Time to upgrade the hard drive

According to NASA, the recent problems with the Spirit rover might have been caused by storing too many files that were accumulated when conducting experiments. Maybe they should defrag too since they're cleaning up the old files...

In a small but somewhat telling incident showing the problems of Islamic integration into European society, a teacher in England today was accused of assaulting a Muslim student, attempting to take of her headscarf and demeaning her religion. This unfortunate incident does speak to the larger issues faced by a European culture dealing with immigration from Islamic countries, epitomized by the ongoing debate in France over the proposed banning of religious paraphernalia from public schools.

A British Columbia cabinet minister has recently announced that he is the first person in his position to marry someone of the same sex after the BC supreme court made same sex marriage legal in July 2003. Note to some select people out there: the world is still spinning.

A recent Swedish study shows that there is no link between having an abortion and an increased chance of developing breast cancer. This has apparently been an argument used by pro-life organizations, but researchers in this study say that even though some studies have shown a slight relationship, the overall evidence is weak.

Human Rights Watch slammed the Bush administration for trying to retroactively justify the war as an effort to improve human rights. More interestingly, the report stated that although the Iraqi administration was particularly brutal, it did not conduct any mass actions against its people that would make necessary humanitarian intervention. It also warned that the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating over the year and that the war on terror has caused human rights violations in Chechnya to be ignored. I feel I need to quote from the report, as it makes very interesting points. Here is part of the preamble to their case for opposing the war. In addition, I would suggest checking out the whole thing.

"Because the Iraq war was not mainly about saving the Iraqi people from mass slaughter, and because no such slaughter was then ongoing or imminent, Human Rights Watch at the time took no position for or against the war. A humanitarian rationale was occasionally offered for the war, but it was so plainly subsidiary to other reasons that we felt no need to address it. Indeed, if Saddam Hussein had been overthrown and the issue of weapons of mass destruction reliably dealt with, there clearly would have been no war, even if the successor government were just as repressive. Some argued that Human Rights Watch should support a war launched on other grounds if it would arguably lead to significant human rights improvements. But the substantial risk that wars guided by non-humanitarian goals will endanger human rights keeps us from adopting that position.

Over time, the principal justifications originally given for the Iraq war lost much of their force. More than seven months after the declared end of major hostilities, weapons of mass destruction have not been found. No significant prewar link between Saddam Hussein and international terrorism has been discovered. The difficulty of establishing stable institutions in Iraq is making the country an increasingly unlikely staging ground for promoting democracy in the Middle East. As time elapses, the Bush administration's dominant remaining justification for the war is that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who deserved to be overthrown an argument of humanitarian intervention. The administration is now citing this rationale not simply as a side benefit of the war but also as a prime justification for it. Other reasons are still regularly mentioned, but the humanitarian one has gained prominence.

Does that claim hold up to scrutiny? The question is not simply whether Saddam Hussein was a ruthless leader; he most certainly was. Rather, the question is whether the conditions were present that would justify humanitarian intervention conditions that look at more than the level of repression. If so, honesty would require conceding as much, despite the war's global unpopularity. If not, it is important to say so as well, since allowing the arguments of humanitarian intervention to serve as a pretext for war fought mainly on other grounds risks tainting a principle whose viability might be essential to save countless lives.

In examining whether the invasion of Iraq could properly be understood as a humanitarian intervention, our purpose is not to say whether the U.S.-led coalition should have gone to war for other reasons. That, as noted, involves judgments beyond our mandate. Rather, now that the war's proponents are relying so significantly on a humanitarian rationale for the war, the need to assess this claim has grown in importance. We conclude that, despite the horrors of Saddam Hussein's rule, the invasion of Iraq cannot be justified as a humanitarian intervention."

Finally, in breaking news, a Canadian soldier has been killed and three injured in Kabul after a suicide bomb attack. This represents the first casualties for Canada in Afghanistan since October, when two Canadian soldiers were killed in a landmine explosion. May all of our prayers go out to their families in this difficult moment.