Ha'aretz - Article tells Israelis

to be more vigilant. How is that possible? I never knew quite what to do anyway. Not travelling seems a good start.

No amount of vigilance in the world could have helped those Israelis and Kenyans in Mombasa.

CNN.com - Israelis targeted in Kenya attacks - Nov. 28, 2002 So it's back to attackes outside of Israel now.

A little known site for those into British humour at it's best. And a very happy Thanksgiving to all in the USA. Its close to Hannukah now with Christmas not far away. I also get to mourn my 50th birthday next week which I am not looking forward to at all.

As I have said , this is my first Israeli election and I'm keen to learn all I can.

It's nice to see that Israel has it's fair share of nutcakes around. I'd hate to live in a State where everybody behaved the same.

Still, a Green Leaf party? A google search turns up an English langauge web sitehere. Ah I see. Legalise weed.

Rabbi Yosef Ba-Gad is running again with the Father's party. Sounds good to me. In 1999 his election slogan was 'Vote for me- I'd make the Knesset more interesting' No thanks, it's interesting enough.

Tal G. in Jerusalem points out that Evelyn Gordon wants to reject Mitzna's plan to start with evacuating the Gaza strip without pre-conditions.
Well and good I suppose, but the hawks in Israel have even less of an idea of what to do next than the left. The only plus point of Mitzna's plan is that it is something. Sharon and Co only offer more of the same without end.
Personally, I look forward to the day when Hamas and the Government of Israel are not so much in agreement about modalities.

Hamas would love the IDF to continue with West Bank occupation. Hamas want to get rid of Ararfat.
Hezbollah miss the IDF like somebody with an amputated leg.
Every demolished house generates more potential martyrs.
Every killed Palestinian kid generates more hatred.
Every dead Israeli moves more voters every more to the right.

There is no compelling moral, judaic, legal, or economic resaon for the setllements to exist in Gaza.
Let them go now and Israel can start taking control over its own destiny.

ScrappleFace: Razor Blade Campaign Aims to Cut Suicide Bombings Ah... I loved this one. It's only because I have a very Monty Python sense of humour.

US Congressman demands re-imposition of sanctions on PakistanFat chance. Club 'Axis of Evil' is full. Try Club 'Not so nice guys but too important right now'.

My email domain couldn't be clearer when it comes to spam.
As the first rule of spammers states:

Rule 1, (nanae and Spam-L standard) Spammers lie.
Rule 2, (nanae and Spam-L standard) Recursive, If spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule 1.
Rule 3, (nanae and Spam-L standard) Spammers are stupid.

So why does "zhaoqiaohui@163.net" think I might be interested in his products?

Owing to a local company deciding to dump 40 tons (metric only here) of liquid oxygen into the atmosphere, my journey home took 2.5 hours instead of the normal 25 minutes.

Whilst musing on life in general, I remembered this snippet. In the USA, WASP stands for White Anglo Saxon Protestant.
In Israel, it means White Ashkenazi Sabra with Protezia.

The last word means friends in high places. The offending company has been closed while various agencies shout at them. I know that it will be open for business as usual in two weeks or less.

Vodka Pundit says that the USA is the last socio-economic system left after the end of the Cold War. Well, at least I think that's what he means.
So much for 300 million Europeans left without a society and an economy.

Somebody needs to point out to Yanks that there is life East of Boston , West of Seattle, North of Chicago and South of El Paso.
That last sentence might even make a good song.

Where, oh where did my comments go?

Another bomb in Israel with more dead. I'm coming to the conclusion that there is no solution, none at all.
It looks like Sharon wll be Prime Minister again next year. I never thought I'd say it but I'd prefer him to Bibi any day.
Labour continues to thrash around looking for itself .

This article from the Register, my favourite tech site, had me thinking. Yes, phones are disrupting. I'm not just talking about mobile phones now but all phones. It is regretfully common when talking to somebody and the phone rings for them to pick it up and answer straight away. Now to me, that sends me a message along the lines of 'Any random person is more important now than you are' which is offensive.
An 'excuse me' helps but it is not the answer.
Last year, when I was buying a car, we arrived at a car dealer and was very impressed by the salesperson. He switched of his mobile, disconnected the office phone and said 'You have my full attention'
Now that's service.

Didn't buy the car though but for different reasons.

This amusing google game, from somebody French, is fun.
Enter Israel and Palestine.

Sorry, Israel wins again

This Guardian article amused me very much.Well worth a read.I feel just the same way. When I'm told to be vigilant, what exactly am I supposed to do?

Well, my flu has subsided and BigBoy, the new machine at home is up and running. Intel motherboard 256 MByte DDR ram, Celeron 1.7 GHz.A Gforce TI graphics cardwith 128 MBytes ram completes the picture. ADSL Internet and a new HPprinter forthe icing on the cake.
And yes,I do like Windows XP. 'She who must be obeyed' managed to send her first email yesterday all by herself.

Now,why was I so mean as to use a six year old keyboard with a sticky spacekey?

It's stay at home time with a big box of tissues,lots of tea with lemon and honey.

This article from the Jerusalem post says it all about the Labour Party in Israel. It should be the party I'm thinking of voting for. Based on the debate so far, I'm more likely to vote Shas.

Can anyone tell me what the cat and turtle was for?

A blast from the past
Margaret Thatcher once famously said ‘There is no such thing as society.’ That isn't the real quote but it is an indication of her state of mind. She was mistaken of course. During a debate I heard once in the Commons, she decried ‘social engineering’ as being a tool of Satan. The day before, she had applauded her chancellor for increasing the differential between leaded and unleaded petrol. Spot the deliberate mistake competition perhaps?

The real quote for those who didn't read the link is:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!

This articlefrom Public Interest from public interest got me thinking.

The last so called consensus issue from the Florence meeting was that “and that one vote every four years given to political parties run by self-serving elites is no way to run modern, complex democracies in a globalised economy"

Now I could agree with that and here’s why.

Democracy must be about choice and freedom and that is increasing disappearing recently. I’ll supply a few examples.

My sister serves on the Parish council where she lives. They are supposedly responsible for the local parish property, playgrounds, village hall etc. However, the budget they have is virtually always pre determined by insurance costs and the necessary audit every year. In fact, the audit fee is the single largest item on the budget. It remains that as there is no discretion over the budget or duties, the fact that the members of the council are democratically elected means nothing.

If they choose, they can fund raise (and many councils do), or apply for grants, say from the lottery money for specific projects. This, however, doesn’t need a council.

Another example.

The RAF, some years ago decided to give station commanders more control over how their bases were run. Control of the budget was given to the station commander.

Again, the budget was entirely pre determined by costs over which the station commander had no control such as fuel, wages and mission. The only real choice he or she had was over who cut the grass on the airfield. Where my brother was deputy commander, a flock of sheep was found to be cost effective thus allowing a nine hole golf course to be constructed.

Similarly, democracy suffers by being run on rails rather than a road. There is an every decreasing amount of autonomy in local affairs as central governments take more and more power. I am speaking primarily for Europe rather than the USA as I understand that the States there still retain sovereign power. How much freedom they have to exercise that is another matter of course.

This is the main reason for the drop of in voter participation. People feel, rightly or wrongly that their vote is worthless.

What to do about it is another matter of course. Direct voter control over issues seems one way but is fraught with danger.

So the war in Iraq will happen next year sometime.The war here in Israel goes on. We met some interesting people at demos last Saturday. One was from newprofile, a group trying to demilitarise Israeli society. A worthy objective.See herefor more details.

I spent yesterday manning (should that be personing?) our stand at the Israel Telecom show. We're all suprised by how busy the show is. Plenty of overseas visitors except from the USA. Australians were there in force for some reason.
Now my feet ach. I get to do it all over again tomorrow.

As for the elections here in Israel, well I've not experienced a general election here before. Should be interesting.

This game was fun. I have no idea how those top scores came about though. For those who don't know, falafel is the Israeli equivalent of Fish'n'chips but tastier and healthier. Comes in a slice of pitta bread with all sorts of fillings. Purists frown on the chips though.

This Ha'aretz article says it all. For many years , Israel has been trying to catch up with the USA in so many ways. Now, in two important goals it has. Both countries have a military which is capable of easily taking on any concievable enemy (except terrorists ) and both countries have 1 in 5 of their population below the poverty line.

I feel so proud.

Intertesing new Defence Minister we might have soon. Bibi as the proposed Foreign Minister will be interesting. I look forward to his first trip to the USA. Other than that, hey ho, it's another sunny Sunday in never boring Israel. The land that gets your heart pounding. Missed the rally in Rabin square as Daughter number one insisted on a lift back home. My SO came back late after neededing a 20 km pickup burbling on about her three days with Landmark Education. I'll post a URL when I find one.