Right of Return

This article confirms what most Israelis including myself have always suspected. The Arab nations have been using the Palestinian refugees as pawns for a long time. This seems worth exploring further. Bring the settlers out from Gaza and the West bank, pay off the refugees that want a better life elsewhere and bring the 10 percent who refuse to Gaza and the West bank.

Baghdad Blogger

An interesting column in the Grauniad by our favourite blogger. So 15 million dinars is too much for a mistake and the Brits need more experience in souk bargaining. I know just the person.

Tterrorism

If you want to fight terrorism, first make your own terrorist.

From the Economist.

Our collective experience makes it absolutely clear that the only way to uncover and destroy terrorist activity is to penetrate the organisations engaged in it. And the best way to do this is to place spies in their innermost councils. Except in movies and novels, Americans do not like spies, especially within the United States; but we have used them successfully in the past and, if we are to succeed in the war against terrorism, we need to again. The question is: who does it, and who controls it?

A read of the Little Drummer girl is called for.

WMDs again

So if there were forged documents relating to the import of Uranium from Niger then who forged them and why? The British Government says it has other sources but are these any more credible?

WMDs again

I was hoping to be proved wrong about Iraq and WMDs but it appears not. How can anyone justify this war is beyond me. There are still dictators around in this world, countries that have or are soon going to aquire nukes and the USA/UK is bogged down in Iraq at 3.6 billion per month.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, the original backers of Al-Qaeda, have full USA support, nukes and are sitting very well thank you. Saudia Arabia, the original home of most of the 9/11 murderers does nothing with the blessing of the USA.

Ha'aretz - Article

Ohhhh shiny! A new google toolbar that lets me blog a page and blocks popups. What joy. Oh fabjous day, calloh, calay, he chortled in his joy. Get it here for IE only.

Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the start of the Battle for Britain in 1940. On that day I had twelve uncles in uniform, three aunts and my mother and father who hadn't met yet.

I'm proud of all of them but especially my father. He started out in the RAF as an apprentice electrician and made it to Wing Commander flying Sunderlands on anti submarine work.

He was born in a large family of Plymouth Brethren. The West country is/was a hive of Christian sects. Check out the Sethians. My Mother was driving an ambulance in London later on becoming an Instructor on radar tracking for anti aircraft guns. She ended up in Berlin in 1946 as the assistant to the Provost Marshall in the British sector. She was always grateful to some members of the Jewish Brigade who helped her in a tight spot with some Russians.

Visas and the USA

Israelis now need a visa to visit the USA and a personal interview at the Embassy in Tel Aviv. This will be in English. People are not happy. This starts July 14th. The rather small club of Nations that don't need visas for the USA will need machine readable passports starting next year with biometric information.

A big question here. Is a photograph 'biometric'?.

Iraqometer

Welcome to the Iraqometer keeping tabs on numbers. Nice quote.

We did not wish to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. Unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

-- George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, 1999

So who's looking?

Not me Guv. Must be someone else

Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.

General Franks is now retired after a long and distinguished service in the US Army.

A complete 'Horlicks'

What do they mean?

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently described the "dodgy dossier" compiled by Downing Street on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as "a complete Horlicks".

Horlicks is a nighttime drink. We are getting further away from WMDs as time progresses. I have patience to wait for a year or so to see how things pan out. In the meantime, my local Christian Arab shop sells Horlicks. Another one down the road sells PG tips tea bags.

Heat

It's hot.... too hot and they're demolishing the house next door to make room for eight others. It's hot and dusty. How soldiers carry all that gear and body armour is beyond me.

Thinking

A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms,with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations - admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of words. Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.

Patrick O'Brian in Post Captain. Seemingly stories about naval warfare in the Napoleanic era but full of wonderful writing such as the above.

It captures my mind so wonderfully, I think not in words but in concepts, ideas, threads, trains of thought, images, snatches of music and scent as well. What was the lady wearing last night sitting next to me at the bar when I was conversing with a Swedish graphics designer? Images glance past me and I grab frantically at the ones that make sense.

Time to move on I think.

4th July

Happy 4th of July to all left pondians reading this. No hard feelings anymore I trust. I have heard the American revolution described as a glorious victory of brave British colonists fighting against German George and his foreign troops.

Writing style

One of the things I most admire about the USA is the clarity of the Constitution. For example:

Section. 2.
Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

I took that from this site. We will gloss over the bit about 'Importation of certain persons'.
Clear, precise and to the point. Some other good writing styles are the North Atlantic Treaty singed in 1949. Here's article 5.

Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Still good but getting wordy.
Now the Maastricht treaty gets bad:

3. By way of derogation from the procedure provided for in paragraph 1, where the application of provisions concerning the principles of the regulatory system for transport would be liable to have a serious effect on the standard of living and on employment in certain areas and on the operation of transport facilities, they shall be laid down by the Council acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission, after consulting the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee. In so doing, the Council shall take into account the need for adaptation to the economic development which will result from establishing the common market."

See what I mean? Lawyer talk. Meaningless gibberish. I'm a supporter of Euorpean integration but I have this horrible sinking feeling every time the European gets together and tries to make the lives of it's citizens better ot wraps it in meaningless junk. That bit about 'take into account' and 'economic development'. gives a big let out to anyone who doesn't feel like it.


Thanks to the Plain English campaign Golden Bull award, we can see the ultimate in goobledygook.

'13. Waiver
'No forbearance of failure by the Employer at any time to require performance of any provision of the Agreement or to enforce strictly the obligations of the Employee or to take action to suspend the Employee or to determine the Agreement forthwith upon discovering cause therefor shall effect the right of the Employer so to do any time and no waiver by the Employer of any condition or breach of any clause whether by conduct or otherwise shall constitute a continuing or further waiver of any such condition or breach or as the breach of any other clause.'

My grammar and typing may be faulty but I will never, ever get that bad.

Israel and Peace

It's nice to see a small beginning to a more normal life here in Israel even if it is encumbered by bickering, bad faith and grumbles. Now if I could just get paid as well life would be quite good.

Blogger and spellcheck

Umm, Mr Blogger. I speak the Queens English and colour is spelt just right thank you. What happened to the language setting?

Microsoft Word documents

For those of you who send Microsoft Word documents about, be careful. They contain metadata which may give away more than you intended such as the last five authors and other details. Tony Blair found this out then the now notorious Iraq Dossier was downloaded from the Government web site and forensically dissected.

Clink here to get the gory details.

If you want to publish without all that metadata use PDF. Failing that, read this helpful Microsoft guide on how to minimise metadata.

Deputy Mayors

The government has requested that the number of deputy mayors for Haifa and Jerusalem be reduced to three from the normal complement of eight. I would have though one was enough.

BBC

I saw the programme that caused so much grief on BBC World last night. I fail to see what the fuss is about. There were two minor factual errors and a general tone of disapproval of Israel's nuclear programme. I did object to the allegation that non conventional gas was used in the Gaza strip though. Peres did a masterful job of saying nothing in an interview though.

It will blow over as usual.

Spam ... do something

My new, never published work account has started getting spam. Scott Richter is behind a lot of it. He sends around 80 million messages a day. His domains, OptInRealBig.com and saverealbig.com are 'block on sight' whenever he shifts providers. He used to be with Sprint but they cut him off for not paying his bills. They don't mind the spam as long as he pays.

Bad news if you happen to have an ip address in this range.

209.236.22.0/27, Scott Richter (On listed Eddy Marin spam house)

BBC gets it in the neck

First Alastair Cambell, the Prince of Darkness charges in and now Israel. Good to see the BBC being controversial. Behind the welter of charge and counter charge, the facts normally go missing.

Vignettes from Israel part 3

From Uri Avnery

HUNDREDS OF “RABBIS OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA”
ARE UNDERMINING THE DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

They want to paralyze the government, damage the Knesset and demolish the court system, in order to enable the “Judea and Samaria” rowdies to dominate the occupied territories and impose their will on the public at large.

These rebelling rabbis are state employees. All of us pay their salaries, in addition to car and clothing expenses, director-grade insurance and 13th-month salary, as well as bonuses for the holidays’ and for the acquisition of holy books.

All TV channels allow them many hours on the screen, while peace activists are almost completely banned.

We pay ourselves for the destruction of Israeli democracy.

Vignettes from Israel part 2

The Farm lobby is one of the major power centres in Israel. There are around 18,000 Israelis engaged in agriculture of whom about 10,000 view farming as their main occupation

They dominate Israeli politics.

Vignettes from Israel part 1

From Ha'Aratez:

Doron Rosenblum

You have to understand: terrorism knows no boundaries , and our eyesight isn't what is used to be,either. And besides it's not healthy for the fears and bitterness of residents and heads of local councils to accumalate in one place. The alerts, the rocket threats, the dud shells, the nerves, the terrorist attacks, the shootings.. Its about time that you analogs also got it into your heads: obsession with security belongs to all of us. Let's make sure it's distributed fairly and equally, without depriving any place in the country.

Bog blog

Thanks to Pickle Juice for the suggestion of a Bog Blog. I shall pursue the idea when my sensitive parts have healed.

Illness

I'm ill with some stomach bug. Postings will resume when I can get away from the loo.

Luck, lucky man

I am so fortunate. The guy behind me goes on holiday next week and while he's away I get to borrow his waste paper basket. The Company can't afford to buy me one just yet.

Macs are slower than PCs

I knew that. Did you know that? Macs suck anyway. Try designing and inserting your own expansion card in while and you'll agree.

Much as I wonder about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs is just weird. I suggest that failing to acknowledge your own child shows a character flaw the size of the Grand Canyon.

Blog of the day and week

Say hello to Oscar Jr who has a 'Blog around the World' thing going. Well worth a visit. Spot the blog from Mongolia.

memo to self

When trying to write to a file under Windows CE, use the following snippet.

::EnterCriticalSection(&m_crit);

::SetFilePointer(m_hFile, 0, 0, FILE_END););

::WriteFile(m_hFile, buffer, nBytes, &dwWrittenBytes, NULL););

bOk = (dwWrittenBytes != (DWORD)nBytes););

if (!bOk) goto exit_function;);

::FlushFileBuffers(m_hFile););

exit_function:);

::LeaveCriticalSection(&m_crit););


OK, so the labels are bad. This code worked whereas my far more elegant code didn't.

Protect aging hippies

This piece in the Economist has me worried. Jail time for protesting?

Brianh Blum has a nice piece on a Bar Mitzvah at Hogwarts school. Go read.

Interesting day

Alisa points out the significance of June 22nd to a Russian. It is also 450 years since the UK and Russia exchanged ambassadors.

Peres

That was quick. Just after being elected Leader of the Labour party off he goes to the summit in Jordan. That man can travel.

She who must be obeyed.

She has turned back to painting so I'm being very gentle, bringing in food and supplies as required hoping that this will carry on for ever.

Regretfully, her first subject is youngest fighting teenager's classmate who died of leukemia this spring. Various visitors found this too much. More on this later. My first swim this year in the over-large swimming pool attached to Israel went well. No jellyfish (Medusa locally) and few people. The water felt like warm milk.

George Galloway (twit)

I have no time for George Galloway who was accused some while ago of accepting large sums of money from Saddam Hussein. It appears that the allegations are untrue and based on forged letters sent to the Christian Science Monitor of Boston.

Will all those who were so quick to condemn, be just as swift to follow up?

Sigh..... I thought not.

WIBNI's

'Wouldn't It Be Nice If' (WIBNI) is a phrase I dread when working with software. You sweated to complete the product, beta testing has come and gone, the customer has taken delivery, the early bugs have been fixed and things are going well.

Then the customer starts coming up with wibnis and a manic product manager sees nothing wrong with continuing to make extensive changes , for ever, at no charge under the flimsy grounds that 'they have a support contract'. Hey, I'm supposed to service and repair your car, not turn it into a Ferrari!

Peres wins

So Peres makes it. With a low turnout of the party central committee, he beat the other two candidates. I wonder what happens next and when he will make his first trip abroad to solve the problems of the Labour party.

Peres on a roll

The Israeli Labor party is having an election of sorts. Peres is running for the rather ridiculous post of temporary chairperson for a year in order to rehabilitate party. His efforts to get the other candidates to withdraw have had a limited success. Fuad has dropped out having got someone sucker to sign in blood that Peres will step down after one year. Ho, ho. Peres has had problems with elections before though. He keeps losing them.

There again, so did Menachem Begin until he finally made it.

Blog of the Day

So NZPundit has been around for a while. It's the first time I read his whole blog and very much enjoyed the work popup page. That bit's on the top right. The other stuff is worth reading as well. Pity about the dark background but that's just me probably.

Why does the blogger spell checker want to replace the perfectly good word 'blog'?

No good news

In the absence of any good local news, the recent killings of a 7 year old and a yet another suicide attack. I offer this snippet courtesy of Reuters that sexual equality continues apace.

It would appear that Western woman is just as likely to have an affair as her husband. I shall be viewing my friends wives with interest.

Blogger

Blogger is playing up again. It's time to finish that Perl script I was writing to download all posts.

Remember Afghanistan?

This article from the BBC is a bit worrying. People wishing the Taliban were back?

The US in particular is said to be opposed to any expansion of the security force as this might interfere with its ongoing efforts to capture or destroy the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

This shouldn't be allowed to happen. You fight terror and built up a society at the same time, not in sequence.

Spam and Microsoft

Looks like Redmond is using some of it's cash pile for a reallly good cause now. Sueing spammers. Hooray!.

Outlook Express 6.0

You probably all knew this or you're using Macs or Linux boxes. If you have Outlook Express 6, you can turn off reading HTML email via options and the read tab. If I have to download various cruddy spam emails, at least I don't have to see it.

It also stops making a connection to the host web site so bye bye Web bugs.

So go on, upgrade now.

Blogger

Hey, those posts are supposed to be Tuesday's not Monday's. What's going on?

OK, found it, my time zone settings were reset to GMT - 12 hours.

Allison

Allison enjoyed here little holiday up North. You're all welcome to come to the most beautiful part of Israel.

Taxes

Matthew Yglesias comments that Federal tax cuts have prompted a rise in State taxes. No suprise there. I cannot find a breakdown of Federal to State public spending though.

Israel and progress

I watch, read and wonder about the Road Map and it's progress. I was to have written a obituary but that's on hold for now. If Hamas could be driven down, they may be a chance after all. In the meantime, unemployment here hit 10.6% which is worrying. I may not have been paid but I still have a job.

Spammers fight back.

A few auto bounces to one of my email boxes today. Some spammer using my email address in the 'from' field. One of the problems with the current email system is that this is trivial to forge. It's called a Joe Job.

Spamcop, the auto larting machine is under a DOS attack and it's usenet server is down. The email and web server is fine though. It's currently processing around 7 spams per second

Spews is still going and various cartooney lawsuites pop out on a regular basis.
I have taken to manually larting various china net addresses recently with no result. As our BOFH is/has left/pushed/thrown out for a Linux/Apache job, I get first dibs at the mail server. 'Blackholes Are Us' gets put in tomorrow.

I fancy spews myself.
For those frea speach chicken boners out there, try listening to this all day.

Cheapskates

After a difficult weekend, I have persuaded an old Seiko 9 pin dot matrix serial printer to finally accept the fact that it is supposed to be able to print Hebrew and I'm never going to give up until it does. Doing this via Unicode Java and custom dll's running on a iPaq Pocket PC nearly drove me insane but it is finally done.

For those lucky people whose eyes have glazed over while reading the above, I envy you. I really do.

My boss is happy, the customer were about to call in a HP consultant costing $6,000 for one week. I got to do it for free (I still haven't been paid).

What I want to know is which mindless prat decided this was a good choice for sales agents on the road and what should I dream about doing to him/her.