From a recent interview with TrollTech's president on the KDE news site:
Q. When Qt comes to Mac will Linux and Windows users be able to use the Aqua theme?
A. No, they will not be able to. Apple is very protective of the Aqua design, so we will not be implementing it on other platforms. Apple has offered their help to promote Qt/Mac, and we don't feel that going against their wishes will help them or us.
Honestly, I don't get why free software enthusiasts aren't embarassed to keep whining about this. Apple created this, let them have it. Either come up with something better or stop snickering about Microsoft and 'innovation'.
I don't know why it's so difficult for people to grasp this:
Do not intrude into or modify systems unless it's been made explicitly clear that you're allowed to do so.
You think you should be allowed to do something? You have some silly-ass analogy regarding doorknobs and windows to explain why you're doing a public service? It doesn't matter. You're going to get yourself in trouble. Is that really so hard to comprehend?
I discovered last weekend that I stopped getting UPN. Who knows when, since I've never needed it before.
I just want to throw in a plug for my favorite UPN show, The Parkers (Monday night at 9, can't give a URL since UPN.com uses JavaScript for no reason). I'm perhaps the only white person who watches it as it's gotten segregated into a night of all black shows, with DL Hughley and the always-hot Moesha. Look for a knock-off show with a white cast to appear on NBC in a couple of years to rave reviews, like Friends did to Living Single.
Rumor has it that Apple Stores have been burning free update CD's for customers who bring in a blank CD-ROM. Sounds ridiculous, but As The Apple Turns claims they're continuing to get reports of it happening, and someone wrote to them claiming CompUSA will do something similar. (If it's off the front page when you read it, go to Monday's stories, or search for id#3317.)
Sounds crazy, but it's Apple so nothing is ever out of the question.
The photo shows Palestinians in Lebanon celebrating the WTC attack. As you mentioned, at least two of them are wearing clothing of US sports teams. No, I can't indepedently vouch for where the pictures were actually taken but the scenery and disregard for weapon safety are certainly consistent with Lebanon.
I haven't figured out how to explain that in 120 characters, including tags and URL. I'd forget about the whole thing except I think this picture is the single most interesting item in all the news coverage. None of the experts holding forth on "Why they hate us!" has said anything that begins to describe the love/hate mentality in this photo.
So, if you'd like to thoroughly argue anti-americanism into the ground, please proceed to do so, but kindly use reasonable arguments, in context, with citations.
I'm reading the responses to my post and wondering if "Any arguments you make about either being good, bad, or anything in between, is dogshit." deserves a rebuttal and you're complaining about the absence of citations in my sig!?!
I feel that this is the crux of your argument but its not well thoughtout...If you damn cryptography, then you have to damn any sort of communication which isn't plastered on billboards.
You (and a bunch of others) are overstating what I'm saying. I'm not damning cryptography or saying what is Right or Wrong or what should or shouldn't be allowed. And everyone condescendingly informing me that cryptography can be used for good or bad ought to reread what I wrote.
The person I was responding to raised the question of why aircraft builders aren't being challenged the way cryptographers are. I'm distinguishing between work that clearly has the potential to be used for purposes the creator would find reprehensible (cryptography, weapons) and work for a benign task that someone's imagination might somehow transform into a tool for harm. To my mind, at least, the former carries a much greater obligation to think through the implications of your work and exposes you to much more criticism when your work is used to kill thousands.
Just like a gun, cryptography can be used for good or bad. I'm sure that encryption is being used by the US to order troops around. Encryption is being used to protect the Pope by his bodyguards. Encryption is being used to protect your bank account.
Err, yeah. That's precisely why I wrote, "A better analogy is to guns. They make individuals less vulnerable and more powerful, which can be used for all sorts of good and bad purposes. "
I instantly disagreed with your analogy but had to think for a while before deciding why:
I think the difference is that an aircraft is designed to transport passengers and cargo through the air, and in this case was transformed into a destructive tool. (Same for the box cutters used in the hijackings.) Cryptography, on the other hand, is designed to conceal information. If PGP or other crypto was used in the WTC attacks (which I haven't seen anything conclusive saying it was) it was used in precisely the job for which it was intended.
A better analogy is to guns. They make individuals less vulnerable and more powerful, which can be used for all sorts of good and bad purposes.
I've had similar conversations with my father-in-law about working on scientific research that could potentially make for bad uses. I appreciate the importance of ethical oversight in all firelds of science and engineering, but I feel a lot better about my biomedical research, even with the potential for abuse, than about his work on H-bombs that in his opinion (and mine) contributed to the preservation of democracy.
Is the picture referenced in your signature for real or is it edited???
I'm sure it's unedited. The Israeli site it's on had it on a page with a bunch of similar pictures, with no reference to the clothes.
It looks to me (not the original poster) like a real picture of non-protesters. Where are the signs?
Supposedly (I can't vouch for it, and the site is pretty right-wing, but I still bet it's true) the picture is of Palestinians in Lebanon celebrating the WTC attack. "celebrations" had too many characters for the sig so I went with "protests" until I can think of a more accurate word of appropriate length.
With this many licenses around its getting a bit silly.
I think they realize that -- whenever the OSI/ex-OSI figures speak on a panel, they always emphasize that there are now enough licenses out there that an existing one will work for just about anyone, and discourage new ones as unnecessary and confusing.
It's always good for a laugh when an OSI board member attacks license proliferation, without the slightest recognition that that's largely what the organization was founded to facilitate.
I agree -- I'm just saying that they were hyped as, and had their stock priced as, a competitor in that league, and that as a result no amount of small-time success will allow them to meet expectations.
VA Linux got caught up in conflaguration of linux / day trading / tech stock hype. It is unlikely that this company should have ever have gone public..
Again, I agree. It's too bad. They could have made a go as a boutique Linux systems vendor, having fun, funding a few hackers and being big shots in their little world. I think the high expectations, and particularly the insane valuation, was the worst thing that could have happened to them.* It forced them into a realm where they couldn't possibly compete with the Darwinian ubersurvivors of the PC price wars.
* Well, maybe not. I don't know how many shares they converted to cash before flaming out.
At this point, VA Linux, as such, is doomed to failure. Maybe they can scrape a profit out of Sourceforge, banner ads and hypercaffeinated beverages. But it's always going to be LNUX -- the first IPO record breaker, owner of the $320 share price, the creator of Surprising Wealth, the company that was going to challenge Dell and Compaq. There's simply nothing they can do to ever get back to the point of breaking even on expectations.
Right now they have still have a lot of cash and assets, tangible and intangible. OSDN, according to someone who responded to one of my posts and seemed to know what he's talking about, is turning a profit. (No idea how - the ThinkGeek ad I'm looking at now isn't making any money.) It's not scaring Microsoft, but it's plenty to make for an extremely well-funded startup. Come up with a new plan that you think is going to work, change the name and make a clean break. Right now, they're just circling the drain.
...and of course make sure the fan is pointing outwards (Who the hell makes fans pointing inward through the bottom of a power supply? There's no exhaust!).
Some systems (like low-end Compaqs, IIRC) skimp on a fan and direct the power supply exhaust onto the CPU instead. I'm not endorsing this practice but someone thought it was a good idea.
Should I be impressed? I've seen teenage overclocker sites devote that many pages to a review of a fan. Including a table, with entries like Noise: Yes.
Not looking to either karma whore or be redundant, but since I've never seen a story so widely misunderstood here even by people who seem to be reading it, I'd like to lay it out as I understand it.
If I've gotten something wrong, please correct me.
The bug affected an initial screening process that used blood test results and the mother's age and weight to determine the risk of Down's Syndrome. It sounds to me (I'm unclear on this) like the error was caught and 150 women who had been told that they were in the low-risk group were actually high-risk. Four of them turn out (this is where I start to get confused -how?) to have had Down's Syndrome babies. Two of them (I guess) still had amniocentesis and aborted the babies and the other two had their babies.
OK, I'm realizing I'm confused about this too. Anyone have a clearer understanding?
Over here (Chile), a 15-year old script kiddie cracked a webhosting company (Meganet) [presumably abusing a very stupid security hole]. Guess what he got? A job... in the very same company as an apprentice.
I don't know how common it is for that to happen but the belief is common among script kiddies that their antics are going to lead to high-paying jobs at the sites they attack. I recall a Slashdot article a while back about an article on some h4x0r website that was actually complaining that it wasn't working out that way for the author. Slashdot search is broken now but maybe one of the people who post those "We had this two years ago! Morons!" bits the moment a duplicate story is put up can confirm my memory.
Incidentally, while 8 months in juvie isn't overkill, I've got to disagree with Rob that it's a slap on the wrist.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 2
Obviously, this is a complicated issue that's can't be addressed thoroughly in a Slashdot thread. But to hit a few of your points:
Re: Acceptance of Israel -- You're talking about today, while I was trying to give some context to the original poster's notion that Mideast politics consisted entirely of Jews arriving out of nowhere and kicking Arabs off their land. Isral has been under constant attack since its founding, by Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Some of those neighbors have accepted the reality of Israel's existance (or at least their inability to destroy it). I think you're naive about Syria's intentions, though, and I'd point out that Palestinian Authority-approved textbooks don't have Israel on the map.
Re: Iraqi nukes -- First of all, Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons today because Isral destroyed their reactor, getting deplored by the world for its trouble. Second, I don't see any reason why Saddam wouldn't be interested in nukes, biological or chemical weapons regardless of what Israel has.
Re: Citizenship -- So you're saying Arabs are better off as subjects of a king or a lunatic than they are as citizens with full civil rights as a religious minority in the Jewish homeland? The scary thing is that they would probably agree, which is why the problem is so intractable.
By the way, I can't outright say you're wrong about the license plates, but I'm _very_ skeptical you've got that right. West Bank and Gaza Arabs who decline Israeli citizenship probably do have different tags than citizens but that citizens have their ethnicity published that way? I _really_ hope you've got that right because otherwise it's a deeply offensive misstatement.
Re: Current hostility -- Hey, it's a Slashdot post and I do realize that's a glib oversimplification. But note the word _current_. The current round of hostility did in fact come around not because of Israel's recalcitrance but when the Israeli government made an unprecedented gesture of concession. I find it hard to draw any lesson from that other than that it's everything (or at least complete control of Jerusalem) or nothing as far as the Palestinians are concerned.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 1
Well, perhaps you are not aware we funded Hussein with military weapons until six months prior to the Gulf "War" because the U.S. government supported his killing of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
The US was sympathetic to Saddam and supported his military, although I think what you're presenting as undisputed fact isn't as obviously true as you think. But what does that have to do with what I said? Obviously Harry Truman didn't begin the policy of support to Israel with he goal of destroying Iraq's nuclear power but I think it's clear that the investment paid off tremendously.
Apparently you have never been to Israel. Go there and have a crime committed against you. See how strongly the police officials try to get you to say an Arab committed the crime. See how you can't find out what the convicted's punishment is (so he or she can be tortured by CIA-trained Israelis).
You know, people go to foreign countries (especially Israel, which has a near-zero crime rate) without having crimes committed against them.;-) I've been there and a lot of other countries and the Philippines is the only place I've needed the police, and the Filipinos advised me that I'd be better off without them.
As for what you're saying, I have no idea what the truth of it is. But again, I don't see where it invalidates my point. (Out of curiosity, did this actually happen to you or are you just repeating what you read goes on? My understanding is non-political crime in Israel is mostly committed by non-Arabs.)
And by the way, the CIA is involved with the Palestinians, too. It's just that the CIA supports Arafat, and Palestinians do not. The PLO is a CIA-supported, pseudo-government that doesn't care whether Palestinians have a homeland.
OK, now I'm wondering whether you've ever been there. I agree that the PLO wants the Palestinians sitting in camps as long as possible (why they walked out of Camp David) and the last thing Arab countries want is a Palestinian state. But I've spoken with Palestinian Arabs both there and here, and my impression is that support for Arafat and the PA is tremendous. And the people who don't back him are supporting Islamic Jihad and other extremists who are even less inclined to compromise.
Anyway, you know what? Yesterday wasn't about Israel -- otherwise it would have been aimed at Israel. It's looking increasingly like a fundamentalist Muslim attack on the center of the Christian world. The Israel-Palestine situation is messy enough without dragging them into this issue.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This isn't a useful place to have a substantive discussion of this issue, but can I respectfully suggest you try to acquire a fuller and more balanced understanding of this topic if you're going to hold forth on it?
Having said that, perhaps the U.S. should think twice about supporting and funding Israel's occupation and methodical elimination of the Palestinian homeland.
I don't know if you're aware of this but the fundamental problem in that area is that since the founding of Israel, the Arab countries have continuously devoted themselves to its destruction. I think you also have some major misconceptions regarding the nature of a "Palestinian homeland" which could be more accurately described as "whatever area happens to be under Israeli control at the moment".
Not to diminish the reality that many Arabs did lose their homes and property and that the current occupation is untenable and harmful to both sides.
Just recently the UN discussions used some 'heated' words to describe Israel's policies (racist, etc) and both Israel and the US walked out of the talks. Why is condemnation of Israeli policy an insult to the US?
The use of the word "racist" is a non-event. The issue was conference ostensibly intended to fight racism that turned into a wildly anti-semitic assault depicting Israel (one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world) as the sole locus of evil. Yes, it's appropriate that the US government didn't lend legitimacy to it, and European countries should be ashamed of their compliance.
Why are my tax dollars paying for this?
If it makes you feel better, think about how much we spend on defense each year. Now think about the dollar value of the fact that Iraq didn't have nukes in 1991. Was aid to Israel cost effective?
Just a citizen of the USA that has become more and more disheartened to see a nation of people that know terrible oppression firsthand now dishing it out.
I'm not going to relentlessly cheerlead Israel -- their settlement policy in the West Bank was a mistake and it's come back to haunt them. But it's worth keeping in mind that the only country in that region in which Arabs can vote is Israel. In the rest of the area, the best they can hope for is a reasonably benign king (Morocco, Jordan) or despot (Egypt). And also that the current hostility isn't because Israel denied the Palestinians a homeland but because it offered them one.
Yesterday, while at was work with no TV or radio, my primary source of information was Slashdot, both what the editors posted and what readers added. It has to have been one of the highlights of the site's history.
Taco's notions of journalism can sometimes be almost as shaky as his spelling, but I think he and Hemos both have an excellent sense of what to do with the tremendous platform they have and they showed it yesterday.
Three other random thoughts: First, when I went to donate blood yesterday, I was very touched by the number of people who rushed to help, and in particular by all the foreign students there. (Japanese, especially.) We may all have our differences, but it's good to see that almost all of us are basically on the same side.
Second, and this is kind of out of nowhere, hopefully this incident will take some of the steam out of "anarchist" rioting. If you have honest objections to the IMF, World Bank, Starbucks or whatever, by all means protest, demonstrate, get arrested, but please start leaving it at that. The "black bloc" folks may think they're the ultimate badasses with their slingshots and gas masks, but yesterday should have made it clear that there's two kinds of people in the world and they're over here with us.
Finally, and I'm aiming this mostly at myself but encouraging others to join in -- yesterday brought home just how insane it is to get enraged over whether one should say Linux or GNU/Linux or what Craig Mundie said about Linux. The world needs free software, it needs fair use of information but it doesn't need more hate. Certainly not over software.
For the US to respond in force in less than 12 hours would practically imply that someone giving orders knew about the trade center attacks before they happened.
Or that they're going to blame Afghanistan and Bin Laden without bothering to make sure. I'm as eager as anyone to see the terrorists get paid in full, but for God's sake, make sure we get the right people!
(Latest updates suggest this is, in fact, internal Afghani conflict.)
I agree. I'm not going to start flaming over this (today has given me a better perspective about what is and isn't worth getting angry or hostile over) but I'd like to see today treated simply as a tragedy for at least a few days before it passes into an anecdote for culture theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Q. When Qt comes to Mac will Linux and Windows users be able to use the Aqua theme?
A. No, they will not be able to. Apple is very protective of the Aqua design, so we will not be implementing it on other platforms. Apple has offered their help to promote Qt/Mac, and we don't feel that going against their wishes will help them or us.
Honestly, I don't get why free software enthusiasts aren't embarassed to keep whining about this. Apple created this, let them have it. Either come up with something better or stop snickering about Microsoft and 'innovation'.
Do not intrude into or modify systems unless it's been made explicitly clear that you're allowed to do so.
You think you should be allowed to do something? You have some silly-ass analogy regarding doorknobs and windows to explain why you're doing a public service? It doesn't matter. You're going to get yourself in trouble. Is that really so hard to comprehend?
I just want to throw in a plug for my favorite UPN show, The Parkers (Monday night at 9, can't give a URL since UPN.com uses JavaScript for no reason). I'm perhaps the only white person who watches it as it's gotten segregated into a night of all black shows, with DL Hughley and the always-hot Moesha. Look for a knock-off show with a white cast to appear on NBC in a couple of years to rave reviews, like Friends did to Living Single.
Sounds crazy, but it's Apple so nothing is ever out of the question.
Me too! I can never see the spider in the nostril.
I haven't figured out how to explain that in 120 characters, including tags and URL. I'd forget about the whole thing except I think this picture is the single most interesting item in all the news coverage. None of the experts holding forth on "Why they hate us!" has said anything that begins to describe the love/hate mentality in this photo.
So, if you'd like to thoroughly argue anti-americanism into the ground, please proceed to do so, but kindly use reasonable arguments, in context, with citations.
I'm reading the responses to my post and wondering if "Any arguments you make about either being good, bad, or anything in between, is dogshit." deserves a rebuttal and you're complaining about the absence of citations in my sig!?!
You (and a bunch of others) are overstating what I'm saying. I'm not damning cryptography or saying what is Right or Wrong or what should or shouldn't be allowed. And everyone condescendingly informing me that cryptography can be used for good or bad ought to reread what I wrote.
The person I was responding to raised the question of why aircraft builders aren't being challenged the way cryptographers are. I'm distinguishing between work that clearly has the potential to be used for purposes the creator would find reprehensible (cryptography, weapons) and work for a benign task that someone's imagination might somehow transform into a tool for harm. To my mind, at least, the former carries a much greater obligation to think through the implications of your work and exposes you to much more criticism when your work is used to kill thousands.
Just like a gun, cryptography can be used for good or bad. I'm sure that encryption is being used by the US to order troops around. Encryption is being used to protect the Pope by his bodyguards. Encryption is being used to protect your bank account.
Err, yeah. That's precisely why I wrote, "A better analogy is to guns. They make individuals less vulnerable and more powerful, which can be used for all sorts of good and bad purposes. "
I instantly disagreed with your analogy but had to think for a while before deciding why:
I think the difference is that an aircraft is designed to transport passengers and cargo through the air, and in this case was transformed into a destructive tool. (Same for the box cutters used in the hijackings.) Cryptography, on the other hand, is designed to conceal information. If PGP or other crypto was used in the WTC attacks (which I haven't seen anything conclusive saying it was) it was used in precisely the job for which it was intended.
A better analogy is to guns. They make individuals less vulnerable and more powerful, which can be used for all sorts of good and bad purposes.
I've had similar conversations with my father-in-law about working on scientific research that could potentially make for bad uses. I appreciate the importance of ethical oversight in all firelds of science and engineering, but I feel a lot better about my biomedical research, even with the potential for abuse, than about his work on H-bombs that in his opinion (and mine) contributed to the preservation of democracy.
Human: What license should you be released under?
Robot: I BE RELEASED
Well, there you go!
I'm sure it's unedited. The Israeli site it's on had it on a page with a bunch of similar pictures, with no reference to the clothes.
It looks to me (not the original poster) like a real picture of non-protesters. Where are the signs?
Supposedly (I can't vouch for it, and the site is pretty right-wing, but I still bet it's true) the picture is of Palestinians in Lebanon celebrating the WTC attack. "celebrations" had too many characters for the sig so I went with "protests" until I can think of a more accurate word of appropriate length.
I think they realize that -- whenever the OSI/ex-OSI figures speak on a panel, they always emphasize that there are now enough licenses out there that an existing one will work for just about anyone, and discourage new ones as unnecessary and confusing.
It's always good for a laugh when an OSI board member attacks license proliferation, without the slightest recognition that that's largely what the organization was founded to facilitate.
I agree -- I'm just saying that they were hyped as, and had their stock priced as, a competitor in that league, and that as a result no amount of small-time success will allow them to meet expectations.
VA Linux got caught up in conflaguration of linux / day trading / tech stock hype. It is unlikely that this company should have ever have gone public..
Again, I agree. It's too bad. They could have made a go as a boutique Linux systems vendor, having fun, funding a few hackers and being big shots in their little world. I think the high expectations, and particularly the insane valuation, was the worst thing that could have happened to them.* It forced them into a realm where they couldn't possibly compete with the Darwinian ubersurvivors of the PC price wars.
* Well, maybe not. I don't know how many shares they converted to cash before flaming out.
Right now they have still have a lot of cash and assets, tangible and intangible. OSDN, according to someone who responded to one of my posts and seemed to know what he's talking about, is turning a profit. (No idea how - the ThinkGeek ad I'm looking at now isn't making any money.) It's not scaring Microsoft, but it's plenty to make for an extremely well-funded startup. Come up with a new plan that you think is going to work, change the name and make a clean break. Right now, they're just circling the drain.
Some systems (like low-end Compaqs, IIRC) skimp on a fan and direct the power supply exhaust onto the CPU instead. I'm not endorsing this practice but someone thought it was a good idea.
Should I be impressed? I've seen teenage overclocker sites devote that many pages to a review of a fan. Including a table, with entries like Noise: Yes.
Obligatory BBSpot link: Video Card Review Sets Page Record
Out of curiosity, how does Office for MacOS handle embedded components? Is it COM as well, or something entirely different? Anyone know?
Not looking to either karma whore or be redundant, but since I've never seen a story so widely misunderstood here even by people who seem to be reading it, I'd like to lay it out as I understand it.
If I've gotten something wrong, please correct me.
The bug affected an initial screening process that used blood test results and the mother's age and weight to determine the risk of Down's Syndrome. It sounds to me (I'm unclear on this) like the error was caught and 150 women who had been told that they were in the low-risk group were actually high-risk. Four of them turn out (this is where I start to get confused -how?) to have had Down's Syndrome babies. Two of them (I guess) still had amniocentesis and aborted the babies and the other two had their babies.
OK, I'm realizing I'm confused about this too. Anyone have a clearer understanding?
Link
I don't know how common it is for that to happen but the belief is common among script kiddies that their antics are going to lead to high-paying jobs at the sites they attack. I recall a Slashdot article a while back about an article on some h4x0r website that was actually complaining that it wasn't working out that way for the author. Slashdot search is broken now but maybe one of the people who post those "We had this two years ago! Morons!" bits the moment a duplicate story is put up can confirm my memory.
Incidentally, while 8 months in juvie isn't overkill, I've got to disagree with Rob that it's a slap on the wrist.
Obviously, this is a complicated issue that's can't be addressed thoroughly in a Slashdot thread. But to hit a few of your points:
Re: Acceptance of Israel -- You're talking about today, while I was trying to give some context to the original poster's notion that Mideast politics consisted entirely of Jews arriving out of nowhere and kicking Arabs off their land. Isral has been under constant attack since its founding, by Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Some of those neighbors have accepted the reality of Israel's existance (or at least their inability to destroy it). I think you're naive about Syria's intentions, though, and I'd point out that Palestinian Authority-approved textbooks don't have Israel on the map.
Re: Iraqi nukes -- First of all, Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons today because Isral destroyed their reactor, getting deplored by the world for its trouble. Second, I don't see any reason why Saddam wouldn't be interested in nukes, biological or chemical weapons regardless of what Israel has.
Re: Citizenship -- So you're saying Arabs are better off as subjects of a king or a lunatic than they are as citizens with full civil rights as a religious minority in the Jewish homeland? The scary thing is that they would probably agree, which is why the problem is so intractable.
By the way, I can't outright say you're wrong about the license plates, but I'm _very_ skeptical you've got that right. West Bank and Gaza Arabs who decline Israeli citizenship probably do have different tags than citizens but that citizens have their ethnicity published that way? I _really_ hope you've got that right because otherwise it's a deeply offensive misstatement.
Re: Current hostility -- Hey, it's a Slashdot post and I do realize that's a glib oversimplification. But note the word _current_. The current round of hostility did in fact come around not because of Israel's recalcitrance but when the Israeli government made an unprecedented gesture of concession. I find it hard to draw any lesson from that other than that it's everything (or at least complete control of Jerusalem) or nothing as far as the Palestinians are concerned.
The US was sympathetic to Saddam and supported his military, although I think what you're presenting as undisputed fact isn't as obviously true as you think. But what does that have to do with what I said? Obviously Harry Truman didn't begin the policy of support to Israel with he goal of destroying Iraq's nuclear power but I think it's clear that the investment paid off tremendously.
Apparently you have never been to Israel. Go there and have a crime committed against you. See how strongly the police officials try to get you to say an Arab committed the crime. See how you can't find out what the convicted's punishment is (so he or she can be tortured by CIA-trained Israelis).
You know, people go to foreign countries (especially Israel, which has a near-zero crime rate) without having crimes committed against them. ;-) I've been there and a lot of other countries and the Philippines is the only place I've needed the police, and the Filipinos advised me that I'd be better off without them.
As for what you're saying, I have no idea what the truth of it is. But again, I don't see where it invalidates my point. (Out of curiosity, did this actually happen to you or are you just repeating what you read goes on? My understanding is non-political crime in Israel is mostly committed by non-Arabs.)
And by the way, the CIA is involved with the Palestinians, too. It's just that the CIA supports Arafat, and Palestinians do not. The PLO is a CIA-supported, pseudo-government that doesn't care whether Palestinians have a homeland.
OK, now I'm wondering whether you've ever been there. I agree that the PLO wants the Palestinians sitting in camps as long as possible (why they walked out of Camp David) and the last thing Arab countries want is a Palestinian state. But I've spoken with Palestinian Arabs both there and here, and my impression is that support for Arafat and the PA is tremendous. And the people who don't back him are supporting Islamic Jihad and other extremists who are even less inclined to compromise.
Anyway, you know what? Yesterday wasn't about Israel -- otherwise it would have been aimed at Israel. It's looking increasingly like a fundamentalist Muslim attack on the center of the Christian world. The Israel-Palestine situation is messy enough without dragging them into this issue.
Having said that, perhaps the U.S. should think twice about supporting and funding Israel's occupation and methodical elimination of the Palestinian homeland.
I don't know if you're aware of this but the fundamental problem in that area is that since the founding of Israel, the Arab countries have continuously devoted themselves to its destruction. I think you also have some major misconceptions regarding the nature of a "Palestinian homeland" which could be more accurately described as "whatever area happens to be under Israeli control at the moment".
Not to diminish the reality that many Arabs did lose their homes and property and that the current occupation is untenable and harmful to both sides.
Just recently the UN discussions used some 'heated' words to describe Israel's policies (racist, etc) and both Israel and the US walked out of the talks. Why is condemnation of Israeli policy an insult to the US?
The use of the word "racist" is a non-event. The issue was conference ostensibly intended to fight racism that turned into a wildly anti-semitic assault depicting Israel (one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world) as the sole locus of evil. Yes, it's appropriate that the US government didn't lend legitimacy to it, and European countries should be ashamed of their compliance.
Why are my tax dollars paying for this?
If it makes you feel better, think about how much we spend on defense each year. Now think about the dollar value of the fact that Iraq didn't have nukes in 1991. Was aid to Israel cost effective?
Just a citizen of the USA that has become more and more disheartened to see a nation of people that know terrible oppression firsthand now dishing it out.
I'm not going to relentlessly cheerlead Israel -- their settlement policy in the West Bank was a mistake and it's come back to haunt them. But it's worth keeping in mind that the only country in that region in which Arabs can vote is Israel. In the rest of the area, the best they can hope for is a reasonably benign king (Morocco, Jordan) or despot (Egypt). And also that the current hostility isn't because Israel denied the Palestinians a homeland but because it offered them one.
Taco's notions of journalism can sometimes be almost as shaky as his spelling, but I think he and Hemos both have an excellent sense of what to do with the tremendous platform they have and they showed it yesterday.
Three other random thoughts:
First, when I went to donate blood yesterday, I was very touched by the number of people who rushed to help, and in particular by all the foreign students there. (Japanese, especially.) We may all have our differences, but it's good to see that almost all of us are basically on the same side.
Second, and this is kind of out of nowhere, hopefully this incident will take some of the steam out of "anarchist" rioting. If you have honest objections to the IMF, World Bank, Starbucks or whatever, by all means protest, demonstrate, get arrested, but please start leaving it at that. The "black bloc" folks may think they're the ultimate badasses with their slingshots and gas masks, but yesterday should have made it clear that there's two kinds of people in the world and they're over here with us.
Finally, and I'm aiming this mostly at myself but encouraging others to join in -- yesterday brought home just how insane it is to get enraged over whether one should say Linux or GNU/Linux or what Craig Mundie said about Linux. The world needs free software, it needs fair use of information but it doesn't need more hate. Certainly not over software.
Or that they're going to blame Afghanistan and Bin Laden without bothering to make sure. I'm as eager as anyone to see the terrorists get paid in full, but for God's sake, make sure we get the right people!
(Latest updates suggest this is, in fact, internal Afghani conflict.)
I agree. I'm not going to start flaming over this (today has given me a better perspective about what is and isn't worth getting angry or hostile over) but I'd like to see today treated simply as a tragedy for at least a few days before it passes into an anecdote for culture theory.