Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 21:14 - Category: Unfiled ;
The militant group Hamas gained a firm foothold in the world of Palestinian politics yesterday, dealing a serious blow to the ruling Fatah movement, which barely clung to power.
“Hamas will transform politics or politics will transform Hamas,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority minister.
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 20:29 - Category: Unfiled ;
In a reversal of policy, the United States on Monday backed an Iranian initiative to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
Sigh.
The enemy of my enemy
I really can’t imagine how we could ever consider going to war with Iran. We have so much in common.
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 14:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Let me know what you think of the new look. The old one was ok, but a bit plain. This is an adapted version of Patricia Muller’s excellent Connections theme, and I’ll be tweaking it more over the next few days.
I’m finally getting so I understand the CSS that underlies themes on virtually all blogs. It’s quite cryptic, and immensely powerful too.
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 07:47 - Category: Unfiled ;
MSM articles about the Palestinian elections today are nearly uniformly negative, especially about the possibility of Hamas winning big. Yet if western powers genuinely believe in democracy they should applaud the process and support whoever wins. Otherwise it appears they support democracy and elections only if the side they favor wins. How Bushian.
If you dig a bit, you learn that Hamas has multiple charities and helps their people in numerous ways, as well as being squeaky clean and not even slightly corrupt. So it’s easy to see why they are getting votes.
And to call them terrorist while turning a blind eye to American-built assault helicopters blowing up Palestinian homes seems more than a little one-sided.
If the US and Israel provided genuine assistance to Palestinians then they, and not Islamists, would be winning in the elections. That’s how to defuse the Islamists, provide a real alternative. But the US/Israel tactic of brute force and no compromise generally backfires, driving the undecided to the Islamists or insurgents, just like what’s happening in Iraq.
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 07:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
The control over the price of oil is in now in the hands of global guerrillas – the open source, system disrupting, transnational crime fueled, sons of global fragmentation. These actors can now, at will, curtail the supply of oil through low tech attacks on facilities in Iraq, Nigeria, central Asia, and India. The amount of oil effectively under their control exceeds five million barrels a day, more than Saudi Arabia’s two million barrels a day of swing production.
They explain how these low-tech, fast-moving attacks are difficult to stop as well as being quite effective. The guerillas don’t have to disrupt all the oil supply, just a bit here and there - then let the resultant price swings caused by capitalist pricing create the chaos for them. Indeed, they assume, these guerillas will soon join forces with shadowy hedge funds and the like, those who would profit hugely if they knew in advance an oil supply disruption was coming.
Nine killed in raid on Nigeria oil office
A rash of attacks and kidnappings in recent weeks by militia groups demanding the release from prison of local leaders has cut Nigeria’s daily oil exports of 2.5 million by nearly 10 percent.
NPR yesterday quoted a Nigerian OilCo official saying if the attacks didn’t stop, if they didn’t get serious help from the government, that they would abandon the fields.
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 07:11 - Category: Unfiled ;
WaPo says Dubya’s stonewalling won’t play.
Here are some things we know about Jack Abramoff and the White House: The disgraced lobbyist raised at least $100,000 for President Bush’s reelection campaign. He had long-standing ties to Karl Rove, a key presidential adviser. He had extensive dealings with executive branch officials and departments — one of whom, former procurement chief David H. Safavian, has been charged by federal prosecutors with lying to investigators about his involvement with Mr. Abramoff.
We also know that Mr. Abramoff is an admitted crook who was willing to bribe members of Congress and their staffs to get what he (or his clients) wanted. In addition to attending a few White House Hanukkah parties and other events at which he had his picture snapped with the president, Mr. Abramoff had, according to the White House, “a few staff-level meetings” with White House aides.
They go on to shred the protestations of that highly skilled liar, press secretary Scott McClellan, saying Bush needs to be open and honest. Now.
(WaPo seems more than a little bi-polar to me. One day they shut down comments on their blogs because readers weren’t properly submissive. The next, they run quite excellent op-eds like this - when Woodward isn’t running interference for the neocons, that is.)
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 07:11 - Category: Unfiled ;
Low tech defeat for CD DRM!
Applying a piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disk renders the data track of the CD unreadable. A computer trying to play the CD will then skip to the music without accessing the bundled DRM technology.
Take that, Sony!
Bob Morris @ Jan 25th 2006 07:11 - Category: Unfiled ;
Industry and academia have joined together in an open source-like initiative to stop spyware, an excellent idea indeed.
StopBadware.org is a “Neighborhood Watch” campaign aimed at fighting badware. We will seek to provide reliable, objective information about downloadable applications in order to help consumers to make better choices about what they download on to their computers. We aim to become a central clearinghouse for research on badware and the bad actors who spread it, and to become a focal point for developing collaborative, community-minded approaches to stopping badware.
Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute are leading this initiative with the support of several prominent tech companies, including Google, Lenovo, and Sun Microsystems. Consumer Reports WebWatch is serving as an unpaid special advisor.
They are asking people to send in reports of spyware and to get involved. The more information they get, the more they can share. Thus, we can all work together to stop badware.
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