Randomosity
I've switched this blog, in day 2 of its incarnation, to Blogger Pro. I like it much better than LiveJournal. Also, Blogger Pro has a neat email-to-blog feature that's going to be perfect for the email updates I need to post to the Federation website. After all, the update is basically a blog by email anyway...
"Gulf War 2: Electric Boogaloo" started last night, and there are indications that more strikes are happening now. Last night's attack was called a strike at "targets of opportunity," apparently an effort to catch some members of the Iraqi leadership together in a bunker. Wouldn't that have been great if we had managed to kill Saddam with the first salvo of missiles, and could stop this war before American soldiers and Iraqi civilians end up dead?? Unfortunately, there's no indication yet that we eliminated Hussein.
Earlier today, Iraqi TV showed an obviously pre-recorded speech by Saddam. In it, he railed against the United States, saying that this attack was instigated "by the criminal Zionists and others with their agendas." He also closed his speech by saying "Long live jihad and long live Palestine," doing his best to paint this war as an Arab vs. Jew sort of thing. In the Arab world, I'm sure that's exactly how it will be viewed.
Hell, even in the US, there are some that think like that. As we all know, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) pretty much blamed the US Jewish community for this war, though he later backpedaled and said that wasn't what he meant to say. Commentator Pat Buchanan has been even more vitriolic, saying that this war is for the Jews only, and accusing Jews of having dual loyalties.
Now, it's no surprise that Pat Buchanan would make the same anti-Semitic arguments that Adolf Hitler made 60 years ago. After all, they're cut from the same cloth. But this perception that Jews are behind this war, or even that Jews are strongly in favor of this war -- that's incorrect. Surveys have shown that support for Bush's war hovered around 55-60% among Jews, the same percentage of support that the war holds among Americans in general. (These numbers probably have inched upwards now that the fighting has started.)
A friend said to me recently, "We don't need to fight this war -- why are we fighting a war for Israel?" This is NOT a war for Israel. Although Israelis, like most of the rest of the world, will be happy to see Saddam dead or exiled, he poses no immediate threat to Israel. Even if he did, Israel has the most advanced military in the middle east, and having fought no less than six wars against her aggressive Arab neighbors since 1948, Israel knows how to defend herself.
Quite the contrary to what others think, I believe this war could be bad for Israel. In order to show that we're not really fighting a war against all Arabs or all Muslims, President Shrub has been forced to offer conciliatory gestures to the other Arab countries in the region, our quote-unquote allies. Thus, he keeps pushing Israel to negotiate with terrorist Yassir Arafat, to make it look like the US can be friendly to Arab interests. He offered a "roadmap to peace" in the conflict, and is the first American president to publicly support the idea of a Palestinian state.
Look, I understand there has to be a bi-national solution, with an independent Palestine. But the PLO (or PA, or whatever they're called now) under Arafat is in no shape to be leading a state. He's taken the hundreds of millions of American and European dollars which have been given to him in humanitarian aid over the last 20 years, and squandered them. His people live in poverty, uneducated, in squalor. Arafat doesn't really want peace with Israel, because then he'll no longer be able to blame all of his people's problems on "the Jews." His citizens will start looking around, start realizing that they live in the poorest conditions in the Arab world (which lags behind the rest of the world), and they might start wondering why they've lived like this for so long. If it's not the fault of "the Jews," then whose is it??
In non-war things happening, the NCAA Tournament starts today, un-delayed by the war. I'll be watching all afternoon, so hopefully work will be quiet and people will stop breaking things for a while.
R. and I filled out our brackets for the ESPN Tourney Challenge, like we do every year. We never come close to winning, of course. I'm always torn as to how far I should pick the Gators to go. Everyone always says, don't pick your favorite team to go all the way. But it's hard for me to pick against them, to write another team's name on the winner's line. Especially this year, when I know they've got the talent to play with just about anyone.
A couple of interesting tidbits from Apple this week to close this blog. On Tuesday, they officially retired the original iMac. It comes as sort of a surprise that they were even still selling it, in this era of the flat panel iMac and the eMac. But apparently, it was still in Apple's lineup, as a low-cost alternative.
But now, it's gone. Say what you will about it's butt-ugly design, the garish colors that it came out in, the lack of a floppy drive and SCSI connectors -- but it's the iMac, introduced in 1998, that saved Apple. Without the iMac, I don't know if Apple even exists in 2003. That gumdrop-shaped piece of junk became ubiquitous. We still have some labs with four or five of the things. I have one on my desk, even.
Then, on Wednesday, Apple announced the newest member of their board of directors -- Al Gore. You may remember him -- he's the guy that more Americans voted for in the 2000 presidential elections, and then had the election stolen from him thanks to our stupid electoral system, stupid Florida, and the stupid Supreme Court.
He got a lot of criticism -- rightly so -- for claiming that he took the initiative to "create the Internet." But the fact remains, he's an uber-geek. Since the 2000 election, he's been a visiting professor at several universities, and has also served as a consultant to Google.
"Gulf War 2: Electric Boogaloo" started last night, and there are indications that more strikes are happening now. Last night's attack was called a strike at "targets of opportunity," apparently an effort to catch some members of the Iraqi leadership together in a bunker. Wouldn't that have been great if we had managed to kill Saddam with the first salvo of missiles, and could stop this war before American soldiers and Iraqi civilians end up dead?? Unfortunately, there's no indication yet that we eliminated Hussein.
Earlier today, Iraqi TV showed an obviously pre-recorded speech by Saddam. In it, he railed against the United States, saying that this attack was instigated "by the criminal Zionists and others with their agendas." He also closed his speech by saying "Long live jihad and long live Palestine," doing his best to paint this war as an Arab vs. Jew sort of thing. In the Arab world, I'm sure that's exactly how it will be viewed.
Hell, even in the US, there are some that think like that. As we all know, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) pretty much blamed the US Jewish community for this war, though he later backpedaled and said that wasn't what he meant to say. Commentator Pat Buchanan has been even more vitriolic, saying that this war is for the Jews only, and accusing Jews of having dual loyalties.
Now, it's no surprise that Pat Buchanan would make the same anti-Semitic arguments that Adolf Hitler made 60 years ago. After all, they're cut from the same cloth. But this perception that Jews are behind this war, or even that Jews are strongly in favor of this war -- that's incorrect. Surveys have shown that support for Bush's war hovered around 55-60% among Jews, the same percentage of support that the war holds among Americans in general. (These numbers probably have inched upwards now that the fighting has started.)
A friend said to me recently, "We don't need to fight this war -- why are we fighting a war for Israel?" This is NOT a war for Israel. Although Israelis, like most of the rest of the world, will be happy to see Saddam dead or exiled, he poses no immediate threat to Israel. Even if he did, Israel has the most advanced military in the middle east, and having fought no less than six wars against her aggressive Arab neighbors since 1948, Israel knows how to defend herself.
Quite the contrary to what others think, I believe this war could be bad for Israel. In order to show that we're not really fighting a war against all Arabs or all Muslims, President Shrub has been forced to offer conciliatory gestures to the other Arab countries in the region, our quote-unquote allies. Thus, he keeps pushing Israel to negotiate with terrorist Yassir Arafat, to make it look like the US can be friendly to Arab interests. He offered a "roadmap to peace" in the conflict, and is the first American president to publicly support the idea of a Palestinian state.
Look, I understand there has to be a bi-national solution, with an independent Palestine. But the PLO (or PA, or whatever they're called now) under Arafat is in no shape to be leading a state. He's taken the hundreds of millions of American and European dollars which have been given to him in humanitarian aid over the last 20 years, and squandered them. His people live in poverty, uneducated, in squalor. Arafat doesn't really want peace with Israel, because then he'll no longer be able to blame all of his people's problems on "the Jews." His citizens will start looking around, start realizing that they live in the poorest conditions in the Arab world (which lags behind the rest of the world), and they might start wondering why they've lived like this for so long. If it's not the fault of "the Jews," then whose is it??
In non-war things happening, the NCAA Tournament starts today, un-delayed by the war. I'll be watching all afternoon, so hopefully work will be quiet and people will stop breaking things for a while.
R. and I filled out our brackets for the ESPN Tourney Challenge, like we do every year. We never come close to winning, of course. I'm always torn as to how far I should pick the Gators to go. Everyone always says, don't pick your favorite team to go all the way. But it's hard for me to pick against them, to write another team's name on the winner's line. Especially this year, when I know they've got the talent to play with just about anyone.
A couple of interesting tidbits from Apple this week to close this blog. On Tuesday, they officially retired the original iMac. It comes as sort of a surprise that they were even still selling it, in this era of the flat panel iMac and the eMac. But apparently, it was still in Apple's lineup, as a low-cost alternative.
But now, it's gone. Say what you will about it's butt-ugly design, the garish colors that it came out in, the lack of a floppy drive and SCSI connectors -- but it's the iMac, introduced in 1998, that saved Apple. Without the iMac, I don't know if Apple even exists in 2003. That gumdrop-shaped piece of junk became ubiquitous. We still have some labs with four or five of the things. I have one on my desk, even.
Then, on Wednesday, Apple announced the newest member of their board of directors -- Al Gore. You may remember him -- he's the guy that more Americans voted for in the 2000 presidential elections, and then had the election stolen from him thanks to our stupid electoral system, stupid Florida, and the stupid Supreme Court.
He got a lot of criticism -- rightly so -- for claiming that he took the initiative to "create the Internet." But the fact remains, he's an uber-geek. Since the 2000 election, he's been a visiting professor at several universities, and has also served as a consultant to Google.
Labels: politics
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