SHMF in new drummer scandal

I'm pleased to announce that our band, "She Hit Me First" finally has a (long-awaited and sorely needed) new drummer. And he's really really good, so maybe he was worth waiting for.

James Millar, welcome to the band.

He's written a little blog entry on our MySpace page to introduce himself.

Visopsys 0.63 release

Version 0.63 of my PC operating system, Visopsys, was released the other day. It's a maintenance release with bugfixes and loads of small tweaks throughout the system, but also a few new little features, including the ability to format and resize Linux swap partitions, more reliable OS loading, better CPU detection, and a simple text editor. Detailed change log and downloads.

Thanks, Israel

From the BBC today:

The conflict in Lebanon has caused devastating damage to the local economy and environment of the ancient port of Byblos. Byblos was not bombed, but it has been deeply damaged by the Israel-Hezbollah war. The harbour and the rocks and the beaches of Byblos are disfigured with oil. It spread up the coast in a thick slick after the Israelis attacked storage tanks at the Jiyyeh power station south of Beirut.

I visited Byblos in November -- here are photos (1, 2) of its beautiful little ancient harbour -- and it was one of the highlights of my Lebanon-Syria trip. I'm sure it will be beautiful again someday. I wonder if Israel will be helping to clean this up?

Pesky terrorists Pt. 4

I've been writing and linking to things expressing my doubts (here, here, and here) about the big alleged air-terrorism plot that emerged this week in London. Today Andrew Sullivan links to an item by Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan (and helped expose some nasty goings-on there). A couple of little excerpts:

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

...In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Lebanon Pt. 3

From the BBC today:

With a truce between Israel and Hezbollah raising hopes of peace in Lebanon, much of the focus is moving towards the task at hand: how to rebuild the country and how to pay for it. ... Tunisia's president has called for an emergency summit of Arab leaders, urging collective support for the rebuilding of the war-torn country. And Sweden has taken a lead in the West by organising a donor conference on 31 August, which some 60 countries and aid agencies are expected to attend.

"The world community now has to give its support to Lebanon's recovery and to the Lebanese people who have been severely affected," says Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson.

Maybe Israel and America can help pay for it.

I mean, since they're the ones who blew everything up.

If they don't, and the country descends into chaos yet again, then all that rhetoric about supporting emerging democracies (such as Lebanon) will seem pretty empty.

Pesky terrorists Pt. 3

More doubt.

In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

I can tell you from recent experience, that if you're:

• British
• Planning on boarding a plane next week to blow it up; and
• You haven't got your passport yet

Then I'm afraid your friends are going to have to go to martyr's paradise without you. Maybe they'll save you some virgins, but tell them not to expect you for a month or so.

Sullivan makes an equivalence

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, who has chosen his side in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, tries to counter some of the scenes of horror from Lebanon with this.

This Was Once A Car ...and then a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket arrived.

Well Andrew, I do feel sorry for the owner of that car. Someone's insurance premiums are really going to skyrocket!

In the meantime, if you have a strong stomach and there are no children about, have a look at some of Israel's handiwork here.

Pesky terrorists Pt. 2

A couple of entries ago I decided to just "throw it out there" that I had unformed and unsubstantiated doubts about the big counter-terrorism bust yesterday here in London (the one that involved blowing up a bunch of planes). Today on The Register, they're suggesting that some other folks at the US Department of Homeland Security might possibly have some doubts, too. Here's a couple of choice paragraphs, with some very handy links to articles about the previous big British counter-terror operations of the last few years (all of which have turned out to be fairly or entirely bogus):

In favor of option one, we have a recent history of British eagerness to announce breakthroughs in the struggle against the forces of darkness, with nothing to show for it. We have Jean Charles de Menezes shot to bits at point-blank range for behaving oddly just after the 7/7 atrocity. We have the imaginary ricin plot. We have the imaginary chemical bomb plot. And we have the imaginary red-mercury suitcase nuke plot.

There's been a lot of crying wolf in London, so it should surprise no one to find that the Americans have heard enough of it. (Although, to be fair, Washington has trumpeted its share of counterterrorist breakthroughs involving semi-harmless losers, but that's no reason for them to buy into anyone else's.)

Sullivan makes it explicit

A couple of entries ago I hinted that conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, who likes to accuse opponents of Israeli militarism of anti-Semitism, might be a bit of an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot himseld. He says this today:

There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche's ressentiment, but with God re-attached. We should indeed fear these people for the hideous carnage they can wreak for the sake of their God. But we should never let our fear overwhelm our contempt for them - their sickness, their evil, their petty insecurities, their inability to live meaningful lives and their attempt to assuage this by murdering others in God's name. Yes, they evil. But they are also pathetic, miserable excuses for human beings.

I guess that makes it about as explicit as can be -- he's just denounced the entire religion. He doesn't say that a few fanatical jihadists are sick: To Andew, it's the "Muslim mind" that's sick. And he tosses around accusations of anti-Semitism?

I guess in the same way that a thief always thinks everyone's trying to steal from him, maybe a certain kind of bigot always thinks everyone else is a racist.

Pesky terrorists

...disrupting everyones' Summer holiday plans. Today British police arrested a load of people, claiming they've foiled a massive terrorist plot to explode airliners headed for the USA:

A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

At the moment, details are sparse. So, we all have to take this news at face value, I guess.

However, given the record of the British police and the politicians that motivate them, let just say that I have a small doubt in my mind. Remember the big 'ricin' terrorist plot involving, as it turned out, the dangerous posession of apple cores? (yes, I mean the fruit).

I don't know why I doubt it, I have no specific hunches, and maybe they really did foil a big plot. But still...

Sullivan and Israel

To conservative (but sometimes sensible) blogger Andrew Sullivan, the destruction of Lebanon is justified as part of the existential struggle of the state of Israel. An email from me to Andrew:

So, just so I'm clear, you support this, right?:
http://visopsys.org/andy/cat/2006/08/Lebanon-pt-ii.html

Because Hezbollah attacked a military patrol on the wrong side of the border? That's the threat to Israel's existence?

(the whole "threat to Israel's existence" thing is laughable anyway. They could kill every Arab in the Middle East if they were allowed to)

Did you notice that Hezbollah only fires rockets at Israeli cities in *response*, and that the other day, they largely stopped when Israel paused its attacks?

You know as well as anybody that Olmert needed a provocation so that he could swing his dick around, proving his tough-guy bona-fides, because he didn't have the military resume of Sharon.

Ever been to Lebanon? I visited in November. It was becoming beautiful again. The Lebanese have worked so hard to put conflict behind them. They are a natural democracy. They are friends of America. They barely *have* a military, for crying out loud.

Israel are bullies.

No response to that. But then, maybe that's to be expected. To Andrew, people who oppose the actions of Israel are anti-Semites:

The current war is not only bringing out the Jew-haters in America, like Mel Gibson, but also in Europe. Yesterday, one of Norway's leading writers, Jostein Gaarder, author of best-seller "Sophie's World," with 26 million copies in print, wrote an astonishing op-ed in Aftenposten, Norway's leading paper. It's called "God's Chosen People."

Here's a translation of some of the Gaarder piece to which he's referring:

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep at its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism...

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

I don't like the tone of this either, in that it's a bit overwrought, but that's all. Is it not legitimate to be enraged by what Israel is doing in Lebanon? To Andrew Sullivan, this is anti-Semitism. Some people, like Andrew, willfully refuse to recognize the difference between disagreeing with Israel, and racism. It's not that he doesn't know the difference, of course, and I don't even think it's necessarily malicious -- it's just intellectual laziness. If you're engaged in debate, and the person on the other side of the issue resorts to crude (and inflammatory) name-calling, it usually means they've run out of worthwhile arguments -- they want to shut you up. One way to end a meaningful debate in a hurry is to start calling the other person a racist.

Mr. Sullivan does have ideas about the current Hezbollah-Israel conflict, and here they are: The survival of Lebanon is a worthwhile cost of Israel asserting itself, and deterring Hezbollah from cross-border skirmishing. People of Lebanon be damned. Dead civilians be damned.

That's a legitimate position to hold (though I happen to stongly disagree), but let me turn Andrew's name-calling around on him: Mr. Sullivan has nothing but contempt for Arabs and Muslims, and displays a typically American (sorry!) combination of derision, arrogance, and ignorance. Even while he mocks them, he can't be bothered to learn the difference between a burqa and a hijab.

He didn't change his mind about the Iraq war until lots of Americans started dying. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs didn't really rate a second thought. Why? Maybe for the same reason he doesn't care about the suffering in Lebanon. But I wouldn't want to start name-calling.

Police innovation

The latest suspicious behavior targeted by British police:

Iraqi man 'filmed terror targets'. An Iraqi man filmed video footage of potential targets for a terrorist attack on London, a court was told. Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye were among the sights on tapes made by Rauf Mohammed, Woolwich Crown Court heard on Tuesday. The recordings could be of use to someone "angered" by the West's action in his homeland, prosecutors said.

The stupidity and laughability of this should be self-evident. I have nothing further to add, except to say that I too am angered by the West's actions in Iraq, and I too have photographed London tourist attractions. However, I am not an Arab.

If you have any questions, go to the back of the class.

Lebanon Pt. II

Some nice before and after shots of Israel's handiwork, courtesy of CNN. This is a suburb of Beirut by the way -- this is not a place from which Hezbollah has been launching rockets. This is not even in the "conflict zone". This is Israel destroying the lives of thousands and thousands of Lebanese civilians:

Criminals.

Lebanon and Israel and America Pt. 2

So today, the leader of Hezbollah threatened to attack Tel Aviv:

"If you hit Beirut, the Islamic resistance will hit Tel Aviv and is able to do that with God's help," Nasrallah said in a televised address.

He justified it this way:

"You attack our cities, our villages, our civilians, our capital, we will react," he said. "At any time you decide to stop your aggressions on our villages and towns and cities and our civilians, we will not hit any settlement or any Israeli city."

Trying not to sound too biased, I guess I'd have to say that sounds reasonable. Notice that when Israel temporarily suspended airstrikes, Hezbollah stopped firing rockets? And that when Israel resumed airstrikes, Hezbollah fired more rockets than ever before?

While it's true that Hezbollah provoked the whole mess, it was a minor provocation compared to what has followed; they attacked an Israeli military patrol, not civilians. Israel has responded by punishing the whole country of Lebanon and killing civilians (and don't say it isn't deliberate -- if you level apartment buildings, you at least don't care if you kill civilians). In return, of course, Hezbollah has done likewise, firing rockets at Israeli cities. This is the nature of warfare. Both sides try to inflict pain on the other.

Now, why has Israel responded so drastically to a minor provocation? After all, the two sides have been skirmishing at the border for a long time now. So, why? Because new Prime Minister Ehud Olmert needs to show he's a tough guy. He wasn't seen by the Israeli public as being a strong military leader, the way Sharon was. He views this as his opportunity to beat his chest and establish his bona fides.

By most accounts, Israel has been waiting for the right provocation to justify this operation. Notice everyone seems to have mostly forgotten about those 2 abducted soldiers. And besides, Israel now has 30 or 40 more dead soldiers, plus a couple of dozen dead civilians. Worth it? Not to save 2 soldiers it isn't, especially when Hezbollah offered a prisoner exchange. They've exchanged prisoners with Israel before.

Now, here's Condoleezza Rice's response to Hezbollah's latest threat:

"The international community needs to say to Hezbollah that these kinds of threats are also not helpful at a time when the international community, the Lebanese people, the Israeli people, all want an end to the hostility," she told "Larry King Live" in a taped interview to be broadcast Thursday night.

So, it's okay if Israel makes threats, and targets civilians and infrastructure. It's not okay when Hezbollah does it. Got it. And America is trying to pretend to be a moderating force here? They arm one side, and make excuses for one side. They are on Israel's side, and everyone in the World knows it, so let's not try to pretend otherwise. For Lebanese people, that must hurt; Lebanon has been the most pro-western and pro-American country in the Middle East, not to mention the only natural Arab democracy.

By the way, opinion polls do not support Rice's assertion that the Israeli people want an end to the hostility.

America allows Israel to continue its offensive, ostensibly to give it time to weaken Hezbollah, but can't abide Hezbollah fighting back? Got it. And who really suffers here anyway? Israeli civilians, and much more so, Lebanese civilians. Sounds like a plan.

Punishing all of Lebanon, of course, is the point. Israel wants to punish the Lebanese people until they decide that supporting Hezbollah isn't worth it. On the contrary, I think Hezbollah is going to come out of this with more popularity than ever.

I hope Israel and America end up with a big black eye over this. I don't approve of Hezbollah's continuing fight with Israel (after Israel's withdrawal from Southern Lebanon a few years ago), but at this stage, I hope they have the last laugh. And I bet they will.