This is the right time

Last summer, after Hezbolah kidnapped 3 Israeli soldiers Israel went to war. Sure it didn't end that well, but that was the right thing to do at the time. Now we got Iran kidnapping 15 British soldiers. Just like Hezbolah they are too arrogant to expect a military response. This is the time to strike back. Can it end badly? Sure. But that depends on execution. I am sure nobody in the US/British command is as incompetent as Olmert+Peretz couple. This is the time to dismantle their nuclear plants.

Iraq. Day ***9

Fighting the good fight.

Undercover

In this documentary photo Hamas terrorists show of their superior camouflage skills. Notice anything strange?


Why is he wearing green uniform, magically covered with leaves, in the middle of light-brown desert? And what's with the fake beard? Maybe it is for making us believe he is just an intimidating local phalah, crawling through the desert with his shotgun, in search for a job?

Thousand nations of muslim empire descend upon you

Two developments not really mentioned in the mainstream press that should make you nervously giggle:

1. The Iran has taken over the smuggling over the Suez channel, and not even Egyptians (according to their own admission and facts) have the resources to deal with that development

2. The King of Jordan Abdullah, and his father before him, supported and keep supporting Hamas. Such is the conclusion of a two year long intelligence gathering process undertaken in Israel.

This man is innocent. He killed no one this morning!

Recently Internet journal Linux-Watch accused a research group Yankee Group of biased comparisons between Windows and Linux that favor the former. Yankee Group responded. Here is a condensed, self-sufficient version of their hilarious exchange in pleasantries:

LW: Yankee Group lies!
YG: This is absolutely and utterly untrue. Sometimes we tell the truth!

LW: Yankee Group is polling a self selected group of people.
YG: Not true! We do this only sometimes! Also, we use other sources, which... we will neglect to mention here.

LW: And the group is also biased!
YG: False! They say nice things too.

LW: Yankee Group collaborated with a Microsoft subsidiary Sunbelt to create the report!
YG: Which subsidiaries? Where? We see nothin'.

LW: We caught Yankee Group lying before.
YG: We weren't hiding it... that well.

LW: So, why promote biased surveys? Maybe Microsoft's products can't win in honest ones?
YG: We are a very honest company.

From Sudan... on Boing 747

Remember the Sudanese "olim" I talked about in my previous post? Turns out they also arrive through Ben Gurion airport. The money for the high-tech travel comes from United Nations. Hey, maybe after we finish building the Palestinian state we can grant sovereignty to freedom loving people of Sudan. Somewhere in Ramat Gan.

Secret War

Did you know that Iraq is the only country were more journalists die in a year then in Russia? Did you know that French Constitutional Council just passed a law prohibiting anyone without journalist accreditation filming or broadcasting violence, in essence criminalizing citizen's journalism? See any common trends?

Slightly shortsighted ?

Amir Peretz in a photo from today and George W. Bush in an old photo. They say Ariel Sharon did the same thing once.

From Sudan with Love

Apparently, even while sitting in Israeli prison one can discover (even more) corruption of the current Israeli government. "What's that" you say?

Shmuel Zatam, a recent immigrant from USA, is sitting in Israeli prison on charges of "intention to kill Arabs". Not only did he bring the family hunting rifle on his way to Israel from North Carolina last March, but what's more, answering an inquiry of authorities on his future place of living he said that he intends to live in the Kfar Tapuah, the ideological center of Kach movement. Too bad he didn't know that in Israel those two facts, when put together, are considered "an attempted murder" and are sufficient for imprisonment until trial.

After spending the past 9 months in Ashkelon prison Shikma, awaiting his trial, Shmuel uncovered the following fascinating scheme. Turns out there are Sudanese prisoners sitting in Shikma prison. They are not prisoners of war that never happened. They are sitting there by agreement with Israeli government. Sudanese cross the Egyptian border where they allow themselves to be captured by the border patrol. They are shipped to Shikma where they spend the next 3 months, working. By the end of this time period they are given money they made over the 3 months, an Israeli citizenship, and are set free inside Israel to seek further employment.

Why is this being done? Because they are dirt-cheap labor, and the government can't let Palestinians in because they keep blowing themselves up in the cities, and Jews want decent pay. But why is Israeli government breaking the law and destroying the future of the state, by filling it with yet more Muslims? Because they can save a buck or two!

Back to you,
Reporting from the land of twisted mirrors, where the unjustly imprisoned are fighting to save the country from the lawfully elected.

Russia + Syria + Iran + Lebanon + Hezbollah = Love

Yes. Apparently, on January 31 2007 a Russian plain, coming from Syria, full with 600 containers of anti-tank Cornet rockets landed in Lebanon. The weapons are for Hezbollah, and were accepted by Hezbollah representative who also happens to represent Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Of course neither Russia nor Syria nor Iran nor Lebanon (of all countries) never heard of UN resolution 1701 prohibiting supplying Hezbollah with arms, but the cooperation, the cooperation is so touching.

Global what?

Maybe old news, but apparently some scientists confirming my own old suspicion: that human effect on planet's climate is minuscule compared to the forces that make it tick. This particular study puts must of the blame on cosmic rays and solar activity. For some reason it seems like those two dwarf human contribution whichever way you look at it. And surprise, the prediction is for global cooling. And soon.

Ivan's Legacy

Today Russia is very rich and arrogant. So arrogant in fact that assassination on another country's sovereign territory is no longer a taboo. It feels like after Litvinenko anyone is a fair game. How did it come to this? Here is a short story of Russian "secret police", organization that changed tens of official names, but is most widely known as the KGB.

Today KGB is in best shape it has ever been, but things started humbly when the "Iron" Felix Dzerzhinsky created organization charged with keeping the Bolsheviks in power. The organization drew from the human resources and mind set of Tzar's secret police which goes back to Ivan the Terrible and his loyal Maluta. The revolutionary circumstances changed quickly, and the organization had to adapt. Hardened criminals were drafted to help fight the powerful organized crime, as no one knew better the ins and outs of that world. Some were eventually exterminated, but some grew within the organization, further criminalizing mentality passed down through generations of secret police breeding. As they rose in ranks they brought in like-minded people taking the organization on a downward spiral.

Lenin and even Stalin knew very well what power lies within the walls of the Lubianka complex. That is why they took every precaution to keep KGB from real power. To aid in this goal a competing organization, the GRU, was created. KGB and GRU were supposed to keep each other in check and prevent the scenario of either one coming to power. After Stalin came Hruschov, and after he got deposed Brezhnev. Brezhnev was a consensus figure and very weak leader. It was during his reign that KGB started to get out of it's borders and like a cancer, infiltrate everything in sight. By the time of his death KGB was powerful enough to put their own man in power, Yuri Andropov. He turned out to be unfit, and was soon replaced by Chernenko, not a KGB person. He died after only seven moths, poisoned. The next one was a KGB man again, Gorbachov. He however also turned out to be a mistake as well, as is easy to guess, since under his rule the entire USSR broke apart.

In the early 90's KGB started an operation to "cover tracks", as they were afraid of a backslash being the least favorite part of USSR which started to get the dog's treatment. Over several years KGB went through series of reorganizations, splits, renaming, and carefully staged PR campaigns intended to clean wash the old image. The plan worked, and KGB's main part emerged as what we now know as FSB. At the same time in early 90's secret division called URPO was formed within KGB, numbering about 150 members. It's task was to infiltrate organized crime and, when asked to, assassinate specified individuals. Of course, it wasn't the court that decided who needs to be taken out, and the division started to resemble Hire An Assassin organization. Eventually it was publicly exposed in 98' by five high ranking FSB officers, one of which was Alexandr Litvinenko.

The URPO was only the beginning. By that time, although technically Yeltzin was in power, KGB was preparing to replace this accidental man with one of their own. It is notable that all the possible replacements for himself Yeltzin went through, changing them one by one as prime ministers, were KGB people. Putin was the last, and final choice. As Putin himself joked once, "operation of infiltrating our man to the post of the President is accomplished successfully". Indeed it was.

As extensively exposed in this article (Russian), during the 90's a directive was born within KGB of which the URPO was but one practical realization. The directive talked about establishing illegal (this is how it is in the text) spy networks that are to infiltrate commercial organizations, banks, judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government. This was justified as measure against organized crime that already infiltrated all those institutions. As a special measure the directive allowed for physical termination of leaders or members of those criminal organizations. Since it was assumed that any legal organization could be infiltrated by a criminal one, this meant that any person could be considered a subject of physical termination. 007s indeed.

In order to carry out this activity, and properly shelter the KGB from possible exposure, directive instructed how to created separate "teams" comprised from "ex"-KGB members, "ex"-criminals, and ex-special forces officers. Over the last decade there were numerous cases were groups of this type with clear and direct ties to KGB were exposed in connection to assassinations by police investigators. To the most part either the people involved mysteriously died or the cases were closed or both. Almost or all acts of terrorism in the past decade (details are beyond the scope of this post) that occurred (or nearly occurred) in Russia also tie back directly to KGB. Reasons for such less targeted killings are usually political which speaks volumes about how far up the chain of command the decisions might have came down from.

Over the past fifteen years Russia is transitioning to a new era. The mentality of people behind Putin, and Putin himself was forged in best traditions of KGB, which in turn inherited many traits of organized crime. In fact, it is the most dangerous and powerful criminal organization I ever heard of. They have their own state, bigger in size then some continents. They are bent on extending their power to the west, through infiltrations, assassinations, coercion, economic expansion, and fueling of military conflicts. Sit tight. The Russians are coming.

Does Islam really exists?

This is something I just realized, watching on CNN how Suni and Shia Muslims masacre each other. It comes down to two separate hospital systems in the same capital city, one Shia and one Suni, one supported by government and one not. To get to the wrong hospital might be signing your death warrant. Yes.

Remember, all monoteistic religions are unanimouse in that there is exactly one God, and naming him differently doesn't makes him different. So we have Shia and Suni that both believe in god named Allah, but if we leave the name alone, there is probably more in common between Buddists and Hindus then between Shia and Suni.

Of course, lets not forget that Shia and Suni are not the only ones. There are many other different "Muslims" in the world. For example Pushtun Muslims still keep millenia old Jewish traditions. Sufi "Muslims" came before Islam, and are very different from both Shia or Suni in their beliefs (although Suni consider them as their own). Then there are the Ahmadiyya "Muslims", who are still very different from other "Muslims", and remind more the Bahai sect then anything else, who are not considered Muslim at all, although were initially formed as an extension of Islam.

Of course, this list is far from complete, but you get the picture. Who can be considered true Muslim? I can say from personal expirience that Muslims themselves cannot agree on this. So is there such a religion?

Doing Good and Evil: still ahead by the numbers?

I want to point your attention to a very disturbing fact. Enter Ebocha, our today's example, a Nigerian city. It's soil is reach with oil and gas, and oil extraction facilities. The oil is extracted by Italian company Eni. Demand is always high, but supply is tightly controlled, to keep the prices high. Decision is executive, not a technology related. But there is no way to really control how much oil or gas is extracted. Storing it for future is highly difficult and expensive endeavour. What to do? They burn it. Result? Natural resources waisted, oil and gas prices kept artificially high, and people of Ebocha get health problems.

So far so good, nothing particularly new. The everyday garden variety of evil, countered by the good will of charitable organizations that invest in the health of people of Ebocha. For example, Gates Foundation (founded by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates) invested 218$ million dollars in research and immunization, of related health problems. Including in this region. The official website lists more then 7.7 billion dollars in grants for health related causes since inception. However, the website fails to list investment activity of the foundation. According to Los Angeles Times, the foundation "has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France". The very companies responsible for health issues the foundation is fighting.

This strange alliance is not unique to Gates Foundation, and is in fact common among other charitable foundations. I guess making just enough good to make up for the evil sounds OK for some people. If nothing else, it is a sound business strategy, isn't it?

How Vista plans to steal the christmas

I read an analysis on what Vista does to achieve the goal of content protection, i.e. preventing you from copying e.t.c. of all those movies on Blue-ray and HD-DVD, and I am stumped. Things will go wrong by design. Before you yourself do anything wrong. To make things clear, there is a critical difference between concepts of secure computer and content managed computer. Former is designed to protect our computers from access by an unauthorised party. Later is designed to protect our computer from access by an authorized party. Us. This is of course very hard. How does one achieves it? Analogy to what MS approach comes down to, is filling our every single little pocket with a grenade to "protect" us from reaching into those pockets as long as even one of them might have "managed content".

There are two direct consequences to this. First, managed content becomes a Trojan horse that robes us of control over our own computer, and then benevolently lets us use it's resources, until we reach into one of the pockets and accidentally pull one of the grenade pins. Second, managed content robes us of our security, for it is not hard to imagine what can happen to a person on a crowded street (which is Internet) with pockets filled with grenade pins. Eventually someone will pull one out.

Read all about it here.

Return of the Gas Chambers

Seems like somebody in the Russian city Pskov wants the 1940's back. Some evildoers spread gas during Hanuka celebration dinner inside a Jewish community center. Apparently, the community center is located right next to a technical institution. Students are suspected, as this is not the first act of aggression on their side.
Now this wouldn't be much of a deal on it's own, if not for the fact that this is part of a growing wave of violence against Jews in Europe. I don't give a damn about political correctness, and I will say what needs to be said here loud and clear. In western Europe it is the growing Muslim communities, bundled with the ignorance and self deception of the press and politicians which is bordering on criminal. Incidents, and there are many, are either not reported at all, or made seem like a criminal acts, while in fact they are expression of growing religious intolerance. Mark my word, Christians are next.
In Russia, biggest part of eastern Europe, this has become federal policy, sanctioned on the highest levels (yes, Putin) to keep people's attention away from real problems, and serve political interests. The discrimination against Georgians is the biggest right now, but the undercurrents are growing in many directions.
Think USA is immune? Think twice. Violence happens here as well, and there is more to come. Many people saw Sasha Baron Cohen's stunt when he started singing an antisemitic song in some bar. At least half the people, to my count, were readily singing along "throw the Jew down the well". They only need a good push.

Software and Community in the Early 21st Century

How Microsoft plans to appropriate Linux

The state of affairs right now is that Linux is a highly desirable and free technology, and any Microsoft of this world would love to "embrace, extend, extinguish" it from the landscape. This however is problematic because Linux, including the kernel, are licensed under GPL, and GPL says "if you agree to this license you agree to distribute the source code of YOUR programs you distribute with this product [in our case Linux] under GPL as well. if you do not agree, you may not distribute this product." This is the biggest obstacle for Microsoft, because they are too afraid to open source their code.

Or is it? Turns out, not so much. What would happen if customer Z to whom company X wants to sell a closed-sourse product running on Linux, already had Linux? Then company X could get away with not distributing Linux, but still selling their product on top of it. Now, what would happen if Z obtained a copy of Linux just for that purpose from another company Y? The scheme would still work, except that two companies are now involved with Z which means double responsibility for the final product for X and Y (and Z does not likes this), and split profits for X and Y (and X does not likes this). Now assume that X and Y enter into agreement, under which they promise to "integrate" their technology (but not bundle it together), and integrate their customer support (keeping it technically separate, but providing the customer with a single "phone number") as well as advocate each other when negotiating a deal. Now Z is happy, the proprietary product is effectively distributed with Linux but not GPLed, and X and Y are laughing all the way to the bank. The one thing remains? For either X or Y to try to screw the other over the profits.

Unlikely scenario? If you think about it, this is pretty much what Microsoft just did with their deals with Xen and Novell, and you can guess which one is X yourself. Welcome to the New Order.

What does this photograph tell you?

Stealing from the honey pot

So, in face of Apple's wildly succesful iPod, Microsoft, as always trying to get a piece of action anywere there is money, ditched it's old strategy of developing software for an "ecosystem" of 3rd party devices, and built one itself. The device is called Zune, has nice touches, but is generally infirior to similarly priced iPods. What's really interesting though is that Microsoft stroke a deal with Universal, to distribute their music (much like Apple) and agreed to pay Universal royalties on each Zune player sold. Not just on each song (which is a given) but on each device. Universal's reasoning? Quoting Times,

"it is only fair to receive payment on devices that may be repositories for stolen music".

Excuse me?! First, this assumes that any customer is a pirate. Nicely done, Universal and Microsoft. Second, if I am not pirating, should I get a refund? Third, and most critical, what about my personal computer? My cellphone? They all may serve as repositories for stolen music. Should music industry get to tax me for owning a computer? What about the movie industry? The software industry (hello Microsoft)? Ah, my bad. That last one we already paying, every time we buy a new computer and shell out cash for copy of Windows we already have at home or don't need.

Finally, there is a good idea I want to give Universal. People also have memory to reposit stolen music in, and lips to reproduce it. In the spirit of things, you should be taxing our heads.