Month: January 2008 | Ain't Complicated

Uh…Mr. Bush?

I guess I should no longer be amazed at this:

President Bush, summing up meetings with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said Thursday that a peace accord will require “painful political concessions” by each. Resolving the status of Jerusalem will be hard, he said, and he called for the end of the “occupation” of Arab land by the Israeli military.

Israel has made lots of concessions.

What have the Palestinians done?

And that “occupation” business is not good either.

Here’s more from the AP news piece:

He made a point of using a loaded term “occupation” to describe Israeli control over land that would eventually form the bulk of an independent Palestinian state. That he did so in Jerusalem underscored that he is trying not to seem partial to Israel.

[…]

“The point of departure for permanent status negotiations to realize this vision seems clear,” he said. “There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish a Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people.”

Is the US still “occupying” any territory taken in war?

I think I need a head-shaking, eye-rolling emoticon here.

I have no idea whose side the book below takes.

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

I Am Not Paranoid!

Believing the Web and email are both secure and private requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

So read this story and take a lesson for living:

The Softer Side of Spyware from Sears, Kmart

Googins noted on his company’s blog that the spyware installed by Sears transmitted everything from banking logins, email, and all other forms of Internet usage to comScore for analysis all in the name of ‘community’ participation. This was done without notice, an act contrary to documentation about the community from Sears saying that any data collected would stay within Sears’ hands at all times.

I’ve been trying to tell people that they shouldn’t assume privacy and security online. Not even in “private” and “personal” email.

But I think most of them think I’m being old-fashioned. Or hypersensitive. Or paranoid.

No. I’m. Not.

🙂

Now, say it with me…all together now…

Mark is not paranoid!

Thank you.

New Hampshire Speaks

Well, folks, according to what Drudge is headlining at this moment (and it keeps changing every few minutes), Obama and Edwards failed to knock Clinton into third place…and Thompson got knocked into sixth place:

OBAMA 36; CLINTON 37; EDWARDS 17; RICHARDSON 4; KUCINICH 2... MCCAIN 38; ROMNEY 29; HUCKABEE 11; PAUL 8; GIULIANI 9; THOMPSON 1.

That may signal the end of Thompson, branded by some pundits (many, perhaps?) as the only true conservative among all of the above.

In which case, maybe it’s time to make my move.

😀

SWATted

I wonder what the other side of this is:

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family’s home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.

The boy’s parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy’s father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves.

Someone, apparently the unidentified paramedic, called police, the sheriff’s office and social services, eventually providing Leoniak with a report that generated the magistrate’s court order to the sheriff’s office for the SWAT team assault on the family’s home in a mobile home development outside of Glenwood Springs, the father, Tom Shiflett, told WND.