Shalom From Turkey Dear Sir or madam, I am a 31 years old Turkish man I do not want to take a risk or maybe advance my self by not showing my identity. So i am not posting via email. I just want to express my feelings. All my life, there was always some hate to Israel in me. But i dont know why?  In my country, it was always like a duty that everyone should hate Israel and their religion without any reason Everyone hates israel here, but no one knows why. As usual, i grow up wit...

Preliminary election results in Israel: Kadima ("Forward", centre Zionist): 28 seats Likud ("Consolidation", right-wing Zionist): 27 seats Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is Our Home", moderate* Zionist): 15 seats Avoda ("Labour", left-wing Zionist): 13 seats Shas (Sephardi** Haredi*** Zionist): 11 seats United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi**** Haredi): 5 seats National Union (national-religious Zionist): 4 seats Hadash ("New", left-wing Jewish and Arab): 4 seats United Arab Li...

The Arab-Israeli leadership is increasing pushing us into anti-Israel radicalism. This extremism climaxed with the “Death to the Jews” chants during Operation Cast Lead. Here is what I have to say to those leaders: Look at what you’ve done.   We did not cry out in the face of rocket attacks on southern residents that went on for years. We did not cry out in the face of the suffering of our brethren, Gaza residents, who have been brutally repressed by Hamas. Yet we crie...

I tried to imagine how different this conflict would be if Hamas set up medical facilities for Israeli civilians wounded by Qassam rocket attacks. The very idea, of course, is absurd. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/02/a-dispatch-from.php  

"Anti-war" Democrats in Congress question President Obama's anti-war stance:   After campaigning on the promise to end one war, President Barack Obama is preparing to escalate another. Obama's dual stance on the two wars is not lost on congressional Democrats, many of whom also ran on anti-war platforms. In coming weeks, they expect to have to consider tens of billions of dollars needed for combat, including a major buildup of troops in Afghanistan. While increasing...

Elections are happening in Israel. Here is an overview of the four leading parties and their leaders. 1. Likud ("Consolidation"), Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu The original party of Ariel Sharon represents mostly right-of-centre Israelis including the "settlers" (Jews who live in areas that according to the UN should be Jew-free). Netanyahu wants to continue the peace process but focus more on the economy in the Arab territories rather than border questions. The Likud does not support the...

I just ordered Tamazight (Berber language) study software. Apparently it runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It's from 2003. Tamazight is the language (or one of the languages) of the Amazigh people, the indigenous people of North-Africa west of Egypt. It is spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, some areas in western Egypt, Mali, and Niger. A dialect of Tamazight (Tuareg) is a national language of Niger (official language is English). It is also since protests in 2001 a national language o...

Chapter III - Southern Sudan Southern Sudan has not fared well under Arab rule. Originally under Egyptian and British control, Sudan was handed over to an Arab dictator to "liberate" it from colonial rule. But coming under Arab rule was not the purest of liberations for the black Christians and animists of southern Sudan. Independence of Sudan meant genocide, slavery, and Arabisation for the black tribes of the south. And only a few years ago did the long civil war lead to autonomy and pos...

Remember the reports about Israel firing at a UN school in which "civilians" had found refuge? It was a lie. Physical evidence and interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was in the schoolyard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, no one in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where all three mo...

Max Boot, Council on Foreign Relations: What about the Israeli expectation that with these attacks they will have established deterrence against Hamas? Do you think that's true? Khaled Abu Toameh: Yes. Yes. Look. The West Bank was quiet during the attack in Gaza. Now, I was talking to many people. You know what they were saying? And this is the funny part. “You know what?” they said. “The Jews have gone mad. This is not the time to mess around with them.” And, yo...

Seeing that Brad has published a Windows 7 wish list , I figured I should add my Mac OS X wish list. I am not a big Carbon application user and hence don't really care much about 64 bit Carbon . It would be great for Qt and REALbasic and all those toolkits based not based on Cocoa, but I would probably prefer everything to be pure Cocoa anyway.   1. .NET support built into the system, with an Apple-supported method to use Cocoa APIs from .NET and vice versa. I don't care if Ap...

I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read b...

I was born and grew up under foreign occupation. We even had the blockade, the siege, and a wall around our densely-populated area, everything you need for a full-blown occupation. Here is what I learned: 1. If you don’t fire rockets at the surrounding country, they probably won’t shoot at you a lot. (I figured this out by not firing rockets at that country.) 2. If you don’t attack occupation forces, they probably won’t fight you. (I figured this out by not attac...

I hear that President Obama has decided to move more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan while abandoning the Iraqi government, who want American troops to stay, to its fate. Let me first say that I absolutely support the President's decision to move more troops to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban must be fought and I too think that President Bush has neglected to do so. I also don't trust most NATO troops and I'd rather see American troops do a good job than French and German troops ...

The retired scientist formerly in charge of key NASA climate programs has come out as a sceptic. Dr John Theon, who supervised James Hansen - the activist-scientist who helped give the manmade global warming hypothesis centre prominent media attention - repents at length in a published letter. ... "As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the resear...