Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

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A few more blogs of note: Sgt. Stryker in Iraq, Healing Iraq (getting more and more interesting), Boots on the Ground, and PC Watch.

triple outrage of the day

LGF's 'outrage of the day' is really three in one: this article explains that:

(a) "the U.S. Aid For International Development (USAID) indeed funds the Palestine Academic Society For the Study of Academic Affairs (PASSIA), the PLO lobby group in Jerusalem which trains PLO media professionals in the art of transforming the image of the Arab-Israeli struggle into an Arab David against an Israeli Goliath. "

(b) This funding arrangement was made possible back in 1997, under an agreement reached between the PLO and the man who was then the U.S. Consul in Jerusalem, Mr. Edward Abington. Immediately upon leaving his position as consul in Jerusalem in 1997, an employee of the U.S. State Department, Abington was hired by the PLO to be their paid lobbyist and official foreign agent in Washington, D.C., where Abington continues to lobby for the PLO under the framework of Bannerman and Associates.

(c) "an account of a seminar for Palestinians (from a booklet produced by the Palestine Academic Society For the Study of Academic Affairs), teaching them how to effectively manipulate the media—and the speakers are Eric Weiner of National Public Radio and Lyse Doucet of the BBC"

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars (or pound sterling) at work. A former US diplomatic official working as a paid lobbyist for a terror-sponsoring entity; journalists of US and British tax-payer funded media giving spin seminars to propagandists for the same entity; and an (otherwise legit) US foreign aid organization funding the whole operation at taxpayers' expense. As the Dutch expression goes: "And may we go puke now?" ("En mogen we nu gaan kotsen?")

Andrew Wilkie follow-up

Following up on the story of Oxford professor Andrew Wilkie, who refused an Israeli postdoc applicant "because you have served in the Israeli army", Keshertalk reports that Wilkie --- whose acts blatantly violated labor laws --- has been suspended without pay for two months and resigned (had to?) as a Fellow of his "college" (Pembroke). The disciplinary board also recommended that he be forced to sit through equal opportunity seminars. That's not my usual line of business, but I am willing to give the seminars to Oxford for free. And Wilkie's vocabulary will be greatly expanded :-)

History not quite dead

"The rumors of history's death are quite exaggerated" is Victor Davis Hanson's ironic nod to Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis. Go read the whole thing --- selective quoting doesn't do it justice. (Hat tip: lgf)

Alexandria Amazonia Library

Amazon released its digital archive yesterday. WIRED has the story.

Briefly, Amazon had a few hundred thousand books scanned and OCRed and put them online in a database. You enter keywords in the search box as before, but now all searches include full-text search of all participating books. If a book had a full-text hit, you get to see a few lines of text around the matching keywords. You can then view the actual page (as a low-resolution image, but enough for it to be readable) and browse forward and backward through the book!!!

The resolution of the images is deliberately kept low enough that you would normally want to purchase the book if you were interested in actually reading it. Also, linking to individual books or pages appears to be intentionally crippled. (This is how Jeff Bezos sold the publishers on the idea in the first place.) But as a tool for finding books that relate to a given subject of interest, this is an incredibly useful tool. This holds particularly for expensive scholarly books --- even those of us who have US$50--$150 to spare (or to spend from their book budget) on a collection of recent research papers on some abstruse subject in the natural sciences would not like to waste their (organization's) money. Until now, people would rely on book reviews in scholarly journals, or (for older work) citations (via tools like CiteSeer or Web of Science), or on occasional opportunities at browsing (book fairs, exhibitions at very large scientific meetings, visits to national libraries with a "buy everything" policy and budget). Now one can actually do this from one's office or home, and much more efficiently than by browsing hardcopy.

The image views, incidentally, are particularly useful for books in the natural sciences, as mathematical formulas, chemical structures, graphs, diagrams of experimental setups,... do not lend themselves well (if at all) to OCR-ing.

Caveat lector ("reader beware") continues to apply, of course. Considering that Amazon will market virtually anything with an ISBN number, it cannot be ruled out that some searches will lead to material that is crackpot, repugnant, or both. But the same will apply to going to a large bookstore or the Library of Congress. Search engines are an exceedingly useful tool, but never a substitute for using one's necktop computer :-)

Leftist journalist advocates whacking Arafat

Today's Jerusalem Post carries this remarkable op-ed by leftist Israeli media personality Matti Golan (past editor-in-chief of Haaretz and of the business newspaper Globes, currently running a current affairs show named "Documedia" on Israeli TV).

When instructing the IDF, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that the army could do anything and everything – except harm Arafat. The question is why? [...]

The Left's knee-jerk reaction is to automatically oppose the idea of killing Arafat. That just proves how much the political division between Right and Left obscures clear vision. In fact, killing Arafat would serve the interests of the Left and actually run counter to the interests of the Right. Because those who want peace, those who want to return territories, should be working for a situation in which there is someone to whom they can be returned, someone with whom it is possible to make peace.

AT THE same time, those who do not believe in peace should be praying that Arafat lives forever.

Some say that killing Arafat would be immoral. Is that really the case? Isn't there something immoral about eliminating those who carry out the terror attacks while not touching the person who is dispatching the suicide bombers?

Is it justified to kill the messengers of terror without killing the person sending them? Wouldn't it be more moral to kill the person inciting and instigating the terror, the person who is sending people to commit suicide – before eliminating those who are incited and whose mission it is to blow themselves up?

If a democratic government were involved, it might be said that we do not have the right to interfere, that the decision regarding Arafat's fate and future should be left to his citizens. However, we are talking about a brutal dictatorship, one where no one dares to say what he really thinks, to say nothing of actually doing anything.

No country or person has the right to harm or attack a leader who has been democratically elected by his nation. Yet that right does not exist for a person who acts against the best interests of his people without even allowing them to express their views.

Still others argue that a slain Arafat will be considered a martyr, that the revenge will be cruel, that chaos will erupt. All these arguments are indeed valid – but only as long as Arafat is still alive. Anyone with a little knowledge of history and even more of human nature knows that there is nothing deader than a dead man.

In other words, the moment Arafat is no longer around, the fears and reservations about killing him will become largely irrelevant.

Life abhors a vacuum. After all the expected lip service has been paid, Arafat will become no more than a distant memory, and the Palestinian leaders will be preoccupied with fighting over the inheritance. Ultimately, one of them will prevail over all the others. Will he be better than Arafat? Perhaps not. But then again, perhaps he will be.

At least he won't be Arafat. At least, there remains the chance that he will be different.

Galling Galloway expelled from Labour

Ueber-idiotarian (and ueber-w*nker) Labour MP George Galloway, covered extensively by this weblog near its beginning, has been expelled from the Labour party. He will hold on to his seat as an independent, but will not be able to run for re-election as a Labour candidate, and in practice will probably lose his seat following a redistricting.

North Korea's Gulag

The WSJ previews a report about the North Korean version of the Gulag. (The report itself should be online here later today.) For readers with very strong stomachs only.

Arutz-7 closed down

Following a lengthly legal battle initiated by Labor MK Eitan Cabel, an Israeli court order closed down the pro-settler pirate radio station Arutz Sheva (Channel Seven). The channel claimed it was broadcasting from outside territorial waters, but it was also operating a transmitter from the settlement Beit-El (outside Ramallah) which allegedly was interfering with air traffic control. The station's internet arm continues to operate (Hebrew; English). The Jerusalem Post editor condemns the measure.

IAF refutes 'massacre' claim

Israel Air Force releases "gun camera" footage that refutes 'massacre' claims. Here is the video in question (part of a Channel 1 newscast, RealMedia format, relevant bit starts around 1:45).

Meanwhile, the world's most expensive debating society the UN General Assembly "condemns" the Israeli security fence. Note that GA resolutions (unlike Security Council resolutions) have no legal standing under international law; hence the Israeli delegations just got a free supply of toilet paper.