I think it’s silly, because let’s face it, it’s one little town beaurocrat in Britain, but what the hey–Gus Van Horn is riffing off IEAPD and introducing Eat a Ham Sandwich for al Qaeda Day. I will not, of course, be participating. And I have many representations of Piglet, who is my favorite Pooh character to imitate.

Alcibiades is worried that the EU will gain control of the Internet. I’m not.

Also on Kesher Talk, the lies that come out of palestinian mouths, and the lies that the BBC publishes as truth. Yeah, right, W. told them God said he had to invade Iraq. What crap.

So you think I can just hire Omri to write my daytime posts? I mean, really. We read the same things, write the same things–he may very well be my long-lost twin brother, except for the age difference thing.

Here’s the thing: If you can’t read Solomonia daily, you’re going to spend hours catching up. Try to find the time to read this prolific writer regularly. (Solomon did not pay me to write this.)

Good advice on Iran and Saudi Arabia from Mary Madigan.

Normblog: The casual anti-Semitism of the British.

If you’ve got an interesting blogger link, add it to the comments.

Katie Holmes is pregnant.

I wonder who the father is?

I read this Guardian story linked to by Charles Johnson, and wondered how close to the truth it was.

You would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the internet to be a grand affair - a big stage, spotlights, media scrums and a charismatic frontman working the crowd.

But unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon’s slightly apprehensive voice through a beige plastic earbox. The words were calm, measured and unexciting, but their implications will be felt for generations to come.

Hendon is the Department for Trade and Industry’s director of business relations and was in Geneva representing the UK government and European Union at the third and final preparatory meeting for next month’s World Summit on the Information Society. He had just announced a political coup over the running of the internet.

Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government’s unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium.

So I dug around a bit, and found a blather-filled article in some online tech magazine that helped not at all. (Stick with me here, and you can get a glimpse into how I write these posts). Then I thought, first, what are the root servers? Where are they? Who runs them? So I did a quick Google search and scanned some information about them, then I found this nifty list at the Wikipedia, which can be counted on to be pretty reliable when it comes to Internet tech entries:




Letter	Old name	Operator	Location
A	ns.internic.net	VeriSign	Dulles, Virginia, USA
B	ns1.isi.edu	ISI	Marina Del Rey, California, USA
C	c.psi.net	Cogent	distributed using anycast
D	terp.umd.edu	University of Maryland	College Park, Maryland, USA
E	ns.nasa.gov	NASA	Mountain View, California, USA
F	ns.isc.org	ISC	distributed using anycast
G	ns.nic.ddn.mil	U.S. DoD NIC	Vienna, Virginia, USA
H	aos.arl.army.mil	U.S. Army Research Lab	Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, USA
I	nic.nordu.net	Autonomica	distributed using anycast
J		VeriSign	distributed using anycast
K		RIPE NCC	distributed using anycast
L		ICANN	Los Angeles, California, USA
M		WIDE Project	Tokyo, Japan

So I’m wondering: Exactly how did the EU stage this coup? Exactly how does the EU expect to take control of the root servers from the companies that own them, and most important, how does the EU committee expect to get control of the DoD root server?

Methinks this Guardian writer is unable to research facts before spouting nonsense. And this was in the Guardian tech section.

A number of countries represented in Geneva, including Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran and several African states, insisted the US give up control, but it refused. The meeting “was going nowhere”, Hendon says, and so the EU took a bold step and proposed two stark changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a “cooperation model” comprising governments that would be in overall charge.

Much to the distress of the US, the idea proved popular. Its representative hit back, stating that it “can’t in any way allow any changes” that went against the “historic role” of the US in controlling the top level of the internet.

But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world’s governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce.

It’s amusing how this writer thinks that if the UN says the U.S. must give up control of the Internet, America will just say, “Sure! No problem.” Does he not realize that even if the U.N. Security Council brought forth a resolution saying as much, the U.S. has veto power?

When I first saw that article on LGF, I wondered if it had any basis in fact. Now I know: I’m not going to lose any sleep worrying that the EU is going to get control of the Internet.

The article is just another in a long list of articles written by journalists who don’t understand their subject matter, making dubious or false claims that can be easily disproved with a few minutes of online research.

The good doctors of Dubai are not willing to use Israeli-made equipment:

A hospital in Dubai returned Dh200,000 worth of medical goods including physicians’ and patients’ uniforms, bed sheets, pillows and towels made in Israel, a source said.

The hospital source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for himself and the hospital involved, said: “While going through the goods to check the quality and quantity, hospital administrators were shocked to find tags reading ‘made in Israel’.

“We are not sure these items are healthy, safe, and usable by physicians and patients. Maybe they contain harmful or infectious materials. Patients come here to be healed of diseases and not to be harmed.”

The hospital immediately rejected the goods and sent a notice to the supplier telling them they cannot accept items made in Israel, the source explained.

And thus we inaugurate the “Jew Cooties” category. If you read about something that falls within this category, email me the link: meryl -at- yourish -dot- com.

The Arab boycott is still in effect, no matter what some may try to tell you. And there are those who are trying to reverse any progress made toward removing it:

Manama: Twenty-four societies and charity funds yesterday appealed to His Majesty King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa to reverse a government decision to lift Bahrain’s embargo on Israeli goods.

They also urged the business community to boycott goods made in Israel and not import them.

“We urge HM the King to annul the decision to legitimise trade with the Israeli enemy because commercial normalisation paves the way to political relations and allows the Zionists to penetrate our country under the auspices of the US.

You know, news likes this just makes me want to jump and yell “Boo!” at these people. But it’s a very serious threat to Israel’s existence, and always has been.

Having absolutely no reason to believe that the UN is going to put any teeth into atomic inspections, what with the Nobel Committee awarding the toothless IAEA the Nobel Peace Prize, Iran is encouraged to threaten more uncooperation:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran could stop U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities, its top envoy said Friday, as tens of thousands of Iranians rallied in support of their country’s nuclear program.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state-run TV that Iran would be entitled to put an end to unfettered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency unless it changes its resolution on Iran at a November meeting.

Good to know that Iran sees progress being made in its nuclear ambitions.

In what universe does the IAEA deserve an award for failure?

Nihon Hidankyo has been nominated at least three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. The group’s secretary general, Terumi Tanaka, also a nuclear-bomb survivor, noted that the last time, in 2001, the award went to the United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan.

“I feel utmost regret that the prize has gone to a UN agency again,” Tanaka told reporters in Tokyo.

“The UN and public organisations are just doing their jobs,” said Tanaka. “I thought the prize would be best suited to an NGO like us who have campaigned against nuclear arms and talked about the bombing experiences over the past 60 years.”

Outrage
Green activists also voiced outrage on Friday, saying the IAEA has helped military nuclear proliferation by encouraging civilian nuclear power.

A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear), said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by “promoting” civilian nuclear plants, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs.

“The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement.

“India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the five ‘great powers’ [the US, Russia, China, France and Britain] in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament.

“Recent developments [Iran and North Korea] have confirmed the IAEA’s patent failure,” it said.

Good to know, though, that El Baradei and the UN feel vindicated by this award. Because that’s the important thing: How they feel and are perceived.

ElBaradei suggested winning the world’s most prestigious award vindicated his methods and goals - using diplomacy rather than confrontation and defusing tensions in multilateral negotiations that strive for consensus.

He also suggested the conflict with Washington was over, saying Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “wished me well” in a congratulatory phone call.

The Bush administration has bristled at ElBaradei’s positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran and Iraq and unsuccessfully lobbied to block his appointment to a third and final four-year term this year. The endorsement by the Nobel committee was viewed as a major boost to the 63-year-old Egyptian and his mandate to curb nuclear proliferation.

But wait, it gets worse:

Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 - along with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin - said Friday that he considered the Nobel Committee’s decision a warning to Iran as well as a recognition of what he said was ElBaradei’s worthy, but incomplete, efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The message [of awarding the Nobel Prize to the IAEA and ElBaradei] is to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, because if the irresponsible people in the world - and there are quite a few of these - get nuclear weapons, it will be very difficult to exist in the world,” Peres told Israel Radio.

I’m going to stop reading about this in the news for a while. My blood pressure can’t take it.