If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 prior to March 2nd, you need to download the upgrade immediately. A cracker managed to mess with the code of the download file.

If you’re lazy like me, and still have a version that is not 2.1.1, you’re safe. Or if you downloaded it after March 2nd, you’re safe. But for about four days prior to the 2nd, you downloaded a poisoned copy of WP.

No word on what the cracker wanted to do, but I’m guessing it wasn’t send you a birthday card.

It isn’t easy. You have to work pretty hard at it.

Former French Prime Minister Raymon Barre has sparked an uproar within the Jewish community after accusing “the Jewish lobby” of making “a scapegoat” of Maurice Papon, a French senior official who signed deportation orders for hundreds of Jews in the Bordeaux region during WWII.

In an interview last week with France Culture, a state-run radio station, Barre also said that “opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of “major national interest.”

So is that anti-Semitism? Saying that the deportation of Jews happened, but giving a Gallic shrug and declaring it not in the interest of France? Or is this, perhaps, anti-Semitic:

“Mr Papon became a scapegoat. I am not passing moral judgment on the attitude that one should have had with regard to the deportation of the Jews or not. But I consider that this country is fundamentally hypocritical in seeking out a few scapegoats.”

[...] Barre added: “I want to say that on this issue I consider that the Jewish lobby – and not only with regard to me – is capable of mounting disgraceful operations and I want to say this publicly.”

And if that isn’t anti-Semitic, how about this quote? Can you tell the difference between a former French Prime Minister’s sayings, and anti-Semitic statements?

Raymon Barre, who was Prime Minister under former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, already shocked the Jewish community at the time when reacting to a Palestinian terrorist bomb attack against a Paris synagogue in October 1980, he declared on the television: “This appalling attack was intended to hit Jews on their way to the synagogue, it has hit innocent French people who happened to be in the Rue Copernic”.

He implicitely stated that Jews are not French.

Okay, well, that was 27 years ago. He’s changed. He’s grown. He’s understood what his words meant, and perhaps he wants to amend them. Let’s see what he has to say today:

During the interview with France Culture, Barre said he doesn’t not regret his words.

“Don’t forget that in the same statement I said that the Jewish community cannot be separated from the French community. When you quote, you must quote in full. And the campaign undertaken by the Jewish lobby with the strongest links on the left came from the fact that we were in an electoral climate and this didn’t impress me and they can continue to repeat it.”

“Those who wanted to get their own back on Jews could have blown up the synagogue and Jews. But not at all, they launched a blind bomb attack and there were three French people, not Jews, that’s a fact, not Jews. And that doesn’t mean that Jews are not French,” Barre said.

And that last paragraph, ladies and gents, is all you need to tell the difference between a Frenchman and an anti-Semite.

In this particular case, there is none.

Of course, it is not about a member of the Royal family, what, are you totally bonkers? It is about the one and the only Michael Moore, the king of a new cinema genre defined by NYT as “tweaked documentary”. Twisted will be more apt, but then NYT cannot get too rough with their idol.

Michael Moore, some claim, has done more for the cause of progress, enlightenment and justice than any other filmmaker. He has also done very well for himself and his sponsors, being a first documentary maker to break into the seven digit bracket. This in a genre with an established tradition of being impoverished for the cause.

Unfortunately, on the way to success, Moore has also broken another tradition: that of documentary, by the virtue of its name, supposedly telling the truth. Not for Moore the stifling and restricting confines of mere facts. Twisting the reality, ignoring inconvenient facts and plainly lying - all for the cause - is just part of the job for him. And his grateful audience is happily lapping up everything.

But it seems that some of his previously unquestioning supporters are asking questions.

The Toronto-based documentary filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk started out in the first camp. But during the course of making an unauthorized film about Mr. Moore they wound up somewhere in between. In the process, their experience has added a twist to the long-running story of an abrasive social critic who has frequently been criticized from the right, but far less often, as is the case with Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine, from his own end of the political spectrum.

Their film “Manufacturing Dissent” will have its premiere on March 10 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tex. To say it sheds an unflattering light on Mr. Moore — whose work includes the hit “Fahrenheit 9/11″ and the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” — would be an understatement.

The linked article in NYT is too subdued and misses another quote by Melnyk, picked up here:

“If you have to sell out your values and principles to get at a greater truth, where does that leave you?” said Melnyk. “If we think it’s wrong for the government to lie and manipulate, how do we think that [those on the left] doing it is the solution?”

Yep. Lying for a good cause is not the way to overcome the fact that you are a fat self-aggrandizing slob. I do not know whether Moore really likes or hates America, and I suspect it is irrelevant, since the only entity he really loves and cherishes is Michael Moore, and he would not let anything, mere facts included, to stand on his way to fame (no matter how dubious) and money (the more the merrier).

Feh.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Bibi Netanyahu called for early elections. If he’s truly serious about it, we’ll see a no-confidence vote in the near future.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu called for early elections on Wednesday, claiming that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government had no public support.

“We need to hold elections. Most of the public feels a loss of confidence in the government, and now the time has come for justice,” the Likud leader said.

“The government failed in the war and the people want a new leadership,” he added, referring to the mishandling of last summer’s war with Hizbullah .

Netanyahu accused Olmert of obstructing a state comptroller investigation into the handling of the home front by the army and the government during the war.

“How can the government draw lessons if it is refusing to hear about them? We need to change this government,” he told reporters in the Knesset.

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss this week accused the prime minister of failing to cooperate with his inquiry into the government’s handling of northern communities during the war.

He has some points there. But if all he’s doing is making speeches, he’s not ready to make his move yet, what with his making speeches like this since before Olmert was Prime Minister.

He certainly mentions wanting to lead the country every chance he gets. But let us not forget that Netanyahu was also investigated for corruption. I’m wondering if there is such a thing as an honest Israeli politician.