Since I’m about to send my computer off to HP and get a loaner from work, and I’m trying to write stories tonight that will appear throughout the day tomorrow, and, well, I seem not to really want to write them, here are the stories I’m thinking of writing about.

The WaPo’s interpretation of the rise of European anti-Semitism, where in some countries, more than half the population thinks Jews hold too much power in world finance and are more loyal to Israel than to their native lands. Gee. Where have we heard that before? And this is sixty effing years after the destruction of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewry. And a great big one-finger salute to you, Europe. Really. Eff you, and you, and you. (Of course this explain’s the EU’s attitude towards Israel. Did you ever truly think there was another cause? I didn’t.)

Here’s the ADL article. France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland. More on this later.

The WaPo and the Times on the debacle that Al-Hurra is becoming. It’s very interesting to read them both and compare and contrast. I have but one comment for the Times, which can’t understand just why Muslims hate America: It’s the religion, stupid.

Okay, Falwell didn’t leave Jews with “mixed feelings.” Some of us couldn’t stand the guy at all. Like Lair Simon and me. Others are just not as smart. And if you think that post is bad, listen to the SNN podcast this week. Lair’s segment is absolutely sizzling. I’ve seen the script. Classic Lair.

And of course, it’s a Black Panther blame-the-Jews-fest in Canada. Why? Because Canadians refused entry to a speaker who’s been less than kind to the Jews. And check out this defense:

“B’nai Brith has won this one, and I’m starting to see the power of the Jewish lobby in Canada, full force. I thought Canada was free.”

He said his views have been “grossly mischaracterized,” and that he is an anti-Zionist, not an anti-Semite.

You see? He’s not anti-Semitic. He just blames the Jewish lobby’s influence. Just like Walt and Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter. Amazing how that keeps happening.

Feh. I’m going to stop now.

Wikipedia has the synopsis of the dreams I’ve been mentioning in the Heroes threads.

Nathan arranges for Peter’s release, but when they leave the police station, Peter begins coughing and collapses, unconscious. As he hits the ground, his surroundings change. Peter has what appears to be a vision of New York City, which is empty and on the street there are many cars - most with their doors open. Peter looks around and the other major characters start appearing out of various places. Mohinder climbs out of a cab and runs from Peter. Matt stops Peter and leads D.L., Niki, and Micah away from him. Hiro and Ando watch sadly from a distance. Simone begins to run to Peter but is held back by Isaac. Claire approaches Peter and tearfully mouths “I’m sorry” before running in the opposite direction. Nathan finally steps out of a building and walks toward Peter with a forlorn expression on his face. Peter looks at his hands which have begun to glow bright orange. After Nathan approaches close enough to be seen in the same shot, Peter screams as his whole body turns orange and explodes, similar to the flaming man Isaac had painted. At this point Peter wakes up, whispering “It’s all my fault”, then faints again as the episode ends.

Reading that, I realized that things have already changed. Simone and Isaac are dead. So if these dreams are prophetic—and we’re not sure they are—things are already different than they were.

I was also talking to someone and pointing out that it’s only a different level from absorbing someone’s powers while not affecting them, to completely draining their power. Peter has the potential to do that. Perhaps that’s how Sylar makes it to season two.

This is what happens when the TV season ends and I don’t have anything to do between 8 and 9 on Wednesdays. Damn. I really liked Jericho.

The mainstream media may have trouble catching on to the uses of the internet, but TV networks are figuring it out.

Besides NBC utilizing the enormous fanbase and interactivity of the internet (next year we get to choose which new character gets introduced in season three), CBS is allowing its fans to blast it for cancelling Jericho–on the CBS message boards.

Love or hate the cancellation, you gotta love the network for doing that.

And by the way, I hate the cancellation, but then, I was pretty pissed off when they killed of Gerald McRaney’s character.

I had no idea last week was the season finale. Oh. Now it’s the series finale.

Damn.

That makes two years in a row that a new show I actually bothered watching all the way through has died. First Invasion, then Jericho.

Hey. I think I’d better not watch an SF show that starts with a K next year. Guaranteed cancellation.

The terrorists in Gaza kill and maim civilians with impunity. The media rarely pick up the story, and most often bury items like these deep within stories.

In another incident, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security. Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her apartment and struck her and two of her children with their weapons. One of the children is 14 years old; the age of the other wasn’t immediately known.

“They came, they broke the door,” she said. “They assaulted my children and they pushed me aside, then they torched the apartment.”

Shadi al-Kashir, a building resident, said his father, wife, five children and two sisters had been trapped inside by smoke in the halls and gunbattles raging in the entranceway. “They tried to send ambulances, but the ambulances came under fire,” he said. They later managed to escape.

A group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.

Earlier Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak before storming it and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians security and medical officials said. Abu Shbak and his family were not home at the time.

Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, angrily accused Hamas’ leadership of the attack, charging that the Islamist group “wanted to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Darfur.”

Fighting also raged close to President Mahmoud Abbas’ heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight, and the bodies of two Fatah gunmen were sprawled on the street nearby. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present.

More than 30 journalists from different news agencies were holed up at the Gaza offices of Al-Jazeera television, unable to venture outside because of heavy fighting next to the building.

“We are in fact, without exaggeration, in grave danger,” said Al-Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, his words interrupted by sounds of gunfire.

There also isn’t much recognition that a group of international journalists are currently trapped in a building in Gaza while Hamas and Fatah shoot it out all around the building. So far, this report by an AP reporter trapped in the building has been picked up on only 55 news sites. And look: More war crimes going unnoticed:

My building is across from a Palestinian government complex, and both sides are fighting for control of the area.

Gunmen are taking over rooftops. My apartment is on the top floor of a five-story building and some Fatah fighters tried to force their way in Wednesday morning so they could shoot from my windows, overlooking the government compound. I had an argument with them, and they left.

There have been street battles between Hamas and Fatah before, but there are dangerous new elements this time. Now they are arresting or even shooting people for the way they look. If you have a beard, you might be arrested by Fatah security for looking Islamic. If you have a chain around your neck or on your arm, Hamas gunmen might shoot you because you look secular.

Fighting from civilian areas. Arresting and shooting people on no cause.

If it does get noticed, cue the blame-Israel chorus.

Michael Weiss got two of the former Suck writers to appear in their Moveable Snipe feature, where two people email each other while taking apart five blogs.

If you can read this without laughing, you are a robot.

Does anyone use italics in the blogosphere better than Glenn Greenwald? I don’t think so, Tim, and I’m willing go to the mat on this. This guy gets it, you understand? In fact, sometimes he gets it with italics and bold. Just take a look at the long, indented paragraphs that run through his blog like, I don’t know, stink on rice (where is that Adderall?). Greenwald is the author of The New York Times bestseller How Would a Patriot Act? (yeah, I stopped reading too after “Times bestseller”) and the surefire forthcoming smash, Tragic Legacy, which will also savage George W. Bush. Finally, someone willing to take on an all-powerful president with approval ratings in the low 30s!

Too funny. Read it all, and Michael—mazel tov.

Rockets have fallen on Sderot almost daily for over a year now, and the world notices them only when they do damage—or when the IDF responds.

Israel’s leadership has decided that the terrorists can fire at will. Once again, Israel won’t do what it takes to stop the kassam fire.

The IDF’s policy in Gaza has not changed drastically, but the military will be permitted to operate more widely, while focusing on specific targets, in order to minimize the Qassam rocket threat on Israel.

The decision came following the emergency evaluation meeting held by Defense Minister Amir Peretz Tuesday night after Qassams barrages hit the southern town of Sderot, leaving a mother, her son, and about 20 other residents wounded.

It was also decided that the Home Front Command will increase its aid to residents of Sderot and the vicinity.

In light of the intelligence and operational evaluations presented in the meeting, the Israel Defense Force will be permitted to perform wider operations in the Gaza Strip, including hitting terror sources, ‘targeted killings’, and other operations meant to stop the rocket shootings.

Luckily for Olmert, Hamas is killing Fatah members are a pretty good clip, and even managed to screw up and kill five of their own. (And may they have more such luck in the future.)

Police from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security organization arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials told The Associated Press. Five of the Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said.

Oh, they got another civilian. A rescue worker, in fact. Not that that matters much. She’ll be considered a “martyr” and added to the “killed-by-IDF” stats.

Hamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in another clash, and a nurse in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain dead and on a respirator.

War crimes abound in Gaza, but you will see no special UN session to discuss them.

A group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.

Hamas, of course, blames everyone but themselves for the fighting.

The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to life an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday.

[...] “The international community and Arab countries shoulder part of the responsibility for the current events due to their attitudes toward the national unity government,” Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press by telephone in Damascus. “The continued financial and political siege has pushed matters to this simmering tension.”

[...] “The Israelis are behind all these events,” Abu Marzouk said. “It’s illogical that the Arabs stand idle watching the Palestinian arena while it’s on the verge of explosion under the siege. … This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion.”

Abu Marzouk singled out Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, for criticism. “He was one of the main instigator for these events because he is continuing his siege of the Palestinian people and had boycotted Palestinian elections,” the Hamas official said.

Yeah, because just look at all the suicide bombers and civil wars the situation in Darfur has caused. Oh. Wait. The deaths in Darfur are mostly due to the Arab Janjaweed militia. My bad.

Meantime, the man who would be PM is evacuating Sderot using his own money.

Business mogul Arcadi Gaydamak came to the rescue of hundreds of terrified Sderot residents on Wednesday, after nearly 30 Qassam rockets landed in the town in 24 hours.

Gaydamak received a letter on behalf of Sderot’s residents on Tuesday, requesting that they be evacuated from the town.

The billionaire responded to the letter by sending eight buses to the town, in order to take residents out of harm’s way to hotels in Beer Sheva and Ashdod; he also pledged to aide in the fortification of homes in the town.

The problem is, the terrorists are using the evacuation as proof the rockets are working. It’s a Catch-22 situation. Stay and be shelled, leave and lose the town to terrorism.

“Launching Qassam rockets has proven itself,” said Ahmed when confronted with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas statement, that the firing rocket further damaged the Palestinian cause.

“The rockets have caused the Israelis to leave Sderot” he said.

He’s right, of course. Israel can’t stop the rocket fire. Only the Palestinians can do that, and they have so far shown no inclination of doing so. And so the mess that is Gaza, which holds the dysfunctional group that is the Palestinians, continues to drag Israel down. And what is the world’s response to all of this?

Aid to Palestinians has nearly tripled. In other words, the world is funding the war on Israel.

Donations to the Palestinian Authority almost tripled last year as a result of the international boycott of the Hamas government, according to a report published this month by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Aid in 2006 totaled $900 million, up from $349 million a year earlier.

The boycott meant that most countries refused to channel money directly to the PA, and Israel refused to transfer the tax revenues it collects on the PA’s behalf.

However, Arab and Western nations continued and even increased their donations, channeling them through either a “Hamas bypass” mechanism known as the Temporary International Mechanism (TIM), or the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. This money, which compensated entirely for the halt in Israeli tax transfers, partially financed the salaries of PA employees and was used to make welfare payments to the needy.

Thanks, world. Way to make Palestinian society whole again. Reward them for their continued anarchy and terrorism.

I bought Acronis True Image and tried to start the backup of my HD. I keep getting stuck at the full backup because True Image keeps telling me I’m trying to save the backup to the same place as the HD. It is also not letting me create a file name.

If anyone knows where there are simple, clear instructions for True Image backups, I’d love to know.

Of course, I may just be exhausted, what with going to bed late last night and Tig waking me up early this morning.

I am going to bed. The backup can wait until tomorrow.