Year: 2004

Arab attitudes to US hardening

The Arab world’s opinion of the US has further deteriorated in the last two years over widespread impressions of an “unfair Middle East policy”, two new polls have found.

An overwhelming percentage of 3,300 Arabs polled said US policies, rather than American values, shaped their overall attitudes towards the US.

The polls underscored the frustrations with the Iraq war. The majority said the war would result in more chaos, more terrorism against the US, and less democracy.

Respondents answered “nothing at all” when asked to identify “the best thing that comes to mind” about America. Top responses to the “worst thing” about the US included “unfair Middle East policy”, US responsibility for “murdering Arabs” – primarily in Iraq – and the perception of US preoccupation with “Arab oil”.

[Source: Financial Times]

Sidi Ali El Mekki

Yesterday was one hot day.
We woke up relatively early (for a weekend) and we went out for a couple of errands, and by the time we were home we were dying from the heat.

Only one solution to that: The Sea.

So, we threw our swimwear on and headed off to the beach.

Living in Tunis, the closest beaches are: La Marsa, Gammarth, La Goulette, Rawad, Sidi Bou Said and Carthage.
But I personally don’t like swimming in any of those places for various reasons.

My favourite beaches are scattered around the north of Tunisia in the Governorate of Bizerte (My home city).
Beaches there are clean, water is crystal clear and cold, sand is pure and not too many people.
My favourite place among all those is: La Grotte in Bizerte’s Corniche region.

Anyway, being in a rush yesterday, we chose to go to the closest one of those great beaches, and that is the beach of Sidi Ali El Mekki.
Sidi Ali El Mekki is next to a city called Ghar El Melh which is around 50Kms north of Tunis.
I discovered this place 2 years ago when I went there with some friends from work.

It’s a really cool place where the mountain meets the sea. The scenery is great, the water is cold and clear, the beach is clean, and it’s a delight swimming there.

We had a great time.
Man do I envy the fish.

Just laying there floating on the cool water with nature surrounding you not only relaxes your body, it also relaxes your mind and soul, taking away all the stress of everyday life and putting your mind at ease.

Osama Bin Laden Virus

A virus purporting to show images of Osama bin Laden’s suicide popped up on the Internet on Friday, designed to entice recipients to open a file that unleashes malicious software code, security experts said.

The virus was attached to a message that was posted on over 30,000 Usenet newsgroups and is not being spread via e-mail yet.

The fake bin Laden suicide file, when opened, unleashes a Trojan horse that makes it possible for attackers to take over infected personal computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

[Source: Wired]

Miss Plastic Surgery

The world’s first beauty pageant for women who have undergone plastic surgery is to be staged in China this November.

A spokesman for the organisers said contestants would have to produce doctor’s certificates confirming their charms were not natural.

He added that to avoid a series of bungled rush jobs participants also had to have gone under the knife no later than May 29 this year.

Now, let’s imagine this.
A group of obsessed women with oversized breasts, lips, buttocks and what more fighting over which one of them actually looks artificially better.
Should be quite interesting for an artificially intelligent audience 😛

I Am Israel

The following is a short, succinct article that tells a lot, written by Hashem Said, a young Palestinian student in Washington State University, for which the paper – under pressure, as usual, from pro-Israeli activists – had to apologize.

This was forwarded to me back in 2002, and I stumbled upon it today while sniffing around my old emails, and I thought I’d share it with you guys here.

I am Israel
By Hashem Said
The Daily – Washington State University, Feb. 25, 2002

I am Israel – I came to a land without a people for a people without a land. Those people who happened to be here, had no right to be here, and my people showed them they had to leave or die, razing 480 Palestinian villages to the ground, erasing their history.

I am Israel – some of my people committed massacres and later became Prime Ministers to represent me. In 1948, Menachem Begin was in charge of the unit that slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, including 100 men, women, and children. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for our allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

Continue reading I Am Israel

RSS Bandit

After being a loyal SharpReader user for quite a while now and using it as my default feed reader, yesterday I stumbled across another one called RSS Bandit.

I installed it, ran it, and loved it. In only a few seconds it lured me in and it became my default feed reader.

It’s really a neat piece of software.

It’s written in C# too, and it’s open source.
I’ve downloaded the source code and am thinking of doing some customization in it if I actually find time to, mainly in the looks because the rest is going fine.
Anyway, if I do get around to it, maybe I’ll make it available for you guys to download as the official Subzero Blue Feed Reader 😛

Update (29/07/04):
I’ve switched back to SharpReader. It’s simpler, lighter and well I just got used to it 😛

Why Al-Qaeda wants President Bush to be re-elected

Aaron Swartz presents three reasons why Al-Qaeda wants President Bush to be re-elected.

  1. Reuters reported a letter from an al-Qaeda group that said “it supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader ‘more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.
  2. A top CIA expert on al-Qaeda has concluded that al-Qaeda loves President Bush, and might go so far as to plan an election attack to rally the country around Bush.
  3. Even administration officials concede “al-Qaeda has morphed into a loose and expanding association of regional terror cells [and] the Iraq war has fueled rather than doused the fires of jihad.”

I truly agree.
I think President Bush is doing more harm than good. He is fueling the growth of such terrorist organizations through the use of dumb force and creation of more hatred towards the US throughout the world.

The situations Bush keeps creating are the ideal ones for an organization like Al Qaeda to grow and recruit more and more members.
Of course they’d want him to stay.

[Via Boing Boing]

Norway: Right-wing politicians want to ban Islam

Central members of Kristiansand Progress party (Frp) claims Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and the Koran are one of the same, and they want Islam banned in Norway.

“It is about high time Norway and Europe make the ideology Islam and the practice of this, illegal and punishable in the same way as Nazism,” said Karina Udnaes, deputy leader of the Progress party’s city council group in Kristiansand.

Halvor Hulaas, chairperson in Krstiansand Frp, says: “The religion as it is practiced is a threat against our social system and way of life.”
He goes on to say that Kristiansand now lives under the threat of getting a large mosque in town.

Now what the hell is that?!

Dubya, The Peace President

“I Want to Be the Peace President”…
“Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president… The next four years will be peaceful years.” — George W. Bush

Yeah right!
After waging two wars and obviously starting to get things ready for the next ones, this is a really stupid thing to say.
I’d laugh if I weren’t so disgusted.

Peace President my ass!

[Via Je Blog]