Year: 2004

Iran: The Next Target

So George W. Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

And he says that his administration is investigating possible links between Iran and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, although CIA Director John McLaughlin said there was no connection and that Iran did not support the attacks.

So here they go again, trying to build false links between a country and Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, even though their intelligence people tell them there are none, all in an attempt to set the stage for a possible new war.

Soon, we’ll start hearing that whole thing about the so-called Irani nuclear program and it’s weapons of mass destruction again.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ‘first strike’ plan against Iran is ready.
Israel has completed military rehearsals for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear power facility at Bushehr, Israeli officials said.

They noted that the strike could also be accompanied by an attack on other targets, including a facility at Natanz and a plant at Arak.

Of course such an attack would start a war (or would be part of an already ongoing one) and Israel wouldn’t dare do it alone, so guess who’ll be doing the dirty work for them. The US of course.

More war, more blood, more chaos and more death.
It’s unbelievable what this world has come to.

10 Rules for driving in Tunisia

The 10 golden rules for driving in Tunisia 😉

  1. Get in the car and make sure you don’t fasten your seat belt. ( It’s considered a bad habit.)
  2. Try to avoid looking in your side mirrors or front mirror. Mirrors in cars are made only to check on your appearance.
  3. Before you start your engine, make sure a car is passing by, And then start driving.
  4. Do not warn the drivers behind you of your intentions to stop, just step on the brakes and stop as suddenly as you possibly can.
  5. Remember to cross the traffic light only when it’s about to become red.
  6. If by any chance you see a friend, just stop in the middle of the road and greet him/her.
  7. Never honor stop signs, they are only there for decorative purposes.
  8. If you need something from the supermarket, double park making sure that no car will be able to find its way out.
  9. A one-way street is an idea foreign to our culture, don’t ever go by it.
  10. If you hit a car, don’t stop, just leave, and forget Anything happened.

Enjoy 😛

Picasa

So Google have acquired Picasa, the digital photo software maker, and now they’re offering their product for free.

I just downloaded it and man does this look like some sweet piece of software to import, organize, edit and do loads of cool stuff with your photos in.
It’s really cool and a must for everyone.

Check it out here.

Don’t you just love Google more and more with every move they make.

Whatever happened to Maktoob?

I’ve known Maktoob ever since they were first born into this world as a little startup that offered a heavy java applet based free arabic email service out of a villa near the 2nd circle in Amman / Jordan.

As the Internet boom reached the Arab world, Maktoob grew and they started venturing into other fields slowly but steadily unlike others.

They started by growing their site into a portal and creating a number of other big services inlcuding an auctions site Mazad Maktoob which was very interesting and maybe the only arab auctions site that worked.

They later launched CashU a prepaid Internet shopping cards service which did really well and made the internet more usable and international services more accessible for the everyday person.

Anyway, after that, I kind of lost track of what they were doing and where they got to in their business.

So today, I thought I’d check them out and see whatever happened to them.

It seems they’re still advancing at the same steady pace. Their email service now offers 1GB of email space, Mazad Maktoob is still going on quite well, they’ve launched a match-making site called Mabrook and they have a bouquet of other smaller but interesting services.

I’m not sure about how financially successful they are, but they’ve managed to keep the company going this long.

This post is not an advertisement for Maktoob and I’m certainly not getting paid for it, although I wish I could be 😛
I just thought it would be interesting to pick a web company every now and then and trace it’s steps and how successful or unsuccessful it has been.

If you have a web startup or company you would like me to write about and you’re willing to pay, then just let me know 😉

Iran Next if Bush stays

George W. Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.

The official said: “If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.”

So, they’re still in the middle of all the mess they created in Iraq, but they’re still thirsty for more war, more blood, more chaos and more death. And they’ve already got their sights set on Iran.

As long as presidents like this rule the U.S. and the hawks remain to control the government, the US will continue to wage war after war and the world will never live in peace.

Americans’ first and only concern for the time being should be regime change in the US itself. They have a lot cleaning up to do in their government, and the upcoming elections are a good chance to kickstart this effort.

[Via Je Blog]

Allawi cold-bloodedly shoots suspects

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city’s south-western suburbs.

Iraq’s Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done.

One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.

Could someone please remind me in what ways this new government is better than Saddam’s?
I can’t quite find the difference.

[Source: SMH]

The old man & Bush

One sunny day in 2005 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Ave, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the US Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine looked at the man and said, “Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”

The old man said, “Okay” and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.” The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same US Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand?”

The old man looked at the Marine and said, “Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it,”

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “See you tomorrow, Sir.”

[Via eclecticism]

Beckham’s Missed Penalty Millions

The ball that David Beckham blasted into the stands when he missed a penalty in England’s Euro 2004 quarter final shootout defeat by Portugal has attracted a 10 million euro bid (Approximately US $12,384,000) on ebay and it still has 7 days to go so the price could go even higher.

Pablo Carral, a 25-year-old Spanish football fan who claimed the trophy when it landed in his arms in Row Q of the Luz stadium in Lisbon decided to put the ball up for sale on the Spanish site of Internet auctioneers eBay after a British newspaper offered to buy it for 18,000 euros.

This is one hell of an example of a fat lucky chance dropping into someone’s lap from the sky (literally).
Why doesn’t something like that ever happen to me?

Update: After running checks on the bids, eBay’s Spanish site decided to reduce the top offer for the ball from 10 million to a mere 23,650 euros ($29,270) after concluding that pranksters were behind hiking the price to astronomical levels.

PHP 5 Released

So the long-awaited PHP5 is finally out. I can’t wait to play around with this baby when I find time for it.

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

  • A better Zend Engine II
  • Better XML support focused around the excellent libxml2 library.
  • SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects.
  • A brand new built-in SOAP extension for interoperability with Web Services.
  • SQLite has been bundled with PHP. (After all MySQL sold out and went commercial on them)
  • Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.

Obviously, like all other programming languages, PHP is moving more and more towards the whole web services model and making it easier to use PHP for such stuff.

[More: PHP.net]