Friday, June 25, 2010

.XXX, Israel Supports Investing in Gaza, N Korea Demands $65 Trillion In Compensation From US

David Brooks
Eugene Robinson
"President Obama said today, although he admires McChrystal's service and dedication to his country, he said, 'You don't criticize your bosses.' Okay, that's the same reason President Obama never says anything bad about the Chinese." –Jay Leno

"So, the bad news for McChrystal is he got fired for insulting the President. But the good news is, Fox said, 'We'll hire him.'" –Jay Leno
"But the general is in trouble for shooting off his mouth. Once again, another hole Obama can't plug." –David Letterman
"Starting today, there is a huge rock festival in England. It is called Glastonbury. These days, every country has its own music festival. England has Glastonbury. Here, we have Lollapalooza and Coachella. In North Korea, they have the Kim Jong Ill-ith Fair." –Craig Ferguson

The Daily Beast reports on the legislative body that supervises the Internet has voted to created domain addresses exclusively for porn, instead of a .com or .org suffix, they will have .xxx: "As if it wasn't easy enough already to find porn online: ICANN—the organization responsible for assigning and managing Internet domain names—has approved the creation of a .xxx domain. According to Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, the company backing the domain, the new porn-only Web addresses are "great news for those that wish to consume, or avoid, adult content." According to ICM the first .xxx sites will go live early next year, and it already has 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx addresses. In 2005 attempts to move forward with .xxx came to a halt when conservative political groups protested." This makes sense, but it won't force the hundreds of thousands of established porn websites to migrate to the new domain, they can stay where they are and have established an audience. Church groups are unhappy because this legitimizes an unhealthy presence for vulnerable web surfers.

 You just know that many people would get a kick out of having their personal website under the porn domain, like larrycraig.xxx, or yournamehere.xxx. They may not allow the parody or goof registrations, because a lot of people try to extort money from celebrities by registering names before they do. For example, would Sarah Palin pay someone to have ownership of sarahpalin.xxx? There were some court cases that were decided in favor of commercial companies,  they had an inherent right to own coke.com  bescause it already was an established brand name, and that it was criminal for someone else to register the name and charge thousands of dollars to let Coca Cola have it, so beware...


One of the most interesting developments in Israel today, is the 180% change in policy by the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who just invited a group of European diplomats and businessmen to come and tour Gaza, as reported in Haaretz: "Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has invited his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini to head a delegation of European diplomats to the Gaza Strip, Channel Two news reported Thursday.


This proposal marks a striking shift in Israeli policy, which has been to discourage and even prevent foreign officials from visiting the Palestinian territory since Hamas violently wrestled control over Gaza in 2007." Two things are happening here - one, that potential investors are also being invited, hopefully to get some economic projects started. A developing Gaza will further erode Hamas' hold in the region, if it doesn't go along and still clings to ruling by force and violent rhetoric. Second, this is a complete turnaround for Mr Lieberman, who in the past has done just the opposite, to discourage attention from Europe focusing on the situation in Gaza. He would rather have covered up the problems instead of hosting a walking tour amid the rubble For now, it looks like the pragmatic realists maybe exerting some influence in the government, seizing the opportunity that relaxing the borders offers, and is a good step towards stabilizing like the successful projects in the West Bank have done as an example. I also see this as a goodwill gesture made in the chess game trying to release Gilad Shalit, who now has been jailed by Hamas for four years, so look for some news items about this soon, well before the New York Free Gilad Flotilla arrives...



AArrgghh! The damned cat keeps putting his head on the computer keyboard, and just erased all of the websites I have bookmarked for research. It will take time to rebuild the list, if I can remember them all... We just had a remembrance of the Korean War in all of the media, but Asia Times reports on what wasn't reported, was that North Korea: "... has defiantly marked the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War by demanding US$65 trillion in compensation from the United States for its "atrocities" and sanctions since the peninsula was divided in 1945. Pyongyang's demand may be rhetoric, but along with tensions over the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, it highlights how bitter divisions remain after all these years."

My father joined the Army at the end of WW11, as soon as he graduated high school, and served in Korea and Japan as an MP. He saw first hand how the officers benefitted from the black markets, and also got some tattoos done by an outlawed Yakuza artist, done the old fashioned way with bamboo needles and using quarts of beer for anesthetic. He saved the life of a visiting Pentagon General and as a reward received a special discharge that would have required a special act of Congress to call him back up. He got out the week before war was declared on Korea, which proved to be a bloodbath that cost the lives of so many men used like cannon fodder. During his lifetime he did get to go back and visit Japan, but the US wouldn't let him go to Korea or Hong Kong because of his high security clearance and the area of defense that we worked in, they didn't want to risk the chance of the Chinese abducting him. His expertise at that time was intelligence satellites...

Anyway, I don't think the US will acknowledge the silly demand, but it's an exercise in power for Kim's son, who is being groomed to take over when Kim finally passes on. A couple of other decisions he got to supervise was the blowing up of the South Korean ship by torpedo, and actually being in charge of the country when Kim had to go to China and explain it all to the Chinese leaders. so they could exercise plausible denial... He hasn't developed the high skills of his father yet, who masterfully faced South Africa and telepathically gave advice to the North Korean soccer team at the World Cup, who lost by a humiliating margin of 7 - 0. Way to go, Little Leader, such huge shoes to fill, Littler Leader To Be...

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