June 13, 2003

US to Belgium - stuff it While its all fun and games to charge another country’s Prime Minister with war crimes but filing chargers former US President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and General Norman Schwarzkopf does get you in trouble with the Americans. The New York Times reports that US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened Thursday to find another venue for NATO meetings if Belgium failed to act on United States demands to rescind its controversial war crimes legislation. Belgium is now arguing that the law was recently amended to allow the government to dismiss politically motivated cases by transferring them to the defendants' home country. An example of this was when charges against Israeli general Amos Yaron were transferred to Israel. However, probably to prevent every American soldier or politician from being charged the US wants the law scrapped. 11:32:59 PM

Possibly writen on the airplane to Canada - Gerald M. Steinberg has an editorial on the Roadmap in the Jerusalem Post. 11:28:25 PM

We cannot wait for Forever CNN Money reports that computer game publisher Take Two Interactive has angered 3D Realms, the developer of Duke Nukem by writing off most of its investment in Duke Nukem Forever, the game that 3D Realms has been working on for over five years. 11:20:42 PM

DVD Burner price drops I have noticed a dramatic fall in the prices of recordable DVD drives in the latest issue of Toronto Computes (for example a LG Burner for $228 cdn). DigiTimes.com reports that production increases by NEC which supplies Pioneer and LG in the number of DVD chipsets it produces are said to behind a worldwide drop in the cost of such devices. (Via Ars Technica) 11:13:58 PM

Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director, Program on Conflict Resolution at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel spoke Thursday at Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Toronto on the prospects for peace through the US led roadmap. In this lecture he stated that he did not expect that the American backed roadmap for peace would work since the refusal of Palestinian and Arab states to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state was the key stumbling block not addressed by this or any peace plan. Until this is addressed no peace plan could come to a satisfactory conclusion and the result would be similar to the disastrous Oslo Accords. In the absence of a shift in this position, which he does not expect, Steinberg said Israel must focus on conflict management, not conflict resolution. In his view Israel should create a unilateral separation between the Arab and Israeli populations Steinberg also expressed deep criticism about the European role in the peace process saying they were either well-intentioned but misguided or in the case of France doing things for their own goals. His position on Canada was the same, well intentioned but mostly ineffective at best, damaging at worst. Copies of Steinberg’s December 2002 report, The Quartet, The Road Map, And The Future Of Iraq: A Realistic Assessment and the recently revised, Rethinking Middle East Peace Efforts: Is Less Actually Better? both which advocated conflict management instead of unrealistic efforts at complete peace were distributed before the talk. 12:14:46 AM