Keith Olbermann on the dictatorship of George Bush.
RawStory: "An ex-UN prosecutor has said that following the issuance of an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, former US President George W. Bush could - and should - be next on the International Criminal Court's list.
The former prosecutor's assessment was echoed in some respect by United Nations General Assembly chief Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, of Nicaragua, who said America's military occupation of Iraq has caused over a million deaths and should be probed by the United Nations."
HuffingtonPost: "Air America conducted a poll that asked a question raised by Time Magazine's Joe Klein: 'Should Obama pardon George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney?' The idea: a pardon would brand them for crimes without the agony of a trial.
Air American's aren't buying the Klein solution. They want the whole lot thrown in jail. No trial necessary! A whopping 90% of our 9000 respondents want to see Bush and Company pay for their crimes with either hard time in the pokey or hard time in the pokey after enhanced interrogation techniques. (Shocking!)"
10:36:56 PM
I have mentioned earlier that Apple is having some trouble with its new iLife09 and Safari4 browser.
Apple acts like the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys. There is nothing wrong with Apple apps and rumours about bugs being fixed are totally misplaced. Well, actually Apple's iWeb3 is misplacing images in blogs (see image on the right where images are duplicated and appear in the wrong entries). The rss feeds produced by iWeb3 are faulty too. The hard-core Apple fundi will always deny any wrongdoing by Apple, it's the customer who is to blame.
And, mind you, Apple is very particular about the use of the 'wrong' words in their forum discussions. If you have the temerity to use the word 'hell' or 'pornography', you will see **** and *********** on the forum. Apple also removes all posts about rumours, even positive rumours. This message was sent by Apple after removing a post from the forum:
"Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions titled 'Apple addressing issues with iWeb - Hurrah! (if true)' because it contained the following:
Speculation or Rumors
We are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.
Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa We encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use.
Kind regards,
Apple Discussions staff
This message is sent from a send-only email account. Any replies sent to this address are deleted automatically by the system.
A copy of your message for reference:
Quote
'Also in the works, and reportedly undergoing internal testing, is iWeb 3.0.1. The update is believed to address issues with publishing iWeb pages to MobileMe and FTP, which has been one of the largest sources of complaints about the new Web editor that shipped last month as part of iLife '09.
One thread running since late January concerns FTP publishing errors where a test worked properly but the publish failed. Others have reported issues with pictures not appearing correctly while still others have struggled with uploading for a month only to discover their sleep settings were putting the computer to sleep before it could finish the upload.'
AppleInsider Go, Apple, Go!'
Unquote"
Apple is removing messages on their discussion pages at a high rate now as more and more discontented users are ventilating their annoyance, and Apple has not made any comment on the reported bugs in iWeb3 as yet. Does their removal of this post mean they are not planning to fix the bugs? It looks like it.
But if they remain silent, rumours will go around.
Apple has the most user-friendly system and apps, that is ... until they release their updates. Then some of the users will invariably get into trouble, and they won't hear from Apple for a long time. The users themselves will have to figure out what's wrong, they will have to devise their own solutions, sometimes they will have to buy new hardware like a modem to get their system working again. In short the user will have to delve into the technical intricacies he or she is supposed to be spared of. That is the arrogance of Apple. This 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' policy of Apple destroys the userfriendliness of its apps. And the Apple fundi will deny till kingdom come that there is anything wrong with the apps. But after the release of Safari4 hordes of users are already tweaking its internal works; which shows that Safari4 is not up to the users' standards.
MacWorld: "In the two examples involving iWeb, Apple's answer is more the equivalent of the old Rodney Dangerfield joke: 'I told the doctor it hurts when I do this. So he told me 'Don't do that.'"
So my initial advice still stands: don't buy iLife09, especially if you'd want to buy it for iWeb. iWeb3 is totally unstable. You cannot use it for blogging or podcasting. They have just added the new YouTube and html widgets, but they are defeating the whole purpose of the improvement but releasing a bugged application that won't work as advertised.
I would like to ask Apple to abide by the terms of honest commerce and fix the bugs in iWeb.
I will let you know in a few weeks how the situation develops.
12:02:02 PM
RawStory: "The biggest obstacle to an enhanced national health care system wouldn't be money, a study conducted by the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy found. The transformation of America's current health care system into a single-payer 'Medicare for all' system could cost six times less than the bank bailouts.
Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private. The Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy (IHSP) is a non-profit research group for the National Nurses Organizing Committee. According to the analysis of their proposal for a single-payer universal health care system, IHSP found that 'full medicare benefits for all' would have these immediate effects:
- $317 billion in increased business and public revenues throughout the US economy.
- 2,613,495 new permanent jobs, at an average of $38,262 per year.
- $100 billion in additional employee compensation.
- $44 billion in increased tax revenue.
The biggest impact of the proposal would be coverage for the 46 million uninsured Americans, but 'Medicare for all' would also get rid of the 'current chaos of eligibility, exclusions, family coverage, premium costs, and high out-of-pocket expense', unenviable consequences of the present system. The full report can be found here."
Ralph Nader: "While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.
Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people 'teaser rates' to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford.
Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks.
They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do the commercial banks.
Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers.
There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one prosecutor called 'lying, cheating and stealing' in fancy clothing."
The system of stock exchanges is the Trojan horse in our economy. As a result of the greed of stock holders and their irresponsibility, other people lose their jobs and social security is broken down. The financial market, Wall Street, is a fiction that is destroying our economy.
The Dutch government has taken over the 'subprime' mortgages of ING bank for a total of 23 billion Euros. Their total bail-out now amounts to 40 billion Euros. They could have bought the whole bank at that time for 10 billion. And what is this about 'subprime' mortgages? No way there is so much money involved in subprime mortgages in the Netherlands. The 'subprimes' are all in the US affiliate of ING bank. It's a scam. And guess who the Dutch government is lending the multi-billion bail-out money from? Yes, the ING bank. Double scam.
This year ING bank is paying extra bonuses to their employees (additional to their contractual bonuses) amounting to 950 million Euros. Triple scam.
DailyExpress: "Top secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a 'summer of discontent' in Britain.
The 'double-whammy' of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the -extraordinary step of the Army being put on -standby.
MI5 and Special Branch are targeting activists they fear could inflame anger over job losses and payouts to failed bankers."
Strangely enough, it's not the fraudulent bankers who will be arrested. MI5 will protect them and their banks from discontented customers.
Independent: "The Israeli military's policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers' organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted.
The operation, which took place a little over eight years ago, at the start of the present intifada, or uprising, left the former sharpshooter with psychological scars. To this day he has not told his parents of his participation in what he called 'the first face-to-face assassination of the intifada'.
As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment."
SP: "The SP is urging Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to put pressure on Israel to allow human rights activist Shawin Jarbarin to travel to the Netherlands. The director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq has been invited to the Netherlands to receive in person the 'Geuzenpenning' (literally, beggars' mite) a Dutch award given to persons or organisations who have fought for democracy and against dictatorship, racism and discrimination. The award takes its name from De Geuzen, 'The Beggars', a resistance group active in Vlaardingen, Maassluis and Rotterdam during the Nazi occupation suffered by the Netherlands in World War Two. It is presented by the city of Vlaardingen. Israel is refusing to allow Shawin Jarbarin to travel."
CommonDreams: "A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy.
The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.
U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign 'as a way of bringing non-violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law'.
In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid system and Israeli racism.
They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces."
10:55:38 AM
I have mentioned earlier that Apple is having some trouble with its new iLife09 and 