Mahmood Ahmadinejad, Iranian President, has taken to blogging.  I think it’s great that he’s addressing people in this medium.  Be sure to click the US flag, second from the left to get the English version. 

But don’t visit his site if you’re in Israel.  His blog is specifically geared to exploit an IE vulerability, but ONLY for Israeli IP addresses.  Amazing.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad now has his very own blog. That’s fine. The content is entirely what you might expect with one notable exception. Several Israeli bloggers, including Yael K.’s Step By Step, which I read regularly, report that if you access the Ahmadenijad blog from an Israeli IP address the site sends you a little gift, a cyberattack in the form of a virus or trojan (reports vary) designed to exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability.

Link:  Ahmadenijad Blog Contains A Little Surprise For Israeli Readers Using Windows and Internet Explorer

Link:  The Jill Carroll Story – Introduction

Britain and France wanted control of the Suez Canal, but had no basis for invading Egypt, so they colluded with Israel who was willing to put up a smoke screen that would then allow for an invading force to keep the peace and then control the canal. 

“The Israelis provided a way out. On September 30th a delegation secretly presented the French with a fabricated casus belli: Israel would invade Egypt and race to the canal. The French and British could then invade, posing as peacekeepers to separate the two sides, and occupy the canal, ostensibly to guarantee the free passage of shipping. When this plan was presented to Eden, he jumped at it. Thus was collusion born. The details were agreed on at a secret meeting in Sèvres, outside Paris. Not for nothing is the Suez crisis known in Egypt as the “tripartite aggression”.

The British and French forces now had a pretext to invade. For the Israelis, it would punish Egypt for its escalating incursions into Israel from Gaza. It would also hitch the major European powers to the cause of Israel: up to that point, the French had tried to be even-handed between Israel and its neighbours; the British had leaned towards the Arab states.”

It blew up in their faces when Eisenhower balked at the thought of such events and put the kibosh on their little masquerade. 

“Eisenhower, kept completely in the dark, felt utterly betrayed by his erstwhile allies. “I’ve just never seen great powers make such a complete mess and botch of things,” he told his aides. He determined to put a stop to the whole enterprise.

America struck at Britain’s fragile economy. It refused to allow the IMF to give emergency loans to Britain unless it called off the invasion. Faced by imminent financial collapse, as the British Treasury saw it, on November 7th Eden surrendered to American demands and stopped the operation, with his troops stranded half way down the canal. The French were furious, but obliged to agree; their troops were under British command.”

They royal schlacking that the Brits in particular gave Egypt through the years in part fuelled the rise of “radicals” associated with Islam while all they really wanted was to be left alone.  The Muslim Brotherhood formed during the height of Egyptian fury over the peddling nature of the British government.  Ayman al-Zawahiri, 1st Lieutentant of Al-Qaeda, joined the Muslim Brotherhood at 14 years of age.  It was the Egyptian intellectual, Sayyid Qutb, that really furthered the movement though.  It’s no coincidence that we’re faced with radical forms of Islam wherever colonial powers once roamed in the Middle-East and South Asia in particular. 

Condi Rice should have used her recent trip to the Middle-East to persuade Israel and Hezbollah to an unconditional cease fire.  It would have been the first time since the Suez that “America was to take strong action against Israel.”  I’m not trying to argue right or wrong in the current conflict that will finally reach a UN negotiated cease fire on Monday, August 14th.  What I do know is that Lebanese civilians have been amongst the largest casualties and Israel will be no safer in the end.

Link:  The Suez crisis:  An affair to remember (subscription required)

For better or worse in the interim, these kinds of democratic movements are necessary.  The French youth who protested against the government labor issues hurt themselves, but the will of the people should stand supreme irregardless of material outcome.

It’s one thing to have pedestrian victims when your government is at war, but it’s another situation entirely to be the target of attack. The latter is the situation in Sudan. More succintly, genocide is before us and external intervention by NATO is required.

China’s interested, not in the humanitarian needs of the Sudanese people, but only because the Sudanese government is quick to supply the energy hungry Chinese with plenty of oil.

Not that China would ever consider intervening in Sudan considering their own lousy record and the possibility of losing access to oil. As self-described “people of the civilized world,” it’s time for NATO to focus on the fact that 300,000 civilians have died in the most recent violence and many more could suffer the same.

It is undoubtedly xenophobic as hell for anyone to question the security of the ports when in fact security itself won’t change hands.

Last month, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Amrit Singh fired one of her trademark zingers at the Bush administration: New documents obtained from the Pentagon suggested senior U.S. officials are to blame for the systemic abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she said.

“These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials,” Ms. Singh charged in an ACLU news release. “Despite mounting evidence…not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice.”

Ms. Singh’s dogged pursuit of U.S. government information has subjected the Bush administration to withering criticism of its treatment of suspected terrorists.

But among the ironies of the post-Sept. 11 world is the fact that this particular critic of the Bush administration is also the relative of one of its newest friends. Amrit, 36 years old, is the youngest daughter of Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. Mr. Singh, 73 years old, will host President Bush at a summit in New Delhi early next month.

Link-o-rama: Prominent Bush Critic Is Also Daughter Of India’s Premier
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