Obama weasels on Palestine

Why can’t Palestine have statehood right now?

From time to time I ponder this question, usually after one of King Abdullah’s visionary speeches where he says we can solve the Palestinian question now, this year. I have never heard an answer.

This time I thought I heard on NPR that Obama had made a speech in Amman where he said Palestine couldn’t have nationhood because neither Israel nor Palestine was strong enough.  Strong enough to do what?  Push each other into the sea? That sounds like an excuse, and a poor one at that.

But paraphrasing never works for me–I need the exact words.   And a lot of people in the Middle East will be parsing Obama’s words in the next few days as he moves on to Israel.

From the Washington Post:

Tuesday, July 22, 2008; 11:36 AM:

Now, before I take some questions, I want to make a comment about the events today in Jerusalem. Today’s bulldozer attack is a reminder of what Israelis have courageously lived with on a daily basis for far too long. I strongly condemn this attack and will always support Israel in confronting terrorism and pursuing lasting peace and security.

Right now, my thoughts and prayers go out to all who were injured and to their families….

~~~~~~~~~~~~

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I just want to say that the reason that I haven’t focused on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is because I’m spending tomorrow visiting Israel and the West Bank. And so I was going to save some of these comments until I actually had these conversations tomorrow. It wasn’t that we were avoiding the issue. We just came back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is my firm belief that it is in the interest of both the Israeli people and the Palestinians to arrive at a peaceful settlement.

It is a very difficult process. There is a lot of history that exists between those two people. That history is not going to vanish overnight. People’s memories are long. There’s been bloodshed and disputes that date back generations.

And so I think it’s unrealistic to expect that a U.S. president alone can suddenly snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region.

OBAMA: What a U.S. president can do is apply sustained energy and focus on the issues of the Israelis and the Palestinians. And I do believe that an ultimate resolution is going to involve two states standing side by side in peace and security, and that the Israelis and the Palestinians are going to both have to make compromises in order to arrive at that two-state solution.

Now, one of the difficulties that we have right now is that in order to make those compromises you have to have strong support from your people, and the Israeli government right now is unsettled. You know, the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas.

And so it’s difficult for either side to make the bold move that would bring about peace the way, for example, the peace between Israel and Egypt was brought about. Those leaders were in a much stronger position to initiate that kind of peace.

So one of the things I think the United States is going to have to do is to help build capacity, make sure that Israel feels secure. And obviously the tragedy that happened with the bulldozer does not help with their security. That breeds a sense of insecurity.

And that’s why terrorism is so counterproductive, as well as being immoral, because it makes, I believe, the Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what’s going on beyond their borders. I think the same would be true of any people when these kinds of things happen and innocent people are injured.

On the other hand, I think that the Palestinians have to feel some sense of progress in terms of their economic situation, you know, whether it’s on the West Bank or Gaza, if people continually feel pressed, where they can’t get to their job or they can’t make a living, they get frustrated.

OBAMA: And it’s hard for them if they see no glimmer of hope to then want to take a leap in order to make impressions.

And so, I think what the United States can do is — is to help to create more — a greater sense of security among the Israelis, a greater sense that economic progress and increased freedom of movement is something that can be accomplished in the Palestinian territories.

And with those confidence building measures, that we get discussions back on track.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

OBAMA: I’m sorry. I need you to speak up. You were speaking up very loudly when you wanted me to call on you. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: Well, let me — let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under a McCain government — administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.

OBAMA: What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now.

And recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves, I believe it’s also in the interest of the Israeli people, because it is going to be very difficult for Israel ever to feel secure if you don’t have some sense of opportunity and prosperity and stability with its — its neighbors.

And so, you know, my goal is to make sure that we work, starting from the minute I’m sworn into office, to try to find some breakthroughs.

Now, the other thing I have to make a point though is is that everybody’s going to have responsibilities and obligations in this process. And sometimes I think there’s a tendency for each side to focus on the faults of the other instead of looking in the mirror and saying, what can be done to improve the situation?

So, for example, I think with respect to the Palestinians, obviously it is very important to resolve the internal differences between the Palestinians. It’s going to be very difficult for the Israelis to resolve a significant peace agreement if they don’t know who they should be dealing with and who can actually enforce an agreement. But I just use that as one example.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a cop-out.

This is the same politician who stood in in front of a crowd in the Chicago Hyatt on Super Tuesday, having won considerable victories in the primaries,  and said,

“Maybe this year we don’t have to settle for politics where scoring points is more important than solving problems.

Maybe this year we can finally start doing something about health care we can’t afford.

Maybe this year we can start doing something about mortgages we can’t pay.

Maybe this time, this year can be different.”

That night, the crowd screamed “Yes, we can.”

So now what does Obama propose for the Middle East?

Maybe this time we’ll be willing to work for Palestinian statehood?

Maybe this time America won’t demand that Israelis and Palestinians skip hand in hand singing Kum Ba Yah before they’re willing to lift a finger to support any actual movement toward that two state solution?

Maybe this time, this year, Palestine will declare its independence?

Maybe this time America will be first in line to give official recognition to the new nation of Palestine?

Nope.  If Obama was president he would be having a goal to be making sure to be working to be starting to be trying to be finding …..Uff da!  So many verbs, you forget was he started out to do.  Funny that a savvy politician who also happens to be a lawyer would talk that way.

So let’s take Obama’s arguments against Palestinian statehood and see where they lead.

1.”Palestine can’t be a state because Israel had some Palestinian guy run amuck in a bulldozer today.”

Ridiculous.  Did America wait until all its tea was safe before declaring independence?  Did we wait til all the redcoats were out?  No way.  It was Nike thing.  We just did it. We still have people run amuck in Amercia every day, from 9-11 to the shoe bomber to random crazy people exhibiting road rage during rush hour.  That doesn’t mean America can’t be a nation.  In fact, it is BECAUSE America is a nation that it is more capable of dealing with acts of violence.

2. Palestinians can’t get to their job or make a living.

Well, if Palestine was a separate nation they would still be crossing borders to go to work, wouldn’t they.  You don’t have to be particularly friendly with a country to declare your own independence.  It would be nice if Palestine and Israel could be just like America and Canada where you just show your driver’s license to cross the border (or is that all changed now?) but the U.S. has not always had friendly borders.  What about Mexico? There was that Pancho Villa guy.  And the Alamo.  And there was the invasion of Veracruz by the marines.  Still that didn’t keep America from being a country. Maybe the incidents even ended sooner because America could act in an official capacity as a government.

And as far as needing economic stability to be a nation, we in America went through an economic depression in the 30’s without losing our nationhood. In fact, it was the federal government that started the WPA, CCC, and all the other alphabet soup agencies to put people to work to rebuild the nation’s parks and cities. Once people were working, the nation started pulling out of it’s economic problems.  That’s exactly what Palestine needs.  A New Deal.  Jobs, a la Tammany Hall or the Kingfisher.  Patronage, with the U.S. quietly holding the purse strings.  Okay, I’m putting a little negative spin on it, but the U.S. needs to be involved in Palestine’s economic recovery.  If we don’t, all the crazies from Iran will be right there with their big fat oil money.  Let them keep Gaza and run it into the ground; America needs to be front and center with Palestinian statehood.

Obama is WRONG.

Obama is saying no, when there is not any reason to say  no.  This is called a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.  He is claiming Palestine can’t be a nation until they do a bunch of stuff that other nations never had to do. Obama is setting Palestine up for failure. No we can’t, says Obama.

Listen to these words instead:

Time is now of the essence. It is vital that the year 2008 does not end as the year 2000 did: With progress cut off, the sphere of agreement collapsing and years of expanding violence to come.

We need to ask ourselves, how much further ahead would we be today, if these last eight years had been years of peace and stability? If, all this time, a sovereign Palestine had been building and thriving? If extremists and external forces had not had this issue to manipulate? If global investors and customers had been able to approach our region with even greater business confidence? If the Middle East were, already, the united economic powerhouse it can and should be - a regional community, speeding growth, ending poverty, creating jobs and securing the future, the future for which our young people are preparing so hard?

Let us not stand here in eight years, or even one year, thinking, ‘if only’. We can begin a different future, right now.

The words are from King Abdullah, of course.

Right now.

Forget capacity building and all those other stalling tactics. That can be done any time.

We need a sovereign Palestine right now.

Post-FISA paranoia

Since the passage of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last week, it is now legal for the government to listen in on any American citizen without a search warrant as long as they say they are trying to find a terrorist. Then they have to apply for a certification.  If the government doesn’t get the certification after 67 days, they are supposed to just stop listening. Of course the government was spying on citizens before the law was passed, but that’s another topic.

The passage of the FISA amendment is not the only example of our eroding privacy. In a court ruling last week YouTube was ordered to turn over customer records about viewing habits to a court in order to prove something about a commercial marketing concern. Even though the Video Privacy Protection Act forbids revealing video materials requested by customers, it was not clear if YouTube would be permitted to provide the information with the identities concealed.

So what does that mean in the life of someone who, say, gets a new computer, to take a hypothetical case? Suppose someone buys a computer from Dell.  Sometime after powering up their new computer for the first time they would see the following popup asking for permission to monitor their viewing habits:

Please indicate your preferences below and click next to continue.

Dell offers a suite of technical support tools designed to provide you with customized technical content and maintenance tools information that are specific to your computer.  To provide this support to you, Dell needs to collect your computer’s Service Tag and, on an ongoing basis, information about your system configuration( the hardware and software installed on your computer) and Dell support tool use data.  Aside from your Service Tag, none of the system configuration or use data can be used to identify you.

Customer privacy is of the utmost concern to Dell.  Dell will not collect any computer use information outside of the Dell support tools, such as Internet use or personal files.  Moreover, we will not sell any information we collect in connection with the Dell support tools or otherwise disclose the information for commercial purposes.  Dell’s Privacy Policy applies to information collected by Dell support tools.  Click here to see Dell’s Privacy Policy.

You will enjoy a variety of personalized benefits if you allow Dell to collect the information described above.  For example:

• your navigation of the Dell Support Center suite of tools will be easy and intuitive.
• Drivers and download pages will offer solutions and updates that are specific to the hardware and software on your system.
• Dell can send customized list of diagnostics and error fixes directly to your system.
• Dell can send you proactive technical support alerts that are relevant to your computer.

How reassuring.  Somehow I don’t feel very reassured, though, especially  since reading the text of the FISA amendment.

But what about the privacy statement? Maybe it has something reassuring.

Here it is, under the heading “Disclosing Personal Information”:

We may disclose your personal information in connection with law enforcement, fraud prevention, or other legal action as required by law or regulation, or if Dell reasonably believes it is necessary to protect Dell, its customers or the public.

At least they tell you.

Not cooperating with the government’s unconstitutional spying would certainly leave the company unprotected.  I mean, look at Qwest, that told the government they wouldn’t do anything illegal…  Isn’t their CEO sitting in jail right now under some murky insider trading conviction?

I suppose my neighbors–and my old roommate–would tell me “you better HOPE they are listening in so they can catch any terrorists.” And the liberal bloggers who are now in an Obama lovefest/feeding frenzy would say “shut up, we have to elect Obama.” Or maybe the more pragmatic ones would point to the WordPress ban in Turkey or the cooperation of American companies with Chinese government censorship–this is pretty small potatoes compared to what happens in other countries.  Yes, it is.  And I have lived in those other countries and been glad for the presumed surveillance.  But this is MY country .  It just doesn’t feel right.

What does it matter anyway if some pimply-faced kid is sitting in a room full of optical cables munching on a donut and checking out my browsing habits, or whatever it is they do.  I mean, it’s not like I use the internet to look at porn or research explosives or mount Denial Of Service attacks on anyone who publishes cartoons I don’t like. And I don’t receive emails from the Middle East all that often.

Well, I just don’t like it, that’s what.

I was always taught that reading someone else’s mail is rude and unthinkable, that privacy is important, and that respecting other peoples possessions is the grease that keeps our culture turning.

When I was in high school back in the dark ages, I used to have a Peanuts cartoon taped to my notebook–inside so no one in authority could see it.  The comic was Peppermint Patty sitting outside the principal’s office after coming up against the Dress Code.  Yes, in those days we had a rule against female students wearing slacks in our school, even in the winter when it was forty below. And as far as wearing a black armband on moratorium day, or a headband, or moccasins, don’t even ask. Peppermint Patty’s problem was her sandals.  In the first frame Patty sits on a chair outside the principal’s office looking at her feet and saying, “These are nice sneakers, but I miss my sandals.”  In the next frame, the bubble over Patty’s head says “snif”. In the last frame, Charlie Brown says, “All I know is any rule that makes a little girl cry has to be a bad rule.”

For years and years and years, humans have lived and breathed and used computers without the manufacturers of those computers having identifying information about them.  I don’t think the world will come to an end if users don’t sign up for Dell’s program.  These days, there’s too many new bad rules out there.

I realize this isn’t a grand marshalling of reasons against FISA that would move anyone who isn’t moved against FISA already. It’s more a quesiton of how I feel.  But feelings have always been my first line of protection.  How to spell a word–does it look right? Nine time out of ten, my feeling about a word will tell me if it’s mispelled.  Change your answer on a test?–don’t do it!  For me at least, my first gut reaction is always right. Got creepy feeling about a guy?  Don’t date him, don’t be alone with him, don’t even get on an elevator with him. Cross the street, get out of his range of consciousness. Those nonverbal signals may be hard to explain, but they’re there for a reason.  Don’t ignore your spider sense.

My favorite Chinese curse is , “may you live in interesting times.”  These time are way too interesting.  Oh, I know it’s all unconstitutional, things have shifted before like this during the Civil War, habeas corpus suspended and so forth, and they always shift back when the military threat is over.  But something in the back of my mind keeps saying, this time what if, what if…”we have always been at war with….”

Jordan’s King Abdullah II on YouTube

If you have never seen King Abdullah the Second of Jordan speak, you can now see him on YouTube, thanks to Charlie Rose.

The videos are: |here| from the Royal Palace in Jordan (date unknown, but after the Palestinian election and before the Iraqi one), |here| from Washington after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, |March 19, 2002 here|, and |September 16, 2003 here|with the sound quality so poor and out of sync you can hardly hear the video, also King Abdullah is shown |here| in the first two minutes of something called the YPO Leadership conference, date unknown.

Who can forget the King’s entrance into the public spotlight with the Middle Eastern soccer championship, less than a year after the death of his father, the late King Hussein. At every game the king was front and center wearing a sport jersey and jumping up from his seat with both arms straight up in the air whenever there was a goal. No wonder the Jordan team was so inspired to win.

And that poor player from Iraq who made a goal in the wrong direction, inadvertently scoring for Jordan. Things will not go well for him, my Palestinian friends told me. Uday, the son of Saddam Hussein, was in charge of the team and on his return for sure the player would be tortured or killed for that blunder.

On the night that Jordan won the championship, all over the country there was celebratory gunfire. I was watching with some Americans near Madaba and at the end of the game decided not to return to my lodging until all the gunfire was over.

I kept a photo of the King in my digs while I was in Jordan and still have one over my desk. The King’s speeches were available to read in the Jordan Times, somewhat buried in the back pages, but they always published the whole thing verbatim in an “unofficial transcript”. I remember reading Fidel Castro’s speeches back in college. Our university paper used to receive a copy of the Havana propaganda publication with Fidel’s speeches printed in the front. I never did get entirely through one speech. They were just the same thing over and over again. Viva the homeland, venceremos, we will win, etc, etc.

Abdullah’s speeches aren’t at all like that. They are incredibly well thought out. You have to wonder if Abdullah even has a speechwriter–where would he find someone who could express those ideas so well? Apparently he thinks on his feet a lot better than the American presidential candidates too, as I was always amazed by the way he was able to answer reporters’ questions off the cuff.

When I returned to the U.S. I found out that King Abdullah had been interviewed by Charlie Rose several times. Unfortunately you had to have a credit card and order the video which they would mail to you for a nominal fee. So if your old Jordanian roommate is in town overnight and you are in the mood to watch it NOW, too bad. Later the videos got put together into an archive, so you had to order several hours worth of shows to just see one of the king.

The king continued to make riveting speeches, at least from the standpoint of someone like me who was looking for enlightenment about the unfathomable Arab culture, politics, and current events. The Jordan Times continued to print his speeches in their internet edition. Unfortunately they were only online for a week, until their latest Sunday through Thursday issue replaced the previous weeks’ issue. I started cutting and pasting the entire speeches into my January 2004 archives. The Jordan Times now keeps more extensive archives, and the King’s own website has his written pieces that have been published in the west, but this is probably one of the few places you can still find online transcripts of some of the King’s previous speeches.

So now may favorite interviewer, Charlie Rose, and my favorite world leader, King Abdullah, are together on video and and available for the world to see. Hopefully Charlies’ s archivists will get around to putting the dates on the videos (and fixing the sound) sometime soon.

Is the Bohemian Club stag Republican bash now underway?

A while back I predicted a Repbulican vice presidential candidate to be chosen in July at the all-male Bohemian Club Republican bash in Californaia.

Perhaps they are there now.  Several key Republicans are now in the state, including the president and vice president.  Laura Bush is not.  McCain’s whereabouts are unknown.

There has been some speculation over whether Obama might have been attending the infamous Owl Ceremony last weekend during a gap in his published schedule. I think it’s pretty safe to guess Hillary Clinton did not attend–not even McCain wants to woo her supporters badly enough to challenge the boys-only rule.

A new prediction: Condoleeza Rice will not be McCain’s running mate.

Who is Netroots Nation?

So what is this Netroots Nation convention thing already. Last year it was called Yearly Kos. Was it ever part of the DailyKos.com website and is it completely different now? What about stuff like the ACLU?  If they’re going to be there, aren’t they sponsoring it?

In an attempt to find the answers to these questions I have as usual googled some stuff and found some of it more useful than others.  Here is a partial reading list:

Last year’s convention was founded by and named after the founder of Daily Kos.  It is a gathering of Democratic party insiders. The coordinator was Gina Cooper who said, “This event is much larger than any one blog, though we’re all a fan of Kos and certainly not distancing ourselves from his blog.” This year Cooper is again the organizer. She says McCain, who has a DailyKos button on his website, is welcome to attend, although Cooper suggested it was his wife who was helping him with his email.

Organizations that sponsor the convention–53 organizations so far–pay $5000 and up for the privilege. More than 2000 bloggers attend. Anyone, including politicians may attend and many do.  The procedure is just to register like everyone else.  Registration fee is $450, currently discounted to $375. (What’s that about?)

What to do if your religion is disrespected: Sing or Riot?

Last Sunday at the Green convention I was trying to find the breakout group about Iran. Since the website with the convention schedule had mysteriously disappeared from the blogosphere, I relied on memory to tell me which room it was in.

As I slipped into the back of one room, the speaker was saying, “That’s the right thing to do and that is what history will respect..” Then the speaker started talking about how his group had offered to pay the $1500 fine if only the municipality would perform marriages….oopsie, wrong room, isn’t that the LGBT agenda? Later the same guy told me a heckler had started an outburst in the session and I had missed the fireworks.

Must be something going around. It seems last Sunday the world’s only openly gay Episcopalian bishop was heckled in England, where he is traveling in spite of C of E’s having misplaced his invitation to their big fancy bishop convention they have every ten years. (Do they really think those stories about vengeful Fairy Godmothers are for children?)

How did the Episcopalians treat the intruder? They listened for about two minutes, then as the heckler started shouting “repent, repent,” they sang. They sang a famous, and in my opinion not very rousing Episcopalian hymn that I have never heard of: “Thine Be The Glory, Risen, Conquering Son.”

But maybe rioting is a more effective means of dealing with information you don’t want to process, at least in the long run. The Anglicans seem to be dying out as a breed (as an anti-gay Anglican publication says pointedly), while the Muslim population is increasing. Oh I know I’ve ignored a few minor points here, like not all Episcopalians support their church’s decisions to accept gay bishops, or for that matter, female bishops as they did in 1992, and the fact that not all Moslems riot and burn embassies. But if you see a bunch of people burning an embassy and waving a flag, chances are it won’t be an Episcopalian flag.

But in Asia, the Christians are finally starting to catch on. Last Sunday, at the same time as the dwindling Episcopalians were singing their forgettable hymn, Christians across Asia were rioting at newspaper offices that had published an image of Jesus with a cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other. Yes, I’m predicting a resurgence of Christianity in Asia.

Yearly Kos Convention next weekend

Last year at the Yearly Kos Convention, they booed Hillary Clinton when she said she’d accept campaign campaign donations from lobbyists.

Wonder what they’ll say this year.

Pakistani blog tagging

I have been tagged.

Friday afternoon, someone named Ghazala Khan left the following comment:

Interview Request

Hello Dear and Respected,
I hope you are fine and carrying on the great work you have been doing for the Internet surfers. I am Ghazala Khan from The Pakistani Spectator (TPS), We at TPS throw a candid look on everything happening in and for Pakistan in the world. We are trying to contribute our humble share in the webosphere. Our aim is to foster peace, progress and harmony with passion.

We at TPS are carrying out a new series of interviews with the notable passionate bloggers, writers, and webmasters. In that regard, we would like to interview you, if you don’t mind. Please send us your approval for your interview at my email address “ghazala.khi at gmail.com”, so that I could send you the Interview questions. We would be extremely grateful.

regards.

Ghazala Khan
The Pakistani Spectator
http://www.pakspectator.com

How can I resist someone who finds that I am both “notable” and “carrying on great work”? She is obviously very perceptive.

A while back I discovered Jordanian blog tagging. The Jordan form of blog tagging is not too serious. The tagger asks a series of questions, mostly frivolous social questions, which the taggees can then post on their blogs, along with the answers. The effect is upbeat and carries the flavor of Jordanian style conversation.

This Pakistani blog is a lot more serious. They have several writers and deal with weighty political questions. The blogs tagged…er, interviewed, are serious and the questions asked of them are serious questions about politics and technology. The interviews are a regular feature, and several are published every day. The blogs featured are from all over the world.

If I was blogging to make money–and no one I know of on a WordPress subdomain is making money–this would be an opportunity for a little search engine optimization. As it is, maybe it will just be an interesting cross-cultural glimpse.

Well, anyhow, I sent an email telling Ghazala Khan I would be happy to answer some questions for the Pakistani Spectator, and within two hours, received the questions from halfway around the world. Isn’t the internet awesome? Here is the reply:

Dear and respected , thanks a lot for your consent. Here are the questions for the interview. Please also send us a brief bio of yourself, and URL of your site. Please send the answers at your earliest convenience.

Here are the questions please:

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for - what would your top 3 choices be?

What is your favorite book and why?

What’s the first thing you notice about a person (whether you know them or not)?

Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?

How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?

Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?

What role can bloggers of the world play to make this world more friendlier and less hostile?

Who are your top five favourite bloggers?

Is there one observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?

What is your perception about Pakistan and its people?

Have you ever become stunned by the uniqueness of any blogger?

What is the most striking difference between a developed country and a developing country?

What is the future of blogging?

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?

What are your future plans?

Any Message you want to give to the readers of The Pakistani Spectator?

Best regards,
Ghazala Khan
The Pakistani Spectator
http://www.pakspectator.com

Some of these questions are really easy, but others I’m going to have to think about. I suspect the questions will give more illumination than the answers.

Drooling over a computer with Windows XP, but do I need a video card upgrade?

This is the computer I want to replace my Windows 98 system. Core 2 Duo, a flat screen–get that fat monitor off my desk–, upgrade the memory to 2GB, and yes, I hate Vista and want it with Windows XP. They just stopped selling XP a few weeks ago, and XP will go away completely in a few more months, so now it costs another $99 to order the system with XP, but there are also a lot of legacy programs available for free that will run on XP and not Vista.

I’m still trying to decide about the floppy drive and whether to upgrade my old speakers, but the real question is whether to get a better video card.

I have never used video much and don’t even know how to get movies online. Everyone who has the video card that comes with the system says it’s too slow for movies. A better card is an $80 upgrade. Is this something I’m likely to wish I had later?

Ah, yummy computers, maybe I’ll order it when I come home from work.

Update: Looking online I found plenty of USB floppies and external speakers with some pretty good frequency response at reasonable prices. So if I ever actually need one I can pretty much go out and get one on the spot. The video card is another matter. Although cheaper cards are available online they would not have a manufacturer’s warranty.  The ones under warranty are actually quite a bit more expensive than the one offered, so I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and clicked the video upgrade box.

I suppose now I will have to find out how to get movies.

Your privacy just became “speculative”

How would you change your internet browsing habits if you knew someone–the CIA, your boss, your mother, anyone–was looking over your shoulder watching every Google search you did, every website you browsed, and every YouTube video you watched? Well, they are–at least the part about YouTube.

The internet giant Google is being forced to hand over the personal information of every person who has ever watched a video on the YouTube website as part of a billion-dollar court case in the US.

A judge in New York has ordered that Google, which owns YouTube, must pass on the details of more than 100 million people - many of them in the UK - to Viacom, the US broadcasting company which owns channels including MTV and Nickelodeon.

The data will include unique internet addresses, email accounts and the history of every video watched on the website, giving Viacom’s experts the ability to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world.

The information is being sought in relation to a copyright lawsuit, but Google says they want to anonymize the data–strip it of personally identifying information–before turning it over to the courts.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees, pointing out that the Video Privacy Protection Act protects “personally identifiable information,” which is defined to include “information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services.”

What can you do? The second most frequent search item on YouTube right now is how to clear your viewing history. You can sign up for Google and its sister entity YouTube using the throwaway registration website spam.la (WordPress blogs won’t let you do that), but it looks to me like you can’t change your email address once you have it. You can clear your geographical information, except for the country. But using a pseudonym on YouTube may not be enough to protect your privacy. The AOL search fiasco proved that users could be identified just by the information they searched for.

In the meantime. the ruling opens up any number of possibilities of how your credit card information, telephone bills, electronic tolls or subway tickets, and what diseases or fetishes you search for on the internet can be made public.

But why? Whatever is the court thinking of?

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton dismissed privacy arguments as speculative.

Back in the golden age of the 60’s, when every university rule from no alcohol to required chapel attendance to required English 101 courses was being challenged, a certain university decided to have a rule that if you lived in a dorm and you had a visitor of the opposite sex, the door to your room had to be open at a 45 degree angle. Students were not pleased. In the middle of the night, they managed to remove the front door of the college president, who lived in a small mansion on campus. “Let’s see how HE likes not having any privacy”, the students said later. The rule was rescinded.

I sincerely hope that this very moment someone is speculatively taking the front door off of judge Louis L. Stanton’s life.