Happy New Year everybody… Welcome to another year on NWOW... where today we open 2009 with a column about... Annoying Viruses.
VIRUS NUMBER ONE
This week we are coming to you from the Nate laptop… my usual desktop in my home office is currently out of commission.
It all started innocently a week ago Saturday Night,… I had changed the font aka skin of my Mortgage Podcast and I thought that after 3 years of the same background, it might be time for a change. (The first 2 months of the blog, we used the same background that DAS blog uses.) I took a gander at the available skins on Blogspot… which is now part of Google… but I was not exactly enthralled by what they had to offer. Google however had a list of other sites offering skins and I decided to check them out.
The first site I saw was Blogskins dot com. I was using my browser of choice – Mozilla… and as I soon as I logged on to that dastardly site, my computer starting acting a bit haywire… and seconds later, Mozilla was knocked off. Since some sites are not too Mozilla-friendly I decided to try again by going on Internet Explorer.. the #2 browser… because as usual, somebody else has the better set-up superior to what Bill Gates has to offer.
I shoulda quit while I was ahead.. As soon as I relogged into blogskins website.. my machine started flipping out again… except this time, the browser wasn’t knocking itself out… and that is where all hell started breaking loose. My google toolbar started sending me an alert that a program was trying to change my default search engine.. .and I noticed that my google searches had a series of ads popping up on the left side. I did a little research and I found out that I seemed to have the internet speed monitor bug. I figured out how to remove that bug that was adding those ads and I thought the bug was defeated. I used Ad Aware which isolated and quarantined 12 infected files ( I later found a 13th file too), yet I also noticed my older version of Ad Aware wasn’t able to update itself from the web.
Well I guess I was wrong! My computer continued to act up with all kinds of crazy crap popping up… and I was up till 5 oclock that morning trying to figure out how to get my computer back to its old self. I also spent a lot of time on google researching ways to get rid of that annoying virus. But ultimately it worked its way into my administrator account and it was blocking me from doing a system restore.
I tried a few other ideas too… most of them involving downloading virus fighting programs. However my main account was now shot down… everytime I would log on, the pop ups would cause an instant crash. However, I was able to start up a 2nd account.. but that was now being blocked from certain sites… mainly sites that provided the virus fighting programs!
Well off I went to our laptops.. (and why do 2 of us have 3 computers?)… and downloaded the programs into a memory stick. However, when I went to the infected computer and tried to run the program in safe mode – no dice. A message would pop up that I was unauthorized to run the aforementioned program because I don’t have administrator privileges.
Luckily that machine doesn’t have any important files on it… I saved them on that memory stick and I will be taking my machine to Danny the local computer guy who is gonna wipe the slate clean… and by the end of the week I will have a “new” computer!
Incidentally I googled that blogskins website and discovered it is owned by a guy named Myles Grant. I actually tracked him down through Linked In, and kindly informed him that his website has a virus that killed my computer – but I never heard back from him so I guess he really doesn’t seem to care.
The moral of the story: You can look at all the porn in the world.. but the day you go to a G rated website… you’re in trouble!! And next time we need a computer - we are definitely getting a virus free Mac! But Virus Number One is just a computer that set me back some money and a lot of time - Virus Number Two is a much larger problem than a computer virus.
VIRUS NUMBER TWO
I have just about had enough of all of these people who are sympathizing with these Hamas terrorists who have been launching these attacks on my Israeli brothers and sisters. I am at the point now where I don’t care if Israel loses the public relations battle as long as they thoroughly and decisively win the war against terrorism.
Let’s set the record straight right up front. I am extremely conservative when it comes to Israeli politics and I don’t have patience for people who are sympathetic to the evil Hamas terrorists. Those supporters are either Anti Semites or self hating Jews and frankly their opinions mean nothing to me. If Israel eliminates every terrorist and gets outta there with no deaths to heroic Israeli soldiers, the world will be a much better place.
Let me first address the people that say Palestinians are oppressed. They aren’t.
Control of Israel went from the British to the current status in 1948. As they were drying the ink on the new Israeli constitution, Arabs living in Israel were texted, twittered, or told via smoke signal to get the heck out of Dodge. Israel’s not so friendly Arab neighbors were planning an all out attack on the new government and all they had to was leave town and come back after Israel was destroyed.
So they left.. and all of a sudden Israel with its brand new army was able to defeat its new neighbors who were attacking them.
At this point, let me just point something out to Palestinian sympathizers. If you plot against the government in the US… it is called treason and you face a punishment of execution. And all these people that left Israel after this warning were in on the plot to overthrow the government.. so theoretically they were all committing treason and in reality should have all been thrown in jail.
Well these people suddenly realized that they weren’t welcome in the neighboring Arab countries so they decided to go back home once the smoke cleared. But instead they started crying that they were “Palestinians” and they wanted to go back to their homes. One thing you gotta credit these Middle Easterners is their ability to manipulate the media (and dopey liberals) with their slick sweet talking.
I don’t sympathize with those people… and now 60 years later, the fight goes on even though anyone under 60 was never really tossed out of his home as the Palestinians falsely allege. In reality, they want to live in Israel because they know they will have a better lifestyle there than in any other neighboring country. And things picked up during the 1990s when for whatever reason the late Prime Minister Rabin was able to make progress with Yasser Arafat. That was the decade when Palestinians started living it up happily co-existing with Israelis... building popular businesses, casinos, and achieving economic freedoms.
But that all went downhill thanks to Yasser Arafat who at the moment is hotter than a roasting marshmallow as he continues to burn in hell. Arafat had a great peace treaty set up during the Clinton Administration, but as always Arafat selfishly sold his people down the river even though Secretary of State Madeline Albright was reported to be chasing him down a driveway at Camp David as she attempted to get him to sign on the dotted line on a deal that would make life a lot better for the Palestinians.
Ultimately, Arafats replacement was overthrown by a slick campaign led by Hamas which exploited the more reasonable Fatah’s riches contrasted by the poverty of the Palestinians. Hamas developed a constitution that calls for the elimination of Israel and today the world rightfully recognizes them as nothing more than a terrorist organization…
Hamas had a peace treaty with Israel but they violated it by firing off rockets into Israel. Ultimately Israel had enough of Hamas’s bullying Scut Farkas-esque actions… (that’s the last Christmas Story reference till December!) and like Ralphie Parker decided it was time to fight back. And that is what they are doing.. fighting back to defeat terrorism
This leads me to 2 messages I would like to send out. First to the Anti Semites who demonstrate at the pro terrorist rallies… I already got into one of these verbal battles on Facebook with one of these morons. Feel free to cut and paste it to rebut any of the morons who support Hamas by saying both sides are wrong:
But let's get back to that original comment that it "is not ok from either side".
There is a saying... "we don't negotiate with terrorists"... Hamas is a terrorist organization - read their charter to educate yourself about Hamas's intentions. Yet Israel did negotiate a peace treaty with Hamas and what did Hamas do? They violated it by launching rockets into Israel.
If you make such a comment that "it is not ok from either side", what is your educated solution to this? Negotiate with terrorists who use school children as human shields? Or just let them cotinue to terrorize inncoent Israelis?
Believe me, if terrorists were launching rockets into the US, and we fought back to protect our citizens, I doubt anybody would be standing on a soapbox criticizing the US.
And as for the self hating liberal Jews who are defending Hamas:
You all should be ashamed of yourselves as Jews to sit in America and criticize the actions of those who are brave enough to live in Israel. Seven years ago after the terrorist attacks here all you did was cry out “9-11 9-11”… and cried about all the lives lost that horrible day. Yet now you have the audacity to criticize the Israeli government and its heroic Army?? Well everyday is 9-11 there as citizens live in constant fear of more terrorist attacks while you just sit on your self hating Jewish ass complaining about one day of terrorism while simultaneously sympathizing with those evil people who are daily terrorizing the lives of our brothers and sisters in Israel.
Hopefully by next week, Israel will be able to finish off a quick and thorough defeat and we will be back to our usual silly shenanigans! In the meanwhile, I have found some Hamas supporting blogs that allow comments and I've posting a link to a site that sympathizes with “the occupation”. The site? Blogskins.com!
CLIP OF THE WEEK:
Here is the first clip of 2009 – kind of appropriate as we approach Martin Luther King Day next weekend…
4 comments:
Just to mix things up a bit:
You point out that plotting against the US government is treason, which is true. However, I'm not quite sure the analogy holds with Palestinians as far as Israel is concerned. We live in the USA which is supposed to be a state for all people. Israel is the Jewish State! How are non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs full citizens of Israel (btw, it says something that many non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs are given the rights they have!)?
If you were a random Palestinian in 1948 ... even if the Israeli army didn't physically kick you off your land (btw, some Arabs were kicked out of their land by Jewish terrorists like the Irgun and the Stern Gang)., you still had no stake in the coming Israeli state ... that wasn't your constitution or anything. Nu? How would opposing that state of "foreigners" be treason?
Nate, how would you feel if some group from Europe claiming spiritual and even genetic ancestry from the Lenni-Lenape Natives started settling around your home, isolated scalpings started occurring and then you were told the US would cede Northern and Central NJ to establish a Lenni-Lenape homeland in which your safety could not be guaranteed if you stayed. What would you do? I reckon you'd either fight back as a terrorist or get out of Dodge or even do both -- get out of Dodge then be hella angry at those "redskins" for kicking you out and support a struggle against those "redskins".
Of course, the argument is: well that happened to us Jews in Europe, so if it's good enough for us to leave our homes and settle in Israel, why can't the Palestinians accept what happened to them: worse has happened to us Jews. Which is true. But the Jews kicked out of Europe finally in 1948 could settle in the Jewish homeland. Where could those Palestinians kicked out or even just made afraid so they would flee in 1948 go (and contrary to your picture, some were actually kicked out)?
True, the anti-Zionists who reflexively blame Israel for all of this are wrong. They betray their fundamental anti-Semitism when they refuse to even think of how they would feel and act if they were in Israel's shoes.
But on the other side, we Jews should also think for just a minute -- how would we respond if we were in the position of the Palestinians? At the very least, if Israel weren't so obsessed with "showing those Palestinians we are strong" and perhaps were a bit more clever because all of us Jews collectively took the time to know our "enemy" and really, really understand how they think and feel by considering "what would we do if we were in their place?", maybe Israel would start dealing with the Palestinians in a manner that doesn't get them into binds (currently, if Israel doesn't "respond" to Hamas, Hamas wins because they've frightened Israel into doing nothing, but if Israel does "respond" then Hamas wins as well, because Israel is bound to hit some civilian and that scores points for Hamas ... nu? Israel is in a catch-22) and we'd see some peace ... which means Israelis will be more secure and we'd see less Jews getting hurt or killed by rockets.
I'm fundamentally a pragmatist. I want to see results. Is what Israel's doing working? If not, then why all the destructive fighting? To show the world "we Jews mean business"? How is that Jewish?
OTOH, "do not do to others what is hateful to you" is Jewish. How would you feel? How would I feel? If we were in the place of the Palestinians? So should we, as Jews, be doing things that we would have good reason to find hateful and unjust? Just military action is one thing. If we were Palestinians, we might not like it, but it would not be "hateful". OTOH, all this "we'll show them" is hateful. All these claims of "Israel is trying and the Palestinians are not" are disingenuous when so many Palestinians are dying (no matter who is to blame -- and those who just automatically blame Israel are, IMHO, anti-Semites). and Israel indeed, while complaining about cease-fire violations, etc., is not living up to its bargains with regards to settlement activity (why we Conservative/Masorti Jews should support such people that don't even view us as real Jews is beyond me).
I agree ... we need to fight the Hamas terrorists. And Israel is certainly not the primary culpable party for the plight of the Palestinians (and anyone who says Israel is is probably an anti-Semite). But lets be honest about what Israel is and is not doing here. And let's stop acting like we are so morally high and mighty when, if we were in the shoes of the Palestinians, we'd be doing the same things as they!
As to the Jews who don't agree with Zionism are self-hating claim -- the Satmars are nuts, but are they "self-hating"? The State of Israel is founded on a philosophy that, until very recently, would have been considered heretical in Jewish circles.
Gosh there is so much to disagree with here, I dont know where to start so Ill start from the bottom and work my way up...
1. The loony protestors are the Neturei Karta not the Satmar. The Satmar are very quiet about their anti Zionist beliefs. Also most Hasidic sects are not Zionists because of the secular non religious aspects of the Zionist platform.
2. I would never put myself in a Palestinian's shoes because I don't want the mindset of kill the Jew. The treasonists I refer to are the 1948 people who plotted against the gov't, left town and then when the dust settled came back claiming they were displaced and had a right to resettle in their old homes.
Look at the time frame.. it was post WWII 1948. The goal of these people was to pick up where the Nazis left off. This time however the Jews decided to fight back and stand up for themselves because they did not want to see history repeat itself.
And I don't believe that Palestinians were kicked out in '48... although there might have been some isolated incidents of crimes against Palestinians perpetrated by Jews.
3. And another correction - Israel recognizes non Orthodox Jews as long as a person's mother is Jewish. The issue is actually the validity of non Orthodox conversions which is common among all Orthodox... not just in Israel.
4. And Israel is morally high and mighty - they are the terrorized and Palestinians are the terrorists... just like Bin Laden's crew and the victims of 9-11 and other terrorist activities perpetrated by Al Qaeda.
In this case the victims are Jews which seems to make it less valid to the anti Semites and self hating Jews amongst us.
It would help those of us who would love to believe Israel is being morally high and mighty if we didn't see this sort of thing in the papers. And the issue here isn't (just) media bias: even if the media reported equally on all the deaths caused by Palestinian shells, those "school children used as human shields" are still school children and for all of Israel's claims of moral superiority, after the attacks (which I would agree are justified) it is against international (and probably Jewish) law for the Israelis to block aid from getting to those school children.
As to some of your points:
(1) So it's ok to be against Zionism, as pretty much any Jew, who's orientation toward Judaism was religious (rather than being "culturally Jewish, was throughout most of Jewish history -- but only so long as those Jews keep quiet?
I'm not even sure of Neturai Karta does what they do out of self-hatred or trying to get attention to their cause. Remember that many of them were in Israel before the Zionists were. They view themselves are guarding Israel not attacking it. Of course, there is a bit of "well, we Jews shouldn't make trouble" in their opposition to Zionism, but if that mindset is anti-Semitic, so is asking non-Zionist Jews "not to make trouble", ain't it?
(2) They plotted against a government that they had no share in making ... that wasn't their government in any way. As I asked -- how would you feel if a group of Lenni-Lenape were around scalping NJ residents and then given NJ as a state?
BTW -- I agree with your point about the relative status of Palestinian Arabs in Israel and outside of Israel.
(3) Whether some random Orthodox congregation in the diaspora would refuse to recognize a Conservative conversion is neither here nor there ... those of us for whom that would present a problem can just walk a little further to the next shul. The question is why we liberal Jews should do anything to support a state, which we support in large because we are Jewish (*), when said state doesn't recognize the Judaism we practice as Judaism -- when we go to Israel, we might be able to go to the next shul to daven, but when our conversions are not recognized, it causes huge problems with any sort of life-cycle event. And if they don't recognize our Judaism as Jewish and even some of our Jews as being Jewish, then why should we care about them?
* I think you and I would agree that if a non-Jewish state, let's call it Schmizrayel, was in the same position as Israel and responded the same way, most of those complaining the loudest about Israel, would be silent about Schmizrayel. That Israel is the Jewish State is the real reason why they cannot stand it, which makes them, by definition, anti-Semites. Now the question is, how many of Israel's supporters would be supportive of Schmizrayel? Would you support Schmizrayel? Or would you not care?
If we Jews are being asked to support Israel because it is the Jewish State (and those who ask us Jews to do so can't complain about Walt and Mearscheimer or accusations of dual loyalty by anti-Semites, as they themselves are asking us to have dual loyalty) when we wouldn't give a wit about Schmizrayel, well, why should we support Israel as Jews supporting the Jewish state if they don't even view our loved ones as Jewish or view our religious practices as Judaism?
Why should we care any more about Schmizrayel than Israel?
1. If the frummies are not zionists for "religious reasons", that is their perogative - they still support Israel in their own way such as sending their relatives to study in Israel without joining the army.
Nonetheless, the frummies make a large contribution to Judaism as a whole, with their incredibly low intermarriage rates. To me that offsets their not being "Zionists" while at the same time being supportive of Israel in their own way as part of their own religious agenda.
2. Treason is treason and defending the Nazi wannabes of 1948 is not really important to me.
3. This is a touchy issue especially when there are non Orthodox converts in one's family -and I believe there is one in my family too if I'm not mistaken. We also had an Orthodox wedding too for similar reasons, even though neither of us would label ourselves as Orthodox.
There are a lot of things about Orthodoxy I disagree with, but if they don't recognize a non Ortho convert or a Conservative kosher certification, I am not really sure how to argue with them about that.
But please don't confuse Orthodox attitudes towards the Non Ortho with Israel's attitudes to the Non Orthos. Those are just talking points used by non supporters of Israel to create a rift amongst Jews when they should be united in this fight against terrorism!
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