The Holocaust and the Occupation

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Over the last couple of years, especially since the intifada of 2000, there has been a worrying trend amongst Israel’s enemies to compare the Israeli occupation with the holocaust. This trend is based on lies and total ignorance on the part of many Islamist extremists who have formed a strange alliance with the new left, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, Iran, Hamas and even Al Qaeda. Of course there are also the eternal holocaust deniers who add grist to the mill of anti-Semitism.

Nothing can be compared to the Nazi crime against the Jewish People. Those who sympathize with the Palestinian cause and make these erroneous comparisons with the Israeli occupation have no conception of the attempted genocide of European Jewry which was part of Hitler’s plan to make Europe and the world Judenrein (free of Jews).

The comparing of Israel to Nazi Germany in its treatment of the Palestinians cannot be taken seriously by knowledgeable people. The only way to combat this ridiculous comparison is by education. This could be achieved by including holocaust studies in the school curriculum of schoolchildren all over the world, including the Arab world.

Palestinian children should be granted permits under parochial supervision to visit Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum) in Jerusalem, where they should be encouraged to ask questions about the holocaust. There will be Palestinians who are skeptical about the holocaust and may view this as a ploy to digress away from the evils of the Israeli occupation. Despite this problem, documented evidence of survivors of the holocaust as portrayed in Yad Vashem would go a long way in convincing even the hardest lined skeptics amongst the Palestinian community of the authenticity of the holocaust.

There is no doubt that the Palestinian people are suffering under Israeli occupation. The road blocks, security checks, logistic problems of movement within occupied Palestine have resulted in massive unemployment. The Israeli settlers living beyond the green line have done much damage to Palestinian property as well as abused the Palestinians. There is no justification for that under any circumstances. Much Palestinian land has been usurped by these settlers. Despite all these injustices towards the Palestinians committed by Israel, it is a long way from Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews.

Palestinians do not wear identification badges on their clothing as the Jews did. Palestinians are not beaten up in the streets by the Israeli Army because they are Palestinians as the Jews were in Nazi Germany. There have been incidents of abuse of the Palestinians by the Israeli Security Forces which was unjustifiable. The Nazis used to burn down shops just because they were owned by Jews. Jews were discriminated against in every sphere of life. Jewish professors and lecturers were fired from German universities, Jewish teachers from schools and Jewish judges and lawyers from law courts. The list of professions forbidden to Jews was unending. Jews were fired from their jobs just because they were Jews. They were strangled economically as all means that they had for earning a livelihood was taken away from them.

Eventually all these restrictions culminated in the “final solution” which was nothing more than genocide as the Jews were taken to concentration camps where many of them were gassed, shot in open pits, starved to death or died as a result of appalling conditions in the concentration camps where they were incarcerated. The crime – they were Jews! Six million Jews perished because of Nazi terror.

While there was tardiness on the part of Israel even before the first and second intifada in carrying out the Oslo Accords, one must bear in mind that Palestinian terrorism had begun just before PM Rabin’s assassination in November 1995. This had resulted in loss of trust between the Palestinians and Israel causing a severe setback in achieving an independent Palestinian state.

Much of Palestinian suffering (although not all) was a result of Israel’s security measures to protect its citizens from suicide bombings which had escalated into an almost daily occurrence during the years from 2000 to 2005. The security fence, with all its convolutions that divided Palestinian agricultural lands, causing much hardship, is serving its purpose. Many lives have been saved. Palestinian terror has dropped significantly but the motivation to carry out suicide attacks against Israelis still exists. The constant firing of Qassam rockets in the south of Israel into Sderot is still occurring regularly.

The Jews, who lived in Europe during Nazi rule, were never a security threat to Germany. The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic collapse and hyperinflation. The Palestinian regimes, such as Hamas and their ally, Islamic Jihad, are dead set on “the final solution” – genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel. If one were to examine the Hamas Charter, there is no doubt as to their intention.

If anything, one can find many similarities in the Hamas Charter and the Nazi Manifesto as regards the Jews and Israel. Both Hamas and the Nazis have a common aim – the destruction of the Jewish People and their homeland.

August 25, 2007 · Filed Under Middle East, World news

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A Book That Will Change You - The Success Principles

Normally not a fan of most business/life self-help books, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield was a great book. I give it my seal of approval that it will change you. Check if out if you’re in the mood for a refreshing book on life.

August 21, 2007 · Filed Under Interesting tidbits, Recommended

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“Iphone and Digg. The first victim of user-generated reviews” An exercise in predictive writing

jm_small_55.jpg[[The article below was written on the 9th of June, MORE THAN TWO WEEKS BEFORE the highly anticipated official launch of the Apple iPhone (29th June).
Following the advice of a friend on potential legal conflict with the Apple brand in such a critical moment, I decided not to publish it…until now.
The article serves as a good example of a prediction made before a big event happened, going against the prevailing view of that moment on the issue.]]


Iphone and Digg: the first Apple victim of user generated reviews
“Tu ego extiende cheques que tu cuerpo no puede pagar” (Spanish)

temperase6.jpg With only a few days to go for the much hyped and seemingly revolutionary coming of the Apple iPhone to retailers, it seems like the perfect time to look at the potential success or failure of such device and what all this will mean for mobile phone users and the industry in general. (please note all dates are approximate)

A timeline of possible events in the coming weeks/months:

0h. the iPhone era begins - Apple iPhone hits the stores. Long queues to get one. Police involved in several incidents around stores. People being assaulted when they’re going home from the shops. Some assaults have serious consequences. Many stores sell all their units in the first hour of opening to the public.

24-48h after the Iphone - Less than glowing reviews start to pour in from the gadget-loving websites. Users are already complaining primarily, of slow internet connection times, non-user friendly keyboard for SMS, the battery, and the camera.

24h after the Iphone - Some Digg users and other die-hard apple supporters, having flocked to the shops to get their “piece of history”, can’t stop boasting about their new iPhone (even if they don’t have one).
However, and at the same time, said users are already realizing its shortcomings…although they won’t tell, of course!
The first poor iPhone reviews are being submitted to Digg. And buried right away. However, the bad user reviews and images of cracked iPhones hit youTube and are seen by hundreds by the day. The growth of visitors to some of these video reviews proves to be exponential.

36h after the iPhone - the hype is still in full swing, supported by last minute marketing and PR efforts from Apple.

2 days / 1 week after the iPhone - at least two attractive mobile phones from competing companies are unveiled worldwide. (Who would have thought so?!)
Not only do they boast some of the usability advances of the Iphone, but are cheaper and have better specs than the iPhone. One of the makers is Nokia.

1 week after the iPhone - Apple shares are down. The market is uneasy about Apple’s seemingly sub-par attempt to become the market leader in the highly competitive mobile phone handset market. Apple investors have doubts at this time of the potential effectiveness of the iPhone’s scheduled marketing plan. The 10 million users benchmark starts to seem, at this point, unreachable.

2 weeks after the Iphone - users start to realize one of the biggest problems that most overlooked: a touchscreen may not be the best way to interact with a mobile phone…particularly if it requires two hands and a pair of eyes on it to actually do the job.
In the other hand, business users, realizing how bad a greasy and fingerprinted phone makes them look, are already thinking on passing the Iphone away to someone else and getting one of the shiny, new, competing models recently unveiled by other companies.

3 months after the iPhone - Iphone released in Europe. Although the Apple device for the European market is an improved version of the first iPhone (iPhone 2.0) and not as limited as the first iPhone, it still is a sales failure. The European consumers, being accustomed to higher specs phones, having read the poor reviews and not being so sensitive to the Apple PR machine as their American counterparts, simply choose other handsets over the iPhone. (please note that depending of the success/failure in the US, Apple may not even launch the iPhone in Europe)

4 months after the iPhone - Apple shares are slowly recovering, although it is not sure that they’ll fully reach pre-iPhone values. The Apple brand and credibility are at its point. However, the Apple PR machine is already working in the next “revolutionary” product. It is just that much fewer people believe this next product is “revolutionary”.

5 months after the iPhone (or much before) - Public die-hard supporters of the Apple brand start to -discreetly but surely- get away from their old “I love Apple” stance. Being an Apple fan is no longer what it used to be. “if you are not cool, you’re nobody”

Sometime in the future - In an attempt to distance themselves from the iPhone “experience”, the next iPhone will not be called “Iphone” at all.


Some conclusions -from the future- of the failed Apple experiment

1- The iPhone has helped to popularize the mobile internet as a whole. People has grown to expect Internet access anywhere on their phones.

2- Some/(only) of the most user friendly features of the iPhone design are included in future handsets by Apple’s competitors, to everyone’s delight (except Apple’s)

3- The iPhone has helped to educate the American public on mobile phone handsets, their strengths, weaknesses and potential uses

4- The iPhone has shown once again the strong influence that bloggers, social bookmarking and “review websites” play in the immediate success or failure of a product

6- The iPhone has helped Nokia, Motorola and other makers to be better known and increase sales by showing to the American consumer what they’ve been missing all this time regarding the features that a high end mobile phone “should” have.

7- The whole iPhone campaign and its results have made Apple rethink its PR strategy for future products. They -and many other companies- have learnt the perils of over-hyping a product, and they are not inclined to do it again. The lesson to learn for Apple is that the rules have changed. When you are being watched by hundreds of thousands of real time skeptical interconnected global consumers, there is much less room than before to over-hype and under-deliver a product or service.

8- Advertising expenditure in blogs, websites like Digg, CNET and others has increased, in volume and price. This trend assists in the consolidation of Internet advertising in general, consumer generated paid reviews, and conversational marketing.

9- People have become more familiar with the concept of mobile web, made-for-mobile websites, and the impracticalities of having “the full internet” shown in a small screen

10- People have become more familiar with buying, getting all kinds of information and being located 24h a day through their mobile phones. Computer skills are on the way out, as more people use and depend of their mobile handset to do most of the things that they used to do with a computer before.

…………
Javier Marti is a writer, futurist and founder of Trendirama.tv, Trendirama.com and Trendinews.com
////////////
This article can be reproduced in part or in full over any media provided that a visible and active link to
http://Trendirama.com
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as well as the name of the author, Javier Marti, is included.

……………… Reality check: What happened after this prediction was written ………………………..

The most hyped up product launch in history
http://blogpulse.com/trend?query1=iphone&label1=&query2=&label2=&query3=&label3=&days=60&x=0&y=0

http://www.slashgear.com/iphones-are-fetching-over-1000-on-ebay-295994.php

One of the first iPhone user reviews in youTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOgwJLWTQnk

As predicted: Iphone’s users dissapointment
http://www.turtlespeed.com/electronics/20-apple-iphone-problems/

http://www.thecellfreak.com/list-of-iPhone-problems-and-drawbacks/

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=267794

http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/iphone/index.html

“Hi Iphone, bye Iphone”
http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=377

Apple iPhone users reporting unresponsive multi-touch displays
http://www.intomobile.com/2007/08/09/apple-iphone-users-reporting-unresponsive-multi-touch-displays.html

As predicted: “AT&T Earnings Up, but iPhone Sales Disappoint”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/technology/24cnd-phone.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

As predicted: “Iphone demand shows significant decline”
“In other words, the people in the queues were the hardcore fanboys, and they’ve already got their hands on their new love. For the rest of us, the iPhone isn’t turning out to be the killer device that Apple promised, and the likelihood of Apple shifting 10 million iPhones in its first year, as Steve Jobs predicted, is starting to look optimistic.”
http://mobilementalism.com/2007/07/24/iphone-demand-shows-significant-decline/

http://www.uberphones.com/2008/01/apple/apple_puts_a_gag_on_o2_and_carphone_about_disappointing_iphone_s/

As predicted: Executives dumping their Iphones?
http://iphonefeatures.blogspot.com/2007/07/with-wi-fi-equipped-blackberry-8820.html

As predicted: “Apple shares fall on iPhone numbers”
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070725/apple_iphone.html?.v=2

As predicted: “Nokia’s iPhone”
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/29/nokias-iphone-no-seriously/

As predicted: little interest in Europe
UK release
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/iphone_europe_sales/

Failed to predict / Lessons for the future
- Fortunately, no major personal security problems around the stores on the launch day were reported
- I was pleased to see that Digg proved to be more transparent in their covering of the Iphone that I had given them credit for. The negative reviews were not as severely buried as I thought they would be

On a funny note…

Unfortunately, I failed to predict that
- someone would drop their Iphone as soon as they received it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvNujZ3ZDKs

- someone else would try to “blend” the Iphone in a high-powered blender (how could I miss that?!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

Maddox article: “The iPhone is a piece of sh*t, and
so is your face.”
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

Other interesting websites

Iphone clones from China and articles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_8wuVEYMZ8

Marketing suicide
http://mobilementalism.com/2007/06/30/motorolas-media-monster-lost-by-mad-marketing/

Iphone parody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xv7HirIPjQ

……………….

“Realistically, though, no matter how good the iPhone’s interface is, it’s just unusable as an Internet device without 3G - and the camera’s pretty crap, too. So until Apple release a proper version of the iPhone, expect more negative headlines as the backlash from all that hype starts to kick in.”
http://mobilementalism.com/2007/07/24/iphone-demand-shows-significant-decline/

August 18, 2007 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

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Erotica or Pornography?

Brian HaddonThe recent discussion in the Human Rights Council concerning non-consensual sex and child marriage in particular, estimated that within the next 10 years more that 100 million girls are likely to be married before the age of 18. Much progress needs to be made in countries where such practice is common. In countries in which child marriage is rare we need to address other practices which permit, encourage or condone non-consensual sex. Pornography is such a practice.In the 1960’s there was much talk about Ban the Bomb and War. There was also much talk about Free Love. Since then the common assumption is that this “permissive” age led to today’s acceptance of pornography, increased Sexually Transmitted Disease and high teenage pregnancy. A lot of people do not know that Eroticism and Pornography are very different.

Men and women have erogenous zones. They like to be touched; it gives them pleasure and is pre-requisite to consensual sex. Since human beings developed imagination feelings can be roused without being touched. These physiological and psychological processes are normal. Culture affects these matters according to the attitude of those who lead.

In my book, Let the Debates Begin, I suggest that early tribal leaders, like the animals they were, concerned themselves with survival. Sex, Food, Hunting and Warfare were the necessary issues to be controlled by competitive means. Leadership gave rights alongside responsibilities. Later, as knowledge began to be accumulated, religion was invented to protect those who pursued knowledge from the violence which was, and is, still part of the human process.

It was further suggested that politics is supposed to be the way of dealing with the conflicting dynamics of knowledge and animal instincts. The book suggests that political and religious leaders succumbed to preservation of their own power over and above leading people to a better society. A society where knowledge would increasingly determine events rather than the baser processes. Political and Religious leaders learned that they could manipulate people’s emotions by denying them access to unprejudiced knowledge. This denial is still regularly debated by those who have sufficient knowledge to identify it.

It should be noted that many religious books, especially the Old Testament of the Bible give prominence to the control of sexual processes whilst seeming to condone sexual abduction, forced marriage and the killing of innocent men, women and children as well as the annexation of other people’s land.

Erotic art forms of all kind do rouse sexual emotions. As these emotions are natural there would seem to be no real problem with erotica. It does not seek to harm or corrupt.

Pornography seeks to rouse all kind of emotions, especially those sexual and violent. It pursues this end without regard to whether it will cause harm or corrupt people. It does not differentiate between adult consent to the sex that it portrays or violent invasive sex. It does not care about the anti social effect that it’s violence may encourage. It’s values and activities are obscene in that it does not care if it crosses the line marking normal standards of decency; in fact it seems to deliberately do so in it’s pursuit of the extreme.

From the beginnings of religion and politics, it has been known that knowledge is power. By seeking to monopolise knowledge those leaders corrupted other people’s development. In the matter of pornography the need for control was vigorously broadcast by Mary Whitehouse, in her reaction to the “permissive society” of the 1960’s. One of the more sensible things that she said was that there should be research into the effects of pornography. The religious leaders from whom she sought support, continued to include all erotic material in discussing pornography.

Academics know that good research will set out to prove the negative and will only seriously look at an assertion which has been tested in this way. The negative may not have been proven but the balance of probability gives credence. When pornography began to grow it was reasonably suggested that it might have damaging effects to society, particularly the young. Those promoting pornography argued that there was no evidence that pornography had any bad effects. At this stage the political legislators could have differentiated between erotica and pornography and insisted that those issuing pornographic material should have to prove that the material did not tend to damage those who experienced it.

The pornographers cleverly posed the question of control as a human rights issue; a curtailment of free speech. Because erotica was included in the process the academics and supporters of the arts were up in arms against any curtailment of “free speech”. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was described as pornographic in court. The judgement against the prosecution was correct as the book was erotic, not pornographic in as much as it described consensual sex. However the expensive loss made any prosecution of pornographers prohibitive. Regrettably the judgement proved to be a green light not for erotica but the whole sordid world of pornography.

Pornography should be thought of in terms of violence as well as sex. Violence is obscene like non-consensual sex. In it’s relationship with erotica pornography should be defined as obscene erotica. As obscene, it should be controlled by some process or another as should all obscene activities. By definition they have gone further than decency should allow. Erotica may stimulate sexual emotions but the healthy sex act is a private sensitive affair. Sex in public is not erotic it is pornography. Participants in pornography are debased by it. They are being humiliated and treated without respect as commodities to be sold to insensitive people, men in the main, who seek gratuitous stimulation without any responsibility.

Erotica is a celebration of the joys of private consensual sex. Erotica is perverted by commercial considerations into pornography, which is licensed by politicians. Religious leaders argue against people enjoying sex in it’s own right and seek to shackle it in any way they can by calling all sexual activities pornographic unless it conforms to their own interpretations.

The description of sexual acts in words, film, art in all it’s forms is erotica and should be permitted except when it is describing non-consensual sex. This is pornographic and should not be allowed to be displayed. The display of gratuitous violence is also pornographic and should not be allowed.

August 2, 2007 · Filed Under Culture, Society

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