Lettre 13

Here’s two very interesting podcasts where you can hear from people who where there and running either the war to occupy Iraq, or the country at the beginning of the occupation.

First an interview of Charles Ferguson (with some excerpts from the movie) which is the director and Producer of No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq.

It seems that for almost two years, the President Bush was completely disengaged from Iraq and the whole show was run by a very small group composed of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bremer and Wolfowitz. Some decisions where made without consulting the US military, and against their will (like the disbanding of the Iraq army). One of the theory that emerges is that the US lost the peace at the beginning of the occupation when the US army let the looting out of control.

No End in Sight, On Point, guest host Jane Clayson.

The second podcast involve peoples that were in charge of the invasion. General Richard Myers seems less dumb that what I though. But doesn’t really come clean. The others, General William Wallace and General Jack Keane are more interesting. What is fascinating is how the BBC journalist, Owen Bennett-Jones, can ask direct questions, without spinning and reverence to these generals. I wish it could be possible to have such an interview in the US.

The Generals Debate Iraq, Documentary Archive , BBC World Service (mp3)

Blair’s negatives in the Middle East are well known, and are not counter-balanced by his many successes at home or in Europe. His main problem is not only that he has been hypocritical or partial to Israel and the United States rather than truly even-handed; it is also that his policies have contributed directly and abundantly to the Arab-Israeli conflict and associated tensions in the Middle East that he is now going to try and resolve. Appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.

Rami G. Khouri, A peace envoy whom we can do without, The Daily Star (Lebanon)

Here’s a couple of podcasts on the 1967 Six Day-War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

Something I didn’t know or forgot is that there was a debate in the Israel cabinet about conquering the West Bank and the Gaza strip. It seems that at the stage of the Six Day-War (day three I think) when the cabinet decided to takes these territories from Jordan, they were no military reasons for doing so. Futhermore, some members of the cabinet were against such a move, understanding all the problems this move would cause to Israel. As we see today, you have to ask what the Six Day-War accomplished for Israel when they conquered the West Bank and Gaza.

On the other side, many in Egypt and Jordan saw the disaster coming, and the people that could have prevented the situation to degenerated where not listened too, or didn’t talk.

The Six-Day War, On Point (Windows Media, Real Audio)

Six Days that Changed the Middle East, BBC News, 4 parts (mp3-1, mp3-2, mp3-3, mp3-4)

It’s possible that Safari Beta 3 interferes with other applications. For one, the excellent French spell checker Antidotes RX. The second one is my trusty Launchbar. Here, Launchbar « looses » its index and take forever to rebuild it. The only solution so far that has been working for me is to use the Safari Beta 3 deinstaller.

This is a way cool podcast. Amit Singh, of kernelthread.com fame, manager of Macintosh Engineering at Google, author of MacFuse (which let you mount a remote directory via sshfs), talk about its last book, Mac OS X Internals. He debate about the misuse of Unix to characterize OS X, the way MacFuse use nfs locally to mount remote directory via sshfs and many other interesting topics. Amit Singh is very open-minded, far from OS sectarianism and provide an all around conversation on the basics of OS X.

Technometria: Mac OS X Internals, ITConversations.com (mp3)

If you install MacFuse, you should get MacFusion, which is a nice front end GUI for MacFuse. [via Infinite Loop]

Well, I have been contacted by one folk from Panic regarding my last post on Coda, asking me to download the last Coda release (1.0.1) (zip file) to check if the terminal bug I was talking about was fixed. The terminal bug is definitely fixed. I must say that the Coda terminal is also very nice. And, I’m totally impressed by the Panic folks.

* I’m not a customer of Panic.

* I didn’t write to Panic about this bug.

* I run an obscure blog.

* I said that Coda was not for me (well, I could buy a Coda « light »).

* But they contacted me to see whether their fix for the terminal was working.

So, in the end, Panic really digs the web and all that stuff about the « market as a conversation ».

On OS X, tuck this function in you .bashrc file to open from Terminal.app a repertory in Path Finder.

function pathfinder {
	open -a "Path Finder" $1
}

Then in terminal, to open the current directory do
% pathfinder .

You can open also a specified directory:
% pathfinder /Users/me/Desktop

Since Path Finder can call appropriate applications or open in itself different type of documents, you can also do the following:
% pathfinder ShellScripting.pdf

Well, like everybody, I’ve been impressed with the eye candy of Coda. Its nice to have everything bundled in one window. Unfortunately, for me, the bundle is not right because the text editor is not good as TextMate or BBEdit, and the CSS editor doesn’t look good as CCSEdit. And missing in action are bookmarks for the Web browser and bookmarks for the books included.

Also, the terminal have problem with my FreeBSD server. If I load my .bashrc config or launch vim, I get a garbled screen. And then, the only way to really quit the terminal, is to quit Coda, closing only the window seems not to work, because when I launch a new terminal, I get again the old window.

My mini reviews sound very negative, but in fact, Coda is very nice. I could use it as a sysadmin. I like very much the integration of a SFTP browser, a terminal window, a Web browser and a good editor. I can foresee a use to edit configurations files on the server, or do a quick modification on a web page. But I don’t see myself working all the day in Coda. I think Panic could do a « sysadmin » version, less expensive, with just the FTP/SFTP browser, the Web Browser, the text editor and the terminal, getting rid of the CSS editor and the included books on Javascript, CSS, HTML and PHP.

For a full fledged review, see Daring FireBall.

You must listen to this if you don’t know or never heard of the theremin, one of the strangest musical instrument in existence. It’s the only musical instrument that you don’t touch to play it.

Leon Theremin [Vincinnati / Flickr]

Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Passion: The Theremin (mp3)

An articulate and informed discussion on applying the word « apartheid » to the situation in Israel and Palestine. This review of President’s Carter last book by Joseph Lelyveld of the New York Reviews of Books shows the limitations and analogies that can help or impede the discourse when Israel is considered like an apartheid state. Although, I think that the comparison of Israel with South African apartheid is not an equivalence, it still contains underlying truths. Yet, this advice by Meron Benvenisti cited by the author nevertheless makes some sense for me.

Meron Benvenisti, who has been intrigued by the comparison to South Africa over the years, now calls for a rhetorical cease-fire. The use of the term « apartheid, » he wrote back in 2005, has become in Israel a « mark of leftist radicalism, » while its denial stands as proof of « Zionist patriotism. » Objective comparison or discussion of the validity of any comparison is « nearly impossible. » Anyone who goes into the question, Benvenisti wrote, « will be judged by his conclusions. » The choice, he said, is between being called an anti-Semite or a fascist. The occupation should be seen in its own harsh light, he concluded, rather than subjected to a comparison.

Joseph Lelyveld, Jimmy Carter and Apartheid, The New York Review of Books

It’s also worthwhile to listen to J.J. Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Forward on Zionism. Too much people equate zionism to racism or apartheid while this word cover many different realities and historical contexts.

J.J. Goldberg, But Is It Good for the Jews?, truthdig.com (mp3)