There's always a certain fascination watching tyrannies coming unstuck, and the convulsions of the Iranian regime are more colorful than most.,

You'd expect this from such a rich and ancient culture, and from such clever and imaginative people who specialize in illusion.  Last week (7/24) all these qualities were on display in Tehran, at a central mosque where Hashemi Rafsanjani was preaching to the faithful. 

There were masses of people in and around the mosque, and at a certain point in a scene that would have delighted Fellini, the two sides faced off in a chanting contest.  The pro-regime crowd shouted "Death to America!"  The much larger pro-democracy crowd responded, "Death to Russia!" 

Then came from the pro-regimers: "Death to Britain, Death to Israel!"  And the reply:  "Death to China!"

Which pretty much sums up the contemporary strategic landscape, enacted in a Persian morality play in front of a mosque in Tehran.  Plus this: The stench of panic is now widespread in Iran. 

637 million IE Browsers at risk

Researchers claim there are 637 million Internet Explorer users at risk, because they are less likely to update their browser for security updates, than Firefox, Safari and Opera users. If this is you, please protect yourself and update now.

Independence Day

Happy July 4^th to all Americans, we have so much to be proud of!

People know your Bill of Rights

You live in the land of the free, please know your rights!

Syllabus of SCOTUS in District of Columbia ET AL. V. HELLER

No. 07-290.  Argued March 18, 2008-Decides June 26, 2008.

America The Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates first wrote this song in 1913. We've all sung the first stanza many times - but there are seven more.  For all the stanzas and a history about her, click on the link above.

Warren Buffett can feel confident about sinking his $4 billion into Israel - at least from an electronic-security point of view.

I can say with utmost certainty that the country's most sensitive secrets are safely stowed away on secure servers, inaccessible to the public.

Try as I might, I couldn't find any Word documents marked "top secret" regarding Israel's plans regarding Iran on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site; no PowerPoint presentations on Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program on the Ministry of Defense site; no PDFs on future political plans on the main government site - nothing, nada, not a thing! 

Even using the special advanced "Google hacking" techniques I learned from Johnny, I couldn't get an untoward, scandalous or headline-making fact on any of the burning issues of the day.

One less thing for Warren Buffett to worry about.

It’s a common debating trick to focus on one perceived error in your opponent’s argument, ignore all the other points, and pretend that if you can refute that one point every other point and therefore the entire argument is refuted.

Thus I have gotten a lot of flack over my noting, in The Hiroshimic Imposture , that so-called Soviet suitcase nukes built in 1988 could not be set off with a cell phone as claimed because there were no cell phones back then.

As Joe Farah kidded me in a Front Page interview, “The cell phone is 30 years old. I had a cell phone in 1988. Jack’s memory is a little faulty here.”

I’m sure Joe is right - about his having a cell phone the size of a brick back then. The only guy I saw with one in those days was Ollie North. So yes, there were American cell phones. But Soviet cell phones? Nope, no such thing. The first cellular systems were introduced into Russia in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, using the analog NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) protocol.

Seven days to go to the Iranian "elections" on June 12.  Of course Iran doesn't have elections, as we understand the term.  It has circuses. 

Most people don't bother to vote, since they think - with good reason - that the outcome simply reflects the wishes of the only voter whose opinion matters:  Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 

But even so, the "campaign" is quite lively, and some very unusual things are happening.  Can we read the entrails of the latest dead chicken?  Let's give it a try.

Apple announced Monday June 9^th at the World Wide Developer Conference that  the new iPhone would be released for sale on July11th, 2008. While the original iPhone release was slick and had a great touch interface, it missed the business niche market. The new device should fill those missing elements nicely. Here is why.

The new phone has GPS, which is a big plus for the business traveler. It also will provide metadata to an image captured with its built-in camera to provide your exact location where the image was taken.

Lets talk 3G. The iPhone with 2.0 software will cruise nicely on 3G networks which the rest of the world has been doing for a while. AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the US has bumped up their networks to 3G levels in all major markets. The effect of this is downloading files, watching UTube videos, and email attachments will now be quicker.