Here is an Egyptian man called Yehya (يحيى Arabic for John), although it is pronounced "Yaya".He was on Jimmy Kimmel Live on the 13th of September.He is a handyman by day, and celebrity stalker by night. He just wants to have his picture taken with famous celebrities. He has accumulated 1,600 such photos.His technique is typical Egyptian: he gives the celebrity a gift, which is a souvenir camel figure.His accent is typical Egyptian too. He says "biktshur" (picture), "Robert Williams" (Robin Williams), "Little Women" (Lethal Weapon), "Sixty Second" (Sixth Sense), "elephant" (dolphin).

Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery has a good article on the recent quotes by Pope Benedict. A good refutation of "spreading the faith by the sword" myth.

Two decades ago, Air India flight 182 was bombed over the Atlantic ocean.

The main suspects were militant Sikhs devoted to creating a homeland independant of India, and protesting the Indian army storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

Kalwant Mamak is a Sikh-Canadian who lost his 42 year old wife in the bombing. She was going to India to visit her sick father. He describes in some detail how his life was impacted: he could barely cook, his son did not hug his mother out of embarassement at the airport, and more.

Iran continued defiance of Western pressure and its assertiveness are not out of mere religious fervor. The BBC's John Simpson's article: Iran's growing regional influence explains the motives in nationalist and anti-Imperialist. Similarly, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah has a growing popularity in non-Shia countries, such as Egypt, because of his militia's being able to hold off Israel in the recent war in Lebanon.This led to humorous things, such as the most expensive variety of dried dates being dubbed Nasrallah by fruit sellers in Cairo. The worst kinds are dubbed Olmert and Bush.

In an article titled the digg effect analyed, an owner of a Drupal site on shared hosting explains what happened when he had a poll up on Digg's front page. Amazingly, without caching or throttling, the site kept going with no problems.A list of modules active on the site are mentioned, including the adsense module, and a few others.

James Travers writes in the Toronto Star on how Bush, Blair and Harper push dubious claims that our freedoms are what fuels anger that can end in terrorism.

Sheema Khan wrote an article in the Globe and Mail about how foreign policy and domestic resentment (culminating in "homegrown" terrorism) are intimately tied. This applies equally to Canada, UK or the USA.

Some time back I wrote on why invading foreign countries creates chaos, and fuels terrorism.

Every day, there is growing evidence that this is more true than before ...

Iraq

On the Iraq front, there is a very real risk of civil war emerging from the sectarian strife that is going on there. The chaos created there have caused the country to become a haven for terrorist groups and figures (like Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi). More importantly, invading Iraq hasa caused terrorism to become a cause that many flock to.

The UN Secretary General, now nearing the end of his term, says that the Iraq war is a disaster for the Middle East, and warns of a full scale civil war there.

A humorous self-critical look at an Egyptian:

A nice list of programming quotes with some that are thoughtful, some amusing, some interesting and some just plain fun.