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.

Business Week has a very telling article on click fraud: the dark side of online advertising.

The article reveals how a parasitic underground has developed around internet advertising.

See also the click fraud slideshow and botnet slideshow.

ClickMonkey: a click fraud example

A chilling example is ClickMonkey, a company specializing in just clicking on ads. They claim they have 20,000 "monkeys" clicking on ads from an offshore ship. Each monkey has three computers, and the connection cycles through various ISPs.

Someone from India was searching Google on australian lotto lottery inc head office. Google made him land on this email scam winning a fake lottery page on my site. He then sent me the following query:

From: vivek <...@yahoo.co.in> To: meDate: Sep 23, 2006 1:43 AMSubject: BE: for my fuducial agent Rev. johnson james.i am unable to contact to Mr. johnson james.i has alredy send you to mailform ...@rediffmail.com .as soon as possible please send me anacknowledgement that you has been recived my mail or not. thanks

Kimveer Gill, a 25 year old Montreal man marched into Dawson College carrying three pieces of weapons, including a semi automatic carbine. He fired tens of shots. One student was killed. Two are still in critical condition, and many others wounded. Gill shot himself in the head after the police shot him in his arm.

Gill was wearning combat boots and a black trenchcoat. His online profile was on a Goth web site (vamiprefreaks.com).

Several interesting observations on the aftermath:

• Some blame the Goth culture,
• Some blamed the internet site he frequented.

Guilt by association, and seeking simplistic answers for complex issues.

• Some praised his actions online.
• Some blamed the police for killing him (ignoring that it was Gill who barged in and started shooting at people).
• Some say he died a good deed.
• Others belittle the "deed" for the low count of the victims, as well as not going out the way it should.

The interesting part is that there was no cause, and no motivation. Still some glorify the atrocity.

Interesting parallels with terrorism, and its aftermath ...