Backing up matters

Always remember to take the occasional look in your rearview mirror.

How the JournalSpace operator plans to recover: here. Or not.

Google Cache to the rescue — but only if…

this method only works for people who did not have their blogs/journals set to be viewable only by other JournalSpace members, or set to Friends &/or Favorites only, and for other entries that were not set to private. Also, if people configured their blogs so that the googlebot, or other bots were blocked, they may have limited success in resurrecting old entries from the cache

I was fortunate to learn hard lessons about backups decades ago while working on an aircraft project which shall remain unnamed. I’ve never forgotten since.

Oh, all right then, perhaps I have “forgotten” a time or two, but to no consequence.

So far.

So as not to leave anyone out…

The blight on Canada’s free speech known as the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) can’t make up its mind what it does best — prosecute, or defend — bigots. If you can get by the online Calgary Herald’s fractured English and punctuation (can’t anyone write or edit any more?), you might get an earful about a Montreal Imam named Abou Hammad Sulaiman al-Hayiti, who declares almost anyone to be unequal to Muslims.

Ho-hum.

As a test, a Montrealer decided to take the CHRC to task by filing a complaint against the Imam. Needless to say, the Commission declined to hear the case. No surprise there.

So rules the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

“the majority of the references in ‘Islam’ are to ‘infidels’, ‘miscreants’ or ‘western women’. These are general, broad and diversified categories that do not constitute an ‘identifiable group’…

As we have also mentioned, the extracts that identify groups on the basis of prohibited grounds of discrimination (homosexuals, lesbians, Christians, Jews) do not seem to promote ‘hatred’ or ‘contempt’ according to the criteria…”

Oh, really?

Fire. Them. All.

Here’s to 50 more for a blockaded Cuba

“If the United States does not continue to stand for the ideals of freedom and human rights and against the many guises of tyranny and oppression, who will?”  — United States Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, during his fatwa against Cuba, declaring that the U.S. should not ease sanctions

Now there’s a mouthful, considering the record of King George and the current administration’s eight long years. I could elaborate, but since the record stands for itself, why bother?

Will someone please wash that man’s mouth out with soap?

¡Viva la revolución!

Why does America continue it’s childish feud with an absolutely meaningless cork bobbing in the Gulf? Can’t get your way in your own hemisphere? Need to blame someone for your intransigence? Or, has it something to do with spoiled brats and voters in Cubida — err, Floriduh?

The WSJ demonizes Cuba for a movie review

the real marvel of the past 50 years in Cuba — the steady stream of heroic nonconformists who have risked all in their aspiration to think, speak and act freely — remains the untold epic of our time. — Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady

If the relentless bobbing of the Cuban cork within the confines of the Gulf of Mexico remains an untold epic, then I suppose the story of Cuba meets the definition, but I do wonder why the American press has such a preoccupation with countries that throw out murderous and crooked U.S. corporations and the American mob merely because they want to lead their own lives. Perhaps the voting block known as Cuban-Americans residing in Florida and the relentless ass-kissing that politicians feel they must give them has something to do with the silliness of it all. How many of those “freedom-loving Cubans” now ensconced in Florida will return once the great Castro Satan of the western hemisphere has been banished to the dustbin of history?

Not many, I’d say.

The romance of Cuba lies not in that it is Communist, but that during the ’50s it was a haven for the mob and the corporations who, in concert with the Batista government of the time, was milking the country for all of its worth. It lies with the people who threw them lock, stock and barrel out of the country. You won’t read much of that in mainstream American media reporting. After all, it was the all-American mob and corporations doing the damage who got tossed.

Che has been dead at the hands of the CIA since 1967, Cuba is an impoverished island courtesy of the United States and its meaningless embargo, and still the darlings of the American media must go on a rant and declare that to allow this cork to float is a pox upon the world — well, the world as the privileged American media sees it, anyway. Would that they for a minute would get over publishing the government line on anything and go and see for themselves the damage America has done to a country that merely occupies space in the Gulf.

But wait, they can’t! It’s against the law for an American to visit Cuba. Oh well, no matter. They can write all about it from Florida, or D.C., or wherever the money is coming from to pay for the media advertising budgets.

It’s not a wonder to me why the newspapers are bleeding subscribers at an alarming rate. Just read the article and see the government-inspired propaganda line for yourself. And yes, all that for a meaningless movie review.

See what I mean?

Link to article here.

Warming the cockles o’ my heart

If only it were this simple:

A South Philadelphia man enraged because a family was talking during a Christmas showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button decided to deal with the situation by shooting the father, police said. — philly.com, Barbara Boyer

Admit it, you’ve wanted to do that too, haven’t you?

Now perhaps at least one family will stay home when they want a nice fireside chat.

Here we go again

It’s all to protect the children, of course.

  • The internet is dangerous.
  • Let’s regulate it.
  • Rate web sites in the manner of motion pictures.
  • Come up with international rules for English-language web sites.
  • Have social sites — e.g. Facebook, Youtube — display “offensive” or “harmful” content only after the kiddies have gone to bed.

Good old mom and apple pie (or in this case, steak and kidney pie):

“The internet has been empowering and democratizing in many ways but we haven’t yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around.”

“There is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.” — British Culture Minister Andy Burnham

Link to article here.

This guy is a wet dream for the British scandal sheets. His Wikipedia entry contains some real boners, but don’t bother going to look. All you have to do is close you eyes and you can see it all for yourself, based on his internet incompetence, above.

Riding farther, seeing more