Today the US death toll in Iraq reached 4000. The death toll on the Iraqi side is a matter of dispute it goes from 85,000 to 600,000. Being a pacifist myself it´s been hard to me to understand why do so many people willingly go to war. This morning I was doing some research on the subject and came up with some unusual reasons for dying at war. On the US side it turns out that many of those who are counted as US death toll are not really US citizens…until they die. How post mortem citizenship can make somebody from Guatemala die fighting for the US in Iraq escapes me. Most likely the unfortunate soldier was trying to obtain both, US citizenship and a lifetime to enjoy it after the war and sadly just got the former. But the citizen reward pales in comparison to the reward offered in the other side, that one of the Virgins waiting for you in heaven.

In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness.”

Considering the enormous amount of violent deaths that are occuring in the Middle East there must be an endless supply of virgins in heaven.

The first casualty of war is common sense.

Here´s an idea I had today that I don´t think exists (can we still have an original idea?). In any case here it goes, I call it the photostory. And no it´s not like Twitxr, nor like Flickr, nor like Seesmic, nor like Youtube, it is close, but not that. What I would like to see digital cameras and phones to have is the ability of allowing me to do a photostory. How would that work? Well a photostory would combine a voice recording with a person taking pictures. The idea is that somebody would walk around say, Tokyo, telling a story of what he is seeing, his reactions and documenting the story with pictures. Why would you want a photostory and not a video? Because as flickr and youtube show a pictures is a picture and a video is a video (although Sevenload is the only smart side I know that collects both from your SD card). And with a photostory you can have people focus more on your story and quality pictures and not in the poor quality video that we so frequently see on the internet.

I live in Spain. I am Jewish. I am sometimes in favor of the international policy of the government of Israel but during the governments of Ariel Sharon and Olmert I have been mostly against these policies. For example I was against what I considered a disproportionate retaliation to the Hizbollah attack. As a result of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon I created a spontaneous vehicle to donate to the Lebanese who were victims of this invasion called Jews For Lebanon. And my personal opinion is that again the Israeli government over reacted to the attacks of Hamas last week and killed many innocent civilians in Gaza including children. Now that is my opinion. But the problem with El Pais, Spain´s leading newspaper and Jose Maria Ridao in particular the journalist who writes the article, is that in order to disagree with the policies of the government of Israel they simply lie. The one page article in El Pais written by Jose Maria Ridao says that the Israeli government declared (and this is clearly false) that should Israeli civilians continued to be bombed from Gaza the Israeli government would undertake a “holocaust of the Palestinian people”. Yes, in those words, a holocaust as if this is something that the Israeli government could possibly say. And moreover in order to illustrate this anti Israeli article, Nazi imagery is used that includes in big letters and in an illustration that occupies a quarter page the horrendous Nazi phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” (image is not in the online edition). But as you can guess these images do not mean to remind us of the 6 million Jews and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust but instead to show us how committed the Israeli government seems to be to its own holocaust. As I said I live in Spain. And I am by now a Spanish citizen. And there are many, many things I love about Spain. But it is hard and sad for me to see that the majority of the Spanish people, and I mean what I say, probably believes the article. Indeed El Pais contains a voting platform and other than my vote all other votes were extremely positive.

Addition after reading comments:

Even though an Israeli official evidently made those comments that I was not aware of and then the Israeli government immediately clarified that it did not mean that it was its plan to commit a holocaust on the Palestinian people I still think that my general comment about El Pais stands. The question really is this. We all know what the holocaust was, it was the systematic killing in gas chambers of the vast majority of European Jews plus other minorities including gypsies. So the key issue here is. Does El Pais really believe that that is the plan of the State of Israel, to systematically kill every Palestinian person in a way that is similar to Hitler´s final solution? I don´t think so.

Today I had a meeting at a very large Japanese company. Part of the meeting took place in Japanese so I had a chance to observe the faces of the people who I was meeting with more detail as I could not understand what they said. In so doing I could notice tremendous signs of fatigue. And this was not only true of this meeting but of many meetings that I attended. Especially with executives of large companies. Doing some more research on this I learned about the famous last trains of Tokyo, which run around 1130 and how packed they are. This means that many people stay at the office from 9am to 11pm. And then they commute for over an hour on the average. Now what I can´t understand is how come in Europe we work so much less and yet enjoy a similar standard of living.

These monuments are built in honor of dead babies in Japan

Because the city combines an ancient body with a new skin.

Because in Tokyo fashion comes in many styles at once.

Because they make the biggest type of buildings small.

Because foreign foods taste local.

Because toilets pamper you.

Because everyone is so polite and makes you feel safe.

Because the few children there are, are little princes and princesses.

Because the map of Tokyo must have been drawn by a drunk emperor thousands of years ago.

Because when people don´t understand you…they still try.

Because taxi drivers open the door for you…from their seats.

Because over here you don´t have to look like a geek to love technology.

Because Tokyo is a collection of little villages that blend into a city.

Because the best food they have, miso ramen, is food everyone can afford.

Because your bath tub is expected to overflow.

Because people care that you don´t get sick if they are.

Because the Japanese are as curious about you are you are about them.

Because as strict as they are with rules they still opened Cafe Salvatore in Roppongi tonight because they saw how much we wanted their chocolate cake!

In the era of Google it is surprising to see a lot of human contextual advertising in Japan.