You all obviously don't remember that old post about the Jewish Reconnection Project.
So to remind you - this is a place for a lively dialog between youngsters of New York and Jerusalem. You can find more about it here. And this project is alive and kicking.
And if there are bloggers between you (happens, you know, although bloggers do not read other people's blogs normally), you can give this project a hand too. No sweat, I can assure you.
If you are still interested to know who is cooking on another planet, who's a few tacos short of an enchilada, who... OK, you get the drift, so go there:
Being happy about the ignominious demise of the UCU boycott "enterprise", we cannot fail to notice that some people and organizations are trying to jump on the bandwagon to get some of the glory. To quote (in translation) that article in NRG-Maariv:
The decision to rescind the boycott is a result of the effort by Jewish organizations and academicians and the Israeli embassy in London.... The Israeli Ambassador, Zvi Heifetz, expressed his satisfaction by this decision, after working a lot during the recent months to defeat this threat. He met with Sally Hunt, the UCU president, heads of universities in England, Scotland and even [sic!] in Northern Ireland to recruit their support.And more of the same. With all due respect to the unnamed Jewish organizations, academicians and the (named) Israeli embassy, who indeed invested some effort into the fight, all that effort and all that fight would have been in vain but for the Engage team, lead by David Hirsh, Jon Pike and Jane Ashworth (and so many others I commit a crime by not mentioning).
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, aka Ahmydinnerjacket, said yesterday...
What, are you out of your tiny minds? Who cares what this monkey said? This is not a scoop, besides. He spews the same old crap for years.
This could be a scoop, though:An orangutan who objected to having its photograph taken by a French tourist snatched her backpack before ripping off her trousers.
But before you get your hopes too high, here is a letdown:The woman, known only as Odile, was taking photographs of a female orangutan named Delima in a Malaysian wildlife centre when the ape took offence.
So, calm down and straighten your knickers.
This li'l darling is not a monkey, though, she's an ape and higher on the evolution ladder.
Scratches better, too.
So no scoops, then... A quiet century all around...
The first one of note happened in Bnei Brak (where else when Jerusalemites are asleep?):A 14-month-old baby from Bnei Brak was lightly injured Thursday when he fell from a third floor apartment window onto a sukkah, Yedioth Ahronoth reported. The sukkah that broke the baby's fall was located in the building's courtyard and was empty at the time of the incident. At around 5 pm the baby's parents heard screaming and rushed downstairs after realizing that their infant son was not in the apartment.
Frontier justice would demand that both parents be thrown out (er... can I say defenestrated?) from the same window. But, seeing as there is a limited supply of miracles, let them be...
Another miracle, in quite another area of human endeavor, happened in London:The campaign for an academic boycott of Israel has ended today in an absolute and final political, legal and moral defeat. The University and College Union’s (UCU) own lawyers advised it that a policy to exclude academics who work in Israel from the global academic community – and to exclude nobody else on the planet - would have been a violation of equal opportunities legislation in Britain.
Of course, the Elders would vastly prefer the story to end with a bang rather than with a whimper. Meaning that the boycott idea should have been put to the direct ballot by the UCU members, where it would have painfully expired, instead of being put asleep by a gentle injection of legal poisons. But you cannot have it all, it appears.
And regarding this concern of David Hirsch:
Some boycotters will persist even after their boycott has been widely recognized, morally, legally and politically, as a counterproductive and racist proposal.No worries. Let's have the list, and our trained mind control teams will get on their case, one by one. After that they shall all look and talk like this one:
The theme for this week PhotoHunt is "Original", whatever it means. I don't know whether a lonely orange in a dying tree with slanted sun rays just before sundown is original, but it is all mine...
Aussie Dave reported on the birth of his 4.17 kg baby daughter. For some reason the post looks kind of subdued - is it due to the baby's gender or does he just reflect on his really minuscule part in the whole production? Whatever, congratulations to Dave and the mom!
***
The shocked party is not pointed out by the BBC article, but here is the shocker:
The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately. Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".I was mulling on what would constitute the Archbishop's worst nightmare, and I think I have found it:
Mikey has written a nice introduction that will allow you to start getting educated on the intellectual shenanigans of Noam Chomsky, the Mastermind of the last century or whatever title these highbrow characters bestow one upon another from time to time.
If you are interested in studying the subject, this is an excellent place to start.
Both Haaretz and JP are indignant about the generally negative reaction of British football fans and commentators to the appointment of Avram Grant as new Chelsea manager.Israeli soccer fans and their British counterparts were equally amazed by Avraham Grant's appointment to coach Chelsea.
Me too, me too, and I am neither an Israeli soccer fan nor a British "counterpart"...
Sport is not under my personal supervision as part of my Elder's duties, but I know for a fact that the Elders have never even considered this act of cruelty on poor British fans. There are some limits, you know. So, what are Israeli newspapers foaming about is a mystery to me. Take this fairly subdued response:And former Conservative government minister, the outspoken Chelsea fan David Mellor, spewed that the appointment was "laughable, risible, completely and utterly stupid."
So, what is the big deal? Why has the Haaretz hack decided to dig into Mellor's past?
It may merit mentioning that Mellor had to leave his governmental post after barely surviving two public scandals. One involved adultery: The minister was said to have had extramarital sex with a television actress, whom he reportedly instructed to wear a Chelsea t-shirt while engaging in intercourse with him.If Haaretz decided to leave you under impression that Mellor is not qualified, I am sure you can see through this attempt: the fact that Mellor insisted on his partner wearing that t-shirt is proof of his deep understanding of the game.
For brevity and completeness this post beats everything I have ever posted and will post.
Alerting the UFOlogists crew to this story:
"We thought the Chileans were attacking," Junquilla, 53, recalled Thursday, referring to Peru's historic rival, Chile. "That's what everyone was saying. It was very loud."
Townsfolk in this desolate, high-plains hamlet not far from Lake Titicaca and the Bolivian border received the shock of their lives — a meteorite that struck with a thunderous bang just before noon Saturday, leaving a deep crater, an acrid smell and terrified villagers and livestock.
The incident took on a magical-realism feel out of a Gabriel García Márquez tale as residents reported strange illnesses and revolting odors, while repeating rumors of a military attack, radiation or a celestial rain of gold.Oh well, no one promised that the E.T.s will smell good. Just think how we may smell to them...
The pungent odor, experts say, could have been caused when the crashing object fused with such elements as sulphur found in the earth.Should be checked more closely, but there could be a problem in the near future for the boffins:
"Now that various experts from Japan and other countries have assured us there is nothing bad, we have decided this belongs to us," said Benito Mosaja Pari, 56, who called himself the village lieutenant governor. "We're going to dig it out. The scientists tell us this was part of a world that fell apart. It has some value. And now it's ours."Them local folks surely do know where their interests are...
I don't know much about the author of the article (there is some info on him at the bottom), but one thing is clear: he will never be a successful poker player. He carries his heart on his sleeve, and I cannot say I like what I see on his sleeve.Such vicious, unbounded personal attacks on Iran's president recall earlier manifestations of US jingoism perpetrated against, among others, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and, during the Cold War, various Soviet and Eastern European leaders.
Who could have thought, indeed, of placing Mahmoud the Mad in the company of Fidel, Hugo, Nikita Khrushchev and others? What could all these luminaries have in common? For crying out loud...
The search string "ojsimpson jew" that came by our blog recently overwhelmed me. I am kinda used to "Ben Bernanke Jew", "Litvinenko Jew" and many other, outlandish or not, queries. This one had me doing that ROTFLMAO shtick.
But, you know, the crazier the idea sounds the more merit it has. So I have carried out an experiment* that even a first year criminology student will not miss, and here it comes:
Yep. It is all clear now...
(*) Apologies to the connoisseurs of Photoshop, I am hopeless in this area.
The list of bloggers joining the protest against the creepo is steadily growing. Here is the latest updated list (from Chicken Yougurt):
Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North, B3TA board, Naqniq, Yorkshire Ranter, The Home Of Football, UFO Breakfast Recipients, Moninski , Kerching, e-clectig, Mediocracy, Sicily Scene, Samizdata, I blog, they blog, weblog, Colcam, Some Random Thoughts, Bel is thinking, Vino S, Simply Jews, Atlantic Free Press, Registan, Filasteen, Britblog Roundup #136, Scientific Misconduct Blog, Adam Bowie, Duncan at Abcol, Camera Anguish, A Very British Dude, Whatever, Central News, Green Gathering, Leighton Cooke (224), , Skuds’ Sister’s Brother, Contrast News, Poliblog Perspective, Parish Pump, El Gales, Noodle, Curly’s Corner Shop, Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft, otromundoesposible, Richard Stacy, Looking For A Voice, News Dissector, Kateshomeblog, Writes Like She Talks, Extra! Extra!, Committee To Protect Bloggers, Liberty’s Requiem, American Samizdat, The Thunder Dragon, Cybersoc, Achievable Life, Paperholic, Creative-i, Raedwald, Nobody’s Friend, Lobster Blogster, Panchromatica (251), Back off, man…, Dan Hardie, Krusenstern, Brendadada, Freace, Boriswatch, Fork Handles, Chris Applegate, Christopher Glamorgan, West Virginia Rebel’s Blog, Instapundit, Powerpymes, iDiligence Forum, Gizmotastic, Demos, Gary Andrews, Neweurasia , Never Trust a Hippy, sub specie aeternitatis, Bananas in the Falklands, The Sharpener, Virtual Light, Stu News, Scraps of Moscow, Danivon, As A Dodo, La Russophobe, PJC Journal, Mick Fealty’s Brassneck, dead brains don’t dance, A Comfortable Place, Bamblog, Robert Amsterdam, The Customer, No Longer at Ease, Rachel-Catherine, Humaniform, Mike Rouse, Chesus Yuste, anticapitalista, Aderyn Cân, Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog (294).
It is not a matter of your political worldview, so go ahead and add your voice to the cause.
Sometimes a person does not have a choice but to resort to a banal and overused format. This case cannot be described otherwise without wasting lots of I-space, so:
Being born in Munchen, Germany.......NIS 0.00 (this is a free world)
Moving to Israel when a toddler..........NIS 0.00 (parents and Israel paid)
Converting to Islam...............................NIS 0.00 (sponsored)
Converting to Islam while being gay...NIS 0.00 (questionable)
Moving to Jordan...................................NIS 0.00 - 2,000.00 (estimated)
Visiting Beirut for Lebanese lovers......USD 2,000.00 (estimate per visit)
Visiting Beirut with Israeli passport....USD 0.00 (but stupid)
Becoming a suspect Mossad agent.......USD 0.00
Getting lots of free love in a Lebanese nick..... Priceless!
"Alisher Usmanov? WTF (Who That Fellow is)?", you may ask, and it is your inalienable right. I was asking the same question too until today, to be precise, I wasn't asking any such question since I knew fuck all about the subject.
Now I know more than I care, I am afraid, all thanks to Jams, one of my favorite bloggers. I also have seen the mugshot:
No, of course, the exterior of the person does not have anything to do with his/her character. Some of my best friends are of portly persuasion, myself inc... oh well, let's keep it for another post.
Anyway, this creep and his brave shysters are going all guns blazing (or, rather, all sleaze-bags open) for a few bloggers, and this by itself is enough to dislike him even if he looked like an angel. Which he is definitely not.
Anyway, the unbearable ease of legal actions against bloggers is definitely pissing me off.
That's an easy job to coin a new term based on Fisk and his body of work. How would you call that obsession of this luminary with Israel? If you count his articles in Indy, the percentage of the ones mentioning Israel (of course, in a negative way) will be not very far from 99.
In his latest opus on the murder of Antoine Ghanem (so far he did not blame Israel for this one), his obsession was expressed so transparently:
Lebanon is not a democracy in our Western sense of the word. Nor, for that matter, is Israel.After I have encountered Fisk, that term "chosen people" got a completely new meaning for me.
Maybe. Maybe not. The Peanut President, however, is definitely a threat.
I was first attracted to this article by a strange juxtaposition of the Alan Greenspan's picture with the article headline on the Yahoo News:
Eventually it appeared that there is a link: the caption to the picture says that "Greenspan sharply criticized Latin American populist politics of the kind practiced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in his memoirs out Monday". Which was not of an immediate interest to me, but browsing the article itself I have stumbled on the interesting fact. It relates to the college-level syllabus that is being renewed under the watchful eye of the Comical Hugo:The syllabus also includes quotations from Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose leftist guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, the U.S. and European Union.
Hmm... Manuel Marulanda, the leader of the nefarious FARC, the de facto drug overlords of Columbia, is declared an official thinker in Venezuela, on par with Karl Marx. Interesting, to say the least.Venezuelan officials defend the program at the Latin American Medical School — one in a handful of state-run colleges and universities that emphasize socialist ideology — as the new direction of Venezuelan higher education.
Of course, the new "socialist" direction Venezuela is taking explains the necessity of filling the future doctors' brains by Das Kapital, no arguing with this. Probably Marulanda's relevance to the medical school somehow stems from the wondrous health effects of the white powder he is instrumental in pushing?
Guess which of the two (admittedly colorful) birds in the picture is DUI?
Spiritof1976 produced a brilliant description of The Guardian brainchild CiF. All you ever need to know about it. Enjoy.
From the CNN report:
City officials in New York have denied Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's request to visit the site of the destroyed World Trade Center next week, a police spokesman said Wednesday.And the reason for this decision:
But workers are rebuilding the foundations of the site, "and it would not be possible for him to go where other people don't go," Kelly told CNN.Mahmoud the Mad, foundation, lots of cement... Is the ancient art of making selected and thoroughly deserving VIPs closely involved in the building foundation lost in US of A?
The eighth anti-Syrian politician assassinated in Beirut. This murder (of course, having nothing to do with Baby Assad, who denounced the assassination) reduces the parliamentary lead of the Lebanese anti-Syrian coalition to 9. Still some work for the unnamed busybodies, but the goal is close.
I wonder how soon Mossad will be blamed for this one...
Bibi proves again that every minute he spends while not seated in the PM's armchair is a minute dedicated to his election campaign. And that it does not matter to him where and how he gathers brownie points.In the first confirmation that Israel operated over Syria two weeks ago, opposition leader and former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he congratulated Prime Minister Ehud Olmert following the alleged airstrike of a nuclear installation in northern Syria on September 6.
Which was an appetizer for the main course:Speaking during a live interview on Channel 1 news, Netanyahu said that he was "part of the matter from the beginning" and that he knew to separate matters of national security from politics.
Of course, knowing to separate himself from the failures and share the glory of successes is a mandatory skill of a politico. However, this time (and it is not the first) Bibi went a bit too far in his zeal to promote Bibi.
This quote from Eitan CabelI have no idea if this is stupidity, foolishness, an attempt to jump on the bandwagon…to steal credit, or whatever else.
suffers from unnecessary nitpicking. All of them, Mr Cabel, all of them, including the whatever else...
become a cheap techno-thriller writer (no names, please), this is precisely the way I would do it:
It was just after midnight when the 69th* Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.I would also change the pen name from Uzi Mahnaimi to something with more zing to it. For example... no, no names.
At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.
Meanwhile, the birth of Hizbullah's hidden republic is upon us. What Rice erroneously saw as a the birth pangs of the new Middle East last summer, may turn out to be the birth pangs of the Islamic republic in Lebanon or parts of Lebanon. It's funny how people in the region often do exactly what they accuse foreign conspirators of trying to do. In the case of Lebanon, Hizbullah and their leftist sympathizers have made permanent slogans out of alleged foreign plots to partition the region into sectarian cantons to "suit Israel". In reality, however, we see them planning (some unwittingly) similar partitions should their political opponents dare go by the constitution to legally elect a president.Read the rest of this perceptive article here.
A senior source in the Labor party told Ynet Sunday that "with no elections expected before the end of 2008, Labor is stuck in the government."
My heart goes out to the poor slaves. I think not.
From this post by JudeoPundit:
But the flood-victims directed attention to protecting the portraits of President Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il than their families.What is it you would like to do now? Tear apart that malodorous little parody of a human being, this sack of excrement called Kim Jong Il? Drag him behind a horse through the streets and roads of North Korea? Subject him to tortures so far unseen in the history of this globe?
Among such people are peasant of the Jongdong Co-op Farm in Phyonggang County Cha Hyang Mi who handed over portraits to rescuers and went to the bottom of the torrent water, peasant of the same farm Pak Jong Ryol who lost his wife and child by landslide but saved the portraits and worker of the Ichon Foodstuff Factory Kang Hyong Gwon who firmly took portraits in his hands in flood though his five-year-old daughter slipped down from his back.
And you could have reached this conclusion by yourself, but wouldn't - exactly like I, who received it from an anonymous friend:
Bon appetit!According to the Jewish Calendar, the year will be 5768.
According to the Chinese calendar, the year will be 4705.
That means that for 1,063 years the Jews went without Chinese Food.
Those were known as the Dark Ages.
Another day, another article by the inimitable Fisk.
Lying on his back in Colosseum and watching the stars, the darling of the lost generation has produced the usual jumble of commonplace utterances, as usual sold to the same captive audience as a revelation worthy of unquestionable consumption.
The tendency of recent Fisk's stuff to take a more generic, high level world view is clear in this opus as well. He is even dispensing criticism fairly indiscriminately, not passing over his usual heroes (Palestinians, Bin Laden, etc. - only Hezbollah is not mentioned for some reason). The general thrust is to do one over Jesus, denouncing violence in any form, which even Jesus stopped short of. Violence is bad and should be abolished, says Fisk, telling us in no uncertain terms about his personal take on the barbarian execution of three human beings:I was so appalled that I could not write in my notebook and instead drew pictures of this obscenity.
My calcified brain has no other way to deal with the above quote but to come up with a post I have written long ago, quoting Shakespeare:
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,Yes, some people are obviously more sensitive than the others... Be it as it may, this is not the only message of the article. Cause the main message is here, in plain view:
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
He was perfumed like a milliner;
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took't away again;
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk'd,
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
Yet I fear the real problem goes beyond the individual act of killing, judicial or otherwise. In a weird, frightening way, we believe in violent death. We regard it as a policy option, as much to do with self-preservation on a national scale as punishment for named and individual wrongdoers. We believe in war.So wars are at the root of all evil, as our thinker has established. Not bad for a lay-in at the Colosseum. And, of course, an example of such evil is easy to find, even in supine position:
For what is aggression – the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example – except capital punishment on a mass scale?Go tell this pathetic excuse for a human being and a journalist about wars fought and people dying to prevent or, at least, to stop evil from spreading. Go ask him what alternative, aside of impotent and blind anti-war preaching, he has to offer. But don't expect any answers. Expect the usual drivel on moral equivalence between the forces of darkness and anyone who, successfully or not, tries to battle them. Expect more tripe like this:
The leading antagonists in the preposterous "war on terror" which we are all supposed to be fighting – Messrs Bush and bin Laden – are always talking about death and sacrifice...And be afraid, because this message has many a follower. It is an easy sell, because after all the only thing it requires you to do is absolutely nothing. Just close your eyes, stick your head in the sand and wait patiently...
"I was just collecting material for my new book", the former football star said.
According to his publishers, the book, "If I did it too"* is going to cover O.J.'s expenses for the upcoming trial related to the (hypothetical) robbery described in it.
(*) The title is tentative, since O.J.'s lawyers' positions are split between "too" and "2".
As if it were not foggy enough, now we have Peter Beaumont of the Observer jumping into the fray with a new version of the event.
First of all, he came up with a name for this sortie: Operation Orchard. Now, of course, the relevance of the whole story he concocted is that much higher, due to this morsel of inside info. Then, in a generous display of his ability to reach deep into the IAF secret vaults, he says:
It was a secrecy so tight, in fact, that even as the Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits of their planes they were not told the nature of the target they were being ordered to attack.Gee... I wonder, have the pilots realized by now where they have been taken? No worries, they could wait for the next issue of The Observer.
So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran's nuclear sites in mind.To make it irresistible, he adds something that the previous authors have neglected:
It [the nuclear angle version] also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy concerns:...This one is definitely a clincher, and the artful (?) insertion of the neocons is a winner. At least with the right kind of reader. And to increase the impact of this penetrating analysis, Beaumont finishes the piece in a deafening crescendo:
In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder. In a world of proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of military action against Iran has far from disappeared from the agenda.I hope, dear readers, you are sufficiently scared by now. Just hold on to your seats...
Frequently we (the Elders) encounter messages from "a concerned citizen". Usually we do not bother with anything signed by anyone less than a head of state, and even then we are quite choosy. But from time to time we stumble upon a message of such refreshing naivety that we just cannot remain indifferent. Besides, we are allowed to show concern at our spare time, which is right now in the midst of the High Holiday.
So, Larry, a very concerned U.S. citizen, writes to all who may be concerned:
I fear the majority of good people in the Middle East do not realize how much the U.S. is controlled by Israel and her henchmen in Washington, D.C. All one need do is study the influence wielded by the neocons and their cohorts in our State Dept. to see how far down the road Israel has led the U.S. since the end of WWII.And more. So, in order to spare Larry the anguish and the wear and tear of his stomach lining and his esophagus (whatever it means, but ain't it a nice word?), we have prepared a special, individual and very open letter:
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the mysterious (some say fictitious) leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq issued a contract fatwa on the heads of two new enemies of Islam for an amount that is really insulting to the pair:
The al-Qaeda leader upped the reward for Vilks' death to $150,000 if he was "slaughtered like a lamb" and offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Vilks' cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body on August 19th.Come on, people. Your boss sits on a few hundred million dollars and you are offering such a pittance for the job?
This story illustrates the usual backwardness and futility of government's (any government) PR activity.
Officials in the Russian province of Ulyanovsk urged residents on Wednesday to take the day off work and make patriotic love, with prizes for producing a child on the country's national day nine months hence.Sergei Morozov, governor of this province 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of Moscow, dreamt up the idea as a way of helping to pull Russia out of its demographic crisis.The Ulyanovsk folks have gone for the PR in a half-hearted way. Done professionally, such a special day could have brought volunteers galore from all over the world. But leaving the volunteers aside, even the citizens of Ulyanovsk were not persuaded:
But some residents were sceptical, including 16-year-old Dmitry Fyodorov. "When one teacher started talking to us about sex this morning I asked her what there was left for us to learn," he told AFP. Nineteen-year-old student Nadezhda Teryokhina objected that "the governor can't push us to make love when he wants. It's up to free people to choose."Notice the issue of free choice, which doesn't leave me a choice but to tell you the real story behind the extinction of the dinosaurs. The mass media feeds you from time to time by new versions of the "real" reason for that calamity, each new one being even more far-fetched than the last. So here goes (are you listening, Matt?) - the recording of the fateful dialog between the male dino (M) and his spouse (S).
M[hopefully]: So dear, what do you say?And so they have become extinct, and if there isn't a mighty powerful lesson for the residents of Ulyanovsk, I really cannot be of any assistance then.
S: Go away...
M[nuzzling]: But dear...
S[pushing]:...
M[agitated]: But darling, we'll be doomed to extinction if you persist!
S[shrugs]:...
I don't follow the Guinness book of records, but this one is promising:
A citizen of Moscow is suing one of the capital's breweries for 50 million rubles [about $2.5M] after discovering a condom in a sealed bottle of beer.
According to the lawyer Stalina* Gurevich, representing the interests of the plaintiff, in August 2006 Mr Pavlov bought a case of beer in the store. In one of the bottles he has discovered a condom and its packaging**. According to the lawyer, in the opinion of experts who conducted the case analysis, "the foreign objects got into the beer bottle at the company." "The customer has sustained a severe mental injury and cannot consume any factory-produced drinks(***) for fear that they may contain foreign objects and poison. He asked for help from a psychologist and now undergoes a course of psychotherapy, "said Gurevich.(*) A female derivative from Stalin
I always knew (felt, intuited, whatever) that we, the males of the species, are being judged quite harshly by the better gender. And, knowing my place in the general picture, I have always accepted the judgment and the consequences. This time, however (this is about neocons):Does it have something to do with a midlife panic over masculinity and mortality? These are, after all, men of a certain age, and they did seem to find Bush's shock and awe disproportionately exciting.
The author in this case (one Decca Aitkenhead) is, probably due to her youth and innocence, coming to a rush conclusion. From the (low) point of my advanced age, Decca, I can tell you for free that being forced to choose between sex, "shock and awe" and a good dinner (drinks included, please) I shall invariably and immediately go for the third (left to right, mind you) option. So would most people of my generation, with the minority preferring the first one.
I suggest to look for another reason. And it is not ecstasy, rest assured.
P.S. Being a sexist pig (residual) , I strongly advise to look Decca Aitkenhead up in Google Images. Yep.
to George S.
That mysterious sortie into the Syrian territory, ascribed to IAF, continues to bother the news agencies. Today, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Ynet in concert with CNN published a new version of the story, with Debka presenting a separate opinion.
What CNN say, with the other three closely following, is:
Israeli aircraft carried out an airstrike inside Syria last week, possibly targeting weapons that were destined for Hezbollah militants, according to sources in the region and in the United States.What was presented as an incursion at first, slowly but surely becomes a strike.
The Israeli government is very happy with the success of the operation, the sources said.Which is strange, since the weaponry seem to flow to Lebanon from Iran via Syria on a daily basis, as everyone agrees.
Sources told CNN reporter Christiana Amanpour that weapons have been transferred in this way for the past three or four years uninterruptedly.What was so special about this specific shipment that warranted a special operation and all that happiness? Sounds fishy. Then, CNN adds another titillating detail (with Israeli papers repeating it, keeping the censorship in mind, obviously):
But the sources told CNN the military operation, which happened Wednesday into Thursday, may have also involved Israeli ground forces who directed the airstrike which "left a big hole in the desert" in Syria.Hole- shmole, but this ground forces story seems too improbable, at least for what could be called peace time. JP, sticking its head out a bit (where the censor is concerned), presents the following map, allegedly created according to the Syrian FM's reconstruction of the flight:
The distance to be covered by the IAF jets to and from the marked destination would be roughly between 1200 - 1500 km (to and fro totaled), which is quite a trip. And to risk insertion of a ground unit at this distance would require an extraordinarily important shipment of weapons.Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem and other Syrian officials have been putting out their version of events. The Syrian government said Israeli bombs were dropped on its territory and fuel tanks from Israeli jets were dropped on the Turkish side of the border.It should be clear that the Hon. FM would vastly prefer to keep the fuel tanks (used, but maybe repairable) instead of used bombs' fragments. Turkey won in this case, too bad.
European diplomats who met with Moallem on Sunday in Damascus quoted him as saying that Israel's decision not to comment on the incident was appropriate, given the circumstances. Moallem reportedly told the Europeans that he expected Israel to apologize "through the usual channels." In Ankara for an official visit, Moallem went on to reveal the details of the alleged strike, which according to him resulted in no casualties or damage to property.I would dare say, he is quite happy with the results and apparent lack of damage. Good.
According to the report, the Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry as saying, "This is a very dangerous provocation little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security."What constitutes a wanton violation if penetrating about 500 km into Syria is stopping "little short", is absolutely unclear, and an NK expert opinion is required.
One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.That could explain the NK indignation, but does not explain the bombing and the "big hole in the earth" reported by all. Curiosier and curiosier...
“The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” the official said. He said it was unclear whether the Israeli strike had produced any evidence that might validate that belief.
