Save the planet: eat a professor?

This headline is a slight paraphrase of the Save the planet: eat a dog? article. Cannot say I was shocked by the main conclusion of this piece:

Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.

What with proliferation of quasi-scientific "research", we are being swamped lately by a lot of inane discoveries, such as negative impact of cow patties, general ruminants-produced flatulence, including the famous attack on the Norwegian moose whose belching and farting habits are going to put us all down (I guess it was about the males of the species, but it wouldn't be politically correct to say so in mass media). So the turn to our house pets was inevitable, I guess. Only in this case, the scientists in question could have been much more sensitive. After all, the custom of growing your pets and then eating them is not totally unheard of. It is just that the title of the book could have been crafted in a much more attractive way, such as:

Having Your Best Friend For Dinner

or

The 10th Life Of Your Beloved Tabby

or

The Inner Cat Or Claw Out Of That One

See what I mean? But to be practical, the above mentioned proliferation of scientific spam and research "achievements" requires another, really revolutionary, approach. Somebody must calculate the carbon footprint caused by the general upkeep (the housing, the feeding, the lecture halls, the offices, the research grants, the innumerable students, research assistants, the conferences and related flights and accommodation, the farting and belching of course, etc.) of an average university professor. Multiplied by the number of the phony and unnecessary scientific and teaching positions all over the world, I bet that the results will be striking. And, as I've already mentioned, revolutionary.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it appears that to have a professor for dinner will become our preferred remedy for the CO2 surplus, global warming, scientific spam and many other problems.

After all, it could be just a question of recovering some old forgotten recipes that gather dust in some unpopular corners of various museums.

But isn't it what we have them professors for?

P.S. They claim that a cat is (CO2-wise, of course) equal to Volkswagen Golf. This is why I keep two cats and not a single Golf at home.

Via Tinkerty Tonk.

Carla Bruni attacked as new Marie Antoinette. So?

Some yellow gossip rag (that is politely called "society magazine") attacks the incomparable Carla:

Point de Vue presents the 41-year-old wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy as a daffy multi-millionaire socialite who does very little real work and is completely out of touch with ordinary people.

Point de Vue... like they can't find a better name for their stupid rag.

Whatever. Follows a test assignment for men:

1. Take a good look at this here document.
2. Now confess: do you care about or understand that quote above now?

I rest my case.

Damien Michaels, Porn Actor, Found Stabbed to Death in California Hotel

They say he was stabbed, but "Michaels did about 50 adult movies...", I say this was just exhaustion. Now watch this:


Chill...

Keening for McDonald's in Iceland

Icelanders, one would assume, are so busy trying to recover from their financial woes, that it will scarcely leave them time to pay attention to trifles. One would be wrong, some of the Icelanders are so observant that they have time to dance on other people's funerals. Well, if not exactly dance, at least quietly jumping with a gleeful expression. Like the Guardian's CiF correspondent Alda Sigmundsdóttir in her article McDonald's, gone from Iceland. The coda of this article summarizes exceedingly well its tone:

In a strange and poignant way, the departure of Ronald McDonald and company is like a release from the yoke of runaway capitalism and unrestrained greed, of over-processed fare and empty calories. Farewell, golden arches: you won't be missed.

To tell you the truth, I am not a connoisseur of McDonald's fare. Given a choice, my feet will always carry me away from their hallowed premises and, since my kids outgrew their craving for fast food, my feet do so unfailingly. So this post is not about defending McDonald's, rather about the general tone of the article, so familiar in the slightly poisoned CiF atmosphere.

In general, failing attempts of various food and drink giants to penetrate new markets are not indigenous to Iceland. From local experience: the Anheuser-Busch failure with Bud, which proved to be unable to beat the European competition and Starbucks folding their tents after a few years of an uphill battle against Italian chains. A matter of taste, after all. In both cases, I don't remember local press going into throes of ecstasy after the event.

Not so in this case of delighted Huzzah!! Especially when the decision to close the franchise is thus motivated:

So why drop the McDonald's brand? Well, apart from the hefty annual fees associated with owning the franchise, with the devaluation of the Icelandic currency, importing all those over-processed fish burgers and frozen beef patties and extra-long French fries has become too expensive. Apparently McDonald's has very stringent standards when it comes to production of its foodstuffs.

So, "stringent standards" are not what the owner of the franchise was looking for... he will continue to produce burgers, but according to his/her own standards this time. No comments.

Now to this one:

The vast majority of Icelanders couldn't be happier.

I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that an event like closing of a burger joint is having such a earth-shattering effect on the whole 300K+ Icelanders. And then this scorcher:

After all, economic crisis notwithstanding, this country's food production is, by most standards, exceptional. In purely gastronomic terms, the abandonment of the McDonald's franchise should be a vast improvement.

I wish I could be as confident as Ms Sigmundsdóttir. Especially, after reading the Wiki entry on Icelandic cuisine. Of course, wind-dried fish beats a burger hands down, not to mention fermented fish (the word "lutefisk" is carefully avoided in this Wiki's entry).

And of course, I overreact when I read a sentence like this:

Above all else, McDonald's in Iceland was a symbol of an era when Icelanders lost touch with their roots and the real things in life.

I can almost feel the "Rootless cosmopolitan" charge leveled at some sinister but unseen power. But of course, the target in this case is different:

Oh well. Another observation: in another article Ms Sigmundsdóttir says:

Now the government has crumbled we need all five parties to unite to restore our credibility with the rest of the world.

I wonder if this is the way she considers best to restore that credibility. But of course, I am taking a simple culinary issue too seriously. One thing for sure: if and when I happen to visit Iceland, I shall steer away from that burger joint, seeing as how "stringent standards" are not their thing.

I should do better with lutefisk fermented fish, I guess.

Walmart: with you in the afterlife

Rest assured: you are not alone anymore.

Chirac to face corruption trial

The charges relate to Chirac's final months as mayor of Paris, when he is alleged to have employed staff on the city payroll who were instead working on his presidential campaign.

Oh, come on, really. I was so fond of the old rascal. Now I am confused... what the heck do they want from him?

Michael Connelly on Ani Ashekian, Chungking Mansions, Nine Dragons

I bet Michael follows Google Trends. Anyhow, his last book, the Nine Dragons, unfortunately sucks. To my taste, that is. But what do I know?

Back to Dashiel Hammet's short stories. And no mistake.

Too Many Jews Or The Rage Of A little fart

It came to our attention... oh, what the heck: our Signals department sent us a memo with a link to a new opus by a little known British anti-Zionist AssaJew that goes under a moniker Mark Elf (not a musician), keeps a fiery anti-Zionist blog Jews Sans Frontiers and is... well, small in all respects.

Some of his ex-friends call him "tribal Jewish activist", we don't call him anything for more than an year, since we simply got bored by the subject. We have indeed paid some attention to this character at the time, and may have caused him some unpleasant feelings by calling him (in no specific order): leprechaun/worthless leprechaun, varmint, little dreck, paskudnyak, entry level ZioBot, little fart, anti-Zionist troll, hyena, a very disturbed Joo from London, puny brain, der kleiner mensch mit der kleiner pipick (a small man with a small johnson), a sorry and miserable excuse for a human being and a waste of oxygen, putz, kneebiter (a toenail nibbler, actually)... enough for now. While it was established that only the term "little fart" (LF further in this post) is an adequate designation, all others being intended for someone way above his level, it may have smarted...

A bigger man would have spent some time licking his wounds and then simply forgot about this. But, being small, Mark Elf, aka Levixxxx or LF, has a lot of storage space for grudges and besides, it appears, he is a whale for punishment. So, as our Signals correctly reported, more than an year after being mentioned for the last time here, LF decided to give in and play out his frustrations again, in the post titled "Oh no! Jewish Jew bashing fails to silence criticism of racist war criminals". Yes, we know, being of puny brain, LF tends to long, pompous and incomprehensible headlines.

Anyway, in this opus of frustration (no link, search for it yourself - it is easily done by using that pathetic headline as a search string), Simply Jews are being mentioned in a following rant:

And of course they were happy to cross post from that rarity, a hasbara site that's even sillier than Engage, Simply Jews as it managed to bring together crass references to the the genitalia of Palestinian men, jokes at the expense of the late Rachel Corrie, and further reflections on the alleged‘physical inadequacies’ (also of a sexual character) of anti-Zionist Jews. But surely its most egregious moment comes when a new variant of the “self-hating Jew” canard used to deny the legitimacy of anti-Zionist Jewish identity is provided. The author coins the term ‘self-serving’ and goes on to relish in the fortuitous discovery that this provides a means to label anti-Zionist Jews ‘SS Jews’. How curious that these people are usually on record supporting the idea of outlawing the perfectly apt comparison of Israel to nazi Germany because they say it is hurtful to Jews to compare a specifically Jewish state to a state that brought so much harm to so many Jews. Let's leave aside the fact that is precisely the supremacy thing together with the rampant militarism that leads to the comparison between nazis and zionists and focus on the sheer lack of principle of these people who see themselves as Simply Jews or simply Jews.

It is of note that the link provided by LF is not to the site itself, but to a seminal document Anti Zionists: who are you?, written more than three years ago by GideonSwort, our distinguished Wing Commander. Worth your time, I fully guarantee. I also guarantee that if the document continues to inflame the LF's ire after so much time, it must have hit the spot.

I bet that after reading the above quote, you will easily finger the point that drives LF mad: "further reflections on the alleged‘physical inadequacies’ (also of a sexual character) of anti-Zionist Jews". And of course, there is a good reason for him to be mad, but it couldn't be helped. The truth hurts...

As for the insidious refrain "comparison between nazis and zionists": LF does it all the time, and little does he know about the language he is abusing. So, to be helpful:

Noun: nazi - Derogatory term for a person who is fanatically dedicated to, or seeks to control, some activity, practice, etc.

Noun: Nazi - A German member of Adolf Hitler's political party

You see: much as LF likes to compare the Zionists to everything vile and evil under the Sun, he cannot perform even this simple task without stepping on his (small) dick. Even in this he must be assisted...

Now look at the incomprehensible way he decided to round up his semi-coherent rant:

Just to round up, according to these hasbaraniks, Jews must not, as Jews, criticise Israel but Jews, as Jews, must support Israel and attack and smear Israel's critics. Israel must not be likened to the nazis because it's hurtful to Jews, but Jews who, as Jews, criticise Israel, can be called SS Jews. You get the idea?

I don't know whether you get the idea, because we sure don't: there are too many Jooz in it for the whole to be understood by anyone but a raving "anti-Zionist" who will be definitely brought into a righteous frenzy by the repeated use of that word. Oh well, the pathetic little putz gets only more pathetic. Now to the medical details.

A reflection by Wing Commander GideonSwort

A while back, while browsing the Guardian's cesspool (aka Cif), reading a post by the acclaimed Prof. David Hirsh, I came upon a conversation between the aforementioned LF and a poster using the screen name of JackHamertash. Actually it turned out to be more like a psychiatrist intake session, culminating with a diagnosis. LF was being taken apart, bit by bit in a revealing exchange, by JackHamertash, who picked upon a variety of clues from LF's incessant obsessive ramblings. The diagnosis was there for all to see, with LF acknowledging that he has a debilitating psychiatric condition – Asperger's.

A while later, in what turned out to be a complete coincidence, while in a discussion about Joo AZ's common pathologies, I came across an individual that apparently knew LF in his previous guise – as a Zionist Volunteer in a Kibbutz. A rather bizarre story unfolded of rejection and unrequited love. Zion is a small puddle when it comes to things like that. You step in the pond, and you leave a mark. While we won't bore you with the pathetic details, as hearsay comes this one seems pretty probable, as the specific individual bestowing the knowledge upon us seemed to know the details of the chick involved and her apparent whereabouts.

You may at this point ask, why is this relevant? Well, it isn't. We know that LF is not the most cogent individual, but we seem to have stumbled upon a trigger point... We can now understand why LF recognized himself within the framework of the Anti Zionists: who are you? document. One of Asperger's manifested characteristics is a crippling inability to comprehend humor and nuance, which basically explains LF's neurotic detailed rant about a document that's about as lucid as LF's other incessant dreary obsessive mumblings.

For your attention

Little as I grok the British politics, here is another angle on the BNP recent TV fiasco (according to some) - or was it a success story? By Andrew Ian Dodge.

Norway raises the anti-Israeli hysteria another notch. By Philosemite.

Brian Whitaker or the worthless life of a wrong Brian... by Hawkeye.

Large Hadron Collider is on, the end of the world is near!

During the last weekend (23-25 October) particles have once again entered the LHC after the one-year break that followed the incident of September 2008.

In a month or so the gadget will start getting to its full power, so you have time to prepare. I would start with selling your stocks and buying as much of your preferred drink as possible. And consuming it, of course.

The black hole is near, so dispense with long range planning. Be calm and drunk - all your worries are behind you, after all.

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice for teetotalers, but there is always this or another religion to turn to.

Christian Aid and Israel: some hard facts for Liberal Jews (and concerned Christians)

"Naturally it's not for me to tell Jews what to think, but I do think they ought to know what they're getting into", says Cyrus, but he is really too humble.

Liberal Jews, if I understand this designation correctly, can do much, much worse (and many do indeed) than heed Cyrus' advice. And they should definitely read this post.

John Howard Griffin: Black Like Me

This is another truly remarkable story I missed for most of my life.

It would have seemed very different 50 years ago to the white Texan writer John Howard Griffin, when he embarked on one of the most remarkable one-man social and psychological experiments in history.

Griffin was the white man who fooled hundreds of Americans into believing he was a black man as he travelled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia - and who felt at first hand the bigotry that meant.

And a truly remarkable man.

Lenin - another modification

Not long ago we have reported here on a creative remodeling of one of the most famous Lenins' statues in St. Petersburg:

Apparently really creative people never rest on their laurels. And recently another remodeling attempt was crowned with a resounding success, and also in St Petersburg:

Although there is no official competition, you can vote for the one you prefer here...

Hat tip: M.T.

And now, the Lyndon LaRouche Choir

If I were a US citizen and totally anti-Obama (like many good Americans are today), even then I would have supported the health care reform - just to spite this deranged SOB.

Behind what?

Via Elder of Ziyon:

"We don't want to isolate people because they don't feel quite so comfortable with 'pro-Israel,' so we say 'pro-peace,'" said American University junior Lauren Barr of the "J Street U" slogan, "but behind that is 'pro-Israel.'"

I am not as polite as EoZ, so let me put it in a simple way: they can kiss my behind at will.

Stormfront for all things Apple?

Of course, the name "Stormfront" doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people. But to internet buffs, esp. ones who dig politics, it means first of all "a white nationalist and supremacist neo-Nazi Internet forum...". A nasty bunch of Nazis and their sympathizers. And of course, they have a branch in UK. You can establish all of the above by googling, we don't provide links to such places here.

The more amazing was to discover (via a comment by Jams) that there is a chain of Apple shops in UK that has chosen that name - yes, Stormfront.

Strange choice, you would agree. There is no hint on their site about the history of that moniker.

As Jams rightly wonders:

I hope there are no adverts saying "Get your i-pods and the Turner Diaries here..."

I wonder, too, what title their CEO carries and what is this all about anyhow?

Anyone in the know is welcome to comment.

Three Misguided Idiots: A Play in Two Acts

This one is quite entertaining - in a Guardian way.

On the same subject: Yaacov Lozovick on the reasons that make the CiF cesspool so remarkable:

This makes CiF Exhibition A for anyone trying to document the state of Jew hatred in the early 21st century. Such people and such ideas exist out there, make no mistake about it.

Quite.

Jewish Bloggers Carnival: Haveil Havalim #240 The Aliyah Edition

It is brand new, it is good and its' here.

And if you have something you want to see linked next week, it will be done here, so send in your entries, bring them on!

BiondVax success and lesser news

To start with, as a refreshing change, some good news: as heard on the radio, Israeli company BiondVax has successfully completed a limited trial of its universal flu vaccine, where several tens of volunteers, including adults of all ages and pregnant women, were given the universal flu vaccine developed by the company. BiondVax is commencing the next stage of the trial in Israel and has already applied to FDA for a world-wide approval. You can read about the vaccine and the far-reaching implications of its success here, a short quote meanwhile:

Key Benefits

• Multi-strain protection thus multi-season coverage. One vaccination schedule is expected to confer three to five years protection against the flu.
• Year-round vaccination is possible independent of the flu season and according to patient preferences and health authorities’ multi year vaccination program.

Which means good news for the world*, for Israel and for BiondVax.

(*) Some folks may not want to be vaccinated by a Zionist product... too bad for them.

On other subjects:

Bibi stepped on his tongue, as it happens with increasing frequency when he wants to be nice to the media, answering "We're looking into that..." when asked about the possibility of setting up an Israeli inquiry into Goldstone report conclusions. Which, of course, has caused a storm in the ministry of defense, Barak being one of the strongest opponents of such inquiry. And of course, Bibi is now in his usual denial stage:

The PM's bureau issued a statement of clarification saying that "in his statements to The Washington Post the PM did not suggest that he is considering creating an investigative committee".

Strange, innit, especially in light of the fact that support of such inquiry in the government and the Knesset appear to be chiefly non-partisan. Which is a miracle by itself.

The rabble-rousers of the Islamic movement on one side and what is euphemistically called "Jewish extreme-right elements" on the other side have again joined forces to cause a squabble over the Temple Mount:

On backdrop of high state of alert in Jerusalem holy site, police attacked with stones, Molotov cocktails. Forces enter Mount in order to catch rioters, using shock grenades; 12 people arrested. Three police officers lightly hurt; Palestinians say eight worshipers also injured.

A pox on both their houses.

And thus another week is starting here...

Construction drawings released: Flight 93 crescent now points less than 3° from Mecca

I have to confess: I am posting the following out of sheer curiosity: do you think that there is a premeditated attempt to build the memorial as described or is it pure coincidence?



From Error Theory:

The original Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 faced less than 2° from Mecca. That made it a mihrab, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed-arch shaped, but the classic mihrab is crescent shaped.)

The Park Service dismissed concern about the Mecca-oriented crescent on grounds that the construction drawings had not yet been finalized. “Those trees could move fifty feet, or three hundred feet,” said Project Manager Jeff Reinbold in the Spring of 2006, as if this kind of "tweaking" would make any difference (Crescent of Betrayal Ch.8 p.145-6).

The construction drawings have now been released, and yes, they moved the lower tip of the half-mile wide crescent about 300 feet, enough to change the orientation of the crescent by about 4.5°. Instead of pointing less than 2° north of Mecca, the giant Islamic-shaped crescent now points less than 3° south of Mecca.

Here is the original Crescent of Embrace:


"Qibla" is the direction to Mecca, which you can verify using any online Mecca-direction calculator (just type in Somerset PA). A person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) would be facing 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1°.

Here is one of the new construction drawings:


Instead of facing a titch north of Mecca, the giant crescent now faces a titch south of Mecca (2.7° south ± 0.1°).

As with the original Crescent design, the upper crescent tip is the end of the 50’ tall Entry Portal Wall and the lower crescent tip is the last of the 50’ tall Maple trees on the bottom. The landscape overlays make the details hard to see in the thumbnail image above, but at full resolution they are fully legible. (Copy of source PDF, without the superimposed orientations lines here. Large file warning. Graphic is on p. 30 of 233.)


The Park Service was SUPPOSED to remove the Islamic symbol shapes

When architect Paul Murdoch’s winning Crescent of Embrace design was announced in September 2005, it appeared to show a bare naked Islamic crescent and star-flag planted atop the crash site:



Burned by the resulting firestorm of protest, the Park Service to agreed to get rid of the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They added an extra arc of trees, and they call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent.

This is explained on the Park Service's own website, where the extra arc of trees is explicitly described as a broken off part of the circle:

In summary, the memorial is shaped in a circular fashion, and the circle is symbolically "broken" or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site.

Those two breaks are the two ends of the extra arc of trees:


The extra arc of trees extends from blue circle to blue circle, marking the two “breaks” in the circle referred to in the Park Service’s official explanation of the broken-circle design. One is where the flight path breaks the circle (left), the other is near the crash site (center).

What is symbolically left standing (the unbroken part of the circle) is just this:


Remove the symbolically broken off parts, and you get the original Crescent of Embrace design.

The only change is that the crescent has now been rotated clockwise a few degrees. In the construction plans it faces slightly south of Mecca instead of slightly north of Mecca. For a parallel, imagine airline security discovering a terror bomber, then playing with the fit his suicide vest before escorting him to his plane.

They said they were going to remove the giant crescent. They claim they HAVE removed it, but they haven't. Symbolically, the design remains completely unchanged. The terrorists are still depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.


The giant crescent is actually a mihrab

Here is the mihrab at the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just like the crescent memorial to Flight 93:



Confronted with evidence that the Crescent of Embrace is actually designed to be the world's largest mosque, the Park Service sought advice from a pair of Muslim scholars. Both acknowledged the almost exact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent and both offered overtly dishonest excuses for it. One said not to worry about the likeness to an Islamic mihrab because no one has ever seen a mihrab this BIG before:

...most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience.

Right. That's why everybody scratches their head at Mt. Rushmore. No one has ever seen Abraham Lincoln so BIG before. They just can't figure it out.

To be fooled by this excuse, you have to really really want to be fooled. The other Muslim scholar said not to worry, the crescent cannot be seen as mihrab unless it points exactly at the Kaaba:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

In fact, a mihrab does NOT have to point exactly at Mecca, for the simple reason that, throughout most of Islamic history, Muslims in far-flung parts of the world had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. As a result, it was established as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca. This was recently affirmed by Saudi religious authorities, after Meccans realized that even most of their local mosques do not face directly towards the Kaaba. “It does not affect the prayers” assured the Islamic Affairs Ministry.

Faced with evidence of an Islamic plot, why would the Park Service send this evidence exclusively to Muslims for appraisal? Have they forgotten who attacked us on 9/11?

The Service has long since been apprised of the patent dishonesties retailed by its two Muslim advisors but they don't care. They wanted to be lied to, they knew where to go to be lied to, and they got what they wanted.

Delta Airlines - new pilots' accessory

Details.

Bill Maher on vaccination: we have to debate this...

The expression "above his(her) station in life" usually pisses me off due to its inherent fallacy of assuming some undefined but clearly existing limits to individual advancement and its self-satisfied sound, akin to a burp after a serious meal. Not that I am against a good burp, mind you.

But watching the unending parade of the big screen and small screen stars becoming instant gurus in politics, sociology, medicine, philosophy etc, I cannot help but wonder whether some delicate balance could be reached between the freedom of speech and the person's credentials and background that allow him/her to weigh in with his/her opinion on a subject that he/she deigns to comment upon*. Watch this:



I was especially touched by that "we have to debate this" passage. It would be interesting to know whom does Bill Maher include in that sweeping "we". Does he consider himself to be an expert in medicine in general and vaccination in particular?

Bill Maher is truly a person of many talents (one could even say that he is a pretty mixed up and confused character, but what do I know?). He is saying so much and so frequently that, like the proverbial clock, sometimes he shows the right time. In this case, however, he came out as an ignorant moron so full of himself that... oh well.

(*) If that sentence was too long for you, let's try a different approach: why don't some people shut the fuck up on subjects they know nothing about?

Via LGF.

Massive FBI Raid on Islamic Slaughterhouse Mystifies Tiny Illinois Town

At 8 a.m. Sunday the population of Kinsman, Ill., stood at 109. An hour later it nearly doubled, as upwards of 100 federal agents and police swooped in on the tiny, rural community. And no one seems to know why.

What do you expect where FBI is involved? I bet they don't know why either.

Probably got a call from a whistleblower that the slaughter wasn't strictly halal.

I hope the snipers didn't shoot any cows at least. This will be strictly non-halal meat then...

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone

Let the fur fly. I shall stick to HTC.

Churchill, BNP, kings, cabbages,...

I have been reading today (yesterday by now) an exceedingly strange post titled Churchill, As BNP As Mosley. The headline, to start with, was a bit confusing. I am not good in history, especially where dates are concerned, but I was pretty sure that Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill isn't running any political movement for any purpose currently. Not to mention Mosley.

In any case, the author of that post, one David Lindsay, got it in for the old man, so much so that he even forgot about Mosley. Ostensibly the purpose of his post is to provide a counterpoint to the current BNP's use of Churchill's name for their own nefarious purposes. The method chosen by Mr Lindsay was not to separate Churchill from BNP but to prove that Sir Winston was, if anything, a spiritual precursor of that revolting phenomenon.

The way Mr Lindsay waded into the target is not completely unlike the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so bloody-minded he was at the time of writing. A good example would be his characterization of the old man as "unreliable, opportunistic, highly affected and contrived, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, Eurofederalist demagogue who admired Mussolini, heaped praise on Hitler, had no need to work for a living, had an overwhelming sense of his own entitlement, profoundly hated democracy, and had a callous disregard for the lives of the lower orders and the lesser breeds". The paragraph where the quote belongs is built in a way that the quote could have been about Mosley, but "So did the other one" makes any doubt superfluous.

Well, what can one say about it? I could point out that Sir Winston was a true son of the British establishment of the time and that the said establishment was by and large racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist and the admiration for Hitler was a plague that left hardly a British notable standing. And that callous disregard for the lives of the lower orders and the lesser breed could be detected even today.

And what can I say about this one, regarding Churchill's desire to see the British Jews relocated to Israel:

The anti-British terrorists who went on to found the State of Israel agreed with him, very nearly coming to an understanding whereby Hitler would have expelled the Jews by sending them to British Palestine, which he and the Zionists would have conquered together for the purpose.

Besides this being an old anti-Zionist trope, in hindsight I can only state that the alternative to this failed "Zionist plot" appeared to be somewhat inferior (yep, I am trying myself here in the British art of understatement).

But saying all of the above didn't get me closer to the real purpose of the post. So I had me a look at the blogger's profile:

The pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war voice of an economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriot. One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. Conservationist, not environmentalist. Far too conservative to be capitalist, far too left-wing to be liberal.

Uhu... leaving the "make cute" addendum of the last sentence, we are dealing here with an anti-war isolationist - or a very good replica of one. It's going around today. Now, reading the post carefully again, one could find a few hints to reveal the full picture. Start with this:

...the brutality and the contempt for democracy, the admiration for Mussolini and especially for Hitler, are omitted from accounts of those who agitated for war in the Thirties, but heavily emphasised, sometimes to point of fabrication, in accounts of those who pleaded for peace.

If you think that the author's anti-war (stopper?) sympathies are not emphasized enough, here comes a scorcher:

Ahmadinejad’s oblique, if any, Holocaust denial causes uproar...

The word "oblique" has quite a few meanings, but I doubt that there is any ambivalence in that quote. What precisely is "oblique" when Mahmoud the Mad calls Holocaust "myth" or "lie" or "great deception" (all documented), I am unable to understand. But I believe I do understand where a stopper is leading when I see, hear or read one.

I believe that displaying his preference of the anti-war movement of 1930-s with its crowning achievement being a certain NC signing a certain M agreement (well, there is no mention of either in Lindsay's post), and by (lamely) diminishing the Iranian's menace, Mr Lindsay shows his cards quite clearly. There wasn't really any need to add "The contemporary resonances of both aspects could not be more obvious" - it was made obvious by the body of work, thank you.

So now I can finally say what I think about this post. To start with, by a quirk of fate I was born not only Jewish but also in the late Soviet Union and at a time not far too distant from the WW II. So, being forever grateful to the Red Army for sacrificing millions of lives to facilitate my birth, I am also forever grateful to the no good ole racist, anti-Semite, blah blah... Sir Winston for doing his best to help the Red Army to stand up to the Nazis. And I feel no more sympathy for the pre-war British (and any other) anti-war movement, including the above mentioned NC than I would feel for a squashed cockroach. Nor do I feel a lot of sympathy for the current breed of "We are all Hezbollah" stoppers and others of their variety.

As for the future and above mentioned Mahmoud the Mad - again, it could be educational to look back - namely, at Sir Winston's bio.

Churchill was holidaying in Spain when the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland in February 1936, and returned to a divided Britain. Labour opposition was adamant in opposing sanctions and the National Government was divided between advocates of economic sanctions and those who said that even these would lead to a humiliating backdown by Britain as France would not support any intervention.

How is that for "contemporary resonance", Mr Lindsay?

Should I use the trope about history repeating itself? Nah, no need really. After all, David Lindsay is a few field trips short of an historian. And so am I...

Hat tip: Andrew Ian Dodge.

Man ran down 'too Westernized' daughter

Arizona police are looking for an Iraqi man who they allege ran down his daughter and her friend because he believed his daughter had become "too Westernized."

Too Westernized. I guess this plague is going strong, especially in the US Western territories.

Unless, of course - let me see, yes, here it is:

Faleh Hassan Almaleki was last seen in a gray or silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, police said.

Uhu... it will be Chrysler's fault then. They manufacture the tool used to commit this crime.

Case closed.

It is me, o Lord!

Somehow I have missed the whole brouhaha with the Turkish TV series revealing the Zionist murderers. But then I read that funny interview with the producer of the show:

The producer of the controversial Turkish television series that has caused a diplomatic scandal for depicting soldiers shooting Palestinians said in a conversation with Ynet: "We don't have anything against Israel."

Sure, we don't have have anything against Turkey too. And then came a surprise:

According to him, "Obviously that it needs to be real enough for the viewers, but these aren't the same uniforms. It is really important to emphasize that we love the people in Israel. We love the Israelis."

I have to give the man credit where credit is due: the man is unusually perceptive, witness my astonishment upon seeing this scene:

Do you notice that guy without a helmet? Standing with his back to the camera? In the light uniform shirt? Er... with the red arrow pointing at him? OK.

Well, what do you know - it's me, really! I was much younger then, the obvious proof is the abundant hair where today you will be able to see only some spare and dying growth. And of course this is not an IDF unit, the uniforms are different indeed: it's a platoon of Elders' trainees on a bonus outing. We used to gather a few local folks and put them against a suitable wall then for a friendly no-violence execution. Nothing personal, to be sure. Just a Passover surprise for the eager trainees. Of course, the cadavers were dissected for spare parts, it goes without saying.

Today we are more careful, using abandoned basements, cinema buildings, mosques, in short places where it will be difficult to film us surreptitiously.

As for the above mentioned producer: we love him too and will drop by shortly.

The Guardians of Iran

An excellent post by The Alchemist on CiF Watch. Highly recommended.

This must be wrong

From The Sun site as of October 19, 2009:

£50,000 a time? How many times can you sell one virgin?

Steve Phillips, Marni Phillips, Brooke Hundley

I don't know anything about these three, but it's time to publish another nice picture to reduce the general unrest on the internets.

Feeling better now? Thought so.

Choudary wants the Queen to convert to Islam? So what?

"Sensationalism" is a word recognized by the dictionaries. Its meaning is "Subject matter that is calculated to excite and please vulgar tastes". Which fits some media outfits like a glove. The Sun, for example, with their hysterical headline:

Hate preacher tells Queen: Turn Muslim

First of all, the man doesn't "tell the Queen", if you read the article itself, he just said:

We invite everyone from the Queen, to the ministers, to the Parliament, to the aristocracy, to the ordinary person in Britain to embrace Islam.

There is a big difference between "turn Muslim" and "embrace Islam", you must agree. Besides, he is not a hate preacher but a servant of Religion of Peace, and no mistake about it.

And the incendiary caption under this picture of the Queen:

Her Majesty ... Islam convert target

Of course, her Majesty is not a "target" but a courteously invited candidate for conversion. Moreover, we have already heard that she is seriously considering the invitation, here comes the proof:

As you can see, Her Majesty is serious about the conversion, notice also that she is sticking to her colors of preference.

And I am sure that her loyal subjects will follow her. Peacefully and willing.

So there.

Adjust your watches!

From the Watcher:

SAN'A, Yemen (CP) — Yemeni warplanes killed at least 44 Shiite rebels in a series air strikes near the Saudi border, a senior government official said Sunday. The insurgents, however, claim the dead were civilians.

Mohammed Abdelallah al-Qawsi, deputy interior minister, said 27 of the rebels were killed by a strike on a rebel hideout in an abandoned hospital in the small town of Razeh.

The rebels, however, said the hospital was still functional and those killed inside were civilians.

The contradiction of terms, I suggest, is simply a matter of choosing your point of reference on the time axis (since the location is agreed upon, as it looks): of course, the hospital was functional before the strike, promptly becoming abandoned after it. So, you see, it's not really a contradiction here.

So chill, folks.

And, as Watcher says, Goldstone could help to figure it out too.

Engineering according to Bibi: vacuum vs brain drain

I was initially startled a bit by this headline:

PM wants 'vacuum to suck Israeli minds back'

But after reading the article, my anxiety settled down somewhat. After all, it's our PM speaking:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on the first day of the academic year that "we need to set up a vacuum here to suck up the Israeli minds located at top universities abroad.

So, as you see, it's really simple: we create a vacuum and the Israeli minds get sucked into it and thus come back home. Uhu... clear. But - how do we create this intriguing vacuum? Here it is:

He said US funds were "sucking up" the greatest minds, and that Israel should behave similarly in order to fight against the phenomenon.

So it's the issue of funds. This seems to be clear too. But wait, on the other hand:

Back to college: More students, less lecturers

This is about the lamentable state of our universities.

As expected, the university budget cuts have also led to more packed classrooms. Changes occurring over the past few years in the number of students on the one hand and the number of senior staff on the other, have lead to more students per senior staff member. Ten years ago the number of senior staff positions available stood at 4,684. Since then, this number has gradually declined and in now stands at 4,300 – an 8% drop.

Be interesting to know where these missing senior staff folks are? My uneducated guess will be - US of A. The good ole brain drain, you know.

So, by now you have also figured out the ingenious scheme Bibi is nurturing. One one hand, we'll create a local vacuum system to suck in the unsuspecting Israeli brains back. On the other hand, we already have in place a reverse mechanism that uses a similar (but better) vacuum system that exists in US to suck same brains back. Meaning that the name of the game is circulation.

Ingenious indeed. Although - wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper if... oh what the heck. It is not a good idea to argue with own government, after all.

Still, just to be helpful, a humble suggestion: wouldn't it be more efficient and cheaper if we use the brain vacuum that already exists in our government and the Knesset?

Obama's Nobel: a point of law

And you thought that the hype is over? Not yet, it seems.

From Dick Stanley.

So who is wise? And who is astonished?

"Who is wise?" asks the Talmud. "He who can see what is about to happen."

This reminder by Daniel Gordis in an article that laments the poor political situation Israel had found itself in, particularly in the aftermath of the Goldstone report approval, is very apt. Gordis' article is a good review of the pitiful state of the Israeli diplomatic establishment. On the other hand, "there is no longer any prophet" will be another apt way to describe it.

While it seems that the Goldstone report and the voting by the Human Wrongs Council didn't require any prophet, the only "astonishing" part of the whole story (aside of the amazing Goldstone's interview to Forward - I wonder whether Goldstone caught the Arafat's bug of speaking in tongues) was the overflow of fury produced by our political establishment. The grown-ups' equivalent of falling on the floor screaming and kicking the said floor, displayed for everyone to see.

The surprise and the fury

It is better to be pissed off than pissed on, they say. It seems that our government has chosen to combine the two options.

How childish could one get, crossing into being ridiculous, is shown clearly by that quote:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem Thursday night that he hoped all the "responsible countries" would vote against endorsing the Goldstone Commission Report "that encourages terrorism and harms peace."

Sure, see that (partial) list of the "responsible countries" out of 25 who voted yes: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. The luminaries of human rights indeed, but saying this is rather obscuring the point: how could Bibi expect a different outcome? Enough said re "seeing what is about to happen".

Doing something about it then

Didn't Bibi know what will be the outcome of the vote? Surely he knew. And here we come to another question - what was done in advance - not to prevent the inevitable outcome of that report and the vote, but to counter-attack the show, to make sure that the report is met by a solid body of evidence and legal work that could be presented, if not to the UNHRC, at least to the whole political world, to the UN that is going to discuss the Goldstone report, to the media etc.? Well, almost nothing. Starting with the refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone's team to absence of any activity (save the above mentioned fury and some weak indignation upon the report going public), our politicians and diplomats have done precisely what they do best: stuck their collective heads in the sand.

Doing something about it now

The displays of impotent fury, aside of making many of those who care to watch them very happy, will not change the votes or the opinions, most probably they will make the situation even worse, insulting some of our supporters. In general, most of what could be done now, when the battle is over, is akin to an attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has been stolen

However, losing the battle is not yet losing the war, and the next step - discussion of the Goldstone report in the UN - should be met with something more productive than fury. To start with, Israel must do what it neglected to do in the first place: conducting its own thorough and as public as it is humanly possible (even with IDF screaming and kicking) investigation of everything mentioned in the report. And if there appear to be IDF faults or misconduct, let the heads roll when deserved and applicable. Only public and detailed investigation will do, not some half-hearted attempts at military justice, confined to the walls of military offices, mostly closed to the outside world. No matter how laudatory, warm and fuzzy was the testimony by Colonel Richard Kemp, it is not something that will serve as proof - only as a supporting statement by a professional soldier. And of course, the commission should be able to hear and cross-examine the testimony by Goldstone and his colleagues.

Goldstone report is eminently faulty, even if we turn to Goldstone himself as a witness:

If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.

Of course, we can also try to decipher Goldstone's more mysterious statements, like:

Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission...

but it will take some doing and a lot of time, which we all don't have in the current situation.

As an example of an ongoing work on the Goldstone's report's many fallacies I would like to refer to The Goldstone Report site - an endeavor undertaken by several good people who are doing their considerable best to undermine the foundations of the report. Quite successfully, I would say.

Still, as it was exceedingly well articulated by Ami Isseroff in his article Goldstone and investigating the Gaza war, there is one main point that should become focal in any well-organized attack of Goldstone report:

Beyond all its irregularities, the Goldstone report made one claim that cannot be refuted: That Israeli policy and war tactics were deliberately designed to kill civilians. It can't be refuted because it is not logical or based on any facts.
...
Goldstone's report claimed:

1211. Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.

How could a prominent legal beagle make (or allow to be made) a statement that opens the whole report to annihilation in a court of law is impossible to guess. But you better read the above linked article by Ami as a whole.

Conclusion

Confronting Goldstone is a marathon, not a sprint, as Herb Keinon correctly states. If, as he predicts, the Goldstone report is passed by the UN General Assembly to International Court of Justice in The Hague, we better come prepared, with more than indignation in our hands.

After that, if all ends well, we could deliberate at will on other subjects. Like Israel's dire int'l standing, who lost Turkey, whether it's the 'Obama effect' turning the world against Israel, which countries are "responsible" in Bibi's book and so on, and ad absurdum.

But meanwhile - we should get prepared.

Falcon Heene, the balloon boy: "We did this for a show"

If the story is half true, the hide tanning I expected the boy to get should by rights go to his dad, Richard Heene.

The 6-year-old Colorado boy thought to have floated off in a homemade balloon has raised questions whether it might have been an elaborate attention-getting family stunt.

Much more on that strange family where the above comes from.

Duh...

Update: From CNN:

Three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly through the air as a tearful family expressed fears that their 6-year-old boy could be inside, authorities announced what millions already suspected: The whole thing was staged.

Yep.

Testosterone drives men to buy fast cars

This is a result of a quite expensive research at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business. The chief conclusion is:

Testosterone is what drives men's desire to own fast cars, according to a study published in the journal Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

Why was it expensive?

Researchers at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal took 39 willing young men and let them take a cruise in a $150,000 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet. The men were then asked to drive a 16-year-old Toyota Camry.

And to the quantitative side of the results:

The researchers found that in the sedan, the men's hormone levels remained low, but in the sports car, testosterone levels stayed high — with or without an audience.

Amazing, innit? Now Porsche can truthfully state that their four-wheeled penises have outstanding therapeutic powers as well as unmatched mechanics.

So, what else is new, you may want to ask? Only the subject of the next research: marriage as a result of high testosterone levels...

P.S. Could a person with low testosterone level lodge a claim for a Porsche now with Canadian health services ?

Gruban, you animal, you!

A sidesplitting story of a fictional Serbian war criminal indicted during Goldstone’s tenure at the ICTY. By one and only.

Superpower meme

Jacob Da Jew hit me between the eyes with a meme more than a month ago, and what with the usual Elder's duties and natural forgetfulness, I have recalled it only now. Here are the rules:

1. Write one superpower you would like to have and what you would do with it.
2. Write why you chose that super power over everything else.
3. Tag and link lots of people, and write why you think they will have an interesting meme.
4. Fix your broken links.

I shall leave the last one on Jacob's conscience, since there is simply no way I would start wading through the lists and, besides, I suspect that he invented it himself. Otherwise:

Firestarter abilities. Why is very simple: I see it as a great helper with starting the grill going and lighting my cigarettes whenever that darn lighter gets lost.

I am aware, by the way, that I wouldn't be able to replicate the Gorgona-like hair effects, for some technical reasons we'll not go into for the moment.

As for the folks I am hitting with the meme:

Lesley - she must already possess a few powers, I am more than sure. Let's see which one she wants in addition.

Andrew Ian Dodge - he is an expert in that realm.

No Good Boyo. Being of Welsh extraction, he must be good in all kinds of magic skulduggery.

Paul. Hope he will find a minute for this. It could be expressed in the haiku format too, I guess.

Katie. I don't know why I include females, by the way, like they need any additional powers. Still, one must give equal opportunity.

Syria bans smoking in public places

Shocker. Reminder to self - cancel the trip next week.

It is your health, after all

Haveil Havalim #238 - The We Love The Dodgers/Angels Edition!

It is here and it's immensely readable, so what are you waiting for?

Hotmail - has it eventually croaked?

Just asking. Can't get to login screen since this morning.

Or is it only I?

Northern Ireland as a model for Israeli-Palestinian peace?

Whatever people think (and say) about Guardians' CiF (Comment is Free), it remains a good source of entertainment. Today, for example, I have stumbled on an article Middle East: a Belgian solution? by a Belgian contributor Khaled Diab.

The article offers two models for solution of our crisis: Northern Ireland, which is discussed rather briefly and Belgium, the subject in which the author feels rather better informed (and justifiably so). Unfortunately, I got stuck at the beginning of the article, upon reading this statement:

While I have expressed scepticism vis-à-vis Mitchell's chances of success – because the shift in US foreign policy has been mainly rhetorical, the Israeli position has hardened and the Palestinians are in disarray – there are certainly lessons to be learnt from Northern Ireland.

Even if I were searching for something to gast my flabber on purpose, I couldn't have come up with anything better.

Let me recount the story of Six Counties briefly: forcible eviction of local landowners, settlement by "imported" population of a different religious persuasion, 400 or so years of slow mutual bloodletting and, eventually, an enforced uneasy peace.

Granting that some people on both sides of Middle Eastern divide will willingly sign up for another three or four hundred years of conflict, seeing how it empowers them, I am not sure that Mr Diab has employed sufficient analytical abilities when he recommended the NI model.

The point is that this model ended in the occupying power (UK) remaining the occupying power, the settlers remaining the settlers and the Irish nation still split between the two countries.

I seriously doubt that this is what the author had in mind...

October 9, 2009 - The Day of Confusion

How do you say WTF in Swedish?

Update: and/or Norwegian, sorry for my ignorance.

Gaddafi Jewish too now? Oh boy...

The ink on the latest "revelations" about Mahmoud the Mad's Jewish roots has barely dried and evaporated (after all it was a canard, created, most probably, by his political rivals). And here we are on the brink of another scandal: the Maariv article (in Hebrew) tells a story about the Jewish mom who produced Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, that unique, albeit a bit deranged, offspring.

Maariv received a corroboration by one of the female relatives that Qadaffi's mother's name was Rosella (Rosalla?) Tamas. When Rosella was 18, she acquainted and married a Muslim man. One of the offsprings of the marriage was Muammar.

The article goes into further details of the genealogy of Tamas family. Suffice to say that, according to it, Muammar has quite a few close relatives in Ramat Gan, where he will be warmly received, no doubt.

Well, I am not sure the King of Kings is considering repatriation at the moment, but the story clears up at least one of the question marks: the uncertainty about his name: Gaddafi, Qadaffi, Gadhaffi, etc. etc.

And, of course, Elders have lost a valuable agent, once his true identity was revealed, but his usefulness was in doubt lately anyway...

Jet lag my foot...

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

On superiority of Iranian science and glowing Mahmoud

I don't know whether you recall the old story where Mahmoud the Mad was bragging about his ability to glow - and no less than in green, the color being both Islamically and politically correct nowadays.

"A DVD is making a splash in Iran. No, it's not the new, pirated King Kong. It shows Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad telling an ayatollah how he was miraculously enveloped by a green aura when he delivered his fiery speech at the recent United Nations General Assembly in New York. He added that for half an hour the array of world leaders, in awe, didn't even blink."

After some research, the green glow was traced to a few Taiwanese scientists who first experimented on pigs, making them glow in green as well. Of course, the suspicion fell on these practical jokers immediately.


The truth, however, could be different. Check this out:

7 Glow-in-the-Dark Mushroom Species Discovered

Since the story about glowing Mahmoud hit the media sometime in 2005, and the discovery of the glowing mushrooms was published only recently, there is only one conclusion to make: Iranian eggheads were years ahead of their colleagues, concealing the discovery for several years. All this to make Mahmoud the Mad a green halo during his UN stand-up appearance.

Of course, consumption of the mushrooms explains many other oddities in his behavior. And it goes easy on one's memory: MMM - Mushrooms - Mahmoud - Mad...

Hat tip: Lesley.

Chinese virginity-faking devices are a Zionist plot

Once again the subject is broached by the media:

Egyptian politicians have demanded that an ‘Artificial Virginity Hymen’ kit be banned in the country, calling it a “mark of shame”.

Shame or fame, who will be the judge? Anyway, this time the article contains a link to the offending device seller. Which is rather more free publicity, I suspect.

After searching for some references to the manufacturer (a Japanese one, if you read the small letters on that site) in the Elders' archive, we have come up with a discovery of another ancient plot by the Elders' eugenics department.

It appears that the liquid contents of the kit are choke full of identical spermatozoons produced in our secret laboratory by cloning. The boys are especially strong and equipped by spermicidal abilities to enable them to win the race to the egg by eliminating competition.

Most important, they all look like this one:

It is also guaranteed that the babies will all be male and will all look like that. For this reason the Elders' requested and were granted a special dispensation from the Chief Rabbi: the babies will be considered Jewish notwithstanding the fact that the moms are not. "With such a punem there is no doubt the kid is a Yid", Chief Rabbi decreed flatly.

Oh, and by the way, the statement "This item will be shipped from China" on the linked site is misleading. For Egyptian customers it will travel in a jiffy from a much closer address... And there is a special discount for repeat customers.

Manuel Zelaya - these are your friends?

After the first outburst of the ousted president of Honduras about the Israeli mercenaries that are torturing him with high-frequency radiation, I was rather entertained by this product of his feverish imagination, ready to discount it as a side effect of his besieged existence in the embassy basement and, probably, paranoid mindset to start with. After all, any would be South American ruler must carry a healthy amount of paranoia, lest some of his colleagues decide to unseat him in a South American style putsch.

I was also mindful of many of my blogger colleagues who feel acute discomfort viewing what is considered by many today an unlawful coup that ended in Zelaya's plight - from exile to that embassy basement. Notwithstanding the opinion that there are enough reasons to consider Zelaya's removal a perfectly lawful act.

But then comes another question, which is not a legal issue and one that could be classified as intangible by a stickler for dry logic. Who, indeed, are Zelaya's friends? Aside from his buddy Chaves who coached him on the way to imposing what would have effectively become a dictatorship.

WSJ article Revolutionary Anti-Semitism shows at least one friend more odious than even Caudillo Chavez - one David Romero Ellner, Executive Director of Radio Globo, Honduras.

Mr Ellner takes the feverish revelations of his ex-president a bit further:

Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn't right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites.

Again, like many of his ilk, Ellner is confusing the politically correct "Israelis" with less politically correct "Jews" or "Israelites". Otherwise, he is an all-around fine supporter of Zelaya and Chavez. Well, and a convicted pedophile:

A few years ago he was convicted and served time in prison for raping his own daughter.

There is more information on Mr Ellner, but I have to visit a vomitorium rather urgently, so you will have to read it yourself over there at Sultan Knish's place.

As for myself, I think that Mr Zelaya shouldn't count on my support anymore. Too bad for him.

Update: The pathetic tapeworm apologizes. Says his grandfather was Jewish. Fuck him.

Thirty-Six Years Ago Today, Richard Nixon Saved Israel—but Got No Credit

Can't say I hold the late Tricky Dick in high regard. But, saying this, we should remember that, as any man, his personality was more complex than a few black on white lines in the history books. It appears that we, the Israelis, should be more than grateful to Nixon for daring to go where his heart commanded him - without hesitation and doubt.

What is clear, from the preponderance of information provided by those directly involved in the unfolding events, is that President Richard Nixon — overriding inter-administration objections and bureaucratic inertia — implemented a breathtaking transfer of arms, code-named Operation Nickel Grass, that over a four-week period involved hundreds of jumbo U.S. military aircraft delivering more than 22,000 tons of armaments.

Is there a lesson for his successors? Definitely: when you are going to shoot - shoot, don't talk.

Is there a lesson for us? Absolutely: be prepared and don't count on another Operation Nickel Grass...

Mercedes Sosa RIP

Took me some time to find this one, where she sings a song in Hebrew during her last visit here, in 2008.



RIP, La Negra. We all love you.

Bush lied - Chicago failed

Or, at least, this is what Rev. Jesse Jackson would like you to believe.

Isn't this specific dead horse getting a bit too high for your olfactory sense?

"Trying to look innocent" - an offense in Australia?

Yep. This is what the story tells:

Officers said they found it loitering near a fence "trying to look innocent", reports the Northern Territory News.

And of course there is a stool pigeon involved:

Locals called out the police after the 7ft saltwater crocodile turned up at Arrkuluk Camp in the Northern Territory.

So, where is that famous presumption of innocence, I ask you? Isn't it a case of pure unadulterated speciism? Is it enough to be looking different and innocent now to be arrested?

I think a good reptilian lawyer - a lizard or, even better, a snake, will easily demolish the prosecution case.

Demi Moore Bush Picture - what about it?

An interesting observation here:

Every couple of months the search engines go wild again looking for that Demi Moore Bush pic. It usually coincides with either Demi Moore or her husband, Ashton Kuchner, doing something or other.

Well, one needs to keep the surfers calm, so here:

It's not exactly a bush, as you surely notice, but it's as twisted as your fingers will become if you surf too much for such stuff. Not to speak about hair growing on your palms.

I, personally, blame Bush for this too. Works anytime.