The article The Schoolmarms Tell the Terrorists to Play Nice by prof Barry Rubin is written with unusual for him harsh overtones. I can easily understand how the increasingly self-important buffoonish style of Tom Friedman could get up one's nose. It's enough to see that "Muslim Brotherhood needs to understand..." bit to understand how delusional the man has become. Well, he was moving in this direction all the time.
But then - read the whole article.
This item is of a personal interest to me:
The Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said authorities recommended the 1.5 million truck drivers in the country keep records of how often they go to the restroom and how long they spend on the toilet, so they can accurately determine how much of their income should be written off when their taxes are calculated...I am not sure I understand how sitting on the toilet allows one to write off one's income, but if I find a similar regulation in the local tax code... yeeehaw! - our income tax authority will be deep in er... debt, I can assure you.
A real drama, but thankfully, with a happy ending.
Anorak has a special opinion on the reasons for this attempt.
The thesis seems to be conclusively proven by this:
Two Turkish men were hospitalized on arrival to Turkey after drinking camel's milk and urine while on an umrah visit, daily Hürriyet reported.Imam, obviously, was protected by the power of his office (or even by a higher power).
The men believed the camel's milk and urine to be good for health, claiming it was written in a hadith. An imam, according to the Turkish men, also drank the milk and urine with them.
The sentence that caught my attention in this article is at the end of the quote:
The official, described as having direct knowledge of an analysis done by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies of the Dec. 12 launch by the secretive Communist country, told CNN the United States and its allies were caught "off guard" even though U.S. and Japanese military vessels and missile defenses were in place to monitor it and to protect land, sea and space.So, of course, I went googling for the "dukes". Now I know. These are the same dukes that CIA fellows can't find their backsides with. Without a manual, that is.
"We had our dukes up, operationally, but we were caught off guard," the official was quoted as saying.
And this is the problem with the moral outrage of moral people who recoil at the killing. If their anger is devoid of context and forgetful of consequence, if it focuses on one side to a conflict without looking at the other, it uses only half the world to describe the whole.Yep. But read the whole article.
The article starts with an interesting quote, to whit "An Iranian official is saying the country may open a controversial military site to inspectors of the United Nations nuclear watchdog." There is, naturally, a catch. This is Mahmoud the Mad's domain, after all. The catch is that "the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency may visit Parchin military site “if the foreign threats weaken”."
Now, let me work this out. If you westerners drop the sanctions and stop suggesting that there is the possibility of a military "solution" to the Iranian nuclear programme, we might (heavily underlined and with further conditions attached, of course) let you in to this particular plant.
By then, of course, all sensitive, might lead to a bomb, materials and technology will have magically been disappeared - to a completely different nuclear plant, to which either access is denied, or no-one in the /West even knows exists.
Now where have I come across this logic before in the Middle East. Ah, yes, of course, Hamas: 'we will negotiate with Israel once the Israelis have withdrawn to the Green Line'. Funny sort of negotiations, those: you retreat to the position that you see as the ultimate final outcome, with or without any other aspects to that deal, and we'll START to talk to you. And that statement was made just about the time of Operation Cast Lead. Wonder what that says about the effectiveness of Cast Lead, given that this was the first such statement from them.
I can't quite make up my mind whether those massive intellects terrorist birdbrains were serious or only speaking to the useful idiots who go around chanting "we are all Hamas now'?
Whatever.
By: Brian Goldfarb
Good news for me:
Engineers at Chicago-based Boeing Co. used sacks of potatoes as stand-ins for passengers as they worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals. They needed full planes to get accurate results during signal testing, but they couldn't ask people to sit motionless for days while data was gathered.Being a quintessential potato couch and seeing how WiFi is helping me out in this important task, I can only say bravo to the tireless Boeing engineers.
Judeopundit aka Yitzchak Goodman on the moronic ruminations of the so called professor. An exceptionally elegant takedown. And a must read.
Tit for tat in US-Russia relationship is one of many traditions surviving the demise of the Soviet Union. The story of Dmitry Yakovlev bill, which was a Russian response to the Magnitsky bill was, however, so absurd that it defies imagination. And who better to explain the absurdity than a Russian journalist, the intrepid and hard hitting Yulia Leonidovna Latynina? Her article, titled Cannibal's mistake, deserves reading, thus deserves a translation, even if a poor one, with Google's help. But first - some background.
On December 19, the State Duma voted 400 to 4 to ban the international adoption of Russian children into the United States. The bill was named after Dmitri Yakovlev, a Russian toddler who died in 2008 of heat stroke, being neglected by his adoptive American father.
This measure was an obvious response (in the tit for tat custom) to the Magnitsky bill, so named after a tragic death of a Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitski, who died in prison, where he was put on a fabricated charge. Jailing of Magnitsky was a punishment for investigating and making public many cases of corruption by various Russian public officials and oligarchs.
So here comes Yulia Latynina to tell you about hypocrisy of the Dmitri Yakovlev bill. While a bit too naive about the American society, she doesn't mince words describing the grim reality of the modern Russia and its orphans.
Enjoy.
As the old IDF saying goes: "This is what you have and with it you must win".
This ToI article shows clearly that Bibi is what we have. I think - unfortunately, but what do I know. David Horovitz is noncommittal.
Well, at least we have David Horovitz for the chief of what became arguably the best Israeli online newspaper. Not a bad deal, all things considered.
In a normal course of events I would have skipped this blighted subject: verbal shenanigans of a certain imam or pastor or rabbi are interesting only in direct proportion to their stupidity or funniness or hatefulness. That one was hardly exceptional, so that Ynet article wasn't of much interest to me. It says:
Australia's biggest mosque, The Lakemba, issued a Fatwa on Facebook against Christmas, stating that Muslims who will celebrate the holy day would be committing a "sin." The mosque later took down the online post after it drew wide condemnation from Muslims and non-Muslims alike.Well, and then I would have forgotten it altogether, the problem was that Google brought up a few other articles on the subject, including (for instance) that one:
The Lebanese Muslim Association claims it organised for a festive message be written in the sky above Lakemba Mosque following reports of a fatwa being declared on Christmas.Fair enough, and the incident could be considered over and done with.
The sky message comes after an Imam at Australia's biggest mosque reportedly issued a fatwa against Christmas, warning followers it is a ''sin'' to even wish people a Merry Christmas.So the story didn't really start with Facebook:
The ruling, which followed a similar lecture during Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque, was posted on its Facebook site on Saturday, according to media reports.
The head imam at Lakemba, Sheikh Yahya Safi, reportedly told the congregation during Friday prayers they should not have anything to do with Christmas.It is only later that some folks decided to tone down the incident, ascribing it to a mistake by a young (and eager, I guess) member of the congregation:
The original post came from text copied and pasted from the internet by junior members of staff and the mosque did not endorse the message, the Lebanese Muslim Association said.What a pile of crapola...
Samier Dandan, the president of the association told ABC television the Facebook post was a mistake by a youth officer.
"We have given him a warning," he said.
Of course, the article attracted me purely out of prurient interest. As such, an extended quote is on the way:
An Australian court has ruled that a bureaucrat who was injured while having sex on a business trip is eligible for worker's compensation benefits.Well, prurient/shmurient, but the questions I have are actually technical:
The Full Bench of the Federal Court ruled Dec. 13 in favor of the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and rejecting the appeal of the federal government's insurer.
The woman was hospitalized after being injured in 2007 during sex with a male friend while staying in a motel in the town of Nowra, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of her hometown of Sydney.
During the sex, a glass light fitting was torn from its mount above the bed and landed on her face, injuring her nose and mouth. She later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government.
Shaun, being an expert in that stuff, will definitely detect the image in the picture:
This is for Jewish and philo-semitic lovers of Tolkien and all things Middle Earth. It's okay to be a fan, because Tolkien was not only not antisemitic, he was, if anything, a philo-semite. How do we know? Well, The Forward tells us so, so it must be true.
Actually, it's a bit more concrete than that. The article linked to has evidence that Tolkien rejected attempts by the Nazis to recruit him as an "Aryan" (in his own coining, "arisch"), regretting that to the best of his knowledge he didn't have any Jewish ancestry, but at the same time didn't believe himself to be an Aryan.
I'm relieved, because not only did I thoroughly enjoy reading "The Lord of the Rings", I thoroughly enjoyed reading it as a bed-time story to my (then very young) daughters - though I have to confess that doing the voices of the Orcs was painful on the throat: now they're the Nazi types in the books - as, they assure me, they thoroughly enjoyed hearing it read. It also means that you Tolkien fans and readers of "simplyjews" out there can continue viewing your dvds of The Lord of the Rings, go the new film(s) of The Hobbit, and go back to the books! JRR is one of the Good Guys!
Merry Christmas, or a couple of days off, or whatever. Just don't drink and drive. I need all the readers I can get!
By: Brian Goldfarb
Here's a turn up for the books: HRW "blasts Hamas for targeting Israeli civilians with rockets". This comes, of course, just a very few months after the founder of HRW had attacked his creation for its lack of balance in reporting of the Middle East. I wonder, he wrote a tad cynically, whether that attack has had an effect on funding? The new report says that "Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population have no lawful justification and are a war crime...assigning Hamas blame for civilian deaths in Israel and Gaza during last month’s Operation Pillar of Defense." Note, especially, that "civilian deaths in...Gaza" quote.
Regrettably, that isn't because Hamas brought it on itself, but because of the rockets that fell short. That said, the report does note that "“Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “There is simply no legal justification for launching rockets at populated areas.”." As the report makes clear, "...armed groups repeatedly fired rockets from densely populated areas, near homes, businesses and a hotel, unnecessarily placing civilians in the vicinity at grave risk from Israeli counter-fire." Elsewhere, it is noted that this is a war crime. Just because Hamas has " “[a] limited military arsenal that relies on largely indiscriminate rockets [this] does not justify a failure to respect the laws of war, which apply to all sides in a conflict whatever their capabilities...”."
At last, someone who the so-called "progressives" might take some notice of has made this point: Hamas and the rest of the terrorist organisations are committing a war crime every time they fire a rocket indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.
Of course, HRW can't leave it there. This report "comes a week after an HRW paper pounded Israel for journalists’ deaths in Gaza during the conflict." My memory may be faulty here, but weren't those "journalists" Hamas activists in a car boldly labelled "Press"? I always thought that the laws of war didn't protect activists (be they IDF members or Hamas activists) operating in disguise.
Ah well, where Israel's concerned, it can never be all good news, can it?
Two other stories to go with this one: firstly, Syrian rebels are claiming that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in a raid on a rebel held town; and, from the same Times of Israel issue, it is reported that the Egyptian forces have intercepted a shipment of rockets intended for Gaza, and did this in the Sinai penonsula. Only 17 of them, but that's 17 fewer that will be available to launch towards Israel.
By: Brian Goldfarb
To all our Christian and non-denominational friends wherever and whoever you are.
And for a smile:
The Times of Israel has this story, which starts with the following quote: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel was carefully watching developments in Syria, and especially the regime’s sizeable stockpile of chemical weapons, which Israeli officials are afraid could be turned against the Jewish state." It goes on to claim that the US is prepared to send in troops, along with various allies. Or, as The Times of Israel notes, "The Times of London reported that the US, along with several key allies, is prepared to launch a military intervention in Syria should the Assad government resort to using its chemical weapons against the rebels."
Further on, it is suggested that the Israeli government is also prepared, whether alone or with allies, to act should the rebels get hold of the chemical weapons and use them on Israel. Hows that for a happy new year?
By: Brian Goldfarb
I should have know that I spoke too soon. No sooner had I pressed "send" on the previous item (that and this one via The Elder of Ziyon site) than this pops up. Still, it's still a happy holidays item, as you might guess from the headline, which says it all: "Spanish Satellite Provider Bans Iranian Channel That Blamed Newtown Shootings on Israel" I'll just leave you to relish the fact that, finally, someone else has sussed out just what Press TV is all about.
By: Brian Goldfarb
The Times of Israel has stumbled across a new virus apparently targeting Iranian computer systems. That's the reason for the heading to this item. Further, it appears to especially like Microsoft Windows XP & Windows 7, he said smugly, given that he was typing this on an iMac. As the writer of the article says, "A new apparently simple computer virus targeting Iran may be more potent than it appears, according to an Israeli security expert."
It may be more serious than otherwise supposedly "simple" viruses are supposed to be because "The malware, considered a Trojan by security experts because it sits on a hard drive for a period and acts only at a specific trigger point, is being termed Batchwiper in the security community."
Heh, heh, heh...
Happy holidays to all you Zionists out there. And a less than happy holiday to the ayatollahs and their supposed puppet Mahmoud the Mad.
By: Brian Goldfarb
Another year, another Christmas. The survivors of the Mayan end of the days are blearily opening their eyes looking forward to some hearty celebrations of their survival. And, as every year, The Guardian produces its usual broadside on the precarious situation in the Zionist-controlled Bethlehem. This time, though, the editors have toned down the headline. Instead of the regular:If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed and its varieties, this time they have chosen an almost neutral No room at the inn – but Bethlehem's popularity is a boon for Palestinians. Almost, but not quite. After all, it has a whiff of a complaint, and an unprejudiced reader may want to ask why didn't the Zionists make sure there are enough rooms at the inn?
Unlike the last year article (and many preceding it) that was discussed here, this one starts on a somewhat positive note:
All of the West Bank city's 3,700 hotel rooms are likely to be filled, with thousands more visitors making day trips from nearby Jerusalem.But don't feel cheated: the author, well known Harriet Sherwood, will not leave you in suspense for long:
This year has seen a 20% growth in the numbers of visitors to Bethlehem compared with the previous year, and officials hope for a further rise in tourism to Palestine next year.
But officials say the local tourist industry still faces huge hurdles as a result of Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank. Israel controls all entry to the West Bank.Etc. So no worries, all is well, and the business is definitely as usual in the good ole Guardian. And you wouldn't find there any reference to the slight problem Christians (the remaining ones) are still experiencing in West Bank in general and in Bethlehem in particular:
The number of Christians in the West Bank is on the decline, and many speak of persecution by the Muslim majority, but always anonymously, fearing retribution.
Christians have even lost their majority in Bethlehem where more than two-thirds of the some 50,000 Palestinian residents are now Muslim.Oh well, Merry Christmas, Harriet, and many happy rewrites!
The rest of that psalm (the exact fate of the right hand) is disputed in its various English translations, but a recent case of forgetting Jerusalem should put an end to doubts:
And it belongs to a BBC article:
GM sprouts 'could blow away flatulence'
The following comes from The Tablet, with the second link coming from the Haaretz article The Tablet links to. It suggests that UN sources (should we choose to believe them, and why should we?) are claiming that Islamists and Jihadists are being drawn into Syria as the regime continues to crumble. I'm not certain that this is, in any way, new news: this has been reported for some weeks, even months, now. However, the disturbing part is in the sentence that comes after "Jihadists from around the world": Why are the Jordanian officials warning Israel as well as Western nations? Do they think that (a) Israel is somehow responsible for this development? One would have thought that Israel would prefer a stable Syria that took notice to avoid upsetting its powerful neighbour to its south-west, even if the regime is murdering its citizens, to an unstable Islamist/Jihadist regime that foamed at the mouth at the mere mention of Israel. Or (b), do they think Israel doesn't know this and is unaware of the consequences of this development? I'd be willing to place a small wager on Israeli intelligence knowing this long before the Jordanians woke up to threat, more immediate for them, to their north.
Anyway, a quote from the article shows what I mean about the mention of Israel: ""...senior Jordanian officials warned this week that Syria may devolve into a "black hole that sucks Jihadists from around the world."...they [further] claim[ed] that despite their warnings to Western nations and Israel against this expected development in their strife-ridden northern neighbor, advanced weaponry continues to flow into the hands of Salafist and Jihadist organizations who are gradually taking over the rebellion against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad."
The further link mentioned above gets us to this report, again from Haaretz, via The Tablet, of an Israeli spy satellite spotting an Iranian ship being loaded with missiles from Sudan bound, presumably, for Gaza. The most worrying aspect of this is that "“Regardless of the cease-fire agreement, we will attack and destroy any shipment of arms to Gaza once we have spotted it,” an Israeli defense source told the Times." (Haharetz, in turn, has these reports from the Sunday Times of the UK). It may also be of concern to Israel that the Iranian cargo ship is being accompanied by an Iranian warship which will, it is assumed, escort the cargo ship into the Red Sea and, presumably, at least to a transhipping in Egypt.
When (and if) the IDF will seek to destroy the cargo isn't part of this report.
By: Brian Goldfarb
What did they depict first on the Canadian flag that they had to cover with a maple leaf afterward?
I don't know - let the better hot search win. And I don't know whether calling one's daughter Favor is worse than believing some stupid calendar-related gag.
But, no matter which of the two searches you prefer, you have to relax. And what is better than a foggy day on the marshes? Click to embiggen and watch:
That's a fact:
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees Jerusalem’s Western Wall, said a worshiper found an envelope at the site Wednesday with 507 checks in the amount of about $1 million each. They were not addressed to anyone, and it’s doubtful they can be cashed.You may be discombobulated by this detail:
Rabinovitch said most are Nigerian.But don't worry, my dear friend. You see, Rabbi Rabinovitch has a long time ago taken a vow not to handle money in any form and for any purpose. Being his nephew twice removed on his second wife's side, I am usually charged with performing the (distasteful, but necessary) task of taking care of the checks left at the Western Wall.
If you have never seen this PC-inspired series of e-mails from an alleged Human Resources Director of a medium sized company, you should read it - it's a must. While not new, it warms my heart again and again, once a year when Christmas is closing in.
I thought it may be worth to mention that:
Iran's Press TV website quoted Michael Harris, former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona and GOP campaign finance chairman, as saying that "An Israeli death squad was involved in the Sandy Hook shooting."As you can see, Press TV doesn't ask you to take the Ayatollahs' word as gospel. They have brought in an expert, and he doesn't half talk, he is a veritable eruption of information on Zionist plots.
A prominent Phoenix-based analyst tells Press TV that the Israelis and their media like Hollywood are behind most of the violent incidents happening within the United States namely the recent deadly New Town school shooting incident.It may seem to an unprejudiced eye that Mike Harris was kept for years in a solitary confinement, gagged with his hands tied lest he writes some of that on a wall or on his toilet paper. And that this eruption is his first opportunity to share his information with the whole free world, starting, of course, with his sponsor in Tehran.
Michael Harris came in third place in the 2006 Republican primary, which Len Munsil won before falling to Democrat Janet Napolitano. He is now the Phoenix-based financial editor of Veterans Today, a conspiracy-minded “military and foreign affairs journal” whose editorial board includes former Pakistani and Russian spies.The "Veterans Today" rung a bell: indeed, it is a baby - an apple of his eye, so to say - of another prominent personality, one Gordon Duff, whom I already had a pleasure to present to our readers.
The Soviet style Bolshevik’s hidden within the German government do not care about justice for David Duke; they only care about destroying him for his truthful and forthright manner which he exposes the true nature of Jewish inspired Communism worldwide.Leaving aside the lack of editorial oversight re some basic grammar, the passionate call for freedom for one of the foremost patriots and spiritual leaders is a real doozy to read. Of course, leaving aside the insignificant detail of the patriot and leader being outed as the one of the early models of the Elders' Zionist reptilians.
Last week’s intelligence revelation that Iran has six nuclear weapons that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, acquired in 2003, was significant.If you are still laughing when reading this, considering the huge oil reserves that the Zionists plan to flog at inflated prices, don't: the conspiracy goes much deeper, because:
The other significant revelation of the week was that Iran and Israel have colluded for a military engagement to close the Straits of Hormuz for a period of time to drive up the price of oil.
Israel’s financial sponsors (House of Rothschild, City of London et al.) have already bet the farm on the price of oil futures rising above $120/barrel December 1st from the current spot price of $81-89/barrel; they cannot void those futures contracts, currently there are no buyers at that price.I bet you don't laugh now, seeing as how the Rothschilds were linked. Anyway, Mr Harris has learned them Ayatollahs how not to be Zionist patsies, and they must be still reeling from this slap on their chops. Fact is that the nuclear war described by Mr Harris never happened, definitely because the timely publishing of his piece frightened the Zionists or the Iranians. Or both, I like to think. Well, it figures, and the world must be thankful to the fearless whistleblower. How did the Press TV miss this article is beyond me.
Mike Harris has over thirty years experience in manufacturing, finance and technology development. A participant in domestic and international start-ups, acquisitions and mergers, Mr. Harris founded Harris Technical Sales Inc. that became Motorola’s vendor of choice, placing over $1.2 billion of capital equipment worldwide. As Chairman of the Board of Eclipse Technology, improvements in logistics decreased Motorola downtime by 60% and decreased mean time between failures by 90%. As Chairman and CEO of TFG Acquisition Corporation, he drove an additional $300 million of value to Motorola shareholders.Do you see how Motorola profited and continues to profit from Mr. Harris' activities? And who benefits from Motorola's profits, if not Google, the insidious arm of the Zionism? Granted, a few hundreds millions are pocket change for the Elders, who, according to same Mr. Harris, are breakfasting on billions and dining on trillions, but still... he has outed himself loud and clear. Not quite one of the Rot... you know whom I mean, but quite a busy bee of the Zionist cause, our Mike Harris.
It pays to be prepared, and here are some Russians who, out of civic responsibility, offer a free end of the world service:
On a very light note (sort of), and via The Elder of Ziyon, comes this small item. Note the spelling (and I guess the pronounciation) of the first 7 letters of the blog heading, and think Friday night. The subtitle of the blog is "Middle East Nonsense. Anyway, it's a brief item, and here's a brief quote: "Will [December 2012] be the first month in 5 plus years without a rocket or mortar being fired from Gaza into Israel?" No idea, but read and enjoy it.
By: Brian Goldfarb
Here's a short item from The Times of Israel, to be filed in the "If only..." column. Typical quote (just about sums the three or so paragraphs) "Israel could destroy Iran’s electric network with a specially designed electromagnetic bomb in the event of a military conflict between the countries, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday." [I presume that's the UK Sunday Times].
By: Brian Goldfarb
Winston Churchill famously said that "To jaw, jaw is better than to war, war". He was talking during the Cold War, a phrase he had helped to coin with his earlier talk of "an Iron Curtain descending over Europe". However, some people just don't know when they're well off, or, come to that, when to talk rather than fight. Despite the Mayor of Hebron downplaying, as the title of the article linked to below says, talk of a third intifada, there are those who claim it's already started.
How do we know this? Well, according to The Times of Israel, "On Friday, a group of Palestinian youths from divergent political streams formed the “National Unity Brigades,” which said it was already fighting a third intifada, or uprising." This demonstrates either remarkable optimism that this time things will be different or, instead, remarkable stupidity. At a time when the IDF has severely degraded Hamas's ability to fire rockets into Israel and managed to get Morsi of Egypt to police the cease-fire, when their most likely nearby supporter, Assad of Syria, looks finally and definitively to be on the way out and, as reported just a day or so ago, Abdullah of Jordan appears to be promoting a resumption of talks between Israel and the PA makes this announcement (and fact?) likely to be on the stupid side of the equation.
As though the IDF are going to be cowed or even bothered by a group of youths, with more time than sense on their hands, threatening to "set the land on fire". The IDF (and, of course, the Border Police) are more likely to sweep them them aside. Unfortunately, this may also mean deaths on the palestinian side. And we know what the world will make of that. Deaths on the Israeli side will, of course, be ignored. As usual.
By: Brian Goldfarb
The first category mentioned above is not a big surprise for anyone who watches the news from Northern Europe - the cradle of most progressive, semi-socialist and politically correct regimes. So this is quite an old news:
Israel’s ambassador to Denmark reportedly warned Jews to avoid being identified as such in Copenhagen.As a small consolation (is it?), another group of folks considers itself endangered species:
“We advise Israelis who come to Denmark and want to go to the synagogue to wait to don their skull caps until they enter the building and not to wear them in the street, irrespective of whether the areas they are visiting are seen as being safe,” Amb. Arthur Avnon is quoted as telling AFP on Wednesday. The news agency reported that Avnon also advised visitors not to "speak Hebrew loudly" or demonstrably wear Star of David jewelry.
We have confronted police about this, but the answer we got is that there are areas of Copenhagen where they cannot walk around in uniform -- which is no answer at all, but rather an indication of how chaotic the situation has become.There is a lot left unsaid between the lines of that short article, but I really don't want to go there, so use it for your homework, if you will, please.
Mostly gentlemen, I guess, but who knows: I don't have any access to statistics of that kind. Anyway, here is the gist of the news:
If you’re in the U.S. and trying to search for boobs on Google Images right now, you’re going to have a tougher time. That’s because Google has prevented U.S. users from disabling SafeSearch. And if you want to find NSFW images, you’re going to have to be more specific with your searches.A few remarks to that:
Google users should be familiar with the SafeSearch toolbar at the top right of Image searches. Until recently, that bar allowed users to select MODERATE, STRICT, or OFF. As of right now, those options have been removed from the drop-down menu – but only in the U.S.
Farmer Jones and farmer Smith, or Parable of Proportionality.
Wild West circa 18..
It was a warm and sunny April morning. Farmer Jones was having his second cup of after-breakfast coffee, preparing for a long workday, half-listening to the voices of his kids from elsewhere in the house, half-listening to the chorus of birds outside his window. Suddenly a volley of gunshots, mixed with sounds of broken glass and shouts from other rooms of his substantial house, disrupted what promised to be another beautiful morning.
Quickly dropping under the windowsill Farmer Jones felt a few stings on his arms and neck, but immediately established that it's just a few scratches from small shards of glass or other flying debris. Crouching on all four, he left the kitchen and called for his wife, getting an immediate response from her and the kids, who have already hugged the floor in different rooms. The family was used to such occurrences, and everyone was sounding more or less calm.
To get to the "armory", as Farmer Jones and his wife referred to his gun locker, was a matter of a few seconds. This time Farmer Jones pulled out a marksman's rifle, recently bought for him as a present by his rich uncle Samuel. "You don't have to use it, but I shall feel better knowing you have one," was uncle Samuel's explanation for the gift. Making a notice to thank Samuel next time he talks to him, farmer Jones quietly slithered out of the house through the back door and, using the shrubbery surrounding the back yard, crawled to a point where he could covertly observe the area where his farm bordered that of farmer Smith, his neighbor and sworn enemy. A reflection from an old gun barrel, shiny after years of use, caught his attention immediately. Focusing the superb optical scope on the spot was a matter of seconds. Farmer Jones briefly thanked the fates for making him spend a few hours training and tuning the rifle.
The image that sprung into view of the scope made him smile, in spite of the earlier fright and boiling blood. Farmer Smith, all 140 scrawny pounds of his poisonous personality, wasn't even hiding appropriately, almost fully visible behind a bush, where he lodged his gun on a branch for support.
The distance didn't present any difficulty with that rifle, and farmer Jones was able to blow away the scoundrel easily with the first shot. However, once again farmer Jones checked himself. In all previous altercations with farmer Smith so far neither Jones nor any member of his family was seriously hurt, farmer Smith being a notoriously poor shot. Farmer Jones, a gifted shooter, did his best not to cause serious injuries to Smith. But the cup of farmer Jones' resentment was overflowing. He focused his scope on Smith's knee and pulled the trigger. The piggish squeal, heard clearly over the distance, told farmer Jones that the bullet was well spent. He turned back, not bothering to watch the ensuing activities of his neighbor's household. This was the day when his legal nightmares started.
The feud between farmer Jones and farmer Smith was going back in time for several generations. It was really impossible to firmly establish the initial reasons for the rivalry, but several mutual accusations of property theft, cattle rustling and poisoning various farm animals were passed down the genealogical tree faithfully. Farmer Jones, being well-to-do and, in general, a forgiving kind of fellow, tended to laugh off the stories and even made a few approaches to farmer Smith in an attempt to bring the whole rivalry business to a peaceful end, but was scornfully rejected by the latter. The latest flare-up was concerned with a few cows that, according to farmer Smith, were poisoned by his neighbor, big clamps of Johnson grass freely growing over his place notwithstanding. Farmer Smith was of a habit to blame his numerous business misfortunes and his permanent state of almost-poverty and tittering on the brink of financial ruin on somebody else. And Farmer Jones was most frequently that somebody.
The feud with farmer Smith could have been settled by farmer Jones forcefully or otherwise, but the problem was that most of surrounding farms in the county were populated by a myriad of Smith's relatives, mostly no good freeloaders, as poor as farmer Smith or worse. Granted, there were a few wealthy, even fairly rich relatives, but their assistance to their impoverished brethren was scant and infrequent. But all of them, poor or not, were firmly on the farmer Smith's side against farmer Jones. A few of them have even become a sort of lawyers, after doing some prison time for various offenses. In any case, as a voters, this bunch of relatives was a formidable force in the county.
After a perfunctory investigation, farmer Jones was charged with "disproportional use of force", attempt to murder, causing a major injury and other sundry charges. Skillful defense lawyer was able to rubbish all of the charges, presenting incontrovertible evidence of farmer Smith's potentially homicidal behavior, however the jury, liberally seeded by various distant members of the Smith's clan, thought differently, and farmer Jones, while not sent to jail, is burdened with compensation he has to pay to farmer Smith - till death do them part.
The local newspaper, Progressive Daily, hailed the groundbreaking court decision, describing in lavish detail the hitherto unheard of precision rifle used by farmer Jones, his generally bloodthirsty attitude, standoffish behavior and suspicious wealth. Militant inclinations of farmer Jones and his cruel treatment of farmer Smith, "whose rifle, as it is widely known, has a bent barrel and cannot be used with an intent to kill anyway", were nailed to the wall of shame.
Most of the work for this post was already done by Norm, it his two posts. First of them, Not enough Israelis killed, shows a BBC correspondent, Mishal Husain (hm...), who tries, in a manner of Grand Inquisitor, to provoke Israeli Gil Hoffman, the chief political correspondent and analyst for The Jerusalem Post, asking about the number of Israelis killed by the Gazan rocket fire. Her intention is clear: to put through to her viewers, in the form of a noisily repeated question to the interviewee, a suggestion that "disproportional force" is being used by Israel against population of Gaza.
A partial answer, from another Norm's post, Red for danger, shows what Israeli children in the southern Israel (general population of 1.5 million, similar to the Gazan population) go through for the last 7 years. No need to expand on this:
Behavior of Ms Husain in that first clip is not unique, unfortunately. Her insistence that Gazan rockets are, for most part, harmless homemade contraptions, unable to kill enough people to be of consideration, may sound absurd, taken out of relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as long as it is the I/P conflict that is being mulled upon by many a Western "thinker", the argument suddenly springs to life and sounds as valid as death and taxes.
And the next logical step of such a talking head, of course, is to consider the "proportionality" of Israeli military responses to the Gazan attacks. While most of the talking heads cannot for the life of them define the principle of proportionality, all of them rely on their so called "common sense". Which common sense could be distilled to a formula: "I killed your cat - you can kill my cat, I killed your horse, do the same to mine etc." While no one of them says it straightaway, their "understanding" of proportionality principle comes to Israelis being allowed to produce at home the same kind and quantity of rockets that Hamas produces, and for each rocket launched at Israel, lob another one back.
Idiots will be idiots, and useful idiots are a tough nut to deal with, but there indeed is a legal definition of proportionality principle, formulated by ICRC. Witness the so called Rule 14 of ICRC, which boils down to one sentence:
Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.I am not a lawyer and I understand that this relatively short rule could be a source for volumes of learned tracts on a myriad related points of law. However, a few layman conclusions seem to be clear:
I think that in the long rivalry between connoisseurs of the drink and the science the last word belongs to the former now.
Two elephants have been saved from the deadly Siberian cold by drinking vodka, Russian officials say. They say the animals had to be taken out into the bitter cold after the wooden trailer they were travelling in caught fire in the Novosibirsk region. The elephants, aged 45 and 48, suffered frostbite to the tips of their ears amid temperatures of -40C (-40F). But they were warmed up by two cases of vodka mixed with warm water, one official was quoted as saying.Of course, BBC, fed by the public
Like with humans, alcohol can make animals feel warmer but it actually lowers their core body temperature, scientists say.I already feel warmer, being cared about by BBC, don't you? So, we can allow ourselves to lower our body temperature a degree or two.
The elephants belong to a Polish circus, which has been touring the region, reports say.Uhu... so these are Polish elephants, in a way, and a few bottles of vodka didn't make no nevermind to them...
Our condolences to families and friends of the kids and the grown-ups that lost their lives in the bloodbath.
We know, because he told us so (although not in so many words), that Hezbollah's leader, Nasrallah, would not have given Israel a causus belli had he known how hard israel would strike Southern Lebanon and, in particular, Hezbollah and its fighters and arms supplies. In other words, they got hammered.
Now, "a senior [but unnamed] Israeli military officer" says that "...Hamas should be allowed to save face after failing to inflict more pain on the Jewish state. “Their jubilation was not from victory, it was from their relief at being able to emerge from shelters,” said the officer, who could not be identified by name under military regulations."
Further, this same officer argued that "Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions...were now “thoroughly daunted” by Israel and trying to shore up the calm or at least avoid breaching it."
Even better, for those of us committed to Israel's future in peace and security (especially the latter), the officer (who sounds pretty senior to me) went on to say, that while he couldn't estimate how long the cease-fire might hold, there was the threat of "heavier bombing in any future offensive. Though Israel killed the Hamas military chief, Ahmed al-Jaabari, in a Nov. 14 air strike, the officer said several other commanders had been spared because non-combatants were nearby." He also suggested that, next time, the IDF might be forced to be less selective in its targeting, if Hamas and other terrorist groups continued to place and fire missiles from within populated areas.
While we know how the rest of the world will react (only Israel breaches human rights, Hamas doesn't commit war crimes by using civilians as human shields, they'll say), it does suggest that, even if the Israeli officer is only half right, Hamas et al took a pounding from which they'll take a while to recover. We hope.
The full article is in The Forward.
By: Brian Goldfarb
I don't know where they get their information from (but then, I'm not a journalist with a contacts book), but The Times of Israel says that Israeli Channel 10 says that "the United States will engage in direct talks with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program. Should these talks not prove useful, the U.S. is reportedly planning to strike Iran in the next four-to-five months." The report also says that "America’s decision to hold off on military involvement in Syria for the time being was due to the fact that it didn’t want to open a new front with the prospect of a war against Iran looming on the horizon."
Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. Trouble is, if it doesn't happen in the time-frame suggested (like all those Jeffrey Goldberg predictions of imminent Israeli air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities), the journos are hoping that we'll have forgotten this particular prediction!
BTW, you might find this of interest as well, from The Tablet (the same issue as the King Abdullah story). It's about why the US has no Syrian strategy. The two articles are (I think) contradictory, but when has that ever bothered either politicians or journalists? It's only academics of whom consistency is demanded, depending on the properly tested evidence available. Again, this latter notion has never bothered politicians or journalists.
Ah well, read them both and chuckle or despair, depending on how relaxed you are, I guess.
By: Brian Goldfarb
Coming to you, from YNet, via The Tablet, it says here that "Palestinian and Israeli representatives will meet in Jordan in two months to promote the peace process, King Abdullah II said during a UK visit which included a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron."
Yup, I'm sceptical as well, but a major Jordanian newspaper, Al-Hayat, has it from King Abdullah II of Jordan, so it must be true. Or not, as the case may be.
The paper also quoted the king as saying "the meeting will be held under the auspices of the European Union and the United States. He expressed his desire to see Washington focus on putting "the peace process on the right track."" Well, we all know that previous US Administrations from lbj onwards (with the probable exception of the peanut farmer) have been in favour of this "right track". The real question is are the Palestinians in favour of this? Snoopy just a day or so ago suggested not.
However, as the nearest neighbour they've got, and with Assad in Syria in possibly terminal decline, maybe Jordan and Abdullah can pull it off. Jordan could certainly do with stability on their western border, 'cos they certainly don't have it to the north and east. And maybe Abbas took just the message from Netanyahu's announcement about housing in Area E1 that I suggested a couple of days ago that he (Bibi) might be trying to send: "you don't want these houses built? Come to the negotiating table in good faith, and we'll see what we can do". After all, other commentators have said the Israeli bureaucratic hoops are such that it will be a couple of years before anyone thinks of even breaking soil for the first properties to be built.
It's also fascinating to note that, further down the article, Abdullah is reported as being, while using diplomatic language, extremely rude about Morsi and Assad, so who knows, maybe it is as reported.
By: Brian Goldfarb
This news really tickled my hitherto dreaming sense of fashion:
A new perfume created in Gaza will bear the name of a missile designed by Hamas, which was fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Defense. A local cosmetics company, decided to name a new scent M-75, saying “the fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance.”Being very conservative (a euphemism for "lazy") in the matters of fashion, including aftershave, deodorant etc, I have decided to give the new scent a try at first opportunity. I hope our government will allow export of this perfume, after all we should support any peaceful activity in Gaza. So wait for my full report on the stuff.
After the Second Lebanon War in 2006, a perfume tagged with the slogan “the scent of resistance” was marketed in Lebanon several months later.I was surprised that the Lebanese creators of perfume didn't continue this interesting line of products with brands like "Running for my bunker", "Six years underground" and "Fearless under Iran's embassy", all bearing a picture of the above mentioned Mr Nasrallah?
The Lebanese Daily Star reported back then that “if you’ve ever wondered what resistance smells like, then try a dab of ‘Resistance Perfume,’ which comes ‘exclusively’ with a political messages and a picture of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.”
