Terry Pratchett RIP

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

Rest in peace, young man. See you in the Discworld.

Andrew Ian Dodge: last will

I dreaded to hear it, but I knew it was coming for quite some time. I watched from afar the courageous fight Andrew gave to the killing disease, all the pain and suffering he went through. Apparently my pen-friend of many years is no more, his last public message being published today on Facebook. I shall miss you, Andrew. Rest in peace.

Here is Andrew's last message.

If you are reading this I will have succumbed to the forces of cancers that have been ravaging my body for the last little while. The last fight betwixt my body with the help of cancer treatment and cancer has not gone according to plan. The hordes of cancer plague entities have felled their host on the battlefield of life.

I want to write this statement to thank all those that have been so meaningful in my life, especially over the last few years. I want to thanks those who have put up with my angst and drive. Thank you to my editors and co-writers who have worked with me on a variety of projects musical, creative and political. It has always been a great pleasure to know that strangers can become friends so quickly and help you produce things of merit in a very little while.

Kudos go to all my suppliers in PR of review music, books, DVDs and what all else I have managed to review. No matter how bad you feel “review stuff” has always perked me up.

And the musicians along the way that have put up with me Mitch Benn, Per Ove, and Paul Stead in our project called Growing Old Disgracefully. I want to thank all those who have been so helpful with www.angstia.com my bucket-list band Chris Loesch, Michael Wade, Frank Wnek, Dean Hill and Bill Colby.

And there is Charlotte Sabel my wing-goddess who was responsible for the night I met my beloved Kim.

Thanks to Doug Welch for being my rock web-guy over the last few years. His work on my campaign, personal and musical blog has been above and beyond.

My thanks for the support of my mother, Elizabeth, in this time of strife as well as the Benson clan Jean, Jim and Perry.

Of course, I must pay tribute to my beloved wife Kim who has been a rock beside me through this entire ordeal. The Dodge’s have put her through a great deal health-wise since we met in a London Club in 2005. But she has stuck by with love, affection and care all the way through. Ultimately everything in my life for good or ill led me to meet this wonderful woman, therefore I can have no regrets. She is of great talent, compassion, love and fortitude.

I ask that all of you do your best to help my beloved Kim through this tough time and help her to the next phase of her life. I hope for the best for her personally and professionally in the coming years I wish this unfortunately event will not hold her back too much for too long.

PS: Please go watch this & smile with me…  just remember the last laugh is on you.

And now to our own (Israeli) garbage

Take a look at this, please:

This is not a result of close encounter with a Gazan rocket, nor is it a consequence of domestic violence. But I'll let the victim, Meytal Sella, tell her own story:

My "Hasbara" results - a knee, an elbow and cheek sore and a rib questionable.

I have passed near a demonstration of the radical left on the way home (incidentally, I do not agree with them) and I heard calls of "death [to the lefties] and other evil slogans, and it hurt. All I wanted was to explain that the Zionist left supports our soldiers, doesn't calls our pilots killers and wants to get rid of Hamas, but is against violence. So - I wanted. They wanted to muzzle me at any price. Well, at least I understand now how Rihanna and Whitney felt...

I am not sure I share Meytal's politics, not being acquainted with her, but it doesn't matter. Because I think I known very well the kind of vermin who are able to do what was done to Meytal.

• The kind of garbage that runs amok in the street after every terrorist act or after a rumor of one, hollering in their mindless frenzy "Death to Arabs" and attacking helpless and unprotected workers in shops, if they look even vaguely Arabic.
• The kind of garbage that provides fertile ground for inhuman murderers of the kind that recently burned alive an Arab boy.
• The kind that spews racist slogans at slightest provocation and without one.
• The kind that hardly ever serves in the army, being usually exempt for various reasons I wouldn't go into - better leave it to reader's imagination.
• The kind that will faint seeing a real armed Hamas terrorist or the shadow of thereof.

Believe you me, we need your kind right now like we need a cholera outbreak. And if you want to fight someone, just ask for it, and maybe, just maybe, our CoS will find a way to ship you over to Gaza City - to fend for your own repulsive self.

As a side issue, and just out of interest - tell me how are you different from this character:

Pox on your house...

Yes, President Mohamed Morsi is Jewish

This is OK'ed for publication now, though it is with a heavy heart that I am doing it. The brilliant career of one of our best field agents is coming to an end, after 62 years of nurturing, training and managing our man in Cairo. Besides, he was outed as our agent by young Assad anyway and the counter-intelligence in Egypt is getting too close for comfort. And only his unshakable determination to end his days as a martyr for the Elders' cause and his absolute refusal to be extracted gave way to this public revelation, so alien to the traditions of our ancient establishment.

But let's proceed in an orderly way. Everything you will read in Wiki about this illustrious man is a total misdirection, of course (long live Wiki). That is, aside of his birthday, 8 August 1951. This is the day when a baby boy Moshe was born in Alexandria (Egypt) to a family of a Jewish lawyer. The times were already difficult for the Jews of Egypt at the time, but, being a firstborn, little Moshe was a ray of sun in the grueling existence of the young family. The father was fired from his government job in 1948, for a reason that may seem unfair today, but at the time the declaration of independence by Israel was a good enough pretext for Egyptian authorities to fire the Jewish lawyer. He barely succeeded to eke a meager existence for himself and his wife, chasing ambulances, writing wills and assisting Western tourists in trouble with local constabulary and customs.

And in 1956 even this hardy existence came to an abrupt end, when in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis 1,000 Jews were arrested and 500 Jewish businesses were seized by the government. The final exodus of the remaining Egyptian Jews has started. To exacerbate the tragedy of the Prosor family, a week before these events took place, they have sent their son, little Moshe, to their relatives in the country, unaware of the dangers coming. When the people of Aliyah Bet came in the early hours of the night to spirit them away for a clandestine trip to Israel, they had to apply force to get the family from their house. The Aliyah Bet people promised to take care of Moshe later, and so they did. In a fashion.

Their relatives flatly refused to be evacuated, and as the last ditch measure, five years old Moshe was given for adoption to a poor Egyptian fellahin, one Mr Morsi, whose wife was barren for several years and who pined for a son. The boy was renamed Mohamed and quickly forgot his roots under the influence of his pious adoptive parents. But of course, the boy's fate wasn't forgotten, at least not by our people. Mohamed Morsi recalls being taken to school on the back of a donkey by his father, but even this donkey was purchased using a contribution from an anonymous source (read Mossad). And when the young Mohamed suddenly (of course...) won a scholarship to the University of Southern California, he became easily accessible to his handlers, who used his prolonged stay in US to reveal to him his real roots. Then it became very easy to indoctrinate the impressionable youth in the Zionist dogma and to proceed with development of his future career as a field agent.

Muslim Brotherhood was already considered a rising star by the Israeli intelligence analysts, and the decision to insert Mohamed into its core paid off handsomely in the long range. His meteoric career through the ranks of MB is a matter of public record, but of course he was just doing the bidding of his mentors in Jerusalem.

As for his original and adoptive families, there were some interesting developments too. His adoptive mother, as it sometimes happens after an adoption, didn't remain barren and made her hubby (well to do now, thanks to the donations from the same anonymous patron) happy, delivering four baby boys. And, of course unknown to Moshe/Mohamed, his biological mother was already pregnant while leaving for Israel and the baby boy was born in 1956, to be named Ron, in memory of his elder brother.

So, for the first time, here is a side to side comparison of the current president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi and his biological brother, Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ron Prosor:

If you disregard the wig (granted, of a very high quality) used by Mohamed/Moshe, the resemblance is unmistakable and remarkable, you have to agree. This resemblance also explains why the two took the utmost care never to be seen together at various UN events.

The career of Moshe Prosor aka Mohamed Morsi, the Israeli super-agent in Egypt, has to remain mostly secret for quite a few years to come, for obvious reasons. Only two items were allowed to be aired here by the censor. The first is the decisive role he played in the famous Operation Rooster 53. The aim of the operation was to steal from Egyptian army a Soviet P-12 radar system, considered then to be the best of the kind. Yes, the Nahal Brigade's 50th battalion, the elite paratrooper reconnaissance unit Sayeret Tzanchanim, and the Israeli Air Force have done their part. But without inside assistance, the radar antenna, a massive construction anchored to its concrete foundations, couldn't have been lifted as quickly and easily as it was, during a few fateful minutes. The young daredevil Moshe/Mohamed, under the guise of a local tribesman bringing fresh goat meat to the radar team, every night during the month preceding the operation filed away a few millimeters of the steel pylons supporting the antenna. Thus ensuring the phenomenal success of Rooster 53.

The other feat of our agent was less spectacular and, unfortunately, didn't prevent the Yom Kippur war. However, detailed information provided by Moshe/Mohaned played a decisive role in the eventual isolation and entrapment of the Egyptian Third Army. An especially created medal of honor and a photograph of Ariel Sharon with his personal inscription and a letter of commendation are being kept with his other secret awards in the Mossad safe, never to be shown to a living person.

Unfortunately, his many other outstanding intelligence feats that easily overshadow the two we are allowed to talk about, must remain secret. And the world wouldn't know anytime too soon where exactly did young Moshe/Mohamed and his team of agents place the (heavily booby-trapped) radio-controlled nuclear devices, how the price of premium Egyptian cotton is manipulated and other breath-taking field intelligence exploits.

His public record as a politician and a president is another matter, however.



This and other, carefully prepared in Jerusalem, revolting speeches are designed to show his Muslim Brotherhood brethren for what they really are: a bunch of barbarous baboons. And that "Apes and Pigs" interlude could never hurt, no matter how frequently it is repeated.

All this, however, is in the glorious past. Today is a bad day for the Elders. Losing a field agent is never easy, and losing a super-agent of this quality is a real tragedy. But we shall persevere and prevail, and our young new talents will replace (are already replacing, as we speak) their (still falling) comrade in arms. Glory be to you, Moshe/Mohamed, PBUY.

Update: and now in French, with more visual proof.

Christopher Hitchens RIP

It is difficult to imagine the world without this man, whether you agreed with him or were his bitter enemy. His brilliance and incisive intellect will be missed sorely in the world where mediocrity is on the rise.

Rest in peace, Hitch.

The Boeing 747-8JK cockpit is what?

The Boeing 747-8JK cockpit is filled with pretty buttons and switches.

Please leave me alone, while I take some Advil and  lie down to have a good refreshing cry.

Where is the basic human decency?

Asks Greg. Read this. Now, when they say in Texas about a person "he needs killing", I hope you know what they mean.

As for the other question Greg asks: "And why are such things apparently still socially acceptable in a way that such abuse towards minority groups is not?" - I believe that I have a glimmer of an answer. While the veneer of political correctness (that powers that be are enforcing by all possible means) is strong enough to make us utter only the right words about minorities, it is only skin deep. This veneer doesn't make up for our animal behavior, as witness the case(s) Greg describes. It doesn't convert us from apes to men. No way.

Too bad.

Lviv, Ecclesiastes and Karl Marx

Ecclesiastes 1:9: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun...

Karl Marx: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

So what is going on here? Has the old coot lost his last marble, you would ask. What is it with Lviv, Ecclesiastes and the Beard? What is Lviv, anyway, some of you may want to know, of course.

Well, Lviv is a city in Western Ukraine. The latter was annexed by Soviet Union in 1939 as agreed between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union in the framework of infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Since then, many a Western Ukrainian carries a chip on his/her shoulder where Russia is concerned. Not that the Ukrainians in general don't carry such a chip: most of them do, but with Western Ukraine it's kinda special. When Nazis recruited Ukrainians into their army and into local police, the response was quite enthusiastic all over, but in Western Ukraine Nazis were seen as liberators and a god's gift that will upset the Moscow commies and Judeo-masons. Oh, and incidentally, Lviv had a big Jewish population at the time: about 110,000.

It so happens that on May 9, 2011, as on every May 9 since 1945, Russians, especially ones that fought in the WWII against Nazis, visit the war memorials, bring flowers to remember the millions of Red Army soldiers fallen in that war and generally do what every veteran does on this day in Russia and around it.

Not in Lviv this time.

On Monday, violence broke out as Ukrainian protesters attempted to disrupt the May 9 celebration of the Russian victory over the Nazis.

The sickle and hammer flag was burnt and a wreath dedicated to the Soviet Red Army was destroyed.

The violence took place in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which has a troubled history with Russia. The city was occupied by Soviet troops in 1939, and some welcomed the Nazis as liberators when they arrived two years later. Around 50 nationalists fought with riot police and one of the demonstrators was shot in the leg.

There is a clip of the violence to watch in the article, but here is another one, unfortunately only in Russian but with more ugly details:



No need to learn Russian (or Ukrainian or any other language), is there? You can see the hateful mugs of the "nationalist" youngsters, their hateful behavior and come to your own conclusions about how fitting the term "nationalist" is in this case. Another, more suitable word comes to mind.

And then I read an exceptional post by Mahmoud Salem aka Sandmonkey about another eruption of hate - the fighting between Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt - close to our neck of the woods.

And then I read about new adventures of Jobbik, the Hungarian neo-fascist gang party.

And then I read some new/old quotes from Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh and the trick played by Baby Assad and his Iranian sponsors on our border and ... oh well, enough for today.

Well, and on top of all this (sorry, Francis, my sincere apologies) I encountered a blogger who, being a nice and sincere socialist, tries to persuade us (look in the comments, please) that nation-states must be abolished ASAP. Which is, in general, not a bad idea. Only the timing grated a bit, seeing all of the above.

And now we can go back to were we started. You see, there is a partial agreement between Ecclesiastes and Marx: yes, they agree that history repeats itself. Only the bearded one, being an optimist, considers the second time (is it every second time, I wonder?) to be a farce. Nope, comrade Marx. As far as history goes, it's a tragedy every old time. Farce is what we read in some history books and in some science fiction stories.

If we, as humanity in toto, learn anything from history, it's rather negative: that we don't learn anything from history. Now figure the previous sentence out...

Oh, and I think we can add another (nice but fairly useless) ditty to that of comrade Marx:

Never again...

Hat tip: Y.S.

One day in the news

So what is the most benign headline you see below?
Yeah, I though that much...

(The headlines belong to Fox News site)

To folks arrested in Russian protests

Russian authorities arrested at least 135 opposition protesters, including a leading Kremlin critic, at rallies demanding freedom of assembly, state media said.

Besides being with you in my heart, guys, and grieving about the history spiraling (down in this case) out of control, just a remark: in Russia one should demand not just freedom of assembly, but rather freedom after assembly.

The final proof of our coming demise

As I love to quote: "This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper".

Forget the cataclysms, forget the nuclear winter, forget the speeding asteroid, forget the deadly virus released by a nearsighted/forgetful egghead... all this is irrelevant. Proof:

What awaits us is a slow and gentle decay, caused by onset of mass senility. Maybe ants and flies, being a tad impatient, will speed it up a bit, but it will be hardly necessary.

The proof documented by Francis.

Ivanka Trump announces engagement to Jared Kushner on Twitter

This is what happens when you are not vigilant enough where your own interests are concerned. Ehehe...

Besides, I haven't mastered Twitter yet.

Yisrael Beiteinu? Or what?

For Hebrew - challenged: Yisrael Beiteinu means "Israel our home". Or, in other words, a name for a party that is quickly becoming a fucking gang of brownshirts that will take our country to fascist hell if we don't stop them in time.

When a well-meaning minister invents a law that will prevent demonstrations against public officials near their houses, it smells bad. It irritates. It reminds you of places and times you would rather forget.

When a malicious little paskudnyak that plays a big patriot invents a law that will prohibit Israeli Arabs to mark the Nakba (no matter how malicious and stupid that Nakba day is), it starts stinking. You have to sit up, smell the air and ask yourself what the hell is going on around you?

When that same gang of brownshirts invents a law that requires Israeli citizens to pledge an oath of allegiance, you may think a first that OK, quite a few countries have their folks doing the same as a precondition to getting that red or blue or green passport. But then you notice that "I pledge to be loyal to the State of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state...". And it starts stinking to high heaven. And you don't see red anymore - just brown.

When some of us vote in people who wouldn't know democracy if the democracy bit them on their fascist backsides and, in fact, couldn't care less about the democracy, we all pay. Not immediately, no - it will take some time. But a day may come when we all will wake up to flags we have not yet seen and to music we haven't yet heard. If we don't stop the vermin in time.

Or some of us may find out that Israel is not exactly their home anymore.

Take heed.

P.S. This here blog goes on vacation for a week or so. And no, it is not related to the mofos mentioned in this post.

Matching the mood

Yeah...

From here.

9/11 - seven years later

It still grips your heart.

Have we all learned something from this tragedy? Was the jolt strong enough to make us open our eyes?

If not, we have more, much more coming.

Rose's body found in a suitcase

This is how it ended. The last hope against hope that she may be alive is gone.

Divers find suitcase containing human remains believed to be those of missing four-year-old in Yarkon River's waters.

As for the person(s) who killed the girl, put her in the suitcase and threw her away as garbage: to remind ourselves - we still have the capital punishment buried deep in the law books.

We still have some suitcases.

We still have some poisonous streams.

My shit is ... oh well

It feels a bit better now.

More on the ship of fools - SS Free Gaza

Of course "ship of fools" is a banal and trivial shot, far from a broadside that some more powerful writer could issue. But there is nothing that sticks better to SS Free Gaza. The other one, the SS Liberty, is rather a ship of provocateurs, as could be seen from its goals here.

Read this article by Ben Cohen. Look at the motley collection of do-gooders. Don't laugh.

Because what is expected to happen at the end of this journey is another PR disaster courtesy of IDF, that will give the do-gooders some fat to chew for quite some time.

Italians sunbathe after Gypsy girls drown

I don't know, we are quick to blame other people. This pair of the beach doesn't look especially happy to me. Well, they don't dance or sing joyfully.

I hope they didn't forget to fingerprint the girls...

The new dawn of Lebanon?

One of the banners awaiting the child murderer Kuntar on his way to the beginning of celebrations in Beirut says "Liberation of the captives: a new dawn for Lebanon and Palestine".

I strongly suspect that there is a typo in this banner: it should be "down", which aptly describes the touching moment of national unity, when Muslims, Druse and Christians gather to receive as a hero someone who in normal society will rot in infamy and isolation of a jail.

From a "moderate" Lebanese "The Daily Star":

Speaking to Al-Jazeera television about the returning Lebanese prisoners, Christian opposition leader and head of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun said, "honoring the detainees is a must."

Aoun is a Christian, albeit affiliated with Hezbollah.

Leader of the parliamentary majority MP Saad Hariri meanwhile welcomed Wednesday's swap deal, saying it was "a historical day of national joy."

Hariri - one of the Muslim leaders of an anti-Syrian coalition.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Elias Murr congratulated Hizbullah and the Lebanese for the swap deal. "Today is a day of victory for the unity of the people, the army and the resistance," he said in a statement.

Murr - a Christian, of anti-Syrian persuasion...

And this is the way it goes. Apparently, people who normally hate each other's guts are united for a cause. Should I explain the cause? Nah...

At least some people in Lebanon think differently. Small consolation.

On a lighter note: the sad day and the whole stomach-turning festival of joy have their moments:

It is not a gun in my pocket, I am real happy to see you, Kuntar!

Bleh...

All in all: it is with great sorrow and gnashing of teeth that I force myself to quote Olmert (nothing to do about it, his speechwriter was real good yesterday):

Woe is the nation that celebrates at this hour the release of a man that crushed the skull of an infant.

Yep.