Who owns Britain?

A case of exceptional naivety came to our attention in the midst of our holiday.

The current Duke of Norfolk, The Duchy of Lancaster, Durham Cathedral,...

Ha!

We'll let it go for now.

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Muslims Play Part In Easter Parade For First Time

First off, I wish a happy Easter to all our Christian comrades. And here is an Easter story for our friends:

A traditional Easter parade in Spain broke new ground by allowing Muslim prayer beads to be entwined in the hands of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

The Virgin of Hope was paraded through the streets of Ceuta, one of Spain’s two north African enclaves, with a string of Muslim prayer beads entwined in her hand, an unprecedented step during the yearly Holy Week celebrations.

I absolutely welcome such gestures of goodwill, hoping that one day Muslims will graciously return the favor by allowing Jews and Christians to openly display and practice their religion in the Muslim world.

I think that this motion does a great job of capturing the spirit of modern-day Christianity (except for the Russian Orthodox Church, sorry) impeccably - goodwill, openness and benevolence. Keep up the good work - and hopefully Israel will one day become one of the beneficiaries of this attitude.

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Happy Easter

To all our Christian friends.

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Passover Story Reported by CNN or the New York Times

Good at any time, but especially these days. Copied from here.

If the Passover Story Were Reported by CNN or the New York Times

Daniel P. Waxman

The cycle of violence between the Jews and the Egyptians continues with no end in sight in Egypt . After eight previous plagues have destroyed the Egyptian infrastructure and disrupted the lives of ordinary Egyptian citizens, the Jews launched a new offensive this week in the form of the plague of darkness.

Western journalists were particularly enraged by this plague. "It is simply impossible to report when you can't see an inch in front of you," complained a frustrated Andrea Koppel of CNN. "I have heard from my reliable Egyptian contacts that in the midst of the blanket of blackness, the Jews were annihilating thousands of Egyptians. Their word is solid enough evidence for me."

While the Jews contend that the plagues are justified given the harsh slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians, Pharaoh, the Egyptian leader, rebuts this claim. "If only the plagues would let up, there would be no slavery. We just want to live plague-free. It is the right of every society."

Saeb Erekat, an Egyptian spokesperson, complains that slavery is justifiable given the Jews' superior weaponry supplied to them by the superpower G-d. The Europeans are particularly enraged by the latest Jewish offensive. "The Jewish aggression must cease if there is to be peace in the region. The Jews should go back to slavery for the good of the rest of the world," stated an angry French President Jacques Chirac.

Even several Jews agree. Adam Shapiro, a Jew, has barricaded himself within Pharaoh's chambers to protect Pharaoh from what is feared will be the next plague, the death of the firstborn. Mr. Shapiro claims that while slavery is not necessarily a good thing, it is the product of the plagues and when the plagues end, so will the slavery. "The Jews have gone too far with plagues such as locusts and epidemic which have virtually destroyed the Egyptian economy," Mr. Shapiro laments. "The Egyptians are really a very nice people and Pharaoh is kind of huggable once you get to know him," gushes Shapiro.

The United States is demanding that Moses and Aaron, the Jewish leaders, continue to negotiate with Pharaoh. While Moses points out that Pharaoh had made promise after promise to free the Jewish people only to immediately break them and thereafter impose harsher and harsher slavery, Richard Boucher of the State Department assails the latest offensive. "Pharaoh is not in complete control of the taskmasters," Mr. Boucher states. "The Jews must return to the negotiating table and will accomplish nothing through these plagues."

The latest round of violence comes in the face of a bold new Saudi peace overture. "If only the Jews will give up their language, change their names to Egyptian names and cease having male children, the Arab nations will incline toward peace with them," Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah declared.

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Baby Assad plays it open

Republican congressmen meeting with Syrian president say they believe there is an opportunity for dialogue with Syrian leadership; add they had talked about 'ending support for Hizbullah and Hamas, recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security, and ceasing interference in Lebanon'

The article does not say whether baby Assad responded to this overture at all, but our agents report about the spirit of openness and cooperation that permeated the discussions. It was divulged that the host shared with the congressmen a hitherto secret recipe for lamb cutlets, jealously kept by at least 15 generations of Assad family.

After the dinner, fortified by a few glasses of orange juice, baby Assad went even further with his openness, heedlessly disclosing what is considered a state secret:

For once CIA, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies concur with this assessment.

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Holiday miscellaneous

This piece of news was met in Elders' HQ with mixed feelings:

A fire destroyed the synagogue and residence of a senior rabbi of an anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jewish group whose members attended an Iran-sponsored Holocaust denial conference in December.

In the picture below are the above mentioned:

While the picture is backdated, you can see these people already carrying the facial expressions suitable for entering the realm of martyrdom.

We, the Elders, are definitely against all kinds of violence, which is abhorent to us in all its forms. Unless, of course, some violence is absolutely necessary, and then we do what we must do, in the best tradition of the profession and with gusto.

We have not made up our minds yet regarding this specific case, so you shall have to wait for a separate notice. We can state for the record, though, that we are not at all sure that the case in question was about violence. As some of our readers may know, just before Passover it is customary for the Jews to perform an especially stringent house cleaning culminating in the procedure called "biur hametz", meaning burning the residue of all kinds of stuff that is not considered kosher for Passover. See picture below:

It could have easily happened that the orthodox folks like the ones on this picture have decided that the synagogue that belongs to these Neturei Karta monkeys should be considered not kosher for Passover. Or, even worse, tref. Go figure.

Meanwhile, while doing a research for the piece of the "Simon Says" series, we have stumbled on a picture of Angelina J. that we feel we have to share with you all, this being holiday time and all that.

There are two reasons we share the picture with you. The first one, clearly, is that the picture is pleasing to the eye. The second one is that it is mysterious. While the picture was filched from a place that does not require any parental quidance, one of our (younger) operatives exclaimed "Mamma mia!" seeing it for the first time.

Ain't it a mystery?

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Ballmer joins Linux Foundation board

That was a good one. Really.

Ballmer was ecstatic about his appointment. "For a long time, Microsoft has supported the free and open source movement. I mean, come on, if we hadn't been putting out such crap in the marketplace, how do you think you Linux guys would have got a toehold?" he asked at a media conference held in Tegucigalpa, capital of the Honduras, this morning.

More where it came from. Enjoy.

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Simon says...

In what appears to become another installment of the Simon Says series with Simon Tisdall in the role of the Guardian's political guru, I would like to be short and to the point.

So - Simon says:

To say Iran has become an obsession for Israeli leaders is an understatement. Tehran's sinister hand is seen in all the key problems facing the country, including Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and in the fostering of what Professor Amnon Rubinstein calls Israel's "sense of abandonment surrounded by a rising sea of Islamism".

Leaving the part of professor Rubinstein out of the story - how do you like that "sinister hand" gimmick? By an elegant gesture, that purported Iranian involvement in Hizballah and Hamas business is made looking ridiculous and, in fact, being a fruit of somebody's imagination. Deft.

I wonder, if something (anything) bites Simon on his rosy arse, does he call it sinister or does he call for a bobby?

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Hooray to Iranian investigators!

According to this:

All 15 of the British service personnel held in Iran have confessed to having illegally entered the country's waters, an Iranian state-run television channel said today.

From the inside rumors, confessions of the same aggressive act were successfully extracted from the boats the UK sailors used, although the language used by the inflatable ones was something that the investigators have found wanting.

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Schools Drop Holocaust Lessons

To be perfectly honest, some of the happenings in Great Britain are quite simply beyond the pale. When making one's way through this article in the al-Guardian, one gets the eerie impression that s/he has suddenly found her/himself in a first-glass loony bin for those irretrievably lost members of society.

Schools have avoided teaching the Holocaust and the Crusades in history lessons because they are concerned about causing offence to Muslim pupils or challenging "charged" versions of history which children have been taught at home, government research has found.

A report for the Department for Education and Skills found that a history department in a northern city had avoided selecting the Holocaust as a GCSE topic for fear of confronting "anti-semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial" among some Muslim pupils.

I do not wish to come over as an out-of-touch numbskull, but education, I have always naively held, is all about providing students with accurate, scientifically sound information and taking the claptrap they have accumulated in their juvenile heads to task. The ultimate goal of education is to broaden students' horizons, drum at least a handful of knowledge into their heads and, among other things, aid our youth in the arduous quest to differentiate between arrant gibberish, pushed down our throats all the time, and more or less correct information. The importance of education cannot be overstated, as it undoubtedly constitutes the cornerstone of any civilized society.

Knowledge, as an added bonus, oftentimes serves to dispel hatred, anchored in ignorance and misinformation, and foster understanding between different peoples.

Muslims, the libertarian in me asserts, have the right to hate Jews with gusto and enthusiastically deny the Holocaust, yet schools, in my humble view, should on no account be in cahoots with them. Their mission runs contrary to the agenda of the Muslim community, and they have the obligation to stick to it against all odds.

Incidentally, if one of my unshakable beliefs is that the Earth is flat, will the Ministry of Education prefer to leave me in peace, for fear of shattering my precious world view, however insane my opinions may be?

Another school decided to teach the Holocaust despite anti-semitic sentiment among students, but avoided the Crusades as "their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques".

G-d forbid some inconsequential schools challenge the knowledge disseminated by those temples of science, mosques! They, plainly, don't have the authority to issue such a bold, defiant challenge.

Teaching of the Holocaust is expected to become compulsory under the new national curriculum from next year.

I am afraid that Brits are in for a couple of bloody riots. It is, however, encouraging that the madness seems to be nearing its end at long last.

On a related note, such revealing articles inadvertently point in the direction of what is being taught in mosques. It has long been suspected that mosques spread anti-Semitism, hatred for all things infidel and even occasionally call on congregants to resort to violence, but evidently the amount of propaganda is staggering in the extreme.

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Campus Anti-Semitism

The US Commission on Civil Rights has published a report on campus anti-Semitism. It is worth taking a glance at.

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Jihadists Behead, Roast Christian Toddler

“When they cook a dish in the Middle East, it is traditional to put the meat on top of the rice when they serve it. They kidnapped a woman’s baby in Baghdad, a toddler, and because the mother was unable to pay the ransom, they returned her child – beheaded, roasted and served on a mound of rice.” The infant’s crime was to be an Assyrian, but this story, reported by the Barnabus Fund, went unnoticed in the West, like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq.

I still have a bulky lump in my throat. Are they even human beings after that?

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Hag Pesah Sameach - Happy Passover

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Bloggers Nabbed!

We've just heard through our Elder Liaison Office that following a piece on False Dichotomies, Alex and Seth were just nabbed by Israel's Internal Security Services (Shabak) for allegedly supplying Mordechai Vaanunu with a professional blond mimsy. They have both been taken into custody at the Russian Compound and are facing an unpleasant shakedown.

Our contact revealed that the two gullible new immigrants took pity on the isolated nuclear whistle blower, when interviewing him for a blog article, after he complained bitterly that he hadn't had intimate relations since he was nabbed and put away behind bars. The agent stated that they were prompted into rapid action once Seth had put up his blog piece, and are now in the process of taking legal action to remove the blog.

The agent revealed that Alex and Seth pretended to be away from Israel once they suspected that the services were on to them. However, they were easily located using the chip implants that every Israeli conscript is injected with ("IDF inoculation injections").

Update: There is an uncertainty re the text of this communique, since a typing error slipped into it: the text "Seth had put up his blog piece" should be read "Seth had put up his blond piece".

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Separated at birth?

I bet you will recognize easily at least one of the two characters below:











The second one is our current minister of internal security, Avi Dichter.

The situation those two are/were in when the pictures were taken are eerily similar: both are looking for a new sheriff. As we all know, the one on the left succeeded admirably.

Maybe he could come over to share some of his wisdom with Dichter?

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