International Eat A Tasty Animal for PETA Day — March 15 — is right around the corner. Have you scheduled your meat-up yet? No? Well, a blogger from Sweden has.

Go over to PETA.ISFULLOFCRAP.COM and schedule your gathering. And post abput it on your blog, or just chat about it in the comments here.

IEATAPETA Day: History. Reasons why you should get together with people on March 15th. Where I’ll be on March 12th and 15th.

Come on, join the fun.

Tig looked extra-regal in this picture. I do believe he’s asking us all to bow to his superior, uh, Tiggerness.

Thanks to Gary, who found me an interim editor.

Well, one in particular, anyway. The one that bought my Waterhouse credit card company and proceeded to jack up the interest rate to usury levels.

You think this week might go down in movie trivia history?

Look at the box office list for the top ten movies this weekend. Pay close attention to numbers four, five, and six.

1. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion
2. 16 Blocks
3. Eight Below
4. Ultraviolet
5. Aquamarine
6. The Pink Panther
7. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
8. Date Movie
9. Curious George
10. Firewall

I’m thinking that there may never be as colorful a movie list as there is right now. Of course, if you movie buffs out there want to tell me there were instances in the past, please do. I can think of a few movies with colors in their title (the most obvious being “The Color Purple”). Jump on in.

Just in keep you’re keeping score, Bird Flu has spread to cats in Austria.

Germany… Austria…. hrm… if this were Hitler, next would be Poland…

Poland reported its first outbreak of bird flu on Monday, saying laboratory tests confirmed two wild swans died of the disease. Polish authorities have implemented a set of European Union precautionary measures for dealing with a bird flu outbreak. Those measures include keeping poultry indoors within two miles of an outbreak and intensifying checks on any meat leaving the area.

Ach! Bird Flu is the next Hitler!

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that people in America won’t over-react to this news and start a Dark Ages style campaign to wipe out cats because of some plague or another. Nor will shady faux-pharmaceutical companies try to sell you sugar pills as if they were Bird Flu cures, or other gimmick-peddlers marketing hoax preventitives or Bird Flu Blockers.

I mean, it’s not like some lone nutball is trying to poison newspapers and television news anchors with Anthrax, thus causing the publishing, broadcast, and government sector to care the crap out of everyone when it’s really just them that are the target, not the public at large.

Unless, of course, cats owned by newspaper moguls, magazine publishers, television executives, and members of Congress start wobbling weirdly and coughing up things. Then I fully expect TIME and Newsweek to try to out-shriek the Big Three Networks (CNN, Fox, and ESPN) when it comes to panicking the public into a mass slaughter of the feline kind.

So, what color ribbon has been reserved for Bird Flu Victims? What color rubber wristband will we be expected to wear? Shall we stick “Support Our Flocks” on our SUVs?

Palestinian civil war watch: Hamas was forced to cancel a legislative session by armed Fatah members who threatened to storm the building. Damn. Please, next time, keep your promise!

Six kassam rockets were fired at Israel on Sunday morning. An average of two rockets per day have been fired since January. Imagine that Mexico were firing two rockets per day at San Diego, even if they almost never hurt anyone. Just imagine the reaction. Now compare that with the world outrage at Israel when she defends herself. No other country in the world has to suffer from the adjective “home-made” added to the word “rocket.” No other country has the modifier “rarely cause casualties” added to “rocket attacks.” See? Even when I’m not quoting Reuters or AP, they piss me off.

EU to Israel: Transfer palestinian tax money. Meryl to EU: Eff you.

Hamas tells Al Qaeda: No thanks. Huh. Gotta look into this one more.

In an editorial, the New York Times almost hits a home run about the U.S. not dealing with Hamas.

America cannot bankroll a Hamas government that preaches and practices terrorism, denies that Israel has any right to exist, and refuses to abide by peace agreements signed by previous Palestinian governments. That should be blindingly obvious. America is engaged in a global armed struggle against terrorism. It is firmly allied with Israel and is committed to Israel’s survival.

Hamas won the recent Palestinian election fair and square. American officials, who say they are so forcefully committed to the cause of expanding democracy in the Middle East, should not even entertain the idea of doing anything to try to somehow undermine the results and install a different government. But that does not mean continuing to provide the subsidies that help pay for the Palestinian police, civil servants and other employees.

Here’s where they whiffed:

And Washington should continue to press Israel to resume turning over to the Palestinian Authority the Palestinian tax and customs funds that Israel collects on the authority’s behalf. This is not aid, but the Palestinians’ own money.

Tough. Israel shouldn’t have to transfer funds that will be used to finance its own destruction. Let ‘em use the missing billions from Arafat’s account. Oh, wait. That’s already been transferred over to Mahmoud Abbas. So. Ask him for the money.

However, one other caveat about this editorial: The Times published it on Saturday, which is its least-read day of the week. Funny that they couldn’t hold it until Sunday, isn’t it?

Yeah, I know. Not really.

If you don’t read other blogs, you probably haven’t gotten this story yet. Iranian clerics were briefed — by the man who led nuclear negotiations for two years — on how he lied to the West while Iran rushed to finish building its nuclear program. And ladies and gents, it’s not a power plant he’s talking about.

The man who for two years led Iran’s nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme.

In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot.

[...] In his address to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, Mr Rowhani appears to have been seeking to rebut criticism from hardliners that he gave too much ground in talks with the European troika. The contents of the speech were published in a regime journal that circulates among the ruling elite.

He told his audience: “When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Teheran we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site. There was plenty of work to be done to complete the site and finish the work there. In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan.”

Funny. Most of us could smell a rat from the get-go, yet the IAEA, the UN, and Europe simply couldn’t grasp the fact that the Iranian regime is full of liars.

Of course the big question is: Will this change anything?

One would hope so. One will probably be disappointed.

The love, actually, is reserved for the generous hosts (a slip of a finger almost caused me to make it “ghosts”, and now I wonder whether it is a ghost of a previous regime that is pulling the ropes now in the labyrinths of Kremlin).

Anyway, what radiates as strong as usual from the Hamas bosses is hate. Here is comes:

Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’s deputy political leader, told Reuters in an interview that recognizing Israel would negate all Palestinian rights.

“It means a negation of the Palestinian people and their rights and their property, of Jerusalem and the holy sites, as well as negation of their right of return. Therefore the recognition of Israel is not on the agenda,” Abu Marzouk said.

Now notice the follow-up to the above quote:

“We believe that Israel has no right to exist”, he added later in remarks to an Arab audience. “Hamas will never take such a step.”

As usual, the Yasser double-tongued way of selective dissemination of messages: some in English and some in Arabic. Amazingly simple trick that works perfectly for an amazingly long time.

And you know what? I believe the delivery in Arabic, and don’t blame me.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews