This week’s edition of Shire Network News is up, and as usual, it’s a good one. Bruce has an excellent eye for picking the news stories and interview subjects that keep you listening. (And I’m not saying that because I’m now part of the podcast.)

Go read the post I linked to, and if you still don’t want to listen to the podcast, well, you’re hopeless.

You don’t need an iPod to listen. If you have Windows Media Player or any other program that plays MP3s on your computer, you’re good to go.

Why else should you listen to the podcast? Because every week, I write an essay specifically for SNN that does not get posted here. This week’s topic: The Dubai Ports deal, and whether or not Americans are bigoted against Muslims, with a deconstruction of the Washington Post/ABC poll numbers.

Go. Listen. Subscribe. We want Bruce to get popular enough so that he gets hired by an American radio station, so he and I can go out for dinner on International Eat an Animal for PETA Day. It’s tough commuting between hemispheres.

Here’s another shot of Tig that proves he’s not nearly as fat as he looked in this picture.

It’s all in the haunch position, you see. And there’s some heavy-duty fur-poofing going on as well.

Okay, sure, he’s still fat. But he’s not yet of Edloe proportions, and probably will never be. Come to think of it, he’s not very grumpy, either, except when you try to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do. Like go to the vet’s. Or get out of your chair.

Hmmmm.

Folks, if you haven’t signed up your gathering on the Peta is full of crap site, there’s still time.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, International Eat A Tasty Animal for PETA Day was started three years ago when a child of Holocaust survivors emailed me about a reprehensible PETA ad campaign called “The Holocaust on your Plate,” which compared the slaughter of Jews to the slaughter of cows and chickens, and used photographs of cows and chickens side-by-side with photos of Jews in concentration camps. It could have gotten more disgusting, but I can’t think how.

So we decided that since this is a free country, after all, and we’re not about to protest by the thousands and riot and kill and burn, we decided that our protests would consist of doing the exact opposite of what PETA would like us to do. In other words: Eat meat. Eat more meat, actually. Most observers of EATAPETA Day have meat at all three meals.

Even vegetarians can get in on the festivities, by eating eggs and dairy products.

Me? I’m having a tall glass of milk with breakfast, meeting Sarah and the twins for a lunch that will include fried chicken, and finishing off with a steak for dinner. Or maybe corned beef. I cooked a corned beef last week. Mmm, corned beef.

I am also going to be in Rockville, MD tomorrow at 4 p.m. on a dual-purpose mission: Picking up more kosher meat, and having a meat-up with friends from the area to enjoy great kosher Chinese food.

So. What are you having?

The Ayatollahs have found themselves a supporter of the useful idiot category. IRNA is quite happy about this.

Angelika Beer, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and chair of the Iran delegation in the EP, has called on the European Union not to blindly toe the US policy towards Iran.

“The decision by the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council gives the thumbs up to the confrontational approach of the US and will seriously damage the chances of a negotiated solution,” said Beer, a German member of the EP for the Greens, in a statement issued Friday in Brussels.

Angelika (or her predecessors) probably tied themselves (naked or otherwise) to the gates of the NATO nuclear facilities or power stations to protest against nukes (military or otherwise), but Iranian nukes seem to be relatively benign to the useful idiots everywhere.

IRNA folks also slobber happily over the Pakistan reaction:

“Ummah to side with Iran in case of US-Israel attack: Pak official“, says another headline.

Interesting that the term “Pak”, that would be considered a racial slur in the West, is freely used by Iran’s official organ. But the article itself is more interesting:

In an interview with IRNA here, Maulana Ramzan Tauqir, who is advisor to NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, flayed the US and its allies for propagating against Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme.

“The aim of US and Israeli threat to Iran is to deviate the attention of the international community from anti-cartoon issue,” he pointed out.

Now the diabolical plan of the Zionists is totally out of the closet. They have drawn the cartoons in their secret WMD labs to use the ensuing brouhaha to “propagate” against Iran’s oh so peaceful and gentle nukes. Shame on their chutzpah!

Cross-posted on SimplyJews