Eric J. sent me a YouTube video that you must not watch with a drink in your hand. Or food, either.

It’s from Geek-Week.net: Secret Wars re-enactors. It is absolutely hilarious, and the ending is doubly so. Click on the link, and laugh.

There’s a reason it’s the box office champ. Actually, there are a lot of reasons. Let me count them. Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Iceman, Shadowcat, Colossus, Pyro, Juggernaut, Mystique, Callisto, and yes, even the Beast. Oh, and Sentinels. Yes, there were Sentinels. References to Days of Future Past. Morlocks. Angel. Moira McTaggert, replete with mega-Scots accent. Hey, they even had the Evil Terrorist Wife from last season’s 24.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Kelsey Grammer made a halfway-decent Beast.

The Kitty Pryde character was great. I just love how she handled Juggernaut, whom they portrayed perfectly. It’s a laugh-out-loud moment.

Mind you, there are a few things in the plot that I didn’t like at all, particularly a few disappearances, but overall, wow. The Danger Room. They had a session in the Danger Room! (And fans of the X-Men knew it straight off. I sure did.)

I caught Stan Lee as soon as he showed up onscreen, but I did not know that Chris Claremont has a cameo as well. Now I’ll have to look for him when I go see the film again.

By the way, if you go see it, stay through the entire credits. It’s actually a scene I had a few problems with, but it’s probably important if you want to see X4.

Of course there will be an X4. X3 made $120 million over Memorial Day weekend, and broke the box office record for Friday, I think.

Overall, I’m a happy woman. Now I only have to wait about a month before seeing Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

Oh. Six commercials. We had to sit through six effing commercials. I hate Hollywood.

Update: Kindly put very long spoiler warnings in your comment if you intend to give away major plot points so soon after the film’s release.

So what do you think Tig is thinking in this picture? He’s sitting on the very top of my comic collection, which is on a large shelf in the bedroom closet.

There’s nothing on the wall where he’s looking. There is, however, a shelf that is probably too far for him to reach in a jump (which may be what he was thinking about).

Of course, he may also be thinking about how gorgeous he looks. He’s sometimes a bit vain.

Remember a day or so ago when Terrorist Chieftain Ismail Haniyeh said that the checks were in the mail?

PA Bagman Omar Abdel Razek says otherwise:

The Hamas-led Palestinian government does not have enough money to pay tens of thousands of employees, the finance minister said Wednesday, pulling back from a pledge to begin paying long-overdue salaries to all workers in the coming days.

…

On Wednesday, however, Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek said the government has raised enough money in tax revenues to pay just 40,000 workers.

He said only the lowest wage earners, those who earn up to 1,500 shekels ($333, or ?260) a month, would receive a one month salary. People earning more than that will have to wait, he said.

…

“When we have enough money for the rest, we will pay. We don’t know when,” Abdel Razek said.

I suppose it’s no coincidence that this announcement comes just as the UN is ratcheting up their goals for the latest Adopt-a-Terrorist Begathon.

This post was originally published on August 2, 2003.

I stayed at Heidi’s last night. Woke up bright and early because Worf got into the compost can, which is a small garbage can of the type that you have to step on for the lid to open. Heidi used to keep a great glass bottle half-filled with pennies on top to prevent Worf from opening it. So one day Worf knocked the entire bottle off the top of the can. Then Heidi put the pennies into a metal scoop (sorta like those scales). Worf figured out how to knock that off last night. So this morning, because this dog is nothing if not bright, he knocked the scoop of pennies off again. I got up, shooed him and the other two dogs out of the kitchen, and started cleaning up the compost, as everyone else was still asleep, probably because the guest room is closest to the kitchen. I do believe they planned it that way. Sure, what does it matter if their guests get woken up by the dogs? It’s not like they have guests every night.

The dogs immediately take advantage of my distraction by running into my room and seeing if I have smuggled any food. I have not, but that wouldn’t stop Sparty from tearing apart my pocketbook. So I run into the guest room and shoo the dogs out of my room and this time, I close the door behind me. I finish cleaning up the compost, put the compost can in the TV room so the dogs can’t get it again, and go back to my room.

The door is locked.

It locked behind me when I closed it. I am locked out of my bedroom. Inside are all of my clothes, my computer, and my glasses. I can’t even read. Or watch TV. Not without sitting inches away from the screen. And anyway, I don’t want to read. I’m tired. I want to go back to sleep.

Nobody else is awake. I have no idea where the little tools to unlock the doors are. So I lie down on the couch in the Great Room, because the couch in the TV Room, although more comfortable, smells like dog because, well, the dogs lie on it a lot. Heidi gets up about half an hour later, sees me on the sofa, and says, “Did the dogs wake you up?”

We will stop here.

Post-terrorism stress syndrome. I am tired of constantly writing about the gazillion attempts to destroy Israel and Jews. I think today, instead, we’re going to concentrate on other things.

Like Powerline’s “Greatest American novel” poll.

Oh, wait. I don’t want to discuss it, because it’s pretty much an arbitrary thing. And frankly, a lot of their choices suck. But there’s this utterly classic part of the post that I simply must highlight:

We tried to select candidates based on literary merit. Politics and sociology were ignored.

In an update to the post, Joshua Sharf says that The Sot-Weed Factor should be replaced with The Grapes of Wrath. Hinderaker’s response?

Joshua, Joshua, Joshua. You’re fortunate that Denver has a fine public library. I’m sure they have The Sot-Weed Factor. It’s not too late to catch up with one of the most entertaining (albeit nihilistic) books ever written. But, beyond that–The Grapes of Wrath?? No socialist realism for us, thank you!

You know, that one’s such a gimme, that I don’t think I can add a snarky response to it.

Oh, of course I can. Hypocrisy, thy name is John.

Hebrew University adds details to the story, describing the species and the cave.

The invertebrate animals found in the cave – four seawater and freshwater crustaceans and four terrestial species – are related to but different from other, similar life forms known to scientists. The species have been sent to biological experts in both Israel and abroad for further analysis and dating. It is estimated that these species are millions of years old. Also found in the cave were bacteria that serve as the basic food source in the ecosystem.

The Palestinian Authority has released a statement saying that the Israeli species displaced the native palestinian species, and are demanding reparations and the “right of return” for the palestinian species.

Oh, and the Israelis are digging in a Muslim burial ground, too.

In an interview with Der Speigel, the president of Iran proves that once again, he is able to manipulate the media at will.

Here is the problem. He has set the debate starting from the false position that the Muslim and Arab world, and frankly, the Israel-hating part of the world, begins from: Namely, that Israel exists only because of the world’s guilt after the Holocaust. No one ever reminds Ahmadinejad that Jews originated in Israel, that there has been a continuous Jewish presence there for 3,500 years, and that it is the ancestral homeland of the Jews — just as Iran in the ancestral homeland of the Persians. Instead, we get idiotic journalists who counter his lies with things like this:

SPIEGEL: Well, we are conducting this historical debate with you for a very timely purpose. Are you questioning Israel’s right to exist?

Ahmadinejad: Look here, my views are quite clear. We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

SPIEGEL: That’s just not the case. All peoples mourn the victims claimed by the Second World War, Germans and Russians and Poles and others as well. Yet, we as Germans cannot absolve ourselves of a special guilt, namely for the systematic murder of the Jews. But perhaps we should now move on to the next subject.

Ahmadinejad: No, I have a question for you. What kind of a role did today’s youth play in World War II?

SPIEGEL: None.

Ahmadinejad: Why should they have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

SPIEGEL: The German people today can’t do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our fathers or grandfathers.

Ahmadinejad: How can a person who wasn’t even alive at the time be held legally responsible?

SPIEGEL: Not legally but morally.

Ahmadinejad: Why is such a burden heaped on the German people? The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely?

That crap plays really well to certain people. And it is utterly not germane to the existence of Israel. Just once — just once, I’d like to see a journalist confront him with these historic facts, and see what he says. Not that I think he’d say much different, but to see just one journalist push and push until he has answers the question or gets pissed off.

Because I need a cat picture to look at before going to bed, and because this one didn’t make it into the IFAQs post.

A new species of invertebrate animals that have been heretofore unknown to science have been discovered in Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Tuesday.

Various politicians and members of Knesset deny that the report is based on their actions toward terrorism from Gaza.

Glenn Reynolds got a note from blogcorrespondent Bill Roggio arriving in Afghanistan with a some interesting observations about those riots in Kabul after a military vehicle had brake trouble and slammed into local traffic, killing a few natives…

The good news is I’ve safely landed in Kabul. The somewhat bad news is the UN flight to Kandahar is booked, so I will head down there on Monday. But there is plenty to do in Kabul, and I’ve already dug around a little bit about the violence in the city yesterday after a US vehicle killed 1 to 3 Afghans during a traffic accident. The consensus among the folks I spoke to is the protests after the accident were staged by groups waiting for such an event to happen. I made the comparison to the reaction by some Islamist groups in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) after the Muhammad Cartoon riots, where the “spontaneous protests” were anything but. there was agreement on this point. I will likely post about this tonight or tomorrow.

Planning violent riots just waiting for an excuse to launch them? Who’d have thunk up such a thing?

By Andrea Harris:

Rock music is not and can never be conservative. Don’t even try to argue with me, I’ll just whup you upside the head. Oh please, this is just pathetic — a pitiful illustration of no-longer-young people realizing that they are no longer cool, and desperately attempting to redefine the term “cool” to suit their current way of life. Look: just go ahead and listen to your old Motley Crüe tapes, and feel free to hang your framed Mudhoney poster on the wall of your living room. No one will take away your Republican Party card away just because you were young once, and you don’t have to pretend to be your grandfather to be considered a conservative.

The full post is well worth reading. Especially for people who think that “conservative” means “anything I like, because I’m a conservative so it must be conservative, too.”

Thank you, Andrea. Rock music. Conservative. Riiiiight.

The Scotsman, in one of the most outrageously anti-Israel pieces I’ve read in months.

We begin with scare quotes in the headline:

Israel kills four ‘militants’ in Gaza Strip night attack

The clear impression being: Israel says these guys were “militants,” they were probably innocent little palis just out for a midnight stroll.

ISRAELI forces raided the Gaza Strip early today, killing four Palestinians they claimed were Islamic Jihad militants who planned to fire rockets

It was the first time the army had ventured so deep into the area since the withdrawal in September..

The scare quotes are gone, but the use of the word “claim” is clearly intended to make the reader doubt the Israeli version.
(more…)

Natfhe conference supports blacklist of Israeli academics, says Engage.

Conference invites members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies.

On one hand - who gives a flying donut? On the other - that “boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies” reminds too vividly this picture:

Of course, most of the Natfhe dumbos that voted for this resolution may be too young to remember and too stupid to understand.

I am waiting now for a notice about an e-mail address and a phone number where I could report a few closet Zionists that still support and condone secretly, while dissociating publicly.

Also - where does one get some politically correct ash to sprinkle on one’s head while dissociating? And what is the correct way to tear one’s clothes while going at it?

Questions, questions…

Update: I cannot avoid adding the following quote from the Guardian report:

…said Tom Hickey, a philosophy lecturer from the University of Brighton, member of the union’s national executive committee and proposer of the motion. “Turning a blind eye to what an Israeli colleague thinks [sic!] about the actions of their government is a culpable blindness.”

Priceless! Even good ole Joseph did not go into the suspects’ thought process…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Donald Macintyre of Independent reports from Jerusalem:

Meanwhile three Palestinians were killed and at least four wounded in an Israeli air force missile strike late last night on a sector of northern Gaza reportedly used for the launching of Qassam missiles.

Need to get your sorry ass from Jerusalem hotels and move around more, Donald: here is what Haaretz reports:

IDF special forces troops, operating deep in Gaza in a rare Israeli ground operation inside the Strip, killed at least three members of an Islamic Jihad Qassam crew setting up to fire rockets into Israel early on Tuesday.

And here is the picture:

And here is the caption to that picture (by AP, lest somebody claims Zionist manipulation of the media):

Gazans removing the body of a member of a Qassam crew killed early Tuesday by IDF troops as he prepared to fire a rocket into Israel. (AP)

Now go back to the text by Mr. Macintyre. Notice his skillful avoidance of any term, even the usual “militant” is missing.

Duh.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The IDF Gallilee commander describes yesterday’s battle against Hezbullah, and shows how the terrorists regularly commit war crimes that are ignored utterly by the world media:

Over the past few months the Northern Command has been carrying out hasty preparations for a quick and decisive retaliation plan on Hizbullah bases south Lebanon, awaiting such an attack. The aim was simple: Employ various means simultaneously, disrupt the fire and deal Hizbullah a significant blow. “Preparations were made by consolidating means: fighters were sitting with their sights aimed waiting for terrorists to come while other forces were primed to attack all bases by various means. We took out a lot of Hizbullah bases, all those along the border including those built in the past few months in the west. We made an effort to hit the terrorists, rather than the structures. Every manned post was in our sights; they tried to put snipers on us but they got hit too; they aimed anti-tank missiles but they missed and our tanks hit their bases,” the senior officer related.

He said that during the battle soldiers saw dozens of children being sent towards the Tziporen base and throwing stones. Brig.-Gen. Hirsch, who led the fighting, instructed a direct hit on the sniper cell, and only after the children had gone were helicopter gunships sent to flatten the base. “They also hid in UN buildings, which forced our attacks to be chirurgic and exact. We recommended the UN take cover when the battle started. We didn’t shoot on any target where UN employees were present.”

So not only is Hezbullah in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, but they’re also in violation of the Geneva Convention.

And yet, you won’t hear calls for a war crimes tribunal against these scumbags.

If only Israel would stop oppressing the palestinians and give them their own state, attacks like these would never happen.

Polish Chief Rabbi attacked in Warsaw
Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, was punched and sprayed with what appeared to be pepper spray by an unidentified man in downtown Warsaw on Saturday, but escaped without injuries from what police said may have been an anti-Semitic attack.

Schudrich said he was heading to a Sabbath lunch near Warsaw’s main synagogue with a group of people when a young man yelled out “Poland for Poles!”

“That’s a well-known pre-World War II slogan which basically means ‘Jews, get out of Poland,’ and I didn’t like hearing it, so I approached the gentleman to ask him why he said such things, and his reaction was to punch me in the chest,” Schudrich told AP.

“I was going to hit him back, but before I had a chance to hit him he sprayed me with some kind of spray - maybe pepper spray.”

If only Israel would stop oppressing the palestinians and give them their own state, attacks like these would never happen.

Shoppers in the historic Marais neighbourhood, one of the busiest districts in the Jewish area of Paris, were left in shock early Sunday evening after a group of extremists terrorized community members with anti-Semitic verbal abuse.

More than 20 men claiming to be members of the Tribu-Ka anti-white group walked up and down the crowded Rue des Rosiers shouting at the families and youths in the area.

The French Office of Vigilance against anti-Semitism (BNCVA) said in a statement the gang was “performing Nazi salutes, looking for a fight with the neighbourhood’s Jews, threatening and intimidating them.”

Yes, if only Israel would give the palestinians a state (preferably behind the 1949 Armistice lines), Jews the world over would not continue to be attacked by these people. It isn’t anti-Semitism, you see. It’s anti-Zionism.

Knock me over with a feather. No, knock me over with a nano. The AP is running a story about the IDF successfully preventing a suicide bombing — and actually calling it a suicide attack.

JERUSALEM May 29, 2006 (AP)— Israeli soldiers, acting on intelligence reports, prevented two Palestinian militants on Monday from carrying out a suicide bombing inside Israel, the military said. The militants were spotted carrying a suspicious bag near the West Bank city of Nablus and tried to flee, said Lt. Col. Arik Chen, a battalion commander in the Nablus region.

They threw away the bag, then led troops on a three-hour foot chase, until they were cornered and gave themselves up, he said. The men surrendered only after troops fired in the air.

Inside the bag, soldiers found a bomb weighing 15 pounds, packed with nails and pieces of small metal, which heighten the deadly effect, Chen said. Sappers later blew it up.

Go buy a lottery ticket today, folks, the world is upside down.

According to the AP, the IDF took out most of the Hezbullah front-line rocket positions during the bombardment yesterday.

Israel destroyed most of the military positions of the Lebanese Hezbollah along the northern border, in the heaviest fighting since it withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon six years ago, the IDF’s northern division commander said Monday.

The Sunday rocket and artillery exchanges killed two Hezbollah guerrillas and wounded two Israeli soldiers. The cross-border fighting began when Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets from Lebanon at Israel’s northern Galilee region, hitting an air force base, then attacked Israeli outposts along the border.

“Our main effort was to destroy the frontline that Hezbollah has built in the last six years,” Colonel Gal Hirsch said, adding the pro-Iranian group had established dozens of frontline outposts along the border with Israel.

“We destroyed most of them,” he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.

(more…)

BTU being “British Teachers Unions.”

Judith of Adloyada has an in-depth look at the first vote against academic freedom in the current campaign to demonize all things Israeli (but no, not Jewish, never Jewish, they’re not anti-Semites — the fact that Israel is a Jewish state has nothing to do with their hatred and contempt for Israeli policies).

She’s written extensively about the boycott in the past as well. Everything you wanted to know about the boycott can be found here.

It is very instructive to browse from time to time through the Guardian Israeli shelf at the http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/. There is really no quiet moment on that shelf, and it keeps growing at a speed that would be envied by many other countries (if, indeed, other countries could care about coverage by Guardian).

There are quite a few contributors to the ever-rising stack of articles. They do not think alike, they do not write alike, they are not alike. However, there is one common trait that unites them: that intangible, but easy to distinguish ability to detach themselves from reality in favor of the point they are intent to make. That ivory tower syndrome, so to say.

Take as an example what two different authors say about Israeli shelling of Gaza. Chris McGreal in this article:

The military says the bombardment is aimed at deterring Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel from open fields…

(more…)

Carnival of the Cats: I have one in this week. It’s the post directly before this one.

Haveil Havalim: Y’know, I never submit, but they still put my posts in. They’re such mensches.

Shire Network News: This week, I tear into the British moron who couldn’t understand why Americans would want to take the WTC steel and put it into warships. Yeah, most people don’t understand us.

In the interest of helping society, we here at yourish.com have developed a list of questions about cats that would ordinarily not get answered, or at least, certainly not get answered the way we answer them. This is the first in a series. Feel free to send your questions to meryl -at- mylastname - dot - com if you’d like this series to continue.

Why do cats sleep in the sun?
Why do bears crap in the woods? Why do babies cry? Why is the sky blue? Come on, be honest. If you could spend 18-20 hours a day sleeping, you’d do it, too. Who wants to work?

Do cats get sunburn? Are they at risk for skin cancer from UV rays?
Yes, as a matter of fact, they do. Gracie and Tig were both black cats when I got them. Over the course of their lives, their habit of sleeping in the sun has burned their skin and fur to the orange color you see in recent pictures. (Gracie actually used to be a tuxedo, but is now orange-and-white.)

I found pawprints all over the hood of my car. Should I be worried?
Yes. While many cats merely like to sleep on the warm engine of a parked car, some have more nefarious schemes in mind. Lately, I’ve had to repeatedly check my brake lines. Tig is trying to blackmail me into giving him more tunafish, and he’s been slashing the brake lines from time to time. He thinks I haven’t got a clue, but my hidden camera caught him fleeing the scene only this morning.

Why do cats like tunafish so much, anyway?
It carries within it deep species memories, from the days when cats were cats and humans were humans, and when they met, it often ended in cats eating humans. Cats have what Jack London used to call “racial memories,” wherein they could remember prehistoric times. Back then, cats frolicked on the shorelines, waiting for the hapless tuna to crawl up onto the beaches to spawn, and then pounced, eating fresh tuna from the sea. Indeed, hidden deep within the vaults at Starkist are the fossil records of just such a scene, kept under lock and key for fear that the current generation of domestic kitties would never again obey their human masters if the evidence got out. There’s a rumor that it’s the subject of Dan Brown’s next novel, The Kitty Code.

Why don’t cats do tricks and come when they’re called? Dogs do!
Dogs are Communists. The dog is always too willing to follow the strongest leader, a.k.a. the alpha dog. Dogs are weak, cowardly, chicken-hearted collectivists, eager to please anyone and anything that is physically stronger. Cats, on the other hand, are red-white-and-blue Americans. They are individuals and individualists, fending for themselves if they must, but canny enough to trick humans into giving them food and cleaning up after them. The fact that the United States now has more cats than dogs per household is proof that a country is only as great as its pets. Even a crap artist like Andrew Lloyd-Weber recognized the superiority of cats. There have been exactly zero major Broadway hits about dogs.

Most American presidents had dogs in the White House. This is because in general, a president is unable to handle anything less than complete submission of his subordinates. Bill Clinton’s cat was a facade. He gave it to his secretary when he left office, thus proving that he never really liked cats to begin with.

Occasionally, you hear about cats being taught tricks, but this is generally a deliberate act on the part of Cat Nation. Some are sacrificed so that the many can save face.

Is it true that cats make good snipers?

Yes. They are taught how to handle firearms from a very early age. So watch your manners around cats. And if you can’t watch your manners, then watch your back. And have an up-to-date will.

The situation in northern Israel is escalating:

At approximately 3 p.m. Palestinians on the Lebanese side of the northern border opened fire toward the Kibbutz Manara area in northern Israel, and IDF soldiers manning a nearby outpost retaliated. Meanwhile a number of mortars were also fired toward Israel, apparently by a separate terror cell. In response IDF choppers launched a strike on Hizbullah bases in southern Lebanon, and army forces opened fire at the areas from which the mortar and rocket attacks emanated from.

Some residents think it’s about damned time to get rid of the missile batteries once and for all.

The secretary of Moshav Margaliot in the north told Ynet, “I think Defense Minister Amir Peretz now realizes that the restraint exhibited this morning did not pay off and that only a major strike on the Lebanese infrastructure will prove the severity of the situation to the Beirut government.

“I call on Peretz to let the IDF act with all means available to it,” he said.

Another northern border resident said, “If we want to put an end to the threats, then this is the chance.

“Send us to the bomb shelters, shut down the communities and put an end to Hizbullah and its partners once and for all; they are disrupting daily life for northern Israel residents.

Can’t argue with that. There is a UN resolution backing up Israel’s position. If the UN won’t disarm the terrorists, Israel should.

While looking for something else, I found this article on the 1982 air battle between Israel and Syria over the Bekaa Valley.

It gives you an idea why Hezbullah is aiming thousands of rockets at Israel: Because there is no Arab air force that can make its way into Israel without being utterly destroyed.

Of course, the big question is: In the event of an all-out battle, will the IAF manage to destroy the bulk of the rocket batteries before serious damage is done?

Terrorists in Lebanon, in violation of a binding UN Security Council resolution to disarm, fired katyusha rockets into Israel yesterday, wounding an Israeli soldier. In response, Israel bombed several terrorist bases, killing one and wounding five.

They should have sent out more bombers.

After three to eight Katyusha rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon Sunday morning, the Israeli Air Force reprised with an air strike on two bases in southeast Lebanon, wounding six Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine operatives.

Some of the Katyushas hit in the residential section of the air control unit base in Mount Meron, some 10 km (6.25 miles) from the border. One soldier suffered from shock and was evacuated to the Ziv hospital in Safed in light condition, and one of the base’s buildings was lightly damaged.

Shortly after 10 a.m. the air force retaliated with missile strikes in the Lebanese valley. The first targeted the Popular Front general headquarters in Sultan Yaakov five kilometers from the Syrian border. Al Jazeera reported that eight missiles were fired at the base, wounding at least three operatives. Afterwards, the planes returned and fired at a Popular Front base in the Nueima area south of Beirut.

A senior PFLP member told al-Jazeera his group has the right to retaliate for the attack. Asked whether his group was behind the attack, he refused to answer and said: “Blessed be the hand that fired into Israel.”

The AP spin:

(more…)

The Economist runs an article in which a genetic scientists insists that Jews are smarter than anyone else — due to persecution and intermarriage of the Ashkenazis.

Dr Cochran, however, suspects that the intelligence and the diseases are intimately linked. His argument is that the unusual history of the Ashkenazim has subjected them to unique evolutionary pressures that have resulted in this paradoxical state of affairs.

Funny, my grandfather told me the same thing, only without the genetic background.

I think there will be much controversy over this claim. Most of us hold that Jews rise to the top of our game due to our upbringing. We are taught to respect education. There are very few Jewish professional athletes for a reason. Our children are raised with the expectation that they’ll put aside the games and concentrate on real-life concerns like becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals.

But I thought my readers would be interested. I expect this one will bring out the anti-Semites in droves.

Update: Whoops, this article is a year old. It somehow showed up as new on Google News.

It’s Friday, the weekly day for the “nonviolent” protest that the ISM pretends is its motif.

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.

So these “non-violent” methods, what do they entail?

On Friday, dozens of demonstrators tried to cross the barbed wire section of the barrier that is built through a Palestinian-owned olive orchard.

So these “non-violent” methods, does anyone get hurt?

A soldier was lightly injured in the demonstration, the army said.

(more…)

America pays belated tribute to an unsung hero of WWII:

Sixty-six years ago, Hiram Bingham IV, a blue-blood American diplomat in France, defied U.S. policy by helping Jews escape the Nazis in the early years of World War II.

Bingham’s actions cost him his Foreign Service career but won him the undying gratitude of the more than 2,000 refugees he helped save by issuing them travel visas and false passports, and even at times sheltering them in his home. Only in recent years has his heroism been officially recognized by his own country.

[...] But Bingham, in defiance of U.S. policy, went much further, helping thousands of Jews escape. He provided Fry with visa and other travel documents, some fraudulent, let rescue activists use his home for planning meetings and hid refugees there from the local authorities. At one point he helped novelist Lion Feuchtwanger elude the Nazis by dressing him in women’s clothing and spiriting him through German checkpoints by telling authorities the person was his mother-in-law. Among the people Bingham helped save were artist Marc Chagall and philosopher Hannah Arendt.

In a 1980 audiotape made by his granddaughter Tiffany, who was working on a school project, Bingham made clear that his superiors would have disapproved had they known what he was doing.

“My boss, who was the consul general at the time, said, ‘The Germans are going to win the war. Why should we do anything to offend them?’ ” Bingham said on the tape, which was found in the 1990s and played at yesterday’s event. “I had to do as much as I could.”

His name will be honored for a long, long time. Scroll down the page to read the USPS profile on Bingham.

A car bomb killed a leader of Islamic Jihad in Lebanon.

Mahmoud Majzoub, a member of the group’s policy-making Shura Council body and its leader in Sidon, 24 miles south of Beirut, was walking with his brother, Nidal, near the central square of this coastal city when a parked car was detonated by remote control, security officials said.

Mahmoud Majzoub survived the blast but died during surgery, while Nidal Majzoub was killed instantly, said the security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Islamic Jihad’s representative in Lebanon said Nidal Majzoub also was a member of the group.

If it had been a simple car bomb, I wouldn’t have been sure who got them. But that’s a Mossad technique for assassinating terrorists who hide in other countries. Perfectly carried out, too — nobody else was hurt.

Expect the terror alert in Israel to rise over this one.

If only they’d target Nasrallah. Now that would send a message to the terrorists, and to Iran.

I have finally understood what I would like to do with the rest of my life. It is so simple - like a 1000 watt bulb going off in your head!

And it happened reading this editorial in NYT. Wow, man! You get, like, a blog of your own, but a) you get paid a good buck and b) lotsa folks are going to read it. And all the other conveniences of the blog: anonymity (it is NYT that has written it, after all, not a specific bloke - go and clean the clock of all the flunkies there - quite a sweaty undertaking), ability to write any bullshit that comes to mind and stuff…

Just look at it:

Now, because of two culprits and one enabler — Hamas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Bush — that hill is becoming a mountain.

I mean, isn’t it cool: that poor Ehud, barely a week in his job and already a “culprit”. Of course, he cannot bash the author’s teeth in for the reason stated above, but I bet he wanna to…

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On Tuesday night, I watched the first of the X-Men films. It’s been a long time, and I’d forgotten a lot of it, so it was rather delightful to see all over again. I remember thinking how incredibly annoyed I was that they left the Toad in Magneto’s brotherhood, but they did manage to make him interesting enough to bear. It was interesting, too, to see how they set up the Pyro character in that small bit in X-Men where he tries to launch a fireball at another student and Iceman freezes it.

I plan on watching X2 tonight, a film that I’ve seen more recently because it’s been all over the TV lately. Plus, it’s one of those films I tend to get hooked on if I’m channel-surfing and it appears.

And I will see X3 sometime this weekend. Unfortunately, I may not get to it until Sunday. B’nai Mitzvah season is upon me. The first one is this weekend, then there’s a break, then four in a row to fill out all of June. I’ve been invited to three of the five (two are newer students that I didn’t teach or meet until this year). That will be four of my first year’s class by the end of June. I think the twins are in August (on the same day, naturally). I know of one other in October. Not sure when Samantha’s bat mitzvah is. But from now on, I’ll be attending the b’nai mitzvot of my former students. But that’s okay. They’re going to have to attend mine in November of 2007.

As for the reviews of X3: Not interested. I will not be reading them, nor paying attention to anything anyone says. I’m going to see the movie and judge for myself.

Salon has a piece by a journalist who details the difference between covering “resistance” and civil war:

Having said that, a lot of the goodwill toward the foreign journo dries up when it’s Arabs fighting each other. Suddenly, you’re not documenting a noble struggle against occupation, you’re just some foreigner. And if you’re in a hospital full of pissed-off Military Intelligence officials tending to their wounded, it’s a disaster. As I tried to take pictures, I was suddenly surrounded by a mob of armed men grabbing at my cameras. Luckily, the son of a wounded official jumped into the fray and dragged me to a side room. Once he checked my digital images, he informed the angry crowd I had done nothing wrong and I was free to take pictures outside the hospital.

One frame later, I was chased off the hospital grounds by a half-dozen armed, screaming men. A local photographer — one smart enough to not even take his cameras out of his car — yanked me to safety.

“You know they’d kill me for saying this, but I miss the Israelis,” one droll local journalist told me after we watched the men beat another photographer and destroy his gear. “Sure they occupied us, but there were fucking rules, man. ‘Go here and we’ll shoot you. Stand there and you’re cool.’ We could work. We could live. Now we have this shit.”

It’s not worth sitting through the annoying ad to read the whole thing. The rest of the article is full of poor, poor, pitiful pal propaganda, all about how noble Hamas is for keeping its word on the “truce,” and how the world is screwing the terrorist organization by cutting off funds to the PA. Funny, for a broke organization, they managed to find funding to arm, clothe, and train 3,000 new militia men. The AK-47 is going for $800 a pop now. Anyone want to do the math on how much it cost to arm 3,000 terrorists with AK-47s?

Shyeah. Broke. That’s why their leaders get caught smuggling in close to a million dollars.

Here’s the headline:

Saudi Arabia Restricts Religious Police

Here’s the lead:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia May 25, 2006 (AP)— The Interior Ministry said it is taking measures to restrict the powers of the agency that runs the religious police, a force resented by many Saudis for interfering in their personal lives.

In a decree carried by the official Saudi Press Agency late Wednesday, Interior Minister Prince Nayef said members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or the religious police, can still make arrests in cases like the harassment of women, but probes will now be conducted by the public prosecutors.

“The role of the commission … ends with the arrest of the suspect or suspects,” said the decree, sent to provincial governors across the kingdom.

Wow, that sounds great, doesn’t it? Finally, the Saudi religious fanatics are going to start reining in the dreaded muttawa, the force responsible for sending young Saudi girls back to their deaths in a burning school because they fled without first putting on their hijabs.

So, an announcement that the Saudis are “reining in” the muttawa is a good thing. Right? So. Let’s go see what the big change is.

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Last week, I pointed out a quote by a Hamas legislator that pretty much proves they will never give up on their intent to destroy Israel:

“We are in favor of any steps towards establishing a Palestinian state in the borders of 1967,” says Mr. Bardawil. “When Israel stops its dream of a state from the Nile to the Euphrates, we will stop our dream of Haifa and Yaffa and Acco,” cities along Israel’s coast which had large Arab populations before 1948, and still have sizable Arab minorities. “Give us the land of 1967 and less us dream for the next 100 years.”

(Replace “less” with “let” and that last quote makes sense.)

Now we have Mahmoud Abbas issuing an ultimatum to Hamas: They have 10 days to approve the “prisoner’s plan,” which is essentially the return to the 1949 Armistice lines (a.k.a. “1967 borders”). Failing approval in ten days, Abbas will call for a referendum and see what the people have to say. It’s being called a “bold move” and oohed and aahed by various members of the media.

But something Abbas said struck a chord.

Abbas told a conference of Palestinian leaders Thursday that a national consensus exists on the borders of a future Palestinian state.

“All the Palestinians, from Hamas to the Communists, all of us agree we want a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders,” he said. “This is what we have, we cannot talk about dreams.”

It seems like Abbas is telling Hamas to give up its dream of a state “from the river to the sea,” but I’m not ready to believe that it isn’t also what he wants. He is a disciple of Arafat, after all, hand-picked by the corrupt Jew-hater to placate the West when it finally realized that Arafat was a waste of protoplasm.

I think Abbas’ statement makes perfect sense if you add the word “now” to the end of it.

While their “leaders” powwow in reinforced bunkers far from the fighting, it looks like the rank-and-file of Hamas and Fateh are still doing their usual negotiating in the streets of Gaza with bullets and roadside bombs:

A member of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian security forces was killed and four others were wounded Thursday, doctors and witnesses said, in the latest factional clashes in the Gaza Strip.

The shootout, which occurred on a major Gaza road, began when a group of security officers riding in a car on their way from the funeral of top Gaza security commander Nabil Hodhod clashed with members of the new militia.

So, when does Islamic Jihad start its own police force? And when does FOX get to ride along with these trigger-happy nutcases for an episode of COPS?

It’s good to know that when Hamas put in their charter that the Freemasons are part of the worldwide conspiracy against Muslims, they really meant it.

Unfortunately, the Americans are on Israel’s side …and gave the Israelis the green light for a conspiracy against our people.”

Haniyeh said the Palestinian government won’t comply to international demands that it make concessions in the pursuit of peace with Israel.

Haniyeh spoke of “international plotters” who conspired with Israel to “set up a network against the elected government to suffocate and starve us.”

Yes, the members are Hamas are as dumb as they look. And this line is simply a knee-slapper:

“Our unity is a religious must and a political need. Internal clashes harm our image in the international community. There will be no Palestinian civil war; Palestinian blood is holy,” he said.

So, about that Fatah bigwig who was murdered in the past few days — I guess his blood, not so much?

The UN is finally threatening Darfur. If Darfur doesn’t stop interfering with the UN auditors who are there to see what happened to all the money spent on the Darfur peacekeeping force (don’t laugh, there is one), the UN is going to pull the auditors out of Sudan.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N.’s internal watchdog agency has threatened to withdraw its auditors from Sudan to protest restrictions placed on it by the U.N. envoy to the troubled African nation, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The Office of Internal Oversight Services, known as OIOS, has been prevented from carrying out a thorough examination of the nearly $1 billion peacekeeping budget for the country, according to the internal e-mail memo.

The threat comes as the United Nations plans to expand its Sudan operation and take over peacekeeping duties in its conflict-wracked Darfur region, site of one of the world’s most serious humanitarian crises. It also comes in the midst of a major reform effort and greater scrutiny of U.N. peacekeeping missions with a goal of more openness and accountability.

That’ll show ‘em.

Does this strike you as the definition of chutzpah, or what?

The president of Mexico is touring America to tell us to give our illegal immigrants — his citizens, who can’t find work because of his crappy government’s decades-long culture of corruption, graft, bribery, and crappy economic policies — a break.

SALT LAKE CITY, May 24 — Adding a voice from south of the border to the national debate on immigration, Mexican President Vicente Fox is barnstorming the western United States this week, arguing against fencing off the U.S.-Mexico border and asking Americans for “decent treatment of our people.”

The U.S. tour is designed partly to enhance cross-border trade and investment. But Fox has also taken pains to present the Mexican view of the raging U.S. debate over immigration — or, as he calls it, “the migration phenomenon.”

Funny, we call it the “illegal immigration” phenomenon.

Addressing the Utah legislature Wednesday in accented but clear English, Fox insisted that Mexican immigrants have been a boon to this country. “Mexico is proud, very proud, of its people here, whose working spirit and moral values contribute every day to the economy and society of this great nation,” he said.

And he spoke out repeatedly here against proposals to build fences along the border. The U.S. House has passed legislation calling for a 700-mile fence to cut the flow of immigrants, and the Senate last week voted to build a three-tiered fence stretching 370 miles.

“We don’t put up walls,” Fox told a predominantly Latino crowd in Spanish at a lively rally Tuesday in a Salt Lake suburb. “That’s not the way you’re going to fix the problem. Walls that pretend to solve the problem only provoke distance between two peoples.”

Um, yeah, you do put up walls, and you don’t allow immigrants from points farther south than Mexico. But hypocrisy aside — am I the only one who thinks this guy should shut the hell up, go home, and fix his own goddamned economy?

If any of you are expecting to call me between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m. EST, I’m afraid I will be unavailable.

I will not be liveblogging the finale.

I will not be on the phone with Sarah during the finale.

I will not be playing computer games during the finale.

That’s right, I will be watching the finale. Oh, except for the commercials. I generally don’t pay attention to those.

And nope, I didn’t write this post just before the show started. I scheduled it. I wrote it last night.

Just in case though, be very, very quiet while you’re on my blog. I don’t want to be disturbed.

Update: Well, that was one freaky-deaky ending. I stand by my initial hunch that the writers just say they had a plan for it all. I think they’re going by the MSU plan. (They just make shit up as they go along.)

Update 2: Why do I keep wanting to sing “Sloop John B”?

Fateh and Hamas leaders claim to have settled their differences and agree to “curb” back on the civil war stuff.

Meanwhile, just got a Muppet News Flash: Nabil Hodhod just got taken out by a car bomb in Gaza City. He’s Fateh’s commander of Preventive Security there.

I suppose bits and pieces of him and his staff are spread across a few curbs right now.

In case you’re already popping corn, Meryl, I like my popcorn popped on the stove with olive oil and smothered with Parmesan cheese.

So a Fatah border guard asks his buddy, who is driving the PA Foreign Minister, our old buddy Mahmoud Zahar, to ask Zahar when the