Tig at rest, on the back patio.

That’s my big pig Tig, as I like to call him. Goofball to the end.

This picture is very similar to how he looks when he’s lying across my lap, except that his head bends down and his back feet stick up farther in the air. And his tail curls around into his belly, wrapping around my hand as he gets his bellyrub.

Maybe I could set my camera up on a tripod and a timer. Hm.

I forgot to mention that this week’s Shire Network News is up. It’s been up since yesterday. However, I wasn’t online most of yesterday, what with that stomach bug and all.

Oh, my part of the podcast: I instruct listeners in the many ways to avoid dangerous animals, like alligators — which are the new shark.

Hey, somebody had to balance out Lair’s six-minute rant with a giggle or three. Yes. I made alligators funny. Rattlesnakes, too.

File this one under “What. A. Load. Of. Crap.”

Thirty five Jews volunteered to carry out suicide attacks against Israel in the service of an Islamic terrorist organization, claimed the head of an Iranian terrorist organization, “The Committee for the Commemoration of the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign.”

Members of the organization said that they planned to send the terrorists to Israel via Britain.

The Mahar news agency reported that the terror chief, Faruz Rajai-Far, told a Teheran conference that the organization’s website registered 55,000 volunteers from all over the world to carry out suicide bombings. The volunteers, he claimed, included 35 Jews who don’t live in Iran, as well as a number of Christians and other citizens. At the same time, the organization’s website has been taken down, and cannot be viewed.

I fully believe that those 35 people say they’re Jewish. But then, so do the haters on any Israel thread on the internet. I learned a long, long time ago to disbelieve the ones who say they’re Jewish, then launch into the most vitriolic anti-Jewish hate speech in the thread.

Now, I know that some of my commenters are going to say that they wouldn’t be surprised if some really are Jewish, and will supply the writings of the likes of Tony Judt to bolster their arguments. But at least Judt has never said he would strap on a bomb belt and murder innocents.

This story is bullshit. Propaganda. Lies.

Haveil Havalim, at Dad’s place.

Carnival of the Cats, at IMAO, but written by Dad.

What is this, an early Father’s Day thing?

While I’m at it, I was over at Ellison’s earlier, and found this moving and wonderful sermon given by his daughter for Kol Nidre. It speaks particularly to me because my grandfather always thought that his family was descended from Spanish Jews who pretended to convert, but who kept their faith hidden until they could emigrate from Spain.

We have lost so many of our own to forced conversions and the outlawing of Judaism. That’s one reason why the yellow badge story echoed so fast, and so fiercely, across the blogosphere and even the media.

Looks like the civil war is getting closer and closer to some major activity.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip May 22, 2006 (AP)— Hamas militiamen and Palestinian police traded heavy fire near Gaza City’s parliament building Monday, killing the driver of the Jordanian ambassador in Gaza and wounding 11 people in the worst internal fighting in weeks.

At one point, Hamas gunmen holed up in two buildings under construction, hurling grenades and firing a rocket-propelled grenade at police. Other militants took up positions behind trees, cars and buildings, turning downtown Gaza into a battle zone.

Monday’s battle was the most intense in an increasingly bloody confrontation between gunmen loyal to the Hamas government and the Palestinian security forces allied with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Hamas government deployed a 3,000-member force of militants last week, sending tensions soaring.

Bring it on, bubelahs. The more terrorists you kill, the less the IDF has to worry about.

On Sunday, police found a 154-pound bomb on the road used by Rashid Abu Shbak, a commander recently appointed by Abbas to keep Hamas-controlled troops in check. On Saturday, a bomb planted in the elevator shaft of the Palestinian intelligence headquarters seriously wounded the Palestinian intelligence chief.

Fatah officials hinted they believed Hamas was behind both incidents but stopped short of making an open accusation against Hamas.

What? They’re not blaming Israel? Check the temperature of hell, someone.

Oh, and stock up on your popcorn. There’s no way this is going to remain smalltime, not with the attempted assassinations of two Fatah leaders. It’s only a matter of time.

The AP did pick up on the kassam rocket landing in a Sderot schoolroom. Here’s what they had to say about it:

JERUSALEM (AP) - A Palestinian rocket hit on Sunday a school in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, hitting an empty classroom but causing no injuries, the army said.

School had just begun but children were holding morning prayers in a separate room when the rocket came through the roof of the classroom, school officials told Army Radio.

Palestinian militants fired a total of five rockets early Sunday toward Israel, but no other damage was caused, the army said. One of the rockets landed in a Palestinian area, the army said.

(more…)

A profile of Iranian Jews, in a straightforward article in Britain’s Independent.

Now, Iranian Jews are worried and angered by their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust. Haroun Yashayaie, head of Tehran’s Jewish Committee, wrote to him in February, saying his comments caused “fear” in his community.

“It worried us, it was disrespectful,” said a woman who did not want to be named. “Everyone knows six million Jews were killed and burnt but the President denies this. How does he know if something happened or not?”

The fact that she did not want to be named shows the tightrope on which minorities walk in Iran.

As they say, read the rest.

The EU decided last year — especially following the publication of the Mohammed cartoons — that it desperately needed a conference to discuss racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, and anti-Semitism in the media.

Guess which of the four subjects got dropped for the final topic list?

The original description of the conference received in Jerusalem in March said that the two-day seminar, which would be attended by a number of media personalities from Europe and the Arab world, would deal with racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

However all references to anti-Semitism had been removed from an updated description that the Foreign Ministry received on May 11, while a report on Islamophobia in the press was still on the agenda.

Israeli diplomatic officials said that the decision to eliminate the discussion of anti-Semitism was taken following pressure from Arab countries.

You know, there’s something almost like clockwork in these events. The same thing happens, over and over again, and then, after the Israelis get the shaft, the conference organizers always manage to get in one last hit:

Austria’s ambassador to Israel, Kurt Hengel, told the Post that the Euro-Med framework was the only forum where Israel and Arab countries sat together, and that “it wouldn’t be wise for the Israeli side not to take part in this type of forum, where it can make its point.”

Israel took place in a conference a long time ago, just before 9/11, in fact. It was the UN-sponsored Durban conference on racism, which turned into such a disgustingly anti-Semitic event that the U.S. and Israel walked out on it in disgust.

Leave it to Europe to have its head up its ass when it comes to noticing any form of Jew-hatred.