Tonight I took the last dose of the Prevpac, which has disrupted many of my body’s normal routines, not least of which is the bacteria in my digestive system regulating, well, my digestive system.

In the last few days, I thought I must have burned my tongue, or brushed it too hard, or something, because it hurts a little bit. Then today, I started wondering if maybe I had something, since it wasn’t getting any better. I discovered that it’s turning a delightfully disgusting brownish-yellow color (no sticking my tongue out at anyone today, probably). A quick google on the side effects of the Prevpac shows that tongue discoloration is one of them, and it says I should notify my doctor immediately.

Well. Now I have thrush. What fun. It’s my old foe, Candida, in a different place. Actually, I think I’ve had a light touch of it for some time, and it got worse as my good bacteria were depopulated, and the bad bacteria set up shop.

So now I get to drink this disgusting yellow liquid that pretends to have a cherry taste to it. They’ve added some kind of wintergreen flavor to kill the aftertaste. It doesn’t, really. Four teaspoons a day for a week.

I am so looking forward to getting off this regimen and getting back to taking only a single allergy pill per day.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Things could be much worse, yadda yadda. But this is my soapbox, so I get to whine about nasty-tasting medicine, and bad bacteria doing bad things to me.

Thrush. Why the hell did they name it after a bird? Or do I not want to know?

Ew. Major ew.

Well, at least I’m done with the Prevpac and the Florastor. And sometime this summer or early fall, I’ll even get to know if it was all worth it, and if H. pylorii is dead and gone. Here’s hoping.

Kofi Annan finally issued a statement about the attack on Israel by palestinian terrorists. He apparently got a case of the vapors over it.

The Secretary-General is alarmed about the recent events in Gaza and Israel, and is following developments closely. He is concerned about the attack that took place yesterday, when Palestinian militants tunneled from Gaza into Israel, and killed two Israeli soldiers and took another hostage. He calls for the safe and immediate release of the captured soldier.

The Secretary-General urges all parties to exercise restraint at this grave moment, and to take all possible steps to avoid further escalation and bloodshed.

Let’s compare this statement with the one that Kofi made about the targeted assasination that went awry last week:

The Secretary-General deeply deplores the killing of three children and the injury of other bystanders in an attempted Israeli targeted killing of alleged militants in Gaza on 20 June. The Secretary-General calls on Israel to respect international law and to ensure that its actions are proportionate and do not put civilians at grave risk. The Secretary-General sends his condolences to the families of the dead and injured.

The Secretary-General is fully cognizant of Israel’s legitimate security concerns in light of continuing rocket fire, which endangers Israeli civilians, and calls on the Palestinian Authority to do all in its power to halt such actions.

Some difference, hm? No condolences sent to the families of the Israeli soldiers killed, no forceful statement demanding the return of the kidnapped soldier and the halting of all further attacks on Israeli territory, no calls for the terrorists to adhere to international law (as IF).

But no, there is no bias against Israel at the UN. None at all.

No, really.

I swear.

Because I wasn’t online last night.

Carnival of the Cats

Haveil Havalim, the Carnival of the Jews, is over at AbbaGav’s this week.

The terrorists have issued their demands for Cpl. Shalit’s return:

The Palestinian groups that claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack on an Israel Defense Forces post near Gaza said Monday that they would provide information on the soldier kidnapped in the raid in return for certain demands.

A pamphlet sent to local Gaza media outlets and signed by the three groups said that they would only release information on the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit if Israel freed Palestinian women and under-18s held in its jails.

According to recent figures, Israel currently has 95 Palestinian women and 313 under-18s in its prisons.

There are conflicting reports in the press about whether Israel knows exactly where Shalit is being held. I’m sure the leaders of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas know exactly where he is.

By the way, still no statement from Kofi Annan saying he “deplores” the attack on Israel by terrorists from Hamas. Funny, he’s always so quick to “deplore” any action by Israel against the terrorists, though.

Have you ever found something neat while googling something else? I just did, while looking for the number to the service department for my apartments.

Someone scanned in a document from 1863 Richmond, which at that time was the capital of the Confederacy. It’s called

The Stranger’s Guide and Official Directory for the City of Richmond.
Showing the Location of the Public Buildings and Offices of the Confederate,
State and City Governments, Residences of the Principal Officers, etc.:

It’s a list of who’s who and what’s what in Richmond in the year 1863. It’s probably a lot more interesting to Richmonders, who know the streets and places and can say, “Wow, that company was around during the Civil War?” But I found this to be amusing:

GENERAL REMARKS.
In the absence of a map it may be proper to remark for the information of strangers, that the streets of Richmond are laid off at right angles to each other, with one or two exceptions. The principal streets are those extending from east to west. The “cross streets” extend from the river to the northern boundary line of the city, and are numbered in regular order from west to east. North of and parallel with Main street, in the order mentioned, are Franklin, Grace, Broad, Marshall, Clay, and Leigh streets; South of Main, and also parallel with it, are Cary, Canal and Byrd streets. The Capitol Square, which is situated near the centre of the city, is bounded on the north by Capitol street, which is parallel with and near to Broad street; on the south by Bank street; on the west by 9th street, and on the east by Governor street, and a part by 12th. Governor street (formerly a county road,) is irregular. It is 13th street south of Main, but by its inclination to the west acending the hill, its continuation becomes 12th street north of Broad street. A stranger can readily find any place, whose situation is described in the DIRECTORY, by bearing in mind that the numbers of the “cross streets ” diminish as he goes “up town” or west, and increase when he goes in the opposite direction. The names and numbers of streets are (or should be) inscribed on boards attached to the corner houses. The Capitol Square breaks the continuity of two streets, Franklin and Grace.

They sure knew how to stretch a sentence in 1863. But not nearly as badly as they did in 1763, and don’t even get me started on early eighteenth century literature. (Have you ever read Jonathan Swift? Sure, he had some good stories, but my God, the abuse of the comma and semicolon!)

So. Have you ever found something neat while googling something else?

Cpl. Shalit is reportedly being held by senior Hamas terrorists.

Abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit is being held in the Gaza Strip by senior members of Hamas’ armed wing, a senior military intelligence officer said Monday afternoon.

[...] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Shalit is being held by a group of Hamas members Israel has not identified. He emphasized that “the government sees the Palestinian Authority as responsible for the life of the kidnapped soldier.”

The intelligence officer said, “at the moment there are differences between Hamas’ military wing and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh [of Hamas] over how to confront the Shalit matter. Haniyeh is seeking to solve the problem together with Abu Mazen [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] as quickly as possible.”

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas’ political bureau, is also involved in the process.

According to the intelligence officer, the terrorists’ original plan was to kidnap an IDF soldier, present him at a press conference and use him as a bargaining chip in demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. However, once the gunmen abducted Shalit, “they realized they were holding a hot potato.”

Israeli forces are positioning along the Gaza border. The AP headline is in its trademark non-biased fashion:

Israeli Makes Threat Over Captured Soldier
Israel massed troops Monday along the Gaza Strip border in preparation for what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said would be a “broad and ongoing” operation against Palestinian militants following the abduction of an Israeli soldier.

Olmert issued the threat as Israeli and Palestinian officials furiously worked diplomatic channels to gain the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a dual French-Israeli citizen who was seized in a cross-border raid on Sunday.

Speaking to a tourism conference in Jerusalem, Olmert said Israel’s patience was wearing thin and that he held the entire Palestinian leadership responsible for Shalit’s safety.

“I gave the orders to our military commanders to prepare the army for a broad and ongoing military operation to strike the terrorist leaders and all those involved,” he said. “It should be clear. There will be immunity for no one.”

Let me interpret that last line for you: “We’re going to start killing the top Hamas leaders if they don’t give us our boy back.”

The situation could easily erupt into a major Gaza operation. The question is, will Olmert keep his word and refuse to negotiate for Cpl. Shalit’s return?

Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, a close aide to Abbas, called for restraint “at a time when President Abbas is exerting maximum efforts in order to acquire the release of the soldier, alive and unharmed.”

The tensions have raised the possibility that Israel could renew its policy of assassinating Hamas political leaders, a practice Israel halted after a February 2005 cease-fire.

Hamas lawmaker Mushir al Masri warned Israel against any “stupid acts.”

“This will blow up the area again,” he said. “We also warn the Zionists against assassinating any leader because we believe the armed wings of the resistance groups will not remain silent.”

Pinhas Inbari thinks the attack was made to derail the vote on the prisoner’s document.

The June 25 Palestinian attack from the Gaza Strip on an IDF military post inside Israel is directly connected to the Hamas-Fatah struggle over the “Prisoners Document,” which may be put to a Palestinian referendum. The core of that document calls for the unification of all armed factions to carry out joint operations against Israel. What remains in dispute is who exactly will lead the new unified front. Essentially, Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau, is telling Fatah that it will not determine for the Palestinians how to conduct the “resistance.”

Al-Aksa is threatening to use chemical and biological weapons if the IDF invades Gaza:

According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons.

The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip.

I’m of the opinion that it’s all talk and no walk, but still, the threat has been made.

An interesting analysis of Israel’s “hostage syndrome.” Don’t know that I agree with anything it says, but it’s worth the read.

Warren Buffett, the world’s second-richest man, is donating 85 percent of his fortune to charity.

June 26, 2006 — Warren Buffett, the world’s second-richest man, is making an unprecedented donation to the world’s richest man, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

Buffett, 75, the CEO of the Omaha, Neb.-based company Berkshire Hathaway, is worth $44 billion, according to Fortune magazine.

Fortune reports that Buffett will donate 85 percent of his fortune amassed from stock in the Berkshire Hathaway company to five foundations.

The donations, which will come from Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway shares, would amount to about $37 billion, based on current values.

Five-sixths of the money reportedly will go to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which specializes in finding cures for diseases that plague the Third World.

Let us compare this man to the men who have gotten rich on the proceeds of oil in their countries. Like, say, Saudi Arabia, where the money has gone to feed a corrupt monarchy, keep it in power, and fund worldwide terrorism and a virulent sect of Islam that hates the West.

And oh, yeah—there’s that Bill Gates fellow, who has donated much of his fortune to charity as well. Charity that will ultimately help the Saudi subjects, because their rulers are much more interested in finding new ways to export Wahabism than to find cures for disease.

Warren Buffett is what we of the Jewish faith call a mensch. Good for you, Mr. Buffett.

“Buffett once told Fortune magazine: ‘A very rich person would leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing,’” Hobson said.

“He says he and his wife talked about it and decided they shouldn’t pass huge amounts of money along to their children. They believe their kids were born with the advantages of wealth, and grew up with great opportunities because of that. He says they had a gigantic head start, and that dynastic megawealth would further tilt the playing field in America, when we should be trying to make it more level.”

Yes. A mensch.

Yes, this is the tag Al Jazeera has chosen for the article Conspiracy theorists meet over 9/11.

They wore T-shirts asking What Really Happened?, snapped up DVDs titled 9/11; The Great Illusion, and cheered as physicists, philosophers and terrorism experts decried the official version of the September 11 attacks.

About 1,200 people gathered at a hotel in Los Angeles over the weekend for what organisers billed as the largest conference on the plethora of conspiracy theories that see the 2001 attacks on Washington and New York as, at best, official negligence, and at worst an orchestrated US attempt to incite world war.

I can easily imagine the atmosphere of intellectual challenge, excitement and the unprecedented level of lunacy generated by 1,200 of the best and finest. I would love to watch the unabridged recording of the public appearances as well.

I sincerely hope that APA has used this rare opportunity to study the behavior of this gathering, since it is not an everyday occurrence when so many fruitcakes get together and interact in a relatively small place of their own free will.

What I really want to know is how this large group manages to reconcile the 1,200 different versions out of this “plethora of conspiracy theories”? The article gives out a free example:

Most are convinced the U.S. military command “stood down” on the day of the attack, that the hijackers were trained at American military bases, and that the World Trade Center towers collapsed because of a series of controlled explosions set before they were hit by two hijacked planes.

So the towers were attacked by the American-trained highjackers and blown up by controlled explosions. I wonder whether IDF bulldozers were involved - to insure the results?

To give more weight to his ravings, one of the chief fruitcakes - Alex Jones uses a subtle and soft selling approach:

There are so many prominent people who are incredibly well-respected who have stated that the evidence is overwhelming that 9/11 was an inside job.

Introducing a new level of respect: “incredible”. Is it that the respect level is so high as to be incredible or the mere fact that these anonymous “people” are respected is incredible? Of course, Alex does not mention any names, hoping that the future compiler of the list of the “incredibly well-respected people” will include him into this category.

Now to business, dear fruitcakes. The following quote is ringing an alarm bell in the Elders’ HQ:

Suggested motives range from expected benefits for U.S. arms and oil conglomerates to revolutionary plans for a new world order headed by the United States.

Granted, the alarm bell is a very weak and minor one, on the scale between a cockroach farting and a tree falling somewhere in the forest. However, the things must be done well or not done at all, so: the Elders do not mind any and all of you fruitcakes and will be only happy to see the number of conspiracy theories per single member of your team grow without any limits.

However, beware: the world order is already here since year 2000 and it is not going to change, unless the Elders so decide. US or no US. And blabbing about any new world order may be detrimental to your health. So take care and do not overstep the blue/white line. Remember this:

At ease.

Cross-posted at SimplyJews