The latest Shire Network News podcast, featuring yours truly, is up.

This week, I share with you some of the hatemail and hateful comments that you never see, due to my habit of deleting them.

I haven’t listened to the rest, but Lair shared his script with us. It’s pretty powerful. And the rest of the crew is always good.

Go. Listen. You’ll like it.

The Carnival of the Cats (this week featuring Tig and Gracie) is back home at Lair’s place.

Haveil Havalim, the Carnival of the Jews, is at Perspectives of a Nomad. A wandering view. Oh, now I get it. Funny, Soccer Dad. (You had to get the email. Actually, no, you didn’t, I just gave you the joke.)

You should be reading Soccer Dad daily to get his daily roundup of the J-Blogosphere, and the war.

This is a pretty typical scene, but in an atypical place. The green tissue paper is on the sofa for Gracie’s enjoyment. From time to time, Tig sleeps in it just to piss her off, because he really prefers sleeping in many other places—a box near my ottoman, the top of the sofa (as seen here), any other part of the sofa, my bed, the chair next to me when I’m blogging, and a host of other places. Gracie, on the other hand, generally picks two or three spots and those are hers. Hers, hers, hers. Tig knows it, so he devils her whenever he wants my attention. He will purposely—and slowly—use the scratching post when Gracie is sleeping inside the tube, just to piss her off. Works every time. I hear first growls, then blood-curdling shrieks, at which point I get up, go over to the pair of them, tell Tig to knock it off and commiserate with Gracie, who snuffles self-pityingly and agrees with me that Tig is a brat.

So to get the two of them near each other in a shot like this is rare. I have many, many individual shots of Tig and Gracie, and though they do actually like each other a lot, and do more than a few things together (they walk to the food dishes in unison often enough to notice, but rarely enough to make me smile every time), they don’t often sleep next to each other. I suspect that’s Gracie’s doing. She knows what a brat her big brother can be. Really. Last night, she walked past him and he reached out and swatted her just to swat her. They don’t play, and he knows it.

Brat, I say. He’s a brat.

But he’s awfully cute when he sleeps. And to get a twofer like this is a rarity.

The major news media are not picking up on this, but Brian of London has. The latest rocket barrage in Haifa has caused the collapse of an apartment building in an Arab Israeli neighborhood.

Watch for the expressions of “martyrdom” from Chipmunk Cheeks and his minions of death. Watch the media pick up on it once they realize that it isn’t another bunch of dead Jews.

JERUSALEM (AP) - A barrage of Hezbollah rockets struck Haifa on Sunday, killing at least one person and wounding more than 30, officials and media reported, in the heaviest attack on the port city since fighting with the Lebanese-based militia began nearly four weeks ago.

A spokesman for the Haifa fire department, Chezi Levi, said one crowded residential district suffered five or six hits, and there were many casualties.

At least one house collapsed, apparently trapping people inside, Channel 2 television reported. Two or three residential areas also were reported to have been targeted.

That’s the AP. This is Ynet:

One of the rockets hit an apartment building. Following the hit, the building collapsed and several people were apparently trapped under the rubble. Large rescue forces were dispatched to the area in order to attend to the injured. In addition, several houses caught fire, some of them after being directly hit by rockets.

Shaul from Haifa told Ynet: “At around 7:50 p.m. there was a siren. I work on the 17th floor, I entered the fortified room, and after a minute there were suddenly four great ‘booms,’ the entire building trembled. I also spoke to a friend working in the area, and there the building also shook. At least a minute passed between the siren and the landing, so we had enough time to reach the fortified room.”

The rocket barrages will fall silent now. Hezbullah doesn’t fire during the night. Because the IDF and IAF can pinpoint them more easily and take out their launchers. Contrary to what you read, Hezbullah isn’t a brave, daring, courageous military fighting the IDF to a standstill. They’re still running like the cowards they are, using anti-tank missiles against people instead of facing the IDF in combat—and lobbing rockets at civilians.

The task of fisking is sometimes a challenge. When your opponent’s IQ is above that of a hedgehog, enabling the said opponent to create an artful mix of reality, half-truths and outright lies, it may be difficult to wade through the material at hand.

Strangely, the person in whose honor the occupation of fisking was named, is so deranged lately that fisking his own stuff has become a child’s play. Since I do not have a child handy at the moment, I have decided to review Fisk’s latest ravings as a recreational activity. Instead of having a cigarette, that is.

If the Israelis crossed the Lebanese border, the Palestinians jumped in their cars and drove to Beirut and went to the cinema. Now when the Israelis cross the Lebanese border, the Hezbollah jump in their cars in Beirut and race to the south to join battle with them.

There were no intelligence (or other) reports about Hezbollah members racing south. But there are plenty of reports about them changing into civilian clothes and hiding themselves and their rocket launchers and other assorted armory amidst general population. A useful trick that, in addition, enables subsequent reports about the bloody Israelis targeting innocents.

But the key thing now is that Arabs are not afraid any more. Their leaders are afraid, the Mubaraks of this world, the president of Egypt, King Abdullah II of Jordan. They’re afraid. They shake and tremble in their golden mosques, because they were supported by us. But the people are no longer afraid.

Everyone is afraid. IDF sodiers, Hezbollah “activists”, civilians on both sides of the border. Only a mad person does not experience fear. Contrary to the newly hatched myths about Hezbollah’s valiant struggle, our soldiers know better. Most of the IDF casualties are caused not by the small arms fire, but by the astonishing quantities of anti-tank weaponry accumulated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah fighters do not like to look at the whites of our eyes any more than they did years ago.

Fisk will do much better trying to answer why had Hezbollah accumulated such an enormous stock of armory - is it to “liberate” the puny piece of land called Shaaba farms (that, according to all experts, was in Syrian jurisdiction)? But could he?

It’s not the same enemy, and they’re not running away anymore, and that is what is going to doom us in this crazed conflict, which we continue to provoke…

So it is Israeli side that “provoked” this crazed conflict? That beating administered by the Afghani farmers many years ago has, evidently, caused irreversible damage to that brain, never amounting to much in the first place.

Bolton keeps saying in the United Nations that Syria is behind Hezbollah. Bush said the same at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg when he was caught in his [expletive] comments by the microphone. And they’re right, but for the wrong reasons, of course.

Hmm… They are right - but for the wrong reasons… Have I already mentioned that beating in… oh yes, I have. Anyway, there is no explanation of that mysterious statement in the following text. On the other hand, there is a curious outburst:

I mean, Bolton, most Arab leaders and diplomats realize that Bolton is a bit cracked. I mean, he needs medical, rather than political, help.

There was a psychiatrist that said something to the effect that when one person calls another an idiot it is not clear which one of the two really is an idiot. But have I already mentioned that beating in… oh, yeah.

And the whole piece is crowned by a statement of faith:

I am not going to let 19 Arab murderers change my world and nor should you in America. I am not going to let the 7th of July bombs on the [inaudible] in front of the Picadilly London train that blew up, I am not going to let that change my world…

Indeed - why would one care about changing that sad little world of a habitual word-twister and spinmeister gone off?

Feh…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

As if Iranians have been open to an advice from me, they have decided to add some variety to the assortment of fellow travelers they are sending to Lebanon to become martyrs for the cause.

Iran has freed a son of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from house arrest, a German newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Die Welt said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard released Saad bin Laden on July 28 with the aim of sending him to the Syria-Lebanon border. It linked the reported move to the outbreak of war between Israel and Lebanese-based Hizbollah.

“From the Lebanese border, he has the task of building Islamist terror cells and preparing them to fight together with Hizbollah,” Die Welt said, quoting intelligence information.

What can one say? A turd does not fall far from the bird…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Say, Michael Totten, is this Hezbollahland or a Christian town? The IDF found a mortar and 100 bombs in a civilian area in southern Lebanon. Shocked, shocked, I am. Well, no, not really.

IDF forces revealed a 120 mm mortar, prepped for launch, in a tour of the village of Mahbib, which is in the eastern zone of southern Lebanon. The IDF reports that some 100 mortar bombs were found. (Efrat Weiss)

The Syrian sock-puppets speak: Lebanon has rejected outright the cease-fire agreement.

Lebanon’s parliament speaker, who represents the Shiite Islamic militant group in negotiations, said the draft resolution was unacceptable since it would leave Israeli troops in Lebanon and does not deal with Beirut’s key demands a release of prisoners held by Israel and moves to resolve a dispute over a piece of border territory.

Good. Ehud, send in 50,000 soldiers. Clear out the rat’s nest. Stop these baby steps and unleash the IDF. Show some balls, old man. Ask yourself: What would Arik do?

Reuters photoshops the war: Charles Johnson caught Reuters with its pants down, and exposed a fake photo that has been photoshopped to make the damage in Beirut look worse. And the best thing about it? It happens to have been done by the photographer who many are accusing of having staged the Qana photos. Can you say, “Anti-Israel media bias”? I knew you could.

How damning is the evidence? Reuters has pulled the photo and suspended the photographer. Take a bow, Charles & Co. (Watch for the Kos Kidz to spin this one hard, and look stupid trying.)

Olmert to EU: STFU, you hypocrites: Ehud Olmert told a German newspaper that the Europeans killed a hell of a lot more people in Kosovo than the IDF has in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

“Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?” Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll.

“European countries attacked Kosovo and killed 10,000 civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket.

“I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.”

Right. Now send in more ground forces, Ehud. Take out the damned rocket launchers.

Good thing it isn’t the US Army that has him: The IDF caught one of the mofos that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers three weeks ago.

IDF Intelligence Chief Major General Amos Yadlin has revealed that the IDF has captured one of the Hizbullah terrorists who kidnapped two IDF soldiers.

“In one of the operations in Lebanon the kidnapper was captured. He has been taken for interrogation,” Yadlin told government ministers.

He also had a report on Hezbullah’s fearless leader—the one who hides in bunkers and disguises himself in civilian clothing to travel around unrecognized, yet says he’s ready for martyrdom.

“Nasrallah has turned into a figure that hides in a bunker. His evaluations of how Israel responds, how it prepares, how steady its home
front command is, how long the clash will last – all of these parameters have been significantly struck. Hizbullah today is a lot less deterring,” he said.

I shall raise a celebratory glass of wine on the day that your Chipmunk Cheeks are peeking out of the Hezbullah flag and your corpse is about to be lowered into a grave. May it be soon.

And that is all I can take for now. Stress levels are high. Repeat: Stress levels are high. But not nearly as high as our friends in Israel. Now would be a good time to donate to Magen David Adom, or any other Israeli charity if you can afford it.

Katyushas hit a crowd of people and killed eleven, wounding many others.

VIDEO – Deadly fire on northern border: A massive rocket barrage was fired Sundayt afternoon at Kibbutz Kfar Giladi in the Kiryat Shmona area. Ten Israelis were killed in the attack and another person died of his wounds at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed, to where he was evacuated in critical condition.

Ten people are still hospitalized at the Safed hospital and the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, four of them in serious condition.

The rocket hit what the JPost called a “gathering spot.”

At least eleven people were killed, and two others were critically wounded after a rocket hit a gathering spot in Kfar Giladi in the upper Galilee on Sunday afternoon, MDA reported.

[...] “It was a direct hit on a crowd of people,” Dan Ronen, the chief of the northern police command, told Army Radio.

The usual celebrations are taking place in the towns of Israel’s “partners in peace.”

Celebratory processions were held in Nablus following the lethal attack. Cars with photographs of Hassan Nasrallah drove past with Hizbullah flags.

And may the next rocket land in your neighborhood, scumbags.

Remember that these missiles are deliberately produced with ball bearings added to the load. They are specifically made to create as many casualties as possible.

Some of the rockets, such as those that killed eight rail workers in Haifa on July 16 and two young brothers in Nazareth on July 19, have warheads packed with thousands of metal ball bearings that spray out from the blast. Launched on civilian areas, the ball bearings are intended to inflict maximum harm.

Under international humanitarian law – also known as the laws of war – parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes.

Not that there’s any danger of the UN threatening Hezbullah with war crimes charges.

In addition, the warheads used suggest a desire to maximize harm to civilians. Some of the rockets launched against Haifa over the past two days contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.

[...] “In my medical opinion, they [these rockets] are supposed to injure as many people as possible,” said Dr. Eran Tal-Or, director of the Surgical Emergency Room at Haifa’s Ramban Hospital. “If you wanted to bring down a building, you would make a weapon with a heavier blast. And you wouldn’t bother with the balls inside that don’t do much harm to buildings; just to people.”

And on top of this, Lebanon has rejected the cease-fire agreement.

Multiply the number of ground troops, Ehud. More are needed.

Just when you think a horrible story can’t get any worse, you click on a link, read a news story, and are proven wrong.

Naveed Haq didn’t just kill Pat Waechtler by accident. He hunted her down and murdered her.

Prosecutors allege that Haq shot Pamela Waechter in the chest and then followed the wounded woman as she fled up some stairs. At the top, Haq allegedly reached over the railing and shot her again, killing her.

He knew what he was doing.

When a gunman opened fire on women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle last Friday, he announced the shootings were intended to make a statement.

It was terrorism. It wasn’t a hate crime. It was meant to terrorize Jews the world over.

The charges say the shooting began shortly after Haq forced his way into the federation offices by sticking a pistol in the back of a 14-year-old girl who was visiting her aunt. He ordered her to open the security door, according to the charges. Once inside, Haq allegedly said, “I’m only doing this for a statement.”

According to the papers, Haq followed the girl upstairs to a reception area and, when they reached the desk of receptionist Layla Bush, Haq asked to see the manager. The 14-year-old girl continued walking and went into a nearby restroom, locking herself in a stall.

What ensued was mayhem. Witnesses say Haq “readied his gun” — he was carrying two, as well as a knife, prosecutors say — and shot Carol Goldman in the knee as she attempted to call 911. “Haq continued to shoot, hitting [Layla] Bush in the abdomen and left shoulder and [Cheryl] Stumbo in the abdomen,” charging papers say.

Moving through the office, the papers say, he shot Christina Rexroad in the abdomen and wounded Waechter in the chest. She clutched at the wound and ran up some stairs. Haq chased her down and killed her, the charges allege.

And they still keep saying it isn’t terrorism.

Though he said there is no evidence the shooting itself was an act of terrorism, Maleng said it is inexorably linked to political events in the Middle East and to the war on terror worldwide.

Christine Rexroad’s father-in-law has the right idea:

“It was premeditated. Let the punishment fit the crime,” Rexroad said. “He knew exactly what he was doing. He barged in and just started shooting. Whether the women were Jews, gentiles, Christians, it really didn’t matter.”

It is the 1930s all over again. Jews are being murdered worldwide, for the crime of existence. There may be no death camps being built, but there is a fanatical madman who wants to annihilate all the Jews in Israel—and the world is doing nothing. No, wait. My bad. The world is blaming the Jews.