Well, apparently Large Company in Richmond is feeling a bit cautious these days. The good news is that I am the candidate that soon-to-be-boss wants to hire. The bad news is Large Company isn’t letting her hire me as a permanent employee. The good news is that she’s going to hire me to do the job as a temp, and the job will last at least until the end of the year. The bad news is that there’s no guarantee it will become permanent. The good news is that by the end of the year, I will have worked five months for Large Company and may be able to find other permanent positions if the one I’m being hired for doesn’t work out. And in any case, by the end of the year, I will have had ten months of writing in a corporate environment, so I’ll be able to springboard anywhere.

I would very much like to stay with Large Company, so I’m hoping that my new boss’ workaround, well, works.

But hey, it’s a job, I start Monday, and the new temp agency also offers benefits—hopefully including paid time off, like my last one did—so I’ll only be on COBRA for a month.

The blizzard of posting you’ve seen in the last month will trickle down to a normal number again. I’ll probably go with my old routine of writing posts the night before and scheduling them to appear throughout the day, as well as checking for fresh news in the morning. Lunchtime; probably not. I like eating lunch at lunchtime, go figure.

Thanks again to all of you who have hit the tipjars in the past few weeks. Every time I go to transfer the funds, I find someone else has added a few bucks to the total. Between that, my savings, and not buying the iPod with my tax refund after all, I’ll be fine until the new paychecks start coming in.

And soon, it will be time to go back to being a teacher again. Ooh, that reminds me. I have a project I need to work on for September. Been thinking about it all summer. I’m going to make a set of cards for “Jewpardy.” Now where did I put those Mastery Skills booklets?

Adam Shapiro will be leading an ISM convoy of idiots into the war zone. They’re making some kind of statement, but other than they’re idiots, I can’t really think of one.

Can you say, “Moron”? I knew you could.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - International and local activists are planning on Saturday to bring a civilian convoy to southern Lebanon, worst hit by Israel’s 28-day-old war on Hizbollah, to deliver aid and show solidarity with suffering residents.

“We hope this will be the first of what will become continuous convoys to show that there are civilians being killed and affected by this war,” Adam Shapiro, an American documentary filmmaker and human rights activist, told Reuters.

“If governments are failing to act, we as citizens will.”

Shapiro, 34, is among several activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian group that usually works to bring attention to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, who have traveled to Lebanon seeking non-violent ways to support local groups protesting the war.

This time, however, the activists will not be facing Israeli soldiers, tanks or bulldozers but aerial bombardment.

One idea they are considering is to bring large numbers of people, rather than a few activists, to the Hizbollah strongholds of south Lebanon or south Beirut to try to protect them or draw attention to the plight of civilians there.

This is not a “peace” group. This is an anti-Israel group.

Lebanon will be the first time the ISM has worked outside the Palestinian territories, though individual activists have been to other war zones such as Iraq as human shields.

Israeli authorities view them as trouble makers and sometimes accuse them of inciting violence.

That’s because they do incite violence. Every Friday, in fact.

“I’m not sure we can be as ambitious as to end the war but certainly we can change the dynamic,” Shapiro said. “In the media this has so far been portrayed as a war between Israel and Hizbollah. Maybe we can change the dynamic so it is seen as what it is, Israel versus all of Lebanon.”

Yes, because of all those Hezbullah rockets that have been landing in Israel. Sure. It’s not a war with Hezbullah. Not at all. They just happen to be the ones standing behind the rockets when they’re launched. Israel’s really coveting all that cedar wood, because you know, it smells so good in your closet.

Shmuck.

You know, Shapiro could get stupider, but not by much.

Say, Lair—time to add “ISM” to your Bingo card. If it’s not already there, that is. Or maybe an “Adam Shapiro” square. Or both.

Hope Shapiro knows how to duck, because I’m guessing he is stupid enough to stand by a Hezbullah rocket launcher to prove his idiotic point.

Oh, look. The newly-revamped, new and improved UN Human Rights Council—which replaced the Human Rights Commission—is about to convene an emergency session on Lebanon.

Will they discuss Hezbullah’s 3,000-plus rockets sent into Israeli civilian areas?

No.

Will they discuss the cross-border murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers that was the act that sparked the current war?

No.

Will they discuss Hezbullah in any way, shape or form?

No.

They’re going to pound on Israel again. Color me unsurprised.

GENEVA Aug 8, 2006 (AP)— The new U.N. Human Rights Council will hold a special session this week in a move initiated by Muslim countries to condemn Israel for its military offensive in Lebanon, officials said Tuesday.

In a similar session last month, the council voted 29-11 to deplore Israel’s military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The council will “consider and take action on the gross human rights violations by Israel in Lebanon,” according to the request filed by Tunisia on behalf of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The statement said the council should consider the July 30 Israeli air strike on the Lebanese town of Qana, which killed 28 people, as well as “countrywide targeting of innocent civilians and destruction of vital civilian infrastructure.”

Yes, this calls for yet another STFU moment.

STFU, UN Human Wrongs Council.

Oh. My. God.

Will you stop showing the damaged Merkava tank and stop babbling about the big, giant, whoopdedoo operation to recover the tank?

And will your effing moron newscasters learn how to pronounce Merkava correctly?

IT’S NOT “MURKUHVUH”!!!

The “a” is an “ah” sound.

MerkAHva.

Geez.

David Horovitz on whether or not Israel will—or should—ramp up the use of force.

The negative perception and presentation of Israel starkly impacts on the degree of Israeli military response that international public opinion, and by direct and vital extension the American political leadership, is prepared to tolerate. The problems, self-made or inflicted, that Israel is encountering on the media battlefield, in short, constitute a significant factor in circumscribing its military room for maneuver.

But the main limitation on Israel’s use of heavier force, nonetheless, remains our own nation’s sense of right and wrong. Israel’s leadership and its mainstream public don’t want to get large numbers of reservists killed in the effort to eviscerate Hizbullah. And they also don’t want to kill large numbers of Lebanese. And so Israel still hesitates.

In the meantime, Caroline Glick says that everyone in charge of Israel has failed in their duties, and is calling for a revolution.

THERE IS a palpable sense in Israel that we are on the edge of a revolutionary moment. Our national leadership in the government, the IDF and the media has utterly failed us.

As we stand poised on the edge of an even larger war, the main question that hangs in the balance is what lessons the Israeli people will take from the current fiasco. Will we continue to believe their fictions, or will we find a way to abandon them and move on with leaders who understand that territory is vital, that the jihad is real, that Israel has a right to defensible borders, and that Israel is not to blame for our enemies’ hatred?

My thoughts are that when this crisis is over, the second Olmert tries to start his “realignment,” his government will fall.

Lastly, we have “Spengler” in the Asia Times, who says that the U.S. doesn’t quite get that the current situation in Israel is the right way to go in the Middle East, and he also says Israel needs to send in massive ground forces to sweep out Hezbullah.

Israel’s strongest move on the chessboard would be a massive armored incursion into Lebanon to crush Hezbollah combined with limited strikes against Syria. These would be costly in terms of human life, but that is the bill due the devil for fleeing Lebanon six years ago. The Israeli population longs for normalcy, and is loath to sacrifice its young men, a fact with which Hezbollah taunts them. It is far from clear whether Israel will convert a subtle but fundamental change in the regional balance into a strategic breakthrough.

Washington’s best move would be an ultimatum to Tehran with a deadline for dismantling its nuclear-weapons program, followed by aerial attacks in the event of non-compliance. Rather than engage the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Washington should take the opportunity to destabilize it. Rather than attempt to hold together its Frankenstein monster in Iraq, it should partition the country. Sunnis and Shi’ites already are fleeing mixed neighborhoods and agglomerating into sectarian strongholds, and a broader population exchange is the best formula to suppress bloodshed.

In other words, in pursuit of its own best interests, Washington should do precisely what the Iranian regime fears that it may do. Tehran’s paranoia, of course, runs far ahead of Washington’s limited imagination. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is skating in tighter and tighter little circles attempting to limit the war. The US demand for a 48-hour halt in Israeli bombing runs in Lebanon to which Israel acquiesced expresses the delusional hope that Sunni Arab states can be enlisted to oppose Iran and Hezbollah.

Read them in full, particularly Spengler’s.

Today I have become aware of two seemingly unconnected affairs that, upon second thought, are related - in a spiritual way.

The first is the “mysterious” disappearance of the original tapes of Apollo 11 moon landing. The reason is clear - NASA’s archiving system is simply sticking old stuff where it will not impede the safe passage of a rocket scientist carrying a coffee mug. But imagine the field day all the conspiracy nuts will have with this innocent case of slovenliness!

Anyhow, the affair of the “fake moon landing” is old. It hardly tickles anyone’s funny bone these days, what with the slew of much more popular 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But today another interesting case that, most probably, marks the real birthday of a brand new conspiracy theory, has taken place. I am talking about George Monbiot’s odious piece titled: Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong. The title clearly mirrors the moment of truth experienced by the man, some kind of celestial enlightenment that suddenly makes everything absolutely clear. Akin to the feeling one gets a few moments before falling asleep after one has had too many glasses of whatever poison one prefers. Usually the feeling gets forgotten in the morning, replaced by a terrible hangover.

Unfortunately, in Monbiot’s case the feeling of a momentous discovery did not pass. He is even ready to announce “mea culpa” regarding his previous meandering in the dark:

I repeated this “fact” in my last column, when I wrote that “Hizbullah fired the first shots”.

Discarding in this elegant way the heavy weight of past mistakes, our valiant George rushes into the (almost) uncharted territory, to prove that the Lebanon war is nothing more but a result of yet another long-term Zionist conspiracy. I say “almost”, because there already was a similar bleating, by incomparable Pat Buchanan. Isn’t it interesting how two personalities that should, in theory, hate each other’s guts, are so charmingly in agreement?

Well, let’s cut to the chase: Monbiot, like Buchanan, claims that “The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers’ capture simply provided the excuse.”

Leaving aside a potpourri of facts, mistakes and fakery (after all, it is a long article, probably paid by word), the whole house of cards is based on the following:

So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail”.

The house of cards collapses very easily when that “premeditation” card is trumped, of course. And the best (and only) answer is that, like any other military in the world, our IDF has detailed enough plans for dealing with countries or other entities that may potentially be a military threat to Israel. Same as US, China and Russia keep plans for almost every country in the world, same as UK and France have plans for their respective neighbors (yeah, I believe that Chirac and Blair do like to play with their sandboxes once in a while - a harmless vice, not to be sneered at). So the whole story is pure bull, and not worth to go in more details.

But the true/false criteria is hardly applicable here. Even the gullible nature of the general public is not of importance. Yes, there are enough people (of the same kind that indulges in the fake moon landing wankery) that will jump on this conspiracy bandwagon out of stupidity. But in case of Jooz in general and Israel in particular, the new myth will attract huge numbers of supporters of a different category. All the Jew-haters, the Israel-haters, the uncounted scribes of anti-Israeli (or so called anti-Zionist) MSM, the characters in the Muslim (and other) areas that are permanently hungry for garbage like this. Especially when both the ultra-right and the super-left are in full agreement…

The success of the new myth is guaranteed, and in my opinion Monbiot should apply for a patent. The royalties will be enormous.

Yeah, and there is not much to add aside of a quote from here:

And this is the ugly face of third-worldist propaganda.

And a quote from the article discussed here:

This being so, the Israeli government’s supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done?

The answer is simple, George: the hell shall freeze over before any sane Israeli asks for your opinion.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Oh, look. Another entry in the “Jew Cooties” category.

Three Israeli backpackers were evicted from Fiji after a Muslim immigration officer ruled that they had humiliated Palestinians during their military service in the territories.

The three – Amit Ronen, Eldar Avracohen, and Nimrod Lahav – left Israel in February for a tour in Australia.

In July they decided to spend a week in Fiji. On July 13 they arrived at Fiji airport where a surprise awaited them.

“We gave our passports to the officer, and when she saw we are Israelis she asked for ID cards. We told her we don’t understand why we need ID cards and she responded shouting: ‘You know very well how to ask Palestinians for IDs and humiliate them for three years.”

That’s what Avracohen wrote in a complaint letter he sent to Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Nati Tamir.

The three were held at Fiji airport for six hours and officials rebuked their pleas to be allowed to make a phone call.

Armed policemen took them to a cell at the airport where they spent the night before being sent back to Australia.

Did you get that last? They spent the night in prison. Their crime? Being Israeli.

Fiji is a mostly Christian nation. This one can’t be blamed solely on Muslim anti-Semitism.

It can be blamed on the anti-Israel media poisoning the world, however.

This one is my new desktop wallpaper.

This is after a long afternoon of napping in the sun. It’s exhausting work, but somebody’s gotta do it.

I wonder if I could turn that into an animated gif and make him dance….