I promised Lair Simon a birthday card today, but it’s been a busy week so far. So you’ll have to take this as your card.

It’s your birthday? So what? I didn’t get any tuna today.

For your birthday, I’m going to sit here so it looks like I’m wearing a funny hat, and you can see my pretty mustache. I know I’m a girl, but I have a pretty mustache. And a pretty birthmark. That’s on the other side. Maybe I’ll show it to you your next birthday.

Happy birthday here, Lair. Many happy returns of the day, and may you have many, many more birthdays.

Folks, my mailbox was super-spammed in the last day. Most of your emails to me disappeared. Anyone who sent me email between 10:30 a.m. and, oh, 10:30 p.m. probably got bounced.

I did add some filters on my inbox to lower the number from four digits to three and then to two, when I went letter by letter to see what I could recover. But feel free to send your mail again if you think I didn’t get it.

I was going just to post a brief report on innuendo in Russian pro-government press about the possible culprits behind Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. However, a recent post on Zionation on the subject of the endless conspiracy theories sounded strangely in tune with this subject.

Ami Isseroff says: “Only the vilest and most demented minds could have dreamed up the conspiracies attributed to Zionism.” I am not sure that I agree. I concur with Ami’s guess that very soon we’ll hear that Zionism is behind the North Korean nuke test, but this is not the point.

From times immemorial the pagans invented various gods and goddesses responsible for every disaster - be it one concocted by nature or by inexplicable abnormality of human behavior. Later, in the age of monotheistic enlightenment, the need for these gods/goddesses has not abated, but was replaced by the constant lookout for the dark power behind the same disaster. And of course, Jews became that handy power in most cases. And it does not take an especially vile or demented mind, I would say…

Now we can go to the Russian example.

“Жиды погубили Россию“: or, phonetically, “Zhidi pogubili Rossiyu“. Or, in plain English: “The kikes ruined Russia“. This call, familiar for the last two hundreds years (at least) of Russian history, frequently uttered just before (or in the middle of) throwing up due to excessive intake of cheap vodka, is nothing new. Not always, though, it is related to sheer drunkenness alone. It was and is used quite seriously on many occasions when a handy explanation for a recent disaster or any other event is required, and the blame clearly applies to the authorities.

It is difficult to break the mold, and so it goes: year after year, regime after regime. The current murder of Anna Politkovskaya is not an exception. The body is still warm and Pravda and Isvestia have already found the way to link the dreaded Zhidi to the dastardly deed:

Version that links Leonid Nevzlin* or, for example, another “exile”, Boris Berezovsky**, to the murder, could seem delirious at the first sight. But it could not be denied that some of the persons who left the motherland, must sustain abroad the image of Russia as a country where a person could die for his/her convictions. (Izvestia)

Anna’s murder could have been of advantage to the forces of opposition, for example these surrounding Khodorkovsky*** (Pravda)

See how easy it is. Surely the Pravda and Izvestia people are not that vile and/or demented - they are good fathers/mothers, friends, colleagues that just do their jobs, that’s all. Same as their Iranian colleagues in IRNA and their Syrian, Saudi and other colleagues. They just have to have that dark power to explain everything away.

As if to add insult to injury, numerous inquiries of the sort “Is Anna Politkovskaya Jewish” are running across Internet as we speak…

(*) Nevzlin - a Jewish-Russian billionaire in trouble with Russian authorities. Currently resides in Israel. Seems to be getting in trouble here too.
(**) Berezovsky - a Jewish-Russian billionaire in trouble with Russian authorities. Currently resides in UK. Seems to be getting in trouble there too.
(**) Khodorkovsky - a Jewish-Russian billionaire in trouble with Russian authorities. Currently resides in Russian jail. Seems not to be in any special trouble there.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

For those of you who don’t listen to the SNN podcast every week, this is my contribution from Sunday:

I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “tyranny of the majority”. My topic today is the tyranny of the minority—specifically of the Muslim variety.

Consider what has happened over the past several weeks in Europe and America, and for longer than that in Australia.

In Britain, a police officer asked not to be assigned to the Israeli Embassy. The first reasons given in news articles were a refusal on “moral grounds”. He objected to the war with Hizbullah.

Scotland Yard is now saying the first story isn’t true, and that it’sa safety issue—the police officer, who has family in Lebanon, was afraid for his family in Lebanon if he should be spotted guarding the Israeli embassy.

I don’t know what the truth is; this story will doubtless play out further, but the point is this: Events in Lebanon are affecting actions in London, and they are driven by Muslims—who are in the minority in Britain.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, home to a large Somali immigrant population, Muslim cab drivers are refusing to pick up certain passengers at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport—the ones carrying alcohol. The airport says that about three people per day are turned down by Muslim cabbies, and they are trying to figure out some kind of signal so that passengers will know which cabbies will take them if they have a bottle of beer in their hand, and which will not. Granted, three times a day at an airport is not a lot, but stay with me on this one, it’s going to work into the tyranny theme.

In London, a blind woman was refused service by a Muslim cab driver because he said her dog was unclean and refused to have it in his cab. The driver was ultimately fined 1,400 pounds. This did not dissuade him. He said he would again refuse to allow any dogs in his cab, even guide dogs for the blind. This is also, by the way, not the first complaint of its kind in London.

Apparently, this is common practice in Melbourne, Australia, where at least 20 blind people have complained that Muslim cabbies wouldn’t take them as fares because they had guide dogs.

Also in London, an art gallery removed paintings by surrealist Hans Bellmer the day before an exhibition was due to open, for fear of—you guessed it—giving offense to Muslims.

Let’s go back a week or so, to Berlin, where an opera house pulled a Mozart production because it included a scene featuring the severed heads of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and Poseidon. The opera house administration weren’t afraid of offended Greeks wielding pitchforks. They were afraid of—say it with me, folks—offending Muslims.

I sense my listeners have picked up on the pattern here. And you’ve also picked up on the name I am giving this habit of Muslims taking offense at everything remotely offensive to their religion: It is the tyranny of the minority. The minority, in this case Muslims, are trying to force the majority, in this case non-Muslims, to adhere to the restrictions of the minority’s religion. This is, strangely, the exact opposite of the usual kind of religious discrimination. Muslim cab drivers feel completely entitled to not allowing dogs or alcohol into their cabs. We non-Muslims are supposed to just suck it up and accept this.

I don’t accept this. If you allow a religious exception for alcohol and dogs, you head down a slippery slope. What’s next, refusing to take women passengers in short skirts?

It isn’t the Muslim cab driver who gets to say who and what gets into his cab. His job is to pick up fares, not to pick and choose them. If it is illegal in America for a cab driver to refuse to pick up a black man, then it should be illegal in America for a cab driver to refuse to pick up that same man because he’s holding a can of beer. Or because he has a bottle of wine in his luggage.

By the same token, canceling an opera, or an art display, or refusing to publish cartoons of Mohammed—or to portray him on a South Park episode, for that matter—are all part of the new wave of catering to the tyranny of the minority. And that is simply unacceptable.

It’s time to stop catering to a narrow-minded few who think the world should bend its rules to fit them. This isn’t about respecting their religion. It’s about someone who has chosen a profession in public service refusing to serve the public.

You don’t want to take the chance of encountering dogs or alcohol in your cab? Simple solution: Don’t drive a cab.

So the other day, Baby Assad pretended that he wants peace with Israel, but called Israel too “weak” to be able to negotiate a peace agreement. Olmert’s government responded with a verbal one-finger salute.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Tuesday it would not negotiate with Syria as long as the country continued to back militant groups, rebuffing remarks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that he was ready for peace talks.

Assad told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Monday that he was willing to hear if Israel was ready for rapprochement, but questioned whether the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had the strength to move toward peace.

“Israel has always been heavily interested in achieving peace with its neighbors,” said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman in Olmert’s office. “Bashar al-Assad has no interest in peace.”

“He is worried about world reaction to his involvement in funding and backing and safe-havening terrorism,” she said. “He should be noted by his actions, not his words.”

But of course, Reuters has to get its bias in:

The United States and Israel say Syria arms and funds factions sworn to Israel’s destruction, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, whose supreme leader lives in Damascus.

Assad has denied this. He told the BBC Syria had offered Hezbollah political support only and rejected accusations that it was a terrorist organization. He also said his country would help ensure the Lebanese group did not acquire new weapons.

Yeah. Because it’s not like the Syrians were giving Hezbullah intelligence reports from listening posts manned by Syrians and Russians during the Hezbullah war.

So, another one-finger salute to the Dorktator—from me.

Gee, didn’t this look interesting?

Qatar to push mediation talks in Mideast
CAIRO, Egypt — Qatar’s foreign minister headed to Gaza on Monday to talk with Hamas as part of a new and aggressive role for the tiny Gulf nation: pushing mediation efforts on Mideast issues ranging from Sudan to the Palestinians to the stalemate over Israeli prisoners.

Qatar’s efforts are expected to infuriate regional heavyweights Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which the United States has been relying on to try to stifle Hamas and other radical groups.

On Sunday, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem al Thani traveled to the Syrian capital, Damascus, to meet exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to try to end the standoff between the Islamic militant group and the rival Fatah faction.

Moussa Abu Marzouq, Mashaal’s deputy, acknowledged Qatar presented various ideas during talks Monday but declined to give details. “There is an in-depth discussion about the Qatari ideas, but so far we haven’t made a reply,” he told The Associated Press.

Wow! A new player, with street cred! Think they can convince the bad guys to stop killing Israelis?

Qatar is a major supplier of cash to Hamas.

Oh. Maybe not. Perhaps this is yet another showpiece from the Arab world. Because Qatar, let us not forget, is the country that brings us Al Jazeerah, AKA Jihad-TV. And Qatar fully supports palestinian terrorism; they’ve been giving money to Hamas since before they were elected murderers-in-chief.

But let’s put all that aside for a moment and see how the negotiations went. Are they all fixed? Are the pals all pals again?

Nope.

Mediation efforts by Qatar’s foreign minister failed to resolve a stalemate between rival Palestinian leaders that has prevented the formation of a unity government, a senior Palestinian official said on Tuesday.

The impasse has triggered the worst internal fighting in over a decade as the Hamas-led Palestinian government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh became embroiled in a bitter power struggle with President Mahmoud Abbas of the once-dominant Fatah faction.

“The differences on the core issues have remained … In the light of tonight’s talks it does not seem as if we are closer to an agreement,” senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

But–but why?

The key obstacles to the formation of a unity government have been Hamas’ refusal to participate in any administration that recognizes Israel and to renounce armed struggle against the Jewish state.

Oh. Right. That little thing that was supposed to go away as Hamas moderated. Say, how’s that working out guys? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

According to Abed Rabbo, the talks failed because Hamas continued to refuse to recognize Israel and to accept previously signed agreements with it. “We will continue the dialogue over these points but no agenda for a unity government can succeed unless these points are resolved,” he said.

Uh-huh.