Unexpected Religious Lovefest in Jerusalem

The New York Times - Clerics of 3 Faiths Protest Gay Festival Planned for Jerusalem

International gay leaders are planning a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City, home to three great religious traditions.

Now major leaders of the three faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are making a rare show of unity to try to stop the festival. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

"They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable," Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, said yesterday at a news conference in Jerusalem attended by Israel's two chief rabbis, the patriarchs of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches, and three senior Muslim prayer leaders. "It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it."

Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik, added: "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem."

How pathetic that fanatics of three flavours can only be united in mutual hatred. Its particularly sad, given that the sufis and the sephardim are often regarded as relatively soft and cuddly among the fundamentalists of their phenotype. What a desecration of Jerusalem. However, if these folk can perusade the pope and Ayatollah Khamenei to join them at a news conference at the Kotel, then I say we cede Jerusalem as an international city of united religious craziness and let them have their own private lovefest.

Canadian Seal Cull Underway

Guardian - Cull of 300,000 baby seals begins

Thousands of commercial hunters armed with clubs, rifles and spears moved on to the ice floes off eastern Canada today to kill more than 300,0000 baby seals for their pelts over the next few weeks.

The Guardian article goes on to say that the slaughter is worth the equivalent of $16 million to the area's 'coastal communities'. That makes each seal pelt worth about $50. I suggest that we all consciously avoid spending $50 on Canadian goods in the next year.

Here is a page of other suggestions on what you can do about it. Importantly, write to the Canadian Prime Minister (Paul Martin, pm@pm.gc.ca), the Ambassador (Frank McKenna, canada@canadianembassy.org)

More Love and Togetherness at the SOAS

The London School of Oriental and African Studies is rapidly acquiring a reputation as an international hotbed of hatred. Apparently anti-semitic sentiment is not the only piece of bigotry to reach boiling point. In the April New York Review, William Dalrymple writes:

In November 2003, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, I was acting as moderator of a lecture on the great Hindu epic the Ramayana given by the celebrated Sanskrit scholar Professor Wendy Doniger, who was once Courtright's teacher. Midway through the lecture, a man stood up, walked threateningly toward the podium, and threw an egg at Doniger, which narrowly missed her. During the questions that followed the lecture, Doniger faced a barrage of insults from a group who had come with the egg-thrower, and who maintianed that as a non-Hindu she was unqualified to comment on their religion. Other lectures on India have since been broken up in similar circumstances.

The administration at the SOAS would have us believe that media reports of tensions on their campus are wildly exaggerated, no doubt reflecting jewish hysteria. This account would seem to contradict that. Nobody is likely to accuse Dalrymple of having a covert zionist agenda.

Note - please (Victor) don't imply that I have tremendous respect for Dalrymple - his review of Bernard-Henri Lévy's book on Daniel Pearl was mostly memorable for description of the 'glitzy departure lounge' at Karachi Airport intended to refute BHL's description of Pakistan as society in which women are not merely oppressed, but suppressed:

Looking around at the chic Pakistani women journalists, models, and politicians in the room as smiling turbaned waiters circled to offer us cups of chai...

First class lounges are just the same everywhere, aren't they!?

Dopaminergic Stem Cells from Bone Marrow

Israel21c - Israeli therapy uses adult stem cells to treat Parkinson's Disease

Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics has developed a novel stem cell therapy to treat Parkinson's Disease - using a patient's own bone marrow stem cells to produce the missing chemical that enables restoration of motor movement.

The process - which successfully alleviated symptoms of Parkinson's in rats - will be tested on monkeys next year, with human clinical trials scheduled for the following year....

'The breakthrough here is that, first of all, our source material is bone marrow. Second, they showed not only neuronal markers and electro-physical functions, but the in-vitro expression and release of dopamine,' BrainStorm's President and CEO, Dr Yaffa Beck told ISRAEL21c.

This sounds very promising - circumventing the whole embryonic stem cell debate. A caution is that past research implanting dopaminergic neurons into Parkinsonian brains has yielded mixed results and short-term improvements. Sources of dopamine producing cells have always limited the applicability of this kind of procedure - however if the technique for producing dopamine neurons really works, I suspect other researchers will be tempted to try it, giving the possibility of further improvements...

Soros Convicted

Forbes.com- Appeals Court Upholds Soros Conviction

A French appeals court on Thursday upheld George Soros' conviction for insider trading, which the billionaire investor says has unfairly damaged his reputation.

The court also upheld a 2002 fine of 2.2 million euros ($2.9 million at current rates) for the Hungarian-born financier. The fine was the same amount he was accused of making from the purchase and the sale of shares in Societe Generale bank 17 years ago, allegedly with insider knowledge.

Soros was not present in court, defense lawyer Ron Soffer said.

At an appeals hearing last month, the billionaire acknowledged hearing about a Paris financier's plans to take over the newly privatized French bank days before he began buying its shares independently.

But Soros, 74, denies that knowledge amounted to insider information or influenced his decision to buy, which he maintains was part of a broader, well-documented investment strategy.

'My reputation is at stake,' Soros told the court on Feb. 10.

George Soros has written extensively about his commitment to nurturing 'open societies'. His commitment to liberty is commendable. On the other hand, liberty is best maintained by democracy - free people will tend to vote to remain free (Vichy France notwithstanding). Soros' actions demonstrate little regard for democracy - he spent more than $12 million (mostly in donations to MoveOn.org and America Coming Together) to influence the last US election. Most of us don't have that kind of cash, and campaign finance reform was supposed to eliminate the ability of wealthy individuals and groups to buy a greater share in the democratic process. Soros (and others) exploited a loophole in the law, permitting massive donations to 'unaffiliated' political action committees. Soros would do better to spend his (ill-earned) cash supporting freedom in places where people really want it - Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt - than using it to undermine democracy at home.

Profiling Kippot

Yaron London correctly mentions in the new Yidioth english online edition that Israeli security forces have been using profiling for a long time. Naturally, those fitting the profile who are subequently singled out for further security procedures feel humiliated. It's a tough call - it would be costly and inconvenient to impartially subject everybody to the same security procedures ; yet its unfair to cast suspicion on a sub-group, whether because of ethnicity, religion or nationality. Happily the availability of affordable technology can render some of these dilemnas moot - fast and sensitive scanning for explosives and inspection of all luggage is superior to detailed questioning of 'suspicious' passengers in airports.

Naturally the 'safe' majority tends to support profiling. So its particularly interesting to see what happens when the shoe is on the other foot:

Observant residents in Eilat complained last week they were unfairly singled out by Ariel Sharon’s bodyguards while the prime minister was speaking.

At the same time, the streets of Eilat were burning with an orange-shirted anti-Sharon demonstration, but not all of those turned away from the Sharon speech were wearing orange.

The reason for the slight is clear: the kippa is no longer an innocent head covering, but a warning sign, presumably because it identifies the wearer as a potential danger.

I assume that this is exactly how Israeli Arabs feel every time they are subjected to extra-careful security checks at malls, restaurants and airports around Israel. The accent, skin color, and mustache present a picture that security forces have learned to identify as dangerous.

So, too, it is for the religious: the kippa, the flying tzitzit and sandals readily identify the fanatic settler and his followers.
Ynetnews - Flashing Kippot

Abraham Niclas Clewberg-Edelcrantz

It often happens with regard to new inventions that one part of the general public finds them useless and another part considers them to be impossible. When it becomes clear that the possibility and usefulness can no longer be denied, most agree that the whole thing was fairly easy to discover and that they knew was significant.

Treatise on Telegraphs (1796)

Divest Against Terror

Finally, detailed research revealing which companies are responsible for propping up the murderous regimes of Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. In particular the report picks out 12 companies to exemplify the strategy of divesting from corporations making money from terror: Alcatel SA, BNP Paribas, ENI SPA, Hyundai,Lundin Petroleum, Oil & Natural Gas Corp., Siemens AG, Statoil ASA, Stolt Nielsen, Technip Coflexip, Total SA, UBS AG.

"Terrorism Investments of the 50 States" is the first national security-based statistical analysis of the investment patterns of America's public pension funds. This report proves empirically that this nation's largest and most prominent public pension systems tend to be heavily invested in global publicly traded companies that have business activities in terrorist-sponsoring states.

Together, these funds invest over $1 trillion in stock alone on behalf of this country's fire fighters, police officers, teachers, state and local officials and other public employees, making this collection of funds one of the most powerful investment blocks in the world. Given this extraordinary financial influence and the important role played by public companies in the economies of terrorist-sponsoring states3,the Center for Security Policy has reached a key finding: America's 100 largest and most prominent pension systems have the power to help defeat terrorism.

No doubt the World Council of Churches will be the first to purge its investments of morally repugnant companies.

Bush Admin Protects Satanists

Yesterday, the Supreme Court started hearing the case, Cutter v. Wilkinson, concerning the constitutionality of legislation mandating that State prisons enable prisoners to practice their religion. It's strange to hear an administration, famously conservative, siding with fringe religious groups:

The U.S. Justice Department believes that Satanism, Wicca and polytheism are religious beliefs.

The federal government argued in the Supreme Court Monday that states must enable prison inmates to practice and observe such "religious" beliefs – no matter how unconventional they may be. Newsmax.com

There was a piece about Satanism in the Village Voice this weekend. It's a little less radical than you might have hoped for. Astonishingly, 'official' Satanists don't actually believe in Satan, rather, "Satan is a metaphor for personal empowerment and rebellion". There's also a $200 dollar membership fee.

Apparently there are about 10,000 jewish people in US jails. The need for the legislation under scrutiny is underscored by this fascinating article in the Jewish Times:

Brandl Rifka tried to get other Jewish prisoners to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with her. She bought tuna fish and potato chips from the commissary — her definition of a "special meal" at the time — and went to bring it to her peers. An officer stopped her, called her a profanity, threw the meal on the ground, and with a foot on her back, made her pick it off the floor.

"I was discouraged from being a Jew," she said. "I understood at that point if I didn't embrace my Judaism, that is how it gets lost for everybody."

Advanced Dating Techniques - Wingwomen 101

Intrepid reporter (and esteemed neighbour) Matt Katz tries out the latest dating technique - hiring a 'wingwoman' to make initial contact with unsuspecting female marks...
Courier Post - Wingwoman helps him navigate dating danger zone

After a few minutes, Amy saw two women talking with a guy on an outside patio. Smoothly and confidently, she asked them if they had been to this bar before. In seconds, we were all talking.

Amazing. If I had used the line, 'So, you guys come here often?' I would have been tossed over the patio.

You could say its tactics like this which undermine trust between strangers. But you could also say this sort of tactic is necessary in a society in which that trust has already disappeared.

Hanna Arendt and Two Years in Iraq

The very substance of violent action is ruled by the means-end category, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means which it justifies and which are needed to reach it. Since the end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.
Hanna Arendt. On Violence.

Which is not to say that use of force should be ruled out from the beginning - but that we should take every opportunity to review whether its continued application is for the good and whether the methods we employ remain justified.

In the case of Iraq I think we can feel confident that both of those questions can still be answered in the affirmative. Much good has resulted already, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Sure, it was unpredictable, but a firm commitment to supporting the growth of democracy is yielding welcome results.

Elephants Taking a Bath

Very cool site with cleverly designed panoramic views - including of Chitwan National Park elephants taking a bath

Bush Bush Kush Kush

IranPressNews - A report from the celebration of the Festival of Fire from cities around Iran

In another area of the city people took to setting the French flag on fire while chanting: 'Europe is finished and so are their Mullahs.' OR 'Bush, Bush, where is Bush?' (In Persian this rhymes: Bush, Bush, kush, kush!).

(via RegimeChangeIran Blog)

NYT Claims Saddam Had WMD Capability

The NYT - Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Iraqi Says

In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting...

Dr. Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's dormant program on unconventional weapons.

This hints that the world's intelligence agencies were not entirely wrong in claiming that Saddam was developing nuclear arms. It's pretty outrageous that these sites weren't top priority for the invasion force. Surely it wouldn't have taken a large number of soldiers to secure them.

In other news, NPR reported today that polls show for the first time a majority of Americans consider the invasion of Iraq to have been a mistake. Pretty incredible - successful elections in Iraq have triggered waves of popular dissent across the region, and there are promising signs of change in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia. Apparently this isn't enough for the American public. I guess its a good thing the Bush administration garned support for spreading freedom by lying about WMD's. Or not, if you believe the NYT.

Video To Go

The New York Times - Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
Matt pointed me to this article about the growing trend for government to supply TV outlets with ready-to-air video. It's pretty appalling, both that the government is wasting money on making glossy TV advertisements for promoting policies and that the media has become so lazy it actually uses it. The article is rather misleadingly titled - buried somewhere in the text is an acknowledgement that the practice was widespread in the Clinton administration. Under Bush, 'prepackaged news' has expanded, but it's misleading to say its a 'New Age'. However, the inbuilt bias of the NYT is not at issue here.

Press releases are a normal part of communication between organizations, including goverment, and the press. Sadly, press releases are frequently regurgitated by lazy journalists as 'news' - thats why organizations take the time to make sure they're well written. So what's the big deal - surely video releases are no different? If unscrupulous television producers fail to mention that the clip is government produced (or worse, as the NYT article points out, sometimes even edit out footage where government spokespeople identify themselves as such), why blame the administration?

Well, two things strike me as unacceptable about the practice. First - government produced video constitutes an under-the-table subsidy for television news. Having seen a great deal of television in the last few months as I start working out in the gym, I feel that this medium should not be propped up by taxpayer dollars. News and analysis on TV features either vacuous creeps spouting pointless drivel, or stares obnoxious belligerants screaming at each other from their video interfaces. Either way, its about as substantive as a bowl of ministrone soup.

Secondly, government agencies make these films in the full knowledge that TV has descended to the level where it will occasionally use the footage without attribution. This makes it irresponsible. However strongly a given branch of government thinks its policy to be correct, it needs to acknowledge that this can only be decided by public debate. Plying decadent TV stations with ready-to-air one-sided analysis subverts this principle.

Television is a public tragedy. I have no doubt that if the whole industry collapsed tomorrow, after a short period of disorientation, people would gravitate towards more serious news sources, adopt fruitful and satisfying hobbies, focus more on interpersonal interactions, and be relieved from the crass and unhealthy values promoted by advertising.

You can play a part in promoting this vision of a better future... now available for $14.99 from TV-B-Gone. That's what I call video to go!

Those Jolly English Students

The London School of Oriental and African Studies caught flack last December for hosting a conference on the general theme that Israel is an apartheid state. At the time, I wrote to the acting director, Peter Robb, expressing my horror, and received reply in which he explained that the SOAS encourages debate. Despite this enthusiasm for argumentation, in this case the SOAS wasn't actually organizing the conference, merely allowing its facilities to be used in hosting it. Not that he had a problem with the conference mind you - he pointed out that one of the speakers I had objected to, wasn't half as bad as everybody thinks.

In closing, he thought I would take solace in knowing that the director of the SOAS is a South African. A great comfort indeed.

In the months since I have cheerfully gone about my life, firmly convinced that, as Dr Robb instructed me, the SOAS is a very difference place from what I imagine. Imagine then how my tranquil dreams were shattered when I read this:

The latest sign of increasing anti-Semitism at the college is the publication this week in SOAS Spirit, the student union magazine, of an article advocating suicide terrorism by Palestinians.

The article, written by Nasser Amin, argues that violence is the best hope of the Palestinian people, describes Israel as a Jewish colony and says that all Zionists must be exposed.
Times Online - Tide of extremism is rising against us, say Jewish students - Britain

The juicy parts of the article are cited on Solomonia

...Non-violent resistance is no solution either. We know what the Israelis can do to unarmed peace activists. Violence, rather than feebleness, generates power for the oppressed...

Humor, H-Bombs and the Sorry State of Irony

Ahh the internet at play. Somebody on a jihadi website posted instructions on how to build an nuclear bomb at home. This was reported by the Arab News who described the poster as someone "whose expertise veers toward chemical warfare, shows a marked emphasis in making gas bombs." Next, Internet Haganah did some digging round and discovered that "There are other items of concern on this forum, such as the following discussion of poison gas". The story made the rounds on the blogosphere, in fact the identity of the original poster was cunningly ferreted out - until somebody finally pointed out in a comment on the Jawa Report that the 'instructions' were no more than a 10 year old humour piece which contains the following giveaway section that somehow, everybody above failed to realize wasn't intended seriously...

Is It For You?

Let's be honest. The H-bomb isn't for everyone. Frankly there are people who can't handle it. They break out in hives at the very mention of mega-death, fallout, or radiation sickness. The following quiz will help you find out whether you have what it takes for home H-bomb ownership. If you can answer 'yes' to six or more of these questions, then you're emotionally eligible to join the nuclear club. If not, a more conventional weapon may be more your cup of tea, try botulism-toxin, laser rays, or nerve gas.

1. I ignore the demands of others.
2. I subscribe to one or more of the following: Soldier of Fortune, Hustler, Popular Mechanics, Self.
3. Though I have many interesting acquaintances, I am my own best friend.
4. I know what to say after you say 'Hello,' but I am seldom interested in pursuing the conversation.
5. I have seen the movie 'The Deer Hunter' more than once.
6. I know that everyone can be a winner if they want to, and I resent whiners.
7. I own one or more of the following: handgun, video game, trash compactor, snowmobile.
8. I am convinced that leukemia is psychosomatic.
9. I am aware that most vegetarians are sexually impotent.
10. I have read evidence that solar energy is a Communist conspiracy

Make Intimidation Not War!

Columbia students protesting against intimidation by faculty, debated anti-War students last night. Strangely, the anti-War representatives take a pro-intimidation position. This article in the Columbia Spectator makes it clear that if the students who attended the debate are representative, Columbia is doing a lousy job training the next generation of academics in reasoned discourse.
Columbia Spectator - Incendiary Accusations at MEALAC Debate

The audience seemed primarily sympathetic to the Columbia Antiwar Coalition’s point of view, directing most of its tough questions toward CAF. As the CAF students spoke, members of the audience yelled “Liar!” and “Shame on you!”

“You are the real terrorists,” shouted one audience member at the CAF debaters during her chance to speak.

Note that the 'real terrorists' are the students who would like to be able to express their view in the classroom, or publish letters in the university magazine, without being thrown out of the classroom, or threatened with expulsion.

As Patrick Moynahan warned the UN back in 1975 during the debate preceding adoption of the 'Zionism is Racism' resolution, you misuse a word too flagrantly and it loses its moral impact. Thanks to idiots like those above, the word 'terrorist' seems to be going the way of the word 'racist'.

Pink Lentils Enlighten the Mind

A short, fascinating look at the history, culture and nutritional value of lentils.

The ancient Egyptians believed they enlightened the mind, and in Jewish tradition, lentils were traditionally served to mourners, since they represented the life cycle, with no beginning and no end.
U-San Bernardino County Sun - A modern look at ages-old legume

Seals Tremble Waiting Canadian Slaughter

Canadian fishermen feel that the seals unreasonably compete for fish. The seals feel much the same way about the fishermen but don't have access to high tech weaponry - harpoons and skinning knives and such. Moreover, as greed has caused Canadian fishermen to drive certain populations of fish (most famously Newfoundland cod, but also other species such as salmon) to near extinction, one might think the seals have a point.
Press Release from The Humane Society

Independent journalists, scientists, and parliamentarians who observe the hunt each year continue to report unacceptable levels of cruelty, including the dragging of conscious seals across the ice with boat hooks, shooting seals and leaving them to suffer in agony, and stockpiling dead and dying animals. A recent veterinary report concluded that up to 42 percent of the seals studied at the hunt were likely skinned while alive and conscious.

Taunting Syria a Second Time

Lebanese protestors taunt Assad a second time... Syria insists on gradual pullout from Lebanon (March 6, 2005)

In Martyrs' Square yesterday morning, the scene of numerous demonstrations in recent weeks, thousands of protesters came to watch a broadcast of Assad's speech on projection screens, at times booing and jeering. The protesters, many dressed in white, waved Lebanese flags and called for 'freedom, sovereignty and independence.' Some called out 'Liar!' and 'Bush sends his greetings!' during the broadcast of the speech.

And in unreported news, other protestors sneered derisively at the tv screens, muttering, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries". Enraged, Assad swore that even in the event of a complete pullout, he will maintain a elite unit permanently on the border, with one soldier poking his leg out onto Lebanese soil at all times.

Looking Out from Mt Everest

Astronomy Picture of the Day March 7 is spectacular - the view from Mt Everest. Follow the link for a full sized picture.

NY Press Editor Not Sacked for Unfunny Pope Gag

'N.Y. Press' Editor Quits in Wake of Pope Cover

If you see through the nasty Pope jokes, for instance, you will see a well-reasoned political argument. ... I did my best to show this battle to be one of free expression.

By chance I saw this NY Press piece '52 funniest things about the pope dying' piece on the weekend. I'm certainly not a fan of the pope, but there was just nothing very funny about writing 52 remarks along the lines of '31. Pope rolls in his own urine'. I must have missed the razor-sharp politcal commentary - I just read a bunch of disgusting remarks that could be applied to the passing of almost any old person. I wouldn't have sacked the editor, but I don't think I would have solicited any more articles from writer Matt Taibbi. Actually the publisher denies that the editor was sacked for the '52 funniest' things piece, rather

...he vetted the Pope story before publication, and that the actual reason for the suspension stemmed from Koyen, against orders, running a parody of a New York Post cover (on the death of the Pope) on an inside page.

Koyen resigned rather than accept the suspension.

NPR Promotes Dog Cruelty Event

Apparently NPR doesn't merely promote a dark vision of the War in Iraq - its positively blindsighted when reporting the Iditarod sled race. This event makes cockfighting look like some the the SPCA might endorse. According to www.helpsleddoogs.org at least 122 dogs have died in this event, and the cruelty is barbaric. While 'mushers' snooze on the back of their sleds, the dogs race forward, 1150 miles over 8 days with little rest. And worse:

They have been strangled in towlines, gouged by sleds, suffered liver injury, heart failure, pneumonia and "external myopathy," a condition in which a dog`s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise.

A previous race winner was banned in 1990 after accusations that he struck a dog with a snow hook. In 1985, a woman musher (dog sled driver) watched the race from the sidelines after a moose stomped on her team of dogs.

You can send NPR feedback here.

Bill's Bonhomie and the Banality of Evil

Bill Maher to Ward Churchill with an amicable smile, "Professor, someones gotta walk out there on the edge to know where it is." Does this also apply to those adorably 'edgy' jihadists, neonazis or any other killer with an fondness for self-justificiation? Or does Bill Maher appreciate only those who apologise for them?

In the interview, Churchill defended himself by arguing he was concurring with Hanna Arendt's characterization of the banality of evil, thus aligning himself with one of the 20th century's radical intellectuals. Paul Krassner documents some of Churchill's own radical, edgy history in this weeks New York Press:

This brings up a phone call I got from a friend of 30 years. I'll call her Atria. She attended Bradley University in Peoria at the same time Ward Churchill did.

"He's a phony radical from way back," she said. "He snitched me out to the police in 1970. He came over to my house one time and—the very first pound of pot that I ever bought—I sold him an ounce. I didn't get arrested, but I had to suffer the wrath of my parents. They just went nuts. It's one of the reasons I moved away from Peoria."

"What do you think was Churchill's motivation?"

"My guess is he's been arrested before, and his fingerprints are probably still in existence. He may have had it expunged. I think obviously they had him on something else. He might've had a felony conviction. And he went around and ratted everybody out. And I wasn't the only one. He was the campus snitch. I'd love for him to be able to say anything he damn well wants, but he's not the authentic article." - NYPress - Paul Krassner

Hanna Arendt might not be so flattered by the comparison.

Marano Jews, Pot and the Founding of Bombay

I don't know if this is accurate, but the theatre of the idea is great:

Rohit told the story of the founding of Bombay, in which a Portuguese Jewish botanist was working in Goa, south of Bombay, when the Catholic church there decided it was time to bring the Inquisition to Goa. The botanist, who had hid his religion from the authorities, feared he would be found out, so he requested permission to relocate his research to the island of Bombay, so he could study hemp. With that, Mumbai's history as a settled community began.

"So you're telling me that Bombay was founded by a Jewish botanist pretending to be Catholic who leased a piece of land to get away from the Church and focus on studying pot?" I asked.

from: Andy Carvin's hilarious blog posting in which he meets an Indian Sammy Davis Junior.

CNN Posts Photos of Al-Zarqawi

The smiling laughing face of murder. Who knows, perhaps these pictures will job an Iraqi's memory somewhere...
CNN - Photos of al-Zarqawi

This Year - A Spy Film by Spielberg

Reuters.com - Spielberg Eyeing Fresh Double-Date with Oscar
Spielberg will be releasing a film about the hunt for the murderers of Israeli atheletes at the 1972 MunichOlympics. The film One Day in September was a harrowing, but fascinating account of the killing itself, documenting the outrageous incompetancy of german security forces, callousness of the international olympic committee in failing to postpone the olympics and disgraceful aftermath in which Germany released the terrorists. Israel subsequently tracked down and assassinated at least 8 of the 11 killers, and presumably this is what the Spielberg film will be about.

Big Mac Diet Successful

Les Sayer's McDonald's diet is over - over the course of a month he lost 17 pounds. My own weight loss over the last 6 weeks has been less impressive as the chart to the left shows. But on the bright side I haven't eaten 15 big macs or 16 egg mcmuffins.

A Righteous Gentile Remembered

Debbie Stillman writes about an almost forgotten hero of WWII, Harry Bingham:

He was posted in such faraway places as Peking, Warsaw, and London before he was named the American vice-consul to France and was posted to Marseilles in 1937. The US was neutral at the time and did not wish to annoy Marshal Petain’s puppet Vichy regime. So to that end, President Roosevelt’s government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews. But for Bingham, who was on the ground and who confronted misery and despair outside the consulate walls every day, this policy loomed before him as immoral and intolerable and so, risking his career, Bingham chose to do all in his power to undermine it. In defiance of his bosses in Washington, Bingham went on to grant over 2,500 US visas to Jews and other political refugees. Among the thousands Bingham saved are some names you might recognize: artists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp; sculptor Jacques Lipchitz; writer Thomas Mann; and Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Meyerhoff.

Being Jewish - Winter 2003 - A Dangerous Maverick and Hero

Advice to Would-Be Kings

Spengler's piquant replies to mock letters from concerned despots... read 'em all: Asia Times - Ask Spengler

Dear Spengler,
I have done my best to emulate Yasser Arafat, and all I get for my troubles is a lousy cave in western Pakistan. As the chief executive officer of a global conspiracy to restore the Islamic caliphate, I have had to kill a few thousand people here and there, but Arafat has killed far more people than I have. He is treated like a head of state, while I am hunted like a criminal. Where did I go wrong?
Worried In Waziristan

Dear Worried,
Your error is obvious. Arafat only kills Jews.
Spengler

Dean, Democrats and Donnybrook

Excellent piece in the Jerusalem Post about Howard Dean's record on Israel. According to dictionary.com, the word donnybrook means

An uproar; a free-for-all. [After Donnybrook fair, held annually in Donnybrook, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, and noted for its brawls.]

Jerusalem Post - Republican Ad Sparks Donnybrook