Growing pot in Tennessee ...

Deborah Lipstadt has volunteered to help judge Boomka's jewish anti-semitic cartoon contest. There's a great suggestion by DodeBasar below one of the entries:

I propose that once we have the contest going full blast that we get groups of Jews together all over the world and throw cheese Danishes at random embassies.

Hassams

From Haaretz -

Prior to the elections and despite an agreement on the 'period of calm,' Hamas played an active role in the rocket attacks, with military officials estimating that the movement was responsible for nearly 20 percent of all Qassams fired at Israel last year.

Now that Hamas is officially in charge, Qassam fire should be regarded as authorized attacks by a foreign power and responded to appropriately. There's no point providing free electricity to bomb makers.

A great cartoon on slate...

The World According to Arla

The Danish company Arla is upset about being the target of a boycott by the Arab world. From their website a status report with a map showing the situation in countries where Arla is active. Notice anything odd?

I can barely control my tears.

Mac Demise Watch

A second Mac virus has been found. This one sounds like it has considerably more potential to be virulent, as it spreads autonomously rather than needing to dupe a naive Mac user into opening an attachment.

Computer viruses are as natural a part of the digital ecosystem as nucleic acid viruses in the biological realm. The human cortex already forms a continuum with the electronic bitspace, albeit the interface remains clumsy. And like their biological namesakes, the evolution of computer viruses is a distributed process, occuring through dispersed small mutations and rare dramatic recombination events.

Anybody who believes that virus programmers should be locked up should similarly argue that third world farmers who cuddle their chickens should be locked up. Clearly the better solution isn't legal, it's the emergence of a healthy viro-medical industry and observance of good hygiene.

Wear a good warm firewall before going out and flush your cache regularly and your beloved laptop will still be zipping along on its 5th birthday.

This is unlikely to be effective, but here's an online petition worth signing, though the recent election of Hamas undermines the call for 'bilateral negotiations'.

The undersigned urge the Green Party to reverse its resolution in support of Divestment from Israel and to eliminate that resolution from its platform.

As with any conflict, the Israel-Arab conflict requires bilateral peace negotiations and joint agreements in order for a real and lasting peace to be achieved. Divestment is an aggressively coercive tool that is counterproductive due to the presumption that only one party (Israel) is to blame for the conflict.

There's an article about how the resolution came about on Frontpage magazine.

Everybody Loves Leunig

Michael Leunig, the Australian cartoonist, has long been criticised for his venomous hostility to Israel. Delightfully, someone submitted one of his cartoons to the Hamshahri contest. It was happily accepted and apparently posted as their first entry (though I didn't see it on the website, no doubt its been removed. By the way, Hamshahri now has a link in English at the bottom of the page to the rules for the competition. Anonymous entries are welcome... ... ...)

In an editorial, Michael Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of the Age (which is not exactly printed in blue and white) criticizes Leunig:

Gawenda wrote that Leunig was silent about 'the fact that the competition's organisers thought his cartoon -- which is not a hoax -- was a perfectly fine entry for this racist exercise.

'Indeed, Leunig goes out of his way to praise the Iranians who were 'courteously apologising. They had been co-operative. They cared'.

Now for the strange part - this image from Reuters of a cartoon demonstration, shows protestors holding a large sign with Michael Leunig and Hirsi Ali (and others), presumably to draw Allah's attention to infidel deserving of a little wrath. Muslim fanatics are going to have to learn who their friends are if they are to make any headway in the global jihad. No point beheading your own PR reps. Or are these protesters furious that Hamshahri is making the Islamic world look petty and childish?

End of Macs (Finally) in Sight

This virus isn't much of a threat. But once the code for any virus is out there, ambitious youngsters will take up the cause, making tweaks, mods and hacks to upgrade its virulance. In time, a new life-form will emerge, like a chrysalis emerging from its arborial tomb, ready to strike a deadly blow at the arrogance of Macintosh users everywhere. And precisely because the Macintosh facilitates, nay, encourages, its followers to remain ignorant of the byways of the microchip, this virus, long heralded, will sound a death-knell for those useless design icons that litter biology labs.

A malicious computer worm has been found that targets Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system, believed to be the first such virus aimed specifically at the Mac platform.

Probably that which would excite the most respect for the human species in a sperm whale would be a full symphony orchestra playing a symphony.
- Lilly on Dolphins

Death by Beaurocracy

A Spanish woman...

was mistakenly registered as dead by a Barcelona court in 1994. Four years later she managed to prove she was alive, but with no cases of rebirth in the rule book, an impasse was reached.

She even went on to have a child - who was, following bureaucratic logic, declared an orphan.

Before the last election, there was a lot of discussion about whether Kerry was a real hunter, or posing for the sake of the NRA. No such doubt about Dick Cheney.

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a 78-year-old man while hunting for quail on a ranch in Texas, U.S. television networks reported on Sunday.

Move to the Right. Move to the Left.

Yossi Beilin has always understood that the pursuit of peace involves compromise. Unlike many on the left, his pursuit of an agreement with the Palestinians is not predicated on a flowery notion of peace, but rather is imperative for the survival of Israel. What's remarkable about his latest editorial in Haaretz - insisting that Hamas reject terrorism, accept a two state solution and act upon agreements signed with Israel - is that his long-held position now represents the Israeli concensus. In this sense, the 'shift to the right' by the Israeli public following Arafat's embrace of terrorism, has been accompanied by a 'shift to the left' in long-term objectives.

Bottled water, environmental menace.

Why Pop Culture is Junk and My Sister Will Never Support Me in my Senility

A new study to be published in Science had songs rated by two groups of participants. One group rated the songs 'blind' - with no information about what other people thought of it. However:

In the social influence group, participants were provided with the same song list, but could also see how many times each song had been downloaded.

Researchers found that popular songs were popular and unpopular songs were unpopular, regardless of their quality established by the other group. They also found that as a particular songs' popularity increased, participants selected it more often.

I'm sure this applies to culture in general and explains the popularity of such worthless tombs as "Life of Pi" and "Ulysses". It also explains why you should immediately visit mp3.com.au and download my sisters latest track which is doing well on the jazz/blues charts.

Cunning Semitic Virions

Ynetnews - Syria: Israel behind bird flu

The state-run Syrian daily al-Thawra lately hinted that Israel developed the bird flu virus to harm the genes of its Arab neighbors.

An article published by the newspaper argues that Israel spread the virus in the Far East to mislead the world.

Them dastardly Jews!

More Cartoon Casualties

Gutsy. The NY Press runs some really viluent anti-Israel stuff. I pick it up occasionally anyway because they used to be equal-opportunity offenders.

The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.

There's a clear lack of concordance between the objectives of the publishers and the editors of the NY Press. Just last year, an editor was forced out after the publisher decided criticism of the pope was too nasty. The publishers may not be devoted to free speech, but they're consistent.

Jewish Backlash Underway

NRO - The Jewish Street Explodes

At Brandeis University, a course on Lesbian motifs in Yiddish literature was briefly interrupted as students asked their professor what he thought about the controversy. In Washington D.C. a flurry of letters to the editor and press releases poured out of Jewish organizations. In New York, Commentary magazine -- a leading organ of the 'neoconservative' Jewish Right -- announced it would run three articles on Iran in its next issue as well as an extensive letters section.

Embassy Burning Competition Announced

The Tehran municipality newspaper HAMSHAHRI is going to publish Holocaust cartoons, in order to test the limits of free expression.

So... they want to get competitive. I think we can rise to the challenge - we Jews can get pretty damn rowdy when provoked. I'm thinking of firing off a letter to the editor about it myself. Yes, I said 'fire'.

We'll beed to keep a careful running tally of the number of embassy's burned and lives foreshortened in response to the upcoming publications. But I think that as Muslims outnumber Jews 60:1, its only reasonable to add a multiplier to the Jewish score.

So far:

Mohammed Cartoons

Embassies burned: 3 (Syria, Lebanon, Iran)
Deaths: 6 - 3 in Afganistan and 1 each in Somalia and Turkey

Kadouri's Legacy

Short bio of Rav Kadouri includes one crucial aspect of his life, strangely overlooked by his most ardent followers:

Active and articulate until the last weeks of his life, Kadouri lived modestly in Jerusalem's Bukharan Quarter. A vegetarian, he rose early and went to bed late.

BBC versus the JPost

Reporting the actions of passengers in a sherut to apprehend the 23 year old terrorist-murderer who was busy stabbing them:

The Jerusalem Post describes the scene:

Eli Haziza, 64, who works at the Caniel Israel Can Company factory next door, took a big wooden stick and smacked the terrorist in the leg, sending the knife flying. Three passersby then surrounded the stabber and restrained him.

The BBC version:

People grabbed him and started to beat him up.

Love the SOAS

Once again the London University School of Oriental and African Studies happily lends a platform to anti-semites. The particular antisemite they've invited this time, Dr. Azzam Tamimi, longs to be a suicide bomber:

Asked if suicide bombing was so glorious and honorable would he do it, the response was a categorical "yes." "If I can go to Palestine and sacrifice myself I would do it. Why not?"

Editorial comments in a Jordanian newspaper:

'Muslims of the world be reasonable,' wrote Mr Momani.

'What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?'

Jihad Momani has now been fired, forced to apologize, arrested and charged with insulting religion. I think that clarifies the correct answer to his question.

Atomic Energy Agency Goes Wild

... and submits a resolution calling on Iran to:

# Reestablish a freeze on uranium enrichment and related activities.

Yes... lets re-re-re-re-establish that freeze. Nothing like frozen heavy water to melt a cold UN diplomat's heart.

# Consider whether to stop construction of a heavy water reactor that could be the source of plutonium for weapons.

This time, we want them to consider it really deeply. Give it a good thinking over You know, internal discussions and all. Let 'em do what they like, so long as its been solidly considered.

# Formally ratify an agreement allowing the IAEA greater inspecting authority and continue honoring the agreement before it is ratified.

Because what we can rely on is a sincere promise by Ahmadinejad not to do anything sneaky. Previous insincere promises don't count, he had his fingers crossed. Moreover this time, ElBaradei is warning he'll look under the bed and on the top shelf of the cupboards.

# Give the IAEA additional power in its investigation of Iran's nuclear program, including 'access to individuals' for interviews, as well as to documentation on its black-market nuclear purchases, equipment that could be used for nuclear and non-nuclear purposes and 'certain military-owned workshops' where nuclear activities might be going on.

More power for the IAEA. It's always reassuring to have competant people in charge. Could we give them control over the Philadelphia City Council while we're at it?