Video of the day

With the recent.... let's call it arglebargle and fooferaw surrounding Israel over that whole "shooting humanitarians, strangling media access, and then blaming the victims" thing, they're not all that popular. Well, more unpopular than usual. So of course one's mind wanders to the most obvious problem arising from these newly (not really) ratcheted up tensions: what of Israel's tourism industry.

So of course Israel could use some good PR to boost the flagging tourist trade that might not want to be caught up in that war we all know is coming or come sailing in on a cruise ship and get their head kicked in by a special forces SWAT team repelling from helicopters. And since Israel's only PR strategy seems to be throat punching anyone who makes eye contact with them, the responsibility to drive international travelers to the Holy Land falls to Peru. Yes Peru.

In the prologue the Delfín, who likes to begin his socially-conscious music videos with similar scenes, is shown relaxing in his living room, watching the news. In this case, the faces on the screen express their doubts about Israel as a tourist destination. “There could be bombs in the street,” one woman says. “It scares me.” The Delfín springs to his feet in outrage at this distortion: “This cannot be!” he cries, and the Andean disco/huayno beat kicks in. “Israel, Israel,” the singers chant in the chorus,

How pretty Israel is!
Israel, Israel
In your lands one day I’ll dance.

Behold:


I swear to God, despite all the footage of scuba divers, llamas, windmills, creepy old women in catsuits, and the countryside of Peru, that video is about Israel.

Anyway, makes me want to visit Jerusalem... or drop peyote in Lima. Either or.

Broken News: Millions of Americans not gonna touch this one with a ten foot fucking pole

AMERICA—With the recent revelation that an attempted humanitarian aid mission to the Gaza strip was met with force by the Israeli military, resulting in anywhere from 10-20 deaths, 30 injured, and over 600 arrested, millions of Americans have announced that uh-uh, no way, not in a million fucking years are they gonna go anywhere near this one. Not with a ten-foot fucking pole.

“Oh no, you’re not dragging me into this,” announced David Haren, a fellow at the Brookings Institute Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “If there one thing Middle East studies have taught me, it’s to know better than to wade into this mess. Jog on.”

Indeed, when numerous experts were asked whether or not they’d like to talk about these events, we were met with abrupt hang-ups, abject laughter, stammering leading into fainting, and various reams of profanity indicating that we had either lodged our heads completely up our fucking asses, had gone completely off our fucking rockers, or were assuming a mass level of retardation had swept the ranks of American academic, foreign policy, and news commentary.

Upon requesting that a group of individuals from the Washington Post give their opinions on the situation, they, as a group, slowly backed away from us before sprinting and diving into an abandoned spillway.

When we approached normally reliable sources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for their input, such as John Abrahms of the Carter Center, who last year almost successfully convinced the Oxford English Dictionary to add “arguing about Israel on the internet” as the number one definition of “futility,” Mr. Abrahms produced a large knife and proceeded to barricade himself inside his office.

Even members of the American public seemingly know better than to comment, as if they feel nothing useful or productive will ever emerge from a discussion of Israel.

Several attempts to engage citizens on the street about things like American aid to Israel, the UN Security Council, Turkey and NATO tensions with Israel, independent investigations, Matisyahu's back catalogue, or general questions about the Middle East were either met with intense skepticism and silence, protestations that they spoke no English, or statements that they "fucking knew better and that you [we] oughtta fucking know better than to ask, you [we] jackass [jackasses]."

In fact most Americans have reflexively taken to flinching when the third-person singular verb, “is”, is employed. Most have suspended the use of the word “real” in order to avoid having other people think they just heard them make a comment about Israel and attempt to start a conversation about it.

We were able to get one person to comment, Dr. Tom Wallace of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown. After a series of unethical lies about our intention to discuss flowers, puppies, and the general state of pleasant niceties, Dr. Wallace eagerly opened up.

After explaining that we were “rotten, disingenuous bastards” and that he would “bring down all manner of unpleasant horrors on our families", we in turn informed him that the room we were in had been barricaded, the windows sealed, sharp objects removed, and that he had no chance of escape. After an unsuccessful attempt to change the subject to “things that are much less divisive… like, say the Armenian genocide or America’s storied racial conflicts”, Dr. Wallace relented.

“I, uh, would just like to say that… oh Jesus… that, whether or not you think Israel acted rashly or, OR... that the actions of the humanitarians… SO CALLED HUMANITARIANS, SO CALLED HUMANITARIANS… were justified,” Wallace said, his eyes darting around the room looking for any means of escape and his shirt beginning to soak from the profuse sweat.

“I think we can all agree… that this… was… important. Or possibly not important at all. I certainly condemn the loss of life, but not in a manner which seeks in any way to asses blame, just factually acknowledge that lives were lost… hoo boy…. Sovereignty… good… terrorism… bad,” he finished, before attempting to swallow his own tongue after repeated attempts to hold his breath until he died failed miserably.

As of now, Wallace is recovering in the intensive care wing of an unnamed local hospital. His career is in critical condition, having been immolated in a cross fire of warring commentary on his commentary by opposite sides of the Israel/Palestine debate.

At press time, the country said “See!” and noted that there’s no way they’re getting involved of any of this shit. Early reports say America has calmly turned its TV to old re-runs of Mama’s Family.

Give chickpeas a chance

Jews and Arabs. They go together like Jews and Arabs. You know the story: one launches rockets at the other, one invades the other, one is accused of violating international law and the Geneva conventions by the other. Oh the hijinks they get into. But if there is one common theme to this seemingly endless series of conflicts,k it is war. War... over hummus. That's what this conflict is all about, right?

Lebanon set a record for the largest plate of hummus Saturday in the continuing gastronomic war with Israel over the regional delicacy.

The war has played out publicly for years with two sides outdoing each other for the title of world's best or world's largest hummus dish.

On Saturday, about 300 Lebanese chefs in the village of al-Fanar -- about 8 km (5 miles) east of Beirut -- lay claim to the latter title with a dish that weighed 11.5 tons. That's 23,042 pounds or 10,452 kg.

The achievement more than doubled the previous record -- set in January in the Arab-Israeli village of Abu Gosh.

Israel has responded by sending tanks over the border and building a series of walls around Lebanese chickpea farms. Hamas has responded by slingshotting bowls of tahini randomly into Jerusalem.

This is just the latest battle in the war over hummus, with each side trading Guinness World Record attempts as the public front over a various serious battle over who can claim the rights to having originated hummus. Lebanon wishes to have the European Commission grant them a "protected designation of origin" order on hummus, so that only Lebanon will be able to label mashed chickpea dishes "hummus". Much like the Greeks with feta cheese, where every other country that produces it must refer to it as "Greek style cheese". Israel claims that this is tantamount to a country trying to claim the invention of bread or wine. In any event the special designation could mean millions or billions in export rights and I'm sure this fight won't escalate into increased hostilities and America vetoing things in the Security Council.

But despite this battle and the charged record attempts it engenders, some are hopeful.

"If you enter any good hummus restaurant in this region, you will see Jews and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis sitting at the same table, eating the same food. I think in the end this rivalry will show that we in the Middle East have far more in common than the things that divide us."

Well, when food opinions supercede religion, territory, and who scuffed whose sandal first two thousand years ago, the rest of the world will breathe a sigh of relief. Until then, we're just hoping that a turf battle between Famous Original Ahmed's Hummus and Original Famous Ahmed's Hummus over stolen recipes doesn't touch off an international incident. All I can say is thank God Iran isn't trying to build the World's Biggest Falafel. That could really set something off.

Cheap Blogging Crutch - 5.18.10

Further glorious details here.

I was walking past one of Brooklyn's many mental institutions the other day. Several patients were standing outside chanting "Thirteen! Thirteen!" I walked over and peered through the chainlink fence to try and figure out what was going on. All of a sudden a mop handle shot through the fence and caught me right in the eye. The patients begin chanting "Fourteen! Fourteen!"

In today's THERE IS NO GOD news, Bristol Palin's people announced she will be paid up to $30,000 in speaking fees per engagement. Before you get your Irish up, allow me to make the argument that she is eminently qualified for this very public role. After all, she is the daughter of a materialistic, dishonest political train wreck and managed to compromise a presidential campaign by popping out a kid while she was still in high school. Not to mention the fact that... eh, do I really need a third?

Elvis Costello has joined Carlos Santana and Gil Scott-Heron in canceling scheduled performances in Israel. Costello cited Israel's "intimidation" and "humiliation" of Palestineans. After what went down with Professor Noam earlier this week, does anyone else smell a Costello-Chomsky collaboration in the works?

St. Joe Biden, Patron of Drunk Uncles at Holiday Parties, made light of his "big fucking deal" comment at a rally in Cedar Rapids today. Watch as Papa Joe goes from being "embarrassed as hell," to thanking the Almighty for killing his mother, to pondering why everyone finds the comment so amusing, to bragging about the pile of money the phrase has made Organizing for America. I don't even think he paused to blink while doing this.

On a more personal plug note, TheseBastards friends and occasional co-conspirators, Cry Fire, are finalists in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "Pittsburgh Rocks" contest. While whether or not Pittsburgh does rock is a matter for debate, Cry Fire's lead guitarist and bassist personally guaranteed me that if I mentioned the contest in this forum, they would play their next gig pantsless. Go here and vote for Cry Fire.

Finally, I leave you with the Mr. Barry Popularity and Russian Putin hand puppet President Dmitry Medvedev, pondering whether or not they'd hit it. I'm sure you'll agree that, they would, in fact, hit it.

Understatement of the day

Maybe you've noticed the tensions in the Middle East lately. Or should I say: the slightly more tense than usual tensions in the Middle East. It started off with news of more Israeli settlements being announced with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the groin during VP Biden's diplomatic trip to Jerusalem and has since escalated into a childish one-upping of snubs, terse statements, flow charts about Israeli building codes, photo ops, photo op snubs, and the general level of childishness one would expect from the Middle East peace process.

It has, of course, thrown the Israel/Palestine negotiations into chaos. Which isn't a surprise, seeing as how everything does that. The breakfast you had this morning? That really fucked up the peace process. But in explaining how recent diplomatic tensions between Israel and the US have risen stemming from the Biden/settlement incident, one of the biggest understatements in the history of the peace process might have been dropped in an attempt to sweep this whole kerfuffle under the rug.

The Jerusalem municipality has approved 20 new apartments for Jews in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, the city said Wednesday, in a move that could stir a new diplomatic crisis with the United States just as Israel's leader is in Washington on a fence-mending visit.
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The Obama administration is seeking "clarification" of the latest building plan and continues to believe Israeli construction in Jerusalem is destructive to the Mideast peace process, said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
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Jerusalem city officials have tried to play down the project as a zoning issue.

Yes, a zoning issue. One of the biggest problems in the Middle East peace process, settlements, has been distilled down into "zoning issues". Well that is correct, much like World War II started with zoning issues in the Sudetenland. This is slightly different that what's going on in Haiti, which is reeling in the aftermath of some building code issues.

The unnamed Jerusalem city officials are right, it's just a problem stemming from the fact that Israeli zoning and building codes are based in the Book of Genesis. You trying getting those laws changed.

So a round of applause for the Jerusalem city officials. Your gift for understatement is not lost on us. Well played.

The Simpsons Did Something Funny

Just a quick reminder that, apart from the two countries we are currently occupying by force, Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign economic and military aid. Egypt is 4th. Serbia and Montenegro get the shaft.

Apropos, we recommend yesterday's NYT thought piece on how an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might play out.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.06

Climate Activists Jailed For Saying ‘Coal’s Killing West Virginia’s Communities’
What do you have to do to get arrested in West Virginia? Well we know marrying your cousin, hunting Burt Reynolds and raping Ned Beatty during a canoe trip, bootlegging moonshine, or setting every couch in Morgantown on fire won't do it. But if you point out that coal mining and mountaintop coal mining damages communities, damages the environment, and damages the health of the men doing the work? You get imprisoned and held without charges for an offense that would merit a $100 fine. Stay classy, WV.

Japan Bomb Survivor, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Lived Through Hiroshima And Nagasaki Atomic Attacks
Did you ever wonder who in human history had the worst week ever recorded? That would be Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese man who went to Hiroshima for a business meeting for his shipbuilding company, got nuked, suffered serious burns to his body, spent the night in the hospital, went back to his home in Nagasaki, and hot nuked again. I also think he banged his shin off a table somewhere in the intervening period between atomic blasts. That really hurts. Thankfully he lived a long a full life to the age of 93. So next time you think you're really having a bad week, just say to yourself "At least I'm not 'Two Nukes' Yamaguchi."

Iran soccer official resigns over e-mail to Israel
How great is Iran's hatred of Israel and how rigid is their punishment of government officials that recognize Israel as a state? So much so that the head of their soccer federation was fired for including Israel's soccer head in a mass e-mail of banal New Years' greeting he sent out to every soccer federation head in the world. That's sticking to your Jew hating guns. I don't know why they fired him. Isn't being President of Iran's soccer federation enough punishment?

Moon hole might be suitable for colony
Good news for those of us who think we should all have been living on fucking moon bases like a decade ago. Seems that a 312 ft wide 260 ft deep hole in the moon's Marius Hills would provide a perfect temperature controlled, meteorite protected place to put a fucking moon base already. Either the government needs to get on this or Sean and I are using it for the galactic headquarters of Moon Water Inc. I don't want to give away too much of our business model, but lets just say it involves multiple Sam Rockwells and a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey.

The Distant Executioner
Vanity Fair takes an extensive look at our Afghanistan policy of trying to avoid civilian deaths and what that means for combat, particularly in the usage of snipers. It follows around a Texas Army National Guardsman sniper who has dropped a Taliban fighter at 806 meters and believes God is on his side. Worth your time.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.02

Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan
Jeremy Scahill really wants to write about something other than all the shady shit Blackwater, nee Xe Services, does, but it's just they're given so many opportunities to do shady shit and it is so utterly shady that he's just forced to write about it. More or less, Blackwater is running a secret assassination/kidnapping ring at the behest of the CIA in a program so secret that the White House might not even know about it. Well at least the CIA is getting a handle on this "plausible deniability" stuff, you just kind of wish they wouldn't use the only American organization in the area with a worse reputation than themselves.

Sarah Palin, Israel and Armageddon
Hey, wouldn't it be great if Sarah Palin just started getting really crazy and started spouting off weird Israel related rapture buzzwords, started hanging out with evangelicals who openly promote pro-Israel policies in service of the second Exodus/second coming of Christ/Armageddon, and generally became more dangerous, Jesusy, and crazy? Well...good news then; you got your wish.

UK Iraq War Inquiry: Blair Was Told Iraq War Was Illegal, Decided On War In 2002
Ahh, the United Kingdom, you poor hopeless bastards. Let me see if I have this right: you not only investigated your involvement in the Iraq war, but you did so in a serious manner, and are releasing finding as the investigation goes on? Rookie mistake. The correct way to do things is to admit "mistakes were made", never authorize investigating those mistakes because "they were in the past and we're focused on the future", and then set about whitewashing everything and making the same mistakes, either on a whole new war or and golden oldie.

Capital in the Capitol: Total House Wealth Exceeds $1 Billion
Yup, humble servants of the people all. Plus, as a bonus, their actual net worth is probably more that twice that figure. It's probably even higher, on average, in the Senate. So now you don't have to wonder why no one in government ever seems to be concerned with the plight of regular "non-top 5% Americans". It's because none of them are one, and if they ever were one they've long since forgotten it. Perhaps we need to organize expeditions into America for our elected betters, so that they may study us "normals" much like Jane Goodall studied chimps. Perhaps then they can learn to understand us and learn that we aren't all that thrilled with massive corporate handouts, endless wars, and getting bent over various barrels of their choice.

The Bank Job
This time, it's Vanity Fair and Bethany McLean who decide to take the baton from Matt Taibbi and get in a good couple of shots at our money overlords at Goldman-Sachs. Did you know that ole GS pretty much never loses on the financial bets it makes, essentially has a license to print money because of securities "spreads", and ripped off it's own customers to the tune of $40 billion by selling them shoddy mortgage securities? Probably not, but I bet you could have guessed something equally shady and ethically questionable and been pretty close. I just hope when they're allowed to rewrite our regulatory laws, they throw some of all that excess cash on the nightstand and tell us they'll call us. We could use the ego boost.

Late nite Palestinian children's show video dump

I don't want to throw too much of a damper on any puppet/muppet related hopes of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but we have been reminded of previous failed examples. There is the case of Mickey Farfour here, a Palestinian children's show mascot who was struck down by the Israelis.



Luckily Farfour's struggle against the Zionists was taken up by a giant bee.....who died because the Zionists denied him healthcare for whatever bee related illness he had. Luckily his cause was taken up by a giant rabbit, Assud, who....eats Jews or something.



Will the puppet/muppet/man in shoddy suit based violence never end? I can only hope that Karim and Haneen from Shara’a Simsim learn the lessons of Farfour, that bee thing, and the pink bunny. Because Israel doesn't fuck around with uppity Palestinian puppets, even if they are backed by the Children's Television Workshop.

h/t Jesse

Damn you, The West

It's not a good day to be a meddling power with megalomaniacal desires and Bond villan type machinations on the Middle East. Our fiendish Western plots are being figured out left and right. First was today's plane crash in Iran, which killed 168. I'm sure in the coming days we'll find that not only was this orchestrated by Barack Hussein Obama, whilst sitting in his ovaled office stroking a white cat, but that it was done in conjunction with Hossein Mousavi in an attempt to de-legitimize the rightfully "elected" "government" of Iran. Then there's Israel, which has taken a new, heinous step in its war against the Palestinians: boner gum.

Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to "corrupt the young," an official has said.
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The story came to light after a Palestinian man filed a complaint that his daughter had experienced "dubious side effects" after chewing the offending gum, Israeli media reported.

The Israeli military declined to comment officially on the allegations, which one military source termed "absurd."

Oh you would deny this, Israel! But your secret Spanish Fly Bubblelicious and Rhino Horn Fruit Stripe gum has been discovered! Hamas was too polite to overtly say what these "dubious side effects" were, but we know: exposed wrists and ankles, signifying the extreme excesses of Western harlotry and whoreishness. We know what's next: the dancing to the rock'n'roll music. They're on to you, The West. No more plane crashes, no more BBC led revolutions, and cease with the boner gum and any other arousing chocolates or lascivious sodas you try to unleash on unsuspecting populaces. This will not stand.

Diplomatic love connections

Libya's Qaddafi Gave Condi Rice $212,000 In Gifts

In its final months in office, the Bush administration made out pretty well in odd and exotic gifts from foreign leaders - including diamond jewelery, a taxidermied lion, and Israeli bike shorts.

One of the most generous gift-givers was Libya's Moamar Qaddafi, who seemed particularly grateful for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Tripoli last year, giving her gifts with a total value of $212,225, including a diamond ring and a locket with his own picture inside, according to a newly-released State Department report.

Oh my, seems like international diplomacy is a little sexier than I originally thought. Diamond lockets with Qaddafi's picture inside, bike shorts, free dead lions, mountain bikes, saddles.....it's all so sordid. In return for the gift the US Government reportedly sent Qaddafi a chain with a diamond encrusted characture of the head of Condi, not unlike the kind Rick Ross (the boss) sports. In return for getting the bike short from Ehud Olmert, Bush strutted around the Oval Office in them, picking up briefing documents that has been "accidentally" dropped and generally just acting sexy for Ehud. Hey, that Roadmap to Peace doesn't come without the traveling of some hard miles.

In many cases the reason given for the acceptance of these gifts was "Non-acceptance would cause embarrassment to donor and U.S. Government", but in some cases the reason was "Can you believe how cool this shit is? There's no way I'm letting those eggheads at the Smithsonian get their grubby nerd mitts on this." I should have gotten into this diplomatic racket, I could use cooler stuff. But I thought you should know this just so you're not surprised when Condi and Muammar get married in Tripoli next summer. I wonder what gifts they'll get from foreign governments then.

Things that don't sound good

Iran Announces Successful Missile Test

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Wednesday that his country had successfully launched a medium-range missile, just two days after President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu discussed the importance of halting Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Gee, after Israeli elections that make the government more hard-line and right wing, the day after the US talks to Israel about "that Iran thing" and Israel's possible propensity for launching some unannounced missile strikes, Iran decides to do some missile testing. Then when asked about the range of the missiles all Ahmadinejad can say is "Oh, they can go as far as...say Israel, to use an example." This sounds like it's going to make things so much better.

Another Democrat Says CIA Records On Briefings Were Not Accurate

The letter makes Obey the fourth Democrat to allege that the CIA's record of which members of Congress were briefed on the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques contained factual errors. Former Sen. Bob Graham, in an interview with the Huffington Post, noted that the agency's records initially had him being briefed four times in 2002 about the interrogation techniques. Upon contacting officials with the CIA, it was determined that he had only attended one such briefing. Similarly, Sen. Jay Rockefeller has said that the records kept by the agency and made public on May 7 contained errors in regards to his briefings.

All told, the testimonies of these three Democratic officials bolster the case made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the agency's own account of those now-controversial briefings is misleading. Pelosi -- like Graham -- has insisted that members of Congress were kept in the dark in the fall of 2002 about the Bush administration's use of waterboarding on terrorist suspects.

All right! The CIA is back to actively misleading elected officials and fabricating records on their dealings with Congress. Topple a few African governments, rig a few European elections, switch out that high fructose corn syrup for real sugar, and we're back to the classic CIA we all loved. Some of the GOP, in their quest to blame all the torture (which was awesome) on Nancy Pelosi, seem to want to fight a battle based around the thought that the CIA would ever mislead Americans or elected officials...ever. Of all the battles to fight and all the hills to die on, "the CIA is honest" is probably the one you want to fight the least.

Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands

Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

Why does this sound familiar? *cough*Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq*cough* "May be", NYT? Between the weapons and money we give to Pakistan that end up in the Taliban's hands and all the equipment and money we give to Pakistan for anti-terrorism work they don't do, we're practically funding, arming, and supporting the fight against ourselves and our allies.Good thing we're not going to ramp up military action and funding into that whole entire area. ....Oh wait. Well.....at least we aren't sending them shipments of uranium that they totally promise to use to build a uranium statue of George Washington.

Israelection

Raise your hands if the things you wanted to hear most out of an Israeli election were the phrases "inconclusive", "right wing coalition government", "hard-right victory", "hard-line", "ultra orthodox", "two-state solution dead", and the kingmaker of the coalition government described as "a former bouncer from Moldova who has risen in Israeli politics on a platform of racial hatred for Israeli-Palestinians (20% of the population), whom he has urged be "executed" or made to take loyalty oaths, stripped of their citizenship and possibly transferred to the Palestine Authority." and a "...certified gangster...who is the Israeli equivalent of Jorg Haider of Austria (now dead) and Jean-Marie LePen."? Well, good news then. You got what you wanted.

Inconclusive election results sent Israel into political limbo Wednesday with both Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and hard-line leader Benjamin Netanyahu claiming victory and leaving the kingmaker role to a rising political hawk with an anti-Arab platform.

Livni's Kadima Party won 28 seats, just one more than Netanyahu's Likud, in Tuesday's election for the 120-member parliament, according to nearly complete results. Both held victory rallies, but without a clear majority neither can govern alone. Hard-line parties won a majority of the votes, meaning that Netanyahu has more natural allies and a better chance of forming a coalition.

The results set the stage for what could be weeks of coalition negotiations. The first meetings began Wednesday, with Netanyahu meeting the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas faction and Livni meeting Avigdor Lieberman, whose ultranationalist party received 15 seats and emerged as the third-largest force in parliament.

All this essentially means Netanyahu is all but assured the PM spot, with immense power given to a crazy gangster. I guess the Gaza invasion did work out alright for the far-right parties in Israel. Who would have thought? Copy-cats. Also, in Gaza post-invasion, Hamas is more popular than ever as hardliners have been empowered and extremists strengthened! Win-win for hardline extremists! Everyone breathes a sigh of relief as things get less tense in the Middle East, especially in Israel. Wait, I meant the opposite.

Those sounds you heard? That was Rahm Emanuel grabbing the razor before Barry could slit his wrists, Hillary calling Governor Patterson to see if her old seat was still open, and Jimmy Carter comically pulling on his collar and going "Yeeesh!" Oh well, this is just going to increase the degree of difficulty and thus allow for higher scores in the Negotiation Olympics.

Mahmoud's feelings are hurt

Iran's Ahmadinjad Demands US Apology

Iran's president called Wednesday for "profound changes" in U.S. foreign policy including an end to support for Israel and an apology to the Islamic republic for past misdeeds.
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"Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering ... Zionists and letting the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny," Ahmadinejad said. "Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in (different parts of) the world."
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"We will wait patiently, listen to their words carefully, scrutinize their actions under a magnifier and if change happens truly and fundamentally, we will welcome that," he added. "The change will be to apologize to the Iranian nation and try to compensate for their dark records and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation."

Listen, I know we've fucked over Iran a lot. The whole toppling of your elected government in the 50's, the shah thing, shooting at your planes, the Saddam support, and let's not forget those goldbricking hostages who lived in your country for over a year without paying rent. I get it. But can the man demanding an apology for these transgressions not be the Jew hating guy whose demands for Obama to enact an agenda of change involve a few vaguely anti-Semitic rants, fucking over said Jews, fucking over their their nation, and letting Iran do whatever? Khameni? Rafsanjani? Larijani? Want to speak up? No? Alright then.

Israel: On winning friends and influencing people

Israel Shells UN Headquarters In Gaza

Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and the main warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

The U.N. chief, in Israel for the day, demanded a "full explanation."

A senior Israeli military officer said Israeli troops shelled after coming under fire from Palestinian militants inside the compound _ an account dismissed by a U.N. official there at the time as "nonsense."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."

Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

Barry v. Osama

Osama bin Laden decided to pop back up today with a message for the world and our new President. It was a tape of his congratulations to his Muslim brother and a signal to ease tensions in the Middle East. Just kidding, it was all about the Jews! OBL is, surprisingly, not a fan of this Gaza conflict. He called for a jihad against Israel, which was surprising because I thought one had already been called years ago. Maybe this is a new one, or maybe in all the hubbub of 9/11 and Iraq, Israel just slipped al Qaeda's mind. It happens. He also vowed to open new fronts on the war on terror against the US.

"We are on the way to opening new fronts," he said, urging Muslims to "join hands with the mujahedeen to continue the jihad against the enemy, to continue bleeding them on these two fronts and on the others that are open to you."

"The question is, can America continue the war against us for several more decades? The reports and signs show us otherwise," he said. He said Bush had left his successor "with a heavy inheritance," forcing Obama to choose between withdrawing from the wars or continuing.

"If he withdraws from the war, it is a military defeat. If he continues, he drowns in economic crisis," bin Laden said.

I'm not so sure I buy Osama's financial analysis. We can give almost a trillion to banks but ten billion a month is causing us financial trouble? Did insurgents unleash credit swap markets on us? Come on now, claiming credit for our economic failures? That's just being dishonest. Well, unless Phil Gramm was a cell leader. Also big congrats to George Bush, I didn't think you were going to get a big FACE~! from your greatest failure, but OBL did not disappoint. Have I thanked you for pulling troops out of Tora Bora to go to Iraq? No?

But I'm more outraged by his continual use of audio tapes. We're in a Blu-Ray world Osama, Hamas has its own YouTube and you're still pressing record on your boombox. Get with the program Osama, get a blog, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr account and start hammering out some hate and/or satirical news pieces. How are you going to speak to the kids if you can't poke them on Facebook? Then you can challenge the new guy. It's just hard to take you seriously at this point. Web 2.0, look into it.

Quote of the day

For those of you not in the know, Joe the Plumber is going over to Gaza to be a war correspondent for right wing news site Pajamas Media to "let the Average Joes share their story" by haranguing Israelis and Palestinians in the middle of a war. When asked if he was afraid, he gave a brilliant little quote.

Is he scared that one of the Hamas rockets might have his name on it? Not really. After all, as he explained, he's a Christian so God will keep him safe.

"Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe," he said.

Yeah....uh check with the Israelis about how well that works out. Or the Palestinians. Or really, just about anyone who's occupied that general area of land in the entire recorded history of man. I think even dinosaurs were biting the shit out of each other in some sort of Mesozoic Gaza Strip. There isn't much God based protection going on there. I think it has something to do with all the various Gods canceling each others powers out. Maybe the buildings or soil have some sort of God-negating material in it.

Broken In Brief: Israel all like, "America, Iran was talking shit on you today..."

TEL AVIV--Distraught over the rapt attention being paid to its benefactor's financial Ragnarok, Israel today issued a statement claiming Iran was, "like, totally talking shit on [America] during lunch today." Israeli UN Ambassador, 13 year old girl junior high student Hadassa Shalev, decided to reveal this catty lunchroom behavior because she "Just wanted to let America know how totally two-faced Iran was being and, like, how we're totally behind you 100% if you want to get all up in Iran's bitch-ass face and totally throw down."

The Chosen expounded on this statement, claiming that Iran, who always shares a table with Syria, Libya, and Lebanon, called America a "slut" and a "skanky trollop," citing as justification the superpower's trade agreements with morally dubious nations, as well as its nuclear pact with India. "Yeah, like America thinks it's all the shit and stuff," observed Iranian UN Ambassador, 14 year old cheerleader Laila Alizadeh "But we know what's going on with them. They're the two-faced bitch faces. Totally. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, but Syria totally saw America in the bathroom throwing up right after lunch. The fatty bitch has an eating disorder, morally repugnant foreign policy, and she's shallow."

When pressed for comment George Bush's 15 year old niece and Director of Overseas Relations, Madison Herbert Walker Bush said "What. Ever. I am ready to go stomp these tramps anytime, anywhere. They know my family, we don't back down from any fight, no matter how shortsighted and stupid. I'll claw their eyes out and totally economically sanction the shit out of their little sand hole. Our foreign policy isn't tragically misguided....theirs is. Existentialistical threats and stuff. We'll wipe them off the map. I'm just glad Israel was a total sweetheart and told us what was going on. They rock!"

Insiders report that shit is totally going to go down on Tel Megiddo hill out behind Eric Bana Junior High after school this week. Sources say America and Israel are gonna totally throw down with Iran, Syria, and Lebanon just as soon as they hear the seven trumpet blasts and the fire and blood hail starts to fall.