My House... In the Middle of Winter!

From ColorExperiments

Do You Love This Guy... or... Do You Love This Guy?

Barack Obama and a plunger: He might not want to remember this photo

Before he was even a senator, let alone president-elect, then-unknown Barack Obama was, at a 2003 St. Patrick's Day parade, a plunger wrangler. (Photo courtesy Mats Selen)

Intellect is Coming Back to the White House

125 Facts About Sex

Around 100 B.C. in Babylon all women had to go to the temple of the Fertility Godess Mylitta to have sex with a stranger. Only then were the women allowed to marry. The stranger, in return, had to donate money to the temple. (The History of Prostitution)

125 facts about sex - Nachrichten English-News - WELT ONLINE

In Washington, All Roads Lead to Tehran - by Daniel Luban

As the war in Gaza approaches its third week, a chorus of influential voices in the U.S. media has cast the conflict as a proxy war in which the real enemy is not Hamas but Iran. The result has been a growing tendency in the U.S. to view Gaza as simply one battleground in a larger war between Iran and the West, and to dismiss the stated concerns of the Palestinians as a mere smoke screen for Iranian influence.

But critics charge that this way of framing the conflict is both overly simplistic and agenda-driven. By overstating the importance of Iran's operational aid to Hamas, they claim, these opinion-makers aim to increase hostilities with Iran, to bolster an increasingly shaky Israeli rationale for war, and to curtail any inclination to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

For years, it has been a commonplace among neoconservatives that Iran is the real source of opposition to the U.S. and Israel throughout the Middle East, from Palestine to Lebanon to Iraq. During Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, prominent neoconservatives urged the West to focus "less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders in Syria and Iran," as William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard.

In Washington, All Roads Lead to Tehran - by Daniel Luban

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Blogged with the Flock Browser

This is Way Too Funny

Skier left dangling upside down and trouserless

This skier pictured at Colorado's luxury Vail ski resort spent several minutes dangling upside down from a chairlift with his pants around his ankles and in full view of passing skiers.

Al-Qaeda Should Thank Israel for the Helping Hand

... and the winner is (speech!) | Marc Lynch

From al-Qaeda's perspective, therefore, Israel's assault on Gaza is an unmitigated blessing. The images flooding the Arab and world media have already discredited moderates, fueled outrage, and pushed the center of political gravity towards more hard-line and radical positions. As in past crises, Islamists of all stripes are outbidding each other, competing to "lead" the popular outrage, while "moderates" are silent or jumping on the bandwagon. Governments are under pressure, most people are glued to al-Jazeera's coverage (and, from what anyone can tell, ignoring stations that don't offer similar coverage), the internet is flooded with horrifying images, and people are angry and mobilized against Israel, the United States, and their own governments. That's the kind of world al-Qaeda likes to see.

Even if Hamas emerges weakened, as Israeli strategists hope, all the better (from al-Qaeda's point of view, that is). In general, where the MB is strong (Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine for example), AQ has had a hard time finding a point of entry despite serious efforts to do so, while where the MB is weak (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Lebanon) it has had more success. Up to now, AQ-minded groups have had little success in penetrating Gaza, because Hamas had it locked. Now they clearly have high hopes of finding an entree with a radicalized, devastated population and a weakened Hamas.

Al-Qaeda likely can not thank Israel enough for its efforts over the last two weeks. Over the last few years, al-Qaeda has been losing ground with the mainstream Muslim public -- because of its real radicalism and fringe ideology, its killing of so many Muslim innocents in its attacks in Muslim countries, challenges from other Islamist groups and from within its own ranks, an increasingly effective strategic communications campaign by Western and Arab governments, and more. Israel's military assault against Gaza threatens to reverse that trend.

This is War on Several Front

The war where real humans are killed for no good reason, and the war where the real opinions are killed for a very good reason.

Israel armed with internet savvy

The thermal imaging footage shot from an Israeli drone hovering over Gaza shows eight Palestinian militants loading rockets on to a lorry. Within seconds, the drone’s sights are locked on to the vehicle and it and the ghostlike figures nearby are incinerated in a missile blast.

Or so tens of thousands of visitors to the popular video-posting internet site YouTube have been led to believe. The clip was one of several dramatic scenes uploaded to the site by the Israeli army last week, the first time a national army has created its own YouTube channel.

A subsequent investigation by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem attracted less attention. It suggests the rockets were in fact gas canisters and that the supposed militants were civilians moving welding equipment after their workshop had been damaged in one of the hundreds of Israeli air strikes on Gaza over the past week.

But facts appear to have been the first casualty in a public relations war that is being conducted as vigorously by Israeli defence officials as the fight against Hamas.

Control the News... Control the Opinion.

8 foreign reporters allowed into Gaza (Ed. Note: Not yet... But Soon?)

At the urging of the High Court of Justice, Israel agreed Thursday to allow eight foreign journalists into Gaza when it reopens the border crossing with the Hamas-ruled territory, the Justice Ministry said.

The decision fell short of a High Court proposal, made a day earlier, to let up to 12 international journalists into the Gaza Strip, and was deemed "insufficient" by the Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association, which had petitioned the court on the matter.

The move was the latest in an ongoing legal battle between the government and the group representing foreign journalists in Israel, following a two-month-old ban on foreign correspondents entering Gaza.

Israel originally imposed the blanket ban following an upswing in Palestinian rocket attacks, but the issue took on added urgency in the wake of this week's massive assault against Hamas targets in the Strip.

Sorry...

... I have been way addicted to Facebook and so I haven't been updating this site quite as often as I wanted... But, Facebook rocks!!!

Oh Wait... It's China Now!

Latest rockets manufactured in China

The Chinese rockets have a range of 40 kilometers. They are very similar to the 122 mm Soviet-made Katyusha that was used extensively by Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War and are slightly more sophisticated than an Iranian-made Grad-model Katyusha that is also in Hamas's arsenal.