Stevie Ray Vaughan - So Excited

I had tickets to see the great man twice. The first time he collapsed on stage a few days prior to the gig (caused by his drug and alcohol excesses) and was admitted to hospital - he subsequently went into rehab and cleaned himself up. The second time he was killed in a helicopter crash, a couple of months prior, after playing at a blues festival somewhere in America. If my memory serves me correctly the helicopter he boarded was actually meant for Eric Clapton.

The song he's playing here is from a studio album called The Sky is Crying (comprised of songs that never made it onto his previous studio albums), although the studio version is almost unrecognisable from the live version shown. SRV was known for varying, often radically, the way he played any particular song.

Iraqi's warmth to Israel exacts a heavy price

I salute this brave man. In 2005 his 2 sons were killed in what many Iraqi's see was as an assassination attempt on his own life because of a previous visit he'd made to Israel. Undeterred, he visited Israel again, attending an International Institute for counterterrorism conference.

He's now at the center of a political storm, in Iraq, after his fellow Iraqi lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel - a crime punishable by death, no less.

It's worth noting that Iraqi children are being and have been treated in Israeli hospitals for all kinds medical conditions.

BAGHDAD (AP) — First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi's troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state — something Iraq's leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel — a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party's sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

Now he is in trouble for again visiting Israel and attending a conference a week ago at the International Institute for Counterterrorism.

"He wasn't set to speak, but he was in the audience and conversed with a lecturer on a panel about insurgency and terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel," said conference organizer Eitan Azani. "We didn't invite him. He came on his own initiative."

Al-Alusi has a German passport, allowing him to travel without visa restrictions imposed on other Iraqis. Lawmakers accused him of humiliating the nation with a trip to the "enemy" state.

The uproar shows how far Iraq has moved from the early U.S. goal of creating a democracy that would make peace with Israel and remove a critical force from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"What has happened was a catastrophe for democracy," Al-Alusi told The Associated Press in an interview in his Baghdad home. "Within an hour's time, the parliament became the policeman, the investigator, the judge, the government and the law. It was a sham trial."

Al-Alusi said he went to Israel to seek international support for Iraq as it struggles against terrorism, and insisted that the outcry reflects Iranian meddling in Iraq's internal affairs — an accusation often leveled by Sunnis like himself against Iraq's mostly Shiite neighbor.

"Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah and many other terrorist organizations. Israelis are suffering like me, like my people. So we need to be together," he said. "Peace will have more of a chance."

Khamenei says Iran, Israel on 'collision course'

The unelected, fire-breathing "Supreme Leader" of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has come clean about the Iranian regimes true intentions about Israel. If we recall his protégé, a certain Ahmabobblehead, said "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time" (depending on whose translation you are to believe). I actually showed, an Iranian work colleague, a phonetic version of Ahmadinejad’s speech and asked him what it meant. His immediate reaction was to wave his hand in contempt and say “wiped away....destroyed”. He then asked me if work for British intelligence.

Let’s take the best case scenario i.e. that Ahmadinejad was referring merely to regime change in Israel. – whatever that is supposed to mean.

Here we have the words of Khameini presumably at Friday prayers:-

TEHRAN -- Iran's highest authority lashed out against Israel on Friday with some of his harshest comments in recent memory about the Jewish state.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is Iran's top political and military figure, said his country's hostility to Israel extended beyond the government to the Israeli people as well. In saying so, he was brushing aside recent overtures by top Iranian officials to the Israeli public.

Khamenei said Iran and Israel were on a "collision course," a statement that could further increase tensions in a Middle East already fearful of a conflict between the two countries.


[..]


Khamenei left little doubt about Iran's position on relations with Israel, saying he was raising the issue "to spell an end to any debates" on it.

"It is incorrect, irrational, pointless and nonsense to say that we are friends of Israeli people," said Khamenei, who delivers prayer sermons only on special occasions.

Iranian officials typically increase anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rhetoric in the week before the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan, which is called Jerusalem Day in Iran. This year, it falls on Sept. 26.

The Muslim holy city of Jerusalem not being mentioned once in the Koran, of course.

Pat Condell's feedback page

I know Pat Condell's videos may be construed as controversial, by some people, because of his strident views on political Islam. To be fair to him though he is equally disdainful of all religions. Check out the feedback page on his website, it's full of really vile threats to his life not to mention unbelievably bad grammar and spelling.

Here is a taster :-

ur just a ignornat whtie son of a bitch that needs to b bheaded wid a blunt knife

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i don't care about religioists. i know where you live and i'm coming to shove a coke bottle up your old pathetic ass and rape all the women of your family. i can't believe i pay taxed for old impotent farts like you. satan bless ameri-fuck-ca.

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The entire time I watched your video on youtube, I was shooting you a bird you piece of fucking shit. I hope you die today in a horrible fiery car crash with a full tank of gas. Fuck YOU.

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i cannot fucking wait until you die (which will be probably soon) and stand before your creator. I bet that would scare ur little gay accent right out of you. I am 100% sure ur gay. Just by the way u look.

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why don't you kill yourself white bastard? or do you want me to do it?
do you have a white daughter to rape and molest?
or are you scared your number is decreasing you redneck?

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i saw your videos and their fuckn bullshit you white cunt, come link me up in birmingham lets discuss this in person you motherfucker

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fuck u !! and fuck all the zionist christian and atheist like u ! u are an ignorant mother fucker extremist ! u are a terrorist old man! u are a son of a bitch ! fuck u and fuck every body loves u ! if i see u in the streets i swear i am going to cut ur head off

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Fuck you old bastard watch out buddy cause am coming we have lots of people where you live jihad is declared on you bitch you dont ever insult islam or prophet muhammad(pbuh) sorry old bastard but i hope you had a fun time on earth cause your going to hell with the christians jews and athiest

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Cunt

i hope u die... very painfully

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u son of a hoe ur mama shouldve aborted u when u were in her womb,if she hadnt and i waz alive dat time i would punched her right dere so u couldve died... FUCK UUUUUUU!!!!!

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you suck asshole and if i see you on the streets il punch your fucking face in

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Pat Condell = nothing but a jew-loving, ZOG-sucking, nigger-fucking race traitor and truly, a CUNT. Fuck off you fucking shitskin faggot.

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you suck fucing jewish dicks sucker hahahahaha,you try to be famous,but you looking like a boar,hahahaha,youcan change nothing by your stupid vids,just see your face in the mirror and you will see a boar hahaha and fuck you again,just wait for dead

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FUCKER!!!!!

OMG!!! i seen u in real life!!!! i m 100% sure it was u!!!! i will do anything to find u!!! then tell me about islam and watch what i do to u

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Nice!

Palestinian Mayor for Jerusalem?

I dare say he, Zohir Hamdan, is unlikely to win the Jerusalem Mayoral election but he does come across as a very interesting character.

Hamdan, 53, the mukhtar (head) of the east Jerusalem village of Tzur Baher who is married to three wives and is the proud father of 18, announced his candidacy on Wednesday. In an interview to Ynet he says: "I was married to a Jewish woman from Tel Aviv, but we divorced about three years ago". His name has been mentioned before as a possible mayoral candidate, but according to Hamdan, those were just speculations; this time, its official.

Hamdan was born in Jordan, and studied engineering in Beirut. "I love this country, that's why I came here in 1974. My father and other relatives were already here. It was a family reunion; it was my duty to come here for my father", he said, describing his love for the country and for Jerusalem. Since his arrival, Hamdan has held several jobs, among them chief negotiator for east Jerusalem.

Tzur Baher, Zohir Hamdan's village, was in the news recently for a different reason. Terrorist Hossam Dwayyat, who killed three people by running them over with a stolen bulldozer, was a resident of the village. However, Hamdan goes about things in the opposite direction, wishing to bring Jews and Arabs closer together. "I'm chairman of the co-existence forum in Jerusalem. I was the first one to bring co-existence into the frey. When the Tanzim were shooting at the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, I sympathized with the residents of Gilo."

"I have many Jewish friends from all over the country," adds Hamdan. "I go to visit them; they visit me and shop in Tzur Baher. We don't have any problems here. Since I announced that I was running for mayor, the phone hasn't stopped ringing. More Jews call to congratulate me than Arabs".

Read it all.

RIP Richard Wright

Pink Floyd are probably my favourite rock band - their music was way ahead of its time and has indeed stood the test of time. Sadly their keyboard player, Richard Wright, has succumbed to cancer.

PINK Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright died yesterday after battling cancer.

Wright, 65, was a founding member of the legendary British rock act.

His spokesman said: "The family of Richard Wright announce with great sadness, that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer."

A self-taught keyboard player and pianist, Wright met fellow band members Roger Waters and Nick Mason while at architecture school.

He was a founder member of The Pink Floyd Sound in 1965 and their previous incarnations, such as Sigma 6.

Wright is the second original member of the band to die recently, following the death of Syd Barrett last year.

In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Barrett, was the group's dominant musical force.

Two of his best known works were The Great Gig In The Sky and Us And Them, both from 1973's classic Dark Side Of The Moon album.

Galloway cut to shreds

I can't abide George Galloway for his views and his aggressive attitude in interviews. Here we see him getting a taste of his own medicine. Excellent stuff.

BBC misinformation?

The meaning of the word stillborn, as far as I'm aware, is when a baby is born dead - it seems clear cut to me.

The BBC however has other ideas. According to this report on their website:-

An Israeli soldier has been removed from duty and jailed for two weeks for refusing to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through a checkpoint.

The soldier was in command at the checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus. The woman was trying to reach a hospital in the city.

She was forced to give birth at the checkpoint. Her baby was stillborn.

Strangely, further on in the report we get this:-

It took an ambulance from Nablus 50 minutes to get to the checkpoint. At which point the baby was dead.

"At which point the baby was dead". Surely if the baby was stillborn, it was dead before the ambulance even left Nablus or am I missing something here?

Ali G interviews the Beckhams

I know this clip of Ali G interviewing the Beckhams is quite old but I didn't actually see it at the time. Someone mentioned to to me the other day and I decided to have a look for it on Youtube. It's absolutely priceless.

The joy of Houmous

Anyone who's read up about quantum mechanics (I'm a novice in this regard) will know that the sub-atomic world is very strange indeed. It's a world where Newton's laws are meaningless and even a flummoxed Einstein was reduced to comment that "God does not play dice".

As we all know the Large Hadron Collider is about to be switched on. One of the aims of the project is to try and detect "God's particle" or the Higgs Boson particle which is supposed to explain why matter has mass.

The project has involved scientists from around the world - including Israel and Palestine it would seem. This from Ynetnews:

The project also brought about several unexpected collaborations, with Israeli scientists working side by side with Lebanese, Pakistani and Iranian counterparts. But one cooperative effort stood out the most, that of the warm bonds forged with a young Palestinian scientist from the Birzeit University.

When work on the project ended the Israeli team even organized a celebratory party together with the Lebanese and Palestinian scientists. Both Israeli and Palestinian flags were hung.

One day, Mikenberg recalled, suffering from joint hunger pangs for some decent hummus, the Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli scientists "swung by Paris and scarfed some down, Israeli and Arab together. Science knows no borders and no enemies. It's a wonderful thing."

Iran's holocaust cartoons revisited

The infamous, and very tasteful, Iranian cartoon competition, about the Holocaust, included an entry from a staunch Palestinian supporting (anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, of course) Brazilian cartoonist, Carlos Latuff . As it happens, the party-of-god supporter, Norman Finklestein, showcases his cartoons on his website. Latuff's entry, which earned him second prize and the reward of $4000, depicts a despairing Palestinian lamenting the existance Israel's defensive wall.

Strange, why would someone get so upset about a defensive wall?

Keegan leaves Newcastle, again

Personally I don't blame him.

From what I've read in the press, players were bought and sold, without his prior knowledge nor his consent, at the behest of Newcastle's "Director of football" Dennis Wise.

My recollections of Dennis Wise, as a footballer, are that he was a mediocre, dirty player who did little for the image of the game of Football. Alex Ferguson once said of him that he could "start a fight in an empty house".

What are Newcastle FC thinking of when they give more weight to an apparent thug, rather than a footballing legend who'd achieved so much more for them in the past.

Btw I am not a Newcastle fan, but I've always admired their passion for attacking football, as embodied by Keegan's football philosophy.

I'd have Keegan over him any day. Anyway, this is the report:-

One of the most protracted, and painful, farewells in football was confirmed last night when Kevin Keegan finally resigned as the manager of Newcastle United. An increasingly acrimonious three-day stand-off between Keegan and Mike Ashley concluded with the club's billionaire owner refusing to be backed into a corner by the former England coach's demands before forcing him to walk out.

Arab students visit Israeli embassy in Washington

A good news story with regards to Arab/Israeli relations emanating from the US.

It's an open secret that Israel surreptitiously trades with its Arab neighbours (in a big way) in terms of commerce. Indeed, many wealthy Arabs (not to mention poor Azan's) seek and get medical treatment for life threatening diseases/conditions in Israeli hospitals. With that in mind, imagine the possible sea-change of opinions following this.

Dozens of students from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates and Qatar visited the Israeli embassy in Washington this week.

The Arab students, who arrived in Washington in the framework of a young international leadership training program sponsored by the US government, listened to diplomatic briefs from embassy employees and asked questions.

“It was a unique opportunity to explain Israel’s position first hand,” said Rafi Harpaz, director of Public Affairs at the embassy, in a report sent to the Foreign Ministry.

When the briefing was over, the Arab students, all from affluent homes, shook Harpaz’ hand and asked to take photos with him, telling the director it was their first time meeting an Israeli.

Each student received a PR kit that included brochures about Israel, photos and CDs.

Back seat lovers survive cliff plunge

This is a hilarious story from Ananova - especially the last line.

Two lovers ended up in hospital in Taiwan after their car plunged 150ft down a cliff face as they made love in the back seat.

Lin Gu, 25, and lover Lee Shin, 29, were left with broken bones and bruises after their car toppled over the edge of a hill in XinDian, reports Today News.

A spokesman for police who were called by witnesses said: "They had parked up close to the edge of the mountain and had left the handbrake off.

"When they started having sex the rocking motion started the car moving and it rolled off the hill. They were lucky they were not more seriously hurt."

The two lovers had driven to a deserted mountain road and parked but their movements made the car topple over the edge and roll down to the bottom of the valley.

Despite their injuries - and being covered with mud and grass - the couple managed to clamber back up to the road where the woman asked the man to keep walking while she sought help at a nearby house.

Homeowner Chen Chenggang said the woman pleaded with him not to reveal how the accident happened as her husband "would definitely sue for divorce".

Jaw dropping moment of the year

This from todays Haaretz.

Hamas' Christian convert: I've left a society that sanctifies terror

A moment before beginning his supper, Masab, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and then say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates. It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: The son of a Hamas MP who is also the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. "I'm now called Joseph," he says at the outset.

Masab knows that he has little hope of returning to visit the Holy Land in this lifetime. "I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he'll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I'll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God."

Nor does he attempt to hide his affection for Israel, or his abhorrence of everything representing the surroundings in which he grew up: the nation, the religion, the organization

"Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country," he says. "You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death."

Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?

"More than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the 'heroism of the shaheeds.'"

And yet, in spite of the criticism of the place he left, California can't make the longings disappear.

"I miss Ramallah," he says. "People with an open mind. ... I mainly miss my mother, my brothers and sisters, but I know that it will be very difficult for me to return to Ramallah soon."

Saying of the day

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

- Baltasar Gracian

And now for some Radiohead...

Some of their music grates a bit but this is great song performed superbly.

Hugo Chávez's Jewish Problem

This is a classic example how extreme left meets extreme right.

Since Chávez took the oath of office at the beginning of 1999, there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world. Prominent Jewish figures have been publicly denounced for supposed disloyalty to the “Bolívarian” cause, and “Semitic banks” have been accused of plotting against the regime. Citing suspicions of such plots, Chávez’s government has gone so far as to stage raids on Jewish elementary schools and other places of meeting. The anti-Zionism expressed by the government is steadily spilling over into street-level anti-Semitism, in which synagogues are vandalized with a frequency and viciousness never before seen in the country.

[..]

As an alleged oppressor of the Palestinian Arabs, Israel has its own place of special infamy in Chávez’s world view. This latter theme has served him particularly well in his efforts to mobilize the sentiments of his rural constituents. Thus, during a 2005 speech marking Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, Chávez likened the plight of Venezuela’s Indians to that of Palestinians. Reminding his listeners of how their ancestors had been “murdered in their land” by “governments, economic sectors, and great land estates,” he thundered: “You were expelled from your homeland, like the heroic Palestinian people.”

All of these elements seem entirely derivative of Marxist-Leninist theorizing, with a strong admixture of post-colonialism à la Franz Fanon and Fidel Castro. But Chávez is not just another Latin American leftist on the Castro model. While the Cuban dictator may be his most important political influence, his greatest intellectual debt is to the Argentinian writer and thinker Norberto Ceresole: a man not of the Left but of the populist Right, a Holocaust denier, and a sworn enemy of Israel and the Jews.

[..]

The ingeniousness of Ceserole’s doctrine, as filtered through the sensibility of Hugo Chávez, resides in its blending of Marxist economics with two venerable anti-Semitic traditions. The first, still powerful in South America, derives from Catholic teachings about the historic Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus. The second, encapsulated most notoriously in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has flourished in both rightist and leftist variations throughout modern European history, resurfacing in our own time in the fulminations of extreme anti-Zionists. Chávez drew on both traditions in an address he delivered on Christmas Eve in 2004. Here he spoke ominously of certain “minorities, the descendants of those who crucified Christ,” who had “taken possession of the riches of the world.”

But there was an added element at play in this passage, which has to be quoted in full to be properly appreciated:

The world has enough for everybody, but it happened that some minorities—the descendants of those who crucified Christ, the descendants of those who ejected Bolívar from here and who crucified him in their own way in Santa Marta, over in Colombia—took possession of the riches of the world. A minority appropriated the world’s gold, the silver, the minerals, the waters, the good lands, the oil, and has concentrated the riches in a few hands.

Read it all.

Israeli saves 2 Palestinians from lynch mob

Here we have a heroic Israeli saving 2 Palestinians from a lynch mob

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3571913,00.html

Hatred in Jerusalem: Two Palestinians narrowly escaped a lynching attempt in Jerusalem Tuesday evening after they were assaulted by dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The two Arabs were wounded, while a Jewish resident who protected them with his body was stabbed.

"Blood was boiling, and these crazy people almost killed me," the Jewish man told Ynet. The police are looking into the incident and searching for the attackers.

"Suddenly, while we were sitting shiva because my father-in-law passed away, two Palestinians stormed into the house bleeding and bruised, following by an angry mob," the Jewish man, who asked that his name not be published, told Ynet. "Dozens of ultra-Orthodox from the nearby yeshiva entered the backyard and severely beat up the two Palestinians, while we, still shocked, were trying to break it up and protect the Palestinians."

[..]

However, a mob then again came out of the yeshiva and started chasing the two Palestinians.

"They caught them and beat them up terribly," the Jewish man said. "My son and I were quick to protect them with our bodies…then, two Orthodox men arrived and one told us: 'You're saving Arabs?' they pulled out knives. I managed to grab the arm of one of them, yet the second one cut my stomach."

Hostage released for pizza

Bizarre new from down under:-

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1389697.html

An Australian prison guard held hostage for two days was released after a ransom demand for pizzas was met.

Up to 20 inmates at the Risdon Prison in Hobart, Tasmania, seized the guard in a protest over conditions in the maximum security jail.

Initially they made 24 demands to authorities, but eventually gave up their hostage after agreeing to 15 pizzas, Coke and garlic bread instead.

"At midnight, the final sticking point with the inmates was that they were requiring pizzas to be delivered. Our staff member was negotiated out with the delivery of 15 pizzas," Graeme Barber, Tasmania's director of prisons, told The Advocate newspaper.

The guard is recovering from his ordeal at home