MR BAGEL CARTOONS Laugh with Mr Bagel Mr Bagel cartoons, they're often corny, but their innocence and 'cream cheesyness' makes for a welcome break from the seriousness of life.
HAVEIL HAVALIM Haveil Havalim BagelBlogger has an archive of the Jewish Carnival Haveil Havalim, which means 'Vanity of Vanities'(or 'Futility of futilities') in Hebrew, check it out, its well worth the journey.
Baleboosteh has been gracious enough to do this fortnights JPix 12. It is a day late, seems with my birthday yesterday the onset of senility is faster than I could have imagined. JPix completely skipped my thoughts, which isn't usually the case.
The thing is JPix is now basically running like a well oiled machine, there were a few grumblings last fortnight, when one or two regulars were dropped due to not submitting, but now that people know they have to submit to have a chance to be in JPix the work load is a lot easier.
For those that are willing to give hosting JPix a go, (thanks Rafi G for your offer to host JPix 14 in 4 weeks time) I would still encourage you to go scouting for 'new talent' but in essence, the regulars have been whipped into shape and most of the work is basically already done.
Now knowing this, who is going to host next fortnights JPix13? If you miss out, JPix 15 and Jpix 16 are still available as well. Leave a comment or email Mr Bagel to let me know.[Click read More...]
This particular edition of JPix Photo carnival is reflective of just how much growth JPhotographers are achieving, there really are some beautiful shots. Beautiful content isn't always the essence of what makes up a superb photo, some of the very best photos are of the mundane.
Speaking of Beauty, Baleboosteh has done a marvelous job of JPix 12, and thrown down the challenge, remember there are no hard and fast rules in presenting JPix, its like any creative process, it works best with a sense of freedom and la joie de vivre.
BAGHDAD - The U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, adding that information from him indicates the group's foreign-based leadership wields considerable influence over the Iraqi chapter.
Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid, was captured in Mosul on July 4, said Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a military spokesman. "Al-Mashhadani is believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq network," Bergner said. He said al-Mashhadani was a close associate of Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Bergner said al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between al-Masri and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
"In fact, communication between the senior al-Qaida leadership and al-Masri frequently went through al-Mashhadani," Bergner said.
"Along with al-Masri, al-Mashhadani co-founded a virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006," Bergner said. "The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest efforts by al-Qaida to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people."
In Web postings, the Islamic State of Iraq has identified its leader as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, with al-Masri as minister of war. There are no known photos of al-Baghdadi.
Bergner said al-Mashhadani had told interrogators that al-Baghdadi is a "fictional role" created by al-Masri and that an actor is used for audio recordings of speeches posted on the Web.
"In his words, the Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al-Qaida in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq," Bergner said.
He said al-Mashhadani was a leader of the militant Ansar al-Sunnah group before joining al-Qaida in Iraq 2 1/2 years ago. Al-Mashhadani served as the al-Qaida media chief for Baghdad and then was appointed the media chief for the whole country.
Al-Qaida in Iraq was proclaimed in 2004 by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led a group called Tawhid and Jihad, responsible for the beheading of several foreign hostages, whose final moments were captured on videotapes provided to Arab television stations.
Al-Zarqawi posted Web statements declaring his allegiance to bin Laden and began using the name of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Diyala province in June 2006 and was replaced by al-Masri.
The degree of control and supervision between bin Laden's clique and the Iraq branch has been the subject of debate, with some private analysts believing the foreign-based leadership plays a minor role in day to day operations.
However, the U.S. military has released captured letters from time to time, suggesting the foreign-based leaders provide at least broad direction.
Mr Bagel: Hopefully Abu Shahid will be singing better than a pop princess and the leadership of Al Qaida in Iraq will be severely disrupted. References: Yahoo News: US: Top al-Qaida in Iraq figure captured
Seems the one that is supposed to love me couldn't help but have a giggle at what the ravages of time have done to poor old Mr Bagel. [click read more...]
The good thing is, this year I seemed to have got almost as many presents as the years old I am, which means every year from now on will be even better... Will it not?
Heightened Visa Checks are causing accusations of profiling.
Mark Dunn, July 18, 2007 12:00am
NEW laws that demand Arabs seeking visa entry into Australia provide the names of their parents and grandfather hint at racial and religious profiling, according to a leading Islamic group.
"It would be pretty naive to think there is no religious profiling going on (with visa applicants), even if it's not officially recognised," said the Islamic Council of Victoria's spokesman, Waleed Aly.
Australian security agencies had asked for the new regulations that require extra personal information from Arabic visa applicants to include the names of their parents and grandfather.
Other visa applicants, including those from China and Russia, are also being required to provide additional information about the spelling of names and ancestral names before being granted entry to Australia.
The Federal Government has insisted there is no racial or religious profiling in Australia's immigration programs.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' spokeswoman said the changes would help in the proper identification of applicants and their character.
"The question that has been included in the new form (about Arabic grandfathers) is designed to enable more accurate and higher-quality identification of visa applicants," she said.
But Mr Aly said his own experiences had shown him racial and religious characteristics were focused on by border officials.
Mr Aly said despite random searches being conducted at Australian airports, he had become used to always being stopped and questioned, and that many Australian Muslims knew that they would come under special attention, especially at airports.
"They disproportionately focus on people who are Muslim or who appear to be Muslim," he said.
All visa applicants aged 16 and older wanting to visit Australia must fill out a character assessment form, which identifies their siblings and parents.
But regulations brought in this year require Arabic, Chinese and Russian visa applicants to provide extra detail.
For Russian citizens they must include their patronymic or ancestral name, and Chinese applicants must provide their name in commercial code numbers, which relates to Chinese characters, and in English.
Bagelblogger: What a joke. The simple fact is in addressing the serious problem of Terrorism you need to rationalise your resources. The cold hard truth is its far more likely for a potential terrorist to be Muslim than any other religion. To ignore such statistics is simply foolhardy to say the least. Denial of this is 'PC' madness.
If Muslims resent the extra attention that this brings to their travel plans and lives then there really is a simple solution. Ensure that within their sub culture it becomes unacceptable to be a terrorist and kill innocent people.When there is a major shift in attitudes within the Muslim community then the probability of a Terrorist being Muslim will be diminished and hence the limited resources government agencies do have will be directed in more appropriate demographic groups.
Don't complain to the government, complain within your own culture which promotes and advances acceptable notions towards terrorist acts.
With the penchant for actively voicing concerns within the Muslim community at perceived injustices, a valid question arises; when was the last mass Muslim protest against Islamic terrorism rather than the usual orchestrated self serving protest at infringed rights?
A short and punchy video showing British intellectual and author Howard Jacobson giving a speech about the recent boycotts by British Unions of Israel. Wonderfully explained and with perfect irony.
"No longer to listen is no longer to engage in the dialogue of thought. It disqualifies you as a scholar"
Published: 14 July 2007
I have a confession to make. I stepped off the straight and narrow last week. I addressed a political rally. Not a rally in the George Galloway sense, where you stand on a box in the middle of Trafalgar Square, proclaim: "I glorify the Hizbollah resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah," and then when someone reminds you that that same Hassan Nasrallah has said he looks forward to the day when all the world's Jews are congregated in Israel so that he can annihilate the lot, and wonders (the someone, not Nasrallah) whether that doesn't make you a raving anti-Semite by association, you say you can't stop to discuss it because you've got a Big Brother's Big Mouth to present.
So no, not that kind of rally. More a meeting of concerned people in a not very big room. And no fanatics spewing hate.
But it was still an event more political than I am used to, or, to be honest, believe that as a novelist I should take part in. I am squeamish about any sort of activism or affiliation. If you're a novelist you're not essentially anyone in the activist, affiliative sense. Your characters speak through you which is not the same as speaking for you. Strictly speaking you don't, as a novelist, have anything to say. Discourse ain't your discourse.
On this occasion, though - a meeting called to oppose the proposed academic boycott of Israel - I felt I had to depart from the principles of my profession because academics in this country had departed from theirs. You don't silence other voices if you're a scholar, that's where I stand. You don't, if you're a thinker and a teacher, remove from the unending conversation of the mind those of whom you happen, rightly or wrongly, to disapprove.
I won't rehearse the arguments here. I had my say some weeks ago in this newspaper. In response to what I wrote, a boycotter popped up on some blog explaining that I'd got it wrong. Those in favour of excommunication weren't removing Israeli voices in the sense of gagging or silencing them, they were simply refusing to listen to them. A distinction that was lost on me at first, but with time grew clearer and more shocking. For "not listening" is, if anything, more philosophically brutal than silencing or gagging. Brutal, in especial, to the person not doing the listening. That act of intellectual violence which, if you are a boycotter, you are presently preparing against the Israeli academy, is in fact an act of violence against yourself.
To say you intend knowingly and purposefully and on principle "not to listen" is to say you are waging a sort of war on your own faculties, because listening, if you are a reasoning person, is chief among the tools you reason with.
Most of what Socrates did was listen. No longer to listen is no longer to engage in the dialogue of thought. Which disqualifies you as a scholar and a teacher, for what sort of example to his pupils is a teacher who covers truth's ears and buries it under stone. A university that will not listen does far more intellectual damage to itself than to the university it has stopped listening to.
It seemed worth saying this at the meeting. Not that I was the only one who said it. What impressed me, as a political agitation virgin, was how lucid and calmly rational everyone was apart from the pro-boycott pickets outside - though why you would want to picket people who are gathering to disagree with what you said at your gathering I am at a loss to understand. Which I suppose shows how politically naive I am.
The other thing that seemed worth saying related to that now classic formulation - "It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel." I wasn't concerned to make the no less classical rebuttal - "Of course being critical of Israel doesn't necessarily mark you out as an anti-Semite, but it doesn't necessarily mark you out as not one either." Enough already with who is or who isn't. What I wanted to address was something different - how the glamour word "anti-Semite" has transfixed both parties to this semantic tussle, when the real issue is what we mean by "critical".
Reader, only think about it: was ever a tiny word sent on such a mighty errand, or to put it another way, was ever such a massive job of demolition done by so delicate an instrument. Critical - as though those who accuse Israel of every known crime against humanity, of being more Nazi than the Nazis, more fascist than the fascists, more apartheid than apartheid South Africa, are simply exercising measured argument and fine discrimination.
I know a bit about being critical. It's my job. Being "critical" is when you say that such-and-such a book works here but doesn't work there, good plot, bad characterisation, enjoyed some parts, hated others. What being critical is not, is saying this is the most evil and odious book ever written, worse than all other evil and odious books, should never have been published in the first place, was in fact published in flagrant defiance of international law, must be banned, and in the meantime should not under any circumstances be read. For that we need another word than critical.
So try replacing it with whatever that word or words might be and have a look at how the statement bears up now. "It is not anti-Semitic to defame or curse or stigmatise or revile or execrate or anathematise or with malice aforethought misrepresent Israel." You might think that veers a touch too far in the opposite direction, but you take my point. Put back the inordinacy of reprehension hidden behind the pretend even-handedness of fair-seeming little "critical" and you see why those who oppose the boycott and other such traducements smell a rat.
None of this, to rehearse another tired though necessary qualification, is to support the Israeli occupation. Something else that impressed me at the meeting - how universally what needed to be condemned was condemned. An unequivocal no to the ban didn't mean an unequivocal yes to Israel.
This was not a room of people blind in love with Zionism. Which made me wish that some who write vituperatively to me whenever I use the word Israel had been there.
You don't have to be a Zionist to oppose the boycott. You don't even have to be pro-Israel. You can weigh an argument on its merits. There is such a thing as disinterestedness, even at a political rally. I speak as a veteran.
mmmm Ok If you're a Jihadist then I live in a dark cave, in remote tribal lands cursing the heat and the flies. If you're one of the rest of US, then I'm just an average guy, doing average things, hoping to make people smile.
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