Egypt blames Hamas - so should the rest of the world

Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said in a Cairo press conference that Egypt had long since warned Israel would respond in this manner, and added that those who did not heed the warning "should bear the responsibility."

He noted that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Hamas as well. Earlier in the day Aboul Gheit said that Egypt had predicted this would be the play of events, "because Hamas did not stop firing rockets into Israel."

Update:

and apparently Hamas is blocking wounded people from going to Egypt. Egypt is waiting at the border with ambulances but no-one popped up. The minister of foreign affairs believes Hamas is blocking the border. Now,.. why would that be? A propaganda trick? Because of the background of the wounded (Hamas-affiliated, perhaps)?

Food for Gaza

"(...) when rockets aren't being shot, Gazans get aid. It is as simple as that, and these facts are documented. Those "peace activists" who pretend to care about Gazans and yet stay silent about the rockets care neither about Gazan lives nor about peace."

Trying hard to humiliate - to no avail

We've all heard of the Iraqi who threw a shoe at Bush. For some, like the Iraqis, its a huge insult to throw a shoe at someone, to step with a shoe on someone or anything else with a shoe towards that other person. For westerners like Bush, it's only a funny act reminding you of the old Charlie Chaplin movies. So how come the Iraqis (and many other Arabs and even non-Arabs as the Pakistani students in the picture show) think that throwing a shoe at Bush would be the greatest insult to him?

The silly part of this all is that Iraqis are claiming that the shoe-thrower's arrest is a violation of freedom of speech. Since when is a physical assault on somebody freedom of speech? They've got a lot to learn about human rights over there. I don't blame them as they had long lived under the horrific human rights abuser Saddam Hussein.

Free Hossein Darakshan (aka Hoder)

The Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey puts it nicely:

"(...)let me inform you that I have a deep personal dislike to Hossein Darakshan (...) Nope, me don't like him, so much so that when I heard the news of him getting arrested in his last visit in Iran, on charges of espionage for Israel, I let out a hearty laugh, thinking that the piece of shit finally got what was coming to him. (...) And then I remembered: The guy was arrested by the Iranian republic. For Espionage. FOR ISRAEL. Even if we ignore that last part, the man was arrested, no doubtly for his writing and activism. Since when did that not matter? Since when are our campaigns for releasing dissidents based on our personal like or dislike of said dissident? (...) even if all of my beliefs change, there is one I can not give up on, and that's every human's right to freedom of speech, even if they are brown-nosing assholes.

So yes, please, Free Hoder (...) because Freedom of speech is not about popularity. If you can design a website, if you can help out with banner-designs, if you can do anything to help, please do, and let's get him out, and then bash him later as long as we wish. Ok?"

Couldn't have said it better. Hope this post will help freeing Hoder somehow. I'll leave the design of a Free Hoder banner to a more crafted person though.

Monty Python strikes back!

Collections of must-reads

Already tense relations between Egypt and Hamas have soured after Cairo for the first time openly accused the Islamists of torpedoing Palestinian reconciliation talks.

Finally there is more discussion about Jewish refugees from Arab countries after Guardian posted in article about what Obama can do for the Middle East. Professor Geoffrey Alderman started it at Dec 04 08, 3:05pm. Read it all and contribute.

Sad news in the physics world: CERN has issued its final report on the failure of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and has said that the device cannot be restarted before June 2009.

Not sad news in the field of astronomy, however:
Astronomers have used light echoes from a supernova explosion as a time machine to look again at a historic stellar event first witnessed on Earth more than 400 years ago. The brilliant 'new star' appeared in the sky in 1572 and was so bright it could be seen during the day. It was observed and charted by astronomer Tycho Brahe who discovered it was far away from the moon. [sure it was far away from the moon, hehe]