Suspicious circumstances around the tuberculosis joyride

So the story about the dude who has a rare and deadly form of tuberculosis and took off with his wife in around-the-world plane trips, then tried to sneak back into the country, just got a little weirder. His wife's father works for the CDC researching... yup, tuberculosis.

ATLANTA - The father-in-law of the tuberculosis patient under the first federal quarantine since 1963 works as a microbiologist at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory that studies TB and other bacterial infections.

Shimshon, circa 2007

Y'all remember the story about Shimshon (Samson) killing the lion with his bare hands and ripping the lion's jaw off? Well in Israel, a modern-day version of the story happened, but the guy was a nature lover so he didn't rip the leopard's face off.

Israeli Man Wrestles Stray Leopard in Bedroom

JERUSALEM — A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family. [Have you read the book "Good Night Gorilla"? -ed.]

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," [no duh. -ed.] said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority [IsNatAPaPrA for short. -ed.], said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch's small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.

Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. [maybe it wanted to snuggle? -ed.] Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added.

Du Mosch's cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room. [heh, that'll teach you to be afraid of a mosquito. - ed]

Shapira said the leopard was very weak when park rangers arrived at Du Mosch's home after the surprise late-night visit. He said nature officials would likely release it back into the wild.

Du Mosch said he probably would not have been able to control the big cat were it in better health. As a nature guide, he said, he was familiar with animals and did his best to hold down the leopard without harming it. He said he took it all in stride, "but the kids were excited." [pee-in-your-pants "excited" - ed.]

Proportionality for thee but not for me.

Lebanese proportional response.

What a crazy farce. I don't even want to think about the double standards of "proportionality" - whatever that means anyways. Are the crazy governments really calling for Israel to respond proportionally to random firing of rockets into civilian centers?! If that's what they want, then there would be a lot more loss of civilian life, and schools and kindergartens would be decimated, and civilian homes would be blown apart. how crazy are these people! And to top it off, as lawhawk comments on the Lebanese foray into a "palestinian" "refugee" "camp":

It is curious how the Lebanese military is able to go after the Palestinian terrorists operating in the camps without so much as a peep from those who would otherwise be urging proportionality in the Israeli military's response to the same kind of attacks from Gaza.

Gateway Pundit has a good roundup of the Lebanese proportional response which has tallied a death toll of 65 so far.

Must see TV - Sderot Edition

Here is a collection of news clips, home video, and other must-see TV centered around the practical strangling of the beautiful Israeli city of Sderot. 25% of its residents have fled. School is closed. The Government has declared martial law and a state of emergency. Please go here for a first hand account of the terror and panic of running for your lives during a rocket attack.

Local Israeli TV:


Foxnews, NBC, CNN:


Sderot - Then and Now:


Live shot of a Qassam hitting next door (from Sderot Media):

Prelude to the Six Days

Ripped from LGF:

Charles Krauthammer has a great column today on the upcoming anniversary of the Six Day War: Prelude to the Six Days.

There has hardly been a Middle East peace plan in the past 40 years — including the current Saudi version — that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

Read the whole thing...

Democracy Backfire

It looks like electing a terrorist group to lead your people isn't quite working out as hoped. From Israel Matzav:

The 'Palestinian people' are fed up

MEMRI reports on its blog site that there are indications that the 'Palestinian people' are fed up with their 'leadership' and despairing of any end to the current violence. Here are three samples:

[T]he head of the Egyptian security delegation, Burhan Hamed, argued that Fatah and Hamas leaders, who are meeting to discuss the chaos and internal warfare in Gaza, are not representing the men on the ground who are fighting each other, and are incapable of ordering them to stop shooting.

Talal 'Awkal, columnist for the PA daily Al-Ayyam, wrote that Hamas members are not showing any concern for the consequences of the internal warfare in Gaza. He said that it is difficult to expect those who take no interest in journalists' lives, beset them by force of arms, and takes them hostage, to be disturbed by the continuation of the current situation, which is likely to cause Palestinians to emigrate.

Also in Al-Ayyam, Abdallah Awad strongly attacked both Fatah and Hamas: "Between the murders, between the abductions... our leaders continue to sit in their fictitious chairs and to bring tidings of resistance, liberation, unity, and return... They are all liars. The weapons that they want to keep, [on the explanation] that it is the weapons of the resistance, are the weapons of terrorism and internal murder... You are murdering the [Palestinian] problem, [the Palestinian] people, and [the Palestinian] future... Take your government, your militias, and your gangs, and go to Hell."

Axis of Evil testing missiles

Lil' Kim must have hired a marketing firm because unlike previous missiles, the new missile's name is no longer some variant of "Dong" (with my favorite missile name being 'Nodong'). From TigerHawk:

The members of the House of Representatives who voted to outlaw planning for a military strike against Iran undoubtedly also want to outlaw thinking about the new and entirely uncooked intelligence report that North Korea and Iran have cooperated in the development of a new long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Guam from North Korea:

Named Musudan, the new missile was first made public on April 25 at a parade marking the anniversary of the foundation of the North Korean military. Sources in Washington had told Yonhap this week that South Korea and the U.S. were trying to verify an intelligence tip that Pyongyang may have tested the missile in Iran, a country suspected of having purchased North Korean missiles and of continuing technology sharing.

The more likely ultimate target may not, however, be in the western Pacific. Stratfor (sub. req.):

If the Musudan was tested in Iran, perhaps during a series of missile tests earlier this year, it could indicate either a sales demonstration by Pyongyang or the testing of a system already sold to Tehran. The first is more likely, as there are no other signs that Pyongyang has successfully tested the Musudan to date. Either way, it would appear the new missile is intended not only to enhance the domestic security of North Korea, but also to create additional sources of cash -- which fits with previous North Korean missile sales and the renting out of its technicians, with all the implications of proliferation that brings.

With its estimated range of more 2000 miles, the Irans could not only hit Israel and the American bases in the Persian Gulf, but Cairo, Rome, and Berlin.

Not that we should plan for that, or anything.

Our children in the crosshairs

Dear Lord, help us get out of this mess. Dear Lord, help the people of Israel cope with the double standards of 'human rights' and 'war crimes' as they sit beneath desks in school studying. All we want to do is live, and all they want to do is kill us.

An Israeli student crouches under his desk as he attempts to safely study for his Bible exam after a Kassam rocket hit his high school [in Sderot].

Breaking: Sderot casualties from rocket attacks

Mere Rhetoric has details:

BREAKING: Major Injuries In Sderot Rocket Barrage. Children Wounded As Rockets Score Direct Hits On School and Home.

UPDATE 03 (12:55 PST):
For the next day or so you're going to see the IDF in a holding pattern. Helicopters will hover over Sderot and northern Gaza to try to limit rocket fire until a meeting this evening between Peretz and army brass. Last Sunday the regularly scheduled security cabinet meeting apparently worked out a number of contingency plans in case of a major rocket attack. They'll choose one of those plans, the orders will go out, and some kind of operation will be implemented.

The only thing that might possibly hold off a ground invasion is if the government decides that Hamas and Fatah are killing more of each other than the IDF thinks it can reasonably do in short order. Which would be a frustrating decision, but not necessarily a numerically unjustified one. There's nothing in the English-language Hebrew media that indicates pressure for a ground operation from anyone starting with the center-right on leftward, so the decision will probably be to escalate air strikes. Invading Gaza while the Palestinians are tearing themselves apart might be more trouble then it's worth.

Then again - rockets are falling on schools and homes, on mothers and children. That can't go on.

UPDATE 02 (12:50 PST):
Hey, you know how you're going to be hearing that the Palestinians dropped a dozen rockets on schools and houses today because of their "legitimate grievances" about the "occupation"? Yeah, that's a bald faced lie:

According to Hamas' armed wing, it fired the rockets to mark Nakba Day, on which Palestinians commemorate what they call the catastrophe of Israel's creation.

Their grievance is the existence of the Jewish state. Don't let the LA Times tell you otherwise.

UPDATE 01 (12:45 PST):
Ha'aretz has the lede as a moderate injury to the mother who was hit when the rocket scored a direct hit on her home, but then clarifies that it's "moderate to serious". Which almost certainly means shrapnel - so at a minimum, the woman is maimed for life, has lost her house, and has a four year old son who was also hit. People need to start understanding what's going on in Sderot: it's like being in the middle of a war, with rockets falling out of the air on your house and schools. Think of an actual war - WWII - and think of bombs dropping from the sky. That's daily life there, and this tragedy was inevitable.

Original:
JPost is reporting dozens of rockets, with injuries in excess of 20 people. Hamas is threatening to fire dozens more rockets at Israeli schools and hospitals unless Israel does whatever it is Hamas wants Israel to do.

David Groder of One Jerusalem had just finished posting video of a rocket flying by right in front of him. The rocket attacks are coming from Hamas soldiers and are scoring direct hits on Israeli schools and houses - that would be a war crime if committed by the troops of any other government anywhere else on the planet, but we're kind of skeptical about the global condemnation that's about to ensue. Or rather - we're quite confident that world leaders will be expressing "concern" and urging both sides to "think about the day after", but we kind of think that they're going to wait until the impending Israeli response to this outrage.

GIYUS just posted an action alert asking people to email world leaders and express their outrage. Do with it what you will - we're generally skeptical of these things, but they certainly can't but help blunt world criticism. You're probably going to be most effective aiming your emails toward the US Congress and State Department, since those are the only places where condemnation of Israel's impending counterattack are not a forgone conclusion.

Save yourselves!! Make Aliyah! (Detroit edition)

You want reasons to make Aliyah? Just read the news.

Detroit Bans Police from Asking Immigration Status

Two days after the New Jersey Jihad arrests, in which three of the suspects were living illegally in the US for decades, the Detroit City Council has passed an ordinance making it illegal for police to ask residents about their immigration status: City Council approves ordinance to prohibit the profiling of immigrants.

An ordinance that bans profiling was approved Wednesday by the Detroit City Council. It prohibits police and city employees from asking about the immigration status of residents.

The council voted unanimously for the law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, dress, physical appearance and immigration status. Under the new law, police cannot ask people for their immigration papers unless it was related to a crime.

It’s another victory for the Hamas- and Saudi-linked radical Islamic front group calling itself the Council on American Islamic Relations.

The ordinance was introduced after talks with Latino, Arab and Muslim groups. The Detroit-based group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength played a lead role in pushing for the law. ...

Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said he is pleased with the council’s vote. “The city of Detroit should be seen as a place that is not hostile to immigrants.”