Post-Production has begun...

on Rebel Evolution, so I will not be blogging for a while.

I will be on Twitter intermittently, so follow me there.

Have a great rest of the summer!

A Shocker... Justin Bieber is My People ::: Justin Bieber and dad's matching Hebrew tattoos | Mail Online

Justin Bieber and his father pose topless, showing off their matching tattoos.

A newly-released photo shows the father and son in Israel earlier this year where they had the etching done together.

The pair had the word 'Yeshua,' - which many believe to be Jesus' Hebrew or Aramaic name - etched onto the left side of their torsos.

Another shocker? Justin's dad looks like he could have played with Jane's Addiction.

Justin Bieber and dad's matching Hebrew tattoos | Mail Online

‪So Sad. Rest in Peace, Dear Girl ::: Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good (live BBC Sessions)‬‏ - YouTube

I've followed Amy for years, and was so incredibly sad to hear the not so surprising news of her demise. I really wished she'd made it past this age and on to some level of maturity. What a loss.

I will never deathpool somebody again. It would have been so much nicer for Ms. Winehouse to defy the odds she kept putting on herself.

Here... a great but super intense video. My prayers for her family and all who loved her.

‪Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good (live BBC Sessions)‬‏ - YouTube

Good Girl! One Shot, One Kill ::: Motel clerk kills robbery suspect trying to rape her

He outweighed her by a hundred pounds, and she dropped him. Love!

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A man is dead after the motel clerk he tried to sexually assault and rob early Monday morning fought back and killed him, deputies said.

Investigators say 43-year-old Vincent Carson of Orangeburg, SC, entered the Days Inn motel at 133 Plumbers Road near I-20 and North Main Street sometime before 6 a.m.

As the female clerk went into the breakfast room to prepare breakfast, she found Carson waiting inside. The victim said Carson held a knife to her throat and said "this is a robbery."

Investigators said when her attacker slipped the knife into his pants pocket to begin tying her up with plastic ties, the woman pulled a handgun from under her shirt, turned and fired into the man's chest at point blank range.

The victim was about 100 pounds lighter than Carson and stood at least a foot shorter than him, investigators said.

When deputies got to the scene just after 6 a.m., they found the suspect unresponsive on the floor. Richland County Coroner Gary Watts said Carson died from a single gunshot to the chest.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said Carson's intent was not only to rob the motel, but also to rape the clerk.

"There's no doubt that was his intent," said Lott. "Not only was he going to rob her, but he was going to sexually assault her. Now what was he going to do after that assault was over with, we don't know."

The clerk was not injured, but was taken to Palmetto Baptist Hospital as a precaution.

The suspect was wanted in at least one other motel robbery in the Midlands. The Orangeburg County Sheriff's Department was looking for Carson in connection with a July 14 robbery at the Hampton Inn on US Highway 601.

In that incident, deputies said Carson broke into the room of two elderly tourists and took their money, their cell phone and their vehicle.

Lott said that this was an unfortunate situation in which the victim feared for her life and defended herself.

Lott said the clerk had been victimized in one of two recent robberies at the same Days Inn and had gotten permission from her employer to carry a .22 caliber gun. The suspect in both of those incidents was identified as 22-year-old David Wesley Watson.

Motel clerk kills robbery suspect trying to rape her, sheriff sa - WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-

She Rocks ::: Wendi Deng Murdoch's right hook set to make her movie debut a hit too | Mail Online

Ya gotta love a woman who will leap to her husband's defense if ever necessary. Good goin', girl!

It was an admirable right-handed whack - a spontaneous open-handed slap delivered into the custard-pie throwers' face.

A flash of pink, a raised arm and a solid connection was all that was needed to catapult Wendi Murdoch from supportive wife to unlikely hero of the day, trending worldwide on Twitter just moments after protester Jonnie Marbles' now-infamous 'splat'.

Leaping to her husband's defense, Mrs Murdoch, 43, sent a
clear message of strength - beyond the boundaries of common assault - that the Murdoch empire will fight.

But then Mrs Murdoch, who has just produced her first movie, is used to holding her own.

The Chinese third wife of the media magnate and centre of the phone hacking scandal counts Ivanka Trump and Tony Blair as close friends - and clearly knows exactly what she needs to do to get what she wants.

In his book, From Rupert's Adventures In China, Bruce Dover says that Mrs Murdoch moved to the USA when she was 19, sponsored by a married couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry, who befriended the then Wendi Deng while on travels in China.

She went on to marry Jake Cherry, a middle-aged engineer, when she was 21 years old, before separating and heading to study business at Yale.

She holds an MBA from the prestigious university and has played key roles in her husband's business in China, including being vice-president of business development for News Corp-owned Star TV less than a year after graduating.

According to Dover, Deng was 'hardworking and eager to learn, but also ambitious and single-minded in her desire to succeed. There was no doubt she put in the long hours required to excel. She impressed everyone with her energy, good humour and wit.'

In his biography about the Murdoch dynasty, Michael Wolff says the couple are madly in love thanks to a shared passion for business.

More here: Wendi Deng Murdoch's right hook set to make her movie debut a hit too | Mail Online

Rest In Peace, Sweet Boy ::: Leiby Kletzky: 8,000 mourners gather for funeral of Hasidic boy, 8 | Mail Online

Just a total and complete heartbreaking tragedy. My heart goes out to his family and community.

More photos, complete story here: Leiby Kletzky: 8,000 mourners gather for funeral of Hasidic boy, 8 | Mail Online

OMG! How Did I Ever Miss This Picture of Obama?! (Plus, will any of Michelle's staffers teach her how to sit?)

Help me... this is NOT a photoshop... it's from ABC. But it just looks insane.

And while we feast on that shot, can I just say that out of the 22 staffers that the First Lady has, could just one of them give her pointers on how to be seated during official photo ops?

Look at this official shot of Michelle Obama and Nelson Mandela:

I'll just end this with a couple of ladies showing us how it's done:

WH Says Annual Easter Egg Roll Will Be April 25 - ABC News

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010322/Kate-Middleton-Prince-Williams-royal-tour-Canada-Day-2011-red-hot.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2006299/Michelle-Obama-girls-meet-Nelson-Mandela--wives-current-South-African-President.html

Brilliant Photos ::: An Incredible Rare Look At Life In North Korea

Click to see them all... wild stuff: A Incredible Rare Look At Life In North Korea

Celebrity WTF ::: Cate Blanchett's Speech To The Australian Performing Arts Market

Old... but worth it if you missed it when it happened. Cate's making a speech to validate using tax dollars to fund the arts, and it is a doozy.

I'm completely in agreement that the arts are vital to a culture, but the private and municipal sectors do just fine providing for them.

This is an edited extract of the keynote speech Cate Blanchett gave to the Australian Performing Arts Market in Adelaide...

Australia has been enriched, challenged and changed by taking a stronger and more complex place on the world stage, rather than just selling ourselves as a great beach resort populated by smiling outdoorsy larrikins. Now, I know this from my own experience. I know this from having worked recently with Benedict Andrews. I know this from seeing a growth in my own husband's work. We can justify ourselves with economic indicators and KPIs and graphs and acquittals but it just makes us look like any other industry, and we are not.

The arts operate at the core of human identity and existence. They operate at the cutting edge of a science that is now trying to unravel the puzzle of consciousness and identity. ''Our experience, for all that we are the subject of it, is a mystery to us'': Emerson's wonderful hymn to the mystery of experience is not a piece of whimsy. It touches on the enduring source of cultural power in human life. How did we come to know, to understand, to grow? When did the pieces fall into place? Not on some graph. The graph is proof and proof comes afterwards. Proof is important to science because scientists start with speculation and conjecture to arrive at reality. Our job is to change reality, to challenge it, not prove it and explain it.

Now this little detour probably hasn't got much to do with the Australian Performing Arts Market, but I think it is important in this room because around the country, certainly, and I think in the world more generally, there's been a growing pressure on the arts to justify themselves, to prove their case, make their graphs and their pie-charts, and we have done it. We know the ripple effect of funding the arts leads to better dollar multipliers than many other expenditures and we know that cities with strong arts opportunities are more vibrant and attract more business and tourism. We know that most of the arts community works for lower wages and longer hours and this is only tenable because they are so proud of their work.

Advertisement: Story continues below

But I want to make another point that I don't hear made often enough for my liking: the arts are a great employer. At the Sydney Theatre Company, we have a staff of about 130 at any particular time. The division is the interesting thing. Thirty of them might be artists working on a specific show - actors, directors, designers - and maybe 10 of them full-time staff who would be considered artists in our permanent employ. That means that about 90 people, more than double the number of artists, are employed to help create and realise the work of the company. We are a big company, yes, but my guess is the ratios are pretty similar all around the world. It's not just the artists who work in the arts. It is an entire highly skilled, highly committed and passionate community.

Anyway, what else do we know, and have studied and measured? We know that countries with strong cultural identities demonstrate greater social cohesion and on and on and on. Basically, all sorts of studies have been done, key-performance indicators, measured and indeed graphed.

But there is more. We do more than all that. We must remember the arts do more than just that. We process experience and make experience available and understandable. We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.

What I'm saying I don't think anyone would deny, and yet no one seems prepared to constantly value that we give people the chance to make sense of the experience of their lives, their brief lives, and the tool to communicate that unique sense in another person or people.

This insistence on the importance of experience itself is a feature of these witnessing books and these witnessing lives, an insistence that history is not a concept or a force, but the brief, limited, unimportant lives of ordinary men and women involved in the business of just getting from one day to the next, just this, repeated a million times over.

Dear Lord.

Cate Blanchett's Speech To The Australian Performing Arts Market

OMG... Remember Champagne Out of Uma's shoe? Beejoli Shah email about 'having toes sucked by Quentin Tarantino' goes viral

I generally tend to comment more on fascists than fetishists.... but this is insane. Insane and EWWW.

'I'm making a drink and realize the pasty tall fellow pouring orange juice into my glass is the man himself, QT,' she wrote.

'Realizing I kind of have to go for at it this point, in all my nerd glory blurt out: "I'm sure everyone tells you this but I f**king loved Reservoir Dogs.'

She claims that the pair kissed in a kitchen at the party after she told him that she did not like his Kill Bill films.

According to the email, Mr Tarantino said: 'Wow...I don't think anyone has said that to my face about my seminal films.'

She replied: 'Perhaps it's because you call them your seminal films. Shouldn't you wait for someone else to say that?'

Before he said, 'You know, you've got a mouth on you. I like that,' and the Oscar-winning film director put his arm around her and kissed her.

'At some point in our public makeout, Jamie Foxx comes over and without acknowledging me goes, "Yo QT, ready to roll?" Quentin looks at me and says "Want to come to my house?",' Miss Shah wrote in the email.

The couple went back to the director's house where they took pictures of themselves in a photo booth, which Miss Shah attached to the email as 'proof that this story even happened'.

Miss Shah said that she 'started panicking' when Mr Tarantino suggested they head to bed because 'the makeouts were really losing their appeal because you can only be sweated on so much'.

She then included a graphic description of his private parts and claims that Mr Tarantino asked if he could suck her toes while he masturbated.

'And thus began the weirdest ten minutes of my life - having my feet made out with by an Oscar winning filmmaker while he pleasured himself,' she wrote.

'In the morning, I snooped through Quentin's belongings while he was in the bathroom and now know his e-mail address,' she added.

...

Read the full email (WARNING: Explicit content)

Please note that she never mentions washing her feet. EWWW!

More pix and info here. She's even been a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, lol: Beejoli Shah email about 'having toes sucked by Quentin Tarantino' goes viral | Mail Online

Cartoon: "Free Health Care"

LOL... Obama Thinks Campaigning is "Service" ::: Commander In Chief Misspeaks About Soldier Killed in Afghanistan

The big story to come out of this speech is Obama claiming to have awarded a Medal of Honor to a live recipient, but mentioning one that received the award posthumously.

But even nuttier to me is what constitutes his claim of service in the first line. lol.

"Throughout my service, first as a senator and then as a presidential candidate and then as a President, I’ve always run into you guys. And for some reason it’s always in some rough spots.

First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously."

The problem with the second part? FTA:

The problem is, Jared Monti was killed in action in Afghanistan, on June 21, 2006. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, September 17, 2009. President Obama handed the framed medal to his parents, Paul and Janet Monti. He and the First Lady comforted them in the Oval Office following the ceremony.

Commander In Chief Misspeaks About Soldier Killed in Afghanistan

Ron Paul Suing Obama Admin over Libya: "[W]e’re taxing the American people to bomb the very nation that we taxed them to prop up."

Here's the whole thing... an OpEd in the Daily Caller. Money quotes are at the end.

There is no issue more serious than war. Wars result in the loss of life and property. Wars are also expensive and an enormous economic burden.

Our Founders understood that waging war is not something that should be taken lightly, which is why Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the authority to declare war. This was meant to be an important check on presidential power. The last thing the Founders wanted was an out-of-control executive branch engaging in unnecessary and unpopular wars without so much as a Congressional debate.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly the situation we have today in Libya.

That’s why I’ve joined several other members of Congress in a lawsuit against President Obama for engaging in military action in Libya without seeking the approval of Congress.

Of course, in 2007, then-Senator Obama spoke passionately about the need to go after the Bush administration for violating the War Powers Act — the very same thing he’s doing now. In fact, while speaking at DePaul University in October of 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama said the following:

“After Vietnam, Congress swore it would never again be duped into war, and even wrote a new law — the War Powers Act — to ensure it would not repeat its mistakes. But no law can force a Congress to stand up to the president. No law can make senators read the intelligence that showed the president was overstating the case for war. No law can give Congress a backbone if it refuses to stand up as the co-equal branch the Constitution made it.”

We are now taking Barack Obama’s past advice and standing up to the executive branch.

Of course, the War Powers Act is hardly an improvement on the U.S. Constitution because it does allow the president to go to war without the approval of Congress. But President Obama refuses to follow this law.

If a president does go to war unilaterally, the War Powers Act requires him to seek Congressional approval within 60 days. The president can get an extension of up to 90 days if he asks for more time — but President Obama did not do this.

His time is up.

The Obama administration recently issued a 38-page paper stating that Obama is not in violation of the War Powers Act because “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.” Under this argument, President Obama could preemptively launch nuclear weapons against any country in the world without Congressional approval. Obviously, this is not what the Founders intended!

But even aside from violating the Constitution, it makes no economic sense for us to be engaged in yet another war overseas — especially during such tough economic times. For years now, we’ve been sending foreign aid to the very same Libyan government we’re now spending $10 million a day to fight. And it has been recently discovered that the Federal Reserve’s bank bailouts even benefited the Libyan National Bank. Now, we’re taxing the American people to bomb the very nation that we taxed them to prop up.

This makes no sense at all.

The Founding Fathers did not intend for the president to have the power to take our nation to war unilaterally without the approval of Congress.

It’s time for the president to obey the Constitution and put the American people’s national interest first.

Rep. Ron Paul represents Texas’s 14th Congressional District and is a Republican candidate for president.

Ron Paul | Libya | Why I'm suing the Obama administration over Libya | The Daily Caller

UCLA Prof's Book: Liberal Media Distorts News Bias - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

The liberal bias of the mainstream media tilts so far left that any outlets not in that political lane, like the Drudge Report and Fox News Channel, look far more conservative than they really are, according to a UCLA professor's new book out next month.

In a crushing body blow to the pushers of the so-called "Fox Effect," which claims the conservative media is dragging the left into the center, UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose in Left Turn claims that "all" mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias in their reporting that makes even moderate organizations appear out of the mainstream and decidedly right-wing to news consumers who are influenced by the slant. [Read Fox's Huckabee slams MSNBC's Matthews, Scarborough over bias.]

"Fox News is clearly more conservative than ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and National Public Radio. Some will conclude that 'therefore, this means that Fox News has a conservative bias,'" he writes in an advance copy provided to Washington Whispers. "Instead, maybe it is centrist, and possibly even left-leaning, while all the others are far left. It's like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared toprofessional basketball players."

What's more, he says, "this point illustrates a common misconception about the Drudge Report. According to my analysis, the Drudge Report is approximately the most fair, balanced, and centrist news outlet in the United States. Yet, the overwhelming majority of media commentators claim that it has a conservative bias. The problem, I believe, is that such commentators mistake relative bias for absolute bias. Yes, the Drudge Report is more conservative than the average U.S. news outlet. But it is a logical mistake to use that to infer that it is based on an absolute scale."

And in further analysis sure to enrage critics of conservative media, Groseclose determines that Drudge, on a conservative to liberal scale of 0-100, with 50 being centrist, actually leans a bit left of center with a score of 60.4. The reason: Drudge mostly links to the sites of the mainstream media, with just a few written by Matt Drudge himself. "Since these links come from a broad mix of media outlets, and since the news in general is left-leaning, it should not be surprising that the slant quotient of the Drudge Report leans left," he writes. [Read Poll: Fox, O'Reilly most trusted news sources.]

The author developed a calculation to figure out the "political quotient" to find the bias of mediaoutlets and the average slant of an organization.

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. "Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see." [Check out political cartoons about the Democratic Party.]

He adds: "That bias makes us more liberal, which makes us less able to detect the bias, which allows the media to get away with more bias, which makes us even more liberal."

Some key points:

"Every mainstream national news outlet in the United States has a liberal bias."

"Supposedly conservative news outlets are not far right. For instance, the conservative bias of [Fox's] Special Report is significantly less than the liberal bias of CBS Evening News."

"Media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election. I find, for instance, that if media bias didn't exist, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama 56 percent to 42 percent, instead of losing 53-46." [See editorial cartoons about Barack Obama.]

Perhaps the most useful part of his book is the slant ratings of the media. The numbers are based on a conservative-to-liberal 0-100 rating, with 50 being centrist:

• New York Times-73.7.
• CBS Evening News-73.7.
• NPR Morning Edition-66.3.
• U.S. News & World Report-65.8.
• Drudge Report-60.4.
• ABC Good Morning America-56.1.
• Washington Times-35.4.

Left Turn, How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, published by St. Martin's Press, is due out July 19.

Book: Liberal Media Distorts News Bias - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

On The Pathetic Palin Email Witch Hunt ::: The Far-Left New York Times Hits Rock Bottom - Douglas MacKinnon - Townhall

That loud crash you just heard off in the distance was the New York Times finally hitting the bottom of the barrel with an embarrassing but expected thump.

Having long ago turned its back on objective journalism to become the mouthpiece for liberal ideology, the Democrat party, and corrupt unions, it was still somewhat of a surprise to see the compromised editors of the paper do something which might cause Anthony Weiner to recoil from its unseemly request.

On Friday, June 10th, the State of Alaska released more than 24,000 of former Governor Sarah Palin’s emails. A Democrat recently told me that some liberals get more satisfaction out of a Palin “mistake,” or in smearing her and her family with more political mud than in the actual killing of Bin Laden. Apparently.

The New York Times -- under the headline “Help Us Review The Sarah Palin E-Mail Records” -- has just asked its readers to help its reporters to “identify interesting and newsworthy emails, people, and events that we may want to highlight.” Interesting and newsworthy being nothing more than liberal code for anything which will inflict further pain and suffering upon Sarah Palin and her family.

At first, I honestly thought it was a joke. Maybe David Letterman and Jon Stewart’s writers got sick of being mindless servants to the left and decided to have some fun at the expense of the Grey Lady. But no. Those writers still do the bidding of the Messiah in the White House and The New York Times is beyond serious in arming its readers with pitch forks and torches as it eagerly sends its virtual mob out in search of the conservative monster. (It should be noted -- again predictably -- that the equally left-wing Washington Post initiated its own Sarah Palin email witch hunt)

Maybe next, The New York Times will ask its readers to become informants against their neighbors or even family members. "Tell us," the next New York Times headline might read, "who is not using "green" light bulbs, who is not driving a hybrid vehicle, who is sending their children to charter schools, who just ate at McDonald's, and who especially on your block or in your neighborhood, still believes in traditional values."

That headline and that request just seems like the next logical step in the New York Times spiraling flight from dignity and into literary dementia.

I don’t seem to remember The New York Times asking its readers to review the 2000 plus pages of Obama’s Healthcare bill, or to review the emails sent from the thuggish Service Employees International Union, or to help it get access to the names on the White House visitor logs team Obama is trying to hide, or to try and find anyone who might be able to prove if Obama actually had a higher G.P.A. in college than Joe Biden.

No. Facts and relevant information no longer interest The New York Times. Not when they can create an army of snitches to try and further harm the former governor of Alaska.

Surely, there must be one person at that paper shocked and humiliated by this request. Just one.

A request that is as pathetic as it is chilling.

The Far-Left New York Times Hits Rock Bottom - Douglas MacKinnon - Townhall Conservative

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore (and my man Mamet!) defend Sarah Palin against media onslaught - Yahoo! News

This news is hilarious, it really shows just how far off of the reservation the media is. When you've lost Ashton and Demi...

Is Hollywood softening its opinion on Sarah Palin?

Over the weekend, the former Alaska governor got a surprising show of support from actor Ashton Kutcher, who trashed the media for digging through thousands of emails Palin sent when she was in office.

"As much as I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin I find sifting through her emails repulsive and over reaching media," Kutcher said on Twitter.

The message was re-tweeted by his wife, actress Demi Moore, who added, "So agree!"

Their messages came as Palin got a boost from another potentially surprising source: David Mamet, the famously testy playwright, screenwriter and film director who confessed he's "crazy about" the ex-governor.

In an interview with the Financial Times (and re-printed in Slate), Mamet, who announced during the 2008 election that he was no longer a "brain dead liberal," trashed President Obama, calling his record "abysmal." Asked whom he would prefer as president, Mamet was mum on every single GOP candidate named, except for Palin.

"I am crazy about her," he confessed. "Would she make a good candidate for president? I don't know, but she seems to have succeeded at everything she puts her hand to."

He cited Palin's rise from a PTA parent to governor of Alaska. "That's someone who knows how to work," he says.

I've been reading Mamet's The Secret Knowledge and it is BRILLIANT! Get it now!

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore defend Sarah Palin against media onslaught - Yahoo! News

Ha ha... Yahoo! Reporter Thinks Ron Paul Is "Fringe" For Dropping The "Obscure Subject" of "Monetary Policy"

This is our "media":

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who has run for president before, did little to shake his image as a fringe candidate by talking too fast and dropping obscure subjects like "Keynesian bubble'' and "monetary policy'' into the conversation.

Just fabulous. No wonder the country is in so much trouble. Our monetary policy is, amongst other things, crushing us, and this reporter thinks it's an obscure, OBSCURE, subject. God help us.

Romney, Bachmann dominate gracious GOP debate - Yahoo! News

Russia says deeply concerned by Golan clashes | Reuters

(Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it was "deeply concerned" by an upsurge in confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians on Sunday that Syria said killed 23 demonstrators and injured 350 in the Golan Heights.

"We express deep concern in relation to the new surge of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations. The death and injury of many peaceful demonstrators in the course of these protests is of particular concern," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Israel accused Syria on Monday of orchestrating the lethal confrontations in which Israeli troops fired on Palestinian protesters who surged against the fortified boundary fence on Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said live Israeli fire had caused casualties and U.N. monitors were "seeking to confirm facts."

Israel contested the Syrian account and said President Bashar al-Assad was trying to shift world attention from the security forces' killing of at least 1,100 Syrians while suppressing anti-government revolts.

Sunday's protest was held to mark the 44th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, as well as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where Palestinians want to establish a state.

Russia says deeply concerned by Golan clashes | Reuters

Celebrity WTF ::: Bar Rafaeli: ‘Dodging IDF paid off big time’ - Israel Culture, Ynetnews

So pretty. And pretty nuts, too.

In her interview, the Israeli model said she was not against army service, even though she never enlisted, having married an acquaintance to evade the draft. The couple was soon divorced.

“I really wanted to serve in the IDF, but I don’t regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time,” she said. “That’s just the way it is, celebrities have other needs. I hope my case has influenced the army.

“Israel or Uganda, what difference does it make? It makes no difference to me. Why is it good to die for our country? What, isn’t it better to live in New York? Why should 18-year-old kids have to die? It’s dumb that people have to die so that I can live in Israel,” Refaeli added.

‘Dodging IDF paid off big time’ - Israel Culture, Ynetnews

It Rocks! ::: Video: The greatest music video ever? Hot Air

This really is one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen.

From Hot Air:

POSTED AT 8:49 PM ON JUNE 1, 2011 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
PRINTER-FRIENDLY

That’s Roger Ebert’s verdict, and for once he might be right. You don’t need to know thebackstory on this to appreciate it but you’ll enjoy it more if you do. Quite simply, Grand Rapids ended up on some magazine’s list of “America’s Dying Cities”; the locals took exception and set out to prove that they’re still very much alive, and this is the result — 10 minutes, featuring a cast of 5,000, paid for with $40,000 that the director and a colleague raised themselves. Displays of civic pride are often rote and occasionally schmaltzy, but this one manages to be genuinely touching. It’s a time capsule from the heartland, certainly the most American music video ever made whether or not it’s the greatest. You’ll enjoy every minute. And trust me, you’ll want to watch every minute, if only to marvel at the coordination.

One take, guys. One. Take.

Here is the original music video, Don McLean live somewhere, lol. Absolutely brilliant performance:





Video: The greatest music video ever? � Hot Air

Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists | The New York Observer

On the rare occasion that New Yorkers talk about farming, it's usually something along the lines of what sort of organic kale to plant in the vanity garden at the second house in the Adirondacks. But on a recent afternoon, The Observer had a conversation of a different sort about agricultural pursuits with a hedge fund manager he'd met at one of the many dark-paneled private clubs in midtown a few weeks prior. "A friend of mine is actually the largest owner of agricultural land in Uruguay," said the hedge fund manager. "He's a year older than I am. We're somewhere [around] the 15th-largest farmers in America right now."

"We," as in, his hedge fund.

It may seem a little odd that in 2011 anyone's thinking of putting money into assets that would have seemed attractive in 1911, but there's something in the air-namely, fear. The hedge fund manager and others like him envision a doomsday scenario catalyzed by a weak dollar, higher-than-you-think inflation and an uncertain political climate here and abroad.

The pattern began to emerge sometime in 2008. "The Hedge Fund Manager Who Bought a Farm," read the headline on one February 2008 Times of London piece detailing a British hedge fund manager's attempt to play off the rising prices of grains in order to usurp local farmland. A Financial Times piece two months later began: "Hedge funds and investment banks are swapping their Gucci for gumboots." It detailed BlackRock's then-relatively new $420 million Agriculture Fund, which had already swept up 2,800 acres of land.


Even Michael Burry, the now-defunct Scion Capital founder and star protagonist of Michael Lewis' The Big Short-who bet against the housing bubble in 2008 with credit default swaps to enormous profit-gave a rare interview on Bloomberg TV last year, explaining that he's thrown his hat into "productive agriculture land with water on site" as it's going to be "very valuable in the future." (Like most of those asked to comment for this story to The Observer, Burry declined to discuss his investments in farmland.)

Three years later, the purchase of farmland both in America and abroad by outside investors has increased-so much so that in February, Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, warned against the violent possibilities of a farmland bubble, telling the Senate Agriculture Committee that "distortions in financial markets" will catch the U.S. by surprise again. He would know, because he's seeing it in his backyard: Kansas and Nebraska reported farmland prices 20 percent above the previous year's levels and are on pace to double values in four years. A study commissioned by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and released in January estimated the amount of private capital currently committed to farmland and agricultural infrastructure at $14 billion. It also estimated that future investments will "dwarf" what's currently being thrown into land, by two to three times. Further down, the study makes a conservative projection that the amount of capital potentially entering the sector over the next decade will fly past $150 billion.

Excerpted: Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists | The New York Observer

Muslims Surround Church in Egypt, Prevent Its Reopening

(AINA) -- On the morning of May 19 two Coptic priests went to St. Mary and St. Abraham Church in Ain Shams and opened it together with some of the Coptic residents, but later in the day thousands of Muslims surrounded the church to protest its opening, hurled stones at the church building and the Copts, who responded by throwing stones. The army and the police stood there watching and did not intervene (video).

Unable to secure the church, the army and police closed it and arranged for a "reconciliation" meeting between the Coptic priest and the Salafi sheikhs. They also arrested eight Copts, one of them 13-years old, and three Muslims. They were all charged with rioting, violence and causing injury to citizens. Three Copts were also charged with having cartridges but no guns and one 15-year-old boy with possessing two knives. The 3 Muslims were charged with throwing stones at the army.

Father Filopateer Gameel, one of the organizers of the Maspero sit-in, said that during a meeting with the Minister of Interior he was told he cannot choose the churches to be reopened because it was all "planned with the Salafis and the security authorities so that when we go, there will be no problems." He confirmed the minister had himself suggested the names of the three churches to be reopened.

The "reconciliation" session was held in a tent by the Islamist imam Kerdassi, the main opponent of the reopening of the church, who also recently built a mosque facing the church. Next to the tent was another one hosting Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi sheikhs, among them the renowned Salafi sheikh Hassan and over 3000 guests all chanting "Islamic, Islamic."

The session lasted for 5-hour, and was attended by sheikhs, imams, priests, lawyers and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which the Muslims insisted the church was a factory and the Christians explained that it was a church, although it has no dome or bell, and has been used as a place for worship and has a consecrated alter.

The Coptic diocese bought the building, which used to be a clothes factory, in 2004 and used it for worship until November 22, 2008, when it was closed by State Security after nearly 3000 Muslims surrounded the church, pelting it with stones and terrorizing thousands of parishioners inside.

Excerpted. More here: Muslims Surround Church in Egypt, Prevent Its Reopening

Sinéad O'Connor: Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan, the Sexiest Man in the Universe

It's a rollicking read... but I love them both so much. And it's filled with Jesus.

=)

Happy Seventieth, Bob! smooch!

Dear Zimmy

It's your gorgeous birthday next week. You're three years younger than my father (whom I hope never reads this!). That's a bit of a head-wrecker.

It is a fact that I wish to high heaven that my father's father had met my mother's whatever-it-is earlier. Then I would have been old enough to tell you all this in a more delicious setting. My beloved brother Joseph, who introduced me to you, passed an invitation to me from the Mail to write something about you because next Tuesday is your birthday.

I said, 'But I'm a moron! What will I say?' He said, 'You could make it like a letter to Bob. To say the oul' happy birthday'.

So... Bobby, or R.J or Ray, or Anything...Here is my birthday little thing for you.

This week when everyone is writing and talking and thinking about your birthday, they're all gonna go on about the usual stuff.

'Prophet'.

Blah blah.

'Voice of a generation.'

Blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah.

All true I'm sure... But no one ever says: 'Holy Mother of God! That Dylan fellow is an extremely adjectival sexy adjectival m.a.n. so he is for himself!'

It's about time all the ladies, and I mean ALL the ladies, need to tell everyone exactly where it's at concerning the deliciousness of Robert Zimmerman.

Drop. Dead. Gorge. Us.

Yes, sir! THE sexiest man that ever stalked the face of this earth.

'Tis lucky for you, boyo, that you're away over there in America. Sure there's barely a woman in the universe who could keep her mitts off you! Thanks be to God that flights are not cheap here in Ireland or you'd be wise to run. And also to follow Gaddafi's example by employing fake Bob Dylans, so no-one will know which one is actually you. Incidentally, should you decide you want to follow Gaddafi's example by employing all-female body guards, I hope you will consider me. Please don't ask for a reference though. I wouldn't come up looking very good.

I once worked with a lady who'd once worked with you. She said you're just crazy about the ladies. I took her in my arms and danced with delight. Hurray!

This means I'm not the only person on earth who thinks you're a ride. Despite your main feature being sexeliciousness, you're also not a bad oul' sayer of songs. And by the way, there's something the 13-year-old me wants to say to you: Thank you for making Christian music sexy. Poor God. Until you made Slow Train Coming, he was suicidal. From listening to terrible religious music.

I mean, have you ever seen Irish dancing? It's the un-sexiest thing one could see. We only dance from the knee down. Keeping everything else tight as a board. Arms stiff at our sides. For fear we might slip into the world of sensuality.

People say, and I hope it's not so, that you didn't 'stand by' Slow Train Coming. I don't know what they mean exactly. And I don't even care. Either way you could never have known what it was like in Ireland before that album tore down the walls which separated God and sex. You couldn't have known the effect the record would have. And that's appropriate. Why should you know?

I was 13 the year it came out. Joe, my brother, brought it home.

I was just beginning to wonder what kind of person I wanted to be. And what kind of woman I wanted to be. And what kind of artist I wanted to be. There weren't many options open to a female like me. I would either die or go to jail if I continued along the path that was given me.

But when I heard you singing those songs on Slow Train Coming, and when I saw the drawing of the train on the sleeve, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

So Rabbi, from you I know I gotta serve somebody. I know I'm a precious angel. I know God believes in me. I know I'm gonna change my way of thinking. I know I'm gonna make myself a different set of rules. I know I'm gonna put my best foot forward, stop being influenced by fools.

I saw you at Slane when I was like 16. I couldn't believe I would actually see you in the flesh. I had a boyfriend at the time. Only reason we were together was we were both obsessed with you. Sadly we never did really anything but talk about you! Of course I could never have dreamed of telling him you were way sexier than him. Am I bad? I certainly hope so.

Santana played before you. When you came on you had on Oompa Loompa orange make-up. So it wasn't only musically or spritually that you were ahead of your time. You foresaw fake tan! And the dreaded RTE make-up department. [C'mon, Ryan, man, let's just come out and admit it, they've not been the Mae West over the years. Though I do grant you they're not as woeful as TV3 - I'm forever tweeting Vincent Browne's show over the make-up. They have him looking like Bob at Slane.]

I think you also had on loads of black khol eyeliner. Very strange sight. Gorgeous nonetheless, obviously. But strange.

Then I briefly actually met you twice. Backstage at two festivals, there were loads of us playing. I must have seduced your manager with sexual bribes, I can't remember, but there I was in your dressing room. Just you and your tour manager.

You asked would I like a drink. I said yes, and though I can't stomach alcohol I sipped away and pretended I wasn't suppressing the desire to let you have a look at what I ate for lunch. You did a lot of pacing up and down. I remember thinking 'Holy mother of the divine lord Krishna, who could perform after drinking this?'

The third and final time our paths crossed was on that infamous evening at your tribute concert in Madison Square Garden, an evening which heaved with consequence. In the week or so before that show I had done an incendiary acapella version of a Bob Marley (the other 'Bob') song called War on Saturday Night Live. I changed some words and made it about child abuse instead of racism. And at the end of the song I tore up a picture of the then Pope, JP2. No smirking please, Bob - when mentioning 'the incident' one must always look very serious.

Then, soon after that, I went shopping to find an outfit for your upcoming show. The decision I made was so wrong - a turquoise jacket and skirt suit which should have been worn by a very old woman...and with a hideous gold thing on the jacket. Unforgivable. I look at the footage of the show now and I am appalled. What was I thinking? Perhaps I should have slipped you a note before the show, explaining 'the incident' to you, but in the terror of my image in my dressing room mirror I guess I forgot.

So I walked on stage that night and half the audience cheered and the other half booed. Was it the Saturday Night Live fallout or had I just totally made the wrong wardrobe choice?

Seriously though, backstage afterwards, you looked at me confused as if to ask me what I had done to upset people so much. Instead of singing I Believe in You, as planned, I had screamed out the Bob Marley song instead. But it felt appropriate for me to scream while I had the chance. And I knew, if you understood, you wouldn't mind that I used the stage you gave me to stand for the God you also gave me. I hope your questions from that night have since been answered for you by the various revelations concerning the spiritual condition of the catholic church. In God's wide world. If I had simply sung I Believe in You that night my voice would have been drowned in the noise of the opposing spiritual forces in the room.

I had to do what I did in Madison Square Garden. Even if it meant being treated like a mental case for years after.

The God I believed in was the one you brought off the pages of scriptures into my life. Not the one those bored black-and-white-wearing priests droned on about whilst flicking bits of dust off their altars in the middle of the consecration of the Host.

Even if they showed me to the door. And said don't come back no more cuz I didn't be like they'd like me to. Even if I walked out on my own. A thousand miles from home, I didn't feel alone. Cuz I believe in you.

I believe in you, even through the tears and the laughter. I believe in you even though we be apart. I believe in you even on the morning after. Though the earth may shake me, though my friends forsake me, this feeling's still here in my heart.

Don't let me stray too far. Keep me where you are. So I will always be renewed. And Lord, what you've given me today is worth more than I could pay. And no matter what they say, I believe in you...

But, I digress, Bob. I only meant to tell you you're gorgeous. So have seventy kisses for yourself on Tuesday.

Sinead

Sin�ad O'Connor: Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan, the Sexiest Man in the Universe