schachterrific!

Weeks after the story of an Israeli attack on UNRWA schools in Gaza made its way around the world, the truth begins to come out that it didn’t quite happen that way.

John Ging, the director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, spoke to the Toronto Globe and Mail last week and agreed that no shell had actually struck the school building. Ging said he had never claimed that the school itself was hit, and he blamed Israel for confusion over where the strike took place.

Shortly after the alleged attack, Ging harshly criticized Israel for firing near the school, saying he had given the exact coordinates of the compound to the IDF and suggesting they had failed to avoid hitting the building.

While admitting that Israeli fire had not hit the school compound, Ging insisted it made little difference.

As the story was spread by UNRWA administrators, staff were told not to speak to the media. Wouldn’t want the facts to come to light, eh?

Back in 1981, TV news covered this oddball idea: The concept of getting news from your computer instead of your newspaper. What could they have been thinking?!?!?

The editorials of Investor’s Business Daily are some of the finest op-ed pieces you will see coming out of the Fourth Estate. In one of today’s pieces, IDB takes a close look at Bibi Netanyahu, and sees a man with a very sharpened sense of history:

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Netanyahu cautioned that economic woes are distracting the West from a far greater danger. The former finance minister said that while global economic woes are reversible, “the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatic radical regime” is not.

“We have never had, since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear weapons in the hands of such a fanatical regime,” Netanyahu added. Stopping Tehran “remains the greatest challenge facing the leaders of the 21st century at the beginning of the 21st century.”

Its worth the read. Take it or leave it.

From the Associated Press’ crack investigative team, via Yahoo, a great piece of investigative journalism about a captured terrorist who has remained a mystery since 1973. And is about to be released:

In 1973, a young terrorist named Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary entered the United States and quickly began plotting an audacious attack in New York City.

He built three powerful bombs — bombs powerful enough to kill, maim and destroy — and put them in rental cars scattered around town, near Israeli targets.

The plot failed. The explosive devices did not detonate, and Al-Jawary fled the country, escaping prosecution for nearly two decades — until he was convicted of terrorism charges in Brooklyn and sentenced to 30 years in federal penitentiary.

But his time is up.

Read it. This is a definite must read!

From trendwatching.com:

Flickr, the photo sharing site, now boasts more than 33 million users, more than 3 billion images, and was handling 3,087(!) new uploads per minute.

Thirteen hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, while 1 billion videos are watched. A day. And that was LAST year.

TripAdvisor.com hosts over 20 million interviews.

I’m starting a new section called Trains of Thought. These will be links to a series of articles that I think everyone should read, really do not want to lose, but have no logical reason to bookmark them on my browser. So here, immortalized on the internet (provided the articles themselves are not removed), you and I will be able to find them.

Jews in Genes

Just What is Genetically Coded in the History of Judaism?
Crypto-Supersessionism
Why Can’t Muslims Take a Joke?
Why are there so many Jews in comedy?

Take it or leave it.

You know you’re getting old when you see some of your show-biz favorites ringing down that last curtain. And today, two actors I greatly respected for their talents passed away.

Rich Corinthian Leather….

Ricardo Montalban, the suave leading man who was one of the first Mexican-born actors to make it big in Hollywood and who was best known for his role as Mr. Roarke on ABC’s “Fantasy Island,” has died. He was 88.

Of course, my favorite Montalban role was that of Khan Singh in the StarTrek film, Wrath of Khan. The man was definitely creepy. And he was definitely a great choice as Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island. Read the Obit here.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

“I am not a number, I am a free man!” Patrick McGoohan’s character Number Six shouted at the panoptic eye in the sky at the beginning of every episode of the revolutionary ’60s sci-fi TV series The Prisoner. And although the character would come to dominate McGoohan’s life and even chase him out of London following the series’ controversial 1968 finale, “Fall Out,” McGoohan is a prisoner no longer.

Probably one of the all-time great sci-fi tv series, The Prisoner added to McGoohan’s fame after he won American hearts with Secret Agent Man. If you haven’t seen his work, find it, grab some popcorn, and turn off the phone. You can read his obit here.