There were four car bombing attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, and at least two were targeted at Jewish locations:
Local journalist Aboubakr Jammai told the BBC that witnesses had spoken of “many dead” as well as numerous injuries.
Mr Jammai said he knew of four attacks that had taken place near an Hispanic centre, a hotel, a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery, although he said there were reports that there had been as many as six explosions.
He said that the attack on the Hotel Safir in the old part of the city had been a suicide attack and that at least eight people had been killed in that incident alone.
More terrorism. More people dead. And another “who would’ve thought?” target. With all the talk about Riyadh, about the US and Britain as possible targets, and even the warnings in Kenya, who on earth saw this coming?
Update: CNN is reporting that at least 20 people have been killed in the bombings. One of them was apparently targeted at a Jewish nightclub, but it was closed for Shabbat so it was (thankfully) empty. Another bomb exploded in front of the Belgian Consulate, for reasons that are as of yet unclear.
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With the March to Jerusalem coming up this Sunday, I’m happy to hear that the weather forecast is predicting sunshine and a high of 22 degrees. Sounds like it will be a perfect summer day.
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Chief Palestinian negotiator and spokesman Saeb Erekat has resigned:
Erekat, an ally of President Yasser Arafat, tendered his resignation on Thursday after being excluded from [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas’s negotiating team, which is set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday, a Palestinian official said on Friday.
It’s hard to tell what the political implications here will be. On the one hand, it can be seen as another key Palestinian figure refusing to support Abbas, thus weakening his new and shaky power in the Palestinian Authority. On the other hand, Eraket was a terror supporter and apologist, and the only thing quicker than his propensity for invention of facts was his automatic finger-pointing at Israel no matter what was going on. Not exactly the qualities needed in a negotiator.
His resignation has not yet been accepted so it’s possible this whole thing is just a scheme to get attention, and he’ll be right back in his position within days. It’s always hard to figure out what will happen in an iron-fist dictatorship that is trying to pass itself off to the world as having made nonexistent democratic reforms.
The bottom line is, this is unlikely to affect the talks between Sharon and Abbas due to take place tomorrow.
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Season finale night on NBC tonight . . . no, I won’t spoil them for those of you who haven’t seen them yet. But Friends was predictable but hysterical, Will and Grace was quirky but the ending was kinda unexpected . . . and wow, was that an amazing ER or what?
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There’s more conflict between the Hasidic Jewish community and a group of bigoted xenophobes in Outremont. First, they opposed the Eruv on the grounds that the wire is visible and it bothers them or something similar. Then, they lobbied against a zoning change that would have allowed a synagogue to expand. Now, they’re opposing a bus service between Montreal and New York that is geared towards the Hasidic community, many of whom have friends and relatives in New York and make the trip regularly:
Even more important than convenience – the bus made three stops in Outremont, picking up people almost from their doorsteps – is that the bus service offers kosher food, separate seating for men and women, and prayer time, Werzberger said.
The bus service has existed for about 30 years, he said, and nobody had complained about it until a small group of residents started lobbying council.
“There is a small group of people in Outremont who have made it their raison d’être to make life difficult for the Hasidic community. They come and bang in at the councillors and sometimes you just cave in to this kind of pressure.”
The credibility of the residents who keep complaining about the Hasidic community is long gone. The only question is, will the borough council cave into their pressure?
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I was skimming some of his past rants up on HBO’s site this evening, and came across the classic one on media bias, and I can’t help but lament that he no longer is coming out with these on a weekly basis:
In today’s information economy, the old journalistic mandate of “Get it fast, first, and right” has been downsized to just getting it fast and first. Today’s idea of an “investigative report” is one they remembered to run a spell-check on. And the line between fact and opinion gets stepped on more frequently than the feet of a circus clown slow-dancing with a scuba diver.
[ . . . ]
The sad truth is, we don’t object to the slanted nature of our news because being told how to think is easier than figuring it out for ourselves. Media bias is just the latest in a long line of American labor-saving devices that began with the cotton gin and will likely end with us swaddled in our full-sensory La-Z boys, while a holographic Wolf Blitzer gnome dances on your man-breasts and yips, “Bad stuff happened to other people in the world today, but not to you, Pumpkin. That’s the news. Have another bear claw.”
Let’s be honest with ourselves. You want the truth? You can’t stay awake for the truth. We want police chases, mudslides, and world leaders caught on tape having sex with their daughter’s piano teacher. We don’t give an embryonic rat’s ass about Enron, the Middle East, or the new Campaign Finance Reform bill because it’s way too complicated and depressing. When we come home from a hard day at the office, all we want is to kick our feet up on the coffee table, pop open a cold one, turn on the television, and be reassured that everyone in the world is more fucked up than you are, especially the people reporting on it.
At this point, Dennis would end with his trademark “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.” But he rarely was.
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StatsCan released the latest census figures on religion, and the results were pretty predictable. Most Canadians are Christian, there are a bunch of Muslims and Jews . . . but 20,000 claimed to be Jedi: (via Jon)
The 20,000 Canadian followers of Obi-Wan Kenobi pose little threat to the major religions.
That number came as a result of an e-mail campaign that urged people to respond “Jedi” when asked about their religion in the 2001 Census. Similar campaigns were even more successful in other countries such as Britain, where more people said they were Jedis than called themselves Jews.
Canada’s Jedis are concentrated in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.
May the force be with you.
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My reaction to tonight’s West Wing: HOLY SHIT! (Pardon my French.)
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Al Qua’eda, or whatever offshoot of it that is responsible for the Riyadh suicide attacks, is a highly-organized terrorist network full of evil murderers. I’m sure they’ve been called every name in the book, and they more than deserve all of them. But one thing they are not is stupid.
So then why would they attack within Saudi Arabia, risking the anger of the Saudis?
“Saudi Arabia is committed to…striking with an iron fist all who are tampering with the country’s security,” [Prince Saud al-Faisal] told a news conference in Riyadh.
“Whoever did this will regret it because they have unified this country’s determination to extract this cancer (terrorism) and ensure that it doesn’t return.”
Why, with their hatred of the West and of the United States in particular, would they do anything that would align the terrorist-supporting Saudi regime further with their “strange bedfellow” ally, the United States? Why would they risk a backlash from the Arab world? I mean, they had to know, didn’t they?
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