blogolob

Villagers in the Kenyan town of Limuru are angry over an order from the council that their donkeys must henceforth wear nappies, in an attempt to keep the streets clean.

I was contemplating what it must be like to live in a society that was dependent on donkeys instead of on tractors or motorised transport and I was thinking how a matter that is very serious to the villagers in Kenya (or Iraq) would be laughable here in the UK. I was wrong.

It turns out that Great Yarmouth council tried to force nappies onto the horses that take tourists for rides along the seafront. The owners were having none of it and in a court case the magistrates ruled against the council.

The donkey owners of Limuru should talk to the lawyers of Great Yarmouth.

Norm writes

As a confirmed atheist, I find it dismaying when those on the same side as I am, loosely speaking, discredit our case by the addition to it of lightminded provocation.

I never really understood the term ‘confirmed atheist’. Confirmed by whom? God?

You hit it like this … or like this …

Two… Three…

Osama Bin Laden

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports that Hamas’ Executive Force attacked three journalists who were covering a demonstration organized by national factions in Southern Gaza. The journalists were detained and forced to delete all their video footage and photographs before being freed. The demonstration had been organized by factions of the PLO, who called for dialogue, Palestinian unity and the raising the Palestinian flag, while condemning the military showdown. They met with a larger demonstration organized by flag-raising supporters of Fatah who chanted slogans against Hamas and its leaders.

PCHR is ‘deeply concerned’ over the detention and threatening of journalists and stressed that they must be afforded protection to be able to carry out their jobs freely and enjoy their right to the freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Industrialists report that 80% of Gaza’s factories have temporarily shut down after Israel closed border crossings in response to the Hamas takeover of the coastal strip.

“The factory closures make Gaza’s 1.5 million residents increasingly dependent on humanitarian aid,” said Michael Bailey of Oxfam International.

“Before the latest closures, some 85 percent of Gazans received some form of aid,” he said. “If the crossings between Gaza and Israel aren’t opened soon, the slide into all-out dependency will be swift and inevitable,” he continued.

Israel said it keeps Gaza’s main cargo crossing closed for security reasons and because it cannot coordinate truck shipments with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

“Since the fall of Gaza to Hamas, Israel has only permitted food and medicine to enter Gaza,” said Bassim Khoury, head of the Palestinian Federation of Industries. Palestinian businesses have been unable to import raw materials or export goods.

Mohammed al-Talbani, who owns the Al Auda cookie factory in Gaza, said he has laid off 270 of his 370 workers. “It is a mistake to think that choking Gaza will work against Hamas,” he said in a statement.

“Quite the contrary - the economic stranglehold is driving people to extremism. In Gaza, people receive food assistance from Hamas, and they are blaming Israel for the closure,” he continued.

However, Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel’s coordinator of policy in the Palestinian territories, said that Israel is doing its best under difficult circumstances to avert a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He noted that Hamas militants have fired at Gaza crossings, and that this makes it difficult to increase truck shipments.

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A moving ‘Encounter on a bus’ tale, followed by a philosophical debate that (I think) goes something like:

Believer: “I was motivated by my religious beliefs to perform that act of bravery.”
Person hostile to religion: “No. Religions are crap so it must have been something else.”

Here, Norm explains that the first statement may be given more weight than the second.

Reminds me of:

Person hostile to religion: “Religions have been responsible for more death and destruction than anything else.”
Other person: “What about Stalinism, Nazism, Maoism?”
Person hostile to religion: “Well they’re really religions too”.

With most of the blogosphere chuckling at the news that Iran has ‘detained’ 14 spying squirrels, blogolob decided to dig deeper.

In an exclusive interview with a British Intelligence source who has requested that he not be named, blogolob has learnt that specially trained spy squirrels were indeed sent into Iran but, even more astonishingly, the British military sent in giant badgers to eliminate further squirrels that had been sent into Southern Iraq but had been ‘turned’ by al Qaeda animal training cells.

The squirrels sent into Iran had been trained to detect nuclear facilities and to indicate their locations using trails of radioactive acorns. Our source admitted that 14 of the squirrels have been intercepted by a crack Iranian counter-squirrel unit but had this message for the Iranian president:

“We sent 15 trained squirrels, Ahmadinejad. One of them is still out there.”

Meanwhile, of the Iraqi squirrels, our source admitted:

“We had not expected al Qaeda to have such sophisticated squirrel turning technology but we believe the equipment was obtained in the US. We had to send in the honey badgers but were not fully prepared for the consequences. The badgers were trained to go after the squirrels, we didn’t expect them to terrorize the Iraqi population. Still, we had no choice - the squirrels knew too much.”

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via Israellycool

Striking maestro, Robbie Blake, has today signed a 3 year deal to return to Burnley, the club where he scored 51 goals in 137 appearances. When Blake left Turf Moor just over two years ago, it was for a Burnley club record of £1.25m. The fee to cash-strapped Leeds is reported to be £250k plus appearance fees and a promotion bonus.

Burnley manager Steve Cotterill is known to be a big fan of the creative striker and he moved quickly to sign him once he heard that he might be available. The signing is yet another step in the revival of the Lancashire team, that has followed the quiet boardroom revolution taking place since the appointment of Brendan Flood to Barry Kilby’s board. Robbie Blake joins the recently signed Albanian, Besart Berisha, high scoring Andy Gray, fit again Ade Akinbiyi and Northern Irish international Kyle Lafferty, to form what is probably the most lethal strike force in the Championship.

Blogolob’s tip - put your children’s college fund on Burnley for promotion to the Premiership.