From The Telegraph, Jan. 28:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the favourite to win next month's Israeli general election, yesterday predicted al-Qaeda would blow up the purported burial place of Jesus Christ if the country relinquished control of Jerusalem.

In his unlikely New York Times op-ed of Jan. 22, "The One-State Solution," plugging his utopian scheme for a single country uniting Israel and Palestine as "Isratine," Muammar Qaddafi (this appears to be the Colonel's preferred spelling), the one-time bad boy of intransigent Arab nationalism, actually mimics Zionist revisionism on the 1948 Nakba. To wit:

Pope Benedict Jan. 24 rehabilitated a breakaway "traditionalist" bishop who denies the Holocaust—ignoring warnings from Jewish leaders that it would seriously harm relations with the Catholic church and foment anti-Semitism. The Vatican said the pope issued a decree lifting the 1988 excommunication of four traditionalist bishops for being ordained by the late "traditionalist" Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without Vatican consent. The four bishops lead the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which has about 600,000 members and rejected modernizations of Roman Catholic worship and doctrine. The Vatican said the excommunications were lifted after the bishops affirmed their acceptance of Church doctrine and papal authority.

Media accounts are generally not recalling the similar incidents earlier this year. Why is nobody seeing patterns here? From Network World, Dec. 22:

Undersea robot searches for severed cables
A robot submarine was scouring the seabed 200 meters under the Mediterranean Sea on Monday trying to locate the ends of undersea cables that were cut on Friday, disrupting voice and Internet traffic.

Read the fine print. "Five Muslim immigrants from South Jersey were convicted today of plotting to kill American soldiers, a crime that prosecutors said demonstrated how Al Qaeda was using the Internet to recruit, train and incite supporters for attacks in the United States and around the world." So states the lead paragraph in the Newark Star-Ledger's Dec. 22 coverage of the verdict in the Fort Dix pseudo-conspiracy case. Except that it's the usual bait-and-switch: al-Qaeda had absolutely nothing to do with it...

We wish we were joking. From CNN, Dec. 2:

Behavioral screening—the future of airport security?
TEL AVIV — Keep your shoes and belts on: Waiting in long airport security lines to pass through metal detectors may soon be a thing of the past. Security experts say focus is shifting from analyzing the content of carry-ons to analyzing the content of passengers' intentions and emotions.

India's intelligence apparatus is rapidly zeroing in on its usual suspect Pakistan in the Mumbai attacks. The Times of India reports Dec. 2:

All the 10 terrorists, suspected to have been involved in the Mumbai attacks, were trained by ex-army personnel even as the lone arrested terrorist has admitted to being a Pakistani, the police on Tuesday said.

On the heels of talk about forming an an anti-Obama "underground," the right-wing talk radio set is now broaching actual secession from the union. The liberal blog Think Progress Nov. 25 posted an audio link from a recent broadcast by shock-jock Glenn Beck. Here's the offending quote: