In Brüno, Cohen arranged a sit-down with Ayman Abu Aita, whom he identified as the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an honest-to-goodness suicide-bombing Palestinian terrorist group that's responsible for dozens of murders. It was funny because he made fun of Osama bin Laden and pretended to be gay.

But Aita, who claims he's no longer affiliated with the Brigades and doesn't like the idea of being seen paling around with an Austrian gay man in a feature film, is threatening a lawsuit:

Mr Abu Aita's lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, said that he is preparing a legal action against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the Martyrs' Brigade reference could get his client in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by the Palestinians.

Of course, one way to avoid getting mixed up with gags like this is to not affiliate yourself with groups that launch suicide bombings in the first place, so—wait, that didn't work for Ron Paul, did it?

What's worse, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is making its own threats against Cohen—bafflingly enough, via the "Jerusalem bureau" of WorldNetDaily, the birther outfit that's rapidly overtaking Lyndon LaRouche's place in the taxonomy of American political paranoiacs. WND's Aaron Klein, whom we last saw engineering a fake Wikipedia scandal designed to promote his noxious and fanatical beliefs about Obama's birthplace, obtained a statement from the group:

We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man. This movie was part of a conspiracy against the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Islamist nutjobs complaining to right-wing nutjobs about a Jewish comedian.

[Via Intelligencer.]

Intrepid reporters from NYU Local are embedded right there in the barricaded student center with the insurgents, and have, at risk of life and limb, been issuing updates to the world on the tense negotiations going on therein. This morning, the mood was already ugly:

10:11 - The smokers are going crazy. They haven't been able to smoke since around 9 last night. One guy just said to me, coffee in hand, "When I get a cigarette in me, I'm gonna pass out from ecstasy."

As if that wasn't bad enough, the fascist NYU administration is trying to starve out the wayward revolutionaries by denying them their right to have friends bring them non-prison-labor vegan meals as they occupy the building:

10:43 - Sounds like this is more technical stuff - not broad demand negotiations. Aramark (NYU's dining service contractor) is willing to supply food, but a TBNYU protester just told me that some people aren't OK with that because "Aramark uses prison labor." So they are trying to find a way to have friends be allowed entrance to deliver food.

SITUATION CRITICAL. Food and nicotine are precursors to, not products of, Palestinian educational achievement. The latest development, according the insurgency's Minister of Information:

2:05 - So before all hell broke loose, I sat down with Emily Stainkamp (CAS ‘11) to talk about how food was going to get in here. She told me that NYU made a "bizarre" and "paternalistic" move by "[offering] to bring [them] food." TBNYU said that the food would have to be vegan and NYU agreed. But then TBNYU decided that it couldn't accept food from Aramark because the "outsource to prison labor." Stainkamp said, "Why can't our friends just bring us food?…Our food, our space."
NYU said "they would talk to their people." So there is currently no food, and with the added development of people breaking into the occupied area and breaking through the balcony door (dead bolt!), it seems unlikely that there will be any.

Chaos!

[NYU Local. NYU protesters, feel free to email us the inside story. And here is some spoof blog about this, so please stop emailing us the link.]

As predicted, wrapping up the war now will allow news of its aftermath and the inevitable tallying-up of the destruction wrought to be overshadowed by wall-to-wall coverage of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, the child Obamas, the inaugural balls, the crazy DC traffic, the Obama move into the White House, the residual bitching of Bush staffers, the scramble for post-presidential interviews of various Bush officials, Obama's accomplishments on his first day in office, the Obama plan for the first 100 days, and the initiation of Congressional squabbling over the Obama agenda.

Good timing, PR-wise. For Israel. [Breitbart]

Check out that early shot of a presumably Hamas-fired rocket from the Gaza strip hitting Israeli homes. The resulting fireball looks almost painted on — very colorful and well-defined against a more blurry background. (The contrast is a bit harder to see in our small video player.)

At the very least, the ad makes cable news even more melodramatic and pointlessly heart-pounding, adding no new information about an admittedly terrible situation in which Hamas is rocketing Israel. Pointless for the viewer at least; the advertiser, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, hopes to further link (as it has) Israelis with MSNBC-watching American Christian evangelical donors, many of whom support the Jewish state because they believe it paves the way for an "apocalyptic battle between good and evil in which Jesus returns and Jews either accept him or perish," as AP put it.

If you believe the apocalypse is coming, no alarm is likely to sound over the top.

Last March, at the SXSW Interactive Web conference, Zuckerberg spoke at length about how the connections Middle Eastern youth make on Facebook could lead them away from religious extremism. It's a theme he's returned to time and again. But how Zuckerberg thinks they're going to connect when his site's not even letting them talk isn't clear. Users report that posts are getting deleted apparently for even mentioning words like "Gaza" or "Palestine."

What's curious about the claims of censorship is that censors are supposed to have an agenda. If Facebook has one, it seems to be against anything vaguely controversial: Both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian forces are outraged by mysterious deletions of Facebook content mentioning the current crisis.

What's really going on? The site's self-policing mechanisms, which allow users to report "inappropriate content," seem to be to blame. The flagging system, meant to prevent the posting of porn where minors can see it, is easily abused by people with a political agenda. And with only 800 employees overseeing 140 million users, it's impossible for Facebook customer service to keep up with all the disputes.

It's a perfect illustration of Zuckerberg's twisted-up ambitions. On the one hand, he wants Facebook to be a reflection of the real world, as it is: a reflection of our real social relationships, and perhaps our very emotions. And yet he also wants to make it a better place. Giving people on Facebook a free hand to censor each others' words serves neither end.

Of course, everyone's against censorship until they're for it. Here's something that will likely offend the true believers on both sides of the conflict — the tales of Saar Netanel, a gay Israeli Jerusalem city council member, and Bodi, a Palestinian drag performer who claims Hamas is hounding him out of the country:

(Photo by AP/Eyad Baba)

The Jerusalem Post reports that journos were invited to attend this mid-day Hamas government meeting, and they were all a bit confused to see the legislators "sitting around a table with burning candles." Despite the daylight. Making it basically a dramatic staged photograph. With a ridiculously credulous caption.

Back in 2006, a Reuters freelancer named Adnan Hajj got the agency into a bit of trouble by crappily photoshopping some extra smoke into a photo of the Israeli Defense Force attacking Beirut. Another manipulated Hajj photo was found, Reuters dropped him, and eventually fired a responsible photo editor.

Critics (and there are plenty!) charge that the 2006 controversy and this more recent example of, at the least, complicity in photo-staging, is proof of Big Media anti-Israel bias. We think it's more like a bias towards more dramatic photos. But it's also Reuters' unfortunate bind in covering overseas crises: they have to rely on folks who have to live there.

Mohammed Salem needs access from Hamas to continue doing his job. Hamas needs attention from western media like Reuters to drum up sympathy and stay in power. Reuters needs dramatic content. Basically, the entire situation is more or less exactly like Britney Spears, her pet paparazzi exploiters, and the media-celebrity complex. The poor Palestinian people are Britney, and Hamas is creepy Svengali lover/manager Sam Lufti.

We are all TMZ now.

Reuters Fauxtography Alert: Spreading Hamas Propaganda With Fake Power Outage Photos [Newsbusters via FishbowlNY]
Palestinian Journalists: Hamas Staged Blackouts]

According to the Post, these violent militants rely on Google Earth to pinpoint locations for attacks with more reliable accuracy than offered by mere maps. While the majority of their rockets have "fallen harmlessly into fields because they lack guideace systems," Google is directly responsible for the successful, fatal attacks.

As is Nabor, king of the sea.

Jaabari, also known as Abu Walid, claimed his men are using sea salt to lengthen the distance that Qassams travel.

"It's a secret process," he said, "but we're very excited by the results."

• Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden reportedly bragged to friends that a "Google" search for "what should I destroy" inspired him to do 9/11.
• Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr allegedly uses "Gmail" to tell his militia which neighborhoods to cleanse of Sunnis.
• Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho reportedly hid his deadly plans from school officials by making his "kill everyone" Google Calendar event "private."
• As soon as you turn Safe Search off Google Image Search is like 20% furry porn.

TERRORROCKETS.COM [NYP]