This week’s rant of the week has the awkward title of “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.” It was written by Matthew Parris of the Times.

This week’s essay of the week is “The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep” by Matt Labash. It takes some time to get going (could have used more editing) but it is worth the effort.

From various reports I had already figured that Egypt and Israel had some secret understanding regarding Isreal’s planned attack on Hamas. I knew that the Egyptian government was furious with Hamas. But I never expected to see the above expressed on Egyptian prime time television in Arabic by Egypt’s Foreign Minister. Regardless of what Arab leaders think in private, they are not supposed to say things like this in public.

Granted, the clip is short and I am sure if I had a full transcript of what he said I would find that he made some kind of pro forma denouncements of Israel. Still, I admire his forthrightness.

However, if I was a life insurance company I would deny him coverage. There is a reason why he went on television to say this and not Mubarak.

From the Telegraph….

That threshold was lowered considerably by yesterday’s operation when, for the first time, Israel targeted groups of Hamas soldiers and policemen not involved in active operations.

Membership alone of the security structures of Hamas was yesterday turned by Israel into grounds for attack. To put on a Hamas police baseball cap is to make oneself a target.

This means that any Hamas traffic cop on a street corner in Gaza – or manning a makeshift ‘border’ checkpoint – can expect to be attacked.

From later on in the article…

Throughout this period, Hamas planners assumed their security forces were safe from Israeli strikes, as long as they were not directly involved in running or ordering an attack. All of that changed with yesterday’s raids. Somehow, I no longer expect to see uniformed Hamas officers guiding traffic at Gaza’s junctions.

Kind of amazing that Hamas could shoot at Israel and assume that only the people involved in the shooting were in danger huh?

The Belmont Club has more.

From the New York Times….

Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

Authority officials offered little explanation for the discrepancy, telling reporters that the initial number was an estimate based on their information at the time. The aerial survey was done on Tuesday, but the results were not released until Thursday. Calls to an Authority spokesman on Friday morning were not immediately returned.

Residents were stunned by the new numbers. “That’s scary to know that they can be off by that much,” said Angela Spurgeon, whose yard is swamped with ash. “I don’t think it was intentional, but it upsets me to know that a number was given of what the pond could hold, and the number now is more than double of what the pond actually held.”

Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the Authority, said Wednesday that the pond had not exceeded its allowable capacity.

Look, the dam burst. That is a fact.

Thus, it seems that the pond had exceeded the its allowable capacity according to the laws of physics. Now maybe there is a piece of paper somewhere that says that the dam could hold more. But if so, that piece of paper was wrong.

Given that their are lots more of these dams all around the pressing question is why was that piece of paper wrong?

In this case though, I suspect that someone is lying. The clip below seems to suggest that they knew there where problems with the dam.