Never trust the teller. Trust the tale.

— D. H. Lawrence

An open thread for a pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday evening.

UPDATE at 11/26/08 6:57:33 pm:

And by the way, registration is open. Please read all the rules and commit them to memory, don’t register with a proxy, don’t register with a throwaway email address, don’t register more than one account, don’t be a jerk, do play nice, and everything will be groovy.

UPDATE at 11/26/08 7:38:10 pm:

Now closed, with 42 hatchlings.

Here’s a video report from the Investigative Project on some of the key evidence that resulted in terror convictions in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

Just in via Reuters video, some raw footage from an Indian source:

UPDATE at 11/26/08 1:54:37 pm:

Just reported on CNN: a massive explosion at the Taj Hotel…

UPDATE at 11/26/08 2:33:03 pm:

IBNLive.com has live streaming video in WMV format.

A coordinated series of bombings and shootings in the Indian financial center of Mumbai: Terror attacks in Mumbai; 80 dead, over 250 injured-India.

MUMBAI: Terror struck the country’s financial capital late on Wednesday night as coordinate serial explosions and indiscriminate firing rocked eight areas across Mumbai including the crowded CST railway station, two five star hotels—Oberoi and Taj.

At least 80 people were dead and 250 injured in the terror attacks, hospital sources said.

Armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades, a couple of terrorists entered the passenger hall of CST and opened fire and threw grenades, Mumbai General Railway Police Commissioner A K Sharma said.

The terror strike which began at 10:33 PM at Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus(CST), formerly known as the Victoria Terminus(VT), claimed 10 lives in the premises of the station alone, police said.

Three persons were killed in a bomb explosion in a taxi on Mazegaon dockyard road and an equal number were gunned down at Taj Hotel. The victims in the hotel were its employees. The lobby of the Oberoi hotel was on fire and the hotel evacuated, eyewitnesses said.

Fox News is reporting that there may be hostages inside the Taj Hotel.

UPDATE at 11/26/08 11:39:10 am:

An eyewitness on Fox said the terrorists wanted to know about anyone who had British or American passports at the Taj Hotel…

An alert has been put out for a possible terror plot targeting the Long Island Railroad.

Law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com, the plot involved a “Madrid-like attack,” a reference to the synchronized bombing of the commuter rail system in Spain in March 2004 that killed 191 people. …

“There is nothing concrete to suggest this plot ever went beyond the aspirational or talking stage,” said a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence that led to the warning.

Law enforcement officials told ABCNews.com the information was based on an FBI source who has proved “reliable and knowledgeable in the past.” …

The FBI’s source reportedly told agents of an al Qaeda-connected group’s desire to place bombs or suicide bombers inside the first and last Long Island Rail Road commuter cars and detonate them as the train entered Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, also used by the Washington-New York-Boston Amtrak system and the New York City subway.

A song recorded by one of the Bali bombers shortly before their execution for mass murder is now being used as a ringtone by members of the Religion of Peace™ in Indonesia.

A defiant deathbed song written and recorded by Imam Samudra shortly before his execution has been released on the internet and is now being downloaded as a mobile phone ringtone by hardliners and ordinary people alike in Indonesia.

News Ltd understands that Samudra’s song, which is about two minutes long, was recorded on a mobile phone by a visitor to Samudra at the prison in the months leading up to the execution. It has only just been released in MP3 format and is now being downloaded from Islamic websites in Indonesia.

In the song Samudra declares: “I am a martyr, I am a martyr. My eyes are closed, my chest is wounded.” He farewells his family, promising to meet them again in the hereafter. And he continues with his rhetoric about Jews and Americans who he claims are the enemies of Islam, saying of America and its allies: “We will beat them up, and they will fall.”

Fajar Badrullah, a herbal medicine seller in Jakarta, said he had made it his ringtone several days ago to “honour” the Bali bombers, who he said had struggled in Allah’s name to defend Islam against America and the allies.

“So this ring tone in my phone is my form of honouring them,” Fajar said. And he blamed the Indonesian Government for the 2002 Bali bombings, saying that if Indonesia had adopted Syriah law the bombings would not have occurred. “The bomber’s executions only light up the spirit of others to keep struggling for Islam. Plus the bombers died with a smile on their faces,” he said.

Rahmadia Shinta, a female student at Muhammadiyah University in Yogyakarta, says she had the ringtone but had now stopped using it because she found it scary to hear the voice of a dead man at night. And she said the intentions of the bombers, in defending Islam, were holy even though the bombing appeared cruel.

“They have paid for their mistakes in the world by being executed and now they are going to receive blessings for what they have sacrificed for Allah,” Rahmadia said.

The website of Al Qaeda’s Somalian affiliate, al-Shabaab, is being hosted by the US-based company Dotster; Rusty has details: Terrorists: Yes, Our Official Website Is Hosted in the U.S., So What?