How does one confuse a NATO base with a civilian airport? I am sick of hearing that it was due to her lack of knowledge of English and her nervousness. I can't imagine that a military installation and a giant field of concrete peppered with Boeing 747's look very much alike, no matter much she was pushing the altitude capabilities of her civilian aircraft.
Is this really what we have been reduced to? Moreover, what does this make Iraq in that case? As we all know, Al-Qaida and WMD's had nothing to do with it. And the Iranians were helping American soldiers who were operated in Afghanistan. However, that aside, this makes Olmert's weak overtures to the Palestinians even more disingenuous. I am equally disgusted with an article which appeared in Sign and Sight. It claims that the world cares not when Muslims kill Muslims, or for that matter when anyone other than Israelis kill Muslims. I beg to differ. This article specifically refers to Iraq, Dafur and Chechnya. Perhaps Monsieur Glucksmann failed to notice a few minor details. I would compare Iraq with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for one fleeting moment. It is not that the world does not care that Muslims are being killed (although granted, America seems to be the mandatory exception to this rule). Rather, I believe it is that the world has become de-sensitised to these deaths. Each additional death does little to add to the horrors of the scores of deaths that preceded it. I would argue that it is clear that at least in theory, the world wants both of these conflicts resolved. As for Chechnya, I remember sitting in high school, hearing and reading about the world's outcries. Unfortunately, Clinton was too busy bombing the Balkans to create any moral high ground from which to dictate anything to the Russians. (Don't get me wrong--I like Clinton. However, no matter how many times this strategy is tried, it never produces the results desired.) Lastly, we have Dafur. I agree: what happened, what is still happening, in Sudan is horrific. I found bitter irony in the fact that in one breath the World's states said, "never again", and in the next, refused to aid those who needed it most. However, I would postulate that Europe and the US had less influence over the Sudanese government than America has over Israel. In other words, the current crisis in Lebanon is all the more deplorable because (a) the Israelis attacked a state which had not attacked it, (b) the US had the requisite influence over the Israelis to bring an earlier end to the hostilities and (c) for all its bragging about it capability to avoid civilian casualties, the vast majority of the dead on the Lebanese side were civilians. Israel attacked a country which was just rebuilding itself. So, perhaps it is not so that "some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes", Monsieur Gluckmann.
The Polish Government, and for that matter the Polish public's reaction to this exhibit depresses me. To protest the inclusion of materials on the forced transfer of scores of Germans from what is now western Poland is not to minimize the suffering of those peoples whose members were displaced en masse, but rather goes to illustrate that often victims, when given the upper hand, do not always act with magnanimity. I feel that rather this is an especially important reminder that victor's justice is often unjust. Yes, Poland was a victim of WWII and the Cold War. However, it should not forget that even its past is not morally clean.
Shrub, with his usual flare and pizazz, has stated that the foiled plot to use liquid explosives on planes traveling from the UK to the US was a "stark reminder" that the US was still at war (to emphasise American's military activity since 2001 just in case it had somehow evaded your attention, I suppose) with "Islamic Fascists". Ah, yes. Brilliant. The man has managed once again not only to offend, but also to display his ignorance of the English language. One cannot be both an Islamist and a fascist. Why not, you ask? Precisely because fascism is grounded in ultra-nationalism. Islamists, by definition, seek unity among adherents of Islam, regardless of what nationality those Muslims may be. Moreover, might he not have given his speech writing crew the easy task of embarking on a search for a better choice of words? Then again, these are also the people who came up with the phrase "terrorist-state"ignoring the fact that terrorist acts, by definition, can only be carried out by non-state actors. Clearly, I expect too much.
While watching this clip that K had sent to me, it dawned on me why the American public is so willing to support Israel. While it is easy enough to rattle off factors, such as relatively low Arab immigration, a strong Jewish lobby, etc, I could not help but feel as though I were missing the most basic piece of that puzzle. Now I realise the exceedingly obvious fact that I had suppressed. The American public possesses no long term memory. The short term memory that it does have does not exceed four weeks in most cases. In other words, the Americans have ungracefully taken this attack by Israel out of context. I have also been marveling at the skill and deftness of Israeli propaganda, both at home an abroad. The death of each soldier is emphasised and dutifully mourned by Israeli media. Such tactics have a strong effect on the national psyche, allowing Israelis to feel that they are indeed the victims of this conflict. Moreover, Israel has managed to keep at least one key proposal from the headlines. Prior to the bombing of Qana, the Lebanese government floated a proposal which would have included such measures as sending Lebanese troops to the south to prevent a vacuum from being created by the withdraw of Israeli troops and *gasp* the release of the two Israeli soldiers whose capture provided the Israeli government with the excuse it needed to launch its attack in the first place. Come to think of it, this clip of Mr Galloway reminds me of this clip from British CNN.
I am sure that no one has forgotten about the education Cheney bestowed on us on the dangers of quail hunting. We were not only amused that he had confused his human hunting buddy for a quail, but also that Cheney was hunting cage raised quails, whose wings had been clipped so as to prevent them from flying too high. Perhaps, just perhaps, Cheney was in fact prophesying Israel's bombing of Lebanon. Now there is a conspiracy theory for you (and just think, even the Right Wing would like it, as it suggests that that malevolent God figure they all seem to believe in sends signs through Cheney's bizarre behaviour). War does not decide who was right, war decides who is left.--Bertrand Russell
Perhaps I have overreacted, but I doubt it. On Thursday, as per my boss' brilliant instruction, I found myself driving him down to WV at 6 am. Driving, I might add, a rental car. This might seem like a small and somewhat insignificant detail, until you realise that in this Grand Ol' Land I am too young to legally drive a rental car unless extra insurance is obtained to over said rental car. Whether it had been obtained is a precious fact which has escaped my grasp. Most likely I should merely be thankful that it was not his SUV which I was driving into WV. It was painful enough to enter a state which screams "uneducated, simple bigots live here" with the power of a thousand banshees without having to endure swallowing my concerns about the very existence of SUV's on well-paved roads. I should have also been grateful, I suppose, that I was no longer the captive audience of the taxi driver who ushered me into my place of business at that ungodly hour. While I found the adventure surrounding his root canal to be not at all interesting (and, therefore, theoretically easy enough to ignore), his constant imitation of a dentist's drill was more than capable of disturbing my not all together peaceful train of thought. Moreover, I was not even afforded a slow introduction to WV via Wheeling. No, no. I had to plunge straight into the one story countryside, where fonts composed of logs seemed to be a sure way of attracting large-ish customers. Let's all head down to Wood's! Yee-ha! The courtroom hadn't been changed since the early 1930's (according to the Honourable Justice presiding over the proceedings) and my boss thought it would be good fun to listen to Rush Limbaugh on the ride home while he napped. Needless to say, I was quite spent by the time that I returned to my current place of residence, shallow pitt though it is. And so, the greater part of my time between then and now was spent on the delicate task of duct-taping what remained of my fragile psyche into a shell of its former self. With any luck, I will resume pontificating on matters I would be better off not pontificating on later today. Oh, and note to self: Avoid jury loos if at all possible.
