Head in Hands
As I've mentioned, er, once or twice, I have recently been crushed beneath the heel of work. The one partial benefit of that has been I haven't had much time to brood over current events. Not even getting into Thursday's insanity, the state of affairs has been enraging, maddening, frustrating, disgusting and a lot other things that there aren't words strong enough to express. As much as I usually can't contain myself, this time, I don't feel able to even begin to articulate anything sufficient to express my feelings on the Middle East "crisis," much less how it's being portrayed and spoken about, and I generally just find myself driven to tears. Fortunately others are not so stymied and are more articularte than I. For anyone who wants, here is a link to an essay (one of many, many excellent pieces out there if you look (and don't look to mass media)) that someone sent me today. An excerpt:
Go read it. A few other rather randomly chosen links, all of which, in my opinion, are worth reading: here, here, here, here.
On Thusday's news, I have to mention something. The mother of a very good friend of mine was unlucky enough to be traveling from America to Africa with a stop over at Heathrow on Thursday morning. From what I understand, she, along with many other passengers with non-EU, non-US passports, were herded out into a parking lot where they were forced to wait for their flights without food, water or shelter. My friend's mother, an elderly woman with diabetes, spent 10 hours out in that parking lot, along with thousands of other people, including other elderly people and babies, before being escorted back into the airport to board her flight. She was not allowed any access to a telephone to call her family, who were frantic about her whereabouts. WTF? I've no where near read all the coverage of Thursday, but I haven't seen stories about this little detail of civilized behavior. My friend is ready to raise hell. Let's see if she gets anywhere.
They tell you that a Jewish state is democratic but a Muslim state is evil; that Palestinians living in Palestine have no rights and no state but Jews living in the rest of the world can ‘return’ and live there as rights’-bearing citizens; that Jesus wants you in Palestine unless you are a Palestinian or a Muslim; that Washington, London and Tel Aviv can produce nuclear warheads but that Tehran is a global threat for daring to enrich uranium; that legitimate resistance is terrorism but state terrorism is “self-defense”; that the desert state of Syria is Nasrallah’s courier and puppeteer but that Washington is an honest broker and a partner for peace; that Iran is a rogue state for arming Hizbullah but that America is freedom-loving for arming Tel Aviv; that we cannot talk to Damascus or Tehran unless they renounce themselves out of existence first; that expansionism and regime change are necessary for American and Israeli national security but that the Arab and Muslim winners of free and fair democratic elections should be arrested in the middle of the night and imprisoned in secret police detention centers for attempting to rule.
They tell you that three soldiers captured by Hamas and Hizbullah are worth the collective destruction of Palestine and Lebanon but that civilians kidnapped by Israel are not worth the price of a printed page; that the tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and the hundreds of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Arabs and others at Guantanamo Bay are worth less than the abandoned pets of the residents of North Israel fleeing to the bomb shelters. They sing sanctimonious hymns to the glory of international law as they veto it into the oblivion of a million shell fragments.
Go read it. A few other rather randomly chosen links, all of which, in my opinion, are worth reading: here, here, here, here.
On Thusday's news, I have to mention something. The mother of a very good friend of mine was unlucky enough to be traveling from America to Africa with a stop over at Heathrow on Thursday morning. From what I understand, she, along with many other passengers with non-EU, non-US passports, were herded out into a parking lot where they were forced to wait for their flights without food, water or shelter. My friend's mother, an elderly woman with diabetes, spent 10 hours out in that parking lot, along with thousands of other people, including other elderly people and babies, before being escorted back into the airport to board her flight. She was not allowed any access to a telephone to call her family, who were frantic about her whereabouts. WTF? I've no where near read all the coverage of Thursday, but I haven't seen stories about this little detail of civilized behavior. My friend is ready to raise hell. Let's see if she gets anywhere.