The War Criminals' Delight

American media are waving their hands, Thomas Friedman is blubbering, Condoleeza Rice is preaching, and American and Israelis generally are doing the standard line: "It's all the Palestinians' fault".

What's actually happening? Israel occupies Palestine for 40 years, systematically rapes the land, kills the people. The US arms Israel to do still more of same. Palestinians demand the very rights Israelis and Americans demand for themselves. Palestinians exercise their democratic rights. Israel and the US apply ever harsher measures. Palestinian society falls apart.

And then the Americans and Israelis say, "See? We told you so."

There is no people, no animal, that could be treated as Israelis and Americans treat Palestinians without cries that a crime is being committed. Yet in the case of the Palestinians, Friedman, Dershowitz, Rice, Cheney, their fellow war criminals blame the victims without fail.

Later this year -- in September -- we will see the 25th anniversary of the Israeli (particularly Sharon) orchestrated massacre at Sabra and Shatila. My prediction: the US and Israel will ignore it. Or they will blame the Palestinians. And if anyone dare criticize Israel for that crime, that person will be attacked in the style exemplified by Dershowitz.

Burn, Baby, Burn (or "From Paris, With Love")

Oh the shape of things to come. Poor Paris. Found prison didn't agree with her. It's tough going 15 minutes without a cellphone or a chance to check your pout in the mirror.

And what about us? Who's fiddling while Rome burns?

The Road to Hell is Paved with Cement . . . Maybe Asphalt

United States to World: "Go to Hell"

The BBC and others reported on Saturday, 26 May 2007, that the US is rejecting proposals to address greenhouse emissions in advance of the June G8 summit in Germany. The BBC story quotes US comments: "We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position."

Check NPR and others for reports that the US wants China to curb its emissions.

Refugees Seek Refuge

The bitter irony of the life of the Palestinian people. Driven from their homes by a people driven from their homes. Oppressed by the oppressed.

Now in northern Lebanon, the Lebanese army shells a Palestinian refugee camp. And Palestinian refugees flee -- refugees from the refuge. Could there be a better summation of our time?

By the way, when you hear, see, read a news account on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, check to see whether they mention any of the following:
1. That the residents of the camp are Palestinians.
2. That the Lebanese army is forbidden to enter the camp, so they shell because that's 'okay'.
3. That the Palestians are refugees from the Israelis, dispossessed in 1948, 1967, and ever since.

Introducing the End

This is a rambling rant on the end of our world. Global warming, ice caps melting, species disappearing. Bush's Crusade. Braindead politicians fiddle. Pick your favorite. Enjoy it. Mull it over. Savor the taste.

My thesis? Humans are an evolutionary failure, like sabre tooth tigers. Evidently, our brains are very good at concocting ways to destroy one another. As many have suggested before, we have failed utterly to develop adequate means to solve the problems we create. Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is right. War is the human metier.

Case in point: Dresden, 1945. A refugee city, a city of art, firebombed into oblivion by the British and the Americans. If we are unable to admit that such a bombing, killing tens of thousands of civilians, was outrage (even though visited upon Nazi Germany), then what can we say of ourselves?

Hiroshima, Kosovo, the Nazi death camps, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. How often do we need to be reminded?