Admittedly this is a picture of Tel Aviv residents protesting their nation’s militant actions against Lebanon and gathering to offer a prayer for peace.
 
On another level, is it also a picture of fair-skinned westerners on a Middle Eastern beach who’ve overstayed their welcome?
 
Maybe it’s time to close Club Med Judea.

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Was Mel Gibson speaking his mind when he was pulled over for drunk driving? No doubt he was. In Vino Veritas. It wouldn’t be in Latin if it weren’t true. Discounting some of the vociferous hyperbole owed to his drunken ego, were Gibson’s comments anti-Semitic? How low is the bar for what is anti-Semitic? Gibson didn’t say he hated Jews.

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Can I explain the current cataclysm in Lebanon? The media doesn’t want to do it. Unfortunately for them, it’s becoming a simpler story at each denouement.

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Drinking the Kool-aid is an interesting illustration, a cliche to lampoon those who do not question what their leaders tell them.
 
To drink Kool-aid at all seems stupid enough, but do we forget Jonestown, Guyana and what was in the Kool-aid?

Hizb’Allah means the Party of God. The party of Allah. The allegiance to god is clear in the spelling Hizb’Allah. This is the way Moslems spell it, this is how al-Jazeera spells it. Even Hizballah or Hezballah is more clear.

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I heard a report the other day about the new medicare prescription drug benefit choices and the donut hole trap for for many seniors.

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In the days when Hitler occupied Europe, the Nazis had a problem with insurgency. At that time it was called the resistance. Resistance fighters, usually ordinary civilians, conducted espionage, acts of sabotage and executions of collaborators or Germans when they could.

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This is a building located over two thousand miles from any major body of water. It’s known that the US Navy conducts strategic command operations in the Rocky Mountains, usually in association with NORAD. This might be where they dock their ships.

Does less
have one fewer
syllable than fewer
or one less?

Is it shrink-wrapped
or shrunk-wrap?

Bill Clinton, speaking in support of Neocon Democrat Joe Lieberman, attempted to bridge the gap by saying, “It doesn’t matter whether one supported the Iraq war or not, the question is what do we do now?”

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In a recent harder-than-usual puff piece report, the Stars and Stripes described a day of hunting insurgents in Fallujah.
 
Nevermind that Fallujah was supposed to have been pacified, razed to the ground more precisely, and barricaded to such an extent that only residents with approved retina scans could get back in. Nevermind. Insurgents are planting IEDs again, they’re sniping at our soldiers again, and we’re conducting patrols to stop them again.

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US servicemen are escaping charges of murder in court because they can claim they were following orders. Actually, their official Rules Of Engagement: “Kill all military age males.”
 
Kill all military age males?! That’s an actual ROE? That’s a war crime!
 
We’re still trying to bring Serbs to justice for that very crime in Srebrenica. That’s a criminal ROE and all soldiers have an obligation to question such a rule. The Nazis claimed they followed orders. Not good enough. Still a crime.

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Israel is delivering a lot of shit into the fan, and the US is shoveling to resupply them as fast as we can. The world wants an immediate cease-fire but the US objects because we say Hizb’Allah [Hezbollah] will not honor a cease-fire. In reality Israel says it won’t stop until it has meted out at least another week of punishing air strikes. Secretary Rice objected that to stop Israel now would be to accept the status quo.

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It’s a hot summer this year, isn’t it? Record-breaking temperatures on this continent and others. Record number of wild fires. Is this global warming? Can’t blame it on an isolated El Nino this time.

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Whenever there is talk about the age of mankind, or the solar system, or the universe, a friend of mine delights in adding, “IN THEORY.” If the calculations denote an earthly past beyond the scale of a Creationist’s 7,000 year model, my friend considers it theoretical.

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In Al Gore’s film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, much is made of Gore’s new found demeanor. Yes he’s a lot smoother and passionate. It helps that the camera captures him more intimately, and that he had directorial control over how he is portrayed. Contrast this to a hostile media determined in 2000 to make Gore look as bad as possible. Corporate media made Gore’s I-discovered-Love-Canal, I-invented-the-Internet, and Love-Story-was-written-about-me remarks look buffoonish instead of the remarkable half-truths they really were.
 
Juxtapose Gore’s role with George W’s microphone gaff at the G-8.

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About this time each year for some reason, a certain friend of mine gets into a panic and passes on chain emails in renewed hope that she will come into money. Last year she sent everyone the It-Really-Works-Bill-Gates-Will-Pay-You-$275K email. A day later she apologized.

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The problem with impeachment is that Republicans control the houses which possess the power to initiate articles of impeachment. There are a number of offenses for which Bush could be run out of office, there are 4 or 17 listed in various initiatives. Trouble is, what offense will be bad enough to alarm senators and congressmen?

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WORLD TRADE CENTER, Oliver Stone’s sentimental take on 9/11 heroism comes out this summer. I have nothing against a story which describes the travails of two New York City cops and their families caught up in the World Trade Center collapse. But Stone’s timing with the release of this movie is unfortunate. With the upcoming elections, the only rallying cry the Republicans have anymore is 9/11. What a time for Stone to wax patriotic. And I think the absence of his usual political curiosity offers a silent aquiescence to the official line. Too bad.
 
For anyone who feels they absolutely need a jolt of 9/11 heroism, might I suggest the documentary 9/11 aired on CBS and made by the Naudet brothers, the French filmmakers who inadvertantly captured the first tower being hit. Talk about harrowing viewing. They went inside the WTC to witness the second strike and were still inside when the opposite tower collapsed. (That’s why the video of the first plane was so late to emerge. Filmmaker and film were nearly destroyed in the rubble.)

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Harki is Algerian for collaborator. Zenedine Zindane has publically refutted the accusation before.
 
“Zizou” Zidane could not even speak the word on TV when asked what taunt had provoked his now infamous headbutt in the last ten minutes of the World Cup. He would only say that Materazzi had insulted his mother and sister, three times.

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Of what good is another pro-war politician, be he a Republican or a Democrat? Colorado Springs congressional candidate Jay Fawcett is a revolving-door military contractor who is unapologetic about what the US is doing in Iraq. We’ve already got plenty of those in Washington. What do the Democrats of El Paso County gain by promoting another conservative schmo who is running on a platform of “smarter governance?”

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Complimentary t-shirt souvenirs for each world leader photographed next to Bush.

Who are the combatants fighting an illegal war? It’s US. The entire of the world, not including the Murdoch NewsCorp empire of Britain, Australia and the US, have declared the Iraq War to have been an illegal act of agression. Even the Secretary General of the U.N. stated as much. We’re quibbling about whether fighters captured in this war and in Afghanistan have to be considered legal combatants and subject to protection under the Geneva Conventions. We are asserting they do not.

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Knee-jerk patriots accuse critics of US actions of having nothing to suggest by way of alternatives. Indeed pseudo-rivals like the Democrats aren’t speaking any differently than the GOP.

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