I'm sick of it. Sick of Bush and Kerry. Sick of their wives. Sick of Cheney and Edwards. And their wives.
Sick of the spinners, who, in plain English, are liars.
I'm sick of the cable TV yellers, who try to make up in heat what they don't have in light.
I'm sick of being told Jon Stewart is funny. I'm even sick of thinking about whether Jon Stewart is funny.
I just want it to be over.
[.....] I'm sick of Kerry pretending to be a normal guy. Killing a goose to get the gun vote. Saying, "Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?" to get the racing vote.
President Bush bugs me, too. He and his Stepford Wife were on a stage in front of bales of hay. I'm thinking about the poor shlub who had to carry the hay so Bush could stand in front of it. That's the one job that won't be outsourced.
I'm sick of celebrities telling me whom to vote for. And of best seller lists gummed up with propaganda.
Wrong War Bloomberg reports on a scientificstudy by reserarchers from the Johns Hopkins University and being published by The Lancet, which says, in part,
About 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war in Iraq
[...] The study, based on a survey comparing mortality rates in Iraq during the 15 months before and 18 months after the March 2003 invasion, found violence was the leading cause of death after the invasion. The majority of the civilian deaths were women and children, said the study, led by Hopkins' Les Roberts.
Most of the casualties occurred after the end of major hostilities in May 2003, researchers said in the study. Observations suggest that civilian deaths since the war are mostly caused by air strikes, the survey said. Two-thirds of the deaths were in the insurgent-held Sunni Muslim Iraqi city of Fallujah, the study said.
my emphasis - ub
I'm not sure how close to reality that horrifying figure is but I'm just wondering if there is a standard by which this thing is measured, say X of your people are worth Y of ours? I'm wondering if Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney have these little books of equations where they calculate such figures before launching a war? Or do they just go by conviction, belief and bad planning? Wrong approaches both, to fighting a war.
posted by ubaid - at 10:09 PM -
0 comments -
post anonymously
Killing Children I have mentioned before the IDF's steady loss of moral clarity in its actions against the Palestinians and its out of proportion reaction to the most minor of infractions. This piece in the Haaretz talks about how easy it has become for Israeli troops to shoot and kill Palestinian children, how it's done with scant concern or fear of repercussion, under the guise of fighting the intifada and crushing the terrorists in the occupied territories and the Gaza strip.
More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors.
[.....] Muatez Amudi and Subah Subah were killed by a soldier who was standing in the village square in Burkin and fired every which way in the wake of stone-throwing. Radir Mohammed from Khan Yunis refugee camp was in a school classroom when soldiers shot her to death. She was 12 when she died. All of them were innocent of wrongdoing and were killed by soldiers acting in our name.
At least in some of these cases it was clear to the soldiers that they were shooting at children, but that didn't stop them. Palestinian children have no refuge: mortal danger lurks for them in their homes, in their schools and on their streets. Not one of the hundreds of children who have been killed deserved to die, and the responsibility for their killing cannot remain anonymous. Thus the message is conveyed to the soldiers: it's no tragedy to kill children and none of you is guilty.
The relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a constantly deteriorating mess and I don't see it moving toward any kind of resolution any time soon.
posted by ubaid - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 at 11:36 PM -
0 comments -
post anonymously
Cruiser Cruiser, Third Street Promenade, 10/9/2004
posted by ubaid - Sunday, October 17, 2004 at 4:39 AM -
0 comments -
post anonymously
