Aid worker removes body from Qana rubble
"Not only do we feel sorrow for what happened in Qana, but also a determination that it is really important to remove the conditions that led to that."
Tony Snow, President Bush's spokesman
Washington Post
Naw, that was more than our despicable rulers could fathom. The Qana massacre is just another public relations problem to be managed on the way complete domination of uppity natives.
NO END TO BOMBING
Besides its announcement of a partial 48-hour suspension of bombing, Israel said it was giving a 24-hour window to allow aid workers to reach the worst hit areas and residents to flee.
But Israeli jets bombed targets in southern Lebanon, and the United Nations said access had not improved....
Israeli artillery shells hit two villages. An air strike on a Lebanese army vehicle killed one soldier and wounded three. Reuters, via Yahoo News
Sometimes there is not much left to say. One can only retreat into snark. Since 9/11, many well-meaning people have been at sea, confronted with a world in which there were no good guys to root for. Americans like to root for good guys, especially underdogs.
Our own U.S. government seems to have gone fully rogue, crashing around meaninglessly, stomping whoever gets in the way of a set of fantastical ambitions, perhaps in service of control of oil or perhaps about implanting nominal democracies led by compliant puppets. (Since none of it works, they just have to spin most news.)
Meanwhile, the forces that have created some friction in the imperial dreamscape, the Iraqi insurgency, various Islamists groups, don't inspire Westerners with progressive, feminist values. We must respect their right to define the destinies of their countries. We must recognize that Hamas and Hezbollah present a new challenge to our regime because they have won legitimacy from their own peoples in a region where most rulers have no credibility. Terrific Egyptian discussion of this point here.
But the rest of their package is not anything we can root for.
So what is to be done? Our project has to be in our "homeland" -- that quasi-fascist locution promoted by our current rulers. In the United States, our government enables and abets Israeli atrocities. We need to stop that. In the United States, our government threatens any state that won't play by our rules and invades when it dares, as in Iraq. We need to stop that. If we aren't working on it, we are part of the problem.
Ja, not only do we have to work in/on the Heimat, but it might help to work on something specific and local that would make a major difference just in its ripple effects.
ReplyDeleteLet's collaborate on a project.