In here and Out There

Suspicious mole is acting suspiciously! It's definitely darker and raised where it used to be flat. Looking closely it seems to be bleeding a miniscule amount, which indicates some wee buggy nosh, but time for the doctor anyway.

Edited to add: The top's just come off it! Ow!

Tiny non problems; Looking out there is something else.

Almost impossible to talk about Gaza, like one of those nightmares you wake out of only to find you are still dreaming. One thing I have learned; it is no good just trusting one news outlet anymore. This is what Twitter can actually do; most of it is not good hard journalism but it's real, it's on the ground, and you can move from source to source quickly if you want to, from Al Jazeera to the Beeb to Reuters to Sky...probably not Fox though. Fox news exists to show us what happens if we give up on journalism altogether. I blame Russell Brand for making me watch it.

There is a lot of sifting to be done. Avoiding the photographs is impossible, and the rabid are out in force, from anti-semites and holocaust deniers to Israel's own far right, who seem to lack perspective in more ways than one; The Times of Israel ran an article entitled 'When Genocide is Permissible.' I read it before it was pulled, and swear it left me wondering if I had woken up in a parallel universe. It bodes well that someone had the sense to remove the piece, but even among the apparently rational there's some very strange reasoning out there.

This is an excerpt from one discussion on the Huffpost.

[Commentator to Boot] A lot of what you say is sensible. It is not the ordinary citizens of Gaza that are necessarily the enemies of Israel, it is the groups that are bent on destroying Israel, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Unfortunately, they are in control right now, and they have been poisoning the minds of their civilians for a very long time, so many of the civilians support them. They did get elected, remember?

Israel, and the rest of the world, tried to help make Gaza into a peaceful, thriving state. When Israel left in 2005, they left behind millions of dollars worth of greenhouses and farming equipment. The world sent billions of dollars in aid money. The greenhouses were destroyed, the corrupt leaders stole a lot of the aid money for themselves, and then spent the rest of it on weapons and terrorist infrastructure like tunnels, instead of civilian infrastructure to build a state and support the people.

If this problem is ever going to end, several things need to happen:

1) We (the world) need to get the terrorists out of power there. They cannot be the political leaders, they cannot run the schools and the mosques, they cannot run the television and radio stations. The next generation needs to be raised without the hate-filled brainwashing that led this generation to support terrorists.

2) The people who take over power need to be under regular oversight, to make sure they do not continue the pattern of corruption and diversion of funds to terror. I would like to see oversight from the US or perhaps Canada, or some combination of countries that have NOT shown a strong anti-Israel bias. (The last time UN troops had "oversight" that affected Israel's security, they either actively helped the terrorists, or turned a blind eye to their activities; that can't be allowed to happen again).

3) Emerging terror cells or movements need to be stopped quickly and effectively, before they can gain traction. This requires good intelligence sources.

4) The blockade needs to stay in place, for now, allowing civilian goods through but preventing more weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists. As a new generation discovers the benefits of peaceful coexistence, the blockade can be lifted


This was a perfectly amicable if surreal exchange; it is just the most extraordinary list. I read it a few times thinking, 'But you can't have this, can't you see why?' We were looking at the Minipax, Minitru, Miniluv and Miniplenty all coming together to socially engineer a nation-state over generations; all it needed was a little touch of Aldous, vats of genetically modified Palestinians designed and trained to think only good thoughts, and we would finally have peace in our time. Whut? Whut?

I don't think she meant harm and she didn't seem irrational or furious. I think she just genuinely believed that Palestinians had been extremely naughty and foolish and needed long term correction by Israel and all Israel's friends. Has any stable society ever come into being that way? We all live in our own mythologies I guess, myself as much as anyone else. Gaza though, Gaza is real.