Stop the Lies

The 'myth':

Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending . . . among women and children...
Jan Egeland, UN head of humanitarian affairs

Something probably closer to the 'truth':

Hezbollah fighters [...] avoid civilians like the plague. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.
Mitch Prothero (link via Informed Comment)

Here I am! Kill me, please!

The implication of Egeland’s cowardly statement seems to be that any Lebanese fighter, or Palestinian one, resisting Israel and its powerful military should stand in an open field, his rifle raised to the sky, waiting to see who fares worse in a shoot-out with an Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter jet. Hizbullah’s reluctance to conduct the war in this manner, we are supposed to infer, is proof that they are terrorists.
Jonathan Cook

Is it live, or is it Memorex?

My good friend Pierre over at Loser's Guide posted this interesting comment today about a movie review he read at Salon (the name of this Tunisian movie is Satin Rouge). Pierre informs us that the review "... dutifully belabours the fact that many Tunisians are Muslim [...] even though this movie is about friendship, middle age and loneliness," and then presents us with this little chestnut of a quote (with "righteous parentheses"!):

(Even if Islam as a religion doesn't necessarily preach misogyny, if one of its cultural interpretations is that a woman should be sentenced to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock, there's no other word to use.)

Now let me quote Pierre:

I don't know. What do you call a religion that demands the death penalty thusly (Deuteronomy 22:20-21):

But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:

Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.

As Pierre informs us, "And there's a lot more where that came from."
And then we have this story from Media Matters for America (link via SIVACRACY):

For the second time in three days, CNN featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East. The July 26 edition of CNN's Live From ... featured a nine-minute segment in which anchor Kyra Phillips discussed the Apocalypse and the Middle East with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh. At one point in the discussion, Phillips asked Rosenberg whether she needed "to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done," to which Rosenberg replied: "Well, that would be a good start." Throughout the segment, the onscreen text read: "Apocalypse Now?"

As Media Matters for America documented, the July 24 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now featured a segment examining what "the Book of Revelation tell[s] us about what's happening right now in the Middle East." CNN re-aired this segment the next day. Media Matters also noted that Rosenberg is just one of several conservative media figures who have identified and expounded upon the purported signs of the Apocalypse to be found in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During his appearance on Live From ..., Rosenberg claimed that he had been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill, and the CIA to discuss the Rapture and the Middle East, and noted -- several times -- that the apocalyptic events described in his novels keep coming true.

So, CNN is giving serious coverage to the impending apocalypse? Is this what passes for news in the United States of America these days? Maybe the apocalypse ain't so far away after all... Japan seems saner the longer I live here...

My Head Hurts

I've been too busy reading (pretty much exclusively about this) the past few days to post anything new here. I feel a kind of mental 'paradigm shift' coming on. This happens periodically, and when it's over the world looks different to me (not necessarily better or worse, just different). In the meantime, it's a bit unsettling, and somewhat paralyzing, because right now I'm not sure what I think about anything. It's not any kind of real 'condition' or anything. This is just what happens to me when I'm about to change some long-held opinion or belief. I'm very unhappy about what's happening in Lebanon...
Anyway, I expect to be back real soon...

Meanwhile, in Iraq...

... we've been hearing about kidnappers threatening to kill their peace activist hostages, more US marines killed by roadside bombs, and an ambush by militants that killed 19 Iraqi soldiers. Not so widely reported was the broken mirror on a Japanese Ground Defense Force vehicle, inflicted by stone-throwing protesters in Samawah on Sunday. How are these events connected and what does it all mean? I leave that to you, dear reader...

A Tale Told by a Fool...[to an Idiot]... Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

According to WorldNetDaily, Al-Qaida has a plan in the works that will kill 100,000 Americans, apparently sometime during Ramadan. "An al-Qaida commander in Iraq close to Osama bin Laden" claims that the attack will "amaze the world and turn al-Qaida into [an organization that] horrifies the world until the law of Allah is implemented [...]". Whatever...