Monday, July 24, 2006
Raffie's Rant (the middle East Conflict)
The following is posted on behalf of my friend Raffie.
My thoughts on the situation in my father's home country.
The basic version: it blows ass
The Raffie cynical version: might is right in this world my friends. Israel is the mighty so they can do what and as they please and the US is mightier and they support Israel so that compounds it.
The advanced version: the fact that the exercise is pointless and never going to achieve the (politically) stated objectives is moot, to start with.
So Israel says it want s to protect its borders by neutralizing Hezbollah right? My first premise is then what they should be doing is destroying Tehran (Iran) and Damascus(Syria) and not obliterating a defenseless country....not that Lebanon is exactly defenseless....it has 75000 ground troops, some helicopter gun ships, a few armored vehicles....but now Hezbollah is a real army more or less...populated by LEBANESE....yeah I said Lebanese, there may be a few Palestinians Syrians, and Iranians etc but essentially it is a militant Shiite Lebanese group that formed in the after math of the PLO leaving Lebanon in the 1982, the last time Israel went on an all out offensive inside Lebanon. Like then, all this current action will achieve is to push more Lebanese to hating Israel and thus give Syria and Iran more stupid asses to do their front work for them. Ironic how vicious the cycle actually is.
Which goes to my second premise, Syria and Iran can achieve their objective of attacking Israel without direct danger to them by using groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel can fool their population by saying they are defending them by then attacking these nicely set-up puppets (Hezbollah and Hamas).
Who benefits? Well Israel can remain a military state, the USA can continue to defend their support of Israel against “terrorists” and Syria and Iran continue to be heroes to the Islamic world.
Who suffers? In all of this it is Lebanon and the Lebanese people being punished by their own hate of Israel, no matter how justified, the stupidity of Hezbollah for not seeing that Syria and Iran are using them, the malice of Syria and Iran for using them and the cowardice of Israel for not attacking the true source of their worries...Syria and Iran. All that remains is to realize that the true powerbrokers in all of this remains the USA who actually have the power to fix all of this but then again that does not fit their current foreign policies.
And the average American voter/citizen/ accomplice by association had the nerve on 09/12/01 to ask “Why did they attack us? What did we do them?” Maybe it was “What we did not do for them?” to be asked.
Comment please.
My thoughts on the situation in my father's home country.
The basic version: it blows ass
The Raffie cynical version: might is right in this world my friends. Israel is the mighty so they can do what and as they please and the US is mightier and they support Israel so that compounds it.
The advanced version: the fact that the exercise is pointless and never going to achieve the (politically) stated objectives is moot, to start with.
So Israel says it want s to protect its borders by neutralizing Hezbollah right? My first premise is then what they should be doing is destroying Tehran (Iran) and Damascus(Syria) and not obliterating a defenseless country....not that Lebanon is exactly defenseless....it has 75000 ground troops, some helicopter gun ships, a few armored vehicles....but now Hezbollah is a real army more or less...populated by LEBANESE....yeah I said Lebanese, there may be a few Palestinians Syrians, and Iranians etc but essentially it is a militant Shiite Lebanese group that formed in the after math of the PLO leaving Lebanon in the 1982, the last time Israel went on an all out offensive inside Lebanon. Like then, all this current action will achieve is to push more Lebanese to hating Israel and thus give Syria and Iran more stupid asses to do their front work for them. Ironic how vicious the cycle actually is.
Which goes to my second premise, Syria and Iran can achieve their objective of attacking Israel without direct danger to them by using groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel can fool their population by saying they are defending them by then attacking these nicely set-up puppets (Hezbollah and Hamas).
Who benefits? Well Israel can remain a military state, the USA can continue to defend their support of Israel against “terrorists” and Syria and Iran continue to be heroes to the Islamic world.
Who suffers? In all of this it is Lebanon and the Lebanese people being punished by their own hate of Israel, no matter how justified, the stupidity of Hezbollah for not seeing that Syria and Iran are using them, the malice of Syria and Iran for using them and the cowardice of Israel for not attacking the true source of their worries...Syria and Iran. All that remains is to realize that the true powerbrokers in all of this remains the USA who actually have the power to fix all of this but then again that does not fit their current foreign policies.
And the average American voter/citizen/ accomplice by association had the nerve on 09/12/01 to ask “Why did they attack us? What did we do them?” Maybe it was “What we did not do for them?” to be asked.
Comment please.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Terrorist Zizou?
With France and Italy level in extra time of Sunday's World Cup final, Zinedine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi in the chest and was sent off. France went on to lose on penalty kicks.
"The Italians did everything they could do to provoke Zidane," France defender William Gallas said. Seconds before, Materazzi had wrapped his arm around Zidane just as a French attack on goal passed harmlessly by. The two exchanged words as they walked back up the field, well behind the play. Then, without warning, Zidane spun around, lowered his head and rammed Materazzi, knocking him to the ground.
The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA investigate and take any appropriate action.
Materazzi, meanwhile, was quoted as denying the terrorist comment. "It is absolutely not true, I didn't call him a terrorist, I don't know anything about that," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Materazzi as saying when he arrived with his team at an Italian military airfield. "What happened is what all the world saw live on TV," the Italian player said, referring to the head-butting.
Zidane's agent, Alain Migliaccio, was quoted by the BBC as saying the France captain told him the Italian "said something very serious to him, but he wouldn't tell me what.”. Whatever it was, it was enough to infuriate Zidane. Zidane's red card was anything but unusual. He was sent off 14 times in his career at the club and international level.
At the 1998 World Cup, he stomped on a Saudi Arabian opponent. Sitting out a two-match ban, he came back to score two goals against Brazil in the final. Five years ago with Juventus, he head-butted an opponent in a Champions League match against Hamburger SV after being tackled from behind.
"This morning, Zinedine, what do we tell our children, and all those for whom you were the living role model for all times?" French sports daily L'Equipe wrote. Zidane, whose parents emigrated to France from Algeria, became a proud symbol of a multicultural France and is adored in Algeria.
In the mountains where Zidane's parents grew up, Atmanne Chelouah carried off a life-size cardboard cutout of the player at "Cafe Zizou" after the red card. "We are very disappointed," Chelouah said. "He should have kept his cool."
But lashing out is nothing new to Zidane, who grew up playing on concrete in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood of Marseille, where fouls and insults are met with instant retribution. "You can take the man out of the rough neighborhood, but you can't take the rough neighborhood out of the man," striker Thierry Henry said Sunday.
According to the dictionary:
a terrorist is somebody who uses violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, to intimidate
a head-butt means to hit somebody a deliberate hard blow with the forehead or the top of the head.
Leave your comments.
