Wise

Wise words from Amos Oz on Israel (and a much more elegant summation of my feelings about drones in a previous post):

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Read the whole post - it sums up the situation in Israel and the problems it is facing as well as anything I've read.

Genius

Couldn't find the link but this tasty bit of news is from The Guardian's June 2nd International Edition:

The company has recruited as head of the firm's US media relations Anne Womack-Kolton who was then vice-president Dick Cheney's press secretary in the 2004 presidential election and later ran the public affairs arm of the energy department under George Bush.

Simply genius. It's becoming clearer and clearer why BP is in trouble. It's run by morally bankrupt idiots.

Drone on and on and on....

Andrew Sullivan makes a nifty moral calculation:

Increasingly, I feel the drone attacks may be our strongest technique against the enemy. As long as civilian casualties are kept as low as humanly possible. They are certainly more promising than an endless counter-insurgency in defense of a corrupt government.

Ahhh yes - "keeping civilian casualties as low as humanly possible" - If the drones only killed my innocent mother and sister but not 30 other innocent mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, I'm sure that I and my relatives, friends and neighbors wouldn't hate America at all - cause they're keeping civilian casualties as low as humanly possible. Good god. When are we going to realize that this struggle is not going to be won by occupying countries or sending in robotic killing machines spreading death indiscriminately? As fast as we kill one (and thirty other "deeply regrettable" civilian casualties) we create a new fertile pool of recruits. Have we simply resigned ourselves to a state of permanent war?

Detective

He walked out of his building on a hot, humid, bitch of a day. He looked at the long line of fresh, dry, black, brown, white, decaying dog shit up and down the street and said,

"Prague sucks."

Israel...

...while cleaning its gun and bragging about how its the toughest SOB in these parts shoots its friend in the head and then accidentally shoots itself in the foot. Immediately it starts jumping around howling in pain.

"You! You did it!" it says pointing frantically at the shocked onlookers.

"Wasn't me", the crowd mumbles back.

"You made me do it!" it retorts triumphantly.

The crowd looks, heads shake, backs turn. They leave sadly. Horrified.