rain on tin
lebanon links
In The New Yorker's online edition, neatly absconded between flashy adverts showing how beautifulhappysmart you could be, lies a gem of a column, Watching Lebanon: Washington's interests in Israel's war. The sources are a bit weak, but the story is believable.
An exceedingly rational and legalistic Stephen Shalom explains how a principled person should react to the situation in Lebanon, at least as it was a week ago. I finished the article feeling clarified. I have a tendency to side with the oppressed in any pair, to the point of concealing their crimes; Shalom transcends that. Nonviolence is a hard path. update: fixed the link to point to a full version of the article.
and a bonus
Guardian journalist Rory Carroll writes How I never quite fell for South Africa. The fellow's account is true and distressing in many ways. Life among South Africa's poor, yes; but the class distinction is what bothers me. Namibia is similar, in some places.
the next movement
I think I'm going to inflict myself on Paris this weekend, meeting up with a fellow wanderer on our third continent thus far. Provided that the train station still has some tix.
hacks
I moved guile-gnome to bazaar, away from arch. Arch is just too complicated. I never want to have to register an archive again.
The move is still experimental, awaiting a bit of feedback before I update the web site and such, but from the little time I have had with bzr (bazaar), I can say that it is much, much easier. I just don't think like Tom Lord does.
5 responses
Comments are closed.
If you are serious about moving away from Arch, you should try and fill out all the ghosts. The process is essentially:
1. for each Arch branch you have patch logs from, convert it to bzr format using "bzr baz-import-branch" as you did for the mainline.
2. in your mainline branch, run "bzr fetch-ghosts $convertedbranch" to pull in the missing revisions.
This will give you better "bzr annotate" output (and any other command that relies on having a full picture of the history), and is worth doing if you want to leave Arch behind entirely.
proper disclosure - I'm an israeli.
I've read the linked article.
It basically says - whatever happens, for any reason, israel cannot respond in any way but to surrender its interests.
Your soldiers got kidnapped from within your borders? (and 8 other killed, and rockets where shot at villages and cities - at the same time) too bad - negotiate.
Your neighbours can't decide (retroactively!) who owns what piece of land (although the un says its okay)? just give it
to the un (and other disputed territories, like tel-aviv).
new found national movement decides that jordanian and egyptian land is theirs? just give it to them!
some armed people are using civilian areas as launching spots or command centers? well, they've just gained immunity, other wise, just throw in all the ground forces you have, and they better come unarmed.
the associated press tv (aptn.com) and reuters where caught forging news reports? there must be some truth in all those lies. just accept it- a massacre is a massacare, even if one person died (fleeing from a battle zone initiated by your own side is the real holocaust, of course). it been done repeatedly? you're propably a very bad person
there's a country actively working toward nuclear weapons, and declares that your country must be wiped of the map? it's been mistranslated, and you'd better just curl down and die preemtively.
i haven't tested bzr yet, so i can't give an opinion on that.
sorry, curl up, not curl down. silly me
It's not just the insides of Wingo's nostrils that are pink.
Just so you know why Israel, and the US might be very interested in Hezbollah (btw, Lebanon and Hezbollah are two entirely different things...), and diminishing their strength, this is the guy who runs it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Nasrallah
I'd love it if pink fluffy bunnies were to rule the world, passing out chocolate and flowers to all who pass by, but that, sadly due to mans arrogance on all fronts, all issues, of all sorts, is not the case.
Unfortunatly, for the good of the nation as a whole, preemtive actions are sometimes assumed to be necessary in order to protect the people who pay taxes. Hezbollah is in no condition to ever be satisfied by any concessions made toward them, as per the comments of Mr. Nasallah himself, and more recently, the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That sort of biggoted, vile hatred towards another race is obviously going to be blinded from logic and reason, and will do God knows what in pursuit of their goal. That stated goal is to eliminate Israel.
It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure. I know from reading Lebanese and Israeli blogs, from people that live in the area who are going through these times, they all want it to be over. Almost every single Lebanese blogger I have ran across is contemptous to the point of being venomous against Hezbollah and it's agenda. They want no part of it, and the Lebanese people are victims of a radical factions dedication to wiping out Israel. It's true. I would say to you that if the article you read was clarifying then you should seek further clarification over the issue. The man writing the article had an agenda, clear, plain and simple. I always find it difficult to take an article as truth when the bias is so overwhelming. The people of Israel and Lebanon don't have 'spin', however, so you can get to the heart of the matter much more quickly than news outlets would allow.
I'm sure this will be tossed aside as the ravings of one who is pro Israel. I'm pro peace. But laying down, with your head on a chopping block is not my idea of peace, it's my idea of idiocy. If the people of this world were more like myself (not bragging, it is true), there would simply be no wars. I don't act on revenge, or hatred. I may feel the need to act on these, but I never do. Because it's destructive. This is on BOTH sides, in every single issue facing the world today which involves war. Tit for tat, all day long, leads to a long, bloody conflict where no one is the victor. That, the article had correct.
But to 'curl up' as my man said above, and offer no resistance to a faction that wants your elimination is, plain and simple, suicide. There hopefully will be peace when Hezbollah is dealt with. I pray that Lebanon will be strong enough to keep it, and Israel drops its arrogant nature, and embrace Lebanon. This cannot, and will not happen, with Hezbollah in place.