Sorry I haven't blogged as of late. I was too busy having fun.
For the first time in Iraq's history, Christmas has been declared a public holiday. Iraqi Christians are still wary, however, due to sectarian violence perpetrated by those who abhor anything not Islamic. This kind of attitude wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else. I have yet to hear Washington Post or Christopher Hitchens say anything. I don't think I ever will.
In Bosnia, things got rather heated when Santa Claus did not appear in local kindergartens. Parents protested the ill-favoured political correctness that racks Western institutions. This proves, I feel, that adults from every walk of life and every stripe can decide what is good for their children and not ban Christmas. God bless us, everyone.
To further prove the goodness of Christmas, candy canes (specifically, the peppermint oil in them) kill germs and settle stomachs, and mistletoe helps cancer patients. Is there anything Christmas can't do?
And now for less pleasant stuff.
The horrendous pounding of the Gaza Strip shows once more how the West refuses to see how Hamas uses the Palestinians as sandbags in its "war" against Jews (not Israelis, Jews). Israel is being battered by the international community because it possesses the temerity to fight for itself.
We must keep in mind these things:
-Israel is its own state with freedoms that exist nowhere else in the Middle East.
-the Palestinian leadership cares not a whit about the human sandbags they string along, and they never have. Everyone who is not them will suffer. A new code in Sharia law has allowed for crucifixion, an ultimate blasphemy in both legal and cosmological terms.
-the Palestinians, indeed, everyone in the Middle East, will always be a small people because they can never forge their own destiny. They instead kill their own children, smash greenhouses and throw rocks at armed soldiers. Not even other Arabs like them (not surprising considering the slavery and maltreatment throughout the region). The Palestinians can throw bombs but can't beg for help from their Muslim neighbours.
Should Israel stop? I think not. Time and again they've waited for peace and all they've gotten for their trouble is Hamas. when Hamas goes, maybe then things will be different.
For some reason, Stalin was voted third best Russian ever in a rather tilted contest. Joseph Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions, engineer of the Great Terror, butcher and tyrant, happens to have surpassed in glory to Shostakovich, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak (both of whom must have had a special place for Stalin), Peter the Great, even Pavel Chekov (yes, I know...). Only in Putin's Russia can such a thing happen. Maybe Ukraine can rehash the glorious memories of its Orange Revolution or when Irakli Tsirekidze, the Georgian judo Olympian, destroyed Ivan Pershin, the Russian one. I do hope Japan is up for rubbing the Russo-Japanese War in Russia's face. Nothing says "your empire is a rotten one" like a history lesson.
In conclusion, check out this old picture I took while in Nagasaki (which, for a time, was the only port open to foreigners). This sign informs visitors that a Russian mission once landed there.
1 comment:
Where is this Islamic sense of charity, fraternity and compassion when it comes to welcoming Palestinian 'refugees'? It would seem completely absurd if a Canadian or Australian of Irish origin would protest Britain's Parliament demanding rights for lands that were taken from their ancestors. Herein lies the difference; civilized people pick up the pieces and forge a culture while savages go on murdering sprees. It is clear that their agenda is not rights to land but the annihilation of Jewish people.
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