I'm Signin' In

I'm signin' in, as opposed to signin' up. I notice that the "1000 Jobs in the C.A.F." sign out front of the local menage militaire is gone! Either they got the quota, or they don't have the job funding any more. The world seems much in need of 'sojers' right now.

Since last I was griping, the middle east seems to have hit 'boil', two Mounties shot out West, Canadians being rescued from Lebanon, and another 'baby' tsunami in the Andaman Sea. I've got some yappin' to do about most of this and maybe a few words in praise of my favorite city - Tronna. Oh yeah, there's a BIG AIDS conference going on - hear about it?


I guess the 'biggie' right now is how Israel is fillin' in her neighbours, or rather her terrorist neighbours. This has been in the works since the Gazaians (?) elected themselves a Hamas government. Hamas is one of the Palestinian factions - aimed at giving the 'Zionists' the old heave-ho. With that kind of attitude the Israelis will not have any part.

So they did something that would show the newboys who was boss. They withheld the money. Israel collects all the PLA's taxes for them and uses them to fund the Palestinian government. Either they don't take enough (their story) or they put it into the 'general revenue' account (other side), but the world and the UN have been keeping the Palestinian basket cases afloat since the 50's. Well, no money means a world relief effort well-watched by Israeli customs. Now this should be seen against the backdrop of the wonderful generosity of the Israelis in withdrawing from some Palestinian territory they'd been squatting-on, this time last year. The same thing was supposed to happen in parts of the West Bank but only just began when a minor adjustment to the great retaining wall nipped-off another little Arab enclave
and scuppered the works. Next thing the regime change, some sanctions - some rockets - some artillery work - some kidnapping, and then the whole shebang reverts to the 50's - deja vu.

Hezbolleh - the Lebanese Shiite group who claim to have driven the 'Zionists' out of Lebanon in 2000 - decide they'd like to get in on the easy pickings, so they do a raid and kidnap a soldier, too. That does it - Israel pummels Lebanon - isolating it and wrecking infrastructure. Hezbolleh thumbs its nose and rockets northern Israel, including Nazareth and Haifa. A land incursion follows, followed by a return to 1972 and the last Lebanese tour, which lasted 18 years!

Israel seems to think that if they hit their enemy hard enough, he'll quit. That seemed to work with regular armies and the Israelis have been quite successful at it. But the 'terrorist' groups are quite a different entity. Arafat clung on like a louse for 30 years, even though full pest-control measures were in effect. He succeeded to a kind of ugly-looking-statesman status. Remember him at the UN with that horse pistol on his belt? But you couldn't help but think that shooting that thing would probably have hurt Yassir.

Anyhow, he said he would live in peace with Israel, in his own little private country, and the Israelis were almost talked into it. But Yassir wasn't as grateful as they thought he should be, and started acting like he ruled something. Well Israel wouldn't have any part of an attitude like that ......

So here we go again. You got the Yanks worried that Iran has a 'nuculer' missile and will lob it into Israel, which then would want to nuke the Arab world. Or maybe America should nuke Iran as a preemptive strike! There are actually idiots proposing this be done! Anyway America has given Israel a week or so to 'git 'er done!' Considering the Yanks haven't been real good at doing that themselves, we'll have to see how long Israel takes, and if she does.

Which brings us to Canadians in the middle of things. Another blog!