After days of bombing raids across the border into Canada, centered on highly populated areas of Toronto, US tanks and armoured personnel carriers crossed the border at Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, Lewiston, and Windsor today moving the heavy artillery and ground forces into the areas inside Canada that have been the source of missel launches in recent weeks. For two weeks preceding the bombing raids into Canada missiles have been flying from various places in the Toronto and Hamilton area into the United States. While most of the missiles have hit farm land and lower populated areas, air raid sirens have filled the night air since before Christmas as over 200 missiles were launched from terrorist forces inside Canada. While the Canadian government and the Canadian military are not being blamed for the missile attacks on the US, the retaliation has resulted in many civilian Canadian deaths.
After 7 years of consistent terrorism by missile attacks and suicide bombers from inside Canada, the US has finally decided that the terror must stop. As the international community wrestles with the issues involved in the retaliatory action, the US continues to attack the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario relentlessly.
Sounds crazy? Yes... it is. And no this scenario is not exactly the same as the complex set of circumstances between Israel and Hamas that has Gaza caught in the cross hairs but looking at this this way takes away the strange "bent" the American media's coverage of the situation. I thought I'd lost my mind when I woke up one morning to see Israel bombing Gaza. I had to DIG to find out that for TWO WEEKS the missiles had been coming over the border into Israel, over 200 in that shor time... more than a dozen missiles a day for two weeks. Can you imagine the terror?
I'm sick for the Palestinian people. My heart aches for the destruction that is resulting from the retaliation. And my heart aches for the soldiers in the IDF who fights this war in heavily populated areas. I think of the parents gathering their children into basement bunkers more than once a day, everyday, to keep them safe from that one missile that hits it's mark.
I'm not against Palestine, not at all. I think the Palestinians deserve a homeland. It was a horrible mistake not to make that part of the post WWII division of land in the region. But just change the names and faces just a little.... and it's easy to see how it has evolved in these past few weeks. Hamas fired missiles into Israel today. They vowed to make Gaza a cemetary for the IDF. And it is becoming a graveyard for the Palestinian people.
Pray for peace. Pray for peace. Pray for peace. The protests are becoming larger, anti-semitism is enjoying a comeback. I do not defend Israel in all that they do. But Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself.
We need only look at what the US military did to Afghanistan and Iraq in the service of fighting terrorism to see the pattern. And all this on the day that Al Franken becomes a US Senator. What's next? Rachel Maddow for president?
Pray for peace.



Adam Loses: Don't Ask Don't Tell Wins the Day
I'd never watched American Idol in my life until this season. My companion in Boston coaxed me into watching by getting me to sit through a couple of early shows and we laughed our faces off. I love to laugh and watching those early shows were fun and seemed harmless. My travel schedule got really busy and I missed a lot but by the time my regular trips to Boston resumed, Adam Lambert had begun to emerge as a superstar. She sat me down in front of a TiVo'd episode and my jaw dropped. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. How long has it been since a bonafide superstar rose up? Fresh, funky, queer, sweet, original, super talented, gorgeous, did I say sweet? I was over the moon for the kid from the first song I saw/ heard him sing. I was one of those middle aged women groupies the bloggers talked about.
I never heard him say anything about being gay but this kid was obvioulsy very queer. I didn't give a flip whether he identifies as gay, straight, bi, trans.... whatever. He's amazing and I could not wait for Tuesday night to roll around so I could see what he would do next. It was a treat to sit and wait for his original arrangments, his unique phrasing, and his magnificent voice. I began to describe him as the love child of Elvis and Freddie Mercury. He blew me away.
The fact that he did NOT win the American Idol competition is proof positive that "Idol" is a crock. Yes, yes, I know it's all about the voting. But this guy was so far above the rest of the class that even they knew it. Only near the end did I realize that there was an entire subculture of hate and homophobia that was operating against him the whole time.
Pardon me but I live in Canada and spend half my time in Boston and I just forget that most of the US is full of homophobic folk who will go out of their way to express their moral high ground by running down anyone who doesn't fit their male masculine/female feminine binary gender construct. He never made any issue of his sexuality or gender identity one way or another. But his "difference" made him suspect. And suspect is all that is needed when bigotry is involved.
Lt. Choi is an asset to the security of the United States. So why is he being thrown out of the military? Because he dared to say, out loud and in public, that he is a gay man. Ooooooo scary. That is really a frightening prospect. He might actually translate a message that will allow us to stop an actual terror attack by radical haters of the United States and then go home and cook dinner with his male partner and (horrors) lie down in the same bed with him and rest so that he can get up and go to work protecting our country again the next day. OMG! Call somebody! We cannot have this!
Really people, what are we doing here?
Get off your duff and write your congressman and senators. Call the White House (ask for the comment line when the very rude man answers the phone or he'll cut you off in mid sentence... yes, yes... in the Obama White House). Log on to KnightsOut.org and click the "Take Action" tab. And talk to your friends, your kids, your family and bring this ridiculous madness out of the closet.
The security of the United States is important to every citizen of the US and to most of the rest of the world as well because we are a symbol of democracy. Should we really sacrifice security for moralistic bigotry? Get real.
Posted at 09:14 PM in Political Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)