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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Mars, God of War - Velázquez
Reuter's well-publicized problem with a Photoshopping photographer, analysed here in detail and continuing conflicting reports on casualty numbers provide a good argument for multiple sourcing for information and in all fairness very few sane people have time for that.
And there is little shortage of opinion based on all this unreliable info. One article I read today was a scathing criticism of Lebanese leadership by Michael Béhé, The most hypocritical people on earth. It's not unreasonable for Béhé to demand an accounting from his government as to how Hezbollah managed to create its own state within Lebanon, but when his self-assured diatribe extends further on to statements like this, I am really appalled.
"All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: Last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 p.m. to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not?All is right with the world when your fave restaurant is busy and nothing helps your argument as much as trivializing other people's suffering.
Of course, there are some 500,000 refugees from the south who are experiencing a veritable tragedy and who are not smiling. But Jean Tsadik, who has his eyes fixed on Kfar Kileh, and from whom I have learned to believe each word he says, assures me that practically all the houses of the aforesaid refugees are intact. So they will be able to come back as soon as Hezbollah is vanquished."
A different article, and an opposing POV, A Foolhardy Wars, Unleased by Fools by Eric Margolis contains this statement:
"A number of respected press agencies have reported the skirmish that triggered this war didn’t occur in Israel, as Israel claims, but just inside Lebanon."I read this same assertion several days ago, and at that time it was only attributed to one French blogger. Since then I have read multiple references to it always prefaced with: "some say...", "it has been reported in Europe that ...", etc. it's downright viral, but if it was slightly verifiable, you'd think that Al Jazeera would have led with it as a headline on day 1 of this war.
Those complaints aside, I did read Retaliation’s Mutual Injustice by Pierre Tristam posted on his site Candide's Notebooks.
Elsewhere on his site, he wrote this intro to two responses on a previous essay of his:
"The focus on Lebanon in the last three weeks has generated what no discussion about the Levant has managed to avoid since the third day of creation (did God create oranges first that day, or lemons? Citrus groves have been waging their own intifadas over that one ever since). Namely: disagreement. I post here two of the more compelling recent comments, one by an American married to a Lebanese Christian, disagreeing with my characterization of Hezbollah as, among other things, a Shiite Taliban. The other, by one of our friends at Jewlicious, disagreeing with my take on Israeli designs as described in yesterday’s piece. I don’t think anything said in these letters in invalid, which reinforces a point essential to an eventual peace, if we’re ever to have it in Lebanon and the rest of the place still embarrassingly called Holy: differences of opinion and interpretation are not barriers to co-existence. They’re only proof that pluralism needn’t be lovey dovey to be civil, and even—as in a Pirandello play, but with real lives at stake—to find a common stage.
Pierre Tristam just won me over and I haven't even read the original essay yet.
Recent Ontario news.
Yup, I got nothing. (though I should ask my brothers to buy me a chainsaw next Christmas)