Lewis's favourite books

Lewis likes the books

• Poppleton in Winter, about a pig and his friends. Not sure why he likes it, but the stories are pleasant.
  
• The Adventures of a Nose, about a nose who wants to "fit in by sticking out". In each picture the nose is surrounded by objects that serve to frame it as a nose in a face. Lewis requests this one every night. I think he's fascinated by seeing an anthropomorphic nose and its framing within each picture.
  
• Yum Yum Dim Sum, about all the foods that one can get when having a dim sum dinner. The pictures are photos of carefully crafted paper art. Lewis loves the pictures.

Janneke

Janneke was working on a magick trick the other day, trying to make a bead disappear. It worked! She lost track of the bead and only found it later five feet away. The funny thing is that when the bead disappeared she figured that she had somehow performed magick and decided to look in her ear to see if it had been transported there.

Ruminations on terrorism by an Iraqi blogger

... I try to imagine what would happen to me, personally, should this occur. How long would it take for the need for revenge to settle in? How long would it take to be recruited by someone who looks for people who have nothing to lose? People who lost it all to one blow. What I think the world doesn’t understand is that people don’t become suicide bombers because- like the world is told- they get seventy or however many virgins in paradise. People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.

I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…

But I completely understand how people get there.

New PQ leader

Quebec's separatists are counting on a politician who admits to snorting cocaine to win independence, writes Anne McIlroy.

"Snorting cocaine to win independence". I see more than one interpretation of this phrase. Will PQ politicians also torture kittens to win independence? Who knows how low they'll stoop.

Weasel words

From MSNBC

“There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using ‘outlawed’ weapons in Fallujah,” the department said. “The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq.”

Venable said white phosphorus shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.

From the Christian Science Monitor

But they do raise the issue of the military's judgment. Because fires can burn out of control during a battle, the Convention on Conventional Weapons in 1980 banned the use of incendiary devices, like white phosphorous, in heavily populated areas. America, however, did not sign the agreement.

Ah. The US also decided not to sign on to this treaty's prohibition of the use of lasers. Nor has the US signed on to the land mine treaty. If the US wants the "freedom" to use phosphoros weapons in populated areas it should not complain when it's vilified for doing so.

The US is a very powerful and influential nation. I like the US and am married into an American family. I have deep emotional ties to the US. That's why, I suppose, I'm so bothered when the US passes up the opportunity to show leadership in the restraint area. They can do better than that and could help others see how to do so as well.

Lewis

Lewis put a bead up his nose Monday and became, understandably, rather distressed. Nancy called me and I told her how to make a rounded hook out of a paperclip. I saw the doctor do this last time Lewis stuck a bead up his nose. Several hours in the emergency room avoided. Lewis is now probably old enough to remember not to put more things up his nose.

White phosporous

The Globe reports on the US military's response to an Italian news article on the use of white phosphorous in its assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujeh.

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the authors wrote. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]" munitions.

One man's psychological weapon is another's weapon of terror. Is napalm sprayed at civilians a psychological weapon? Is the weapon "psychological" when used against "enemy combatants" and one "of terror" when used against civilians? Perhaps it's difficult to only burn the flesh off the bad guys when you're assaulting a city. Perhaps people might not like the United States after seeing their family members scream in agony as phosphorous burned them to the bone despite attempts to smother it or immersing it in water.

Military invasion is not a "surgical" tool for peacebuilding. It should be a last resort, carried out with a heavy heart. The world is not a chess board, but rather filled with actual real people. People cannot really create reality through the might and power of their wonderful empire.