Whose War is it, Anyway?

The American Way of Life is non-negotiable" -- President George Bush (Sr.) at the Earth Summit on the Environment (Rio de Janiero, 1992)

How many terrorist attacks has the US actually had on its soil? One. In all its history, ONE. How many Iraqis die because of the US 'war on terror'? 655,000. How many Iraqi troops? 30,000. How many U.S soldiers? 3,123. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHOSE WAR IS THIS, ANYWAY?
And for Afghanistan, (yeah, remember that country?) I can't even find a reliable estimate. If someone out there has one I'll be very glad if you sent it in.
Is this the most-underreported story of 2006? What do you think?

Fox Attack!

So, John Kasich. Now that guy's in a class by himself. Check out a segment from his show, 'the Heartland', on, (you guessed it, Fox) called 'Jesus and Judas', in which Kasich and his guest, (the director of a Nat Geo docu which said that Jesus and Judas were friends) had a shouting match while a priest looked benignly on.



Here's my favourite part:

Kasich: Okay, doctor (who is he calling doctor?) you have the Da Vinci code, okay, which was inspired by the gnostics, okay, then you had a book that came out (...) called I think the Jesus papers, okay, and this books says that Jesus didn't die on the cross, i mean, that he got punctured and everything, but he didn't die. I mean, you know, insanity. It seems to me that there is a basic attack on some of the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Why is this happening?

Kasich then goes on to basically attack poor James Barratt, turning pinker and more slack-jawed with every word.

Barratt: There were more than thirty gospels and in the early days of Christianity they were basically competing for supremacy..
Kasich: You're dead wrong. If you believe that Jesus' best friend was Judas, it's not the case, Sir,
Barratt: But what are you basing it on?
Kasich: This stuff is nonsense. We're going to have to stop it there.

Now that's good TV.

Paati...

The first time I met Paati, I was twelve years old, and riding an old yellow school bus. The bus was the one that I took to school every morning and every evening, and if I had to pick one place not to receive the revelation of the meaning of life, that would have been it. It was a rickety, creaking, huge monster the colour of particularly fresh excrement. It smelt of generations of children who had been rolling around in the same playgrounds, children who had been sick, children whose idea of a game was to stick their eraser up their neighbour’s nose, and then make them lick it off. Children who grew up, and sent children of their own on the bus.
The bus was supervised by an old mountain of a woman, who sat in front, taking up two whole seats. She was always dressed in silk sarees in the colours of food: the flagrant yellow of turmeric, the rich, self-satisfied purple of brinjal glowing in the reflected light of a wood stove in a shadowy kitchen, the wicked red of chillies dried in a relentless sun, the yellow of three-day old lemons, handed out at weddings for good luck. Her hair, (of which we firmly believed she had only three strands carefully combed over a smooth, shining oval scalp) was the exact color of the sacred ash that was generously applied on her forehead. Her palms were thickened with the beatings she had faithfully delivered to thousands of tiny passengers, her feet calloused from walking up and down the rough rubber carpeting of her beloved bus, and her name was Paati. Grandmother. At the end of every month, when the receipts were handed back signed Yogambal, we would all stare confusedly at it, wondering who this Yogambal was who signed Paati’s cards. All children were frightened of her, and she hated all children. It was a perfectly symbiotic relationship, and everyone understood everyone else.