Major news is that the Great Experiment will be tried this Christmas . . . a grand moment in history. Taishi will be taking his first flight . . . alone. I could go back and check the records, but it seems to me that the little tyke has probably flown on more airplanes in his tiny ten-year span than I had when his age . . . okay, maybe a few less flights but probably a lot more miles. Back then, to get from Calcutta to California, even in a 707, you had about six stops just to refuel. That's why I can say with all honesty that I've been to Baghdad, Karachi, Dhaka, Istanbul and by gum, Josef Tito's Belgrade -- I just didn't get off the plane at some of them (I was afraid in Baghdad, but only of Ali Baba and his 40 thieves, not Saddam and his 10,000 thieves).
But yes, this will be his first, all alone. It should be a no-brainer. It's from Osaka-Kansai to SFO direct and there will be a lot of meet-and-greeting, but it damn near saves me $4000 if you count hotel, meals and transportation, a very welcome harbinger of the future -- to get to Montreal it will only be for me to fly to Seattle or Vancouver -- Tai-chan will be doing the heavy lifting. As far as how I'm going to fare going all the way to the west coast and come back on the same day -- with stops it's still around a 9 - 10-hour jaunt -- but it saves so much unimaginable time and money.
And it will be the first time I've been back to California in almost three years. I'm sure my family won't be too thrilled to see me but they're slavering to see Tai-chan.
Let's just hope I survive the jaunt on September 10 to Japan and back . . . my sister, who works as a supervisor for Homeland Security, ominously warned me that I'd better get my shit wired tight because there's a small, uh, anniversary right around thereabouts. I am desperately hoping that I will be seeing the backside of Japan for, like, maybe 50 years or so. To tell the truth, I really have no idea what toll these trips to Japan and back for the past 8-odd years have taken on me -- let's just say that it's been a continual circle of Life Interrupted, with plans continually being put on hold and getting wrenched askew just when I've gotten back into something of a routine.
I just don't know how people who work on ships for months away from their homes and family do it -- I'd go berserk. It would be either home and family or ship -- I couldn't do both.
Ships. Now I remember why I'm here tonight. You know by now that I'm pretty much apolitical -- I just tune out when the word "election" comes onto the scene in any format and I couldn't give a flying F who's in power -- liberals, democrats, republican liberals, licentiotarians, totalitarians, whatever. Same guys, different spots.
So you can imagine that I'm the same way about religion -- same guys, same spots. I really couldn't give an f-bomb (see how bizarrely restrained I'm being today, Flock? I guess it's Expletive Deleted Day for some inexplicable reason). But when the twain meet, I get seriously annoyed.
Especially when the hypocrisy level rises above the usual normal -- high. Before I met Brigitte, who's Jewish, I was basically just merely annoyed at both religions/politics -- Judaism, Islam. I just basically thought about it like, why can't you guys both just shut up and get along?
But being aware of Israel, as opposed of just Judaism, and a renewed look at the Holocaust, has led me to very different conclusions. I won't go into it in any great detail, but, as an ad in the NY Times said today (sorry, tried to get a link but you'll find it), where are the flotillas to Syria? And it goes on to list a large number, most of but not all, Islamic-run countries whose populaces live under a litany of horrors ranging from mere starvation to state-sponsored mass murder, torture and imprisonment, and it struck me that where's all the hoopla given to that joke of those lunatic-fringe Flotilla to Gaza people when it comes to, say, Libya?
This time there's no Bush demon, no WMDs, practically no American and absolutely no Israeli involvement, yet where's the indignation? The intervention of oil-rich pseudo-theocracies such as Saudi Arabia, Arab Emirates, Dubai yada yada, coming to the aid of their oppressed brethren? It appears they have little, if anything to say as they build their absurd palaces in the desert, ski resorts in Dubai on the backs of semi-enslaved immigrant workers to do the grunt work -- where are they?
Meanwhile the population of Libya, themselves wholly enslaved for 40 years, fight a desperate battle to wrest power from a cartoon dictator with nothing but extremely low-key NATO intercession, a battle that's been fought and won in Egypt and Tunisia but at great human expense -- but WHERE ARE the marching chanters, the hordes of Israel demonisers that launch mass protests every time Israel feels it necessary to defend itself from brazen attacks from yet another lunatic terrorist group that actually, amazingly, got itself ELECTED (well, Bush did too -- twice, so there's no surprise at the level of human microcephalic tendencies) . . . where ARE these people?? Huh? There's just a VAST SILENCE that comes from the shame of feelings of complicity -- the un-statements from anyone in the Arab world with even a shred of credibility -- and, after doing the adding, that adds up to a big fat ZERO. That's all.
Think about it. When was the last time you read or heard the words "Saudi Arabian advances in science . . ." "Dubai's medical wizardry results in new aids for the developmentally disabled . . . " "Bahrain sends team of volunteer doctors to quake-ravaged . . ."
Huh?
I rest my case. Cases. Both upper and lower.
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| The Arab world's latest contribution to Humanity |
Hello!!!??? Anybody home???????
Can you say "Fifteenth century?" Better yet, can you say "Bombed back into the fifteenth century, where they all desperately want to be"?
I know you can. I'll even hold your hand while you say it.
Final, really final note: I think this explains it in visual terms so much better than I ever could in writing. Go to this page and look at the map. Then click the magnification tool again and again until you see the tiny blue country buried in a sea of red. That's Israel. This map simply signifies countries that trade. But in reality it means how "developed" countries are. How civilized. You can see at a glance that most of the countries in red are simply organized anarchic groups of humanity that to a larger or lesser degree all share the honor of having populations of humanity who have very much yet the so-called level of "civilization" that the countries in blue do.
But isn't it poignant? That you have to click, click and click again to find this tiny country in a veritable morass of instability to find Israel? What, now you say there's some Wikipedia conspiracy to colour Israel blue? I find it frankly incredible that so few people in such a small country have found the wherewithal not only to survive, mostly as a mass of immigrants that heretofore had nothing in common but a label: "Jew" -- and manage to make it work, but not just work; to survive in an incredibly hostile world, whose nearest neighbours want only to see it erased from the face of the Earth.
I swear, this little picture makes my case so well that I will have no more to say on the subject. For now.
NEXT DAY: Stop the Presses! Somebody IS helping the Libyans!!!!
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