one of many reasons why i hate war

is the environmental destruction that comes with it. people talk up modern precision munitions, but hitting a set of oil tanks precisely does not convey an actual advantage to the environment:

An oil leak from the recently bombed Jiyeh power station has covered Lebanon's coastline in 15,000 tons of fuel oil reaching Chekka in the north (meaning that the spill has spread up to 100 kilometers in length).

the original article is in arabic; i have not seen a mention of this in any of my regular news sources. i am hoping that they're exaggerating (see, here's my negative prejudice again, expecting arabic news sources to exaggerate, *sigh*).

oil spills are so destructive, for a long time. 17 years after the exxon valdez disaster, we now know that populations and habitat within the oil spill area have suffered substantial and unanticipated injuries.

if it were up to me i'd do nearly anything to avoid a war. i think i might even concede living under occupation; war is just too costly IMO. it depends on the circumstances, of course. i remember hearing "better dead than red", and thinking "not i"; i'd rather live in east germany or the soviet union than be dead. because as long as i live, things can change; once i am dead, that's that. i am unlikely to be willing to die for any cause; no longer believing in a glorious afterlife puts a decided damper on any heroic notions i might have once had; though some protective instincts might make me throw myself in front of the paramour. i am not a pacifist; i consider direct self-defense ethical -- if somebody tries to shoot me with a gun, i'll view myself justified in killing the person. but not the person's family, not even if they knew zie had a gun and didn't take it away from zir -- only if they egged zir on, pushed zir into attacking me, and reloaded for zir. it ties into my beliefs about personal responsibility.

i know it's not that simple when one group of people shoots missiles at another in an impersonal manner (ie. they don't care what they destroy and whom they kill). but i would not be comfortable shooting missiles back, unless that group were clearly isolatable. because the "collateral damage" is not responsible for what this group did. and i am, dammit, not sinking to the same level, even when in fear of my life.

dear condoleezza rice

how anyone can be so smart and yet so abysmally stupid at the same time, it boggles my mind. do you not realize that what you say is listened to by the arab world with the perkiest of ears? do you not realize what images are plastered all over their newsmedia? let me help you out: the images of severely injured or dead children.

"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

you shrubwad, you. piss, piss, piss. pissing it all away, every little bit of gain other people give their lives to make.

[edit: ah, i see abu aardvark has an actual useful analysis about this, rather than an eye-rolling rantlet.]

i want to remember this

no, not the pictures of israeli children happily signing artillery shells (i guess hezballah isn't alone in thinking it's good parenting to involve your children early and often in the violence), but these excerpts from a comment calling the lot of them on their crap, copied from the comment section of the huffington post, on an essay as to whether psychosis is contagious. (yes, it is, IMO.) ( long, therefore behind a cut )

the idea of a loss registry is brilliant; i never heard of the concept, and a google search doesn't find the term in connection with buddhism. so now i have to hunt for the idea otherwise; if there are any practicing buddhists reading, i'd appreciate pointers.