Israel's Blockade Party, Mahmoud and Hamid To BYOB, Blooming Kissingers

Ali Sethi
John Leyne

This morning, Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the Gaza blockade with his ministers, and decided not to lift the naval blockade, but that the land barriers could be eased. Mounting support for ending the blockade has come from England's Tony Blair and the Foreign Minister of Germany. This weekend members of the Arabic Brotherhood visited Hamas in Gaza for the first time. Many surrounding Arab states have not been too friendly towards Hamas, seeing them as a potential destabilizing force. But with the rising bad feelings between Israel and Iran,  a de-escalation in the Palestinian situation may help mellow everyone out. Again, the welfare of the poor, uneducated youth of Palestine are being used as negotiating chips on a larger canvas. Neither Israel, Hamas, or the Arabian Brotherhood really cares for the plight of Gazans, unless it dovetails with their own desires of retaining power and control. You know, politics as usual. The leaders of Israel and Hamas should be made to visit the family of each child who dies of malnutrition and harsh conditions in Gaza. But, it'll never happen, just like George W Bush and Barack Obama won't take the extra time to visit with the families of slain soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan...

One thing I've noticed, is wherever there are suicide bombers or opposition movements to a government, it's always the fault of outside agitators. That is the official version of the Iranian government, who claims that there is now a permanent end to any opposition in it's country. But, just be patient, because the Iranian government is ready to implode... The economy is still on a downwards slide, and the unemployment rate among college graduates is spiraling upwards. A lot of the large and state run businesses have been taken over by the Revolutionary Guard, and hey, they suck at business but are better at intimidation, so they have created a weird new hybrid of military-gangsta-business class that should soon rival the Russian mafiya in the Mid East, creating more shell companies in the Gulf states, already a center for smuggling goods and assets...  And the RG's may have been lulled into thinking that they can take care of every social situation by threat of violence and intimidation. Let's see what happens when it's time for the next election cycle or two...

Poor Hamid Karzai, our puppet in Kabul. One day the press is making him out to be a weak ruler, the next he is our best buddy, the day after that he is a lonely, isolated, depressed kind of guy. As long as the military situation isn't going according to plan, he will be depicted as part of the problem, stuck between the traditional Eastern ways of running a government, and a more modern concept where the government acts responsibly and more honest than not. The day we withdraw our troops and say our goodbyes may be his last day in office... If you really want to have the population get rid of the Taliban, leave a few million laptop computers behind and give the country free Internet access, along with buying up the poppy harvest every year, oh, those Americans, they are still our friends!!!

We probably could balance our economy by next month, if we recalled all of our soldiers stationed overseas, and got rid of all of our overseas military bases. The only problem with that, besides providing jobs for thousands of prostitutes around the world, is if the secondary economy of supplying our military would send us into a tailspin if the companies all went bankrupt. Do the two balance each other out, or are we stuck with a military-industrial complex forever finding wars for us to engage in, just to satisfy their economic bottom line? Where to next? Somalia or South Korea?... Instead of sending mercenaries and spies out into the world, let's send diplomats.  Instead of one Richard Holbrooke sent out to conduct proxy negotiations, what if we sent 20 Israeli diplomats out, along with 20 Arabian ones, 20 Syrian ones, and 20 Palestinian ones, you get my drift. By having lots of diplomatic meetings, we open up the back room negotiations and include so many more people in the decision making process. We get more of a consensus for whatever eventually gets worked out, and much more input to wrangle the details and point out the pitfalls. Let a hundred Kissingers bloom... Actually, I want to see all of those people engaged in think tanks to get up off their butts instead of playing armchair quarterback. But with the world economy still in shaky hands, we can hardly afford to be the world's cop. We are going to have to delegate some authority to others, no matter how painful to our national pride and collective ego. And as humans acting as soldiers give way to drones and clones,we are going to have to confront some ethical choices, time to drag out the Star Wars DVD's and learn a few lessons...