Israel, Lebanon, Palestine

What an enormous clusterfuck this whole middle east war is turning out to be. Our beloved leaders seem to be making the most inane comments. Here in a nutshell is what seems to be happening.
- Hamas militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier.
- Israel started bombing the shit out of the gaza strip
- Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli Soldiers and fired a bunch of rockets into Israel killing a few folks.
- Israel started bombing the shit out of Lebanon.
- Israeli troops and tanks moved across the Lebanese border.
- Western nations begun to pull their citizens out of Lebanon, there are very few western citizens dumb enough to be in the Gaza strip so that wasn't a problem for us.
- Our leaders demanded that Hezbollah stop the rocket attacks and give back the Israeli soliders but curiously did not demand the same from Israel.

I'm not sure i really understand but what the fuck is wrong with Israel? Some nutter with a bomb kills a few Israelis and they level a housing complex. The response is totally disproportionate. The Israelis are war criminals. I say this with no bias, its true. It is what we call a fact. They deliberately target civilians and civilian infrastructure in matters of war. Thats a war crime. Go on, look up the Geneva conventions, there it is, war crime.

And what do we in the west do. Do we reprimand Israel? No. Do we put Israel under sanctions? no. Do we support Israel with Millions in aid and weapons and (in the case of the US) veto any criticsim of them in the UN? yes.

So we have a very young nation, illegally occupying land and committing war crimes against its neighbours, and we are completely backing them, never uttering scorn or concern except at their enemies. And we wonder why the locals hate us.

Seriously, finding someway to bitchslap the Israelis into complying with international law and abandoning their illegally held lands (and returning them back to the Palestinians) would be the single best thing we could do for Middle east peace. And yet there seems to be no such effort under way.

On this most recent issue, Qatar introduced a UN resolution to force a cease fire. A CEASE FIRE. not a settlement or surrender but simply and end (for the time being) to the bombing. And guess what America did. Thats right, they vetoed it. Fuckers.

I now sincerely believe that the US wishes to destabilise thewhole mideast region, they actually see this war as a good thing. Just another reason why those dopey fuckers need to get off their arses and impeach Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/et al.

Of course, our own Tony Blair, bitch that he is, is firmly towing the American line urging Hezbollah to stop firing rockets and give back the Israelis so that Israel has an excuse to stop bombing them. No excuse is needed. Israel must be made to stop and to pay for its crimes.

Note that i'm no more sympathetic to Hezbollah or Hamas (although Hamas as a majority party need to seize the moral high ground and stop doing this kind of stuff). They opened this particular round of violence. It only remains to be seen who will stop the violence first. If anyone.

Roleplaying

I'm a geek i know. Maybe even a dork. Whatever, not only do i thoroughly deserve these apellations, but i enjoy them. One of the geekiest things i do is Roleplaying. For those not in the know, roleplaying is a leisure (and leisurely) past time where in players design and create characters and then play these characters in a very loosely scripted fashion. One of the players takes on the mantle of GM (Games master, also know as storyguide, storyteller, dungeon master, director and a host of less wekll used epithets). The GM roleplays all the stories minor characters and sets the scene and generally keeps things ticking along.
Think of it as a play with the players playing the major characters and the GM playing all the supporting roles, villains, and chorus girls, and also being the director, producer, lighting guy and ticket seller.
The worlds these games are set in are usually not earth as we know it. For instance, in my favourite games, Ars Magica, Cyberpunk, D&D and Vampire (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world of darkness games) the world as, respectively, Mythic Europe circa 1220 (Europe as the people then believed it was, complete with faeries, demons and dragons), 2020 post apocalypse America, a swords and sorcery world called Toril and finally a version of earth just like ours but full of corruption, ghosts, vampires, etc.
The aim of these games is not to win, winning as such is impossible. The aim is to take your characters through stories and enjoy oneself. Usually the characters face trials and tribulations, hopefully conquer (or at least survive) them and go on to be wiser, more powerful and more interesting.
All actions of the characters and GM are spoken not acted out. There is a form of roleplaying where the players dress up like their characters and act it all out called LARP (Live Action Role Play) but this is very much a different kettle of fish to what is known as "tabletop" or "Pen and Paper" Roleplaying.
The main joys of roleplaying i think come from escapism. Many of the people i roleplay with pay characters very different from their everyday self and use RP as a way to express this side of their character. Some play idealised versions of themselves, some play total opposites. One friend invariably plays women despite being a guy, another tends to play rather dumb characters who have problems interacting on an intellectual level. Another tends towards characters VERY hostile to authority and yet another plays cheeky backstabbers. I personally tend to find myself playing very clever, sinister, usually evil but very polite people. I think for me this allows me to air all my naturally evil tendencies in a safe environment, allowing me to be pleasant and friendly the rest of the time.
Roleplaying has various bad reputations, firstly as hugely geeky. Fair enough. Secondly, it came under major attack by my favourite idiots, the Christian Right. This was way before my start in Roleplaying in the 1980's, but basically D&D got accused of inducing satanism, suicide, murder and all other kinds of ridiculous nonsense. Its all long blown over now but you can still find an article or two on the web warning of the satanic reach of young dorks playing D&D.
If you get the chance, give it a go. You may have fun. If not fair enough but at least you know what you are missing.

Atheism

Just a quick post,

The previous post got me thinking about Atheism. Some people, theists mainly, want atheism to be treated as just another religion. Reminds me of a comment someone left on a blog i read

If “atheism” is a religion, then “off” is a television channel.
If atheism is a religion, “not collecting stamps” is a hobby.
If atheism is a religion, then ‘bald’ is a hair color.
If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.

Dumbest fucking guy on earth

Just as the title says

http://brandontstanley.blogspot.com/2006/06/polemic-against-atheism.html

Feel free to leave him some comments.

Little Bit Warm

Those that know me generally know that i like the cold. Correction. I like cold weather. I'm usually toasty warm in such weather, clad in layers of black and big coats. This is because i am a mammal. I'm warm blooded which means i generate my own heat from the processes of my body. This heat, when trapped by clothing, then keeps me feeling warm and comfortable.

In times of heat i remove layers of clothing and even shock people with my lilly white legs in shorts. However, this does not cool me down. It only lessens the amount of heat my body retains. Its very hard to cool down when the weather is hot and the bodies chief method of doing so is via sweat. I hate, i hate absolutely hate, being hot and sweaty for any reason not connected to vigorous physical activity (e.g. ninja, claire). I despise getting hot and sweaty from just sitting around.

At present my green and noble island (Britain) is in the midst of a heat wave. I live in Manchester and highest temperature of today is 28 degrees C. It isn't yet midday and so temperature hasn't spiked yet but my office is already 30 degrees C and will only get hotter as the day goes on. My office (and most of Manchester it seems, is also breeze free, making the heat stifling and stuffy. Since i work for the Home Office we don't have fancy new gadgets like air conditioning.

I'm suffering, it amazes me that some of the people i work with don't actually mind the heat. They actually enjoy it. Freaks. I could understand it if we were all on the beach or by a pool and could throw ourselves in to cool off, or if we were doing something physical that would make us hot and sweaty but just sitting on our rumps typing? Thats not right.

I sincerely cannot wait for Autumn to turn up, kick summers butt and begin a long period of storms and cold weather.