Sick of Business as Usual?

This looks fun and, well, just in time...

Thursday Lovin': Huffpo People Ranker

Playing around with this little tool - which compares the number of blog entries that mention the provided keyword(s) - I found it somewhat humorous to compare food with personalities or disparate things...

Enjoy!

Rant: Waking Up the Left

I thought it was interesting that during the interview with Ned Lamont when Colbert mentions friends of Israel (if I remember correctly) that Lamont follows a party line and remarks that Israel has a right to defend itself.

I like Lamont but find the Democrats and much of the left's uncritical and zealous support of Israel too much. While I am frustated with Hezbollah's provocation, I feel that Hezbollah's creation is in large part due to Israeli actions in the past.

That frustration with the favoritism for Israel in Middle East only fuels the very things that Israel and the United State hope to qwell. Especially when so many innocent people, in what this administration once touted as bastion for democracy during the Cedar Revolution, are killed or displaced. Why don't more thinking people on the Left realize that this is very dangerous, very sad, very wrong path we are taking.

Lipi sends along this article expressing the same frustrations. If you love peace, if you are a humanist, if you truly believe in progressive ideals then you cannot stand back and watch this happen. By mere inaction you become an accomplice.

The frustration that I have heard from many Arabs (we seem to forget that there are significant populations of Christian Arabs in Lebanon) and Muslims is often summarized in one word: justice. Injustice breeds so many ills. If we truly want change and peace it cannot be done through violence especially when one side in the conflict is so favored. Why is that such a hard lesson for people to learn? With growing sentiment against the war in Iraq why can't people make the conceptual shift to understand the same ideas about the failure of force as a measure to promote change applies to Lebanon?

I think the whole course of events so far does not bode well for the US or Israel. It is only when this mess is too far along and, as Lipi often tells me, we are paying $10 for a gallon of gas will most Americans wake up.

I worry a lot about it all when I try to sleep at night. At the risk of trodding on Dennis' territory I have to say that the recent events have clarified something for me and that is that we are all interconnected. We are really one. I don't want to be hokey but it seems that those in charge have the inability to see the consequences of their thinking and their actions. Utopia or oblivion? Start thinking about love not violence as an answer. Hokey, perhaps, but very powerful. Think love.