The President of Syria has NIMBY

That's right: Not in my backyard. Bashar Al-Assad (بشار الأس,) President of Syria, has stated that foreign soldiers in Lebanon "negates the sovereignty of Lebanon". So does a political party within the nation throwing missiles at another. The fact is, the UN has a right to step in and try to keep hostilities to verbal threats and name-calling. The undersigned parties (that would be the nations who are members) give them that right. It what its there for. To mediate conflicts so we don't have WWIII like we thought we might.

Let's put it in a smaller scale. Take a city like Chicago with its sizable Polish population starting sending rockets to Milwaukee to get at its German population for, I don't know, 6 million Poles dying in World War II. Milwaukee fights back. They send missiles back at civilian areas like Evanston and the Loop. They knock down the Sears Tower. Now, the rest of the country, a federal representative body, that these two cities and their respective states are members of, must do something since neither can stop shelling the other. It intercedes and brokers a cease fire between the two. In the cease-fire is a plan that 5,000 troops will be provided by Illinois and 5,000 from the rest of the nation. They'll be headquartered at the border on Illinois' side, the one who started hostilities while the troops in Wisconsin, fall back to Racine. Would this violate all of Illinois' sovereignty? Think on that while I grab a cup of Earl Grey.

The fact remains these two sovereign nations need to get along and the UN, a representative body (with little real power) actually brokers such a cease-fire. Though they are having a hard time getting the troops (see earlier post), they still got this truce with both sides agreeing. That means Lebanon was ok with the French camping out on their lawn or anyone else for that matter. The thing is the Syrain President (whose birthday is September 11th) doesn't like the idea of foreign troops being so close to him. Maybe he should've thought of that before he gave Hezbollah weapons and aid.

News you can use! So I went onto the Washingtonpost.com. I like reading the Post ever since I did a term paper on the Pentagon Papers (oy vey (אױ װײ)) and saw how the Post and Times stood up to the man (w00t). Anyways, I went there. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a bunch of Filipino teenagers with South Park gear. The article in question is about how text messaging is mobilizing political protests especially in the Phillipines where it is incredibly popular. In fact, they are the biggest users of the techology. The article goes on to cite how Filipino president Joseph Estrada was forced out of office in 2001 in a "coup de text". At first I was amazed such a thing was reported. Then I started thinking "Thanks a lot, Post!" Now over here they'll know that's how we organize rallies. They're on to us now!

News Flash: Milwaukee is the drunkest city. The Twin Cities, where I live, is #2. I could've told them that!

News Flash (...again!): The French are really sending troops!!! [faints]

On this day back in 1920 (only 86 years ago), Poland opened a can of whoop-ass and beat the ever loving shit out of Russia. WTF? Course, Russia was not the big bad USSR yet and Poland was in between big conflicts with Germany. Unless you count Milwaukee and Chicago.

Other topics of mild concern: Ann Coulter your roots called; they want their peroxide back.

Mary Jordan took that photo. Not I.