Sorry for not noticing that it was from 2004. However, the reason I posted it was because it seemed to be in line with the undisciplined, ruleless behavior of the IDF noted just previously in the excerpt from Col. Lang's firsthand observations.

how would you react if Canada and Mexico started firing rockets into the US?

With amazement. I mean, we have no border disputes and we have NAFTA and we aren't blockading Mexicans or Canadians or keeping them from having an airport, why the f*** would they be firing rockets at us?

I just looked at NYU student's blog.

Now you know why I request, repeatedly, multiple meds.

Glad you asked. Let's see here. This evening's rendition of "Papa's little helpers" comes in the form of Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 500mg tablets. Take 1 or 2 tablets every 4 - 6 hours as needed for "pain."

Please, however, do not construe this as medical advice.

Speaking of biases and the like, do you have any emotional, cultural or religious connections to Israel that make it more than just another foreign country to you?

Many are asked, but so few seem to answer. What's the sample looking like so far?

With amazement. I mean, we have no border disputes and we have NAFTA and we aren't blockading Mexicans or Canadians or keeping them from having an airport, why the f*** would they be firing rockets at us?

Once upon a time though, we fought plenty with Mexico. We even placed settlements that encroached on them, sliced off a few hunks of their territory.

But we seem to have settled on a two-state solution, so maybe there's hope for Israel and Palestine...

This evening's rendition of "Papa's little helpers" comes in the form of Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 500mg tablets. Take 1 or 2 tablets every 4 - 6 hours as needed for "pain."

You're my kinda doctor! If only you were licensed, why, NYU Student et.al., would bother me far less than otherwise. Personally, I'm pushing (!) for a revisitation of the DYOML (Dispense Your Own Medication Law) currently before the legislative chamber of Pago Pago. I have high hopes.

A few years back there was a survey that asked, "Should America annex Canada?" If I recall correctly something like 40% of Americans said, "yes".

When I told Dad that, he was 88 at the time, and perfectly compos mentis, he said, "Really? Well if they come, I found the goddamn Nazis and if they come here, I'll fight them too." We both agreed he'd make a good suicide bomber.

Dad is almost 92 now, and still bowling. If I was you guys I would wait a few years...

I'm serious about the Sorel's though, with no proper boots you will all die in minutes.

make that "fought" the nazis..

make that "fought" the nazis..

I certainly do. I have a personal relationship with Israel. I spent two years in the West Bank during the first two years of the Intifada, and got to know the strategies and policies of the Israeli military rather well. In 2004, after saving and preparing for a year, I went back. I wanted to live in my father's village--something I hadn't done the first time because I worked in NGO's. I wanted to write about what I was seeing, improve my Arabic and spend some time with my elder relatives who I had neglected far too much the first time around.

I was arrested by Israel when I arrived at Ben Gurion airport, interrogated by various security services for 16 hours, jailed for another day, and then deported. They were going to deport me from where I had connected, France, where I would have been stuck with no money to pay for a ticket back home. I wasn't reimbursed, my assumption is that I can't go back, but I am not allowed to mount any kind of legal attempt because I am not a citizen of Israel and have no standing to do so. My assumption is that I'll never be able to go back, but I don't have a thousand bucks to throw away on the enterprise to find out.

Ironically, my father, who was born in our village in 1939 could just as well have gone through the same thing, because he has an AMerican passport and is thus, only allowed to visit Palestine for three month periods. You can trust that the insult which is the right of return--which means that anyone who claims Jewish ancestry can go and live, not just in Israel, but in the settlement rapidly consuming the lands of my father's village--is not lost on us. Certainly, there is a lot of emotion there as there should be.

Even so. I do my best to learn as much as I can about the international law and treaties applicable to the issue, the history of historical Palestine and of the actors involved. I do my best to critique my own society, because I want our society to be better, and to eventually gain some kind of ability to live freely. I examine my beliefs critically, and if they don't compare well with scholarship, I dispose of them. A rabid pro-Zionist pundit can go on any program in our media and be given a hearing; we all know that the same is not true of a rabid pro-Palestinian. Its just makes good sense for me to be well-informed and open-minded. I would be doing my people a disservice if I wasn't.

What's sad to me is that there are so many so-called supporters of Israel, who spout the most asinine and easily disproved mythologies. They make no attempt to research their viewpoint, to find a functional truth in the murk. At the base of it, they just don't care what happens to Israel, because they'll make no sacrifice in time or pride to put their rhetoric to the test. They just want to watch it all burn.

Canuckistan is a state of mind. As is Israel and Palestine, I might point out. You pays your money, you picks your identifiers.

Me, I was just plain grateful when Bill O'Reilly identified Canuckistan as the source of so many of the US's problems, particularly in regard to sane health care policies, after the vitriol and mocking from an idiot, well I just had to take the moniker, which I did as soon as I could.

I have since been informed, rather severely, by other Canuckistanis, that O'Reilly was not in fact the originator of the moniker; me, I think that they are just sore because, like Palestinians, they just refuse to accept that possession is nine points of the law: anybody else calling themselves "Canuckistan Tom/Dick/Harry/Jane" would simply be lame, after I grabbed the Jerusalem of "Canuckistan" first. And besides, I would be quite willing to send my internet tanks in and kill women and children, to defend my sacred right to exist as the only original and true Canuckistan XXX. Just sayin'.

Mind you, after all the quibbling and bitching about the primogeniture of the phrase "Canuckistan," I almost want to come over all Canadian and be polite and apologize. Until my American side kicks in, and I want to get all "America, Fuck Yes!" on my pathetic Canadian critics, which, unfortunately, include myself.

Well this; I'm clearly a traitor: I hold dual US/Canadian citizenship, and have in fact spent most of my life living in neither country, and have some fairly compromised loyalties to various varieties of brown pissed off people that basically aren't all that welcome when Serious People Discuss topics like immigration and Middle East Realities.