Redesign!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm overhauling my somewhat bloated blogger life. The first step is to do something a bit different with "The Tree of Knowledge," which will now become "Just Living," (it's a bit of a play on words). I will still be writing articles on grander issues like vegetarianism and feminism, and all those other lovely and not-so-lovely isms. However, I will also be trying to blog regularly about my efforts to live by the ethical guidelines that I think are worthy. This will feed into my efforts to start a magazine about the same sort of subject. The other blogs which are attached to Aine Bina will probably fall by the wayside, though I'm not deleting them just yet.

So, my first entry along these lines: I'm struggling at the moment, because I have recently uprooted myself and moved to London. Being a vegetarian here is generally easier than in the states. I am also traveling almost exclusively by train and underground, so that's something as well. I'm somewhat nomadic at the moment, so I've been eating in cafes, pubs, and restaurants with no attention paid to fair trade, organic, or locally grown. However, I am surprised by the number of times I've stumbled into some place and seen a sign saying the management strives to use fair trade, GMO free, locally produced, cage-free, etc. Not to sound like yet another liberal denigrating the US, but the UK is definitely a lot quicker to pick up on the new wave of progressiveness. And then the UK is somewhat more backward than some other countries in the EU.

The biggest issue I have been having is that there is a serious dearth of public recycling bins. This is especially problematic given that there are several free papers available every week day. I also receive daily candy emails, and I've noted that the London subscription is much more likely to feature sweatshop free or organic than the NYC or Washington, DC subscriptions were. Sadly, I've fallen very far behind in my Ideal Bite and Greenlife daily emails.

And so the struggle goes on. . .

Things are in the works

I'm moving to Britain in a number of days. I have an interview with an animal welfare group, which is pretty cool, but you know, nothing is certain but death and taxes (and non-refundable plain tickets). So, that's why things have been so slow on the update front lately. Moving from state to state, nation to nation, finishing up work on the upcoming issue for the magazine I was working for, dealing with Thanksgiving, doing my final project for the class I have been taking... I have been one busy (non-) blogger.

So, there may be some blog changes coming up. I will probably be deleting the "experimental blog." This blog may be reformatting a bit. You'll see what I'm talking about soon. That reminds me, I still have that thing about factory farming screwing over people in the works. I'm sure It will be written eventually. Really.

In the meantime, keep watching the stars. Or something.

ETA: I finished the factory farming piece. It is published under the date I started it on, 10/28, a few entries down.

FYI

If you check out my profile, you'll notice I recently added a new blog about the magazine I am trying to start.

I don't know when you'll get the piece on how factory farming affects people. It's just not on the top of my priority list right now. Perhaps if you left notes it would motivate me. Sort of like clapping and saying "I do believe in fairies" brings Tinkerbell back to life.

Oh well, can't blame me for trying.

Yeeha!

Democrats are retaking the House of Representatives! Can I get an AMEN?!

In the meantime. . .again. . .

I have a post in the works about humans and factory farms, but it's hard to write. I'm just not in the mood for researching right now.

At any rate, Sadam Hussein was sentenced to hang today. It's very creepy. It's not a question of whether he deserves to die. I don't really believe in the death penalty no matter what. The death penalty, as an immutable sentence, requires an infallible justice system. And the justice system cannot be infalliable as it is based on the judgments of men. Moreover, it erases any chance that the criminal might have to atone. Sure, their atonement during life in prison might be state-compelled rather than born of any true repentance, but I believe the balance needs to be redressed. Criminals should be put to work redressing the balance. Another failure of our justice system.

I am really bothered by Hussein's sentence though because it was inevitable. From the moment this trial started, I knew that he would be found guilty. I suppose I have a hard time believing that it was possible he got a fair trial. And it's just creepy knowing that someone is going to die at a designated time and place. It gives me a chill. And I suppose it also feels odd because at this point, Hussein is a dwindled man. It's easy, or easier, to think of killing a man when he's a horribly powerful dictator. But now he's an embattled defendant staring at his own mortality. I'm not saying this erases his crimes, but it certainly complicates my image of Hussein, and therefore complicates my feelings of comfort with his ultimate demise. I don't remember having this problem with other capital punishment cases. But maybe I was just much younger or they were much less publicized. I don't know.

I just know it's creepy.

Vegetarianism, Part III: Inhumanity to Man

So, the end of my last Vegetarianism post I indicated that I would be talking about the effects of the meat industry on people. This post is not about the implications a meat-based diet has for your health. This is about how industrial farming affects people, notably, though not exclusively, industry employees and local communities.

What is the experience of a worker in a factory farm or slaughter house? Well, it's not dissimilar from the experience of animals in factory farms, as workers' needs go unmet in areas of sanitation, health care, safety, and comfort. The fatality rate for farm workers is five times higher than the all-industry rate (factoryfarming.com). OSHA rates meat-processing as one of the most hazardous jobs in America. Assuming full-time employment, most workers fall on or below the poverty line, and many employees do not get work or wages during seasonal slow-downs. Many employees are illegal immigrants who feel they have no recourse to help; they cannot complain to their bosses, lest they get fired, nor to the government lest they get deported.

It is intuitive that the nature of the work is dangerous: live, usually terrified animals and tools such as large blades and air-powered knocking guns aren't exactly baby-proofed. Many workers get kicked by cows and pigs. However, the working conditions in factory farms involve many more dangers than the nature of the work makes inevitable. Rampant bacteria and toxic gasses lead to some unpleasant diseases. For example, Johns Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health found that in a sample of chicken catchers, more than 40% tested for campylobacter bacteria, which can cause diarrhea, stomach cramps, and fever (goveg.com). Factory Farm laborers also spend all day inhaling dust from confined animals, which causes respiratory problems. And then there's the ammonia from all the excrement that doesn't get cleaned up, which also gets inhaled. Plus, Factory Farms use large-scale industrial chemicals, like pesticides.

Then of course there are the local communities who are affected by these plants: "Factory farms have been linked to health problems for farm workers and neighbors, and contaminated water and air in surrounding communities. The stench alone can ruin rural communities, as residents rush to shut their windows and bring their children indoors when the wind shifts. These communities have been fighting lonely, uphill battles against operators that take advantage of lax enforcement of zoning and environmental laws.

'In a 16 mile corridor we have dairy operations dumping five times the amount of raw sewage as that produced by the entire population of Seattle onto our fields,” said Helen Reddout, president of Community Association for Restoration of the Environment in Yakima County, Washington. “Contaminated waste on our fields is dangerous as we can see in the California spinach case.'" (foodandwaterwatch.org) Factory Farming in America has actually put over three million family farms out of business, according to David Grazia's A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights (which I mentioned earlier) This happened in part because agribusinesses receives huge government subsidies (so, your meat isn't as cheap as you think it is).

In fact, the repercussions of the meat industry can be far-reaching, more so than any of us might think. According to A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights, the misuse of resources involved in the meat industry can affect people on a global scale. It takes 8 pounds of hog feed to produce a pound of pork, 21 pounds of calf feed to produce a pound of beef. America, that's where your grain is going. The demand for meat in wealthy countries makes plant proteins unaffordable in poorer countries, since it's better business (meaning higher profits) to feed to the animals that get fed to the rich than to feed the poor. Poor communities than abandon sustainable farming practices to produce cash crops and meat. Non-sustainable farming means short-term business, short-term profits. Which means poor communities stay poor. If we didn't channel most grain protein into huge herds of livestock, we could easily feed all the people on earth. So why should we eat hamburgers and spare ribs when there are children in third-world nations are starving?

Here is another web page I found on the subject:
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/behind-closed-doors.asp (which for some reason features an image of a highland cow)

You can also check out http//:www.hfa.org or just google "factory farm workers."

AIDS: Helping the Gap Sell

I've got a beef. The Gap is featuring a new line of (Red) products to go to AIDS programs. Forget that the Gap is still being monitored by various environmental, sweatshop, and human rights groups. Let's just focus on the fact that certain companies, including The Gap, MAC cosmetics, and others, do these promotions where they create certain product lines with the inducement that part of their profits go to AIDS and breast cancer programs (for example). So now the burden is on me to buy the products that will donate to charities regardless of whether they are the products that I actually want. Meanwhile, The GAP looks like a good corporate citizen (which they aren't, though admittedly they seem to be working on cleaning up their act) and take a tax break on the donations. Why doesn't The GAP just donate a portion of ALL their profits to charity? Or better yet, a percentage of all their profits with a minimum guaranteed donation, so that it doesn't matter if people run to buy their products. Because, that's what genuinely good people do. And, if you really want to give, then skip the GAP shirt and just cut a check to your favorite organization devoted to AIDS relief (or the environment, or animal rights, or women's rights, or whatever). At least then you get the credit, instead of a big corporation who has shown more care for their bottom line than social responsibility.

By all means, shop with corporations you think have good corporate policy. But don't get sucked in by slick campaigns.

Poll

Here's a poll:

After reading my entries on animal rights and/or environmentalism, have you made any relevant changes to your lifestyle? No, your arguments aren't convincing. No, I don't care as long as these issues don't negatively affect me in any direct way. No, I was already devoted to animal rights/environmentalism before I visited your blog. No, but I wanted to. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. Yes, I have.    Free polls from Pollhost.com

Please feel free (or even compelled) to leave a note explaining your answer.

Also find the poll here: Take my poll!

We're here. We're SPCA. Get used to it.

"I'm sorry, but you people make me absolutely sick. A group of people from your organization goes all the way to Beirut, sees how a city has been demolished, witnesses, first-hand, the human catastrophe that took place and then proceeds to fly 300 dogs and cats to the United States?!?!

You should be prosecuted for for crimes against humanity."

The above was posted by someone on the Best Friends animal rescue organization's website (www.bestfriends.org). In all likelihood, they did it just to piss people off. However, this wouldn't be the first time that a person has belittled the efforts of animal welfare groups, citing all the people who need help.

First, at the risk of sounding catty, I wonder what these people are doing with themselves? It often seems to me that there are plenty of people who would rather see apathy and selfishness rather than any sort of sympathy directed towards animals. One woman who spent thousands of dollars on healthcare for her pet was sent angry mail about the human beings who have no healthcare. Yet how much money has that person given to charity? How much did they spend on their electronics or luxury cars? It seems that rarely do people say, "How dare they put so much money and effort into the Academy Awards ceremony when there are people starving in Africa?" At least, they aren't saying it in my hearing.

Second, animals have no voice. Yes, many human beings are disenfranchised and oppressed, but the option exists for rebellion and sedition. Animals don't have the capacity to organize a media campaign for support, to band together and rise up against their tormentors, to drastically manipulate their environment to better suit their own needs. Which means that when human endeavor endangers animals, it is up to human endeavor to save them. Would I argue that human aid organizations should instead direct their efforts to animals? No. However, I still contend that the efforts of animal welfare organizations are valid and perhaps equally important.

Finally, I feel these people need to be made aware that all victories for animal rights are victories for people as well. It's important to campaign against factory farming because humans are injured by its excesses. Actions to find alternatives to animal testing mean better, more innovative ways of developing treatments for humans. Maintaining the integrity of rare ecosystems means a healthier planet for people and a greater likelihood of making discoveries that are ultimately of benefit to humanity. There may be any number of yet to be studied plants in the rainforest with miraculous medicinal qualities, which means that the entire ecosystem must be saved, as all organisms are interconnected. And really, if the world guarantees that all animals have a right to freedom from suffering, how can anyone get away with denying humans the same?

Some new links

A couple of new links in the link list. One is to my other blog, which I occasionally update with some randomness or see how certain html codes look. You know, when I'm being slightly less lazy than usual.

Also, a link to Wine Monkey, which is the blog of the managing editor of Bon Vivant, who happens to have an in with Aine Bina. I personally don't care about wine, but he does a lot so if you're looking for someone to tell you about which wines are good and which are bad, Wine Monkey is the guy.

Give us the skinny?

Milan Fashionistas fear Spanish skinny model ban

When I went to Spain, I barely found anything to eat and I threw up in Madrid. Apparently too many models have been doing the same thing, because Madrid has imposed a ban on overly skinny models strutting the runways during fashion week. They have created a minimum bmi (body mass index) number which all models have to be over.

Milan's mayor has stated that she is considering bringing the same ban to Milan's fashion week. This apparently is not going over well with some of the fashion industry's movers and shakers. Riccardo Gay, an agent, says that the BMI limit will disallow 80% of the models looking for work. Apparently most models are encouraged to exercise, eat right, and get plenty of sleep. Mario Boselli suggests that anorexia is a rare issue in fashion and that the answer is better education programs and for everyone in the fashion industry to spread awareness.

Now that is tough to swallow. If a person is under a certain point on the BMI scale (with a little wiggle room), then they are unhealthily skinny. So if 80% of models are in that category, than the industry is most certainly not encouraging healthy bodies, and most definitely not sending that message to young women and teenagers.

More important, the fashion industry does not show a wide range of body types, so regardless of how skinny models actually are, they encourage a very narrow idea of beauty. This means that most of the women throughout the world are receiving, at best, subliminal messages that there are parts of them that need to be fixed.

Perhaps, rather than, or perhaps in addition to, imposing a BMI lower limit, cities hosting fashion weeks should require that models fall across a wide range of heights, weights, and ethnicities.

Absolution

Today I went to a fashion show with my boss, as we work at a lifestyle magazine and this week is fashion week. She made a comment on our way in (or possibly out, I can't remember) that in a way it was sort of sad that all this was going on even though it was the anniversary of September 11th (would it be flip of me to say that we should consider a more appropriate name for this event?). My response was that the entire ethos of post-9/11 America was that the perpetrators of the destruction would not succeed in forcing us to change our lives. Which did not really seem to convince her. However, I stand by my belief that the entire nation does not need to dress in sack cloth and ashes, tear at their hair, and wail in the street every year come September. Though September 11th is indeed the anniversary of a tragedy, every day is the anniversary of someone's tragedy. Indeed, every day is the setting of someone's tragedy. Which is not to say that the destruction of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center should be ignored, but rather that to say that we must remember on the anniversary of a tragedy is artificial and sterile. I remember my grandfather or my pet frequently throughout the year, but rarely on the exact date of their deaths (infact, I don't even remember the exact date of my grandfather's death). Rather they are with me when I feel them with me, and so there are no self-recriminations when on a certain day of the year I do not feel sad. And I didn't feel sad today. It was a beautiful day, full of promise, and I am not a bad person for feeling that way (and neither are you, should you have felt similarly). In truth, dwelling on this day only because people died is not the perfect way to honor the memory of those who passed anyway. Better to go out and make positive change. If going to a memorial service helps you to make positive change, more power to you. But if all it is for you is paying lip service to a grief you feel obligated to have, then who does that really serve?

Post, shmost

Gentle Jerkwads! Sorry, it's a Futurama quote and I couldn't resist. At any rate, with a recent move and a new internship, not to mention my involvement in a wedding coming up, I'm somewhat behind in the updating. Yes, there were other lapses in updating that were longer, but I guess I was doing such a good job recently that it feels as if it has been forever since I posted anything. So, I am sorry. When the craziness subsides a bit and I have my head back together, I shall post something.

For the Love of Wolves

I find wolves to be compelling animals. They are beautiful, intelligent, and devoted to family. So it's enough to make me want to cry when I find out that Idaho would like to eliminate their wolf population. Please sign this petition to urge the Fish and Wildlife Service to say no to Idaho's outrageous slaughter request.

Just Hope You Don't Need It in an Emergency

FDA Approves Plan B's Over-the-Counter Sale

As you may have heard, Plan B emergency contraception, was approved for over-the-counter (OTC) sales. However, it is only being made available to women (and men) over 18 with valid IDs, and it is being kept behind the pharmacist's counter. This is seen as only a partial victory by women's advocacy groups, such as NOW (who is already hitting me up for money to help their campaign--don't they know I'm broke?). After all, a woman who needs EC doesn't want to have to ask a pharmacist who may be more inclined to give out lectures than medication. And in fact, the issue of whether anti-abortion pharmacists and religious hosptitals have the right to refuse provision of EC is still wide open.

According to Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, this is a detrimental decision for women, families, parents, and girls. Apparently it will encourage promiscuity and lead to more unplanned pregnancies. Yeah, what? That's like saying condoms help spread disease. These people don't seem to understand that women have sex without wanting to get pregnant, and they will continue to have sex whether they are well-prepared and well-educated or not. (Men will too, but the risk of pregnancy is significantly less for them.) The recent decision of the CDC to treat all women as "pre-pregnant" comes from the fact that the US has a higher infant mortality rate than most other industrialized nations and half of all pregnancies are unplanned, increasing likelihood of bad habits during pregnancy (Pregnant Forever). I would suggest that the reason other nations have fewer problems is because they have contraception readily available, and strong sex ed programs that are not geared towards eliminating teen sex.

Forcing women to continue with unplanned/unwanted pregnancies is, in my opinion, a form of rape. Rape is a horrendous crime because it forces a person into a position where she (usually) is bereft of control/possession of her own body. Forbidding women easy access to contraceptives, and yes, even abortifacents, does the same thing. The statement made is that the government (or for places with parental consent laws, a girl's parents) has more say over a woman's body than she herself does. Control over one's own body is an inherent right of every individual. If we say that a woman has to continue with an unwanted pregnancy, what is to keep us from saying that people are obligated to donate blood, bone marrow, or a kidney to a person in dire need? After all, the decision not to donate could mean the death of an individual, whereas I would argue that a fetus is not an individual, and so is not deserving of the same consideration we give to, shall we say, post-birth humans? But I think most of us would have serious issues with proposing taking body parts from people against their will, so why should it be considered appropriate to hi-jack a woman's womb?

I don't advocate promiscuity, unsafe sex, or abortions. But I have absolutely no right to forbid those things to anyone. And the fact is that latter two would happen far less often if we stopped trying to lock sex behind the counter and just made condoms, birth control, the embattled hpv vaccine, and EC readily available.

Book Recommendation

I've recently started reading A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights by David DeGrazia, part of Oxford's "A Very Short Introduction" series. It's very readable is quite good at explaining the basics philosophies behind the animal rights movement (as well as behind those who are opposed to it). I think you'll find it helpful whether you're a dvoted vegetarian who wants to be able to make better arguments or someone who is still trying to learn more about the decision to support animal rights.

The Other Blog

Yes, Aine Bina is a two-timing sort of blogger. At any rate, I posted a meme at the other blog about books. The other blog is for trying out html stuff, or giving book recommendations, or whatever I want to blab about but doesn't really fit in with the whole social commentary theme of this blog.

The Color Green: Representing Environmentalism or Nausea?

Aine Bina has finally gotten around to reading an article from the June 4, 2006 issue of the New York Times that has been sitting on her night stand. The article, which perhaps should be described as editorial journalism, was featured in the "The Way We Live Now" column of the NY Times' Weekend magazine and is called "Mass Natural; With Wal-Mart going organic, where will organic go?" and was written by Michael Pollan. I am giving you all this info rather than a link to the article because a) I *gasp* have the article in hard copy, so I would have to actually *bigger gasp* work to find such a link and b) NYT is quite stingy about letting just anyone access its articles in full on the web.

The title is a pretty good indicator of what the article is about. On the surface, the news of Wal-Mart, or Evil Incorporated as I affectionatley refer to it, deciding to go organic is a major coup for environmentalism. As The Grist wrote in a recent editorial on green crusaders failing to applaud progressive actions taken by the traditional enemies of the environment: "But that self-same Wal-Mart is embarking on a comprehensive sustainability program that includes emission reductions and organics -- the whole shebang." But as Pollan will reveal to us, dig a little deeper and suddenly Wal-Mart's decision to go organic is deeply troubling. Wal-Mart's decision to go organic should not be interpreted as a company's sudden impulse to be a more caring type of corporation. The fact is that recently green has become cool. Vanity Fair did its green issue this summer, and the Washington Post devoted a Sunday Source to it this past month. I was flipping through a recent issue of "Glamour" and they had some suggestions on small steps to becoming greener. So if Wal-Mart wants to keep up with trends in consumer culture, they have to start satisfying demands for Green veggies.

Wal-Mart still wants to deliver it's products at "great" low prices. So they're promising that organic products will only cost 10% more than their non-organic counterparts. The fact is that the Green movement has never promised you cheap goods, just responsibly priced goods. So if Wal-Mart insists that it can deliver organic products cheaply, then one has to ask what the cash register price fails to reflect. For starters, if Wal-Mart is going to deliver on promises for cheap organics, it is going to have to get the products from where it's cheap to grow them. Check the labels on some items around your house: a tv, a souvenir from your recent trip, the tag in your shirt. Found anything made in Asia yet? (Actually, my shirt was made in the USA. Kudos to Wet Seal) So lets ignore for a moment the worker abuses that may be/probably are going on in the countries where we produce our fabulously cheap goods. If you've looked at any websites like myfootprint.org or climatecrisis.net, you know that transporting goods (or people) over great distances causes a significant amount of environmental damage. Why do we love organic again?

As Pollan says "To [get organic food prices to a level just 10% above non-organics] would virtually guarantee that Wal-Mart's version of cheap organic food is not sustainable, at least not in any meaningful sense of that word." This isn't just a theorhetical projection; the evidence for non-sustainable, cheap "organics" is already there. Pollan points out the existence of so-called organic feed-lots. To produce cheap organic milk, agribusiness sets up huge factory dairies, often in the desert. Rather than being fed on grass, these organic cows are fed a diet purely of organic grain, which not only negatively affects the cows, but actually affects the nutritional value of the milk that you drink. Organic milk produced by these cows is lacking in beta-carotene and "good" fats. Is that really what we think of when we choose organic? And sure, guidelines for growing organic meat requires that animals have access to the outside, but agribusiness often meets these requirements by cramming animals into too-small, grassless, shadeless feedlots or, in the case of some poultry producers, screened-in porches which really only provide access to a view of the outside.

This is why, to quote Kermit the Frog, it isn't easy being green. The more converts we get, the more big corporations want to cash in by providing goods labeled "organic" and "locally grown" without in any way affecting their bottom line. And if obeying only the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit of the law isn't enough to keep it cheap for companies, they'll lobby to change the letter. In the past year the Organic Trade Association lobbied on behalf of Kraft Foods (a part of Phillip-Morris, which I affectionately refer to as "The Devil's Henchment"), to make it easier to include synthetic ingredients in products labeled organic. Pollan tells the story of a chicken producer, Fieldale Farms, which persuaded their Georgian congressman to add a provision into an appropriations bill which would allow the substitution of conventional chicken feed if the price of organic feed exceeded a certain level. The rule was eventually repealed, thank goodness. Because if so-called organic producers can continue to label their goods "organic" without actually producing them in an organic way, what good does that do any of us?

The Grist has some hope for the future of a better, kinder, greener, Wal-Mart. So the point here isn't really that Wal-Mart is intrinsically evil and will ultimately fail to in any way help the environment, but rather that one can't become complacent, and you should always do your homework.

The State of the Blogger

My gentle readers (affectionately known as "you three"), Aine Bina is developing a stomach ache of massive proportions. The Israeli-Lebanon crisis is the cause of my gastro-intestinal woes. This is not an entry, like the last one, that speaks directly to the issue, but rather to the fall-out of the issue. Specifically, my personal fall-out. I am a Zionist. I support Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself. But that does not mean that I think it is without failing or fault, or that I wish to give it a carte blanche to do whatever it wants. First, no country is without failing or fault, and there is no reason to expect that Israel should be any different from the rest of the world. Second, I do not wish to engage in the sort of rampant ethnic chauvinism that so frequently breeds terrorists and hate-mongers. Yet I find myself in a difficult position. It seems that there is no such thing as a fair and unbiased report of the situation. Of course, it is hard to know what is fair and unbiased when one is already biased. I would not wish to become one of those people (and I personally know at least one) who says "This person holds the same opinions as I do; at last, an unbiased account." And yet it seems very difficult to find the unique person who truly sees the situation for what it is. I expect to recognize this person (or organization) when they can present criticism of all parties involved, because it is false to set up this dichotomy as one of brutal oppressors and brave, pure freedom fighters. It is equally false to look at this as a situation of racist, selfish terrorists and an embattled bastion of democracy and goodness, though that one rings closer to the truth for me in many ways. It isn't that I think Israel is always completely blameless in its actions, but I do think that the major instigators like Hezbollah and Hamas claim to do things in the name of downtrodden Muslims when they really couldn't care less. I don't think Hezbollah's goals are universal health care and a Utopian Middle East free of religious prejudice and intolerance. I don't think Hezbollah expects anyone to think that. It would be so easy to just take the hard-line Zionist stance and insist that Israel is only defending itself and has made no wrong moves in this conflict or in its history at all. But that would be wrong of me. Just as it is wrong of Muslims to say that Hezbollah's actions are justified or that the civilians of many Middle Eastern countries aren't in many cases as horribly oppressed by their own "compatriots" as they are by some great, evil, Westernizing force. There is always a greater complexity to international issues. Always. More so in the Middle East, which has been a center of strife for as long as humanity has kept written records. And it's greatly distressing that I feel as if there is no one that I can trust on this issue, least of all myself.

Once again, Aine Bina finds herself wishing she could move into some nice log cabin in the woods and pretend the world does not exist.

You Say Opinion, I Say Deliberate Misrepresentation

Huh. That's not as catchy as "to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to." Oh well. Check out this here propaganda:

Lebanese Prime Minister's Seven Point Plan for Peace.

Lest you accuse me of indiscriminately calling all critics of Israel anti-Semitic and all criticisms propaganda, allow me to explain what bugs me about Faoud Siniora's "End This Tragedy Now." Siniora's essay has a complete lack of accountability for the UN or for the Arab* countries in the Middle East. He states "the peoples of the Middle East. . . aspire only to live in freedom and dignity**." Actually, Hezbollah quite adamantly insists that what they want is to wipe Israel of the map. So does the official, internationally recognized government of Iran; one of its ministers made a public statement to that effect just recently***. Hamas, which is the "political" party currently in charge of the Palestinian Authority, is squatting on Israel's doorstep with the same ideology.

I do not condone Israel's botched campaign against Hezbollah; too many civilians have died. Israel is getting sloppy, and their warnings to civilians (a courtesy not extended by Hezbollah to Israelis) are not sufficient. Yet Hezbollah has also targeted civilians in Israel. In fact, for this specific conflict, they started it. And Hezbollah does not truly care about Lebanese civilians. If they did, they would not launch their rockets at Israel from the backyards of Lebanese villagers, thus making innocent families targets for Israeli retaliation. It is not a new strategy for Middle East terrorist groups to use civilians, including, and perhaps particularly, children, as shields.

Siniora also proposes "land for peace," which was a frequent strategy of Israel before the most recent Intifada. In fact, PM Barak offered to meet 95% of Palestinian demands for land and statehood--an offer that was rejected because it did not include Jerusalem. Yet nowhere in his piece does Siniora state an agreement to the disarmament of Hezbollah. The Lebanese and other Arab nations are apparently eager for peace, so long as it doesn't actually involve compromise on their part. Oh, silly me. . . they must feel it is a compromise just to "allow" Israel to continue existing.

I will make no claims to impartiality. I am a Zionist, and it can be hard to recognize Israel's faults when it seems that the whole world is reluctant to acknowledge the contributions to violence and conflict made by other nations in the Middle East. If one has legitimate criticism of Israel, then by all means it should be expressed intelligently. But in order for there to be a true path to peace, all the nations of the Middle East must accept accountability and agree to compromise for lasting peace.

*I am actually quite unclear as to whether descriptions of Arab-Israeli conflict include Iran. It is technically a Persian nation, speaking farce rather than Arabic. However, it is deeply entrenched in Middle East conflict and was an early addition to the Islamic Empire, giving it a long history of Arab influence.

**And of course, if the peoples of the Middle East really aspire to live in freedom and dignity, I'd say they need to take a close look at their own governments. Iran recently declared the Center for Defense of Human Rights, founded by a Nobel Laureate illegal. Apparently human rights watchdog need proper permits, even if the Iranian constitution doesn't actually say so (forget that the CDHR applied for the permits repeatedly and never got a response).

***They're also Holocaust deniers. Hey homosexuals, disabled persons, Gypsies, blacks and even some Christians who opposed the Nazi regime: that must make you feel great about Iran!