The wrong approach: Palestinian statehood and compensation

Bush: Palestinian statehood and compensation are solution to refugee issue

"I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue," said Bush, in a statement summing up two days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Bush arrived in Israel for a three-day on Wednesday.

"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967," continued Bush. "The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."

In today's news, this is how the news was received:
Ramallah demo brands Bush 'war criminal'

Thousands protest in Gaza against "vampire" Bush

and via Gateway Pundit, the American International School in the Gaza Strip got bombed.

Have Fatah, Hamas or Hizbollah changed their stripes?

Then making a Palestinian state and paying compensation will accomplish nothing.


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Sicko, and Friday round-up

Updated
Via Larwyn, Prepare to be Sickened by SiCKO

Literally every day, the mainstream media in the countries whose government-run medical systems Moore holds up as superior models publish stories documenting the failure of mandatory, no-opt-out, state-run medical care. The laundry list of ills, in the U.K. alone, includes patients waiting months or even years for critical drugs and treatments (sometimes becoming disabled or dying because of the delay or lack of care), people denied therapies altogether because of rationing or cost (see, for example, an article last February in The Scotsman, “Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS”), an explosion in the size of the medical bureaucracy, and thousands of physicians taking to the streets earlier this year to protest.

One bottom line, so to speak, is particularly telling: Moore, who is obese, would most likely be denied a number of common health care procedures and treatments in one of his favored government-controlled socialist medicine systems, the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS), because of his excessive weight. Recently, the cash-strapped NHS actually started limiting or prohibiting therapies for residents who are fat or who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

In Princeton, the Public Library has been banging the drum on socialized health care for a while, inviting Paul Krugman to ignore the facts about the French healthcare system and featuring a film on Cuba's healthcare at the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, by which they not only managed to ignore Cuba's huuman rights record but also Cuba's apartheid health care system, even when three members of the audience tried to talk about it.

I expect the PPL will be showing SICKO soon.

Update: Michael Moore's Shticko: His health care jeremiad won't win any converts

And I won't be surprised if Sicko has wonderful things to say about the Venezuelan healthcare; too bad Michael didn't bring along any Norwegian reporters

Speaking of Venezuela,
Remember the fallen viaduct in Caracas?

Well, a new one's up.

In other Venezuelan news, The constitutional changes draft has been leaked: the path to an eternal Chavez dictatorship and kiss what's left of your private property good-bye. Update Dymphna has more on Hugo's latest.
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Joe finds some Academic Fantasies Exploited

Abbas: Hamas Creating ‘Empire of Darkness’ unlike Fatah's sweetness and lignt. The Guardian blames the US and Israel, of course.

Tony Blair's going to Rome

Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain. Indeed.

El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners

Unlike the Brits who allowed themselves to be taken hostage, the Aussies repelled an Iranian attempt to capture a boarding party. Update: Richard North has more on the story and how it's covered by the blogs and by the MSM.
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Via Irwin, June 20, 2007 Paul Krugman Four Years Ago Today. Krugman's wrong on things other than French healthcare, too.
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Via Bob, Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises "Scintillating and Sexy" Talk, since college students don't think of sex at all.
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George not-in-my-back-yard Clooney


technorati: SICKO
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A few thoughts by the beach

Every day when I first wake up I pray a Rosary in thanks, for I live a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Some of it may have to do with my name.

In Spanish, the name Fausta is most unusual for a woman. There are many Faustos, but women are usually named Faustina, which carries a softer connotation as the ina ending is also used as a diminutive. There are very few diminutive aspects to my personality, as those who know me well will tell you.

Faust in any language, to anyone familiar with Western opera and literature, connotes being gypped by unsavory characters. Frequently the person inquiring about my name is not fully familiar with the Faustian plot, and I have been asked if I was named after the devil. (I have developed a number of cutting remarks which have come in handy for those inquiries, thanks. Some day I'll post about that.) Classical scholars do know that Fausta was the wife of Constantine the Great, and she was up to no good. Probably becasue of this, many new visitors to this blog think Fausta is a pseudonym, when it actually is my real name.

I'm happy to report that I have not engaged in any Faustian dealings and that I was named after my grandma, a nice little old lady with flawless fair skin and snow-white hair, not after any conniving Roman empresses.

Fausta, on the other hand, is also an adjective in Spanish, meaning fortuitous, and also, happy in a splendid way. So I have been blessed with the life my name invokes.

Granted, mine is a simple mind and I derive great joy from the simplest things. Like stair-climbing, for instance.

Yesterday I went up and down four flights of stairs several times during the day. It was a hot and humid day and I was perspiring heavily (almost as much as that time I went to the aerobic yoga class, but not quite). To me it is a wonder that I can actually do that. It is an outright miracle. Several years ago I was really sick and despaired of ever doing such a simple thing again.

So there I was yesterday, going up the stairs for the umpteenth time (yes, the building has an elevator, but I wanted to go up the stairs because I could) and my heart was singing. No, it wasn’t palpitations. It was sheer delight. As I reached the fifth floor, I nearly said to a lady who was heading down, Look, I can do this!.

I'll never know if I woul feel that way if I hadn't been so ill. All I know is that I do now. I can not go back to find out, since there is no going back.

I derive a great deal of enjoyment from the most common things.

A fresh peach, eaten on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

The smell of the early morning.

The feel of cool clean linens.

The sight of a four year old hosing off the sand from his bellyboard.

The sound of a groom and his best man hugging each other in silence, just before they head to the wedding.

Blogging and podcasting are two other things I truly enjoy. Blogging and podcasting enrich my life in many wonderful and surprising ways. If I weren't blogging I would have never witnessed this wonderful event yesterday, for instance.

Yes, I have a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Since I'm on vacation I have had a chance to ponder these things while I haven't been keeping up on the news as much as usual, but I have heard from friends who do. Several of these friends I have met because of blogging, and they are very well informed.

They are expecting that things are not going to get better; indeed, they are expecting things to get a lot worse for a long time. Several of those friends are preparing for the worst.

They certainly have good reason to.

• A glance at the so-called newspaper of record shows the complicity of the mainstream media with crackpot Communist dictators.
• Academia has debased itself into a morass of dogmatism and moral blindness to the point where 87 faculty members of a major university judge three young men as guilty by "reason" of their race and background.
• Unprincipled secular societies in the West can not ever begin to understand fundamentalist Islamists because they are unable to fill a void with a void.
• We are in an existential struggle and Democrat candidates are running on the premise that there is no war at all. Listen up, democrats, look at what really happened in the Middle East. There have been 8,638 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. It's not Methodists doing it.
• The leadership in Washington is faltering in ever-worse ways. Both parties are out to find the most disastrous way in the least time.
• Even when I'm not keeping up with the news I know that the US and Israel will be arming Fatah. Have they lost their minds? We are arming our enemies. The enemy of my enemy will turn against us. They have before and will again.

So while I'm enjoying everyday pleasures and posting about them, I too have the temptation of wanting to go back to the the age of 1990s blindness, where a corrupt president was lauded by the media and where terrorist attack after terrorist attack was ignored and pushed aside because it didn’t fit the script of Clintonian happiness so many want to return to today.

They think that by bringing back the same-old same-old and singing the new campaign song it's all going to be Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So lets sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again,as if the words alone would make it so. It didn't happen in the 1930s. Then, as now, appeasement didn't work. But oh, those words would make anyone feel so good.

The problem is, words alone are not cutting it. Being blessed with a name does not alone make for a happy life as of itself. Ignoring an enemy set on destroying our very culture where I can write these words will not win a war.

There are many things I don't know, but there is one thing I know: there is no going back.

Don't close your eyes to reality.

Enjoy every moment you have.

And pray.



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