Is Israel admitting...

...that they have been engaging in collective punishment of the civilian populus of Lebanon? What am I talking about? Well its this 48hr ceasefire. The thing is as has been pointed out its not really a ceasefire, as they will continue to use tactical air cover to assist their troops in the actual ground forces fight against Hizbollah. Ok let me think aloud here. It's a cease fire, but its not. If Hizbollah are active in the area of South Lebanon which is their 'stronghold' the Israeli's maintain their 'right' to bomb them, i.e. if Hizbollah launch missiles or are active. So its a ceasefire for Lebanon but not for Hizbollah. Ok I begin to get this now, I'm gonna try and decipher this, are they saying 'We will continue to fight Hizbollah, but not bomb the rest of Lebanon for 48hrs, so the NGO's can get you some food and water before we bomb you again!'

???

Progressive Islam?

I have come across this conjunction of words twice in as many weeks, and really have to ponder it means exactly? For me the word progressive is inherent in the word Islam both historically and contemporarily, thus to actually use the phrase strikes me as a form of apologetics. It reminds me a little of that phrase 'New Europe' as opposed to 'Old Europe' to which my answer has always been 'Its not New Europe, nor is it Old Europe it's just Europe is old'. It does not take a genius to deciper what the phrase 'progressive Islam' means, what it attempts to express and to whom, nor the point I attempt to delineate, so I will end.

Adam Kadmom

I think as supplement I may include a page form the Jewish encyclopedia demonstrating the body of Adam Kadmon...

Mishkat Al Anwar

Bilad As Sham

I returned home the other day to find my wife raving about the traditional music she had playing. Rather than calling it Palestinian, she called it music from 'Sham'. I then watched yesterday as a man in the street in Beirut said 'There is no Syria, no Lebanon, no Palestine, no Jordan, No Iraq...we are one land!!!!. Well its been almost a hundred years, but the hollow categories may be beginning to dissolve, and as they do so will the pencil lines on the map of the peninsula....

To the accusation of 'Perfidious Albion'...

...I must actually speak up for the Brits (after all I was born here and my family before me for many generations). Its not that the British lie or cannot be trusted. I think it is best delineated as single thinkers versus double thinkers (that's dialectic reasoning for the uninitiated). This is where you (I was going to say beyond calais, but that only includes the east, and to be honest, the greatest difference between the Americans and the British is the English language, so lets include the West too!!!! Tho' actually those who speak different languages quite often ask for qualification!!!) so often will come unstuck, it's not that we lie, it's that you can only get your head around one truth. As I pointed out to someone the otherday, to nearly every question there are multiple answers. When one statement has multiple interpretations and crucially will have i.e. future tense, if you leave a conversation with an Englishman without having him qualify every syllable, then later realise he was actually saying the complete opposite to what you thought he said, you only have yourself to blame.

As the Donald Byrd song says...

'Watch them fall like dominoes'. I have just been watching the BBC and the analogy of falling dominoes has been struck, with the question will they ultimately bring down primarily Tony Bliar, but of course his sellout version of the Labour ethic. I think it's not will he fall, rather which line of dominoes will be the one to bring him down????