27 May 2005

It's all about your behavior, not mine

[source]

What Peace Means to the Egyptian Government:

This Egyptian government website, which my wife stumbled upon by chance, tells an amazingly distorted story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, and the history of Jerusalem in particular. Of particular note is this page on the “history” of Jerusalem. It starts with the assertion that “[a]ll along human history, Jerusalem has always been an Arab Palestinian city”—quite a feat given that Palestine didn’t exist as a geographic entity until Roman times, and then only briefly until the 20th century, and, as the page itself later notes, the Arabs didn’t invade Jerusalem until the 7th century—and goes downhill from there (e.g., “[in] 600 years BC, the political history of the Jews had ended in Palestine”—guess that Hasmonean dynasty was just Josephus’s imagination). Egypt, remember, is at “peace” with Israel. I’d hate to see what lies and distortions the government’s website would come up with if they were still at war.

I’m not sure it would be any different if Egypt was at war with Israel, as the primary effect of the “peace” is

  • Egypt gets huge amounts of American money
  • Israel isn’t allowed to blow the Egyptian military in to tiny little pieces

It certainly doesn’t seem to restrain Egypt in any way.

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You can no longer make this stuff up

[source, source]

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

[…]

The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established.

Is there no mockery so ridiculous that the forces of nanny-fascism won’t eventually catch up?

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