Assalmu Alaykum ('Peace be with you').
Just riding out a Colorado low..winds been howling off the lake at over 80kms per hour all through the night and most of the following day. Awoke this morning expecting the white stuff, but nothing yet. The weather network reports +4C so snow wont survive that mercury reading. It is (the snow that is) better off to settle in BC with their sub-zero forecasts (settling in at -5 tonight) for a white Xmas. Nevertheless, we are better suited to navigate the flurries than west-coasters. BC blog follower Gerry Desharnais took off to Puerto Vallarta last weekend, so he timed 'er right. LOL. I could do without the power grey-outs that accompany these lake gales here, on the Erie shores, though.
We just finished cleaning up from my beloved Val's 43rd birthday on Sunday. We had company, John and Sue, came in from North Bay and shared in celebrations. Our neighbour Tim took them on his family's greenhouse tour at Seacliffes Greenhouses and sent the gals home with potted Poinsettias for Xmas. A good time was has by all.
Val has posted the Xmas decor and lights but the tree still waits. My Xmas shopping, also, still waits but I have acquired Xmas cards and sent Mother's birthday gift so I haven’t neglected all my social responsibilities. Ha Ha Ha. Nothing quite so complicated as running a Union, but just as pressing, nonetheless. But alas, that was another life.
Speaking of another life, have you followed any of the Middle East peace talks? I used to belittle and ignore the pro rights activists that quickly judge one side, or the other, in this longstanding dispute. I saw it first-hand in 1977, and witnessed the bombed out schools, buses, markets and cafes that resulted in the murder of scores of Israeli women and children in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I also travelled as a Goyum with Hebrew friends through Jericho, and to the Dead Sea and the Negev’s Sinai, Beersheba, Elat and north to the Sea of Galilee and Tiberius, as well. I recall spending many nights with kibbutz (Isreali collective farms) volunteers and, in the dorm of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus and having to be in residence before the shields were lowered over the entrances and windows. It wasn’t long before I found accommodations in the Jerusalem's Old City in an Arab family's rooming house and came and went as I pleased.
Some thirty-two (32) years and a zillion deaths later, parties have, once more agreed to conditions to talk peace with the halting of settlers in the Palestine (Arab) neighbourhoods. Those conditions have resulted in Israeli settlers and citizens demonstrating against their leader's agreement to halt any future, i.e. not the already permitted to be built (which already arouses the questionable principle of good faith) settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Excuse me, but settling does not imply the inherent ownership of the land, and in my humble experience in people’s rights, to settle against the indigenous acceptance and/or welcome of those lands, and as such, equates to invading and occupying, no? The absolutely sinister ironies prevail, circa the Berlin Wall and/or the Nazi invasion of Poland and establishing the Jewish Warsaw ghetto in 1940. Like a young facebook friend of mine says when he encounters injustices..OMFG???
The question begs to be asked. "How do societies, around the planet, condemn, recover, remedy and compensate for the occupations of indigenous lands and its peoples spanning over the last few centuries, but ignore this?" As God is my witness, I thought cool heads would have prevailed by now.
I’ll be in touch.
We just finished cleaning up from my beloved Val's 43rd birthday on Sunday. We had company, John and Sue, came in from North Bay and shared in celebrations. Our neighbour Tim took them on his family's greenhouse tour at Seacliffes Greenhouses and sent the gals home with potted Poinsettias for Xmas. A good time was has by all.
Val has posted the Xmas decor and lights but the tree still waits. My Xmas shopping, also, still waits but I have acquired Xmas cards and sent Mother's birthday gift so I haven’t neglected all my social responsibilities. Ha Ha Ha. Nothing quite so complicated as running a Union, but just as pressing, nonetheless. But alas, that was another life.
Speaking of another life, have you followed any of the Middle East peace talks? I used to belittle and ignore the pro rights activists that quickly judge one side, or the other, in this longstanding dispute. I saw it first-hand in 1977, and witnessed the bombed out schools, buses, markets and cafes that resulted in the murder of scores of Israeli women and children in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I also travelled as a Goyum with Hebrew friends through Jericho, and to the Dead Sea and the Negev’s Sinai, Beersheba, Elat and north to the Sea of Galilee and Tiberius, as well. I recall spending many nights with kibbutz (Isreali collective farms) volunteers and, in the dorm of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus and having to be in residence before the shields were lowered over the entrances and windows. It wasn’t long before I found accommodations in the Jerusalem's Old City in an Arab family's rooming house and came and went as I pleased.
Some thirty-two (32) years and a zillion deaths later, parties have, once more agreed to conditions to talk peace with the halting of settlers in the Palestine (Arab) neighbourhoods. Those conditions have resulted in Israeli settlers and citizens demonstrating against their leader's agreement to halt any future, i.e. not the already permitted to be built (which already arouses the questionable principle of good faith) settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Excuse me, but settling does not imply the inherent ownership of the land, and in my humble experience in people’s rights, to settle against the indigenous acceptance and/or welcome of those lands, and as such, equates to invading and occupying, no? The absolutely sinister ironies prevail, circa the Berlin Wall and/or the Nazi invasion of Poland and establishing the Jewish Warsaw ghetto in 1940. Like a young facebook friend of mine says when he encounters injustices..OMFG???
The question begs to be asked. "How do societies, around the planet, condemn, recover, remedy and compensate for the occupations of indigenous lands and its peoples spanning over the last few centuries, but ignore this?" As God is my witness, I thought cool heads would have prevailed by now.
I’ll be in touch.
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