“There’s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide.”
—Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug. 29, 2002

Courtesy of Slate.

The Times has a front page picture and inside article about one of the doubles teams at the U.S. Open: Amir Hadad of Israel and Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan — yes, a Jewish/Muslim doubles team. There’s a video on the CNN/SI site also — they’re adorable. A photo from the U.S. Open site of them is here.

When it’s tank shells (or F-16s) rather than suicide bombs that kill civilians, Americans seem to think it’s not terrorism. Israel shelled people in a bedouin encampment last night, killing a family of four, and wounding others, claiming there was movement in an area near a settlement where Palestinians were forbidden. When I heard about it on NPR this morning, they said it was within an olive grove. I know from my friends in JAtO that now is the time for harvesting olives for oil.
[ CNN – <a href=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/020829/161/24zzj.html&e=3&ncid=705"> Photo</a> – NY Times – Ha’aretz ]

It’s one of the top stories on the newswires right now, but the NY Times chose to put it on page 9 with a standard-sized headline.

The settlements are being built in areas where these families have lived for generations. To kill them for being in the olive groves that they’ve tended for hundreds of years (or more) is terrorism.

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd announces, “I’m with Dick! Let’s Make War.” She admits she was dubious at first, but says that Cheney’s vision — as the vice-president put it, “a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized” — convinced her. “I’m on board,” she says. “Let’s declare war on Saudi Arabia!”

My favorite part:

The Saudis would probably use surrogates to fight anyway. They pay poor workers from other countries to do their menial labor. And they paid the Americans to fight the Iraqis in 1991. The joke among the American forces then was: "What’s the Saudi national anthem? ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ "

I’m a total amateur compared to Republicans when it comes to cognitive dissonance. How they are able to oppose the International Criminal Court — using the constitutional protections given a U.S. citizen as an excuse — while putting American citizens in jail and denying them their rights as “enemy combatants” is beyond my comprehension. Sometimes political cartoons say it better.

Sometimes it’s a mess, and it’s not the place to be when you have to get something done immediately, but I love Italy anyway. The latest reason — found on zoomata:

Italian men on the beach trying to pick up women are relying on the heavyweights of literature instead of bodybuilding.

According to a magazine survey of over 1,000 Italian men, some 68% of those aged 18- 55 take a book to the beach in hopes of catching the eye of a bathing beauty.

Most have a very clear idea about what sort of literature seduces — eighty percent of these tome-carrying Romeos rely on the Divine Comedy and the Bible.

Other pickup favorites were Giacomo Leopardi’s poems and Alessandro Manzoni’s epic love story “The Betrothed.” Although some 27% admitted favoring books instead of the usual crossword puzzle or gossip magazine because it’s important to appear ‘cultured,’ around 20% said the books were also a source of inspiration — for pickup lines.

The Times has a followup article to the one I wrote about several weeks ago regarding monks fighting over territorial rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. I can’t imagine trying to summarize this, so I’ll just excerpt a bit of it. One of the things that interested me was how all of the other sects took over the “territory” of the Ethiopians after they were wiped out by plague in 1658. The article also mentions that 11 monks were hospitalized after the previously-mentioned melee.

At 11:40 a.m. on Saturday, a 72-year-old Egyptian priest walked out onto the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher carrying a wooden chair.

Limping heavily, the Rev. Abdel Mallek walked to a wall in the shade of a tree mysteriously rooted in the ancient stone and sat down near a cluster of Ethiopian monks, gazing at nothing in particular. Exactly 15 minutes later, he gathered his chair and walked back into the Coptic monastery.

It was the most prosaic of scenes, except that Father Mallek was closely guarded by an Israeli policeman, and three others stood guard. From the windows of the Egyptian monastery on one side, someone recorded the scene with a video camera, while several Ethiopian monks peered warily over the wall of their ancient compound on the other side.

…

The policemen saw nothing strange in the assignment. They are also from Jerusalem. “This is the center of the world,” one explained. “This is how the world looks.”

I’m never at a gas station, or I would buy some.

For my musically-inclined readers, I’ve been listening to Trent Reznor’s favs on Live365 – from Bowie to Bloody Valentine to obscure Soft Cell tracks.

… some time later …

OK. I got bored with that and switched to girl punk, courtesy of Church of Girl Radio — from Portland, OR of course.

I’m planning to head over to Bellwether Gallery‘s block party later today. Drop me an email or call my cell if you’re going to be in the area!