Month: December 2005

Other Body Counts

I got to thinking about this when the American media was heralding the 1000th US execution since executions were reinstated in 1976.

I remembered the media’s heralding of the 1000th American soldier to die in Iraq. And the 2000th. And the gradually-ticking-upward toll.

What other body counts could the American media track?

I have five suggestions for now:

Why should the media be bothered?

Oh, I don’t know. I suppose most people don’t care to be bothered with more body counts and statistics. (I know I don’t want to be bothered.) But it might convey at least the appearance of some balance to the media’s reporting.

Maybe instead of body counts they could substitute some un(der)reported good news. Some uplifting, life-brightening, positive stuff. Ever hear of such a notion?!

Courageous, But Marked?

Can this man survive? I’m harassed with doubts.

Here’s a little of what Reuters is reporting:

“I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath,” said 38-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in room 63 at the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he was 15 when Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi’ite militants tried to assassinate him.

. . .

Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he gave evidence.

Courageous, I would say.

Grasping for Explanations

This whole deal of the Islamic terrorists seizing the CPT folks in Iraq and threatening to kill them if some impossible demand isn’t met seems odd to me.

How to explain it?

I suppose we could say this group of Muslim terrorists is simply ignorant of (1) who CPT is, (2) what good PR is, and/or (3) what righteousness is.

Maybe they didn’t count on their fellow terror groups taking exception with them for snatching this particular group of people. (See below.)

Maybe this particular terrorist crew isn’t Islamic at all. Maybe they’re American and/or Israeli agents trying to give the Muslims some bad press. That would even explain the targets of choice. Hmmmm. Maybe after/if these four are executed, this is the explanation that will be given by some folks “out there.” Well, I guess if that’s how it happens, I’ll be able to say I read it first right here at my very own MVP. Big deal.

Anyway, Robbins over at National Review Online says this in his current piece:

A letter in the Mennonite Weekly Review featured a letter signed by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Palestine People’s Party, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Union of Palestine, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian Liberation Front, and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front. “We appeal to our brothers in the resistance and all those with alert consciences in Iraq,” the letter said, “with whom we consider ourselves to be in the same trench confronting American aggression and occupation, to instantly and quickly release the four kidnapped persons from CPT, in appreciation for their role in standing beside and supporting our Palestinian people and all the Arab and Islamic peoples.”

Why did these guys use the Mennonite Weekly Review?

Could it be they know the CPT-snatchers read MWR?

Now I’m getting carried away.

May God somehow glorify Himself through all this.

God is great and Daniel was His prophet!

CPT Hostage Update

Maybe hostage is the wrong word, but it seems to fit. Whatever the case, it doesn’t look good for them, humanly speaking.

Despite calls and appeals for their safe release from a variety of Muslim individuals and groups, we have this report via Yahoo! News:

Kidnappers threatened to murder four Western peace activists abducted in
Iraq last week . . . .

In a video that appeared on Al-Jazeera television, the kidnappers said that unless all detainees in Iraqi and coalition prisons were released by December 8, they would kill the American, British and Canadian hostages.

A story I read yesterday said even some Palestinian terror groups have called for their safe release.

So, if the kidnappers are ignoring all these folks and making a demand they know won’t be met . . . .

Like I said, it doesn’t look good, humanly speaking.

I wonder what God’s plan is for these people:

Pray for them and their families.

And their captors, too.

I Shopped at WalMart

Yesterday. In Woodburn, Oregon. With a clear conscience. Aware of the vitriol and/or complaints directed toward the company.

In Woodburn, in my estimation, WalMart drove out KMart. Naughty WalMart. Except, in my estimation, KMart had already driven out PayLess/RiteAid. Oh. Well, then, naughty KMart. Except, in my estimation, PayLess/RiteAid had already driven out Ben Franklin. OK, then — naughty PayLess/RiteAid. But I wonder what business(es) Ben Franklin had already driven out. Probably some mom-and/or-pop operations. Fine — naughty Ben Franklin. Except it’s likely those smaller operations competed against others, driving them away.

Sounds like Darwinian Capitalism — dog eats puppy (ie, survival of the fittest).

Am I saying the fittest is always the most fit to survive? I’m not that silly or deluded.

So, what did I buy at WalMart yesterday? A box of envelopes of a type available nowhere else in town that I’m aware of. And prints of several photos I’d uploaded from home via the Internet.

I suppose I could have gone to Salem (20+ miles one way) to find those envelopes. But it would have cost me way more than the envelopes. Besides, I would have gone on a road and used an automobile which “drove out” horses and wagons and trails from business.

And I likely would have gone to another big business to get the envelopes anyway.

Ditto for the option of ordering online instead of at WalMart.

I could say more, but what’s the use. I don’t have time nor interest.

So I shop at WalMart.

No problem.

News to Bug You

Yeah, I know — awful headline pun.

But the news is awfully buggy this morning, as I read at Yahoo! News:

Bedbugs, the houseguests nobody wants, are back in growing numbers across the USA, and booting them from your bunk can be a lengthy, costly process.

Sixty years after near-eradication, the little bloodsuckers are infesting homes and hotels from New York to San Diego. Why the outbreak? Increased world travel and changing pest-control practices.

“The bugs had become a myth,” says Richard Cooper, an entomologist who runs a family pest control firm in Lawrenceville, N.J. “They were the monster in the closet. People don’t believe they’re real.”

So carry your bug spray and bug bombs and bug repellent and Gold Bond Medicated Anti-Itch Cream if you’re planning to stay in a motel.

Oh well.

News Quiz #1

Here’s the story:

Surgeons will attempt early next year to mend the severed nerves of young people who have suffered motorbike accidents in the first trial of a simple but potentially revolutionary technology that could one day allow the paralysed to walk again.

At least ten operations will be carried out to test in humans a technique pioneered in animals by the neuroscientist Geoffrey Raisman, who heads the spinal repair unit of University College, London. He discovered 20 years ago that cells from the lining of the __________ constantly regenerate themselves. Professor Raisman’s team believes that if those cells were implanted at the site of the damage they would build a bridge across the break, allowing the nerve fibres to knit back together.

What’s the missing word?

No fair searching for the correct answer till after you post your answer (ie, guess) here. 🙂

Above all, love God!