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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Will there will be U.N. peacekeepers in Gaza again?

As we're seeing Israel's revenge reprisals ongoing against the Gaza strip, the pattern, as usual, is quite clear. Israel, in an effort at "behavior modification" will inflict casualties at a 10:1 ratio on the Palestinians, for the casualties inflicted on the Israelis. The notion that the Israelis will "destroy" Hamas is, of course, ridiculous, since Hamas is just a general pattern of resistance by the Muslims to Israeli occupation, which, obviously, is not going to change. Ever. On the other hand, the notion that a two state solution is the answer is equally ridiculous, since a two state solution is a no state solution. Neither the Jews nor the Muslims would have a secure territory with an adequate military to defend itself, they would simply be distinct ethnic groups in an Arab sea rather like they were under the Ottomans. And, under those circumstances, there would be no good reason for Jews to be there, at all, would there? It seems unlikely that there will be a full scale invasion of Gaza this time. It doesn't look like the U.S. will permit it, it would accomplish nothing, and might subject the Israelis to far more military casualties than they wish to have. So, what is the way forward here? While a two state solution is not a meaningful or practical possibility, there is a kind of compromise that might, possibly be acceptable at this time. How about a kind of super-Ghetto for Palestinians in Gaza -- peaceful, secure and policed by the U.N. In the past, U.N. peacekeepers have been tried between the Arabs and the Israelis, but, the fact is, these two groups just enjoy killing each other too bloody much for that to work very well. However, with both Israel and Iran being nuclear powers now, with an increasingly unstable world situation, and with new technologies making the results of military confrontations more and more unpredictable, it may be that the Palestinians and Israelis might actually be willing to accept some kind of impartial referee between them for a time. Maybe. These two groups may actually grasp that their four thousand year old fight to the death is no longer a practical possibility in our modern world, and they'll just have to settle down a bit. If U.N. peacekeepers didn't have to worry about getting shot up all the time, they might actually do a good job in Gaza. And, up to a point anyway, both the Palestinians and the Israelis could live in peace in this region. And, if the Palestinians got tired of their "super-ghetto", well, they could always filter their way into Egypt, or Jordan or Syria or Lebanon. And, ultimately, we might actually have peace in this part of the world.

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