14 'Av 5766 * 8 August 2006: Retief!

Greetings.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Iran, Israel, and the Arabs (1982)”
  
• “First Casualty”
  
• “Lebanon: An Expert Opinion”
  
• “The state as a rootless transient”
  
• “This Time It's War”
  
• “Hezbullah's other war”
  
• “Misdirected tears”

As everyone knows by now, diplomats are hard at work trying to bring the Israel-Lebanon war to a halt—and blatantly trying to ignore the reality of the situation in the process. It just so happens that I remembered that there is a science-fiction novel on the Internet about the monstrous clouds of self-delusion in which diplomats operate, oblivious to reality, and so in dishonor of any and all diplomats who have no clue what jihad is all about, today’s weird thing is Retief! by Keith Laumer.

Bonus weird thing: Alice’s Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll, the precursor to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You want the HTML zipped version; trust me.
Enjoy.

Aaron