do a little thing

i almost choked on my free goya poster on tuesday, reading my independent. apparently their fiercely independent stance now includes employing dominic lawson to continue hauling out the simpering conservative waffle he passed off as comment for ten years at the telegraph. fortunately i didn’t know this history when reading the article, so i was able to try and swallow his blinkered splurge before i was forced to choke on it.

it can be informative to pick up on a phrase that the media is currently overusing and analyse it. lawson picks up on ‘disproportionate’, subjects it to his high-powered analysis and conclude that the vagaries of parliamentary democracy permit firing rockets onto villagers you have commanded to evacuate their homes. at the time of writing 400 lebanese and 42 israelis have died in this conflict. lawson argues this is ‘proportionate’, because of the nature of the threat to israel and the prevalence of fanatics within hezbollah. now everybody got fanatics. but to even begin analysing this situation in terms of what ratio of deathtoll is supposedly acceptable, well i’d rather turn my putrid carcass over to a mcdonalds processing plant. even accepting the sickening concept of ‘just war’ and ‘offensive defense’, whether military action with a supposedly humanitarian goal is proportionate can only be judged by whether it is effective in it’s goals. how many rockets we can justify after they fired two rockets at us is logic that the densest playground bully knows, deep down, is flawed. and starting a war you can’t win, which makes your previously unpopular enemy stronger and has less chance of getting back your missing kids then a missing ad on a milk carton, well, A for effort and Z fucking minus for delivery.

do slightly more than nothing, sign this “yo blair, quit bending over for more and simply ask people to stop firing rockets at UN observer posts petition from oxfam. perhaps it does no good. but when reactionary warmongers coming right out and delcaring that OUR prime minister’s lack of balls is directly providing them with carte blanche to fight a pointless, bloody war that some people even believe is going to end the world, it’s probably time ask him to speak up.

it’s so obvious that even the daily star knows it. stop all war now.