IT'S A SCARY WORLD

  Two days after Teehoo flew out of Amsterdam, on her way home, a Malaysia Airlines flight on its way to Kuala Lumpur, was shot out the sky over Eastern Ukraine. The flight originated in Amsterdam. 298 individuals were immediately killed. Both sides are blaming each other in Ukraine. These weapons are manned by 18 year old knuckleheads, both Russian and Ukrainian. It's not surprising that some soldier sees a contrail and turns the turret skyward and pulls the trigger. I've yet to hear any reporter ask an official whether or not it is standard operating policy for commercial airlines to fly over war zones? I'm just glad Teehoo is on terra firma. She's not leaving the ground until she finishes college, if I have anything to say about it. Of course I have nothing to say about it
    On another front, after weeks of phone calls, "roof knocks" with dummy bombs, and full out air assault, Israel has begun another ground invasion of Gaza. In one of the saddest exercises in Kafkaesque futility, the JDF air force, drops fliers all over Gaza City telling people to leave. They drop them in the North, South and East. To the west is the sea. Gaza is fenced in by the Israeli occupiers. The only way they have of escape is through the tunnels, which Israel is targeting. Leave? How? Where? My "Hebros" here on the mountain will point towards Hamas' constant rocket fire as an excuse for all this. If you were penned in, by a foreign government, unable even to become refugees, wouldn't you be throwing everything you could at them? Fish in a barrel would have a better chance.
   I don't pretend to be an expert on any of this. Like most Americans, except for a very few "left" media outlets, like Democracy Now, I get the Israeli/American party line. Any deviation from this is rewarded by a transfer. Case in point, a NBC news reporter who witnessed 4 Palestinian kids, he was playing soccer with a hour earlier, killed by Israeli forces, was immediately taken off the air. The lopsided element of this "conflict", and its reporting, reminds me of the Indian wars of the 1890s. Bows and arrows don't do much against Gatling guns. History's a bitch. The one Israeli casualty in the new ground war in Gaza was attributed to "friendly fire".  Almost 300 killed in Gaza. And this is just a 24 hour hour news cycle- Russians vs. Ukraine, Israel vs. Gaza. A squirrel just dropped an acorn on my roof and simultaneously the phone rang.  I damn near jumped out of my skin. JESUS CHRIST! No wonder I never leave the mountain.