So there. Now, noone can even pretend anymore that there is a ceasefire on Sri Lanka.

There is probably just as much concentrated insanity on Sri Lanka as in the Middle East. The upside is that, unlike with the latter, noone else is affected. Even if Sri Lanka burned to the ground, it never could set half the world ablaze.

While we are all preoccuped with Lebanon’s death by thousand cuts, the Israeli destruction of Gaza threatens “total breakdown of the fabric of society,” reports the Independent.

How grotesquely appropriate to name it “Samson’s Pillars.” Here’s what Samson, according to myth, accomplished in Gaza:

Sounds like terrorism, no? Now, what pathological condition might have engendered such behavior?

Well, when it comes to the government of Israel, some of us do.

An op-ed by the Norwegian novelist Torgrim Eggen, readworthy especially for its historical point of view.

Now they are bombing Beirut again. That’s what it’s like to have the world’s worst neighbor.

THE INTERNET is quite a tool. I am sitting here with Google Earth looking at satellite images of Beirut. I think I have found Khraibeh Street, where I lived in the fall of 1993.
     Khraibeh Street is situated in the hillside in Hadeth east of the airport, and from my roof terrace adorned with pictoresque bullet holes I enjoyed a panorama view of western Beirut. Nearest was the ghetto Hay al-Sellum, which US Marines called “Hooterville” when they served as a peacekeeping force in Beirut from 1982 to 1984. Hay al-Sellum is Hizbollahstan. The area was dangerous, claimed my Christian hosts, so when we ventured there it was on the condition that I was “Swiss.” This, of course, was thanks to the Oslo Accords.

NORTH OF “Hooterville,” in good view of my terrace, was the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj al-Barajneh. Or rather, what was left of it. North-west of this, in turn, are Sabra and Shatila, the scene of perhaps the blackest chapter of Israeli and Lebanese history.
     I recall people asking: — What are you doing in Beirut day after day? Why don’t you head up to see the Roman ruins at Baalbek, or the ruins of Byblos? My reply: — Don’t you think I see enough ruins from the terrace? There was, as it were, nothing else.

AND NOW THEY are at it bombing Beirut again. What wrong have these people done?
     It would be unfair to blame all of Lebanon’s misery on its southern neighbor. Let us say Israel is merely responsible for ninety percent. It is shocking what brutality the Israelis display when Lebanon is the target. The current Chief of Staff is Dan Halutz, and the acts of war had barely begun when he declared that they would “bomb Lebanon 20 years back in time.” This week he reportedly said that Israel “will bomb ten housing blocks in Beirut for every missile hitting Haifa.” To avoid the commonplace accusations of “anti-Semitism” I shall not mention what this is reminiscent of. According to the Jerusalem Post, Halutz was misquoted. In any case, this is a man who is staying the course toward the Hague. His former boss Ariel Sharon, now in coma, should have been charged there as well.

IN THE WAR OF 1982, Israel managed to commit just about every war crime in the book. Bombing of hospitals. Terror bombing of residential quarters. Use of phosphorous and cluster bombs against civilians. Summary executions of prisoners. You name it. Israel was even able to bomb Beirut’s sole remaining synagogue. All this and more can be read in Pity the Nation: Lebanon and War by Robert Fisk, hereby recommended. This is the book that will make you laugh out loud the next time you hear the term ’surgical strikes’.

SO WHY dwell at length on a war 24 years past? Because that was when Israel invented Hizbollah. It was an accomplishment making the expression ‘to shoot oneself in the leg’ sound tame.
     When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 to weed out the PLO, the poor Shia minority in southern Lebanon were relatively impartial. The conflict lacked the religous resonances it has today, and besides, the majority of the PLO, Fatah, et cetera were Sunnis. The problem was that the Shias were in the way. The savagery and brutality with which Israel proceeded, first against southern villages and then against the quarters of Beirut to which the villagers fled (those who weren’t mowed down by Israeli aircraft underway), led to radicalization. The Shias became militant, and there was inspiration (as well as finances) on offer in Iran.
     On November 11 1982 it said boom. Israel’s military headquarters in Tyre went up in smoke; 75 Israelis died. A previously unknown group that called itself Islamic Jihad took responsibility for what was in fact the first suicide operation in the Middle East. Islamic Jihad is believed to have been a branch of “the Party of God.”

CAN I TEMPT with an interesting moral dilemma? A “terrorist organization” stations a SAM site on a hospital roof in violation of the Geneva Conventions. A martial power bombs the hospital and kills everyone inside — doctors, nurses, and civilian patients. Is it possible to talk about ‘degrees’ of responsibility here? I think it is. The “terrorists” put civilian lives in danger. The martial power executes them. Much of today’s Lebanon conflict is about such things, about “living shields” and “collateral damage.”
     The above example is once again from Israel’s invasion in 1982. To be fair, they also bombed hospitals on which the “terrorists” had stationed nothing whatsoever. At Bourj al-Barajneh it appeared that the Israeli pilot had used the Red Cross-symbol on the roof to aim. After all, there could be “terrorists” in the hospital beds. This year it seems that shooting at ambulances is the sport in vogue. Or was it UN observers?

ISRAEL’S FORMER Prime Minister Menachem Begin once declared that “if Adolf Hitler were hiding in a housing block full of civilians, we would bomb it.” Now, there wasn’t any Israel at the time when Hitler frequented housing blocks. That is at the core of the problem, so to speak. Back when PLO was the main enemy, it was passable in the Israeli public sphere to compare Yassir Arafat to Hitler. This year the Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has the honor of being “Hitler.”
     But in that case it would surely suffice to bomb one house? As opposed to reducing a city of millions to rubble?
     This is where the Israeli logic fails, and it does so because it is the logic of terrorism. The logic of terrorism dictates that a hospital is a legitimate target if it may contain combatants.
     The logic is so bizarre that it values the life of one terrorist higher than other lives — if one kills twenty innocents to eliminate one Hizbollah stalwart, the operation is a success.
     Yes, I think Israel must have the right to exist and defend itself. I even find the idea of a “security zone” a good one. But then, in the name of decency, it should surely be located in Israel and not in Lebanon. After all, you don’t empty your garbage bin over the fence to your neighbor, right?

By Torgrim Eggen 2006. Translation by Sirocco.

Like all modern wars, this one is being waged on a moral as well as a military front. Israel is losing on both. Its international image depends on a David vs. Goliath frame, which has two elements: 1. Goliath is nasty, brutish, and tall; 2. David kicks him around against all odds. Israel is supposed to be David — as in 1948, 1967, 1973. Instead it now comes across as Goliath being held to a tie by David in spite of savagely terrorizing his wife and children. If the war were to end today, it would be an unmitigated political disaster for Israel.

But what to do? As its generals ought to know, air power alone has never destroyed an army, nor induced a civilian population to surrender. Thus, for Israel to avoid total strategic disaster, it will have to invade southern Lebanon. But this is what Hizbollah has spent six years preparing for. Furthermore, Israel has destroyed the communications infrastructure, which puts a lightly armed, mobile and already deployed guerrilla at an advantage. Finally, the human toll of invasion would inevitably further undermine support for Israel, even in the only demographic and government it cares about.

I don’t see any way out of this for the Israeli government.

More photos here.

So the noble, knightly warriors of the IDF carry out another massacre in Qana, killing at least 40 60 civilians including at least 23 37 children. Israel’s belated answer to Curtis LeMay assures us it was a regrettable accident:

Sure, maybe. Or maybe not:

And why, after all, should reprisals be confined to Beirut, when according to the Israeli government, “[a]ll those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah”?

Time for a brief recap of just a few previous “slips” that come to mind:

1967. IDF conducts sustained air and naval attack at the USS Liberty flying US flag in int’l waters after 8 hours of aireal surveillance, killing 34 — accidental

1982. IDF allows massacre by ally in Lebanon refugee camps, killing 7-800 — accidental

1996. IDF massacre at UNIFIL compound at Qana, killing 106 refugees while two helicopters and drone are present — accidental

2003. IDF kills American activist Rachel Corrie with bulldozer — accidental

2006. IDF shells to death family on the beach in Gaza — accidental

2006. IDF attacks several Red Cross ambulances — accidental

2006. IDF shells UNIFIL compound over six hours, killing four — accidental

2006. IDF shells other UNIFIL compound, wounding two — accidental

2006. IDF attacks several press convoys — accidental

2006. IDF bombs several hospitals — accidental

2006. IDF attacks numerous refugee convoys — accidental

Surely this must be one of the world’s most incompetent militaries. Can it really be entrusted with more than 200 nuclear weapons?

Telephone polling of 1002 Americans lays bare the staggering extent of American distaste for facts.

In the midst of a catastrophic civil war, no less than fifty-five percent of respondents “think history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy” to Iraq.

I have given the American people every possible benefit of the doubt over the last six years. That’s not an error I am likely to repeat.

Tony Bliar, having finally placed himself outside the scope of any possible human forgiveness, speaks the truth for once:

Damn right. We — that is, most of the world — are up against the mindset of murderous scum like you. In the words of former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Update: At long last, Labour is getting enough. Bliar’s final exit is likely just a few months away.

BBC News:

No kidding. A convoy of international press, clearly marked and giving the IDF half-hourly updates on its position, was shelled on Friday on its way out of south-east Lebanon. Several cars with refugees had joined the convoy, mistakenly believing this would be safer. These refugees were hit, wounding several children.

The Norwegian TV2, which had a reporter in this convoy, interviewed terrified villagers trapped with their children in the area and running out of food. They either didn’t have a car or were afraid to be attacked if they left the house.

In the subsequent segment, the Killer Chimp filled the TV screen with his hideous grin, boasting that what is going on in Lebanon “is US policy.”

– We’ll get every last one of those turrrist children.

Update: Good news. A terrorist mother and her six terrorist children were killed when an Israeli F-16, paid for with American tax money, bombed the family’s house outside of Nabatiyeh. Another terrorist family member was also offed.

Unfortunately the terrorist family father, Adnan al-Kharakeh, survived as he was out working for the terrorist Lebanese Civil Defense, saving other terrorist bomb victims.

In other uplifting news on the fruits of US policy, six terrorist civilians were killed in an airstrike against several residential houses in the border village Ain Arab, and a further eight terrorist civilians were found killed on the deadly roads of southern Lebanon. Among the latter were a terrorist married couple and their three terrorist children, hit by an Israeli missile as they shamelessly tried to flee the Israeli self-defense.

Source: NTB/Aftenposten.

Meanwhile, Norwegian TV showed images of a terrorist woman, nine months pregnant, trying to walk the 30 kilometers to relative safety in the blistering heat with bombs literally raining around her. After a near-hit she squatted and cried in despair, as only a true, hardened terrorist would do.

Additionally, another terrorist UN observer post has been destroyed in an airstrike. Two terrorist unarmed UNIFIL observers were wounded.

Israel’s ambassador to Norway, the disagreeable Miryam Shomrat, continues her campaign to stir up outrage over a satirical cartoon in the Oslo tabloid Dagbladet. As I noted in a previous post, she has filed a complaint with the Norwegian Press Trade Committee, claiming that the cartoon — which portrays Ehud Olmert as a smiling Amon Göth from Schindler’s List — exceeds the limits of free speech. Now the ambassador makes her case in the New York Sun:

Is it a crime for a European paper to be critical of Israel? Did Der Stürmer come out in 1956? And lastly, who is now making tasteless comparisons?

Israel’s objection to freedom of expression in another country is nothing like the Muhammed protest because Israel is fighting a war? Since the New York Sun can hardly be suspected of anti-Israel bias, presumably the ambassador is accurately quoted. And it boggles the mind.

Israel used to be adept at propaganda as well as war. What went wrong?

Not depressed enough by the world situation? The existential pessimist and philosopher of tragedy, Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990), is here to help.

For more by this unjustly neglected thinker, see my Philosophy category.

It is said that the spirit is like a flickering fire in the night; thus we must be humble with regard to all that we cannot fathom. Whatever paroxysms of self-vaporising humbleness should not then be expected of sheep, or oysters? We “know that we know nothing”, yet the charting of our ignorance has in time become respectable. Rather, we are over-endowed when it comes to posing problems; even our flair at solving them has brought us to the brink of disaster.

It is said of the nihilist that ”to him, nothing is sacred”. He might reply that at least he does not sanctify the lie, the common compulsory living-lie; be it expressed as optimism about civilisation or as the falsettos and tightened throats of those who must hide the disconcerting facts to children, so these are not frightened witless even at the outset.

The sooner humanity dares to harmonise itself with its biological predicament, the better. And this means to willingly withdraw in contempt for its worldly terms, just as the heat-craving species went extinct when temperatures dropped. To us, it is the moral climate of the cosmos that is intolerable, and a two-child policy could make our discontinuance a pain-free one. Yet instead we are expanding and succeeding everywhere, as necessity has taught us to mutilate the formula in our hearts. Perhaps the most unreasonable effect of such invigorating vulgarisation is the doctrine that the individual “has a duty” to suffer nameless agony and a terrible death if this saves or benefits the rest of his group. Anyone who declines is subjected to doom and death, instead of the revulsion being directed at the world-order engendering the situation. To any independent observer, this plainly is to juxtapose incommensurable things; no future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will. It is upon a pavement of battered destinies that the survivors storm ahead toward new bland sensations and mass deaths.

So you ask whether I would choose to be unborn? One must be born in order to choose, and then the choice involves destruction. But ask my brother in that chair over there. Indeed, it is an empty one; my brother did not get so far. Yet ask him, as he is travelling like the wind below the sky, crashing against the beach, scenting in the grass, revelling in his strength as he pursues his living food. Do you think he is bereaved by his incapacity to fulfill his fate on the waiting list of the Oslo Housing and Savings Society? And have you ever missed him? Look around in a crowded afternoon tram and reflect whether you would allow a lottery to select one of the exhausted toilers as the one whom you put into this world. They pay no attention as one person gets off and two get on. The tram keeps rolling along.

It is no cure for tooth-ache to get ache in four more teeth. ‘Progress’ is a matter of quantity. In order to provide the multiplicants with a living, a place in the brooding box, and continuous clamour in their spare time, nature is crushed and put on sale. A new generation will discover that it was the landscapes of our minds we were demolishing. Preserves are not to be countenanced; a desolate island is a crime. Every municipality has but a single goal: to multiply. To multiply profusely. To multiply the most. And so what?

An experience-based ethic arises naturally from our predicament as prisoners of a cosmic concentration camp. In the blind law of transience we have a common enemy. Hence our model should be the ethics of the life-boat. Those who wish to die shall be allowed to. But whoever steals from the water cask makes himself a collaborator with the enemy, and only ethically irrelevant love can prevent his extradition to his new master.

Above all, we must make the reproductive question ethically relevant. A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness. Nobody flinches – except when saying cootchie-cootchie to the treasure in the cradle, little Hjalmar Alexander.

Besides Ibsen, especially Henri Fredric Amiel has made a profound impression upon me. He possesses that complete meditative relaxation which allows thought to sink, as heavy as lead, to the great conceptual depths – depths inaccessible to anyone whose attention is burdened by concerns with everyday welfare. But this discerning, generous, self-reflective and self-forfeiting type – a noble dreamer, impaled on the needle of the now – is naturally defenceless in a society that only acknowledges measurable value. And a nation of such refined minds would be haplessly abandoned to any blind, gluttonous conqueror. Cheaply victorious, he bids the broken mimosa a scornful farewell, oblivious to this being humanity bidding itself farewell. Some of the dreamer’s states of mind are ideal heights at which I look askance from the debasement of necessity. But this ideal is void of any future. A famous editor in Kristiania said to his son: “Are you still pursuing that nonsense.” Well then, he was only witnessing his own spiritual demise. But how can a planet hirsute with six billion vehicles of the flesh, all bellowing out their needs, have room for those who merely wonder and despair? Who dares demand of this panic-prone, surging avalanche, this oceanic breaker wave of jaws and claws, that it direct its power inwards, consider the dead and the tormented, and don every morning, in trembling, the mercy of chance?

Israel defends its destruction of Lebanon with reference to UN Security Council Resolution 1391, calling on Lebanon to seize control of its entire territory. In this context it is interesting to consider Israel’s own record when it comes to UN resolutions.

The Israeli Ambassador to Norway, Miryam Shomrat, has kindly answered questions from readers of the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. One question read: “Is Israel free to pick and choose which UN Resolutions are to be complied with?” Her Excellency replied as follows:

That’s quite a study in disingenuity. Three follow-ups come to mind:

1. If it’s fine and dandy to ignore UN General Assembly resolutions at will because they aren’t legally binding, why are we constantly reminded that Israel was established under a UN General Assembly resolution? Indeed, Israel’s own establishment proclamation cites this resolution immediately before declaring the state:

The ambassador herself complains in another reply: “The historical fact is that when the State of Israel was established the Arab countries attacked it a [sic] war of aggression and at the end of the war refused to sign peace agreements and establish recognised borders - which Israel wanted.” But if a barrage of UN General Assembly resolutions critical of Israel count for nil, why was it so wrong for Arab states to reject the particular resolution authorizing Israel’s creation in the former British Mandate? (For the record, I don’t personally oppose it.)

2. Is it really true that “Israel is adhering to Security Council resolutions”? If by this one means, ‘adhering to some Security Council resolutions’, then it is doubtless so, though not mind-bendingly impressive. But what about the following, Mrs. Ambassador?

The above list relies on this compilation by Professor Stephen Zunes, updated from the primary sources. Note that it only includes resolutions which Israel currently is flaunting; otherwise it would have been longer. For instance, UNSC Resolution 425 (1978), calling on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, was ignored by the former for 22 years.

3. To the extremely limited extent that passed UNSC resolutions are palatable to Israel, could that possibly be because the US, after adopting Israel as a client state in the early 1970s, has used its veto power more than all other permanent members during that period combined? After all, since Ambassador George Bush cast the first pro-Israel veto in 1972, forty UNSC Resolutions critical of Israel have been shot down by the USA, the most recent one calling for a halt to the Lebanon slaughter.

I rest my case.

Update:

That’s what I call a snub:

The Syrian Foreign Minister visits Norway and is relegated to meeting a bureaucrat? That’s how it goes when you allow the torching of embassies over cartoons.

But in any case, in a marginally saner world, Mouallem would not be in Norway at all. He would be busy negotiating with Condoleezza Rice.

A fresh NYT/CBS poll finds ample support for Israeli war crimes in the only demographic that matters:

And what is this “handling” of which only 27 percent disapprove? Apart from rush-delivering “precision-guided” ordnance to Israel, financed by 20 percent of US “development aid,” it amounts to vetoing a call for ceasefire by the UNSC and similarly torpedoing the summit in Rome:

At the Rome talks, Rice resisted pressure from allies for Washington to change its stance and call for an immediate halt to the violence.

Rice insisted any cease-fire must be “sustainable” and that there could be “no return to the status quo” — a reference to the U.S. and Israeli position that Hezbollah must first be pushed back from the border and the Lebanese army backed by international forces deployed in the south.

Israel takes the result of Rice’s sabotage as a pat on the back:

So heartened by the “world’s support,” the “justice” minister openly threatens a campaign of relentless war crimes:

Except the children; the elderly; those who lie wounded in their homes because you have bombed the ambulances and hospitals; and those who are trapped for want of a vehicle or because you have destroyed the roads and bridges and targeted convoys of refugees marked with white flags.

Is someone taking notes at the Hague? Oh, wait. At a previous conference in Rome, Israel was one of only seven countries rejecting the International Criminal Court. The others were China, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Yemen, Qatar, and the USA. As usual, the latter is in a class of its own: Congress has authorized the President to “use all means necessary and appropriate” to free US personnel (and certain allied personnel, including Israeli such) detained or imprisoned by the ICC. Presumably, the Hague has taken note of that.

However, might does not make right. Morally speaking, the USA stands to Israel as Serbia stood to the regime of Radovan Karadžić. It is, and I regret having to write these words, a blight on humanity.

What sort of country revels in murder and oppression but cries to high heavens about cartoons?

Saudi Arabia? Check. Syria? Check. Libya? Check. Iran? Check.

Israel? Check:

Here is the intolerable doodle in need of repression:

The allusion to Schindler’s List is clear. Now here’s another list:

1. Anwar Isma’el Atallah, 12 years old
2. Saleh Sleman Al Jemasi, 16 years old
3. Ruwan Fareed Hajjaj, 5 years old
4. Khalid Nidal Abed Al Karim Wahbeh, 1 year old
5. Mahfouth Farid Nasseer, 15 years old
6. Ahmad Ghaleb Abu Amshah, 16 years old
7. Ahmed Fathi Odah Shabat, 16 years old
8. Waleed Mahmoud Al Zinati, 12 years old
9. Salah Adeen Hammad Abu Maktuma, 17 years old
10. Ibrahim Ali Khatoush, 15 years old
11. Mahmoud Muhammad Al Asar, 15 years old
12. Ibrahim Ali Al Nabaheen, 15 years old
13. Ahmad Abdil Mina’m Abu Hajaj, 16 years old
14. Nasrallah Nabil Abu Selmieh, 5 years old
15. Aya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 7 years old
16. Iman Nabil Abu Selmieh, 11 years old
17. Yahya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 9 years old
18. Huda Nabil Abu Selmieh, 13 years old
19. Basma Nabil Abu Selmieh, 15 years old
20. Sumaia Nabil Abu Selmieh, 16 years old
21. Raji Omar Deif Alla, 16 years old
22. Muhanna Sa’ed Mesleh, 16 years old
23. Ahmad Rawhee Abdo, 13 years old
24. Ali Kamil Al Najar, 13 years old
25. Fadwa Faisel al ‘Urouqi, 13 years old
26. Mohammad Awad Muhra, 17 years old
27. Khitam Muhammad Tayeh, 11 years old
28. Nadee Habib Al Ataar, 11 years old
29. Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 13 years old
30. Bashir Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 12 years old
31. Sabrine Naser Habib, 3 years old

The above are children killed by the IDF in Gaza alone since June 26, according to Defence for Children International.

Two questions come to mind: 1. How far off is the cartoon in light of this list? 2. To the extent that it misses the mark, which is more unacceptable? The cartoon, or the list?

A few more examples of Finn Graff’s fine penmanship in this previous post.

Juan Cole hits the nail on the head as usual:

There is only one thing I differ with here, and it’s probably just a matter of wording. Cole says the missile attacks on Israel are ‘casus belli’, i.e., just cause for war. True, but let’s not forget the timeline. Jonathan Cook can help us with that:

Does this timeline excuse the Hezbollah attacks on Israeli towns? No, because there is no excuse for targeting civilians. But trying to justify Israel’s total war on Lebanon with said attacks is to reverse cause and effect.

In the rest of his article, Cook is talking nonsense. He slams the UN Emergency Relief Coordinatior Jan Egeland for condemning Hezbollah tactics of hiding among civilians. Instead he praises “the lengths the Shiite militia is going to ensure their loved ones, and the Lebanese people more generally, are not put directly in danger by their combat.” I frankly am unaware of any such ‘lengths’.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this war is the extent to which Hezbollah and the Israeli government are racing for the moral low ground. May they both hit the wall instead.

Congratulations are due the IDF for another job well done:

Here is how it looked the last time Israel deliberately targeted a UNIFIL compound, killing over 100 refugees, mostly women and children:

No headless babies this time around, but maybe they are working on that.

Crossposted from Booman Tribune and European Tribune.

The United States of America has no problem with Israel burning the skin off children’s bodies with incendiary weapons, reducing cities to rubble, targeting UN positions and Red Cross ambulances, forcing 900,000 civilians to flee, and generally bombing a sovereign, democratic state a generation back in time. On the contrary, it provides munitions, diplomatic support, and moral encouragement for these war crimes, financed in no small part with US tax money, to go on. This is not without implications.

The landmark seen below is the traditional, universally recognized symbol of the United States of America and the values on which it builds:

The Statue of Liberty, New York

As such it is, however, obsolete. In all seriousness, I hereby propose a replacement structure, seen below:

The US Navy base Coronado, California

The advantage is that this structure already exists, so that there is no need to divert funds away from burning the skin off children, targeting ambulances, destroying cities, and the other purposes which it so poignantly serves to represent.

Nice one, Israel. Right smack in the Red Crosshairs.

What is it about Qana that always inspires you to do your very worst? The last time too, you certainly had excellent aim.

– Lick my boots and die

Advice to all Lebanese: play dead. Maybe then conditions will be “right.”