ROTFL... Canberra and Culture in the same sentence.

David,

Perhaps the problem is not with CAP but with the city. Take away the National Institutions and there ain't much left - Jim's Snow's airport development on a rainy day.

David

If you choose to live in a place with such a vicious climate and have not yet evacuuated I can only wish CAP on you.

I must admit it was good to see The Raiders give The Chooks a flogging, but that is really Qeanbeyan isn't it ?

If you are asking for art, culture and politics, a cartoon in Friday week back's “West Australian’ should fill the bill.

Indeed the cartoon speaks reams concerning today’s political truth in the Middle East as one Lebanese says to the other as a long column of tanks cross their border, guns blazing, warplanes filling the sky.

“We’re lucky!”

“What do you mean ‘lucky’?” says the other.

“Imagine what they’d do if we’d captured more than two Israelies?”

The above pretty well says it, the Israelies are being pestered by the Palestiners, but not much different than frustrated natives fighting for their rights in colonial times, like redskins gaining a few rifles and still trying to attack a far superior military force - and as beknown of history still able to capture and kill more than one occasional white soldier.

But we never read or hear about an oversize military force moving in. The big problem is of course that modern technological means of retaliation can be so severe - in fact as aptly shown in the cartoon to the point of stupendous ridiculousness. Already for the taking of two of their soldiers, the Israelies have rendered the main Lebanese airport unuseable, as well as most other
military establishments.

Like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut as the old saying goes, but it remains the same. As also has been the same ever since the US has protected Israel as a tiny country or group of special people that had to be protected at all costs. But overdone, so very overdone in the Middle East where both the US and Britain have more mercenary interests, hegemon, and contraband in the shape of oil, especially in Iraq and Iran who also have at least a quarter of the world’s best quality oil, as well as the world’s easiest to recover.

Historians and social scientists know all about it, as do journalists, but as reported in last week’s Guardian, US neo-cons have been given free reign in the media to whitewash the crimes of empire, and as what is happening in the Middle East today is only the carrying on of the crimes of empire, a situation that has not changed, but only got worse, hidden either by immoral craftiness or by very careless management by our leaders pertaining to the true meanings of freedom and liberty.

The Israelis whom we were so passionate about giving a go in the Middle East after their genocidalisation in Nazi Germany, have now spoilt themselves in the Middle East with their US-backed arrogance, pepped up not only with US supplied planes and tanks as shown in the cartoon but also with two hundred nuclear-capped missiles all ready to go.

Why this was all allowed by America, with the Arabs pretty well unarmed, and a meek United Nations standing by, will certainly have future historians in a huddle.

Graphic descriptions will be all part of the play, a depiction of desperate Jewish families not so loved by Britain who foresaw future trouble in the Middle East between Jews and Arabs, but America and most Australians ready to agree to settling the long wandering Jewish families back into Israel, their long Promised Land. Certainly the Arabs proved resentful, as the British predicted, starting to drive the new Israelis out. But not for long the Israelies already prepared with planes and artillery flown in, and after two short wars, the Arabs were beaten both by lack of modern weaponry and Israeli determination.

Unfortunately, for future Middle East peace, the strong power position of a US-backed Israel, has now placed her in a position from an Arabic point of view like a red-backed spider with her nuclear sting able to protect herself against all comers. It is no wonder that Iran. desires nuclear artillery