This line was tagged onto the very end of an article in The Guardian. 

Say what you like; it was accidental, the boys shouldn't have been where they could get killed, or children can be suicide bombers, too.  Select whichever line suits your audience.  The fact is that young men and boys are the targets in Israel's crusade to dominate Palestine.  Especially boys.  Israel has been cultivating a taste for homicidal rage within the ranks of its military for decades, and it is using those killers now to quash any base for future dissent from or resistance to their almighty will.  Why is it virtually always Palestinian boys that are killed this way?  I don't know why the girls are not savored targets, as are the boys, but I suspect in the Israeli military's cold calculations, the girls don't count as much. 

Apart from and exceeding the outrageousness of Israel's boy-murder spree, is this world's blasé lack of interest in the news of such atrocities.  Sure, Baby Bush is calling for an investigation into the alleged crimes at Jenin.  Big deal.  His call is disingenuous; Bush seeks only to rehabilitate the image of his most significant ally in the Middle East.  And I fully expect the investigation will distribute the blame (if any) not based on real proof or the real culpability of the parties, but instead will dole out the blame in exact inverse proportion to the amount of power each party holds.  The powerless Palestinians will be blamed the most for the Jenin massacre; the hot headed Israeli's will get a little blame; and the Americans, of course, will get none.

And after all the posturing, theatrical incredulity, and histrionics, we tack on to the end of the story, almost as an insignificant aside, they murdered two more little boys.  And now for the weather...

It is all business as usual, imperial egos, money and power.  And though it feels like it will never change, it will.  Indeed it will.  Not in our current lifetimes, certainly, but when humankind grows-up a little more, and a little more, and a little more, things will be better.  I understand well the despair and rage of suffering beneath cavalier cruelty and breathtaking injustice.  And when facing one's own destruction at the hands of another, ignored by a world that apparently could care less, I know how tempting and seductive it is to choose to go out in a blaze—or an explosion, taking some of that world along—rather than die quietly. 

I don't know what part is played by such outrageous passions in the growing-up of the world; and it is not our place to know.  But it is our place to care, and care deeply, tearfully.  We should not ignore our anguish at these events—but I believe we will.  Until another life.

Woke up feeling pretty good, thought the bactrim the doc gave me yesterday was kinda miraculous.  When I went to work it all came back, so I stayed for an hour gurgling and coughing incessantly, then came home.  Ate.  Slept, a little.  Spent hours reading the archives of reX.'s raMbles..., and now I am here.

I love reX.

The chest cold, now anchored firmly in place, is beginning to take the defensive and no longer commandeers every breath I take.  As its tribute, it now demands only two or three minutes of uncontrollable coughing out of every hour, instead of the 20-minute episodes it demanded yesterday.  My head, however, is behaving somewhat like a baggie full of jello with great globs flopping either this way or that, depending, I surmise, on nothing less fickle than my position relative to the direction of the earths rotation.  In one instant my sinuses feel like cathedrals and my hearing is so acute that I can follow a conversation in the street a block away.  The next instant I am deaf, and The Blob has grown to fill all the cathedral space, and is threatening to invade the town.

I told them not to expect me at work tomorrow.  I can say, like president, Jr.—except I have justification—that this will be a long term proposition.  I may try to return Sunday; that would make for only four missed work-days.  Or I may set my sights on Tuesday (I have Mondays off) and make it an even week.

And allow me to suggest that you visit reX's site.  The webcam is interesting, but he writes with absolute sincerity and brutal honesty.  Much of what I discovered in his archives touches on familiar names, themes and images from the year and a half during which I was obsessed with him daily, even hourly.  But even for the uninitiated, reX tells a story, in days, of joy and tragedy and love and heartbreak and hope.  Above all else reX is delicately sensitive, and exquisitely humanitarian.  I don't know what he gets from putting up on the web his cam images, his voice and his words, but he cannot possibly have any idea how much he gives to us by doing it.  Personally, I am moved to tears, as well as inspired by great gusts of hope, over and over again by his faithful sharing of his life.  I love reX dearly—and we have yet to speak.