C L O S E R – Some disturbing and something to laugh

There is some discussion in the blogosphere of an attempt in the Armed Forces Journal to redraw the map of the Middle East:

ARMED FORCES JOURNAL – Blood borders – June 2006
Blood borders
How a better Middle East would look
By Ralph Peters

International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.

The Maps are to be found here (NOW) and here (AFTER). It is rather daring: even the Israelis are pushed behind the 1967-borders. What kind of ideas do these people have? Do they think the Middle East is a chess board? They want a new summit with Churchill, Stalin and Eisenhower? Probably for people like me, who are obsessed with structure and evolution rather than revolution, they have left one thing the same though. The situation of the Palestinians is still not resolved.

And because it is Sunday I try to give you something funny as well. Usually I go to the Onion.com and pick something there. Not necessary, today you are invited to The Observer.

Come fly with me – unless you’ve eaten all the pies, that is

Armando Iannucci
Sunday August 27, 2006
The Observer

An eyewitness writes:

We were coming back from our holidays in Spain and it was 3am when the flight was scheduled to depart, so we were all pretty tired, but I still had my wits about me. There were these two strange-looking men who came on the flight at the very last minute, and they were both clinically obese. That’s when me and all the other passengers told the cabin crew we weren’t happy and asked for them to be removed. I think we were right. One of them was so fat that he looked like he might explode at any minute.