Robert Pogson

I’ve been watching CNN a bit lately and while sometimes it’s informative and sometimes entertaining, I rarely comment on the content. In the last 24 h though I have been moved to write:

• CNN reporter Arwa Damon has been reporting from behind rebel lines from Aleppo, Syria. Besides mentioning the guts it takes to leave peaceful studios to go to places where death is random and sudden, I am pleased she reports on ordinary folks making bombs, rockets, and improvising good defences against Assad’s forces. She also says it like it is when USA announced some local rebels were “terrorists” just because… Hey, when USA puts some skin in the game to fight evil they might have some credence. The guys USA calls terrorists are their freedom fighters. Think back to the revolution against England, etc. There’s plenty of terror to go around any time ordinary folks pick up arms to right wrongs. It’s about time the USA dropped its phony wars and did the right thing occasionally. 40K+ civilians dying because USA and others don’t want to take sides is reprehensible. At least the terrorists are doing something about it.

  She also tried to reach a Syrian chemical weapons site…

• Conversely, when news broke that N. Korea had put something into orbit, CNN’s Candy Crowley wondered who had helped Korea accomplish this feat… and it was also announced that such a rocket might be able to reach Hawaii or Alaska… ACCHHH! Orbit, folks, means the rocket could reach anywhere on Earth. How I wish some people had open minds and actually respected other people’s intellectual ability, knowledge of physics, chemistry, engineering and just plain old learning from mistakes.
• Finally, there is news that intelligent life does exist. When a madman rampaged through a shopping mall in Washington state, 10K people actually did reasonable things to escape. The employees locked people down in stores in back rooms and the like and shoppers cleared the wide open spaces as rapidly as possible while assisting people along the way. The police arrived within a few minutes and immediately entered the shopping mall severely limiting the shooter’s ability to wreak havoc. He shot himself without the police having to fire a shot. The death toll was 3 at last report, two victims and the shooter. It could easily have been 50. One wonders what might have happened if 1% of those shoppers had been packing a .45. It turns out that last year the local police and the mall were run through a similar exercise for training. Wonderful.
• Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., fools supposedly leading the country cannot even balance the budget while imagining USA needs a huge military and a war on drugs, terrorism and afghanis.

Well, back to writing this blog and planning my garden and the Christmas feast. The world may go to Hell but I still have some chance for fun.