Four news stories that make me sad

I was away for a few weeks, and am only slowly getting reintegrated back into life here.  So instead of talking about my community, I'm going to briefly mention four news articles that made me really sad this past few weeks:

Family-friendly tours of Bangkok's sex bars, with CNN doing their advertising for free

This article was written with a glibness that made me ill.

At another bar, both sons were lured on stage where two nude women spanked them with paddles made of harmless sponge, while the crowded bar's patrons roared with delight.
"My sons have absolutely come of age," marveled the 52-year-old father, Phil. "Because they're slightly reserved, the guys. Anything like this, they're not used to. They've grown up.

Leaked files show the Iraq War was even worse than we thought

There were already more than enough reasons to be against the Iraq War, including, of course, the lies that were told to lead us into it, the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed, the millions of people whose lives were traumatized, the enormous cost in broken lives to our own families, and the terrible state that the country was left in.  So it's just yet another depressing moment to find out that the US government was logging tens of thousands of civilian casualties while publicly claiming that they had no such logs.  The leaks also reveal that the government routinely ignored reports of rape, torture, abuse and murder, instead just passing the reports onto the very units responsible for the abuse.  In response to the report, the Pentagon only said that the leaks are terrible because they might give away US military tactics.  And then there's this:

The logs also illustrate the readiness of US forces to unleash lethal force. In one chilling incident they detail how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.
The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at base told the pilots: "You cannot surrender to an aircraft." The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.

And another thing about that war

It looks like the mercenaries (I mean, "heavily armed civilian contractors who shoot people") we hired for that same war were more out of control than was ever let on to the public.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

May God avenge their blood...but just case he doesn't, we already have

And, because the world constantly forgets how horribly war always goes for everyone involved, it looks quite possible that another one is about to start.  Three Jewish youths are tragically murdered, so a Muslim youth is gruesomely tortured and murdered in response, and the violence appears to continue to escalate.  Netanyahu, taking every opportunity to villainize and dehumanize the other side, claims:

"They sanctify death, we sanctify life.  They sanctify cruelty, and we mercy and compassion. That is the secret of our strength."

As he said that, hundreds of Palestinians were being arrested, 12 had been killed, Israeli soldiers had been filmed viciously beating Palestinian youth, and dozens of homes and businesses had been destroyed (this is in addition to the 25 Palestinians killed and hundreds injured in the partially related fighting in Gaza).  This is a repeat of the pattern that has existed since 2006, where 10-20 Palestinians are killed for every Israeli who is killed.  And, of course, Palestinian terror groups have been firing rockets as Israel in response.  Can neither side see that their violence only leads to more violence?  Or are they actually looking for violence, and are glad when their enemies respond just the way they want them too?


May the God of Peace turn our hearts to the peace that his son preached, and lead us to a different way of living in this world.