Good News stories

[Leinster Lass]

Is it any Blinken good?

Doubtless he'll receive 40 lashes if he isn't (that's my friends Iris and Len's joke, by the way).
One other piece of good news is that The Donald's press briefings seem to be much less frequent and much shorter.

[jayne lee wilson]

Shades of the Teahouse of the August Moon?. Better amend tea-room to teahouse. On the old BBC board we had a 'limeraiku' thread, but I've forgotten what the rules were. Perhaps 5,7,5,7,5 syllables with the limerick rhyme scheme? I think it petered out quite quickly.

No, you must keep "tearoom".....you need the locality and the specific event and observation, with the suggestion of the Japanese form reaching across the referential world. "Teahouse" would be too generalised towards a feeling of Western-context Oriental cliché......

[french frank]

No, you must keep "tearoom".....you need the locality and the specific event and observation, with the suggestion of the Japanese form reaching across the referential world. "Teahouse" would be too generalised towards a feeling of Western-context Oriental cliché......

<sigh> And there was me working to replace the English red roses with cherry blossom too

[french frank]

One side of the story. Other points:

https://www.politico.eu/article/nine-things-to-think-about-antony-blinken/

Good news? Cultivated internationalist? Blinken went along with some of the biggest foreign policy blunders during the Obama/Biden 2008-16 administrations, and is arguably even more of an interventionist than either of those two men. Blinken maintains that the U.S. did not employ enough force in Syria. Also that Biden’s vote to invade Iraq was a “vote for tough diplomacy”. He was pro the USA’s disastrous Libya intervention – wasn’t Joe Biden at least against that? And initially, Blinken advocated U.S. support for the Saudi coalition annihilation of Yemen, widely considered the worst man-made humanitarian disaster so far this century. He has since backtracked on that one.

Cultivated internationalist indeed. A pro-interventionist Secretary of State is always good for America's war machine. Business is likely on the up for America's weapons manufacturers, who must be quietly celebrating with this appointment.

[oddoneout]

<sigh> And there was me working to replace the English red roses with cherry blossom too

No need to replace surely, why not have both. Cherry blossom = teahouse in spring, roses = tearoom in summer?

[jayne lee wilson]

<sigh> And there was me working to replace the English red roses with cherry blossom too

Your poem was really lovely. Don't change a word.

[jayne lee wilson]

No need to replace surely, why not have both. Cherry blossom = teahouse in spring, roses = tearoom in summer?

OK oddball......we're waiting for your all-inclusive verses....

[Joseph K]

One side of the story. Other points:

https://www.politico.eu/article/nine...ntony-blinken/

No 7 on that list would corroborate Boilk's points, and really sticks out of many of the other things we apparently ought to know; I don't care if the warmonger speaks French or spells his name without an H.

[french frank]

No 7 on that list would corroborate Boilk's points, and really sticks out of many of the other things we apparently ought to know; I don't care if the warmonger speaks French or spells his name without an H.

But there were nine points, many of them supporting my point. Selecting one is known as cherry-picking - and, wouldn't you know it? that's the very point that trumps (sorry) any other argument you can make.

There are many moral points to make about 'intervention'. Never allowable? The Taliban in Afghanistan, and their brethren in Africa, should just be allowed to prevent young girls from getting an education, should be treating women as slaves of the male population? When do you intervene and when do you turn your back and say 'Not our problem'? My short answer is, I don't know. Wiser heads see things more clearly, apparently.

To get back on topic, for many people any replacements for Trump's appointees are good news. For others, if they're not the 'right' (tbd) people, they're the wrong people. I don't find life that simple

[Ein Heldenleben]

There is quite a body of respectable opinion that the reluctance of the US to intervene , even through proxies , in Syria opened a massive opportunity for Putin and resulted arguably in more death and destabilising conflict. I’m qualifying all this because I don’t pretend to know what the solution to Syria is but clearly standing back and doing nothing hasn’t exactly worked.

[Joseph K]

But there were nine points, many of them supporting my point. Selecting one is known as cherry-picking - and, wouldn't you know it? that's the very point that trumps (sorry) any other argument you can make.

I'd say most the points are irrelevant, though.

There are many moral points to make about 'intervention'. Never allowable? The Taliban in Afghanistan, and their brethren in Africa, should just be allowed to prevent young girls from getting an education, should be treating women as slaves of the male population? When do you intervene and when do you turn your back and say 'Not our problem'? My short answer is, I don't know. Wiser heads see things more clearly, apparently.

To get back on topic, for many people any replacements for Trump's appointees are good news. For others, if they're not the 'right' (tbd) people, they're the wrong people. I don't find life that simple

Yes, wiser heads can see that Islamism/Wahhabism/Islamic State has been practically invented by Western intervention in the Middle East in fairly distant and not-so-distant history to the present day.

You must know that the USA found people like the Taliban useful allies against the USSR?

[french frank]

There is quite a body of respectable opinion that the reluctance of the US to intervene , even through proxies , in Syria opened a massive opportunity for Putin and resulted arguably in more death and destabilising conflict. I’m qualifying all this because I don’t pretend to know what the solution to Syria is but clearly standing back and doing nothing hasn’t exactly worked.

Yes, it's always the question of "What should be done NOW", not wringing one's hands over what was done wrong to get us here in the first place. What should have been done at that point when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait?

[Serial_Apologist]

But there were nine points, many of them supporting my point. Selecting one is known as cherry-picking - and, wouldn't you know it? that's the very point that trumps (sorry) any other argument you can make.

There are many moral points to make about 'intervention'. Never allowable? The Taliban in Afghanistan, and their brethren in Africa, should just be allowed to prevent young girls from getting an education, should be treating women as slaves of the male population? When do you intervene and when do you turn your back and say 'Not our problem'? My short answer is, I don't know. Wiser heads see things more clearly, apparently.

To get back on topic, for many people any replacements for Trump's appointees are good news. For others, if they're not the 'right' (tbd) people, they're the wrong people. I don't find life that simple

It depends on one's political position. Intervention was legitimate in the case of Britain's invasion attempt at Dunkirk on the grounds that the German armed forces were overrunning Europe and needed stopping or they might have overrun everywhere. In the case of Cambodia the invasion by the Communist-run Vietnam army brought the mass genocide of the population by the Khmer Rouge to an end. These two cases have little in common, but I would think that were a government, or a resistance movement against fascism such as in Spain in 1936, to appeal for foreign support, a foreign government would need to weigh up the pros and cons on a case-by-case basis. As it was, the pusillamity of European states other than Germany and Italy, based on ambivalence towards fascism, left the matter of invasion in support of the anti-Franco forces up to informal networks and individual sympathisers abroad. On moral grounds alone Syria has been a case for military intervention, but would have risked the wrath of radical Islamic factions and some Arab states on grounds that the West was intervening for other than altruistic purposes, let alone giving Iran a causus belli. The issue probably won't be resolved there until the West gives up its interest in oil.

In general one should guard against intervening without appeals from within another country. Ex-Yugoslavia offered one such legitimate case for occupation in the 1990s, to stop the menace of Serbia and try and ensure an equable parcellisation of territories. But then there is the problem of the UN's proven inadequacy for deciding on firm action in the case of breaches, as was seen in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when the UN affiliate peacekeeping force in question sat by like dummies, allowing genocide to take place against the Bosnians in Szrebenica, instead of going in and dealing forcibly with the Serbians.

[french frank]

In general one should guard against intervening without appeals from within another country. Ex-Yugoslavia offered one such legitimate case for occupation in the 1990s, to stop the menace of Serbia and try and ensure an equable parcellisation of territories. But then there is the problem of the UN's proven inadequacy for deciding on firm action in the case of breaches, as was seen in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when the UN affiliate peacekeeping force in question sat by like dummies, allowing genocide to take place against the Bosnians in Szrebenica, instead of going in and dealing forcibly with the Serbians.

Yes, indeed, but doesn't that highlight the difficulties for outside forces? Sometimes they move in too quickly, at other times they are too slow. And when disaster ensues (whether massacres or imposed dictatorship), they stand accused of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And that ensures they will hesitate or not hesitate wrongly the next time in an attempt to get it 'right'.

[oddoneout]

OK oddball......we're waiting for your all-inclusive verses....

A stray cherry blossom
Kisses my jasmine tea.
Bridge to June's roses.