There's been sort of a moratorium on discussing it among me and my friends.

I have found this the case IRL here too. A friend that I haven't seen in months stopped by to visit me yesterday and in the first few minutes he gently inquired as to my feelings on the war. His intention was to not ruin our visit if we were not of the same thinking.

Over the years I have routinely debated opposing views with friends without it harming our rapport. This particular war seems to be a topic that rational adults on opposite sides just can't discuss.

This particular war seems to be a topic that rational adults on opposite sides just can't discuss.

Misha linked to an excellent article on that very topic in her blog the other day.

Thank you for the plug, Angus! (My blog, by the way, is called Hippo Dignity -- I need to buy that URL when I get paid...)

And the article is completely true, and possibly the least annoying thing Neal Pollack has ever written as a result.

I have seen so many of my relationships with people change since 9/11, and the war in particular seems to have brought out the worst, most crazy-making sides of everyone I know. Myself included. And I don't think it's going to end any time soon.

Meanwhile, my truly insane acquaintance Chris Allbritton is now reporting online from Iraqi Kurdistan, if you want to follow along at home.

In Portland about 60% of the people I know are pro-war; and the only reason I know 40% who are not is due to activism - overwhelmingly the majority of my friends (as opposed to political allies) are pro-invasion. So I wish you would look for explanations other than groupthink for disagreement. My life would be much more comfortable if I were pro-war right now.

I just had to post this, from yesterday's (Friday's) NY Times. It's about all the looting (which bugs me about the hospitals but NSM about places like Aziz' palaces):

Caroma the problem with all the looting and lawlessness is that, once again, it is the crooks who benefit not the ordinary people. The wealth and treasures of the palaces that are being looted, as well as the ordinary implements/furnishings of the ordinary Iraqi business people, as well as the stuff from the hotels and other official buildings, all goes to make up the collected wealth of the Iraqi people, the same as it does anywhere else.

Some of these may help you understand the dire economic straits that face Iraq and remember that these are all figures from before this war really started ...

From cornell article.

By 1989 Iraq owed an estimated $80 billion, representing more than 350% of the estimated Iraqi GNP. By contrast: US debt to GNP ratio was roughly 5% in 1990.

Iraq's Debt Burden

Iraq’s financial burden consists of debt amounting to $127bn, pending contracts worth some $57.2bn, and Gulf War compensation of $27.1bn (the difference between compensation awarded and compensation paid out), and whatever is awarded by the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) for the remaining claims totaling $197.4bn. Iraq’s liabilities therefore stand at a total of $211.3bn. Assuming a similar proportion of roughly 30% of remaining claims to the UNCC are approved, resulting in an additional bill of around $60bn, Iraq’s financial burden would reach $271.3bn.

And forget the money side of things for a moment and just consider the history and cultural side of things ...

Iraq is the cradle of civilization -- home of the world's earliest agriculture, its earliest cities and its earliest writing. Abraham lived there, as did Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar. Imam Ali, the founder of Shiite Islam, died there.

Iraq is the land of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where Neolithic peoples around 9,000 years ago domesticated animals and developed agriculture, enabling them to form the world's first cities.

Around 3500 B.C., the Sumerians became the world's first great civilization. Cuneiform writing on clay tablets was developed about 3200 B.C. Empires rose and fell in ancient Mesopotamia, from the Akkadians to the Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Parthians and Romans.

Abraham, the patriarch of the Torah and the Old Testament, came from the southern Mesopotamian city of Ur, and Hammurabi, the lawgiver, ruled in Babylon, as did Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of Jerusalem, and Alexander the Great. Ali died in Kufa in 661 A.D. and was buried in Najaf. Baghdad served as the center of the Abbasid Caliphate for 500 years until it was sacked by the Mongols in 1258 A.D.

"Baghdad itself is a major medieval site," said Columbia University archaeologist and art historian Zainab Bahrani, who was born in Iraq. "The city is filled with [Islamic-era] buildings from the ninth to the 14th centuries."

then the looting and destruction become even more significant than just ripping off a few office chairs, lampshades, and dinnersets. This is all from a Washington Post articlewritten a month ago,

The gravest danger comes afterward, when authority disappears and desperate people cope with chaos by stealing the marketable treasures that reside in museums or in the ground. It happened after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and Iraq never recovered from the experience.

In the war's immediate aftermath, guards were withdrawn from sites and museums and laws became all but unenforceable. Nine of the 13 regional museums in both the north and south were raided by mobs who stole things straight from the cases, at least 3,000 objects disappeared."

In 1996, dealers were offered nine fragments of what in 1990 had been an intact bas relief sculpture from Sennacherib's Palace in the Assyrian city of Nineveh.

Anybody interested in art, history, archeology, civilisation, culture, philosophy, and so on, must surely cringe not laugh when they read things like this ...

There was also a lengthy gun battle near the capital's main museum this morning. Archaeological treasures from the dawn of civilisation lay broken in pieces.

FayJay.

Do you remember weeks ago we we're discussing the use of -y as a word ending?

I said it was English-y?

Well, I found an example {yes, but I get there in the end}

How about "The Health Food Shop" as opposed to "The Health-y Food Shop"?

Sorry, Moonlit. I knew all that but like I said, I don't spend a lot of time posting political stuff here, I just throw out broad comments. I appreciate your efforts but I don't think there's any need to work yourself so hard.

Anyway, the NY Times reports that the main museum has indeed been looted. Bastards. Respecting their own culture so little.

I wish the Marines could do something, but they can't even protect the hospitals yet and--oh yeah--people are still trying to kill them.

Caroma.

Where do you live?

Do you remember weeks ago we we're discussing the use of -y as a word ending?

I said it was English-y?

Well, I found an example {yes, but I get there in the end}

How about "The Health Food Shop" as opposed to "The Health-y Food Shop"?

Sure I remember! I'm fond of this kind of thing.

Lots of English words have -y as an ending. 'Healthy' is a good example of a word with a -y ending, but it doesn't mean the same thing as 'Health'. Health is a noun. Healthy is an adjective. 'Health Food' is a noun phrase - it's a phrase that people use with a specific meaning. In practical terms, you know that the stuff in a shop with a sign saying "Health Food Shop" will probably be much the same as the stuff in a sign saying "Healthy Food Shop" - but in grammatical terms, there actually is a difference between "Health Food Shop" and "Healthy Food Shop". (Don't get me started on all the shop signs that abuse apostrophes. I swear, when I'm an old lady I'm buying a pot of red paint and I'm going to go and correct all these bloody signs for Fish and Chip's [sic]etc. Drives me batty.)

Either way, though, that particular conversation we all had a while ago about the -y ending wasn't saying that English words didn't have -y endings. (If that was what you thought, I can quite understand your confusion!) IIRC, the article cited was talking about the slang specific to the show - not about textbook use of words, but about the kind of wordplay that's used on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It claimed that the BtVS slang usage of "much" as a suffix (as in "Slay much!" or "Demonic much!" or "Legal much!") had been replaced by the use of the suffix -y (as in "Slayer-y," "demon-y" or "lawyer-y").

This isn't suggesting that "much" isn't a normal English word, just that it isn't normally used in this pattern. Using it in this pattern is a slang usage associated with BtVS and AtS. I don't know whether it's common in Californian slang, but it isn't the standard grammar usage of the word.

Similarly, adding a -y in this way (i.e. in places that you'd get marked wrong if you did it in an English essay) is a convenient shorthand way of saying "to do with". It's a slang usage on Buffy which is modelled on a pattern in normal English - the pattern in "Healthy", "salty" etc.

Nobody was claiming that the slang was invented out of thin air - it's an adaptation of the way we use English, and that's why it works. "Healthy" is a word. "Demony" isn't - but because it's modelled on a familiar pattern, you still know what it means.

The objection I had to the article was that I think the -y ending is being used slightly differently from the -much ending. (I tried to illustrate it above, but I'm not sure how well.)

In English, lots of adjectives end in 'y'. In our day-to-day speech all of us have particular sorts of slang and speech patterns that differ from standard English - not just the dialect stuff that's the same for one's grandparents, but the specific stuff that's "in" with your peer group - even if it's just a handful of friends. Like the way Buffistas use "foamy". "Foamy" is an ordinary English word. But the slang usage of "foamy" to mean wonderful/desirable/gorgeous is not ordinary. It's specific to us.

Does this make sense?

Do you (Aussies) really pronounce it "noo-gah" over here? Weird. But you also pronouce "fillet" as "fill-it"!

True, but, not only do you guys pronounce it "fil-ay", you also spell it 'filet' (whenever I've seen it on a menu anyway), which - being the French spelling - should be pronounced sans t. (If you were to pronounce 'fillet' as per French, it'd be 'fee-yay', so I'm going to stand by 'fill-it' being correct there.)

Meanwhile, I am a happy camper. My league team - the Canberra Raiders - roughly an hour ago fought off a late comeback to be victorious over the Parramatta Eels, meaning that five weeks into the competition, they remain unbeaten. Even better, a half hour later the Brisbane Broncos went down to the New Zealand Warriors, which means the Raiders are now the only team still unbeaten.

Oh yes, and in more trivial matters, I've actually finished writing up my study notes, and am now ready to start revision. Once I stop bouncing around the study and singing "The Green Machine".

GROUP HUG!

Ah, that reminds me. Some dialogue from a D&D game in Australia:

Thorn: "I cast Magic Circle Against Evil."
Ladock: "Group Hug!"