Wasn't that a splendid part of the insidious inculcation of nationalism though? Traipsing en famille to find the perfect place on the lawn of the park, decades before it was a feared place for its gangs and drug dealers. Parades down main street on each of the veteran's days back then, while the current amalgamated Veteran's Day gets nothing more than a parade of sales.

I don't work in daily contact with people, children or otherwise, so I don't get to counter naive enthusiasm with dramatized anger. Alas.

I recommend coming down here to the Cote d'Azur for a couple seasons just to dry out. There are feu d'artifice (fireworks) constantly for the tourists. So, going to town for explosions isn't needed on a particular day and there are no national anthems ...perhaps rarely, during the competitions between state teams there's an anthem at the end.

=>>> I am quite turned off by the referenced Rense article and want to register my protest. <<<=

Even after reading today's harrowing post
'Do Israeli soldiers kill civilians including children? - Jews sans Frontieres and as much as I loath the regime of Israel for all that they have perpetrated and my tax dollars pay for, I am not willing to swath any group based on such specious reasons as nations or whether some ancestor believed in a particular male-centric mono-god in an area of female-centric multi-gods.

There are good people in the area pitching away at the nonsense and wiping them all out isn't the answer (I'm not certain if that reads as I want it to. I don't want anyone wiped out.)...especially since the poor and innocent can't just come watch fireworks on the Cote as the rat bastards can, when the meanness comes down.

The solution is for the US to go bankrupt right freakin' now, with enough wherefores and here to withs to make every military base close down a second from now. Then, let the war crimes trials begin.

Would you go to town to watch that?

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

I will give you credit:  The author's assertion that Iran has the ability of electronic jamming has not gotten much attention on the English language Web.  This is really worth research and elaboration, as it goes much beyond what we know about the Russian Sunburn missiles (that they work) and how the 2002 US war games showed how mass small-boat tactics could sink the US carrier fleet (if it tries to operate in the Straits or the Gulf.)  

That Israel is currently running a long-term policy of genocide (committing it) is indeed obvious to some of us, but this is logically unconnected to the holocaust of the 20th century (psychologically is another topic I don't touch here) and denying the holocaust is certainly useless rhetorically in confronting Israel's commission of genocide.  

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Fourth of July?  It's nothing like when I was a small child spending summers in a small town--people now too busy lobbing their own bombs to watch the ones the city has shelled out good money for.  Why did they bother to come?  

I now avoid that.  

The Fates are kind.