Asking: What is Aleppo? - by Hénock Gugsa

 Asking: What is Aleppo? 

 - by Hénock Gugsa -
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This minor and misunderstood moment in a candidate's recent interface with the media actually speaks volumes about the mad rush to judgement by the media! What a pack of marauding hyenas they are !!!

I think Mr.Johnson should be given some slack. After-all, he is a libertarian and he doesn't even like foreign entanglements. Why should he be expected to know and differentiate Aleppo from Kirkut?!!

At least three things bother me with the whole flare-up here .... 

1) How many people (including the media) really, actually know or have even heard of Aleppo before?! Even now, many Americans (and especially politicians) don't know Aleppo from, excuse the expression, a hole in the ground.

2) Why should Mr. Johnson be expected to know about Aleppo, and what is wrong with him even admitting his ignorance?  At least, he is not parading around as a know-it-all braggart !!!  Also, Aleppo is not the problem .... The problem is and has always been American ignorance about the world and the resulting, disastrous mule-headed foreign policy.  Everybody knows what the problem is but they are not admitting it.
3) Priorities, priorities !!! Why is the  Syrian city singled out as an American concern when it is being bombed by its own government?  The evil enemy, ISIS, is not even there, and why are we not concerned more about the Russian complicity in the Syrian tragedy, etc.?? .... On another front, world refugee crisis is not entirely from Aleppo or from Syria in general.  There are thousands and thousands of refugees from everywhere else in the world.  

Conclusion ===> So let us talk about Eritrea?  Do Americans know about Eritrea?  Are they going to ask:  What is Eritrea?!

 

Ah, the Past! - by the Doryman

Ah, the Past!
by the Doryman *
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Every blasted time I see a black Lab, I think of Dinah. She was an Iowa farm dog, about my age, way back there in the ’50s. I would see her on occasional Christmas holidays when my parents and I would visit her master, my Aunt June. Dinah could perform two tricks. The commands were: ‘Sittest-the-back-end-down, Dinah’ and ‘lookest-thee-out-the-window, Dinah.’ She was as dependable as the comfort of the living room’s wingback leather chair and the scent of the nearby oil stove.

Every blasted time I smell diesel exhaust, I am reminded of the cozy winter nights of my childhood when I would drift off to the droning voices of loved one’s stories. My memory of those times is like a gallery of Norman Rockwell paintings.

Now there are more and more blasted times. One thought leads to another, and they often end up somewhere in the past. Ah, the past. It’s edging out the future in my mind’s eye as I grow older. I suppose because there is so much more of it.”
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* Source: Bulletin Board, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Aug. 31, 2016