Wednesday, March 28, 2007

I just don't have the heart to write the "Palestinians Up Shit's Creek" headline

Without taking any sides here, isn't it fairly safe to say that the Palestinian people lead some of the suckiest lives on Planet Earth? Hey, I'm just saying. In absolute value terms, they have crappy lives. And for some Gaza townspeople, I mean that literally, as a sewage basin ruptured yesterday and literally released a deadly tidal wave of putrid, putrid human waste on a Gaza village. Oh, and animal waste, too. Don't forget animal waste! At least four people died.


Don't touch the scum, kids! And oh, how I wish
that really was just scum! I'd eat five pounds
of scum right now if all that was was ordinary scum!


Let us ponder this for a moment. Living in the Gaza Strip, you are most likely living on a sweltering, squalid dirt farm. There are drum-tight border check points in every direction, and thus you are generally one errant pizza delivery away from bloody streetfighting with your next-door neighbor and mortal enemy -- who is generally regarded as having one of the fiercest armies pound for pound in the world. And your best means of defense in that event? Blowing yourselves up. And now, your grandmother has drowned in a shit tsunami, and you'll be cleaning bits of decomposed goat entrails off of what's left of your meager possessions for the rest of your natural life. I mean, is this rock bottom here? What's next? Locusts? The Plague? Everyone gets free puzzles with one piece missing? All their TVs get only the TV Guide Channel? I'm just saying -- it's a tough row to hoe out there.

Hyperlink:
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Flood of Sewage in Gaza Kills at Least 4 [New York Times]

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Photo credit: Mahmud Hams/AFP -- Getty Images

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know this phrase is said often in today's absolutist culture, but that is the worst thing I've ever heard. At least now, if anyone ever wonders if their lives could possibly get any worse there is a definitive answer: Yes, you and your family could drown in a river of shit.

i.p. daily said...

I have to disagree here. Although this was certainly a brown eye for Palestine, I'm going with Malawi as my candidate for "Hell on Earth". Smaller than the state of Pennsylvania, this country of 13M people has the world's 9th highest AIDS rate at 14.2% The Median age of a Malawian is 16 years old! That's right, it's a country of teenagers. The average Malawian woman has six children. Life expectancy a respectable 42 yrs old, but the infant mortality rate is a staggering 1%. Here's the kicker - per capita GDP in Malawi is $600/yr! Take into account that most of that money goes to the central government and that, my friends, is true poverty.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mi.html


In all seriousness, hearing that story about Palestine and listing these facts about Malawi just makes you shake your head in disgust. It's clear that the world just plain doesn't care about people in need. This isn't a matter of religion - Palestine is Muslim and Malawi is Christian - or race - these two countries are Arab and African. In my opinion, it's just about money. Both countries are basically dirt pits with little resources, or education, to build on. That'why the world ignores their problems.