Sunday, February 13, 2011

Saturday's Barbershop



Yesterday, my barber gave me these personalized pens in celebration of her grand re-opening.  Cookies, too, and can soda. I've only been going to her for a year-and-a-half. My old barber retired and left his clientèle on their own. I say left on their own because most barbershops nowadays are stylists. Do they know how to cut hair. Not necessarily, but they can "style" your hair, and charge a higher rate for an inferior job. Anyways, last year the property owner gave my present barber notice that they would be expanding their adjacent offices and needed her floorspace. Fortunately she was able to find a retail space two buildings away on the same street. Yes, fortunately for everyone.

More Egypt....

Obama couldn’t very well come out against the protesters; they embodied the values which, in his Cairo speech [Jun 4, 2009], he claimed the United States would always support.

....[However] even as Obama increased the pressure on Mubarak to stand down, he refused to side with the demonstrators....and insisted that Washington would not interfere in the question of who rules Egypt.

But in the eyes of the demonstrators, the US could hardly pretend to be neutral: the tear gas canisters fired at them were labeled ‘Made in America’, as were the F-16s monitoring them from the sky. In calling for something more than a ‘managed’ transition under military rule, the demonstrators in Egypt were defying not just Mubarak but the US.

Mubarak, when he stands down, is not likely to be missed by many people in Egypt....but he will be missed in Washington and, above all, in Tel Aviv....Egyptian foreign policy would be set in Cairo rather than in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Adam Shatz | London Review of Books

I care about democratic values, but they are worse than useless in societies that have no tradition or respect for minority rights. What we want for Egypt is what we have ourselves. This, though, is an identity crisis. We are not them.

Richard Cohen | Washington Post

2 comments:

Kay said...

Too bad we can't see a photo of you with your new haircut/style.

At one time the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein too, didn't we? We have many some very "unholy" alliances.

RONW said...

Kay- the US also supported the Taliban during the Russia/Afghanistan War. If we hadn't, the Russians would have annihilated the Taliban along with Al Queda. It's just as ridiculous who we refused to support after they reached out to us. Fidel wouldn't have allowed gambling casinos and drugs in Cuba, so we supported Baptista. Cuba in those days was equivalent to the French Connection for drugs into the US. Ho Chi Minn rescued and provided safe harbor for downed pilots during WWII. Yet after the war was over, we abandoned Ho when he fought to gain independence from the French. Vietnam was a French colony then.