A few weeks ago an Israeli soldier was kidnapped by Palestinian Hamas. Israel responded by knocking out power, flying jets low to knock out windows with sonic booms, arresting a bunch of key figures and so forth.
A few days ago Hezbollah, apparently inspired by Hamas, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded by attacking Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah then launched some missles or rockets at Israel, who then upped it back at them. About 170 Lebanese and 24 Israelis have been killed so far. Other countries are now evacuating their citizens from Lebanon.
Meanwhile, over in North Korea Kim Jong Il announced that if anyone takes a stab at North Korea, he’s going to start launching nukes. The good news about that is that they don’t seem to have a missile that can carry a payload to the United States. The bad news is that they can easily hit South Korea and can probably hit Japan, since they’ve been doing test launches in the Sea of Japan.
There were recently a number of terror attacks across India, killing over 200 people. The violence in Iraq shows no sign of slowing; just today 40 people were killed by gunmen in a market.
All this, and there’s the war in Iraq and the possibility of nukes in Iran. Newt Gingrich wants to call this World War III in order to gain support. Seems a little tawdry to throw it out there just for PR.
With all this, Britain and the United Nations are talking about sending troops to Israel to help calm things down. Russia is friends, or at least has been trying to mediate on behalf of Iraq and Iran, as has France. So who knows if they’d even get involved. For that matter, if Russia got involved, what side would they be on? What about China? Would anyone else jump in on our side?
On top of everything else there was an earthquake that triggered a tsunami in Java that killed about 200 people. Wildfires out west are out of control and there’s a heat wave across the nation. Gas prices are hovering just under $3.00 a gallon.
The world is in peachy shape right now. To top is all off, ESPN is calling UNC pre-season number one and Duke pre-season number twelve. Kentucky’s not even on the list.
Zach Dotsey