Israel no longer part of Middle East

Picked up my Saturday Globe at The Korean's place this morning and then me and the Farm Manager settled in for a leisurely breakfast at the Topnotch.

There's been an older woman around The Korean's place lately. I assume she's the mom or the mother-in-law. She appears to be in charge of watering the plants in the garden centre that springs up in the parking lot of The Korean's store every spring. Doesn't seem to have much English. Wonder if her papers are in order?

Sometimes you have to work around that papers-in-order bullshit. My dear grandmother eventually became a legal resident of Canada and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Guelph, but she'd spent extended spells with us in the early sixties that I suspect far surpassed what the technically legal limits of a "visit" would have been. She didn't have any English either.

The Topnotch was busy, so busy we couldn't get one of the booths. Maybe I gotta stop writing about it...

Listen up, folks; DO NOT GO TO THE TOPNOTCH RESTAURANT! Especially on Saturday morning. It's a terrifying experience, and besides, I want our booth back.

There were bikers at the Topnotch today. Bucket-list bikers. Their Harley's were as shiny and new as the leather chaps these folks were sporting. They were making the most of the all-you-can-eat buffet, which, by the way, is an astonishingly good value at $12.99.

But back to breakfast with the Globe and Mail. Just yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that big media are ignoring the Qatar brouhaha, and today Mark MacKinnon is all over the story. He's got at least four feet worth of column inches on A15 titled "A week of chaos, crisis in the Middle East."

I read through it. Hmm... there's something missing here. Read it again...

Israel!

That's what's missing! Thousands of words on chaos and crisis in the Middle East, and the word "Israel" does not appear anywhere in the text?

He's got the Ruskies and the Germans and the Turks and the Persians and the Saudis in the story, and of course the patron of all Middle East crises, Uncle Sam, but not a single reference to Israel?

Who can even imagine such an oversight?

Some questions about the most recent wave of refugees

There are refugees, and then there are refugees.

German media recently featured an upbeat story about a couple of high-end Syrians staying at the home of Albert Speer's daughter in Berlin. One was an ophthalmologist and the other was a medical doctor. Frankly, that's the sort of "refugees" one would expect to find at the home of Albert Speer's daughter.

But alas, not all these refugees are doctors.

Speaking as hillbilly riff-raff, it pains me to suggest that Europe is being overrun by Middle East riff-raff. But this could well be the case.

First of all, where does this sudden deluge of refugees come from?

We have colluded with various Gulf States and our NATO ally Turkey for several years now to ensure that conditions in Syria are utterly intolerable. It is inconceivable that the recent up tick in refugee numbers is due to the state of things on the ground, simply because we've ensured that normal life in Syria is an utter impossibility.

Could it be that the most recent wave of refugees arrive courtesy of refugee camps in Turkey deliberately opening the floodgates?

If so, it would be prudent for the West to revisit its rationale for the massive guilt complex that seems to be driving refugee policy across the Nations of Virtue these days.

The Middle East is aflame because we set in on fire.