Obama's bad foreign policy from the start shows little sign of improving, as Washington Post Editorial Board lashes out Sunday : "Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria": "So what does the Obama administration propose to do to stop this barbarism? The simple answer is: nothing, other than issue strongly worded statements..."; #stonecoldfacts, @washingtonpost

Obama's bad foreign policy from the start shows little sign of improving, as Washington Post Editorial Board lashes out Sunday : "Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria" 

In case you were still on your summer hibernation when this happened a few weeks ago, the only time that President Obama has brought the country together this year on a policy is when nearly the entire country stood-up in opposition to his ill-considered ideas, plans and policies over Syria, one of his major weaknesses since coming into office in January of 2009.
That hasn't changed.
Think about that for a minute.

The Washington Post
Washington Post Editorial: Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria
By Editorial Board
Published October 28, 2013

ACCORDING TO Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad now is waging “a war of starvation” against his own people. In a robustly worded op-ed column posted Friday on ForeignPolicy.com, Mr. Kerry denounced what he said was “the systematic denial of medical assistance, food supplies and other humanitarian aid to huge proportions of the population.” The regime’s tactics, he said, “threaten to take a humanitarian disaster into the abyss.” They are “intolerable,” and “the world must act quickly.”

So what does the Obama administration propose to do to stop this barbarism? The simple answer is: nothing, other than issue strongly worded statements. 

Read the rest of the editorial at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-kerrys-empty-words-on-syria/2013/10/28/d422b6c4-3feb-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html

What's old is new again: NY Times film critic A.O. Scott on the Arab Spring of 2011 and David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia'

NY Times video: Critics' Picks with A.O. Scott: Lawrence of Arabia (1962 Best Film) by David Lean.

http://youtu.be/TIcU1Bm89mw

Aqaba!!!

I have seen this film, one of the ten-best films ever made, conservatively, about sixty times, including a couple of times at an old-fashioned giant screen at the Uptown Theater in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., one of the great remaining theaters in the country, and located not far from The National Zoo.

Going to see a new film on that big screen and then walking around the zoo was a frequent pastime of yours truly and my pals on weekends.

To my mind, you simply can not consider yourself a well-educated and sophisticated person without having seen this film a few times and come to understand the brilliance of Lean's depiction of the simple and complex stories running parallel to one another throughout it, along with the myriad complexities and conundrums that puzzle us to this day.

There's always something new you see in it with every showing, and a lesson or allusion you can draw in comparing some aspect of it to something else.

I consider myself a bit of a David Lean buff since I have seen just about every film he's been associated with. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000180/

Original Trailer - Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

http://youtu.be/IDF0at7sC0M

Path to Aqaba

http://youtu.be/5ZQSpMiaaxk

Maurice Jarre's genius with this score never fails to impress, no matter how many hundreds of times you've heard it. (I've seen it so many times that I know which scene goes with which part of the score.) Three years later, Jarre wins the Oscar again for Dr. Zhivago, the second of his three Oscars.

Maurice Jarre conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992 performing his Oscar-winning score.

http://youtu.be/irPSvEkQl8Q

The next showing of Lawrence of Arabia on Turner Classic Movies, DirecTV Channel 256, is Tuesday July 12th at 8 p.m. Eastern.