Emphasis mine.
Salon.com Books | "Prague" by Arthur Phillips
And there is John's interview with a Marine lance corporal who makes short work of the young journalist's knee-jerk cynicism:
"It's way too easy for you to say World War One was a joke. You're not Belgian. Your farm wasn't overrun by Germans. Your sister wasn't raped by them. Name any war you want. Every single war, somebody had a damn good reason at the time, and they don't owe you an explanation for it. Here's what I know, John, and you can print this and you can write one of your smart-ass columns around it, okay? ... There is no 'grand scheme of things.' That's just a bullshit disguise for cowards. The present has no right to judge the past. Or to act in order to win the future's approval. They're both irrelevant when the enemy's at the door."
And the Olympics are going to be held here. What a joke.
Yahoo! News - Fire Closes Beijing Internet Cafes
Beijing officials have closed down the city's 2,400 Internet cafes after a fire at an unlicensed cafe killed 24 people, a move that could temporarily keep millions off the Internet.
While a city official in the Chinese capital said Monday that the move was motivated strictly by safety concerns following Sunday's fire, the closures coincide with a crackdown on Internet cafes nationwide meant to tighten Chinese government control of Web use.
