faking it

They say that those who fake injuries for compensation end up becoming sick as they have to pretend to be sick for most of their lives in order to fool assessors, neighbours, anyone who might be watching. I don't think it applies to orgasm as I guess we don't have to prove our bliss 24/7. Accordingly, if one lies enough, I guess one has to live and come to believe those lies.

At the Davos economic summit in Switzerland, the Turkish Prime Minister, Rcep Tayyip Erdogan, walked off the stage after challenging the words of the President of Israel, Shimon Peres after Peres stated the following as reported by CNBC.Com (after the video):




Democracy is not about elections; it's about civilizations... [Journalist's comment: insinuating that just simply the fact the Palestinian people held an election through which they voted for Hamas, that does not make them a democracy...]

According to him, there was not one day of starvation in Gaza over the course of the last few weeks...



or from the article linked just before:



There was never a day of starvation in Gaza (Peres had expressed puzzlement as to why rockets might be fired, claiming there was no siege, after assertions by Erdogan that the Gazans lived in an open air prison, governed by the Israelis, cut off from the rest of the world).

None of the crossings between Gaza and Israel, vital crossings, were ever closed.

John Ging and the United Nations are yet again liars, according to Peres. I guess at least he did not say that there was not one day of starvation over the last two months, or the year of 2008 otherwise Peres, himself, might have been lying. But of course, once a war occurs in which the main UN compound which stores food is targeted and burnt to the ground, and the goods that were allowed into Gaza were limited anyway, well then, all of a sudden people become positively Rubenesque with the abundance of supplies.

Turkey doesn't have a clean record when it comes to human rights, however, towards the end of the conference, asking for time, Erdogan said: "I find it very sad that people applaud what you said . . . You killed people. And I think that it is very wrong."

Later he added, in response to statements Peres had made:

"You kill people,". . . "I remember the children who died on beaches. I remember two former prime ministers who said they felt very happy when they were able to enter Palestine on tanks.".

He left the conference saying he would not return, however [u]ltimately, Erdogan stressed he left not because of a dispute with Peres but because he was not given time to respond to the Israeli leader's remarks. Erdogan also complained that Peres had 25 minutes while he was only given 12 minutes.

It would be nice if a few more world leaders had such sorrow, and the guts to express it.

News first sighted here.

The peace blog, Tikun Olan reports the story in more detail, and has the video of the conference. Or you can go straight to the source.

*Note, an interesting interview with Erdogan by the Washington Post (January 31, 2009).