One story has dominated the news beyond all others this week. Sadly, it's not remotely a new one: Gaza.
The whole thing is horrendously predictable. Hamas launch rockets into Israel, Israel blow Gaza to smithereens with arms that make Hamas' look like Coke bottles filled with Mentos. Lather, rinse, explode, die, and repeat. To date, for every Israeli killed in the latest squirmish, 29 Palestinians have died. And yet, news coverage and the prevailing western winds still seem to be using that most curious of irregular verbs: Israel cooly and pre-empitvely strikes, Palestinians illogically and heinously strike. Worrying, the debacle has also transferred to Twitter, IDF Spokesperson flinging out menace like white phosphorous. In one instance, they warned the press that Hamas may use them as human shields.
Although a ceasefire has been called, hope of a lasting resolution looks slim, although all major parties could do worse than to turn to Dublin for maintaining hope under unlikely odds. 17 year old student Kaelem Hainsworth died at the weekend, and his friends at school resolved to pay tribute to him by getting his favourite band Green Day to dedicate a video to him for his funeral. After a blistering online canvassing campaign, #makeKaelansdaygreen trended number one in the country and attracted the attention of several celebrities. As of Wednesday, that included Green Day's Mike Dirnt. Incredible.
During the weekend, Ireland's young people were all over the trending charts like Oasis in the 90's, this time for the culmination of the president of Ireland's Being Young And Irish seminar. A day of rigorous debate and refreshing positivity made for the formation of a rather powerful document praised by the president and presented to the minister for children, who we can only hope will use it as a policy bible and not a lovingly prepared door stop. Among the suggestions on the day were a more secular nation, with marriage and adoption rights as a given, legislating the X-case, absentee ballots for Irish citizens oversees, a greater voice and say for young people in the matters that affect them and greater power for local politicians so national ones didn't have to act like village powerbrokers. What sane politician could argue against all that? Judging by the pathetically prevaricating response to the Savita case, we might soon find out.
When it comes to being decisive, you certainly can't fault the Church of England. Unfortunately, the decision itself you can fault very easily. It turns out a majority of the Church's Synod favour women bishops, just not big enough to actually make it happen. Some of the more hardline members of the Anglican Communion claim that women shouldn't be bishops because all of Jesus' apostles were male. Which makes about as much sense as saying that old men shouldn't be able to live in Florida because of The Golden Girls.
And speaking of little sense, Snoop Lion. Fresh from choosing the winner of the presidential election (psephological fact: a bitch with a dancing horse has never been elected president) he has now set his sights on becoming a board member of Celtic. So that's one little mystery solved: the 'G' he so often refers to must be Georgious Samaras. I wonder what Parkead stalwart Rod Stewart thinks about having his thunder stolen? It's probably not affecting him as much as the win against Barca, anyway.