Mary Poppins - Trend Setter

My daughter was watching MaryPoppins on TV last night, and I would pop in occasionally to catch a glimpse of what was happening. After all, I was seven when it came out, and I got the rare treat to go see it in the theatre.

But what caught my attention this time was Bert's (Dick Van Dyke) dance with the penguins. It was funny when I first saw it - how ridiculous he was when he stretched his pants down to mimic the penguins. Then it hit me, this was a trendsetting moment, in 1964! It took forty years to catch on, it was so far ahead of it's time, but the young folks embraced it.

Who would have thought Mary Poppins could have bridged the fashion gap as initiating the baggy pants style?

Hezbollah, using the public as a shield

Watch these videos of captured Hezbollah terrorists discussing their tactics that included using civilian buildings to hide in, store munitions in, and using the civilian population as a shield.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

The media used images of destroyed family dwellings to indicate how terrible things were in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, yet these terrorists admit that they used civilian housing to launch missiles from, in order to attract Israeli tanks, and the destruction of the home. One terrorist said that 90% of the civilian population in one city had sent keys to their homes to Hezbollah for their use! 90%!

This puts a different light on organizations like the UN Refugee Agency, aka UNHCR, which is asking for donations to rebuild these same "donated" homes. A BBC article contains a quote from a Lebanese citizen, which says "I feel very bad to see what Israel has done here - ever since 1948 they have done evil to civilians on our side." But now there's an admission from a Hezbollah member that Hezbollah used the citizens for their own twisted purposes, which made Israel look like the bad guy.

But, truth will prevail. Hezbollah is not the savior it wants the world to think it is.