America’s Stubborn and Stupid Syrian Policy

I could not believe it when I saw it on CNN News, or was it CBS, anyway, the American Policy Makers saw only one possible policy in Syria, and that was to arm the ‘Moderate’ Opposition, What Moderate Opposition are they talking about?    The original Moderate Opposition was from the Junior Officer Corps of the Syrian Army who thought that the Syrian Civil War would go as mildly as Egypt, Tunis, or even Libya… that is what the American State Department had promised them – “Take to the Streets, stir up trouble, and in 60 days the Country will be yours”… whose idea was that?  Hillary’s.  Keating’s.   Well, both were horrible Secretaries of State…. Secretaries of State need to be Career Government People – outside of the pull of appealing to voters for their next big bid for Power… indeed, most Government Officials should be Career Government – outside of the pull of appealing to voters for their next big bid for power.  Anyway, after the first six months of the Civil War, many of these Young Officers reached out and begged to be taken back.  They confessed that they had been egged on by the CIA and promised Posts in the New Government but that they were sorry and wanted to come back and fight for the Legitimate Government.    Assad took them back.   When you hear on the News about the Free Syrian Army, well, its just propaganda at this point… most of the Free Syrian Army went back to the Real Syrian Army.  Their choice was to fight with the Government that had given Syria a Secular (none-religiously biased) Government for so many years, or fight side by side with all the Crazy Sectariains and Religious Fanatics.   What would any sane young officer choose?    So who is this “Moderate Opposition”?   Who ever they are are they are the little pussy cats who have been losing the Civil War to everyone whom they have gone against, indeed, the reason why ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is so powerful, with all its tanks and artillery, was that it was able to snatch all of that stuff away from the poor little trembling and afraid Moderate Opposition.   Read History.  Revolutions are not won by Moderates.  Crazy Violent People win revoltutions… or they can be successfully opposed by Civilized, Ordered and well-funded Governments.    And in Syria today the only Government unified enough to do anything belongs to President Assad.

 

Why does America hate that guy?   When neither America or Israel could bring order to Lebanon, during their Civil War, Syria was able to step in and smooth things out… Perfectly?, well, no…. Hezbollah was included in the mix, but, really, what was Israel and America worried about, as Hezbollah had perhaps 3 or 4% of the military capacity of Israel… they could be nothing more than a nuisance.  So are we to Hate Assad simply because he solved a problem that no one else could solve while leaving a little tiny nuisance behind?   Yes, America is that stupid sometimes.  It comes from all the Crazy Money from the Pro-Israeli PACS, which accounts for most of the Money going into influencing American Political Campaigns.   Most Money going to Both Political Parties in America is sourced from Israel or collected in America from Organization based in Israel.  Therefore American Polititians – Presidents, Senators, Congressman, really have no Free Will when it comes to voting on issues involving the Mid East … the only way to be elected and stay elected is to Vote what the Crazy Israeli Right Wing wants you to Vote… and, we can’t repeat it too much – THEY ARE CRAZY!   But their dollars are green and that is all the American Political Establishment cares about, apparently.

 

But, if Common Sense ruled the day, then everyone who wanted ISIS defeated would recognize the fact that their best bet would be by backing President Assad of Syria.  A Tyrant?  Well, only in the sense that his Political Organization is Secularist.  The only people who have a problem with President Assad are the Crazy Religious Sectarians who believe that Allah wants them to Rule All and to subjugate all of the heretics and infidels who just coincidentally are not members of their Tribe and Clan.  But it can be said that Assad stands in the way of Democracy.  Duh!?  Democracy would bring into power all of the Crazy People… look at what happened in Egypt… the first free Election brought into power people direct from the Mentality of the 14^th Century – religious Nut Cases who instantly went to work to destroy Secular Principles and Fairness and Equality.  While Majorities in the Middle East are Politically Irrational because of Ethnic or Sectarian Biases, Democracy simply must be put On Hold.   And so it is a bit silly to punish Assad for doing the only rational thing that any rational Leader would do… or maybe the PACs from Israel have been remiss in not paying off Assad just as well as they pay off the American Politicians.   But for a Tyrant, maybe Assad is the only Honest Man left in the whole mix… certainly all of the Americans are paid off…

Red Eye and Infected Third Eyelid in My Cat

Sometimes everything happens at once, and one wonders whether there is some common cause underneath it all.  What happened here was that Betty, the Alpha Cat of my Household suddenly just died, probably of a heart seizure.   Well, the next day Rory, a Yearling Neutered Male, looked at me with a bit of a squint, and I should have paid more attention.   But he was not my only problem.  Foxxy, my Alpha Male 10 year old, was behaving strangely… going from sleeping place to sleeping place, apparently not finding comfort anywhere.   His ear had been drooping, but he had often used it as a mannerism (he is part Siamese, and they have all sorts of mannerisms and strange vocalizations that other cats would never even imagine doing), but when I finally decided to examine him explicitly, well, his ear was a complete bag of blood – a hematoma – “pillow ear” as some people refer to it.  So Foxxy went to the Veterinary Clinic (see my Blog about that, if you like). 

 

The next time I circled back home, well, Rory’s eye was a lot worse.  It was now decidedly red and the Third Eyelid was almost a third of the way up, almost blocking Rory’s vision.   There are places on line to read about the Third Eyelid of a cat, but I can give it to you in short – the 3^rd Eye Lid is like a passive spring, so that if the Eye is pulled back by a muscle behind the Eye, the 3^rd Eyelid automatically just pops up covering the Eye.   Cats need this because they get into fights a lot… if a Cat or some other Animal attacks them by going at their Face, then right before contact, a Reflex will pull their Eye back, and the 3^rd Lid will pop up and prevent them from being blinded. 

 

But, apparently, what happened here was that the eye had gotten infected, and that infection somehow affected that muscle behind the eye, causing it to contract, or the actual eye got smaller, causing the 3^rd Lid to start creeping up over the smaller eye.  

 

I thought it was probably a bacterial infection, and so I got some Triple Anti-Biotic Ointment (Neosporin), tested it by rubbing it into my own eye (no sting), and rubbed it in Rory’s.    Well, for a few days his eye got no worse, but not getting any better, I discontinued the Anti-Biotic Ointment.   That was a mistake.  The Time Line here was that Saturday evening Betty had died, I saw the ‘squint’ on Sunday Morning, the inflamed eye and rising 3^rd Lid on Monday.  I stopped treatment on Wednesday, and then by Friday morning Rory’s eye was very red, closed shut, and when you would pry the eye open, the 3^rd Lid completely covered his eye, and everything was red and inflamed, with a bit of puss seepage.   It all looked very very bad.   Well, I glopped on some more Neosporin as a last resort and then I had to go to work.

 

Yes, I should have taken Rory to the Vet, but we are still in what they call the Great Recession now, and Foxxy was taking up all of our discretionary income.  But this was serious, and I found myself planning to take Rory to the Vet and find out what the options were.  And if the Doctor would have suggested too many expensive Tests and too many possible treatment plans, all of them expensive, or the possibility that Rory would be blind in one eye… well, I am ashamed of it, but putting  Rory ‘to sleep’ was a possibility on my mental list of alternatives…. God have mercy on my soul.   But, thank the Good Lord, when I got home from work that Friday evening, Rory was at the door to greet me, and his Eye was open and the 3^rd Lid a great deal retracted.   The Neosporin had worked.   Rory would not have to die.

 

Now, my Veterinary Doctor says that Neosporin is not for the eyes.   But it does seem to work.  And the good thing about Neosporin, or any generic Triple Anti-biotic Ointment, is that the cats don’t mind it.   Rory was actually holding still and seemed to welcome my rubbing the Ointment into his eyelids.

 

Oh, and remember what they say about Anti-Biotics… that there must be a ‘Course’ of  treatment… 10 days or something.  Anyway, don’t do what I did and stop halfway through… keep administering the Treatment until the eye is better.

 

Now, Rory is back to being Perfect.  This morning he jumped on me to wake me up (yes, after 8 hours sleep they are allowed to at least try to wake me up) and both of his eyes were so open, wide and bright… no one could have guessed which eye had been the sick one.

 

All that aside, though, if money is no problem for you, and you have the time to take your Kitty to the Veterinary Clinic, and you notice even just a slight squint with just a hint of redness, well, don’t lose any time getting Kitty to the Vet… that Red Eye Third Lid Inflammation Thing gets BAD in a real quick hurry.   If I had gotten to Rory sooner, maybe it all would not have had to become quite so dramatic.        

Cat Ear Hematoma or Pillow Ear and the Various Treatments

Poor Foxxy Buddy… one day I discovered that his ear was simply inflated with blood or ‘something’.   I should have known something was wrong.  Foxxy had given up his usual sleeping place and was wondering around trying place after place… trying to get comfortable.   I thought that he may have been a bit distraught over the sudden death of Betty, the House’s Alpha Cat, though I did wonder about that, as Foxxy never showed much affection for her (her sudden death may have caused him to be more anxious, in such a way that he would scratch at his ears more than normally... a Hematoma of the ear is caused by the rupturing of blood vessel within the cartilage of the ear but without a corresponding tear in the skin surrounding the ear that would allow the blood to drain).   Anyway, once discovered, and finding that he found his ear quite sensitive to the touch, I took Foxxy to my usual Veterinary Service, and their treatment protocol was to drain the hematoma, stitch up the ear to close it up, and to tell me to bring Foxxy back in 10 days to get the stitches taken out.  

Well, because of a tropical storm moving through the Islands at the time, the 10 days was changed to 13.   But several days after Foxxy had his stitches removed, his ear had puffed up again.   

Instead of going back the same Vet, for ‘warranty work’, I went to a different Veterinary Service.  The first thing the New Doctor, and old man, found was that it was no longer a simple Hematoma… an ear full of blood… no, it was an Abscess –an ear full of puss and infection.  He had never seen that before.  Anyway, the New Doctor’s Treatment plan was to drain the air, but to stitch it up with a backing material to support the ear… he used X-Ray Film.  He left a huge hole in the skin in the inside of the ear (more than a half of inch long, and a bit more than a eighth of an inch wide), so that the wound could drain, and he gave me instructions to clean the drainage… to clean off the scab… twice a day, and to put some antiseptic yellow stuff on the wound, and to do that until the ear seemed to have stopped draining and begun to heal.  Also, I was told to give Foxxy some antibiotics, orally, to stop whatever infection there was at its source.    And I was not to bring Foxxy back for stitch removal for 20 days… twice the protocol of the first Veterinary Service I had gone to.  

Lessons learned in all of this.    If your kitty’s ear is operated on, you shouldn’t have to be told to put antibiotics on the healing wound… using Neosporin on Foxxy’s ear, although nobody told me to do it, might have saved Foxxy another trip to the Vet.  Also, 10 days did not seem so much time to heal… not even 13.  

Oh, when the New Doctor removed the X-Ray film from the top of Foxxy’s ear, well, it looked red and infected and horrible.  I had my doubts about that part of Foxxy’s treatment.  But the Doctor went out into his garden and clipped me off some actual aloe vera leaves, and instructed me to freshly break the leaves section by section and to smear the aloe vera juices on Foxxy’s ear.  Well, even by the next day, Foxxy’s ear was looking so much better.    

But I am a bit concerned about the short glaze of fur that coats a cat’s ear.  Foxxy’s ear now looks a bit like bare skin, and I do hope that a new layer of fur glaze will grow up on his ear.  

Foxxy’s ear now droops, like a dogs… no longer standing up like a cat’s ear.  That is a bit sad, and also a bit ironic.  You see, if you remember, Foxxy’s full name is Foxxy Buddy, named after another ‘Buddy’ cat I had known who would always cock his ears down, like Star War’s Yoda, and Foxxy Buddy would do the same when I first met him.  Well, now, Poor Foxxy has no choice about it in regards to one of his ears.

 

But he now is doing okay.  He had hated the Treatment.   But now that the Treatment is over, he has re-initiated all of his old Quality Time Rituals, and then some… reaching out to Bond with me a little extra, after what must have been quite an ordeal for him.