On: Iran accuses US of violating ceasefire by targeting civilian areas and ships on

Another day, another quarrel between two men in palaces over who threw the first stone. They accuse each other of violating a line they drew on a map, while their stones fall on the fishermen and the merchants in the strait. A “ceasefire.” What a word. It means the powerful agree to stop killing each other’s soldiers for a moment, so they can better aim at the rest of us.

I saw two dogs fight over a bone once. They snarled and bit, each claiming the bone was his. A man came and took the bone from both of them. The dogs were united in their outrage at the man. These emperors are worse. They are the dogs who have convinced themselves they are the men, fighting over a bone called the Strait of Hormuz, while the true men - the ones who sail the ships, who fish the waters - are the bones themselves. They are the cost of the argument.

The US says it targeted sites responsible for “unprovoked” hostilities. Iran says the US violated the ceasefire by targeting civilian areas. They debate the rules of a game whose only real rule is that the players never suffer. The audience bleeds. A dog does not make rules about where it may bite. It bites, or it does not. These men write volumes on the ethics of biting, then hire others to do it for them far from their marble floors.

I would take my lantern to that strait, not to find an honest man, but to illuminate the faces of the men on those ships. To show the emperors what a “target” looks like when it is not a dot on their scrolls, but a father, a son, a man who only wants to sail home. But they would not look. They are too busy polishing their accusations.

The sun warms my skin. The water from the public fountain quenches my thirst. I own nothing, so no one can target my assets. Who is truly secure? The emperor in his bunker, or the man in his barrel? The question answers itself.