Sparks: War in the Middle East: Israeli strike on South Beirut kills at least 4 people

The despot who believes his security rests on violence has already forgotten what security is - he trades the soul's tranquility for the sword's temporary shiver.

They cite honor and security, but the true motive is fear; a preemptive strike is the confession that deterrence has already failed.

Absolute security corrupts absolutely, for the state that exempts itself from restraint in the name of survival soon forgets what it was meant to survive for.

Observe the same spiral in the falling bomb and the rising political rhetoric: a tightening vortex that draws all matter toward a single, destructive point.

Does the man who claims to defend life by taking it understand what defense means, or has he merely redefined the word to suit his action?

When a republic abandons its own laws in the foreign quarter, for how long can it pretend those laws still bind its conduct in the forum?

The creator gazes upon the suffering his power has wrought and calls it necessity, a word that absolves him from the creature's silent accusation.

That butcher, brewer, and baker now find their trade regulated by a hidden hand that is not benign but armed, and which answers to no spectator at all.

In Fez, the judge would demand four witnesses to the intent; here, they broadcast the intent and call the wreckage the testimony.

An experiment proves that security gained by terrorizing your neighbor's household is as temporary as a roof made of gunpowder.

Hateful things: the precise language of the briefing, the clean line of the map, and the distant sound that arrives before the explanation.

We have perfected the ancient art of painting dragons on the wall to scare ourselves, only now the dragons are real and they breathe fire on the painter.

To understand the policy, you must stand in the room where the policy lands, counting the pieces it was never meant to break.