Here we go again. It seems that Syria, a neighbor of Israel, has stockpiles of nerve gas, aka chemical weapons, and the US and, by extension, everybody else in NATO is becoming concerned that as the Syrian rebel forces squeeze Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen into the tightest of corners, they will unleash these weapons of mass extermination upon their foes, viz., the people of Syria. My guess is that, being an MD who has presumably taken the Hippocratic Oath, he will refrain from the use of such a weapon and will prefer to carry the fight to his enemies using conventional body-piercing methodology such as bullets and shrapnel, which is apparently less politically incorrect. Israel, being a country next door to Syria and in eternal conflict with it, though never with chemical weaponry, has a proper concern that as the Syrian conflict reaches a climax, these stockpiles will be inherited by the rebel forces, after which anything could happen. We are warned that the weapons could find their ways to the hands of crazies such as Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, thereby upsetting the balance of power in the region. So the state of Israel, with the assistance of its multitudinous proxies, prods the slumbering US, with the result that Mrs. Clinton, standing tall in her most stateswoman-like posture, draws a red line in the sand across which Mr. Assad must not go.

But what if he flips her off? What do we, i.e. NATO, do?  Do we dispatch an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean armed with drones (maybe we already did) and thence bombard the storage sites? Would such an activity unwittingly release the VX and Sarin gases into the atmosphere whence they could drift into the surrounding populated areas? After all, as the Chernobyl incident showed, substances carried on the wind know no national boundaries; air-borne chemical death is indiscriminate, visiting itself on friend and foe alike.

And these drones, might they be steered, as in the Afghan theater, by pilots clad in flight gear sitting at video terminals in Tampa FL (close to where I am now) where resides the HQ of Central Command which has the purview for conflicts in mid-eastern countries? And after a particularly successful bombing run would these self-same pilots and their senior officers repair to parties hosted by Ms. Kelly, that much-acclaimed socialite? If they were, one imagines that she would be urging them to do their utmost to ensure that they only unleashed their smart bombs on Syrian stockpiles of Sarin when the surface wind was blowing from the West, in that way to protect the people in the land whence she hails; such a small world isn’t it?

Meanwhile, a half a world away we learn that voter-approved initiatives in the Great States of Washington and Colorado have legalized the recreational use of marijuana/cannabis/dope. In Washington’s neighbor state of Oregon, there is already widespread use of pot for medicinal purposes and even a healthy person there will not be hassled by the police for having an ounce or so in his pocket or her purse. However, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal in ALL states of the union under federal law, so if you are wish to go toking in Tacoma, you had better check that the FBI are not in the same room. This can only be described as surreal; citizens at the same place and time being subjected to two contradicting laws. Surely this move to liberalization will be frowned upon by many, but for others it will represent a business opportunity. Travel agents will be setting up pot tourism flights to Seattle from all over the US; it will be a boon for the hotel and airline industries. And what about the return flights, will the TSA, being a federal agency, set their full body scanners to sniff out cannabis on all passengers leaving SeaTac and other airports? I can visualize large crowds of tokers clustered outside airport doors, smoking up the remains of the stuff still in their pockets rather than turn it in to the boys and girls of the TSA; could non-smokers get high while threading their ways through the massed puffers? I can’t wait to hear how this turns out!

These momentous events, including the evidence from Egypt that the president thinks that he is a pharaoh, are dwarfed into insignificance by the truly world-shaking news that the Duchess of Cambridge had a severe bout of morning sickness for which she had to be hospitalized. Very few pregnant ladies are taken to the hospital for such an everyday occurrence, but then very few ladies are carrying a future monarch within their persons. The sympathetic noises from the world’s sisterhood for her ignoble condition were mixed with expressions of joy that this was the result of a hitherto-unannounced Royal Pregnancy. Poor Britain, it has hardly got over a Royal Wedding and a Royal Olympics and now it is faced with another media blitz over the usual questions raised by any pregnancy, even non-Royal ones; boy or girl, twins or more, when will it/they arrive, and what will the little bundle of joy be named???

If it is a boy and to be named after his father, there are four names to choose from: William, Arthur, Philip and Louis. Since the dad will be William V, should the throne ever become vacated by today’s incumbent, a William in utero would be number VI, but would a female in utero be named after her paternal grandmother? We await the outcome of these momentous decisions with bated breath.

My question about all this is more philosophical; when does the little blighter gain Royalty status and become entitled to HRH? The mother is a commoner, like me and 99.99% of British people (I refrain from using the word “subjects” here because I do not regard myself as being subject to any monarchic entity), but Kate’s lucky egg, a poor haploid commoner, was impregnated by sperm from a Royal – a future monarch, no less. Is the now diploid entity immediately entitled to HRH, with Royal sperm trumping all other claims? Or does it have to wait until its blood can be shown to be truly blue? Again my breath is bated until the answers to all these questions are revealed. One thing I know for sure is that the womankind of Britain, of the seventeen realms of QEII, of her Commonwealth, of the remaining colonies, and of the former colonies, etc., etc., are gushing at all this kerfuffle!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!