tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8912897113771562242024-03-19T10:47:18.706+02:00A Political Refugee From The Global Village An Englishman in love with Bucharest's blowsy charmsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3818125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-89122847264655418062024-03-17T12:23:00.006+02:002024-03-17T17:33:53.323+02:00'Israel Is on the Brink of the Abyss'<blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">'The Shin Bet security service and Military Intelligence "completely failed" to detect what Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' leader in the Gaza Strip, had planned, one defense official acknowledged. "It's also true that a few days before October 7, the consensus of all the intelligence agencies was that Hamas was growing only moderately stronger and hadn't found an alternative" to the cross-border attack tunnels Israel blocked.<br /><br />'"Nevertheless, the defense establishment's expectation was that if the government continued the judicial overhaul,<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-03-13/ty-article-opinion/.premium/smotrichs-dangerous-battle-to-blame-the-idf-for-october-7/0000018e-3449-d606-a5ff-7dfff8360000"> Bezalel Smotrich continued his life's work</a> of erasing the Green Line [between Israel and the West Bank] and Itamar Ben-Gvir heated up the Temple Mount and the West Bank, it would end in rivers of blood," he added.<br /><br />'If anyone thought the October 7 massacre would raise doubts among the overhaul's chief proponents and cause them to abandon their insane agenda, each new day proves that nothing has changed.'</span></blockquote><p> </p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Gidi Weitz in the left-of-centre Israeli newspaper <i>Ha'aretz </i>on Friday March 15. </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">From the point of view of the Israeli far right the Hamas attacks are the obvious opportunity to seize more territory. Ethnically cleanse and occupy the Gaza Strip? Is that insane? </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">From the point of view of foreigners, Israel is going to be widely hated.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">The </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Ha'aretz </i><span style="font-family: verdana;">editorial on Friday was headlined '</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Israel Is on the Brink of the Abyss'. </span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-68782404116114253062024-03-17T08:43:00.007+02:002024-03-17T09:14:04.419+02:00Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club in September 2010<span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">'But I would like to remind you that in the wake of Kosovo we did not recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We stopped short of that. As I said in public quite recently, we "swallowed" it. The only thing that I did at the time was to sign a decree on the development of economic relations with these territories. By the way, that was in line with United Nations requirements, because the UN was against the economic isolation of these territories. That was all. In principle, we were prepared for further dialogue.<br /><br />'And yet armed forces were used. Some quarters are so fond of shooting and bombing that they thought they would succeed here too. Why did they think that they would succeed here when they had no success elsewhere, in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East? They failed here as well, and those who believe that it is the most effective instrument of foreign policy in the modern world will fail again and again.<br /><br />'...One cannot behave in the world like a Roman emperor.'</span></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am reading Philip Short's biography of Putin. He went to my college.<br />Mr. Short, not Putin. Of Putin could be said what an apocryphal don who met<br />Napoleon said of him: 'It is easy to see that he did not go to<br />Cambridge.<br /><br />That was a favourite story of the ill-fated Professor Lord Pinkrose in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy.<br /> </span><div></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-50646168375413113702024-03-14T08:28:00.010+02:002024-03-14T19:09:54.284+02:00Quotations<span style="font-family: verdana;">“Hamas leaders know they cannot defeat the IDF militarily. Their only hope is to provoke Israel into killing enough civilians to defeat Israel politically. This is a classic terrorist strategy of provocation. Israel has fallen for it, hard.” Professor Virginia Page Fortna of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University">Columbia University</a>, writing today in Ha'aretz. She is an American political scientist and a specialist in the study of peace negotiations.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfFzJFI8tdAcuBK22Wwd4D161q0qIWtj5u0Nv9qhiWx-EOyxi6GeruY8svbg43hfn0qguvCs9U8LUhWFupEHZa3__yFBHEXtE0cvWo4RuzzDiydJCbF6zC93uSV-NQPCS4RbkzuHdco7V5sudrd9-ZxFt63HG3wcMMDvfIFr1Au6mZZjXb16GpiwzPIcXQ/s1692/Screenshot_20240314_082924_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1692" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfFzJFI8tdAcuBK22Wwd4D161q0qIWtj5u0Nv9qhiWx-EOyxi6GeruY8svbg43hfn0qguvCs9U8LUhWFupEHZa3__yFBHEXtE0cvWo4RuzzDiydJCbF6zC93uSV-NQPCS4RbkzuHdco7V5sudrd9-ZxFt63HG3wcMMDvfIFr1Au6mZZjXb16GpiwzPIcXQ/w408-h640/Screenshot_20240314_082924_Chrome.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpwhc9fPQB-EkEdCqTpVPcPCJLv-QPS1uEiEImozisPSabYmAusDmQjPeXLRij6fKC0VYsTqTNJMn-ilab9fdbQDOMqAKpFWvzRbJ1Xsvb3_y6rxarptZVLDeJUYaRsf8GxcfV2YvwuX7KvJt-A8Sd8tPTLQVO6d0UVO1y4dgILuz1o9zTMPQ33RjfD_6D/s1061/Screenshot_20240314_083012_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1061" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpwhc9fPQB-EkEdCqTpVPcPCJLv-QPS1uEiEImozisPSabYmAusDmQjPeXLRij6fKC0VYsTqTNJMn-ilab9fdbQDOMqAKpFWvzRbJ1Xsvb3_y6rxarptZVLDeJUYaRsf8GxcfV2YvwuX7KvJt-A8Sd8tPTLQVO6d0UVO1y4dgILuz1o9zTMPQ33RjfD_6D/w640-h394/Screenshot_20240314_083012_Chrome.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">"I remember when British people used to say things like “They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong,” or “They can’t do that; it’s against the law.” George Orwell noted in 1941 that a vague belief in law being above power, expressed in such sentiments, was part of the English character. We also used to say that an Englishman’s home was his castle.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;" /><br style="font-family: verdana;" /><span style="font-family: verdana;">"But night after night, local TV news bulletins show police in body armor with special battering rams, smashing down the door of some alleged drug dealer’s home. And we are expected and intended to approve, even though these events, plainly done for show, have less than no effect on the vast levels of drug abuse in our society. In fact, although we have had a Bill of Rights in England since 1689, on which much of the American Bill of Rights is based (including, amazingly, the right to bear arms), we are very poorly protected from the state if it wishes to start pushing us around."</span><br style="font-family: verdana;" /><br style="font-family: verdana;" /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Peter Hitchens <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/assange-phillips-and-the-end-of-rights/">in the </a></span><a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/assange-phillips-and-the-end-of-rights/"><i style="font-family: verdana;">American Conservative</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> yesterday</span></a>.<span style="font-family: verdana;"> The article is worth reading. The UK no longer has free speech.</span><span><a name='more'></a></span><span><!--more--></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-68756051143812676802024-03-10T15:30:00.005+02:002024-03-11T11:43:54.285+02:00“Six times in the past 12 years Netanyahu rejected plans to eliminate the Hamas leadership” <span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote>“Six times in the past 12 years [Benjamin Netanyahu] has rejected plans proposed by the heads of Israel’s secret security agency, known as Shabak, to eliminate the Hamas leadership.” </blockquote></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israel-must-decide-where-its-going-ehud-barak">So writes former Israeli PM and general Ehud Barak</a> this month in the American defence establishment's house magazine, <i>Foreign Affairs</i>. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">How much better had the spies murdered Hamas leaders than the wholesale massacre that is taking place now. Using the secret service to pick off Hamas fighters might have prevented the 7 October attack. Doing this after October 7 would have been better than what is happening now, both morally and in terms of Israel's long term interests.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">The 90 year-old far leftist American Ralph Nader, whose third party candidature is the reason George W Bush became US President in 2000 and therefore the reason for a lot of bad things, thinks the number of dead Arabs in Gaza <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/calculate-real-gaza-death-toll">may be 200,000, not the 30,000 always quoted.</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">As always, Belloc is to the point.</span></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">'Oh! let us never, never doubt</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">What nobody is sure about!'</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">As third party candidates for the American presidency go Nader is one of the most significant, comparable to Ross Perot who made Bill Clinton president and Theodore Roosevelt who did the same favour for Woodrow Wilson, but a very long way behind Abraham Lincoln or Donald Trump.</span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-66332536309554518602024-03-10T13:47:00.004+02:002024-03-11T22:27:37.327+02:00A tale of two rabbis: Eliyahu Mali and Elhanan Beck<span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />From Anadolu Agency (AA), the Turkish state-owned news news agency.<br /><br />1. Eliyahu Mali <br /><br />An Israeli rabbi urged the killing of women and children in the Gaza Strip and said he considered it a response to the teachings of halakha, or Jewish law.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><br />It came from Eliyahu Mali in a video that was widely circulated Thursday on social media.<br /><br />Mali heads the Shirat Moshe religious school in Jaffa in central Israel, where students serve in the army.<br /><br />“In our mitzvah (holy) war, in our situation in Gaza, according to what the law says, ‘Not every soul shall live,’ and the logic of this is very clear: if you do not kill them, they will kill you,” said Mali.<br /><br />He claimed that those described as "vandals" in today's war are “the children of the previous war whom we kept alive, and in reality, it is the women who produce terrorists.”<br /><br />“This means that this rule (do not keep alive every soul) is very clear in its concept, either you or them," he said. “Whoever comes to kill you, kill him first.”<br /><br />“Whoever comes to kill you with this concept does not only include the young man aged 16, 18, 20, or 30 who is now pointing a weapon at you, but also the future generation (the children of Gaza), and those who produce the future generation (women of Gaza), because there is really no difference,” he said.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />2. Elhanan Beck<br /><br />[The video is <a href="https://twitter.com/NABEELRAJAB/status/1766351177623408658">here</a>.]<br /><br />- ‘A person who can justify genocide, a person who can commit genocide, I can't count him as a Jew. People (who) justify genocide, they are more Nazis than Jews,’ Orthodox Rabbi Elhanan Beck tells Anadolu<br /><br />- ’75 years of killing. Still, Jews live in the Muslim world peacefully. Take the example, in Morocco, in Tunisia, in Algeria, in Iran, in Türkiye, in Yemen,’ says Beck, a leading Rabbi of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement<br /><br />- On Oct. 7 attacks, Beck explains: ‘Oct. 7 didn't start on Oct. 7. It started in 1948 on May 15. It was started by the Nakba for the Palestinians. This happened and they want to cover up their killings, the genocide, with more genocide, with more killings’<br /><br />LONDON<br /><br />Israel has long claimed to be a safe haven for the Jewish people, an assertion that has been widely affirmed by Israeli officials for decades, as well as by key legislation and policy allowing Jews all over the world to settle within its borders.<br /><br />But according to one of Britain’s well-known Jewish figures, far from providing the safety and security it claims, Israel since its inception has brought little more than “bloodshed after bloodshed” for the Jewish people.<br /><br />“Today, where is the most dangerous place for Jewish people?” asked Elhanan Beck, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, speaking to Anadolu in an interview.<br /><br />“Go all around the world, all the world. You will come to one point, the middle of the world, the state of Israel. That is the most dangerous place for Jewish people,” said the Rabbi, who has lived for decades in the UK, which he suggested was much safer for Jews than Israel.<br /><br />“I’ve lived in England for 36 years. I don't know how an English soldier looks like. I never saw them. I don't know the uniform, how it looks like … This means a safe country,” he said, adding: “Jews have a good life today in England, in the USA.”<br /><br />Orthodox Jews have long been one of the strongest non-Muslim voices against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as they have repeatedly expressed their wishes for the “peaceful dismantlement of the state of Israel.”<br /><br />Members of the community rose to prominence once again since Israel launched its latest campaign against the Gaza Strip, ongoing for more than two-and-a-half months. Members of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) movement have been vocal participants of massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London.<br /><br />Beck, a leading Rabbi from that movement and community, spoke to Anadolu at the group's main building on Stamford Hill in north London, home to thousands of Orthodox Jews.<br /><br />During the interview, he asserted that Zionism was in "total opposition" with the Jewish faith, saying that Orthodox Jews were against the foundation of Israel from the very emergence of the idea of Zionism.<br /><br />Elaborating, Beck said Zionism was not only non-religious but also a "rebellion against God," as it sought to create a land for Jewish people despite Jews’ belief that they are “in exile” by God.<br /><br />Israel will come to an end ‘sooner or later'<br /><br />“Zionism is basically built upon mistrusting God, don't believe in God, don't trust God. From the other side, Judaism is built upon trust in God,” Beck explained.<br /><br />“The state of Israel is a rebellion against God and will not succeed. They will come to an end sooner or later, but they will come to an end,” said Beck, adding that in its 75 years of existence, Israel has failed to achieve peace.<br /><br />“How many countries have been established in these 75 years? Fifty? Sixty? Many counties. Everybody has peace. The only place where there is no peace for a single day, that is the state of Israel,” he said.<br /><br />According to Beck, most Orthodox Jews “are strongly opposing the state of Israel,” and are “waiting for the dismantlement of the state of Israel.”<br /><br />“Of course, we’re looking for a peaceful dismantlement. Nobody looks for bloodshed, but they’re looking for the end of this state of Israel.”</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-91684919374796541802024-03-09T07:17:00.012+02:002024-03-10T07:48:34.190+02:00Tweets<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4K6ZMyP74NzTdSqJfe6-mgTRzFdZiQyfs8JlAFQWSs1pYt5GefLCWS-3ClbyquqMa1dW_-riASARrQrZdzphpbwcn4iGJzkoFVls_Vfa77R19atyacrJxNmfgoySi2NOpwNZWHfF1ey-7gjB-dY54u5oAAGQuwZ7iTD_0Ih_KyFcwYcMUoNynwfMyR3a3/s1831/Screenshot_20240309_103625_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1831" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4K6ZMyP74NzTdSqJfe6-mgTRzFdZiQyfs8JlAFQWSs1pYt5GefLCWS-3ClbyquqMa1dW_-riASARrQrZdzphpbwcn4iGJzkoFVls_Vfa77R19atyacrJxNmfgoySi2NOpwNZWHfF1ey-7gjB-dY54u5oAAGQuwZ7iTD_0Ih_KyFcwYcMUoNynwfMyR3a3/w378-h640/Screenshot_20240309_103625_Chrome.jpg" width="378" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I see nothing whatever objectionable about people marching through London in support of the Palestinians, or any other cause, except from the point of view of obstructing traffic, but pretty well all the British newspapers do. The days when journalists were in favour of freedom of expression ended long ago.</span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2TEftr7MolE4-ISDqONdBKgiCNwAHy1Rk6hIH6gYneOXnFWo-5niau8lXZP6i8NlrS_O78l68-uBkvH3H-gOHnCdZznGVvOQsswUsHTzxjTdpR3pb9v7fz1wxMAJbBQaFI1BAcoqqGvPKV9pmrYN5RznGxdkPLB23XO84_wkle8ukd7kiE-BN94qS8kS/s2400/Screenshot_20240309_112714_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2TEftr7MolE4-ISDqONdBKgiCNwAHy1Rk6hIH6gYneOXnFWo-5niau8lXZP6i8NlrS_O78l68-uBkvH3H-gOHnCdZznGVvOQsswUsHTzxjTdpR3pb9v7fz1wxMAJbBQaFI1BAcoqqGvPKV9pmrYN5RznGxdkPLB23XO84_wkle8ukd7kiE-BN94qS8kS/w288-h640/Screenshot_20240309_112714_Chrome.jpg" width="288" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;">S Sebag Montefiore</span></span></div><div class="css-1rynq56 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-rjixqe r-16dba41 r-xoduu5 r-18u37iz r-1q142lx" dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline-flex; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; 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line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;">@simonmontefiore</span></div></a></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="css-175oi2r r-1jkjb" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 8px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-175oi2r r-1awozwy r-18u37iz r-1cmwbt1 r-1wtj0ep" style="align-items: center; 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background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-175oi2r" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-175oi2r r-1s2bzr4" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1rynq56 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-1inkyih r-16dba41 r-bnwqim r-135wba7" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__s73ol6ruiuc" lang="en" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 24px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;">I was close to tears when i read the words of Samer Sinjilawi, 52, a Palestinian of Jerusalem, recounted by </span><div class="css-175oi2r r-xoduu5" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><span class="r-18u37iz" style="flex-direction: row;"><a class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3 r-1loqt21" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/gershonbaskin" role="link" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1d9bf0; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;">@gershonbaskin</a></span></div><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; 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Do read this especially those of us far away in our armchairs fighting righteously and very bravely in the media for one side or the other:
Trauma and the hope for tomorrow:
Samer is very courageous. He says in public that he, as a Muslim has to recognize the historic rights of the Jewish people to be in this land. There is no way to deny the Jewish connection to this land for thousands of years. But he adds, yes, the Jews were always here, but they were never alone. There were always others on this land, and we are the others. We were also here. “Perhaps a long time ago maybe I was Jewish, maybe I became Christian also before I become a Muslim, because my family has been here for hundreds of years”. When Samer is asked how he deals with the trauma of this war and of the whole conflict he responds by saying that when he sees an Israeli Jew who hates Palestinians and even wants to kill them, he understands them. He says “we did terrible things to the Jews and the Jews did terrible things to us. I used to think that we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. Now I know that the reality is much more complex and we have done terrible things to each other.”
Samer went to visit Kibbutz Kfar Aza after October 7. He was filmed there by a documentary film maker and he said that he came because he wanted to see with his own eyes the atrocities committed by Hamas. He said “I have to take responsibility for this because it was done in my name as a Palestinian, by my own people, and we are all responsible.” He also now says that he hopes that someday Israelis will be able to go to Gaza and stand up and say “I take responsibility as an Israeli because the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza were done in my name.” Confronting trauma begins with compassion and taking responsibility. I, as someone who has spent his whole adult life working for Israeli-Palestinian people, and as someone who has more than 100 friends and colleagues in Gaza that I have been in contact with since October 7, I can say that I feel the pain and the suffering of people in Gaza. I receive WhatsApp messages from friends and colleagues describing the horrors that they are living through. A young woman from the Nusseirat Refugee camp in central Gaza who has a one-year-old baby who writes to me “I am living in the street. My home was bombed. I am hungry.” It breaks my heart. Another young woman who I helped to raise money for her university tuition where she was studying computer programming and doing quite well until the war, her university has been demolished along with all of the universities in Gaza, and I have not heard from her in two months. I don’t know if she is alive. I am sorry and I feel responsible as an Israeli for the horrors of what this war has brought on the Palestinian people. Yes, Hamas is primarily responsible for what has happened, but as an Israeli I cannot escape responsibility for what our army is doing in Gaza. Our war is with Hamas, not with the Palestinian people, and not all Gazans or all Palestinians are Hamas or share the goals of Hamas...
I want all Israelis to hear the voice of Samer.
</span></div><div class="css-1rynq56 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-1inkyih r-16dba41 r-bnwqim r-135wba7" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__s73ol6ruiuc" lang="en" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 24px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="css-1rynq56 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-1inkyih r-16dba41 r-bnwqim r-135wba7" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__s73ol6ruiuc" lang="en" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 24px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span face="TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #0f1419;"><a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/trauma-and-the-hope-for-tomorrow/">https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/trauma-and-the-hope-for-tomorrow/</a></span></span></div><div style="font-size: 15px;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-30418975436079761032024-03-06T13:08:00.012+02:002024-03-12T06:10:25.610+02:00Saudi Arabia's missing princes<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>'For God's sake let us sit upon the ground</span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span>And tell sad stories of the death of kings.'</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span>Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2.</span></div><br />I missed, in August 2017, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40926963.amp">these astonishing accounts on the BBC</a> site - they read exactly like a thriller - of three Saudi princes kidnapped in Europe, taken back to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and probably executed. <br /><br />They scarcely made the news and I don't remember them being mentioned when Adnan Khashoggi was murdered. <br /><br />This is England and America's gallant ally, whom we armed to fight the Houthis.<br /><br />That sometimes silly former British Ambassador <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/10/khashoggi-erdogan-and-the-truth/comment-page-2/">Craig Murray wrote</a> about the cases well.<br /><br />As he says, Mohammed Bin Salman no doubt thought the death of Khashoggi, in a Saudi consulate in Turkey, would go equally unnoticed, but he wrote for the Washington Post and journalists do not like their colleagues being killed. Meanwhile Erdogan, unlike his European allies, was not prepared to tolerate Saudi political murder in his country.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><br />We hear a lot of complaints about crimes by Iran but not much about murders committed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or, at least until the invasion of the Gaza Strip, by Israel, Saudi Arabia's unofficial close ally against Iran. <br /><br />This is because the Western media, including left-wing papers like the Guardian, is dominated by the CIA. Really remember that everything is propaganda in favour of the US, Nato and progressive ideas - and nowadays in favour of Israel too.<br /><br />I recommend the article by John Bradley <i><a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/forget-our-misguided-friendship-with-saudi-arabia-iran-is-our-natural-ally/">Forget our misguided friendship with Saudi Arabia: Iran is our natural ally</a></i> that the Spectator published in 2017.<br /><br />It begins thus.<br /><br />'The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place of unique cultural and religious significance. But under the guise of fighting Iran-backed terror cells, the Saudis then subjected Awamiya’s entire civilian population to the indiscriminate use of fighter jets, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, heavy artillery, armoured assault vehicles and cold-blooded executions.<br /><br />'More than a dozen Shia, including a three-year-old boy, were killed. Hundreds of young men were rounded up. At least 500 homes were flattened, and 8,000 residents were forcibly removed from those that remained. Saudi soldiers recorded themselves dancing and singing amid the rubble of the town’s once-beautiful old city. They stomped on a poster of a revered Shia cleric from the eastern province, Nimr al-Nimr, beheaded last year for sedition. And they denigrated the town’s ‘cleansed’ local Shia as ‘rejectionists’ and ‘dogs’ — language identical to that of their fanatical Wahhabi brothers in Iraq and Syria, who rejoice in slaughtering Shia in the name of Isis. The mass beheading of 14 local Shia activists, including a severely disabled teenager, is said to be imminent.'</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I wrote along similar lines <a href="https://pvewood.blogspot.com/2017/04/obviously-usa-and-uk-should-never-have.html">here</a>.<br /><br />Israel is understood to have carte blanche to kill its opponents or to bomb or invade other countries (in the last few days two attempted incursions into Lebanon were thwarted by Hezbollah).<br /><br />The best way to understand the Middle East is not in terms of Islamism or democracy and certainly not as a battle between good and evil but as the Great Game, just like the Jihad the Germans were plotting in John Buchan's <a href="https://pvewood.blogspot.com/2014/02/reading-john-buchan-when-sick.html">Greenmantle</a>.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-12825584157107408992024-03-06T10:14:00.070+02:002024-03-12T06:11:18.808+02:00The Yinon Plan is not important, but Israel wants to be surrounded by failed states and with US help has achieved this goal<span style="font-family: verdana;">Ten days after declaring the existence of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish army's general staff: “We must immediately destroy Ramle and Lod. ... We must organize Eliyahu’s brigade to direct it against Jenin in preparation for the Jordan Valley. ... Maklef needs to receive reinforcements and his role is the conquest of southern Lebanon, with the aid of bombing Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. ... Yigal Allon must attack in Syria from the east and from the north. ... We must establish a Christian state whose southern border will be the Litani. We will forge an alliance with it. When we break the strength of the [Arab] Legion and bomb Amman we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria falls. And if Egypt still dares to fight, we will bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.”</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Israel did some of those things eventually. <span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />You sometimes see anti-Zionists (Gilad Aztmon is an example) talking about the Yinon Plan. This refers to<a href="https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/A_strategy_for_Israel_in_the_Nineteen_Eighties.pdf"> an article</a> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">by a very obscure person called Oded Yinon, published </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/A_strategy_for_Israel_in_the_Nineteen_Eighties.pdf">in February 1982 in the World Zionist organisation's journal <i>Kivunim ("Directions"), </i>entitled <i>A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s</i>.</a> </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">In it he argued that the Arab countries that encircled Israel were a 'temporary house of cards put together by foreigners' and once they disintegrated Arabs would no longer be a threat to Israel. Israel should try to engineer their disintegration. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">He did not argue for Israeli expansion.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">It seems to have made a big stir for a short time but now is spoken about only by people hostile to Netanyahu or Zionism or Israel. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yinon and his plan are of no importance in themselves but the logic of his arguments was and is valid. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>Israel rightly wants to be surrounded by failed states and this </span>presumably is why Benjamin Netanyahu has urged th<span>e USA to make war on Iraq, Syria and Iran.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I remind you that only the election of Donald Trump prevented the Hillary Clinton administration achieving regime change in Syria.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span>Yinon wanted the dismemberment of Egypt, a Christian Coptic state established on the Israeli border and the destruction of Jordan. He considered Iraq, with its oil, to be Israel's greatest threat. He thought that the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War">Iran–Iraq War</a><span> would split up Iraq, which should be a strategic Israeli aim, and he envisaged the emergence of Shiites governing from Basra, the Sunnis from Baghdad, and the Kurds with a capital in Mosul.</span><br /><br /><span>Wikipedia sa</span></span><span>ys, 'According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Haddad">William Haddad</a>, the publication of the article caused a sensation at the time. Haddad notes that the American syndicated columnist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kraft">Joseph Kraft</a>, a month later, echoed Yinon's ideas in an article that Syria would implode into confessional fragments composed of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawite">Alawite</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze">Druze</a> and Sunni communities were the country to be occupied after an Israeli invasion, and that such an event should cause reverberations throughout the Arab world, resulting in a reconfiguration of ethnic microstates guaranteed to introduce an era of peace. The idea was dismissed at the time.'</span></span></div><div><span><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></span><span> Former Russian Prime Minister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Primakov">Yevgeny Primakov</a> in his 2009 book <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qXHKs5WaNgMC&pg=PA201">Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East from the Cold War to the Present</a> </i>mentions the Yinon Plan and the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ball_(diplomat)">George Ball</a> told the U.S. Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee in 1982 that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told him that his long-term strategy consisted of "squeezing the Palestinians out of the West Bank, allowing only enough of them to remain for work". That is interesting.</span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-11386803299454910122024-03-03T08:55:00.003+02:002024-03-04T07:36:26.995+02:00A 'western military source' quoted by John Helmer, the senior Western journalist in Moscow<blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I’m not so sure, as some of the Russian milbloggers are, that the broad front approach [Russian General Valery] Gerasimov is taking heralds a new approach to modern warfare – or operational art, if you like. The push at different points, conserving men and materiel in favour of firepower is being done as much, or more out of political considerations, which include those of a domestic character (Putin’s public support, domestic stability); and also the military objective since Day One of the Special Military Operation — to draw in and destroy as many and as much of the US-NATO manpower and equipment in the Ukraine as possible.”<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><br />“The Russian ‘retreat’ conducted in Fall of 2022 was part of the plan and struck me as being inspired by the Mongol tactic of attacking, making a big show of running away, only to turn to pursue and then destroy the enemy. The Ukrainians and their NATO handlers fell for it hook, line and sinker. Now they don’t have the forces needed to maintain their fortress strategy, let alone conduct much in the way of counter-attacks. It was in this fashion that Gerasimov gained the upper hand in the two-front war – the one on the Ukrainian battlefield and the one on the Russian home front.”</span></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-33126192000431297242024-03-03T08:46:00.009+02:002024-03-04T10:53:54.756+02:001984<span style="font-family: verdana;">The body charged by the European Union with restricting freedom of expression on the internet is called the Agency for Fundamental Rights. <br /><br /></span><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-88130137048727838552024-03-03T07:15:00.015+02:002024-03-03T20:30:46.281+02:00George Galloway and the Decline of the West<span style="font-family: verdana;">I really must not read the British or American newspapers. I have almost given up but I skim and wish I hadn't.<br /><br />The British Labour party deselected its candidate in the Rochdale by-election for saying that Netanyahu knew beforehand about the Hamas attack on 7 October.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">This was anti-Semitic, said the Labour Party, without explaining why. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Predictably the seat which Labour could not contest, because it was too late to nominate someone else, was won by the pro-Palestinian ex-Labour firebrand George Galloway. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is said to be a dark day for democracy because now there will be a pro-Palestinian member of the British Parliament. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Actually there are plenty of pro-Palestinian MPs, but most keep quiet.<br /><br />What has Gaza to do with Britain? Nothing at all, but you would not think so to read the press. </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Many Labour MPs privately (but not publicly) want a ceasefire. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-03-01/corbyn-british-public-smeared-gaza/">Only 13 percent of the public share the two main parties’ view that Israel is justified in continuing to take military action.</a> <a href="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-03-01/corbyn-british-public-smeared-gaza/">(The article I link to is worth reading, by the way.)</a><br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dan Hodges in the <i>Mail</i> says that some Conservative MPs want a general election now, with their party doing very disastrously in the polls, to divide Labour over Gaza.<br /><blockquote>‘If we wait until after May, the picture might change,’ one told me. ‘Joe Biden is coming under his own pressure from his base in the States over Gaza. If he cracks and calls for a ceasefire, Starmer will just move in behind him. And the heat will go out of the issue.’<br /><br />Some Labour MPs are becoming so desperate they want their leader to move without the cover of the US President.</blockquote>So the Labour front bench are not going to support a ceasefire in Gaza until the USA does. </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Does this make any sense to you? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is not how Labour used to behave.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">People have a need for a cause - whether it's the Covid lockdowns or Ukraine or being for or against Israel. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">And people take the press seriously, even though they know the papers get everything wrong in news items of which they have personal knowledge.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">The fuss about Israel is really a projection of fears of Muslims in Europe (fears of Muslims in two senses - the Muslims in Europe feel marginalised and Muslim fanatics and criminals provoke fear among white people). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yet the Arab Israeli dispute has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with race. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is caused by immigration, but it is the Jews, not the Arabs, who are the immigrants. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">And <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/57794/the-middle-of-nowhere">the Middle East is of no importance to Europe or the USA</a>, except for our (often selective) compassion for the dead, wounded, orphaned and widowed.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-u-s-should-get-out-of-the-israel-palestine-game/">Attempts by outsiders to do good always make things worse</a>, starting with the Balfour Declaration itself.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here is <a href="https://chroniclesmagazine.org/featured/the-israel-lobbys-mideast-mess/">a new article by Taki</a> who quotes Mrs Rabin telling him that the religious nuts in Israel are the problem. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rabin was the man who might have made peace. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Netanyahu inspired and provoked the nut who murdered him.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-46512175451919089762024-02-29T08:19:00.018+02:002024-03-03T13:39:50.717+02:00Today is February 29th<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Today is February 29th, the day when in England by tradition women are permitted to propose marriage to men. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I intend to stay home and not answer the telephone or read messages until the danger period has passed.</span></p><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">It must have been on 29 February 1976 that I read in the Peterborough column </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">in the Daily Telegraph, over breakfast before school, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">that it was the 21st birthday of Frederick, hero of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGzv4vufN-k" style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty</a><i style="font-family: verdana;">. <span><a name='more'></a></span></i></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></i></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;">(</i><span style="font-family: verdana;">I simply adored Peterborough. It's one of my models in this blog. </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Private Eye</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> called it unfairly Peterbore. ) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Frederick was apprenticed by mistake to be a pirate, instead of a pilot, and not until he was 21, but until his 21st birthday. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I saw that someone on the net thought he reached this milestone in 1948. </span></div><div><br /></div></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">This sounds a bit like <i>Notes and Queries</i> or a learned footnote to</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Aristophanes. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-1492826312163845082024-02-24T13:05:00.011+02:002024-03-07T14:25:14.328+02:00 We have met the enemy and he is us<blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote>"The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability."</blockquote><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Jeffrey Sachs, a distinguished America economist. The whole article is<span><a name='more'></a></span> <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cia-destablizes-the-world">here</a>. Professor Sachs' Wikipedia entry is <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cia-destablizes-the-world">here</a>. He supported Bernie Saunders in the 2016 US presidential election, just so you know.<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><blockquote>'Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear Klaus, your annual Global Risk Report makes for a stunning and sobering read. For the global business community, the top concern for the next two years is not conflict or climate. It is disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarisation within our societies. These risks are serious because they limit our ability to tackle the big global challenges we are facing: changes in our climate – and our geopolitical climate; shifts in our demography and in our technology; spiralling regional conflicts and intensified geopolitical competition and their impacts on supply chains.'</blockquote></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote>'Special Address by President von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum', Davos 16th January. </blockquote><p> </p><blockquote>She is frightened of what people will read on the internet and how they might react.</blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><blockquote>As Pogo said in <a href="https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2021/04/22/walt-kellys-1971-earth-day-essay/">Walt Kelly’s strip cartoon for Earth Day in 1971</a>: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”</blockquote><p></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-51202106465353316642024-02-20T13:58:00.006+02:002024-03-11T11:43:22.877+02:00Admiral Collingwood is right<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdIUJLMLCtKubaoUuTUdMcYlfUJObiL2HG6C4rNUuhVMPUonoPSxM-S9i0ykONVVWsfAmBIa5EZvM3UJoJfpSvmoazRwpxxzDeZCQqcR1rng9NOMm09D0yDOlefshsl0ujNMmZMbtw2YxmKwJl05WQutqxBxuKTjBfMIj2IvLzsBdg9F_zAOWWvPvJsuqt/s2400/Screenshot_20240220_135718_Chrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdIUJLMLCtKubaoUuTUdMcYlfUJObiL2HG6C4rNUuhVMPUonoPSxM-S9i0ykONVVWsfAmBIa5EZvM3UJoJfpSvmoazRwpxxzDeZCQqcR1rng9NOMm09D0yDOlefshsl0ujNMmZMbtw2YxmKwJl05WQutqxBxuKTjBfMIj2IvLzsBdg9F_zAOWWvPvJsuqt/w288-h640/Screenshot_20240220_135718_Chrome.jpg" width="288" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-73992453424714786472024-02-20T11:51:00.002+02:002024-03-08T18:41:36.308+02:00A still from the film ‘The Zone of Interest’, showing Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss’s garden and, beyond the wall, the camp<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4ZSBaHfS8OKPc5tez18sS6Burlj6PVu3zQfz1pRiYNu7UxcVojZkHINMX3HzIFN4jab1vDfjkg4jHSlOhpXYY23ZBhyLT7U5w3U5h3tZ74_oWrgyNyJ6DH5Ss-269SWxqDCoWB1D9aDAPF8ui2h0vgQjJxhGOc_OxP-jE3nr_b_e5hBF0kIxJiTLEipdb" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="680" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4ZSBaHfS8OKPc5tez18sS6Burlj6PVu3zQfz1pRiYNu7UxcVojZkHINMX3HzIFN4jab1vDfjkg4jHSlOhpXYY23ZBhyLT7U5w3U5h3tZ74_oWrgyNyJ6DH5Ss-269SWxqDCoWB1D9aDAPF8ui2h0vgQjJxhGOc_OxP-jE3nr_b_e5hBF0kIxJiTLEipdb=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-3536016555370102302024-02-17T18:42:00.029+02:002024-03-05T12:30:59.191+02:00Massacres in Palestine have continued since 1921, thanks to A.J. Balfour<span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />The Jews lost 6,373 people, about 1% of the Jewish population of Palestine, in the 1948 war. </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I read that 4,000 were soldiers and the rest were civilians but elsewhere that Arabs killed 346 Jewish civilians and POWs.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">According to leading Israeli historian </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris" style="font-family: verdana;">Benny Morris</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the Yishuv (which became the Israeli army) committed</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> twenty-four massacres in which they </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">killed roughly 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I read that 1,732 Arabs civilians were killed by Jews </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">but </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have no idea if this is true. The total number of Arab soldiers and civilians who died is said to be somewhere between 4,000 and 15,000. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">More than 500,000 Palestinian Arabs were ethnically cleansed. <br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">T</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">here were between ten and eighty massacres committed in total by both sides, according to Wikipedia, which is not very precise.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dreadful war crimes were committed by Jews in </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">the 1948 war, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre">murdering babies</a>, to which people who</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> sympathise with the Arabs rightly draw attention, comparing them with the false stories of babies beheaded or burnt alive spread recently by Israelis. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Such people are disingenuous if they do not add that Arabs also did plenty of dreadful things. <span></span><br /><br />The massacre by Hamas of up to 600 or more civilians in October last year and the slaughter of at least 2,000 Arab civilians in Gaza since are part of a story that goes back to 1921. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is what the media do not mention and which the public does not understand, unless they have looked into and studied the tedious issue.<br /><br />One country is completely to blame - mine, England, and the all too languid, over-intelligent Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">He persuaded the British cabinet, for no reason that is clear, to promise a Jewish homeland in what was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_and_Palestine_campaign">until 1917</a> a pretty peaceful backwater of the Ottoman Empire.<br /><br />Where your books are is where you live. I recently got possession of most of my books, that had been in storage for two decades and I am rereading. When I read Piers Brendon's <i>Eminent Edwardians</i> just after going down I thought it slight and journalistic but now, decades after reading history at university, the chapter on Balfour seemed good. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">So far have my standards slipped and probably my intelligence diminished. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDiZeTZEipXjJnyQkk_q8-Tnc4QahFNzDh_e0zrJ5BnKunnCWdU8rZHAoOSUmOs_3lTozxiZpydY008k5NDRMwpicTdL_NpJQDVWjZR8K3J2FvlWwmReU3ZnXD-gExP0GwYBYVaU1Fvhxat2s5rMMVi1dzo5jyaPx6kZxMFRjWI94bS1XYzy7Xtjg0ogmH" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="999" data-original-width="702" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDiZeTZEipXjJnyQkk_q8-Tnc4QahFNzDh_e0zrJ5BnKunnCWdU8rZHAoOSUmOs_3lTozxiZpydY008k5NDRMwpicTdL_NpJQDVWjZR8K3J2FvlWwmReU3ZnXD-gExP0GwYBYVaU1Fvhxat2s5rMMVi1dzo5jyaPx6kZxMFRjWI94bS1XYzy7Xtjg0ogmH=w451-h640" width="451" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Like Sir Max Beerbohm who was always drawing him, I often thought about Balfour, that glamorous figure, but did not remember the Balfour Declaration or quite how utterly useless he was. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Though I knew that he and Gordon Brown were the two cleverest and worst Prime Ministers of England in the 120 years between Lord Salisbury and Theresa May.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">'The scent on my pocket handkerchief' is how Lloyd George described his role at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1914 he was plotting treason against the King's government by involving himself in an Irish Unionist rebellion which the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914 forestalled.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">His successor as Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, for all his legendary pomposity and pride a much more substantial man, said Balfour's laziness was extraordinary.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://balfourproject.org/experimentadventure/">He considered him `the worst and most dangerous` individual to have held the office, writing of his "lamentable ignorance, indifference, and levity….He never studied his papers;</a> he never knew the facts; at the Cabinet he had seldom read the morning`s FO telegrams; he never got up a case; he never looked ahead` – trusting instead to his unequalled</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> power of improvisation".<br /><br />He was very beautiful. He was sub-Wildean. He offered Wilde the chance to escape to Paris and avoid prosecution for sodomy.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">As a lifelong celibate he was extraordinary empty, though much esteemed at country house Friday to Mondays.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span face="Verdana, sans-serif"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Brendon said that that playing tennis he obtained 'pale gleams of happiness'.This phrase has always stuck in my mind. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">He famously said 'Nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all' - that seemed in the 1980s a rather welcome contrast to Margaret Thatcher but it was not.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I quote from<a href="https://balfourproject.org/experimentadventure/"> an article I recommend about the Balfour Declaration </a>by William M Mathew<br /><br /><blockquote>"As for serious political commitment, in any cause, he was, as he casually observed of himself, `a thick and thin supporter of nothing, not even of myself'.<br /><br />"A.J. P Taylor refers to him as `cynical, unprincipled, and frivolous`- the latter characteristic notably exemplified in his exchanges with the French ambassador in London during the war, Paul Cambon. When Balfour declared `that it would be an interesting experiment to reconstruct a Jewish kingdom` in Palestine and Cambon warned that, according to scripture, a Jewish king would signify the end of the world, Balfour`s arcane-facetious response was `that such a denouement would be even more interesting'."</blockquote></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Cynical, unprincipled, and frivolous", like many of Taylor's judgements, is right.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"> This is the man who created the Arab-Israeli dispute.</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-67458032535813897232024-02-16T09:55:00.010+02:002024-02-24T15:06:26.365+02:00Israel-Hamas conflict quotations<span style="font-family: verdana;">Chris Van Hollen (Democrat Maryland) addressing the US Senate: “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food ... That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it, war criminals.” Then the senator voted for military aid to Israel.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"I've said it before and will say it again. Nothing that Hamas did justifies Israel's response. Nothing. Does this mean I suggest that Israel has no right to defend itself? I never said that. I said from day one that Israel should have used its vast intelligence network (which somehow failed on Oct. 7, but that is another story) and its Special Forces, to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice." Michael Rectenwald, until he recently retired Professor of Liberal Studies at New York University.<br /><br /><br />"Yet the US is also wrestling with the entirely contradictory aims of supporting Israel while dampening regional tensions, in a conflict which has already leapfrogged to the Red Sea in a manner America is struggling to deal with. Already under pressure from his own electoral base for his support of a war which half his 2020 voters now <a href="https://x.com/metzgov/status/1750520261231747566?s=20">believe is genocidal</a>, the widening crisis has drawn its first American blood, in a deployment at least partly undertaken for Israel’s benefit." Aris Roussinos, Unherd, Sunday, 28 January 2024</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbi8bh67dGuzTR6GPqdZe6NF61jPm6Eeg0rW-1xWMyffQNI05Vi39Uzitzs5xZNbYz776NSq2dCNvPyHsyYP0ZQCKMsEMV52reUBCe4avzpFch9ViEDpITh73OqH0JC1t2ZT1K4RmhpMub4rmWXMBzAs6kmPQXeXe492ngPWfVWbJCGjz3rLxmzJ9lPvKl/s2400/Screenshot_20240216_065800_Chrome.jpg" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbi8bh67dGuzTR6GPqdZe6NF61jPm6Eeg0rW-1xWMyffQNI05Vi39Uzitzs5xZNbYz776NSq2dCNvPyHsyYP0ZQCKMsEMV52reUBCe4avzpFch9ViEDpITh73OqH0JC1t2ZT1K4RmhpMub4rmWXMBzAs6kmPQXeXe492ngPWfVWbJCGjz3rLxmzJ9lPvKl/w288-h640/Screenshot_20240216_065800_Chrome.jpg" width="288" /></a></span></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-17792943954727879932024-02-15T09:49:00.004+02:002024-02-16T10:00:14.132+02:00The words of 102 year-old Franco-Jewish philosopher Edgar Morin, a distinguished French savant who fought in the Communist resistance<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> The film clip is <a href="https://twitter.com/Bob30031583/status/1757654852623073571/video/1">here</a>.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: verdana; font-size: 19px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: verdana; font-size: 19px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"I am both astonished and outraged by the fact that those who represent the descendants of a people who were persecuted for centuries for religious or racial reasons... That the descendants of this people who are today the decision-makers of the State of Israel, that they could not only colonize an entire people, partly drive them out of their land and seek to expel them for good... But also, after the massacre of October 7, engaged in a real massive slaughter on the populations of Gaza and continue, incessantly, hitting civilians, women, and children.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: verdana; font-size: 19px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">
"And to see the silence of the world, the silence of the United States, protectors of Israel, the silence of the Arab states, the silence of the European states who claim to be defenders of culture, humanity, human rights.
"I think we are living through a horrible tragedy because we are also powerless in the face of this thing that is unleashing. At least, I say: bear witness! The only thing that remains if we cannot resist concretely is to testify. Let's resist in our minds, let's not be fooled, let's not forget, let's have the courage to face things head-on."</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: verdana; font-size: 19px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-77785430789758541812024-02-11T14:55:00.011+02:002024-02-15T13:25:40.507+02:00Quotations<span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">"The war in Ukraine is just a diversion from the real war against us." Laura Ghisoni, last summer<br /><br />"Every day is once in a lifetime." Ayesha. No, I don't know who she is. Also coined by </span><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/mac-mcanally/"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mac McAnally</span></a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br /><br />“I think that Meghan must have been incredibly envious and then jealous of Kate. I heard Meghan actually thought she was going to be a princess and live in Windsor Castle. Instead, there’s William and Kate with this beautiful house, while they are stuck in Nottingham Cottage which Harry used to call ‘my hovel’.” Ingrid Seward, editress of <i>Majesty </i>magazine and royal biographer </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-77660015302734510832024-02-09T14:57:00.007+02:002024-02-19T07:39:33.043+02:00Quotations <p><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><div class="css-175oi2r r-zl2h9q" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-size: 15px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 2px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-175oi2r r-k4xj1c r-18u37iz r-1wtj0ep" style="align-items: start; 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z-index: 0;"><div class="css-175oi2r r-xoduu5 r-1p0dtai r-1d2f490 r-u8s1d r-zchlnj r-ipm5af r-1niwhzg r-sdzlij r-xf4iuw r-o7ynqc r-6416eg r-1ny4l3l" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-radius: 9999px; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; inset: 0px; list-style: none; margin: -8px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: absolute; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, box-shadow; z-index: 0;"></div><svg aria-hidden="true" class="r-4qtqp9 r-yyyyoo r-dnmrzs r-bnwqim r-1plcrui r-lrvibr r-1xvli5t r-1hdv0qi" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><g><path d="M3 12c0-1.1.9-2 2-2s2 .9 2 2-.9 2-2 2-2-.9-2-2zm9 2c1.1 0 2-.9 2-2s-.9-2-2-2-2 .9-2 2 .9 2 2 2zm7 0c1.1 0 2-.9 2-2s-.9-2-2-2-2 .9-2 2 .9 2 2 2z"></path></g></svg></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></span></p><div class="css-175oi2r" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-size: 15px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1rynq56 r-8akbws r-krxsd3 r-dnmrzs r-1udh08x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-rjixqe r-16dba41 r-bnwqim" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__y3e24z4827e" lang="en" style="-webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-line-clamp: 10; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: -webkit-box; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" color="inherit" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;">So it turns out the US president can be an actual, literal dementia patient and the US empire will trudge on completely unhindered by this. Literally anyone could be president and it would not matter. A coma patient could be president. A jar of kalamata olives could be president.</span></div></div><p><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"This world is concrete – it cannot be described in the abstract unhistorical language of the socialist or liberal theorist without removing the skin of significance that renders it perceivable" Sir Roger Scruton, How to Be a Non-Liberal, Anti-Socialist Conservative</span> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-15437986870709839102024-02-09T11:12:00.004+02:002024-02-11T07:40:30.920+02:00America blew up the German pipeline last year, which is an act of war. The media is sublimely incurious.<span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />For me Putin's stated opinion settles it. The cui bono principle limits it to the US and the Ukraine and the Ukraine does not have the means. YET NOBODY IN THE PRESS DISCUSSES THIS.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />TUCKER: "Who blew up Nordstream?" <br />PUTIN: "You, for sure." <br />TUCKER: "I was busy that day." <br />PUTIN: "You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi." <br />TUCKER: "Wouldn't you present evidence and win a propaganda victory?" <br />PUTIN: "In the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the US, because the US controls all the world's media."<br /><br />But then Kissinger thought that Ukraine did it.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Disillusioned former CIA man John Stockwell, in his testimony to the US Congress in 1976, explained that with Operation Mockingbird the CIA had taken over the English speaking media and were on their way to completing the takeover of French and Spanish speaking media. If you seek Operation Mockingbird's monument read the newspaper or watch the BBC. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Many left-wing journalists are very much part of the CIA/MI6 sphere of influence.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Stockwell came to think the CIA efforts were counterproductive and harming a lot of people in its "secret wars" overseas. It seems to me that nowadays almost everything the US does is pointless and counterproductive. They should stay at home and guard their border.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-89730162324039588052024-02-08T15:16:00.006+02:002024-03-08T18:41:56.151+02:00This interview is hilarious and terribly shocking<p><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 18.75px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 18.75px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 18.75px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiop34qHwIptkGCI_xLH_WS2LyK5DuVzIBu0xVfh6bnXBaUf5TEb7UdKIPcUII8xQdvO5B8-ydsYfrXY0o1K_mbfKZYAD5snEH_F4JiR9z7EJ7KMc3hCjDV2b0IE6mp48jh_CksLPBaWHXZKYN2gr9MNUGrEi6TGMc2chd4MDaiI_pWLegIxgHMoPux54K" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="888" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiop34qHwIptkGCI_xLH_WS2LyK5DuVzIBu0xVfh6bnXBaUf5TEb7UdKIPcUII8xQdvO5B8-ydsYfrXY0o1K_mbfKZYAD5snEH_F4JiR9z7EJ7KMc3hCjDV2b0IE6mp48jh_CksLPBaWHXZKYN2gr9MNUGrEi6TGMc2chd4MDaiI_pWLegIxgHMoPux54K=w640-h354" width="640" /></a></span></div><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 18.75px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nobody is going to sanction Tucker Carlson for interviewing Putin - that is a non-story and he deserves congratulations on his scoop -but t<a href="https://twitter.com/Glenn_Diesen/status/1755567249413316902">his interview is hilarious and terribly shocking</a>. How very low US journalism has fallen. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-78808978744770693862024-02-08T14:53:00.005+02:002024-02-08T16:06:25.651+02:00Quotations<span style="font-family: verdana;">"Vivamus, moriendum est." ("Let us live, since we must die.") Seneca<br /><br /> "The nation that copies another is lost." Bismarck<br /><br />"Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel." Fernando Pessoa<span><a name='more'></a></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />"The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people... And so, if you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere." Oscar Wilde, who never visited Japan</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />"It is not that you wish to give offence. But you are up against people who are expert in taking it, who have cultivated the art of taking offence over many years and who are never more delighted than when some innocent man falls into the trap of speaking incorrectly." Sir Roger Scruton</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGsC8teLCCfn91jpJpp-Lgo3kdy9u5sSNd8w3O-SXXnypCdX4zYNvBHSfmjs7NsS0qm1jYIPRheqaYi6LWwWuKnnKrsz9KN5y735vbhouO4ivNhYwX7iz5JFCyD9Po44pG0rzucXTh6KE2jV7xIZjZ_EZGPwZvIt1FG0kVDZ1SWwUEgtu8S_4DmyucAfci/s2400/Screenshot_20240208_145436_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGsC8teLCCfn91jpJpp-Lgo3kdy9u5sSNd8w3O-SXXnypCdX4zYNvBHSfmjs7NsS0qm1jYIPRheqaYi6LWwWuKnnKrsz9KN5y735vbhouO4ivNhYwX7iz5JFCyD9Po44pG0rzucXTh6KE2jV7xIZjZ_EZGPwZvIt1FG0kVDZ1SWwUEgtu8S_4DmyucAfci/w288-h640/Screenshot_20240208_145436_Chrome.jpg" width="288" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Lauren Witzke was Republican candidate for the US Senate in Delaware in 2000.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-59720595196520517352024-02-05T18:21:00.008+02:002024-02-09T11:21:46.042+02:00Private Pike has died<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ian Lavender, the stupid boy Pike, has died. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">When Philip Madoc died his obituaries covered respectfully his distinguished career as a Shakespearean actor but concentrated on <a href="https://youtu.be/kYz2nPE0BCk?si=7zTf6TmtzwX4usMg">the one scene</a> from <i>Dad's Army</i>, where he played the German submarine commander captured by the Walmington Home Guard, which is now integral to the British myth. So do Lavender's.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">An article in the Guardian once said that the cult of <i>Dad's Army</i> was a function of nostalgia for a time when Britain was all white and unencumbered by the European Union. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">She was not yet an American satellite either. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-34725647916435944862024-02-04T08:40:00.012+02:002024-02-04T13:22:40.644+02:00In 1973 Nixon saved Israel and then stopped the Israelis fighting - this time Biden does neither. <p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpw8ghLtRSM45kvIyfD0ruuL1cWuakgkR3FYofgFl9anVmsavFF6IJh3MsO8tdntSKCIcqaBQuOqxL65zvSydsTmZOD65UAwhB8ciZ05Dwilq20rwvEnQctV3eBL_TZfa5AZB_bVUvIpfKIlXAz9Jc7LVnfwifTQDgeD4Vgn0d5SG9a3wxhZ6xvb0Ocp9h/s1268/Screenshot_20240204_083355_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1268" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpw8ghLtRSM45kvIyfD0ruuL1cWuakgkR3FYofgFl9anVmsavFF6IJh3MsO8tdntSKCIcqaBQuOqxL65zvSydsTmZOD65UAwhB8ciZ05Dwilq20rwvEnQctV3eBL_TZfa5AZB_bVUvIpfKIlXAz9Jc7LVnfwifTQDgeD4Vgn0d5SG9a3wxhZ6xvb0Ocp9h/w341-h400/Screenshot_20240204_083355_Chrome.jpg" width="341" /></a></p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I listened to Professor John Mearsheimer in an<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFb8Av76Gug"> interesting but very depressing conversation </a>about the hopeless position in which Ukraine is - he says Orban is right to object to giving Kiev 50 billion as their cause is lost and much of the money will be stolen - and the cruelty and lawlessness of the Israeli state.</span><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0