Quotations

"I would suspect that I would describe my approach to this issue [abortion] as pro choice rather than pro live [sic]." 

Sarah Mullaly, about to be Archbishopess of Canterbury 

“We cannot enjoy peace in this world unless we are ready to yield to the will of God in respect of death. Our times are in His hand, at His sovereign disposal. We must accept that as best.”
John Owen, Oliver Cromwell's chaplain

"The Israelis have been debating the plan... moving the bulk of the Palestinians [in Gaza] to the Sinai Peninsula. The problem is that the people of Gaza don't want to go." 
Life Magazine, June 1970.

"Having rid his party of conservatives, that self-described “Heir to Blair”, David Cameron, condemned the Tories to share Labour’s fate: the collapse of the two parties, viewed in narrow partisan terms by the Westminster lobby, is more accurately the collapse of the shared ideology they undertook, between them, to impose on Britain."

Aris Rousinos

"'From the river to the sea' is in the original charter of Israel's Likud Party and is the stated policy of Israel's current government. So how can it be antisemitic?"

Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola

Terrorism and making terms with murder

"Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man.’

"But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier."

Future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (Likud) in 1943, when he was one of the leaders of the Stern Gang.

Sigmund Freud

“America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”

“Smoking is indispensable if one has nothing to kiss.”

Foreign states putting propaganda on Wikipedia

Obviously the CIA and MI6 largely control Wikipedia from behind the scene. 

You knew that. 

M16 took control of the British press in 1939 and has never let go.

The Russian government uses social media extensively for propaganda, as we are constantly told by the people who do so even more extensively. 

Are the IDF in Gaza heroes or cowards?

Mr. Dajani, the manager of the oldest hotel in Jerusalem the New Imperial, told me on my last visit some years ago  that he looks at young Israeli men and sees that they are softer than the ones  he vividly remembers conquering the old city of Jerusalem in 1967. 

I love that man and wish I knew his thoughts about what is happening now but they are not hard to guess. 

I think the tens of thousands or, according to an Israeli investigator working for the UN, hundreds of thousands of killings (mostly of civilians) in Gaza show the weakness not the strength of the IDF. 

The killings are not the actions of heroes.

I understand their reluctance to enter tunnels. 

Killing people on the surface is much safer but those people are not usually Hamas.

Quotations

Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz
If I looked out my window and saw people massacring children, I'd probably think thoughts like "That's horrible!" and "How can I stop this?"
The furthest thing from my mind would be thoughts like "What religion are they?" or "Their religion is very relevant to any discussions we might have about this massacre" or "We should definitely be very careful about discussing this massacre because we don't want to offend people who have the same religion as the people doing the massacre." It would never occur to me to consider such things, much less that such considerations should be central to all discourse about the massacre for years on end.

"I was looking at my dog tonight. She has no idea she's now quite old, surely one of the many advantages of being a dog." Dominic Johnson

The Wailing Wall

 

Marco Rubio this month at the so-called Wailing Wall

'I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.' Sigmund Freud in a letter dated 26 February 1930 declining a request to sign a petition condemning the Arab riots of 1929, in which more than 133 Jewish settlers were killed by Arabs.

Quotations

"Everything is theatre" 

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

"Injustice never rules forever."

Seneca 

41.2% of pupils in Vienna's primary and secondary schools identify as Muslim

 

April 2025 — 41.2% of pupils in Vienna's primary and secondary schools identify as Muslim. A year ago, this figure stood at 39.4%. Viktor Orban sees Islam as a threat to Hungary.

Anti-Semitism

As a pedant I feel like saying the IDF is very much more anti-Semitic than Hamas measured by the number of Semites it kills.

Israel is the most anti-Semitic country in the world, if words are used accurately.

I dislike false pedantry - for example I try to say England to mean UK - but I think this useful pedantry.

It even hints that all Semites are equally important.

Another talk between Chas Freeman and Pascal Lottaz

Charles W. Freeman Jr. is 2 and was the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time of the Gulf War.

The shock within the EU and NATO and especially in the UK is the result of the fact that we've all been living in the midst of the most intensive information war the world has ever seen.  

You have people who think, who thought that it was a good idea, this is the Biden Administration, not to discuss anything with the adversary on the battlefield. How that was supposed to accomplish anything is unclear but there was no diplomacy at all, there was only fighting.

Quotations

Voltaire:

"Every man is a creature of the age in which lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of time."

I constantly try very hard to do this.



Whitney Webb in 2019:

Claims of Epstein’s links and his involvement in a sophisticated, well-funded sexual blackmail operation have, surprisingly, spurred few media outlets to examine the history of intelligence agencies both in the U.S. and abroad conducting similar sexual blackmail operations, many of which also involved underage prostitutes.

"We have gone down into the mud with Israel and I don't think we're going to get out." Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman talking to Pascal Lottaz

A very interesting talk on Neutrality Studies. All the talks on Neutrality Studies that I have heard are. 

The message: the USA is behaving like a rogue state and the West has lost its moral standing. 

I could not agree more.

Trump on dead babies tonight

Evelyn Waugh said Churchill was “simply a radio personality who outlived his time”. What a great television personality Donald Trump is. 

His inaccuracies are somehow not lies but not accidental. He was just asked this in a press conference in the Oval Office.

REPORTER: Is Israel committing genocide?
TRUMP: Did anyone commit genocide on October 7th? What do you think about THAT? THAT was genocide, at the highest level. Murder, genocide, call it whatever you want. Babies chopped in half, heads cut off, arms cut off.

In a nutshell from the Chinese

My friend posted this short 'reel', an interchange between an Israeli and a Chinese, on Facebook and it is worth seeing.

Unfortunately the number of 70,000 civilians mentioned by the Chinese in the clip is a very big underestimate.

A former Israeli army commander, Herzi Halevi, has confirmed this week that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in the war in Gaza.

That too unfortunately is a big underestimate.

On Monday (September 15), four UN special rapporteurs – Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, Irene Khan, special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mary Lawlor, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and George Katrougalos, suggested approximately 680,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces over the past 710 days.

“If this number is confirmed, then 380,000 of these are infants under five, 1,581 earth workers killed in Gaza, 252 is the number of the journalists, and 346 of the United Nation staff,” notes Francesca Albanese,

St Januarius, pray for us! 5,000 men embraced the Christian faith even before he was beheaded thanks to him

Today is St Januarius's feast day and anniversary of his martyrdom. A journalist who wrote a very interesting book investigating many apparent miracles, John Cornwall, was not convinced by any of them, and they were all to me astonishing, except for one: the annual liquefaction of St Januarius's blood.

The journalist somehow was elected Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. So many odd people now head Oxford and Cambridge colleges.

Miracles still happen constantly. A number happened to me. They happened to many other people to whom I have spoken.

Being human and avoiding suffering, American presidents and polemicists

“People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don’t accept what Life presents them with, the questions and tasks that Life sets them.

"When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering, they owe to their nature. In so doing, they refuse to pay Life’s dues and for this very reason, Life then often leads them astray.

"If we don’t accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that Life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat Life, to avoid something. One cannot do more than Live what one really is".

Carl Jung

I remember at the age of 3 consciously making the choice to avoid suffering and knowing it was the wrong choice.

Rome wasn't burnt in a day

It took nine days (in July 64 AD).

Blogging the televised royal banquet at Windsor Castle

Mr Trump is 3 years older than the King but, with no disrespect to the Queen, his wife looks much better. 

Mr Trump should not address "William and Kate". 

The King is hubristic in assuming the US and UK will exist for the next 250 years and beyond. I wouldn't bet on it. 

Angerer's photograph of the Antim monastery in 1856 colourised

 

On Charlie Kirk's and other murders

I am not sure why but I am very, very saddened by the murder of Charlie Kirk, though he had only been a name to me before his death.

I am also horrified by the murder by Trump of the people in the Venezuelan boat. (This is not whataboutery.)

And by the Israeli attack on Doha. I do not know if Donald Trump is to blame for that.

Christianity and women

As Mr. Gladstone said, Christianity has in all times and places raised the condition of women. Whether it has recently raised it too far, as a young Catholic priest once told me it had, is far too controversial a theme for this blog. Women will decide whether feminism is a good or bad idea over the next fifty years.

Quotations

Charlie Kirk

@charliekirk11

·

Nov 27, 2016

You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.

Marcus Walker

@WalkerMarcus

·

22h

I’m not the world’s greatest defender of Starmer but isn’t it axiomatic that you back a person until you sack them? Otherwise you have, effectively, already sacked them.

Thomas Fazi

@battleforeurope

·

Sep 9

This is insane on so many levels. 1) Russia has neither the intention nor the means to attack Europe. It would make no logical, military or strategic sense. 2) Even if Russia wanted to attack/invade Europe — a ludicrous proposition — it would be suicidal, because NATO’s conventional military capabilities far outstrip Russia’s. This in itself undermines the whole “Europe needs to rearm” narrative.