Palestine - Borders & Barriers

Palestine is the area between the Mediterranean & the River Jordan. It has always been a crossroads for trade, religion & politics. It is the birthplace of all 3 Abrahamic religions, Christians, Muslims & Jews. One & a half million years ago Homo Erectus arrived out of Africa, so the area is one of the earliest areas of human habitation. It's history is a story of numerous warring tribes & peoples & it's rulers & borders have constantly changed over history.

You would hope that we humans would learn from that chequered history of suffering. Apparently not. The death of the innocent alongside the fundamentalists continues on both sides. Apportioning blame only perpetuates the problems, the fighting, the destruction & the death.

Truth & humanity are also  casualties of this war. It's tentacles are widespread. Responsibility also lies with the nations who benefit from war by trading in weapons & gaining lucrative contracts from the results of any war.

Both sides have behaved with cruelty and a total lack of empathy or humanity. Their professed "religion" ignores the tenets of the actual religions they supposedly belong to. They all think their actions are justified. They are not & never can be. Deliberately taking life is murder. Taking the lives of innocent children & adults going about their daily lives is abominable whichever "side" they are on.

Everyone has human rights, even misguided fundamentalists on both sides. At the root of this problem is the fact that people are poor, displaced, opressed, lacking in basic facilities for themselves & their children, & corralled into a space that is no better than a Ghetto. The Jews know about Ghettos first hand. You would think that might enable them to fully understand what they are doing.

The Jews want a secure land of their own & the right to live there. We gave them Israel & walked away. We have a  responsibility for this mess.

When the face to face dialogue stops attitudes harden. The Middle East needs to sort out it's own problems with all possible help from the developed world. For a start all arms trade should cease. If the guns & missiles dry up war becomes much more difficult. But the West isn't going to do that - it earns us too much money.

"Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war" William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar:

The world is descending into a patchwork of wars fought on many fronts, but with two 

common denominators. Firstly there is the Islamist Sunni / Shia conflict for Jihad & domination, which amounts to civil war in several countries. Then there is the battle for power over resources, which brings untold wealth to those who control them. The world is in the midst of complete disorder.

Currently there are wars being fought in Ukraine (supported by Moscow), Syria (again supported

by Moscow), Afghanistan (Moscow seems to have learnt their lesson there), Iraq & Israel.

China is skirmishing with Japan, Vietnam & the Phillipines. Japan & South Korea are bickering.

North Korea is a basket case. India & Pakistan play politics with nuclear deterrants.

Meanwhile Britain, the Eurozone & America employ the politics of "Soft Power". That is a complete euphemism. Doing nothing or not doing enough is no longer an option. The West is behaving like a powerless lap dog. Putin has power. Assad has power. Isis has power. Israel has power.

This has all being going on for years, during what we have been pleased to call 70 years of "Peace".

All out war is not an option either. The danger of a nuclear conflict caused by panic striken fingers

on buttons is too great. We simply must find a solution - there is no other option.

Unless this is the End Game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts - Wikipedia Link on Uppsala Conflict Data Programme.


Apologies - This has not printed out as WYSIWYG for some reason. Also clicking on the link doesn't work.

MH17 - Victims - 298 dead - Truth?

American Friends Service Committee in "Speak Truth to Power" : A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence (1955)

Everyone is quite rightly appalled at the downing of this passenger plane by surface to air missile. The death toll & ripple effect of suffering caused is massive. It is difficult to comprehend how this could happen in our age of advanced technology, other than by human error. We are always the "weakest link".

The press & media have got into full crisis gear, ratcheting up the speculation & blame game. We the public have no way of knowing if what we are told is lies, biased, error, political, or actual fact. The truth is so often also a victim in situations like this.

What is truth anyway? Is your truth the same as mine? Is truth changed by circumstance? Is truth always good, always better than some sort of compromise between outright lying & protective fiction? I don't know. I tend to believe in truth, but try not to hurt by being true to others & to myself.

The damage is done in a situation created by men fighting & posturing for power & land - Again! The people are dead, their lives cut short in the battle for control. It is an individual tradgedy & also a tragedy for humanity. This mindless violence is repeated in so many parts of the world now. This minute. Unimaginable suffering perpetuated by men who are blinkered by blood lust, religious fervour, greed & every base human frailty.

I don't see any sign of war stopping. War has just changed shape and morphed into something even more deadly. We all perpetuate it with the political compromises we allow our politicians to make & by our arms trade which puts weapons into the hands of fundamentalist killers of all religions.

I'm normally very positive, but I can't see any solution because there isn't the political will. How can we get consensus in the present world political structure? Two of the most tired phrases are "we must make sure we learn the lessons of..." & "we must make sure this never happens again"

Somehow we never do, so everyone is the loser.

Politicians & "Hard working families"

The use of this phrase by politicians really p..... me off. It is so patronising used by the right wing & implies just working class wage earners when used by the left. Apparently it started to be used in the 1990's & since then it has been consistently overused. (I think Goebbels also used the phrase in the 1930's. Maybe the politicians should think on that snippet of information!)

It's completely meaningless. "Families" don't work hard. Individuals may well do. It's trying to imply the Protestant work ethic in a ridiculous, generalist way. Instead of making us non politicians feel included, it singles us out & implies there are a lot of non hard working families. Because it has now been so overused by the likes of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg & Milliband, all of whom may be hard working, but certainly have little in common with the majority of working people, it has become completely debased.

No one works all the time. Pensioners, single parents, the sick & elderly, & the unemployed can't work all the time, often through no fault of their own. My guess is that most of us know people in one or more of these categories. Statistically the idle spongers are a very small proportion of society. Most people work hard to provide for their families & don't need any politician to tell them just how difficult that is.

Somehow the politicians are trying to make us into a club of one sort or another. Either the right wing  or left wing version. They try to engender a feeling of inclusiveness. It doesn't work. Nowadays most of them aren't like us & never will be. What they need to grasp & quickly is that we can see through the rhetoric.

We aren't daft!

Euphemisms for Dying

Yesterday would have been my 48th wedding anniversary, but it was also the 5th anniversary of my husbands death. I didn't "lose" him, because that would imply I might find him again & that doesn't seem very likely. He didn't "pass" either, because I might catch up with him if he did & that's just not going to happen. It made me think how hard we try to avoid saying the word died.

The following are a selection of euphemisms for dying - fell off his perch, popped his clogs, met his demise, kaarked it, shuffled off this mortal coil, ceased to exist, decorporealised, went to meet his maker, joined the heavenly choir, was deep sixed, croaked, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, is playing a harp, the long sleep, is pushing up daisies / feeding worms, went to meet St Peter, passed away, passed on, passed expiry date, sent to the glue factory, bought it, caught it, got it in the neck, sent to hell, went to heaven, met the reaper, making a bad smell, flying a cloud, making the grass grow, fertiliser.

All very inventive & all show how we don't want to face up to the fact that we are all dying. Right now. It's just a question of when & how.

I've got used to the single life in 5 years. There are aspects of it I really like.  My house will eventually be my home - No one else's. It will reflect me in a way that has never happened before. I don't have to compromise with anyone else. I can do what I like when I like & could be completely selfish in theory. (Not in actuality though).

I marked the day in my mind, but I have got past the dreadful early stages of grief. Some good friends remembered too & that is lovely. David lives on in memories. The house was full of workmen doing various jobs & it was very funny at times. My kitchen is actually finished!!!!! The joinery in the ground floor will hopefully be finished this week.

So there is life after death. Just not the religious sort.
"The parrot E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!That parrot is definitely deceased.It's bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk - Monty Python

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HMS Queen Elizabeth - New Aircraft Carrier.

Am I the only person who thinks that it's odd to be building 2 vast new aircraft carriers, one of which was launched yesterday? (Launched - not yet operational). Odd on so many fronts I don't know where to start.

• The ship took 5 years to build, during which time we seem to have managed quite well without carriers as "Ark Royal" & "Invincible" were de-commissioned in 2011.
• The ship cost £6.2 billion, as opposed to the £3.65 billion it was supposed to. It would appear that the forces procurement people need some basic training in accurate costing & estimates. They do seem to have quite a problem with numbers. (On the plus side the build did give 10,000 people & 100 companies jobs).
• It is the largest UK warship. (I'll come back to the notion of what UK means in a bit). According to the 1st Sea Lord it is a "national symbol of power & authority". It puts the "great into Great Britain" & the "royal in Royal Navy". If that isn't jingoistic I don't know what is. 
• When are we going to get rid of the idea that we are a uniquely powerful nation? We really must stop trying to punch above out weight. We have probably got the best armed services in the world, but even they have a problem recruiting fit enough specimens.
• What will Great Britain actually mean if the Scots, who ironically built the ship, decide to vote no in the coming referendum? We won't be the United Kingdom that's for sure. I hope the Navy isn't expecting to park it in Scapa Flow if the Scots go it alone.
• The name Aircraft Carrier seems to be a bit of a misnomer for a ship which won't actually have any aircraft to deploy until at least 2020. It may well not even be then as the American F35 jets, which the ship will carry, have all been grounded recently because of a problem!

Do I need to say more?

ICTC - Microplane - Excellent Customer Service

Just to show that I don't just rant & complain.

I had a Microplane grater which my late husband bought me. It was the cause of a certain degree of hilarity in our household because kitchen utensils have never been high on my lists for presents. However I think this gadget is really good.

The only flaw is that it was an early model with a plastic frame. This fractured in several places quite early on, but if you held it carefully you could still use it. Oddly, because it had memories I suppose, I never did anything about the fact that it was broken. Not like me at all.

Anyway I finally got round to sending an email to the company. I have to say I am really delighted with their excellent customer service. Not a quibble. They didn't ask for proof of purchase or the return of the faulty item. (I did try uploading a digital image as an attachment, but it didn't work).

They offered a replacement, which arrived today, just a few days after the original email. What's more I had offered to purchase a slider gizmo that stops you grating your fingers. They sent this too - at no charge.

It is such a delight to deal with a company that takes customer satisfaction & service so seriously. It is also, in my experience quite rare, although companies are getting better. So huge thanks to Sonia & ICTC.

It's really nice to be able to praise a company in glowing terms. (Don't ask about my Wren Living kitchen saga which is still ongoing!)