World Affairs

Gaza 

29th June 2026

Still silence on Gaza. Am I the only one watching the world quite rightly sending aid for the people of Venezuela, crushed under the rubble from the Earthquake, and contrasting this with the world sitting on its hands whilst the people of Gaza were crushed under the rubble? Do we only respond to tragedy that is deemed an act of God, whilst remain silent when the tragedy is the result of actions by a people who think they are God's gift?

A petition triggered a debate on the influence in the UK Parliament of a certain Middle Eastern nation. Few turned up. Members of Friends of Israel fell over themselves in the rush to label it as anti-Semitic. The previous week the female Home Secretary had dodged a serious question about the reported IDF use of rape of women and children. 

7th April 2026

Silence on Gaza in the media. We know who wants that. 

Anyone want to think about the silent majority in the UK House of Commons? Friends of Israel. Foreign countries meddling in our political agenda.

And then there is the illegal war against Iran. One man wanting oil and a place in Heaven. One regime promising it's people a place in Jenna. Another regime chasing after the Promised Land. What an unholy mess. Western interference in the Middle East - what a catalogue of disasters that has been.

2nd February 2026

Silence now on Gaza and the West Bank. Who knows what  is being done now as the media focuses on the unlawful attacks on Iran, sanitised as a war choice. I suppose assassination and violence aimed at another country is OK if the leaders sanctioning it are democratically elected.

Democratically elected genocide. We see the same actions, practiced in Gaza, ignored by the Western media, supported by politicians and others signed up as friends of the Middle Eastern cuckoo. Target the leaders but don't worry if you take out civilians in the process. Schools, hospitals, bury the children under the rubble. I thought there were Conventions on this? Why the media and political silence? Well we know why, foreign interference in our media and politics. Stop and listen, can you hear the cuckoo?

When other countries decide to act to secure their oil and gas supplies in their national interest and for their own security, then what? They have as much right to send in their military to escort the tankers they need. Or the Gulf States stop the investment they have promised to the US? What then?

There will be no winners, but an awful lot of losers. It's called war. It's ugly. It's stupid. It's short-sighted. 

22nd January 2026

So, here we are, with a Board of Peace on the horizon. No representation from Gaza, of course. 

Some say it is all a scam, a money raising enterprise with the money going, well, that's to be seen. But I don't think it is a scam. It seems to me that it is a business opportunity. President Trump runs his office like a Chairman. Like all business leaders, he wants to see his business grow, make more profit, take over smaller businesses or take out competition. That is the mindset. And Gaza from this perspective is a business opportunity.

In a few years the hiss of gas and the gurgle of oil will be heard coming down the new pipelines to the Gazaan beaches. The processing plants and refineries will be hidden from their view. Tankers from the West, from countries who have shunned the Board of Peace, will queue up to be filled.

Kerching. Money will be made, lots of it. How much will reach the current population of Gaza, or those stuck in refugee camps around the Middle East, remains to be seen. It probably won't even be called Gaza anymore, except by those for whom it was their home.

But the fossil fuel bubble will burst, eventually, and what then?

Let us see where the Western media focus their cameras, assuming they will be let in once the carnage ends. The nice apartment blocks that will probably start to go up in the south? Or the gas and oil terminus that will appear further north? And what of the bodies under the rubble. Will there be sensitivity to recover what they can, or a straight drive to build, build, build? T

31st December 2025

A New Year Quiz

1. Name a country that encourages terrorist activity against its indigenous population?

2. Name a country that encourages gunmen to shoot and kill civilians, including children and the elderly, when they are queuing for food?

3. Name a country that has a global network of supporters including media and politicians for their terrorist activities?

4. Name a country that thinks anyone who criticises what they do is anti who they are?

5. Name a country that violently abducts members of its indigenous population and holds them without trial sometimes for years, tortures them, but cannot see that they are in fact taking hostages?

6. Name a country that has used and continues to use terror and violence to extend its territory and territorial control?

7. Name a country that thinks it is ok to create a situation in which children have to undergo amputation without anaesthetic?

8. Name a country that promotes itself as civilised, calls itself a democracy and is the answer to all of the above questions?

It's your answer. It is not for me to give it to you. 

Happy New Year

16th December 2025

Let me be clear, I wholly condemn the shooting and killing by gunmen of unarmed civilians, including children, on a beach. 

So why wasn't the same degree of outrage and victim personalisation presented in the media and by politicians when it was indigenous Palestinians being killed when queueing for food on the beach in Gaza?

The bias is palpable and it has a name - Anti-Palestinic and Anti-Palestinicism.  But no-one seems to want to use the phrase.

More Palestinians have been gunned down in Gaza on a daily basis since the so-called ceasefire, including women, children and the elderly. But, hey, that doesn't get a mention. Anti-Palestinic.

Let us be absolutely clear. The people who are doing most to encourage Anti-Semitism in our world are Netenyahu and his  supporters, in Israel and in the Governments and media of the West. At the same time they do not want a concept such as Anti-Palestinic to be used to describe them. 

There is an outcry when foreign Governments interfere in our political processes, well, when it is China or Russia. Meanwhile Israel, of course has free access to MPs, the media, pretty much anyone and everyone.

I wrote to the Speaker of the British Parliament asking that when MPs stand up and refer members to the book of interests, they should name those interests. Watching on TV, I want to hear what they are. They are supposed to represent voters, not foreign lobbyists. Unsurprisingly I have not had a response.

I do want to acknowledge though that at least I live in a country where I can raise such an issue without fear of the knock on the door. Though my sense is that it might just be closer than we like to think as we sleepwalk our way towards increasingly extreme and intolerant Government and social norms.

12th December 2025

The fictional ceasefire continues and the world sits on its hands. 

23rd October 2025

I have reworked the song 'Streets of London'. Thought I'd upload the lyrics. Trying to get someone to record it.

Streets of Gaza

Have you seen the young girl

In the bombed out market

Kicking up the dust

In her bloodied shoes

She’s no time for talking

She struggles with her walking

Her family dead and buried and now she's all alone

So how can you tell me you're lonely and

And that for you that the sun don't rise

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of Gaza

I'll show you something

That'll make you cry and cry

Have you seen the old man

It what once was a cafe

Bloodied rubble round him

And his lips are dry

Nothing there for drinking

His blinded eyes keep blinking

A crushed and broken landscape, a world he cannot see.

So how can you tell me you're lonely and

And that for you that the sun don't rise

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of Gaza

I'll show you something

That'll make you cry and cry

Have you seen the young boy

Sitting on the debris

Watching others running

But he cannot join

He has no legs to stand on

The pain of amputation

The bodies of his siblings lay crushed beneath the stones

So how can you tell me you're lonely and

And that for you that the sun don't rise

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of Gaza

I'll show you something

That'll make you cry and cry

Have you seen the mother

Shuffling through the carnage

Her life is only memories

Of the people she once knew

Father, mother, brothers,

Sisters, sons and daughters

No one left to talk to as she wanders on alone.

So how can you tell me you're lonely and

And that for you that the sun don't rise

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of Gaza

I'll show you something

That'll make you cry and cry

***

14^th October 2025

I thought I would simply post the text from a series of emails sent to the Press over recent days as we see the ‘ceasefire’ coming into force, hostage and exchanges taking place, and politicians grabbing photo-opportunities.

 

Press reporting from Gaza - Bit late now to make demands about press access. From the start from the moment they were banned from access the press should have refused to report anything said by Israel. But the press gave them their voice and colluded with their silencing Palestinian voices. They could have used aljazeera footage and reports but they didn't. Free press? That's a joke. 

 

False perception - I don't think Israel has any concept of the storm they have unleashed by their actions. They think they are gods gift that can do no wrong and are above criticism. They have seen Western politicians and media fall in line with their narrative. But people on our streets know what they have done is indefensible. They know that an indigenous population has been oppressed and killed for decades. And they know Israel will do exactly the same to the west bank. And the politicians and the media will continue to sit on their hands. 

 

Prior to the Sharm-el-Sheik meeting - What a hypocrite Starmer is. For two years he opened his mouth and all we heard was the voice of Israel. No inclination to arrest Netanyahu. That is what should happen on Monday. But the politicians will all sit on their hands again. And the media too. No one will talk of the thousands of Palestinians violently abducted from Gaza and the west bank, still held without charge. No one will talk of the west bank, period, where settlers terrorise the indigenous population on a daily basis. No one will want to talk about the broken bodies of 20,000 children, the dead ones, countless more alive and permanently disabled, physically emotionally and mentally scarred. The silence will be deafening.

 

Sharm-el-Sheik meeting - What a lot of sickly fawning. And where is a Gazan climbing on the stage to shake hands with Trump? No recognition whatsoever of the voice of the indigenous Gazan population. Nothing changes. Everyone making decisions except them. Leaders coming out of the woodwork. Utterly sickening. No doubt they all ate well whilst discussing what to do with the half-starved Palestinians.

In case I missed it in all of the posturing in front of the camera's, did anyone actually make any reference whatsoever to a two state solutions? 

+++

7th October 2025

So, 2 years on from the fateful day. 1,200 killed we are told. How many by Hamas, how many by Israeli weaponry remains unclear. It will always be.

Palestinians will mark the day by... like they have marked every day over that time. Having to move from place to place whilst be bombed and maybe taking time to try and find decomposing bodies of their children under the rubble.

But we can't protest against it in the UK it seems. That is how far the UK has fallen. 60,000 dead, policy of starvation, policy of withholding medicines, policy of not letting in journalists, policy of abducting Palestinians daily, policy of unlawfully detaining people on the high seas. The list goes on.

Trump Plan

Will the Trump plan work? Who knows. Probably not because the plan for greater Israel will always trump it in the eyes of too many. Radical Judaism. Are we even allowed to say that? The vision of a Jewish only state across the whole region, with enormous gas and oil terminals on the Gaza coastline. Along with big hotels. Do they really think the people of the world will want to go there?

Will all hostages be released, all who have been violently abducted and held without trial or charges?

Rise in anti-semitism

And in the UK and elsewhere we are told of the rise in anti-semitism. It is a difficult area to comment on. It is hard to know anymore what is and isn't lawful to say. So I shall simply say that it seems to me that the person who has contributed to it more than anyone else has to be Netanyahu, and of course those acting on his behalf - the military, the settlers etc - and those who support them both in Israel, and outside of Israel.

Another cartoon idea: Four horsemen of the apocalyse arrive over Gaza. One says, 'damn, someone has beaten us to it'.

I am against all use of terror to obtain a political or territorial gain. I am against all use of terror against any group simply because they are a member of that group. 

All I would say to everyone in the region is to be aware of how your actions today will reverberate into the future. You want peace? You have to start building for it now. If you don't want peace then now will never arrive.

+

22nd August 2025

With famine being recognised in Gaza, and with Israel planning illegally (that means breaking the law) to build more property in the West Bank on Palestinian lands and seeking to split the West Bank in two, I am left pondering the following:

• At what point do we start using the phrase 'Semetic extremism' to describe the behaviour of Israel?
• And given they are clearly seeking political ends through terror ... well, you know the rest.

Meanwhile Palestinians are being herded up and down their lands, promised safety in concentration areas ...  

I am still waiting for a cartoonist to depict world and local leaders sitting on a bus, with Palestinians, particularly children, being thrown en masse under its wheels. We all know who is driving the bus.

+

4th August 2025

Just a quick question. What do you call a nation that violently takes over territory from an indigenous population, abducts members of that indigenous population and throws them in jail without charge for months and sometimes years on end? Oh and sometimes tortures them. I won't bore you with the answer, you know it already.

+

2nd August 2025

So nations are calling for the recognition of a Palestinian State, but only if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire. We wait for the September timetable with about 100 Palestinians being killed daily, that will be another 3,000 by the time the British timetable for a ceasefire kicks in. And you can be sure the death count will rise prior to the deadline, it always does in these situations. So presumably the British Government is OK with that because it has set up the timescale knowing what will happen.

If there is no ceasefire then what? An international force to escort in aid and to establish a Palestinian State and boundaries? And what of all the Palestinian refugees stuck in camps around the Middle East? Where is the land to house them back in an independent Palestine that the British Government is calling for.

+

16th July 2025

So here we are, some 60,000 Palestinians dead and the Western media and politicians can't call it out for what it is - mass murder. Even Israeli's are starting to call it out.

And the recognition of a Palestinian State that the British Government and others are calling for, but only if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire. If they do agree, then it is only a matter of time before another excuse for mass slaughter will arise. Palestinians thrown back under the bus. If history teaches us anything it is that oppressed peoples will rise up and take back what is theirs. The end of the British Empire is an example to us all.

+

I think of it this way.

Imagine you come home and your neighbour has moved the boundary fence into your land. You complain. He laughs. You tell the authorities. They laugh too.

  

A month later he moves it again, more of your land has gone. Your complain. He laughs. He throws rotten fruit at your wife when she comes home. You tell the authorities. They aren't interested.

A month later the fence is now up against your house. It is difficult to get in your front door. More rotten fruit is throw at your wife and son. He retaliates by throwing a stone at the neighbours house. The authorities come and shoot him dead.

Next day the bulldozer arrives. Your home is flattened. Your possessions destroyed. 

+

I look at what is happening today. People dying trying to get food. Aid being blocked. The refusal of the Western media to acknowledge the part that almost 80 years of violent oppression have played in the present situation.

Oh, and whilst I mention that, can someone explain where a violent, oppressive and occupying power has a right to self-defence under international statute? There is no right.

Yes, October 7th was terrible. The last 80 years have been terrible. And silence remains on the number of Israeli's killed on that day by Israeli weaponry as they blew up anything that moved in the direction of Gaza.

+

The so-called two state solution is a fantasy. Israel wants the land for oil and gas pipelines from the Gulf. They want access to gas reserves off the Gaza coast. They want total control as is plainly obvious. No-one in the media wants to mention pipelines.

+

Then there are the people referred to as 'settlers'. A nice name for what are in reality illegal immigrants stealing land from an indigenous population and violently hanging on to it. Or have I got something wrong here?

+

Then there is the silence from the Muslim countries. No protests allowed on their streets. The protests are elsewhere, around the world, particularly in the West. The majority of people are anti the behaviour of Semites towards Palestinians. Only the media and politicians seem to find it difficult to criticise. Politicians in the West open their mouths and all we get is the echoing voice of Israel. 

Free press? Democracy? It's gone.

+

What now? That is the question. Can people live side-by-side after the carnage? 

The ordinary Palestinians people have shown how to behave. They have simply sought to survive. Living in rubble with bits of children scattered under the rubble. And no one mentions the toll on the elderly. Silence on that.

+

And yet the silence is more deafening when it comes to Sudan.

Western and Middle Eastern press totally silent. We know why. We know who is involved and who the West is afraid to offend.

+

I leave you with a final thought. 200 years ago it was being said in the US that the 'only good injun' is a dead 'injun'. 

Who is saying today 'the only good Palestinian is a dead ...'. You filled in the missing word. You know who is saying it.

+++

Gaza (the Gaza Ghetto) - 28th August 2014

The fighting has stopped but the entrenched attitudes of  hatred remain - not surprising given what has happened.

The reality is, of course, that there can be no peace without justice, and without lands stolen from Palestinians to some degreee being returned by the Israeli's.

Israel fears for its security, and given the history of the  bombings in the past that is understandable.

The Palestinians want to have the freedom to get on with their lives, rebuild and  live without constant Israeli blockade and interference.

Looking at the rubble in Gaza today I am reminded of images of the Warsaw Ghetto at the end of the 2 World War. It is ironic that  Israel has in effect created a Gaza Ghetto given the experience of Jewish people themselves being herded into small, overcrowded areas and subjected to brutalisation.

I have a petition calling on giverments and the media to start referring to Gaza as the Gaza Ghetto, as this is surely a more accurate reflection of what the Israeli's have created. Please go to :

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Goverments_and_the_media_Start_using_the_descripton_Gaza_Ghetto_instead_of_Gaza_or_Gaza_City_becau/?eDgeNbb

But don't think I am only critical of the Israeli's. Hamas has to renounce violence and oppression as well, and it's aim of destroying Israel.  Firing rockets into Israel  has to stop as well. It achieves nothing but more bloodshed and an endless cycle of tit-for-tat  bloodshed.

Towads a United States of the Middle East -  28th August 2014

When will the West realise that it cannot 'sort' the Middle East? Only the Middle East can do that which will require nations working together, putting aside differences, and very likely eventually working towards some kind of a United States of the Middle East - which the West fears as the West loves divide and rule... So more arms sent into a fragmented region whilst maybe helping to address a short term crisis, will simply throw fuel on the medium term fire given the continued fragmentation and animosities manifest today.

Ukraine / Russia - 2nd March 2014

Headlines - Western Democracies support overthrow of elected Ukraine government. Posturing international politicians take opposing sides. No sign of wise heads identifying middle ground to draw opposing forces to a compromise.

Democracy only works with consent. Polarised views do not allow democracy to function so highly likely Ukraine has to split, or one side or the other will function as a dictatorship to hold power.

So, let's consider what could happen next if it goes like WW1.

Russia invades Ukraine.

NATO stands with Ukraine and threatens military support leading to a declaration of war although Turkey has deep reservations being on the front line.

Muslim separatists within old USSR states side with Ukraine. Muslim countries split. More ferment in the region and the Middle East.

China support Russia, invades Taiwan, annexes disputed territory in China Sea. Japan and China clash.

Ukraine - 1st March 2014

Democracy requires tolerance to survive. Two polarised views make democracy very difficult. We have in Ukraine a classic revolution, people trying to overthrow a regime, but are they a majority? The country is politically divided geographically and this means big problems.  Someone needs to be trying to bring the two parties together, otherwise there will only be more violence and chaos.

Meanwhile the powers outside threaten to get involved and this can only add to the problem.

What we have learned in recent years is that when a super-power muscles in on a country, the other super-powers back down. Russia is getting in first this time.

In the 100 year anniversary of the 1st World War you would have hoped politicians to be less bellicose and more collaborative in finding solutions. Have we learned nothing?

Let us pray and work for a solution, fast, before everything spirals even more out of control.