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2024 Addendum

 

It's shocking that another Addendum to this article is necessary.

Yet, we are no nearer to a peaceful resolution like the, internationally called for, 'Two state solution', or some workable version thereof.

Indeed, the situation, particularly for Palestinians, has gone from bad to worse.

At the same time, Israeli losses are mounting as the war drags on.  Yet, Hamas remains undefeated and Bibi remains recalcitrant.

Comments:

 On Wed, 4 Sep 2024, at 1:23 PM, Barry Cross wrote:
> There seems to be no resolution to the problem of the disputed land of Israel. You consider Gaza to have been put under siege, but I wonder if that and the other Israeli acts you mention are themselves responses to a response by them of being under siege, or at least being seriously threatened, by hostile forces who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel? Hamas’s claim and stated intention of establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” and periodic acts of aggression need to be taken into account I suggest, when judging the actions of the Israeli’s. In addition, there is the menace coming from Iranian proxies in Southern Lebanon and Yemen, and from Iran itself.
>
> Whatever the merits of the respective claims to the contended territory might be, it seems reasonable to accept that Israeli’s to consider they are a constant threat to their very survival. Naturally, this must influence their actions, particularly in response to the many acts of aggression they have been subjected to over many decades. By way of contrast, how lucky are we!
>
> These are my off the cuff comments for what they are worth.
>
> Regards
> Barry Cross
>
> Sent from my iPhone

 

 

 

2023 Addendum

 

It's a decade since this visit to Israel in September 2014.

From July until just a month before we arrived, Israeli troops had been conducting an 'operation' against Hamas in the Gaza strip, in the course of which 469 Israeli soldiers lost their lives.  The country was still reeling. 

17,200 Garzan homes were totally destroyed and three times that number were seriously damaged.  An estimated 2,000 (who keeps count) civilians died in the destruction.  'Bibi' Netanyahu, who had ordered the Operation, declared it a victory.

This time it's on a grander scale: a 'War', and Bibi has vowed to wipe-out Hamas.

Pundits have been moved to speculate on the Hamas strategy, that was obviously premeditated. In addition to taking hostages, it involving sickening brutality against obvious innocents, with many of the worst images made and published by themselves. 

It seemed to be deliberate provocation, with a highly predictable outcome.

Martyrdom?  

Historically, Hamas have done Bibi no harm.  See: 'For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces' in the Israel Times.

Thinking about our visit, I've been moved to wonder how many of today's terrorists were children a decade ago?  How many saw their loved ones: buried alive; blown apart; maimed for life; then dismissed by Bibi as: 'collateral damage'? 

And how many of the children, now stumbling in the rubble, will, in their turn, become terrorists against the hated oppressor across the barrier?

Is Bibi's present purge a good strategy for assuring future harmony?

I commend my decade old analysis to you: A Brief Modern History and Is there a solution?

Comments: 
Since posting the above I've been sent the following article, implicating religious belief, with which I substantially agree, save for its disregarding the Jewish fundamentalists'/extremists' complicity; amplifying the present horrors: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil 

Another reader has provided a link to a perspective similar to my own by Australian 'Elder Statesman' John MenadueHamas, Gaza and the continuing Zionist project.  His Pearls and Irritations site provides a number of articles relating to the current Gaza situation. Worth a read.

The Economist has since reported and unusual spate of short-selling immediately preceding the attacks: Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?  

short-selling

Money-making by someone in the know? If so, it's beyond evil.

 

 

A Little Background

The land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, known as Palestine, is one of the most fought over in human history.  Anthropologists believe that the first humans to leave Africa lived in and around this region and that all non-African humans are related to these common ancestors who lived perhaps 70,000 years ago.  At first glance this interest seems odd, because as bits of territory go it's nothing special.  These days it's mostly desert and semi-desert.  Somewhere back-o-Bourke might look similar, if a bit redder. 

Yet since humans have kept written records, Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, early Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Ottomans (and other later Muslims), British and Zionists, have all fought to control this land.  This has sometimes been for strategic reasons alone but often partly for affairs of the heart, because this land is steeped in history and myth. 

Perhaps the most enduring cause for this conflict is that about four thousand years ago this was the land of a semi-nomadic war lord who came to be called Abraham and who's god Yahweh became the 'One God' of Moses then, in due course, the single, universal, all-encompassing, deity shared by all three 'Abrahamic' religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Once-upon-a-time this land was far more attractive to human habitation, lush and welcoming. Along with adjoining Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, the eastern shore of the Mediterranean was said to be a land of milk and honey. But climates change and expanding populations over-graze and cut down trees, as we have seen in desertified and deserted Petra, nearby in Jordan, that was a populous city in a green and pleasant landscape in the time of Herod.  Now much of the Palestinian countryside varies in appearance from cultivated farmland, dependent on irrigation, to absolute desert. 

In many ways this is vast improvement since the end of the nineteenth century, when it was most frequently described by visitors from more verdant Europe as desolate, poor, backward and diseased.  Malaria and malnutrition were endemic and Western aid focussed on the provision of hospitals.

 

Israel3 Israel4

Israel

 

Today modern parts of Israel are a like resort areas of southern Europe or perhaps California. Many private houses are large and well appointed. There are many new high rise apartment blocks and more under construction. The use of a more or less standard colour scheme with light sandstone walls, and even raw concrete, gives the cities and towns a uniform clean or sandy look. The roads and other public infrastructure are of a high standard and prices are similar to those in southern France or Spain.

 

Jerusalem - A Modern City
Israeli Jerusalem - A Modern City

 

Some parts of Jerusalem, Israel's largest city, remind me of Amman in Jordan or Damascus in Syria, before the recent destruction.

Although not nearly as rundown as those in neighbouring Egypt, Arab areas are not nearly so wealthy in appearance as the up-market, mostly European, Jewish areas.  But not all Jews are rich or live the high-life either.  Around half of the Jewish population is ethnically middle eastern, from poorer backgrounds.  The late model cars of the wealthy mix with the not so grand.  If you are interested Google Street-view is worth a look. Try clicking this link to see a not so wealthy area.

Physical appearance is where the similarity to Europe or California ends. This is a Jewish homeland, in many ways a theocracy.

Very orthodox groups abound and we were told by a cab driver when driving us on Saturday that some areas are out of bounds as cars moving on the street are stoned.  Almost all official public signage is in Hebrew.  English is widely understood which is good as otherwise it would be a difficult place to visit.  This is complemented or replaced by Arabic in the Arab areas. Comprehensible to us, English/Latin signage is reserved for commerce, like shop and restaurant names and advertising displays.

About 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab, both Muslim and Christian, and they are in a strange coalition with each other in contrast to the Jewish majority.  We found the Muslim Arabs almost universally friendly, but not necessarily adverse to ripping-off tourists.  People of unknown religion we interacted with on public transport and and in street cafés particularly outside the old city were usually polite and helpful and might have been in a major city anywhere in the world.  But Jews who were self-identifying by their mode of dress were frequently aloof to rude to us tourists, except when they seeking contributions to various causes like the Synagogue or the defence of Israel.  One exception was an elderly German man who went out of his way to talk to us and had, he told us, come to Israel as a young adult.

 

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Travel

India and Nepal

 

 

Introduction

 

In October 2012 we travelled to Nepal and South India. We had been to North India a couple of years ago and wanted to see more of this fascinating country; that will be the most populous country in the World within the next two decades. 

In many ways India is like a federation of several countries; so different is one region from another. For my commentary on our trip to Northern India in 2009 Read here...

For that matter Nepal could well be part of India as it differs less from some regions of India than do some actual regions of India. 

These regional differences range from climate and ethnicity to economic wellbeing and religious practice. Although poverty, resulting from inadequate education and over-population is commonplace throughout the sub-continent, it is much worse in some regions than in others.

Read more: India and Nepal

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

 

Introduction:

The other day, my regular interlocutors at our local shopping centre regaled me with a new question: "What is AI?" And that turned into a discussion about ChatGPT.

I had to confess that I'd never used it. So, I thought I would 'kill two birds with one stone' and ask ChatGPT, for material for an article for my website.

Since watching the movie Oppenheimer, reviewed elsewhere on this website, I've found myself, from time-to-time, musing about the development of the atomic bomb and it's profound impact on the modern world. 

Nuclear energy has provided a backdrop to my entire life. The first "atomic bombs" were dropped on Japan the month before I was born. Thus, the potential of nuclear energy was first revealed in an horrendous demonstration of mankind's greatest power since the harnessing of fire.

Very soon the atomic reactors, that had been necessary to accumulate sufficient plutonium for the first bombs, were adapted to peaceful use.  Yet, they forever carried the stigma of over a hundred thousand of innocent lives lost, many of them young children, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fear of world devastation followed, as the US and USSR faced-off with ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction.

The stigma and fear has been unfortunate, because, had we more enthusiastically embraced our new scientific knowledge and capabilities to harness this alternative to fire, the threat to the atmosphere now posed by an orgy of burning might have been mitigated.

Method:

So, for this article on the 'atomic bomb', I asked ChatGPT six questions about:

  1. The Manhattan Project; 
  2. Leo Szilard (the father of the nuclear chain reaction);
  3. Tube Alloys (the British bomb project);
  4. the Hanford site (plutonium production);
  5. uranium enrichment (diffusion and centrifugal); and
  6. the Soviet bomb project.

As ChatGPT takes around 20 seconds to write 1000 words and gives a remarkably different result each time, I asked it each question several times and chose selectively from the results.

This is what ChatGPT told me about 'the bomb':

Read more: The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

Opinions and Philosophy

A new political dawn

 

 

The State election on 26th March saw a crushing political defeat for the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales. Both sides of politics are still coming to terms with the magnitude of this change.  On the Labor side internal recriminations seem to have spread beyond NSW.  The Coalition now seem to have an assured eight and probably twelve years, or more, to carry out their agenda.

On April 3, following the advice of the Executive Council, the Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales, gave effect to an Order to restructure the NSW Public Service. Read more...

It remains to be seen how the restructured agencies will go about the business of rebuilding the State.

 

Read more: A new political dawn

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