We have 60 guests and no members online
To see the remaining photographs (not already linked above) click on the image below:
State Capital building Rhode Island
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: |
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: Another reader has provided a link to a perspective similar to my own by Australian 'Elder Statesman' John Menadue: Hamas, 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? Money-making by someone in the know? If so, it's beyond evil. |
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.
My brother, Peter, is dead.
One of his body's cells turned rogue and multiplied, bypassing his body's defences. The tumour grew and began to spread to other organs. Radiation stabilised the tumour's growth but by then he was too weak for chemo-therapy, which might have stemmed the spreading cells.
He was 'made comfortable' thanks to a poppy grown in Tasmania, and thus his unique intelligence faded away when his brain ceased to function on Sunday, 22nd May 2022.
I visited him in the hospital before he died. Over the past decade we had seldom spoken. Yet he now told me that he often visited my website. I had suspected this because from time to time he would send e-mail messages, critical of things I had said. That was about the only way we kept in touch since the death of his daughter Kate (Catherine). That poppy again.
I've dusted off this little satirical parable that I wrote in response to the The Garnaut Climate Change Review (2008). It's not entirely fair but then satire never is.
In a parallel universe, in 1920† Sidney, the place where Sydney is in ours, had need of a harbour crossing.
An engineer, Dr Roadfield, was engaged to look at the practicalities; including the geology and geography and required property resumptions, in the context of contemporary technical options.
After considering the options he reported that most advanced countries solve the harbour crossing problem with a bridge. He proposed that they make the decision to have a bridge; call for tenders for an engineering design; raise the finance; and build it. We'll call it the 'Sidney Harbour Bridge' he said; then less modestly: 'and the new crossing will be called the Roadfield Highway'.