Chinahand

HeliX genuinely get a grip. Amadeus is not parroting Hitler's antisemitic arguments. My goodness, despicable ad hominin. Be a gentleman and accept this is too far.

Context matters. It is almost certain the young lady wasn't been confronted by a swastikas in this context. Is some thug able to openly display a swastika and pretend, while winking, it's a Buddhist symbol? Yeah, that's today's UK.

And so the Arab Israeli trilemma is laid bare. Israel cannot remain Jewish, democratic and a single state. Palestine cannot create a commonwealth for its people via fanaticism, terrorism and demanding from the river to the sea. Both sides are in thrall to their extremes, see the use of violence as a legitimate response to the others' actions, and are unwilling to compromise. Hey ho. The main difference between them is that Israel's political leadership has, up to now, been able to create wealth and win the wars it has had to fight (or at least fight them on their enemy's territory & get out for Lebanon). Palestinian political leadership has played a poor card atrociously and brought disaster time and time again onto their people. Israel's have built a powerful wealthy country but one dominated and divided by these multiple dilemmas. I'm glad it's not my problem to sort out!

Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano Number 11 on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-top-100 I'd never heard of it or the author so thought it worth ago. After the event I'm not exactly sure! It's a bit of a slog. Hardly surprising as a "modern" novel it is full of stream-of-consciousness hard to follow inner dialogues, it mixes Spanish & French with English and uses a huge vocabulary. I was regularly needing a dictionary and google translate to understand him. And the basic plot is a bit self-obsessed. In some ways I'm reminded of a movie I enjoyed - Leaving Las Vegas. The story is about the last day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin - I'm not giving a lot away in telling you this as the first chapter starts a year after the event with some of the characters lamenting his passing and then the rest of the novel narrates the events of that fateful day. Firmin is an alcoholic - it has destroyed his marriage to Yvonne, but she has returned to try to encourage him to renounce the demon drink and seek a new life, while his brother Hugh suffers divided loyalties between the two. Each chapter takes the point of view of one of these three and slowly the plot unfolds. A self-obsessed alcoholic isn't a particularly sympathetic main character, and angst, self-doubt and inner anguish are shared amongst the lead characters in about equal proportions. We learn of their past lives, aspirations and failures, but in quite a contorted way via dialogue and inner dialogue which meanders and fragments under the influences of alcohol and memory. I did persevere and I'm sort of glad I did ... but I found the actual plot so buried in layers of experimental writing that it was often obscured and hard to follow. The language got in the way of story telling, which is surely putting the cart before the horse! 5/10

We just don't know the full context of the images and I suspect we never will. If I was a civilian in an active combat zone I'd carry a white flag, but we all know that that was no help to the escaped hostages the IDF killed. Impunity in war is an evil thing.

Ho hum ... what a terrible terrible thing war is. Leaders who think war is a way of achieving their political objectives deserve a special place in hell ... but what of those fighting to stop them? I am really struck by the total dichotomy in propaganda about this nasty little war. On one side it is the worst genocide committed this century, on the other the war with the lowest ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths. I don't believe either claim. The war is massively destructive but there is a difference between war and genocide. I've continue to seek reasonable comparators to base my understanding. Hamas has 30,000 fighters embedded in 2million people. The British army is 80,000 in 60million. In Berlin in 1945 there were about 45,000 Nazi soldiers within the Berlin Defence Area during the Battle in Berlin, and about 125,000 civilians died during the Soviet assault. War is a sickening thing. My main view is that on October 7th Hamas deliberately created a casus belli and I am not surprised at all that Israeli politicians see very little difference between clearing Berlin of Nazis and clearing Gaza of Hamas. Terrible political leadership from both the Nazis and Hamas have brought terrible terrible hardship upon their people. I pity them, and look at Russia too. I hope our political leaders are wiser. For Hamas to so devalue Israel's deterrent capability was madness in my view.

Some initial context of HeteroErectus' photo. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-probes-leaked-footage-showing-strikes-on-apparently-unarmed-men-near-khan-younis/

An excellent lecture on the Cultural Revolution. A seriously horrid time of violence, anarchy and political repression: https://youtu.be/XcgtfCv0MK0?si=w3vHMu_1aKQKkcjW It is a part of Darwin College's Lecture series on Revolutions: https://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/lectures/category/item/2024-lecture-series-revolution/

Want a very succinct summary of the political system of the PRC. Try this 2 page summary from Susan V. Lawrence of the Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12505?ref=neican.org

Yep, 500,000+ killed in Syria, 377,000+ killed in Yemen, 5,400,000+ killed in Congo, 500,000+ killed in Sudan. Just in Nigeria 60,000 have been killed by Boko Haram.

The humanisation of the tragedy through telling the story of innocent victims like Hind Rajab is important & so sobering. Her story has been repeated many many times in the tragedy that has befallen Palestine. War is so full of evils. Terrible terrible political leadership to bring this upon their people.

恭喜发财！ Happy Chinese New Year one and all! It is now the year of the dragon, and if you are concerned about the increased militarisation of China. Then watch this! It is I think a first for the New Years Gala which dominates New Year's Eve in the PRC. The PLA in full combat fatigues with virtual aircraft carriers, fighter jets and nuclear missile launches!

BiBi justifies: As Frank Sinatra sank ... Regrets I have a few, but then again, too few to mention. That man has spilled a lot of blood.

There are practical arguments such as a) it costs more to employ all the multiple lawyers and judges and go through all the appeals and years of death row all to ensure only the guilty are executed compared to the marginal cost of lifer in a cell on prison food; and b) errors cannot be corrected if you kill them. But the moral principle that the state does not kill, removes from society but treats with humanity, is simply a better clearer argument. States which kill their citizens dehumanise their citizens and that is wrong and generally can be seen in other aspects of these states' behaviour.

Wow ... Twitter/X has accused me of Hateful Conduct ... LOL

And would the dad of the person you'd killed be able to come after you? This is the essence of why states have taken the monopoly of violence, changed the focus from vengeance to justice, and (in enlightened countries) abolished the death penalty. Blood feuds revenge and vengeance are behaviours to be suppressed not given state sanction.

Think you are mixing up assisted suicide with state killing, Wrighty. Quite different methinks.

Want a free ebook on the Chinese Communist Party? Check out here: https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/chinese-communist-party

The state should not be a killer. It is barbarous and ineffective. Full stop.

And the ICJ issues a magnificent fudge which will satisfy no one.

Err .... Phantom... Ever heard of ethnic cleansing?

Births & Deaths in China.

It is a bit scary... What do they see in him? The lazy answer is they are all thick. I think it is a bit more complicated than that. Godwin-ing myself was everyone who voted for Hitler thick. There are more things going than just being thick methinks. As a liberal internationalist, isolationism and an immigrant panic are a long way from my thought patterns but seem to be central to US politics at the moment. Sad.

South Africa's case: Israel's Response:

My understanding is the main divide is between those who see a typical and nasty war being fought in the context of post-WW2 geopolitical complexities, examples of which are legion; and those who see something uniquely evil about the creation and ongoing behaviour of Israel; often with almost a denial of the contexts. I am intrigued how the post-war settlement will unfold. HeliX and his genocide verse a grand geopolitical fudge slouching towards two states.