So a new year begins . . . . .

Well you can't call me anything but observant, I can spot a New Year months away- and one has to wonder what's ahead, although one does wonder what has been behind!

Detractors and demonisers of Israel seem to have the memory (and by and large the matching IQ) of a goldfish. They witter on continually about "occupied land", "Israel the oppressors", "Apartheid Israel" and other blame-cultural and blood-libelous horsedung, while NEVER referring to:

1. The 1967 and 1973 wars that, had the Arabs not started them in the first place, there would not have been a need for a so-called consequential 'occupation'. Will the UN now push for Pakistan to give itself back to India from whence it came with the loss at the time of over 1milion lives and 12million uprooted from their homes in 1947?
2. Referring to Israel as an Apartheid State when it is so clearly the ONLY fully-fledged democracy in the region. The lack of basic human rights let alone the oppression in some of the surrounding countries is astounding and totally defies description. And the one that cries the most 'wolf', Israel's Western neighbour Blame-Cultureland, does not even admit Jews (except donkeys such as Miriam Mygoolies and other similar self-blaming dregs of humanity on their publicity-seeking and career-rejuvenating ventures).
3. Professional, acknowledged and previously censured anti-Semites such as Jenny "Acid" Tonge and piddle-with-the-wind Wishy Washy Warsi are allowed to remain as ennobled members of Her Majesty's United Kingdom when they have so plainly crossed the divide between legitimate criticism of Israel and whipping up, encouraging, or in Tonge's case, actively acting as professional ambassadors for Jewhate
4. The political rules state that public officials, whether MP's or Councillors have a duty of care to put the requirements of their constituents first and foremost on their priority lists. Yet the likes of MP's Richard Burgon, Grahame Morris, Shabana Mamoud and others such as Alan Duncan, John McDonnell, David Ward and numerous councillors from the likes of Leicester Council spend an inordinate amount of time not only demonising Israel and whipping up anti-Jewish sentiment, but many actually waste taxpayers money visiting (only) Gaza and the West Bank, further  acting as ambassadors for blame-culture, Israel-demonisation and Jewhate
5. The detracting anti-Israel brigade and the UN have NEVER questioned the commonly acknowledged fact that the Hamas leadership, since taking over (been elected, ha ha) Gaza, has misappropriated over $10billion of world-donated funds. Also, that they have spent most of the past 10 years living in 5-6 Star luxury in Doha, Qatar, is never questioned. The Hamas Charter, with its Jew-murdering content has similarly never been questioned by the likes of the UN who are so quick with their partisan resolutions against Israel while the rest of the world get away scot-free with far more serious abuses of their own.
6. (Added, thanks to RS) The disgraceful UN resolution that "Zionism is racism" fiasco, while people get their knickers in a twist when it is suggested that Islam might not perhaps always be the religion of peace it's cracked up to be. This probably goes quite a way to help explain why the charitable, people-loving, life-loving, culture-loving, western culture-respecting, peaceful members of so-called Islamic State have the word "Islamic" in their title. They just spell their version "pieceful" - human pieceful - but hey, it's more fun demonising Israel to take peoples' minds off all of that. Besides, we have the new hip, meaningless phrase, "post-truth". Let's man (or woman) up and face it and look at all the Jews who have driven planes into buildings, blown themselves up on buses, in trains, on the underground, in restaurants and how many have run rampant with guns in public places, at rock concerts, on marathon runs all in the name of Kind David. ET phone home.

Just remarking. Happy New Year to all.

Call me sexist, but . . . .

I am fed up with mobi-morons walking the streets with their heads stuck in their phones.

It's so much that I'm fed up with the mobi-morons' sad lives that they have to glue to their phones 24-7. No. It's more to do with the fact that as someone who doesn't walk around with his own head stuck in his phone 24-7, I fail to see why it should have to be me who has to watch out for them and give way to, or walk around them on the path in order to allow them to uninterruptedly maintain their heads stuck in their phones.

And why, as someone who is a little more senior, should I have to stand on a crowded tram so that some youngster who isn't aware of anything going on around them in the world that's not on their little 5-inch screen can sit there and Facebook, Angry Bird or hunt for Pokemons?

And the amazing things one notices while standing in a tram. Many of those on their phones  don't actually have anything constructive to do on their phones. They are actually searching for something to see and do on their phones.

It's the girls and young women who are by far the worst.

They just do not know how to put their phones away, even for 30 seconds. They have a persecution complex about the trash-puzzle magazine "Take a Break". And if they do put their blasted mobiles away for 30 seconds, second 31 sees them taking their phone back out again to check it - presumably to see whether World War Three has started,  the hole on the Ozone layer has enlarged or whether one of their witless friends has posted yet another picture of his penis on Snapchat.

The picture above shows five ladies waiting in the queue for coffee at an exhibition I attended. Typically like all ladies, they are HSIP; Heads Stuck In Phones. They simply cannot pack it in for a moment, even in a relatively speedy moving queue.

What is wrong with them?

Better to Fidel while Rome burns . . . . .

It would seem that Fidel Castro was not really a bad man.

He was " a huge figure of modern history", "a champion of social justice", a man who "stood up for something very, very, different" and "a giant among global leaders whose view was not only one of freedom for his people, but for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet".

Now the aforementioned quotes weren't from Vladimir Putin. He simply stated that the late President Castro was a "distinguished statesman", the "symbol of an era" and a "sincere and reliable friend of Russia". Yep, so reliable that if Nikita Krushchev hadn't been made of such strong stuff, he would, at Castro's suggestion, have pushed the missile button and not just started World War Three, but actually wiped Cuba off the map in the process.

No, the first three quotes were from the most unsuitable UK Labour leader of modern times, Jeremy Corbyn, the latter, from the unkempt-haired president of the Republic of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, a giant amongst the rose bushes.

What these premium statesmen of the world political scene fail to realise is that Castro's dictatorship was an unmitigated and epic disaster of brutal and oppressive proportions. Free education and healthcare for all, yes, but with unbelievable poverty and food shortages and rationing. In fact, Castro was so good for Cuba, that over 1million Cubans exited stage left for Florida in the USA during his rule.

And in keeping with the plaudits handed out by both Mr Corbyn and President Higgins, independent media outlets were closed down wholesale, priests and homosexuals were dispatched to 'correction' camps and American rock music was declared the sound and work of the devil.

Put in a nutshell, it was nothing but a prime example of a first-class Communist failure. Which possibly explains why it ranks so highly in Mr Corbyn's top five regimes, presumably alongside his good friends in Hamas and the IRA.

Meanwhile back in England, and the BBC's Question Time programme of Thursday 24th November.  Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, himself not exactly a beacon of actinic light on the UK political stage, became unwell and was unable to appear. Not really such a bad thing (not that I wish him unwell), because all he would have done would have been to bleat on and blame the Tories for everything while forgetting Labour was in fact in charge during the 2008 financial crisis. Anyway, the BBC asked former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2015) Chris Leslie to step in instead.

Back at Labour HQ, chains weren't as much rattled as flushed as hard as they could be, and Mr Corbyn's IKEA cabinet went into dowling and screws overdrive and very speedily sent one of their other stand-by leftie loons, Andrew Gwynne along to get in on the act instead.

While Mr Gwynne managed to get as far as the Green Room, an astute member of the Question Time team realised Mr Gwynne wasn't exactly Mr Leslie, and asked him to pack his flat-pack and screwdriver and leave.

Now in trying to get Mr Gwynne on the panel when the BBC had already decided the stand-in they required, isn't that all rather Castro-ish and Cuban of Mr Corbyn's shady and dysfunctional cabal, eh?

I'm not religious myself, but . . . . . .

I became totally disillusioned with religion many years ago as a result of something that happened to a very good friend of mine. He was subjected to total hypocrisy at the hands of some so-called religious sages that caused him untold grief when getting married. I'll go no further than that.

I became a fervent religious cynic some 20 years ago, and adhere more than ever now to Atheistic principles when I look back over the years where wars, murder, unrest and bigotry have all come about pretty well as a result of religion. That all these have resulted from one person's belief in the unprovable versus another persons belief in something different that is also similarly unprovable, to me, defies not only logic, but goes against pure common sense.

According to recent estimates, there are some 4,200 religions on earth at present. It is said that to believe you have to have faith, and to have faith you must believe. 4,200 religions means an awful lot of individual faith. And an awful lot of believing. That's 4,200 disparate groups, all following some inane belief, all without a shred of evidence or scientific proof to back up their claims. Cynics might remark that on a psychological level, this is actually not normal behaviour.

But on a more practical level, not all of the 4,200 can be in any way all be right!  In fact, "not many" can be right.

I'm certainly very sceptical of the more modern religions, those altogether recent offshoots from the long-established Judaeo-Christian religions. The Methodists, the Plymouth Brethren and many more besides. These very much smack of some strong-willed, big-mouthed people simply not liking their lot and deciding to start their own brand formulated on their own perceptions of what their religion adherence should be. Whether there was just an element of Indians wanting to become Chiefs, or whether, like Scientology or many of the other current evangelical and happy-clappy TV-religions, it was born out of a desire simply to make money, I'm not really too sure.

Cardinal Richelieu, the Spanish Inquisition, witch-hunting, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Islamic Fundamentalism are, as a few examples, not exactly the stuff people-enrichment initiatives are made of. Yes, those in charge make - or made - a good living, but the end-user is stuffed totally. And often terminally.

The famous 'mystery horror' film The Wicker Man, the original with Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland, portrayed a group of potty Scottish Islanders who sacrificed a man (police sergeant Edward Woodward in the original, Nicolas Cage in the remake) and an assortment of farm animals, by burning them to death in a wicker structure on a hillside as homage to a sun god in an attempt to avoid crop failure the following year. Meanwhile, on a purely scientific level, their land and location had been proven as not actually suitable to guarantee any form of sustained year on year crop-growing in the first place!

If you are looking for anomalies and things that don't make even common sense, let alone just sense, look no further than religion. Virgin births, reincarnation, dividing major seas. And taking 40 years to travel 1,200km, now that's a good one (that's about 80metres a day, or perhaps a lengthier 100metres a day if you take the Sabbath and High Holy days of rest into account as the Israelites were wont to do - I mean Olympic superstar Mo Farrah runs 20km in about an hour!) and help to preserve the mystery of religion. They mystery that people actually believe it all with a single shred of evidence.

Then there's building a boat from wood capable of accommodating two of every species on earth (I'm sure the two woodworms must have had a field day with that huge wooden boat all to themselves) to avoid the entire planet covered in water (er, excuse me science, but where did the water go to afterwards?). Or finding 72 Virgins in heaven awaiting the arrival of the latest human pieces from a blown-up and murderous homicide-bomber. I mean, if you were a respectable, attractive virgin, would you want to the the hand of a murderer - although being in pieces following self-explosion, I suppose it would be easier to take just the hand.

But where is the proof that 72 virgins are awating? And who reassembles the dismembered murderer so he can have his way with the 72? And if indeed it is his member that is the dismembered, and it doesn't make it nto heaven with the rest of his body parts, how does he indeed then have his wicked way? And anyway, to these holy former hit-squaddies, pure Muslim women aren't actually allowed into the company of strange men without their families' permission, so how do the reassembled murderers, who are altogether more strange than normal strange men, get access to the 72 virgins in the first place?

I'm sorry, but this is all unprovable nonsense, takes the 'have faith to believe and believe to have faith' get-out clause to somewhat of a rather cheap show-business level. "We can't prove any of it, but you'd better believe it or you'll be transported to hell". 

And that's another one. 'Hell'. Where precisely is 'hell' and has anyone proof of the place? Or are people just referring to their misadventures in a nightclub in Doncaster or Scunthorpe? But then North Korea has often been describes as hell on earth. Is that where all the naughty people of this world actually go. To the land of banned hairstyles and banned Western TV and music.

Many things "ist" seems to have quite anti-Jewish tendencies

Socialist, Corbynist, Entryist, Trotskyist and now Methodist. Where there's an 'ist' there ultimately seems to be the demonisation of Israel and ultimately of the Jewish people. That's against just 14million people in a world of 7.4billion (that's under one-fifth of one percent [0.2%] of the world's entire population).

Methodism, as a branch of Protestant Christianity, has it's roots in the 18th Century, so it's fair to say that it's not exactly an old religion. It stems, like many of the 4,500 or so modern"ist" religions of the world, from the disaffection with a long-established religion at the time by a small cabal of people, in this case, John Wesley (a leading anti-Semite of his generation!), George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley. Very much a case of it being that if you don't like the party and its party-goers, simply start your own party.

While Methodism may emphasise "social holiness", missionary zeal, charity and service to the poor and vulnerable, it certainly does not extend this mantra to Israel or, ultimately, to the Jews. You name it in terms of a partisan event that demonises Israel, and the Methodists seem happy to run to the fore and host it at one of their venues. And when publicised on social media, it attracts the usual blame-culture and apologist detractors, many of whom do not feature crosses in their avatar, but instead, the Palestinian 'flag' so beloved by indigenous, British-born, non-Muslim Jewhaters. The ones who are quick to get their banners out and shout at the world to boycott Israeli goods while they themselves hypocritically continue to use Israel technology and medicine themselves.

One such event took place during the 19th - 23rd September (2016) at the Hinde Street Methodist Church, near Oxford Circus in London. It was a World Council of Churches event in connection with the World Week for Peace in Palestine (wherever that may be; ask the Jordanians if you are unsure)  and Israel. It is very much about wanting Israel (and note, it's only Israel, no other country) to dismantle the land barriers they currently use for security to check whether workers or visitors from Israel's land borders are bringing in that which they should not, in particular knives, automatic weapons or homicide bomb belts. Israel does this because it has to. Pretty much in the same way as you have to divest yourself of everything when you go though any airport into the departure lounge. Or enter any Court building in the UK. They don't want you bringing weapons into their country or into a British Court, so why shouldn't a country - Israel in this case - that borders another which is governed by a recognised terrorist organisation (that's Hamas, in case you are either a Methodist or don't actually know - or in the case of the Methodists, apparently don't appear to want to know) be allowed to do the same?

However, the World Council of Churches has chosen, as usual, but on this occasion with the support of the Methodists, to single out only Israel. They have never, for example, homed in on other people barriers in the world, some of which function more to keep people in or out, (as can be seen in the image below), rather than to protect their citizens from terrorist attacks as Israel has to do on a 24/7 basis. Not once have they organised an exhibition hosted by a Methodist church to address these.

Lord George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury summed it all up perfectly. But then he, as an astute, intelligent and caring man, would do. And there is no better man to emphasise "social holiness", charity and service to the poor and vulnerable than Lord Carey. But then, he is after all a true Statesman. And a thoroughly deserved Peer of the British Realm.

This thoroughly detestable "You Cannot Pass Today" exhibition in London was nothing short of divisive and totally partisan Jew hate. It was an effrontery to Israel, to the Jews of the UK band to any moral, decent-thinking person who can see both sides.

Yes, Israel is by no means perfect (show me a county that is!), but this constant, partisan singling-out of the only true democratic country in a region that sees it totally surrounded by nothing but hostile countries full of people who want to see it destroyed and its people murdered, well this is as totally unforgivable as it is unjustifiable.

And it is ultimately nothing more or less that the despicable Jewhate witnessed throughout the Nazi era of the 1930's and early 1940's that saw 6million Jews murdered. And remember, when the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War, local Methodist Minister John Leale was up there collaborating vigorously with the Nazis by identifying the names of the Island’s Jewish residents.

These lovely people, it would appear, have neither shame nor morals, and have a nerve to call themselves Christians. 

In actual fact they haven't really got a lot going for them full-stop, apart, that is, from their partisan hatefulness.

There comes a point when Jews become totally sick of the Jew-hate . . .

. . . and that tipping point has now been well and truly reached.

As a Jew, I openly confess to not being a synagogue-attending bible-thumper. In fact, I think Richard Dawkins might, to an extent, have a somewhat valid point. Why do people transport themselves back to the 16th Century, wear ludicrous clothes or have completely illogical habits in the cause of following something totally devoid of one single shred of factual evidence in support?

I'm talking about religion.

On a very basic level, if you are a bible-thumper, can you ACTUALLY prove there is an all-seeing, all-doing deity, a he or she who must be obeyed? Can you prove Noah built a huge boat containing, among other beings, a pair of rabbits, a pair of flies, a pair of crocodiles, a pair of elephants and a pair of Cobras and that it housed the only surviving family on earth? Can you prove you gain the pleasure of 72 virgins after you pass away? Can you prove you were born to a woman without a conception taking place? Can you prove claims of "memories going back 76 trillion years"? (that's Scientology for you, in case you were wondering)?

Why no! Of course you can't.

Instead you are continually fobbed off with the hackneyed saying "to believe you have to have faith, and to have faith you have to believe". So using an analogy of that get-out-clause, a chronic gambler on a high street fixed-odds money swallowing machine is totally off the hook for leaving their family without food and clothing because "they have faith in the machine and believe they can win".

Terrific.

Now most world ills over the centuries have been the result of the adherents to one set of unprovable scientific beliefs being pitted against adherents to another set of unprovable beliefs. And as the scientific world these adherents reject moves further on in sophistication, the weapons being produced for enforcing their beliefs on others similarly advance. Yes, weapons they believe in, but scientific proof, none do they have.

And the root of all this evil? By and large money, power, bigotry and blame culture. You only have to look at the likes of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Cardinal Richelieu, Hamas or the IRA. They made/are making millions at the expense of those they claim or claimed to support.

Now what I can’t abide is the hypocrisy of hate. The partisan attitude of the haters who more often than not haven’t actually a clue as to who or why they hate they way they do. They are usually very easily-led sheep, probably of quite low intellect who follow some charismatic lunatic because they would be otherwise excluded from normal society. Not that this is in any way normal, you will understand. And more often than not they have not only never actually been to the country they hate, but have never even met anyone from that country, or someone from that country living in their own country. It bears similarity to when people of my age played in the streets during the 60’s. The cowboys were the ‘goodies’ and the Indians were the ‘baddies’. It's only when we got older that we realised the Indians, the then indigenous population, had been forced into being the baddies because of the corrupt and better-than-thou mentality of the gold-rush diggers and rail barons who usurped their lands chasing their filthy lucre.

However, all is different now and thanks to the ready availability of information, it is easier for people to get hold of the knowledge they need in order to make an informed decision for themselves. But this is where it all falls down. Whether through ignorance, laziness, fear, jealousy or good old-fashioned bigotry and racism, they often choose to ignore history and facts and instead accede to simply accepting false blame culture. Or they believe that, which, through their own lack of intelligence, they find more convenient to believe, even if it is so far removed from the truth or actuality as to be laughable, or more often, contemptible.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movements have proven themselves to be the most hypocritical and anti-Semitic organisations on the planet. These two organisations are actually using the terminology “acceptable face of anti-Semitism and Jewhate” by stealth.

Their continual partisan vitriol against Israel and the Jews is very thinly, if at all, disguised as criticism against the government of Israel. It is never ending and in truth can be accepted as legitimate only by either the most narrow-minded or uninformed bigot . . .  or the 100% anti-Semite. They openly condemn Israel and the Jews for alleged acts of barbarism, with the added pretence of Apartheid that are complete figments of their infertile and underutilised imaginations. They are totally without foundation, fact or proof, but these are actually the very practices that have been shown to be carried out by the likes of Hamas who govern the very people the PSC claim to support.

In particular, the Brighton division of the PSC, possibly the UK’s most virulent Jewhaters in the UK, took part in a gay pride rally where they demonstrated against what they narrow-mindedly perceive to be Apartheid in Israel. Israel, meanwhile, is the only true democracy in the Middle East, where unlike most Arab Muslim countries, non-Jews sit side-by-side with Israeli Jews in government, the civil service, the judiciary, education and the military. Neither are women dictated to by the state, as they are for example in Iran or Saudi Arabia, the great exponents of Human Rights violations that seem to totally escape censure by that august body of partisan anti-Israel resolution producers, the UN.

But what is beyond laughable is that the PSC should attend a Gay Pride event at all. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that freely allows Gay Pride Events onto the calendar of organised activities within its cities and towns! The event in Tel Aviv is such a full week of activity for the LGBT Community that it has become an international tourist attraction!

Meanwhile in Gaza, populated by the very people the PSC purport to support, gay people are thrown live off tall buildings or dragged along behind motorcycles by Hamas. So what right does the PSC have to criticise Israel under the sham of its attendance at a Gay Pride event, the very section of the community those it supports are more than happy to murder for being so?

Unless, of course, the PCS themselves are anti-gay, a conclusion any rational person might perhaps reach?

I am sick to the back teeth of the continual hypocritical and partisan attitude towards ONLY Israel shown by these groups. Enough is enough. If they are continually going to throw stones (something the Palestinians seem to excel at regardless) in their own greenhouses, they deserve to be treated with utter contempt by all rational, free-thinking people who should withdraw their support for these rabid anti-Semites.

It’s time this Jew-hating was stopped by the free world. Let the barbarians hate within their own fetid environments, not in our civilised society that is continually under threat from Islamists, not Jews.

Just leave us alone to our one , simpledesire – to be allowed to live in peace in our own land while continuing to produce not car bombs, suicide vests, stone-throwing or terrorism, but the technological and medical innovations that the hypocrites of the PSC and BDS continue to use themselves while calling for others to boycott.

Let them smash the windows of their own glass house if that is how ignorantly and stupidly they wish to live their own insignificant, bigoted lives.

Enough is enough.

Has Turkey been well and truly basted?

I have been to Turkey on holiday several times over the past 25 years, the first being on honeymoon to a very undeveloped Bodrum, before the townspeople realised there was money to be made from the all-night drinking, Union Jack pants-wearing, tattooed, face-rivited and ridiculous haircutted brigade - and that's only the British women.

In fairness, each holiday we took was delightful, the only down side whatsoever being the fact that when you walked past a restaurant, some member of staff wanted to drag you in kicking and screaming to eat what they perceive as being required, wholesome 'good burger and 'sips (chips) and big beer' as the standard fare for the average British holidaymaker. Not for us I'm afraid.

Yes, we have only ourselves to blame on that score.

However, wherever we went, the adulation by the Turkish people for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the former Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey, defied description. By all accounts a moderniser, hero, visionary and man of the people who dragged his country kicking and screaming into the 20th century. In the meantime there have been several coups to maintain this status quo of modernity, compared with say Iran which has successfully managed to transport itself back to the 16th century, while making those who saw the Shah as a corrupt money-grabber and suppressors of human rights and values, the Ayatollas, far more wealthy and corrupt in comparison than any way the Shah and his family ever were, and with oppression far outstripping anything the Shah even ever privately dreamt about.

Which is what makes it all the more strange regarding the carry-on by the current Islamist president Recep Tayip Erdogen. All the hard work of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the wonderful life his people enjoyed for decades seems to be slowly eroding away. The recent failed coup, resulting in the unbelievably swift arrest of 6,000 people over the course of a mere two days, are nothing if quasi-fascist in tendency. Plainly Erdogen had his hit-list of opponents ready and waiting for any excuse to remove them from circulation. So much so, it may, at the risk of suggesting a conspiracy theory, they he might have engineered the coup himself, just to be rid of his opponents.

But this appears to have totally gone over the heads of the common people. That 6,000 people could be rounded up and transported away over a mere 48 hours.

Yes, OK, Mr Erdogen has improved the health services dramatically, something the common people see (potentially their only real contact with the state) on a daily basis, but this has been offset by, for example, creeping religion that no one really wants in the form of the removal of Darwin from the syllabus in universities, a creeping campaign against alcohol consumption, the building of increasing numbers of faceless mosques complete with call-to-prayers booming out in a language (classical Arabic) that very few - if any - Turkish people actually understand.

Dark days ahead indeed with this man as President.