Afternoon music
The incomparable Sadie Marquardt.
Tweets seen
Tel Aviv, other cities, and some thoughts about “new” cities
The events in Israel/Palestine have sparked a few thoughts.
Not very beautiful, but it is impressive all the same, when one thinks that, 150 years ago, there was very little if any urbanization, though the port of Jaffa, the original town in part of the location, has existed for 1,800 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa.
“In 1906, a group of Jews, among them residents of Jaffa, followed the initiative of Akiva Aryeh Weiss and banded together to form the Ahuzat Bayit (lit. “homestead”) society. One of the society’s goals was to form a “Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene”.[32] The urban planning for the new city was influenced by the garden city movement.[33] The first 60 plots were purchased in Kerem Djebali near Jaffa by Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen, who registered them in his name to circumvent the Turkish prohibition on Jewish land acquisition.[34] Meir Dizengoff, later Tel Aviv’s first mayor, also joined the Ahuzat Bayit society.[35][36] His vision for Tel Aviv involved peaceful co-existence with Arabs.[37][unreliable source]
On 11 April 1909, 66 Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune to parcel out the land by lottery using seashells. This gathering is considered the official date of the establishment of Tel Aviv. The lottery was organised by Akiva Aryeh Weiss, president of the building society.[38][39] Weiss collected 120 sea shells on the beach, half of them white and half of them grey. The members’ names were written on the white shells and the plot numbers on the grey shells. A boy drew names from one box of shells and a girl drew plot numbers from the second box. A photographer, Abraham Soskin (b. 1881 in Russia, made aliyah 1906[40]), documented the event. The first water well was later dug at this site, located on what is today Rothschild Boulevard, across from Dizengoff House.[41] Within a year, Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Yehuda Halevi, Lilienblum, and Rothschild streets were built; a water system was installed; and 66 houses (including some on six subdivided plots) were completed.”
[Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Aviv].
Note, though, how even those first steps by the Jews were accompanied by the acquisition of land by subterfuge: “Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen, who registered them in his name to circumvent the Turkish prohibition on Jewish land acquisition“… [Wikipedia].
The city of Tel Aviv grew rapidly as Jewish immigration increased in the 1920s and 1930s:
It could be argued that, like so much of the world, Israel/Palestine would have been better had it stayed under European, in this case British, rule (the British having conquered the region during WW1, and then administered it under League of Nations mandate).
I have seen other “instant” cities, at least cities which have been founded from effectively nothing and then have mushroomed quite quickly (in historical terms). Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) for one.
Incidentally, “Harare” was, pre-1980, the name of an African “township” (poor suburb outside the city).
“[Salisbury] was founded in 1890 by the Pioneer Column, a small military force of the British South Africa Company, and named Fort Salisbury after the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. Company administrators demarcated the city and ran it until Southern Rhodesia achieved responsible government in 1923.”
[Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harare]
I remember well how struck I was when I saw the flowering trees and bushes almost everywhere in the central and near-central parts of Salisbury. I have never been able to discover what were the quite large dark-green trees with football-sized spherical orange flowers that I saw quite often in 1977. Very beautiful.
In a way, a city such as Salisbury (now Harare) was even more impressive as a testament to human enterprise than somewhere such as Tel Aviv, which after all grew upon an existing port, Jaffa (or Yafa; the Jews call it Yafo). The location of Salisbury was almost terra nullius; only a few African tribesmen were in the area at the time of its foundation as a fort in 1890.
Population increases are always key. The present Harare has over 2M inhabitants; Tel Aviv (including autonomous suburbs etc) about 4M.
Another city, where I lived for a full year [1996-1997] is Almaty, Kazakhstan, founded (like Salisbury) as a fortified stockade in the late 19thC and called, by its Russian founders, Verny. Now, a city of over 2M inhabitants.
I find rather fascinating cities —and whole states and societies— which grow from almost nothing in a relatively short space of time. One, which I saw in its construction phase, was Milton Keynes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes]. I knew it for a few months in early 1977; on returning a few times about 30 years later, the difference was incredible. Whole suburbs where only fields were before; a railway station where none existed before; a population of over 250,000 (in 1977, only a few thousand); bus services (in 1977, effectively non-existent); filling stations; large modern hotels.
I appeared as Counsel a couple of times in the years 2002-2007 at Milton Keynes County Court; in 1977, there was no such court; neither was there the whole Central Milton Keynes district where the Court and the railway station etc are now located.
I saw Doha, Qatar, in 2001. A sleepy and not unpleasant city. When I returned in 2008, Doha was already unrecognizable, a city of concrete and skyscrapers. Since then, a further transformation along the same lines. A kind of Manhattan-look in the desert, and on the Red Sea.
One thing I can say which is positive about the Israelis is that much —not all— of their town planning is pretty good, from what I have seen from photos etc. Many of their suburbs and towns seem well-planned, with trees, parks and leisure facilities.
Of course, the foundation and sometimes fast development of cities has a flip side: cities can sometimes disappear quickly as well.
More tweets seen
This government of Sunak (with those of his predecessors) is a disaster. There is every chance that the Israel-lobby Starmer-Labour replacement will be as bad, or even worse.
Saudi Arabia is a useless, corrupt, decadent and hypocritical pseudo-theocracy.
“Retired General Wesley Clark speaks about the USA’s plan to DESTROY 7 countries within 5 years in the Middle-East.
“Did you know that the USA wanted us to completely destabilize the middle-east and turn it upside down? Did anyone ever tell you this? Has there been any public dialogue about this? Did Senators or congress denounce these plans!? NO, they have not!!” “They told me that they were invading Iraq and I asked, WHY!? They said, ‘sir, it’s much worse than that, we’re going to destroy 7 countries in 5 years’ : We’re going to start in Iraq, then Syria, then Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia, then Sudan and we’re gonna finish with Iran.
The USA and allies already destroyed and demolished every country on this list except Iran – Who are the real terrorists that are terrorizing the entire planet? How can you hear this and not immediately think : Who the fuck is controlling the USA military and what is their real purpose? Who do they work for?
If you can’t use your critical thinking skills then you really don’t stand a chance at figuring shit out. The mainstream media creates your perception of reality on behalf of the globalists. The media is their strongest weapon of deception. Please STOP letting others shape your view of the world. Use your own brain and understand that we are up against a group of people/cult that runs and controls our world in secret. It’s OBVIOUSLY not easy to see through their deceit or else they wouldn’t have been in control of our planet for 100s, if not 1000s of years.“
Most of which is effectively as said by me on Twitter (until the Jewish lobby had me expelled in 2018), and on this blog since late 2016. NWO/ZOG.
One can imagine what might happen were Israel to be more heavily attacked, or invaded.
Well, there’s a surprise…oh, no, wait…
Late tweets
It seems that the vast majority of cruise missiles and drones (though 99% seems very high) were destroyed in the air either by Israeli forces or by US, UK, French, Jordanian and Saudi aircraft. Such cruise missiles and drones are quite slow. If, however, the Iranians were to use the hypersonic missiles they are said to possess, then it might be a very different story.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Regarding the gorgeous jacaranda tree, I discovered (as I suspected by its name) that is native to South America. The word “jacarandá” is the Spanish version of “yacarandá” a word of Paraguayan origin that means “nice smelling plant”
I remember being surprised to see jacarandas in Australia where they are fairly common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaranda_mimosifolia
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I have been watching an interesting video about Hackney (a very ugly borough) However, judging for the few old surviving Victorian or Edwardina buildings, it must have been a quite nice place. Another proof of the awful cultural and social decay of Great Britain. Very sad.
The funny chappy presenting the video (Joolz) comes up with some interesting bits of information, he obviously has done some research. He has done lots of videos about London.
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Claudius:
Not an area I really know, though I did meet, in or about 1982, a girl who lived with her cousins in one of the old and quite nice 18thC houses in the original Hackney village. She was studying Russian, I think. Cannot quite recall now. A nice girl, who was shocked that I had lived (on and off) in London for several years yet had never once visited the South Bank Centre (arts complex).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbank_Centre
I had been to some godforsaken other part of Hackney for a few days in 1978, sometime after I returned from Rhodesia, when I did a truly horrible temporary job hauling around chemicals at the old Matchbox (toy cars) factory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_(brand)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_(brand)#Economic_difficulties,_bankruptcy_and_the_post-Lesney_era
Typical of much of British industry, perhaps: a small, old, dirty factory, noisy etc, which actually produced the little cars (I had had some myself as a small boy) and, right next to that building, a tall office building, quite new, housing the office workers (who must have been far more numerous than the quite small factory workforce, I think only a few dozen strong).
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Thank you for your comment! What memories you have brought back! I remember being about 10 years-old (1969) and collecting the MATCHBOX cars! I used to run races with the other boys. I also remember, around the same time, going with my father to a tiny shop in an elegant arcade that sold British (AIRFIX) and American (REVELL) models of aeroplanes, tanks and ships to be assembled. What a beautiful time! I remember assembling the “Bismarck” the “Scharnhorst” and the “HMS Nelson” with its unique and rare system of three triple turrets of 16-inch guns. Thank you for the memories!
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Claudius:
You are welcome. As someone once said (Ouspensky? Gurdjieff?), we are more alive in the past (memories) and the future (wishes, plans etc) than we are in the present, through much of which we are metaphorically asleep.
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Yes, the Zionist entity should not exist. Palestine was much better off ruled by us as a mandate of the League of Nations. Palestinian Muslims and Christians lived in harmony with Jews for many years before 1948. Zionism is a supremacist political philosophy which created much ill will between Jews and Palestinians and is also a problem for the Near/Middle East and the globe.
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Saudi Arabia might soon be to the 2030’s, 2040’s what Dubai and the United Arab Emirates were in the 2010’s compared with the 1970’s. Economically, it will become more advanced and their tourist industry is developing quickly.
There are some good points about Saudi Arabia one of which is a tough line on criminals. They don’t have that much in the way of criminality there. Mind you, even a hardliner on criminals like myself is very reluctant at introducing executions by beheading in public. I prefer my executions to be more dignified and less brutal and bloody.
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John:
As you know, I generally oppose capital punishment, but it could be argued that the actual execution in Saudi Arabia is less cruel than the American pseudo-scientific or pseudo-“medical procedure” types such as lethal injection. The Arabian sword is razor sharp; one blow usually severs the head from the neck, in an instant. I once knew someone who, when living over there (1960s) attended in the square one Friday, and saw it done.
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There are some good points about the death penalty in the USA but many bad points as well. One good thing is that you only get it if you commit a 1st degree murder. Obviously, categorising murders into different degrees is far from a simple and easy task but the crime of murder is a varied one. Some murders are worse than others.
The bad points include some of the methods. As you say, lethal injection is plagued with a myriad of problems such as it takes too long to do which adds to the inmate’s mental distress and is preformed by people who are not skilled enough to do it properly thereby making it the method most likely to be botched. The worst point about executions in America is that they take too long to do. No one should be waiting more than five years to be executed. The average time waiting on death row for the deed to be done is well over a decade and can be several decades. That is a total farce and means that any deterrent effect of the penalty will have expired by that point in time. No wonder anti death penalty groups in Britain and elsewhere always point to America to say there is no deterrent value in capital punishment. I agree with the Judicial Comittee of the Privy Council when they argue that convicted murderers on death row in some Caribbean countries should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment if their executions can’t be performed within five years after being sentenced to death. Having people under the sentence of death waiting to have their lives ended by the state for more than five years is not just utterly farcical but a form of mental torture as well so not acceptable.
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American senators are really dumb for the most part as that climate change denialist one proves. No wonder the powerful Pro Israel Zionist Lobby in the US finds it so easy to buy them and get them to do the Zionist state’s bidding.
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Elon Musk is not as intelligent as he thinks he is either. Perhaps that is why he is now not the world’s richest person but only third or fourth in the world.
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Saudi Arabia is less decadent than Britain is in some ways. Their crime control policies are very tough so they don’t have legions of stabbing maniacs seriously injuring or murdering people with knives every day in Riyadh unlike the crime infested hellhole that is ‘Stab City Upon The Thames’.
Degenerate drug dealers who help to hook people on dangerous drugs like heroin or cocaine which makes them very ill or kills them and helps to increase crime rates in general and also violent crime rates in particular get executed in Saudi Arabia rather than receive derisory prison sentences of five years, ten at the most like 99% of drug dealers here.
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No wonder so many very wealthy footballers have moved to Saudi Arabia in recent years. There they can wear their very expensive and flashy Swiss designer watches on the streets and be confident they won’t be violently mugged for them.
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I saw the meeting of Milei and Elon Musk, it was pathetic. The idiot of Milei was looking up at Musk as a teenager would look at one of his pop idols when meeting him. When they shook hands Milei said: “Thank you for all that you are doing for the world” (???) 😲😲😲 How pathetic can you be?
Please, watch this video only from 2.50 to 3.20 and you will see what I mean. Look at the scruffy, shameful appearance of Milei, who looks like a follower of a Heavy Metal band from the 1970s. Also, look at his childish and stupid “thumbs up” gesture. Last but not least, look at his awful hairdo, it looks like a wig! 😁😁😁
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Claudius:
As I said from the start, when I first saw him, that Milei person looks mentally deranged. Perhaps his election was a measure of how desperate the voters of Argentina were and/or are.
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It looks like you in Argentina have got your own version of Boris-Idiot. Politicians who adopt a cheeky chappy persona or are that way inclined naturally are often not what they are thought of as being by the often misinformed and stupid masses. My country has found that out the hard way.
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Yes, Ian, you are right. We are desperate and the worst part of it is that there is NO escape. We are very much like you in the UK. One candidate is more hateful and useless than the other. I remember a friend of mine who, many years ago, said: “Our political options are like this; you can choose between AIDS or Cancer, that´s it”
I watched Milei in a long interview yesterday night; the interview was made a week ago. The lunatic, because that is what he is, said: “I have a vision and the conviction to carry it through” and he really meant that. He is a lunatic of the worst kind; the ones who believe are guided by God.
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Claudius:
No only a loonie but a pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby loonie…
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Yes! Milei is the Argentinian version of Keir Starmer but on steroids! 😁😁😁
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Your options are unappealing but they must still be better than ours. Argentina is a modern country in a poltical sense in that you have elections for your head of state and use Proportional Representation for your parliament. That latter point means new parties can easily be set-up AND if people vote for them they WILL gain seats in parliament in proportion to their voting strength.
Here, in Britain, on the other hand, our political system is stuck in a nineteenth century time warp with an unelected Head of State, an unelected second chamber of parliament called the House of Lords and the ‘elected’ chamber uses an electoral system ie First Past The Post that wastes millions of votes everytime there is a farcical and inherently rigged/unfair general ‘election’ eg in 2019 14,000,000 votes were ‘wasted’ (about 50% of the total that were cast) as they were cast for losing candidates (under FPTP only ONE candidate is elected in single-member seats and these constituencies are the ONLY type that are used). Under ‘pure’ FPTP as we have new parties can be set-up but unless they can concentrate their vote share they will win few, if any, seats ie UKIP got 4,000,000 votes or 12% of the national vote share in 2015 yet got only ONE seat in parliament.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a semi-democracy at best. It certainly can’t be described as a modern one as modern ones use Proportional Representation where the value of an individual voter’s vote is roughly equal to another voter’s one.
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk
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Re Nick Griffin’s tweet about the past isolationist instincts of Americans. I know he and others claim that’s still the case, but to me it seems to actually be the opposite. Many Americans (particularly Republican voting ones,) never seem to see a war they don’t like. Griffin and others are saying there is an awakening happening in the West about Jewish power, but again to me it seems to be the opposite. 80% of the online posts i see from Americans and Brits re Israel-Gaza-Iran are still very (fanatically in a lot of cases) pro-Jewish. I don’t see an awakening, i’m just seeing that the public are even more stupid/brainwashed than i already knew. The spiteful side of me thinks that if a major war in that region erupts, the “patriots” (you know, the type who send money to Tommy Robinson) who are daft enough to sign up and go over there deserve to be killed.
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EnglishBrit89:
The Washington Bubble “inside the Beltway” and in nearby bits of Virginia may be “interventionist”, but I think that the general population is more mixed in its views. However, I have not myself been there myself for 20 years, so I am slightly guessing.
Of course, the American population never sees or hears (in the msm) anything that is not 100% Israeli propaganda; maybe CNN is a bit different. The Internet is different, but how far that has moved the “window” is hard to say.
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