Tag Archives: Siwa

Diary Blog, 30 April 2024

Afternoon music

[David D, Pearce, Bird Souk, Cairo. Pearce is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who was stationed, inter alia, in Cairo: https://www.daviddpearce.com/about; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Pearce]

Tweets seen

True in part, but incomplete. Slavery existed well before the 7thC in the Middle East: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Middle_East.

Incidentally, slave caravans would pass through the oasis of Siwa in Western Egypt, having travelled from Central Africa en route to the Mediterranean coast or the Nile Delta, as recently as the 1940s.

I myself spent a month in Siwa in 1998 (out of 3 months in Egypt that year). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis.

[Siwa]
[Siwa]
[Siwa]
[I may have bought fruit there from time to time; a bit different to Waitrose…]

Yes. One frequently sees Jews on Twitter etc [pretending to be] upset that “their family” died, or were displaced, or inconvenienced, during the early 1940s; people that those descended from them and alive today never knew, of course.

British or German people just do not weaponize (or, indeed, monetize via books, films, “reparations”, and “restitution”) their family histories in that way.

My own maternal grandfather [b.1901] was at Dunkirk in 1940, and later in Burma. My maternal grandmother [b.1900] lost two brothers in the First World War (both, I believe, captains of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry).

British (and German) people accept such events as historical, and do not constantly try to use them as tags on which to hang contemporary socio-political issues.

The question is, “replaced by what“?

I wonder whether he was the one who (ultimately) ran agents Epstein and [Ghislaine] “Maxwell” when they were still in play? See also https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/08/11/the-jew-epstein-and-prince-andrew-the-british-royal-family-has-another-scandal-maybe-its-time-to-just-get-rid-of-them/.

More music

These people should be on our side!

More tweets

Britain 2024

Strange minor incident. Taking a nap this afternoon, after having had a very early start today, I was awoken by a knock at the door of our tiny flat (the days of country houses and Caribbean villas being now long gone). I heard my wife agreeing to donate to the county’s air ambulance charity.

I was rather suspicious about the man at the door wanting bank details “to set up a direct debit“, so intervened and told the fellow that we would give another way. He left with superficial politeness; I could see that he was unhappy at being challenged (though I am not particularly aggressive).

I was concerned, so thought to call the police on their 101 non-emergency service. It then took something like 20 minutes to get beyond the recorded messages and just to get to talk to a human being (a pleasant-sounding lady) from the police and give her the details.

I also tried, twice, to telephone the air ambulance charity people themselves but, after an initial recorded message, was informed “your call cannot be transferred” and an unobtainable signal.

I looked up what the CEO of that charity gets paid: about £119,000 a year.

That small incident was typical of the way in which everything in this country is so screwed and just does not work. For a start, the air ambulance should be an official service, not a ragbag of private charities across the UK.

Secondly, it should be illegal for fundraisers to go around knocking on doors like itinerant gypsies. The public need to be protected.

Thirdly, how is it that the CEO of such a small charity (30 employees) gets a fairly generous salary? Yet their only public telephone number is non-operational. It’s poor.

There are too many boondoggles around, to use the American phrase. The “Major Tom” nonsense, with the quasi-fraudulent daughter and son-in-law, has surely brought that to public attention.

Fourthly, the police are almost absent when you need them. At the same time, the county police have apparently spent many many hours snooping upon and “monitoring” this blog, as they do the social media posts of others. The police need to get back to doing actual, real police work.

As a matter of fact, the Police and Crime Commissioner for the county will be elected this week. At present, it is some useless and enormous woman, a Conservative Party member.

Britain 2024— terminally sick.

Late tweets

Shut up and get on the train…

Bravo! End the war.

If the Kiev regime imagines that a new army of forced and unwilling recruits will save the day, it is very much mistaken.

When the weather is warmer, and the Stavka gives the order, it is likely that the Russian armies in the east will start to roll, covered by massive artillery barrages and air cover. Any new forces recruited by the Kiev regime will simply be rolled over.

Late music

[Katyusha rockets, aka “Stalin’s organ pipes” on the Eastern Front, WW2]

Crowdfunder

My crowdfunder remains open: https://www.givesendgo.com/GC14J.

Final word

[Adolf Hitler, 20 April 1889-30 April 1945]

Diary Blog, 21 October 2023

Afternoon music

Battles past

Saturday quiz

Well, this week brings another win over political journalist John Rentoul. He scored 4/10, but I trumped that with 6/10. I did not know the answers to questions 2, 3, 5, and 9.

Tweets seen

Human beings are so inventive; there are grounds for optimism.

Take away the ricebowl of the Jew Zelensky and his corrupt and brutal cohorts.

Speak the truth and shame the Devil” [old proverb].

More music

Currently unter Polnischer und Russischer Verwaltung

History is chequered and/or grey, not black and white, usually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prussia

More tweets

She is right, and about Elliot Colburn very right (except that his surname is “Colburn” not “Coldburn“). Here he is, the careerist little twit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Colburn. Never really had a job; no profession, either.

Well, his MP-odyssey will soon be at an end. Looking at the election results for his constituency, he will be toast within a year; he will then have to get a real job, if anyone would give him one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carshalton_and_Wallington_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

Andrew Bridgen is considered very dangerous by the System, because he is an MP, not someone opining on Twitter/X or Facebook. The System will be doing everything possible to have him removed as MP and replaced in 2024 by a Con Party or Lab Party drone who will make the “expected” noises. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bridgen.

Looking at Bridgen’s constituency, it was Labour from 1997 until Bridgen was elected in 2010. His vote-share has increased steadily since then, and in 2019 was 62.8%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_West_Leicestershire_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s.

Looking also at the present political climate, and the great unpopularity of the present government, it may be that Bridgen has as much chance as a “Reclaim Party” candidate as he would have had as a “Conservative” Party one.

Reclaim Party is a dead duck, in my opinion, but Bridgen has a high public profile, and it is just about possible that, if the Conservative Party vote in the constituency collapses, or reduces by 40%-50%, and if the Labour Party vote only increases slightly, that Bridgen might just manage to come through the middle and win by a short head. A long-shot, but just about possible.

All part of an overarching “agenda” (conspiracy).

I do not disagree on some of what Goodwin often expresses, but anyone who doormats for Israel and the Jewish lobby (as Goodwin does in that discussion, and in some of his tweets) cannot be respected by me…

Looks hopeful, as far as it goes…

I agree, in outline, with that tweet by Goodwin.

I would normally agree with that, but can think of a couple of advantages all the same. Hm, think that I shall lie doggo on that question.

About 25% (mostly over 70s).

Brits asked: “Which side in the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict do you sympathize with more?”

All Brits: Israel 21% Palestine 17% Both equally 29% Dont know 33%

Labour voters: Israel 9% Palestine 27% Both 35%

Conservatives Israel 39% Palestine 6% Both 27%

18-24 yr olds Israel 11% Palestine 39% Both 16%

Pensioners Israel 37% Palestine 11% Both 36%.”

There should be an MPs’ section (result would be “Israel 90%, Palestine 10%“, looking at how many are either bribed or intimidated by the Jew-Zionist lobby).

The true face of Zionism?

Those American (mainly) Jew settlers or colonists are far worse even than the old-style or “Sabra” Israelis.

I blogged years ago about an experience I had when in Egypt in early 1998: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2020/02/02/the-jews-i-met-at-an-oasis/.

[part of Siwa oasis, Egypt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis]

Incidentally, and for those interested in slightly picaresque travel tales, another reminiscence about Egypt: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/03/07/when-i-was-not-arrested-in-egypt/.

History corner…

(A little window on history)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Darnand

More tweets

Incredible that, in 2023, a large organization such as Currys is still unaware that “Jack Monroe” is a total fraud and “grifter”. Still, if you have ever been in any of their stores, you can see that Currys is badly-run, and only saved from being hopeless by the skills of some of their staff, who however, are rather poorly-paid (underpaid).

“Jack Monroe” runs dozens if not hundreds of Twitter/X “sock accounts”, most of which are very obvious.

Incredibly, “Jack Monroe ” now has 507 utter mugs sending her between £3.50 and £44 per month via Patreon. Each. At one time she had over 800, but that fell back to below 400 as she was exposed as a fraud. Seems that another 100+ idiots have signed up in the past few months. Truly it is said that… there’s a new mug born every minute…

Late music

Diary Blog, 31 March 2023

Morning music

[painting by Bruce Liston]

On this day a year ago

On the blog 5 years ago

BBC Question Time, and Twitter

The tweets below show how far removed from both ordinary reality and political reality are both Question Time and Twitter:

A tendentious, probably brainless (and also —probably— atheistic) Church of England clergyman, and a plainly uneducated and also unintelligent fellow (or possibly someone with a mental health problem), both of whom favour migration-invasion by backward hordes into what is left of our country.

Truly, both stupidity and (in the lay sense) treason come in a variety of guises.

Beyond that, it is remarkable how little Question Time and Twitter reflect the popular mood. In fact, you could say that the popular mood in the UK is usually the precise opposite to whatever the Question Time audience and the main UK Twitter mob are saying.

My own approach would be rather different, certainly harsher, certainly more effective in destroying the migration-invasion, “but that’s just me“…

London. Zoo.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/adrian-satchwell-sentence-acton-park-rape-london-metropolitan-police-b1071159.html.

More tweets seen

Emily Thornberry (aka Lady Nugee) and her half-Jew husband, however, have about 7 or 8 buy-to-let and other properties. It might be said that they are profiting from the squeeze on housing.

Emily Thornberry never seems to wonder what the effect on housing availability might be of importing many millions of immigrants (mainly non-white, at that) over several decades, immigrants who have been breeding prolifically.

Yes, I am sure that Labour will, indeed, “clear the backlog” of migrant-invaders of all sorts. How? By approving almost all applications, and prioritizing the invaders above British people for housing (and all other services), then by setting up some kind of quick rubberstamp process in France, and even in the countries of origin of the invaders. That way, Britain will actually get swamped even more, but the bad public relations of the invading cross-Channel boats shown on TV and social media will be mostly avoided.

Ah, yes, those great idealists and humanitarians, Meghan Mulatta and “the Harry formerly known as Prince”…

The USA is not working for most of its people. There again, who are we in the UK to talk?…

…but only if they have the wealth, property, money etc as well

The “trans” nonsense is everywhere now, but we must be clear: it has not emerged by accident. It is one of several attacks upon white Western civilization and culture, planned and incubated by forces of Evil embedded in our society, often in leading positions.

See also my comments from 4-5 years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

Better late than never?

In the end, this can only end one way…

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11920249/Look-away-vegans-Scientists-plants-produce-ALARM-SOUNDS-cut.html

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake; https://www.sheldrake.org/essays/wikipedia-under-threat; https://www.rudolfsteiner.org/.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11923459/Finlands-rock-star-PM-Sanna-Marin-looks-set-LOSE-Sundays-general-election.html.

Finnish politics could dramatically shift to the far-Right on Sunday as an anti-immigration party aims to replace Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats Party.

The ‘rock star’ prime minister, who took office in 2019 as the world’s youngest PM at 34, is Finland’s most popular leader this century, polls show.

However, latest figures put the mother-of-one’s centre-Left SDP in third place behind the anti-immigration and nationalist Finns Party and the centre-Right National Coalition Party, which held on to a thin lead.

[Daily Mail].

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanna_Marin#Early_life_and_education; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanna_Marin#Spending;

I have nothing, as such, against silly, ignorant, and/or badly-behaved, creatures of that sort; I just prefer them to stay out of politics.

Still, looking at quite a few MPs in the UK, from both main System parties, who are we to laugh at the Finns?

More tweets

I had actually not heard of Kathy Burke until today. Yesterday was better in that regard…[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Burke].

Once more, a naive “Jack Monroe” supporter who, looking at her other tweets, is obviously entirely unaware that many “recipes” of “Jack Monroe” make food containing only a few hundred calories per person (some are around 200). So not “nutritious“. As for “thrifty“, anyone can buy cheapest pasta, mix in some fish paste and/or some tinned tomato pulp, then heat it in the microwave.

Not too far removed from the Berber/Arab oasis of Siwa, where I spent a month (out of a 3-month visit to Egypt) in late 1997 and early 1998.

[the citadel of Shali, Siwa oasis, Egypt]

That should wake up at least a few of the somnolent “woke”…

Late music

Lost Doggerland, Some Historical Changes and Some Large-Scale Projects

In January of 2019, I wrote the following speculative piece:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

16 months later, I believe that the article is even more relevant, now that Coronavirus/Covid-19 has concentrated minds (and leaving aside the fact that the Chinese virus is overblown and also being used by the System to bluff people into becoming members of police states across Europe and beyond).

I was just reading again about “Doggerland”, which is not a gonzo-literature novel about some of the leisure activities of a sub-set of the English pleb-dom, but a large territory that once existed between the area now designated as “UK”, and those of present-day “Denmark”, “Germany”, “Netherlands” etc.

At the end of the last ice age, Britain formed the northwest corner of an icy continent. Warming climate exposed a vast continental shelf for humans to inhabit. Further warming and rising seas gradually flooded low-lying lands. Some 8,200 years ago, a catastrophic release of water from a North American glacial lake and a tsunami from a submarine landslide off Norway inundated whatever remained of Doggerland.https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

and see the very interesting series of maps below

[By Francis Lima – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49850020] It can be seen that, at its greatest extent, what is now called “Doggerland” (a term invented only in the 1990s), together with similar areas in the Atlantic off (mainly) the present-day coasts of the UK and Ireland (the ancient land of Lyonesse, of Arthurian legend), was larger in extent than the present-day UK.

Consideration of these matters gives perspective.

Videos about the above matters:

 

and while looking at those Doggerland videos, I also saw this one (below)

Fascinating, though possibly not a good idea even if do-able.. How about starting with something smaller, such as the Irish Sea? (only, sort-of, joking…).

In fact, large-scale projects are not always a poor idea. One which has interested many is that of creating a canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, then using gravity to move seawater the 40 miles to the Depression.

The Qattara Depression is on average 200 ft (60m) below sea level, though the lowest part is 440 ft (134m) below sea level. No-one lives there, though the very isolated oasis of Qara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qara_Oasis lies near the Western edge of the Depression, some 47 miles (75km) North-East of the nearest larger oasis, Siwa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis

I myself stayed in Siwa for a month, in early 1998, out of three months spent in Egypt (on that trip).

SiwaPanorama

 

275682-Siwa_Oasis_Egypt

Siwa is 189 miles (305km) from the Mediterranean Sea coast. British or American people tend to think of an oasis as being a small lake with a fringe of palm trees, but Siwa is, at greatest extent, 50 miles long and 12 miles wide, and has a total population of some 30,000 (though when you are there —admittedly I was there over 20 years ago— the place does not seem in any way heavily populated, rather the reverse). It has about 350 freshwater springs (the water of which is exported to Alexandria and Cairo in plastic bottles), 300,000 date palms, 70,000 olive trees (and some fruit trees, too).

Reverting to Qattara, the Depression is 190 miles (300km) long by 84 miles (135km) wide. Area: 7,570 square miles, about the same as mainland Wales.

A project to flood the Depression would be hugely beneficial. Fish would flood in with the water, it would change the regional climate for the better, and it would enable hydropower as well.

It may be that, by using hydropower and solar power, new eco-cities or towns, even horticultural areas, could be created and maintained, supplied with fresh water via desalination.

By AlwaysUnite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17865159]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

Fact follows fiction (again): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Sea

Anwar Sadat was said to have been seriously interested in the Qattara idea, but when he was assassinated, the project was again mothballed.

Other projects I have seen or read about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-15/port-augusta-sundrop-farms-sold-to-investment-fund-morrison-co/11108046

In Iran, not long before the Islamic Revolution unseated the Shah , there was a government programme to replace sand dunes and semi-desert with forest. Of course, the backward mullahs did not continue with it. I read about the project in the National Geographic. Brilliant.

First, the sand dunes were coated with a very thin layer of crude oil, sprayed from tanked vehicles. Secondly, seeds of the tamarisk tree (salt-resistant and heat-resistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix were spread over the oil layer.

Tamarix aphylla.jpg[above: tamarisk tree in the Negev Desert, Israel. CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521]

The thin oil layer prevented the seeds from being blown away by wind, and anchored the tiny shoots when germinated. The climate had enough moisture for their survival. The tiny growing shoots and trees (within a few years about 4 feet high) were protected from goats and their owners, if any, by fences and a ranger force.

Once the trees were mature (some of the 60 types of tamarisk grow as high as 60ft/18m), the idea was that the climate and ecology would be markedly improved.

Under the Shah, there was to have been a roll-out across Iran. It never happened. Sad.

There have been and still are many large-scale projects of great value, both engineering projects and more obviously “environmental” ones. Most founder on the rocks of politics and/or finance.

[Note: the above first appeared in my daily blog]

Update, 1 December 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/evidence-life-on-doggerland-after-devastating-tsunamis-study

Diary Blog, 18 May 2020

A thought out of season

Israel is a country with many interesting aspects in terms of water supply, agriculture and horticulture, urban planning, afforestation etc.

I should certainly find it interesting to visit Israel, because I find artificially-contrived societies interesting in general (Singapore and North Korea being two others which do not seem natural), but I doubt that it would be long before I became the victim of a traffic accident, a scuba accident, or whatever. You get the idea…

Strange. He looked quite healthy quite recently…

More musing

In January of 2019, I wrote the following speculative piece:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

16 months later, I believe that the article is even more relevant, now that Coronavirus/Covid-19 has concentrated minds (and leaving aside the fact that the Chinese virus is overblown and also being used by the System to bluff people into becoming members of police states across Europe and beyond).

I was just reading again about “Doggerland”, which is not a gonzo-literature novel about some of the leisure activities of a sub-set of the English pleb-dom, but a large territory that once existed between the area now designated as “UK”, and those of present-day “Denmark”, “Germany”, “Netherlands” etc.

At the end of the last ice age, Britain formed the northwest corner of an icy continent. Warming climate exposed a vast continental shelf for humans to inhabit. Further warming and rising seas gradually flooded low-lying lands. Some 8,200 years ago, a catastrophic release of water from a North American glacial lake and a tsunami from a submarine landslide off Norway inundated whatever remained of Doggerland.https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

and see the very interesting series of maps below

[By Francis Lima – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49850020] It can be seen that, at its greatest extent, what is now called “Doggerland” (a term invented only in the 1990s), together with similar areas in the Atlantic off (mainly) the present-day coasts of the UK and Ireland (the ancient land of Lyonesse, of Arthurian legend), was larger in extent than the present-day UK.

Consideration of these matters gives perspective.

Videos about the above matters:

 

and while looking at those Doggerland videos, I also saw this one (below)

Fascinating, though possibly not a good idea even if do-able.. How about starting with something smaller, such as the Irish Sea? (only, sort-of, joking…).

In fact, large-scale projects are not always a poor idea. One which has interested many is that of creating a canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, then using gravity to move seawater the 40 miles to the Depression.

The Qattara Depression is on average 200 ft (60m) below sea level, though the lowest part is 440 ft (134m) below sea level. No-one lives there, though the very isolated oasis of Qara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qara_Oasis lies near the Western edge of the Depression, some 47 miles (75km) North-East of the nearest larger oasis, Siwa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis

I myself stayed in Siwa for a month, in early 1998, out of three months spent in Egypt (on that trip).

SiwaPanorama

 

275682-Siwa_Oasis_Egypt

Siwa is 189 miles (305km) from the Mediterranean Sea coast. British or American people tend to think of an oasis as being a small lake with a fringe of palm trees, but Siwa is, at greatest extent, 50 miles long and 12 miles wide, and has a total population of some 30,000 (though when you are there —admittedly I was there over 20 years ago— the place does not seem in any way heavily populated, rather the reverse). It has about 350 freshwater springs (the water of which is exported to Alexandria and Cairo in plastic bottles), 300,000 date palms, 70,000 olive trees (and some fruit trees, too).

Reverting to Qattara, the Depression is 190 miles (300km) long by 84 miles (135km) wide. Area: 7,570 square miles, about the same as mainland Wales.

A project to flood the Depression would be hugely beneficial. Fish would flood in with the water, it would change the regional climate for the better, and it would enable hydropower as well.

It may be that, by using hydropower and solar power, new eco-cities or towns, even horticultural areas, could be created and maintained, supplied with fresh water via desalination.

By AlwaysUnite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17865159]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

Fact follows fiction (again): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Sea

Anwar Sadat was said to have been seriously interested in the Qattara idea, but when he was assassinated, the project was again mothballed.

Other projects I have seen or read about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-15/port-augusta-sundrop-farms-sold-to-investment-fund-morrison-co/11108046

In Iran, not long before the Islamic Revolution unseated the Shah , there was a government programme to replace sand dunes and semi-desert with forest. Of course, the backward mullahs did not continue with it. I read about the project in the National Geographic. Brilliant.

First, the sand dunes were coated with a very thin layer of crude oil, sprayed from tanked vehicles. Secondly, seeds of the tamarisk tree (salt-resistant and heat-resistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix were spread over the oil layer.

Tamarix aphylla.jpg[above: tamarisk tree in the Negev Desert, Israel. CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521]

The thin oil layer prevented the seeds from being blown away by wind, and anchored the tiny shoots when germinated. The climate had enough moisture for their survival. The tiny growing shoots and trees (within a few years about 4 feet high) were protected from goats and their owners, if any, by fences and a ranger force.

Once the trees were mature (some of the 60 types of tamarisk grow as high as 60ft/18m), the idea was that the climate and ecology would be markedly improved.

Under the Shah, there was to have been a roll-out across Iran. It never happened. Sad.

There have been and still are many large-scale projects of great value, both engineering projects and more obviously “environmental” ones. Most founder on the rocks of politics and/or finance.

UK politics

The latest opinion poll:

I suppose that what passes for a strategy in Labour is to wait until Boris-idiot messes things up even more than he has already done, then hope that, in Britain’s absurd and unfair (and basically binary) First Past The Post political-electoral system, the voters will simply cool towards the Conservative Party and thus elect Labour by default. Not much of a strategy, really…

Tweets seen

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/02/stupid-arguments-for-drug-legalisation-examined-and-refuted.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html

and I like this…

Image

Night music

The Jews I Met At An Oasis

A random tweet seen just reminded me of when I met a group of Jews in a desert oasis. It happened like this: I was in Egypt for several months in the winter of 1997-98. I started off in charming Aswan, spent a week or two under canvas in a then-remote part of the Red Sea coast, and then a month or so in Alexandria (an experience recounted, in part, here: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/when-i-was-not-arrested-in-egypt/).

I left Alexandria to visit the remote oasis of Siwa, in the Western Desert not very far from Libya, southwest of the Qattara Depression and only a mile or two from the first great dunes of the Great Sea of Sand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sand_Sea

275681-Siwa_Oasis_Egypt275695-The_desert oasis of Siwa

SiwaPanoramaA VIEW OF THE OLD AND NEW CITY OF SIWA IN EGYPT'S WESTERN DESERT.

I lived for a month, maybe longer, in a kind of small concrete chalet in the garden of the very small hotel I used. The hotel garden was sand but planted with closely-situated date palms. I discovered that dry date palm fronds, fallen from the trees, burn easily. Thus I inadvertently started a “tradition” of having a fire around which people gathered and talked in the cool of the evening.

Most visitors to the oasis would arrive on the one bus (a luxury Mercedes coach) in early evening, stay only one or two nights, then return to Alexandria (an 8-hour journey via Marsa Matruh on the coast). By the time I left, I had spent at least a month there and was the longest-resident foreigner save for a Finnish person who did Tai Chi on the flat roof of the hotel (well, maybe you have to be a little unusual to stay long at Siwa!) and an Anglican nun who wanted to set up a Christian centre there (not a very good idea even if the authorities approved it, which was almost inconceivable). Turned out that she knew a man who had tried (unsuccessfully) to teach me Physics when I was at school in the early 1970s. Small world.

I met a number of mostly young people there. I myself was an arguably youthful 41. Apart from the Finn and the English nun, I recall quite a few others who stayed at the oasis for longer than average. Some were more eccentric than others.

There was an odd young man from somewhere near Lancaster. When in the UK, he lived in a caravan on a red squirrel conservancy and had inherited a small legacy (£12,000, I think) from his grandmother. He had lived for eight years on that, in India. He said that India was both cheaper and dirtier than Egypt. I found both statements hard to believe.

Another oddity, also English, was someone about 28, whom I at first took to be some sort of evangelical Christian, but who in fact was a militant atheist. Very militant. He had bicycled across vast expanses (including the Kazakh steppe), using a specially-built bicycle which had water storage inside its frame. He had cycled from Alexandria and was planning to cycle from Siwa to the next oasis, Bahariya, a journey of some 250 miles to the East, on a desert road used only by occasional Egyptian Army patrols, perhaps once weekly. Not a good place to get a flat or run out of water. I wonder whether he made it.

One young lady, a very attractive French girl from Rennes, the capital of Brittany, was rather interested in me, but had a boyfriend with her, a pleasant young fellow from Montpellier, so our animated conversations did not lead anywhere, or any further…

We temporary “local expats” would eat such as molokhiya, a rather slimy but oddly tasty soup made mainly from green vegetables (jute leaves); more often we might have falafel, and maybe drink helba, a kind of yellow-green herbal tea made from fenugreek (Siwa was dry in both senses).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulukhiyah

https://www.inside-egypt.com/health-in-a-cup.html

So what about those Jews? They were tourists from Israel, travelling in a group. Students. There seemed to be about 8 of them. None of them seemed to be overtly attached. The girls were quiet, pleasant, modest; the boys slightly less quiet. Only one was extremely unpleasant, a transplanted New York Jew aged about 25, with beard and carrying at all times a thick and obviously unread paperback about “the holocaust”. I cannot recall the exact title, something about the SS and “holocaust” anyway. This particular Jew was studying at some university at Jerusalem and within minutes had marked me as a probable enemy! My copy of Alan Clark’s Barbarossa probably triggered his interest.

The others in that Israeli group, in discussion with other tourists (including my French “girlfriend” who never became a girlfriend), seemed to be reasonable in that they were not looking for war with the Arab world, but of course the unspoken elephant in the room was the historical basis: the migration of millions of Jews to British Mandate Palestine and later Israel, which displaced the previous occupants.

Still, in that milieu, by the “camp-fire”, one could briefly believe in an Arab-Israeli concordat. Only the occasional presence of the American Jew Zionist fanatic disturbed that pacific fantasy. He personified the Zionist fanatics who never quite get around to moving permanently from New York, Los Angeles or London to “Eretz Israel”, yet they are the ones who, as much or more than the “native” Israelis, push the hardline Zionist agenda. Look at the recent film featuring the former heads of MOSSAD, Shin Beth etc. They seem, in principle, less warlike than both the American (etc) “diasporic” Jew fanatics and Israel’s own political leaders.