World leaders have no idea!

You cannot bludgeon your way to world peace and harmony.  Only through magnanimity, a generous spirit and by sharing fairly the world's remaining reserves of minerals and other resources.  And sharing out the desperate, the persecuted, the leftovers from our wars and lifestyle.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles was the wrong idea, completely.  However, the Marshall Plan in 1945 had the right idea.  Yet, it was never extended to the Communists because of our paranoia in thinking the worst of them.  Despite them having lost over 30 million Russians, killed in two world wars which they helped us to 'win' - yes, both wars!  We could never have done it without them (or America)!

In the 1980s and 90s, Russian leaders ended the Cold War stand off but our Western leaders failed to recognise that.  They crowed over OUR, NATO victory of liberal democracies over the evil Communists.  Instead of co-operation and sharing, free market capitalist leaders put the boot in and introduced right wing economic policies to the former USSR and simply took advantage by allowing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO.

They ended the Cold War but we cheekily assumed it was all our doing; so we took full advantage by upsetting the balance of power between West and East and spreading steadily eastwards to even attempt to take in Ukraine, with disastrous consequences!

No wonder Putin is so resentful and so full of hatred towards our foolish leaders.

Despite the Good Samaritan lesson of centuries of mutual hatred between Jews and Samaritans, their descendants have ratcheted that conflict/hatred to an entirely new level in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Our beloved, world leader, Bibi believes that hatred and slaughter is the way to win friends and influence people.  His close friend, our 'crazed' World Emperor Donald, regrets killing but does it all the same to make hypocrisy sound a virtue!

We need a new Marshall Plan to make the Communists and the Muslim Arabs love the Judeo-Christian world because, for once, we actually do try loving our enemies instead of wiping them off the face of the earth in righteous indignation.  And that gets us nowhere, as we see every day.

Money can't buy you love or food

Tel Aviv's leafy boulevards were built on the vision of Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes who said, "We live not by the jingling of our coins but by the fullness of our harvests."

from Haaretz

Speaking at an annual conference on Jewish-Arab partnership, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that personal security in Israel's Arab society is "a national challenge that should occupy the country's leaders every day as a top priority." Herzog added that "Arab Israelis are entitled to personal security just like any other citizen, and Arab communities must be secured just like any other."

from Haaretz

 Israel News

Analysis 

Israel Blocked 37 Aid Groups From Gaza – and Then Claimed Credit for Their Work

Israel has pushed responsibility for Gaza's civilians onto international aid groups, then smeared, restricted and ultimately barred many of them.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact

The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, like many European leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans.

"Net negative migration" means ... ? More going than arriving in Israel

 Israel's population growth fell to a new low in 2025, rising by just 0.9 percent, a study published Wednesday found, attributing the decline to lower birthrates, higher mortality, and chiefly to net negative migration. The study, conducted by demography expert Prof. Alex Weinreb, described the 0.9 rise in population as "an unprecedented decline," and said 2025 was a demographic turning point for Israel.

It's not so much a shift in power

It's not so much a shift in power from councils to Mayors but a duplication and a doubling of everything that that brings.  Hence, Thatcher got read of the earlier version ('iteration', in modern parlance) of Mayors and Combined Authorities, called County Councils.

It was the W Mids County Council councillors under present, still repeatedly re-elected, Cllr Phil Bateman who brought back trams only twenty years after the same councillors of all parties got rid of them.  Phil's trams went on two mainline railways now destroyed and a third, very nearly!  The idiots.

The single figure head Mayor is a compliant rubber stamp - as are the councillors.  Surplus to requirements - the lot of them.

from Haaretz

GAZA: A group of 19 Israel-based human rights NGOs condemned Israel's decision to bar dozens of international aid groups from operating in Gaza, saying that it "undermines principled humanitarian action, endangers staff and communities, and compromises effective aid delivery."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres criticized a move by Israel to ban electricity or water to facilities owned by the UNRWA, a UN spokesperson said, adding that UNRWA is an "integral" part of the world body. UNRWA Commissioner General Phillipe Lazzarini said the decision was part of an ongoing " systematic campaign to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct" the role it plays in providing assistance to Palestinian refugees.

"Israel's decision to prevent 37 international aid organizations from continuing their work in the Gaza Strip is the latest step in a policy that has been both cruel and amateurish in its treatment of Gaza's civilian population. Like other dark regimes around the world, the Israeli government has spun a web of lies and conspiracies around international organizations in an effort to blur responsibility for its own grave failure" – Nir Hasson

■ ISRAEL: Throughout the Gaza war, Palestinian security prisoners were sometimes denied drinking water for up to half a day as collective punishment, according to 2024 visit reports by the Public Defender's Office. In January, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel asked a court to make the reports public after the state initially blocked their release, citing national security concerns and the risk of harming hostages held in Gaza.

from Connecticut - an Israeli reader of Haaretz

 if even a clinic, which is supposed to be the most protected refuge, becomes an arena for killings, what place is still protected?

A criminal government is only interested in protecting itself from arrest.

Has it been the concern that the criminal government of Israel has been attacking clinics and doctors at work in Gaza for more than 2 years?. Doctors without Borders months ago reported that in Gaza, 2 healthcare workers per day has been the average killed, the direct result of official Israelo policy. Yesterday Israel banned Doctors without Borders from entering Gaza anymore