Antisemitism is blown up out of all proportion when the Jews and Christians do this with their islamophobia!

Antisemitism bears no comparison with the viciousness, the atrocities from the islamophobics - ourselves! 

An example of our side's wicked islamophobia - extracts from:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/09/israel-what-went-wrong-by-omer-bartov-review-the-long-view?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

"Israel’s attack on Iran is only the most recent example of its degeneration in recent decades, coming on top of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, invasion of Syria and relentless bombardment of Lebanon. The fact that the US joined in this illegal war confirmed to many in the region what they have long suspected: that the country is an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle East." 

"In the early years of statehood, Israel was seen in the west as an icon of liberal, progressive and egalitarian society.

"Today, it is widely regarded as an immoral, violent, cruel and oppressive apartheid state. The Israeli response to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was a major milestone in the gradual slide to its status as an international pariah. Israel claimed the right to self-defence, but proceeded to act in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law."

"The moral and political degradation of Israel is the subject of this remarkable book. The author, Omer Bartov, has impeccable credentials for writing it: he was born on a kibbutz, he served as an officer in the IDF, and is currently professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University in the US. It is dedicated to his father, Hanoch Bartov, “the last Zionist”, a reference to the liberal brand of Zionism to which the whole family were evidently dedicated. Yet this book is written more in sorrow than in anger. Its goal is not to condemn Zionism but to explain its evolution from a dream to a nightmare."

Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine. Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov is published by Fern Press (£20).

This article was amended on 14 May 2026. An earlier version said the ICJ found there was a “plausible risk of genocide in Gaza” This has been clarified to reflect that the court found that the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide was at risk.

Our Islamophobia is a Bigger Killer than Antisemitism

Being anti antisemitic (supporting Israel right or wrong) means being islamophobic

The Western Judeo-Christian nations are islamophobic and anti-Muslim in killing many tens of thousands of Muslims over the many wars they and Israel have fought since 1945.

Better to be called an antisemite, as I am by the two noble lords, Ian Austin and John Mann, for it means I strongly oppose anti-Muslim or islamophobia oppression and killing of Muslims in lands our side is attacking.

I think all our political parties, apart from the Greens, are so anti antisemitic in their love and support for the Jews/Israel that they have become anti Islam/Muslims, aka seriously islamophobic.

The general dislike of being accused of antisemitism means we are continuing to allow the Jews/Israel to get on with their war on the mainly Muslims of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon and Iran.

It results in death and injury for many in those places but all of them, with Judeo-Christian Western support are keeping the people under the most appalling living conditions, quite apart from the fear of missiles, bombs and explosions, ALWAYS from OUR side. This is despicable, disgusting, disgraceful for our policy of anti antisemitism or unconditional military and economic support for Israel/USA for whatever they do.

Our side, in opposing antisemitism and therefore being islamophobic, displays the most shameful, anti-Muslim, death dealing behaviour in so solidly supporting and funding one side only - our Jewish friends - since the Jewish/Israeli terrorist gangs started their war in 1945 "to capture" (David Ben-Gurion) Palestine for themselves and to hold it to this day.

This is race hatred on quite a different scale

HEROES AGAINST SLAUGHTER, GENOCIDE, HATRED - the upright five, Eurovision boycotters and the four hate-filled nations - see below.

Attacks on the Jewish community are called antisemitism and have resulted in two Jews killed in the UK by an individual Muslim.

Attacks on the Muslim community in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon and Iran is called antimuslim or islamophobia or hatred towards Muslims.  These two years of attacks have resulted in many tens of thousands of children, women and men slaughtered who nearly all simply wanted to live in peace with their Jewish/Israeli neighbours.

The very small minority who wanted to kill Jews/Israelis, apart from the perpetrators of 7.10.23, were doing so in accordance with international law which allows Hamas fighters to defend their homeland of Gaza from Judeo-Christian-Western attacks.

This enormous extermination/genocide of Muslims is wholly the result of Israeli/Jewish/Christian hatred, funded and approved by her friends and allies, the USA, the UK, Germany and other Christian/European nations who have failed to stand up against these anti Muslim attacks on mainly Palestinian Muslims.

The honourable exceptions are the honourable boycotters of Eurovision, viz: Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Iceland.

There is no global smear campaign against Israel/USA/UK/Germany, as Israel insists but a just campaign against these four nations hatred, oppression and slaughter of their fellow human beings.

Daniel Levy, President of the US Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator is attending today's pro Palestinian rally in London.  He talked about the catastrophe of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

"The UK government is still getting its policy wrong and that is why we have protest in this country as well", said Daniel Levy.

He said, "intifada in Arabic means awakening, a shaking off, uprising, it's about justice and some people centre it around justice for Palestinians, some around fighting global injustice but the go to place is violence but it is not the go to place for the vast majority using the term, intifada."

"It is a dangerous conflation that somehow protesting about Israel's injustice is protesting against Jews.  There are many of us Jews who see our Jewish values as intimately bound up in a universal ethic that we must stand up for the rights of all peoples."

from Wikipedia:

Daniel Levy (Hebrew: דניאל לוי) is a British–Israeli analyst, commentator, author, and former advisor to the Israeli government with expertise on Middle East and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He was formerly an Israeli negotiator as part of the Taba summit and Oslo 2 peace process. He is current president of the U.S./Middle East Project

Globalise the intifada means: Globalise the Struggle Against Hate Crime and Slaughter of Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians by us lot of wicked Western Judeo-Christian reprobates.

The hypocrisy of the Judeo-Christian West for THEIR genocidal slaughter is mind blowing.

My response to 'A Short History of the First World War'

First World War links to Second and subsequent

Sarajevo's two gun shots were the starting gun for the full century and more of wars, courtesy of the people of violence in the Jewish/Christian world from 1914 through to today!  Perhaps, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish and the JWs know something that the rest of Christendom does not? 

This foolish, first world war, from the adherents of the Jewish/Christian Bible, has meant that these good people have, so far, had 112 years of warfare around the globe to bring many millions of humans to a premature end to their lives.  A planet of people at war with itself, despite having the Bible example and teaching to live by!  Or are the violent, unacceptable parts of the Good Book, part of the problem?

Professor Gary Sheffield, in his 2014 book, 'A Short History of the First World War', believes the values that led to the 1914 war are different from those of 112 years on.  He wrote,

"We should try to see the First World War as contemporaries viewed it and seek to avoid excessive use of hindsight and the imposing of 21st century values on individual who lived 100 years ago." Page 3

Don't we need to have excessive use of morality and conscience?  Values don't change.  Greed for land, resources and domination of others is unchanging down the centuries.  The rich and powerful Judeo-Christian nations are most at fault for using military might to get their way.  The weak and powerless are most likely to meet an untimely end.  It was forever thus!

Again from Gary, "All historical writings must be judged in the context of the period in which they were produced."

This sounds so fine.  However, human behaviour does not change from one generation to the next.  Right and wrong are unchanging as we see with the values of the Ten Commandments, written about 3,500 years ago but still valid and both upheld and broken today.  Killing is wrong whether it is murder or done by elected politicians telling individuals to go and kill as part of the much loved government armed forces.

Page 3 title, 'The rise of German power' shows a refreshing lack of paranoia at the end of the 19th century before the 'strange' Kaiser got going in 1888.  Gary tells us that the lack of paranoia was down to Bismark's skill in orchestrating "a new international equilibrium" amongst the leaders of Britain, France, Austria-Hungary and Russia.  But all too soon undone.

On page 194, we read Gary wrote a letter in 'praise' of the world war, entitled "It was a great war.  One that saved Europe".  'The Times', 1 Feb 2014

Gary lays into people like me, on page xii: "the First World War prompts people (like me) to go public with views based on emotion, limited knowledge and flawed understanding."  Hence, I play into his hands by asserting that it is the people of violence who are far too ready to use violence to get their way.  It is called the militarisation of diplomacy.  Warfare is popular with the public and popular leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have used 'success' in war to cash in on that.  PM Keir Starmer needs a war to boost his popularity.  Strong, warring PMs are much loved by the electorate.

When you have military might and power, it is all too tempting to use it to get your way.  Hence, WAR.  Unbalanced men like the Kaiser Wilhelm II who reigned (and thought he ruled) in Germany from 1888 to 1918, Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump are good examples of "not all there" (Lord Salisbury concluded on meeting the Kaiser in 1891).  See page 4 for further examples of the Kaiser being "possibly mentally unbalanced."

from 'Preface' - quotes:

"sowed the seeds of fascism in Italy and Germany"

"It killed millions and brought the world, albeit not directly, to an even greater conflagration."

"It facilitated the rise of the USA to global power and so made capitalist democracy an ideological force to contend with Soviet Marxist-Leninism, setting the scene for the Cold War."

"The result of an appallingly destructive war was a post-1918 world that was less than ideal.  This led into a sense of futility, that the war had not been worth fighting."

"The Empire, not Europe was where potential threats lay."

From the last two lines of page 174, Gary quotes the common view that "a second round of hostilities (became) inevitable."  He says that this is too simplistic and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression brought the economic crisis and "aided the electoral growth of the Nazis."  Page 175

I maintain there was unfinished business with the unsatisfactory conclusion of the war so evenly balanced for four years but only one culprit getting it in the neck with reparations, to leave bitterness and revenge.  It could have gone either way at different points, even as early as 1914.  No one side should have thought they had won.  All of humanity lost out - big time - and, it has never ended, to this very day.

War is so addictive and irresistible for the great, wealthy and powerful nations - of which we are part in the UK, playing third fiddle to the Americans after the close USA/Israel partnership and their genuine special relationship.

Website: www.garysheffield-historian.com can no longer be found.

Publisher: Oneworld Publications

to Alex over Gas Regs

Dear Alex and team

SUMMARY over what I think needs to be done:

Gas regulations must be changed when, in future, gas users have their gas meters officially and professionally removed and then sealed to prevent leaks, as was the case in our home in November 2023.

MORE DETAIL:

To complete the modernisation of our home, to make it compliant with your government's insistence that there is a Climate Emergency which demands change by each of us, my wife and I completed our transition to Climate compliance by having the gas meter removed on the 30 November 2023.

Since 2024, I have received a number of letters from Cadent demanding access.  I have been unwilling to oblige so they have got on with the job, anyway.  Hence, for the first time in 2024, Cadent dug up the pavement twice to switch off the gas at the mains.  On the last occasion, two separate holes were dug out of the pavement.  This was in December 2025.  When that work was finally completed, I thought they must now - surely - have succeeded.  However, ...

Yesterday, two men arrived at my home, did a test to confirm that there was old gas left in the pipe (surprise, surprise; and professionally sealed where the old meter was, of course!), said the Gas Regulations demand every cubic gram of gas must be removed and intimated that my new £8,000 resin bound drive and steps, laid in October 2025 (last year!) to replace a decades old tarmac drive in poor shape, may need to be dug up to comply with the gas regs.

Even before the drive is dug up, this is costing incompetent Cadent thousands of pounds in visits to my home and in digging deep holes in the pavement at the bottom of the drive.  I may yet receive a bill for all this totally unnecessary work.  It is important that every one of your constituents begin the transition out of gas into renewable electricity from mainly the solar panels on the roof of their homes, with battery storage, as we have done.

Within ten years my wife and I are likely to be dead.  In less than ten years, the next occupants of the house may well want the gas restored to 28 Hunnington Crescent.  Hence, things should now be left as they are with no more expense for Cadent and me.

 

Please will you help, Alex and team, to get the gas regulations modified to be more sensible, reasonable and to comply with urgent Climate and finite Resource imperatives?

Thanks so much.    Tim   (Weller  28 Hunnington Cres  Halesowen)

FROM MY BLOG:

Saturday, 2 December 2023

Getting out of gas is complete with the meter taken out on 30 Nov '23

Our transition from gas to 100% electricity is now complete.  We had our gas meter removed, for free by Octopus, yesterday.  Now on 100% solar power and cheap grid electricity in winter, only, to help balance the grid.

The almost zero carbon home

Just seen, over last 12 months:- 2.6kWh/day of electricity imported from world oil, gas reserves. Our legacy is this low cost, energy efficient, solar powered home for a descendant to live in!

Last 12 months has seen gas used for water heating throughout the year and some for cooking. Next 12 months will be electricity for everything, so will be higher than 2.6 kWh per day (now, between 3 and 4 kWh/day). In the summer this house is a MAJOR mini power station.

Every building should be like this.

Reaction to 'Antisemitism bad; islamophobia ... good?'

What these two governments fail to recognise is the antisemitism now raising its head is the direct result of Israel's actions.

What's worse is that many people who secretly held vile antisemitic views are now expressing them openly, under the cover of the war.

As for the war itself, its difficult to see how it resolves. Netanyahu needs it to continue to stay out of jail. Trump needs it to continue until he can manufacture something that he can convince us all is a victory.

The only other route to peace would be for Iran to run out of weapons. But even then, the slaughter in Lebanon, Gaza & the West Bank would carry on.

Disturbingly, the indiscriminate killing of so many innocents has become so routine that no one seems to care anymore, at least until it impacts upon the cost of living.

Antisemitism bad; islamophobia ... good?

Dear Leaders of the Churches in Halesowen

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Quite rightly antisemitism is condemned ...

 ... when Jews are murdered on our streets. But, in shocking contrast it feels to me, there is no genuine horror over islamophobia resulting in many tens of thousands of children, women and men dying, who had no part in 7.10.23 and, before they died, wanted to live in peace and freedom from being slaughtered by Israel/USA, which is part of OUR side.

There is never boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) against our great friend and ally, Israel or the USA which backs Israel so wholeheartedly and enthusiastically with the latest WMD and conventional weaponry to kill Arab Palestinians wanting a slice of their land - and, exterminating Lebanese and Iranians too.

Some of the over 70,000 Muslims, Christians and other faiths (or none) killed were bound to be Hamas fighters lawfully defending their land from our side attacking them.

Also, shockingly, we use parts of our Bible as a weapon to justify our Amalekite-like genocide of mainly Muslim Palestinians in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon and Iran. This is disgusting, despicable and disgraceful and the wrong use of the Bible.  But why no protest in Halesowen, no letters written, no disquiet expressed and when it is on such an enormous scale of tens of thousands murdered by us, compared to antisemitism leading to a handful of murders in the UK?

In fact, two UK Jews murdered by an antisemite.  Compare that with many tens of thousands murdered by islamophobia attacks since 7.10.23 with Israel's disproportionate and indiscriminate war of aggression and revenge on Gaza.

Please put me right and give me your side of the matter.

ONE RESPONSE:

"What these two governments fail to recognise is the antisemitism now raising its head is the direct result of Israel's actions.

What's worse is that many people who secretly held vile antisemitic views are now expressing them openly, under the cover of the war."

from Nir Hasson of Haaretz

There is no way of understanding the manner in which the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society operated over the last two-and-a-half years without recognizing the fact that vengeance was part of the fuel that drove things. The destruction and killing in the Gaza Strip, the Jewish terror in the West Bank, the destruction of villages in southern Lebanon and the legislation of capital punishment have no logic other than the wish to take revenge.

...

As explained by journalist Yehuda Schlesinger on Channel 12: "We should have seen much more revenge there, with rivers of Gazan blood." Broadcasters on Channel 14 were obsessed with vengeance. This also cropped up in sermons by rabbis, in interviews by politicians, in statements by the prime minister, who used the Biblical term Amalek, by the defense minister who talked about "human animals" and in the new hit wedding song, "May your village burn."

https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da24-d718-a5ff-faa4b8a00000

Brum's election result in May '26 from Jane Haynes

The biggest party in Birmingham now is Reform UK with 23 seats. The party had never held a seat here before.

Greens are the second biggest party, with 19 seats, a massive surge after previously holding two.

There was a massive anti-Labour vote, but the party managed to retain 17 seats, just ahead of the Conservatives, with 16 seats.

Liberal Democrats made no forward movement, with 12 seats, the same as it had at the start.

Independents of varying types claimed 13 seats, and the Workers' Party have one.

Questions for Cllr Simon and Laura Sadler

1. How has the Council's declaration changed or modified your plans and policies and actual delivery in any way?
2. Has it made any difference in reality, apart from on paper?
3. Can you give me actual examples, please of money spent by the Council in the short term to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the medium to long term?
4. Is Simon a Climate sceptic or does he accept human-induced (or anthropogenic) Climate science and why?
5. Are you, personally, Laura a Climate sceptic or do you accept human caused Climate science and why?
6. Does spending £20 m on Halesowen town centre worsen or will it reduce Climate/GHG impacts?
7. At Merry Hill Shopping Centre, does the Council's approval to transform the grass and tree covered Dudley No 1 Canal embankment into one of rock and stone for the Dudley Metro Tram, help to mitigate Climate and resource/oil and gas shortages or worsen them both?
8. Does your council's second attempt in recent years to fill in a safe, pleasant and well used Laurel Lane subway with rock and stone, mean more people will have to stop the traffic at the nearby Pelican crossing to bring about more air pollution and oil shortages from the vehicles stopping and starting more often?
9. Would the Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) which I have enjoyed for 18 years, help to improve the quality of life for us all, if it was extended to all age groups as a reward for leaving the car at home?
10. Is it possible to end all Metro extensions at the present Merry Hill tram stop, so that the planned £15 billion for 8 lines over 150 miles of Metro and  380 tram stops by 2040, could be used to fund regional FFPT for all ages?  It only needs the political will to transfer the capital pot of money into the revenue budget. 

What Campaign for Better Transport wants - oh dear!

Greedy Transport We Can Ill Afford.  Green Transport Cuts Climate Emissions

"It commits to set up a Mass Transit Taskforce, which - among other things - should make it easier for more tram and light rail networks to be built."  Writes Campaign for Better Transport.  BUT ...

Trams were used to destroy two West Midlands mainline railways over these last 45 years.

The Merry Hill monorail was never connected to the principal mainline railway, so it soon closed to make way for the Dudley tram (still not arrived!) over 30 years later, which destroyed that London to Edinburgh mainline through the Black Country!

These billions in price and in weight of GHG emissions simply accelerate the Climate Emergency.

Those billions would be better spent on Fare-Free Public Transport for all and not just my age group (I'm 78 yrs old).

Used to entice car commuters out of their cars onto bikes, buses, trains - and the trams we do have.

Used to address Climate catastrophe and resource depletion instead of worsening them in the 101 ways I and others have written about.

INSTEAD, billions are going into 150 miles (240 Kms), 8 lines, 380 tram stops of new West Midlands tram extensions by 2040 (their target date).

The greenhouse effect ...

is related to the complex processes of absorption, circulation and emission of energy by the planet's climate system. The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused irreversible changes in the planet's climate dynamics.

The Christians taught the Jews how ...

to do slaughter on a grand scale in the 1930s and 40s. Over the last 80 years the Jews and Christians have combined to slaughter the Muslims in the Middle East. And, in far greater numbers than Jews/Christians killed by Muslims.

Yet, they are all the Children of Abraham!

Continuing destruction of the second ...

W Midlands mainline railway - now in S Staffordshire between Brownhills and Lichfield, a distance of 12 Kms - is causing more use of cars, faster decline in finite oil reserves and accelerating the heating of the planet's land and oceans.

The first one was for trams at 3 x the expense per Km of other tram construction projects around the world.

That means 3 x the quantity of GHG emissions to further underline the folly of top officers and their cllrs and MPs who rubber stamp their thoughtless, madcap, Trump-like schemes. 

Nothing quite like the idiocy of us humans to make things worse for ourselves! 

'The Making of the Modern Middle East' by Jeremy Bowen

Bowen on British blunders betrayal and duplicity but ... put so diplomatically and gently. The essence of moderation and fairness. Therefore, it comes across as all being accurate, correct and truthful - which it is! 

It has more decades to run - more torture!

Dear Alan (are you a LibDem in Stourbridge?) - it is definitely NOT too late because they wanted 200 Kms by the year 2000 CE and, since Jan 2020, Andy Street (who is very keen on Metro and HS2 extensions) has been working to get 150 miles (240 Kms) by the year 2040!  I've been fighting them (TfWM/WMCA) since about 1990 and count on my pleasant, persistent but irritating opposition as very successfully slowing them down!

MORE DETAILS:

They have been trying to get 200 Kms of tramways to replace or duplicate mainline railways and bus routes since 1981.  By the year 2000 they had precisely 21 Kms, 19 Kms on the first mainline railway destroyed between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton.  By the end of this year, they will add a further 7 Kms when the Dudley Tram, (aka by me as the 'Donald buffoon Trump' tram), opens on the even more important principal mainline railway from London to Edinburgh via Dudley, "the historic capital" of the Black Country.  This is on the unused for passenger trains, 56 Kms (Stourbridge to Burton on Trent) out of the 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.

After​

 Trumpland Transport in the West Midlands since 1981

​for four decades, the 56 Kms has been give over to:

• freight trains as far as Round Oak (coming up from Port Talbot, S Wales)
• Very Light Rail (VLR) test track
• VLR innovation centre and HQ for VLR - yet another!
• ​cycle-walkway
  
• fresh air
• by December 2026, with a bit of luck, the fantastic Dudley Tram.  It will have taken them only 7 years of actual work on the ground, for 6.7 Kms of tramway on a railway​
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  ​would you believe!

​Hence, I think, I am right to call these shenanigans​ or Trump-like stupidity, ​the UK's biggest and longest running scandal in UK finance/transport history.  And it has yet more decades to run!

Am I right, Alan or, am I completely deluded and out of my aging, weakening mind in writing about all this?  Please tell me why the LibDems (David Shepherd is one notable example) have never agreed with me and, therefore, shown no support or help.

This green canal embankment is now a rock and stone horror show, as in this before photo:​

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​Best wishes

FROM: www.HerbEppel.uk

"If you’re interested in how we get to 100% renewables have a look at a new University of Oxford report, co-authored by Jan Rosenow, which advocates electrifying industrial operations using existing and emerging technologies — such as huge heat pumps, thermal batteries, electric-resistance heaters, induction tech, and plasma-based systems —all able to run on an increasingly clean grid  and a vast potential to reduce companies’ fossil-fuel exposure."

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-industry/industry-fuel-shocks-electrifying

My Thought of the Century from Rev Lucy Winkett

Early one morning last week, I was taking a walk from the church to the park in central London where I live. I walked down Waterloo Place, named after the battle more than 200 years ago when on a June Sunday, 60,000 casualties and thousands of horses were killed on a muddy field in present day Belgium. Past the memorial to the war in Crimea fought three decades later when hundreds of thousands of men died, many from infected wounds.

Historic acknowledgement of terrible bloodshed collided with the present day as I noticed a new statue, as yet without too many crowds to see it, had appeared overnight. We now know it was put there by Banksy.

Up on a plinth is a well fed man, dressed in a western style business suit. In his right hand, he holds high a huge flag. His other hand is in a fist. He is marching forward. But the flag he’s carrying has blown into his face and he can’t see where he’s going. As the viewer, we witness his next step taking him off the plinth, marching into thin air. One more step and he will fall.

The man’s distinctive posture lionises individual autonomy, allied with what seems to be a determination to dominate in the name of whatever’s on the flag he’s holding. But the flag, presumably the reason he’s marching in the first place, is itself the very reason he can’t see the way ahead.

I found myself addressing the man as he towered over me…. Sir – you’re holding your flag up proudly but you can’t see where you’re going. I don’t know what made you think you should be up there, but you don’t have to stay. Now, the only way is down.

But when you’re scrambling to get up - in the mud of the wars similar to the ones that are commemorated all around you – there’s a chance you could recover yourself, and turn your flag, no doubt colourful and vibrant, into a symbol of a different kind of unity. You could use it to bind the wounds of war, to wipe the face of Christ on his way to be crucified. You could use it to make shade in the heat, bring warmth in the cold.

In addressing the man in my mind, I thought of the prodigal son in Jesus’s parable, leaving his community to seek autonomy, marching off his own particular plinth, finding to his surprise, off his pedestal, that his father still welcomed him home. I found myself feeling compassion for hubristic and lonely humanity, as we consistently choose domination over cooperation, clenched fists not open hands.

And for evoking these reflections, I thanked God for the inventiveness of artists, who in these bellicose and dysregulated times, powerfully and provocatively show us another way.

American Evangelicals are Trump's core base!

Too shocking for words!!

The Olympics of Art

The Venice Biennale 2026 - "a large scale, contemporary, international arts exhibition held every two years in Venice."

'Today' interview on 6 May

Sir Anish said, "Let me start by commending these five incredibly courageous women who form the jury of selection for the Biennale.  For having the courage to say 'We resign rather than consider these two countries, Israel and Russia for the prizes given out at the Biennale.  I am saying they should have included the USA because of their horrendous politics of hate and the ceaseless warmongering that gone on now for the last many months.  One of the things that is said in this or the unspoken vision here that these curators articulate is that culture matters.  That culture is a forum through which politics is influenced.  That is one of the great things, so that it is no longer just entertainment at the Bienale.  We are now talking some other serious question."

INTERVIEWER: Some say that Art should be separate from politics.

"Well, they are wrong.  It seems to me that many things that artists do is to try to articulate other agendas for our inner psychic consideration.  Empathy with those destroyed by war.  Empathy with the millions living in poverty.  The dispossesed and the hundreds of millions refugees in the world.  The environment ...  This is part of what these five courageous ladies are articulating."

INTERVIEWER: We have to reflect American culture.  We have to reshape culture to reflect Donald Trump's image.  An insistence that the US artists at the Bienale must reflect American values.

"Well there you go.  That is utterly disgusting and I will not mince my words.  What an utter shame that the artists they chose and the artists themselves - and I do not criticise the artists who tried to set aside from this - that the White House pushes its agenda in this cultural sphere.  It is absolutely horrid."

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor CBE RA (born 12 March 1954) is a British [2] sculptor