Will Alex suggest to HMG that our policy should be for both sides to renounce and dismantle nukes/WMD and even 2,000 Km missiles to end the war?
After nearly 4,000 years of off and on violence and warfare in the over 4,000 years of Bible narrative, we have to recognise that both activities are the norm for the people of the Bible and for humanity as a whole, throughout our short time on the planet.
"There are around a hundred Old Testament passages where the use of force is commanded. Around one third of the psalms reference warfare." Andrew Ollerton: 'God's Book', p 89, pub 2025
The Bible's 4,000 years is of the children of Abram/Abraham falling out big time in battling it out over one patch of land. The two warring factions are - the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel on the one side; and, Abram's first born, Ishmael on the other. Ishmael is recognised even by the descendants of the second born, Isaac, as being the father of the Muslims.
To the Jews was added, 2,000 years ago, the followers of the Way of Jesus or Christians. So we have the Judeo/Christian world today holding sway over the Middle East, although the Arabs/Muslims are the more dominant faith.
Yet, despite the clear example and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth which was followed by 95% of the early Christians until 300 CE, violence and warfare are the norm, still today. And, especially between Jews and Muslims in that tiny corner of the Middle East known as Israel since 1948.
The Bible is not meant to be the way that warfare must be carried out, as dear Bibi Netanyahu so fondly asserts. The Bible is used to justify disproportionate and indiscriminate slaughter of wholly innocent non-combatants in Gaza and the West Bank. Since, the 28 February 2026, Iranians and Lebanese in even greater numbers. I'm thinking of Amalek and Jericho inspiring friend Bibi.
For me, after, 78 years of being preached at by my dad and now my wife, I really do feel all this makes a complete mockery of morality. It simply isn't good enough.
... taking us all down with them.
Horrible, unstable, unsuitable man in WH. I am ashamed that my gender has produced such a monster. Bibi Netanyahu admires, praises and adores the man. We in the Wild West remain the problem but there is no insight by our leaders.
The problem because of our greedy, selfish interventions over our grab for oil to fuel the 1WW and thereafter never being able to let the Iranians be in charge of oil and themselves. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company but more Anglo than Iranian.
Our man the Shah of Iran was imposed by ourselves but a king the big majority of Iranians hated - he was an oppressor through his secret police and military. Read Bowen: 'The Making of the Modern Middle East'.
With rising prices at the pumps from the war on Iran and Gulf energy facilities, should the best kind of transport revolution be to urgently transition
I think Balfour did not help but it was an ambivalent, all things to all men document that meant that the promise of a homeland was contradicted or, certainly, made very difficult by the safeguards for the Palestinians in the second half of the declaration.
I understand my magnificent, cycling into work everyday, hands on compassionate NURSE at your hospital and my son in law, is facing a £60 parking fine.
A massive parking fine when for years he has cycled from near Pontesbury into your hospital, in all weathers, to cut back on car pollution and car commuting which accelerate all the ecological problems I am all too aware of.
The guy does, so often, work an extra one hour on top of his 14 hour shift because any decent person cannot leave vulnerable patients suffering when time is up.
Tim Willson only drove because he crashed on an icy road and found the bike was impossible to cycle onwards. He therefore had to quickly rush home to get the car. Unfamiliar with all the parking regulations he faces a £60 fine, I'm told.
I will pay the fine if you still insist on imposing it - and most unfairly, too. I urge you to think of this nurse and his essential, humanitarian work and cancel it, please.
One side, the Islamists/Jihadists, openly wish to kill every Jew to express their hatred for what is being done to them. The other side, our side, has exactly the same intent to slaughter them but, we actually do it!
For eight decades the Islamists and Jihadists have been threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and to kill every Jew. Therefore, the Jews of Israel, America and the West have found that their patience has worn thin and Israel and America are hitting back (as ever!) in this pre-emptive war on Iran and its three proxies who are also fighting back showing how, indeed, they wish to kill every Jew. Actions speak louder than words. And our Judeo-Christian side is better at actions. They are better at words, threats but, will retaliate.
Violence, aggression, warfare, stealing land, slavery slaughter and oppression are the hallmarks of Western ways down the centuries. And the Brits in Iran for 125 years have behaved abominably! Read Jeremy brilliant Bowen, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East' (2022) in the chapter called, 'In the Name of God'. Find 9/11 insights, too in the chapter 'Ground Zero'.
Bowen wrote, "Iranians learn about British imperialism at school. Iran's dysfunctional relationship with the Western world is rooted in the interventions of Britain and America. As always with powerful nations, their actions were designed to protect and promote their own interests." p 111 onwards is important.
How does an ethical/honourable apologist, as I try to be, answer that appalling, immoral, interventionist foreign policy of self-serving consistent hypocrisy, misbehaviour, disaster and tragedy for the human race?!
Eight more rounds/decades to see which side can kill the most people? The winner wins? Human ecocide, in fact, is what will result.
I was upset to hear from my daughter last night that she had to bring home her heavy duty chain and lock that she uses every week to lock her bike at your station as part of her commute into Sandwell.
It is essential that more people leave the car at home and use bike, bus and train to get into work. Not just because of Climate but also because of finite fossil fuels of which oil is more important for the 101 other essential uses than for burning in transport.
Every working day on 95% occasions from the early 1990s to 2013 when I finally retired, I was using my bike to get into work and for my social work visits as a Brum city council social worker. I set a very good example to you younger workers in relying on bikes to get around.
If you so dislike seeing in use cycle chains and locks on the floor of your station, you must install a bike lock rail at hand height for these unused chain/locks to be fixed to away from the floor.
My daughter already has a heavy laptop in her bike bag and it is totally unreasonable for cyclists like her to have to lug around a very heavy cycle chain and lock, as well.
I hope you will reply to this and reassure me that cyclists will not be penalised by your unfortunate action yesterday, which simply encourages cycle commuters to take to the car instead. For environmental/ecological reasons we have to reduce personal car use.
A shining example of Security officers supporting cycling!
Earlier this decade I cycled into the Millennium Centre in Brum city centre and locked my bike to the cycle stand there. I came back at the end of the day to find my precious bike further secured with the Security officers D-lock, with a note explaining why, and with the phone number for me to ring them to come and unlock their D-lock. How thoughtful and decent of them! Ever since I've been using my own D-lock.
On submission: If you have any other questions, please call us on 03333 211 202
EXTRACTS:
"Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.
...
"In the current oppressive climate, even to exist as a Palestinian in western society is to be the target of aggression and suspicion, to be tainted as a murderer and an antisemite, even if your ambitions stretch little further than cooking food and serving coffee.
"Does any of this move the dial in the occupied territories even one iota? Almost certainly not. But perhaps this is simply the nature of an increasingly disenfranchised age. Palestinian activism has arguably never been less capable of exerting a meaningful influence on global events, and so is increasingly defined by small acts of petty symbolism. A smashed window. A provocative sticker. You can’t lay a glove on the US-Israeli military-industrial complex, and you can’t get your local council to boycott Israeli goods, and you couldn’t stand with Palestine Action and the protest march on Sunday has been banned by the Metropolitan police. So some people then direct their ire at the bakery with distant links to Israeli security funding.
"Food – the access to it, the denial of it, the culture and tradition it represents – has become a recurrent theme of this forever war, one with multiple resonances. And so Faten and Mahmoud will carry on hosting their supper clubs, feeding the people of north London, existing in a world where their very existence is threatened.
"The falafel, the lentil soup, the upside-down chicken: these are blunt and frankly inadequate tools of defiance. But when they’re among the few things you have left, you may as well use them."
Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist
FAO Alex Ballinger MP and yourself please Stewart - I think, you both need to read the lessons learnt which Jeremy Bowen pinpoints in these pages, 129 to 131 (attached at the foot). Lessons/wisdom, please, to pass on and up to our American friends so that we don't keep on repeating the same follies and idiocies of death and destruction decade after decade.
The tragedy of Jews v Arabs when they are all descended from Abram/Abraham
Here is the proof of the crucial part the Bible plays in reinforcing Israel's intention never to share the Land with any other tribe, faith or faction. No Palestine, ever. And, ideally, no Iran to threaten God's nation of Israel by its (Iran's) very existence - 1,074 miles away in a straight line.
I have read all of Bibi Netanyahu's 654 page magnificent tome and enjoyed it: 'Bibi: My Story' (pub 2022). He believes that his ancestor Abram/Abraham, was given the land after he moved (1900 BCE) from Ur of the Chaldeans to Canaan, or the Levant, at the Mediterranean end of the Fertile Crescent. Bibi is convinced Abram got there first to claim the land in Canaan - "north, south, east and west, as far as you can see" - to be his and his descendants who would become a great nation, Israel and, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12) What a way for the Jews/Israelis to be a blessing to their neighbours - by slaughtering them!
Our great ally and friend Bibi, conveniently overlooks that the Bible says that there were other tribes in Canaan when he finally arrived. The Jews' ancestors did not move into an empty land. The Canaanites were one tribe already there - Genesis 12 v 6. In the next verse, the Lord told Abram, "To your descendants I will give this land." And it was and is always by coercion, force and violence, apart from the first, with Abram's family arrival about 1900 BCE - like today perhaps, as unwelcome immigrants.
For Bibi the Bible is historically correct, with no anachronisms or even areas of uncertainty, with the Jewish tribe alone as the legitimate claimant to the Levant/Canaan. No acknowledgement that the OT might be the Hebrew Scriptures, written by them, to give their version of the facts. Bibi has the support of the evangelicals who are equally convinced. The Bible account is crucial in the current thinking and behaviour of Israel's leaders. They are on a mission. They got there first, gained it by aggression for a second time in winning wars over the indigenous tribes, like the Canaanites, Moabites and Ammonites under Joshua, and were duly rewarded by their God in keeping it. Until the Exile.
The Bible is written by about forty Jews and Christians, of how Abraham's son Isaac and his descendants, from Jacob/Israel, have considered themselves as being blessed by the One and Only God who has chosen them to be His Chosen and honoured People and the only Rightful heirs to, and owners of, the Greater Promised Land.
The other son of Abraham is Ishmael who was actually the first born. He was born out of wedlock to slave woman, Hagar and was cast out of the family along with his mother and, against the custom of the day. Ishmael was also to become the father of a great nation - the Arabs. "Jewish and Islamic traditions consider Ishmael to be the ancestor of Arabs.[26]" Wikipedia
No wonder divided humankind is unable to live in peace and harmony despite the promise to Israel to become a great nation and mediating blessings to other peoples. Instead, constant resort to mutual recriminations and violence.
The Bible is crystal clear that it is the Jews/Israelis who alone must have the Promised Land of Canaan. Not the Arabs or Palestinians. Hence, our friend Bibi is so intransigent that his lot are the only Rightful Owners of the unHoly Land. He will forever fight and war over it - into eternity. For the present, he lives in paranoiac fear that his country will be attacked and overrun by Iran with its ballistic missiles and, one day, nukes. "It only takes one nuclear bomb to land on Israel for it to be all over", claim the Israelis to justify their forever war on Iran and its proxies. No attempt at conciliation, friendship and the Good Samaritan approach! They are far more comfortable living with fear of attacks and regular wars (lawn mowing) to control the upstart Arabs, than peace, harmony and goodwill among all their neighbours.
It is so tragic. But it goes to the heart of the human condition - we can never share, equitably, the earth and its resources. Forever wars. Forever divided in hatred and fear. There is unlikely to be a happy ending when the evangelicals are longing for Armageddon and the return of Christ to well and truly End everything. They and Bibi/Trump are going the right way about it. timweller1@gmail.com
(Sources: Bible; 'How Did We Get Here' on BBC Sounds; and 'The Lion Handbook to the Bible')
THE ONLY RESPONSE:
"Further to your email from this morning, it may be worth pointing out to the Evangelicals, that should there be a Second Coming, Christ would almost certainly condemn the actions of Israel & The USA. Their actions are a complete contradiction to the teachings of Christ.
Such is the fervour of some of the confused & befuddled, they now believe that Trump is Christ's earthly messenger!! God help us."
"Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and leader of the independence movement who pioneered nonviolent resistance (satyagraha or truth-force) against British rule. His campaigns, including the Champaran and Kheda Satyagrahas, the Salt March, and Quit India, mobilized millions. Advocating truth, nonviolence, and self-reliance, he inspired global civil rights movements before his assassination in 1948."
Another right wing nationalist killed Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, just as Gavrilo Princip was also right wing in June 1914 shooting dead the heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungary Empire.
Three right wing nationalists murdering internationally renowned leaders. Are left wing types like me, just as bad?!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/
Not only has our gas reliance left Britain with some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, it’s also fuelling rising temperatures, floods, fires, storms and droughts caused by climate breakdown. [2]
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Homegrown, renewable energy like wind and solar is actually cheaper than gas. And they rely on the sun and wind, rather than imported fuels affected by wars, supply crunches and political shocks abroad.
Every war has been a disaster and led to bitterness, revenge and more war. And to the killing of people like me who understand the immorality and pointlessness of it all.
Extracts from chapter 10, 'In the Name of God'
Many Iranians are suspicious of the intentions of foreign governments. At the top of the list are America, Israel and Britain.
The UK's long history of meddling in Iran's affairs.
Iranians learn about British imperialism at school. Iran's dysfunctional relationship with the Western world is rooted in the interventions of Britain and America. As always with powerful nations, their actions were designed to protect and promote their own interests.
Britain took control of the waters of the Gulf between Arabia and Iran in the 1820s to stop pirates attacking shipping on the route to India. The discovery of oil in southern Iran in 1908 changed everything, putting the Middle East front and centre in the minds of the leaders of the great powers, where it has stayed ever since. ... oil was a strategic resource as important as steel or coal had been in the 19th century, much too precious to be left to the people who lived on top of it.
Churchill regarded Britain's near monopoly of Iranian oil as one of his greatest achievements. The deal D'arcy had made in 1901 netted him another fortune as well as providing bundles of money for Britain's exchequer and cheap oil for the Royal Navy. It was a disaster for Iran, and not just financially; Britain's outsize influence distorted Iranian politics for decades.
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, paid more in taxes to the UK government than it paid in royalties to Iran. ... Iranians were not trusted to do the company's big jobs. ... Senior Europeans lived in re-creations of English suburbia on the coasts of the Gulf ... while workers had terraced houses with high walls and tiny courtyards. The worst place was a shanty town known as 'Paper City' (officially Abadan) which was without electricity or running water and was a haven for rats.
The Iranian oil industry created Iran's first industrial working class. In the winter of 1978-79, Abadan was one of the cities that rose against the Shah.
In 1941, the British and Soviets invaded and removed Reza Shah - they suspected he was a Nazi sympathiser - replacing him with his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The young shah was not invited to the dinner or the conference.
Britain's domination of Iranian oil was an obvious target for Iranians fed up with meddling foreigners making fortunes at their expense ... Losing control of Iranian oil would kick away another leg of Britain's rickety pretensions to world power.
Despite their fierce disagreements, the importance of breaking the hold of Britain on their country's oil industry and natural resources was something they could all understand.
By the time the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company offered to split the profits with the Tehran government, it was too late. In 1951 the company was nationalised. Two years of crisis followed as the British fought to regain some kind of control. They deployed the Royal Navy to blockade Iran's oil exports. As the economy shrank, Mossadeq's enemies gathered.
By 1953, the British and the Americans decided that the time had come to end Iran's democratic experiment. The CIA and MI6 plotted a coup to restore the status quo in Iran.
Once Mossadeq was ousted, the Shah returned and imposed arbitrary and increasingly authoritarian rule, setting Iran down a path that led to revolution in 1979. Iranians and critics of the US and its allies point to the 1953 coup as the epitome of mid-century imperialism.
The removal of Mossadeq had consequences that were still felt several years on. Opponents of the Islamic Republic believe the coup snuffed out Iran's chance to develop a democracy. The wound in the Iranian psyche caused by foreign meddling was deepened by the memory of the United States removing Mossadeq in league with the fading British imperialists.
The Shah was an autocrat at the head of a vicious police state that allowed no political freedom. The secret police was notorious for brutality, arbitrary arrests and the disappearance of the regime's opponents.
Unsound minds and wrong thinking are drivers of conflict:
Letter to the Times:
Why does Professor Richard Dawkins begrudge us our delusions? Knowledge is not necessarily a solution.
If I believe that my husband adores me, whereas in fact, he regards me as a part of the furniture, who benefits by having this explained to me?
There is universal benefit in a simple thought that there is a last resort to which one appeals when desperate. Millions do this and have this need.
Mary G Evans, Devon
Jude Weller-Redfern wrote: "An interesting view on the belief in God. Pragmatism par excellence!"
from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reza-Shah-Pahlavi
"After centuries of misrule by its former rulers and the ravages of the war waged by foreign belligerents on its soil from 1914 to 1919, Iran in 1921 was prostrate, ruined, and on the verge of disintegration.
"The cabinet was weak and corrupt. Patriotic and nationalist elements had long been outraged at the domination of Iran by foreign powers, especially Great Britain and Russia, both of which had strong commercial and strategic interest in the country.
In 1928 he put an end to the one-sided agreements and treaties with foreign powers, abolishing all special privileges. He built the Trans-Iranian Railway and started branch lines toward the principal cities (1927–38). He emancipated women and required them to discard their veils (1935). He took control of the country’s finances and communications, which up to then had been virtually in foreign hands. He built roads, schools, and hospitals and opened the first university (1934). His measures were directed at the same time toward the democratization of the country and its emancipation from foreign interference.
His foreign policy, which had consisted essentially of playing the Soviet Union off against Great Britain, failed when those two powers joined in 1941 to fight the Germans. To supply the Soviet forces with war material through Iran, the two allies jointly occupied the country in August 1941.
Iranian Revolution, popular uprising in Iran in 1978–79 that resulted in the toppling of the monarchy on February 11, 1979, and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic. It involved the participation of a wide range of Iranians—from the secular left to the religious right—who sought an end to the shah’s autocracy and Western interference in the country’s policies.
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from https://www.britannica.com/topic/US-Iran-Relations-A-Timeline
To say that the relationship between the governments of the United States and Iran has been volatile over the last 80 years is to master the art of understatement.
The U.S. installed and propped up a highly unpopular leader, endured the trauma of having citizens held hostage by the government that ousted him, surreptitiously sold arms to that same government less than a decade later, and branded Iran as part of an “axis of evil” before trying to solidify a global deal for nuclear restriction. Then, in 2026, Pres. Donald Trump ordered attacks on Iran that killed its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The dizzying nature of these events can leave anyone wondering, “How did we get here?” Here’s a look at how a once-promising international relationship devolved into one defined by searing images, hostile rhetoric, and bloodshed.
The coup, backed by the CIA and British intelligence, overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, August 1953.
