With the travel and visits in the past 2 months, and only fleeting access to the internet, I have not been able to make any comments about what’s happening in the world – particularly in the waters off Gaza and in southern Kyrgyzstan. On the murders of Turk humanitarians by SAS people, all I can say in response to the pathetic rationalisation of the murderers is how do the Israelis expect people to behave when they launch an attack on a defenceless ship? A few days later I read of how the Nazis had treated the residents of a village whose men-folk had dared defend themselves against their attack in the early 1940s. They massacred the women and children – just like the Israelis. How quickly do the victims become the perpetrators!
We all knew in Bishkek in 2005 just how many guns there were in the Osh area – but horrifying how quickly they have been used to institute ethnic killings on a Yugoslav scale. And Putin’s Russia just stands by and watches – as they did on the edge of Warsaw in 1945. When will we ever learn? For the human aspects of the situation there read this Spiegel piece-
And I was stunned to learn of the death of Fred Halliday who wrote so eloquently about the middle east.Open Democracy has a tribute which gives a good sense of what we have lost see -
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