October 2025

As a small child I lived in Scotland between Aberdeen  and Inverness and not far from Forres. This is Macbeth country. After school, we  would fight  each other  in  fatal battles with branches from trees and bellow at our opponents  “Lay on Macduff, and dammed be him who first cries,  Hold. Enough ”  We screamed  “How far to Forres?”  without knowing why!  I learned  about a King being  murdered in Inverness Castle. My Mum took me there, but I never saw the blood from King Duncan’s  assassination. But from my friends blabber  I still recall that strong rhythm. “The Thane of Fife had a wife.”  HowRead More →

VICTIMS OF VICTIMS… ..is not from me.  Edward Said, a  Palestinian-American  Scholar, who died in 2003 was writing  about Zionism, the Jews and the Palestinians.   It needs to be noted that Edward Said acknowledged that millions of Jews were persecuted, killed and butchered in Nazi Germany. This phrase captures the core irony Said identified: a people who suffered profound persecution in Europe (Jews) established a nation through the dispossession of another people (Palestinians). Zionism thinking worked for many years to establish a permanent home for Jews. The British helped with their Balfour Declaration and  in 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into separate JewishRead More →

If you rearrange the letters in the word  “silent” you can form “listen”. It would be good if the present three-headed coalition  government had listened more to the nation and followed past principles on our record for caring for Human Rights. Palestine  did exist before 1948, and even the Gorgon, Netanyahu, cannot deny that.  Israel did not exist before 1948.  And what about  the promised equality from the long gone Balfour Declaration? Israel is silent on that part of the promise. So is New Zealand Recently my country  shamed itself by sitting and wetting its pants  on the political fence which is dripping with theRead More →