The headlines say the UK is investing £4.7 billion in defence. I call it warfare. Why aren’t we investing in diplomacy? Why aren’t we investing in STOPPING a war from happening?
In Gaza, horrors continue. This is an excerpt from the Refuser Solidarity Network’s latest bulletin (RFN is an organisation that supports conscientious objectors in Israel):
In Colorado, there is good news. Jewish Voice for Peace reports the success of their support for a Democratic candidate who cares about what is happening to Palestinians. (For your info, AIPAC is a very powerful pro-Israel lobbying group)
Here at Hepworth Towers, we call a genocide a genocide and we don’t believe in war.
And our garden is taking over. I call it a garden, but it looks more like an abandoned park, or even a meadow. It is so untidy, with clumps of flowers flopping and draping everywhere. It’s a wonderful exuberant mess. But also a little disreputable. Imagine all my borders looking like this one.
The sweet peas are flowering, and the wildflower patches I sowed are also starting to bloom. The gooseberries want picking - a job I hate because of the prickles - and the blackcurrants are ripening so soon it will be jam time.
On the painting front, I have four paintings in an exhibition in Ashbourne Town Hall.
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| Photo by Valerie Dalling |
They are all for sale, but I won’t find out if any have sold until I go in Saturday for the last day of the exhibition, when I’m on duty as a steward. Fingers crossed.
The last thing I want to say is…I have just read a wonderful book, (well actually I listened to it on Audible while I was painting and I LOVED it) - The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans.
Do any of you have any book recommendations?
3 comments:
Desperate diplomacy failed with Hitler. It has been tried with Putin and the other two, I'm sure, and failed again. The problem is that they aren't sane. How can you reason with insane people? And two of them seem to have partitioned the world for themselves, and one of those has said repeatedly that Europe is on its own from now on. We have to hope that signaling to the other one that he would be opposed if he tried anything funny will be enough to prevent worse. But sadly Europe needs to be able to defend itself. Where would Ukraine be now if it hadn't? I know, it's awful to reach our seventies and find that nothing has changed after all when we'd believed all our lives that we had actually learned and made progress. I never believed that Ukraine would be invaded and cried with disbelief when it was. As for the Middle East, it's as much of a shameful blot on humanity's record as the concentration camps were.
On a much happier note, have you read Remarkably Bright Creatures? It's lovely. Colette in New Brunswick.
Thank you for the book recommendation. Unfortunately I can’t get on with magic realism.
As for the armament issue, I accept your points about insanity. But I think that diplomacy and peace making and negotiation should be an ongoing permanent feature of the way countries operate, not just at times of war. Plus, the U.K. is not under threat and the fabric of the country is falling apart, and the money would be better spent on improving the lives of the British people rather than lining the pockets of arms dealers.
Your borders continue to be nothing short of glorious! Such good news about Colorado! I do not have any sense of what the solution to all the horrors will or should be. I feel so strongly though that we ( the world) need to be able to recognise when something is wrong. Not wrong for me, or wrong some days but WRONG. A kind of baseline on which to base actions and decisions. I read the final John le Carré, Silverview recently and it gave me pleasure
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