It is the easiest thing to feel the pressure and fall back in line. It is sometimes hard to walk in the opposite direction, but it is sometimes the true road , and you will know because you will be following your conscience, As long as you have that , you will never walk alone
Gaza, a genocide, while the West watches and indeed participatesin.
As we navigate through the complexities of our world, one region continues to capture global attention and concern: Gaza. The situation there is not just a recent development; it is the culmination of decades of conflict, oppression, and suffering that many argue constitutes a creeping genocide, particularly since Israel’s establishment in 1948. This week, I delve deeper into the historical context and the current humanitarian crisis that has left the people of Gaza in dire straits.
The World This Week From Mennies: A Reflection on Gaza
A Historical Perspective
To understand the present, we must first revisit the past. In 1947, the United Nations proposed a partition plan aimed at resolving the ongoing conflict between Jewish and Arab populations in Palestine. This plan was met with mixed reactions, and ultimately, in 1948, Israel declared independence, leading to the first Arab-Israeli war. The war resulted in significant territorial gains for Israel and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, an event referred to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Since then, the Palestinian people have faced a series of challenges: dispossession of land, restrictions on movement, and military occupation. The establishment of settlements in the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza, and the perpetual state of conflict have all contributed to a systematic erosion of Palestinian rights and dignity. Many activists and scholars argue that what has transpired over the decades represents a slow but deliberate attempt to erase Palestinian identity and existence—a creeping genocide.
Current Conditions in Gaza
Fast forward to today, and the situation in Gaza is nothing short of catastrophic. The blockade imposed by Israel since 2007 has turned this small strip of land into one of the most densely populated and impoverished areas in the world. Reports from various humanitarian organizations highlight alarming conditions: chronic shortages of food, clean water, and essential medical supplies. The infrastructure is crumbling, and the economy is in tatters, with unemployment rates soaring.
As we look around, we see the harrowing images of families struggling to survive amidst famine-like conditions. Children, who should be playing and learning, are instead facing malnutrition and a lack of basic healthcare. The psychological toll of living under constant threat and instability cannot be overstated. Many people in Gaza have known little else but hardship and despair.
The International Response
Despite the overwhelming evidence of human suffering, the international response has often been tepid. While there are calls for humanitarian aid and a ceasefire, the underlying political issues remain unresolved. The narrative surrounding Gaza is frequently polarized, with many failing to grasp the historical injustices that have led to the current crisis.
In recent weeks, protests have erupted worldwide, demanding an end to the blockade and calling for justice for the Palestinian people. Activists are urging governments to take a more active role in advocating for human rights, emphasizing that the plight of Gaza cannot be overlooked any longer.
Looking Forward
As I reflect on the situation in Gaza this week, it’s crucial to recognise the importance of awareness and advocacy. The history of the region is complex, and the challenges faced by its people are immense. However, as global citizens, we are responsible for amplifying their voices and pushing for meaningful change.
In conclusion, the situation in Gaza is a stark reminder of the consequences of historical injustices and the urgent need for collective action. It is a call to conscience for all of us to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, to demand accountability, and to strive for a future where peace and justice can prevail.
As we move forward, let us not forget the lessons of the past and the cries for help echoing from Gaza. The world is watching, and it is up to us to ensure that these voices are heard and that change is not just hoped for, but actively pursued.
Well, folks another week in and as far as world events are concerned, a most unpleasant week it has been with further evidence of the incursions of the West in other countries affairs having extremely adverse effects on these countries.
Let me start with the US for although I have many dear friends who live in the US, I fear they suffer from extremely bad governments, and not only the people who live there but unfortunately, people all over the world.
I could probably write a book on the foreign policy disasters of the US, but don’t worry, I won’t, or at least not tonight anyway. However, it does seem that any country with reasonable natural resources is at risk of the US installing “democracy” in that country normally by way of NGOs ( Non-Governmental Organisations.
Yes, that is what they do, they set up these groups (generally through the good offices of the CIA) who look for merging areas of dissent. They then pour money into these small groups, making them big groups, and before you know where you are you have insurgent groups trying to oust governments. As happened in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, etc., etc. Sometimes of course they dispense with the formalities as they did in Afghanistan, and Vietnam, etc. etc, and simply invade the country, usually preceded by a false flag incident such as the Gulf of Tonkin or 9/11, where they blamed an ex-employee who had a Kalashnikov, a pair of sandals and was holed up in a cave in the Tora Bora mountains with a Nokia analog phone on which he planned the whole thing. For Al Quida read MOSAD.
Ok, so to cut a long story short, my American friends have chosen the short straw in choosing leaders and this year have the choice between Genocide Joe Biden who should be in a care home, and Donald Trump who should be in a lunatic asylum.
The UK
We in the UK had the good news today that our economy is in recession. The only surprising thing about that is that it took so long. The reason is that we started in 2016 when as an act of public suicide we left the EU and became a candidate for the next third world economy.
Now that was it seems, not bad enough, so a couple of years ago we then followed the US ( as per usual) and placed huge sanctions on Russia who supplied most of Europe with cheap gas and oil. As well as grain and agricultural products. Mind you the EU was as bad and now they are in an awful state with Germany almost crippled financially as after the US blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline they had to depend on the US for gas supplies and Uncle Sam readily agreed to supply them at four times the price they had been getting from Russia. Talk about stupidity. Now Germany ( and the UK for that matter) are talking about going to war with Russia, taking idiocy to a new level.
We have a general election this year and it is going to be a laugh, because we have a choice between a Tory government that supports genocide in Palestine and who has gotten the country into a bloody mess, with its corrupt practices and a Labor party under “Sir “ Kier Starmer who’s family are Jewish and is firmly implanted into the rectum of the other genocidal nut Netanyahu of the manufactured country of Israel. Starmer says he talks daily on the phone with Netanyahu.
So, not a lot going for the UK at the moment.
Palestine
This brings me to Palestine and I really do not know what further I can say about these poor people. There is mass slaughter of Palestinians being perpetrated by Israel. They have ignored a judgment of the International Court of Justice, which instructed them not to continue killing Palestinians in a manner that could form Genocide.
They just go on and on ignoring all forms of humanity in their desperation to establish a greater Israel.
World opinion is speedily going against Israel but the problem is that meanwhile, the slaughter goes on. There are 195 countries in the world and only about 25 of them support Israel by way of designating Hamas as a terrorist organization. The rest, and the UN recognize Hamas as the elected government of Gaza and a resistance force.
In the north, we have the West Bank which borders Lebanon. There we have Hezbollah who are much stronger than Hamas and have been returning the aggression shown by Israel in no uncertain manner. These soldiers are battle-hardened by years of fighting in Syria against ISIS which is a terrorist organization formed by both Israel And the US. Israel will do anything to prevent an all-out war with Hezbollah.
In the bible, it reads that the end days will come with a final battle at Armageddon where good will battle evil. Armageddon is at Mount Megiddo. It is in Northern Israel.
So to all my friends the world over I wish you a pleasant weekend among all this doom and gloom brought to you by politicians the world over. Time for a pint and I will leave you with one of my wee quotes
Sit in the same place for long enough and the whole world will pass you by. You will, however, probably be arrested for vagrancy.
The state of the United States. Ukraine. Rosa. Palestine
The state of the United States
Well, folks here we are at the end of another week, and what a week, so let’s start with the US and what a state it is in.
There is an election this year and you have a choice between Joe Biden, a guy who struggles to remember his own name or where he is going at times, who has a son with a penchant for cooking. Not food I might add, but cocaine as well as a relationship with some very seedy Ukrainian “businessmen” in a Ukrainian company called Burisma who were supplying him with $50,000 per month whilst his daddy was Barack Obama’s number 2. It is I am sure pure coincidence that Genocide Joe has supplied Ukraine with funds in the region of $75 billion. Which as a by-product, has also made the Ukrainian president and one-time comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a multi-billionaire property magnet.
The other choice is of course Trump, a guy who also has a job putting intelligible sentences together, not because of senile dementia like Genocide Joe but simple stupidity. The man is as thick as two short planks, as was displayed a few years back when he decided to come to Scotland, his ancestral home ( something we in Scotland like to keep secret), and build a golf course at Balmedie. He was rather upset when an owner of a small holding refused to sell his property to him and even more upset when he discovered that he could do nothing about it, so he ended up building the course around David Milne’s small holding resplendent in the prominent exhibition of the flag of Mexico.
Both of them of course are fatally shackled to the cause of Israel which in itself is a very compelling reason that neither of them is worth a single vote from the basically good people of America.
So, to all of my friends in the good old US of A, my condolences, as it would seem, on the surface of things that you do not have a lot going for you at the moment.
Ukraine
Well what can I say, but I told you so. Ukraine is on the point of collapse and hopefully with it will also come the beginning of the collapse of NATO which has been a willing participant in the war with Russia.
If that happens, it will be the start of a peaceful world as NATO led by the USA has been responsible for virtually all wars on the planet for the last 40 years and they are getting worse with their support for the genocide in Palestine.
Rosa
I had a call from my 14-year-old granddaughter Rosa last week, she was in tears and extremely distraught. She was worried about a war starting with Russia. I went across to her house and sat down with her and asked what had brought this on.
She took out her phone and clicked on one of her social media accounts which was full of politicians beating their chests about the need to go to war with Russia. One of the most prominent was our illustrious Minister for Defense, Grant Shapps, who had just been all over social media and indeed the BBC ( British Bullshit Company) which is the propaganda arm of whatever government happens to be in power.
His latest gem was that he thought the UK ( hopefully by then, minus Scotland) would be at war with Russia within 20 years and he had come up with the idea that a senior citizens reserve army should be raised, presumably to clear up the nuclear waste, which will be all that is left of the country if we try to invade Russia. What an absolute idiotic moron.
I told her that this clown was a politician, worse than that, a Tory politician. Now this is an election year, and the Tories are the most unpopular party in the country. Mainly because of the mess they have made of things, including dragging us out of the EU and the utter mess they made of the Covid situation which started in 2020 together with the mass corruption with many of the Tory politicians suddenly being directors of businesses specifically set up to provide the NHS with covid related products, thereby making hundreds of millions out of the sheer misery most families had to go through. Most of these businesses then went into administration after their assets had been plundered.
“So, Rosa”, I said “the Tories are very unpopular and most likely to be ousted from power in the upcoming election. So what do politicians do when they are unpopular and wish to continue on the gravy train that politicians travel on? They strike fear into the general population because when people are frightened, they are inclined to cling to what they have. After all, to change is a step into the unknown”.
That is exactly the tactics the Tories are employing. They know we are not going to war with Russia because they also know that if we did, our army would be slaughtered. They ignominiously had to ask the US if we could withdraw our forces from Helmand in Afghanistan in 2014. That was against a bunch of farmers and poppy growers with AK 47s and the occasional RPG launcher, so god knows what Shapes was thinking of when he hatched his brainwave of going to war with Russia.
“No Rosa,” I said, “we are not going to war with Russia, that is a figment of imagination in a demented mind”. This is what politicians do to control and it is awful, they should be ashamed of themselves.
By the way, the alternative to Sunak, our present prime minister is “Sir” Keir Rodney Starmer the leader of the Labour party a man who does not have a clue of how to run a raffle never mind a country and he is firmly planted up the backside of the Jewish lobby thereby supporting the present genocide in Palestine.
Palestine.
Well despite the ruling of the ICJ that Israel was on no account to continue with acts that could construe Genocide, they ignore that and continue to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the crime of the Century and the West is complicit in this.
Now, Israel is desperate to bring the US into the war they have started on the poor people of Palestine and they are shit scared that Iran will become a nuclear state before very long, which would mean that they no longer are the sole owners of the final solution. ( ironic isn’t it). So they are working overtime to bring Genocide Joe into the fray, although he had been a willing partner in the awful slaughter to date by supplying the weaponry and ammunition that have been used to slaughter more than 27,000 Palestinians since October 7.
Now Israel has been slaughtering Palestinians since the formation of the artificial Israeli state in 1948 under the auspices of first the League of Nations and then the newly formed United Nations. Before then and since about 1935 Jewish people and more especially Zionist Jews had been emigrating from all over Europe and the USA to Palestine and in the main been made welcome.
They returned this hospitality by starting terrorist organizations such as Irgun and Stern gang who were not only responsible for various massacres of their Palestinian hosts’ but also, of British soldiers and police who were there to administer the Palestinian territories on behalf of firstly the League of Nations and then the United nations.
So Israel is no stranger to terrorism as the Israeli state was founded on terrorism.
So what have we today? Well on the 7 October, we had a group of resistance fighters go back into occupied Palestinian territory to attempt to remove a part of the Israeli army of occupation, as since 1948 Israel, through occupation and illegal settlements had increased the borders of Israel by a factor of about 7.
Israel was well aware of this impending attack as they had been warned by the intelligence services of Egypt. Not only that but their own intelligence service, Mossad was also well aware of the impending attack. Several days before the attack, the Israeli stock market was the subject of irregular short selling ( that is selling shares in a company before actually owning them, then buying them a few days later after that had fallen because of some unusual event at a much lower price. These shares were in companies that would have suffered losses because of the attack by Hamas, therefore the people involved in the short selling could have very well, known of the attack in advance.
So the rest is short-term history, Israel took advantage of the attack to go to war after inventing incredible stories of slaughtered babies and civilians, most of whom were actually killed by Israeli forces employing the Hannibal protocol which is the killing of hostages held by a terrorist group to also kill the terrorists.
Israel has not done very well on the ground as they are great at killing civilians including children with their massive advantage of air and artillery power.
They have been bombing various other countries such as Lebanon and Syria in the hope of bringing America into the war but they have a big problem with getting supplies through the Red Sea as Yemen has all but stopped all freight transport heading for Israel, and all over the middle east there have been attacks on US bases because of the US’s mindless support for the Genocide being carried out in Gaza, so all is certainly not going Israels way.
I think that a ceasefire will be agreed upon in the next few days as Israel needs to regroup or attack Hezbollah in the north and in Lebanon and that will open a real can of worms as Hezbollah are no pushover and have plenty of combat experience in Syria. So interesting time ahead, oh and by the way the alleged attack on the American base in Jordan was not in Jordan but was in fact in Syria, where America is there illegally, so the US is now carrying out retaliatory actions for an attack on a base which they occupy against international law.
So today I went into Dundee as there was to be a demonstration on behalf of the poor people of Palestine. Take care all and have a good weekend
Yesterday I tweeted a question to Chris Law the MP for Dundee West regarding any affiliations he had with any Jewish organisations. My concern was that a few weeks ago in Dundee City Square he attempted to give a speech that by all accounts supported Israel.
His answer was to block me. I have therefore sent an email to his parliamentary contact address with an official request for the information.
Here below is the email sent and I will update you with any answer I receive.
Hi Chris
Bob Costello here, remember me? I am the guy who helped you get where you are in the British parliament. Firstly in respect of the assistance I gave you during the independence campaign in 2014, when I took your 40-year-old fire engine into our workshops to renovate it including a full strip and re-spry thereby turning it into the Spirit Of Independence for you to use touring the country during the campaign. This, completely free of charge.
I remember remarking to Jamie ( my son) that you had more ambitious plans in mind and you would probably be using the campaign to further your political ambitions.
once the campaign was over you then indeed set about furthering your political ambitions and again I assisted in first your selection as a candidate and then through campaigning through the Yes Bus Team for your successful election to parliament.
Cast your mind back to the night before you went down to Westminster when we were having a pint in Menniés. You said to me “Well, what do you think” I said “Well Chris, we have got you here and you will go down to that place tomorrow where, if you are not careful you will be sucked into the glamour and pomp of that place. We have brought you here to fight for independence and if you stray off that road, we will fight to have you replaced by someone who will carry forward the fight.”
Well, Chris you were sucked in and between yourself and the rest of the Sturgeonites’ you have all but destroyed the independence movement but that is something for another day perhaps somewhat closer to the next election when I intend to expand on this theme.
My concern today is in connection with the ongoing situation in Gaza. Yesterday I tweeted a question to you as my MP, concerning your possible connection to Israel. I wanted to know whether you had any links through possible or similar organisations such as Friends of Israel, or whether you or your parliamentary office have ever received any funding or benefits from any Jewish organisation or any of their affiliations?
My concern is that on the face of it, you could possibly support Israel and this was evidenced a few weeks ago when, in the City Square ( the place where we together campaigned for the freedom of Scotland) you attempted to give a speech supporting the present actions of Israel, which to many people mind is tantamount to genocide.
Remember, Dundee is twinned with Nabulus.
Unfortunately, instead of answering my concerns, you blocked me.
I support the right of the Palestinian people to have the freedom of their own country, a position I believe to be very prevalent among the people of Scotland and indeed among your own constituents. I therefore call upon you to make your position clear. Do you condemn the slaughter visited upon the Palestinian people by Israel and do you support a free Palestinian state, can you answer the questions concerning possible affiliations to Israeli organizations and funding positions?
To give you a fair chance of reply I will post this and any answers I receive from you on social media.
Bob Costello 