I am not surprised by actresses like Jolie and Arab/Muslim members of Congress or any Parliament around the world damning Israel. They are not great intellects, they are not significant thinkers, they are not historians and certainly not ethicists. And to crticize Israel based on the ethics Judaism has taught them has a certain quality…
Author: Daniel
The Donkey
The Donkey When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve,…
There Be Dragons
The new issue of the New Art Examiner is a your-de-force of articles about dragons and dragon literature and myths around the world. But that was not the most interesting element to the theme because ceramics and paintings exist dealing with every myth. No, the most ingesting thing was the Oxford English Dictionary derivation of…
Travelling Light
I made the train journey to London over night the past two days with one change of a shirt for a meeting. The train up, contrary to many things I have been told, was straightforward and easy even to the underground in London. The journey back was a touch more complicated as I had to…
Why A School?
In World War Two every child in the major cities of the UK was evacuated an the small ones who stayed with their parents spent many nights underground to protect them. It seems absurd to me after months that a school in Gaza would still be a school or that a single child would be…
Never Talk to the Police
I have just listened to an American defence attorney and a veteran investigator for the Venice Beach police about being a suspect. Both men said that the instinct of the innocent is to answer questions asked by the police but the advice is to never say a word. The reason they gave is very simple:…
When I read
of artists whose work fetched $180,000 a few years ago getting $10,000 today, or multi-millionaires drowning on their superyachts which is, when you think abut it, what anyone could do in a storm at sea, or the difficulties of keeping the financial system on track when by its very nature it is a boom-bust cycle…
Perhaps More Thought
should be given to human beings in war. There are those who thrive on it and enjoy battle. The British army says after a conflict there is always a higher than usual retirement of personnel which has always been the case. Those who know what war looks like never want to experience it again. In…
Innocence
Innocence Our innocence was kept in a blue vase – Holding chrysanthemums with heavy heads – Or over gas fires making toast and reading Flecker Or lying on narrow beds comfortable with happiness – Books littered with petals and ‘notes’ About coming ‘home’ late – Piping a recorder in the dusk of that autumn,…
Talent
I read in the 1980s about a French singer who had a wonderful, evocative voice who was not well known. The reason being her voice sounded very much like Edith Piaf and, of course, France already had Edith Piaf they didn’t need another. Or rather the record studios and those who owned Edith’s rights didn’t…