Nanu Nanu

A friend of mine spent some time on a yacht with Robin Williams, he told stories with hilarious voices and faces... all the time, until she wanted him thrown overboard.  He was clearly an unusual man: prodigiously talented with a mind like lightening and always unstill.

The press agent releasing details of his death said "He has been battling severe depression of late".  There has followed much discussion on the nature of depression or bi-polar syndrome as it often called.  There has been talk of his addiction issues.   I hope Mr Williams' untimely death gives us some time to reflect on the nature of madness and morality.  

Madness is a way of thinking that one would not wish upon one's own worst enemy.  It may appear selfish, but it is not self interested.  It's rough being crazy. 

Madness and immorality are hard to tell apart.  We all have a tendency to be wilful and selfish, we all need some rules to regulate our behaviour.  We all have a tendency to get lost in the moment and ignore the bigger picture.  How do we know when someone around us is suffering mental illness or just plain insensitive?

How do we know if we are crazy?

We don't.  This may be why the Old Testament common to Muslims, Jews and Christians states that 

"pride is the beginning of sin".  We need humility to allow for the possibility that our thinking is faulty.  

Robin Williams knew that his thinking was faulty, his comedy was always tinged with tragedy.  He was acutely aware of the idiocies of the human condition and played the failures of hubris with a lightness that left us feeling tender and forgiving of our own.  It is a source of great sadness that he could not be succoured by his own message.  

Palestine: When to lose is to win

Most everybody I meet is currently vexed by the Israel - Palestine conflict. There is endless talk of ceasefires and, more helpfully, solutions. The solutions fall into two broad categories:



1) Hamas must stop launching missiles at Israel from the Gaza strip. Time will pass and the Israeli's will trust the Palestinians enough to ease then end the siege of Gaza.

2) Israel must stop besieging Gaza and let a free flow of goods, services and terrorists into its country. Time will pass and the Palestinians will not be so angry that that they lob incompetent missiles toward Tel-Aviv


There are grander versions of these solutions: Palestinians accept new Israeli borders, Israel mollifies Palestinians but they are essentially variations of the above. Neither is likely to happen.

The Palestinians have a claim on both the occupied territories and Israel itself that they are unlikely to renounce, the Israeli's know this and are not going to facilitate Palestinian retribution in any way. The two state solution continues to fail.

News Bunny's specialist subject is "the bleeding obvious". The bit missing from this story is war.

There was a war and the Palestinian's lost. Someone needs to tell them. When you lose a war, the winning side get to run your country. They can annex your country or they can colonise it. Someone needs to make the Israeli's step up and do this. As Israel and Palestine are adjacent the obvious answer is to annex Palestine. This is consistent with the Greater Israel policy of the Zionists.

Of course, this is where the problems for the Israeli's begin. The country is a democratic ally of the west, particularly America. It will be very difficult for them to run an explicitly apartheid state for any length of time. There is a fine Jewish tradition of tolerance and humanism that would probably give the vote to all adult nationals within its borders voluntarily. Alternatively there would be an extraordinary weight of international pressure and opprobrium if the Israeli's renounced democracy in favour of theocracy.

The Americans don't really believe in theocracy. For all their God fearing bible belt tub thumping, America is as much an idea than a country. The idea is that you cannot be persecuted for your religious beliefs. This is fundamental to American DNA. Most of the rest of the world has eschewed theocracy too, although a perverse alliance with Iran is possible, I suppose!

Let Israel win!



We'll have more of these... List of Arab members of the Knesset