Random Links to stuff I found interesting this week.

First a warning, some of these links are about Gaza. Thankfully there is (well at least at the time I set this up to post!) a ceasefire.  Regardless, everyone has a view, this week someone told me that talking to terrorists never solved the problem or got the terrorists what they wanted. I don’t agree, in Northern Ireland, we have something approaching peace for the first time in years because of talking. It’s not perfect and there’s work to do but Northern Ireland is a much less scary place than it used to be. Israel is a state founded on terrorism (this list for example) that they don’t apologise or accept responsibility for, yet they accuse Hammas of the same thing, it’s always changing and it’s always the same. My point is that one person’s freedom fighting is another’s act of terrorism.

I’m not sure that anyone will comment but if you do, keep it civil. Talking and listening are important.

1) I thought this might make me cross, it didn’t

One good lesson I am learning this week is to shut up and listen. Because the only way to cut through the mutual agony here is to find people who have solutions and to hear what they have to say. Bombing the other side into oblivion is no more a solution than counting your dead children in public.

2) Why whatever happens in the occupied territories, Hammas wins

 (Netanyahu) may intellectually accept the possibility that the absence of meaningful negotiations actually empowers Hamas. But never emotionally. If you see the world through an us vs. them filter, you’re rarely responsible for the problem — it’s almost always the other guy’s fault.

4) Giles Fraser on photos of dead children

These images call me out of my ordinary day – but to God knows what. Do they amplify an instinct for revenge or an instinct for making peace?………..The danger is that one is left marooned in one’s own anger when the real challenge is to find some way forward – both emotionally and politically.

5) British Foreign policy that’s wrong, wrong, wrong

Ever since, Modi has been persona non grata in the west. The US refuse him visas; European diplomats will not shake his hand. Yet last month, for no obvious reason, the British government broke ranks and brought him in from the cold. For Modi, who contests state elections next month and wants a shot at running for prime minister in 2014, this was a massive boost. No sooner had he got the news than he convened a rally to announce that the British had rehabilitated him.

6) The UK’s last typewriter. I feel nostalgic for the my aching little fingers as I learnt to type in school.

8) The CofE still doesn’t have women bishops.

Again and again, opponents claimed they longed to see women bishops accepted by the whole church. Each time this happened, I had to pinch myself to remember that they were the bit of the church that didn’t and don’t accept women as bishops. If they want to see women bishops accepted by the whole church, all they need do is accept them

9) Given the awful things that are happening in the world right now. I really don’t think that the presence (or not) of donkeys at the birth of Jesus are really important. The Pope disagrees. Way to go Benedict….

“In the gospels there is no mention of animals,” the pope states. He says references to the ox and the donkey in other parts of the Bible may have inspired Christians to include them in their nativity scenes.

10) How to cope with a hangover.

If you must remain awake, there follows a period known as the “false dawn”, where you feel surprisingly OK. “I feel surprisingly OK!” you will say, thoughts turning to a full English, or an Egg McMuffin. I cannot advise this. The meat-sweats will make the Inevitable Dawn far, far worse. No, fruit sugars are most effective, banana on rye toast the advised breakfast. (Pret A Manger’s miso soup can also work wonders.) Spend the morning drinking green tea, take another Alka-Seltzer at 11am, and you should be good for the noon meeting.