Israel:

Israel’s actions in Gaza are tactically self-destructive in the longer term. In the short term they are buying a sense of stability.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says ‘Capitalism is dead. Yeah, dead:

Any Christian should know that death is not the end. But this has not prevented the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster from declaring that, just as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 killed off Communism on , so the ‘credit crunch’ of 2008 sounds the death knell of capitalism.

And this he announced at a lavish black-tie, four-course, champagne reception in the palace that is Claridges – at which Sir Rocco Forte personally oversaw the decoration of the ballroom with red flowers and red lights ‘to match the Cardinal’s clerical outfit’ - appealing to the great and the good (Catholicism’s wealthiest capitalists) for £3 million to restore his cathedral ‘which he fears will be forced to close within a decade if cash is not found for urgent repairs’, and £8 million ‘for the work of the bishops in England and Wales’.

Charity is not dead…

Jeffrey Goldberg can’t write about the latest Arab-Israeli fight:

I actually feel too close to this problem, a problem that symbolizes all problems… I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I’ve seen many people killed in Gaza; I’ve served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I’ve been kidnapped in Gaza; I’ve reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn’t kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they’ll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered…My paralysis isn’t an analytical paralysis. It’s the paralysis that comes from thinking that maybe there’s no way out. Not out of Gaza, out of the whole thing.

You just need to decide which party are the native American Indians and got from there…

DETOX is a load of nonsense. It is? Says Ben Goldacre:

Greeetings to listeners of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. About 20 minutes ago I was on the show talking about detox nonsense. Nas Amir Ahmadi of detoxinabox.com denied the rather foolish contents of her own website, and confidently claimed that I must be thinking of the wrong company. I read a quote. She laughed and said I was mistaken.

The audio is here:

I promised on air that I would double check and post on badscience.net. It will not surprise you to hear that she is completely wrong, and I am completely correct.

EDIT: The Today programme, bless them, share my anality and clarified that I was right and she was wrong.

Here is Nas Amir Ahmadi, managing director of Detoxinabox (which earns her the soubriquet “MD”):

http://www.detoxinabox.com/nas.html

Clear as, er, water…

CHICAGO rules in Israel:

Israel’s just playing by Chicago rules: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.  That’s the Chicago way!”

He pulls a nuclear bomb…

FERGUS Shanahan (Sun):

“…this war is not Israel Gazza, it’s Israel v Iran. The Israelis are saying to Iran: ‘We are not going to sit here waiting for you to finish building a nuclear bomb so you can destroy us.”

THE WAR in Israel and Gaza grim - all wars are grim:

The legs of the body of one of three Palestinian siblings from the Al-samoni family, killed by an Israeli tank shell, are seen in the mortuary of Al-Shifa hospital, on January 5, 2009 in Gaza City. By Abid Katib/Getty.

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