Sunday, 6 July 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 06/07/2025

Oh, good, they are arresting silly old lady vicars now.
83-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt, being gently arrested by the Met.
And about time, too. It was as long ago as the 22nd June that I told the Starmer government to proscribe Palestine Action, following their sabotage of two military planes at RAF Brize Norton, but they got there in the end. Palestine Action is now designated a terrorist organisation, following the Commons voting 385 to 26, majority 359, to proscribe it on Wednesday, with the House of Lords nodding it into law without a vote on Thursday. Palestine Action lost a late-night Court of Appeal challenge on Friday (July 4), and the new  legislation came into force at midnight. The designation as a terror group means that membership of, or support for, Palestine Action is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. 
Of course the useful idiots were out protesting against this entirely sensible move on Saturday. One woman failed to co-operate with the police and had to be bodily lifted into a police van. Drama Queen. She stated her position: "Free Palestine, stop the genocide, I oppose genocide, I support the rights of the Palestinian people, I support freedom of speech, I support freedom of assembly." I'll be generous and say she has no fucking idea what she is talking about. She has swallowed Islamist propaganda hook, line and sinker (a fishing analogy), and does not understand that Hamas' stated intent is to kill all Jews and destroy their country. She hasn't put two and two together to realise that the genocide which she claims to oppose is the actual, stated, war aim of Hamas. I really hope that the useful idiots are not anti-Semitic - but I fear the ugly truth is that they are, that London is not safe for Jews and that hatred for Jewish people simmers beneath the skin of the fashionable, left, "Metropolitan elite". Pah (exclamation of disgust.) 
Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, was appointed to the post on 8 July 2022 after Dame Cressida Dick, his predecessor, resigned in February 2022 on account of making a pig's ear of the job, not having the right influential friends, or being a lesbian (take your pick). Challenged on the Sunday politics programmes about arresting silly old lady vicars - and 28 others, he held his ground, declaring staunchly that le loi est le loi, si vous etes Mede, Pierse ou Juif - or words to that effect, and he was acomin' to arrest your ass if you is a silly old lady terrorist, whether you is 18 or 80. (she is 83, actually, our Mark), and could he have some more money to create 12 mega forces instead of 43 mini forces (yeah, and didn't that fly well in Scotland) and make the football clubs pay the £70 million for policing football matches. Good call, Mark.
Could you now please arrest Pascal Robinson-Foster, a.k.a. Bob Vylan, he of the hate speech and incitement to murder of the Israeli Defence Forces? The Bob Vylan pop group, like Edith Piaf, have no regrets and have issued a statement saying: "The  headline of it is: don’t let the media distract you from what’s truly important. They want to control this country’s narrative to frame genocide as Israel defending itself."
I just checked out the Palestine Action website that had provided those daunting images of their sabotage of Britain's Air Force a fortnight ago. It now bears this banner statement and nothing else:
Palestine Action is proscribed in Britain. For that reason, the website has been transferred to others in the global movement who are not active in Britain or British nationals.
Well, our legislators have done what they can to keep Britain safe from this Fifth Column and our enemies in the global movement.
Four people – Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, Jony Cink, 24, Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 36, and Lewis Chiaramello, 22 – have all been charged in connection with the  sabotage at RAF Brize Norton. They appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday after being charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom, and conspiracy to commit criminal damage, under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Pulvis et umbra sumus.

 We are but dust and shadow.
Horace


This building, 59, Brick Lane, on the corner of Fournier Street in Spitalfields, London, could be read as a spiritual space dedicated to the People of the Book, over the three and a half centuries since it was built. Successively a church, a synagogue and a mosque, it reflects the waves of immigration into the area. The land on which Spitalfields was built belonged to St Mary Spital, a priory or hospital (a lodging for travellers run by a religious order) erected on the east side of the Bishopsgate thoroughfare in 1197, from which its name is thought to derive ("spital" being a corruption of the word "hospital".) The travellers that were welcomed there were Huguenots, refugees escaping religious persecution by the Roman Catholic church in France, who brought their silk weaving skills to the area. They initially prospered, but the industry went into decline in the face of cheap silk imports from abroad. Spitalfields became a byword for urban poverty and deprivation: "The low houses are all huddled together in close and dark lanes and alleys, presenting at first sight an appearance of non-habitation, so dilapidated are the doors and windows:- in every room of the houses, whole families, parents, children and aged grandfathers swarm together." Jewish refugees, escaping European persecution, with nothing but their skills set up tailoring businesses in this poorest of poor quarters. In the late 20th century Jewish homes and businesses were replaced by an influx of Bangladeshi immigrants, who also worked in the local textile industry and made Brick Lane the curry capital of London. By 1981, at least 60% of households were of minority ethnic origin. Each successive wave of migrants brought their religion with them and 59, Brick Lane catered to the spiritual needs of Christian Huguenots (Protestants), Jews and Muslims. Not at the same time, of course. The People of the Book don't get on with each other, despite worshipping the same God. 'Twas ever thus.
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 I've been thinking about war lately, as you know. Being at war concentrates the mind wonderfully. I remember asking my dad, when I was a little girl, if I would be required to go and fight - he'd been telling me one of his war stories and I was terrified. He reassured me that, being a girl, I wouldn't be called up. I didn't realise then that more civilians than soldiers are killed in war. And I don't think I understood then that nobody gets out of here alive. And there was that long period we all enjoyed - in Britain, at least, when we weren't much troubled by war on the mainland. To be sure, there were the Troubles and the Cold War and the nuclear scare - actually, there hasn't been a time when we weren't at war in my life time, and those that rule over us have been spectacularly unsuccessful at making friends rather than enemies. Why on earth didn't they welcome Russia into NATO when they had the chance?
The current conflicts in which we seem to be engaged - although we are not told much about it and even when you actually experience events of a war orientation - like the Salisbury poisonings or the cable cuttings in the Northern Isles, we are gas-lighted out of understanding the significance of these things by government and media - to avoid panic, I suppose; anyway, the current conflict seems to be the West and the East lining up against each other. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Palestine on one side against the U.S., NATO and Israel on the other side. I know I've not covered everyone, but stay with me here. I've just read True North - Travels in Arctic Europe by Gavin Francis. The blurb says: "The stark, vast beauty of the Arctic Europe landscape has seduced explorers and adventurers for thousands of years." The big take away for me, though, from Francis' meticulously researched book, was not the sometimes laboriously-striven-for lyrical prose - he describes the ice floes on the sea as crumbs scattered on a mirror - really? wouldn't they just fall off? (mr ishmael described the Orkney Isles as seen from a plane window as "dog droppings in the sea") - but the ubiquity of war, invasion, murder, rape, theft, enslavement of captives. Humans. We're a bad lot.

We're so used to the Mercator projection that this view of the Arctic circle is a surprise. There's some big boys there, held apart by the ice. As the ice melts - which it is, it is yielding previously unattainable resources that the big boys want. War. It is what humans do.
Here's a few thoughts about War from mr ishmael:

Just  when I start thinking I have acquired an understanding of my fellows,  as with the Bremainers and their talk of peace,  just waving their mandibles at us, all moistly together,  clicking and squeaking, inside  their spit palace, fooling us, in a manner  that results in us not quite being able to see what's going on. Or thinking we're mad and not them.

All of these bastards start a war at the drop of a hat. How can anyone look at them and not smell Carnage, the fucking monsters,  uneducated, ill-tempered, larcenous red-faced, braying bullies, utter fuckpigs. They are filth, they are seen to be, known to be, proven to be  filth. And yet they lecture us about Peace and Virtue,  they have had no need to dip their snouts in European blood for they have drenched the streets of Arabia in it, of North Africa, of South East Asia and of Northern Ireland.
I dunno upon whom Donald Trump has rained fire and shrapnel and other than being a spiv, a ponce and a vengeful, Tory hypocrite I can find no fault in Nigel Poundland, either, yet I am told to see both as horsemen of the Apocalypse, when, in fact, Death's monsters are already stabled, fed  and exercised in Brussels and Washington and in MediaMinster.
The role of the recruiting sergeant has been buzzing around my mind, we are urged by liars and crooks to do the right thing for our country, when what we are driven to do is of benefit only to our masters; the same dogs which snapped at townfuls of young men, the more eagerly to make them enlist for Flanders massacre, now roam the streets again, snarling;  the same  wistful lady arseholes send white feathers to those who object. The SpivLords of New Cotswoldia hector us as though they were Lord Kitchener, himself, whilst delivering us up to a junta of greed and corruption, to an unelected oligarchy of consumerisme totalitairienne nouvelle; to limitless immigration and to the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant.
 The British folk song, once, like the pamphleteers,  a voice of resistance and satire,  has long been usurped by showbiz reptiles like Sir Billy Bragg, in his career, as a folk singer  and Filth-O-Graph  columnist. 
Rich Americans, like the sensitive diva, Ms Joan Baez and the incomparable artiste, Mr Bob Dylan, have grown hugely rich on the Childe ballads of  Scotland and Northern England and countless British musicians have corporatized the treasure house that is the Copper Family Songbook, the banks of the sweet primroses;  the sweet morning in  May; the hard times of old England.
The songs, however, own themselves and exist, still, to be applied as they were intended to be, as an antidote to MediaMinster, then and now.
This one, here, is an historic Anglo-Irish counterblast to the taking of the King's or Queen's poxy, one-shilling inducement.  The recorded song dates from the late 'seventies,  the joyful visualisation is much more recent but if you squint you can see that,  Redcoat or David Beckham, the recruiting sergeant would always see us march to a ruinous drumbeat,  whilst they march to none.
 Maestro Paul Brady is old, now, sourly marinaded in  vinegary showbusiness;  the song, however, a caustic and lyrical refutation of  vicious, mendacious  state charlatanry,
remains the same.
A song, now, for Europe.


..........................................................................
I was asked about 
Levimus Leminius, whose diary I quoted last Sunday. He was a Dutch physician and author, living from 1505 to 1568. He studied in the Netherlands and Padua and travelled to Switzerland and to England, where he was interested in the English use of strewing herbs.  Part of the purpose of a Medieval and Early Modern garden was to provide the household with strewing herbs. Floors were carpeted with rushes, reeds or straw, for insulation and to provide bedding for members of the lower household. They also served to soak up spillages, bones, dropped food and dog droppings. However, these floor coverings were only cleaned out and replaced once or twice a year, so to counteract the accumulated odours fragrant herbs were scattered (strewn) on top of them, releasing their scents when they were walked upon. Some of these herbs also acted as insect and pest repellents.  Shakespeare references this practice in Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Sc. 1 when the servant asks: 

“Where's the cook? is supper ready, the house
trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept.”

Thomas Tusser in his 1557 poem lists these strewing herbs: Basil, Chamomile, Costmary, Cowslips, Daisies, Fennel, 
Germander, Hyssop, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Marjoram, Maudeline, Mints, Pennyroyal, Roses, Sage, Savory, Tansy and Violets. Other herbs included Rosemary, Rue, Wormwood, Sweet Woodruff and Meadowsweet. With regards to Meadowsweet, John Gerard said that Queen Elizabeth “did more desire it than any other herb to strew her chambers withal.”
Meadowsweet

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.
IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.