Archive for Israeli government
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) expelled from Gaza!
Posted in Kids with tags Doctors without Borders, Gaza, Gaza war, genocide, Israeli government, Israeli military, MSF, NGO, Palestine, UNRWA, war crimes on February 4, 2026 by xi'an
a journal of the four horsemen year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life, Wines with tags Alfred Hitchcock, Andalucía, aquarelle, Art Spiegelman, Arthur C. Clarke, BD, Becky Chambers, book reviews, comics, COVID-19, cuisine, Daniel Craig, dolly zoom effect, drawing, four horsemen of the Apocalypse, France Inter, Frank Herbert, Gaston Leroux, Gaza war, genocide, Hamas, Iain Banks, Isaac Asimov, Israeli government, Japanese cinema, Japanese TV series, Joe Sacco, John Scalzi, Journal of the Plague Year, Lenin, Occupied Palestinian Territory, olive oil, Orson Scott Card, Philip Pullman, pici, restaurant, Russian invasion, Sevilla, space opera, Studio Ghibli, The Guardian, Tokyo, Ukraine, Vertigo, whodunnit on January 7, 2026 by xi'an
Read a very light space-opera novel, (The Belt) Entanglement, by G.M. Kilby, with shallow characters, shallow plot with an unlikely McGuffin (a uniquely advanced quantum computer, even 20y later) and implausible rescue episodes (incl. one where a character punctures their spacesuit to recover from a broken propulsion thruster!). This book stands million years away from monuments of the genre, like Arthur C. Clarke‘s, Isaac Asimov‘s, Orson Scott Card‘s, Frank Herbert‘s or, to cite more recent writers, Iain Banks‘s, ‘sJohn Scalzi‘s, Becky Chambers‘s… I will most certainly not become entangled in the sequels! And am contemplating with glee attacking recent purchases and gifts, like Tasmyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth, Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field (Book of dust finale), and Florent Chavouet‘s Tokyo Sanpo (to revive memories of March’s visit to Edo!), 
discovered while attending an exhibit on Studio Ghibli’s Isao Takahata at Maison du Japon .
Brought back several litres of Andalusian olive oil from Sevilla! And made fresh green pici over the turn of the year, with spinach replacing water in the dough (following a recipe posted on the food weekly of France Inter), as well as three different dishes from the same batch of Norman scallops.
Watched Wake Up Dead Man, by Ryan Johnson, the third instalment of Benoît Blanc’s investigations. Which is rather fun, the more because Daniel Craig is visibly having fun playing a Southerner detective and over-doing his accent, while leaving a large chunk of the stage to other actors, like Josh O’Connor playing the junior, soul-searching priest. The plot itself is light and somewhat irrelevant (if with a wink to old classics of closed room murders, conveniently appearing in a Book Club list, if missing Gaston Leroux’s Mystère de la chambre jaune, as well as to Hitchcok’s Vertigo with a dolly zoom effect at the most dramatic instant), while the suspicion revolving among all characters is worth watching. Also tried a few episodes Just a bit Espers (ちょっとだけエスパー), a Japanese TV series on a group of almost ordinary persons with limited ExtraSensory PERception. The characters are nice but the plot is very weak, the resort to time travel all too common to this type of stories, the resolutions to the episodic challenges embarrassingly cringy, and the part of the story where a new employee (Bunty) has to play along being married to another (Shiki) who genuinely believes they are married is quite uncomfortable, to say the least…
اليوم العالمي للتضامن مع الشعب الفلسطيني
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Gaza, Gaza war, genocide, illegal settlement, Israeli bombardments, Israeli government, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Palestinian Authority, settlers, Trump administration, UN, United Nations, war crimes, West Bank, West Bank annexation on November 30, 2025 by xi'an
the peace of graves, the silence of ruins
Posted in Kids, pictures with tags ceasefire, Donald Trump, Gaza, genocide, Hamas, Human Rights, Israeli government, Palestine, Palestinian refugees, peace treaty, ruins, two-state solution, UNRWA, US politics on October 12, 2025 by xi'an
don’t mention the children
Posted in Kids, pictures with tags Choose Love for, Don’t Mention the Children, Gaza, Gaza war, genocide, Israeli government, Michael Rosen’, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Palestine, poem, Save the Children, Stop the War, The Guardian, UK Government, UK politics, war crimes, West Bank on October 7, 2025 by xi'an
