A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted: "'Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am".
The man below replied "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude".
"You must be a technician." said the balloonist. "I am" replied the man "how did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you have told me is probably technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I'm still lost....
Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip with your talk."
The man below responded, "You must be a Tory politician". "I am" replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the man "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems.
The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my f**king fault!!!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Reading this glorious book this afternoon... So much research worn so lightly and so intimately. And the connections made betwwen country and city, England and empire, industry and agriculture. So beautifully written too.
I know the way i am putting the book face down with a cracked spine is chaotic evil and will stress bibliophiles out. Sorry.
Cc: @CjvHenderson you will find this so relevant to your thinking.
The first name on this list is Oleg Deripaska, on whose yacht Peter Mandelson partied and on whose behalf Tories lobbied the US to remove THEIR sanctions on him.
"The British emissary for Deripaska’s companies [is] Lord Barker of Battle, a protégé of David Cameron, the former prime minister of Britain. Also involved are lobbyists, law firms, public relations experts, a former US senator" etc
"Mr. Deripaska befriended Nathaniel Rothschild, a British-born financier whose father is a British peer, and through him met the Tory politician George Osborne, a future chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as Lord Peter Mandelson, a leading figure in the Labour Party."
This beautiful garden was nurtured by Mahmoud Salhiyeh, whose house in Shaykh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Israeli government. This is of course a war crime, given that East Jerusalem is occupied territory.
As @Mandymaryturner writers, "Mahmoud was a master gardener, designing and tending to gardens in Jerusalem and further afield, as well as growing plants in his centre that people came from all around to buy."
"He redesigned the Kenyon Institute garden in 2014, transforming it from a rubbish dump into the beautiful space in which [the Kenyon Institute] held events and parties. Mahmoud and his family spent 25 years in courts trying to save their home and business."
When Palestinians talked about their memories of the 1948 Tantoura massacre, their oral history was dismissed as unreliable (by no less than Benny Morris). But now that Israeli veterans confess, we can all believe it.
Can i just put in a word for two extraordinary oral histories of the Nakba that predated the New Historians: Nafiz Nazzal's groundbreaking 1970s account: palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649387
So many things are so FUCKED up about this OfS proposals: A) success in education is measured by producing a bunch of worker bees; B) this process does not take account of the students' social background or which part of the country they live/work... 1/
C) No understanding of how university courses work AT ALL (this country has so much standards-monitoring we are all drowning in oceans of red tape); D) NO UNDERSTANDING WHATSOEVER of how business cycles or labour markets work which is perfect for a Tory government... 2/
E) Yet ANOTHER attempt at winnowing down the universities so that the children of the affluent get to go to a handful of remaining posh universities; regional, smaller and newer universities are shut; and the children of the poorer folks go get vocational training. 3/
I lived in the city of Mashhad in December 1979. The revolution had only just triumphed. Many of our friends were leaving Iran. Then we heard about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Even with the monumental transformation of the revolution, we knew that the Soviet invasion 1/
... was significant. I remember two things very vividly from that moment: first that the April 1980 US hostage rescue attempt (which ended up in a catastrophe in Tabas, 350 miles away from Mashhad)... 2/
... was seen by many Iranians NOT related to the Embassy hostages, but as a covert operation against USSR. Why else, they asked, would the aircrafts/helicopters be so far from Tehran, and so far east/closer to the Afghan border. 3/