Xmas in the Holy Land, not to mention Tony Blair.

He’s looking even madder these days, is Blair – the other eye, too, beginning to swivel in its socket.
Has he been maddened by memory of his slaughter of the Iraqi first-born?
Maybe he’s demented from fear that his security guys will waste him.
Blair has top-range security not only because friends of his victims might be out for revenge, but on account of his current Middle East role. He represents the Gang of Four – the US, the UN, the EU and Russia – in supposedly pushing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He operates from offices in (no, really) Jerusalem’s American Colonial Hotel.
Sending Blair to negotiate a settlement between Palestine and Israel is like asking Judas to broker a deal between Jesus and the Romans.
The Guardian reports that one of Blair’s minders recently thought to test his gun as he boarded a ‘plane at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport (named after the notorious racist), causing the weapon to go off with a loud bang and triggering pandemonium. The official inquiry continues.
This was no mere once-off faux pas. In September last year, a new bullet-proof (so they think) BMW bought for Blair had to be returned from the docks in London to the factory in Munich after four asylum-seekers jumped out when the container was opened.
In May, a squadron of fighter-jets was scrambled when Blair’s private ‘plane flew into Israeli airspace without notice or authorisation. The New York Times says the fighters came “within seconds” of opening fire on the intruder.
September last, the senior firearms officer of Blair’s security detail was driving up the Edgware Road when, caught short, she hurriedly parked and dashed into the toilet of a branch of Starbucks. Twenty minutes later, a customer using the same cubicle found the gun – a Glock 17 semi-automatic, its 19-round magazine fully loaded – which code-name Annie Oakley had somehow let slip when loosening her belt.
We might reasonably speculate, then, that Blair’s madness is related to security concerns.
The number of security officers accredited to Blair is 12. Could an equivalent of the aforementioned Judas be among them?
At a human level, we all must hope that he comes to no harm. But I have to say that if a further security breach were to result in, say, the Israeli air-force shooting down his ‘plane in a cascade of debris and gobbets of fire, there are many who would say that his own hand was on the trigger.

The legend O’Neill sends me an url – www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A_ma2h0idk – with advice that this is “the best-ever version.”
And so it is. Check it out. Teaching the world to sing a great song. Tears to the eyes. Lump to the throat. Hope to the heart.
And talking of tears... Top scientists tell me that weeping works wonders.
Bio-chemistry Professor William Frey of the University of Minnesota reports: “Tears may make us feel better because we are literally crying it out. Chemicals that build up during stress may be removed in our tears. Because unalleviated stress increases our risk for heart attack and damages certain areas of our brain, the ability to cry has survival value.’’
So crying confers an evolutionary advantage. Thus, only humans can cry.
Emotional tears have higher levels of proteins, manganese, potassium, and hormones than eye-watering caused, say, by chopping onions. Too little manganese leads to blood clotting, skin problems and poor cholesterol levels. Potassium helps the nervous system, muscle control and blood pressure. For good health, crying is the best game in town.
Further facts: Twenty percent of bouts of crying last longer than 30 minutes; 77 percent of crying takes place at home, 15 percent at work or in the car; 40 percent of people weep alone; 35 percent of crying occurs in the evening, compared with morning (16), afternoon (29), and night (17 percent).
On average, women cry 47 times a year, men seven. (No wonder women have the edge.)
Weeping improves the mood of 88.8 percent of us; only 8.4 percent feel worse.
All that stuff about, ‘let it out’, ‘have a cry, you’ll feel better’ – all true.

It’s the fact that drugs are illegal, which ensures that competition for market share takes the form of gang warfare.
There is no measure open to government more likely to lift terror from streets in Limerick and Dublin than an Act transferring drugs distribution from gangsters to pharmacists.
But if politicians acknowledged the truth about drugs, they’d lose one of their main strategies for spooking the public into acceptance of police misbehaviour and assaults on civil liberties.
It would be wrong to suggest that the law’n’order crowd weren’t as distraught as they seemed at the murder of Shane Geoghegan. But neither were they slow to seize on the killing as a hook on which to hang long screeds of propaganda.
When it was only members of gangs and of the class the gangs come from who were dying in the gutters from gun-fights over the franchise for particular territories, the moralists for law’n’order didn’t seem particularly concerned.
If they wished seriously to put an end to this continuing blood-splattered tragedy, they’d urgently be arranging for drugs to be disconnected from criminality.
Crime can be very useful to those who, for professional, political or ideological reasons, crave further restrictions on freedom. That’s what’s happening here.