Category: First Thursday Archive

Politicians need to be careful and take responsibility for the words they use-  although some are  “careful” enough to provoke a reaction (for example Nigel Farage’s hint that the police were not telling the full story about Southport- did this encourage the English Defence League-led riots?) Riots usually come from disenfranchised groups who see no…

Our discussion was on the morning of the General Election, after a campaign full of sound-bites, and a legacy of lies.  James O’Brien: “How they Broke Britain”; Michael Roberts: “Broken Britain”; Jeffrey Scheuer: “The Sound-bite Society”; Digby Anderson: “Faking it”; Nick Davies: “Flat-Earth News” and a Cardiff University Paper: “Immediacy, Convenience or Engagement? An Analysis…

Amid all the news of the UK General Election (including Nigel Farage’s late intervention in Clacton), the D-Day 80th Anniversary celebrations, and the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, the Ukraine War continues.  In his book “How the West brought War to Ukraine: Understanding how the US and NATO Policies led to Crisis, War and the Risk…

Ilan Pape was a Senior Lecturer at the Middle Eastern History Department and Political Science Department of the University of Haifa, Israel, from 1984 to 2006.  Following his endorsement of the boycott of Israeli universities, he left Israel in 2007/8 to work as a Professor at the University of Exeter.  His major 2006 work “The…

Gaza today is reminiscent of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, when the Red Army stood back and allowed the Nazis to massacre the Polish Home Army- today Israel’s “allies” mouth calls for “restraint” while they arm the bombing and slaughter.  The UK shares in this with £300 million of parts manufactured in Scotland for US…

Summary of the discussion In October 1893 the Chicago Evening Post journalist Finley Peter Dunne, in his weekly column, quoted his fictional Mr. Dooley that, “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.   We might say the same of the Church.  But we have to recognise that people who…

Summary of Discussion The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem (combined since 2017 with Kairos Palestine) works for human rights, justice and equality for Palestinians (see its website https://www.sabeel-kairos.org.uk/category/about-us/about-sabeel-kairos/).  After nearly twenty years’ work in Galilee, Naim Ateek came St George’s Cathedral in 1985, and when the Intifada broke out two years later, people…

First Thursday- summary of the discussion Gaza and Ukraine are still top of the international news.  They reminded us of the title of Bishop James Jones’ report on the Hillsborough disaster: “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power”.  Here in the UK the electoral cycle is beginning to dominate everything, with politicians seemingly afraid to speak…

This is more of a reflection on our discussion than a summary, which would be far too long.  Is it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to find a solution for how to live together?  The 1948 United Nations “settlement” which set up a two-state partition of Palestine (despite warnings that this would cause continuing conflict)…

In his book “Value(s): Building a Better World for all” (published by William Collin in 2021, and in paperback in 2022), Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that “the embrace of markets and their ‘subjective’ valuations has led to a society that has been robbed of its capacity to express…