RIP MJ

Billie Jean remains my favourite Michael Jackson track of all and it never fails to get my feet tapping wherever and whenever I come across it.

I remember the live 1983 Motown performance of Billie Jean and I have watched this slice of magic so many, many times on video tape it’s embedded in my memory. It was a seminal performance on so many levels that I would rate it the best live performance of the entire ‘80s. In fact this virtuoso number blew away a certain someone who knew a little about dancing - the legendary Fred Astaire.

This was MJ at his peak. You simply have not lived if you have not seen this bit of pop history.

Enjoy

Israel is a state formed and maintained by war

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

It's been almost a year since I last made an entry to this blog...so much has happened. It is precisely my absence an indication of how much has been happening in real life that the blog had subsumed to matters more important (and fun...) yet I ironically had so much more to say and share during my period of absence than in any other time.

Yet it is my anger at the recent Israeli assault on Gaza that has prompted me to write a few words. In fact I can write and write and write on the topic but I came across an article by an Iraqi Jew and British historian Avi Shlaim in the Guardian today that summarises my thoughts succinctly.

I urge everyone to read it

One of my favourite wartime reportage books is by an Israeli journalist Amira Hass who chose to live amongst the Palestinians in Gaza and report eloquently on a society the average Israeli (or the rest of the world) have no clue whatsoever about. This is a first hand account from an Israeli who has voluntarily been there, lived there and the only one to do so where others have merely tried.

It's incomprehensible that Israel, a nuclear power and the world's 4th largest arms supplier, is complaining bitterly of being a victim and seeking peace when it acts as an aggressor by subjugating and bullying an entire community of people for decades and right now slaughtering civilians without care. Once again I will be protesting this weekend against the Israeli assault on Gaza.