Agents of evil

I would have put something next to this for scale... but it moved and I ran away. This  27mm horror is the Dark Giant Horse Fly and I suspect it is what bit me through my jeans(!!!) and left blood running down my leg.

Productive first meeting with my Cranfield Mentor today, always good to work with people who are expert in their field. It was a lot of effort to apply, be interviewed etc, but feels worthwhile. 

Philosophy Friday 
Scroll on now if you don't want to hear my views on the crimes against humanity being committed by the State of Israel and it's government.
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Ive watched incredulously as our media and politicians have lambasted a hitherto unknown, but clearly political, rap duo for using the language of hate whilst (the vast majority of) those same politicians fail to decry, or even mention, the murder of civilians including children of which they protested, using the platform they had. Would I have used that language? No. But if they'd used the F word instead of the D word, as literally dozens of acts have over the last decades to announce their protest, they knew they'd be cut. I suspect they knew it was a crass way to raise an issue, but what else were they left with when there is literally no national level debate about what we're all seeing. For most of the late 80's I stood with the miners and the communities of the North as we protested Thatchers ideological destruction, I thought setting our own police on our own population was as low as a British government could get. I'm ashamed of how this government, one I voted for, is acting now. History will not forget. 
I cannot stand by and remain silent. I believe that the actions of the State of Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces — not individual soldiers but the institution itself — amount to war crimes and genocide. Those who say nothing in the face of such atrocities, including our own government, will, through the long lens of history, be seen as complicit. 


“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Lecture, 1986.