sudan | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

September 2, 2025

33:64 presents “Al Gore.”

Say what you will about everybody’s favourite doom monger, but she certainly practices what she preaches, when it comes to recycling anyway. Tom Thumberg is once again leading a flotilla of small ships, which will again be packed with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. Quite whether she imagines that she has a realistic chance of doing so is beside the point. The point is that she’s trying and the point is that the worlds press will be recording her every move and most importantly of all, will be on hand when Israel enforces its naval blockade of Gaza and prevents her armada from reaching its destination.

I imagine she knows she has as much chance of getting to Gaza as there is of there being a Pride march to greet her arrival if she did. But that isn’t her goal. Her goal is to draw much needed media attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of..you know..how the world has ignored it, and to also reposition herself as not just a climate change harridan but as a social justice warrior. And much like every other social justice warrior before her, I question exactly how much of her desire for social justice depends upon which society it is. Is hers an Orwellian concept of social justice whereby some societies are more equal than others?

But apparently to impugn her motives is to doubt her moral probity. Ahead of the flotillas departure she gave an interview to Sky News, in which she rejected accusations of anti-Semitism “It is not anti-Semitic to say that we should not be bombing people, that one should not be living in occupation, that everyone should have the right to live in freedom and dignity, no matter who you are.” Which is true, if you take away the first five words from that statement, that is. But what is also true, uncomfortably and undeniably true, is that when you put them back, and say those words in relation to the only Jewish state in the world, then what else can it be?

The same words, save the first five could just as equally apply to Yemen or Sudan. In Yemen, a civil war has been happening since 2014 and because of this, according to the UN, over 370,00 people have been killed. There is also an humanitarian aid crisis, as one might expect there to be in a war zone. 21 millions people, 11 millions of them children are at risk from starvation. Earlier this year there was a cholera outbreak. In Sudan, the situation is depressingly similar. A civil war. Factions splintering off into more factions. Over 500,00 dead since 2023. Again, the need for humanitarian aid is urgent.

I don’t want to play a grotesque version of Top Trumps here, but it seems as if Tom Thumberg does. Okay then. By the end of July 2025, some 63,000 Gaza’s had died. Why are their deaths more worthy of the worlds attention, why are their deaths to be so roundly condemned by people, organisations and countries whose anger seems to be exclusively focused on those in Gaza. Often by the very same countries who are who are participating in the wars in Yemen and Sudan?

Indeed, if she was serious in her intent to help alleviate the sufferings of the people of Gaza, she might better use one of her press conferences to question why, unlike in every other civil war civil war, Gaza’s neighbours haven’t opened their borders to allow for refugees to escape. And, for good measure, angrily demand to know why – according to the UN’s own figures – 85% of their food aid trucks into Gaza are hijacked by Hamas and other militia groups. And on the back of that, not only question why the UN continues to do something it knows doesn’t work, but also why that fact isn’t widely reported in the media.

But why would she? What’s in it for her? Given how the prevailing narrative casts Israel as uniquely evil and Hamas as essentially innocent, the backlash against her for doing so would be as immediate as it was inevitable. Much easier, and better for her long term career prospects, if she plays along.

After all, when her last Gaza cruise was curtailed by the Israelis, and they invited her to watch footage of the 7th October massacre, she refused. So for all her bleating on about “how everyone should have the right to live in freedom and dignity”, it proved how conditional her concern is, how hollow and performative she is. It also proves that she is right to call this latest stunt symbolic.

A load of symbolics.

August 8, 2025

33:64 presents “Palestine Action.”

Much has been written about Palestine Action (PA) recently. And most of it has concerned the various this’s and that’s which caused the British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group last month. Yet more has been focused on what wholly impartial onlookers perceive to be further evidence of something that their wholly impartial deductions have already deuced to be happening. Alas, what no-one seems to have given any thought to is the inherent contradiction in the name PA, which whilst it great for PA, also exposes the highly subjective and dangerously blinkered notion of morality upon which it claims to have been founded.

Ostensibly founded to disrupt the UK’s arms industry sales to Israel and nowhere else, because well…Israel, and because of it being complicit in what they describe as a the genocide in Gaza, their disruption amounts to little more than some vandalism, petty theft and performative criminality. Which essentially is little more drunken stag weekend in Croatia with some photo’s posted on social media

The high-minded morality which they loudly proclaim to possess – and to which their placard waving supporters are drawn – is nothing more than disingenuous grandstanding. It wilfully obfuscates the reality of war. Yes war is brutal, innocents will be killed and regrettably, atrocities will happen. These things are universal and apply to every war ever fought ever.

It is also disingenuous because by focusing on Gaza, other conflicts can continue out public view, and as such, easily ignored by the media. A good example of this Yemen, where a civil war has been happening since 2014. According to the UN, over 370,00 people have been killed.There is also an humanitarian aid crisis, as one might expect there to be in a war zone. 21 millions people, 11 millions of them children are at risk from starvation. Earlier this year there was a cholera outbreak.

In Sudan, the situation is depressingly similar. A civil war. Factions splintering off into more factions. Over 500,00 dead since 2023. Again, the need for humanitarian aid is urgent.

But do the streets of Central London reverberate to the sounds of protesters denouncing the war in Yemen or the genocide in Sudan? Do they demand that the UK suspend arms sales to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), because it has somehow involved itself in both civil wars? No, because the disingenuous grandstanding of PA offers an simplistic and easy to follow narrative of oppressed and oppressor, unlike to utterly confusing situations in Yemen and Sudan. They’re difficult.

Much easier then – and far more likely to garner approving comments from those whose approval the useful idiots crave – is to loudly declaim that whatever Israel is doing in Gaza is a genocide. Or else throw some paint, maybe steal some statues, even smash a window or two, anything that stops well short of actually helping the people of Gaza.

Because if the PA were serious about helping to alleviate the suffering help the people of Gaza, they’d bang on less about UK arms sales to Israel and more on the fact that there hasn’t been an election in Gaza since 2007. That its president, is in his 20th year of his 4 year term, or that, unlike in every other civil war civil wars Gaza’s neighbours haven’t opened their borders to allow for refugees to escape. And, for good measure, angrily demand to know why – according to the UN’s own figures – 85% of their food aid trucks into Gaza are hijacked by Hamas and other militia groups. And on the back of that, not only question why the UN continues to do something it knows doesn’t work, but also why that fact isn’t widely reported in the media.

They might also question where all the money that the US, the EU and the UN has given to Gaza has gone – at least $10 billions since Israel handed back control of Gaza in 2005. Possibly some of that is spent on Hamas’s military budget of $200 millions a year. Or maybe some of that money is spent by the Palestine Authorities Martyrs Fund, which pays the families of those who’ve killed Israelis a monthly amount. The more Israeli’s killed, the more the amount.

But then again, if the PA, like your friends, most of the posters on social media and politicians, aren’t asking those questions, why would you?

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With perfect timing, the police have announced that for the next football season they will be equipping officers with a DNA misting spray. A DNA misting spray marks someones skin and clothing with an invisible solution that remains present for months and shows up under UV light. It provides forensic evidence to link individuals to a specific crime or event.

They could hasten its use and give a test at Saturdays march for something, but which a large amount of PA supporters are expected to turn up. The hope is that sufficient numbers them will be arrested – given how supporting PA is now a crime – and that this will both provide images of screaming protesters being dragged way in cuffs for the media and clog up police cells and the courts.

To my mind, why hand PA an easy win? That’s what they’d expect. Much better to arrest the supporters and then immediately let them go. Days later, announce that the police have indeed used the spray and that anyone who attended the march, regardless if they were arrested or not, can be identified.

And when they are, they’ll go on a database to which US, Australian and other countries immigration services will have access to when deciding whether or not to grant a visa.

A win-win. Less pressure on the UK justice system and a great way for virtue signallers to signal exactly how deep-seated their virtue is.

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Thinking about tomorrow’s performance in Central London, the one with the arrests, the screaming protesters and the utter impossibility of it stopping UK arms sales to Israel or something equally unlikely, puts me in mind of the Popular Front of Judea (PFJ)

A couple of years ago, an anniversary of the Grenfell fire was marked by occupation by three members of PA of a factory factory in Birmingham. The reason given was that the factory – which made the cladding used on Grenfell tower- also provided materials which were used by Israeli airplanes. Two people were arrested, one of whom went on hunger strike when he was sent to prison. Of course he did, although possibly this was due to the fact of there being no vegan food option in prison than anything else.

Regardless, he said they would end his hunger strike if any one of four conditions were met: the release of all PA protestors ; the eviction of Elbit (a UK/Israeli arms company) from its London headquarters, the closure of all Elbit Systems’ British operations and release by the government of all correspondence and documents relating to its dealings with Elbit and its subsidiaries.

In the magnificent ‘Life of Brian’, the PFJ plan to kidnap Pilates’ wife and demand that in return for her release, the entire Roman occupation and infrastructure in Judea be dismantled in two days or they’ll cut her head off. And tell him if they do cut her head off, it’ll be his fault.

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June 8, 2025

34:63 presents “Greta Thunberg.”

The best kind of virtue signalling is, of course, the kind that has minimal adverse consequences for you, but a multitude of positive ones. The most audaciously successful example of this is Greta Thunberg’s ‘school strike’, which somehow transformed her bunking off into some sort of noble act of protest. Quite why no-one called ‘bullshit’ on her little stunt, I can’t explain, but fair play to her, by her constantly banging on about how something has been exacerbated by political inertia, and that because of that, the action needed to combat it is as drastic as it is urgent, she has managed to get away with it.

Because if I’d have tried to get justify me bunking off school as something other than a test of how far I could push my luck with my parents, I’d have gotten more than a stern talking to. If I’d then constantly been on at them to change their lifestyles, to the extent that my mother had to give up on her career as an international opera singer because I’d been incessantly haranguing her about her flying to concerts, I doubt if I’d be eventually invited to address the United Nations or nominated three times for the Nobel peace prize,

But because of the world we now live, one that places a disturbingly worrying amount of importance on positive media coverage, her bunking off has been rewarded with her being lauded as a something about that something. And because of this, she is given platforms upon which to berate pretty much everyone for not doing what she wants. And in an almost masochistic way, one that seems to have the bizarrely religious need for flagellation to it, the more she lambasts people, the more they seem to want it, She’s like a virtue signalling dominatrix.

And no virtue is more worthy to be signalled these days than support for the Palestinian people. Despite their plight being having as many complicated causes as the something she gained ‘celebrity for, that is the only similarity. Yes, people are starving, but so too are people in Yemen and the Sudan caught up in the middle of civil wars fought between disparate factions as only civil wars can be, but then again, their humanitarian crisis’ don’t lend themselves the kind of performative display of virtue that is so beloved by the media. She is on a boat, sailing towards Gaza, in an attempt to bring food and medical supplies to the people of Gaza, as I write this. She is also live-streaming the whole thing. Of course she is. After all, what’s the point of virtue signalling something, if no-one knows that your virtue signalling something?