Joanna Brown

“Diplomacy is not reality TV. The world is not a casino. Statecraft is not a real estate deal.” @UNReliefChief @TFletcher tells me that as the war with Iran continues to escalate, “We’ll be paying for this war for years to come… “We’re deeply frustrated… that’s diplomatic speak for saying we’re furious. Because rich people are winning out of this. The arms dealers are winning… And the people I serve are losing.”

Murderers . She will not be forgotten. A time for them to answer will come.

@MarkUrban01 Sorry to hear this. Wonderful podcast and hope to see similar future projects.

Alas the Crisis Room is coming to and end after 8 months - so in this episode we take stock of a momentous period in global security

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes about Tom Stoppard

It’s the natural order of things. It’s coming down the line for everyone with living parents — and yet, still, I just cannot fathom a world without Mum in it. (“Mum” to everyone, including her 18 grandchildren.) Even though she was 91 and had lived a huge life, we were still unprepared. It still felt sudden — a devastating shock. As a recently bereaved friend said to me, “There’s no getting round the shock of it. Mums are a big deal.” Losing the person who brought you into this world is a big deal. I took it for granted that she’d be presiding over us forever. If yours is alive, hold her close. Stay the extra hour. Sit down. Put your phone away. Say all the things you need to say. Funny and sharp to the end — when a young doctor doing his rounds in the hospital (where she’d very reluctantly found herself, much to her irritation) on Friday evening spoke to her like an old person — “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” he said slowly, over-enunciating every syllable. “I have a stomach pain, not Alzheimer’s,” she shot back. A few hours later, on Saturday morning, she died peacefully in her sleep. I’m grateful for that. She was so loved. RIP Mum.

Apparently this guy from Bob Vylan doesn't want people to know that his real name is Pascal Robinson-foster after his performance at Glastonbury yesterday It would be terrible if everyone Re-tweeted this

UAE Condemns in the Strongest Terms Targeting of Qatar mofa.gov.ae/en/mediahub/ne…

This is the most striking opening paragraph on Israel-Iran war so far @SpencerGuard : ‘Imagine if Operation Overlord in World War II began with the elimination of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German High Command; Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS; Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; numerous other senior generals; and the destruction of all of Germany’s air defenses, before a single Allied soldier landed on the beaches of Normandy. That’s not an exaggerated hypothetical. It’s a near-parallel to what Israel just did to Iran.’

A rare @RoryStewartUK rant on Dominic Cummings to fuel your weekend 🚀

If I could read Helen Garner all day every day, I’d regard it as a life well-lived. I revere all her writing, but it’s her non-fiction I return to most and, to distil it further, for me it’s her diaries that show her to be the absolute killer writer that she is. I think it was speaking of Elizabeth Strout that Hilary Mantel said she had a prose style of such lucidity it was a moral virtue in itself, and that’s exactly how I feel about Garner. All three diaries are now available in the UK in a single volume (they’re actually published here tomorrow, the 13th, by @wnbooks) and in them is revealed, in sometimes agonising detail, the life of a writer, of a woman, of a person so vividly engaged with both the everyday and moral struggle of just being in the world. Her gift simply for paying attention is – to use a horribly blurby word – just luminous. She may not be as widely read here as she is in her native Australia, but she bloody well should be!

To understand the "Trump Shock" of the last two weeks, it helps to understand the Nixon Shock of 1971. @realDonaldTrump 2.0's debt to Nixon is not well understood. For all the imperial talk about McKinley, the real role model is RN.

If you watch one thing today make it this remarkable speech by an independent French senator. It captures the moment @ClaudeMalhuret

A letter to Donald J. Trump from Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, a Saudi prince and former government official who served as the head of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency from 1979 to 2001. He is a grandson of Saudi's founder King Abdulaziz and son of King Faisal. He is the chairman of the King Faisal Foundation's Center for Research and Islamic Studies. The letter: Dear President Trump, The Palestinian people are not illegal immigrants to be deported to other lands. The lands are their lands and the houses that Israel destroyed are their homes, and they will rebuild them as they have done after previous Israeli onslaughts on them. Most of the people of Gaza are refugees, driven out of their homes in what is now Israel and the West Bank by the previous Israeli genocidal assault on them in the 1948 and 1967 wars. If they are to be moved from Gaza, they should be allowed to return to their homes and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis. Mr President, many of the tens of thousands of immigrants who came to Palestine from Europe and other places after the Second World War stole Palestinian homes and land, terrorised the inhabitants and engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Alas, America and the UK, the victors of the war, stood by and even facilitated the murderous evictions of the Palestinians from their homes and lands. America and the UK did not want to receive the victims of Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, so they were content with sending them to Palestine. In the book Eight Days at Yalta, the author Diana Preston refers to a conversation between then US president Franklin Roosevelt and his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin. Preston writes: “Conversation turned to the subject of Jewish homelands. Roosevelt said he was a Zionist… When Stalin asked Roosevelt what present he planned to make [Saudi king] Ibn Saud, he replied his only concession might be to give him six million Jews…” Fortunately, when Mr Roosevelt did meet Ibn Saud, the king disabused him of that offer and suggested that the Jews should be offered the best lands in Germany as compensation for the Holocaust. Alas, Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, wholeheartedly supported Jewish immigration to Palestine and eventually became instrumental in the creation of Israel. The violence and bloodshed we witness today are the result of that action and the previous British complicity with Zionist ambitions from 1917 until then. Mr President, your declared intent to bring peace to Palestine is much lauded in our part of the world. I respectfully suggest that the way to do that is to give the Palestinians their inalienable right to self-determination and a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and 194 and Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the Arab Peace Initiative. All the Arab and Islamic countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority, accept the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative to end hostilities and establish relations with Israel. One hundred and forty-nine countries recognise the Palestinian state. Please make your country the 150th. No peace in the Middle East will be realised without addressing this noble issue justly and fairly. Be remembered as the peacemaker. Prince Turki Al Faisal

@toadmeister Oh 😔

According to Bridget Phillipson, Shakespeare is 'outdated'. She's devising a new 'decolonised', 'anti-racist' curriculum which she's going to force all schools to teach in the name of 'diversity'. dailysceptic.org/2024/12/30/lab…

Very honoured to be interviewing the President of Georgia tomorrow live with @campbellclaret - live 11 am UK time - at a critical moment in the history of Georgia and the Caucasus. 🙏🏻

Jonathan Freedland in today's Guardian:

Happening now in Tbilisi: Unbelievable scenes from Rustaveli, hundreds are dancing Georgian war dance Khorumi

@adamboxer1 Sygun Copper mine

Breaking my Twitter pause - need recommendations for extremely-rainy-day things to do in Snowdonia 🙏🙏 I've got the trampoline caves already

@HertzUK Thanks @HertzUK Will happily send a private message if you follow me back

@Jobro71 Good morning Joanna, we are sorry for any inconvenience cause , please write a private message with your claim so that we can look into this for you. Regards, Deena

I recently disputed erroneous ‘late return’ charges with @HertzUK at LGW, and have now received two rejection letters despite providing a credit card receipt proving that the car was refuelled locally before the due time. How else can I ‘prove’ I returned the car on time?