Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

Many brave people are going with the Gaza Flotilla II assembling in the Med right now.  The Zionist Entity has made its usual revolting attempts to stop the ships before they sail and smear the people but the ships are going.  Shame on Greece, Cyprus, The USA, Canada, France and Australia for telling their citizens not to participate.  Interestingly The Zionist Entity is claiming that people on the flotilla entering Gazan waters 'will be treated as individuals having attempted to enter Israel illegally' (Jerusalem Post) thus demonstrating that they consider Gaza to be under the authority of the Zionist Entity...

"And when no elite existed, one could always be imported from elsewhere. Cyrus [the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire], even as he flattered the Babylonians with the attentions he paid to Marduk [Babylonian God], had not ignored the yearnings of the city's deportees, exiles such as the Judaeans, brought to Babylon decades previously - for the Persians had recognised in these wretched captives, and in their homesickness, a resource of great potential.

I did not know him before his rush to power, but
what I saw in him then was a man overhorsed by the glory
fate had handed him, riding by sheer force of will, knowing
he must be thrown sometime, and that it would hurt.

In my experience, men who find themselves in receipt of
unasked-for luck become either benign, believing themselves
unworthy, or dangerous, believing everyone else sees them as
unfit.

An excerpt from

Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favour, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude

Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a slap

L’esprit de l’escalier (French): usually translated as "staircase wit" is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it. UPDATE: the english equivalent is ‘tintiddle’.

Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

Taarradhin (Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for "compromise" in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement

In 1997, when I tutored on the Constitutional Law course at Liverpool Uni and was only ever a chapter of the book ahead of my students, the chapter on “Conventions” floored me. Coming from Germany, this way of securing democracy seemed positively insane.

Miri it is while sumer i-last

With foulës song;

Oc now neghëth windës blast

And weder strong.

Ei, ei, what this night is long,

And Ich with wel michel wrong

Sorwe and murne and fast.

Old poem - mediaeval or even older.

'Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,

The small raine down can raine.

Cryst, if my love were in my armes

And I in my bedde again!'

Westron wynde, when wylt thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys
And I yn my bed agayne!

Quoted in The Lie of the Land