New Year’s res­o­lu­tions being noto­ri­ous­ly unkept, 2025 can be bet­ter than the unla­ment­ed year we just lurched through if the media harkens back to what its job is, or at least ought to be, and peace­mak­ers take on board the les­son of a 13^th cen­tu­ry papal conclave.

Print and online news out­lets could make a good start by rein­ing in their predilec­tion for seek­ing out and quot­ing “experts” who state the obvious.
In yet anoth­er of the seem­ing­ly end­less litany of sto­ries on “health issues”, one was described as “a geri­atric inte­gra­tive psy­chi­a­trist”. It was unclear whether “geri­atric” referred to the source, or the job title. Nor was clar­i­ty offered for the “inte­gra­tive” des­ig­na­tion. How­ev­er, since first quote on the many val­ues of deep breath­ing was that “breath accom­pa­nies us from birth until death,” I pre­sume it was meant to add grav­i­tas. What it pro­voked in me was an instant need to expos­tu­late the cliché: “No s***, Sherlock.”
On a more infor­ma­tive lev­el, the sto­ry not­ed the inter­est­ing (to me, away) fact that the con­nec­tion between breath, body and brain has been known for at least 1,500 years.
“Mod­ern research” has appar­ent­ly found evi­dence sup­port­ing the inter­link­ing. No doubt that involved an expen­sive study, when all the boffins had to do was ask a yoga devo­tee. In fact, they didn’t even have to ask. Like com­mit­ted veg­ans, they’ll tell you every­thing they think they know about being healthy, whether you want to hear it or not, even if you don’t ask.
TV cor­re­spon­dents are no less guilty of insult­ing their audi­ence with the puerile. They add to the sin by, in too many cas­es, rely­ing on repet­i­tive, smug talk­ing heads and see­ing them­selves as per­form­ers, walk­ing and talk­ing and wav­ing their hands about on cam­era, rather than writ­ing and nar­rat­ing con­cise scripts to accom­pa­ny TV’s great­est pow­er and sto­ry-telling asset, pictures.

                    AND AS FOR STORIES

The same online news source that car­ried the breath­ing gem had an entire piece ded­i­cat­ed to how “it’s nev­er too late to start lift­ing weights…”. Appar­ent­ly, if I’d done it in my 60s, I could “pre­serve strength for years”Actu­al­ly I did and still do, but the weights and reps have declined, dis­con­cert­ing aches and pains keep pop­ping up that don’t seem to bear any reac­tion to said exer­cis­ing. I and I’m sure many oth­ers my age, would be pleased to see a piece with use­ful quotes from actu­al doc­tors on how to avoid that.
In the cer­tain knowl­edge that the next four years will be replete with un-caveat­ed report­ing (if that’s not being over­ly kind) of non­sense, lies and out­right igno­rance spewed out from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, I’ve opt­ed to pass on the Wash­ing­ton Post’s offer of a sub­scrip­tion to “a week­ly run­down of the lat­est devel­op­ments in Don­ald Trump’s crim­i­nal cas­es.”

               A TASTE OF REALITY

Equal­ly point­less is Trump’s threat on Truth Social of “ALL HELL TO PAY” in the Mid­dle East unless there is an agree­ment to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas before his inau­gu­ra­tion on Jan. 20.
So far, I’ve seen no reports he was asked what “HELL” he has in mind that the peo­ple of Gaza, or the hostages and their fam­i­lies haven’t already paid over the past 15 months.Or how shout­ing by way of cap­i­tal let­ters on a van­i­ty social media plat­form will ease or wors­en it.
The Gaza “peace talks”  remain mired in a turgid state of Hamas accus­ing Israel of intro­duc­ing “new con­di­tions,” and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu com­plain­ing Hamas are “reneg­ing on understandings.”
Per­haps the glacial pace of progress could be speed­ed up if the mid­dle­men (Egypt, Qatar and the U.S,) took a page from the Ital­ian town of Viterbo.
In 1268, Pope Clement IV died there. Thir­ty-three months lat­er, the car­di­nals gath­ered in the town in the first ever papal con­clave, were still arguing.
Fed up, the offi­cials of Viter­bo locked them in the meet­ing room, then reduced their rations to bread and water.
When that failed to nudge the process, they took the roof off the build­ing, expos­ing the “Princes of the Church” to the elements,
Short­ly there­after, Pope Gre­go­ry X was elected.
The late U.S. ambas­sador Richard Hol­brooke bul­lied a peace deal for Bosnia using a sim­i­lar, if less dras­tic ploy, by hav­ing the pres­i­dents of the three war­ring parts of the for­mer Yugoslavia nego­ti­ate inside a drea­ry, fend­ed-off air­base in Day­ton Ohio.

Instead of meet­ing in five star hotels and lux­u­ry vil­las with total secu­ri­ty and room ser­vice in Doha and Cairo, how about putting the Hamas and Israeli cease­fire nego­tia­tors in a makeshift tent, built by a Gazan refugee,  with no elec­tric­i­ty, run­ning water or san­i­ta­tion, lim­it­ed rations from inter­na­tion­al relief agencies,and ongo­ing drone, air and artillery strikes at close quarters.
I won­der how long it would take them to ham­mer out and sign a Gaza peace agreement?
And whether a vari­a­tion on the theme would work for the wars in Sudan  and Ukraine.
Seems worth a try to me.
And if it’s suc­cess­ful, 2025 would be even bet­ter if the main­stream media cred­it­ed the diplo­mats who chan­neled Hol­brooke to achieve it, and fore­stalled Trump from crown­ing him­self as the dealmaker.

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