What Do You Think Today?

[Avatar]

..and the nation formed in response to that most awful of crimes against humanity is itself engaging in behaviour against another group of people that it of all people should understand...

I know, right? This has been a source of bafflement to me even before the current conflict...that a people so historically oppressed should be so willing to oppress another people...

This seems to me to be Netanyahu's only way out now. His Gaza operation is failing because Hamas is too dispersed amongst the wider Palestinian population, too amorphous for rooting out in the traditional sense, without the complete levelling and expunging of the Strip (and even then......)

Something I said multiple times here in response to the US "War on Terror." You can't fight a war against terror. It has no borders, no address, no economy. Stamp it down hard here, and it springs up with renewed bitterness somewhere else.

----

So, progressive taxation, proportional representation, re-establishment of trading links with the EU, the simultaneous opening up of the labour market to EU nationals...

So...basically what you had before?

--A

[peter]

No, no no Av.......

We have never had PR, we haven't had a truly progressive taxation system since what - the late 1970's, and the re-establishment of closer trading ties with the EU and opening up of our borders to EU nationals who want to come here to help fill gaps in our workforce would be nothing like participating in the full EU membership that we were locked into prior to our leaving in 2020. It would be a matter of expedient choices made at our own discretion and to suit our particular needs at given times.

Nb. It's worth noting here the reason behind the huge increase in immigration figures since we left the EU. The promise to "take back control" of our borders notwithstanding, the need for foreign workers to fill jobs within our economy, shortfalls in our labour markets, particularly in the NHS and care sectors, has still been paramount. Where this could previously be filled with EU workers on short term contracts (or longer term as necessary), the sheer distance away of the workers that our businesses and state employers were now having to source, meant that inevitably their commitment to a long term move to this country had to be so much the greater, and therefore the need to bring their dependent families with them. It was no longer possible for a worker to say, come and work in the NHS in London, but make frequent trips home to see his/her family when work allowed. If you are coming from sub-Saharan Africa or the Philippines this simply isn't possible, so you bring your family with you and set up a new life in the UK. This places huge demands on, well, just about everything (schooling, health care, housing.....you name it) that don't accompany the single short-hopping itinerant EU worker, and therefore makes the non EU migrant a much more visible (and potentially damaging to their own access to services etc) presence to the indigenous population. This breeds the resentment upon which the far-right (and not so far-right in our case) are adept at playing upon. Nb. It's always an easy thing when people are struggling in hard times, for unscrupulous politicians to deflect anger onto a particular group of 'others' such as immigrants or Jews or whatever. It's a trick as old as the hills themselves.

(This is granted, a huge oversimplification of a very complex picture, and doesn't take into account the student and asylum seeker {itself very small} impact on figures. But in terms of net immigration it is of high significance.)

-----0-----

But all this aside, it looks to me like we are being softened up for all kinds of bad stuff in the coming years, if this morning's press is anything to go by.

Rishi Sunak is reported as saying that he is quite prepared for the UK to be involved in further actions in the Red-Sea,and Tory MP Tobias Ellwood says we must be prepared to be in it for the long term (surely indicative that there is no expectation that the Houthi capabilities of disrupting trade routes through the region will be diminished any time soon).

In recent days a top Nato official has said that the UK must be prepared for the liklihood of a full scale war with Russia within the next twenty years, and other commentators within the body have said that it is likely to come much quicker than that (one said within five). And in today's Telegraph Chief of the General Staff Sir Patrick Sanders is reported as saying that the British public must be prepared for conscription in the event of such a war, given that numbers of serving soldiers have fallen so low in the UK.

He is not apparently in favour of this, but sees little alternative should the worst materialise. Presumably he'd like to see numbers increased in the services via the traditional route of voluntary signing up, but given that appetite on this score seems unlikely to increase any time soon, there may be no alternative other than the introduction of mandatory service.

I can't see the desire to sign up increasing much in the face of continually being told that the chances of war are rising by the day (and let's face it - you don't really have to be told this, you can see it in just about every news broadcast you watch), but another factor has to be the terms upon which a prospective service candidate is offered were he or she to do so. Time was that the commitment service personnel were making to the defence of the nation was recognised in the form of high wages and significant pension inducements. I can't say in respect of the latter, but I understand that in terms of wages a potential soldier going in at the lowest rank is looking at little better than minimum wage in terms of remuneration. This, for people expected to sign up for five years, with little or no get-out, and every chance of being thrust into situations that could likely see them killed - who will be shouted at and ordered around in ways that would not be tolerated in any other place of work...... Come on. It's not exactly an appealing career choice now, is it?

But the General goes further. It's not just the soldiery that must adjust to a war footing; the general public must also adjust its way of thinking to the prospect of war. The same kind of thinking he said, that people adopted in the twentieth century, when war was a simple reality of people's lives. This, he (previously) said, is our 1937 moment.

Well I don't know about you, but don't want it to be our 1937 moment. I have no appetite for 1937 moments at all! In fact I find them entirely not to my taste! When it comes to 1937 moments I like to say, "Ta, but no ta very much!" I prefer my life to be.....less exciting!

But hell, I'm nearly seventy. I think my days of smoking out machine-gun nests and running screaming onto the beaches of foreign shores are over. Whatever happens it'll be for younger heads than mine to worry about, younger backs to bear the burden. But this much I will say. When your politicians and media start trying to soften you up in this manner - either just to try to frighten you, or to distract you, or for some other undiscernible reason - or God forbid, because it's the actual truth......then you have to start thinking very hard as to whether the people upon whose decisions your life, the life of your family, friends and indeed country, depend upon, are the right ones.

[peter]

Curiouser and Curiouser.

The PM has reacted stridently to the comments reported above by Chief of the General Staff Sir Patrick Sanders that the UK will be forced into relying on conscription in order to raise an army in the event of a full-scale war with Russia.

Not only has he angrily denied that this is the case, but Number 10 has gone further, by commenting that discussions on the topic of possible future wars are ""unhelpful", and should not be engaged in.

The Telegraph, who ran the story reporting Sit Patrick's observations, say this morning that Number 10 did not want his comments made public (I'll bet they didn't) and they will not therefore have been pleased to see the story taken up by Sky News, occupying it's lead story position on the 6pm news slot.

But there is no general agreement that such commentary should not be engaged in. A Whitehall spokesperson said yesterday that there was "a broader conversation to be had" and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has himself said that "the UK is moving from a post-war world into a pre-war world". Shapes wants to see defence spending raised from its current level of around 2 percent of GDP to around 3.5, and has made no secret of this.

Now all of this is reported in today's Telegraph, the same paper that started the exchange with its yesterday story, and I confess that it all has me somewhat confused.

What exactly is going on here?

Certainly Sir Patrick, who is set to stand down as Chief of the General Staff within the next 6 months, is making a play to get army numbers back up from the around 75,000 level to closer to the 120.000 that would be needed in order to pursue any serious conflict with Russia, and using the prod of conscription in order to arouse public pressure in support of this aim. But is this all there is to it?

One doesn't want to become too conspiracy minded about everything, but these stories are rarely ever printed in a vacuum. Very little of what finds its way onto the front page of a high circulation daily like the Telegraph is put there for the simple purpose of reporting. There is normally a subliminal intent in such publishing, but here it's difficult to discern. Okay, perhaps the Telegraph actually wants to see the public increase pressure on the government to increase service personnel numbers: they've run stories recently about how naval vessels would, in the event of conflict, have to remain languishing in port, because of lack of personnel to sail them. Perhaps they've been speaking to top military brass behind the scenes and have decided to give the government a dig as a favour to them.

Or is it something else?

The Tories are facing electoral defeat on an epic scale (if you believe the polling figures) and while Kier Stamer has gone most of the way to calming the fears of the establishment about a forthcoming Labour government, to the Telegraph this would still be anathema. (They clearly don't like Sunak, and would have preferred Truss and her tax giveaway government to have remained in power, but that ship has sailed.) So that might explain the story, were it just centered around the increasing liklihood of war with Russia. The public tend to flock towards the party in power when they are frightened, and naturally towards the Tories when it comes to matters of defence (Labour has never quite thrown off its 'red' image).

But this conscription business complicates this interpretation. It's clearly a frightening tactic of some kind and coming hard on the heels of another story that I haven't commented upon (the comments by a senior back bench Tory MP that Sunak is leading the party to electoral wipeout and should resign immediately to enable another leader to take charge) one wonders where this is going. Perhaps the Telegraph actually wants Sunak out before the general election, seeing him (as the aforementioned Tory MP said) as the one thing standing between the Tories and a reversal of their electoral prospects. The Telegraph is very influential among Conservative backbenchers (Boris Johnson referred to it while PM as his "real boss"), and perhaps the paper's proprietors have been mobilised by the movers and shakers behind the scenes (ie the big Tory donors et al) to make a last concerted effort to mobilise MPs to get him out. Whatever the case, there is more going on than is being reported here: there is underlying intention behind this of which we know nothing. Certainly the public will be frightened by the ideas of war in the offing, they will be angry at the idea of conscription (only ever having seen it for about a dozen years in the army's 350 year history - it simply isn't a thing we are used to), but to what end? What purpose is being served by this?

You tell me. Your guess is as good as mine.

Edit; I've just read the rest of the Telegraph front page and it would tend to bolster the idea that the paper is trying to seed the idea of a leadership challenge being a viable option (indeed, perhaps the only one that gives them a chance of actually winning) before the next election, in the minds of Tory backbenchers.

This has hitherto been seen as simply not viable, due to the number of leadership changes that the party has already undergone without recourse to a general election - but in extremis (and the polls certainly suggest that the party are indeed in extremis) there may be no other choice. The suggestion is that not only might the party not win the next election, but also they might actually be beaten so badly that the party effectively ceases to exist.

I don't personally believe this - the Conservative Party is too understanding of the need for broad unity if it is to win power and hold it, and this will never be more clear to them than after an electoral thrashing. The very effect of this will be to pull them together, not to blow them apart. Let's face it: these guys would hop into bed with Jack the Ripper if it kept them in power (hell, they had a coalition with the Lib-dems for Christ's sake ) So no - I don't predict the end of the Tory Party following electoral defeat to the Labour Party, but some however do.

So back to the Telegraph front page, there is a story about a Number 10 attempt to integrate Chat-GTP into their operations, championed by the PM, that has gone tits up. It gives inaccurate, even nonsense answers, and even (sit down for this) speaks bloody French at times! OK - not terminal for the PM, but a little bit undermining.

Then you have a cartoon by their front page cartoonist Matt, that references leadership challenges (two MPs saying that they're trying to give them up for January, but are having the odd 'cheat day'.

And finally, there's a bottom corner story that the acid test of Sunak's leadership will come in the two forthcoming by-elections in February, and the response to the budget in March. The piece is entitled "Sunak has 6 weeks to save his leadership", which firmly sets the idea that if he fails to turn the polls around following these events, then he must go.

Put together, I think we can see the game here. Sunak is a chicken that will not fight, a busted flush, and the paper wants him out.

If this is indeed the case then in all liklihood he's already a gonner.

[peter]

What the fuck is wrong with America?

In the state of Alabama the execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith has been carried out, not by hanging or firing squad, not by electric chair or lethal injection, but by essentially suffocating him from lack of oxygen.

Normal air has, if I recall correctly about twenty percent oxygen with the resst being pretty much nitrogen, but remove the oxygen and while it remains (as would any gas) breathable, it won't support life.

The idea was - and the state conceeded that this was a 'trial procedure' carried out to asses the viability of the method - that a mask would be strapped onto Smith's face and a pure nitrogen stream fed into it which would, in theory, cause unconsciousness in seconds and death in a few minutes.

It certainly worked insofar as Smith was dead by the end of it, but only following minutes of thrashing around on the gurney to which he was strapped. My guess is that he simply died as if he was being strangled, but the officials who carried out the execution were sanguine about the affair.

"Yes - this was entirely expected," they said, before recording the proceedings as a success.

The reason that they had resorted to this bizarre form of causing death was apparently that, for a variety of reasons not least of which was that Pfizer, the manufacturer of the normal pharmaceutical used, has declined to sell the state the drug to be used for that purpose, they can no longer get hold of the grolly to do the job. This in itself seems bizarre to me. Any veterinary practice in the state could have supplied it (with the assurance that they were doing so under legal statutory requirements), so I really can't see the problem here. Why they chose this method as opposed to hanging or firing sqad, I have no idea. Perhaps so many tickets are now sold to these execution extravaganzas that they feel a bit of theatre is needed to 'big up the show'. Or perhaps the chair is itself a bit too brutal for modern sensibilities - all that burning flesh and smoking, jumping around and whatnot - perhaps they just want, if people are to be executed, they want them to go off smiling and glowing pink in colour (the actual colour, I'm told of the corpses of people who have died of barbiturate poisoning, which is what the lethal injections are). If this is the case I suggest they contract out the jobs to that Dignitas place in Switzerland or wherever it is: they seem to be able to deliver the death blow without upsetting the relatives who are there watching the proceedings.

But Smith, prior to his death, was apparently pretty resigned to the affair. His last words were delivered with a smile and were, "I love you all," said to his legal team and spiritual advisor who were there to be with him. Hardly surprising really. He'd been through the process once before (if you can believe it) when at a prior execution attempt, this time with the usual phenobarbital injection, his executioners had been, "unable to raise a vein".

Unable to raise a vein? There are hundreds of them? Any junkie worth his salt could have done that job, let alone a half decent medical professional? But hey - I suppose 'Executioner for the state' is not something you really want on your CV as a doctor - sort of goes against the vibe if you get me - so I suppose getting access to the best quality medical personnel for the job is somewhat challenging.

So anyway, against the recommendations of a number of medical professionals who said that the method could be fraught with risk, they went ahead. One doctor had warned that unless the mask was a perfect fit (unlikely apparently) it would leak air into the mixture, causing not death but the inducement of a vegetative state instead. So at least this didn't happen. Smith apparently died after a few minutes thrashing about, conscious or otherwise - who's to know - but at least he was dead at the end of it. As well as the previous botched attempt, he (it must be remembered) had been on death row for 33 years or thereabouts, so he had certainly had time to prepare himself.

As, one could say, had the State of Alabama, but he was obviously better at it than they were. A jury had not recommended the death sentence (Smith had always claimed he had only observed the killing of his victim, not actually taken part in it), but they had been overruled by the presiding judge. By the day of his execution he had clearly made his peace with the world and was ready to leave it. The son of his victim, preachers wife Elizabeth Sennett (who Smith apparently killed (or witnessed being killed) in a contract killing) said that he had no sympathy for the executed criminal. Neither could one expect him to have. But I'm not a believer in the death penalty. I don't think it would act as a deterrent in the huge number of cases of murder, many of which are carried out in a fit of violent passion when people are not capable of coherent thought. In the case of the rest, the chances are that the perpetrators are not thinking in terms of getting caught, or they are so removed from normal humanity that they really don't care one way or another. If you are capable of taking another person's like at such low value, chances are that you don't place much more value on your own.

But if you are going to do these jobs (the executions I mean) for God's sake do them properly. Watch the frikkin' Chinese on how to do it. At least they know their game when it comes to killing people. Victim kneeling down, hands tied behind back and head bowed. Bullet through the base of the skull and second one into the head of the (probably) corpse on the ground. Two in the head - you know they're dead, as the ditty goes. Executing a man is no place for squeamish sensibilities. It has to be done fast and efficiently or not at all. Guillotine understood this when he developed his notorious device (which incidentally he did in a spirit of humanity after witnessing the brutality of decapitation via headsman and axe) - why the fuck is it beyond these penal officials in places like Alabama? If the sight of a man being shot is too much for you then stay away from the execution is my advice. There is no reason that a condemned man should be made to suffer a moment longer than necessary in my mind, and certainly not to assuage the sensibilities of those who attend the execution.

So Alabama, get it right or stop fucking doing it (and preferably the latter)! Enough said.

[Avatar]

Apparently the veterinarians association had previously determined that nitrogen was too inhumane to be used in the euthanasia of animals...and it took 22 minutes for him to die...

---

In other news, I watched the ICJ judgement on the SA v Israel genocide case, and glad as I was to see that the ICJ has acknowledged that they have jurisdiction over the case, and that there is enough prima facie evidence that the claims may indeed fall under the ambit of the (genocide) convention, I also saw immediately the orders were read out, that they were not going to order a cease fire.

Sure, basically all other interim orders requested were granted in some form, but the one that (might) actually make a difference to Palestinians in Gaza was conspicuously absent.

All the other orders, well, it can easily be claimed that they were complied with. A ceasefire was the only one where it would be immediately and obviously clear whether or not they were complying.

(As I mentioned on the discord, if Hamas were smart, they would immediately release all hostages unconditionally, and if Israel were smart, they would immediately declare a cease-fire to show their commitment to the convention and humanitarian aid, but sadly both Israel and Hamas are getting exactly the result they want, and as such, have no incentive to do any such thing.

Israel's immediate response was to accuse the ICJ of anti-Semitism for daring to suggest that a Jewish state could ever be guilty of committing genocide.

Meh.

Casualties continue to mount of course.

--A

[peter]

(Edit. Sorry Av - made my below post without checking to see if anyone had posted between me and my last post. Think it pretty much stands, and I agree with yours in full. I'll leave it as written and post anyway. )

Remember that line from Monyt Python's Life of Brian, "You're not the Messiah. You're a very nauwty boy!" Well sorry, but that's just how yesterday's interim statement from the ICJ comes across to me, in respect of its respone to the South African accusation of Israel's intended genocide of the Gazan Palestinians.

Israel has not been told it has to stop. It hasn't been instructed to cease its clearly disproportionate response to the October 7th atrocity, it has been told, "Now hold your hand out, you've been very naughty and you're going to have to be more careful!"

It's a wording that allows both sides to claim victory (although the final reckoning will be years in the brewing, by which time everyone will have forgotten what it was all about (except the Palestinian peoples, who could no more forget this than the Jewish people could forget what history has seen done to them). A carefully tailored piece of diplospeak from the ICJ, giving both sides something to walk away with, and presenting itself as a fair arbiter and reasoned instrument at the same time. In other words, a meticulously disguised piece of cowardice presented as a considered statement of judgement, and one intended more for getting itself out of a sticky international judgement in which whatever result it came up with, someone was going to be pissed, and it was ultimately going to take the fall.

Because if it had ordered Israel to immediately cease its activities, it would have brought about the condemnation of itself by Israel, America and the UK (and its only on American say-so that the UN (its parent body, if you like) has any recognised legitimacy on the international stage; the moment the US decries it, it's game over for the UN). And if it had found in favour of Israel and said there was no case for Israel to answer, then it would have been shown up in harsh light, to be the toothless poodle that in reality it might reasonably be seen to be.

So it walked a fine line and said to Israel, "Okay off you go. But be more careful!"

Netanyahu's response was to immediately claim victory and call the South African claims a nonsense (which in truth they were - because there is no evidence that Israel intends to commit a genocide on the Gazan population - ethnically cleanse it out of Gaza, yes.....collectively punish it for October 7, yes.....see it shifted en masse out of Gaza and Israel, yes.....but commiit genocide on it, that's a stretch too far). The EU has responded that it "expects Israel to immediately comply with all of the panel's recommendations" (good luck with that) and so today it's business as usual in the killing fields of Gaza.

And in a separate incident, based on information received from Israel, the discrediting of the UN presence in Gaza was begun (just in case of an unfavourable judgement by the ICJ), via the implication of its bias against the Israeli state, by the apparently coincidentally timed accusations of involvement of Gazan based UN relief agency workers in the October 7th attacks. This has prompted an immediate probe by the UN and the cessation of aid to the agency from the US. There may or may not be truth in the accusations, but it cannot be denied that UN workers within Gaza have been a major source of the information coming out of Gaza re the effects of Israel's actions on the people - a source that has been accorded weight in the Western media - and anything that can be done to discredit the body (irrespective of the work of the ICJ) has to be supportive of Israel's cause.

So, in brief, a shit load of politics and a whole heap of nothing. Will Israel take even the slightest bit of notice of what the ICJ has said? Well, let's hope so, but I'm not holding my breath. Netanyahu is in deep shit if he doesn't pull off a Gazan victory. He can't eradicate Hamas, he can't get the hostages out by killing them (there is no achieving this without negotiation), so what does he do? The answer I guess, is to double down and keep buggering on. Maybe he'll be a bit more cautious (he has to report back to the ICJ in a month with proof that he is taking the steps they have instructed him to), or maybe he'll just go for broke and try to get the war to spread into a more regional conflict in which the USA and UK have no option but to get involved. Who knows. Watch, I guess, this space.

[Avatar]

Likewise, I pretty much agree with what you said above there. I must just add though that by legal definition, "genocidal actions" can be carried out against portions of populations, and that I do not think it a stretch too far to consider Israel's actions against the Palestinians in Gaza to be at least "genocide adjacent." Nor do I think that there is much distinction between "ethnic cleansing" and genocide per se. (See Serbia etc.)

Israel's intention to get rid of the Palestinians in Gaza has been publicly explicit for many years, and is certainly not limited to actions in this current conflict.

--A

[peter]

Point taken Av. I can't really argue with it.

It was a brave move by South Africa to bring this case, absolutely guaranteed to win them no friends in either the UK or US, and any person with a shred of humanity who has been watching this tragedy unfold will recognise it as such. Nothing will ever bring back those lost on either side, and the important thing now is to get the situation back under control. There are I believe, tentative steps to restart temporary ceasefire talks, which must be a good thing, and if Israel is even given pause to think on what the ICJ has instructed then so much the better. Perhaps in my disappointment that a ceasefire was not ordered, I am a little harsher on the ICJ than they deserve. Yesterday's Times was far more strident in reporting the interim statement as a success for the Palestinian cause than the BBC had been the previous evening, so I suppose that it's all a matter of perspective really.

But another issue that is developing here is this now growing condemnation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) across a number of nations (all key supporters of the Israeli prosecution of their offensive against Gaza), members of who's Gaza office were involved (they say) in planning the October 7th attacks (or at the very least had - again, they say - prior knowledge of them.

This I believe as I said above, is designed to undermine the credibility of any information about what is going on in Gaza coming out of the office, and also to undermine faith in the UN more generally. It seems fine to hold up the UN as the foremost body representing the collective nations of the world while ever it supports whatever we in the West want to do (like illegally attack third countries like Iraq - although I can't actually remember if the necessary resolutions were obtained prior to our savaging that country either), but the moment that it goes against any actions that we would take or support, then it must be brought down with questions about its impartiality being raised.

It is entirely possible that a small cohort of the UNRWA workers were involved or had knowledge of what was planned - given that workers in relief have to be drawn from the indigenous population in any country where the relief agency operates it is almost inevitable that in a place like Gaza where the need for relief has been entirely brought about by the actions of a third party (and in this instance, occupying) state, bias against that state will exist - but this cannot be cause to remove funding for the entire operations of the organisation, which 8 states have now done.

The head of the agency Phillipe Lazzarini has said that upwards of two million people are dependent upon the relief work carried out in Gaza, and for the activities of the whole to be put in jeopardy by the actions of a small number of individuals is nonsensical. He describes the decision of the 8 countries, UK and US included, who have suspended support of the agency as "shocking" and has urged them to reconsider. He has terminated the contracts of the individuals named by Israel in the information they have provided and promised a transparent investigation into the alleged involvement by his staff (of which there are more than 13,000 in the Strip).

Rishi Sunak, in the last day or so, has absolutely repeated his commitment to the UK standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel in this business, and thrown his full support behind the Israeli operation in Gaza. It seems that no level of Palestinian death in the Strip will be too much, as long as it is framed under the cloak of "Israel's right to defend herself", and no obstacle of any kind, UN or otherwise, that stands in the way of this "defence" (and its attendant prosecution) will be tolerated.

History will not be kind to us on this score - and we will not deserve it to be.

-----0-----

Do you know, I'm a bit worried.

I saw an American general on YouTube some weeks or months ago, who was unequivocal in his belief that the war in Ukraine was essentially lost. In any conventional war, he said, two things are critical deciders as to who will win. Manpower and firepower. Whichever side can raise and mobilise both of these at the higher rate will win. Russia he said, could raise both men and munitions at five times the rate of Ukraine. After a slow start Russia was bedding itself in for the long haul, digging itself in behind its lines and slowly, incrementally, pushing those lines forward. Western appetite for being in for the long haul was, irrespective of the military thinking on the subject, politically questionable, with every sign of it faltering.

Stories are starting to emerge of the horrendous casualty figures inflicted on both sides, but in the case of Ukraine who have far smaller reserves of manpower to fall back on, these casualty figures are far more significant. Those refugees who fled the war to other countries, looked on with sympathy and compassion when they first arrived, are now being looked at to see whether they can be returned, in order to fill the rapidly increasing need for fresh 'fodder' for the war effort. The draught in Ukraine itself now includes middle-aged men and women who in normal times would be far outside the age range for service. The Zelensky government has no choice in this: there are no normal service age individuals left to fall back on. They're either already fighting or they're dead. Reports of pregnant women fighting on the front line may or may not be true, but the fact remains that the Ukraine are running out of personnel.

Running out of personnel fighting a proxy war for Nato against Putin. A war that we are far more invested in (in terms of interest) than the Ukrainians are themselves. A war that we do not want to loose.

And suddenly, a retiring Chief of Staff of the army says in our media, that we might have to consider conscription, if push comes to shove, and we found ourselves at war with Russia.

Like Neil Oliver, I find this sudden coming out on the retiring general's part suspicious. It has, as Oliver said, the feel of a stone being thrown into a pond, by a man who has nothing to loose by being the chosen one to chuck it. As he said, a "running up the pole" of a flag, just to see what the response was, to seed (as it were) the idea out there. This idea, this guy's comments, haven't sprung from nowhere. This was carefully planned and executed at just this time.

And we have form on this. The use of political outriders to introduce the idea of privatisation of the nationalised utilities (utilities that were absolutely seen as part of the national fabric) into the public debate, was used highly effectively by Margaret Thatcher prior to her successful achievement of that very aim. Could it be that this intervention is something of the same order? Because clearly, if Russia are going to be driven out of Ukraine, boots on the ground are going to be needed. And they have to come from somewhere. And we have a huge pool of unemployed youth sitting on their backsides playing war games on their consuls, don't we? Put two and two together and maybe come up with five? But maybe come up with four as well.

And before you shake your head and chuckle to yourself: say, "Old Peter's going a bit soft- it'll never happen, the British public would never wear it", I'd remind you of a time six years ago. A time when if someone had told you, you'd be locked up into your own house, prevented from seeing your children and your neighbours, prevented from visiting sick relatives in hospital or standing in a church while they were buried.......you'd have said they were mad, it would never happen, the public would not stand for it......

And you'd have been wrong.

[peter]

Just to let you know.......

The part of the increase in food prices attributable to Brexit has to date not been due to any increase in import paperwork imposed by the UK, but rather down to export paperwork from the countries where the food is produced.

This has already had the effect of causing many EU exporters to decide that the slog of getting food into the UK is simply not worth the candle (this and the extra time that entering the UK from the EU takes), resulting in visible gaps on our supermarket shelves as previously available products fall away from the range available.

But things are about to get worse. Because on February 1st, the long awaited introduction of "complex post Brexit paperwork" (the FT's words not mine) are set to be brought in - they've been delayed five times already for fear of what the unpredictable result of unleashing them might be.

All products of plant and animal origin will need this complicated certification, the cost of which and responsibility for preparing, must be provided by the exporter. The result can only be a sharp uptick in the costs of imported foods, the decrease of imported food quantities as many more exporters are forced to decide that exporting to the UK is simply no longer viable, and an increase in the cost of home produced food as demand for the limited supplies of this increase in proportion to that which the exported provision has fallen.

This going to push food prices across the board skywards as well as causing shortages in specific areas where the UK public are used to there being plentiful supply. It's big fucking news, and yet typically it's nowhere to be found in the UK media. Only in the Financial Times is a sqare inch of coverage given down in the bottom left hand corner of page 1. We import 700,000 tonnes of pork from the EU every year and any disruption to supply will rapidly result in shortages, one policy advisor is noted as saying.

I'm actually surprised that the introduction of the import controls is going ahead. As I said, they've been repeatedly delayed for fear of the impact they would have on already stretched supply chains and household budgets. I know that the farmers involved in pork production in the UK have been pushing for their starting (as agreed in the Brexit withdrawal agreement), but the EU themselves have been perfectly happy not to have to complete the certification (while of course, exporters from the UK to the EU have had to) and would presumably happily see the current situation carry on ad infinitum.

I'd expected that the Sunak administration would continue to do what the Johnson one did, and kick the can down the road until a later point when perhaps we were better situated to deal with it (or even until it was not them, but a Kier Stamer administration that had to deal with it) but apparently not so. There might still be an announcement, but if there is going to be one, then it's coming rather late. But it looks to me like something unreported has happened to force the government's arm, and like it or not, the import requirements are going to be introduced.

So better brace yourselves: make sure that that months worth of dry and canned foods is carefully stocked away in your cupboards. Unreported and unasked for, the food cost/supply show of our Brexit journey is about to enter its second act.

[Avatar]

It was a brave move by South Africa to bring this case, absolutely guaranteed to win them no friends in either the UK or US, and any person with a shred of humanity who has been watching this tragedy unfold will recognise it as such. Nothing will ever bring back those lost on either side, and the important thing now is to get the situation back under control. There are I believe, tentative steps to restart temporary ceasefire talks, which must be a good thing, and if Israel is even given pause to think on what the ICJ has instructed then so much the better. Perhaps in my disappointment that a ceasefire was not ordered, I am a little harsher on the ICJ than they deserve. Yesterday's Times was far more strident in reporting the interim statement as a success for the Palestinian cause than the BBC had been the previous evening, so I suppose that it's all a matter of perspective really.

Yeah, the real problem is proving intent is very difficult and has an extremely high bar...I have no doubt that Israel will not be found guilty in the long run by the ICJ because of course, they don't want to wipe out the Palestinians, and have never done so, they just want them to stop attacking them for taking their land, imposing a discriminatory system of laws on them, and cramming 2.5 million people into 360 sq km.

(Also agree about the UN credibility thing...everybody touts them, until they get told to do or not do something, then everybody ignores them...) (Now if they had some actual teeth...)

As for the Brexit thing, it works both ways...mate of mine says he's lost 25% of his business because all his European customers can't be bothered to go through the hassle of getting his products into the EU now.

--A

[peter]

Absolutely on both counts Av.

I heard James O'brien asking yesterday (and he was talking to the ex top UNRWA communications official for the whole operation, not just Gaza) what it was that the cutting of funding to UNRWA was supposed to achieve. Given that the UN controlled body had already sacked the 12 individuals named by Israel as being involved in the October attack (and before even investigating the matter), what then,O'brien asked, was the criteria which UNRWA would have to satisfy in order to get this funding restarted?

It never seemed to cross the minds of either O'brien or the eminent 'expert' that he was interviewing, the answer that immediately sprang to my simple mind - that the move to halt the activities of the main source of aid for all the 2.2 Gazan inhabitants by the USA, UK and assorted cronies, was not about UNRWA workers involvement in the atrocities. It was rather, nothing other than to throw their weight behind the Israeli attempts to make the continued presence of the Palestinians in Gaza - any Palestinians - harder to maintain. It is nothing other than a further pressure being heaped on the already embattled population, to give up the fight and leave. And this in the face of the ICJ ruling that Israel must increase the levels of aid reaching the Palestinians! Shame on the USA and UK that we should resort to such base tactics, let alone be supportive of Israel in what is now becoming apparent as their clear aim (and maybe scratch out the word 'becoming' here).

And I was gratified to hear an Irish MEP standing before the European chamber and unequivocally stating exactly this, and similarly stating that the countries within the EU who had also resorted to this base tactic should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. More power to this lady's elbow. I'd give an arm and a leg to have such a woman leading my country, let alone sitting in our parliament.

But on the broader front, the warmongering goes on.

Three American service personnel are killed on an airbase in Jordan and Jo Biden says America will respond "at a time and place of its choosing". But he doesn't want a war with Iran. (Shame that half of his cabinet don't agree with him on this, then.) Iran will not stand for any acts of aggression committed against itself and will respond in kind with all the means at its disposal....... But it doesn't want a war with the US. Britain will continue to defend its shipping interests in the Red-Sea, and so will the USA. We'll bomb targets within Yemen and wherever necessary in pursuit of this aim - but we don't want any war to spread as a result of it: we don't want to see this develop into a 'wider regional conflict '. We'll call up our youth into the armed forces in preparation for a predicted war with Russia within the next 5, 10, 20 years (take your pick according to who you listen to) and US nuclear warheads "twenty times as powerful as that dropped on Hiroshima" (what, only twenty!) come back to the UK for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall......

But no-one wants a war!

No. And I should think they fucking don't!

Because unless it has slipped your mind, it was nearly impossible to stop these idiots from blowing the world to smithereens when only two countries had these weapons of armageddon at there disposal. So what chance exactly, of emerging from this much spoken of war, with anything above the size of a cockroach intact? Do these fools in the media and commentariat who keep talking of war simply forget where anything approaching a full scale war in this day and age will finish up? Is absolutely fucking cast iron guaranteed to finish up? Because I fucking don't, and if you are clever you won't either.

So surely it's time that someone with a platform somewhere stood up and told the people - the people I say - that they don't have to put up with this bullshit. That if Jeremy Corbyn had been elected (just for say) none of this would be happening! (Or at least we wouldn't be balls deep in it. )That there are people out there who don't want this stuff, who don't buy that "the Russians are coming" or that China wants to take over the world. And that it's time we stopped this fucking nonsense in its tracks and started behaving like adults, and maybe dealing with the real stuff we should be, like whether the planet will be burned to a crisp by the sun in a few hundred years, rather than some ***t with a button to press in ten.

Because if we can't do this, can't put some people who are not simply bent on putting us all into one great sandbox of war while they trouser the profits generated thereby, into power.....well then, frankly we have less right to be running the show on Earth than the cockroach that will likely replace us.

[peter]

Well it's a hugely significant step and it's been a long time in coming, but finally the DUP has agreed to reenter Stormont as part of the power sharing agreement that runs (or rather should be running) the devolved government of Northern Ireland.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't believe it would happen - I've said as much in these pages - especially given that this time they will be entering the parliament not as the leading party, but as second partner under the combined leadership of Sinn Fein.

This moment marks a sea-change in Irish politics, as the nationalist Sinn Fein party, for the first time takes the lead in the province that has formerly always been firmly unionist in its leaning.

The argument has always been (from the DUP side) that it was the brexit withdrawal agreement, that threatened to cut off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK in terms of its relationship with the EU, that was the sticking point preventing them re-entering into the devolved parliament, but the fact remains that they were never going to be happy playing second fiddle to a Sinn Fein led devolved parliament, and this has certainly played its part. If this had not been the case, then there is nothing to have stopped the party from re-entering Stormont shortly following the signing up of Rishi Sunak's redrawn up agreement, the Windsor Framework, signed as long ago as March of last year. But further agreement between the UK and the province has finally persuaded the DUP that they can finally re-enter the power-sharing agreement, and that governance of the province, so long held in abeyance, can restart.

This has to be a reflection of deeper changes within the collective 'mindset' of the unionist community (or perhaps I should better say the protestant community, though I have no doubt that secularism is on the rise in the province, just as (as is the case elsewhere) the influence of religion in people's lives is waning). And more, it has also to be indicative of the beginning of a process that can only end in one way, namely the reunification of the island of Ireland into one political and national entity.

And let's face it; there are many in Westminster who would shed no tears at the dissolution of the Union. They see Northern Ireland as a millstone around the neck of Great Britain, both in terms of the economic cost of maintaining the province and the gordian knot of its politics, and feel that we would be better off without it.

For my part, I believe we have a historical responsibility for the support of the province in whatever manner it so chooses its relationship with us to be, since we must bear ultimate responsibility for being the authors of so many of its troubles. If the people of NI choose to remain as part of the Union, so be it. If they decide on balance, that their route must lie elsewhere (and looking at the state of the rest of Great Britain as we speak, who could blame them) then equally, they must go with our best wishes for their future. But it must be their collective decision, taken via the ballot box and not via the barrel of a gun.

If Sunak can leave office with the beacon of a road to the peaceful solution of this troubled region's problems shining in the distance, then he will have done a fine thing. I'll be the first to say so.

-----0-----

And let's face it. At what point would anything they see going on across the Irish Sea convince them that a better future for themselves lay in continuing to be tied to our sinking ship?

I was in Dublin last year, and the difference between it and London was striking. Where the centre of London is tired dirty and downmarket, Dublin was a bustling hive of activity with a real sense of the thriving nature of the place coming through. It's a well known fact that Northern Ireland did not vote en masse to leave the EU, and this I think, must have had an input into the historic win of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland elections. The people it seems, know where they believe their bread to be buttered, and in a choice between Great Britain and an Ireland that remains within the EU, it ain't with us!

And as if to drive that fact home, yesterday the International Monetary Fund blew a great big raspberry at Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, by telling him that his plans for an electioneering tax giveaway in the forthcoming March budget were ill thought out. He'd be far better, they told him, concentrating on "fiscal consolidation" (ie getting his taxation/borrowing balance in order) and carrying out the desperately needed spending in areas like health, education and green policy planning. And as if to add insult to injury, they simultaneously downgraded our growth forecast for 2024 to a miserable 0.6 percent if we're lucky (we are essentially teetering on the brink of recession at all points of the forthcoming year).

Hunt, needless to say, knows better. He desperately needs to stick with his tax giveaway plans if the Tories are going to avoid total electoral annihilation at the polls next year, and the IMF intervention yesterday could not come at a worse time for him. Even worse, they reiterate exactly what I've said in previous posts in the past few months, that urgent attention needs to be given to closing income and wealth tax loopholes in this country, in order to achieve fiscal balance. In other words the richest in this country must start paying their taxes!

We now have, apparently, the lowest growth forecast figure of the G7 economies, with the exception of Germany (which seems to have turned into a basket case of late) and I was interested to see, not in the same article but at the bottom of the FT front page in small letters referring to an inside piece, that Russia's growth forecast (put out in the same global report as the UK's) has doubled.

You won't hear that on the BBC news tonight. So much for the effect of sanctions on the Russian economy.

So anyway, once again reality intrudes it's rude head into the bullshit, pie in the sky thinking of our Chancellor, and he is brought down to earth with a bump. Not that it will achieve anything. He's far beyond actually doing anything in the country's interest by this stage of the proceedings; his job is damage limitation in respect of the forthcoming election and nothing else. He'll slubber up a tax giveaway budget for March even if it kills him (or more likely a few thousand people on hospital waiting lists who will die before the money is found to actually treat them). Rumour has it that his seat in the election could well fall to Labour, and he will have the ignominy of standing there on the rostrum as Chancellor, watching his constituents kick him out of Westminster. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke. (Actually, not fair that; Hunt has never struck me as a particularly bad man - more misguided I'd say. He has no qualifications rendering him a fit individual to be our Chancellor, but hey - when did that ever stop them.)

One more thing.....and perhaps the most important to take on board of all.

The tax cuts that Hunt is lauding as "universal" (ie we all get them) are not what they seem. Because if you save, on minimum wage, a few quid a week, and the richest in our society save thousands, and then the inevitable inflation that follows on from tax cuts kicks in and wipes out any benefit you derived from your tax cut, but leaves the richest still seeing a gain.......

Then all that has really happened is that the wealth/income inequality gap in the country has got larger and the rich have got richer at the expense of the poor getting poorer. Which as I've said in previous posts, is what the Tories are specifically here to do. Because money is only relevant in terms of what you can buy with it; it's a measure of value and no more. And if you can buy less then you're poorer. Point blank. By Huntian economics we are heading back to that feudal state of Victorian times when wealth was concentrated (alongside the power that comes with it) in the hands of a tiny elite of plutocrats, and the rest of us are only as good as the money we can be farmed for.

So in what world would the province of Northern Ireland be better off sticking with us, rather than cutting ties and rejoining with its sister nation and getting back into the EU? C'mon. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work that one out now do you?

[peter]

This, I think, deserves a little post of its own. Read it and think about it: what it tells you at a really fundamental level about where we are. I think it's as sobering a little piece of reportage as I've read in a long time

From this morning's Financial Times;

Britain struggles to keep up in infrastructure race.

The average cost for a flat road in the UK is 8.5mn per kilometre, but in France it comes in at 4.22mn. That is just one statistic pointing to significantly higher construction costs than in peer countries on the continent, laying bare the challenge of upgrading Britain at a time of tight public finances. One issue is long planning times, but experts also point to decades of under-investment. "We have a shortfall that is manifest in appalling publicservices," one said.

How on earth can we ever keep pace with continental Europe in terms of infrastructure against a backdrop like this. There can only be one result:a sliding backwards of the UK in comparison with other countries that will become ever more apparent as time progresses.

This small piece sums up exactly where fourteen years of Conservative rule has brought us, and should be headline news on every media outlet in the country, so that the public can be made aware of it.

It goes exactly back to what I was saying about London and Dublin in my previous post, and lays bare exactly where we are, exactly the place where the Tories have brought us to. Chilling for the future or what?

[Avatar]

I was just reading some horrifying stuff about the "dental Deserts" in the UK...Say what I will about SA, at least I can get a dentist, and afford one.

In other news, I see that the US has taken some surprising steps re Israel, and both they and the UK have intimated recognising Palestinian statehood...More on that in a more appropriate forum perhaps.

--A

[peter]

Don't even get me started on the UK dentist situation Av! My dentist has just stopped seeing NHS patients so I have to go private or loose my access to dental care completely. 75 quid for a check up, 300 for a filling or tooth removal. Huge numbers of people simply won't be able to afford dental care at all, and with no NHS places available they will be totally screwed. Welcome to UK 2024!

On the announcements by Cameron, got to admit I haven't kept up with them (other than just seeing them in headline form. Seems to me to be so much piss and wind given that we have withdrawn UNRWA funding upon which the entire population of Gaza are dependent, when 12 out of 30,000 UNRWA workers have been accused (not convicted) of being involved in the October atrocity. This is no more than piling on the pressure for Gazans to quit the territory under the thin covering of cod-outrage at the implied complicity of the UN in the attack. While ever we are playing such games (and continuing to supply Israel with the wearwithal to pursue its ethic cleansing activities, I find it hard to bring myself to listen to Cameron playing up to the world's media by pretending that we are any way onside with the Palestinian cause for statehood.

The removal of UNRWA relief aid is not only in complete opposition to the ICJ instruction that food and medical aid to Gaza should be prioritised at the exclusion of all other considerations, but is in effect itself a hostile action being levied against the Gazan people. The only time Cameron et al will consider the "recognition" of the Palestinian state will be when there are no Palestinians left in the region to live in it.

[peter]

America has begun a "tiered response" to the strike against one of its outposts on the Syrian-Iraqi border, by striking at a number of reputedly Iranian backed militia bases in both countries. It won't be the last of such strikes, the department of defence tells us, but they are "in no way seeking to risk escalation" of the already explosive situation in the region.

Grant Schapps said yesterday, as he called for increased military build-up, that we in the UK for our part needed to send a clear message to the various enemies of the West that they can never triumph in any conflict - that (and I quote) "democracy always wins".

The obvious logical fallacy that any win that is achieved via the barrel of a gun cannot be considered to be democracy didn't seem to bother him, any more than the idea that carrying out multiple aerial strikes in third countries cannot be considered not to be escalatory bothered the American spokesman, but in this day and age of doublespeak and deliberate obfuscation these things merely pass us by as normal.

The plain facts that the conflict in the Middle East is escalating, and that democracy is now a concept that is degraded to the point of virtual meaninglessness all over the so called liberal-democratic world are not however lost on us. In fact ongoing forever wars (alongside the lucrative spin-off they generate) seems to be the chief modus operandi, even dare Isay raison detra, of the West, as it attempts to halt its inexorable decline in the face of a world that is discovering that it does not need to be hide bound to the ways that others tell it must pertain.

The expression of doubt that our leaders are advising us well is however, not received with grace. More and more, anyone who suggests that a hostile approach towards the non Western world as it finds its own path - a path in which it makes decisions for itself, rather than simply bowing to the course that we would choose for it - is neither productive or wise, is looked upon as a borderline traitor, a potential collaborator to be shouted down with scorn and derision.

The age of rational argument has given way in our public discourse to the age of he who shouts loudest and longest is adjudged the victor.

The policy chosen for us by our political masters is presented with care and cunning. Doublespeak and ambiguity are used to cloud issues which on the face of it should be clear and without question. Smooth presentation and emollient words are used to cloak aggressive acts in a shield of jusifiability, so that the senses become confused and what is palpably wrong suddenly appears to be possibly right (but only if looked at obliquely, via the side of the eye as it were). White man speak with forked tongue indeed!

But through a glass darkly the eye begins to see, and the mind begins to clear. So despite what the shouters and the bullyers would say, despite all the calumny and accusation that will follow you if you elect to speak out, hold fast to your own critical judgement of that which you are being told to believe. In amongst all of the clever rhetoric and winding words the truth is still out there to be seen. Search it out and when you discern it put it forward in quiet rational argument to any who will listen. Use your truths like feathers from a torn open cushion and shaken into the wind on the outskirts of the recievd wisdom of the 'official narrative'. Once out there, they will not soon be gathered in again.

(Reading the above I'm reminded of the famous Wilde (?) quote, "A man's grasp should exceed his reach, or what's a heaven for?", so forgive my attempts to wax lyrical. Still, I think the meanings clear enough for all the attempts to make it sound good. I suspect it finishes up looking like a badly made up drag-queen, garish and ridiculous, but hell - at least I try! )

[peter]

The Houthis have been struck again.

They've had the temerity to (South African contribution notwithstanding) be the only country in the world to say, "No! You don't get to facilitate the atrocity that is being commited against the people of Gaza, and just carry on with everything else as if nothing is happening!"

We, the civilised West on the other hand, with our much vaunted liberal values, are not only prepared to turn a blind eye to it, but are actively prepared to enable it with our support and supplies, and our staggering inhumanity in cutting of funding for the one lifeline of aid that the poor denizens of this tragic region depend on.

This ragtag, looked down upon, cobbled up group of fighters, are the single people who are standing up to actually do something against a West that has 'turned rogue' by pouring cold water on the judgement of the International Court ofJustice, the single highest legal authority in the world.

Do you get this? Do you see the significance of these things? Let me repeat it.

In being the ones not prepared to accept and follow the ruling of the ICJ, Israel, Britain and America - because we the latter have said in no uncertain terms that we disagree with the ruling, and not only this, will do nothing to ensure that the former complies with its instructions - we have accorded ourselves the status of being rogue states. By our own judgements and actions of days past. Because you can't claim for 75 years that any country that doesn't bow to the ruling of the highest world authority, set up specifically make judgement in cases such as this, is a rogue state, and then not be one when you fail to do so yourself.

The rest of the world looks on while we trash any claim we ever had to occupy the moral high ground in our dealings on the international stage. We are brought low by the actions of a nothing state (in our superior eyes), who without killing a single person (while we support the actions of a country that has bombed, shot and starved upwards of 30,000 to people) have drawn a line in the sand and said, "This you will not do while we stand here to stop it."

The so-called 'global South' sees at last the real nature of the 'liberal West' in its true colors. Colors which despite its high rhetoric to the contrary, show it to be a meaningless sham when the chips are down and a choice must be made between unquestioning support of an allie or calling out an atrocity for what it is.

Remember two politicians not considered to be the most friendly individuals when it came to the support of lesser nations - Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan. When Israel invaded South Lebanon in the 80's and IDF soldiers stood and watched as massacre and rape was committed against the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila, the former condemned it as a barbaric outrage and the latter picked up the phone and told the Israeli leader to pull his forces out of Lebanon with immediate effect. And they did! You can be absolutely sure that neither of those leaders would be 'standing shoulder to shoulder' with Israel in this current situation.

And the complicity of the western media in this is staggering. The ICJ ruling was by accounts devastating in its condemnation of what Israel has been doing, but was this reported? This hugely important development was not featured in anything but the slightest of passing in our printed media (in the Times on the morning after the judgement it ran on page 42) and on the BBC newscast of the night it came out, the story ran second to some lightweight issue (I forget which) and when it was given, concentration was placed upon the fact that Israel had not been instructed to cease the hostilities, giving very much the impression that they had in effect been vindicated by the Court.

I should know,: I was taken in. In fact the judgement of the Court was a searing indictment of Israel's activities in the strip, in which serious intimation was given that there may indeed be grounds for upholding the charge of intended genocid. It also said that as a first priority, Israel should begin looking to increase aid to the beleaguered Palestinian people within the Strip.

Was this reported? It barely broke surface before it was of course engulfed by headlines, shrieked by loudhailer from every outlet visual or printed across country, that a number of UNRWA workers had been involved (allegedly) in the assault into Israel. This was given wall-to-wall coverage and the ICJ judgement story disappeared as if it had never happened. In doing so, Western media across the board gave Israel license to evade the international consequences of the judgement and to carry on with its murderous rampage in Gaza. More civilians were killed in the days following the judgement than in the days before it, as Israel effectively put two fingers up at the judges. And we for our part, put the lives of 2.2 million Palestinians in further jeopardy by defunding UNRWA, the single most important source of relief in the Gaza region. In doing so we added to the already long list of our complicity in the illegal and inhumane actions of Israel in Gaza.

This is a situation that will come back to haunt the West with its consequences. Our cachet is damaged on the world stage beyond repair. You do not pour cold water on the judgements of the UN, and its principal judicial organ the ICJ, without suffering a serious blow to your credibility as a voice that must carry weight in the wider world. The institution we disparage in our denial of its judgment is the very one that we set up yourself in the aftermath of World War 2, in order to prevent just a such situation as is now unfolding in Gaza, from ever happening again. The irony of this is not lost on the rest of the world and neither will it be forgotten.

We are not on the right side in this, and the failure of our administration to put our actions in the Red-Sea before Parliament gives the lie to it. As with any cheap criminal, scrutiny of what they do in the harsh light of day is the last thing they want. As every day we are drawn closer to what our Western leadership seems to be bent on achieving - total and ongoing war - and as with each passing day it becomes ever more apparent that we no longer have a functioning media that is prepared to report and call out what is happening in unbiased and unequivocal terms, the need for the disparate army of unqualified but uninfluanced citizen journalists spread across the ether (and of whom I am proud to consider myself a member) becomes all the more pressing.

History will judge who has the right of this, and I have no fear on that score.

[peter]

Kier Stamer's minimalist manifesto.

This was a thing I read about a day or two ago - Kier Stamer's cunning plan to stave off criticism of proposed Labour policies by the Tories before the next election.

The political manifesto, traditionally being the place where a political party sets out its stall before the public prior to a general election, can be a tricky affair. It's the place where, if you make any rash promises or have any questionable policies, the press and the opposition will bear down on you, potentially making you look like the class klutz if you can't give convincing answers to their criticisms.

But Stamer has got it all worked out. What he's going to do, is produce a manifesto that's so thin that there's (wait for it).....fuck all in it! That way, there's nothing he can be tripped up on!

Brilliant!

He's so far ahead in the polls that he doesn't even need to tell people what he intends to do, because they'll vote for him whatever it is he has planned.

I'm serious: this is what has been put forward. It's as good as an open admission from the Labour Party that it isn't them that people will be voting for in the next election, that will be winning the keys to Downing Street. That the truth is that they could be the Monster Raving Looney party and they'd still win the election, because it is the Tories that are going to loose it, not them actually win it.

I mean, it's hardly surprising is it. The country's a train-wreck. There's nothing left of it to vote for. Only the wildest swivel-eyed loon, somebody who deliberately walked around with his head up his arse refusing to see what is before his eyes would still put his X in the Tory box. You'd have to be a veritable certifiable nut-job to still think the Tories could make a go of it.

But it's a measure of the paucity of the opposition that Labour would actually think it reasonable to present themselves to the country with nothing set out on paper. It's a mark of their disrespect for the electorate that they would think that they deserve such a condescending trick played on them.

I hope the fuckers get beaten roundly and sent back under their turn-coating rock.

So come forth Spaghetti Monster, come forth Flat Earth Party and Monster Ravers of the Night. My vote's up for grabs and there for the taking!

[Avatar]

History will judge who has the right of this, and I have no fear on that score.

All law grows from the barrel of a gun

The real and perhaps deeper danger here is that things like this push the "global south" toward regimes like China and Russia.

The fact that these powers were not colonial (as Africa sees it) does a lot to hide the fact that they are not democratic or unexploitative.

Not to mention that "democracy" is a fairly new and difficult ideology for Africa itself, which still has an unfortunate (if understandable) tendency toward the authoritarian etc.

--A

[peter]

On the first Av, how indeed could it be otherwise? The Brics developments are already paving the way for a shifting focus of economic concentration, away from the unipolar one led by America and into a more multipolar state; it is almost inevitable that the legal/military concentrations of powers will shift as well, and in truth much of what we are seeing is being driven by just that desire of the USA to protect its hegemony as 'leader of the free world'. Particularly in the Middle East of course, the added need to be in the driving seat when it comes to the sourcing and distribution of oil is always going to be in there as well. All this notwithstanding, the UN remains (for all its myriad faults) out best hope on a global level, of getting through this without witnessing a descend into fascism (or something akin to it, albeit hidden behind a cloak of cod-morality/superiority) or an end in total war and conflagration. Our stepping away from it represents a major breach of our commitment to the rule of law as paramount, and a major step backwards for the world. It also puts us at odds with the bulk of the world, where (would you believe) it is the Houthis who are stepping up to the plate in support of this, the primary commitment of all civilised nations, and we are the ones denying it. (Does it not seem incredible that I can write these words, and for them to be even conceivable, let alone true? Let's be clear. The Houthis are the ones standing up against a possible genocide, or at the least a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law. We on the other hand are collaborative in the crime by our refusal to condemn it, by our supply of the means by which it is prosecuted, and by our active denial of the means by which the victims suffering may be alleviated.)

As to the second point, again isn't this inevitable? Simple geography puts China and Russia at a distance from the countries that suffered worst under colonialism and the naval nature of the powers that did indulge in it cannot be ignoredas a factorin this. But it is always going to be the master that kicked the dog that the latter will shy away from, while the other, newly emerged one (quite possibly equally bad), will be given the benefit of the doubt. Badly put I know, but as you say, we bear the stain of the colonialism under which Africa and elsewhere suffered, while others do not.

As to the idea of democracy - there's that old adage about it being the best of a bad lot and little more, when it comes to political systems and boy is that beginning to look more true by the day. We in the UK have never embraced democracy in any full sense of the word; it was accepted only ever grudgingly and in our own peculiar form and now is effectively nonexistent (in terms of any pretence that our political system is designed for the betterment of the mass of the people).

But our so called (and much vaunted) position as "the upholders" of this questionable notion is demonstrated to be ever more a sham by the day. Take the war in Ukraine as a simple case in point. Did you know that elections have been stopped in Ukraine? Political opposition has been all but wipied out, quashed underfoot by a wave of nationalistic fervour, led by administration propoganda, that sees any opposition to the current strategy (and the current administration by extension) as treacherous, and bordering on traitorous. So our very stated reason for being involved in this pointless waste of human life is no longer even credible. To protect the 'fledgling democracy' of the brave little Ukraine against the despotic Russian monster. It's bullshit. There is no fledgling democracy; it's the same old corrupt and borderline kleptocracy that it has been since the fall of the USSR. It's just that it sits on the border of the Russia which we hate and so we want it. We're determined that our missiles will sit right under Putin's nose like a great big "Fuck off!" from Nato. We don't give a shit about democracy in Ukraine, or anywhere else come to that. It's all about what serves our interests. And that translates upwards into what serves the interests of the tiny slices of our societies that skim off the cream from all of our endeavours. The liberal establishment has the 'best little earner' in town, right across the West and in its dominance of the rest of the world, and its damned if its going to see this dissappear or be disrupted in any way. And if it means global war to preserve it..... well - there's always the money printing opportunities of investment in the military-industrial complex isn't there?