What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Now that DJT is bedding in for his second run in office, it's business as usual for the UK media in making sure that everything in the news in which there is any possible way to draw in the president and cast him in a bad light, is taken advantage of.

Take the recent airline disaster in which a collision between an American Airlines regional flight and a military helicopter left 67 dead with no survivors.

The worst aviation disaster in many a year, you'd think that the story would be covered by looking at the details which could have resulted in such an occurrence - some serious consideration of how two flight paths could have been allowed to converge in the manner seen, what evidence was emerging and how such events could be prevented from happening in the future.

But no. Today's fixation is about some ridiculous comments that Trump seems to have made, about diversity inclusions in the staffing of the air traffic control centers which monitor and direct the flight-paths of air traffic in the USA.

I'm not even going to dignify his ludicrous commentary by repeating it; he clearly makes these remarks just to get attention (and no doubt to deflect media attention away from something else he's doing far more damaging or sinister). But this is what we've come to expect and no-one should be suprised.

But given the tragedy that this is for the families of those lost, I think that the president needs to be taught a lesson in being ignored. That when he engages in this kind of childish nonsense - grandstanding I suppose you call it - he's just not going to be engaged with. He's not going to be reported on, and is just going to be ignored. That way, like any child pulling the same kind of 'look at me' stunt, he'll soon learn that it's a waste of time and stop it.

If he genuinely believes that diversity targets have brought about a lowering of the required quality of employees within the air traffic control staff, then do something about it. He has the power and should (and in fairness I believe is) exercise(ing) it. The commentary is a side issue and the media should not pander to it.

-----0-----

I expect by now you've seen the story that astronomers or stargazers of some scientific variety have identified an asteroid the size of a football field that has about a one percent chance of hitting the earth in 2032.

Boffins (to use the Star's favourite descriptive term for any kind of scientist) have actually been very precise in their timing of when this potentially world changing event could occur; think 5.25 am, December 22nd, 2032 to be precise. That should make for an interesting run up to Christmas but joking aside, even one percent chances (when you are talking world level destructive asteroid events) have to be a serious thing. I can certainly claim no expertise on the subject, but I'd imagine that if this thing is genuinely going to pass us by by such a whiskers width, there's at minimum going to be some less cataclysmic, but more significant to us in that we'll actually be around to experience (and have to deal with them) effects of its passing. Say atmospheric disruption or electromagnetic disturbance? And couldn't even such residual effects be devastating to the actual conditions we experience at the planetary surface? Temperature blips that suddenly cause a temporary but fatal shift to conditions outside our ability to withstand? Gravitational effects on navigation and/or magnetic effects on the same. I'd be very surprised if some serious 'boffins' aren't thinking about this right now.

I may be making a stupid conjecture here, and no-one would be more happy than me to be assured so - but isn't it the case that it isn't the one percent chance of a direct strike that should be feared here (that would simply be curtains for all of us), it's the fifty percent chance that it passes close enough to cause some real and very damaging other effects, which our governments will have no ability or intentions of protecting the bulk of us from and will as per usual, be far more concerned with looking after themselves first. Don't believe me? Watch the docu-film Threads on the BBC i-Player right now.

[peter]

Trump has got at least one thing right in the past few days - Gaza is a demolition site.

The people returning to their homes are finding nothing left. It's estimated that 92 percent of all domestic dwellings are to some degree destroyed. 66 percent of the infrastructure is no longer functional. No hospitals, schools, shops, market places or administrative centres.

To all intents and purposes as a livable space It's gone.

The people will face a stark choice in the next few weeks and months, stay and die or move away. And this is what they will do. Slowly, and with Israeli assistance, they will relocate to wherever they can find a place in which they can survive, wherever they are sent, and Gaza as a Palestinian homeland will be no more.

The hardline members of the Netenyahu administration always said that this would be the endpoint - making Gaza uninhabitable - and they have been true to their word. Now slowly and without fuss, Gaza will be starved out of existence. The necessary aid to to render ti inhabitable will not be forthcoming, building materials will not be allowed to enter on the grounds that Hamas will use them to rebuild its own infrastructure of tunnels and hideouts, and slowly without fuss and without the attentions of the rest of the world becoming excited, the Palestinian people will be moved away. Job done, as it were.

Trump, in his private conversations with Netenyahu will say, do whatever you like as long as it is done quietly. He will demand that he is not placed in a position of having to face a backlash for any Israeli actions: beyond that it'll be open season.

So says Professor Norman Finklestein in his assessment of the situation as it stands and it would be hard to disagree with him. It's been an exercise in ethnic cleansing, carried out in full view of the world and with the cooperation and compliance of Western governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably a genocide - we await the decision of the ICJ on this score - but nothing will be done about it. The story told to future generations in the history books will of course depend on who writes them, and no points for guessing who that will be. The true story of a genocidal extremist who with Western support murdered and moved a population of people will instead be transformed into that of a leader who, yes, did some questionable things, but in essence looked to and acted in the interests of his people. Well, we all know that the victors write the history and nothing will change this. With the willing organs of the state, mouthpieces such as the BBC (and Finklestein specifically called them out) the sanitised story will get propagated down through the ages and the truth will be buried along with bodies under the rubble of the Gaza Strip.

-----0-----

The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently reset the clock, moving it forward from the position of 90 seconds to midnight by 9ne second to 89.

This symbolic gesture is a response to the increasing insecurity of the world caused by the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Now a move of one second might not seem like much, but given that at the end of World War 2 it was set at 8 minutes to midnight, and 89 seconds represents a closer time than the Board has ever placed it before, including at such times of heightened danger as during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's pretty frikkin serious. Message being, "the world is in a highly fragile and insecure place in which the slightest miscalculation could trigger a consequence that we see us all dead."

And against this backdrop, the observation of Professor Jeffrey Sachs that there is no evidence that Donald Trump has any understanding of what he is dealing with, and is just spinning out executive orders and statements in an ad hoc and extempory manner, is something worrying.

Take, for example, he said, his comments on the resettlement of 1.5 million Gazans in Egypt and Jordan. That he has no authority to make such decisions (as was made immediately clear by the leaderships of both countries saying that it simply was not going to happen) didn't seem to occur to him. It'll take weeks or months, said Sachs, for people to explain to him the deeper nuances of the geopolitical world he has 'inherited', and explain that it absolutely is not the same as the world that he left, when he grudgingly relinquished office in 2020. This, in short, is not a world that needs someone making off the cuff statements about anything.

Which makes the situation that has developed in the last day or two re the sudden emergence of a Chinese competitor to the Open AI chat-GTP large language model, all the more significant. Because this really could be a game-changer.

Or so believes economics academic Richard Murphy. This, he says, is not just a competitor model to the American AI industry upon who's dominance the entire American economic performance is built, but represents a threat to the entire capitalist model upon which their economy depends.

Contrary to popular belief, says Murphy, the American system is not based on open competition and neither is it in any sense efficient. The idea of lean, mean and hungry companies in competition, with a 'law of the jungle' style arena resulting in hyper-efficient businesses rising to the top is just nonsense. On the contrary, the entire system is now based around the corporate patent lawyers spending all their time making sure that no competition exists that could threaten their monopolistic dominance of the market. Which is why a small number of companies (Meta, Google, Amazon etc) with huge dominance over the tech sector (upon which the American stock market rise rests) have developed, with no competition able to come close enough even to touch them, let alone to threaten their positions.

And it is upon the successes of these companies in the developing AI market that all of Donald Trump's electoral promises rest. Without this dominance, he has nothing to offer. And thus any threat to it is a personal threat to him. And, as Murphy points out, the rather timely release of an open source large language AI model onto the field at exactly the point that Trump is threatening sanctions against the Chinese.....well, you'd have to be nieve to not see at least the possibility of the Chinese state fingerprints over this.

It's not an absolute - there are no absolutes in this - but it has the possibility of being big. The DeepSeek AI model has thrown a completely new player onto the field of the American dominated AI tech market, and one that doesn't follow the rules of corrupted capitalism that keeps them artificially afloat. It could, says Murphy, turn out to be a storm in a teacup. But it might not. And if it doesn't, then that whole dangerous level of threat and instability in this world just got a whole lot worse.

[peter]

Update:

Apparently asteroid 2024 YR4 which is "barrelling" towards us is not, at a mere 100m wide, sufficiently large to warrant even a raised eyebrow in terms of the threat posed to civilisation should it strike the earth. The one that did for the dinosaurs was by comparison some 3.5 km wide and did indeed cause a world wide planetary extinction event. This one however, only rating a measly 3 on the scale of 1 to 10 in terms of damage rating, would barely cause a ripple other than at the site of its actual impact.

Pffft is all I have to say to that! 3? I don't even get out of bed for a 3! Anyway - that'll teach me not to read the full article before making an end of the world driven scenario post. I'm like one of those guys with a placard reading The End is Nigh you see out in the town square on a Saturday morning (it's when you're in the town see).... a catastrophist. Yes, that's me all over. Sorry governments and rich people etc. You can be trusted to look after our interests and stuff after all.


-----0-----

Why when I look at actor Jesse Eisenberg, do I always think of Mark Zuckerberg?

I know he played him (or character based on him) in a film, but still. I mean, surely he rates more than just being lumped in as a single morphed individual with the Zuck? The human brain is a strange thing, though in fairness, I don't (on reflection) think I've actually ever seen him in anything other than The Social Contract. (No - that can't be right: surely that's something that French guy was on about - Rousseau or somebody? Still - no matter. I can't actually be bothered go and check.) So anyway, it turns out that it's his fault after all - Jesse's not mine - and the human brain isn't a strange thing after all (though, as the only exemplar of anything like it in like, the entire universe, I suppose it still is).

(Nb. When I see Zuckerberg I don't think of Jesse Eisenberg. Now that surely is strange.)

----0----

BBC website tells us that Sir Thomas and Lady Ingleby are selling their family castle of 700 years standing because it "will allow them to spend more time together".

What - is it like they can't find each other inside the miles of corridors and hundreds of rooms or something? Sorry guys, I think it's the money. Trust me: it's always the money.

-----0-----

Now it's a funny thing, but on Friday January 31st, a group of nine countries got together at the Haigh in order to coordinate activities (legal, economic and diplomatic) in response to Israel's violations of international law - and not a word of it is to be found in the media.

And not only the legacy media; if you search Google with the phrase 'the Haigh Group', you come up with details of a company that makes bedpan macerators (whatever the flip they might be) and not a jot on the grouping of nine Latin American and African countries (representing the global south's collective stance if you like, against what is happening in Gaza) who are at last doing something concrete to tackle this, the worst atrocity of our living memory.

Alerted to this by the sterling Greek ex finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, it is noteworthy that of all of our politicians who you might think could have some skin in the game in regard to this deplorable business, only Jeremy Corbyn and suspended Labour MP Zara Sultana (suspended for voting against the maintenance of the two-child benefits cap) elected to attend this significant development.

Still - one could see how news relating to coordinated actions by representatives of what, some eighty five percent of the world's population would be seen as unworthy of comment in the media. After all - poor countries innit? Who'd be interested in anything they had to say?

Moor power to their elbow is what I say. Like Owen Jones and a few other individuals of note, Varoufakis is one of the few voices who will not let this drop - ever. I'd love to write to my MP, upbraiding her in relation to the shameful role this country has played in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza (because it has been achieved - though you won't hear much more about it as it is slowly executed over the weeks and months ahead), but I'm too afraid to do it.

Get that. I have become afraid to raise my head above the parapet in 21st century Britain for what might occur if the state were to suddenly notice this miniscule thorn pricking away at its side on an obscure little site on the internet. I'm probably being paranoid - but I'm betting that some people thought that in 1930's Germany, or in the early Soviet days as well. How do I know where my MPs sympathies lie? Mayhap she herself has been given a 'fact finding visit' to Israel (apparently all new MPs are offered them courtesy of the Israeli lobby or someone). How do I know? It isn't as if I'm afraid of 'the sound of the boots on the stairs' or anything. It's just discretion being the better part of valour and all that. But still - makes a mockery of the old adage that governments should be afraid of their people and not people afraid of their governments doesn't it.

Bad times eh? Bad times.

-----0-----

Glad to hear that the always sketchy case against Lucy Letby is at last coming under some serious scrutiny both in the media and more importantly, by the experts upon who's evidence she was convicted in the first place.

I was always concerned that she seemed to be undergoing trial by media rather than trial by jury, and that the possibility of a miscarriage of justice in such circumstances was a very real danger.

I have no opinion as to her innocence or guilt - but she, like everyone else, deserved a fair trial. And evidence is slowly but surely gaining ground that she did not get one. She's sitting in prison under a whole life sentence, and if her conviction is in any way suspect, it must be addressed at pace.

-----0-----

Nice to know that Patrick (now Lord) Vallance has been rewarded for his stirling work as Chief Scientific Advisor during the pandemic, where his almost daily doom laden prophecies of projected deaths turned out to be grossly overestimated, but very useful as a behavioural modification tool. Responsible for cudgeling the British public into acceptance of lockdown policies that would see them confined for months to their houses, denied access to their dying family members in hospital etc, he's now been given a new role.

He's actually a minister in Kier Stamer's government, luxuriating in the role of Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, but has now been found an actual job to do (as opposed to simply sitting in the HoC bar a few hours a day earning 150K) which he is no doubt highly qualified for.

He's been put in charge of Rachel Reeves' project to build a connection link of railways and new-towns between Oxford and Cambridge - our new European Silicon Valley as it were.

Trained as a doctor and research scientist in medical related disciplines, I'm not sure quite what expertise he brings to the table in respect of multibillion pound civil engineering projects, but we wouldn't want a small thing like not having the faintest clue about what he was doing stand in the way of the government's gratitude now would we.

Better to call him the Minister of State for Cloud Cuckoo Land Ideas That Will Never Happen. But at least he'll have something to pretend to be doing while he's banking the taxpayers hard earned, won't he.

(Interesting footnote. The Google AI answering service Gemini which I'm playing around with at the moment, did not see that Lord Vallance would have any appropriate qualification or experience, that would render him a suitable appointment to oversee such a project. It said that while Vallance was no doubt a brilliant fellow, the ideal candidate for the Reeves project would have civil engineering and urban development experience and training. Now there's a thing)

[peter]

Precious little in the media on the passing of the day 16 benchmark in the Gaza ceasefire agreement yesterday, and one wonders if all is going to plan.

As a recap, day 16 was the day on which negotiations on the details of phase 2 of the agreement were penciled to start, which if successful, will see this second stage of the ceasefire start in about four weeks time. It's a critical period since failure to get phase 2 running means effectively that hostilities could resume at any moment, and with large numbers of people now milling around in northern Gaza without shelter or housing, this could be as disaster.

In fairness there wouldn't be much point 8n continuing to bomb northern Gaza - there's nothing left to bomb - but clearly Hamas are very far from defeated and driving the returned population back south might seem like an available option to IDF commanders, in the event of resumed fighting.

The happy condition of the returning hostages, together with the well turned out and equipped Hamas fighters, has by accounts been a shock to the Israeli public. Clearly Hamas are far from being as near defeat as they have been told, and clearly the hostages whose lives they have been fearing for have been well treated - quite probably far better than the Palestinian hostages held in Israeli detention, who have by accounts been tortured and beaten on a regular basis.

But on the ceasefire front, Netenyahu is visiting Donald Trump (though American involvement in negotiations is I believe minimal, the role of mediators falling largely to the Quatari representatives). Word is that they will discuss a possible strike on Iran, but given Trump's known reticence to getting involved in military adventures abroad this seems unlikely (and rumours are swirling about that Trump might even be in contact with the Iranian administration, with a view to normalising relationships and resetting the whole Middle East east mess. Netenyahu will no doubt want the lowdown on the truth or otherwise of that).

Right wingers in Israel will be seriously hoping that the negotiations in respect of securing phase 2 fail - they are adamantly opposed to the ceasefire deal - and given the requirements set out for phase 2 (establishment of a permanent ceasefire, return of all remaining Israeli hostages and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza) there seems a good liklihood that their wishes will be fulfilled. Commentators such as Professor Norman Finklestein suggest that there is no intention on the Israeli part that phase 2 should ever be initiated, but given that the effective utility of Gaza as an inhabitable region is gone, frankly, there doesn't seem to be much left worth fighting over. Finklestein's suggestion that the removal of the Palestinians from the region is now almost inevitable (starvation and exposure to the elements will effectively force them to leave) seems much more credible than a resumption of hostilities. Israeli can quietly facilitate the drip by drip removal of the population to Egypt and Jordan (their public refusal to accept the refugees notwithstanding), and as long as this can be done 'beneath the radar' of world attention as it were, job's a good 'un. Why blacken the reputation of Israel further by continuing the public killing spree unnecessarily, when a bit of patience will achieve the same result anyway?

So the thing could go either way, and one can assume that the silence of the media is just a lull in which they are waiting to see which way the wind will blow.

In the UK, the pro-Palestinian demonstrations are facing ever more restrictions by the police, excuses being found why they cannot follow this route or that. The last major demonstration saw Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell requested to attend a police interview with a view to possibly being charged with offences relating to protesting outside the designated areas provided. That they amongst others were asked by the police themselves to cross the said lines (in order that they could lay wreaths for the Palestinian victims of the conflict) seemed to have been forgotten. The decision as to whether charges will be forthcoming has not yet been made, and John McDonnell remains suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party (on a different matter) until this decision is forthcoming. He spoke recently to Andrew Marr on the fundamental and historical rights of the British public to march (think the Chartists, the hunger and Jarrow marches of the 1930's, the CND marches, the anti-war marches re the Iraq war) and said that the current attempts to restrict this freedom were a serious attack on the democratic freedoms of the British people. Still - I don't suppose Kier Stamer will be minded to take much advice from John McDonnell, particularly on the freedoms of the British public to protest. Stamer and his ilk rely upon fear and authoritarianism to maintain their hold, be it within the Parliamentary Party, the constituency Party or indeed, outside in the general population as well.

It's been amazing just how easily the state (and this goes back before Stamer, well into the last five years - probably starting with covid) has sowed an atmosphere of slight menace into the activity of criticising either itself or the incumbent government. It's been subtly done, slice by slice, an arrest or criminal charge here, a tightening of the rules there, a news story of people facing recriminations for this or that activity. Nothing overtly said, nothing demonstrably done (well, until recently with the.....no - self-censorship.....see what I mean), just a vague feeling that it's probably better to keep one's head down. It's not with the small stuff. Sure - you can mud-sling and create over all manner of things without having to worry too much. But there's this area around the more difficult stuff that you have to avoid. I've pulled posts on many and varied occasions, often because I've thought, "No - this is going to bring the 'woke' police down on me,". But now I'm more careful on the political stuff as well. Particularly since Southport. When the police start 'requesting' that you don't comment on a subject, and the papers begin reporting that people are being charged and convicted for passing on their (no doubt often repellent) views online, then it's time to be more careful. This shouldn't be our way. It never was historically. But it is now, and I'm too old to become a martyr to a cause (shameful though it is to admit).

[peter]

It was really rather galling to watch the BBC News at Six last night and see them presenting the news that convicted serial baby killer Lucy Letby might, according to a panel of experts, have been the subject of a miscarriage of justice.

The BBC, whose ghoulish fascination with every twist and morbid detail of her arrest and subsequent trial, can only have been in large part responsible for the near impossibility of her receiving a fair hearing, was suddenly now all moderate balance and reservedness.

Watching the spectacle at the time, I was horrified at the clear presumption of guilt that the supposedly impartial news reportage was delivering, and realised almost immediately that any chance of her receiving a fair trial was compromised beyond repair. From start to finish, there was no question which way we were to see this woman vis-a-vis her innocence or guilt; any presumption of innocence was dispensed with from the very first shots of her being led down the garden path. After all - all of those doctors who had accused her could not be wrong could they? They were doctors after all.

I sincerely hope if you read back over these pages, you'll find my having referred to this at the time. I was certainly beating on about it to my wife, and when the verdict and sentence were passed, had really serious doubts about it. I remember at the time doing a fairly longish post on what seemed to me to be areas of significant doubt (the statistical evidence against her and the preoccupation of doctors never to see any finger of blame pointed at their skill or lack of it etc) but scrubbed the post because it seemed insensitive to the feelings of the people who had lost children in the hospital. Now that my own very real doubts seem to be developing into a broader belief held by people who are far more qualified to talk on this subject than I, it seems only fair to put on record what no doubt many of us have been experiencing - a real fear that a terrible mistake has been made that has destroyed the life of an innocent person.

I can only imagine what is going through the minds of parents of the children involved, who must have been plunged into an even deeper nightmare than that already resulting from the loss of a baby, when first approached by the police. It is pain heaped upon pain. But it must be bourn because of the absolute necessity of knowing beyond doubt, that no miscarriage has occurred. If this has been a mistrial we must know it and the verdict must be overturned. At present we cannot know.

But if our worst fears are confirmed, and Letby is innocent, then a lot of people are going to have a lot of explaining to do. And not least in any subsequent investigation, must be an examination of the role of the media (and the BBC in particular as the nation's main disseminator of news) in the fabrication of an atmosphere of guilt around her, because it simply made for more morbidly compelling news coverage.

-----0-----

Can I just get this clear.

We are handing sovereignty of the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius who seem to perhaps have something of a better claim to them than we do - but are going to retain the option of renting back the secretive military base of Diego Garcia......which the Americans get to use?

I mean where to even start on this.

Firstly, surely the Chagos islanders should have some kind of say in this? You'd think? But life just ain't that simple. You see when we took control (ie sovereignty) of the Islands, it wasn't exactly virgin territory. The French had to be driven out and they had apparently been the first to occupy the previously uninhabited islands. So who exactly are the Chagos Islanders?

Flipped if I know, but if history is anything to go by, when it comes to power politics and the international interests of big nations, rightfully or wrongfully they ain't going to have a leg to stand on. I'm guessing they were local natives from close by islands who were shipped in by the French, so as the longest standing occupants their claim should have priority (if they are even making a claim; their voice seems remarkably silent in all of the media coverage).

But my point is that what do we want with a frikkin base in some far flung part of the Indian Ocean? We ain't a global power so we should stop acting like one. All of that going around the world giving orders to everyone else is over - finito. Stop it! So okay give the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, or to the Chagos Islanders, or whoever (preferably not to the Chinese or Americans though), and get the fuck out of Dodge.
But do not.....do not.....tell me that my hard earned is going to be spent renting a military base for the next 99 years.....for the frikkin Americans to use! Not frikkin happening!

What actual strategic value is this barren hunk of lava in the arse end of nowhere anyway? To what end do we, or more properly the yanks, need it anyway? I'll bet it'd be because, "If we don't hang on to it, then the Chinese will start sniffing around it,and we don't want that."

Why not? If they want it, let 'em have it. They can sell cheap shoes and handbags to them instead of us for a change.

Ah, but they'll put planes and ships and stuff on them, and then we'll be at a disadvantage.

No - because if we stop frikking around trying to take over great slabs of the world out of fear of other nations doing the same, then they'll stop doing it as well. And we can trade with each other instead of wasting money and time stalking around the globe shaking our fists at each other. Watch my lips. China do not want to take over the world. It's not what they do. Name me one country that China has ever taken over?

So forget the bloody Chagos Islands. Get your attention back home and if the Americans want to continue to spend their time and money pretending to be the big shots of the world (they aren't - it's over) then let them. And let them pay for their own bloody bases!

-----0-----

Apparently UK security chiefs are concerned about Trump's appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (pretty small lob in America I'd reckon) because of her perceived Russian sympathies and outspoken stance on the use of chemical weapons by Syrian ex leader Bashar Al-Assad.

On Russia, Gabbard apparently expressed understanding of the Russian position very early in the conflict with Ukraine, and in the case of Syria, expressed doubts that Al-Assad was actually behind the attacks, which seemed suspiciously timed to deliberately cross Obama's red lines and thus bring America into the civil war, siding against the Syrian leadership.

These two faux pas' have apparently caused Gabbard to be seen as 'not one of us' by the liberal establishment, and we all know that those who refuse to adopt the official narrative, to sing from the establishment hymn sheet, cannot be tolerated.

But what to do? Gabbard might not yet recieve approval by the full Senate, which would simplify things, but if she does it could make things tricky. As Director of National Intelligence Gabbard would have access (by agreement) with much of the UK's security related information, and our security bosses wouldn't much like that. But if they recind fer access, then the Americans would respond in kind and we'd loose much valuable intelligence in consequence, so the question is what to do?

I'll give you some advice guys. Stop worrying about her. Because she acknowledges the truth that you insist on hiding from us - indeed perhaps from yourselves as well - does not make her a spy. Or a danger. Or a 'Russian apologist'. It just makes her pragmatic and perhaps more inclined to stop baiting other countries and to make the world a safer place. A book from which perhaps you'd do well to take a leaf or two from.

[peter]

Make no mistake. The world is a much darker place today as a result of Donald Trump's flouting of the rules based international order. In one stroke he has undermined the credibility of America as a state dedicated to maintenence of stability and order in the world, and fixed it firmly amongst the ranks of countries who buck the system of international law and behaviour, as laid down following the unveiling of the horror and brutality utilised on an industrial scale by Germany during the second world war.

Sat next to a grinning Benjamin Netenyahu, Trump unveiled his plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, in which he proposed that America - not Israel or the Palestinians - would "own" the territory, would shift out the population and clear and make safe the devastated buildings and infrastructure, and would turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East", a playground for the rich and famous on the site of the Palestinian territory as recognised by UN General Assembly Resolution 3236.

He had no concern for the ignoring of international law, immediately and at one stroke setting a precident that other nations will follow, undermining the pillars upon which justice between nations rests, and sweeping away at a stroke every grain of America's right to comment or act in response to the bad behaviour of any other nation state. Immediately, anything America has to say on Russian behaviour in Ukraine, on China's behaviour toward Taiwan or the Uigar people, lost all credibility against the backdrop of its own behaviour, which it no longer even attempted to hide, was akin to that of any other rogue state on the face of the planet.

There is - must be - one and only one response by the rest of the world. This must be called out, by a collective and unified response from every other nation in the world, for exactly what it is. The ethnic cleansing of a people. And almost certainly as of today, falling into the definition of a genocide as codified in the Genocide Convention of 1948. Only by such collective response can Donald Trump be placed where he deserves to be, in the dock alongside Netenyahu, charged as representative of the nation that has funded and fuelled this atrocity, and without which it could not have been perpetrated.

None of which, needless to say, will ever happen. The responses both of our leaderships and our media commentariat is pathetic. Certainly there is handwringing aplenty; self-righteous language about how "Gaza must be allowed to be rebuilt and the Palestinians allowed to return to their homes," - but almost zero unequivocal statement of the facts of the case - that what Donald Trump has called for in unambiguous terms is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Which if, even of itself (the speaking of it rather than the doing) is not an offence, is against every moral and ethical precept which any civilised and rational being should adopt. What he has suggested is to align himself with the worst monsters that humanity has had the misfortune to see raised to the rank of leadership, over the course of its history.

The forcible moving of a people from their homeland, to (quote) "places of beauty and stability - doesn't have to be one....could be four or five,..... ". I bet this kind of rhetoric was used in Nazi Germany as well. And while he was saying this, he spoke of "the hell through which these people have been living", the death and destruction. As if America would be doing them a favour, shifting them from their own homeland such that they could in all probability never return. And right next to him as he spoke, the man responsible for the wreaking of this very death and destruction sat grinning like a ghoul. It was as stark an admission as you could wish for, of the brutality of what Israel has done in Gaza, and the perpetrator didn't even deny it sitting there as the words were spoken.Well here's an idea of where the Gazans could go - back to the homes from which they were forcibly removed inside Israel during the nakba of 1948. How would this idea float in the kneset do you think?

And what about all the religious Zionists in Israel? How does the idea of America owning Gaza sit with their claim on the territory as their biblically laid down right? I'd like to hear the commentary on that idea in the extremist settler communities this morning!

But all in all it's a clusterfuck. It's not going to happen so there isn't much point in even talking about it. But what's of far more significance is the undermining effect of the world's most powerful leader on the rules based international order. The ramifications of that are huge and ongoing. They will spread, ripple like, throughout the world and down through history, as it becomes commonplace for the rulings of the United Nations, the International Courts, the Geneva Convention, to simply be ignored and treated with contempt by those with a mind to do so. Yes, this has always been the case - but there has always been consequences. It's absolutely critical now, that if these institutions are to retain any credibility, that the world speaks collectively in support of them, and Donald Trump and America are called out roundly for what they are - enemies of order and disruptors of world security - in the highest forum of the world, the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Today is a day where I barely know what to think about where we have come to, about where we are going. Every day seems to bring a new unfolding, a new turn to the chaos of the world in which we live. How I yearn for the simplicity of earlier days - of days when leaderships could be trusted and good and evil in the world seemed more clearly defined. But I guess it probably never existed: it was a chimera created by those who controlled the narrative and only existed because we kept on 'taking the blue pill'. Sometimes I wish I'd never reached out and picked up the red one. This is one of those days.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Make no mistake. The world is a much darker place today as a result of Donald Trump's flouting of the rules based international order. In one stroke he has undermined the credibility of America as a state dedicated to maintenence of stability and order in the world, and fixed it firmly amongst the ranks of countries who buck the system of international law and behaviour, as laid down following the unveiling of the horror and brutality utilised on an industrial scale by Germany during the second world war.

Sat next to a grinning Benjamin Netenyahu, Trump unveiled his plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, in which he proposed that America - not Israel or the Palestinians - would "own" the territory, would shift out the population and clear and make safe the devastated buildings and infrastructure, and would turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East", a playground for the rich and famous on the site of the Palestinian territory as recognised by UN General Assembly Resolution 3236.

[…]

That would give the USA the distinction of a Rogue Nation. Sounds about right.

It should soon be time for Trump to join Bibi at The Hague. What say we rent a plane and get one of those Hannibal Lecter handcarts and facemasks for the Orange Guy and make a day of it?

[peter]

I'm up for it Wos if you are!

(Ps. Nice to see you over here. Get's a bit quiet wandering the halls on my own, but like the Duke of Plaza-Toro, I find it less......exciting!)

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I'm up for it Wos if you are!

(Ps. Nice to see you over here. Get's a bit quiet wandering the halls on my own, but like the Duke of Plaza-Toro, I find it less......exciting!)

[peter]

(Hey Wos, in case you read this; I'm embarrassed that you saw yesterday's post in its raw and unedited state - as 'work in progress' as it were. I brainstorm a post and am then often too frazzled to immediately bash it into shape. Today, having done so, it is a very different animal in terms of its readability - not that I suggest you plough through it again, but just so you don't think I actually write that badly. Ahh pride.... A terrible thing! )

I see Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the ICC and accusing it of "illegitimate and baseless actions" directed against America and Israel.

He accuses the Court of creating a "moral equivalence" between Hamas and Israel and has placed financial and visa restrictions on certain ICC assistants and their families as retribution for so doing. This is yet another attack on the rules based order, which Trump seems determined to place the USA outside, and for which the world may pay a heavy price further down the road.

I'm the first to admit that the post-war institutions set up to try to prevent the kind of atrocity that occurred in Nazi Germany from ever happening again have not been a universal success. But in a world where nuclear arms are widespread and the risk of escalating conflict ever growing, any action or words that undermine the single set of structures in place in which grievances and abuses can be aired, responded to, and perhaps even settled, can only be unwise in the extreme. Does anyone really believe that the 'might is right' philosophy of people like Trump is really the best way forward for the world; that we would truly be better off without organisations like the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court?

No. The only way to deal with bullies like Trump and Netenyahu is to isolate them internationally, for America to be placed in the same 'pariah state' basket as Israel, and for that we need such internationally agreed forums. Because let's call a spade a spade here. This has been America's war, fought with bullets shot from America, bombs dropped from America, paid for with money flowing from America. Every Palestinian corpse lying under the rubble that Trump would build his luxury condominiums over, has 'Made in America' stamped on it and the world should now be prepared to say it.

And while we're saying it, let's look at that moral equivalence. Those Hamas people did terrible things on October 7th. They streamed into Israel wreaking havoc and spreading death and destruction. But when Israel went into Gaza 'mowing the lawn', were they not doing exactly the same thing? Did they not, in Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge, do exactly the same thing? Because the perpetrators wore IDF uniforms and did these things under the aegis of a state, does that make them different? Acceptable? What have the Gazans been subjected to for decades and on repeated occasions, that the world should lecture them on brutality? Look at what they have been subjected to on a daily basis for decades - people killed, homes and buildings raised, hostages taken and tortured in cells away from the public gaze. Against this backdrop, what then of moral equivalence?

If it's to be no holds barred and 'speak your mind time', then let Americans hear the truth and own it. Trump at least, wears his colours on his sleeve. He doesn't pretend to be the good guy and I like that. Like Lt. Aldo Raine, I like my Nazis in uniform. That way I can see them. Biden, the pretend good-guy had the actual blood on his hands: Trump is just the jackal that's come to gnaw on the carrion. Because as always, where the carcass is, there will the vultures gather.

[peter]

Interesting little thing - I work with a Chinese lady who is shortly to visit with family in Hong Kong, and while there will visit mainland China for a short break.

She's been told by her relatives of a service available in the city they are to visit, by which as you are walking down the street, you can, with an app on your mobile, call for a coffe - Starbucks or whatever - and a drone will deliver it directly to you within minutes as you continue on your way.

There are other signs that Asia (and China in particular) are moving ahead of us fairly rapidly in the integration of AI and other internet based tech into their daily lives. We don't hear much about this technological advantage (or at least advance) perhaps occurring in the global East on our media, and I wonder if this is deliberate. Our states in the West are lairy about conceding that any other society might be stealing the march on us, and like unto that of the old Soviet leadership, would not be happy to see any such knowledge become a subject of public discourse, lest questions begin to be raised about why this difference should be developing. Perish the thought that any other system should perform better in any area than ours.

I don't have any skin in this game - I wouldn't drink a Starbucks coffe if it was delivered to me by Scarlet Johannsen (well.....maybe) and have no interest in seeing more 'tech' input into my already confused and struggling understanding of life. But I do recognise that it is inevitable that this will be the future for the upcoming generations and wouldn't particularly want us to become like a backwards or undeveloped society - a society of straw chewing yokels in the eyes of our Asian counterparts. If we are lagging behind then shouldn't we know it? And maybe do something about it? The only other tech related thing I learned this week was that a Tesla car can be switched off centrally as you are driving along. If for whatever reason the manufacturer (or mayhap the state?) want your vehicle stopped, then stopped it can be. Instantly. Now that's something to be considered by any would-be getaway drivers, or perhaps any of us who actually value the knowledge that we go, where we want to go, when we want to go there - and without the sayso or knowledge of somebody behind a computer terminal in Tesla central office.

-----0-----

It took the financial wizards at the Bank of England a little time to catch up, but at last they've also cottoned on that the UK economy is fucked - that getting anyone to invest in it is akin to selling tourists London Bridge on their visit to the capital. That growth is not happening because no-one is going to invest in their own businesses let alone anyone else's, that trade with our biggest and closest partner is falling faster than a hookers knickers in Soho, and that the bulk of people are so skint that spending on anything other than just basic living is simply not happening. Businesses are toppling like nine pins and everything is going into metaphical lockdown. Borrowing is higher than it's ever been and more expensive. The Chancellor's fiscal headroom has vanished into the ether and she hasn't got a clue what to do next. Business is waiting for the increase in NI contribution costs to soar in the spring and is considering how many people will need to be sacked in order for it to survive.

And it's taken the BofE financial bods until now to 're-evaluate' the growth prospects for the next twelve months as being perhaps not very brilliant.

Can I make a suggestion Andrew Bailey or whatever your name is. Sack those useless c.... idiots you're employing as forecasters and take me on instead. I've got a piece of seaweed hanging out of a window and a penguin that tap-dances on a deck of cards that might be more efficient at prediction than the current bozo's you're paying 150 K a year to. Give me a bell why don't you.

-----0-----

Can't seem to find a decent film to see at the moment.

Dull old Bridget Jones is being wrung out for another last gasp of unfunny jokes about king-size knickers and the (now aging) Guardian readership that adore her are telling us about "Things I learned from Bridget Jones in my twenties." Clearly not what makes for a good book, film or funny story.

And then there's those two weirdos from the film Wicked. The stretch-skinned Arianna Grande and her of the impossibly long nails Cynthia Erivo (I had to look her name up. She wouldn't have touched the sides in passing under my radar had I not seen a very funny video taking the piss out of the both of them. ) Two little nobody divas fawning over each other and spouting meaningless bullcrap about how "You matter, no you do matter. You're beautiful!"

Fuck that for two hours entertainment. I'd sooner chew razorblades.

What else is there? Dull Bob Dylan biopic. He's dull in real life for all his ability to pen a lyric, write a tune. Who'd go see a film for anything other than to hear the tunes you can better hear at home. Captain America or some other Marvel/DC bollocks. When are these guys going to get it. The generation that enjoyed these tedious superhero flicks are at last growing up and seeing them for the tired overworked rubbish they are. Time to get a new schtick guys. Anything else? Dog Man. Some kind of cartoon. For a moment I thought it said Dogging Man and a spark of hopeful interest ran through my breast (I said my breast), but another boring kids cartoon - screw that. I gave those up when I was wearing short trousers and a tie held on with elastic.

Going back to Bridget Jones....Mad about the boy? Wouldn't be as well recieved if it were about some old man office worker letching over the young female intern I'm guessing? But that's just the world we live in.

[peter]

Not a great deal in the Sunday papers today.

The families of the Southport children who died in the viscous attack by Axel Rudakubana are speaking to the media for the first time. Who can begrudge them the space to say anything they choose, given the horror they have been through. I haven't actually read the reports as yet, and will return to this if there is anything politically salient in the pieces, when I have done so.

Donald Trump has been talking about Prince Harry and his troubles with the American legal system over claims he lied on his immigration form about his history of illegal drug use. He says he has no desire to run Prince Harry out of the country, adding, "I don't want to do that. I'll leave him alone. He has enough problems with his wife - she's terrible." Not a fan then Donald? She doesn't grab you?

There's a story in the Sunday Times that Kier Stamer asked his cabinet secretary Simon Case to approach the BBC and attempt to quash a story about to be run, in which it was revealed that Sue Gray, Stamer's top advisor, had effectively set her own salary, which was higher than the PM's own. Case apparently spoke to both the corpoation's political editor Chris Mason, and the Director General Tim Davie. This kind of political pressure on the media is not good for democracy for obvious reasons and it's to the BBC's credit that they didn't comply in the face of it. The story ran, with minimal interest generated (though the Telegraph seized on it for a day or two) and then fizzled out. By this time there were far bigger stories, such as the winter fuel payments cuts and Kier Stamer's freebies etc. (Nb. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a PM's salary should be less than a top ranking civil servant's: the one has entered into it by ostensibly reason pertaining to provision of a public service, the other as a career. The first will have earnings potential by virtue of the public service act, far in excess of anything the career civil servant could dream of, in their post PM career. For the civil servant the salary is effectively it. And the two jobs are not the same: totally different spheres if you like. Why should their payscale's be related?)

Leading Tories are calling for an electoral pact between the Conservative and Reform Parties prior to the next general election. They are concerned that to run separate campaigns will split the center right and right voting cohorts, and let Labour in for a second term of office. They are right to be worried. The election prior to the last was effectively handed to the Tories by Nigel Farage agreeing not to stand candidates in seats where the Tories were otherwise safe bets to win. As a result, Boris Johnson won his overwhelming majority. This last time things were different. No reward was given to Farage for handing the Tories their victory, so this time he punished them, with the result we see today. The stonking Labour majority is effectively the result of Farage taking that fifteen percent of the popular vote that would otherwise have been voting Conservative. If no arrangement is come to, it's doubtful that the Tories can ever win another election. There simply isn't room for two parties of the right in a first-past-the-post system.

And finally I'd like to comment on the BBC coverage last night of the latest hostage exchange that has occurred in Gaza/Israel.

The state run news service was desperate to stress that concerns were evident on the condition of the released Israeli hostages; this was repeatedly referred to, where references to similar concerns about the hostages released from Israeli captivity were delivered in quickly passed over commentary and rarely referred to again. And this despite the apparent conditions of some of the Palestinian hostages being considerably worse than that of their Israeli counterparts.

The reason for this effort to stress the medical condition of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas, is because of the clearly good condition of the hostages released up to this point. The female hostages have emerged smiling and happy, and contrary to what we have been told, have clearly been well kept and fed during their captivity. This has by accounts, been a real story in Israel, where it has caused shock and anger amongst the populace. It was absolutely necessary to get some counterbalancing imagery onto the screens to back up the narrative of Hamas cruelty and their hatred of all Israeli people. Add to this the pristine condition of the vehicles, weaponry and uniforms of the Hamas fighters on display, and the narrative of Hamas being a broken force seems equally questionable. Thus was the release of some hostages looking clearly the worse for wear following their ordeal absolute manna for the media presentation of evidence to support the official narrative. Once again we see that there is no equivalence between the suffering of Palestinian captives in Israeli detention centers, and that of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

If you are a Palestinian grabbed up by one of the frequent IDF raids into Gaza, held without conviction, trial or date of potential release, then you are a hostage no more or less than if you are an Israeli snapped up on October 7th. That you are held in an Israeli prison/detention centre rather than a Hamas tunnel under Gaza is neither here nor there. That the abuse and torture is meeted out by an IDF jailer rather than a masked Hamas fighter makes the crime no less egregious, the horror it should inspire in us no less expectable. Crimes of both sides in this terrible, terrible conflict are equally despicable and to be reviled. It would be nice if our news outlets could reflect this, rather than playing games in support of spinning this narrative or that.

[peter]

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to release videos of illegal immigrants being busted at workplaces and being forced onto planes for deportation, in a putrid attempt to appear tough and head off an electoral challenge br Nigel Farage's Reform Party in future elections.

It's the same kind of gimmicky antic that Theresa May pulled when she was Home Secretary - in her case sending vehicle drawn billboards around with messages reading "Go Home Illegal Immigrants; You Are Not Welcome Here" (or words to that effect) round London areas with high immigrant populations. But Cooper has surpassed even this by involving the manhandling of actual people in her pranks. Where does this end:in pictures of them being thrown out of planes?

It's a horrid practice and sets a race to the bottom in standards of behaviour of the state towards people who,irrespective of the legality or otherwise of their presence, are still human beings and deserving of respect. Perhaps had we not been causing chaos in the regions where many of these individuals hail from, there would be no need for them to have decamped to the UK in the first place.

'Fast-tracking' deportations is a recipe for injustice to occur as the particular situations of individual persons are swept aside in the zeal to present this inflexible face to the public, for politically motivated reasons only.

Is this what we have come to then? In the Stamer government then, it appears that you don't even have to wait for the 3am 'boots on the stairs' run: the operation will be carried out in the full glare of day with cameras running to capture the event. Far from being a shameful thing that even the Nazis did at night in recognition of this, for Stamer's lot it's an opportunity to present themselves as tough - a PR stunt for the masses. Shame on them for their betrayal of the Labour principles on which their party was built - a recognition of the common bond between workers of all nationalities and a humanist approach to dealing with all people, irrespective of their place of origin. This cold reflection of that great tradition is a thing of base shame, and I for one am gladdened to hear the United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has said that Kier Stamer should be investigated over human rights abuses relating to the sales of arms and equipment to Israel, where they are known to be being used to facilitate breaches of international law up to and including potential genocide.

Yvette Cooper isn't quite at this level yet, but her actions are despicable and should be called out as such.

-----0-----

In case it's any comfort to those who feel hard done by, by virtue of not being able to partake of Holy Communion because they are gluten intolerant, I'm sure God will take this into account when you stand before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

A decision has apparently been made that the normal practice of making communion wafers from wheat based ingredients, and wine from fermented grape juice cannot be diverted from in order to facilitate the partaking by those individuals with dietary intolerances (or perhaps reformed alcoholics).

Cue the standard response, with the decision being described as "an injustice" by outraged commentators.

I don't know, maybe the protocols for making the ingredients are laid down in some ecclesiastical rule book or something - perhaps in the bible itself. Perhaps the transubstantiation only occurs if the recipe is followed to the letter; we know how difficult such alterations can be from our experience in trying to change lead into gold; how much harder to change bread and wine into flesh and blood? Still, one assumes the almighty could pull it off should he desire to - after all He who makes the rules can also change the rules. No?

I only make gentle fun of this however; for the devout community such things are no doubt of serious import and I have sympathy with them despite my attempts at humour. But neither do I think that the decision of the Church leadership on this is necessarily wrong. They clearly will have good reasons for their decision and these must be respected. It does seem that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but as I say, I don't think that those effected should worry too much about it. I'm sure it'll all work out at the end of the day (days?) and all will be well. If God is what we've been led to believe He is, then trust placed in Him will not be disappointed.

[peter]

We haven't heard much about Ukraine of late, but safe to say that Donald Trump's boasts about ending the war with Russia "on day one" of his presidency have come to nothing.

But this notwithstanding, work is going on in the background to try to get some movement in the situation, and most of the efforts seem to be centered around the plan of General Keith Kellogg, the United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

This plan, which typical of any plan the USA ever offers in respect of helping another country in its war efforts (remember that ships for territory deal with the UK in WW2), seemingly hinges upon Ukrainian agreement of access to its mineral resources in return for continued military aid. But beyond this it has already been assessed by military experts as being a non starter.

It essentially grants Russia the territory that it has currently gained, but suggests a demilitarised zone be established between the two countries, policed by forces from third parties such as the EU and UK. This DMZ, reminiscent of that which exists between North and South Korea, is going to be a non starter for the Russians from day one. What they have demanded is Ukrainian neutrality, end of, not a militarised Ukraine bristling on their border, barely contained by a thin force of pretending neutral forces, always ready to restart the conflict on the Ukrainian side at need.

The second, condition, that Ukrainian membership of Nato be kicked into the long grass for ten years is equally anathema to Russia. "Not happening," they will say. Total Ukrainian neutrality, in perpetuity, or nothing. The Russians have almost total dominance of the field of battle and why are they ever going to cede this in return for a peace agreement that effectively leaves them no better off (vis-a-vis Nato sitting right on their doorstep in the near future, with nuclear weapons pointed into the heart of Russia) than at the very start?

But all of this, despite our having promised to give Ukraine 3 billion pounds worth of military aid every year for the next hundred years (I kid you not - see Kier Stamer's recent trip to Kiev), is outwith our influence. The truth is that Europe and the UK don't even come into this. When the chairs are pulled out round the table, and the talking turkey begins, the EU and UK won't even be there. Oh, Kellogg has assured us that he will be consulting with all the interested parties prior to any talks beginning, in order to canvas their opinions - but the harsh reality is that they don't matter squat. It's what America wants, what Russia wants and to a lesser, though infinitesimal in comparison, what Ukraine wants, that will be calling the shots.

Europe and the UK are essentially also rans in this game. Let's not pretend otherwise.

[peter]

It's but a few short weeks since the Assisted Dying Bill was passed through the House of Commons and as warned, the attempts to water it down are already proceeding apace.

Not satisfied with the stipulation that any such procedure should have the authorisation of two doctors and a judge, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater now wants the judge element to be removed and a watered down description to a looser stipulation of 'expert' consultants to be applied.

Dame Esther Rantzen is featured in a headline on today's Daily Express which reads, "MPs must back crucial right to die law," has been a strong advocate of the campaign to introduce this legislation, seeming adamant that this procedure become commonplace despite the huge risks it presents, as evidenced by the Canadian model, which at the last hearing, was about to be introduced to cover the mentally ill alongside the terminally (and just about everyone else as well if stories are to be believed).

Needless to say Rantzen, who incidentally has never provided a satisfactory explanation of why she didn't expose her colleague Jimmy Saville, despite his crimes being common knowledge amongst the BBC high level entertainment stars, and her crusade against child abuse notwithstanding, wants the "correct precautions" built in to any legislation on the matter. What this in effect means is that the right to die isn't any such thing - it's a process of taking the right away from the individual concerned, and placing it in that 'oh so trusted' section of society whose word must be given preferential weight on any subject under the sun (as for example in the current Letby baby muder case) to make the decision.

It's bollocks. This isn't about whether a person has the right to die, it's about whether someone else should allocate them the right to die and then assist them to do so, by state sectioned killing if they cannot perform the coup de grace themselves. If it was about the right to die, it'd be about putting the means in the hands of the public directly, so they were not forced to go to extreme lengths in order to 'execute' their wishes with so often such messy and unsuccessful results. Putting the grolly behind the counter at your local Superdrug or Boots.

I'm no great supporter of assisted dying, but I'm one hundred percent sure that if it is to be practiced, the state cannot be trusted to take a hand in it - least of all the medical profession (which should rightly concern itself to enhancing our chances to live). Either people should have that choice freely available to them - or they shouldn't. And I believe it's probably better that they don't.

Assisted dying and the right to die are two separate issues. We all already have the latter I believe, though it isn't made easy for us granted (and probably shouldn't be). The first is simply too difficult a minefield to navigate and inevitably leads to creeping mission that in its worst scenario, leads all the way to the gas chambers.

-----0-----

Off it goes again.

As predicted, the ceasefire in Gaza looks increasingly doomed as Netenyahu says that if all hostages aren't returned by this coming weekend, the fighting restarts.

This is a new development added to the unraveling of the deal which began a couple of days ago when Hamas said they would not release the three agreed hostages this weekend, because Israel were breaking the terms of the agreement. They were, claimed Hamas, failing to provide the aid as promised (though undoubtedly increased amounts have been getting through), and were preventing people from returning to their devastated homes in the north. Israel was also, claimed the group, still firing upon the people of Gaza as they moved around the territory. Donald Trump had complicated the issue by suggesting that all the hostages should be returned in one large grouping, a suggestion which Israeli PM Netenyahu seems to have taken up and is running with. Some have suggested that Hamas is reticent to release further hostages in public view because they are in such poor condition (worse it is suggested, than the three men released last week).

Needless to say, this is all so much piss and wind; the Trump intervention on American 'ownership of Gaza' has thrown a different ball into the court and far from being the throwaway comment many people believed it to be when he made it, the American President seems to be doubling down on it. The question is out on whether he really means to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people and turn the Stripinto a 'Costa del Gaza' for the rich to buy condominiums in, or whether by staking a claim on the territory, he is watering down the Israeli claim and bringing the Palestinian people under the wing of American protection (should the 'ownership' by America be achieved). As per usual the Palestinian people seem to have no say in their future and given Trump's comments asking "Why would they (the Palestinians) want to return; they'll have beautiful new houses elsewhere?", it would seem that perhaps the removal of Palestinians from Gaza is his intent.

He's given a press conference in which he has reiterated the idea of the relocation of the Palestinians (with an uncomfortable looking King Abdullah of Jordan sitting next to him), but Egypt has complicated matters for him by putting forward an alternative plan - one in which Gaza is reconstructed with the Palestinians in situ - and this is bound to piss him off (Trump that is). Needless to ask that if America favours one plan and Egypt another, which would be the plan adopted, but it should be remembered that Egypt is the one (alongside Jordan) being asked to take in the near 2 million Palestinians to be 'relocated' (read ethnically cleansed) and therefore has much more skin in the game. Again needless to ask which plan would be more appealing to the Palestinians themselves - they won't get a say either way.

But to return to the top, the ceasefire looks like it's face down in the water and a new game is in town. I believe Trump is already putting pressure on Abdullah of Jordan and Sisi of Egypt to take the Palestinians, and preparations to recieve them may actually be beginning as I post (I seem to recall having heard a snippet to this effect somewhere). Netenyahu won't want to restart a wholesale slaughter in front of the eyes of the world, but will be under pressure from his right wing colleagues in government to at least restart the aerial attacks. IDF troops are preparing to restart by reports in today's media, so it looks almost inevitable that the slaughter will begin again. As I say, it won't look good (how terrible to sound so insouciant about it) and Trump won't be happy, but it'll just add fuel to the fire of his ambitions (perhaps he sees a Trump Tower on the beach in Gaza as his own part of the sweetner): who knows?

[peter]

It's amazing how exercised the right wing media have become over a single Palestinian family being allowed to join their relatives in this country, in order to escape the horrors they have endured in the occupied territories prior to escaping to a refugee camp in a third country.

The problem seems to be that the judge hearing their appeal (presumably their first application had been rejected) deemed that it was a suitable case in which the legislation put down in order to aid the immigration of Ukrainian people fleeing the conflict with Russia to enter the UK, could reasonably be utilised to apply to a Palestinian family, facing the same risks should they return home.

Cue outrage in the press (don't really need to keep repeating 'right wing' - it's all right wing bar the Daily Mirror) with the bog-standard refrain of "opening the floodgates" and the like. But the truth is because it's brown Muslim people and not white 'Christian' ones, that are being allowed in, they simply don't like it. Whatever horrors that Palestinians are subjected to, they must stay and face them; white people facing the horrid Russians? Why, let 'em in!

It's all part of the (not so) subtle anti-islamic shepherding campaign of the media and the state/polity, that has been going on for years in this country. (And people ask how the German people were gotten to accept the persecution of the Jewish people prior to the second world war - exactly like this!) In the past few days we've had the man who was allowed to stay because his boy "wouldn't like the chicken nuggets" he'd have to eat if he went back home; the "Pakistani pedophile" who was spared deportation because he'd be separated from his family (note the association of his race and no doubt religion with sexual perversion), and now this furore over the Palestinian family.

And meanwhile Donald Trump actually admits, quite openly, what the Israeli's have done to the Palestinians.....and the media turns not a hair. Trump's words were, in answer to what he would "pay for Gaza,", "Nothing. There's nothing to pay for. It's gone - destroyed. It's rubble. We'll have it and own it....etc".

There it is. He said it. Gaza is destroyed. Uninhabitable. Which is one of the stipulations for constitution of a genocide, insofar as it renders the life of the 'group' impossible to continue. Even if not considered genocidal it would most certainly constitute a crime under international law and Donald Trump freely admits to that crime having been commited.

So excuse me, but if just one Palestinian family can escape this torment, this abomination of aberrant behaviour in our modern world, then it's okay by me. And as for the right wing media and any politician who thinks to turn me against a whole section of the world's population on the basis of their religion - well they can go fuck themselves.

-----0-----

Last night I watched a film called Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story.

It told the story of an infamous set of psychological studies carried out in the 1960's at Yale University, in which a participant was instructed, on receiving wrong answers to questions by a second participant behind a screen, to apply electric shocks of increasing severity, the results of which he or she could hear but not see.

As the session continued and the shocks (and resultant cries) became worse, the participant became less and less comfortable with what they were doing, but were instructed to keep ahead with the study by a lab-coated overseer taking notes in the rear. Despite the shocks getting more and more severe, their own unhappiness to continue and despite the second participant saying that they'd had enough and wanted out, over 70 percent of the participants involved followed the instructions given by the overseer, and took the shocks to the maximum strength that the equipment allowed for, and continued to administer shocks at this level.

Unbeknown to the participant at this time, the second participant was in fact an actor, and was receiving no real shocks at all, but despite this the experiment was condemned as unethical and it's findings judged unreliable. People, it seemed, didn't like the idea that we are hardwired it would seem, to simply obey authority figures, even to the point of committing acts of clear brutality against our own kind. Coming as it did, in the years following the revelations of the horrors commited by the Nazis in the death camps, the study threw up uncomfortable findings that challenged the generally accepted position that there must have been something uniquely evil about the Nazi regime and the people who commited these atrocities. Could it be that we to, in the position of people drafted into the Holocaust machine, would have done these things? Surely never! It could not be!

The work of Milgram and his team was carried out over the same time period that Adolf Eichman was being tried in Israel for the war crimes he had participated in, and televised as they were, the world was shocked by the matter of fact way in which 'the monster' recounted his deeds, seemingly having no feelings of either remorse or guilt for what he had done. On the contrary he absolutely fell back on the answer, again and again, that he was simply following orders. That it was no part of his to question the instructions of his superiors, and that he was simply following the instructions of decision makers higher up the hierarchical ladder. The chiming of this with the results of the Milgram studies was, and remains, an uncomfortable fact. And reviled as the experiments are (to this day), the conclusions drawn from their findings contested, still every time a new horror is wheeled out on the world, the same questions are asked and the results of the study once again reappear in the conversation.

I spoke a few posts back about James O'brien asking how the ordinary people of Germany had been brought around to accept what was going on around them, and I gave the same answer as I give above in relation to the behavioral nudging of propoganda and drip-drip-drip of media content in the case of Muslims. Time and propoganda do it - but our inherent faculty for bowing to the instructions of authority figures must also come into it.

How else were we made to go against our every instinct in the covid pandemic? Told to stay in our houses, not to see our families, not to gather for marriages, christenings, funerals and even (God, it seems unbelievable now) at the deathbeds of our dying family members. Wives, husbands, mothers and fathers. Sons, daughters and parents alike, leaving their kith and kin to die alone? The answer; the power that authority exerts over us. Milgram's experimental conclusions writ large over the whole scale of populations. No different to the obedience of the German people during the years of the Holocaust. Obeying the instructions that come from above, even in the face of our own cries against it and the cries of the ones we condemn.

And why should this be? I don't think even Milgram tried to answer that question, but I'd have a stab. It has to be that 100,000 years of experience has taught us that if you don't do what figures in authority told you to do, you die. In all ages passed, those in authority were there only by virtue of their ability to inflict violence on you if you declined to follow their instructions. In fact (truth be told) they still are. Hard won experience has driven it into us to the point where we cannot refuse, that we must do what we are told by those in positions of authority above us. And so we throw the children into the gas chambers, we deliver the electric shocks, and we deny our loved ones the comfort of our presence at their deaths, on the back of this fact. That we cannot refuse.

But if there is one ray of light in this dark and depressing revelation of our nature, it is this. Remember the thirty percent. The thirty percent who do not push the switch. The thirty percent who do not stay away, or turn in their neighbours. It is in that thirty percent that our redemption lies, our hopes must live. And I believe - I really believe - that you and I are amongst them.

[peter]

Much talk in today's media about the rapidly developing situation vis-a-vis peace talks aiming to bring about the end of the Russia- Ukrainian war.

President Zelensky made a rather pathetic (in the sad sense of the word) attempt to regain some traction in the affair yesterday, by stating that Ukraine would not be party to any agreements that were forthcoming in which they had not been represented around the table. This intervention followed a 90 minute call between Donald Trump and President Putin, and a subsequent much shorter call with Zelensky himself. He owned that it was somewhat galling to be spoken to second to Putin, but accepted it was what it was.

He has been told by Trump himself and more forcefully by vice-president J D Vance, that his conditions of Ukraine getting its pre-war territory back and an agreement for future joining of Nato are non-starters in any talks. Ukraine will, he has been told, have to concede territory and accept the joining of Nato as a pipe-dream. He's in this morning's press begging for Putin not to be given all he wants, in any future agreement.

The one interested party that is nowhere to be seen mentioned in any reports (or indeed commentary issuing from the US, Russia or Ukraine) is Europe. Europe, including the United Kingdom, will it seems, have no part to play in any negotiations. Zelensky has made one desperate plea that Europe should be included in any talks; he's aware that his side is taken (ie that Russia should not walk away with the Ukrainian territory it has taken and guarantees that Ukraine will be excluded from Nato) only by Europe, and that without their presence he is effectively isolated between the two big-boys wrangling over his future.

Europe itself is thus far pretty quiet on the issue. Not wanting to antagonise Trump into going even further than he is (or indeed stir him into further punitive actions regarding trade sanctions etc) the response to his going behind their backs to initiate separate peace negotiations from which they are excluded (although word is that Ukraine will be included, albeit that no-one expects them to be anything other than a very junior participant) is thus far pretty muted. Europe is aware that if Trump turns off the taps on aid for Ukraine, both financially and/or militarily, its effectively game over. Zelensky has conceded that without America in its corner, continuation of its fight is all but pointless, but nevertheless he thanked the European leadership for their reiterating that European support of Ukraine is unchanged regardless of any actions by the Americans. But without the military clout to be able to give these words substance, they remain just that - words and nothing else.

What a shambles this military adventurism in which someone else had to pay the price in blood, has turned out to be. Ukrainian and Russian life has been shed in quantities reminiscent of earlier more terrible times, and paid for by western dollars, huge quantities of which have simply circled back into the pockets of the people who pushed for the conflict in the first place - call it the military-industrial-political complex if you like. Nothing has been gained. Nato is not one inch further forward than at the start, nor Russia one inch pushed back. Ukraine is ruined and its people scattered. And this could all have been stopped in mere weeks from its start, had not the USA and UK told Zelensky not to pursue the peace agreement he had negotiated with Russia in Istanbul. How much worse off is he now as a result of believing his promises that "we will never let you down:we won't let you loose this war."

Well we did and he has. And hundreds of thousands lie dead. Zelensky, if he escapes with his life, will retreat into some European or American bolt-hole, to enjoy the millions of dollars he will have skimmed off the American and European aid we have sent him. And he'll have earned it ; blood money for the lives his country has shed on the back of our promises. Whether his people will see it that way, will wish him well with his millions, will be a different matter. I think he'll need to keep a sharp watch over his shoulder at all times from now going forth.

And Europe and Nato. It's all coming apart for them. Both have lost much credibility, much kudos on the world stage. When other countries look at us, suddenly we won't seem such a big-fish after all. We've weakened our own position, crapped in our own nest, and our ability to project power is substantially reduced. Who now, is going to fear the big bad European wolf? In a world in which international law seems to be retreating as a protection against the unguarded ambitions of the strong, we have shown ourselves to be weak and vulnerable. This is the price we pay for years of misguided foreign policy, culminating in this Ukrainian debacle. A Nato without America (and unless we stump up big time it's looking increasingly likely that this could come to pass) is a non-starter. Even if we had the money to increase production of weaponry to fill the vacuum of a departing America (and we don't) we still wouldn't have the glue of the American schoolmaster holding us all together. We simply wouldn't want to be bound into a single defensive arrangement with each other. But I digress.

Read back to my earliest posts on this foolishness on our part: see if I wasn't predicting this very end all those years ago. How is it that I, a bumpkin from the arse end of nowhere, can see what the so-called finest geopolitical and military strategists of the West cannot? None so blind as those whose hubris and arrogance, greed for power and avarice for personal enrichment, blinker their eyes and stuff their ears to any entreaties that they might be wrong.

[peter]

J D Vance has really set a cat amongst the pigeons with his speech at the Munich Security Conference.

Expected to speak on the ending of the war in Ukraine, the vice-president instead concentrated on the erosion of democratic freedoms in Europe and the United Kingdom.

What has really stoked the fires of European outrage is his stating in bald terms that the internal dangers of these movements represent a far greater danger to its people than Russia or China. He has cited things such as people being arrested for praying outside abortion clinics, the cancellation of elections because the 'wrong party' loked like winning them (accusations of this re the recent cancellation of Romanian elections where far-right candidates led in the polls), a woman arrested outside a court for holding up a climate change placard, and the wholesale exclusion of certain political perspectives from the national debate, because they didn't fit within the prevailing liberal establishment parameters of what was considered 'acceptable political opinion'.

And he has a point. I've waxed lyrical about my fears of broaching certain subjects, or commenting too deeply upon them within these pages. It's not fear of the mods on the site, or even my readership (if it exists). It's that I simply don't know where the lines are drawn these days on what I can and cannot legally say. If I expressed an opinion that (for example - and I stress it is not true) that I didn't believe Israel had the right to exist, would I be breaking the law? Another case; I might not believe a trans person born a man,but who has undrgone surgery, is a real woman. If I say this, am I in infringement of the law? Or if I don't believe that the Holocaust occurred, and say so, am I in breach of the law? In certain European countries I certainly would be, since Holocaust denial is a crime, but here? I simply don't know. (And for the record, I absolutely do believe that the Holocaust happened and will visit Auschwitz later this year to pay my deepest respect to the millions of victims who lost their lives there.)

But the point is this. Should my freedom to say whatever I believe, subject to the caveat of not inciting hatred or violence, be restricted? Is it? I really don't know.....but I get the distinct feeling that it quite possibly is. Certainly in terms of the public backlash that expression of certain opinions can result in, this is the case - but can I loose my job, my bank account, or indeed be put to the courts because of them. Do I still have the right to offend? If I do, it's certainly not a right I feel disposed to avail myself of at this particular time - not if the amount of self-censorship I engage in is anything to go by.

And in the recent pro-Palestinian protests, the climate protests, the anti-lockdown protests, there was a certain sense of rights being withdrawn, of the right to gather, to march, to express a position publicly. The increasing of the range and scope of the public order acts, the online safety acts, the monitoring and action against online content considered 'unlawful' by the state (which definition can effectively mean whatever they choose it to). And then there were other things: things that I'm still really leary about going into, because when a policeman stands in front of the cameras and asks you (oh so nicely) not to "speculate" about things - things where there is a distinct whiff of something rotten around them, then the clever money is not to speculate.

And so J D Vance's speech resonates with me. I'm not afraid of Russia and I'm not afraid of China. I don't expect either of them running up my stairs in the middle of the night anytime soon. My own government? Suddenly I'm not so sure, and what Vance had to say would seem to be a indication that I might be right not to be.

[peter]

[Contd...]

But irrespective of all that, there are some decades in politics where nothing happens. Then there are weeks when whole decades pass - and this last has undoubtedly been one of them.

We've seen Donald trump effectively overturn the entire post-war understanding that America will be responsible for the security of Europe, and now the effective trashing of the mainstream liberal centrist agenda, that it always knows best what is good for the people, that it's "My way or the Highway!", and that no alternative or dissenting opinion will be tolerated let alone listened to. It is shaking the liberal establishment to its knees and sending ripples of horror through the corridors of power throughout the Western world.

Trump - for it is he that must be looked to as the source of all this upheaval - is playing with fire. there will be a reaction, just as there was with Jeremy Corbyn when he threatened the established order, and in the case of Trump we may expect it to be magnitudes of scale bigger. He'll be brought down, if the 'Old Guard' can contrive to pull it off. They couldn't quite contrive it last time, but this time he's pushing them into a corner from which they'll have no choice but to up their game. The vested interests that are imbued throughout with the existing status quo remaining just as it is will not simply roll over and die. Tricks will be pulled, pressures applied here and there and should the worst come to the worst.... well - best not go there.

Trump will be accused of being a fascist; he isn't. He doesn't need to be one. he has no opposition, the presence of which is an unfailing one on the road to that particular ideology. No, trump, like his fan-boys in the tech world is a disruptor. He's closer to an anarchist than to a right-wing dictator. In his desire to go down in the history books [because let's face it, Trump MkI was a bit of a damp squib] he will put the world into a cocktail shaker and give it a good shake. Whatever comes out, the books of the future will have the name of Donald Trump in them.

But this ain't what the world needs. Sure - things need a change; but not a knee-jerk change of unthought out actions which will precipitate unknowable consequences. Politics needs to be boring and geopolitics all the more so. this is anything but.

[peter]

Oh fuck it, it's all happening so fast here I am fucking up my Saturday night posting on this crap.

This Munich security conference has been going on today and Zelensky gave a speech in which he basically said that the USA could no longer be trusted with the defence of Ukraine and even Europe, and that Europe would have to get its act together and get a European Army together to replace the retreating Americans.

Well good luck with that fella, but just this evening a load of attendees at the conference were sat around in a television studio (and we're talking high level people here UK foreign secretary David Lammy, the US special Envoy on Ukraine General Keith Kellogg etc) and they were talking important stuff right there and then. General Kellogg said that contrary to Zelensky's stated desire yesterday Europe would not be at the table in any peace talks between Russia and the USA, but would only feature in talks on the future of the arrangements post peace having been settled.

This is going to piss off a lot of peopl in Europe e big time, but what can they do about it.

Also on the news German Chancellor Olaf Scholz replied to JD Vance's saying that the Christian Democrats in Germany should work with the AfD to establish a stable government in the country. He said basically, "Fuck off and look to your own business, and we'll look after ours!" ( Well - not quite like that, but that was in essence what he was saying. ) He said that given Germany's history Vance should have been aware of the unpalatability of what he was saying.

Yet another fracture in the rapidly developing chasm between Europe and America, which must surely spell the end of Nato and the post war agreement that America should be the 'policeman of the world'. Game over Nato I'd imagine. Game over Zelensky almost surely. New world here we come.

See you tomorrow.