What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

I really don't get it.

A huge power cut leaves a great swath of the Iberian Peninsula in darkness and no-one can say what has caused it?

I mean, how hard can it be? Surely the generation of power is a science ruled by physics - a physics we know pretty well by now? How can it be that in even as complicated a system as this, the fault cannot be identified and explained, if not immediately rectified? I'll buy that it could take time to ferret it out, but this much?

And surely an area as large as errr...Spain and Portugal is going to have multiple sites of power generation, each covering specific areas? That means if all failed simultaneously the causation must have been working at either multiple sites simultaneously or must have been something (say the equivalent of an emp pulse or something) that fried similar components within each generating facility en masse as it were.

What are we looking at here? Obscure weather phenomena, something extra planetary (then why only the Iberian Peninsula?), malign actors either state sponsored or terrorist in origin? Or just some basic science issue concerned with how the system is interlinked across huge networks?

The bods in charge of the electricity generating industry in the area affected seem at a curious loss to be able to say what is behind this occurrence - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said last night nothing was being ruled out (what - not little green men with x-ray vision or the flying spaghetti monster having farted toxic gas into the electric cabling?), presumably hinting that Russia or China might be behind it. Whatever it is, they need to get it nailed down and fast, because tens of millions of people without access to money, food, water or accommodation (if they are travelling), is a very serious situation - even for a few hours only. Any longer and chaos would soon erupt with people killing each other for resources.

There is speculation that temperature fluctuations might be responsible for the failure. It seems unlikely to me that the temperature, no matter how hot it might be for us as living beings, would suddenly be sufficiently high to shut down whole swathes of the Iberian grid, but hey - it's possible I guess. Either way, they ne3d answers to this and fast.

In a (sort of) related incident, Mark's and Spencer - a large and popular retail outlet across Britain - has had ongoing problems with its systems for over a week now.

It started with the company being unable to take wireless payment from phones in its stores, and seems to have spread from there. Their entire on-line ordering service has now been shut down and for whatever reason the stores are unable to reduce any products nearing their sell-by dates. This array of problems indicates that the issue is widespread within their system, and they are deep in trouble as a result.

M&S (as it is commonly abbreviated) is not a business in the most robust of health anyway, and one can only imagine the damage that this ongoing problem is exacting on their balance sheet (never mind the value of the company as a whole). This could literally finish them off as a going concern which would be very sad, for the company is much loved by the British public.

But anyway, that's my compooter type stuff done for the morning. I'm going of to look at the rest of the news - mayhap even this story about scientists shutting down the sun. Yes, I kid you not - you heard me aright.....scientists shutting down the sun.

(Update; M&S value is reportedly down by 700 million on the stock market.)

[peter]

So Ukraine has finally folded to American coercion and signed away its mineral and energy resources for fear that if it didn't, the USA would walk away and leave it up shit creek without a paddle.

It's standard US tactics to rinse anybody it 'helps' for decades to come following said assistance. The last of the payments for US loans to the UK made at the end of WW2 was paid in 2006 half a century later. In Ukraine's case it'll probably be longer given that the USA will be involved in helping to rebuild the country destroyed fighting the war which it - the US - instigated. It's a damn fine trick: start a war, get someone else to fight it for you, then rinse them for a century for the cost of fighting it and then rebuilding their devastated country after they've lost it.

Needless to say it will not be presented in the news quite like this. But even our propogandized excuse for a media recognise that this 'deal' (it's a deal only in the same way that blackmail is a deal) doesn't pass the smell test. Luckily they've got Trump for Fiona Bruce to curl her lip at as she reads it out, master as she is of the raised eyebrow (one permanently drawn higher than the other) and barely hidden contempt. But the truth is it'd have happened sooner or later no matter which party was in power, what president was cooking the books. It's just the way that America works in its dealings with the world. America first? At what point have America ever not put itself first.

Suddenly Ukraine will now be more worthy of 'protection' however - now that the USA has a vested interest in the amount of territory that falls under it's control in the post-war settlement with Putin. It'll not want to see all of the best mineral and oil areas falling under Russian sway and will do its level best to keep them. Zelensky knew this would be the case and so in at least some respects signing the deal made sense. (That and keeping the US support for the war effort flowing.) Now America is commited to the same vested interest as Zelensky himself, and as if in evidence of this the language of the agreement is suddenly less.....neutral shall we say.....than it was previously. The document refers to "Russia's full scale invasion" and states that "no state or person that financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to profit from the reconstruction of Ukraine." Of that I have absolutely no fear. The idea that anybody else should profit from anything ever is not one that has entered the American psyche, let alone from the rebuilding of a country that it has put so much effort into seeing destroyed.

But this isn't over yet. Because the Russians haven't had their say, and they are going to be very carefully considering what this means for the process of ending the war. They are currently in negotiations with the Americans (it's possible that Steve Witkoff is there in Moscow as I post) over their response to the Kellogg peace proposals (which no serious observer could believe that either side would have countenanced, other than just as a token gesture not to make Trump look silly and thereby infuriate him into doing something stupid) and we'll need to see how this effects things.

Maybe Putin and Trump have privately agreed on the carve up of Ukraine already. "You take everything up to the Dnipro and we'll settle with the rest," style of thing. Problem with this is that much of the commodity wealth is concentrated in the east of the country that would fall into Russian hands, and this would not please the Americans. So it'd have to be agreed with Russia that some kind of partnership deal would be struck between them, ensuring an equitable sharing of the spoils. This is possible - Trump's duplicity will know no bounds in respect of his preparedness to stab Ukraine in the back: Trump and Putin between them will barely be even thinking of the Ukrainian people anymore, looking rather at this as new land from which huge wealth can flow. The Ukrainian people will feature in their thinking about as much as the native American people did to the invading settlers that first colonised the US itself.

Or maybe it could go the other way. Perhaps suddenly the winning of the war might seem more important to the Americans. I'm doubting that they want to risk WW3 over this, but it's entirely possible that Trump just won't get how badly positioned the Ukrainians are in this war. That he might start believing the propoganda that comes out of his own machine about how weak the Russians are, how devastated their economy, how secondary sanctions, if he will but apply them, could bring the Russians to their knees. There are people still feeding him this nonsense even in the face of the perfectly obvious facts on the ground, and Trump is stupid enough to suck it up.

We really could be entering into the most dangerous phase of this war yet. The point where, by mistake, people misjudge the situation and start making the mistakes that lead to disaster. What if Trump and Putin haven't reached agreement on the Ukrainian carve up? What then? Suddenly the arming and fighting, the long range attacks and deep strikes into Russia start with a new impetus and enthusiasm. Hopes for a ceasefire receed and summer offences begin. And suddenly the same place we stepped close to once before, again comes into view. And this time Vladimir Putin does not display the patience he did when last time we came this close. When he just with one simple missile, sent the unmistakable message to America, "Don't send any more deep ATACM's into Russia ot this is what you will get on your bases in Poland etc." Because this time he doesn't know that the president of the United States is about to be replaced with someone he thinks he might.....might....be able to do business with. That ship has sailed and this time it's for real. So this time, he thinks, it's time to finish this.

If we're lucky under such a scenario, we'd just see Ukraine completely overrun. If not, Poland would be hit and then the sky would be the limit.

Pretty bleak stuff, but there you have it. It remains an absolute that the peace proposal will be rejected, by one side or the other if not both. What does Trump do then? Walk away, let Russia mop up Ukraine and then step in to claim his mineral rights with Putin's agreement. A deal made in hell, signed with Ukrainian blood? Could be. This is the man prepared to empty Gaza of over 2 million of its rightful occupants ("It's better for them - they'll love it!") in order to build luxury condominiums and hotels on their land. Don't place any limits on his treachery. You'll just be disappointed.

[peter]

From above.....

A few minutes in the bath always helps to clarify things.

Question: what does Trump want? He wants to get back the money spent on Ukraine. He want to get his greasy paws on the Ukrainian resource revenue stream. And he desperately wants the sanctions lifted off Russia to offset the tarrif war with China that he is loosing.

Thus you can take it as read that the more defiant stance of the language against Russia in the Ukrainian minerals agreement isn't of any significance at all. There's no security guarantees for Ukraine in this document and so that defiant language isn't worth a spit.

It's in there because without it the Ukrainians would never have signed (in the absence of said security guarantees).

So on this basis of Trump's domestic needs you can be 99 percent sure that America are not going to support any kind of increased military engagement with Russia, unless it be to watch Ukraine go it alone and then step in with Russia to scoop up the remains of the Ukrainian corpse. The Ukrainians will have to know this and recognise that if they want to keep anything of their country, they have no choice but to agree to the peace proposal which basically sees them shafted in respect of their desires.

So Russia? This is the question? Can they be gotten to sign the peace proposal so that the skimming off of the Ukrainian cream can begin.

What are their demands? The guarantees of no Nato joining of Ukraine. That's pretty much agreed already. The regime change in Ukraine. Well that's already in the bag (Zelensky can't survive the peace deal, even though he has no choice but to sign it). The complete demilitarisation of Ukraine and its turning into a neutral zone. This one is more tricky and the Russians might have to compromise here a bit. They'll be somewhat reassured by Trump's presence in the Whitehouse and his known dislike of Nato, so maybe will feel somewhat less threatened than they have in the past.

But they've been invaded through Ukraine three times in modern history. They don't forget this. So they will want really serious guarantees that the threat of it happening again is removed and this may actually involve the USA withdrawal from Nato. (Without the USA Nato would fall apart in weeks: America is Nato - the French, Brits and Germans couldn't agree in what colour socks to put on in the morning, let alone on the collective defence of Europe. There has been talk of Ukraine still being allowed to join the EU and maybe this is a sop that will work. Both the USA and Russia know that Europe and the EU are a spent force (Europe for the duration, the EU permanently). Russia won't loose too much sleep over Ukraine joining the EU as long as Nato is out of the picture.

So yes - maybe Russia can be induced to sign the peace agreement if Steve Witkoff can do a behind the doors deal with them that this is the way it will go. Trump would be like a dig with two dicks if he could pull Russia away from China and towards the USA. This would really work with the domestic audience and strengthen the US hand geopoliticaly no end.

So if I'm right what do we look for. One. Ukrainian agreement to the deal. Two. Russian agreement to the deal. Three. Trump withdrawing from Nato or very much reducing American involvement with it. Four. Full lifting of sanctions on Russia by the USA, cooperation on, and even partnership with Russia on the rebuilding of Ukraine and subsequent stripping of its resources - a joint cash-cow for both countries. Five. A complete rapproacment of relations between Russia and America and subsequent chilling of the same between Russia and China.

Who knows - maybe Trump is smarter than I've given him credit for. But there's many a slip between cup and lip, as the saying goes.....

[peter]

The Daily Express surpasses even its own record for the ridiculous this morning, with its front page claim (in respect of the Princess of Wales' daughter Princess Charlotte) that "She has 'inner strength' like our beloved queen."

She's 10 years old for Christ's sake!

-----0-----

Despite my speculation yesterday that maybe Trump did actually have a coherent plan to get the Ukrainian war settled, JD Vance has said in interview with Fox News that he doesn't expect the war to end anytime soon.

This is to an extent confirmed by a Guardian leader (to an inside article - no details given) that following the signing of the minerals deal, "Trump is set to restore arms shipments to Ukraine."

Oh well, my bad. I suppose I was desperately trying to find some rationale behind the whole US strategy which one minute seems to favour the Ukrainians, then to flip back to the Russians, then back to the Ukrainians again.

Golden rule learned. Don't look for rational behaviour and consistency where experience and history have shown you again and again that there is none.

-----0-----

Yesterday I watched the recent Louis Theroux documentary Settlers in which Theroux revisits the Israeli territories in the West Bank that he first visited 11 years ago, to find that the Ultra Zionist nationalists of his first visit have not softened their extremist views, but have rather pushed forward to the point where they have gained "political traction and have become mainstream". (Guardian review; Louis Theroux, The Settlers.)

Centered around the 'Godmother of the Settler Movement' Daniella Weiss, Theroux travels around the West Bank experiencing the continual harassment and checkpointing that is the daily lived experience of the Palestinian people (whom many of the settlers refuse to even accept as a distinct people - some as even people at all). He speaks to individuals who simply see no place for the presence of anyone but Jewish people within the lands of Judea and Samaria (what the Israeli's call the West Bank) and simply try to displace the existing population by moving in, establishment of camps, then shabbily constructed settlements, which, when achieving a certain size threshold, the Israeli government then recognises and true construction can begin.

When Theroux questions Weiss about the activity in terms of its illegality under even Israeli law (let alone international law which protects the West Bank as an occupied territory) Weiss is dismissive. It's a small misdemeanor she says (that would be the displacement of the Palestinian inhabitants from their historical homelands by violence, intimidation and bullying). When Theroux puts it that even her own government doesn't approve of this she laughs. "We do what the government cannot," she counters. "Of course they approve - they just cannot say so." In fairness, the guns of the IDF which everywhere protects the settlers and intimidate and drive off the Palestinians would tend to support this.

The crushing oppression that is daily life in the occupied territory is shown with unflinching honesty and gone is Theroux's normal faux-nievity to be replaced by a silent woodenness that says all it needs to in the face of some of the worst viewpoints he is subjected to. He isn't buying it and his demeanor shows it.

But this program is illustrative of something that I think few of us have actually taken on board. This is the extent to which a radical extremist viewing of the Zionist project has overtaken mainstream Israeli politics. It's as if the most radical Islamist elements had taken over administrations we normally see as moderate. Think the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979, but without the fanfare. These hardline elements within the Israeli administration are now running the show and their position in relation to the Palestinians is unequivocal. They want them gone and gone permanently. They are way beyond the point of caring about international law, about world opinion. Netenyahu, if not as radical in his thinking as they are, is nevertheless absolutely beholden to them in order to stay in power and out of prison.

International law and world opinion matter not a jot. As long as Israel enjoys the unquestioned support of America, the world and its fixation with international law can go hang.

An American advisor commentator who worked with the Israeli security service in the 90's spoke recently of his asking an Israeli official at the time, what he (the Israeli) saw as the greatest threat to the State of Israel going forward. The reply surprised the American. Not the Iranian threat. Not Hamas nor Hezbollah. The greatest threat came from the Ultra nationalist Zionists he said. And this is the group that now holds sway in Israel. Some commentators from within Israel itself have said that this division within politics (between the radical ultranationalists and the moderates) reflected as it is by equal divisions within the population, threatens to spill over into civil disturbance or even God forbid, civil war.

Against a backdrop such as this, the ongoing decimation of the Palestinians of Gaza must come as no surprise. Israel has too long been able to operate in a manner outside that which would be permissable for any other country in the world. We must all recognise the very special circumstances under which the country came into existence, but this does not, not, not, justify what we have seen unfolding in front of the world's full sight since the October 7th atrocity. Like Owen Jones, I'm tempted to fall into the belief that nothing can now save the people of Gaza. There is no international will and the eyes of the media have turned elsewhere. But I cannot bring myself to do this. And so I beg, if just one person reads this, keep looking at Gaza, keep in focus what is happening there.

Don't, in the midst of all else that is happening, forget the people of Gaza. Their suffering each and every day is horrendous beyond description and their ongoing plight an abomination.

[peter]

Not very often that local council elections make for exciting news, but last Thursday's was an exception.

It's not by and large a very profitable exercise listening to Nigel Farage's pronouncements, but when he says that yesterday's results were a seismic change in British politics he's not actually far from the truth.

Because if nothing else, they do illustrate a real shift away from the two party dominance of the British political landscape, and a recognition amongst the people that it's time that other options than Labour or Conservative were available to them.

It can't be denied - Reform crucified these elections by completely knocking out the two dominant parties, and throwing in an overturning of a completely safe Labour by election seat for good measure. OK, they only have 6 MPs, but no question had yesterday's council results been reflected in a national general election we'd have a Reform government now with Farage as PM.

He's like a man for whom all of his birthdays and Christmases have come rolled up into one, and while I think Reform are a pretty grubby lot I really do like seeing the two party monopoly overturned. If Reform can maintain their momentum then they really could do it. Expect the establishment to really start digging the dirt on Farage now (ala Jeremy Corbyn style) in a way that to date he's pretty much escaped. If he's so much as put his socks on the wrong feet in the past 20 years we'll know it. The existing order will be rattled - very rattled - and it won't take long for them to rally and bring out the big guns. Antisemitism won't work: that particular stick has been overused and its cache devalued. It'll have to be something else viewed with equal social unacceptability and there's really only one thing. (Work it out for yourself.)

But my take is that once the two party monopoly is broken at least other options (not Reform) will also step into the ring. Possibly even a real socialist or social democratic alternative that could win the people to a different outlook from that offered by the uniparty or Reform. A return to a mixed economy with people at its heart. A polity that has the public interest front and center in its sights without the continual looking to retain the status quo as it currently stands. Business centered, but that always second to the people themselves.

Now there's a consummation devoutly to be wished.

-----0-----

Have America decided to pull back from the peace proposal negotiations?

News is a bit scanty but it looks like it. No-one knows what that actually means (will Trump stop supplying the Ukrainians?). If he doesn't then the war will simply grind on because the suggestion that Russia and Ukraine just "sort it out between themselves" is just plain stupid.

But Trump/Vance know it and are just creating a new narrative away from the real one that they started the war (well, Trump did), they continued it, they lost it, and now they're trying to distance themselves from it. They'd rather pretend that they're disinterested parties rather than balls deep in the catastrophe. Ukraine and Russia are so far away from each other that no common ground exists upon which peace negotiations could even be started. In the current situation it would be a cruelty to keep supplying Ukraine because it'd just see more and more Ukrainians die. Russia will win this war. Russia has won this war.

Any person who believes different is away with the faries (and that includes you Kier Stamer).

[peter]

Let's just look at a couple of things.

First, the idea of America as a neutral mediator in the Ukraine-Russia situation is preposterous. They have been balls deep as a protagonist since day one and are just trying to create a new narrative in the face of their failure to win the war.

A mediator has to be uninvolved in the conflict: it goes with the definition. What America is playing at is like having the referee of a football match playing for one of the competing teams. America can enter peace negotiations with the Russians as the principle protagonist in the war (insofar as it could not be fought without the American input), but a neutral mediator it can never be.

But put that aside. Just look at Trump's attempt to bring this to a close.

The Russian and Ukrainian positions are so far apart on this, on their respective requirements from a peace settlement, that absolutely zero common ground exists between them.

It is possible to take things forward from such intractable places, but it takes time and infinite patience from teams of experienced diplomats working in concert. Gradually they piece together a working framework, each small piece of the jigsaw of which is carefully put into place, until ultimately, possibly years later, a fully constructed plan is ready for the final apex piece to be put into place. That being the public signing of the deal by the leaderships of the countries involved.

But Trump's way is different.

Rather than a team of diplomats, he sends one of his golfing mates - a guy who has no diplomatic experience whatsoever, who by the way is tasked with sorting out the Middle East problem at the same time - alone with no backup or advisors, to do the job. In 100 days. And then we wonder why the guy fails spectacularly to achieve anything except to make the situation worse.

This, as John Mearsheimer said, is simply an illustration of the functional incompetence of the Trump administration. It's chaos in there. They have no idea what they are doing.

I mean, is it any wonder that we are in the shit!

And the picture Trump posted of himself in the Papal regalia! What was he thinking! I mean - he's supposed to have some gravitas about him as the leader of a nation isn't he. But instead he offends a huge portion of the world population in one sweep by making a bad taste post at the very moment of their grief and most solemn observance, the choosing of a replacement for the very man whose funeral Trump has himself just attended. It is simply beyond belief. The man is clearly deranged.

It doesn't happen often, but I'm speechless. Which is a shame because I've been unable to post for days as a result of some technical difficulties with loading the site. I'd genuinely thought that KW was over and had (to my shame) even begun putting a few posts up on the dreaded Facebook.

Well, I'm back here for however long it lasts, and very pleased to be so.

[peter]

So the Netenyahu administration has finally put its hand on the table and come out with it.

Full and permanent occupation of Gaza, and a great big, "Fuck You," to international law, accepted norms and civilised behaviour.

The entry and distribution of aid to be at their convenience and under their control, to be used as another tool beyond the terror of the bullet and the gun with which to batter the traumatised population back and forth like a shuttlecock on a badminton court. The population - shift it out. The hostages - fuck 'em.

Of course the wording used is somewhat different: "The recommendation (of the chief of staff) to destroy Hamas. And along the way he thinks it will help rescue the hostages and I agree."

What absolute bullshit. Anybody who still believes that this has anything to do with securing the release of the hostages is away with the fairies. This is the Greater Israel Plan writ large - clear Gaza of its population and bring it into the fold of Israeli territory. That Gaza is officially recognised under United Nations vote as Palestinian territory - screw that. That this action will finally shred any claim Israel has to be anything other than a rogue state in its behaviour toward its Palestinian neighbour - so what. That what this does is effectively bring to an end the post war United Nations charter as the agreed document by which global order will be maintained and wars prevented, that it throws us right back into the time before any pretence existed that the world would be anything other than dog eat dog and the devil take the hindermost, that we now reenter the world of the strong predating on the weak with no recourse to justice or redress - well the world of the West seems entirely comfortable with that even if the global south does not.

And behind it all in Gaza today the killing will carry on. Call it a genocide if you want. Call it 'ethnic cleansing' (sounds cleaner at least ). Call it a massacre or a tragedy or a violation Palestinian rights. The words no longer have any meaning. Without action to prevent what is happening they are of no significance. What this is is a step back into the dark past of human history out of which our experience and suffering should have long brought us. It is an abject lesson that evil only ever begats evil and the pusilanimous attempts of humans, of humanity to make things different are pointless and carried out in vain.

That the very country born out of the evil of the Second World War, of Hitlerism and the Nazi Holocaust, should be the very one to bring the final curtain down upon our weak and feeble attempt to gainsay the blackness of our hearts is irony heaped upon itself. Wyrd it seems is whimsical. It chooses the children of the fires themselves to slay the protecting dragon birthed to be their very guardian (though as dragons go the United Nations was admittedly always something of a toothless variety). And in so doing it all but guarantees that history will repeat itself. And as some sage with an aerosol recently sprayed on a wall, every time history repeats itself it costs (us) more.

(My parentheses.)

[peter]

The Israeli-Hamas war.

This is a term that has been used - is used - repeatedly in our media to describe what is going on in Gaza.

But it is a slippery bit of dissimulation, of misrepresentation, designed specifically to make that situation sound something different to that which it is.

What war, I ask? Where is this 'war'? Name me one battle that has been fought. Show me a map of the various fronts on which it is being prosecuted, the lines of troop formations and the toing and froing of its passage? Yet the BBC's Jeremy Bowen in his current article on the BBC website uses the phrase without question, and further tells us that the war began on October 7th with the Hamas attacks.

In fairness to Bowen, he is using the parlance that his BBC masters would require of him and he is at least one of the few reporters who have been critical of what Israel is doing, and is today casting into doubt any suggestions by the Netenyahu regime that its recent announcement of its intentions to occupy Gaza fully and not leave will do anything to speed up the end of this crisis. On the contrary he suggests that such an action will simply exacerbate the situation, increase the international controversy surrounding Israel's actions, and increase its isolation on the international stage.

No-one watching the huge crowds of agonised and distressed people pressed in around the food kitchens in Gaza, hands and pots held out in desperate pleas for a scoopfull of the slop that now passes for food in Gaza could be anything other than convinced that food provision was being used as anything other than a tool of 'persuasion' in the Gazan 'conflict'. This is of itself a form of collective punishment and is against international humanitarian law, but defence minister Israel Katz has himself described the blockading of food as a "main pressure lever" against Hamas.

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is even more unequivocal. He says that in six months Gaza will be "totally destroyed" with the Palestinians left in the territory, "despairing - understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza." They will, he says, "be looking for relocation to begin new lives elsewhere."

Yes Mr Smotrich. Those who have not been starved to death or killed by bombs and bullets, or simply sheer physical collapse as a result of forced displacement over and over and over again.

Even the UK government it now seems is beginning to realise that siding with Israel in its ongoing decimation of Gaza and its population is not a good look. "We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel's operations, said the UK Middle East minister Hamish Falconer. "Any attempt to annex land in Gaza would be unacceptable." Hello, Mr Falconer. Is anybody in there? Exactly what world have you been living in for the past X number of years. Israel's plans for Gaza have been explicit since day one of the Zionist project. You think they drew up their ideas with the 'two state solution' written into them?

Assuming that the planned expansion of the occupation goes ahead ( and this depends on what comes out of a meeting between Donald Trump and the Saudi Arabian and Emirates leaders on a trip due to take place next week) there's going to be hell to pay on the international stage and it's going to be really difficult for the Stamer administration not to look completely wrongly placed if it doesn't come out strongly against what Israel is doing. Stamer must be praying that Trump can exercise some restraint on Israel and get them to scale back their operational advance, but I wouldn't bank on it. Trump doesn't seem inclined to give Netenyahu anything but full sanction to do whatever he chooses, and there's no guarantees that Netenyahu would take any notice of him if he didn't. It's becoming increasingly difficult for our administration to continue the pretence that Israel is acting in anything other than an unrestrained and unacceptable fashion, and it'll be interesting to watch Stamer twist and turn in his attempts to justify the unjustifiable if the expansion of operations does go ahead.

Watch this space. This is one spot (posting difficulties notwithstanding) that you can guarantee his smarmy lawyerly feet will be held to the fire.

[peter]

The situation in Kashmir takes on an ever more dangerous hue as the two nuclear powers seem locked into an inescapable escalatory cycle of tit for tat strikes.

Another success to be chalked up to British colonialism in general and the 'heroic' work of the honourable Louis Mountbatten in particular.

I listened to George Galloway yesterday on that august individual and it seems that the British public sprung nearly 5 million pounds to secure his diaries and papers for the Southampton University archives, none of which have ever been made available to the public in the years since their procurement.

Repeated efforts by the historian being interviewed by Galloway to have the documents released have been stymied by both the University and the courts. The government has obfuscated and lied through its teeth in order to derail these attempts, presumably with pressure from the royal household itself behind the refusal.

One possible reason, Galloway's guest (author and historian Andrew Lownie) speculated for this apparent distortion of 'the public interest', is that they might show Mountbatten to have been much more involved in the little known coup plot by press barron Lord Cecil King to overthrow the beleaguered Harold Wilson government and install Mountbatten as an interim Prime Minister of a government of 'national unity', than has hitherto been believed.

The 'official narrative' has been that the plot was foiled by Mountbatten's refusal to be part of the plot (in which upwards of 35 MI5 officers as well as armed forces officers were said to be involved) but Lownie claims this to be false. It is more likely says Lownie, that it was only at the insistence of the Queen herself, that Mountbatten refused the offer of leadership and that the plan was dropped. The diaries could clearly be of great significance in clearing up this hole in the historical record, but if they did show Mountbatten to have been deeply implicated in the plot then it would clearly be very embarrassing for the monarchy. In the UK it is not expected for the monarchy to involve themselves in military coups designed to overthrow the governments which the people have elected (although I seem to remember that a Field Marshall of the army was quite happy to admit that the army were prepared to 'step in' had Jeremy Corbyn been elected: that astonishing admission caused not a squeak from our client media when it was made).

But Lownie has further reasons to suspect why such great efforts are being made to prevent the British public from seeing that which they have purchased with their own money. They have to do with, shall we say, Louis Mountbatten's more private activities, particularly in Northern Ireland where he held estates to which he regularly retreated and where Lownie suggests, some of the things going on would have made Prince Andrew look like a Presbyterian minister in comparison.

I'll not go into these things here for they are not proven one way or the other, but what is certainly true is that a great deal of effort is going into making sure that these diaries stay out of the public domain. The recording of our history is dependent upon the access of historians to material such as this - Mountbatten was instrumental in putting together the deal that saw India partitioned and given its independence, and the insights and detail that could be provided by these documents into that most terrible of blunders (in terms of the way it was carried out) are invaluable. But this it seems is of small consequence to our establishment in comparison to their being embarrassed or undermined in any way. That politicians learn from these mistakes that they may not repeat them, is of insignificance to a system that values its own survival over the wellbeing of the people over which it is subject. And thus we are where we are; ossified in the past, and in the grip of an establishment that behaves more like a banana republic than a modern democratic state (hah!)

It isn't going to change because I'm writing about it, but it's good to know anyway.

[peter]

Let's just go through our papers this morning looking at the front pages and seeing just how many stories may be seen as anti-immigrant or directed towards fostering a negative view of foreign people.

The Express focuses on the VE day anniversary so nothing there.

The Mirror has a great cartoon that they ran back 8th May 1945. It shows a battle weary soldier, injured and broken, holding a wreath in front of a rubble strewn landscape of bombed out buildings and total devastation. The wreath has a ticket on it reading Victory and peace in Europe (clearly referring to the cost of that victory as shown by the wreckage of the country behind the man) and below the cartoon reads the line (which the broken soldier is saying) "Here you are. Don't loose it again." Above the normal 'Mirror' bandline reads, "Learn from the past: be peacemakers." It's a fantastic front page for today and all the more pertinent given that our leaderships are planning to do just that as I post. Never, never, never again! That must be our solemn sworn oath as a people, as the people - the people who will be expected to bear the cost of our leaders foolishness. God, I could weep!

The Star. Less ambitious and pointed than the Mirror, but okay none the less. A picture of a silhouette of the Churchill statue superimposed in front of a Westminster tower and dark evening sky. A Union Jack is projected onto The Big Ben tower and the caption reads "Never Forget." So far so good.

Now, here we go. The Guardian has the developing India-Pakistan conflict and a headline saying that Labour is in a "fight of its life" with Reform and Nigel Farage. That Stamer is conducting his fightback by moving into Reform ground, mounting attacks on the same immigrant communities that Reform are targeting, and the Guardian are fully behind them in this ridiculous answer to an entirely fictitious problem (it's not the immigrants or boat people or Muslims that are screwing the people - it's the corporations and the wealthy and the political class who ensure that the fruits of their labours only ever go in one direction - upwards - that is royally shafting the average working person of this country) is not said, but remains true nevertheless.

Moving on.

FT - Indian-Pakistan problem again and then a headline, Migrants face 10 year wait for residency under tougher Labour rules. See that! Labour, tough on migrants! Look at that Farage! (And look at that people, as well.) Nb. This story refers to the decision by Labour to up the waiting time for a residency visa from 5 to 10 years, for immigrants granted temporary work visas. These individuals come here and contribute massively to our economy, providing skills and knowhow that we are lacking in, or labour for jobs where we are in short supply or simply won't do anyway. They are a boon to the economy, not the reason why the indigenous population are in such dire straits, which is entirely due to the shafting exercise referred to above.

Daily Mail. "Iranians 'Plotted to attack Israeli Embassy in London' ". See - it's them Iranians again! (Fist waving)

The Times; "Iranian 'terror plot' targeted Israeli Embassy in London", and "All migrants will have to be fluent in English." This latter to add to the increase in waiting times for residency visas to 10 years. All to show that Labour can be as tough on migrants as Reform. Migrants must demonstrate that they are competent in English up to A-level standard, says the report, in order to ensure that they can 'integrate into society' under Labour's immigration reforms. Were this the case, they'd definitely struggle to communicate with most of the people I know, let alone the rest of the population. And it's all bullshit. Bullshit designed to sound good to the floating potential Reform voters who Stamer is desperate to draw back into the Labour fold. The fostering of hateful insidious views against migrants (we'll stick it to them!) for no other purpose than to try to out-Reform Reform. Sickening.

Telegraph. "Four million pounds a day; true cost of housing migrants." "Iranian terror cell in UK targeting Israeli embassy." "Pakistan vows revenge for 'every drop of blood spilt' in bomb raid."

And on it goes......

Message; Hate the other. All their fault. Vote for us and we'll stick it to them.

And be absolutely guaranteed that if you give us the time, the space and the power to do so, then we ensure that it does all happen again, that we do, on the contrary to what that war-weary soldier said, loose it all again.

[peter]

Today, May 9th, is VE day in Russia. Yesterday, May 8th, was VE day in Great Britain. We can't even agree on what day the bloody war ended.

The reasons for this are not as clear as you would believe as significant a thing as this should be. Google says it is because of the time zone differences that had the time in Moscow at gone beyond midnight into the 9th when the actual surrender was signed (in Berlin?) at 11.08 pm. The BBC gave a reason that Russia refused to accept the document signed at Reims in France the previous day, and insisted on the signing of the Berlin document.

And in fairness, they had every right to make the running.

Because contrary to what we'd like to believe, it was Russia and not us, not the Americans, that won (if won is the correct word for the pyrrhic victory they secured) the war.

Let's flesh this out and put to bed some misconceptions about exactly what they achieved.

The first thing to grasp is the enormity of the German crime. Hilter, in the development of his Wehrmacht, put together the greatest killing machine that the world has ever witnessed. And that was it's purpose. To kill and kill and kill. Anything that stood before it. It killed at the ratio of 10 to 1. 10 deaths of those opposing it, to every death it suffered.

Russia, in facing this death machine, lost 27 million on its people. Soldiers and civilians destroyed at a rate that to the West is inconceivable, then and now. We lost 20,000 men on the D Day landings: Russia was loosing 40,000 men a day on a regular basis in order to grind down that awful construction of terror. Some 84 percent of the Whermacht fell in front of the Russian army - around 600 divisions - compared to the 16 percent dealt with by the British and American forces. The Russians won the second world war. They own it.

And yet here we stand, 80 years later, side by side with the very country that built that killing machine, and arrayed against the country that bore that humongous cost.

And in Germany they 'celebrate' May 8th as their 'liberation' day. As if they weren't as a nation hand in glove with the Hitler leadership that brought all that horror about. That they weren't the ones from which that killing machine was forged. That the guilt for those multiple millions of deaths doesn't sit absolutely and squarely on their shoulders, never mind what comforting fabrications implying they were somehow coerced into doing what they did, are constructed.

Guilt and cost.

Neither, does it seem, are we happy to place in their correct historical positions. And would you expect any different.

I watched the new Netflix documentary on Britain in the Blitz yesterday. A harrowing 8 months of destruction raining down from the skies over this land. How when it was finally over and Hitler turned his attentions instead to the destruction of the Great Bear, the barriers of class and wealth had briefly broken down and for one wonderful moment we became one people, joined in gratitude and relief at our collective survival.

And how this had for a brief moment in time, resulted in an outpouring of state rebalancing, the development of the post war consensus, the NHS, the welfare state, equity and progressive taxation to ensure that those at the bottom of the pile got their dues just as those at the top. And how, briefly it worked and we all enjoyed the fruits of or labours to something like equal degrees.

And then you realise the enormity of the crime that has been perpetrated against us. How the vested interests that had had their absolute supremacy wrested from their hands, albeit with their own brief acquiescence, had reverted to type. And have spent the next 80 years attempting to overturn that brief rebalancing of the scales, purchased at such great cost in two world wars, by the people of this country.

They should hang their heads in shame, those politicians who have facilitated the reversion and no doubt been paid handsomely, their 30 pieces of silver, for doing so.

[peter]

Much is being made of Kier Stamer's deal with Trump to cut tarrifs on cars and aluminium, and the UK PM is walking around like a dog with two dicks following its announcement.

But to me it looks like Donald Trump was as desperate to make the deal as Stamer was himself, and thus it's no suprise that this limited affair was cobbled up and sprung on the media as it was.

Trump apparently phoned Stamer out of the blue suggesting the meet which produced it - and I don't think he would have done that unless he was grasping at straws for something to say to both the world and his domestic audience following his bragging that everybody and his mother were queuing up to make deals with him following his spraying around of tarrifs like slurry onto grassland. I'm guessing that the deals he was boasting of were not materialising anything like as fast as he'd have liked, and he needed something to show his domestic audience to prove that he knows something about what he is doing. We were, after all, the first country he signed a deal with since he levied his tarrifs - a fact that our media made much of yesterday.

Now he is indicating that he's prepared to ease up on the China tarrifs, another sign surely that things aren't going quite to plan with the rash policy he has been following.

Stamer, needless to say, was equally desperate to have something to say to cast his ailing premiership in a better light, and it was a gift that he couldn't refuse when Trump called offering to talk. Needless again to say that the deal, while it does improve things on the car manufacturing side, doesn't really do much other than that. There isn't much talk of how much this will raise in terms of actual money, how much GDP will be boosted, and I'm guessing that that is because if there was, the paucity of this deal would actually be thrown into the light. These figures are standard fare in the usual reportage surrounding trade deals, yet here they are oddly absent.

And this is of course not a full trade deal. It's a special and specific arrangement on certain very limited things. Not the all encompassing general trade deal spoken of by Brexiteers - the ones we were going to be doing all around the world, but have proven strangely elusive now that Brexit has actually happened. And the Trump deal still leaves us worse off than we were a month ago before all of this nonsense began. It's hardly a step forward rather than just not going as far back as we'd thought we were.

Anyway, let's have a look at the papers.

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The Times are still on the immigration thing (you can never fail with a bit of additional racism stoking) telling us that the fall in the rate immigration increase that has been seen of late is stalling. Get that? Immigration isn't falling - it just wasn't going up quite as fast and now it is again. Poisonous shrew Yvette Cooper won't be pleased with this headline and will be scheming other ways to dissuade individuals from travelling to this country, though God knows, if anybody just read the headlines about this country for a few weeks before coming it'd be a miracle if they didn't just tear up their tickets to come anyway. Why in God's name would anybody want to come here in the first place. Not when alternatives like Rwanda or Kazakhstan, the Belgian Congo or North Korea were out there as possibilities. Beats me.

The Express has a medical headline: I've forgotten already - what is it, cure for alzheimers, new wonder weight loss drug or something. Hold on.....oh yes, obesity drugs on the NHS could give 4.5 billion pound boost to the economy. No behind the doors deals with the pharmaceutical industry behind that headline; just plain honest reportage by some hard working Express hack, working away with his calculator.

Also in the Express, "Moronic pair who cut down sycamore gap tree are guilty." We won't ask what daily these clowns read then (assuming they can read), but we'll have to wait till July to see them sentenced. I think 5 years would be about correct, but it seems a bit of a waste of public money. Better perhaps to tag them and keep them under curfew (though pity their poor families stuck with these creeps in the house) and put them to work planting trees for community service.

The Mail runs with the head of the navy having to step down from his role while allegations that he was having a bit of nookie on the side with a female colleague are investigated. Well, at least it's a female colleague and not a cabin boy I suppose. Could be worse. Can't much see that it's anyone's affair (get it) but their's myself, but hey - the forces have rules about this stuff.

The Telegraph has the same naval story and also a big picture of George Galloway enjoying the VE celebrations in Red Square. Well someone from the UK had to acknowledge that Russia did actually contribute a bit to defeating Nazism, and it might as well be Galloway as anybody else. He was apparently awarded a medal or something named after a Hamas leader as well (the Yahya Sinwar Award perhaps?) which no doubt will have the Telegraph readership spluttering into their coffe cups at breakfast. Galloway is a trifle to good at speaking the honest truth (not something Kier Stamer and his bunch, let alone the Tory leadership or the ruling establishment clique want us to hear), so it's good to stick one on him now and again if you can. Pretty stupid I'd say to do it via the front page of the Telegraph though. More people who've never heard of Galloway will see him there than people will be put off from listening to him, that's for sure.

Also the Telegraph; "Leaders fly to Kiev today to ramp up pressure on Putin." Stamer and Macron and a few others are apparently flying to Ukraine in order to demonstrate "solidarity" and to "pile pressure" on Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. Funny - I thought Russia was already having a unilateral ceasefire for three days during the VE celebration period? No mention of that, but then I suppose if the Ukrainians aren't part of it there wouldn't be much point. But anyway Kier and Emmannuel - good luck with that! I'm sure Putin will be listening with all ears to anything you have to say on the matter. He must be quaking in his boots at the thought of having to face you pair when he agrees with Trump to stop supplies to Ukraine.

And the 'i' finish it up by telling us that Reform are now polling 10 points ahead of Labour as Farage plots his way to power. (Clue guys; Farage doesn't need to plot his way to power. He just needs to sit back and let Stamer carry on doing what he's doing. That will be quite enough to see the Essex spiv into Downing Street on its own.)

[peter]

Migrants could be kicked out of the country if they commiy ANY crime under a planned government crackdown.

Currently, foreign criminals are only reported to the Home Office if they receive a jail sentence, and only those given a year behind bars are considered for deportation.

But Labour is set to rip up these rules as it tries to get a grip on immigration and see off the growing threat posed by NigelFarag's rampant Reform Party.

So writes this morning's Sunday Mail, in as frank an admission as could be given that the rights of immigrants to fair treatment in the UK are seen as no more than a political bargaining chip, to be withdrawn at the drop of a hat in the face of political expediency for doing so. The paper seems to approve of this stance, but gives a list of crimes so serious that it claims are covered by this now to be closed 'loophole', that one cannot seriously believe that anyone, migrant or otherwise, could have escaped a custodial penalty for committing them anyway. It seems to me that the moment that freedom of flexibility in sentencing is taken away by mandatory sentencing (in any situation) it is always justice that will be the victim; judges are appointed on their perceived ability to do just that ,and it seems to me that they should be allowed to do so on a case by case basis without the pressure of knowing that there will be an additional component to consider when any given sentence is being considered. This will only serve to distort the punitive process.

But this aside, that such a change is being considered - and for the political reasons given - shows the direction of travel we are headed in. Farage is not in power yet and already his presence is distorting our political system, forcing it in an ever rightward direction as other political parties attempt to ape his populist program of 'othering' migrants in our society, rather than the true villains that are really responsible for the increasing hardships being experienced by the larger proportion of the population. Bad news all round for anyone with eyes to see, and that we are on the one hand celebrating the defeat of just those same political forces in the 1940's, and yet today enacting exactly the same trajectory toward what one can only imagine will ultimately be a muchly similar outcome is more sad than ironic. Grim days ahead.

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But it doesn't end there.

Across the water in the USA, Donald Trump continues his radical overhaul of the much sung greatest democracy on the planet, by converting it at pace into a new thing altogether.

The fascist phrase is bandied around a lot and I'm not even going there with Trump - but whatever it is he's after, he's making use of the same techniques that Uncles Adolf and Benito did back in the 30's. Othering is a key component - you have to have someone else to blame or people start blaming the system itself, and secondly comes the stifling of people's ability to think.

Now this seems perhaps a difficult thing for a political leader or party to achieve, but its actually not that hard. Start young in the schools by controlling what children are taught. Continue by stifling any content taught within the university system that runs counter to the narrative you want to project. Ensure that the media, either by force or by mutually beneficial compliance, runs always along the preset lines of the controlled narratives you want pushed and lastly, censor or control the output of the arts to ensure no alternative stories are told.

Okay - it's a lot, but it isn't complicated, and Donald Trump is simply building upon the scaffolding already firmly in place to add his own particular extensions of control. And some would say it's already gone beyond the point of no return.

The media has always been half way there, and the American school system has always been big on pushing the 'America is the Greatest, the Freest, the most Advanced place on Earth' that can possibly be imagined. They've always had their ready made others in the form of the black population who could be portrayed as outside of the norm, and now that isn't working as well any more, they have turned attention to the Muslims and immigrants across the southern borders, but hitherto the universities and the arts have been pretty much left alone.

But Trump's agendas will put paid to that. His attacks on the university system will not be directed at the bigger named places of further education; the anti Palestinian forces are already working the oracle at that level with three of the big five university principles already having fallen under its scythe. But it is at the smaller state funded level that the right wing forces of the Trump phenomenon will manifest.

Take Texas as an example. It has 17 or so State (as in the individual States, not the state as a 'blob') funded colleges of further education. They are being told by the Republican governorship of the State authority, that they must strip out anything from their courses that projects America in a bad light, or risk loosing funding. In this way the history as taught in the colleges is neutered into a pro American propoganda that seeks not to teach students how to think, but rather what they should think. It's one narrative, one dimensional teaching, that has no place for critical examination of the country's past and the places where it has been bad, as well as those where it has been good.

And this process will be writ large across the USA in every State where the Trump influenced Republican governorship has power. As noted, this will be a continuation of the already flensed minds coming out of the school system, where indoctrination with the 'USA is Great' narrative has already been begun.

And finally we (and they) turn to the arts.

Trump's recently announced policy that any films not produced in the USA will attract a one hundred percent tarrif will effectively make film going in America a one trick pony. Clearly it won't effect blockbuster productions filmed elsewhere in the world other than the States - it isn't meant to - but it is the smaller productions, the ones that most often run counter to the official narratives of history, that will be affected. The American market will simply be closed off to them and they will become not financially viable in consequence. Thus will we all suffer by virtue of this, but it's the Americans who will suffer most. The stifling of freedom of thought, of expression, of 'thinking outside the box', that will result from this, will ossify the country in a created image of the past that bears no relation to the truth, and can stand no stressing by alternative modes of thinking against which it will react in a vicious attempt of self preservation.

And so here we have it. As such a system progresses, those who can will flee to other parts of the world where freedom of thought and expression is not stifled by the state (assuming such places still exist), and the process will speed up in result. Each critical mind lost is a balance tipping further in the favour of the 'process'. This is what happened in Europe in 1930's and this is what will happen in America this time. But there won't be any point in heading in thisdirection, because we will already be a long way down the same road. If Farage gets power it'll be so much the faster, but even if we don't see this it'll still happen.

And here I will return to the coin of fascism. Because fascism and neoliberalism are the two related tools of capitalism. And when the one fails, as it inevitably always does, then capitalism turns to other. When the markets have milked the people to the point where there is nothing left to milk by the normal route, then the rise of authoritarianism and control is the only possible way in which the oligarchy can retain their power. And we see the rise of the demagogues. I'm not sure it's even deliberate as such - it's just more (I think) what happens. A cycle that repeats itself maybe? (Didn't Vigo, or some classical guy have a theory on that or something?)

I wish I knew more about this stuff. Too late now I guess. It's thanks to George Monbiot and Richard Murphy that most of this comes, and gratitude to both of them for pointing all of this out. I'm sur there are loads of commentators out there screaming about what is happening, but certainly they ain't being heard on the legacy media. You have to search this out (or at least expand your horizons beyond the mainstream stuff) in order to get it. The BBC is certainly stuffy about Trump, but not openly warning of where this is leading. That it's happening here as well, they simply cannot or will not see. A combination of willful blindness and vested interest I'd guess.

Anyway fuck it. I'm going back to sleep for a while. Enjoy your Sunday.

[peter]

Exciting news to read that the St Ives music festival have lined up the chap who was almost chosen as front man to the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin rather than Robert Plant, but wasn't in their top billing spot this year. Rumour has it that the literary event might secure the fellow that almost wrote the Pultzer prize winning novel for the year 1974, but didn't, but that might be hoping for too much.

Unfortunately I won't be able to see them, as the man who almost bought a ticket to the event but didn't.

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"Zelensky challenges Putin to meet him after Trump demands Ukraine-Russia talks."

This on the BBC News website following a more sober headline that Putin had suggested the possibility of direct talks between the two a few days ago. Trump and Zelensky it appears merit a more confrontational turn of phrase. Picture little Zelensky shaking his fist from behind a glowering orange man's legs if you will. "Grrrr," he growls.

I heard a guy talking who was at the Russian remembrance day event for VE day and who'd heard Vladimir Putin talking. He said how Putin, watched by Xi Jinping and other world leaders who were in attendance, spoke briefly but poignantly of the huge sacrifice that Russia had made in securing victory against the Nazi death machine, and in doing so acknowledged the contribution of the allied forces who had come into the fray from the west. No sniping or bitterness, no diminishing of their contribution, despite the fact that none of the leaderships had bothered to attend, to take the opportunity to perhaps be part of a gathering of world leaderships with whom it is so important that at some point, the bridge building exercise that will lead to peace must begin.

Talk about opportunities squandered.

To put the respective sacrifices of Russia, America and the UK in securing the allied victory in perspective, Russia lost one in five of its population in that terrible confrontation - twenty percent. America, point one of one percent and Britain one point nine percent. We should have been there in Moscow respecting this sacrifice and it is a measure of the smallness of our leaderships that we weren't.

Still, it would be ironic if the two leaders - Zelensky and Putin - were to meet in Istanbul, the very scene of the previous attempt to end the conflict shortly after it began and the one in which agreement was reached but scuppered by Boris Johnson on the instructions of Joe Biden. I bet Zelensky wishes he'd ignored the Johnson promises of 'with you until the end' now. He's a hundred times worse off and hundreds of thousands of troops dead in the field because he didn't.

The clever money for him is simply to suggest to Putin the same deal (or as close an arrangement as can be made) as was agreed on that prior occasion. I see no reason why Putin would not accept this, assuming he could hold the territory he was won by force of arms. Ukrainian neutrality would negate the reason for any western presence in Ukraine at all and the genie of great power confrontation could be put back in its box. If there's an ounce of common sense amongst the American leadership that is the course they will be urging. It'll piss the Europeans off but who cares about that. European credibility is gone and won't be coming back for the duration.

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Stamer is unveiling his attack on immigration today in the form of revised conditions about who may apply for residency and when. It'll tighten things up across the board - the need to be fluent in English, clean criminal records etc - and generally make a good sounding splash in front of voters considering defecting to Reform.

The Times runs with this story, but also manages to get one in about weight loss wonder drug Ozempic being a potential 'cure for cancer' as well. Who knew? Don't think that some of the Times ownership has money invested in Big Pharma do you? That would never be right would it, and I certainly can't see the Murdoch empire being involved in anything as unscrupulous as that.

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Apparently the UK lawyer attempting to secure the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netenyahu and Yoav Gallant in the ICC tried to pressure a woman accusing him of forcing her to have sex with him into dropping her claims because it would damage his attempts to help the Palestinians. So tells us the Telegraph this morning.

Ahhh... So that's it? This must mean that all that stuff about what's going on in Gaza is nonsense then mustn't it? Now we see that we wore worrying about nothing. Israel is the most moral country, Netenyahu the most moral leader, in the world after all. Phew - that's a relief. For a minute I thought all that genocide talk was true.

[peter]

Entertaining little sideshow with the emergence of the viral video of Stamer, Macron and the German leader (yes - I've forgotten his name) on the way to Kiev by train, and in which Macron appears to be surreptitiously palming a white object (bag of charlie or used tissue - you decide) while they all look a bit uncomfortable (they have the 'guilty schoolboy' look about them).

I doubt it's the 'Columbian marching powder' as George Galloway put it (in explanation perhaps, for the trio's belligerence towards Russia and opposition of any kind of agreement leading to peace) but hey - who knows. Zelensky himself is reputedly a fan of the occasional powdering of his nose so perhaps the menage et trois heading towards him were getting in a bit of practice? I'm tempted to ask if the picture passes the sniff test to you, but will refrain from doing so.

In other news (that you won't find anywhere else) speculation that Donald Trump has finally lost patience with Bibi Netenyahu is emerging.

The independent deal with the Houthis (that America won't bomb them if they leave American ships in the gulf alone), the moves toward nuclear agreement with Iran, and the whispered suggestions that there might even be some direct communications with the Palestinians in Gaza themselves - none of this is going to please Netenyahu for whom the ground upon which he stands is starting to look increasingly shakey. There has even been some kind of rumblings about Trump being prepared to accept some kind of two-state resolution to the situation.

And on the Russian-Ukrainian front, it seems that despite my pessimistic consideration in earlier posts there may actually be some movement. It's funny how it developed from Russia saying it would be up for talks with Ukraine (at which point Kier Stamer was adamant that no talks should happen), through Trump telling Zelensky that he'd better be prepared to talk to Putin or else, to Zelensky "challenging" Putin to talk to him (as the UK media would have it), to Stamer then saying that Putin had better be prepared to talk to Zelensky or else....(clammy fist a'shakin towards Moscow).....

He knows which way the wind is blowing our Kier, and he'll always be pointing in that direction like the painted cockerel he is.

So who knows where all this is going - maybe in the right direction in both cases. I really want to be wrong in my pessimism and today at least it looks like just perhaps there might be some light over the horizon in both situations. If Trump continues to distance himself from Netenyahu then the latter must fall and then hopefully- hopefully - some kind of resolution in Gaza can be worked out. Way too little, way too late, but never too late for the remaining hostages or the Palestinian lives that will otherwise be lost.

But back to Ukraine and it seems that the offer of direct talks with Zelensky in Istanbul came from Russia as an alternative to acceptance of a 30 day ceasefire that Zelensky and European leaders had been demanding, backed up by Trump. The latter it seems, accepted this as a doable alternative and pushed Zelensky to agree to it. And so here we stand. Istanbul it is on Thursday. Whether Putin himself will attend is still in some doubt - Russia has yet to confirm or deny this - but nevertheless, it's definitely movement. If Putin does attend it'll be the first meeting of the two leaders (Zelensky and Putin) since 2019 and even Donald Trump has suggested he might make an appearance. Presumably this would be dependent upon Putin also being present. Zelensky has expressed approval at the idea of the American President being there, and it is to be hoped that Trump would at least be more favourably inclined to the same kind of agreement that was rejected by Johnson and Biden when it was last reached.

Clearly now the situation is different than it was in (what) 2021?, but it should still be possible to integrate the new realities on the ground into an agreement that sees Ukraine take up neutral status and accept demilitarisation. The question is, would Putin be satisfied with the territory up to the Dnipro or would he want the whole of Ukraine? My personal opinion is that he would: he'd only really be interested in that portion of Ukraine that was essentially ethnically Russian and the rest with its non Russian population would just be a pain in the arse to him. Far better to get the thing settled, get the sanctions lifted and then get onto the serious business of making money for Russia.

On sanctions, the EU is still insistent that the 30 day ceasefire is put into place or that they will impose further sanctions on Russia. Russia has said that this is unacceptable, but in truth they haven't really got much to worry about because the European leaders can't agree on what sanctions should be imposed, when or how, and so it all seems to be a bit of a waste of breath anyway.

But let's see what happens on Thursday. Should be an interesting meeting and has all the shades of a 'Munich' of our times about it. Let's hope that it ends a bit better than that one did and that Putin turns out not to be Hilter after all. Back in the day I'd probably have been considered an appeaser, but I believe that the conditions here are radically different. Enough very smart people who I respect say that Russia has been shabbily treated by the West since the fall of communism and I believe them. It's time to redress some of those ills and perhaps Istanbul on Thursday is the place to begin this process.

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A quick mention of the backlash that Kier Stamer's revision of UK immigration policies has received - absolutely to have been predicted and totally justified in my opinion.

The policy of apeing Reform in order to try to win back voters to the Labour payroll is misguided in the extreme. People don't like it and rightly. Stamer would be far better to be truthful with the British public. They are not stupid and would see the truth behind his words if he was.

That truth is that immigration is not just a net benefit to this country - it's an absolute necessity. We don't have either the skills or the population to run an NHS, a social care service, a hospitality sector without it. The number of people arriving on boats is miniscule compared to the number that arrive totally legally - and who must be brought in because we are totally dependent upon them for the services I mention. This is why immigration numbers remain so stubbornly high. Because every administration we have, in power, is immediately confronted by this reality. We simply can't do without these immigrants, and if they don't come from the EU they must by necessity come from elsewhere.

To lump these legal migrant workers with the illegals arriving in boats is like unto equating people who go into a shop to purchase goods legally with those who go in to shoplift. It's a nonsense. And it's designed to be a populist answer to explain other, totally unrelated problems, that the people are experiencing in their daily lives.

This is what Stamer should be hammering home, but he's too stupid, too politically inept, to see it.

[peter]

There is just so much wrong with this story of Peter Sullivan, held for 38 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit, that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Almost every aspect of it shines a light into some dark cranny of the UK 'justice' system, a system that has been lauded from time immemorial as being the acme of fairness and impartiality, beyond and above the corruption and inadequacy of that of lesser countries. What has been done to Sullivan has been beautifully described by the Mirror as a "justice fiasco" and it cannot be put better than that.

The starting point is to ask why this low IQ individual was held for so long before the wrong done him could be set to rights?

Sullivan, placed behind bars at the age of 30 following the brutal murder of a florist in 1986, yesterday had his conviction quashed after it was shown that "new DNA evidence" demonstrated that the DNA profile of the murderer found on the victims body did not match his. He had been appealing against the conviction for years, but had served his sentence even beyond the point of being eligible for parole, because of a vindictive clause in the system that says that only those who confess their guilt and show contrition for their crimes are eligible for consideration. Thus is an innocent individual in a catch 22 situation, where he cannot be considered for release unless he confesses guilt for a crime that he did not commit. Thereby he would of course, fatally compromise any attempt to overturn the guilty verdict against himself.

That this ridiculous hurdle - and the parole process also includes requirements that the now contrite subject also attend psychological assessment sessions to prepare and make themselves into suitable candidates for reintroduction into society - effectively served to keep Sullivan behind bars long after he could have been released, simply because he refused to admit his guilt.

Now to this "new" DNA evidence.

I use the inverted commas because this is how it is being described in the media. The BBC news last night referred to the improvement in techniques that has been achieved in the intervening years between the time of Sullivan being convicted and the present, and from the brief clip I saw of the court deliberations the suggestion was that the conviction had been largely based upon DNA evidence presented at the time, which has now transpired to have been flawed. Or if not flawed, then at least to have been far more trusted as a means of identification of a specific individual than was justifiably the case.

I remember the time that DNA was first introduced into the criminal justice system as a reliable form of evidence - how it was sold as a "chance in a billion" that anybody could be wrongly identified on the basis of a DNA sample and that, like a fingerprint, a DNA sample could be taken as irrefutable evidence as having come from a specific identifiable individual. I also remember thinking to myself, "Who says so?" The 'experts' were always going to be pushing this 100 percent infallible angle - it was their work they were protecting in doing so - and the police were never going to argue. As for the average joe in the street (and I include the venerable members of the legal profession in this) they didn't know shit from a shovel when it came to scientific stuff and such was the societal respect for anything told to it by someone in a white coat (the phenomenon has a name, scientism, but I call it flying high on borrowed wings) that they certainly weren't going to disagree. Thus it seemed to me, the moment a so called expert stood up in court to say this was this, or that was that, who was there to say him nay? No-one had the competence to know if he was telling true or not and he capitalised on this.

But now it seems that that DNA sample didn't actually identify down to any specific individual - that it might have sufficient similarities to a given individual to imply that it might belong to him (as would seem to have been the case in Sullivan's sample) but might in actual fact have been issued from one one of millions of other individuals who shared those particular pointers upon which the identification was based. In other words, it wasn't worth shit.

And given Sullivan's experience, I wonder just how many other wrongfully convicted individuals are languishing in our prisons - individuals who haven't yet been fortunate enough to have had their appeals come to fruition, to have navigated the snails-pace process of clearing ones name, the uphill struggle to justice following the downhill speed run to miscarriage. I wonder how many will never see justice done, never have the comfort of seeing their convictions overturned, but will go to their graves being remembered for ever and a day, should their name ever be revived, as men of guilt, monsters to be shunned and feared?

And now let's come to Sullivan himself. He's 68 years old now and hasn't much time left. His is a story of tragedy too awful to contemplate. This morning's press say that his compensation (how can you compensate someone for that: he'd need the top floor of Trump Towers and hot and cold running supermodels on tap for the rest of his life to come close) will be a long time coming. They cite the case of a guy held for 17 years for a wrong conviction of rape, who was forced to live in a tent while awaiting compensation. But this will be just another of the miscarriages of justice our system will heap on this man. This is not what primarily concerns me. It's the fact that this man has by accounts 'learning difficulties'.

In other words he is, and always was, especially vulnerable to the wrongful attentions of those who would do him harm. Against a police system that needed to find a culprit, a legal defence that would have been state funded and, well, probably not the most motivated to fight a war of bloody attrition against those oh so damning DNA results, frankly this guy was low hanging fruit. I'd not be surprised if on examination you would not find that as with another educationally subnormal patsy, the guy convicted for killing BBC tv news presenter Jill Dando, there was all sorts of evidence not presented to the jury, not presented because it undermined the case. In the case of the Dando miscarriage, it took the police multiple lineups to finally get one that identified the patsy, and then they presented the evidence of his being "identified in a lineup", conveniently forgetting to mention the numerous ones that hadn't identified him.

What kind of justice system doesn't require the police to submit all the evidence they have gathered, positive and negative, but rather allows them to selectively present only that which supports their case? Such a system isn't a justice system at all. And the Sullivan case looks like just such another case where the police have needed a culprit and so they have found one that fitted the bill. Dando's killer was also educationally subnormal and I wonder, do we have a pattern here?

I don't know, if I was the Home Secretary I'd be thinking in terms of instructing all prison wardens to supply me with a list of any prisoners held beyond their time of parole threshold, on the basis of refusal to admit their guilt. I'd be especially looking at those prisoners deemed to have learning difficulties/low IQ levels and on the more general front, I'd remove the stipulation that a person had to admit guilt before becoming eligible for parole.

On the police side, I'd make it so all evidence had to be presented to the court and I'd circulate that far greater weight must be placed upon investigation forward from a crime to apprehension of a suspect than on working backwards from a local profile to an individual, who might then be tied to the crime scene by DNA or whatever. Lastly I'd be far more careful about the use of 'scientific evidence' to convict people. The inbuilt biases of people to present themselves as all-knowing before a court, and the tendency of people to believe them on the basis of shared societal assumptions of infallibility has been the cause of far too many cases of miscarriage of justice and it must stop.

Anyway - I've burned myself out on this topic and don't really know how to wind it up. Let's just say that in Peter Sullivan's case we recognise that it is too late for justice to be done. His life is gone. The Home Secretary should apologise to him in front of parliament as a minimum. Let's just hope that the rest of his life is long and happy, for no-one deserves a happy ending to his story more than he does.

[peter]

So let's hope that behind the drama and oneupmanship of the leaders in respect of peace talks in Istanbul today, their remains the possibility of some real progress towards ending the bloodshed.

The 'will they, won't they' games as to which leaders will be present seems to have ended with the news that probably none of them will be there.

It's a question of status. To quickly recap, Putin first suggested talks between Ukraine and Russia without preconditions last Sunday (Stamer said that Ukraine mustn't agree to this: in parentheses because it's not significant other than to demonstrate what a weather cock he is). Trump said that Zelensky "must attend."

Zelensky returned with the "challenge" (BBC description) to Putin to attend Istanbul today and meet him in person. Trump intimated that he might break his current tour of the Middle East and attend himself. (He's clearly got an eye to Putin and won't attend unless he does so as well. Zelensky would not be of equal enough status in Trump's eyes to warrant such a break in his schedule. Putin on the other matter, is a different proposition.)

(Stamer pipes up with, "Yeah Putin - you'd better show up or we'll slap more ineffectual tarrifs on you!", which Putin responds to as being "ridiculous.")

Putin hasn't commented about whether he will attend or not (this is around Tuesday) and Zelensky repeats his demand that Putin attend and meet him directly. Clearly this in itself (never mind the ineffectual threats from Stamer) are not going to increase the liklihood of Putin attending. He's never suggested that he would, nor did his suggestion include the proposition that the Ukrainian and Russian leaders meet. It was Trump the fool who pushed Zelensky to be there and caused Zelensky to return fire at this appearance of himself being pushed around by doing a bit of pushing himself. By this point it was clear that the leaders wouldn't be attending.

The last demand (BBC again) of Zelensky that "Putin meet me in Istanbul" was clearly the final nail in the coffin. Putin isn't going to be pushed around by Zelensky or Stamer (the latter of whom he's frankly just disinterested in as insignificant), he's not interested in playing games or putting on appearances and so a list of Russian attendees is released last night on which Putin's name doesn't appear. Trump also (on hearing this) let's it be known that he won't be attending - he's not going to go anywhere for the purpose of seeing a minor leader like Zelensky - people like Zelensky come and see him, not the other way around. Besides, why see Zelensky. He tells Zelensky what to do and Zelensky does it. He doesn't need to be in Istanbul for that. Only Putin's presence would make that worthwhile and that was never happening (and sealed as such by Zelensky and Stamer's input themselves - indeed quite possibly deliberately).

So it all, this theatre, goes back to Trump's intervention after Putin's Sunday suggestion, and none of it ws really necessary. It made a good media show, a political theatre, but no more than this. The idea of Putin was for Russian and Ukrainian diplomats to sit down together and see what could possibly be worked out. It would have been difficult - it still will be - but it's a step forward. Despite Trump's need to do everything yesterday (for domestic purposes) there still remains the possibility that just getting around the table, an end (effectively a Ukrainian surrender) can be arrived at.

Despite all the hype and posturing this remains the serious goal here, ending the killing, and now the talkers should get heads down together and begin talking towards that end.

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Trump over in Saudi Arabia agreeing with MBS a huge multibillion pound deal over selling arms of every description to this questionable regime. How many deaths will follow from that handshake and dick-sucking exercise.

Then off to Oman to meet with the ex head-chopper who now leads Syria. Handshakes and smiles. All sanctions on Syria lifted at the flick of a switch in order to 'Make Syria Great Again.' Tell that to the Alawites being murdered in the streets. But it's okay isn't it, because now they are our murderers, our Al-Qaeda personnel doing the murdering, and as long as they are prepared to do business with us and are killing our enemies not us, well that's alright by us. And if during the trip the odd super-luxury plane gets thrown your way, well hell - you'd be a fool to refuse such a gift wouldn't you? Corruption? Surely we're beyond all of that nonsense now aren't we? We don't have to bother with that kind of accusation anymore. We do what we want and fuck the vibe. (Sonny boy is down the street doing billion dollar deals for the family business while I'm out front doing the 'country stuff'.) Remember Jimmy Carter putting his peanut farm into a trust for the duration of his presidency: well more fool him! It's business, baby, business - all the way to the bank! Can't let a minor thing like being POTUS get in the way of that!