What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Sunday's here, so let's have a look at the papers.

The Sunday Times runs with a nice bit of fear mongering ("The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming - don't panic Mr Mainwarring!) in the report that the strategic defense review will recommend the formation of a 'home guard ala the WW2 civilian militia.

Put together in order to protect civil infrastructure sites such as power plants and telecommunications hubs etc, the force would mirror that formed in preparation for defence against invasion, although it is not clear exactly who might be massing as army in preparation for such as invasion at this time. Perhaps the newly energised Germans (see above)?

Heightened tensions with the 'axis of Russia-Iran-Korea' is cited in the report as being behind the idea, but it's not likely that any of this lot are looking to parachute into our back gardens anytime soon, but perhaps the government knows something we do not. Anyway, it's a fine way to serve a number of objectives. To heighten the sense of threat that always pushes people in towards their elected government. To justify increasing defence spending at the expense of - well - everything else. To maintain and add to the already long stirred up sense of threat that the media has been used to generate - covid, the wars in Europe, inflation, immigration - they all help, and now adda bit of immediacy to it with talk of invasion and the need for civilian militias. Well gor blimey, who'd have thort it: I'm quaking in me boots Uncle Arthur!

The Sunday Times Rich list, in which the super-rich get to judge how they're doing against their peers and the rest of us is set out.

What is exactly the point of it. Is it meant to rub our noses in what we know already: that while the huge, huge majority of us go ever increasingly into hardship and ultimate poverty, a tiny proportion of our society continues to enrich itself beyond the dreams of wildest avarice and reason, becoming in the process a gross example of what selfish extravagance, unthinking of the circumstances of those around themselves, engenders? I really can't say. But it appears that to a man, if the Times has it right, they are scornful of Rachel Reeves and her policies for the country.

Well on that we can agree, but not perhaps on the solution to the problem. Because they'd see, as an example, her policies of increasing taxes on inherited land wealth to the same as other inherited wealth, thereby closing this loophole that allows tax avoidance on a massive scale, as bad. I, on the other see them as paying lip-service to the problem - more by far about raising money for the exchequer than about taxing wealth in any meaningful way - and if the Times Rich List is anything to go by, she certainly won't be demonstrated to be doing anything that approximates to that.

The Sunday Mail run with the soon to be held meetings between the UK and EU that they describe as a "surrender summit."

It appears that some agreement on student exchange programmes might be reached and that talks on fishing grounds access will be discussed, and this has the editorial team at the Mail falling to the ground and chewing the carpet edges in anger. (What is it about chewing carpets that famously angry people get? Both Hitler and King John of England have been recorded as carpet chewers {as opposed to pillow biters, which I'm told, is a completely different thing}.) "Brexit - What Brexit!" the paper screams. Errrr..... That would be the Brexit that has knocked four percent of our GDP since it was put into effect, of which, the cumulative total of deals we have struck since (and this includes the Indian and American deals, much of which has been made in the press in recent days) have brought in the region of one three-hundreth of our losses back into the coffers. That Brexit. The one that in combination with covid and the war in Ukraine, has delivered a death blow to this country that neither my generation, nor the next, nor the one after that, will ever see the recovering from (the clues in the word death).

Ahhhh.....(breath deeply)......what else.

Telegraph, "Former asylum seekers spying for Iran." Ticking a couple of boxes there: getting in a dig at both immigrants and Iran at one stroke - two birds with one stone as it were.

And finally the Star: "Scumbag Seagulls in attack numbers rising" or words to that effect. Seagulls in Cornwall are getting notorious for their propensity to dive in and grab at the fish and chip lunches of outside eaters on the beaches and seafronts of the county.

Well, you would wouldn't you? (Rolling of seagull shoulders.) It's like, lunch innit? A gull's gotta make a livin' asn't he?

Sea you tomorrow Cod willing.

[peter]

I just want to add a little rider to something I posted yesterday.

I said that the Sunday Times Rich List had been published and that it would absolutely show a rising divide between the rich and poor in our society (or words to this effect).

When I actually went to read the words, the article began by lamenting that the number of billionaires registered in the UK had fallen (shock horror).

The number of billionaires resident in the UK is apparently 156, some 21 lower than it was at it's peak 2 years ago. The combined wealth held by the 350 richest individuals (by coincidence, all who have individual wealth greater than 350 million pounds each) fell by 3 percent to 772.8 billion pounds, which would tend to undermine my initial statement.

The implications of the article was of course that the super-rich are having a rotten time of it and seeing their wealth evaporate before their eyes. No doubt this, they thought, was because the all but communist policies of the Stamer government.

Of course nothing could be further from the truth - either that the wealth of those at the top is falling or that we have a left wing tax-happy government in place.

For starters, these figures tell us nothing about the comparisons of wealth held by the top sections of our society and those at the bottom end. If you were to take that figure of 772.8 billion and put it into a percentage of the national wealth, then work out the percentage of the population that would have to be arrived at in order to equal that percentage, but this time coming from the poorest upwards, I'll guarantee that the figure would be greater than if the same exercise were carried out for last years data. This would show a rising wealth divide between the richest and poorest - even between the rich and the richest - of the type I'm talking about.

That we saw a three percent drop in the cumulative wealth of these wealthiest individuals would again seem to imply that their wealth was falling. Not so, because these are by no means necessarily the same individuals as were included last year. These people can change their country of residence at the drop of a hat and undoubtedly numbers will have done so simply because of the inheritance tax changes that Kier Stamer's Labour government has effected. Remember - these tax changes are simply to bring the inheritance tax on land to the same level as that paid on anything else (actually, even that's not entirely true, given the higher threshold that the tax kicks in at, but let that go). That means businesses, money, investments, goods, houses etc, etc, etc.

The super-rich can do this far easier than the rest of us and they do. So those 350 individuals will be a different lot than last years, and by virtue of this of course the amounts of wealth they hold will be different. But if you were to look at the same individuals as last year, I'd put you a pound to a penny that that 3 percent apparent loss in wealth would dissapear to be replaced by a net positive growth of equal or greater value.

One last story, from a post made by Brian Eno, ex Roxy Music organist and electronic music luminary who's political work on in support of the progressive left of this country I've sadly neglected over the years.

Eno, in a recent YouTube post standing next to a bus promoting the establishment of a wealth tax in the UK, told the tale of a particular wealthy individual who in interview was casually displaying his extraordinary wealth, making sure all who were watching understood it, when a man approached him and spoke into his ear. This super-wealthy individual blanched and immediately ended the interview without explanation or delay. It transpired that a new list of the world's wealthiest people had been published and that he was number 11 on that list. The devastating element of this news however - that which had caused him to flee from his interview - was that he had expected to be number 8.

The moral of this tale. It's not that there isn't enough money in this world to meet the needs of the poor: it's that there isn't enough to meet the greed of the rich.

[peter]

Cue today, a howl of rage from the right wing media as Kier Stamer negotiates some kind of minimal deal that draws us a fraction closer to the EU.

There will be carpet chewing all around as agonised editors fall to the ground, clawed hands pawing the air as foam-flecked imprecations squeeze out between their gnashing teeth.

And I haven't even read the papers yet! I just know that it'll be in there.

News is that some kind of 11th hour deal was arrived at over access to fishing waters (the EU dug their heels in over this and Kier Stamer's team will have had no choice but to capitulate - queue pissed off fisherman on the 6 o'clock news) and no doubt some reciprocal arrangement will have been come to over student exchanges.

All of which will have the Mail readership screaming for Kier Stamer to be hung up by the balls as the 'Great Betrayal of Brexit' unfolds.

I'm well aware of the cost of Brexit - it's been a fucking disaster for this country in economic terms - but I'm also no great fan of the idea of tying us too tightly with the EU at this time. They seem adamant that we must adopt an anti Russian policy, even to the point of taking us right to the edge of war, and I just don't get it. This is more important to me that the positive economic benefits that could be achieved if we get closer to them.

But I heard a guy yesterday - a Tory MP I think - saying that while the idea of backpacking students doing a bit of bar work while travelling around this country sounds innocuous enough, it was a different thing when you started to think of it in terms of 30 year olds coming to the UK with their families in tow, using the NHS and taking up school places and social housing etc.

Well yes. But a student exchange program is what it says it is surely? A student. Not a full fledged family of individuals and dependants? Surely we can legislate in the small print to that effect? So the man's argument is surely as spurious as saying, "Well it's OK in terms of backpacking students, but when it comes to emptying out El Salvadorian mental hospitals onto our shores it's something different." Of course it's different; but there's no suggestion that all of these 30 year old families will be allowed in any more than the El Salvadorian mental patients will be........is there?

Perhaps we need some clarification on this point.

But by and large I'm fairly indifferent to the idea of this type of student exchange (as it is implied that it will be). It's probably a good thing - good for our kids and for EU kids as well. And if a bit of our labour shortage difficulties are sorted out temporarily in the meantime then all to the good. Fishing access? Wtf do I know about fishing. I know I haven't been able to find a decent piece of plaice for years but that's about it. So I won't be chewing any carpets over the news today, but neither will I be much interested by it.

-----0-----

It was unbelievably stupid of Gary Lineker to re-tweet a post that contained a picture of a rat in it, alongside a description of what the Palestinians are going through in Gaza. The rat was apparently an image historically used as an antisemitic image, but Lineker has explained that he didn't know that, and in fairness neither did I. He removed the post immediately upon being told this and gave both his explanation and apologies for making the post.

I believe his mistake was just that - a mistake, but needless to say he's opened the floodgates for his 'enemies' to attack him. Silly, silly man. He's undermined the absolute rightness of his position by making a stupid thoughtless decision to repost someone else's message. The picture of a rat should immediately have set alarm bells ringing and made him investigate further. Perhaps he'd never come across a term linking Jewish people to vermin in his reading of history (has he done any reading of history? - he's a football presenter after all, not an academic), but the clue was there.

Lineker has made the point that he has a right to speak out on issues that he feels are important, and I agree he has that right. Since he made his mistake he's come out fighting, saying that to be silent on the issue of what is transpiring in Gaza is to be complicit. I absolutely agree, but it's going to cost him dear. Me not so much.

He's already leaving Match of the Day, but now it looks likely he'll be out of the BBC altogether. They are saying that it's imperative that their presenters retain the BBC's "impartiality" ( ) on Gaza, but I agree with Lineker. What - impartiality in the face of the starvation of children? The massacre and rape of civilians? The wholesale destruction and ethnic cleansing of a whole people? What kind of impartiality is that?

And in fairness, even the most studiously 'impartial' of the Western media is beginning to show signs of being worn down by Israel's brutality. There is a very definite shift in tone of the reportage coming out of Sky News for certain, and even the BBC are having to show the devastating footage of the bombs falling on Gaza. The news that Israel intends to extend its ground offensive in Gaza in the days ahead will send shivers of fear through the establishment, that has tied it's wagon so tightly to the Israeli cause and is now effectively chained to a monster that threatens to damage it alongside the perpetrators of the carnage. The scenes coming out of Gaza are terrible, can no longer be denied as 'fake footage' or 'fake statistics' (except by one Conservative MP who still maintained in interview that "there are no starving people in Gaza.") They are incontrovertible. Incontrovertible proof that Israel in it's treatment of the Palestinians of Gaza, has overstepped the bounds of acceptable behaviour and clearly holds itself above international law. This is the tamest iteration of what is happening that can be said. You could be far less prosaic in your wording if you chose, and not be stretching the truth.

Either you are prepared to say this, or as Lineker says, you are complicit. For the sake of the Palestinians, we can none of us afford to be complicit.

[peter]

From above, they have managed to push Gary Lineker out of the BBC.

It's been confirmed today that Saturday's Match of the Day will be his final appearance for the BBC, so now we know that expressing an opinion about the wrongness of starving people, bombing and killing them, deliberately destroying their homes and making life impossible for them to continue, is outside the Corporation's policy of impartiality. That for the crime of expressing an opinion on these things, your career will be ended.

Fair do's - now we know it. But on Lineker's point that to say nothing is to be complicit I'd add the following.

Lineker has power. He has a platform. When he speaks people - and I mean specifically those in power - will listen. A million clowns like me can post a thousand posts a day screaming out about the wrongness of it all, and no-one in a position to actually change anything will give a crap. It's only when people like Lineker start saying things - in numbers - that any notice will be taken.

But they don't do they. They're all as quiet as mouses. The Ian Hislop's and Paul Merton's. The fearless 'cutting edge' of journalism and celebrity in the UK. The Joanna Lumley's and the Bob Geldof's. Bono. Sir Paul McCartney. All those who could really make a dent in the government armoury of excuses and misdirections by actually stepping up to the plate and being counted.

Because Gary Lineker can't be the only one that can see the truth of this can he? So where are all the rest?

They are either too frightened of the consequences of speaking out. Or they support what Israel is doing. Or they just aren't even aware of what is happening; so wrapped up are they in their own world that they haven't even noticed what is going down? Or lastly, they simply don't give a damn?

Let's work backwards.

Don't give a damn. They see it and simply don't care. Palestinians being live streamed genocided just leaves them indifferent. No - I don't buy it. You'd need to be a monster to see the pictures of children, one after the other, coming out of the rubble in their broken parents arms and not be affected.

Don't know about it. Again, you'd have to have been living on a dessert island for the last 18 months.

Think that the Israeli's are doing the right thing. Possible but unlikely. Unless they have ties to Israel or have completely bought the idea that this is all rubbish - that there is no starvation, no ethnic cleansing, no genocide, no destruction of Gaza, no indiscriminate bombing....... it's all just antisemitic propoganda and everything Israel is doing is as they boast - in the most humane and targeted way possible. I suppose it could be this....but it'd take a degree of gullibility that it'd be almost superhuman to possess. Lineker makes the point that for the first time in history we can see a genocide being carried out. Even in the sanitised pictures shown on our msm, it's there for all to see. How could a person with no skin in the game be still believing that this still comes under Israel's right to 'defend itself'?

Lastly, they are afraid. That the Israel lobby is so powerful in this country that they dare not raise their head above the parapet. Now this could be it. But Paul McCartney? Mick Jagger? Ian Hislop? Is the Israel lobby really that powerful? These people have incredible clout themselves but they say nothing about what everybody and his mother knows is happening? I just don't get it. If these people are afraid of speaking out - the ones who could really make a difference, then they are cowardly beyond description and are really, as Lineker says, complicit.

And if the Israel lobby is really that powerful to have them quaking in fear about what opinions they can and cannot express, even to the point of ignoring a massacre of children, then we are in deep, deep trouble indeed.

[peter]

Why do the BBC insist on referring to the "low level delegation" that Russia sent to the Istanbul talks last week?

On day one, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov - probably one of the most experienced politicians in the world and as heavyweight a Russian politician outside Putin himself - wasthere. It was then handed by Lavrov to Vladimir Medinsky, the man who negotiated the successful 2022 negotiations in the same city - the ones in which Ukraine agreed to remain neutral in return for an end to the Russian occupation, and which would have gone forward preventing a million deaths, but thanks to Joe Biden's intervention via his poodle Boris Johnson, did not.

The BBC insist that the status of the Russian delegation must be seen as an indication that Russia was not serious about peace, but this is simplistic.

The Russians fully understood the huge gulf between the Ukrainian and their own position - a gulf so wide that only a huge amount of work by diplomatic technocrats could ever hope to bridge it - and that as such it was a pointless exercise - and quite possibly a hindrance - to have leaders present at this early stage in the negotiating.

The choice of Medinsky was a deliberate signal that the 2022 deal was still on the table, with the caveat of the changed situation on the ground now obviously needing to be overlayed on top of it.

But there was nothing insignificant about the Russian team - in fact reasonable progress was made, insofar as the teams were able to talk - a significant step forward in itself - and prisoner exchanges were agreed upon.

Now Donald Trump has intervened again. He said after Istanbul that peace would only be achieved after he and Putin talked man to man about this. Now, following a two hour conversation with Putin, he says that only the Russians and Ukrainians can sort it out (with maybe the help of the Pope ), so were back to that.

He's implied again that he'll "walk away", saying that there are "red lines in my head" about how much time he will give this. Zelensky is adamant that the USA must remain involved, but he would be because he knows that if they distance themselves, then as sure as night follows day, before long the money spigot will be turned off.

This is where things currently stand. A stalemate as far as talks are concerned (though Putin did agree to have talks about talks in his conversation with Trump) and Russia still grinding forward towards the Dnipro on the ground. So much for stopping the war in 24 hours. The fool.

-----0-----

Let's just look at what the UK, France and Canada are having to say over Gaza.

Suddenly the administrations of the three countries are beginning to see what is unfolding there. That they have been balls deep in their complicity (well, certainly in the case of the UK) in what is happening notwithstanding, they suddenly feel the need to speak out on the Palestinians behalf.

Israel has to "stop its military actions" and "immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza."

What happened to Israel's right to defend itself, Sir kier? You thought it okay to stop food, medicines and water going in before didn't you? What has changed excepting that the world can now see what the effects of doing this has been and you want to distance yourself from it.

Netenyahu has agreed to allow a "basic amount" of supplies to enter Gaza but the aforementioned countries now say that is "wholly inadequate". You don't say?

They say

denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the populace is unacceptable and risks breaching international law.

Risks breaching international law! You're supposed to be a fucking humanitarian lawyer man - what do you mean risks? It risks it in the same way that shooting someone in the face with a shotgun risks spoiling their appearance.

They think that the level of suffering in Gaza is "intolerable". Well welcome to the party you idiots. Don't think we can't see that you're at last getting to understand how fully and completely this thing is going against you - that you don't give a flying fuck about the Palestinians, it's your own complicit hides you are now trying to protect.

If you care so much stop the fucking provision of parts for the F-16's. Stop the information gathering flights from RAF Akrotiri without which Israel couldn't do half the stuff it does. Your words don't mean shit and they won't save you when the time to pay the piper comes around. You are far too deeply embedded in what Israel has done for you to be able to extricate yourself with a few meaningless pronouncements.

Too fucking little, too fucking late!

-----0-----

The BBC website has an article by roving commentator Katie Razzle entitled Gary Lineker: A sorry end to an illustrious BBC career.

I couldn't disagree more. I think it ws a glorious end. History will remember Lineker as a good man. You lot who said nothing on the other hand, will be remembered as the cats paws that enabled our government to get away with its actions in facilitating a genocide. Think on this and be ashamed.

[peter]

Some clown has written an article on the BBC website entitled 'Stamer and Lammy sound genuinely angry at Israel.'

I'm not being funny mate, but have you been seeing anything that's been happening in the last year and a half? The pair of them have been so supportive of, so complicit in, what has been going on that in any world with a functional system of international law they'd already be sweating away over their defences with their briefs.

They said on the BBC last night that there were signs in the government's attitude that Israel had "crossed a line" and the government's patience had finally snapped.

Crossed a line? So we've been following a policy of patience with a country in the process of committing a genocide (Spain has said it, so why shouldn't I)? Is this the policy we could have expected from our elected representatives as children and women were dying in their thousands? As people were being bombed from pillar to post and slaughtered wholesale before our very eyes? A turkey shoot dressed up as a 'war'?

Jesus, how much more of this can I take?

But let's turn to matters more domestic for a moment and consider another story that is grumbling along, very much by design it seems to me, in the background. I'd even go so far as to say that the Israel proclamations of Stamer and Lammy in the House, were almost designed to ensure that this story was relegated to an 'also ran' slot on the news (so also ran, in fact that only the funny little end quip story that the 6 o'clock news always finishes on came behind it).

You may remember that last week there was a story concerning three arson attacks that had been made on property either owned by the Prime Minister, or formerly owned by him. A Ukrainian man was arrested very quickly following these attacks, and as yet we have no knowledge as to the manner by which the police were able to track down the alleged culprit.

All a bit odd, not much detail given, but hey, a Prime Minister is going to attract all kinds of nutcases in the course of his premiership. The news told us that although the fires were soon extinguished and nobody was hurt, because Kier Stamer was (by association) involved, it was being investigated by antiterrorism officers.

No details other than the nationality of the arrested man were given, but a suggestion was made that he might be a Russian ethnicity Ukrainian, and might even be working for the Russian state. I emphasise, these suggestions were couched in vague terms and were in no way made explicity.

Anyway, the next bit of news, a day later,was that a second man had been arrested, this one attempting to leave the country via a London airport. Again no details were given of the detained man.

Enter George Galloway (from my story part of it) and I saw a post of his, that while entertaining, I took with a bit of 'Galloway Salt'. The first detainee (I was running a bit behind, and his post came out before the news of the second arrest) it transpired was a male model (claimed Galloway). He had no grasp of the English language to speak of, and how such an individual could possibly have knowledge of Kier Stamer's previously owned properties (a car and a house) or currently owned ones (a house he rents out to a family member) was beyond understanding. This kind of personal information about a serving Prime Minister is not exactly going to be common knowledge said Galloway, and how this 20 year old Ukrainian male model had acquired it was a puzzling question indeed.

Galloway questioned why this man should have been carrying out such a vendetta against Kier Stamer, and said (though I've no idea how he could know) that the man was not an ethnic Russian, but rather a Ukrainian Ukrainian (as it were) and would thus be more aligned with Stamer in terms of the latters support of Zelensky, one would have thought. This would seem to rule out the broader motive of a Russian element to the story, he thought, so perhaps we were witnessing a more personal tale unfolding. Some connection, as it were, not pertaining to the Ukrainian situation.

Now at this point, I was chuckling to myself, not giving it too much credence - Galloway being Galloway, I thought. No doubt there'd be a nugget of fact in it, but being who he was, Galloway would spin a mountain out of a molehill if he could.

But by this time, things were progressing a stage further. A third man had been arrested, but still the details were sketchy and the stories were not being given much of an airing.

But then the inclusion in the news of yesterday evening came and suddenly my political radar began to sing a bit.

Details of the second man had been released, and he was a (wait for it) male model who was of Russian-Ukrainian birth, but now registered as Romanian. The report was accompanied by a picture of the man who was, shall we say, a very photogenic young man, but not of the rugged type. More 'epicene', dare one say it. Details of the third man had not yet been released, we were told, but were given dates for the appearance of the first two arestees at the Old Bailey in due course. I'd hazard a guess that the BBC had included the male model detail because they knew that the information was widely available on the Internet by this point, and not to have included it would have made them look like they were either incompetent or deliberately withholding information of the public interest.

Galloway had alluded to this in his post. National security demands that any Prime Minister not be in a position where he might be subject to the unfriendly attentions of third parties, who might attempt to coerce him under threat of being compromised. This is common sense. There is no suggestion that Stamer has allowed himself to be put in this position, but there is clearly something about all of this that we are not as yet aware. Something as serious as three individuals involved in a plot to engage in a vendetta against a British Prime Minister will demand explanation. The public will have the right to the explanation of what is going on here and even our client legacy media will be forced to come up with one.

Watch this space.

[peter]

I've got to be honest, there's not much of interest to me in today's news.

Much of the front page material is taken up by two stories - the 'moves' being made by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to influence (some would say undermine) Chancellor Reeves, and by extension Kier Stamer, and Donald Trump's ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over the issue of violence against white farmers in his country.

On the latter, I've got to say that white South African farmers come pretty low on my list of people who I loose any sleep over. Apparently there is a movement of some kind attempting to drive them off their lands to which Donald Trump is referring, but I dare say that if I know anything about white South Africans at all, they will be pretty robust in the protection of their own interests. There was always going to be a price to be paid for historical injustices commited against the coloured population and this I'm afraid is going to be part of it.

On Rayner's moves to secure her position when Kier Stamer falls (and I think he will, before the end of this parliament) again I'm in no great state of excitement. Arguing about the precedence of Rayner versus Stamer has all of the point (let alone the liklihood of settlement) of Johnson's famous 'louse and flea' argument. It's a waste of time - they're both equally despicable. Rayner is trying to gain some popularity by putting forward possible tax increases to Reeves that the Chancellor might consider rather than continuing to clobber the poorest in our society.

Reeves hasn't responded, but is under additional pressure by virtue of an intervention by ex Chancellor and PM, Gordon Brown, saying that billion should be spent lifting the two child benefits cap. It's the most cost effective way of lifting large numbers of children out of poverty he says. Already the Chancellor has had to announce that changes will be made to the winter fuel payments threshold, but as yet no details of by what level it will be increased by have been given. All in all, Cancellor Reeves is not having a good week and I reckon, like the PM himself, her future in politics is marked to be a pretty short one. Still, she's spent so much capital increasing her job prospects for her post political career already that she'll no doubt be okay. Unlike Liz Truss or Boris Johnson who none of the big money brokers will touch with a bargepole, Reeves has done everything in her power to ensure that the rich continue to keep getting richer, and the City banks will no doubt repay that loyalty when the time falls due.

A story that isn't getting much oxygen, but is quite illustrative in its own way, is the assassination outside a Madrid school, of an ex politician from Ukraine who was pro-Russian in his position. Andriy Portnov was a lawyer who worked closely with a former Ukrainian president as a personal aid. The hit was clearly a professional job, and it isn't going to be rocket science to take a guess at who might be behind it. Going around killing your political opponents is not what you expect law abiding administrations or individuals connected with them to be doing. It's the mark of a ruthless kind of political viewpoint, that sees the winning and retention of power as the supreme goal, above any kind of considerations of morality or rights or decency - and I deliberately don't mention democracy because that isn't even in it. One only has to imagine the kind of administration that would be run by people who believe shooting down opponents outside of schools is an appropriate tactic, in order to get the idea. But seeing our position on the current Ukrainian situation, the lower the profile that this story receives, perhaps the better.

And that's about it. As I say, not much to get the blood boiling, which given my already strained circulatory system is probably all to the well.

Chow for now.

(Oh - it's not in the papers, but there's evidence that hostility is growing within Israel itself to the policy of increasing the occupation of Gaza and the renewal and increase of the ground assault.

The effective leader of the political opposition from the left to Netenyahu, has all but confirmed that the President's policy is that of ethnic cleansing, and has said that this risks the future of Israel as its international standing becomes ever increasingly damaged.

Demonstrations against Netenyahu's policy in Gaza are growing with one particular group in which activists from both the Palestinian and Israeli population 'stand together' (the group are named Stand Together) are leading calls for an end to the massacre and the release of the hostages.

The more that people see the damage that Netenyahu is doing, not just to the occupants of Gaza, but to Israel itself, the louder these protests will become. )

[peter]

Good of U2 frontman and ubercelebrity Bono to have finally taken a leaf out of Gary Lineker's book and pitched in on Gaza.

Well, he doesn't actually mention Gaza - perish the thought that he should come across as pro-Palestinian in any way - but he has said that Israel should free itself from the grip of Benjamin Netenyahu. He also makes some pale remarks about peace being the road through many difficult situations, but has as yet to my knowledge, made no direct reference to the wholesale slaughter of the occupants of Gaza that the world has witnessed.

Still, better than nothing (if a little belated from the man who normally wastes no time in attaching his name to any humanitarian cause where a little publicity can be scraped up for nothing).

Sunday, bloody Sunday? Well - lots of bloody Sundays actually Bono.

Not the only one to see which way the wind is blowing, ex top honcho from GCHQ, Sir Jeremy Fleming has said his piece in interview with Sky News. He warns that the spillover from Gaza will have ramifications for security in Europe for decades to come (doesn't hurt to prepare the budgetary justifications for future funding well in advance now, does it) and also welcomes the recent comments of Prime Minister Stamer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy as well. He notes the belated nature of their input, but in the gentlest of ways. Again, good to be seen on the right side of history once the obvious becomes impossible to deny.

Netenyahu must be really feeling the pinch when people like Bono step up to the plate, but in fairness, if enough of them do so it really will make a difference. I just wish they'd found their balls a long time ago when it didn't just look like they were doing it for their own interests rather than the people of Gaza.

For its part, the UK government has decided to come down hard on Israel. It's slapped sanctions on the British investments of half a dozen of the most egregiously aggressive settlers (including Daniella Weiss who featured so prominently in the recent Louis Theroux documentary on the West Bank), so that'll really hurt them. To my knowledge they haven't actually stopped supplying arms or parts for F-16's without which the bombings couldn't continue, they haven't stopped the information gathering flights from RAF Akrotiri upon which Israeli bombing raids are contingent, but no doubt hitting the financial interests of Daniella Weiss and a few of her rabid cohort will save more Gazan lives than that would. (I'm not actually sure that supplies to Israel haven't increased since Lammy made his original statement to the House that they would be partially ended, back shortly after Labour took office. There might actually be an ongoing court case about this, but of course the client media would not tell us if there was so we couldn't know. I'll try to look into it at some point.)

Anyway - short post this morning; I self-censored an earlier one out of cowardice (which of course authoritarian governments rely on the world over in order to maintain their grip on the narrative) but hey, I'm no hero and have never claimed to be one.

Maybe tomorrow I'll grow some balls and start really posting what needs to be said. But not today alas, not today.

(Edit: Ukraine is quiet at the moment. Guess the Pope has declined Donald Trump's suggestion that he step in and mediate a ceasefire between that country and Russia. Wonder what's going on behind the scenes. Always look at 180 degrees away from the main stories in the msm if you want to see what they don't want you to look at. Good journalistic tip that. Still think that the Stamer-Lammy comments on Israel were the ultimate dead-cat bounce operation to keep attention away from Ukrainian male models but I'm probably wrong.)

[peter]

Harvard University has secured a temporary court order blocking the Trump administration ban on the elite institution enrolling international students.

So reads the opening paragraph in a story on the front page of this morning's Financial Times.

The headline, "Class war; Harvard fights federal action" alerted me to a situation that before long, if Donald Trump has his way, will be potentially a thing of the past. Because, if a recent YouTube posting by Professor Richard Murphy is to be believed, the American President is in the process of bringing democracy in the United States to an end - and he's doing it in a very slippery way, via a small clause attached to a long piece of budgetary legislation, due to be put before Congress. And, says Murphy, it will likely pass. (Update : I've just checked - it has, by one vote.)

Named (if you can believe it) the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the bill centers around permanently extending tax cuts enacted during the Trump presidency, but also contains the following clause tucked away in the small print.

"No court in the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or restraining o4der, if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued."

Which essentially means that if a federal court passes an injunction against the President, for the denial say of Harvard's right to enrol international students beyond his constitutional powers, and Trump ignores that injunction, then the federal court will be unable to bring a contempt of court charge against him, because this clause will prevent it from accessing the funds to do so. So essentially whatever Trump decides he wants to do, he can do, and even if the courts tell him nay, they have no means to prevent him from continuing to do it.

Ship out immigrants without going through the courts? No problem - just do it. Suspend the elections? Easy peasy - courts might buck, but they can buck till the cows come home. And Congress has just handed him the power to do this. By fatally undermining one of the much fabled 'checks and balances' limiting presidential power, they have essentially plunged America back into the dark ages of the times before democratic accountability before the courts.

As Murphy notes, they have essentially created 'King Donald of the USA' and placed him above the rule of law. Not since the signing of the Magna Carta 800 years ago has a monarch ruled above the law in this way (in a country pretending to be a functional democracy) and it will remain to be seen how Trump will use his new won power. There is literally no limit to the areas where such impunity from contempt proceedings might grant him freedom from the need to obey the law, and knowing Trump, he'll not be backwards in coming forwards in using it. Let's face it - America is in the hands of a leader the like of which it has never had in the entirety of its history, and his name is Donald Trump. I don't know if Trump is a fascist - Murphy thinks so - but I know that he's a loose cannon and a grave danger to the people he now in the truest sense of the word reins over.

So God help America, because no-one else is going to.

-----0-----

The Telegraph reports this morning, of a man charged with holding up a placard at a counter-protest to a pro-Palestinian one being held in London. A cartoon depiction of Hasran Nasrallah, a Hezbollah leader murdered by the Israeli state, holding in his hand a pager going "beep,beep, beep," was deemed potentially offensive and the man has been charged - but significantly we are not told in the article what with, and this of course makes all the difference.

On the face of it, it seems like heavy handed policing - even an attack on freedom of expression or something like. But in the lack of actually being told what the charges are, we cannot know. It's a lovely bit of inflammatory journalism that is the speciality of the Telegraph.

The headline reads Protestor charged with mocking Hezbollah, and a subheading, 'Jewish activist arrested for holding up cartoon for 3 minutes during demonstration.'

Well, 'mocking Hezbollah' won't actually be a charge under UK law, so this is nonsense for starters. Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation so it's actually illegal to publicly demonstrate support for them, and under such circumstances it's unlikely that mocking them would place an individual in a situation where the police would consider it necessary to bring a charge. Unless I suppose one was deliberately trying to incite a rival demonstration to commit an act of criminality, provoke them as it were, to a violent response. Attempting to provoke violence might be a criminal offence in this country, and it might not just necessarily apply just to a person trying to stir up a violent response from people who he is aligned with in their thinking. One can attempt to incite violence as a response to say, inflammatory provocation, so perhaps this is what the man is charged with. As I say, the Telegraph is not saying.

On the face of it, just considering the cartoon in and of itself, I think it's in very bad taste. Hasran Nasrallah is dead. Good or bad, he's paid his due and gone to a higher court (as it were). There's no need to mock him, or the scores of innocent victims of 'Operation Grim Beeper' (haha - very funny) that many consider no more than a terrorist outrage in itself. But to be charged for holding up the cartoon? No. That I couldn't agree with. (But as I say, I doubt very much that that is what the man is charged with). But this is how the Telegraph are spinning it, and they know exactly the reason why they are doing it. To stir up xenophobic anti Islamic feeling in their own readership. That and to attempt to demonstrate 'two tier policing' in the UK. To show that the police are acting more stringently against Israel and Jewish protesters, and soft-soaping Muslim protesters and the wider Muslim community. When nothing of course, could be further from the truth.

Because what the police definitely do not need, at the pro-Palestinian demonstrations or anywhere else, is some clown with an offensive placard deliberately trying to stoke a response that will either cause an already febrile situation to ignite. And my bet is that this is what the charges against this fool will be about. The Gazan demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful affairs with virtually no trouble or arrests being made. Attempts to incite violence within them, from Jewish activists or anyone else, should be met with the full force of the law, and if the Telegraph were playing this story straight, then this is the position it would be taking as well.

If the situations were reversed and it was a Palestinian man holding up a mocking cartoon of October 7th, then I assure you they would be.

[peter]

You'd think that a mob style execution, three in the body and the finisher in the back of the head, of a man - any man - in front of his children outside their school, would cause 'auntie' Beeb to throw up her hands in horror.

Not so it seems. She's suddenly developed a ruthless streak in the case of this particular man, who if the article on her website is anything to go by, was something akin to a cross between Atilla the Hun and Beelzebub, while he lived.

We are talking about the life and apparently timely death (if the BBC article is anything to go by) of ex Ukrainian political pariah, that worst of things, a pro-Russian opponent of the Zelensky now dictatorship, Andriy Portnov.

Gunned down outside his children's school in Madrid a couple of days ago, the BBC article gives a brief description of his political career as first a supporter of the pro Western Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, until in 2010 he commited the worst of sins and 'crossed the House' changing his alliance to the pro Russian President Victor Yanukovych. His killing, says the BBC article, raises many questions - and then goes on to ask none of them.

Because what we are then treated to, is a long list of the reasons why we should shed no tears over the death of this man, without actually telling us of anything bad that he really did. He had enemies all over the place we are told. He helped build the architecture that allowed for the current war to occur. Blah, blah, blah. But of concrete details - involvement in this atrocity or that notorious occurrence - there are none.

The article is a masterclass in using spokespeople from the current Ukrainian administration to justify or explain why a man might be brutally murdered outside a school, without appearing to condone the killing themselves. The BBC will be aware that to the vast majority of people in the UK, this kind of political assassination will be anathema, a cause for horror and revulsion in the cruelty of its execution. That it has the fingerprints of nice Mr Zelensky (or someone very close to him) all over it will be a source of embarrassment not only to the BBC news editorial team (for whom Mr Z, plucky little chap that he is, can do no wrong) but also to the very British government itself. Because we don't go in for that type of thing you see. (Yet, some might add.)

And so all of the stops are being pulled out to minimise the footprint of this story (it's barely reported on the main news bulletins, let alone 'the important questions' being asked). And for those who might be interested, do we get a forensic analysis of who might be behind this atrocity by the BBC Verify team? No. Instead we get an article shoved away on its website that lists reasons why it might have happened; weak justifications put out by spokespeople from the Zelensky team about how hated this man was (by people like them, it remains unsaid).
At the end of the article, a final obfuscation that this man had so many enemies it's really impossible to know who 'offed' him - so there's no real point in questioning it too much anyway.

And close article it's a wrap.

And that's it. No questions that maybe a political team that resorts to killing its opposition by mob style hit, in front of their children, might not actually be all that nice a group of people. No - we don't want to go there now do we?

[peter]

I'm getting tired of Have I Got News For You, the BBC satirical take on the weeks news, as seen through the eyes of their carefully selected team members, and led by the duo of Paul Merton and Ian Hislop and guest presenter.

Each week, these smug and very much mainstream panelists go through the motions of pretending to be cynical observers of the establishment/political class/media, while absolutely backing up whatever the official position, the desired narrative of the day, happens to be. Ruthless in their contempt for example Jeremy Corbyn, or Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump, or Vladimir Putin, figures like Benjamin Netenyahu or Vlodomyr Zelensky are rarely seen in front of their crosshairs.

In fact on the biggest news story of our time, the slow-motion genocide of the Gazan people, they are completely silent. Not a word spoken on the complicity of the Sunak and Stamer administrations in the murderous activities of Netenyahu. No mention, even in the serious tones that can occasionally break through the comedy format on especially difficult subjects, of the tens of thousands of deaths attributable to an ally of the British state. The murder of women and children goes by unmentioned as does the ethnic cleansing unwinding before our eyes.

Instead this week, they reserve their attention to Gary Lineker, who has been "sacked" from the BBC (the highest honour a presenter can be given in my opinion) for speaking out about what they either dare not to, or do not think is in any way wrong anyway. He's guilty of re-tweeting an "antisemitic trope" - a picture of a rat. Hislop sneeringly discounted Lineker's explanation that he hadn't seen the picture (perhaps he was distracted by the accounts of the brutality that you seem unable to notice enough to speak about?), rather implying it was some kind of latent racism on his (Lineker's) part.

What is it that it said in the bible? Something about the mote in thy brothers eye and the log in thine own?

But this is really just the surface of it. The sheer fat complacency of the whole show is starting to grate on me. It's mendacious to its core. The establishment, pretending to take the mickey out of itself, when in truth it is never in a million years ever going to land a punch that hurts. It's part of the problem, not part of the solution. The entire team from editorial and production staff, to presenters and contributors, would to a man read the BBC article I was going on about in the previous post, and never question it.

----0----

The Sunday Mirror tells us that the Ukrainian arson attacks on the Prime Minister's ex and current properties are being "probed for a Russian connection."

I'd imagine there's been probing enough already in this particular story, in Kier opinion. I'd guess the sooner any probing is forgotten about and things return to business as usual, the happier he'll be.

-----0-----

Oops - the Express has got the same story. No forgetting it yet.

-----0-----

Carrie Johnson has just had her fourth child with husband Boris, and a picture of her with the newest member of the Johnson clan features in a couple of the papers.

How many children has Johnson got now? Well, the known knowns tally to around 9 (according to the Times of India, where I'm guessing such a number would be seen as a mark of wealth and worthy of great respect). But if we were to include the known unknowns, or even the unknown unknowns, well, the sky's the limit.

Suffice to say that the number has definitely passed the point at which, if each of his children follows the same familial planning model as their father, then in about seven or so generations time, everybody in the world will have the surname Johnson.

Well somebody has to think about these things. Cheers for now.

[peter]

I was listening to a guy in conversation with Neil Oliver on YouTube yesterday and he said the following.

They were talking about the ongoing 'permacrisis' that the world seems to have been in for a decade or so and the unreliable state of the media in keeping us up to speed with unspun facts about whatever is transpiring.

"I realised," said the man, "that as a rule of thumb, whenever a story sprung to the fore and dominated the headlines, the overwhelming liklihood was that we were being misdirected or manipulated in some way."

It wasn't always true, he said, but very nearly so.

For me it was the Jeremy Corbyn saga, his establishment dismemberment, that opened my eyes. Story after story, accusation after accusation, they tried out to nail him, until they hit on the antisemitism schtick. Such was the reverence in the cultural history with which the Holocaust was held, that to label someone antisemite, and to disagree or challenge that label once applied, seemed almost sacrilegious in itself. Such accusations stuck because no-one would believe that anyone would stoop to using them for nefarious underhand purposes.

But they did, and mercilessly so, and the entire establishment joined in from politicians to the media to celebrities and game shows (yes HIGNFY - you were there) until they brought him down.

From that point onwards I realised that what I was reading, hearing, seeing, from our media could not be taken as reliable or necessarily true. Of course I hadn't been so nieve as to believe that everything I consumed was without exception gospel, but I'd believed that at core the facts would be reliable. Especially so from the BBC, who I'd always believed would never stop to being the kind of propoganda dissemination platform that we used to laugh at in Pravda - the old USSR equivalent, for being so.

Cue forward to today.

A few days ago James O'brien was spinning out his morning speel, this time on a Telegraph article that was repeating the Donald Trump lie (the one he had egregiously told in the Oval Office when he bushwacked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa) that a picture of hundreds of white crosses stuck in the ground in the South African veldt were those of murdered white South African farmers, and spluttering his amazement, his unbelief, his outrage, that UK journalism could have fallen so far as to repeat this untruth.

The crosses, it transpired were a memorial a particular family of white farmers that had been murdered, but were not individual graves as had been claimed. They'd been killed in a standard robbing event, and not as part of an organised pogrom against white farmers. In fact the idea that there was in progress a genocide against white farmers in that country was nonsense. A lie made up to undermine the black population and government and spread false dissent against them. White farmers do die - but in no greater numbers than black farm workers who work alongside them. Out in the sticks, they are vulnerable to robbery and if anything, this accounts for the apparent higher proportion of attacks to which they are subject. Trump for his part, prefers the idea that they are being singled out because of their colour, and has indeed stopped the refugee program via which asylum seekers gain entry into into the USA with the exception of white South Africans, who he is happy to take on humanitarian grounds.

But returning to point, O'brien was incandescent that a story known to be false, was being treated as true by a 'respected' leading UK paper that should have known better. It was unbelievable that journalism in the UK had sunk to this level he told us. That journalists of repute knowingly repeated lies to misinform their readership.

And I agree. Wholeheartedly I agree. I saw it with Corbyn, I saw it with Brexit, I saw it with covid. Again with Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and now with the Israel-Palestinian situation in Gaza. Antisemite, millions for the NHS, death-dealing pandemic, Russian instigated aggression, "In it together", started on October 7th. The whole of our news consumption over a decade plus, spun and manipulated, obfuscated or completely ignored, to the point where our heads were spinning in confusion, and I wanted to scream out loud.

And as O'brien spluttered out his outrage, I wanted to say to him, "But I remember when the Corbyn antisemite nonsense came out, and you were as complicit in spreading it as the rest of the establishment media. You were balls deep in spreading the lies, manipulating the truth, so that a leftist who didn't conform to your particular breed of New Labour champagne Guardianista style socialism could never win. And didn't you, at that point realise, that at some point, those same tricks and lies and manipulations would someday be used against you, against something that you cared about?

And here we are in the now. And nothing is true or false anymore. There's a song written by the Manic Street Preachers called 'If you tolerate this, then your children will be next. I think it behoves every one of us to remember this line as we watch the images coming out of Gaza, and then to set it against the story we have been told by our governments, by our media, by our establishment class.

Because every child killed there, every family buried under the rubble to be forgotten about, is one of ours in the future. Because what we are seeing - truly seeing - is nothing short of the abandonment of the veneer, the thin disguise, that this is a world run on the rules based order. Every truth not told in our media is a further nail in the coffin of this defunct idea, that the post Holocaust utopia of a world run by institutions that could ensure it could 'never happen again', was a nonsense - meant nothing when set against the greed and grasping of the nations that had it all, looking at the encroaching footfall of the world that has nothing.

And we should look at this and weep. Because in that fall, that tearing away from the veil, the one absolutely indisputable truth that does emerge is the one that says our children will be next.

Someone once said that, "There is such a thing as truth and it can be told." What a terrible thing that this is true and that the above truth should be it.

[peter]

Second (short) post of the day. Oh you lucky, lucky people.

In the febrile days after the killing of the three Southport girls, childminder and mother of a 12 year old daughter Lucy Conolly posted a furious and intemmporate 51 word tweet that landed her with a 31 month prison sentence.

In her anger and misguided belief that the killings had been carried out by an asylum seeker, she posted that all asylum seekers should be deported immediately and that the hotels housing them should be burned down. She added, "If that makes me racist, so be it"

The post was made in anger. She has no record of prior racist behaviour, but she did have 9,000 followers on X, and her post was viewed over 300,000 times before she deleted it.

The judge recognised the spontaneous nature of her post, but said that she must still take responsibility for it. The charge against her was inciting racial hatred and she received the above custodial sentence for it.

A few days ago, a court of appeal judged that the sentence was not excessive and declined to reduce it.

I think her post was stupid in the extreme. She's clearly an idiot. But an idiot worthy of spending 31 months in jail? C'mon!

Besides, this is not a 31 month sentence. It's a life sentence. She will forever be an 'ex-con'. On every job application she makes. On every official document she fills in. In the eyes of the people she knows, in the thinking of the people she encounters, it will be the foremost thing they consider about her. Ex-con. Her daughter will live with being the offspring of one, and her life will be blighted as well.

This is not justice, no matter what the appeal court judges believe. If the courts in their wisdom, could not come up with a more fitting punishment than this (working in community service in a children's holding centre or something) then they are not fit to hold the title of judges.

There are individuals in countless numbers who deserve to be in our prisons walking free as I post. Some have served or currently serve in our government. But this lady, foolish as she is, is not one of them.

[peter]

This morning's Guardian reports.....

"......more than 800 lawyers, academics and senior retired judges have said...." (via a joint statement sent to the Prime Minister)......

All states, including the UK, are legally obliged to take all reasonable steps within their power to prevent and punish genocide (which earlier they had said, there was mounting evidence was being, or at risk of being, committed); to ensure respect for international humanitarian law; and to bring an end to violations of [the right to self-determination]. The UK's actions to date havefailed to meet those standards. (Bit of an understatement there, but moving on)

.....The international community's failure to uphold international law in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory contributes to a declining international climate of lawlessness and impunity, and imperils the international legal system itself. Your government must act now before it is too late.

If I could answer the esteemed ladies and gentleman signatories to the letter, not as from the Prime Minister (to whom it was addressed), but as an interlocutor from whom they had saught advice before sending it, I'd say the following.

I'm sorry to report, but this is too little too late. It is already too late.

The West, in its ignoring of the crime of our century, has already displayed its contempt for the very international institutions you seek to preserve, which let's face it were only ever put in place to govern the actions of smaller, weaker nations, and were never meant to apply or be brought to bear upon the neoliberal bastions of the 'Great Western Order'. The enabling of Israel, not just since October 7th, but long before that terrible date, to ride roughshod over the rights of the Palestinians in pursuit of a Western foothold in the Middle East, told us all we ever needed to know about the institutions we had created in our post war desire to say "never again".

These were utopian institutions never intended to get in the way of the system that the victors of that last great conflict had decided would rule the world: the belief that they were for all nations, in all situations, was for the little people and always understood (by the more savvy) to be contingent upon agreement or otherwise of 'the big players'. (America never considered itself obliged to even join the International Court of Justice or its sister organisation, the International Criminal Court as a signatory, preferring rather to shout in support from the sidelines whenever they made decisions it agreed with (eg the issuing of an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin) or boo and hiss when it didn't (the arrest warrant for Benjamin Netenyahu.)) The veto of the security council showed where the real power lay, and the fall of the Soviet Union seemed to pave the way for a single world (capitalist) order that the international institutions would work to uphold, but raise no finger was raised against any atrocity performed against people who's ideas ran contrary to it.

But sure, the belief that we had a structure in place that was capable of putting a restraint on the most egregious tendencies we display towards brutality at the level of international relations, or en masse as it were, when dealing with each other - the base tendencies tendencies toward violence and cruelty that seems, like those mandlebrot patterns, to recur at whatever level you view humanity from - that belief was at least a comfort. But as Chris Hedges recently observed, that veil has now been ripped aside and under it the empress wears no clothes.

Too late to even maintain the facade, let alone the pretence, that the thing has any real restraining value. How, in the face of what we are witnessing, can we even pretend to believe this.

(Aside; I'm getting lost here. Let me put it simply, for my own benefit as much as anything else. The post war international order was put together not to support the interests of humanity, of the world in toto, but rather the big players. And latterly, following the fall of communism and the East, the interests of the neoliberal West. Never to protect the interests of small players like the Palestinians - people who stood in the way of Western hegemony and the pursuits of global capitalism. Sure, the illusion that it was there for all was a good one to maintain - it might have been believed even by those who put it forward. But the truth was that if those interests of the West were ever threatened by actions of the small players, then the illusion would be ripped aside and torn up. And what we see in Gaza, what we have seen in smaller degrees elsewhere, would not only be tolerated, but would be facilitated and enabled, by a West whose interests and self interest must, in all circumstances, be given precedent over any other (even to the extent of witnessing or even facilitating genocide.)

And back to the letter, and its 800 signatories, and its appeal to our Prime Minister to "act before it is too late."

What, my well intentioned friends, do you not understand? We are so embroiled in what has been done in Gaza already, so embedded in its facilitation, as active participants in the outrage, that for us to "act" in any way that now supports the illusiory but desirable international order, the rule of international law, the post war world order, is not so much a case of 'before it is too late', as in and of itself impossible. We are participants of the very crime in which you would have our government act in order to prevent. There is no saving of the Palestinians - that boat has long ago sailed. And as for now supporting the collapsing structures of international law - what could we who have been so part and parcel of its undermining, possibly have to say which could in the slightest begin to repair the damage that we have done? The shift that would be required for this miracle to be achieved would require a fundamental change in everything our establishment, our successive administrations, our polity and paradigm are based on. Only radical and fundamental change, root and branch from the bottom up, could begin to adress it, and our current leadership would certainly have no desire to see this, or ability to execute it if it did.

Because, let's see. We'd have to abandon the idea of Western hegemony. We'd have to accept that the Middle East did not require a colonial enterprise with our stamp all over it slap bang in the middle of it. We'd have to accept that the global South was also a player of import in our world; that there were perhaps other ways of doing things that did not require a slavish obedience to the whims of the market, that the neoliberalism project of the last 40 years had failed, that other people's in other parts of the world also had their rights to self determination, and that to interfere, to undermine, to overthrow anyone and anything that did not conform to 'our way' was plain and simply wrong.

And if you truly think that our Prime Minister is up to that level of readjustment, that level of fundamental change, then my friends you are delusional.

I absolutely commend you for your efforts - but I'm afraid you display a level of nievity, a level of failure to grasp the historical reality of our contribution to the world, rarely seen outside a kindergarten school. Until you and your establishment colleagues come to grasp that we are not the good guys of this world - and that we (save for the brief occurrence when we stood alone against the Nazi threat) have never been. We are the joint perpetrators of the Gazan nightmare. We are the joint destroyers of the post war illusion. We are so fundamentally flawed in our history and in our present that if the good lord himself were to take up the reins of our country he could not redeem us. Until you grasp these unpalatable but inherently true facts, you can have no significant input to contribute to this debate.

[peter]

The potted history of the world in a nutshell.

Advantages of climate and land productivity gave the global north greater time and resources to develop the ability to go out into the rest of the world to persue opportunities, both trade and conquest, in the wider world.

Conquest and colonisation gave the global north west a boot on the neck of the rest of the world. Industrialisation consolidated this power and elevated the asset stripping activities of the former over the latter to new heights. Arguing over the spoils of this caused fragmentation and war amongst the 'Great Powers' of the north, which ultimately brought an end to the colonial activities, but in no way relieved the stranglehold of the North over the South. What could not be taken by force and rule, must instead be obtained by political coercion, by shaping the world into the image, or at least to the benefit if the image could not be achieved, of the wealthy north.

Over consumption of energy, raw materials and ever increasing pillage of the earth's resources by the wealthy North, began to take its toll and a climate crisis was developing. Add to this a political turmoil deliberately fostered in all countries choosing not to adhere to the capitalist world model that had emerged from the conflicts of the two global wars,, and the conditions were created for the mass movement of people west and north, fleeing from the consequences of this north western generated chaos on both the political and climatic fronts. Suddenly these fleeing people from the east and south were baying at the gates of the West, desperately crying simultaneously both "Save us from the chaos you have created," and, "We see what you have, and we who have nothing want to share of it."

And the response to these cries as they batter and press against the razor-wire and weld-mesh fencing - the result of this long history of the subjugation and exploitation of one part of the globe by the other - is as Chris Hedges summed it up a few days ago in a speech to the Middle East Children's Alliance in New York,

We have everything, you have nothing. But if you try to take it from us we will kill you.

[peter]

What does and does not constitute a genocide seems to be a difficult chestnut to crack these days.

Here's the Google AI response to the question.

The internationally accepted definition of genocide, as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is 'any act commited with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. This includes actions like killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children out of the group.

There seems to be some disagreement as to whether what is happening in Gaza constitutes a genocide. Many individuals and institutions seem to consider that it is. Naturally enough, Israel disagrees. The International Court of Justice seems to think that there might at least be a plausible case that it is. So where do we stand?

Or come to that, does it even matter?

We've all seen what's going on. The evidence of slaughter on a mass scale is overwhelming. Starvation is being used as a tool of coercion and perhaps even execution of the Gazan population. Accounts, verifiable and documented, of atrocities within holding centers, abound. Physical destruction of infrastructure and accommodation, of the means of pursuing life, are visible from areal photography to the point where it can be verified from space. More tonnage of weaponry has been dropped on Gaza from the skies than would be contained in four of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and the number of deaths of children as a proportion of population is three hundred times that of Ukraine.....

Need one go on.

So what matter this word? This arguing over a definition? The absolute wrong and horror of what is being done here goes beyond any word, beyond any words. But it does matter and so we must run with it.

So who and when was it, that put forward this definition?

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was a treaty proposed and unanimously adopted by the United Nations in December 1948. It specified the five means by which genocide might be carried out, as described above.

So okay - we have a formal and accepted definition of the word, recognised internationally, so it shouldn't be too hard to see whether what has been done, is being done, constitutes an example of it.

Next we have to agree that the Palestinians are actually a national or ethnic group, and that one or more of the five 'acts' is being applied to them.

Now this is beyond me to argue in depth here - I simply don't have the time to research the answers, nor indeed the expertise. But there are those who do. There are experts on genocide in university departments in this world, so let's defer to them on this question.

I recently saw Hungarian physician and Jewish activist Gabor Mate on Gaza in conversation in New York, and he said that of the limited number of experts on genocide in our universities, a large majority believed that what is occurring in Gaza does constitute a genocide, but let's not take his word for it.

Let's go to Google AI and see what answer this question raises (and I have no idea what this will be)?

Okay. I don't know where Mate got his information from, but I posted the question 'What is the concensus among experts on whether a genocide is in progress in Gaza' and the results were not that simple.

There is definite consensus amongst humanitarian organisations; Amnesty International, Medicines San Frontieres and Human Rights Watch all agree, and one would think that they should know, but no reference to these 'university experts' was thrown up. But perhaps I'm being too simplistic; perhaps the experts referenced to in these organisations (and there are plenty of these references at least) are the university experts that Mate refers to (nb I've heard Norman Finklestein making similar claims about academic agreement that this is a genocide, so it's not just from Gabor Mate that this bit of information comes.)

But it does however seem that only remaining party that is prepared to say with any degree of definiteness that this is not a genocide is Israel itself. And that would surely suprise no-one no matter what the answer to the question was. So I'd think on the balance of probability - the big human rights organisations, the government's of the world that have expressed an opinion, the lack of denial that this is the case from all except Israel itself - we'd have to conclude that this in all likelihood does satisfy the criteria for being added to the small list of true genocides (there are only half a dozen or so actually recognised as such).

But as I say. What matter the word. It won't make the death of a crushed child any easier to bear for a bereaved mother. It won't put a territory back together, or raise a single soul from beneath the rubble that is Gaza. Choose what we or some court in the future decide to call it, the hundred plus thousand people will remain dead, the land shattered and the territory unoccupiable. The aim of Israel will have been fulfilled and one further step will have been taken in the long term project to occupy and control the Middle East.

[peter]

I see from the front page of this morning's Financial Times that Christine Lagarde is apparently in preparation to leave her role as president of the European Central Bank (ECB) in order to move (sideways?) to become chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Which would be fine if I actually knew what any of these things were. I mean really were.

Because while I know that the WEF organise the annual shindig of the world's "business and political elite" at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, I haven't actually got the faintest idea what it is that these bodies do - I mean in terms of stuff other than talking at various schmoozing events, sucking up more caviar in one meal than I'll eat in a lifetime, washing it down with enough champagne to fill a swimming pool, and congratulating each other for making it to the top of the greasy pole.

I mean who actually are these people? Who puts them where they are? Or are they the hidden masters of the world?

And what is it that they do?

I'll give you an example. (Incidentally, Lagarde it seems, is set to replace another name I recognise, but don't really know shit about - klaus Schwab, who founder of the WEF as he is/was, has had to leave his role as chair because of alleged misconduct. I'm still no wiser.) Anyway - example.

A couple of weeks ago (might be only a week - time seems to be doing funny things at the moment, such is the speed and confusion of world events) Donald Trump was in Oman (was it) patting Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharra ( formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani) on the back and shaking his hand.

Julani (I'll stick with that) had previously been atop the list of America's 'most wanted' list of terrorists with a fat bounty sitting on his head, but somehow, miraculously, here he was, made over and besuited, wearing the rolex with newly trimmed beard and styled hair, standing in front of the world's most powerful man (a man who in his former incarnation as head of Isis or Al-Qaeda or something, he'd have surely been bound to strike dead where he stood) and being officially welcomed into the fold.

How had this transformation taken place? He'd certainly stepped up to the plate and aided in the ousting of the hated Bashar Al-Assad from his role as Syrian leader - that was much desired by the West for certain. But this guy was Al-Qaeda, Isis - a head chopper? What or who had okayed this transformation to "big handsome fellow with a strong past - strong past," (to echo Trump's words).

Strong past indeed! If ordering the decapitation of bound captives in front of you counts as such. But that was all forgotten apparently. New suit. New haircut and beard trim. New rolex. New name. New person. And we, the dim public who just swallow anything that is put in front of us are expected not to notice. To notice that, "Hang on? Aren't Al-Qaeda supposed to be the bad guys? Aren't they the ones that this has all been about? The 'war on terror' and all that? No - because the news reporter on the television isn't angered by that, we're not expected to be angered by it either - and like good puppies, we aren't.

Turns out it seems that black is white after all and that actually (embarrassed titter) we've been funding them all along - or for a good while anyway. World Trade Centre? Twin Towers and 9-11? Well that was then - this is now. We've forgotten all that.

So my point is, who is it that is making these decisions? Who is behind the scenes calling these shots. The 'Balkanisation' of Syria, with America and Israel and Turkey and Julani (and everyone else and his mother) all in there tearing off a slice of the action, the pushing and prodding and chaos creating opera of the 'forever war'?

Is it these guys do you think? These Schwabs and Lagardes with their ECB's and their WEF's? Do they pull the strings of Trump and Stamer? Of Macron and Merz? Making sure that the massive engines of war, the biggest of the rackets that any organised mob of mobsters the world ever created - our governments - came up with? It has to be doesn't it? Because who else is behind the madness of the world we see - the madness that suddenly has, within a 6 month period, the head of Isis going from wanted pariah to the leadership of Syria with the President of America describing hin as a "handsome guy with a strong past"? This is the neoliberal elite doing its thing. Chaos with control. Keep the madness rolling, but keep your hands on the strings. The show must go on.

Because it doesn't matter how chaotic it seems, however out of control it appears, there's always someone's hands on the wheel.

Or is there? Because look at the state of things for fricks sake; I've seen kids parties at McDonald's that were beter organised. If there really are 'secret rulers of the world', then they aren't doing a very good job of it. Perhaps the truth is that the world really is out of control. Perhaps the car really is careering towards the cliff edge and we're all doomed. I don't know which idea is worse; that these clowns that hide behind capital letters, the WEF, the IMF, the WHO, the ECB, really do run the world and everything is going according to plan - or that actually no-one is at the wheel. That it's all just one great fucking mistake. A chaos that is building to a crescendo, that sooner or later things will go beyond a tipping point, that someone will loose their nerve, make a misjudgement, and the whole shebang will come crashing down.

I really have no fucking idea.

But I know that this morning it all seems too much for me to wrap my head around. And that for my own wellbeing I need to walk away, stop fretting about the big picture that is simply too complicated, too shrouded in unknowns and the 'fog of war' for any sense to be gleaned from it. To start thinking about the small stuff, the real stuff, and get away from all this bollocks. So as the saying goes, I'm outa here. Will the last person out please turn off the lights.

[peter]

Okay let's get a bit more grounded shall we say, and ask a question that has been puzzling a number of pundits since the Stamer arson attacks of a couple of weeks ago.

Why is there virtually zero media coverage of this story: why has it to all intents and purposes dissapeared from the agenda: why have no questions been raised in the House - not a single one - asking anything about what could conceivably be an issue of national security, let alone of great public interest?

The entire thing is extremely odd.

You will remember that it began with the occurrence in close proximity, of three separate arson attacks, two on former properties of the Prime Minister and one on a car he had sold privately.

In very short order 3 men were arrested, two of whom were Ukrainian, and the third of which was born in Ukraine, but now holding Romanian citizenship (his Ukrainian birth was not initially reported in an almost it appeared, deliberate attempt to misdirect the public. The men have the similarity it seems of being male models, two in their twenties and one a bit older. One has apparently offered services of a more 'personal nature' more openly. Two were arrested in situ in London, one attempting to leave the country, to what destination we are not told. All three have been remanded in custody and are slated to appear in the Old Bailey in June charged with conspiracy to commit arson.

These are the bald facts as we know them. Because the Prime Minister is involved, the investigation is being carried out on the grounds of a national security issue rather than a plain criminal one.

There was some speculation as to whether there might have been a Russian involvement in this affair, and true to form on one Sunday I believe, there was a concerted press effort to point the implications in this direction in the press. Scrutiny of the articles however, revealed that there was no basis for this belief any more than any other, and no concrete evidence of any Russian involvement had been discovered. Russia for their part denied any involvement, but they would, wouldn't they. The Russian angle appears less than likely at this point given that the men all appear to hail from the Ukrainian west, and to be unaligned with Russia in their sympathies. One of the men has actually posted pro Zelensky tweets (or similar) online, and so the Russian connection seems dubious at best.

So was it in relation to some personal connection that these attacks were carried out? In the absence of any true media coverage online speculation on this question has run amok, much centered on exchanges around the PM's sexuality. Only to be expected one might assume, but less expected is the apparent complete lack of interest by both the media and the political colleagues of the Prime Minister in the House.

Now we need to be clear: there is not a media blackout on this topic. The government has not issued a 'D' notice forbidding any mention in the media. It has the power to do this on issues of national security, but has (despite the decision to conduct the investigation as such) not done so. So what we have, is an extremely odd situation where titbits of information are being drip dripped out via the media, fuelling all kinds of speculation in the unregulated ether of the Internet, but then silence from the legacy media who you would expect to be running rampant with a story of this potential in terms of public interest and national security implications. Not to mention the revenue that could be garnered from it - the viewing figures drawn therefrom.

So why this strange situation of information dribbling out on the one score, but being failed to be investigated, asked about on the other? Not a single question has been addressed to the Prime Minister on this topic - by a journalist or a fellow politician (especially in the House where freedom from the risk of prosecution or censure is guaranteed) since the start of this affair. Let's be clear on how odd this is. Three young males, who seem to have information about Kier Stamer's private property that none of us could access without great difficulty and one of whom at least seems barely able to speak our language, make a concerted attack on the Prime Minister of this country, and no-one even thinks to ask him if he has any knowledge, has ever met, any of these individuals before? Not the Leader of the Opposition? Not a single MP from Reform, from the Lib Dems, the Scottish National Party? Not one journalist questioning the PM in passing? This is bizarre. There is no other word for it.

Now Crispin Flintoff who was speculating on this subject the other day put forward a rather interesting possibility. Was this, he suggested, a warning shot across the Prime Minister's bows? Was there someone out there sending a message to the PM - the purpose of we know not what - "Behave yourself. Do our bidding. Act in our interests, or the full story comes spilling out."? Could be I suppose - but how would this account for the media silence, the failure of people who could very much gain from the Prime Minister's discomfiture in the House of Commons, his political opponents, failure to ask the obvious question of the PM? This doesn't stack up.

So the whole thing is very odd and I suspect we're not going to see the light of it any time soon. I doubt if the trial of these men will be held in public court. Far more likely 'in camera' (ie in closed court) away from the public view. National security reasons will be cited for this and the public will remain none the wiser as to what is behind this than they are now.

Make no mistake. In years gone by our press would have been all over this. No details would have been too small, no fact would remain unwinkled out by investigative reporters of the Sun, the News of the World, or even the Sunday Times. But now things have changed. We are in a strange kind of hinterspace, where media no longer functions as a service to the public to inform. Rather to direct, misdirect, ignore when appropriate or even deliberately misinform. But to hold those in power to account? To keep the public informed about the activities and actions of their elected representatives? God forbid!

[peter]

Another story that has received virtually no coverage proportional to its gravity was the recent announcement by the newly elected Chancellor Merz of Germany, that his country will 'help' Ukraine in the development of long-range missiles which can be fired deep into Russia.

It is known that Merz was not in agreement with the Olaf Schultz policy of refusal to supply Kiev with German Taurus missiles which could have made such deep strikes, and this announcement is clearly related to this not overturned policy - but what is not known, and is of critical importance, is whether Merz intends to actually supply the Taurus missiles themselves, hitherto denied.

Now when I heard the brief BBC coverage of this announcement from Merz, it flagged up a warning sign in my head, but in the absence of any media coverage I admit, I gave it little more thought.

But not so the Russians apparently.

Because they are well aware that if the Taurus missiles are supplied, or if Germany and Ukraine do indeed develop missiles that can be fired deep into Russia, then this would constitute an attack on Russia by Germany as much as Ukraine. And by accounts they have already given their response (and this most certainly hasn't been covered in the mainstream media) that a deep strike into Russia with German made or German fired missiles (because in all likelihood German personnel would be required to fire the missiles) would constitute an act of war and would trigger a response directed Berlin.

Strong stuff indeed and one might assume that our mss might be interested in such a story. But no. It's come to me rather via George Galloway. He says that it's been reported in one of the main Russian outlets for news (the equivalent of their BBC if you like) and that the woman who has reported it has the ear of "the very highest authority within the Kremlin," which one assumes can only be Vladimir Putin himself.

Now my question is, "Is Galloway reliable?"

He can be outrageous and over the top, but he's also a highly respected political activist and commentator as well. It's just really difficult to know how much you can take from his output as correct. He's not in the business of lying, of deliberately misinforming, of that I have no doubt. But sometimes I think he runs away with himself, and maybe one wonders, if this is one of those occasions.

But then I remember that small twist of feeling, that gut instinct that I had as the BBC reporter spoke. That voice that said, "Russia ain't going to like this," and suddenly Galloway's follow up has a ring of truth to it.

As indeed do his continued remarks on the subject.

That if Germany is stupid enough to go down this route, then it can only be by virtue of an unjustified faith in the protection given by Article 5, that says that if one Nato member is attacked then it is considered an attack on all member states, that would give them the confidence to do so. And this confidence is misguided says Galloway. Because contrary to popular belief, the attack on a member country does not automatically trigger Article 5 - this actually requires the agreement of every member state. And the liklihood of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Lithuania agreeing is next to zero.

And the idea that America is going to unleash armageddon in support of Germany/Europe because Germany went out on a limb and supplied Ukraine with long range missiles is for the birds. Not going to happen. So the Germans need to think very hard and long about what Merz is suggesting, and rein him back in with all possible haste.

We got away with firing missiles deep into Russia earlier on in this conflict, purely because Putin was so very careful in his response to this outrageously reckless and provocative action by the Biden administration. We won't do so again. If German Chancellor Frederich Merz thinks that rowing Europe right up to the brink of a full scale global power confrontation with Russia is a clever thing to do, then I'd suggest that somebody disabuse him of this notion immediately.

It's not. It's off the scale of stupidity and could get us all killed.

(But why am I having to talk about this; why aren't the main stream media all over it?)

[peter]

The Times reports that Defence Secretary John Healey says that defence spending of three percent of GDP is an absolute certainty by 2034.

This in response (presumably) of military chiefs belief that the "UK could be just a few years away from a war with Russia."

Well let me ask this? If we're so close to a war with Russia, why aren't our leaders doing everything in their power to step up diplomatic exchanges in order to iron out whatever is leading us into this earth shattering situation? Presumably it'll not be just us - there's like, half a dozen countries between us (unless they simply intend to obliterate us from the skies in which case there doesn't seem to be much point in spending money on anything other than air defences.

And that money represents a 10 billion pounds a year increase in spending every year until 2034. And it isn't as though we don't actually have other things, like social care and the NHS that are desperate for this money as well. You really need to make a case for this kind of expenditure and I haven't heard one that isn't merely propoganda and speculation up to this point. In fact it seems to be us (in concert with Nato) that seems to be intent on pushing the Russians into conflict, so could I (at the risk of sticking in my pennyworth where it isn't wanted) make the tentative suggestion that we just leave the Russians to be them while we concentrate on being us. Perhaps if we do this they won't feel so threatened and won't feel the need to go setting up bulwarks of defence around themselves?

Oh why would they feel threatened you ask? Well it might be to do with Nato deciding to put a frikkin great bristling fistful of missiles on their frigging doorstep. That isn't going to help is it?

-----0-----

The Telegraph has a flyer along the top, "Prince William: I want to bring about real change."

Sorry fellah. Let me explain it. You are a constitutional heir to a constitutional monarchy. That means you don't get to make any changes. You get to be born (tick), get married to an appropriate girl (tick), produce the next link in the chain of heredity (tick), and live like a king for a bit until you shuffle off. That's it. You don't get to do anything else regarding changing anything - that's not part of the deal, the job description as it were.

Actually, I suppose you could announce that upon assumption of the crown you'll scale back the entire shebang to the level of one of those European monarchies that we hear very little about; the ones that don't cost their people an arm and a leg every frikking year. That might be a change you could make, and one the people could thank you for.

-----0-----

Kier Stamer is expressing "full confidence" in his attorney general Lord Hermer, after the latter expressed the opinion that right wing calls to leave the European Court of Human Rights were akin to the 1930's rejection by the Nazi Party "of international law and human rights in favour of state power".

This probably indicates that he is done for.

Stamer is facing calls for him to be sacked and will (I bet) ultimately comply. It doesn't matter that the man is telling the truth. His mistake was saying it. You can have international and human rights law - or you can have autonomy of the state within a country to set its own standards, a clarion call of the nationalist movement from the time that nation states became a thing (not as long ago as people tend to believe - people in the past tended to support monarchies or administrations rather than the nation per se). You either believe in some higher authority in law than the nation itself - something that nations agree to answer to - or you believe that the nation is the highest authority, and above that the system is anarchical (ie that in real terms, might is effectively right). Many realists believe that this is actually the case, even in the presence of the vaunted 'higher authorities'. They believe that when the chips are down, that nations will always do whatever is in their own interest despite the presence, or their belonging to, these higher institutions.

The Nazi regime was clearly of the nationalist thinking type, and what the attorney general has said is undoubtedly true. But that won't save him. Not if continued presence is damaging to Kier Stamer. If that's the case he's doomed.

I don't suppose, that aside, that it necessarily falls true that anyone preferring the nation state over internationally agreed norms is a proto-fascist in the making, but wouldn't it be nice if we just had political administrations that agreed upon a higher international authority and then genuinely bought into the idea? Utopian thinking perhaps, and not born out by experience, but nice anyway.

-----0-----

I don't think this guy who ploughed into all those people at the Liverpool football club celebrations conforms to what the media wanted him to be.

He isn't a terrorist, nor by accounts an individual mired in crime and antisocial living. Rather he's a businessman of sorts, with a family and no obvious history of criminal activity.

I've watched the footage and even from the start it looked to me like a situation that simply spiralled out of control.

He (it seems to me) got himself somewhere where he shouldn't be in relation to the celebrations (behind an ambulance it appears, in what should have been a no vehicle section of the route). The crowd seemed to turn ugly on him, started bashing his car and at one point pulled open the driver-side door. He's panicked and tried to push through the crowd, lost control and swerved into them.

He appeared in court yesterday, by accounts in tears, and was charged with a number of different offences, but not, significantly, the attempted murder charge that it was originally said by the police would be brought.

He's a gonner. You can't knock 75 people about with a car and walk away (though my bet is that those numbers are 'bigged up' for the story as it were - I doubt very much that many of these were any more than people who were pushed aside in the scramble). But nevertheless he's going down. A moment of panic, a silly driving choice followed by an instantaneous ill-advised attempt to flee a situation that was running out of control, and bobs your uncle - a life ruined for ever and a family shattered beyond repair. I really hope none of his 'victims' are too badly hurt, but equally I hope (if my surmises are true) that justice - which must be done - will be tempered with mercy.

----0----

"British and French officials drawing up plans for a 'coalition of the willing' peacekeeping force in Ukraine have discussed the need for people to 'get real' about Donald Trump abandoning the country."

So writes the Telegraph this morning.

I think what these officials need to get real about is that the Russians are just going to fall back and let the same people who have been funding and supplying the war against them, be mediators of the peace in Ukraine when the fighting eventually stops. Haven't they been listening to a word that the Russians have been saying? They don't want Nato forces in Ukraine.

Watch my mouth- I'll say it slowly. They - won't - accept - Nato- troops - in - Ukraine. How hard can it be? The Russians have won the war. They get to dictate the terms of the peace. The negotiations being carried out in Istanbul in June are not ceasefire negotiations - they are surrender negotiations. Effectively anyway. Without America this ridiculous war is over and it's pointless for these jumped up cockerels Macron and Stamer to pretend otherwise.

Perhaps Emmannuel Macron needs a few more shoves in the kisser from his wife (horseplay my arse!) in order to knock some sense into him. I don't know about Stamer; I think he's long beyond the point of seeing anything resembling sense. He abandoned sense long ago when he suddenly had the epiphany that stabbing Jeremy Corbyn in the back and destroying everything that the Labour Party was about was his only route to power. OK, it might have worked, but what profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but loose his soul.......

(If he ever had one!)