What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

The split widens.

Stamer and Macron agree to an emergency summit meeting of European leaders next week as the PM acknowledges that this is a "once in a generation moment" and that Europe must henceforth take a greater role in Nato. (Trump has then, at least achieved this much of his goal. That this empowered Europe would then perhaps one day rise to challenge the might of America? Perhaps he might not have thought that far? But I get ahead of myself.....)

The purpose of the summit is to discuss the Ukrainian situation, in which European leaders feel that they risk being frozen out of the process, by virtue of talks being arranged and going on without them (as for example in that US Secretary of State Marko Rubio is set to meet Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.....and Europe won't be there). Keith Kellogg, the US Special Envoy on Ukraine put it bluntly. He said previous negotiations had failed because too many parties had been involved.

Not exactly true. They didn't fail in Istanbul at the very beginning of the war: on the contrary they succeeded and the war would have ended there and then had not Boris Johnson, at Joe Biden's instruction, not ordered President Zelensky to walk away (because the Americans didn't like the idea that the agreement restricted their ability to put heavy offensive weaponry in Ukraine, right up against its border with Russia).

But now Trump has (rightly) lost all interest in that, and while maybe European leaders still have this kind of mindset (and the British as the most bloodthirsty and belligerent nation on earth - the words of political economist professor Jeffrey Sachs, not mine - certainly still do) Trump as the bankroller of Nato effectively calls the shots.

So now Britain and Europe move to preserve their position that "all things Russian, bad", and are meeting to see how the war can be continued (against American, or at least Trump's, insistence that it will end) and the narrative of 'necessary aggression against an unholy opponent' maintained. Trump is pulling this apart and I'm with him. Too many people have died, Russian and Ukrainian. The world has come close - too close - to nuclear armageddon. This must end, and the narrative of Russia as a country that wants to take over the whole of Europe militarily must end. And be assured, you're going to hear a lot of that kind of bullshit in the next few days, as the vested interests of keeping the war and threat and re-armament narratives going marshal their responses.

But it looks as though, like it or not though the Europeans might, the talks will go ahead. And American Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has already put a cat amongst the pigeons by saying that it is unrealistic for Ukraine to believe that it is going to get its pre-war territory back or retain its ambition to elevate to Nato membership. These are of course the major demands of Zelensky and he'll be desperate to have European leaders beside him fighting for the same end result. But no peace can be reached with these demands on the table and the American negotiators will know it. So, given that they are footing the major bill for the war, they will call the economic shots and their decision will be final.

So all ears will be on the noises coming out of Saudi Arabia in the next few days and that little bleating you can hear in the background - that will be the sound of our European leadership complaining like drains that "We want to be in the room round the table too!" (even if it's only in the baby's high-chair alongside the adults).

[peter]

And so let's look at it. The Sunday press response to what is happening.

And the first salvo comes in the Sunday Express with a contribution from ex Army Chief Lord Dannatt with a "blistering salvo" directed at Kier Stamer over his "embarrassing" neglect of our forces in the face of a "growing threat from Putin."

Dannatt, who will be balls-deep in the military-industrial complex and their vested interest in maintaining the idea that Russia is an existential threat to the rest of Europe, is screaming out for more money to be poured into defence (and via that into the pockets of the arms industry shareholders). The latter part is of course unspoken, but hey - let's not be too transparent about how things stand shall we. The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge blow to the defense industry and they've been screaming out for a new threat ever since. Now Putin has stepped into the role of bogeyman, they'll be damned if they are going to see that opportunity for mullah to slip through their fingers as well. If Trump is going to do his level best to defuse the tensions and bring Putin back into the fold, then they'll do their damndest to argue the opposite; that (irrespective of the lack of evidence to support it) he's an expansionist megalomaniac with his eye on the whole of Europe. The arms industry don't actually want war with Russia - that would be the end of everything, even for them - it's the fear of Russia as a potential threat that they want to maintain. That's the goose that lays the golden egg for them, and Dannatt's contribution to the work will no doubt be well recieved and paid for.

Incidentally Stamer has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP before the end of this session, but that will never be enough for these guys. The five percent that Trump suggested would have them masturbating on the floor, but hey, three percent would be nice for starters. 2.5 percent would Incidentally be a huge slice of the money that should be being spent on helping this country recover from the devastating impacts of Brexit, covid and the cost of living increases etc, but who gives a fig about that when there's a shilling to be earned. That it's money spaffed up against the wall protecting us from chimeras that don't exist - well, don't talk about that.

What's next.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is reported in the Telegraph as telling Chancellor Reeves that if defence spending isn't increased right now, she risks it being three times as high if "Ukraine looses the war against Russia." No need to ask who he'll be working for when he's chucked out of office at the next election then.

Also in the Telegraph we've got a couple of anti-islamic pieces; one about a couple of Brits arrested in Iran for crimes undescribed as yet. No doubt just the nasty old Iranians up to their tricks again. Another about illegal immigrant who has "escaped deportation because he is close to his nephew." Add him to the ones already described who's kids don't like chicken nuggets or who's children might miss them if they're chucked out. (We've had them in the 'T' in the last few days. Kemi Badenoch is in agreement with JD Vance that freedom of speech is under threat in the UK. I agree, but suspect that Ms Badenoch's tolerance of free speech would decrease somewhat if the speech was directed against her. It was after all, her government that increased much of the legislation which is now being used to curb various historical freedoms we enjoyed, free speech amongst them.

That's pretty much it. Have a good Sunday and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

[peter]

So Kier Stamer is ready to commit British ground forces to Ukraine in order to secure the security of that country and the rest of Europe.

He's ready to do it as part of a peace deal - presumably a peace deal that he will have no part in negotiating, because he's already been told we won't be there. Securing a lasting peace in Ukraine is "essential for deterring Putin from further aggression."

Has anyone ever told him that Putin again and again told the West that further eastward advancement of Nato towards its borders would result in it this very situation? And that this ridiculous policy was followed right up to the announcement of signing up Ukraine (the red line that Putin had said would not be tolerated), with the express intention of placing missile and military placements right on Russia's border?

Can you imagine America having accepted such a situation? Would Stamer, if say Scotland were independent and Russia were interfering in its election processes, toppling elected government's and installing puppet governments of its own? Then 'persuading' them to allow Russia to move in its military hardware?

And it's Russia that is the aggressive one! Jesus, save us from this bullshit.

And does he even believe for a second that Vladimir Putin is going to accept a peace deal that includes UK or other forces on the ground in Ukraine, as part of a 'peace keeping' body? In a sort of Korean style DMZ arrangement? When Russian blood has been spilt by the tankerfull in stopping that very situation from developing? Boots on the ground is just one step closer to all out war in Europe, and that's what our foolish leaders seem determined to precipitate.

On the other hand, perhaps the Russians will accept it. If they get to keep the territory they have taken in the conflict to date, and it stops the killing, then maybe its a price worth paying. After all, they're absolutely used to Nato forces abutting territory close to their buffer-zone countries, as in the case of between East and West Germany as was. Perhaps a new cold-war style state of affairs will develop out of this - an era from which both Putin and Stamer arise and are perhaps comfortable with seeing return. And in fairness, the balance of security back in those days, for all its suspicion and double dealing/bluffing, seems safer by a wide margin than the chaos we've unleashed by our disastrous foreign policy decisions since the cold-war ended.

But it'd be an interesting one; because this time presumably America would be out of the picture, concentrating on it's own problems with China. This would be a European affair - and let's be frank, the Russians are not exactly going to be wetting their pants over the presence of anything our European forces can currently muster. The UK army would be pushed to defend its own borders and the French one is better suited to prancing around in African exercises playing pretend soldiers than actually doing any fighting. When it comes to battle hardened troops, the Russians are streets ahead of us and any 'old soldiers' looking at the current crop of coddled material they have to play with must hang their heads in despair. They'd need more emotional support teams than training personnel in order to whip this lot of mollycoddled softies into soldiers. Theyd get more nervous breakdowns than soldiers passing out of training. Our young simply aren't made up to be soldiers. Not the real side of a gaming console anyway.

Anyway, let's see what the week brings. Marco Rubio will meet with Russian officials in the coming days and what is (or isn't) agreed to here will set the tone for what happens going forward.

But all in all it's a mares nest. It's one step forward and half a dozen back in this world and we humans never seem to learn. Why is that? Why don't we get that all this effort put into fighting each other is holding us back. Half of the work we do is just wasted in spending on armies and missiles and crap, and does no one any good. Because we can't bring ourselves to get along. To live and let live. I've just read a small book on Auschwitz - plumbed the depths as it were, of where all this bullshit leads. Any leader that doesn't see that this leads nowhere good is a cunt. I think even Putin gets this; Trump seems to have at last grasped it from the American side and President Xi of China certainly does. Why the fuck can't we in Europe get it, and especially us Brits. If we were stuck on a desert island we'd start a fight with our own shadow.

We're going to be flooded with commentary telling us how dangerous the Russians are. How Putin is set on conquering Europe. It'll be flooded at us from all sides. Watch my mouth. They aren't. He isn't. It's bullshit designed to scare you into swallowing the enlargement of our defence spending when we desperately, desperately need to be spending that money elsewhere.

[peter]

Now to the mornings press.

Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion as to whether or not, Ukraine/Zelensky were invited to the meeting between Marko Rubio and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week. An American spokesperson had said that absolutely, they would be present (despite General Kellogg having made it absolutely clear that no EU or UK presence would be there), but Ukraine denied that any invitation had been forthcoming.

Zelensky has said he will not be going (irrespective presumably sending any Ukrainian representative) so seems to be pinning his hopes on the meeting of European leaders this week (at which UK PM Stamer will be present) as being his best hope. He (Zelensky) no doubt wants the war to end; just not until he's got back all the territory he's lost (by not agreeing to the Istanbul agreement at the start of the conflict) and obtained his promise of entry in the future, into Nato. Getting Crimea back would be good as well, but hey, you can't have everything.

Zelensky is discovering, as many have before him, that the Americans are fickle friends when the chips are down. What one president swears blind will be the case, can rapidly evaporate when a new administration takes power. (And it doesn't even have to go that far.) It's a nieve country that hangs all of its hopes on American promises. Today he therefore, seems more disposed towards the European mindset that Putin must be put back in his box by loosing - and being seen to lose - the war. Trouble is that he isn't (loosing the war) and Europe has no means to alter this fact. Not for years at least, and not without huge further loss of life if they push this intention to its extreme ends (and assuming the world isn't destroyed in nuclear conflagration if they do).

But anyway - the papers.

Daily Mail: Europe in crisis, Stamer failing to step up with more money for defence. (We haven't got any, idiots.)

Telegraph: Stamer - I'm ready to put troops into Ukraine. (Your own kids, Kier, or just other people's?)

Times; PM will act as 'Bridge' to Trump during peace talks (yea right: see what the Don has to say about that!)

The Guardian: Talks lay bare transatlantic rift over Ukraine. (Yep. America wants out because it's fed up of spending money. Europe wants the killing to go on because it's vested interests want to continue making money.)

Sun: Prawn crackers! (Moaning because Britain spends billions on foreign aid projects like shrimp farms, instead of building more weapons and armies to protect us against Putin. Food or fucking armageddon? No problem deciding that one for me.)

Express: Farmers driven to the brink of despair. (Shed a tear for the 'poor' landowners, everyone.)

Daily Star {thought for the day}: Chill - it'll soon be Friday. (And who knows what the shape of the world will be by then - which won't of course impact on Star readers because they don't think about that sort of stuff and none of them work anyway, so what difference does Friday make to them? {Stop being a cunt peter, you know that you actually like the Star, probably more than any other rag out there. And it's readership are probably a fuck site cleverer than you for ignoring all this stuff that they cannot do crap about}).

That's it. Cynical diatribe for the day over.

[Well, almost. Let's just call out either the sheer stupidity and arrogance of Kier Stamer if he genuinely believes he can act as a "bridge" between Europe and the Trump administration in respect of their differences over Ukraine. Does he really believe himself to be that important?

I doubt it: I believe this headline/announcement on his part is more for domestic consumption - to say, "Look at us - We're still important you know!", when the truth is we don't matter a crap to the USA. What we think of what they are doing is neither here nor there. The 'special relationship' exists in the minds of our leaders [if it does even there], and nowhere else.

[peter]

True to form, European leaders spent 3 hours fighting like cata in a sack yesterday, in an 'emergency summit' designed to adress the fact that events concerning the ending of the Russia-Ukraine war are proceeding apace, and they aren't in 'em.

Behind a much more closed wall of security than usual (designed to keep the press away, not terrorists or enemies or anything so banal as that) they hid their disunity from the world, but still only emerged with the one solid point of agreement that defence spending across the board would have to be increased big time, in response to the America's withdrawal from its commitment to European security.

Beyond that there was nothing. They tried to whitewash it by saying that "this summit was never meant to agree anything," and in which case it was a roaring success. They couldn't agree on the composition of a post-peace Ukrainian defence force (designed to ensure Ukrainian security should the beastly Russians decide to invade again). My advice on this would be simple; if you want to stop the Russians being aggressive then stop running ever closer to them waving missiles and tanks in their face. Look at it from their side. If you were in a playground, and the school bully kept walking closer and closer to you brandishing his fists, wouldn't you decide to get the first punch in? This is exactly what we did with Russia and they kept telling us to stop it. Now we're pissed because they snapped up the last bit of distance to throw up a defensive ring around themselves.

But our lot couldn't even agree on how to put boots on the ground in a defensive post war force. Germany's Scholz said it was all premature - he's got an election looming and doesn't want that particular wasp-nest poked before he goes into it. He said that as a peace deal hadn't yet been decided on, it was silly to be talking about what should be done after it. We don't, after all, have the faintest idea what it will look like. He said such talk was entirely inappropriate and left him feeling "a little bit irritated". Poland and Spain also indicated their reluctance to commit to any kind of Ukrainian peace keeping firce.

Stamer wants an agreement upon a mixed European force with Brits present amongst it, but with a US agreement to provide a "backstop" (good word that - he learned it from Theresa May in the Brexit days;sounds sort of...reassuring) in the event of its not proving to be up to its task (it wouldn't). Who knows what the French want; Macron was the first one to start talking about putting French soldiers into Ukraine, but now that the possibility of it being required is arising he's suddenly lost his voice.

What this all means for us,as the average Joe, is that money we should be seeing spent on the NHS, and infrastructure, and alleviating poverty and educating our kids, will be instead syphoned off into the pockets of the arms industry shareholders. Nice for them. For us, not so much.

Meanwhile Zelensky has been in the Middle East - but not anywhere near the Rubio-Russian meeting. He's made it clear that he wants nothing to do with that set of talks (because of course he knows he's doomed by them). When the war ends, Zelensky ends with it. Maybe by slipping away to enjoy his millions: maybe more permanently. He'll make a lot of enemies with a lot of very nasty people at home, if he allows territory to be ceded to the Russians in any deal, and these people might not be inclined to let him walk away while they remain and pick up the pieces. For him (like Netenyahu) it's victory or curtains.

The UK press seem to be of the belief that Kier Stamer will be telling Donald Trump what he must do in terms of providing for European security in the post Ukrainian war period; mu opinion is that Trump will take no more notice of him than he would a fly buzzing round his arse. If Stamer tries to treat Trump like a child who can be lectured to, he'll soon be shown the door. He'll need to be a lot more diplomatic than trying to say what must and must not be. Trump needs to be cajoled into a place where he thinks he has come up with the ideas. Then he might adopt them.

As for Zelensky saying he won't recognise any peace settlement in which he's not involved, watch my mouth. You haven't got any money to buy your own arms. To pay your own soldiers. You rely on other people to fund your war; other people to supply it. Just be quiet and let these other people try to end the meaningless carnage that has been imposed upon your country. Take a spoonful of realpolitik. You'll do what you are told, or the money-tree will be suddenly leafless. What will you do then. Fight your war with knives and forks?

-----0-----

A government report has concluded that knee-jerk responses to rising crime figures have over the years, brought the prison service to a point where it is just about on its knees.

They can't understand why increasingly severe sentencing isn't having the effect of steering people away from crime.

Idiots. Hugo gave the answe in Les Miserables over 100 years ago, and it's three words. Poverty and ignorance. Crime increases or decrease in proportion to these two factors in a society. Increasing penalties will not deter people either too impoverished or too ill-educated to be effected by them. Too impoverished and crime becomes a necessity for survival, not a lifestyle choice. Too ill-educated and you lack both the means to lift yourself out of poverty, or the foresight to see where the committal of crime will land you.

I mean - how hard can it be. In order to empty the prisons, lift people out of poverty and educate them to provide for their future. Give them a reason not to turn to crime. Don't impose the conditions upon them (by serving only the interests of the top echelon of society) that induce crime, and then think that merely increasing the severity of punishment will suppress it. That's for the birds and if you can't see that, then I suggest that you find another source of employment.

-----0-----

Finally, just a quick message hoping that Pope Francis makes a speedy recovery from his respiratory complications, for which he is currently being treated in hospital. Prayers going out.

[Avatar]

As for Zelensky saying he won't recognise any peace settlement in which he's not involved, watch my mouth. You haven't got any money to buy your own arms. To pay your own soldiers. You rely on other people to fund your war; other people to supply it. Just be quiet and let these other people try to end the meaningless carnage that has been imposed upon your country. Take a spoonful of realpolitik. You'll do what you are told, or the money-tree will be suddenly leafless. What will you do then. Fight your war with knives and forks?

So...we're back to the global super-powers carving up the world however they like and who cares what anybody actually affected thinks...

How 1918...and 1945...

--A

[peter]

The Western Liberal Establishment hasn't exactly brought us to a good place Av. The corpses are piled high and left to the Biden style policies that the departing American President attempted to hardwire into the system to shackle Trump with, they'd continue to pile higher ad infinitum.

Zelensky has not done well by the Ukrainian people (and had he put himself up for election when his time fell due in the normal manner, would likely be long gone by now).

Trump (and he is a man of many faults and contradictions to be sure) has taken this whole wretched situation and shaken it up. It absolutely needed doing. How many of his countrymen would Zelensky see dead in order to pursue hopeless dreams of turning the clock back to day one of the conflict. He had his chance to end this war and rather bowed to the instructions of the Biden poodle Boris Johnson and kept it going. And here we are now, goodness knows how many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russians dead later, and not a jot further forward.

And at what point were the 'global superpowers' not calling the shots? That's what global superpowers do. It's just a different leadership calling a different set of shots, and because the European leadership don't like the change (not least because they had it very nicely thank you under the old 'perpetual war' rules) they are stamping their little foot about it.

Sergei Lavrov injected a dose of realpolitik into the EU/Stamer bubble yesterday when he said that the idea of having a 'peace keeping force' comprised of the very Nato countries that had ranged themselves against Russia in the last 3 years, and sitting right atop the Russian border, was a nonsense. And of course he's absolutely correct. Peacekeeping forces are by their very nature comprised from the soldiery of neutral countries (and I'm by no means sure that Russia is going to accept even that condition). If Zelensky would partake of these negotiations then he must accept the realities of the situation (realities that would have been much better had he taken the path of peace at the beginning when he had the chance). Otherwise he's simply an obstacle to be overcome.

Trump is a businessman. He sees the world through the eyes of deals, not wars. This meeting was about far more than war - it was about money. Sanctions lifting, deal making, mutual back-scratching and opportunity grasping. We may not like it but it's a good deal better than corpses piling up in Ukraine and nuclear arsenals being readied in Moscow. We can look forward to a time when Putin, Trump, Xi and Modi (the big four in the world today) stand together on the balcony of the Kremlin for the May Day celebrations and we may not all like this, but 1918 and 1948 it ain't (or if it is, at least that's better than 1914 or 1939 which is where the 'old guard' would have it).

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Give peace a chance. All wars end in negotiations and they have to start somewhere.

[peter]

As ever with Trump, he opens his mouth and something stupid comes out of it.

His blaming of Ukraine for having "started it" is a distortion of the truth rather than the outright falsehood it can be presented as being - but it is as damaging to the real truth as the idea that this all started on that day three plus years ago when the Russian tanks first rolled across the borders into sovereign Ukrainian territory.

Zelensky is a dictator? Well, no - but it's indisputable that the elections are a year late and that the country is under martial law. Trump claims Zelensky would loose an election; Zelensky claims he wouldn't - but we'll not find out if one isn't held and the justification that "Britain didn't hold elections during WW2" might be true, but doesn't alter the facts. But again Trump's overblown comments don't help people understand. Zelensky might win an election or he might not, but there are disturbing rumours about conditions in Ukraine that are circulating, not on extremist conspiracy sites but rather amongst learned commentators - people with connections, people in the know - whose words must rightfully be listened to. And you aren't going to find those people given airtime on any of the so called legacy media outlets (just, if I may say, as you didn't during the covid pandemic when experts whose opinions ran contrary to the 'official narrative' were simply frozen out of the discourse).

But this latest exchange is definitely indicative of a developing breach between the Ukrainian leadership and Washington, and is really unhelpful at a time when for Ukraine's best interest, it needs to be in step with the American administration. Zelensky and the current UK defence secretary are both correct; Ukrainian security (even after a negotiated peace) simply cannot be guaranteed by Europe alone. The US must be on board, or it is as nothing. Widening divisions between Kiev and Washington (exacerbated by barbed exchanges between the leaders) are not going to help.

Here's how it should go.

Step 1. Agree a ceasefire. Stop the killing.

Step 2. Neutral venue (Saudi Arabia seems to be working). US, Russian, Ukrainian deledations in separate rooms, write down conditions for ending the conflict and security arrangements going forward. Independent arbitration by agreed agents between the participants until an acceptable compromise arrangement is hammered out. Jaw-jaw, jaw-jaw until it is worked out. Shuffle diplomacy and periodic meetings.

Make it happen.

Let's just clear something up here. Putin isn't a monster. He hasn't got Auschwitz Birkenau style camps hidden away in Siberia, he isn't trying to wipe out a population or killing people by the millions. Contrary to the picture our media would paint he isn't a Hitler or a Stalin and I don't believe that he has territorial ambitions other than to secure his own borders (and goodness knows, history shows that Russia needs to do this).

He's the guy who took a bankrupt and broken post Soviet Russia, callously abandoned by the West to its own fate, and gave it back its pride. No wonder that the people love him. Would that we had a leader that could do the same for us. Putin has watched the West renage on every promise it has made, break every agreement it has been party to, and has said no more. If he is an enemy, a threat, then we have made him so. How can we support a true monster like Netenyahu, and then upbraid a leader like Putin who is really trying to look out for the interests of his people?

Call me a Putin apologist? First tell me what it is that Putin has to apologise for.

[peter]

The Western liberal commentariat is apoplectic about Donald Trump's description of Vlodomir Zelensky as a "dictator" who refuses to hold elections and would be booted out by his countrymen if he did, and I'm first to agree that the Don has a way with words that immediately makes everything that comes out of his mouth sound like horse-shit.

But let's just look at it.

Has Zelensky cancelled elections in Ukraine? Yes. Even his supporters have to concede that. They are a year overdue and no date has as yet been fixed for their holding.

But there's a war going on, and to do so is by no means unusual. He's declared a state of emergency (or some such), and didn't Britain do the same during WW2? Yes they did - but there was also a national government formed in which all parties were represented, and if what we are hearing (the unreported stuff) is true, then a very different state of affairs pertains in Ukraine. George Galloway reports that the opposition in Ukraine has been effectively put out of business, and the leader put under house arrest. I don't know if this is true or not, but Galloway is not prone to lying (although he is undoubtedly something of a showman himself), and it is certainly true that the country is under martial law. Other reports of arrests and forced conscriptions are again circulating but not addressed in the legacy media. Fake news or deliberate ommission on the part of the legacy media, of facts that are uncomfortable in respect of the narrative it is desired that we swallow without question.

So in the light of these considerations, the Trump claim, though not substantiated, is not as wild as it at first seems.

What about "Ukraine started the war"?

Again, this is stretching it, but as above, it wants unpicking.

Certainly Nato expansion since the end of the cold war hasn't helped. I'm not going to go into the history of the Clinton decision to expand Nato eastward (against very strenuous advice from many very experienced people), nor the history of Western duplicity which the Russians have had to soak up on repeated occasions since that time; it's all out there if you want to find it, and the explanations given by Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, both renowned scholars from highly respected academic institutions, are a good place to start.

Repeated warnings from the Russians that they would not accept a Nato membership state on their doorstep (with the associated presence of missiles and armaments directed in their direction) and the repeatedly broken promises of the West that this wouldn't happen, have brought us to this place, and the internal interference with Ukrainian politics, the usurping by Western inspired coup of the legitimately elected government, and the talk of inviting a Ukraine administration hostile to Russia into Nato was the final straw. Russia invaded under the pretext of giving aid to the pro-Russian forces already carrying out a war in the east of Ukraine (in the Donbas and Luhansk regions), and here we are.

But Ukraine started the war? Pushing it a bit. Certainly Zelensky's is a pro-Western puppet leadership: they are responsible to that extent. They have declined to follow the path of neutrality which the Russians, with powerful historical justification, have required of them. They walked away, at the insistence of Boris Johnson, from a peace agreement that would have given them security against further Russian invasion and land appropriation in return for assurance of neutrality (and which in fairness to Zelensky, he was prepared to accept until instructed to Biden via Johnson, not to do so).

So in this sense, I suppose they did at least bring about the continuation of the war, which could have been stopped at that very early point, mere weeks after the initial Russian incursion, and when no Ukrainian territory had been irreversibly taken.

But Ukraine started it? Did they approach Nato requesting membership? Possibly. They must have known that it would cause the very situation that has resulted if they did, so maybe that's what Trump is referring to.

But you see, the comments that have the Western commentators (both political and professional) so exercised, while stretching the definition, are not exactly false. They need understanding of the background to make sense of, and that understanding is simply not being provided by our legacy media or indeed our politicians. Both are failing us at a fundamental level and we must ask why?

It simply isn't any good to tell us not to fall for "Russian propoganda" - they have to take the historical assessments given by people like Mearsheimer and Sachs and rebut them. Explain why they are not true, despite seemingly being a part of the historical record that these acemedicians have access to and intimate knowledge of. It's deep stuff indeed, but people are not stupid - they can cope with it. And the situation is so important that it requires to be done.

I want to believe that my country, my government, is on the right side of the argument on this, but to date the argument of the opposing team are way more convincing - and our lot seem happy to simply spin propoganda and half-facts in order to convince the gullible of their rightness, rather than adress the real and difficult truths of the situation head-on like adults.

(Incidentally, the reason why the press conference between Zelensky and General Keith Kellogg was cancelled yesterday (in case you're interested, because the mainstream media aren't telling you) is because Kellogg has blotted his copy book with Trump by saying (without clearance) that Zelensky would definitely be at the table in any peace talks with Russia. He made that comment in Munich where he was in meetings with European foreign policy authorities, but hadn't reckoned on the degree of animosity building between Trump and Zelensky (over mineral rights in Ukraine). The media clearly haven't been keeping abreast of the behind the scenes stuff, or they would not be printing that no known reason for the cancellation was apparent. )

[peter]

It was sort of refreshing yesterday to read that Hamas had acknowledged a mistake had occurred, following the Israeli discovery that the remains returned to it were not those of deceased hostage Shiri Bibas.

A second body has now been provided and if I have it correctly (I can't seem to find the report I saw earlier) Israel has said it is indeed that of the mother of the two children returned earlier.

The circumstances of the deaths of the Bibas family remain unclear and there is a raft of claims and counter claims issuing back and forth between Israel and Hamas concerning their fate. Terrible to state, but such is the emotive force that can be harnessed around such tragic losses that we will probably never learn the true fate of any of the lost family members with any certainty. There is however great anger within the Bibas family in Israel that more was not done in order to secure the release of the hostages before such tragic deaths occurred. It us hard to deny at least the possibility that Benjamin Netenyahu has not been fully engaged with securing the release of the hostages, against the backdrop of his larger aims, of defeating Hamas and securing Israeli security against future attacks going forward.

In respect of the current ceasefire, it seems to be holding, if only by the skin of its fingertips. Much question must still exist as to whether it will enter phase two, which includes the withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza, and behind this uncertainty lies not least the unknowable desires of the Israeli Prime Minister himself. He's under terrific pressure not to enter the second phase - indeed to return to the bombing campaign in Gaza as soon as possible - but could not do so without at least very solid grounds for doing so in terms of ceasefire violations from the Hamas side, violations which they are striving hard not to give him. In addition, it's not at all clear that a resumption of hostilities would get the thumbs up from Donald Trump, who of course ultimately provides the wherewithal for the continuance of Israel's war against its opponents.

Without question, Netenyahu would like to get a war up and running with Iran (with the Americans on board, needless to say) and something which has been drawing attention, not so much in legacy media circles but rather beyond that in the online discussion forums that have interest, is the recent supply of large numbers of MOAB's (mother of all bombs - bombs exceeding 2000 lbs in weight and of extraordinary explosive capacity) which would be almost exclusively used for bombing deeply buried assets such as the Iranian nuclear production facilities. They could feasibly be used to disrupt Hamas tunnel systems in Gaza, but would almost certainly be wasted in such an overkill usage and such is their cost and value in other areas that this idea is not really being taken seriously.

One question that has been raised is that Israel it would appear, does not have the appropriate aircraft for the delivery of such bombs, and so either the necessary planes for carriage and delivery of the bombs would have to be supplied, or American planes would have to be used (ie flown by American pilots), or (less feasibly) Israel would have to cobble up some delivery system of their own devising. The latter is not really a serious possibility so we are left with the idea that these bombs are most likely intended for use against Iran, and quite possibly with American forces being utilised in their delivery. War with Iran is then it appears, by no means off the cards as we speak. Colonel Douglas Macgregor indeed, thinks it to be almost inevitable, and with as possible as early a start date as sometime in March. He's probably more pessimistic on this score than most commentators, but has proven to be a pretty accurate guide to what is on the radar in the past, both on the Israeli-Hamas conflict and in the Ukraine. Certainly the supply of these bombs could be a precautionary measure, a 'just in case' preparation, but their delivery should be noted and reflected upon in terms of what this possibly portends.

Switching to Ukraine, one has to ask whether Donald Trump can really swivel the long-standing policy of regarding Russia and all things Russian as an existential threat, simply as an unquestionable given, on a sixpence, just on his own say-so? The entrenched narrative is surely so hardwired into the establishment psyche that even Trump, with his inflated sense of what he has the capacity to achieve, will come up against a wall of resistance that he will not be able to overcome?

Well, possibly, but Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov gave him a good shunt in the right direction the other day when he spelled outright that sanctions against Russia had cost American businesses some 300 billion dollars in lost trade since the war began. And there's no quicker way to the American heart than via its wallet. Certainly there will be elements of the American establishment who will be adverse to such a resetting (not least those pertaining to the American arms industry for whom every day has been Christmas Day since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war), but the clear and obvious advantages of a rapproacment will ultimately penetrate even the most Russophobic elements of the establishment (and let's face it - these are not nearly as pathologically entrenched as within the British establishment, who have been hating on the Russians for centuries).

But even Europe and the UK will come around eventually, when the manifest advantages of a continent, nay world, in peace as opposed to pieces, eventually sinks in. At that point Kier Stamer and his bellicose foreign minister will begin to look stupid and isolated with their ever increasingly shrill warnings about a threat that at last the rest of the West has realised is a bogus one. The cross-Atlantic liberal establishment consensus is at last dying and giving the world a chance to get beyond the hopeless strategy that has bogged down European advance for the past 30 years. We have a chance, at last, to right the wrongs of the our post-Soviet treatment of Russia, to pick up the pieces of that potentially great union of culture and cooperation that could have been established all those decades ago, had our foreign policy choices been just that bit wiser.

And this, if it happens, will be down to Donald Trump. And I never thought I'd see myself saying that.

[peter]

"They are creating insecurity in order to sell us protection," said Yanis Varoufakis, voice of the European progressive left, from the Munich 'security' conference a few days ago. "We know your game," he continued, "It's the classic tactic used by the Mafia for decades."

From the right end of the political spectrum, an ex CIA analyst and US government advisor Larry Johnson said that our governments (in Europe) were creating a "straw man" in order to frighten us into acceptance of a foreign/defence policy that would see a continuation of the hostility towards Russian that has blighted our relationship for decades.

In Israel, the release of six hostages by Hamas (as per the terms of the ceasefire) is responded to by a permanent delay of the agreed release of 600 Palestinian prisoners, many just as much deserving of the title hostage as any of the Israeli's held, in order to goad the Palestinian side into breaking said ceasefire, and providing the requisite excuse for Israel not to proceed to phase two of the arrangement.

It seems that on all sides the West is determined that the killing continue, whether it be Ukrainians and Russians in Europe or Palestinians in the Middle East.

I watched the tearful reunions of the six released Israeli's on the BBC news last night (and who could not be moved by the joy of such scenes), and saw the cursory attention given to the failure of Israel to uphold its end of the bargain, on the grounds of contrived complaints about the manner of the Israeli hostage releases - useful cover to conceal its real objective - and thought it was ever thus. Palestinian lives do not equate to Western (and I include Israeli's in this grouping) ones in any meaningful way: they never have and they never will.

It's too depressing to require any further comment. These politicians of the Western Liberal elite will never allow peace to pertain as long as they draw breath. The center, it seems, has for once become more dangerous than the edges.

-----0-----

The problem with the European poodle, is that now the American owner has suddenly cut the leash and set it free, it has not the slightest idea what to do with its liberation.

Kier Stamer will this week head off to Washington in order to try to placate the man who he sent Labour officials over the water to canvas against, and Trump will rightly humiliate him.

Entirely the wrong move on Stamer's part. Why even bother to go? Macron has been granted first audience; let him do the sucking-up. If America wants us free, then let's be free. More - let's go where we should have been all along, and develop relationships with that very individual who Donald Trump is saying we should, Vlad the Mad, Vlad the Bad, or more rightly, simply plain Vladimir Putin, a guy who recognises the value that a combined Europe and Russia, working as equal partners to balance the three-legged Asian-American stool of world geopolitical power, could bring. Were Stamer to also begin making overtures to the Russians, alongside the French and Germans, Trump might suddenly start having second thoughts about the wisdom of humiliating Europe. He'd start to realise that America without its 'poodle' was a site less secure from potentially greedy eyes from the East, than it had been.

That poodle might not be much: but at need it can still deliver a bite that could mean all the difference in a fight.

-----0-----

Hmm...

Regular readers will know I'm not a fan of the right wing press, and in particular the Mail Group newspapers including the Daily and Sunday Mail.

But today I'm bound to say they've printed an important story. I'll print the whole headline in quotes before describing the rest of the front page.

As thousands of REAL criminals go uninvestigated, two detectives call on a grandmother. Her 'crime'? She went on Facebook to criticise Labour councillors at the center of the 'Hope You Die' WhatsApp scandal exposed by the MoS

(Main headline)

Come Out. It's the Thought Police

The photograph accompanying the headlines show two plain-clothed police officers pictured on a door-bell cam, waiting outside the door of a house, with their police identification tags on clear display. The blurb accompanying the picture reads "Caught on the doorbell cam. Two detectives making a house call over innocuous posts."

For those who might have missed it, the reference in the top quote is to a recent scandal in which a group of Labour councillors were found to have been exchanging derogatory and disgusting posts in a private WhatsApp group, about people in their council area, who had been perceived as 'difficult customers' or complainers of one variety or another. One notorious comment (referred to in the headline) had said of a resident, after a bout of abusive description, "Hope You Die!"

The story then goes on to relate how Helen James, a 54 year old resident of the borough, had called for the resignation of the councillors in question, but had subsequently recieved a "Stasi like" visit from the police about her posts, although they conceded that she had commited no offence in the making of them.

Mrs James was understandably shocked to receive such a visit, and said that it had "made her afraid to post on social media" from then on. "It was actually quite scary," she said. "It made me think I'd best just keep quiet for the rest of my life."

So what was going on here? Police intimidation with a political motivation? Over zealous policing of perfectly legal and acceptable postings, simply because they made perhaps 'uncomfortable' reading for some other individuals? A bit of 'looking after your friends' (who might, say, have a handle on the purse-strings or something, next time they came up for review)?

Whatever the reason behind this visit, it's not a pleasant situation. It's the very reason I'm personally careful about what I post. I avoid some issues simply for fear if similar style occurrences were I to pursue them. This is not how things should be. We do not live in the East Germany of the Soviet era. We don't have a Stasi, or a Gestapo, or a thought police, who should come knocking at our doors to instill compliance with the state dictates, silence in the face of corruption or just to simply let us know that 'Big Brother' is there (as in 'Kier Stamer is Watching You') - but you'd be nieve not to recognise that this type of occurrence is the first step on a dangerous pathway. A very dangerous pathway indeed.

[peter]

As I packaged up the weekend papers for return to W H Smiths last night, I picked up the issue of the Financial Times and the once monthly color supplement they include which focuses on leisure activities for the wealthy elite, happened to fall out of it.

Except that it had subtly changed. Previously glorifying in the less than tasteful title of 'How To Spend It', I noticed that the title had morphed into the less insulting to those not lucky enough to sit at the top of society's financial pecking order, and more covert acronym of HTSI.

Was this because even the Financial Times recognised that in this time of real and existential hardship for huge numbers of the population, the previous title was not only offensively insensitive, but downright inflammatory. Time perhaps not to draw attention to the fact that in the face of stagnating and declining living standards for the many, there remained a few at the apex for whom they had never had it so good. That the tragedies of the pandemic and war in Europe had not resulted in a massive reduction in their disposable incomes, their future prospects, the vista that they looked out upon as their lives unfolded into one bleak day following another. On the contrary, for this group the money had simply flowed upwards in an ever increasing stream as government opened its coffers and huge monetary resources flowed from the treasury into the society. It is estimated that something like 600 billion pounds of the national wealth was released into the hands of the furloughed workforce, from wence it flowed directly upwards into the hands of the business ownership, the bankers, insurers, mortgage company ownerships and rentier capitalists, and thence into goods and assets which yet further rose in value, in the face of rampant inflation.

It was no coincidence that a few short weeks ago an antique Stradavarius reached the highest price ever recorded for a violin, when it was sold by Sotherby's New York to an "anonymous buyer". The newscaster reporting the sale raised a quizzical eyebrow and wondered aloud whether "the buyer can actually play it".

This is where we have reached. The wealthy recipients of our money taken from the treasury, from our industry and wages, have now so much residual cash that they simply do not know what to do with it. There are only so many houses and buildings to buy, so much land that can be acquired, and ultimately other resources have to be turned to. I opened the copy of HTSI I held in my hands and sure enough, more evidence of this most difficult of conundrums for the superwealthy stared back at me. Aspreys, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Cartier - they were all there. Great drooping necklaces awash with diamonds and emeralds. Minutely crafted pieces of extraordinary beauty and delicacy, fit for museum display cabinets and certainly never for actual wearing. Diamonds, sapphires and rubies intertwined in gold filigree in pieces than must cost in the hundreds of thousands if they cost a penny. On and on the pages went, some ten or fifteen plus, before you even reach the contents page of the magazine.

I report this stuff because few people ever get to see it. Most are blissfully unaware that while they budget to make ever shrinking resources stretch to ever greater lengths in the face of ever increasing costs of everything that they need in order to survive, an elite circulates above them, above even the cheap glamour of the Beyonce's and the Kardashians that they think are the apogee of taste and 'good living', enjoying surplus that they can only dream of - excess wealth to the point that it becomes embarrassing even to them (hence the noted title change) and even problematic in that at this level of income...what the hell do you do with it? Once you've bought all the houses and land and cars and paintings, once you've had all the holidays, eaten all the meals and drunk all the champagne that your only human body can stand....and still the bloody stuff keeps on pouring in.....

Spare a thought for them then, the ones that ex Eurythmics singer Dave Stewart referred to when whining about "How people didn't understand" how hard it was to be that rich. How life could become meaningless when you'd surfeited yourself on everything it had to offer.

Well come to daddy because 'Doctor Peter' has the cure. It's called taxing the crap out of you until your pips squeak. It's called taking back that 600 billion that that idiot Sunak gave away, it's called taking back every penny that you hijacked and price-gouged out of the public in the 'cost of living crisis' that your greed and grasping had as much to do with creating as anything else, its called creating a society based on equity and fairness and not running a legislature that's driven by the desire to protect the interests of a minority few and at the expense of a multitude of the many.......

.......And if you don't like it, then you know where the fucking door is!

-----0-----

Good of Zelensky to say in today's press that he is "prepared to quit" in return for peace in Ukraine and a guarantee of joining Nato.

Funny that; I thought democratic politicians quit when they were voted out, but obviously I have it wrong there.

But at what point does he think that he can call any shots in this business as it currently stands? He blew it. He's yesterday's man and the times they are a'changing.

As for David Lammy; he tells us not to fall for Russian propoganda dressed up as realpolitik. He's lying. Russia has won the war. It's won militarily. It's won diplomatically. It's won economically. This is the bald truth. It isn't propoganda and it isn't Russian lying. It's the simple truth that Donald Trump has had the courage to acknowledge and our politicians insist on hiding from us.

Donald Trump - and you can hate on him all you like - has done the only thing he could have, to stop this senseless war and unnecessary killing. The alternatives were to allow it to continue until Ukraine was a smoking ruin and all its people fled or dead - or watch the conflict proceed up the escalatory ladder until nuclear conflagration was the inevitable endpoint.

Our politicians are so mired in their own narrative of the 'bad Trump' picture they have been pushing, that they fail to get that it's over. Trump is who they have to deal with. Trump and Putin, doing what is necessary to normalise Russo-American relations, and get the world back onto an even keel. Don't they even get that Ukraine is simply a sideshow to them? It isn't a national security issue to America, it's an economic one. At that meeting in Doha, Ukraine was a side issue. The huge majority of the talking was not about Ukraine and Zelensky, it was about sanctions lifting and economic development, and trading relationships. Europe isn't in the picture because there is no Europe. There's just France and Germany and the United Kingdom going their own way and fighting like cats in a sack.

Forget Ukraine and Zelensky and hating on Russia. The world changed. It turned on a sixpence and we have to get with the plan or sit on the sidelines carping and counting the cost. Neither Russia nor America need Europe anymore and our leaders need to change that; get with the drift, open up the taps for business and trade, for cheap oil and gas to return, for mutual benefit. We've made bad calls for sure - it's going to cost us because now Russia will call the shots. But there's no evidence that Putin is particularly vengeful. He'll trade because it's in Russia's interests to do so.

So here's my prediction for the week. Stamer will visit Trump in Washington and Trump will humiliate him. Oh, they'll present a nice picture for the cameras, but Stamer will get nothing. No agreement, no concession, no change of course from Trump. He'll come back pretending he's reinvented the wheel, but in reality he'll have shit. Hopefully he'll get that Europe is a chicken that won't fight anymore and realise that he's got little choice but to turn to the British public grinning sheepishly and say, "Actually - you know all that stuff we said about Putin being the next Adolf Hitler.......", but I won't hold my breath. It'll probably take Farage to spell it out for the British public and by the time of the next election it'll be too late. We'll have fallen behind the French and Germans in realising the 'new normal' and have lost too much ground to catch up.

Cest la vie. It is what it is.

[peter]

If things are looking right, we may just be inching towards a Ukrainian peace deal, step by tortuous step.

At the meeting between Trump and Macron yesterday, Trump suggested that Putin might be prepared to accept some limited EU/European troops present in Ukraine as a peace keeping force and also that President Zelensky was almost ready to agree to a deal regarding Ukrainian rare-earth mineral deposits, his rejection of which caused the nasty exchange of commentary between the two leaders last week.

On the first of these suggestions, it's difficult to judge the veracity of the comment. Trump was after all sitting with Macron next to him and would have been trying his best to keep the atmosphere on an even keel - and it's true that it's difficult to see Putin accepting anything like what the comment suggests: but stranger things have been known, and there are many different ways of making the statement true that wouldn't be too challenging to the Russian president (say for example the peace keepers were situated only on the western border of Ukraine right away from the Russian border, or indeed perhaps the Russians themselves shared a role in the peace keeping. It'd be far more likely however that any deal with Putin would be based on that of the Istanbul communique, and would demand complete Ukrainian neutrality (which incidentally was the arrangement that the democratically elected Yanukovych in the Maidan coup).

But all this aside, things are looking hopeful and let's hope for poor devastated Ukraine that this pans out. European leaders will gradually come around to this, despite Kier Stamer's insistence that "Russia does not hold all the cards" in this morning's press. No - they don't: but they hold enough as to make no difference and unless this reality is accepted there is very little point in Stamer's going to Washington at all later this week. He's got to get it: Trump wants this war to end and it will end. The 'plucky little Zelensky' myth will be busted as the money trail is followed and the true scale of the corruption is uncovered. Heads will roll in the USA and who knows, perhaps in the UK as well. Zelensky might escape prison, but prison could well be the safest place for him, such is the number of enemies he has garnered in the last 3 disastrous years. It was interesting to see on the BBC news last night, a vigil from one of the main squares in Kiev for 'the dissapeared'. Thousands of Ukrainian troops have simply vanished from the action with their families receiving no details of what has happened to them. One tearful woman spoken to said, "We simply want to know where our loved ones are - what has happened to them. We are being told nothing." This is, to my knowledge, the first time anything suggesting something a bit questionable has been going on, has been reported (though actually perhaps not: I do remember a report that raised the issue of Ukrainian losses being much higher than was being admitted to on one occasion previously).

But anyways, let's keep our fingers crossed for a successful resolution to this utterly pointless war. And if you still don't believe it to have been so, watch the YouTube video of Jeffrey Sachs speaking to the European Parliament spelling it out: saying that he was present in Ukraine for the negotiations with Russia at the Yanukovych point, and that Russia now as then, have absolutely no territorial intentions on Ukraine or anywhere beyond. (Incidentally, why would it? The one thing Russia is not short of is territory: it crosses 11 time zones for goodness sake.)

-----0-----

Returning to the BBC briefly, the corporation made a serious contribution towards bringing the truth about what has been happening in Gaza into the public sphere - and then pulled it.

The controversy surrounds a BBC News produced documentary called Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, in which daily life in the strip is viewed through the eyes of 3 children. It was brutal and uncompromising, not flinching away from the daily horrors which the people endured, but was immediately labelled as "Hamas propoganda" by the right wing and Israeli lobby, and the producers and corporation roundly castigated.

Needless to say it was no such thing: it merely documented the truth as experienced day in and day out by the inhabitants of Gaza. Yet this truth being simply too hard to bear being shown to a wider audience was apparent from the backlash. Those sitting on the Israeli side of the fence (and the pro-Zionist organisations in the UK were loudest in their complaints) were clearly outraged that the true results of Israel's actions should be so starkly laid bare, and were having none of it.

And the BBC, like a craven lap-dog capitulated and pulled the documentary from their website (BBC i-Player) on which it had been available to view.

Massive respect to the makers of the documentary for their journalistic honesty - doing exactly what all journalists are supposed to do, all the time - and respect to the BBC for funding it. Contempt however for crumbling at the first sign of the inevitable backlash that you must have known would follow its broadcasting on the tv news channel, and the subsequent action to prevent anyone who had not been able to see it on its first airing from doing so.

Is this where we are, that minority groups (with undeniable 'clout') can dictate what the public are allowed to see, even in an issue as important as this, when British public opinion could be used to bring pressure on our politicians, to change our policies towards the people responsible for such scenes in the first place.

(Incidentally, one lie that has appeared in the right wing press is that one of the children used was the son of a Hamas official. True - the boy's father is a Hamas government appointee. He's the Minister of Agriculture or something. A respected academic, educated in the UK and the author of at least one book on agricultural practice in dry environments. Not exactly a wild-eyed gun toting fighter, fresh from the conflict battle-zones. Just a simple government employee with no history of employment within the struggle. Yet our media see fit to portray him as a violent terrorist by simple use of the term Hamas and ommission of his actual role. This is how news is distorted when journalists betray their professional duty and render themselves unfit to perform the important responsibility they owe to the public they purport to serve.)

[peter]

America says jump and the poodle says, How high?"

Stamer's announcement yesterday of the "biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war" comes at the expense of the foreign aid budget. Provision of life curtailed in favour of the spreading of death. Fake enemies conjured up with smoke and mirrors in order to get people to accept the production of rockets and guns while our children go to school hungry. Jeffrey Sachs is exactly right: Kier Stamer should not be wasting his time going to see Donald Trump tomorrow - he should be phoning Vladimir Putin to try to repair the damage of 30 years of misguided foreign policy concerning Russia.

I'm not going to pretend not to be biased in this: I'm naturally more inclined towards the rich cultural traditions of a Russia that have given us Tchaikovsky and pushkin, the Winter Palace and St Basil's Cathedral, than the immature shifting society whose major contributions seem to be Hollywood and Disney land, but these things aside, it just seems to me that the Russian population is more 'adult' in its thinking, more reasoned and stable as a society.

Compare the two leaders. Putin is no plaster saint, but he's set out a program for his people and has stuck with it. He's taken a broken country and given it back its sense of purpose, of destiny. He's done it with one hand tied behind his back, with no help from a West that insisted in viewing him as an enemy to be thwarted rather than a potential ally who's partnership could have carried the world forward into its next phase of development.

Trump on the other hand is .....well......something else. No-one can deny that he can effect change. But he's mercurial and unpredictable - the exact opposite of his Russian counterpart. It's too early to tell where the Trump administration is going to lead, but make no mistake, while the eyes of the world are facing toward Europe and the events unfolding there, changes are afoot in America itself that will radically alter the society in ways which no-one can predict. Where Putin is straight with his people, Trump will use distraction and legerdermaine to achieve his ends, whatever they may turn out to be. Contrary to what is being sold in Europe, he's not a fascist - actually he's a Democrat, forced out of that place into something new that sits outside political conventions. He's no need to become a totalitarian because he has no opposition to fight him other than the deep state, and that is being dismantled as we speak. The establishment in America is broken - but to be replaced by what is anybodies guess.

But in a pathetic attempt to pretend the 'special relationship' still exists (it never did, by the way) Kier Stamer will fly to Washington, with his defence budget increases proudly on display. Like a puppy to his master, ball held in its mouth, he'll run to Trump for praise, only to be rejected publicly and humiliated privately for his presumptuous belief his opinions matter and that Trump can be played like a fiddle. 'Bridge between America and Europe' my arse! Stop play-acting for the domestic audience Kier. You're a two-bit leaderof a country broken beyond repair. . All of the defence spending hikes that we can't afford, building of aircraft carriers that we have no sailors to man, ain't gonna change that. Turn your eyes domestically; forget the outside world and start fixing things at home and you might - just might - have a contribution to make to the improvement of the lot of the people.

-----0-----

I listened briefly to James O'brien yesterday morning, and as per usual it took about 30 seconds before he did/said something that made my toes curl in anger and disgust that this bigot, this shameless Stamerite, should be allowed even within a mile of a microphone from which to broadcast his odious distortion of what a Labour governed country should look like.

On this occasion he was pouring his scorn on the USA for voting against the United Nations motion condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine on the third anniversary of the event two days ago.

The motion was passed, but without the vote of the American representative, who along with a small number of other countries, voted against the motion. In total 17 nations voted against, and O'brien listed some of them.

"Let's see who voted with America against the resolution," he said, in a voice in which you could almost see his lip curling in distain as he spoke. "Burkina Faso. [pause] "Niger." [pause] "Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea."

You could hear the post-colonial contempt dripping in his voice. James O'brien - the equality tsar, the champion of all and everybody worse off than himself (unless he actually has to rub shoulders with the blighters) -revealed as exactly who he really is. "Look at them," you could almost hear him saying, "These pathetic little countries whose votes aren't worth the time it takes to count them, whose opinions are so insignificant in comparison to ours, that we need take no notice other than to heap scorn upon them."

That every country he had contemptuously named was populated by coloured people; well he didn't say it, but then he didn't need to.

And thus was he exposed in his true colours. Exposed for the closet racist, closet colonial byproduct that he and his ilk are and have always been. We'll shout for your emancipation, your equality, your equal value to us, until the day that you express it for yourselves. And then if it doesn't concorde with our opinions, then woe betide you! Back down you go. Burkina Faso! Niger! Eritrea! Equatorial Guinea!

God damn it O'brien I hope a million listeners heard that revelatory little exposure. I'm not even going to expound upon why some countries might have not voted for the resolution, suffice to say that a moments study of the history might show you that the situation is complex, and that perhaps it is the American volta face that might bear some scrutiny (and that God forbid, the UN is simply showing its pro Western [or anti-Russian] bias in so sweepingly adopting the default position they'd been coached to take for the last three decades).

But let that rest. You can't slay all of your dragons in one sweep of the sword. Sufficiently gratifying that James O'brien so egregiously exposed his inner prejudice, wiping away in one sweet sweep, years of carefully constructed virtue signalling pomposity.

Nice one James. Keep it up and we might see the back of you yet.

[peter]

It's an indisputable fact that we sit on the edge of a precipice of the unknown insofar as the point that AI research has reached, and many developers at the forefront of the actual research itself are uneasy about the speed with which the field is advancing, without perhaps the necessary thought being given to where this might be headed.

Current AI available - the ChatGPT, DeepSpace type - is narrow band AI in that its functionality is very limited to a narrow band of activity beyond which it has no ability to operate.

Contrast this with our own intelligence which is broader in its ability, spread across all the realms of different problem solving demands that we face in the course of our daily lives.

It is the search for this generalised AI functionality that now consumes researchers at the forefront of the field, and while there is no guarantees of success - not least because of our small understanding in relation to the nature of consciousness and its relationship with intelligence (is consciousness even needed for high intelligence to be present) - there is little doubt that at some point in the probably not too distant future, we will make the breakthrough into broad band AI.

At this point all bets are off. As one researcher put it, when a being is faced with another being so far beyond it as Einstein is beyond a housefly, the problem that being faces is how to convince Einstein that he shouldn't simply squash the fly.

Some of the key developers in this field of research believe that there is only one conceivable way in which this threat can be countered, and that is that we must elevate and integrate ourselves with this developing technology, as it is unrolled, in such a way that it cannot get ahead of us. In such a scenario, we rather see man and machine coming ever closer together through a shared interface that at some (again not perhaps so distant) point, the two become inseparable, and a new 'transhuman' being is created.

The ideas of transhumanism have become an almost mythos by accounts, within the spaces of Google, Microsoft and the other lesser known places where such research continues apace. There is an almost religiosity to the venerence given to it - a salvic aura that brooks as little divergence from the canonical belief as any dogmatic religion of the medieval days, and sees no alternative way in which humanity might want to harness the power of science and technology, in different forms of directing our future development.

And as with the insinuation of the internet into our lives, the process of introducing the technology that will bring about the transhumanist revolution will be done without our sayso: we will not be asked if this is what we want. It will simply 'develop' into the way it has to be, the process one has to unthinkingly follow in order to simply stay ahead of the game, in order to be able to participate in a fully integrated way, with the society we live in.

Already we see it happening. How many of us have smart technology on our wrists, monitoring our health, our 'steps', keeping us 'fully connected' at all times and in all places, to the points where we already feel a 'severance' if that connection is cut, albeit however briefly. A CEO of one of the big tech companies recently said effectively of this move, it begins with billions of people looking into their smartphones as they move through the streets and finishes with an integrated interface such that all the power of the vast information pool is instantly available without almost the need to even think about it. A fusion of man and machine to the point where they become one and the same. A singularity.

As with all medical research, what begins as study to alleviate the problems of ill-health and disease, always ultimately moves across into the enhancement of the normally healthy individual. Not satisfied with the elimination of disease, medical research inevitably moves towards the preservation of first of all youth, and then the extension of longevity to ultimately, one supposes, the point where we banish death altogether. So with the transhuman technology, is it gently introduced via the route of compassion. We can use this technology in order to enable the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the paralysed to walk. And inevitably as the brain/computer interface gets more integrated via the improvement of connections of the silicone and 'soft' elements of the pairing, the separation between the two begins to diminish. Inevitably this takes us to the place where such connectivity, such amalgamation, is not just acceptable, but actively desired by people, the ultimate 'must have' for which they have been waiting all their lives.

But as with all technology advancements, there will be the luddites who will not accept it. These will simply be left behind, unable to participate with the hugely advanced society that will have developed around them. They'll be as 'disabled' as those considered to have disabilities are now. The guy who heads the OpenAI group - the guys who brought us ChatGPT - is pragmatic about this. "Those who choose not to engage will need to be given their own space to continue their lives within," or words to this effect. Does it sound fanciful? How different was it when the covid pandemic was unleashed upon us? Where those who elected not to have the mRNA vaccines not proscribed from entry into the 'safe spaces' of the vaccinated? And incidentally, the tech being developed will almost certainly include that of genetic modification, of Crispr clipping and restructuring of genes, of nanotechnology 'bots' scouring and 'cleaning' us from (as it were) the inside. Moderna, one of the covid 'vaccination' producers (actually gene modification technology rather than traditional vaccination technology, but let that go) is involved in such research and development as we speak.

And finally, where does it lead? It's by no means clear that this transhumanist revolution will be equally available to all. If prior experience is anything to go by, hierarchies of availability, governed by price, are almost inevitable. Those with the most will enjoy the 'premium' experience, with a stratified layering of enhancement falling away below. And ultimately, at the far end of this rapidly becoming dystopian nightmare, we have the situation of the billions being completely in the hands of a few small hundreds. The technology overlords - Gods of their own making, overseeing the lesser Gods that their tech has enabled or forced the rest of us to become.

(Acknowledgement to Academy of Ideas for the information behind this post. See their excellent YouTube post 'The Dark Side of AI: Transhumanism and the War against Humanity.)

[peter]

Contrary to my expectations Donald Trump managed to rise above himself in his meeting with Kier Stamer yesterday - well, almost - and behave for once, almost like a normal human being.

In fairness, Stamer himself had clearly taken lessons on 'Dealing with an Orange Man-Baby' and had adopted the failsafe tactic of 'giving him butter - and spreading it on thick!'

Stamer started by offering up an 'unprecedented' second royal invitation for Trump to visit with King Charles (can't see Camilla and Melania finding much common ground, but I suppose they'll rise to it as well) and continued by .....well.......shutting the frick up. When dealing with Trump it's always best to let him do the talking, and talk he did.

He was unusually diplomatic, starting by giving a tacit nod of approval to Stamer's Chagos Islands deal ("140 Years of a strong, strong lease - sounds pretty good to me,") and followed it up by speaking positively about possible trade deals of the future that would lessen the need for tarrifs.

On the idea of helping with Ukrainian security he was less forthcoming but still diplomatic. "I've always cared for the UK, but they're strong - they don't need any help." They can look after themselves but I'll always be there. Americans in Ukraine is a backstop in itself." This sort of stuff.

So Stamer passes this test - but nothing changes in reality. Trump showed with both Macron and Stamer that he could be presidential when required; it remains to be seen whether he'll do the same for Zelensky later today, but I'm guessing he will. Zelensky will sign the minerals deal and recieve no security guarantee in return, and Trump will be pleased. He's getting what he wants. He's made noises that he'll do what he can to win Ukraine a bit of territory back in his talks with Russia, but we'll have to see what Putin has to say about that. If it happens it'll be minimal at best.

But all in all a reasonable starting point. James O'brien asked yesterday what a success for Stamer would look like and I replied, "To walk away closer to ending the war and improving relationships with Russia." I think this has inched a little closer, possibly on both scores. If Putin gives a little, Zelensky gives a little and Stamer and Macron are prepared to accept Trump do the talking with Putin in Europe's corner, then progress might be made. And everyone should be happy about that.

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You would have to look hard to find any mention of it, but there has been a significant step closer to all out conflict between the new regime in Syria and Israel in the last couple of days.

Israel has occupied an extended region around the Golan since the fall of the Assad regime and has carried out extensive bombing around the country, ostensibly to prevent weapons and arms facilities from falling into the hands of potentially hostile aggressors.

But in recent days a tension has developed between Israel and the new holders of power (if this can even be said of the ex Isis groups that now sit in Damascus), by virtue of Israel's insistence that no military presence in the south of the country will be acceptable to it. The new 'rulers' naturally feel that if they have anything approaching true sovereignty within the country, they should be able to move their own forces and armaments wherever they choose to, and have said so.

The response from Israel was immediate and unequivocal; they bombed the bejezus out of targets on the outskirts of the capital and said that they would in no way allow any threatening presence in territory bordering Israel or its occupied lands (odd sort of similarity with Russia there, don't you think). They have of late changed their tone about the Golan and the territories they are occupying, moving from saying that the occupation was "temporary" to that of its being at least semipermanent or even permanent.

All of the world recognises the Golan Heights as being Syrian, with the exception of the Israeli's and Donald Trump (who in his last presidency said he recognised it as Israeli territory). But evidence of Israeli intention to hold the territory is building. They are in the process of construction of roads and military bases on the new territories they have annexed since the regime change, and have effectively junked an agreement that was in place with the Assad administration not to extend their territorial ambitions any further. The new regime had said that they recognised the agreement (as you would expect them to), but this has fallen on deaf ears.

The country is apparently in tatters as we speak. One commentator said that it was worse than any third world country he had ever visited, with huge population displacement and virtually no reliable water or electricity supplies anywhere in the country. Governance is by accounts virtually absent. Accusations that the latest Israeli bombing onslaught effectively puts them into a war situation with the new regime abound (yet another front for them to add to their already long list) and it is widely assumed that they are acting to prevent the new regime from finding its feet. Sowing chaos in the country, destabilising the new regime and quite possibly attempting to bring about the 'balkanisation' of the country - ie to see it broken up into smaller territories of which they presumably expect to take a share.

But oddly, none of this seems to be finding its way into our news output. One would almost think that we were in some way protecting Israel from any accusations of being the aggressor, of carrying out unprovoked and destructive actions of naked hostility for purposes of its own. But this could surely never be. I mean, not with our righteously minded and unbiased media with its hands on the output. What we'd be screaming from the rafters about were, say Russia to be doing it, would surely be receiving the same treatment if it were Israel doing the same? But apparently not. Excuse me while I go and puzzle over this conundrum. One would almost believe that we are not the upstanding nation, foremost in moral thinking and rectitude, that we always purport ourselves to be: that we are rather, invested in hiding the deplorable activities of our 'friends' while being perfectly comfortable in heaping criticism and disgust on others, when they perform similar actions which suddenly become unacceptable.

[peter]

Phew!

It's difficult to know what to say really, in the short hours following the live televised meltdown of - well - everything really, that occurred in the Whitehouse Oval Office yesterday.

One UK security source probably summed it up best in an on-the-spot offhand comment that found its way into the 'i' newspaper.

The world has just changed in the last 90 minutes.

You couldn't put it better than that. Any of the groundwork done by Macron and Stamer in the previous few days lay in tatters, a rift as wide as the Atlantic was driven between the European and American positions on Ukraine and it's difficult to see anything remaining in the aftermath that could constitute a relationship of any kind at all.

One simple cannot speculate about what will happen in the days ahead as European leaders gather to consider the implications of the bust-up and the security situation of Europe going forward.

The trouble seems to have been brewing before the meeting even began but finally exploded into acrimonious exchange thanks to a less than diplomatic input from hard-line Vice President JD Vance saying that Zelensky should show more gratitude to the Americans for all the help they have received. Zelensky seems to have responded that the ocean between America and Russia would not protect them (a reference to Trump's earlier comments of a "big beautiful ocean" between them) and American soldiers would pay the price for their leader's failure to provide the security guarantees that Ukraine needs. Trump exploded into the fray accusing Zelensky of gambling with World War 3, and the chaos was unleashed.

Shortly thereafter Trump pulled the plug on the meeting and no minerals deal was signed, and a further press conference was cancelled. Zelensky was by accounts asked to leave the Whitehouse and quite possibly Washington as well. Trump has posted that it seems the Ukrainian leader has no interest in peace while the Americans are involved, saying that he (Zelensky) seems to think that the American involvement gives him an advantage. "I don't want an advantage," posted Trump on X, "I want PEACE!"

Well, that might be - but he clearly wants those Ukrainian minerals as well. "Sign the agreement or we're out!" he'd fumed at Zelensky in front of the cameras earlier. Drawing the meeting to a close he'd said sardonically, "That'll make great TV - I will say that." As the Financial Times reporter Ben Hall said, "For the Ukrainians, it's far more important than that."

Who in their wildest imaginings could ever have seen such a massive gravitational shift in world geopolitical orientation occurring in almost real-time before ones eyes. In the space of minutes, the alignment of America away from the West and into the camps of Russia, China and North Korea happened before our disbelieving eyes, and one can only imagine the furious telephone conversations and zoom-calls that will be occurring across the electronic airwaves of Europe and the world as I post.

Tomorrow's is going to be a different world to that of today and only God knows if it'll be a better one. There are signs of European leaders desperately trying to salvage something from the ashes of the disaster - Stamer has I believe spoken to both leaders, and Zelensky himself has said that it isn't too late for relationships to be resuscitated - but one doesn't get the impression that Trump will be much in the mood for talking at present. He's left a slight gap in the slammed door by at least posting the Zelensky shouldn't bother to come back until he's ready to be serious about peace, but the idea that the Ukrainian leader can realistically continue to negotiate with Trump is a pretty thin one. He's unlikely to be greeted back in Kiev with unreserved adulation following his outburst; even there people will have expected their leader to not resort to angry exchanges, when quiet explanations of the Ukrainian position would have achieved infinitely more. Whether he'll survive this episode remains to be seen, but his cachet both at home and abroad will be seriously damaged. The Ukrainians must have someone who can treat with Trump, like it or not, and at present it seems that Zelensky is not that man.

But more broadly, we in Europe must decide now whether we at last are going to cut the apron strings that have tied us to the USA since the end of WW2 (and many would say not before time). More pertinently even, how are we going to view this new severed relationship with USA? Suddenly the cost of Brexit, of not being part of the big European alliance could become much more serious a position to find ourselves in. And America? Exactly how unfriendly is it likely to be? Will Trump (for example) decide that his designs on Greenland might now take a more physical (shall we say) form? What would we do? Where is all of this going?

Only time will tell, but as the saying goes, "May you live in 'interesting' times' : well it's certainly playing out that way at the moment. I don't think even Stalin's comment about there being some weeks in politics where decades occur covers it. Decades yes - but minutes? That's a bit too fast even for me!

[peter]

One of the questions following the Trump-Zelensky debacle seems to be whether it was a deliberate ambush of the Ukrainian leader.

Ex Tony Blair advisor Alistair Campbell seems to believe it was: there were sufficient anomalies about the pre-talk press gathering to suggest that JD Vance and Trump had pretty much cooked it up, but I watched it all very carefully (including the earlier parts prior to the bust-up) and I'd have my doubts.

I just don't see that anything would have been gained by such a ploy; Trump's peace process with Putin is ,while not completely in rags, severely tattered at the Ukrainian end (ie his economic rapproacment can continue - albeit with difficulty - by dint of his ceasing materially to support Ukraine), but his grandiose attempts at being 'the President who ended the War' are shrinking, and with them that opportunity of securing a Nobel Peace Prize.

But the question is, if he stops supplying Ukraine with arms, will he also stop supplying the UK and Europe with the ancillary supplies that allow us to produce supplies for them as well? He could do this in order to cement his position with Russia and Rory Stewart, with whom Alistair Campbell has his podcast The Rest is Politics had little doubt that he was capable of doing this. He saw in addition, an emboldened Putin being prepared to take (over time) the whole of Ukraine and possibly even Moldavia as well. This might be just good old Eurocentric alarmism (never underestimate the reach of the military industrial complex on this score ) but I will concede that having listened to Zelensky who, for the first time in my personal experience, was able to point to places where Russia had failed to meet its obligations re agreements it had made (as opposed to the West/Nato which is an indisputable common occurrence), I am no longer sure that this is not possible. There is no evidence that Putin began in 2014 with any territorial ambitions other than securing the borders of Russia against Nato encroachment - but after the last three years of war and the possibly hundreds of thousands of sacrificed Russian lives, who knows what changes can have occurred and what indeed this new ordering of events following the Trump decampment might bring about.

I'm sufficiently sure of my sources of information to know that beyond question the Russians have been provoked - and quite deliberately so - into this conflict (watch professor Jeffrey Sachs' recent hour long presentation to European parliamentarians on the finer details of the historical process that led to it for confirmation), but what's been to a degree lacking has been information on the picture from the other side. I recognise the dangers of the 'echo chamber effect' where internet algorithms simply feed you the postings that correspond to those it deems you are most likely to watch - but I am in little doubt that poor foreign policy decisions over 30 years by the West have brought us to this place. The evidence is simply too secure on this. Where I begin to have doubts is where this is leading and how benign Putin's intentions remain. He has certainly handled the Ukrainians roughly, and it would be a foolish person who believes that if he 'wins' this war, then they will not pay a price in terms of the sovereignty of Ukraine going forward. How badly they will be punished remains to be seen.

But Trump remains correct that this war must end; for the future survival of mankind if nothing else. The ability of Europe to step in and take up the role of Ukrainian defender should Trump withdraw all support is questionable in the extreme. Rory Stewart thought it would take two years minimum to step up productive capacity in order to meet the demands of this, by which time it would of course be far too late. So much now depends upon trying to repair the Trump-Zelensky rift and prevent the American departure from the fray.

At this juncture it seems like a bit of a forlorn hope. Even if Zelensky can be got back to Washington (and head of Nato Mark Rutte seems absolutely to think that Zelensky's first priority should be to repair his relationship with the American President) and signs the mineral deal (that ex UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has described as simple extortion), there is no evidence that Trump simply won't sell out Ukrainian interests to Russia at the negotiating table. If he, Trump, is determined to stop the war then it will stop. Zelensky has no control over this in the absence of European ability to step in and take up America's place as weapons supplier; without the air cover and information supply that comes in from American missiles and data services, the Russian advance could not be slowed to even the level it currently is, and would increase exponentially. So by all measures the war is effectively already lost and Trump does not back losers. European attempts to alter Trump's mind (especially following his public meltdown with Zelensky) and bring him back into the fight until at least Ukraine is in a better place from which to have leverage in any future negotiations, are likely to fall on stony ground. Europeans haven't exactly been cheerleaders in their support for a second Trump presidency and Trump won't forget it. He seems to see Putin as a more profitable ally than the European leadership and sees no reason for doubting his (Putin's) trustworthiness going forward.

Zelensky has come straight to London to meet with Stamer and the latter is loving it. The two men met outside Downing Street with a very public bout of hugging and back slapping. Stamer's in the limelight as a 'bridge', between Trump and Zelensky, Europe and America, and no doubt feels at last that something is going right for him. Unfortunately, he's throwing so much support behind Zelensky and Ukraine - we'll be behind them every step of the way until the end, sort of thing - that it can only look to Trump as though we are taking Zelensky's side against his, rather than acting as a mediator (not that Trump wants a mediator; he just wants Zelensky to sign the frikkin deal and then be quiet while he, Trump, gets on with securing his Nobel Prize). There's to be a meeting of European leaders today and if Zelensky is there as he's expected to be, it's going to look very much to Trump as though Europe is gathering to secure its position against him, rather than just to discuss its increased need for self (paid for) defence going forward. Stamer was at pains yesterday to point this out, but the orange manbaby is notoriously thin skinned and will likely listen to no reason on this score, despite his being the one that actually told Europe that it must put more into its own defence.

Anyway, I haven't even looked at the papers yet to see what Stamer and Zelensky had to say to each other, so I suppose I'd better go and do that. I might be back with an update, but if so will continue with a new post underneath.

(Edit: I should add that President Zelensky is also chalked up to meet the King today, prior to attending the summit of European leaders. This meeting with Charles was requested by Zelensky, and its acquiesce to can only be seen as a slight by Trump, who mere days before, had been schmoozed by an invite handed over by Stamer, for a second 'unprecedented' state visit to the UK. Charles it should be noted, has little say in these matters - he does what his Prime Minister instructs - so this is an absolute signal to Trump that if he, Trump, believes that his position with the British monarch is somehow special, then he's very much mistaken. This type of goading is in my opinion unwise. The USA is after all a longstanding ally of the UK and Trump will be gone in four years. It would be nice to have at least a little relationship left to build upon. And after all, are we really going to sacrifice the entire post-war Western framework of relationships and defence etc, over Ukraine? Let's be clear. Sovereignty is one thing, but there's very little evidence that life for the average Ukrainian would be noticeably worse under Putin than it would be under any other leader, Ukrainian or Russian (even if this were the outcome of a peace settlement, which is unlikely). Surely getting the killing and destruction over and maintaining a tolerable relationship with America is worth parking Zelensky's pride to one side for a bit, and not forgetting all of the other advantages that a rapproacment between Russian and Western relationships could bring?)

[peter]

(Grumble, grumble.....can't reach site, hour late......grumble, grumble.)

It's just difficult to see where this 'coalition of the willing' stuff of Stamer's is going. The Financial Times report today begins with the words "Britain and France are to lead a desperate European attempt to salvage hopes for peace in Ukraine after last week's explosive meeting between US president Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Vlodomyr Zelensky."

That makes it sound like Kier Stamer et al were enthusiastically behind Donald Trump in his attempts to negotiate a peace deal for Ukraine (in their absence not forgetting), when in truth all they had done is react with dismay at the way that the American President was proceeding. They were insistent on conditions that Vladimir Putin would never have accepted in a month of Sundays - conditions that could only have resulted in a failure of any peace talks (which, under such conditions would in fact, never have even reached the negotiating table) - and would see the war continuing to grind up the lives of Ukrainian and Russian troops into the future ad infinitum.

Now they are cobbling up some alternative suggestions for a peace arrangement - something about a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities for a month or something - to present to Donald Trump as an alternative to his plans for a rapproacment with President Putin.

My God how deluded are they? Do they genuinely believe that Donald Trump is the man to hand over control of the process to Europe - to Stamer and Macron - who he believes have been freeloading on American gullibility since the beginning of the war and failing to shoulder their share of the burden? Do they understand nothing of the vanity of the man? The absolute need for him to be the Great Saviour - the Knight in Shining Armour? Take this away from him and you are left with a petulant child - a petulant child holding a loaded shotgun.

This is not a peace plan. Putin won't accept this and will simply cleave the closer to Trump as a result of it. The pair will become ever more closely bound, Ukraine will fall further and faster into Russian hands as American aid dries up and then Macron and Stamer will have to make good on their promises to "go as far as it takes" in support of Ukraine. This will include 'boots on the ground' - that soft euphemism for soldiers being ripped apart by shrapnel and bullets - soldiers that will not include the sons of Stamer and Macron, but will include very likely those of someone close to you.

And Putin, knowing that America will no longer be there, behind any fight between Russia and the rest of Europe, will be emboldened. To the victor the spoils, and all that.

I don't know, but far from what the papers seem to think, and the general commentariat who seem to think Stamer is stepping up to the plate well (and even I did yesterday), I can somehow only see these developments leading Europe closer into a face to face confrontation with Russia. Russia will not give up its gains in Ukraine - it has bought them with blood - it will be emboldened by America having pulled away from Europe, and will be ill-disposed to be told by Europe what will and will not be the terms of any Ukrainian peace deal. It is winning the war: Ukraine is running out of soldiery; it is slowly advancing towards the Dnipro and nothing is going to stop it. Europe is in no condition to fight a war with it and all parties are aware of this. What in these conditions would predispose it to be dictated to? Europe may be willing (and even that's in doubt - not many countries have actually committed to Stamer's coalition of the willing) but even so it simply doesn't have the wherewithal. The only way - the only way - that Stamer could put actions behind his words to if necessary, support Ukraine with troops, is to bring in conscription. Think on that and (perhaps) be dismayed. If you see this move on Stamer's and Macron's part going in any other way than how I've outlined then please, please post and tell me. Because turn it how I can, I simply can't.

[peter]

Okay. Here's a problem I have.

That Western Foreign policy has played its part in bringing about the crisis we now face in Ukraine is indubitably the case. The eastward expansion of Nato despite serious argument against from some really high profile figures is documented record. The broken promises and duplicitous backsliding on agreements, the unequivocal warnings from Putin as to where this would lead is given in detail by some of the world's leading geopolitical experts, people who were present at the various stages, witnessed for themselves the historical developments that have brought us here.

This evidence, if you choose to look for it, is easily found on YouTube presentations, on Wikipedia pages and even in the official documents pertaining to the periods/events, such as have been released.

But our leaderships in Europe, in the UK, tell us that "this stuff is right out of the Putin playbook." It's all Russian smoke and mirrors put up to decieve us. But the criticism from our media commentariat, pundits and our politicians, pouring scorn on any reference made to these seemingly solid accounts, never advance a single alternative account, verifiable or otherwise by a similar team of geopolitical experts, by YouTube accounts that give a different story, by a return to the source material, to actually counter these accounts.

Where is the counter argument to that which states that President Gorbachev was given explicit guarantees that no eastward advancement would follow the reunification of Germany? That states that President Clinton made the specific decision to ignore warnings and proceed with this eastward progression of Nato? That it was Western failure to adhere to Minsk 1 or continue with Minsk 2, that the CIA were behind the Maidan coup of 2014, that the legitimately elected government of Ukraine was undermined by subversive action on the part of the Western security apparatus, that it was Biden poodle Boris Johnson that prevented Vlodomyr Zelensky from carrying forward with the negotiated settlement of the Istanbul communique?

This is apparently all nonsense they tell us (they never mention specifics when telling us it's nonsense actually - such scorn is always cast generally, with no specific area that can be verified as such), Russia apologist material straight out of Putin's propoganda plan.

Well it might be. Perhaps I and Professors Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, are the dupes. We've been hoodwinked. But if were driving in a car following a road signposted to New York, and we keep passing such signage, but our passenger tells us repeatedly that, no - we are heading not to New York, but to New Orleans, we're simply being conned by false signage put up to decieve us......then surely it behooves them to demonstrate that this is the case and until they do it is reasonable to assume that the signage is in fact correct and it is they, our passenger that are trying to mislead us?

This is exactly where I find myself in relation to the situation vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and it makes coming to a reasoned decision really, really, difficult. If the evidence of Sachs and Mearsheimer is believed, then Trump is right, and we should trust Putin enough to get the war ended by as quick a means possible, even if it means some cost in territory and sovereign rights to Ukraine. If Kier Stamer and David Lammy, all of the European leadership et al are correct, and Putin is intent on the rebuilding of a 'Greater Russia' - that he has territorial aspirations that reach across Ukraine and possibly into Poland or Moldavia, then things are radically different.

I have no illusions about how ruthless Putin can be - you don't get to survive in his position in Russia by not being able to scheme and take down your enemies - but is he the Hitler style figure our leaderships are painting him? I don't actually see it. We seem to be supporting a much worse character in Benjamin Netenyahu - there are not piles of corpses that can be laid at Putin's door, women and children and elderly alike, being buried in mass graves - not to my knowledge anyway (although yes, if this war is entirely of his making as is suggested then okay, his tally is huge). But again I come up against the evidence or lack of it. How are we supposed to make these calls if our information is suspect, if we cannot trust our own leaders to be straight with us - and God knows we in the UK have had occasion enough to doubt the word of our leaders.

So like the characters of the X-Files, I want to believe.....but they are going to have to do better in order to convince me that the road signage is the conspiracy, and not what they are telling me.