What Do You Think Today?

Post by **peter** » Wed Apr 09, 2025 6:55 am

It won't make any difference, but I for one am pleased to read that 10 British nationals who have been party to war crimes in Gaza have had a dossier containing details of their actions passed to Scotland Yard's war crimes unit, for consideration regarding charges being brought.

The dossier, prepared and handed in by leading UK human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield KC (veteran of such celebrated cases as the Grenfell Tower incident, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six) contains details of coordinated attacks on protected sites and the forced transfer and displacement of civilians. The individual details of those under investigation have not for obvious reasons been released, but it is understood that officer level individuals are included amongst the men. Horror stories of bulldozers being driven over corpses and buildings being deliberately brought down by the same are rumoured to be included, and Mansfield said to journalists who had gathered outside Scotland Yard for a statement that UK nationals committing crimes abroad must not believe that they were above the law.

Clearly Israel are not going to be influenced by such actions, but if UK nationals or those holding duel citizenship with Israel are discouraged from going to Gaza and colluding with crimes committed therein, then at least something is achieved.

Perhaps of more significance in exerting pressure on this rogue state will be the description of Gaza as a "killing field" by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterress.

The heads of six separate UN agencies have issued a joint appeal to world leaders, to ensure that adequate food and medicines reach the people of Gaza who they say are now in desperate straits with commodities running extremely low. Some relief had been possible during the brief ceasefire, during which time more aid had been able to enter (though by accounts not by any means without Israeli interference in the supply) but this had now dried up once more.

The six organisations signatory to the joint appeal are the World Health Authority, UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNWRA, children's agency Unicef, the UN Office for Project Services, WFP the World Food Programme and the OCHA - the Office for Coordination of Human Affairs.

Israel insists that the comments by Guterress are nonsense - that there is more than ample food and medical supplies in Gaza - with the Secretary General being accused of "spreading slander against Israel."

Needless to say any pressure this intervention will bring on the Netenyahu administration will be fiercely resisted. Netenyahu's domestic travails have reached a point where only the continuation of the assault on Gaza (and the soon to be moves towards annexing the West Bank) are keeping him out of prison. Israel has given up all pretence of being bound by the recognised rules of international order, and in so doing (or rather being allowed to do so with impunity) has plunged the world back into the pre WW2 era of time, before which we had such things as the International Criminal Courts, the International Courts of Justice and the Rome Statutes. Now that we have shown our unwillingness to support these institutions with our combined authority and support, they immediately become as nothing, exposed as the meaningless chimeras they really are.

We are every one of us the worse off for this. Gaza today, a town near you tomorrow. Greenland, Taiwan, Ukraine or the Baltic States; there are greedy eyes and calculating minds watching just what Israel will be allowed to get away with in Gaza - minds that note the testing of our post war humanitarian institutions and the exposure of their impotence and turn to their own particular bugbears. So send not out to know for whom the bell tolls (because you already know the answer) - it tolls for thee.

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Thanks to Neil Oliver for drawing attention to Trump's Twitter post regarding the killing of 30 or so Houthi tribesmen in Yemen.

He shows before and after aireal videos of the gathered circle of people, and the blast of smoke and explosion in which their collective lives were ended. He tweets, "These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis."

Oliver asks whether this flippant attitude is really what we want - expect - from the 'leader of the free world' when exercising that grimmest of his duties, the ordering of the termination of human life. An almost jokey "Oops!"?

Never mind the fact that it is increasingly possible that these so called Houthi rebels were in fact a gathering of tribal elders (in which family members including children were also present) and were doing nothing more sinister than discussing local parochial affairs - we can't know this one way or the other, but let's assume that American intelligence did - still Trump’s attitude, his blase cruelty, is stomach turning. "Is it any wonder," asks Oliver, "That they hate us?"

He's right. The charnel house that the Middle East is becoming - has already become - while of no great concern to us in the West, shielded as we are by a deliberately otherwise occupied media, is nevertheless the source of growing horror out in the rest of the world where such blinkering is not the order of the day. The killings in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon the Yemen, to name but the active sites where human life has become a consumable commodity that can be bought and discarded at a knockdown price. The bargain bins of 'use once and discard' tat. Brown people who's lives are neither here nor there.

Oops indeed Mr President. You put down your toy now and go to sleep. Enough poking at screens for tonight and tomorrow we'll see if we can't find some flys for you to pull the wings off. Or perhaps we'll watch some more cartoons - you know...the ones from that sandy place where you get to sit in your highchair and shout, "Kill them! No Kill them! - not those ones...they're sheep you Dummies!" You like that now don't you?

Post by **peter** » Thu Apr 10, 2025 7:36 am

Where have all of the good adverts gone?

Time was when the enforced advert breaks in on ITV were little shows almost of their own right.

Some of the adverts were entertaining and funny - sufficiently so that you could have actual conversations with your workmates about which adverts you liked, and "Have you seen...." style exchanges over particularly new and entertaining ones. Remember the coffee ones for example, that built into a romantic story that had the nation gripped as to how it would play out.

Where have all of these gone? The stuff they churn out now is either banal to the point of actively making your attention shift away, or irritating to the point of annoyance (has anyone seen the Bisodol advert in which a dancing man simulates an attack of diarrhea and clutches his arse - gross, gross, gross!) But the terminally dull nature - bland and uninteresting - is more the order of the day. Insurance is dull by it's nature, but even meerkats have their limits.

Remember the Hamlet cigar ads (the golf bunker, or the guy in the restaurant with the wig), or the Heineken beer ones. Classic stuff. Of the Pepperami ("It's a bit of an animal") ones? The Pepperami multipack, the 'Bunch of Fives'? Love it.

Working in retail, I suppose I've spotted a bit more of advertising/marketing stuff than most: I've pointed out before the special edition Quality Street confectionery items, the Big Green one, the Big Blue one, the Big Yellow one, that when it came to the purple variety suddenly became just simply the Purple One (

), but it's in the field of television and radio advertising that this fall off in quality is most apparent. Perhaps they simply have no requirement for you to enjoy the advert - perhaps investigation has shown that that doesn't actually make a difference; that it's the recall (the same, whether you like or dislike an advert) that's important. Perhaps they simply don't care - only that you recall and then buy.

But please.....

If you are going to have the bad taste to force your way into our lives (the sound of the pig farmers stick in the swill bucket style of thing) then have the good taste to make something that is pleasurable or at least fun to watch or listen to. For my part I make an absolute commitment to never ever buy a product from a company that cannot entertain me when it intrudes itself unasked for into my life.

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Donald Trump is creating chaos in the world markets and when commentators on news programs talk about it, they can't exactly explain why. They are puzzled by what he is actually trying to achieve, where he actually thinks all this is going.

The problem is he's sending out conflicting signals; If he wants for example, this to adress the American deficit, then why is he offering deals for countries to avoid the sanctions?

I'm going to go right out on a conspiracy limb here today and ask a really stupid question. What if turmoil is the goal here? What if his purpose is to shake up the American system to the point where civil disorder becomes a real threat and then Trump has to call in the National Guard or military to re-establish order on the streets. Perhaps this is his way to overturn the democratic system and establish a permanent Trump administration.

Ridiculous of course. Completely bonkers. But tell me this. What is your minds picture of what a post-Trump USA looks like? It's almost impossible (for me) to visualise it. I find my mind just refuses to conjure up an image of 'business as usual' - like, of 'America as it was' before the Trump tsunami hit it and the world, for six. Of America simply returning to the old Republican-Democrat contests of the pre-Trump era.

Pre-Trump and Post-Trump. Here we are again. It's becoming a watershed point in world history and we are balanced on the pinnacle of it - except there is only one way to go.....forward. And into what? As I say, I can't picture it.

And finally, can anyone really see Donald Trump just handing over power? Stepping away with the job half done? Are we not almost guaranteed for some kind of 'Capital Hill' style showdown at the end of his term? No he can't stand again: but will he be required to? Or will some civil or world situation demand that elections be suspended, that the Trump administration remain in situ for the duration?

Tell me it's impossible. Looking out of your window this morning, tell me hand on heart it couldn't happen.

Post by **peter** » Fri Apr 11, 2025 6:38 am

Any hopes of Kier Stamer that his toadying to Donald Chump would result in a 'special relationship' being brokered between the US and UK regarding tarrifs seems to be face down in the water.

A Trump economic advisor said yesterday it was unlikely that any country would avoid the baseline tarrif of ten percent and that it would take an "extraordinary deal" to avoid this.

The UK neoliberal establishment immediately seized its chance of using this to push a number of its key desires, namely i) to find reasons for edging us back into a closer relationship with Europe in a reversal of the Brexit caused fracture of our bond. ii) To use the pronouncement to say that aforementioned EU relationship could be tied into a closer defence agreement with Europe: needless to say one that would demand great chunks of money being spent on a common defence policy that would further enhance the profits already pouring into the pockets of shareholders in the war industry (let's not call it defence anymore shall we - everyone knows it's not about defence anymore). iii) To bring us closer to that 'sweet spot' in the public mind, where we feel sufficiently anxious about falling out of the American defence umbrella to tolerate every welfare gain we've seen since WW2 sacrificed on the alter od establishment of a 'war economy', but we sit just this side of actually dipping our toe into the water: of committing ourselves to the thing that might kill the goose that lays the golden egg - war itself.

On that latter front, given that the Biden promised funding of Ukraine is rapidly nearing its limit, with no guarantees that Trump will refill the tank when it is empty, the UK government has just commited a further half billion pounds (or thereabouts) to Ukraine. We wouldn't want the Ukrainian effort to collapse into defeat prior to Europe and the UK getting something into place to ensure that the forever war keeps going for, well, forever. Okay, it's peanuts, but if we all throw in a bit then perhaps we can just about keep the thing in idle mode for a while longer. (We don't seem to be hearing much about the peace negotiations anymore do we? Is that why Trump is giving the world economy a good kicking? In order to create a news storm about tarrifs and distract from his failures in both the Middle East and Ukraine? If so, it's backfired on him, because he's made an even bigger failure of his tarrif policy and had to do an embarrassing U-turn. Who knew?)

But either way the neoliberal centrists will be fairly happy at the way things are progressing. They won't much like the market turmoil, but for everyone who looses a dollar another person will make one, and I have little doubt that there will be billionaires who have made exactly the correct calls on this and have (via a few apposite calls to their brokers or however it is done today) made a few extra billions out of it. I'd put a pound to a penny that Elon Musk will be one of them (no insider knowledge being used there of course).

Because that's what all of this is. An ideological war is being fought between the neoliberal consensus of Europe and the UK, vs the maverick fringes of the non-centrist polities of the right and the ideological anarchists of the Trump regime. And we, the poor schmucks of the proletariat, are caught in the middle. And you don't need to ask who is going to pay the piper when he comes to collect his fee.

Post by **peter** » Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:57 am

I wonder. Do you think that the inconceivable has happened and that America has fallen into the hands of a dictator?

Trump has all the manner of a Mussolini, a Moammar Gaddafi, about him. That same swaggering style, contemptuous and overbearing. In his second term he has become almost a parody of a 'Chaplinesque' style dictator character - and one begins to wonder if it isn't actually for real?

Does Trump look to 'strongman' Vladimir Putin and say to himself, "That's the way to do it!" You know you can see such words going through his head - it just isn't a stretch and perhaps that's just because it's for real.

There's already been talk about his running alongside JD Vance as his Vice President and then, subsequent to Vance winning and then immediately stepping down, assuming the role of POTUS once more. I don't personally think this is credible, but I suppose it's technically possible. I'd think that it'd more likely be pulled off by some kind of national emergency that would be cited as reason for delaying the elections. And do you know, I think that the frightening thing is that a large part of the American voting public would not only swallow it, but would be positive in their view of it.

You can just tell that Trump has no conception of himself as a normal run-of-the-mill president: his vanity cannot allow for such a picture. One former president told of how, on day one of assuming office, of walking into the Oval Office as president, the full weight of the continuity of the role he had stepped into, immediately came down with full force onto his head. It was, he said, a humbling and powerful thing, that understanding that the role was not a singular thing yours alone, but a mere rung on a ladder of responsibility to the American people.

Can anyone actually believe that Donald Trump, stepping into the Whitehouse for the second time, felt that? On the contrary, I think he entered into it with the determination that this time he would make his mark; that in the chain of presidents the name Trump would be remembered as first on the list for a thousand years. How else to understand what he has done in just 3 months as president? Upending not just America, but the world. Shaking it like a child with a rattle - for the fun and mischievous nature of it. Because he could. Like a boy in a fast car, peddle to the metal just because he could. I'm really not sure that he is actually 100 percent sane anymore - it looks to me as though his megalomania has taken over and he is no longer functioning with a full deck. You just cannot see him thinking in terms of one day handing over the mantle to his successor, humble in his stepping away from the central role and ready for a life of quiet contemplation and 'painting' (ala Dubbya).

Something tells me that the Trumpian end will not involve this kind of scenario. Can anyone believe - really - having seen what we have now, that had the january 6th Capitol Hill attack ended differently, had the crowd been successful in taking the building, that Trump would not have stepped back into the Oval Office as dictator on that day, rather than having had to wait for the second opportunity as it now presents itself?

Sarah Silverman in her 'culture' piece in the Friday 'i' newspaper led with the headline, "Donald Trump has all the traits of a comedian." I don't think so. I think that he has all the traits of a very different kind of character - one that isn't very funny at all.

-----0-----

Not very much is being made of it, but behind the scenes I wonder what is being discussed regarding the Vlodomyr Zelensky claim to have taken a number of Chinese prisoners in Ukraine, fighting apparently under the Russian flag in the war that still rages across that country.

This is another piece of news that one can't quite get a handle on. It just doesn't seem quite right that Xi Jinping would have 'boots on the ground' in Ukraine. He's been studious in his avoidance of getting involved in this dispute and why, one asks, would he compromise his distance from it by having his soldiers represented on the front line where they could be taken, let alone anywhere else?

Are we really to believe that Russia and China are so close these days, that they exchange troops to fight in each other's wars (not that China has any)? It doesn't make any sense. It seems far more like a really unsubtle bit of propoganda, to try to get China pegged into the same morass as Russia: a grubby bit of merchandising to try to blacken the name of China on the world stage - and one that has the West's (if not Trump himself's) clumsy fingerprints all over it.

It might be Zelensky himself that has drubbed the idea up - for what purpose I cannot imagine - but I somehow doubt it. China is pretty far from Zelensky's radar, but as a 'gift' to Trump/America he might have been persuaded to engage with the ridiculous 'trumped up' tale. Who knows. The world gets madder by the day. Or perhaps Xi himself is feeling left out. "The West and Russia have got their wars and I want one too!

Can't see it somehow. Just can't see it.

-----0----

British Steel eh? British again.

Basically the Chinese owners of the plant at Scunthorpe have said that the blast furnaces are too old to continue in operation and that the economics of the plant are such that it isn't viable to replace them. I don't know if they have formally said the plant must close, but this is the jist of it and Kier Stamer is not happy.

Thus his announcement that parliament will be recalled today from their Easter recession, in order to debate emergency legislation that would bring the plant (presumably as a prelude to the rest of British Steel) back into public ownership.

It's not a universally popular suggestion. Many (no doubt Conservative) MPs think it should remain in the private sector, but given the economics pointed out above, it's not clear that any investors could be found who'd take on the loosing enterprise.

But but but......

I haven't heard it said yet - and I'd think it unlikely that Kier Stamer would raise it as an issue - but it crosses my mind that a country's steel industry is very important - like really important - if it is shifting its economy onto a war footing. Not exactly the time that you'd want your key industry for the production of weaponry and armaments, vehicles and planes etc, to go into liquidation.

And if all of the noises coming out of Europe at the moment are to be paid attention to (never mind our own Generals and leadership) the plans to shift to a war economy are already well under way (not that anybody thought to mention this in the run up to the general election or anything).

So I'm betting that this is the reason for this sudden love of the steel industry by Stamer. Let's see if they can be honest enough with the British public to admit it.

(Nb. I haven't read the headlines yet,so let's go see if I'm right and the 'war' element is studiously avoided. I'll come back if I'm wrong and be honest. Honest. )

Edit: some passing mention of it being a "strategic asset" and its closure having "security implications", but no reference its obvious centrality to the development of a 'preparing for war (even as a way of maintaining peace)' strategy.)

Post by **peter** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 3:29 am

Jeremy Corbyn has called for a Chilcot style inquiry into the UK role in the destruction of Gaza and has to date garnered the support of 30 or so MPs in so doing.

Given the incontrovertible evidence that accumulates by the day in respect of the genocidal intent from day one of the post October 7th operation, it seems a pitifully small number in comparison to the whole (around 650) but there you have it. I suppose numbers of MPs have good cause not to wish the rather too close ties of the Israel lobby to the UK parliament to be exposed to too public scrutiny (freebie trips to Israel and all notwithstanding), but still you'd have thought that by now somewhat more of them would be interested to see to exactly what extent we have been complicit in the slaughter.

While I have little faith that such an enquiry could actually achieve much - you don't exactly see Tony Blair suffering much as a result of his damning exposure by said enquiry cited above - it is the one and only thing we can actually do as a people, to exercise pressure on our parliament and administration, to be mindful of what they sanction in our names.

To this end, my recommendation would be for petitions to be drawn up in every individual constituency, for people to sign pressurising their particular MP to join the group calling for such an enquiry. MPs will respond with alacrity to nothing more than a threat to their support within the constituency. It's what their re-election in 2029 will depend upon. Let's make each and every one of them stand up and be counted. Do they support the enquiry (to be carried out much faster than the seven years it took Chilcot), ot not? We the public have a right to know exactly the extent to which we as a nation are complicit in what has been done. Such an investigation could provide invaluable information for any future prosecution arising in the international courts, and the arraignment of the guilty parties therein where appropriate.

-----0-----

Clearly rattled by the backlash against his tarrifs, Donald Chump has now decided to exempt computers, iPhones and other electrical goods from his exorbitant tarrifs that threatened to hit American consumers really hard in their pockets.

We are talking said iPhones doubling in price, and there was no way the phone obsessed culture we live in was going to accept that.

Even Trump is not c*** enough not to realise that there is a point beyond which the zombified people cannot be pushed. Getting between them and their phones is beyond that point.

Needless to say it'll be another thing that was "part of the plan" (it's having some transitional difficulties, but it's going to be beautiful - just beautiful) like that other hunk of U-turning backsliding he did the other day, but everyone can see through it. In the UK the Daily Star have already been considering buying an iceberg lettuce to see which lasts longer, but I don't think we're quite there yet. Still the comparisons between Trump and Liz Truss's disastrous mini budget (re world markets) are definitely there for the making. It's only thanks to the Japanese deciding to unload American debt as unreliable (via the selling of American bonds) that has caused Trump to reverse his tarrifs. My bet is that in 90 days (when said tarrifs are supposed to be reintroduced) they will be quietly forgotten about and pushed into the long grass. By that point we will be three or four different global emergencies down the road - each one Trump inspired in one way or another - and we'll have all long forgotten about tarrifs and their reintroduction.

Meanwhile over in the States, the hardcore Trump fan base will paper over these failures of their man (who frankly, hasn't succeeded in anything he said he would in his campaign yet) and continue to slavishly hang on his every word. Kier Stamer must feel a bit stupid for being the first in line to suck orange dick, now that every country in the world that did have the bollocks to stand up to Trump is enjoying exactly the same tarrif rates as we are, but there you have it. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Good to see that the 'special relationship' is serving us as well as it always has done (that is, earning us about as much respect as a clinker hanging from an old man's scrotum). Nothing changes eh?

----0-----

It's coming out that what prompted this weekend's sudden rush by the government to get the British Steel plant at Scunthorpe away from its Chinese ownership were indications that Jingye (said Chinese parent company) were attempting to sell raw materials that are in transit to Scunthorpe - raw materials that are critical to keeping the blast furnaces going upon which the plant's operations depend.

These furnaces, if allowed to 'go out' would be practically impossible to restart and therefore it was critical to get the materials to the furnaces in time to prevent this. In fact so important is this, that if a story in this morning's Sunday Times is to be believed, the government were prepared to issue instructions to the navy to escort it to its destination. The coking coal is in transit as we speak, and clearly the government has concerns that it could be "intercepted or delayed" prior to reaching Scunthorpe. Presumably this is because in theory the coal still belongs to Jingye (though presumably they will be reimbursed for their outlay), and no doubt the government fear that there are 'external actors' who would take amusement from any difficulties we suddenly faced in production of our own 'virgin steel'.

Wonder who that might be?

-----0-----

Pleased to read that American actor Paul Giacometti has a role in the new Downton Abbey film, the first post the death of legendary actress Maggie Smith who held leading roles both in the televised series and in the subsequent film adaptions.

Giacometti has long been one of my favourite actors and I like the soft appeal of the Downton Abbey films as a palliative against all of the horrors of real life. Put the two together and I'm on board for starters.

-----0-----

Got to feel just a little bit sorry for Camilla Hempleman-Adams, 'first woman' to complete a solo trek across Canada's Baffin Island using only skis and foot-power.

It should have been 'first soft western woman' to complete the trek of course - a fact that the lass soon discovered as she faced a barage of howls and criticism from indigenous people who naturally do the trek every other day as a matter of their normal routine. In fact unless a woman stops and pops out a sprog or two en route it isn't even considered worthy of mention.

So poor Camilla, daughter of adventurer (the locals don't much like that description either) Sir David Hempleman-Adams, has found herself in the middle of a storm, accused of promulgating ideas of colonialism and the ignoring of local presence, and desperately trying to convince everyone that she didn't mean any offence.

And of course she didn't. She was just trying to live up to her father - to make him proud and to carry on a family tradition (of ignoring local achievements of wherever he'd happened to go adventuring, no doubt) and suddenly she finds herself in the middle of all that.

But fair play to her. What she's done is a bloody tough ask for a westerner, and for a woman let alone a man. She doesn't need to worry about the fact that her achievement is done on a regular basis by the locals. She isn't local. Like when a blind person climbs Everest, it isn't lessened by the fact that sighted people do it a hundred times a week. So yes - she should perhaps have said she was the first western woman to achieve this....but let's forgive her her slip. Like any ground breaker, she relies upon the publicity of what she has done and first woman has the necessary ring to it.

And do the Innuits really care? They shouldn't. They should treat us westerners like the children we are, who live lives so banal that energy is left over for such meaningless pursuits. When I was in Tibet I spoke to sherpa guides who summed it up. They hadn't climbed Everest before we got there because they simply couldn't be bothered. They didn't see the point. The only thing that ever induced them to do so was the money we would pay them to haul us up there and back. This could ease the hardship of life in the high climes and this was the beginning and end of it. The Innuit should be the same. They have bigger fish to fry than jumping on our politically correct concerns about what our forefathers did that was right and wrong. They have lived life in the extremes and have nothing to prove to us. They should pet the little rich girl on the head and say, "There there! Aren't you a clever girl then!" A dose of reverse patronising that would get better results than all of the whining complaining that they could ever do. They didn't need our approval or recognition before we came to their island and they don't need it now.

Post by **peter** » Mon Apr 14, 2025 5:43 am

The Madness of King Trump.

That's what sme people calling it, while others believe there to be method behind it all.

Gary Stevenson, British You Tuber and economics pundit spoke at length yesterday about his own conclusions (or lack of them) and said that after long and hard thinking he was little closer to understanding what Trump's goals were, but was beginning to believe that the thing was basically driven by incompetence.

Another American congressman spoke to an audience of his peers saying that evidence was emerging (spikes in telephone calls to the NYSE in the hours prior to significant comments by Trump etc) that the whole thing was just grift. Market manipulation for the purpose of enrichment of a few individuals with advance inside knowledge (Trump and Musk included, needless to say) carried out at the expense of the stability of the entire world economy. (Nb. Economics Professor Richard Murphy said he intended to do this months ago.)

But the inept stupidity angle cannot be ruled out either.

By basing his 'tarrif equation' on the trade deficit size of America with any given country, by necessity poor countries that cannot afford expensively produced American goods, but produce cheap goods (by virtue of their own wage bills and costs being much cheaper) for the low end American market, are punished. ie Poor people in the poorest nations on Earth are punished alongside the poorest people in America.

Richard Wolf points out that this includes places like Laos, Cambodia, Thailand - places that border America's greatest rival China, but who rather than being courted for their strategic value in this respect, are instead driven closer to China by the necessity of Trump's actions. And Japan, America's most stalwart supporter for decades since the end of WW2, finds itself punished by the Trump tarrifs and suddenly isolated. It does the only thing it can and begins to rearm.

And Europe.

Cut adrift from the USA, punished with tarrifs and told to look to its own ends, begins the process of re-arming. Germany begins the process of re-arming. And as Dr Wolf points out, this was done twice in the 20th century and it didn't end well. No threat to America, a resurgent Germany would only have one place to project its newly achieved power - Europe. Maybe, maybe not - but history repeating itself and all.

So yes. Trump is an enigma. But a fucking dangerous one. One commentator said "It's amateur hour in the Whitehouse," and it's hard not to agree.

Truth is, Trump has fucked up on everything he's turned his hand to. He's fucked up on his tarrifs, which he's been forced to back down on by virtue of nearly driving America into bankruptcy. He's fucked up on Ukraine by screwing up the negotiations with Putin, putting forward proposals that he will never accept. He's fucked up in the Middle East, with ludicrous commentary on Gaza that just has Netenyahu laughing at him, and by sending Witkoff to Iran with a proposal they will not buy; that they surrender their right to refine nuclear fuels for domestic energy purposes. They've said they will never surrender that right and Trump has threatened to bomb their nuclear facilities if they don't. They won't. He can't. Ergo he's made himself (and America alongside him) look like a blowhard.

So basically he's fucked up on everything he's touched since becoming president. So maybe the truth is he's both a grifter and an incompetent? What must Putin and Xi be thinking watching this clown in charge of the greatest nation on earth.

Post by **peter** » Tue Apr 15, 2025 5:34 am

Ex Conservative Party leader and current mouthpiece for the more regressive and stupid attitudes swilling about in the S-bend of that failed institution is as per usual down on the Chinese.

He's sticking his oar in about the current kerfuffle over Chinese ownership of key British infrastructure, when it was of course his own party that starteoff the trend of selling the 'nation's silver' to outside ownership in the first place.

Because, in a circumstance that seems entirely to have escaped him, once you place something on open market, anyone can buy it - and that includes investment companies or interests controlled by foreign governments you might not like. The clues in the name idiot. 'Open' market. See?

In fact there's much in the press today about barring the Chinese (be it state or private companies) from ownership of or involvement in our key infrastructure (or projects to build thereof), but in typical fashion I believe that the arguments are all framed wrong.

If the events of the last 3 months have taught us anything it is that no-one should be involved in utilities and infrastructure upon which our security and stability depend, other than either the state (in the key infrastructures) or the UK controlled private sector in areas of lesser importance.

There's no need to single out the Chinese: at the moment they are no worse or better than our suppodly 'closest ally' the United States of America. There's not a sheet of toilet paper to be slipped between them in turns of which could be trusted to partner with in the key areas of our national security........

Neither!

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The carting of celebrities up into space in order for them to spend 3 minutes spaffing around in weightless antickery (new word there I believe) is about as banal and pointless an exercise as walking across Baffin Island on skis or indeed climbing to the top of mountains just because 'they are there'.

So now Katy Perry et al have been 'into space', the first all-female 'crew' of 'astronauts', and can return to tell us what a horizon expanding experience it was, how they return 'feeling the lurv' that previously they had only partly understood (for daisies and kittens and yes - grubby old you and me as well).

Well there's nice for you. I expect you'll eschew the private jet home then, and scout around for a bit of car-sharing to make the trip will you?

Can't say I remembered Neil Armstrong and crew bursting into histrionic giggles and arm-waving fits from the cockpit (aptly named in this particular rocket's case

) but I suppose that the nature of crews has changed along with the times. It's good to see that we are making such good use of our space program and the advances we have made therein.

But seriously, is this wise? I'm sorry that all I can see from such cheap stunts is a reflection of the cheap world that the Bezoz and Musk brigade would create for us to live in,but be that as it may. What these silly people with silly amounts of money to waste are not being explained or encouraged to understand is just how fucking dangerous what they are doing is.

How many of those girls had children? People who, if anything went wrong, would have been devastated by their loss? Because when an accident happens - and it will, just as it did on that Titanic visiting submarine - there will be no coming back. It'll be curtains down for everyone on board. And if that doesn't matter much for a 90 year old William Shatner, then it surely does for the four year old daughter of Katy Perry.

-----0-----

Do you know that today, years after the Covid debacle has ended (not the aftermath you understand - we'll be living with the consequences for generations to come) people are still being arraigned before the courts on charges relating to 'misdemeanours' they committed during that shameful era?

Years later, the state is persisting in hounding down those who walked the wrong way round supermarkets, or took the wrong kind of PCR test prior to entering the country.

I kid you not. Neil Oliver relates this week, the tale of a woman who'd been visiting relatives in America when the travel restrictions were suddenly imposed: who had waited it out, and then when restrictions were finally lifted, returned home with her children having taken the necessary PCR tests to pass immigration and customs checks, only to be informed that her tests were not of the appropriate kind - and that she was liable in the courts for her mistake.

Years later she'd been put before the bench and fined 4000 pounds which she had appealed against. She remains in limbo to this day, waiting for her case to be heard. Yet others, he said, are only now reaching the courts for their hearings.

Why, asked Oliver, would these historic cases still be being brought before the courts. Surely no-one would now believe there was a case for still pursuing these charges (recognised as overzealously brought even at the time) years after the event. Surely a general amnesty could be given, and an end be brought to these people's worry?

Not so it appears. It's a necessity that the state be demonstrated to have been correct in its assessment of the risks of Covid. So the charade that this was the biblical level plague that we were told it was (and that it patently wasn't) must be maintained. Nothing must undermine the narrative and a quiet shelving of these historic 'crimes' would do just that. Besides, it would open all sorts of difficult doors in respect of those who had already been charged and punished for their sins. What of them? Would they then also be pardoned, and if so, what of the fines they had paid, the punishment they had endured? Would the state also be responsible for reimbursement or compensation in this regard? No. Far simpler to keep going with the existing policy that crimes must be paid for, no matter how long it takes for the piper to call for his due. Better for maintaining the fiction that covid was a threat to humanity, that the government took all the correct decisions (we can see this now by looking at the devastated wasteland that Sweden has become) and that the transgressors are dangerous malefactors who must be punished through the courts.

Much better indeed.

-----0-----

80 years ago today, the notorious concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British army. The Daily Express pays recognition of this on its front page, the only paper to do so.

If anything more is needed to illustrate the critical importance of what is happening in our societies as we speak, then I cannot think of what that thing is. The above situation re the courts, the preparedness of the state to pursue its own ends even at the expense of justice and the truth, is exactly what the Second World War was about. That governments should be afraid of their people, not people afraid of their governments.

Yesterday I heard James O'brien pontificating that perhaps it was time to "bring in new laws", new guidelines on what should be regarded as acceptable speech, in the modern era.

He was reflecting on a recent report that had said that there was definitely no evidence of two-tier policing, in respect of the heavy response of the UK police to the Southport riots following the killing of the Southport children by the homicidal maniac Axel Rudakubana. O'brien thought that to have suggested that there was evidence of two tier policing, should have been a criminal offence, and would see laws brought in to bring those guilty of such offences to book.

No two tier policing? Mmm. Let's look at that. No two tier policing when Boris Johnson is fined fifty quid for partying in Downing Street (with countless other offences taken into consideration, while students attending raves were hit with hundreds if not thousands of pounds for effectively the same offence?

Or that Quakers talking about protesting against climate change and the genocide in Gaza are arrested and have their houses raided, while spouters of anti-islamic rhetoric and spreaders of racist hatred within our political system can openly spread their divisive message with impunity?

No. No two-tier policing here James. Still, it's only not two-tier when it's direct attack something you don't personally like, like far-right mobs running riot. And who wouldn't condemn such behaviour? Of course rioting in the streets and trying to burn down hotels with migrants in them must be cracked down on - nobody in their right mind would say different. But sending people to jail for intemporate spur of the moment posts? There is such a thing as proportionality you know.

But leave all that aside. Because there's a real risk here, that is if the James O'brien policy of legislating against 'free speech' is adopted, then by virtue of the actual difficulty of doing this, that the legislation becomes just a 'catch-all' piece of wording, by virtue of which the state can simply scoop up anyone it chooses to, on the basis of something or other that they have said.

Cardinal Richelieu famously said, "Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world and I will find something in them to hang him." We need to make sure that 'O'brien's Law' doesn't operate in just this way, or before long the fight that those men made who had liberated Bergen-Belsen 80 years ago will have been for nothing.

Post by **peter** » Wed Apr 16, 2025 7:27 am

Interesting that JD Vance chose Unheard as the platform to give an interview to, in which he made his uncharacteristically pro British comments that he saw every possibility of a "good deal" being reached on trade between the USA and the UK in the near future.

Unheard, if not exactly a far right news and comment platform, is certainly way to the right of centre, and being a more 'upmarket' (in terms of its presentation) type of chanel, probably hits the right note in the way Vance would like to be perceived in the UK. It was a snub to the BBC his choosing a relatively small and unknown platform over the go-to choice of the state broadcasting service, and you could see the BBC newscaster gritting his teeth as he acknowledged the source of the story.

The proposed deal is very much not the type of free trade deal that we were looking for as a post Brexit boost to our economy - that train has gone - but is a more specialised affair involving tech and agricultural products, plus or minus the contentious issue of pharmaceutical products.

American food standards are significantly looser in their application than those we currently adopt (which still equate to those we upheld while members of the EU), and thus such products as hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken is prohibited from sale in the UK. Vance would expect these proscriptions from to be eased in any such deal, but herein lies the rub.

Because not only does Kier Stamer want a deal with the USA, but he's also inches away from sealing a separate deal with the EU, specifically on food and veterinary standards (which would then allow for the free passage of food and agricultural products across the North/South border in Ireland) - and the signing of the latter would make very difficult the signing of the former. Knotty.

Vance is known to favour the UK signing exclusive deals with the USA rather than trying to ride both horses simultaneously, but given that the EU is our natural closest trading partner and the ne3d to get this Irish border situation sorted out (also the UK to Northern Ireland 'line' down the Irish Sea) the EU deal would seem to be the more important one to get over the line.

One can only guess how Vance - not exactly an anglophile at the best of times - will react to having his 'kind words' shoved back in his face. Expect fireworks if the EU agreement is signed. That's all I'd say.

-----0-----

There's a lot of talk about self identifying these days, about how people choose to identify themselves regarding their gender and what pronouns they choose to have applied to them.

I read a piece on the BBC website about Bella Ramsey, star of the tv adaptation of the game The Last of Us, in which the word 'they' seemed to be being used in a way that didn't make much grammatical sense. It was only at the end that the article dropped in that "Ramsey does not identify with any gender", as though this explained the quite simply odd nature of the writing.

'They' is a word that for my entire life has had a plural meaning; he, she or they (if there's more than one). Or when you were referring to a person who had no specific identity in terms of who it was (eg "Bring a friend and perhaps they can drive.")

Not so any more it seems. But how can you alter the very meaning of a simple but ever so important word such as they? It's plain wrong. Why? I don't know.....it's just the vibe I guess.

But never mind that, it seems to me that perhaps rather than thinking all the time about self identification, that identification is actually a thing that should really be left up to other people. They should make the decision based upon how you present.

In fact I think that this is already what I do. I don't feel particularly like 'a man'. I don't feel like a woman either. I don't 'identify' as either (so here me and Ramsey are in particular agreement it seems). It's a decision I'm prepared to allow others to make about me. They can see me, they can communicate with me, they can form their own opinion.

In fact most do. I'm pretty sure that I know what most people think I am within a few moments of meeting me, and that may be obliquely related to gender, but let that rest. (

) But anyway, here I stand. You know me. I'm here in these pages, exposed (as it were) for all to see. In case you need more detail (and stop reading now if you're of a nervous disposition) I consider my fare traditional - meat and two veg (small portion if you please) - and shave my chin daily. I sing in a bad baritone voice and if you placed a gradation line with Scarlet Johannsen at one end and Winston Churchill at the other I'd be occupying a position 95 percent in the direction of Churchill in appearance. (About the same body build as well.) I haven't got functional breasts, but in the mirror (no forget that....even I deserve some privacy). I have no apparatus with which to build a baby, or introduce the makings of one.

That's enough. You have all the details you need. You're not getting any more. From this point it's up to you. You decide.

Post by **peter** » Thu Apr 17, 2025 7:08 am

Big furore in the papers today over the supreme court's decision that only a biologically born woman can be considered to be a true woman, and the implications this could have for things like single sex female protected spaces etc.

Seems like a common sense decision to me - having trans-women (ie male to female) allowed into girls changing rooms in schools, sent to women's prisons, able to force themselves into specifically women's clubs or associations etc, just doesn't seem right - but I was interested that the court made a point of saying that the equality law they were referring to was specifically and only pertaining to women.

I read from this that a trans man (ie woman to man) would still be allowed to encroach into male protected spaces, which seems to mean that male spaces have no actual protection under the law anyway.

It doesn't effect me because I'd never go into a male changing room anyway. I change my clothes etc in my own home or nowhere. I use disabled toilets which are non gender specific and I don't join clubs, single sex or otherwise. But it does seem odd that in its drive for equality the actual law pertaining to this specifies apparently that it is not to be evenly applied to both sexes.

-----0-----

I notice that today's Telegraph runs a headline saying that Great USA trade deal may be sealed within 3 weeks, following yesterday's which said that any deal with the EU could scupper any chances of making a deal with the USA.

Do you think that JD Vance, the fellow making these promises, might be trying to use this temptation of a near deal with the USA as a carrot on a stick, to tempt us away from a European deal.

Surely he doesn't think we are a nation of donkeys to fall for such a ruse does he? Looking at our leadership, I suppose he might, but I doubt even they would be fooled into believing a trade deal of any moment was anything but light years away with this Trump administration. America has traditionally only made deals that are weighted heavily in their own favour - they have the power in any negotiations to call the shots and they always, without exception, make use of that power. The Trump administration will follow this historical pattern with more zealous attention than any that has preceeded it for decades. 'Make America Great Again'. The clue's in the title. Even Vance said in his interview that he would put America first; that doesn't mean being the nice fair guy in negotiations. It means being the ***t.

My advice to Stamer. The EU is closer, more reliable, fairer, and has more goods of higher standards that we want. They can be trusted and their food standards are higher. Deal with them and tell Vance to go boil his carrot.

-----0-----

K2-18b is looking good as the first planet on which we will confirm the presence of life outside of our own galaxy.

A couple of years ago the guys at Cambridge astrophysics dept announced the presence od dimethyl sulphide in the atmosphere of this planet in the 'goldilocks zone' (ie the zone of conditions that might meet the criteria for supporting life as we know it) - a chemical known only (to date) ever produced by living organisms.

Since their original discovery they've been beavering away getting more information on the situation.

K2-18b has some twenty times more of the compound in its atmosphere than is seen on earth, and as the chemical rapidly dissapears once produced, the implications are that there is a continuous source of production on the planet. The planet is thought to be a Hycean world (a world with a huge volume of liquid water ocean underneath a hydrogen/methane/CO2 atmosphere) slightly warmer than earth. The possibility is, say the astrophysics guys at Cambridge, that there is a large marine phytoplankton body responsible for the chemical's presence.

Good old K2-18b I say. Rock on! From little phytoplankton, great intelligence and consciousness may grow. Didn't happen in our case, but in yours hey, who knows.

-----0-----

Also from the Telegraph today (as is everything), the guys at the IMF have said that "70 is the new 50, so we should all work longer." They say our cognitive condition at 70 is equivalent to that of a 58 year old in the year 2000 and this together with our retained sprightlyness means there's no reason for us not to work well on into our seventies.

Fuck off is my reply. Where the fuck do you get this nonsense from? As if something like cognitive fitness could jump by 12 years in as little as a quater of a century. Changes like that take hundreds of thousands of years - even if the living conditions of every living member of a species are improving at pace all together.

This is simply bullshit put out to justify increasing the age at which pensions will be paid by governments across the western world, and to push people into working loner and for more hours than they currently are.

Because in the neoliberal ideology you are an economic unit and nothing else. The moment you become economically inactive you become nothing.

You cunts! You cunts! Do you not think we cannot see through your self-serving pronouncements, your bullshit manipulation of the truth for your own purposes. I repeat, fuck off and disappear up your own arses you bunch of useless cunts.

(Say what you think Peter.

)

Ps. I don't like using the 'C' word here, but in your cases I'll make an exception.

Edit: Actually, there's more to this than meets the eye. No doubt improved nutrition and diet etc wocould prevent earlier decline of cognitive faculties than a well fed population would demonstrate, but still the very tendency for the body to age even in the best circumstances puts an upper limit to this. If health and medical, plus better nutrition are producing such effects in previously much more impoverished countries, then statistically perhaps such effects might be demonstrable.

But as for the conditions in western societies (where the IMF is chiefly concerned and where these comments are directed to have their effect) - these have not changed materially in any way significantly enough between the year 2000 and today, to bring about such a change. It's absolute bullshit. I've no doubt that there are some statistical monkeys working for the body who can stretch the figures sufficiently to make such a claim (if they include totally different groups or populations within the two different times they are talking about) - but not such that they would stand up to scrutiny in a scientific way.

Post by **peter** » Thu Apr 17, 2025 8:01 pm

More power to the elbow of the 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews who sent a signed letter to the Financial Times yesterday, saying that they could no longer "turn a blind eye or remain silent" about the ongoing loss of life and livelihoods in Gaza as a result of Netenyahu's renewed offensive.

While the leadership of the Board has said that the signatory members do not reflect the views of the Board itself, this large number of members demonstrates clearly that the actions of Israel in Gaza are by no means unreservedly approved of within the UK Jewish community. The Board did however say that it could "understand" the position of the signatories, and that like Israel itself, the range of views held by its members was wide and by no means uniform.

The letter says that Israel is having its "soul" ripped out" by the conflict, and they feared for the future of the land they loved. Lawyer Phillip Goldberg, one of the signatories, said on Radio four in interview, that many British Jews would have similar views but would not choose, for perfectly fair reasons, to raise their heads above the parapet.

I absolutely get this. It takes courage to go against the prevailing wind of opinion within your community, and I absolutely understand why many Jews would feel that discretion was the better part of valour in this situation. More respect thereby for those who do run the risk of being ostracised by their peers and make their disquiet known.

Massive, massive respect to you, and gratitude for your action. It is by acts such as this that the terrible situation faced by the Palestinians in Gaza will be remedied. You have at least this man's gratitude for your bravery.

Post by **peter** » Sat Apr 19, 2025 9:35 am

As per usual, the statements coming from the Trump administration regarding their position on Ukraine are ambiguous at best, disingenuous at worst.

It started with Secretary of State Marko Rubio saying, following a meeting with eu leaders in Paris, that if the USA didn't determine pretty quickly (a matter of days said Rubio) that a ceasefire was going to happen, then America would "move on" as it had other issues to adress.

Trump has followed this up by saying the US will "take a pass" if either Russia or Ukraine "make it very difficult" to reach a ceasefire deal.

Vice President JD Vance had earlier indicated that he was optimistic about reaching such a deal and that things were developing "even in the past 24 hours" that led him to think a deal could be reached.

Clearly these "things" were not sufficient to convince Trump that he was backing a winner.

"Now if for some reason," he said, "one of the parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say 'you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people,' " and we're just going to take a pass."

But of course what he didn't say was whether this meant that he would stop the provision of armaments and intelligence to Ukraine, which is the only thing that can actually stop the fighting.

Because more than ever we know now that this is a proxy war. It isn't a war between Ukraine and Russia, albeit that the Ukrainians are the ones doing the dying. It's a war between Russia and the USA, and has been since the beginning. So Trump's and Rubio's comments about the Ukrainians or Russians being difficult are not the whole picture in the least. (For those who don't know, a four page spread in the New York Times told how the operations had been formulated and controlled by American generals from a base in Germany, effectively from day one.) This is an American conflict to continue or end, because neither side of the supposed prosecutors are going (for different reasons) to do it.

And so the continuation or cessation of arms/intelligence provisions to Ukraine by America is the only thing that matters. The Ukrainians might sign this minerals deal in desperation to keep the arms flowing (even with no security guarantees) but this will just prolong the war indefinitely or until Ukraine is crushed. Which looks frankly, like the most likely scenario in respect of the war's ending. Presumably if this happens, the deal would be null and void since Russia would essentially control Ukraine at that point, but assuming Ukraine does surrender with some rump of territory left to it, then the USA would probably expect to have control of these mineral rights even at that point, in order to recoup its losses.

Or perhaps with a minerals deal under its belt, it'd feel that suddenly Ukraine was a territory that it did want to see retained in its larger measure, would step up its efforts to secure a victory of sorts (or force the Russians into acceptance of a ceasefire and end to the conflict) in which case we'll be back into WW3 territory again.

Either way, from all angles it's a fuck-up and Trump's boasts of ending the war in days are not worth the piece of paper he wipes his fat arse on.

-----0-----

Oh, and by the way, interesting snippet I picked up listening to Norman Finklestein talking to Chris Hedges.

Apparently square meter for sqare meter, the ordinance that has been dropped on Gaza is the equivalent of four of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagassaki.

Now there's Israel exercising its right to defend itself. And depressingly, neither Finklestein nor Hedges saw any prospect of anything happening which would help the Palestinians escape their fate. Forcible expulsion from Gaza or death. Ethnic cleansing or genocide - choose your term of reference.

And we watched it happen people. We were there.

Post by **peter** » Sun Apr 20, 2025 3:44 am

It's a strange fact, but we in the UK are now more reliant upon (possibly) foreign sources to tell us what our own politicians are up to than on our own home-grown media.

Take the recent meeting in London - in London mark you - between Foreign Secretary David, and his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar.

Under normal circumstances, such a high level meeting would be, if not front page news, certainly something that the media would notice and record - something the details of which would be fed to the public. It would certainly involve a meeting in Downing Street, a doorstep photo opportunity (with the usual jockeying for putting hands on each other's backs etc to establish primacy etc) - most likely a photo opportunity in front of the media following the talks, in which a brief outline of the subject matter covered would be given, with accompanying doloping of 'honey and cream' on each other about how much in accord they found themselves. Special relationships and all that.

Curiously on this occasion none of that was to be found.

Saar slipped in and slipped away (earlier than planned if I have it correctly), and not only was the customary presentation to the public avoided, but somehow, and for some reason, the press were induced/threatened/persuaded, not to even mention the visit. It's only by virtue of Middle East Eye, a London based, but possibly Qatari funded news outlet, that we know anything at all about the visit (although the Guardian did mention it, I believe, in the very briefest of passing).

Now this is doubly odd, given that a few short days ago, there was full legacy media coverage of two Labour MPs being refused entry into Israel: you'd have thought surely that a meeting between the two nations involved's senior foreign service ministers would be a natural go-to story? But nothing. Neither the government nor the media chose to inform the public as to the meeting or the content of the discussions occurring therein.

But isn't this something that, national security issues aside, the public would have a right to be informed about? Do we not have an interest in the goings on at such high level meetings between our representatives and those of a partner nation? It seems not. It's almost as if Lammy, or the Labour leadership were ashamed to be meeting with the foreign minister of a country who are being accused in the international courts of potentially being responsible for a genocide?

So what was going on? Was it a bridge building exercise? Did Lammy tell Saar, "Don't worry - we have your back: continue with your actions in Gaza as you see fit, and let us know if you need our help with anything,"? Or did he read him the riot act? Tell him that his country was responsible for the biggest outrage of a generation and that a genocide/ethnic cleansing was in progress, in real time, with all the world's media watching as it happens?

Wouldn't it be nice to know these things? But you aren't going to. Because our powers that be have long decided that you simply don't matter enough to be informed of such business. That they operate independently of your likes, dislikes or opinions, and you will be informed only on a 'need to know' basis, of what is going on.

It's good to be so valued isn't it?

-----0-----

Is something going on in America? If the thoughts of Richard Murphy are anything to go by, there is, and it's pretty momentous.

Here's the gist of a recent post by him on YouTube and if it seems a bit histrionic, then remember that Murphy was telling us that Trump would deliberately put the world economy into a tailspin six months before he was even elected. The guy has a sound political antenna and has proven correct in much of his speculation to date.

90 Days ago, on first being elected to the presidency, Donald Trump's first action was to instruct two of his leading officials, Vice President JD Vance and US secretary of defence Pete Hesgeth, to opinion upon whether the state of emergency that he claimed America was in the grip of, was sufficiently advanced to justify his initiating the 1807 Insurrection Act - a long standing piece of legislation which gives an American president, under certain circumstances, the authority to suspend the normal Rule of Law, parliamentary proceedings etc, and place the country under military rule, be it of the national army or of an unnamed militia (normally supposed to mean the National Guard, but not specified as such) of the president's calling up.

Okay. All very technical and under another president, probably not terribly significant. But under Trump, perhaps slightly more unsettling an idea. The rules of such a presidential instruction demand that the said solicited opinion (in the original Act said to be made by two 'upstanding and trusted officers of the State') must be delivered within 90 days of the request being made - and this weekend marks the 90 day anniversary of the said request.

Now it won't be forgotten, says Murphy, that Trump has a history when it comes to calling up militias. He did so on the January 6th uprising when he instructed his frustrated followers to march on the Capitol Building. It takes no stretch of the imagination to see him now, at perceived need, calling up possibly millions of the MAGA faithful to his side - and possibly under the terms of the Act, quite legally so.

But again, this is all very speculative. Why should Trump want to go down such a route when to all intents and purposes he already has all of the power he needs to do whatever he wants?

Well this isn't exactly true. And if the American constitution is functioning correctly in terms of its checks and balances, it's just possible that Trump is entering into a situation where he may have to fall back on something like the kind of extreme measures allowed for in the Act.

There are two very significant challenges to what he has been doing going into the Courts, and they are as follows.

Trump has been vigorously following his adopted policy of deportation to third countries of individuals he deems unsuitable to remain in the USA. Earlier in March 150 such individuals were transported to a mega-jail in El Salvador, and there are a number of individuals therein who's lawyers are protesting the innocence of their clients (chiefly in respect of accused membership of drug gangs from Venezuela).

One Chief Court Judge in particular has put his head above the parapet, claiming Trump is in contempt of court by his refusal to turn around an ongoing flight to El Salvador and return the prisoners therein to America. James Boasberg had judged that such deportations demanded official sanctioning via the court system and were not within the presidential remit without such. He said a flight headed at that moment for El Salvador should return home - an order that Trump overturned and refused to comply with. This, said Boasberg, put him and his officials dealing with the situation, in contempt of court, and he brought forward a case to that effect. The case has since been dropped, but had it been carried, such a judgement could have resulted in prison sentences and severe penalties for administration officials involved.

The second challenge involves Trump's putting tarrifs on goods entering the USA without first having gained the approval of Congress for so doing. Trump justified this by saying he was dealing with an emergency and could thus take such action via presidential decree, but.....

(Cont'd below...)

Post by **peter** » Sun Apr 20, 2025 5:19 am

(Cont'd from above....)

Governor Gavin Newsom of California disagrees.

He says Trump has overstepped his remit as president and was bound by the constitution to have presented his tarrif policy to Congress for passage by vote. He has instigated court proceedings to this effect, and when one realises that California is the fifth biggest economy in the world just on its own, one realises that this is a guy who has clout. This is a significant challenge to Trump's authority and he won't like it.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 reads, "If an action so hinders the laws of the United States, or so obstructs the execution of the laws.....or impedes the course of justice under the laws, then the Insurrection Act can be invoked."

Could it be that Trump foresaw this kind of challenge and has prepared the ground for it? Murphy thinks so and much fears that Trump might actually be about to invoke the Act. Boasberg and Newsom might unwittingly have been the very foils that Trump needed to carry out something that he would dearly desire (and who would deny this) - the assumption of supreme power to himself and the overruling of democracy. Are we about to see, asks Murphy, American democracy fall in so little as a few short months of Donald Trump assuming the presidency.

I said at the beginning of this post it could be a bit histrionic - I still think so. But who would deny that almost nothing could be put past Trump in his current gorging of power. He must look at Vladimir Putin, at Xi Jinping, and say to himself, "That's the way to do it! That's way to get things done!" Who would deny this. And if this is indeed the case, then who can say how far he would be prepared to go in order to get it, and more worryingly, how far his supporters would be prepared to back him up in doing so.

Post by **peter** » Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:23 am

The Pope has died.

Pope Francis (I've only just learned his name

) had been in hospital for serious lung and kidney issues and had been released, clearly still very ill, a couple of weeks ago.

He was returned to the Vatican and instructed to limit his duties, but to what extent he followed these instructions is unclear. He certainly carried on having high level meetings as both King Charles and Vice President JD Vance saw him very recently (Vance only the day before his death).

On Easter Sunday he addressed the crowds from the balcony of St Peter's and took a short ride in the 'pope-mobile' to bless the people directly.

Now the process of selecting a new pope begins. The conclave of cardinals will gather, the curia will direct the process, and the black smoke will issue, followed by the white at some indeterminate time in the weeks ahead. How long this will take will depend upon how much pre-preparation has been done. The Pope's obvious decline will have had the cardinals preparing the ground: names will have been put forward, cabals formed and alliances drawn up. It'll have been no different from any internal and private process within an organisation - say a political party or a university governing body, where different competing groups, often with different agendas they happen to pursue, forming up and preparing to do battle.

And battle will be the right word. The Roman Catholic Church has much history - I mean modern history - to come to terms with, and much depends upon selecting the correct man for the job. He must of all things be a communicator. The recent trials of the Church of England hierarchy, the resignation of Justin Welby etc, would not be a tableau that would bear repetition on the larger scale of the Church of Rome. This would be a disaster. Whoever takes over must have no association with anything that has a whiff of scandal about it. A safe pair of hands above all.

One also wonders if the election of Donald Chump will factor in to the decision made. The Trumpster is keenly pursuing his 'war on woke' and his efforts to root out DEI from government/state institutions, and to some extent this will chime with Roman Catholic principles of patriarchy and male dominated hierarchies. The movement of society towards ever more inclusivity has not been an easy one for them to accommodate to; women priests, contraception, abortion - these are issues it has struggled with and even though it has tried hard to appear accommodating, in truth it has recoiled from any such changes in societal norms. Will the movement back of the American administration towards a more family centered, 'old fashioned' approach, effect its decision in the coming days. Will any progressive elements within the college of cardinals suddenly find that they are on a loosing wicket: that the tide has turned and a more traditional wind is blowing - perhaps one they can easier adopt to.

Time will tell, but in truth you are getting this post because - well frankly it seemed to be the order of the day. Every news channel and printed outlet of the media is flooded with the 'story' of Pope Francis' death, and so I thought that I should follow suit and do a bit myself. I won't pretend that I follow Vatican or Roman Catholic stuff very closely. Don't get me wrong, I have massive respect for the Church, both Roman and other, but I find that my particular kind of religion is more self centered. It moves to the shape I need it, depending on how the demands of any given day are panning out, and while this will seem a rather selfish way of pursuing a faith, it works for me. I'd not function well within the constraints of a particular set down dogma and would soon start finding problems. My way, I just alter what needs altering on a given day almost without thought. God doesn't seem to mind. He hasn't told me so yet.

But I wish Pope Francis well on his journey. I suppose he had more 'skin in the game' in terms of a particular kind of scenario than I do (not, I hasten to add, that I'm presuming to any kind of comparison between myself and the departed Pope), and I hope it works out well for him. My personal belief has it that where he finds himself today, will so eclipse anything that his human bound intellect could ever have comprehended, that even the concept of his individual existence will become almost meaningless. Equivalent to the smallest atom on the smallest cell of the biggest infinity that infinity theory can conjur up.

And by accounts he's earned it. A good man. And that's the highest praise that any of us could ever hope for.

Post by **peter** » Wed Apr 23, 2025 6:00 am

Ever a man to blow in the direction of the prevailing wind, Kier Stamer not very definitely believes that a trans woman is not a real woman.

Previously, though it had to be drawn out of him as if by two men with a block and tackle, he'd said that a trans woman was a real woman.

But now he's pleased that the recent supreme court decision has clarified the matter and it can be put to bed. There has even been some admission that he has changed his mind.

It seems that Kier Stamer can change his mind much more easily than a man can change his sex, depending on the way he is thinking, but we who have been watching his progression since his assumption to the Labour leadership knew that already.

-----0-----

Elon Musk has let it be known that he will be drawing back from his involvement with DOGE, the department charged with improving the efficiency of the state services and cutting federal spending.

The announcement comes as figures released show the hit that Tesla has taken in recent months - some twenty percent of automotive revenue in the first quarter of 2025 and profits similarly devastated - as purchasers show their dissatisfaction with Musk's involvement with the Trump regime.

Clearly the tarrif war with China is hitting home as well, and Musk, acknowledging the poor state of the figures, said that more pain must be expected before things get better. He's currently involved in a spitting match with Trump trade advisor Peter Navaro, who said that Musk was more of a car assembler than a manufacturer. Musk replied by calling him a moron, maintaining the level of debate within the Trump top team at its normal high standard.

He says that most of the work of DOGE is done and he'll be limiting his involvement down to a couple of days a week from now on, as long as the President wants him and as long as it is useful.

Well they haven't publicly fallen out it seems - a first for anyone parting ways with Trump, who normally falls out with everyone - but things have definitely cooled between them. The 'bromance' seems very much over - no more jumping up and down and punching the air - but both men are far too canny to let any disagreement between themselves become public. Musk has quietly been saying that he thinks the tarrifs on cars should be lower, but he would wouldn't he. His personal fortune will be looking considerably thinner as a result of both his relationship with Trump and the chaotic actions that Trump has been taking in terms of his tarrif policy. He ain't gonna be happy about that for sure.(Elsewhere, there's a meeting in Washington today of lots of finance ministers from various countries to attempt to understand what it is that he is trying to achieve, and IMF figures released yesterday gave his policies a very resounding thumbs down in terms of its predicted effects on the US economy.) I bet behind the scenes they now hate each other.

But Musk has not himself proven exactly top-notch at delivering the goods, efficiency wise. His projected savings via DOGE activities have been gradually reducing and reducing to the point where they are a fraction of that first estimated they would be (around one tenth? A trillion down to a hundred billion or something). He's decimated many of the departments he's involved himself in, departments which will now have to pick up the pieces of his random scattergun activities and cuttings and try to regroup themselves around what they have left. It'll be an interesting few months seeing the consequences of what DOGE has done play out in the American system. Butterfly effects, chaotic systems and all that.

I think Musk is headed for a fall. No-one is beyond this in this world, choose how rich you are. These financial mountains can be built on very shaky sands and Musk has been knowingly tunnelling under his for a long period now. The Board of Executives at Tesla must be mucho pissed off with him by now (their fortunes will have fallen alongside his as well) and behind the scenes I'm betting his name is like shit. I saw a board somebody had left outside the main gates of Tesla saying, Sack Musk!, and I'm betting that's looking like a pretty popular option at the moment.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Post by **peter** » Wed Apr 23, 2025 6:54 am

Now this is a serious one.

There's a report in this morning's Telegraph headlined Trump to let Putin keep seized land.

The condition, which the Telegraph calls a "demand", such is the nature of the document that will be put to the Ukrainians today in London, is part of a seven point plan for ending the war in Ukraine.

Clearly the USA will want the Ukrainians to agree to the terms therein, so that they can then proceed to Moscow and present the proposal to the Russians.

The Telegraph is quick to point out that the plan essentially allows Russia to keep all of the territory it has taken within Ukraine to date, without giving Ukraine any security guarantees whatsoever in return. It's a broad ranging affair and is worth looking at in some detail.

The first two points, says the paper, pertain to the ceasefire and subsequent talks with Russia. Point 3 "requires Ukraine to refrain from seeking membership of Nato", but does apparently leave them free to join the EU can't see the Russians being happy with this). Point 4 allows for the freezing of all front lines where they currently stand, effectively granting Russia that territory it holds in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions going forward. Territory in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia also passes to Russia, but the power plant in the latter would pass into American control. America would grant de jure recognition of Russian sovereignty in the Crimea, an effective violation of international law which says that recognition of any land annexed by force by one country from another is not to be recognised by a third country. Point five is missing from the account, but point six deals with the Ukrainians signing deals allowing America rights to mine it's mineral and other natural resources. Finally point seven deals with the establishment of a new relationship between America and Russia, the lifting of sanctions and the beginning of a cooperation policy on energy.

Crucially from the European side, the proposals would allow for the presence of European troops in the remaining sovereign Ukraine, but absolutely without any kind of American support guarantee sitting behind it. You will remember that Kier Stamer is very keen on such a European presence - but only in the case of their being guaranteed by an American backstop in terms of providing military support if they come under attack. So the absence of this guarantee will be a no-no from his point of view. From the Russian side, a complete demilitarisation of Ukraine has been an integral part of their demands, and it is clearly not delivered by this deal. It's difficult to therefore see them accepting this proposal as it stands.

Another sticking point is that small parcels of territory are proposed to be handed back to Ukraine by Russia, allowing Ukraine access to the Dnipro river. The Russians will no doubt be leary about handing back any territory that has been won by blood being spilt, and will not easily be convinced to do so.

So from Putin's demands, he gets his guarantee of Ukraine not being in Nato but not Ukrainian neutrality or demilitarisation. He wins land, but also has to cede it for no advantage. There is no mention of regime change or denazification in the document. He gets the sanctions with the USA being lifted and gets back onto a normal trading footing as well.

And what does Ukraine get? Not much that I can see. It gets to end the war and Zelensky gets to walk away alive (for a while at least). It doesn't get it's territory back. It doesn't get the Crimea back. It looses it's mineral and natural resources rights to America. By and large it's the shit end of the stick, but this is what happens when you loose a war. And as always, Donald Trump holds that stick over them that if they don't agree to the proposals then he can pull the plug on their armaments and intelligence supplies overnight (not to mention the technical support his military are supplying either on the ground ot from that base in Germany) and the war is immediately lost anyway. (The Brits and Europe, if they believe they can win this war alone when they have singularly failed to do so with the Americans on board, are living on fantasy island. Zelensky knows it and so do the Russians. And so do the Americans and probably Stamer and the British military as well. In fact everyone knows it, so why do they even talk about it?)

So it's possible that the Ukrainians may be forced to accept the proposals - proof positive that being America's friend is fatal - the Russians almost definitely will reject them, and Trump will be left with a dilemma. Does he 'back off' and throw in the towel (and what would this mean?) Or does he keep trying to negotiate the impossible - agreement between Putin and Zelensky. Probably the latter but we'll see. He might decide to do what he originally said he'd do and stop the war in a day by stopping supplying Ukraine. This would be the kindest option in many ways. A victorious Russia has no reason to exact revenge on the people of Ukraine....does it? The less salubrious elements in the Ukrainian army could be in for some reprisals, but in the main I think they would be limited. It'd have to be better than the meat-grinder that currently runs on week after week, month after month.

But anyway there you have it. You know as much as me. You decide what is going to happen.

Post by **peter** » Thu Apr 24, 2025 6:28 am

James O'brien, who you will know isn't one of my favourite pundits/presenters, was commenting the other day on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's announcement that she would publish a "league table" of crimes commited by foreign immigrants, according to statistics of which countries they were from.

This according to Cooper, would help explain the policies adopted by the government re the deportation of individuals back to their country of origin.

O'brien was, he said, shocked by the announcement - confused even, as to why this would be done for any other reason than simply to stir up racial antagonism against people from particular nations, and to attempt to steal the thunder from political rivals such as Reform, who he'd naturally have expected to adopt such divisive type policies. (Nb His observation that Cooper, once having made the explanation as to why certain people of given countries were seemingly being deported more often, didn't then actually have to publish the data, was absolutely correct. The explanation itself was enough.)

He was searching, he said, for something he had missed, to account for the decision, but was thus far unable to come up with anything. Were it the Tories or Reform, he'd immediately have jumped to the racist explanation, but in the case of Stamer's Labour he was simply too invested in the administration to do so.

Poor chap.

O'brien isn't always the fastest dog out of the trap - take the Israel-Gaza situation where it was months into the atrocities before he started to realise that it had gone way beyond 'Israel's right to defend itself'. But he did eventually get there and once realising he was supporting an atrocity in the making did start to call it out. He has since been assiduous in doing so, and has been a useful source of information for anyone keeping tabs on the ongoing situation.

But he's been a dyed in the wool Stamer supporter from day one. A champagne socialist of the worst kind, he found the true radical socialism of Corbyn simply beyond the pale. Of the Guardianista style belief that the working class were the salt of the earth until they started expecting to make decisions for themselves, his is a sort of avuncular 'half-way' socialism that isn't actually socialism at all. It professes to be - Kier Stamer and Wes Streeting would, in their own minds, be the best thing for the working class since sliced bread - but in reality it's a bulwark of the status quo neoliberalism that has killed this country since the time of Margaret Thatcher. And O'brien is balls deep within it. He can't begin to stand next to true socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell and so he hates them. They would bring down the public school-Oxbridge system that produced him and maintains the state of things just as it has always been and so he's having none of it.

But suddenly he's starting to see the cracks appearing. Cooper's announcement shows his beloved Stamer administration for exactly what it is: a populist chaser of opinion, a political vacuum into which any idea that ups the vote count, increases the vote score for the next election, will be welcomed. Moral consideration won't come into it, right or wrong neither here nor there - it's all about the votes, the getting of power and holding it. Stamer's shifting stance on the trans issue is the same thing; he cares nothing about whether a trans woman is a woman or not - she could be a bloody Martian for all he cares - it's all about saying the right thing such as to be pointed in the right direction of the prevailing public opinion.

I predict that now the rot has set in, the chink in the armour of his stubborn supporting of an obvious political chameleon who would do anything for power, that the disenchantment will come fast. He's supported them through the winter fuel cuts, the refusal to lift the two child benefits cap, the gift-gate scandal and the excision of the left. He's even refrained from levelling any criticism at them for their support - both verbal and material - of the monstrosity of the Netenyahu administration. But now suddenly they have overstepped the line. As he says, there isn't anywhere you can turn to in this latest trick. It's racist populism naked for all to see and there's no excuse to be slubbered up for it.

I shall enjoy in the coming months witnessing his turnaround. He did it with Rishi Sunak who,on his election to Conservative Party leader, he originally thought would be a 'good chap' (well - he wasn't an old white male, so even as a Conservative leader you had to give him the benefit of the doubt) but about whom he soon changed his tune. But with the Stamer administration it is going to hurt - and given what O'brien has done in terms of damaging the one hope the working class in this country had in the last four decades, I shall enjoy watching it in real time.

-----0-----

All of which should bring no comfort to Vlodomyr Zelensky in hearing Downing Street's pronouncement that, "We will never walk away from Ukraine."

Stamer's track record on vaccillation would challenge any politician's alive - his reliability as an ally non-existent.

Downing Street is of course referring to JD Vance having said that if significant progress cannot be made in peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that the USA should "walk away" sooner rather than later. Vance was following up on earlier remarks made by Rubio and Trump himself (iirc), but the President himself has weighed in this morning.

Following the revelations (based on rumours that have been circulating for a few days) that the US peace proposal included the recognition of Russian sovereignty of the Crimea, Zelensky had apparently said that this would be a non starter for Ukraine. Trump has responded furiously reports the Telegraph, posting that Ukraine has "no cards left to play and must accept that Crimea is lost." He accuses Zelensky of prolonging the killing and blames the Ukrainian leader for derailing the peace plan.

Meanwhile Stamer acts to increase the separation between the US and UK by making this pointed comment about not walking away from Ukraine. Fat lot of consolation that will be to Zelensky: it's like having a three year old saying he'll support you as you square up for a fistfight with a football hooligan.

It's typical Trump to attack Zelensky rather than Putin (though in fairness it is Zelensky making the comment). But the failure of the peace proposal (which got off to an inauspicious start yesterday when Steve Witkoff and Marko Rubio pulled out and the meeting was downgraded) which is almost a given, is always going to be blamed on Zelensky by Trump, and on Putin by Europe. That's just where the cookie lies at the moment. Zelensky has chosen a significant stumbling block to the proposals acceptance, but really he could have gone with virtually any of the points. No security arrangements. Cedeing huge areas of territory, being obliged to hand over energy and mineral resources and power generation facilities to the USA.... It's a turd of a deal for Ukraine and everybody knows it. He's just chosen one of the things that would get him into the worst trouble at home if he agreed to it. The talks were probably started with Ukraine looking at the proposals first simply so that Ukraine could be accused of causing their failure. Trump would be too cowardly to go head to head with Putin over the proposals, but Zelensky is a different fish altogether. He can be bullied, where Trump doesn't want antagonise Putin whom he both respects and fears (and also of course wants to do business with).

Trump said on his Truth Social that Zelensky could, "have peace or [....] fight for another three years before loosing the whole country."

Any clues here about what he means by America 'walking away'? Possibly. If he thinks that Ukraine could fight for another 3 years that implies that (maybe) America would continue to supply arms and intelligence to the country, but that he assumes Russia would continue their slow incremental gaining of Ukrainian territory (rather than achieving a sudden and decisive win) until they effectively controlled the whole country. (Unlikely that Russia could easily do this - the logistics would be horrendous.) One assumes that if Trump pulled American assistance to Ukraine that they'd fold very quickly, but I suppose even the European supplies could keep them going for a while.

Trump also posted, "We are very close to a deal. The man with 'no cards to play' should now, finally, GET IT DONE!" This is typical Trump bragadoccio. He's nowhere near getting a deal done. Russia would pull his proposals to pieces before they'd accept them; it'd take months of negotiating and changing to get them to sign, but it's much easier to simply blame Zelensky as the patsy. The truth is that the proposals are a non starter from the get go.

The UK, France and Germany seem united in their opposition to Ukraine agreeing to hand over territory before the Russians have agreed to a ceasefire, but the Russians have already previously vetoed this by saying that the end conditions must be set before they will lay down their arms. The UK is putting pressure on Ukraine to come closer to the Trump proposals, but is also exerting diplomatic pressure on the USA to get Putin around the table forthwith. The Americans are unlikely to put much effort into this - things would get really complicated really quickly if the Russians were at the table with the Ukrainians, and the option of heaping all the blame on Ukraine would be lost when it became obvious that Russia wouldn't countenance the agreement either.

So all in all it's a mare's nest. A bloody great mess with Trump's size nines all over it.

Peace in Ukraine? Not any time soon.

Post by **peter** » Fri Apr 25, 2025 6:47 am

James O'brien was yesterday banging on about who could doubt that Putin, if recognised as being the de facto 'owners' of the Crimea (if not the de jour), would not before long be trying to pull the same stunt somewhere else.

Could we really countenance the world being carved up by agreement between Trump, Xi and Putin, into subservient blocks, answerable each to whatever overlord happened to be in charge in that given area.

Well excuse me James, but tell me what difference it would make to us from what we have experienced since the end of WW2 anyway?

And last time I looked, neither Xi nor Putin were involved in and supporting a genocide in Gaza. I'm sure neither Russia nor China has been plaster saints over the years, but the USA record isn't exactly whiter than white is it. What countries they haven't dominated economically, or who's elected administrations they have disapproved of, they have interfered with mercilessly, via the CIA, or by subversion or by outright war. How many democratically elected governments have fallen to be replaced by tyrannies that happened to suit the US purpose: democracy it seems is fine at home - elsewhere not so important.

And us? What about us? Eighty years of the 'special relationship' hasn't exactly brought us to the land of milk and honey has it? The loyalty has been altogether one way. Jump - how high stuff. Suez. Good support there eh? Nuclear cooperation after we helped in Los Alamos? Forget it! They rinsed us of our wealth (ill-gotten that most of it might have been, but that's a different matter) in payment for the war that never reached their shores. No rebuilding for them. They just got wealthy, and we bore the cost and have been ground into the dirt ever since.

So don't give me how bad Xi and Putin are. Screw them as well as the Americans. It matters not a jot to me which one of a bad bunch are calling the shots. They're all equally tarred in my eyes. But of the three, I'm thinking America is the one which I'd least choose to be on the leash of. At least Russia and China seem to be looking forward. Joining Brics, thinking about alternative exchange currencies not dependent upon the dollar (which allows America to syphon off a cut from every transaction made across the globe on a daily basis, thereby increasing its wealth ever further). Thinking about how the rest of the world can develop, and not just about how, as America, how their own interests can be feathered (and no - I don't think that they are not interested in their own interest as well; why wouldn't they be. But at least they seem to have the idea of other countries rising up as well - not just being held in poverty at the expense of the big dog's wealth).

And they are not killing Gazans and justifying it with lies. Not laying the Middle East to waste in support of Israeli ambitions for future regional hegemony.

Don't give me the West, the neoliberal West (spits on the ground). I've had it with the West. I'm waiting, hoping, praying, for a government that will grow a pair of balls and put us back on track to a destiny where we call the shots for our own interest. Where we can take the moral decisions not to be party to the destruction of other peoples, the laying waste of their countries, the jumping to the words of another master, never mind how malevolent and ill-intentioned they might be. And the first thing we need to do is stop partaking in the killing. Stop supplying it. Stop informing it. Stop supporting it. Stamer is today saying he'll support Zelensky no matter what Trump thinks should be done in Ukraine. Stop supporting Zelensky and support the people of Ukraine. The schmucks who are dying on the front line, in the bombed out houses and apartments. What matter it to the public of Ukraine who leads them if they are lying dead in the dirt. Even the mayor of Kiev, ex boxer Klitschko recognises that sacrifices are needed to bring this shit-show to an end.

And stop with the 'Israel has a right to defend itself." It's not defending itself. It's killing thousands of innocents in pursuit of settling the Gazan problem. Hamas gave them the very opportunity they needed and they took it. We are in the weird situation of seeing a fucking ex footballer speaking more sense, with more honesty than our own government ministers (watch the Gary Lineker Amol Rajan interview if you don't believe me). This should never be and is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

Enough. Don't ever think I don't love my country: I do. I just hate what our politicians have done in our names, what they have reduced us to. I'd vote for Lineker tomorrow over any one of the current crop. At least he recognises that we should have an opinion on what is going down in Gaza. And as for Ukraine and the Crimea - the Crimea doesn't belong to either Russia or Ukraine. It was the land of the Crim-Tartars until they were thrown out in the 1950's by Stalin, and so it certainly shouldn't be the sticking point over turning off the meat-grinder that is in full operation in Ukraine. Let the people of Crimea decide. And let us just get away from all this foolishness and start concentrating on our own domestic issues.

Post by **peter** » Sat Apr 26, 2025 3:28 am

Interesting little addition to the story of the failed meeting in London between Russia and Ukraine, at which the American peace proposals were supposed to be discussed, but which folded at the 11th hour.

The meeting had apparently been organised by Stamer, and as well as delegates from Ukraine and Russia, attendees were supposed to include American Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marko Rubio, foreign ministers from various European countries and of course the UK itself.

Problems began to arise when first of all, prior to the meeting, Vlodomyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that there was no way Ukraine could accept the signing away of Crimea (one of the key inducements for getting the Russians to sign). On hearing this, Witkoff and Rubio decided that the meeting would simply be a waste of their time and so scaled back their involvement to lower level members of the foreign department.

On hearing this, the European foreign ministers one by one pulled out, until finally the UK itself pulled out of its own meeting.

This left Zelensky effectively holding his own dick, and the whole thing descended into farce. The UK looks stupid, Stamer having led everybody up the path to nowhere, and the process in tatters. But the truth is that neither side were going to ever accept the deal as it was formulated and I guess even the Americans knew this. Truth is that Trump has opened his mouth and made stupid assertions that he hadn't a hope of keeping. He could stop the war in 24 hours and all of that bullshit. Now that the truth of this baloney is coming out, America (or rather the Trump administration) is trying to distance itself from it by pretending that the fault is everybody else's. "Well - if you lot aren't going to be reasonable then we're just going to walk away and leave you to it," style of thing.

And frankly, it's the best thing they could do. This would put Stamer and Europe in the position of having to confront their own limitations (actually already happening - Stamer has announced that it is no longer viable to think in terms of boots on the ground in Ukraine, rather limiting UK support to air cover and 'further back' technical support of Ukrainian forces). This war needs to end before Ukraine is totally lost and destroyed in its entirety. Contrary to popular understanding, the eastern part of Ukraine has been historically Russian and the Dnipro river marks not only a significant population change in the make-up of the people, but the natural border of separation between Russian and Ukrainian territory. This will probably be the line beyond which Putin's advisors will be saying Russian troops need not go, and once a few details around the cities of Odesa and Kherson are thrashed out, the rest should be fairly easily achievable.

The Ukrainian people were not themselves averse to a peaceful negotiated settlement with Russia and the eastern provinces - Zelensky was originally voted in on such a mandate - and there is no reason why (extremist ultra-right elements excepted) they would be minded any differently now. The problem is for Zelensky, that he is surrounded by such extremist elements, and has very real cause to fear for his life if he gives ground to the Russians. Frankly, his best course is to get the fuck out of Dodge and skedaddle off to the USA as fast as possible. Perhaps a new administration could achieve a better working base for negotiation with the Russians. Neutrality is really the best option for Ukraine as things stand, and it would at least pave the way for rebuilding the country via proper relations with its neighbour.

But see that Trump is bragging this morning that "a deal is nearly done between Russia and Ukraine,"

Well - I haven't even read beyond this headline (on the BBC website) but I'll go and have a look. It's bullshit. I can say this before I even look at it. The distance between the two countries is simply too great for a deal to be struck without the complete withdrawal of the USA from the conflict. America presenting itself as an impartial mediator in a conflict within which it is a key belligerent (if only by proxy) is a nonsense. Only by severing its involvement regarding supplies of ammunition and intelligence can it exercise any control in bringing the war to an end. But I'll go and look anyway and report back.

(Mmmm...... Lots of hot air and not much else.)

-----0-----

Well - not quite true: basically Special Envoy Witkoff has had a reasonably productive meeting with Vladimir Putin in which much was discussed alongside the Ukrainian situation and in which both parties seemed to find some common ground.

On Ukraine the Russians seem satisfied at least with the territorial aspect (well, they would, wouldn't they) but of the thorny issue of Nato there has been no mention. One suspects that Ukrainian neutrality is an assumption in all this, though whether that includes complete demilitarisation as Russia wants is again not mentioned.

So far so good - but remember, Ukraine are not represented here. And a distance away, Ukraine and Europe are not being a pushover. Russia has tentatively signalled that it might be prepared to talk to Zelensky (that in itself is a step forward) but Zelensky has said that without a ceasefire, nothing can be discussed. Once a ceasefire is in place however, he says that anything can be discussed.

But Putin is no idiot. He knows that the distance over Crimea, let alone everything else, is so great that the chances of reaching a settlement are virtually zero. So he'll have given Ukraine the chance to rearm, to consolidate and reorganise, to Russia's great disadvantage in the war, but to no likely positive outcome in the negotiations. So he'll never accept Zelensky's conditions. And Zelensky himself knows that the distance between the two sides is unbridgeable, and so he's most likely playing a game, trying to buy Ukraine time it desperately needs to reorganise its battle forces, as well.

So while the picture may look good for an America withdrawn from the conflict (in terms of reestablished contact with Russia - business and all that) from the Ukrainian war perspective things do not look an inch further forward. Trump might be happy with things - perhaps ne needs to pretend that the war negotiations are going well in order to be able to justify talking (business) turkey with Russia (otherwise it just makes it look as though he doesn't give a shit about Ukraine [nb. he doesn't]). Whatever his thinking, the one thing that's not a closer as a result of Witkoff's visit is an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine. Well - not unless it gets Trump closer to severing aid to Ukraine in pretend frustration with both parties (but really so he can get his business deals up and running with Russia).

(Nb. Funny how a day after Kier Stamer says UK troops won't be going to front line peace keeping duties in Ukraine, suddenly the USA indicates it might be prepared to offer limited security guarantees for any UK involvement. It wouldn't go as far as offering troops or anything, but technical support of sorts might be a possibility. No connection between Stamer's announcement and this sudden change in attitude from the US. None whatsoever. )

Post by **peter** » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:12 am

A few points on the Trump position on Ukraine, which as per usual with the orange man, is fraught with duplicity and misdirection.

The first point to recognise is that Ukraine is not Biden's war, as claimed by Trump, but rather his own.

It was he who started arming Ukraine, training their soldiery, and preparing them for war with Russia, during his first presidency. He wants everyone to forget this, but in truth Biden was just following a policy begun by Trump years earlier. Undoubtedly the CIA had its grubby hands behind what was going on and again it was during this period that they began to install covert bases within Ukraine, as many as 12 right up on the Russian border, from which to execute their covert activities.

Trump now seeks to cover this up by heaping blame onto Biden, who surely does demand his own share, but is by no means alone in holding it.

We must also confront the ridiculousness of the USA presenting itself as the distanced mediator of the peace deal, when in reality it has been the driving force behind the proxy war since day one. Putin is putting up with this charade because he's getting what he wants either way (and that certainly isn't what is in the Trump peace proposal). The USA seeks to present itself as the benign desirer of peace, the moral mediator of a situation that is occurring at a distance from itself, when it has been balls deep in the thick of it from the start. It's a nonsense.

Next the stupidity of Europe.

Stamer is strutting around like a dog with two dicks, Macron putting his protective hand on little Zelensky's shoulder to shield him from the big bad Trump-wolf, and in so doing they inflate themselves in their own opinion, posing as the honourable supporters of Ukraine in the face of unadulterated Russian aggression and American perfidity. And this is (the Russian part) the western narrative writ large; Ukraine the good - Russia the bad, and the West, the fearless protectors of democracy. And we must all buy into or be accused of being 'Putin apologists', Russia lovers or whatever. But the truth is this war was engineered and pushed for, every opportunity to avoid it deliberately frustrated, and the plans and preparations for it laid out clearly and carefully in advance. If this were not the case then why were so many members of the Western polity warning of this very situation that has developed, years and years ago long before it happened? Were they all prescient in some way or could they see where the policies that the West was following would lead? What do you think?

And now it's all gone tits up, and the war that was provoked is lost, the USA seeks to distance itself from its handiwork by creating this scenario of themselves as mediator. The old 'Putin as Hitler', ready to sweep across Europe with his jack-booted hordes behind him is left to the Europeans. The West as defenders of the faith with plucky little Zelensky standing, David in front of Goliath, between them and Europe' is left for Stamer and Macron to plug, while they, the Americans, back out of it. "Not our concern." It's all bullshit. Now the war is lost the USA, with Trump the Guilty at it's head, pretends to be the disinterested party. The party of reasonable thinking who will try to help, but if "you don't want it - then we have different fish to fry."

And it's a trap. A trap that the stupid fuckwit leadership of the West has walked straight into. Germany has been duped into providing the base from which America has been controlling the war (it was revealed as such in the New York Times four page article on the subject only a couple of weeks ago) - Germany who sits right on the front line with Russia and who will be first for the chop if it all goes pear-shaped. And Stamer and Macron flounce around feeling all righteous and moral ("We're the ones behind Ukraine now that it counts,") when in truth they are handing it to Trump on a platter. Giving him the opportunity to walk away feigning disinterest, and expressing the dismissive sentiment of, "Well, this isn't our fight - we've tried to stop it but you don't want our help so we're out of it. You carry it on by yourselves if you want to."

And our stupid leaderships are sucking it up, so full of their own importance that they can't see the trap they are walking into. That they are going to be left carrying the can of a war that they can't begin to fight, to afford, to win. And that when or if it spirals upwards to the point of demanding actual participation, they will be absolutely on their own with Trump watching from the distance (and doing very nicely from his renewed trade and business relationship with Russia).

This is what happens when you put third rate politicians into places that they shouldn't be a million miles from. Stamer is a manager, a school headmaster, a civil servant. Not a seasoned politician with an understanding of geopolitical history. He has himself stated that he has no ideology. No fundamental beliefs upon which his decision making process will rest. He would, he said when asked, govern by making "decision followed by decision." This, as Richard Murphy pointed out, is tantamount to saying that he has no overriding vision. No plan. It's getting power and keeping it that interests him. Nothing else. He'll always be at the mercy of events because he'll do nothing to shape the course of his tenure in office. And on an international level he'll be subject to the manipulation of more clever operators than he.

Our leadership are like that old adage about Irish men. Give them a shovel and they'll dig a hole. And they are certainly digging a hole with this one. Trump is creating a new narrative with himself as the peacemaker whose attempts have been rebuffed by those who only want to continue the war - and they are letting him get away with it. And in the process preparing us to carry the can for America's failure of foreign policy fot the last 30 years.

Kevin's Watch

Kevin's Watch