Trump is obviously not a peacemaker in the ordinary sense. His limitations as a peacemaker in the tradition of political realism and imperialist manouevering are now also becoming evident.

If the Ukraine war is to end, it must end quickly lest warmongers adhering to a different imperialist strategy re-ignite it. A degree of shock therapy is needed. Trump is the man for that. But more than that is needed to turn the super tanker of US-western policy around.

Zelensky is part of the problem but is also trapped by the problem. Any other leader would have to deal with the same trap. Support in Ukraine for the war – or at least willingness to die for it – is declining. But any leader trying to end it must still reckon with de-stabilisation or an outright coup from the right. The best way to marginalise the right would be a credible promise of US and European economic support, delivered in a way that would not antagonise Russia as war by other means.

Trump would be relatively well-placed to do that, were it not the polar opposite of his whole strategy.

Europe would also be well-placed to help, were it possible for that to be seen as part of a re-normalisation of relations with Russia, with economic benefits for all sides. But that is the polar opposite of the trajectory and recent statements of European leaders.

Trump is busy trashing whatever small hope there was of European leaders coming round to that position. For some of them, hostility to Trump is a gift that keeps on giving. It allows them to construct a pseudo-left skin that stops the left mobilising properly even while they move rapidly rightwards. That strategy worked better when Trump was out of office and conflicts with the historic attachment of most of them to obsequiousness towards the US. But Trump is giving them little incentive to return to that tradition.

The US has sought since the end of the Cold War to block the emergence of a strong, independent-minded Europe incorporating or semi-incorporating Russia. Perhaps Trump believes it doesn’t matter to the US if Europe crashes and burns. But the US and the world won’t really be able to stand clear of the wreckage.

The end of the Ukraine war is not inevitable once the US pulls out. Without the US, but with an unstable or collapsed Ukrainian state the war will transform but will not necessarily end. Some of the global risks will diminish. New risks will emerge. People will keep on dying.

Europeans need to get a grip, turn their ship around, stop their leaders war-mongering and stop counting on Trump to do their peacemaking for them. It’s fun laughing at the discomfiture of our leaders as they grapple with changing times. But it isn’t enough.

I’ve no sympathy at all for Zelensky. He allowed himself to be a vehicle for a bunch of warmongers in the US and Europe. He got used to being treated as a star everywhere he went because Biden was standing behind him, and then he mistook US power for the power of his own charisma. Continue reading →

This blog was offline from April 2023 until March 2024. Sorry! Normal sevice has, perhaps, been resumed.

I have added a few short items I originally posted to facebook during the offline period. They are dated with the date of the original facebook post.

The blog was also offline from October 2021 to 12 March 2022. One or two items posted prior to October 2021 escaped inclusion in backups and it has not been possible to restore them.

The blog may be a bit wobbly on its feet for a bit, so please be patient if you come across anything that looks a bit dishevelled or doesn’t quite work properly. I’ll try to fix any problems as they emerge, and perhaps also to make some improvements.

Feel free to contribute via the comments. To do so you’ll need to register an account (which will be approved manually, so please be patient) or login using your facebook or twitter account. However you log in, your first comments will need to be approved manually, so again please be patient. I hope this doesn’t sound tedious. It has to be better than facebook, doesn’t it?

If commenting, just bear in mind what I’ve said before:

“If you are socialism-averse, or you are thrilled by the sight of military parades, or you worry that Europe is being Islamified, or you fear that your town is about to be swamped by immigrants, or you are fond of locking people up and throwing away the key, or you think Britain’s security services are doing a great job, you probably won’t like this blog. You’d be much happier somewhere else.”

You’ll also be unhappy here if you’re thrilled by the prospect of war with Russia, or if you don’t like to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.

Comments along any of those lines are unlikely to be treated kindly. But if that’s not you, you’re welcome.

“Israel has a right to defend itself” is a vacuus phrase that will go down in history alongside “just obeying orders” as a fraudulent passport to genocide. It has become so ubiquitous that it is being used not just by downright rascals but also by people in official positions making otherwise decent-ish statements.

Israel does not have a right to “defend” its control of territory internationally recognised as occupied. The correct response to attacks on occupation forces is to lift the siege of Gaza immediately and then end the occupation.

The Palestinian people, on the other hand, do indeed have a right to resist the occupation by armed force. Their right barely gets a mention in the corridors of power and has been ghosted by the banning in many countries of organisations attempting to exercise it.

What if we recognised Israel’s right to self-defence while banning the IDF and Israel’s main political parties?

Doubling down on horror. Tzipi Hotovely justifies the RAF’s unquestionably criminal bombing of Dresden in ww2 en route to justifying Israel’s planned genocide in Gaza. She also, completely bizarrely, compares Gaza under Hamas to Nazi Germany.

The most shameful and militarily pointless actions of the UK during WW2 are being recycled to justify more crimes. The fact that Nuremburg, while a benchmark for justice in some senses, was also quite blatantly a victors’ justice, is being cynically exploited to destroy justice altogether.

This the open abandonment of international law. It’s a claim that international law doesn’t matter as long as you win.

Biden-Netanyahu-Sunak are determined on a course of action that is openly genocidal and, even from their own point of view, full of risk. They know that they have no friends in the Middle East, precious few friends outside the US bloc, and are facing widespread domestic opposition. They want to do it anyway. We have to step up the pressure until they stop wanting that. Join the protests on Saturday.

Palestinians have broken out of Gaza. Good. They came out shooting. What did anyone expect? Remember what happened when they walked out peacefully in 2018, in the Great March of Return?

Saturday 7 May is an international day of  action for peace in Ukraine, supported by Codepink, the Stop the War Coalition and the No to NATO network.

The UK’s Stop The War Coalition is calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops, an end to the military escalation by the NATO countries and for all efforts to be focused on finding a negotiated solution to this terrible war and is holding demos around the UK.

The Stop The War Coalition Scotland is calling a national demo in Glasgow, assembling at 11.30am on Saturday 7 May in Blythswood Square, Glasgow.

For events in the US (events elsewhere in the world will perhaps be added here), see www.peaceinukraine.org.

Dr Issam Hijjawi Bassalat was released on bail on Monday 13 December 2021 and is back home in Edinburgh.

He was granted bail by the High Court in Belfast on 9 December, having previously been refused bail in Dungannon Magistrates Court. District Judge Michael Ranaghan had ruled that the heart attack that Issam had suffered in prison did not amount to a change in his circumstances

On 14 December Issam was acquitted in Edinburgh Sheriff Court of a separate charge under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 relating to a stop-and-question incident at Edinburgh airport in early 2020. He was represented in court by Ryan Sloan of Aamer Anwar & Co Solicitors.

Issam was arrested in August 2020 in an MI5 sting said to have been directed against the New IRA. He was held on remand in Maghaberry Prison until his release in December 2021.

He continues to fight against the charges brought against him in Northern Ireland. A commital hearing for Issam and his nine co-defendants is expected to be held later this year.

Issam would like to thank everyone around the world who has helped him to reach this point, whether by writing supportive letters to the court, standing surety, or by helping to spread word about his case. International support has been particularly valuable and will continue to be crucial as the legal fight-back continues.

The government’s definition of extremism amounts to: “we don’t know what extremism is, but we know it when we see it.”

Philip Hammond, when he was Foreign Secretary, claimed: “countering Islamist extremism is, perhaps, the great challenge of our time.”

He said that fascism and communism were extremist ideologies of the past, but that “Islamist extremism” has deeper roots and wider reach.

He apparently believes  extremism is a bigger threat then the Luftwafe or the Red Army were, bigger than the threat from global warming now is.

This is craziness. It’s junk politics and junk language. It’s a confidence trick. We cannot let it rule our lives.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree – my speech at the Muslim Council of Scotland seminar on countering extremism, 2 March 2016.

Foreign Secretary speech on the challenges of extremism, 31 October, 2015

Ben Duncan, Green councillor in Brighton, had to apologise on Monday for a tweet critical of Armed Forces Day in which he described British soldiers as “hired killers.”

In what way was his comment incorrect? Has the British Army stopped paying its soldiers? Or are they no longer expected to kill?

Continue reading →