It’s not been a great couple of weeks for peace. The callousness of the Israeli genocide grinds on, reaching unconscionable depths. An attack on Iran appears to be in the balance. The US is ramping up its aggressive rhetoric against China and Ukraine choses this moment in its stalling negotiations with Russia to strike deep into the latter.
Not really!
In response to the Spring Statement delivered to the House of Commons in the UK on 25.03.25. by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, I say:
Let’s not cut welfare to fund warfare!
It’s getting more and more embarrassing.
From The Guardian 20.03.25:
‘Starmer warns Putin of severe consequences if he breaches peace deal’.
Europe (and the UK) responds by planning to re militarise, funded by a mixture of welfare cuts, tax rises and borrowing.
Say what you like about Blighty but unlike many places there’s still freedom of speech – isn’t there? OK so mainstream media struggles to speak truth to power on the key issues facing us (and threatening it) but journalists don’t get arrested for providing information that counters the government line do they? OK there was Julian, but that was at the behest of the US wasn’t it, and maybe he was the exception that proved the rule ………..
I suspect that most of us in the ‘collective west’ give little thought to ‘warfare’; what it involves, how it is materially supported, and to what ends it should be put. We may agree that ‘war’ is per se an appalling thing, destructive of society, community and humanity and be generally against it – and rightly so. However, does this blanket approbation leave the majority of us ill equipped to evaluate the actual mechanics and economic underpinnings required to wage war?
The judgment of history is going to be extremely harsh on Western leaders’ role in the Ukraine / Russian conflict.
On the 6th of February Tucker Carlson recorded a two-hour interview with President Putin in The Kremlin, which was subsequently made available for streaming on the 8th. (1)
I had determined not to blog about the Israeli / Palestinian crisis mainly, it has to be said, due to time constraints and the knowledge that this was complicated and would require careful research and thoughtful analysis. But once a writer always a writer! In trying to make sense of what is going on in the current conflict I found myself wondering how I might go about writing about it ………..
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