World Reaction To American Warmongering

As the Mango Moron in the White House finds himself in such esteemed company as Putin in Russia and Netanyahu in Isreal as invaders you would expect the rest of the World to be rightly condemning America's latest occupation of an oil rich country and it did spark an influx of comments from some, but others weirdly disapproved but in such as way as not to criticise the man who only a few weeks ago was crying about not receiving a peace prize.
Slaps on the back and a well done from Israeli Prime Minister, War Criminal and Genocide committer Benjamin Netanyahu who said: 'I salute your decisive resolve and the brilliant action of your brave soldiers' and the Terracotta Tyrant's pal in Argentina, President Javier Milei made straight for the Trump colon by calling it: 'Excellent news for the free world'.
On the disapprove but don't upset the Fuscha Fascist are Colombia (deeply concerned) and Spain who said: 'The situation in Venezuela must be resolved exclusively by peaceful means, through dialogue, negotiation, and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people in all its expressions, without external interference and in accordance with international law' while French President Emmanuel Macron said the transition: 'Must be peaceful, democratic, and respectful of the will of the Venezuelan people'.
Outright condemnation came from China who said they were: 'Deeply shocked and strongly condemns the use of force by the U.S. against a sovereign country and the use of force against the president of a country' and Russia who accused America with a straight face that they had: 'Committed an act of armed aggression against Venezuela' and called the pretexts used to justify such actions as 'Unfounded' and 'Ideological'.
Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Da Silva, said America had: 'Crossed an unacceptable line' and was 'A grave affront to Venezuela's sovereignty' and the Belarus President ,Alexander Lukashenko reached for the Caps Lock to type on Social Media that 'The President of Belarus CATEGORICALLY CONDEMNS the act of American aggression against Venezuela'.
Uruguay said it: 'Rejects, military intervention by one country in the territory of another' and Chile's President, Gabriel Boric said they: 'Express our concern and condemnation of the military actions of the United States in Venezuela'.
The Iranians, as expected, said they: 'Condemned the U.S. attack on Venezuela as a blatant violation of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity' and Malaysia said they: 'Opposes all forms of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of other States, as well as the threat or use of force'.
Cuba President, Miguel Diaz-Canel issued a sharply worded condemnation, accusing Washington of carrying out: 'A criminal attack against Venezuela' which they described as 'state terrorism directed at the Venezuelan people' and Mexico kept it simple with: 'Mexico condemns the military intervention in Venezuela'.
Offering no comment at all were Germany's Friedrich Merz and the UK's Keir Strarmer with Merz saying they will take their time to evaluate what happened and the UK's Keir Starmer was keen to ensure Brits that the UK Government was not involved whatsoever and he would: 'Want to establish the facts first but international law should be upheld' and the European Commission, Canada, Guyana, Italy, Belgium, Paraguay, Indonesia and Denmark who all said they were: 'Monitoring developments closely' while Trinidad and Tabago were also keen to let it known that they: 'Were NOT a participant in any of these ongoing military operations'
Most nations pointed towards International Law and the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said he: 'Emphasized the importance of full respect, by all, of international law, including the UN Charter' and was 'Deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected'. Assuming he meant  Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations which states: 'The UN and its members must follow, focusing on sovereign equality of states, good faith fulfillment of obligations, peaceful settlement of disputes, refraining from threats or force, non-intervention in domestic matters (except when peace is threatened), and cooperation with the UN, ensuring even non-member states respect these principles for peace. Key aspects include sovereign equality (Art. 2(1)), peaceful dispute resolution (Art. 2(3)), and the prohibition of the use of force (Art. 2(4)).
Obviously as the USA has a veto at the United Nations and as we found out with Iraq and Afghanistan, they can get away with literal murder, so nothing will happen there but FIFA might want to rethink the peace prize they handed to the Apricot Arsehole sex pest after this weekend.

Who Was Hugo Chavez?

With what is going on in Venezuela, I have been asked by several people too young to know who was Hugo Chavez and why do i rant about how great he was?  
I make no bones about, i thought the man was a shining example of what all World leaders should aspire to and you only have to look at the state of the Country that he inherited from the brutal right wing dictator Perez, and compare it to how it was when he left it in 2013, dying of Cancer.
In 1998, the majority of Venezuelans lived below the poverty line and after Chavez won the Presidential election he made it a priority to lance this particularly unpleasant boil.
He nationalised the country's oil reserves and set about using the revenue from the oil business to be used to finance social and development programmes.
Chavez began literacy campaigns, built free medical centres and hospitals and constructed schools in the poorest neighbourhoods as well as subsidising supermarkets to reduce the cost of food to the poorest families.
What Chavez did was not such a revolutionary idea, he just let the people keep the profits from the natural resources of their country to better their lives.
To compare 1998 to 2013 figures make astounding reading.
1,628 doctors in 1998, 19,571 in 2013, 250,000 free school meals in 1998 and in 2013 there was 1.8m.
Access to education dramatically increased, including more than 1 million people participating in free adult literacy classes, leading to Venezuela eradicating illiteracy by UN standards.
The 60% of the population in poverty in 1998 was down to below 30% and the Venezuelan economy grew by almost 80% with inflation down from 120% in 1998 to just under 20% and malnutrition related deaths fell by 50% during.
Don't expect those bent on condemning Chavez as a power crazed megalomaniac to applaud these impressive achievements, two Venezuelan students i spoke to about him complained that 'He only helped the poor' which is praise indeed although the irony was lost of them being International Students who were obviously doing okay, but the rest of us can maybe agree that he has set about solving the problems of the most vulnerable in Society, one year he even imported 124,000 toys from China and sold them at 20% of their price to hard up parents for their children's Christmas presents.
What Chavez had was oil being sold at $100 a barrel, what Maduro inherited when he took over was the oil being sold at $40 a barrel and that's where the problem's started but thanks to Chavez, for 15 years the lot of the poorest, illiterate, sick and hungry got better and he helped a lot of people which is a massive success in my book and there are not many politicians who can boast that after they leave office.

This Makes Me Smile

There are some stories which make me smile and none more of the reported third place Elvis took in his own look-a-like competition and Dolly Parton being beaten into 2nd place in hers by a drag queen.
Charlie Chaplain apparently was also beaten in a similar contest by two people who were apparently more like Chaplain than himself and you would think that the guy who voices Elmo on the Muppet Show would pretty much be the automatic winner of any Elmo impression competition but he failed to convince a bunch of judges at an event with one saying that even he could do a more convincing Elmo impersonation.
These came to mind while reading about Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, him with the £3.5 million Stradivarius violin and is generally accepted as the best violinist in the World and known for playing complex masterpieces on his expensive instrument.
The story was that days after selling out a concert in Washington at hundreds of pounds a seat, he performed a free mini-concert at a subway station for 45 minutes, performing six classical pieces in all.
Assuming he was a busker, he raised $32 from passer-by's, brilliant.

Trumps Venezuelan Oil Grab

Back in the day when America invaded other countries for their oil at least they had the decency to lie about it, even George W Bush went to the trouble of making up the WMD and links to Al Queada  before going into Iraq but Donald Trump didn't even bother, plumping for regime change and oil rights as justification for bombing and kidnapping Nicolás Maduro and his wife although there was the Fentanyl flooding America and Maduro being some sort of Drug Boss nonsense but according to a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report, Fentanyl is produced mainly in Mexico and crosses into the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border and Venezuela is not mentioned as a country of origin for Fentanyl smuggled into the US in the DEA's 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment so that was rubbish straight away.
Maduro called it using the Fentanyl as an excuse to try to depose him and get its hands on Venezuela's vast oil reserves and Trump pretty much confirmed that when he said recently that: 'They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back' so spot on Nicolás, you called that 100% right.
For a man who wet his pants when he wasn't given the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump sure has no problem not only using his own military but providing the arms for others to use but while Trump is blustering about what a great success the operation was, the details are yet to be seen and we all remember how he said the same thing about Iran but that ended up amounting to dropping tens if millions of pounds worth of bombs to put a dent in a mountain and put back the Iranian's Nuclear program weeks according to his own intelligence Agencies.   
So here we are with the latest press conference to discuss the unprovoked and illegal coup where Trump said American oil companies would move in to fix infrastructure and will be: 'Taking a tremendous amount of wealth from the ground and get reimbursed for everything we've spent' with the US selling oil to other countries, that's the US, not Venezuela.
So naked Imperialism and regime change to enable an oil grab but Trump has done nothing since taking office except massively increase the number of people around the world who would hope that if there was going to a regime change, it will come in the United States.
That said, nobody is talking about the sex pest and probable pedophile appearing in the Epstein files today though.

Stranger Things Finale

Unusually for me, i got in on the ground floor with Stranger Things, my usual tactic is to join things halfway through and play catch-up but there I was in 2016 telling people about it and how they should give it a go.
My plan was to watch it at 1am New Years Day when it landed on Netflix just to avoid anyone telling me what happened but when i saw it was 2 hours long I changed to watching it last night instead and avoiding reading or talking about it yesterday.
Something i always notice in American series such as this is the budget  which was a reported $50-$60 million per episode and the 8 episodes of Series 5 costing a hefty $400-$480 million which to put into context, the Downton Abbey TV series cost around £1 million per episode but then i guess they didn't have to CGI Demogorgons chasing Lady Sybil around the family's estate which must have been a bit of a cash saver, although it may have made it more watchable if they did.
I am aware that there are some people who may not have watched it yet so I hesitate to give away any spoilers but it seems like not everyone liked it, one reviewer i just read said the CGI was almost as bad as the Flash and AntMan 3 which i wouldn't know because i haven't seen them as i'm an adult and not 13, but i liked it.
It has action and just the right amount of emotion which is unusual for an American show which usually overdoes the sentiment and emotion and left a bit of a question mark over Eleven right at the end for you to take whichever way you wanted.
For a show which seemed to be based on the game Dungeons and Dragons, it was a lot better than that makes it sound but I would say to Netflix that was $400-$480 million well spent and i hope you have some left over for the new Buffy The Vampire Slayer which apparently cost $2 million per episode to make although it will probably cost just that alone to make Spike and Angel appear as they did when we last saw them in 2004, that's a lot of heavy make up.

How Will 2026 Play Out?

It appears that 2025 left some unfinished global stories which will rumble on into 2026 and these include Keir Starmer's leadership of the country, the Russia/Ukraine War, the Epstein Files, Venezuela, China and Taiwan and Israel and Palestine so how do I expect these to play out over the next 12 months?

Keir Starmer is struggling and he must know it and the Labour Party certainly does because 2025 came to an end with some big figures in the Party maneuvering themselves into position should he fall or be pushed.
I don't think anything will happen and tinder will be kept dry until the Local Elections in May where a set of bad results, and nobody thinks they won't be awful, will probably see him and the Chancellor step down rather than be forcibly removed and hand the country over to a new pair who, hopefully, will be a bit more like the old Labour Party than they have been so far.
     
There is a reason why Vladimir Putin appears to be swerving the Europeans when it comes to talking peace because he knows that all the time Donald Trump is in charge of the peace talks, he can just string him along and play Trump who bizarrely seems to be coming down on Moscow's side despite them being the invaders and issuing demands of Ukraine to make peace but the Europeans are very much on the opposite side and are very keen to stop Trump bulldozing Zelenskyy out the way and rewarding Russia and I can't see that changing so I expect to still be talking about it next January.

The Epstein Files are not going anywhere and with millions of documents yet to be released, we are only at the start of it so this year will see us being drip fed photo's and documents which implicate some powerful people, including increasingly Donald Trump who will do his usual blustering of 'fake news' and 'conspiracy' but as even his own people are now turning against him as the evidence piles up he will either step down (unlikely) or try to deflect the attention by introducing even more Draconian laws in America or even starting a war.  

The USA military has now blown up over 30 small boats coming from Venezuela with no evidence shown that they are drug boats and so concerned are many nations that they have stopped supplying the USA with intelligence but the Trump Government are threatening to take a step forward from their current actions and attacking Venezueala itself to remove Nicolás Maduro and replace him with a much more America friendly Maria Corina Machado who, as Trump said himself, would hand out Oil Contracts to them like sweeties.
At some point in the next 12 months it will probably happen but as America found out in a lot of conflicts recently, removing a leader is easy but keeping the peace afterwards not so much.

China ended the last year militarily encircling Taiwan who they claim is part of China but the sticking point has always been the agreement made by the USA to help Taiwan defend itself but President Xi must be looking on at what is happening in Ukraine and Israel and seeing two nations invading and murdering scores of civilians and the USA actually backing them and Trump is making no noises about stopping China, he is even visiting Beijing in Spring and expect Xi to start leveraging pressure on the US to row back its allegiance to Taiwan in exchange for economic easing, particularly of the rare Earth Minerals America are so desperate for. We probably won't see Taiwan invaded this year which will be all about laying the ground for it next year.

Just like Putin in Russia, Netanyahu in Israel has found Trump to be very amiable in allowing it to do what it wants when it comes to Palestine where it has been committing a Genocide and Netanyahu knows that he can string Trump along and make promises he has no plan to keep while scrubbing the Palestinians out of their land but the fly in the particular ointment is that he has elections in October 2026 and he knows that the only thing keeping him out of prison on fraud charges is the Presidency which he is unlikely to win so nothing much will change, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine may actually be fast tracked, until late next year.   

Grrrr......

My 'Keep Religion Out of Christmas Campaign' seemed to be going well, I hardly heard any mention of Jesus last year and it was his birthday on the 25th so that's good going but then he has been sidelined in favour of the Jolly Fat Man with the presents for a while now so give it a few years and it will be 'Jesus who? and we can all stop killing each other over which of the religions is more peaceful because religion will be consigned to the history books along with the Earth being flat and eating bread crusts will make your hair curly.
Hopefully we can move onto old cliched phrases that we hear over and over in certain situations which really need to be taken out of circulation such as when you go out for a meal and the sharing platter arrives and someone says: “Well here’s mine, what’s everyone else having?' or if you ask someone if they want sugar in their tea and they reply: 'No thanks, I’m sweet enough' for which hard labour in a Siberian prison is too kind.  
Another one is when you are washing your car and the neighbour walks by and says 'You can do mine next' or 'You’ve missed a bit' which has you scanning Law Books to see if there is some long forgotten law still on the statute books which allows you to tie them to your bumper and drag them across the City.
Another one is if you ask someone the time and they say 'Time you got a watch' or look at their wrist and say 'Hair past a freckle' or when you drop and break something, you hear a voice say: 'Don;t think you wanted to do that', no shit Sherlock.
If you someone starts a sentence with: 'No offense, but..' or 'I'm not Racist but...' then it doesn't stop what follows being offensive or racist and if something 'goes without saying' then why are you still going to fecking say it?
'Can I get' to a shop assistant should be answered with,'No, i'm here so i will get it for you' and 'Hot enough for ya? in the middle of Summer should be punishable by being held upside down by your ankles from a car park and being asked high enough for ya?
Probably the worst one is when you ask someone a question and they reply: 'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you' which has you wishing someone would because then you wouldn't have to hear that cliched utterance again and 'Working hard or hardly working' should be met with the reply harder than you obviously.

2026 A Sporty Year

It's a sporty kind of year this year which starts with watching people slide down hills from 6 February in the Winter Olympics in Italy.
As it is in a fellow European Country it won't be on at a ridiculous time for us so we can see Newton's Theory of Gravity in full effect as men and women in super close fitting clothes slip and slide around and either end up in a snowy heap or bouncing around a podium wearing a medal.     
Next up is the Football World Cup in June being held across Canada, America and Mexico where England expects...expects to sail through the group stage and just as the Media start to build us up as potential Champions, then get knocked out by the first half decent team we play and as it is over there, means that people over here may well be turning up to work next day bleary eyed and then falling asleep at our desks.
The Commonwealth Games is then launched in Scotland in July with only a select few nations who had the privilege of once being taken over and pillaged by Britain can join so silver linings then, yes we may have taken all your resources back in the day but you do get an invite to run and jump over things in summertime Glasgow, so bring your wellies.
As well as the big International events, we also have just entered the sharp end of the Premier League Season which Arsenal are hoping may finally be their year to win as well as the Champions League and the Rugby Six Nations so much to hope that your Television doesn't pack up for.

Legislative Changes Coming For 2026

In 2026, the UK government is implementing a wide range of legislative changes focused on employment rights, social security, housing, and public health which will leave some better off, some worse off but such is the width of the changes, everyone will be affected somehow.

From January junk food averts will be banned before the 9pm watershed and a new MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) will be introduced for children which will now also include Chickenpox
From March all English councils will collect food waste, garden waste, paper/card and other dry recyclables separately.
From April, the National Living Wage will rise to £12.71 per hour and £10.85 for 18-to-20-year-olds and there will be new 'Day One' Employment Rights Act which grants workers the right to paternity leave and ordinary parental leave from their first day of employment.
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will be paid from the first day of illness and a new Government Department (Fair Work Agency) is being created to enforce Employers are abiding by employment rights and paying the minimum wage.
Cuts to Agricultural and Business Property Relief take effect meaning farmers with assets over £1m will be subject to a 20% tax rate and the dividend tax rate will increase by 2% to  10.75%.
All Social Security benefits will now be folded into The Universal Credit and the basic standard allowance will increase from £400.14 to £424.90 but additional health payments for new claimants will be reduced to £217 per month while the Two-Child limit has been scrapped allowing families to receive payments for all their children and the State Pensions will increase by 4.8% in April and disability benefit by 3.8%.
From May the end of "No-Fault" Evictions will be introduced meaning landlords will need a legally valid reason to evict tenants
From September businesses (such as Gyms and streaming services) will not be able to roll over services without first sending a renewal reminder.

All in all nothing there to scary although the Farmers will continue bleating about having to now pay inheritance tax although they still have a far better deal than the rest of us and I am all for a new Government Department to enforce employment rights because employers have been getting away with skimping on their workers rights for far too long and who hasn't been stung by companies just rolling over services so good job Labour, about time.     

Ai Shares Tips

I asked Google a few years ago what shares i should buy with a pretend £1000 and I made £2683 minus the original £1000 outlay which means £1683 profit which isn't to be sneezed at but that was in 2013 and now we have Ai and i have heard many people reporting they use it to get their shares and stocks tips so i asked AI, what shares should i buy in 2026?

It did give me some warnings about how it cannot provide personalized financial advice and the stock market involves significant risk, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results etc etc blah blah but then it listed some UK and International Companies i should invest in today, which was nice of it.

The issue was i was going to use my pretend profit of £1683 but the price ranges from £10.84 to £3028 per share so my £1683 really wouldn't go very far so i got rid of some of the more expensive ones and ended up with the following:
 
Shield Therapeutics: 10.84  155 shares    10 = 108
Jadestone Energy: 22.50      74 shares      10 = 225
Panthera Resources 23.20    72 shares      10 = 234
TechnipFMC : 44.68            37 shares      10 = 446
Brave Bison Group 66.35    25 shares      10 = 663


10 Shares in each comes to £1676 so i walked into my fake bank, slapped down my fake £1676 onto a fake desk and said 10 shares in each please and i will be back in December 2026 to cash them out and if they do well, regret bottling out of using a real bank and real money.