America's Gunboat Diplomacy

 
Gunboat Diplomacy was a popular tactic by the British with the mosr famous example being the Opium Wars where the British parked their warships off the coast of China to force them to relegalise the drug opium which was very lucrative to the British Empire and we really didn't like it when the Chinese Empire, our best customer, began to see the unfavorable side of massive, widespread heroin addiction and banned it. We aLeo said you can hand over Hong Kong as a place to land our Opium cargo as you are at it.
It wasn't just the Brits, most nations where at it to intimidate other, less powerful entities into concessions but it kinda fell out of favour until recently when America has picked it up and brushed it off as they park warships off the coast of Iran although the reasons are constantly changing and the current ones are no Nuclear Weapons, stop killing protesters and stop funding militia around the Middle East.
Now i am no fan of Iran or any of the Middle East theocracies and if they could all just dump the Religion thing the World would be a much more tolerant place and neither do i want any nations to have nuclear weapons or any of them to kill protesters regardless of where they are, Iran, America or China but we have to be consistent.
If you go left at Tehran and continue through Iraq and Jordan you will find Israel who have, and continue to commit a Genocide, killing over 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, mostly women and children including guiding them to 'safe places' before then bombing them.
Just this weekend another 31 were killed and since the Peace Deal they agreed to in October 2025, 509 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and it is America who have been giving political and military backing for the Genocide to continue.
Yes, Iran is run by an awful, murderous Administration who need to be dealt with diplomatically but far worse is Israel who is run by a Genocidal Administration who have been conducting it for over 75 years and backed by a warmongering nation who are currently under the control of a narcissistic idiot who was recently threatening to invade another NATO country.
America, Iran, Israel....a pox on all their houses.  

Just Handed Back What We Stole

The Chagos Islands had been in the news recently as the UK plans to hand them over to Mauritius which makes it sound as if we are doing it out of the kindness of our hearts but handing them back would be more appropriate because it wasn't given to us, we took it.
As most people woulds struggle to find it on a map, look for the Indian Ocean and work your way down from India and there it is south of the Maldives in the British Indian Ocean Territory and that gives you and idea of how we ended up with it.
Originally part of France, we took it off them in the early 19th Century and in the early 1970's, Britain forcibly expelled the natives at the request of the United States as they wanted to build a military base  there and forcibly transported 2,000 people to Mauritius and the Seychelles and prevented them from re-entering the islands   
Mauritius claimed the Chagos Archipelago as part of Mauritius and in 2019 The International Court of Justice agreed and stated that the UK had an obligation to return the islands to Mauritius hence where we are today with the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius agreement expected ratified some time this year.
Under the terms of the deal, the Chagos Islands are immediately leased back to the UK for the next 99 years and Mauritius will receive an annual rent of £165 million from the UK for the first three years, followed by £120 million annually for the subsequent ten years. Thereafter, the £120 million annual payment.
There you have it then, we are giving back which was there's anyway but as for the people forcibly removed...they remain forcibly removed, another consequence of the awful British Empire and the awful American militirisation of the Planet.

Special Guest Blogger: David Soul

Hi, its me, yes, that Guy from Starsky & Hutch and the “Don’t Give Up on Us” guy. And, apparently now the dead guy also.
Let me get one thing straight: I did not plan on dying. I mean, sure, I knew it would happen eventually, smoking 60  day for decades helped with that, but I assumed I’d at least be consulted first. One minute I’m contemplating whether oat milk is a scam (it is), the next I’m checking my own pulse and finding there isn't one.
Now, don’t get me wrong, death isn’t all bad. The peace and quiet is nice, no more autograph seekers asking, “Weren’t you in that cop show? and 'which one was you, Starsky or Hutch?” while I’m just trying to enjoy a coffee in Hampstead Park.
I may have been born American but i died a Brit, obtaining citizenship in 2004 because i loved Britain apart from the weather which is lousy. I actually sort of knew the woman who runs this blog, our seats at Highbury were quite close by and we would nod at each other occasionally, both Arsenal fans see, i even frequently appeared in Arsenal matchday programmes and club magazines over the years.
Obviously i am most well known for the Cop show but when i started having hit songs i know some people wondered why this guy who was all about driving fast cars and flinging himself at bad guys could suddenly think he was a pop star. They didn’t realize that I was a singer and musician long before I made any mark as an actor.
In England I carried on my acting career and would pop up in several shows but mainly did theatre even after the Internet announced i had died in 2009.
'Wait, you’re still alive?' people would say followed by the request for a selfie and one woman in an elevator said I looked like that actor from the old TV show and when i said 'That’s because I am him', she replied, 'Nope, he’s dead.'
Whether it was for my singing or my acting, I was described as a legend which is sweet but i did suffer with back pain from decades of bell-bottoms and legends don’t spend forty years being introduced as 'David Soul, you know, the guy from Starsky & Hutch'.
Still, I suppose I can’t complain. I had a good run. I chased bad guys in a red Ford Gran Torino. I made women swoon with my sideburns. I topped charts. I made cameos on Hawaii Five-0 and Casualty and there is even a remastered Starsky and Hutch on streaming platforms in high definition although nobody really needed to see that close-up of my 1976 haircut in 4K.

May 8th Going To Be Interesting For PM

It seems it is only a matter of time before Keir Starmer is removed either by his own Party or by taking himself out of Downing Street and it was blatantly obvious what the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, was thinking.  
Popular amongst his Labour peers, the problem was that he was not a Member of Parliament so he would have to solve that little problem first and so when Greater Manchester MP Andrew Gwynne said he was stepping down due to 'significant ill health', this paved the way for Andy Burnham to potentially run in a by-election in his constituency.
Starmer's allies emphatically tried to shut that down while supporters of Burnham egged him on the second problem to overcome was that all potential Labour MP's have to be vetted by the nine man panel of the Labour Parties National Executive Committee who voted 8-1 to block the Manchester mayor's bid, citing the concerns of cost the having to hold not only a Bye Election but one for the Manchester Mayor when they have upcoming local English, Welsh and Scottish elections to pay for.
Not sure how much sway Starmer had in the NEC decision but having someone so obviously just waiting to step into his shoes would have been a problem for him especially if the Local elections is the royal tonking that the Labour Party are fearing where it would be difficult for Starmer to continue and that was always the Catch 22 for him.
Allow Burnham to run and amplify the drumbeat of a leadership challenge that is already growing or block him and face the fury of his supporters and the accusation that he is running scared of a leadership challenge and harden opposition against him.
All this is very useful for Wes Streeting who is the other name commonly cited to replace Starmer and he has made no secret he would someday like to lead the Party although at the moment he is saying all the right things but he must be smiling that the kickback for Burnham will land on Starmer, therefore losing him even more support.
The morning of the 8th May may be very interesting.

Historians Say Trump Isn't Hitler

Time around the World is strange. In Britain at the moment it is 23:15 and in France it is 22:15 meanwhile it in America it is the mid 1930's Germany as the Trump Administration turn up the full fascist, or so i thought because scholars and historians i spoke to have it closer to the mid 1920's, mid 1920' Italy to be precise.
Benito Mussolini is considered the creator and founder of Fascism, developing the ultra right wing ideology and where most people would associate the present Trump Administration with early Hitler, historians argue that the comparison is stronger with Il Duce than any with Adolf Hitler who took what Mussolini had, and made it his own.
The similarity, according to people who study these things, are like Mussolini, Trump uses simplified, repetitive, and emotionally charged language to bypass traditional media and connect directly with a mass movement rather than just a political party and both tried to cultivate an image of hyper masculinity and alpha-male dominance.
Mussolini’s promised to restore the glory of the Roman Empire parallels the 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) slogan and both centered their platforms on the idea that the nation had been weakened by corrupt elites and 'internal enemies' and only they could restore its past greatness.
Both tried to dismantle democratic norms such as the judiciary and the press as well as trying to manipulate media outlets and both relied heavily on nepotism in their inner circle, Mussolini’s appointment family members to his ministry and so has Trump with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in official advisory roles.
Both have Paramilitaries doing their dirty work. Il Duce had the Blackshirts causing systematic street violence while Trump has ICE currently doing the same while both utilised the technology of their time to bypass traditional gatekeepers such as Mussolini who created LUCE, a government agency that produced propganda newsreels shown in every cinema while Trump created Truth Social which enabled him to speak direct to his followers without censure and cause a constant barrage of misinformation designed to make the public question reality.
Experts have linked Trump’s use of alternative facts to Mussolini’s methods, where the leader's declarations are promoted as the only truth, dismissing established facts as lies.
Like Mussolini, he cast established journalists as 'enemies' and attempted to replace them with a direct, unmediated 'truth' so Mussolini and Trump both positioned themselves as truth-tellers in a landscape they characterised as dominated by a corrupt and dishonest press and positioned themselves as the only ones to believe despite what the evidence showed.
Both tried to centralise power, attacked and attempted to prosecute opposition and targetted minority groups and while Trump often wears hats that says 'Trump was Right about everything', this is almost the same as Mussolini’s slogan 'Mussolini is always right'.
Mussolini’s face was plastered on posters, buildings, and textbooks across Italy to create a sense of omnipresence while the U.S. context is different but Trump is keen to have his name associated with everything and have his name on everything.
While Mussolini scapegoated Bolsheviks, plutocrats and ethnic minorities, Trumps administration targets the Deep State, radical leftists and illegal immigrants.
The slogan, One of Ours, All of yours' which the Trump administration used when defending the ICE agents after they killed a US citizen, is not directly attributed to Mussolini himself but was used within the context of Nazism in  general,particularly in relation to the tactics used by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist regime to eliminate opposition and demand total obedience to the state.
Finally Fascism was inherently expansionist and Trump has wanted to add Greenland as well as mentioning adding Panama and even Canada to the United States so make of that what you will but as we all know Mussolini was overthrown by his own side and hung upside from a lamppost and as the American people stir to protest what is happening there, we can only wait to see if the comparison runs right through to the end. 

Ryanair V Musk

We all know that Elon Musk is a tool of the highest order and he uses his X Platform to throw out sarcastic barbs to anyone who gets under his amusingly thin skin which is exactly what the Ryan Air boss, Michael O'Leary, has done.
O'Leary is also a complete tool and when Musk asked O'Leary if he would consider installing Starlink satellite internet service aerials on his planes, O'Leary replied that it would cost his company about €200-250m per-year by impacting the aerodynamics and adding to their fuel bill and said he would pay not attention to the idiot.
An irked Musk replied that O'Leary was an utter idiot, a chimp,and called for him to be sacked and even queried about buying Ryan Air for himself for which the reply came that due to EU Rules: 'Non-European citizens can’t own a majority stake in a European airlines' but said that he could always invest in Ryanir as it would be a: 'Significantly better investment than X' and launched a 'Big Idiots Seat Sale' which was 'only available for Elon Musk and any other idiots on X'.
He also said in a dig at the Grok scandal, that he would always be available to: 'Address (undress??) Elon Musk's latest Twitshit'.
What Musk obviously didn't know when he started the spat was that O'Leary is infamous for trolling morons and is damned good at it so if Musk is thinking of replying to the Irishman's provocations, we can expect even further and more hilarious replies aimed at the man who even Donald Trump called 'A bullshit artist' which must have stung coming from someone who lies as easily as he gains pounds.
The worst thing about it is that Michael O'Leary is the one that everyone over here is rooting for which is like last season when Title chasing Arsenal fans were cheering on Tottenham because they were playing Manchester City.
Obviously Tottenham lost but it did take quite a few showers to wipe away the stench and that's what this is like, damn you O'Leary (but go ahead and embarrass the South African idiot even more). 

Board Of Piss

Any Board that has Tony Blair, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on it is not a great Board and to call it a peace board is a grim joke when one is actively committing genocide and is wanted by the ICJ, one has just invaded and kidnapped the leader of Venezuela to claim its oil and threatening to invade another while another lied his way to a war which resulted in a million dead and the fourth is in the third year of invading its neighbour so hard to think any of them would know what Peace was even if was rolled up into a newspaper and swiped around their warmongering heads.      
Invites went out to most World Leaders and sensibly all the important countries have ran a mile from it so on the board are  Bahrain, Morocco, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan and Mongolia with Russia and Israel set to join soon and China yet to reply which isn't a great line up.
It was originally established to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, but now has a far broader mandate, including promoting global stability and conflict resolution around the world, conflicts which most of the Peace Board are either involved in or are the cause of so good luck with that.
I assume it is seeking to use their 11-page charter to bypass, or even replace, the United Nations  and the chairman is the orange buffoon himself, Donald Trump who serves as the final authority on the interpretation of the charter and holds veto power over key decisions, including membership removal and executive board actions, membership which last three years unless the members contribute more than £1bn.
The United Nations does need to be looked at, its model of some countries able to veto anything is a nonsense but rather that than a board with most of the worst World Leaders on it in charge of peace but i dont think the UN need to worry, everything Trump gets involved with ends up a failure so they just got to wait it out and get the popcorn ready.

Under 16 Social Media Ban Coming To UK Soon

After the House of Lords backed a ban on under-16s using social media, it is now almost inevitable that Britain's teenagers will be joining their Australians counterparts in seeing a 'blocked' message when they try to access their accounts.
An amendment to the government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is currently making its way through parliament and a consultation has been launched on how it worked, and is working in Australia, which they are calling 'highly effective' to make sure no under-16s can become users.
The Prime Minister was initially opposed to such an outright ban but has faced pressure from not only his own backbenchers but parents, celebrities, charities and teachers which has softened his view.  
It has been one month since Australia enforced the social media rules for children by banning such platforms for those under the age of 16, and during that time, social media companies have removed almost five million Australian accounts held by minors with Meta/Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok losing the most accounts and the resulting revenue streams and with Britain and other nations now seriously looking at the same policy, the Social Media companies are not happy.
But it seems almost certain a ban will be coming in some shape or form and a Government spokesman said: 'We will take action to give children a healthier relationship with mobile phones and social media'.
I completely agree that it should be banned for under 16's, i have seen the harm it does to young,. impressionable minds and I have heard the argument that it should be the parents responsibility and not the Governments but if it is backed by Law, then that makes it much easier for the parents to enforce so get on with it Keir, the sooner the better.

Keir Playing The Trump Game

The first rule of the Trump Game, played by politicians around the world, is you do not talk about the rules of the Trump Game. The object of the game is to pretend that the President of the United States is a normal, rational person and on no account are you ever to admit that he’s nasty, vain, venal, unstable and obviously unaware that his own doctors are testing him for signs of dementia.
The 2026 round of the game got off with the US military attacking Venezuela and kidnapping its president while making it clear that it was all about the oil and every British politician  bent over backwards to not say anything bad about it, even gobshite Nigel Farage just pushed his head a little further up Trumps bum  and Keir Starmer mumbled something about not rushing to a decision therefore giving himself time to reflect on whether invading other countries, kidnapping their leaders on made up charges and literally stealing their oil was a bad thing but then we are finding out that is what Starmer does.
Not content with threatening tariffs against the UK and seven EU countries for not just handing him Greenland, the deranged Donald has now sent a letter to the Norwegian prime minister to complain about not winning the Nobel peace prize and to say he was so ticked off he was thinking of starting a war instead.
Up stood Keir, cleared his throat and claimed that Greenland’s sovereignty could only be determined by Greenland and Denmark and our values are resolute and Trump taking Greenland was a line in the sand and we all thought, here we go, Keir has had enough and is going to tell the sex pest where to go, only he never.
Instead Starmer said it was time to take the heat out of the situation and this was not the time for overreaction. What was needed was a cool head. Calm diplomacy. No need to make a drama out of a crisis. Just sit down with the man who thought digesting bleach would sort out Covid and talk things through. Man to man as once Trump had had things explained to him, he would have a rethink. Realise he had acted a bit hastily. A gentle reminder that starting a trade war with the largest single market in the World was a wee bit over the top.
All of which was fine if the other person has an IQ higher than his shoe size and could respond sensibly to reason, a proper grownup and not a man-baby who tries to bully those around him and is surrounded by sycophants and lickspittles and a party who will not dare challenge him.
We can all agree that changing the fat orange lumps mind with persuasion and diplomacy would be a good thing and maybe Keir will prove us all wrong but we all know that isn’t very likely and their isn't anyone in the White House who will whisper in his strangely coloured ear, 'With respect Sir, you are being a real dick over this'.
We keeping hearing Dementia Donny may not have long left, hence his obsession with naming as much as he can after himself but if we are waiting for the Love Actually moment: 'A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger.', this isn't coming from Keir Starmer who is a World Champion master at the Trump game.

Feeling Ill In Space

Space . . . is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the shops but that's just peanuts compared to space, our nearest neighbour is about 240,000 miles away and takes 3 days to get there so it was lucky the recent medical emergency happened aboard the International Space Station which is is 250 miles above our heads and only 24 hours away.
To protect the crew member’s privacy, Nasa hasn’t disclosed details about what happened but medical evacuations in Space are rare, this is the first time in 25 years, but the evacuation raises the question if we are looking for manned missions further out from the Earth?
A trip to Mars typically takes 6 to 9 months and coming back home if you are suffering a medical issue wouldn't be easy but Astronauts do undergo rigorous medical screening before selection for conditions that might worsen in microgravity of Space which could explain why the emergencies are so rare but what health issues occur in Space?  
The scientists at the European Space Agency have always been very helpful when I have Space type questions so I emailed them and asked the question to them and they were very quick to reply with an answer.
According to them skin irritation is the most frequently reported medical issue during spaceflight ranging from dry skin, rashes, hypersensitivity reactions and impaired wound healing  as the  cold, dry, low-humidity spacecraft environment exacerbates these problems.
Congestion and headaches affect most astronauts, particularly early in a mission as without gravity pulling fluids downward, blood shifts toward the head, causing a puffy face and 'space sniffles' as well as many Astronauts suffering from changes pressure in the eye, leading to optic nerve flattening and vision changes.
Sleep disruption is a thing as circadian rhythms are disrupted and musculoskeletal injuries are common, generally from the exercise designed to protect astronauts’ bones and muscles.
Watching returning Astronauts being carried away on stretchers after being on the ISS only reinforces my belief that if we do make it to Mars,  after 6-9 months of travelling, the astronauts would be in no fit state to do anything once they got there and nobody wil be waiting for them with a stretcher and a hospital to check them over.
Obviously if the boffins could come up with a Spaceship that duplicates the Earth's gravity then that would solve many of the problems but until then the sick astronaut has my sympathies because when you are not feeling at your best at work, there really is no place like home, shame it was whizzing 250 miles below them at 17,500 mph, 16 times a day.