Tony Blair is a war criminal…(539)

...sounds to me like saying rain is wet.

But its been oddly, quietly controversial since the catastrophic Bush/Blair Iraq atrocity, at least this side of the pond, the debacle being ruled to have been started not just on a false premise but on one that was known to be false at the time (ref The Chilcot Report).

So why am I writing about his now when I and innumerable others, have referred to Blair in this fashion for two decades while the rest of the world and much of the legacy media behaved as if with collective, selective amnesia?

A couple of weeks ago I received mail from the managing editor of Scotland’s newspaper The National informing me that IPSO (The UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation) ruled in the paper’s favour re certain complaints. One such was a letter of mine referring to Tony Blair as a war criminal. Something I do regularly.

Many papers that have, for years, published my missives were shy of using the WC tag and simply ignored those letters that did.

Notably, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Bush’s Freudian slip where he referred to that atrocity as the invasion of ‘Iraq’, there was a subtle change. The Guardian for example, for the first time, published a letter where I’d used the WC tag.

IPSO ruled in the paper’s favour and mine.

Its odd in a way as it makes little material difference to me. I and many millions like me, will always know Blair is a war criminal even though he’s protected by the colour of his skin his wealth, power and connections, from ever facing consequences.

But why does this matter now?

The answers to that dark question are legion -

Because we are repeating ourselves.

Because at some point the truth always has to be acknowledged.

Because we cannot continue in a world where only certain people face consequences for their vast crimes while victims always pay in blood, misery and destroyed futures.

Because Trump is in Iran.

Because Putin is in Ukraine.

Because Netanyahu is in Gaza and Lebanon.

Because its always about resources (see blog 483 All Wars Are Resources Wars).

Because power, like wealth is more unevenly distributed than ever and the two are more closely linked than ever and the powerful and wealthy are spending on war not welfare. (NB - in the US 40m Americans live in poverty while Trump’s war has so far cost the US tax payer an estimated $25BILLION).

Because vast swathes of the populous are malleable and easily persuaded to act against their (the majority's) interests even more so now by the tech bros who manipulate all narratives and those bot-billionaires are, in turn, pandering those who control government and military might.

Because we are at the zenith of the collision of catastrophic Capitalism and war-mongering. Greed and war have always gone hand in hand as those who have, continue to grab grab grab feeding their endless want want want, they need to be backed up by fire power.

Because carrying on regardless, we may (as per last month’s post) be the first species on the planet to bring about our own destruction.

Finally in this ‘because’ list which could go on, we must acknowledge the devastating AI/social media associated decline in that singular commodity most precious to civilisation and the counterweight to greed and violence - human empathy.

And so it matters to me that the man who has been a major 21st century catalyst to the normalisation of the heightened destroy and grab, dominate and subjugate process and is deeply embedded in it still via his Tony Blair Foundation and who, stretching irony almost to breaking point, was an early joiner of Trump’s Board of Peace – should be called what he is, a WAR CRIMINAL.

To IPSO I am perhaps a little grateful for one thing, a tiny amount of vindication. More importantly, we must finally acknowledge the ‘war’ (illegal invasion) for the atrocity it was and Blair for the abomination that he is even though we continue to blindly repeat.

Its the least we can do for the dead, displaced and traumatised. Without even that small thing, we are all shameful and shameless.

The End. It starts with Africa… (538)

In my dystopian novella Zero One Zero Two (e-book and paperback) – there is a background landscape where Africa has been quietly abandoned in a world where humanity effectively works its way to destruction.

The forsaking of the historically abused, gruesomely exploited cradle of humanity is not new but Trump’s war-not-a-war, already out of control, begun to distract from his vile past with the infamous paedophile Epstein, is a hugely significant catalyst.

And who have the world’s historically ill-used got to rely on in The United Nations? Well – the five permanent members – the ones who have always carved up the world and done so little for the exploited and the poor; the five who have in fact, historically been the worst colonial abusers, oppressors, warmongers and abusers/destroyers of the globe’s resources; The US, The UK, China, Russia, France.

Yes, in the short term, a world addicted to oil will focus on economic pain and their own inconvenience rather than on human suffering but this is so much bigger than another stupid Western slaughter fest in The Middle East.

Our own bargain basement Trump, the ultimately buffoonish Prime Minister Boris Johnson, chose to cut foreign aid DURING COVID while his government were dishing out government contracts to dodgy mates. And while his behaviour at home led to huge suffering and further loss of confidence in national government – this barely reported act of extreme injustice and cruelty had a much more far-reaching relevance. It was one of the first overt, almost boastful and blatant cruelties without the usual sugar coating and it mattered not a jot, barely registering with the public.

One of Trump’s early actions in his cataclysmic second term was to cut US AID. In 2025 The Centre for Global Development estimated that these cuts would lead to 700,000 additional deaths annually – many in Africa.

Of course there is plenty money for the war machine and Trump’s golden ballroom etc…

But this snake eats itself. Our very denial will be our downfall.

According to organisations such as Debt Justice, Africa subsidises the rest of the world to the tune of around $40billion PER YEAR in both repaying debt that often outweighs aid significantly and in the way its resources continue to be exploited.

Another interesting but ignored figure is the Action Aid calculation that Africa is owed around $36 trillion in Climate Debt by rich countries – countries like the US and Britain that have chosen to cut aid, have been at the forefront of the resource/asset gouging of that continent. However, they continue through politicians and a lazy media to portray Africa as an eternal aid sponge. The hard truth is the exact opposite.

There may be some short-term positive side-effects the Trump’s Iran horror such as more intra-African trade and a shift away from reliance on the unreliable West. Also some African exporting countries such as Libya may get an economic hoist – but whether this will benefit those ‘on the ground’ in a country still without necessary infrastructure and security to provide stable services to all, is not a given.

But as Trump’s stupid war gets away from his stupid rotting little hands – I believe something much bigger has been triggered than just more disruption to the black gold that fuels the comfortable lives of the soft, easy-living-uninterested West. Not least that in this latest sad, humanity-disregarding, episode of Actuarial Warfare – a Middle East country appears for now to be getting the upper hand. Or at least holding its own. 

Iran is not Gaza.

Two tiny choke points – The Straits of Hormuz and The Bab-el-Mandeb Straits could take the globe closer to that infamous tipping point. Both are significant for moving huge quantities of the stuff that literally fuels global trade and both are embroiled in Trump’s mess.

The White House malignant narcissist’s blasphemous, incoherent, expletive Easter rant will not ease the situation.

One piece of barely acknowledged news is the immediate crises caused in places such as The Philippines. Much of the cheap labour wealthy countries rely on comes from this small South East Asian country and its overwhelming dependence on imported oil has meant The Philippines was one of the first to directly experience economic disaster.

Africa may partially benefit from its recent growing economic ties with China especially as the economically legendary Petrodollar loses much of its global punch and even shipping securities and insurance companies begin to quote in Yuan. But Africa has already taken massive hits from Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine even though China is on the side – sort of – of Russia. Supplies of both wheat and sunflower oil to the continent have been massively disrupted.

Much of Africa’s farming is Middle East dependent i.e. its fertiliser comes from The Gulf states. And unlike rich countries, poorer areas of the world cannot shield themselves from these shocks. Cuts to aid along with the latest hits to oil/grain and fertiliser are just piling on already unsustainable pressure.

What is being felt immediately in The Philippines has been a long term drip drip effect on Africa and is now exacerbated by the Iran war. The fast, the slow, the short, medium and long-term repercussions will be catastrophic.

What the selfish, insular West should realise however, as in my novella, abandoning The Exploited Continent in this vicious way will ultimately effect those who think they are invulnerable to crises. We are all interdependent.

For decades The West has ignored the in-our-face climate crisis – because it could afford to. The results of Western greed and lazy, disinterested comfort were felt mainly by the poor of the world in countries The West saw as either holiday destinations or cheap resource suppliers.

Just as the West largely ignored the 2008 global financial crisis that it created – because it could.

The West ignored many of the major global health crises until it was touched – AIDS and COVID being the best examples. (I have written on this blog more than once how typical that the world had viagra but no cure for Malaria).

The insulated, cosy West has ignored common sense, logic, history and humanity in such adventures as the illegal invasion of Iraq. Both Bush and Blair prosper free, wealth, at liberty and taking no responsibility for what followed – the destabilisation of The Middle East [again] – mass migration, the rise of the Right Wing in Europe and the tragic knock-on effects we see today.

But there is always an end game. I envisioned a possible one in my novella.

Trump began his distraction war by bombing an elementary girls’ school killing 170 while negotiations were supposedly ongoing. So the suggestion that Iran will return to the negotiating table any time soon is just another Trump fantasy. Why would Iran partake?

The idea that The US is ‘winning’ is also a Trump fantasy. This is Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and other terrible etceteras.

But this time I strongly argue – the END GAME may not be simply another spectacularly costly US military blunder.

And remember the numbers -

While it costs around $13 million to launch one THAAD missile interceptor. The Iranian missiles it is trying to intercept cost a fraction of that – around $35k. Some of the mines laid in The now infamous Straits of Hormuz cost as little as $1,500. Oh – and approximately 3 THAADs are needed to down one Iranian missile.

I understand those who claim there is some sort of plan behind all this. It’s human nature to look for logic and a comfortable narrative. However, this view seems to be broadly based on the assumption – ‘surely no one can be this stupid’ and if they are ‘surely there are clever people in the background’. To them I say – I have a time-share on Mars to sell you…

Yes, we are hearing about global disruption to oil and rising costs. But here in the UK you’d barely believe the Ukraine suffering is still ongoing let alone this abomination in Iran. This weekend the legacy media were covering the usual slush. Easter eggs, Royal outings to be viewed by the zombie public, celebrity shite, holidays...

We’ve been here before many times.

Too many times.

We have not learned.

This time Trump may simply be painting the background story described in my novella.  

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For my regular readers remember I’m on no social media and never have been just existing in my tiny unnoticed corner of the real world. Do feel free to re-post on your own platforms.

Also, check out my other books HERE.

Apologies that the main link is Amazon but they bought the publishing platform I was on.

My books are available on wider distribution from alternative good online book stores. 

The Great Regime Change Irony. (537)

The sands of time only run one way which is something humans ignore.

Yesterday in The National (Scotland) and The Guardian (England) this letter of mine was published -

Dear Editor,

As the usual tragic civilian casualties pile up under rubble, including 170 blown to bits in a girls' school in Tehran in first wave US bombing, the world faces perhaps its greatest irony.

Trump has illegally initiated a war that has no congressional approval while calling on the people of Iran to rise up - in part because of the abuse of its own citizens.

No one would argue that Iran hasn't committed atrocities against its people but this from a regime that has its own masked thugs murdering people in broad daylight on the streets of US cities and 'disappearing' them into camps. 

Is there another country on the planet that needs 'regime change' more than The US?

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And this was hot on the heels of another letter that went like this -

Dear Editor,

There are many works of fiction that echo or pre-empt real events to the point that their prescience is unnerving.

At the moment I struggle to not chew over Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’.

In the film version of this sci-fi thriller, the actions of the psychic school teacher John Smith, played by screen favourite, Christopher Walken, saves the day although not in the way he imagines.

The lunatic right-wing populist politician Greg Stillson, perfectly captured by Martin Sheen, is a one-man wrecking machine whose rise to the top is so eerily Trump-parallel, it gives me goose bumps.

President Greg Stillson (Sheen) in a mad midnight craze – is future-seen by the psychic to press the nuclear button in his catastrophic, self-obsessed, if-I-go-everyone-goes narcissistic, sociopathic literal end game.

Just as Trump is now ramping up wars and conflicts both within the US and around the world, simply to cover his vast and incalculable failures and corruption actions, so did Greg Stillson.

Many Western politicians and even more folk in the media continue to behave as if there is something normal about /workable around this US administration. But I see no John Smith/Christopher Walken to save the day…

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Since that letter was published, Trump has started his war, egged on by Netanyahu (Israel of course a state with nukes, albeit outside of any international agreement) and according to sources in the US, the Saudi Crown Prince – Prince ‘Bone Saw’ – he of the brutal murder and dismemberment of American Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This is further monstrous distraction from the infamous Epstein Files.

But over-arching all this seems to be the unspoken assumption that some repair will magically happen in the future. Trump will leave office (!) or – eventually die…

This is not the fix people think it is.

Situations do not revert to what they were before a cataclysm. No landscape looks the same after a landslide or earthquake or volcano.

A new situation exists based on the trauma that has happened.

Add to that the cumulative trauma that our fragile planet is subject to on a daily basis and even the fabled ‘rebuilding’ cannot possibly, logically, realistically ‘take us back’.

The world will move forward with the baggage, destruction and more limited resources. We will not be in a post WWI or post WWII situation. We have deliberately destroyed so much of the ‘gains’ of those horrific sacrifices and those lessons learnt were not just forgotten but trampled underfoot after mere decades.

The sands of time move in one direction and they run out…

Do check this out… Zero One Zero Two

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PLUS this Friday March 6th it's

So why not download the audio version of

 Casey & the Surfmen

It’s Not Complicated. (536)

Epstein’s legacy is simply the canary in the coal mine of The West’s deep, dark, depressing, subterranean cavern of human failings.

It’s a rotten, stinking, oozing, vicious, viscous, discordant, shameful, venal, sick, unholy mess…

I’m talking of course of the cabal that own the world; that have more power than national governments and influence our lives minutely. Their entitlement, greed and sense of invulnerability is not something us ordinary folk can really comprehend.

While we are rightly shocked at Epstein’s paedophilia and trafficking of young women, his hold over the seemingly endless numbers of powerful men who shared his view that any other human was theirs to use and own, is more broadly about greed, power and corruption. With the drip of information contained in the infamous Epstein files, we are simply getting a glimpse into just how deep the rot goes, how wide, how extensive the networks.

The perpetrators were overwhelmingly men and vastly, outrageously rich. And many of them, while riding rough shod over the vulnerable and weak, are responsible for running the world we live in.

Anyone paying attention is aware of the Oxfam statistic that

The world’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity.

Solving the man-made problems faced by so much of humanity is difficult to achieve because so much is stacked against the required outcome.

Many structures are rigidly, deeply embedded in the status quo.

Difficult it may be but complicated it most definitely is not.

Many folk on our precious planet with its dwindling damaged resources are in need.

A tiny handful at the very top have wealth beyond imagining.

There are estimated to be 800 billionaires in the US and even the tiny UK boasts 156 according to The Times Rich List.

Our outdated systems focus tax on income and not wealth and that is the first and very least of things that need to change. But which government will do this with the billionaires and all their resources constantly stroking them and flunkies like Lord Mandelson ready to put their rich mates before their duty to country.

Humanity is now painted into a corner. The people we desperately need to get under control have all the power.

It’s tough but it is in no way complicated.

'It's complicated' is the biggest lie in town.

It’s painfully, clearly, heartbreakingly simple…

A handful of greedy corrupt nasty fuckers have it all.

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here are some old doodles in case we need illustrations to this very obvious point -

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And any regulars who check into this blog know I'm an old luddite and not on any social media.

My books are still floating in the ether - lonely - minding their own business if you want to check them out here Goodreads or listen to a lyrical, environmental tale on Bandcamp

Trump lights the global touch paper the day before legal Epstein discovery is due...

 ...with the appeasement and complicity of - well - just Sir Keir Starmer!

In light of the grovelling to Trump (the royal invitation obsequiously proffered from an inner pocket near his heart at the White House) and the disastrous and nightmarish following of the US, yet again, into Middle East catastrophe in Gaza etc - it should be no surprise that while the rest of the world watched in absolute horror, Trump's illegal invasion of another oil-rich country, Starmer should be hot out of the blocks fawning, eager to please and acquiescing to the behaviour.

Trump has gone full Putin. No surprise to anyone but Starmer. The rest of the world, including some who would love to perpetrate similar actions (Russia and China) have clearly condemned this heinous action.

As Emily Thornberry (snr Labour MP) pointed out, you can condemn Maduro's regime and still see that this action is abhorrent.

Apart from clearly wanting to emulate ex-PM Blair - deeply embedded in the Starmer government via the TBI (Tony Blair Institute) - it is a huge embarrassment to at least three of the four nations of the so-called United Kingdom - Scotland - that condemned the Israel/US/UK abominations in Gaza and called for an early cease fire, ditto Ireland and Wales. Albeit Wales did so without the support of Starmer's Labour Party in Wales.

No one but Starmer believes Trump’s drug trafficking excuse for grabbing Maduro (Trump just pardoned ex-president of Honduras and infamous drug trafficker Juan Hernandez) and Trump himself openly stated he wants Venezuelan oil.

This latest lack of backbone and failure to be on the right side of history from the UK Prime Minister should be a huge embarrassment and enormously saddening to anyone left with a moral compass.

Terminator agrees… (534)

I decided to go full dystopia in the last blog of 2025 albeit the cringe Hollywood type.

This is a logical progression from the previous two posts and also letters I’ve had published this year on the subject of our at-risk humanity – as increasingly a majority ‘choose’ to hand over their lives, their privacy, information and even biometric data their very selves in minute detail to the tech oligarchy.

The dehumanisation of humanity by tech is a long running theme on this blog – check out – post 147 More Less-Contact Is Making Us Horrible

The jury is no longer out on whether social media is robbing us of our creativity and empathy. Its no longer out on whether the use of screens is robbing our children of the ability to concentrate and there’s no longer any doubt whether the use of AI is dimming human intellect.

SO – I refer to the Terminator films. Things I’ve always regarded as popcorn viewing at best.

RE-watching a 20p DVD over the weekend of the one I considered the weakest, I was struck by a quote from the character Kyle Reese when faced with the Cyborg version of John Connor. (So – no - I’m not doing the obvious one from Terminator 3 The Rise of The Machines “Skynet IS the virus”

It’s from the 2015 Terminator; Genisys and it relates to the way all human IT devices become connected, interactive and therefore easily under the control of the tech behemoths. And the juxtaposition of reality and fiction causes it to make sense.

Those who control the real AI systems are themselves malformed humans lacking decency, empathy and those things that in the past we valued about humanity. No need to lay out the current hideous examples.

Kyle Reese says something I’ve said in many forms many times about the current human willingness to give up autonomy, individuality and humanity…

“These people re inviting their own extinction in through the front door and they don’t even know it…”

And – of course when I’m in dystopian mood – I’ll recommend books of mine that I always do on such occasions.

The novella Zero One Zero Two

The calmer and more hopeful audio book/narrative poem - Casey & the Surfmen

Merry Christmas.

OUTSIDE (534)

 This month - a poem. I've not done one in a while - topical, reflective or humorous - and it occurred to me that considering the previous post there'd be - if incomplete, at least sufficient context. 

OUTSIDE

On the outside I remained

Perceiving those contained

Legitimacy feigned

Truth strangled cold constrained

Expression ever reigned

In

From the outside I observe

Absence of verve

Survive dodge swerve

The good lose their nerve

From the fight they always curve

Away

Yes it’s strange out here

But it’s painfully clear

The front’s the same as the rear

The driver – always fear

No 5^th gear to

Escape

This dreary gilded age

Of complicity not rage

Lives made of beige

The self constructed cage

Your soul for a wage

Slip

All-new pay-to-die

Pretty vapes your lungs fry

Mine the earth pollute the sky

Accept some Netanyahu lie

The end is nigh

Not just an old guy with a cardboard placard

So why not chuck it all away

And come outside

With me...