And now look.

At the end of a song about an abusive relationship, the singer Liza Minnelli whispers ‘no more bombs’ in a soft desperate voice. I whisper that same way now as I watch the war escalate in the Middle East, from my King size memory foam bed made using the finest petroleum. The battle for land and resources is as old as humanity and the ape. The British took Aboriginal Australia by force but wrote about it in polite terms as if it was gradually acquired. Turns out it was just a lot of murder like any land grab. Does 70,000 years of land occupation, like the Australian Aboriginals, give you ownership rights? The answer is yes, but not if someone with a greater arsenal decide they want it.

Around the middle of the 20th century, the Jews went back to their Holy land after thousands of years of expulsion, exodos and genocides and established a home state called Israel. Some believed that they had an authority over the land with a historical and biblical mandate. Many believed without a place to call home, Jews would continue to be “othered”, expelled and slaughtered, whenever times got tough.

As expressed in Der Judenstaat, a book written by Theodor Herzl in 1896, the best way to avoid antisemitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state. Herzl proposed two possible regions for settlement – Argentina and Palestine – but recognised in the book that colonisation in either would be difficult: “In both countries important experiments in colonisation have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.”

For that reason, Herzl, both in Der Judenstaat and in his political activity concentrated his efforts on securing official legal sanction from, as he put it, “the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan.” Attempts to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities failed, but with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the subsequent creation of Mandatory Palestine under the control of Britain, the Herzl’s idea gained traction: Britain issued the Balfour Declaration that supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

And now look.

In the last few years, Hamas the leaders of Palestine attacked Israel. Israel retaliated by completely destroying Gaza and most of it’s inhabitants. Iran jumped in and attacked Israel and Israel struck back. It’s a hot August in 2025. Things are going backwards fast. The only way Israel will survive in it’s current form is to attack and annihilate. Or is there another way?

The colonisation of Palestine then, even with the protectorate of the ‘present masters of the land’ is very much in it’s infancy and witnessed by a world that understands colonisation as primitive and barbaric. The fall of Trump, which is inevitable will be a precarious moment for Israel.

Our only achievement in the last 100 years is convincing more people that the brain is like a car…

There is little we can do to prevent someone with a chronic mental health condition killing people. The slaughter of three little girls at a dance class in Southport in northern England. The random slaying of three people on the streets of Nottingham. The mass killing of people in a shopping mall in Sydney. They happened because mental illness unmedicated can in some cases result in violence and murder. We are better at learning from our mistakes in terms of mapping the system failings but are no better putting measures in place to safeguard against these. Sometimes it’s an email missed from police to mental health teams like in Sydney. Sometimes it’s someone not taking an episode of mental distress seriously enough. Often it’s about understaffing and under-resourcing. We are better at understanding mental illness and it’s consequences but seemingly no better at doing something about it.

I don’t want to use the names of the men responsible for killing the little girls obsessed with Taylor Swift, a couple of university friends meandering home after a night out, a delivery driver doing his deliveries, a young mother who had to throw her baby into the arms of a bystander while she was being stabbed. Quite frankly I want them to disappear into hell. The killers don’t deserve our compassion but they do deserve the forensic analysis that tells us what we can do next time to medicate a potential killer before they kill. I support the use of reasonable force when detaining someone with the capacity to hurt themselves and others and compassionate tactics to stop a fit escalating into violence but I trust a jab of sedative before a foot on the neck.

A friend told me once that we should provide wrap around social and therapeutic support for people mental illness rather than medicate. I adore idealists and encourage their view of the world but we all know there is not enough human resource in the world to adequately provide mental health services. Our only achievement in the last 100 years is convincing more people that the brain is like a car, it needs regular MOTs and that there is no shame in being mentally unwell. 50 years ago the Southport, Nottingham and Sydney stabbings would have been understood as ‘bad people doing bad things’ and we have to either hang them or lock them up. But now there’s a reason. Even Osama Bin Laden who masterminded killing 3000 people in New York in 2001, was often explained away as revenge for US crimes in the middle east. If he pulled off that same mass killing 100 years earlier, he would have been seen as a psychotic lunatic, born to be bad, motivation was not even considered. We are better at understanding context, we are better at seeing both sides of story. The information super highway, remember that? It means we receive information faster and have to weigh up the reasons. The social media algorithm threatens to remove context but it remains hungry for reason, true or not.

Enlightenment is marvelous but it’s not reducing the wide spread harm associated with mental ill health. The world around us, it seems is making us even more mentally unwell and the resource we need to make us better and reduce the harm associated, is not within our grasps.

To stop people with schizophrenia killing other people we need to do one thing, forcefully medicate. Mental health support services will never be robust enough to stop violence without this draconian backwards step.

Capitalism is a powerful force but it’s blind followers are vulnerable to subjugation because at the heart of capitalism is the need to assert individualism and what goes with this is a slowness to mobilise.

Tariffs on countries to pressure them into introducing tighter controls on borders and drug trafficking is a good idea. But drugs and migrants will continue to find new routes into countries where opportunities exist to make money. This is the basic Capitalist rule of supply and demand. A wall might help but Mexico will find new ways to smuggle Fentanyl into the US while there is demand, for instance. Cutting off supply will work only momentarily.

Trump wants to enter deal negotiations where the US holds all the cards. Makes sense. He wants to win. He is prepared to push the US into recession in order to flatten the playing field and then rebuild it with the US holding all the cards.

The problem is Russia and China also like to win. Trump and Musk will find themselves at the negotiation table under the illusion that they hold all the cards, only to discover Russia and China slapping down a royal flush (to drag out the analogy). This is because Russia and China are smarter. Both have risen from the ashes of communist ruin and opium wars and learnt valuable lessons on how to resist and gazump the West. Trump and Musk are new to this and have no idea what their doing except making sure they both become a whole lot wealthier. The West is not prepared to die for their country’s global advancement no matter how many US patriots tell you they are. It’s not woven into their DNA. Capitalism is a powerful force but it’s blind followers are vulnerable to subjugation because at the heart of capitalism is the need to assert individualism and what goes with this is a slowness to mobilise.

When push comes to shove, the US won’t hold many cards at all. The Trump administration is a former superpower’s last gasp and last grasp on global dominance. The silence of Putin tells you all you need to know. He will allow Trump and Musk to juice all the profit they can out of their dying empire as long as they share the spoils and he will wait till the time is right to bring America to it’s knees once and for all.

The only saving grace for Trump is he will conceal his humiliation with that bilious orange tan.

It’s still the quickest way to the top, in 3 easy steps – demonise minorities, amplify their threat and convince the mainstream they are losing grip on power.

What happens when Donald Trump realises the extent of America’s powers? When all the might is flexed? And the true position of the USAs geopolitical power is laid bare? What does he turn to? How does he flex? What happens when no amount of fake news and posturing can convince the American people he is making them great again? The answer is not quit. Because we know that there is one thing that Donald Trump will never do…quit. Donald Trump will keep going, he will never relinquish power. The desk in the oval office is his until his heart stops beating. The White House is Orange until a bullet takes him out.

Donald Trump has played us all for fools. Fear mongering always works. He knows that, in fact we all know that and yet once again the left has been made to look like the oppressor by right-wing fear mongering. They do it to us every time. And we let it happen. Careless with economy, wooly on the big issues, overly permissive, giving the crazy fringe special privilege, idealistic, out of touch with the hard working majority who are just trying to make and honest living and put food on the table for their families.

We always assume the most articulate and most qualified make the best leaders but every few decades the charismatic snake charmer rises up and leads the pack into the abyss. A politician doesn’t win elections. Celebrity wins elections. The old reliable statesman in a grey suit who we assume knows better than us, is not very TikTok. The celebrity with an arsenal of sound bites and catch phrases, whose the embodiment of god, country and flag with a flare for gladiatorial theatrics, is. God, country and flag are terms so often weaponised against the left. So too “family values”. Jesus fuck the amount of times I’ve heard people use “family values” to justify some extreme far-right idea. The breakdown of the family is a consequence of the breakdown of society. Not the other way round. DICKS. Suggesting that anything outside of social norms is worthy of a voice can easily be blown out of proportion by the far-right and rebranded as an attack on the pillars of a civilised society.

Transgender rights becomes a devious disguise for rapists and the end of women’s sport. Actually, in time, transgender women in sport will be regulated. If men are dressing as women to win, common sense tells us that some sort of regulation will be introduced. Can you really imagine a world where transgender women dominate professional women’s sport and cis-gendered women are the meek and defeated minority? And the vast majority of rapes will still be committed by a bloke in trousers not a bloke in a dress.

Grown children of undocumented Mexican migrants becomes the biggest threat to American jobs. Grown children of undocumented migrants are blameless. Surely? What about the decline of manufacturing in the USA, surely that has something to do with it?

Chinese e-commerce marketplace like Temu destroying the American economy. Not really. The big American companies still play a significant role in driving innovation, economic growth, and global trends.

Lazy bureaucrats wasting tax payers money. It’s hard to measure government efficiency in a world that uses profit margin as its only gauge. A review of government efficiency is a great idea and I would say a necessary process. Most hard working folk are unwilling tax payers so holding these ‘dead at the desk’ civil servants accountable feels good. But it’s impossible to know what efficiency looks like in government agencies because they are not geared up to declare efficiency savings because that would make them vulnerable to budget cuts. It’s much safer to pretend your super stressed and over-worked and struggling to deliver on a shoe string budget in the public sector. I’ve been watching this facade play out throughout my entire career in the public sector. The private sector is about the art of what is possible and celebrating riches. The public sector is about regulating, safety-netting and crying poor.

None of this reasoning and rational thinking will prevail while there is boundless money and power attached to fear mongering. It’s still the quickest way to the top, in 3 easy steps – demonise minorities, amplify their threat and convince the mainstream they are losing grip on power.

The English have an expression ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ and that my friends is America today. What’s left of that fur jacket in 4 years time is anyone’s guess. And how many seals will need to die to make a new one is also anyone’s guess.