Bring Me the Head of Donald Trump

Well, there you go.  Just as I was lamenting the fact that 2026, as with most New Years, felt no different to its predecessor, that fat fuckwit in the White House decides to run a bulldozer through international legal conventions, (again), by kidnapping the president of Venezuela, then declaring that the US was going to  'run' Venezuela.  Which, in practice, seems to mean that it intends forcing the country to allow US oil companies to exploit its oil.  Doubtless, the illegal exploitation (or, as I like to call it, theft) of Venezuela's resources will quickly spread to include such mineral deposits as gold.  Now, I'm not going to go into the obvious illegality of Trump's actions, let alone their lack of morality, as the entire rest of the world has already done this.  But I think a few observations might be pertinent here.  For one thing, this operation throws a new light upon the Trump administration's apparent haste to end the war in Ukraine by forcing an unjust peace treaty upon Kiev.  It could well be that they wanted to get that out of the way in order to somehow make the snatching of Maduro seem like a minor 'police action' - they'd be basking in the glory of a successful peace deal, using it to deflect attention and project themselves as 'peacemakers'.  Plus, it makes it much more difficult to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine (although they barely do that anyway, I know), when you are invading someone else's sovereign territory and abducting their head of state.  Obviously, things didn't work out as they wanted them to do in Ukraine, so they just went ahead with violating Venezuela's sovereignty anyway.  Because this is an administration headed by someone with a low attention span and a desperate need for attention.

Perhaps, though, the most frustrating aspect of this whole business has been the lily livered way in which most other world leaders have responded.  Take Keir Starmer as an example - he refuses to actually condemn the incident until he has 'all the facts', whilst simultaneously telling us that he is a lifelong advocate of international law.  Well, Keir, if the abducting of a foreign leader, the violation of another nation's sovereignty, the threat to seize its natural resources and direct its government isn't a pretty clear violation of, at the very least, Article Two of the UN Charter, then I'm really not sure what might be,  But hey, I'm not a lawyer - but Starmer is and quite clearly knows all of this.  (Hiding behind the fact that the legitimacy of Maduro's presidency is highly questionable does nothing to justify the US' illegal actions here - Maduro is Venezuela's problem to deal with, not Trump's).  Sure, sure, I know all the arguments about diplomacy and the need not to upset Trump because of our need to maintain trade and defence ties, but surely there has to come a point at which you can no longer trade these things off against the maintenance of international law?  Surely we must be at the point where we can ask our leaders to stand up to the likes of Trump, regardless of possible repercussions, in the name of maintaining internation law and standards of decency and conduct?  Particularly bearing in mind that, in the wake of his Venezuelan atrocity, he is renewing his threats to seize Greenland from Denmark and has broadened his targets to include Colombia and Mexico.  There are threats which really should now be taken very seriously.  

But where, exactly does the world go from here?  I've said before that we need to start boycotting and isolating the US which, if not clear before, is quite obviously a lawless rogue state devoted to disrupting the world order.  Maybe we now need to go further.  Perhaps the civilised world should put a bounty on the heads of Trump and his cronies - every bounty hunter, mercenary, terrorist and crazy homicidal bastard could converge on the US, intent upon delivering the heads of Trump, Vance, Hegseth et al to the International Criminal Court.  Maybe Mexico, now that it is under direct threat, could do a reverse Magnificent Seven and recruit seven of the country's top gunfighters to go north of the border and sort Trump and his bandidos out once and for all.  (Although I suspect that they'll want more than twenty dollars apiece for the job).   The fact is that something needs to be done.  Thankfully, as I write this, the Danes and some other European leaders are finally making a stand on the Greenland issue - even Keir Starmer has chimed in on their side.  But words are one thing, to have any weight, they have to be backed up with actions.

Happy Same Old Year!

So, here we are, 2026.  I don't know about anyone else, but it has been a sluggish start to the year for me, with a lot of it, so far, spent in bed.  Mainly on account of the weather being cold and depressingly miserable, giving me little incentive to get up.  Apparently, the weather is forecast to get even worse next week, with the possibility of snow.  Oh joy!  That's the trouble with New Year's, though, they always feel exactly the same as the old one - the whole New Year thing is built up so much, as if it is some kind of earth-shattering event, that when it actually  arrives, it is inevitably a let down.  The clock ticks past midnight and POW!  Everything is exactly the same.  As ever, I'm making no resolutions with regard to 2026.  As I never tire of saying, New Year resolutions are a complete waste of time - if you want to change something, take a different direction, turn over a new leaf, or whatever, then you can do it anytime, you don't have to wait until New Year.  In fact, I'd say that if you are really serious about making changes in your life, you'd just do it, regardless of what the date might be.  Waiting until New Year to make a declaration of intent is a sure sign that you aren't actually serious about doing anything - otherwise you'd have done it already.  While I didn't make any resolutions, I did, however, toast the outgoing year with the words 'Go fuck yourself, 2025', because, by any standard, it was a pretty shitty year, from that fat senile fascist being back in the White House to my own personal travails, with Spurs winning the Europa League as virtually the only bright spot, (even though this was followed by them sacking Big Ange).

Still, the year has ended on a better note for me, (despite my spirits being dampened by various personal issues I won't go into), with the discovery of those Haitian and Ghanaian (not to mention Guyanese) TV channels via a Roku app, which stream apparently pirated movies and TV shows.  Over the seasonal season, most of them have been showing these films back-to-back, allowing me to catch up with quite a few relatively recent releases.  Best of all, most of them seem to grasp the fact that the season doesn't abruptly end with New Year, but is actually a twelve day festival, ending on, surprise, surprise, Twelfth Night.  To be fair, amongst the terrestrial channels, this year it only seems to be BBC1 which has been determined to bundle Christmas out of the door with unseemly haste and restore its regular programming.  The others have continued with some semblance of special seasonal schedules and branding until, it seems, the end of the weekend.  Perhaps all my moaning about the truncating of the Christmas period which seems to have become fashionable has paid off.  It's bad enough this myth that you have to take the decorations down by Twelfth night having become so widespread, (according to tradition, they can stay up until Candlemas, February 2, which is when Epiphany ends), without the powers that be trying to steal several days of celebration from us.  At least, so far, I haven't seen the usual moaning in the Daily Hate about bloody plebs still being on their Christmas holidays, even though it's January!  Bloody outrageous - if the workers don't get their noses back to the grindstone, how will the rich bastards who own everything be able to get off on their January ski-ing holidays?