Keir Starmer Says British Democracy is Under Attack as His Properties (and Britain) Burn

Starmer Burns

On a relevant but comic note to get us started:

Cairns News carries a statement from George Galloway slamming UK media and politicians for failing to question Starmer’s connection to the Ukrainian trio of “male models”.

A reference, we should assume, to a trio of individuals (one Romanian, two Ukrainian) charged with suspected arson attacks on property belonging to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

As everyone must instantly understand of course, and as law enforcement authorities have informed the Financial Times, this clearly means that there must be some form of Russian involvement. Because, you know, people who claim to be Ukrainian or Romanian are always really Russian. And in the midst of a virus attack on the brains of Western leaders that could even become true.

Authorities are investigating whether Russian operatives recruited three Ukrainian-born men charged with arson or conspiracy to commit arson, senior Whitehall officials told the Financial Times.

Perish even the faintest thought that Ukraine could in any way be involved, not even remotely. Or Starmer, seen publicly in tight embrace of Zelenskiy outside of No. 10 and who has behaved obsessively to devote most of his attention to Ukraine, to throw away scarce UK wealth and weapons to Zelenskiy and his regime - to the significant disasvantage of his own people - might, in any conceivable way, acted inappropriately in a ME2 or any other sort of way, with Ukrainian, ahem, male models or, as we call them in the trade, rent-boys.

Yellow Goblin Goes to War with Europe

Trump told the world a few months ago that he would end the war with Russia over Ukraine in his first day of office. The conflict continues, of course, four months later. Trump nonetheless had said that he wanted the US to focus its energy on what he claimed should be the US’ main preoccupation, China.

But then China immediately humiliated Trump, calling his bluff on the 145% tariff war - which Trump has now pulled back to “only” 30%.

Russia has predictably rejected all US attempts at a ceasefire via rival Kellogg and Witkoff peace proposals and is now poised to present the same set of demands that Putin fashioned in June last year and which are an extension of the draft agreement of the 2022 Istanbul negotiations, which both delegations signed off on and which was sabotaged by Boris Johnson on behalf of the US neocon establishment and The Demented One (1).

All very frustrating for The Demented One (2). Trump appears to have withdrawn from active engagement in talks with Ukraine and Russia (although he cannot now abandon Ukraine, the US having signed a mineral rights deal with the illegitimate regime), leaving the matter, as he sees it, to Russia and Ukraine in a manner that is widely interpreted as signalling his contentment with an eventual Russian victory.

In the ensuing vaccum, having shown himself totally unwilling to end - and therefore complicit in, and even the prime instigator of - the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Trump has returned to his regular amusement of beating up on Europe.

This is a pastime that unites the current demented Presidency with its previous brand, at first surreptitiously (de-industrializing Germany by blowing up Nord Stream and encouraging European squandering of its public wealth on one of the most corrupt nations in the world) and now overtly and aggressively, with the pronouncement of 50% tariffs on EU imports to the US (higher even than the 30% tariffs imposed on China) and also a 25% tariff on Apple products until Apple relocates its manufacturing back from China and, just lately, India, to the US.

(Is this just a great way to treat Silicon Valley buddies who are integral to the security-surveillance State machinery, who comply with State requests for information on clients, allow installation of back doors, manipulate algorithms in support of State narratives and the suppression of dissidents, recruit former spies to “fact-checking” operations and, as in the case of Microsoft, provide thousands of jobs for IDF retirees?). [See Microsoft]; and [See Microsoft in Gaza]

Chancellor Merz of Germany has apparently recognized that Germany’s decline is the result both of US chicanery over Nord Stream and of the stupidity of his predecessor Scholz, and of European leadership generally, in going along with a crime that Biden publicly told the world he was going to commit (on the eve of the SMO) and then making this crime far worse in its consequences and more expensive by voluntarily trying to cut off all ties to sources of cheap Russian energy in favor of US LNG imports. While, at the same time, receiving and paying way more for it through Russian LNG and third party suppliers?

So what does Merz do? He shoots himself and his country in both feet, several times more, by bitterly opposing plans that the US and Russia might themselves form a consortium that would reactivate Nord Stream (whch currently delivers nothing) - a pipeline of which Germany is part owner, along with Russian Gazprom (through a Swiss intermediary).

To make sure, as he thinks, that this will never happen - and to make sure, as Merz actually says, that this can never become a matter of public debate, a matter on which his opposition, principally Germany’s most popular party - the “extreme right” AfD (whose “extremism” cannot be more extremely stupid and counterproductive than Germany’s center)- and to make sure, therefore, that Germany can never again benefit from cheap Russian energy but will rot away, growing ever less competitive against all of its major rivals, Merz is pressing the EU to impose sanctions that will prevent any reactivation of Nord Stream, ever.

And Hearsula Vonder(mentally) Lying, unelected EU Commissioner - who imposes more sanctions a day than Macron, Merz and Starmer snort drugs - also a German national and a failed Defense Minister, will be glad to help sink her own country.

Like her spiritual guru, US Senator Lyndsey Graham, she wants to sanction those countries that buy Russian oil and gas. These are mainly China and India. Germany’s major export markets are China and the US. If the EU imposes sanctions on China, China will retaliate and German exports to China will fall. For the US, Trump is already proposing to impose tariffs of 50% by June 1st, and that will pretty much wipe out the US market for Germany.

The candle on the cake will be US withdrawal of troops from Europe, further undercutting domestic consumption in Germany, in particular, and greatly enhancing pressure on Germany and all of Europe to spend more, much more, on their own defense (yes, the rearmament of Germany to doubtless Hiterlistic mightiness), leading to reduced social programs, increased taxation and higher inflation. And world war III as an afterthought.

Perhaps dimly perturbed by the lunacy of his own politics, Merz has thought to bother China’s premier, Xin Jinping, with a further lunatic proposal namely that Jinping accept Europe’s “peace plan” for Ukraine which is actually designed, by placing NATO troops in Western Ukraine, to ensure the continuation of the war, and is, therefore, a war plan.

In effect, Merz was asking China’s firmest ally and friend, Russia - partners in the great BRICS project to end the subjugation of the world to US’ lunacy, its demented presidents, its bought-out politicians and AIPAC puppets - to support a plan that would seek the capitulation of the country that is actually winning the war (Russia), and significantly undermine China’s interests.

No Western “peace” proposal has gone anywhere, nor will go anywhere, not least because not a single one of these proposals has been drawn up in good faith, demonstrates a capacity, even, to listen to what Russia has been saying, forthrightly and clearly, since 2008 and before, demonstrates the remotest diplomatic skill at dealing with complex security architectures, even to recognize that Russia has security needs. They are the products of idiots.

Russia will at some point soon present its own proposal (“memorandum”) to Ukraine. Trump foolishly suggested a meeting could take place in the Vatican. The Vatican is entirely unsuitable, given that the Pope is American, might even conceivably be a CIA pope, and as we saw during the funeral for Pope Francis, Vatican clerics can easily be suborned to move chairs at the behest of characters like Trump and Zelenskiy, and the Vatican and Rome are historical centers for dirty dealing, backhanding, and corruption.

Lavrov ruled out the Vactican as a location, immediately, and he was right. I think he should probably ditch Istanbul too. Both Italy and Turky are NATO powers. The leaders of neither country, nor the Vatican, can be, nor need be, trusted to mediate in major conflicts involving Russia. Erdogan is the least trustworthy politician on the planet.

Of even greater importance than the location of any talks between Russia and Ukraine is the very reduced possibility that any Ukrainian delegation under the continuing illegitimacy not just of Zelenskiy but of the entire RADA will have anything to say, anything to concede.

I regard further talks as a mere formality that could easily be dispensed with. At the very least, the West needs to bring immediate pressure on Zelenskiy to hold new elections. Only then can there be sensible negotiations, and only then can there be a legitimate outcome to negotiations.

My money for the time being is on continuing war and Ukrainian capitulation by year’s end. Macron and his colleagues of the Coalition of the Brain Dead will continue to do everything they can to stop a conflict that they hope will continue for long enough and be bad enough to entice the US back into the picture.

Such a scenario is unlikely for the medium-term future, and Ukraine is going to have to capitulate before the medium-term. And even if the US did come back into the picture, what would that possibly change? Nothing changed in three years of war with the US in the picture.

Macron and his tinpot army trying to invade Odessa from Romania will be good for a Hollywood comedy, but little else. Starmer will be long gone, Rent Boys or not. Merz is already primed for the Asylum.

One good thing, however, has emerged from the talks so far completed in Istanbul, which is a prisoner exchange: 1,000 for 1,000. Questions have been raised as to whether Ukraine even has 1,000 prisoners. The exchanges will take place over a period of three days.

The talks did nothing to stop Russia’s slow war of attrition (135 more square miles over the past month); and have not trimmed the Kremlin’s plans to establish buffer zones on Ukrainian territory in Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkiv to provide protection for Russian oblasts Kursk, Briansk and Belgorod.

Nor did they dissuade Ukraine from launching in its most intense drone attacks on the Russian mainland this week, across three days. Russia says it shot down 1177 of them, but surely many will have hit their targets. Since most of these Ukrainian initiatives are performed for PR purposes (the only thing for which Zelenskiy shows talent) in a bid to seize the narrative and drum up sponsorship funds, I am inclined not to attach much importance to them. They may represent a last desperate bid for modest advantage at the cost of remaining stockpiles and while Russia continues to take more and more towns and villages, without even drawing on its reserve armies of a quarter million men. The Ukrainian drone attack does not compete with the far more voluminous missile and drone attacks by Russia across Ukraine every few days or so (and which attract minimal Western media attention). It could, at best, be an attempt to deplete Russian air defense missiles preparatory to some other form of lethal attack which, in turn, will almost certainly provoke a deadly reprisal, possibly involving the use of Oreshniks, which are due to start coming off the production lines very soon.

In Other News

Europe helps push Ukraine’s economy into decline (see (Ukraine Economy)

The British Empire never died (see (British Empire Lives)

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio and of California State University. His books include The International News Agencies; Le Trafic des Nouvelles (co-authored with Michael Palmer), Contra-Flow in Global News (co-authored with Daya Thussu), The Globalization of News (co-editor with Terhi Rantenan, and contributor), Communications Media, Globalization and Empire (editor and contributor), News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet (editor and contributor); Hollywood and the CIA (with David Herrera and Jim Baumann); Media Imperialism; Interfax: Breaking into Global News; Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis; Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change (with Taneer Mirrlees, eds.); RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media; Conflict Propaganda in Syria: Narrative Battles; RussiaGate Revisited: Aftermath of a Hoax (with Stephen Marmura, editors, and contributors). Just published in 2025 is Propaganda, Communication and Empire: Western Intervention in Afghanistan (with Sumanth Inukonda and Lara Lengel, editors and contributors). In preparation for 2026: The Sage Handbook of News Agencies (co-editor with Pedro Aguiar and Christian Vukasovich).

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