Hi.
This is Richard nagging his poor defenceless laptop again.
I want to see if I’ve got this straight.
 Iran and Russia are both highly authoritarian states, who choose to protect their oppressive rule by being tough on anyone, nationally or internationally, who takes a a moral stand against their immoral, unprincipled and unjust regimes.
 On the other hand, Israel and the USA are both long-established democracies, who can only preserve our democratic freedoms by being tough on anyone, nationally or internationally, who takes an immoral stand against their moral, principled, and just governance.
 Therefore, as a British man who lives in a long-standing and proud democracy, I’m duty-bound to hate Russia and Iran because they are authoritarian states, not like us, but I am also required to admire the USA and Israel because they’re democracies, just like us.
Right. So what does that mean for today?
It means, in principle, that any time Israel or the USA needs our help, we’ve got to give it to them.
 It really doesn’t matter what they need our help for, we’ve got to support them because they are our friends and allies while Russia and Iran want to destroy us. And we have a duty to our friends.
 The eternal struggle between freedom and tyranny.
 The trouble is, right now, and I really hate to say this, I can’t see where the freedom is.
 Did anybody ask the people of the USA whether or not they wanted to join with Israel and go to war with Iran? No. Is anybody asking us whether or not we ought to be helping the USA to fight its war? No.
 Nevertheless Keir Starmer is allowing the USA to fly so-called defensive missions out of British airbases, thus exercising his democratic right to make decisions on our behalf, even if it might eventually mean putting us all in the line of fire in the name of another nation’s cause.
But let’s give Starmer this much credit,as small as it is: he doesn’t believe that Trump is doing the right thing! Aerial bombardment as political policy? Just doesn’t work!
 So he tells us that what he’s actually doing is looking out for the best interests of our citizens who have been caught up in this mess.
I don’t know which figure of speech works best here. Is Starmer sitting on the fence or looking at the thin end of  a wedge? Both maybe? I mean, does Starmer seriously believe that Trump, who has no understanding of what it means to keep a promise, will use British air bases only for defensive reasons if he can get away with doing what he really wants? He’s already whinging about the limits Starmer is laying down.
And of course, Starmer has to keep the king and queen of spite, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, quiet. They have somehow persuaded themselves that Trump is doing a sensible thing here, which doesn’t say much for their own common sense.
So why is the USA fighting this war anyway?
 There’s no point in asking Trump or his various mouthpieces. I defy anyone to make sense of any of their explanations, or the ones that came to Trump in his dreams that I haven’t listed here.
Bringing about regime change without changing the regime.
Destroying the nuclear missile program which had already been destroyed in a previous bombing campaign.
 Giving all the Iranian political factions, including the powerful Islamist Revolutionary Guard, the opportunity to unite and create a democratic government.
 Acting in direct and immediate response to the advice Trump was given that Iran would only attack US interests if Israel attacked them first.
And anyway, it’s not really a war, it ‘s just a military operation in a country which is responding militarily.
All this while skirting around the real reason, which is that when Netanyahu says Jump, Trump heads straight for the nearest cliff. Why? That is a complicated and painful story that can’t be told here. 
What matters here is that Iran has retaliated against its enemies just as it always warned it would if it was ever attacked, and now Trump is saying that this retaliation is the reason why the war should be continued, whatever the cost in American lives.
His policy? They started it before we started it first.
 So this is entirely Netanyahu’s war, with Trump simply adding American muscle . It’s certainly not the American people’s war. They don’t want another Iraq, another Afghanistan, another Vietnam. They remember the pain.
 And anyway, they’ve got enough troubles dealing with the huge mess Trump is already making of their lives in the States itself and he’s only been president for just over a year. So why the hell should we British ever put ourselves on the line for him?
 The truth is, Trump and Netanyahu are arrogant, corrupt, deluded, cruel old men, having far too much power for far too long and still wanting more,
gifting great chunks of the world’s wealth to themselves and their fat friends even though that means impoverishing that world, our world. And both know that if they fail, if they don’t keep their power and control, they will very likely go to prison for the rest of their repulsive lives for all the law-breaking they’ve got away with so far.
 Trump, already an adjudicated sex-offender, lives in fear of the Epstein files, as well as all the many crimes finally catching up with him for which he was convicted but, weirdly, never punished; while Netanyahu, a conscience-free bloodthirsty war-criminal who has also been fielding accusations of extreme and blatant corruption for many years now, will do anything to achieve his depraved idea of immortality.
We should be warned by our own history with Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump’s USA and Netanyahu’s Israel are in their way as much our enemies as either Russia or China. Netanyahu with his genocidal hate-squad in the Knesset and Trump with his fascist hero-worshippers in congress all want to destroy whatever democratic freedoms we have, carve out their own empires of greed and money, and rule as they see fit, just as, so we are told, our supposed enemies Russia and China want to do.
 Surely we should not be aiding and abetting fascists and genocidalists in any way for any reason. We can’t any longer think of the USA and Israel as reliable and trustworthy allies, as friends. They are not. 
And I for one do not want to appear in some nightmarish, blood-soaked series of Pinky and the Brain as co-scripted by the ghosts of George Orwell and Stephen King.
 Give these autocrats nothing. Let them punch each other out if they’re too stupid to do anything else. This is not our war.
Till next time.