for a brief period it seemed like a door had opened. but then it shut again.

what does horsemouth think is going on with the world? 

with ukraine horsemouth thinks there will be a partition and a division of the spoils between the US and russia. it is a mineral rich country horsemouth expects it to become like iraq, a country that is fundamentally unsafe at the same time as it is being pillaged for its natural resources.

but on the other hand 'the deal' could all fall apart (and then people could go on dying). 

the US ruling class has interests, the russian ruling class has interests, those interests will be satisfied at the expense of the people of the ukraine and its mineral resources. 

everyone who has died so far will have died in vain.  

horsemouth thinks europe lacks the unity of purpose (not to mention the military resources) to do anything different from what the US proposes and that any attempts to do so will just leave the EU exposed.

europe claims it wants peacekeeping troops in ukraine - would they not be better deployed in lithuania, latvia, estonia etc.? rather than be hostages to fortune of some US extractive project. 

the proposal will then be for european countries to increase their defence expenditure.

there are two reasons for doing this - one is to keep the trump administration happy, to keep them interested in doing something to defend europe. this may be a forlorn hope already. the second would be that if the US is not providing the security guarantees for europe then europe will have to provide them for itself so that neither the US nor russia can push them about.

the major effect of this will be to impoverish still further the working population of europe (through raised taxes or lower provision of social services). at the moment the story is being told that this can all be funded by robbing overseas aid budgets etc. (this is bullshit). the other major effect will be to reduce demand in the european economy, and growth is essentially stagnant and has been for a long time. the EU will become further economically hobbled.

the problem for the UK is even more difficult - it is neither in the EU camp fully nor in the US camp - and for domestic or external political conditions it can move closer to neither. 

the belief in europe may be that trump will soon be gone and that US foreign policy will return to its earlier default setting  - neither of these may turn out to be the case.  

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and then there's the realm of the micropolitical and the personal - horsemouth has just attended an online meeting of the communal endeavour. as usual it was a blood boiling experience. it was nice to see the people he likes, the people he doesn't like less so (jesus the entitlement of these people). 

horsemouth is adjusting mentally to the notion that he will not be around in the communal endeavour much longer and that everything is ceasing to be his problem. he just hasn't told anyone yet. and he has failed to detach from the work. one last heave to get it over the brow of the hill and to get it started and then he is out. 

for a brief period it seemed like a door had opened. but then it shut again. now the situation is a different one. it will go on its own path. 

horsemouth is no longer around to fix these things. they are not his to fix. in as far as anything can be fixed. 

it's a beautiful day. sun shines in the window (and it has the beginnings of strength in it). in a little while a walk. horsemouth has brought the recycling bin back up the drive.