Rob’s comments below are in italics.Derek’s comments below are in normal font.

Today is the first of May — the Celtic festival of Beltane. We’re at the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. I mention it because, amid all the dark stuff going on, we need to remember to pay attention to what’s in front of us and around us.

Right. I’ve made a similar adjustment myself. George Orwell wrote in one of his essays that whatever the bureaucrats, politicians and militarists do, spring is still spring and the earth is still going round the sun.

The sun will still come up. Having said that, there’s been a lot going on over the last five days, and we feel like there’s plenty to talk about.

There are many different threads, and they’re all interrelated. The first thing to note is that, despite the demonisation of Putin in the Western media, he is far more accommodating than any leader likely to replace him, as far as I can see.

Something people must wake up to soon is that he is talking to everybody prepared to have a dialogue with him. The most notable example is the Iranian foreign minister, Arachi, who visited him. Putin gave him a substantial meeting and has since come out publicly saying they are standing with Iran. That’s pretty notable in itself.

Apparently, Trump is now saying he had a 90-minute conversation with Putin. Given everything, it would be understandable if Putin had decided it was a waste of time talking to Trump. The criticism he’s getting from within Russia runs along the lines that he’s not proceeding fast enough in Ukraine and should be far more aggressive. There are also plenty of people inside Russian politics and the military saying that Germany, France and Britain — who are openly bragging about supplying Ukraine with drones attacking Russia — are effectively waging war and Russia should strike back.

It’s an act of aggression, surely. We’ve been very lucky over recent years that the Russian leader appears to have a couple of brain cells to rub together, which cannot be said of our so-called leaders.

Certainly not of anyone in the West, as far as I can see. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, the Baltic States and probably Poland are all actively trying to talk their populations into contemplating war with Russia in the not-too-distant future. They seem to be actively promoting this.

They’ve not read the room. It’s not going to happen.

Well, Merz has just said he aims to rebuild the German military to a strength of 480,000. Who he thinks will sign up, I can’t imagine. If they try to conscript people on that scale, my reading is that there would be open refusal. Certainly, anyone of military age just doesn’t buy into it at all.

These look like acts of desperation, but I also don’t think these leaders make their own decisions. They seem to take their orders from above. Keir Starmer has not made a single independent decision. You can see when something happens — he waits to be briefed and then sticks to that line.

Somebody must have an enormous hold over them. One wonders what they’ll do with all those elderly pensioners the police were picking up for holding a placard.

This is another thing, though. If you think they’ll stop at arresting pro-Palestine protesters, just wait until it’s something you do care about, because it’s coming.

Yeah. Another thing: Kazakh oil has now stopped flowing to Russia. Not only are they not getting oil from the Gulf states, but they’re also not getting any from Kazakhstan, either, which has been a significant portion of their supply. The reason for the stoppage isn’t entirely clear.

Germany has been in continuous economic and industrial decline for four years, arguably since the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up. What they’ve had to pay for energy since then — largely from the United States — is far more than before. We’re getting an object lesson in how much we depend on the energy sources and prices we’ve taken for granted.

Did you see the Chris Hedges interview with Richard Wolff? Wolff was essentially saying this is the price of globalisation. He was talking about car manufacturing. In the early seventies, it was all based in Detroit; the supplier companies were small- to medium-sized firms located within about 50 miles. Everything was done within America.

Whereas today production is spread across different parts of the world, so you rely on these shipping networks. As soon as those networks are disrupted, the whole thing becomes very fragile.

Yeah. The population of Detroit has fallen from 2 million to 700,000, which is pretty dramatic. There’s an enormous degree of social unrest there as well.

There’s a famous photo of the old railway station in Detroit — a huge building you can see from miles around. It’s a monument to what once was.

Image: Derek Gauci, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s interesting. The other thing about Kazakhstan is that many of the Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian heartland have been routed through Kazakhstan. There must be intense diplomatic activity, with Russia pointing out that this constitutes a de facto act of war. If further drones come over and the Kazakh government doesn’t take responsibility for shooting them down, Russia will respond, which means a certain amount of debris will land in Kazakh territory.

Getting back to failure to read the room: in Germany you wouldn’t have to try very hard. The AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, is now running at 28% to 30% in opinion polls — higher than the governing party. In the Western press they’re portrayed as far right, sometimes even accused of Nazi affiliations.

I have reservations about whether party politics can solve any of this. These movements tend to get infiltrated. But it’s still an interesting read of public perception.

Yeah, so do I. If you look at their manifestos and publications, one clear position is that they strongly favour renormalising relations with Russia, which seems only elementary common sense.

You have to judge them by what they do, not what they say. That’s the proof of the pudding.

Yeah. They’re also calling for cooperation rather than confrontation. Meanwhile, Zelensky keeps touring Europe, saying Ukraine should be the bulwark between Russia and aggression towards the rest of Europe. That’s not going to happen.

Now that Orbán has lost the premiership in Hungary, the obstacle to the EU providing the 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine is out of the way. However, apparently Zelensky will only receive 20 billion of it, and Ukraine’s economy is already 20 billion in deficit. The remaining 70 billion is supposedly being directed to European arms manufacturers, which clearly indicates what’s driving this.

Yeah, just what we need.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria has just had an election with a landslide victory for a party that wants to re-normalise relations with Russia. Once again, I share your scepticism about party politics and about what actually happens when people get into power versus what they promised.

All political parties of any size get hollowed out by corporate interests. Those corporate interests are largely invisible in the background.

Yeah. The United States has been shipping increasing numbers of troops and equipment into the Middle East. They’re now talking about deploying hypersonic missiles — the first time we’ve seen those from the United States. We’ll see how well they perform in reality and what difference they actually make regarding Iran.

They’ll probably still get shot down by a hundred-dollar drone or something. That seems to be the pattern.

Who knows? Anyway, I had a quick check on the BBC website yesterday, and I listened to Radio 4 news. None of those items I’ve mentioned so far were on the main one o’clock bulletin.

Do you still pay a licence fee, by the way?

I do, because we watch quite a bit on iPlayer.

I really feel I should cancel it. It’s only the family that keeps me paying, but we really ought to stop funding them.

There’s something in that. I’ll talk it over with Gina.

Now, whatever you think of Trump, Putin is still prepared to talk to him. They recently had a 90-minute conversation. I have no idea what was said or agreed, or how much agency Trump actually has. Apparently, they discussed both Iran and Ukraine. One way or another, this will affect how things unfold, though exactly how is unclear.

Apparently, all this movement in oil prices involves heavily manipulated futures contracts on paper. Anyone trying to buy real oil for delivery now is paying between $150 and $230 a barrel. The prices going up and down to placate American public opinion have nothing to do with what anyone in the real world is doing.

With shale oil and fracked gas, it’s true that current US consumption is covered by domestic production, with a little left over. But even without that factor, the price of diesel there has doubled.

The US companies will sell it abroad first, ahead of selling domestically at a lower price.

Exactly. That was another point Richard Wolff made in the Hedges interview. The price has gone up anyway, and it’s going to go up a lot more. I wonder how much pain the average American will bear before it erupts into real trouble, bearing in mind the population is heavily armed.

The problem both the Russians and the Iranians face is that any restraint on their part is interpreted by the Americans and their allies as weakness, rather than as an opening for more constructive dialogue.

One thing that’s contributed to European complacency is that for the past 300 years, Russia has been trying to integrate itself into Europe and has largely been rebuffed or left in a weaker negotiating position. What Europeans don’t seem to have grasped is that Russia has progressively taken the view: if you don’t want to engage, fine — there’s a whole world to deal with that’s more convenient and more congenial.

Russia’s got plenty of options given where it sits in the world.

Yes. The post-Second World War independence movement across colonial territories gave those countries a nominal political break from their imperial oppressors, but in practice, it made far less difference than they had hoped. Many of the leaders installed were Western puppets, so even political independence wasn’t what it seemed. More to the point, those countries remained under Western economic control.

What appears to be happening now is that the countries known as the Global South are slowly regrouping. The global financial system is definitely changing. The key question is whether the transition can be reasonably smooth or will result in a catastrophic breakdown. With the latest disruption to traffic through the Arabian Gulf, the likelihood of something cataclysmic, abrupt and violent is increasing.

Yeah, it’s very concerning.

Those are the key headlines from the last two or three days. I’ll leave it there unless you have further observations.

I think maybe you should apply to BBC News as the kind of journalist they clearly don’t have at the moment!

The only reference they had to the Middle East was a brief word from their economics correspondent, stating the blindingly obvious.

Just to reiterate — we’re not all deep in gloom. There is a world that can work for everyone, and it’s worth fighting for. Hang tight. Keep standing in the light. Thanks, Derek.

Right. Exactly right.

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