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Category: Opinion

  • The ruling class WANT working-class people to riot against Muslims

    Following the racist and Islamophobic race riots of the weekend, many middle-class politicians, columnists, and journalists on the right and centre-right have felt the need to distance themselves.

    Coincidentally this has happened with the most hateful of pundits, no doubt after their lawyers have reminded them laws about inciting hatred also apply to social media now too.

    While many have accused Labour Party PM Keir Starmer (both rightly and wrongly tbf) of not doing enough, more than a fair few have laid the brick of blame at the left’s door.

    One such accuser was ‘feminist’ Julie Birchill, who usually devotes her time to bullying trans people and pulling apart women she disagrees with.

    In a tweet Burchill said:

    There are thugs on both sides – but this is, among other things, actual class war. That the working-class aren’t the way the middle-class Left wanted them to be is no doubt ‘appalling’ – so I suggest the Left-wing commentariat retire to their fainting couches until it’s all over.

    I’m not going to break down the actual tweet because her hateful little ilk already gets too much attention, but there is something in what she’s saying about class wars. Except the point is usually as far away from the truth as these agitators are from the communities that are getting destroyed.

    This is a class war, but it’s not of the left’s doing.

    A class war – but not of the left’s making

    Those in power have a long history of turning the working class against each other so that they won’t pay attention to the cruel ways they’re destroying their lives.

    Through a steady stream of speeches, legislation, and media bias, the rich middle-and upper-class arseholes on the right have managed to convince working-class people that their livelihoods and way of life have been taken away from them by people who need the most support in society.

    While it’s great that the Daily Mail is getting called out for its part in this, that hate-filled paper doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We also need to look at the ways in which every other tabloid and broadsheet has spread lies about marginalised people – and not just those on the far right.

    But the left-leaning journos and pundits aren’t ready for that conversation. And their regulator certainly doesn’t give a toss whilst they refuse to broaden their guidelines to protect groups as well as individuals.

    Demonising those the system already marginalises

    For decades now those in power – either elected or by virtue of the platforms they’ve been afforded – have turned the lower classes on each other. There’s been a deep-rooted poisonous campaign to turn working-class people against anyone who doesn’t fit into the right-wing world view.

    We’ve seen it with disabled people labelled benefit scroungers and stealing taxpayers’ money all while there’s £42 BILLION in unpaid taxes a year.

    Trans people are called groomers and pedos whilst statistically far more people are abused by cis men in their own homes. And any services that help women are constantly under attack from both budget cuts and far-right ideologies.

    The way asylum seekers have been made the enemy is just vile though, and it’s all been perpetuated by the ruling class so we don’t look at them.

    It’s far easier to blame a big bad “swarm” of Muslim men “invading” our shores than it is to take a look at the fact that there are a whopping ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE billionaires just in the UK alone. And that’s down by 12 from 2022 (insert tiny violins).

    The arguments in the race riots

    One of the arguments in the racist and Islamophobic riots is the age-old “Muslims are stealing our jobs”.

    Muslims didn’t close down the shipyards and coal mines, taking away the livelihoods of many in working-class communities then paint them all as lazy so-and-so’s who just sit on their arses drinking beer all day and collecting the dole – whilst providing them with no support to actually work.

    I find it truly perverse that the people holding all the cards – with all power, wealth, and influence – have managed to convince the working class that the real enemy is those who are as worse off or even worse off than them.

    It wasn’t Muslims, disabled people, or trans people that made food prices soar, the energy companies hike up their prices, or that defunded and carved up public services.

    People like Farage, Robinson, Tice, Hartley-Brewer, Rowling, and Fox may not make the laws – but they certainly benefit from them being upheld and restricting working-class people’s way of life.

    Riots serve the rich better than revolution

    So you’ve got to ask yourself why then they’ve painted themselves as saviours of working-class people, what does it benefit them?

    But then if you were sitting high and mighty and only becoming richer at the top of the ladder, you would want those low down to keep punching down too. Because those in power know that if poor people stop fighting each other, they’ll climb up and come for them.

    At the end of the day, it serves the rich much better for there to be civil unrest than a revolution, so they’ll keep poisoning us against each other.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • GMB just made Zarah Sultana’s DESPICABLE treatment by Ed Balls even WORSE

    In just one day, a group of racist, Islamophobic white supremacist bigots have made an about turn. Not the neo-Nazi lynch mobs rampaging the streets across the UK. Those vile fascists are still planning pogroms and violence against Black and brown communities all over the country. No, the right-wing race riot apologists at Good Morning Britain (GMB) have seen the error of their Islamophobic, chauvinistic ways… well, not really. Once again though, currently whipless Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana showed the panel – including home secretary Yvette Cooper’s husband Ed Balls – up for the rancid right-wing racists they are.

    Race riots UK: GMB’s panel of white right-wing racists

    On 5 August, Zarah Sultana took to GMB to tackle the corporate media’s white-washing of the current far right fascist pogroms rife across the UK.

    As the Canary previously reported, Sultana was:

    not only shut down by the four white people on the panel, but effectively infantilised and talked over.

    In what was at best deeply uncomfortable viewing, and at worst a politically-motivated assault, Sultana was first subject to several minutes of firstly lies. Kate Garraway and Ed Balls both claimed that the far-right attacks HAD been called “racist” – with Ball in particular hammering home this point.

    Repeatedly, the hosts gaslit Sultana and mocked her points. This was despite the fact that what she was driving home was of course, verifiably true. Largely, Sultana, when she could get a word in edge-ways, highlighted the role of the corporate media in setting the stage for these racist riots. Naturally, Sultana pointed to panellist ‘journalist’ Andrew Pierce’s paper, the Daily Mail as a classic case and point of this.

    Balls and Pierce asked for evidence of this from Sultana. It was as if they expected her to pluck the thousands of viciously racist headlines from thin air, live. Not that they would let her speak anyway.

    Fortunately, plenty on X were only too happy to oblige. Many curated and shared a damning rap-sheet of just some of the fetid shit-rag’s disgusting front pages.

    Sultana burns Balls and GMB – round two

    Fast forward to GMB 6 August, and it’s almost as if the nasty dickhead Ed Balls might have learnt some ethics. Almost.

    In particular, the GMB panel hosted Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi on its programme. During the segment, Balls and party didn’t sneer, speak over, or dismiss Warsi’s points.

    So, as Sultana herself pointed out, it’s as if Balls knew all along how to conduct an interview without being a misogynistic and racist wanker:

    What’s the difference? One interviewee is a socialist with a history of standing up for marginalised, racialised groups in the UK. The other is a right-wing Tory baroness who has backed successive Conservative governments hell-bent on scapegoating migrants, Muslim, Black, and brown communities:

    The pot, kettle moment from Warsi was also glaringly evident in more ways than one. Particularly so, in her failure to call out the GMB hosts for their shameful assault on Sultana the morning before:

    Ultimately, the GMB panel were lapping it up from the mouth of a Tory token brown peer. Although, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves. Pierce still couldn’t swallow the truth that his paper had incited these pogroms. Predictably, he threw in more disgraceful disrespect to Sultana while he was at it:

    Stay in line with the white supremacist status quo

    Ultimately, the Western media establishment only tolerates Black and brown voices if they get in line with white status quo. It’s why LBC hung Sangita Myska out to dry after challenging the Zionist propaganda machine. And why it then promptly platformed vehement architect of racist violence, former home secretary Suella Braverman.

    Now again, the mask is slipping. GMB’s Ed Balls and fellow hosts showed their rank double standards between Warsi and Sultana. It didn’t matter that they ultimately made many of the same points – Warsi is right-wing, and therefore respected.

    Left-wing Sultana pointed her finger at the right-wing political and media class. She spoke the deeply uncomfortable truths that made the panel of sneering white government stenographers squirm in their pathetic little GMB host seats:

    Balls’ and co’s two-faced hypocrisy only proves Sultana’s points all the more. That, after years of failing to call out anti-Black and brown racism and Islamophobia – while outright perpetuating it – politicians and the corporate media have fanned the flames of this abhorrent fascist violence.

    It’s high time pathetic little white men – and their racist patriarchy-enabling Karen’s – shut the fuck up and wither away in their own irrelevance. Because at the end of the day, they’ll never grow a pair and speak up for the communities their commitment to whiteness has long oppressed. Least of all home sec hubby Ed Balls.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • MSM and politicians shamed themselves beyond redemption this weekend

    As far-right, racist, and Islamophobic race riots broke out across the UK, corporate media and politicians were making sure we all knew about them – but just not exactly what they were. Because there was a concerted effort by all involved to obscure the fact that these were indeed far-right, racist, and Islamophobic riots, pogroms, and attempted lynchings.

    Lawless Labour Britain – or just ‘Britain’?

    We all know what went on over the first weekend of August in most of the UK. Far-right racists, Islamophobes, and neo-Nazis went on a violent rampage in towns and cities – hunting down Black and brown people.

    They did this while claiming to be ‘taking their country back’ – by looting shops, attacking NHS workers, destroying libraries, and ransacking Citizens Advice Bureaus. The far-right also torched a police station. We’re not quite so concerned about that one, if we’re honest.

    Anti-fascists also came out across the UK to resist the far right. They were not having the fact that the far right were claiming to be ‘protecting children’ in the wake of Axel Rudakubana’s alleged murder of three little girls – unless you believe everything in the above paragraph does actually protect kids.

    So, to most reasonable people (we’ll get onto exactly how many people in the UK that could be later) – racists were enacting pogroms and lootings across large parts of the country. But NO. Not if you’re the BBC – because ‘both sides’, right?

    BBC: ‘so, we’re calling neo-Nazi race riots ‘protests’ now, yes?’

    Apparently, these were just “rival protests”:

    Then, it was some “disorder” at “protests”:

    By Sunday morning, it was “arrests at protests organised by far-right”:

    Sunday teatime, the BBC was at ‘pro-British marches’:

    And by the time BBC News at Ten came around, we’ve swerved to “anti-immigration protesters”:

    Of course, ten years ago the BBC was promoting Nigel Farage as some sort of reasonable character who just happened to attract far-right lunatics:

    The gist of this segment (which Andrew Neil has a good old chuckle about at the end) was to show that Farage’s UKIP didn’t have any more political extremists in it than other parties did. That is, the BBC was making him and his party look mainstream:

    The BBC has continued with this ever since – to the point where the far-right feel emboldened enough to launch waves of race riots across the UK.

    Of course, it wasn’t just our alleged public service broadcaster doing the heavy lifting for racists.

    ITV: ‘we heard the fascists were actually just ‘anti-immigration protesters”

    Don’t think these are race riots?

    Not sure if this is a pogrom or not?

    Unclear about what a lynch mob is?

    Well, you’d be ITV News then. The far-right’s attempted pogrom against asylum seekers in Rotherham – setting fire to a hotel in what would be considered attempted murder in any other circumstance – was “anti-immigration protesters” ‘targetting’ the hotel. Because yeah – it’s ‘stop the hotels’ isn’t it?

    Just to get in on the act, Channel 4 News’s Alex Thomson thought Brown people protecting themselves and their communities from violent racists were a “mob”. Then, after over an hour, he realised he was a massive cunt and deleted it:

    Well, we say “realised”:

    ‘We condemn the riots in the weakest possible terms’

    Of course, the corporate media and politicians couldn’t possibly call it out for what it is. Because if they did, it would expose the ridiculousness of stunts like this – due to another ‘protest’, apparently:

    riots

    It would also expose that broadcasters like the BBC merely parrot the line that the colonialist British state tells them too. Because in 2011 they were of course “riots” – when Black people were doing them:

    But it would also mean the narratives around Muslim people, Black and brown people, and anyone else who isn’t ‘Anglo Saxon’ would start to fall apart. So, no – much easier to call them “protests” or “thuggery” – isn’t it, Cooper?

    It’s also much easier to not mention racism or Islamophobia once in nine minutes – isn’t it, Woodcock?

    It’s also much easier to call it “far-right thuggery” – isn’t it, Starmer?

    And it’s even easier to play into far-right, racist rhetoric – isn’t it, Edwards?

    Fear not, though – because the cops were doing it too; probably because half of their racist asses would have been out rioting WITH the far-right if they hadn’t had to have worked. It’s probably why BBC Midlands deleted this tweet:

    riots

    But what, we here you ask, are all these charmless and soulless cretins in the media and Westminster trying to protect? Well, it’s probably several things.

    Riots = political agendas

    Allowing Black and brown people to be demonised over here helps with the West’s global agenda of making them subhuman. How else do you think Israel could get away with killing 40,000 Palestinians without the UN sending in peacekeepers or the US invading?

    Also, right-wing corporate politics is better for the slowly rotting capitalist system we live under. If that means Black and brown people’s lives are put at risk in the UK, that’s a small price to pay for the very rich.

    Ultimately, though, and the media and politicians are also trying to obscure the fact that Britain is a racist cesspit, and always has been.

    Yes, there are plenty of people who aren’t racist or Islamophobic. However, there are at least four million people who are – because we know what Farage-shaped party they voted for at the general election. There’s a few million more racists who will have voted Tory, too.

    ‘I’m not racist, but…’ say millions of Nigels and Karens

    Julia Hartley-Brewer is the prime example of this ‘I’m not racist, but…’ type of racist. She posted on X that, in respect of the “millions of people” she says aren’t “far-right”:

    they DO care about their country, their communities and their nation’s culture. They DO care when the political elites import millions of people from very different cultures who fail to integrate and assimilate, or even learn the… language.

    Yes, Julia, we feel sorry for Spain, too – where 42% of the 300,000-odd British “ex-pats” (NOT ‘immigrants’, because that’s what Black and brown people are) don’t or won’t speak Spanish.

    Oh sorry – you were talking about the UK – where, for example, around 79,000 Afghan nationals live; a quarter of the number of fat, tattooed, beer-drinking, white British immigrants living in Spain. Oddly, the same number of UK immigrants overall don’t speak English (142,000 – 1% of the total) as UK immigrants in Spain don’t speak Spanish – except there, that’s 42% of them.

    Racist Hartley-Brewer continued her mindless sermon:

    And they DO care when they are told they’re racist for stating incontrovertible facts about that mass immigration such as the impact it has had on access to housing, public services, school places, GP appointments and, yes, their own wages.

    No, Julia – blaming Black and brown people for the intentional failures of politicians IS racist. It’s call scapegoating – and it leads to racists trying to burn alive asylum seekers in hotels. And saying human beings have been ‘imported’ is also racist: see note above about dehumanisation.

    Little fucking Britain

    This is the racist language of millions of white, British people – built off the back of an institutionally racist state and a colonial past and present.

    With media and politicians’ talk of “thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”, it was this fact that ultimately they were trying to obscure.

    Britain is a bitter little racist island, filled with bitter little racist people. Some of them – like the neo-Nazis and fash that were out over the weekend – are just a bit more racist than the rest of us.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Fiji Times: Democracy – ‘by the skin of its teeth’

    EDITORIAL: By Fred Wesley, editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times

    Australian constitutional law expert Professor Anthony Regan believes Fiji’s Coalition government came into power “by the skin of its teeth”.

    In the face of that, he believes it is not an option to leave the 2013 Constitution “as it is!”

    Professor Regan spoke at the Fiji National University’s (FNU) Vice-Chancellor’s Leadership Seminar in Nasinu on Thursday, on “Constitutional Change in Fiji: Looking to the Future”.

    The Fiji Times
    THE FIJI TIMES

    He has voiced caution about the stability of the 2013 Constitution.

    “Do you leave it as it is now and say it’s too difficult to change? That’s an option,” he said.

    “And you might say that’s OK because the new regime is a fair and thoughtful regime and will act only fairly.

    “That may be true, but every government is subject to temptations when there are pressures.”

    He spoke about what he terms a pretty bad electoral system designed to keep people in power.

    The Coalition government got in by the skin of its teeth in the face of that system.

    The system, he argued, designed to favour certain parties, increased the risk of a less favourable government gaining power in the future.

    And this, he warned, could cause problems in the future.

    “There’s no guarantee that a good outcome will come in every future election and then, if a government that had far less good intent came to power, it’s got the authority to do all the things we have talked about.”

    These included overriding human rights and stacking accountability institutions.

    He believes the recent Parliamentary remuneration debacle has added a new layer of complexity to the challenges we face as a nation.

    He believes, with the added majority in the House, it may be possible to get the 75 percent majority needed to amend the constitution.

    He has also suggested possible ways to move on reforms.

    He suggested amending electoral legislation, and factored in compulsory voting to raise voter turnout and possibly inch out support for constitutional reforms.

    Change though, as the good professor notes, will definitely need support and a united front.

    That will mean awareness campaigns designed to raise the level of understanding of any need for reforms and encourage participation.

    That will mean taking the message out to the masses, and encouraging them to buy into any bid to make changes.

    That isn’t going to be a walk in the park either.

    Professor Regan’s opinions will no doubt stimulate discussions on this important topic and encourage people to consider whether it is important enough for them to participate.

    So we have what he considers a constitution that is vulnerable to potential abuse by future governments if it is left like this.

    And in the face of that sits the need for us all to carefully consider what we must do moving forward. We have layers of complexities as we mentioned above, and major challenges that will need careful consideration and discussions!

    Republished from The Sunday Times on 4 August 2024 under the original headline “By the skin of its teeth” with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ilan Pappe: To end Gaza genocide, uproot the source of all violence – Zionism

    Since the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, writes Ilan Pappe.

    ANALYSIS: By Ilan Pappe

    “When we revolt, it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

    — Franz Fanon

    Since the 1948 Nakba and arguably before, Palestine has not seen levels of violence as high as those experienced since October 7, 2023. But we need to address how this violence is being situated, treated, and judged.

    Indeed, mainstream media often portrays Palestinian violence as terrorism while depicting Israeli violence as self-defence. Rarely is Israeli violence labelled excessive.

    Meanwhile, international legal institutions hold both sides equally responsible for this violence, which they classify as war crimes.

    READ MORE: Middle East on edge as Israel continues to bombard Gaza

    Both perspectives are flawed. The first perspective wrongly differentiates between the “immoral” and “unjustified” violence of Palestinians and Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

    The second perspective, which assigns blame to both sides, provides a misguided and ultimately harmful framework for understanding the current situation — likely the most violent chapter in Palestine’s modern history.

    And all of these perspectives overlook the crucial context necessary to understand the violence that erupted on October 7.

    This is not merely a conflict between two violent parties, nor is it simply a clash between a terrorist organisation and a state defending itself.

    Rather, it represents a chapter in the ongoing decolonisation of historic Palestine, which began in 1929 and continues today. Only in the future will we know whether October 7 marked an early stage in this decolonisation process or one of its final phases.

    Throughout history, decolonisation has been a violent process, and the violence of decolonisation has not been confined to one side only. Apart from a few exceptions where very small, colonised islands were evicted “voluntarily” by colonial empires, decolonisation has not been a pleasant consensual affair by which colonisers end decades, if not centuries, of oppression.

    But for this to be our entry point to discuss Hamas, Israel, and the various positions held towards them in the world, one has to acknowledge the colonialist nature of Zionism and therefore recognise the Palestinian resistance as an anti-colonialist struggle — a framework negated totally by American administrations and other Western countries since the birth of Zionism, and so therefore also by other Western countries.

    Framing the conflict as a struggle between the colonisers and the colonised helps detect the origin of the violence and shows that there is no effective way of stopping it without addressing its origins.

    The root of the violence in Palestine is the evolvement of Zionism in the late 19th century into a settler colonial project.

    Like previous settler colonial projects, the main violent impulse of the movement — and later the state that was established — was and is to eliminate the indigenous population. When elimination is not achieved by violence, the solution is always to use more extraordinary violence.

    Therefore, the only scenario in which a settler colonial project can end its violent treatment of the indigenous people is when it ends or collapses. Its inability to achieve the absolute elimination of the native population will not deter it from constantly attempting to do so through an incremental policy of elimination or genocide.

    The anti-colonial impulse, or propensity, to employ violence is existential — unless we believe that human beings prefer to live as occupied or colonised people.

    The colonisers have an option not to colonise or eliminate but rarely cease from doing so without being forced to by the violence of the colonised or by outside pressure from external powers.

    Indeed, as is in the case of Israel and Palestine, the best way to avoid violence and counter-violence is to force the settler colonial project to cease through pressure from the outside.

    The historical record is worth recollecting to give credence to our claim that the violence of Israel must be judged differently — in moral and political terms — from that of the Palestinians.

    This, however, does not mean that condemnation for violation of international law can only be directed towards the coloniser; of course not.

    It is an analysis of the history of violence in historical Palestine that contextualises the events of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza and indicates a way to end it.

    The history of violence in Modern Palestine: 1882-2000
    The arrival of the first group of Zionist settlers in Palestine in 1882 was not, by itself, the first act of violence. The violence of the settlers was epistemic, meaning that the violent removal of the Palestinians by the settlers had already been written about, imagined, and coveted upon their arrival in Palestine — debunking the infamous “land without people” myth.

    To translate the imagined removal into reality, the Zionist movement had to wait for the occupation of Palestine by Britain in 1918.

    A few years later in the mid-1920s, with assistance from the British mandatory government, 11 villages were ethnically cleansed following the purchase of the regions Marj Ibn Amer and Wadi Hawareth by the Zionist movement from absentee landlords in Beirut and a landowner in Jaffa.

    This had never happened before in Palestine. Landowners, whoever they were, did not evict villages that had been there for centuries since Ottoman law enabled land transactions.

    This was the origin and the first act of systemic violence in the attempt to dispossess the Palestinians.

    Another form of violence was the strategy of “Hebrew Labour” meant to drive out Palestinians from the labour market. This strategy, and the ethnic cleansing, pauperised the Palestinian countryside, leading to forced emigration to towns that could not provide work or proper housing.

    It was only in 1929, when these violent actions were coupled with a discourse on constructing a third temple in place of Haram al-Sharif, that the Palestinians responded with violence for the first time.

    This was not a coordinated response, but a spontaneous and desperate one against the bitter fruits of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

    Seven years later, when Britain permitted more settlers to arrive and supported the formation of a nascent Zionist state with its own army, the Palestinians launched a more organised campaign.

    This was the first uprising, lasting three years (1936-1939), known as the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Palestinian elite finally recognised Zionism as an existential threat to Palestine and its people.

    The main Zionist paramilitary group collaborating with the British army in quelling the revolt was known as the Haganah, meaning “The Defence,” and hence the Israeli narrative to depict any act of aggression against Palestinians as self-defence — a concept reflected in the name of the Israeli army, the Israel Defence Forces.

    From the British Mandate period to today, this military power was used to take over land and markets. It was deployed as a “defence” force against the attacks of the anti-colonialist movement and as such was not different from any other coloniser in the 19th and 20th centuries.

    The difference is that in most instances of modern history where colonialism has come to an end, the actions of the colonisers are now viewed retrospectively as acts of aggression rather than self-defence.

    The great Zionist success has been to commodify their aggression as self-defence and the Palestinian armed struggle as terrorism. The British government, at least until 1948, regarded both acts of violence as terrorism but allowed the worst violence to take place against the Palestinians in 1948 when it watched the first stage of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

    Between December 1947 and May 1948, when Britain was still responsible for law and order, the Zionist forces urbicided, that is obliterated, the main towns of Palestine and the villages around it. This was more than terror; this was a crime against humanity.

    After completing the second stage of the ethnic cleansing between May and December 1948, through the most violent means that Palestine has witnessed for centuries, half of Palestine’s population was forcefully expelled, half of its villages destroyed, as well as most of its towns.

    Israeli historians would later claim that “the Arabs” wanted to throw the Jews into the sea. The only people who were literally thrown into the sea — and drowned — were those expelled by the Zionist forces in Jaffa and Haifa.

    Israeli violence continued after 1948 but was answered sporadically by Palestinians in an attempt to build a liberation movement.

    It began with refugees trying to retrieve what was left of their husbandry and crops in the fields, later accompanied by Fedayeen attacking military installations and civilian places. It only gelled into a significant enterprise in 1968, when the Fatah Movement took over the Arab League’s PLO.

    The pattern before 1967 is familiar — the dispossessed used violence in their struggle, but on a limited scale, while the Israeli army retaliated with overwhelming, indiscriminate violence, such as the massacre of the village of Qibya in October 1953 where Ariel Sharon’s unit 101 murdered 69 Palestinian villagers, many of them blown up within their own homes.

    No group of Palestinians have been spared from Israeli violence. Those who became Israeli citizens were subjected, until 1966, to the most violent form of oppression: military rule. This system routinely employed violence against its subjects, including abuse, house demolitions, arbitrary arrests, banishment, and killings. Among these atrocities was the Kafr Qassem massacre in October 1956, where Israeli border police killed 49 Palestinian villagers.

    This same violent system was transited to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the June 1967 War. For 19 years, the violence of the occupation was tolerated by the occupied until the mostly non-violent First Intifada in December 1987. Israel responded with brutality and violence that left 1,200 Palestinians dead, 300 of them children — 120,000 were injured and 1,800 homes were demolished. 180 Israelis were killed.

    The pattern here continued — an occupied people, disillusioned with their own leadership and the indifference of the region and the world, rose in a non-violent revolt, only to be met with the full, brutal force of the coloniser and occupier.

    Another pattern also emerges. The Intifada triggered a renewed interest in Palestine — as has the Hamas attack on October 7 — and produced a “peace process”, the Oslo Accords that raised the hopes of ending the occupation but instead, it provided immunity to the occupier to continue its occupation.

    The frustration led, inevitably, to a more violent uprising in October 2000. It also shifted popular support from those leaders who still put their faith in the diplomatic way of ending occupation to those who were willing to continue the armed struggle against it — the political Islamic groups.

    Violence in 21st century Palestine
    Hamas and Islamic Jihad enjoy great support because of their choice of continuing to fight the occupation, not because of their theocratic vision of a future Caliphate or their particular wish to make the public space more religious.

    The horrific pendulum continued. The Second Intifada was met by a more brutal Israeli response.

    For the first time, Israel used F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters against the civilian population, alongside battalions of tanks and artillery that led to the 2002 Jenin massacre.

    The brutality was directed from above to compensate for the humiliating withdrawal from southern Lebanon forced upon the Israeli army by Hezbollah in the summer of 2000 — the Second Intifada broke out in October 2000.

    The direct violence against the occupied people from 2000 took also the form of intensive colonisation and Judaisation of the West Bank and Greater Jerusalem area.

    This campaign was translated into the expropriation of Palestinian lands, encircling the Palestinian areas with apartheid walls, and giving a free license to the settlers to perpetrate attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem.

    In 2005, Palestinian civil society tried to offer the world a different kind of struggle through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a non-violent struggle based on a call to the international community to put a stop to the Israeli colonialist violence, which has not been heeded, so far, by governments.

    Instead, Israeli brutality on the ground increased and the Gaza resistance in particular fought back resiliently to the point that forced Israel to evict its settlers and soldiers from there in 2005.

    However, the withdrawal did not liberate the Gaza Strip, it transformed from being a colonised space into becoming a killing field in which a new form of violence was introduced by Israel.

    The colonising power moved from ethnic cleansing to genocide in its attempt to deal with the Palestinian refusal, in particular in the Gaza Strip, to live as a colonised people in the 21st century.

    Since 2006, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used violence in response to what they view as ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of the Gaza Strip. This violence has also been directed at the civilian population in Israel.

    Western politicians and journalists often overlooked the indirect and long-term catastrophic effects of these policies on the Gaza population, including the destruction of health infrastructure and the trauma experienced by the 2.2 million people living in the Gaza ghetto.

    As it did in 1948, Israel alleges that all its actions are defensive and retaliatory in response to Palestinian violence. In essence, however, Israeli actions since 2006 have not been retaliatory.

    Israel initiated violent operations driven by the wish to continue the incomplete 1948 ethnic cleansing that left half of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and millions of others on Palestine’s borders. The eliminatory policies, as brutal as they were, were not successful in this respect; the desperate bouts of Palestinian resistance have instead been used as a pretext to complete the elimination project.

    And the cycle continues. When Israel elected an extreme right-wing government in November 2022, Israeli violence was not restricted to Gaza. It appeared everywhere in historical Palestine. In the West Bank, the escalating violence from soldiers and settlers led to incremental ethnic cleansing, particularly in the southern Hebron mountains and the Jordan Valley. This resulted in an increase in killings, including those of teenagers, as well as a rise in arrests without trial.

    Since November 2022, a different form of violence has plagued the Palestinian minority living in Israel. This community faces daily terror from criminal gangs that clash with each other, resulting in the murder of one or two community members each day. The police often ignore these issues. Some of these gangs include former collaborators with the occupation who were relocated to Palestinian areas following the Oslo agreement and maintain connections with the Israeli secret service.

    Additionally, the new government has exacerbated tensions around the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, permitting more frequent and aggressive incursions into the Haram al-Sharif by politicians, police, and settlers.

    It is too difficult to know yet whether there was a clear strategy behind the Hamas attack on October 7, or whether it went according to plan or not, whatever that plan may be. However, 17 years under Israeli blockade and the particularly violent Israeli government of November 2022 added to their determination to try a more drastic and daring form of anti-colonialist struggle for liberation.

    Whatever we think about October 7, and we do not have yet a full picture, it was part of a liberation struggle. We may raise both moral questions about Hamas’ actions as well as questions of efficacy; liberation struggles throughout history have had their moments when one could raise such questions and even criticism.

    But we cannot forget the source of violence that forced the pastoral people of Palestine after 120 years of colonisation to adopt armed struggle alongside non-violent methods.

    On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a significant ruling regarding the status of the West Bank, which went largely unnoticed. The court affirmed that the Gaza Strip is organically connected to the West Bank, and therefore, under international law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. This means that actions against Israel by the people of Gaza are considered part of their right to resist occupation.

    Once again, under the guise of retaliation and revenge, Israeli violence following October 7 bears the marks of its previous exploitation of cycles of violence.

    This includes using genocide as a means to address Israel’s “demographic” issue — essentially, how to control the land of historical Palestine without its Palestinian inhabitants. By 1967, Israel had taken all of historical Palestine, but the demographic reality thwarted the goal of complete dispossession.

    Ironically, Israel established the Gaza Strip in 1948 as a receptor for hundreds of thousands of refugees, “willing” to concede 2% of historical Palestine to remove a significant number of Palestinians expelled by its army during the Nakba.

    This particular refugee camp has proven more challenging to Israel’s plans to de-Arabize Palestine than any other area, due to the resilience and resistance of its people.

    Any attempt to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be made in two ways. First, immediate action is needed to stop the violence through a ceasefire and, ideally, international sanctions on Israel. Second, it is crucial to prevent the next phase of the genocide, which could target the West Bank. This requires the continuation and intensification of the global solidarity movement’s campaign to pressure governments and policymakers into compelling Israel to end its genocidal policies.

    Since the late 19th century and the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, a right that has been denied to the Palestinians for more than a century, not only by Zionism and Israel but by the powerful alliance that allowed and immunised the project of the dispossession of Palestine.

    This is not a wish to romanticise or idealise Palestinian society. It was, and would continue to be, a typical society in a region where tradition and modernity often coexist in a complex relationship, and where collective identities can sometimes lead to divisions, especially when external forces seek to exploit these differences.

    However, pre-Zionist Palestine was a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted peacefully, and where most people experienced violence only rarely — likely less frequently than in many parts of the Global North.

    Violence as a permanent and massive aspect of life can only be removed when its source is removed. In the case of Palestine, it is the ideology and praxis of the Israeli settler state, not the existential struggle of the colonised Palestinian people.

    Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is also the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld) and many other books. Republished from The New Arab.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: welcome to lawless Labour Britain – but Just Stop Oil are the REAL enemy

    I don’t know about you, but I have paid very little attention to the Paris Olympics, what with lawless Labour Britain looking more like a burning zombie, race-riot battlefield than anything like a country of civilised, tolerant human beings.

    I absolutely hear the opinion that sports and politics don’t mix, regardless of how utterly ridiculous and naive it might be to think a group of flag-flying athletes haven’t turned up to represent their sponsors, their country, ergo their government.

    A coach-load of athletes from Israel being roundly booed by a crowd has nothing to do with the actual athletes and everything to do with the genocidal terrorist state that they represent. I don’t think that’s particularly complicated?

    Even your average far-right Molotov-cocktail-launcher can get their head around that one.

    Race-riot Britain: where being a Just Stop Oil-er is somehow worse

    From the delightful young ‘lady’ that wanted a lighter to throw at riot cops to the charming ‘gentleman’ that ended up getting a fash brick in the gonads, I’m genuinely sat here now wondering how on earth these non compos mentis reprobates found their way out of the birth canal.

    I don’t know if you stopped for a moment to notice how a blazing wheelie bin being launched at a row of riot squad cops by a far-right maniac feels so much better under a Labour government than it ever did under successive Tory administrations?

    I did mention “lawless”, just a few paragraphs back, but if you are taking a moral stance against the climate catastrophe you will feel the full force of the law under this Labour government.

    Although if you’re a literal child predator in possession of some of the very worst images of children imaginable, you’ll be home in time for Countdown.

    The outpouring of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation on social media — predominantly pedalled by self-styled right-wing influencers and anonymous Farage-fetishists — is one of the primary reasons as to why hatred and division has spilled onto the streets of Labour Britain.

    Labour LOVES the far-right

    The problem has never been Muslims, Roma, and Bangladeshis. Just switch on the news and you will see the problem is mostly young white men, radicalised by Tommy Robinson on TikTok and viral falsehoods which authorities simply cannot handle.

    Believe me, you have so much more in common with a Polish cabbie and an Afghani Deliveroo driver than you will ever have with the knuckle-dragging moron Yaxley Lennon and the patriotic disciples that are a walking advertisement for everything that is wrong with NHS dentistry.

    The poisonous little bastard isn’t fighting the fucking establishment, he’s fighting the establishment’s battle for them.

    Government after government rely on the far-right to perpetuate the myth of foreigners being at the front and centre of all of your ills, simply because it gets them off the hook. You know this, and I know this. When will we put a stop to it?

    Keir Starmer, a man that makes the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights look positively at ease, will gradually lose the support of the nefarious right-wing corporate media if he fails to get a grip of the right-wing degenerates the same right-wing, billionaire-owned media has successfully whipped up into a frenzy.

    Confusing? Possibly. Completely and utterly fucked up? Definitely. Welcome to Starmer’s Britain.

    Just do SOMETHING, Starmer – please

    Starmer doesn’t need to talk about being tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime. He doesn’t need to constantly remind us that he used to be in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service. He needs to get a grip, and fast.

    Anyway, why bother with all of this aggro when you could simply send Margaret Hodge to the Hartlepool frontline to talk some sense into these young miscreants?

    What I want to hear Starmer say is he will not allow the senseless murder of three young children, by a British man, born in Cardiff to Christian parents, to be weaponised by the far-right and used as an excuse for social unrest.

    I want to hear Starmer say he will proscribe Patriotic Alternative, Youth Alliance, Reform UK, and any other group of moronic baldies as terrorist organisations.

    If Khamas are the bad guys for resisting the genocidal occupation of Palestine, what must these hard-right headbangers be for causing terror and race riots on the streets of Britain?

    Worryingly, I haven’t seen anything from the new prime minister to suggest he will stop pretending the overwhelmingly peaceful pro-Palestine rallies are of equal concern to the scenes of Tommy’s acolytes getting their arse cheeks ripped off by a police dog.

    I will defend anyone’s right to protest — left or right — wherever and whenever they wish to do so, but when a beautiful Alsatian is forced to sink their teeth into the human equivalent of the Sports Direct sale rail, a line has been crossed.

    A perfect storm for race riots in lawless Labour Britain

    What you need to do, Mr Starmer, is spend less time concerning yourself with a handful of Just Stop Oil protestors, and address the root causes of what is behind the chaotic mess of race riots, currently being played out in towns and cities across the country.

    A perfect storm of poverty, low wages, homelessness, insecure employment, a failing education system, and a genuine lack of opportunity has gifted the far-right with a vehicle of division, and successive British governments have done nothing to address the mess of their own making because it’s so much easier to bend up a protestor for shouting “free Palestine”.

    Please don’t think for one moment I am suggesting the Tories would have handled the scenes of unrest any better than quiet Keir and his shallow cabinet. Remember, you can criticise the government without being called a raging Tory these days.

    But I am suggesting it really doesn’t make the slightest bit of a difference if the people running the country wear a red or a blue rosette.

    I know a considerable amount of work is going in to the creation of a new left-wing party, and I believe, in time, you will have a supportable vehicle for societal change that is desperately needed to challenge the status quo.

    It hasn’t taken long for us to see Keir Starmer’s true Tory colours.

    If only somebody had warned us.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Zionism: Managing Its Demise

    It is increasingly becoming clear–even to some Western observers—that the Zionist project has run its course. It had an extraordinary run, but it has now reached the end of its settler-colonial track.

    The creation of this exclusionary settler-colonial Jewish state was a historical anomaly, among the greatest blunders of Western civilization in the twentieth century. Despite the deep alliance—between Western Jews and their Western tormentors—that established Israel in the mid-20th century, this Jewish state could not in the long run resist the deep logic of history. A few sober Israelis, too, can read the writing on the wall.

    At the same time, no one doubts that Israel is capable of inflicting devastating harm on the Western Islamicate. Some members of Israel’s extremist right-wing government, steeled by messianic delusions, are threatening to invoke the Samson option—b’rerat Shimshon. For sure, Israel could kill several million Iranians and Arabs with its arsenal of neutron bombs. But where would that leave the Jewish state?

    Would Netanyahu, Biden, and MBS be flying to a new Iranian capital—since they will have obliterated Tehran—to celebrate their victory over Iran, and then fly to Riyadh to seal an enduring Saudi-Israeli alliance, guaranteed for a thousand years by the USA, after Trump’s victory in this great democracy’s last election. It is likely that the inimitable Thomas Friedman will be rooting for this scenario in his next New York Times op-ed.

    In order to prevent Israel from launching its neutron bombs, the Western powers that birthed and nurtured the Zionist project must now take responsibility for their historic blunder, and manage the transition of this abnormal Jewish state to a normal one that accords equal rights to all its inhabitants—Jews and Arabs alike. Western powers have shielded this rogue state for more than 76 years. It is now time to make amends.

    Acting resolutely and quickly, the UN Security Council needs to sanction Israel until it ends its long-standing violations of multiple international laws. Simultaneously, the USA, Britain, and Germany will need to shut off their arms pipeline to Israel. If Israel refuses to agree to a permanent ceasefire, then the UNSC may also need to impose an oil embargo on Israel.

    If someone—Jew or Penguin—who has read this essay and understands my test of antisemitism, and still insists on accusing me of antisemitism, be aware that this accusations fails this test.1

    I oppose Zionism not because it is led by Jews, but because of what Zionism proposed to do, what it has done, and continues to do to the Palestinians. I have made it clear that I would have opposed exclusionary settler-colonial project even if it were by Penguins, Pelicans or Pakistanis.

    Future historians of Zionism will acknowledge that Zionism was a trap set up by British antisemites—in addition to securing control over their oil in the Middle East—to be rid of Europe’s Jewish population. Zionist leaders, overambitious and myopic, sold their Zionist vision with ease to Western Jews once they had ‘recruited’ Britain, the leading imperialist power, to their cause.

    It is quite astonishing how a brilliant people who produced perhaps a fourth of the world’s most extraordinary minds—from the mid-19th to mid-20th century—espoused two flawed utopian visions, Communism and Zionism, that might dazzle with their surface brilliance, but were not aligned with the heavenly forces.

    The first utopian vision, because of its extreme demands on human nature, collapsed in 1990. This totalitarian socialism also blocked the transition—when the historic window was still open—from the destructive capitalism of the 19th century to humane, democratic socialist alternatives.

    The second utopian vision may have run its course, but while the vast Soviet Union—a superpower with the second largest military and a vast nuclear arsenal—collapsed peaceably, without causing any wars, Israel, the embodiment of the Zionist utopia, threatens its neighbors with nuclear apocalypse.

    Israeli Jews cannot save Israel from itself, but the Jewish diaspora has a chance—because of its distance from the war psychosis generated by the Jewish Spartan state—to use its influence and organizing powers to try to re-orient the ruling elites in the USA, Canada and Britain towards rescuing Jews in Palestine from the Zionist quagmire. Is this even possible since Zionism has dominated the discourse in the Jewish diaspora too?

    Nevertheless, there are signs that important sections of Jewish diaspora are beginning to see past their own propaganda. Over the last ten months, many Jews, especially young Jews, have been taking a moral stand against Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians that began in 1947, not October 7, 2024. Also, for the first time, the International Court of Justice has spoken if not clearly and loudly. The International Criminal Court too has filed applications for warrants for the arrest of two Israeli leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

    The Jewish diaspora can and should mobilize to save Israel’s Jews from the worst instincts of its right-wing Messianic government. For more than 76 years, the Jewish diaspora has mobilized in support of Israeli governments, no matter their crimes against Palestinians. It is time now to mobilize to restrain Israel’s extremist leadership. It may not be too late. There may still be time to to do the right thing.

    ENDNOTE:

    1 I will explain this test in another essay that I will publish soon.

    The post Zionism: Managing Its Demise first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gaza killings and the death of Western journalism – why the shocking silence?

    COMMENTARY: By Mohamad Elmasry

    On Wednesday, the Israeli army killed two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

    Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi were working when they were struck by Israeli forces in Gaza City.

    Al-Ghoul, whose Al Jazeera reports were popular among Arab audiences, was wearing a press vest at the time he was killed.

    The latest killings bring Israel’s world-record journalist kill total to at least 113 during the current genocide in Gaza, according to the more conservative estimate. However, the Gaza Media Office has documented at least 165 media people being killed by Israeli forces.

    No other world conflict has killed as many journalists in recent memory.

    Israel has a long history of violently targeting journalists, so their Gaza kill total is not necessarily surprising.

    In fact, a 2023 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report documented a “decades-long pattern” of Israel targeting and killing Palestinian journalists.

    Targeted attacks
    For example, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that Israel targeted “journalists and media facilities” on four separate occasions in 2012. During the attacks, two journalists were killed, and many others were injured.

    In 2019, a United Nations commission found that Israel “intentionally shot” a pair of Palestinian journalists in 2018, killing both.

    More recently, in 2022, Israel shot and killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.

    Israel attempted to deny responsibility, as it almost always does after it carries out an atrocity, but video evidence was overwhelming, and Israel was forced to admit guilt.

    There have been no consequences for the soldier who fired at Abu Akleh, who had been wearing a press vest and a press helmet, or for the Israelis involved in the other incidents targeting journalists.

    CPJ has suggested that Israeli security forces enjoy “almost blanket immunity” in incidents of attacks on journalists.

    Given this broader context, Israel’s targeting of journalists during the current genocide is genuinely not surprising, or out of the ordinary.

    Relative silence
    However, what is truly surprising, and even shocking, is the relative silence of Western journalists.

    While there has certainly been some reportage and sympathy in North America and Europe, particularly from watchdog organisations like the CPJ and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), there is little sense of journalistic solidarity, and certainly nothing approaching widespread outrage and uproar about the threat Israel’s actions pose to press freedoms.

    Can we imagine for a moment what the Western journalistic reaction might be if Russian forces killed more than 100 journalists in Ukraine in under a year?

    Even when Western news outlets have reported on Palestinian journalists killed since the start of the current war, coverage has tended to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, often framing the killings as “unintentional casualties” of modern warfare.

    Also, Western journalism’s overwhelming reliance on pro-Israel sources has ensured the avoidance of colourful adjectives and condemnations.

    Moreover, overreliance on pro-Israel sources has sometimes made it difficult to determine which party to the conflict was responsible for specific killings.

    A unique case?
    One might assume here that Western news outlets have simply been maintaining their devotion to stated Western reporting principles of detachment and neutrality.

    But, in other situations, Western journalists have shown that they are indeed capable of making quite a fuss, and also of demonstrating solidarity.

    The 2015 killing of 12 Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists provides a useful case in point.

    Following that attack, a genuine media spectacle ensued, with seemingly the entire institution of Western journalism united to focus on the event.

    Thousands of reports were generated within weeks, a solidarity hashtag (“Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie”) went viral, and statements and sentiments of solidarity poured in from Western journalists, news outlets and organisations dedicated to principles of free speech.

    For example, America’s Society of Professional Journalists called the attack on Charlie Hebdo “barbaric” and an “attempt to stifle press freedom”.

    Freedom House issued a similarly harsh commendation, calling the attack “horrific,” and noting that it constituted a “direct threat to the right of freedom of expression”.

    PEN America and the British National Secular Society presented awards to Charlie Hebdo and the Guardian Media Group donated a massive sum to the publication.

    All journalists threatened
    The relative silence and calm of Western journalists over the killing of at least 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza is especially shocking when one considers the larger context of Israel’s war on journalism, which threatens all journalists.

    In October, around the time the current war began, Israel told Western news agencies that it would not guarantee the safety of journalists entering Gaza.

    Ever since, Israel has maintained a ban on international journalists, even working to prevent them from entering Gaza during a brief November 2023 pause in fighting.

    More importantly, perhaps, Israel has used its sway in the West to direct and control Western news narratives about the war.

    Western news outlets have often obediently complied with Israeli manipulation tactics.

    For example, as global outrage was mounting against Israel in December 2023, Israel put out false reports of mass, systematic rape against Israeli women by Palestinian fighters on October 7.

    Western news outlets, including The New York Times, were suckered in. They downplayed the growing outrage against Israel and began prominently highlighting the “systematic rape” story.

    ICJ provisional measures
    Later, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures against Israel.

    Israel responded almost immediately by issuing absurd terrorism accusations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

    Western news outlets downplayed the provisional measures story, which was highly critical of Israel, and spotlighted the allegations against UNRWA, which painted Palestinians in a negative light.

    These and other examples of Israeli manipulation of Western news narratives are part of a broader pattern of influence that predates the current war.

    One empirical study found that Israel routinely times attacks, especially those likely to kill Palestinian civilians, in ways that ensure they will be ignored or downplayed by US news media.

    During the current genocide, Western news organisations have also tended to ignore the broad pattern of censorship of pro-Palestine content on social media, a fact which should concern anyone interested in freedom of expression.

    It’s easy to point to a handful of Western news reports and investigations which have been critical of some Israeli actions during the current genocide.

    But these reports have been lost in a sea of acquiescence to Israeli narratives and overall pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing.

    Several studies, including analyses by the Centre for Media Monitoring and the Intercept, demonstrated overwhelming evidence of pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing in Western news reportage of the current war.

    Is Western journalism dead?
    Many journalists in the United States and Europe position themselves as truth-tellers, critical of power, and watchdogs.

    While they acknowledge mistakes in reporting, journalists often see themselves and their news organisations as appropriately striving for fairness, accuracy, comprehensiveness, balance, neutrality and detachment.

    But this is the great myth of Western journalism.

    A large body of scholarly literature suggests that Western news outlets do not come close to living up to their stated principles.

    Israel’s war on Gaza has further exposed news outlets as fraudulent.

    With few exceptions, news outlets in North America and Europe have abandoned their stated principles and failed to support Palestinian colleagues being targeted and killed en masse.

    Amid such spectacular failure and the extensive research indicating that Western news outlets fall well short of their ideals, we must ask whether it is useful to continue to maintain the myth of the Western journalistic ideal.

    Is Western journalism, as envisioned, dead?

    Mohamad Elmasry is professor in the Media Studies programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. Republished from Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Promoting peace and stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing its worst aggressor

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    President Biden — if you feel like pretending Biden is still serving as President and still making the decisions in the White House — has pledged to support Israel against any retaliations for its recent assassination spree in Iran and Lebanon which killed high-profile officials from Hamas and Hezbollah.

    A White House statement asserts that Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” and “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.”

    Hilariously, the statement also claims that “the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”

    Yep, nothing emphasises the importance of de-escalating broader tensions in the region like pledging unconditional military support for the region’s single most belligerent actor no matter how reckless and insane its aggressions become.

    This statement from the White House echoes comments from Secretary of “Defence” Lloyd Austin a day earlier, who said “We certainly will help defend Israel” should a wider war break out as a result of Israel’s assassination strikes.

    All this babbling about “defending” the state of Israel is intended to convey the false impression that Israel has just been sitting there minding its own business, and is about to suffer unprovoked attacks from hostile aggressors for some unfathomable reason.

    As though detonating military explosives in the capital cities of two nations to conduct political assassinations would not be seen as an extreme act of war in need of a violent response by literally all governments on this planet.

    Helping Israeli attacks
    In reality, the US isn’t vowing to defend the state of Israel, the US is vowing to help Israel attack other countries.

    If you’re pledging unconditional support to an extremely belligerent aggressor while it commits the most demented acts of aggression imaginable, all you’re doing is condoning those acts of aggression and making sure it will suffer no consequences when it conducts more of them.

    Washington’s position is made even more absurd after all the hysterical shrieking and garment-rending from the Washington establishment following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

    Israel murdered the leader of the Hamas political bureau, not a military commander, and he was the primary negotiator in the mediated ceasefire talks with Israel.

    This was a political assassination just like a successful attempt on Trump’s life would have been, but probably a lot more consequential. And yet the only response from Washington has been to announce that it will help Israel continue its incendiary brinkmanship throughout the Middle East.

    Washington swamp monsters talk all the time about their desire to promote “peace and stability in the Middle East”, while simultaneously pledging loyalty and support for a Middle Eastern nation whose actions pose a greater obstacle to peace and stability in the region than any other.

    These contradictions are becoming more and more glaring and apparent before the entire world.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific Journalism Review at 30 – a strong media legacy

    COMMENTARY: By David Robie in Devpolicy Blog

    Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) began life three decades ago in Papua New Guinea and recently celebrated a remarkable milestone in Fiji with its 30th anniversary edition and its 47th issue.

    Remarkable because it is the longest surviving Antipodean media, journalism and development journal published in the Global South. It is also remarkable because at its birthday event held in early July at the Pacific International Media Conference, no fewer than two cabinet ministers were present — from Fiji and Papua New Guinea — in spite of the journal’s long track record of truth-to-power criticism.

    Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad, a former economics professor at The University of the South Pacific (USP) and a champion of free media, singled out the journal for praise at the event, which was also the occasion of the launch of a landmark new book. As co-editor of Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific with Shailendra Singh and Amit Sarwal, Prasad says the book aimed to analyse recent developments in the Pacific because if sustainable peace and stability remain elusive in the region then long-term development is impeded.

    Papua New Guinea’s Information and Communication Technologies Minister Timothy Masiu, who has faced criticism over a controversial draft media policy (now in its fifth version), joined the discussion, expressing concerns about geopolitical agendas impacting on the media and arguing in favour of “a way forward for a truly independent and authentic Pacific media”.

    Since its establishment in 1994, the PJR has been far more than a research journal. As an independent publication, it has given strong support to Asia-Pacific investigative journalism, socio-political journalism, political-economy perspectives on the media, photojournalism and political cartooning in its three decades of publication. Its ethos declared:

    While one objective of Pacific Journalism Review is research into Pacific journalism theory and practice, the journal has also expanding its interest into new areas of research and inquiry that reflect the broader impact of contemporary media practice and education.

    A particular focus is on the cultural politics of the media, including the following issues: new media and social movements, indigenous cultures in the age of globalisation, the politics of tourism and development, the role of the media and the formation of national identity and the cultural influence of Aotearoa New Zealand as a branch of the global economy within the Pacific region.

    It also has a special interest in climate change, environmental and development studies in the media and communication and vernacular media in the region.

    PJR has also been an advocate of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as demonstrated especially in its Frontline section, initiated by one of the mentoring co-editors, former University of Technology Sydney professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon, and also developed by retired Monash University Professor Chris Nash. Five of the current editorial board members were at the 30th birthday event: Griffith University’s Professor Mark Pearson; USP’s Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the conference convenor; Auckland University of Technology’s Khairiah Abdul Rahman; designer Del Abcede; and current editor Dr Philip Cass.

    The cover of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review
    The cover of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review. Image: PJR

    As the founding editor of PJR, I must acknowledge the Australian Journalism Review which is almost double the age of PJR, because this is where I first got the inspiration for establishing the journal. While I was head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1993, I was really frustrated at the lack of quality Pacific-specific media and journalism literature and research to draw on as resources for both critical studies and practice-led education.

    So I looked longingly at AJR, and also contributed to it. I turned to the London-based Index on Censorship as another publication to emulate. And I thought, why not? We can do that in the Pacific and so I persuaded the University of Papua New Guinea Press to come on board and published the first edition at the derelict campus printer in Waigani in 1994.

    We published there until 1998 when PJR moved to USP for five years. Then it was published for 18 years at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), mostly through the Pacific Media Centre, which closed in 2020. Since then it has been published by the nonprofit NGO Asia Pacific Media Network.

    When celebrating the 20th anniversary of the journal at AUT in 2014, then AJR editor professor Ian Richards noted the journal’s “dogged perseverance” and contribution to Oceania research declaring:

    Today, PJR plays a vital role publishing research from and about this part of the world. This is important for a number of reasons, not least because most academics ground their work in situations with which they are most familiar, and this frequently produces articles which are extremely local. If “local” means London or Paris or New York, then it’s much easier to present your work as “international” than if you live in Port Vila of Pago Pago, Auckland or Adelaide.

    Also in 2014, analyst Dr Lee Duffield highlighted the critical role of PJR during the years of military rule and “blatant military censorship” in Fiji, which has eased since the repeal of its draconian Media Industry Development Act in 2023. He remarked:

    The same is true of PJR’s agenda-setting in regard to crises elsewhere: jailing of journalists in Tonga, threatened or actual media controls in Tahiti or PNG, bashing of an editor in Vanuatu by a senior government politician, threats also against the media in Solomon Islands, and reporting restrictions in Samoa.

    Fiji's Deputy PM Professor Biman Prasad (sixth from left) and PNG's Communications Minister Timothy Masiu (third from right) at the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of PJR
    Fiji’s Deputy PM Professor Biman Prasad (sixth from left) and PNG’s Communications Minister Timothy Masiu (third from right) at the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of PJR in Suva, Fiji. Image: Khairiah Rahman/APMN

    At the 30th anniversary launch, USP’s Adjunct Professor in development studies and governance Dr Vijay Naidu complimented the journal on the wide range of topics covered by its more than 1,100 research articles. He said the journal had established itself as a critical conscience with respect to Asia-Pacific socio-political and development dilemmas, and looked forward to the journal meeting future challenges.

    I outlined many of those future challenges in a recent interview with Global Voices correspondent Mong Palatino. Issues that have become more pressing for the journal include responding to the changing geopolitical realities in the Pacific and collaborating even more creatively and closely on development, the climate crisis, and unresolved decolonisation issues with the region’s journalists, educators and advocates. To address these challenges, the PJR team have been working on an innovative new publishing strategy over the past few months.

    Flashback to the 20th anniversary of PJR - collaborators on board the vaka:
    Flashback to the 20th anniversary of PJR – collaborators on board the vaka: From left: Pat Craddock, Chris Nash, Lee Duffield, Trevor Cullen, Philip Cass, Wendy Bacon, Tui O’Sullivan, Shailendra Singh, Del Abcede, Kevin Upton (in cycle crash helmet), and David Robie. Riding the sail: Mark Pearson, Campion Ohasio, Ben Bohane, Allison Oosterman and John Miller. Also: Barry King (on water skis) and the cartoonist, Malcolm Evans, riding a dolphin. © 2014 Malcolm Evans/Pacific Journalism Review/Devpolicy Blog

    View the latest Pacific Journalism Review: Gaza, genocide and media – PJR 30 years on, special double edition. The journal is indexed by global research databases such as Informit and Ebsco, but it is also available via open access for a Pacific audience here.

    This article is republished from ANU’s Devpolicy Blog. Dr David Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, former director of the Pacific Media Centre, and previously a head of journalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The far-right do not care about protecting women and girls, as Southport showed

    As you will all too well know, horrific acts have occurred this week. On 29 July a 17-year-old male walked into a Southport community centre dance class and stabbed a group of girls and their adults. Two girls died at the scene and one later in hospital. Ten other people were injured, eight of which were children.

    Southport: a clear attack on women and girls?

    They were attending a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class for kids aged 6-12. After the class, they were due to make friendship bracelets – a tradition amongst Swifties, as they trade them at events and shows.

    The attack hasn’t been labelled as terror-related yet, but it should be. Taylor Swift’s fan base is young women and girls and her music stands for celebrating who you are and feeling your emotions fully.

    This is a clear attack on women and girls, which is no doubt spurred on by the pervasive ideology of hatred against women that has been allowed to persist online.

    Later, while the community of Southport and the online community of Taylor Swift fans were grieving, misinformation was spreading rife about the nationality of the attacker.

    High-profile far-right Twitter accounts falsely claimed he was a Muslim immigrant and shared images of much older men with fake names to try and disprove he was only 17. Unfortunately many believed this and on 30 July a large group of far-right thugs tore Southport apart, burning police cars and throwing bricks at a mosque.

    Similar “protests” have happened and are planned to happen around the country, with a similar march on parliament already happening. These are being called protests to protect kids and “get our country back”.

    But let’s call them what they actually are: riots caused by violent thugs who only care about spreading hatred.

    Where were the riots when…

    Amidst this civil unrest, the real message is being lost. This wasn’t about “immigrants” or Britain being taken over.

    This was an attack on little girls who just wanted to fucking dance to Taylor Swift.

    Many will say I’m wrong and they’re “just protecting women and girls”, but if that’s the case they’re seriously lapsing on that front.

    Where were the riots when a white man tied up and shot three women with a crossbow?

    Where were they when police arrested and assaulted women attending a peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard who was raped and murdered by a white police officer?

    Where the fuck were they when a white man stabbed a teenage trans girl literally the same day in the same town of Southport?

    If the Southport riots were about VAWG, then…

    If it’s about protecting women and girls why did none of them stop the men calling a woman “stupid fucking cunt” and trying to assault her whilst she stood bravely and defiantly with a banner which read “One race – human. Hope not hate. Racism not welcome here”.

    If it’s about violence against women and girls how come none of them have denounced Brian Spencer (aka brick to the dick guy) who off his fucking tits on rage and god knows what else then went home and by the sounds of it, smacked up his missus?

    This guy isn’t the only one in their little hate mob. Thugs were heard chanting “Tommy Tommy Tommy” in support of the far right hate monger Tommy Robinson. Which is ironic considering Robinson himself has defended paedophiles and allowed them to stay in the EDL.

    If it’s about violence against women and girls why aren’t these men both online and taking to the streets highlighting just how endemic VAWG is?

    • That one woman a week is killed by a current or former partner.
    • That one in four women have been sexually assaulted.
    • That one in nine girls have experienced sexual assault or abuse.
    • That most women and girls who are abused have the horror inflicted on them by a partner or family member.

    Where are they when their friends make rape jokes or one of their pals talks about “jail bait” or how a 16-year-old girl is “legal enough”.

    Making rich, white men richer

    This was never about “protecting kids” it was about using people’s grief and anger to whip up hatred for anyone who is different. It was rich, privileged tossers exploiting the anger of working-class people.

    It was the likes of Farage, Robinson, Fox, Anderson, and their ilk seeing working-class people being left destitute by governments and corporations who care more about profit than human lives and knowing they can cash in.

    It was classic “nah don’t look at the billionaires who are sat on the biscuit tin while you’ve only got one biscuit. Watch out for that immigrant who’s gonna pinch your biscuit though”.

    Of course it wasn’t just men throwing bricks and hurling abuse in Southport. There was more than their fair share of Karen’s there too. But maybe these women need to ask themselves how many of these men they’d feel safe alone with.

    Meanwhile, many online are saying men are “justifiably angry” but women have been carrying this fear and anger for as long as we can remember.

    Ever since a grown man made a sexual joke at us while we were wearing our school uniform. Every time a man won’t leave us alone in public and we’re too scared that if we tell them to stop they’ll kill us. Every fucking time a woman or girl has been murdered and men say we should ban crossbows and knives, or that we shouldn’t be out late.

    Women didn’t respond to Southport by destroying the world

    We’ve as a gender experienced so much fucking trauma every single day of our lives since we were little girls.

    Yet you don’t see us setting fire to gyms, working men’s clubs, private men’s clubs, golf clubs or wherever the fuck men hang out – oh wait it happens everywhere.

    This was never about violence against women and girls because women didn’t respond by burning shit down.

    We responded with tears, holding our friends close – both virtually and physically – we raised over £300,000 pounds for the hospital treating the kids and the funerals of those lost. We made friendship bracelets for those poor girls still in hospital and donated to care packages.

    Women didn’t respond by destroying the world – because we know that when men control it all, that will never solve anything.

    But we’d be perfectly justified in doing so.

    Featured image via the Guardian – screengrab

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Julian Assange: reflections on politics, publishing, and power

    In 2011, on a bright, cold day in May, whilst enduring house arrest on a resplendent Norfolk estate that nonetheless constituted a jail of sorts, Julian Assange reflected on the seismic uprising of a global counterculture that his incredible activism galvanised.

    His righteous renegade crusade for freedom of information and democratic enfranchisement by giving citizens data necessary for meaningful informed choice is one of the most important contributions to revolutionary politics since Marx, and is of a tradition encompassing names too numerous to list, but including the likes of Orwell, Ellsberg, Schwartz, and Lauri Love.

    WikiLeaks was an immensely successful intervention that dealt a fist to imperial geopolitics by generating huge publicity for government and corporate corruption. This was a major influence in stoking a geopolitical environment in which students, workers and conscientious citizens united, an uprising which scared a thousand kings by reviving the ideals of the 1871 Paris commune within the context of the Information Age.

    Against this raw new zeitgeist, and against the backdrop of uprisings in US proxy states engendered by Wikileaks’ exposure of endemic corruption in Cablegate, Assange answered, under duress, to Google Kingpin Eric Schmidt and his motorcade.

    Julian Assange: demystifying the idea of civil society

    Of all the erudite evaluations Julian Assange made later in a long meditation of the event, the most striking – for he has no formal training in the theory of politics – is his deft demystification of the hagiography of fabled “civic society,” debunking the central pillar of the dominant pluralist school of democratic theory by illuminating how agendas are being set and enacted by shadow networks beyond ceremonial government, in think tanks, transnational lobbies, and military committees.

    Were we to sideline media conjecture for a moment and reflect on the ideas being published everybody has something to learn from those words with their wisdom any jail, any subpoena cannot erase with the bludgeon of its authority.

    It is wisdom worthy of the megaphone, the articulations of a supremely perceptive and voracious intellect in unity with a compassionate heart.

    Moreover, as a form of acknowledgement of the critical influence of radicals the world around on the febrile atmosphere of protest which snaked from the Arabic speaking nations to the poor underworld of London, he hails, in the introduction to the published transcript of the debate with Schmidt, a fresh generation of activists, empowered by brave, socially conscientious use of ITC. He explained how ethical use of the internet resource could expose the corruption of ossified officialdom.

    The at once hopeful and tragic gestures like those of self immolating peaceniks such as in Tunisia, whose names should be spelled across the stars, proclaimed an era of permanent struggle, a species of rebellion in which fearless activism can accelerate the collapse of the system of domination today.

    Plainly explained, that system is manifest in the political and governance institutions that exert vast control over the substance and detail of our societies and lives.

    A diligently developed philosophy

    Julian Assange’s diligently developed philosophy, theory, and praxis of individual and social emancipation – evident not only in his published texts but his activism and interviews – has come to be a highly regarded and influential source of guidance for opposition movements in a new age of authoritarianism and dissidence.

    The unifying idea of this school of thought is that the goal of every serious citizen is to enlist a progressive arsenal of technological knowledge and critical doubt of establishment claims to scatter the seeds of a non-repressive society, based on fundamentally free existential relations, inhibited from emerging by contemporary society and intensified by the establishment’s rapid recent monopolisation of ITC.

    Julian imagines that common cause in communal cryptography collectives, a sort of global agenda to nationalise information so as to manifest a utopian world.

    To this end, Julian invests serious time as a cryptographer, publisher, and activist bringing his influence to bear on power, for peaceful revolution.

    On Julian’s view nascent collectives and protest movements bring utopia closer to fruition because they mobilise against the centralised infrastructure that has encoded the dominance of all manifestations of oppression, perpetuated by the institutions of civilisation, namely money and war and organised religion.

    His meditations on the backlash against informational imperialism, the craven misery beget under its aegis, the geopolitical doom it engineers, made in the zenith of the Wikileaks controversy, reveal his thoughts on liberation in their broader cultural and historical context.

    The 2010s and Assange: a seismic era

    It was a time of transition, a seismic era: imperialism was increasingly assailed by protest and revolt organised diligently by those no longer invested in the rigged game of society. They worked together towards laying the foundations of a qualitatively different and unique society, one which transvaluated – transformed the values of – the corrupt civic order they lived in.

    The counterculture, and the tide of protest movements which succeeded it, were passionately abloom with a protest against imperialism, a movement to: transcend its conditions of alienation which cuts to the roots of its existence, which argued vehemently against its henchmen in the third world, and despised, mocked its culture, its morality of nihilism and wastefulness.

    By this point it had become clear to protestors that the growth and success of the imperial state was an expression of a project at the centre of which is the experience, transformation and organisation of life and people as the mere subjects of domination.

    Civilisation entrenched tyranny, subjugation, exploitation and alienation of the masses and nature. But Julian Assange, like the counterculture, was incandescent for bubbling with optimism about change. There was a world to win.

    The culmination of Julian’s letters, loves, and learning experiences represent an attempt to realise the revolutionary potential of radical philosophical experimentation that mark him as truly a man of the counterculture.

    Global peace and enlightenment

    Whilst the historical trend had been towards the continuation of war and aggression as a policy of the dominant powers on the world stage, Julian Assange nevertheless remains committed to the project of global peace and peaceful enlightenment, in which he sees the potential to manifest a rational and moral utopia banished of social ills and wants such as war, pollution and greed.

    He believes in this project presumably because the conquest of the war machine over the natural instincts of love and peace – symbolised most negatively by the atomic bomb – and the exponential development of the productive forces of the war machine in the advanced industrial states signified to him that the utopian designation for revolutionary ideas had ceased to be an operative truth, because the means really existed to rationally and creatively plan society in such a way as to create solidarity, abundance, happiness, and peace.

    If that social vision is to be dismissed as utopian, then realism can be called into disrepute. That is to say ideology had concealed the reality of domination and alienation inherent in imperialism. Julian’s message implicitly implored people to think about the terrifying truth of the world we currently live in by imagining one that was better.

    The lively life of Assange places him as the crux of an opposition of youth and intellectuals and persecuted minorities against a corrupt authoritarian statist autocracy which engages in military warfare against its own citizens, insofar as it coldly perceived how powerfully they could subvert the continuum of repression perpetuated by the hegemonic and hawkish military-industrial complex.

    Julian Assange: still a danger to the status quo

    What makes Julian Assange and his disciples so dangerous to the status quo was the way they acted beyond the continuum of repression, conscientious about liberating themselves from its demanding repressive imperatives, those of a society which they could see was constrained by a carefully managed ideological conformism.

    His anger at social injustice and organised repression developed to focus on the ways in which war-makers and the political classes were tightening control of their societies not only through the rule of the iron fist, but also through new technologies like the web, the new religion, which integrated the working classes into regulated modes of thought and behaviour.

    Moreover, the doom cloud of the new Cold War looms large in our minds, the battle being, like in the mind of the sixties militants, as two systems equal in degrees of totalitarianism, transcending the Cold War demonology which cast communism as the oppressor against the liberal democratic state.

    We see that, save for the nascent counterculture movement, liberal democracies are static societies in which there was a dearth of opposition to the status quo, in which people were integrated in to regulated systems of thought and behaviour.

    Julian aims to surprise and stimulate, and his existence helps give inspiration and joy to the parties and groupings that constituted the international solidarity movement, making stone hearts beat and bleed and people united.

    In the spirit of a genuinely radical critique of society Julian bequeaths a vision rare in its passion, a swan song of the liberation era which distinguishes the new age vision and ideas of the anti authoritarian left. It pays well to flash our eyes on Julian’s letters, for their insight in to the terrifying truth of a culture that alienates the essence of our humanity.

    Featured image via Wikileaks

    By Megan Sherman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Why Israel assassinated Haniyeh – desperation over Gaza failure

    ANALYSIS: By Ramzy Baroud

    Israel’s assassination of the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on yesterday is part of Tel Aviv’s overall desperate search for a wider conflict. It is a criminal act that reeks of desperation.

    Almost immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, Israel hoped to use the genocide in the Strip as an opportunity to achieve its long-term goal of a regional war — one that would rope in Washington as well as Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

    Despite unconditional support for its genocide in Gaza, and various conflicts throughout the region, the United States refrained from entering a direct war against Iran and others.

    Although defeating Iran is an American strategic objective, the US lacks the will and tools to pursue it now.

    After 10 months of a failed war on Gaza and a military stalemate against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is, once more, accelerating its push for a wider conflict. This time around, however, Israel is engaging in a high-stakes game — the most dangerous of its previous gambles.

    The current gamble involved the targeting of a top Hezbollah leader by bombing a residential building in Beirut on Tuesday — and, of course, the assassination of Palestine’s most visible, let alone popular political leader.

    Successful Haniyeh diplomacy
    Haniyeh, has succeeded in forging and strengthening ties with Russia, China, and other countries beyond the US-Western political domain.

    Israel chose the place and timing of killing Haniyeh carefully. The Palestinian leader was killed in the Iranian capital, shortly after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

    The Israeli message was a compound one, to Iran’s new administration — that of Israel’s readiness to escalate further — and to Hamas, that Israel has no intentions to end the war or to reach a negotiated ceasefire.

    The latter point is perhaps the most urgent. For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything in his power to impede all diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war.

    By killing the top Palestinian negotiator, Israel delivered a final and decisive message that Israel remains invested in violence, and in nothing else.

    The scale of the Israeli provocations, however, poses a great challenge to the pro-Palestinian camp in the Middle East, namely, how to respond with equally strong messages without granting Israel its wish of embroiling the whole region in a destructive war.

    Considering the military capabilities of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran, Hezbollah and others are certainly capable of managing this challenge despite the risk factors involved.

    Equally important regarding timing: the Israeli dramatic escalation in the region, followed a visit by Netanyahu to Washington, which, aside from many standing ovations at the US Congress, didn’t fundamentally alter the US position, predicated on the unconditional support for Israel without direct US involvement in a regional war.

    Coup a real possibility
    Additionally, Israel’s recent clashes involving the army, military police, and the supporters of the far right suggest that an actual coup in Israel might be a real possibility. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid: Israel is not nearing the abyss, Israel is already in the abyss.

    It is, therefore, clear to Netanyahu and his far-right circle that they are operating within an increasingly limited time and margins.

    By killing Haniyeh, a political leader who has essentially served the role of a diplomat, Israel demonstrated the extent of its desperation and the limits of its military failure.

    Considering the criminal extent to which Israel is willing to go, such desperation could eventually lead to the regional war that Israel has been trying to instigate, even before the Gaza war.

    Keeping in mind Washington’s weakness and indecision in the face of Israel’s intransigence, Tel Aviv might achieve its wish of a regional war after all.

    Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A major ME charity shared an article gaslighting Maeve after her death

    It’s the second week of an inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill. In 2021, the 27-year-old died of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). However, it wasn’t the devastating disease alone that killed her – Maeve died as a result of a series of unconscionable failures by the NHS professionals charged with her care.

    During the first week, Maeve’s words – penned not long before her death – were read out to the courtroom. Among her fiercely intelligent, powerful, and enormously important musings on the abysmal state of ME care, Maeve wrote:

    How frightening to discover that there are no doctors who can help you, that they do not even know what is wrong with you, and that in looking for effective alternatives you will be wandering in a wilderness of quacks and blogs.

    Three years on from her death, one post on X has proved how heartbreakingly and painfully true Maeve’s words were – and still are. Because in the midst of the ongoing inquest, the corporate media has spun, woven, and twisted the facts to fit a particular narrative. Largely, this is one where NHS clinicians aren’t culpable – and biopsychosocial beliefs not to blame – for the catastrophic failings that ultimately led to her death.

    A singular article from iNews has summed it up, when – Maeve’s inquest ongoing – it proselytised psychiatric and dubious alternative treatments. And what made it infinitely worse? One of the UK’s biggest ME charities shared it (seemingly) without a second thought.

    Maeve inquest: another gaslighting article on ME/CFS

    On the face of it, the iNews article explored former severe ME/CFS patient Lucy Rowett’s battle with the devastating chronic illness and a dire healthcare system.

    Predictably, there were many parallels with Maeve’s story, which it drew. In this way, the article appeared to be speaking to the systemic stigma and dogma that pervades the entire healthcare system for ME. Yet, this wasn’t actually the underlying thrust of piece, or Rowett’s message. Instead, it promoted junk science, psychologising treatments, and alternative therapies.

    There’s a long, torrid history of snake-oil sales people preying on people living with ME. A prominent recent example was the Dragon’s Den ‘ear seeds’ debacle. In this case, Rowett was opining her successes with reiki – a pseudoscientific ‘energy’ therapy.

    Of course, it didn’t stop there. In one notable passage, it described how Rowett had gone to an inpatient unit at Queen’s Hospital. There, doctors put her on a “structured programme”. She told iNews what this involved, stating how:

    One week I’d start by trying to sit slightly up for 10 minutes, the next week I’d sit up a bit more and for a bit longer. We did the same with walking to the end of the bed”. That helped gradually build back her ability to sit up, chew and walk.

    In short, this was graded exercise therapy (GET) by any other name. This is the treatment at the centre of immense harm to people living with ME. Reading this was jarring next to Maeve’s own words I’d heard during Friday’s proceedings, and the experiences of myself and many others I know living with ME.

    Corporate media STILL promoting GET

    Maeve had spoken to her own encounter with GET and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – another treatment wrapped up in the history of the psychologisation of the disease. By contrast to Rowett, she’d written that:

    I attempted to follow the workbook they gave me, find my high energy activity baseline and increase it by 20 per cent every fortnight, provided this didn’t bring on any symptoms. It didn’t work.

    Instead, my baseline shrank. I rarely had the energy for telephone CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] with an OT [occupational therapist], and it was never helpful. Physical stamina was the wrong paradigm, nor was the issue with my thoughts or feelings of behaviour. Since then my health has only deteriorated. I am now 26.

    After the ceaseless, unwavering efforts of ME/CFS campaigners, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated its clinical guidelines, dropping GET as a treatment for ME. Maeve herself wrote on the guidelines too:

    Persisting with the GET/CBT approach on the grounds that it is evidence base[d] when that evidence base is fundamentally flawed, will do nothing to improve the situation of severely affected patients, any of whose severity of disease has been increased by this treatment.

    Having come so far to recognise the needs of patients, particularly the severely ill, I profoundly hope that NICE [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] will not bactrack at this late stage.

    But she did not live to see it – NICE published these just weeks after Maeve’s death in October 2021. And three years on, here again was a corporate media outlet laundering this dangerous treatment, in the very midst of Maeve’s inquest.

    However, this wasn’t even the worst of it.

    As Severe ME Day approaches

    Maeve’s inquest will conclude just days before Severe ME Day – 8 August – Sophia Mirza’s birthday. Sophia was the first person in the UK to have ME/CFS recorded as her cause of death. She died in 2005, after a litany of painfully similar failures and abuse by healthcare professionals. Since 2013, the community has marked this as a day of remembrance for all those who’ve died to ME. And of course, there have been far, far too many.

    For Severe ME Day in 2020, the ME Association posted an extract from Sophia’s Story, written by her mother Críona Wilson. In this, she expressed how Sophia’s abusive GP tried to coerce her to attend a supposed specialist neurological clinic. She wrote that:

    In 2001, Dr. Firth approached Professor Findley at Oldchurch Hospital in Romford, telling me, for legal protection of the G.P. and the surgery. Sophia asked me to research the clinic, which cost thousands of pounds. They told me, when I pressed them for long-term results, that patients usually revert to the point from whence they started.

    I spoke to a couple of ex-patients who were afraid to have their names used; they said that this clinic was run on the lines of mental health and used Graded Exercise, although it claimed to be a neurological clinic. They also said that when patients did not get better that they were given a different diagnosis before being sent home. Sophia elected not to go to the clinic.

    And so it is with a cruel, contemptuous irony that during Maeve’s inquest – almost two decades on from Sophia’s death – a corporate news outlet was extolling none other than Dr Leslie Findley, and his long-closed ME clinic.

    ME Association provides veneer for trash article

    It was in this context that the ME Association posted the article on its X:

    The piece had a comment from the ME Association’s honorary medical adviser Dr Charles Shepherd. It’s presumably why the charity’s social media handle shared the article in the first place. However, if anything, the quote actually makes this all that much worse.

    By providing a comment, the ME Association loaned legitimacy to the whole piece. And wittingly aware of the article’s GET and alternative therapy bent or not, the damage is done.

    Plenty from the ME/CFS community on X have voiced their horror at this. However, it’s also not hugely surprising either. For one, I’ve previously explored the connections between the ME Association and a notorious organisation at the heart of the psychiatric lobby.

    The big ME charities have at best, stood idly by as the NHS kill many more Maeve’s.

    In the last year alone, the Canary has highlighted three such women NHS services have been abusing. They are still doing this right now to 23-year-old Carla Naoum in West Middlesex hospital.

    At worst, the ME charities have been actively complicit in propping up arrogant professionals trivialising ME as part-psychosomatic.

    The ME Association’s comment in and share of this iNews article is another case and point of that.

    Maeve should still be here

    The concluding line in the iNews article has stayed with me in an altogether different way to Maeve’s prosaic words. It was a quote from Rowett, which said:

    Recovery is possible. I know it is. Maeve didn’t need to die.

    Of course, she was right in this, Maeve didn’t need to – or rather, shouldn’t have – died. But this isn’t as Rowett and iNews implied as a result of missed opportunities for alternative therapies. In fact, it’s precisely these psychiatric, opportunistic, as Maeve herself put it, “quacks” – and the media that shills for them – who were responsible for her death.

    After years of gaslighting people living with ME/CFS, I didn’t think the corporate media could stoop any lower. Gaslighting a young woman after her death? How wrong I was.

    Maeve was a writer, the same age as me, from the county just over from mine. In 2021, I was going through the second year of a Covid-induced ME relapse. I was never severe, but I was mostly house and bedbound, feeling helpless and hopeless as so many living with this awful chronic illness do.

    In the grip of her severe ME, Maeve wrote so poignantly, profoundly about the tragic, woeful state of care for people with ME. Somehow, her lyrical prose still managed not to pull any punches. She articulated so eloquently what I’m now struggling to put into words and communicate to you.

    By the end of 2021, Maeve was gone, the NHS had killed her. In December 2021, life in tatters, I reached out to Steve Topple here at the Canary.

    In her writings, Maeve had expressed how:

    I had every potential to be an asset to humanity, and hoped and intended to advance the cause of human flourishing

    I didn’t know if I had that potential, and I still don’t. But I did know that if I got the chance, I wanted to turn my pen to do the same. And I was lucky. In the months that followed, my ME did improve. Then, in March 2022, Steve invited me onto the Canary’s journalism training scheme.

    It’s why I’m where I am now, writing this: why – if I’m honest with myself – I think I’m even here now at all. Maeve should be here now too, writing her truth to power, and I so badly wish she were.

    The ME Association and iNews circulating this sham biopsychosocial ‘science’ are an affront to her memory. Never more so than the very fortnight we’re seeing just how a healthcare system with this firmly entrenched belief utterly failed this young, brilliant soul, who should have had so much life yet to live.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Netanyahu has taken us to the brink. He must be stopped.

    The following article is a comment piece from Stop The War Coalition

    Israel’s series of overnight attacks on Iran were a dramatic and calculated attempt to spark a wider war in the Middle East by Netanyahu.

    Netanyahu: dragging us all into war

    The killing of Ismail Haniyeh in particular could not have been more provocative. Haniyeh was not just the political leader of Hamas, he was the lead Hamas figure in the negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza taking place in Qatar and elsewhere.

    As Chris Nineham wrote:

    Israel chose to kill Haniyeh in Iran rather than in Doha where he lived, quite deliberately throwing down a gauntlet to the Iranian regime. Amongst other things all the strikes were attacks on foreign sovereign territory, justifying responses in international law.

    The level of provocation is only underlined by the fact that the killing of Haniyeh took place during the swearing in of recently elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian who has vowed to try to end the sanctions regime imposed by the US on the country.

    If you are serious about a ceasefire, you don’t assassinate the people you are negotiating with. All this points to the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, given carte Blanche by the Israeli cabinet as to how to respond to the recent attacks on the Golan Heights, is looking for a way to escalate his war.

    Netanyahu’s last hope is to drag the US into a wider war with Lebanon or Iran. The attack on Tehran comes a few days after he received a standing ovation in the US Congress. The US have been deeply involved in developments since the attacks on the Golan Heights. It is almost inconceivable that it hadn’t discussed Israel’s plans.

    The job of everyone who opposes a wider war in the region is to escalate our global struggle against the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s spiralling aggression.

    Israel must be stopped

    Britain is the main Western backer of US policy in the Middle East and a prime supporter of Israel. What happens here matters.

    This Saturday’s national demonstration against Israel’s genocide in Gaza now also needs to be a massive show of strength against a wider war in the Middle East. Labour’s decision to reinstate funding for UNWRA and the abandonment of a proposal to block the ICC’s warrants against Netanyahu are victories for our movement. Now, we call on them to suspend all arms sales to the apartheid Israeli state. Let’s step up the pressure and do all we can to force their hand.

    Make sure you’re there.

    The forces fomenting endless war in the Middle East must feel the weight of opposition to their constant warmongering.

    Join Stop The War Coalition here.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own

    Forget a 10-month genocide in Gaza. Only when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians living under its military occupation are we supposed to start worrying about the ‘consequences’, writes Jonathan Cook.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights last Saturday has been intentionally misleading.

    The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.

    I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell — and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).

    It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.

    The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.

    Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”

    Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

    Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.

    Panic as Israeli strike hits near Gaza school playground.  Video: The Guardian

    Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football 0- especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.

    So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?

    Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.

    Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.

    (Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)

    It’s not just ‘unlikely’ that a Palestinian rocket destroyed the Gaza hospital. It’s impossible. The media know this, they just don’t dare say it. My latest:

    – Jonathan Cook

    Read on Substack

    The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months — that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”

    So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.

    A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.

    Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.

    Update – ‘Tightening the noose’:
    Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article — and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).

    Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to this Substack page.

    As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.

    Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly — either through email or via Substack’s app — bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.

    If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.

    Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This article was first published on Substack and is republished with the permission of the author.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: Starmer restoring UNRWA funding is more smoke and mirrors

    Well blow me down with a feather. It has taken less than three weeks of a Labour Party government to confirm that no matter which group of elites we are lumbered with for at least the next five years, child poverty is a political choice.

    For those who are not paying even the slightest bit of attention at the back, Keir Starmer will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his personal agenda.

    Welcome to Labour: jaw-droppingly duplicitous foreign policy

    There’s no point telling me about “difficult decisions” and the old Tory favourite, “living within our means”, when it’s not such a difficult decision to send billions and billions of pounds to a regime in a state that is described by NBC as having a “genuine Nazi problem – both past and present”.

    I was pleased to see the restoration of the critical funding to UNRWA, this past week.

    The new Foreign Secretary — a bought and paid for narcissist that enjoys grandstanding for photo opportunities with genocidal maniacs — described the move as a “moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe”.

    But what does Mr Lammy have to say regarding the murder of 200 of UNRWA’s staff, mercilessly targeted by the Israeli killing machine, and now declared a terrorist entity?

    Not a word.

    Fucking coward.

    Lammy thinks nobody will notice his jaw-dropping duplicity and his fervent support for the pariah state of Israel.

    We notice. We won’t stop noticing.

    Lammy’s double-standards are well practiced and easily found. I mean, if I can tap a few words into my search engine, pretty much anyone can.

    For example:

    Sorry, Lammy – what was that?

    In July 2016, Mr Lammy told parliament he could not vote to renew Britain’s nuclear-armed submarines because of his Christian faith:

    I stand here first and foremost as a Christian and it’s from that perspective that I speak.

    I stand united with Pope Benedict XVI when he said ‘in a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims”.

    The idea of loving thy neighbour and protecting our world for future generations simply cannot hold if we have stockpiles of weapons that will destroy our neighbours and destroy our world for future generations.

    Not only do nuclear weapons contradict religious principles, any form of international relations based on the threat of mutual destruction is totally contradictory to the preamble of Article 1 of the United Nations Charter.

    Pretty impressive waffle, Mr Lammy, such a shame you didn’t mean a single word of it. What is it with political god botherers?

    Skip forward just six years and David Lammy proudly told the Telegraph:

    Just as Bevan built the NHS to be the heart of Atlee’s Labour, so Ernst Bevin helped found NATO and established our nuclear programme to be its strong arm.

    This is Labour’s heritage.

    My commitment to NATO and the UK’s nuclear deterrent is unshakeable.

    So what the actual king of all fucks happened over those six years to make Bilderberg-attendee David Lammy go from praising the Lord to nuking the fucking world?

    Two variants of the same virus

    Let’s be clear: nobody with just an iota of common sense was expecting Starmer’s Labour government to be anything other than remarkably similar to the Tories of 2010 – 2024.

    If the Tories were SARS-CoV-2, this Labour government is Omicron.

    What I find baffling is how long Labour had in opposition to develop a cohesive strategy and come up with the right answers to the two-child benefit cap, yet within hours of taking office they’re needing to hold an internal inquiry as to how they are going to deal with it.

    Furthermore, the Labour Party, from root to branch, is fully aware the cap is a morally reprehensible policy from the days of Tory austerity that directly impacts some of the poorest children in the country.

    But Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t really care about any of that minor detail. They want to demonstrate their power to the supportive Murdoch media empire.

    Opposing the view held by a majority of the Labour Party wasn’t accidental. Starmer and Reeves wanted to prove how they can “balance the books”, and they were more than willing to immediately face down and suspend any dissenters, just to prove they really are “changed”.

    Not all change is for the better

    Not all change is for the good. Even more so when the change we seek doesn’t look anything like the change that was forced upon us by just 34% of the overall vote share — some 6% less than the 40% achieved by Corbyn’s Labour in 2017 against the backdrop of a pernicious campaign of smears, slurs, and downright lies.

    How typically vile and dishonest of the Starmer regime to sacrifice impoverished children upon the altar of establishment media approval.

    It was only five years ago that Keir Starmer made those trashed ten pledges along with a promise to make the “moral case for socialism”.

    So here’s a challenge for you, Labour supporters. Show me how Starmer has made the moral case for socialism, not only in government but also in opposition.

    If Starmer wants to understand what socialism looks like he only has to think back to the creation of the welfare state, the building of an unprecedented number of new council houses, and the birth of our National Health Service. These are examples of socialism in action that Keir Starmer will never embrace. They call it a “far-left” ideology, apparently.

    Do you honestly see a Prime Minister when you look at Keir Starmer?

    Dishonest dog whistler

    When I look at Keir Starmer I see a dishonest, dog-whistling persecutor with the charisma of a tin of Spam that has successfully coasted into power on the crest of a wave of anti-Tory sentiment.

    The media – spoon-feeders-in-chief of neoliberalism throughout most of our lifetimes – have Keir Starmer exactly where they want him.

    The length of Starmer’s honeymoon period is entirely in their grubby hands. If they like the tone of his anti-refugee, anti-poor, pro-capitalist rhetoric, there is absolutely no reason for them to cease pretending the new Prime Minister is the greatest Labour leader since Clement Attlee.

    The first 24 days of this depressingly familiar Labour government — fortuitously gifted principle-free power by a dramatic, but entirely predictable collapse in the Tory vote, and the emergence of the Reform hatemongers — hasn’t given us any cause for optimism whatsoever.

    Although if your ideology is centred around allowing hundreds of thousands of children to languish in destitution and poverty while making sure the Azov Battalion is sorted for guns and bombs, you’re probably quietly satisfied with the dross being served up by servile Starmer and his lobbyist-funded freeloaders.

    You would also probably approve of Labour whips attempting to bribe now-independent MP Apsana Begum — suspended by Starmer for refusing to vote against an SNP attempt to force him to end the deeply cruel two-child benefit cap — by supporting her proposed legislation to protect victims of partner violence, providing she agreed to vote how Starmer wanted her to vote.

    Labour: the barrel bottom, scraped

    Starmer’s shameless Labour enforcers are fully aware of the importance of proposed domestic violence legislation, particularly to a woman that suffered at the hands of her ex-husband, but there is no barrel-bottom that is safe from a Starmer scraping.

    If you needed any further evidence that the Labour Party is no longer a progressive vehicle for societal change, then look no further than the government of today.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Caitlin Johnstone: US presidential races hide the criminality of the Empire

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    The thing I hate about Western electoral politics in general and US presidential races in particular is that they take the focus off the depravity of the US-centralised Empire itself, and run cover for its criminality.

    In the coming months you’re going to be hearing a lot of talk about the two leading presidential candidates and how very very different they are from each other, and how one is clearly much much worse than the other.

    But in reality the very worst things about both of them will not be their differences — the worst things about them will be be the countless ways in which they are both indistinguishably in lockstep with one another.

    Donald Trump is not going to end America’s non-existent “democracy” if elected and rule the United States as an iron-fisted dictator, and he’s certainly not going to be some kind of populist hero who leads a revolution against the Deep State.

    He will govern as your standard evil Republican president who is evil in all the usual ways US presidents are evil, just like he did during his first term.

    His administration will continue to fill the world with more war machinery, implement more starvation sanctions, back covert operations, uprisings and proxy conflicts, and work to subjugate the global population to the will of the empire, all while perpetuating the poisoning of the earth via ecocidal capitalism, just as all his predecessors have done.

    And the same will be true of whatever moronic fantasies Republicans wind up concocting about Kamala Harris between now and November. She’s not going to institute communism or give everyone welfare, implement Sharia law, weaken Israel, take everyone’s guns, subjugate Americans to the “Woke Agenda” and make everyone declare their pronouns and eat bugs, or any of that fuzzbrained nonsense.

    She will continue to expand US warmongering and tyranny while making the world a sicker, more violent, and more dangerous place for everyone while funneling the wealth of the people and the planet into the bank accounts of the already obscenely rich. Just as Biden has spent his entire term doing, and just as Trump did before him.


    Caitlin Johnston’s article on YouTube.

    The truth is that while everyone’s going to have their attention locked on the differences between Trump and Harris these next few months, by far the most significant and consequential things about each of these candidates are the ways in which they are similar.

    The policies and agendas either of them will roll out which will kill the most people, negatively impact the most lives and do the most damage to the ecosystem are the areas in which they are in complete agreement, not those relatively small and relatively inconsequential areas in which they differ.

    You can learn a lot more about the US and its globe-spanning empire by looking at the similarities between presidential administrations than you can by looking at their differences, because that’s where the overwhelming majority of the abusiveness can be found.

    But nobody’s going to be watching any of that normalised criminality while the drama of this fake election plays out. More and more emotional hysteria is going to get invested in the outcome of this fraudulent two-handed sock puppet popularity contest between two loyal empire lackeys who are both sworn to advance the interests of the Empire no matter which one wins, and the mundane day-to-day murderousness of the Empire will continue to tick on unnoticed in the background.

    The other day the US Navy’s highest-ranking officer just casually mentioned that the AUKUS military alliance which is geared toward roping Australia into a future US-driven military confrontation with China will remain in place no matter who wins the presidential election.

    “Regardless of who is in our political parties and whatever is happening in that space, it’s allies and partners that are always our priority,” said Admiral Lisa Franchetti in response to the (completely baseless) concern that Trump will withdraw from military alliances and make the US “isolationist” if elected.

    How could Franchetti make such a confident assertion if the behaviour of the US war machine meaningfully changed from administration to administration? The answer is that she couldn’t, and it doesn’t. The official elected government of the United States may change every few years, but its real government does not.

    To be clear, I am not telling you not to vote here. These elections are designed to function as an emotional pacifier for the American people to let them feel like they have some control over their government, so if you feel like you want to vote then vote in whatever way pacifies your emotions.

    I’ve got nothing invested in convincing you either way.

    Whenever I talk about this stuff I get people accusing me of being defeatist and interpreting this message as a position that there’s nothing anyone can do, but that’s not true at all. I’m just saying the fake election ritual you’ve been given by the powerful and told that’s how you solve your problems is not the tool for the job.

    You’re as likely to solve your problems by voting as you are by wishing or by praying — but that doesn’t mean problems can’t be solved. If you thought you could cure an infection by huffing paint thinner I’d tell you that won’t work either, and tell you to go see a doctor instead.

    Just because the only viable candidates in any US presidential race will always be murderous empire lackeys doesn’t mean things are hopeless; that’s just what it looks like when you live in the heart of an empire that’s held together by lies, violence and tyranny, whose behavior has too much riding on it for the powerful to allow it to be left to the will of the electorate.

    Your vote won’t make any difference to the behavior of the empire, but what can make a difference is taking actions every day to help pave the way toward a genuine people’s uprising against the empire later on down the road.

    You do this by opening people’s eyes to the reality that what they’ve been taught about their government, their nation and their world is a lie, and that the mainstream sources they’ve been trained to look to for information are cleverly disguised imperial propaganda services.

    What we can all do as individuals right here and now is begin cultivating a habit of committing small acts of sedition. Making little paper cuts in the flesh of the beast which add up over time. You can’t stop the machine by yourself, but you can sure as hell throw sand in its gears.

    Giving a receptive listener some information about what’s going on in the world. Creating dissident media online. Graffiti with a powerful message.

    Amplifying an inconvenient voice. Sharing a disruptive idea. Supporting an unauthorised cause. Organizing toward forbidden ends. Distributing eye-opening literature.

    Creating eye-opening literature. Creating eye-opening art. Having authentic conversations about real things with anyone who can hear you.

    Every day there’s something you can do. After you start pointing your creativity at cultivating this habit, you’ll surprise yourself with the innovative ideas you come up with.

    Even a well-placed meme or tweet can open a bunch of eyes to a reality they’d previously been closed to. Remember: they wouldn’t be working so frantically to restrict online speech if it didn’t pose a genuine threat to the Empire.

    Such regular small acts of sabotage do infinitely more damage to the imperial machine than voting, talking about voting or thinking about voting, which is why voting, talking about voting and thinking about voting is all you’re ever encouraged to do.

    The more people wake up to the fact that they’re running to nowhere on a hamster wheel built by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful, the more people there will be to step off the wheel and start pushing for real change in real ways that matter — and the more people there will be to help wake up everyone else.

    Once enough eyes are open, the people will be able to use the power of their numbers to force real change and shrug off the chains of their abusers like a heavy coat on a warm day.

    There is nothing that could stop us once enough of us understand what’s happening. That’s why so much effort goes into obfuscating people’s understanding, and keeping everyone endlessly diverted with empty nonsense like presidential elections.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • There’s a stupor in Catalonia over Spanish judicial abuse

    In order to form a government of PSOE and Sumar (centre and left) and avoid one of PP and VOX (right and extreme right), they made a pact with eight parties, with 179 seats, representing 12.3 million citizens. The Catalonia pro-independence supporters, essential to achieve the pact, demanded, as an initial condition, the approval of an amnesty law that would deactivate the judicial repression with which the high judiciary, motivated by its exacerbated Spanish nationalism, has persecuted Catalan nationalists (500 people have convictions or pending trials). The PSOE, which is also very nationalist and which rejected the amnesty, did a U-turn after the elections and accepted the amnesty in order not to lose the government.

    Spanish nationalism is not accepting Catalonia amnesty

    However, the amnesty law is not being accepted by Spanish nationalism, so we will see how it will be applied. But in reality what would have been fair would have been a process of nullification of the cases, admitting that the Catalan independence supporters had not committed any crime in organising a referendum on self-determination and that the accusations against them were part of the “lawfare” (instrumentalising justice for political ends) used by the state against them.

    Then the police officers who improperly attacked the referendum voters could have been tried. The amnesty, on the other hand, annuls the crimes that are understood to have been committed by both sides, but the fact is that the pro-independence side acted democratically and committed no crime, while the state acted outside the law.

    Although the amnesty is unfair to the pro-independence supporters because it attributes crimes to them, what makes Spanish nationalism mad is that, being the strong side, they cannot win and humiliate the weak, as they have always done.

    As the state is the strong party, its approval of the amnesty implies that it implicitly accepts that it played dirty with the illegitimate aim of trying to destroy a perfectly legitimate political movement.

    Legal twists and turns

    The Spanish Congress ensured that the law was unambiguous because it was certain that the judges would try to interpret it in a distorted way against the Catalan pro-independence supporters.

    As it is not possible to grant amnesty to specific individuals for the fact that they are pro-independence (in fact being pro-independence “was their crime”), specific crimes were amnestied, in the context of the Catalan independence process, with some exclusions: embezzlement (with personal enrichment or affecting the financial interests of the EU), high treason (with “an effective use of force against territorial integrity”), and terrorism (“that has intentionally caused serious violations of human rights”).

    The law, passed on 7 March, was rejected by the right and judges, and former President Aznar said that “whoever could do something against the amnesty law, should do it”. A manual on how to paralyse the application of the amnesty law, ignoring the spirit of the legislator, was distributed to all judges from the official email of the General Council of the Judiciary (the highest body of the Spanish judiciary), which nullifies the rule of law for Catalan pro-independence supporters.

    Many missing from Catalonia amnesty

    As for the crime of high treason, Judge Joaquín Aguirre does not want to grant amnesty to those accused of the secret plan that, according to him, the Catalan independence movement had with Putin to destabilise Europe. He himself has made statements to German television, spreading secret information from the case to discredit the accused.

    Nor did judge Manuel García-Castellón want to grant amnesty to Puigdemont and seven other people (who had gone into exile in Switzerland) for the crime of terrorism that he attributed to demonstrations in 2019.

    Fortunately, the judge was forced to close the case, but not because of the application of the amnesty, but because of a procedural error. Five of the defendants were finally able to return from exile.

    Nor is there any desire to grant amnesty to the seven young men who, in 2019, were arrested for terrorism in an impressive police operation that made all the news, seemingly in an attempt to influence the elections that were to be held two months later, by insinuating that the peaceful Catalan independence movement had swung towards terrorism.

    Information and decontextualised pieces of video footage of the interrogations were leaked to the press in a serious breach of the secrecy of the case file. After the elections, they were released on bail. Would they have been released if they were really terrorists?

    The judge has decided not to grant amnesty and to take the case to the European Court of Justice, which will further delay their final acquittal.

    Embezzlement?

    As for embezzlement, the Supreme Court rejected the amnesty and will keep the arrest warrants against Puigdemont, Comín and Puig (with charges of 12 years in prison!) in force.

    They argue that the politicians embezzled in the organisation of the referendum with “personal enrichment” because, although they did not keep a single euro, they can be considered to have saved from putting up personal money. They also argue that they would have harmed the financial interests of the EU.

    The judges never specify the amount embezzled because they would not even know what to record, but the fact is that in 2017 the finances of the government of Catalonia were intervened by the Madrid government, and the finance minister Cristóbal Montoro of the PP already assured that no public euro had been used to finance the referendum.

    In reality, there was no embezzlement of any kind because the referendum was carried out on a voluntary basis and with private funds.

    Moreover, the judges want to justify financial damage to the EU, using an EU directive that has not yet been approved (!) and that refers to appropriating European economic funds, which was not stated in the 2019 Supreme Court ruling, but now they argue that there was.

    The positive thing is that, in this pronouncement of the Supreme Court, five magistrates have voted in favour, but one magistrate, Ana Ferrer (unequivocally anti-independence), has voted against because she considers that, by not granting the amnesty, the interpretation of the law is being twisted and sees the danger of this implying a condemnation of Spanish justice by the European Court of Human Rights.

    Catalonia amnesty: granted, in part, for now

    At the moment, amnesty has been granted: on the one hand, 20 activists and four Catalan public officials and, on the other hand, 50 Spanish police officers. It is doubly insulting that the amnesty cannot be applied normally to peaceful Catalan pro-independence activists, but is instead applied to the police officers who attacked them.

    And the most serious thing on a human level is that the Spanish population, except for the Catalans, is justifying the abuse of justice against the Catalan independence fighters, because the media have dehumanised them and presented their objective as totally unacceptable.

    By taking rights away from the Catalans, they are feeding the beast of fascism. This beast, which worries the EU, has been attacking the Catalans for centuries, and now that Catalonia is claiming political rights, this fascism is accepted across the board in the Spanish state without any objection.

    In Catalonia, it has caused stupor that the high magistrates are not applying the amnesty law as it is written, but as they see fit, in a kind of judicial coup d’état against the Spanish parliament, and that nothing will happen to them for doing so.

    If even the Constitutional Court allows them to do so, there will be no way to stop them in Spain, and they will have to resort to European Justice, where the cases will be delayed for years.

    The only solution is for Catalonia to be like Andorra or Portugal, a new state in Europe.

    By Jordi Oriola Folch

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • More bars is not the answer: why Labour should focus on prison rehabilitation not reform

    UK prisons are “on the point of collapse” and in need of reform. This was the verdict from new Labour Party justice secretary Shabana Mahmood.

    On Friday 12 July, she announced plans for the early release of thousands of prisoners. But overcrowding isn’t the only issue when it comes to the UK prison system. With crumbling buildings, staff shortages and inadequate training, it’s no surprise that one in four prisoners go on to reoffend. In fact, prisons are perhaps the most unrivalled example of a country crying out for the reality of Labour’s promised “Change.”

    It’s about time that Britain’s justice system focusses on rehabilitation rather than ineffectual punishment.  However, it remains to be seen if the government will move on from the regressive cycle of harsher sentencing.

    Labour prison reform: early releases

    Of the nearly 84,500 places in men’s prisons, barely 700 cells are empty.

    Early release is only an emergency solution but the implications are still huge. According to the Big Issue, around 785 prisoners could be at risk of homelessness, when prisons release them last minute and without the support to help them with their transition. As the Times previously put it:

    It is not an announcement that any sane politician would wish to make, or member of the public to hear

    However, it is not as if Mahmood had much choice in the matter given the extent of overcrowding in UK prisons. Rishi Sunak’s justice secretary Alex Chalk had proposed a practically identical early release scheme. Despite this, Sunak blocked it earlier this year out of fear for political backlash.

    The justice and prison system has always been a contentious topic in public opinion. Too often politicians have pursued increasingly authoritarian crime policy for the sake of popular approval. However the early release of prisoners due to overcrowding demonstrates that this does not work.

    Overcrowding

    Overcrowding in prisons has become an acute issue for two main reasons: tougher sentences and court backlogs. In an effort for politicians to appear ‘tough on crime’, custodial sentences are increasing.

    According to the Prison Reform Trust, more than three times as many people were sentenced to ten years or more in 2022 than in 2008. In fact, England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe. And yet ironically, most people seem to think that sentences are getting shorter, fueling a pointless partisan competition over sentencing.

    The result is inhumane overcrowding that undermines the prison system’s ability to meet basic human needs, such as healthcare and accommodation.

    Tory-inflicted austerity has undoubtedly impacted this. The Conservatives began to reduce prison funding in 2011/12 as part of this policy, and it reached an all time low in 2014/15 at £393bn. Combine this with pre-existing overcrowding, and the Tories have sacrificed rehabilitation, mental health training, and even maintenance to the cost of building more prisons.

    In a February 2024 report, chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, described walking into a unit in Eastwood Park:

    Acutely mentally unwell women were being held in appalling conditions with bloodstains on the floor and scratch marks on the walls; evidence of the levels of distress of the women being held there.

    Unfortunately, horrific conditions such as these are not uncommon. This is especially the case following the Covid pandemic, which further isolated vulnerable inmates. Ultimately, our prisons are a disgrace to ethics, cost, and reoffending rates.

    A different kind of justice

    In September 2023, a German court in Karlsruhe refused to extradite a man to the UK. The report cited concerns over the safety and conditions of UK prisons.

    The England and Wales prison watchdog has said that the government should shut down one in ten prisons in those two countries because of overcrowding and inhumane conditions. England and Wales’ rate of prison admissions is approximately three times that of Italy and Spain and almost twice as high as Germany. So what is it that we are getting wrong?

    Halden prison Norway is referred to as the most humane prison in the world. “Who do we want as our neighbour?” has become almost like a slogan within its walls. The prison is situated within a luscious pine forest and with shared kitchens and ensuite bathrooms some have described it as more like a university campus.

    The comparison is not without substance. There is a school on site that provides prisoners a proper education. It also offers training in tasks such as car mechanics and cooking to help them find a job on the outside. Perhaps the most striking thing about Halden is the relationship between prisoners and guards. Not only do they eat together and play sports, but inmates purportedly view guards as role models.

    Of course many people object to such a ‘cushy’ lifestyle awarded to drug traffickers and murderers, including the heinous criminal Anders Breivik. However there is no denying the system its successes. Defenders of Norway’s prison system argue that the removal of freedom is punishment enough.

    Moreover, Norway’s prisons have proven that keeping normal routines and helping prisoners line up a job on the outside keeps down reoffending rates. Since the reforms, this has fallen to only 20% after two years.

    Changing the UK system

    Almost 130 years ago, in 1895, the a government’s Gladstone Committee published a key report on prisons. This stated that reform and rehabilitation should be the primary objectives of imprisonment – men and women should be better people upon release. This ran contrary to the perception of British prisons at the time, infamous for their brutality, even in Russia.

    However, the report also emphasised that the purpose of imprisonment was to punish. If this dual focus may appear to be a contradiction – that’s because it is.  And it effectively sums up the British dilemma when it comes to the goal of imprisonment. As Stephen Bush has put it in the Financial Times, Conservative governments in the last 14 years have tried to:

    pursue draconian ends when it came to prisons, but on a reform-minded minister’s budget.

    Striking the balance between rehabilitation and punitive punishment is not a new problem. Despite prison reforming legislation throughout the 20th century, politicians have been de-prioritising rehabilitation since the late 1970s. Michael Cavadino and James Dignan’s research for their 2003 book The Penal System found that this change was based on a loss of public confidence in the rehabilitation scheme.

    In 1993, Conservative home secretary, Michael Howard, uttered the words: “prison works”.

    Indeed, crime rates have dropped significantly since then. But as Stephen Bush rightfully notes, this has as much to do with being a government in the second half of the 20th century as anything else. The problems with a purely punitive system of justice are not just ethical – there are also practical issues.

    More people means more crimes, which in turn means more cells, more prisons, and ultimately more money. It’s a system with an insatiable appetite for funds, not least considering the annual £18bn bill stemming from reoffending. As Mahmood noted in her speech on 12 July, nearly 80% of offences in the UK are second offences.

    What now on Labour prison reform?

    With the largest governmental majority since 1997, Labour now has a fleeting opportunity to change prisons. Nevertheless, it’s important to note the distinction between official rhetoric and practical solutions.

    Despite fluctuating legislation and attitudes around rehabilitation in the last 100 years, the key problems in prisons have remained predominantly consistent. Undoubtedly, Britain’s prison problem will not be an easy fix. However there is evidence that the government is taking steps in the right direction.

    Keir Starmer has appointed James Timpson as the new prisons minister. His family key-cutting business is known for recruiting thousands of prison leavers and he was also chair of the Prison Reform Trust. Timpson is an advocate for the Dutch system of community sentencing. He also previously said that only a third of prisoners should definitely be in custody.

    So the question is this: what direction will Labour prison reform take?

    Perhaps a former prosecution officer at the helm will finally lead the way to meaningful change? What is for certain is that whatever Labour chooses to do will have a hefty price tag attached. However, it’s about time that governments considered the long-term future. Changing the focus of the prison system from punitive to rehabilitative would be just that – an essential piece in a sustainable future.

    Feature image via Youtube – Channel 4 Documentaries

    By Emily Csernus

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • One sentence from the coroner accidentally summed up why the NHS failed Maeve

    It has been day three of the inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) on 3 October 2021, aged just 27 – but due to catastrophic failings from the NHS.

    The inquest, which began on Monday 22 July, has already been exhausting and distressing for those affected, directly and indirectly. You can read more on it here. But for some of us, it has also been highly frustrating – not least on 24 July. One line from the coroner in the case summed this up.

    Maeve’s inquest: Dr William Weir gives evidence

    Dr William Weir was giving evidence at Maeve’s inquest. He is one of the UK’s leading experts in ME/CFS. In the interests of transparency, I know William very well and speak with him on a regular basis. However, at Maeve’s inquest it was obvious that everyone else present, giving evidence, or mentioned in a professional capacity – including the coroner – had little idea what they were talking about, yet acted as if they did anyway.

    The line of questioning from the coroner revolved around William’s “opinions” on Maeve’s care versus what so-called ‘professionals’ at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital carried out.

    We learned that, for example, Dr David Strain (who previously gave evidence on Tuesday 23 July) was sometimes at odds with William’s advice. Anyone who knows Strain’s history will not be surprised by this. I believe him to be at best, compromised, and at worst, a fool.

    One such occasion was on the issue of feeding.

    Disagreements over feeding

    Strain was adamant that Maeve’s vomiting would have continued regardless of what method of feeding the hospital gave her. This could have been nasogastric (NG). nasojejunal (NJ), or total parenteral nutrition (TPN).

    William disagreed. He noted that many severe and very severe ME/CFS patients also live with gastroparesis. This is where the stomach does not empty properly or voluntarily. William said this was likely due to a problem with the vagus nerve. He noted that NJ feeding would have overridden this issue and allowed Maeve to take adequate nutrition without vomiting – in combination with IV saline to increase her blood volume, which he believed was likely due to pituitary dysfunction.

    The hospital’s dismissal of William’s clinical opinions was a running theme – and still is in other cases where he’s involved. The Canary and the Chronic Collaboration have been supporting Carla Naoum who lives with very severe ME and is currently being abused by West Middlesex NHS hospital. I have personally had oversight of nearly a dozen emails containing evidence-based recommendations that William has sent to the hospital. It and its staff have ignored nearly all of them.

    Maeve could have been saved

    At Maeve’s inquest, this line of questioning around feeding continued for most of 24 July morning.

    Dr Ovi Roy from the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital was noted as saying IV feeding or TPN was the “most dangerous” option for Maeve. He said it would “significantly increase nursing needs”, would “increase disruption to Maeve”, and “increase the risk of sepsis”. Dr Roy said the latter would be “inevitable”, leading to a “worse quality of life”.

    William disagreed, said “risk/benefit analysis” would have shown TPN to be the best option to save Maeve’s life because “at least she would have been properly nourished”. While Roy noted the downsides, William said:

    nonetheless, Maeve clearly reached a point where she need further nutrition and the usual route was a difficult one

    Therefore she need TPN. Contrary to what the hospital believed (and the coroner repeated), TPN was, William said:

    not experimental in any way with people receiving it in the community and [it has] standarised procedures.

    Ultimately, William believed that if the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital had addressed Maeve’s feeding earlier and more robustly, and put aside their flawed beliefs, then they could have saved her life.

    The counsel representing the NHS Trust, whose name escapes me not least because of his robotic, monotone delivery, clearly thought he was on an episode of The Good Fight or another legal drama. His ideas-above-his-station, passive-aggressive line of questioning of William – which the good doctor repeatedly batted back at time – showed an NHS trust clearly feeling it had to defend itself; ergo – it knows it was in the wrong.

    There are not two sides to the ME/CFS argument

    However, this backwards and forwards – with William giving his clinical expertise and other medical professionals ignoring it – underscores Maeve’s tragic case. One line from the coroner perhaps summed it up best when she said:

    I’m trying to understand the different sides of the argument around feeding Maeve…

    Much like the climate crisis, management of ME/CFS is NOT about people’s opinions. There is scientific, evidenced-based approaches to management which have been shown to work – and then there’s arrogant professionals’ “dogma” as William often describes it to me as.

    There’s also the problem of people being in highly responsible jobs when they really shouldn’t be.

    One such example was a representative from the local authority’s adult social care team. She could not even pronounce ‘myalgic encephalomyelitis’ correctly in front of a coroner. We heard that essentially the local authority’s first response to Sarah Boothby’s requests for support for Maeve included looking for safeguarding risks.

    This is, undeniably, standard practice – which is exactly the problem.

    Local authority failings

    Local authorities have no provision, and no idea, how to deal with chronically ill people. For example, we heard from in the afternoon session that the council had failed to invite Maeve’s family or an advocate to crucial meetings surrounding discharge planning. Sarah said this led to the risk of dying of malnutrition and dehydration being lost in discussions.

    Also, in August 2021 when the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital discharged her again, the council failed to do an updated care plan for her. The council had also stipulated that care staff could not assist with food and fluids – leaving it to Sarah, Maeve’s mother.

    It began to emerge that (to me anyway) there seems to have been a complete breakdown of communication between the NHS trust and local authority. It got to the point where, in my opinion, someone from one of those bodies has been lying about what has gone on.

    The point being that, when someone presents as desperately ill as Maeve did, these people do not have a clue what to do. Generally, they get it wrong – and in Maeve’s case, catastrophically.

    Maeve’s inquest opens a microcosm of the problem

    Overall, we learned very little from day three of Maeve’s inquiry that many people affected by ME/CFS don’t already know.

    Arrogant yet ignorant – and quite frankly at times promoted beyond their intelligence – professionals dismiss the severity of how sick chronically ill women like Maeve are because they’re women. They ignore experts because their jobs enable their own God complexes to flourish. And they are so entrenched in failed academia that they are told is correct, that they cannot see the wood for the trees.

    An inquiry will not resolve this combination of dogma, misogyny, laziness, hierarchy, and arrogance. Nor will polite campaigns such as #ThereForME fix this – however good their intentions are.

    We are dealing with societal-level problems; Maeve’s case being a microcosm of them. If we learned anything from day three of her inquest, it is that even in death, her case and ME as an illness are still viewed as ‘debatable’ – a damning indictment of the system we live under, and the society we live in.

    Featured image supplied

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • In Australia, pro-Palestinian voices face a frenzy of Zionist McCarthyism

    ANALYSIS: By Randa Abdel-Fattah

    Since 7 October 2023, across every profession and social realm in Australia — teachers, students, doctors, nurses, academics, public servants, lawyers, journalists, artists, food and hospitality workers, protesters and politicians — speaking out against Israel’s genocide and the Zionist political project has been met with blatant anti-Palestinian racism.

    This has manifested in repressive silencing campaigns, disciplinary processes and lawfare.

    As coercive repression of anti-Zionist voices escalates at a frenzied pace in Western society, what is at stake extends beyond individuals’ livelihoods and mental health, for these ultimately constitute collateral damage.

    The real target and objective of anti-Palestinian racism is discursive disarmament, specifically, disarming the Palestinian movement of its capacity to critique and resist Zionism and hold Israel to account.

    This disarmament campaign — the immobilising of our discursive and explanatory frameworks, our analysis and commentary, our slogans, protest language and chants — is emboldened and empowered by the collusion and complicity of institutions, media outlets and employers.

    The past fortnight alone has seen a frenzy of Zionist McCarthyism. Both I and Special Broadcasting Service veteran journalist, Mary Kostakidis, were defamed as “7 October deniers” and rape apologists, and as being on a par with Holocaust deniers.

    Complaint lodged
    A week later, the Zionist Federation of Australia announced it had lodged a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) against Kostakidis, alleging racial vilification for her social media posts on Gaza.

    On July 11, Australian-Palestinian activist and businessman Hash Tayeh was notified of arrest for allegedly inciting hatred of Jewish people over protest chants including “all Zionists are terrorists” and other statements equating Zionism with terrorism.

    The same day, right-wing shock jock radio host Ray Hadley interrogated the AHRC about Australian-Palestinian Sara Saleh, employed as legal and research adviser to the AHRC’s president.

    In violation of Saleh’s privacy, the AHRC went on the defensive and revealed that Saleh had resigned. Saleh had been subjected to months of anti-Palestinian racism and marginalisation at the commission.

    On July 15, documents released under a freedom of information request revealed that the State Library of Victoria was actively surveilling the social media activity of four writers and poets — Arab and Muslim poet Omar Sakr, Jinghua Qian, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, specifically around Palestine.

    The documents provided more evidence that the writers’ pro-Palestine social media posts were the likely reason for the State Library cancelling a series of online creative writing workshops for teens which the writers had been contracted to host — corroborating what library staff whistleblowers had revealed earlier this year.

    Political ideology
    It is impossible to overstate how the repression we are witnessing is occurring because governments, media, institutions and employers are legitimating disingenuous complaints and blatant hit-jobs by acquiescing to the egregious and false equivalence between Zionism and Judaism.

    Despite pro-Palestine voices explicitly critiquing and targeting Zionist ideology and practice in clear distinction to Judaism and Jewish identity, and despite standing alongside anti-Zionist Jews, we are accused of antisemitism.

    Zionism is a political ideology that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century. It explicitly argued for settler colonialism to replace the majority indigenous population of Palestine.

    Zionism is not a religious, racial, ethnic or cultural identity. It is a political doctrine that a member of any culture, religion, race or ethnic category can subscribe to.

    Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Jews and Judaism existed for thousands of years before Zionism. These are not controversial contentions. They are borne out by almost a century of academic scholarship and have been adopted by anti-Zionist Jewish scholars, lawyers, human rights organisations and clerics.

    They are supported by facts. Consider, for example, that the largest pro-Israel organisation in the United States is Christians United for Israel.

    A Zionist can be an adherent of any religion and come from any ethnic or racial background. US President Joe Biden is an Irish-American Catholic and a Zionist.

    Australia’s former prime minister, Scott Morrison, is an evangelical Christian and a Zionist. Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong is an Australian-Malay Christian and a Zionist.

    Inherently racist
    Zionist ideology is recognised as inherently racist because it denies the inalienable right of indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination, and the right to live free of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism and domination.

    Palestinian subjugation is an existential necessity for the supremacist goal of Israel’s political project. This is not even contested.

    Israel’s 2018 nation-state law explicitly states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and established “Jewish settlement as a national value”, mandating that the state “will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development”.

    Anti-Zionism is directed at a state-building project and a political regime. Rather than protect people’s right to subject Zionism to normative interrogation, as is the case with all political ideologies, institutions panic at complaints and uncritically legitimate the false claim that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.

    Protected cultural identity
    Indulging vexatious claims and dishonest conflations is why we are seeing extraordinary coercive repression and anti-Palestinian racism across institutions.

    To posit Zionism as a religious or ethnic identity is like saying white supremacy, Marxism, socialism or settler colonialism are all categories of identity. The perverse logic we are being asked to indulge is essentially this: Zionism equals Judaism therefore a white Christian Zionist is a protected cultural identity category.

    Indulging the notion that the ideology of Zionism is a protected cultural identity sets a precedent that would be absurd if it were not so dangerous.

    By this logic, communists can claim the status of a protected category of identity on the basis that there are Chinese communists who feel threatened by critiques of communism.

    Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities.

    Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities

    Further, if Zionism is a protected cultural identity, what does this mean for anti-Zionist Jews? And what is Zionism from the standpoint of its victims, as Edward Said famously said?

    Genocide in name of Zionism
    What does it mean for Palestinians whose lives are marked by dispossession, exile, refugee camps, land theft and now, as I write, genocide explicitly enacted in the name of Zionism?

    In the context of a genocide that has so far, on a recent conservative by The Lancet, one of the world’s highest-impact academic journals, caused an estimated 186,000 deaths and counting, governments, institutions and mainstream media are prepared to effectively destroy any vestige of democratic principles, fundamental rights and intellectual rigour in order to exceptionalise Zionism and Israel and shield a political ideology and a state from critique.

    While institutions stand with Israel, the vast majority of the public, witnessing the massacres, are daring to question Israel’s actions. This includes questioning the Zionist ideology that underpins that state.

    Institutions and employers may choose to discipline and sack those calling out Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in this moment, but will be held to account for their complicity in the political suppression of our collective protest against crimes against humanity.

    Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is a Future Fellow at Macquarie University. Her research areas cover Islamophobia, race, Palestine, the war on terror, youth identities and social movement activism. She is also a lawyer and the multi-award-winning author of 12 books for children and young adults. This article was republished from Middle East Eye.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Murdoch’s Times now pushing DWP benefit fraud propaganda for Labour

    The now Labour-led Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has published its annual report. So predictably, it was prime opportunity for the right-wing hacks at the Times to punch down on benefit claimants. Top of its benefit claimant-bashing agenda – the usual – DWP benefit fraud, naturally.

    Only this time, there was a twist! A particular revelation must have the right-wing gutter publication spitting feathers after its wall-to-wall benefit fraud-busting hit pieces. Because as it turned out: the public now give less of a shit about people committing benefit fraud. Cue, a vitriol-fueled crusade chock-full of fact manipulation.

    Times’ latest DWP benefit fraud bullshit

    On Monday 22 July, the Times published an article which led with the headline:

    ‘Britons’ tolerance of fraud could cost benefits system £2bn a year’

    The Canary will spare you the effort of reading it. Spoiler: it’s not worth the subscription fee. The article’s key take-away? People are about to commit MORE benefit fraud. To be precise, according to the Times, it’s looking set to soar 5% year on year.

    Its basis? A DWP annual report which details supposed economic fraudulence. Specifically, these included exhibit a: an increase in fraud against businesses. Then – and this is a real clincher if ever there were – an uptick in… shoplifting. But if none of that was damning enough, the DWP had one last piece of incontrovertible evidence. That is, that attitudes to fraud have “softened” since 2016.

    You read that right. The public care less about benefit fraud than they did eight years ago. Ergo, expect more of it.

    If you’re not following how any of this proves that there’ll be a rise in benefit fraud, that’s because it’s palpable nonsense. Specifically, the report itself says that:

    The overall conclusion of this analysis is that there is an increasing trend in the underlying propensity towards fraudulent behaviour, which can be expected to place an upwards pressure on fraud in the welfare system. DWP has estimated through the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expenditure forecasts that this long-term behavioural trend creates a headwind that would cause fraud levels to grow at around 5% per year without action to reduce it.

    Then, in reality, it based this claim solely on a flawed evaluation promulgating an “inexact science” (the DWP’s own words, not mine). In short, the DWP assessment looked at the so-called “propensity” to commit fraud overall. Moreover, this pertained to entirely disparate forms of crime, unrelated to benefit fraud. So it couldn’t actually show trends for DWP benefit fraud specifically: meaning of course, that the 5% figure is effectively bogus.

    ‘Dark money’ think tank has a take on it

    Not that this mattered to the Times. Two plus two equals five, or indeed *insert whatever alarming-sounding figure here*. Because the point is, the facts aren’t important. So long as the right-wing lapdog can drum up legitimacy for the new Labour government’s “tough on crime” publicity machismo, any figure will do.

    Of course, it’s not exactly unexpected from a lynchpin publication of the Murdoch media empire. That’s because the shit rag pumps out this bile hell-bent on demonising poor, chronically ill, and disabled people accessing the welfare system for a past-time.

    And for good measure, the DWP mouthpiece threw in a comment from the right-wing think tank with the best-worst misnomer – the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). This is the brainchild of ostensible ex-DWP grim reaper and all-round Universal Credit-machinating cunt Iain Duncan-Smith. Calling it an “independent centre-right think tank”, the Times introduced its policy director Edward Davies saying:

    The pandemic seemed to somewhere break the social contract and pour petrol on harmful behaviours —we’ve seen that coming through in economic inactivity, school exclusions and now fraud.

    First, let’s clear this up. The CSJ is as far from “independent” as you can get. In actual fact, it’s a “dark money” think tank – in other words, it doesn’t disclose its funders. Open Democracy has rated it among the worst for transparency, which isn’t surprising given how tight-lipped it is about its financial benefactors.

    Plus, I guess anything passes as “centre” these days, since both major political parties have lurched so far to the right. Yet, the CSJ is regularly the haunt of a ghoulish line-up of right-wing politicians launching their cruel new policies. A recent example of this was Rishi Sunak and his “sicknote culture” strongman stunt, front and centre at a CSJ event. The CSJ’s CEO was a fan by the way, in case you were wondering.

    Fictitious fact-fiddling over DWP benefit fraud

    Largely, Davies’s odious spiel boiled down to suggesting that people are committing more benefit fraud because of some totally mysterious and unknown reason relating to the pandemic. This chimes perfectly with DWP boss Liz Kendall’s persistent post-election “economic inactivity” and back to work guff. Both aim squarely at chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits. It’s almost like a global mass disabling and chronic illness triggering event never happened. Except of course, it did.

    What’s more, people couldn’t possibly be claiming benefits more now, after Tory pandemic corruption, Brexit, and rampant recession-teetering inflation sent the cost of living sky-rocketing. Or you know, because parasitic employers diddle workers out of job security and a livable wage, while reaping killer dividends. Nope, for the DWP and the CSJ, more benefit fraud must be afoot.

    However, here’s the thing. By now, the Canary must sound like a broken record saying this (take it up with the corporate media), but DWP benefit fraud is virtually non-existent. We’ve consistently shown how everything from Universal Credit fraud, to supposed Personal Independence Payment (PIP) fraud is either fictitious fiddling of the facts, or quite literally zilch.

    British public have ‘low integrity’? Now that’s rich

    Labour left MP and Mother of the House Diane Abbott called the Times article out for what it is:

    As did consultant clinical psychologist and chronic illness ally Dr Jay Watts:

    Moreover, if timing is everything, it’s telling that the Times put out this scapegoat-mongering piece the same day the DWP closed an inaccessible and discriminatory consultation on dangerous PIP reforms. The new Labour government has hugely distressed chronically ill and disabled people for its silence on this – which includes the Tories’ callous ‘voucher’ scheme vanity project proposals.

    Oh, and did I mention? If you’re one of those people who couldn’t give a toss about non-existent benefit fraud, while the DWP pays out an unlivable pittance, denies sick and disabled people payments, and kills tens of thousands of people, breaking the UNCRPD international disabled rights law in the process, then the DWP and the Times think you have “low integrity”. Go figure.

    At the end of the day, the Times article is nothing more than a sly pretext-setting exercise for Kendall’s fraud-busting fantasies. When she dons a bullet-proof vest and puffs out her chest Pursglove style in a police ride along raid-turned-DWP-publicity promo, don’t be surprised. It’s media trash like this Times piece that paved the way for it.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

  • Perimenopause: I broke an unspoken rule at the chemist

    There’s an unwritten rule at the chemist that you try not to overhear what the person in front of you is discussing with the pharmacist at the “scripts in” counter. This is hard because you are often barely three feet away.

    Earlier this week a woman in front of me flashed her e-script at the pharmacist and asked quickly for estradiol patches. The tone of her question sounded as if she already knew the answer would be no. The pharmacist replied that no, they didn’t have any patches. She started walking quickly away. I stepped in. “Excuse me, did you know that you can also maybe use the gel with the current shortage of patches?”

    The woman was understandably alarmed at my unsolicited intervention.

    What on earth was I doing? Firstly, only a medical practitioner or pharmacist should be talking to a person about medication. Secondly, I had broken the aforementioned rule of the chemist “scripts in” counter.

    Transdermal estradiol patches are sometimes prescribed by doctors for perimenopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal symptoms as part of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). Hormone replacement therapy is also used during gender-affirming hormone therapy. The patches are applied to the skin and deliver oestrogen directly into the bloodstream.

    As Associate Professor Ada Cheung wrote in an article in March this year, Oestradiol is important for bone health, heart health and maintaining mental health and wellbeing. Interestingly, post‐menopausal MHT is also approved for the prevention of bone mineral density loss. A fun fact is that oestradiol is derived from soya beans or sweet potatoes. For more than 12 months there have been serious shortages Australia wide (of the patches, that is, not the vegetables).

    The reason I spoke to the woman in the chemist this week, is because I have become quite desperate in my search for these patches. Every week I ring or visit 10 -15 chemists to see if any patches have come in. The answer? No. No. No. No.

    The pharmacists always tell me they have no idea when supply will come in. My GP equally has no information about when the patches will be available again. I have been to my GP several times for advice. Most recently she gave me literally 10 different scripts to help me get the required level of estradiol I need, including in the more expensive gel.

    Would it be cheaper to eat a tonne of sweet potatoes? Unfortunately that wouldn’t work and I much prefer a little sticker on my bum.

    For me, these little patches have been life changing. Before I started on Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT) I was a cross between Cruella De Vil and the Sadness character from Inside Out. I was not sleeping. I was depressed. I had horrible hot flashes. I had insane skin crawling that feels like ants and spiders and running all over my skin. A couple of times I literally slapped myself in the face thinking there was a spider there. It was embarrassing  and deeply unpleasant.

    When I started on MHT my symptoms literally vanished within two days. They do not work this effectively for everyone, but for me they are little angels of saneness.

    The Australian Medical Association (AMA) submission to the current senate inquiry into the issues related to menopause and perimenopause initiated by Senator Larissa Waters, has identified that while some Australians have few or no symptoms, many will have symptoms that can be prolonged and severe.

    Australia is not currently doing anywhere near enough to make sure we have a regular and secure supply of oestradiol patches.

    The AMA has said that MHT medication supply shortages need to be urgently addressed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

    The TGA, Australia’s medicines and medical devices regulator, is not treating this with urgency and seems to be doing little to ensure regular supply.

    Meanwhile our New Zealand neighbours appear to be taking this seriously. The New Zealand medicines regulator, Pharmac, has a clear and long list of actions they are undertaking including:

    • Tendering for the supply of patches
    • Called for proposals (RFP) from suppliers for oestradiol gel.
    • Funding a range of alternative brands of the patches
    • Exploring if there are other presentations or products NZ can secure and fund
    • Asking suppliers and wholesalers to limit patches they send out trying to make distribution of the limited stock as fair as possible
    • Supporting suppliers to speed up delivery of stock into New Zealand and out to wholesalers and suppliers

    Why can’t I see a list this extensive on our TGA website? Can we please try as hard as New Zealand?

    Right now tens of thousands of Australians are unable to access these potentially life changing medications. Australia pushed hard to get a good supply of Covid Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) when we needed them. Now the Australian government needs to work harder to get a good supply of these medications.

    Or is “women’s” health still not important enough?

    • Picture at top: Daisy Gardener. Credit: Pru Aja 

    The post Perimenopause: I broke an unspoken rule at the chemist appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Perimenopause: I broke an unspoken rule at the chemist

    There’s an unwritten rule at the chemist that you try not to overhear what the person in front of you is discussing with the pharmacist at the “scripts in” counter. This is hard because you are often barely three feet away.

    Earlier this week a woman in front of me flashed her e-script at the pharmacist and asked quickly for estradiol patches. The tone of her question sounded as if she already knew the answer would be no. The pharmacist replied that no, they didn’t have any patches. She started walking quickly away. I stepped in. “Excuse me, did you know that you can also maybe use the gel with the current shortage of patches?”

    The woman was understandably alarmed at my unsolicited intervention.

    What on earth was I doing? Firstly, only a medical practitioner or pharmacist should be talking to a person about medication. Secondly, I had broken the aforementioned rule of the chemist “scripts in” counter.

    Transdermal estradiol patches are sometimes prescribed by doctors for perimenopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal symptoms as part of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). Hormone replacement therapy is also used during gender-affirming hormone therapy. The patches are applied to the skin and deliver oestrogen directly into the bloodstream.

    As Associate Professor Ada Cheung wrote in an article in March this year, Oestradiol is important for bone health, heart health and maintaining mental health and wellbeing. Interestingly, post‐menopausal MHT is also approved for the prevention of bone mineral density loss. A fun fact is that oestradiol is derived from soya beans or sweet potatoes. For more than 12 months there have been serious shortages Australia wide (of the patches, that is, not the vegetables).

    The reason I spoke to the woman in the chemist this week, is because I have become quite desperate in my search for these patches. Every week I ring or visit 10 -15 chemists to see if any patches have come in. The answer? No. No. No. No.

    The pharmacists always tell me they have no idea when supply will come in. My GP equally has no information about when the patches will be available again. I have been to my GP several times for advice. Most recently she gave me literally 10 different scripts to help me get the required level of estradiol I need, including in the more expensive gel.

    Would it be cheaper to eat a tonne of sweet potatoes? Unfortunately that wouldn’t work and I much prefer a little sticker on my bum.

    For me, these little patches have been life changing. Before I started on Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT) I was a cross between Cruella De Vil and the Sadness character from Inside Out. I was not sleeping. I was depressed. I had horrible hot flashes. I had insane skin crawling that feels like ants and spiders and running all over my skin. A couple of times I literally slapped myself in the face thinking there was a spider there. It was embarrassing  and deeply unpleasant.

    When I started on MHT my symptoms literally vanished within two days. They do not work this effectively for everyone, but for me they are little angels of saneness.

    The Australian Medical Association (AMA) submission to the current senate inquiry into the issues related to menopause and perimenopause initiated by Senator Larissa Waters, has identified that while some Australians have few or no symptoms, many will have symptoms that can be prolonged and severe.

    Australia is not currently doing anywhere near enough to make sure we have a regular and secure supply of oestradiol patches.

    The AMA has said that MHT medication supply shortages need to be urgently addressed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

    The TGA, Australia’s medicines and medical devices regulator, is not treating this with urgency and seems to be doing little to ensure regular supply.

    Meanwhile our New Zealand neighbours appear to be taking this seriously. The New Zealand medicines regulator, Pharmac, has a clear and long list of actions they are undertaking including:

    • Tendering for the supply of patches
    • Called for proposals (RFP) from suppliers for oestradiol gel.
    • Funding a range of alternative brands of the patches
    • Exploring if there are other presentations or products NZ can secure and fund
    • Asking suppliers and wholesalers to limit patches they send out trying to make distribution of the limited stock as fair as possible
    • Supporting suppliers to speed up delivery of stock into New Zealand and out to wholesalers and suppliers

    Why can’t I see a list this extensive on our TGA website? Can we please try as hard as New Zealand?

    Right now tens of thousands of Australians are unable to access these potentially life changing medications. Australia pushed hard to get a good supply of Covid Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) when we needed them. Now the Australian government needs to work harder to get a good supply of these medications.

    Or is “women’s” health still not important enough?

    • Picture at top: Daisy Gardener. Credit: Pru Aja 

    The post Perimenopause: I broke an unspoken rule at the chemist appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • My life as the Great Dictator just came full circle with Starmer’s Double Cross Party

    In 2006, I started to embody a new, difficult and edgy character – Adenoid Hynkel, the Great Dictator, Chaplin’s spirited and timely parody of Hitler. Finding myself trawling all the charity shops in the area looking for something that would pass as a jacket, I knew what I had wanted. It had to be white and stylishly cut, with silver buttons and breast pockets; perhaps a safari suit. This had pretty much narrowed my search down to the power suits in the lady’s section.

    Charity shop fingerings

    “That’s a woman’s jacket!” the shop assistant had barked at me, eyeing me up and down as I fingered a delicate crisp cream number with a plunging neckline.

    “I know”, I had answered – innocently groping a generous 80’s style shoulder pad. “I’ll take it.”

    That had been the final piece of the jigsaw. I had the shirt and a clip-on black tie, white tracksuit bottoms for the trousers, and thick black woolen socks pulled up for the jackboots. My mate had knocked me up an armband carrying the insignia of Hynkel’s Double Cross party, and I’d nicked an Essex policeman’s cap and painted it white:

    I’d once gone to a party dressed as the Chaplin’s Little Tramp and been accosted by a drunken fool on the dance floor who’d kept giving me fascist salutes. But wearing that outfit, with white face paint and toothbrush tash, there could be no mistake.

    That first dress rehearsal, I had put on the Sex Pistols (Holidays in the Sun) full blast, picked up my placard which had said ‘Free Sprachen Stunk’ (a quote from one of Hynkel’s speeches), puffed my chest out, and began marching round my front room saluting the pot plants. Then I had sat down to watch The Great Dictator on DVD.

    Hitler, Chaplin, and The Great Dictator

    For those who haven’t seen it, it is basically a tale of mistaken identity, where a Jewish barber from the ghetto called Schultz (Chaplin), a dead ringer for the tyrant Hynkel (also Chaplin), ends up getting the chance to deliver a message of peace and humanity to the world.

    Hitler had apparently sat down to watch the movie on at least two occasions at his Bavarian mountain retreat. Even though the Nazis had hated Chaplin’s euphoric reception during his visit to Germany in 1931, one can only assume that Hitler had got some kind of perverse kick out of seeing this international superstar lampooning him. History did not record his reaction to the movie, but Chaplin apparently said that he’d “give anything to know what [Hitler] thought of it”.

    Chaplin and Hitler were not only born the same week of the same month, but also the same year (1889). Both had difficult childhoods, with violent or alcoholic fathers and sick mothers.  Both sought their fortunes in a foreign land. Chaplin played a tramp throughout his movie career, and Hitler had found himself living the life of a tramp on the streets of Vienna.

    Legend has it that Hitler actually fashioned his ‘facial furniture’ on the Chaplin look, reducing the ‘walrus’ moustache that he had sported whilst serving as a lance corporal in the Bavarian army during the Great War, and gone for something a touch more modern and expressive.

    Whatever the reasons behind the new look, I find it hard to believe that on the day that Adolf first ventured out without his fur handlebars, someone in the street didn’t point to him and laugh, “Got en Hemel! Das es Charlie Chaplin?”

    ‘Charlie’s done it better’

    Crucially though, where the two men seem to part company is at the dawn of talking pictures, which seemed to mark the end of Chaplin’s ascendancy, and the rise of Hitler’s popularity.  The Talkies loved passion, and Hitler did ‘passion’ brilliantly, greatly bolstered by unlimited budgets, innovations in camerawork and montage techniques, actual awe-inspiring locations, and a cast of adoring thousands. As spirited and successful as it was, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, released in 1940 (but originated in 1938), could never match the propagandist punch of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, released in 1935.

    Perhaps the last word on their relationship should go to the English comedian Tommy Handley, famous for the wartime radio programme ITMA (“It’s That Man Again“). Three days after Britain entered the war in September 1939, before the disaster at Dunkirk had truly kicked Britain awake, Handley took part in a BBC radio show called, ‘Who is that man who looks like Charlie Chaplin?’, during which he sang a song by the same title.  It went like this:

    “Who is this man who looks like Charlie Chaplin?

    What makes him think that he can win a war?

    It can’t be the moustache. That only makes us laugh!

    And Charlie’s done it better, and before.

    If it wasn’t for the boots and cane and trousers,

    You couldn’t tell the 2 of them apart.

    But the whole idea’s absurd. Charlie’s never said a word!

    And Adolf couldn’t play a silent part!”

    By the time he wrote his autobiography in 1964, with the immense gravity of hindsight, Chaplin had clearly grown embarrassed about the film’s slapstick nature, and he confessed that, had he known of “the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator: I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis”.

    My great dictator’s first outing

    I chose the State Opening of Parliament for my first outing.

    Wow! I’d never seen so many gunmen in all my life. There was bearskin and bullied boots from Parliament Square to Buck Palace, with hundreds of cops thrown in. And I was there to launch a leadership challenge, as the Queen’s golden bullet proof carriage rolled by.

    I was instantly set upon by the police when I tried a silly flappy-armed salute that I had lifted from the film. A policeman came up to me and said:

    I am aware of the films of Charlie Chaplin from the 1940s. But someone else might not be. If I see you making that arm gesture again, I will arrest you for breach of the peace.

    It was the day I got the veteran peace campaigner Brian Haw to read out the speech. And I remember thinking at the time, I’ve really got to learn this. Which didn’t happen for another 11 years.

    During that time, I very rarely dressed up as the Great Dictator, perhaps half a dozen times. A protest on the day of Trump’s inauguration outside the old American embassy. Alongside the Trump baby blimp in Parliament Square during his state visit.

    Outside an arms trade trial at Stratford Magistrate’s Court, holding a placard that said, ‘Greed has poisoned man’s soul’ – a line from the speech. At an anarchist bookfair in Cape Town.  Once outside Downing Street, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, wearing a black hard hat with a nuclear explosion coming out the side, holding a sign that said, ‘Grab ‘em by the oligarchs’.

    In truth, I’ve always felt uneasy doing the character, much preferring the playfulness and everybody’s friendliness of the Little Tramp. Dressed as Hitler means you are more likely to get challenged on the street. Which has happened a few times. Notably, when a Jewish man came up to me.

    The fine line between comedy and tragedy

    OK, full disclosure.

    A man had just walked past and given me a Nazi salute. He was laughing and joking. And I, very stupidly, gave him a Nazi salute back. And this man had seen it, and quite rightly, wanted to know why I was making fun of the Holocaust. I fumbled around for some lame excuse, but there was really nothing I could say.

    The Holocaust is no laughing matter. Full stop.  And I vowed, if I was to ever dress up as the Great Dictator again, I would just stick to the speech, which really needs to be heard, nailing quite a few unassailable truths. Snippets of which have ended up in hundreds of memes, in graffiti, on t-shirts, even as tattoos, incorporating timeless sentiment and universal truth. Touching so many lives.

    Like the policeman I met once at the station after one of my arrests, keeping watch as I used the loo, telling me he’d learnt it for his best mate’s wedding. Then the guy actually starts reciting whole chunks of it, while I’m sitting on the toilet. It was quite surreal.

    More recently, three days before the election, me and the Dictator travelled up to Westminster to film the Double Cross Party election broadcast, very much with Labour in mind. What with their centrist policies and cosying up to the corporate media, Israel and the arms trade, their purging of any shred of socialism from a socialist party. Starmer betraying every leadership election pledge.

    Labour has Double Cross written all over it.

    Always armed with a large thought bubble that has ‘Free Speech’ written on it. For which I was once arrested, inside Tony Blair’s one-mile protest exclusion zone. You could say, Britain’s first thought crime. Also, very much aware of my Article 10 rights, to Freedom of Expression, about the only defence we have left. I have always seen the freedom to recite that speech, very loudly, right outside Downing Street, as my own personal litmus test as to how authoritarian our society is becoming.

    Chaplin’s message of peace might get me arrested for breach of the peace. I might just get ignored. As I mostly have been. Lots of confused tourists, waiting for me to ‘do the box’:

    The Great Dictator

    We’ll see.

    There’s a strong risk however that the centrist policies of the Double Cross Party will fall well short of the bold steps desperately needed to fix decades of austerity, social decline, and neo-liberal looting, and that this would only serve to empower those tyrants waiting in the wings with beautiful words on their lips, always ready to steer resentment and blame far right.  And I’ll be there too, for as long as I can be, with Chaplin’s beautiful words on my lips, crying out, ‘People, don’t give yourselves to brutes!’

    Featured image and additional images via Neil Goodwin

    By Neil Goodwin

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Helen Hill: for social justice and Timor-Leste’s independence

    COMMENTARY: By Sandy Yule

    When Melbourne-born Helen Hill, an outstanding social activist, scholar and academic, died on 7 May 2024 at the age of 79, the Timorese government sent its Education Minister, Dulce de Jesus Soares, to deliver a moving eulogy at the funeral service at Church of All Nations in Carlton.

    Helen will be remembered for many things, but above all for her 50 years of dedication to friendship with the people of Timor-Leste and solidarity in their struggle for independence.

    At the funeral, Steve Bracks, chancellor of Victoria University and former premier of Victoria, also paid tribute to Helen’s lifetime commitment to social justice and to the independence and flourishing of Timor-Leste in particular.

    Further testimonies were presented by Jean McLean (formerly a member of the Victorian Legislative Council), the Australia-East Timor Association, representatives of local Timorese groups and Helen’s family. Helen’s long-time friend, the Reverend Barbara Gayler, preached on the theme of solidarity.

    Helen was born on 22 February 1945, the eldest of four children of Robert Hill and Jessie Scovell. Her sister Alison predeceased her, and she is survived by her sister Margaret and her brother Ian and their children and grandchildren.

    Her father fought with the Australian army in New Guinea before working for the Commonwealth Bank and becoming a branch manager. Her mother was a social worker at the repatriation hospital.

    The family were members of the Presbyterian Church in Blackburn, which fostered an attitude of caring for others.

    Studied political science
    Helen’s secondary schooling was at Presbyterian Ladies College, where she enjoyed communal activities such as choir. She began a science course at the University of Melbourne but transferred to Monash University to study sociology and political science, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1970.

    At Monash, Helen was an enthusiastic member of the Labor Club and the Student Christian Movement (SCM), where issues of social justice were regularly debated.

    Opposition to the war in Vietnam was the main focus of concern during her time at Monash. In 1970, Helen was a member of the organising committee for the first moratorium demonstration in Melbourne and also a member of the executive committee of the Australian SCM (ASCM, the national body) which was based in Melbourne.

    She edited Political Concern, an alternative information service, for ASCM. In 1971, Helen was a founding member of International Development Action. Helen was a great networker, always ready to see what she could learn from others.

    Perhaps the most formative moment in Helen’s career was her appointment as a frontier intern, to work on the Southern Africa section of the Europe/Africa Project of the World Student Christian Federation, based in London (1971-1973). This project aimed to document how colonial powers had exploited the resources of their colonies, as well as the impact of apartheid in South Africa.

    In those years, she also studied at the Institute d’Action Culturelle in Geneva, which was established by Paulo Freire, arguably her most significant teacher. The insights and contacts from this time of engagement with global issues of justice and education provided a strong foundation for Helen’s subsequent career.

    In 1974, Helen embarked on a Master of Arts course supervised by the late Professor Herb Feith. Helen had met student leaders from the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola in the Europe/Africa project, who asked her about East Timor (“so close to Australia”).

    East Timor thesis topic
    Recognising that she, along with most Australians, knew very little about East Timor, Helen proposed East Timor as the focus of her master’s thesis. She began to learn Portuguese for this purpose.

    Following the overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Portugal in April 1974 and the consequent opportunities for independence in the Portuguese colonies, she visited East Timor for three months in early 1975, where she was impressed by the programme and leadership of Fretilin, the main independence party.

    Her plans were thwarted by the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975, and she was unable to revisit East Timor until after the achievement of independence in 2000. Her 1978 Master of Arts thesis included an account of the Fretilin plans rather than the Fretilin achievements.

    Her 1976 book, The Timor Story, was a significant document of the desire of East Timorese people for independence and influenced the keeping of East Timor on the UN decolonisation list. She was a co-founder of the Australia-East Timor Association, which was founded in the initial days of the Indonesian invasion.

    Helen was a founding member of the organisation Campaign Against Racial Exploitation in 1975. She was prolific in writing and speaking for these causes, not simply as an advocate, but also as a capable analyst of many situations of decolonisation. She was published regularly in Nation Review and also appeared in many other publications concerned with international affairs and development.

    Helen was awarded a rare diploma of education (tertiary education method) from the University of Melbourne in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, she was a full-time doctoral student at Australian National University, culminating in a thesis about non-formal education and development in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (the islands of the north Pacific).

    Helen participated in significant international conferences on education and development in these years and was involved in occasional teaching in the nations and territories of her thesis.

    Teaching development studies
    In 1991, she was appointed lecturer at Victoria University to teach development studies, which, among other things, attracted a steady stream of students from Timor-Leste. In 2000, she was able to return to Timor-Leste as part of her work for Victoria University.

    An immediate fruit of her work in 2001 was a memorandum of understanding between Victoria University and the Dili Institute of Technology, followed in 2005 with another between Victoria University and the National University of Timor-Leste.

    One outcome of this latter relationship has been biennial conferences on development, held in Dili. Also in 2005, she was a co-founder of the Timor-Leste Studies Association.

    Helen stood for quality education and for high academic standards that can empower all students. In 2014, Helen was honoured by the government of Timor-Leste with the award of the Order of Timor-Leste (OT-L).

    Retiring from Victoria University in 2014, Helen chose to live in Timor-Leste, while returning to Melbourne regularly. She continued to teach in Dili and was employed by the Timor-Leste Ministry of Education in 2014 and from 2018 until her death.

    Helen came to Melbourne in late 2023, planning to return to Timor-Leste early in 2024, where further work awaited her.

    A routine medical check-up unexpectedly found significant but symptom-free cancer, which developed rapidly, though it did not prevent her from attending public events days before her death on May 7. Friends and family are fulsome in their praise of Helen’s brother Ian, who took time off work to give her daily care during her last weeks.

    Helen had a distinguished academic career, with significant teaching and research focusing on the links between development and education, particularly in the Pacific context, though with a fully global perspective.

    Helen had an ever-expanding network of contacts and friends around the world, on whom she relied for critical enlightenment on issues of concern.

    From Blackburn to Dili, inspired by sharp intelligence, compassion, Christian faith and a careful reading of the signs of the times, Helen lived by a vision of the common good and strove mightily to build a world of peace and justice.

    Sandy Yule was general secretary of the Australian Student Christian Movement from 1970-75, where he first met Helen Hill, and is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. He wrote this tribute with help from Helen Hill’s family and friends. It was first published by The Age newspaper and is republished from the DevPolicy Blog at Australian National University.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Disabled people took over Parliament Square to once again fight for their basic rights

    Chronically ill and disabled people took over Parliament Square to demand that the new Labour Party government undo years of damage caused by the Tories. From the DWP to social care via housing and hate crime, the system and its proponents have wilfully marginalised millions of people. Now, those people are demanding their rights back. But will chronically ill and disabled people’s calls be heard?

    Disabled people: out again to protest their basic rights

    Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) led a coalition of campaign groups in organising the ‘Disabled People Demand’ demo. From 12pm on Thursday 18 July, people gathered on Parliament Square’s green on what was one of the hottest days of the year:

    The turnout was one of the largest seen for a DPAC demo since before the pandemic. Over 100 people were present:

    Speakers included John McDonnell MP, Ben Sellers from People’s Assembly, and Paula Peters from DPAC:

    John McDonnell speaking to Nicola Jeffery. He is wearing a shirt and trousers, she has bright pink hair and is wearing a black top and patterned flared trousers disabled people

    There was also performances from artists and musicians, and artwork on display:

    As DPAC itself said, the overriding thrust of the event was that:

    Closing the door on the past doesn’t just mean closing it on the policies of the past – but also on the negative and exclusionary practices of the past too. This day will celebrate our communities survival through austerity, benefit cuts, assessment torture, covid and cost of living crisis – and a reminder that too many of us didn’t survive them.

    We have a long history of devising our own solutions to whatever crisis we find ourselves in. That’s why we are taking this opportunity to present our solutions to political decision makers and to the rest of the people in the UK. We are putting what we believe are both possible and achievable out there.

    So, there’s no hiding place from them. Nobody can say they didn’t know.

    We will use them as a marker to measure the success or failure of the next government.

    Various demands

    DPAC and its allies have created a template of demands that they want the new Labour Party government to enact. The core demands are:

    • Legislate to fully incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.
    • A “triple lock” on annual benefit rate increases.
    • Legal Right to Independent Living with a National Independent Living Service.
    • Introduce a national requirement for all new build homes to be accessible and 10% to be wheelchair accessible.
    • A right to mainstream education and to education in fluent British Sign Language for Deaf and Disabled students.
    • A fully integrated, fully accessible, affordable publicly owned transport system for all.
    • A right of disabled access to built and natural environments.
    • Introduce mandatory two-week timeframe for reasonable adjustments and an enforcement framework which does not fully depend on an individual.
    • An independent public inquiry into the deaths and maltreatment of disabled children and adults incarcerated in mental health institutions.
    • Legislate to abolish forced detention and treatment of people on mental health grounds.
    • No Assisted Dying.
    • Adequate provision of technical aids and equipment, eg. wheelchairs, and adaptive communication aides for people who are nonverbal.

    There was a small police presence throughout the afternoon. The Canary noticed ‘blue bibs’ (police liaison officers) asking attendees about when the next demo was going to be. This, as group Netpol has repeatedly warned, standard behaviour from these pretend cops whose job on the ground is intelligence gathering. Fortunately, everyone there was wise to this and kept schtum.

    A mixed bag of speakers

    The rhetoric coming out of the event on 18 July was a mixed bag. A speaker from the Disability Poverty Campaign Group (DPCG) was there talking about the letter that it had written to Keir Starmer. As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland previously noted, it really didn’t go far enough – in fact, the letter felt like a begging bowl for disabled people, rather than anything ‘demanding’.

    Moreover, the speaker from DPCG whose name the Canary missed on 18 July name-dropped Mind – a charity which should not have been anywhere near this kind of event, nor had anything to do with chronically ill and disabled people’s campaigning more broadly – given its historical involvement with the DWP.

    This was juxtaposed by the always fiery and passionate Paula Peters – who sent a clear warning to the new Labour government while also remembering allies who had died during the 13 years DPAC had been active for. She said:

    Many people are not here today because they did not survive. We will never forget our disabled friends, relatives, activists, and trade unionists. We hold them in our hearts and in our minds today, tomorrow, and always. And we promise this: that we will continue the fight that they began; that we honour them by not mourning them, but my organising, by mobilising, and fighting on for equality and social justice.

    The Chronic Collaboration’s Nicola Jeffery spoke of how having a Labour Party government won’t make any difference to chronically ill and disabled people:

    We are here because we know that regardless of which political party is in power or what policies they choose to implement, we need a wider societal change in the way that disabled people and chronically ill people are treated…

    We have already witnessed the United Nations find our country guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s civil and human rights and we have seen nothing change.

    We have already witnessed the treatment of chronically ill people being described in Parliament as the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century and we have still seen none change. This is not good enough and we as chronically ill people and disabled people demand better. We as chronically ill and disabled people demand more.

    The ball is in Labour’s court

    Now, the ball is in Labour’s court. So far, the signs have not been good. It seems that the party will not treat chronically ill and disabled people much differently to how the Tories did.

    What came across from DPAC’s event was that this was far less of a protest than normal. Road blocks were out, and music and art were in. This seemed more of a gathering, less of a demo.

    One can only assume that this paring back of tactics by DPAC and others is to give Labour a technical chance to prove they’re not a reincarnation of the Conservative Party and actually start to work with chronically ill and disabled people, instead of torturing and killing them.

    It doesn’t sound like a big ask – but based on the historical evidence, it clearly is. Unfortunately, it feels likely that DPAC and others will be back to blocking roads and blockading parliament sooner rather than later.

    Hopefully, Labour will prove us wrong.

    Featured image and additional images via the Canary

     

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s inquest has already highlighted how little doctors understand ME/CFS

    Monday 22 July was the start of an inquest into the death of a young woman with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). As written in MEpedia, Maeve Boothby O’Neill:

    was a young British woman who died from very severe ME on October 3, 2021, aged just 27 years old.[1][2] Maeve Boothby O’Neill was a promising writer, a natural scholar and talented at languages. She was diagnosed after 4 years of unrecognised illness, shortly before her 18th birthday. She was writing The Alchemists, the first of a series of novels, set on Dartmoor where she grew up in Devon, England, when she died.

    Maeve’s mother Sarah Boothby and father Sean O’Neill, who is a journalist for the Times, have been publicly trying to raise awareness of their daughter’s death along with the appalling treatment of ME patients. But we have already learned from the inquest just how little doctors know about ME and how little they can do to help patients.

    What REALLY is ME/CFS?

    ME/CFS is a debilitating chronic illness that in its most severe form can cause symptoms that are worse than some late stage cancers and sometimes death in patients living with the condition. It is defined by the hallmark symptom of post-exertional malaise (PEM), which is often disregarded/misrepresented as fatigue. According to the NHS website:

    Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is a long-term condition that can affect different parts of the body. The most common symptom is extreme tiredness. The cause of ME/CFS is unknown.

    ME/CFS can affect anyone, including children.

    Of course, “extreme tiredness” downplays just how bad ME is. Also known as ‘Yuppie Flu’ in the 1980s, this condition has a long history of being dismissed or even psychologised by doctors – even though it has killed people, including Maeve.

    Similar to long Covid, many patients remember their symptoms beginning after catching a virus, leading many to believe that this is a post-viral illness or condition. Unfortunately many patients also discover that the only support offered to them by the NHS is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which is again viewed as a dismissal of patients – effectively blaming them for their own symptoms.

    The irony of this condition is that many patients find themselves living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the years they often face being dismissed by various health professionals just to have their condition taking seriously.

    Many of these patients also live with other conditions like postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), gastroparesis, and dumping syndrome which also very rarely get diagnosed properly.

    From PACE to PTSD with ME/CFS

    The extent of some ME/CFS patients’ symptoms are quite shocking – yet medical professionals seem surprised, even unable to cope, when they have to face the reality of the illness.

    As a person diagnosed with ME, I remember going to an appointment with my partner, explaining my situation to a GP – and they literally broke down in tears in front of us; disgusted at the state of both the NHS and how people with these conditions and chronic illness are treated, feeling helpless.

    During today’s opening day of Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s inquest we also learned that her GP has developed PTSD as a direct result of Maeve’s deteriorating condition, her death, and its aftermath.

    This speaks volumes on firstly how little current doctors and GPs understand ME, and secondly how little support they can offer, if they can offer any at all – effectively leaving patients with psychologisation as a treatment.

    As many patients know, this treatment approach unfortunately has links to a part-DWP funded clinical trial.

    It’s not just ME

    Whilst this inquest is taking place, there are also currently three other women that the Canary is aware of that are living with severe/very severe ME/CFS.

    We have recently reported on #BringMillieHome, #SaveCarlasLife, and Karen Gordon. All of these women have again faced neglect and mistreatment, and are desperate for support.

    But these are just the ones we know about via social media. There are so many more people suffering in silence. There are an estimated 250,000 people living with ME in the UK – which is likely a huge underestimate. So what, if anything, is actually being done to support these women and the thousands of other adults and children that have been diagnoses of ME?

    Can anyone help ME?

    In 2023 campaign group the Chronic Collaboration along with many other ME/CFS patients, groups, and allies successfully (both online and directly outside) forced NICE to remove graded exercise therapy (GET) from its ME guidelines. This treatment had for many years caused patients extreme harm, making their symptoms worse and often irreparable.

    Along with Maeve’s inquest this week and a new Labour government, the Canary has heard that John McDonnell MP will be asking a question in parliament regarding ME, which we will be reporting on.

    It’s not the first time ME has been mentioned in parliament – most recently with a Westminster Hall debate. Former SNP MP Carol Monaghan stated that ME and the treatment of patients with it was the potentially the ‘biggest medical scandal of the 21st century’.

    But thankfully the voices fighting for this chronic condition are getting louder. So, it will only be a matter of time before they will have to be listened to.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Nicola Jeffery

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: a lot changes in a week and I owe Keir Starmer an apology

    The Canary only had a week-or-so off, and in that short period of time we have seen Donald Trump survive an apparent assassination attempt, Joe Biden addressing the Ukrainian comedy guy as “President Putin”, football fail to come home for the umpteenth time, and the new prime minister Keir Starmer prancing around on the global stage as if little insular Britain is recognised as anything more than a good place to buy arms and launder dirty money.

    I also vaguely recall the new foreign secretary, David Lammy, posing for a photo with a man that is facing an arrest warrant from the Hague for crimes against humanity, but nobody gives a fuck about that because it’s not Jeremy Corbyn dining with the corpse of Osama Bin Laden.

    So, just sixteen days into Keir Rodney Starmer’s prime ministership and I feel like it is time for me to apologise, because I got it wrong.

    Rachael Swindon: an apology to Keir Starmer

    Even I didn’t think Keir Starmer would be enough of an intolerable, foolish shithouse to give the thumbs up to supplying billions of pounds worth of arms to the Ukrainian regime, every year, “as long as it takes”, while so blatantly allowing British children to languish in poverty and hunger, within a week of being in office.

    Is this what you red Thatcherite relics call “patriotism”? To me, it would appear Starmer’s loyalties lie with Washington, Tel Aviv and Kyiv before Warrington, Telford and Kettering even get a look-in.

    The public antipathy towards the deliciously-routed Conservative Party isn’t going to disappear at the drop of a Rees-Mogg bowler hat, but if you are expecting an end to the politics of short-termism, instability, and division, I think you are going to be extremely disappointed.

    Keir Starmer’s quicksand majority could be put to excellent use.

    Plenty of options

    Instead of a Border Force Control, build council houses. Ask not who we can blow out of the water, but what these human beings can offer our exhausted and broken society.

    Instead of arming and enabling war and genocide, lead the way in searching for peaceful and just resolutions to global atrocities. We do not have to slavishly sign up to this bomb-first-ask-questions-later strategy favoured by the neocons. This is a political choice.

    Instead of rubbing shoulders with the elite, try doing a shift in your local foodbank or homeless shelter, but away from the ghastly spectacle of self-serving publicity.

    Starmer doesn’t need to put your future on the never-never with huge corporations when he can adequately tax the same huge, obscenely rich corporations to pay for it.

    The 2024 Taxing Wealth Report demonstrates to Labour just how simple it would be to make some tweaks to existing UK taxes to raise up to £90 BILLION of new tax revenue – every single year.

    Better still, Mr Starmer, these easily-made adjustments would be raised only from those who are already well off or who are absolutely fucking minted, which only applies to people that are lucky enough to be in the top 10% of income earners.

    But you know as well as I do, there’s more chance of Keir Starmer ditching the public-purse-funded private jet — that carried his over-privileged arse to the Euro 2024 final to watch England lose to Spain — than there ever will be of Keir Starmer taking a meaningful bite from the very hand that feeds his lust for power, free from morals, ethics and principles.

    Labour corporatocracy

    This new Labour government has seamlessly picked up the corporatocracy baton from the Tories with an alarming ease.

    Despite promising to “get a grip” of the huge water companies, Starmer has wasted no time in rubber-stamping bill increases of up to 44%. The new prime minister has the majority to crush these disproportionate price hikes, simply by renationalising water companies.

    I am old enough to remember the time Keir Starmer said:

    Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water.

    That was pledge number five of the infamous ten pledges that Keir Starmer put forward to Labour Party members back in 2020.

    Keir Starmer is a proven liar. I give zero fucks for the size of his majority and even fewer fucks if I have to keep calling out this malignant, fraudulent, servant of the immoral elite until I turn blue in the face.

    Meanwhile, somewhere in the UK’s broken ‘justice’ system…

    As reported earlier this week in the Canary, five Just Stop Oil supporters were sent to prison for a combined TWENTY ONE YEARS for doing nothing more than attending a Zoom call.

    Is it not quite incredible that in the week the new government are forced to announce they are having to release some 5,500 prisoners to “avert disaster”, some creepy batshit judge is locking up climate change protestors for having the temerity to attend a Zoom call, or am I missing something blindingly obvious?

    In my humble opinion, and my opinion alone, I believe the judge in question — Judge Christopher Hehir — is a climate-change-denying, paedo-sympathiser, and the fact he is dishing out ‘justice’ is a grave injustice in itself.

    Is this the kind of good old fashioned British justice that Keir Starmer will continue to support without reservation?

    If society begins to accept the imprisonment of climate protestors is of greater importance than the non-imprisonment of a man found to be in possession of three category A images, the most serious type, and five category C images, which depicted victims aged eight to 12, as well as accessing a website known to contain indecent images of children 393 times, would it be wrong of me to suggest we are heading down an extremely dangerous path?

    Same judge, very different sentences.

    I’ll pass on your ‘national renewal’, thanks Keir Starmer

    All of this talk of “change”, “national renewal”, and “doing things differently”, may well convince the 20% of those eligible to vote that voted for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to run the country, but your average Joe isn’t going to feel, or be any better off than this time last year.

    It should go without saying, we shouldn’t judge Starmer’s tinpot government on what they have or haven’t done in the space of just two weeks, but we can certainly begin to get a good idea of which way the river is flowing, merely reinforcing our judgement of Starmer and his cabal of metropolitan spinners before they managed to get anywhere near the corridors of power.

    If your idea of “change” looks like a guaranteed £3 billion every year for Ukraine to fight a proxy war on behalf of the West, I’m not interested in your idea of change.

    If your idea of “doing things differently” looks like offering out another £700 million worth of NHS contracts to the private sector, I’m not interested in your idea of doing things differently.

    And if your idea of “national renewal” looks like bowing down to Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel by refusing to withdraw your objections to the pariah state being dragged kicking and screaming through the International Criminal Courts, you can go to hell.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.