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Category: Opinion

  • Op-Ed: Dubai Summit Shows the Future of Food Hinges on Regulatory Sandboxes

    eu novel foods
    7 Mins Read

    Regulatory expert Stephen O’Rourke explains why the global future food industry could learn a thing from Dubai’s RegLab model.

    If foodtech is going to scale globally, the next breakthroughs will not come from bioreactors or cell lines. They will come from regulation, and more specifically, from a shift in regulatory mindset. That was hard to ignore last week at the Dubai International Food Safety Conference (DIFSC 2025).

    Dubai brought together an unusually diverse mix of voices: regulators, FAO leaders, innovators, scientists, municipal officials, and founders. In most countries, these groups orbit each other politely. In Dubai, they shared the same room and asked direct questions about what is required to deliver safe, scalable, and trusted food innovation.

    One theme resurfaced repeatedly, not only in my talk but also during my panel with Dr Markus Lipp (FAO) and Andrew Wilson, and in countless conversations across the event:

    Regulatory sandboxes are not shortcuts.

    They are structured environments for shared learning, and one of the most important tools the future of food will rely on. Dubai has made the urgency of the topic unavoidable.

    Food safety as soft power

    dubai food safety conference
    Courtesy: Stephen O’Rourke

    While Europe debates impact assessments and North America deals with fragmentation between federal and state responsibilities, Dubai is building something different: regulatory capability as national infrastructure.

    Food safety here is not treated as a bureaucratic burden. It is positioned as a strategic asset and a form of soft power that signals the UAE’s intention to be a safe, trusted, globally connected food hub.

    This matters because most regulatory delays in foodtech do not stem from the science. They stem from uncertainty over who decides what, how risk is interpreted, which evidence is considered relevant, and how predictable the pathway is.

    Dubai is addressing these gaps directly, using tools that reduce uncertainty at the source.

    In my talk, I used a line that drew an immediate reaction: “Innovators often feel like they are sprinting while regulators are walking.”

    This was not criticism. It was a description of reality. Startups must move quickly. Regulators must move carefully. Without mechanisms to bring these two tempos together, the result is predictable: stalled dossiers, shifting expectations, avoidable rework, longer timelines, and frustration for everyone involved.

    This is where regulatory sandboxes show their value.

    What the UAE is doing: the RegLab model

    A point that many outside the region overlook is that the UAE already operates a legally backed regulatory sandbox through the federal RegLab initiative.

    RegLab flips the traditional model on its head. It allows regulators and innovators to test new technologies before the rules are written. Most jurisdictions legislate first and test later. The UAE is testing first and regulating with evidence.

    Based on DIFSC discussions and insights from Dubai Municipality, RegLab provides three important advantages:

    1. Early visibility for regulators: Instead of assessing novel technologies from a static dossier, authorities can observe them in controlled pilots. This reduces blind spots and accelerates understanding.
    2. Less uncertainty for innovators: Founders can deal with strict requirements. What they cannot manage is unpredictability. RegLab allows companies to generate real-world data with government oversight, avoiding the mid-process shifts that often complicate the EU Novel Foods pathway.
    3. Regulation informed by real conditions: RegLab is not about speed. It is about insight. Regulators learn what actually works and design rules around that evidence.

    RegLab is similar to the way innovation is governed in sectors such as fintech and medical devices, where supervised pilots and early testing are considered routine.

    It is particularly well-suited to foodtech. This sector combines biological uncertainty, population-wide exposure, and the need for public trust. In that context, supervised real-world testing is not optional. It is essential.

    RegLab reflects an agile regulatory mindset. It does not lower standards. It reduces unknowns.

    Sandboxes aren’t new – and that matters

    lab grown meat uk
    Courtesy: Mosa Meat

    It is positive to see more organisations, including at the EU level, acknowledging the value of regulatory sandboxes. Conversations about this have grown across the European Parliament and several future-focused think tanks.

    But sandboxes themselves are not new.

    • The UAE introduced its federal RegLab initiative several years ago, applying sandbox-style regulation across multiple sectors.
    • The UK launched a cultivated meat sandbox earlier in 2025.
    • Singapore has relied on sandbox-style early engagement from the beginning of its novel foods framework, even if it does not formally label it a sandbox.

    Food tech innovation runs ahead of static regulatory structures. The system has been signalling the need for this shift for a long time. Only now is momentum catching up.

    The EU novel food system is changing, slowly but meaningfully

    While the UAE continues to test and adapt through RegLab, Europe is making adjustments of its own.

    In late 2025 and early 2026, EFSA and the European Commission will introduce new measures for the Novel Food pathway, including a pre-publication notification process, stricter timelines (including “three strikes” for unanswered RFIs), limits on extensions, faster completeness checks, and reduced acceptance of late evidence.

    These changes will not resolve Europe’s core issue of unpredictability. However, they do show that early alignment and consistent expectations are now recognised as essential.

    It is also worth noting that updates like these are never purely technical. They reflect the political pressure on EFSA and the European Commission to demonstrate predictability, transparency, and tighter process control at a time when novel foods have become a policy battleground.

    As one regulator in Dubai remarked: “Innovation slows not because the bar is high, but because the bar is not visible.”

    Europe’s reforms are, in their own way, an attempt to make that bar more visible.

    eu novel foods
    Courtesy: European Food Safety Authority

    The role of early scientific advice

    In both Europe and the UAE, one principle remains true: 20 minutes of early scientific advice can save a year of misaligned studies.

    Early alignment is the difference between a dossier that moves and one that stalls. In systems like the UAE’s RegLab or Singapore’s early-engagement model, companies know what evidence regulators consider meaningful before they invest heavily in studies.

    Europe often provides this clarity only after the data has already been generated. That timing gap explains much of the frustration that founders experience and much of the delay that regulators cannot easily prevent.

    Europe’s structure adds to this challenge. EFSA evaluates safety, the Commission manages the process, and Member States approve the final step. With responsibilities split across institutions, early scientific advice is available in theory but difficult in practice. The result is a system where predictability depends as much on navigation skills as on science.

    This is not a criticism of Europe’s expertise. It is a reflection of how its machinery works.

    Europe’s challenges and opportunities

    Europe has strengths that the UAE does not: long-standing institutions, deep scientific heritage, transparent review mechanisms, and strong legal safeguards. These are foundations that many countries would envy.

    But Europe also has a persistent weakness: it still lacks simple, predictable early-entry pathways for innovators.

    Dubai, Singapore, the UK, and the Netherlands have moved quickly to design systems that welcome innovators early. Europe still treats early engagement as the exception. That difference in approach slows innovation, not because Europe is less capable, but because its system expects alignment to happen late rather than early.

    The lesson is not that one region is ahead of another. It is that mindset and tools matter.

    Systems built around visibility, predictability, and early alignment consistently outperform systems built around late judgment. When innovators understand what regulators expect, regulators receive better evidence, and society receives safer, more thoroughly validated products.

    Europe can do this too. The scientific excellence is there. What is missing is a structure that allows innovators and regulators to meet earlier, share understanding earlier, and close uncertainty earlier. The opportunity is enormous.

    A global call to action

    dubai reglab
    Courtesy: WAM

    None of this is accidental. The UAE’s progress on regulatory agility, including the federal RegLab initiative and other sandbox approaches across the region, reflects sustained national investment in innovation governance.

    At the DIFSC level, the work done by the Dubai Municipality Food Safety team deserves recognition. Their openness and willingness to connect innovators, regulators, and global experts is a major reason Dubai is becoming a regional reference point for more collaborative regulatory approaches.

    It complements the UAE’s broader commitment to building a regulatory system capable of learning at the same speed as the technologies it governs.

    Dubai demonstrated something important. The future of food will be shaped not only by science or investment, but by regulatory mindset.

    Regulatory sandboxes are not experimental add-ons. They are practical tools that reduce uncertainty for regulators and innovators without weakening safety. They create shared understanding, build trust, and make regulatory decisions more predictable.

    If foodtech is going to scale, we need regulatory systems that learn as quickly as the technologies they oversee. RegLab is one model. The UK is building another. More will follow. The direction of travel is clear. The question is who will act with intent, and who will wait.

    Governments should not wait for perfect rules. They should create structured environments where rules can be informed by real evidence.

    Innovation does not need lower standards. It needs fewer unknowns. If governments build systems that learn, adapt, and engage early, then innovation will not have to fight the system.

    It will finally have a system designed to help it succeed.

    The post Op-Ed: Dubai Summit Shows the Future of Food Hinges on Regulatory Sandboxes appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Shabana Mahmood blocks ruling that protected Palestinian family

    Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has succeeded in reversing a human rights-based ruling that allowed a family of Palestinian refugees fleeing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, to remain in the UK.

    The Court of Appeal backed Mahmood’s bid to prevent refugees using a scheme designed for (almost all white) Ukrainians to remain in Britain under the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to protect family life. This overturns the decision of an immigration tribunal ruling that horrified the Israel lobby and the far-right because it said that a Palestinian family qualified for the scheme’s protection.

    The appeal court instead ruled that family links between siblings are not strong enough to justify them remaining in the UK under Article 8 of the ECHR.

    Human Home Secretary’s rights

    The appeal court judges also decided that immigration tribunals must take account of the Home Secretary’s right to act in the interests of “the economic well-being of the country or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” The ruling completely ignores the Home Office’s own evidence that immigrants are net contributors to the UK’s economic health rather than detracting from it.

    The Appeal Court’s ruling is deeply dangerous because government lawyers will use it as a precedent to persuade immigration tribunals to rule against desperate refugees with UK family in future cases.

    Mahmood is preparing new legislation to further limit the scope for immigration courts to consider Article 8 human rights in asylum applications and appeals against deportation, requiring judges to prioritise supposed ‘public safety’ over individual rights.

     

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    A post shared by Friends Of Al-Aqsa (@friendsofalaqsa)

    Shabana Mahmood was not always a dog-whistling xenophobe who would rather pander to racists than respect human rights — and the international law that underpins them. In 2015 — before Keir Starmer got his claws into Labour and imposed his fanatical support for Israel and his thirst for the approval of racists — she wrote that helping refugees whether in their own regions or in Europe was a “moral duty”:

    we have a moral duty to act. When the refugees make it to the shores of Lesvos they are not just on Greece’s doorstep but our doorstep too.

    I welcome the government’s policy proposals to help refugees directly from the camps, who have not made the dangerous journey to Europe. But we cannot simply ignore the crisis in Europe, either.

    It is not an either/or situation – we must have a strategy and a willingness to help both refugees in the region and those who have made it to Europe…

    …Their desperation is not lessened because they have a degree or because they had a good job before war and chaos descended.

    Fear of death doesn’t diminish because of the money you used to have or the standard of the house you used to live in.

    It is a false distinction and we mustn’t fall for it.

    We have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas… the push factor [for people fleeing to Europe and the UK] is either death or the slow torture of a temporary life in a camp which amounts to no kind of life at all. If that is what they face then they are going to run. We cannot kid ourselves that they have choices; we have to act.

    Shabana Mahmood of 2015 would hate this one

    Shabana Mahmood was also once enough of an advocate of Palestinian rights to argue publicly in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the Israeli occupation. Her own website still boasts that:

    I am, and always have been, a passionate and determined supporter of Palestinian rights and my parliamentary record on this issue speaks for itself. My support extends fully to citizens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who have had themselves or their families displaced or injured by Israel’s military action in the region.

    Not any more, you’re not, Ms Mahmood. Now you are a shill for your racist boss and his twin Islamophobic obsessions with Israel and with pandering to the racist right from whom he is functionally indistinguishable. You are helping him make sure that Palestinians and others guilty of fleeing-while-brown are rejected or made to live in fear that they will be, while ‘schemes for Ukrainians’ are only available for those pale folk.

    Shame on you.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Farage slammed for saying Enoch Powell was right

    In a new interview, Nigel Farage has said he thought Enoch Powell was right. Specifically, he said Powell was right about the common market. This hasn’t stopped critics from seizing on the comments, however:

    The situation is a sign of two things:

    • Finding himself under-pressure, Farage is losing his ability to do effective political messaging.
    • The other political parties have worked out how to fight Farage on his own level.

    Propaganda wars

    Farage has been on the back foot for several reasons. Among his problems, 20 classmates and teachers came out to say he was essentially a Hitler youth. As one Peter Ettedgui said:

    [Farage] would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers […] I’d never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking. But I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘P*ki’ or ‘W*g’, and urging them to ‘go home’.

    Farage responded to all this in the most muddled way imaginable. In an interview, he didn’t deny the allegations of racism, but he did argue he would “never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way”.

    In the clip at the top, Farage said:

    If you look at what they said, none of them said I directly attacked or abused them. What they do say very clearly is they had different political views to me.

    That I thought Enoch Powell was right about the Common market, which I did, in the referendum, which was a minority position, but I held it all the way back then, and I thought he was right to talk about not having vast community change.

    That was a source of big political debate, back in the late 1970s.

    If you’re unfamiliar with Powell, he’s the former Tory MP who made the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which he argued people of varying ethnicities cannot live alongside one another without descending into barbarism.

    You’ve got to imagine that Farage’s advisors were watching this response screaming: ‘Why did he bring up Enoch Powell!? Nobody told him to bring up Enoch Powell!‘. The fact that he did bring up Powell set Labour and others up for an easy slam dunk:

    And well, well, well, what do we have here?

    Powell fan boy

    As reported by the Guardian in 2014:

    Nigel Farage once asked for the endorsement of the former Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who warned that immigration could lead to ‘rivers of blood’ in 1968.

    Letters unearthed from a university archive by the Telegraph found Farage unsuccessfully requested the backing of the rightwinger Powell in 1994 and Ukip later twice asked the politician to stand as a candidate for the party.

    Farage has long openly admired Powell, once calling him his political hero. While acknowledging that Powell got it wrong about people of different nationalities and races being unable to mix, the Ukip leader has said the central thrust of Powell’s arguments about immigration hold true.

    They added:

    A Ukip aide said Farage had asked for the endorsement because of Powell’s position as a renowned eurosceptic, having urged Tories to vote Labour to keep Britain out of the EEC. It was nothing to do with Powell’s rivers of blood ideas, he added.

    The idea that UKIP wanted Powell because of his Euro-scepticism is silly when you consider Powell is infamously Mr Rivers of Blood. It would be like commissioning Hitler to paint a mural and then being surprised when people asked: ‘Isn’t he the Third Reich guy?‘

    Either UKIP were incredibly naive, or they wanted to sign up Powell to signal to voters that they agreed with his extremist position. Some might think that this is what Farage is doing today; that he’s referencing Powell specifically to dog whistle to the growing far-right movement in the UK.

    Problems

    The problem for Reform is that they almost certainly can’t win a majority on an openly far-right platform, which may be why their polling seems to have peaked earlier this year before going into reverse.

    Farage and his crew took their poll lead as a sign that voters backed everything they think, whereas actually they seem have benefitted from the backlash to Starmer. This is creating a situation in which Farage is struggling to work out where the line is, as we’ve seen many times recently:

    In other words, he’s being made to dance in the same way that Reform spent most of this year making Keir Starmer dance. And he has four more years of this before the next election.

    Featured image via Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Indonesia’s Gaza peacekeeping mission risks enforcing a ‘broken’ status quo

    ANALYSIS: By Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

    Indonesia is preparing one of the largest peacekeeping deployments in its history — a 20,000-strong force of soldiers, engineers, medics and logistics personnel — to enter the shattered and starving Gaza Strip.

    Three brigades, three hospital ships, Hercules aircraft, a three-star general, a reconnaissance team, battalions for health services, construction and logistics — Jakarta is moving with remarkable speed and confidence.

    But the moral clarity that Indonesia prides itself on in its support for Palestine is now in danger of being muddied by geopolitical calculation.

    And that calculation, in this case, is deeply entangled with a plan conceived and promoted by US President Donald Trump — a plan that critics argue would freeze, not resolve, the structures of domination and blockade that have long suffocated Gaza.

    Indonesia must ask itself a hard question: Is it stepping into Gaza to help Palestinians — or to help enforce a fragile order designed to protect the status quo?

    For years, Indonesian leaders have proudly stated that their support for Palestine is grounded not in expediency but in principle.

    President Prabowo Subianto has reiterated that Jakarta stands “ready at any moment” to help end the suffering in Gaza. But readiness is not the same as reflection. And reflection is urgently needed.

    Tilted towards Israel
    Trump’s so-called stabilisation plan envisions an International Stabilisation Force tasked with training select Palestinian police officers and preventing weapons smuggling — a mission framed as neutral but structurally tilted toward Israel’s long-standing security demands.

    The plan does little to address the root political causes of Gaza’s devastation. It does not confront Israel’s decades-long military occupation.

    It does not propose a just political horizon. And it does not establish meaningful accountability for continued violations, even as reports persist that ceasefire terms are repeatedly breached.

    A peacekeeping force that does not address the underlying conditions of injustice is not peacekeeping. It is de facto enforcement of a deeply unequal arrangement.

    Indonesia’s deployment risks becoming just that.

    Former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal has urged caution, warning that Indonesian troops could easily be drawn into clashes simply because the territory remains saturated with weaponry, competing authorities and unresolved political tensions.

    He argues that Indonesia must insist on crystal-clear rules of engagement. With volatility always a possibility, a mission built on ambiguity is a mission built on quicksand.

    Impossible peacekeeper position
    His warning deserves attention. A peacekeeper who does not know whether they are expected to intervene, withdraw or hold ground in moments of confrontation is placed in an impossible position.

    And should Indonesian forces — admired worldwide for their professionalism — be forced to navigate chaos without a political framework, Jakarta will face unpredictable political and humanitarian consequences at home and abroad.

    More troubling is the lack of political strategy behind Indonesia’s enthusiasm. Prabowo’s government frames this mission as a humanitarian and stabilising operation, but it has not clarified how it fits within the long-term political resolution that Indonesia claims to champion.

    For decades, Jakarta has stood consistently behind a two-state solution. Yet today, after the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of any credible peace process, many Palestinians and international observers argue that the two-state paradigm has become a diplomatic mirage — repeatedly invoked, never realised, and often used to justify inaction.

    If Indonesia truly wants to stand for justice rather than merely stability, it must be willing to articulate alternatives. One of those alternatives — controversial but increasingly discussed in academic, political and human rights circles — is a rights-based one-state solution that guarantees equal citizenship and security for all who live between the river and the sea.

    Such a political horizon would require courage from Jakarta. Supporting a single state would mean breaking sharply from US policy preferences and acknowledging that decades of partition proposals have failed to deliver anything resembling peace.

    But Indonesia has taken courageous positions before. It has spoken against apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, called out the global community’s double standards in the treatment of Ukraine and Palestine.

    Jakarta must be moral voice
    If Jakarta wants to be a moral voice, it cannot outsource its vision to a proposal drafted by an American administration whose approach to the conflict was widely criticised as one-sided.

    Indonesia’s soldiers are being told they are going to Gaza to help. That is noble. But noble intentions do not excuse political naivety.

    Before Jakarta sends even a single battalion forward — before the hospital ships are launched, before the Hercules engines warm, before the three-star commander takes his post — Indonesia must ask whether this mission will move Palestinians closer to genuine freedom or merely enforce a temporary calm that leaves the underlying injustices untouched.

    A peacekeeping force that sustains the structures of oppression is not peacekeeping at all. It is maintenance.

    Indonesia can — and must — do better.

    Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the director of the Indonesia-MENA Desk at the Centre for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) in Jakarta and a research affiliate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He spent more than a decade living and traveling across the Middle East, earning a BA in international affairs from Qatar University. He later completed his MA in International Politics and PhD in politics at the University of Manchester. This article was first published by Middle East Monitor.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Indonesia’s Gaza peacekeeping mission risks enforcing a ‘broken’ status quo

    ANALYSIS: By Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

    Indonesia is preparing one of the largest peacekeeping deployments in its history — a 20,000-strong force of soldiers, engineers, medics and logistics personnel — to enter the shattered and starving Gaza Strip.

    Three brigades, three hospital ships, Hercules aircraft, a three-star general, a reconnaissance team, battalions for health services, construction and logistics — Jakarta is moving with remarkable speed and confidence.

    But the moral clarity that Indonesia prides itself on in its support for Palestine is now in danger of being muddied by geopolitical calculation.

    And that calculation, in this case, is deeply entangled with a plan conceived and promoted by US President Donald Trump — a plan that critics argue would freeze, not resolve, the structures of domination and blockade that have long suffocated Gaza.

    Indonesia must ask itself a hard question: Is it stepping into Gaza to help Palestinians — or to help enforce a fragile order designed to protect the status quo?

    For years, Indonesian leaders have proudly stated that their support for Palestine is grounded not in expediency but in principle.

    President Prabowo Subianto has reiterated that Jakarta stands “ready at any moment” to help end the suffering in Gaza. But readiness is not the same as reflection. And reflection is urgently needed.

    Tilted towards Israel
    Trump’s so-called stabilisation plan envisions an International Stabilisation Force tasked with training select Palestinian police officers and preventing weapons smuggling — a mission framed as neutral but structurally tilted toward Israel’s long-standing security demands.

    The plan does little to address the root political causes of Gaza’s devastation. It does not confront Israel’s decades-long military occupation.

    It does not propose a just political horizon. And it does not establish meaningful accountability for continued violations, even as reports persist that ceasefire terms are repeatedly breached.

    A peacekeeping force that does not address the underlying conditions of injustice is not peacekeeping. It is de facto enforcement of a deeply unequal arrangement.

    Indonesia’s deployment risks becoming just that.

    Former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal has urged caution, warning that Indonesian troops could easily be drawn into clashes simply because the territory remains saturated with weaponry, competing authorities and unresolved political tensions.

    He argues that Indonesia must insist on crystal-clear rules of engagement. With volatility always a possibility, a mission built on ambiguity is a mission built on quicksand.

    Impossible peacekeeper position
    His warning deserves attention. A peacekeeper who does not know whether they are expected to intervene, withdraw or hold ground in moments of confrontation is placed in an impossible position.

    And should Indonesian forces — admired worldwide for their professionalism — be forced to navigate chaos without a political framework, Jakarta will face unpredictable political and humanitarian consequences at home and abroad.

    More troubling is the lack of political strategy behind Indonesia’s enthusiasm. Prabowo’s government frames this mission as a humanitarian and stabilising operation, but it has not clarified how it fits within the long-term political resolution that Indonesia claims to champion.

    For decades, Jakarta has stood consistently behind a two-state solution. Yet today, after the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of any credible peace process, many Palestinians and international observers argue that the two-state paradigm has become a diplomatic mirage — repeatedly invoked, never realised, and often used to justify inaction.

    If Indonesia truly wants to stand for justice rather than merely stability, it must be willing to articulate alternatives. One of those alternatives — controversial but increasingly discussed in academic, political and human rights circles — is a rights-based one-state solution that guarantees equal citizenship and security for all who live between the river and the sea.

    Such a political horizon would require courage from Jakarta. Supporting a single state would mean breaking sharply from US policy preferences and acknowledging that decades of partition proposals have failed to deliver anything resembling peace.

    But Indonesia has taken courageous positions before. It has spoken against apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, called out the global community’s double standards in the treatment of Ukraine and Palestine.

    Jakarta must be moral voice
    If Jakarta wants to be a moral voice, it cannot outsource its vision to a proposal drafted by an American administration whose approach to the conflict was widely criticised as one-sided.

    Indonesia’s soldiers are being told they are going to Gaza to help. That is noble. But noble intentions do not excuse political naivety.

    Before Jakarta sends even a single battalion forward — before the hospital ships are launched, before the Hercules engines warm, before the three-star commander takes his post — Indonesia must ask whether this mission will move Palestinians closer to genuine freedom or merely enforce a temporary calm that leaves the underlying injustices untouched.

    A peacekeeping force that sustains the structures of oppression is not peacekeeping at all. It is maintenance.

    Indonesia can — and must — do better.

    Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the director of the Indonesia-MENA Desk at the Centre for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) in Jakarta and a research affiliate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He spent more than a decade living and traveling across the Middle East, earning a BA in international affairs from Qatar University. He later completed his MA in International Politics and PhD in politics at the University of Manchester. This article was first published by Middle East Monitor.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • What’s the best way to stop UKIP on their shithead hate marches?

    It’s been a few weeks now since fascist Nick Tenconi brought UKIP to Sheffield, as reported by the Canary.

    After ousting Nick and his rabble, the city came together. Over 50 different organisations held a unity rally — standing up to the right and denouncing their divisive tactics.

    Sheffield Communities Against Racism & Racism (SCARF) are a local group set up in response to the riots of last summer. They have released a statement responding to UKIP’s hate march through the city. The letter outlines their views on how to better mobilise against the far-right. Whilst 800 anti-fascists took to Sheffield’s streets to oppose UKIP, a huge group allowed themselves to be kettled into a small area where they couldn’t revive the anti-fascist tradition of direct action. And, is it really anti-fascism if a group of people are placidly standing down the road from fascists? Or is it just a token nod to Being Against This Sort Of Thing, and no more?

    UKIP’s shithead tour

    The conversation around the approach that the left should take is one that’s occurring in many spaces at the moment. I’ve witnessed it first hand over the summer.

    In Newcastle, activists are faced with this same question since UKIP visited at the start of autumn. The counter-demo was split along several lines. Some at Monument for speeches; some at the migrant hotel; and then another swathe of people down on the Quayside to block the far-right march.

    I got myself stuck in the kettle down at the Quayside with hundreds of people all packed into that narrow space. People linked arms in defiance of the police and the fascists, and in the end, the far-right march was diverted and kettled, falling short of its final destination. A lot of soul-searching has followed.

    When I got in touch with SCARF to ask about their thoughts on the question of diverging approaches and attitudes to ongoing resistance, they told me:

    Whilst SCARF is proud of our part in mobilising opposition to the march, we were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing it from taking place. Given this we thought it was important to reflect on the day, and the movement more broadly, to learn and to improve in future. It’s important to celebrate our victories but we see little benefit in inaccurate or dishonest self aggrandising accounts.

    They continued:

    Antifascists have been physically confronting fascists since the 1930’s… a diversity of tactics is necessary, as such no one group or approach should be seeking to dominate or exclude another.

     

    Plenty of anti-fascists

    I was a bit apprehensive on Saturday sitting on the train – you never know what turnout’s going to be like from social media alone – but a good few hundred people had managed to get out.

    Gathered listening to the speeches, more were joining until quite the crowd was gathered. It was heartening to see so many people braving the wintry drizzle. One suspicious character loitered filming the assembly, but aside from that it was all quiet on the western front. Sheffield Drummers 4 Palestine arrived just before the march was set to leave – a branch inspired by M.D.4.P who I interviewed last month for the Canary.

     

    It’s always a nice day when the drums are out. The sound of the skins bouncing off the walls of the narrow streets always rouses the spirits.

    It’s notable that there were no police out.

    The only flash of yellow was the high-vis of one of the frantic bicycle stewards shooting off into the distance to secure the path ahead for the incoming march. It’s so well organised that everything goes off without a hitch. Well, there was one wet wipe in a 4×4 too important to wait and drove around the steward. I’ve never really understood the strange narrative that the right wing employ that the left are all violent thugs. In reality we play quite well together. The only flare-up – the suspicious camera operator from the start decided to pop up and scream at people for being traitors halfway through the route.

    Countering the far-right

    Tudor Square was a poignant spot to end the day. A few weeks ago I was being aggressively umbrellaed here by YouTubers. Now I was watching this slightly happier, more hopeful group of human beings snake into the square and converge to listen to the debrief from the organisers and some more speakers. I caught the last of my shots for the day and went to find coffee and noodles. Sheffield is a beautiful city, I really need to remember to give myself some time here to enjoy it when I’m passing through. It’s easy to see why so many people rallied to defend it a few weeks ago.

     

    But I can’t help but wonder about that central question. How the left counters the rise of the organised far right? Sometimes it feels like they’re running a better ground game than the left.

    It’s great getting thousands of people out to tell UKIP to fuck off. That’s genuinely amazing. But if you’re only hitting the streets when it’s ‘vibe adjacent’, the hard work falls on the people getting out to protests weekly. And people forget, its not just protests.

    There’s the organising; meetings, outreach, community initiatives, walking around and knocking on doors. The unglamorous work of real activism.

    Forward path

    I guess, maybe it isn’t about the approach right now as much as it is about numbers and consistency… if there were a thousand people outside your local hotel week in and week out then they wouldn’t have to be there week in and week out… the flag bandits would have lost interest long ago… Yeah, there’s definitely a place for all the old school activism – I think if people want to get together and listen to speeches then yo, thats your prerogative, but you will be missed.

    Everyone’s an adult and make their own choices. If people want to listen to the police then again I can’t stop you. But fuck me I’m realising that people aren’t being melodramatic about how little they care about you and me! Im telling you, they don’t give a fuck.

    If you think the police are there for our protection and safety come tag along with me. I’ve been at this a month, and my eyes are fucking open. If you want to follow orders, sit in a little box, and not be let out unless you’ve broken a bone or have visibly shit yourself — be my guest.

    I cannot stop you shooting yourself in the foot. The inevitable reality, however, is this … In the long term, direct action is the only way. Whether the threat is racist institutions or lowkey fascist thugs, in our communities, and on our streets, is where they must be confronted.

    By Barold

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour accused of reshashed austerity ‘Osbornomics’

    If you’ve been on Twitter in the past 24 hours, you’ve no doubt seen the following video in which one of Labour’s haircut MPs likens the fiscal deficit to Britain’s beloved biscuit:


    You’ve probably also noticed:

    • Favourable journalists and thinktankers creaming themselves over how slick the video is.
    • People who don’t have long-term memory issues pointing out that Labour are making the same argument George Osborne did in 2010.

    Taking the biscuit

    In the video above, McKee lays it out clearly:

    There’s a reason Britain feels broke and it’s probably not what you think.

    I’m going to explain but first of all you need to understand one thing. It’s called debt-to-GDP ratio. Sounds boring — kind of is boring — but it’s important. Basically means how much debt the government has compared to how rich the country is.

    When I was born in 1994, it was about 30%. In other words, for every pound the country made, the government owes 30p in debt. And it stayed that way until around about 2008, when the banks ran out of money and we had to bail them out.

    ‘When the banks ran out of money and we had to bail them out’ — is that what happened, is it?

    We seem to remember the ways financial institutions were acting like casinos and dishing out dodgy sub-prime mortgages to customers who couldn’t afford them, triggering an entirely avoidable global meltdown. That’s if we hadn’t deregulated the banks in the 80s.

    2008 was the perfect moment for politicians to take back power from rogue billionaires who have rigged the game in their favour. Instead, we bailed them out, and they’ve repeatedly bit the hand which fed them ever since.

    This is why we’re on the verge of a crash which could make 2008 look like a picnic.

    To be fair to McKee, he was 14 when 2008 happened, so possibly he still has a teenager’s grasp of the crisis.

    He goes on to say:

    So then, debt jumps to 60%. Over the next 10 years of Tory government, it rises to about 80%. Then some guy eats a bat in Wuhan, and now nobody can go to work.

    We don’t know how much McKee is paying his banter writer, but it’s too much.

    Osbornomics

    Getting to the George Osborne of it all, McKee said:

    So the government has to borrow even more money. And today, Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio is roughly 100%. But the weirdest thing is that’s not even the main problem. Because in France, the debt-to-GDP ratio is 113%. In America, it’s 120%. Japan’s 240%. What’s really mad is that Britain is paying more interest on its debt than any of these countries because the people lending money to the government aren’t just looking at the total amount of debt, but how quickly it’s racking up.

    Think of it like this. Japan is your mate who’s always in his overdraft. America’s the guy who spends a lot, but always shows up to work. Britain was the sensible one, but we’ve bought a dog, a new car, and a hair transplant all in one month. We’ve pretended that we’ve had a big pay increase, but in reality, we’ve just got a credit card with a lot of debt.

    This is the austerity portion of the argument.

    ‘It’s not that we’ve allowed rich people to take everything that isn’t nailed down; it’s not that we’ve sold off all our utilities and infrastructure off to thieving international conglomerates — it’s that we dared to spend any money whatsoever on things which benefitted the wider public‘.

    You’ll notice McKee using the credit card analogy which we all realised was bullshit in the early 2010s. The analogy was so widely contested that the BBC actually pulled themselves up for using it, as this report found:

    Note on household analogies. That states don’t tend to retire or die, or pay off their debts entirely, is one way national debt is not like household or personal debt, not like a credit card for example, and why analogies with household debt, or suggestions the government must ‘pay off’ or ‘pay down’ the debt can cause intense debate. Clearly, pithy, accessible metaphors are valuable to journalists and audiences. And ‘paying off’ is a tempting phrase even to those who know the arguments because it seems to express the idea there must be some degree of discipline over debt, even for a state. We just used a household analogy by saying mortgage debt equal to 100% of income would not usually induce fear. But again, it helps to know that household analogies are dangerous territory, intensely contested, and can easily mislead.

    The BBC was following the lead of Tory chancellor George Osborne, who said that “Labour maxed out the nation’s credit card“. Osborne was using the debt as an excuse to implement austerity — the politics of wealth extraction. It’s unclear if Labour wants to double down on austerity or think these talking points are a good excuse for maintaining the status quo. But the argument will continue to prop up politicians seeking to cut services to finance tax cuts for the rich.

    Oh, and lest we forget, austerity was a disaster. Cutting spending didn’t lessen the debt; it just made us all poorer.

    All except the mega rich, obviously.

    Response

    Getting to the response, many were sickened to see Labour aping the politics of the 2010 coalition government:

    On the other hand, a cadre of the nation’s most banal centrists, journalists, and think tankers were custard creaming themselves:


    So it’s a case of who you listen to; the people who warned you that austerity was a mistake, or the professional idiots paid to be wrong about everything.

    Careful, buddy

    By now, we’re noticing a weekly pattern: Labour pushes new messaging, establishment duds fall over themselves, and then the weekly polls show the government is down another percentage point. Reheated Osbornomics is not going to move the needle, just like Starmer’s conference speech didn’t.

    Oh, and one last thing, we already had a way of explaining the economy with biscuits, and it’s this:

    Rupert Murdoch pointing at a migrant and saying 'careful, mate that foreigner wants your cookie'

    Featured image via Gordon McKee

     

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Artificial Intelligence: At Heaven’s Gate

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises all sorts of wonderous things. We are told that it will add trillions to GDP; diagnosis, prescribe treatment and register cures for all manner of illnesses; relieve us of mind-numbing tasks at work and at home; and ensure that every one of us is better than average. Doubtless, AI does carry the potential to improve some aspects of our lives. To gain perspective on the impacts that it will and will not make, though, prudence tells us to ponder how exactly AI will resolve the following matters that are bedeviling us.

    * Americans’ selection as their President a demonstrable psychotic neo-Fascist, convicted felon, sexual predator and whose hallmarks are vulgarity, insult and sadist pleasure in hurting people
    * Our depraved partnership with Israel in crimes against humanity in Gaza – following on the United States’ participation in the murderous assault in Yemen
    * The raucous Congressional reception of Bibi Netanyahu the orchestrator of genocide whose very presence defiles the chamber
    * Picking a fight with China over the status of a territory, Taiwan, we acknowledged 50 years ago was an integral part of that country. Accompanied by a veritable campaign of provocations, this ensures a hostile relationship with the world’s other great power – the tenor of that relationship destined to shape global affairs for the balance of the century
    * A Supreme Court that has arrogated to itself the unbridled power to rewrite the Constitution to accord with its ideological dogmas and political biases while superimposing its judgement on any action of Executive agencies, the Congress or lower judicial bodies and regulatory agencies
    * Financialization of the economy in a way that guarantees periodic crises while continuing to redistribute trillions of national wealth into the pockets of the 1% — a process that will be accelerated by Cloud Capital’s exploitation of AI
    * Permitting a locust-like plague of hedge funds and private equity to scythe through the economy
    * Rampant drug addiction among the young
    * The wave of censorship by the MSM, by owners of social media sites, by Internet billionaires, by the government, by the former two at the instigation of the latter, by professional associations, by universities
    * Warehousing and neglect of the elderly
    * Mass homelessness
    * The sterility of the creative arts
    * The absence of word class public transportation. [China has 28,000 miles of state-of- the-art high speed rail lines. The U.S. has zero. Plans are being floated to build, by 2035, an inaugural line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas — the Bugsy Siegel Express]

    What is the latent potential of AI to alleviate these conditions? One thing comes to mind: persons suffering acute anxiety/deep depression — as from mass structural unemployment and declining living standards — could open their hearts on AI CHATGPT — cheaper than a therapist.

    The post Artificial Intelligence: At Heaven’s Gate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Epstein Island of Everyday Capitalist Reality

    A missing story thread of the Epstein scandal involves his connection to and service in behalf of Israel. Yes, we know the marketing platitude: “sex sells.” It goes without saying, genocide doesn’t. But there is a connection: The confederacy of pervs of the economic elite’s sense of entitlement includes possessing a proprietary attitude towards all they survey — whether it involves exploitation of the bodies of women and teenage girls or parceling off for profit the real estate of Gaza by means of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

    Ecocide, perpetual war, for profit Big Medicine, non-living wages, exorbitant rent and housing cost — all have the same root cause: structures of power created for the massive exploitation of the powerless.

    Term it, The Epstein Island of Everyday Capitalist Reality.

    Seems like yesterday, Trump seemed to thrive in his persona of a pervy creepopathic tub of noxious goo. But the mania attendant to the predilection has, by all indications, caused him to lapse into a doom spiral.

    Study his face. There is no amount of fake tan lacquer that can continue to camouflage the rot festering in his rancid soul nor hide the signs auguring that he is nearing a collapse into his corrupt and rotted out core.

    Trump is the emblem of the massive animus required to distract from the decaying conditions of neoliberal capitalism and overstretched empire. All nations have bodies buried on their property. But empires are maintained by the mindset, evinced in a collective basis, and, on a subliminal basis, mimicked below by its citizenry, of criminals, from grifters to cold blooded assassins.

    Masked thugs intimidate on the streets and demand compliance. Financial malfeasance is the economic order of the era. And the spilled blood of the innocent is the calling card of the state.

    Crime pays and pays (obscenely) well. Yet the hyper-vigilance, hubris, and manic cope needed to maintain the rampant criminality will, after a time, exhaust the enterprise. The players will get sloppy, first from overconfidence then from fatigue.

    May be an image of text

    Trump, face to cankles, is an object lesson on the phenomenon.

    Trump, character-wise, in regard to his predecessors to the US presidency, is about as odious as a specimen that ever slouched through the precincts of the White House.

    Bear in mind, though, as with Trump, the previous occupant, Biden, was an enabler of genocide. Previously, Obama bragged about being an ardent murderer-by-predator-drone and evinced equal zeal in acting as an operative for Big Banks and corporate oligarchs in general. The Bush (i.e., Cheney) administration lied the nation into foreign wars and (and with the help of congressional Democrats) expanded the National Security State. Bill Clinton continued the Cold War after the collapse of the USSR, lorded over racist, police state enhancing crime legislation, and cut Welfare benefits for impoverished children. The geriatric Howdy Doody puppet of the economic elite and war profiteers, Ronald Reagan, following the tentative measures of Jimmy Carter, ushered in, in full force, the Neoliberal Era, as his handlers waged a series of covert, imperialist wars abroad. Richard Nixon initiated the fascist contrivance known as the War On Drugs — an authoritarian campaign waged against minorities and the counter culture, perpetrated a covert war in Laos and Cambodia that caused the subsequent deaths of millions, and there is no need to elaborate on the crimes known as the Watergate Scandal that led to his political undoing.

    All of the Executive Office’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells (a quaint term for men responsible for so much death and suffering) actions culminated in the rise of the US empire-undermining, shambling embodiment of The Second Law Of Thermodynamics in (dismal) human form, Donald J. Trump.

    As far as odiousness of character goes, Trump faces stiff competition insofar as the succession of racists, corrupt tools of capitalism, war criminals, and enablers and perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and genocide who held the office of president before him.

    May be an image of the Oval Office
    Crime Boss-in-Chief peruses the rogue gallery of his predecessors

    Yes, Trump is an ugly man. But the question remains: Is he making the US an uglier place or is he merely exposing what was always hidden in plain sight?

    Witness the recent Jennifer Jacobs outage. When the Bloomberg News reporter questioned Trump aboard Air Force One as to whether he had knowledge of incriminating information contained within the Epstein files, he pointed his finger in a threatening manner towards the journalist’s face, and stabbing the air in front of her, snarled the now notorious ad hominem, “Quiet! Quiet, piggy!”

    A crucial question:

    Did any of the corporate press who witnessed the affront come to the woman’s defense — or even press the Swine-in-Chief to answer her question?

    Thus we are presented with an object lesson on the reason Epstein’s et al. criminal activity went on unacknowledged and unreported for as long as it did.

    The fact does not bode well regarding whether Epstein’s power-filthy cohorts in crime will ever face justice.

    And finally regarding the aesthetics of facial features — who is it exactly that possesses a porcine-adjacent countenance. (No AI enhancement required.)

    No photo description available.

    Swinish over-consumption at the fossil fuel feeding trough:

    Trump on climate change at the recent Saudi-US so-called “Investment” conference:

    I’m all for climate change… It’s climate change that’s destroying the world, remember? The world was supposed to have been gone two years ago. The world was gonna burn up, but it actually got much cooler. It’s a little conspiracy. We have to investigate them immediately. They probably are being investigated.

    When the sundowner years begin to descend on a lifelong grifter he will be given, to a greater and greater degree, to believe his own grift. Conversely, an accomplished con artist is aware of the realities of the world at large because verisimilitude is crucial to the success of the con; he risks exposure by not being nimble enough to know the difference between the actual situation at hand and his own lies. Between his advancing age, his physical decline and his worsening affliction of gold fever Trump’s deteriorating condition appears to be accelerating at an exponential rate. His mental acuity is dropping at a faster than beaters on the used car market.

    Withal, Trump: 

    My pollsters said, ‘Sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came back from the dead and they went for the president, vice president as a combination, you’d be beating them by 25 points.

    Trump has always had a hostile relationship with the realm of fact and truth, but as age-related dementia is setting in his talent or grift is losing its ability to ensnare the credulous and even seduce the stupid.

    Trump’s state of mind displays both the most the infantile omniscience of toddler and the unhinged rage of a nursing home malcontent. Still in their prime High Dollar hustlers (e.g., a bone saw aficionado Saudi monarch) have discerned he, like an infant reaching for a set of jangling keys, is dazzled by the scintillation of gold. Flattered and bedazzled when gifted with shiny objects, he can be bended to their will.

    May be an image of the Oval Office

    President Sundowner rises at morning and dispatches the following into his Truth Social Dominion Of Onset Dementia Palaver:

    For his political rivals to be dispatched to the gallows and hung by the neck, insisting ”It’s what George Washington would do.”

    As events proceed increasingly beyond his raging will and his poll numbers continue to spiral southward, even in the red state south, expect more old man flings his pudding cup at nursing home staff outbursts. Trump’s, like his partner in unfettered exploitation Jeffrey Epstein, time of unaccountability for his action seems to be at an end. Could the Empire Of Endless Exploitation be in the initial stage of foundering?

    Tech Oligarch loony muffin Peter Thiel rants any restraint pertaining to capitalists’ proclivity to view the body of planet earth as rife for exploitation in the manner Trump and Epstein viewed the underage bodies of teenage beauty contestants should be regarded as evidence that the Antichrist is guiding the events of the day and The Beast Of Revelations’ ten crowns of blasphemy are cresting the waves of Mayor Elect Mamdani’s New York Harbor.

    The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel's Antichrist Obsession | WIRED

    Although Thiel’s declaration is the crackbrained stuff of fascist boilerplate and borderline psychotic fantasy of the kind that malignant narcissistic personality types are prone to sputter when under duress, the fantasy is revealing: The billionaire economic elite believe any curtailing of their privilege and power would seem like the world coming to an end.

    Call me an operative of the Antichrist or a treasonous leftard but I am all in for giving the times a sustained push in that direction.


    “The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea,” William Blake

    The post The Epstein Island of Everyday Capitalist Reality first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The ban on Palestine Action is inherently Islamophobic

    “It’s our pals that were arrested.”

    We had known for a few days that two people from the University of Nottingham had been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, but nobody knew who. One morning in 2008, in the middle of exam season, a friend found out that two of our pals had been arrested.

    Just like we knew this June when we heard that Palestine Action had been banned under the same terrorism law, we knew then that this was nonsense. We knew then, as now, that when people of colour take part in organising for peace and justice, the state gets scared quickly and hits out. We knew then, as now, that this was bullshit.

    Only a couple of months before, one of them had been plucked out of a Free Palestine protest outside our university library and arrested. He was released without charge because he wasn’t doing anything different to everyone else there, apart from having a darker skin tone.

    “So we should probably organise a meeting about this on the weekend”, my pal said.

    “Fuck that”, I replied, “we need to meet today.”

    Islamophobia from the cops

    That evening we met in a pal’s living room. About 12 of us gathered to work out what to do. We were scared. Homes had been raided. People had only just found out where their loved ones were. Officers in unmarked police cars were waiting outside. Some of us (not the white ones) were followed home.

    The line from the Counter Terrorism Police was that our pals had copies of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual and therefore were terrorists. It sounds legit, until you know that it was downloaded from US government websites as part of their studies. The University of Nottingham did not bother to check what they were studying before they called the police.

    Power never backs down or apologises unless forced to. From that first meeting we organised. We held a huge demo. We spoke to the media all around the world. The academic community were rightly concerned about academic freedom and some of them kicked off too. It turned out counter terrorism police had made up evidence, so eventually they had to apologise for that. The police hassled one of them so much that they had to pay him £20,000 for continued unjustified harassment.

    To their shame, the University of Nottingham never apologised for its part in this racist witch hunt. They even hounded out Dr Rod Thornton, who acted as a whistleblower for their Islamophobic attacks. Never one to learn from their mistakes, the University of Nottingham again did not check before doing something, accidentally naming an accommodation block after them, the Nottingham Two.

    Stopping Muslim dissent under the guise of terrorism

    This was not the first time the Terrorism Act 2000 had been used to shut down dissent.

    In 2003, it was used to stop protesters at an arms fair and detain over 1,000 peace protesters. In 2005, to evict an 82-year-old heckler from the Labour Party Conference. Schedule 7 of the Act is repeatedly used to target journalists and activists. The police made up “Domestic Extremism” and now “Aggravated Activism” to label protests similar to terrorism.

    It is also not the first time counter-terror powers have been used in an Islamophobic way. Prevent is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and racism and has contributed to the legitimisation of institutional discrimination against Muslims.

    Palestine Action is a protest group. It supports Palestine, which is largely Muslim. On top of that, many people active in it are Muslim.

    The ban on Palestine Action is a worrying marriage of these two chronic abuses. Just as we saw back in 2008, Muslim dissent is seen as a legitimate target for crushing with terrorism legislation. Counter terrorism powers have always been used to crack down on dissent and attack Muslim people and communities. Just as we did in 2008, organising is the only way to defend our freedoms, friends and communities.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Father of Timor Post’ – why Asia Pacific media legend Bob Howarth’s legacy will live on

    TRIBUTE: By Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo

    The world has lost a giant with the passing of Australian media legend Bob Howarth. He was 81.

    He was a passionate advocate for journalism who changed many lives with his extraordinary kindness and generosity coupled with wisdom, experience and an uncanny ability to make things happen.

    Howarth worked for major daily newspapers in his native Australia and around the world, having a particularly powerful impact on the Asia Pacific region.

    I first met Bob Howarth in 2001 in Timor-Leste during the nation’s first election campaign after the hard-won independence vote.

    We met in the newsroom of the Timor Post, a daily newspaper he had been instrumental in setting up.

    I was doing my journalism training there when Howarth was asked to tell the trainees about his considerable experience. It was only a short conversation, but his words and body language captivated me.

    He was a born storyteller.

    Role in the Timor-Post
    I later found out about his role in the birth of the Timor Post, the newly independent nation’s first daily newspaper.

    In early 2000, after hearing Timorese journalists lacked even the most basic equipment needed to do their jobs, he hatched a plan to get non-Y2K-compliant PCs, laptops and laser printers from Queensland Newspapers over to Dili.

    And, despite considerable hurdles, he got it done. Then his bosses sent Howarth himself over to help a team of 14 Timorese journalists set up the Post.

    The first publication of the Timor Post occurred during the historic visit of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to Timor-Leste in February 2000.


    A media mass for Bob Howarth in Timor-Leste          Video: Timor Post

    In that first edition, Bob Howarth wrote an editorial in English, entitled “Welcome Mr Wahid”, accompanied by photos of President Wahid and Timorese national hero Xanana Gusmão. That article was framed and proudly hangs on the wall at the Timor Post offices to this day.

    After Bob Howarth left Timor-Leste, he delivered some life-changing news to the Timor Post — he wanted to sponsor a journalist from the newspaper to study in Papua New Guinea. The owners chose me.

    In 2002, I went with another Timorese student sponsored by Howarth to study journalism at Divine Word University in Madang on PNG’s north coast.

    Work experience at the Post-Courier
    During our time in PNG, we began to see the true extent of Howarth’s kindness. During every university holiday we would fly to Port Moresby to stay with him and get work experience at the Post-Courier, where Bob was managing director and publisher.

    Bob Howarth
    Bob Howarth with Mouzy Lopes de Araujo in Dili in 2012 . . . training and support for many Timorese and Pacific journalists. Image: Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo

    Our relationship became stronger and stronger. Sometimes we would sit down, have some drinks and I’d ask him questions about journalism and he would generously answer them in his wise and entertaining way.

    In 2005, I went back to Timor-Leste and I went back to the Timor Post as political reporter.

    When the owners of the Post appointed me editor-in chief in the middle of 2007, at the age of 28, I contacted Bob for advice and training support, with the backing of the Post’s new director, Jose Ximenes. That year I went to Melbourne to attend journalism training organised by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre.

    I then flew to the Gold Coast and stayed for two days with Bob Howarth and Di at their beautiful Miami home.

    “Congratulations, Mouzy, for becoming the new editor-in-chief of the Post,” said Bob Howarth as he shook my hand, looking so proud. But I replied: “Bob, I need your help.”

    He said, “Beer first, mate” — one of his favourite sayings — and then we discussed how he could help. He said he would try his best to bring some used laptops for Timor Post when he came to Dili to provide some training.

    Arrival of laptops
    True to his word, in early 2008 he and one of his long-time friends, veteran journalist Gary Evans, arrived in Dili with said laptops, delivered the training and helped set up business plans.

    After I left the Post in 2010, I planned with some friends to set up a new daily newspaper called the Independente. Of course, I went to Bob for ideas and advice.

    On a personal note, without Bob Howarth I may never have met my wife Jen, an Aussie Queensland University of Technology student who travelled to Madang in 2004 on a research trip. Bob and Di represented my family in Timor-Leste at our engagement party on the Gold Coast in 2010.

    Bob Howarth
    Without Bob Howarth, Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo may never have met his Australian wife Jen . . . pictured with their first son Enzo Lopes on Christmas Day 2019. Image: Jennifer Scott

    Jen moved to Dili at the end of that year and was part of the launch of Independente in 2011.

    In the paper’s early days Howarth and Evans came back to Dili to train our journalists. He then also worked with the Timor-Leste Press Council and UNDP to provide training to many journalists in Dili.

    Before he got sick, the owners and founders of the Timor Post paid tribute to Bob Howarth as “the father of the Timor Post” at the paper’s 20th anniversary celebrations in 2020 because of his contributions.

    He and the Timor Post’s former director had a special friendship. Howarth was the godfather for Da Costa’s daughter, Stefania Howarth Da Costa.

    Bob Howarth at the launch of the Independente in Dili in 2011
    Bob Howarth at the launch of the Independente in Dili in 2011. Image:

    30 visits to Timor-Leste
    During his lifetime Bob Howarth visited Timor-Leste more than 30 times. He said many times that Timor-Leste was his second home after Australia.

    After the news of his passing after a three-and-a-half-year battle with cancer was received by his friends at the Independente and the Timor Post on November 13, the Facebook walls of many in the Timorese media were adorned with words of sadness.

    Both the Timor Post and the Independente organised a special mass in Bob Howarth’s honour.

    He has left us forever but his legacy will be always with us.

    May your soul rest in peace, Bob Howarth.

    Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo is former editor-in-chief of the Timor Post and editorial director of the Independente in Timor-Leste, and is currently living in Brisbane with his wife Jen and their two boys, Enzo and Rafael.

    Bob Howarth (third from right) in Paris in 2018 for the Asia Pacific summit of Reporters Without Borders
    Bob Howarth (third from right) in Paris in 2018 for the Asia Pacific summit of Reporters Without Borders correspondents along with colleagues, including Asia Pacific Report publisher David Robie (centre). Image: RSF/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • From the sound of the crowd to the echo of explosions: the story of sports journalists in Gaza

    In an instant, the sounds of the crowd and their cheers from the stadiums turned into the echo of Israel’s explosions. The seasoned sports journalist from Gaza, who had spent years covering major tournaments, from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to the local league, suddenly found himself in front of a camera tasked with conveying the suffering of his people.

    What used to be a day of filming goals, celebrations, and match analysis became one of documenting blood, destruction, martyrs, and hunger.

    This transition was not just a change of workplace, but a complete reversal of his media mission: from conveying the joy of the crowd and the excitement of the stadium to narrating a live human tragedy to the world. Between the destruction and devastation, and between the scenes he used to see in his sporting dreams and what was happening on the ground, the journalist became a witness to daily violations and massacres, sacrificing the psychological and professional comfort he was accustomed to in sports media in order to convey the voice of Gaza to the world.

    It took Palestinian sports journalist Wael Al-Halabi less than a minute to realise that his professional life had changed forever.

    Sports journalists on the frontline in Gaza

    At noon on 7 October 2023, as he was preparing to cover a Premier League match in Gaza, he received an urgent call from his manager asking him to go to the hospital instead of the stadium. The voice on the other end was decisive:

    The newsroom needs you immediately… The war has begun.

    In that moment, Halabi’s lens shifted from following players to documenting martyrs. From the background of the stands and cheers, he found himself facing corpses, blood, and screams searching for survivors. He tells Palestine Online:

    The job of a journalist in war is no different from that of a fighter… only the weapon changes.

    What happened to Al-Halabi was no exception; it was the general scene of an entire sports press turned upside down. Dozens of journalists who used to fill the stadiums with their coverage and interactions are now running after the smoke of air strikes, chasing stories of survivors instead of stars, and recording the names of martyrs instead of league scorers.

    Yahya Eid, who used to photograph players’ shots or the joy of the crowd, found himself chasing his camera between destroyed houses:

    The player I used to photograph scoring a goal, I now photograph standing at his friend’s funeral… How can a single lens bear this transformation?

    He adds that the war has stripped the profession of its original innocence: photography is no longer a search for moments of joy, but an attempt to save memories before they are erased.

    As for journalist Khamis Abu Hasira, known to the Gaza public for his voice broadcasting matches on Sawt al-Quds radio, he appeared after the start of the war on Palestine Today television, standing amid the rubble of a stadium that was once filled with cheers. In that shot, which shook viewers, he addressed the camera, saying:

    Here, where the crowds used to cheer, displaced people now sleep without shelter.

    A seismic shift

    The shift from sports journalism to war coverage was not just a professional transition, but a humanitarian shock and a psychological battle that these journalists face every day. Sport gives stories clear endings: winners and losers, goals and joy. War, however, offers only one ending: death.

    This shift imposed on Palestinian journalists was not a choice, but a necessity to capture the truth in the midst of one of the most violent wars in contemporary history.

    They have become a bridge between what is happening on the ground and what reaches the world, a first line of defence against attempts to obscure the narrative, and witnesses to a time when everything is collapsing… even the stadiums that were once a symbol of life.

    As the war continues to change every detail of Gaza, sports journalists remain a model of the profession’s resilience and courage; those who have moved from the roar of the crowds to the echo of explosions, carrying their cameras as a last point of light amid the darkness of war, clinging to their mission: to keep the truth alive… even if the stadium dies.

    I, the writer of this article, am no exception to this harsh transformation.

    Lives changed forever in Gaza

    I spent many years in football stadiums, as a prolific writer, television analyst, and sports reporter, covering international tournaments such as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and I was preparing for research projects in sports media development after obtaining a master’s degree in this field.

    But the war in Gaza pushed me, as it did others, to leave the stands behind and stand in front of a French television camera, conveying the voices of martyrs instead of the voices of fans, documenting hunger instead of infiltration, and destruction instead of joy.

    As the days passed, I could no longer remember what life was like before the war. I was swallowed up by politics and the field, until I found myself writing about myself as I tried to remember what my daily life was like when the most important news was a beautiful goal, not an air strike.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour has just betrayed its 2024 manifesto completely

    I checked Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto on immigration.  “We have a proud tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and abuse,” it says.

    Perhaps there was a mix-up at the printers, because they forgot to say, “Within the first year of the Parliament, we will make a speech echoing Enoch Powell.  In year two, we will start to seize the jewellery of vulnerable people fleeing war by enacting a policy that evokes scenes from Schindler‘s List.”

    Labour: betraying its own manifesto (again)

    In case you missed it, Alex Norris, minister of state for border security and asylum, was interviewed on Sky News.  The Labour government had briefed journalists that asylum seekers would have their jewellery and other assets seized to pay for their stays in detention centres and overcrowded hostels.  Pressed on the issue by Sophie Ridge, he said that people’s heirlooms would not be confiscated.  Or their wedding rings.  How kind. But if they had a bag of jewellery, it would be.  Presumably the underpaid and overstretched public servants processing asylum claims will now go on a special two week course run by the Antiques Roadshow.

    Labour home secretary Shabana Mahmoud said, “Dark forces are stirring up anger in this country, and seeking to turn that anger into hate. We must take the opportunity we have to stop that from happening.”  Presumably by doing their job for them.

    With the subtext reader turned on, Mahmoud said, “Frankly, I’m sickened by my own actions, but I’m part of a clueless government that thought saying ‘growth’ often enough would fix everything.  Now we’re out of our depth and panicking because we’re fourth in the polls. And rather than open safe and legal routes which would actually be quite popular, we’ve decided to roll in behind the people shouting at hotels.”

    Where are the legal routes?

    The quickest way to stop the small boats would be to allow asylum seekers to use safe and legal routes.  No one is going pay a huge wad of cash to get in a dinghy when you can go to the ferry terminal and buy a ticket.  It is alarming that a government so obsessed with the magic growth bunny cannot grasp basic supply and demand.

    British public opinion supports safe and legal routes for asylum seekers, with 43% in favour vs 28% against.  Despite the best efforts of the government and billionaire backed media, 29% are still undecided.

    If I lived in a war zone, or was in danger of being imprisoned and tortured for standing up for democracy, or was stricken by poverty, I’d be trying to get out of the country with my wife and kids.  Overall 87% of Britons support the idea of us giving refuge to those fleeing persecution.

    Yet despite language claiming that safe and legal routes will be opened, Labour’s own announcement says something different.  Every mention of new routes refers to refugees, who will come on capped and approved schemes.  There is no mention of asylum seekers.  Part of the divisive strategy around migration is to deliberately muddy the terms.  As defined by the United Nations, refugees are former asylum seekers who have had their claim processed and been granted refugee status.  An asylum seeker is someone whose claim has not yet been processed.  They do not have refugee status.

    Conspicuously missing from any government announcement is the fact that migration has huge economic benefits.  Half of all UK immigrants are overseas students who contribute a whopping £41.9 billion to the UK economy.  It’s also a source of immense soft power for Britain globally to have so many professionals educated here.

    Labour sell outs

    I don’t believe Mahmood and her Labour cabinet colleagues got into politics to beat down on some of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.  I do believe that when push comes to shove they will sell out anyone to protect their jobs and the white colonial infrastructure the UK is built on.

    Unfortunately for all of us, they are really very bad at their jobs.

    These are the geniuses that tried to prevent a leadership challenge against Starmer by announcing Starmer would stand in any leadership challenge.  They seem to take their latest inspiration from Denmark, briefing that the Danish Social Democrats are doing something similar to fight off the far right.  Yet a ten second Google search tells you that this very policy is likely to lose them control of Copenhagen for the first time in a century, driving progressive voters to the Red Green Alliance.

    It’s a pity that Starmer, Reeves and co haven’t followed the Danes’ other policies.  They tax capital gains up to 42% compared to Britain’s top rate of 28%.  This funds free university and excellent public services, giving them the world’s second highest standard of living.

    It is ironic that Labour are introducing a wealth tax on asylum seekers, but not on billionaires.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Starmer and his government are disintegrating before our very eyes

    Keir Starmer, the catastrophic charlatan who has turned Labour’s landslide into a laughing stock faster than you can say “mission-led government”, will be incredibly fortunate if he lasts another six months.

    The leadership farce that has engulfed Downing Street since early November is destroying Starmer’s crumbling credibility within his own ranks.

    Starmer’s allies, who were manically briefing like deranged arsonists against the Poundland Pet Shop Boy, Wes Streeting, have left the isolated prime minister looking like more of a paranoid weakling than ever before.

    The writing is on the wall, Mr Starmer.

    Starmer vs Rayner vs Burnham: what a choice

    I have no preference for the next Labour leader. Why would I care for the name of the next servant of the elite? The next Labour leader, and prime minister by default, will come from the right wing of the party.

    I am seeing Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham being touted as not only the saviours of Britain and the rancid, corrupt Labour Party, but also the saviours of the left.

    Britain is a horrible, expensive, racist shit hole, the Labour Party is dead and almost buried, and the left is perfectly capable of destroying itself from within. Absolutely no assistance is required from the two former cabinet minister heavyweights who had a perfectly decent opportunity to prove their left credentials, some time ago.

    How did that go?

    I must admit, when Starmer came in, I thought he would at least see out one term. The vast but thoroughly undeserved majority should’ve been enough to drag him through five tumultuous years with the likelihood of a smaller majority at the next general election.

    Yet here we are, just sixteen disastrous months later, with whispers of rebellion echoing through the lobbies because, surprise, this incompetent, authoritarian nonsense isn’t going down particularly well with MPs and constituents alike.

    The Labour government’s latest plans for refugees are so typically vile of what the Labour Party has become.

    Vile

    Who even is Shabana Mahmood, when she isn’t aping far-right populist rhetoric, ethnically stereotyping an entire nation, and claiming expenses to cover the services of a spin doctor?

    Once a darling of Labour’s soft-left, morally-rotten Mahmood’s unveiling of sweeping asylum reforms isn’t just a bit of policy wonkery; it is yet another savage and dangerous pivot to the right, one that’s earning her plaudits from Nigel Farage, Tommy Five Names, and Reform UK goons, all while fracturing Labour’s soul beyond recognition.

    Mahmood’s “moral mission” stinks of performative toughness. She invoked her own racism to inoculate herself against charges of stoking division, using her personal trauma as a gagging order on her critics, all while her own policies fan the flames of xenophobia and hatred that she claims to abhor.

    A reminder, we are talking about a Labour government here. Whatever happened to international solidarity? Whatever happened to the Labour Party?

    Keir Starmer seems to think that ripping off Denmark’s notoriously cruel playbook — confiscating refugees’ property, deporting children, and turning Britain into an “island of strangers” — will appease the bigots in Reform UK. The naivety is utterly astounding.

    Starmer’s “battle for the soul of the country” bullshit is simply a very public surrender to Reform’s big lead in the polls.

    Starmer and Mahmood, hailing from the ‘soft-left’ of Labour, could not be any clearer. Britain is a country hostile to foreigners.

    Jeremy Corbyn nailed it, as he often does. This isn’t progressive. It’s Labour folding like a cheap suit to Farage’s nativism, flushing refugees’ fundamental rights down the toilet for a few red wall votes. And it really is just a few because the right-wing despise the shapeshifter Starmer as much as you or I, believe it or not.

    Starmer: mainstreaming the racist

    Keir Starmer is mainstreaming the ugliest impulses in British politics, and why? A desperate last-ditch attempt to maintain a grip on the power that he surrendered to left-purger-in-chief McSweeney during the days of opposition.

    To every part-time socialist who held their nose and voted Labour in July, only to watch Starmer piss away a historic mandate like a Tory on a pub crawl, how does it feel to witness a masterclass in betrayal, incompetence, and spineless capitulation to the very forces Starmer once pretended to oppose, safe in the knowledge that YOU enabled it?

    The Starmerites can’t even call it a blip because they know, deep down, it is the death rattle of a fraud. We are approaching the finale of Keir Starmer’s self-scripted tragedy, and with his own approval ratings down the pan and his gutless party fractured beyond recognition, justice feels poetic.

    Starmer’s beige apocalypse meltdown has been truly remarkable. Plots, leaks, infighting, and a popularity plunge so steep it would make a cliff abseiler blush.

    Starmer’s not governing, he’s disintegrating, and I, for one, will dance on the ashes of his unforgivable betrayal.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Reform UK councillor suspended after vile WhatsApp messages exposed

    Reform UK councillor Tom Pickup has been suspended from Nigel Farage’s party after a member of a WhatsApp group allegedly called for a “mass Islam genocide” — dire language in every sense. Tom Pickup, a leading Reform councillor in Lancashire, is now under investigation.

    The far-right WhatsApp group also included a message inciting violence against Keir Starmer, saying that he “needs a f*cking bullet” and another calling him a “DICKtator” — to which Pickup replied by referring to Starmer as a “dicktaker” as well. In other comments, he supported mass deportations and allegedly called a government minister a “Ukrainian boy penetrator.”

    Reform UK—Tactical

    Pickup also suggested that Reform is being ‘tactical’ about its real racist beliefs in order to win power, saying that:

    Everyone in Reform is a lot more hardline on immigration than is typically stated publicly. To get a majority government we have to be tactical.

    After the WhatsApp messages came out, Pickup said he had “been my usual jokey self, and it’s been twisted out of context” and that he was unaware of extreme posts in the group calling for weapons to be stockpiled for use against “migrants” and the “mass Islam genocide” message. He also claimed to have “done a lot of community engagement work with the Islamic community” and that he would have condemned and reported the comments if he had seen them.

    Given Reform’s record of MPs and candidates caught making racist and homophobic comments — and the alleged record of party leader Nigel Farage — readers might be forgiven for thinking that the WhatsApp messages would be considered grounds for promotion rather than suspension.

    But perhaps, you know, ‘tactical’ until power and all that.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Leaked trans code is a victory for women everywhere, provided they don’t look a bit too mannish

    Despite being handed the 300-page document months ago, the government still hasn’t implemented the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) new trans code. It deals with the practical implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Equality Act defines women according to sex assigned at birth.

    The EHRC immediately chose to interpret this as the basis for the complete exclusion of trans people from the single-sex facilities of their lived gender. However, it has since taken down the ‘interim’ guidance.

    The lack of the new code has left trans people in a legal limbo. My community has been left without a clue to the extent of exclusion we are about to face.

    However, the new code has now been leaked to the press. The news outlets of the UK managed to get their reporting out just in time for Trans Day of Remembrance, on which we mourn the lives lost to transphobic violence and discrimination around the world. This, I’m sure, was a coincidence.

    The big reveal that has taken so long? The promised solution to the trans question? The service providers of the UK will be asked to take a guess at who they reckon is a tranny, and chuck people out accordingly.

    EHRC trans code: ‘based on how they look’

    The BBC wrote that:

    Trans people could be asked about whether they should be accessing single-sex services based on their physical appearance or behaviour, according to proposed new guidance seen by the BBC.

    Likewise, the Times claimed that:

    Under the guidance, which has been seen by The Times, places such as hospital wards, gyms and leisure centres will be able to question transgender women over their use of single-sex services based on how they look, their behaviour or concerns raised by others.

    Note the language used here: “trans people could be asked” and “question transgender women”. These statements are a rhetorical attempt to mislead the reader – either on the part of the EHRC or the news outlets. What’s more, the articles themselves expose them as such. Both go on to state some variation on the following:

    The code reportedly notes that “there is no type of official record or document in the UK which provides reliable evidence of sex” because people are able to change their sex on passports and driving licences without a GRC. Instead, where there is “genuine concern about the accuracy of the response”, the code reportedly states it may be proportionate to exclude a transgender person.

    ‘Humiliated and excluded’

    So, walk with me here. There’s no way to tell whether or not someone is trans by official documentation. As such, a service provider is allowed to exclude someone from single-sex spaces purely according to how they look and act.

    Therefore, someone doesn’t have to be trans in order to be excluded under the new anti-trans guidance. So stating that “trans women could be questioned” etc. isn’t actually true, is it? Anybody could be questioned, and anybody could be excluded, based purely on “concerns raised by others”.

    The EHRC and its transphobic stenographers in the BBC and the Times would like you to believe that this code will only impact trans people. This is a lie, and a deliberate one at that. Transphobes like to believe that they can tell who is trans just by looking at them, because they’ve convinced themselves that all trans women look like men in dresses, and all trans men look like tomboys.

    This is false. If it wasn’t, having sex without disclosing that you’re trans wouldn’t be a crime. If trans people always looked like their assigned sex, the EHRC wouldn’t have to suggest that trans men could be banned from men’s and women’s toilets. Likewise, trans advocacy and education group TransActual UK reported that:

    Our research has uncovered many stories of cis people, especially gender non-conforming women, being humiliated and excluded by staff or vigilante gender police when using the appropriate facilities and shown that this has already increased since the publication of the EHRC’s draft guidance.

    ‘Get this right’

    It falls on equalities minister Bridget Phillipson to make the EHRC’s guidance into law. The EHRC’s Kishwer Falkner – a woman criticised for her bigotry by the fucking Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide – has urged Phillipson to implement the new code. Likewise, the Guardian reported that the code was leaked by government figures who believe Labour is “delaying publication to avoid a potential backlash”.

    Addressing these claims, Phillipson told reporters:

    I have responsibilities to make sure that’s done properly and we’re taking the time to get this right.

    This is an important area and we want to make sure that women have access to a single-sex provision – that’s incredibly important for domestic violence services, rape crisis centres, so that women are able to heal from the trauma they’ve experienced.

    But of course, trans people should be treated with dignity and respect.

    Let’s not mince words. If a trans person is trying to access a rape crisis centre, it is because they have been raped. However, that fact is less important than the possibility that they might make a cis woman uncomfortable. There’s no “dignity and respect” in that.

    Similarly, there is no way to “get this right”, with all the time in the world. This transphobic code necessarily involves an assault on the rights of anyone who could be perceived as trans, regardless of their gender status. Trans+ Solidarity Alliance founder Jude Guaitamacchi called out that very fact, stating:

    These leaks reveal that not only does the EHRC’s proposed code of practice seek to require trans exclusion, it instructs service providers to police this based on appearance and gender stereotypes.

    This is a misogynist’s charter, plain and simple, and the government must reject it.

    Echoing the sentiment, a spokesperson for TransActual stated:

    We’ve seen this before – people trying to make our society into a place that is only safe for ‘normal’ ladies. Not just loos. But sports centres, changing rooms and more. We know from experience that women of colour and butch lesbians are more likely to be seen as unfeminine by strangers, so this policy would have racist and homophobic impacts as well as being obviously incredibly harmful for trans people.

    We offer our solidarity to the many cis women who have been targeted and harassed for their appearance by ‘gender critical activists’ who believed they were trans, and who would be put even further at risk by these rules.

    We cannot believe that government would be so foolish – so hell-bent on shooting itself in the foot – as to go along with this. We therefore trust that Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson will treat it with the contempt it deserves and reject this costly, cruel and unworkable guidance, sending it back to the EHRC to be completely rewritten.

    Congratulations to the anti-trans left. You’d better own the EHRC trans code.

    I want to finish this article with a direct address. Almost every time I – or one of my colleagues – write a piece on trans issues, the comment section is populated by people who cheer on the anti-trans policies. Some, I’m sure, are right-wing trolls who merely pretend to be on the left to muddy the water.

    However, I’m also sure that some of you genuinely believe that you are on the left. Lets ignore for a minute the fact that trans bans were a policy priority for the fascist Trump regime. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

    You might believe that trans women don’t belong in women’s sport. In turn, that opened the door to your wholesale opposition of trans people living their lives as they see fit. Maybe you believe that women’s oppression is rooted wholly in biology. Accordingly, you fight against the rights of the trans men you believe to be women, because they can’t be allowed to make decisions for themselves.

    I want to congratulate you. I am now wholly defined by my biology, or at least, whatever anybody cares to guess is my biology. This is your great victory. Please do celebrate.

    Only, own your victory with your whole chest, because all of it belongs to you. I cordially invite you to comment with expressions of joy, invectives for trans people to stay out of single-sex spaces, and explanations of why you’re actually the true leftist and all of the fascists you keep company with are mere coincidence.

    Just remember to append your comment with the following:

    I believe that the accompanying discrimination against intersex people, butch lesbians, femme gays, and gender non-conformists is worthwhile to achieve this goal.

    You fucking cowards.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Ramzy Baroud: Pathetic attempt to achieve by Gaza decree what US-Israel failed to gain through brute force

    COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

    UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected. It is a direct contravention of international law itself, imposed by the United States with the full knowledge and collaboration of Arab and Muslim states.

    These regimes brutally turned their backs on the Palestinians throughout the genocide, with some actively helping Israel cope with the economic fallout of its multi-frontal wars.

    The resolution is a pathetic attempt to achieve through political decree what the US and Israel decisively failed to achieve through brute force and war.

    It is doomed to fail, but not before it further exposes the bizarre, corrupted nature of international law under US political hegemony. The very country that has bankrolled and sustained the genocide of the Palestinians is the same country now taking ownership of Gaza’s fate.

    It is a sad testimony of current affairs that China and Russia maintained a far stronger, more principled position in support of Palestine than the so-called Arab and Muslim “brothers.”

    The time for expecting salvation from Arab and Muslim states is over; enough is enough.

    Even more tragic is Russia’s explanation for its abstention as a defence of the Palestinian Authority, while the PA itself welcomed the vote. The word treason is far too kind for this despicable, self-serving leadership.

    Recipe for disaster
    If implemented and enforced against the will of the Palestinians in Gaza, this resolution is a recipe for disaster: expect mass protests in Gaza, which will inevitably be suppressed by US-led lackeys, working hand-in-glove with Israel, all in the cynical name of enforcing “international law”.

    Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the history of Palestine knows that Res 2803 has hurled us decades back, resurrecting the dark days of the British Mandate over Palestine.

    Another historical lesson is due: those who believe they are writing the final, conclusive chapter of Palestine will be shocked and surprised, for they have merely infuriated history.

    The story is far from over. The lasting shame is that Arab states are now fully and openly involved in the suppression of the Palestinians.

    Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bending over backwards for the right isn’t saving the BBC. It won’t save the ABC either

    COMMENTARY: By Christopher Warren

    There’s been skillful work in journalism’s dark arts on display in the UK this past week, as the nasty British right-wing media pack tore down two senior BBC executives. The right-wing culture warriors will be celebrating big time.

    They reckon they’ve put a big dent in Britain’s most trusted and most used news media with the scalps of director-general Tim Davie and director of news Deborah Turness.

    Best of all, the London Daily Telegraph was able to make it look like an inside job (leaning into a paean of outrage from a former part-time “standards” adviser), hiding its hit job behind the pretence of serious investigative journalism.

    For the paper long dubbed the Torygraph, it’s just another day of pulling down the country’s centrist institutions for not being right wing enough in the destructive, highly politicised world of British news media.

    Sure, there’s criticisms to be made of the BBC’s news output. There’s plenty of research and commentary that pins the broadcaster for leaning over backwards to amplify right-wing talking points over hot-button issues like immigration and crime. (ABC insiders here in Australia call it the preemptive buckle.)

    Most recently, for example, a Cardiff University report last month found that nearly a quarter of BBC News programmes included Nigel Farage’s Reform Party — far more coverage than similar-sized parties like the centrist Liberal Democrats or the Greens received.

    It’s why there are mixed views about Davie (who started in the marketing rather than the programme-making side of the business), while the generally respected Turness is being mourned and protested more widely.

    BBC’s damage-control plan
    The resignations flow from the corporation’s damage-control plan around an earlier — and more genuine — BBC scandal: the 2020 expose that then rising star Martin Bashir had forged documents to nab a mid-1990s Princess Diana interview. You know the one: the royal-rocking “there were three of us in the marriage” one.

    The Boris Johnson government grabbed onto the scandal as an opportunity to drive “culture change”, as then Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden put it in an interview in Murdoch’s The Times. As part of that change, the BBC board (almost always the villain in BBC turmoil) decided to give the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee a bit of a hand, by adding an external “adviser”.

    Enter Michael Prescott, a former News Corp political reporter before moving on to PR and lobbying. Not a big BBC gig (it pays $30,000 a year), but it came with the fancy title of “Editorial Adviser”.

    Roll forward four years: new government, new board, new BBC scandal. Prescott’s term ended last July. But he left a land-mine behind: a 19-page jeremiad, critiquing the BBC and its staff over three of the right’s touchstone issues: Trump, Gaza and trans people.

    It fingered the BBC’s respected Arab programming for anti-Israel bias and smeared LGBTQIA+ reporters for promoting a pro-trans agenda.

    Last week, his letter turned up (surprise!) — all over the Telegraph’s front pages, staying there every day since last Tuesday, amplified by its partner on the right, the Daily Mail, helped along with matching deplora-quotes from conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and demands for answers from the Tory MP who chairs the House of Commons Culture Standing Committee.

    The one stumble sustaining the outrage? Back in November 2024, on the BBC’s flagship Panorama immediately before the US presidential election, snippets of Trump’s speech on the day of the January 6 riot had been spliced together, bringing together words which had been spoken 50 minutes apart.

    Carelessness . . . or bias?
    Loose editing? Carelessness? Or (as the cacophony on the right insist) demonstrable anti-Trump bias?

    The real problem? The loose editing took the report over one of the right’s red lines: suggesting — however lightly — that Trump was in any way responsible for what happened at the US Capital that day.

    Feeding the right’s fury, last Thursday the BBC released its findings that a newsreader’s facial expression when she changed a script on-air from “pregnant people” to “pregnant women” laid the BBC “open to the interpretation that it indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity”.

    Even as the British news media has deteriorated into the destructive, mean-spirited beast that it has become, outdated syndication arrangements mean Australia’s legacy media has to pretend to take it seriously. And our own conservative media just can’t resist joining in the mother country’s culture wars.

    An Australian Financial Review opinion piece by the masthead’s European correspondent Andrew Tillett took the opportunity to rap the knuckles of the ABC, the BBC and “their alleged cabals of leftist journalists and content producers”, while Jacquelin Magnay at The Australian called for a clean-out at the BBC due to its pivot “from providing factual news to becoming an activist for the trans lobby and promoting pro-Gaza voices”.

    Trump, of course, was not to be left out of the pile-on, with his press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the BBC “100 percent fake news” — and giving the UK Telegraph another front page to keep the story alive for another day. Overnight, Trump got back into the headlines as he announced his trademark US$1 billion demand on media that displeases him.

    It’s not the first time Britain’s Tory media have brought down a BBC boss for being insufficiently right wing. Back in 1987, Thatcher appointed ex-Daily Mail boss Marmaduke Hussey as BBC chair. Within three months, he shocked the niceties of British institutional life when he fired director-general Alastair Milne over the BBC’s reporting on the conservative government.

    Here we are almost 40 years later: another puffed-up scandal. Another BBC head falling to the outrage of the British Tory press.

    Christopher Warren is an Australian journalist and Crikey’s media correspondent. He was federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) until April 2015, and is a past president of the International Federation of Journalists. This article was first published by Crikey and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Opinion: COP30 Will Be the Opportunity of A Lifetime to Improve Our Food Systems

    cop30 food
    6 Mins Read

    Aline Baroni, country director of ProVeg Brasil, makes a case for why COP30 could bring about a pivotal shift in the fight for a better agrifood system.

    Brazil’s ecosystems are a kaleidoscope of life. 

    According to UNEP, the country ranks at the top of a small group of ‘megadiverse’ regions, hosting an estimated 15-20% of the world’s species across its diverse ecosystems, from rainforests and wetlands to savannas and coasts. Iconic species such as jaguars, sloths, macaws and capybara are native to Brazil, with thousands of other naturally occurring flora and fauna contributing to its ecological richness. 

    But this abundance is under siege, and the culprit is on our plates. A report from the UNEP and Chatham House shows that agriculture, and notably the expansion of pastures, is threatening 86% of species at risk of extinction.

    In Brazil, the meat industry is devouring the planet. Livestock production drives a staggering 90% of Amazon deforestation and spews over 60% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The damage comes from both ends: methane released through enteric fermentation, and deforestation to clear pastures and grow animal feed. It’s an industrial system that consumes land, water, and crops at a colossal scale, while flooding the atmosphere with methane and nitrous oxide.

    With Brazil being one of the top meat exporters in the world, the hunger for animal products in Europe and globally may be directly fueling the destruction of crucial ecosystems that sustain human life on our planet.

    But COP30, hosted in the Amazonian city of Belém, offers a chance to put how we grow and produce our food under the microscope. Sitting at the intersection between nature, agriculture and local life, Brazil’s COP30 embodies both the promise and the peril of our planet’s future: a frontline where biodiversity clashes with the global struggle to feed our world.

    The impact of industrial livestock

    amazon deforestation cattle
    Courtesy: Paralaxis/Shutterstock

    For decades, deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and the Cerrado savannah – driven largely by industrial agriculture – has marched on with little resistance. Millions of hectares of forest have been cleared for cattle ranching or to grow soybeans destined for animal feed across the world. 

    The process is as brutal as it is efficient: in order to clear the land, powerful fires are set, destroying thousands of plants, animals and ecosystems. Every tree that falls and every patch of habitat that disappears takes with it more than just greenery – it takes countless forms of life. A recent study found that in just five years, the Amazon may have lost up to 23.7 million hectares of forest, an area almost as large as the entire United Kingdom. 

    But the devastation doesn’t stop at deforestation – industrial animal agriculture is also one of the biggest climate emitters. Upwards of 15% of direct greenhouse gases are pumped out by the livestock sector, including approximately 32% of all global, human-caused methane emissions. This puts the Paris agreement’s goal to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels further out of reach. 

    The fallout is environmental as well as social. Traditional communities, whose livelihoods depend on the land, are being displaced as pastures expand and profits take precedence. The global appetite for cheap meat is driving not only ecological collapse, but also deepening inequality and poverty in Brazil.

    Meanwhile, in wealthier nations, excessive consumption of animal-sourced foods is fuelling a public health crisis – with the EAT-Lancet Commission estimating that a global shift toward plant-rich diets could prevent up to 40,000 premature deaths every day.

    Towards a just food transition

    brazil livestock farming
    Courtesy: Igor Alecsander/Getty Images

    But none of this is inevitable. With courage and vision, leaders can turn the tide, crafting policies that protect nature, restore biodiversity and strengthen communities.

    Yet the solutions must be as diverse as the planet they aim to save. We must think of our food system as a complex and interconnected arrangement of actors, interests and variants. Cutting meat production and consumption is a crucial lever, especially in wealthy countries, and how to do it in a fair and nuanced manner should be at the core of the debate.

    On the production side, switching away from livestock must bring better opportunities and a higher quality of life for farmers; on the consumption side, promoting plant-rich diets must encourage healthy eating and food justice.

    In Brazil, the recently launched Cultiva Project assists farmers in transitioning from livestock farming to plant-based agroforestry, showing what a just transition could look like. The pilot works hand-in-hand with rural producers to design transition plans that honour local sociobiodiversity while unlocking new opportunities, including income increase.

    This isn’t simply a strategy for cutting meat consumption; it’s a blueprint for shared prosperity. By giving farmers the knowledge, tools, and support to adopt sustainable and resilient practices, projects like Cultiva are turning agriculture from a driver of devastation into a force for regeneration.

    Brazil also has the largest school meals program in the world, PNAE. Working with municipalities, state governments and schools, PNAE aims to ramp up veggie and legume intake at the early stages of life when eating habits are formed, showcasing another promising way of promoting sustainable, healthy plant-rich diets.

    When sustainable farming and school meals come together, a perfect cycle is created – especially in Brazil, where 45% of ingredients used in schools must come from smallholder, family farmers. By encouraging farmers to produce more veggies, and children to consume them, these initiatives have the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of the food system almost immediately, and on a large scale, while promoting health and a just transition.

    Looking to COP30

    cop30 just transition
    Courtesy: ProVeg

    But these actions are just a drop in the ocean when considering the damage already caused. There needs to be bold, international policy and non-state action to accelerate the transition to resilient and equitable food systems, across the entire value chain.

    The recent Belém Declaration on Plant-Rich Diets, signed by dozens of NGOs, MEPs and regional governments, such as the City of West Hollywood, California and Oxford City Council proposes a simple solution. It calls on national governments to promote healthy and sustainable diets through the drafting and implementation of Action Plans for Plant-Based Foods. 

    This declaration will be presented at COP30, where there are numerous opportunities to elevate the role of food systems in tangible climate action. Countries are on a deadline to submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions, and there is hope that progressive nations will incorporate food-related targets, such as reducing methane emissions from agriculture. 

    Brazil’s leadership knows that the moment for bold action on food has arrived. The Presidency’s Action Agenda for this year makes that clear. Its third pillar, Transforming Agriculture and Food Systems, calls on those beyond the negotiating tables, from civil society to business and investors, to step up. That’s why the Action on Food Hub Pavilion has united the community at COP30, to reshape food systems that are not only productive, but also adaptive, equitable, and restorative – for people and the planet. 

    The planet is entering a new reality – one marked by the first of several catastrophic, potentially irreversible climate tipping points. Against this backdrop, COP30 could be our last and best chance to forge solutions that deliver real, lasting change.

    The momentum built by the food movement in recent years has shown what’s possible; now it’s time to turn that progress into policy. Bold, decisive action can still ensure that Brazil – the beating heart of the world’s biodiversity – remains a thriving sanctuary for generations to come.

    The post Opinion: COP30 Will Be the Opportunity of A Lifetime to Improve Our Food Systems appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • A desperate plea to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana over Your Party

    Jeremy and Zarah, I hope you’re reading this, as this message is addressed to you both about Your Party.

    For so many years, the left has been utterly lost. Since the Labour Party sabotaged Corbyn’s leadership, shit on all of our hard work, we have been crushed and lost. Then out of nowhere, when so many people had all but given up, Your Party was announced, and all of a sudden, so many of us felt a flicker of hope again. That fire in our bellies which had been stomped out, flared back to life, and over 800k people signed up as the politics of hope was resurrected. It felt like a new dawn was breaking, that a movement for the people could finally be built.

    But now, that hope has all but been crushed with public infighting. Please, for the love of the movement, listen to the thousands of people who support you now.

    We are begging you to stop this.

    Time is a vital factor now; the clock is ticking. A Farage government is looming over Britain, a rise in fascism heralded by flags in our streets, and a massive surge in racist rhetoric.

    History will judge this moment harshly. Unity isn’t an option anymore; it’s a fucking necessity, and we need to rise above this internal struggle.

    Is this divide in Your Party old guard vs new energy?

    Your current struggle mirrors our movement’s deepest conflicts. Your Party reflects two powerful demographics, both of which we need to succeed politically. And right now, we need them to fucking coexist.

    Jeremy, you represent our past strengths and victories. When I think of the left in the UK, I think of you and how you awoke so many people, myself included, to the world of politics. You’ve always championed the NHS, working-class solidarity, you’ve stood against racism and championed human rights. You are the older generation’s voice for change and it’s so vital for stability. It gives us historical grounding and this movement owes you so much.

    Zarah, you are a political whirlwind. You connect deeply with a new, diverse generation. Your face is all over social media, your speeches encouraging the direct action we so desperately need. You understand how the young feel, how they organise and this is so important for growth. Without it the party will wither away and fail to bring in new activists. The future of the movement, our movement, depends on that energy. You are the future of the left.

    Can you not see the party needs both of you? We need the history of you both. We need both of your voices and the strength you bring to truly make this movement work for all. We need the wisdom of experience but also the fire of youth to truly build something effective.

    You are both two sides of the same essential coin.

    The betrayal of exclusion risks ostracising so many

    The recent sniping online isn’t just betraying each other, it is betraying us all. This division is structural, not just personal and it is burning the foundations of this party before we have even built them.

    Jeremy, you speak reassuringly of the process, but it has scared so many. Sortation and structuring, people already in place who have not been elected is reminiscent of Labour Party structuring that so many fear. You speak of a party welcoming to all, you pledge to “make sure Your Party gets through” this current mess and you sound optimistic and determined.

    Yet when I saw Zarah speak last Saturday at the Durham Your Party launch, she told a completely different and shocking story. She says she has been systematically shut out of the conference.

    I have been excluded from the process. I have had nothing to do with the founding documents, I have had nothing to do with the regional assemblies, I have had nothing to do with the conference itself.

    Can you not see why so many of us are afraid? Why is one of the key figures of our movement been pushed away? Why are you marginalising the very face of the young left? Why is the one woman spearheading this being ganged up on? Can you see why we cannot claim Your Party is inclusive when it freezes out a voice like Zarah’s? This exclusion undermines any promise of welcome.

    The fight for control

    The financial dispute involving MOU just seems to highlight a pathetic power struggle from those who are looking in. It looks like this isn’t an administrative technicality, but about who controls our party’s future. It’s all veiled in secrecy, no one is telling us what the fuck is going on.

    Zarah stepped up where others failed completely. When the previous directors of MOU Jamie Driscoll, Andrew Feinstein and Beth Winter said the organisation would be liquidated Zarah says she took action. She claims the directorship was offered to all of you, but no one would take it, so to ensure our money did not disappear, she took a massive legal risk alone. She took the fight for the finances.

    And what was the response from the independent MPs steering Your Party? They ganged up on her unfairly and released a critical public statement. Five fucking men vs one woman? Just as Zarah is about to go on BBC Question Time? Who fucking allowed that? Rumour is your name was added to it without your permission Jeremy, but can it be clarified? Because this looks like nothing short of public sabotage aimed at undermining her credibility.

    The Independent Alliance must answer for this. If you are not above us as you claim, why does it seem we are being told half truths? Why try to sabotage a colleague? To those of us on the outside, looking in, this looks like a power grab. This exclusion must stop immediately. We are ruining this before it’s even begun.

    We need clarity on rights within Your Party

    The political stakes are too fucking high for this internal ambiguity.

    The fascist threat under Nigel Farage is growing. They thrive politically on dividing the working class, we know this. So why the hell are we playing directly into their hands? The delicate issue of trans rights is their most potent weapon, and you just handed them the sword to spear us on. They use it to sow chaos and hatred, and apparently now the left does too. Is it not that none of us are free until we all are?

    Zarah has always been crystal clear on this issue, and she speaks so eloquently for all marginalised communities. She stands unequivocally with our trans comrades. She knows that a socialist party cannot be what it claims without standing firmly for everyone.

    That is socialism, isn’t it? Or at least that’s what so many of us believe it to be.

    Jeremy, your own stance must be clear too. Your historic support for the LGBTQ+ community has helped to shape the rights we enjoy today. You’ve always fought for us and your record is so valued. But you must speak up now on this specific issue. You cannot play the middle man anymore and you must address the trans issue directly and fully. Ambiguity is fueling this fight. It gives dangerous cover to those who want division and you must be an ally to some of the party’s most vulnerable members.

    The left cannot allow itself to be pulled backwards now and we must move forward with our main mission. Equality for all people. This includes gender self-identification rights and a failure to be clear is a failure of leadership. It is a surrender of our socialist values.

    The vision vs the reality of Your Party

    On Sunday, at the Newcastle Your Party launch Jeremy laid out a determined vision for the future. He spoke of ‘getting past debating points we are stuck on,’ and dismissed social media as a bad place.

    He said:

    We are going to have conference going well… we’re all going to be there, supporting each other.

    This is an admirable, strong sentiment, but the words seem meaningless. They are hollow if Zarah is not fully included. Empty if this destructive infighting continues..

    The “complicated issues” Corbyn mentioned are not simply administrative hurdles. They are massive political differences and they are about power, control and ideology. They must be resolved through honest discussions and they cannot be solved through exclusion.

    If the youth structure issue is so crucial and thinks in terms of immediacy of communication and not delegate structures, as Jeremy stated in his own speech, why are we excluding Zarah? She is that immediacy. She is the social media presence which galvanises that energy. To exclude her is to exclude the youth. Please, fucking stop it.

    A final call for unity

    Please listen. You both represent two absolute necessary parts of this movement. We need the deep wisdom of you, Jeremy. And we need the unshakeable fire of the youth from you, Zarah. We need you both. We don’t give a shit who is whispering to you behind the scenes, we don’t care who is sniping at who on social media. For the love of the movement, and for the people you claim to champion, please drop this.

    We are begging you.

    The time for petty, structural disputes is long gone. End the exclusion of Sultana and do us all a favour. Sit down with each other, hash it the fuck out and negotiate. Heal the rift. Unite on a clear, socialist and inclusive platform and unite the movement.

    We are on the precipice of fascism. Every one of us is petrified of Farage and all he represents. Please, do not allow him to take power.

    Do not allow this to happen because we were too fucking busy fighting each other.

    The consequences are too dire to even think about and so many of us are resting our hope on the unification of Your Party.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Antifabot

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Another day, another anti-Sultana briefing by Your Party to the MSM

    It’s the gift that keeps on giving.  If each day you rush to Twitter to see what the Your Party debacle has to offer, you’re in luck because *drum roll*  Zarah Sultana may now be blocked from giving a speech at her own founding party conference.

    Zarah Sultana: briefed against again

    Anonymous sources have once again briefed against Zarah Sultana in the Murdoch-owned Times newspaper.

    The paper said:

    The firebrand Coventry South MP may be prevented from addressing delegates at the first gathering of Your Party, which takes place in Liverpool on November 29-30.

    Apparently, a “senior Your Party source” said that Sultana “would need to be on speaking terms with those organising the conference to have any clarity about when, and whether, she would speak”

    The source added:

    The problem is she isn’t on anything approaching speaking terms.

    And another insisted:
    We don’t want this to become the Zarah show.

    Which is an odd call because the only show this project looks like is one where varying sizes of clown get out of an improbably small car. Moreover, Your Party goons saw fit to use Gabriel Pogrund as the journalist to write the hit piece. Ironic – considering he was one the the Times hacks central to Morgan McSweeney and Labour Together’s plot to bring down Corbyn as Labour leader. If you lie down with dogs, and all that.

    For her part Sultana, at least, seems to know what she’s doing. A spokesperson told the Canary:

    As a co-founder of Your Party, Zarah will be addressing the founding conference as members expect.  She’s fighting for maximum member democracy and is confident the movement will not accept any attempt to exclude or sabotage her, as happened before her appearance on Question Time last week.

    Internecine fuckery

    Despite enormous optimism early on, Your Party quickly descended into bizarre, internal power-wrangling. And all the while Reform UK have risen in the polls. Controversies have included a punch-up over whether transphobes and landlords should be in the party. Oh, and an argument over membership portals. Then, an ongoing row over the estimated £800,000 pound in donations. And don’t forget the allegations of misogyny being directed at Sultana by notionally left-wing colleagues.

    If you want a good cry you can catch up here. Because if we linked every report of a puerile, self-defeating argument in Your Party this article would be the length of the entire Game of Thrones series. Albeit a lot better better written. Though roughly equally blood-spattered.

    What we do know is that Zarah Sultana WILL be holding a rally the night before the conference:

    Meanwhile, sources close to her rejected the anonymous claims against her. They told the Canary:

    Zarah and Jeremy have spoken in recent days, it’s factually incorrect to say they are not on speaking terms as alleged in the Times. ⁠Zarah has been excluded from the entire process leading up to conference, which includes drafting founding documents, organising regional assemblies and organising conference.

    They added:

    Co-leadership is still her preference, but it’s up to the members to decide if it’s sole, co-leadership or collective and they should be able to vote on that leadership structure. Zarah is a strong advocate of maximum member democracy.

    Look in the mirror

    We’re aware the Canary has been stoking some controversy in pro-Corbyn circles with our apparent siding with Zarah Sultana. However, the real picture here is that a) Sultana isn’t the one running to the Guardian and Murdoch rags with intentionally-destructive tittle-tattle (when these outlets would happily throw everyone involved under the bus), and b) she is a lone Brown woman in a movement dominated by men and white women at the top with multiple teams working for them.

    The Canary’s only duty is always to punch up, not down. And if you think punching up on the side of Sultana is the problem, here – then maybe you’re reading the wrong article. And maybe – just maybe – you’re backing the wrong people, too.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A shameful mandate for force: What the UNSC’s Gaza resolution means in practice

    The UN Security Council passed a regime change resolution against Gaza on Monday, effectively issuing a mandate for an invasion force to enter the besieged coastal enclave and install a US-led ruling authority by force.

    ANALYSIS: By Robert Inlakesh

    Passing with 13 votes in favour and none in defiance, the new UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution has given the United States a mandate to create what it calls an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF) and “Board of Peace” committee to seize power in Gaza.

    US President Donald Trump has hailed the resolution as historic, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stood in opposition to an element of the resolution that mentions “Palestinian Statehood”.

    In order to understand what has just occurred, it requires a breakdown of the resolution itself and the broader context surrounding the ceasefire deal.

    When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that this resolution is perhaps one of the most shameful to have passed in the history of the United Nations, casting shame on it and undermining the very basis on which it was formed to begin with.

    An illegal regime change resolution
    In September 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel to have committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

    For further context, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the most powerful international legal entity and organ of the UN, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and thus issued orders for Tel Aviv to end specific violations of international law in Gaza, which were subsequently ignored.

    Taking this into consideration, the UN itself cannot claim ignorance of the conditions suffered by the people of Gaza, nor could it credibly posit that the United States is a neutral actor capable of enforcing a balanced resolution of what its own experts have found to be a genocide.

    This resolution itself is not a peace plan and robs Palestinians of their autonomy entirely; thus, it is anti-democratic in its nature.

    It was also passed due in large part to threats from the United States against both Russia and China, that if they vetoed it, the ceasefire would end and the genocide would resume. Therefore, both Beijing and Moscow abstained from the vote, despite the Russian counterproposal and initial opposition to the resolution.

    It also gives a green light to what the US calls a “Board of Peace”, which will work to preside over governing Gaza during the ceasefire period. The head of this board is none other than US President Trump himself, who says he will be joined by other world leaders.

    Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the illegal invasion of Iraq, has been floated as a potential “Board of Peace” leader also.

    Vowed a ‘Gaza Riviera’
    On February 4 of this year, President Trump vowed to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. The American President later sought to impose a plan for a new Gaza, which he even called the “Gaza Riviera”, which was drawn up by Zionist economist Joseph Pelzman.

    Part of Pelzman’s recommendations to Trump was that “you have to destroy the whole place, restart from scratch”.

    As it became clear that the US alone could not justify an invasion force and simply take over Gaza by force, on behalf of Israel, in order to build “Trump Gaza”, a casino beach land for fellow Jeffrey Epstein-connected billionaires, a new answer was desperately sought.

    Then came a range of meetings between Trump administration officials and regional leaderships, aimed at working out a strategy to achieve their desired goals in Gaza.

    After the ceasefire was violated in March by the Israelis, leading to the mass murder of around 17,000 more Palestinians, a number of schemes were being hatched and proposals set forth.

    The US backed and helped to create the now-defunct so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) programme, which was used to privatise the distribution of aid in the territory amidst a total blockade of all food for three months.

    Starving Palestinians, who were rapidly falling into famine, flocked to these GHF sites, where they were fired upon by US private military contractors and Israeli occupation forces, murdering more than 1000 civilians.

    The ‘New York Declaration’
    Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France were busy putting together what would become the “New York Declaration” proposal for ending the war and bringing Western nations to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN.

    Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Trump’s so-called “peace plan” that was announced at the White House in October. This plan appeared at first to be calling for a total end to the war, a mutual prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in a phased approach.

    From the outset, Trump’s “20-point plan” was vague and impractical. Israel immediately violated the ceasefire from the very first day and has murdered nearly 300 Palestinians since then. The first phase of the ceasefire deal was supposed to end quickly, ideally within five days, but the deal has stalled for over a month.

    Throughout this time, it has become increasingly clear that the Israelis are not going to respect the “Yellow Line” separation zone and have violated the agreement through operating deeper into Gaza than they had originally agreed to.

    The Israeli-occupied zone was supposed to be 53 percent of Gaza; it has turned out to be closer to 58 percent. Aid is also not entering at a sufficient rate, despite US and Israeli denials; this has been confirmed by leading rights groups and humanitarian organisations.

    In the background, the US team dealing with the ceasefire deal that is headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has been juggling countless insidious proposals for the future of Gaza.

    Even publicly stating that reconstruction will only take place in the Israeli-controlled portion of the territory, also floating the idea that aid points will be set up there in order to force the population out of the territory under de facto Hamas control. This has often been referred to as the “new Gaza plan”.

    The disastrous GHF
    As this has all been in the works, including discussions about bringing back the disastrous GHF, the Israelis have been working alongside four ISIS-linked collaborator death squads that it controls and who operate behind the Yellow Line in Gaza.

    No mechanisms have been put in place to punish the Israelis for their daily violations of the ceasefire, including the continuation of demolition operations against Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. This appears to be directly in line with Joseph Pelzman’s plan earlier this year to “destroy the whole place”.

    The UNSC resolution not only makes Donald Trump the effective leader of the new administrative force that will be imposed upon the Gaza Strip, but also greenlights what it calls its International Stabilisation Force. This ISF is explicitly stated to be a multinational military force that will be tasked with disarming Hamas and all Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.

    The US claims it will not be directly involved in the fighting with “boots on the ground”; it has already deployed hundreds of soldiers and has been reportedly building a military facility, which they deny is a base, but for all intents and purposes will be one.

    Although it may not be American soldiers killing and dying while battling Palestinian resistance groups, they will be in charge of this force.

    This is not a “UN peacekeeping force” and is not an equivalent to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon; it is there to carry out the task of completing Israel’s war goal of defeating the Palestinian resistance through force.

    In other words, foreign soldiers will be sent from around the world to die for Israel and taxpayers from those nations will be footing the bill.

    ‘Self-determination’ reservation
    The only reason why Israel has reservations about this plan is because it included a statement claiming that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) — that does not control Gaza and is opposed by the majority of the Palestinian people — undergoes reforms that the West and Israel demand, then conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.

    A keyword here is “may”, in other words, it is not binding and was simply added in to give corrupted Arab leaderships the excuse to vote yes.

    Hamas and every other Palestinian political party, with the exception of the mainstream branch of Fatah that answers to Israel and the US, have opposed this UNSC resolution.

    Hamas even called upon Algeria to vote against it; instead, the Algerian leadership praised Donald Trump and voted in favour. Typical of Arab and Muslim-majority regimes that don’t represent the will of their people, they all fell in line and bent over backwards to please Washington.

    It won’t likely work
    As has been the story with every conspiracy hatched against the people of Gaza, this is again destined to fail. Not only will it fail, but it will likely backfire enormously and lead to desperate moves.

    To begin with, the invasion force, or ISF, will be a military endeavour that will have to bring together tens of thousands of soldiers who speak different languages and have nothing in common, in order to somehow achieve victory where Israel failed.

    It is a logistical nightmare to even think about.

    How long would it take to deploy these soldiers? At the very least, it’s going to take months. Then, how long would this process take? Nobody has any clear answers here.

    Also, what happens if Israel begins bombing again at any point, for example, if there is a clash that kills Israeli soldiers? What would these nations do if Israeli airstrikes killed their soldiers or put them in harm’s way?

    Also, tens of thousands of soldiers may not cut it; if the goal is to destroy all the territory’s military infrastructure, they may need hundreds of thousands. Or if that isn’t an option, will they work alongside the Israeli military?

    It is additionally clear that nobody knows where all the tunnels and fighters are; if Israel couldn’t find them, then how can anyone else?

    After all, the US, UK, and various others have helped the Israelis with intelligence sharing and reconnaissance for more than two years to get these answers.

    How do regimes justify this?
    Finally, when Arab, European, or Southeast Asian soldiers return to their nations in body bags, how do their regimes justify this? Will the president or prime minister of these nations have to stand up and tell their people . . .  “sorry guys, your sons and daughters are now in coffins because Israel needed a military force capable of doing what they failed to do, so we had to help them complete their genocidal project”.

    Also, how many Palestinian civilians are going to be slaughtered by these foreign invaders?

    As for the plan to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, the people of the territory will not accept foreign invaders as their occupiers any more than they will accept Israelis. They are not going to accept ISIS-linked collaborators as any kind of security force either.

    Already, the situation is chaotic inside Gaza, and that is while its own people, who are experienced and understand their conditions, are in control of managing security and some administrative issues; this includes both Hamas and others who are operating independently of it, but inside the territory under its de facto control.

    Just as the Israeli military claimed it was going to occupy Gaza City, laying out countless plans to do this, to ethnically cleanse the territory and “crush Hamas”, the US has been coordinating alongside it throughout the entirety of the last two years. Every scheme has collapsed and ended in failure.

    It has been nearly a month and a half, yet there are still no clear answers as to how this Trump “peace plan” is supposed to work and it is clear that the Israelis are coming up with new proposals on a daily basis.

    There is no permanent mechanism for aid transfers, which the Israelis are blocking. There is no clear vision for governance.

    How a US plan envisages Gaza being split into two sections
    How a US plan envisages Gaza being permanently split into two sections – a green zone and a red zone. Image: Guardian/IDF/X

    ‘Two Gazas’ plan incoherent
    The “two Gazas” plan is not even part of the ceasefire or Trump plan, yet it is being pursued in an incoherent way. The ISF makes no sense and appears as poorly planned as the GHF.

    Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will not give up their weapons. There is no real plan for reconstruction. The Israelis are adamant that there will be no Palestinian State and won’t allow any independent Palestinian rule of Gaza, and the list of problems goes on and on.

    What it really looks like here is that this entire ceasefire scheme is a stab in the dark attempt to achieve Israel’s goals while also giving its forces a break and redirecting their focus on other fronts, understanding that there is no clear solution to the Gaza question for now.

    The United Nations has shown itself over the past two years to be nothing more than a platform for political theatre. It is incapable of punishing, preventing, or even stopping the crime of all crimes.

    Now that international law has suffocated to death under the rubble of Gaza, next to the thousands of children who still lie underneath it, the future of this conflict will transform.

    This UNSC vote demonstrates that there is no international law, no international community, and that the UN is simply a bunch of fancy offices, which are only allowed to work under the confines of gangster rule.

    If the Palestinian resistance groups feel as if their backs are against the wall and an opportunity, such as another Israeli war on Lebanon, presents them the opportunity, then there is a high likelihood that a major military decision will be made.

    In the event that this occurs, it will be this UNSC resolution that is in large part responsible.

    When the suffering in Gaza finally ends, whether that is because Israel obliterates all of its regional opposition and exterminates countless other civilians in its way, or Israel is militarily shattered, the UN should be disbanded as was the League of Nations. It is a failed project just as that which preceded it.

    Something new must take over from it.

    Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Op-Ed: Clearing the Greenwash Fog – Challenging Agribusiness Influence at COP30

    meat climate change
    6 Mins Read

    Maddy Haughton-Boakes, senior campaigner at the Changing Markets Foundation, on how the Big Ag lobby is flooding COP30, and how to curb its greenwashing efforts.

    As COP30 enters its final days, an unfortunate takeaway is the agribusiness greenwash, which has flooded the summit. Industry influence has been an unfortunate addition to COPs for years, and Belém is no exception. As DeSmog reports today, there are nearly 302 agribusiness lobbyists on the ground. Of these, almost a quarter (72) come from Big Meat and Dairy, almost double the number of climate delegates of Jamaica. 

    These included delegates from Brazil’s two biggest meat companies JBS (also the world’s largest) and MBRF (formerly Marfrig), food giant Nestlé, and agribusiness giant Bayer, as well as groups, such as the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), Brazil’s most powerful agriculture lobby group, and the US-based Meat Institute and Animal Agriculture Alliance – under scrutiny for their role in the backlash to the planetary health diet. 

    Dozens more lobbyists attending only as part of the new, unprecedented official COP space, known as the AgriZone, remain unaccounted for. The zone, hosted by Embrapa, Brazil’s state-owned agricultural research agency, and its sponsors include major agri-corporations such as Nestlé, and Bayer (a ‘diamond sponsor’). Bayer, along with Senar, a branch of the CNA, has been linked to platforms that spread climate disinformation.

    How the meat industry is influencing the UN climate summit

    The AgriZone is a greenwash theatre, built to ‘dazzle negotiators’ and members of the public, while deflecting attention from industrial agriculture’s role in the climate crisis. In the entrance, you are greeted by the JBS-sponsored media centre, Canal Rural Studio. This is the same JBS that is repeatedly linked to deforestation, emissions, environmental violations and human rights abuses.

    Nearby, a giant SUV, promoting ‘hybrid’ powered by ethanol, is positioned to showcase the power and influence of the Brazilian biofuel industry. (Side note: the number of bioenergy lobbyists has soared this year).

    Inside, corporate-sponsored booths lure visitors with glossy, feel-good videos promoting ‘climate-smart’ farming, tech-driven efficiency narratives, and partnerships with farmers. Set to soothing music, these displays are carefully curated to show pristine fields and peaceful-looking cows.

    cop30 lobbyists
    Climate campaigners protest at COP30’s AgriZone | Courtesy: World Animal Protection

    Meanwhile, Embrapa displays dramatic videos showing climate impacts such as droughts and floods for agriculture, while claiming the solution lies in techno-fixes. The sequence crafts a deceptively simple tale: one in which agriculture is the victim, but the solution is simply more innovation, which the Brazilian industry is already working towards.

    We cannot escape these messages even in the Blue Zone, the heart of COP’s decision-making. Here, we continue to find agribusiness branding and messaging, some of which is also making its way into the media. JBS is leading ‘food systems’ discussions and claiming that some of its farms ‘remove more carbon than they emit’, and MBRF is touting its supposedly ‘low-carbon’ beef. 

    There have been at least six screenings of the pro-industry documentary World Without Cows, produced by agribusiness company Alltech. At a panel in the Action on Food Hub, the CEO of Alltech invited everyone to join, claiming he had commissioned the film to “broaden the debate”.

    However, our request for tickets was not granted, which wasn’t surprising; screenings have been heavily restricted since the film’s launch, with only industry-friendly audiences allowed to ensure glowing reviews.  Only one very determined youth activist managed to get a ticket, and was able to write an honest review of the film. 

    The common thread is unmistakable: a focus on productivity, innovation and incremental tweaks, alongside a glaring avoidance of the urgent, science-backed reality that we need to reduce meat consumption and production, and shift toward plant-rich diets and more sustainable production methods.

    The reality on the ground aligns with our recent investigation, launched in the run-up to COP. The Meat Agenda: Agricultural Exceptionalism and Greenwash in Brazil traces a pattern of corporate capture of the narrative on the road to Belém, from industry-sponsored media content and influencer campaigns. A new DeSmog analysis of this trend shows that 195 influencers, who collectively have hundreds of millions of followers, were engaged by agribusiness in 2025. 

    brazil beef emissions
    Courtesy: Billion Photos/Naeblys/Getty Images | Illustration by Green Queen

    Methane action a missed opportunity at COP30

    Our report also shows how agricultural methane, responsible for more than three-quarters of Brazil’s methane emissions, is glaringly absent from the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC), and how the sector’s grip on politics threatens the implementation of the overall NDC ambition.

    But this is not just a Brazilian story. The same pattern is playing out around the world. And the stakes could not be higher. The latest UN Emissions Gap report shows that current NDCs point toward 2.3–2.5°C of warming, while existing policies are closer to 2.8°C, far from the pathway needed to keep the 1.5°C threshold alive. The world is already caught in the grip of climate catastrophe: COP30 opened as the Philippines reeled from back-to-back typhoons. There is no time left for half-measures or false narratives, and high-methane-emitting sectors, including agriculture, have a key role to play.

    Methane is a super-pollutant, over 80 times more warming than CO₂ in the short term and ris esponsible for nearly a third of today’s global heating. Globally, agriculture accounts for around 40% of methane emissions, most of which come from farmed animals, especially enteric fermentation (cow burps). The science says that to stay within 1.5°C, livestock methane emissions must fall by at least 25% by 2030.

    Cutting these emissions is the emergency brake the world needs to pull to avoid even more catastrophic climate impacts. It has been encouraging to see a growing focus on methane at this COP, but agribusiness remains largely off the hook.

    livestock methane emissions
    Graphic by Green Queen

    Monday’s methane ministerial missed a crucial opportunity to confront the root cause of its most significant driver: animal agriculture. With more than 150 countries signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, the world has committed to a 30% cut by 2030. But we are far from meeting that goal, as the newest UN Methane Status Report shows.

    Still, there are reasons to be hopeful. Indigenous groups are refusing to be silenced, and civil society is challenging the Agrizone head-on. For the first time in years, meaningful protest has returned to the streets.

    Together with partners, we’ve created vibrant spaces that expose corporate greenwash, highlight the urgency of cutting methane, and expose the industry’s aggressive push for ‘no additional warming’ approaches, a misleading use of the controversial metric, GWP*, being used to justify ‘business as usual’ approaches. (Spoiler: many of the industry lobbyists at COP are there to push for it). 

    The more greenwash is exposed, the harder it becomes for industry spin to dominate the conversation. In and outside the COP30 venue, across the Blue Zone, the People’s Summit, and civil-society spaces across Belém, farmers, Indigenous communities, scientists, and activists are showing how to build food systems that nourish people and the planet rather than destroy them.

    And as these real solutions are discussed, debated, and demanded, the space for corporate obstruction shrinks. As the summit enters its final stretch, negotiators would do well to learn from this leadership.

    The post Op-Ed: Clearing the Greenwash Fog – Challenging Agribusiness Influence at COP30 appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Opinion polls are useful – but they’re not a crystal ball

    For a Roman general about to commit to battle, every piece of intelligence was vital.  Rather than blindly attack or retreat, he asked the gods.  More specifically, he got a professional augur to open a cage with chicken in, throw some bread at it, and watch how the chicken ate it.  Then, you see, he would know if the gods favoured him. Today, we use opinion polls.

    Just before the Caerphilly by-election, Survation predicted Reform would poll 42%, with Plaid Cymru on 38%.  The result?  Plaid polled 47%, Reform 36%.  From 4% behind, Plaid won by 11%.

    True, that was a single constituency telephone poll with a small sample size.  But why have people revered divination throughout history?

    We didn’t always have opinion polls

    The Ancient Greeks preferred the Oracle to chickens.  A priestess would sit on a stool over a crack in the ground that belched out natural petrochemical fumes.  Then she’d speak the word of the gods.

    When I was elected Mayor in May 2019, Theresa May was Prime Minister.  Imagine if I’d written a column predicting she’d be gone within weeks, and that bloke from Have I Got News For You would become Prime Minister.  And there’d be this killer virus, right, that would stop us all going outside and we’d be paid to stay at home, but there would be no toilet paper or pasta.  But the scruffy-haired Latin bloke would get convicted for having a big party in Downing Street, so he would be replaced by that angry cheese speech woman, but she’d be beaten by a lettuce.  And get this, a load of Russian tanks would roll into Ukraine, but then get confused and stop, and go back.  Then invade again.  British summers would top 40 degrees Celsius.  Oh, and England will win the European Football Championship – twice.

    You would have thought I was huffing the Ancient Greek glue.  Especially if I’d said we would solve street homelessness overnight.  Which we did, in lockdown.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

    There is a reason politics and everything flowing from it is so febrile. No one has addressed the root cause of the 2007-8 financial crash.  In the post-war boom profits came from making things.  Developing new products, organising productive new methods of manufacturing.  Profit depended on increasing the skills and productivity of the workforce.  There was at least something of a balance of power between owners and workers, leading to increasing wages and prosperity.  Beveridge’s five giant evils of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness all but disappeared.

    Awash with money

    Today, profit comes more from owning things and charging rent on them.  Remember how most of the building societies were turned into banks?  Well, most of those bank shares are now owned by very rich people.  Our care homes used to be run by councils.  Now most are owned by private equity.

    Britain is awash with money.  But it is not being usefully deployed.  Billionaire wealth has increased tenfold since the 1990’s.  That’s after accounting for inflation.

    That’s the cause of austerity.  That’s why we have unemployed GPs and a shortage of GP appointments.  That’s why university leaves you with £53,000 debt just for getting the skills we need to run a modern economy.  That’s why your park no longer gets the grass cut.  That’s why you see homeless people on the street and 3 million people using food banks.  How long before kids have to pay back the loan for their A-Level tuition?

    The most recent Find Out Now poll still has Reform in the lead, but puts the Green Party second.  They’re on 18%, ahead of the Tories on 16% and Labour on 15%.  And that’s before the Starmtroopers decided to start a leadership challenge against themselves.

    The turmoil will continue

    Who would have predicted Labour would be fourth just sixteen months after winning 411 general election seats?  Who would have predicted the Greens would be the opposition?  Will Labour now step aside to stop splitting the progressive vote?

    Until someone offers a credible cure for Thatcherism, politics will continue in turmoil.  Polls will rise and fall, leaders will come and go.  At Majority, we’re committed to pluralism and progressive alliances.  We need leaders at every level who can work together, who are competent and networked, and who don’t get snagged in petty disputes.  People who could run the country in the interests of the people who do the work, and run it well.  We run training on community wealth building, on being a candidate, on how to mobilise activists.  And you can be a member of the Greens, or Your Party, or anything else progressive, and still join Majority.

    Here’s one prediction I will make.  There will continue to be scandals and panics.  Poverty will remain widespread and climate action will be inadequate.  And nothing will be fixed until we get a team of competent, compassionate leaders who act with integrity.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Renters’ Rights Bill: a study in political betrayal

    What, precisely, is the government doing with the Renters’ Rights Bill? This was the legislative fix demanded for the “housing crisis”—the one senior Labour members spent the last election shouting about, often using the now-infamous, hollow phrase, “on day one.”

    I’ve been watching this with more than just interest. Since January 2024, I have received three Section 21 “no-fault” eviction notices across two separate properties. One landlord filed it to avoid undertaking necessary damp works because they lacked the proper license. The current one—whom I have never even met—along with his agent (hi, Sam!), has dragged his heels on two improvement notices. The agent, at one point, put me in temporary accommodation that featured broken glass in the fridge and discarded needles in the backyard. I’ve now run out of road: court action can begin to evict me under this very Section 21 on the first of January.

    Renters rights – not just yet

    Wait, I hear the shouting: Aren’t they getting rid of Section 21s? Yes. They are. But not now. That wouldn’t be reasonable, would it? It’s only been seven years since the Tories first promised to ban no-fault evictions. Perhaps the landlords haven’t had enough notice.

    We must, after all, think of the landlord. In the words of Karl Marx:

    He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived…The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.

    Oh, sorry, was that Winston Churchill? Awkward.

    We all know landlordism is fundamentally destabilising the country, so why is the current government bending over backward to cater to the landlord lobby? What happened to “on day one”? I suppose they meant day one of May 2026. Kind of. Unless you’re in the social sector.

    But at least there’s the National Landlord Database to help people like me when we get booted out to find a good new landlord… Oh, that’s not until the end of 2026, you say? Well, okay. But the Warm Homes Standard, surely? Well, if we’re talking how long it’ll be for all homes in the country to reach those standards? Around about 2028.

    Parasites race to the bottom

    Sometimes, I honestly don’t know who I despise more: my landlord for being a leaching parasite, or the government for pandering to this entire farce.

    There’s a local property management company currently buying up homes at auction in a nearby small community—sometimes for as little as £30k cash. They immediately slap on some magnolia emulsion and rent them out for £600 a month. How is any of this legal? My last house lacked loft insulation; the council’s housing service telephone operator knew my letting agent by name when I reported him. Yet he is still allowed to manage dozens of properties, while local councils choose not to use the legal mechanisms available to repossess dangerous properties.

    And even the basics are a struggle: I am still waiting for a date for my Rent Repayment Tribunal to reclaim money spent on a dodgy house that was not legally habitable for most of the time I lived there. How can you rent a house that is unsafe for people to live in and still profit from it? This entire system is fundamentally broken.

    It all ties together. No, I am not painting the gate this year; I don’t give a damn. I’m not volunteering at the local library, and I’ve given up my allotment. Why? Because who knows where I’ll be living? If I move five miles in the wrong direction, I lose access to my therapist. I have no stability, so I am not investing time or effort into a place I won’t be in six or eight months from now. When that mentality infects 30% of a street, a village, or a city—when 30% of the population has no stake in the land they inhabit—that is a truly terrifying world.

    Trapped

    I helped a friend move into their first house yesterday. It’s warm, the roof doesn’t leak—it’s a home—and the mortgage is less than my rent. Make it make sense. Only one in eight renters can afford to buy a property where they live. Everyone else is told they can’t afford to buy, all while we are reliably paying someone else’s mortgage month after month.

    Even some of the criticism from landlords is valid: this legislation genuinely doesn’t fix anything. It has spooked smaller landlords into leaving the market, yet too few people who need to buy those properties are able to afford them. This is further compounded by a generation of property owners who refuse to downsize because of the tax implications on an asset that they bought for literal peanuts. That is the legacy of the last few decades of deregulation in the housing sector; tens of thousands of families stuck in a high-supply, low-demand trap, with land banking driving up current property values. People in rented accommodation in the North East and Midlands pay more council tax than homeowners I know in the South East.

    Ultimately, even when this watered-down legislation comes into play, if local councils lack the funding to implement these changes, it will all mean nothing. As my Environmental Health Officer wisely told me, the government can pass whatever law it wants, but if councils don’t have the capacity to implement and enforce the new regulations, they might as well not exist.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Barold

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Shabana Mahmood thinks being called a Paki qualifies her to deport Brown people

    Shabana Mahmood has gone to even greater lengths to justify her abhorrent asylum reforms. Just yesterday, the Home Office briefed that the government could go ahead with plans to ‘seize’ jewellery and other valuables from asylum seekers.

    Don’t worry, as fucking grim as that sounds, they’ve assured us that they won’t ‘seize’ sentimental jewellery. I don’t know about you, but I definitely trust a government that doesn’t know its arse from its elbow to distinguish between valuable jewellery and sentimental.

    Rather than considering the moral depravity of her department’s proposal, Shabana Mahmood dug her heels in:

    Shabana Mahmood has no shame

    The full context of the quote from pound-shop Priti Patel reads as follows:

    I have to say to the honourable gentleman, I wish I had the privilege of walking around this country and not seeing the divisions that the issue of migration and asylum system is creating across this country.

    First of all, these “divisions” – a watering down of the terrifying racism permeating our streets – are not happening because migration is an issue. They’re happening because politicians like Shabana Mahmood weaponise the very very few people that seek asylum in this country in an effort to appeal to racist voters.

    Racists have been regularly showing up every week in my area to shout abuse at passing Black and Brown people. They’ve physically fought residents on the street who are trying to stop them putting up flags. They’ve told people who call this their home to fuck off back where they came from. Basically, they’ve done everything they can to make sure that all people of colour – regardless of immigration status or anything else – know that they are not safe in this country.

    They’re not people who are merely ‘concerned’ about “divisions” from migration. Do you think these people give a fuck about the statistics on how few asylum seekers actually come to this country? Do you think they’ll actually vote for Labour politicians desperately trying to court them? Will they fuck.

    ‘Divisive’ is not the fucking word

    Then came Shabana Mahmood’s attempt at being a Confident Little Deporter:

    Unlike him, unfortunately I am the one that is regularly called a fucking Paki and told to go back home. It is I who know through my personal experience, and that of my constituents, just how divisive the issue of asylum has become in our country.

    She may have been aiming for a punchy soundbite, but it came out sounding like a desperate and deplorable attempt to use her own experiences of racism to justify deporting people desperate for a better life. How many times does someone have to be called a Paki, or be told to go back home, to earn the right to make the lives of Brown people a desperate misery?

    Because, let me tell you, I’ve had those slurs hurled at me my entire life, no matter where I live in England. It may be personally sad for Mahmood to be called a Paki – it feels like a rush of dehumanisation come to slap you in the face. It’s a reminder that even if you were born here, your citizenship isn’t the same as that of your white neighbours. It’s a reminder, as if you could ever forget, that you’re not a full person, you’re not ‘from’ here.

    And the thing is, Mahmood is taking those feelings and slapping them on top of a Home Office policy which demeans and dehumanises asylum seekers. She’s taking those experiences of racism and using them to fuel media narratives that manufacture consent for deporting people.

    So, no, I don’t really give a fuck if she’s being called a Paki. I do give a fuck that she’s weaponising her own identity to prop up a white supremacist system that targets the most vulnerable people in our society.

    Who broke the system?

    The next set of comments from Shabana Mahmood haven’t garnered as many headlines, but they’re worth a look:

    I wish it were possible to say that there isn’t a problem here, that there’s nothing to see, and that it is all in fact extremist right-wing talking points but this system is broken and it is incumbent on all Members of Parliament to acknowledge how badly broken the system is and to make it a moral mission to fix this system so that it stops creating the division that we all see and I do say to him, I do not consider it acceptable or appropriate for people in this place to not acknowledge the real experience of those sitting outside of this House. We are supposed to be in here to reflect that experience in this House and I hope that he will approach the debate that we will no doubt have on all of these measures in that spirit.

    Unfortunately for Mahmood, it’s not 2005 and her piss-poor racial analysis isn’t going to fly anymore. She’s specifically refused to connect being called a Paki with anything remotely resembling a system of racist oppression. It would be far more useful to have a conversation about how having brown faces in high places is no substitute for actual change.

    What difference does it make if the person spitting abuse at you on the street, or the border officer kicking your door down in a dawn raid, or the racist emboldened by politicians paved the path to their actions via a brown face? Whether it’s Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, or Shabana Mahmood, the end result is the same.

    Brown people can work in service of racism and white supremacy as much as anyone white can. I don’t give a fuck if Shabana Mahmood was called a Paki when she’s heading a system that destroys the lives of Black and Brown people who are trying to survive this nationalist racist hellscape we all live in.

    Being aware of a highly educated and powerful Brown woman’s experiences of racism shouldn’t inform this ‘debate.’ Liberal white people might be shamed into silence by Shabana Mahmood’s recounting of racism, but I see her actions for what they are: a desperate attempt to justify the cruelty and violence the Home Office are unleashing on asylum seekers.

    Featured image via X/Politics UK

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Jacinda Ardern: Why NZ’s tiny group of hysterical haters can’t face the facts

    COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto

    As you know, there’s a tiny group of Dame Jacinda Ardern haters in New Zealand who are easily triggered by facts and the ongoing success of the former prime minister on the world stage.

    The tiny eeny weeny group is made to look bigger online by an automated army of fake profile bots who all say the same five or six things and all leave a space before a comma.

    This automation is imported into New Zealand so many of the profiles are in other countries and simply are not real humans.

    Naturally this illusion of “flooding the zone” programmatically on social media causes the non-critical minded to assume they are a majority when they have no such real evidence to support that delusion.

    Yet here’s some context and food for thought.

    None of the haters have run a public hospital, been a director-general of health during a pandemic, been an epidemiologist or even a GP and many struggle to spell their own name properly let alone read anything accurately.

    None of them have read all the Health Advice offered to the government during the covid-19 pandemic. They don’t know it at all.

    Know a lot more
    Yet they typically feel they do know a lot more than any of those people when it comes to a global pandemic unfolding in real time.

    None of the haters can recite all 39 recommendations from the first Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19, less than three of them have read the entire first report, none have any memory of National voting for the wage subsidy and business support payments when they accuse the Labour government of destroying the economy.

    Most cannot off the top of their heads tell us how the Reserve Bank is independent of government when it raises the OCR and many think Jacinda did this but look you may be challenged to a boxing match if you try to learn them.

    The exact macro economic state of our economy in terms of GDP growth, the size of the economy, unemployment and declining inflation forecasts escape their memory when Jacinda resigned, not that they care when they say she destroyed the economy.

    They make these claims without facts and figures and they pass on the opinions of others that they listened to and swallowed.

    It’s only a tiny group, the rest are bots.

    The bots think making horse jokes about Jacinda is amusing, creative and unique and it’s their only joke now for three years — every single day they marvel at their own humour. In ten years they will still be repeating that one insult they call their own.

    Bots on Nuremberg
    The bots have also been programmed to say things about Nuremberg, being put into jail, bullets, and other violent suggestions which speaks to a kind of mental illness.

    The sources of these sorts of sentiments were imported and fanned by groups set up to whip up resentment and few realise how they have been manipulated and captured by this programme.

    The pillars of truth to the haters rest on being ignorant about how a democracy necessarily temporarily looks like a dictatorship in a public health emergency in order to save lives.

    We agreed these matters as a democracy, it was not Jacinda taking over. We agreed to special adaptations of democracy and freedom to save lives temporarily.

    The population of the earth has not all died from covid vaccines yet.

    There is always some harm with vaccines, but it is overstated by Jacinda haters and misunderstood by those ranting about Medsafe, that is simply not the actual number of vaccine deaths and harm that has been verified — rather it is what was reported somewhat subject to conjecture.

    The tinfoil hats and company threatened Jacinda’s life on the lawn outside Parliament and burnt down a playground and trees and then stamp their feet that she did not face a lynch mob.

    No doors kicked in
    Nobody’s door was kicked in by police during covid 19.

    Nobody was forced to take a jab. No they chose to leave their jobs because they had a choice provided to them. The science was what the Government acted upon, not the need to control anyone.

    Mandates were temporary and went on a few weeks too long.

    Some people endured the hardship of not being present when their loved ones died and that was very unfortunate but again it was about medical advice.

    Then Director-General of Health Sir Ashly Bloomfield said the government acted on about 90 percent of the Public Health advice it was given. Jacinda haters never mention that fact.

    Jacinda haters say she ran away, but to be fair she endured 50 times more abuse than any other politician, and her daughter was threatened by randoms in a café, plus Jacinda was mentally exhausted after covid and all the other events that most prime ministers never have to endure, and she thought somebody else could give it more energy.

    We were in good hands with Chris Hipkins so there was no abandoning as haters can’t make up their minds if they want her here or gone — but they do know they want to hate.

    Lost a few bucks
    The tiny group of haters include some people who lost a few bucks, a business, an opportunity and people who wanted to travel when there was a global pandemic happening.

    Bad things happen in pandemics and every country experienced increased levels of debt, wage subsidies, job losses, tragic problems with a loss of income, school absenteeism, increased crime, and other effects like inflation and a cost of living crisis.

    Haters just blame Jacinda because they don’t get that international context and the second Royal Commission of Inquiry was a political stunt, not about being more prepared for future pandemics but more about feeding the haters.

    All the information it needed was provided by Jacinda, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins but right wing media whipped up the show trial despite appearances before a demented mob of haters being thought a necessary theatre for the right wing.

    A right wing who signed up to covid lockdowns and emergency laws and then later manipulated short term memories for political gain.

    You will never convince a hater not to hate with facts and context and persuasion, even now they are thinking how to rebut these matters rather than being open minded.

    Pandemics suck and we did pretty well in the last one but there were consequences for some — for whom I have sympathy, sorry for your loss, I also know people who died . . .  I also know people who lost money, I also know people who could not be there at a funeral . . .  but I am not a hater.

    Valuing wanting to learn
    Instead, I value how science wants to learn and know what mistakes were made and to adapt for the next pandemic. I value how we were once a team of five million acting together with great kotahitanga.

    I value Jacinda saying let there be a place for kindness in the world, despite the way doing the best for the common good may seem unkind to some at times.

    The effects of the pandemic in country by country reports show the same patterns everywhere — lockdowns, inflation, cost of living increases, crime increase, education impacts, groceries cost more, petrol prices are too high, supply chains disrupted.

    When a hater simplistically blames Jacinda for “destroying the economy and running away” it is literally an admission of their ignorance.

    It’s like putting your hand up and screaming, ‘look at me, I am dumb’.

    The vast majority get it and want Jacinda back if she wants to come back and live in peace — but if not . . .  that is fine too.

    Sad, ignorant minority
    A small sad and ignorant minority will never let it go and every day they hate and hate and hate because they are full of hate and that is who they really are, unable to move on and process matters, blamers, simple, under informed and grossly self pitying.

    I get the fact your body is your temple and you want medical sovereignty, I also get medical science and immunity.

    It’s been nearly three years now, is it time to be a little less hysterical and to actually put away the violent abuse and lame blaming? Will you carry on sulking like a child for another three years?

    It’s okay to disagree with me, but before you do, and I know you will, without taking onboard anything I write, just remember what Jacinda said.

    In a global pandemic with people’s lives at stake, she would rather be accused of doing too much than doing too little.

    Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Samoa Observer: The PM’s wish and our promise

    EDITORIAL: By the Samoa Observer

    They say the march toward authoritarian rule begins with one simple act: taking control of the narrative and silencing the independent press. Yesterday, Samoa witnessed a step in that direction.

    Prime Minister Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, elected by the people to serve them, has already moved to weaken one of democracy’s most essential pillars.

    With barely seven full days in office, he directed his power at the Samoa Observer, the very institution tasked with holding leaders like him to account.

    Samoa Observer
    SAMOA OBSERVER

    The Prime Minister accused this newspaper of misleading and inaccurate reporting, of disrespect and of having “no boundaries.” He went further by invoking the name of Sano Malifa, founder and owner of the Samoa Observer, suggesting that the paper had strayed from its mission, a statement he’s made countless times.

    So let us clear the air.

    Does the Prime Minister remember Sano Malifa’s reporting when, as Deputy Speaker, he gave a second hand car from his dealership to then Speaker of the House, Tolofuaivalelei Falemoe Leiʻataua, without cabinet approval?

    It was Sano Malifa who wrote extensively about the matter and helped ensure the vehicle was returned when questions were raised about improper dealings.

    Does he remember the concrete wall fence he attempted to build stretching toward Parliament, a plan never sanctioned by cabinet?

    Does he remember calling the Samoa Observer before the 2021 general elections seeking permission to erect FAST party tents outside its offices and being refused, because this newspaper does not trade favours for political convenience?

    Does he forget that Sano Malifa stood alone to question the one party rule of the HRPP, a party he joined and one his father served in, while most of the country remained silent because they felt they could not speak?

    Does he forget that the Sano Malifa he now quotes would never permit any leader to run the country unchecked?

    Let this be understood. Sano Malifa’s vision remains fully intact. It demands scrutiny of whoever occupies the Prime Minister’s chair, even if that chair is fake. It demands accountability, regardless of who holds power.

    It is intact in the way this newspaper was the only media organisation to question the Prime Minister’s meetings with foreign leaders while he sat on his famous chair, despite the warnings of his own advisers.

    It is intact in ensuring the public knew their new leader had been quietly flown out on a private plane for medical treatment, while sick patients in an overcrowded and underfunded hospital struggled without food because of unpaid wages for kitchen staff, even as its minister announced plans for a new hospital.

    It is intact in the story of a father whose pleas for justice went unanswered after his son was badly beaten and fell into a coma, until the Samoa Observer published his account and police were finally forced to act.

    It is intact in the simple reporting of rubbish piling up near homes, which was cleared by the government the very next morning.

    It is intact even when Sano Malifa’s own village and family appeared on the front page during a dispute, because he believed in accountability for all, including himself.

    So why would the Prime Minister believe he is entitled to special treatment?

    As the elected Prime Minister, whose salary, car and expenses are paid for by the public through their hard earned taxes, he should know that the media’s fundamental role is to keep him honest.

    If the Prime Minister is truly concerned about the vision of journalists, he need only look at those closest to him. A JAWS executive, Angie Kronfield, publicly declared she wished the Observer editor’s face had been disfigured during the assault carried out by the Prime Minister’s own security guards.

    Better still, her husband, Apulu Lance Pulu, a long-time journalist and owner of Talamua Media, was charged alongside the Prime Minister and later convicted of fraud in a 2020 court case. Yet he now seems to enjoy the Prime Minister’s favour as a preferred media voice. Let that sink in.

    So if the Prime Minister wants proof of a failed vision, he need not search far.

    Lastly, the Prime Minister’s other claim that an outsider writes for this newspaper is a fiction of his own making.

    The Samoa Observer remains under the same ownership, grounded in nearly 50 years of service to the public. And since he has made his wish clear that this newspaper is no longer welcome at his press conferences or those of his ministers, let us state this without hesitation. The same people stand behind this newspaper, and our promise to our readers has never wavered.

    The Samoa Observer editorial published on 18 November 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The fall of the ‘Red Wall’ was a lie. Politicians never gave a shit about the North in the first place.

    A few years ago, the term ‘Red Wall’ was coined to describe the Labour Party’s former heartlands in the North and the Midlands, but the term in itself is a lie used by the political class to hide the real story. The term describes a sprawling collection of constituencies, from Bishop Auckland to Bolsover, and crucially encompasses my own battered heartlands in Teesside.

    For over a century, these were the beating heart of the Labour Party, this ‘Red Wall’ built on the foundations of coal, steel, manufacturing, and the collective working-class solidarity. But following the 2019 collapse, the phrase was bastardised. It became a neat soundbite, distracting from the decades of state-sponsored economic violence that preceded it.

    The narrative is a vile lie. That the decent, working-class people of the North suddenly abandoned socialism for flag-shagging, Brexit and a culture war.

    The ‘Red Wall’ didn’t turn its back on socialism over ‘wokeness’ at all.

    We were betrayed by a political class that didn’t give a single, solitary fuck about us. The nation and those who lead it forgot who built this country, whose blood, sweat, and tears lie in the steel that holds up the UK’s infrastructure. They abandoned the principles of economic struggle long before we did.

    We didn’t stop voting for Labour because we lack patriotism… We stopped voting for a party that, for generations, failed to give us any genuine, fighting alternative to the slow decline of our communities. The problem was never a lack of love for our country; it was a lack of socialism. It was a crushing realisation that the party we helped to build to defend us against the elite had become the elite itself. It was going to manage our decline and not reverse it.

    Economic annihilation and decades of deliberate neglect across the Red Wall

    The true betrayal of the wall started long before 2019. In 2010, the Tories and mainstream media teamed up and successfully rebranded austerity as a necessary evil instead of what it actually was.

    A disgustingly apparent, class-driven theft of wealth from the poor North to the rich South. This wasn’t innocent oversight; it was a scorched-earth policy created to weaken the institutional power of the working class permanently. And the stats remain hard evidence of betrayal, proving beyond a doubt that the North East was deliberately punished.

    The public sector was the last bastion for many in the North East after deindustrialisation. During the 2010 cuts, London saw a public sector job reduction of around 10%, which in itself is a shocking statistic, but compared to the 19% the North of England lost, it’s nothing. This reduction didn’t just ruin local employment, it gutted the capacity of local government to deal with the avalanche of social issues we suffered through poverty, housing and addiction.

    Waging war on our children

    They wage war on our children. Since austerity began, the North saw a massive increase of over 200,000 children living in relative poverty, a devastating 22% spike. Today in the North East, it is predicted that 38% of our kids live in poverty, but if you look closer at constituencies such as Middlesbrough, the rate is estimated to be over 52%. That is over fucking half. This is not a political realignment; this is a social crime carried out by policy choices in Westminster.

    And what’s worse is the cost in human lives. The chronic underfunding of health and social care has utterly decimated our basic security. Healthy life expectancy in the North East is now the lowest in the UK at a disgusting 59.1 years, which shows precisely what happens when the state pulls the plug on services. When welfare is replaced by hostility, people die younger, and it’s a clear trade-off.

    Private profit at the expense of public life.

    The human cost of decay, despair, and silence

    When a town like Middlesbrough, which had been Labour for decades, switched paths, it wasn’t cultural. It was a silent scream for help from people who have watched their high streets hollow, their neighbours grow sick, and their children fail for years. We have watched politicians we don’t even know, who we have no common ground with, come in with the promise of a new future, only to fuck off. They leave nothing but dust in the place of promises.

    In Boro, the town with one of the highest drug death rates in the country, the Diamorphine Assisted Treatment programme, a beautiful socialist solution, was allowed to fold. This initiative was making headway, saving lives and helping the public, but was ripped from the town as the Tories argued over billions for ridiculous vanity projects in the South. Billions of pounds for London, and the establishment couldn’t even stump up a few hundred thousand to save the lives of vulnerable people in one of the country’s most deprived areas.

    This is the definition of political neglect.

    Council funding has been systematically cut; they are on their knees and forced to choose between adult social care and the safety nets for children. This lack of political empathy is rooted in material decay. We feel disposable, that we are a burden on the nation’s finances, yet so many of us are aware of the billions the rich dodge in taxes.

    When people are scared, unrepresented, and their cries are brushed aside, they rarely look to the centre-ground establishment for answers. We fucking rebel. We will look for someone, fucking anyone, who sounds like they care about us and our crumbling lives.

    Scapegoating the victim

    This ruinous economic trauma creates a massive vacuum. The establishment and its media attack dogs understand this perfectly. They need to distract from the reality that the average weekly wage in the North East is nearly £50 below the national average (£472.30 vs £520.70)

    So, enter the ‘Culture Wars’ narrative.

    The rise of racist rhetoric and the shift towards right-wing parties in the North is not a cause; it’s a symptom. The term ‘reap what you sow’ is never more evident than it is here. It is the bitter harvest of a political elite that weaponises division to protect itself and its money. The establishment points their jewelled fingers at immigrants, ‘the woke,’ and the ‘lazy lout on benefits,’ because it stops people from asking the questions they truly fear: Where the hell did all the money go, and why did those who lead us let it happen?

    By feeding the working class’s anger with a cheap narrative scapegoat instead of economic opportunity, they have managed to turn us on our neighbours rather than those who rule. The true purpose of the ‘Red Wall’ label was to allow Labour to talk about identity rather than economic power. It allowed them to dodge the radical platform needed to fix the North.

    How to rebuild the Red Wall from the ashes using socialism and a Green Path

    The crisis which haunts the North isn’t one of identity; it is one of investment, ownership and control.

    The solution must be profound; it requires a comprehensive outcome that rejects neoliberalism and the consensus held by most major parties.

    To genuinely bring the North East and the wider ‘Red Wall’ region back to even a glimmer of its former glory, we need a political project built on two radical principles: Wealth redistribution and deep local empowerment.

    Labour’s failure is rooted in being piss-wet cowardly on wealth and ownership. The only way to get the billions we need to fix the North’s shattered infrastructure and social beliefs is to make the rich pay their fucking way.

    This is where the radical platforms of both the Green Party and Your Party offer a much-needed path.

    Public Ownership and the Wealth Tax

    The Greens have already taken the UK by storm, with their membership soaring on the promises they’re making to rebalance the books. The suggestion of an annual wealth tax on individual assets above a high threshold is precisely what we fucked need. This isn’t just a revenue generator, it’s a moral declaration that the ultra-rich are finally going to pay their way.

    Public ownership of water, central rail, and energy companies excites me. Immediately, we could stop the extraction of billions in private profit from essential services, using that money to insulate homes, upgrade grids, deliver clean, affordable energy, and create jobs in coastal and post-industrial areas. The North could be and should be a hub for genuine, publicly-owned green manufacturing and offshore wind, making the thousands of jobs the area desperately needs.

    The Greens want to abolish the hostility created by the DWP. Polanski has stood against the cruel two-child benefit cap and mandatory sanctions, which keep the people in the North in perpetual poverty. Policies like Universal Basic Income and a guaranteed minimum wage of £15 an hour would not just lift people out of in-work poverty. Still, it will also restore dignity and community stability to the area.

    Building wealth in the community and reversing the flow of capital

    Time and time again, Westminster and Whitehall have proven they cannot, and will not, fix the North. The key to breathing life back into the ‘Red Wall’ is Community Wealth Building – a modern revival of socialism.

    This model has been implemented in places like Preston and focuses not on attracting international capitalism, but on keeping local wealth local. In Teesside, this means things such as anchor institutions in which we will harness the spending power of local hospitals, universities and councils to shift contracts to local, worker-owned co-operatives and small businesses. This breaks the extractive supply chains that bleed local money dry (see Michelle Mone as a prime example).

    We must actively establish community land trusts and nurture local co-operatives. Instead of profits from new, green businesses flowing to London shareholders, they should be democratically controlled by the workers and the community that generates them. This helps restore the sense of ownership and collective stake that Thatcherism decimated and Labour never restored.

    And lastly, we need to prioritise local public services. Dedicating the new wealth tax revenue directly to local budgets (as the Greens propose an additional £5 billion a year) allows councils to adequately fund public health, social care, youth services and more importantly, re-establish local, non-privatised and high-quality children’s services to address the regional crisis of children in care directly.

    The Red Wall is not left behind – we’ve been dragged down

    We people of the North East are not ‘left behind’ culturally. We have been dragged down by years of a cowboy Westminster stealing our money and giving it to their pals.

    The people of the Red Wall deserve a political force that not only acknowledges our abandonment but also offers a revolutionary plan for economic repair. We need a fusion of socialist principles and the Greens’ vision of sustainable, high-quality jobs.

    These are the only bricks that can rebuild the Red Wall.

    Anything else is a fucking lie.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Antifabot

    This post was originally published on Canary.