radiofree.asia

Category: Opinion

  • TERF loser Graham Linehan arrested and banned from tweeting by police

    Hahaha, oh I love my job sometimes, and never more than when it gives me the chance to laugh at a terf loser getting their comeuppance – and there’s no bigger one than Graham Linehan.

    Glinner: the biggest terf loser on Twitter

    Graham Linehan, if you’ve the pleasure of never having heard of him, was formerly known for being the creator of shows such as Father Ted and Black Books. But for the last few years, he’s progressively become known as the weirdo on Twitter who harasses trans women and their allies to the point that his wife and family walked out on him.

    Anyone who dares to tweet about trans rights is bound to have plenty of experience with Graham, or as he’s known on Twitter by his username Glinner. In my time, I’ve been told to stay away from kids, stay out of women’s spaces, called a man, the Stasi and of course, the classic “gold star trans maiden”. Glinner’s tweets are nearly always a dog whistle to his even weirder loyal followers, so if he tweets you or about you, you’re guaranteed the absolute worst people in your mentions for a minimum of 2 days.

    But compared to the sustained hatred some have received from Graham, that’s small fry. He’s already in the middle of a court case for harassing 18-year-old trans activist Sophia, which included abusive comments and damaging her phone. He pleaded not guilty to these charges back in May and is due to stand trial tomorrow for that.

    Telling people to punch trans women is, in fact, inciting violence

    However, when he was returning to the country for the trial, he was arrested for a completely different reason. On Monday, the terf was arrested for inciting violence towards trans women through his tweets. To be honest with you, the police could’ve chosen a myriad of Glinner’s tweets, but three in particular were reported.

    As well as the above he also says you can “smell” a photo of trans rights protestors and another tweet simply stating “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. Fuck em.” In the tweets, he can clearly be seen being hateful towards trans people and their allies and definitely telling people to assault trans people. But of course, this is something Glinner denies.

    Linehan wrote about his arrest on his Substack because, in the best news of all – the police have told him he’s not allowed to tweet! Which must be absolutely killing the man who averages around 80 tweets a day. Jesus, we know you’re divorced Graham, but that takes the piss.

    Absolute comedy gold

    While I won’t link to his Substack, I will share some quotes from the post, because it’s the funniest shit he’s written in decades.

    After some horribly vile excuse for why he wrote the tweet about assaulting trans women, which involves him claiming all trans women in female-only spaces are abusers and should be assaulted, he comes out with a corker that apparently definitely happened:

    …The ‘punch in the bollocks’ bit was about the height difference between men and women, the bollocks being closer to punch level for a woman defending her rights and certainly not a call to violence. (Not one of my best as one of the female officers said “We’re not THAT small”).

    He then immediately challenges the police officer who is interviewing him on his use of the phrase trans people:

    He mentioned “trans people”. I asked him what he meant by the phrase. “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” I said “Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend.

    Imagine being so privileged that you not only feel you can challenge an arresting officer’s language but then think so warped that you think Stonewall have any influence over the UK Police.

    Linehan then informs the reader he was taken to A&E after his blood pressure was exceedingly high; he blames this, of course, on the harassment he’s faced by trans people and their allies. But let’s be honest, it’s from getting himself so red in the face any time a trans person breathes, isn’t it?

    But it wasn’t only Stonewall that’s embedded in the police force:

    The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans. Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists.

    Yes that’s right, the Catholic Church definitely don’t have a special relationship with the police force, but trans people do. Let that sink in for a minute and try not to burst out laughing.

    Glinner: banned from Twitter at the worst time for a terf

    The terf mournfully informs his loyal Twitter followers:

    I looked at the single bail condition: I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it.

    Which, let’s be honest, may as well be a death sentence for the man who has literally nothing else.

    Glinner ends his diatribe with this:

    To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.

    Which is funny because there’s only one abusive man I can see being treated sympathetically by the police, from what you’ve described, Graham.

    One of Glinner’s big gripes these last few years is that despite him sacrificing (read: throwing away) everything in his life to be a rancid terf, Queen Moldemort JK Rowling has never thanked, supported or even acknowledged him. Presumably because while she likes to cleverly incite hatred with thinly veiled words, Linehan tells people to kick trans women in the balls. But that all changed yesterday.

    Moldemort weighs in

    Rowling quote tweeted a post about the arrest, saying:

    What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.

    As it was rightly pointed out on Twitter, Glinner would’ve had an absolute field day that his hero had finally acknowledged him, so it makes it absolutely fucking hilarious that she waited until he couldn’t respond to do so.

    She’s since shared tweets contrasting the treatment of Linehan with the way raped women are treated by the police. When actual fact, they should be comparing it to how rapists are treated, considering that Linehan said himself, everyone was very polite and understanding.

    Snivelling terf Streeting tries to be funny

    Terf stooge Wes Streeting also felt the need to weigh in. I bet he was really proud of himself when he came up with the line:

    We want the police to focus on policing streets rather than tweets

    He then said something just as funny:

    But the thing we are mindful of, as a government that backs the police to keep us safe, is that police are there to enforce the laws that we as Parliament legislate for.

    So if over the years, with good intentions, Parliament has layered more and more expectation on police, and diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that’s obviously something we need to look at.

    So basically, when Kneecap or other pro-Palestine figures tweet, their laws are working fine. But because one of their side got caught out, it’s bad and needs changing, okay got it.

    Glinner got his just desserts

    As someone who’s been harassed endlessly by terfs, alt-right men and those against benefits for well over a decade on Twitter, I personally don’t think the laws go far enough. Terf accounts who wished my grandmother had died sooner are still active, men who shared my photo with cum on it never even got the posts removed. I’ve been threatened with violence, rape, and abuse to me and my family, and the only time police have visited me about Twitter is when a man got me cautioned for warning others what he’d done.

    Glinner got exactly what he deserved here, and it’s all the more funnier that his precious Twitter got taken away in the process.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Chris Hedges: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists

    Western reporters are full partners in the genocide. They amplify Israeli lies, which they know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel.

    ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

    There are two types of war correspondents. The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones.

    They send back to their viewers or readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives. This first type, in every war, is a tiny minority.

    Then there is the second type, the inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war. Despite what they tell editors and the public, they have no intention of putting themselves in danger.

    They are pleased with the Israeli ban on foreign reporters into Gaza. They plead with officials for background briefings and press conferences. They collaborate with their government minders who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat.

    They slavishly disseminate whatever they are fed by officials, much of which is a lie, and pretend it is news. They join little jaunts arranged by the military — dog and pony shows — where they get to dress up and play soldier and visit outposts where everything is controlled and choreographed.

    The mortal enemy of these poseurs are the real war reporters, in this case, Palestinian journalists in Gaza. These reporters expose them as toadies and sycophants, discrediting nearly everything they disseminate. For this reason, the poseurs never pass up a chance to question the veracity and motives of those in the field.

    I watched these snakes do this repeatedly to my colleague Robert Fisk.

    Took huge hit
    When war reporter Ben Anderson arrived at the hotel where journalists covering the war in Liberia were encamped — in his words getting “drunk” at bars “on expenses,” having affairs and exchanging “information rather than actually going out and getting information” — his image of war reporters took a huge hit.

    “I thought, finally, I’m amongst my heroes,” Anderson recalls. “This is where I’ve wanted to be for years. And then me and the cameraman I was with — who knew the rebels very well — he took us out for about three weeks with the rebels.

    “We came back to Monrovia. The guys in the hotel bar said, ‘Where have you been? We thought you’d gone home.’ We said, ‘We went out to cover the war. Isn’t that our job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’

    “The romantic view I had of foreign correspondents was suddenly destroyed in Liberia,” he went on. “I thought, actually, a lot of these guys are full of shit. They’re not even willing to leave the hotel, let alone leave the safety of the capital and actually do some reporting.”

    You can see an interview I did with Anderson here.

    This dividing line, which occurred in every war I covered, defines the reporting on the genocide in Gaza. It is not a divide of professionalism or culture. Palestinian reporters expose Israeli atrocities and implode Israeli lies. The rest of the press does not.

    Palestinian journalists, targeted and assassinated by Israel, pay — as many great war correspondents do — with their lives, although in far greater numbers.

    Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another. The goal is to shroud the genocide in darkness.

    No other war close
    No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since October 7, Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.” Journalists in Palestine leave wills and recorded videos to be read or played at their death.

    A funeral for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab
    A funeral for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab. Hatab was killed, along with his family members, in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Image: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images

    The colleagues of these Palestinian journalists in the Western press broadcast from the border fence with Gaza decked out in flak jackets and helmets, where they have as much chance of being hit by shrapnel or a bullet as being struck by an asteroid. They scurry like lemmings to briefings by Israeli officials. They are not only the enemies of truth, but also the enemies of journalists doing the real work of war reporting.

    When Iraqi troops attacked the Saudi border town of Khafji during the first Gulf War, Saudi soldiers fled in panic. Two French photographers and I watched frantic soldiers commandeering fire trucks and racing south. US Marines pushed the Iraqis back.

    But in Riyadh, the press was told of our gallant Saudi allies defending their homeland. Once fighting ended, the press bus stopped a few miles down the road from Khafji. The pool reporters clambered out, escorted by military minders. They did stand-ups with the distant sound of artillery and smoke as a backdrop and repeated the lies the Pentagon wanted to tell.

    Meanwhile, the two photographers and I were detained and beaten by enraged Saudi military police, furious that we had documented the panicked flight of Saudi forces, as we tried to leave Khafji.

    My refusal to abide by press restrictions in the first Gulf War saw the other New York Times reporters in Saudi Arabia write a letter to the foreign editor saying I was ruining the paper’s relationship with the military. If not for the intervention of R.W. “Johnny” Apple, who had covered Vietnam, I would have been sent back to New York.

    I do not fault anyone for not wanting to go into a war zone. This is a sign of normality. It is rational. It is understandable. Those of us who volunteer to go into combat — my colleague Clyde Haberman at The New York Times once quipped “Hedges will parachute into a war with or without a parachute” — have obvious personality defects.

    Pretend war correspondents
    But I fault those who pretend to be war correspondents. They do tremendous damage. They peddle false narratives. They mask reality. They serve as witting — or unwitting — propagandists. They discredit the voices of the victims and exonerate the killers.

    When I covered the war in El Salvador, before I worked for The New York Times, the paper’s correspondent dutifully regurgitated whatever the embassy fed her. This had the effect of making my editors — as well as editors of the other correspondents who did report the war– question our veracity and “impartiality.”

    It made it harder for readers to understand what was happening. The false narrative neutered and often overpowered the real one.

    The slander used to discredit my Palestinian colleagues — claiming they are members of Hamas — is sadly familiar. Many Palestinian reporters I know in Gaza are, in fact, quite critical of Hamas. But even if they have ties with Hamas, so what?

    Israel’s attempt to justify targeting journalists from the Hamas-run al-Aqsa media network is also a violation of Article 79 of the Geneva Convention.

    I worked with reporters and photographers who had a wide variety of beliefs, including Marxist-Leninists in Central America. This did not prevent them from being honest. I was in Bosnia and Kosovo with a Spanish cameraman, Miguel Gil Moreno, who was later killed with my friend Kurt Schork.

    Miguel was a member of the right-wing Catholic group Opus Dei. He was also a journalist of tremendous courage, great compassion and moral probity, despite his opinions about Spain’s fascist ruler Francisco Franco. He did not lie.

    Seeking to crush
    In every war I covered, I was attacked as supporting or belonging to whatever group the government, including the US government, was seeking to crush. I was accused of being a tool of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, Hamas, the Muslim-led government in Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

    John Simpson of the BBC, like many Western reporters, argues that the “world needs honest, unbiased eyewitness reporting to help people make up their minds about the major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza.”

    The assumption that if Western reporters were in Gaza the coverage would improve is risible. Trust me. It would not.

    Israel bans the foreign press because there is a bias in Europe and the United States in favour of reporting by Western reporters. Israel is aware that the scale of the genocide is too vast for Western outlets to hide or obscure, despite all the ink and airtime they give to Israeli and US apologists.

    Israel also cannot continue its systematic campaign of annihilation of journalists in Gaza if it has to contend with foreign media in its midst.

    Israeli lies amplified by Western media outlets, including my former employer The New York Times, are worthy of Pravda. Beheaded babies. Babies cooked in ovens. Mass rape by Hamas. Errant Palestinian rockets that cause explosions at hospitals and massacre civilians. Secret command tunnels and command centers in schools and hospitals. Journalists who direct Hamas rocket units. Protesters of the genocide on college campuses who are antisemites and supporters of Hamas.

    Israel ‘lies like it breathes’
    I covered the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, much of that time in Gaza, for seven years. If there is one indisputable fact, it is that Israel lies like it breathes. The decision by Western reporters to give credibility to these lies, to give them the same weight as documented Israeli atrocities, is a cynical game.

    The reporters know these lies are lies. But they, and the news outlets that employ them, prize access — in this case access to Israeli and US officials — above truth. The reporters, as well as their editors and publishers, fear becoming targets of Israel and the powerful Israel lobby.

    There is no cost for betraying the Palestinians. They are powerless.

    Call those lies out and you will swiftly find your requests for briefings and interviews with officials rebuffed. You won’t be invited by press officers to participate in staged visits to Israeli military units. You and your news organisation will be viciously attacked.

    You will be left out in the cold. Your editors will terminate your assignment or your employment. This is not good for careers. And so, the lies are dutifully repeated, no matter how absurd.

    It is pathetic watching these reporters and their news outlets, as Fisk writes, fight “like tigers to join these ‘pools’ in which they would be censored, restrained and deprived of all freedom of movement on the battlefield”.

    When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?

    ‘Hamas camera’
    “Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

    “IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

    “Israel army says six ‘terrorists’ killed in Monday strikes on Gaza hospital,” the AFP headline read.

    “Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists,” Reuters said.

    “Israel claims troops saw Hamas camera before deadly hospital attack,” Sky News explained.

    Just for the record, the camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

    When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and three other journalists were killed on August 10 in their media tent near al-Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?

    Pulitzer prize-winner
    “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

    The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

    The barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press violates a fundamental tenet of journalism, the duty to transmit the truth to the viewer or reader.

    It legitimizes mass slaughter. It refuses to hold Israel to account. It betrays Palestinian journalists, those reporting and being killed in Gaza. And it exposes the bankruptcy of Western journalists, whose primary attributes are careerism and cowardice.

    Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Worried about the impending race riots? Starmer isn’t – he’s too busy shagging a flag.

    Amidst rising racism, Keir Starmer has revealed that he hangs the English flag in his home and:

    always sits in front of a Union Jack.

    Of course, the word ‘revealed’ there is more akin to the type of ‘reveal’ that happens when you lift the toilet lid to see a stinking turd looking back at you.

    Never one to miss out, home secretary Yvette Cooper echoed these bizarre sentiments:

    What else would you expect when racists are daubing roundabouts with England flags, spraying racist graffiti on takeaways, and mosques are attacked? Perhaps for political leaders that understand flags are symbols of nation states and rarely, if ever, just a simple expression of patriotism? Or, political leaders that understand their responsibility to head off another round of white riots?

    No?

    Fine, let’s dive in to the fuckery.

    Racism on the rise and Starmer is busy looking at flags

    Starmer defended his flag remarks, saying:

    Do you think someone would do that? Use a flag to divide people?? If you share that sentiment of shock and surprise, then do get in touch with us – we’ve got some magic beans to sell you.

    The increase in abhorrent racism and stoking of anti-immigrant hysteria should have been a slam dunk for any Labour prime minister. Simply say that you like the flag when it’s for the lionesses winning their latest trophy, and when it’s used a symbol of racism, those same racists must be rejected entirely.

    However, Starmer isn’t just any Labour prime minister. He’s a charlatan Labour prime minister, so we all have to sit through his bumbling attempts to appeal to Reform voters who will never vote for him anyway.

    And, Starmer’s cack-handed flag bollocks will have undoubtedly emboldened an already pretty fucking bold section of the country who think spreading terror to Muslims is acceptable behaviour. Al Jazeera reported that the South Essex Community Centre had a makeshift England flag left covering its entrance.

    Unlike Starmer, local council leader Gavin Callaghan got the measure of the situation and said:

    Don’t dress it up. Don’t excuse it. It’s scum behaviour, and it shames our town … The cowards who did this will be caught.

    To do this right before Friday prayers is no coincidence. That’s targeted. That’s intimidation. And it’s criminal.

    Imagine! A leader calling racism out for what it is!

    Patriotism is no excuse

    There’s been a pervasive excuse over the years that patriotism is an acceptable reason for flying the flag of your nation. But, we know more than we ever have about corrupt governments, crony politicians, and wealth hoarders. It doesn’t make any type of sense anymore – if it ever did – to be proud of your country. And, that’s even more the case when it comes to England and Britain. The flags of both states have been known as the butcher’s apron: heralds of vicious settler colonialism that continues to this very day.

    Is it really worth flying those same flags along with the excuse ‘but I’m not doing it in a racist way’? Ultimately, flags are symbols. The symbols of England and Britain are drenched with the festering blood of colonial violence. These nations are so far away from even beginning to reckon with that colonial past, never mind its colonial present.

    If you can show me a left-wing person who is proud to wave flags of England or Britain, I’ll show you a naive gullible fool. Pride has nothing to do with patriotism. Be proud! Be proud of your neighbours, your colleagues, your friends, the people, and not the nation states. See the good of local communities – but why restrict that to arbitrary borders drawn up by raging cunts?

    The symbolism of flags will, of course, vary wildly depending on where you come from. Palestine and Sudan flags have become synonymous with solidarity with oppressed people. Whether English and British people like it or not, our flags are symbols of vicious and vile racism.

    Doesn’t matter if it’s twee bunting, the Queen’s third birthday, for a game of sports ball, or otherwise. We all know what it means.

    Featured image via Unsplash/balesstudio

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Walden Bello on Gaza and the media silence: ‘It isn’t fear of the Zionists. It is far worse’

    Israel is boosting its Zionist influence in the Pacific. Australia has exposed such media influence. The media in the Philippines is now under scrutiny. And Aotearoa New Zealand?

    COMMENTARY: By Walden Bello

    When the Flores and Velasco articles and posts whitewashing Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza first came out a few days ago, I was waiting for people in the Philippine media to criticise and denounce them since they were so obviously hack pieces that did not meet the minimal standards of decent journalism.

    I waited and waited, until I realised that there were no media people or organisations that were going to speak up.

    Where were the progressive and liberal voices, apart from those of Richard Heydarian and Inday Espina Varona?

    Walden Bello's earlier article in Asia Pacific Report on August 31
    Walden Bello’s earlier article in Asia Pacific Report on August 31 exposing “hack propaganda”. Image: APR screenshot

    This was the reason I felt compelled to issue the statement condemning the sordid reporting of Flores and Velasco.

    I was not out to do an expose, but that’s what it effectively became. In my subsequent posts, I raised the question of what was the reason just two journalists were willing to challenge the stories.

    Was it a case of circling the wagons to protect errant colleagues? Was it fear of ties with the Israeli state being exposed by the Israelis in retaliation? Was it fear of physical or political reprisals by the Israelis?

    These may have played a part, but the deafening silence meant there was something bigger at work.

    This morning I received a long text from a prominent media practitioner that provided the answer. It’s not fear. It’s actually worse: agreement with Zionist ideology and policies, including genocide.

    That the person asked me not to divulge his name for fear of suffering retribution from his colleagues stunned me. OMG, is this how deep the rot is with our media? ? Here is his disconcerting revelation to me:

    ‘Most are prejudiced’
    “Yes some are scared, but honestly most of them actually are prejudiced against Muslims and side with the Zionists anytime.

    “Most believe in the US religious fascist Zionist narrative, and also cannot accept that the world has changed — that the US is no longer the unipower it was decades ago, and that Russia, China, India and BRICS are on the rise.

    “And also, you should hear them talk about how Filipino Muslims should be wiped off the face of the earth.

    “These are college graduates from UP [University of the Philippines], UST [University of Santo Tomas], Ateneo who studied media.

    “Whenever I would voice empathy for the Muslim minority here, or Palestinians, I’d be called stupid. Same also because I refused to join in the corruption.

    “Oh, and also they have the same prejudice against China and the Chinese and mistake the Japanese imperial army atrocities as something China did to us!

    “Also this is not limited to media. I have batchmates from UP Diliman, medical doctors, lawyers, engineers who also have the same prejudices.”

    He added: “Some of these journalists have won awards abroad.”

    Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Flags aren’t left or right wing – yet suddenly, they are

    The obsession with flags is called vexillomania.  A flag is just a symbol. It’s tribalism – which side I’m on.  Tribalism in football is mostly good natured banter.  I’ve been to European games and international games where it has built bridges with foreign fans.  That’s what responsible adults do.

    Tribalism says my side is good, your side is bad, and evidence is irrelevant.  If we lose it’s the ref’s fault.  If we win it’s my personal achievement.  Tribalism works in sport.  But it’s dangerous in governments.  Left unchecked it leads to wars because their religion is different from ours.

    Is vexillomania over flags right wing?

    The current wave of vexillomania is labelled as right wing.  But what is right-wing?  I worked with a Tory councillor who was genuinely concerned about child poverty.  He hadn’t connected the dots the same as me.  He hadn’t concluded that Thatcherite economic policies led to wealth inequality, increased utility bills, spiralling housing costs and a wave of insecure employment.  He was economically right-wing, but in opposing poverty, supported left-wing economic values.

    Thing is, he’s not unusual.  As mayor I met with a centre-right think tank researcher who agreed with me on decentralisation and devolution.  He was all for free market economics, but genuinely anti-racist.

    And is decentralisation left-wing or right-wing?  Communist parties want to replace capitalism with a centrally planned state-owned and state-run economy.  Anarchists want to replace capitalism by supplanting all hierarchies with decentralised voluntary associations.  They are polar opposites, but both want to replace capitalist inequality.  Both are left-wing.

    What is left wing?

    I was once at a global investment summit, flying the flag for the North East (metaphorically).

    People like Bill Gates were there, hedge fund managers and all kinds of government ministers. I got talking to a Treasury minister I negotiated with over the North East devolution deal.  “I can’t place you politically,” he said.  “You’re creating jobs and investing in businesses and talk about fiscal devolution.  But you’re left-wing.”  Some people think economic competence is the preserve of the right.  Although less so since Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.  And austerity.

    On Newsnight I argued against Labour’s adoption of the Conservative’s two-child benefit cap.  “This is fiscally sensible,” was Labour’s argument.

    “It costs a fortune to keep kids in poverty,” I argued:

    Our health is plummeting.  Our NHS waiting lists are through the roof.  Teachers are leaving education in droves.  How are we going to get a healthy, productive high-skilled workforce unless we look after kids?

    It’s common sense to say that lifting 400,000 kids out of poverty provides a long-term benefit not just of those kids and their families, but public services and the economy too.  Is this a left-wing argument, though, or just a logical, evidence-based argument?

    Centrist dads

    In response to this interview, Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani made an interesting point, “I can’t help but feel that in a sane political culture Jamie Driscoll would be a, quote, ‘centrist Dad’ rather than regarded as too radical to run for a Labour Party on the apparently centre-left.”

    The Nolan chart, or political compass, attempts two dimensions.  One dimensions is economically left-wing or right-wing.  Redistribution and taxing wealth vs. unfettered free markets.  And by the way, billionaires really don’t like free markets.  They engage in all kinds of anti-competitive behaviour and lobby for huge taxpayer subsidies and government contracts.

    The second dimension is libertarian vs. authoritarian on personal freedom.  But gun control is authoritarian.  Pro-choice on abortion is libertarian.  So millions of Americans are simultaneously at both ends of that spectrum.

    I’d have two totally different dimensions.  One axis is how willing are you to listen to evidence, check facts, and think things through.  That’s also the hallmark of a good leader – someone who listens without prejudice.  That’s why I’m an advocate of deliberative democracy.  Not reality TV style popularity polls.  But citizens’ juries where they weigh evidence and expert testimony, and bring their diverse lived experience to bear.

    The second axis is how much you want to control other people.  Do you object if people are different from you?  Do you believe that how they live their life is their business, not yours?

    Strip away all the sophistry and distraction, and in the end it comes down to which freedoms you prefer: the freedom to exploit, or freedom from domination?

    Waving flags is not always tribal – but it currently is

    Everyone should enjoy the freedom from violence, harassment and hate just for being who they are.  Everyone should enjoy the freedom to pursue economic, cultural and personal endeavours.  But when freedoms collide, we should prioritise freedom from domination over the freedom to hoard resources.

    That means your freedom from damp and eviction trumps your landlord’s freedom to make more money.  Your freedom to raise children on a sustainable planet trumps a corporation’s unregulated freedom to pump oil.  Your freedom to grow up in peace trumps the freedom of warmongers and arms dealers to profit from war.  The freedom to starve is no freedom at all.

    The people waving flags outside asylum accommodation are completely tribal.  They’re not interested in evidence or thinking things through.  The freedom they seek is the freedom to vent anger and hatred on those worse off than themselves.  Sadly in most cases, they’re punching down because they’ve been punched down upon.  If they want real freedom, they should punch up, at the billionaires who oppress them.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Starmer’s peddling to Farage is a stain on the last shreds of our national moral conscience

    We’re now at that point of the not-so-great immigration debate where mainstream political leaders are committing to sending refugees back to the Taliban to be slaughtered, to the unbridled glee of a bloodthirsty minority that think “our” is spelled as “are”, and painting a red cross on a roundabout is an act of revolution not seen on these sewage-ridden shores since the English Civil War of 1642 – 1651 — thought to be around the time Reform UK and Tommy Five Names wish to take Britain back to.

    This elite-backed and elitist-fronted ‘moral revolt against multiculturalism’ is a hugely embarrassing stain on our national moral conscience. Be in no doubt of that.

    A betrayal by Labour over immigration

    During the 2024 election campaign, Labour emphasised creating “safe and legal routes” as part of their plan to address the small boats crossing over from France, reducing those perilous Channel crossings that risk the lives of the passengers and the heroic souls that are tasked with rescuing them.

    At no point did anyone in the Labour Party suggest they would attempt to out-Reform the Reform UK headbangers, did they?

    An immigration bidding war between Starmer and Farage that ends with a Taliban bullet to the back of the head isn’t quite the patriotic look that we should be aspiring to, is it?

    Why are we even attempting to have this debate on Nigel Farage’s terms? Because he’s been on BBC Question Time almost as often as David Dimbleby?

    The Reform Führer simply peddles poisonous, opportunistic, uncosted hogwash, with a huge dose of populism, carefully wrapped up in a Union flag.

    If this is all it takes to float the (small) boats of the hard-of-thinking right, it’s not going to be impossible to sink them.

    The British media — who have always got a good word to say for the testicle-chewing monster — want you to believe the rise, and eventual success of this toxic nationalism is an inevitability.

    It isn’t.

    Flagshagging ahoy

    A handful of dopey-arsed flagshaggers with the Winston Churchill/Richard The Lionheart/St George Cross/Reform UK social media profile photo is far from representative of the people of Britain.

    Granted, the government’s catastrophic handling of just about everything it touches — particularly the crass and deeply immoral way they have dealt with the debate around immigration — has fanned the flames of discontent amongst the racists and bigots in our communities.

    We have seen this sort of nationalism dressed up as patriotism before, haven’t we? They select a minority group, paint them out to be a threat to our way of life, or in this case, our ‘Britishness’, and the rest is all about raising flags and turning up at rallies to scream something about “protecting are girls”.

    The fact that the British government, a Labour government no less, thinks it can go toe-to-toe with the likes of hateful little shit heads like Farage, Tommy Five Names, and whoever the Tory leader is these days on immigration, is as worrying as it is sickening.

    That’s their MO, Mr Starmer.

    A Labour government is supposed to stand at the other end of the political spectrum and offer an alternative to this loathsome, divisive style of politics, not join in with the populist hatefest while the far-right push our national flags down the same route as the Swastika.

    Human rights lawyer? Pull the fucking other one. ‘Sir’ Starmer is a vainglorious, entirely disingenuous fraud, living off past achievements such as, erm… *scratches head*… his mum working for the NHS.

    Ugly scenes

    The ugly scenes in Epping are set to be repeated across the country in the coming days and weeks. Patreon Prince Robinson is banging the drum of hatred and violence and the middled-aged minions, desperately trying to relive their football hooliganism days, march along to every single beat, ready to throw a quick Seig Heil, because they’re proud to be British.

    I’ve never worked that one out.

    The billionaires and their useful idiots have done a fucking fantastic job of radicalising the people with the very least to turn them against the refugees and asylum seekers that are being stored away in these hotels.

    Had your local Holiday Express been rammed to the eyeballs with white Ukrainian refugees, do you think the South African, Elon Musk would be tweeting a St George cross and complaining about the downfall of democracy in the UK?

    Do you think the EDL fascists with the Nazi Germany ideology would be lining up in the hotel car park, pitchforks in hand, demanding Sergei from Kyiv is sent back to the front line to face the full force of the Russian bear?

    Do you think this toxic, corrupt corporate media, owned by foreign billionaires and tax exiles, would be offering a free 40:1 scale replica of the late Queen’s coffin and a lifetime’s supply of Chinese-made, St George flags to the first person that sets fire to a hotel full of refugees, if they just so happened to be white?

    Immigration: a national scandal, but not for the reasons Reform says

    Reform UK is currently riding high in the opinion polls for one very good reason. I know that every single Reform voter isn’t a racist piece of shit, indeed, some are economically left, it just seems apparent that every single racist piece of shit is likely to vote for Reform UK at the next set of elections.

    Finally…

    At this moment in time, it is not appropriate or sensible for the British left to engage in these internal disputes over ideological purity. I’m talking about Your Party. Diverting any focus from our broader objectives will only serve to undermine the absolute unity that is needed to effectively address the urgent, pressing challenges that we are facing today.

    I’m glad I got that off my chest.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • How two Filipino ‘journalists’ took part in Israeli whitewashing of genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Walden Bello

    I am alarmed by reports that Filipino journalists were flown in by the Israeli government to participate in what is essentially a whitewashing campaign for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    At least two articles, atrocious excuses for journalism, have come out of this trip.One is a piece by Wilson Lee Flores for The Philippine Star, entitled “Israel beyond the headlines: Where ancient stones speak.”

    By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to “the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,” Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.

    In a Facebook post, Flores further parrots Israel’s propaganda by highlighting how the brutal IDF employs both men and women to carry out atrocities, a cynical weaponisation of “feminism.”

    Even more repulsive is the piece from the Daily Tribune about “Gaza’s Fake Famine” from Vernon Velasco. It is a parody of a story, overly simplifying the famine of Gaza to a matter of food truck logistics, and uncritically quoting an IDF Officer.

    Fittingly, the article contains three photos of shipping containers but not a single photo of a human being.

    This runs counter to facts laid out by UN officials, including Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who points out how half a million people face “starvation, destitution, and death”.

    ‘Moral failure’ over Gaza
    A study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet points to the “moral failure” as 1-2 million people live in the most extreme food insecurity level (phase 5 or catastrophe famine) according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

    "By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to 'the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,' Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes"
    “By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to ‘the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,’ Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.” Image: TPS “Life” screenshot APR

    This famine unfolds as shameless journalists make food vlogs kilometres away.

    The facts are clear. At least 63,000 people have been killed and 150,000 injured, with women and children making up a significant portion of the casualties. The UN has also reported that nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population (around 1.9 million people) has been displaced.

    Widespread destruction has left over 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, including more than 94 percent of hospitals either damaged or destroyed. No amount of narrative spin or “complexity” can sanitise this genocide.

    As we celebrate National Press Freedom Day, I implore friends in the press to not fall for the lies of the murderous Zionist regime.

    It would be tragic for journalists to provide cover for a regime that has murdered at least 240 of their peers.

    Filipino journalists must shed the unhealthy culture of silence and non-intervention, and not hesitate to criticise errant colleagues.

    They must make it clear that these recipients of Zionist gold are a disgrace to Philippine journalism. The Philippine government must look into the activities of the Israeli Embassy and their manipulation of local media narratives to sanitise their genocide.

    Filipino journalists must stand in solidarity with their slain colleagues abroad, not with their killers.

    Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Citizens of Switzerland Say NO to the Electronic ID (e-ID): And Now the Swiss Government Calls upon them to Vote Again

    On 7 March 2021, Swiss citizens voted already on the introduction of the electronic ID (e-ID) and rejected the government’s proposals by a landslide of 64.4% NO, against 35.6% YES.

    This was just four years ago. And now the Swiss government puts the proposal again before the people. Not voluntarily. It was presented to both Swiss Parliamentary Houses and accepted, as is often the case, as the Swiss Parliament does not really represent the interests of the people, but the interests of business.

    This is a clear signal that Switzerland has converted from a democratic republic to a corporation, with a corporate accounting system, where profit making is the Master, where the common people are the workers, and those at the head of the Corporation, like the Seven gnomes in Bern, are the Swiss Corporate Management, the CEOs so to speak.

    Immediately, a referendum was launched against the e-ID, so that the government must present the e-ID proposal again to the Swiss people. This time with better prepared arguments with more lies and misinformation, because the essence of the e-ID remains the same: It would be a major step into full digital control, full digital enslavement of the population.

    Just as a reminder, Swiss Parliamentarians absurdly have the right to sit on the boards of as many corporations and financial institutions as they desire. It is the epitome of conflict of interest.

    It means we have in Switzerland a built-in lobby, close to unique worldwide, in a country that calls itself the heart of democracy.

    Think again.

    Now the case of YES or NO e-ID is again presented to the same people, with other arguments and, frankly, misinformation that should make a “yes” vote more palatable. What it really means, the Swiss Government wants to push this e-ID through, come hell or high water. What does that tell you about our government?

    Can it be trusted as it pretends and want you to believe?

    No way!

    Why else would the Government disrespect the will of the people, so clearly expressed with an almost two-thirds voter rejection of e-ID in 2021, just four years ago?

    Do not trust the government.

    You have not forgotten the Covid scandal, better called Covid-crime — a good reason for disbelieving anything pushed by the Government against the will of the people.

    Let us just enumerate a few of the most obvious arguments against an e-ID, arguments valid around the world, not just in Switzerland.

    Arguments against e-ID include privacy risks, with legitimate fears of data tracking and exploitation for profiling and marketing by companies or authorities. Just think of the “cookies” you must approve for almost any article you want to read.

    Security concerns are issues due to potentially insecure technology and insufficient protection against cyberattacks, i.e., data can be stolen and sold to who knows whom, for example to the so-called Five-plus One Eyes, the Secret Services of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and guess who? Israel’s Mossad.

    Data can also simply be used by our government for total control and manipulation of groups or individual citizens who do “not behave.” Digital data can be linked to bank accounts and block bank accounts, if the Master authorities deem it necessary, because a citizen is out-of-line with a corrupted and dictatorial government policy. Digital e-ID is the precursor for a Social Credit System.

    Digital exclusion, or discrimination, is another issue as those unfamiliar with digital tools could be disadvantaged or forced out of accessing services. Additionally, there are fears of increasing coercion by companies or authorities to use the e-ID, and the possibility that it could, indeed, enable a social credit system.

    Digital e-ID data could be used for blackmailing, either by your own government or by those who have stolen or bought your digital data.

    Today, Swiss citizens at home and abroad must use their paper ID card or passport to prove their identity.

    That is SAFE.

    With digital e-ID, you must download one or various apps on your computer and smartphone to be able to upload a digital ID. Every new App is a new risk.

    Like with electronic payment systems – another enslavement horror which unfortunately many people, especially the younger generations, have not yet realized – data on your smart phones can be hacked, and when your phone is lost or stolen, all your security is gone, including banking ID and everything linked to the digital e-ID.

    For now, the Swiss Government says the e-ID will remain optional.

    Wait a minute: That’s “for now.”  In 2026, the government is planning to introduce a biometric Swiss identity card (ID), a precursor to the e-ID. Have you been told about it?

    The Swiss Government is among those governments which push most for an all-digitization of everything, including money. Once a certain level of digitization is reached, the next step to compulsory e-ID is easy. The government simply erases the validity of paper IDs – and what will you do against it?

    You are then at the point of no return, digitally enslaved with hardly an escape.

    An ALARM, please vote NO on 28 September 2025 on the digital e-ID, make it a resounding NO, against digitization of everything.

    The post Citizens of Switzerland Say NO to the Electronic ID (e-ID): And Now the Swiss Government Calls upon them to Vote Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No one needs Hollywood producers flocking to a film about Hind Rajab

    Mainstream media has been abuzz with the news of five “Hollywood luminaries” throwing their support behind the upcoming film The Voice of Hind Rajab.

    Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jonathan Glazer have joined the film as executive producers after previewing a cut of the film ahead of its Venice Film Festival premiere.

    As the Canary’s Alaa Shamali highlighted:

    The Voice of Hind Rajab is based on real audio recordings of Hind, as she cried for help, saying she was trapped among the bodies of her relatives inside a car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza, before the call was cut off and she was later found dead. This tragic moment, which reverberated around the world as a symbol of humanity’s failure, has been transformed into a 90-minute fictional drama that combines documentary and art, raising questions of memory and justice.

    On the face of it then, it seems like a positive thing that Hollywood stars are amplifying Palestinian stories. However, it shouldn’t have taken the Israeli occupation forces firing 355 bullets at a six-year-old to do it. Nor should it come 22 months into a genocide in which Israel has massacred at least 63,000, including 19,000 children, and wounded over 150,000 more Palestinians. It’s a disgrace that Palestinian filmmakers and artists are not being listened to on their own merits. Hollywood have not only dragged their heels on calling out the genocide, but have also silenced the voices and experiences of Palestinians.

    The Voice of Hind Rajab: celebrity reputation opportunism

    It’s only fair to start by underlining that it’s not the first time some of these celebs have spoken out.

    For example, Glazer was the sole exception to a 2024 Oscars that saw otherwise damning silence. In a speech, he decried the instrumentalisation of Jewishness and the Holocaust in justification of Israel’s genocide. It’s worth noting however that Glazer’s spiel was at best, a tentative criticism since it preposterously equated Israel’s brutal genocidal onslaught in Gaza and the murder of more than 50,000 Palestinians, to 7 October.

    Meanwhile, Phoenix was among the early names calling on then US president Biden to demand a ceasefire in 2023. He also signed a letter in support of Glazer’s Oscars speech alongside 450+ other celebrities. In May, he followed this up by backing another letter condemning the film industry for its silence on Gaza. Recently, he also went on American podcaster Theo Von’s show and lambasted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and Israel’s engineered famine:

    @aljazeeraenglish

    Academy award-winning actor, Joaquin Phoenix calls #Gaza situation “horrible” and questions the use of aid distribution methods over established channels. #news

    ♬ original sound – Al Jazeera English – Al Jazeera English

    Mara also signed the letter to Biden, and the recent one in May, the latter alongside Cuarón.

    However, plenty on X felt the move reeked of PR opportunism:

    And to a large extent, it’s hard not to agree. Because let’s be real, a handful of open letters, while welcome, is not what genuine solidarity looks like. Have they thrown their collective billions behind the vital mutual aid efforts – like the Sameer Project – feeding Gaza? Perhaps they have, but it’d be a shock that any celeb hasn’t taken the opportunity to paraded their philanthropy en masse. Have they turned out to protests or taken direct action? Not that I’ve seen – or can find – either.

    And, these individuals aren’t even the story. The real story here is that Hollywood is using censorship and silencing to manufacture consent for Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Middle East Eye’s William Johnson wrote:

    Free speech once meant everything to the US arts and entertainment industries.

    But since Israel declared war on Gaza, artists, actors and production staff have alleged that there is a concerted campaign by industry executives to silence solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians.

    Dozens of workers at every level of the arts and entertainment world: from actors and dancers to carpenters, set dressers, animators, composers and screenwriters have told Middle East Eye that they have been punished for speaking out on Israel’s war on Gaza which has claimed more than 57,700 lives since October 2023.

    The film industry has a problem. It is all too willing to prop up genocidal Israel and to silence Palestinians. Those in the most powerful positions of this industry have their role to play in this genocide. A few famous producers attaching themselves to a film about Hind Rajab, making themselves the story, is like using a thimble to save a drowning boat.

    Hollywood: agitprop for the military industrial complex

    Fundamentally, Hollywood complicity in warmongering is as American as apple pie. From it’s very inception, the industry has been pumping out ceaseless soft propaganda for the genocidal war criminals. As I previously wrote:

    Hollywood is – and always has been – a vehicle of US imperial hegemony. Films operate as a mechanism of US propaganda for its militaristic colonial expansionism across the globe.

    It was only the start of this year that film mega-franchise Marvel put out its propagandistic new Captain America film. This hitched US imperial supremacy to Israel through the introduction of superhero Sabra – in essence, a personification of Israel’s apartheid regime. This was in spite of, and amid, the settler state’s continuing genocide in Gaza.

    The Pentagon’s entanglement with Marvel and Hollywood studios more broadly only cements the entertainment industry’s collusion with the US military industrial complex further.

    In this way, Hollywood movies serve as a soft power strategy for subtly reinforcing US cultural domination on an international stage. Hollywood promotes the US’s white imperial project through screen. It sanitises the US and West’s militaristic expropriation of foreign territories, and its deliberate programme of destabilisation and domination throughout the globe using glorifying imagery and narratives to seed this in the psyche of international audiences.

    Of course, the capitalist entertainment racket has just reinforced its moral vacuity with more of the same imperialism-mongering agitprop. The case of staunch Zionist celeb and de facto Israel ‘cultural ambassador’ Gal Gadot tells you all you need to know about the entertainment biz’s priorities.

    That’s also nothing to even speak of these Hollywood names’ particular role in this. Brad Pitt is the obvious offender. His 2014 zombie dystopia World War Z bristled in unbridled Zionist apartheid glorification, Hasbara propaganda, and apologism.

    Some have also questioned how a powerful white man with allegations of assault against ex-wife Angela Jolie, and their two children, could possibly be a champion of Hind Rajab and the children of Gaza:

    https://twitter.com/lenajohnson007/status/1961036547064500511

    Limits of solidarity

    And once again, what these five Hollywood heavyweights stepping up – 22 months into a brutal genocide – painfully demonstrate, is not a tide-turning, dam-breaking, watershed moment of shining solidarity. Instead, they show its limits.

    It’s a rinse and repeat of the spineless, amoral scoundrels at the Oscars Academy who refused to stand behind No Other Land’s Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdam Ballal after his lynching by far-right Zionist settlers. Less than 10% of the Academy’s membership spoke out then. To their credit though, Cuarón and Glazer were at least among them. Now, the media is rushing to praise five famous faces for throwing their support behind the film. It’s not enough, and it’s frankly not good enough either.

    And let’s not forget that since Israeli settlers lynched Ballal, Israel has only continued to escalate its ethnic cleansing of the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank. In other words, Palestinians can win an Oscar, expose Israel’s crimes to the whole damn planet, and the settler war criminals can still get away with it.

    There is power and poignancy in projecting Palestinian lives and stories – that isn’t in dispute. Absolutely, stars should be stepping up to support Palestine. Yet stepping up in this instance, should mean stepping aside so Palestinian cultural artists and producers can platform their lived realities in their own words and voices. Any film industry, even the remotest bit committed to anti-racism, to basic human rights and Indigenous agency, would – and should – do that much.

    But that’s not what these Hollywood wonders giving major white saviour vibes are actually doing with their support for Hind Rajab.

    ‘Perfect victims’, like Hind Rajab

    It’s that moment when rich white people speak over, after barely speaking up when it would have made a difference. Essentially, all they’ve actually done is throw their weight behind it at the eleventh-hour. They have swooped in for all the gains and glory. The fanfare over them latching onto the film at the last-minute epitomises this problematic paradigm perfectly as well. It took five big names – five white wealthy celebs – for the corporate media to spin into a frenzy over the film. As ever, Palestinian stories are only legitimate when forced through the lens of the white status quo.

    Some on X have also underscored how this is the classic ‘perfect victim’ issue all over:

    They’ve got behind Hind Rajab’s story because it’s safe. One poster recounted the poignant words Egyptian-Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad posted in late October 2023:

    The Voice of Hind Rajab is a vital retelling of Israel’s abhorrent war crime (one of many). Ultimately though, these Hollywood stars’ backing of the film alone is, at best, hollow handwringing:

    At worst, it’s opportunistic reputation laundering while Israel continues to slaughter more children just like Hind, and they still fail to take concrete action.

    At the end of the day, Hollywood is hardly the place for punching up to power. It’s a vehicle to preserve and protect the interests of the elite. What this shows as ever, is that the powerful entertainment institutions will never truly afford Palestinians a voice in their own right. When it comes down to it, alone, Palestinian’s words count for nothing in the eyes of Hollywood, unless filtered through the worldviews of  wealth and whiteness.

    However, Hind’s story doesn’t need the validation from Hollywood hotshots looking to profit from Palestinian trauma. Hind’s story has already taken on a life of its own. Its eulogised in the hearts and words of Palestinians, bravely, fiercely projecting their own stories out into the world – one that unconscionably continues to fail them. And it’s in their words and voices that Hind’s story will resonate louder than any Hollywood feature ever could.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Two state, deluded state – shuffling of the deck isn’t stopping Gaza genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell

    Chances are, anyone whose family is dying of starvation would not be looking for New Zealand to have a prolonged debate over how they deserve to be defined.

    Yet a delay in making even the symbolic gestures seems to be all that we have to offer, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to be systematically starved to death by Israel.

    Could be wrong, but I doubt whether anyone in Gaza is waiting anxiously for news that New Zealand government has finally, finally come to the conclusion that Palestine deserves to be recognised as state.

    READ MORE:

    So far, 147 out of 193 UN member states reached that conclusion ahead of us. Some of the last holdouts — Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Australia — have already said they will do so next month.

    So far, none of that diplomatic shuffling of the deck has stopped the Gaza genocide. Only significant economic and diplomatic sanctions and an extensive arms embargo (one that includes military-related software) can force Israel to cease and desist.

    You don’t need to recognise statehood before taking those kind of steps. Last week, Germany — which does not recognise the state of Palestine — imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel that forbids sales of any weaponry that might be used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Not much, but a start — given that (after the US) Germany has been the main foreign arms supplier to the IDF.

    Meanwhile, the Luxon government has yet to make up its mind on Palestinian statehood. Our government repeatedly insists that this recognition is “complex.” Really? By saying so, we are embarrassing ourselves on the world stage.

    Trying to appease Americans
    While we still furrow our brows about Palestinian statehood, 76 percent of the UN’s member nations have already figured it out. Surely, our hesitation can’t be because we are as mentally challenged as we are claiming to be.

    The more likely explanation is that we are trying to appease the Americans, in the hope of winning a trade concession. Our government must be gambling that an angry Donald Trump will punish Australia for its decision on Palestine, by lifting its tariff rate, thereby erasing the 5 percent advantage over us that Australian exporters currently enjoy.

    By keeping our heads down on Palestine, we seem to be hoping we will win brownie points with Trump, at the expense of our ANZAC mates.

    This isn’t mere conspiracy talk. Already, the Trump administration is putting pressure on France over its imminent decision to recognise Palestine statehood. A few days ago, Le Monde reported that the US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner — yes, Ivana Trump’s father-in-law — blundered into France’s domestic politics by writing a letter of complaint to French president Emmanuel Marcon.

    In it, Kushner claimed that France wasn’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism:

    “Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” [Kushner] wrote.

    “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – plain and simple.”

    Breaking every civilised rule
    Simple-minded is more like it. People who oppose the criminal atrocities being committed in Gaza (and on the West Bank) by the Zionist government of Israel are not doing so on the basis of racial prejudice. They’re doing so because Israel is breaking every rule of a civilised society.

    Any number of UN conventions and international laws forbid the targeting of civilian populations, homes, schools, ambulances and hospitals . . . not to mention the deliberate killing of hundreds of medical staff, journalists, aid workers etc.

    Not to mention imposing a famine on a captive population. Day after day, the genocide continues.

    For Kushner to claim the global revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza is motivated by racism is revealing. To Israel’s apologists within Israel, and in the US (and New Zealand) only Israeli lives really matter.

    Footnote: New Zealand continues to bang on about our support for the “two state” solution. Exactly where is the land on which Christopher Luxon thinks a viable Palestinian state can be built, and what makes him think Israel would ever allow it to happen?

    Thirty years ago, Israeli settlement expansion fatally undermined the Oslo framework for a Palestinian state situated alongside Israel.

    Since then, the fabled “two state solution” has become the tooth fairy of international politics. It gives politicians something to say when they have nothing to say.

    Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s Werewolf column in partnership with Scoop.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • From displacement tents to dreams of school: this time, I am writing to you about my own children

    To the world where children are preparing to open their new books and start the new school year, going to school in safety, I write this story as a journalist accustomed to telling people’s stories, and as a father deprived of the most basic right of fatherhood: to see his five children walk to school in Gaza with peace of mind:

    Gaza

    Gaza: no school, broken futures

    In Gaza, school is no longer a building with walls and doors, but has become a distant dream, haunted by a childhood threatened with loss.

    As I write, I feel that the words are no longer just letters on paper, but tears falling on the page, as if I were writing a personal letter to the world: Take a moment from the luxury of your schools and give it to the children of Gaza, so that they may know the taste of hope, even if only for a day.

    I am a journalist from Gaza. I have written a lot about people, about children who lost their schools and dreams in the turmoil of war, about young children who carried their torn notebooks under the rubble, and about eyes searching for a window of light in the darkness. I wrote about all of them, not realizing that I was also writing about my five children.

    It was as if I had been writing a mirror of my pain all along, but I hid my children’s faces between the lines. When I look at them and remember their situation, I realize that every story I told about the children of Gaza was nothing but a chapter of our own story.

    I dreamed of a distinguished educational future for them. I followed them year after year, waiting for the back-to-school season to prepare for them what they desired: new backpacks, colored pens, neat clothes, and small wishes floating innocently on their faces. But war took us by surprise, tearing their notebooks apart before their dreams were erased, and wasting two whole years of their childhood without education, without classes, without the school bell.

    And now I search among them for remnants of that dream, but all that remains are memories of images: a smile with a new pen, or a small hand turning the pages of a book full of promises. Memory alone has become their school, and I alone have become the teacher who can only tell them stories instead of opening the doors of classrooms for them.

    Dima: the postponed dream of university

    My eldest daughter, Dima (15), I was waiting for her to reach high school, to see her pave her way to university so I could be proud of her like any father in the world. But instead of accompanying her to the classroom, today I see her sitting in a displacement tent, trying to hide her tears as she whispers: “Dad… will I be able to continue my studies?”

    I hear her question echoing inside me at night like an absent school bell. I try to smile and tell her, “You will continue,” but my voice betrays me. How can I reassure her when all I have is my pen, while all the roads to school are blocked by rubble?

    Ibada: the little support

    As for Ibada (13 years old), I saw him as the next support. Every year, he amazed me with his love of learning and his early maturity, as if he were an extension of my heart and mind. Today, he stands before me with confused eyes, asking about his lost books, his school that has been reduced to rubble, and his future that lies lost among the rubble of schools.

    As I look at him, I feel that the war has not only stolen his books, but also his certainty about the future. His voice, which used to be full of enthusiasm, has become hoarse with waiting, as if he is growing up before his time, carrying the burdens of adults while still a child.

    Salah and Abdullah: innocence lost

    Salah (12) and Abdullah (10) were the mirror of childhood in my home. Their laughter on the way to school and their running on the way back gave me the feeling that life was still possible despite the war. Today, that innocence has been stolen from them, and they play in the corridors of displacement instead of schoolyards.

    Sometimes I see them making pens out of stones and a small blackboard out of dirt, writing their names on it and then quickly erasing them, as if they are trying to tell the world: “When the school doors are closed, playing becomes a lesson, and dreams become a pen and a blackboard.”

    GAza

    Lina: a child without a seat

    What breaks my heart the most is my little girl, Lina (6 years old). She has never been to school, but today she is registered on paper as a second-grade student. She grows up year after year, but she still doesn’t know what a school desk looks like, or what a clean book untouched by war looks like. This alone is enough to leave a father like me in a state of fatal helplessness: how can I write about the children of Gaza when my own child has never been to school?

    When I look at her, I feel that her entire childhood is being silently assassinated. She is growing up outside of school, like a flower without water, and her pain alone is enough to fill a thousand news reports. But all I can do is carry her silence and broadcast it to the world.

    A father dreams of a school bell

    Today, my biggest dream as a father and husband is for my children to return to school. I don’t dream of luxury or a distant future, just to see them carrying their notebooks and backpacks, sitting among their peers, and hearing the bell ring on a normal day instead of sirens.

    I dream a dream that seems trivial in the eyes of others: to wake up early to accompany my children to school, to see them running ahead of me with quick steps, arriving a little late for the bell, and returning with beautiful mischief. It is a simple dream, but for me it is a whole life.

    I have written a lot about the stories of Gaza’s children, but my story with my five children remains the most painful. In this war, education is no longer a right, but a dream, a dream that swings between the rubble of schools and the sound of planes, a small dream that is worth the whole world.

    So, world, take a moment from your children’s laughter and give it to our children, so that their notebooks may be filled with letters again, not dust. In Gaza, education is no longer just a right, it is a whole life. A life we want for our children, and a dream we hope you will wake up with us to achieve.

    Is there anyone who will answer?

    Featured image and additional images supplied

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • In defence of Taylor Swift

    In case you somehow missed it, this week, Taylor Swift announced her engagement to her footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce. Along with the happy tears of millions of Swifties there was something else that emerged, as it always does when Taylor Swift lives her life.

    An undercurrent of resentment, even hatred for Taylor that as a Swiftie for over a decade I know All Too Well. And while some of the criticism is very valid, there’s a lot of it which very much isn’t.

    There are some valid criticisms of Taylor Swift

    So let’s start off with what is valid criticism of Taylor Swift and work our way out.

    Many dislike her because of one part of what she’s become the figurehead for – a capitalist system which makes it impossible for newer artists to break into whilst pushing out constant repeats of, lets be honest, the same merch. The excessive amounts of album variations, the same cheaply made cardigans because her and her management know fans will buy every single thing they can. It’s excessive and comes across as greedy. There’s also the sheer amount of money she has and makes off of every single album drop, merch drop tour and the countless variations. In a world of extreme poverty, richness of her level shouldn’t exist, it’s as simple as that.

    But there’s also what she’s done for the music industry. Before she started releasing Taylor versions there was very little awareness of how music ownership worked, and that the musician actually owned very little of the rights to their music, videos, and even image. Since this, many other artists have been able to fight for masters rights when negotiating contracts and reclaimed their own masters.

    I’ve seen a lot of criticisms around her owning a private jet, which again shouldn’t be a thing that exists when the planet is dying and being ravaged by carbon emissions. But it’s also true that Taylor bought double the amount of carbon offsets than she would need. Carbon offsets go towards things like planting new forests or conserving current ones.

    Many argue that if she didn’t fly by private jet she wouldn’t have to offset her carbon usage, but as the most famous woman in the world its impractical for airlines and not to mention unsafe for her not to. Just search her name on any social media site to see the sheer amount of hatred and threats this woman gets every day.

    Most criticism is thinly veiled misogyny

    But lets be honest, most criticisms of Taylor Swift aren’t about her wealth hoarding or carbon emissions: they’re deep-rooted in misogyny.

    It’s men who think a woman shouldn’t be so famous, shouldn’t empower other women to advocate for themselves, and know themselves. It’s the sort of men who will direct hatred at a woman for simply attending the football game of the man she loves. It’s the sort of men who will send her death and rape threats and we won’t bat an eyelid when the president of the United States incites hatred on her and her fans – until one man decides to take a machete to a dance class where her young fans just wanted to dance and sing along to her songs and make friendship bracelets and it’s suddenly all about “protecting our girls”.

    And there’s been a lot of criticisms about The Eras Tour, but there’s a lot to defend Taylor’s tour for too.

    Yes, she is a billionaire who became inextricably rich from a tour which lasted two years. But she worked herself to the bone for those two years, her tour created microeconomies and boosted the economies of the places she visited. All her staff on her tour were paid incredibly well, with them also receiving regular bonuses, she’s also had a lot of the same musicians, singers, backstage staff and team for most of her career.

    She has helped families buy houses, seen kids through college. Her charitable donations are also immense. She donated thousands to food banks and local grassroots charities in every city the Eras tour stopped at – and those are just the charitable donations we know about.

    Terror threats and how the Taylor Swift community uplifted each other

    There’s also the sheer JOY of the Eras Tour: getting to experience a stadium full of mostly women screaming our hearts out, dancing with our best friends, trading bracelets and sobbing with both happiness and grief and heartbreak is something I will never forget. Getting to do that with my best friend in the whole world is one of my most cherished memories.

    Taylor Swift is a woman who empowers other women so much that men feel the need to silence her in every way possible, including threatening the lives of thousands of her fans with terror threats. Her Vienna leg of the tour was cancelled after three teenagers were arrested for planning a terror attack during her shows.

    What came after the cancelled shows was a display of just how wonderful the fandom is. When the Southport attack happened, Swifties raised thousands for those affected for hospital care, funerals, and to support the hospital. They sent care packages and friendship bracelets in their thousands. When the Vienna shows cancellations were announced at such short notice, many fans were already in the city, so they all came together in their thousands to hold a vigil, sing songs, trade bracelets and hold each other in a show of grief and resilience.

    She has also empowered fans to stand up against the creep of fascism in America. Shortly after it was announced that the 2024 presidential race would be Trump v Harris, Swifties 4 Kamala mobilised, thousands of fans held drives to help their friends and neighbours register to vote and held mass planning and rallying zooms. The collective is still going now, renamed Swifties 4 Hope. Their mission is to “educate, advocate, activate and celebrate”.

    Having to justify cancelling shows due to terror

    Even after cancelling her shows to protect herself and her fans, Taylor Swift received scorn. Many criticised her having an armoured police escort around London, as if the lives of her, her team, and fans hadn’t been threatened days before. She was also bitched about for not speaking about the suspected attack and carrying on with her tour. She took to Instagram once the European leg of the tour had ended to clarify that she did this in order to stay safe:

    Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows.

    She underscored her point with:

    In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.

    More than anything though, she just makes me feel seen

    But more than anything though, the reason I will defend Taylor Swift to the hilt is because she makes me and women like me feel seen. There may be a significant wealth gap between Dr Swift and me, but at the heart of it she’s also a woman in her mid thirties trying to make sense of life.

    A woman who has grew up under such deep scrutiny and never stopped writing and singing about the things that are important to her. In a world that tells women they should be happy with what they’ve got, settle and dull their sparkle to please men who are supposed to want them to thrive, she says “I love you, but i love sparkling”. She has created tapestries and given so many of us a new language to describe our hurt, anguish, pain, and joy. “Who’s afraid of little old me” became a rallying cry for all who’d been underestimated then had men attempt to silence and destroy them.

    And now after years of seeing her (from a distance) fall for man after man who wanted to use her for her fame and then have the courage to leave a relationship that’s failing, she’s found someone who truly adores her. Travis is a fan of Taylor Swift first and her boyfriend second, well her fiancée now – and people have still got a problem with it.

    And now Taylor Swift can’t even be happy and engaged

    From a weird part of the fandom there’s bizarre claims that she’s gone “tradwife” because she’s had the audacity to take a break from churning out music – after she was on tour for two whole years – and spent her time building a house with a man she loves. When if they look close enough, they’ll see a woman who is for the first time in a long time, living life on her terms.

    There’s also the criticism coming from a lot of the left that this was the wrong time for her to announce an engagement whilst the world burns, but newsflash the world is always fucking burning. Was she supposed to wait and have it leaked to the press, once again stripping her of her agency? Yes it is crass as fuck seeing newspaper after newspaper abandon headlines about Gaza in favour of the Tayvis engagement, but that isn’t Taylor Swift’s doing.

    The media bookending murder with her ring and speculation over who will design her dress is vulgar, but it’s a symptom of a media who will always find anyway they can to paper over atrocities.

    Swifties contain multitudes

    The criticism of Taylor Swift extends to her fandom. That we shouldn’t be all simping over another new album from a billionaire whilst children are murdered by Israel in Palestine, and that us focusing on how beautiful her engagement shoot is, means we don’t care about fascism on our own shores. But as Swift has shown, women contain so many fucking multitudes. We can highlight atrocities and raise awareness of systemic discrimination.

    I struggled with a Taylor Swift lyric to end this on but I think the most beautiful one, which typifies what she brings to the world and her fans is this:

    So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it, you’ve got no reason to be afraid.

    There are many reasons to criticise Taylor, but me and so many women like me will also be here to defend her.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Why do white women defend Taylor Swift so proudly?

    Billionaire Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to American footballer Travis Kelce. And, Swifties are flooding the internet with their comments and takes on Tay Tay’s latest relationship. However, as ever with Swift, there’s something more than a little off with her public persona.

    As a left-wing news outlet, she isn’t our usual fodder. But, the image that Swift has curated throughout her long career is rife with controversies that just won’t go away. And, for many people. she’s become a symbol of what’s wrong with our societies.

    Taylor’s Version

    For many of her fans, Taylor Swift is a powerful woman overcoming misogyny from the music industry and the press to become a glass-ceiling-busting billionaire. She’s an apparent inspiration to young girls, and has toured the world in record-breaking tour after record-breaking tour. But, Swift’s experiences of misogyny certainly doesn’t exempt her from the racist spats she’s created. And, a billionaire girlboss is still a billionaire. Last I checked around here, it’s simply not possible to become a billionaire without exploitation.

    At a time when people around the world are struggling to feed themselves, to afford suitable housing, and see their pay checks swallowed up instantly, Swift’s billionaire status is less girlboss done good, and more parasite rights in action. Swifties often point to her billionaire status as a sign of her success. The thing is, it’s not a sign of success. It’s a sign of how limited collective understandings of success are. Why should girls have role models whose success is built on capitalist exploitation?

    And, it’s not 2007. We don’t need to re-tread the very well-worn ground over white feminism’s allegiances to racial capitalism.

    Carbon footprint of a small country

    Taylor Swift is notorious for her gigantic carbon footprint. Carbon Market Watch reported that:

    Her private jet usage amounted to an estimated 8,300 tonnes of carbon emissions in 2022 – that’s about 1,800 times the average human’s annual emissions, or 576 times that of the average American and about 1,000 times that of the average European.

    Undoubtedly, the climate crisis is a product of global capitalism. It’s not going to be solved by individuals washing out yoghurt pots that their councils may or may not recycle. But, when one individual – no matter how super duper sparkly she is – is generating such a massive carbon footprint, there’s an obvious answer: fucking stop it.

    In 2024, after years of criticism and pleading, Swift’s representatives claimed that she had “offset” her carbon footprint. Unfortunately, they didn’t provide any details as to how she had done so. And, of course, there wasn’t any acknowledgement that offsetting isn’t a magic wand that undoes the damage to the planet caused by private jet usage. Obviously, it’s better to not fly as much in the same way that it’s better to use less plastic than to buy more plastic shit that can be recycled.

    Taylor Swift: a white supremacist barbie?

    However, logic has nothing to do with Swift’s public image. For a 35 year old, she’s amassed a remarkable number of accusations of racism. Perhaps the most prominent, or at least the one that just won’t go away, is the allegation that Swift is an alt-right white supremacist darling. During Donald Trump’s first term in office when Nazi marches became a thing again (….yes, really), white supremacist rallied around Swift. The founder of a neo-Nazi site said:

    The entire alt-right patiently awaits the day when we can lay down our swords and kneel before her throne […] as she commands us to go forth and slaughter the subhuman enemies of the Aryan race.

    It took two years for Taylor Swift to speak up:

    There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.

    And, a then-28 year old Taylor Swift claimed she was learning as much as she could. The sheer luxury of such a pronouncement isn’t lost on those of us who are not insulated from the real world by whiteness. Since her fanbase’s flirtation with white supremacists, Swift has remained largely tight lipped about her political affiliations. However, that same silence has spoken volumes when it comes to Israel’s genocide in Palestine.

    Swift can’t control who her fans are. But, she can control what she says about a genocide documented in real time. And here is the thing that’s most grating about her public persona. She luxuriates in the insulation that being an unfathomably rich, skinny, white woman affords her. She’s free to be on a learning journey, to date scumbags, to blunder around being clumsily racist, and ultimately to be defended by hordes of white women.

    Nuanced hating on Taylor Swift

    In 2015, Taylor Swift stated that misogyny was “ingrained” from birth. How long until a similar realisation about racism? There are much more serious people than Swift unlearning their internalised racism, but apparently we’re supposed to believe she isn’t a racist.

    Don’t get me wrong – I am absolutely being a hater here. Swift is far from the only fucked up billionaire singer. She doesn’t have to be – and nor is she expected to be – perfect. But, it’s just not realistic to expect everyone to like her with rabid fervour. To some people, she’s a feminist success story. And to some people, she’s a symbolic marker of how crushing and invalidating white women can be. The standards for white women are entirely different than for women of colour. White women are afforded more grace, space, and time to be themselves. Women of colour are policed socially, culturally, and economically. Having lived, so far, 33 years of it myself, white supremacy shapes how white women are perceived, how they conceive of themselves, and it touches every possible aspect of modern life.

    So, why do white women have such allegiance to Taylor? White supremacy isn’t just the preserve of men in KKK hoods. After all, someone has to make the KKK hoods: the handmaidens of white supremacy. Just as misogyny is ingrained into people at birth, so too is white supremacy. Even for nice white people, and even internalised white supremacy for people of colour. The impulse white women feel as a group to defend Swift is perhaps rooted in far uglier roots than they would like to admit. And, ultimately, they’re not reaching for a defence of Taylor as much as they are a defence of the racial capitalist status quo.

    Every possible permutation of identity – class, disability, sexuality, gender – moves through the prism of white supremacy. The mediocre lyricist that is Taylor Swift isn’t immune from that.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The flag shagging, racist bellendery from the far-right is not patriotism

    We’ve had a spectacular bank holiday just gone here in England. As well as blazing sunshine, this weekend saw an ancient English tradition return, that of “we’re going to tell you it belongs to us because look at our flag” – dressed up as ‘patriotism’.

    Such custom harks back to the days of the Empire, the worst days in our history, which many would gladly go back to. This is despite them being poor and working class, so it would be even worse for them than it is now, though they’d at least be a bit more aware that the lord of the manor was pulling the strings.

    I don’t need to give you a history lesson, but this was of course, when jolly English explorers (read: murderers, rapists, colonisers) would jaunt on over to whichever island they fancied and plant a flag, claiming the land. This is despite it already belonging to culturally diverse peoples who, if they resisted, would be abused, starved, and enslaved.

    Though this time, they’re doing it on their own soil. Because after centuries of enslaving people from all over the world and bringing them here forcefully and illegally, racists now don’t like that England is home to many other races, religions, and cultures. To borrow a line from Bob Vylan, it’s a classic case of “loves a chicken korma, hates the hands that cook it”.

    Flag shagging, racist bellendery dressed up as patriotism

    So, for some absolutely unbeknownst reason other than sheer racist bellendery, the fash decided this weekend they would “remind everyone who’s country this is and if you don’t like it you can leave”. Because this country has gone to the dogs and you can’t even have a pint and a bacon sandwich without being arrested. And to prove we won’t stand for that absolutely not made up scenario, we’re going to *checks notes * paint a St George’s cross on a roundabout.

    All around the country, we saw definitely not racists strewing cheap tacky flags upside down on lamp posts, and defacing everything from roundabouts and zebra crossings to, bizarrely, nature information stands in parks. All in the name of PATRIOTISM.

    And of course it was never just about being proud of the flag. Racist losers who’d done things like paint a zebra crossing waited eagerly until Muslims crossed it to take photos and shame them on social media.

    But of course, it’s done under the guise of “protecting our girls”. Which is why it’s especially ironic that Tommy Robinson caused a mass pile-on of three young women who tore down flags on a roundabout, instructing his Twitter followers to “make the dogs famous”.

    Elon muscles in

    And in turn, other far-right gobshites are adding fuel to the fire too. The edgiest little edgelord Elon Musk decided to be soooo edgy and post an England flag on Twitter. Not content with getting a pedo racist into the Whitehouse, it appears he’s setting his sights on pulling the strings in British politics too. Yesterday, Musk shared a tweet from far right grifter Rupert Lowe which apparently detailed:

    85 cities in Britain where local authorities were complicit in the rape of children.

    Though this is a Reform investigation which surely enough does nothing to highlight the fact that most abuse is perpetrated by white men. Elon and Rupert have also conveniently ignored a campaign which is urging the government to not only stop weaponising violence against women and girls for racist means, but also hold those who do to account. But then, they’d be telling on themselves wouldn’t they?

    Raising a flag isn’t inherently racist

    The thing is, raising the flag in itself isn’t inherently racist. Our flag is used at times of national celebration and support (albeit usually connected to football) or commemoration of those lost to conflict. At its heart, raising your national flag should be a point of pride, “this is where I’m from and I’m proud of that”. Being truly proud of where you’re from isn’t racist, but in order to do that you have to also accept how gloriously multicultural England is.

    True patriotism comes from community-building, from looking after your neighbours and wanting to improve where you live for all. It comes from lobbying your politicians for better, for everyone, not just those who look and think like you. It’s supporting local businesses, being kind to strangers, and opening doors instead of building walls.

    Tying a hastily and shoddy-made flag your missus got on Temu upside down on a lamppost or drunkenly painting a roundabout whilst shouting about ‘protecting are girls’ isn’t patriotism. When raising your flag comes as a warning, that’s not patriotism, that’s a threat.

    But isn’t that what raising the English flag has always been about?

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Antony Lowenstein: Israel’s murderous killing spree against Palestinian journalists

    By Antony Loewenstein in Sydney

    The grim facts should speak for themselves. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has deliberately killed an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

    Those brave individuals are smeared as Hamas operatives and terrorists by Israel and its supporters.

    But the real story behind this, beyond just Western racism and dehumanisation towards Arab reporters who don’t work for the corporate media in London or New York, is an Israeli military strategy to deliberately (and falsely) link Gazan journalists to Hamas.

    The outlet +972 Magazine explains the plan:

    “The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the ‘Legitimization Cell,’ tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.

    “Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave.

    “It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week [august 10].

    According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.

    As a journalist who’s visited and reported in Gaza since 2009, here’s a short film I made after my first trip, Palestinian journalists are some of the most heroic individuals on the planet. They have to navigate both Israeli attacks and threats and Western contempt for their craft.

    I stand in solidarity with them. And so should you.

    After the Israeli murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif on August 10, I spoke to Al Jazeera English about him and Israel’s deadly campaign:


    Antony Loewenstein speaking on Al Jazeera English on 11 August 2025.   Video: AJ


    Antony Loewenstein interviewed by Al Jazeera on 11 August 2025.  Video: AJ

    News graveyards - how dangers to journalists endanger the world
    News graveyards – how dangers to journalists endanger the world. Image: Antony Loewenstein Substack

    Republished from the Substack of Antony Lowenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory,  with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Poor Bear the Brunt of the Pain

    In the theatre of global conflict, where empires clash and ideologies contend, one truth remains tragically constant: it is not the architects of war who suffer its consequences, but the poor. The dispossessed, the voiceless, the expendable—these are the true casualties of geopolitical ambition. Their pain is not incidental; it is structural. It is the very currency by which power is transacted.

    Ukraine: A War Between Blood Brothers and Colonial Ghosts

    The war in Ukraine is often framed as a struggle for sovereignty, democracy, or territorial integrity. Yet beneath these abstractions lies a more intimate tragedy: a fratricidal conflict between peoples bound by history, language, and blood. Slavic brothers now spill each other’s blood—not for ancient grievances, but for the ambitions of post-imperial actors manipulating borders and allegiances from afar.

    This war is not merely a regional dispute—it is a symptom of unresolved colonial legacies. The descendants of former colonizers, now cloaked in the garments of liberal democracy, stoke the flames of division while the poor—Ukrainian and Russian alike—are conscripted, displaced, and buried. The pain is not evenly distributed. It is the peasant, the pensioner, the factory worker who pays the price through lost sons, shattered homes, and economic ruin.

    Gaza: A Fire Ignited by Promises and Betrayals

    The tragedy of Gaza is not an accident of history—it is the consequence of deliberate design. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was not a gesture of goodwill but a colonial maneuver that set in motion a century of dispossession. Palestinians were displaced to make room for Jewish refugees—many of whom were themselves victims of European persecution. Thus, the persecuted were resettled through the persecution of another people, not by moral necessity but by imperial convenience.

    Today, Gaza is ablaze. Not metaphorically, but literally. Homes reduced to ash, families annihilated in seconds, children buried beneath rubble. And yet, much of the world hesitates. It equivocates. It attempts to rationalize genocide with the language of security and self-defense. The perpetrators, led by Netanyahu and his coterie of war profiteers, are shielded by a U.S.-led order that privileges power over principle.

    The Moral Logic of Emergency

    In moments of crisis, humanity instinctively prioritizes the most imperiled:

    • In a burning building, evacuation begins with the floor most engulfed in flames.
    • In a hospital, triage dictates that the most grievously wounded receive immediate attention.

    This is not ideology—it is moral logic. So why, when Gaza is engulfed in fire, does the world avert its gaze? Are Palestinians not human enough to warrant the same compassion? Has our moral compass been so thoroughly colonized that we no longer recognize suffering unless it is politically convenient?

    The Architecture of Global Oppression

    The so-called “rules-based order” is not a neutral framework for peace and prosperity. It is an architecture of oppression, meticulously designed to preserve the privileges of the powerful and diminish the aspirations of the poor. It criminalizes resistance, monetizes suffering, and pathologizes poverty. It is a system in which the pain of the Global South is treated not as a crisis, but as a constant—an ambient hum beneath the cacophony of global capital.

    This order does not merely fail the poor; it feeds upon them. It is sustained by their labor, their displacement, their silence. And when they speak—when they resist—they are labeled as threats, extremists, or terrorists.

    Conclusion

    The poor bear the brunt of the pain. Because they have no lobbyists, no media machines, no seats at the table. But they have graves. They have scars. They have stories. And those stories must be told—not as footnotes to history, but as its moral center.

    Let us not be seduced by the ill-conceived language of diplomacy while children are incinerated. Let us not mistake silence for neutrality. In the face of systemic violence, silence is complicity.

    The post The Poor Bear the Brunt of the Pain first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why the International Criminal Court is under attack – it must be defended

    COMMENTARY: By Greg Barns

    If it were China or Russia, the imposition of sanctions and threats of harm to prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court would be front page news in Australia- and in New Zealand.

    The Australian’s headline writers and columnists, for example, would be apoplectic. Prime Minister Albanese, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and Foreign Minister Penny Wong would issue the strongest possible warnings to those countries about consequences.

    But, of course, that’s not happening because instead it is the US that is seeking to put the lives and well-being of the ICC’s staff in danger, the reasons the ICC has rightly issued arrest warrants against undoubted war criminals and genocide enablers such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

    Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, purely a slavish appendage of the worst US president on record, Donald Trump, announced sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors at the ICC.

    Rubio issued a statement calling the ICC “a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare” against the US and Israel. A statement that, no doubt, war criminals around the world will be applauding.

    These are not the first attacks on the ICC.

    In February this year, Trump issued an order that said the US “will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the US of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our nation would be detrimental to the interests of the US”.

    The ICC was established in 2002 to administer the Rome Statute, the international law that governs war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other crimes.

    Leading atrocity nations
    Australia is a signatory, but the US and Israel have not signed up in the case of the former, and failed to ratify in the case of the latter, because they are, of course, leading nations when it comes to committing atrocities overseas and — in the case of Israel — within its own borders, through what many scholars say is a policy of apartheid inflicted on Arab Israelis.

    So, despite the relatively muted interest in Australia today at the latest outrage against the international order by the corrupt thugs in the Trump Administration, what should the Albanese government do?

    Trump’s shielding of Netanyahu and his advisers from criminal proceedings through sanctions and threats to members of the court is akin to both aiding and abetting crimes under the Rome Statute and clearly threatening judges, prosecutors and court officials.

    This means Australia should make it very clear, in very public terms, that this nation will not stand for conduct by a so-called ally, which is clearly running a protection racket.

    Australia has long joined with the US and other allies in imposing sanctions on regimes around the world.

    When it comes to Washington, those days are over.

    Sarah Dehm of UTS and Jessica Whyte of the University of New South Wales, writing in The Conversation in December last year, referenced Trump and Rubio’s thuggery towards the ICC among other sanctions outrages, and observed correctly that “Australian sanctions law and decision-making be reoriented towards recognising core principles of international law, including the right of all people to self-determination”.

    A ‘trigger mechanism’
    Dehm and Whyte argued this “could be done through ‘a trigger mechanism’ that automatically implements sanctions in accordance with decisions of the International Court of Justice concerning serious violations and abuses of human rights”.

    What the Albanese government could do immediately is make it abundantly clear that any person subject to an ICC arrest warrant would be detained if they set foot in Australia. This would obviously include Netanyahu and Gallant.

    And further, that Australia stands to contribute to protection for any ICC personnel.

    Not only that, but given the Rome Statute is incorporated into domestic law in Australia via the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a warning should be given by Attorney-General Rowland that any person suspected of breaches of the Rome Statute could be prosecuted under Australian law if they visit this country.

    What Australia could also do is make it mandatory, rather than discretionary, for the attorney-general to issue an arrest warrant if Netanyahu and others subject to ICC warrants came to this country.

    As Oxford international law scholar, Australian Dane Luo, has observed, while Foreign Minister Wong has said in relation to the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants that “Australia will act consistently with our obligations under international law and our approach will be informed by international law, not by politics”, this should not be taken as an indication that Rowland would have them arrested.

    The Trump administration must be told clearly Australia will not harbour international criminals. And while we are at it, tell Washington we are imposing economic, cultural, educational and other sanctions on Israel.

    Greg Barns SC is a former national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations : John Menadue’s public poiicy journal.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: Operation Raise The Colours is the least patriotic thing you could do

    One thing we have learnt about Keir Starmer — aside from him being the son of a toolmaker, some forty four times  — is his willingness to abandon any semblance of a socialist principle to bring the Labour Party in harmonious alignment with establishment interests.
    Starmer is also particularly fond of a freebie or two. Well, more freebies than ever other Labour leader combined since confused, angry dinosaurs wandered across Swindon’s infamous Magic Roundabout, paint pots in hand, at a Reform UK rally.

    Believe it or not, I’m not going to go on about Keir Starmer, this week, because this flag fondling nonsense in the form of Operation Raise The Colours is far more entertaining than Keith the dulcet ringworm.

    Let’s start with a note to the flag-fancying Reformerisers. Swindon doesn’t have an “immigration problem”, but we do have beautifully diverse communities that makes the town tick along quite nicely, thank you very much.

    I should also mention, oh gullible follower of snake oil Farage, Swindon is in the northern part of a landlocked county called Wiltshire, so trim your trotters, take yourself and your intolerable intolerances to the White Cliffs of Dover, and practice some paragliding without the bit that makes you effortlessly glide.

    Don’t gasp, comrades. Just contribute to their train fare to Dover because jumping on a GWR train tends to cost an arm, a leg, a kidney, and for them deluded fuckers, any chance of a trip to Istanbul for a fresh head of hair

    I can picture the placards now…

    “We want are cuntry back”

    “BREXIT MEANT BREXIT”

    “The Ministry of Defence has spent more than £8 million compensating survivors of historic child sex abuse committed by military personnel or on military bases since 2017”

    Okay, perhaps they’ll give the last one a swerve as it doesn’t fit in with their own hateful, intolerant, right-wing agenda.

    Operation Raise The Colours. Really?

    If people want to display a flag in their garden, or take part in “Operation Raise The Colours”, they have every right to do so. But this show of ‘patriotism’ has absolutely nothing to do with a deep and profound love for Britain and everything to do with bigotry, division, and hate for anyone that wasn’t born in Britain.

    What’s patriotic about stalking refugees in their temporary accommodation? Explain it to me as if I am five-years-old, because terrifying people in a supposed place of safety for the sake of clicks, likes, follows and ultimately, subscription fees, is a pretty fucking hideous and depraved thing to do, in my humble opinion.

    Britain’s substandard, dated infrastructure, appalling public services, and successive Tory governments of both a red and blue persuasion cannot be pinned on a small rubber dinghy containing trafficked humans.

    How naive and incapable of thinking for themselves must a person be to believe all of society’s ills are stored away in a shit Travelodge on the M4?

    It will be the same gullible individuals that fork out forty quid for a Reform FC football jersey. I’m surprised Farage doesn’t know you can buy perfect copies of any football shirt from China for around £7.

    Real patriotism

    The Canary sponsors a real grassroots football team, right here in Swindon. Great Western FC are a proper community based football club, with players from every background imaginable.

    This coming Saturday, ‘GWFC’ have organised a match with a local refugee support charity, the Harbour Project, and their team of refugee footballers, Harbour FC.

    The charity itself aims to be a family for every individual who seeks asylum or is granted refugee status in Swindon, and to help them to rebuild their lives.

    Harbour provides advice, support, practical help and friendship, which gives the man, woman or unaccompanied child the best possible chance of a fair hearing, a fair outcome from their asylum claim, and a fair future in Britain.

    That makes me feel so much more patriotic than giving Farage another few quid for his retirement pot, if I’m being honest with you.

    While Farage, Robinson and everything that is wrong with NHS dentistry services are looking to incite hatred towards refugees, the Canary-sponsored Great Western FC are working with local refugee charities to support their vital work in our communities.

    Stop the flag shagging

    If you want to waste £40 on your own little piece of racist memorabilia for the equally racist Operation Raise The Colours, be my guest, and when you are bored with it you can hang it up next to your justice for Lucy Connolly onesie and that musty smelling brown shirt.

    I struggle to see the patriotism angle with this flag thing. It’s nationalism.

    Buying a Chinese-made flag that’s dedicated to a dude born in Turkey on the say so of an Australian-owed tabloid just doesn’t make me want to bash out a few lines from God Save The German King with the ancestral links to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, if you get where I’m coming from?

    Aaaaaand breathe…

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Is Israel becoming the nightmare prophecy it was meant to escape?

    COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames

    So here we are, 2025, and Israel has finally achieved what no terrorist group, no hostile neighbour, no antisemitic tyrant ever could: it has become the most dangerous country on earth — for its own people.

    Not because of rockets or boycotts, but because its government has decided that the only way to secure the future is to annihilate everyone else’s.

    The Zionist project — once sold as a miraculous refuge for a persecuted people — now stands revealed as a 70‑year experiment in ethnic cleansing, wrapped in biblical entitlement and armed with American money.

    The current phase? Bulldozers in the West Bank, tanks in Gaza, and a prime minister whose personal survival depends on keeping his citizens permanently terrified and morally anesthetised.

    Netanyahu and his coalition of zealots have at last clarified Israel’s mission statement: kill or expel two million Palestinians, and call it “security.”

    Reduce Gaza to rubble, herd the survivors into tents, and then — here’s the punchline — offer them “resettlement packages” in Libya or South Sudan, as though genocide could be rebranded as humanitarian outsourcing.

    And the world? Still dithering over whether to call this behaviour “problematic.” As if sanctions and isolation are reserved only for the unlucky states without lobbyists in Washington or friends in European parliaments.

    Israel is begging to be treated as a pariah, but we keep dressing it up as a partner.

    The most awkward truth of all: Jews in the diaspora now face a choice. Condemn this grotesque betrayal of Jewish history, or keep defending the indefensible until Israel itself becomes the nightmare prophecy it was meant to escape.

    Richard David Hames is an American philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and mentor and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Black Power Move

    In late August 1968, one of the largest military protests in American history took place at Fort Hood in Central Texas. You’ve never heard of it.

    Why?

    The year before, on April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out for the first time against the Vietnam War. He was assassinated one year to the day later. Just three weeks after MLK was assassinated, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Mohammad Ali appeared in Houston, Texas, before a Vietnam War draft board. He was called for induction four times, but refused to answer his summons. He was immediately arrested and stripped of his boxing titles.

    Fifty-seven years ago on August 23, Black soldiers staged a peaceful protest at Fort Hood—but not against taking up arms in Southeast Asia; they refused to take up arms against American citizens. You’ve never heard of them because political pundits and the American military didn’t want you to. The Vietnam War was fiasco enough, and the powers that be largely squelched coverage of the protest.

    After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, thousands of Fort Hood troops were sent to Chicago for riot control duty. A number of Black civilians were killed.

    In mid-August 1968, another large group of soldiers stationed at Fort Hood was scheduled to return to Chicago in late August to control potential rioters at the Democratic National Convention. At midnight on Friday, August 23,1968, sixty Black troops staged a nonviolent sit-in on base to protest their deployment to Chicago. The majority of these Black soldiers were uncomfortable with being placed in situation where they might be asked to “police” other Black Americans. Several of the demonstrators said they had grown up in low-income neighborhoods and could empathize with the folks in those areas who might feel civil unrest was necessary. At 5 a.m. that morning, the division commander and members of his staff met with the protesters and discussed their grievances. Seventeen of the demonstrators got up and left, but forty-three continued to protest. The protesters were placed in the Fort Hood stockade for failing to report for morning reveille.

    The protesting soldiers became known as the “Fort Hood 43,” and their refusal to deploy to Chicago for riot-control duties was one of the largest acts of dissent in the annals of United States military history. Over the next few weeks and months, a number of the Fort Hood 43 were court-martialed and punished, receiving sentences of three to six months of hard labor, a partial forfeiture of their wages and reductions of rank.

    For the last six decades there has been much made about the hippie movement and white Vietnam War protests. But, arguably, a disproportionate amount of the most significant activist stances involved young black men. And we have drifted into comparably grave straits.

    President Trump and his legion of cretinous nimrods have turned the nation into a ludicrous gameshow, and three-quarters of the country is knackered or deeply despondent. Mortgage rates are approaching adult male shoe sizes, masked federal agents are goose-stepping over civil rights, prominent politicos are spread-eagle or face-down (and lubed) passing Big Beautiful Bills and crapping away their last remnants of human decency, moral compass and political conscience. There’s nothing bonny about Donny, and anyone half-awake is on edge or ready to crawl out onto a ledge (or simply devoid of humanity altogether).

    Something has to give, or at least give us an excuse for not thinking about our vile betrayal at the ballot box, and the fatuous, sausage-vat we elected to the highest office on the planet.

    We need a distraction.

    We need a reason to ignore our staggering cluelessness and somehow take our minds off the dumpy cunt (thanks, Jim Jefferies) that flatulates across our eye- and ear-waves every day in increasing states of derelict flamboyance and inane kakistocracy.

    Enter Blandman.

    Or, in this case, bland men.

    Or, even better said, whole leagues of bland men, addicted to pro, college and high school football.

    Nothing brings hand-wringers and mouth-breathers together like football season.

    There’s nothing important or relevant about American football, football players or football games in the current moment, but they give us a great escape from our election-day belligerence and the blithering of our titty-baby ignoranus-in-chief. We can pour ourselves into the “big” game, join fantasy football leagues, gamble big, or gamble small (on quarter-by-quarter football pools). We can forget about nepo Einstein visas, porn star payoffs, pissing parties, and Donny’s predatorial behavior around prepubescents. We can tune out Ukraine and Gaza, tranny terror, 10-Commandment commandants, asinine tariffs, and the Kennedy Center Commode Awards.

    But who does this sanity-saving distraction ride largely on the backs of?

    Young Black men.

    It’s certainly not fair to put young Black men on the spot, here—they’re not treated very well or trusted, especially if they aren’t carrying, catching, or cradling a pigskin, but.

    Paul Robeson

    What would happen if young Black men became more Paul Robeson, or collectively pulled a Muhammad Ali, denying us our beloved distractions? And not just taking a knee, but actually refusing to play … at the pro, college and high school level? What would happen if young Black men went all Fort Hood 43?

    That’s easy.

    The January 6 insurrection would be a footnote compared to the “Football Riots.”

    President Donny would be out of office in 60 days.

    And fascist goons like Greg Abbott would be unceremoniously dumped headfirst in a downtown Austin port-a-poddy—by conservative Longhorn boosters themselves.

    The post Black Power Move first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Vulnerable to Progressive Populism

    Democrats are politically flummoxed by the flurry of regressive proposals and policies daily manufactured by the Trump administration. Party leadership has been reduced to a reactionary political presence, simply reacting to Trump’s initiatives. Weakened and disoriented, the party seems incapable of effectively challenging Trump’s disingenuous populism. They do not forcefully attack his many vulnerabilities. Democratic party leaders, moreover, refuse to embrace a comprehensive program of fundamental social, economic and environmental projects and guarantees that are both popular and a genuine alternative vision of America.

    The beleaguered Social Security Administration offers an enormous opportunity to weaken Trump’s political strength. Ostensibly driven by budget deficits, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has eliminated 7000 employees at the SS Administration. That will certainly reduce services since now 1 employee manages 1,480 beneficiaries, which is 3 times the beneficiary load in 1967. Already telephone calls to the agency have gone unanswered. Close to 90 percent of Americans, moreover, wants SS to remain a strict priority of the government, “No matter the state of budget deficits.” Here the Trump administration has left itself wide open to a progressive political challenge that would guarantee funding of SS in the coming decades, definitively reject any privatization plans and highlight how Trump’s cuts threaten the integrity of a service so vital to all Americans.

    Trump is also vulnerable in many other of his administration’s initiatives. The elimination of the Agency for International Development, for example, immediately terminated the annual purchase of as much as a million metric tons of U.S. crops, depriving American farmers of a $510 million market. As a direct consequence, farmers are burning crops due to low prices, rising input costs and labor shortages compounded by the government’s immigration policies. Tragically, 1.5 million starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan depend on AID’s food assistance. By 2030, according to researchers, an estimated 14 million people, including 4.5 million children under age 5, will die without the relief AID’s programs provide.

    Exposure of Trump’s cuts and plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency again opens opportunity to reveal the callousness and shallow, short-term thinking that is typical of the administration. From 2008 to 2024 FEMA provided $170 billion to assist with environmental disasters. FEMA assistance is based on the cost of per capita impact (PCI). Trump has proposed raising the qualifying PCI from $l.89 to $7.56. This policy change is designed to shift the cost of disaster relief onto the states, thereby reducing federal spending and, among other specious cost-reduction efforts, diminish the federal deficit to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. And contrary to Trump’s assertions, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the tax cuts will spike the deficit by $2.4 trillion programs. over the coming decade.

    Trump’s healthcare plan is yet another area of his vulnerability. A national universal health insurance program is long overdue and such a proposal would stand in stark, constructive contrast to the administration’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would leave 10.9 million more Americans without healthcare, especially targeting those with low incomes and individuals in poor health. The elimination of the ACA funding mechanism, moreover, will increase the federal deficit by $41 billion. In addition, planned Medicaid cuts threaten rural hospitals that depend on it for a significant percentage of their revenues. And massive cuts to science and medicine in the recently approved ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will hamper and even end much research into life-saving medicines and reduce the nation’s preparation for future epidemics and pandemics.

    The disappearance and detention of thousands of immigrants are a direct attack on the U.S. Constitution. Capturing and transporting law-abiding individuals to distant detention facilities without due process are practices common to police and military states. More than 60,000 immigrants are detained in facilities across the nation. Judges who rule against Trump’s immigration policies and practices are pilloried and threatened by the president himself. Families are broken up and children are arrested. This is yet another example of outrageous and often tragic violations of law and human rights.

    Trump’s virtual abandonment of Ukraine and his unwavering support of Israel are also very profound moral issues, positions that must be adamantly opposed. The U.S. and NATO allies must swiftly counter and arrest Putin’s military onslaught. With regard to Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, Trump’s continued support for the Netanhayu government – his approval of $12 billion in military assistance in less than 2 months in office – makes the Trump government an unquestioned accessory to massive crimes against humanity. Trump swiftly by-passed Congress to supply these military weapons to Israel. To date more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, at least 18,000 of them children.

    The list of assailable proposals and program issues is interminable. Flagrant flouting of the law and congressional authority. Threats to and removal of dissenting judges. Weaponizing the Department of Justice. Deploying military troops in streets. The attack on the media to eliminate fact-based critique and dissent. The assault on academic freedom and free speech at universities, blocking the entrance of foreign students and undermining basic scientific research, imperiling U.S. global leadership in science and technology. Elimination of federal support of public education. The pursuit of tariffs that are actually paid by American importers who will raise prices of these goods, inducing inflation. Downgrading the NATO alliance. Violation of the emoluments clause. Usurping congressional authority and eroding separation of powers among the three branches of government. Pardoning insurrections. Appointing unqualified and compromised nominees to sensitive government positions. Undermining the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health. Weakened regulations at the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. A complete retreat from renewable energy and other green practices and emphatic reliance on fossil fuels. Absolute ignorance of climate change. Aggressive vote suppression and rigging elections. Defunding Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And on and on, ad infinitum….

    The Democratic leadership is incapable of moving from soft, centrist politics to a progressive social and environmental agenda. In 2016 Democrats’ electoral scheme of superdelegates undermined the democratic socialist insurgency and its millions of youthful followers. Wedded to identity politics and fixated on quixotic undecided voters and presumably fence-post Republicans, the establishment wing of the Democrats runs away from thoroughgoing reform. Eschewing progressive populism – fearful of being branded leftist, socialist and communist – the party has pursued an electoral platform of abstract ideas such as appeals to saving democracy and nearly politically meaningless allusions to joy and decency. Without a genuine populist agenda the Democratic leadership drifts toward the political center, an increasingly conservative position as the center moves to the political right.

    Now is the time for progressive Democrats to break from the party and, allying with politically independent progressives and others on the political left, put forth an agenda that forges an alternative vision of a healthy America, one that supports ordinary families through authentic social welfare and sound environmental policy. To turn back a government takeover by the wealthy corporate class, progressives must seize this political moment. Their voice must be forceful, optimistic and youthful. They must aggressively challenge Trump, preying on his numerous points of vulnerability.

    By staging powerful televised weekly press conferences, engineering appearances on televised and digital ‘talk shows,’ generating a compelling social media presence and organizing public rallies and marches, progressives could present timely critiques of Trump’s ongoing misrepresentations and regressive proposals and, even more importantly, put forth a platform of populist programs that will really benefit average Americans. Such a campaign and strategy will energize and focus opponents of Trump, elevating the political discourse and conferring enormous credibility on progressive alternatives. It will give anti-Trump forces a platform of specific programs and goals to confront his dictatorial intentions and methods. If progressives fail to lead at this critical juncture in the nation’s history, they cede the immediate and long-term future to a self-serving dictator supported by a party of sycophants and opposed only by weak-kneed, unimaginative politicians.

    The post Trump Vulnerable to Progressive Populism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Step Towards Resolving a Long-standing Territorial Conflict or a Leap into the Abyss?

    A few days ago, Armenia and Azerbaijan published the text of the peace agreement, brokered by the United States. On paper, both sides pledged to respect each other’s territorial integrity and formally end the decades-long conflict. However, it remains a mystery, whether the countries will actually sign the agreement. Numerous mutual claims and disputes, the resolution of which cannot be expected in the near future, call into question the readiness for reconciliation demonstrated by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moreover, the draft itself, as well as the additional agreements, raises many doubts about who would really benefit from a potential truce.

    Thus, one of a few agreements that was actually signed and entered into force, gives the United States an exclusive right to develop the Zangezur Corridor (a strategic transport route between Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic) for 99 years. As usual, when it comes to America’s interests, it rushes to actions. According to the White House, the project — which has already been branded it the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity — is expected to strengthen economic ties with the region and increase energy exports. At the same time, the United States has cemented its presence in the South Caucasus, which is also being presented as another triumph of Washington’s diplomacy.

    As for Baku and Yerevan – while the former is the primary beneficiary of the potential peace, the latter is relegated to the role of a bargaining chip. Azerbaijan gets the opportunity not only to legally strengthen its control over the territories it has gained, but also to become a key energy center in the South Caucasus. Moreover, one should not forget that restrictions on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States had also been lifted. The mere possibility of receiving weapons from the United States gives Azerbaijan more confidence and freedom of action, which leads to increased pressure on Armenia. Thus, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has already repeatedly tried to force relevant amendments to the Armenian Constitution, insisting to do it as quickly as possible.

    It turns out that everyone, except Armenia, gains something. Trump receives the status of “peacemaker” and “noble tenant,” Aliyev – support from powerful patrons, while Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, is left with several problems which could lead to even greater weakening of the country’s geopolitical position. After losing Nagorno-Karabakh and failing to receive clear answers about the fate of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and the possibility of returning ethnic Armenians who fled hostilities in 2023, Armenia quickly lost its main negotiating tool, allowing the United States to take control of the Zangezur Corridor. In the future, this could lead to serious internal political instability and threaten the territorial integrity of Armenia.

    The post A Step Towards Resolving a Long-standing Territorial Conflict or a Leap into the Abyss? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NZ is trailing its allies over Palestinian statehood – but there’s still time to show leadership

    ANALYSIS: By Treasa Dunworth, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

    It’s now more than a week since Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced his government had begun to formally consider New Zealand’s position on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

    That leaves two weeks until the UN General Assembly convenes on September 9, where it is expected several key allies will change position and recognise Palestinian statehood.

    Already in a minority of UN member states which don’t recognise a Palestinian state, New Zealand risks becoming more of an outlier if and when Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom make good on their recent pledges.

    Luxon has said the decision is “complex”, but opposition parties certainly don’t see it that way. Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it’s “the right thing to do”, and Greens co-leader Chloë Swarbrick has called on government MPs to “grow a spine” (for which she was controversially ejected from the debating chamber).

    Former Labour prime minister Helen Clark has also criticised the government for trailing behind its allies, and for appearing to put trade relations with the United States ahead of taking a moral stand over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

    Certainly, those critics — including the many around the country who marched last weekend — are correct in implying New Zealand has missed several opportunities to show independent leadership on the issue.

    The distraction factor
    While it has been open to New Zealand to recognise it as a state since Palestine declared its independence in 1988, there was an opportunity available in May last year when the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian governments took the step.

    That month, New Zealand also joined 142 other states calling on the Security Council to admit Palestine as a full member of the UN. But in a subsequent statement, New Zealand said its vote should not be implied as recognising Palestinian statehood, a position I called “a kind of muddled, awkward fence-sitting”.

    It is still not too late, however, for New Zealand to take a lead. In particular, the government could make a more straightforward statement on Palestinian statehood than its close allies.

    The statements from Australia, Canada and the UK are filled with caveats, conditions and contingencies. None are straightforward expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law.

    As such, they present political and legal problems New Zealand could avoid.

    Politically, this late wave of recognition by other countries risks becoming a distraction from the immediate starvation crisis in Gaza. As the independent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese have noted, these considered and careful diplomatic responses distract from the brutal truth on the ground.

    This was also Chloë Swarbrick’s point during the snap debate in Parliament last week. Her private members bill, she noted, offers a more concrete alternative, by imposing sanctions and a trade embargo on Israel. (At present, it seems unlikely the government would support this.)

    Beyond traditional allies
    Legally, the proposed recognitions of statehood are far from ideal because they place conditions on that recognition, including how a Palestinian state should be governed.

    The UK has made recognition conditional on Israel not agreeing to a ceasefire and continuing to block humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is extremely problematic, given recognition could presumably be withdrawn if Israel agreed to those demands.

    Such statements are not exercises in genuine solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, which is defined in UN Resolution 1514 (1960) as the right of peoples “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

    Having taken more time to consider its position, New Zealand could now articulate a more genuine statement of recognition that fulfils the legal obligation to respect and promote self-determination under international law.

    A starting point would be to look beyond the small group of “traditional allies” to countries such as Ireland that have already formally recognised the State of Palestine. Importantly, Ireland acknowledged Palestinian “peaceful self-determination” (along with Israel’s), but did not express any other conditions or caveats.

    New Zealand could also show leadership by joining with that wider group of allies to shape the coming General Assembly debate. The aim would be to shift the language from conditional recognition of Palestine toward a politically and legally more tenable position.

    That would also sit comfortably with the country’s track record in other areas of international diplomacy — most notably the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, where New Zealand has also taken a different approach to its traditional allies.The Conversation

    Dr Treasa Dunworth is professor of law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Saige England: Why I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    I unequivocally support Irish author Sally Rooney with all my heart and soul. The author risks imprisonment for donating funds from her books and the TV series based on Normal People to a Palestinian group.

    Once again the United Kingdom tells Palestinians who they should support. Go figure.
    In her opinion piece in The Irish Times last Saturday she said that:

    “Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”

    Whenever the people resist or rebel they are deemed terrorists. That has been the case for indigenous people around the world from indigenous Americans to Indians in India to Aborigine and Māori, the Irish and the Scots, and the Welsh.

    I went from being a “born-again” starry-eyed kibbutznik who believed in Zionism to a journalist who researched the facts and the hidden truths.

    Those facts are revolting. Settler colonialism is revolting. Stealing homes is theft.

    I kept in touch with some of my US-based Zionist kibbutznik mates. When I asked them to stop calling Palestinians animals, when I asked them not to say they had tails, when I asked them to stop the de-humanisation — the same de-humanisation that happened during the Nazi regime, they dumped me.

    Zionism based on a myth
    Jews who support genocide are antisemitic. They are also selfish and greedy. Zionists are the bully kids at school who take other kids toys and don’t want to share. They don’t play fair.

    The notion of Zionism is based on a myth of the superiority of one group over another. It is religious nutterism and it is racism.

    Empire is greed. Capitalism is greed. Settler colonialism involves extermination for those who resist giving up their land. Would you or I accept someone taking our homes, forcing us to leave our uneaten dinner on the table? Would you or I accept our kids being stolen, put in jail, raped, tortured.

    Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine
    Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine Action and rejects the UK law banning this, and she argues that nation states have a duty not only to punish but also to prevent the commission of this “incomparably horrifying crime of genocide”. Image: Irish Times screenshot APR

    The country was weird when I visited in 1982. It had just invaded Lebanon. Later that year it committed a genocide.

    The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a mass murder of up to 3500 Palestinian refugees by Israel’s proxy militia, the Phalange, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The horrific slaughter prompted outrage and condemnation around the world, with the UN General Assembly condemning it as “an act of genocide”.

    I had been primed for sunshine and olives, but the country gave me a chill. The toymaker I worked with was a socialist and he told me I should feel sorry for the Palestinians.

    It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets. But you need to defend yourself when you steal.

    Paranoia from guilt
    Paranoia is a consequence of a persecutor who fails to recognise their guilt. It happens when you steal. The paranoia happens when you close doors. When you don’t welcome the other — whose home you stole.

    In 2014, soldiers of the IDF — a mercenary macho army — were charged with raping their own colleagues. Now footage of the rape of Palestinian men are celebrated on national television in Israel in front of live audiences. Any decent person would be disgusted by this.

    The army under this Zionist madness has committed — and continues to commit — the crimes it lied about Palestinians committing. And yes, the big fat liar has even admitted its own lies. The bully in the playground really doesn’t care now, it does not have to persuade the world it is right, because it is supported, it has the power.

    This isn’t the warped Wild West where puritans invented the scalping of women and children — the sins of colonisers are many — this is happening now. We can stand for the might of racism or we can stand against racist policies and regimes. We can stand against apartheid and genocide.

    Indigenous people must have the right to live in their homeland. Casting them onto designated land then invading that land is wrong.

    When Israelis are kidnapped they are called hostages. When Palestinians are kidnapped they are called prisoners. It’s racist. It’s cruel. It’s revolting that anyone would support this travesty.

    Far far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed that day (and we know now that some of those Israelis were killed by their own army, Israel has admitted it lied over and again about the murder of babies and rapes).

    Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England
    Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England . . . “It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets.” Image: Saige England

    Mercenary macho army
    So who does murder and rape? The IDF. The proud mercenary macho army.

    Once upon a time, a Palestinian kid who threw a stone got a bullet between the eyes. Now they get a bullet for carrying water, for going back to the homeground that has been bombed to smithereens. Snipers enjoy taking them down.

    Drones operated by human beings who have no conscience follow children, follow journalists, follow nurses, follow someone in a wheelchair, and blow them to dust.

    This is a game for the IDF. I’m sure some feel bad about it but they have to go along with it because they lose privileges if they do not. This sick army run by a sick state includes soldiers who hold dual US and Israeli citizenship.

    Earlier this year I met a couple of IDF soldiers on holidays from genocide, breezily ordering their lattes in a local cafe. I tried to engage with them, to garner some sense of compassion but they used “them” and “they” to talk about Palestinians.

    They lumped all Palestinians into a de-humanised mass worth killing. They blamed indigenous people who lived under a regime of apartheid and who are now being exterminated, for the genocide.

    The woman was even worse than the man. She loathed me the minute she saw my badge supporting the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aoteara. Hate spat from her eyes.

    Madness.

    De-brainwashing
    I saw that the only prospect for them to change might be a de-brainwashing programme. Show them the real facts they were never given, show them real Palestinians instead of figments of their imagination.

    It occurred to me that it really was very tempting to take them home and offer them a different narrative. I asked them if they would listen, and they said no. If I had forced them to come with me I would have been, you know, a hostage-taker.

    Israel is evidence that the victim can become the persecutor when they scapegoat indigenous people as the villain, when they hound them for crime of a holocaust they did not commit.

    And I get it, a little. My Irish and French Huguenot ancestors were persecuted. I have to face the sad horrid fact that those persecuted people took other people’s land in New Zealand. The victims became the persecutor.

    Oh they can say they did not know but they did know. They just did not look too hard at the dispossession of indigenous people.

    I wrote my book The Seasonwife at the ripe young age of 63 to reveal some of the suppressed truths about colonisation and about the greed of Empire — a system where the rich exploit the poor to help themselves. I will continue to write novels about suppressed truths.

    And I call down my Jewish ancestors who hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I have experienced antisemitism.

    Experienced cancelling
    But I have experienced cancelling, not by my publisher I hasten to add, but I know agencies and publishers in my country who tell authors to shut up about this genocide, who call those who speak up anti-semitic.

    I have been cancelled by Zionist authors. I don’t have a publisher like that but I know those who do, I know agencies who pressure authors to be silent.

    I call on other authors to follow Rooney’s example and for pity’s sake stop referencing Hamas. Learn the truth.

    Benjamin Netanyahu refused to deal with any other Palestinian representative. Palestinians have the right to choose their own representatives but they were denied that right.

    What is a terrorist army? The IDF which has created killing field after killing field. Not just this genocide, but the genocide in Lebanon in 1982.

    I have been protesting against the massacre of Palestinians since 2014 and I wish I had been more vocal earlier. I wish I had left the country when the Phalangists were killed. I did go back and report from the West Bank but I feel now, that I did not do enough. I was pressured — as Western writers are — to support the wrongdoer, the persecutor, not the victim.

    I will never do that again.

    Change with learning
    I do believe that with learning we can change, we can work towards a different, fairer system — a system based on fairness not exploitation.

    I stand alongside indigenous people everywhere.

    So I say again, that I support Sally Rooney and any author who has the guts to stand up to the pressure of oppressive regimes that deny the rights of people to resist oppression.

    I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop. I believe they will be granted the right to return to their land. It is not anyone else’s right to grant that, really, the right of return for those who were forced out, and their descendants, is long overdue.

    And their forced exile is recent. Biblical myths don’t stack up. Far too often they are stacked to make other people fall down.

    Perhaps if we had all stood up more than 100,000 Palestinians would still be alive, a third of those children, would still be running around, their voices like bells instead of death calls.

    I support Palestinians with all my heart and soul.

    Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rewarding knowingly illegal conduct – some might say, Israeli terrorism

    Why the recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia is an important development. Meanwhile, New Zealand still dithers. This article unpacks the hypocrisy in the debate.

    ANALYSIS: By Paul Heywood-Smith

    The recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, leading, it is hoped, to full UN member state status, is an important development.

    What has followed is a remarkable demonstration of ignorance and/or submission to the Zionist lobby.

    Rewarding Hamas
    Let us consider aspects of the response. One aspect is that recognising Palestine is rewarding the resistance organisation Hamas.

    There are a number of issues involved here. The first issue is that Hamas is branded as a “terrorist organisation”. So much is said, apparently, by eight nations compared to the overwhelming majority of UN recognised states which do not so regard it.

    May I suggest that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation: refer P&I, October 23, 2022, Australia must overturn its listing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political party which chose to fight apartheid by calling for one state.

    That was Hamas’s objective when it fought the election against Fatah in 2006.

    As an aside, it now results in the lie that it is ridiculous that the Albanese government would recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution when Hamas rejects a two-state solution. This is just yet another attempt to demonise Hamas.

    Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they would accept a two-state solution. It has only recently done so again.

    On 23 July last, when Hamas responded to a US draft ceasefire framework the Hamas official, Basem Naim, affirmed Hamas’s publicly stated pledge that it would give up power in Gaza and support a two-state solution on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.

    These are the very borders stipulated by international law — see hereunder.

    The Palestinians constituting Hamas are residents of an illegally occupied territory. International law affords to them the right to resist: Geneva Conventions I-IV, 1949.

    The hypocrisy associated with the demonisation of Hamas is massive. Much is made of hostages having been taken on 7 October 2023 — a war crime according to international law. Those militants who took the hostages might be forgiven for thinking that it was minimal compared with the seven years of non-compliance with Security Council Resolution (SCR) 2334 calling for the end of occupation and removal of settlements.

    The second issue is that Hamas commenced the events in Gaza by its horrific, unprovoked, attack on 7 October 2023. As to October 7 being unprovoked, see P&I, October 9, 2023 Palestinians, pushed beyond endurance, defend their homeland against violent apartheid.

    The events of October 7 are, in any event, shrouded in doubt. This follows from Israel’s suppression of evidence concerning what happened. What we do know is that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases on October 7.

    In addition, the Hannibal Directive justified IDF slaughter of Israelis potentially being taken as hostages. It is also accepted that allegations of rape and beheading of babies by Hamas militants were false. The disinformation put out by Israel, and Israel’s refusal to allow journalists on site, or to interview participants, make it impossible to form any clear or credible understanding of what happened on October 7.

    It is accepted that Hamas militants attacked three Israeli military bases, no doubt with the intention that those bases should withdraw from their positions relative to Gazan territory. Such action can be understood as consistent with an occupied citizenry resisting such illegal occupation.

    Compounding the uncertainty over October 7 is the continuing conjecture, leakage, of information suggesting that the IDF had advance warning of the proposed Hamas attack but chose, for other purposes, to take no action. These uncertainties are never adverted to by our press which repeatedly attributes responsibility for all Israeli deaths on the day to the actions of Hamas militants, which actions are presented as an “abomination, barbarity”. Refer generally to P&I, November 5, 2023 (Stuart Rees) Expose and dismiss the domination Israeli narrative; P&I, January 4, 2024 Israeli general killed Israelis on 7 October and then lied about it.

    The third issue, the major hypocrisy, is that Hamas is being rewarded. Consider the position of Israel. Israel is, and has been, illegally occupying Palestinian territory since 1967. This is undisputed according to international law as articulated in the following instruments:

    • 1967 – SCR 242;
    • 2004 – the ICJ decision concerning The Wall;
    • Dec. 2016 – SCR 2334, not vetoed by Obama, recognising the illegal occupation and calling for its end; and
    • 2024 – the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ of 19 July.

    Israel has done nothing to comply with any of these instruments. It is set on a programme of gradual acquisition.

    The result is that now there are illegal settlements all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When Israel is told: the West Bank and East Jerusalem are to be part of a Palestinian state, it will scream, “But large parts are occupied by Jewish Israelis!” These are “facts on the ground”.

    Supporters of Israel ignore the fact that occupation by settlers occurred in the full knowledge that international law branded such occupation as illegal. If the settlements are considered as a “done deal”, that would be rewarding knowingly illegal conduct — some might say, Israeli terrorism.

    So that there can be no doubt about the import of the position it is appropriate to specify the critical parts of SCR 2334:

    The Security Council

    1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
    2. Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
    3. Underlines that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;
    4. Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;.

    Following the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 19, the UN General Assembly in adopting the same set 17 September 2025 as the deadline for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory.

    Negotiated settlement
    And when Israel now says, “Recognition now is going to prevent a negotiated settlement”, it is ignoring the fact that in the six, 12, 20 months, two, three, four years until such negotiated settlement occurs, many more settlements would have been commenced, which of course, are more “facts on the ground”.

    Then we have the response of the Coalition, which demonstrates how irrelevant the Opposition is in today’s Australia. That response is that the recognition will inhibit a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians.

    The Coalition, however, says nothing about the fact that the Israeli government has repeatedly stated that there will never be a Palestinian State. Indeed, Israel has legislated to that effect and is moreover periodically purporting to annex Palestinian land.

    So how does the Coalition believe that a negotiated settlement will come about? Well, one way, over which Israel may have no say, is for Palestine to become a full member State of the UN. One UN member state cannot occupy the land of another.

    Failure of our press to ask any question of pro-Israel interviewees about the end of occupation is a disgrace.

    Next challenge
    Now for the next challenge — to bring about the end of occupation. Israel will not accede readily. Sanctions must be the first step. Such sanctions must be immediate, concrete and crippling.

    They must result in the immediate suspension of trade. That can be the first step.

    Watch this space.

    Paul Heywood-Smith is an Adelaide SC (senior counsel) of some 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, an incorporated association registered in South Australia in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer (Wakefield Press, 2014). This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A Cancer Spreading in Africa

    The UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is a cancer spreading in Africa. This cancer has infected much of east Africa and is spreading into northern, central, and western parts of the continent.

    The worst outbreak of this disease, the UAE disease, has been in Sudan where the ruling Emirates family instigated an attempted coup d’etat 3 years ago, backing a warlord and his army, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and the Rapid Support Forces, also known as the Janjaweed since the war in Dafur/west Sudan from 2003-2005.

    When he launched the attempted coup, Hemeti’s fighters quickly scored major victories against the Sudanese Army lead by a coterie of corrupt, sycophantic officers. This was helped by a generous outpouring of UAE cash and weapons shipments to keep the coup attempt running smoothly. The capital Khartoum was quickly over run, eventually forcing the head of the Sudanese Army, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdelrahman al-Burhan, de facto president of Sudan, to retreat to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

    As he watched his army being bruised and battered, in retreat across much of the country, Gen. Burhan turned to his neighbor in the south, Eritrea, and its battle hardened military to step in and help his army regroup and regain some fighting spirit.

    Eventually, with the Eritrean involvement, supplying training and logistics and even leading the fight alongside the Sudanese army Gen. Burhan, the military began to effectively fight back and turned the tide of war against the UAE-backed coup attempt by Hemeti and his RSF/Janjaweed.

    In response, the UAE stepped up its weapons supply, with plane loads being delivered to the RSF via Chadian airports under the watchful eye of the Chadian army. The UAE sent several hundred drones to support the attempted coup and when that didn’t work, plane loads of mercenaries began to put boots on the ground in Dafur, much like what was done when the UAE intervened in Yemen against the Houthis from 2015-2017. Mercenaries from Libya, CAR, Somalia, Ethiopia and last but not least, Colombia.

    Of course the UAE has denied this, but the Sudanese Army destroying a plane load of Colombian mercenaries in Dafur put paid to any cries of innocence by the Emirati Royal Family.

    As the Sudanese Army under Gen. Burhan began to drive the UAE-backed RSF fighters out of the urban areas captured at the beginning of the attempted coup, the Sudanese Army warned the Chadian military that they would be targeted for supporting the RSF and this resulted in the Chadian Army withdrawing most of their support for the RSF and the partial closure of the Chad airports to UAE arms shipments.

    To counter this the UAE turned to their henchman in Libya, long-time CIA asset “General” Haftar ensconced in eastern Libya who gave them a military base on the Sudanese border to transship weapons and supplies to the RSF/Janjaweed.

    In the course of the fighting in western Sudan, where the RSF fighters had retreated to after being driven out of the capital Khartoum, some horrendous crimes have been committed by the UAE backed RSF and the mercenaries supplied to Hemeti by the UAE. The Sudanese government-controlled town of Al Fashir was surrounded by the RSF and completely cut off from food and medical supplies — now going on for many months. Starvation, cholera without any access to medical treatment, and steady shelling and drone attacks from the RSF have seen thousands killed and thousands more dead from starvation, as bad if not worse than in Gaza.

    Due to battlefield set backs, the UAE cancer in Sudan is steadily shrinking but murder and mayhem by the RSF continues. Eventually the Hemeti-led RSF will be driven from Sudan into Chad, Libya, and other countries with their tails between their legs, but not before doing incalculable damage in the mean time.

    The UAE cancer has also been eating at the Somali people for many years now, long before it infected Sudan. Al Shabab, “the youth” in Arabic, are an approximately 15,000-man army-of-terror being paid $300 a month which along with food, fuel, and military supplies must run up to $7million a month, $80+million a year going back over 15 years. This means the UAE has spent almost $1billion trying to buy a foothold in Somalia in the form a port with blood money .

    We know this because a former head of Somali Puntland regional National Intelligence spoke out on this, the UAE’s involvement in supporting terrorism in Somalia in particular, Al Shabab. As I write, Al Shabab is waging a brutal war against the slowly collapsing Somali government lead by a US-anointed “President”. Remember, this new Somali President had not even been inaugurated when AFRICOM, the US military in Africa, had already begun reoccupying their bases from which they had been expelled across Somalia.

    Having control of ports seems to be an obsession with the British installed royal family, the Emir and his spawn, and the UAE cancer is trying to spread wherever it can find a hold, from Somalia to Socotra island in the Gulf of Aden, to the Persian Gulf and back to north and central Africa in Libya, Chad, and especially South Sudan.

    For years, Libyan weapons left over from US/NATO overthrow of Col. Gaddafi have poured into Africa’s Sahel region fueling murder and mayhem by religious fanatics, with the role of the UAE in Libya linking the Emir and his lackeys to this blood soaked trade.

    So far the alliance of Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan have prevented the UAE cancer from infecting the Red Sea coast though one of the main reasons for the UAE supporting Hemeti’s RSF is getting a port in Sudan on the Red Sea.

    The mafia family ruling the UAE is separate from the government of the country, the day to day professionals, who are not happy with what the Royal Family is dragging the UAE into.

    The dream of the Emirates royalty is to create, or re-create in their distorted version of history, a new “empire”, marine based in ports in strategic parts of the region and even includes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whom the Emirates consider little more than buffoons, and whose rightful rulers are their Emirate cousins.

    You should ask, really, from where did this information come from?

    Some may remember early in 2025 when the Trumpists came to power that hearings were held which exposed, for a very brief period, how the US CIA was funding terrorists groups in Africa, including Boko Haram in west Africa and Al Shabab in east Africa.

    Recently, the Eritrean President Issias Aferwerki, noted for his reticence, gave an interview where he went in depth into, amongst other problems, the role of the UAE in Africa. He exposed a whole range of crimes in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries. As someone who has followed Pres. Issias’ speeches for decades, this presentation was exceptional in its detail and breadth, disclosing an intricate web of crimes being committed by the UAE in their attempt to buy an “empire.” Of course, one must not forget the Big Brother of the UAE, the US Central Intelligence Agency, by statute in charge of dirty dealings by the US internationally. The US has always preferred to leave their crimes to be committed by their compradores in the region, keeping their “deniability” and to be able claim their hands are clean.

    Today the UAE cancer is shrinking, facing defeats on at least two fronts, Sudan and Ethiopia. In both cases Eritrea has played an important, if not decisive role, behind the scenes. In Somalia, all the hard work the Eritreans put into training over 15,000 professional security forces has come to naught, and matters only seem to be getting worse for the Somali people.

    But in Sudan and Ethiopia the UAE cancer is receding and hopefully, with the continued leadership of Africa’s most successful Pan Africanist government and its President Issias Aferwerki it seems a cure for the UAE disease is possible, Inshallah?

    The post A Cancer Spreading in Africa first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Eyes of Fire is an updated Rainbow Warrior classic and must read for activism

    REVIEW: By Jenny Nicholls

    Author David Robie left his cabin on the Rainbow Warrior three days before it was blown up by the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency

    The ship was destroyed at Marsden Wharf on 10 July 1985 by two limpet mines attached
    below the waterline.

    As New Zealand soon learned to its shock, the second explosion killed crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira as he tried to retrieve his cameras.

    “I had planned to spend the night of the bombing onboard with my two young sons, to give them a brief taste of shipboard life,” Dr Robie writes. “At the last moment I decided to leave it to another night.”

    He left the ship after 11 weeks documenting what turned out to be the last of her humanitarian missions — a voyage which highlighted the exploitation of Pacific nations
    by countries who used them to test nuclear weapons.

    Dr Robie was the only journalist on board to cover both the evacuation of the people
    of Rongelap Atoll after their land, fishing grounds and bodies were ravaged by US nuclear fallout, and the continued voyage to nuclear-free Vanuatu and New Zealand.

    Eyes of Fire is not only the authoritative biography of the Rainbow Warrior and her
    missions, but a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace by a French spy, the bombing, its planning, the capture of the French agents, the political fallout, and ongoing
    challenges for Pacific nations.

    Dr Robie corrects the widely held belief that the first explosion on the Rainbow Warrior
    was intended as a warning, to avoid loss of life. No, it turns out, the French state really
    did mean to kill people.

    “It was remarkable,” he writes, “that Fernando Pereira was the only person who
    died.”

    The explosives were set to detonate shortly before midnight, when members of the
    crew would be asleep. (One of them was the ship’s relief cook, Waihekean Margaret Mills. She awoke in the nick of time. The next explosion blew in the wall of her cabin).

    “Two cabins on the main deck had their floors ruptured by pieces of steel flying from
    the [first] engine room blast,” writes Dr Robie.

    “By chance, the four crew who slept in those rooms were not on board. If they had been,
    they almost certainly would have been killed.”

    Eyes of Fire author David Robie with Rainbow Warrior III . . . not only an account of the Rongelap humanitarian voyage, but also a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace and the bombing. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Eyes of Fire was first published in 1986 — and also in the UK and USA, and has been reissued in 2005, 2015 and again this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary
    of the bombing.

    If you are lucky enough to own the first edition, you will find plenty that is new here; updated text, an index, new photographs, a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and a searing preface by Waihekean Bunny McDiarmid, former executive director
    of Greenpeace International.

    As you would expect from the former head of journalism schools at the University
    of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific, and founder of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Eyes of Fire is not only a brilliant piece of research, it is an absolutely
    fascinating read, filled with human detail.

    The bombing and its aftermath make up a couple of chapters in a book which covers an enormous amount of ground.

    Professor David Robie is a photographer, journalist and teacher who was awarded an MNZM in 2024 for his services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education. He is founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review, also well worth seeking out.

    Eyes of Fire is an updated classic and required reading for anyone interested in activism
    or the contemporary history of the Pacific.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • From Gaza to Iraq: the British establishment are allergic to accountability.

    Imagine a world in which we didn’t have to see Iraq war criminal Alistair Campbell’s face or hear his voice. A world in which the almost-always incorrect views generated on his smug, shit, Centrist Dad podcast never landed in your algorithm.

    I’d say the same for arch-Tory Rory Stewart who, bizarrely, governed an Iraqi province during the US occupation.

    There are honourable exceptions, sure. Gary Stevenson was on there there recently and he seems likes a decent lad. But on the whole, why are these deeply unserious figures treated like their track record isn’t appalling.

    Now imagine a world in which Tony Blair simply never got a platform to advance his grandiose, yet inevitably ridiculous takes?

    And imagine a world where the core values of Blairism – embodied today in the Magic Bank Manager Keir Starmer – had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

    Sounds alright, doesn’t it?

    Well one of the reasons that world doesn’t exist is that nobody was every remotely held to account over the Iraq War.

    The legacy media is a part of this. We shouldn’t be surprised that an industry dominated by Russell Group-educated Professional Managerial Class (PMC) losers would help recondition figures who represent their own values and ambitions.

    But there are other reasons too.

    The Inquiry Racket – from Iraq to…

    One mechanism to achieve a reckoning would have been a serious public inquiry, the findings of which would have been actionable before the law. But that is simply not what Britain does.

    Chilcot’s inquiry into Iraq delivered a vast report late and over-budget. The process was crippled by the report’s own parameters. It effectively left questions about the legality of the war unanswered. It had no legal power to hold anyone culpable.

    The drippiness of major British inquiries is well established. You can look at everything from Hillsborough to Bloody Sunday all the way through to Iraq. But it’s not simply that heads didn’t roll.

    At worst, there was some surface level reputational damage to a few powerful figures. Certainly not enough to keep them off our airwaves.

    Is that what we’re going to get with Gaza? The signal crime of our lifetimes? A horror much worse than Iraq?

    … a Gaza inquiry?

    Jeremy Corbyn – who else would it be? – is fighting for an inquiry into Israel’s genocidal assault already.

    A Bill to make provision for; to require the inquiry to consider any UK military, economic or political cooperation with Israel since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases; to provide the inquiry with the power to question Ministers and officials about decisions taken in relation to UK involvement; and for connected purposes.

    On principle, you’d have to support him in that effort. But the truth is official inquiries are partial, messy and limited affairs. Inquiries often deliver a sense of closure the establishment doesn’t deserve. They take years. They drain those chasing justice of energy.

    Even Oliver Cromwell knew the best way to kill off a pressing issue was to refer it to a committee. To bog it down in bureaucracy, in haggles over language and scope, to slow it down – maybe forever.

    Having covered so many of these big inquiries over the years, I can’t help but feel that is what they are meant to do.

    Accountability never?

    And these the questions of Iraq and Gaza are not separate. Blair’s ideological inheritor is PM of this country. Would there be a Gaza if anybody had been held accountable for Iraq?

    It’s impossible to say.

    Britain founded Israel. It helped guarantee the great displacement of Palestinians long before these began. Israel remains a key node in a network of political and economic control over the Middle East. The British commitment to maintaining the fascistic little outpost it carved out of Palestine has never been clearer.

    But if nothing else, I think some permanently ruined senior political and media careers would have been a small ask. And it might have made it harder to back Israel to the degree we’ve seen. A serious inquiry with legal power might have forced the Labour Party – and the British establishment – into a reckoning with itself.

    And I can’t help but ask, how much of the political alienation people feel in this country comes back to this question. To the sense that no matter how awful its behaviour, the British establishment will always be able to set the scale and scope of its own accountability to zero.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Is Keir Starmer really set to resign as PM?

    I saw a meme earlier today, and it boldly stated that Keir Starmer was set to resign.

    It wasn’t a very good meme, and most probably created on one of those free design apps like Canva, but I did immediately wonder if there was any actual substance to this claim, for all of twenty seconds.

    Keir Starmer set to resign? Really?

    The opinion polls are absolutely disastrous and point towards Prime Minister Farage in 2029. The current Prime Minister — weak and isolated — is detested by the left and right wings for policies deemed either too left or too right by opposing sides.

    And the only people that continue to stand by Keir Starmer are the dopey-arsed #FBPE liberals that are too fucking arrogant to ever admit that their man, Keith, is a fraudulent failure of a politician.

    How weak is your argument when you desperately claim that any anti-Keir Starmer sentiment is a vote for Nigel Farage?

    Hategoblin Farage and Reform UK’s greatest recruitment tool is none other than Keir Starmer – so maybe he won’t resign.

    The government’s reluctance to clearly communicate its immigration policies, coupled with a history of profit-driven outsourcing in immigration services, has allowed far-right narratives to gain traction and has unnecessarily exacerbated community tensions.

    That’s not my fault, it’s probably not your fault, and we’re not going to blame it on the ever-warming sunshine, the moonlight, the good times, or Corbyn.

    If you are blaming someone else for the inevitable rise of fascism because you’re too stubborn to admit your support for Keir Starmer is at best, misguided, and at worse, wilfully enabling this corrupted government’s evil, we’re probably not going to get along, because you are a disturbing individual.

    Abandon your fanciful trickle down theories and free market fuckwittery and fearlessly jump on board the next overpriced, leftward-bound GWR train that is riding along the crest of the political spectrum as I type these words.

    Left wing. LOL.

    There are so many conversations that I could have with a Keir Starmer devotee.

    They still have the nerve to call themselves “left-wing”, or something wishy-washy like a “social democrat”, when reality would suggest the Blue Labour hat would fit them perfectly well.

    Left-wing is addressing systemic inequality, opposing militarism, and advocating for progressive policies like taxing the wealthy, or investing in council housing, and supporting a secure, free and independent Palestine.

    There’s absolutely nothing left-wing about freezing pensioners to death, or forcing thousands more children into poverty, funding a proxy war in Ukraine, greedily filling your pockets with extravagant freebies from the super rich, targeting sick and disabled people with perpetual austerity, or outsourcing public services to failed corporations — and there is definitely nothing left-wing about allowing the sale of military hardware to terrorist states to assist them in committing crimes against humanity.

    Is that even debatable? Perhaps a Starmer stan wants to jump on an X post and teach me the errors of my ways without mentioning Jeremy Corbyn, or Labour’s worst electoral defeat since 300 BC? If they think that was bad, they clearly haven’t been paying any attention to the inevitable, (and to be welcomed) destruction on the Labour Party

    Maybe they can brainwash me into believing my support for the innocent human beings in Gaza is actually a horrifying example of why Margaret Hodge has always got to think about keeping suitcase packed under the stairs?

    Truth is, very few of the centrist jellyfishes have actually got the guts to contribute anything meaningful to the debate without resorting to personal abuse and vexatious, meaningless, pro-government rhetoric.

    They learned well from their Tory predecessors.

    There is, of course, a credible left-wing alternative upon the horizon – whether Keir Starmer will resign or not.

    Your Party

    Three-quarters-of-a-million people have already signed up to ‘Your Party’, reflecting widespread disillusionment with Labour’s attempt to shift to the populist right under Keir Starmer.

    I mentioned Labour’s worst election defeat since the beginning of time, a little bit further up.

    According to opinion pollster Find Out Now UK, if there were an election today, Keir Starmer’s Labour would receive just NINETEEN PERCENT of the overall vote, leaving the red Tories with just SIXTY SIX members of parliament.

    While this might well be cause for celebration, it is also deeply concerning to see the hard-right polling a combined fifty percent, because this is where Keir Starmer will continue to try and win the unwinnable votes of the small-boat-obsessed Neanderthals at the expense of anything that barely resembles a progressive policy.

    Remember what they told you, day after day…

    Labour would be twenty points ahead under anyone but Corbyn.

    A few years and a whole load of grey hairs later, Keir Starmer’s Labour will be over-achieving if they manage to register twenty percent at the next general election.

    Resign Keir Starmer? If this critical downward spiral continues, and Labour look set up for an absolute hammering at the next general election, I believe the choice to resign will be taken away from him.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The boomerang effect: ‘forever wars’ abroad have given us class war at home

    It’s been a while. Nearly two years ago, the Canary was forced to cut down its coverage. This came at exactly the time our work was most needed. It meant the class war at home and the ‘forever wars’ overseas couldn’t be covered as deeply they should have been. That starts to change again today.

    This work is vital. Of course, these two kinds of conflict are never truly separate. By some estimates we have up to 10 million hungry people in the UK yet we have a £66bn war budget for 2025/2026.

    What is new is that the wars abroad and the war at home are merging in new and terrifying ways.

    The explosive situation we face today is a result of a long political and economic decline in the west, certainly. That decline was already being felt in the US over two decades ago. The American response was to cynically use 9/11 to launch a series of disastrous wars. The British government of the day chose to stumble along behind George Bush. There is no question today that those wars have come home to roost.

    There were warnings even then. On 21 September 2001, Stop the War Coalition was founded. Their foundational statement from that year reads:

    any war will simply add to the numbers of innocent dead, cause untold suffering, political and economic instability on a global scale, increase racism and result in attacks on civil liberties.

    Maybe this was a relatively easy prediction, maybe not. But their assessment was pretty damned accurate, wasn’t it? And in 2025 we can see that that dystopian vision uncoiling before our eyes.

    Delusion or fabrication?

    We’d be fools to ignore the echoes of post 9/11 practices like rendition and shadow detention camps in recent projects like the Rwanda deportation scheme and ‘Alligator Alcatraz’. Clear examples of how the forever wars fed into the class wars. Because it’s workers, not their bosses, crammed into cages in America’s sweltering south.

    Increasing mass surveillance, the rise of far-right politics globally and, more locally, the British state’s use of police counter-terror powers against non-violent critics of foreign policy are also partly products of the wars.

    This process finds its latest culmination in what is too often called Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I say ‘too often’ because it isn’t just Israel’s genocide – it’s Britain’s too. Israel has been directly supported by successive British governments.

    Of course, there’s a lot of denialism among the establishment even if it is wearing a bit thin. A few weeks ago, I saw an example so flimsy that I laughed out loud.

    A (superbly-named) former army colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon told the billionaire-owned Daily Mail:

    Whatever people think about what’s happening in Palestine, it’s nothing to do with the British military.

    He was talking about a ban on military equipment at an armed forces day event in Yorkshire. But the fact the press allow such absolute garbage be published unchallenged is part of the problem. In fact, it’s such a deliriously inaccurate take that it’s hard to tell if de Bretton Gordon was being disingenuous or ignorant. It takes all of about three minutes on a search engine to find the truth.

    For example, our friends at Declassified UK’s have reported on British forces’ active involvement in surveillance operations over Gaza, and on the Israeli soldiers who’ve been trained in the UK. That is without mentioning the D Notice which is allegedly in place regarding UK Special Forces operations in Palestine.

    The UK military, the British state and the British arms trade – if we even consider these as separate entities – are up to their necks in genocidal killing. The fact that the failing Starmer government have rejected recent calls to come clean on the surveillance flights suggests they know it full well.

    The lesson is that the survival of a “loyal little Ulster” in the Middle East is more important to the British establishment than Palestinian life. And its definitely more important than the liberties of citizens here at home.

    Forever wars are home to roost

    Now I’m not exactly the chairman of the Tony Blair Fan Club, but to my knowledge he never arrested Iraq War protestors en masse. The current situation tells us at least two things.

    One is that Starmer is – or has ended up – far to the political right of Blair. For some of us, the Labour Party’s authoritarian urges were clear long ago. They certainly can’t be ignored now that they are being realised at scale. A dorky centrist creed emerged under 14 years of Conservative rule which ended at insisting ‘anybody but the Tories’ should govern. It should never be heard again. This kind of performative waffle isn’t going to cut it anymore.

    The other thing is that the so-called ‘imperial boomerang’ has landed back at in Britain with a jackboot thud. This isn’t entirely new, rather it is an acceleration and expansion of processes that were already underway.

    The domestic backlash of the War on Terror has been felt for a very long time. It was just that for the first twenty years, the victims were mostly Muslims. The current program of repression is a new mutation of that process.

    The imperial boomerang concept, originated by the anti-colonialist writer Aime Cezaire, described the way methods and technologies of repression developed in the colonies come home to the colonizing nation.

    Hannah Arendt, analyst of the old totalitarian ideologies of Naziism and Stalinism, broadly agreed with Cezaire. So did the cultural theorist Michel Foucault, if you’re into that sort of thing.

    Today we see the boomerang expressed everywhere. In the violent repression of Palestine protest in Germany; in the rise of ICE, Trump’s personal fascist militia, in the US; and in the general turn around the world to what the scholar Gilbert Achcar recently called a new age of neo-fascism.

    Blood and sand

    The rise of far-right ‘disaster nationalism’ is deeply related to the doom loop cycle of decline at home and war abroad. But the far-right won’t bear the brunt of state repression. The Home Office has proscribed Palestine Action. The police have dragged away pensioners as they protest genocide. Yet the current UKIP leader can throw up Roman salutes unmolested?

    If fascism is more tolerable to those in power than anti-war activism, it is precisely because very little about fascism misaligns with empire.

    And let’s not forget that the anti-migrant rhetoric Farage trades off is steeped in the anti-Muslim bigotry generated by and for the wars – the same ideology invoked by migrant hotel ‘protestors’.

    While self-appointed ‘journalist’ and friend of Israel Tommy Robinson was carried to fame leading the backlash against poppy burnings by a tiny clique of equally far-right idiots during a homecoming parade. Both of these figures, and the movement they represent, were shaped by the wars.

    We are reaping the whirlwind of decades of war, of a US empire in crisis and of an economic system which can no longer hold together. We might have some say in what we get next, but that will take serious work.

    That effort must include building an independent, uncompromising and adversarial media, It must be committed to the democratic values which a real fighting press – and real fighting journalists – are meant to advance.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.