Tory leader says the quiet part out loud, admitting that both Israel and Ukraine are fighting for the West

If you have spent the past 20 months wondering why British leaders on both sides of the aisle have barely criticised Israel, even as it slaughtered and starved Gaza’s population of more than two million people, you finally got an answer last week.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the quiet part out loud. She told Sky: “Israel is fighting a proxy war [in Gaza] on behalf of the UK.”

According to Badenoch, the UK – and presumably in her assessment, other western powers – aren’t just supporting Israel against Hamas. They are willing that fight and helping to direct it. They view that fight as centrally important to their national interests.

This certainly accords with what we have witnessed over more than a year and a half. Both the current Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and its Tory predecessor under Rishi Sunak, have been unwavering in their commitment to send British arms to Israel, while also shipping weapons from the United States and Germany to help with the slaughter.

Both governments used the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri in Cyprus to carry out surveillance flights to aid Israel with locating targets to hit in Gaza. Both allowed British citizens to travel to Israel to take part as soldiers in the Gaza genocide.

Neither government joined South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice, which found more than a year ago that Israel’s actions could “plausibly” be considered a genocide.

And neither government proposed or tried to impose alongside other western states, as happened in other recent “wars”, a no-fly zone over Gaza to stop Israel’s murderous assault, or organised with others to break Israel’s blockade and get aid into the enclave.

In other words, both governments steadfastly maintained their material support for Israel, even if Starmer recently toned down rhetorical support after images of emaciated babies and young children in Gaza – reminiscent of images of Jewish children in Nazi death camps like Auschwitz – shocked the world.

Coded language

If Badenoch is right that the UK is waging a proxy war in Gaza, it means that both British governments are directly responsible for the huge death toll of Palestinian civilians – running into many tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands – from Israel’s saturation bombing.

It also makes it indisputable that the UK is complicit in the current mass starvation of more than two million people there, which is indeed what Badenoch went on to imply in the coded language of political debate.

In reference to Starmer’s recent, and very belated, criticism of Israel’s starvation of Gaza’s entire population, she observed: “What I want to see is Keir Starmer making sure that he is on the right side of British national interest.”

According to Badenoch, Starmer’s implied threat – so far entirely unrealised – to limit the UK’s active collusion in the genocidal starvation of the people of Gaza could harm Britain’s national interests. How exactly?

Her comments should have startled, or at least baffled, Sky interviewer Trevor Phillips. But they passed unremarked.

Badenoch’s “proxy war” statement was also largely ignored by the rest of the British establishment media. Rightwing publications did notice it, but it appeared they were only disturbed by her equating the West’s proxy war in Gaza with the West’s proxy war in Ukraine.

Or as the opposition leader put it: “Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK just like Ukraine is on behalf of western Europe against Russia.”

A column in the Spectator, the Tory party’s house journal, criticised her use of “proxy war” to describe Ukraine, but appeared to take the Gaza proxy war reference as read. James Heale, the Spectator’s deputy political editor, wrote: “By inadvertently echoing Russia’s position on Ukraine, Badenoch has handed her opponents another stick with which to beat her.”

The Telegraph, another Tory-leaning newspaper, ran a similarly themed article headlined: “Kremlin seizes on Badenoch’s Ukraine ‘proxy war’ comments.”

Related wars

The lack of a response to her Gaza “proxy war” remark suggests that this sentiment actually informs much thinking in western foreign policy circles, even if she broke the taboo on articulating it publicly.

To reach an answer on why Gaza is viewed as a proxy war – one Britain continues to be deeply invested in, even at the cost of a genocide – one must also understand why Ukraine is seen in similar terms. The two “wars” are more related than they might appear.

Despite the consternation of the Spectator and Telegraph, Badenoch is not the first British leader to point out that the West is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine.

Back in February, one of her predecessors, Boris Johnson, observed of western involvement in the three-year war between Russia and Ukraine: “Let’s face it, we’re waging a proxy war. We’re waging a proxy war. But we’re not giving our proxies [Ukraine] the ability to do the job.”

If anyone should know the truth about Ukraine, it is Johnson. After all, he was prime minister when Moscow invaded its neighbour in February 2022.

He was soon dispatched by Washington to Kyiv, where he appears to have strong-armed President Volodymyr Zelensky into abandoning ceasefire talks that were well advanced and could have led to a resolution.

Offensive frontiers

There are good reasons why Johnson and Badenoch each understand Ukraine as a proxy war.

This weekend Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, echoed them. He told Fox News that Russian president Vladimir Putin was not wrong to see Ukraine as a proxy war, and that the West was acting as aggressor by supplying Kyiv with weapons.

For years, the West had expanded Nato’s offensive frontiers towards Russia, despite Moscow’s explicit warnings that this would cross a red line.

With the West threatening to bring Russia’s neighbour Ukraine into Nato’s military fold, there were only ever likely to be one of two Russian responses. Either Putin would blink first and find Russia boxed in militarily, with Nato missiles – potentially nuclear-tipped – on his doorstep, minutes from Moscow. Or he would react pre-emptively to stop Ukraine’s accession to Nato by invading.

The West believed it had nothing to lose either way. If Russia invaded, Nato would then have the pretext to use Ukraine as a theatre of war to bleed Moscow, both economically with sanctions and militarily by flooding the battlefield with western weapons.

As we now know, Moscow chose to react. And while it has indeed been bleeding heavily, Ukrainian forces and European economies have been haemorrhaging even faster and more heavily.

The problem isn’t so much a lack of weapons – the West has supplied lots of them – as the fact that Ukraine has run out of conscripts willing to be sent into the maw of war.

The West is not, of course, going to send its own soldiers. A proxy war means someone else, in this case Ukrainians, does the fighting – and dying – for you.

Three years on, the conditions for a ceasefire have dramatically changed too. Having spilled so much of its own people’s blood, Russia is much less ready to make compromises, not least over the eastern territories it has conquered and annexed.

We have reached this nadir in Ukraine – one so deep that even US President Donald Trump appears ready to bail out – precisely because Nato, via Johnson, pushed Ukraine to keep fighting an unwinnable war.

Full-spectrum dominance

Nonetheless, there was a geopolitical logic, however twisted, to the West’s actions in Ukraine. Bleeding Russia, a military and economic power, accords with the hawkish priorities of the neoconservative cabals that run western capitals nowadays, whichever party is in charge.

The neoconservatives valorise what used to be called the military-industrial complex. They believe that the West has a civilisational superiority to the rest of the world, and must use its superior arsenal to defeat, or at least contain, any state that refuses to submit.

This is a modern reimagining of the “barbarians at the gate”, or as neoconservatives like to frame it, “a clash of civilisations”. The fall of the West would amount, in their view, to a return to the Dark Ages. We are supposedly in a life-or-death struggle.

In the US, the imperial hub of what we call “the West”, this has justified a massive investment in war industries – or what is referred to as “defence”, because it is an easier sell to domestic publics tired of the endless austerity required to maintain military superiority.

Western capitals profess to act as “global police”, while the rest of the world sees the West more in terms of a sociopathic mafia don. However one frames it, the Pentagon is officially pursuing a doctrine known as US “global full-spectrum dominance”. You must submit – that is, let us control the world’s resources – or pay the price.

In practice, a “foreign policy” like this has necessarily divided the world in two: those in the Godfather’s camp, and those outside it.

If Russia could not be contained and defanged by turning Ukraine into a Nato forward base on Moscow’s doorstep, it had to be dragged by the West into a debilitating proxy war that would neutralise Russia’s ability to ally with China against US global hegemony.

Acts of violence

That is what Badenoch and Johnson meant by the proxy war in Ukraine. But how is Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians through saturation bombing and engineered starvation similarly a proxy war – and one apparently benefitting the UK and the West, as Badenoch argues?

Interestingly, Badenoch offered two not entirely compatible reasons for Israel’s “war” on Gaza.

Initially, she told Sky: “Israel is fighting a war where they want to get 58 hostages who have not been returned. That is what all of this is about … What we need to make sure is that we’re on the side that is going to eradicate Hamas.”

But even “eradicating Hamas” is hard to square with British foreign policy objectives. After all, despite the UK’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation, it has never attacked Britain, has said it has no such intention, and is unlikely to ever be in a position to do so.

Instead, it is far more likely that Israel’s destruction of Gaza, with visible western collusion, will inflame hotheads into random or misguided acts of violence that cannot be prepared for or stopped – acts of terror similar to the US gunman who recently shot dead two Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC.

That might be reason enough to conclude that the UK ought to distance itself from Israel’s actions as quickly as possible, rather than standing squarely behind Tel Aviv.

It was only when she was pushed by Phillips to explain her position that Badenoch switched trajectory. Apparently it wasn’t just about the hostages. She added: “Who funds Hamas? Iran, an enemy of this country.”

Cornered by her own logic, she then grasped tightly the West’s neoconservative comfort blanket and spoke of a “proxy war”.

‘Bracing’ truth?

Badenoch’s point was not lost on Stephen Pollard, the former editor of the Jewish Chronicle. In a column, he noted of the Sky interview: “Badenoch has a bracing attitude to the truth – she tells it as it is, even if it doesn’t make her popular.”

The “bracing” truth from Badenoch is that Israel is as central to the projection of western power into the oil-rich Middle East as it was more than a century ago, when Britain conceived of Palestine as a “national home for the Jewish people” in place of the native Palestinian population.

From Britain’s perspective, Israel’s war on Gaza, as Badenoch concedes, is not centrally about “eradicating Hamas” or “getting back the hostages” taken during the group’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Rather, it is about arming Israel to weaken those, like Iran and its regional allies, who refuse to submit to the West’s domination of the Middle East – or in the case of Palestinians, to their own dispossession and erasure.

In that way, arming Israel is seen as no different from arming Ukraine to weaken Russian influence in eastern Europe. It is about containing the West’s geostrategic rivals – or potential partners, were they not viewed exclusively through the prism of western “full-spectrum dominance” – as effectively as Israel has locked Palestinians into prisons and concentration camps in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

This strategy is about averting any danger that one day Russia, China, Iran and others could unite effectively to oust the US and its allies from their heavily fortified hilltop. Alliances like BRICS are seen as a potential vehicle for such an assault on western dominance.

Whatever the rhetoric, western capitals are not chiefly concerned about military or “civilisational” threats. They do not fear being invaded or conquered by their “enemies”. In fact, their reckless behaviours in places like Ukraine make a cataclysmic nuclear confrontation more likely.

What drives western foreign policy is the craving to maintain global economic primacy. And terrorising other states with the West’s superior military might is seen as the only way to ensure such primacy.

There is nothing new about the West’s fears, nor are they partisan. Differences within western establishments are never over whether the West should assert “full-spectrum dominance” around the globe through client states such as Israel and Ukraine. Instead, factional splits emerge over which elements within those client states the West should be allying with the closest.

‘Rogue’ policy

The question of alliances has been particularly fraught in the case of Israel, where the far-right and religious extremist factions in the government have a near-Messianic view of their place and role in the Middle East.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many of those closest to him have been trying for decades to manoeuvre the US into launching an attack on Iran, not least to remove Israel’s main rival in the Middle East and guarantee its nuclear-armed regional primacy in perpetuity.

So far, Netanyahu has found no takers in the White House. But that hasn’t stopped him trying. He is widely reported to be deep in efforts to push Trump into joining an attack on Iran, in the midst of talks between Washington and Tehran.

Over many years, British hawks look like they have been playing their own role in these manoeuvres. In the recent past, at least two ambitious British government ministers on the right have been caught trying to cosy up to the most belligerent elements in the Israeli security establishment.

In 2017, Priti Patel was forced to resign as international development secretary after she was found to have held 12 secret meetings with senior Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, while supposedly on a family holiday. She had other off-the-books meetingswith Israeli officials in New York and London.

Six years earlier, then-Defence Secretary Liam Fox also had to step down after a series of shadowy meetings with Israeli officials. Fox’s ministry was also known to have drawn updetailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran, including allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean.

Unnamed government officials told the Guardian at the time that Fox had been pursuing an “alternative” government policy. Former British diplomat Craig Murray was more direct: his sources within government suggested Fox had been conspiring with Israel in a “rogue” foreign policy towards Iran, against Britain’s stated aims.

Crime scene

The West’s behaviours are ideologically driven, not rational or moral. The compulsive, self-sabotaging nature of western support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is no different – though far grosser – than the self-sabotaging nature of its actions in Ukraine.

The West has lost the battle against Russia, but refuses to learn or adapt. And it has spent whatever moral legitimacy it still had left in propping up an Israeli military occupier bent on starving millions of people to death, if they cannot be ethnically cleansed into Egypt first.

Netanyahu has not been the easy-to-sell, cuddly military mascot that Zelensky proved to be in Ukraine.

Support for Kyiv could at least be presented as taking the right side in a clash of civilisations with a barbarous Russia. Support for Israel simply exposes the West’s hypocrisy, its worship of power for its own sake, and its psychopathic instincts.

Support for Israel’s genocide has hollowed out the West’s claim to moral superiority for all but its most deluded devotees. Sadly, those still include most of the western political and media establishments, whose only rationale is to evangelise for the belief system over which they preside, claiming it to be the worthiest in history.

Some, like Starmer, are trying to moderate their rhetoric in a desperate attempt to protect the morally bankrupt system that has invested them with power.

Others, like Badenoch, are still so enthralled by the cult of a superior West that they are blind to how preposterous their rantings sound to anyone no longer rapt in devotion. Rather than distance herself from Israel’s atrocities, she is happy to place herself – and the UK – at the crime scene.

The scales have fallen from western publics’ eyes. Now is the time to hold our leaders fully to account.

• First published at Middle East Eye.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

If there is one thing we can thank US President Donald Trump for, it is this: he has decisively stripped away the ridiculous notion, long cultivated by western media, that the United States is a benign global policeman enforcing a “rules-based order”.

Washington is better understood as the head of a gangster empire, embracing 800 military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been aggressively seeking “global full-spectrum domination”, as the Pentagon doctrine politely terms it.

You either pay fealty to the Don or you get dumped in the river. Last Friday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was presented with a pair of designer concrete boots at the White House.

The innovation was that it all happened in front of the western press corps, in the Oval Office, rather than in a back room, out of sight. It made for great television, Trump crowed.

Pundits have been quick to reassure us that the shouting match was some kind of weird Trumpian thing. As though being inhospitable to state leaders, and disrespectful to the countries they head, is unique to this administration.

Take just the example of Iraq. The administration of Bill Clinton thought it “worth it” – as his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously put it – to kill an estimated half a million Iraqi children by imposing draconian sanctions through the 1990s.

Under Clinton’s successor, George W Bush, the US then waged an illegal war in 2003, on entirely phoney grounds, that killed around half a million Iraqis, according to post-war estimates, and made four million homeless.

Those worrying about the White House publicly humiliating Zelensky might be better advised to save their concern for the hundreds of thousands of mostly Ukrainian and Russian men killed or wounded fighting an entirely unnecessary war – one, as we shall see, Washington carefully engineered through Nato over the preceding two decades.

Henchman Zelensky

All those casualties served the same goal as they did in Iraq: to remind the world who is boss.

Uniquely, western publics don’t understand this simple point because they live inside a disinformation bubble, created for them by the western establishment media.

Henry Kissinger, the long-time steward of US foreign policy, famously said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Zelensky just found that out the hard way. Gangster empires are just as fickle as the gangsters we know from Hollywood movies. Under the previous Joe Biden administration, Zelensky had been recruited as a henchman to do Washington’s bidding on Moscow’s doorstep.

The background – the one western media have kept largely out of view – is that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US tore up treaties crucial to reassuring Russia of Nato’s good intent.

Viewed from Moscow, and given Washington’s track record, Nato’s European security umbrella must have looked more like preparation for an ambush.

Keen though Trump now is to rewrite history and cast himself as peacemaker, he was central to the escalating tensions that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In 2019, he unilaterally withdrew from the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces. That opened the door to the US launching a potential first strike on Russia, using missiles stationed in nearby Nato members Romania and Poland.

He also sent Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, a move avoided by his predecessor, Barack Obama, for fear it would be seen as provocative.

Repeatedly, Nato vowed to bring Ukraine into its fold, despite Russia’s warnings that the step was viewed as an existential threat, that Moscow could not allow Washington to place missiles on its border, any more than the US accepted Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba back in the early 1960s.

Washington pressed ahead anyway, even assisting in a colour revolution-style coup in 2014 against the elected government in Kyiv, whose crime was being a little too sympathetic to Moscow.

With the country in crisis, Zelensky was himself elected by Ukrainians as a peace candidate, there to end a brutal civil war – sparked by that coup – between anti-Russian, “nationalistic” forces in the country’s west and ethnic Russian populations in the east. The Ukrainian president soon broke that promise.

Trump has accused Zelensky of being a “dictator”. But if he is, it is only because Washington wanted him that way, ignoring the wishes of the majority of Ukrainians.

Reddest of red lines

Zelensky’s job was to play a game of chicken with Moscow. The assumption was that the US would win whatever the outcome.

Either Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bluff would be called. Ukraine would be welcomed into Nato, becoming the most forward of the alliance’s forward bases against Russia, allowing nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to be stationed minutes from Moscow.

Or Putin would finally make good on his years of threats to invade his neighbour to stop Nato crossing the reddest of red lines he had set over Ukraine.

Washington could then cry “self-defence” on Ukraine’s behalf, and ludicrously fear-monger western publics about Putin eyeing Poland, Germany, France and Britain next.

Those were the pretexts for arming Kyiv to the hilt, rather than seeking a rapid peace deal. And so began a proxy war of attrition against Russia, using Ukrainian men as cannon fodder.

The aim was to wear Russia down militarily and economically, and bring about Putin’s overthrow.

Zelensky did precisely what was demanded of him. When he appeared to waver early on, and considered signing a peace deal with Moscow, Britain’s prime minister of the time, Boris Johnson, was dispatched with a message from Washington: keep fighting.

That is the same Boris Johnson who now breezily admits that the West is fighting a “proxy war” against Russia.

His comments have generated precisely no controversy. That is particularly strange, given that critics who pointed this very obvious fact out three years ago were instantly denounced for spreading “Putin disinformation” and Kremlin “talking points”.

For his obedience, Zelensky was feted a hero, the defender of Europe against Russian imperialism. His every “demand” – demands that originated in Washington – was met.

Ukraine has received at least $250bn worth of guns, tanks, fighter jets, training for his troops, western intelligence on Russia, and other forms of aid.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian men have paid with their lives – as have the families they leave behind.

Mafia etiquette

Now the old Don in Washington is gone. The new Don has decided Zelensky has been an expensive failure. Russia isn’t lethally wounded. It’s stronger than ever. Time for a new strategy.

Zelensky, still imagining he was Washington’s favourite henchman, arrived at the Oval Office only to be taught a harsh lesson in mafia etiquette.

Trump is spinning his stab in the back as a “peace agreement”. And in some sense, it is. Rightly, Trump has concluded that Russia has won – unless the West is ready to fight World War III and risk a potential nuclear war.

Trump has faced up to the reality of the situation, even if Zelensky and Europe are still struggling to.

But his plan for Ukraine is actually just a variation of his other peace plan – the one for Gaza. There he wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and, on the bodies of the enclave’s many thousands of dead children, build the “Riviera of the Middle East” – or “Trump Gaza” as it is being called in a surreal video he shared on social media.

Similarly, Trump now sees Ukraine not as a military battlefield but as an economic one where, through clever deal-making, he can leverage riches for himself and his billionaire pals.

He has put a gun to Zelensky and Europe’s head. Make a deal with Russia to end the war, or you are on your own against a far superior military power. See if the Europeans can help you without a supply of Washington’s weapons.

Not surprisingly, Zelensky, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron huddled together at the weekend to find a deal that would appease Trump. All Starmer has revealed so far is that the plan will “stop the fighting”.

That is a good thing. But the fighting could have been stopped, and should have been stopped, three years ago.

Money, not peace

It is deeply unwise to be lulled into tribalism by all this – the very tribalism western elites seek to cultivate among their publics to keep us treating international affairs no differently from a high-stakes football match.

No one here has behaved, or is behaving, honourably.

A ceasefire in Ukraine is not about peace. It’s about money, just as the earlier war was. As all wars are, ultimately.

An acceptable ceasefire for Trump, as well as for Putin, will involve a carve-up of Ukraine’s goodies. Rare earth minerals, land, agricultural production will be the real currency driving the agreement.

Zelensky now understands this. He knows that he, and the people of Ukraine, have been scammed. That is what tends to happen when you cosy up to the mafia.

If anyone doubts Washington’s insincerity over Ukraine, look to Palestine for clarity.

In his earlier presidency, Trump tried to bring about what he termed the peace “deal of the century” whose centrepiece was the annexation of much of the Occupied West Bank.

The hope was that the Gulf states would ultimately fund an incentivisation programme – the carrot to Israel’s stick – to encourage Palestinians to make a new life in a giant, purpose-built industrial zone in Sinai, next to Gaza.

That plan is still simmering away in the background. At the weekend, Israel received a green light from Washington to revive its genocidal starvation of Gaza’s population, after Israel refused to negotiate the second phase of the original ceasefire agreement.

The Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are now spinning their own bad faith as Hamas “rejectionism”.

They and the echo chamber that is the western media are blaming the Palestinian group for refusing to be gulled into an “extension” of what was never more than a phoney ceasefire – Israel’s fire never ceased. Israel wants all the hostages back, without having to leave Gaza, so that Hamas has no leverage to stop Israel reviving the full genocide.

The people of Gaza are still being fed into the Washington mafia’s meatgrinder, just as the Ukrainian people have been.

Trump wants them out of the way so he can develop a Mediterranean playground for the rich, paid for with Gulf oil money and the so-far untapped natural gas reserves just off Gaza’s coast.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump doesn’t pretend that Ukraine and Gaza are anything more than geostrategic real estate for Washington.

The big shakedown

Zelensky’s shakedown did not come out of the blue. Trump and his officials had been flagging it well in advance.

Two weeks ago, the industrial correspondent for Britain’s Daily Telegraph wrote an article headlined “Here’s why Trump wants to make Ukraine a US economic colony”.

Trump’s team believes that Ukraine may have rare-earth minerals under the ground worth some $15 trillion – a treasure trove that will be critical to the development of the next generation of technology.

In their view, controlling the exploration and extraction of those minerals will be as important as control over the Middle East’s oil reserves was more than a century ago.

And most important of all, the US wants China, its chief economic – if not military – rival excluded from the plunder. China currently has an effective monopoly on many of these critical minerals.

Or as the Telegraph puts it, Ukraine’s “minerals offer a tantalising promise: the ability for the US to break its dependence on Chinese supplies of critical minerals that go into everything from wind turbines to iPhones and stealth fighter jets”.

A draft of the plan seen by the Telegraph would, in its words, “amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity”.

Washington wants first refusal on all deposits within the country.

At their Oval Office confrontation, Trump reiterated this goal: “So we’re going to be using that [Ukraine’s rare earth minerals], taking it, using it for all of the things we do, including AI, and including weapons, and the military. And it’s really going to very much satisfy our needs.”

All of this means that Trump has a keen incentive to get the war finished as quickly as possible, and Russia’s territorial advance halted. The more territory Moscow seizes, the less territory is left for the US to plunder.

Self-sabotage

The battle against China over rare-earth minerals isn’t a Trump innovation either – and adds an additional layer of context for why Washington and Nato have been so keen over the past two decades to prise Ukraine away from Russia.

Last summer, a Congressional select committee on competition with China announced the formation of a working group to counter Beijing’s “dominance of critical minerals”.

The chairman of the committee, John Moolenaar, noted that the current US dependence on China for these minerals “would quickly become an existential vulnerability in the event of a conflict”.

Another committee member, Rob Wittman, observed: “Dominance over global supply chains for critical mineral and rare earth elements is the next stage of great power competition.”

What Trump appears to appreciate is that Nato’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has, by default, driven Moscow deeper into Beijing’s embrace. It has been self-sabotage on a grand scale.

Together, China and Russia are a formidable opponent, and one at the centre of the ever-growing Brics group – comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They have been seeking to expand their alliance by adding emerging powers to become a counterweight to Washington and Nato’s bullying global agenda.

But a deal with Putin over Ukraine would provide an opportunity for Washington to build a new security architecture in Europe – one more useful to the US – that places Russia inside the tent rather than outside it.

That would leave China isolated – a long-time Pentagon goal.

And it would also leave Europe less central to the projection of US power, which is why European leaders – led by Keir Starmer – have been looking and sounding so unnerved over the past few weeks.

The danger is that Trump’s “peacemaking” in Ukraine simply becomes a prelude to the fomenting of a war against China, using Taiwan as the pretext in the same way Ukraine was used against Russia.

As Moolenaar implied, US control over critical minerals – in Ukraine and elsewhere – would ensure the US was no longer vulnerable in the event of a war with China to losing access to the minerals it would need to continue the war. It would free Washington’s hand.

Trump may be behaving in a vulgar manner. But the gangster empire he now heads is conducting the same global shakedown as ever.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April [2022], British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end”. Naftali Bennett said in 2023 that both sides had wanted a ceasefire, the odds of the deal holding had been 50-50, and that the Western powers backing Ukraine had stopped the deal.^[79]

Mr. Johnson had received U.S. President Joe Biden’s authorization to do that — to go to  Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky to inform him that The West (the U.S. empire, including NATO) would cease supporting Ukraine’s Government if Ukraine would sign the till-then-agreed-upon but not-yet-signed peace treaty with Russia, which entailed Russia’s ceasing its invasion in return for Ukraine’s returning to its neutral status which had prevailed prior to the US. Government’s take-over of Ukraine on 20 February 2014, and Ukraine’s ceasing its efforts to restore to Ukraine the 22% of the former Ukraine’s territory that Russia then was occupying. Biden insisted upon the Ukrainian Government’s pursuing an all-or-nothing strategy to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine — or else Ukraine would lose Western support in its war against Russia. (The reason for this policy from Biden is that though such a peace treaty would have been far better for Ukraine, since the million-or-so deaths, that continuing the war entails, would have been prevented, such a treaty would have totally ended America’s ownership of Ukraine, which was won by the Obama-Biden Administration’s stunningly successful coup in February 2014, which grabbed control of Ukraine away from the people of Ukraine. The U.S. Government wants to continue controlling Ukraine’s Government.)

Publicly, the U.S. Government continues to insist upon a total defeat of Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine. However, it also states that, “as we have been consistently saying, it’s going to be up to President Zelenskyy, if and when he wants to negotiate an end to this war. Certainly, a negotiated end is the most likely outcome here. But when that happens, and under what conditions and circumstances, that’s going to be up to President Zelenskyy.” In other words: if Ukraine’s Government will lose the war against Russia, and Russia will win the war against Ukraine, then (according to the Biden Administration) only Ukraine’s Government will have lost it; the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance won’t also have lost it. This is the message from the White House, two-and-a-half years after it had ordered Ukraine’s Government to continue this war until Russia will have been defeated.

All U.S. regime media are trying to either blame Ukraine’s Government, or else blame the Government (i.e., the U.S. Government) that has, in fact, been controlling Ukraine’s Government, for Ukraine’s losing this war. Domestically within the United States, the Biden Administration and its Vice President Kamala Harris would rather that Ukraine’s defeat be held off till after the November 5 elections, so that their Party will win on November 5. But, if the defeat comes after she has won the election, then there will be total pressure upon Zelensky to quit before she becomes inaugurated on January 20th, so that this loss won’t be blamed upon her — won’t occur during her Presidency.

On September 30, The Atlantic magazine, which is owned by the Democratic Party billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, the intensely neoconservative widow and heir of Steve Jobs, headlined “The Abandonment of Ukraine: The American strategy in Ukraine is slowly bleeding the nation, and its people, to death.” It argued against “the most unsettling thing we saw [in Ukraine] was the American strategy in Ukraine, one that gives the Ukrainian people just enough military aid not to lose their war but not enough to win it. This strategy is slowly bleeding Ukraine, and its people, to death.” And it closed:

The war in Ukraine is at risk of being lost — not because the Russians are winning but because Ukraine’s allies have not allowed them to win. If we encourage the Ukrainians to fight while failing to give them the tools they need for victory, history will surely conclude that the Russians weren’t the only ones who committed crimes against Ukraine.

How can this be “not because the Russians are winning”? How not only definitionally false, but outright stupid, is that statement? 925,872 people in the deceived U.S. empire are paying subscription fees for such neocon propaganda, basically pushing for WW3. What Ms. Jobs’s agents are arguing for there is to escalate this war to being a direct war between the U.S. Government (and all of its ‘allies’ or colonies) versus Russia’s Government and Russia’s people. How many Americans really even want that — WW3 — in order to continue the U.S. Government’s control over what still remains of Ukrainian territory? Is Ukraine necessary for protecting U.S. national security? Of course not. But if you are a rabidly neocon Democrat, then you want the Biden-Harris Administration to go at least to the brink of WW3, if necessary, in order to prevent the loss of Ukraine.

What the Democratic Party half of America’s Deep State — and Ms. Jobs is part of that — are doing is to try to force the Democratic Party officials to go all the way up to WW3 if that’s what it takes in order to ‘win’ against Russia in Ukraine. This is what’s called a “proxy war.” It has, all along, been part of the U.S. regime’s long war to conquer Russia. Russian citizens have been well informed about this, but the subjects in the U.S. empire have not.

On 2 October 2024, EurAsia Daily headlined the video of a former adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Alexei Arestovich, who had advised President Zelensky at the Istanbul peace negotiations in 2022, “The Ukrainian front is collapsing, the loss of Coal is only the beginning of a catastrophe — Arestovich,” and presented him saying, “The training system has failed, there is no basic motivation in the troops, but there is an understanding that the stated goal of the war — reaching the borders of 1991 — is unrealistic in these specific circumstances. In addition, there is no motivation due to domestic politics, where every day those in power put forward new proposals on restrictions on citizens – from cultural and language bans to economic ones, new corruption scandals open almost every day and the mess in the management of the army and the state intensifies.”

A “DavidZ” posted also on October 2nd lengthier quotations from Arestovich’s video:

“In two to three months, well, three to four, the front, which is currently crumbling in two directions, and slowly retreating in three, will begin to crumble in six or seven. This flow will become uncontrollable. This means a collapse of the front,” he said.

He stated that in this case, the Russian army will shift the war to maneuver warfare, leading to “the collapse of the front as such.”

“When all these 700,000 with automatic weapons and artillery cannot hold the front line, the enemy will start to rapidly advance inward, cutting off Kharkov and reaching Poltava, Dnepr, and Zaporozhye. This will lead to the loss of key industrial centers of Ukraine,” the former presidential office advisor noted.

Arestovych identified the main reason for what is happening as the lack of a reserve of motivated infantry.

“No drones can help reach the borders of any year if infantry soldiers do not walk this path under enemy fire… The training system has failed, there is a lack of basic motivation in the troops, but there is an understanding that the declared goal of the war – reaching the borders of 1991 – is unrealistic under these specific circumstances,” he explained.

“Moreover, motivation is lacking due to internal politics, where every day new proposals are put forward by the powerful to limit citizens’ rights: from cultural and language bans to economic restrictions. Almost every day, new corruption scandals emerge, and the chaos in the management of the army and the state intensifies,” added the former presidential office advisor.

Arestovych believes that “now the only way out is to sober up, stop the war, and begin a complete reorganization of the state system.”

On 26 October 2024, the widely respected military-affairs blogger “Simplicius,” headlined  “SITREP 10/5/24: Post-Ugledar Landscape Unfurls into Dark Ukrainian Future,” and reported, from numerous reliable sources on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, the end closing-in on the existing Government of Ukraine. One in Ukraine headlined on October 2nd, (translated) “’We Simply Had No One and Nothing Left to Fight with’ — A Rpresentative of the 72nd Brigade Battalion Headquarters on Leaving Vuhledar.” It reported:

After two years of defense of Vuhledar, the Ukrainian military withdrew from the city. Today, the Khortytsia operational and strategic grouping of troops officially announced this: ‘Having suffered numerous losses as a result of prolonged fighting, the enemy did not give up trying to capture Vuhledar. In an attempt to take control of the town at any cost, they managed to send reserves to conduct flanking attacks that exhausted the defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a result of the enemy’s actions, the city was threatened with encirclement. The Higher Command gave permission for a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to save personnel and military equipment, and to take up a position for further actions.’

That was a long and strategically crucial battle.

Also on October 6, Russia’s RT News headlined “Russian ambassador to US returns home: Anatoly Antonov has left Washington, during a period of fractured ties between the two countries,” and reported that, “‘The Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has ended his service in Washington and is on his way to Moscow,’ the Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement carried by Russian news agencies. The ministry did not provide any additional details and has so far not named his successor.” This is normally the sort of thing that happens shortly before a war breaks out between two countries, in order to protect their diplomats from dangers where they are, such as becoming hit by their own country’s weapons.

Both of the two U.S. Presidential nominees have been saying nothing about whether, as the President, they would go all the way to WW3 in order to prevent Russia from winning in Ukraine. And none of the ‘news’ media have asked about that. The only possible exception is that on September 17, Donald Trump co-authored with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at The Hill, “Negotiate with Moscow to end the Ukraine war and prevent nuclear devastation,” which contradicts not only what Kamala Harris has said, but some of the things that Trump has said. It is entirely consistent, however, with what RFK Jr. has been saying. On the other hand, even Mr. Kennedy has not addressed specifically the question of whether, as the President, he would go all the way to WW3 in order to prevent Russia from winning in Ukraine. So: there has been no public discussion of such a question. Perhaps the American pubic don’t even care about it. Would most people be interested in a candidate’s position on it? If not, then is this a democracy? And if so, then is this a democracy? In fact, wouldn’t a democracy be focused upon this issue above any other? Americans aren’t focusing upon it at all. Nor are the publics in any of the U.S. Government’s colonies.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them.

Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw bricks.

Gangs have swept through residential areas where Jews are known to live, smashing windows and trying to break down doors. The rioters attacked and torched a hotel identified as housing Jewish asylum seekers, an act that could have burned alive the occupants.

For days, the media and politicians have chiefly referred to these events as far-right “thuggery” and spoken of the need to restore law and order.

In the midst of all this, a young Jewish MP is invited onto a major morning TV show to talk about the unfolding events. When she argues that these attacks need to be clearly identified as racist and antisemitic, one of the show’s presenters barracks and ridicules her.

Close by, two white men, a former cabinet minister and an executive at one of the UK’s largest newspapers, are seen openly laughing at her.

Oh, and if this isn’t all getting too fanciful, the TV presenter who mocks the young MP is the husband of the home secretary responsible for policing these events.

Look at how @edballs & @kategarraway treat @zarahsultana.

So hostile.

pic.twitter.com/BqwnM62owS

— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) August 5, 2024

The scenario is so hideously outrageous no one can conceive of it. But it is exactly what took place last week – except that the mob wasn’t targeting Jews, but Muslims; the young MP was not Jewish but Zarah Sultana, the country’s most high-profile Muslim MP; and her demand was not that the violence be identified as antisemitic but as Islamophobic.

It all sounds a lot more plausible now, I’m guessing. Welcome to a Britain that wears its Islamophobia proudly, and not just on the streets of Bolton, Bristol or Birmingham, but in a London TV studio.

‘Pro-British protests’

Islamophobia is so bipartisan in today’s Britain that BBC reporters on at least two occasions referred to the mobs chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans as “pro-British protesters“.

BBC reporter has just described rioters as "a pro-British march" pic.twitter.com/IR8695kGWF

— Ted Booth (@tedgbooth) August 4, 2024

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them.

Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw bricks.

Gangs have swept through residential areas where Jews are known to live, smashing windows and trying to break down doors. The rioters attacked and torched a hotel identified as housing Jewish asylum seekers, an act that could have burned alive the occupants.

For days, the media and politicians have chiefly referred to these events as far-right “thuggery” and spoken of the need to restore law and order.

In the midst of all this, a young Jewish MP is invited onto a major morning TV show to talk about the unfolding events. When she argues that these attacks need to be clearly identified as racist and antisemitic, one of the show’s presenters barracks and ridicules her.

Close by, two white men, a former cabinet minister and an executive at one of the UK’s largest newspapers, are seen openly laughing at her.

Oh, and if this isn’t all getting too fanciful, the TV presenter who mocks the young MP is the husband of the home secretary responsible for policing these events.

Look at how @edballs & @kategarraway treat @zarahsultana.

So hostile.

pic.twitter.com/BqwnM62owS

— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) August 5, 2024

The scenario is so hideously outrageous no one can conceive of it. But it is exactly what took place last week – except that the mob wasn’t targeting Jews, but Muslims; the young MP was not Jewish but Zarah Sultana, the country’s most high-profile Muslim MP; and her demand was not that the violence be identified as antisemitic but as Islamophobic.

It all sounds a lot more plausible now, I’m guessing. Welcome to a Britain that wears its Islamophobia proudly, and not just on the streets of Bolton, Bristol or Birmingham, but in a London TV studio.

‘Pro-British protests’

Islamophobia is so bipartisan in today’s Britain that BBC reporters on at least two occasions referred to the mobs chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans as “pro-British protesters“.

BBC reporter has just described rioters as "a pro-British march" pic.twitter.com/IR8695kGWF

— Ted Booth (@tedgbooth) August 4, 2024

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Ghastly terminology used in Australian elections rhetorically repurposed for the British voter: “Turning the Back Boats”, the “Rwanda Solution”.  Grisly figures such as Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, showing an atavistic indifference to human rights.  The cruelty and the cockups, the failures and the foul-ups.  Mock the judges, mock the courts.  Soil human dignity.

All this, to culminate in the end of the Rwanda Solution, declared by the new Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as “dead and buried before it even started”.  Yet it was a sadistic policy of beastly proportion, offering no prospect of genuine discouragement or deterrence to new arrivals, stillborn in execution and engineered to indulge a nasty streak in the electorate.

In April 2022, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced the Asylum Partnership Arrangement with Rwanda, ostensibly designed “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership”.

Mysteriously, British officials suddenly found Rwanda an appropriate destination for processing asylum claims and resettling refugees, despite Kigali doing its bit to swell the ranks of potential refugees.  In June 2023, the UK Court of Appeal noted the risks presented to asylum seekers, notably from ill-treatment and torture, arguing that the British government would be in breach of the European Convention on Human rights in sending them into Kigali’s clutches.  In November that year, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion.

These legal rulings did not deter the government of Rishi Sunak.  With lexical sophistry bordering on the criminal, the Safety of Rwanda bill was drafted to repudiate what the UK courts had found by denying officials and the judiciary any reference to the European Convention of Human Rights and the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 when considering asylum claims.

The bookkeeping aspect of the endeavour was also astonishing.  It envisaged the payment of some half a billion pounds to Kigali in exchange for asylum seekers.  The breakdown of costs, not to mention the very plan itself, beggared belief.  The Home Office would initially pay £370 million under the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, followed by a further £20,000 for every relocated individual.  Once the risibly magic number of 300 people had been reached, a further £120 million would follow.

Operational costs for each individual kept in Rwanda would amount to £150,874 over the course of five years, ceasing in the event a person wished to leave Rwanda, in which case the Home Office would pay £10,000 to assist in the move.

With biting irony, the UK government had demonstrated to Rwanda that it could replace the supposedly vile market of people smuggling in Europe with a lucrative market effectively monetising asylum seekers and refugees in exchange of pledges of development.

By February 2024, according to the National Audit Office, the UK had paid £220 million to Rwanda, with a promise of another £50 million each year over three years.  It was a superb return for Kigali, given that no asylum seekers from the UK had set foot in the country.  When asked at the time why he was hungrily gobbling up the finance, Paul Kagame feigned serenity.  “It’s only going to be used if those people will come.  If they don’t come, we can return the money.”

With an airy contemptuousness, the Kagame government has refused to return any of the monies received in anticipation of the policy’s full execution.  Doris Uwicyeza Picard, the central figure coordinating the migration partnership with the UK, was blunt: “We are under no obligation to provide any refund.  We will remain in constant discussions.  However, it is understood that there is no obligation on either side to request or receive a refund.”

In another statement, this time from deputy spokesman for the Rwandan government, Alain Mukuralinda, the sentiment bordered on the philosophical: “The British decided to request cooperation for a long time, resulting in an agreement between the two countries that became a treaty.  Now, if you come and ask for cooperation and then withdraw, that’s your decision.”

In an official note from Kigali, the government haughtily declared that the partnership had been initiated by the UK to address irregular migration, “a problem of the UK, not Rwanda.”  Rwanda, for its part, had “fully upheld its side of the agreement, including with regard to finances”.  Redundantly, and incredulously, the note goes on to claim that Kigali remained “committed to finding solutions to the global migration crisis, including providing safety, dignity and opportunity to refugees and migrants who come to our country.”

The less than subtle message in all of this: Rwanda is ready to keep cashing in on Europe’s unwanted asylum seekers, whatever its own record and however successful the agreement is. Kagame has no doubt not lost interest in Denmark, that other affluent country keen on outsourcing its humanitarian obligations.  While Copenhagen abandoned its partnership with Rwanda in January 2023 regarding a similar arrangement to that reached with the UK, it is now showing renewed interest, notably after hosting a high-level conference on immigration.

In opening the conference on May 6, the Social Democratic Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, speaking in language that could just as easily have been associated with any far right nationalist front, decried the “de facto” collapse of the “current immigration and asylum system”.  Those in the Rwandan treasury will be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Boris Johnson

Not that Johnson was exactly thrilled with the decision. The findings of the House of Commons Privileges Committee in what is known as the Partygate Report were damning. Released on June 15, 2023, the 30,000-word document details the numerous instances the then Prime Minister systematically undermined the very same pandemic regulations that his own government had implemented, only to then consistently mislead and deceive, most notably the Commons itself. In “deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government.”

The nature of that misleading conduct centred on Johnson’s refusal to double-check advice given to him by, for instance, Jack Doyle, his former press secretary, over a number of gatherings on whether they were compliant with COVID-19 rules and guidance. Johnson’s Principal Private Secretary, Martin Reynolds, had also pressed Johnson on the issue as to whether the guidance “had been followed at all times”, notably on the December 18, 2020 gathering. He wondered “whether it was realistic to argue that all Guidance had been followed at all times, given the nature of the working environment in No. 10. He agreed to delete the reference to Guidance.”

The report had to be rewritten at short notice to take into account Johnson’s abrupt resignation. Had he remained, the Committee members would have recommended a 90-day suspension for, among other things, the former PM’s deliberate misleading of the House, members of the Committee, and being “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of” its members. Instead, it concluded that Johnson should be deprived of his Member’s pass.

The Committee took umbrage at Johnson’s attack upon its members, which he condemned as undemocratic, a kangaroo court, and executioners of a witch hunt. “We consider,” states the report, “that these statements are completely unacceptable. In our view this conduct, together with the egregious breach of confidentiality, is a serious further contempt”.

His overall contemptuous attitude to the inquiry was also conveyed by his effort “to re-write the meaning of the [pandemic] rules and guidance to fit his own evidence”. One example was the “assertion that ‘imperfect’ social distancing was perfectly acceptable when there were no mitigations in place rather than cancelling a gathering or holding it online, and his assertion that a leaving gathering or a gathering to boost morale was a lawful reason to hold a gathering.”

Johnson’s base of supporters is a shrinking one; but from pandemonium land some continue to express their support. Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, wished to no longer occupy his position in the Commons. Then came former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, who initially claimed she was going to “immediately” step down, only to then do a bit of fence sitting. Bruised in not getting her promised peerage from Johnson, she is seeking answers from the House of Lords appointment committee. She has also warned that any Tory MP who would side with the findings of the report “will be held to account by members of the public. Deselections may follow. It’s serious.”

Brendan Clarke-Smith, MP for Bassetlaw, was similarly “appalled” by the “spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions of the report.” He promised to “be speaking against them both publicly and in the House”. The comically anachronistic Tory Man of the Nineteenth Century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, found himself in agreement, observing that Parliament, when standing “upon its dignity […] often ends up looking foolish. The Privileges Committee report is a case in point.”

Many of the supporters can be said to be part of the scandalous “Honours List” that Johnson drew up on grounds of gratitude, a veritable Who’s Who of fans and flunkeys that was, for the most part, approved by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. One was the 29-year-old Charlotte Tranter Owen, who has become the youngest life peer in British history. Her less than distinguished journey from York University graduate to a life peer took a mere six unremarkable years.

While some Tories have been desperate to jettison the Johnson link, many were complicit in stacking the compendium of deception. As Peter Oborne explains, the Tory party saw Johnson as an election winner. For three years, they were “thus prepared to put up with his false claims. Ministers and MPs appeared happy to repeat claims on radio and television, in print, and inside the Commons chamber.”

Sunak is, therefore, in more than a spot of bother, not least because Johnson will be holding fort as a newly appointed columnist at the Daily Mail. His plight is made worse given his struggling efforts to keep the party together before potential electoral oblivion. Johnson, with his poison pen tirades, is unlikely to help.

A final note on the whole Boris Bonanza is also worth reiterating. For Oborne, “Johnson will be remembered by history as the most immoral, dishonest and morally squalid of all British premiers.” This is going a bit far; it was a certain Tony Blair who, playing the role of sidekick to US President George W. Bush, embarked upon an illegal war that led to the destruction of Iraq and a good portion of the Middle East. His conduct, both directly or otherwise, in the confection, and intentional misreading of intelligence material elevating Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the level of globally dangerous despot, must surely be seen as squalid as any. Along the way, he corrupted public life and politicised institutions. And yet he moves and speaks, to this day, with impunity – the one who got away.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Boris Johnson

Not that Johnson was exactly thrilled with the decision. The findings of the House of Commons Privileges Committee in what is known as the Partygate Report were damning. Released on June 15, 2023, the 30,000-word document details the numerous instances the then Prime Minister systematically undermined the very same pandemic regulations that his own government had implemented, only to then consistently mislead and deceive, most notably the Commons itself. In “deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government.”

The nature of that misleading conduct centred on Johnson’s refusal to double-check advice given to him by, for instance, Jack Doyle, his former press secretary, over a number of gatherings on whether they were compliant with COVID-19 rules and guidance. Johnson’s Principal Private Secretary, Martin Reynolds, had also pressed Johnson on the issue as to whether the guidance “had been followed at all times”, notably on the December 18, 2020 gathering. He wondered “whether it was realistic to argue that all Guidance had been followed at all times, given the nature of the working environment in No. 10. He agreed to delete the reference to Guidance.”

The report had to be rewritten at short notice to take into account Johnson’s abrupt resignation. Had he remained, the Committee members would have recommended a 90-day suspension for, among other things, the former PM’s deliberate misleading of the House, members of the Committee, and being “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of” its members. Instead, it concluded that Johnson should be deprived of his Member’s pass.

The Committee took umbrage at Johnson’s attack upon its members, which he condemned as undemocratic, a kangaroo court, and executioners of a witch hunt. “We consider,” states the report, “that these statements are completely unacceptable. In our view this conduct, together with the egregious breach of confidentiality, is a serious further contempt”.

His overall contemptuous attitude to the inquiry was also conveyed by his effort “to re-write the meaning of the [pandemic] rules and guidance to fit his own evidence”. One example was the “assertion that ‘imperfect’ social distancing was perfectly acceptable when there were no mitigations in place rather than cancelling a gathering or holding it online, and his assertion that a leaving gathering or a gathering to boost morale was a lawful reason to hold a gathering.”

Johnson’s base of supporters is a shrinking one; but from pandemonium land some continue to express their support. Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, wished to no longer occupy his position in the Commons. Then came former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, who initially claimed she was going to “immediately” step down, only to then do a bit of fence sitting. Bruised in not getting her promised peerage from Johnson, she is seeking answers from the House of Lords appointment committee. She has also warned that any Tory MP who would side with the findings of the report “will be held to account by members of the public. Deselections may follow. It’s serious.”

Brendan Clarke-Smith, MP for Bassetlaw, was similarly “appalled” by the “spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions of the report.” He promised to “be speaking against them both publicly and in the House”. The comically anachronistic Tory Man of the Nineteenth Century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, found himself in agreement, observing that Parliament, when standing “upon its dignity […] often ends up looking foolish. The Privileges Committee report is a case in point.”

Many of the supporters can be said to be part of the scandalous “Honours List” that Johnson drew up on grounds of gratitude, a veritable Who’s Who of fans and flunkeys that was, for the most part, approved by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. One was the 29-year-old Charlotte Tranter Owen, who has become the youngest life peer in British history. Her less than distinguished journey from York University graduate to a life peer took a mere six unremarkable years.

While some Tories have been desperate to jettison the Johnson link, many were complicit in stacking the compendium of deception. As Peter Oborne explains, the Tory party saw Johnson as an election winner. For three years, they were “thus prepared to put up with his false claims. Ministers and MPs appeared happy to repeat claims on radio and television, in print, and inside the Commons chamber.”

Sunak is, therefore, in more than a spot of bother, not least because Johnson will be holding fort as a newly appointed columnist at the Daily Mail. His plight is made worse given his struggling efforts to keep the party together before potential electoral oblivion. Johnson, with his poison pen tirades, is unlikely to help.

A final note on the whole Boris Bonanza is also worth reiterating. For Oborne, “Johnson will be remembered by history as the most immoral, dishonest and morally squalid of all British premiers.” This is going a bit far; it was a certain Tony Blair who, playing the role of sidekick to US President George W. Bush, embarked upon an illegal war that led to the destruction of Iraq and a good portion of the Middle East. His conduct, both directly or otherwise, in the confection, and intentional misreading of intelligence material elevating Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the level of globally dangerous despot, must surely be seen as squalid as any. Along the way, he corrupted public life and politicised institutions. And yet he moves and speaks, to this day, with impunity – the one who got away.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Composite: PA/Getty images

Could well be.

It would be a little-veiled game.

And as usual, no coincidence; not that Boris resigned, not that Liz Truss entered, nor that she resigned after only a short period. And it will not be coincidence if Boris is reelected and stays as British PM up to, or close to, 5 years.

The opposition – Labor – would like to call for new General Elections, but they will be overruled by the Tories’ almost two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Boris Johnson was ideal for the tandem Washington-London on a rampage intent on demolishing Europe via the Russian war with Ukraine. Johnson was the brain, Biden and his hintermen the executioners. And as they were working on dismembering Europe, they also were, with NATO aid, simultaneously attempting to crush Russia.

The illusion of arrogance has no limits.

Britain’s exit from the EU was no coincidence either. It was part of the plan – the plan to act relatively undisturbed outside the EU on the very EU’s destruction. They have Germans, who do the same from inside – Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, (unelected, but appointed) President of the European Commission, former German Defense Minister; and Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany. Among his many high-ranking former political positions, he was Vice Chancellor under Angela Merkel, Minister of Finance and Mayor of Hamburg.

They are both involved from within, destroying Europe economically and socially.

Boris Johnson first lost popularity with the long-drawn-out EU-exit; then with his floppy handling of the “covid crisis” – and a number of intended or not, other crises: An enormous budget deficit, a national debt of about 95% of GDP in 2022, the highest since 1960. An infamously decaying infrastructure throughout the country – as well as other plunders, including a sex-scandal of a senior lawmaker in Johnson’s Government.

When some 50 parliamentarians resigned within 48 hours in protest of the sex-scandal, Johnson resigned in July 2022, in what was considered a non-confidence manifestation.

British General Elections would have been due in January 2025, in a bit over two years. With Boris’ popularity in free fall, even within his own party, the Tories would have had next to no chance to win the elections. The Conservatives have currently about a 3 to 2 majority over Labor.

The British exit from the EU looks increasingly like the precursor to the plan currently being executed. Destroy Europe and “contain” Russia for the benefit of the big One World Order (OWO).

Remember – nothing is coincidence. It fits all into the Great Reset and – interalia – into the UN Agenda 2030. The European Union, a block of 27 countries and half a billion population, would be too unwieldy to control, and does not fit into the OWO’s Command Center.

So, in response to the British crises earlier this year, better get Boris out and replace him temporarily with a “caretaker”. Ms. Liz Truss was a perfect fit for the scheme. She knew exactly what her role was, and she played it as good as she could.

Ms. Truss knew what to do as an immediate measure to earn immediate countrywide criticism, namely reducing taxes for the rich.

The British economy is in a sharp down-turn, losing in August 2022 unexpectedly 0.3% in output, driven by a sharp decline in manufacturing and a small contraction in services, according to the Office for National Statistics recent assessment.

Ms. Truss also knew that under such somber circumstances, certain measures like tax cuts for the rich, are a no-go. She did it anyway – to draw the ire of the public and of her own Parliament, even her Tory colleagues.

Her then newly appointed finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, reversed the decision on the tax cuts for the rich and said that the government will prioritize help for the most vulnerable, referring also to the high inflation of 10.1% in September and projected to rise further until the end of the year. A British recession is in the making.

With all that self-made circus, the time had come for Liz Truss to go. Most media and political analysts predicting on Wednesday 19 October, that her ouster or resignation was not even a “question of days, but of hours”.

Yesterday, 20 October, Liz Truss resigned, “as planned”, leaving the field open for the new – old PM, Boris Johnson. After the Liz Truss disaster, he has gained new popularity. A socio-psychological trick. A majority of Tories want him back. And since the Tories will be Kingmakers – again – Johnson’s re-election is almost assured.

See this.

That means the Washington-London-NATO Trio will be intact again, and able to continue their war game – with economic catastrophes for Europe, and by and large the global north. The key players US, EU and Germany are well aware and play the self-destructive game, as long as they can – or as long as they are allowed to do so by their still slumbering populace.

The visible people on top are following orders, coming silently down through the WEF – instrument of the gigantic Financial-IT Complex (FITC), running the world. Up to end 2019, they did it more or less clandestinely. Since 2020, the beginning of the dictatorial worldwide implementation of the insane covid fear – paralleled by the deadly vaxx-tyranny – this Cult of the Riches has become increasingly visible, hiding behind just a thin “veil of shame”.

If re-elected as PM, Boris and his party’s two-third’s majority would have a good chance to last through another 5 years. Enough time to drive the Elite’s Agenda forward. The proxy-war with Russia could be dragged on for several years – always with an “immediate threat” of turning nuclear. Initiated by Russia, of course.

The UN Agenda 2030 is in full implementation. All behind the curtain of war. Bothing is coincidence. The dots connect. One just has to see them.

The media love to play right along with the propaganda song, keeping people around the (western) globe on their toes, diverted with fear from whatever else is going on behind the scene – in an attempt of completing the Great Cult Reset, including with the WEF’s planned 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), and the consequential transhumanization.

To 4IR and transhumanization is intimately linked to the rapidly expanding construction of 5G-antennas throughout the western world. Both 4IR and transhumanization depend on a 5G seamless and flawless coverage. The antenna proliferation is hardly visible and even less talked about. Construction often happens at night.

The duo, Biden/Johnson, representing the old but faltering British Empire, supported by an ever-expanding NATO, are hoping to prevail and revive the Empire’s Dream back to reality.

It won’t happen. The Boris tactic of resigning to be re-elected is a clever ploy. But far from enough to face the dawning new world in the East – an era of collaboration and Peace – an era of cooperation and development. Development, as in seeking social balance and equity.

The future is in the East, where the sun rises. The East encompasses already about half the world’s population and a number of existing and emerging associations, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS-plus, ASEAN, Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and many more.

The British-American Empire is on its last leg. Never mind the last-ditch Biden/Johnson efforts with NATO backing. Their economy is fake and broke. The economy of the emerging East is solid and real.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Peter Koenig.

When are you going to govern?  The only thing you have governed for the past year is your own survival.

— Jess Phillips, Labour MP, October 20, 2022

British politics has revealed hidden depths, each one being sought as each prime minister succumbs.  The announcement by Liz Truss that she would be resigning came after a mere 45 days in office.  In terms of duration, this would make her the shortest serving PM since the Tory George Canning, who died of tuberculosis in August 1827 after holding office for 119 days.

The sequence of events from the moment Truss entered Downing Street on September 6th is bound to induce vertigo.  She promised a package of eyebrow raising energy-price guarantees and tax cuts on September 23rd.  She fantasised about growing Britain and demonised a fictional cabal of anti-growth opponents lurking on the opposition benches and on the streets.  Central to such policies, as Tim Bale of Queen Mary University describes it, is “the myth that we can have Scandinavian levels of welfare on American levels of taxation.”

The calamitous mini-Budget delivered seven days later spooked the markets and encouraged a fall in the pound.  The promise to abolish the tax bracket of 45p was scrapped.  Then came the sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, supposedly Truss’s close ally.  In a manner befitting the friendship, Kwarteng was blamed for announcing Truss’s policies.  Jeremy Hunt, his replacement drawn from political oblivion, took the hammer to the fragile edifice of supply-side Trussonomics and promised to further puncture it.  Britannia was being rechained.

In the maelstrom, jokes began to proliferate and thicken as each disastrous decision was made, and then unmade.  With such a sequence of inglorious crashes, the Economist suggested that Truss’s time would be comparable to the “shelf-life of a lettuce.”

The Daily Star set up a webcam in tribute to the observation, featuring a wilting iceberg lettuce from Tesco, valued at 60p.  The paper poses the following question on the site: “Will Liz Truss be Prime Minister within the 10-day shelf-life of a lettuce?”  At lunchtime on October 20, when Truss made her resignation statement, the lettuce received a plastic gold crown.  The caption was one of triumph: “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss”.  Then came the national anthem, accompanied by champagne.

The resignation speech retained that air of unreality on steroids that characterised Truss’s brief sojourn in Downing Street.  There was the old mantra, the “vision for a low tax, high growth economy – that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit.”  She underlined her achievements in controlling energy bills and cutting national insurance.  Apart from giving Russia’s Vladimir Putin a mention for threatening “the security of our whole continent”, that was more or less that.

The Economist, now confirmed in its predictions, gloomily coined the term “Britaly”, a land “of political instability, low growth and subordination to the bond markets.”  With acid irony, it noted that Truss and Kwarteng, as contributors to a pamphlet “Britannia Unchained”, had warned that Britain should not go the way of Italy and other southern European countries, encumbered by bloated public services, tardy growth and poor productivity.  Their “botched attempt to forge a different path” had done just that.

The UK’s indignant Italian ambassador Inigo Lambertini added some flavour to the comparison by rejecting the paper’s use of a cover “inspired by the oldest of stereotypes”.  Why go for spaghetti and pizza when you might consider an example from “our aerospace, biotech, automotive or pharmaceutical sectors?”  Any other choice “would cast a more accurate spotlight on Italy, also taking into account your not so secret admiration for our economic model.”

Since 2016, British politics has claimed the scalps of four leaders, reminding pundits of Australia’s own revolving door of prime ministers (that country boasted five between 2010 and 2018).  David Cameron, injudiciously and arrogantly, called a referendum on leaving the European Union.  Designed to stifle anti-EU voices within his own Conservative Party while enabling him to stay in power, it did quite the opposite.  There were no plans in the event of Britain leaving the Union, let alone any strategy.

Brexit became a millstone of defining proportions, hampering Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, who found maintaining party discipline amongst the Tories impossible.  Europhobic and Little England sentiments were in the ascendant.  Enter Boris Johnson, whose populist, baffling antics had their desired effect: a comprehensive victory in 2019 with the slogan “get Brexit done.”  Global Britain, nostalgic and starry-eyed, had arrived.

Johnson’s time in office impoverished British politics and denigrated the Sceptred Isle’s famed sense of dour stability.  He was found to have behaved unconstitutionally in proroguing parliament.  He mishandled and derided the coronavirus pandemic.  He flouted rules made by his own officials, holding clandestine gatherings even as the rest of Britain stayed locked in and prevented from seeing family and friends. He was fined for doing so and eventually resigned for lying over the partygate affair.  His list of abuses had no end and seemingly no beginning.

With the resignation of Johnson, the Tories went into selectorate mode, giving the British voters a taste of tribal war before debates held between Truss and her contender, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak.  Truss, demagogic and deluded, won through, convincing a white-haired and greying percentage of Conservative Party members that she had the magic.  With this pro-growth creature, ironically herself ungrown in so many ways, the horror show continued.

No sensible person will be seeking the office.  But the Tory Party is riddled with the insensible.  Sunak is likely to recontest.  The leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, is also a contender.  Even Johnson, who did more than most to denigrate the office, is contemplating a return.  For the moment, the lettuce won out.  At the very least, it deserves a run.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Last February, Emily Maitlis left her role as presenter of the BBC’s Newsnight programme to join rival media group Global. In a recent speech, Maitlis made a surprising reference to Theresa May’s former communications director Sir Robbie Gibb:

‘Put this in the context of the BBC board, where another active agent of the Conservative Party – former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News – now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.’

Outraged by this whistleblowing, someone at the BBC activated the corporation’s ageing Complaint Response Autobot:

‘The BBC places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy and we apply these principles to our reporting on all issues.’

The standard, ‘Just the facts, Ma’am’, claim for ‘impartial’ journalism, in other words, as Matt Taibbi described it in Rolling Stone magazine.

Maitlis’s criticism of bias at the BBC was ironic indeed given her own record. In August 2008, Maitlis opened BBC’s Newsnight programme with an almost Chomskyan comment on the conflict between Russia and Georgia:

‘Hello, good evening. The Russians are calling it “peace enforcement operation”. It’s the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud.’ (BBC2, August 11, 2008, 10:30pm)

It was unclear why Orwell would have been made ‘proud’ by examples of ‘Newspeak’. But anyway, imagine Maitlis, or any BBC presenter, referring to comparable Western propaganda on Afghanistan (‘Operation Enduring Freedom’), Iraq (‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’), Syria, or Ukraine, as ‘the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud’.

On 1 April 2020, Maitlis retweeted a thread on Twitter from someone called Dave Rich smearing Jeremy Corbyn. This was the first tweet in the thread:

‘Goodbye Jeremy Corbyn. They said you don’t have an antisemitic bone in your body. That may be true, but your brain is full of it. Can we remember all the examples? Probably not but I’ll have a go /1’

Maitlis, who is from a Jewish family, retweeted this and similar comments to her quarter of a million followers.

‘Remarkable’ Rainbows

The truth of the BBC’s reflexive claim that it ‘places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy’ was, of course, tested to destruction by its coverage of the death and funeral of the Queen. A BBC news journalist observed:

‘As crowds wait to see the Queen’s lying-in-state for the final evening, many were touched to see the evening sky light up with a rainbow.

‘Remarkably, a rainbow was also spotted at Windsor Castle on the same day the Queen died on 8 September.

‘The BBC’s Sophie Raworth caught the reaction of people who spotted the rainbow as she noted on Sunday: “As the sun set over Westminster tonight… the crowd gasped.”’

This was the BBC, in the 21st century, clearly suggesting that supernatural forces may have been honouring the Queen. Otherwise, it was not ‘remarkable’ for rainbows to appear as part of the UK’s mixed September weather; nor would a high-profile reporter feel the need to note that a number of overwrought mourners ‘gasped’ at the sight of a rainbow.

Elsewhere on the BBC, the former Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, spoke of how the Queen had performed an act of spontaneous spiritual healing. Sentamu recalled:

‘I went with a huge burden of matters that maybe one day will be revealed.

‘I knelt down, and I said “Your Majesty, please pray for me.” So I put my hands together and she put hers outside mine, and we were silent for three minutes. At the end she said “Amen”.

‘When I got up, the burden had lifted.’

Also on the BBC, we learned that ‘Emma, the Queen’s fell pony, greeted the procession’. Separately, the BBC devoted an entire news piece to the pony and the Queen’s two remaining corgis, Muick and Sandy, who were pictured looking sad and wistful. Apparently drawing inspiration from the Richard Gere film, ‘Hachi: A Dog’s Tale’, about a heartbroken dog waiting for his deceased master’s return, the BBC reported:

‘The Queen’s last two corgis have appeared during her coffin’s procession to Windsor Castle, as if out waiting for their mistress’s return.’

Any Guardian readers hoping to escape this Disneyfied version of analysis were disappointed. In probably the first and last opinion piece of its kind, Anna Whitelock, professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London, opined of the Queen:

‘Certainly, a monarch reigning for more than 70 years, but also a monarch who in a modern media age of populism and celebrity retained an echo of the mystical, age-old, divine right of kings.’

Whitelock clarified the assertion, noting that Elizabeth had been ‘cast by accident of birth into a role unearned and then anointed as God’s chosen one’.

To her credit, Whitelock was candid about the personal crisis that lay behind this analysis:

‘For me, the moment when the imperial crown, representing the sovereignty of the nation, and the orb and sceptre, representing spiritual and temporal power, were removed from the coffin, and so from Elizabeth for the last time, was the moment when my expertise abandoned me. In that instance, I became not a professor of the history of modern monarchy, but a disoriented forty something who, at least in that moment, witnessed the breaking of the spell: the shattering of the magic of monarchy that I have often described but had always assumed I was quite immune to.’

The day after the funeral, high-profile Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff breathed a sigh of relief:

‘GOOD MORNING to the day the news is allowed back in the room’

We asked:

‘Well, who stopped the news? Who has that right? And why did you allow it to happen?’

Other journalists also expressed limited dissent. Long-time Guardian and Observer contributor, Dan Hancox, commented:

‘I think if I worked for BBC News in any capacity I would absolutely mortified after the last fortnight. “Public service”, “BBC balance” and purported pluralism revealed for what it truly is – an inflexible arm of the state and the elites that control it. Truly an embarrassment’

Michael Crick, former political editor of the BBC’s Newsnight programme, went further:

‘The past days, with a few honourable exceptions, have been a shameful period for British journalism, in which scrutiny, challenge, perspective, balance and common sense have been ditched in favour of fawning  banalities.’

We asked Hancox about the newspapers that publish his work:

‘And how did the Guardian and Observer fare, Dan?’

Donnachadh McCarthy, aggrieved climate columnist at the Independent, responded first:

‘Seemed like they replaced the newspaper with 30 page royal souvenir promotion brochures, for 11 days solid!!   Arghhh

‘I was a captured subscriber.’

McCarthy added:

‘Utterly failed on balanced reporting, just like they did with 1200 articles trashing Corbyn, to ensure Johnson got elected.’

Clearly peeved, Hancox responded to our tweet:

‘This would maybe be a scathing gotcha if 1) I was editor of these newspapers, rather than a freelance writer, and 2) our monolithic licence-fee-funded PS broadcaster was the same thing as a privately-owned newspaper. For media critics, you could use a bit of media literacy’

McCarthy responded to Hancox again:

‘Seems like you did not read the 11 royal souvenir brochures, which replaced Guardian Observer for 11 days!!

‘Now that is what was really shameful…’

We replied to Hancox’s tweet referring to our attempted ‘gotcha’:

‘I’m genuinely asking: as a Guardian and Observer contributor, how mortified have you been by their performance?’

Hancox responded:

‘You sad little men, shouting at a freelancer via QTs [quote tweets]. As usual showing your nuanced understanding of where power is located in the media’

As other tweeters pointed out, Hancox had himself been ‘shouting’ at people who worked at the BBC ‘in any capacity’ – presumably including ‘sad little’ freelancers. We replied:

‘For 21 years now, journos have responded with rage and insults when we’ve asked them to comment on media publishing their work. It’s a way of avoiding the question. In essence: “You’re so nasty and vicious, and I’m so angry, that I won’t respond.” We haven’t been shouting at all.’

Being described as ‘sad little men’ reminded us of the time filmmaker and BBC producer Adam Curtis commented to us two decades ago:

‘I don’t know whether it occurred to you that I might have been away – instead of stamping your little feet and trying to whip up an attack of the clones.’ ¹

To the painfully swollen egos of the Guardian and BBC, we are annoying ‘little men’ with ‘little feet’ barely worthy of consideration. After all, who are we? How dare we challenge them? As Peter Beaumont, the Observer’s foreign affairs editor, noted in a rare ‘mainstream’ mention (unthinkable now), we are ‘self-appointed media watchdogs’.²

It was a telling comment. We are not appointed by authority of any kind and are therefore ‘little men’ to commentators afflicted by what Erich Fromm called ‘the authoritarian character structure’ – people who look to hierarchy, status and power for guidance, rather than to their own capacity for critical thought.

The ‘Unprovoked’ Invasion

We received a further telling response from high-profile reporter Wyre Davies of BBC News & Current Affairs. For reasons unknown, Davies likes to occasionally vent his spleen in our direction. This time, he responded to our retweet of a deeply disturbing prediction about the war in Ukraine by political commentator and former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter:

‘The mobilization of 300,000 men, as well as the announced goal of bringing all other units up to the standards of the Russian army, will not happen overnight. Russia will be forming new units, and this takes time.’

Ritter’s grim conclusion:

‘I believe we will see a strategic pause… But once Russia consolidates the new territory politically, and accrues the necessary military capacity, I believe we are looking at the physical destruction of the Ukrainian nation as the endgame for this conflict.’

Ritter has been banned by Twitter, so Davies responded to us:

‘Indeed; one precipitated by Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine.’

Like anyone who has looked at the facts, we agree that the invasion is illegal and brutal, but reject the claim that it was unprovoked. As John Pilger commented recently:

‘The news from the war in Ukraine is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission.  I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.

‘In February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass on their border.

‘In 2014, the United States had sponsored a coup in Kiev that got rid of Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russian-friendly president and installed a successor whom the Americans made clear was their man.’

Pilger continued:

‘Last December, Russia proposed a far-reaching security plan for Europe. This was dismissed, derided or suppressed in the Western media. Who read its step-by-step proposals? On Feb. 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened to develop nuclear weapons unless America armed and protected Ukraine.

‘On the same day, Russia invaded – an unprovoked act of congenital infamy, according to the Western media. The history, the lies, the peace proposals, the solemn agreements on Donbass at Minsk counted for nothing.’

Pilger added:

‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable. It is a crime to invade a sovereign country. There are no “buts” – except one.

‘When did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it? According to the United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in the Kiev regime’s civil war on the Donbass. Many of the attacks were carried out by neo-Nazis.’

As former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook wrote:

‘The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato’s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.

‘These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia – and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control.’

Noam Chomsky commented recently:

‘In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the major establishment journal, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent – highly regarded policy analysts with close government connections – report that:

‘“According to multiple former senior US officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. The terms of that settlement would have been for Russia to withdraw to the positions it held before launching the invasion on February 24. In exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.’”

Aaron Maté of The Grayzone website added:

‘In confirming that US officials were aware of this tentative agreement, Hill bolsters previous news that Washington’s junior partner in London was enlisted to thwart it. As Ukrainian media reported, citing sources close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev in April and relayed the message that Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also informed Zelensky that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,” his Western patrons “are not.” The talks promptly collapsed.’

Chomsky notes that it is not known if similar peace initiatives continue to be made:

‘If they do, they would not lack popular support, not only in the Global South but even in Europe, where “77 percent of Germans believe that the West should initiate negotiations to end the Ukraine war”.’

Craig Murray, who was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004, offered this shocking observation:

‘There really are – and remember I worked over twenty years in British Foreign Office, six of them in the senior management structure – people in NATO, and in all western governments, who have no problem with the notion of hundreds of thousands of dead people, particularly as they are nearly all Eastern Europeans or Central Asians. They are not even particularly perturbed by the risk the conflict could turn nuclear. They are delighted that the Russian armed forces are being degraded and vast sums pumped into western military budgets. That is worth any number of dead Ukrainians to them.’

Typically for ‘mainstream’ journalism, Wyre Davies was forthright in his condemnation of Russia’s invasion – nobody ever harmed their career by criticising Official Enemies. As with Hancox, we thought it would be interesting to test his honesty closer to home:

‘Wyre, in your opinion, was the 2003, US-UK invasion of Iraq illegal, unprovoked and brutal?’

Davies responded:

‘Jeez … “look over there!” I thought for a minute this was all about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?’

Which is how ‘mainstream’ journalists like it – it should be ‘all’ about Russia’s crimes. After working on Media Lens for two decades, it is still unclear to us whether journalists like Davies understand the consequences of damning the crimes of Official Enemies while refusing even to comment on the crimes of our own government. Do they understand that this one-eyed moral condemnation forever portrays the West as compassionate crusaders responding to the despicable illegality and violence of the ‘Bad Guys’? And do they understand that the results are catastrophic? The public simply doesn’t know that the West destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria on packs of lies at vast human cost, fighting completely avoidable wars, while Western oil companies, like BP and Exxon in Iraq and Libya, reap the spoils.

It is because all crimes are equal for journalists like Davies, but some crimes are more equal than others, that the public can’t conceive the utterly ruthless nature of Nato’s actions in Ukraine. To the public, it really does seem like the West is spending tens of billions of dollars to defend Ukrainian freedom. Even after the human catastrophes of Western ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the public can still be made to believe that the chief Western concern in Iran is women’s rights, rather than the oil for which ‘we’, unprovoked, illegally and brutally overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953.

It is only the awesome, brainwashing power of our state-corporate media that makes it possible for anyone to imagine that this is how Great Powers behave in the real world. If foreign policy really worked that way, planet Earth would long since have been transformed into a paradise of peace, equality and justice. We need only look around us to see how close we are to achieving that aim.

1. Email to Media Lens, 18 June 2002.
2. Beaumont, ‘Microscope on Medialens [sic]’, the Observer, 18 June 2006.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

No leader with such a destructive sense of presence could do anything but impair those who followed him.  But that impairment lingers in the contenders who are seeking to replace him, and it shows.

In a system that is admirably daft, the governing party, namely the Conservatives, have given themselves a remarkable span of time to pick Johnson’s successor.  A number of candidates initially put their name forth, a chaff-wheat separation exercise that eventually led to the selection of chaff.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss rallies the Tories within the party ranks (a YouGov poll puts Truss at 62 per cent over her rival contender, Rishi Sunak, at 38 per cent).  Sunak seems more appealing to the wider conservative vote.  Both are unappealing in several ways and have already shown that they are not beneath populism and demagoguery in convincing the party faithful.

Like most Tories hoping to court gullible voters in the centre, we are facing an elaborate deception of privilege burnished as hard work and triumph in adversity.  This is the season for counterfeiters.

Sunak is proving something of an adept in this, diminishing his privileged background in order to polish and flash invisible, underprivileged credentials.  Truss supporter, culture secretary Nadine Dorries, will have none of it, noting that Truss will campaign around the country in £4.50 earrings, but Sunak will do so in a £3,500 bespoke suit, along with £450 Prada loafers.

Truss is also playing on false images, though prefers to lie in more confident fashion.  With mendacious thrill, she claims to have grown up in a “red wall” seat, as if it might have proved anything.  “I got where I am today through working hard and focusing on results.”  If it is that mindless, corrosive activity of Instagramming, then she might have a point.  If an event is not posted on social media, it never took place.

In terms of policy, if we dare go there, Truss is a conventional supply sider, wanting to cut taxes despite obstinately rising inflation.  She argues that the budget has enough fiscal headroom to the tune of £30 billion, an amount that will be dramatically cheapened with inflation.  She also boasts of delivering a number of trade agreements, though many were simply copied, roll-over versions of deals made when the UK was an EU member.

Sunak, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, does not see taxes as satanic, and is considering raising them as a dampening measure to cope with rising prices.  Should he become Prime Minister, the corporation tax rate will rise from 19 per cent to 25 per cent in 2023.

Sunak, in some respects, is going for a softer touch, such as improving home insulation to cut energy bills.  Unfortunately, the Energy Savings Trust has found that loft insulation, while saving a terraced home £230 a year on energy bills, would also cost £500 to install.  Even as Chancellor, his efforts to encourage homes to install insulation via the green homes grant scheme failed to gain momentum, resulting in its scrapping.

On foreign policy, however, Sunak claims to be the hardest of hard men. Having been called by Chinese state outlet Global Times “clear and pragmatic” in the face of Sinophobia, he was bound to insist on a measure of difference.  To that end, the closure of the Confucius Institutes in Britain – namely, all 30 of them – is promised.  In doing so, he hopes to strangle Chinese “soft power” while rooting out Beijing’s industrial espionage efforts.

With militant fervour, he also promises to “kick the CCP out of our universities”, the sort of meaningless babble that risks harming academic endeavours.  The method of doing so will involve mandating higher education establishments to disclose the nature of their foreign funding associations for amounts above £50,000, including the review of research partnerships.  All such proposals always tend to harm the host institution more than the foreign target.

This was of little concern to Sunak, who has suddenly discovered an interest in human rights.  “They torture, detain and indoctrinate their own people, including in Xinjian and Hong Kong, in contravention of their human rights.  And they have continually rigged the global economy in their favour by suppressing their currency.”

Sunak’s language on rights is rich given his own attitude to those wishing to find sanctuary in Britain.  His ideas on irregular migration have ranged from housing arrivals in cruise ships in a hark back to the bad old days of British penology to enthusiastically supporting, along with Truss, the transfer of irregular migrants to Rwanda, a country not exactly famed for its human rights record.  This, from a grandson of immigrants from Punjab who ended up in East Africa before making their way to Britain.

A deliciously appropriate note on the campaign so far was struck in this week’s The Sun and TalkTV debate, hosted by journalist Kate McCann.  Both Truss and Sunak fronted up.  Harry Cole, political editor of The Sun, intended to co-host, but contracted Covid.  McCann, left in charge, made her solid contribution to the whole affair by fainting.  “We apologise to our viewers and listeners,” the channel stated with regret, sparing the audience the inanity of it all by calling the whole thing off.  Johnson must have relished it all.

In the slime-touched final runoff between two bottom-of-the-barrel finds, voters meet two candidates who, in finding wealth or coming from it, seek the ultimate prize of a country that once kept a quarter of the globe in described, cricket-enlightened subjecthood.  The prize is barely worth it, and, with Britain no longer part of the EU, barely noticeable.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Not only is he a compulsive liar, an arrogant, spoilt misogynist, he and his gaggle are completely incompetent. As a result of their appalling governance over the last 12 years, yes the Conservatives have been in power in one form of another for 12 disastrous years, they have created a catalogue of crises that will take a generation to put right, and unless they are ejected from office swiftly, could relegate the UK to a second tier nation – economically and socially, including health care, education and other public services, many of which are in tatters.

It is hard to overestimate the damage the Tories have done. First there’s Brexit, something Johnson claims as one of his three major achievements, that he “got Brexit done”. Brexit should never have happened and it would not have happened had the 51% that voted to leave been given the correct information and understood the implications. The Leave Campaign, with Johnson as its loudest mouthpiece, repeatedly and knowingly lied, completely distorting and misrepresenting issues including the economic impact, which is and will continue to be devastating. Immigration,  employment, environmental standards, workers rights, etc., etc. They didn’t just mislead and manipulate, they trampled on the truth and seasoned their lies with large dollops of tribal nationalism and British bravado, hiding duplicity in the folds of the flag.

Brexit followed on from years of austerity administered by a previous Conservative government led by PM David Cameron (who gave in to the far right fanatics in the party to grant the EU referendum in 2016). Brutal cuts in funding for public services, including the National Health Service (NHS) were made under the guise of fiscal responsibility, pay was frozen for workers in low paid jobs, inequality deepened, and continues to increase, geographically and between the rich and the rest.

The response to Covid, in particular the vaccine program, is another area where Johnson blubbers success. Currently it is estimated that 178,000 people have died in the UK from Covid/Covid related causes. This is 266 per 100,000 and places the UK seventh in the list of countries with the highest rates of Covid deaths (behind, in order, the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru): this is hardly a success. The UK government was slow to lockdown, had no workable testing system for months in 2020, making diagnosis impossible, and allowed untested patients to be discharged from hospitals to care homes in England and Wales, which resulted in more than 20,000 deaths of elderly/disabled people between March and June 2020. A barrister representing the daughter of someone who died prematurely in a care home told the BBC, that the government’s failure to protect residents of care homes and decisions that allowed Covid to infest care homes “represent one of the most egregious and devastating policy failures in the modern era.” As for the vaccine, this was indeed offered and delivered quickly, but it was administered by the NHS and had little or nothing to do with Johnson, who routinely claims the credit.

The final area that Johnson claims as a triumph is his government’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The UK has provided weapons, some training of military personnel and a badly designed, appallingly managed asylum program for Ukrainian refugees. By supplying arms and making outlandish, unrealistic claims about Ukraine “winning the war”, Johnson and co., have prolonged the conflict and condemned hundreds of Ukrainians to death who need not have died.

If peace is the objective (of the UK, US etc) in Ukraine (and elsewhere), and it’s a big if, and if conflict resolution is the test of success in relation to the war, Johnson (and others) has failed totally. Engagement/discussion with Putin is needed (as President Macron of France has been attempting) not more and more arms. At the same time NATO should be scaled back, with the view to disbanding it completely, not increasing troop numbers and raising defense spending, as is happening. When will humanity learn? Preparing for war is the guarantee of conflict, death and terrible suffering, it is not the way to peace. But men and women like Johnson and his monstrous foreign secretary, Liz Truss (who looks like to become the next PM), have no interest in peace and even less in Ukraine; they are concerned only with stirring up their misguided supporters, strengthening nationalism/idealism – the single greatest cause of conflict – agitating hate and division.

Domestically the UK is facing acute problems; headline issues include: huge increase in the number of people living in poverty (estimated to be around one in five of the population or 14.3 million), with 2,173,158 forced to use a (registered) food bank in 2021/22, up from 40,000 in 2008/9 – before which there were no such things as food banks; inequality has deepened and growth is forecast to be the lowest in the G20 with the exception of Russia. Inflation at 11% is a forty-year high; 6.6 million patients are waiting for NHS treatment (May figures); ambulances are taking on average 50 minutes to respond to emergency calls (the target is 15 minutes) because hospitals are full, because patients cannot be discharged as there is no functioning social care provision; airports have seen huge delays in flights due to lack of staff – many of whom were laid off during Covid or returned home, to Poland or Spain; e.g., after Brexit poisoned the collective atmosphere for European workers; the asylum system is totally broken; Britain’s international standing, particularly within the EU has been trashed and after a litany of Johnson lies and cronyism trust in politicians is at an all-time low.

Dishonesty, incompetence and social erosion

On 7th July, after an unprecedented 53 members of the government resigned over Johnson’s serial deceptions, he was forced, kicking and screaming, to step down. But lacking any self-respect and moral fiber, instead of going immediately and allowing the deputy PM to stand in while a new Conservative leader was elected, he remained in office, and will be there until the replacement is chosen (5th September). It’s Conservative members (180,00 roughly) only, not the general public, that get to vote – this is plainly undemocratic. In circumstances when the leader of the party in government, and therefore the PM, is driven out, a general election should be called.

Constitutional reform with the establishment of a written constitution, which does not currently exist, is required to look at a plethora of democratic inadequacies revealed by Johnson’s abuse and manipulation of power. Included in the changes is the urgent need to move from the unjust first-past-the-post election system to proportional representation; greater regional/national devolution, including perhaps Home Rule for Scotland, and a binding ministerial code of conduct, among other matters.

Johnson and his cronies have presided over a shambolic, deeply damaging period in British politics and national life. A period in which truth has been sacrificed, facts dismissed and the political and social landscape has been poisoned totally. Divisions have intensified (Brexit being the loudest example), tolerance of differences and common sense routinely sacrificed upon the alter of ambition and ideological arrogance, the rule of law ignored; a shameful period of dishonesty, incompetence and social erosion. Johnson’s legacy, as Jeremy Corbin recently said in the House of Commons, is “[greater] poverty, [intensified] inequality and [grinding] insecurity.”

As the final two Conservative leadership candidates (Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss) – is this really the best they have to offer — are demonstrating, the policies and general approach of the Conservative party, which has moved increasingly to the right/far right of the political spectrum, is completely out of step with the needs of the people and the planet. They are ideologically imprisoned in the past and, despite their robotic rhetoric to the contrary, are driven by a determination, not to serve the needs of the populous and be a force for peace and unity in the world, but by raw ambition and a determination to remain in power by appealing to the lowest common denominator – tribal nationalism, hate and prejudice – no matter what damage is done to the country, its reputation or the environment, which they care not a tot about.

In many ways Johnson (like Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro of Brazil, Modi of India, Orban of Hungary etc.) and the toxic brand of Conservatism he represents is a product of the age, The Age of Populism, which has infected many democracies. Such malignant, mendacious men and women (Liz Truss loud, stupid and incompetent) represent, and are powerful expressions of the backward-looking, divisive and deeply dangerous reactionary forces that are standing in the way of change. And if there is ever to be peace and social justice in our world, and if we are to have any chance at all of stopping the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding, they must be swept aside totally.

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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Graham Peebles.

Millions of people in the UK are beset by insecurities and worries about the rising cost of living. Fuel and energy prices are escalating, variously blamed on Brexit, Covid, and the war in Ukraine. A recent survey reported that 67% of Britons are worried about paying food and fuel bills, and 56% believe their household finances have worsened in the past 12 months.

The NHS is experiencing huge pressures. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic, said in March that the NHS:

‘is not coping much better now than it was at Covid’s peaks. We are drowning – in Covid patients, cancer patients, the patients on the waiting list backlogs, and the patients whose conditions have become infinitely more complex and harmful because they’ve been waiting so long. There are so few staff – and those left are so burned out and traumatised – that patients are inevitably being neglected.’

Too many people in this country are relying on food banks. Between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022, the Trussell Trust network, the UK’s largest foodback organisation, distributed over 2.1 million emergency food parcels to people in crisis. This is an increase of 81% compared to the same period five years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill people are having to wait an average of five months for disability benefits. Employees are working long hours on short-term and zero-hour contracts. There are persistent delays and poor services on public transport. And people have to wait inordinately long times to obtain driving licenses and passports.

All of this is taking place against the reality of industrial action and rising public dissatisfaction with what passes for ‘news’ or ‘politics’ in the Westminster bubble, or any of the other bubbles inhabited by Western elites.

Public trust in the ‘mainstream’ media has dropped dramatically in recent years. According to a recent analysis by Press Gazette, BBC News experienced the biggest drop in public confidence, along with the Times and the Telegraph. BBC News, regularly touted by its managers and senior journalists as the ‘gold standard’ in reliability and accuracy, has seen trust in its journalism drop from 75% four years ago to 55% now.

For what it’s worth, that still leaves it the most trusted newsbrand in the UK, along with ITV news, also at 55%. Channel 4 News was just behind on 54%. Sky News saw trust in its output decline from 62% to 45%. The Guardian could only manage 48% (remarkably high, given its record), down from 61%.

Press Gazette summed up the findings:

‘Major newsbrands have a crisis of trust’.

Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook observed:

‘Is the reason all establishment media are seeing huge drops in audience trust the fault of Russian disinformation? Or is it because they act as brazen mouthpieces for the establishment? Be sure all these outlets will tell you it’s down to Russia.’

Commenting on the low trust figures, Cook added:

‘half of audiences think our main news shows actually peddle fake news.’

Rossalyn Warren, Reuters audience editor, recently shared a headline finding from the Oxford-based Reuters Institute that:

‘46% of people (mostly women and young people) actively avoid the news because it has a negative impact on their mood. That’s up from 24% in 2017.’

The prevailing public mood was pithily summed up by writer Umair Haque as a ‘feeling of downward mobility’. This, he said, is how many people feel today:

‘They don’t feel good. Confident. Assured. Optimistic. They feel…worthless. Defeated. Helpless and hopeless. Traumatized and weary.’

Haque continued:

‘I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it financially — how am I going to make ends meet? I can’t take it economically — no matter how hard you work, little seems to change. I can’t take it culturally — nothing, no one out there seems to help me, aid me, be there for me. I can’t take it socially — this whole society feels like it’s against me.’

There is, warned Haque, a ‘tsunami of demoralisation’ sweeping our societies:

‘And as people grow demoralized, they grow de-moralized. Their moral centers and cores stop working. Only the strong survive, and the weak perish? I had better become ruthless, cunning, cruel. I must learn how to be a knife. Not a lever, not an open hand. A closed fist. In the bitter battle for self-preservation, the great virtues — empathy, grace, truth, knowledge — all themselves become needless luxuries and unaffordable indulgences.’

To some extent, in this harsh depiction, Haque was playing devil’s advocate. But his point was clear. Many of us are struggling and perhaps tempted to protect and preserve what we have, in our own limited spheres; and woe betide anyone who gets in our way.

However, rather than feel despair or harden our hearts, an alternative approach is to admit that many of us sometimes feel demoralised, even overwhelmed, and to share that feeling with others. As Haque said:

‘You’re not alone, my friend.’

That may be a small step on a new journey that we all need to take. Because we have to accept that real change is not going to come from our ‘leaders’, but from ourselves.

Consider the rail strikes that have been taking place in the UK. The most overtly right-wing press – the likes of the ‘soaraway Sun’ – wailed about ‘a return to the 1970s’ driven by ‘Marxist thugs’. Such defamation is to be expected in the vitriolic pages of the billionaire-owned press.

But how different is this from the more subtle vilification by an ostensibly neutral BBC journalist? On the eve of recent industrial action, Nick Robinson, former BBC political editor and now a Radio 4 Today presenter, tweeted:

‘Who’s the man behind the strikes which are threatening a week of rail chaos? Is he a champion of workers who deserve a pay rise or a politically motivated dinosaur? You decide after listening to my half hour conversation with Mick Lynch @RMTunion’

This might appear a relatively minor example. But it is symptomatic of the insidious, endemic anti-working class, anti-trade union stance embedded in BBC News ‘impartiality’. Robinson would never say of a senior Tory leader:

‘Is he a public servant or an oligarchy-serving, greed-driven predator?’

Scale up Robinson’s attitudes, shared across leading BBC News presenters and editors, and you get what the BBC represents; indeed, what the BBC is: a state-affiliated broadcaster relentlessly pitching elite perspectives on domestic and international affairs. Challenges are routinely met with disdain, blanking or arrogance.

‘Once You See How The Super Rich Run Everything Solely For Their Own Benefit You Cannot Unsee It’

In his calm, articulate determination to get his points across in recent media interviews, many of them conducted risibly by highly-paid celebrity journalists, RMT union leader Mick Lynch has been a ray of hope for many people.

Speaking live on BBC News from a picket line in London last month, Lynch said:

‘The whole country is suffering. And we have got a membership and a trade union that is prepared to fight for what we’ve got. What the rest of the country suffers from is the lack of power.’

Lynch expanded:

‘The lack of the ability to organise and the lack of the wherewithal to take on these employers that are continually driving down wages, and making the working class in this country poorer, year on year on year, while the rich get richer and dividends are accelerated and the stock market is reasonably healthy. We’ve got full employment and falling wages, and that is a situation that has never happened before and it cannot be tolerated by working people or by the trade union movement.’

In a Sky News interview, the union leader highlighted the deceptive rhetoric of many businesses:

‘What we’re seeing here is a smokescreen caused by Covid, and many employers are taking this opportunity. They’re using what is a temporary phenomenon – Covid – and the temporary phenomenon of people being told not to go to work as a smokescreen to get rid of decent conditions, decent pay rates and decent agreements.’

Making the kind of rational, reasonable points that rarely get an airing on state-corporate ‘news’ outlets, Lynch added:

‘Everybody wants our cities, towns and villages to recover. The way we do that, and one of the most important aspects of that, is by having a decent public transport system that can be relied on, is safe and accessible. Cutting staff, cutting services and cutting funding is the opposite to that, and nobody in our community should tolerate that from this government of billionaires who tell everyone else they’ve got to tighten their belts while they’re raking it in.’

Lynch’s assured media performances, particularly when confronted with ludicrous questions, won him praise from many corners. A Guardian piece observed that the union boss had been ‘deft, scornful and effective.’

Political economist Matt Bishop noted:

‘What’s remarkable about the Mick Lynch coverage is just how rarely we hear straightforward, working-class lefty union people in mainstream debate. Our media is dominated by a privately educated professional pundit class, their MP and banker chums, and it’s all the poorer for it.’

Exactly. Although, of course, it is not ‘mainstream’ debate. It is a tightly-controlled ‘debate’ that exists within the severely skewed bias of a state-corporate media, owned and managed by elite interests.

Even Mark Solomons, a former industrial correspondent at the Sun noted in an article in the right-wing Spectator, that:

‘Lynch is currently dominating TV screens and social media, making mincemeat out of politicians and broadcast interviewers alike.’

Solomons added:

‘He has stuck to his guns, confounded his opponents, and used simple, plain-talking language. He comes across as a working-class man who has made it to the top of his profession without selling out his principles, someone who makes it quite clear why the union is doing what it is doing irrespective of whether or not we agree with him.’

There was understanding and support from members of the public. An anonymous 53-year-old manager of an NHS mental health team living in south London blamed the government for the rail strikes:

‘I wish the government would meaningfully and consistently fund public infrastructure and the key workers who keep our city and society running. I’m tired of services being cut to the bone, everything being done on the cheap and workers being told to simply work harder to fill the gaps.’

Giles Barret, a 38-year-old owner of a recording studio, said:

‘Collective action is the reason we have a weekend, among many other hard-won rights, and we must never stop fighting for them – capital certainly won’t.’

And David Ling, a 69-year-old pensioner, also pointed to the bigger picture behind the rail strikes:

‘There’s so many problems in this country that are caused by austerity, privatisation and cutbacks that in the end it’s gonna be a reaction. It’s not just the railway workers – it’s teachers and nurses and everything. In the end, something’s got to give. You can’t carry on cutting back and people scrimping and saving. It doesn’t work.’

Barnaby Raine of Novara Media commented approvingly of Mick Lynch’s media performances:

‘Our whole media debate is a surreal circus until someone bursts it open.’

An opinion poll showed that public opinion had shifted dramatically in support of rail strikes following Lynch’s media appearances. Previously, support for the strike was at 38%, while opposition to the strike was 43%. Afterwards, support for the strike had risen 7% to 45%, while opposition to the strike had dropped 6% to 37%.

On Twitter, political writer John Traynor provided a potent summary of why Lynch had been so effective at getting his points of view across to the public.

First:

‘Lynch knows that what he is saying is both factually correct and consistent. This contrasts with conservative voices who know what they are spouting is [a] pack of lies and drivel, and comically inconsistent.’

Second:

‘Lynch understands fully what he is talking about. His knowledge allows him to counter any derisory interruption. This contrasts with conservative voices who know only a few mendacious soundbites with no in depth knowledge, and this causes them to fall.’

Third:

‘Lynch speaks sincerely; he believes in all the points he makes. This contrasts with conservative voices who believe in nothing and are just playing a part for money.’

Matthew Todd, author of the best-selling LGBT mental health book, Straight Jacket, said via Twitter that:

‘Ive worked in the media alongside politicians for 25 years. Once you see how the super rich run everything solely for their own benefit you cannot unsee it. If people understood what lies in store for us they wouldn’t be on strike, there would be a revolution #RailStrikes’

Despite this brief opening in permissible debate around the economy, if Lynch continues to be this effective, then the state-corporate media will revert to type and attempt to crush him, just as they did with Jeremy Corbyn.

The Guardian Is ‘A Tool Of The British Establishment’

Indeed, in a recent compelling interview with Matt Kennard of Declassified UK, Corbyn opened up about the experience he had gone through as Labour Party leader during which he had been the target of arguably the biggest ever propaganda blitz against a British political leader. He was particularly scathing of the Guardian which, long ago, may have been regarded by some as a reliable left-leaning newspaper:

‘I have absolutely no illusions in the Guardian, none whatsoever. My mum brought me up to read the Guardian. She said, “It’s a good paper you can trust”. You can’t. After their treatment of me, I do not trust the Guardian.”’

He continued:

‘There are good people who work in the Guardian, there are some brilliant writers in the Guardian, but as a paper, it’s a tool of the British establishment. It’s a mainstream establishment paper. So, as long as everybody on the left gets it clear: when you buy the Guardian, you’re buying an establishment paper.’

Indeed, the Guardian and BBC News were central to the establishment’s cynical exploitation of antisemitism allegations to kill Corbyn’s chances of becoming Prime Minister:

‘an analysis of the Guardian’s treatment of the time that I was leader of the party needs to be made because they and the BBC had more unsourced reporting of anti-semitic criticisms surrounding me than any other paper, including the Mail, The Telegraph and the Sun.’

As for the British media as a whole:

‘We have a supine media in this country. The British self-confidence of saying we’ve got the best media in the world, the best broadcasting in the world, the best democracy in the world. It’s nonsense, utter, complete nonsense. We have a media that’s supine, that self-censors, that accepts D-Notices, doesn’t challenge them, and the vast majority of the mainstream media haven’t lifted so much as a little finger in support or defence of Julian Assange.’

Today, Labour has a new ‘leader’ who is trying as hard as possible to stifle left policies and voices within the party, dragging it relentlessly towards the right; or what Sir Keir Starmer calls the ‘centre ground’. In an Observer opinion piece, ‘Labour has now claimed the centre ground – and has shown it can win’, this Blairite establishment stooge boasted:

‘Since the horror of the last general election, we have rolled up our sleeves and focused on listening to the public and changing our party. We’ve rooted out the poison of antisemitism, shown unshakeable support for Nato, forged a new relationship with business, shed unworkable or unaffordable policies and created an election machine capable of taking on the Conservatives. Being able to win again has taken more than two years of hard graft from all those who ache to see the transformation a Labour government would bring the country we love.’

As political writer Steve Topple noted, Starmer’s comments were largely ‘vacuous dross and detached from reality’. In particular:

‘Labour has “shed unworkable or unaffordable policies” but with no clear reference to what these are. Clearly, it’s those promises he made during the Labour leadership election. Remember those? The talk of nationalisation of industries and services? We can now categorically see that Starmer’s pledges were nothing short of manipulation of party members. This is despite the fact that with things like rail renationalisation, the public consistently supports it.’

A ’Bent’ System Of Government

Peter Oborne, former political editor at the Spectator and former Daily Telegraph chief political commentator, recently warned of the rising oligarchical nature of politics in the UK, whether Conservative or Labour:

‘You would hope that in a well-managed democracy the purpose of political power was to challenge the super-rich, make sure they didn’t get what they wanted. Under [Boris] Johnson, political power has been a vehicle for the super-rich to make sure that they do get what they want.’

Oborne offered this damning verdict on our supposed ‘free press’:

‘The second element of Johnson is that the media class and the political class have merged in Downing Street; they are the same thing. And so all the stuff which we as journalists get taught at journalism school – it’s the task of the press to hold government to account, and there is a sort of separation of powers – is no longer the case. There has been a merger.’

Oborne called Johnson ‘the billionaire’s bitch’. Why? First, because Johnson was, before he announced his resignation as Tory leader on 7 July, dependent on billionaire donors to the Tory party who saw him – until recently, at least – as the best option to represent their interests:

‘You can see what they want is access to power, it’s contracts – we saw this with Covid when Tory donors were rewarded endlessly.’

Second, because Johnson has curried favour with billionaire newspaper proprietors, such as the Barclay brothers, owners of the Telegraph, and Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Times and the Sun.

In an article titled, ‘Boris Johnson is finished. But will the rotten system that created him fall too?’, Oborne pointed out:

‘The Murdoch Press, Associated Newspapers and the Telegraph group control approximately three quarters of the newspaper reading market. These three groups have been central to Johnson’s success.

‘Every title in all these groups supported Johnson’s bid for the Tory leadership, his 2019 general election campaign, and through last month’s vote of confidence. Throughout all of this they played down the corruption, fabrication, scandal, cronyism, law-breaking and incompetence of the Johnson government.’

Oborne found some hope in democratic pressures at last having some effect:

‘Very late in the day the reputational damage of sticking with Johnson has struck home. The newspapers, finally scared of their readers, are running for cover. On Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch’s Times belatedly pulled the plug – “The prime minister has lost the confidence of his party and the country. He should quit now”.’

Faced with the prospect of crumbling support from even the right-wing press, together with multiple resignations across government, Johnson finally bowed to the inevitable and resigned as Tory leader, while remaining as Prime Minister until a new leader can be elected in the autumn.

What will happen next? Oborne warns that nothing much will change:

‘The global super-rich are looking for a British prime minister who will look after their interests without the reputational damage. Ex-chancellor Sunak, now the bookies’ favourite, looks like their choice.

‘A near-billionaire himself, he at least has no incentive to take bribes. But he’s been at the heart of the bent Johnson system of government for almost three years, repeating the prime minister’s lies and tolerating his incompetence, bigotry and incessant sleaze.’

Whether Sunak or someone else takes over, warned Osborne:

‘The next Tory leader will almost certainly pursue the same policies as Johnson.

‘On Brexit. On civil liberties. On the Human Rights Act. The same English nationalism and cheap, ugly, vicious populism.’

He added:

‘Remember that all the leading candidates in the leadership contest served in Johnson’s cabinet. They supported his policies, and in many cases repeated his lies.’

As for Keir Starmer, Knight Commander of the Order of Bath, Oborne is scathing, pointing out that the politician ‘dishonestly’ represented himself as coming from the left when bidding to become Corbyn’s successor. Since Starmer was elected Labour leader, he has been ‘trying to buy into the Blair model’ of relying on donors, appeasing newspaper proprietors, ‘ruthlessly’ excluding the trade unions, and indeed attacking the left, notably Stop the War and any Labour MPs critical of Nato:

‘He made a choice to define himself not against Boris Johnson, the billionaire’s person. He decided to define himself as not being Jeremy Corbyn. That was the classic Blairite pivot. Blair chose to win by sucking up to Rupert Murdoch, and sucking up to the billionaires, and Starmer appears to be doing just the same thing.’

Oborne predicts that, if Starmer ever becomes Prime Minister, all he would be is ‘maybe a more scrupulous version of Boris Johnson’; in other words, ‘a slightly softer version of oligarchical politics.’

If the public is to get what it supports and deserves – not least a basic standard of living, and a rational and urgent response to the climate crisis – we all need to take action now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself.

— Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) (preface to the English Edition, p. 36).

The IMF and World Bank have for decades pushed a policy agenda based on cuts to public services, increases in taxes paid by the poorest and moves to undermine labour rights and protections.

IMF ‘structural adjustment’ policies have resulted in 52% of Africans lacking access to healthcare and 83% having no safety nets to fall back on if they lose their job or become sick. Even the IMF has shown that neoliberal policies fuel poverty and inequality.

In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

According to Prof Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization, the closure of the world economy has triggered an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Governments are now under the control of global creditors in the post-COVID era.

What we are seeing is a de facto privatisation of the state as governments capitulate to the needs of Western financial institutions.

Moreover, these debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

It raises the question: what was COVID really about?

Millions have been asking that question since lockdowns and restrictions began in early 2020. If it was indeed about public health, why close down the bulk of health services and the global economy knowing full well what the massive health, economic and debt implications would be?

Why mount a military-style propaganda campaign to censor world-renowned scientists and terrorise entire populations and use the full force and brutality of the police to ensure compliance?

These actions were wholly disproportionate to any risk posed to public health, especially when considering the way ‘COVID death’ definitions and data were often massaged and how PCR tests were misused to scare populations into submission.

Prof Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University implies we should have been suspicious from the start when the usually “unscrupulous ruling elites” froze the global economy in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (the over 80s).

COVID was a crisis of capitalism masquerading as a public health emergency.

Capitalism

Capitalism needs to keep expanding into or creating new markets to ensure the accumulation of capital to offset the tendency for the general rate of profit to fall. The capitalist needs to accumulate capital (wealth) to be able to reinvest it and make further profits. By placing downward pressure on workers’ wages, the capitalist extracts sufficient surplus value to be able to do this.

But when the capitalist is unable to sufficiently reinvest (due to declining demand for commodities, a lack of investment opportunities and markets, etc), wealth (capital) over accumulates, devalues and the system goes into crisis. To avoid crisis, capitalism requires constant growth, markets and sufficient demand.

According to writer Ted Reese, the capitalist rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. Although wages and corporate taxes have been slashed, the exploitability of labour was increasingly insufficient to meet the demands of capital accumulation.

By late 2019, many companies could not generate sufficient profit. Falling turnover, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.

Economic growth was weakening in the run up to the massive stock market crash in February 2020, which saw trillions more pumped into the system in the guise of ‘COVID relief’.

To stave off crisis up until that point, various tactics had been employed.

Credit markets were expanded and personal debt increased to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages were squeezed. Financial deregulation occurred and speculative capital was allowed to exploit new areas and investment opportunities. At the same time, stock buy backs, the student debt economy, quantitative easing and massive bail outs and subsidies and an expansion of militarism helped to maintain economic growth.

There was also a ramping up of an imperialist strategy that has seen indigenous systems of production abroad being displaced by global corporations and states pressurised to withdraw from areas of economic activity, leaving transnational players to occupy the space left open.

While these strategies produced speculative bubbles and led to an overevaluation of assets and increased both personal and government debt, they helped to continue to secure viable profits and returns on investment.

But come 2019, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King warned that the world was sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that would have devastating consequences. He argued that the global economy was stuck in a low growth trap and recovery from the crisis of 2008 was weaker than that after the Great Depression.

King concluded that it was time for the Federal Reserve and other central banks to begin talks behind closed doors with politicians.

That is precisely what happened as key players, including BlackRock, the world’s most powerful investment fund, got together to work out a strategy going forward. This took place in the lead up to COVID.

Aside from deepening the dependency of poorer countries on Western capital, Fabio Vighi says lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions allowed the US Fed to flood the ailing financial markets (under the guise of COVID) with freshly printed money while shutting down the real economy to avoid hyperinflation. Lockdowns suspended business transactions, which drained the demand for credit and stopped the contagion.

COVID provided cover for a multi-trillion-dollar bailout for the capitalist economy that was in meltdown prior to COVID. Despite a decade or more of ‘quantitative easing’, this new bailout came in the form of trillions of dollars pumped into financial markets by the US Fed (in the months prior to March 2020) and subsequent ‘COVID relief’.

The IMF, World bank and global leaders knew full well what the impact on the world’s poor would be of closing down the world economy through COVID-related lockdowns. Yet they sanctioned it and there is now the prospect that in excess of a quarter of a billion more people worldwide will fall into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 alone.

In April 2020, the Wall Street Journal stated the IMF and World Bank faced a deluge of aid requests from scores of poorer countries seeking bailouts and loans from financial institutions with $1.2 trillion to lend.

In addition to helping to reboot the financial system, closing down the global economy deliberately deepened poorer countries’ dependency on Western global conglomerates and financial interests.

Lockdowns also helped accelerate the restructuring of capitalism that involves smaller enterprises being driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies and global chains, thereby ensuring continued viable profits for Big Tech, the digital payments giants and global online corporations like Meta and Amazon and the eradication of millions of jobs.

Although the effects of the conflict in Ukraine cannot be dismissed, with the global economy now open again, inflation is rising and causing a ‘cost of living’ crisis. With a debt-ridden economy, there is limited scope for rising interest rates to control inflation.

But this crisis is not inevitable: current inflation is not only induced by the liquidity injected into the financial system but also being fuelled by speculation in food commodity markets and corporate greed as energy and food corporations continue to rake in vast profits at the expense of ordinary people.

Resistance

However, resistance is fertile.

Aside from the many anti-restriction/pro-freedom rallies during COVID, we are now seeing a more strident trade unionism coming to the fore – in Britain at least – led by media savvy leaders like Mick Lynch, general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), who know how to appeal to the public and tap into widely held resentment against soaring cost of living rises.

Teachers, health workers and others could follow the RMT into taking strike action.

Lynch says that millions of people in Britain face lower living standards and the stripping out of occupational pensions. He adds:

COVID has been a smokescreen for the rich and powerful in this country to drive down wages as far as they can.

Just like a decade of imposed ‘austerity’ was used to achieve similar results in the lead up to COVID.

The trade union movement should now be taking a leading role in resisting the attack on living standards and further attempts to run-down state-provided welfare and privatise what remains. The strategy to wholly dismantle and privatise health and welfare services seems increasingly likely given the need to rein in (COVID-related) public debt and the trend towards AI, workplace automisation and worklessness.

This is a real concern because, following the logic of capitalism, work is a condition for the existence of the labouring classes. So, if a mass labour force is no longer deemed necessary, there is no need for mass education, welfare and healthcare provision and systems that have traditionally served to reproduce and maintain labour that capitalist economic activity has required.

In 2019, Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused British government ministers of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population” in the decade following the 2008 financial crash.

Alston stated:

As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes’ prediction risks becoming the new reality.

Post-COVID, Alston’s words carry even more weight.

As this article draws to a close, news is breaking that Boris Johnson has resigned as prime minister. A remarkable PM if only for his criminality, lack of moral foundation and double standards – also applicable to many of his cronies in government.

With this in mind, let’s finish where we began.

I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie… For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.

— The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), p. 275.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

No chronology on this would be sufficient.  But the recent turn of events has been something verging on spectacular.  There was partygate, which demonstrated the fullness of contempt shown by the Prime Minister and his staff to their constituents.  In April, he was fined for breaking his government’s own lockdown rules, having attended a gathering for his birthday in June 2020.  He also apologised for attending a “bring your own booze” party held in the Downing Street garden during the first lockdown.  Despite showing some contrition, he believed, for the most part, that he had been following the rules and operating within them.

The occasion led to fines aplenty, though even the Police, at some point, drew a line underneath the sad and sorry saga.  Sue Gray, the senior civil servant tasked with investigating a series of social events held by political staff, came up with a grave conclusion.  “The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture.”

On June 16, the Tory leader survived a no-confidence vote from his own party, in which four out of ten parliamentarians voted against him.  Most PMs would have made a hasty exit.  Not Johnson, who seemed quixotically willing to make his last stand.

Then came the by-election losses in Tiverton and Honiton and Wakefield of June 23rd.  Instead of treating them as symptoms of a malady requiring treatment, Johnson simply put them down to the UK “facing pressures on the cost of living” and the fact that “in mid-term, governments post-war lose by-elections.”

The latest, and typically seedy entry in the scandals inventory, was the sexual harassment imbroglio involving Chris Pincher (“Pincher by name, Pincher by nature,” Johnson is said to have quipped).  As Conservative deputy-chief whip, he went to a private members’ club in London on June 29, got sozzled and was accused of groping two men.

A number of sexual assault allegations followed, some duly dusted for the occasion.  Despite a formal complaint being made against Pincher, Johnson denied knowledge of the “specific allegations”.  Not so, suggested former civil servant, Lord McDonald, seeing that he briefed the PM about it.  True to form, Johnson subsequently admitted he had been told in 2019, and regretted appointing Pincher to the party position in the first place.

Over the course of 48 hours, the Tory front bench was dramatically thinned of members.  Law makers and government officials left in an exodus of calculated and self-interested disaffection.  Stripped of support from across the most powerful figures in the party, the decision was made.

The resignation speech exuded reluctance, sounding more like a resume pitch for a return to the job.  It reflected the spectacular tone-deafness of his rule, with Johnson going so far as to lament those “Darwinian” rules that govern Westminster politics, driven by the hungry, remorseless “herd”.  The herd had moved and found their quarry.

Johnson extolled his government’s pandemic response on the vaccine front despite incompetence and bungling that led to the deaths of tens of thousands during the pre-vaccine phase.  Confused health directions on everything from mask wearing to whether Christmas might go ahead as usual, did not help.  When those responses firmed up in the form of strict lockdown rules, Johnson, his colleagues, and advisors flouted them with condescension and arrogance.

While being self-congratulatory on his own Brexit record, the report card is far from glowing.  Despite advertising the deal to electors as “oven ready”, the withdrawal agreement with the EU proved half-baked and raw at the core.

Even after reaching an accord with the EU, his government, last month, introduced plans to override parts of it, thereby threatening relations with the Union, the unity of the United Kingdom and the Irish peace process.  Only Johnson could term scrapping sections of the Protocol, which covers the way goods enter Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, “a relatively trivial set of adjustments.”

There was little chance Johnson would leave Ukraine out of his resignation speech.  Detractors, and even some of those sympathetic to him, had noticed how willingly he seemed to extol the virtues of Ukraine as each crisis engulfed him.  He was the first leader of any major Western nation state to visit Kyiv, and also pledged a number of weapons, including the Javelin and NLAW missiles, and M270 precision-guided rocket launchers.

Another largely neglected legacy of the Johnson years should be noted.  Domestically, his conduct in centralising power during the course of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic at the expense of Parliament has emboldened the executive arm of government and damaged accountability.  In August 2019, he suspended, or prorogued Parliament for 5 weeks, just prior to the return of MPs from the summer recess.  The following month, the UK Supreme Court declared the prorogation unlawful.  “It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason – let alone good reason – to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks”.

Through the course of his political career, Johnson never changed.  He had his supporters, his conspirators, his plotters.  He stayed true to his lies, abject opportunism and tabloid-styled villainy.  His administration proved rotten, but so were the various figures that gave him succour, including the indignant former advisor Dominic Cummings who now plays the role of stone-thrower in chief against his former boss.

Even now, some journalists and commentators detected throbbing notes of magnanimity and grace in his resignation speech, showing again how a profession that Johnson himself corrupted with such glee cannot be trusted to assess this legacy.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In no small measure, the agreement between London and Kigali emulates the “Pacific Solution”, a venal response formulated by the Australian government to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat and create a two-tiered approach to assessing asylum claims.  The centrepiece of the 2001 policy was the transfer of such arrivals to Pacific outposts in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and Nauru, where they would have no guarantee of being settled in Australia.  Despite being scrapped by the Labor Rudd government at the end of 2007, the policy was reinstated by a politically panicked Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2012 under what was billed the Pacific Solution Mark II.

The victory of the conservative Liberal-National Party coalition in the 2013 elections led to its most cruel manifestation.  Operation Sovereign Borders, as the policy came to be known, cast a shroud of military secrecy over intercepting boats and initiating towaways.  The crude, if simple slogan, popularised by the Abbott government, was “Stop the Boats”.  Such sadistic policies were justified as honourable ones: preventing drownings at sea; disrupting the “people smuggler model”.  In truth, the approach merely redirected the pathways of arrival while doing little by way of discouraging the smugglers.

More measures followed: the creation of a specifically dedicated border force kitted out for violence; the passage of legislation criminalising whistleblowers for revealing squalid, torturous camp conditions featuring self-harm, suicide and sexual abuse.

Inspired by such a punitive example despite its gross failings and astronomical cost (the Australian policy saw a single asylum seeker’s detention bill come to $AU3.4 million) , the Johnson government has been parroting the same themes in what the UK Home Office called, misleadingly, a “world first partnership” to combat the “global migration crisis”.  The partnership sought to “address” the “shared international challenge of illegal migration and break the business model of smuggling gangs.”  Not once did it refer to the right to asylum which exists irrespective of the mode of travel or arrival.

Johnson also reiterated the theme of targeting those “vile people smugglers” who have turned the ocean into a “watery graveyard”, failing to mention that such individuals serve to also advance the right of seeking asylum.  More on point was his remark that compassion might be “infinite but our capacity to help people is not.”

If one is to believe the Home Office, sending individuals to Rwanda or, as it puts it, “migrants who make dangerous or illegal journeys” is a measure of some generosity.  Successful applicants “will then be supported to build a new and prosperous life in one of the fastest-growing economies, recognised globally for its record on welcoming and integrating migrants.”

Rwanda is certainly going to benefit with a generous bribe of £120 million, slated for “economic development and growth”, while it will also receive funding for “asylum operations, accommodation and integration similar to the costs incurred in the UK for these services.”

The country will also take some pride in sidestepping its own less than savoury human rights records, which boasts a résumé of extrajudicial killings, torture, unlawful or arbitrary detention, suspicious deaths in custody and an aggressive approach to dissidents.  In 2018, Rwanda security forces were responsible for killing at least 12 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  They had been protesting a cut to their food rations.  Various survivors were then arrested and prosecuted for charges ranging from rebellion to “spreading false information with intent to create a hostile international opinion against the Rwandan state.”

The UK-Rwandan partnership also perpetuates old libels in discrediting cross-Channel crossers as purely economic migrants who somehow forfeit their right to fair assessment.  Emilie McDonnell of Human Rights Watch UK dispels this myth, noting Home Office data and information gathered via freedom of information laws that 61% of migrants who travel by boat are likely to remain in the UK after claiming asylum.  The Refugee Council, in an analysis of Channel crossings and asylum outcomes between January 2020 and June 2021, noted that 91% of those making the journey came from 10 countries where human rights abuses are acknowledged as extensive.

Refugees and asylum seekers are the stuff of political value, rising and falling like stocks depending on the government of the day.  For Johnson, the agreement with Rwanda was also a chance to preoccupy the newspaper columns and an irate blogosphere with another talking point.  “Sending refugees to Rwanda,” claimed The Mirror, “is the political equivalent of a distraction burglary, only less subtle and infinitely more criminal.”

The event in question supposedly warranting that hideous distraction was serious enough.  Johnson, along with his wife Carrie and UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, were all found to have breached government COVID-19 emergency laws and fined by the police.  In the history books, this is already being written up as the “partygate affair”, which featured a number of socialising events conducted by staff as the rest of the country endured severe lockdown restrictions.  Those same history books will also note that the prime minister and chancellor are both pioneers in facing police-mandated penalties.

Johnson’s own blotting took place on June 19, 2020, when he held a birthday gathering in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street.  “In all frankness, at that time,” he reasoned, “it did not occur to me that this might have been a breach of the rules”.  With such a perspective on legality and breaches, the Rwanda deal seems a logical fit, heedless of human rights, a violation of dignity, a potential risk to life and a violation of international refugee law.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On March 12, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior announced the execution of 81 Saudi and non-Saudi nationals, bringing the total of those put to death by Riyadh in 2022 to 92.  The last grand bout of killing was in 2019, when 37 people, including 33 Shi’a men, were put to death after being convicted by customarily dubious trials.

Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, claimed that this orgy of state killing was “all the more chilling in light of Saudi Arabia’s deeply flawed justice system, which metes out death sentences following trials that are grossly and blatantly unfair, including basing verdicts on ‘confessions’ extracted under torture or other ill-treatment.”

Another sordid feature of the system described by Maalouf is the tendency of authorities to underreport the number of trials that result in death sentences being meted out.  Death row, in other words, is a burgeoning feature of the Kingdom’s repertoire.

The executed victims were convicted of a whole miscellany of charges.  According to Human Rights Watch, 41 of the men, as has become a standard practice, were of the Shi’a group. The crimes ranged from murder, links to foreign terrorist groups and the vaguely worded offence of “monitoring and targeting officials and expatriates”.  Other offences included planting landmines, the attempted killing of police officers, the targeting of “vital economic sites” and weapons smuggling “to destabilize security, sow discord and unrest, and cause riots and chaos”.

Mohammad al-Shakhouri, sentenced to death on February 21 last year, was accused of violent acts while participating in anti-government protests.  Through the course of detention and interrogation, he lacked legal representation.  His family were not permitted to see him till eight months after his arrest.

The judge of the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) overseeing his trial took only qualified interest in the evidence submitted by the accused that he had been tortured.  He had also lost most of his teeth due to the handiwork of security officers.  Al-Shakouri’s withdrawal of the worthless confession extracted under such pressure meant that he was given a discretionary death sentence.

In addition to al-Shakouri, Human Rights Watch also noted that in four other cases – Aqeel al-Faraj, Morada al-Musa, Yasin al-Brahim and Asad al-Shibr – due process violations were rife.  All spoke of torture and ill-treatment under interrogations; all claimed that their confessions had been extracted under duress.

These state killing sprees are not out of the ordinary in Saudi Arabia.  On January 2, 2016, 47 people were executed, the largest since 1980.  A prominent figure in the death list was Shi’a cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a critic of the House of Saud.  He died along with other members of the Shiite community and captives accused of terrorist related charges after, in the words of the Interior Ministry, much “reason, moderation and dialogue”.

The governing formula for Saudi Arabia’s rulers has been to maintain an iron hand over protest and dissent while fashioning Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a visionary reformer.  In 2020, the same petulant figure behind the brutal murder of the journalist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, gave signals that a generous resort to the death penalty would be stopped.  Islamic scripture would guide the future use of capital punishment.

This was hardly reassuring.  The legal reforms announced on February 8, 2021, which include the first written penal code for discretionary crimes – those under Islamic law not defined in writing and not carrying pre-determined penalties – is being undertaken without civil society involvement.  This promises to be a very top-down affair.

The calendar events of state inflicted death may well cause outrage, but governments and companies continue to deal with the Kingdom with business-minded confidence.  Unlike the treatment now handed out to Russia, there has never been a mass cancellation of its officials from public appearances for its butcheries, be they legally sanctioned at home, or in such theatres in Yemen. Anger and disapproval, if expressed, are only done so in moderation.  Debates about the death penalty remain confined to such theatres as the UN General Assembly.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with typically bad timing, also showed why Riyadh has nothing to be worried about when it comes to its treatment of dissidents and convicts.  The UK continues to find the Saudis appreciative of made-in-Britain weapons, which are used readily in the war against the Houthis in Yemen.

The priority now is less reforming barbaric legal measures than finding alternative energy suppliers.  Johnson hopes to wean Britain and Western countries off their “addiction” to Russia’s hydrocarbons.  “We need to talk to other producers around the world about how we can move away from that dependency.”

This entailed a visit to the Kingdom, which Johnson gave no indication of calling off.  Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute, is very much in support of this morally bankrupt calculus.  “The realpolitik of this situation is that to free ourselves from our dependence on Russian fossil fuels, we will have to turn a blind eye to other evils in other regimes.”

The trip proved fruitless.  The Prime Minister failed to secure an agreement to increase oil production, a point brushed aside in Downing Street by a spokesman’s platitudes.  “Both the Crown Prince of the UAE and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia agreed to work closely with us to maintain stability in the energy market and continue the transition to renewable and clean technology.”

So cocky has Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince become, he even refused to take the call of US President Joe Biden on opening negotiations on the rising oil prices. And he can point out that allied countries such as the United States still maintain capital punishment in their chest of judicial weapons against the errant and deviant.  Things have never looked better for the murderous schemer.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Let us begin a conversation in response to what currently qualifies as the most profound question, the one that needs most urgently to be addressed if we are to have any chance of understanding what we conveniently refer to as the “Ukraine crisis.” This is, more accurately, a planetary crisis—close in magnitude to the near-certainty of species extinction within the next century, but in some ways ahead of secondary catastrophes such as the obscene, raging inequality between peoples and nations unleashed by President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, and the global conglomerations of immense corporate and plutocratic power.

Why is it, then, that the three most important power alliances of the Western and Eurasian worlds—North America, led by the United States alongside its “Trudeauesque” poodle and with the problematic connivance of Mexico’s López Obrador; the European Union and post-Brexit UK; and the Russian Federation, in wobbly alliance with China—consider it worthwhile to suffer intensification of the risks of nuclear annihilation? This, in the face of an abundance of routes available for peaceful settlement, given a minimum of goodwill and genuine humanitarian concern?

In the case of Russia, we know very well what these reasons are because Russia has told us—clearly, consistently, loudly, and transparently—for more than 15 years. First and foremost, Russia resents the West’s violation of its unmistakable and supremely important pledge to President Gorbachev in 1990 that the power of NATO would not move one further inch eastward. Secretary of State James Baker gave this commitment at least three times on February 9 that year. This was in return for Russian acquiescence to the tragic error of German reunification, paving the way for an accelerating renaissance of an aggressively militarized and potentially neo-Nazi European hegemon.

President George H. W. Bush (left) with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (right) in 1989. (Credit: theguardian.com)

Yet in place of the 16 members of NATO that existed in 1990, we today have 30, and Ukraine is more and more desperately knocking on the door, conceivably to be followed by Georgia, Finland and Sweden. Current U.S. President Joe Biden, whose son enjoyed a senior place on the board of Ukraine energy giant Burisma, played a key role in that process of enlargement. The U.S. and Russia possess more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, around 4,000 each.

But the United States has deployed its weapons far closer to Russia than Russia has deployed weapons close to the U.S. (each power also has fleets of nuclear submarines: in 2018 the U.S. had 14, against Russia’s 12). The United States has positioned nuclear defense/offense capabilities close to Russian borders in countries such as Poland and Romania. There are between 160 and 240 U.S. atomic bombs in NATO countries, of which 50 to 90 are stored in Turkey, a NATO member. Britain (225) and France (300) have their own sizeable nuclear arsenals.

(Source: atlanticcouncil.org)

Although it is commonly presumed that a nuclear exchange would quickly move from incremental (if there is any moderation at all) to massive, assessments as to how a nuclear war would actually pan out are extremely complicated for both technological and geopolitical reasons. It is not beyond comprehension that a conflict might be confined to so-called low-yield nuclear bombs or mini-nukes. Nor is it at all certain that nuclear weapons will all work as they are supposed to (in fact, it is reasonable to presume they will not). Many uncertainties attend the newest generation of hypersonic missiles. And the functionality of so-called missile defense systems is perhaps most of all in question.

In addition, there is the issue of the weaponization of nuclear reactors, which is to say their conversion into weapons by missile or other form of strike, whether intentional or otherwise. There are 15 reactors in Ukraine, and another 123 in Europe. The U.S. has 93, Russia 38. Not least is the danger of nuclear accident, which almost certainly increases in the context of accelerating tensions between countries at least one of which possesses nuclear weapons or countries that can strike the nuclear facilities or reactors of other countries. There have been at least a dozen or so near misses since the U.S. dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Although their deliberate use by the United States that year is the only time that nuclear weapons have actually been fired in conflict, there have been many instances in which the use of nuclear weapons has been seriously considered. Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone, in their book The Untold History of the United States, relate several instances in which U.S. presidents have given serious consideration to their use. This featured in Winston Churchill’s Operation Unthinkable, formulated within weeks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It contemplated a nuclear strike against Soviet Russia.

The Pentagon developed at least nine such first-strike nuclear war plans before the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in 1949. The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Fortunately, the U.S. did not have sufficient weaponry for the purpose at that time.

(Source: express.co.uk)

In the United States and its allies, Russia confronts an adversary which is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons on another, although this made little concrete difference to the outcome of the Second World War. This is also an adversary which has many times since considered using nuclear weapons again, which tolerates the acquisition of nuclear weapons by its closest allies (e.g., Britain, France, Israel) and bitterly opposes even the faintest possibility of their acquisition by its opponents (e.g., North Korea and Iran).

It is an adversary which fails to keep even its most important promises (e.g., about not allowing NATO to expand), a country which abrogates important treaties (as did Bush in abrogating the ABM treaty in 2002), and which has crowned itself as the rightful hegemon, entitled to crush any power, global or regional, that would dare challenge its hegemonic status (as in the “Wolfowitz doctrine” 1992, progenitor of the Bush doctrine in 2002 by which the U.S. entitles itself to preemptive war).

Paul Wolfowitz (Source: geopoliticsca.ru)

The U.S.’s credibility in international relations is profoundly undermined by: a long history of invasions and occupations of other powers—most egregiously, perhaps, in the case of Afghanistan 2001-2021, or that of Iraq (2003-2021), which can be counted along with many dozens of other instances since World War Two; overt and covert military interventions, with or without the consent of legitimate authorities, often reckless and cruel; fomenting of regime-change “color revolutions” as in Ukraine 2004 and 2014; and universal meddling with elections and political processes as in the activities of organizations such as Cambridge Analytica, and its parent Strategic Communications Limited, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Not least is its equally long-established history of lying, just about everything, but particularly in matters of war. The Pentagon Papers, exposed by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 with respect to the Vietnam War, or the so-called Afghanistan Papers, gathered into book form by Craig Whitlock in 2021, should be sufficient cause for considerable alarm in this respect.

There is a context here of a profound U.S.-led, multi-media and multi-targeted anti-Russia propaganda campaign that dates to the accession to the Russian presidency of Vladimir Putin in 1999-2000. It builds on previous relentless Cold War propaganda against the Soviet Union (which had us all thinking this titanic struggle was all about capitalism versus communism when it was really just about who could steal the most from the developing world), and on an even more distant anti-Russian campaign stretching back at least as far as the Crimean War of 1853-56—all chronicled by Gerald Sussmann, among others, in 2020.

(Source: Russia-now.com)

To this must now be added recent unfounded or presumptive anti-Russian harassment regarding an incessant and unlikely litany of all manner of accusations. These include the shooting down of MH17 in 2014; the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in 2018; purported collusion with Syrian President Assad over the use of chemical weapons; and, the most dramatic fable of all, alleged Russian hacking of DNC/DCCC servers and interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Russia has had every reason for deep distrust of the United States and its NATO and European allies. In addition, as I have chronicled elsewhere, we must take account of US/EU/NATO abetment to the illegal Euromaidan coup d’état of 2014 that was staged against a democratically elected president in 2014, just months away from scheduled elections, and whose muscle was provided by long-established Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements implicated in the assassinations of hundreds of protestors in Kiev and Odessa. To secure “legitimacy” and to stuff the coup legislature with their own people, the new leaders were obliged to ban the country’s major political parties, including the Party of the Regions and the Communist Party.

Scene from the 2014 Euromaidan coup. (Source: inquiriesjournal.com)

Terrified by the anti-Russian threats of the coup leaders, the largely pro-Russian population of Crimea (including Sebastopol, Russia’s major Black Sea port, held on long-lease from Ukraine and where Russia was entitled to maintain thousands of soldiers) voted to secede from Ukraine and to seek annexation by Russia.

In the significantly pro-Russian Donbass, citizens established the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Kiev has never deigned to negotiate directly with the republics, with its own citizens, but has instead, having lost the initial war, violently subjected residents to extensive shelling (with most of the casualties taking place in the republics) and spitefully withdrawn all social security protections.

Workers bury the dead in Slovyansk in Eastern Ukraine where mass graves were found (Source: hrw.org)

The republics did not seek annexation by Russia, nor did Russia entertain annexation. Instead, Russia negotiated the Minsk agreements through the “Normandy Round” in 2015-2016. This sought and agreed to greater autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. Unwilling or unable to combat its neo-Nazi extremists, Kiev proved unable to implement Minsk, nor did the international community, other than Russia, exert pressure on Kiev to make it happen.

It would have taken unusual credulity and naivety on the part of Russian leaders not to have concluded by 2022 that the U.S. and, with some exceptions, its NATO and EU allies, were resolutely and unforgivingly hostile to Russia.

Russia, having explored the possibility of accession to NATO in the 1990s and been rejected, resigned to the provocative continuation of NATO not just beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union—the very reason for NATO’s existence—but even beyond the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. It has been targeted close to its borders by U.S./NATO nuclear weapons that are mockingly and ludicrously described as defenses against Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear missiles, and routinely humiliated and threatened by massive annual NATO military exercises along its borders and the Black Sea.

Members of the U.S. Marine Corps perform military exercise in (now Russian-occupied) Kherson on July 28, 2021 (Source: reuters.com)

Further, it has to listen to Ukrainian President and former clown Volodymyr Zelensky plead for speedier access of Ukraine to NATO membership (extending just days ago to a demand for the placement of nuclear weapons in Ukraine) and for a no-fly zone.

As such it could have had no reasonable hope ever to be freed of the scourge of U.S./EU/NATO salivation for the break-up of the Russian Federation and unregulated freedom for Western capital, as prelude to the Western world’s ultimate confrontation with China.

Whether Russian military exercises on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine from the end of 2021 were intended from the beginning as a platform for invasion is not clear. The invasion may have been provoked by the intensification of Ukrainian army assaults against the Donbass.

Incessant, even hysterical, U.S. warnings of a Russian invasion may themselves have provoked exactly that outcome if it seemed to Russia that the United States was determined to stage any kind of provocation that would have made it impossible for Russia to resist.

Presuming, surely correctly, that the U.S./NATO has long expected and salivated for a conflict that would provide sufficient pretext for the extermination of the Russian Federation, Russia decided on a measure of preemptive advantage at a singular moment when Russia possibly enjoys nuclear superiority over the West because of its further advance (at budgets a small fraction of those enjoyed by its adversary, whose military procurement practices are rife with corruption) of hypersonic missiles and a developing alliance with China.

Putin has indicated willingness to keep moving until Russia conquers the entire territory of Ukraine. The more he can acquire, the more he can negotiate with. At the time of writing the areas under control resemble the buffer zone created by Turkey along its border with northwestern Syria and by the U.S. along Syria’s northeastern border. This seizure of the land of a sovereign nation to add to Turkish security from what it regards as the Kurdish threat, and which it is using to hold the most extremist jihadist groups that the West and others have exploited in their efforts to destabilize the Syrian government, did not occasion the squeals of indignation from Western media that we now hear from them with regard to Ukraine.

Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine as of March 1, 2022 (Source: bbc.com)

Nor did the U.S. grab for Syria’s oil fields, and for its most fertile agricultural land, under proxy Kurdish control. And when the refugees from the U.S. wars of choice in Iraq, Syria and Libya reached the gates of Europe they were inhumanely humiliated and turned away (even allowing for a surprising measure of German generosity). Unlike whiter refugees from Ukraine into Poland and other neighbors. The oozing hypocrisy of Western self-righteousness is merely par for the course.

These considerations therefore help us to understand Russian preparedness to risk nuclear conflict. Indeed, it is possible that for Russia there is now no going back on the path to potential Armageddon. The decision to avert catastrophe has been thrown resolutely into the Western court. But what about the U.S. and its European allies? They are not in too great a hurry for the ultimate wet dream of Russian dissolution, although sooner would likely be more gratifying than later. For the moment, the conflict is well worth it, for as long as it is only Ukrainians who pay the ultimate price. Zelensky’s greatest folly has been to recklessly offer his country and its people as ground zero for World War Three.

Volodymyr Zelensky (Source: marca.com)

Short-term benefits for the West include a potential fillip to Joe Biden’s otherwise steep decline in domestic popularity. War has been the eternal answer to internal instability. It is too soon to say that the Ukraine crisis will help bridge the gulf between Democrats and Republicans, but there is a chance of some measure of healing, perhaps just enough to weaken the hold of the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party.

This in turn could be deeply reassuring to the military-industrial complex (or, as Ray McGovern calls it, the MICIMATT—the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academic-think tank complex) whose distrust for Trump’s wavering on Putin provided fertile ground for the success of the Clinton campaign’s fabrication of the Russiagate saga.

Although Biden followed up on a shockingly incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021—alongside signs of a final exit from Iraq and from Syria—with a multi-billion dollar increase in the military budget, he has since advocated a further increase of 8% in 2022-2023.

Since this is close to the rate of inflation, the weapons lobby will doubtless require another 4% or so, if they are being modest (unlikely), and a sharp increase in European tension will not only boost their cause for a further budget increase but will greatly incentivize the demand for weapons for years to come.

The bloated U.S. 17-agency Intelligence community and its underworld of private contractors will be delighted that, for the first time in a generation, their intelligence (on the Russian invasion, at least) has been perceived by many to be correct, and that, for the first time in a generation, it is not a U.S. war of choice that must be lied about. Such a glorious moment of self-righteousness will go far in the propaganda business. So long as Intelligence can manipulate and coopt corporate, plutocratic, mainstream media, the extent and depth of previous U.S. evils need never prove an obstacle to beating the drums for perpetual war. The mainstream media can be relied upon to foreshorten the narrative, pull in the context, focus on only one side, demonize and personalize. Intelligence will always help with fabrication of what counts as “real.”

The Ukraine crisis upends the energy markets in a way that puts even broader smiles on the faces of fossil-fuel bosses. The forced closure of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to the rest of Europe will create an involuntary European appetite for (more expensive) U.S. LNG exports.

(Source: nationalworld.com)

The brunt of energy price increases will be suffered more by Europe than by the United States. Combined with growing European dependence on the U.S., the impoverishment of Europe is to the U.S.’s advantage, under the scope of the Wolfowitz doctrine, and sustains the buffer between Russia and the continental U.S. Pressure on the U.S. to return to a policy of self-sufficiency in energy will reinvigorate public tolerance for fracking and drilling, for pipelines and spills and fires (if the world is going to end in any case.).

On the downside, from a U.S. perspective, higher energy prices will boost the Russian economy and sustain its servicing of Chinese and other Asian markets, provided they can work around U.S. sanctions (they will).

Ukraine is a test of Chinese resolve in its move toward Russia, reminding it of the economic threats to Chinese interests from U.S. sanctions in countries of the Belt and Road initiative. But this will not be sufficient to shift China from what must surely be its conclusion that the United States is irredeemably wedded to the vision of a perpetually unipolar U.S. world.

In Europe, the crisis will help Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson escape decapitation over the embarrassment of the “Partygate” scandal. It has already enhanced President Macron’s bid to appear statesmanlike in the face of upcoming elections in April, and his ability to ward off threats from the extreme right. But mainly, the crisis will benefit Germany which, in recent years, has broken free of its punitive post-war chains not only to burnish its long-established economic primacy but to rebuild and modernize its military, and to send arms to Ukraine. The sleazy proto-fascist governments of several new East European and former Soviet Union governments will feel similarly enabled and justified.

But all these short-term outcomes notwithstanding, nobody should discount the possibility, short of a robust peace agreement, of nuclear war. If not a nuclear war, then prepare for a protracted global recession, if not depression.

The sorrowful-but-gritty public faces of Europe’s equivalent to MICIMATT—Europe’s financial, plutocratic, military and intelligence elites—are President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron, it will be their faces we need to first scrutinize for a heads-up as to whether, finally, there is to be a public climb-down in the face of Russia’s nuclear checkmate. For that, indeed, is what it appears to be.

• First published in CovertAction Magazine

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Oliver Boyd-Barrett.

The intoxicant that is war tends to besot its promoters, however balanced they might claim to be.  On February 21, the Australian public broadcaster, the ABC, seemed to embrace a subliminal message in its programming, notably on the issue of war.  The standard reference?  The outbreak of the Second World War.  September 1939.  Poor Poland, and benighted UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

The blind, the daft and the reality television viewer may have missed the programming point, but others could not have.  Russian forces are posed on the borders of Ukraine.  In the presses of Australasia, Europe and the United States, there is more talk of war than that of diplomacy.  There is the prospect of much death and many body bags.  Instead of running documentaries, statements or messages on how war might be averted, thereby yielding the floor to diplomacy, the message of conflict has become inexorably clear.

This is perhaps the most visibly sickening feature of the enterprise.  It is a reminder that war has a seductiveness, acts as a paralytic agent, dulling sensibility whilst arousing other senses.  The opposite is never as inspiring because it is always constructively dull: negotiations, peace, averting death and the cracking of skulls.  Best encourage powers to shred a few people, slaughter the residents of a village or two, and crow about the evils of the enemy.  Add some political garnish: they died in the name of democracy; they were killed because they needed to be enlightened by the rules-based order.

The message of war was promoted with unbending consistency when it came to the certifiably criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003 by US-led forces.  It was very much in keeping with the rules-based order according to President George W. Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Australia’s own yappy John Howard.  War would take place, whatever the evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities.

Having decided that invading Iraq would be good copy, the Murdoch Press Empire went to work softening minds and adding Viagra to war adventurism.  Of the stable of papers run by Rupert Murdoch, only one of the 175 – the Hobart Mercury – supported the war.  The project certainly bore rewards in terms of moving opinion.  A Gallup International survey’s findings released on February 4, 2003 revealed that 68 percent of Australians backed military action against Iraq.  Of those Australians surveyed, 89 percent expected war to be imminent.  This was, pure and simple, an incitement to conflict, a hardening of the resolve.

While it is not NATO, or the United States, that is contemplating an invasion of Ukraine, a country meshed with Russian history and influence, the language of predictability, the undeviating lingo of war, has come to heavily shade the workings of diplomacy.  In London, Washington and Canberra, we are already seeing the position that war will take place.

Speaking to CBS, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was as good as convinced that “provocations created by the Russian or separatist forces over the weekend, false flag operations” suggested a state of advanced preparedness for invasion.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in his address to the Munich Security Conference, conceded to not fully knowing “what President [Vladimir] Putin intends but the omens are grim and that is why we must stand strong together.”  Should Russia invade, Johnson promised, Russian individuals would be sanctioned, along with “companies of strategic importance to the Russian state”.  Raising capital on London capital markets would be made all but impossible “and we will open up the matryoshka dolls of Russian-owned companies and Russian -owned entities to find the ultimate beneficiaries within.”

Western press outlets are also aiding in this, using, for the most part, images and material of moving tanks and personnel supplied by the Russian Ministry of Defence.  Even mocking opinions expressed by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the “invasion date” have been spun as tangible proofs of coming war.

As New Lines Magazine points out, “the West is doing such an eloquent job of broadcasting the reality of Russian military might” for the Putin regime.  In a conversation with one of the magazine’s authors, the editor of a British “mid-market tabloid” thought that “this invasion stuff is probably all nonsense.”  But no matter.  “Boris needs this to run and run.”

The headlines and titles of various papers are all too drearily reminiscent of 2003.  “We may be just hours away from war in Europe,” shrieked Mark Almond on February 15 in the Daily Mail.  Some hours have passed since then, but there is no sign of the journalist being held accountable for this nakedly hysterical effusion.

The Scottish Sun was even more blood thirstily confident, with its February 13 issue trumpeting that there was “48 hours to war.”  Moscow’s “bombing blitz may be early as Tuesday after Prez talks deadlock.”  That same day, The Sunday Telegraph insisted that Russia was plotting an imminent “‘false flag attack to provoke war.”

The script for invasion, in other words, has already been written, and not necessarily or entirely from the pen of the Russian leader.  The pieces are all in place: the assumption of invasion, the promised implementation of sanctions and limits on raising finance, and strong condemnation.  A fever has taken hold, and it promises to carry away much life and sensibility.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Nothing is more counter-intuitive than the effort to isolate, cripple and strangulate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.  For all the talk about terrorism and concerns about failing regimes, the Biden Administration is doing every bit to make this regime fail and encourage the outcome it decries. Along the way, a humanitarian catastrophe is in the making.

Prior to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, foreign aid constituted a mainstay of the economy, covering roughly three-quarters of public spending.  After August 15, an almost immediate cessation of funding took place, led by the United States, and those less than noble institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  But it did not stop there.  Billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s own funds were frozen.  (For the US alone, this amounted to $9.4 billion.)

This particularly nasty bit of statecraft was justified by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as necessary to coerce the Taliban into good conduct.  Releasing such reserves was “no guarantee that the Taliban will actually use it effectively to solve problems.”

Johnson should know, given his government’s profligate tendency of waste and dissoluteness during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Ever one to relish hypocrisy, he claimed that Britain and its allies needed “to ensure that that country does not slip back into being a haven for terrorism and a narco-state.”  Ironically, the sanctions and asset freezing regime will be an incitement to just that.

The move did not only paralyse the Central Bank of Afghanistan but impose dramatic limits on the use of bank accounts by Afghans.  Loans have been left unrepaid, the amount in deposits has declined, and the liquidity crisis has become acute.  In November 2021, the UN Development Programme observed that the economic cost of a banking collapse in the country “would be colossal.”

The UNDP also remarked that the banking situation had to be “resolved quickly to improve Afghanistan’s limited production capacity and prevent the banking system from collapsing.”  Unfortunately, the organisation’s Afghanistan head, Abdallah al Dardari, was wishing to do the impossible.  “We need to find a way to make sure that if we support the banking sector, we are not supporting the Taliban.”

This foggy-headed reasoning typifies much policy towards Afghanistan, dooming humanitarian programs and other measures of assistance.  It also renders Washington, and its allies, culpable in fostering famine, starvation, and death.  As long as they can focus their attention on the wickedness, and lack of competence, of the Taliban regime, this monumental bit of callous gangsterism can be justified.  The Afghan civilian can thereby be divorced from the government official disliked and disapproved of by foreign powers.

With pestilential force, this contorted line of thinking finds its way into the heart of the US State Department, which has expressed its desire to cooperate with the UNDP and other institutions “to find ways to offer liquidity, to infuse, to see to it that the people of Afghanistan can take advantage of international support in ways that don’t flow into the coffers of the Taliban”.

In January, the crisis was becoming so grave as to compel the UN Secretary General António Guterres to describe a landscape of catastrophe: the selling of babies to feed siblings, freezing health facilities overrun by crowds of malnourished children and people “burning their possessions to keep warm.”  Without a full-fledged effort by the international community, the Secretary warned, “virtually every man, woman and child in Afghanistan could face acute poverty.”

A modest request was made: that Afghanistan receive $5 billion in aid.  The UN chief has also urged the release of international funding to pay the salaries of public sector workers and aid the distribution of health care, education “and other vital services.”

The international community, or at least a portion of it, is certainly not listening.  Sanctions continue to be the mainstay of the treatment of Afghanistan, as orchestrated through the UN Security Council.  Perversely, this is done, in the words of the Australian Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs to “promote the peace, stability and security of Afghanistan.”  This is darkly witty stuff indeed, given that sanctions are, by their very purpose, designed to destabilise and target governments, while impoverishing the populace and creating desperation.

What President Biden has done this month is tinker with the freezing order by decreeing the release of $7 billion.  But there is a huge catch: half of the funds will be reserved to satisfy legal claims brought by the families of US 9/11 victims; the rest will be placed in a designated humanitarian fund for Afghanistan.  In doing so, a foreign government has effectively determined how to deal with a country’s national assets and foreign reserves, effectively initiating a de facto theft.

Many a famine and societal collapse has been a product of engineered circumstances.  “This impending mass murder of Afghan civilians,” argue the undersigned luminaries of a note published in CounterPunch, “is preventable.”  For those on a list including Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk and Tariq Ali, the Biden Administration should “immediately end these cruel and inhumane policies by lifting the sanctions, unfreezing Afghanistan’s foreign assets, and increasing humanitarian aid.”

For those wedded to the canard and moral excitement of the “rules-based” order, causing a degree of horrendous harm comes as second nature.  Having lost Afghanistan, as every great power has tended to do, revenge is being sought.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

“Why is Boris Johnson making false claims about Starmer and Savile?” runs a headline in the news pages of the Guardian. It is just one of a barrage of indignant recent stories in the British media, rushing to the defence of the opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

The reason? Last week the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, blamed Starmer, now the Labour party leader, for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, a TV presenter and serial child abuser, when his case came under police review in 2009. Between 2008 and 2013, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Savile died in 2011 before he could face justice.

Johnson accused Starmer, who at the time was Director of Public Prosecutions, of wasting “his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile”.

The sudden chorus of outrage at Johnson impugning Starmer’s reputation is strange in many different ways. It is not as though Johnson has a record of good behaviour. His whole political persona is built on the idea of his being a rascal, a clown, a chancer.

He is also a well-documented liar. Few, least of all in the media, cared much about his pattern of lying until now. Indeed, most observers have long pointed out that his popularity was based on his mischief-making and his populist guise as an anti-establishment politician. No one, apart from his political opponents, seemed too bothered.

And it is also not as though there are not lots of other, more critically important things relating to Johnson to be far more enraged about, even before we consider his catastrophic handling of the pandemic, and his raiding of the public coffers to enrich his crony friends and party donors.

Jumping ship

Johnson is currently embroiled in the so-called “partygate” scandal. He  attended – and his closest officials appear to have organised – several gatherings at his residence in Downing Street in 2020 and 2021 at a time when the rest of the country was under strict lockdown. For the first time the public mood has shifted against Johnson.

My latest: The media's watchdog role is an illusion. The current scandal over Boris Johnson's lockdown parties reveals just how dependent journalists are on government https://t.co/BxykcG3qfc

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 21, 2022

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

“Why is Boris Johnson making false claims about Starmer and Savile?” runs a headline in the news pages of the Guardian. It is just one of a barrage of indignant recent stories in the British media, rushing to the defence of the opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

The reason? Last week the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, blamed Starmer, now the Labour party leader, for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, a TV presenter and serial child abuser, when his case came under police review in 2009. Between 2008 and 2013, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Savile died in 2011 before he could face justice.

Johnson accused Starmer, who at the time was Director of Public Prosecutions, of wasting “his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile”.

The sudden chorus of outrage at Johnson impugning Starmer’s reputation is strange in many different ways. It is not as though Johnson has a record of good behaviour. His whole political persona is built on the idea of his being a rascal, a clown, a chancer.

He is also a well-documented liar. Few, least of all in the media, cared much about his pattern of lying until now. Indeed, most observers have long pointed out that his popularity was based on his mischief-making and his populist guise as an anti-establishment politician. No one, apart from his political opponents, seemed too bothered.

And it is also not as though there are not lots of other, more critically important things relating to Johnson to be far more enraged about, even before we consider his catastrophic handling of the pandemic, and his raiding of the public coffers to enrich his crony friends and party donors.

Jumping ship

Johnson is currently embroiled in the so-called “partygate” scandal. He  attended – and his closest officials appear to have organised – several gatherings at his residence in Downing Street in 2020 and 2021 at a time when the rest of the country was under strict lockdown. For the first time the public mood has shifted against Johnson.

My latest: The media's watchdog role is an illusion. The current scandal over Boris Johnson's lockdown parties reveals just how dependent journalists are on government https://t.co/BxykcG3qfc

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 21, 2022

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Ostensibly, the current furore creates the impression that Britain is a vigorous, functioning democracy where the media serves as a watchdog on power, holding the government to account when it breaks its word or the law, or is exposed for hypocrisy.

Prompted by the media’s revelations, Johnson is now facing scrutiny from Sue Gray, a senior civil servant whose investigation is expected later this month and may plunge him into further trouble. There are demands that the police should investigate too.

The image of an embattled prime minister fending off tenacious reporters is the one being promoted by the media, of course. But it is almost certainly an illusion. Britain is looking far more like a managed democracy, where political and media elites work in partnership to control the flow of information – and decide what remains in the shadows. What we, the public, sees is largely what we are allowed or supposed to see.

Revolving Door

The media’s watchdog role is an illusion. The latest scandal reveals just how dependent journalists are on government

Indications that British democracy is dysfunctional have been apparent for years, but the evidence has grown particularly stark under Johnson. He has been able to exploit the vulnerabilities of a political system whose checks and balances have been hollowed out over decades.

Until relatively recently, the tsunami of often outrageous lies Johnson has told since becoming prime minister barely registered on the media’s radar. It has been outsiders – from the Telegraph’s former political commentator, Peter Oborne, now with Middle East Eye, and lawyer Peter Stefanovic – who have done the legwork to bring these deceptions and fabrications to public attention.

But the sudden onslaught of critical coverage of Johnson over a series of lockdown parties – dubbed “partygate” – risks obscuring this failure and wrongly restoring the media’s reputation for hard-hitting investigations and truth-telling.

The reality is very different. “Partygate” completely undermines any claim the media have to be acting as a watchdog on government. How were the press corps so slow to learn of the regular, rule-breaking parties that took place in Downing Street and elsewhere in Westminster through the lockdowns of 2020 and early 2021?

It is not as if the worlds of politics and media are far apart. There has long been a revolving door policy, with sympathetic journalists, especially senior political correspondents, much in demand by the main parties for their media relations offices.

James Slack joined the Sun newspaper as deputy editor in 2021 after nearly four years serving as a spokesperson for No 10, including during the period of the lockdown-busting parties. His own leaving do also reportedly violated the rules.

As David Yelland, a former Sun editor, observed on Twitter of the original revelations of a lockdown party attended by Johnson at No 10: “I can easily name ten, maybe as many as 20 UK political journalists who must have known or should have known about this Johnson party. Their editors would fire them. Except some of these mates of Boris are editors.”

More parties have come to light since.

Rumour mill

The main job of political correspondents and political editors is to be plugged into the famously indiscreet and backstabbing Westminster rumour mill.

The idea that not one of Britain’s high-powered political journalists heard a peep about the lockdown parties until the first revelations appeared many months later – just before Christmas – stretches credulity to breaking point.

The only serious conclusion to be drawn is that either Britain’s broadcasting and press corps are woefully incompetent, or they turned a blind eye until it became professionally inconvenient to continue doing so. Either possibility is cause for deep concern.

If not one of them was able to dig out one of the many nuggets of dirt on Johnson’s government, what other skeletons are there in Westminster’s closet that they – and we – don’t know about? It means the media are no watchdog at all.

But it is even worse if the media knew about the parties – or had heard rumours about them – but did not bring that information to public notice or failed to ferret out the truth.

Given the intimate professional, and sometimes romantic, connections between media and Westminster circles – the constant gossip, the vendettas – it seems unlikely in the extreme that not one correspondent knew the truth.

But why would they keep the information from us? What possible excuse could there be for such a failure?

Public interest

It is true that there are sometimes technical or legal reasons for journalistic reticence, such as the danger of a defamation suit. But that seems an improbable explanation in this case. Johnson’s government was never going to sue over verifiably true revelations.

In other cases, journalists know things, such as indiscretions by senior politicians, but publication is hard to defend as in the public interest – though that doesn’t stop the tabloids from sometimes seizing a “gotcha” moment.

But again, that was not the issue here. Revelations that the government had broken its own rules – rules designed to protect public health – were most certainly in the public interest.

Doubtless more significant has been the need for journalists to keep sources inside the government happy – sometimes referred to as the problem of “access journalism”. Because political correspondents depend on senior politicians and their staff for juicy tidbits and exclusives, they have every incentive to stay on side.

That is even truer in the case of a prime minister and his or her inner circle – unless the government is already in serious trouble.

Loss of access

Picking such a fight is a very high-risk gamble for any political journalist. He or she can be excluded from briefings and contact with government officials. A political correspondent who loses all access to the government is effectively useless to their news organisation.

An example of a Westminster-media feud going public was the government’s decision to boycott ITV’s Good Morning Britain show after its host, Piers Morgan, began grilling government ministers a little too aggressively over their early failures in the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That was a rare case of the access system breaking down, with the dispute forced out into the open.

Political reporters – in contrast to TV celebrities, such as Morgan – usually play by the rules because they are far more vulnerable to the loss of access and have less to gain from a public confrontation.

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 political editors set the day’s political news agenda. If they upset the prime minister, they risk losing access to the very people who provide them with the vast majority of their stories.

That makes it easy for a powerful prime minister to play them off against each other, making them worried their rivals will be given big stories while they are left out in the cold. That would be career suicide – and governments such as Johnson’s know it.

That is why in practice, political correspondents tend to work as a pack. Either they all go on the attack together, as we see now, or they hold their fire collectively. If one or two break ranks, and the rest stick with the government, the risk-takers can come out of the confrontation professionally savaged, with their careers in ruins.

Rules of the game

But there is a further reason why political reporters are likely to have collectively kept their peace over the lockdown parties for so long. And that applies whether they work for papers on the right – the vast bulk of them – or those few that profess to be liberal or soft-left.

Political reporters are not only professionally close to Westminster politics, as the revolving door indicates. Most are drawn from the same small social and cultural worlds. They have attended the same elite schools and universities, and they inhabit the same social circles. In fact, this might even be considered a qualification for a political reporter’s job.

Johnson highlights the problem of the incestuousness of political journalism especially starkly. Many senior political correspondents have worked either alongside him or for him during his own career in journalism, which preceded his reinvention as a politician.

They indulged his deceptions when he was a journalist, just as they have his deceptions as a politician. He was seen as one of their own.

Take the example of Allegra Stratton, a senior government spokesperson until her indiscretions – caught on film – effectively started the current feeding frenzy over the lockdown parties.

Stratton has been a senior political journalist for the Guardian, the BBC and ITV, working with some of the biggest names in the business. Her husband is James Forsyth, the political editor of the Spectator, a right-wing magazine that used to be edited by Johnson. Johnson’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was best man at the couple’s wedding, and Stratton is reportedly friends with Johnson’s wife.

Her connections to the prime minister and her trustworthiness were presumably some of the reasons she was hired to speak for the government. But she resigned last month after footage was leaked of her joking with aides at a press conference rehearsal a year earlier – in December 2020 – about how she might answer a question about a recent Downing Street party that violated lockdown rules.

Overlooked in the ensuing furore are two matters. The first is that Stratton and her aides were aware that such a question might theoretically arise – presumably because they either knew or assumed the information was available to Stratton’s former colleagues. But they were relaxed enough about the fact that the lockdown parties had taken place to joke about them, knowing it was unlikely any political reporter would raise the matter or, if they did, would ask probing questions.

Fetid stench

So what has roused political reporters out of their normal passivity into so belatedly taking on the government?

There may be little comfort to be had here either. The drip-drip of leaks look more like they have been stage-managed by a political enemy or rival of Johnson’s, than sniffed out by the political lobby.

Johnson has been in power long enough – and made enough bad decisions and enemies – for any insider, or former insider, to undermine him with sensational leaks to ratings-hungry media outlets. He is being brought down, just as a bull is weakened by stabs to its upper back until it can fight no more.

Who is the matador? The political reporters hardly seem to qualify. They had the chance to damage Johnson in real time and apparently chose not to. It is still a game of access for them, but there is now a source they need who is more prized than Johnson himself.

Suspicions may point to Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s disgruntled former chief adviser, or others who have grown tired of the shambolic way his government has lurched from crisis to crisis. Certainly, the current revelations follow months of wounding criticisms from Cummings over the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Whichever insider is leaking against Johnson presumably wants a Conservative government that will appear more competent than the present one, and won’t be slumping in the polls and in danger of losing the next election.

If Johnson is brought down, as seems more likely by the day, the media will celebrate the moment as an example of its vital role in holding the powerful to account, and of its ability to breathe life back into our democratic institutions. But far more likely is that this episode will serve only to hide the fetid stench of a media system that is just as corrupt as the political system.

• First published in Middle East Eye

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

“Sir” Tony Blair may now be paraded around as a model citizen of the United Kingdom and the West, an appropriate display of the “values” our civilization now represents. Be a spreader of lies and violence like this goblin, and you will be honored. Happen upon evidence of a war crime by the state, or even by a foreign regime the UK has allied itself to, and you will be punished.

Of course, the greatest victims of Tony Blair’s knighting are the British state’s eroded and discredited reputation for veracity and each individual who was made a knight by the state and now has to bear the dishonor of sharing that with Blair. By sending the message that they support and stand by a liar, British MPs are telling their constituents that they are also liars and that all the UK’s government departments are staffed by liars. Although it is hardly true, sending this message complicates their ability to elicit trust from many in their attempts to inform the public.

If we find ourselves asking why a new generation of paranoid people and conspiracy theorists is emerging in the UK in the next decade, we need look no further than the resolute commitment of the state and the media to honor a known liar. For many, that will be the final nail in the coffin of the state as a source of information.

At the same time that they celebrate and idolize a liar, British politicians wonder why so many people don’t believe them. They can only conclude that certain mischief-makers must be spreading disinformation, rather than that normal people tend to notice liars and eventually stop believing them.

The terror of British MPs under the gaze of the people is greater than ever before, yet they are unable to accept that they created this situation. MPs may, in fact, be more violently hated by paranoid random citizens than ever before in history.

The murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess by random citizens as they tried to do their jobs were undeserved and tragic, and even Tony Blair deserves no such thing. However, these acts, like the crazy burning of 5G towers by paranoid citizens, are the result of disbelief in all authority. It is the result of British MPs often regarding citizens as mere fools they are allowed to deceive.

The Assange saga shows that such politicians are much more frustrated at the inconvenient truth than they are at deception on any scale. As far as they are concerned, the ends are all that matter, and the means are not to be looked at. It doesn’t matter how many people are lied to or killed if the personal wishes of British MPs and officials are served – what they would call the “national interest” but is, in fact, their interest at the expense of the nation. If the truth hurts them, the truth is to be abhorred for being against the national interest, as Assange’s truth is. If lies help the politicians, the lies are good and ought to be rewarded and the deceiver praised for being an “outstanding statesman and performer“, to use the words Michael Gove recently used in Blair’s defense. No sense of morality is permitted, only a sense of what most favors those individuals who manage the country.

In rewarding liars and punishing the innocent, Britain as a state has shown itself to be blind and deaf to the warning signs before it. It sets itself on course to being believed by no-one and securing the loyalty of no-one. The terror in the heart of the state at what its own citizens might do next will increase, as MPs will know they deserve contempt.

The sirs of Britain could give up their titles to avoid being associated with predators and psychopaths. From Prince Andrew to Jimmy Savile, the most honored figures in Britain have a history of often being, or at least coddling, the vilest people imaginable. No honorable person will be found among them, if they are willing to be associated with monsters.

British politicians seem to live in polite, isolated bubbles from which they take a tone of moral superiority and lecture the population, taking no mandate from them. They do not comprehend the gravity of what could happen to them if there was a complete collapse of all trust in authority, and seem to have no belief in such a scenario at all.

British political authority oozes festering snobbery, privilege and immunity because British rulers miraculously never succumbed to revolution, never paid the price for abusing the sovereign nation, and never learned to serve the country faithfully. The result is self-serving “sirs” who believe their purpose is to lord over others once they get past the inconvenient trifle of pandering for votes. Democracy exists, but what we get is not democratic.

Boris Johnson’s resistance to resigning over his lockdown-defying parties, against the demands of MPs, shows that the priority of rulers even under the present democracy is hardly ever the wellbeing of the public but their own positions. It also shows how politicians draw a distinction between how they conduct themselves and how they expect members of the public to behave. The opposition Labour Party offers little better, though, being guilty of the same thing, despite their efforts to capitalize on the scandal.

Although radical change cannot take place in the UK, owing to the deeply reactionary nature of the overall society and wise caution exercised by many, the state can be expected to eventually change its ways, bending under the wind of change. It is doubtful that Tony Blair’s knighthood will be reversed in his lifetime, but society will eventually recognize him for what he was. As with Jimmy Savile, the divorce of the society from him will politely take place after he is gone.

The UK does not undergo radical change, but it does become kinder with time, and that should be expected in the way it handles political prisoners like Assange and the way it chooses to engage in future conflicts. It is only unfortunate that we, as a society, seem to still be too dragged down by the self-serving governing elite to save Assange in time.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by L'Ordre.

Throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, the Prime Minister was pressing his own assault on the pandemic fortifications developed in response to SARS-CoV-2.  He had already shown himself incapable of understanding, let alone following, health directions, shaking hands with infected patients, and furnishing the British public with inscrutable information.  But then came those libation, food-ladened parties held during the lockdown phases, gatherings which often eschewed social distancing.

The interest last December was initially on Christmas gatherings that had taken place in 2020.  The Mirror first noted that a Christmas Party had taken place at 10 Downing Street on December 18, 2020 under lockdown conditions that prohibited indoor social and household mixing.  The rest of the UK was told at the time that Christmas lunches or parties were deemed primarily social activities and “not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier.”

The party was the subject of discussion in a clip released by  ITV featuring a former spokesperson for Johnson, Allegra Stratton, who, giggles and all, is found conducting a mock press conference with colleagues.  The video’s release pushed Stratton to a tearful resignation, but few others walked the plank.  Johnson was certainly not going to be one of them, concluding “that guidelines were followed at all times”.

Evidence of more parties in government offices emerged, resulting in the establishment of an investigation led by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.  This mild effort, designed to distract and dissuade any investigations that might be conducted by the Metropolitan Police, went awry with revelations that the investigator had held two events in his own private office last December.  Chase’s replacement, Sue Gray, once described by Labour MP Paul Flynn as “deputy God”, has been given more room to wander.

In the new year, Johnson finds himself facing a threat that promises to be graver to him than others, as if that was possible.  It concerns yet another 2020 festive gathering that took place at Downing Street.  Taking place in May that year in the Downing Street garden, the drinks gathering was held during the first lockdown and described by Johnson as a “work event”.  This implausible understanding was reached after the PM’s Principal Private Secretary Martin Reynolds invited more than 100 Downing Street staff to “make most of the weather”.  No. 10 has also claimed that it was “untrue” to claim that Johnson was “warned about the event”.

This is not deemed credible by Johnson’s former top advisor, Dominic Cummings, himself a seasoned breaker of lockdown rules and a master of the elaborate fib.  Opining ever darkly, and with keen malice, he is of the view that Johnson “knew he was at a drinks party cos he was told it was a drinks party and it was actually a drinks party.”  In his blog, Cummings claims that both he and one other advisor warned that such a gathering would “be against the rules and should not happen.”

At the start of prime minister’s questions in parliament, Johnson tried to sound contrite.  “I want to apologise.  I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the last 18 months.”  He claimed to know “the anguish they have been through”, acknowledging that there were things “we simply did not get right.”

Other parliamentarians were incredulous.  Labour’s Keir Starmer called Johnson a “man without shame” and asked whether the PM could “see why the British public think he’s lying through his teeth”.  Chris Bryant, also of the Labour Party, proved cuttingly unsympathetic.  “So the prime minster didn’t spot that he was at a social event?  Come off it.  How stupid does the prime minister think the British people are?”

The PM’s reactive strategy to being found out is one born in the cribs of privilege.  Why take the blame for your own actions when you can find the locus elsewhere?  According to the veteran news reporter Robert Peston, a scorched earth policy is being considered against certain allegedly culpable civil servants.  Once they have been cleared out, Johnson intends to “live securely ever after at No. 10.”  Little wonder that Whitehall is both outraged and suffering a decline of morale.

Any hope of placing Johnson’s head on the block, politically speaking, will have to come from within the Conservative Party.  So far, six Tories have publicly made their case that they lack confidence in the PM.  In a functional sense, any leadership contest can only feasibly take place if 54 Tory MPs write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, the powerful backbench body chaired by Sir Graham Brady.  Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross is one MP who has promised to do so.

Despite the Tory rumbles, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi is strumming the tune of “he’s human and we make mistakes.”  To BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Zahawi claimed that Johnson had done enough.  “He came to the despatch box and apologised and said he will absolutely submit himself to Parliament, because that’s our parliamentary democracy.”

Much stock will be placed on Gray’s report and how it goes down among the Tory faithful.  Downing Street has chosen to neither confirm nor deny a Daily Telegraph account that Johnson has been interviewed by Gray.

As a former minister told Peston, the findings by the civil servant will define “the rest of her life”.  She will hardly be remembered well for sacrificing her own colleagues to avoid the scalping of Johnson.  The PM’s response then is bound to be something he has adopted during the entire course of his public life: apologise and hope it all vanishes.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The UK-Australia Free Trade signed last week has its predictable, chorusing champions.  There are the free marketing dogmatists who assume that their dogma is based on fact and that such trade is a boon for all.  “This is a historic agreement – it’s a true free-trade agreement.  Everyone wins,” the admirably deluded Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan stated.

At least one party seemed to win more than the other.  The BBC’s global trade correspondent tartly remarked that, “The UK has given Australia pretty much everything it wanted in terms of access to the UK agricultural market.”

There are those who see this agreement merely as a front for other prejudices, among them showing that the UK can make independent agreements without the approval of doddery, fussy types in Europe overly keen on regulations.  Financial journalist Matthew Lynn delighted in an understanding reached between two countries “stripped of all the supra-national baggage that the EU and its dwindling band of supporters insist are essential to ‘free trade’ – and for that every reason is vastly superior to Europe’s creaking, overly-complex single market.”  The empire delusion, nostalgic and heavy, prevails in such thinking.

Then come the calculating types in Downing Street and beyond who hope that this deal with Australia becomes some sort of mighty springboard to greener pastures.  When the deal was agreed upon in principle earlier this year, the UK government claimed it would ease its move into the Asia-Pacific, with the eventual hope of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Peter Jennings, a paid-up member of the Anglosphere and executive director of the partially US-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, sees the agreement as “an example of what can be done when two countries decide to put some priority and effort into cooperation.”  Unblemished by the detail, he laments the fact those stubborn sorts in the European Union have made it just that much harder in free trade negotiations.

Those in 10 Downing Street suggest that the agreement would not only end tariffs on all UK exports to Australia but lead to £10.4 billion in additional trade.  The more sombre types in the UK Office of Budgetary Responsibility predict a meagre return of 0.08% to the UK economy, but a loss of 4% in loss of free access to the EU.

All the swooning from the free trader advocates belies the critical faults in such arrangements.  As a general rule, and one remarked upon by the co-authors of a RAND report from last year, “a free trade agreement (FTA), an instrument to eliminate tariffs, imposes costs and obstacles on two-way trade.”

The Australian Productivity Commission’s report on bilateral and regional trade agreements in November 2010 was also of the opinion that such “agreements can carry the risk of trade diversion.”  This was certainly the case with the deeply flawed Australian-US FTA (AUSFTA) which, between 2005 and 2012, diverted US$53.1 billion of trade from other sources.

The authors of the APC report were also suspicious about evaluations arising from such trade deals: these tended to be based on political considerations rather than sound economic returns.

The potential costs to Britain have stirred representatives of 14 trade bodies and companies, who warned the then UK Trade Secretary Liz Truss that “the pace of these negotiations, particularly the free trade agreement with Australia, is too quick and denying the opportunity for appropriate scrutiny and consultation.”

British farmers remain justifiably worried.  There are concerns that certain agricultural sectors will immediately feel the effect of Australian exports.  As part of the agreement, Australian sheep meat will receive an immediate tariff-rate quota (TRQ) of 25,000 tonnes, rising to 75,000 tonnes over a series of installments.  The equivalent arrangement with beef covers an initial 35,000 tonnes, eventually rising to 110,000 tonnes.  Both beef and sheep tariffs will be paired in a decade.

Earlier in the year, the NFU Livestock Chair Richard Findlay proved unequivocally hostile to the deal.  Australian agriculture risked being a sinister Trojan horse, undermining British standards.  “There is no comparison whatsoever between the robust production methods in this country and in Australia – they simply do not compare due to sheer size and scale.”

Australia, Findlay points out, was the world’s biggest beef exporter in 2019 (in terms of value) and second largest (behind Brazil) in terms of volume.  Such scale meant fewer regulations, a lower “assurance burden” and significantly lower production costs.

With little by way of fraternal feeling between Commonwealth nations, the NFU livestock chair also pointed his finger at differing standards of animal welfare between the countries.  The UK government was contemplating an arrangement with a country that exported “hundreds of thousands of live cattle and over a million sheep on long sea journeys to Asia and the Middle East every year.” The same UK government had also contemplated banning live exports for slaughter.

This point was picked up by Vicki Hird, the head of sustainable farming at Sustain, an agri-food group.  Painting a picture of antipodean barbarity, Hird enumerated the darker aspects of Australian agricultural practices.  Australia, for instance, permitted “the use of hormones and antibiotics to speed up growth as well as the removal of skin from live sheep [‘mulesing’, to prevent fly-strike], and they license almost double the number of highly hazardous pesticides as the UK.”  And just to make things that bit grimmer, Australian farmers also used feedlots, battery cages and sow stalls.

As for the agreed protections for British farmers, NFU President Minette Batters found little comfort, suggesting they were neither extensive nor effectual.  Dairy would be fully liberalised after six years, sugar after eight, and beef and lamb after 15.  Phil Stocker of the National Sheep Association also noted the absence of “any resolution on how TRQs could be managed in a way to limit potential damage to our own domestic trade”.

A tone-deaf International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan sees little to bother the UK farming sector, or anybody else in Global Britain.  For one thing, most Australian beef and sheep meat exports (somewhere in the order of 70%) made it to Asia-Pacific markets.  “They’re closer for them and they get great prices.”  She expected no “dramatic surge into UK markets” from Australian products but she was “very pleased to do things that will open up consumer choice.”  That is a choice that promises to be very costly indeed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

This was what Britain was told by the government of Boris Johnson, a man famed for his rutting proclivities, to behave, huddle and battle SARS-Cov-2, and its disease, COVID-19.  But the manner he, and his officials, have done so have shown the country’s citizenry that Johnson’s Law on Illegal Covid Gatherings is in full swing, a glorious exemption that few can partake in.

There was Prime Minister Johnson himself gleefully shaking the hands of infected patients, thereby infecting himself despite telling others not to shake hands.  There was the grasping, emotion starved canoodling of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, whose amorous (and camera captured) embrace with senior aide Gina Coladangelo jarred with public health orders.

And who can forget the conduct of former special advisor and éminence grise to Johnson, Dominic Cummings, contemptuous of lockdown regulations in jaunting off to Durham, and then to Barnard Castle.  His reasons for doing so – family safety, testing his eyesight – were riddled with goodly inconsistency and glaring deceits.  But the statement was unmistakable: There is one law for subjects, and another for rulers.

All of this provided decent straw for the bricks that made up the next, sodding round robin of scandals.  Again, they involved a breach of lockdown rules.  Again, they featured government officials and advisors.  The time for the first reported scandal: December 18, 2020.  According to the Mirror, a Christmas Party took place at 10 Downing Street when all indoor social and household mixing was banned and punishable with fines of £10,000.

The official guidance from the time bears repeating: “You must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier.”  The Downing Street gathering allegedly involved a Secret Santa, flowing wine, a quiz and numbered somewhere between 50 to 60 people.

Johnson, and some of his aides, kept matters textbook.  Denying and dissembling, the hope was that visual evidence of such a gathering (or gatherings) would be hard to find.  “I can tell you that guidelines were followed at all times,” an adamant Johnson insisted.  “I’ve satisfied myself that the guidelines were followed at all times.”

Then ITV released a clip showing a former spokesperson for Johnson, Allegra Stratton, chuckling about the December 18 party in answering questions posed during a mock press conference with colleagues.  Stratton is found giggling as prime ministerial advisor Ed Oldfield poses the question: “I’ve just seen reports on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night, do you recognise those reports?”  Stratton laughs, replying that she “went home.”

Then comes an exchange about Johnson’s views about such gatherings.  “Would the Prime Minister condone having a Christmas party?” asks Oldfield.  Stratton, all mirth, replies, “What’s the answer?”  The reaction from Oldfield: “I don’t know!”

Another staffer chimes in with a remark that, “It wasn’t a party … it was cheese and wine.”  Stratton’s response: “Is cheese and wine alright?  It was a business meeting.”  There is laughter all around, punctuated by another comment: “No! … I was joking!”

In cataracts of tears, Stratton, the sacrificial villain, chose to resign once the video itself went viral.  “My remarks seemed to make light of rules, that people were doing everything to obey.  That was never my intention.”  She promised that she would eternally “regret those remarks”, forgetting that regret is only ever skin deep and temporary for a member of Johnson’s staff.

Others preferred to excuse the whole affair in the tried legal fashion of exemptions.  10 Downing Street was a specially carved space, freed of those constraints called rules and regulations.  This was certainly the opinion of barrister Steven Barrett, who gave the tyrant’s excuse in claiming that “the regulations almost certainly never applied to No. 10 anyway.”

Charles Holland, another learned friend in the law, was not convinced.  While admitting that there was a “Crown exemption rule”, the “restrictions on gatherings” provision in the regulations were “restrictions that applied to individuals wherever they were, including on Crown land.”

The Mirror followed up with grainy photographic snatches showing Johnson personally overseeing a Zoom pub quiz on December 15, 2020, all taking place in front of the watchful gaze of Margaret Thatcher’s portrait.  The paper delighted in telling readers that “many staff huddled by computers, conferring on questions and knocking back fizz, wine and beer from a local Tesco Metro.”  Johnson himself was flanked by two staff members.

In one room, four teams, each made up of six people, congregated.  As is traditional in such games, team names were allocated in some vague stab at wit.  In the spirit of the times, one included “The 6 Masketeers”.

While people had been encouraged to play the quiz from their home quarters, others remained in the office, being warned that they should “go out the back” of the building lest they be spotted.

The Mirror was on a roll of exposure, adding more misery to the pandemic party goers by revealing that Tory headquarters had, on December 14 the previous year, witnessed a grand shindig. Organised by the team of London mayoral aspirant Shaun Bailey, a spokesman admitted that, “This was a serious error of judgment and we fully accept that a gathering like this at that time was wrong and we apologise unreservedly.”  Bailey subsequently resigned his place as committee chair in the London Assembly.

In typically unspeakable fashion, the Prime Minister, still denying that any wrongdoing took place, has resorted to a “parties probe” led by senior civil servant Simon Case.  Such probes are internal, scrubbing affairs and almost never involve the prying eyes of the police.  “Of course all that must be properly got into and you will be hearing from the cabinet secretary about it all.”  Little will come of it, least of any prosecutions and convictions.  That is the lesson of Johnson’s Law.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Huge media coverage has been devoted to allegations, and now serious evidence, that a Christmas party was held at 10 Downing Street on 18 December 2020. London was then in a strict lockdown with social events banned, including parties.

In leaked footage obtained by ITV News, senior Downing Street staff are shown four days later, laughing and joking about the party being a ‘business meeting’ with ‘cheese and wine’. Allegra Stratton, then Boris Johnson’s press secretary, was leading a mock televised press briefing and, through laughter, said there had been ‘definitely no social distancing.’

The original story was broken on 30 November by Pippa Crerar, the Daily Mirror political editor.  When pressed at Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson refused to deny three times that a ‘boozy party’ had taken place at 10 Downing Street when such events were banned.

One source who was aware of the party in Downing Street told ITV News:

‘We all know someone who died from Covid and after seeing this all in the papers I couldn’t not say anything. I’m so angry about it all, the way it is being denied.’

Understandably, there is much public anger, though perhaps little surprise, that the Tory government under Johnson has once again been found to have broken rules and then attempted to deceive the public about it. That anger is felt most keenly by those who suffered the unimaginable pain and grief of not being allowed to be with loved ones who were dying of Covid.

Even BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who has spent much of her latter career shielding Johnson, began her BBC News website piece on the latest revelations with condemnations from Tory MPs: ‘Indefensible’, ‘catastrophic’ and ‘astonishing’.

She added:

‘Expect to hear plenty of the charge of “one rule for us, one rule for them” in the next few days.

‘On the back of Downing Street’s attempt to change the rules on MPs’ behaviour after former minister Owen Paterson broke them, even some senior Conservatives are making that claim tonight.’

It is possible that this is yet another nail in the coffin for Johnson’s leadership of the Tory party. There will surely come a time, if it has not already, when the Conservatives will assess that he has become an electoral liability and that he must be replaced to ‘steady the ship’ in order to continue promoting elite interests. After all, financial capital and the establishment require a ‘respectable’ figure at the helm.

While public anger is justified and entirely understandable, with the ‘mainstream’ media judging that the scandal deserves laser-like focus and intensity, the bigger picture is that the government has committed much greater crimes that have not received the same level of scrutiny.

A Surreptitious Parade Of Parliamentary Bills

Just one example is the Health and Care Bill that was being passed while the furore over the Downing Street Christmas party was erupting. As John Pilger observed:

‘The US assault on the National Health Service, legislated by the Johnson govt, is now relentless – but always by “stealth”, as Thatcher planned.’

Pilger, whose 2019 documentary, The Dirty War on the NHS, is a must-watch, urged everyone to read ‘a rare explanatory piece’ on this assault, largely ignored by corporate media including the BBC. The article, by policy analyst Stewart Player and GP Bob Gill, warned that the ‘Health and Care Bill making its way through official channels simply reinforces’ the ‘penetration of the healthcare system’ by private interests; in particular, the giant U.S. insurer UnitedHealth.

Player and Gill explained that the bill’s centrepiece is a national scheme of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) across all 42 health regions of England. This network of ICSs ‘is being effectively designed and fast-tracked by the private UnitedHealth’.

They continued:

‘The Health and Care Bill will essentially provide legislative lock-in for the changes already embedded throughout the NHS. Patients will be denied care to generate profits for the ICS, over which their family physician or hospital specialist will have no influence, while the growing unmet patient need will have to be serviced either through out-of-pocket payments, top-up private insurance, or not at all.’

Player and Gill warned:

‘The NHS will, in the immediate future, resemble “Medicare Advantage” or “Medicaid Managed Care”, a basic, publicly funded, privately controlled and delivered corporate cash cow repurposed to make profit, though in time the full range of the organizational options found in the U.S. will follow.

‘All this will increase the total cost of healthcare, deliver less, harm thousands, enrich foreign corporations and destroy what was once Britain’s national pride.’

Where is the in-depth scrutiny and across-the-board coverage of this scandal?

Likewise, where is the large-scale, non-stop ‘mainstream’ media outrage over the Tory government’s Nationality and Border Bill to be voted on this week? Home Secretary Priti Patel said the Bill would tackle ‘illegal’ immigration and the ‘underlying pull factors into the UK’s asylum system’.

However, as Labour activist Mish Rahman noted via Twitter:

‘While ppl are focused on the video of the govt laughing at us a year ago and a Downing Street Party – the government, with the minimum of media coverage are getting the Nationality & Borders bill passed which will allow them to strip ppl like me of my citizenship without notice’

A report by the New Statesman found that almost six million people from ethnic minority backgrounds in England and Wales could have their British citizenship in jeopardy. Al Jazeera noted that:

‘The bill also aims to rule as inadmissible asylum claims made by undocumented people as well as criminalise them and anyone taking part in refugee rescue missions in the English Channel.’

But, as Jonathan Cook, pointed out: ‘Britain helped create the refugees it now wants to keep out’, adding:

‘Those making perilous journeys for asylum in Europe have been displaced by wars and droughts, for which the West is largely to blame.’

The bill is being pushed through shortly after the appalling tragedy of 27 people losing their lives at sea while attempting a Channel crossing from France to England. Compounding the tragedy:

‘Barely noted by the media was the fact that the only two survivors separately said British and French coastguards ignored their phone calls for help as their boat began to sink.’

Cook summarised his analysis:

‘Europe is preparing to make its borders impregnable to the victims of its colonial interference, its wars and the climate crisis that its consumption-driven economies have generated.’

Meanwhile, yet another bill endangering life and liberty is being pushed by the government. Patel has just added an extra 18-page amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. George Monbiot warned:

‘It looks like a deliberate ploy to avoid effective parliamentary scrutiny. Yet in most of the media there’s a resounding silence.’

The bill seeks to add to the existing plethora of legislation, together with sinister undercover police and surveillance operations, that obstruct and criminalise protest and dissent. Monbiot noted that, if the bill passes, it will become:

‘a criminal offence to obstruct in any way major transport works from being carried out, again with a maximum sentence of 51 weeks. This looks like an attempt to end meaningful protest against road-building and airport expansion. Other amendments would greatly expand police stop and search powers.’

He added:

‘Protest is an essential corrective to the mistakes of government. Had it not been for the tactics Patel now seeks to ban, the pointless and destructive road-building programme the government began in the early 1990s would have continued: eventually John Major’s government conceded it was a mistake, and dropped it. Now governments are making the greatest mistake in human history – driving us towards systemic environmental collapse – and Boris Johnson’s administration is seeking to ensure that there is nothing we can do to stop it.’

Unscrutinised UK Foreign Policy

While corporate news coverage continues to delve into the 2020 Downing Street Christmas party, the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, fuelled in significant part by UK foreign policy, barely gets a mention. Cook rightly observed:

‘Britain and others have aided Saudi Arabia in its prolonged, near-genocidal bombing campaigns and blockade against Yemen. Recent reports have suggested that as many as 300 Yemeni children are dying each day as a result. And yet, after decades of waging economic warfare on these Middle Eastern countries, western states have the gall to decry those fleeing the collapse of their societies as “economic migrants”.’

We wrote in a recent media alert that Matt Kennard and Phil Miller of Declassified UK had investigated the largely-hidden role of a factory owned by arms exporter BAE Systems in the Lancashire village of Warton. The factory supplies military equipment to the Saudi Arabian regime, enabling it to continue its devastating attacks on Yemen.

Kennard and Miller reported that:

‘Boris Johnson recently visited Warton and claimed the BAE site was part of his “levelling up agenda”. No journalist covering the visit seems to have reported the factory’s role in a war.’

In fact, you could take just about any article published on the exemplary Declassified UK website and compare its quality journalism with the omission-ridden, power-friendly output of ‘respectable’ media. Here is a recent sample:

• Anne Cadwallader on the UK government’s attempt to rewrite the history of British policy in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the UK government is actually ‘censoring numerous files showing British army complicity in the deaths of civilians, depriving bereaved families of access to the truth.’ See also Michael Oswald’s documentary film, ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, about Colin Wallace, an intelligence officer in Northern Ireland who became a whistleblower and was framed for murder, likely by UK intelligence. Declassified UK published a review of this important film, describing it as ‘essential viewing for anyone who seeks to hold power to account, who seeks to understand the dark links between state intelligence and the media apparatus.’
• An article by Richard Norton-Taylor, the former Guardian security editor, titled, ‘Manchester bombing: What are the security agencies hiding?’. He wrote: ‘We need to know why MI5 and MI6 appear to have placed their involvement in power struggles in Libya, and Britain’s commercial interests there, above those of the safety of its own citizens.’
• Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis reported that Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, the judge that will soon decide Julian Assange’s fate, is a close personal friend of Sir Alan Duncan who once described Assange in Parliament as a ‘miserable little worm’. When Duncan was the UK foreign minister, he arranged Assange’s eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy.
• Israeli historian Ilan Pappé wrote that ‘Britain is ensuring the death of a Palestinian state’. His piece explained that: ‘The UK claims to support a “two-state” solution in Israel-Palestine but the body of a Palestinian state has long been in the morgue, although nobody dares to have a funeral. As long as Britain and other states continue to superficially endorse a two-state solution, Israel will become entrenched as a full-blown apartheid state with international blessing.’

Any one of these topics, and many more on the Declassified UK website, would be a major item on ‘mainstream’ news if there was a functioning ‘Fourth Estate’ to scrutinise power and hold it to account. In particular, Israel is continually given a free pass by the ‘free press’.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy – a rare example of a journalist who regularly reports and comments on Israel’s serious crimes – published a recent piece, ‘A Brief History of Killing Children’. He wrote:

‘Soldiers and pilots have killed 2,171 children and teenagers, and not one of these cases shocked anyone here, or sparked a real investigation or led to a trial. More than 2,000 children in 20 years – 100 children, three classrooms a year. And all of them, down to the last, were found guilty of their own death.’

Needless to say, these facts are hidden, or at best glossed over, by ‘responsible’ news outlets. As we pointed out last month on Twitter after Israel had dropped bombs on Syria’s capital Damascus – the fourth Israeli attack on Syria in three weeks:

‘Hello @BBCNews

‘Seen this? Of course you have. But most likely you’ll ignore Israel’s latest breaking of international law. Or, at best, you’ll mention it briefly at 3am on  @bbcworldservice

‘You are indeed the world’s most refined propaganda service, as @johnpilger says.’

The ‘mainstream’ media has almost entirely ignored major reports by two human rights groups – B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch – classing Israel as an apartheid state. Cook observed that, despite this, ‘the Labour and Tory parties are now competing to be its best friend’. Commenting on a ‘shameful speech’ by Labour leader Keir Starmer that uncritically supported Israel, Cook added:

‘Israel’s apartheid character, its vigorous lobby and support for a boycott are all off the table. But worse, Labour, like the Conservative party, is once again reluctant even to criticise the occupation.’

Near-silence also greeted human rights groups’ condemnation of the UK government’s announcement of a new 10-year trade and defence deal with Israel. The Morning Star was virtually alone in giving ample space to critical voices, such as Katie Fallon of Campaign Against the Arms Trade:

‘The evidence that Israeli spyware has been used against journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers in the UK continues to pile up. This agreement signals that the government prioritises trade deals to the degree that they are willing to jeopardise the security of people in the UK who are most at risk of illegal surveillance — totally at odds with their stated foreign policy priority to protect and support human rights defenders.’

War on War’s senior campaigner for militarism and security, Chi-Chi Shi said:

‘If the UK government observed its duty to uphold human rights and international law, it would end the UK-Israel arms trade.

‘Instead, it is actively enabling grave human rights abuses and Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime against the Palestinian people.’

But full, accurate and critical coverage of anything to do with Israel is essentially out of bounds for ‘mainstream’ news media.

So, too, is anything that truly exposes the role of corporate and financial power in driving humanity to the point of extinction: a vital point which we have repeatedly emphasised since Media Lens began in 2001.

Following the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the esteemed climate scientist James Hansen summarised that ‘COP meetings are actually Conferences of the Pretenders’ ¹.

He continued:

‘Political leaders make statements that they know – or should know – are blatant nonsense. COPs can produce numerous minor accomplishments, which is sufficient reason to continue with the meetings.’

In typically blunt fashion, Hansen stated:

‘Why is nobody telling young people the truth? “We preserved the chance at COP26 to keep global warming below 1.5°C.” What bullshit! “Solar panels are now cheaper than fossil fuels, so all we are missing is political will.” What horse manure! “If we would just agree to consume less, the climate problem could be solved.” More nonsense!’

‘Young people, I am sorry to say that – although the path to a bright future exists and is straightforward – it will not happen without your understanding and involvement in the political process.’

Noam Chomsky, who recently turned 93, concurs. Asked what is the greatest obstacle to solving the climate crisis, he responded:

‘There are two major obstacles. One is, of course, the fossil fuel companies. Second is the governments of the world, including Europe and the United States.’

Ending the climate crisis, says Chomsky, ‘has to come from mass popular action’, not politicians.

While corporate news media are content to expose the galling, but comparatively minor crime of holding a Christmas party at 10 Downing Street during lockdown, they remain essentially silent about much bigger state crimes.

1. ‘A Realistic Path to a Bright Future’, newsletter [pdf], 3 December 2021

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

The final cut in partitioning Ireland came with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty 100 years ago. That colonial division of a nation, conducted as a fait accompli by British rulers, continues to have harmful repercussions.

Ironically, it is today’s British rulers who are reaping the bitter fruit from the ongoing Brexit debacle with the European Union. The problem of an Irish border and its recurring messiness for the British Conservative government extricating from the EU is a direct consequence of London’s fateful decision to partition Ireland rather than grant full independence to the island.

A clear democratic mandate for independence was given in the general election of 1918, when all of Ireland was under British colonial administration. Across the island, pro-independence candidates belonging to Sinn Fein won over 70 percent of the seats. But rather than obeying the democratic will, London went to war. The War of Independence lasted for nearly three years until it was finally brought to an end by the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed on December 6, 1921 at Downing Street.

The treaty resulted in two jurisdictions: Northern Ireland, which comprised six counties, remained part of the United Kingdom, while the nascent Free State of 26 counties gained quasi-independence, first as dominion status within the British Empire, later to become the Republic of Ireland.

The British establishment justified this unprecedented act by pointing to a pro-British population in Northern Ireland, or Ulster as they erroneously referred to it. That pro-British constituency was created by historical colonization during the 16th and 17th centuries, when native Irish were dispossessed from their lands. Thus, the British rulers gerrymandered an island nation, which later was used to contrive a self-appointed mandate to carve up the country into nationalists and unionists.

During the early 1900s, when nationalist independence was welling up, the “Ulster Unionists” openly threatened to violently defy any possible move by London to grant Ireland freedom. The Conservative Party, led by Andrew Bonar Law, truculently supported the unionist declaration for armed rebellion against their own British government. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right” was the rallying call by the newly formed Conservative and Unionist Party, which continues to be its formal name.

When the Irish Republican leaders were in London negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty, this threat of large-scale unionist violence in the northern counties was used as leverage to force acceptance. The eventual signature by Michael Collins and his fellow delegates was condemned as a sell-out of full independence by Republican comrades.

The flawed treaty signed under duress led within months to a bitter civil war in the Free State, when former comrades murdered one another. Collins himself was assassinated in an ambush on August 22, 1922, in his native County Cork. That fratricidal war, in which the British armed the victorious Free State forces, left deep scars in the Irish memory until today.

Meanwhile, during the 1920s, the British territory of Northern Ireland saw widespread sectarian pogroms and thousands of families made homeless from the inter-communal violence. The Catholic, mainly nationalist population in the new northern state, was suddenly made into a minority and subjected to decades of unionist-dominated government discrimination. That culminated in a massive outbreak of armed conflict in 1968, which lasted for three decades until a peace settlement was signed in 1998.

That peace deal is under renewed danger of collapsing over Brexit. The unionist parties in Northern Ireland and a vehement loyalist minority are objecting to the Brexit treaty signed by Boris Johnson’s government with Brussels, which makes all of Ireland part of the EU’s single market. That arrangement stems from London’s signature to the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, which removed a physical border.

However, the Johnson government and its chief negotiator, the unelected political appointee Lord David Frost, are demanding the EU scrap the Brexit treaty to avoid customs controls in the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland. By way of adding pressure on Brussels to make this concession, London is somewhat cynically suggesting that the Good Friday peace accord is at risk of collapsing from unionist dissent and simmering violence.

This has echoes of British rulers using the ‘Unionist Card’ to railroad their demands over Ireland and troublesome Irish questions. The real problem is the act of partitioning Ireland by London a century ago. That act of colonial midwifery gave birth to dysfunctional politics in Ireland. An independence movement was strangled. And the unstable constitutional deformity from partition has within it the seeds for potentially more political violence. Ultimately, however, Britain’s own politics, as seen from the Brexit imbroglio, continues to be haunted by the great misdeed perpetrated on Ireland.

There is only one solution: Ireland should have its full national independence after a century of malign British meddling.

• First published in RT

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Finian Cunningham.

This condition has become rather acute in the British political scene.  While a backbencher earns £81,932 annually plus expenses, they may pursue consultancies in the private sector as long as they do not engage in lobbying – a ridiculous fine line.  Astonishingly, there is no limit on the number of hours they may spend on these additional jobs.  Accordingly, members of parliament have shown marked confusion on how to separate their various jobs.  Every so often, business has tended to find its way into the member’s office.

A stunning feature of the British system is that there is no revolving door to speak of.  Politicians can seamlessly undertake contracts and perform services, irrespective of their parliamentary position.  The conditions and rules have a Gilbert and Sullivan absurdity to them.

One such figure exemplifies this.  Between October 2016 and February 2020, Conservative MP Owen Paterson received remuneration for lobbying efforts on behalf of two companies: the medical diagnostics company Randox, and meat processing entity Lynn’s Country Foods.  The report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, conveyed to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards, was a thorough and scathing effort on Paterson’s exploits.

In his dealings with Randox, the Commissioner found that Paterson “sought to promote Randox products, including their ‘superior technology’ and thereby sought to confer benefits on Randox.” He “sought assistance with accreditation for Randox’s technology” and sought to promote “other, unrelated, Randox technologies”.  Then came the seedy connection: efforts to promote Randox testing by government agencies.

The smelly nature of Paterson’s advocacy for Lynn’s arose because of efforts made by the MP to approach the Food Standards Agency, at the request of the company, because of concerns dealing with the mislabelling of the food producer’s ham product and a product used by Lynn’s to cure bacon.  The Commissioner also noted Paterson’s initiated contact with the Minister of State (DfID) on the subject of laboratory calibration in developing countries.  All were held to be “in breach of the rules on paid advocacy.”

Paterson, for his part, has claimed that the investigation was uncalled for, unjust and pernicious, having allegedly caused his wife’s suicide in June 2020.  The Standards Committee did take this into account as a mitigating factor on the penalty, and noted Paterson’s “passion for and expertise in food and farming matters”.  For all that, the members found that the MP’s conduct had been “an egregious case of paid advocacy.”  He had “repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant”.  Bringing the House into disrepute, a penalty of suspension of 30 sitting days was warranted.

The response from the governing Tories was one abundant in viciousness.  In trying to save Paterson from the 30-day suspension, Conservative MPs put forth an amendment in an effort to dismantle the very watchdog that had found Paterson out.  A review of the investigation’s findings on Paterson’s conduct was also proposed.  As committee chair Chris Bryant rued, “The definition of injustice is you change the rules in the midst of the process.”

It logically fell upon the investigator to face the chop.  Stone was duly rounded on.  Her office was deluged with abusive messages.  The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, revealed after the vote that Stone had been called upon to consider her position.  It was, claimed Kwarteng on breakfast radio, “difficult to see what the future of the commissioner was”.  Within hours, she found out that her position would probably be safe, with Johnson’s government having executed yet another one of its famous U-turns of spectacular confusion.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had a rather novel interpretation of the proceedings in approving an amendment that would essentially abolish the standards system – if one could even call it that.  “The issue in this case, which involved a serious family tragedy, is whether the member of this House had a fair opportunity to make representations in this case and whether, as a matter of national justice, our procedures in this House allow for proper appeal.”

Despite Johnson’s efforts to save Paterson, the MP quit on November 4.  And just to make matters worse, a raging fire had been lit, enveloping other members of the government.   Former Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, was the next figure to find himself burning brightly.  Cox had received some £6 million in addition to his MP salary for a retainer with the law firm Withers. This included an annual fee of £400,000, and an additional £156,916.08 for 140 hours of work undertaken between April and May 31, 2021.

To show the high regard he held for the voters of his electorate, Cox had also been in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) for a number of weeks, meaning that he was absent from his constituency while being an advisor on a corruption inquiry.

To the likes of Paterson and Cox can be added scores of Tory MPs, among them Johnson  himself, who is estimated to have received £4 million from second job income over the course of 14 years.

With typical, and in this case cringing understatement, International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has suggested that it would be “wise” to review the rules around second jobs.  But she did not favour a total ban, suggesting that Parliament would somehow miss out if MPs could not perform such services as that of a doctor or nurse.

Such a view is also held by Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who claimed it was vital that MPs “maintain connections to the world beyond so that we may draw the insight and expertise that this experience offers”.

In an effort to make some modification to the rules, Johnson has now proposed a measure that any outside role undertaken by parliamentarians, paid or otherwise, can be undertaken “within reasonable limits”.  Trevelyan has suggested that “reasonable”, in this context, is 15 hours.  Labour’s defeated proposal had been to place all second jobs, bar a select few, on the banned list.

The central question to this unfolding farce remains: If you are doing other jobs that are not directly connected to your function as a parliamentarian, are you really representing your constituency?  The likes of Cox, more brazen than ever, square the circle in thinking you do.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

To use a familiar analogy, we are like a fish that cannot see the water in which it is submerged. Water completely orders its life: how it swims, that it swims, the limits of where it can swim, and so on.

Power orders our lives similarly. The difference is that the way power is organised in our societies is not natural – “the normal order of things” – in the way water is for a fish. A wealth elite engineers our environment to perpetuate itself and sustain the power structures on which it depends.

My latest: Power needs to be rid of Sanders, just as it earlier rid itself of Corbyn, because they are not chained to the current power paradigm. By refusing to serve the power-cult like most politicians, they threaten to shine a light on its true nature https://t.co/Um9t170547

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 25, 2020

It is because we are largely blind to this engineered environment that we don’t get out of bed each morning determined to overthrow our governments for maintaining financial systems that tax nurses and teachers at a higher rate than they do transnational corporations; or that protect private, usually inherited, wealth parked offshore; or that reward corporations for “externalising” their costs – that is, offloading them in ways that destroy the environment and the future of our children.

Resignation – our assumption that this is just the way things are – is made possible only because every day we face endless propaganda: in our schools, in our places of higher education, in the workplace, and most especially from the so-called “mainstream” – code for billionaire-owned or state-run – media.

Our minds are battered each day into submission, so much so that fairly quickly our childhood exuberance, curiosity and wonder, and our sense of fairness and justice, is crushed into a soulless technocrat’s ideas of order, efficiency and pragmatism. We are sidetracked into, at best, debates about how we can improve the status quo, rather than whether the status quo works or, even more usefully, whether the status quo is dangerous and eco-cidal.

A pandemic caused either by our pillage of natural habitats or by our meddling with viruses. And a solution to the pandemic that further ravages nature with our plastic waste.

Our species seems to be in a death spiral https://t.co/2PCogq9F7q

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 9, 2021

Ideological capture

The propaganda system tightly constrains our understanding of political and ideological realities to make them dependent on the economic priorities of the ultra-rich. We become unconscious lobbyists for the lawless and immoral activities of corporations and billionaires.

This ideological capture was neatly illustrated by one liberal analyst who bewailed the danger posed by those who seek to challenge the status quo:

If you want to replace the current system of capitalism with something else, who is going to make your jeans, iPhones and run Twitter?

The layers of ideological protection around this system – the degree to which our intellectual and cultural life is entirely captured by the billionaire class – was highlighted, inadvertently as ever, in an exclusive report this week in the Guardian.

Under the headline “Watchdog stopped ministers breaching neutrality code in top BBC and BFI hires”, we get an insight into how our “watchdogs” operate – not primarily to protect our interests from high-level corruption, but to preserve the existing system of power by preventing it from being discredited.

The Guardian report is based on the response from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments to a Freedom of Information request. That response reveals that Peter Riddell, who served until last month as the Commissioner overseeing public appointments, blocked efforts by the government of Boris Johnson to rig the system to make it even easier for Tory party donors and cronies to head the UK’s most important public bodies.

Image of democracy

Riddell was appointed to the Commissioner’s position in 2012 by the Conservative government of David Cameron.

Riddell is a former journalist, and one, it should be noted, who is about as establishment as they come. He worked his way up through the economic elite’s house journal, the Financial Times, for 20 years. Then he joined the Times, the political elite’s house journal, where he spent a further two decades, first as a political commentator and then as assistant editor.

Riddell was an early member of the secretive Gibson inquiry that was supposed to investigate British complicity in the US-led torture and rendition programme. The inquiry, with its tightly delimited remit, didn’t even manage to reach the level of a whitewash. It failed to get to grips with the most pressing issues around systemic law-breaking by the UK and US, and what modest findings it did reach were quietly shelved by Cameron’s government.

Riddell has also held senior roles at the Hansard Society and the Institute for Government, both elite institutions concerned with strengthening the substance and image of parliamentary democracy in the UK to avert growing criticism of its glaring deficiencies.

So Riddell – who was honoured by the Queen in 2012 as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to journalism – is very much integrated into the establishment that runs the country for its own benefit. But he is also on the wing of it that is most anxious about the masses getting restless if the failures inherent in a system designed to uphold the establishment’s power become too apparent.

Carefully selected

Riddell’s ostensible job as Commissioner for Public Appointments is to assess whether appointments to the bodies that control or regulate public life in the UK are being properly conducted – from the BBC to the various regulatory Of-bodies, cultural institutions like the British Film Institute, the commission that regulates charities, the health and safety executive, museums and galleries, and education oversight bodies like the Office for Students.

Riddell was an ideal person for the job, as Cameron doubtless understood, because he cares deeply about the image of elite institutions.

The candidates for these public bodies – including, of course, Riddell himself – have already been carefully filtered for ideological sympathy to elite goals. The vast majority, like Riddell, have attended private schools and/or gone on to elite universities such as Oxbridge. Like Riddell, they have then typically served in the status-quo adoring, advocacy-trained elite professions, as lawyers or journalists, or they have spent decades working in the various temples to late-stage capitalism, such as banks, investment firms and fund management companies.

Traditionally, the ideological pluralism represented by those appointed to public bodies has varied from a moderate, gently reformist identification with turbo-charged capitalism (neoliberalism) to a complete, dog-eat-dog identification with neoliberalism. Riddell is on the more moderate wing of that already narrow spectrum.

The appointments system has always been heavily rigged – as one would expect – to maintain class privilege. Cliques have no incentive to invite in outsiders, those who might disrupt the financial and ideological gravy train the elite has been growing fat on. The appointments system, by its very nature, is deeply conservative.

Crony appointments

Any challenges to the status quo come not from the left – or so rarely from the left that they can be quickly snuffed out with corporate media-led propaganda-vilification campaigns, as happened with Jeremy Corbyn – but from the right. Which is why the system has a consistent tendency to shift rightwards, even as reality moves leftwards, in the sense that the failure of financial institutions and the collapse of environmental support systems become ever harder to conceal or ignore.

That is the context for understanding the “exposure” of Riddell’s concerns about “interference” by Boris Johnson’s government in the appointments system.

The system Riddell oversees is supposed to ensure that one member – and one member only – of the selection panels that decide who will head the bodies influencing our cultural, intellectual and environmental spaces is “independent”.

The charade of this should be obvious. Riddell’s job is to make sure that, even though the rest of the panel deciding, for example, who gets to run the BBC,  can be packed with Boris Johnson’s cronies, one member of the panel must be “a non-political senior independent panel member”. They even have an acronym for this sticking plaster: a SIPM.

What does “independent” mean in this case? Only that these solitary figures on the appointments panels should not be “politically active” in public – perhaps to encourage us to imagine that, in secret, there are lots of socialist bankers and hedge fund managers who pick the people who head our most important public bodies. And that, unlike the other panelists, the “independent” one should have some minimal technical understanding of the principles of making public appointments.

In other words, Riddell’s role is to make sure there is one person like him on these selection panels – a moderate apostle for neoliberalism – rather than only dog-at-dog cheerleaders for neoliberalism. And the reason is as cynical as it looks: that it benefits the system that not too many overtly dog-eat-dog candidates get appointed to our most important, visible and cherished public bodies.

Feeble rules

Riddell earned his place as Commissioner for Public Appointments after a lifetime of working to salvage the image of establishment structures – persuading us that inherently corrupt institutions are basically respectable and well-meaning.

The Guardian fulfills the same role. In its report on the public appointments system, it highlights a supposed battle to maintain the system’s already non-existent integrity – as though Riddell serves as a check on government power over regulatory bodies in the same way the Guardian claims to act as a check on the rest of the billionaire-owned corporate media.

In reality, both are trying to stop real scrutiny of out-of-control power structures that are ultimately destroying economic health and environmental health on a global scale.

The Guardian report summarises Riddell’s actions in its introductory paragraph:

A watchdog had to prevent ministers breaching a strict code on political neutrality and independence during the search for new chairs for the BBC and the British Film Institute (BFI), the Guardian can reveal.

What does this “prevention” amount to in practice? In the main cases cited, Riddell insisted on one member of the appointments board not being someone who trumpets their allegiance to Boris Johnson’s brand of politics.

Riddell compares the Johnson government’s rule-breaking with the situation under Johnson’s predecessor: the much blander, rightwing Conservative leader, Theresa May. He says of her: “May was, as you would expect, rather correct [enforced the “senior independent panel member” rule] and she was concerned with getting good people to do things. She was quite robust on that.”

This is what we are supposed to be excited about? This is what we are supposed to champion as proper regulation? And given how low expectations are – from Riddell, from the Guardian and from us the public – the Johnson government’s efforts to break this feeble rule are presented as some kind of special threat to good governance.

Human warehousing

Riddell and his principles of good governance actually make no substantial difference to the appointments process he is supposed to oversee – as is apparent from the results.

Even though Riddell insisted on an “independent” member on the panel that picked the chair of the BBC, the winner was Richard Sharp, a major donor to the Tory party and former adviser to Johnson’s Chancellor, the billionaire former banker Rishi Sunak. Sharp’s business ventures include funding a firm accused of “human warehousing” – stuffing benefit recipients into “rabbit hutch” flats to profit from a Conservative government scheme.

New BBC chair Richard Sharp is not only a major donor to the Conservative party but he helped to fund a firm accused of 'human warehousing', stuffing benefit recipients into 'rabbit hutch' flats to profit from a Conservative government scheme https://t.co/nR4wOeZozv

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 26, 2021

The man appointed – under Riddell’s ultimate oversight – to head the Office for Students, which regulates higher education in England, is James Wharton. He is a senior figure drawn from the inherently corrupt world of corporate lobbying whose only qualifications for the job are that he is a Conservative peer and served as Johnson’s campaign manager.

The problem here is not the one Riddell or the Guardian are peddling. Johnson’s government is indeed a threat but not in the way they are highlighting. There is no system of transparent, honest governance and regulation Johnson is undermining and that Riddell and the Guardian are seeking to protect.

Through his clownish incompetence, Johnson is threatening to expose the system’s corruption by making it even more corrupt – so corrupt, in fact, that its corruption can no longer be concealed from the public. Johnson is threatening to make a system designed to covertly maintain elite privilege explicitly do so. He threatens to discredit it, to bring it into disrepute.

To make us, like the fish, aware of the water all around us.

Sticking plaster

The Guardian and Riddell are waging a battle – one presented as critically important – to ensure that the sticking plaster continues to stick.

We are being sidelined into trivial debates about upholding rules over panels having one, solitary “independent” member. That “independent” panelist, let us note, has no influence over the shortlist of candidates. He or she has no meaningful influence over who gets picked. And more importantly still, the “independent” panellist is not even independent – they are selected, as were Riddell and the editor of the Guardian, precisely because they have spent a lifetime identifying with establishment priorities.

Riddell personifies the only permitted struggles going in our political, cultural and economic spaces.

On one side are those who have grown so confident in the elite’s ability to rig the system to its advantage that they are contemptuous of those outside their own class and no longer care how bad the system looks.

And on the other side are those who fear that, if the system’s corruption becomes too gross, too offensive, the masses may turn on the elites and end their privileges just as revolutionaries sent the French elite to the guillotine nearly 250 years ago.

Appointments to public bodies are critically important. The leaders of them shape our cultural, intellectual and social lives. But let us not pretend that anything Riddell or the Guardian are doing will bring pluralism to our public bodies or protect democracy. They will simply maintain the veil a little longer over the charade that is elite privilege masquerading as the public good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

One of the most damning assessments of COP26, the UN climate conference being held in Glasgow, came from Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist:

‘#COP26  has been named the must excluding COP ever.
This is no longer a climate conference.
This is a Global North greenwash festival.
A two week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.’

And, indeed, if you scour news reports from COP26 they yield a familiar litany of political rhetoric and weasel words: vows, pledges, promises, commitments, sign up, phase out, green investment, innovation, transition, progress, scaling up, carbon credits, bending the emissions curve, net zero, 2050, 2070.

To quote from King Crimson’s  ‘Elephant Talk‘:

‘Arguments, agreements… articulate announcements…Brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo…It’s only talk…cheap talk…double talk.’

Juice Media, the campaign group who ‘make honest Government ads’, exposed the dangerous and misleading nonsense behind ‘Net Zero by 2050’:

‘There’s a huge gap between our promises and where we need to be. We don’t talk about that gap coz that would entail a complex process called “Being Honest”. Being Honest would mean admitting that we’re failing. And we can’t do that coz then we’d have to stop failing. That would mean ending fossil-fuel subsidies and banning all new gas, coal and oil projects.’

The satirical government ad continued:

‘So being honest isn’t an option for us. Which is why we’ve come up with the next best alternative: Net Zero by 2050…which risks setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond our control.’

Nature, the leading science journal, reported last week that top climate scientists – co-authors of a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – are sceptical that nations will rein in global warming. Moreover:

‘Six in ten of the respondents [climate scientists] said that they expect the world to warm by at least 3 °C by the end of the century, compared with what conditions were like before the Industrial Revolution. That is far beyond the Paris agreement’s goal to limit warming to 1.5-2 °C.’

The news report added:

‘Most of the survey’s respondents – 88% – said they think global warming constitutes a “crisis”, and nearly as many said they expect to see catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes. Just under half said that global warming has caused them to reconsider major life decisions, such as where to live and whether to have children. More than 60% said that they experience anxiety, grief or other distress because of concerns over climate change.’

‘An Orchestrated PR Scam’

A powerful thread on Twitter by conservationist Stephen Barlow echoed our own experiences and insights from observing climate conferences over three decades:

‘I’m starting to get the impression of COP26 as a contrived stitch up. Where world leaders get to present their inadequate action as fixing the problem. This really is dangerous stuff. You see I remember the 1992 Rio Earth Summit well.’

Barlow expanded:

‘After the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, political leaders, fossil fuel companies and general vested interest gave the impression the problem was fixed, that there was no need for people to turn to green politics, because mainstream politics had fixed the problem.

‘In the following years, in the 1990s, we had oil companies taking out big full page adverts in BBC Wildlife Magazine, National Geographic, etc, saying how they were switching their business model to renewables.

‘Politicians presented all these rosy views of green growth, all sorts of carbon trading schemes and generally giving off the impression that the problem was fixed, and the future was green.’

He rightly concluded:

‘The problem is, unlike the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, where it took nearly 30 years to find out everything we were promised was a scam and it just kept on getting worse – in 30 years time (in fact far less) we are going to be in serious trouble.

‘This is as evil as it gets. This is an orchestrated PR scam to carry on with business as usual. Where various elements like politicians, the mainstream media, billionaires, royalty and vested interests, combine to maintain business as usual, with fraudulent presentation.’

Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who has repeatedly exposed the reality of UK foreign policy, recently reported that the British government is seeking trade deals with carbon-lobbying countries who have attempted to weaken a scientific assessment report being prepared by the IPCC. The countries include Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Norway and India. Indeed, the UK is actively seeking to promote increased fossil fuel production in nearly all those countries, including Saudi Arabia – the world’s second largest oil producer.

Ahmed noted that last month, on the eve of COP26, foreign secretary Liz Truss flew to Saudi Arabia and Qatar to explore a potential trade deal with the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

He added:

‘According to the UK Department for International Trade’s Exporting Guide to Saudi Arabia, some of the biggest opportunities for UK investment are in expanding the kingdom’s fossil fuel sector.’

The export guide proudly states:

‘There are significant opportunities in Saudi Arabia’s energy market for UK businesses, especially in oil and natural gas.’

Ahmed continued:

‘Increasing the kingdom’s natural gas production is a particularly lucrative area for UK industry. The DIT notes that Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s giant oil producer, is exploiting natural gas reserves off the Red Sea coast to support increased domestic demand, which will involve using deep water technologies for drilling below 1,000 metres.’

He summed up:

‘Britain’s intent to ramp up fossil fuel production in partnership with some of the world’s biggest obstructers of climate action raises urgent questions about its role at COP26.’

That is an understatement. Then again, who believes that a corrupt Tory government – led by a shambling, elitist, racist, serial twister of the truth – would ever actually take the serious actions required to tackle the climate emergency?

‘Systematically Corrupted By Vested Interests’

The climate campaign group Insulate Britain, who have blockaded several roads in multiple actions in recent weeks, said:

‘As will become clear after COP26, our government has no intention of taking the necessary action to protect its people. It has broken the social contract – the unwritten agreement in which we agree to obey the government’s laws and in return it will protect us.’

In particular, Insulate Britain:

‘have exposed the government’s refusal to act on home insulation as cowardly and vindictive and their refusal to protect our country and our children from the climate crisis as genocidal and treasonous.’

Those are strong words. But climate campaigners from Extinction Rebellion (XR) also made clear that:

‘Nothing on the table in the run up to COP26 has resembled a compassionate and functional response to the crisis. The Climate and Ecological Emergency is a Crime Against Humanity perpetrated by the rich and powerful, and the COP process is systematically corrupted by vested interests – national, corporate and financial.’

The environmentalist group Global Witness assessed that there are more fossil fuel lobbyists present at COP26 than even the largest delegation from any country. They reported:

‘At least 503 fossil fuel lobbyists, affiliated with some of the world’s biggest polluting oil and gas giants, have been granted access to COP26, flooding the Glasgow conference with corporate influence.’

Moreover, reported Global Witness:

• If the fossil fuel lobby were a country delegation at COP it would be the largest with 503 delegates – two dozen more than the largest country delegation [Brazil].
• Over 100 fossil fuel companies are represented at COP with 30 trade associations and membership organisations also present.
• Fossil fuel lobbyists dwarf the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s official indigenous constituency by around two to one.
• The fossil fuel lobby at COP is larger than the combined total of the eight delegations from the countries worst affected by climate change in the last two decades – Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti, Philippines, Mozambique, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Pakistan.
• 27 official country delegations registered fossil fuel lobbyists, including Canada, Russia and Brazil.

On day 1 of the conference, XR had already declared that COP26 was a ‘failure’ and the conference itself ‘a crime against humanity’. XR spokesperson Jon Fuller pointed out the responsibility of the media to:

‘form an analysis of the situation, delving beyond presenting the views of different parties to the reality of what has been achieved and what the consequences are for ordinary people. If they fail to do so they continue to be guilty of the same crimes against humanity as the world leaders who have gathered at 25 previous COPs, claiming progress in spite of a complete failure to stop emissions rising.’

Of course, as Media Lens has demonstrated over the past two decades, the state-corporate media, including BBC News, are indeed complicit in crimes against humanity.

Last year, the BBC took £300,000 in advertising revenue from Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco. The BBC does not carry advertising in the UK, but it does so abroad where much of its output is supported by commercials.

Jim Waterson, the Guardian’s media editor, reported that:

‘Big fossil fuel companies have spent approximately $660,000 (£483,000) with the BBC on US-focused digital adverts since 2018, according to projections produced by the advertising data firm MediaRadar. Most of this came from the national Saudi oil company – although BP, Exelon and Phillips 66 are among the other fossil fuel business[es] estimated to have spent five-figure sums advertising on the BBC’s digital outlets.’

He added:

‘The real figure for how much the BBC is making from large fossil fuel companies could be much higher when other forms of advertising are taken into account.’

Meanwhile, BBC News programmes and high-profile BBC journalists continue to channel government propaganda on climate, with minimal scrutiny or genuinely countervailing voices. An extended appearance by Greta Thunberg on the Sunday morning Andrew Marr show on 31 October was a rare exception.

More typical was Laura Kuenssberg’s relentless tweeting of government talking points:

‘PM says score in the match btw humanity and climate change is now, 5-2, or 5-3, not 5-1 at half time, which was his assessment a few days ago – if you hate the metaphor, let’s say, progress, but not yet enough’

This tweet from the BBC political editor managed to capture both:

1. the pathetic state of the ‘democracy‘ that ‘elected’ Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

2. the crass, subservient nature of much of BBC News.

As US journalist Glenn Greenwald once observed:

‘The worst media in the democratic world is the British media, and it’s not even close.

‘I know it’s hard for people in other countries who hate their own media to believe, but whatever you hate about your country’s media, the UK media has in abundance and worse.’

The pathetic state of much of what passes for ‘journalism’ in the UK was summed up by investigative journalist Matt Kennard’s recent observation:

‘The British Journalism Awards [are] sponsored by Starling Bank, Gilead pharma, Google, Ovo Energy. The capture of our political, media and cultural systems by corporations is absolute and the root of problem. Rejecting + replacing corporate media is prerequisite to real democracy.’

And real democracy is a prerequisite for tackling the climate emergency before it threatens to engulf humanity, driving us towards extinction.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

In their classic book on the news media, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky presented a ‘propaganda model’ of how the major broadcasters and newspapers operate. Whereas the ‘mainstream’ media declare that their aim is to educate, inform and entertain the public, their actual societal purpose ‘on matters that are of significance for established power’ is to avert any ‘danger’ that the public can ‘assert meaningful control over the political process’. ¹

As media analyst Lance Bennett wrote:

‘The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to these messages…. Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.’ (Ibid., p. 303)

Thus, rather than manufacturing public consent for elite policies and priorities, manufacturing public ignorance is the more desirable and effective goal. After all, explicit public ‘consent’ is typically not required for the UK government, for example, to attack the welfare system, underfund and carve-up the NHS for commercial purposes, sell arms to Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemeni civilians, sabre-rattle in the Indo-Pacific to ‘counter’ China, or increase its nuclear weapons arsenal by 40 per cent.

Significant public activism and opposition to state-corporate power needs to be rooted in widespread shared public knowledge. But, in the absence of adequate public knowledge, and thus the reduced ‘threat’ of an informed populace participating in a real democracy, power is more or less free to do as it pleases.

Take a recent Reuters news report following the death of Colin Powell, one of the perpetrators of the supreme international crime of invading and occupying Iraq. Like a parody from the satirical website The Onion, the article was titled: ‘Powell remembered as “one of the finest Americans never to be President”’.

As Matt Kennard of Declassified UK noted:

‘The wildest thing about Western establishment media is its journalists aren’t even working under threat of prison or violence.

‘They do state propaganda – and sanitise our worst war criminals – totally off their own back. Incredible discipline and dedication to serving power.’

Recall that, in February 2003, as the US and allies were preparing to invade Iraq, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had addressed the United Nations Security Council, dramatically holding up a small glass vial he said could contain anthrax, a biological weapon.

‘Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him,’ stated Powell, arguing that Iraq was deceiving UN weapons inspectors. He claimed that he was providing ‘facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence’. Powell’s presentation was seemingly watertight, based on supposedly undeniable evidence, and it was reported as such by an obedient ‘mainstream’ news media across the globe.

But it was all lies, and it is ‘irrefutable’ that Powell ‘consciously deceived the world’, as US political analyst Jon Schwarz noted. Around one million Iraqis died as a result of the invasion-occupation, while many more millions became refugees, the country’s infrastructure devastated.

With her customary sardonic wit, the Australian political writer Caitlin Johnstone described the infamous image of Powell holding a vial while addressing the UN Security Council as a ‘viral anti-war meme’:

‘Over the years Powell’s meme has been an invaluable asset for opponents of western military interventionism and critics of US propaganda narratives about empire-targeted nations, serving as a single-image debunk of any assertion that it is sensible to trust the claims US officials make about any government that Washington doesn’t like.’

For the benefit of credulous, power-friendly journalists and anyone else who believed that Powell had made just one mistake that he bitterly regretted for the rest of his life, she added:

‘Powell’s other contributions to the world include covering up and participating in war crimes in Vietnam, facilitating atrocities in Central America, and destroying Iraqi civilian infrastructure in the Gulf War. But it’s hard to dispute that his greatest lasting legacy will be his immortal reminder to future generations that there is never, ever a valid reason to trust anything US officials tell us about a government they wish to bring down.’

She added:

‘Be sure to remind everyone of Powell’s sociopathic facilitation of human slaughter often and loudly in the coming hours. Public opinion is the only thing keeping western war criminals from The Hague, after all, and those war criminals are keenly aware of this fact. At times like these, they suddenly become highly invested in making sure that regular people “respect the dead,” not because they respect any human alive or dead, but because they cannot allow the death to become an opportunity to amplify and change public opinion about their egregious murderous crimes.’

The Persecution Of Julian Assange

As we have recently observed in media alerts (here and here), the state-corporate media, including and especially BBC News, have been complicit in keeping the public largely ignorant about the case of Julian Assange. Likewise, the case’s likely terrifying implications for further limiting public knowledge about what governments and big business actually get up to. As founder of WikiLeaks, Assange has probably done more than anyone in at least a generation to expose the war crimes of the US and its allies.

The revelations that the CIA had plans to kidnap or even kill Assange, almost entirely ignored by BBC News, has prompted concerned calls from advocates of ‘press freedom’ (such as it is in the West). The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Knight First Amendment Institute, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders are among the signatories of a letter demanding that the case against Assange be dropped.

Next Wednesday, a substantive U.S. appeal hearing will be heard at the High Court in London. Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, the High Court judge who reversed an earlier court order to bar the U.S. from appealing Assange’s medical issues, will preside over the hearing. According to Consortium News legal analyst Alexander Mercouris:

‘It is highly unusual for a judge who has already ruled in favour of one party to continue on the bench. In most cases, fresh judges would be brought in who have had no part in earlier rulings for either side.’

Mercouris called the decision ‘extremely disturbing news’ and ‘very worrying. Nothing in this case is proceeding as it should do.’

Nina Cross has examined the insidious role of the BBC in the state-sponsored persecution of Assange. First, in an overview of BBC history, she showed that:

‘Britain’s most powerful “national asset” helps keep the British people in check while serving imperialism.’

In the case of Assange, the BBC has helped ‘to control the narratives around the stripping of Assange’s asylum’, typically presenting him as someone who is attempting to evade the law.

Cross added that the BBC is serving:

‘the interests of the British state apparatus, enabling a culture of impunity by spoon feeding its audience government narratives, manipulating perception, and promoting ridicule and disdain. The persecution of Assange that increasingly looks like a slow assassination by the UK and US authorities could not be so conceivable without a servile media.’

She continued:

‘The impunity to persecute Assange has been enabled by the BBC through omission and silence. Instead of practising journalism it has turned a blind eye to abuses of the British authorities and those of its allies. The BBC’s behaviour is contrary: anti-journalism, anti-truth.’

This is not new. As Noam Chomsky has observed:

‘Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy – their own population.’

In this sense, BBC News is a form of technology that the UK government deploys to keep the British population away from the levers of power.

The ‘Illusion Of A Democratic System’

Take the case of UK arms sales. A new film and report by Matt Kennard and Phil Miller of Declassified UK investigated the largely-hidden role of a factory owned by arms exporter BAE Systems in the Lancashire village of Warton. The factory supplies military equipment to the Saudi Arabian regime, enabling it to continue its devastating attacks on Yemen which, for years, has been suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Kennard and Miller noted that:

‘Boris Johnson recently visited Warton and claimed the BAE site was part of his “levelling up agenda”. No journalist covering the visit seems to have reported the factory’s role in a war.’

Back in London, Declassified UK interviewed Molly Mulready, who was a lawyer at the Foreign Office from 2014-19. She was responsible for giving legal advice in relation to exporting arms to the Middle East. She said:

‘Boris Johnson was very casual and jokey when we would go in to talk to him about arms to Saudi Arabia. We would go in to brief him about Yemen and he would joke around and waste everybody’s time and it was a bit mind blowing because you know, you’re discussing civilian casualties, you’re discussing the fact that innocent people have died and that British supplied bombs have played a part in that.’

In 2017, Campaign Against Arms Trade took the UK government to court over the export of weaponry from places like Warton to Saudi Arabia. Mulready was tasked with trying to defend the government: ‘something she now bitterly regrets.’ Clearly upset, she told Kennard and Miller:

‘I’m so ashamed that I had anything to do with it. There have been tens of thousands of civilians killed in the bombing and there are millions of people who are food insecure. There are children in Yemen who are starving to death. The Saudis seem to have absolutely no compassion whatsoever.’

The arms sales violate the UK government’s own licencing laws, Mulready believes, and contribute to Saudi war crimes.

As Kennard and Miller concluded:

‘Yet they [UK arms sales] continue, along with the weekly cargo flight we filmed.’

The Morning Star reported Mulready’s important testimony. But, according to our search of the ProQuest newspaper database, no other British newspapers have done so.

In a recent interview with Lowkey, the British rapper and political activist, Kennard said that in his work as a journalist he wants to ‘pierce the propaganda bubble’. He emphasised the ‘illusion of a democratic system’ in the UK:

‘We do not live in a democracy. That’s what people need to understand. This is not a democratic state. Britain is an oligarchy.’

On the tragicomic notion that ‘Britain is a force for good in the world’, he commented:

‘It’s an amazing mythology. It’s mirrored by the US. They have this thing called “American exceptionalism” which is how America operates very differently along principled lines; very differently to all superpowers. They don’t deal with [their own] interests, etc. It’s literally the intellectual level of about a five-year-old.’

Kennard continued:

‘But the interesting thing about our society is you cannot work in any elite part of the intellectual industries unless you believe it…I’m looking every day at the reality of what Britain does in the world. And they are a force for reaction. They are a force for repression. They’re a force for militarism. They’re a force for destroying hope wherever it appears. They’re a junior partner to the US, but they’re actually an integral player. And the imperial operations of both are quite similar.’

What is the way ahead then? Rather than looking for a ‘saviour’, such as Labour centrists Sir Keir Starmer or Andy Burnham, Kennard suggested:

‘Let’s focus on different strategies, i.e. building extra-parliamentary movements and understanding what Labour’s role in the British polity is, which is to support the British establishment, and absorb the radical left and neutralise it.’

‘There Are No Climate Leaders’

As we have often emphasised in our work, in this era of worsening climate instability, time is rapidly running out. Climate activist Ben See observes:

‘Very few people seem aware that we only have about three or four years left before Earth’s species start being smashed by catastrophic 1.5°C of global warming in the context of toxic pollution, deforestation, etc. Perhaps our media and education systems are…utterly inadequate?’

The forthcoming United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, starting on 31 October, will doubtless generate yet more ‘blah, blah, blah’, as Greta Thunberg so memorably summed up all the decades-long, political hot air on climate. She rightly observed that:

‘no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.’

She added:

‘The truth is there are no climate leaders. Not yet. At least not among high-income nations. The level of public awareness and the unprecedented pressure from the media that would be required for any real leadership to appear is still basically nonexistent.’

During COP26, we can expect plenty of coverage of tense negotiations and exhausted delegates finally delivering an ‘agreed’ outcome. But there will be zero or negligible attention given to the unjust system of global economics that is driving humans into oblivion.

The endless corporate drive to privatise the planet was highlighted in a recent article by journalist and researcher Whitney Webb titled, ‘Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class’. She reported:

‘Last month, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had developed a new asset class and accompanying listing vehicle meant “to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth.” Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end of goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.’

Simply put, capitalists are seeking to control, not just ecosystems as ‘financial assets’, but the rights that people around the world have to ‘ecosystems services’, including the benefits that humans receive from Nature:

‘These include food production, tourism, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, carbon sequestration and much more.’

The estimated ‘monetary value’ of Nature’s ‘assets’ have been priced at $4,000 trillion. Webb concluded:

‘Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world.’

The obscenity of this is almost beyond belief. Randall Wray, a professor of economics in New York, warned:

‘From the get-go, capitalism has been all about exploitation. Marx’s followers will point to exploitation of workers, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Capitalism originated in the large plantations of the New World, exploiting the slaves, and Africa itself — which bore the burden of producing the humans that would be kidnapped and shipped across the seas to create the Old World’s wealth. It exploited the environment of America’s seemingly infinite natural resources, abandoning the land it exhausted, moving ever westward in its genocidal conquest of the continent. It spewed its waste into the water, the air, and the bodies of creatures great and small. It put a money price on the formerly free communal resources so that it could exploit them to extinction.’

He added:

‘Capitalism has always been celebrated for its presumed efficiency. In fact, it is supremely inefficient. It survives only because it is the greatest system ever developed for exploitation of man and nature. It pushes costs off to the environment, “other” people, families, governments, and our “future.” It is ever on the lookout for new frontiers of exploitation. And in that quest, human survival is at risk.’

Do not expect to be hearing much, if any, about all this from the state-corporate media in the weeks, months and years ahead; or however much time homo sapiens has left.

1. Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Vintage, 1988/1994, p. 303.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

During last week’s Tory Cabinet reshuffle, ITV political editor Robert Peston inadvertently summed up the primary function of political journalists:

‘I simply pass on’

His tweet was in reference to a ministerial source saying that Priti Patel was ‘not looking happy’. She remained in her job as Home Secretary.

Peston’s phrase was a tragicomic echo of a remark by Nick Robinson, ITV political editor during the Iraq war, who infamously declared that:

‘It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking… That is all someone in my sort of job can do.’

(‘“Remember the last time you shouted like that?” I asked the spin doctor’, The Times, 16 July, 2004)

In 2012, Robinson, by now the BBC’s political editor, mourned:

‘The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions’.¹

However, Robinson’s career certainly did not appear to have been harmed having abdicated this basic responsibility of journalism; namely, holding those in power to account. After a ten-year stint as the BBC political editor, he became a presenter on the high-profile BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Peston’s counterpart at the BBC, political editor Laura Kuenssberg, also performs the required function of ‘I simply pass on’, broadcasting and amplifying the words of those in power with minimal ‘analysis’, far less critical appraisal. Relaying Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s words on the current crisis in gas supply in the UK, as he flew to New York to attend climate talks, she tweeted:

‘Speaking on the plane Johnson said..

1. gas supply probs shd be “temporary”, the squeeze is a result of world waking up from pandemic shutdowns like everyone “going to put the kettle on at the end of the TV programme” and he said he was confident in UK supply chains’

Gary Neville, the football pundit and former Manchester United defender, replied to Kuenssberg’s tweet:

‘Hi Laura do you believe this guys crap ?’

A tad blunt perhaps. But, judging by the number of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’, it was a welcome challenge from someone with a public profile to the endless channelling by highly-paid political journalists of Johnson’s twaddle – and worse (as we will see below).

Daniel Finkelstein, the Tory peer and Times columnist, defended Kuenssberg and responded that reporting the Prime Minister’s words ‘is a part of her job’ so that the public can judge them for themselves. Three obvious glaring holes in his argument are that the BBC political editor:

(a) rarely challenges Johnson (or other government ministers) to any significant extent;

(b) provides very few perspectives or opinions from outside the narrow range of ‘mainstream’ Parliamentary debate (Labour hardly counts as an effective ‘Opposition’ under the Blair-lite Sir Keir Starmer;

(c) ignores Johnson’s many lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations which have been well-documented by several independent political observers, including Peter Oborne and Peter Stefanovic. Kuenssberg and her corporate media peers have given the Prime Minister a free pass on his serial deceptions.

There are countless examples of establishment bias by Kuenssberg (and her predecessors as BBC political editor). Recall, for example, that for years she channelled a one-sided account of Labour’s supposed antisemitism crisis, including an infamous BBC Panorama programme that was demolished as a ‘catalogue of reporting failures’ by the Media Reform Coalition. Recall, too, her evident disapproval when Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the Labour Party, refused to give her a commitment in a BBC News television interview that he was willing to press the nuclear button to launch weapons that would cause untold death and suffering.

On 20 September, 2021, The National newspaper in Scotland reported that the flagship BBC News at Six ‘did not run a single negative news story about the UK Government’ during the previous week, 13-17 September. This was probably not an unusual week in that regard. Genuinely hard-hitting critical reporting of the Tory government is notable by its absence on BBC News and other establishment news media.

The truth is, that on one issue after another, leading journalists like Kuenssberg, Peston, and all the high-profile correspondents ‘reporting’ on politicians, the military and intelligence services spend too much time performing as mere stenographers to power. Rational and critical opposing voices are routinely ignored, marginalised or ridiculed.

Media Lens has documented and explained over the past two decades how ‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’ are alien concepts to state-corporate journalism. As the US commentator Michael Parenti once noted:

‘Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.’

Similarly, Matt Kennard, head of investigations at Declassified UK, a vital resource for independent journalism, put it well:

‘If you’re sympathetic to the weak, it’s activist journalism. If you’re sympathetic to the powerful, it’s objective journalism.’

The public are, in effect, constantly being subjected to gaslighting by corporate journalists purporting to inform the public what is happening around us. We are being told, explicitly and implicitly, that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the system of economics and power politics that prevail in the world. We are being misled that any serious problems that arise – even climate instability – can be ‘fixed’ by ‘incentivising’ changes to consumer behaviour, rejigging the economy by redirecting public subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables, but all still within a corporate-driven ‘market’ framework to maximise private profit, and by implementing technical ‘solutions’, such as capturing and storing carbon emissions (which have failed to live up to the grandiose PR promises made, while fossil fuel companies have received large injections of public cash from governments).

In fact, ‘mainstream’ news is characterised by serial deceptions and omissions that hide essential truths about the world. We are being drip-fed propaganda that preserves the current inequitable system of power, privilege and class – even as we hurtle towards the abyss of climate chaos.

Any one of the topics addressed here could merit a media alert in its own right. Indeed, in each case, we have done so several times before. The objective here is to provide something of an overview of the propaganda system that is leading us towards ever greater levels of inequality and misery, even human extinction; a timely reminder of what is at stake.

Endless War

Consider the recent pull-out of US troops from Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation. In an excellent article for the Morning Star, Ian Sinclair observed that BBC News and other outlets continued to promote ‘misleading narratives about the Afghan invasion and its motives’. As just one example, Sinclair highlighted Johnson’s ‘astonishingly deceitful claim’ that:

‘It was no accident that there has been no terrorist attack launched against Britain or any other Western country from Afghanistan in the last 20 years.’

Sinclair countered:

‘First, terrorist attacks have taken place in Britain and the US that have been inspired by the US-British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.’

He continued:

‘Second, it is widely understood by intelligence agencies and experts that the West’s military intervention in Afghanistan led to a heightened terrorist threat to the West.’

Sinclair added:

‘The final problem with the government’s claim that the war stopped terrorism on the West from Afghanistan is that it’s based on a simplistic understanding of the September 11 2001 terror attacks — that it was necessary for terrorists to “have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilised nations,” as president George W Bush explained in 2006.’

However, the 9-11 attacks were planned initially in Germany, training was implemented in the US and most of the hijackers were Saudi. A recent article in CovertAction Magazine noted that:

‘The invasion of Afghanistan was launched following the NATO invocation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, but eventually it emerged that the report presented to NATO by U.S. Ambassador Frank Taylor contained no actual forensic evidence to support the assertion that the terror attacks had been orchestrated in Afghanistan.’

The 7 July 2005 bomb attacks in London, and the Manchester Arena bombing and London Bridge attacks in 2017, required no ‘safe haven’ for terrorists to commit atrocities in Britain.

Sinclair summed up:

‘The omissions and distortions that have been made by politicians about Afghanistan over the last few weeks, echoed by much of the media, have been so big and unremitting it’s easy to start questioning one’s own grip on reality.’

But following corporate news media daily can have precisely that effect. In gaslighting media audiences, ‘mainstream’ news routinely skews the agenda in favour of what Washington and its allies wish to project. Thus, as Julie Hollar noted in a piece for US-based media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the corporate media only rediscovered Afghan women and their human rights when US troops left:

‘[corporate media] coverage gives the impression that Afghan women desperately want the US occupation to continue, and that military occupation has always been the only way for the US to help them. But for two decades, women’s rights groups have been arguing that the US needed to support local women’s efforts and a local peace process. Instead, both Democrat and Republican administrations continued to funnel trillions of dollars into the war effort, propping up misogynist warlords and fueling violence and corruption.’

Hollar continued:

‘The US did not “rescue” Afghan women with its military invasion in 2001, or its subsequent 20-year occupation. Afghan women need international help, but facile and opportunistic US media coverage pushes toward the same wrong kind of help that it’s been pushing for the last two decades: military “assistance,” rather than diplomacy and aid.’

She concluded:

‘For more than 20 years, US corporate media could have listened seriously to Afghan women and their concerns, bringing attention to their own efforts to improve their situation. Instead, those media outlets are proving once again that Afghan women’s rights are only of interest to them when they can be used to prop up imperialism and the military industrial complex.’

FAIR has summarised a 20-year-long pattern of corporate media self-censorship, scapegoating and stenography since 9-11. The US ‘war on terror’ has likely killed more than one million people at a cost of $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. The report states:

‘Several times as many more have been killed as a reverberating effect of the wars – because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and water-related disease.’

Cost of War co-director Stephanie Savell said:

‘Twenty years from now, we’ll still be reckoning with the high societal costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – long after US forces are gone.’

The corporate media played a major role in bringing about this catastrophe, then covering it up afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing its immoral mission to prosecute Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks co-founder and publisher, for telling the truth about US crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Assange rightly said in 2011 that the US goal was ‘an endless war, not a successful war’. The aim is to line the pockets of the narrow sector of society that profits from the military-industrial complex, at the expense of the general population.

In a piece for Newsweek, Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker and Noam Chomsky wrote that:

‘When Assange published hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the public was given an unprecedented window into the lack of justification and the futility of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The truth was hidden by a generation of governmental lies. Assange’s efforts helped show the American public what their government was doing in their name.’

As we have noted in previous media alerts, Assange’s continued incarceration and long-term confinement, described as torture by Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, is a damning indictment of Western ‘democracy’.

Political commentator Philip Roddis observes astutely that ‘Western democracy is ninety-five percent bogus’ because:

‘(a) democracy implies consent, (b) consent is meaningless if not informed, and (c) informed consent implies truly independent media. That last we do not have when they are “large corporations selling privileged audiences to other large corporations” [quoting Noam Chomsky].’

A recurring feature of ‘democracy’ and its ‘free press’ is judicious silence or quiet mumbling when a ‘mistake’ is made. Consider the BBC’s limited apology, and dearth of follow-up by almost all media, when the BBC conceded its coverage of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian city of Douma on 7 April, 2018 was ‘seriously flawed’.

As we have described in numerous media alerts, the corporate media declared with instant unanimity and certainty that Syria’s President Bashar Assad was responsible for the attack. One week later, the US, UK and France launched missiles on Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Since then, there has been a mounting deluge of evidence, in particular from whistleblowers, that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the UN poison gas watchdog, has perpetrated a cover-up to preserve the Western narrative that Assad gassed civilians in Douma.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens had complained to the BBC following last November’s Radio 4 broadcast of ‘Mayday: The Canister On The Bed’, which propagated the official Western narrative of the attack. In particular, Hitchens had objected to the slurs against an anonymous OPCW whistleblower named ‘Alex’. The BBC had claimed that ‘Alex’ only cast doubt on the official narrative because he had been promised $100,000 by WikiLeaks. The claim was false, as the BBC later admitted. There was no evidence to suggest that ‘Alex’, described as ‘a highly qualified and apolitical scientist’, was motivated by anything other than a desire for truth in sharing his doubts about the attack.

Aaron Maté, an independent journalist with The Grayzone, has vigorously and repeatedly pursued the story, shaming both ‘mainstream’ media and most progressive media outlets who, like the corporate media, have blanked the scandal. He recently wrote a devastating account of the deceptions and evasions by OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias when appearing before the UN. Now, in a must-watch interview with Jimmy Dore about the BBC’s apology, Maté said that the BBC only retracted part of its attack on the OPCW whistleblowers and that ‘the retraction only scratches the surface of its deceit.’

Steve Sweeney, international editor of the Morning Star, noted in response to the BBC’s apology on its Douma coverage that:

‘None of the major British newspapers such as The Times, The Telegraph, or the liberal mouthpiece for war with a human face, The Guardian, gave it column space despite the serious nature of the matter.’

The Stark Reality Of Newspeak

But, of course, ‘we’ are the ‘good guys’. And when evidence emerges to the contrary, it is shunted to the margins or buried. Other countries might be ‘belligerent’, but not us. Hence the deeply skewed reporting of the recent ‘Aukus pact’ between the US, UK and Australia which will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. This was largely presented by state-corporate news, including the BBC and the Guardian, as a ‘defence’ deal to ‘counter’ China in its ‘belligerent behaviour’ in the Indo-Pacific.

BBC News at Ten declared on 16 September:

‘The deal will deliver nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian navy to promote stability in the Indo-Pacific region which has come under increasing pressure from China.’

The BBC might as well admit that they are reading out press releases on behalf of Western power.

An online BBC News article included the deceptive wording:

‘Aukus is being widely viewed as an effort to counter Beijing’s influence in the contested South China Sea.’

The weasel phrase ‘widely viewed’ is newspeak for ‘the view from Washington and London’.

Likewise, the Guardian dutifully carried the official US-UK view and framed its reporting accordingly:

‘In Washington, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, made clear that the administration had chosen to close ranks with Australia in the face of belligerent Chinese behaviour.

‘Austin said he had discussed with Australian ministers “China’s destabilising activities and Beijing’s efforts to coerce and intimidate other countries, contrary to established rules and norms”, adding: “While we seek a constructive results-oriented relationship with [China], we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order.”’

Imagine if western journalists regularly wrote news reports about the plentiful examples of belligerent US behaviour. And about America’s destabilising activities and efforts to coerce and intimidate other countries, contrary to established rules and norms. But that would be real journalism. Instead, a Guardian editorial oozed its approval:

‘A firm and unified response to China’s actions by democratic nations is both sensible and desirable.’

There was no mention in any of the current reporting, as far as we could see, that the UK is set to increase its number of nuclear warheads by over 40 per cent, breaking international law. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is encouraging the public to report the UK government to the UN.

This behaviour by the UK is no exception. ‘We’ routinely flout the law on arms, nuclear or conventional. Andrew Feinstein and Alexandra Smidman recently reported for Declassified UK, that Britain’s ‘robust’ arms export controls are a fiction:

‘In practice, UK controls on arms exports are all but voluntary, and Britain routinely arms states abusing human rights and those at war.

‘Britain exported more than £11-billion worth of arms around the world in 2019 but UK ministers claim this trade is properly administered in a mantra that goes like this:

‘“HM Government takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world. We consider all export applications thoroughly against a strict risk assessment framework and keep all licences under careful and continual review as standard.”’

However, Feinstein and Smidman pointed out that:

‘These contentions are not true and the stark, unavoidable reality is that the British government and its weapons manufacturers, between whom there is a symbiotic relationship, repeatedly violate domestic law and international agreements on arms controls with no repercussions.’

In short:

‘The British arms industry, politicians, the military and intelligence services can all essentially do what they want, with limited scrutiny and virtually no accountability.’

As just one damning example: in supplying arms and other support, including military training and maintenance services to Saudi Arabia, Britain is an active contributor to the brutal Saudi subjugation of the Yemeni people.

The UK also defies its own arms exports criteria in relation to Israel, to whom the UK has sold military equipment worth more than £400 million since 2015. Even this year’s deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza caused no let-up in UK sales to Israel.

These are all yet more examples of the gaslighting that state-corporate news media are guilty of: the constant framing of the UK as a ‘defender’ and ‘promoter’ of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, while the state and military companies pursue arms sales and a wider foreign policy that kills and endangers people abroad and at home.

‘Nothing Is Moving’ On Climate

Almost inevitably, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg makes a return in this alert for another dishonourable mention. ‘Boris Johnson aims to push for more climate action during trip’, she gushed after travelling as part of a press pack with him and his entourage on a plane headed to New York for climate talks. She wrote that Johnson was ‘delighted’ to be:

‘acting as the host of the government plane he has had repainted with the Union Jack on the tail, urging journalists to approve of the new paint job.’

But the most significant ‘paint job’ here was the BBC’s depiction of Johnson as some kind of climate hero. ‘Brokering climate deals a political priority’, was one headline in Kuenssberg’s report. She added:

‘the prime minister’s main task on this trip to New York is to push other countries to make more meaningful promises on cash and climate.’

The notion that Johnson, who has frequently cast doubt on global warming and made derogatory remarks about ‘bunny-hugging’, is a true champion of climate and environmental protection is bogus and dangerous. As recently as December 2015, when it was unseasonably warm, he published a Telegraph piece titled, ‘I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming’.

He wrote:

‘We may all be sweating in the winter air, but remember, we humans have always put ourselves at the centre of cosmic events.’

Referring to the leaders of state who had been at the 2015 Paris climate talks, Johnson added:

‘I am sure that those global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear – as far as I understand the science – is equally without foundation.

‘There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong [in December] – but they don’t include global warming.’

The reference to ‘ping-pong’, and his flippant remarks on the climate talks, suggest the whole thing was all just a game to Johnson; a ‘jolly wheeze’ to provide ammo to churn out another newspaper column.

In this month’s Cabinet reshuffle, Johnson appointed Anne-Marie Trevelyan as his new International Trade Secretary. She had previously rejected climate science in a series of tweets between 2010 and 2012, stating in one:

‘Clear evidence that the ice caps aren’t melting after all, to counter those doom-mongers and global warming fanatics.’

People can, of course, change their minds when confronted by cast-iron evidence and solid arguments. Johnson himself said this month that ‘the facts change and people change their minds’. But the facts had not changed. Certainly not since 1988 when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up and renowned climate scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress about the already-known dangers of climate instability.

Moreover, how sincere can someone like Johnson be with his appalling track record? Has his understanding around the serious reality and implications of catastrophic climate change really changed? Or does he just say whatever he believes is politically expedient to retain his grip on power?

In April 2021, Johnson waffled about ‘building back greener’ after the pandemic.

‘It’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging.

‘What I’m driving at is this is about growth and jobs.’

Experienced observers of political rhetoric will recognise that ‘jobs’ is often newspeak for ‘corporate profits’.

Johnson’s insincerity and disregard for those he considers beneath him surfaced once more in the grossly insensitive remarks he made in ‘joking’ about Margaret Thatcher’s ‘green legacy’. During a visit to a windfarm off the Aberdeenshire coast in July, he was asked if he would set a deadline for ending fossil fuel extraction. He replied with what he clearly thought was a witty remark:

‘Look at what we’ve done already. We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime.

‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.’

Continuing his track record of serial deceptions, Johnson boasted this month that:

‘The fact is the UK is leading the world [in tackling the climate crisis] and you should be proud of it.’

The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was scathing of this ‘lie’ that has been channelled repeatedly by Johnson and other cabinet ministers ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this November:

‘There’s a lie that the UK is a climate leader and that they have reduced their emissions by 45 per cent since 1990.’

She pointed out that the statistics do not include the UK’s share of emissions from international aviation, shipping and imported goods:

‘Of course, if you don’t include all emissions of course the statistics are going to look much nicer. I’m really hoping that we stop referring to the UK as a climate leader, because if you look at the reality that is simply not true. They are very good at creative carbon accounting, I must give them that, but it doesn’t mean much in practice.’

Rational analysis also shows that none of the world’s major economies – in particular, the entire G20 (which includes the UK) – is in line with the Paris Agreement on climate.

The watchdog Climate Action Tracker (CAT) analysed the policies of 36 countries, as well as the 27-nation European Union, and found that all major economies were off track to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The countries together make up 80 per cent of the world’s emissions.

Niklas Höhne, a founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, a CAT partner, warned that:

‘there has been little to no improvement: nothing is moving. Anyone would think they have all the time in the world, when in fact the opposite is the case.’

The lack of seriousness given by UK broadcasters to the crisis is evident in the results of a recent study that showed that the word ‘cake’ appeared 10 times more on British television than ‘climate change’ in 2020 while ‘dog’ was mentioned 22 times more. Mentions of climate change and global warming fell by 10 per cent and 19 per cent respectively compared with 2019, the report from BAFTA-backed sustainability initiative Albert found.

Joanna Donnelly of Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, told viewers of the ‘Claire Byrne Live’ programme on Irish television that:

‘when it comes to climate change, we are in an emergency situation’

Irish journalist John Gibbons highlighted the TV clip on Twitter, praising Donnelly’s forthright words, adding:

‘We’re in a Code Red national/global emergency, might be a good time to start acting like it (yes, media friends, that means YOU)’

A soberly-worded, but terrifying, assessment of climate change risk published last week by Chatham House warned that, unless countries dramatically increase their commitments in carbon cuts:

‘many of the climate change impacts described in this research paper are likely to be locked in by 2040, and become so severe they go beyond the limits of what nations can adapt to.’

The report added that:

‘Any relapse or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7°C of warming by the end of the century’

That prospect is terrifying. John Schellnhuber, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, warned a decade ago that:

‘the difference between two degrees and four degrees [of global warming] is human civilisation.’

In other words, we are potentially talking about the end of human life as we know it; perhaps even human extinction.

James Hansen, the previously mentioned climate expert, remains sceptical about a truly successful outcome of COP26 in Glasgow. He wrote earlier this month:

‘The bad news: we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12.  Gas bag politicians won’t show you the data that matter because that would reveal their miserable performances.  Instead, they set climate goals for their children while adopting no polices that would give such goals a chance.  Some of them may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites.’ ²

Other than the ever-present risk of nuclear war, there is no greater threat to humanity than the climate crisis. And there is no more damning example of gaslighting by state-corporate media when they tell us we can trust governments and corporations to do what is required to avert catastrophe.

1. Nick Robinson, ‘Live From Downing Street’, Bantam Books, London, 2012, p. 332
2. James Hansen, ‘August Temperature Update & Gas Bag Season Approaches’, email, 14 September 2021.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

The United States’ 245-year history as a political entity has been one long trail of wars and more wars. It is estimated that nearly 95 percent of that historical span has seen the nation involved in either all-out wars, proxy conflicts, or other military subterfuges.

But since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the US has gone into hyper-war mode. Twenty years ago, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan ushered in multiple other American wars and covert operations from Asia to Africa, from the Middle East to the Americas.

At one point, the former Obama administration was bombing seven countries simultaneously all in the name of “fighting terrorism”. Hundreds of US bombs rain down somewhere on the planet every day.

What is rather sickening is how the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 event this weekend is marked with solemn speeches by US president Joe Biden and his British counterpart Boris Johnson – the two countries that spearheaded the “War on Terror” era.

Biden claims that 9/11 demonstrates the “unity and resilience” of the American people, while Johnson blusters with platitudes about 9/11 showing that “terrorists did not defeat Western democracy and freedoms”. This self-indulgent piffle is contemptible and nauseating.

Two decades after the US and Britain launched their criminal blitzkrieg on Afghanistan and the rest of the world, those two nations are more financially broke than ever. Internally, they are more bitterly divided than ever. More evidently, their so-called democracies are in reality oligarchies where a tiny rich elite rule over a mass of impoverished people who are spied on and treated like serfs by unaccountable secret agencies and a mass media in hock with oligarchic masters.

If there was a genuine commemoration of 9/11 it would entail a mass uprising by the people to overthrow the war-mongering class system that Biden and Johnson serve as frontmen.

Just this week – of all weeks – the American and British states are in effect admitting that their societies are collapsing from vast economic inequality and crumbling infrastructure. The Biden administration is trying to release a budget of up to $4.5 trillion to alleviate poverty and repair decrepit roads, bridges, buildings and other public utilities.

The Johnson regime in Britain is forced to admit that the National Health Service is overwhelmed by a chronic lack of funding. Taxes are being hiked that will hit low-income workers in order to pay for the £12 billion ($16bn) needed to prop up the enfeebled health service.

All of the cost for trying to repair the US and Britain to make these countries a modicum of decency for its citizens to live in could have been covered by the expenditure on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere that the US and Britain have directly or indirectly been involved in.

A new estimate of the cost for the “war on terror” by the United States alone is put at $8 trillion. This is roughly double the infrastructure bill that Biden is trying to get passed by Congress. American politicians are objecting to the extravagance of that “rescue budget”, yet they had no qualms about spending $8 trillion on wars. It is also estimated that for Britain its military adventurism in Afghanistan alone cost a total of $30 billion. Again, just imagine how British society might be better off if that money had been spent instead on attending to the health needs of its citizens.

But 9/11 also ushered in wanton warmongering regimes in Washington and London that have bled the American and British public of finances and democratic rights. In 2001, the US national debt was about $6 trillion. This year that debt burden on future American generations has escalated to $28 trillion – a crushing, unsustainable burden largely driven by criminal wars.

The healthcare costs for American military veterans wounded and maimed from the wars on terror are projected at $2 trillion. Over 30,000 US service members and veterans are reckoned to have committed suicide over the past 20 years. That’s 10 times the number of American people who died on the day of 9/11.

Untold millions of innocent civilians were killed by the wars that the US and British launched after 9/11. Such suffering and destruction all for nothing except for the enrichment of war-profiteering corporations and the oligarchic elite.

fThe United States and Britain have been so deformed by criminal wars they have become dysfunctional and dystopian. They have inflicted failed states around the world, but none more so than on their own people. The towers that fell on 9/11 were a premonition of much bigger collapse.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Finian Cunningham.

Could an atrocity have been arranged by some of Baradar’s men at the request of the CIA?

Three days before the bloody carnage at Kabul airport, CIA director William Burns held a secret meeting with a top Taliban commander in the Afghan capital. That is only one of several suspicious events this week in the countdown to the dramatic U.S. evacuation.

At least 13 U.S. troops guarding an entrance to Kabul airport were killed in an apparent suicide bomb attack. Dozens of Afghans waiting in line for evacuation by military cargo planes were also killed. A second blast hit a nearby hotel used by British officials to process immigration documents.

It was not the main ranks of the Taliban who carried out the atrocities. The militant group which swept into power on August 15 after taking over Kabul has ring-fenced the capital with checkpoints. The explosions occurred in airport districts under the control of the U.S. and British military.

A little-known terror group, Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K), claimed responsibility for the bombings. IS-K was barely reported before until this week when the U.S. and British intelligence services issued high-profile warnings of imminent terror attacks by this group at Kabul airport. Those warnings came only hours before the actual attacks. President Joe Biden even mentioned this new terror organization earlier this week and pointedly claimed they were “sworn enemies” of the Taliban.

How is an obscure terror outfit supposed to infiltrate a highly secure area – past “sworn enemy” Taliban checkpoints – and then breach U.S. and British military cordons?

How is it that U.S. and British intelligence had such precise information on imminent threats when these same intelligence agencies were caught completely flat-footed by the historic takeover of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15? When the Taliban swept into the capital it marked the collapse of a regime that the Americans and British had propped for nearly 20 years during their military occupation of Afghanistan. Could their intelligence agencies miss foreseeing such a momentous event and yet less than two weeks later we are expected to believe these same agencies were able to pinpoint an imminent atrocity requiring complex planning?

What is the political fallout from the airport bombings? President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are adamant that the evacuation from Kabul will be completed by the deadline on August 31. Biden said the atrocity underscores the urgency to get out of Afghanistan, although he threw in the token vow that “we will hunt down” the perpetrators.

To be sure, the president is coming under intense political fire for capitulating against the Taliban and terrorists and for betraying Afghan allies. Some Republicans are demanding his resignation due to his overseeing a disaster and national disgrace. It is estimated that up to 250,000 Afghans who worked with the U.S. military occupation will be left behind and in danger of reprisal attacks.

There seems a negligible chance that the deaths of 13 U.S. troops – the largest single-day killing of Americans in Afghanistan since a Chinook helicopter was shot down in August 2011 with 38 onboard – will provoke an extension of the Pentagon’s mission in the country. Even after the bombings this week, the Pentagon advised Biden to stick to the August 31 deadline. The Taliban have also stated that all U.S. and NATO troops must be out of the country by that date.

Polls were showing that most Americans agreed with Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan – the longest war by the U.S. was seen as futile and unwinnable. The sickening bomb attacks this week will only underscore the public sense of war-weariness. Hawkish calls for returning large-scale forces to Afghanistan have little political resonance.

This brings us back to the secret meeting earlier this week between the CIA’s William Burns and Taliban commander Abdul Ghani Baradar. The Washington Post reported that Biden sent Burns to meet with Baradar in Kabul. It was the most senior contact between the Biden administration and the Taliban since the latter’s takeover of Afghanistan on August 15. The details of the discussion were not disclosed and some reports indicated other Taliban figures were not aware of the meeting.

Baradar is one of the founding members of the Taliban. He was captured by Pakistan intelligence and the CIA in 2010. But at the request of the United States, Baradar was released from prison in 2018. Thereafter he led the Taliban in negotiations with the U.S. on finding an end to the conflict. Those talks culminated in a deal in February 2020 with the Trump administration agreeing to troop withdrawal this year. Biden has stuck to the pullout plan.

From his career path, there is good reason to believe that Baradar is the CIA’s man inside the Taliban. Let’s say at least that he has the agency’s ear.

Why else would CIA chief Burns meet Baradar at such a crucial time in the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan? To get Taliban assurances of security measures safeguarding American troops as they exit? That obviously didn’t happen.

What else, then? Could an atrocity have been arranged by some of Baradar’s men at the request of the CIA? The objective being to shift focus from a shambolic, shameful retreat to one of necessity due to terror threats. It seems uncanny that U.S. and British intelligence services were warning of an event only hours before it happened in a way that was precisely predicted. The other consequence of benefit is that the droves of desperate Afghans queueing near Kabul airport are dispersed out of fear of more bloodshed. The beneficial optic is that U.S. and British military planes will take off on August 31 without the harrowing, pitiful scenes of Afghans running down the runway after them. Hence, the empire wraps up its bloody criminal war, with a little less shame than otherwise.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Finian Cunningham.

Decisions on aid are eroding trust and eroding relationships between the UK and developing countries.

— Abby Baldoumas, Financial Times, July 15, 2021

Politics is not merely the art of the possible but the pursuit of concerted hypocrisy.  When it comes to that matter of funding good causes – foreign aid, for instance – wealthy states are often happy to claim they open their wallets willingly.  As good international citizens, they fork out money for such causes as education, healthcare, sanitation.  The goals are always seen as bigger than the cash, a measure of self-enlightened interest.

The United Kingdom is certainly such a case. For years, governments of different stripes praised the political importance of the aid programme.  “Development has never just been about aid or money, but I am proud that Britain is a country that keeps its promises to the poorest in the world,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told the United Nations General Assembly in a 2012 speech.

This all started changing in 2020.  The merging of the Department of International Development with the Foreign Office was a signal that pennies would be in shorter supply.  On November 25, 2020, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced that the government would not spend 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance in 2022.  The allocation would fall to 0.5% of GNI – £10 billion in monetary terms.  Relative to the 2019 budget, this would amount to an effective cut of around £4 to 5 billion.  Aid had very much become a matter of money.

The 0.7% allocation has been part of British policy since 2013.  Two years after that, it became part of legislation.  Up till September 2020, it was even assumed that it would also be part of Tory policy, given its mention in the Conservative Party manifesto.

Sunak did not shy away from populist justification in delivering his spending review for the 2021-22 financial year.  “During a domestic fiscal emergency, when we need to prioritise our limited resources on jobs and public services, sticking rigidly to spending 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid is difficult to justify to the British people.”

The Chancellor tried assuring his fellow parliamentarians that he had “listened with great respect to those who have argued passionately to retain this target, but at a time of unprecedented crisis, government must make tough choices.”  Such a tough choice seemed to put Sunak in breach of the law, not something alien to members of the Johnson government, including the prime minister himself.  But do not expect legal writs or the constabulary to be pursuing the matter: all that’s seemingly required is a statement to Parliament explaining why the aim was not achieved.

On July 13, Parliament passed a motion confirming the reduction in the aid budget, with 333 votes cast in favour of it.  298 opposed it.  Despite being billed as a compromise, the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell was wiser.  “There is an unpleasant odour leaking from my party’s front door,” he ruefully admitted.  The motion had been “a fiscal trap for the unwary.”

The consequences of these slashing initiatives have laid waste to the charity and humanitarian landscape.  The list of casualties mentioned by Devex is grim and extensive.  A few unfortunates are worth mentioning.  On July 7, South Sudan country director of Christian Aid reflected upon the closure of peace-building efforts led by various churches in South Sudan given the 59% cut in UK aid.  “These cuts risk having a lethal effect on the chances of a lasting peace here,” James Wani lamented.

On June 14, support was cancelled for the Strategic Partnership Arrangement with Bangladesh.  In the view of the NGO BRAC, this would see a halt to educating 360,000 girls, stop the funding of 725,000 school places, and cut nutritional support for 12 million infants, not to mention access to family planning services for 14.6 million women and girls.

Whole initiatives will cease outright, such as the Malawi Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention and Response Programme or the Green Economic Growth for Papua programme, which focuses on preventing deforestation.  In some cases, existing budget allocations have been reduced by staggering amounts.  The UN Sexual and Reproductive Health Agency (UNFPA), for example, has seen its funding allotment from the UK for its family planning programme reduced by 85% – from £154 million to £23 million.

With all this devastation taking place, Prime Minister Boris Johnson could still breezily announce at the G7 summit that his government would be providing an extra £430 million of extra funding from UK coffers for girls’ education in 90 developing countries.  The timing of this was exquisite: only some weeks prior, cuts had been made amounting to over £200 million for the same cause, down from the £600 million offered in 2019.

In April 2021, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab sounded every bit the stingy economic rationalist.  “Throughout the business planning process, we strived to ensure that every penny of the FCDO’s (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s) ODA (Official Development Assistance) spent brings maximum strategic coherence, impact and value for taxpayers’ money.”

At the Global Education Summit this July, the bleak and razored approach Johnson had taken to aid was concealed by a mask of colourful praise for his own moneyed initiatives.  He called the Global Partnership for Education “the universal cure”, “the Swiss Army knife, complete with Allen key and screwdriver and everything else that can solve virtually every problem that afflicts humanity.”

Without blushing at any point, he spoke about educating the world properly and fairly to “end a great natural injustice.”  In giving “every girl in the world the same education as every boy, 12 years of quality education, then you perform the most fantastic benefits for humanity – you lift life expectancy, you lift per capita GDP, you deal with infant mortality”.

The aid cuts have not only aggrieved those in the charity and development sector.  Baroness Liz Sugg resigned as minister for overseas territories and sustainable development in response to the cuts.  “Cutting UK aid risks,” she wrote to the prime minister last November, “risks undermining your efforts to promote a Global Britain and will diminish your power to influence and other nations to do what is right.”

From the levels of local government, Shropshire councillor Andy Boddington also expressed his dismay.  “Our local MPs and Boris Johnson should bow their heads in shame and recognise how this unnecessary cut has diminished Britain on the world stage just as we prepare to host the international climate summit COP26.”  The good councillor would surely be aware that the allocation of shame, for Johnson, is much like Britain’s current aid budget: diminished in supply.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Of course, anti-Muslim sentiments are rarely framed to appear anti-Muslim. While Europe’s right-wing parties remain committed to the ridiculous notion that Muslims, immigrants and refugees pose a threat to Europe’s overall security and unique secular identities, the left is not entirely immune from such chauvinistic notions.

The right’s political discourse is familiar and is often condemned for its repugnantly ultra-nationalistic, if not outright racist, tone and rhetoric. The left, on the other hand, is a different story. The European left, notably in countries like France and Belgium, frame their ‘problem’ with Islam as fundamental to their supposed dedication to the secular values of the State.

“A problem arises when, in the name of religion, some want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws,” Macron said during a speech in October 2020.

Leftist politicians and intellectuals were just as eager as the right to prevent Ihsane Haouach, a Belgian government representative, from serving as a commissioner at the Institute for the Equality of Women and Men (IEFH). Again, both sides joined forces, although without an official declaration of unity, to ensure Haouach had no place in the country’s democratic process.

It was a repeat of a similar scenario in France last May when Sara Zemmahi was removed from the ruling party’s candidates list for seemingly violating France’s valeurs de la République – the values of the Republic.

These are but mere examples, and are hardly restricted to French-speaking countries. There are many such disquieting events pointing to a deep-seated problem that remains unresolved. In Britain, Rakhia Ismail, who was celebrated as the country’s first hijab-wearing mayor in May 2019, resigned from her post less than a year and a half later, citing racism and marginalization.

While the Belgian, French, and British media elaborated on these stories as if unique to each specific country, in truth, they are all related. Indeed, they are all the outcome of an overriding phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, coupled with a wave of racism that has plagued Europe for many years, especially in the last decade.

Though Europe’s official institutions, mainstream media, sports clubs and so on, continue to pay lip service to the need for diversity and inclusion, the reality on the ground is entirely different. A recent example was the horrific outcome of England’s defeat in the EURO2020 final against Italy. Gangs of white English, mostly males, attacked people of color, especially black people, whether on the street or online. The extent of cyber-bullying, in particular, targeting dark-skinned athletes is almost unprecedented in the country’s recent history.

Various British officials, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, condemned the widespread racism. Interestingly, many of these officials have said or done very little to combat anti-Muslim hate and violence in the past, which often targeted Muslim women for their head or face covering.

Strikingly, Johnson, purportedly now leading the anti-racist charge, was one of the most disparaging officials who spoke demeaningly of Muslim women in the past. “Muslim women wearing burka look like letter boxes,” he said, according to the BBC.

Of course, Islamophobia must be seen within the larger context of the toxic anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiments, now defining factors in shaping modern European politics. It is this hate and racism that served as the fuel for rising political parties like Le Front National in France, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, The Freedom Party in Austria and the Lega in Italy. In fact, there is a whole intellectual discourse, complete with brand new theories that are used to channel yet more hate, violence and racism against immigrants.

And where is the left in all of this? With a few exceptions, much of the left is still trapped in its own intellectual hubris, adding yet more fuel to the fire while veiling their criticism of Islam as if genuine concern for secularism.

Oddly, in Europe, as in much of the West, crosses and Stars of David as necklaces, or the Catholic nuns’ head covering, velo delle suore, let alone the kippahs, the religious tattoos and many other such symbols are all part of Europe’s everyday culture. Why do we never hear of such controversy of a Jewish man being tossed out of a public building because of his kippah or a white French woman being expelled from university for wearing a cross? The matter has less to do with religious symbols, in general, than of the religious symbols of races and peoples who are simply unwanted in Europe.

Also, limiting the discussion to refugees and immigrants may give the impression that the debate is mostly concerned with the non-European ‘others’ who are ‘invading’ Europe’s shores, determined to ‘replace’ Europe’s original, white, Christian inhabitants. This is hardly the case, since a sizable percentage of Belgians and French, for example, are themselves Muslims, estimated at 6 percent and 5% respectively. Namely, these Muslims are European citizens.

Haouach, Zemmahi and Ismail actually wanted to be a part of – not break apart from – these societies by honoring their country’s most cherished political traditions, yet without erasing their own cultural heritage and religious identities in the process. Alas, they were all vehemently rejected, as if Europe has made a collective decision to ensure that Muslims subsist in the margins forever. And when Muslim communities try to fight back, using Europe’s own judicial systems as their supposed saviors, they are, once again, rejected. The latest of such spurns was in June, when Belgium’s constitutional court resolved that prohibiting the wearing of hijab does not constitute a violation of freedom of religion or the right to education.

It is time for European countries to understand that their demographics are fundamentally changing, and that such change can, in fact, be beneficial to the health of these nations. Without true diversity and meaningful inclusion, there can be no real progress in any society, anywhere.

But while demographic shifts can offer an opportunity for growth, it can also inspire fear, racism and, predictably, violence as well.

Europe, which has fought two horrendous wars in the last century, should know better.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

According to the government, the decision to lift most restrictions on July 19 was reached because four tests had been satisfied.  Ongoing vaccine deployment was proving a success, having “broken the link between infection and mortality.”  (Step 4 had been delayed by a month to enable more adults to be vaccinated.)  Gathered evidence showed that “vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.”  Infection rates did not pose a risk to a surge in hospitalisations that would place intolerable pressure upon the National Health System (NHS).  The emergence of new COVID-19 variants did not pose a threat.

In his July 15 speech, Johnson accepted that hospitalisations and deaths would endure.  A calculus of risk was at play.  The days and weeks ahead would be “difficult” with “more hospitalisations and … more deaths but with every day that goes by we build higher the wall of vaccine acquired immunity, a wall that is now higher and stronger in this country than almost anywhere else in the world”.

The promise of Freedom Day had the effect of setting a good number of health professionals on edge.  Arthur Hosie, a Staffordshire University microbiologist, took the view that the government was essentially disarming the populace from non-pharmacological protections.  “This is a new virus to which we have had no exposure over previous years.  Mask wearing and social distancing are important – to remove them is to remove the tools we need to live with the virus.”

Authors of a July piece for The Lancet, many members of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, excoriated a strategy that still tolerated “natural infection for others (predominantly the young)” alongside a partially vaccinated population.  “The link between infection and death might have been weakened, but it has not been broken, and infection can still cause substantial morbidity in both acute and long-term illness.”

The authors offered a range of grave scenarios.  Unvaccinated children and young people risked being disproportionately affected.  Schools faced high rates of transmission that would cause education disruption and endanger “clinically and socially vulnerable children.”  Preliminary modelling data suggested that the opening up strategy “provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants.”  The strategy would also deplete the country’s already exhausted health services and staff.  Finally, and as has always been the case, deprived communities would continue to be disproportionately affected.

With these loud warnings come a rather troubling set of statistics.  According to the Office of National Statistics one in 95 people in England has COVID.  In Scotland, the number is one in 90.  More than half a million people find themselves in isolation and infection levels lie at over 50,000 a day.

The Delta variant is also posing challenges to the wall of immunity Johnson has been promoting.  Certainly, it does not promise to be impervious, though the figures are nonetheless impressive in preventing serious illness and hospitalisations.  While the Pfizer vaccine does pack a punch in being 88% effective in stopping symptomatic disease arising from the Indian-origin strain, AstraZeneca’s offering comes in at 60%.  Public Health England has put this down to an issue of timing, as the effectiveness of the latter vaccine requires a longer interval between first and second doses.

The country’s third COVID-19 wave is causing jolts of dysfunction, largely due to the test and trace system that continues to operate.  Marks & Spencer is considering reducing opening hours to cope with staff shortages arising from infections and self-isolation directions.  A number of factories and work sites face the prospect of shutting for similar reasons.  Parts of the London Underground were closed because of the number of staff made to self-isolate after being notified via the NHS COVID-19 app.  The Rail, Maritime and Transport union secretary Mick Lynch had predicted the previous week that the capital would face “a surge in workers pinged with self-isolation instruction next week.”  A pingdemic is upon the population.

When Freedom Day came, it did not exactly arrive with a celebratory canter.  It had a very Johnsonian air of ramshackle contradiction jammed with misrepresentation, confusion and even a sense of terror.  Physician Gabriel Scally could recall no other “episode in history where a government has willingly aided and abetted the spread of a dangerous infectious disease among its own population.”

This was also freedom of a different sort.  Hundreds of thousands of people are in mandated isolation; the Prime Minister is himself isolating after his health secretary, Sajid Javid, had tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday.  “For these people,” wrote a bleak Ross Clark for The Spectator, “it is no freedom day – it is a return to the darkest hour of lockdown.”  In fact, suggested Clark, this was worse.  “At least during lockdown we were all allowed to go to the shops, or for exercise.”

For those wishing to travel, there were also disappointments.  Travellers to so-called amber designated countries can avoid the ten day isolation requirement upon their return but must pay for testing and get a test within 72 hours of their return.   The onus is on packaged tour operators to foot that bill, should they wish to.  Independent travellers will simply have to lump it.

Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the Commons health select committee, dreads the coming autumn.  “The warning light on the NHS dashboard is not flashing amber,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, “it is flashing red.”  As William Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston observed with sharp disapproval, “The decision [to open up], and the way it has been presented, repeats a pattern of foolishly promising an outcome when dealing with a highly infectious agent.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

With history moving from its tragic gear into a farcical one, Hancock has resigned.  It had all the makings of a tabloid fix: the minister’s name (Hancock), an aide, kissing, a leaking mole and CCTV.  But the departure was not for mendacity or want of competence so much as an ill-considered moment in breach of COVID-19 regulations.  With the country still continuing a lockdown that was meant to dramatically ease on June 21, a camera recording the Health Secretary snogging his aide, Gina Coladangelo, was leaked.  The camera footage of the office incident was recorded on May 6.

Johnson was never going to sack his minister on grounds of incompetence.  The leader has set the precedent others must follow.  According to the vengeful Cummings, it took a hail of 89 texts from Johnson’s wife Carrie to lessen the support.  It was left to Hancock to fall upon his sword, which he took some time to do.

In his resignation letter, priorities are reversed.  “The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.”  The actual reason comes afterwards.  “I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this.”  People who had “sacrificed so much in this pandemic” were owed a sense of honesty “when we have let them down as I have done by breaching this guidance.”  The Times tersely opined that such conduct suggested that “the government tolerates breaches of lockdown rules for themselves, while insisting the public adhere to higher standards.”

With the bigger picture of Hancock’s conduct miniaturised (the breach of social distancing rules, various questionable staff appointments – the list is long), Brandon Lewis, Northern Ireland Secretary, could now focus on the important matters: finding out how CCTV footage found its way into the pages of that undyingly malicious paper of poor record, The Sun.  The culprit is said to be lurking in the corridors of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

British press outlets suggested that the leaker had made contact via Instagram to an unnamed anti-lockdown activist.  “I have some very damning CCTV footage of someone that has been classed as completely f***ing hopeless. If you would like some more information please contact me.”  The same paper supplied readers with all the details, leaving little to the imagination.  Included was a crude outlay of Hancock’s office, including the positioning of the Union Jack, painting of the Queen, bookshelf, coat rack and, it transpires, the “kiss door”.

On Sky News, Lewis made the government’s priorities clear.  “I have seen some of the reports this morning outlining how different journalists think the tape might have got out there.  That is certainly a matter I know the Department of Health will be looking into to understand exactly how that was recorded, how it got out of the system.  It’s something we need to get to the bottom of.”

In comments that can only induce smirks of derision, Lewis preferred to focus on the principle that what took place in “government departments can be sensitive, important and people need to have confidence that what is happening in a government department is something that allows the government to be focused on these core issues, and the sensitivity sometimes in the security sense of those issues.”

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was also busy directing attention to the things that counted – at least from a government perspective.  By leaking footage of Hancock’s intimate moment, the leaker may well have sailed close to breaching the Official Secrets Act.  Paying lip service to the “open society” and protections “for whistleblowers who find things out and release them in the public interest”, Hunt told the Andrew Marr Show what really bothered him.  “[W]e need to understand how this happened, and to make sure that ministers are secure in their offices, to be able to have conversations that they know aren’t going to be leaked to hostile powers.”

A fevered panic swept through Johnson’s cabinet, with ministers fearing they might be the next one to be Hancocked.  Justice Minister Robert Buckland revealed that sweeps were being organised to identify any filming or listening devices that had escaped detection.  “I think there is an important principle here about need for ministers and civil servants who often are handling very sensitive material and information to have a safe space within which to work.”

The calls for investigation did not stop at the issue of a breach of ministerial confidence.  The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wished to guide the debate back to the breach of those very regulations government ministers had insisted Britons follow. “What’s important now is for there to be proper investigations into which rules were broken in relation to use of private email, in relation to the appointment of senior staff and also in relation to the social distancing rules.”

Hancock had certainly built himself a fortress of impropriety during the course of the pandemic.  The Sunday Times, having seen minutes of various meetings, noted that the minister had been using a private email address from March 2020 to conduct departmental correspondence, making accountability for decisions regarding the novel coronavirus slippery at best.

The deflectors were also tapping away.  Those sympathising with Hancock within the government were aghast at the very existence of a camera in the office.  Had he been the victim of an orchestrated sting by enemies in Number 10?  Or did some meddlesome power such as China wish to cause ripples by installing a clinch catching “love bug”?

The smug Mail on Sunday poured water on suggestions of foul play. “In fact, pictures taken in September 2017, just before Hancock moved in, show that the camera which caught the clinch is clearly visible on the ceiling of his office.”  But the Tories were also searching for another alibi that would, if not exonerate Hancock then at least provide a distraction from his conduct.

To that end, suspicion started growing legs with commentary on the camera’s make.  While rented from a Singaporean firm, it stems from Chinese manufacturer Hikvision, a company under contract to supply surveillance equipment to the authorities in China’s Xinjiang region.  Despite being blacklisted by Washington in October 2019 for its role in conducting surveillance of Uighurs in the region’s network of “re-education camps”, US cities, counties and schools have made good use of them during the pandemic.  In Britain, city councils employ them in public spaces.

The China Research Group, run by Tory MPs keen to drum up fears about China, fastened on Hikvision’s role in the Hancock affair in a statement.  “There are questions over whether [Hikvision cameras] are currently used in Portcullis House (where MPs have their offices) and the Palace of Westminster (where the House of Lords and the House of Commons is located).”  The group feared “the potential for Chinese intelligence agencies to tap into camera feeds in sensitive locations”.

The nature and scope of the forthcoming inquiry is uncertain.  A full-blooded investigation, no holds barred, might well reveal a bit more than the Department of Health might want to reveal.  Investigators run the risk of lionising a potential whistleblower while uncovering a good deal of rot at the centre of the Johnson government.  And few civil servants, and certainly no government politician, would like to see that.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The meeting between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Orbán on May 28 did more than raise eyebrows and prompt head scratching.  The statement released by No 10 was anodyne enough, filling space and not much else.  “The leaders discussed the importance of the UK and Hungary working together bilaterally to increase security and prosperity in our countries and to address global challenges such as climate change.”

Johnson is also said to have “raised his significant concerns about human rights in Hungary, including gender equality, LGBT rights and media freedom.”  In terms of foreign policy, Johnson saw his Hungarian counterpart as a man of influence.  “The Prime Minister encouraged Hungary to use their influence to promote democracy and stability.”

The critics, notably those drenched in the juice of Britannic values, were bemused and baffled.  Labour MP Alex Sobel outlined Orbán’s resume ahead of the visit: “a renowned anti-Semite, fuelled violence against the Romany, clamps down on the LGBT and Muslim communities.”  He had also “suppressed democratic norms and press freedom”.  Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy took issue with the visit given Orbán’s record on attacking “press freedom and democracy”, refugees as “Muslim invaders” and was “a cheerleader for Putin and Lukashenko.”

Nandy then turned on that resource so commonly drawn upon when faced with discomforting leaders. Orbán, being one of Europe’s “most regressive leaders” was effectively undermining “the values the UK government says it wants to defend”.

The government of Boris Johnson may well spout the values argument, but Brexit has meant courting and entertaining widely.  The world is less its opportune oyster than a pressing necessity.  Friends need to be won over, agreements inked and secured.  As a No 10 spokesman put it, “As president of the Visegrád group of Central European nations later this year, cooperation with Hungary is vital to the UK’s prosperity and security.”  UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was even more explicit: the UK had to, at times, speak to the unsavoury and approach the unlikeable. “I think Viktor Orbán’s views on migrants are things I would not endorse in any way.”

Kwarteng distils the amoral British position with accuracy, though it also says much about what Timothy Garton Ash described as “the dilemma of self-inflicted weakness” that burdens post-Brexit Britain.  Arms contracts with Saudi Arabia while a theocracy maims and molests remain a matter of course.  The relationship with China privileges the business imperative, despite claims about holding a liberal international order together.  Deals are to be made, even with authoritarian regimes and those with a sketchy record on human rights.

Orbán, by comparison to some of the UK’s trading partners, is almost civil.  And more to the point, he never disappoints as one of the great critics of the EU, even as he remains in its tent.  The abundant admiration for Brexit, described as the opening of a “fantastic door, a fantastic opportunity”, has not gone unnoticed.

Then there is that niggling issue that Johnson and his party members might not be entirely at odds with the Hungarian PM.  While the official statement on the No 10 meeting mentions a concern for rights and liberties, Johnson could hardly have disagreed with some of his counterpart’s views, notably on Islam.  The recent Singh report into claims of Islamophobia within the Conservative Party found degrees of discrimination from the Prime Minister to grass roots organisations, though it rejected claims of “institutional racism” made by such prominent Tory members as Baroness Warsi.  The Prime Minister’s previous remarks, mocking those wearing burqas as “looking like letterboxes” were also picked up in the report.  “I am obviously sorry for any offence taken,” Johnson said in response, though he also added a rounding qualifier: “My writings are often parodic, satirical”.

Orbán’s views on immigration and Islam are far from satirical, though they do not resist unintentional parody and farce.  Reprising himself as a nationalist warrior fending off a modern Ottoman surge, the grave Hungarian leader wears the habitual costume of a defender of European civilisation.

And what of anti-Semitism? Specifically referring to his troubled relationship with George Soros, the billionaire was described as “a talented Hungarian businessman… he is very much in favour of migration, financing and helping the NGOs who are doing that.  We don’t like it but it has nothing to do with ethnic identity.”

The shambolic rollout of the EU vaccination program has also gifted much room to Orbán to mock opponents and stifle detractors.  Vacillation in Europe on how best to approach COVID-19 and poor planning has meant the courting of other countries for vaccines.  The EU is not working, he can say, and this is how we respond.  The result is a range of options for Hungarians, sourced from Russia and China.  As he has done so, Orbán has pursued an aggressive campaign against contrarians within his country.  The pro-government media mobbing of political scientist Peter Kreko, who cautioned against the speed the Orbán government was seeking the Sputnik V vaccine, was typically sinister.

In the indignant storm surrounding the visit, a White Hall source may have provided the most accurate summary that reflects the British PM’s approach to policy in general: “Number 10 has walked into a bear trap.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Boiling down some points of the Cummings show: there was a failure on the part of the Johnson government to respond to the pandemic.  Johnson was unfit for office.  The Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been sacked for any number of decisions.  Lockdown measures were imposed too late to prevent the surge of infections.  There was simply no overall master plan to cope with a pandemic.

The political strategist apologised for the various tiers of decision makers and advisers, including himself, for falling calamitously “short of the standards that the public has a right to expect”.  He apologised to those families who “unnecessarily” lost loved ones and confessed that “lots of key people were literally skiing” instead of moving to a “war footing” in January and February last year.

The portrait of Johnson is superbly unsympathetic.  The prime minister’s clownish credentials come blundering through.  The novel coronavirus was dismissed as “the new swine flu”, a mere “scare story”.   He even suggested receiving an injection of the virus live on television “so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of”.  Bodies piled up high was a preferable outcome to imposing a third lockdown in the autumn of 2020.  And as for information, the PM could not take himself away from the Daily Telegraph’s view of events.

The Cummings-Johnson relationship duly atrophied. “The heart of the problem was, fundamentally, I regarded him as unfit for the job.  And I was trying to create a structure around him to try and stop what I thought would have been bad decisions, and push things through against his wishes.”

Some of the choicest blows are reserved for the Health Secretary, who “should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things”.  Hancock held back the testing regime and interfered in the development of a mass testing system, conduct Cummings found “criminal” and “disgraceful”.  Hancock was mendacious in meetings held in the cabinet room of Downing Street, assuring those in attendance that people “were going to be tested [for COVID-19] before they went back to care homes [from hospitals].”  He also used health experts such as the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical adviser Chris Witty as shields for government incompetence.

Cummings delighted the political science fraternity with his display in the Attlee suite in Portcullis House.  He was, Matthew Flinders of the University of Sheffield, asserted, “at his most magnificent and Machiavellian: a quite beautiful case study in the art of planting seeds and laying traps.”  The Spectator, a magazine once edited by Johnson, was blind to the retributive nature of the testimony.  “His decision to identify the many mistakes made at the start of the pandemic is not about seeking vengeance; it is a vital process to ensure that errors are identified and not repeated.”  How noble.

To a degree, the Cummings account is useful in pointing out administrative failings.  The pandemic blueprint was inadequate, developed to fight influenza rather than respiratory variants in the form of coronavirus.  Dissenting views were not countenanced.  “It was a classic historical example of groupthink in action,” assessed Cummings. “The more people from outside attacked, the more internally said, ‘They don’t understand, they haven’t got access to our information.’”

The response from Johnson to such accounts and depictions is crudely simple: remind voters that Britain’s vaccination effort has been stellar.  The UK is one of the leading countries in the mass vaccination programme.  Specifically regarding Cummings’s testimony, the “commentary”, claimed Johnson, did not “bear relation to reality”.

Hancock’s approach was much the same: stay focused on the vaccination drive.  Forget past crimes and misdemeanours.  He also denied that he lied about patients being sent from hospital to care homes without being tested first.  “My recollection of events is that I committed to delivering that testing for people going from hospital into care homes when we could do it.”  The relevant factor was the timing of it; the capacity for testing had to be built up.

And there is the obvious point that Cummings, despite blaming Johnson and seeking his own restoration, remains chipped and damaged.  The display by the senior strategist in the rose garden of No 10 last year featuring an apologia for his infamous trip to County Durham in breach of lockdown laws was a hard one to efface.  He did concede that doing so had “undermined public confidence”.  But he was ready with an explanation.  Moving his family out of London took place after his wife received death threats from people gathered outside the home.  “The whole thing was a complete disaster and the truth is… if I just basically sent my family back out of London and said here’s the truth to the public, I think people would have understood the situation.”

When asked whether the additional trip by Cummings to Barnard Castle from the family home in County Durham was actually for reasons of testing his eyesight, the dark eminence returned to form.  “If you’re going to drive 300 miles to go back to work, popping down the road for 30 miles and back to see how you feel… it didn’t seem crazy.”  It was not, as committee chair Jeremy Hunt suggested, a birthday celebration for his wife.  “If I was going to make up a story I would come up with a better one than that.”

Patrick Diamond of Queen Mary, University of London, identifies the central paradox of British government that proved so detrimental to the pandemic response.  The British state might be highly centralised but “the centre of government lacks capacity.”  Policymaking by the core executive has also been undermined by the altering of relations between the ministerial group and the civil service. Then comes the “growth of territorial conflict with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”  The result of this: a failure of coordination of governments across the UK in responding to COVID-19.  What Cummings did was render such dysfunctions flesh and folly.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

It would be foolish, however, to imagine that in appearing before a House of Commons select committee yesterday Cummings was serving simply as a conduit for the truth about Johnson’s catastrophically inept government – a kind of inversion of the role the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has played serving as a conduit for Cummings and Johnson’s misinformation.

Cummings was once again proving he is the master of cynical power politics. He is the Machiavelli of our times. His self-serving honesty and self-criticism were perfectly calibrated to rehabilitate his image, win over doubters and stick the knife more deeply into Johnson.

Utterly shocking pic.twitter.com/yc0x6gIsk1

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) May 26, 2021

It may be too uncharitable to exclude the possibility that Cummings is offering his revelations, in part, to benefit the British public. But his larger purpose is clearer. He is doing his best to damage and destroy the incompetently corrupt, like Johnson and Health Secretary Mike Hancock, so that they can be replaced by the more competently corrupt, like Michael Gove and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Better frontman

Cummings is a brigade commander on the frontlines of a war within the establishment class. He wants a better frontman for his brand of US-inspired, super-predatory capitalism. And for that reason alone, the left should avoid getting so deeply immersed in these intrigues that we start cheerleading one side over the other.

Yes, Johnson made disastrous decisions over Covid that killed many thousands unnecessarily: the “herd immunity” plan, the abandonment of care homes, the delays in procuring PPE, the lax border policy, the extravagant contracts for cronies, and much more. We didn’t need Cummings to tell us that, though his insider account puts more flesh on the bones.

But there were plenty of other reasons why so many died, reasons that long predate Johnson becoming prime minister – not least the calamitous failure to maintain PPE supplies, the dismantlement of the institutions needed to prepare for and deal with a pandemic effectively, and the death by a thousand cuts to the NHS.

None of that would have been different had Sunak or Gove been in Johnson’s shoes, even assuming either would actually have been capable of devising and implementing better policies, from lockdowns to care homes. That is the greater scandal and it is not one Cummings – or Kuenssberg – will talk about.

Grudge match

What Cummings did do yesterday – inadvertently – was draw back a little the curtain designed to conceal the charade that is “representative democracy”. If we can avoid being overly invested in the drama of the Cummings-Johnson grudge match, we have a chance to understand that the whole system is rotten from top to bottom.

It is precisely this corrupted and corrupting system of power – run by, and in the interests of, a tiny political and media elite – that spent five years ensuring Jeremy Corbyn would never reach 10 Downing Street, and is now weighing whether Sir Keir Starmer is a credible “alternative” should the Tories’ fortunes sink.

Johnson has good reason to be obsessed with the media, making U-turns “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”. As with one of his predecessors, Tony Blair, Johnson understands that it is chiefly the Murdoch empire and the BBC that decide his fate.

In the Corbyn era, Johnson faced no threat at all – he knew the BBC and Murdoch press had his back. They would never have supported Corbyn against him, however unsuitable and incompetent Johnson proved to be as prime minister. That was the real problem with Corbyn. It was not his supposed character or political flaws; it was that Britain became even more of a one-party state so long he led the opposition – with the media, the political system, even the Labour party bureaucracy itself determined at all costs to keep in power the leader of the Conservative party, whoever it was.

Cummings’ sudden candour is a sign that the establishment is now in a position to replace Johnson, and willing to groom whoever from its short-list is best placed to win over the British public – be it, Sunak, Gove or Starmer.

My latest: In waging war on Labour's left wing, Starmer is determined to prove that the party is a safe pair of hands for the British establishment. Labour is being reinvented as the Tory party of old, emphasising tradition, patriotism and family values https://t.co/Cs18fu7Om0

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) April 5, 2021

BBC on the back foot

It is perhaps not surprising that Cummings sought to embarrass the BBC’s Kuenssberg by singling her out among his media contacts, pretending that he rarely dealt with other reporters. Kuenssberg is probably the single most powerful journalist shaping the public’s perception of this government. And she has done a sterling job of veiling and excusing Johnson’s incompetence at every turn. Without her, Johnson would have been a great deal more vulnerable much earlier.

pic.twitter.com/ebOFAHhP3p

— Ise (@IssssssyP) May 26, 2021

What Cummings has subtly achieved is to force Kuenssberg on to the back foot. She is now prey to the charge – an entirely accurate one – that she has been riding shotgun for Johnson. She will need to distance herself more from him, to deal with No 10 “sources” more critically, in an attempt to prove Cummings wrong. And the new pressure on her to look less like what she is and what the BBC want her to be – a journalist hungry for access – will mean that, as a result, Johnson is more politically exposed, more vulnerable to challenge, than ever before.

For Cummings, it is a master-stroke.

One-party state

What Cummings revealed – again not entirely intentionally – was that we are ruled by narcissists and charlatans, the “donkeys”: precisely the kind of people who crave power for power’s sake and are least equipped to run government wisely and compassionately.

The policy failings, the lies, the chaos, the inflated personality clashes – the scenes of pandemonium Cummings set out – are inevitable when a country has long been run as a one-party state, even if that party comes in two flavours, red and blue, that sometimes take turns in government.

The pandemic exposed the weaknesses of Britain’s one-party system particularly starkly only because of the scale of the threat and the suddenness of its arrival. The cost of the establishment’s corruption and incompetence was measured this time in tens of thousands of lives – lives that can no more be hidden from view than the Covid “Wall of Hearts”.

Here is how you imagine the 150k lives lost to Covid.

It’s just taken me 10 mins to walk the half kilometre length of the national @CovidMemorialUK wall, directly opposite parliament.

Each heart represents one of those 150k lost, those families changed forever.

Please share pic.twitter.com/xjNn9bXIrN

— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) April 8, 2021

But in normal times, donkeys like Johnson, Hancock, Sunak and Gove are ideally equipped to achieve the power elite’s goals, shunting capitalism’s costs out of view: on to the shoulders of the weak and vulnerable, those unheard on the margins of western society; to far-off lands, where the effects will be felt only by irrelevant black and brown people; and into the future, for our children to suffer the consequences.

Crackers by design

Even Cummings’ moments of apparent self-awareness were not quite what they seemed. He told MPs:

It’s just completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there [in a senior government position], just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there – and that the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn.

But it isn’t crackers at all. It is by design. It is the way the system has evolved to keep a tiny wealth-elite in power. We have a narcissistic joker like Johnson in No 10 – just as Americans ended up with Donald Trump in the White House – because the public’s ability to think critically has been intentionally degraded over decades by a billionaire-owned press and a craven BBC that turned politics into the most cynical kind of entertainment.

Gary Younge on Corbyn: '…just not to trash him was enough to risk your reputation. It was clear that in the fetid ecosystem of journalists this would count you out of polite company.' https://t.co/igFAua1cmW

— Tom Mills (@ta_mills) May 27, 2021

When an opposition leader appeared, as if by accident, who actually wanted to use politics to transform the lives of ordinary people – rather than preserve the current predatory system of elite power – the corporate media lost no time turning him into a national security threat, a terrorist and an antisemite.

It is no accident that the one in power, Johnson, is the real clown. And it is no accident that the one out of power and in disgrace, Corbyn, was so easily made to look like a clown. The creation of an equivalence between them is more of the lies Cummings claims to be busting.

Cummings understands our weaknesses. We struggle to see how we are being manipulated. We listen credulously to flesh-and-blood journalists like Kuenssberg even as, in the abstract, we lose ever more trust in the media. We forget that by natural selection those drawn to the highest level of politics are invariably narcissists and master manipulators.

The result: we fall for their lies time and again. We listen to them uncritically, absorbing their cynicism and selfishness as truth, as honesty.

As Dominic Cummings knew we would.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Very obviously, it is not the fault of Jews that Israel commits war crimes, or that Israel uses Jews collectively as a political shield, exploiting sensitivities about the historical suffering of Jews at the hands of non-Jews to immunise itself from international opprobrium.

But here is something that can be said with equal certainty. Israel’s apologists – whether Jews or non-Jews – cannot deny all responsibility for Israel’s war crimes when they actively aid and abet Israel in committing those crimes, or when they seek to demonise and silence Israel’s critics so that those war crimes can be pursued in a more favourable political climate.

Such apologists – which sadly seems to include many of the community organisations in Britain claiming to represent Jews – want to have their cake and eat it.

They cannot defend Israel uncritically as it commits war crimes or seek legislative changes to assist Israel in committing those war crimes – whether it be Israel’s latest pummelling of civilians in Gaza, or its executions of unarmed Palestinians protesting 15 years of Israel’s blockade of the coastal enclave – and accuse anyone who criticises them for doing so of being an antisemite.

But this is exactly what has been going on. And it is only getting worse.

Upsurge in antisemitism?

As a ceasefire was implemented yesterday, bringing a temporary let-up in the bombing of Gaza by Israel, pro-Israel Jewish groups in the UK were once again warning of an upsurge of antisemitism they related to a rapid growth in the number of protests against Israel.

Hmm. Pro-Israel groups say there's been a surge of antisemitism in the UK because of the large numbers attending protests against Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza: 'Demos are being held all over the country every day about this issue' https://t.co/oPxFs7GcOF

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 20, 2021

These groups have the usual powerful allies echoing their claims. British prime minister Boris Johnson met community leaders in Downing Street on Thursday pledging, as Jewish News reported, “to continue to support the community in the face of rising antisemitism attacks”.

Those Jewish leaders included Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, a supporter of Johnson who played a part in helping him win the 2019 election by renewing the evidence-free antisemitism smears against the Labour party days before voting. It also included the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which was founded specifically to whitewash Israel’s crimes during its 2014 bombardment of Gaza and has ever since been vilifying all Palestinian solidarity activism as antisemitism.

My latest: Anti-Palestinian bigotry from a self-styled antisemitism watchdog is the latest move to dress up bullying and threats as victimhood https://t.co/KRaPEuA1jy

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 12, 2020

In attendance too was the Jewish Leadership Council, an umbrella organisation for Britain’s main Jewish community groups. In an article in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on this supposed rise in antisemitism in the UK, the JLC’s vice-president, Daniel Korski, set out the ridiculous, self-serving narrative these community groups are trying to peddle, with seemingly ever greater success among the political and media elite.

Popular outrage over Gaza

Korski expressed grave concern about the proliferation of demonstrations in the UK designed to halt Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. During 11 days of attacks, more than 230 Palestinians were killed, including 65 children. Israel’s precision air strikes targeted more than a dozen hospitals, including the only Covid clinic in Gaza, dozens of schools, several media centres, and left tens of thousands of Palestinians homeless.

The sense of popular outrage at the Israeli onslaught was only heightened by the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had clearly engineered a confrontation with Hamas at the outset to serve his immediate personal interests: preventing Israeli opposition parties from uniting to oust him from power.

In his naked personal calculations, Palestinian civilians were sacrificed to help Netanyahu hold on to power and improve his chances of evading jail as he stands trial on corruption charges.

Of the ceasefire, Israel says it has met its 'goals': over 230 killed in Gaza, including 65 children; hospitals wrecked; tens of thousands homeless; electricity and water in even shorter supply – and most importantly, Netanyahu has scuppered Israeli opposition efforts to oust him

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 21, 2021

But for Korski and the other community leaders attending the meeting with Johnson, the passionate demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians are their main evidence for a rise in antisemitism.

‘Free Palestine’ chants

These community organisations cite a few incidents that undoubtedly qualify as antisemitism – some serious, some less so. They include shouting “Free Palestine” at individuals because they are identifiable as Jews, something presumably happening mostly to the religious ultra-Orthodox.

But these Jewish leaders’ chief concern, they make clear, is the growing public support for Palestinians in the face of intensifying Israeli aggression.

Quoting David Rich, of the Community Security Trust, another Jewish organisation hosted by Johnson, the Haaretz newspaper reports that “what has really shaken the Jewish community … ‘is that demos are being held all over the country every day about this issue’ [Israel’s bombardment of Gaza].”

Revealingly, it seems that when Jewish community leaders watch TV screens showing demonstrators chant “Free Palestine”, they feel it as a personal attack – as though they themselves are being accosted in the street.

One doesn’t need to be a Freudian analyst to wonder whether this reveals something troubling about their inner emotional life: they identify so completely with Israel that even when someone calls for Palestinians to have equal rights with Israelis they perceive as a collective attack on Jews, as antisemitism.

Exception for Israel

Then Korski gets to the crux of the argument: “As Jews we are proud of our heritage and at the same time in no way responsible for the actions of a government thousands of miles away, no matter our feelings or connection to it.”

But the logic of that position is simply untenable. You cannot tie your identity intimately to a state that systematically commits war crimes, you cannot classify demonstrations against those war crimes as antisemitism, you cannot use your position as a “Jewish community leader” to make such allegations more credible, and you cannot exploit your influence with world leaders to try to silence protests against Israel and then say you are “in no way responsible” for the actions of that government.

If you use your position to prevent Israel from being subjected to scrutiny over allegations of war crimes, if you seek to manipulate the public discourse with claims of antisemitism to create a more favourable environment in which those war crimes can be committed, then some of the blame for those war crimes rubs off on you.

That is how responsibility works in every other sphere of life. What Israel’s apologists are demanding is an exception for Israel and for themselves.

Lobby with the UK’s ear

In another revealing observation seeking to justify claims of an upsurge in antisemitism, Korski adds: “We don’t see the same kind of outpouring of emotion when it comes to the Rohingya or the Uighurs or Syria, and it makes a lot of Jews feel this is about them [as Jews].”

But there are many reasons why there aren’t equally large demonstrations in the UK against the suffering of the Rohingya and the Uighurs – reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism.

The oppressors of the Rohingya and the Uighurs, unlike Israel, are not being generously armed by the British government or given diplomatic cover by Britain or being given preferential trade agreements by Britain.

How can British "enhanced military collaboration" with the IDF now be deemed legal? They just bombed Al Jazeera and AP's offices using the £500bn worth of arms Britain has sold them – with no conditions on use! #FreePalestine

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 15, 2021

But equally importantly, the states oppressing the Rohingya and Uighurs – unlike Israel – don’t have active, well-funded lobbies in the UK, with the ear of the prime minister. China and Myanmar – unlike Israel – don’t have UK lobbies successfully labelling criticism of them as racism. Unlike Israel, they don’t have lobbies that openly seek to influence elections to protect them from criticism. Unlike Israel, they don’t have lobbies that work with Britain to introduce measures to assist them in carrying out their oppression.

The president of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, for example, pressed Johnson at the meeting this week to classify all branches of Hamas, not just its military wing, as a terrorist organisation. That is Israel’s wet dream. Such a decision would make it even less likely that Britain would be in a position to officially distance itself from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, where Hamas runs the government, and even more likely it would join Israel in declaring Gaza’s schools, hospitals and government departments all legitimate targets for Israeli air strikes.

Pure projection

If you are lobbying to get special favours for Israel, particularly favours to help it commit war crimes, you don’t also get to wash your hands of those war crimes. You are directly implicated in them.

David Hirsch, an academic at the University of London who has been closely connected to efforts to weaponise antisemitism against critics of Israel, especially in the Labour party under its previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, also tries to play this trick.

He tells Haaretz that antisemitism is supposedly “getting worse” because Palestinian solidarity activists have been giving up on a two-state solution. “There used to be a struggle in Palestine solidarity between a politics of peace – two states living side by side – and a politics of denouncing one side as essentially evil and hoping for its total defeat.”

But what Hirsch is doing is pure projection: he is suggesting Palestinian solidarity activists are “antisemites” – his idea of evil – because they have been forced by Israel to abandon their long-favoured cause of a two-state solution. That is only because successive Israeli governments have refused to negotiate any kind of peace deal with the most moderate Palestinian leadership imaginable under Mahmoud Abbas – one that has eagerly telegraphed its desire to collaborate with Israel, even calling “security coordination” with the Israeli army “sacred”.

A two-state solution is dead because Israel made it dead not because Palestinian solidarity activists are more extreme or more antisemitic.

In calling to “Free Palestine”, activists are not demanding Israel’s “total defeat” – unless Hirsch and Jewish community organisations themselves believe that Palestinians can never be free from Israeli oppression and occupation until Israel suffers such a “total defeat”. Hirsch’s claim tells us nothing about Palestinian solidarity activists, but it does tell us a lot about what is really motivating these Jewish community organisations.

It is these pro-Israel lobbyists, it seems, more than Palestinian solidarity activists, who cannot imagine Palestinians living in dignity under Israeli rule. Is that because they understand only too well what Israel and its political ideology of Zionism truly represent, and that what is required of Palestinians for “peace” is absolute and permanent submission?

Better informed

Similarly, Rich, of the Community Security Trust, says of Palestinian solidarity activists: “Even the moderates have become extremists.” What does this extremism – again presented by Jewish groups as antisemitism – consist of? “Now the movement [in solidarity with Palestinians] is dominated by the view that Israel is an apartheid, genocidal, settler-colonialist state.”

Or in other words, these pro-Israel Jewish groups claim there has been a surge in antisemitism because Palestinian solidarity activists are being influenced and educated by human rights organisations, like Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem. Both recently wrote reports classifying Israel as an apartheid state, in the occupied territories and inside Israel’s recognised borders. Activists are not becoming more extreme, they are becoming better informed.

My latest: A new report by human rights group B'Tselem calling Israel an apartheid state will make it harder to smear Israel's critics as antisemites for arguing that the Jewish state is a racist endeavour https://t.co/ubVRYd3nhj

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 14, 2021

And in making the case for a supposed surge in antisemitism, Rich offers another inadvertently revealing insight. He says Jewish children are suffering from online “abuse” – antisemitism – because they find it increasingly hard to participate on social media.

“Teenagers are much quicker to join social movements; we’ve just had Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, #MeToo – now Jewish kids find all their friends are joining this [Palestinian solidarity] movement where they don’t feel welcome or they are singled out because they’re Jewish.”

Fancifully, Rich is arguing that Jewish children raised in Zionist families and communities that have taught them either explicitly or implicitly that Jews in Israel have superior rights to Palestinians are being discriminated against because their unexamined ideas of Jewish supremacy do not fit with a pro-Palestinian movement predicated on equality.

This is as preposterous as it would have been, during the Jim Crow era, for white supremacist Americans to have complained of racism because their children were being made to feel out of place in civil rights forums.

Such assertions would be laughable were they not so dangerous.

Demonised as antisemites

Zionist supporters of Israel are trying to turn logic and the world upside down. They are inverting reality. They are projecting their own racist, zero-sum assumptions about Israel on to Palestinian solidarity activists, those who support equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East.

As they did with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, these Jewish groups are twisting the meaning of antisemitism, skewing it from a fear or hatred of Jews to any criticism of Israel that makes pro-Israel Jews feel uncomfortable.

As we watch these arguments being amplified uncritically by leading politicians and journalists, remember too that it was the only major politician to demurred from this nonsensical narrative, Jeremy Corbyn, who became the main target – and victim – of these antisemitism smears.

Now these pro-Israel Jewish groups want to treat us all like Corbyn, demonising us as antisemites unless we fall silent even as Israel once again brutalises Palestinians.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Very obviously, it is not the fault of Jews that Israel commits war crimes, or that Israel uses Jews collectively as a political shield, exploiting sensitivities about the historical suffering of Jews at the hands of non-Jews to immunise itself from international opprobrium.

But here is something that can be said with equal certainty. Israel’s apologists – whether Jews or non-Jews – cannot deny all responsibility for Israel’s war crimes when they actively aid and abet Israel in committing those crimes, or when they seek to demonise and silence Israel’s critics so that those war crimes can be pursued in a more favourable political climate.

Such apologists – which sadly seems to include many of the community organisations in Britain claiming to represent Jews – want to have their cake and eat it.

They cannot defend Israel uncritically as it commits war crimes or seek legislative changes to assist Israel in committing those war crimes – whether it be Israel’s latest pummelling of civilians in Gaza, or its executions of unarmed Palestinians protesting 15 years of Israel’s blockade of the coastal enclave – and accuse anyone who criticises them for doing so of being an antisemite.

But this is exactly what has been going on. And it is only getting worse.

Upsurge in antisemitism?

As a ceasefire was implemented yesterday, bringing a temporary let-up in the bombing of Gaza by Israel, pro-Israel Jewish groups in the UK were once again warning of an upsurge of antisemitism they related to a rapid growth in the number of protests against Israel.

Hmm. Pro-Israel groups say there's been a surge of antisemitism in the UK because of the large numbers attending protests against Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza: 'Demos are being held all over the country every day about this issue' https://t.co/oPxFs7GcOF

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 20, 2021

These groups have the usual powerful allies echoing their claims. British prime minister Boris Johnson met community leaders in Downing Street on Thursday pledging, as Jewish News reported, “to continue to support the community in the face of rising antisemitism attacks”.

Those Jewish leaders included Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, a supporter of Johnson who played a part in helping him win the 2019 election by renewing the evidence-free antisemitism smears against the Labour party days before voting. It also included the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which was founded specifically to whitewash Israel’s crimes during its 2014 bombardment of Gaza and has ever since been vilifying all Palestinian solidarity activism as antisemitism.

My latest: Anti-Palestinian bigotry from a self-styled antisemitism watchdog is the latest move to dress up bullying and threats as victimhood https://t.co/KRaPEuA1jy

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 12, 2020

In attendance too was the Jewish Leadership Council, an umbrella organisation for Britain’s main Jewish community groups. In an article in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on this supposed rise in antisemitism in the UK, the JLC’s vice-president, Daniel Korski, set out the ridiculous, self-serving narrative these community groups are trying to peddle, with seemingly ever greater success among the political and media elite.

Popular outrage over Gaza

Korski expressed grave concern about the proliferation of demonstrations in the UK designed to halt Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. During 11 days of attacks, more than 230 Palestinians were killed, including 65 children. Israel’s precision air strikes targeted more than a dozen hospitals, including the only Covid clinic in Gaza, dozens of schools, several media centres, and left tens of thousands of Palestinians homeless.

The sense of popular outrage at the Israeli onslaught was only heightened by the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had clearly engineered a confrontation with Hamas at the outset to serve his immediate personal interests: preventing Israeli opposition parties from uniting to oust him from power.

In his naked personal calculations, Palestinian civilians were sacrificed to help Netanyahu hold on to power and improve his chances of evading jail as he stands trial on corruption charges.

Of the ceasefire, Israel says it has met its 'goals': over 230 killed in Gaza, including 65 children; hospitals wrecked; tens of thousands homeless; electricity and water in even shorter supply – and most importantly, Netanyahu has scuppered Israeli opposition efforts to oust him

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 21, 2021

But for Korski and the other community leaders attending the meeting with Johnson, the passionate demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians are their main evidence for a rise in antisemitism.

‘Free Palestine’ chants

These community organisations cite a few incidents that undoubtedly qualify as antisemitism – some serious, some less so. They include shouting “Free Palestine” at individuals because they are identifiable as Jews, something presumably happening mostly to the religious ultra-Orthodox.

But these Jewish leaders’ chief concern, they make clear, is the growing public support for Palestinians in the face of intensifying Israeli aggression.

Quoting David Rich, of the Community Security Trust, another Jewish organisation hosted by Johnson, the Haaretz newspaper reports that “what has really shaken the Jewish community … ‘is that demos are being held all over the country every day about this issue’ [Israel’s bombardment of Gaza].”

Revealingly, it seems that when Jewish community leaders watch TV screens showing demonstrators chant “Free Palestine”, they feel it as a personal attack – as though they themselves are being accosted in the street.

One doesn’t need to be a Freudian analyst to wonder whether this reveals something troubling about their inner emotional life: they identify so completely with Israel that even when someone calls for Palestinians to have equal rights with Israelis they perceive as a collective attack on Jews, as antisemitism.

Exception for Israel

Then Korski gets to the crux of the argument: “As Jews we are proud of our heritage and at the same time in no way responsible for the actions of a government thousands of miles away, no matter our feelings or connection to it.”

But the logic of that position is simply untenable. You cannot tie your identity intimately to a state that systematically commits war crimes, you cannot classify demonstrations against those war crimes as antisemitism, you cannot use your position as a “Jewish community leader” to make such allegations more credible, and you cannot exploit your influence with world leaders to try to silence protests against Israel and then say you are “in no way responsible” for the actions of that government.

If you use your position to prevent Israel from being subjected to scrutiny over allegations of war crimes, if you seek to manipulate the public discourse with claims of antisemitism to create a more favourable environment in which those war crimes can be committed, then some of the blame for those war crimes rubs off on you.

That is how responsibility works in every other sphere of life. What Israel’s apologists are demanding is an exception for Israel and for themselves.

Lobby with the UK’s ear

In another revealing observation seeking to justify claims of an upsurge in antisemitism, Korski adds: “We don’t see the same kind of outpouring of emotion when it comes to the Rohingya or the Uighurs or Syria, and it makes a lot of Jews feel this is about them [as Jews].”

But there are many reasons why there aren’t equally large demonstrations in the UK against the suffering of the Rohingya and the Uighurs – reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism.

The oppressors of the Rohingya and the Uighurs, unlike Israel, are not being generously armed by the British government or given diplomatic cover by Britain or being given preferential trade agreements by Britain.

How can British "enhanced military collaboration" with the IDF now be deemed legal? They just bombed Al Jazeera and AP's offices using the £500bn worth of arms Britain has sold them – with no conditions on use! #FreePalestine

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 15, 2021

But equally importantly, the states oppressing the Rohingya and Uighurs – unlike Israel – don’t have active, well-funded lobbies in the UK, with the ear of the prime minister. China and Myanmar – unlike Israel – don’t have UK lobbies successfully labelling criticism of them as racism. Unlike Israel, they don’t have lobbies that openly seek to influence elections to protect them from criticism. Unlike Israel, they don’t have lobbies that work with Britain to introduce measures to assist them in carrying out their oppression.

The president of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, for example, pressed Johnson at the meeting this week to classify all branches of Hamas, not just its military wing, as a terrorist organisation. That is Israel’s wet dream. Such a decision would make it even less likely that Britain would be in a position to officially distance itself from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, where Hamas runs the government, and even more likely it would join Israel in declaring Gaza’s schools, hospitals and government departments all legitimate targets for Israeli air strikes.

Pure projection

If you are lobbying to get special favours for Israel, particularly favours to help it commit war crimes, you don’t also get to wash your hands of those war crimes. You are directly implicated in them.

David Hirsch, an academic at the University of London who has been closely connected to efforts to weaponise antisemitism against critics of Israel, especially in the Labour party under its previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, also tries to play this trick.

He tells Haaretz that antisemitism is supposedly “getting worse” because Palestinian solidarity activists have been giving up on a two-state solution. “There used to be a struggle in Palestine solidarity between a politics of peace – two states living side by side – and a politics of denouncing one side as essentially evil and hoping for its total defeat.”

But what Hirsch is doing is pure projection: he is suggesting Palestinian solidarity activists are “antisemites” – his idea of evil – because they have been forced by Israel to abandon their long-favoured cause of a two-state solution. That is only because successive Israeli governments have refused to negotiate any kind of peace deal with the most moderate Palestinian leadership imaginable under Mahmoud Abbas – one that has eagerly telegraphed its desire to collaborate with Israel, even calling “security coordination” with the Israeli army “sacred”.

A two-state solution is dead because Israel made it dead not because Palestinian solidarity activists are more extreme or more antisemitic.

In calling to “Free Palestine”, activists are not demanding Israel’s “total defeat” – unless Hirsch and Jewish community organisations themselves believe that Palestinians can never be free from Israeli oppression and occupation until Israel suffers such a “total defeat”. Hirsch’s claim tells us nothing about Palestinian solidarity activists, but it does tell us a lot about what is really motivating these Jewish community organisations.

It is these pro-Israel lobbyists, it seems, more than Palestinian solidarity activists, who cannot imagine Palestinians living in dignity under Israeli rule. Is that because they understand only too well what Israel and its political ideology of Zionism truly represent, and that what is required of Palestinians for “peace” is absolute and permanent submission?

Better informed

Similarly, Rich, of the Community Security Trust, says of Palestinian solidarity activists: “Even the moderates have become extremists.” What does this extremism – again presented by Jewish groups as antisemitism – consist of? “Now the movement [in solidarity with Palestinians] is dominated by the view that Israel is an apartheid, genocidal, settler-colonialist state.”

Or in other words, these pro-Israel Jewish groups claim there has been a surge in antisemitism because Palestinian solidarity activists are being influenced and educated by human rights organisations, like Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem. Both recently wrote reports classifying Israel as an apartheid state, in the occupied territories and inside Israel’s recognised borders. Activists are not becoming more extreme, they are becoming better informed.

My latest: A new report by human rights group B'Tselem calling Israel an apartheid state will make it harder to smear Israel's critics as antisemites for arguing that the Jewish state is a racist endeavour https://t.co/ubVRYd3nhj

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 14, 2021

And in making the case for a supposed surge in antisemitism, Rich offers another inadvertently revealing insight. He says Jewish children are suffering from online “abuse” – antisemitism – because they find it increasingly hard to participate on social media.

“Teenagers are much quicker to join social movements; we’ve just had Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, #MeToo – now Jewish kids find all their friends are joining this [Palestinian solidarity] movement where they don’t feel welcome or they are singled out because they’re Jewish.”

Fancifully, Rich is arguing that Jewish children raised in Zionist families and communities that have taught them either explicitly or implicitly that Jews in Israel have superior rights to Palestinians are being discriminated against because their unexamined ideas of Jewish supremacy do not fit with a pro-Palestinian movement predicated on equality.

This is as preposterous as it would have been, during the Jim Crow era, for white supremacist Americans to have complained of racism because their children were being made to feel out of place in civil rights forums.

Such assertions would be laughable were they not so dangerous.

Demonised as antisemites

Zionist supporters of Israel are trying to turn logic and the world upside down. They are inverting reality. They are projecting their own racist, zero-sum assumptions about Israel on to Palestinian solidarity activists, those who support equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East.

As they did with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, these Jewish groups are twisting the meaning of antisemitism, skewing it from a fear or hatred of Jews to any criticism of Israel that makes pro-Israel Jews feel uncomfortable.

As we watch these arguments being amplified uncritically by leading politicians and journalists, remember too that it was the only major politician to demurred from this nonsensical narrative, Jeremy Corbyn, who became the main target – and victim – of these antisemitism smears.

Now these pro-Israel Jewish groups want to treat us all like Corbyn, demonising us as antisemites unless we fall silent even as Israel once again brutalises Palestinians.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Nor should we be surprised that Johnson has had nothing to say about the fact that Israel is using British weapons to bombard Gaza, killing families and blowing up media centres.

How can British "enhanced military collaboration" with the IDF now be deemed legal? They just bombed Al Jazeera and AP's offices using the £500bn worth of arms Britain has sold them – with no conditions on use! #FreePalestine

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 15, 2021

Johnson has had nothing to say either about Israel’s recent efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem – the very obvious trigger, along with its attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque, for this latest round of so-called “clashes” between Israel and Hamas.

And like most of his predecessors, Johnson has had remarkably little to say about the much longer-term ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that was always at the core of mainstream Zionism’s mission and was officially sponsored by Britain through its 1917 Balfour Declaration.

But if Johnson’s performance at this critically important moment has been predictably dismal, what about the leader of the opposition Labour party, Sir Keir Starmer? Presumably he is picking up the slack, making clear that Israel is committing war crimes and that there must be harsh consequences, such as sanctions and an arms embargo.

Except Starmer is strangely quiet too.

Moral cowardice

Over the past week, Starmer has tweeted three times on matters related to events in Israel-Palestine. The first two were nearly a week ago, before Israel had begun unleashing the full might of its arsenal on Gaza. Starmer joined others in mealy-mouthed calls to “de-escalate tensions”, as though this was a slightly-too-noisy row between a bickering couple rather than serial wife-beating that has been going on for decades, aided by Britain.

The situation in Jerusalem, Gaza and Israel is shocking.

Labour is calling for the immediate end to air strikes and rocket attacks.

Britain must act to de-escalate tensions and kick-start efforts for a sustainable peace – through a two-state solution.https://t.co/hqi0l25I7S

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 12, 2021

As the death toll in Gaza has mounted, and the both-sidism favoured by western leaders is exposed ever more starkly as moral cowardice, Starmer has uttered not a word on the events unfolding in Israel and Palestine. Complete quiet.

That was until Sunday, when Starmer took time out from his day of rest to comment on a small convoy of cars – driven from Bradford and Oldham, according to a Jewish News report – that had passed through an area of London where many Jews live, waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic curses.

Starmer commented: “Utterly disgusting. Antisemitism, misogyny and hate have no place on our streets or in our society. There must be consequences.”

Utterly disgusting. Antisemitism, misogyny and hate have no place on our streets or in our society. There must be consequences. https://t.co/a1asCAF9Ep

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 16, 2021

And sure enough, there were immediate consequences. The police arrested four people under hate-crime laws.

Pain and insult

In referring to Bradford and Oldham, the Jewish News report was suggesting – probably correctly – that the occupants of the cars were drawn from the large Muslim populations that live in those cities.

This is a pattern we have seen before. When Israel starts attacking Palestinians, many of whom are Muslim and whose lands include important Islamic holy sites under constant threat from Israel, Muslims are likely to feel the pain and insult far more deeply and personally than most other British populations.

Their outrage is likely to peak when Israel desecrates a holy site under occupation such as al-Aqsa in Jerusalem – which is also a powerful symbol of the Palestinians’ aspiration towards political sovereignty in their historic homeland – during the holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli forces attack worshippers inside al-Masjid al-Qibli in al-Aqsa Mosque with stun grenades, effectively trapping hundreds of people inside, including many children#Jerusalem #Palestine #AlAqsa #Israel pic.twitter.com/lcv0ZSEtB2

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 7, 2021

Many Muslims feel Israel’s reckless bombardment of Gaza and its civilian population, as well as the invasion of al-Aqsa mosque by Israeli soldiers, as very personal attacks on their dignity, their identity and their values.

“White” Britons struggling to understand such emotions might try to recall how incensed they felt at an attack by Islamic extremists on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris back in 2015. That led to a march through the French capital by world leaders, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, upholding free speech, most especially the right to offend Muslims’ religious sensitivities, as a supreme – and inviolable – value. (That is the same Paris that at the weekend used water cannon and baton charges against Palestinian solidarity activists, many of them Muslims, trying to exercise their free speech rights to denounce Israel’s attacks on Gaza.)

Water cannon, tear gas and baton charges already being used against pro-Palestine protesters in Paris. pic.twitter.com/HtT9kyjcNR

— Peter Allen (@peterallenparis) May 15, 2021

Dangerous conflation

And just as it is common for many “white” Europeans – including western politicians – to confuse Muslims and Islam with Islamic extremism, blaming a religion for the flaws of its more extreme adherents, so a portion of Muslims wrongly associate Jews in general with the crimes committed by Israel.

Israel does nothing to dispel this dangerous conflation. In fact, it actively encourages it. It declares itself the state of the entire Jewish people, disdaining the presence and rights of 1.8 million second-class Palestinian citizens. Or as Netanyahu observed two years ago, shortly after enshrining institutionalised racism in Israeli law, Israel is “the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people”. When Israel speaks and acts, its leaders claim, it speaks and acts on behalf of all Jews worldwide.

Some prominent western Jews – including Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland – add to the confusion. They appear to agree with Netanyahu by avowing that Israel is at the core of their identity and that attacks on Israel are an attack on who they are. This line of argument was widely weaponised against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, suggesting he was engaging in antisemitism, or at least indulging it, by being such a trenchant critic of Israel.

So, however wrong it was for the occupants of those cars at the weekend to be shouting antisemitic profanities, and however right it is for the police to be investigating this incident, it is not something difficult to explain. Manufactured confusion over the distinctions between Jews, Judaism, Israel and Zionism are as common as manufactured confusion over Muslims, Islam, various Islamic states and jihadism.

But there is a more important point to make that relates directly to Starmer – and most other western politicians. He may claim the moral high ground in his public denunciations of the antisemitic curses from the convoy of cars in London at the weekend. But he must take a considerable chunk of the blame for them.

Trampled dignity

Given how precise Israel's missiles are, it would be interesting to hear Israel explain why it decided to make a huge crater in the main road leading to Gaza's biggest hospital, al-Shifa. Maybe one for the ICC to look into https://t.co/ICTU0fdK7k

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 17, 2021

Over the past week British politicians have mostly chosen to avert their gaze from the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians with Britain’s help – in the form of diplomatic silence, weapons sales and continuing trade agreements.

With Corbyn gone, no one in British politics now represents the rights of Palestinians – and by extension the rights of Britain’s large Muslim population, whose interests and dignity are trampled every time Israel’s army kills, wounds or demonises Palestinians or desecrates Palestine’s holy places.

As Gaza is turned into rubble and whole families killed, keep reminding yourself – because the media sure won't – that this latest 'clash' began because Israel intensified the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians families from their homes in Jerusalem, against international law

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 15, 2021

In his studied silence about Israel’s bombing of Gaza – after Israel recklessly provoked Hamas rockets by intensifying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem to replace them with Jewish settlers – Starmer has sent a clear message to Britain’s Muslim communities, like those in Bradford and Oldham:

I do not represent you or your concerns. I support, as I stated during my campaign to become Labour leader, “Zionism without qualification”. Like the Palestinians, you are on your own. You are not part of the British debate.

It is not just that Britain’s Muslims have been abandoned by politicians like Starmer. Muslims understand that, when it comes to core issues of their identity and their dignity, they have no representation, no voice, in the UK in stark contrast to the treatment of Jewish communities that choose to support the belligerent, apartheid state of Israel.

Those Jews – unlike Britain’s anti-Zionist Jews – have Starmer’s full attention, his “support without qualification“. That was why Starmer was only too ready to insult every Muslim in Britain by cancelling at the last minute his attendance at a Ramadan supper last month, to break that day’s fast, at the behest of pro-Israel Jewish groups. The reason? One of the supper’s organisers had once spoken in favour of boycotting Israel’s settlements, in line with international law – a position one might have imagined a high-profile lawyer like Starmer would have appreciated rather than punished.

Fuelling alienation

These actions have all too predictable consequences. They fuel alienation from British politics among many Muslims, and racism and extremism among a very small subsection of them – of exactly the kind we saw at the weekend in the convoy driving through London.

Denouncing the convoy’s participants as racist while pretending that there are no grounds for Muslims – or anyone else who cares about international law and human rights – to feel aggrieved by what is happening in Gaza, as Starmer has effectively done through his silence, is to pick further at an open wound. It is to claim an entirely unjustified “white” righteousness – like those two-faced world leaders who marched through Paris in 2015 – that serves only to deepen the offence and spread it.

In professing his blind support for Israel and Zionism – Israel’s ideology of Jewish supremacism, the counterpart of extreme political Islam – Starmer revealed himself to be an utter hypocrite and racist. One rule for ugly Muslim supremacism, another for ugly Israeli supremacism. One denounced, one placated.

Starmer is not seeking to “de-escalate” the “tensions” causing bloodshed thousands of miles away in the Middle East – and mostly, let’s note, among Palestinians. Rather, he is fuelling those very same tensions, escalating them, in his own back yard. He may not be shouting profanities at the top of his voice from his car window. He has no need to.

He can cause even more damage simply by loudly prosecuting verbal threats while quietly exonerating war crimes that cause mass death.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

The scene of Hartlepool is one of profound, social decay.  Its decline, wrote Tanya Gold on the eve of the by-election, “meets you like a wall of heat.”  She noted an era lost, the trace of lingering memories.  Hartlepool was once known for making ships.  “Now it makes ennui.”  Male unemployment is a touch under 10%. Rates of child poverty are some of the highest in the country.  Services have been withdrawn; the once fine Georgian and Victorian houses are mouldering.

The seat presented the Conservatives an opportunity to take yet another brick out of Labour’s crumbling red wall.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson made visits to back his candidate, Jill Mortimer, hardly a stellar recruit.  Labour was suffering establishment blues.  They struggled to find a pro-Brexit candidate.  Their choice – Paul Williams – was a Remainer who formerly represented the seat of Stockton, which returned a leave vote of 69.6%.  It was a statement of London-centric politics, the Labour of the city rather than the locality; the Labour of university education rather than the labour of regional working class.

Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, formerly shadow defence secretary, is bitter about the estrangement and emergence of what are effectively two parties.  “A London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of the brigades of woke social media warriors, has effectively captured the party,” he lamented in an article for the conservative think tank Policy Exchange.  “They mean well, of course, but their politics – obsessed with identity, division and even tech utopianism – have more in common with those of Californian high society than the kind of people who voted in Hartlepool yesterday.”

Energy had been expended on such causes as trying to pull down Churchill’s statue rather than “helping people pull themselves up in the world.”  The patriotism of the voters had not been taken seriously enough.  “They are more alert to rebranding exercises than spin doctors give them credit for.”

Labour’s campaign in Hartlepool was not so much off-message as lacking one.  “Today,” penned progressive columnist and Labour Party supporter Owen Jones, “we saw the fruits of a truly fascinating experiment”.  It was one featuring a political party going to an election “without a vision or a coherent message against a government that has both in spades.”

The tendency was repeated in local elections, with ballots being conducted across Wales, England and Scotland in what was called “Super Thursday”.  The Teesside mayoralty was regained by Ben Houchen for the Conservatives by a convincingly crushing 72.7%, three times that of Labour, prompting Will Hutton to see a new ideology of interventionist conservatism.  Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer could do little other than call the results “bitterly disappointing” and sack the party’s chair and national campaign coordinator, Angela Rayner.  He is chewing over the idea of moving his party’s headquarters out of London. The feeling of panic is unmistakable.

What is even more startling is the enormous latitude that has been given to Johnson.  Despite bungling the response to the initial phases of the pandemic, an insatiable appetite for scandals and a seedy, authoritarian approach to power, Labor voters have not turned away, let alone had second thoughts about this Tory.  His mendacity and pure fibbing is not something that turns people off him; the stream of Daily Telegraph confections from the 1990s on what those supposedly nasty bureaucrats in Brussels were up to had a lasting effect on Britain’s relations with Europe.  Mendacity can work.

Last April, Jonathan Freedland examined the prime minister’s resume of scandals and found it heaving.  He shifted the cost of removing dangerous cladding in the wake of the Grenfell fire, along with other hazards, to ordinary leaseholders.  He slashed the UK aid budget and reduced contributions to the UN family planning program.  He delayed lockdowns in March, September and the winter in 2020, moves that aided Britain lead Europe’s coronavirus death toll.  There were the contracts to supply personal protective equipment to Tory donors and the frittering away of £37 billion on a test-and-trace programme “that never really worked.”  And that was just a modest sampling.

The refurbishment scandal is particularly rich, given the bundle Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds have spent on their private residence.  The public purse will foot the bill to the value of £30,000, but the amount spent was more in the order of £200,000.  With a very heavy axe to grind, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former advisor and confidant turned blogging snitch, suggested that the PM’s grand plan was to have that inflated amount covered by donors.   “The PM stopped speaking to me about this matter in 2020 as I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended.”

Johnson, for his part, claims that he covered the costs himself, though he refuses to answer questions put to him on whether Lord David Brownlow initially covered it, and was then repaid.  Not declaring this transaction would have broken electoral law.  The Electoral Commission has not found the affair particularly amusing, and is investigating the refurbishment transactions.

The disaster that befell Labour in the 2019 general election sees little prospect of being reversed.  Starmer, generally seen as the more decent chap, is rapidly diminishing as a chance for Downing Street honours.  As for Johnson, Freedland suggests that the good fortune of the scandal ridden PM reveals an electorate “still seduced by a tousled-hair rebel shtick and faux bonhomie that should have palled years ago.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The scene of Hartlepool is one of profound, social decay.  Its decline, wrote Tanya Gold on the eve of the by-election, “meets you like a wall of heat.”  She noted an era lost, the trace of lingering memories.  Hartlepool was once known for making ships.  “Now it makes ennui.”  Male unemployment is a touch under 10%. Rates of child poverty are some of the highest in the country.  Services have been withdrawn; the once fine Georgian and Victorian houses are mouldering.

The seat presented the Conservatives an opportunity to take yet another brick out of Labour’s crumbling red wall.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson made visits to back his candidate, Jill Mortimer, hardly a stellar recruit.  Labour was suffering establishment blues.  They struggled to find a pro-Brexit candidate.  Their choice – Paul Williams – was a Remainer who formerly represented the seat of Stockton, which returned a leave vote of 69.6%.  It was a statement of London-centric politics, the Labour of the city rather than the locality; the Labour of university education rather than the labour of regional working class.

Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, formerly shadow defence secretary, is bitter about the estrangement and emergence of what are effectively two parties.  “A London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of the brigades of woke social media warriors, has effectively captured the party,” he lamented in an article for the conservative think tank Policy Exchange.  “They mean well, of course, but their politics – obsessed with identity, division and even tech utopianism – have more in common with those of Californian high society than the kind of people who voted in Hartlepool yesterday.”

Energy had been expended on such causes as trying to pull down Churchill’s statue rather than “helping people pull themselves up in the world.”  The patriotism of the voters had not been taken seriously enough.  “They are more alert to rebranding exercises than spin doctors give them credit for.”

Labour’s campaign in Hartlepool was not so much off-message as lacking one.  “Today,” penned progressive columnist and Labour Party supporter Owen Jones, “we saw the fruits of a truly fascinating experiment”.  It was one featuring a political party going to an election “without a vision or a coherent message against a government that has both in spades.”

The tendency was repeated in local elections, with ballots being conducted across Wales, England and Scotland in what was called “Super Thursday”.  The Teesside mayoralty was regained by Ben Houchen for the Conservatives by a convincingly crushing 72.7%, three times that of Labour, prompting Will Hutton to see a new ideology of interventionist conservatism.  Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer could do little other than call the results “bitterly disappointing” and sack the party’s chair and national campaign coordinator, Angela Rayner.  He is chewing over the idea of moving his party’s headquarters out of London. The feeling of panic is unmistakable.

What is even more startling is the enormous latitude that has been given to Johnson.  Despite bungling the response to the initial phases of the pandemic, an insatiable appetite for scandals and a seedy, authoritarian approach to power, Labor voters have not turned away, let alone had second thoughts about this Tory.  His mendacity and pure fibbing is not something that turns people off him; the stream of Daily Telegraph confections from the 1990s on what those supposedly nasty bureaucrats in Brussels were up to had a lasting effect on Britain’s relations with Europe.  Mendacity can work.

Last April, Jonathan Freedland examined the prime minister’s resume of scandals and found it heaving.  He shifted the cost of removing dangerous cladding in the wake of the Grenfell fire, along with other hazards, to ordinary leaseholders.  He slashed the UK aid budget and reduced contributions to the UN family planning program.  He delayed lockdowns in March, September and the winter in 2020, moves that aided Britain lead Europe’s coronavirus death toll.  There were the contracts to supply personal protective equipment to Tory donors and the frittering away of £37 billion on a test-and-trace programme “that never really worked.”  And that was just a modest sampling.

The refurbishment scandal is particularly rich, given the bundle Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds have spent on their private residence.  The public purse will foot the bill to the value of £30,000, but the amount spent was more in the order of £200,000.  With a very heavy axe to grind, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former advisor and confidant turned blogging snitch, suggested that the PM’s grand plan was to have that inflated amount covered by donors.   “The PM stopped speaking to me about this matter in 2020 as I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended.”

Johnson, for his part, claims that he covered the costs himself, though he refuses to answer questions put to him on whether Lord David Brownlow initially covered it, and was then repaid.  Not declaring this transaction would have broken electoral law.  The Electoral Commission has not found the affair particularly amusing, and is investigating the refurbishment transactions.

The disaster that befell Labour in the 2019 general election sees little prospect of being reversed.  Starmer, generally seen as the more decent chap, is rapidly diminishing as a chance for Downing Street honours.  As for Johnson, Freedland suggests that the good fortune of the scandal ridden PM reveals an electorate “still seduced by a tousled-hair rebel shtick and faux bonhomie that should have palled years ago.”

This article was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2021 at 10:08pm and is filed under Boris Johnson, Elections, Keir Starmer, UK Labour Party, UK Politics, United Kingdom.

Yet what’s suggested time and again is that the prime minister’s attitude to the truth and facts is not based on what is real and what is not, but is driven by what he wants to achieve in that moment – what he desires, rather than what he believes. And there is no question, that approach, coupled with an intense force of personality can be enormously effective.

In his political career, Boris Johnson has time and again overturned the odds, and that’s a huge part of the reason why.

The way Kuenssberg tells it, Johnson sounds exactly like someone you would want in your corner in a time of crisis. Not the narcissist creator of those crises, but the Nietzschean “Superman” who can solve them for you through sheer force of will and personality.

Lies piling up

Slightly less enamoured with Johnson than the BBC has been the liberal Guardian, Britain’s supposedly chief “opposition” newspaper to the ruling Conservative government. But the Guardian has been surprisingly late to this party too. Typical of its newly aggressive approach to Johnson was a piece published on Saturday by its columnist Jonathan Freedland, titled “Scandal upon scandal: the charge sheet that should have felled Johnson years ago”.

As this article rightly documents, Johnson is an inveterate dissembler, and one whose lies have been visibly piling up since he entered 10 Downing Street. His propensity to lie is not new. It was well-know to anyone who worked with him in his earlier career in journalism or when he was an aspiring politician. It is not the “scandals” that are new, it’s the media’s interest in documenting them that is.

And when the liar-in-chef is also the prime minister, those lies invariably end up masking high-level corruption, the kind of corruption that has the capacity to destroy lives – many lives.

So why are Johnson’s well-known deceptions only becoming a “mainstream” issue now – and why, in particular, is a liberal outlet like the Guardian picking up the baton on this matter so late in the day? As Freedland rightly observes, these scandals have been around for many years, so why wasn’t the Guardian on Johnson’s case from the outset, setting the agenda?

Or put another way, why has the drive to expose Johnson been led not by liberal journalists like Freedland but chiefly by a disillusioned old-school conservative worried about the damage Johnson is doing to his political tradition? Freedland is riding on the coat-tails of former Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne, who wrote a recent book on Johnson’s fabrications, The Assault on Truth.  Further, Johnson’s deceptions have gone viral not because of the efforts of the Guardian but because of a video compilation on social media of some of Johnson’s biggest whoppers by lawyer and independent journalist Peter Stefanovic.

This shocking compilation of Boris Johnson misleading Parliament is now on 6.2 million views yet UK media continues to turn a blind eye

Help me send it to 7 million@BBCNews @itvnews @Channel4News @SkyNews can’t ignore PM’s shameless conduct forever! pic.twitter.com/PlvEkEij1V

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) March 30, 2021

Politics rigged

Part of the answer, of course, is that until recently the Guardian, along with the rest of the corporate media, had a much more pressing task than holding Britain’s prime minister to account for lies – and the corruption they obscure – that have drained the Treasury of the nation’s wealth, redirecting it towards a bunch of Tory donors, and subsequently contributed to at least a proportion of Covid-19 deaths.

The Guardian was preoccupied with making sure that Johnson was not replaced by an opposition leader who spoke, for the first time in more than a generation, about the need for wealth redistribution and a fairer society.

On the political scales weighing what was most beneficial for the country, it was far more important to the Guardian to keep then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his democratic socialist agenda out of Downing Street than make sure Britain was run in accordance with the rule of law, let alone according to the principles of fairness and decency.

The Guardian’s relentless attacks on Corbyn continue. We’ve compiled a list of over a 100 Guardian articles attacking Corbyn (a small sample). Take a look! (And if you haven’t already, it really is time to #DumpTheGuardian.) https://t.co/zQDRqe1iyP

— FiveFilters.org (@fivefilters) September 16, 2018

Now with Corbyn long gone, the political conditions to take on Johnson are more favourable. Covid-19 cases in the UK have plummeted, freeing up a little space on front pages for other matters. And Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, has used the past year to prove over and over again to the media that he has been scrupulous about purging socialism from the Labour party.

We are back to the familiar and reassuring days of having two main parties that will not threaten the establishment. One, the Labour party, will leave the establishment’s power and wealth untouched, but do so in a way that makes Britain once again look like a properly run country, conferring greater legitimacy on UK Plc. The other, the Conservative party, will do even better by the establishment, further enriching it with an unapologetic crony capitalism, even if that risks over the longer term provoking a popular backlash that may prove harder to defuse than the Corbyn one did.

For the time being at least, the elite prospers either way. The bottom line, for the establishment, is that the political system is once again rigged in its favour, whoever wins the next election. The establishment can risk making Johnson vulnerable only because the establishment interests he represents are no longer vulnerable.

Blame the voters

But for liberal media like the Guardian, the campaign to hold Johnson to account is potentially treacherous. Once the prime minister’s serial lying is exposed and the people informed of what is going on, according to traditional liberal thinking, his popularity should wane. Once the people understand he is a conman, they will want to be rid of him. That should be all the more inevitable, if, as the Guardian contends, Starmer is an obviously safer and more honest pair of hands.

? | NEW: Preferred Prime Minister poll:

Boris Johnson: 40% (+5)
Keir Starmer: 24% (-4)

Via @BMGResearch, 22-26 April
Changes w March

— Politics For All (@PoliticsForAlI) April 29, 2021

But the problem for the Guardian is that Johnson’s polling figures are remarkably buoyant, despite the growing media criticism of him. He continues to outpoll Starmer. His Midas touch needs explaining. And the Guardian is growing ever more explicit about where the fault is to be found. With us.

Or as Freedland observes:

Maybe the real scandal lies with us, the electorate, still seduced by a tousled-hair rebel shtick and faux bonhomie that should have palled years ago… For allowing this shameless man to keep riding high, some of the shame is on us.

Freedland is far from alone in peddling this line. Kuenssberg, in her BBC piece, offers a variant:

An insider told me: “He frequently leaves people with the belief that he has told them one thing, but he has given himself room for manoeuvre,” believing that, “the fewer cast iron positions you hold the better, because you can always change political direction.”

The verbal flourishes and rhetorical tricks are part of the reason why he has prospered. “A lot of his magic has been those off-the-cuff comments, that’s why a lot of the public like him,” says an ally.

In other words, we see what we want to see. Johnson is the vessel into which we pour our hopes and dreams, while he has the tough challenge of making our melange of hopes and dreams a tangible, workable reality.

Liberal journalists have been on this “blame the voters” path for a while. When it was Corbyn and his “dangerous” socialism being pitted against the Tories’ crony capitalism, the Guardian enthusiastically joined the smear campaign against Labour. That included evidence-free claims of an “institutional antisemitism” crisis under Corbyn’s leadership.

And yet despite the media’s best endeavours, Corbyn appalled journalists like Freedland at the 2017 general election by winning Labour’s biggest rise in vote share since 1945. Corbyn denied the Conservatives a majority and was a few thousand votes from winning outright – something Starmer can only dream of at the moment, despite Johnson’s exposure as an inveterate liar and conman. And Corbyn achieved this while the Labour party machine, and the entire corporate media, were vehemently against him.

Dangerous populism

It was in the wake of Corbyn’s unexpected success at the polls in 2017 that the Guardian unleashed its “New Populism” series, seeking to warn of a supposedly dangerous new political phenomenon that lumped the then-Labour leader in with right wing populists such as Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. They were all part of a new wave of authoritarian, cult-like leaders who barely concealed their sinister, racist agendas, gulled supporters with promises divorced from reality, and most likely had secret ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In short, the Guardian’s thesis was that “the people” kept voting for these leaders because they were stupid and easily duped by a smooth-tongued charlatan.

This narrative was aggressively promoted by the Guardian, even though Corbyn had nothing in common with the right wing authoritarians with whom he was forced to share star billing. He had spent his long political career on the backbenches, cultivating a self-effacing politics of communal solidarity and “standing up for the little guy” rather than pursuing power. And far from being a nationalist or nativist, Corbyn had dedicated decades to internationalism and fighting racism – though admittedly, in challenging the anti-Palestinian racism of Israel and its Zionist supporters he had left himself prey to disingenuous claims of antisemitism.

But after several years of emotional and ideological investment in “the people are dumb” approach, the Guardian seems in no hurry to drop it – until, or unless, the people can be persuaded to vote for an eminently safe, status-quo candidate like Starmer. The paper’s target has simply switched from Corbyn to the more plausible figure of Boris Johnson.

The Guardian dares not contemplate any alternative explanation for why voters continue to prefer the narcissist, corrupt, lying Johnson over Labour’s “Clean Up Westminster” Keir Starmer. But its reluctance to consider other explanations does not mean they cannot be found.

I would clean up Westminster.#Peston pic.twitter.com/FTpoHCsbrR

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 29, 2021

A corrupt system

The problem is not that most voters have failed to understand that Johnson is corrupt, though given the corrupt nature of the British corporate media – the Guardian very much included – they are hardly well positioned to appreciate the extent of Johnson’s corruption.

It is not even that they know that he is corrupt but do not care.

Rather, the real problem is that significant sections of the electorate have rightly come to the realisation that the wider political system within which Johnson operates is corrupt too. So corrupt, in fact, that it may be impossible to fix. Johnson is simply more open, and honest, about how he exploits the corrupt system.

Over the past two decades, there have been several way-stations exposing the extent of the corruption of the UK’s political system, whichever party was in power.

Labour under Tony Blair overrode popular dissent, expressed in the largest marches ever seen in the UK, and lied his way to a war on Iraq in 2003 that led to the killing and ethnic cleansing of millions of Iraqis. UK soldiers were dragged into a war that, it quickly became clear, was really about securing western control over the Middle East’s oil. And the invasion and occupation of Iraq spawned a new nihilistic Islamic cult that rampaged across the region and whose embers have yet to be snuffed out.

Five years later, Gordon Brown oversaw the near-implosion of the British economy after Labour had spent more than a decade intensifying the financial deregulation begun under Margaret Thatcher. That process had turned the financial sector into the true power behind No 10. Both Brown and his Tory successor, David Cameron, not only refused to hold to account any of the white-collar criminals responsible for the collapse of the financial system, but instead rewarded them with massive bailouts. Ordinary people, meanwhile, were forced to tighten their belts through years of austerity to pay off the debts.

And in the background throughout this period, a global and local environmental catastrophe has been gradually unfolding that the political system has shown no capacity to address because it has been captured by corporations who benefit most from continuing the environmental degradation. The system has instead dissembled on the threats we face to justify inaction.

No price to pay

The truly astonishing thing is that those who lied us into the Iraq war, destabilising the Middle East and provoking an exodus from the region that has fuelled a surge in xenophobic politics across Europe; those who broke the financial system through their greed and incompetence and lied their way out of the consequences, forcing the rest of us to foot the bill; and those who lied about the ecological catastrophes unfolding over the past half century so that they could go on lining their own pockets; none of them paid any price at all for their mendacity, for their deceptions, for their corruption. Not only that, but they have grown richer, more powerful, more respected because of the lies.

One only needs to look at the fate of that unapologetic pair of war criminals, Tony Blair and George W Bush. The former has amassed wealth like a black hole sucks in light, and preposterously is still regularly called on by the media to pontificate on ethical issues in British politics. And the latter has been rehabilitated as a once-wayward, now beloved, irreverent uncle to the nation, one whose humanity has supposedly been underscored simply by making sure he was filmed “sneaking” a sweet to his presidential successor’s wife.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, a remedy to Britain’s self-evidently flawed political system was thrown up – in the form of Corbyn. He was a throwback, the very antithesis of the modern politicians who had brought us to the brink of ruin on multiple fronts. He was not venal, nor a narcissist. His concern was improving the lives of ordinary people, not the bank balances of corporate donors. He was against colonial-style wars to grab other countries’ resources. The things that made him a laughing stock with the political elite – his cheap clothes, his simple life, his allotment – made him appealing to large sections of the electorate.

For many, Corbyn was the last gasp for a system they had given up on. He might prove their growing cynicism about politics wrong. His success might demonstrate that the system could be fixed, and that all was not lost.

Except that is not how it played out. The entire political and media class – even the military – turned on Corbyn. They played the man, not the ball – and when it came to the man, any and all character assassination was justified. He had been a Soviet agent. He was a threat to Britain’s security. His IQ was too low to be prime minister. He was a secret antisemite.

Lying, cheating and stealing

In the United States, then-Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer warned Donald Trump back in 2017 that the US intelligence services would “have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you” should the president try to go up against them. Maybe Trump hoped that his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, would offer some protection. Pompeo, a former head of the CIA, understood the dishonest ways of the intelligence services only too well. He explained his agency’s modus operandi to a group of students in Texas in an unusually frank manner in late 2019: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. That’s, it was like, we had entire training courses!”

With the campaign to destroy Corbyn, many saw how the British system was just as skilled and experienced as the US one in its capacity to lie, cheat and steal. Corbyn’s treatment offered an undeniable confirmation of what they already suspected.

Over the past two decades, in an era when social media has emerged as an alternative information universe challenging that of the traditional corporate media, all these episodes – Iraq, the financial crash, ecological catastrophe, Corbyn’s political assassination – have had deeply damaging political ramifications. Because once people sensed that the system was corrupt, they became cynical. And once they were cynical, once they believed the system was rigged whoever won, they began voting cynically too.

This should be the main context for understanding Johnson’s continuing success and his invulnerability to criticism. In a rigged system, voters prefer an honestly dishonest politician – one who revels in the cynicism of the system and is open about exploiting it – over one who pretends he is playing fair, one who feigns a belief in the system’s ultimate decency, one who lies by claiming he can pursue the common good.

If the system is rigged, who is really more mendacious: Johnson, who plays dirty in a dirty system, or Starmer, who pretends he can clean up the Westminster cesspit when all he will really do is push the ordure out of view.

Johnson is transparently looking out for his mates and donors. Starmer is looking out for a rotten system, one that he intends to makeover so its corruption is less visible, less open to scrutiny.

Liberals are mystified by this reading of politics. They, after all, are emotionally invested in a supposedly meritocratic system from which they personally benefited for so long. They would rather believe the lie that a good political system is being corrupted by rotten politicians and a stupid electorate than the reality that a corrupt political system is being exploited by those best placed to navigate its corrupt ways.

This, Mason argued, has led to a decline of bumblebees in Denmark. She asked the agency why it had used “fraudulent science” on glyphosate from the European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency, which in turn take their ‘science’ from Monsanto/Bayer, rather than from the direct observations of The Danish Nature Agency.

Mason’s correspondence focused not only on the destructive environmental impacts of glyphosate but also on the devastating human health aspects.

In relation to sanctioning the continued use of glyphosate in Europe, Mason has previously noted that it was totally unacceptable, possibly negligent or even criminal, for the European Union to have allowed a group of plant scientists on the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF) – whose knowledge of human physiology was so lacking that they did not recognise that glyphosate has effects on humans – to make decisions that affect human health.

PAFF’s role was pivotal in the decision to re-licence the use of glyphosate in the EU in 2017.

To date, aside from the DEPA acknowledging receipt of Mason’s letter, there has been no response to the issues raised.

As a follow up, Mason has sent the latest insights to DEPA on the Monsanto-Bayer lawsuits in the US. Three cases brought by Lee Johnson, Edwin Hardeman and Alva and Alberta Pilliod have already gone to trial. In each case, the courts found that Roundup caused their cancers and that Monsanto hid the risks of its product.

Mason also forwarded information to Magnus Hennicke, the health minister, indicating the role glyphosate plays in fuelling cancers and other diseases in Denmark. Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fishery Rasmus Prehn and Special Adviser Casper Steen Petersen also received copies of this information.

Their attention was drawn to the Institute for Responsible Technology claims that cancers caused by Roundup include non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bone cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, melanoma, pancreatic cancer and thyroid cancer.

Mason also quoted Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the renowned environmental attorney, who in 2018 talked of:

… cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

Mason concluded her correspondence by saying:

I will leave Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (to whom I have also sent a copy) and other ministers to demand answers from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. Are they or their relatives suffering from any of these diseases – Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, etc? Until Roundup is eliminated from food and from drinking water, these conditions will continue to afflict us all. That means that farmers must stop using Roundup.

Rosemary Mason has been writing to officials in the UK and Europe about the effects of Roundup and other agrochemicals for over a decade, documenting the health and environmental impacts as well as the institutional corruption that has led to their continued use. Her many reports are littered with peer reviewed scientific literature to support her claims and can be accessed on the academia.edu website.

New study

It seems that not a month goes by until some new paper or study appears and supports what Mason has been saying for a long time. For example, according to the recent multiple author paper ‘In-depth comparative toxicogenomics and Roundup herbicides’, glyphosate and Roundup changes gene function and causes DNA damage.

The research found that glyphosate and glyphosate-formulated herbicides activate mechanisms involved in cancer development, including DNA damage – and these effects occur at doses assumed by regulators to have no adverse effects. The study found that DNA damage was caused by oxidative stress, a destructive imbalance in the body that can cause a long list of diseases.

Writing on the GMWatch website, Claire Robinson summarises the findings and the policy implications. She states that the findings, according to the EU’s pesticide law, should result in a ban on glyphosate and all its formulations.

The study was led by Dr Michael Antoniou and Dr Robin Mesnage at King’s College London. It builds on the findings of a previous study by the same authors. In that study, the findings showed that glyphosate and Roundup, given at doses that regulators say are safe, result in gut microbiome disturbances and oxidative stress, with indications that the liver is affected and possibly damaged.

In the new follow-up study, the researchers carried out some of the standard tests that regulators require the pesticide industry to conduct to gain market authorisation for their products – namely blood biochemistry and kidney and liver histopathology (microscopic examination of tissue).

They also carried out in-depth tests (molecular profiling) that are not demanded by regulators or typically carried out by the industry. In addition, the researchers undertook tests that can detect direct damage to DNA.

Robinson notes that, worryingly for public health, it was the non-standard molecular profiling tests that are not required by pesticide regulators that were most revealing.

Roundup was found to alter the expression of 96 genes in the liver specifically linked to DNA damage and oxidative stress as well as disruption of circadian rhythms or ‘body clocks’. The findings strongly suggest that the key changes in gene function reflective of oxidative stress and DNA damage was due to glyphosate and not the additional substances (adjuvants) present in the Roundup formulation. Direct DNA damage to the liver was found to increase with glyphosate exposure.

Protect public health

Claire Robinson says that these findings potentially constitute a bombshell that could end the authorisation of glyphosate in the EU because the EU pesticide regulation (1107/2009) has what is known as hazard-based cut-off criteria.

She states:

This means that if a pesticide active ingredient is shown to cause a certain type of harm to health at whatever dose, it must be banned. One of the named types of harm is damage to DNA. The discovery that glyphosate alone damages DNA in a living animal should, if regulators follow the law, result in a ban on glyphosate.

The study indicated that both glyphosate and its commercial formulation Roundup activate mechanisms involved in cancer development, causing gene expression changes reflecting oxidative stress and DNA damage.

The UK is currently pushing for the deregulation of genetically engineered crops and products and the non-regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) derived from newer techniques like gene-editing. This in itself is worrying given the scientific evidence pointing to the health and ecological dangers associated with this technology.

At the same time, however, the government’s proposed strategy would only further serve the bottom line of the agrochemical companies while contributing to the ongoing public health crisis brought about by their products.

For instance, the recent paper ‘Herbicide Resistance: Another Hot Agronomic Trait for Plant Genome Editing’ (in the peer reviewed journal ‘Plants’) says that, in spite of claims from GMO promoters that gene editing will reduce pesticide use, what we can expect is just more of the same – GMO herbicide-tolerant crops and increased herbicide use.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has stated that he wants to “liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules”. The type of ‘liberation’ Johnson really means is the UK adopting unassessed GM crops and food and a continuation of the chemical bombardment of our food, environment and bodies.

It is time for Johnson to serve the public not the bottom line of the government’s corporate masters.

It is time for the EU to ‘follow the science’ and side-line industry influence.

This article was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2021 at 7:32pm and is filed under Boris Johnson, EU, Glyphosate, Health/Medical, Monsanto (now Bayer), United Kingdom.

Ahead of the summit, Nobel Prize laureates had added their names to a letter intending to ruffle summit participants.  Comprising all fields, the 101 signatories urged countries “to act now to avoid a climate catastrophe by stopping the expansion of oil, gas and coal.”  Governments had “lagged, shockingly, behind what science demands and what a growing and powerful people-powered movement knows: urgent action is needed to end the expansion of fossil fuel production; phase out current production; and invest in renewable energy.”

Deficiencies in the current climate change approach were noted: the Paris Agreement, for instance, makes no mention of oil, gas or coal; the fossil fuel industry was intending to expand, with 120% more coal, oil and gas slated for production by 2030. “The solution,” warn the Nobel Laureates, “is clear: fossil fuels must be kept in the ground.”

To Morrison and his cabinet, these voices are mere wiseacres who sip coffee and down the chardonnay with relish, oblivious to dirty realities.  His address to the annual dinner of the Business Council of Australia took the view that Australia would “not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.”  Having treated environmental activism as delusionary, he suggested that industries not be taxed, as they provided “livelihoods for millions of Australians off the planet, as our political opponents sought to do when they were given the chance.”

US President Joe Biden had little appetite for such social distinctions in speaking to summit participants.  (Unfortunately for the President, the preceding introduction by Vice President Kamala Harris was echoed on the live stream, one of various glitches marking the meeting.)   After four years of a crockery breaking retreat from the subject of climate change, this new administration was hoping to steal back some ground and jump the queue in combating climate change.  The new target: cutting greenhouse gas emissions by half from 2005 levels by 2030.

Biden wished to construct “a critical infrastructure to produce and deploy clean energy”.  He saw workers in their numbers capping abandoned oil and gas wells and reclaiming abandoned coal mines.  He dreamed of autoworkers in their efforts to build “the next generation of electric vehicles” assisted by electricians and the installing of 500,000 charging stations.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken laboured the theme of togetherness in his opening remarks: “We’re in this together. And what each of our nations does or does not do will not only impact people of our country, but people everywhere.”  But Blinken was also keen, at least in terms of language, to seize some ground for US leadership.  “We want every country here to know: We want to work with you to save our planet, and we’re all committed to finding every possible avenue of cooperation on climate change.”

A central part of this policy will involve implementing the Climate Finance Plan, intended to provide and mobilise “financial resources to assist developing countries reduce and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change.”

While solidarity and collaboration were points the Biden administration wished to reiterate, ill-tempered political rivalries were hard to contain.  On April 19, Blinken conceded during his address to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that China was “the largest producer and exporter of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles.”  It held, he sulkily noted, almost “a third of the world’s renewable energy patents.”

Environmental policy, in other words, had to become the next terrain of competition; in this, a good degree of naked self-interest would be required.  “If we don’t catch up, America will miss the chance to shape the world’s climate future in a way that reflects our interests and values, and we’ll lose out on countless jobs for the American people.”  Forget bleeding heart arguments about solidarity and collective worth: the US, if it was to win “the long-term strategic competition with China” needed to “lead the renewable energy revolution.”

Others in attendance also had their share of chest-thumping ambition. The United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson was all self-praise about his country having the “biggest offshore wind capacity of any country in the word, the Saudi Arabia of wind as I never tire of saying.”  The country was half-way towards carbon neutrality.  He also offered a new target: cutting emissions by 78 percent under 1990 levels by 2035.  Wishing to emphasise his seriousness of it all, Johnson claimed that combating climate change was not “all about some expensive politically correct green act of ‘bunny hugging’.”

Canada also promised a more ambitious emissions reduction target: the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) would be reduced by 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.  “Canada’s Strengthened Climate Plan,” stated Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “puts us on track to not just meet but to exceed our 2030 emissions goal – but we were clearly aware that more must be done.”

Brazil’s President and climate change sceptic Jair Bolsonaro chose to keep up appearances with his peers, aligning the posts to meet emissions neutrality by 2050.  This shaved off ten years from the previous objective.  He also promised a doubling of funding for environmental enforcement.  Fine undertakings from a political figure whose policies towards the Amazon rainforest have been vandalising in their destruction.

Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga also threw in his lot with a goal of securing a 46 percent reduction by 2030. (The previous target had been a more modest 26 percent reduction based on 2013 levels.)  This did little to delight Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor.  “What Japan needs to do now,” he warned, “is to expand its options for technology.”  Any immediate bans on gasoline-powered or diesel cars, for instance, “would limit such options, and could also cause Japan to lose its strengths.”

Toyoda’s sentiments, along with those of Japan’s business lobby Keidanren, would have made much sense to Morrison.  In a speech shorn of ambition, the Australian prime minister began to speak with his microphone muted.  Then came his own version of ambitiousness, certain that Australia’s record on climate change was replete with “setting, achieving and exceeding our commitments”.

It was not long before he was speaking, not to the leaders of the world, but a domestic audience breast fed by the fossil fuel industries.  Australia was “on the pathway to net zero” and intent on getting “there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries, not taxes that eliminate them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create, especially in our regions.”  His own slew of promises: Australia would invest in clean hydrogen, green steel, energy storage and carbon capture.  The US might well have Silicon Valley, but Australia would, in time, create “Hydrogen Valleys”.

With such unremarkable, even pitiable undertakings, critics could only marvel at a list of initiatives that risk disappearing in the frothy stew.  “Targets on their own, won’t lead to emission cuts,” reflected Greenpeace UK’s head of climate, Kate Blagojevic.  “That takes real policy and money.  And that’s where the whole world is still way off course.”  Ahead of COP26 at Glasgow, Morrison will be hoping that the world remains divided and very much off course.

This article was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2021 at 11:51pm and is filed under Australia, Boris Johnson, Brazil, Canada, Climate Change, Fossil Fuel Emissions (FFE), Global Warming, Jair Bolsonaro, Japan, Joe Biden, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, United Kingdom.

We live in a war-like society; one that supports, and is in league with, the world’s number one terrorist threat: the United States of America. Corporate media propaganda plays a key role in keeping things that way.

Ten years ago this month, the US, UK and France attacked oil-rich Libya under the fictitious cover of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The bombing was ‘justified’ by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy by the supposed imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi by forces under Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. As we have documented previously, the propaganda claims were fraudulent.

Libya, previously a wealthy state with free health care and education, was essentially destroyed. An estimated 600,000 Libyans were killed. Many more were displaced from their homes. In the barbarous conditions of the failed state, black people have been ethnically ‘cleansed’, lynched and auctioned off as slaves, illicit arms transfers and terrorism have become rife, and many Libyans have attempted to flee to better lives across the Mediterranean, thousands of them drowning en route.

As Jeremy Kuzmarov, managing editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on US foreign policy, pointed out recently, the powerful Western perpetrators of this human calamity have never been brought to justice. He added:

In hindsight, it is clear that the U.S. was completing a 40-year regime change operation targeting Colonel Qaddafi for which media disinformation was pivotal.

It is important today as such to revisit the 2011 war so that U.S. citizens can learn from the history and not be duped again into supporting an intervention of this kind.

The Stunning Silences Over Syria And Venezuela

But, when it came to Syria several years later, media disinformation was once again pivotal in unleashing Western firepower. As we have described in numerous media alerts, the corporate media declared with instant unanimity and certainty that Syria’s President Bashar Assad was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma on 7 April, 2018. One week later, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Since then, there has been a mounting deluge of evidence that the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has perpetrated a massive cover-up to preserve the Western narrative that Assad gassed civilians in Douma.

Earlier this month, five former OPCW officials joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the UN chemical weapons watchdog to address the controversy. Aaron Maté, an independent journalist with The Grayzone website, has been following developments closely since the beginning (see his in-depth article, ‘Did Trump Bomb Syria on False Grounds?’).

He noted that:

Leaks from inside the OPCW show that key scientific findings that cast doubt on claims of Syrian government guilt were censored, and that the original investigators were removed from the probe. Since the cover-up became public, the OPCW has shunned accountability and publicly attacked the two whistleblowers who challenged it from inside.

In an interview, Maté pointed out the remarkable silence from the corporate media:

The western media, across the spectrum, has buried this story – which is pretty incredible. You have extraordinary allegations of a cover-up, you have whistleblowers; and not only…do you have allegations, you have documents – a trove of documents released by WikiLeaks.

We have observed a similar shameful silence in the UK, including BBC News; even after initial interest in the ‘important story’ had been expressed by Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent.

But Western violence against other nations, and the ‘justifications’ trotted out to defend ‘our’ crimes, or simply ignoring them, has become normalised in ‘mainstream’ journalism.

Consider the case of Venezuela, harbouring one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, and which, as a left-leaning democracy, has long been targeted by the US for regime change. This was seen very clearly when the late Hugo Chávez was the Venezuelan president – temporarily deposed in a failed US-supported coup in 2002, and who was often wrongly described by corporate media as a ‘dictator’ – and continues today under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro.

As John McEvoy observed in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, a recent UN rebuke of crippling US and European sanctions on Venezuela has been met with ‘stunning silence’.

McEvoy wrote:

The report laid bare how a years-long campaign of economic warfare has asphyxiated Venezuela’s economy, crushing the government’s ability to provide basic services both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, the Venezuelan government’s revenue was reported to have shrunk enormously, ‘with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,’ impeding ‘the ability of Venezuela to respond to the Covid-19 emergency.’

Douhan urged US and European governments:

to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment.

The US-led campaign to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Douhan added, ‘violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations’.

Almost exactly two years ago, we noted in a media alert that the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, a respected think-tank, had published a study showing that US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 had since caused around 40,000 deaths. With the exception of a single piece in the Independent, there was zero coverage in the national UK press, and no BBC News coverage at all, as far as we could ascertain.

McEvoy wrote:

By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.

He continued:

Loath to abandon belief in the fundamentally benign nature of Western foreign policy, corporate scribes have typically presented the devastating effects of sanctions as a mere accusation of Nicolás Maduro.

This is a pattern of deception seen over and over again. For example, in 2002-2003, the ‘mainstream’ media repeatedly attributed claims that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. Doing so buried the evidence-backed testimony of senior UN weapons inspectors concluding that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’ of 90-95 per cent of its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998.

McEvoy noted that the Guardian’s reporting of Venezuela sticks to the Washington script:

Often, they fail to mention sanctions at all. In June 2019, for instance, the Guardian’s Tom Phillips reported that “more than 4 million Venezuelans have now fled economic and humanitarian chaos,” citing would-be coup leader Juan Guaidó’s claim that the country’s economic collapse “was caused by the corruption of this regime,” without making any reference to Washington’s campaign of economic warfare.

Keeping with tradition, Douhan’s damning report has been met with stunning silence by establishment media outlets. Neither the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post nor BBC reported on Douhan’s findings.

Imagine if Russia had been responsible for imposing sanctions on another country, violating that country’s sovereignty, with tens of thousands dead and many more lives at risk in the months to come. Imagine, moreover, that Russia had been condemned in a hard-hitting UN report for engaging in economic warfare, described as ‘a violation of international law’ that was causing a serious ‘growth of malnourishment in the past 6 years with more than 2.5 million people being severely food insecure.’ Imagine that such a report pointed to the ‘devastating effect of unilateral sanctions on the broad scope of human rights, especially the right to food, right to health, right to life, right to education and right to development.’ The headlines and in-depth coverage in the West would be incessant. The Russian ambassador in London would be given a stern dressing-down by the UK Foreign Secretary. MPs would address Parliament, condemning Putin in the strongest possible terms. There would be global demands for the UN to intervene.

The ideological discipline required to ignore such crimes under Western policy is remarkable, but it is standard in the corporate media system. Propaganda by omission, routinely carried out by BBC News and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ news media, is a crucial tool enabling Washington and London to pursue their aims; whether that be ‘regime change’, exploitation of oil and other natural resources, and geopolitical domination.

‘Grand Wizards’ And Client Journalism

Occasionally, the strict enforcement of ideological purity imposed on corporate journalists is laid bare when they step out of line by the merest millimeter. Thus, for example, BBC television presenter Naga Munchetty had to issue an apology on Twitter for ‘liking’ tweets that mocked Tory government minister Robert Jenrick for appearing on a BBC Breakfast interview with a Union Jack prominently displayed behind him.

She tweeted:

I “liked” tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these “likes”. This do [sic] not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken. Naga

This read like a statement that had been dictated from lofty levels within the BBC hierarchy. When you are a high-profile BBC figure, you are obliged to tweet out an apology for daring to question the trappings of ‘patriotism’. But when have BBC journalists ever apologised for catastrophically platforming government propaganda on Iraq, Libya, Syria, the NHS, ‘austerity’, militarism, the royal family? The list is endless.

On Twitter, tweets from the broadcaster RT are flagged with the warning, ‘Russia state-affiliated media.’ Rather than apologise for broadcasting Western propaganda, it is far more likely that a senior client journalist working for the UK state-affiliated media known as ‘BBC News’ will send out whitewashing tweets to minimise or deflect any challenges to the government. Take BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, a prime example of this key propaganda function. On the National Day of Reflection on 23 March, the anniversary of the start of the first UK Covid-19 lockdown, Boris Johnson had boasted during a private meeting of Tory MPs:

The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.

There was a huge outcry on social media. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who has been outspoken in her criticism of the government during the pandemic, tweeted in response to Johnson’s crassly insensitive and smug comment:

But he’s wrong.

‘Human nature is bigger & better & bursting with more grace & decency than he’ll ever know.

Wise and compassionate words.

By contrast, Kuenssberg went into full damage-limitation mode, tweeting:

More on PM’s “greed” comments – one of those present says Johnson was having a crack at Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, who was gobbling a cheese + pickle sandwich while he was talking about the vaccine, “it was hardly Gordon Gekko”, “it was banter” directed at the Chief, it’s said

It is a fair point: probably not even Gordon Gekko would have joked about the virtue of capitalism and greed on a day when his very clear responsibility for the deaths of 149,000 people was at the forefront of many people’s minds.

Newspaper cartoonist Dave Brown depicted brilliantly what the day of reflection should have meant: Johnson reflected in the mirror as the Grim Reaper carrying a scythe with the number 149,000 engraved on it.

Kam Sandhu, head of advocacy at the independent think tank Autonomy, reminded her Twitter followers that, in 2019, Kuenssberg had brushed off the revelation that Brexiteer MPs visiting Chequers, the prime minister’s 16th century manor house, had called themselves  “the Grand Wizards“. The BBC political editor had tweeted:

just catching up on timeline, for avoidance of doubt, couple of insiders told me using the nickname informally, no intended connection to anything else

Presumably the use of an infamous Ku Klux Klan term of white supremacy was to be considered mere ‘banter’. There are countless other examples of Kuenssberg deflecting criticism of Tories, while echoing and amplifying their propaganda. You may recall that she acted to defend the government when it belatedly went into the first lockdown one year ago. She misled the public, as Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet noted last March:

Laura Kuenssberg says (BBC) that, “The science has changed.” This is not true. The science has been the same since January. What has changed is that govt advisors have at last understood what really took place in China and what is now taking place in Italy. It was there to see.

Her insidious role in endlessly propping up the government narrative on any given topic is a ‘courtesy’ conspicuous by its absence when it came to the ‘impartial’ BBC political editor’s reporting of Jeremy Corbyn and, in particular, the manufactured crisis of supposedly institutional antisemitism in the Labour party.

On 26 November 2019, just prior to the general election on 12 December, Kuenssberg tweeted about Tory-supporting chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’ suggestion that Corbyn should be ‘considered unfit for office’, 23 times in 24 hours. This at a time when journalistic impartiality was obviously never more essential.

Kuenssberg is not an exception within BBC News, although given her very high-profile position, it is not always as blatant with other BBC journalists. Take BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale, for instance: another serial offender. An item that he presented on BBC News at Ten on 16 March added to the ever-rising steaming pile of ‘impartial’ journalism scaremongering about Official Enemies that must be countered by the peace-loving West.

In line with a new UK government report on ‘defence’, Landale depicted China and Russia as threats that required this country to ‘show Britain can project force overseas’. As part of the strategy, the new £6.1 billion aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will hold joint operations with allies in the Indo-Pacific later this year. ‘But will it be enough?’, intoned Landale, ‘impartially’ cheerleading the UK’s ‘projection of force’ across the globe.

Continuing his virtually government spokesperson role, Landale added:

And the cap on Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads will be lifted because of what the report says is “the evolving security environment”.

The likely increase in the UK’s nuclear weapons was just slipped out, almost as an after-thought. There was no mention that nuclear weapons are now prohibited under international law after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified earlier this year. The Treaty includes:

A comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

In July 2017, over 120 countries voted to adopt the Treaty. In October 2020, the 50th country ratified the Treaty which meant it became international law on 22 January, 2021. Where were the BBC News headlines?

As Double Down News observed:

Boris Johnson set to expand Nuclear Warheads by 40%

No money for Nurses but money for Armageddon.

But all this must have slipped Landale’s mind. Or perhaps there was no time to include information deemed unimportant by him or his editors. There was, however, ample room for a major item on that evening’s BBC News at Ten titled, “Duke leaves hospital“. This covered Prince Philip’s return to Buckingham Palace after one month in hospital for heart treatment. And why was this a major ‘news’ headline on the BBC? Because BBC News is staunchly royalist, fervently establishment and an upholder of the unjust UK class system.

All of this just goes to show that BBC News really is the world’s most refined state propaganda service. As BBC founder John Reith confided in his diary during the 1926 General Strike:

They [the government] know they can trust us not to be really impartial.

The same holds true today.

In this era of Permanent War, potential nuclear Armageddon and climate breakdown, the enormous cost to victims of UK and Western state-corporate policy around the world is incalculable.

This article was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2021 at 5:24pm and is filed under Bashar al-Assad, Boris Johnson, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi, COVID-19, Disinformation, Hugo Chavez, International Law, Iraq, Libya, Lies, Media Bias, Media Censorship, Nicolas Maduro, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Propaganda, Propagandists, Sanctions, Social media, Syria, Terrorism (state and retail), The “West”, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), UK Hypocrisy, UK Media, United Kingdom, United Nations, US Foreign Policy, US Media, US Military, Venezuela.

The comparison is quite apt if we remember the long-anticipated shift in Britain’s foreign policy and Johnson’s conservative government’s pressing need to chart a new global course in search for new allies – and new enemies.

Xi’s words in 2019 signaled a new era in Chinese foreign policy, where Beijing hoped to send a message to its allies and enemies that the rules of the game were finally changing in its favor, and that China’s economic miracle – launched under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in 1992 – would no longer be confined to the realm of wealth accumulation, but would exceed this to politics and military strength, as well.

In China’s case, Xi’s declarations were not a shift per se, but rather a rational progression. However, in the case of Britain, the process, though ultimately rational, is hardly straightforward. After officially leaving the European Union in January 2020, Britain was expected to articulate a new national agenda. This articulation, however, was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the multiple crises it generated.

Several scenarios, regarding the nature of Britain’s new agenda, were plausible:

One, that Britain maintains a degree of political proximity to the EU, thus avoiding more negative repercussions of Brexit;

Two, for Britain to return to its former alliance with the US, begun in earnest in the post-World War II era and the formation of NATO and reaching its zenith in the run up to the Iraq invasion in 2003;

Finally, for Britain to play the role of the mediator, standing at an equal distance among all parties, so that it may reap the benefits of its unique position as a strong country with a massive global network.

A government’s report, “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”, released on March 16, and Johnson’s  subsequent speech, indicate that Britain has chosen the second option.

The report clearly prioritizes the British-American alliance above all others, stating that “The United States will remain the UK’s most important strategic ally and partner”, and underscoring Britain’s need to place greater focus on the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region, calling it “the centre of intensifying geopolitical competition”.

Therefore, unsurprisingly, Britain is now set to dispatch a military carrier to the South China Sea, and is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal from 180 to 260 warheads, in obvious violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The latter move can be directly attributed to Britain’s new political realignment which roughly follows the maxim of ‘the enemy of my friend is my enemy’.

The government’s report places particular emphasis on China, warning against its increased “international assertiveness” and “growing importance in the Indo-Pacific”. Furthermore, it calls for greater investment in enhancing “China-facing capabilities” and responding to “the systematic challenge” that China “poses to our security”.

How additional nuclear warheads will allow Britain to achieve its above objectives remains uncertain. Compared with Russia and the US, Britain’s nuclear arsenal, although duly destructive, is negligible in terms of its overall size. However, as history has taught us, nuclear weapons are rarely manufactured to be used in war – with the single exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of nuclear warheads and the precise position of their operational deployment are usually meant to send a message, not merely that of strength or resolve, but also to delineate where a specific country stands in terms of its alliances.

The US-Soviet Cold War, for example, was expressed largely through a relentless arms race, with nuclear weapons playing a central role in that polarizing conflict, which divided the world into two major ideological-political camps.

Now that China is likely to claim the superpower status enjoyed by the Soviets until the early 1990s, a new Great Game and Cold War can be felt, not only in the Asia Pacific region, but as far away as Africa and South America. While Europe continues to hedge its bets in this new global conflict – reassured by the size of its members’ collective economies – Britain, thanks to Brexit, no longer has that leverage. No longer an EU member, Britain is now keen to protect its global interests through a direct commitment to US interests. Now that China has been designated as America’s new enemy, Britain must play along.

While much media coverage has been dedicated to the expansion of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, little attention has been paid to the fact that the British move is a mere step in a larger political scheme, which ultimately aims at executing a British tilt to Asia, similar to the US ‘pivot to Asia’, declared by the Barack Obama Administration nearly a decade ago.

The British foreign policy shift is an unprecedented gamble for London, as the nature of the new Cold War is fundamentally different from the previous one; this time around, the ‘West’ is divided, torn by politics and crises, while NATO is no longer the superpower it once was.

Now that Britain has made its position clear, the ball is in the Chinese court, and the new Great Game is, indeed, afoot.

This article was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2021 at 6:03pm and is filed under Arms Race, Boris Johnson, China, Cold War, Imperialism, Militarism, NATO, South China Sea, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), UK Military, United Kingdom, US Pivot to Asia, Xi Jinping.

On the face of it, Peter Oborne is impossible.

It’s not possible to be educated at Sherborne independent school, at Cambridge University, to work as political editor of the Spectator, as chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, as a journalist at the Evening Standard, as a commentator at the Express, to make nearly 30 documentaries for Channel 4, BBC World and BBC Radio 4, to appear endlessly on high-profile radio and TV programmes, to be made Society of Editors Press Awards Columnist of the Year twice, and still speak out honestly on systemic corporate media corruption.

US author and ethical logician Upton Sinclair explained why it just doesn’t happen:

‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’

Oborne is different. In February 2015, he resigned as chief political commentator at the Telegraph, warning:

‘If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril.’

More to the point:

‘The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers.’

In 2019, Oborne was interviewed on BBC Radio 2 by the BBC’s media editor and (now) Today programme presenter, Amol Rajan, formerly editor of the Independent. In the interview, Oborne named and shamed ‘client journalists’ cosying up to power, before tearing up all the unwritten ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ on ‘mainstream’ interviewing and inclusion by savaging Rajan himself:

‘You, yourself, when you were Independent editor, notoriously sucked up to power. You are a client journalist yourself… you were a crony journalist yourself. It’s time this system was exploded… Your record was and is shameful. Where to start?’.

Rajan responded like a Club Secretary ruling on a breach of Club etiquette:

‘It’s unbecoming of you, Peter, it’s unbecoming.’

Or consider this comment from Oborne on the arch-propagandist Daniel Finkelstein, former executive editor of The Times (also known as Baron Finkelstein of Pinner in the London Borough of Harrow, OBE):

‘As any newspaperman will recognise, Daniel Finkelstein has never in truth been a journalist at all. At the Times he was an ebullient and cheerful manifestation of what all of us can now recognise as a disastrous collaboration between Britain’s most powerful media empire and a morally bankrupt political class.’

In his searingly honest new book, The Assault on Truth, Oborne directs his fire at a very specific, crucial target:

‘I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson. Or gets away with his deceit with such ease.’

Oborne is well qualified to comment, having been hired by Johnson as his political editor at the Spectator in 2001. Oborne adds:

‘It has become all but impossible for an honest politician to survive, let alone flourish, in Boris Johnson’s government.’ (p. 6)

With every example fortified by meticulous footnotes and references, Oborne nails Johnson’s lies again and again:

‘Johnson went on the Andrew Marr show to claim the Labour leader had “said he would disband MI5”. Marr did not demur, but to be sure I looked at the Labour manifesto. It contained no mention of MI5 but did pledge to “ensure closer counter terrorism co-ordination between the police and the security services, combining neighbourhood expertise with international intelligence”.’ (p. 22)

And:

‘Boris Johnson said that Corbyn “would whack corporation tax up to the highest in Europe”. Not true. Labour had said it would raise the main rate of corporation tax to 26 per cent. This would not be anything like the highest in Europe. At the time of Johnson’s claim, the rate of corporation tax in France was 31 per cent, and in Belgium the rate was 29 per cent.’ (p. 23)

Oborne highlights this particularly cynical example of lie-based electioneering from Johnson:

‘During a ten-minute speech, viewers learn that he is building forty new hospitals. It sounds a hugely impressive election pledge.

‘Actually it’s a lie which the prime minister has already repeated often during the campaign, and would go on to repeat on many more occasions. At best the government has only allocated money for six hospitals.’ (pp. 15-16)

The devil is in the footnoted details at the bottom of the page:

‘Under Tory plans, six hospitals were allocated funding for rebuilding programmes between 2020 and 2025. Up to thirty-eight other hospitals would receive money to develop plans for upgrades between 2025 and 2030, but not to undertake any building work.’ (p. 16)

Oborne’s conclusion:

‘There is irrefutable evidence that Conservative Party lies and distortions in the 2019 election were cynical, systematic and prepared in advance. Johnson’s Conservatives deliberately set out to lie and to cheat their way to victory. The strategy triumphed.’ (p. 37)

So how on earth did Johnson get away with it?

‘Britain’s mainstream reporters and editors collectively turned a blind eye to the lies, misrepresentations and falsehoods promoted by Johnson and his ministers.’ (p. 7)

But this was only part of the problem:

‘Many senior journalists went a step further. They actively collaborated with Downing Street in order to distribute false information helpful to Johnson’s cause.’ (p. 121)

This democracy-killing media bias was pushed yet further by the relentless media campaign smearing Corbyn:

‘the mainstream press paid almost no attention to Johnson’s habitual lying, in sharp contrast to their treatment of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who was subject to constant attack’. (p. 119)

The difference being that Corbyn didn’t lie – he was attacked for everything and anything he said, or did, or didn’t do.

The particular problem, as Oborne observes, is that ‘Johnson’s government was a media class government.’ (p. 115) Johnson and Michael Gove are both journalists massively supported by former colleagues and allies:

‘The truth was that press barons were determined to install the troika of Johnson, Gove and [Johnson’s adviser] Cummings in Downing Street.’ (p. 117)

Michael Gove, after all, was the protégé of Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun, The Times and Fox News:

‘When Murdoch’s News International group was on its knees following revelations of criminal phone hacking, Gove came eloquently to the defence of press freedom at the Leveson inquiry. Murdoch did not forget: Gove and his wife Sarah Vine were invited to his wedding to the former model Jerry Hall.

‘Murdoch also supported Johnson, but his principal sponsors were the Barclay brothers, shadowy owners of the Daily Telegraph, house journal for the Conservative Party. “Many congratulations to Boris Johnson who has of course just been appointed Prime Minister,” enthused the paper when he entered 10 Downing Street. “Boris is the first Telegraph journalist since Sir Winston Churchill to lead the country.”

‘Associated Newspapers, owners of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail, which employed Sarah Vine, also backed Johnson. Together these three groups accounted for more than 30 per cent of British newspaper readers. All their titles backed Johnson. The same applied to the Evening Standard, which serves London, an area of predominantly Labour and Remain voters. Under the ownership of Evgeny Lebedev it became an unlikely ally of the Tories, backing Johnson for both Conservative leader and prime minister.’ (pp. 117-118)

This is seriously damning and courageous stuff (there have been no reviews of The Assault on Truth in the Murdoch Press, Associated Newspapers or the Telegraph group – see below), but Oborne goes much further:

‘A great deal of political journalism has become the putrid public face of a corrupt government. There is only one good reason to be a journalist: to tell the truth. We should not go into our trade to become passive mouthpieces of politicians and instruments of their power. Too much of the media and political class have merged. The unnatural amalgamation has converted truth into falsehood, while lies have become truth.’ (p. 7)

Chomsky’s ‘Basic Principle’

Oborne’s book is a wonderful test for Noam Chomsky’s ‘basic principle’ determining ‘mainstream’ inclusion:

‘The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.’

An idea of the extent to which The Assault on Truth would be allowed to exist could already be gleaned from the reaction to an article written by Oborne in October 2019 on ‘the way Boris Johnson was debauching Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news’. (p. 130) Oborne submitted the piece for his weekly Saturday column for the Daily Mail:

‘I received a call from the editor, who indicated, with his customary exquisite good manners, that he would prefer I wrote about another subject’. (p. 131)

Oborne then offered the piece to The Spectator, ‘but the editor explained his refusal to publish on the reasonable grounds that the newspaper’s political team had cultivated excellent insider sources and publishing my piece would invite charges of hypocrisy’. (p. 131)

Channel Four’s Dispatches showed strong interest before also withdrawing. Oborne finally resorted to publishing his article on the website openDemocracy. He wrote:

‘Papers and media organisations yearn for privileged access and favourable treatment. And they are prepared to pay a price to get it.

‘This price involves becoming a subsidiary part of the government machine. It means turning their readers and viewers into dupes.

‘This client journalism allows Downing Street to frame the story as it wants. Some allow themselves to be used as tools to smear the government’s opponents. They say goodbye to the truth.’

The dramatic response:

‘This article marked the end of my thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me, without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with the Daily Mail after our disagreement.’ (p. 132)

These are huge losses for a professional journalist:

‘The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me. I continue to write for the website Middle East Eye, for openDemocracy and from time to time for the British Journalism Review.’ (p. 133)

Oborne’s comments inevitably recall the fate that befell US journalist Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for nineteen years, focusing on government and private sector corruption, winning more than thirty awards for his journalism. In 1990, Webb was one of six reporters at the San Jose Mercury News to win a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories on California’s 1989 earthquake. Webb described his experience of mainstream journalism:

‘In seventeen years of doing this, nothing bad had happened to me. I was never fired or threatened with dismissal if I kept looking under rocks. I didn’t get any death threats that worried me. I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn’t work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? Hell, the system worked just fine, as I could tell. It encouraged enterprise. It rewarded muckraking.’

But Webb was in for a terrible surprise:

‘And then I wrote some stories that made me realise how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I’d enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn’t been, as I’d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job. It turned out to have nothing to do with it. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn’t written anything important enough to suppress.’

In 1996, Webb had written a series of stories on how a US-backed terrorist army, the Nicaraguan Contras, had financed their activities by selling crack cocaine in the ghettos of Los Angeles. Webb documented direct contact between drug traffickers bringing drugs into Los Angeles and Nicaraguan CIA agents who were administering the Contras. Moreover, he revealed that the US government knew about these activities and did little or nothing to stop them. The country’s three biggest newspapers, The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, turned on Webb, declaring the story ‘flawed’ and not worth pursuing. Webb commented:

‘Never before had the three biggest papers devoted such energy to kicking the hell out of a story by another newspaper.’ (p. 306)

Webb’s career had been cynically and brutally terminated.

The Reviews

To recap, The Assault on Truth makes two key claims: 1) Boris Johnson regularly, systematically and shamefully lies and fabricates, and 2) ‘A great deal of political journalism has become the putrid public face of a corrupt government.’ (p. 7) One of the book’s nine chapters, ‘The failure of the British press’, is entirely devoted to this second issue.

How have these claims, in particular the media analysis, been received?

In the Observer, Tim Adams’ 817-word review devoted around two-thirds of its analysis to the case against Oborne’s supposed hypocrisy and U-turns, and 100 words to the case against the British press.

This is already curious. As discussed, Oborne is a highly respected, very high-profile journalist. It is essentially unknown for someone of his stature to turn so forcefully on political lying, particularly systemic press lying. Why would a journalist commenting in the liberal Observer deem it important to devote so much space to Oborne’s alleged U-turns, and just two or three sentences to damning media criticism that is as rare as hens’ teeth? Shouldn’t the liberal press be celebrating such an unusual exposure of press lying? Adams wrote:

‘There have been some spectacular U-turns from political observers in the past five years – Piers Morgan’s desperate and tragically belated efforts to distance himself from Donald Trump, for example – but no reverse-ferret has been quite so vehemently trumpeted as that of Peter Oborne. Back in 2016, in his Daily Mail column, Oborne was proclaiming a new dawn of Conservatism, with Labour in collapse and David Cameron a busted flush. A “glittering prospect of 12 uninterrupted years as prime minister” awaited the winner of any leadership campaign, he suggested, and Boris Johnson’s years as mayor gave him “huge credibility” for the role.’

Adams portrayed Oborne as an enthusiastic dupe of Johnson:

‘Up until about spring 2019, it seems, Oborne continued to be cheerfully taken in by this music hall act.’

Anyone who reads Oborne knows that he is very generous in giving credit where credit’s due, even when he strongly disagrees on deeper issues of policy and political philosophy. For example, despite self-identifying as a Tory, he has repeatedly and strongly praised Labour’s foreign policy and ethical stance under Jeremy Corbyn.

In fact, the claim that Oborne was ‘duped’ by Johnson is nonsense. To take only two examples, in September 2018, Oborne described Johnson’s foreign policy as ‘morally abhorrent’ and his officials ‘shoddy’. In November 2017, Oborne noted of the catastrophe in Yemen that Johnson ‘scarcely lifted a finger on this calamity’ and did ‘virtually nothing of any significance to help’.

Adams similarly claimed Oborne ‘celebrated’ Trump’s election triumph in the Mail with a piece headlined: ‘At last! He may be a bigot, racist and misogynist but Donald Trump’s revolution could finally bring back family values’.

As Adams is well aware, commentators do not choose the headlines (Oborne did not choose this one). In the piece supposedly celebrating Trump, Oborne wrote:

‘The majority of commentators have issued angry cries of condemnation in response to Donald Trump’s surprise victory.

‘That is understandable. For he is beyond doubt a bigot, a racist and a misogynist.’

He added:

‘As a tax-avoiding billionaire, he will never be a genuine champion of the poor. He has no serious programme for government. He will fail.’

Trump was, Oborne wrote, an ‘odious man’.

Adams’ few words on the press simply ignored the most damning claims. In answer to the question, ‘What led the British people to put a liar into Downing Street?’, Adams commented:

‘A large part of the answer to that question Oborne lays at the door of “mainstream newspaper reporters and editors” who “collectively turned a blind eye to the lies, misrepresentations and falsehoods promoted by Johnson and his ministers” in order for him to bluster his way to power.’

As we have seen, Oborne’s whole point is that ‘mainstream’ media did not just turn a blind eye; they functioned as fully-supportive parts of Johnson’s lie machine.

The ‘blind eye’ comment cited by Adams is from page 7 of the book. He then quoted Oborne from page 137. In between, he wrote:

‘Certain political correspondents are identified as having given Johnson an easy ride – Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC and Robert Peston of ITV among them.’

But Kuenssberg and Peston are not mentioned at all. Did Adams actually read the book?

The Independent (online) devoted 491 words to Oborne’s book. In his review, Martin Chilton spent 431 words on Johnson and 60 words in two sentences on Oborne’s media analysis:

‘Part of the problem is that Johnson’s “claims” are simply not held up to inspection by most of the popular press.’

Again, as with Adams, this conveniently ignored Oborne’s most damning assertion – that the press contribution to the lying was highly active, not passive. Chilton continued:

‘Oborne, who formerly worked for the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, says his new book will “make me enemies”, especially for statements such as “a great deal of political journalism has become the putrid face of a corrupt government”.’

Chilton was clearly keen to keep his head down, gesturing vaguely in the direction of harsh truths that Oborne spelled out with great clarity.

In the Guardian, William Davies’ review totalled 1,261 words. Of these, 109 words discuss Oborne’s media analysis:

‘It’s not just the contemporary Conservative party that appals Oborne, but developments in his own profession. Newspapers, their owners and their staff have colluded with politicians to smear and fabricate without fear. Oborne’s efforts to expose these practices have not been without personal cost. Finding no mainstream media outlet that was willing to publish him on the topic of journalistic malpractice around Johnson, he took his evidence to openDemocracy, who published his article “British journalists have become part of Johnson’s fake news machine” in October 2019. Sombrely he reports that, since the piece appeared, “the mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me”.’

This was something, but Davies preferred to focus on Oborne’s personal plight, rather than highlighting particular examples of journalistic corruption, or delving deeper into the significance of the chapter Oborne devotes to the issue – one of the most important chapters ever written on the UK press.

Thus, national UK newspaper reviews of Oborne’s important and damning claims about the UK press received some 269 words in coverage in the middle of a grand total of three UK national newspaper reviews. We asked Oborne for his reaction on how his book has been received:

‘I haven’t been able to find any review of my book anywhere in the Murdoch press, Associated Newspapers or Telegraph group. They reviewed my earlier books. However this book (which has also been ignored by mainstream broadcasters) demonstrates that the British print and broadcast media have been complicit in Johnson’s serial dishonesty. It’s not just that they turn a blind eye to Johnson’s habitual and systematic dishonesty. I show in the book that the British media class collaborate with Downing Street in pumping out Johnson’s smears, deceptions and falsehoods. They have been an essential part of his machinery of deception. So maybe that’s why they have ignored the book.’ 

Conclusion

In reality, of course, Peter Oborne is not impossible. The corporate media is not monolithic, not run by conspiracy. Honourable, rational human beings can make it past the corporate political and media gatekeepers. And when they do, they’re dealt with.

Jeremy Corbyn got through and was unethically cleansed by a spectacularly dishonest, cross-spectrum smear campaign that rendered him unelectable. Comedian Russell Brand got through, appeared in a powerful BBC interview on Newsnight watched by 12 million people, and was unethically cleansed by Guardian liberals smearing him as a ‘Jesus clown’, ‘misogynist’ and ‘religious narcissist’. Brand was so badly beaten up he retired from political commentary and became a self-help guru.

Oborne also got through. His meticulous book – superbly written by a high-profile journalist with impeccable credibility and experience – has simply been ignored by the vast majority of newspapers and magazines that have been, as Oborne says, ‘an essential part’ of Johnson’s ‘machinery of deception’. The rest have blown past his media criticism in a couple of anodyne sentences. Blink and a casual reader would have missed even these mostly oblique, soft-pedalled references.

Oborne received this treatment despite major omissions that made his message far more palatable than it might otherwise have been. Remarkably, for example, his book contains no criticism at all of the BBC or ITV. As discussed, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg’s infamously biased reporting in favour of Johnson and against Corbyn is not even mentioned.

More importantly, while Oborne does expose active media lying, he perceives it as a ‘failure’ of the British press. By contrast, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model of media control’ – the model on which our own analysis is based – views this media bias as a success – the corporate media arm of the larger, profit-maximising state-corporate system is simply doing what it has evolved and been designed to do! Oborne does not venture into an analysis of the fundamental nature of corporate capitalist media that would locate him even more firmly among the ‘wild men [and women] on the wings’, casting him even further adrift from the ‘putrid’, stagnant ‘mainstream’.

Nevertheless, this was a vanishingly rare opportunity for the public to witness a media insider making a complete nonsense of the myth promoted by the BBC’s leading client journalist Andrew Marr; namely, that journalism is ‘a crusading craft’ run by ‘disputatious, stroppy, difficult people’ relentlessly challenging power.

This is the deception on which all other deceptions depend. It is too precious to be seriously challenged, and journalists know it.

This article was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 at 7:48pm and is filed under Book Review, Boris Johnson, UK Media, UK Politics.

In the meantime, children’s education, small independent businesses, livelihoods and lives have been wrecked all in the name of a coronavirus whose impact has been overstated – certainly if we take time to deconstruct the media narrative of 120,000 ‘COVID-19 deaths’ in the UK to see how that figure has been arrived at.

For example, the vast majority of the deceased had on average almost two serious life-threatening co-morbidities and ‘COVID deaths’ are defined as someone who had a positive COVID test result within 28 days of death, regardless of subsequent cause of death.

Moreover, in the UK, the average age of a ‘COVID death’ is 82.4, in a country where life expectancy is 81.

Fear rather than science has been key to UK government strategy. Using lockdowns to control the virus has little if any scientific basis. On the other hand, there is much evidence that shows lockdowns destroy lives. Little wonder then that behavioural strategists are included as part of the top committee (SAGE) advising ministers. And little wonder, therefore, that the public overestimates the threat of COVID-19.

What has disturbed many commentators, such as former Chief Justice Lord Sumption, is that the media, politicians and ordinary people have rolled over and accepted the erosion of fundamental civil liberties – and by implication, the tyranny of lockdown, based on a corruption of science and the type of medical hubris that Ivan Illich alluded to many decades ago.

These are liberties that ordinary people fought and struggled (and often died) for down the ages.

What is just as disturbing is that prominent commentators on the ‘left’ have supported the restrictions, often calling for tighter controls. Other voices on the left have been conspicuous by their silence. These figures have wholeheartedly bought into the official COVID-19 narrative – the people who are usually first in line to criticise and challenge anything a Conservative administration does.

The aim here is not to regurgitate what has already been stated in the many articles that have appeared over the last year about the current crisis of capitalism or the ‘great reset’. The aim of this article is intended as a brief reminder.

There is a tradition of struggle in Britain which many people appear to have abandoned – the very people who would be expected to carry on that proud tradition.

People’s struggle

Arthur Leslie Morton’s A People’s History of England is a classic text. Morton (1903-1987) takes us back to when humans first inhabited England and then on a forward journey that ends on the eve of the Second World War. His book shows that countless millions have inhabited the place we call England, from ancient hunter-gatherer tribes and the ‘Beaker People’, to the Vikings, Normans and those of the industrial age.

If you are familiar with the words of the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, they may well resonate when reading Morton’s book. Sagan stated that generals, kings, rulers and politicians have spilled rivers of blood just to become temporary masters of some or other part of the planet and that endless cruelties have been visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the globe upon inhabitants in another corner.

However, in all of this cruelty and bloodshed, Morton accounts for the plight of the ordinary person, both in England and abroad, who has borne the brunt of war, famine, exploitation and the political machinations of tyrants and unscrupulous leaders, whether Roman, medieval monarch, feudal baron or modern-day capitalist.

He describes the rise of feudalism and its decline, the agrarian revolution, the English Revolution, the rape of Ireland, colonial expansion and the Industrial Revolution.

As this land grew to be the pre-eminent world power, ordinary people struggled to find a voice within these shifting tectonic plates of history. Nevertheless, they succeeded.

Morton discusses the development of the working class movement and subsequent struggles: he notes the impact of the Peasants’ Revolt, Peterloo, trade unionism and many other inspiring events that litter the historical landscape of England.

The conclusion to be drawn is that most change that has benefited ordinary people has resulted from the actions of ordinary folk themselves. Such benefits have never been handed out freely by the rich and powerful. This is true for women’s rights and political freedoms, as much as it is for workers’ rights or any other number of gains.

This is worth bearing in mind as Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock et al decide whether to ‘give back’ to the public their liberties. History shows that once the powerful seize more power, they do not cede it unless forced to.

If Morton shows us anything, it is that, when conscious of their collective interests, ordinary folk acting together can and do make a difference.

Whether we look at Klaus Schwab’s ‘great reset’ and what it entails, the struggle of Indian farmers against Facebook, Google, Amazon and Cargill (etc) or Bill Gates and his plan to vaccinate the planet, geoengineer the climate or roll out his and his tech-giant cronies’ warped vision for a one-world fake-food agriculture, it is becoming increasingly clear that the rich and powerful are mounting an ultimate power grab.

Based on their warped techno-utopian vision of the future, they want to exert total control of farming, food, nature, personal identities, information, the climate, our bodies – just about everything that will shape the rest of this century and beyond.

They want to ‘build back better’ by ensuring they own everything and you own nothing. Lockdowns have been a convenient tool for helping to kick-start their ‘new normal’.

A L Morton’s book can teach us much about resisting tyranny – but only if we listen.

An abridged version of A People’s History of England (edited by Giles Wynne)  can be accessed here.

This article was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021 at 2:33pm and is filed under Activism, Boris Johnson, Civil Disobedience, Civil Unrest, COVID-19, Human Rights, Liberty, Lockdown, Ruling Elite, Social Movements, United Kingdom.

In recording 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, Britain became the fifth country, and of those the smallest, to pass six figures.  Over half of the numbers were recorded since November, with the virus strafing through the population after the relatively lower levels of infection over the summer.  To add to the woes of the country, a new strain of the novel coronavirus was detected in the country, suggesting that it was up to 70% more transmissible.

On January 22, Johnson did little to reassure the population.  Not only was the new variant identified in London and the South East spreading at a greater speed, it also appeared to “be associated with a higher degree of mortality”.  To stem any convulsions of panic, Johnson, at the same press conference, stated that both vaccines currently being used “remain effective both against the old variant and this new variant.”

At a press conference four days later, Johnson claimed to be “sorry” in making the announcement that 100,000 had perished in Britain to the virus, finding it “hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic.”  Condolences were offered; promises to remember those lost proffered.  The British prime minister also promised to “remember the courage of countless working people – not just our amazing NHS and care workers, but shop workers, transport staff, pharmacists, teachers, police, armed forces emergency services and many others – who kept our country going during our biggest crisis since the Second World War.”

Such statements of desperation have done little to reassure critics, from the opposition Labour Party to bewildered health officials.  Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described the death toll as a “national tragedy” aided by a government that had been “behind the curve” from the start of the crisis.  “It all comes down to failed leadership,” suggests John Ashton, a former director of public health in England.  “We’ve got modern medicine, and we’ve actually done worse than we did in 1918 [in responding to the Flu pandemic].”

And what failures of leadership they have been.  Despite a crushing 2019 electoral win, bagging numerous Labour seats for the Conservatives, Johnson has been whittling away his political capital with a drug addict’s commitment.

On February 3, 2020, Johnson’s speech, delivered in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, warned of “bizarre autarkic rhetoric,” with rising protectionist barriers in the face of “new diseases such as coronavirus”.   He spoke of the dangers of “market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage”.  Behold, then, Britain, namely his Britain, willing to “make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange” taking “off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.”

In March 2020, the Tories were speaking about the pandemic the way starry-eyed officers did at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914: the event would be brief, fabulously patriotic and over in good time. For the warring soldiers, hostilities would conclude by Christmas; for Johnson, the virus would be defeated in 12 weeks.

Lockdowns were slow in coming, and the government chief medical officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, had to admit in May 2020 that introducing such measures earlier “would have made a difference”. To British MPs, however, he proved full of qualifications.  “I think it’s difficult to look back and say that three weeks [earlier] was an obvious point to do it.  I don’t think that was clear, I don’t think that is clear now.”

The response to the second wave was not much better.  As recently as the Christmas period, confusion prevailed over government plans permitting families to meet for five days over the holiday even as the new variant was starting to bite.  Johnson had little desire to “cancel Christmas” but eventually did so after the fact.

May 2020 also instanced another case of perplexity for the general citizenry: the government message had evolved from “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” to “stay alert, control the virus, save lives.”  The introduction of a tier system in October last year did little to clear matters up.

Combined with apologias for top aides and officials such as Dominic Cummings, who flouted coronavirus restrictions ostensibly to test his eyesight, Johnson has little left in the bank to play with.  The butcher’s bill continues to be paid and we are left with such savage reviews of Johnson’s performance as Ferdinand Mount’s in the London Review of Books.  For the former head of the Number Ten Policy Unit between 1982-83 almost anybody else facing the crisis would have done better, encouraging with sobriety “the proper authorities, central and local, to exercise all the powers and draw on all the cash they needed.”  What Britain got, instead, was a fatal and “malign combination of an overly-centralised system and a hopelessly narcissistic prime minister”.

The post Boris Johnson and the Deaths of the Hundred Thousand first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Back in 2017, before WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was silenced by Twitter, he used the platform to highlight an immutable truth:

‘The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security not national security.’

Power hates being exposed. It hates having its inner machinations, its selfish priorities and ugly operations opened up to public scrutiny.

The omission of inconvenient facts, and the silencing of inadmissible viewpoints, are core features of the so-called ‘mainstream’ news media. Thus, it should be obvious by now why we always put ‘mainstream’ in quotation marks. Because, as increasing numbers of the public surely now recognise, the major news media are not impartial, or fair, or balanced. Nor do they truly represent and reflect the concerns and priorities of the vast majority of the population. Instead, the major newspapers and broadcasters represent, defend and project the interests of powerful state and corporate elites. The state-corporate media will not, and cannot, undertake consistent and reliable public scrutiny of these elites. That would make no sense since the mass media is the propaganda operation of state-corporate power.

Since we began Media Lens twenty years ago in 2001, we have amassed over 5,000 pages of media alerts detailing numerous examples of dangerous, power-friendly omissions, distortions and imbalances in UK state-corporate media. Rather than go for easy and obvious targets like the Sun, Express and Mail, we have focused on those media outlets the public is supposed to regard as the most fair, balanced, probing and challenging of governments and Big Business. ‘Thus far and no further’, as Noam Chomsky has described the most open or most liberal end of the narrow spectrum of establishment media.

BBC News deserves particular scrutiny, not least because it regularly declares itself  ‘the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster’. That is not much of an accolade given that public trust in the media is crumbling; particularly in a country which has some of the worst ‘news’ media anywhere on the planet. The UK has an overwhelmingly right-wing and establishment press dominated by rich owners, and edited by compliant editors with the required ideologically-aligned views. As for the Guardian, which has always been a ‘liberal’ gatekeeper on behalf of power, investigative journalists Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis reported in 2019 that the paper has been:

‘successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the “security state”, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.’

Moreover, other than a recent belated and mealy-mouthed defence, for many years the Guardian essentially abandoned and abused Julian Assange, along with the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media, after exploiting him and WikiLeaks.

Couple all that with the fact that BBC News regularly follows the skewed, power-serving agenda set by UK press coverage, and it is no surprise that overall British public trust in the media is so low. As we noted last year, the extensive annual Eurobarometer survey across 33 countries revealed that the UK public’s trust in the press is rock bottom. Indeed, 2020 was the ninth year out of the past ten that the UK had come last.

BBC Silence Over Israel As An Apartheid State

One of the most egregious recent omissions by BBC News was last week’s groundbreaking report by leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem naming Israel as ‘an apartheid state’ and ‘a regime of Jewish supremacy’:

‘In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.’

Apartheid in the Palestinian Territories has long been recognised. For example, in 2004, a prominent South African professor of international law, John Dugard, then UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that there is ‘an apartheid regime’ in the territories ‘worse than the one that existed in South Africa.’

Noam Chomsky concurred:

‘In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid.

‘What is happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce…

‘The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.’

All this was damning enough. But the publication of the new B’Tselem report was the first time that Israeli human rights and legal experts had publicly stated that apartheid exists not just in the Occupied Territories, but throughout the whole region that Israel claims for itself.

As the Israel-based British journalist Jonathan Cook observed:

‘By calling Israel an apartheid state and a “regime of Jewish supremacy”, B’Tselem has given the lie to the Israel lobby’s claim – bolstered by a new definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – that it is antisemitic to suggest Israel is a “racist endeavour”.

‘B’Tselem, a veteran Israeli Jewish organisation with deep expertise in human rights and international law, has now explicitly declared that Israel is a racist state. Israel’s apologists will now face the much harder task of showing that B’Tselem is antisemitic, along with the Palestinian solidarity activists who cite its work.’

As far as we are aware, there was no mention of the report on any of the flagship BBC News at 6 or 10 television programmes. Nor was there anything to be found on the BBC News website. Presumably, the BBC deemed it unworthy of the public’s attention. We challenged BBC foreign editor Andrew Roy, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and BBC digital news editor Stuart Millar for a response. Not one of them replied. It is perhaps significant that Millar moved to the BBC from the Guardian where, as deputy editor of Guardian US, he had scoffed at Julian Assange:

‘I like to think that #Assange chose the Ecuadorean embassy because it’s so convenient for Harrods’

This is the archetypal sneering ‘mainstream’ journalist’s view of anyone who seriously exposes the truth and challenges power.

As for B’Tselem’s landmark report detailing the reality of the Israeli state as an apartheid regime, it is possible that there were sporadic brief mentions in some outlying parts of the BBC. Longtime readers will recall that the BBC infamously buried revelations by Scott Ritter, a former chief UN weapons inspector, that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction, at 3am on the BBC World Service.

In response to the B’Tselem report, John Pilger pointed out via Twitter:

‘Israel is top of the league for vaccinating its own people [against coronavirus]. The accolades say Israel is the “example”. False. Israel is denying the vaccine to Palestinians whose land and lives it controls. WHO has pleaded with Israel: to no avail. Apartheid in action.’

Glossing Over Brutal Imperialism

Here in the UK, the Tory government’s criminally incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic has led to an appalling death toll – now the highest death rate of any country in the world – while ministers robotically repeat the mantra of ‘following the science’, with one U-turn after another. Meanwhile, many people are suffering tremendous hardship, losing their jobs or struggling to earn a living, or even unable to feed their children adequately.

As Phil Miller, a staff writer for the excellent investigative journalism website Declassified UK, noted:

‘The UK now has over 100,000 covid deaths. That’s a result of government failure on a grand scale. The lack of calls for Johnson and ministers to resign is extraordinary’

It is extraordinary. But, tragically, it is a natural consequence of how the state-corporate media represents and defends elite power, of which it is a key component. Any real dissent is smeared, swept to the margins or simply blanked. With the power of corporate media manifest in the demolition of Jeremy Corbyn’s prospects of becoming Prime Minister in 2019, it is entirely predictable that there is now no substantive political opposition to a destructive, elite-serving Tory government.

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s lame Blairite successor, is a stalwart establishment figure who, at best, would only ever paper over a few cracks in the edifice of neoliberal economics. This is the corporate- and finance-driven system that is crushing the vast majority of the world’s population, destroying the natural environment and species at an alarming rate, and driving us all towards the precipice of climate breakdown. As we have noted before, and as we will see again below, no world leader anywhere is doing anything remotely sufficient to address this disaster.

Starmer has actually called for the Labour party to emulate incoming US President Joe Biden’s ‘broad coalition’ to ‘see progressive values triumph over the forces of division and despair’. The stone-cold reality that Biden, set to be inaugurated today (20 January), represents huge financial interests and corporate power, and has an appalling record in supporting US imperialism and wars, appears to have escaped Starmer’s attention. But then, Starmer is also seemingly oblivious to the UK’s own imperial past and blood-soaked complicity in war crimes. How else could a Labour leader write:

‘We are at our best when the world knows we have the courage of our convictions and a clear moral purpose.’

Wiping away the blood of countless US/UK atrocities across the globe, he continued:

‘For the United States of America and for Britain, this is the time to return to the world stage. This is the time for us to lead.’

To gloss over Britain’s brutal past and present – to ignore the grievous crimes committed against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to name a few – is an insult to the UK’s many victims. For a supposed ‘progressive’ to do so is surely absurd. It can only result from being blind to the propaganda system so cogently explained by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (Vintage, 1988). In this system, we are immersed in a brainwashing environment of mass media in which even the more ‘reputable’ news outlets such as Associated Press regurgitate doctrinal statements such as:

‘For decades, the U.S. has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders. These tactics have generated both allies and enemies, and this year’s presidential vote perhaps more than any other is testing the strength of the values it promotes around the world.’

A safe pair of hands like Sir Keir would never recognise, far less, criticise such assertions for the dangerous, ideological and ahistorical nonsense that they are. Instead, Starmer is locked into an elite-friendly mindset apparent whenever he proclaims his establishment credentials, as here via Twitter:

‘This is also an important moment for the world. It is a chance to reassert America’s place as a force for good on the world stage. A nation that will work with Britain and other allies to defeat this pandemic and fight climate change.’

The reply from Media Lens reader Ryan Moon was apt:

‘When, specifically, has the US (& UK) been a “force for good in the world”? Supporting Suharto & Pinochet maybe? In Yemen & Libya? In the Chagos Islands? Nicaragua might have a few choice words about that description, too. Grow a spine.’

Biologist and science writer Richard Dawkins, like so many other prominent members of the liberal commentariat, once again revealed his deep ignorance of history and world affairs:

‘With few exceptions like Putin & Farage, the entire world welcomes President Biden and Vice-President Harris. After four years of lies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values, America has taken a major step towards making America great again.’

Historian Mark Curtis, co-founder of Declassified UK, responded:

‘The thing is, @RichardDawkins, while you’re right to welcome the demise of the contemptible Trump, as I do, the “lies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values” are just routine features of every US presidency, especially in foreign policy.’

Meanwhile, it was no surprise to see a senior Guardian journalist unleashing purple prose in praise of Biden. David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, declared that ‘with empathy and humility, Biden sets out to make America sane again’. The ideological rhetoric continued to gush out across Guardian column inches:

‘After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.’

Readers with long memories will recall similar Guardian effusions of liberal ordure when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 to ‘rebrand America’ and serve as the eloquent ‘cool’ figurehead of US corporate and imperial might. That is the Guardian worldview in a nutshell.

The harsh truth is that the corporate media, including BBC News and the Guardian, has a stranglehold on any prospect for changing society. The transfer of US power from Trump to Biden provided the briefest permissible glimpse of mild scepticism being broadcast from corporate newsrooms. This was most notable with Trump vociferously contesting the US presidential elections results, claiming election fraud on a grand scale. The repeated buzz phrase from journalists reporting Trump’s claims was ‘without offering evidence’. Thus, BBC news presenter Mishal Husain told the nation’s television audience on 8 November last year:

‘President Trump has been out on the golf course and made further claims of election fraud without offering evidence.’

The point was emphasised in a news piece by BBC North America correspondent Nick Bryant:

‘the president took to the golf course this morning continuing to make unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged.’

This narrative was repeated across the ‘mainstream’ media.

But those important caveats – ‘without further evidence’ and ‘unsubstantiated claims’ – are routinely missing when propaganda declarations are, or were, made by the US/UK about Iraq’s mythical ‘WMD’; or when the public is told that the West’s ‘security’ and military forces need to counter the ‘threat’ from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or whoever the latest ‘enemy’ happens to be;  or that ‘we’ need to keep Saudi Arabia as an ‘ally’; that Israel only ever ‘retaliates’ in the face of Palestinian ‘provocation’, that the US is a neutral ‘peace broker’ in the Middle East; or that the US/UK defend freedom and human rights around the world. On and on flow the propaganda assertions, without serious challenge from a compliant media. Suddenly, when it really matters, the media’s supposed enthusiasm for ‘fact checking’ dries up.

Julian Assange And Guardian Hypocrisy

We have seen the ugly truth in the brutal, inhumane treatment of Julian Assange, arguably the most important Western dissident, journalist and publisher in recent years, by western ‘democracies’, the major news media, and a cruel system of court ‘justice’ operating in London. During a recent online conversation, acclaimed film director Ken Loach nailed the despicable role of the Guardian, in particular, in persecuting and undermining Assange:

‘It’s one of those cases that clarifies the role of the media […] there’s a collusion of silence. There doesn’t need to be an active conspiracy; they all understand the steps of the dance. “We’re going to keep quiet about this”. The Guardian did publish some [WikiLeaks] material, but then turned on Julian. And typical with the liberal press, there’s a degree of hypocrisy. They want to have a foot in both camps. They want to be both seen as part of the responsible establishment; they also want to speak truth to power. But they’re compromised on both fronts. And their attacks on Julian Assange were critical in undermining his presence as a journalist, and being seen as a journalist. And the scurrilous attacks on him, for year after year; [and their] failure to really campaign against the torture for ten years.’

He added:

‘There could not be a clearer case of shoot the messenger, and let the scoundrel go free. I mean, here you have people – Bush, Blair, propagandists like Alastair Campbell – wheeled out on the BBC, like Newsnight. They have season tickets to the current affairs programmes that tell us what to think. They are responsible for – what – up to a million deaths, four, five, million people made homeless, destruction of Iraq; the most atrocious war crimes, in an illegal war – an illegal war, so every activity is illegal on account of that, war crimes – they should be indicted. The man who told us about those crimes is condemned to rot, at the very least, and is in danger of never seeing the light of day again, or of being executed, and we know some politicians in the States have called for precisely that. There could not be a more outrageous, a more egregious example of the messenger being crucified and the scoundrels, the villains, the criminals getting away with this.’

As musician Brian Eno said during the discussion:

‘Julian is a threat [to power] because he exposes an illusion that we are generally being told to support. And that illusion is that we live in a democracy. So, the fundamental concept of democracy is that people make decisions about their future, and about the state they live in. And the fundamental assumption of democracy is that people have the information on which to make those decisions. So, clearly, for democracy to work we have to have good information, otherwise we’ll make bad decisions.’

‘The Gravity Of The Situation Requires Fundamental Changes To Global Capitalism’

The most compelling evidence that there is no functioning democracy in capitalist societies is all around us: global environmental collapse and climate breakdown.

A new scientific report this month warns that the planet is facing a ‘ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals’ that threaten human survival. The study, published in ‘Frontiers in Conservation Science’ by a group of 17 experts, observes that:

‘The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.’

Somewhat couched in academic language, the urgency and starkness of the warning are nevertheless clear:

‘The gravity of the situation requires fundamental changes to global capitalism, education, and equality, which include inter alia the abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reigning in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women.’

They added:

‘the mainstream [sic] is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization.’

Meanwhile, the climate crisis has been worsening, with 2020 declared by scientists as the joint hottest year ever recorded, despite the pandemic lockdowns. There were record Arctic wildfires and Atlantic tropical storms.

The European Commission’s Matthias Petschke said:

‘The extraordinary climate events of 2020 […] show us that we have no time to lose. We must come together as a global community, to ensure a just transition to a net zero future. It will be difficult, but the cost of inaction is too great…’

In the wake of the US presidential election last November, the BBC’s John Simpson had tweeted:

‘According to the New York Times, exit polls showed that 84% of people who voted for Trump thought that global warming wasn’t an important issue.’

But, of course, if political leaders everywhere believed that climate breakdown is an important issue – the overriding issue facing humanity – they would be tackling it with the urgency that it requires now.

As climate campaigner Greta Thunberg pointed out last week:

‘In 2010 our leaders signed “ambitious goals to protect wildlife and ecosystems”. By 2021 they’d failed on every single one. Each day they choose not to act. Instead they sign more “ambitious” non-binding future goals while passing policy locking in destructive business as usual.’

This was her acerbic summary of political discussions at the One Planet Summit in Paris on 11 January:

LIVE from #OnePlanetSummit in Paris:

Bla bla nature

Bla bla important

Bla bla ambitious

Bla bla green investments

Bla bla great opportunity

Bla bla green growth

Bla bla net zero

Bla bla step up our game

Bla bla hope

Bla bla bla…*

*locking in decades of further destruction

We have arrived at this terminal stage of capitalism because we are being held in a death-grip by a system of economics and exploitation that is coated with a veneer of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘progress’ and other convenient ideological myths. The corporate media has sold the public those myths, perpetuating and deepening the various interlocking crises that threaten to wipe out homo sapiens, along with countless other species.

We can still escape the worst if we face up to reality. As Gail Bradbrook and Jem Bendell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and founder of Deep Adaptation respectively, explain:

‘Our power comes from acting without escape from our pain.’

They continue:

‘Paying attention fully to what is around us and in front of us, even though it hurts, is to be fully alive. […] Once we accept that anxiety and grief will be constant companions in this struggle, we can stay fully present to what is happening and respond accordingly. It means we do not grasp desperately at the latest idea of what might fix the climate and ecological emergency. Instead, we can help each other stay fully present to the difficult mess, so that we can try to reduce harm, save what we can and plant some seeds for what might come next.’

A good start would be to reject the corporate media.

This article was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2021 at 9:28pm and is filed under Apartheid, Boris Johnson, Climate Change, COVID-19, Democrats, Disinformation, Donald Trump, Extinction, Israel, Joe Biden, Julian Assange, Militarism, Propaganda, UK Labour Party, UK Media, UK Politics, WikiLeaks.

Dhesi stated that many constituents had been horrified to see footage of water cannon, tear gas and brute force being used against protesting farmers on the outskirts of Delhi. He made it clear to Johnson that farmers were protesting against major corporates moving into India’s farming sector. Johnson was asked if he could clarify whether he understood the issue (a previous baffling statement by him indicated that he did not) and whether he agreed that everyone has a fundamental right to peaceful protest.

The letter was written against the backdrop of an Indian diaspora community in Britain that had taken to the streets in support of Indian farmers who are demanding the repeal of three farm laws that were forced through the Indian Parliament. These laws could pave the way for the dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) system, leaving farmers at the mercy of powerful corporate players.

UK campaign

The Landworkers’ Alliance (a UK cooperative) recently posted a link to a campaign page urging people in Britain to write to their MPs asking them to support farmers in India.

The campaign explains that the legislation will:

… loosen rules around sale, pricing and storage of farm produce, allowing a farm sector which has historically been protected by government regulation to be liberalised and opened to corporate investment.

It says that India will be taken down the route that the UK has already followed towards the consolidation and industrialisation of the agriculture sector:

… this is a path for agriculture that consolidates the control of corporations and supermarkets and negatively impacts the independent SME farming sector, destroying our food sovereignty.

India is still very much an agrarian-based society with over 60 per cent of the population still depending (directly or indirectly) on agriculture for a living. The campaign notes that India’s states have strong powers to provide a guaranteed minimum price to farmers, which can provide a fair livelihood for them and the agricultural workers they may hire, alongside ensuring basic food security for India.

Removal of these protections will have a direct impact on the livelihoods of these millions of farmers and farm workers and may lead to poverty and loss of dignity on an unimaginable scale.

The campaign condemns the British government for being “implicit in promoting market reforms and providing expertise to the Indian government to allow private investment and increase corporate control of the agriculture sector in India.” For instance, the Conceptual Farmework on Agriculture and the UK-India Infrastructure Technical Co-Operation Facility (ITCF) promotes contract farming (one of the issues the farmers are protesting about) and finances consultants to “alleviate bottlenecks to private sector investment in agriculture” in India.

Voice of the farmer

In a short video that appears on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, an interview with a protesting farmer camped outside near Delhi is very revealing.

During lockdown and times of crisis, he says farmers are treated like “gods” but when they ask for their rights, they become labelled as “‘terrorists”.

He goes on to say that the contested legislation is a matter of “ego” for Modi:

Corporates invested in Modi before the election and brought him to power. He’s sold out. He’s an agent of Ambani and Adani. He’s unable to repeal the bills because his owners will scold him. He’s trapped. But we are not backing down either.

The farmer then asks:

Do ministers know how many seeds are needed to grow wheat on an acre of land? We farmers know. They made farm laws sitting in AC rooms. And they are teaching us the benefits!

While corporates will initially pay good money for crops, once state-run markets are gone, they will become the only buyers and will beat prices down:

Why can’t farmers put minimum prices on the crops we produce? A law must be brought to guarantee MSP. Whoever buys below MSP must be punished by law.

In finishing, he asks why, in other sectors, do sellers get to put price tags on their products but not farmers.

Visit the UK campaign page at here.

This article was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2021 at 11:04pm and is filed under Agriculture, Boris Johnson, Farmers, India, Protests, United Kingdom.

Gene editing has the ability to harness the genetic resources that Mother Nature has provided in order to tackle the challenges of our age. This includes breeding crops that perform better, reducing costs to farmers and impacts on the environment and helping us all adapt to the challenges of climate change.

In the wake of Brexit, he attacked the EU’s stance on genetic engineering in agriculture by saying:

Its potential was blocked by a European Court of Justice ruling in 2018, which is flawed and stifling to scientific progress. Now that we have left the EU, we are free to make coherent policy decisions based on science and evidence. That begins with this consultation.

Eustice’s statements form part of a long-term pro-genetic engineering-deregulation propaganda campaign. It follows on from Boris Johnson’s first speech to parliament as prime minister in 2019 in which he proclaimed:

Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules and let’s develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.

The type of ‘liberation’ Johnson advocates forms part of the usual neoliberal evangelism which this time revolves around the adoption of unassessed genetically engineered crops and food, while overseeing the gutting of food safety and environmental standards, especially in light of a potential post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

It is no secret that various Conservative-led administrations have wanted to break free from the EU regulatory framework on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for some time. In 2014, Genewatch exposed collusion between the government and global agribusiness giants to force GMOs into Britain above the heads of a highly sceptical public.

In response to Eustice’s comments, GMWatch stated on its website that deregulation would result in no or few safety checks and probably no labelling for gene-edited products. This is despite dozens of top scientists having warned that they could be dangerous for human health and the environment in a 2017 Statement on New Genetic Modification Techniques.

Commenting on the government’s recent press release sent out to journalists to publicise the consultation process, the Beyond GM campaign group said:

… the mendacious propaganda material on the benefits of genome editing… which was sent to journalists throughout the country… will be widely taken up as fact, preventing any intelligent public debate during the consultation period.

The press release is in GMWatch’s view “a pack of lies from beginning to end” based on unsubstantiated ‘jam tomorrow’ claims that gene editing has the potential to protect the nation’s environment, pollinators and wildlife. These claims ignore the reality that the first gene-edited crop to be commercialised (Cibus’s SU canola) is gene edited to survive being sprayed with toxic herbicides. GMWatch argues that there is no gene-edited crop available anywhere in the world that offers environmental benefits.

It is telling that all the claimed advantages of gene-edited crops of the future are already available in the form of agroecological farming methods and high-performing conventionally bred crops. Agroecology offers system-wide solutions that tackle the now well-documented system-wide health, nutrition, social and environmental problems inherent in the model of industrial agriculture supported by corporations behind the genetic engineering project.

However, the UK government shows no interest in these solutions.

GMWatch notes that the government press release claims that gene editing is not genetic modification. The industry has put much effort into spinning this next generation of genetically engineered crops in this way. It wants at all costs to avoid the bad press and negative public perception that has surrounded the first generation of transgenic GMOs by avoiding the GMO tag.

However, gene editing most certainly falls within the definitions of GMOs from technical, scientific and legal (in the EU) standpoints. In fact, the EU and existing UK definition of a GMO does not depend on whether it contains foreign DNA. EU law defines a GMO as an organism in which “the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination”. Regardless of what the government says, gene-edited organisms fall under this definition.

Moreover, the government is wrong to claim that gene-edited organisms do not contain foreign DNA. This can happen intentionally (in the case of certain types of gene-edited organism) and unintentionally, as a result of the inherent inaccuracy and imprecision of gene-editing procedures. To support this claim, a compilation of peer reviewed evidence has been posted on the GMWatch website in the article ‘Science supports need to subject gene-edited plants to strict safety assessments’.

As for the government’s claim that gene-edited organisms only contain “changes that could be made more slowly using traditional breeding methods”, GMWatch says:

We look forward to their proof that the unintended outcomes of gene editing could happen in traditional breeding. They include large deletions, insertions and rearrangements of DNA, as well as unintended incorporation of foreign DNA and entire genes.

Long-time campaigner Jim McNulty of the Genetic Engineering Network is scathing in his assessment of how the UK government is currently acting. He says:

When we look at this administration, filled to the roof with fraud, corruption and cronyism, we now have Boris Johnson trying to make or break the rules on new gene-editing techniques.

He adds that the Brexiteers in government wasted no time in setting their pro-GMO agenda:

Within a week of leaving the EU, the UK moved quickly to challenge and compete with our former European partners. The US is refusing to regulate the new genetic engineering techniques, just like they did with the first wave of transgenic GMOs. We in Europe, in the mid-90s, were faced with untested, unstable and unregulated GMOs in soy and maize going into two thirds of EU food products.

It was a mammoth task to bring politicians, supermarkets and all government bodies on board to regulate the original wave of GMOs.

McNulty explains:

We succeeded because in the UK, Germany and France campaigners and activists demanded action. The media, retailers and politicians buckled under the massive pressure of public opinion that we created to bring that about.

The US also felt the pressure:

Because the EU and its markets were the prize and there was so much anti-GM sentiment, GMOs were driven out and EU lawmakers have never changed their position. Science and public opinion won.

McNulty argues that we now see treachery in our midst: a former member state has seen fit to bury 25 years of evolving laws and regulations founded on a science-based approach and the precautionary principle.

The consultation will close on Wednesday, 17 March at 23:59 and can be accessed here.

This article was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2021 at 7:31pm and is filed under Agriculture, Agrochemicals, Argoecology, Boris Johnson, Brexit, EU, Food Sovereignty, GMO, Monsanto (now Bayer), Science/Technology, United Kingdom.

As unsustainable as it might be, the UK was treated to another round of vigorous U-turning ahead of Christmas by a leader who radiates buffoonery and steady incompetence.  On December 16, a decision was taken to ease COVID-19 restrictions over the festive period, a view distinctly at odds with a good number in the scientific establishment.

In November, submissions by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) to the government warned that mixing over the Christmas period could well lead to greater spread in the event restrictions were eased.  According to a paper by the operational subgroup of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M-O), a relaxation “over the festive period will result in increased transmission and increased prevalence, potentially by a large amount.”  The group also warned that, “SARS-Cov-19 has demonstrated high secondary attack rates in households (with estimates of up to 50% in one household infected from one infected member).”

The analysis also warned that the “bubble” policy – one where a certain number of households would be permitted to mix over a set number of days over the Christmas period – was still burdened by risk.  “Allowing households to ‘bubble’ (i.e. effectively form a single, larger, isolated household) reduces the risks, but is very susceptible to small numbers of links between bubbles.”

Despite this, Johnson was adamant in his Wednesday press gathering: the festive season would be an exception.  “I want to be clear we don’t want to, as I say, to ban Christmas, to cancel it.”  To do so “would be frankly inhuman and against the instincts of many in this country.”  This was a pointed reference to opponents sceptical about his epidemiological grasp of the dangers.  Labour leader Keir Starmer had previously pressed him during Parliament Minister’s Questions about any existing assessments on the impact “on infection rates and increased pressure on the NHS”.

Johnson’s response was far from helpful and, given the circumstances, ill conceived.  “I wish he had the guts to say what he really wants to do, which is to cancel the plans people have made and to cancel Christmas. I think that’s what he’s driving at, Mr Speaker.”  But even conservative forums such as The Spectator had to admit that the prime minister was taking an awful gamble: “that people will suddenly start adhering to government guidance and severely restrict their contact with their families, even though the law does not force them to do so.”

In his December 16 speech, Johnson praised the rollout of the vaccination programme.  With 138,000 recipients of the first dose, he felt there was “no doubt we are winning and we will win our long struggle against the virus.”  The reproduction rate of the virus had been brought below 1.  But Britons had to hold their nerve.  Infections were still rising in parts of the country.  London had moved into Tier 3 restrictions.

An appeal was made to those in the UK “to think hard and in detail about the days ahead and whether you can do more to protect yourself and others.” Never tiring of confusing the citizenry, such regulations were to involve limits of three households meeting over five days.  “I want to stress that these are maximums, not targets to aim for.”  Think, he pleaded, of having a smaller and shorter Christmas.

On December 19, the mind changer was again in full flow.  The very idea of holding Christmas was challenged and Johnson found himself doing exactly what he had accused the Labour leader of wishing.  “I am sorry that the situation has deteriorated since I last spoke to you three days ago.”  The reason given by Johnson in his address was ominous.  Data from the advisory group on New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats (NERVTAG) had revealed the emergence of a new variant of the virus.  “NERVTAG’s early analysis suggests the new variant could increase R [the reproduction number] by 0.4 or greater.  Although there is considerable uncertainty, it may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old variant.”

This new variant had been skipping at speed through London, the South East and East of England.  As things stood, it was seemingly not more lethal or causing illness of greater severity.  This new incarnation was also unlikely to blunt the effect of the vaccines.  But it was clear to Johnson that not taking immediate steps would lead to soaring infections, straining the NHS and causing the deaths of “many thousands more”.

The consequence: London, the South East and the East of England were to move into tier 4.  These have become generally familiar: the necessity of staying at home and working from home; the closure of non-essential services in retail, indoor gyms and leisure facilities.  People are not permitted to enter or leave Tier 4 areas; and residents in such designated zones cannot stay overnight away from home.  Exemptions apply for exercise, childcare and those who cannot work from home.

The corollary of such restrictions was that Britons could not “continue with Christmas as planned.”  Tier 4 restrictions meant that households were to be self-contained, “though support bubbles will remain in place for those at risk of loneliness or isolation.”  To add just another sliver of confusion, household mixing would be confined to Christmas Day for those in Tier 3 zones.

Not all gloom, Johnson unfurled the metaphorical flag.  “The UK was the first country in the western world to start using a clinically approved vaccine.”  Nothing, however, could take away from the fact that Johnson had again been outmanoeuvred by facts and circumstance.

In the scathing opinion of The Observer, it was a decision taken too late, causing grief to families “who have been encouraged to look forward to Christmas for weeks by a prime minister who, in characteristic form, foolishly over-promised in an attempt to avoid being the bearer of bad news.”

In the meantime, Johnson will have to deal with an increasing number of irate Tory backbenchers keen to recall parliament.  Walker is one them, increasingly suspicious of the government’s motives.  “The Government, in my view, knew on Thursday, possibly even Wednesday, that they were going to pull the plug on Christmas but they waited till Parliament had gone.”  A Johnson tactic, through and through.

The post Yuletide Lockdowns and Cancelling Christmas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Press freedoms supposedly axiomatic in holding government to account have been regarded with increasing suspicion by Johnson and his coterie.  When the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, was found breaking the very lockdown rules that the government had imposed, a statement from Downing Street was coolly dismissive of the “stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers.”

With the Britannic press increasingly clipped in holding power to account, it is little wonder that coverage of the most significant, contemporary threat to press freedom remains a small affair, rarely rising above yellow press murmurings.  The Julian Assange case, through the good offices of the US Department of Justice, has already laid a few bombs in the bedcovers of the Fourth Estate, but its members continue to suffer an apathetic torpor, indifferent and oblivious to the dangers his extradition trial poses.

A few fire-cracking exceptions abound, among them the consistent Peter Oborne in a slew of publications, the prickly Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday, and the ferociously reliable Patrick Cockburn in The Independent.  All have expressed constructive, detailed outrage at the treatment of Julian Assange by authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.  Organisations such as Media Lens and Bridges for Media Freedom have also done their bit to stir interest in the gravity of the case.

This month Oborne, in a co-authored piece with Millie Cooke for the British Journalism Review, urged readers to appreciate that the consequences of Assange’s extradition would be “grim” for investigative journalism.  “Any story which depends on obtaining documents from US government sources will become impossibly dangerous. No British journalists would dare to handle it, let alone publish it.”

As Media Lens found, looking at various programmes such as BBC News at Ten, “there was not a single substantive item (there may have been a passing mention on the first day).”  When BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford was asked about why his reporting on the extradition hearing was conspicuously absent, he passed the parcel and gave an insight profound in its shallowness.  “The case is being covered by our World Affairs unit.  I have been in a few hearings and it is slightly repetitive. It will return as a news story.”  A flagging attention span, perhaps.

The lamentable coverage of Assange’s trial was instructive.  The conservative Spectator refused to take of the draught, keeping references to the extradition trial to a minimum.  The pro-extradition outlet, The Economist, went one better in ignoring the trial altogether, having already decided in April 2019 that the “central charge – computer hacking – is an indefensible violation of the law.”   The Sunday Telegraph was asleep to it since April last year.  Tetchy Richard Littejohn of the Daily Mail was awake to Assange, if only because, on being evicted from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, “he stank the place to high heaven”.

When the left-leaning New Statesman, a forum for periodic Assange bashing, was asked why it did not take an interest in the trial, it responded tartly that it had, in fact, covered the trial and would continue doing so. “We are a magazine mostly of essays, long reads and cultural criticism, not a breaking new site or a newspaper.  And we don’t publish court reports.”

Oborne and Cooke pondered the thesis long advanced by Noam Chomksy that the media tycoon dominated stable of hacks are all too happy to play gatekeepers, defending corporate and state interests.  “The Assange case suggests that this analysis is plausible.  At best, the London media reported Assange dutifully.  At worst, not at all.”

While the British press remains reliably despicable for the most part in dealing with the implications of USA v Assange, UK parliamentarians have had a shot of inspiration.  Leading a pack of seventeen figures, Richard Burgon, Labour MP for East Leeds, has requested Robert Buckland, the Secretary of State for Justice, “that provision be made to hold an online video discussion between Julian Assange and a cross-party group of UK parliamentarians.”

What stands out in the letter is an acknowledgment of Assange’s “journalistic work with WikiLeaks including information exposing US war atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq” for which he risks facing prison “of up to 175 years”.  The parliamentarians also note the case’s “important implications for press and publishing freedoms in the UK, for the US-UK Extradition Treaty including its ban on extradition for political offense and for wider human rights.”

Amnesty International’s concerns that “prosecuting Julian Assange on these charges could have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression” and the views of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, also feature.  Expressing deep concern “by the implications of this unprecedented extradition case,” the parliamentarians are hoping to discuss the matter with Assange prior to the January 4, 2021 extradition decision.

While this surge of sentience can only be welcomed, Buckland is not likely to wish MPs to be airing such views with the publisher.  There is a relationship – namely, that of the US-UK alliance – to preserve.  Having previously refused to grant Assange compassionate release from prison for posing a flight risk (this, even during the pandemic), there is a good chance he will be stubborn again.  British injustice, when it chooses to be, can be both implacable and illogical.

This article was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2020 at 6:56pm and is filed under Boris Johnson, Censorship, COVID-19, Ecuadorian Embassy (UK), Freedom of Expression/Speech, Julian Assange, Justice, Media, Media Bias, Media Censorship, Political Prisoners, UK Politics, United Kingdom, US Prison System, US War Crimes, WikiLeaks.

John Pilger interviewed Irene Brunsden in Hackney, east London about only being able to feed her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes in 1975. Now he sees nervous women queueing at foodbanks with their children as it’s revealed 600,000 more kids are in poverty now than in 2012.

*****

When I first reported on child poverty in Britain, I was struck by the faces of children I spoke to, especially the eyes. They were different: watchful, fearful.

In Hackney, in 1975, I filmed Irene Brunsden’s family. Irene told me she gave her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes. “She doesn’t tell me she’s hungry, she just moans. When she moans, I know something is wrong.”

“How much money do you have in the house? I asked.

“Five pence,” she replied.

Irene said she might have to take up prostitution, “for the baby’s sake”. Her husband Jim, a truck driver who was unable to work because of illness, was next to her. It was as if they shared a private grief.

This is what poverty does. In my experience, its damage is like the damage of war; it can last a lifetime, spread to loved ones and contaminate the next generation. It stunts children, brings on a host of diseases and, as unemployed Harry Hopwood in Liverpool told me, “it’s like being in prison”.

This prison has invisible walls. When I asked Harry’s young daughter if she ever thought that one day she would live a life like better-off children, she said unhesitatingly: “No”.

What has changed 45 years later?  At least one member of an impoverished family is likely to have a job — a job that denies them a living wage. Incredibly, although poverty is more disguised, countless British children still go to bed hungry and are ruthlessly denied opportunities..

What has not changed is that poverty is the result of a disease that is still virulent yet rarely spoken about – class.

Study after study shows that the people who suffer and die early from the diseases of poverty brought on by a poor diet, sub-standard housing and the priorities of the political elite and its hostile “welfare” officials — are working people. In 2020, one in three preschool British children suffers like this.

In making my recent film, The Dirty War on the NHS, it was clear to me that the savage cutbacks to the NHS and its privatisation by the Blair, Cameron, May and Johnson governments had devastated the vulnerable, including many NHS workers and their families. I interviewed one low-paid NHS worker who could not afford her rent and was forced to sleep in churches or on the streets.

At a food bank in central London, I watched young mothers looking nervously around as they hurried away with old Tesco bags of food and washing powder and tampons they could no longer afford, their young children holding on to them. It is no exaggeration that at times I felt I was walking in the footprints of Dickens.

Boris Johnson has claimed that 400,000 fewer children are living in poverty since 2010 when the Conservatives came to power. This is a lie, as the Children’s Commissioner has confirmed. In fact, more than 600,000 children have fallen into poverty since 2012; the total is expected to exceed 5 million. This, few dare say, is a class war on children.

Old Etonian Johnson is maybe a caricature of the born-to-rule class; but his “elite” is not the only one. All the parties in Parliament, notably if not especially Labour – like much of the bureaucracy and most of the media — have scant if any connection to the “streets”: to the world of the poor: of the “gig economy”: of battling a system of Universal Credit that can leave you without a penny and in despair.

Last week, the prime minister and his “elite” showed where their priorities lay. In the face of the greatest health crisis in living memory when Britain has the highest Covid-19 death toll in Europe and poverty is accelerating as the result of a punitive “austerity” policy, he announced £16.5 billion for “defence”. This makes Britain, whose military bases cover the world as if the empire still existed, the highest military spender in Europe.

And the enemy? The real one is poverty and those who impose it and perpetuate it.

• This is an abridged version of an article published by the Daily Mirror, London.
• John Pilger’s 1975 film, Smashing Kids, can be viewed at Smashing Kids

This article was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2020 at 11:06am and is filed under Boris Johnson, COVID-19, Housing/Homelessness, Hunger, Poverty, United Kingdom.

In a recent post, I wrote about “externalities” – the ability of companies to offset the true costs inherent in the production process. The burden of these costs are covertly shifted on to wider society: that is, on to you and me. Or on to those far from view, in foreign lands. Or on to future generations. Externalising costs means that profits can be maximised for the wealth elite in the here and now.

My latest: The increasingly desperate task of capitalism's perception managers is to dissociate our economic system from the emerging environmental crisis – to break our understanding of the causal link between the two https://t.co/S4Aby314FX

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) October 25, 2020

Our own societies must deal with the externalised costs of industries ranging from tobacco and alcohol to chemicals and vehicles. Societies abroad must deal with the costs of the bombs dropped by our “defence” industries. And future generations will have to deal with the lethal costs incurred by corporations that for decades have been allowed to pump out their waste products into every corner of the globe.

Divine right to rule

In the past, the job of the corporate media was to shield those externalities from public view. More recently, as the costs have become impossible to ignore, especially with the climate crisis looming, the media’s role has changed. Its central task now is to obscure corporate responsibility for these externalities. That is hardly surprising. After all, the corporate media’s profits depend on externalising costs too, as well as hiding the externalised costs of their parent companies, their billionaire owners and their advertisers.

Once, monarchs rewarded the clerical class for persuading, through the doctrine of divine right, their subjects to passively submit to exploitation. Today, “mainstream” media are there to persuade us that capitalism, the profit motive, the accumulation of ever greater wealth by elites, and externalities destroying the planet are the natural order of things, that this is the best economic system imaginable.

Most of us are now so propagandised by the media that we can barely imagine a functioning world without capitalism. Our minds are primed to imagine, in the absence of capitalism, an immediate lurch back to Soviet-style bread queues or an evolutionary reversal to cave-dwelling. Those thoughts paralyse us, making us unable to contemplate what might be wrong or inherently unsustainable about how we live right now, or to imagine the suicidal future we are hurtling towards.

Lifeblood of empire

There is a reason that, as we rush lemming-like towards the cliff-edge, urged on by a capitalism that cannot operate at the level of sustainability or even of sanity, the push towards intensified war grows. Wars are the life blood of the corporate empire headquartered in the United States.

My latest: The new documentary on Greta Thunberg – I Am Greta – isn’t about climate change. It’s about something even more important: the elusiveness of sanity in an insane world https://t.co/uU2G6i821I

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 17, 2020

US imperialism is no different from earlier imperialisms in its aims or methods. But in late-stage capitalism, wealth and power are hugely concentrated. Technologies have reached a pinnacle of advancement. Disinformation and propaganda are sophisticated to an unprecedented degree. Surveillance is intrusive and aggressive, if well concealed. Capitalism’s destructive potential is unlimited. But even so, war’s appeal is not diminished.

As ever, wars allow for the capture and control of resources. Fossil fuels promise future growth, even if of the short-term, unsustainable kind.

Wars require the state to invest its money in the horrendously expensive and destructive products of the “defence” industries, from fighter planes to bombs, justifying the transfer of yet more public resources into private hands.

The lobbies associated with these “defence” industries have every incentive to push for aggressive foreign (and domestic) policies to justify more investment, greater expansion of “defensive” capabilities, and the use of weapons on the battlefield so that they need replenishing.

Whether public or covert, wars provide an opportunity to remake poorly defended, resistant societies – such as Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria – in ways that allow for resources to be seized, markets to be expanded and the reach of the corporate elite to be extended.

War is the ultimate growth industry, limited only by our ability to be persuaded of new enemies and new threats.

Fog of war

For the political class, the benefits of war are not simply economic. In a time of environmental collapse, war offers a temporary “Get out of jail” card. During wars, the public is encouraged to assent to new, ever greater sacrifices that allow public wealth to be transferred to the elite. War is the corporate world’s ultimate Ponzi scheme.

The “fog of war” does not just describe the difficulty of knowing what is happening in the immediate heat of battle. It is also the fear, generated by claims of an existential threat, that sets aside normal thinking, normal caution, normal scepticism. It is the invoking of a phantasmagorical enemy towards which public resentments can be directed, shielding from view the real culprits – the corporations and their political cronies at home.

The “fog of war” engineers the disruption of established systems of control and protocol to cope with the national emergency, shrouding and rationalising the accumulation by corporations of more wealth and power and the further capture of organs of the state. It is the licence provided for “exceptional” changes to the rules that quickly become normalised. It is the disinformation that passes for national responsibility and patriotism.

Permanent austerity

All of which explains why Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, has just pledged an extra £16.5 billion in “defence” spending at a time when the UK is struggling to control a pandemic and when, faced by disease, Brexit and a new round of winter floods, the British economy is facing “systemic crisis”, according to a new Cabinet Office report. Figures released this week show the biggest economic contraction in the UK in three centuries.

If the British public is to stomach yet more cuts, to surrender to permanent austerity as the economy tanks, Johnson, ever the populist, knows he needs a good cover story. And that will involve further embellishment of existing, fearmongering narratives about Russia, Iran and China.

To make those narratives plausible, Johnson has to act as if the threats are real, which means massive spending on “defence”. Such expenditure, wholly counter-productive when the current challenge is sustainability, will line the pockets of the very corporations that help Johnson and his pals stay in power, not least by cheerleading him via their media arms.

New salesman needed

The cynical way this works was underscored in a classified 2010 CIA memorandum, known as “Red Cell”, leaked to Wikileaks, as the journalist Glenn Greenwald reminded us this week. The CIA memo addressed the fear in Washington that European publics were demonstrating little appetite for the US-led “war on terror” that followed 9/11. That, in turn, risked limiting the ability of European allies to support the US as it exercised its divine right to wage war.

The memo notes that European support for US wars after 9/11 had chiefly relied on “public apathy” – the fact that Europeans were kept largely ignorant by their own media of what those wars entailed. But with a rising tide of anti-war sentiment, the concern was that this might change. There was an urgent need to further manipulate public opinion more decisively in favour of war.

The US intelligence agency decided its wars needed a facelift. George W Bush, with his Texan, cowboy swagger, had proved a poor salesman. So the CIA turned to identity politics and faux “humanitarianism”, which they believed would play better with European publics.

Part of the solution was to accentuate the suffering of Afghan women to justify war. But the other part was to use President Barack Obama as the face of a new, “caring” approach to war. He had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – even though he had done nothing for peace, and would go on to expand US wars – very possibly as part of this same effort to reinvent the “war on terror”. Polls showed support for existing wars increased markedly among Europeans when they were reminded that Obama backed these wars.

As Greenwald observes:

Obama’s most important value was in prettifying, marketing and prolonging wars, not ending them. They saw him for what U.S. Presidents really are: instruments to create a brand and image about the U.S. role in the world that can be effectively peddled to both the domestic population in the US and then on the global stage, and specifically to pretend that endless barbaric US wars are really humanitarian projects benevolently designed to help people — the pretext used to justify every war by every country in history.

Obama-style facelift

Once the state is understood as a vehicle for entrenching elite power – and war its most trusted tool for concentrating power – the world becomes far more intelligible. Western economies never stopped being colonial economies, but they were given an Obama-style facelift. War and plunder – even when they masquerade as “defence” or peace – are still the core western mission.

That is why Britons, believing days of empire are long behind them, may have been shocked to learn this week that the UK still operates 145 military bases in 42 countries around the globe, meaning it runs the second largest network of such bases after the US.

Such information is not made available in the UK “mainstream” media, of course. It has to be provided by an “alternative” investigative site, Declassified UK. In that way the vast majority of the British public are left clueless about how their taxes are being used at a time when they are told further belt-tightening is essential.

REVEALED — The UK military’s overseas base network involves 145 sites in 42 countries.

The results of a months-long investigation by @pmillerinfo https://t.co/oaffNnJlZc

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) November 24, 2020

The post The Planet Cannot Begin to Heal Until We Rip the Mask off the West’s War Machine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Phil Miller’s rich overview of Britain’s military footprint for Declassified UK shows it to be heavy.  “The size of the global military presence is far larger than previously thought and is likely to mean that the UK has the second largest military network in the world, after the United States.”  The UK military, for instance, has a presence in five countries in the Asia-Pacific: naval facilities in Singapore; garrisons in Brunei, drone testing facilities in Australia; three facilities in Nepal; a quick reaction force in Afghanistan.  Cyprus remains a favourite with 17 military installations.  In Africa, British personnel can be found in Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Mali.  Then come the ever dubious ties to Arab monarchies.

The nature of having such bases is to be kind to your host, despite him being theocratic, barking mad, or an old fashioned despot with fetishes. Despite the often silly pronouncements by British policy makers that they take issue with authoritarians, exceptions numerous in number abound.  The UK has never had a problem with authoritarians it can work with or despots it can coddle.  A closer look at such relations usually reveal the same ingredients: capital, commerce, perceptions of military necessity.  The approach to Oman, a state marked by absolute rule, is a case in point.

Since 1798, Britain has had a hand in ensuring the success, and the survivability, of the House of Al Said.  On September 12, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that a further £23.8 million would go to enhancing the British Joint Logistics Support Base at Duqm port, thereby tripling “the size of the existing UK base and help facilitate Royal Navy deployments to the Indian Ocean”.  The Ministry of Defence also went so far as to describe a “renewal” of a “hugely valuable relationship,” despite the signing of a new Joint Defence Agreement in February 2019.

The agreement had been one of the swan song acts of the ailing Sultan Qaboos bin Said, whose passing this year was genuinely mourned in British political circles.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson called him “an exceptionally wise and respected leader who will be missed enormously.”  Papers of record wrote in praise of a reformer and a developer.  “The longest serving Arab ruler,” observed a sycophantic column in The Guardian, “Qaboos was an absolute monarch, albeit a relatively benevolent and popular one.”

The same Sultan, it should be said, had little fondness for freedom of expression, assembly and association, encouraged the arrests and harassment of government critics and condoned sex discrimination. But he was of the “one of us” labels: trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, an unwavering Anglophile, installed on the throne by Britain in the 1970 palace coup during the all but forgotten Dhofar Rebellion.  “Strategically,” Cobain reminds us, “the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil.”  The British made sure their man won.

Public mention of greater British military involvement in foreign theatres can be found, though they rarely make front page acts.  The business of projecting such power, especially in the Britannic model, should be careful, considered, even gnomic.  Britain, for instance, is rallying to the US-led call to contain the Yellow Peril in the Asia Pacific, a nice reminder to Beijing that old imperial misdeeds should never be a bar to repetition.  The head of the British Army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, spoke in September about there being “a market for a more persistent presence from the British Army (in Asia).  It’s an area that saw a much more consistent Army presence in the Eighties, but with 9/11 we naturally receded from it.”  The time had come “to redress that imbalance”.

The UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, prefers to be more enigmatic about the “future of Global Britain.”  To deal with an “ever more complex and dynamic strategic context,” he suggests the “Integrated Operating Concept”.  Britain had to “compete below the threshold of war in order to deter war, and to prevent one’s adversaries from achieving their objectives in fait accompli strategies.”

Gone are the old thuggeries of imperial snatch and grab; evident are matters of flexibility in terms of competition. “Competing involves a campaign posture that includes continuous operating on our terms and in places of our choosing.”  This entails a thought process involving “several dimensions to escalate and deescalate up and down multiple ladders – as if it were a spider’s web.”  The general attempts to illustrate this gibberish with the following example:  “One might actively constrain in the cyber domain to protect critical national infrastructure in the maritime Domain.”

In 2017, there were already more than just murmurings from Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, that a greater British presence in the Asia-Pacific was warranted.  Fallon was keen to stress the reasons for deeper involvement, listing them to a group of Australian journalists. “The tensions have been rising in the region, not just from the tests by North Korea but also escalating tension in the South China Sea with the building program that’s gone there on the islands and the need to keep those routes open.”

With such chatter about the China threat you could be forgiven for believing that British presence in the Asia-Pacific was minimal.  But that would ignore, for instance, the naval logistics base at Singapore’s Sembawang Wharf, permanently staffed by eight British military personnel with an eye on the busy Malacca Strait.  A more substantial presence can also be found in the Sultanate of Brunei, comprising an infantry battalion of Gurkhas and an Army Air Corps Flight of Bell 212 helicopters.  The MOD is particularly keen on the surroundings, as they offer “tropical climate and terrain … well suited to jungle training”.

Over the next four years, the UK military can expect to get an extra £16.5 billion – a 10% increase in funding and a fond salute to militarists.  “I have decided that the era of cutting our defence budget must end, and ends now,” declared Johnson.  “Our plans will safeguard hundreds of thousands of jobs in the defence industry, protecting livelihoods across the UK and keeping the British people safe.”

The prime minister was hoping to make that announcement accompanied by the “Integrated Defence and Security Review” long championed by his now departed chief special adviser, Dominic Cummings.  Cummings might have been ejected from the gladiatorial arena of Downing Street politics, but the ideas in the Review are unlikely to buck old imperial trends.  At the very least, there will be a promise of more military bases to reflect a posture General Carter describes rather obscurely as “engaged and forward deployed”.

This article was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2020 at 2:19am and is filed under Asia, Boris Johnson, China, Empire, Middle East, Militarism, South China Sea, Taiwan, UK Military, UK Military Bases, United Kingdom.

The Roman poet Horace famously declared:

Dulce et decorum est pro patrie mori.

It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen, the great English poet of the First World War, described this phrase as ‘the old Lie’ in his famous war poem, ‘Dulce et decorum est’. Patriotism so often means ‘honouring’ those who ‘fell in service to this country’, grand ceremonies at war memorials, feasts of royal pageantry. And then sending yet more generations of men and women to fight in yet more wars.

On Remembrance Day (11 November) last week, much of the ‘mainstream’ media queued up to condemn two Extinction Rebellion climate protesters who had ‘hijacked’ the Cenotaph, the famous war memorial in Whitehall, London. At 8am that day, after undertaking a two-minute silence, former soldier Donald Bell (64) and NHS nurse Anne White (53) hung a wreath on the Cenotaph with the inscription, ‘Climate change means war: Act now’. Together with two other unnamed climate protesters, they also unveiled a large black and white banner saying:

Honour Their Sacrifice, Climate Change Means War

Within half an hour, the Metropolitan Police had cleared away the protest.

The Daily Mail’s headline screamed, ‘Fury at climate fanatics’ hijacking of Cenotaph’ , while its columnist Robert Hardman declared that the climate action was ‘a monumentally inappropriate protest’. The Mail, Sun and other papers gave prominence to Boris Johnson’s condemnation of the ‘profoundly disrespectful’ protesters.

The Daily Express declared that the action was ‘a disgrace to the fallen’  The editorial fulminated that the:

activists who staged a demonstration at the Cenotaph yesterday craved publicity but disgusted the country. Only extremists devoid of a scintilla of sensitivity would consider staging such a stunt on Armistice Day… The Cenotaph must be protected from the antics of cranks and those who would want to inflict damage at this sacred site.

Express columnist Paul Baldwin, likewise in full splenetic mode, opined that the Cenotaph had been ‘desecrated’ and ‘those virtue-signalling gutless wonders at Extinction Rebellion’ had ‘no shame’.

The Daily Star asserted in an editorial titled, ‘Eco demo a disgrace’  :

These moronic crusties have continually shown a complete lack of respect for the general public. Whether it’s interfering with everyday lives or generally being a nuisance, they are not making their point in the right way. But these hippy-dippy, airy-fairy prats have really crossed a line now.

The editorial continued:

They marred yesterday’s Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph with some shameful antics. Eco-warriors – including a disgracefully disrespectful veteran – trampled over poppy wreaths.

In fact, footage published by newspapers themselves shows that former soldier Donald Bell carefully avoided stepping on wreaths.

The Daily Star continued:

Their behaviour was disgustingly beyond the pale. This vital annual moment of solemnness and reflection must never be disrupted to make political points. And it will only set them back in achieving their aims. Nothing should ever get in the way of honouring our fallen heroes.

For the Sun, the protest was ‘a new low’ and:

Extinction Rebellion should hang their heads in shame and disband after abusing the Cenotaph.

The i newspaper ran with the headline:

Climate protest at Cenotaph condemned for “bad taste”

and its report led with:

Climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion drew condemnation from across the political spectrum yesterday after it staged a demonstration at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. 

Note the emphasis throughout press coverage on ‘condemnation’. Was there no support to quote from anywhere ‘across the political spectrum’, or did the national press just ignore it? Either way, consider what that means about a supposed broad range of views in what passes for political debate in the British media.

The response from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer indicated, once again, that he is no threat to the established order:

No one can doubt how serious the climate emergency is, but the protests at the Cenotaph are wrong. They are in bad taste. We do not support them.

As one astute observer noted via Twitter:

Starmer wouldn’t have supported the Tolpuddle Martyrs, suffragette movement, the bus boycott & Stonewall et al except retrospectively when sanitised by history & his overleaping ambitions

BBC News gave a brief mention to the Extinction Rebellion protest towards the bottom of its online report on Remembrance Day commemorations. The Guardian went one step further by relegating its account of the protest to a single line, buried deep in its coverage of Remembrance Day.

More was to come. True to form, the Daily Mail followed up its initial coverage by dredging up dirt on former soldier Donald Bell. Its headline shouted:

EXCLUSIVE – Revealed: Ex-soldier who sparked fury with Cenotaph Extinction Rebellion protest is DRUG DEALER jailed for selling heroin – and was accused of abusing his disabled wife.

The article boasted:

MailOnline can reveal he was jailed for four years in 2007 after being caught pushing his wheelchair-bound wife around the streets of Cambridge – while peddling heroin at the same time.

Buried at the bottom of the Mail’s gutter ‘journalism’, was a short extract from a statement by Extinction Rebellion:

Donald Bell left the army with serious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a time when the illness was still not fully recognised.

Donald was one of those people who, like so many, made mistakes and then worked hard to turn his life around.

Extinction Rebellion stands by him and his right to speak out about the Government’s complicity in knowingly taking us into future wars and a 4 degree world.

In its full statement published on its website, Extinction Rebellion noted:

Right now, what we’re seeing is papers like the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Express encouraging vitriol and abuse towards a veteran, a man who served his country, when PTSD, homelessness, addiction and alcoholism are the reality for thousands of people who have left the armed forces.

If national newspapers were truly motivated to ‘honour the fallen’, they would be challenging the government repeatedly to uphold its supposed moral commitments to look after former armed forces personnel, many of whom suffer from physical injuries and mental health issues.

Indeed, if the major news media were the responsible fourth estate they claim to be, they would scrutinise government foreign policy, not least statements of benign intent about ‘defending’ freedom and democracy around the world. The media would hold politicians to account for the mass deaths of civilians in the wars and ‘humanitarian interventions’ in which the UK has participated. This would be a fitting memorial to peace, rather than the endless succession of annual ceremonies that politicians and media purport as ‘honouring’ the dead.

As Mail on Sunday journalist, Peter Hitchens, whose courageous work in exposing the official narrative on a supposed chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, commented recently:

In recent years a very strange thing has happened to my trade. More and more journalists seem happy to be the mouthpieces of government, or of political parties. Worse, they attack other journalists for refusing to fall into step with the official line.

Hitchens added:

If such ideas had been around in the days of Watergate, Richard Nixon would have served two full terms as President and retired with honour.

If it had been so in 2003, you wouldn’t know, even now, that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, a truly ‘mainstream’ media – pursuing genuine public-interest journalism – would be exposing the utter failure of successive governments to seriously address climate breakdown. The media would hail as heroes those climate activists who are protesting peacefully to draw attention to the very real risk of climate catastrophe, global mass loss of species and of human extinction itself.

Instead, the level of media debate is often shockingly poor. On ITV’s ‘This Morning’ last Thursday, the right-winger Andrew Neil, until recently masquerading as an ‘impartial’ BBC politics presenter, lambasted Extinction Rebellion, dismissing the warning that climate change will lead to wars. ‘There’s no evidence of that’, he declared.

This was an outrageous untruth. In fact, as Extinction Rebellion (XR) correctly point out, the UK Ministry of Defence itself warned in a June 2020 report of the:

growing recognition that climate change may aggravate existing threats to international peace and security’ and that society should prepare for between 2.3 – 3.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. As XR said, this would bring ‘unimaginable suffering’.

In other words, the MoD has provided powerful evidence precisely justifying the kind of protest, the kind of expression of free speech, that is absolutely vital if we are to save millions, perhaps billions of lives. Is not the best way of honouring the dead to honour and protect the living, to do whatever we can to avoid yet more unnecessary war deaths in future?

And it’s not just the MoD pointing to the link between global warming and war. The US Pentagon has warned of this for at least two decades. As news agency Bloomberg noted in January 2019, the most comprehensive study to investigate the link between climate change, war and refugee flows concluded:

Pentagon Fears Confirmed: Climate Change Leads to More Wars and Refugees

Later the same year, a report prepared by officials from the US Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA and other agencies, warned of a more dangerous world under global warming. The effects would include increased electricity blackouts, starvation, thirst, disease and war over the next two decades. The US military itself may even be at risk of collapse within two decades.

Michael Klare, author of a new book titled All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, summed up in a recent interview:

What happens when you have states collapsing, multiple wars happening in the Middle East and Africa and South America, and many hurricanes and disasters in the United States all at the same time? The US military doesn’t have enough troops or resources to both defend the United States and to address all of these foreign catastrophes. That’s what I call an all-hell-breaking-loose scenario, and the Pentagon knows very well that US forces aren’t prepared or capable to deal with it.

Of course, from the selfish vantage point of imperial power, the US armed forces and the political and security establishment, are primarily motivated to maintain US hegemony in a warming world in which many of their military bases around the globe are threatened by rising sea levels and increased incidence and severity of storms; as well as the ‘threats’ that other countries or ‘terrorist’ groups may pose in trying to take advantage of climate change.

Indeed, the Pentagon has long viewed climate change as a ‘destabilising force‘ and a ‘threat multiplier‘ – increasing the risk of war in the Middle East, Africa and around the globe as food, water and other resources diminish. As long ago as 2004, a previously secret Pentagon report prepared by strategic planners warned of climate wars being waged around the world. There could even be conflict in new areas, notably in the melting Arctic with oil resources and trade routes being fought over in the region.

For Andrew Neil, a high-profile commentator who for 25 years has enjoyed a privileged BBC platform, to dismiss serious concerns about climate wars is yet another symptom of the abysmal state of climate debate in UK national media.

Climate Agreements Are ‘Greenwash’, ‘Fake’, ‘Fraud’

In previous media alerts on climate, we have elucidated the severe threats to climate stability, civilisation and even human existence posed by the madness of corporate-driven globalisation and the imperialistic grasping at diminishing resources. Rather than once again reprising a list of these threats, and the underlying destructive nature of capitalism that is fuelling these threats, consider a recent pledge demonstrating what should be the obvious, honest responsibility of scientists.

‘Science has no higher purpose than to understand and help maintain the conditions for life to thrive on Earth’, is a core statement in a recently published ‘science oath for climate’. Climate scientists Chris Rapley, Sarah Bracking, Bill McGuire, Simon Lewis and Jonathan Bamber have invited others in the scientific community to join their initiative to prevent catastrophic climate disruption. Among their stated pledges is a commitment not to be hindered or intimidated by any sense of:

what might seem politically or economically pragmatic when describing the scale and timeframe of action needed to deliver the 1.5C and 2C commitments, specified in the Paris climate agreement. And to speak out about what is not compatible with the commitments, or is likely to undermine them.

This is especially relevant right now when the ‘MSM’ is selling the idea of President-elect Joe Biden as a harbinger of hope for the climate. The Guardian wrote approvingly of his supposed ‘climate bet’, namely: ‘putting jobs first will bring historic change’. Biden has pledged:

to clean up electricity by 2035 and spend $2tn on clean energy as quickly as possible within four years.

While conceding a cautious note about Biden’s reluctance ‘to be tougher on the fossil fuel industry’, the Guardian declared that his plan was ‘significant and historic’ and it ‘would be just the beginning of a brutal slog to transform the way the nation operates’.

The paper even published a 16-page ‘souvenir supplement’, heralding Biden’s presidency as a ‘new start‘; in much the same way as the Guardian and the rest of the corporate media welcomed Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House in 2008. Obama, of course, then went on to bomb seven Muslim-majority countries, paid lip service to the reduction of nuclear weapons (after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009), shared complicity in Saudia Arabia’s terror campaign against Yemen, as well as in Israel’s crushing of Palestinian human rights, and continued to subsidise the planet-wrecking fossil fuel sector.

We were told back then that Obama would ‘wipe the slate clean’. A ‘new dawn’ was declared. We would ‘learn to love America’ again. In reality, it was all about relaunching ‘Brand America’, so that US imperialism could continue unimpeded. Why should it be any different today, given the way the US system selects for corporate-friendly candidates?

It certainly won’t be. As Kevin Gosztola explained in an article for The Grayzone website:

An eye-popping array of corporate consultants, war profiteers, and national security hawks have been appointed by President-elect Joe Biden to agency review teams that will set the agenda for his administration. A substantial percentage of them worked in the United States government when Barack Obama was president. The appointments should provide a rude awakening to anyone who believed a Biden administration could be pressured to move in a progressive direction…

Of the two presidential ‘choices’ delivered by a corrupt, corporate-financed US electoral system of ‘democracy’, Biden was the lesser evil compared to Trump, the latter described by Noam Chomsky as ‘the worst criminal in human history’ for the threat he represented to climate stability:

There is nothing like this in history. It’s not breaking with the American tradition. Can you think of anyone in human history who has dedicated his efforts to undermining the prospects for survival of organized human life on earth?

But be under no illusion that Biden, representing and backed by powerful corporate and financial elites, and with a sordid record of supporting US crimes around the world, represents any kind of significant departure from business-as-usual for US power.

This grim reality has been ignored or overlooked in the overwhelmingly meek, hopelessly Panglossian reactions of the ‘policy experts’ and climate scientists canvassed by website Carbon Brief in the wake of the US election. Understandable to some extent, there was widespread welcoming of the prospect of the US rejoining the Paris climate agreement which Trump had infamously rejected.

Dr Rachel Cleetus, of the US-based Union for Concerned Scientists, told Carbon Brief:

President-elect Joe Biden and vice-president elect Kamala Harris’ victory marks a new day in the fight for bold, just and equitable climate policy in the US.

Dr Maisa Rojas Corradi, Director of the Centre for Climate and Resilience Research, University of Chile, said:

Biden’s victory will give a tremendous momentum to climate action, a momentum that was building up after the giant Asian countries announced carbon-neutrality compromises recently. This means that in this crucial decade we will be able to tackle the climate crisis seriously.

Dr Niklas Höhne and Dr Bill Hare, who run the Climate Action Tracker initiative, declared:

If president-elect Joe Biden goes ahead with his net-zero emissions pledge by 2050 for the US, this could shave 0.1C off global warming by 2100.

The madness of having to be grateful for the feeble hope of ‘shaving off’ 0.1C of catastrophic heating needs no comment.

One climate expert conspicuously missing from the list of over twenty experts consulted was Dr James Hansen, the pioneering climate scientist who famously warned the US Congress in 1988 of the dangers of global warming. Hansen’s honesty about the politics of climate is legendary. In 2009, we asked him how much had been achieved in the decades since he and others scientists had raised the climate alarm. In particular, we asked him to estimate the percentage of required action to address the climate crisis had actually been implemented by governments. His blunt answer? Precisely zero per cent.  Since then, carbon emissions, consumption and temperatures have continued to soar.

In 2015, Hansen was scathing about the Paris climate agreement:

It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.

In 2017, during the climate talks in Bonn, Hansen described the supposed political ambition of world leaders on climate as a ‘hoax’. He said:

As yet, these politicians are working more for the fossil fuel industry than they are for the public, in my opinion.

These are the kind of direct, honest and accurate statements that climate scientists should be making. Politicians need to be confronted with their chronic lack of action to tackle today’s – not tomorrow’s – climate emergency. Scientists should be explicit in declaring that the fossil fuel era needs to end.

Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg is right to call political leaders ‘hypocrites’ and to denounce them for delivering no more than empty words and greenwash at international climate summits. She said that leaders were happy to set targets for carbon emissions decades into the future. But when immediate cuts were demanded, they flinched. When asked if there was any politician anywhere promising the climate action required, she said, ‘If only’.

She added:

As long as we don’t treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash.

Pledges by the UK, China, Japan and other nations – including the US under Biden – to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or 2060 are largely meaningless, she believes:

They mean something symbolically, but if you look at what they actually include, or more importantly exclude, there are so many loopholes. We shouldn’t be focusing on dates 10, 20 or even 30 years in the future. If we don’t reduce our emissions now, then those distant targets won’t mean anything because our carbon budgets will be long gone.

Thunberg says that there is not a single political leader on the world stage who ‘gets it’ on climate. When asked about what she has learned from meeting people in power, she has some interesting and astute observations:

I’ve spoken to many world leaders, and sometimes I wish I had a hidden camera. People wouldn’t believe what they say. It’s very funny. They say: “I can’t do anything because I don’t have the support. You need to help me.” They become desperate. It’s like they are begging for me to help them persuade the public that we need climate action. What that tells me is people are underestimating their power and the power of democracy and of putting pressure on people in power.

There is hope in that message. We, the public, have strength in numbers. Politicians are not necessarily forced to do the bidding of corporate, financial and military elites. They can be made to do the will of the people. Or, if not, they need to be replaced by politicians who do represent public interests and public power. When it comes to human civilisation – human survival even – it is imperative that we exert that power.

This article was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 at 1:59am and is filed under Activism, Armistice Day, Boris Johnson, Climate Change, Environment, Extinction Rebellion, Fossil Fuel Emissions (FFE), Global Warming, Joe Biden, Paris 2015, UK Hypocrisy, UK Media, United Kingdom.

We’ve all got to be clear; this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.

Since that time, we have seen lockdowns, an ongoing government-backed fear campaign, fundamental rights being stripped away, dissent censored, inflated COVID-19 death numbers and the use of a flawed PCR test to label perfectly healthy individuals as COVID-19 ‘cases’ in order to fit the narrative of a ‘second wave’.

But, just for a moment, consider an alternative scenario.

The government is extremely worried about a substance that could be contributing to a spiralling public health crisis that has been decades in the making. It has been detected in food and in urine. The government has therefore decided to carry out mass urine testing. It has found millions of ‘cases’. The more it tests, the more ‘cases’ it finds. The government and the media promote the message we are all at risk and should get tested. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent to allow for the testing of the entire population.

All cafes, pubs, restaurants and food stores are locked down, aside from those designated to sell only food that is regarded as ‘safe’ by the government. All weddings, parties and get-togethers are banned because contaminated food might be passed around.

Severe restrictions are put in place because this ‘stuff’ is in the air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. And it is in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and even in our vaccines. Everyone is under virtual house arrest until this public health crisis is addressed.

Daily government briefings are held on TV with the PM and health officials in attendance. The PM tells everyone that this thing is linked to various conditions, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

Imagine that scenario. But the substance being referred to is very real. It is heavily associated with all the conditions mentioned and is present in our urine and food. But the government does nothing. It does not just do nothing but actively facilitates the marketing of this substance and collude with its manufacturers.

And the name of this ‘stuff’? Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. The main culprit — Monsanto’s Roundup. But it is not just glyphosate. It is the cocktail of agricultural chemicals that have been in use for decades.

The real public health crisis

Earlier this year, in a 29-page open letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason spent 11 pages documenting the spiralling rates of disease that she says (supported by numerous research studies cited) are largely the result of exposure to health-damaging agrochemicals, including glyphosate-based herbicides.

The amount of glyphosate-based herbicide sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a 10-fold increase. In her letter, Mason discussed links between multiple pesticide residues (including glyphosate) in food and steady increases in the number of cancers both in the UK as well as allergic diseases, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity and many other conditions.

Agrochemicals are a major contributory factor for the spikes in these diseases and conditions. This is the real public health crisis affecting the UK. Each year, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with treatments not making any difference to the numbers.

While there is much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on an underfunded NHS, the health service is already creaking. And people’s immune systems are already strongly compromised due to what Mason outlines. But do we see a ‘lockdown’ on the activities of the global agrochemical conglomerates? Not at all.

We see governments and public health bodies working hand in glove with the agrochemicals manufacturers to ensure ‘business as usual’.

It might seem strange to many that the UK government is seemingly going out of its way (by stripping people of their freedoms) under the guise of a public health crisis but is all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing one caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Unlike COVID-19, this is a ‘silent’ crisis that actually does affect all sections of the population and causes immense widespread suffering. It is silent because the mainstream media and various official reports in the UK have consistently ignored or downplayed the role of pesticides in fueling this situation.

Hundreds of lawsuits are pending against Bayer in the US, filed by people alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid).

The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. In 2017, in a public hearing in Brussels, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumour findings that had not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate.

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason has written numerous open letters to officials citing reams of statistical data to support the contention that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiraling rates of illness and disease, not least among children.

Regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the effects of dosing whole regions with chemicals have been largely ignored.

A report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council says that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.

Authored by Hilal Elver, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, UN special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:

Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.

The authors argue:

While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.

Elver says:

The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.

Tuncak states:

Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a “silent pandemic” of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.

According to Tuncak, increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result. But most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease, limiting our ability to hold those responsible to account.

He concludes:

The overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.

The authors were severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

Way back in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring raised the red flag about the use of harmful synthetic pesticides; yet, despite the warnings, the agrochemical giants have ever since been poisoning humans and the planet, raking in enormous profits.

Michael McCarthy, writer and naturalist, says that three generations of industrialised farming with a vast tide of poisons pouring over the land year after year after year since the end of the Second World War is the true price of pesticide-based agriculture, which society has for so long blithely accepted.

Power is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations which put profit and market control ahead of food security, health and nutrition and biodiversity. Due to their political influence and financial clout, these companies are waging a chemical warfare on nature and people, while seeking to convince us that their model of agriculture — based on proprietary seeds and chemicals — is essential for feeding a burgeoning global population.

Consider that none of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain: in the foetus, in children or in adults.

Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s showed that endocrine disrupters (EDCs) were changing humans and the environment, but this research was ignored by officials. Glyphosate is an EDC and a nervous system disrupting chemical.

In the book published in 1996 Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival Colborn and colleagues revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs. There was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of these chemicals can disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence and the functioning of the immune system.

In addition to glyphosate, EDCs include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine and dacthal.

In 2007, 25 experts in environmental health from 11 countries (including from the UK) met on the Faroes and contributed to this statement:

The periods of embryonic, foetal and infant development are remarkably susceptible to environmental hazards. Toxic exposures to chemical pollutants during these windows of increased susceptibility can cause disease and disability in infants, children and across the entire span of human life.

The Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) has residues of 123 different pesticides that impact the gut microbiome. Obesity is associated with low diversity of bacteria in the microbiome and glyphosate adversely affects or destroys much of the beneficial bacteria. Roundup (and other biocides) is linked to gross obesity, neuropsychiatric disorders and other chronic diseases, which are all on the rise and adversely impact brain development in children and adolescents.

Moreover, type 2 diabetes is associated with being very overweight. According to NHS data, almost four in five of 715 children suffering from it were also obese.

Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular health at Queen Mary University of London who is also the chair of the campaign group Action on Sugar, says:

Type 2 diabetes is a disaster for the child and their family and for the NHS. If a child gets type 2 diabetes, it’s condemning them to a lot of complications of that condition, such as blindness, amputations and kidney disease.

He went on to explain that we are in a crisis and that the government does not seem to be taking action. UK obesity levels now exceed those of the US.

The human microbiome is of vital importance to human health yet it is under chemical attack. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals.

Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. There is strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain.

Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London has found that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate cause a dramatic increase in the levels of two substances, shikimic acid and 3-dehydroshikimic acid, in the gut, which are a direct indication that the EPSPS enzyme of the shikimic acid pathway has been severely inhibited. Roundup and glyphosate affected the microbiome at all dose levels tested, causing shifts in bacterial populations.

A quarter of all food and over a third of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain pesticide cocktails, with some items containing traces of up to 14 different pesticides. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides.

Ian Boyd, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, says pesticides, once they have been authorised, are never reviewed.

Glyphosate is distributed to every organ of the body and has multiple actions: it is an herbicide, an antibiotic, a fungicide, an antiprotozoal, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.

In a paper published in King’s Law Journal –  ‘The Chemical Anthropocene: Glyphosate as a Case Study of Pesticide Exposures’ – the authors Alessandra Arcuri and Yogi Hale Hendlin state:

As the science against glyphosate safety mounts and lawsuits threaten its chemical manufacture’s profits, the next generation of GMO crops are being keyed to the pesticide dicamba, sold commercially as XtendiMax® – and poised to be the next glyphosate. Regulatory agencies have historically been quick to approve products but slow to reconsider regulations after the decades of accumulated harms become apparent.

They add that the entrenched asymmetries between public and ecological health and fast-to-market new chemicals is exacerbated by the seeming lack of institutionalised precautionary policies.

Britain and the US are in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis. These countries are experiencing not merely a slowdown in life expectancy, which in many other rich countries is continuing to lengthen, but the start of an alarming increase in death rates across all our populations, men and women alike. People are needlessly dying early.

Research by US-based EWG found glyphosate residues on popular oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars. Almost 75% of the 45 samples tested had glyphosate levels higher than what EWG scientists consider protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety. Disturbing levels of such residues have been detected in the UK too.

There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said:

These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).

Glyphosate also causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers have found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.

Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers say they saw “dramatic increases” in several pathologies affecting the second and third generations. The second generation had “significant increases” in testis, ovary and mammary gland diseases as well as obesity. In third-generation males, the researchers saw a 30% incidence of prostate disease — three times the rate of a control population. The third generation of females had a 40% incidence of kidney disease, or four times the rate of the controls.

More than one-third of the second-generation mothers had unsuccessful pregnancies, with most of those affected dying. Two out of five males and females in the third generation were obese.

Researchers call this phenomenon “generational toxicology” and they have seen it over the years in fungicides, pesticides, jet fuel, the plastics compound bisphenol A, the insect repellent DEET and the herbicide atrazine. At work are epigenetic changes that turn genes on and off, often because of environmental influences.

A study published in February 2019 found glyphosate increased the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by as much as 41%. A Washington State University study published in December 2019 found state residents living close to areas subject to treatments with the herbicide are one-third more likely to die an early death from Parkinson’s disease.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning. He says that Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

Moreover, strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

And yet, as Mason has described in her work, the UK government had colluded with Monsanto for many years.

Boris Johnson, in his first speech to parliament as PM, said:

Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules…

This could mean the irresponsible introduction of genetically modified Roundup Ready food crops to the UK, which would see the amount of glyphosate in British food reaching new levels (levels which are already disturbing).

So much for protecting public health.

Government collusion

David Cameron appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, to the board of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in 2010. He became Chairman in 2011. At one time or another, CropLife International´s member list has included BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. Many of these make their own formulated glyphosate.

Syngenta is a member of the European Glyphosate Task Force, which sought to renew (and succeeded in renewing) European glyphosate registration. Not surprisingly, the CRUK website denies that there is any link between pesticides and cancer.

In February 2019, at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector, UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of the Bayer Crop Science Division. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made her priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.

Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.

That statement was merely for public consumption and the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides.

But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.

In Mason’s report, ‘Why Does Bayer Crop Science Control Chemicals in Brexit Britain’, she states that Bayer is having secret meetings with the British government to determine which agrochemicals are to be used after Brexit once Britain is ‘free’ of EU restrictions and becomes as deregulated as the US.

Such collusion comes as little surprise as the government’s ‘strategy for UK life sciences’ is already dependent on funding from pharmaceutical corporations and the pesticides industry.

Syngenta’s parent company was in 2010 AstraZeneca. At that time, Syngenta and AstraZeneca were represented on the UK Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Foods, Consumer Products and the Environment. The founder of Syngenta, Michael Pragnell, was the Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) from 2011-2017. CRUK started by giving money (£450 million a year) to the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences and AstraZeneca provided 22 compounds to academic research to develop medicines. AstraZeneca manufactured six different anti-cancer drugs mainly aimed at breast and prostate cancer.

It seems like a highly profitable and cosy relationship between the agrochemical and pharmaceuticals sectors and the government at the expense of public health.

In finishing, let us take a brief look at the Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity.

The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.

ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT).

He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are impacting human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.

The reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery. The industry subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as neutral institutions.

And for the record, it is possible to farm productively and profitably without the use of synthetic agrochemicals – and to achieve food security. For instance, see the article ‘A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability’ based on one US farmer’s journey from chemical-dependent farming to organic on his 8,000-acre farm (discussed on the AgWeb site) or ‘The Untold Success Story of Agroecology in Africa’ in the journal Development (2015). From the Tigray region of Ethiopia to various high-level (UN) reports that have recommended agroecology there are many examples, too many to discuss here.

The UK government says it cares so much about the nation’s health (the infection mortality rate for COVID-19 appears to be similar to those of a bad seasonal flu) but has presided over and facilitated a genuine public health crisis for years. And it is now pumping billions of pounds of public money into a track, trace and test regime when it could have used it to boost overall NHS capacity; remember when the government stated that the initial lockdown was implemented to protect the NHS?

In fact, the government is spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an “unevaluated, underdesigned national programme leading to an insufficiently supported intervention – in many cases for the wrong people” says a recent editorial in the BMJ.

In the meantime, it is investing heavily in a (possibly mandatory) vaccine that based on the design of the trials – according to a recent article in the same journal – may have no discernible impact on saving lives or preventing serious outcomes or the transmission spread of infection.

Readers can access all Rosemary Mason’s reports on the academia.edu site

This article was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2020 at 5:46pm and is filed under Agrochemicals, Agroecology, Boris Johnson, COVID-19, Disinformation, EU, Food Security, Glyphosate, GMO, Health/Medical, Media, Monsanto (now Bayer), United Kingdom.

First, the commission’s headline verdict – though you would never know it from reading the media’s coverage – was that no case was found that Labour suffered from “institutional antisemitism”.

That, however, was precisely the claim that had been made by groups like the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Board of Deputies and prominent rabbis such as Ephraim Mirvis. Their claims were amplified by Jewish media outlets such as the Jewish Chronicle and individual journalists such as Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. All are now shown to have been wrong, to have maligned the Labour party and to have irresponsibly inflamed the concerns of Britain’s wider Jewish community.

My latest: In making an overtly partisan attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is actually likely to stoke very real antisemitism on the right https://t.co/ia7CbpRTUc

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 27, 2019

Not that any of these organisations or individuals will have to apologise. The corporate media – from the Mail to the Guardian – are continuing to mislead and misdirect on this issue, as they have been doing for the best part of five years. Neither Jewish leadership groups such as the Board of Deputies nor the corporate media have an interest in highlighting the embarrassing fact that the commission’s findings exposed their campaign against Corbyn as misinformation.

Breaches of procedure

What the report found instead were mainly breaches of party protocol and procedure: that complaints about antisemitism were not handled promptly and transparently.

But even here the issue was not really about antisemitism, as the report indicates, even if obliquely. Delays in resolving complaints were chiefly the responsibility not of Corbyn and his staff but of a party bureaucracy that he inherited and was deeply and explicitly hostile to him.

Senior officials stalled antisemitism complaints not because they were especially antisemitic but because they knew the delays would embarrass Corbyn and weaken him inside the party, as the leaked report of an Labour internal inquiry revealed in the spring.

My latest: Labour's explosive leaked report, showing how party officials plotted to destroy Corbyn, including by weaponising antisemitism, is being quietly swept under the carpet by the media and Labour's new leader Keir Starmer https://t.co/1m7WfRobhn

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) April 16, 2020

But again, neither the media nor Jewish leadership groups have any interest in exposing their own culpability in this false narrative. And the new Labour leadership, under Keir Starmer, has absolutely no incentive to challenge this narrative either, particularly as doing so would be certain to revive exactly the same kind of antisemitism smears, but this time directed against Starmer himself.

Too hasty and aggressive

The corporate media long ago styled Labour staff who delayed the complaints procedure to harm Corbyn as antisemitism “whistleblowers”. Many of them starred in last year’s BBC Panorama programme on Labour in which they claimed they had been hampered from carrying out their work.

My latest: With last night's Panorama programme on supposed 'institutional anti-semitism' in Labour, the BBC demonstrated that it has become a media attack dog in the hands of the ruling Conservative party https://t.co/dSDaaLBY0S

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 11, 2019

The equalities commission’s report subtly contradicts their claims, conceding that progress on handling complaints improved after senior Labour staff hostile to Corbyn – the “whistleblowers” very much among them – were removed from their posts.

Indeed, the report suggests the very opposite of the established media narrative. Corbyn’s team, far from permitting or encouraging delays in resolving antisemitism complaints, too often tried to step in to speed up the process to placate the corporate media and Jewish organisations.

In an example of having your cake and eating it, the commission castigates Corbyn’s staff for doing this, labelling it “political interference” and terming these actions unfair and discriminatory. But the unfairness chiefly relates to those being complained against – those accused of antisemitism – not those doing the complaining.

If Labour had an identifiable problem in relation to antisemitism complaints, according to the report, it seems to have occurred mostly in terms of the party being too hasty and aggressive in tackling antisemitism, in response to relentless criticism from the media and Jewish organisations, rather than being indulgent of it.

Again, no one in the media, Jewish leadership organisations, or the new Labour leadership wants this finding to be highlighted. So it is being ignored.

Flawed approach

The second conclusion, which I lacked the space to deal with properly in my Middle East Eye piece, relates more specifically to the commission’s own flawed approach in compiling the report rather than the media’s misrepresentation of the report.

As I explained in my earlier piece, the commission itself is very much an establishment body. Even had it wanted to, which it most certainly did not, it was never going to stick its neck out and rubbish the narrative presented by the establishment media.

On procedural matters, such as how the party handled antisemitism complaints, the equalities commission kept the report as vague as possible, obfuscating who was responsible for those failings and who was supposed to benefit from Corbyn staff’s interference. Both issues had the potential to fatally undermine the established media narrative.

Instead, the commission’s imprecision has allowed the media and Jewish organisations to interpret the report in self-serving ways – ways convenient to their existing narrative about “institutional antisemitism” in Labour.

Scouring social media

But the report misleads not only in its evasion and ambiguity. It does so more overtly in its seemingly desperate effort to find examples of Labour party “agents” who were responsible for the “problem” of antisemitism.

It is worth pondering what it would have looked like had the commission admitted it was unable to find anyone to hold to account for antisemitism in Labour. That would have risked blowing a very large hole in the established media narrative indeed.

So there must have been a great deal of pressure on the commission to find some examples. But extraordinarily – after five years of relentless claims of “institutional antisemitism” in Labour, and of organisations like the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Jewish Labour Movement scouring through Labour members’ social media accounts – the commission is able to muster sufficient evidence against only two individuals.

Two!

Both are found responsible for “illegal harassment” of Jewish people.

In those circumstances, therefore, it is important to critically examine just what evidence exists that these two individuals exhibited antisemitic attitudes or harassed Jews. Presumably, this pair’s behaviour was so egregious, their antisemitism so unmistakable, that the commission felt it had no choice but to single them out and hold the party responsible for failing to punish them summarily (without, of course, exhibiting at the same time any “political interference”).

I won’t test readers’ patience by examining both examples. In any case, I have dealt with one of them, Ken Livingstone, London’s former mayor, at length in previous blog posts. They can be read here and here, for example.

Outward appearances

Let us focus instead on the other person named: a minor Labour party figure named Pam Bromley, who was then a local councillor for the borough of Rossendale, near Bolton.

First, we should note that the “harassment” she was deemed to have carried out seems to have been limited to online comments posted to social media. The commission does not suggest she expressed any hatred of Jews, made threats against any Jews individually or collectively, or physically attacked anyone Jewish.

I don’t know anything about Bromley, apart from the handful of comments attributed to her in the report. I also don’t know what was going on inside her head when she wrote those posts. If the commission knows more, it does not care to share that information with us. We can only judge the outward appearance of what she says.

One social media post, it is true, does suggest a simplistic political outlook that may have indicated an openness to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories – or what the commission terms a “trope”. Bromley herself says she was making “general criticisms about capitalism”. Determining antisemitic conduct on the basis of that one post – let alone allowing an entire party of 500,000 members to be labelled “institutionally antisemitic” for it – might seem more than a little excessive.

But notably the problematic post was made in April 2018 – shortly after Corbyn’s staff wrestled back control of the complaints procedure from those hostile to his project. It was also the same month Bromley was suspended from the party. So if the post was indeed antisemitic, Corbyn’s Labour lost no time in dealing with it.

Did Bromley otherwise demonstrate a pattern of posting antisemitic material on social media that makes it hard to dispute that she harboured antisemitic motives? Were her comments so obviously antisemitic that the Labour party bureaucracy should have sanctioned her much sooner (even if at the time Corbyn’s staff had no control over the disciplinary process to do so)?

Let us examine the two comments highlighted by the commission in the main section of the report, which they deem to constitute the most clear-cut examples of Bromley’s antisemitism.

Raw emotions

The first was posted on Facebook, though strangely the commission appears not to know when:

Had Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party pulled up the drawbridge and nipped the bogus AS [antisemitism] accusations in the bud in the first place we would not be where we are now and the fifth column in the LP [Labour Party] would not have managed to get such a foothold … the Lobby has miscalculated … The witch hunt has created brand new fightback networks … The Lobby will then melt back into its own cesspit.

The strong language doubtless reflects the raw emotions the antisemitism claims against Corbyn’s supporters provoked. Many members understood only too well that the Labour party was riven by a civil war and that their socialist project was at stake. But where exactly is the antisemitism in Bromley’s tirade?

In the report, the commission says it considered the reference to a “fifth column” as code for Jews. But why? The equalities commission appears to have placed the worst possible interpretation on an ambiguous comment and then advanced it as an “antisemitic trope” – apparently a catch-all that needed no clarification.

But given what we now know – at least since the leaking of the internal Labour report in the spring – it seems far more likely Bromley, in referring to a “fifth column”, was talking about the party bureaucracy hostile to Corbyn. Most of those officials were not Jewish, but exploited the antisemitism claims because those claims were politically helpful.

Interpreted that way – and such an interpretation fits the facts presented in the leaked internal report – Bromley’s comment is better viewed as impolite, even hurtful, but probably not antisemitic.

Joan Ryan, an MP who was then head of Labour Friends of Israel – part of the lobby Bromley is presumably referring to – was not Jewish. But she was clearly very much part of the campaign to oust Corbyn using antisemitism as a stick to beat him and his supporters with, as an Al-Jazeera undercover documentary exposed in early 2017.

Ryan, we should remember, was instrumental in falsely accusing a Labour party member of an “antisemitic trope” – a deception that was only exposed because the exchange was secretly caught on film.

Internecine feud

Here is the second comment by Bromley highlighted by the commission. It was posted in late 2019, shortly after Labour had lost the general election:

My major criticism of him [Corbyn] – his failure to repel the fake accusations of antisemitism in the LP [Labour Party] – may not be repeated as the accusations may probably now magically disappear, now capitalism has got what it wanted.

Again, it seems clear that Bromley is referring to the party’s long-standing internecine feud, which would become public knowledge a few months later with the leaking of the internal report.

Here Bromley was suggesting that the media and anti-Corbyn wing of the party would ease up on the antisemitism allegations – as they indeed largely have done – because the threat of Corbyn’s socialist project had been ended by a dismal election result that saw the Tories gain a commanding parliamentary majority.

It could be argued that her assessment is wrong, but how is it antisemitic – unless the commission believes “capitalism” is also code for “Jews”?

But even if Bromley’s comments are treated as indisputably antisemitic, they are hardly evidence of Corbyn’s Labour party indulging antisemitism, or being “institutionally antisemitic”. As noted, she was suspended by the party in April 2018, almost as soon Corbyn’s team managed to gain control of the party bureaucracy from the old guard. She was expelled last February, while Corbyn was still leader.

Boris Johnson’s racism

It is instructive to compare the certainty with which the commission treats Bromley’s ambiguous remarks as irrefutable proof of antisemitism with its complete disregard for unmistakably antisemitic comments from Boris Johnson, the man actually running the country. That lack of concern is shared, of course, by the establishment media and Jewish leadership organisations.

The commission has repeatedly rejected parallel demands from Muslim groups for an investigation into the ruling Conservative party for well-documented examples of Islamophobia. But no one seems to be calling for an investigation of Johnson’s party for antisemitism.

Johnson himself has a long history of making overtly racist remarks, from calling black people “piccanninies” with “watermelon smiles” to labelling Muslim women “letterboxes”.

Jews have not avoided being stigmatised either. In his novel 72 Virgins, Johnson uses his authorial voice to suggest that Jewish oligarchs run the media and are able to fix an election result.

In a letter to the Guardian, a group of Jewish Corbyn supporters noted Johnson’s main Jewish character in the novel, Sammy Katz, was described as having a “proud nose and curly hair”, and he was painted “as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit”.