You can only support the current manifestation of late-stage capitalism, if you believe that massive inequality of wealth is necessary to wealth creation, or if you believe that the total amount of wealth is unimportant so long as a very small minority are extremely wealthy.
“Trickledown economics” is at heart simply a statement of the idea that massive inequality of wealth is necessary to wealth creation. There is no evidence for it.
The truth is, of course, that the poor ultimately benefit only from the economic activity of the poor. But not nearly as much as the rich benefit from the economic activity of the poor.
Taking money off the poor does not lead to an increase in wealth creation. If you look at the billions the Labour government is seeking to remove from the disabled, that is not only money taken away from them, it is money taken out of the wider economy.
It seems astonishing that the Labour Party has forgotten the entire message of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake. But then, the Labour Party expelled Ken Loach for opposing the genocide of Palestinians.
Those on benefits have a much higher propensity to spend than the more wealthy elements of society as they have no choice; they need to spend all their income to survive and enjoy a minimal acceptable standard of living. This income is spent on the local goods and services they need, again to a much higher degree than that of wealthier people.
Much of this spend benefits the landlord class, but it is almost all within the UK economy and it has a multiplier effect on economic activity. All of this is pretty obvious. By simply taking this money out of the economy (and it has no real relationship to taxes and revenue) the government is reducing the overall size of the economy.
This austerity is the opposite of pro-growth. It is absolutely anti-growth. It achieves the precise opposite of the alleged goal of Labour’s economic policy.
All this is designed to reduce the fiscal deficit, allegedly. But reducing economic activity will reduce revenue. It is a death spiral. If the aim were actually to reduce the fiscal deficit, taxing those who have money would be far more sensible than taking money from those who do not.
But actually that is not the object at all. The object is to convince the neoliberal finance system that this is a safely neoliberal government, willing to hurt the poor and leave the wealthy untouched.
That system brought down Liz Truss for failing to acknowledge orthodoxy on the fiscal deficit. The strange thing is that Truss was actually right on the non-importance of this shibboleth. Where she was wrong was in a desire to decrease still further taxation on the wealthy, rather than increase spending on the poor; but her attitude to deficit was not wrong.
A higher deficit only leads to an increase in interest rates if you wish to seek to maintain the value of your currency in international markets. But like so many of these economic targets, the justification of this is a matter of convention more than reason. I have seen massive swings in the value of sterling over my lifetime, which have had little impact on the UK’s steady economic decline, although a habitual tendency to over-valuation has contributed to the wipeout of British manufacturing industry.
We now have Rachel Reeves wedded to Gordon Brown’s doctrine on fiscal spend, that led to the horrors of PFI and paved the way for austerity. Yet when the Establishment want to bail out the bankers, unlimited money can simply be created, and when they want to boost the military, unlimited public spending is immediately possible.
New Labour’s economic policy is Thatcherism, pure and simple.
The truth is we do not really need economic growth. The UK economy produces enough wealth for everybody to live free of poverty and in real comfort. The problem is the distribution of that wealth. We live in a society where, astonishingly, 1% of the population own 54% of the wealth.
You can argue about the precise statistic but the massive inequality is clear. The cause of poverty is inequality. The answer is to reduce inequality in a variety of ways – not only by progressive taxation but also by changing the ownership structures of enterprises.
The purpose of reducing poverty and increasing comfort for the majority is to spread happiness. Eternal economic growth is not a necessity for this. Happiness is not merely derived from possession of stuff, and owning more stuff is not the panacea.
Happiness arises from comfort, good relationships, active and engaged minds and a balanced society. A society which prioritises the libertine wealthy over caring for its disabled can never be balanced and can never be happy.
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Hear hear. Once again we have ended up with a Tory government wedded to discredited neoliberal policies. Those of us who saw light at the end of the austerity tunnel with the election of Corbyn to the leadership, allowed ourselves a few brief months of hope for real change, before it was utterly crushed by the forces of the establishment. As Theresa May said, ‘We will never allow you to become Prime Minister’. I actually heard her say it, and thought that the power of mass enthusiasm and the emergence of the youth vote would prove her wrong.
Craig Murray was right about the effect of taking spending power away from people who are already poor. It just makes their area poorer. Give money to the rich and they bank it, spend it outwith their area or lodge it off shore.
However, the Labour Party are continuing with Tory solution:
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
On the Daniel Blake theme, and the plan to get more DWP employees (‘work coaches’ doubling as suspecters and sanctioners) to help more people with complex conditions. Newer reports indicate that, many thousands of times a month, DWP staff still:
fail to record that a person had “complex needs”, in the section showing if they need additional support.
fail to record a summary of the claimant’s additional support.
make other failures around additional support and homelessness.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-make-tens-of-thousands-of-life-threatening-errors-while-planning-more-interaction-with-disabled-claimants/
Also on that site, another person who got personal ‘Independence Payments’ has died alone in squalor. And actually payment had been stopped, wrongly without safeguarding checks, because he hadn’t returned a form in time, a few weeks before he died.
Someone should leak the training guidance given to these “work coaches”.
“Pigs” of various different kinds (as the Black Panthers would have put it) are increasingly off the leash in Britain – not just social workers, schoolteachers, police, medics, but it’s everywhere you look, everywhere you go – GP receptionists, c***s from the local council, utility companies, banks, insurers, etc. Lying, thieving, restricting access to what people need, mugging and degrading people.
Places with signs up saying “Do not abuse our staff” are often the worst.
And still there are a large number of scared people who worship the “NHS”. When you say “the state health service” to them, they are so stupid that they ask “You mean the NHS?” Edward Bernays was absolutely right about people thinking in buzzphrases. These people think you’re a weirdo if you stand back from something so as to try to understand it, to try to understand what type of thing it is. They are zombies.
Only 1000 “work coaches” are in the plan at first, I see, but the number is likely to shoot up, under this title or another, now that hate is being whipped up against the disabled.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bolsters-employment-support-to-unlock-work-for-sick-and-disabled-people
“The plans will see 1,000 existing Work Coaches deployed in 2025/26 to deliver intensive voluntary support to around 65,000 sick and disabled people – helping them to break down barriers to opportunity, drive growth and unlock the benefits of work.”
How many of the 65000 will actually survive the next year?
None of this alters the lack of jobs, a state policy since the 70s.
I shall play devil’s avocado and try to justify these proposed welfare cuts. Currently just over half of the working age population is not what you might call “productively employed”. Meaning they are working in the public sector, unemployed, on the sick, whatever. Being paid for by taxpayers. The remaining half working in the private sector are paying the taxes to support the other half. How can this be right?
Individual benefits are not necessarily especially generous by themselves but if you stack them right (housing benefit, PIP, get your kids spuriously labelled as ADHD, etc.) then it can be and is realistic to add them up to a very decent household income. Then add on a completely free car which up to three family members are permitted to drive; one in five of new cars sold in the UK goes to Motability. And let’s not forget exemptions and discounts for council tax.
Benefits have been allowed by successive governments to run out of control. Cottage industries exist to coach and navigate claimants through the process; how to get one to four points on each element of a PIP claim for example, which is not straightforward unless you know the correct answers to the questions. The most savage injustice is the effective discrimination against naive people who actually do deserve support.
Benefits are not taxable. Who in their right mind would pay the costs of commuting to work in a hard entry-level job to achieve a financial result a negligible few quid more than their on-benefits neighours who have their entire week free to do whatever they want? How many times recently have you tried to buy a service (meal in a pub?) only to be told that sorry not available as we can’t get the staff?
I hope this doesn’t sound as if I am a cruel bastard who wants to send disabled kids up chimneys but please, look at our economy staggering towards collapse. The UK is broke – taxes are already at a historic high and the rest of the world is increasingly reluctant to lend any more to us (check the returns we are having to offer on 10-year gilts). The only remaining option is to spend less.
“I hope this doesn’t sound as if I am a cruel bastard”, well unfortunately you do. What you neglect to consider is the financial inequality in the UK and the lack of real jobs. Serving meals in a pub is not the kind of job you can raise a family on or pay a mortgage with.
Maybe consider arseholes like the CEO of Heathrow, who is paid around £500,000 a year but is quite happy to close one of the busiest airports on the planet, due to incompetence, but with no consequences for him. How about heavily taxing people like him. Or maybe you think half a million a year is fine for an incompetent manager.
The state is out to screw the poor, if that adds to the benefits bill, then I have no problem, fuck the state.
So, stop pubs serving meals, because that’s not a “real job”?
Any other “not real jobs” you’d like to get rid of?
“Individual benefits are not necessarily especially generous by themselves but if you stack them right (housing benefit, PIP, get your kids spuriously labelled as ADHD, etc.) then it can be and is realistic to add them up to a very decent household income. ”
If you design your benefits system so that people can take the piss, then people will take the piss. The answer is to manage the system properly, so that the piss-takers are prevented from doing so, not to kick piss takers and genuine claimants off the system willy-nilly. There is much complaint about laziness when it comes to people who are not working, but very little about laziness of people who are working, which is surprising, because a lazy bureaucrat on £200,000 pa costs the country a lot more than a lazy doley on less than a tenth of that. Most of the problems with the benefit system are because of complexity being substituted for decision-making by those who are employed to operate the system in an effort to make the system operable by fewer people taking less responsibility. However, it is much eaqsier to find loopholes in a complex system of rules than one that depends on individual judgement.
“Who in their right mind would pay the costs of commuting to work in a hard entry-level job to achieve a financial result a negligible few quid more than their on-benefits neighours who have their entire week free to do whatever they want?”
Who in their right mind would drive several hundred miles and stay in not very good accommodation to work hard all week for no money whatsoever? A volunteer on a heritage railway, that’s who. Money is not the only motivator and, anyone whose life is governed by what their neighbours do and don’t do, should really take a good long look at themselves. Why would they care what their neighbours are getting. It’s what they do and what they get that counts. There’s always going to be someone better off than them and there’s always going to be someone worse off. If the former makes them bitter and the latter makes them proud then they have a very sorry life ahead of them. That besides, the benefit trap is very real, but that is a fault with the system and the answer is to correct the fault, not remove the system.
“The only remaining option is to spend less.”
Well, they could start by not sending billions of pounds to prop up a corrupt regime in eastern Europe whose sole virtue is that they were attacked by a country we are supposed to hate. However, the problem the government faces is that all the big budgets have powerful friends to defend them, mostly the people who instigated the expenditure to benefit themselves in the first place. That leaves the big budgets with no powerful friends, like Health, Education and Benefits as the only ones where it is politically possible to make savings.
Trump has shown with his closure of the US Agency for International Development that whole departments can exist that do almost nothing useful beyond solving the problems caused by their own existence. However, abset a Trump figure in the UK, the well-renumerated people who head up such organisations are ideally placed to make sure tha axe never comes within swinging distance of their budgets.
The British government is planning to increase its spending, not reduce it. Weapons and construction contracts figure large.
More vacancies equals fewer benefit claimants. Apropos, how much does it cost to keep rich bastards in idleness?
Why suppose the kids are “spuriously” labelled as ADHD?
I couldn’t disagree more. Suffice to say that in my view, we still need much more Milei than Reeves/Starmer.
And on benefits, I currently have my own experiences with recipients who game the system at our expense, money and safety-wise.
Our neighbours, a white British mother and her daughter, live in a council flat with 5 dogs (they got a pitbull breeding side hustle going on, quite common in those circles). They never walk them and rarely let them out into the garden, as they know that this is illegal and that they may at most have 1 dog. Therefore, the dogs are deranged, aggressive and a danger to the whole neighbourhood, with two attacks reported already.
As they let them do their business inside mostly, the smell and filth in there and from there is massive. They never pick up the poo left in the garden either. RSPCA, police, council or MP don’t give a fig.
The two people sleep during the day and are up through the night, smoking weed, disturbing our and other neighbours sleep, as they are often yelling at each other, get a mid nightly food delivery and let the dogs bark then.
The daughter is about 17 years old and probably hasn’t seen the inside of a school since 5 years, nor is she or will she ever be in training or work.
They are obviously playing the mental health card.
But they aren’t sick, just very lazy and bad people who behave anti-socially 24/7.
They also get a brand new car, with seemingly daily car washes.
They also get food deliveries twice a day, do no groceries shopping or cooking on their own.
The cost of all this to the taxpayer is obviously enormous.
I reckon you have to make at least 100k year gross to be able to afford that lifestyle.
They are also taking away this prime central london council flat from a key worker with a child, like a police officer: our neighbourhood officer and her daughter would be the ideal occupant for that flat, instead, she has to commute 1 1/2 hours each way.
The police, MP and council don’t give a fig.
Oh, and btw, the flat was empty for almost 2 years when the former tenants moved out, because the council couldn’t bother, as it probably was forgotten about.
A solicitor dealing with them told us that the council is so poor at managing its properties, that he estimates that a quarter if its properties are empty, not known about them and/or not paying any rent.
So, spare me the whining.
Yes… and – and – they get flown by private jet provided by ‘the social’ to the Bahamas twice a month, yes they do, and they taunt us with pictures of themselves being chauffeured around there in a Rolls Royce provided by ‘the social’, and – and….
All of that is quite common in “those circles” 🙂 And in between the two food deliveries every day, they often have visits from expensive tattooists and nail experts, and I’ve got a detailed log of every time their valet has taken their car to the car wash and it always comes back smelling of Harrods shampoo. And Alf Garnett, he didn’t know the half of it. They’re obviously on sickness benefit – patently obviously, you’ve just got to look at them – and the MP does nothing about it. They sleep 30 hours a day and spend the other 40 being anti-social, those types. There’s probably dog poo on their carpet, in between the empty pizza boxes. I don’t reckon they know what toilet paper is. Every breath of air they take, they’re stealing it from a key worker like a policeman.
What’s the modern equivalent of “keeping coal in the bath”?
Mind you, I remember someone saying many years ago that his parents kept the coal in the bath because there wasn’t anywhere else indoors that could be so easily cleaned when the coal was removed to have a bath and nowhere outdoors where it wouldn’t be nicked.
There might be a few scroungers but they are in the absolute minority, and if they exist it’s the broken system that allows it to happen. Try visiting some of the deprived areas in the UK, it’s not a bed of roses. This sort of crap is ceaslessly pedalled by the right wing MSM who hate the less well off as much as they love the establishment.
Times headline: A quarter of Britons now disabled
https://www.thetimes.com/article/dab811c7-04c8-46b9-ade5-8a46d3957db0?shareToken=faa2f4fcdd68df1c5a250f1d7ea4e14c
It just can’t be true. One in four people disabled! They are making it up so they can sign on.
Or if it is true then what has happened recently to send people’s mental health en masse down the toilet?
Well it’s in the Times, so it must be true. Would Rupert Murdoch lie to you?
“what has happened recently to send people’s mental health en masse down the toilet?”, think about it buddy !
A large proportion of people in Britain (more than 40% of adults) really are chronically ill.
And as for “what has happened recently to send people’s mental health en masse down the toilet”, maybe read as far as the strapline of that article in the Times: “Two million more people than before the pandemic say they struggle to function because of poor mental health”. Also, you know those little TV things people carry nowadays??
The cops are smashing their way into Quaker meetings and the government and media are whipping up hatred against disabled people and support for strengthening the military. This really does not look good…
Comprehensive enshittification of the country, is the answer. Quite easy really.
It’s entirely the fault of the corrupt, incompetent regime that’s even now taking a relative pittance from pensioners & disabled.
Whilst spunking tens of billions away, on stupid shit at home & abroad.
Oh come on, SB, they have personal experience of people on benefits taking the piss. This proves all benefit claimants are like that, surely?
Three possibilities occur to me:
(1) Your neighbours are agents of our secret service, or that of an allied nation, working undercover.
(2) Your neighbours have connections to an international criminal organisation (maybe a drug cartel) who have been able to corrupt the police, your local council, and all national government agencies.
(3). This is a total pack of lies.
If possibilities (1) or (2) are correct, you can easily be identified and traced, and you, your family, and your good neighbours can be neutralised by any means considered necessary in the interests of that organisation.
However, since anyone not already complicit with their activities will believe possibility (3), I think you are probably safe for the foreseeable future.
obviously that family typifies EVERY benefit claimant /sarcasm
So just because you have personal experience of one family taking the piss, you think that thousands of claimants should be deprived of their benefits? Would you also call for everyone under 25 to have their driver’s licence taken away because one teenager in your street crashed a car when drunk? How about taking everyone’s pets away because someone you know was cruel to their dog, or every child under 5 away from their parents because parents of your acquaintance neglected theirs and it died?
JayBee
Needless to say, any household causing such a disturbance to neighbours on a daily basis – or even intermitently – would be sorted out by their local council/environmental health dept if anyone complained about it, who obviously have a duty to do so. And your claim that the ‘RSPCA, police, council or MP don’t give a fig’ is complete B/S, if you don’t mind me saying so. But you had to throw that one in so as to account for why it’s been going on for such a long time.
to account for your claim that it’s been going on a long time, that is
It reminds me of people claiming that a speed camera near where they live is obscured by foliage (and so drivers are getting fined etc because of it being obscured). I came across posters making the claim on numerous occasions over a period of years, and each and every time I did, I’d post asking them where the camera is situated exactly, but never-ever got an answer. Not once! I would also ask if they had reported it to their local council and/or local police force and, if not, why not. And I also pointed out that all static speed cameras have a relatively large warning sign prior to the camera. Needless to say, it was the anti-camera groups behind it.
@ JayBee
“Obviously”….why?
I’ll spare you the whining because you’re doing it well enough for both of us.
Whether this is true or not, you are condemning millions who are dependant on benefits because of a single case.
Yes, I know it’s slightly off topic, but it involves the Starmerfuhrer:
30+ Met police smash down Quaker meeting house doors to raid anti-genocide gathering
Quakers in Britain have strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship by a gang of Met Police officers last night, which they describe as “a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo”.
The police, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the Quakers’ Westminster Meeting House and arrested six women campaigners who were meeting peacefully in a hired room – the first time in living memory that someone has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house, according to the religious group.
Police smashed the front door of the building without warning or attempting to gain peaceful entry first by simply ringing the bell…
https://skwawkbox.org/2025/03/28/30-met-police-smash-down-quaker-meeting-house-doors-to-raid-anti-genocide-gathering/
It’s hard to believe, but there you have it, but this is Starmer’s Britain now. I wonder if any, or some of the MSM have reported on the episode. I doubt it, somehow. But it reminded me of something I happened to come across yesterday evening, which I’d forgotten about. Here’s the intial part of it:
Protest Measures
Volume 745: debated on Thursday 8 February 2024
The Minister for Security
(Tom Tugendhat)
With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement on new Government measures to tackle unacceptable behaviour at protests.
In the aftermath of the horrific attacks on 7 October, many people took to the streets to make their views heard. Many did so peacefully and respectfully. I had the great privilege of marching alongside many people, including some in this House, against antisemitism on the streets of both Manchester and London. Sadly, those protests do not tell the whole story.
Over the past few months, we have all seen disturbing and distressing examples of hateful abuse, of serious damage, and of law-abiding citizens being intimidated and prevented from going about their daily life. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy, but when we see people hurling racist abuse, desecrating national memorials of great significance to our country, or taking flares to marches to cause disruption and fear, the only reasonable response is outrage and disgust….
It’s all total bollox of course… hateful abuse?!… serious damage?!… law-abiding citizens being intimidated and prevented from going about their daily life?!… taking flares to marches to cause disruption and fear.
Apart from all the rest, I’ve not seen anyone with flares on marches, but even if there WAS, how the ff would that cause disruption and fear…. Oh, right, it just occured to me that such flares would perhaps bring to mind the big Nazi rallies, and THAT is what Tugendhat was alluding to and hinting at, and implying that it was done deliberately for that reason – ie to evoke such memories, and fear, as such. What a total c8nt!
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-02-08/debates/71E44C6F-BD00-48EE-B0CA-42A8FD45C4B7/ProtestMeasures
Oops, I just noticed that I missed out the bit about ‘desecrating national memorials of great significance to our country’.
“With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement on new Government measures to tackle unacceptable behaviour at protests.
In the aftermath of the horrific attacks on 7 October, many people took to the streets to make their views heard.
Some people supported ethnic supremacy and genocide, as I do. Many did so peacefully and respectfully. I had the great privilege of marching alongside many people, including some in this House, against antisemitism on the streets of both Manchester and London. Sadly, those protests do not tell the whole story.Over the past few months, we have all seen
some people oppose ethnic supremacy and genocidedisturbing and distressing examples of hateful abuse, of serious damage, and of law-abiding citizens being intimidated and prevented from going about their daily life.”Have the police released the six women yet?
Tasers and smashing down the Quakers’ door. FFS!!
Just did a search to see how widely it’s been covered, or not, and it certainly seems to have got at least some coverage. The Morning Star posted the following article seven hours ago (at the time of typing). Here’s a few passages from it:
Six Youth Demand campaigners arrested while attending meeting in London
Six supporters of campaign group Youth Demand have been arrested while attending a meeting in central London.
More than 30 officers made the arrests at a welcome talk being held at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster at around 7.30pm on Thursday, the group said.
The Met said they were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Youth Demand said the meeting was “an opportunity to share plans for non-violent civil resistance actions” due to take place in April, and that one of those arrested was a journalist.
The group said police repression had “reached a new level” and a number of houses had been raided on Thursday and today as part of the operation.
Youth Demand, who describe themselves as a “new youth resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide,” began carrying out acts of civil disobedience last year.
Its demands on the government include stopping all trade with Israel and raising money from “the super rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning…
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/six-youth-demand-campaigners-arrested-while-attending-meeting-in-london
OMG, they’re obviously terrorists! Just the sort of people who carry flares on marches, and that sort of thing. Lock them up and throw away the key. Perhaps President Trumpet would be kind enough to take them all and stick them in Guantanamo, being the kind-hearted, benevolent personage he is.
In a Jewish News article I just this minute checked out (which at first glance appears to be almost identical to the MS article) it says that ‘The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.’
Neither article says anything about whether or not they’ve been released yet Brian. Perhaps they’re being tortured this very moment as I write/type this comment… BTW, your amendments were hilarious!
Thanks for that link, @Allan. So there have been house raids too.
Goodness knows why people are linking Palestine with climate change, but that is a mistake. This is asuming some are doing it with good intentions. Genocide and wall insulation are separate issues.
From that Morning Star link:
“Previous demonstrations by Youth Demand included three people hanging a banner and laying rows of children’s shoes outside Sir Keir Starmer’s home in April last year. Leonorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences following the incident.”
Suspended prison sentences? That’s to scare the crap out of them and to stop them doing anything else for which they might possibly get arrested, which nowadays seems to be almost anything other than bending over and taking it.
I wish people would stop talking about “journalism” and actually get some decent statements out. Some suggestions:
1 * Name the six arrestees unless there’s good reason not to
2 * Name the police – bullies tend not to like publicity
3 * Put out a description of police actions – a photograph of the smashed doorframe? was anyone pushed about? make statements on video if thought appropriate – “I was terrified” etc.
4 * Arrange protests preferably including outside any courthouse where the arrestees will appear
5 * Publish video of said protests
6 * Have a clear demand: e.g. free the arrestees (quite possible to do this before they appear in court), drop the charges, or stop the persecution
7 * Try to get some control – e.g. the police want an “interview under caution”? Fine if it’s livestreamed. Something like that. Think where the enemy’s weak points are.
8 * Think outside the box and maybe read Saul Alinsky. Screw journalism. Always make it personal!
It’s obvious that the zionists employ a large team of snooper/spies to monitor and track any pro-palestinian/anti-genocide meetings. As soon as they discover a meeting the blackshirts are called up to disrupt it. And, when I say employ I actually mean that there is a lot of jewish/Israeli money being funneled into these anti-democratic activities.
And, Keir (I’m a zionist) Starmer and his zionist collaborators are on board with the clamp downs whilst they sign away our assets to support nazis in Ukraine and Israel.
> Genocide and wall insulation are separate issues.
Let me assure you once the Palestinians are dealt with, the new development will be properly insulated, and all AC units will be solar powered.
– “Goodness knows why people are linking Palestine with climate change…”
Because fossil fuels are the life (or should that be death) blood of war. All those tanks, aircraft, military ships and boats, they all run on liquid fuels, and the arms industries and fossil fuel industries are extremely close; check out Lord Walney, who drafted the new anti-protest laws. Consider also Operation Ajax in 1953, where BP had MI6 and the CIA overthrow the elected and popular government of Iran, to turn Iran back into a monarchy that could be cheaply bribed to sell its fossil fuels at the prices Western capitalism would rather pay.
Empires fight with fossil liquid fuel, and for fossil liquid fuel. War and fossil fuel are currently inseparable.
Emissions, and military dominance of the Middle East (including arming Israel to the teeth) are simply two cheeks of the same arse.
Oh, and the “flares” are actually smoke canisters. Flares are dangerous; they’re rockets. Smoke canisters are theatrics; harmless. But the term “flares” has caught on; even protestors erroneously use it.
You can bet they wouldn’t have broken into a Mosque in the same way.
Well, yes, because the Muslims might have actually fought back, unlike the pacifist Quakers. You can bet that they wouldn’t have broken into a US Baptist Church the same way, either.
– “You can bet they wouldn’t have broken into a Mosque in the same way.”
Maybe not in Britain, but Israel does it all the time. Often they just bomb them to pieces with everyone inside. Westminster supports this.
The British police raided the Finsbury Park mosque in 2003, but I don’t recall any other police raids in Britain on mosques, churches, or other places of worship, until the recent one against the Quakers.
The Zionists have destroyed churches as well as mosques. In October 2023 their airforce bombed a church in Gaza with 500 people sheltering inside it.
I wonder whether the British police who raided the Quakers in London were accompanied by Shomrim?
The Morning Star? The paper the BBC likes to pretend doesn’t exist and never refers to when doing the “What the Papers Say” rounds (though crap like the Daily Star and the Sun are referenced). Also, for reasons made obvious by this extract, the only paper I will spend money on.
Shocking stuff. I’ve written to my MP.
And the police state is expanding. Facial recognition and this:
https://skwawkbox.org/2025/03/28/30-met-police-smash-down-quaker-meeting-house-doors-to-raid-anti-genocide-gathering/
For a start, the phrase “wealth creation” conceals far more than it conveys. It begs two questions: what do you mean by “wealth”, and what do you mean by “creation”? Both standard weasel words.
If by “wealth” is meant real wealth – useful products and services, or knowledge – then a lot of it can be created by almost any economic system. But it’s obvious that in an unrestricted free market, some inventors and entrepreneurs will be far more successful than others. There’s your inequality.
Equality of opportunity is theoretically possible, but equality of ability is impossible. Lady Luck never distributes her favours equally.
“…equality of ability is impossible.”
That’s why inheritance is protected by so many laws that are enforced with ultrarigor, unlike laws for the protection of the person that are only enforced for rich bastards.
Hardly surprising when the whole raison d’etre of the State is to protect title to property (of all sorts, not just land). Without there being a system of law and order, there would be far, far fewer people who would damage other people’s bodies for the sheer hell of it than there would be people who make off with other people’s property to enrich themselves at the others’ expense.
That’s why I start with the abolition of the state, it is the only reform that will work.
And there’s this too:
from the Times, 28 March 2025:
“Police arrest parents who complained in school WhatsApp group.
The couple were detained in front of their daughter and kept in a cell for eight hours over their messages on the app as well as emails sent to the school”
They were arrested by six police officers – you can watch the video of the police arriving.
https://archive.is/I7eex
Speak against the authorities in Britain and you can be in big trouble.
“They were questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property. After a five-week investigation, police concluded there should be no further action.”
“They say they were blocked from attending the parents’ evening for their daughter Sascha, nine, and were not allowed to be in the audience for her Christmas performance. Crucially, even though Sascha suffers from epilepsy and is neurodivergent and registered disabled, the couple were unable to meet teachers to inform them how to administer medication and ask questions about her learning progress.”
Once again, I mention the ongoing trial of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon – two people who were hunted by hundreds of police on the orders of social services, police who said they didn’t suspect them of any crime whatsoever, and their child died as a result of the hunt, and they are being blamed. They’ve already been in prison for two years. It’s like a massive case of “victim blaming” or attempted “gaslighting” – terms which are in widespread usage except when they’re really called for.
The guy who was arrested in the school case is a producer for Times Radio and uses words like “Kafkaesque”. Imagine how any other people this must be happening to.
“I saw six police officers standing there. There were two cars and a police van. My first thought was that Sascha was dead. I could not think of any other reason why six police officers would be at my door. My heart was thumping, thinking something terrible had happened. So when I was placed under arrest, in a weird way I was briefly relieved.”
This is a policy of state intimidation against … basically anyone who criticises the authorities and doesn’t lie down.
I hope these parents say what they said before and say it f***ing louder. It’s obviously true.
I think the authorities sense that UK society is nearing a tipping point and that too many people have too little to lose. All this sort of thing is intimidation against anyone trying to change the system. Directing people’s anger against other groupings only works for so long. These sort of incidents suggest that it has begun not to any more.
And, I guess Brian, if people truly believe in freedom of speech and equal rights for everyone, then they’d agree that, irrespective of his opinions, the state’s treatment of TR is appalling ?
@Stevie – I oppose TR’s forced segregation, given that there’s no suggestion he’s a danger to other prisoners, and also the lie that it’s meant to protect him, which is just typical oppressor talk in Britain.
Who he?
I think they are referring to Mr Yaxley-Lennon.
Of course, silly me.
Not to mention Blairites Economics !
Worth another post for good measure…
US students are being kidnapped off the streets for pro Palestinian activism, in one case a student had been blacklisted by the Israeli ‘canary mission’ simply for co-authoring an op ed in a student paper calling for Tuft’s University to honour a student vote of 3 to 1 in favour of divesting from companies involved in Israeli wars and war crimes, they also told lies about her.
Marco Rubio speaking about free speech to a CPAC meeting in 2022 said ‘you are one word or sentence away from destroying your life’ there are kids in America who have had their admissions to college revoked because of something they said or liked on social media.
To which Aaron Mate summed up what Rubio said thus “imagine not to be able to say you oppose Genocide, well then Rubio will deport you. These US politicians are the biggest hypocrites of all time, followed closely by UK ones. This exchange can be seen at about the 60 min mark on the Grayzone here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-HxVrmuFJg
Worth noting that, strangely, Florida is a hotbed of zionists, fundemental judaism and former and current IDF members. Rubio knows who butters his bread.
In his 2013 book “The Price of Inequality” Joseph Stiglitz predicted that in the absence of real economy growth the rich will still get richer by redistributing wealth from the poor. And he was correct.
The Evil Starmer
Thinks Genocide is Funny
The BBC Laugh
A brief overview of the upcoming policies of social cuts in GB, F, SPA via German blog Overton.
machine-translation
France, Great Britain, Spain: Higher military spending means social cuts
March 30, 2025
by Ralf Streck
https://archive.is/dTCju
The absurdity is of course that lies sold as trustworthy assessments of military secret intelligence are used to justify all of this.
Statements and assessments that in fact have zero credibility and above all zero evidence. Frankly shocking that German media e.g. do not even attempt to question these assertions.
Obviously some dude in uniform (and oddly it´s always the same 3 dudes on TV) claiming that we are about to be overrun by Russians is enough to enact policies that will lead to the destruction of our societies from within.
Nothing it appears has changed since 1948 when the war scare as one of the biggest propaganda success of its era was initiated by the Truman administration to secure Congress approval of the three-fold increase of military spending. Oh and one of the main beneficiaries then, Boeing.
From 1965 Jerry Lewis/Tony Curtis comedy “Boeing, Boeing”
“All the Advantages”, 30 sec. – that´s how Starmer and friends are thinking….all for one, more for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVloiDfJDgk
“Obviously some dude in uniform (and oddly it´s always the same 3 dudes on TV) claiming that we are about to be overrun by Russians..”
If it was true that we are about to be overrun by Russians, then there is no point in increasing military spending as the Russians will have done the overrunning before any money gets raised, let alone spent. There would only be any point if either the EU countries and the UK intend to attack Russia or the Russians are so stupid that they will delay their invasion until their opponents are capable of stopping it.
Is Richard Shirreff one of the dudes? I read his novel predicting or calling for war with Russia. He used to be DSACEUR, the NATO deputy supreme “allied” commander for Europe. (That post is almost always held by a Brit. The top job, SACEUR, is always held by a guy from the USA.) Shirreff wasn’t long out of the job when he published the book. He couldn’t write well to save his life. If the subject weren’t so serious, his book would be quite funny. It’s pretty much a comic. Most of the themes are about securing supplies of specific kinds of weapon. To summarise the plot: the Russian government tries something in the Baltic – Estonia if I recall correctly – but the British armed forces sort them out, assisted of course by jolly skilled Estonian natives who get a hearty clap on the back. Clearly the natives are the colonialists’ “colleagues” now. Like f*** they are. What a plonker. Does he come from an army family? I know he was a pupil at Oundle boarding school. That’s the one where the masters think it’s amusing to say it’s a school with a town in it.
Just from a dramatic point of view – of little importance unfortunately nowadays given the level of indoctrination and passivity in the population – it would be good if an MP from one of the major parties could reprise Karl Liebknecht and Otto Ruhle and say hell no, I do *not* vote for this stinking military budget – I am voting against it.
C’mon Diane!
Can they get the bins emptied properly?
Meanwhile the genocide continues:
Red Crescent and Civil Defence teams report horrifying war crime site (Skwawkbox, 28 Mar 2025)
“Teams of Red Cross/Red Crescent workers and Palestinian Civil Defence crews have reported finding the mass grave of sixteen of their colleagues who had been shot and dumped into a pit by occupation forces in Tel al-Sultan, southern Gaza. The workers had been missing for four days and witnesses reported that they were made to kneel at the edge of the pit before being shot and falling in, according to local journalist Motaz Azaiza.
All the Red Crescent teams’ equipment – ambulances, medical kits – had been destroyed, along with the Civil Defence crews’ fire trucks.”
FFS.
This war must spread. The organisation that’s committing these crimes against humanity is allowed freedom of operation by host authorities in so many countries. How long is that going to be allowed to last? There’s only one language they understand.
I hope I read the situation wrong but disturbingly it seems that the longer the genocide goes on and the the more obvious of war crimes, the less interest/reaction from the outside world. It seems that nothing could change a considerable part of the western population to change their view on Israel. Israel might as well drop a small nuclear missile on Gaza and the west would still claim “Israel only defend itself” and any deaths from such attack are just because “Hamas use Palestinians as human shields”.
How do we get out of this depraved condition? How do we move from here?
Just the other day Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, openly threatened not Hamas but the civilians in Israel with destruction.
Video: https://www.instagram.com/dropsitenews/reel/DHZRtV7oXVp/
There was no reaction by the collective west to this bold, flagrant genocidal threat. The previously popular policy of “Responsibility to protect” have suddenly vanished from the western political culture, the dehumanization of palestinian lives are total.
typo
*civilians in Gaza
How can you measure reaction from outside? The British corp-0-rat media and state broadcaster are so untrustworthy that they can’t sit on a toilet the right way round.
US-Russian talks in Saudi appear to have failed. The British government and its media are crowing.
Trump is threatening not only Russia but also China and India, the main buyers of Russian oil.
Hold on to your hats.
A French court may disqualify Marine Le Pen from standing for office, with immediate effect, later this morning.
If she appeals, the appeal may not be concluded until after candidate registration for the 2027 presidential election. And in any case Macron is likely to be booted out before then, quite possibly this year.
Gotta look at this from the point of view of USA, Russian, and Zionist foreign affairs departments.
The 5th republic was designed for stability by De Gaulle. It is very hard to throw out a president. Macron will be there till the end of his term.
@Laguerre. I disagree. The Fifth Republic was lucky it lasted through its first four years (1958-62). De Gaulle only introduced direct elections for the presidency (1965) to prepare to give the Count of Paris some “legitimacy”. Then he got his arse kicked in 1968, but knew his time was up. Your view may be based on “survivorship bias”.
Macron has been almost a dead duck since July last year. Then his government got booted out in December. They can’t have another parliamentary election until July 2025, but the best reasonable scenario for Macron (others are available) is that he holds on until then, gets walloped in that election, and resigns the presidency. There won’t be any Mitterand style “cohabitation” with the FN or with La France Insoumise. Everyone’s talking about getting rid of the Fifth Republic. That has never been true before.
As I write, the court has found Le Pen guilty, which everyone expected, but the decision on ineligibility, or how long it’s for, hasn’t been read out yet.
One interesting question is whether there will be a response from Musk. After all he has tried to bring down the “firewall” against the AFD in Germany and also backed Tommy Robinson in Britain. France is probably more volatile than both German and Britain at the moment.
The judge has imposed ineligibility with immediate effect, but hasn’t said for how long.
Marine Le Pen has walked out. Taking a call from Elon?
I don’t know if people are getting how important this is. There is an effort to stop the frontrunner from standing in the next election.
Louis Aliot who was Le Pen’s partner for 10 years has been handed a jail sentence.
The British media are lagging way behind the French media in reporting this. But I doubt it bothers them much, waiting for the Zionist censors to get back to them with the approved versions of their reports.
The governments of Russia (Peskov, Putin’s press secretary) and Hungary (Orban himself) have spoken today in support of Le Pen. As far as I know, this hasn’t been reported in the British media. “Je suis Marine” may be the slogan that takes off…
STOP PRESS – Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to prison for four years, with five years of ineligibility.
As I understand it, 2 years of the prison sentence are “firm”, which means they are NOT suspended (the other 3 are), but the 2 years may be converted to being served outside jail wearing an electronic bracelet.
And hours ago Trump bashed Zelensky again, there is no telling what Trump is really up to – he is a loose cannon,. I sense he will use the sanctions tool on Russia soon, republicans have prepared such acts:
US Senator Graham calls on Russia to agree to 30-day ceasefire and threatens with sanctions
https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/12/7206996/
In my view, it would be great if Russia/US could mend their ties but I would not hold my breath that that would actually happen.
Then we have Trump’s threat against Yemen and Iran that comes after Russia, foolishly, in one way or another, agreed to the wish of the US:
Russia ‘agreed’ to broker talks between Iran and the US: Report
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-agrees-broker-talks-between-iran-and-us-report
Instead Russia should have made clear that they would not support any attack on Iran and/or give support to Iran if such attack would occur.
I doubt the USA would be able to hurt Russia with sanctions. Trump has been talking about sanctioning any country that buys Russian oil. Well that means China and India. He’s all mouth and no trousers. There’s probably some hormone that when it’s up, “Putin is my best mate – he likes me, so I like him back- we’re gonna do great deals”, and when it’s down, it’s a case of “I don’t like him – I’m going to hurt him”.
He’ll poop himself when Russia and Iran de-dollarise oil.
“Russia should have made clear that they would not support any attack on Iran and/or give support to Iran if such attack would occur.”
Agreed.
Our so called betters who organized ‘signalgate’ and then lied about it, exposed that arch Zionist and ex prison camp guard Jeffrey Goldberg to unwanted attention, and proved how cheap they think Arabs lives are.
Big Bird [the muppets] could roller skate, ice skate, dance, swim, sing, write poetry, draw, and ride a unicycle all Goldberg can do is lie through his teeth. https://m3.gab.com/media_attachments/29/fb/89/29fb896e956350bb1229594c83ddd580.jpg?width=568
There is no evidence that Putin wants to take over the whole of Ukraine, still less expanding to other European states, he did say once he regretted the break up of the Soviet Union, however he followed up that remark with ” no one would be mad enough to try and recreate it” this last remark is always left out of western MSM reporting. Which of course leads to that famous and true quote from Hermann Goring..
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but, after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country”.
Starmer, Macron, Merz and von der Leyen are determined to confront Russia by spending billions of Euros in a forlorn attempt to force all the Russian speaking citizens who inhabit the four Oblasts and Crimea back into the failed state Ukraine, from which they voted to leave by large majorities not long ago.
The consensus of ignoramuses in Britain is that the USSR was another name for the Russian Empire and the cold war with the USA continued until 1989 or 1990.
They simply haven’t got the slightest clue about that whereof they speak.
On the former: a quick look at Soviet politburo membership is enough to debunk.
On the latter – a reminder that nobody in the 1970s or 1980s thought the cold war was still going on.
Yes Brian Red, Many fools think Russia is still communist. Russia is now a capitalist country, it encompasses 11 time zones and is self sufficient in all the most valuable natural resources and leads the world with vast oil and gas deposits. What President Putin wants is to sell these riches to the rest of the world, to that end, he sold cheap natural gas to the likes of Germany to fuel its homes and leading industrial economy. Then a strange thing happened, the US Regime changed Ukraine in 2014 and Germany reluctantly fell in line with the US and agreed to the mother of all sanctions in a bid to “weaken” Russia. Of course they all shot themselves in both feet, even saying nothing when the life blood of the German economy Nord Stream two was blown up, [whats a vassal to do?]. Here we are now with all EU states struggling economically and paying 4/5 times more for energy supplies, and cutting social services etc, then threatening to force the unemployed into the army. Our own ‘Great white dope’ Starmer wants troops on the ground and planes in the air to confront Russia, the premier nuclear weapons state [nearly 6,000]. The European people will not follow these fools much longer, it is to be hoped forthcoming by-elections will show the electorates what contempt these fools are held in.
If we had an honest MSM then most of the problems we currently experience would never have arisen and most of the imbeciles would not be in power. We don’t, and we have to ask is that because of who owns and controls the MSM ?
The New York Times has now admitted what everyone else realized a long time ago, the Ukraine war is a proxy war….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/key-takeaways-nyts-secret-history-us-shocking-level-involvement-ukraine-war
“Up until very recently, mainstream media gatekeepers wouldn’t so much as admit that a proxy war has been unfolding from the very start of the conflict in Ukraine. This even after the so-called paper of record had earlier in Feb. 2024 acknowledged that the CIA had built 12 “secret spy bases” in Ukraine to wage a shadow war against Russia going back to 2014″. “The NY Times describes of men taken by a convoy of unmarked cars from the Ukrainian capital to Western Europe. The passengers were top Ukrainian generals,”Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.”
The report makes clear that US commanders were much more inter-woven into Ukrainian operations than known, to the point of ‘shocking’ some NATO allies. In essence many counter-Russia operations happening on Ukraine’s battlefields were simply run from the base in Germany”.
Notably, this is essentially US officials and the NY Times also admitting that the Kremlin has all along been right when it insisted this was never really simply about Moscow vs. Kiev – but that NATO countries have militarized Ukraine and weaponized it against Russia. President Putin and Kremlin officials have been fiercely complaining about US intervention all along, but this was dismissed in the West as merely ‘propaganda’.
Yesterday the Guardian website had two articles on Palestinians returning from Israeli detention unaware that family members had been killed. The headlines described the returnees as ‘Palestinian hostages’. Today one headline reads ‘He insisted we take him to the graves: the Palestinian civilians coming home to catastrophe’. The other at least states that the returnees were ‘Gaza civilians held in Israel’.
Has anyone got a link to the originals?
https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1906367316108902715
That’s power.
The Guardian’s style manual for journalists used to list “goy” as a word to avoid, because they said it was racist (which it is). Then in a later edition this advice was removed.
Certain words were removed from Scrabble too. Never mind that it’s a game in which the meaning of words plays no role whatsoever.
Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to prison for four years, with two years suspended, and with the other two years open to conversion to being served outside of prison wearing an electronic bracelet. She has also been rendered ineligible for standing for election for five years.
Curiously she has been invited to appear on TV this evening at 8pm French time.
Bye-bye Fifth Republic.
No micro-messages from Trump or Musk yet, but they can be expected.
The agency known as Wikipedia already have her down as a “former politician” 🙂
Just to be clear: she has been found guilty of embezzlement by hiring fake European Parliament assistants between 2004 and 2016, i.e. between 21 years ago and nine years ago.
She was the frontrunner in the polls for the next presidential election, both in the first round and the second round.
Seems the Fifth Republic is in trouble.
She will appeal. This story will continue. I’ve not seen much written about the actual evidence for embezzlement as yet. Here is the best link I’ve found so far.
https://archive.is/zu7lz (Le Monde)
Of course she will appeal. The ineligibility will continue through the appeal.
I can’t see the division between Marion Maréchal and Jordan Bardella lasting long. The situation should be clearer by this evening. Both of them have Israeli connections. This is from the Spectator last week:
https://archive.is/tqZcr
“The geometry of the forthcoming presidential election is highly variable at this stage in the race but should Marine Le Pen find herself hors de combat next week, Bardella will have done himself good with his visit to Israel“.
Yeah, Le Monde has been reporting the court judgement well – but anything is superior to the British and Wiki cesspits.
Embezzlement a decade or two ago isn’t the real issue here. Nobody in France thinks it is.
Here’s a link for watching TF1 live without installing any kind of software, V”P”N or otherwise:
http://www.freeintertv.com/View/id-264
Eric Zemmour was always just a sepia-coloured joke. He’s going nowhere. If anything he’ll do the same he did last time – pick up votes from those who swoon at the De Gaullian radio microphone shtick and hand them to the FN candidate within about an hour of the first round results coming in.
How about Marion as Jordan’s prime minister? A golden duo? Then again, they’re not having it away as far as anyone knows.
For an example of a toilet-paper report in the British media, see this by Peter Allen, the Independent’s totally clueless man in Paris.
Allen could easily be replaced by a 14 year old who can’t speak a word of French, doesn’t know the Algerian war from his own left cr*phole, but is able to type “Le Pen” into Google’s websearch engine. Nobody would notice the difference.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/marine-le-pen-macron-national-front-b2724585.html
“(Le Pen’s) criminal conviction all but ends the National Rally’s inexorable rise – as well as any hope of ever taking the Élysée Palace, says Peter Allen in Paris (…) The country is undoubtedly moving to the right (…) Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s likely successor as the RN’s presidential candidate, is only 29, and has nothing like the clout necessary to take her place (…) In the meantime, (the RN’s) chances of ever delivering its a French president are, at present, very close to zero.”
Zero sounds closer to Peter Allen’s number of brain cells, and not significantly lower than his level of writing skill either.
Oh, I don’t think it’s just the Fifth Republic that’s in trouble. The Le Pen stitch-up is just one aspect of the Henry Ford politics affecting Europe — you can have any government you want so long as it’s leftist. The arrest of Georgescu in Romania, the constant efforts to ban the AfD in Germany, and now Le Pen in France. We sneer at the Americans because of Trump, never understanding that the mere fact that he COULD get elected — notwithstanding the lawfare leading up to that — means there is an open society in the US that just doesn’t exist in Europe. It never penetrates the thinking of the left that if they continue to make peaceful change impossible, they’re going to make violent change inevitable. If they keep this up, Europe is going to go up like Krakatoa.
What left? You’re talking about the centrists, liberals and globalists. The left were disappeared years ago, by a process you aid and abet by pretending centrists, liberals and globalists are leftists. See Starmer for an example of all three.
Oh, right, then. Nothing to do with me, guv.
” You’re talking about the centrists, liberals and globalists. ”
I think the word you are looking for is “fascists”, or ,possibly neo-fascists. Most European countries are now fascist states, or well on the way to being one, but, for fascists, they are fairly left-wing. It is more the denial even of the charade that was left of “democracy”, the sidelining of socialism and the rise of the uniparty, badge-engineered to give an illusion of choice. Right-wing fascism got a bad name in the 1940s so the neo-fascists are “centrists”, whatever that may mean, and globalists and are busy fighting the right wing nationalists in a political turf war.
Did anyone catch the excellent documentary about the West Bank on ITV yesterday evening entitled Our Land: Israel’s Other War? I didn’t know it was on, and came across it by chance not long after it started. But I really couldn’t take listening to the demented settlers, and after the first sequence with the guy with the long beard, I put the TV on mute every time he was back on. And then there was the totally insane Israeli woman… I mean really REALLY fucking insane. I’ve known many Jewish people over the years through my work, and had more than a few good Jewish buddies (not that it’s something you ever thought about, and they were just good buddies, full stop), and I would definitely say that generally speaking they have above average intelligence. But when it comes to Israeli Jews – or perhaps more specifically Israeli Jewish zionists, I HAVE to conclude that they are the most demented population on the whole goddam planet, brainwashed by their psychopathic leaders and their religion, or just completely fucking cuckoo anyway.
Re the documentary:
.With rare access inside the Israeli settler movement and the Palestinians whose land they contest, this timely documentary offers a searing insight into the hostile and often violent reality of life in the occupied West Bank. Filmed across 8 months in 2024, it follows the lives of those on opposing sides of the controversial divide: an Israeli settler who’s helped by a group of young associates to further expand and defend the land he controls. And a Palestinian family who endure frequent and intimidating visits from other groups of settlers onto the land they’ve called home for more than 40 years….
https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1weekweek-14-2025-sat-29-mar-fri-04-apr/our-land-israels-other-war
All Israeli Jews are settlers, pieds noirs.
Yes, except that they aren’t Jewish, you can’t be a Jew and a zionist at the same time and you can’t be Jew in occupied Palestine because the zionazis keep it Judenrein.
‘All Israeli Jews are settlers’
Yes, of course – well, mostly (as there were a minority of Jewish people living in Palestine before the zionists started moving in), but I was of course referring to the settlers – so-called – who are making life a misery for the Palestinians in the West Bank. And apart from the demented belief that the land is theirs anyway, promised to them by some fucking god or other, it all comes down to Might is Right, and these scumbags are just fucking bullies who thoroughly enjoy intimidating the Palestinian residents. And I totally despise them, along with most of the rest of the population of Israel, and especially the fascist scum running the country of course.
I haven’t checked yet, but I wonder if ITV is being attacked now by the zionist propaganda outfits for airing a ‘pro-Hamas’ or ‘pro-terrorist’ or whatever film…. I just checked the CAAs website, and there’s nothing on there about it, not yet anyway, but in the process of looking came across an article about someone they describe as an anti-Hamas activist, posted on March 24th. Here’s the headline and the first part of it:
Once again, needless police investigation into anti-Hamas activist dropped following legal support from CAA
A police investigation into an activist renowned for declaring, in the face of anti-Israel protesters, that Hamas and Hizballah are terrorists under UK law, has been dropped.
The investigation stemmed from an accusation by a counter-protester against Niyak Ghorbani at a demonstration on 12th November last year at Queen Mary University of London.
The demonstration was organised to protest Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who was scheduled to speak at the University. Ms Albanese has long been accused of using antisemitic rhetoric.
The protest was initially organised by Campaign Against Antisemitism, but was cancelled due to security concerns, following an online threat of an ‘Amsterdam-style’ attack…
Yeah, like fuck it was!
https://antisemitism.org/once-again-needless-police-investigation-into-anti-hamas-activist-dropped-following-legal-support-from-caa/
It’s quite a short piece – ie about a one minute read. Also came across this as well, also posted on March 24th, which is a really long piece, but full of the usual propaganda shite they churn out:
A year and a half on, has anything really changed in law enforcement?
After a year and a half of regular Palestine protests, the scene of a man standing on the entrance to Marble Arch Underground Station waving a flag at the Al Quads Day march has become one of the preeminent and iconic symbols of London.
It has happened with the full acquiescence of the police and criminal justice system, and thanks to politicians too afraid to stand up to the mob.
A photograph of this scene was taken yesterday by our Demonstration and Events Monitoring Unit at the Al Quds Day march in London.
In the past, the Al Quds Day march has been an annual display of support for the murderous theocracy in Iran and its client terror groups like Hizballah. Some cities have banned the march altogether. Since we and others secured the proscription of Hizballah in the UK, the organisers and marchers have had to rethink some of their paraphernalia.
Still, yesterday’s Al Quds Day march featured what we have all come to expect in our nation’s capital at the weekend: support for violent terrorism and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Extremism is on the march in London, and it is a devastating indictment of our political class and of the state of our criminal justice system that they simply do not seem to care…
And referring to the to the recent big London march they say:
What was interesting about that march was that it took place when there was a ceasefire in Gaza – which was exactly what the Palestine protesters claim to have been calling for over the past year and a half.
Many of us argued that the animosity on these marches went much deeper and spoke to far darker motivations. Hence we were not surprised that, notwithstanding the ceasefire, they continued to march.
But for what?
Judging by the chanting and the signs many seemed to be marching for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state and the exile or murder of its millions of Jewish citizens.
https://antisemitism.org/a-year-and-a-half-on-has-anything-really-changed-in-law-enforcement/
Evil, just pure unadulterated hate-mongering fear-mongering zionist evil.
Hey CAA, so-called, as if you didn’t know:
Massive march in solidarity with Palestine in London
Pro-Palestine activists marched through London on Saturday, 15 March, urging the UK government to pressure Israel to uphold the ceasefire agreement and lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip. They also called on the British government to halt all arms sales to Israel and end its support for Israel’s military actions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKPF0jpPTNY (Middle East Eye 1min 7secs)
And what happened three days later, which of course BN and his fascist buddies were just itching to do?!!
NB You can be absolutlely certain that the CAA have the facility to check where links to their articles have been posted.
‘And what happened three days later, which of course BN and his fascist buddies were just itching to do?!!’
Which they conspired to do of course, along with Trump and his Nazi-saluting buddies and Witkoff et al, and no doubt had already planned to do prior to arranging the ceasefire deal, so that they could murder and maim thousands more people in Gaza, mainly women and children and elderly and non-combatant men, as per usual. The following was posted today:
:Israel orders Rafah evacuation as it continues bombardment of Gaza
The latest forced evacuation orders come as Israel ramps up its military operation in Gaza after breaking the ceasefire.
Israel has announced new forced evacuation orders for Rafah in southern Gaza, as the military said it plans to expand its renewed assault on the enclave.
The military’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, announced on X on Monday morning that the army was returning to “fight with great force” in Rafah, one of Gaza’s largest cities, and surrounding areas.
He called on Palestinians to immediately move to shelter in al-Mawasi on the coast. The area has regularly come under Israeli fire during the war in Gaza, despite being designated as a “safe zone”….
Gaza’s Ministry of Health has reported that more than 900 people have been killed since the bombardment resumed….
Grim Eid celebrations
Israeli attacks have continued to rain down on Gaza as Palestinians observe Eid al-Fitr, a three-day holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
On Sunday, the first day of Eid, at least 64 Palestinians were killed…..
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/31/israel-orders-rafah-evacuation-as-it-continues-bombardment-of-gaza
Yeah, I bet you’re just totally lovin’ it all, eh?!!
PS Oh, and by the way, how can civilians sheltering in schools and hospitals etc be human shields if the IDF bombs them anyway?! Obviously it’s a falsehood, and no doubt it’s ALSO a falsehood that Hamas had command posts in said locations. Or are we supposed to believe that Hamas are not only stupid, but suicidal as well??!
.
“support for the murderous theocracy”
“murderous theocracy” – does that mean people justifying mass slaughter using religious texts written thousands of years ago?
It isn’t really about religion, it’s just good old-fashioned land grabbing. Israel was founded by atheists, and Judaism, being a deistic belief system, is functional atheism anyway. I’m not saying this to defend Israel. I’m as sick of their crybullying as everyone else. I just don’t think it helps to not recognise the nature of the problem that you’re looking at.
I was right. Elon Musk has barrelled in, in support of Marine Le Pen.
https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-slam-marine-le-pen-guilty-verdict/
“Key adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump signals he will make the French far-right figurehead a new cause célèbre.”
Donald Trump’s son Donald (who always seems to be high on something) has also opined.
So has Nigel Farage.
Musk has said the court’s decision will “backfire”, from which we can infer that he will be the source or conduit for lots of money going to the far right in France, from now on.
Piece by Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator from January:
https://archive.is/xOYza
“Could Emmanuel Macron be Elon Musk’s next target?”
Mortimer seems to think Le Pen is too leftwing for Trump and Musk, and that Marechal or Bardella would be more the ticket. Still, a focus is needed and for the moment it’s Le Pen. I may revise that opinion, depending on what she says on TF1 in two hours’ time.
Might Francois Bayrou the French prime minister be about to resign? He says he’s “troubled” by the announcement of the court judgment against Le Pen:
https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/direct-marine-le-pen-la-cheffe-de-file-de-lextreme-droite-fixee-sur-son-sort-au-proces-des-assistants-parlementaires-du-fn-31-03-2025-LZ5RGD4ZCJGDHKTZ5PVUVTNF74.php
Do you still think the Fifth Republic is stable, @Laguerre?
Do we have some professional assessment of this case?
I know the threat of the court case was mentioned after the last election.
But it remained surprisingly low under the radar of media ever since.
In Germany almost no one spoke about it.
I don´t want to be prejudiced.
It appears a bit fishy though. Lagarde having been in a not dissimilar position.
And media being so mute over this until now.
To expect this to weaken RN is not realistic.
If it indeed were a rigged or manipulated case.
A la Romanie.
I don’t know any professional assessors of legal troubles of political figures. I am not sure where they would buy professional insurance either. But I wouldn’t trust them, because as professionals they’d be paid for saying stuff and they’d be most likely to work for whoever paid them the most.
Agreed it’s unlikely to weaken the RN.
Maréchal could do well. Branding-wise, the name “Marion” is even closer to “Marianne” than “Marine” is, and she looks more like Marianne too. But Marine Le Pen is an effective performer, for sure. Ideal for the party or movement might be if she could seem in trouble and then emerge reborn to rapturous applause. None of them are establishment – not Le Pen, her niece, or Bardella.
That Elon Musk supports Le Pen shows you that Le Pen’s party is managed opposition. First the fake left, then the fake conservatives.
Just came across this on The Guardian’s website, posted this afternoon:
Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN
Workers on a mission to help colleagues were buried in mass grave in southern Gaza, says humanitarian office
Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said.
According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied….
Israel’s military said its “initial assessment” of the incident had found that its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.
It added that the movement of the vehicle had not been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in advance, and that the area was an “active combat zone”. The Red Crescent said the Tel al-Sultan district had been considered safe, and movement there was normal, “requiring no coordination”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/israel-killed-15-palestinian-paramedics-and-rescue-workers-one-by-one-says-un
And also this opinion piece, posted today:
Americans are beginning to fear dissent. That’s exactly what Trump wants
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/31/americans-dissent-fear-trump
Yep, Trump AND his Nazi-saluting buddies.
“Trump AND his Nazi-saluting buddies.”
You can’t call Musk a Nazi, he doesn’t have an ounce of socialism in him, national or otherwise.
@Bayard – Things have moved on in national socialist world since 1945. The American Nazi Party was originally called the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists. I mention this not to try to make a silly point, but because this is where I think Musk operates politically – for a business-run white-supremacist strong state. Different from Hitler, but still national socialist. Never mind the chainsaw – it’s still a strong state! It has been obvious for a long while that the critical understanding of what constitutes “the state” needs to be updated. For example, whatever Google is, it is definitely part of the state. The same goes for X.
Incidentally Musk himself had no problem with Alice Weidel calling Hitler a communist.
Hitler was not a communist. Nor were Stalin or Lenin.
Neither were Hitler and the Nazis socialists of course. They used the term because socialism was popular back then in Germany, and did so so as to dupe and deceive the German population. And he had the support of the German establishment and big business prior to being elected, and much like the Starmerfuhrer posing as a continuation of JCs policies in the leadership campaign, Hitler wouldn’t have got their support had they thought he was really a socialist.
The reality is that some of the first people the Nazis started persecuting and putting in concentration camps were socialists’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
My apologies if you were being facetious!
My apologies, I was.
As it happens the German people were never deceived and the NSDAP never won a national election, even the half-bent election of March 1933.
The key point is that petty officials, medics, etc., revelled in support for the fascisation of the state when they got the option. It was like Christmas every day for them.
How many of them had ever voted for the NSDAP is a secondary question.
Quite so, BR, yet how many people think that it was all the fault of Hitler and a few of his cronies?
The rise of the right is sort of a see saw move in a Western Democracy where the left has been relegated (mainly by itself) into a minority which looks on from the outside.
It is what happens when you fall in line with Trump’s predecessors and neo- liberal economics of your World leader and accommodate the rich and try to give small bribes to the rest of the voters.
Look at any country in the West ( away from the US) and you can see the roadmap to where we are now.
The Technocrats in the EU and the UK are and still are trying to straddle three things:
One: Despite rhetoric from the Europeans no countries need Security Guarantees from the US more than the Europeans.
Two: No European governments can square the economic circle of allowing/facilitating the rich to get even richer without hammering the ordinary people in each country.
Three: They are incapable of forming a European Army and defending against Russia neither.
And in my opinion the reason for all three things above is that The EU is a Trading Bloc and has not had a Civil War and a half to forge together the still mighty ( despite decline ) USA.
It was tried a longish time ago in Europe and was the reason why the victorious USA near ran Europe since 1945.
This is where the Yanks get their ‘ Ungrateful Europe ‘ from currently.
The EU could choose if they wished to lower their trade with the US and increase it with China – Russia – the BRICS and so on but they have chosen to carry on this power charade as if they can replace the US Military in Europe.
They can’t but. it is no accident that post Empire UK and France believe that they can.
The politicians that Europe and the UK has supplied since Monetarism and neo -liberal economics became the norm are mixed to say the least.
‘ Centrism ‘ is quite a recent invention in politics but reflects the ‘ politics is concentrated economics ‘ quote.
Thatcher was a politician – Mitterand – Kohl etc but they operated before the collapse of the USSR – they had to know what they were talking about do to a possible real threat from the USSR – a nuclear threat indeed.
After the spoils of the fall of the USSR and the Fall of the Berlin Wall this became an in for the neo -liberals and in they charged.
They needed politicians in place to further their aims and the forebears of this current lot reflect that opportunity taken.
The Centre has collapsed – the left is in retreat and the right is on the rise – hence the use of Lawfare rather than politics.
It will not stave off the rise of the right and there is some hope in the left Coalition in France but it does not preclude the EU rocketing to the right in general.
It is a massive contradiction though that the right talk about ‘ Protectionist ‘ economic policies whilst, at the same time rattling on about an EU Army.
Their Patron in Chief in the US is now conducting that experiment for them and that will not end well.
So in the US where will Donald’s Dis- Appointed go?
Further to the right or to the left?
That is also a question for the Europeans.
Unless they actually do square the circle between bowing to the rich or bowing to their electorate?
No fan of Le Pen at all but no, legal Technocrat fix is going to stop the rush to the right anywhere.
Like in the US – once the Europeans are disappointed with the right – where are they going to go.
There are many people who have gone from the left to the right but I’ve not heard of many going from the right to the left.
I thought Europe did have a “civil war” and much more recently than the 1860s.
~50 million died. It was highly profitable for the US, starting only a few years after the Depression.
Yes, and a very profitable investment in Hitler and his party in the first place. GWBs grandfather did very well out of it all I believe.
“No European governments can square the economic circle of allowing/facilitating the rich to get even richer without hammering the ordinary people in each country.”
Perfectly possible when everyone is getting richer to have the rich take the lion’s share of the extra wealth, but those days are gone, possibly forever.
“And in my opinion the reason for all three things above is that The EU is a Trading Bloc”
The trading bloc was the EEC. When it morphed into the EU it became a wannabe superstate.
Bayard
It is not a State or Superstate – it is a collection of countries that had agreed (amongst themselves – for fear of being picked off by the genuinely mighty US individually ) to collectively negotiate with the US mainly and the rest of the world generally as a Trading Bloc and not as a Political Bloc.
Germany tried forming a European Political Bloc by force in WW2 and after that failed experiment was over the US took charge not just of Germany but the whole of Europe.
Von Der Leyen and her unelected mates may think they are in charge of something ( what ever that is?) but events are showing her that she and her mates are not in charge of anything as the ‘ Coalition of the Willing ‘ collapses like a terrible French Souffle.
Meanwhile Back at The Ranch – Donald has some very important messages for you – me and a waiting world tomorrow on Wet Wednesday.
Question Time in the UK also and Sir Kier Starkers has some explaining to do as to why the US’s ‘Bezzie Mate ‘ can’t get exemptions from an Old Friend.
24.5 % tariff for your old mate?
That’s the positive spin.
It’s a wicked world.
No doubt about that.
Meanwhile – the Gazans and Palestinians are still being ‘ striked ‘ flat.
But – they are way down the list of concerns for the ‘ poor me ‘ West.
“It is not a State or Superstate”
Indeed it is not, but it would like to be.
I was watching the BBC News Channel a bit earlier, and there was a segment about the UN condemning Israel for the fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers who the IDF killed/murdered and buried in a mass grave, with the studio presenter initially relating it, and then going to their correspondent in Jerusalem (who I’ve seen on a number of occasions, but never registered her name), and she says blah, blah, blah and, as they do, just repeats what the presenter in the studio just said, and then goes on to say – as it said in the Guardian article I linked to yesterday – that Israel’s military said its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”. And she then said something to the effect – as in the Guardian article – that the movement of the vehicles had not been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in advance, and I was then waiting for her to say/quote what the Red Crescent spokesperson said in response to this – as in the Guardian article – that the Tel al-Sultan district had been considered safe, and movement there was normal, “requiring no coordination”, but she didn’t, and then, after a bit more blah, blah, actually finished by repeating what she’d said literally 30 seconds earlier that the IDF said the vehicles were advancing suspiciously towards IDF troops.
She was lying through her nasty rotten teeth by omission, and omitting a key and crucial part of the story. And I have no doubt whatsoever that she knew – as with numerous occasions before – that the IDF scum did it deliberately and, as such, are/were lying through their goddam fascist teeth about the vehicles advancing suspiciously etc. I don’t know anything about her, but I’m wondering if she is in fact a zionist, given what she did.
Just now:
I still had the BBC News Channel on, but had the TV on mute, when I noticed that they were doing a segment on the paramedics etc again, and the first thing I took in was a statement by Israel (in response to the outrage about the paramedics etc) saying ‘Every single thing that happens in Gaza happens because of Hamas’, and so I then put the sound on, and the correspondent I mentioned before was saying blah, blah, blah, and then says something about a Hamas operative, and that was it. I didn’t catch where this Hamas operative enters into the episode, but I can only assume that the IDF/Israel has now introduced a Hamas operative into the story in some way.
And yet AGAIN, she omitted to mention what the Red Cross spokesperson said!
Correction: I was just doing a search re the paramedics and rescue workers the IDF murdered to see if I could find an article that’s been posted in the last few hours that mentions about the Hamas operative the IDF have now introduced into the episode and, as such, saved nine articles in the results (a couple of which were posted in the past few hours), and the first one I clicked on to read, a BBC News article posted at 1.42 this morning, said this at the beginning of the article:
The US has said it expects “all parties on the ground” in Gaza to comply with international humanitarian law but declined to confirm whether it was carrying out its own assessment into the killing by the Israeli military of 15 people – paramedics, civil defence workers and a UN official.
Asked about the killings, state department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said: “Every single thing that happens in Gaza is happening because of Hamas.”
I obviously didn’t see that bit, and assumed it was some IDF spokesperson that said it (it was up on one side of a split screen, so to speak – ie the quote – the other side being the BBC correspondent in Jerusalem delivering her report). So the IDF deliberate murder 15 paramedics and rescue workers, as SHE and Trump and his nazi-saluting buddies know full well, and then lie through there goddam teeth about the vehicles advancing suspiciously etc, and Trump’s state department spokeswoman pretends she/they believes the IDFs version, and then blames Hamas.
The article then then goes on to say that:
The UN’s humanitarian agency has said five ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle were struck “one by one” on 23 March and that 15 bodies, including paramedics still in their uniforms, had been gathered and buried in a mass grave.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq80x0z2evvo
And the second article I saved to read and just this minute clicked on is a Middle East Monitor article posted on March 26th. Here’s the headline and the first part of the article:
Israel disappears 15 paramedics, civil defence personnel from Gaza
Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) yesterday accused the Israeli occupation army of abducting 15 paramedics and civil defence personnel in the southern city of Rafah, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.
“The Israeli occupation army continues its crimes against the Palestinian people in blatant violation of international humanitarian law,” the GMO said in a statement.
It said 15 emergency responders were abducted in Rafah as they were rescuing injured people in western Rafah, holding Israel and the US administration responsible for the safety of the personnel and calling the escalation “a war crime that demands immediate accountability.”
“The Israeli occupation is deliberately targeting medical and relief workers, in direct defiance of international agreements that guarantee their safety,” it said.
The GMO also appealed to the international community, the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and human rights organisations to take urgent action to secure the captives’ release.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250326-israel-disappears-15-paramedics-civil-defence-personnel-from-gaza/
So they thought/believed that they had been abducted. It was no doubt inconceivable to them the IDF could have murdered them all, and they understandably didn’t want to think about that possibility. Oh how I bet the IDF scumbags and BN et al were laughing their heads off, knowing that they would eventually find them all murdered and buried.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff in this Middle East Eye article about aid workers and medics being killed/murdered by the IDF since Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza, posted four days ago:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-rescue-workers-recover-paramedics-body-rafah-while-eight-remain-missing
So I just got to the last of the nine articles I saved to new tabs, posted today, a few hours ago, and it mentions the ‘Hamas operative’:
The Israeli military said Sunday that on March 23, troops opened fire on vehicles that were “advancing suspiciously” toward them without emergency signals.
It said “an initial assessment” determined that the troops killed a Hamas operative named Mohammed Amin Shobaki and eight other militants. Israel has struck ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the past, accusing Hamas militants of using them for transportation.
However, none of the dead staffers from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense had that name, and no other bodies were reported found at the site, raising questions over the military’s suggestion that alleged militants were among the rescue workers.
The military did not immediately respond to requests for the names of the other alleged militants killed or for comment on how the emergency workers came to be buried.
It also says the following, contrary to what the IDF implied:
“The available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March,” the UN said in a statement Sunday night.
Further emergency teams that went to rescue the first team were “struck one after another over several hours,” it said. All the teams went out during daylight hours, according to the Civil Defense.
And under the subheading MASS GRAVE, it says the following:
For days, Israeli forces would not allow access to the site where the emergency teams disappeared, the UN said.
On Wednesday, a UN convoy tried to reach the site but encountered Israeli troops opening fire on people.
The convoy saw a woman who had been shot lying in the road. The dashboard video shows staff talking about retrieving the woman. Then two people are seen walking across the road. Gunfire rings out and they flee. One stumbles, apparently wounded, before he is shot and falls onto his face to the ground. The UN said the team retrieved the body of the woman and left.
On Sunday, the UN said teams were able to reach the site after the Israeli military informed it where it had buried the bodies, in a barren area on the edges of Tel al-Sultan. Footage released by the U.N shows workers from PRCS and Civil Defence, wearing masks and bright orange vests, digging through hills of dirt that appeared to have been piled up by Israeli bulldozers.
The footage shows them digging out multiple bodies wearing orange emergency vests. Some of the bodies are found piled on top of each other. At one point, they pull out a body in a Civil Defence vest out of the dirt, and it is revealed to be a torso with no legs. Several ambulances and a UN vehicle, all heavily damaged or torn apart, are also buried in the dirt.
“Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” said Jonathan Whittall, with the UN humanitarian office OCHA, speaking at the site in the video. “We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives.”
“It’s absolute horror what has happened here,” he said.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/palestinian-medics-killed-by-israeli-troops-in-gaza-buried-in-mass-graves-reports-un-2702009-2025-04-01
So the IDF in fact informed the UN on Sunday that they were all dead and, as such, told the UN where they had buried them.
Raiding a Quaker meeting with 20 police/IDF sympathysers , busting open the door and arresting people is what settlers do.
Now playing here in a Uk theatre under our PM fascist
nevermore nd
Wherever anything like this happens it is not the sign of a government that is confident of itself.
Trump – Biden – Starmer – The Germans et al are so confident of their political arguments that they have to resort
to suppression of any counter arguments and discourse by threat.
In the US the repression of University demonstrators is a fine example of the state of play.
It is ironic that Trump who was a self proclaimed victim of ‘ Lawfare ‘ is now applying Lawfare to his enemies.
Then again ,it is assumed that the Americans don’t do irony.
That doesn’t mean that the UK has to copy them though.
Sorry about the predictive txt. Change of my name, sooo fed up with it, even the O2 shop were I bought it could not get rid of it.
This is so accurate. Craig, do you understand Modern Monetary Theory? Because you’re practically there. What MMT shows is that the government doesn’t need to borrow its own money. Government bonds are corporate welfare. The finance sector couldn’t exist without it. Please take a look at Bill Mitchell’s blog. He’s coming over here again in June and I’m trying to arrange for him to meet some good influential people like you.
https://billmitchell.org/blog/
And naked capitalism has various entries of course.
e.g. this video:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-mitchell-demystifying-modern-monetary-theory.html
see also the commentary there by readers. This is ten years ago (!) by now.
Time flies by…
I just got round to doing a search on each of the MS newspapers (on their respective websites that is) re >15 paramedics killed buried idf< and not one of them apart from The Independent covered it (I already posted a link to the Guardian article yesterday). I really thought the Times and the Telegraph would at least cover it, and the Daily Mirror. And although the BBC News Channel has been covering it, there was nothing at all about it in their evening news programmes on BBC 1. As for Sky News, I don't know if they covered it on their TV channel, but they did post a rather skewed article about it on their website. So in other words, the vast majority of the British population are completely oblivious to the episode. Astonishing. But then again…!
Anyway, in the process I came across the following article on the Mirror's website from November 2023:
IDF bombs ambulance claiming it was 'filled with Hamas fighters' as 50 injured
The WHO has condemned a missile strike on a convoy of ambulances in Gaza, while UK nationals have said they are struggling to get through the Rafah crossing as they attempt to flee
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/israel-gaza-hamas-palestine-live-31323593
And there have been other such nazi-type incidents of course by the IDF.
And here’s the Independent’s article:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/israeli-palestinians-gaza-strip-unrwa-palestinian-b2724799.html
Just came across this Guardian article posted yesterday evening (April 1st):
Palestinian paramedics shot by Israeli forces had hands tied, eyewitnesses say
Senior doctor who saw bodies says men appeared to have been ‘executed’, adding to evidence of potential war crime
Some of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to two eyewitnesses.
The witness accounts add to an accumulating body of evidence pointing to a potentially serious war crime on 23 March, when Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews and civil defence rescue workers were sent to the scene of an airstrike in the early hours of the morning in the al-Hashashin district of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
International humanitarian teams were only allowed access to the site this weekend. One body was recovered on Saturday. Fourteen more were found in a sandy grave at the site on Sunday and were brought back for autopsies in the nearby city of Khan Younis.
Dr Ahmed al-Farra, a senior doctor at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, witnessed the arrival of some of the remains.
“I was able to see three bodies when they were transferred to the Nasser hospital. They had bullets in their chest and head. They were executed. They had their hands tied,’’ Farra said. “They tied them so they were unable to move and then they killed them.”…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/01/palestinian-paramedics-shot-by-israeli-forces-had-hands-tied-eyewitnesses-say
Also happened to come across this lengthy Guardian piece from June last year (which may very well have been mentioned by someone on here at the time):
Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war
Exclusive: As the Gaza war rages, Israeli funds target US college campuses and push to redefine antisemitism in US law
Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli.
Chikli has since led a targeted push to counter critics of Israel. The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law….
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/24/israel-fund-us-university-protest-gaza-antisemitism
Also came across this earlier… from 2014. Here are a couple of passages from it:
Israel-Gaza conflict: Israeli targeting policy under scrutiny after shellfire hits a mother and child, a school full of refugees and a doctor’s home
Five hundred metres away, on the road out of the district of Khozaa, a battered car delivered Foulla Sabaan to an ambulance. She was clutching her 10-month-old girl, Raghda, wrapped in a cream blanket soaked in blood as she wept: “The Israelis told us to leave our homes or we would get killed in the fighting. We started walking with a white flag when the tanks started firing. That is when my baby was hurt.”
Ms Sabaan, 31, had been given a lift by a passing car. “My husband is walking with the other children. I am so worried about them – they are firing at everyone, no one is safe here”.
The targeting policy of the Israeli military was once again under scrutiny later in the day when a UN school in the town of Beit Hanoun, which was being used as a shelter by hundreds fleeing the fighting, was hit by tank shells killing 15 people, including children, and leaving 70 injured.
Chris Gunness, spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency, pointed out that “precise co-ordinates of the shelter had been formally given to the Israeli army….
But paramedics accused the Israeli forces of deliberately shooting at ambulances trying to bring the injured out of Khozaa and Abassan. “The tanks were firing and the shells were landing right next to us. There is no doubt that they were shooting at us; it was not crossfire,” insisted Wissan Nabhan. “We had been trying to get permission for a long time to get these people out, people were dying trapped in their houses because they could not get medical treatment. Then, when they allowed us, they started shooting.”…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-israeli-targeting-policy-under-scrutiny-after-shellfire-hits-a-mother-and-child-a-school-full-of-refugees-and-a-doctor-s-home-9627173.html
Starmer has cut the winter fuel payments to impoverished pensioners and is cutting disability money and all to send to the coke head crook in Ukraine. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever witnessed in UK politics by a country mile.
It is pretty obvious that powerful forces in the UK have a made huge financial bet in Ukraine that has now turned sour due to the Russians invading. They simply cannot accept defeat as they will be screwed. Yet they have no chance to win either.
It is almost enjoyable to watch but alas they will drag us all down with them, sacrifice us to save themselves as they always do. I foresee massive civil disorder coming to the UK. Starmer is extremely dangerous, an oppressive, authoritarian who has already jailed thousands of people for social media posts.
There is a shocking and highly sinister crack down on free speech right now in the UK and it should be the biggest story to every real journalist in Britain. Sadly it is not…
Mac.
Wait ’til they raid your pension funds, cancel the triple lock and means test state pensions.
How dare these money grabbing retirees have the temerity to work for 40+ years, pay all their taxes and make provisions for a relatively comfortable retirement. Divide and Conquer. Pensioners need to live on the bread line and rely on state hand outs like everyone else, and if they don’t like it the state can organise for their legalised culling with the help of the corrupt NHS.
“Wait ’til they raid your pension funds, cancel the triple lock and means test state pensions.”
I’ve always assumed that, by the time I get to pensionable age, there will no longer be an old age pension and, for some time have realised that private pensions are a scam and have become resigned to never seeing the money I put into one again. I expect that the shit will really hit the fan next year, or even later this year, the way Stürmer is going.
The other day Starmer bragged about how many he deported, an obvious dog-whistling to the anti-immigration/right-wingers that he are obviously so keen to appease:
Starmer ‘angry’ about illegal migration as he reveals 24,000 deportations under Labour
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-boats-labour-deportations-migration-b2724439.html
Like the zionist he is, Starmer is incapable of speaking, or knowing, the truth.
One should always proceed on the basis that Starmer is a lying bastard, and go from there.
I predict that, like 6Mn, 24,000 will soon be shown to be a pile of exaggerated bollix.