Dystopia 317


Yesterday I scanned the MSM news. The UK openly boasted of running aerial surveillance over Gaza to identify targets for Israel, and it was revealed the USA has provided over 12,000 bombs and 57,000 shells to Israel. Israel killed over 300 more civilians, including over 100 more dead children. At the same time, Kamala Harris had been sobered up long enough to make a speech claiming that the US wished Israel to avoid casualties, in a desperate attempt to mask the blood on the hands of Genocide Joe.

I read that Germany is in budget crisis. I looked thorugh numerous articles, and not a single one mentioned the actual cause of the crisis, the war in Ukraine and in particular the destruction of Nordstream. None of the MSM has ever apologised for their coordinated and unanimous “big lie” that Russia blew up its own pipeline, even though they have all now quietly abandoned this in favour of a fallback lie that it was a heroic “Dad’s Army” attack by a few Ukrainians on a little boat.

I saw the media reporting without criticism, as indeed heroic, a speech by Zelensky in which he claimed as a victory that Ukraine had not actually lost significant territory during its counter-offensive. I found nothing explaining the causes of the war and very little on the inevitable need for a negotiated solution.

I read articles about immigrants drowning while trying to reach Spain, about an EU/Switzerland agreement being stymied over fears of immigration, about immigrants on the Russia/Finland border and about the causes of anti-immigration riots in Ireland. Not one of these articles mentioned that the great wave of immigration to Europe these past twenty years has been directly caused by the destruction of whole societies, economies and national infrastructures by Western invasions and direct or proxy attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.

I saw the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court shuttled around Israel and the West Bank in a fleet of armored Toyotas, looking like the most arrogant of VIPs, while refusing to act against Israel and seeking to “bothsides” the genocide unfolding before our eyes.

I realised that Karim Khan KC, brother of an ex Tory MP, himself should by rights be charged with complicity in war crimes.

The evil of the times in which we live has been clear for a very long time. In “developed” countries we have seen a massive growth in disparity of wealth and increasing numbers of people unable to lead a standard of life which makes them a part of society, in consequence of destruction of worker rights and institutional protections. We have seen an increasingly unapologetic tendency of Western neo-imperialism to unleash the devastating power of modern weaponry upon less developed nations, generally of the Islamic faith, with no care for civilian casualties.

We saw it in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and now we see its apotheosis in Gaza.

Here the two strands of dystopian western and domestic policy intertwine, because there is massive popular opposition to the genocide in Gaza, and it is crystal plain that the people of the “democracies” have no actual influence on the war machine. The war machine controls the people, they do not control the war machine. If you want to look for a sign of hope – and we all need hope – it is that a whole new generation of young people has come to understand that.

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317 thoughts on “Dystopia

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  • alexey

    Very depressing.

    But what’s weird is I saw this posted on the hacked @matthuag twitter account along with other posts which are clearly yours, and other posts which are clearly not.

  • Larissa Bienia

    Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. This is the time of year we celebrate the birthday of a Jewish man, born in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago. Just in case you believe there weren’t any Jewish people there before 1948. Merry Christmas!

    • U Watt

      A Palestinian Jew. A man who not even zionists believe would have identified with their ethnic cleansing and genocidal racism since 1948.

      • Tom Welsh

        And a speaker of Aramaic, in widespread use in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere until the present day.

        Also a man believed by fundamentalist Jews to be the ultimate blasphemer, destined to be immersed in boiling excrement for ever.

        Although he always spoke against violence, advising his followers to turn the other cheek instead of taking revenge.

        Hardly the Jewish way.

    • Dave

      I have read some **ap from Zionists the past few years, and this is right up there.

      “Just in case” you still believe that “Israel” was ‘a land without people for people without a land’, the census at the end of 1944 gave 994,724 Muslims, estimated 77,000 Bedouin, 135,547 Christians, 14,098 others and 553,600 Jews (plus illegal Jewish migrants). Even before D-Day in WWII, a Zionist terrorist group had resumed fighting the British Army.

      Source: Short Handbook of Palestine, 3rd Ed. 1947 page 13

      “Just in case” you still believe that the non-existent Palestinians were poor peasants and Jews were the first to make the desert bloom:

      “Refrigerators and caviar, champagne and carpets – a first-ever comprehensive study by historian Adam Raz reveals the extent to which Jews looted Arab property during the War of Independence… In another place, we found a storeroom with 10,000 boxes of caviar”

      https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-10-03/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/jews-looted-arab-property-en-masse-in-48-the-authorities-let-them/0000017f-e7d4-d62c-a1ff-ffff83bd0000

      Will Mr Raz’s book ever be translated into English???… I’m not holding my breath.

      • Tom Welsh

        And grand pianos, for those who believe the insulting propaganda about how all the “Arabs” were “backward”, “filthy”, and “uncultured”.

    • Cornudet

      2000 years ago Germanic tribes dwelled in what is now southern Russia. They were forced to emigrate en masse in the seventh century to avoid extermination at the hands of Attila the Hun. In the last century a guy you may have heard of called Adolf Hitler used these historical facts to stake a claim on vast swathes of real estate in eastern Europe, with catastrophic results for many millions of people. The claim of the Jewish diaspora on Palestine in 1948 is about as reasonable as Hitler’s claim on eastern Europe.

      • AG

        Of course there is the issue of where to emigrate to when the idea to leave picked up traction among Europe’s Jewry.

        As a modern person one would argue “integration of immigrants from Eastern Europe”.
        How that failed in detail might be worth another closer look via true historic scholarship.

        But anyone I have read points out that there was no other place but Palestine. So the one group was squeezed out of Europe, expelling the other one from Palestine. For both cases crude justification was implemented.

        In Vienna Karl Lueger – one of the longest serving mayors ever of this once premier power centre – was building his popular support on abusing the (Jewish) immigration problem. Of course as a form of class struggle from top to the bottom.

        Lueger openly admitted that he used antisemitism as a major tool in his policy-making and finding political majorities.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger

        Eventually the idea of the 19th century ethno-state which was standard then, was not fit for the problem at hand.

        But as Rashid Khalidi points out in his interview with Chris Hedges and in his latest book from 2020 this was again used by the powerful for their geo-politcal interests. And the Zionist and Arab elites were willing to go along (as was amply pointed out by many here).

        The British Crown just did what they do today, sending 100,000 troops over to kill thousands of Arabs during the 1936-39 uprising – at the same time as the Spanish Republic was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War.

        And again at the same time, British Intelligence Service developed a “cordial” relationship with the Gestapo, knowing full well that the German government was preparing for war against Russia, the Slavik peoples, Jews, Communists, Roma and so on.

        So where do you go as Jew?
        What do you do as Arab?

        Khalidi’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Colonialism/dp/1250787653

        • AG

          p.s. Vienna mayor Karl Lueger and Theodor Herzl had an interesting “work relationship”: Herzl a journalist/commentator back then was attacking Lueger. And Lueger was using the bad press from the liberal media pundit Herzl as PR with his electorate which disliked the Vienna liberal. A bit like today…

        • Aguirre

          100,000 troops? Sounds a little on the high side to me, given that the UK based regular army numbered well under 100,000.

          Hence my questions (call it a kind of FactCheck if you will)

          1. where did the 100,000 troops come from? The UK? Or the UK and some of the troops of the Indian army? Partly from garrisons in Egypt?

          2. The period mentioned was 1936-39: were there always 100,000 troops there during that entire period? Or does the figure take account of total troop rotations during the period (meaning that at any given time there were far fewer than 100,000 troops present?

          • AG

            Aguirre

            Khalidi says so.

            Initially in a letter to Woodrow Wilson, when US participation was considered, “not less than 50,000” were assumed. So they knew the problem was considerable.

            Mainly UK troops, since they did not trust Indian troops for political reasons. This is why only after the Munich Agreement when tensions decreased in Europe they were able to dispatch more. So the uprising did cause some concern.

            (I don´t know how troop numbers varied over those 4 years. But around 1938 the tensions peaked as did British military engagement.)

            (which sheds light on the myth itself of tiny Britain facing bid bad Germany, something I never bought into. GB simply wanted to fight the Germans without the commitment of its whole imperial might.)

            By 1939 with WWII there was a general shift in commitment and numbers, which the Zionits however who were well connected with the West could compensate. Additionally from the outset the British had used and equipped Zionists (terrorists included) units (I don´t know numbers) which later would form the core of the IDF leaderhip´s first generation, like Moshe Dayan. Including their vast experience with waging war.

            The 1936 – 1939 period intensified over time. It started out as Arab general strike. Besides there was no Arab army. To counter.

        • Drew Anderson

          To be fair, the Cornudet didn’t say they were “from” there, just that they were living there.

          That said, there are a lot of factual errors, for such a short post. Gothic culture had spread into the region, but not 2000 years ago and not to today’s southern Russia. The process took place between the 2nd and 5th centuries and the settled further west; today’s Ukraine, Moldova and Romania.

          There were several waves of westward migration by Germanic tribes; some were triggered by the Huns, more widely, and by Attila’s campaigns in particular; but earlier than the 7th century. Attila met his end at his wedding feast in 453 (5th century), Hunnic incursions had petered out by the 6th century.

    • Bayard

      ” Just in case you believe there weren’t any Jewish people there before 1948.”

      It would seem that only those who think that Palestine was a “Land without a people for a people without a land” believe that.

      • Carolyn L Zaremba

        There were Jews in Palestine since the Ottoman Empire, but they were native to the Middle East, unlike the European Zionists.

    • Tom Welsh

      Many Romans were born in Britain nearly 2000 years ago. So modern Romans can come to Britain, steal all the land, and kill anyone who resists.

      Right?

      As for all the European colonists squatting North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa… They had better look out when the original indigenes claim their lands back.

      • Simon

        Well as we all apparently came from Africa, it’s obviously rightfully ours, and raping the entire continent for our benefit, exterminating some the current inhabitants or cutting the limbs off the ones that don’t work for us hard enough, is just right and proper.

        • Emma M.

          Excellent idea, Simon, potentially better than Romans retaking Britain. However, it makes me wonder if one is to consider ancestry if we shouldn’t be considering farther back than modern humans emerging from Africa? Our ancestry doesn’t begin there, after all.

          Given we all know lineage determines rightful present ownership as it does in Israel, we must not forget besides coming from Africa, we’re also all vertebrates meaning we have spines and are related to everything else with a spine (surprisingly, I know, given the spinelessness found in many of us). But more broadly, we’re related to everything else that has a mirrored left and right side in embryo, which is to say bilaterians, most of which don’t even have spines and is a group mostly only excluding animals like sponges and jellyfish, and all believed to descend from wormlike creatures.

          If all such animals, including we human animals, are descended from wormlike animals, then does that not mean anywhere with a worm to be found is the land of our ancestors and rightfully belongs to us? However, I cannot say it is right to take the sovereign territory of any sponge or jellyfish, for which we have no rightful claim.

          Er, on second thought, plants actually had all this land first. They were laying claim to it before we animals even evolved, and we have no common ancestry with them… maybe we’ve made a mistake, and to avoid being hypocrites, legal ownership of everywhere on Earth should be ceded to grass, ferns, and such? I would trust the wise rulership of a tree or even a cactus before I do my Prime Minister. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

    • Paul Greenwood

      Though I understand no important Jews visited him other than reviled shepherds signifying his status as symbol for outcasts and those rejected by Jewish society

  • Ron Pelley

    I just caught an announcement on the BBCTV (while looking for a recording of yesterday‘s football). That said, Israel has recommenced its attacks on Gaza. We will be joined in the studio by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev.
    How is this any different to inviting onto the BBC German spokesman Goebbels, while bombs are falling in London?

    • Cynicus

      “‘We will be joined in the studio by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev.’
      How is this any different to inviting onto the BBC German spokesman Goebbels, while bombs are falling in London?”
      ========
      Well, for one thing Israel (for whom Regev speaks) is not bombing London.

    • Aguirre

      Yes, Australian Mark Regev has come a long way since his stint in London. Well deserved, though, for he is a master of chutzpah and of the art of deflecting from answering awkward questions to spinning the hasbara line.

      By the way, perhaps some of you have seen, on YouTube, of Regev being interviewed by Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC on the subject of 7 October and the hostages?

      Regev deployed all his usual tricks but I have the feeling he was less than convincing, because his evasions and diversions were too obviously just that and it would have had to be a particularly stupid watcher not to have noticed.

      Perhaps that is why MSNBC had decided to pull the weekly Mehdi Hasan programme from its schedules as from now? Has the Lobby struck again?

  • U Watt

    Yes, a big positive is that trends are against zionism. Even in the west, young people of the 2020s are able to see far more clearly than their predecessors that it is a supremacist genocidal ideology.

    As I wrote under the previous post, the Andrew Neil – Piers Morgan generation who are desperate to portray Israelis as victims have greatly reduced traction. All across social media young people are not only seeing the endless slaughter but also videos of Israelis “blacking up” as Arabs, mocking Gazans being bombed, denied water and having disease inflicted upon them. They see English subtitles to the bestselling Hebrew songs, all psychopathic genocidal anthems. Younger people are far more likely to hear the truth about the foundation and history of Israel. People don’t forget seeing and learning things like that, no matter how hard old British politicians, pundits and “media personalities” try and valorize Israel and “Her” noble efforts to defend “Herself”. These old zionists have little influence on minds that have seen and heard the truth about Israel.

  • Dave

    The UN is as toothless as the much-derided League of Nations.

    “If you want to look for a sign of hope – and we all need hope – it is that a whole new generation of young people has come to understand that.”

    Useless without power in a ‘two’ party state, where party insiders pick like-minded candidates to perpetuate the overton window. And reading the following reminded me of Jeremy Corbyn:

    « Queen Elizabeth II was instrumental in the ouster of Canberra’s RADICAL LEFT-wing premier, Gough Whitlam, in November 1975. The papers showed that then-Prince Charles was a core conspirator in the coup, coordinating directly with Britain’s governor John Kerr – who dismissed the Prime Minister – before, during and after. Six months later, the King-in-waiting wrote to Kerr:

     ” I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed in your many and varied duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do. ” » [Emphasis added]

    https://www.mintpressnews.com/is-zionist-king-charles-behind-israel-genocide-in-gaza/286185/

    Incidentally, I read this article about the King’s support for an apartheid country just days after it was revealed he was one of the Royals questioning the baby’s skin colour…

    I’ll keep popping the Prozac, but I thank you for sharpening my thoughts.

    • John Cleary

      They did the same to Harold Wilson four months after Whitlam.

      The next man, one James Callaghan, was quite happy to go along with the “Bank of England Nominees” nonsense.

      And the Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha gang were on their way to uncountable riches.

      Callaghan (“Farmer Jim”) did quite well for himself as well.

  • fredi

    They say the first casualty of war is the truth.
    Humanity has been subject to an information war forever, where those very few with enormous wealth and power lie relentlessly to the many with little or none. It’s all about control.
    Their lies seem to be getting more outlandish these days, it feels like something big is coming, and how can it be anything good?
    Yet the Dow 30 is again touching on historical highs, without a care in the world, it’s almost as if we are witnessing the last engineered hurrah before the lights go out.

    • Tom Welsh

      “Yet the Dow 30 is again touching on historical highs…”

      Although the Dow-Jones index and Dow Chemical Corp were founded by different men with the same surname, it’s a healthy reminder that the Dow-Jones prospers in step with sales of napalm and other delightful substances.

      “Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?”
      — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (“I love you, Madame Librarian”)

  • Peter

    When both the British government and the, so called, official opposition both openly and unashamedly support genocide we are in a new paradigm, a terrible time.

    Everything needs to be re-thought.

    When Shahid Bolsen speaks it is worth listening. His tone and line of logic is very reminiscent of Malcolm X. Here he provides a strong analysis and makes the strong case that the countries of the west are now being treated the same as the colonised countries were in the past – on the same trajectory and with the same results. This echoes Tony Benn’s assertion that Britain is the last colony of the ruling class:

    Shahid Bolsen: We are all in the same struggle (Middle Nation, 3 Dec 2023) – YouTube, 16m 8s

    With respect to Gaza, it is now clearer than ever that Israel is every bit as much a western imperial project as it is the building of a homeland for Jewish people. The west’s “aircraft carrier in the Middle East” as Biden called it.

    Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, provides an outstanding historical analysis of how Israel-Palestine has been brought to its current, dreadful plight. Here he talks to Chris Hedges:

    The Chris Hedges Report: The 100 year war on Palestine w/Rashid Khalidi (The Real News Network, 3 Dec 2023) – YouTube, 1h 1m 10s

    Everything needs to be re-thought. Not least, the current constitution of Israel-Palestine.

    • Laguerre

      “The west’s “aircraft carrier in the Middle East”
      It should of course be understood that the Israeli “aircraft carrier” is of no strategic advantage for the US, and even less to the rest of the West. The US would have better chosen straightforward diplomatic relations with the remainder of the Middle East without the pressure of support for a nation that insists on a state of war with its neighbours.

      • Aguirre

        Exactly my thought. As I’ve written several times, the UK and US gain nothing concrete from their over-close relationship with Israel, hence the following questions should be posed (idem for Ukraine by the way):
        1) what do the UK and US gain, concretely, from their support of Israel? In more brutal language : how are our interests served?
        2) what do the UK and Us owe Israel? Is there a historical or any other concrete sort of obligation upon us?

  • Godolphin

    I realise that I should change my pseudonym to Jaded Pessimist but that ‘new generation’ will all be as impotent as we are.

    We can but hope…

    • Tom Welsh

      I wouldn’t be so sure, Godolphin. There are an awful lot more of us than them – and a surprising number of those who appear to be on the side of the murderers do actually nurse some human feeling, which they hide in order to keep their jobs.

      The young show promising signs of understanding that the enemies of Palestinians, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Serbs, Venezuelans – hell, practically everyone outside the Golden Billion – are also the worst enemies of us, their own citizens.

      The time will come when more and more people totally ignore all the lying media, irrelevant rigged elections, pompous parliamentary bloviation, and murderous swine who spend our taxes on death and oppression – and eventually they will begin to take control of their own affairs.

      “Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular”.
      — David Hume, “Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Essay 4 : Of The First Principles of Government”

      When you think Hume’s words over, you will see exactly why the powers that be hate and fear people like Mr Murray so much.

    • Bayard

      Unfortunately, if you look at organisations like the Army, where young and inexperienced newcomers are given a hard time, you will see that by and large, this doesn’t stop those same people giving the next lot of young and inexperienced newcomers a hard time in their turn. Awareness of an abuse of power seems more often to lead to a desire to become the abuser not the abused, rather than to stop the abuse. The great advantage to the abusers of what we call “democracy” is that it holds out hope to the abused that they might one day achieve this desire. The idea that every citizen of the USA can aspire to be President is one of the evils of the system, not one of its virtues.

      • Tom Welsh

        More and more nowadays I am reminded of one of the BBC’s natural history programs, in which some Japanese monkeys were featured. With snow and ice on the ground, a few dominant monkeys had taken over a pool of warm water and lay luxuriating in the heat. I can never forget the looks of utter callous indifference with which they surveyed their fellows dying of cold within spitting distance. Very human indeed.

      • Tom Welsh

        Oh, every citizen of the USA can aspire to be President. He or she won’t be able to, but they can aspire all they like.

        If they are born to a family of billionaires they have some chance. Being psychopaths really helps.

  • Goose

    Israel’s actions have certainly shone a bright light on the US and UK’s hypocrisy. It’s ruined our leaders’ narrative, already only accepted by the most gullible – which sadly includes much of the media. A narrative that asserted Ukraine was a fight to preserve our values or some international rules based order.

    I see Michael Gove and officials in his department are demanding the Interfaith Network, a charity, condemn Hamas and the attacks of Oct 7th or lose its funding. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/02/interfaith-charity-silence-on-hamas-atrocity-concern/

    The Community Security Trust(CST) and the plethora of other Israeli lobbying operations, aren’t being similarly called upon to condemn Israel’s excessive, indiscriminate bombing, are they? In fact, even asking such organisations to do so, is classed as antisemitism according to the contradictory IHRA. The IHRA entwines Israel and Judaism, trying to have its cake and eat it by claiming certain criticisms of Israel are anti-Semitic, While also stating that attempting to hold Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel is anti-Semitic. By the same token, why are Gove and his department placing an onus on Muslim charities in the UK to denounce Hamas?

    • Bayard

      “I see Michael Gove and officials in his department are demanding the Interfaith Network, a charity, condemn Hamas and the attacks of Oct 7th ”

      Change that to “…condemn the Pope and all his works”, as they might have said in the C16th, and you begin to see the true motivation behind the demand. It’s just another shibboleth to see if you are prepared to fall in with the “right” beliefs.

  • harry law

    Excellent article Craig and so true.
    I suspect the Israelis calculated that the time to act against the Palestinians was now whether contrived or not. Remember the number of Palestinians is about equal to the number of Israelis in the whole of Palestine, not counting the many millions of refugees in neighbouring states, plus the higher birth rates of Palestinians, leaving Israelis as a distinct minority in 5/10 years.
    Couple this with very significant trade deals by both China and Russia and the rapprochement set up by China of Saudi Arabia and Iran – this means a big and negative deal for both US and Israel, in fact the West in general. It was only a short time ago that China did a 450 billion trade deal with Iran; similar deals have taken place with Russia, who are now going to sell the latest fighter jets and attack helicopters to Iran. Iran and Saudi Arabia are slated to join BRICS on 1st Jan 2024. Also very importantly, Iran is a member of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, which other members have a duty to defend if attacked. As I have said in various other comments on this blog, the military balance of power has shifted from Israel/US to the neighbouring states and non-state actors such as Hezbollah.
    Israel knows its time is short and, as Craig said, most young people are now aware that Israel is a racist, supremacist, thieving state which practices Apartheid. This has been confirmed by many leading Human Rights Organisations – indeed, in a separate finding, by the United Nations itself.
    It may be the case that Israel could go for a two-fer, i.e. hoping to destroy Hamas and the Gaza Strip, then inducing Hezbollah to attack while the US fleet are lurking in the Med with several hundred aircraft-carrier-based fighter-bombers on hand too. As Israel’s Defence Minister said, “they will do to Lebanon what they are doing to Gaza”. Big stakes all around.

  • harry law

    Does this not so long ago event remind people of what is happening now in Gaza?
    The Cherokee removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.
    The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after. Some historians have said that the event constituted a genocide.
    The discovery of Gas off the coast of Gaza is purely a coincidence, I’m sure.
    Equally bizarre is when we were sat in cinemas watching the wagon train full of pioneers surrounded by yelping Indians – sorry, I meant savages – then we all cheered when we heard a distant bugle [no, it was not a lost rag and bone man], but the US army coming to enforce the pioneers ‘Manifest destiny’ or ‘will of God’ on the “lesser breeds”. Some things never change,

  • Jack

    Ever since the Berlin Wall fell down there have been a slow demise of the leftist “movement”. Instead a streamlined, consensus-driven neo-liberalism type of politics have taken their place throughout the western world and that goes for the whole of society, from the politics in the parliament to daily op-eds to the position of the NGOs. There is no left left.
    I would say the final straw for me was when leftists cheered on and supported the war against Libya. Then I knew that that was the nail in coffin for me personally that they had abdicated the leftist ideology.

    In a way the right-wingers have become the gatekeppers:
    It is like the left is afraid of taking a position fearing the right-wing media, and the rightwing opposition to attack them. The left today can for example easily condemn Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, supporting sanctions and so on, because that is a harmless thing to do since the rightwingers do it, but hardly any leftist political leader of a party throughout the west dare to condemn Israel because that would create a right-wing backlash they fear so they become silent and complicit. This is nothing but cowardice.

    Why is it that the right-wing, totally unabashed, could openly declare that they support Israel even though the heinous brutality is visible to everyone but the left do not even dare to declare to support for the oppressed, the occupied and the slaughtered, even though a great part of the intentionally killed victims are small children!? And the left have all the arguments on their side when it comes to morally and internationally law but yet they sit in silent doing nothing of substance.

    And what is the result when the left is no longer visible?
    This:
    Russia Today (RT) News : Young European voters flocking to ‘far right’ – Guardian
    The media outlet has lamented that youthful citizens are increasingly backing “xenophobic” populists who prioritize their needs

    https://swentr.site/news/588403-young-european-voters-flock-to-far-right-candidates/

    • Bayard

      “The media outlet has lamented that youthful citizens are increasingly backing “xenophobic” populists who prioritize their needs”

      Whose needs does the Grauniad think politicians should be prioritising, the old and rich? the USA?

  • Xavi

    Over many decades the Germans had succeeded to a remarkable extent in restoring their global reputation. In just a couple of years they have managed to almost completely destroy it again. And this time not even in an attempt to benefit themselves but instead as the result of a bizarre effort to please the US Hegemon and the child murderers of Israel. It’s only the very beginning of German decline too. We should all pray that in the coming years they do not turn again for resurrection to another strong man. Otherwise we could all be looking back at the present Dystopia as a time of peace and goodwill.

    • harry law

      Xavi, Germany’s decline can be attributed to its craven, disgusting, groveling politicians support for the US, this was evidenced by the former US Ambassador to Germany writng letters to German companies threatening them with dire consequences if they continued finishing the Nord stream 2 pipeline, he did this over the heads of the German government led by Merkel, a quite exraordinary state of affairs for a so called sovereign country.
      This was surpassed a few years later when Scholz stood alongside Biden in silence in one ot the greatest shows of cowardice and lack of self respect I have ever seen, when Biden told the audience the US could and would sabotage Germany’s cheap pipeline gas from Russia, thereby crippling German industry and doubling home owners’ gas bills. A short time later Blinken said this is a great opportunity for US gas exporters – how right he was! Germany now imports vast quantities of US gas at 5 times the price of Russian pipeline gas.

      • AG

        the deeper causes of this might be more interesting than might appear at first sight.
        I cannot truly answer them since I did not follow events the way I do now.

        But the Merkel administrations missed the opportunity to create potentially non-US alliances in case the US-RU relationships would implode.

        The pipelines are after all a subject of contestation for decades.

        And as such any government should have taken precautions for the day that these conflicts would surface the way they did.

        But our governments never did.

        Without plans worked out (“Operation Unthinkable 2?”) neither within the EU nor bilaterally between Germany and non-EU states with raw resources etc. they were sitting ducks from 2021 on.

        I am still waiting for a German study that would show what consequences a break with the US over RU would have meant for Germany.

        Of course it would have been a great historic opportunity but certainly not with people with this mindset and in this political environment and culture.

        Imagine what would have happened if Scholz had said: ‘No, I do not participate in the war against RU and I do not support UKR with arms’?

        The US would have not only bombed the pipeline but perhaps frozen major German assets in the US and much much more – things I don’t know about enough (Maybe an email to Michael Hudson would help.)

        To prevent the US blowing up Nordstream would have amounted to something like armed conflict.

        Just play through what the alternative would have meant, knowing that the perpetrator was willing to use any force if necessary.

        How do you protect Nordstream as Germany against the Americans?
        What would have happened had the Germans indicted the US at the UN SC for bombing the pipeline?

        It would result in a wildly entertaining and imaginative alternative reality action movie or novel.

        But for real? This was almost bound to happen.

        p.s. Hugo Chavez asked Cuban state security for protection since the Cubans had been able to protect Castro successfully for decades.

        Who could the Germans have asked to help them protect the pipelines? Or other infrastructure?

  • Stevie Boy

    Well said, it is extremely distressing and depressing times we live in. And yet with all this, the capitalist establishment are still pushing ‘joy to the world’, ‘it’s Christmas’, spend, spend, spend. The moronic masses live in a fantasy bubble, whilst in Paris the blowback has started; our turn soon? Maybe we should be asking the security services where in the UK they’ve resettled their assets, Manchester, London, …

    • Tom Welsh

      Yes – I have been noticing that, in spite of the steadily increasing immiseration of the British people, Christmas now seems to begin in nearly or mid-November.

      When I was young, we begin to think about Christmas in mid-December, put up decorations on about the 20th, and took maybe a week or ten days to celebrate the holiday.

    • Bayard

      ” It’s the IDF you slimy dimwit!”

      Not only that, but having unpleasant things done to you does not in any ethical code, give you the right to do unpleasant things to other people, not even the people who were doing the unpleasant things to you, except in an effort to stop them doing it at the time they were doing it.

    • Damien

      I read the Howard Jacobsen article. His literary training does not qualify him to comment as an independent political or military observer. He displays all the stock self-absorption of Jews who see and recognize only Jewish interests and views. His Wikipedia records his total pro-Israel background. For Jacobsen the Palestinians, and the massive crimes conducted against them by Israel, simply do not exist. For an alternative view read Caitlin Johnson’s account of the IDF shooting of an unarmed teenage Palestinian boy. His “crime”? — he had been “celebrating” the release of Hamas hostages. That’s right, jumping up and down and cheering. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum defended the shooting by saying “part of the deal is that there would be no celebrations for the release of attempted murderers” (this was actually not a part of the deal, it was just a decree issued by Israel’s national security minister). The released hostages had never been charged much less convicted for murdering anyone. People have had enough of the “Israel as victim” garbage. And the deafening silence on the Palestinian dead.

      https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/12/01/israels-savagery-is-so-shocking-its-sometimes-hard-to-take-in/

    • Tom Welsh

      Jacobsen has, as you say, some reputation as a witty novelist. Although I like such books, I have never picked up one of his. Why? Simply because I consider him a vile human being.

  • S. von Toerne

    Hi Craig,

    the acute reason for the current budget crisis in Germany is actually a technical one. German constitutional law (Grundgesetz) limits the ability for the state to borrow money and create new debts. Only in times of crisis (natural disasters or other world events beyond the Government’s control) the ministry of finance is permitted to exceed that limit and borrow additional money for specific purposes directly related to the crisis.

    This has happened several times since 2020 for obvious reasons: the Covid lockdowns and then the loss of access to cheap Russian gas in 2022, the so called ‘energy crisis’ and all its consequences to the German economy. In its last supplemental budget the German government tried to ‘reassign’ 60 billion euros that were originally allocated to measures countering the effects of the pandemic – essentially money borrowed under these emergency measures – to their climate and transformation fund (Klima- und Transformations-fonds) because those 60 billion had in fact not been used.

    However, on 15th of November the German federal constitutional court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) declared this ‘reassignment’ unconstitutional and that’s why there is now a 60 billion hole in the budget and the whole Government program of which the climate and transformation fond was an essential part, meant to steer the country towards renewable energies and away from coal and gas dependency by 2027, is in tatters.

    • Bayard

      “Only in times of crisis (natural disasters or other world events beyond the Government’s control) the ministry of finance is permitted to exceed that limit and borrow additional money for specific purposes directly related to the crisis.”

      Does that not mean that, every time the government runs out of money, a “crisis” appears?

      • terence callachan

        Whose crisis? Germany chucking money at Ukraine to fight Russia – is that an emergency relief for Germany, or are there exceptions?

    • AG

      S. von Toerne

      The German Constitutional Court´s verdict does not touch any of the structural economic changes that were forced upon the German economy as a consequence of the war well before Nov.15th. Or general economic policies.

      I believe what Craig meant is the big picture, the major historic outline and the economic earthquake that destroys wealth and its sources.

      The Court´s decision was tiny in comparison.

      ->Additionally other long-term factors amount to the current crises over the years. Just think of the 350 billion inherited annually in Germany which are not being taxed.

      See this German language FAZ article from 2020. It speaks of annually 200-400 bn Euros inherited which are almost not being taxed.

      “One in fifty inherits more than a million”
      “Between 200 and 400 billion euros are inherited in Germany every year. Hardly any tax is paid on this.”
      https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/schneller-schlau/jeder-fuenfzigste-deutsche-vererbt-mehr-als-eine-millionen-euro-17090096.html

      “Germans are rich. Not every single one of them, of course – but if you add up the net assets of private households, you get the incredible sum of 14.1 trillion euros for 2018.”

      (no online Google-translation was possible)

      -> The infamous 100 bn. for German rearmament had nothing to do with the Court. In fact the outlines of that “Zeitwende” nonsense had been worked out well before the war had broken out.

      -> The same is true for long-term increased military spending in the EU to 4% and increased military posture by NATO. Those were first presented at the Munich Security Conference in 2020.

      This court case is diversion again. In fact it’s perfect to offer another occasion to NOT talk about the real issue here.

      -> In Germany by now even the “Mittelstand” has articulated warnings against de-industrialization. (Bavaria e.g. in Oct.)

      This is in fact of grave concern since half of the global high-end industrial companies are located in Germany.

      They are part of these medium-sized publicly little-known but highly-qualified German companies that make for a unique landscape.

      They incorporate the core of what internationally is regarded as German industrial might and know-how.

      Initially I thought that de-industrialization was alarmism. But apparently it does develop and materialize over time.

  • Robert Dyson

    That reminds me of Max Planck’s comment that new scientific theories do not take over from old theories by convincing current scientists that they are wrong, but because those with the old theories die and the new generation grows up working with the new theories. Israel has totally destroyed whatever good reputation it had and has made firmly fierce enemies of its immediate neighbours and many other countries. What a lack of sane leadership is there in the USA that did not phone Israel on 7th October to say – do not rush into retaliation as that will not end well for you? The USA, UK, EU all giving unconditional support to Israel with weapons and intelligence to topple into disaster for the region. Kamala Harris exposed the weakness of the USA in that she could only talk about what happens when the war is over. That’s like someone with stage 4 cancer being told – we don’t know how to cure you, but when we do you will have a wonderful holiday. Slightly off topic (I hope Craig lets me off) I note Keir Starmer is praising Margaret Thatcher for releasing entrepreneurism in the UK. All the blind leading the blind.

  • Ben

    I am sorry but after the EU (mainly Germany) destroyed Greece’s economy I hope they get the same pain. It is about time the neo-liberals are dethroned and money can be printed to finance the green transition.

    It would be stupid to destroy our civilisation because the neo-liberals say we can not afford it.

    • Laguerre

      It was the Greek govt which destroyed the Greek economy, by spending without bothering to tax. Not the “nasty” EU; Greece could have Grexited.

      • Aguirre

        Again, very correct.

        The “bail-out” model chosen by the EU and accepted (after much fake protest) by the Pasok and New Democracy govts was a fake solution designed to protect the bourgeois class of Greece itself but also those of France, Germany and certain other creditor countries, by putting the burden of reducing govt debt onto the least well- off of the population.

        The Cypriot solution of a “bail-in” should have been applied. For example, there could have been a tax on bank deposits over €100,000. In this way, those with capital (often built up through tax evasion) would have paid rather than those whose already meager pensions and meager minimum wages were reduced further.

        The private money was (and still is) certainly there: during the 5 months before the Syriza govt imposed capital controls, something like €40 billion left the country; and there was much, much more available in Greek-based private accounts.

        The Greek govts could have proposed a “bail-in” – but didn’t. And if they had, the EU might well have refused. This is because the same interests were being defended.

  • Zack15

    I have the impression that our world view is converging more and more. This may not only be due to a similar political point of view, but simply to the factual circumstances. This must have been how someone felt in the early 1940s.

    It is a consolation that people who are more eminent than me confirm my perceptions.

  • Aden

    I read that Germany is in budget crisis. I looked thorugh numerous articles, and not a single one mentioned the actual cause of the crisis, the war in Ukraine and in particular the destruction of Nordstream.
    ==========
    Why have you left off the trillions of Euros of socialist pension debt?
    The workers have been asset-stripped. Now there’s that debt to pay, that has to be paid with taxes (it’s inflation linked), and that means lots of tax with no services: i.e. Austerity.

    • Xavi

      The crisis is not due to German workers receiving pensions. It is due to bizarre economic self-immolation by German politicians to please Washington.

    • AG

      German Gross National Product between 1991 and 2014 has risen by 34%.
      The welfare index for the same period has risen by 4,4%.

      34% vs. 4.4%
      where has all the wealth gone?

      p.s. many younger ones can only live off their parents’ support, which means mostly high pensions and real estate acquired after WWII.

      This is not included in these statistics. I don’t know if there are any major studies on this aspect at all, since it´s difficult to survey.

      We know from Spain and Greece during the financial crises years, that massive numbers of young people were forced to live at home.

      Germany numbers:
      – top 20% of households have 4.6 times as much income as the bottom 20%
      – number of people with less than the average income increased from 7.7% to 10.1% between 2010 and 2022
      – number of people with less than 60% of the average income increased from 14,5% to 16,7%

      Affected most are children with almost 22% in poverty (with a very high percentage of single-mother households) and pensioners with almost 19% poverty rate.

      These numbers naturally don´t tell you anything about the increase of low-level jobs and the rising hours these people have to work to not fall even deeper.

      Barbara Ehrenreich 20 years ago coined the term “working poor” in the US – I assume the same phenomenon has been long known in the UK, too.

      Many are poorer than statistics would reveal because they work as free-lancers or do not ask for state welfare due to the demeaning procedures.
      + see my p.s. note above.

      Additionally people are forced to take demeaning jobs. The money used by state welfare is burnt up in senseless procedures to strike fear into people’s hearts by private companies who have taken over the formerly state-run welfare services (which are often not regarded as “services” granted, but charity under forced conditions).

      For instance: You get a 10 Euro/hour job. However you end up with 4 Euros, because there are 3 intermediate companies who allegedly help the major company to find you a job (which is mostly a lie). But they are being paid from the 10 Euros you are supposed to get and won’t end up with.

      • AG

        p.s. a couple of former employees of these state-run but in fact private welfare services / centers for jobless people managed to get elected into the German Parliament.

        They became so frustrated over the disinterest they faced and lack of influence in their Social Democratic Party or the LEFT PARTY that they would leave the Parliament again and do community work where they could actually change something on small scale.

    • Tom Welsh

      The very first scheme of occupational pensions for workers (and medical insurance) was introduced by Bismarck’s government during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II (in the 1880s).

      Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I were hardly “socialists”. They introduced those basic social benefits (as Churchill and Lloyd George – another pair of unlikely “socialists” – were to do in Britain 20 years later) for hard-headed practical reasons. They understood that the workers were any nation’s greatest asset, so they decided to make them as productive, efficient, and secure as possible. The USA followed similar policies in the 19th century, until it reached its goal of becoming the leading industrial power.

      Nations that do that thrive. Those – like all the Western nations today – that do not, fail.

      • Bayard

        “Those – like all the Western nations today – that do not, fail.”

        That is because those Western nations are being eaten up by the cancer that is financial capitalism. In the past, the industrial capitalists welcomed the welfare state as it provided benefits to their workers which meant that they, as employers, neither had to provide them, or pay their workers sufficiently to afford to buy them from others. Financial capitalism is not a mass employer and their employees are, by and large, rich. They live off rent charged to those who actually add value, so are unconcerned about what workers have to pay for benefits previously provided by the state.

    • AG

      I believe there was gossip of her being easy-going in the past which made her liked by some powerful men in California but offered her some access she might not have gained as a woman in big power politics (though some of those relationships were genuine) – this purely fifth-hand gossip.

      why the Q?

  • Republicofscotland

    Spot on Craig, what I’ve noticed and I hope others have noticed it as well, is the sheer and utterly complicity of Western bodies when it comes to the Genocide in Gaza, and the partiality in the Ukraine conflict, I’ve seen the likes of the EU, the UK and the US and other supposedly world orientated bodies such as the ICC and the UNWFP (CEO attended an Israeli IDF fund raiser) act in such a biased manner.

    Then there’s the Western media is bias is also unprecedented.

    As for Western governments that back the genocide, it’s as if they don’t care what their citizens think of them.

    • John Main

      It’s very possible and plausible, to me at least, that western governments are extremely concerned at the idea of approx 9.5 million Israeli refugees having to move out.

      After all, with the annihilation of Israel, as sworn by Iran, Hamas, etc. the population will either have to shift elsewhere, or be annihilated too.

      It’s not as if the western citizens who are so exercised about the current “genocide” are going to just ignore the alternative genocide, is it?

      • Stevie Boy

        Most of the Israeli population, since 1948, came from (Eastern) Europe and the USA. A majority probably also have dual nationality status. Would not be an issue for most of them all to f*ck off back where they came from. I’m sure the Palestinians would welcome any Jews who wanted to live in Palestine in harmony and with equal rights for all, like pre 1948.
        What do you think ?

        • terence callachan

          Indeed if you go to Israel all you will hear are American accents they’re all sent off to university in USA after school and come back to Israel to do national service at some point. Israel is a weird place. You should visit and see first hand the way they treat Palestinians and anyone else who is not from Israel.

      • Tom Welsh

        “After all, with the annihilation of Israel, as sworn by Iran, Hamas, etc. the population will either have to shift elsewhere, or be annihilated too”.

        If you interchange “Israel” and the Palestinians, you have exactly the situation anticipated by the founders of Zionism in the 1880s. They blithely assumed, as all Zionists have done and still do, that the problem would solve itself. “Somehow”, those annoying indigenous people would disappear.

      • Bayard

        “After all, with the annihilation of Israel, as sworn by Iran, Hamas, etc. the population will either have to shift elsewhere, or be annihilated too.”

        You keep coming out with this as if it is some sort of fact, when it is entirely a figment of your and many others’ imagination. Other commenters have politely explained to you why it is untrue and you ignore them. If you neither have the courtesy to explaining why you think this falsehood to be true against the arguments put for its being a falsehood or to stop repeating it, expect people to be discourteous to you.

  • AG

    I don´t think any German writer has ever compared Israel´s security fence and weapons systems with the former East German Wall.
    Of course it is much more difficult to break through the former. But there are remarkable similarities.

  • Townsman

    Unfortunately I don’t think there is “massive popular opposition to the genocide in Gaza”. Yes there are protest demonstrations that have drawn 300k people. Let’s assume that for every person that shows up to one of these, there’s another one who agrees but can’t attend. That’s still only 600k people out of a greater London population of 12 million – about 5%.

    Most people get their impression of the world from TV news, which nowadays tells them what the State wants them to believe.

    • Peter

      @ Townsman

      If the current police figures are as woefully short of the mark as they were on 11th November then there are at least two more people actually on the demonstrations for every one that the police claim.

      In the meantime opinion polls show that over three quarters of the British public want an immediate ceasefire and halt to the gratuitous, mass slaughter of innocent civilians, as does the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world.

      That shouldn’t come as a surprise to any decent person in possession of their senses.

      The Cradle: 76 percent of UK citizens want ceasefire in Gaza: Poll (20 Oct 2023)

    • Tom Welsh

      I know I am supposed to add some commentary, but this quotation from Adam Smith really does speak for itself. It explains perfectly why British and American people would be indifferent to the suffering and death of Palestinians, even if they hadn’t been led to believe that they are bad people who mean us harm.

      “Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own”.
      — Adam Smith (“The Theory of Moral Sentiments”)

      • Bayard

        If the problem was just the indifference of our latter day equivalents of Adam Smith’s “man of humanity”, it would not be a great one, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is the latter-day men of inhumanity who are not indifferent, but are saying that the victims somehow deserve to die or that their killers are somehow right to kill them.

    • craig Post author

      Most old people get their view of the world from TV news. Nobody else does. And nobody ever got half of the people who support anything out on to the street.

      • Townsman

        Where do the “non-old” get their news from, then? Not your blog (good though it may be) or Glenn Greenwald or Declassifieduk.org. If they get it from the websites of the Daily Mail, the Guardian, etc my point stands with minor amendment.

        • U Watt

          For many years young people have been getting their news from Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter etc. In the last two months they have been exposed to viral videos of Israel murdering children and the extreme popular racism in Israel, which establishment hacks are unable to frame, filter or suppress. The youth are highly unlikely to become consumers of TV news, the Daily Mail or the Fraudian in the future, a fact that is causing much consternation among zionists.

          • Townsman

            A study found Visegrád 24 as the most influential account on Twitter and TikTok about Israel/Palestine (it got 370 million views in the first 3 days after Oct 7). Visegrád 24 is an even more bigoted pro-Israeli source than the MSM, so I don’t see why Zionists should be worried. More info here.

          • Bayard

            “A study found Visegrád 24 as the most influential account on Twitter”

            I may be wrong, but I find it unlikely that a single Twitterer would have the same aura of respectability and truthfulness as, say, the BBC has for the older generations. Visegrád may be a pro-Israel bigot, but that doesn’t mean that his followers don’t realise that.

          • U Watt

            Townsman

            All polling shows young people overwhelmingly support Palestine. So while that particular site may be extremely popular among zionists and other hardcore racists, it is quite evidently not where young people are going for news.

  • Crispa

    And there is no mention in the post of the miserable weather that we are having, people stranded in their cars in the Lake District because of snow, planes stuck in the snow at Munich delaying the flight to Dubai for the passengers to work out how to reverse global warming at COP 28 and a reported record forecast low for this time of the year of -28%C in Siberia. At the same time the miserable cold weather does not seem to have deterred the small boats from ferrying desperate people across the channel. Dystopia indeed.

  • AG

    why isnt´t there any court ruling that Germany which by historic guilt is “standing with Israel” since 1948 should then be as well obliged to be standing with all the Palestinians too?

    If Germany claims that the Holocaust is the one bigget single cause for founding Israel then same should be true for the expulsion of the native people and their denied right to self-determination as a direct consequence of that founding act.

    • Stevie Boy

      The zionist creation of apartheid Israel was well underway before the events of WW2. The holocaust, fascism and Germany is a convenient excuse to justify its existence and continuation.

    • Tom Welsh

      There is an old (and very accurate) saying that generals are always prepared to fight the last war. (But never the next one). Hence the ludicrous aircraft carriers.

      Apparently the German people are now thoroughly prepared to make up for their (well, actually their grandparents’) past sins of mistreating Jews. Unfortunately their Weltanschauung has got stuck in the 1930s so they fail to notice that in today’s world the Palestinians are being mistreated just as the Jews once were – and being mistreated by the Jews.

      This is one reason why I voted for Brexit. So many Europeans – and not only Europeans – see the trees, but completely overlook the forest. They know that it is wrong to mistreat Jews, but they cannot grasp that it is wrong for Jews to mistreat others. They pass and stringently enforce laws forbidding the praise of Nazis or the abuse of Jews, but encourage the praise of Jews and the abuse of Nazis. They are unable to understand the abstract principle of free speech – or even its immense practical benefits.

  • El Dee

    Aren’t UK government claiming that the aerial surveillance is to track down Israeli hostages in Gaza? Or are they directly admitting involvement in this to give Israel bombing targets??

      • Tom Welsh

        “…who knows if the govt or the reporting medium is lying?”

        The obvious answer is “yes, they are”. As for which of them are lying at any particular time, and about what, well…

        “Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea”.
        – Dr Johnson

    • Tom Welsh

      Personally I wouldn’t believe a single word they say. But in the matter of reconnaissance, they have a lot of previous. They overflew Libya “to prevent the regime attacking its own people” – and Colonel Qadafi was murdered. They fly drones and manned aircraft as near as they possibly can to Crimea and Ukraine – and violent attacks on Russian installations almost always follow.

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