Humans are naturally cooperative creatures. The ability of people to dominate other life forms on the planet, to produce a built environment structured to their needs, to ensure food and water supply, to develop complex civilisations and produce all kinds of structures and objects designed to enhance interest and comfort, and to interact on a social plane that includes communication of abstract thought – all of it is a result of coordinated endeavour.
This cannot be achieved without altruism. Ever since humans have existed, people have contributed to the communal good or to the individual good of other humans through acts of social solidarity.
It is of course possible to construct an argument that selfless acts are performed on the basis of expecting wider advantage to oneself or one’s descendants from the fruits of societal advancement, but it is not necessary to believe that empathy and kindness are a manifestation of subconscious selfishness. In fact it is rather perverse to do so.
The argument was popular in the West in the 1980s when dismantling the intellectual underpinnings of the welfare state was a prime mission of those in power. But it is counter-intuitive, does not survive introspection nor observation, and it is unnecessary.
In fact it is not merely in seeking directly to help others that humans may act without selfish motive. There have always been those, for example, who seek to advance the frontiers of knowledge for its own sake, because they are intellectually fascinated, without seeking to derive any personal advantage or even practical benefit to humanity from their area of research.
The quest for spiritual enlightenment or for artistic expression is often followed with no thought of gain.
Poor people, who can hardly afford to, give to charity. Those hundreds setting sail today on the Sumud flotilla to bring aid to Gaza put their lives in danger, from an opposition to social evil.
None
Personally, when I investigated Israeli crimes in Southern Lebanon under Israeli drones and in the sights of Israeli snipers, or when I went to jail for revealing the truth of the conspiracy to imprison Alex Salmond, I cannot convict myself of any ill motive. I was acutely aware of my own danger and of my own responsibilities. A belief in the need to oppose the wicked actions of those controlling the power of the state, and a belief that knowledge of the truth is an essential public good, drove me in both circumstances.
I sat with Ghassan Abu Sitta in a Beirut cafe discussing the fortune he could be making as a plastic surgeon in London when instead he had chosen to work in circumstances of the most extreme professional stress and personal danger on earth, striving to save lives in Gazan operating theatres.
Ghassan is a Palestinian Scot; and there are dozens of healthcare workers with no cultural or ethnic connection to those they serve who have braved the terrors of Gaza to save lives.
Can you imagine how much more common altruism might be if the entire state were not constructed in order to teach us that it is abnormal?
Yet we live in a neoliberal society of which the carefully structured and regulated social model operates on the assumption that everyone wishes to gain maximum resources to themselves, and that the activities of a tiny percentage – who often do little discernible work in production – are hundreds of thousands of times more worthy of reward than those of ordinary workers.
It is not an accident. It is not the natural order of human society. All kinds of human societies have existed, and all have been constructs. They can be patriarchal or matriarchal, communitarian or hierarchised, religious or secular, aggressive or pacific.
Modern neoliberal society is structured around monetary systems that store wealth, in currencies that largely exist as digits in computers, and which are allocated to institutions and individuals through state-regulated systems that in no sense capture societal value as the basis of reward.
Take the UK’s richest citizen, Jim Ratcliffe. What is the basis of his wealth? Did he invent something? Did he pioneer a new form of management? Did he build vast new industrial plants that employed tens of thousands of people?
No, he did none of those things, and indeed arguably he did the very opposite of those things. All he did was accounting tricks with digitised currency units, and then indulge himself in football clubs and Land Rover nostalgia.
I have still never seen a satisfactory explanation of Epstein’s wealth, yet nobody finds it strange to associate with people whose billions have appeared through mystical financial structuring.
For a period of approximately half a century from about 1930, the primary function of states was seen to be ensuring the welfare, comparative economic well-being and social mobility of the vast bulk of its citizens.
From the Reagan/Thatcher era that changed, and the prime activity of states became the fine-tuning of the systems of finance and resource-holding in order to increase the concentration of capital. In other words the state became the facilitator of the relentless accrual of the assets of the nation into the hands of the already wealthy.
As a result we live in an incredibly unequal society, and one in which the living standards and income security of the majority are highly precarious, with disastrous social consequences of scapegoating and xenophobia.
It is at this moment that the major social disruptor of Artificial Intelligence has arrived.
Those of my generation did not usually foresee the impact of the internet. I remember typing green text on a black screen in Dundee in 1979 and being amazed I was playing Dungeons and Dragons with somebody in Manchester.
A decade later we had home computers that made noises I will never forget as they connected down the phone line; if you were lucky you would get a good enough connection to send a plain email.
There are those who foresaw the decline of city centres, the delivery culture, the fall in in-person business and social activity, the growth of corporate knowledge gatekeepers, state control of personal data, and all the other things that happened since.
I was not one of them. Similarly many people were talking about the effects of AI long before I started to give it serious thought. I remember visiting Julian Assange in Belmarsh and listening to his main views on the subject, realising that despite being isolated in jail he understood the subject far more than I did.
He was particularly worried about the centralised power that would arise from the concentration of resources required to achieve AI, and the potential for further abuse and population control by ever-expanding state power. I have to confess at the time I was hazy about what he was stating.
In short, I am not much of a seer. But I want to look for the moment at the more prosaic question of AI’s capacity to replace people in the workforce.
You can’t sit on an AI, and one isn’t going to convey the children to a camping trip: nor can you eat it. Manufacturing and food production will not be massively affected by AI (though design of course will).
What AI will be able to replace is the kind of financial pimping service for world oligarchs in which the UK specialises. Investment managers, insurance underwriters and several score kinds of banker are no longer going to be needed as humans. Vast swathes of civil service employment and administrative employment in the private sector are under threat.
I want to make, for now, just two very obvious points. The change is going to be much bigger in service-based economies like the UK and the other Western “post-industrial” economies. They have imported their needs from the non-West in return for payment based on their services earnings that will be largely redundant. I see AI as contributing to the shift in economic power from the West.
That is potentially a good thing.
The second point is that any advance that increases productivity with less labour ought to be a boon to all mankind, enabling people to work less and society still to receive as much in goods and services.
But as the AI revolution is starting at a time of maximum inequality, and where states are structured to reinforce that inequality; this of course will not happen. Unemployment will rise and people will be driven into desperate poverty, while all the productivity gain will be harvested by the billionaire class.
That is our immediate future.
The need for a more egalitarian society is urgent. The need to break away from systems that enshrine and glorify selfishness and greed is urgent. Otherwise the future is bleak.
We need a politics of altruism and empathy.
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Agree with your tack, Craig. What we need is an actual Democracy not the oligarchy we have now. A democracy where the population of the country tell the politicians what they will and will not do, not the joke, one cross every 4 or 5 years or so ‘democracy’ we have now where the politicians and the establishment enforce on the population what will be done.
On a general note I would recommend a recently published book by Luke Kemp titled “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse”. Being a historian yourself I think you would find it a fascinating read.
“Jeffrey Epstein probably made his initial millions from fees for making Leslie Wexner’s L Brands much more streamlined and tax-efficient. It’s possible that blackmail was also involved. After his death, Wexner claimed that Epstein had stolen from him. Much of the rest of his wealth probably came from asset appreciation.”
Beware of the opposite of survivorship bias. Sure, the ruling class does bear a resemblance to a group of rats in a bucket, but capitalism contrary to some people’s belief is NOT just based on competition but is extremely centralised and increasingly so. (Just as Marx predicted.)
Top scientific research departments in academia have a lot of super-rich bastards hanging around, probably with new faces appearing and old faces moving on, but I don’t buy the idea that Epstein just got lucky because someone had to, and that his “assets” just increased in value, as if he were a Daily Mail reader who’d chosen the right account or the right place to buy a house.
New York Times:
https://archive.is/JefbE
1. “At one session at Harvard, Mr. Epstein criticized efforts to reduce starvation and provide health care to the poor because doing so increased the risk of overpopulation”
^ That and not “philanthropy” is the authentic view of the ruling elite.
The NYT account about how Steven Pinker said oh no, things aren’t like that, because the poor will just reproduce more, and how he got given the bum’s rush, is laughable in its superficiality. This is Steven Pinker we are talking about FFS!
Obviously nobody wants to say they were great pals with Epstein – not because of the eugenics but because of the sexual abuse of minors.
Almost everyone knows they are opposed to the sexual abuse of minors. But few have an inkling of what eugenics is really about.
As Pinker well knows, there are other methods of reducing the population than starvation and not treating people when they’re ill. Pinker is not a humanitarian. He is a raving Zionazi, as anyone can verify by reading his book “The Blank Slate” (pushing the line that differences in “intelligence” are inherited – for the Nazi bit) and hearing him sneer at how stupid “goys” are (for the Jewish-supremacist bit).
https://www.hnn.us/article/steven-pinker-are-jews-smarter
(Imagine if someone had said about black people what Pinker says about “goys” in this article. Let’s try it: “My grandfather was in the KKK. He always told me his n***** employees were stupid. He was such a comedian. I don’t think he was wholly serious. KKK men are so good at humour, you know. They love laughing at themselves.”)
2. Epstein’s “introduction agent” was a guy called John Brockman. Brockman is important as a spider at the centre of a web of “popular science writers” who have been very influential, because many in the professional middle classes read heavily-promoted popular science books, e.g. by Daniel Kahneman, Yuval Noah Harari, and indeed the aforementioned Steven Pinker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brockman_(literary_agent)
Eugenicists’ plans have been prepared for by various popular science writers and even novelists such as Dan Brown.
People like Daniel Coyle and Geoff Colvin have also been published who are aware that “genius” is a product of hard work and opportunity, not superior birth, and who oppose what we can for shorthand call the IQ lie, but the fact that they are allowed to be published is what you can call recuperation. There is no real debate. There are no riots against the rulers’ plans. If anyone says anything, well hey look, these guys have had their stuff in the bookshops too.
3. “Mr. Epstein was willing to finance research that others viewed as bizarre. He told one scientist that he was bankrolling efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.”
That has gone through Chinese whispers but it’s a little window.
Quite
@Peter C – “Democracy” is just Athenian slaveholderese for “people’s state”.
Why is this word so holy to people?
Societal collapse you refer to Peter C.
For me I’m not sure if there ever was a society, a democratic society to collapse. The history of the world, as far as I can see it has always been been run by oligarch big beasts. Democracy, as s many in the UK believe is an utter illusion. The country is run by a few big beasts and the society as you refer to is sadly in reality a society of animals in a pen.
And when the big beasts decide to go to war the creatures in the pen, at least for the most part, fervently go to war committed in the cause they have been fed. Weapons of mass destruction, ready to strike the UK in thirty minutes being fairly recent example of justification for Britain going in to Iraq. And no doubt we will go into the Ukraine – Russia conflict for similar reasons.
So with the history of conflicts over this and the last century we should be under no illusion that another big one is coming. Poland yesterday shooting down Russian drones, Israel with no doubt US consent bombing Doha, our own UK having already and for some considerable time having boots and assets on the ground in Ukrane, and indeed much much more that we know of, confirms where we are heading.
Its a big beast game and society, whatever that is, just tags along and does its patriotic duty. And that’s why peaceful, often elderly folks protesting about the horrors of Gaza get suppressed by a politically apartheid police force acting for an on behalf of the big beasts.
Or am I missing something?
Having spent a fair bit of time in that milieu, I’m of the opinion that the large majority of people involved in advancing the frontiers of knowledge would stop pretty quickly if they weren’t being paid a salary. I may be currently spending three or four hours most days writing up scientific papers on a voluntary basis, but I’m very much the exception. I’m also not sure that our host does have any moral responsibilities towards the people of Lebanon (or no more than to those of, for example, Sudan), but he certainly has a legal and moral responsibility for the children that he (presumably) chose to bring into this world (at least until they’re 18).
The basis of Jim Ratcliffe’s wealth is idiots at ICI & BP etc being prepared to sell assets to his company for far less than they were really worth. It took out high-yield debt to pay for them; there were no accounting tricks. He’s a good businessman: If he were only worth a mill or so, I doubt whether he would be giving his son 300 grand in an attempt to bail out a music festival. He’s also 72 and won’t be around forever. As far as I know, our host has no idea what he’s going to do with his billions when he dies (he can’t give them all to Man Yoo to spend on players that can beat Grimsby, as there are FFP rules).
Jeffrey Epstein probably made his initial millions from fees for making Leslie Wexner’s L Brands much more streamlined and tax-efficient. It’s possible that blackmail was also involved. After his death, Wexner claimed that Epstein had stolen from him. Much of the rest of his wealth probably came from asset appreciation.
Lastly, as the weekend is getting under way; even though I like discussing Skripal stuff with people on here, this was best thing to happen to me this week:
BBC Radio 1: Calibre in the Mix, with Martha (2 Sep 2025) – 2hr radio podcast *
(Around the half-way point I was thinking: I can’t believe I’m not on drugs.)
Enjoy the weekend whatever you’re up to.
—
* “This show is the place to discover new and underground electronic dance music. From dubstep, to jungle, to techno and beyond, Martha takes you on a journey through the sonic innovators pushing the scene forward.
This week, Martha shares a Test Press track of the week, which is an ode to the historic dubstep night, FWD.
Previous guest mix DJ Peroli shares her Love Letter to the Club, illustrating a shuttered Brazilian spot.
Martha provides a running-themed Deep Frequencies mix, designed to get you moving ahead of the Great North Run taking place on the 7th of September. With tracks from Soul Mass Transit System, COFFINTEXTS, Paurro, Club Angel and more.
Plus, legend of the D&B scene, Calibre drops by to share a special new 140bpm mix full of his own original sonics, made exclusively for the show.”
Produced by We Are Grape for BBC Radio 1 Dance.
I was a research scientist too (I hold a PhD in physics) and I don’t agree. To get access to research facilities and communities, it’s almost essential to get some kind of appointment, but many scientists seek appointments (usually poorly paid anyway) in order to be able to do the research – they don’t do the research in order to get the appointment.
It’s some years away, but as they strive to make AI conscious, it’s akin to inviting an alien life form to earth. In that it may prove friendly, maybe not?
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity— the hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes alien to humans, uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.
AI designing smarter AI systems and consolidating; designing smarter AI systems and consolidating…ad infinitum. Anyone, data scientist or not, who says they know what the outcome will be is lying.
“Singularity” was used by the monstrous mass murderer John Von Neumann and then taken up by Google-paid dickhead Ray Kurzweil.
Oh how these scumbags like to think the effects of their wickedness will reach the point of irreversibility. The discourse of singularity is an anti-hope operation.
Nonetheless they must be stopped. They are certainly smashing up an increasing amount, boxing humanity into a tighter and tighter corner.
This is what Ian Tillium meant about raising the high ground. See his 1994 essay.
A computer program cannot become conscious in the way they’re saying. You and I are conscious. Our consciousness does not work through discrete acts of processing discrete bits of information. All computer programs do. (Even fuzzy logic, quantum computers, Al.)
Consciousness is NOT an emergent property of complexity.
Nonetheless, there are such things as tulpas… Or maybe in this case the term “golem” would be more appropriate.
Don’t all these AI systems have an “On/Off” switch?
@Relapsed and @Townsman
“
I’m struggling to see how that’s a disagreement with what’s quoted.
Other than the difference between “I’m doing X because I want to” and “I’m doing X because it’s the system”. But who cares, when it’s coming from guys who ARE the system. Who wants their take on it, unless they leave it and condemn it?
Thanks for your reply Townsman. Nice to have a fellow science PhD on here. Sure, most academics prefer research to teaching, but my point is that if the money dried up and they had to get a job working in insurance or whatever, most of them wouldn’t be doing much in the way of scientific research on the evenings and weekends.
Just read a recent article in Forbes which claims that Epstein’s company received payments totalling ca. $200 million from Leslie Wexner over the years, as well as $170 million from Leon Black, which would account for the bulk of his fortune. Such large amounts suggest to me that he was blackmailing them both. Probably fairly easy to do: all you’d need is one good-looking, underage flibbertigibbet who’d like a couple hundred grand, a room with a few hidden cameras, and some rum & Coca-Colas with the cocaine put back in.
(Thanks to the mods for adding details from the Radio 1 site to my above comment. First time COFFINTEXTS have received an honourable been mention in these comments sections I’d wager.)
Well, what we don’t need is the State deciding how to allocate our altruism.
Yet that’s what we have now.
The State doesn’t trust our individual personalities and positions, instead it just tells us to pay up and shut up.
Humans are naturally co-operative creatures, but they don’t like being told how to do their co-operation, and what rules will be applied.
I blame the inevitable over-reach of socialism.
WJ: “I blame the inevitable over-reach of socialism.”
Now that is funny! Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades. Do you means its existence, even as an abstract concept, is to blame?
Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades.
That’s true.
But it’s even worse than that. Confidence in democracy is declining in the West rapidly because the major parties in many western countries have become averse to any internal debate: instead of seeing political debate as healthy, they see debate as public displays of division; throw in the paranoia about displaying division (weakness) to foreign adversaries, and we’ve arrived at debate-free politics that increasingly resembles the top-down dictatorships that they claim they oppose.
At Labour’s upcoming conference the delegates will go through the motions of debating, maybe there’ll be a few impassioned speeches over Gaza, proscription orders etc, but the votes aren’t binding, and the leadership will just ignore the results. There is literally no way for anyone to influence Labour party policy and Starmer will sit on the stage like Kim Jong Un, totally impassive.
regardless of socialisms, democracies and other political things. I am interested in the system of distribution that people would consider fair.
At the moment we have only one stone ball rushing through the universe.
With a limited amount of habitable surface. A finite amount of water and air. And with a growing number of consumers. And imperfect methods of consumption that can destroy entire ecosystems, like the Aral Sea was drained due to the diversion of water from the rivers that feed it, to the fields.
Why should it be fair that some of the consumers have the right to more resources? They didn’t even participate in creating it in any way! I mean, first of all, landowners who derive income from their right to the land, like some kings.
For some reason, instead of thinking about this injustice, we are all busy arguing about which method of electing a king is more progressive.
IMO.
Regarding the planets finite resources and wealth distribution. I would posit that there is a direct correlation between population size and wealth inequality.
For example, poor people in general tend to have large families, lots of babies, whilst wealthier peoples tend to have smaller families, less babies.
As such, fairer wealth distribution, leading to less wealth inequality would/could lead to a smaller more stable population and thereby less impact on the planets resources. Without genocide or wars.
To achieve this would require a robust definition of what is acceptable personal wealth – and a way of enforcing it. Also, I would suggest there needs to be a mandatory separation between ‘personal wealth’ and ‘business wealth’. For example, owning and running a multi billion dollar company should only have a miniscule bearing on ones personal wealth. And, maybe shareholders in a business should have some liabilities in regard to a business’s productivity profit/loss.
However, I cannot see any changes being allowed to happen. The capitalist mindset is too deeply entrenched, selfishness rules, mankind has not evolved sufficiently to support a fairer society. So, we are stuck.
“Now that is funny! Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades. Do you means its existence, even as an abstract concept, is to blame?”
It’s probably just a misattribution to socialism of the totalitarian bureaucracy that so often, unfortunately, seems to accompany it. The fact that fascist societies can also suffer from bureaucratic totalitarianism seems to pass unnoticed. The desire of the rulers of any type to control an ever greater area of the lives of the people they rule, often for the “best” and most “public spirited” motives (think of the children!), is a completely separate phenomenon to the type of regime that the society that suffers under intrusions into their agency, lives under.
@Wally – Come back and discuss socialism when you’ve distinguished between collectivity and state.
You know Trump’s putting soldiers on the streets? What position does that action have on your scale of socialism vs not-socialism?
Wally Jumblatt
How do we explain the rush to go to war on that basis?
You are actually fighting for the rich as they are the one’s who have any assets to defend.
Or you are fighting for say ‘ British Value’s ‘ whatever they are.
Fighting to defend your Mortgage and the individual right to pay your landlord’s mortgage is even funnier.
I’m sure you know being an ‘ individual ‘ means the getting of money by fair means or foul maybe by borrowing and then it is your individual job to buy things you don’t need in order to keep the whole capitalist freedom train on the rails.
If you think that is individual freedom I have some shares in a Garden bridge across the Thames to sell you.
The problem is, that being rich is the gauge of success these days and is deemed to make you intelligent enough to be an MP or some kind of Guru.
Well these people have run the show for a very long time ( not the Socialists ) and the future looks iffy at least and highly dangerous at worst..
Trump’s Idiotic Christian Believer Hesgeth has had his Defnnce Department re – named as The Department for War.
He must be pretty rich to have that kind of individual intelligence.
Always remember:
It’s not where you finish – it’s where you start ( privilege).
It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.
Socialism? The only socialism in Britain is of the national variety. Leninism for the rich, fascism for the poor.
The MSM headlines on the British reshuffle are assuming almost unheard of levels of stupidity in their audience.
Lammy is described as promoted, as if “deputy prime minister” means something. It doesn’t.
Cooper is described as moved out of the Home Office because of immigration. Is there some kind of rule that every front page must mention immigration at least six times? Far more important is where she has gone to, not where she has come from. Nobody wants the Home Office. Sure there will be some dosh coming from the Community Security Trust – probably enough to keep Theresa May happy – but that’s it. Nobody likes talking to cops and screws.
And of course it’s all supposed to be a “crisis”, and to have something to do with Farage. Perhaps next it will have something to do with Jordan having a boob job, or a football match.
The truth is that Medvedev called Lammy an “idiot”. I don’t like some of what Medvedev has said about the war, but one must recognise that Beary Bear-Face spoke correctly about Lammy. Everyone knows Lammy is a moron. He was never even the real foreign secretary. That’s Jonathan Powell.
Meanwhile Powell’s fellow MI6-er, Minouche Shafik – woman with three citizenships – has been appointed as PM’s “adviser on the economy”. The bonds market is in big trouble. A lot of money will be pocketed on the day it blows, but those who own the ship don’t want retards as the skipper and skipper’s mate. Shafik and Powell are far more important than Lammy, Cooper, and Mahmood.
Not a war criminal and candidate for the Hague then.
Olly Robbins was pictured alongside Cooper in her new role as Foreign Secretary. It’s the same permanent, security service associated, officialdom isn’t it, regardless of the shop front ‘facade’ of a change of govt, management, the backroom management remains the same. Powell, Robbins are just two familiar names, as I’m sure there are many others.
I’m not a fan of the US presidential appointments to cabinet. But at least a change of president really does mean a brand new administration with new thinking, different priorities etc. Maybe the British securocrat dominated ‘securocracy’? system came about because the political class were viewed as incapable, incompetent?
6Brian Red
September 6, 2025 at 09:45
Lamm’ys wiki page includes the following:
“Lammy studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, graduating with a 2:1 in law.[12] He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1994 at Lincoln’s Inn. He went on to study at Harvard University, where he became the first black Briton to attend Harvard Law School; he studied for a Master of Laws degree and graduated in 1997.[12][13]”
This suggests that he isn’t stupid – unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.
IMO he is however intellectually narrow, incurious and ignorant. As his strange comments about men growing a cervix suggest.
And see ” In 2009 Lammy took part in the BBC television quiz show Celebrity Mastermind, scoring a low 13 points. Among his incorrect answers were saying that Henry VIII was succeeded by Henry VII; that the surname of Marie and Pierre, Nobel prizewinners for research into radiation, was Antoinette, not Curie; and that Versailles was a French state prison.[168][105]”, also from his wiki page.
Of course Medvedev is not an authority on wisdom or idiocy.
Yet another one trying to invisibize Lammy’s role in the Genocide.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ten-ways-britains-governing-elite-has-supported-israels-genocide-gaza
In 2015 Lammy revealed that his Harvard law degree had been paid for by a group of Jewish lawyers. May help to explain his crimes against humanity.
https://www.thejc.com/news/community/lammy-tells-langdon-of-his-debt-to-jewish-backers-vsmq0b3u
Apparently, he was supremely arrogant at the FCDO – this according to Craig’s source. It’s never justified being arrogant, but it’s especially irksome when someone has nothing to be arrogant about. Based on that Celebrity Mastermind appearance, Lammy doesn’t. All the questions and his answers:
What was the married name of the scientists Marie and Pierre who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 for their research into radiation?
Lammy: Antoinette
Answer: Curie
Cockpit Country is a rugged, inaccessible area on which Caribbean island?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: Jamaica
Which former Conservative leader, in a magazine article in August 2000, claimed that while working as a delivery man’s assistant he downed around 14 pints of beer a day?
Lammy: William Hague (correct)
Which fortress was built in the 1370s to defend one of the Gates of Paris and was later used as a state prison by Cardinal Richelieu?
Lammy: Versailles
Answer: The Bastille
In February 2008, which Tottenham Hotspur player scored the first goal of Fabio Capello’s reign as England football manager?
Lammy: Aaron Lennon
Answer: Jermaine Jenas
James Gandolfini played a Mafia boss called Tony in which American television series?
Lammy: Godfather
Answer: The Sopranos
What name is used for the highest gallery of seats in a theatre?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: The gods
Which organisation was founded in 1909 as the home section of the Secret Service Bureau to counteract the threat of German spies?
Lammy: MI5 (correct)
Which American military award is given to those who are wounded in action and bears the inscription for military merit on the reverse?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: Purple Heart
Chris Martin is the lead singer with which award winning British band?
Lammy: Coldplay (correct)
Which variety of blue English cheese traditionally accompanies port?
Lammy: Red Leicester
Answer: Stilton
What term for a top floor luxury flat originally meant a shed or out-house?
Lammy: Penthouse (correct)
In 2006, Sandi Toksvig replaced Simon Hoggart as the presenter of which topical Radio 4 quiz show?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: The News Quiz
Which American chat show host has business ventures including Harpo Productions and Oxygen Media which operates a 24 hour cable television network for women?
Lammy: Oprah Winfrey (correct)
Who acceded the English throne at the age of 9 on the death of his father Henry VIII in 1547?
Lammy: Henry VII
Answer: Edward VI
In chemistry, what French word is used for a tube for transferring measured amounts of liquids?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: A pipette
Which country’s so-called ‘Rose Revolution’ of 2003 led to the resignation of its president Eduard Shevardnadze?
Lammy: Yugoslavia
Answer: Georgia
Who acceded the English throne at the age of 9 on the death of his father Henry VIII in 1547?
Lammy: Henry VII
Which variety of blue English cheese traditionally accompanies port?
Lammy: Red Leicester
He ought to have considered a career in comedy.
Come on! The man knows whose job it is to confront spies, what a penthouse is, and how many pints of beer a day a conservative leader can drink. I have no idea who this guy is, but he seems like he wouldn’t mind being a conservative leader.
Tatyana, got it in one, except that in the UK, we call them “Tories”, from an old Irish word meaning “looter”. The “Conservatives” are just one type of Tory and David Lammy’s party, (New) Labour are another. New Labour used to be slightly to the left, politically, of the Conservatives, but now it’s impossible to tell.
Everyone in Westminster and the media was well aware of that. It was far outweighed by the fact he is a pitiless zionist. That’s why there were no objections from the commentariat or his Tory ‘opponents’ when he was appointed Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was up to its neck in a genocide.
Do not assume Lammy is an outlier. He is a true indicator of what the rest are really like – corrupt fuckwits.
“unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.” I do believe it, however, probably only rich idiots.
The education system, like the judiciary, like the government, like the NHS, etc. are corrupt. Money talks.
“This suggests that he isn’t stupid – unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.”
Fair enough, but the alternative isn’t any better: he’s reasonably intelligent, but extremely ignorant and bigoted. The level of ignorance and prejudice he displays is reasonable for someone who’s stupid, but frightening for someone who’s intelligent and a cabinet minister.
The giveaway is the amount of time he spent having his moral compass skewed at Harvard.
Medicine and law require a lot of rote-learning that doesn’t need intelligence as much as application. After qualifying, if you want you can retire into academic somnolence.
@Brian Red, under the British imperial quasi-Constitution, ‘Prime Minister’ isn’t a formally explicit role either. This should be worrying. Not least as one of the nuclear triumvirate. But does the deputy hold the doomsday keys when the PM is on the WC?
Fnar! No they belong with American Caesar.
These two American service people showing a wonderful sense of altruism… https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1963832007697342814
Talking of Grimsby, Jason Stockwood, the owner of Grimsby football club who used to be mixed up with Lastminute.com and Match.com, has been appointed “investment minister” in the British government. He’ll be made a “lord” for this purpose.
Sounds like a cushy number, “investment minister”. Can’t remember it being advertised, though. What a great system, parliamentary democracy is.
Shades of Dido Harding, crooked former CEO of TalkTalk, who became chair of “NHS Improvement” and CEO of the Health Security Agency, similarly from the house of lords and ladies, when her Oxford pal Boris Johnson was in No.10.
Will Mike Ashley of Sport Direct be next?
Or how about Stephen Fitzpatrick of Ovo? The guy made a lot of money very quickly. He must be a great ontie prenner, right, and clean as a whistle? Great role model for the kidz.
Or Philip Green – why not?
C’mon, Labour! See how far you can go, filling ministerial jobs with scum. The bigger fines their companies have been handed, the further you gotta promote them in public service. It’s what the Jarrow marchers would have wanted.
Patronage on a level not seen for 200 years.
Well, yes, although humans are not the only lifeform to practice mutual aid. Despite some people’s parasocial relationships with chatbots, I don’t think this includes AI, though.
I expect something along the lines of science fiction writer William Gibson’s Jackpot meta-events are likely to depopulate the planet one way or other. Our systems tend to have inherent weaknesses and complex interdependencies which lead through tipping points to cascade failure.
What happens when money is perceived as worthless? There are a few foreseeable inflection points, but what would happen if another form of life was encountered or emerged with a different origin story? Bacteria on Enceladus or a General Artificial Intelligence?
Well, you know, morality, or social inclusion, or fair taxation, have slipped out of view.
Our leaders, across Europe, are in agreement, we will poke the bear.
The outcome may be catastrophic, so the question ‘Why?’ hangs in the airwaves like a miasma.
Is the answer ‘because Israel’?
Must Europe be destroyed? For vengeance? All the top seats at the table are taken.
Colonel Macgregor reflects on the portents, pretexts, and preparations happening today, while we look another way: watching the flotilla sail into the jaws of doom.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WfW84CrdDHU
The apples hang heavy on the trees. Blackberries and sloes abound, and rose hips will feed the birds this winter
“The apples hang heavy on the trees. Blackberries and sloes abound, and rose hips will feed the birds this winter”
That sounds poetical. Maybe you should be a writer!
I think we are far away from a politics of altruism with or without A!. What we need right now is a politics of common sense and rational thinking. I have been watching on and off this afternoon the livestream of the Palestine Action protest which ended up on Parliament Square. The protest seemed good humoured early on but as time went on the police started to implement their clearly pre-arranged plan of arresting each one of the placard holders sitting on the grass and it is going on as I write. I don’t think I have witnessed such ugly disgusting scenes as wave after wave of “stormtrooper” police go in and carry out their pensioner terrorists one by one. By 7.00pm the total seems over 500 with more to come with squads of around 8 police to every one arrested. The police must be in their thousands from all over England and Wales.
Who will be the first MP to and when will they ask questions about the stupidity, futility and cost to the British taxpayer of this ugly and disgusting operation? Will they be allowed to ask any questions? And will they get any convincing answers? I somehow doubt it.
Read Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis and then see if you can maintain your belief in the basic goodness of human nature. One thing he points out is that humans have a dual nature. On the one hand, we have empathy and compassion for the group we belong to (though not only those things), and on the other hand we have aggression and animosity towards other groups.
He calls the idea of basic human goodness the romantic fallacy. To blame things like war and greed on capitalism is a form of psychological displacement. Wishful thinking.
You’re an honest person – read that book and see if you can maintain your optimism.
I can think of endless examples of people displaying empathy and compassion towards people not of their group. I cited the many foreign medical staff in Gaza.
Of course there are contrary examples. But the examples on the other side are much stronger – like the attitude of the Israeli people to the Palestinians in general. They’re not exactly rising up against their government’s actions at the moment, in-fact most Israelis support it.
To think that people like Netanyahu are doing what they’re doing out of anything other than their own nature doesn’t look plausible to me.
Ardrey talks about things like the territorial imperative being a basic drive, the prevalence of hierarchy across the animal kingdom (and in humans), the importance of aggression in human nature and tribalism.
He’s an honest writer and thought it through thoroughly, based on the best research at the time. It doesn’t mean do nothing and don’t act on your own instincts and empathy (if you happen to be that kind of person, which you clearly are), but it means be realistic about what can be achieved and the forces ranged against you in human nature itself.
Israelis are hardly a representative sample of humanity, one would not be wise to try to extrapolate much about humanity from them. Particularly when it comes to their inhumanity towards Palestinians.
I mean, come on – a largely self-selecting group of far-right religious fanatics with an advanced superiority and eternal victim complex, living in an apartheid ethno-state in about the most heavily propagandised society on Earth.
No wonder they’re so popular!
In that, too, I think they are typical of humanity. There are millions of Christian evangelicals who are just as ferocious and pitiless in their support of what is being done to Palestinians, all justified by their devoutness, it seems. Not accepting that human nature in its totality includes the worst evils as well as the most inspiring goodness is to be half blind.
Typical of the argument used after WW2 concerning the Germans. No they weren’t an aberration and no neither are the Israelis, they are unfortunately representative of the way ‘normal’ people act when put in a similar situation.
Human beings, like any other living thing, have one overriding imperative, the continuation of the species. If this is best done by cooperation and altruism, then that is what is practiced. If resource shortages dictate that this is best done by aggression and tribalism, then that also is what is practiced, the former situation being far more common than the latter in primitive times and vice versa today.
Netanyahu is arriving this week. NATO forces are in position in the Arctic (Colonel Macgregor), internet cables under the Red Sea have been cut. (Reuters) Body bags and refrigeration units have been ordered and are due for delivery. (Dr John Campbell) Elbit is closing its factories and moving out. Our police are arresting old ladies who care about future generations’ well-being. Police forces from across the country come together to support fossil fuel companies against local people. Gaza is about the Gas. It is profit which pays for war. Our governments are in concordance about allowing Europe to be destroyed in a play for Russia’s oil and gas, and Iran’s oil. Are our elected leaders really that stupid? Are we going to fall for it and oblige by helping them out by having a civil war? We will watch the freedom flotilla sail into the jaws of destruction. Ports in Europe have promised to close to Israeli ships when that happens.
We are being played. Wake up sheeples. We are better than this….
“Are our elected leaders really that stupid?”
No, they are going to do well out of this, at least they think they are.
Chris Wray
Natural Selection is ( in the animal kingdom ) a survival mechanism.
In the wild it has to be – there is no choice.
In the allegedly ‘ Civilised ‘ Kingdom the human race is meant to be …..more civilised than the animals?
Chimps hang around in gangs and fight each and eat meat from time to time – they are deemed ‘ savage’
Yet, I’ve never heard of any of them buying weapons and bombs to fight each other like us ‘ Civilised ‘ Human Beings do.
Ah – you will say they are not capable of doing that.
Quite but, shouldn’t we civilised enlightened Noble Savages know the consequences of doing that?
We are clever after all aren’t we.
Genes do not operate in a vacuum and the world has an effect on our genes and our genes have an effect on the world.
We can ( and do ) destroy the lower natural orders by chopping down trees and sling chemicals on the land etc – that is our effect on nature.
But, yet again we clever ones seem to think that we can do all this and bomb kill and nuke each other with no consequences at all.
Despite the evidence to the contrary slapping us in the face every day.
The current Mode of Production is no longer labour exploitation ( the rich in the West have given up on that now) but the making of money based on past wealth and Dead Labour and have gone into the game of Rentier Capitalism,
Put roughly – Leases – land – Interest on Loans and Insurance and so on.
The Duke of Westminster and his family never laid a brick or a stone in their pampered lives.
Yet in Westminster the houses that his family own probably cost £100 to build in the 1800’s.
They may now be worth £10 million quid a pop now despite very little being done to them ( unless the wallpaper is Gold Leaf)?
I could labour the point her but, the fact is that if you are brought up in a mode of production/existence ( a tribe- a peasant- a day labourer – a capitalist ) then the world will sit on you and have its effect more than you having effect on it.
I don’t have an idealised romantic view of Socialism and no doubt if Socialism emerged in the West and came to power you would certainly have to work with people you don’t like.
But, the job is not just to improve your life it is to improve your life by improving other people’s lives.
It rubs off and the results would be worth the actions.
It is always interesting to hear the phrase ‘ Survival of The Fittest ‘ as usually ,without fail, the phrase comes from the one’s who are safest from the Lions at the top of the tree .
Generally the media are in the Middle Branches but, are still in more danger that the ones at the top.
This is why they act and talk rubbish by regurgitating that old chestnut.
I will tell you that at one time Karl Marx was in awe of Industrial Capitalism.
If he could come back now he would have to re-write a new study of Capitalism.
The Industrialists were Tigers – the current lot are Kittens.
The book’s message is plainly false. And life is short. Something tells me you already agreed with the message before you read it. Or were you a humanitarian but he convinced you to change cable-cars?
Out of interest, does Ardrey mention that those humans who came out of Africa came not alone but with another species with which we co-evolved, namely dogs?
See also the silver fox experiment in Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Cooperativeness affects evolution. That is who we are.
See Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods’s excellent book “Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity”.
The biologists who ran the Siberian experiment have also written a book, which I have yet to read: “How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)”.
I’m not denying that there are disagreement in this area and lots of different opinions. I’m just saying that Ardrey’s books make sense to me based on my own personal experience and on what’s going on across the world.
I used to be very influenced by the views of people like Noam Chomsky. And I still think that people like him are right on a factual level, when they’re discussing situations across the world. It’s just their view on the basics of human nature that I’ve come to disagree with.
I think part of the problem is that people like Chomsky – and Craig Murray would be another example – are over-generalising from their own nature. They happen to be exceptionally compassionate people and they assume everyone must basically be like them. But I just don’t think that’s how it is. People are on a spectrum – for every extremely compassionate person you’ve got an extremely selfish person. And most people lie somewhere in between.
The net result is the world we currently have.
I may have said this before, but duality is part of our nature, and people are either pastoralists: growing food and tending the land which is our mother, or they are raiders, stealing what the pastoralists have made, raping and killing the land and its people. Pastoralists employ raiders to defend them. Raiders become pastoralists when there is no one left to rob. Defence is crucial. We live on an island. It has a natural moat. Our mindset is to share, protect, nurture. This does not deter all raiders, and today they come in many forms, but looking at the landlocked countries which get swept by marauding waves of armies, you can see that without a shared set of underpinning concepts, everyone is poorer.
The Greek Empire was a vast area without internal borders. It was unified by learning and philosophical understanding. We are losing our university philosophy departments. That long history and continuity of ideas of Progress is being silenced. Competition and greed are baffling to people who just want to live in communities that look after each other, and share nicely.
But if you have vastly more than your neighbours you will fear them, and fear is the opposite of love. Fear is the problem. Manipulating fear is the problem. People want to live in peace. Raiders are not satisfied with having enough. Enough is never enough. Democracy requires honesty and rule of law that protects from harm. When those tasked with protecting become subject to the whims of raiders we see our police supporting fossil fuel companies and not people who live in places that fossil fuel companies want to raid.
Clean energy and localism are the only rational and peaceful position but the obscenely wealthy have power that people in settled and stable, and welcoming, communities do not have. Our elected representatives are there to represent us, but they have been corrupted by greed and the monetary systems that facilitate greed. Neoliberal economics is a busted flush. Modern Monetary Theory is about the whole, and people who think of it as ‘helicopter money’ are unaware that a tree has roots. The roots of MMT are the health of the nation, its natural resources, its skills and education, its infrastructure that grows the stability of the cycle of productivity. The fruits fall back to the ground and nurture the roots and then the surplus can be traded.
Trees matter. They give us sunshine and rainfall, rivers and fresh water, and new growth according to the seasons. The loss of tropical rainforests around the world is anthropogenic climate change. Poisoning rivers and land with pollution and monoculture chemicals is anthropogenic damage to the environment. Localism and pastoralism are the foundations of peace, and a common philosophy of respect for truth and rule of law can allow freedom and cooperation for all.
Good people are trying to save humanity from its worst impulses. Good versus evil. Evil has the upper hand in the power structures which serve us, but dynamic change means the outcome is not fixed but the process is risky whichever way it turns.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
Bit of a ramble, I know, but solace in nature seems very precious just now
I’m all for planting trees, the more the better, since they take up pollution, protect against noise, beautify the environment and add to everyone’s quality of life and sanity as well (and so help prevent crime).
I would have given the idiot vandals who chopped down the Sycamore in Hadrian’s wall the task of planting 1000 trees each as punishment, rather than lock them up at taxpayer’s expense, which costs as much as they pay to people holding full-time respectable jobs.
“Modern neoliberal society is structured around monetary systems that store wealth, in currencies that largely exist as digits in computers, and which are allocated to institutions and individuals through state-regulated systems that in no sense capture societal value as the basis of reward.”
It is interesting to speculate as to how much actual tangible wealth these ultra-rich people have, when “digits in computers” can suddenly become valueless. What value to you is that £1M in the bank if the bank goes bust, that £50M in government bonds or that £100M in securitised debt if the debtors default? How much tangible wealth would Besos, Soros or Musk actually have if the next Carrington event wipes out every server in the world? Even banknotes are simply IOUs, which are no good if “I” don’t have anything that is worth anything any more.
Just as much tangible wealth as before? But only momentarily. Because it relies on them being able to invest it and realise a surplus. M-C-M’ as Marx put it.
Control is what counts, not ownership. Money is a form of control. And the form of money is changing. This is evident in ever finer-grained forms of surveillance and control over so much of life and thought.
FWIW China is already the world’s leading country. Pretty much the only paper money many people see there is “ghost money”. Kind of ironic that most Chinese restaurants in Britain prefer to deal in cash.
Those who want to criticise selfishness in society gotta arrive at realising our species’s need to abolish money.
Am I alone in that neolibs and neocons all seem the same to me? They all love capitalism and – how odd – also Zionism.
“Just as much tangible wealth as before?”
OK you own £1M of debt, i.e. someone else owes you £1M. That represents £1M of your net wealth. Now, that someone else goes bankrupt, dies or defaults on the debt. How much does that debt now contribute to your net wealth? Nothing. We constantly hear about the amount of debt in the world, how such and such a country owes more than the total of its GDP, but for every debt, there is a credit. The creditors who own this debt are by and large the super-rich. It’s all pieces of paper, or , nowadays, digits in a computer. If no-one believes those pieces of paper that those digits in a computer mean anything, or the digits are all returned to zero, how much wealth is left?
“Those who want to criticise selfishness in society gotta arrive at realising our species’s need to abolish money.”
Money is just unitised credit. Credit existed for thousands of years before anyone thought to unitise it into money. Money makes things simpler: instead of you owing me 10kg of rice, one goat, half a cow and a pair of shoes and me owing you three week’s labour and us having to sit down to work out how many days labour is repaid by the 10kg of rice, we can agree on monetary values for all those things and make a simple exchange. We don’t need actual coins. Get rid of credit and we have to return to the level of hunter gatherers. Anyone who wanted, say, a pair of shoes, could only get them by doing something for someone who could make them a pair of shoes and, if the shoemaker didn’t have any needs that the shoe needer could provide, the shoe needer would have to go without.
There is nothing wrong with money. The problem is not money, it is greed. There is no more reason to abolish money because greedy people have more than they could ever spend and deprive others to accumulate that amount than there is to abolish knives because violent people use them to would or kill others. Without money, you will still have the greed and a lot of problems that money was invented to solve as well. Without knives, you would still have the violence, but would be unable to prepare food.
I am always wary of any supposed advances in technology trumpeted by the media. To take a few random examples, we’re still waiting for even effective treatment for some types of cancer never mind cures; the human race hasn’t progressed meaningfully in space travel in my lifetime; what happened to those drone parcel deliveries, never mind flying cars (?); where is the CCTV to catch vandals hoisting flags up lampposts recently (or does the ‘lack’, as in the past, tell its own story about who is really behind what would otherwise look very like a campaign for patriotism worthy of a dictatorship?); and I suspect the return to vinyl records tells its own story about the lack of advances there. So when the media talk about ‘AI’ I tend to think it’s more likely, instead, the human race will be heading back to the mines and smallholdings. Sorry to be cynical (and, perhaps too much so, as I write on a computer via the internet, after all) but either way, Craig’s appeal for altruism is well-judged, although I am inclined to think the endemic selfishness and greed are actually one of the symptoms of society’s stasis not of great advances ahead.
In a society that rewards the greedy, the selfish and the unscrupulous, it is hardly surprising that there should be so much of those evils about. What is wrong with our society is not the politics but the ethics. The former simply reflects the latter.
” I am always wary of any supposed advances in technology trumpeted by the media. ”
Possibly a bit unfair, certainly the scientific illiterate media tend to talk up any advances in medicine or technology but for example there are over 200 different types of cancer and whilst some are still deadly survival rates for others have improved exponentially. I can remember a time when leukaemia was the kiss of death. There was nothing anybody could do but now 90% of children and 67% of older generations with the most common types survive.
We are also still waiting for mammoths to be born again and for the sound of bricklayers’ conversations from several centuries ago to be extracted from mortar – two stories that come up again every few years.
CCTV footage is as a rule vetted before it’s put out. See the Tommy Robinson incident at the tube station recently.
We’re not essentially in a different society from when the royalist regime’s anthem was played in all cinemas. It’s all media.
Smartphone users tend to think they’re Stephen Spielberg or paparazzo of the year. This isn’t actually how it works.
890 people have been arrested in London today for opposing genocide.
Meanwhile Gideon “Hitler Face” Falter, the notorious ethnic supremacist, gets given 1000 words under his own name in the
ToryReformgraph, pretending the oppressors are the victims.He’s the genocidalist who wanted to barge his way across the street through an anti-genocidalist demonstration, and then complained he was being oppressed when the police wouldn’t let him.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/apr/19/met-apologises-for-calling-antisemitism-campaigner-openly-jewish
Meanwhile, as this disgusting man knew very well, there were many Jews on the demo who opposed genocide.
Those who are anti genocidalist should be aware that this guy and Zionism generally (which is an organisation) are very well aware that the fight is here in Britain as well as in Palestine.
Best not to care too much what your enemies say about you. You’re not trying to convince them.
I wonder how many of those who seem to think that Israelis can do what they like because of the Holocaust would extend the same freedom to the Roma.
Craig, I wouldn’t worry too much about AI.
The data centers that power it require huge amounts of electricity. Some experts estimate we’ll need as much as 25% more electricity by 2030, and 78% by 2050, to meet this demand alone. Long before then, we’ll be worrying about heat exhaustion, drought, crop failures and famine. Not supercomputers.
Then there’s the water required to cool the data centres….Google’s data centres average 550,000 gallons (2.1 million litres) daily, totalling approximately 200 million gallons (760 million litres) annually per facility. Microsoft’s global operations consumed nearly 6.4 million cubic metres of water (approximately 1.69 billion gallons) in their most recent reporting year – a 34% increase from the previous year.
See this https://kevinhester.live/2025/09/04/is-ai-consuming-your-water-and-power/
“totalling approximately 200 million gallons (760 million litres) annually per facility.”
To put that in perspective, the flow rate of the River Thames at Kingston bridge averages about 16m3/sec, which is 1.38 billion litres per day and the Thames is not a particularly large river by global standards. Alternatively, the Great Lakes contain 22,671 km3 of fresh water or 2.2671 x 10^16 litres.
Quite, the systemic dysfunction, fiscal bankruptcy, manpower constraints and inability to build infrastructure. Is probably the single biggest protection most dissidents in the UK have.
Also the same reason why Britain hasn’t committed suicide-by-Russia, despite the Westminster regime’s deepest desires. The military rot & shrinkage is simply to far gone for the Coalition of the Cuckolds to be practical, even for a losing effort against the Russians.
Assisting genocide in Gaza against a helpless population/milita and striking feeble little basketcases, is their speed. Not opposition who can fight back.
Well put. Also had to be bailed out by the US against the sandal men in both Basra and Helmand. That was after Blair had assured Washington that the British Army was the world’s finest counterinsurgency force .. and *before* twenty years of austerity cuts to the MoD. That’s the context in which British politicians’ sabre rattling against Russia and China should be viewed, but never is by British journalists.
The only viable military force the UK currently has is the special forces. And, these appear to be an uncontrolled, unanswerable collection of misfits involved in illegal, terrorist type activities. Quietly backstabbing foreigners and citizens is our forte.
I remember many years ago that they said that nuclear power stations would lead to cheaper electricity and that improvements in technology in “the future” would lead to people having more and more “leisure time”. They did not mention that it would also be called “unemployment”…
Michael Calder
In a perverse way – it would be alright if our unemployment was well paid.
No idea of any one’s views on this but perhaps we should be heading towards
a Minimum Income.
Keeping it simple by taxing it at the the other end gradually depending on what your income
actually is.
Even Beardy Branson would get it but he’d be taxed on all his income too.
Should be dead easy to calculate in the era of AI because AI can do no wrong
and never be wrong..
Can it?
Its political expression may be some form of PR as well , as Starmer has a massive majority but wants to give it away ( he already is I think ) to Farage at the next round of First past The Post Democracy.
Nuclear power stations are a massive scam and they have not led to cheaper electricity.
In Britain they were all about a Rothschild uranium deal (with Winston Churchill involved) with Canada in the 1950s.
If this sounds loony to anyone – and I can appreciate it might – please check it out!
This is a highly instructive lesson on what “green” politics are all about. I remember when many young people who opposed nuclear weapons also opposed nuclear power and wore badges saying things like “Nuclear power – no thanks”. I may even have such a badge in my loft somewhere. Compare with today when fake eco types basically say coal – yuck.
There is of course a lot that can usefully be said about car craziness, when the average car is used at a rate of about 1% of what it could be. That’s no exaggeration. Multiply the proportion of the time it’s being driven by the proportion of its seats that are being used, and you will get a figure of about 1%. That is truly sick and insane and I quite agree it’s gotta stop, and that energy consumption must fall. Look at all the waste of resources that goes into building an average house too. But greens don’t tend to say these obvious things.
Nice words, if a bit unhinged. So what’s your solution ?
The private car is absolutely essential in todays world, assuming you do want to step outside your hovel. And, nuclear power is essential if you want a reliable baseload in mad Ed’s green world.
We have/had a good, efficient, cheap, and clean power infrastructure developed over hundreds of years. Now thanks to the green looneys we have environmentally damaging sun mirrors, windmills and pimped golf buggies that are cripplingly expensive and totally inefficient, my what progress, NOT.
It’s not unhinged, though. The figure of 1% usage for these big metal things that take lots of resources to produce and run is accurate. It applies to electric cars as well as internal combustion ones. Greenism is little more than Malthusianism, but the baby shouldn’t be thrown out with the bathwater. We need to get rid of “economic growth” and the capitalism that it implies – wage-labour, the commodity economy, and private property. I don’t understand the “essential in today’s world” argument. Some things that are apparently essential in today’s world are testament to how wrong a set-up today’s world palpably is – e.g. the terrible almost society-wide addiction to these little microwave-tracker television sets that people carry around. Money is another example.
Nothing wrong with wind turbines. But the production of energy to chuck it away on cars is wasteful in the extreme, wherever it comes from – the wind, biofuel (basically growing food and then burning it to run cars), wherever.
Those who think nuclear power stations are great could be asked whether they’d want to live near one.
I’m no green, but I recognise and applaud the fact that some of the most radical green activists have been prominent in opposing the genocide of the Palestinians, the oppression of women in British prisons, and forced adoptions, and all this is to be welcomed unconditionally. This has happened in the last two years.
https://rebelsinprison.uk/rebels/all/
“But the production of energy to chuck it away on cars is wasteful in the extreme, wherever it comes from – ”
The answer is that automotive fuel is too cheap, so we waste it. The way to get people to use less of it would be to make it more expensive, but this is political suicide. We are carrying less and less goods and people further and further every year. Faster roads mean people can live further from their places of work as the critical factor is the travel time, not the distance.
Another way that energy is wasted on cars is their extreme complexity. Forty years ago a fifteen year old car was probably fit only for the scrap heap. If the engine wasn’t worn out, the body was rusted out. Now a fifteen year old car can easily be as good as new, but the time it takes and the cost of labour to replace something like a clutch means that it, too goes to the scrap heap.
“We need to get rid of “economic growth” and the capitalism that it implies ”
The capitalism that economic growth implies is financial capitalism, which purely extracts value, as opposed to industrial capitalism, which creates value. Financial capitalism needs economic growth because without growth, there can be no payment of interest: unless I can turn £x into £1.05x in a year, I won’t be able to pay 5% interest on the loan of £x. Financial capitalists need growth so that they can capture it in the form of interest. Lack of economic growth is a problem for the banksters and nobody else.
Brian Red.
Agree on the car usage.
It is normally used for going to work and coming back.
Your car spends 9 hours in the car park – just sitting there.
Public transport ( particularly in the Big Cities makes great sense.
But, that’s an infrastructure lack of investment problem.
This government and any other one based on their histories have no ( or not not much) intention of investing in that particular area.
The main thing, because money talks, is to get you to buy or lease a car from private companies and keep using the petrol/diesel in vast quantities.
And of course keep paying the interest on the lease or purchase.
SPQR – Small Profits – Quick – Returns.
When has anything, technical or procedural, promised by politicians ever led to cheaper services or better lifestyles ?
The basic rule of thumb is: ‘you will continually pay more for less’.
And, there will be no repercussions for lying to the electorate.
Trial by judges rather than juries alert:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-the-criminal-courts-part-1
^ “Independent Review of the Criminal Courts” (of England and Wales) by Brian Leveson. He reckons getting rid of juries would be quick, clean, cheap, and efficient. He reckons this is what the data tells him. Good boy. Cheque’s in the post.
Apparently Leveson only does what he has to do. Here he is, telling the Jewish Chronicle to that effect:
https://www.thejc.com/life/me-bothered-no-i-just-did-what-i-had-to-do-biv9irpf
Meanwhile the talking point that “one in five Britons is anti-Semitic” is being spread, both among Jews and wider, funnily enough simultanously with propaganda aimed at the wider population promising to corral migrants into army barracks.
https://archive.is/D1ik4
Among Jews the image of “the canary in the coalmine” is also being spread. This image has been all over the place in 2025.
According to Zionists, “an astounding 16% of young British adults believe that the attacks carried out by Hamas on 7th October 2023 were justified”.
https://antisemitism.org/new-polling-shows-extent-of-sympathy-for-hamas-and-frightening-trends-of-radicalism-among-young-britons/
Sounds good. Clearly all hope in the young should not be lost. (But is it actually lawful to tell a pollster that one thinks the resistance operation on that date was justified? Perhaps the real figure is higher? Let’s hope so.)
There are shades here – more than shades – of the management theory of the “third” or the “fifth”.
The message is that Jews are being so terribly oppressed that if something isn’t done about it, next it will be most of the population who are terribly oppressed. Those of us who aren’t insane will recognise that this message isn’t true. But it isn’t enough to recognise that it’s not true. One needs to ask what’s behind it. Start by supposing that absolutely everything about it is a lie, from top to bottom. Then what do you get? Does it check out?
Always the victims, never the problem ! 🙂 [JakeTV]
“Meanwhile the talking point that “one in five Britons is anti-Semitic”
Bearing in mind the new meaning of “anti-Semitic”, they are probably right. A lot of people will be going by the old meaning, though. Oh dear! What a pity! Never mind!
MODERATER: You might want to check this given the draconian climate we are in ( but I think it OK).
My subscription to Private Eye was not renewed but if it was I would have sent the Letters Page this ANAGRAM:
ZION-ISRAEL
IS NAZI-ROLE
Thanks Craig, a worthy but thorny issue. I do not think the politics of altruismn will return as long as the establishment forces this inequality breeding FPTP on to us.
Wider coalitions with parties that dilute instead of adding policy without voters participating, will further stretch the casm between ultra rich and poor.
Farrage ought to have stood for the AFD in Germany, all he needs is an abode, learn to speak Deutsch and go through the selection process to become a candidate.
Mind, people there are more clued up of the nefarious ugly moves Herr Merz subjects them to.
Modi is a sneaky wee b&stard – he’s went down greatly in my estimations.
“India has signed an economic cooperation agreement with Israel, amid growing criticism of New Delhi’s complicity in Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Bilateral Investment Agreement (BIA), which is aimed at expanding trade ties between the two sides, was signed in New Delhi by India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and his Israeli counterpart Bezalel Smotrich on Monday.
Smotrich was reportedly joined by the ministry’s chief economist, Shmuel Abramzon, and other senior officials, including Accountant General Yali Rothenberg and Director-General Ilan Rom, as well as Israel Securities Authority Chairman Seffy Singer.
The extremist minister is also expected to meet with business representatives and representatives of the Jewish community in the country.
In July, New Delhi and Tel Aviv pledged to enhance their military ties. India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons.
In recent years, India has also become a major co-producer of Israeli arms.
Indian human rights activists and scholars have raised concerns about India’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended its arms supplies to Israel, citing India’s “national interest.””
https://cdn.presstv.ir/Photo/2025/9/8/df1466be-c645-48b6-bd28-458a1e3bcf62.JPG
Just because the Indians have been subjected to centuries of racist oppression doesn’t mean they can not be as racist as their oppressors.
Caterpillar’s D-9 bulldozer has been used to crush to death women and children, and people in designated safe spaces camps in Gaza, in Gaza its a tool of murder and destruction, an emblem of Zionism and evil – Caterpillars continued attitude of selling these bulldozers to an occupying force that’s committing genocide is nothing short of appalling, and the Yanks don’t like it that Norway is divesting away from the company, I say tough.
“US government recently expressed strong concern over the Norwegian wealth fund’s decision to divest from the US manufacturing giant Caterpillar Inc. over ethical concerns.
US Department of State denounced Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund, saying it was “deeply troubled” about the fund’s recent decision to divest from the American company.
“We are very troubled by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s decision, which appears to be based on illegitimate claims against Caterpillar and the Israeli government,” it said on Thursday in a statement.
“We are engaging directly with the Norwegian government on this matter.”
Norway chose to divest because Caterpillar-made bulldozers have been extensively used in the Israeli regime’s wanton destruction of Palestinian homes and lives in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”
On the British proscription of Palestine Action – in which over 800 people were arrest the other day for supporting them.
“The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is a proscribed terrorist group.
Yet its band marched through Belfast on 12 July 2025 without arrest.”
https://nitter.poast.org/iainoverton/status/1964813509407236461#m
Put this comment up at 1pm today, on MOA an hour later the courts stepped in, “Well 1 hour after the new banksy was revealed that was mocking the courts for censoring people, the courts censored it by covering it up…
Proving his point…”
https://nitter.poast.org/TheGriftReport/status/1965063846491767247#m
—————————
Street artist Banksy gets in on the act.
“Legendary British street artist Banksy has unveiled a new work on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
The mural features a figure holding a blank placard being beaten by a judge wielding a gavel, and comes directly after the Metropolitan Police arrested over 850 people for breaking terror laws on 6 September at a protest against the proscription of non-violent direct action Palestine Action.
Approximately 1,500 people took part in the demonstration, organised by Defend Our Juries (DOJ), in London’s Parliament Square – making it one of the biggest acts of mass civil disobedience in British history. Those arrested included former and current NHS staff, an 83-year-old priest and a disabled RAF veteran.
A DOJ spokesperson said: “Banksy’s work of art on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed by Yvette Cooper on protestors by proscribing Palestine Action.
“When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent – it strengthens it. As Banksy’s artwork shows, the state can try to strip away our civil liberties, but we are too many in number and our resolve to stand against injustice cannot be beaten – our movement against the ban is unstoppable and growing every day.
“We hope everyone who is moved by Banksy’s inspiring work of art will join our next action, which will be announced soon.”
Since the controversial proscription came into force in July, more than 1,600 people have been arrested under terror legislation and over 70 have been charged.
Banksy’s artwork can be viewed on an external wall of the Queen’s Building, part of the Royal Courts of Justice complex.”
For those who haven’t seen Banksy’s art work – on the side of the court in England here it is.
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/media%2FG0VgrInXEAA7Hn5.jpg%3Fname%3Dsmall%26format%3Dwebp
The police moved fast to cover Banksy’s mural, but too late – it’s all over the internet.
On a related topic, the Electronic Intifada reveals that of late there have been several leaked documents from the IDF, one saying that their operations have been a failure filled with mistakes. The resistance groups are saying that version 2 will fail as well. And this despite a genocidal policy by the IDF of reducing built-up civilian areas to moonscapes (a girls’ school building is shown being blown up by the IDF who have used it as a military base). The resistance often place poems which are topical and sharp on walls, for example saying that the Arab forces in bygone eras treated prisoners mercifully, whereas Israelis kill Palestinian prisoners:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azIl3yV9oZU
Genocide-enabler Lammy: Israel NOT committing genocide in Gaza, the Times reports today.
https://archive.is/CPveH
“Until last week the UK government had maintained that the question of whether Israel had committed genocide was a matter for the courts and not for national governments to determine.
However, in a letter to the chair of the international development committee last week Lammy said that an assessment carried out by the Foreign Office had concluded that Israel’s actions did not constitute genocide.”
Project Esther aims to criminalise criticism of genocide and war crimes
Classic from the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4r7dmxgxmo
“Why is France in debt crisis? Simply put, France’s government has for decades spent more money than it has generated. As a result, it has to borrow to cover its budget. The French government says that public debt stood at €3,345 billion, or 114% of GDP, external, in early 2025. That is the third highest public debt in the eurozone after Greece and Italy, and equivalent to almost €50,000 per French citizen.”
That debt ratio is about the same as Britain’s. Curiously the BBC don’t mention that.
BBC = Radio Tirana, 1970. But that may be an insult to Radio Tirana.
What has the state or other party been doing at Heathrow?
The regime evacuated the airport because of people being taken ill, apparently because they ingested a hazardous material.
The regime’s current line is that nothing happened, and people just went crazy. “The BBC understands” it was a “mass hysteria event”. Doubtless the print media will confirm that “experts” say the same.
Obviously the regime is lying. What really happened?
It’s obviously those bloody ruskies attacking our great democracy again.
Somebody farted….
https://sciencesensei.com/15-real-cases-of-mass-hysteria-explained-by-science/
If only British regime security experts were as clued up as you, @Pears, this time yesterday afternoon, on meowing nuns. Then they could have saved 17 billion crowns and 11 billion bitcoins by not evacuating their most important airport.
Note to BBC: better scrub the article where you mention the CS gas canister at Heathrow:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgy9e0zpp3o
Especially the following sentence:
“No hazardous materials were found but the Metropolitan Police discovered a can of CS spray which it said ’caused a reaction to those within the airport’.”
Does what counts as “hazardous” have to be cleared with the Zionists nowadays too? I thought that was only what counted as “terrorism”.
Bin Salman owns Heathrow. Dirty bombs are always a risk
The main vessel in the Sumud flotilla has been attacked by drone off Tunisia.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/9/2/live-geta-thunberg-once-more-on-board-sumud-flotilla-sailing-for-gaza
Lots of photos of healthy-looking middle class professionals are here:
https://globalsumudflotilla.org/about/
Hope you’re not suggesting that some people make a career out of others suffering ! 🙂
Here is a video which indeed clearly show that it was a drone that struck that boat:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/D6AK0uUIVRI
This is nothing but terrorism. Imagine if Russia struck a humanitarian shipment to Ukraine on european soil, imagine the reaction by the west! It would be a declaration of war.
But when israel actually commit this sadistic evil crime, there is ZERO condemnation by western politicians/media, western leaders obviously side with the regime that put western citizens in harms way – this is so disturbing, amd just today the genocidal president of israel Isaac Herzog is in the UK to meet Kid Starver.
Also, absurdly enough you had (the pro-israel) tunisian government early on rejecting the claim of a deliberate explosion/drone, implying it was a preposterous claim by the Flotilla organizers. Now they look real stupid.
I mean the arab leaders/world,.. I have no words left for their servility to israel – one thought that they would be better than the lousy EU/US but they are even worse.
The israeli led corruption that goes on behind the scenes in these nations, must be immense to explain their loathsome submission.
The whole point of the Flotilla is to expose Israel’s evil and the fact that the west is 100% complicit. This attack is expected, as is the inaction from the western governments. No such thing as bad news, I’m sure the flotilla expected this – if they didn’t they’re naïve – just squeezing the poison pus out of the wound. Hope no-one gets hurt, but this is Israel …
…and now israel bombed “hamas targets” in Qatar, what a depraved regime, if israel was a dog it would be put down ages ago.
It is like israelis cannot get enough of the killing, like they get off sexually by seeing their mayhem and arab blood splattered all over the middle east in one grand punitive expedition.
Note that israel conduct this strike just as a ceasefire was about to be agreed upon. israel always do this, when there is a chance to calm, peace they destroy that chance just like that.
Jack,
Netanyahu does not want any ceasefire and he wants war.
His corruption trial is central to what he does; war becomes a foil to delay the trial while he tries to avoid it totally.
But others in the Israeli leadership are equally culpable.
Yes indeed, the Zionists have a long record of this kind of action.
I only hope the Palestinian resistance can respond internationally. It’s about time.
Among other things this is a humiliation of Qatar’s military.
Meanwhile it’s possible the Zionists will soon start a war in Cyprus, against the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/northern-cyprus-is-also-an-israeli-problem/
“Israel, in coordination with Greece and Cyprus, must prepare a contingency operation for liberating the island’s north”
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/07/04/750572/Cyprus-Israelis-purchase-real-estate
How the power cable talks (Greece – Zionists – Republic of Cyprus) fit in with war on Cyprus being talked about as a possibility is not clear. The Zionists could be trying to destabilise Greece, because I don’t imagine all ruling interests in Greece (or the ROC) actually want war with Turkey (or the TRNC). Perhaps Cyprus will soon STOP being the obvious place for (possibly token numbers of) Palestinian survivors to be detained.
France is being destabilised too.
A lot of money is made and very fast when a country collapses.
From the Spectator:
https://archive.is/L55kv
Looking on the bright side, whoever replaces Macron will be an improvement.
The Sulzberger rag is also suggesting Macron should leave office. They are saying he has no obvious way to turn. They’re using the same photo as the Spectator, showing Macron on his own on the cobbles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/world/europe/macron-options-analysis.html
https://archive.is/CXb3a
The NYT like the BBC are talking about the French government’s enormous debt…forgetting to mention that while it is indeed enormous it’s about the same size as the British government’s enormous debt.
On a previous thread I commented on the way that Israelis have been buying up huge tracts of land in Northern Cyprus, using their ‘other’ passports, and saying it is for tourism investment. People living in villages on these lands were appealing to the Turkish government against being thrown off their lands and villages, and the Turkish government claimed it didn’t know the purchasers were not from the countries on the passports they used for the transactions. They sold thousands of acres in these transactions.
It is also true that Israelis are keen to buy property in the rest of Cyprus, which is where our airforce is based, and where there is a long tradition of British forces having had a very pleasant posting there
France’s electoral system is quite different in that the president is a sort of stand alone key position, not specifically linked to the Party with the most seats. I forget how it works but there was a lot of dissatisfaction when he hung onto the role after the last election.
Macron has appointed Lecornu, the Defence Minister, to be France’s new Prime Minister
Lecornu is the 5th PM since the beginning of 2024.
He’s a buddy of Macron in Macron’s “movement” or party, and probably won’t last long.
There’s a general strike tomorrow in France. “Bloquons Tout”.
Le Parisien suggests the strike could be indefinite.
If it it lasts to the weekend, that will finish the walking piece of filth in the Elysée. Or will he dare put the army on the streets?
https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/un-arret-total-et-illimite-du-pays-cest-quoi-ce-mouvement-qui-appelle-a-bloquer-la-france-a-partir-du-10-septembre-22-07-2025-7VCMYN5AJRHODBHYRZKEZ3PDGQ.php
“If it it lasts to the weekend, that will finish the walking piece of filth in the Elysée. Or will he dare put the army on the streets?”
The latter, I expect, not that it will do any good.
They are under attack and they haven’t even reached Gaza yet.
“Video captures the moment a drone struck the main Global Sumud Flotilla vessel “Family” off the coast of Tunisia.”
https://nitter.poast.org/MonitorX99800/status/1965215590504956070#m
I’m told Britain sells air defence systems to Qatar.
A fat lot of good they appear to have done when an enemy attacked Qatar from the air.
Something go wrong, did it?
It works better when you turn it on. First Law of Electronics
Ah, yes
“The main feature of these systems is their close integration with airborne early warning and control aircraft (AWACS), satellites, and command centers that provide targeting data. In addition, they have a shutdown function to prevent accidental friendly fire.”
They were just turned off.
The senate of the city of Berlin is immune to sanity:
Even now mayor Kai Wegener and his merry men and women intend to obstruct a planned speech by Francesca Albanese.
entire German-language article in BERLINER ZEITUNG daily:
“Kai Wegner wanted to prevent this event: Outrage over Francesca Albanese
The controversial UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories has an appointment at the FU on Wednesday. The outrage is immense.”
https://archive.is/TXk5r
excerpts:
“(…)
Albanese, an Italian legal scholar specializing in international law and human rights, has been invited as a guest to a workshop at the annual conference of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) on the Dahlem campus. The workshop is reserved exclusively for registered experts. The 48-year-old will deliver a keynote address, a keynote speech including a key message, at the workshop titled “Forensic and Counter-Forensic Approaches to the Reconstruction of International Law – Cartography and Anatomy of Genocide.”
(…)
Francesca Albanese also has numerous critics in Germany. The Network of Jewish University Lecturers (NJH) and the Jewish Student Union of Germany (JSUD) expressed outrage at the announced visit. In an open letter on Monday, the Jewish organizations demanded not only the “cancellation” of Albanese’s keynote speech but also a change to the workshop title. They accused the lawyer and lecturer of advocating anti-Israel positions “that have nothing to do with legitimate criticism of the actions of a state government.” Albanese, they argued, was making “Nazi and Holocaust comparisons with regard to the Jewish state of Israel,” misjudging the suffering of Israelis, and spreading “theories of a Jewish world conspiracy.”
(…)
Berlin’s Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) also spoke out sharply: “Berlin’s universities are places of teaching and research, but also of conveying values. We do not tolerate anti-Semitism, hatred, and incitement at our universities. An appearance by the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, who has repeatedly attracted attention in the past for her hatred of Israel and the trivialization of the Hamas terrorist organization, therefore has no place at a Berlin university. I expect Freie Universität to send a clear message against anti-Semitism.”
(…)
The (university) statement goes on to say that around 600 participants from around 60 countries are expected at the conference in the Henry Ford Building in Dahlem. The invitation follows “the scientific and procedural standards customary for specialist conferences.” And: “The university administration is not involved in evaluating the positions of the invited individuals and does not influence the proceedings of the conference.”
(…)
The FU’s response concludes: “Universities are committed to the principle of academic freedom in accordance with Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law. This also includes researchers being able to independently decide on topics, formats, and guests for academic events.”
(…)
At the time of this issue’s editorial deadline, it remained unclear how university president Günter M. Ziegler would deal with the latest Albanese case.
(…)”
You can be assured even if the ICJ had decided on a genocide (not just “plausible”) German intellectual excellence would have developed its very own perception of reality.
Or to quote Karl Rove´s Neocon lingo new fascistic twist from almost 25 years ago: “we are now creating our own reality”.
This reality by now is mostly a projection and has no equivalent in the material world any more.
The delusions and diversions which are left from the former might however will go on until the financial means of the West to do just this will be used up.
“Israel isn’t committing genocide”, says UK government helping it commit genocide:
https://skwawkbox.org/2025/09/09/new-post-israel-isnt-committing-genocide-says-uk-government-helping-it-commit-genocide/
The question of intent has been made by many Israeli cabinet members Netanyahu claimed they were fighting Amalek, the President Hertzog said there are no innocents in Gaza, as for Ben-Gvir and Smotrich the least said the better. Lammy attended a commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide when 8,000 people were killed. How many Palestinians have been killed, could be half a million. These Labour leaders are inhuman scum of the earth. They must face justice.
‘ Save the Children reports that Israel has killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children over the past 23 months — this means at least one Palestinian child has been killed every hour on average by Israeli forces. The group said, “If the international community does not step up, an entire generation of children in Gaza will be lost.”
Democracy Now
What happened to it being a matter for the courts to adjudicate? All lies? No journalist even bothers to ask them.
This genocide denial is part and parcel of their complicity and participation in genocide. Undoubtedly they should face international criminal tribunals for what they have done and are doing. It will never happen domestically as virtually every British politician and journalist has been complicit to some degree.
Here is Starmer in 2014 claiming that Serbia commited genocide in Croatia, look what he said:
Starmer: ” Serbian forces carried out a sustained campaign of shelling; systematic expulsion; denial of food, water, electricity, sanitation and medical treatment; bombing; burning; brutal killings and torture which reduced the city to rubble and destroyed its Croat population”
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/compare-contrast/2024/11/27/keir-starmers-remarks-on-genocide-in-croatia-vs-gaza
That statement^could of course easily apply to what israel do in Gaza.
It’s not what’s being done, it’s who’s doing it that counts.
George Orwell in his ‘Notes on Nationalism’ agrees with you.
“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians”.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
Quoted from Dr John Campbell
‘Unusual death cluster
Seven AfD candidates died prior to the 2025 local elections in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), scheduled for September 14, 2025
The extreme improbability
Factors:
Tight time frame of the two waves
Restricted pool of all candidates
Age-specific probability of death
Above-average health of political candidates.
Tight geographical cluster
German economist, Stefan Homburg
“statistically virtually impossible”
AfD deputy leader (MP)
Stephan Brandner “statistically striking and difficult to explain at the moment”.
“I’ve never heard of politicians from a party dying in such a short period of time before an election,”
Statistical anomaly noted
The cluster of six deaths within a short period,
concentrated on one party,
Wave 1 (July / early August)
Opposition candidates
FDP, UWG, Party for Animal Protection, Free Voters, Voter Group SG Zukunft.
Observation: 5 deaths in approx. 3 weeks.
Wave 2 (mid/late August to 1 September)
Almost exclusively AfD – Seitz, Klinger, Berendes, Lange, Herford, Tietze
(plus Uwe Philippsen / list “Volksabstimmung”).
Observation: 7 deaths in approx. 3 weeks.
G Frei News analysis
https://gfrei.news/author/gfrei123/
Final result after the healthy-candidate effect
Wave 1 (opposition, ≥ 5):
1 : 5,809
Wave 2 (AfD, ≥ 6):
1 : 247,351
Two waves in sequence:
1 : 1,437,176,086
Short form: ≈ 1 : 1.44 billion
This means the double cluster clearly lies in the billion range of improbability. That precisely explains why comparable cases (e.g., “four deaths before an election”) are virtually never documented historically.
These deaths have disrupted the electoral process, invalidating ballots in affected districts and requiring reprints and new nominations.’
For reference: one Reform candidate died before the UK election and one Republican before the last US election. Events in Germany are an extreme outlier
2x Chris Hedges from today, brandnew – text + interview
Death of the Holocaust Industry
The genocide in Gaza has exposed the weaponization of the Holocaust as a vehicle not to prevent genocide, but to perpetuate it, not to examine the past, but to manipulate the present.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/death-of-the-holocaust-industry
The Death of Holocaust Studies (w/ Raz Segal) | The Chris Hedges Report
Rather than actually explore the history of the Holocaust, Holocaust studies have always been about manufacturing the exceptionality of the Jewish people and the sanctity of Israel.
47 min.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-death-of-holocaust-studies-w
Germany No. 2 – Baerbock lying in UN press conference.
German BERLINER ZEITUNG:
“Scandal in New York: Baerbock lies right at the start as UN General Assembly President
Already on her first day as President of the UN General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock caused a stir: A quote caught up with her and left her struggling to explain.”
https://archive.is/naRCC
“(…)
Journalist Abdelhadim Siyam from the Arabic-language daily al-Quds then asked a critical question. He wanted to know: “Do you distance yourself from the statement you made as German Foreign Minister when you tolerated Israel’s attacks on civilian targets, civilian hospitals, and civilian schools?” Baerbock responded sharply: “That is not a quote I have ever uttered.” She instructed the journalist to quote correctly.
In fact, Baerbock had given a speech in the Bundestag in October 2024 in which she declared precisely this. “If Hamas terrorists barricade themselves behind people, behind schools, then we’ll find ourselves in very difficult situations. But we won’t duck away from that. That’s why I made it clear at the United Nations: Then even civilian places could lose their protected status,” Baerbock said unequivocally.
(…)”
Good work by Siyam.
First Heathrow was shut, now Warsaw. They’re not saying it was mass hysteria at Warsaw. Perhaps it was a Marian apparition.
TASS are referring to the business with drones as an “incident”. They are also reporting that the Polish government is considering invoking NATO’s Article 4.
Pravda is leading on Job of Pochayev. It’s his day today. He was from Galicia.
Hopefully the general strike in France today will hold. What do people make of the slogan “Boycott, désobéissance et solidarité”? Literally “boycott, disobedience, solidarity”, this is the slogan used by “Bloquons Tout” (Block Everything), which is the name used by those who have called the general strike.
(“General strike” is what I am calling it, with utmost respect. Possibly this is because I am thinking too much about the past. Possibly not. In any case, bring the whole f***ing country to a standstill, preferably indefinitely. Hopefully an alternative power structure will come into being. It’s either that, or hand power back to the enemy. Can French revolutionaries show a light to the world…again? Let’s hope so.)
There will be quite a few Palestinian flags out in France today. They will be flown at the occupations and barricades. They will be shown in many photos.
What is called BDS in English (boycott, divestment, sanctions) is also called BDS in French (boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions), so there is a clear hook here.
This movement has a more leftwing flavour than the Yellow Jackets.
Gotta wonder how much support there might be for a repression among a) the army, and b) the National Rally-supporting right. It’s quite possible there won’t be much. If this were Britain, the bonehead racist thickos in the army, the Tory party, and Reform would be itching to send the troops into Bradford and Birmingham. Having a dark skin, being Muslim, supporting the Palestinians, and lefties and proles and non-whites walking around as though they’ve got a right to – it’s all the same thing for them. They see it as a threat to their teenage girls or something.
Now France…
France is somewhat different. On the one hand, sure, the right wing has been waiting to refight the Algerian war for about 60 years – not in Algeria this time, but in France itself. But on the other hand, people are much more conscious in France of Zionist power. So…I end with an optimistic conclusion….the rising left could have the people behind them…
I cannt find any photos or videos of the russian drones that poland say went into their airspace which i find odd because there are many many photos and videos of the F1 israeli jets that bombed Qatar , the drones obviously travel much much slower than F1 jets , i think the drone story is fake
Donald Tusk’s reference to “huge numbers” of Russian drones over Poland, a phrase that has appeared in so many western headlines, is certainly a lie.
TASS are reporting that Belarus shot down a number of drones over its own territory during the night. They are citing the Belarus defence ministry.
https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/25013121
Brian Red
September 10, 2025 at 09:59
Well said.
This claim that Russia sent drones into Poland is a lie, just like the claims in February 2022 that Russia planned to invade Ukraine.
Warmongers see military threats where tankies rightly see goodness and kindness.
“This claim that Russia sent drones into Poland is a lie, just like the claims in February 2022”
Well, that was three and a half years ago. If no-one in Russia has been caught lying since, they are doing astoundingly well.
The main giveaway is that the drones didn’t have the range to come from Russia, according to Polish sources.
Err, it was night time. The Israeli raid on Doha was carried out in daylight.
France news: nine severed pigs’ heads have been left outside mosques in the Paris area.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-france-paris-ukraine-european-union-b2823288.html
There is a question as to how much support the Zionists can count on in the French right. I would like to say the French right is in a bit of a mess, maybe not strong enough to put a big presence on the streets. But that is probably not so.
The Independent report with a straight face that the pigs’ heads are “ostensibly unrelated to the planned protests”. They also try to blame Russia!
(On a side note, it’s curious how thicko conservatives and regime defenders reach for this word “hallmark”. Most of us didn’t grow up with a lot of precious metals in the house and aren’t familiar with the work of assay offices. We haven’t had much experience turning over tableware and jewellery to look at hallmarks. The way the word “hallmark” works politically is to say “Well done – your prejudices are confirmed! Feel proud and hateful! Today’s news bears all the hallmarks of the enemy you know best, who is probably landing on an Essex beach, a knife between his teeth, and singing the Internationale, at this very moment – as you cower in fear, worrying about inheritance tax.“)
It has now emerged that the Prime Minister represented a defendant in a similar case in 2003. A group of anti-war protesters had broken into RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to sabotage US bombers before they flew to Iraq.
Sir Keir argued that while the actions were against the law, they were justified because they were trying to stop the planes from committing war crimes. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, tweeted: “Worth noting that Keir Starmer defended an activist who broke into an RAF base to set fire to aircraft. Starmer claimed his client was legally justified because it might stop a war crime. Sir Keir argued in court that Mr Richards believed any force he used was reasonable in an attempt to stop alleged war crimes. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/20/starmer-defended-protester-who-sabotaged-military-aircraft/
I hope a similar argument will be succeed in court for those arrested for carrying placards aimed against war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Genocide even.
“Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, tweeted: “Worth noting that Keir Starmer defended an activist who broke into an RAF base to set fire to aircraft. Starmer claimed his client was legally justified because it might stop a war crime. “If he’d won that argument in 2004, what happened at Brize Norton would be perfectly legal.””
Sounds like he did win the argument, given that the jury didn’t convict.
Also Badenoch seems to be admitting that the British airforce “might” assist with war crimes. Free clue if anybody from her office is reading this: if “If A then B” is an argument for B, the assumption is that A is true. FFS what a thicko. No wonder she went off to “manage private wealth”, and then to the Spectator, after she got her law degree.
I recently reread Michael Mansfield’s autobiography, The Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer, Mansfield being, like me, a product of Keele University’s philosophy department. He refers to an incident where Starmer defended a group of Iraqis who had flown to the UK on a plane they had hijacked, on the basis that the conditions in their own country constituted extreme duress, sufficient for a plea of automatism. He lost this case – although the court, in Mansfield’s view, accepted the argument as a persuasive plea of mitigation.
However, all of this, and the case detailed above only indicates the extreme vein of sophistry inherent in the current PM, to which I alluded in a recent post. He will simply say anything to garner wealth and power. Since the UK is in thrall to a military industrial complex vastly less powerful and internecine than that of the US, though still of tremendous concern to anyone valuing the ideals of liberal democracy, the audience he preaches to now demands policies such as the banning of people showing solidarity with anti-genocide campaigns, and to stand lock shoulder with the fascist apartheid regime of Israel
Indeed. The very strange case of Mr Starmer.
There seem to be three possibilities:
i. He was always a living a lie and ingratiated himself with various human rights groups and causes to provide deep cover for other nefarious activities; such as leaking info in cases involving the security agencies themselves. There is evidence that the private lawyer – client confidentiality of communications has been compromised in certain cases(torture) involving MI6. During the Undercover Policing Inquiry aka. Spycops, a former policeman revealed he accessed confidential details of the legal advice the prime minister gave to Helen Steel and Dave Morris after they were sued for libel by McDonalds. He has said nothing about these revelations from the inquiry, that is suspicious in and of itself.
ii. He was impressed by the security services’ work while at the CPS. He worked closely with MI5 and met the then Director General socially. He also went to the US, and played a key role in the Assange attempted extradition process.
iii. They simply have dirt on him and it became a choice between being their gofer or losing everything. Remember how Snowden highlighted the CIA operation operation in Geneva, Switzerland c.2007: after purposely getting a Swiss banker drunk, they encouraged him to drive when the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent sought to befriend him and offered to help. A bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.
He’s the least authentic, most insincere PM we’ve ever had. There is nothing organic, or ‘of the people’ about him; an aloof, out-of-touch political imposter. And that’s really saying something, after Blair – another establishment actor playing the role before leaving politics to become fabulously wealthy.
I view the Labour party as akin to a failing school that has been put in, so-called ‘special measures’ , replete with a ‘Man from the Ministry’ who has been sent to lead it and steady the ship, then turn it back rightwards i.e. Sir Keir Starmer. I really don’t understand why Labour members remain so, given Starmer probably despises the party he notionally leads. If correct, the contempt for democracy from the people behind this is staggering.
I would guess iii) given his habitual “rabbit in the headlights” expression when photographed.
Thanks for the link.
Such remains unnoticed in FRG.