Anne

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Nigel Farage just said the UK was better in the 1950's

In the 1950's the Government owned Gas, Oil, Rail, Power, Steel, Telecoms, Mail, Shipbuilding, Airports, Social Housing, Care Homes (Children and Adults), Schools, Hospitals...

And built 300,000 Council Houses a year.

[Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker @TrumpsPortfolio]

So this is wild if it holds up. A senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran ran the numbers and figures people in Trump’s orbit — they name Kushner and Witkoff specifically — made around $9 billion trading on inside knowledge from the nuclear talks. Iran’s response? They formally asked for half of it, $4.5 billion, routed to them through intermediaries. And they made a point of noting the text messages will end up in the historical record someday.

It gets stranger. During the Switzerland round, Iran reportedly sent Vance a private message warning that Kushner and Witkoff seemed to care more about cashing in on the negotiations than actually closing a deal.

The Iranians also flagged that whatever they said at the table was apparently going straight to Netanyahu — per the official, Kushner and Witkoff are in near-daily contact with him and the Mossad chief.

Worth stressing all of this comes from one Iranian official talking to Drop Site, so grain of salt. But if even part of it is documented, it’s a serious story.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

In the face of this torrent of absolutely insufferable guff, let it be stated again - Starmer is directly complicit in the slaughter of, at the very least, 25,000 children. /1

[Ben Jamal @BenJamal48]

I dont really have a problem with people feeling the need for kindness towards someone as they leave office. It's a human instinct. But glossing over, or rather lying about their failures is something else. The most egregious lie is the one trumpeted across the political establishment..." whatever he got wrong Keir restored Britain's reputation on the world stage as a state committed to the rule of law" . No. He endorsed mass starving of an entire people, continued to arm a state legitimately accused of genocide , failed to respond to responsibilities layed out by the worlds highest Court to ensure the UK was not aiding and abetting that genocide and for over 2 years failed to respond to further recommendations from the same Court as to how to ensure the UK was not aiding and abetting an illegal military occupation. Posing as an antiracist, he materially supported the imposition of apartheid. He did not enhance the UK's reputation or respect for IHL. He damaged both. That is his legacy. And not stating that demonstrates the poverty of our politics and gives a greenlight to his successor to deliver more of the same. Luckily most people aren't fooled.

[Save the Children UK @savechildrenuk]

This is your legacy on the occupied Palestinian territory, Prime Minister @Keir_Starmer. History will remember your complicity.

Despite a partial arms suspension in 2024, Keir Starmer's government has continued to enable Israel's atrocities against Palestinians, their families and children through the supply of F-35 fighter jet parts.

Nothing can change the horrors Palestinians have faced. But the next Prime Minister has an opportunity to put an end to the UK Government's role as an ally to atrocities.

The UK Government must:
🔴 Suspend all arms sales to Israel
🔴 Suspend the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement
🔴 Ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements

To the next Prime Minister: what will your plaque say?

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

There are British citizens who have fought in Gaza for the IDF, and likely committed horrendous war crimes, just walking around our country with zero attempts to even interview or investigate their actions.

Meanwhile, our new Prime Minister 👇

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

This is the first time I've heard about this. No wall-to-wall media coverage

[Sammael's_Party @PartySammael]

Wat Tyler was killed because he sought compromise where no compromise was possible and he believed the lies of the rich and powerful.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

"The Spectator has become one of the most influential British media apologists for bigotry, hatred and racism"

Fascinating and disturbing preface by Peter Oborne - former Political Editor of The Spectator - to the Centre for Media Monitoring's report on the decline of the world's oldest magazine.
https://t.co/E4qFvKUoMy

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

As Keir Starmer yet again recycles his antisemitism creation story - worth revisiting Ep 2 of Al Jazeera's The Labour Files which blew apart much of the media reporting around this issue.

Plse share. Still being determinedly ignored by UK media.
https://t.co/rstxpLvwuZ

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

The social contract has become a gigantic piss take. We pay national insurance years in advance to fund the government, yet the government are taking our tax money and extending the age of the state pension to 68.

National insurance and the state pension has become like a Ponzi scheme. Millions of people depend on the state pension from their decades of national insurance payments and yet the government are now intending to push the state pension to an age where many people will struggle to find work.

Meanwhile, the government spaff away our tax money on wars, net zero, wealth transfers to corporate contracts and their own massive pensions and expenses.

Absolutely shameful.

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

Labour should ditch triple-lock pensions promise, says OECD.

Full state pension is less than 50% of minimum wage

2m pensioners live in poverty

100,000 pensioners die in poverty each year.

OECD backs democide, silent on equitable distribution of wealth.
https://t.co/HMDOPfGbDb

[Joe Guinan @joecguinan]

Perhaps they should simulate a forty-year attack on social infrastructure and living standards by ruling elites.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

Britain loves to imagines it’s the prize in some great geopolitical contest. Who exactly is dreaming of occupying a country with a totally hollowed-out industrial base, crumbling Victorian infrastructure, collapsing institutions, and an economy managed into stagnation?

[Mark Curtis @markcurtis30]

The oligarchy is all set. Its candidate has condoned everything required: nuclear arms, the US, Nato, Israel, arms industry. The system requires no election. It's all perfectly normal.

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

Higher arms spending has consequences.

To fund 8,500 troops in bases across the world and 10,000 to go to Ukraine, Burnham's planning to ditch the Triple Lock and delay devalued pensions for future generations.

This is what cutting welfare to assert "hard power" actually means.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Have you noticed how the liberal establishment hasn't been nearly as emotional and outraged about Trump's second term as they were about his first? Now that he's the president who bombed Iran, the entire western political/media class is cool with him.

The term "Trump Derangement Syndrome" has always been used by the MAGA crowd as a blanket pejorative to protect the president from criticism, but during Trump's first term it wasn't entirely unfair. You'd see Democrats shrieking their lungs out over Trump doing things that other US presidents did all the time like cozying up with dictators and tyrants. They'd lose their minds over relatively sane things like Trump talking about moving troops out of Syria. The whole Russiagate thing was liberals going bat shit over a crazy conspiracy theory that caused them to push for the escalations against Russia which ultimately gave rise to the war in Ukraine.

We're not seeing any of that in Trump's second term. That extra layer of screeching emotionality simply isn't there. There are no Russiagates or emotional support Maddows this time around. Democrats hate Trump, but they hate him about as much as they'd hate any Republican president. The emotional response to his second presidency is wildly, wildly different from the first.

Which is nuts, because he's quantifiably far worse this time around. His domestic policies are much more tyrannical. He's as evil a warmonger as the White House has ever seen. He's so corrupt that he's just openly admitting to being bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs while making his family a fortune using the power of his office. Now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election, he's being completely nakedly monstrous.

And what's creepy is that's WHY the liberal establishment is so much more mellow about him. They're no longer worried that he's going to promote "isolationist" foreign policy and roll back the US war machine. He went to war with Iran, so they like him now. Because they know he's fully compliant.

[Media Lens @medialens]

In his book, ‘Live From Downing Street’, former BBC political editor Nick Robinson summarised our criticism, forcefully rejecting some of our arguments, before adding:

‘But is there something in the concern they [Media Lens] express that “balanced reporting” can allow those in power too much control over the terms of debate…?’ (Robinson, ‘Live from Downing Street’, Transworld, e-book version, 2012, p.287)

Robinson then confessed:

‘The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions...’ (Robinson, ibid., p.288)

In his book, ‘News and How to Use it’, former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger noted that Media Lens had ‘repeatedly attacked the Guardian and other mainstream news outlets for its dependency on advertising’. Like Robinson, Rusbridger strongly challenged the claim, before adding:

‘But, as conventional advertising revenues began to drain away from printed newspapers, there have been notable examples where the Chinese walls were, in effect, torn down by commercial managers who wanted to get their hands on the editorial train set.’ (Alan Rusbridger, ‘News and How to Use It’, Canongate, e-book version, 2020, p.35)

Rusbridger discussed Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model of media control’ in some depth, describing their book ‘Manufacturing Consent’ as a ‘classic’. (Rusbridger, ibid., p.210) But did any of this fundamentally change his journalism?

We suspect that Adams, Robinson and Rusbridger largely continue to be ‘seduced by the trappings of authority’, swayed by the ‘uncritical acceptance of the [authority’s] definition of the situation’, as Milgram observed. Ultimately, we need to tweak Upton Sinclair’s vision - it is not that hard for people to understand truths that threaten their salary. But it is hard to act on that understanding.

Because, as genuine, formerly ‘mainstream’ rebels like Peter Oborne, Richard Sanders and Jonathan Cook have discovered, the price is high: literally overnight, the phone stops ringing, emails are no longer answered, article submissions are rejected and ‘mainstream’ ‘respectability’ vanishes. On the other hand, the rewards of their kind of integrity and courage, though subtle, are very real and, in fact, worth it.
https://t.co/LeZgyeSxhd

[Jo Kaur @SikhFeminist]

The white woman who caused this little boy to be killed in the most vicious, terrifying, and painful way lied that he whistled at her. She admitted to the lie before she died. But she got away with it, her entire life. She helped kill a child.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I'm always astonished how people watch the liberal center in Europe adopt one dystopian policy after another and their non-ironical reaction is "god forbid the wrong team takes over and applies these policies."

They genuinely don't understand how absurd that position is.

Those same people would watch a law being passed to kill half the population and be like "it's fine but let's just make sure the wrong people don't get to decide which half."