Gary Lefley

Retired Headteacher. #Family #class #peace #socialism #BLM #Spurs

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

128 years ago US troops invaded Puerto Rico - and they're still there. The island's such a vital military asset that the US has deployed huge resources in suppressing any resistance to colonial rule.

@LabourOutlook has reviewed my book telling the story:
https://t.co/BRu0rZZE5l

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

Press Freedom Threatened as U.S. Government Seizes Max Blumenthal's Devices
https://t.co/rBbI01JeCf

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

I make no apology for having "no stomach" to send conscripted young people to the killing fields of Ukraine or anywhere else.

The real question is whether any European politician has the stomach for the hard yards of diplomacy that can end wars and prevent future ones.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Every pound that is spent on “defence” is a pound not spent on social housing, education or our NHS.

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

The plot thickens: Healey is reported to support Carney's plan for a bank for arms spending.

Opposed by Reeves, this is debt-funding a military build up without it being "on the books" of specific countries.

It's similar to the "collateralized debt" that led to the 2008 crash.

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

Germany and Britain are evacuating their diplomats from Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The US has advised its citizens to leave the Middle East region. A lot of indications that massive escalations are being prepared.

[Richard @ricwe123]

All the time we hear western mainstream media telling us how evil Putin is.
But then every time I see him talk, he's more learned, sensible, straightforward, and honest than any western politician.

"After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians found themselves abroad in one night. And that was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century"

-Russian President Vladimir Putin

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

An alarming admission...

"For us, Ukraine is already part of the defence of NATO territory," says Cooper.

We were previously told any troops sent to Ukraine would be after a peace agreement to act as "peacekeepers".

Some of us never believed that. Now we know we were right.

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

The vast majority of Ukrainians want immediate talks. What do European leaders do? They boycott diplomacy, finance Zelensky's corrupt hold on state power rather than calling for elections, send weapons, and push for the deportation of Ukrainians to feed their proxy war.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

US soldiers force Vietnamese woman to become "human minesweepers", walking through minefields, Vietnam War (1966).

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

The European satellite states continue to make themselves complicit in US wars

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

Censorship goes to new levels in the EU

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

The war propaganda in NATO countries is becoming increasingly absurd. Why? Nobody can push back without being smeared. Truth is long gone, and everything is assessed by the extent it support NATO narratives. So lets all pretend that Putin has kidnapped Lukasheko...

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

On the day Starmer resigned, he approved strikes on Russia's Voronezh region with Storm Shadows. Will they cry "unprovoked" when Russia retaliates against Britain?

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

Why would a "defensive" alliance have any role in attacking a country outside Europe?

Oops, Hegseth gives the game away. The US sees NATO as a vehicle for its wars (eg Afghanistan, Libya) and considers it shameful some members didn't allow their bases to be used to bomb Iran.

[Steve Howell @QuaeroBooks]

Healey is manufacturing fear to fuel ambition.

He knows the five main European NATO members already spend nearly twice as much as Russia on defence.

Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Poland (£366bn) outspend Russia (£190bn) even as it pumps vast resources into the Ukraine war.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The wonderful Miriam Margolyes, Michael Rosen and Alexei Sayle sat down with @DoubleDownNews to talk about what being Jewish means to them.

Enjoy - and plse share.
https://t.co/JZtBwG757c

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

NATO's fight to the last Ukrainian...
Political leaders in NATO countries are so "pro-Ukrainian" that they toppled the democratically elected government in Kiev in 2014 without majority support in Ukraine; they supported purging Ukraine's political system, media, and society of "pro-Russian" elements; they backed the killing of thousands of Ukrainians in Donbas from 2014 onward who did not recognise the legitimacy of the new authorities; they pressured Zelensky to reverse the peace platform that 73% of Ukrainians voted for in 2019 because NATO viewed peace as "capitulation"; they torpedoed the peace negotiations in Istanbul in 2022 after Russia invaded; they boycotted diplomacy and negotiations for more than four years and declared that "weapons are the path to peace," even as a large majority of Ukrainians wanted immediate peace talks; they maintained public support in the West for fuelling the war by ensuring that the brutal "recruitment" of Ukrainian men to the front lines and other uncomfortable realities were not debated in the media; and now, leaders in NATO countries are pressuring the authorities in Ukraine to lower the conscription age, while the EU will also "help" Ukraine by sending Ukrainian refugees back home to die in NATO's proxy war.

[Steve Howell @FromSteveHowell]

Palantir and the chilling views of its founder have been the focus of the AI debate. But this shouldn't fuel the idea that Anthropic is an ethical alternative. Both companies are part of the US military-industrial complex and closely tied to Israel.

See: https://t.co/hDHxwE67qB