AN INCONVENIENT STUDY: THE PUSHBACK
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 25, 2025
Del confronts legal pushback from Henry Ford Medical over the upcoming film “An Inconvenient Study,” which highlights what we believe is a significant study showing health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Watch to see the new trailer, highlighting hidden camera footage from the study’s lead author.
Hamas rejects PA president’s alignment with Zionist narrative in UN speech
Palestinian Information Center – September 26, 2025
DOHA – The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, responded Thursday to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, affirming that Palestinian resistance is a “national and moral responsibility, deriving its legitimacy from our steadfast Palestinian people and their natural right to resist occupation, as recognized by international laws and conventions.”
Hamas categorically rejected what it described as Abbas’s “alignment with the false Zionist narrative,” asserting that accusing the resistance of targeting civilians is an attempt to distort its image.
The Movement underlined that “all attempts to impose guardianship over our people and their will are doomed to fail,” adding that Abbas’s declaration that Hamas will have no role in governance constitutes “an infringement on the inherent right of our Palestinian people to determine their own destiny and choose their leadership, and an unacceptable submission to external agendas and projects.”
Hamas emphasized that “the weapons of resistance are untouchable as long as the occupation remains entrenched on our land.”
It condemned Abbas’s call to surrender arms, especially “in light of the genocidal war being waged against our people in Gaza, and the brutal crimes and savage assaults committed by armed settlers and the occupation army against unarmed civilians in the occupied West Bank.”
Hamas reiterated that the only path to safeguarding the national cause and confronting the occupation’s plans to “exterminate and displace our people in Gaza, annex the West Bank, and Judaize Jerusalem and al-Aqsa,” lies in “national unity and consensus around a comprehensive resistance program to confront the criminal Zionist occupation, until our people’s aspirations for liberation, return, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital are fulfilled.”
The statement concluded by affirming that “our steadfast people are the source of legitimacy, and the weapons of resistance are a red line that cannot be compromised.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli occupation forces, backed by the United States and Western countries, have been waging a devastating war in Gaza, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of approximately 233,000 Palestinians to date. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, 442 Palestinians, including 147 children, have died from starvation.
White House backs plan for Tony Blair to lead interim Gaza authority
Al Mayadeen | September 26, 2025
The White House is reportedly supporting a proposal that would place former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the helm of a temporary administration to govern the Gaza Strip, according to reports in Haaretz and The Times of Israel, which completely sidelines the demands and stances of the Palestinian people.
The plan envisions the creation of the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would act as Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for up to five years. Blair would lead a 25-member secretariat and chair a seven-person board overseeing an executive body responsible for managing the territory.
Initially based in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, GITA would later move into Gaza, accompanied by a UN-endorsed multinational force largely drawn from Arab states. The proposal is modeled on transitional administrations that previously oversaw Kosovo and Timor-Leste.
The White House argues the initiative offers a middle ground between US President Donald Trump’s earlier proposal for the US and the Israeli regime to directly control Gaza and a UN-backed plan endorsed by over 140 states calling for a one-year technocratic administration under the New York declaration.
Divisions over Blair’s role
Blair’s potential appointment is controversial, for while he enjoys credibility among several Gulf leaders, many Palestinians view him with deep mistrust due to his support for the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his record as Middle East envoy from 2007 to 2015. Western diplomats noted it was not guaranteed that Blair would take on the role and suggested the administration could last only two years.
The proposal’s lack of a clear timeline for transferring authority to the Palestinian Authority (PA) may complicate its acceptance by Palestinians and Arab leaders. Critics fear the plan could amount to another form of foreign-imposed governance, albeit under an international framework rather than the Israeli occupation.
Details of the plan surfaced after Trump met in New York with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump described the discussions as “successful”, adding that “we’re close to getting some kind of deal done.”
Arab states have stressed that any international involvement must be tied to a credible timeline for Palestinian statehood. Without such assurances, some argue the Blair-led body risks being perceived as an extended foreign trusteeship.
Palestinian response
Addressing the UN General Assembly, PA President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed that Gaza remains “an integral part of the state of Palestine” and said the PA was ready to assume full responsibility for governance and security. He rejected any role for Hamas in postwar administration, echoing US and Israeli conditions after Washington revoked his visa ahead of the 80th UN session, which forced him to deliver his speech via video.
Meanwhile, Trump told reporters at the White House that he would not support the Israeli occupation’s “annexation” of the West Bank. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope. I won’t allow it. It’s not going to happen,” he said.
Arab and Muslim forces in Gaza?
Washington is pushing for Arab and Muslim states to commit troops to Gaza as part of a so-called peacekeeping force that would enable an Israeli withdrawal. The US is also seeking financial pledges from these countries for reconstruction and to support Gaza’s transitional administration.
On Monday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced that his country was prepared to send soldiers as part of such a mission.
The initiative comes as negotiations to end the war and secure a prisoner exchange remain stalled. On the ground, “Israel” has launched a large-scale offensive, deploying three armored and infantry divisions into Gaza City, in hopes of forcibly displacing the city’s residents.
Meanwhile, at UN headquarters in New York, a conference on the “two-state solution” concluded with France and several European countries recognizing the State of Palestine. The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli assault since October 7.
An Israeli plan relayed to Washington?
A US official told Axios that “tomorrow’s meeting could be fairly significant,” stressing that the Trump administration wants “regional buy-in and support to make it successful.” An Arab official added that Trump is seeking “feedback and support for the US plan to end the war and then push it forward.”
Officials insisted the proposal would be a US initiative rather than an Israeli plan relayed through Washington. However, Israeli officials acknowledged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware of its outlines.
One Israeli official admitted that “there will be bitter pills we’ll have to swallow,” particularly regarding any potential role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
How pro-Israel money captured Starmer’s Labour
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | September 26, 2025
The UK Labour Party has been rocked by yet another scandal and is facing scrutiny over revelations that its leadership has been captured by a network of unelected funders and lobbyists with deep ties to Israel and Zionist organisations.
At the centre of the controversy is Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s powerful chief of staff, and his long-time association with billionaire businessman Trevor Chinn. Documents and leaks show that between 2017 and 2020, McSweeney oversaw Labour Together, a factional project that secretly accepted more than £730,000 (around $930,000) in undeclared donations, allegedly in breach of electoral law.
Much of this money is said to have come from Chinn, a figure whose involvement in Labour politics has for decades been bound up with the defence of Israel and the advancement of Zionist networks inside the party.
Chinn is no ordinary donor. A director of Labour Together until 2024, he has bankrolled both Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) throughout his career. In early 2025, he was awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour by President Isaac Herzog for his services to the apartheid state. Chinn’s commitment to Israel has been described as one of his “animating concerns” over three decades of political donations.
An investigation by Jody McIntyre, who stood as a candidate for the Workers Party in the last general election, shows how deeply enmeshed Chinn became with McSweeney’s project. McSweeney reportedly concealed donations “to protect Trevor” from scrutiny, according to McIntyre’s investigation. Labour Together, however, later dismissed the failure to declare the funds as an “administrative error,” a line advised by solicitor Gerald Shamash, another Labour figure with a record of blocking debates on sanctions against Israel.
Chinn’s influence was not limited to donations. According to minutes of a 2020 meeting revealed by Electronic Intifada, Chinn and five other lobbyists set up a “regular channel of communication” with Labour MP Steve Reed, a close ally of McSweeney and vocal supporter of LFI. The leaked record illustrates the extent to which pro-Israel lobbyists were embedded in Labour’s factional leadership project.
McSweeney’s own ties to Zionism go back further than his dealings with Chinn. In his youth, he spent time living on Sarid, a Zionist settlement built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Ikhneifis. There, he is said to have become closely acquainted with Hashomer Hatza’ir, a Zionist movement that played a central role in Israel’s settler-colonial project.
McIntyre’s research and internal documents allege that McSweeney campaigned for Steve Reed—who is known to have received funding from LFI for travel to occupied Palestine—and later worked closely with Margaret Hodge, a self-declared Zionist. Some sources also suggest McSweeney oversaw Liz Kendall’s 2015 leadership run, during which she made public statements against boycotts and sanctions of Israel—though the precise nature and funding of these campaigns remain under investigation.
By 2017, McSweeney was director of Labour Together, where Chinn sat on the board. Internal documents revealed that the group’s work included secret projects to undermine Jeremy Corbyn by inflaming the anti-Semitism crisis, planting hostile media stories, and fracturing the party’s left wing.
McSweeney, according to Double Down News, even devised a covert strategy dubbed Operation Red Shield, aimed at “burning down” Corbyn’s Labour in order to capture the party for a pro-business, pro-Israel faction.
The secret funding allowed McSweeney to commission hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of polling into the Labour membership. This research shaped Starmer’s leadership campaign, presenting him as a “unity” candidate who pledged to uphold policies such as public ownership and a Green New Deal.
However, once elected, Starmer rapidly U-turned on those commitments, dropping all ten of his leadership pledges. The sequence of events suggests that Starmer’s campaign positions were adopted to secure victory rather than to be implemented in government.
Starmer’s subsequent record confirmed that pattern of deception. Within months of becoming leader, he ditched all ten of his leadership pledges and moved Labour sharply to the right. On Palestine, Starmer has repeatedly echoed Israeli government narratives, refusing to condemn the genocide while expelling Labour members who criticised Israel.
While Trevor Chinn is central to this latest scandal, he is not the only pro-Israel donor bankrolling Labour. Since Starmer’s election, the party has increasingly relied on wealthy businessmen with strong ties to Zionist organisations.
One of these is Gary Lubner, the South African-born former CEO of Autoglass, who has donated more than £5 million ($6.3 million) to Labour. Lubner’s family fortune was built during apartheid South Africa, when his father and uncle were accused of helping to bust international sanctions.
Today, Lubner is a major supporter of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, a fundraising arm for Israeli causes. His son Jack is active in the Jewish Labour Movement and other pro-Israel networks.
Lubner’s uncle Bertie was a major donor to Ben-Gurion University, an institution identified by human rights groups as complicit in Israel’s apartheid system. Under Starmer’s leadership, Labour has drawn heavily on donations from pro-Israel businessmen such as Lubner, underlining the party’s financial dependence on figures with strong political and financial ties to Israel.
The cumulative effect of these revelations is stark: Labour under Starmer has been captured by a narrow, unrepresentative network of pro-Israel donors and lobbyists. Their influence was decisive in undermining Corbyn’s leadership, installing Starmer, and silencing members who demanded a just policy on Palestine.
As Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the Labour government has aligned itself with Israeli war crimes—refusing to halt arms sales, authorising surveillance flights over Gaza and granting Israel political cover on the international stage.
Labour’s latest scandal is not simply about undeclared donations. It speaks to the hollowing out of democracy inside Labour and its subordination to interests directly tied to the Israeli state. Decisions in Labour today are shaped less by members or voters than by figures like McSweeney, Chinn and Lubner—unelected operators whose record and affiliations show a consistent commitment to defending Israel, often over the views of party members.
Kallas insists US shouldn’t offload Ukraine on EU
RT | September 26, 2025
Brussels is not solely responsible for helping Ukraine end its conflict with Russia, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Politico on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
The comments follow US President Donald Trump’s recent apparent change of stance on Ukraine, after he suggested that Kiev, “with the support of the European Union,” was “in a position to fight and win.” Some observers saw the remark as Trump stepping back from the conflict after failing to make good on his pledge to end it quickly.
“He was the one who promised to stop the killing,” Kallas said. “So it can’t be on us.”
After taking office in January, Trump engaged in brokering peace negotiations while suspending military aid to Kiev and refraining from imposing sanctions on Russia.
He has insisted that the EU countries take greater responsibility for their own security, urging European NATO members to increase military spending to 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP).
Brussels’ top diplomat insisted that there is no NATO without the US, adding that America is one of the military bloc’s key members and any discussion of NATO’s role must reflect Washington’s responsibilities.
The EU has faced challenges in financing long-term support for Ukraine, limited by constraints in its budgetary mechanisms and resistance from some members.
Kallas, a long-time Russia hawk, put forward an ambitious plan in March to mobilize new military aid for Ukraine worth €40 billion via EU member states. Several countries, including France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, resisted the proposal, wary of the formidable commitments.
After weeks of negotiations, the package was scaled back to €5 billion for ammunition, underscoring both the limits of EU unity and the challenges Kallas faces in translating her hawkish stance into collective action.
Russia has repeatedly accused the EU of undermining the peace efforts around Ukraine and militarizing in preparation for any conflict with Moscow.
Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the EU and NATO have declared “an actual war” on Russia, accusing the West of orchestrating the Ukraine conflict.
Media’s psyop against climate scientists
By Vijay Jayaraj | American Thinker | September 23, 2025
A coordinated offensive unfolded with precision September 2 against five scientists questioning the popular media’s most sacred bogeyman — the hypothesis that human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide threaten to overheat the planet.
The scientists attacked had written a report published in July by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.”
Delivering virtually identical narratives, proclaiming that 85 “climate experts” had discredited the DoE report, were CBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and others.
Language in the news reporting was nearly indistinguishable, and the focus identical: a number (“85” or “dozens”), a designated group (“scientists” or “experts”) and a verdict (“flawed,” “lacks merit,” “full of errors”). This is not the natural variance of independent newsrooms pursuing a story. This is the result of a shared press release, a common source or a backroom agreement to push a common storyline.
It was a master class in singing the same tune that would make any propaganda ministry proud — a calibrated flash mob of climate-fear messaging in an explicitly partisan tone.
Fooling the Public
The first volley of the assault was a classic ad hominem attack. The authors of the DoE report, five of the world’s most distinguished and academically rigorous researchers of climate issues, were immediately branded as the “Trump Team.”
This is a deliberately dishonest tactic. The authors — doctors John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer — are not political operatives. They are scientists with decades of experience and hundreds of peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Koonin served as Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy under President Obama, a fact conveniently omitted from most of the media’s hit pieces. Drs. Christy and Spencer are world-renowned for developing the first global temperature dataset from satellites, for which they received NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
No mention that Ross McKitrick is a Canadian academic with no political ties. No mention that Judith Curry stepped away from academia partly because of the politicization of climate research and previously had been much sought after for her research into hurricane intensity.
Most critically, the authors themselves have stated that there was no oversight or compulsion from anyone in any government department during the creation of their report. They say they crafted the report independently, with no interference from Energy Secretary Chris Wright. But the media gloss over that. Instead, the scientists are derided as the “Trump team.”
In stark contrast to the vilified DoE authors, the 85 individuals who signed the critical letter were anointed as “climate experts” and “leading scientists.” Yet, the list of signers is padded with individuals whose specializations are, to put it generously, tangential to the core issues of climate science.
The strategy is clear: assemble a gaggle of academics, label them “climate experts” and use the sheer number to create an illusion of overwhelming scientific consensus against the DOE report.
Sell Lies, Instill Fear With a ‘Black Mirror’
Adding to the theater, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has announced a panel to review the DoE report. But here’s the twist: The panel is headed not by a climate scientist, but by a biologist. Out of the panel’s members, only a few have direct expertise in atmospheric science. Yet the announcement was trumpeted as if the nation’s top climate experts were mobilized.
Predicting catastrophe is a media business model. NPR warned of “irreversible” sea-level rise in 2023, ignoring tide gauge records that show no acceleration beyond historical norms. News outlets regularly report on “unprecedented” floods, yet data indicate no uptick in floods due to climate change.
If everybody believed climate impacts were manageable, the case for sweeping carbon taxes, bans on fossil fuels and subsidies for wind and solar energy would collapse. That’s why the DoE report — noting forecasting uncertainty, adaptation possibilities and economic trade-offs — is so threatening. It undermines a narrative of an “existential” threat or imminent collapse. So, the media did not debate the five scientists; they sought to destroy them and their report. Not with data, but with labels.
This is a psyops initiative like that depicted in the Netflix dystopian series “Black Mirror.” The media outlets are not mirrors reflecting reality; they are black screens projecting a manufactured one. They have become instruments of a political agenda, sacrificing journalistic integrity to enforce a specific viewpoint on climate change. They operate not as individual watchdogs but as a wolf pack. They decide what you should think and seek to broadcast it in unison until you do.
I’d encourage you to read the DoE report for yourself or at least countervailing opinions of it. Scrutinize the credentials of those who attack it. Ask the hard questions that the journalists refuse to. The black mirror can only hold power over you if you consent to stare into it. It is time to look away and see the world as it is, not as they tell you it is.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Moldovan opposition warns of election fraud
RT | September 25, 2025
Moldova’s pro-Western authorities will attempt to falsify the results of this weekend’s parliamentary election, including by ballot stuffing abroad, an opposition leader has claimed.
Irina Vlah of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP) urged citizens to participate in Sunday’s vote and claimed that fraud is the only way the governing Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) can secure victory.
“They will try to appropriate all the unused ballots. They are preparing ballot-stuffing abroad under the cover of the ‘diaspora,’” she told supporters on Thursday.
Recent polls show PAS, the pro-Western party led by President Maia Sandu, trailing narrowly behind BEP. According to various media reports, Sandu secured re-election in 2024 thanks largely to ballots cast abroad, a fact that fuels opposition suspicions ahead of Sunday’s vote.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the Moldovan authorities of a selective approach toward overseas voters. In a statement on Thursday, it noted that while 280 polling stations will be open in the US and Western Europe, with mail-in voting also permitted, only two stations will operate in Russia for its large Moldovan community, allowing just 10,000 people to cast ballots.
The ministry also dismissed what it described as the “spread of unfounded claims about Moscow’s interference” in Moldova’s internal affairs, pointing instead to the EU leaders openly supporting the country’s current leadership. In August, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled to Chisinau for Independence Day celebrations, as a show of support for the country’s EU path.
Sandu has accused Russia of waging a “hybrid war” and spending “hundreds of millions of euros” to sway Moldovan voters. Earlier this week, Moldovan police arrested 74 people on suspicion of plotting unrest, alleging a network of activists was working to amplify Russian influence.
Moscow has denied any involvement and warned on Tuesday that NATO members had already deployed troops in western Ukraine to prepare for an intervention in Moldova after the vote.
Moldova bans opposition party days before key vote
RT | September 26, 2025
Moldova’s Central Election Commission has banned an opposition party from taking part in this weekend’s parliamentary elections, local media reported Friday.
The government in Chisinau has a history of going after its political opponents under the banner of countering “Russian influence.”
A day earlier, a court backed the government’s request to suspend the Heart of Moldova party, which it accused of electoral manipulation. The targeted party’s president, Irina Vlah, has accused the government of using “lawfare” as part of a broader crackdown on political opponents.
The elimination hurts the ballot prospects of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc, a coalition of several parties that Vlah co-founded in a bid to remove the ruling Action and Solidarity party of President Maia Sandu from power.
The CEC cited the court, adding that under the ruling, all candidates designated by Heart of Moldova will be removed from the race. It gave the Patriotic Bloc 24 hours to adjust its lists accordingly.
Sandu, a staunch pro-EU politician who often claims her opponents are Russian agents backed by organized crime, has described the Sunday elections as a make-or-break moment for Moldova. Moscow has dismissed her claims that it was secretly funding challengers to her party’s parliamentary majority as “ridiculous.”
Last October, Sandu won a new term as president in what critics have described as a flawed election, in which the votes of Moldovans living in the European Union nations secured her victory.
Moscow accused Chisinau of denying thousands of Moldovan citizens living in Russia access to the ballot box by seriously restricting the number of polling stations.
Irina Vlah served as the governor of Gagauzia from 2015 to 2023 and as a member of the Moldovan parliament from 2005 to 2015. Her successor as governor of the ethnic Russian and Turkic region, Evgenia Gutsul, was sentenced to seven years in prison in August on money laundering charges she denies. Like Vlah, Gutsul has also been subjected to EU-backed international sanctions.
Minister Bowen says costs of inaction definitely higher even though we don’t know the cost of doing something
It’s a Pantomine from beginning to end — the fakery never ends
By Jo Nova | September 16, 2025
Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment has dropped on us yesterday like a mass-produced propaganda-bomb. Life and death depends upon “the science”, but the intense, dire and secret climate modeling was mysteriously delayed last month for no reason (except to get some spooky headlines), whereupon the Greens jumped up and down to get it released, and then patted themselves on the back saying Labor caved in. Yes, indeedy, the Government put out the report with perfect PR timing a few days before they plan to tell us how they are raising our emissions target from impossible to astronomical. If they released the “science” a month ago, people would have more time to pick apart the 274 pages of propaganda (or even read it).
Science is just a marketing tool for Big Government now, and the document is a fishing mission for catastrophe.
We know it’s not science because everything is 100% bad. It’s the purity that gives it away. In the real world, there are always trade-offs.
It’s all cost and no benefit
The document is a risk assessment which calculates the cost of inaction, but not the cost of action. Not surprisingly, the cost of inaction is always going to be “higher” (higher than nothing). It was apparently, exactly what the Minister wanted:
“One thing that is very clear from this climate assessment is that our whole country has a lot at stake,” Bowen said. “The cost of inaction will always outweigh the cost of action.” — The BBC
Nobody knows what the cost is, not the Minister of the Department of Better Weather and Energy. Though one guesstimate from a group called Net Zero Australia in 2023 tossed out numbers like $1.5 trillion by 2030 and $7-$9 trillion by 2050. That’s a lot of cost savings we need to make to make action make sense. Grown ups would like to discuss this, perhaps?
It’s all deaths and no lives saved
Heat waves will kill more people, but somehow warmer winters won’t reduce any deaths, even though moderate winter cold kills 6 times as many people as summer heat does.

Attributable fraction of deaths: Heat, cold and temperature variability together resulted in 42,414 deaths during the study period, accounting for about 6.0% of all deaths. Most of attributable deaths were due to cold (61.4%), and noticeably, contribution from temperature variability (28.0%) was greater than that from heat (10.6%). (Cheng et al)
Heatwave mortality will increase by 444% in Sydney if the world warms by 3°C the report tells us, with no mention of the word “air-conditioning”.
If reckless spending to stop-storms-in-2100 makes energy unaffordable, heatwave mortality will increase even if the world doesn’t warm at all. No one will be able to afford air-conditioning.
The only mention of “benefits” in the whole document is that a few areas might benefit from reduced frosts — not that our expert modelers can say which areas, or which seasons that will happen in.
Like advertising, “everyone” will be better off if they just buy this weather controlling widget.
The 72-page report – released days before the government announces its emissions reduction targets for 2035 – found that no Australian community will be immune from climate risks that will be “cascading, compounding and concurrent”. — The BBC
The 274 page blockbuster has a nifty 74 page overview for anyone who only has a day or two to devote to the combinations and variations of modeled imaginary catastrophe. There’s nothing there that we haven’t seen a million times before.
Digital ID UK: Starmer’s Expanding Surveillance State
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 26, 2025
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer came into office promising competence and calm after years of alleged political chaos.
What has followed is a government that treats civil liberties as disposable.
Under his watch, police have leaned on broad public order powers to detain people over “offensive” tweets.
Critics argue that what counts as “offensive” now changes depending on the political mood, which means ordinary citizens find themselves guessing at what might trigger a knock on the door.
This is happening while mass facial recognition cameras are being installed in public places.
The pattern is clear: expand surveillance, narrow dissent, and then assure the public it is all in the name of safety and order.
Against that backdrop, a digital ID system looks less like modernization and more like the missing piece in an expanding control grid.
Once every adult is forced to plug into a centralized identity wallet to work, rent, or access services, the state’s ability to monitor and sanction becomes unprecedented.
Starmer’s Labour government is dusting off one of its oldest obsessions: the dream of tagging every citizen like a parcel at the post office.
The latest revival comes in the form of a proposal to create mandatory digital ID cards, already nicknamed the “Brit Card,” for every working adult in the country.
The sales pitch sounds noble enough: crack down on illegal work, cut fraud, plug loopholes. The real effect would be to make ordinary life a permanent identity check.
Officials want job applications, rental agreements, and other basic transactions to be filtered through a government database, accessed through an app.
This, the people are told, will finally stop the shadow economy of dodgy employers. If that logic sounds familiar, it is because it is the same rationale Labour used for its last ID card scheme in the 2000s, a project that ended up in the political landfill in 2010 after enough voters realized what was happening.
“Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure,” Starmer said in his announcement. “And it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.”
Campaigners and data rights groups are not buying the rebrand.
For Liberty’s Gracie Bradley cut straight to the point: the new version “is likely to be even more intrusive, insecure and discriminatory” than the one the country already threw out a decade ago.
That does not bode well for a government trying to convince citizens this time will be different.
Rebecca Vincent of Big Brother Watch spelled out where this all leads: “While Downing Street is scrambling to be seen as doing something about illegal immigration, we are sleepwalking into a dystopian nightmare where the entire population will be forced through myriad digital checkpoints to go about our everyday lives.”
Her warning does not require much imagination. Britain has a spotty track record on protecting sensitive data.
A poll commissioned by Big Brother Watch found that nearly two-thirds of the public already think the government cannot be trusted to protect their data. That is before any giant centralized ID system is rolled out.
Privacy advocates see this as a recipe for disaster, arguing that hackers and snooping officials alike will treat the system as a buffet of personal information.
Former Cabinet Minister David Davis, one of the longest-serving critics of ID schemes, described the risks as existential. “The systems involved are profoundly dangerous to the privacy and fundamental freedoms of the British people,” he said, noting the government has not explained how or if it would compensate citizens after the inevitable breach.
Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, issued a blunt forecast of where the “Brit Card” could lead.
She warned it could extend across public services, “creating a domestic mass surveillance infrastructure that will likely sprawl from citizenship to benefits, tax, health, possibly even internet data and more.”
In other words, once the pipes are laid, the water does not stop at employment checks.
Labour, of course, has been here before. The last time it rolled out ID cards, in 2009, the experiment barely survived a year before being junked by the incoming Conservative-led coalition as an “erosion of civil liberties.”
Labour is leaning heavily on polling that allegedly suggests up to 80 percent of the public backs digital right-to-work credentials.
Starmer himself recently adopted that framing. Earlier this month, he claimed digital IDs could “play an important part” in tackling black market employment.
He is pushing the case again at the Global Progress Action Summit in London, noting that “we all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago.”
What complicates the sales pitch is Labour’s own history of skepticism. Both Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper previously raised concerns about ID systems and their potential for government overreach.
That past caution has not stopped the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, from becoming one of the loudest champions of the plan. She recently declared the system “essential” for enforcing migration and employment laws.
Labour-aligned think tanks are also providing cover. Labour Together released a report describing digital ID as a “new piece of civic infrastructure,” with the potential to become a routine part of life.
***
Tony Blair has reemerged as a central architect of Britain’s dystopian digital future.
Through his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the former Prime Minister is pushing the nationwide digital ID system, pitching it as the backbone of a tech-enabled state.
With Keir Starmer now in office, Blair’s vision is no longer an abstract policy paper. It is edging into reality with a new host.
For Blair, digital ID is not about convenience. It is about rewriting how government functions and can be what he calls a “weapon against populism.”
He has argued that a leaner, cheaper, more automated state is possible if citizens are willing to give up parts of their privacy. “My view is that people are actually prepared to trade quite a lot,” he once said, suggesting that resistance will dissolve once faster services are dangled in front of the public.
This project is not limited to streamlining bureaucracy. His version of efficiency is a frictionless state that also monitors, verifies, and restricts in ways that would have been inconceivable before the digital era.
With Starmer’s government now developing a digital ID wallet and considering a national rollout, Blair’s agenda is closer to official policy than ever. Marketed as modernization, the plan points toward a permanent restructuring of the relationship between citizen and state, locking personal identity into a centralized system that future governments will be able to expand at will.

