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How the Covid Inquiry Protected the Establishment

By Trish Dennis | Brownstone Institute | November 28, 2025

After four years, hundreds of witnesses, and nearly £200 million in costs, the UK Covid Inquiry has reached the one conclusion many expected: a carefully footnoted act of self-exoneration. It assiduously avoids asking the only question that truly matters: were lockdowns ever justified, did they even work, and at what overall cost to society?

The Inquiry outlines failure in the abstract but never in the human. It catalogues errors, weak decision-making structures, muddled communications, and damaged trust, but only permits examination of those failings that do not disturb the central orthodoxy.

It repeats the familiar refrain of “Too little, too late,” yet anyone paying attention knows the opposite was true. It was too much, too soon, and with no concern for the collateral damage. The government liked to speak of an “abundance of caution,” but no such caution was exercised to prevent catastrophic societal harm. There was no attempt to undertake even a basic assessment of proportionality or foreseeable impact.

Even those who approached the Inquiry with modest expectations have been startled by how far it fell below them. As former Leader of the UK House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg recently observed, “I never had very high hopes for the Covid Inquiry… but I didn’t think it would be this bad.” Nearly £192 million has already been spent, largely enriching lawyers and consultants, to produce 17 recommendations that amount, in his words, to “statements of the obvious or utter banality.”

Two of those recommendations relate to Northern Ireland: one proposing the appointment of a Chief Medical Officer, the other an amendment to the ministerial code to “ensure confidentiality.” Neither insight required hundreds of witnesses or years of hearings. Another recommendation, that devolved administrations should have a seat at COBRA, reveals, he argues, “a naiveté of the judiciary that doesn’t understand how this country is governed.”

Rees-Mogg’s wider criticism goes to the heart of the Inquiry’s failures, as it confuses activity with accountability. Its hundreds of pages record bureaucratic process while ignoring substance. The same modeling errors that drove early panic are recycled without reflection; the Swedish experience is dismissed, and the Great Barrington Declaration receives a single passing mention, as if it were an eccentric sideshow. The report’s underlying message never wavers: lockdowns were right, dissent was wrong, and next time the government should act faster and with fewer restraints.

He also highlights its constitutional incoherence. It laments the lack of “democratic oversight,” yet condemns political hesitation as weakness. It complains that ministers acted too slowly, while elsewhere chastising them for bowing to public pressure. The result, he says, is “schizophrenic in its approach to accountability.” Behind the legal polish lies an authoritarian instinct, the belief that bureaucrats and scientists know best, and that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted with their own judgment.

The conclusions could have been drafted before the first witness entered the room:

  • Lockdowns were necessary.
  • Modelling was solid.
  • Critics misunderstood.
  • The establishment acted wisely.

It is the kind of verdict that only the British establishment could deliver about the British establishment.

The Inquiry treats the question of whether lockdowns worked as if the very question were indecent. It leans heavily on modeling to claim that thousands of deaths could have been avoided with earlier restrictions, modeling that is now widely recognised as inflated, brittle, and detached from real-world outcomes. It repeats that easing restrictions happened “despite high risk,” yet fails to note that infection curves were already bending before the first lockdown began.

Here Baroness Hallett makes her headline claim that “23,000 lives could have been saved” if lockdowns had been imposed earlier. That number does not come from a broad evidence base, but from a single modelling paper written by the same scientist who, days later, broke lockdown to visit his mistress because he did not believe his own advice or modeling figures. Treating Neil Ferguson’s paper as gospel truth is not fact-finding. It is narrative protection.

Even Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s most influential adviser in early 2020, has accused the Inquiry of constructing what he calls a “fake history.” In a detailed post on X, he claimed it suppressed key evidence, ignored junior staff who were present at pivotal meetings, and omitted internal discussions about a proposed “chickenpox-party” infection strategy. He argued that the Inquiry avoided witnesses whose evidence would contradict its preferred story, and he dismissed the “23,000 lives” figure as politically spun rather than empirically credible. Whatever one thinks of Cummings, these are serious allegations from the heart of government, and the Inquiry shows little interest in addressing them.

It quietly concedes that surveillance was limited, urgency lacking, and spread poorly understood. These admissions undermine the very certainty with which it endorses lockdowns. Yet instead of re-examining its assumptions, the Inquiry sidesteps them. To avoid reconsidering lockdowns is to avoid the very heart of the matter, and that is exactly what it does.

During 2020 and 2021, fear was deployed and amplified to secure compliance. Masks were maintained “as a reminder.” Official documents advised that face coverings could serve not only as source control but as a “visible signal” and “reminder of COVID-19 risks,” a behavioural cue of constant danger.

The harms of lockdown are too numerous for a single list, but they include:

  • an explosion in mental health and anxiety disorders, especially in children and young adults
  • a surge in cancers, heart disease, and deaths of despair
  • developmental regressions in children
  • the collapse of small businesses and family livelihoods
  • profound social atomisation and damage to relationships
  • the erosion of trust in public institutions

The Inquiry brushes over these truths. Its recommendations focus on “impact assessments for vulnerable groups” and “clearer communication of rules,” bureaucratic language utterly inadequate to address the scale of the damage.

It also avoids the economic reckoning. Pandemic policy added 20 percent of GDP to the national debt in just two years, a cost already passed to children not yet old enough to read. That debt will impoverish their lives and shorten life expectancy, since wealth and longevity are closely linked.

Whenever Sweden is mentioned, a predictable chorus appears to explain away its success: better healthcare, smaller households, lower population density. Yet it is also true that Sweden resisted panic, trusted its citizens, kept schools open, and achieved outcomes better than or comparable to ours. The Inquiry refers vaguely to “international differences” but avoids the one comparison that most threatens its narrative. If Sweden shows that a lighter-touch approach could work, the entire moral architecture of Britain’s pandemic response collapses, and that is a question the Inquiry dares not ask.

The establishment will never conclude that the establishment failed, so the Inquiry performs a delicate dance:

  • Coordination was poor, but no one is responsible.
  • Communications were confusing, but the policies were sound.
  • Governance was weak, but the decisions were right.
  • Inequalities worsened, but that tells us nothing about strategy.

It acknowledges everything except the possibility that the strategy itself was wrong. Its logic is circular: lockdowns worked because the Inquiry says they worked; modeling was reliable because those who relied on it insist it was; fear was justified because it was used; Sweden must be dismissed because it challenges the story.

At times, reading the report feels like wandering into the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, where words mean whatever authority decides they mean. Evidence becomes “established” because the establishment declares it so.

A serious, intellectually honest Inquiry would have asked:

  • Did lockdowns save more lives than they harmed?
  • Why was worst-case modeling treated as fact?
  • Why were dissenting voices sidelined?
  • How did fear become a tool of governance?
  • Why did children bear so much of the cost?
  • Why was Sweden’s success dismissed?
  • How will future generations bear the debt?
  • How can trust in institutions be rebuilt?

Instead, the Inquiry offers administrative tweaks, clearer rules, broader committees, and better coordination that studiously avoid the moral and scientific questions. An Inquiry that evades its central task is not an inquiry at all, but an act of institutional self-preservation.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. Institutions rarely indict themselves. But the cost of this evasion will be paid for decades, not by those who designed the strategy, but by those who must live with its consequences: higher debt, diminished trust, educational loss, social fracture, and a political culture that has learned all the wrong lessons.

The Covid Inquiry calls itself a search for truth, but the British establishment will never allow something as inconvenient as truth to interfere with its instinct for self-preservation.

Trish Dennis is a lawyer, writer, and mother of five based in Northern Ireland. Her work explores how lockdowns, institutional failures, and social divides during Covid reshaped her worldview, faith, and understanding of freedom. On her Substack, Trish writes to record the real costs of pandemic policies, honour the courage of those who spoke out, and search for meaning in a changed world. You can find her at trishdennis.substack.com.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

Global movement to Gaza to stage pro-Palestine protests in 13 cities

Al Mayadeen | November 28, 2025

The Global Movement to Gaza announced coordinated protests across 13 major cities on November 29 to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The rallies aim to denounce Western support for “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza, now entering its third year.

Protests will take place in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Oslo, Vienna, Warsaw, Luxembourg, Cape Town, Washington, DC, Mexico City, and São Paulo.

Organizers say the coordinated actions are designed to expose the complicity of European and North American governments in “Israel’s” war on Gaza. The movement accuses these states of enabling the genocide through arms exports, political backing, and economic ties.

In a statement, the movement issued a list of demands for European Union and national leaders:

  • Immediate suspension of the EU-“Israel” Association Agreement;
  • An arms embargo and an end to military cooperation with “Israel”;
  • Targeted sanctions on “Israeli” officials responsible for war crimes and genocide;
  • A halt to all academic, cultural, and sporting institutional ties;
  • Alignment of EU foreign policy with international human rights and humanitarian law.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Saudi Arabia fund Israel’s grip over Lebanon?

By Mohamad Hasan Sweidan | The Cradle | Novmber 27, 2025

In the wake of Israel’s November 2024 apparent ceasefire with Lebanon, Tel Aviv has moved to reshape the post-war order in its favor. Treating Lebanon as a weakened and fragmented state, Israel seeks to impose a long-term, unilateral security and economic regime in the south, bolstered by US backing.

Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia has thrust itself into the reconstruction process as the main Arab financier. But the kingdom risks becoming a junior partner in an Israeli-American project that sidelines it from real decision-making. The question facing Riyadh is clear: Will it bankroll its own marginalization?

Tel Aviv’s vision: Disarmament, deterrence, domination

Israel’s strategy for Lebanon extends far beyond the oft-repeated demand to disarm Hezbollah. It envisions a sweeping transformation of Lebanon into a demilitarized satellite state governed under a US-Israeli security framework. Nowhere is this clearer than in Tel Aviv’s insistence on remaining inside Lebanese territory until Hezbollah is stripped of its deterrent capabilities, not just south of the Litani River, but across the country.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and former Northern Command chief Uri Gordin have both publicly outlined this goal. Gordin even suggested establishing a permanent buffer zone inside Lebanon to serve as a “bargaining chip” for future negotiations, while Katz confirmed that Israeli forces would remain indefinitely in the south. Tel Aviv no longer seeks temporary deterrence, favoring permanent subordination.

Katz, for his part, has stated “Hezbollah is playing with fire,” and called on Beirut to “fulfill its obligations to disarm the party and remove it from southern Lebanon.”

Most recently, while addressing the Knesset, he warned that “We will not allow any threats against the inhabitants of the north, and maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify.”

“If Hezbollah does not give up its weapons by the year’s end, we will work forcefully again in Lebanon,” Katz reiterated. “We will disarm them.”

According to this blueprint, Lebanon is not considered a sovereign neighbor, but a security appendage to Israel’s northern frontier. State institutions are expected to serve as administrative fronts for a de facto Israeli-American command center. International aid, including funding from Arab states of the Persian Gulf, is being weaponized to enforce this new security-economic order.

From the perspective of Israel, the goals in Lebanon are not limited to the disarmament of Hezbollah. They go beyond that toward a deeper project of transforming Lebanon – especially the south – into a kind of security-economic colony.

This includes consolidating a long-term military presence, imposing new border arrangements, and paving the way for settlement projects or institutionalized buffer zones, as evidenced by current maps showing the presence of Israeli forces at several points inside Lebanese territory.

Saudi Arabia’s options: Pressure or partnership

Enter Riyadh. The Saudi Foreign Ministry has repeatedly called for Lebanese arms to be confined to the state and endorsed the implementation of the 1989 Taif Agreement.

In September,  Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, stressed that:

“Saudi Arabia stands with Lebanon, supports everything that strengthens its security and stability, and welcomes the efforts of the Lebanese state to implement the Taif Agreement (1989), affirm its sovereignty, and place weapons in the hands of the state and its legitimate institutions.”

The Saudi envoy to Lebanon, Yazid bin Farhan, reiterated Riyadh’s position: the exclusive right to possess arms must lie with the Lebanese state. In private information, during a meeting between Bin Farhan and Sunni leaders in Lebanon, the diplomat stressed that pressure must be put on disarming the party, even if that requires reaching a civil war.

On the surface, Saudi and Israeli objectives appear aligned. Tel Aviv applies military pressure. Riyadh applies economic and political pressure. Both demand the end of Hezbollah’s armed presence. But while Israel’s aim is absolute control over Lebanon’s security order, Saudi Arabia still seeks a political system that reflects its influence. In this, Tel Aviv’s ambitions collide with Riyadh’s.

However, Israel has no intention of sharing influence with any Arab state – nor even Turkiye. Its model is exclusionary. It views Riyadh not as a partner, but as a bankrolling mechanism to finance the dismantling of Lebanon’s axis of resistance under Israeli terms. As former deputy director of the National Security Council, Eran Lerman put it, Saudi Arabia is merely a pressure tool to bring Lebanon to heel.

Thus, the crux of the matter is this: Riyadh may envision itself as a key stakeholder in post-war Lebanon, but Israel sees it as a disposable auxiliary.

The 17 May redux: Recolonizing south Lebanon

To grasp the depth of Israel’s project, one need only look to its precedents. In 1983, Israel, alongside the US and under Syrian oversight, tried to enshrine a similar model via the 17 May Agreement. That deal called for an end to hostilities, gradual Israeli withdrawal, a “security zone” in the south, and joint military arrangements. In practice, it turned Lebanon into a protectorate tasked with safeguarding Israeli security interests.

Today, after the 2024 war, Tel Aviv is resurrecting that same formula. Israeli forces have remained stationed at multiple points inside Lebanon despite the ceasefire terms mandating full withdrawal. Airspace violations and near-daily raids persist under the pretext of preventing Hezbollah from “repositioning.” Think tanks in Tel Aviv, alongside joint French-US proposals, are now pushing phased disarmament: first the south, then the Bekaa, then the Syrian border, ultimately ending all resistance capabilities.

International support is being dangled as a carrot. Aid from the US, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others is contingent on Lebanon executing a disarmament plan under International Monetary Fund (IMF) oversight and within a strict timeline. This is the economic arm of the Israeli security project.

More dangerously, Israeli studies suggest that reconstruction of southern villages should be explicitly tied to the removal of resistance forces, while preserving “full freedom of action” for the Israeli army in Lebanese air and land space.

Can Riyadh afford Tel Aviv’s trap?

In parallel with this vision, western analyses close to decision-making circles in Washington and Riyadh show that Saudi Arabia itself sees Lebanon as a pivotal arena in its conflict with Iran. Any serious return to the Lebanese file is linked to the weakening of Hezbollah’s influence.

But the key divergence between the Saudi and Israeli approaches lies in a critical question: Who ultimately holds the keys to decision-making in Lebanon?

Riyadh aims to use its financial and political capital to recalibrate the Lebanese political order in its favor, minimizing Iranian sway while reinforcing its own influence. But Israel’s plan is more radical: to redefine Lebanese sovereignty altogether, placing it under perpetual Israeli security oversight.

In this model, Saudi Arabia – and any other Arab state – is reduced to the role of financier, tasked with implementing terms written in Tel Aviv and Washington rather than contributing an independent Arab vision for the region.

From this angle, Tel Aviv’s persistent invocation of the “military option” in Lebanon works against Gulf interests. It positions Riyadh and its allies as the paymasters for reconstruction, forced to foot the bill for a post-war settlement they had no role in shaping.

If Saudi Arabia concedes to this logic – and fails to leverage its influence in Washington, in Arab diplomatic circles, and in donor mechanisms – it risks forfeiting Lebanon to a joint Israeli-American order.

That order would mirror the defunct 17 May Agreement, only more deeply entrenched. Lebanon would not only be demilitarized. It would become a living model of “security-economic conjugation,” designed to recalibrate regional influence away from the Arab world and toward an Israeli-dominated Levant.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The GDP myth: What it really shows, and what it doesn’t

The most-often cited metric of economic success more often than not simply tells us what we want to hear – or what the West wants us to hear

By Henry Johnston | RT | November 28, 2025

A few weeks after the Russia-Ukraine war began, Belgian economist Paul De Grauwe penned an article for the website of the London School of Economics with the title ‘Russia cannot win the war’. No military specialist, De Grauwe based his conclusion on some simple math: Russia’s GDP was roughly equivalent to the combined output of Belgium and the Netherlands. Therefore, he claimed, Russia is an “economic dwarf in Europe.” Its military operation was thus doomed.

De Grauwe was hardly alone in dismissing Russia on similar grounds. Who has not heard Russia’s economy compared in GDP terms to some modest European country? Needless to say, the article has not aged well. But the point here isn’t to refute De Grauwe – subsequent events have done that well enough. More interesting is to probe the deeper – and mostly unexamined – roots of this particular mode of thinking.

Really the questions boil down to: does such a reliance on GDP even make any sense anymore? And if not, why have we doggedly stuck with an economic indicator whose stature far exceeds its explanative power (and creates a lot of distortions)?

GDP emerged in the 1930s as a tool for policymakers trying to quantify the national economy during the Great Depression. Credited with formalizing GDP was the Russian-born American mathematician and economist Simon Kuznets.

But he was explicit about its limitations: “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.” And this was back when national income mostly entailed real productivity and not stuff like trading derivatives about the weather.

Around the time of World War II, when economies were mostly industrial and debt levels low, GDP was a decent proxy for capacity. After the war, GDP became entrenched in the grand architecture of the post-war order: Bretton Woods, the IMF, and the triumph of Keynesian macroeconomic theory.

Keynesianism sees the economy as a thermostat problem: if total demand is too low and output falls, the government must raise demand through fiscal spending. Its entire policy program depends on measuring, managing, and stimulating aggregate demand – exactly what GDP claims to quantify. Governments could therefore read the pulse of the economy through GDP, inject stimulus when demand faltered, and withdraw it when inflation loomed.

However, in the 1970s the Keynesian consensus broke down, largely due to the problem of stagflation. This is a combination of high inflation and high unemployment that Keynesian theory couldn’t explain because its models assumed inflation and unemployment moved in opposite directions.

On to the scene came the neoliberalism of the 1980s: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Washington Consensus. Deregulation, privatization, and financial liberalization were sold as growth-enhancing reforms, for which GDP became the proof. If GDP rose, which of course it inevitably did, the reforms were “working.” But this represented a subtle shift. GDP had morphed from a diagnostic instrument into a legitimating symbol of a new set of otherwise dubious-looking policies. To put it more simply, Keynesians used GDP to fine-tune the economy; neoliberals used it to justify their ideology.

By this point, GDP was tracking a lot less productive output and a lot more monetary transactions pumped up by leverage. Yet policymakers, investors, and the media continued to treat it as the authoritative measure of real prosperity. Its symbolic prestige actually increased even as its empirical validity declined. This is a point we will return to.

A quick side note: Many people recognize one of the superficial shortcomings of GDP – its failure to adjust for differences in price levels between countries – and therefore prefer GDP measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms. But switching to PPP doesn’t solve the underlying problem, because it leaves untouched the structural distortions within GDP itself: financialization and debt. These are the factors that create the widening gap between real productive output and monetary transactions.

Because GDP treats all spending equally, regardless of whether it comes out of income or borrowing, it cannot distinguish between genuine expansions of productive capacity and debt-fueled transactional churn.

Underlying this is a deeper theoretical fallacy: the modern macroeconomic framework still treats financial intermediation (think Goldman Sachs) as a neutral, efficient allocator of capital, and therefore counts much financial activity as genuine value-added. Let’s say it together with a straight face: investment banking is about efficiently getting capital to the right places in the real economy.

That this assumption persists in today’s hyper-financialized G7 can only be explained by a civilizational-level blind spot. Everyone intuitively understands that flipping a piece of real estate, or repeatedly securitizing the same pool of mortgages, adds to measured GDP without creating any value. These transactions expand balance sheets, not productive capacity, yet GDP tallies them as if a turbine had been manufactured or a bridge built.

But if the standard measure is so vulnerable to distortion, the obvious question is why more effort isn’t devoted to stripping out the debt-driven noise. Yet very few mainstream economists even venture down this path. One man who does is Tim Morgan, a financial analyst who has done important work in exploring the relationship between economic growth and energy. He developed a proprietary metric that he calls C-GDP, which is an estimate of underlying economic output after removing the inflationary effect of debt and credit. Over 2004-2024, Morgan calculates global GDP growth at 96% using the conventional measure, but this falls to just 33% on a C-GDP basis.

This is a fairly radical re-calibration of growth figures that lays bare the fact that much of the recorded growth of recent decades came via credit expansion, asset inflation, and consumption rather than new physical output. Morgan calculates that each dollar of reported growth has been accompanied by an increase of at least $9 of net new financial commitments.

Morgan does not (at least that I am aware of) provide a country breakdown of his C-GDP model, but it is not a stretch to posit that the GDP-inflating effect of debt and financialization is most prominent in the G7.

Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing combined make up just over 20% of US GDP, while household and federal debt levels are at record highs, and the ratio of financial assets to GDP has exploded since the 1980s. Europe is not fundamentally any different. Stripping out debt-inflated transactions would entail a shrinking of measured GDP for both BRICS and the West. But the extent of shrinkage would differ.

Many will correctly point out that China and parts of the BRICS world are also heavily indebted. However, it bears noticing how the link between credit and real output differs from the Western pattern. Much of the credit in China, for instance, has gone into tangible physical assets – infrastructure, housing, factories, power systems – even if there is certainly some overbuilding and malinvestment.

So even if China’s credit system is overextended, a significant portion of the borrowing has produced physical capital, not just paper claims. China’s system is thus internally leveraged but still anchored in actual real trade surpluses. In the West, meanwhile, credit creation is market-driven and profit-seeking, and also heavily intermediated by private banks and financial markets. Debt expansion primarily supports asset speculation and consumption.

This is the hidden weakness in Western economies. Not just has industrial production been largely outsourced – a phenomenon at least acknowledged – but a significant share of what passes for economic output is simply a mirage. And if we think of debt as a claim on future economic output, does anybody actually believe that future output will be sufficient to make good the huge pile of debt G7 economies are sitting on? Of course not.

All of this should be entirely obvious. And the distortions should be obvious. We know what type of economy GDP was created to measure. We know how the structure of Western economies (in particular) has changed. We know that buying and selling derivatives generates no real economic value. So why do we stubbornly cling to GDP?

This question cannot be answered in economic terms alone. To make sense of it, we must depart from the safe confines of economics and examine the bigger paradigm in which our current economic assumptions are intelligible. This is where we return to the notion of the “symbolic” prestige of GDP.

Policymakers and economists in the 21st century fancy themselves paragons of rationality presiding over technocratic systems. This is an inviolable dogma of our time. In reality, we are just as bound by our era’s unquestioned assumptions as any past civilization. Our economic theories are not neutral, objective, or universal; they are a constructed lens that conveys our particular values and accommodates our particular blind spots. GDP is a prime example of this.

An alien economist observing our current civilization would be baffled by how little attention we pay to the distorting impact of debt on our most sacred metric. Even our most widely used attempt to account for debt, the debt-to-GDP ratio, is inadequate precisely because one side of the equation (GDP) is itself inflated by the very thing being measured. The alien’s conclusion: we make no real distinction between debt-fueled growth and organic, sustainable growth. We must be a civilization with a profoundly short-term outlook.

GDP does still correlate reasonably well with employment, consumption, and tax revenues – variables that matter greatly for fiscal and monetary management but say almost nothing about sustainability or the long-term health of an economy. An influx of debt can drive up all three – and GDP with it – while leaving future generations with an albatross.

Yet our fixation on these immediate indicators is not accidental; it mirrors the deeper essence of modern democratic systems, particularly in the West, where this ethos is found in its most concentrated and potent form. Politicians must survive election cycles by promising quick fixes to the uncomprehending masses, central bankers must stabilize the next quarter, and markets increasingly live from headline to headline. Everything is skewed toward the here and now. This seems so natural to us that it hardly ever occurs to anyone to question it.

Nor does it particularly occur to us that the way we think about the economy is inextricably embedded in a deeper logic. GDP merely tells us what we want to hear – and what is allowed to be told within the prevailing civilizational ethos. Nothing more, nothing less.

Any civilizational ethos is a touch metaphysical, whether it admits it or not. Whereas the Roman Emperor Constantine saw a cross in the sky and believed he heard the words: “by this sign you shall conquer,” the Belgian economist De Grauwe, utterly unaware of his own mystical bent, opened a spreadsheet and said “by these figures Russia will not conquer.”

Henry Johnston is a Moscow-based editor who worked in finance for over a decade.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Trump’s ‘drug boat’ attacks mirror controversial Obama-era tactic – NYT

RT | November 28, 2025

US airstrikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean ordered by President Donald Trump bear similarities to the controversial ‘signature strikes’ on purported terrorists under former President Barack Obama, the New York Times has argued.

The Obama-era operations conducted primarily in Pakistan and Yemen relied on detecting patterns of behavior that US intelligence agencies claimed indicated terrorist activity, rather than identifying wrongdoing by specific individuals. Critics condemned the approach for its vague criteria – sometimes as broad as ‘military-age male’ in an area prone to militancy – and for resulting in civilian casualties.

Pentagon officials have acknowledged in closed-door briefings that they often do not know the identities of the people killed in what the White House calls a campaign against “narcoterrorism” in the Caribbean, the NYT reported on Thursday. Despite this, US officials insist that the comparison does not apply, arguing that the strikes are aimed at narcotics rather than individuals.

“They told us it is not a signature strike, because it’s not just about pattern of life, but it’s also not like they know every individual person on the boats,” Representative Sara Jacobs, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the outlet.

The Obama administration’s killings of low-level militants and people merely assumed to be militants was criticized as counterproductive and fueling further radicalization. Trump officials reportedly argued that attacking boats at sea reduces the risk of collateral damage.

Some US allies, including the UK, have reportedly declined to assist with the ‘drug boat’ strikes, warning that they could violate international law. The campaign has already resulted in more than 80 deaths.

Analysts increasingly suspect that the operations could be laying the groundwork for a regime-change effort in Venezuela, whose president, Nicolas Maduro, the US accuses of leading a criminal cartel.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

NATO members terrorizing their own people – Russian envoy

RT | November 28, 2025

European NATO members are instilling a false fear of Russia in their citizens in order to drum up support for militarization and a potential confrontation, Moscow’s envoy to Belgium, Denis Gonchar, has said.

Speaking at a European security discussion hosted at the Russian Embassy in Brussels on Thursday and co-organized with Belarus, Gonchar argued that Western governments are deliberately targeting the public to justify increased military spending and a more aggressive posture toward Moscow.

“NATO, which is terrorizing its own population with the Kremlin’s non-existent plans to attack the allies, is preparing for a big war with Russia, as crazy as it sounds,” he said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

“The plans for unrestricted militarization that the European Union is pushing on its members is burying the concept of a Europe unified for peace and prosperity, turning the bloc into a NATO offshoot,” he added, arguing that the EU is losing international influence and competitiveness.

According to Gonchar, Western efforts to weaken Russia extend beyond Europe and target Russia’s neighbors as well as countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. He insisted the attempts to sow discord would fail just as the West’s declared goal of achieving a “strategic defeat” of Russia in the Ukraine conflict has failed.

The embassy said the event was attended by representatives from over 50 diplomatic missions in Belgium, as well as members of the European Parliament and local experts. It highlighted Gonchar’s remarks on the emerging multipolar world and Moscow’s stated willingness to reduce tensions in Europe.

Russian officials have repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war designed to hinder Russia’s development. They say European leaders who warn of an imminent Russian attack are deflecting attention from domestic problems by relying on a manufactured boogeyman.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Sally Rooney says Palestine Action ban could block publication of her books in Britain

Sally Rooney attends the 2019 Costa Book Awards held at Quaglino’s on January 29, 2019 in London, England [Tristan Fewings/Getty Images]
MEMO | November 27, 2025

Famed Irish novelist Sally Rooney told the UK High Court on Thursday that she may be unable to publish new work in Britain as long as the legal ban on activist group Palestine Action remains in place, citing her public support for the movement, local media reported, Anadolu reports.

Rooney warned that the ban, issued this summer, could even result in her existing books being pulled from shelves, with her case presented in court as an example of the ban’s wider impact on freedom of expression, reported The Guardian.

Rooney praised Palestine Action’s activities as “courageous and admirable,” saying the group is committed to stopping what it views as crimes against humanity by Israel in its two-year military offensive on the Gaza Strip.

In her written witness statement, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations With Friends said the ban would leave her effectively shut out of the UK market, explaining: “It is … almost certain that I can no longer publish or produce any new work within the UK while this proscription remains in effect.”

“If Palestine Action is still proscribed by the time my next book is due for publication, then that book will be available to readers all over the world and in dozens of languages, but will be unavailable to readers in the United Kingdom simply because no one will be permitted to publish it (unless I am content to give it away for free).”

Since the group was banned, Rooney has said she plans to direct earnings from her work to Palestine Action, a decision that prompted her to cancel a UK trip to collect an award over concerns she could be arrested.

The legal ambiguity makes it hard to foresee the full impact of the ban, she said, but warned her publisher Faber & Faber might be barred from paying her royalties. If that happens, she said, “my existing works may have to be withdrawn from sale and would therefore no longer be available to readers in the UK.”

READ: A historic decline in sympathy for Israel in Britain, and an unprecedented rise in solidarity with Palestine in 2025
Adam Straw, representing UN special rapporteur Ben Saul, told the court that growing legal opinion holds the ban to be an unlawful interference under international law, adding that terrorism definitions “do not extend to serious damage to property,” referring to the group spray-painting Royal Air Force planes this July which was cited in the ban.

Representing the home secretary, Sir James Eadie argued that it is for the UK parliament to define terrorism, noting: “Parliament has decided what terrorism is, which includes serious damage to property, whether or not alongside it there is violence against people.”

The hearing will conclude on Tuesday, when the final day of the judicial review is held.

In attacks in Gaza since October 2023, Israel has killed nearly 70,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 170,000 others.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

George Beebe: Ukraine Faces Destruction if Europe Derails Peace

Glenn Diesen | November 27, 2025

George Beebe is the former CIA Director for Russia Analysis and currently Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. Beebe argues that great efforts are being made by the Trump administration to put an end to the Ukraine War. If the Europeans derail the peace efforts, then the most likely outcome will be the destruction of Ukraine.

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November 28, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , | Leave a comment