Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Unions condemn British police for arresting independent journalist

RT | September 5, 2024

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have condemned the recent arrest in the UK of independent reporter Richard Medhurst. In a joint letter addressed to New Scotland Yard anti-terrorism head Matt Jukes and dated Tuesday, the unions said they were “shocked” and “concerned” over what they consider “efforts to stifle press freedom.”

A British citizen of Syrian descent, Medhurst was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on August 15. According to his own account provided to several media outlets, he was pulled off a plane and taken to a police station, where he was held for over 24 hours. His phone and work equipment were seized, while Medhurst himself was subjected to a search and a questioning.

He was told he was arrested under Section 12 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 on charges of “expressing an opinion or a belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization.” He was eventually let go, but said he does not yet know whether he will be charged with any offense.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, and Anthony Bellanger, IFJ general secretary, said Medhurst’s arrest “will likely have a chilling effect on journalists in the UK and worldwide,” as they would now fear arrest by UK authorities “simply for carrying out their work.”

“Both the NUJ and IFJ are shocked at the increased use of terrorism legislation by the British police in this manner. Journalism is not a crime,” they stated, arguing that the “powers contained in anti-terror legislation must be deployed proportionately – not wielded against journalists in ways that inevitably stifle press freedom.” They requested a meeting with Jukes, urging UK authorities to provide “clarity” on Medhurst’s case.

The Terrorism Act 2000 gives police wide powers to prosecute and punish offenses linked with terrorism. Its Section 12 criminalizes anyone who “invites support” for an organization designated as terrorist or “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive” of it. A person found guilty of an offense under this section could face imprisonment for up to 14 years and a hefty fine.

Medhurst told the Anadolu news agency that he was never given a clear reason for his detention, but said it was likely linked to his reporting on the war in Gaza. The journalist is a vocal supporter of Palestine and its militant group Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the UK government.

He also warned that his arrest could set a dangerous precedent, noting that London is increasingly using the Terrorism Act “not against terrorists, but against political dissidents.”

Medhurst covers international affairs on his YouTube channel and hosts a program on Iran’s Press TV, while also publishing opinion pieces in other outlets. He previously contributed several articles to RT.

September 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The American Way of War

By Thomas DiLorenzo | Lew Rockwell | August 31, 2024

The purpose of the war is “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.”

  • Letter from General Sherman to Mrs. Sherman, July 31, 1862

“[H]ad the Confederates somehow won . . . they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”

  • Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign, p. 286.

“Distinguished military historian B.H. Liddell Hart observed that the code of civilized warfare which had ruled Europe for over two hundred years was first broken by Lincoln’s policy of directing the destruction of civilian life in the South.”

  • Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events, p. 116.

In When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession Charles Adams wrote of how the first Geneva Convention on War took place in 1863, followed by three more, with the last one being in 1949.  The 1863 convention codified the laws of war as were understood at the time to say: 1) Attacking defenseless cities and towns was a war crime; 2) Plundering and wantonly destroying civilian property was a war crime; and 3) Only necessities could be taken from a civilian population, and they had to be paid for.  Some historians, Adams wrote, claimed that these laws were the laws of war for four centuries and that they were all broken by the Lincoln regime. The lawlessness of the Lincoln regime, in other words, set the stage for the military atrocities of the twentieth century.

Most Americans have been taught to ignore the Lincoln regime’s war crimes by repeating Sherman’s CYA quip, “war is hell.” But there is a clear historical record of rape, murder, torture, arson, and the bombing of civilian occupied cities by the Union army. See for example War Crimes Against Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco; The Civil War by Shelby Foote; Union Terror by Jeffrey Addicott; and South Carolina Citizens in Sherman’s Path by Karen Stokes for starters.

There you will learn that there was so much murder, arson and theft in Missouri that vast sections of the entire state were uninhabited by the war’s end. Entire towns, including my former town of Bluffton, South Carolina, were burned to the ground with every private residence set ablaze by U.S. Army “soldiers.” The Union Army was an army of pyromaniacs, rapists, and thieves.

In August of 1863 Charleston, South Carolina was not defended by Confederate forces when a six-month bombardment of the city commenced, exploding more than 22,000 artillery shells in the city. Unexploded shells were still being found a century later.

Sherman ordered the four-day bombardment of Atlanta in the Fall of 1864 when it was only occupied by women, children, infants, and elderly men, with his artillerists targeting homes where they spotted human habitation.  As many as 5,000 artillery shells rained down on Atlanta’s civilian population in a single day. Corpses littered the streets, something that Sherman called “a beautiful sight.” Thousands of surviving residents were homeless at the onset of winter.

Such war crimes were committed by Lincoln’s army, with his direction and full knowledge, for the duration of the war. It is said that when the Prussian military invited Sherman’s sidekick, General Phil Sheridan, to present a lecture on the American way of war the Prussians – no shrinking violets – were shocked and disgusted by how he described the murder, rape, plunder, and arson that occurred under his command in the Shenandoah Valley.

Just three months after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia General Sherman was put in charge of the “Military District of the Missouri,” which was all land west of the Mississippi River. His orders were to essentially wage a campaign of genocide against the Plains Indians, which he did for the next twenty-five years, killing some 45,000 of them, women and children included, and placing the rest in concentration camps called “reservations.” In 1891, the year of his death, Sherman expressed his regrets that his army did not kill every last Indian. He is famously associated with the genocidal quip, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” He did all this, he once said, “to make way for the [government-subsidized] railroads,” of which he was a major stockholder.

During the Philippine Insurrection (1889) the U.S. Army killed some 200,000 Filipinos, with some estimates that a million civilians were killed. That was after the Spanish-American War also massacred thousands of civilians.

All of this was brought to mind when I recently ran across a 2010 book entitled Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947 by Thomas Goodrich. (There is also a YouTube video, “Hellstorm: The Genocide of Germany”). It is a hard book to read because it describes the results of the American way of war (imitated by the Russians, British, and Germans as well) combined with twentieth century military technology.

Goodrich starts by writing of how Hitler’s 1925 Mein Kampf promised to rid Germany of all “Jewish influence” if he were to ever obtain political power. This naturally “alarmed Jews worldwide . . .” Influential Jewish businessmen first organized an international boycott of the German economy and of course denounced the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis). That quickly turned into what the organizer of the boycott called a “holy war” against “cruel and savage beasts,” i.e., all Germans.

Goodrich quotes Hollywood script writer Ben Hecht as writing that a “cancer” flourishes in the world in the form of “Germany, Germanism, and Germans.” They are “murderers, foul and wanton,” said the Hollywood movie script writer. “Germany must perish,” added Theodore Kaufman in a book of that title. He argued that, after the war, “all German men and women should be sterilized” to eliminate the disease of “Germanism and its carriers.” The New York Times praised this as “A Sensational Idea” while the Washington Post labeled it “A provocative theory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt made these calls for “extermination” and genocide official when he endorsed the so-called “Morgenthau Plan,” named after his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.  The plan called for the complete destruction of Germany after the war by the dismantling of all industry and the confiscation of massive amounts of land, among other things.  The plan estimated that the result would be death by starvation of some 50 million Germans. Their hope was that “within two generations Germany would cease to exist.” When others expressed shock at such a barbaric proposal, Morgenthau snapped, “They asked for it. Why the hell should I worry about what happens to their people?”  Morgenthau obviously wasn’t worried about what might happen to him in the afterlife.

Winston Churchill also endorsed the plan and, it goes without saying, so did Stalin. Goodrich claims that Hitler considered the war to be a war against “Jewish Bolshevism” since “Lenin, Trotsky, and many other Russian [communist] revolutionaries were Jewish.”

Hellscape vividly describes the carpet bombing of civilian-occupied Dresden, Germany, where tons and tons of bombs were dropped by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Airforce on the defenseless city. Literally thousands of bombers dropped phosphorous bombs on the city, creating a hellish inferno that melted bodies almost instantly, literally broiling them alive. The entire city was described as “one huge glowing wave.” There were thousands of dead bodies everywhere and the stench of burnt, decaying flesh was nauseating, said survivors. The animals in the Dresden zoo were incinerated along with everyone else caught above ground.

Knowing that people would flee to a large public park outside of the city the RAF dropped tons of high explosive bombs there. American bombers followed up by strafing the civilians in the park with their machine guns. This whole scene was repeated day after day as though the objective was to murder every last human being in Dresden. Goodrich cites estimates of some 400,000 civilians killed in Dresden alone.

This mass murder of defenseless citizens was gleefully and fiendishly repeated in Hamburg and many other German cities near the end of the war when there was little or no military resistance. “What had taken the German nation over two millennia to build, had taken its enemies a mere six years to destroy,” Goodrich concludes.

Goodrich writes of how Stalin considered Russian prisoners of war to be traitors since his order was to fight to the death.  The American authorities after the war helped Stalin enforce his rule with “operation keelhaul,” which returned thousands of Russian prisoners of war back to Stalin. “[T]he entire Cossack nation had been delivered to the Soviets.  Within days, most were either dead or bolted into cattle cars for the one-way ride to Siberia” and slave labor. Over five million Soviet citizens were returned to Stalin and “delivered to torture and slavery.” General Eisenhower supervised all of this with a collection of concentration camps that held the prisoners before handing them over to Stalin. Thousands of them were intentionally starved to death in the camps, writes Goodrich.

Stalin wasn’t the only newly-anointed slave owner. “When France requested slaves as part of its war booty, Eisenhower transferred over 600,000 Germans east.” And “like the Americans, the French starved their prisoners.” Several hundred thousand prisoners in Great Britain “were transformed into virtual slaves” as well. Eventually, “at least 800,000 German prisoners died in the American and French death camps” after the war.

One of the more sickening sections of Hellstorm is the description of the massive rape of German women and girls that occurred for several years. I will spare the reader of the gory stories and details. The Russians were the primary perpetrators, while American soldiers boasted that rape was not necessary; it was easy to bribe starving and destitute German women with a mere candy bar or a few slices of bread. “A bit of food, a bar of chocolate, or a bar of soap seems to make rape unnecessary,” an American soldier is quoted as saying very matter-of-factly. “By the summer of 1945, Germany had become the world’s greatest slave market where sex was the new medium of exchange.”

As I said, this is a hard book to stomach, but it is also a necessary book to read to understand the realities of the American way of war that was introduced the world in the 1860s and which, because of its “success,” was imitated by murderous tyrants – and their propaganda mouthpieces — the world over during the twentieth century. War crimes and their “ends-justify -the-means” rationales are so routine today that propagandists for the current Israeli war of genocide in Gaza have nonchalantly advocated the “Dresdenizing” of Gaza and the subsequent murder of thousands of women, children, and infants.

September 4, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Masochistic Naivete: Another Great Danger

NewZealandDoc | August 28, 2024

Long covid may or not be a chimera, but the long reach of covid certainly isn’t, as I have learned from an unexpected situation that involved the gratuitous remarks of a covidian doctor here that created difficulties for me. I am hopeful, however, of a positive resolution to this unnecessary development.

This incident merely strengthened my belief that the enemy we are up against, large and small, local and global, is unprincipled, lawless, low, and, given the measures unleashed against the world in the name of protecting us from a danger they created in the first place — dangers heaped upon dangers! — murderous.

If ever I believed in the trustworthy authority of the major media, having grown up on Time, Life, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, NBC in my early youth, and, later, on The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books et al. in my later years, that belief has been smashed into a thousand pieces as I watched all of them drop the veneer and flash the biceps of complete and utter fraudulence in our faces, day in, day out, relentlessly. I now ignore them completely.

If ever I believed in fair play and the rule of law, the inconstant application of justice has shaken some sense into me. What kind of system inveigles a Reiner Fuellmich into an arrest and incarceration, or deceptively seduces the founder of Telegram into an apprehension? Need I mention the numerous illegitimate legal attacks against a former President of the United States, still ongoing? Need I mention the attempt to murder him in the cold light of day? Should I hark back yet again to New Zealand’s use of stormtroopers to invade and disperse the Parliament Protests of 2022?

Should I mention the UK arrests for social media expressions of free speech, or the many and multifarious ways that Big Social Media have censored those whose political inclinations or opinions had been targeted by the governments they had a right to criticize? It has become nearly comic to listen to and watch presenters on YouTube who resort to code words to evade algorithms that would punish their channels?

Dare I refer to the unnecessary wars and the horrific numbers of the dead in the Ukraine and the Middle East, promoted so enthusiastically by the ‘liberal’ so-called democratic Left in the United States, not to mention the openly authoritarian EU?

By the strange contorted logic of our ‘now’, universal inoculation, active armed conflict, and perpetual fear of pandemics mark the road to … to the well-regulated world ordained by some occult globalist racketeers for their own benefit.

Given all of the above, one would think that any vestiges of naivete would be gone as we figure out a way to save ourselves. It’s an interesting word, ‘naive’ — coming as it does from the Latin nativus, and meaning, essentially, being innocent or artless as a newborn babe in the corrupt and devious system devised by humankind to regulate itself. When we use the phrase ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’ we’re saying we’re not naive.

Yet I can’t count how many times so many friends have expressed astonishment at each new depredation and each miscarriage of justice, and how so many still have faith in a legal system that has been commandeered by our enemies. I can’t count how many times people will say, about the latest jab-implicated adverse event, ‘this will turn the tide!’ Or how many game-changers there have been that have only resulted in the game going on with even more ferocity against our cause.

While I believe that it is very important for us to continue to report truth, it is equally important for us to know what we are up against. To know that facts are hardly guaranteed to change the minds of the sleepwalkers around us.

It is destructively naive to believe that simply by being virtuous we will win the day, or that the courts will come to our rescue because of our well-prepared evidence, or that martyrdom will be glorious.

General Patton is reputed to have said that ‘no dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country.’

As Irregulars against Established Power we must fight smart, and fight to live, and we by no means can count on the System to assist us. We must recognize the murderous intensity of our enemy, the rigged judicial system, the coopted media, and adjust our strategies.

Or else.

Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.

August 2024

August 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Free speech is on the line as UK revives controversial non crime hate reports

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 30, 2024

“Non-crime hate incident” (NCHI) recording is about to come back with a vengeance in the UK.

The recently-elected Labour government has decided to reverse the previous cabinet’s decision to stop wasting police time by having them report such huge numbers of these, often in reality trivial events.

However, even before this policy u-turn engineered by Labour, there were already 12,340 NCHI reports in the first half of the year, rights group Big Brother Watch revealed.

The now former Conservative government hardly put its foot down against such a “granular” (and some would say, absurd) way of policing people’s behavior, that wouldn’t sit oddly with an Orwell novel.

The Conservatives’ solution was to tell the police to report only what they viewed as real risks that could escalate into significant harm – a definition already clear as mud, one might say.

Now, Labour is happy to announce that they are reversing even that attempt at toning down the practice, and the spin to justify this latest decision is that it is needed to “monitor” antisemitic and anti-Islamic “non crime incidents.” Other communities are not mentioned.

This appears to be one of the “band-aid solutions” applied to recent serious rioting in the country, and the UK government didn’t forget to reassure citizens that the right to free speech will – somehow – be preserved in the process.

Just to illustrate what type of “events” the police include in their NCHI reporting – the UK press mentions a case where “a woman said children had used chalk on the pavement outside her home, claiming she was targeted as she was not from the UK.”

In another case, somebody’s “emotional distress” because they were removed from a WhatsApp group was also reported as a “non-crime hate incident.”

However, trying to whittle down this type of “HCHI spamming” to what could reasonably be treated as a threat has now failed.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the new approach would be that of “zero tolerance.”

And – likely of thousands upon thousands of reports, including distinctly dubious ones, every month.

Big Brother Watch noted that in addition to children playing with chalk on sidewalks, “sticking flags on poles” also featured among NCHI reports in the past period.

“Police should protect free speech and privacy by only putting details on file only when necessary,” the group recommended.

August 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

British-Palestinian surgeon vindicated after medical council rejects Israel lobby complaint

MEMO | August 29, 2024

British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was vindicated this week after a complaint by a notorious pro-Israel lobby group was rejected by the General Medical Council. UK Lawyers for Israel sought to have the distinguished plastic and reconstructive surgeon suspended and banned from practising medicine.

The so-called “lawfare” organisation is widely known for filing vexatious complaints and litigation to silence critics of Israel and its apartheid policies. The lobby group was behind a complaint to remove art work by children from Gaza which was on display at a London hospital. In another case, UKLFI was slapped down by the chairman of an English football club for allegedly threatening behaviour.

UKLFI claimed that alleged social media posts by Abu-Sittah impaired his fitness to practise medicine and sought for his medical licence to be suspended. This smear is said to have been designed to bring Abu-Sittah’s distinguished reputation into disrepute, and undermine his prominent profile as a public figure in the British Palestinian community. It also sought to undermine Abu-Sittah’s rights to freedom of expression.

Dr Abu-Sittah is known for his humanitarian work in conflict zones, particularly Gaza. He argued that the complaint was politically motivated. He clarified that he was not the author of several posts in question, while others had been translated inaccurately. The tribunal expressed concern over UKLFI’s inability to provide verified translations of the Arabic language posts.

The tribunal also dismissed UKLFI’s arguments that Abu-Sittah’s alleged social media activity posed a risk to patients or the public. No evidence was found to suggest any compromise to patient safety. On the contrary, several compelling testimonies, including one from a British-Israeli colleague, attested to Abu-Sittah’s fair and professional treatment of all patients.

The move by one of the key arms of Israel’s lobby in the UK was seen widely as a smear campaign designed to tarnish Abu-Sittah’s reputation. Nevertheless, in April, he was elected as rector of the University of Glasgow, winning an overwhelming 80 per cent of the vote following a campaign that resonated deeply with students.

Abu Sittah’s successful legal team was comprised of experts from Bindmans LLP, 11KBW and Furnival Chambers. The team included Tayab Ali, who is also the Director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP); Axel Landin, Zac Sammour and Soraya Bauwens.

The surgeon’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza have been praised widely. He volunteered his medical services for forty-three days from 9 October 2023, when Israel launched what the International Court of Justice has called a plausible genocidal campaign in the besieged enclave.

Upon his return to London, Abu-Sittah spoke at an ICJP press conference, recounting the harrowing experience in Gaza, including performing multiple amputations on children and working with severely limited medical supplies.

The vindication of Abu-Sittah is the second legal victory for the British Palestinian doctor since his return from Gaza. In May, he successfully overturned a Schengen-wide travel ban imposed on him by the German government, in what appeared to be yet another vexatious legal campaign to silence the 55-year-old.

This vindication is seen as a major victory not only for Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, but also for all medical professionals engaged in humanitarian work in conflict zones.

August 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

UK backs Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles inside Russia – media

RT | August 28, 2024

The UK is in favor of allowing Ukraine to use its Storm Shadow missiles for strikes deep inside Russia but is keeping its support out of the public eye so as not to cause a rift with the US, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

Ukraine already has the greenlight from Britain to use Storm Shadows to strike Crimea and other areas claimed by Kiev, but not to target internationally recognized Russian territory. Amid Kiev’s ongoing incursion into Kursk Region, Vladimir Zelensky has stepped up his calls for the country’s Western backers to lift the restrictions on the use of their weapons for strikes in Russia. This is particularly the case for the British missiles, which can avoid enemy radar and hit targets up to 305km (190 miles) away.

However, according to The Telegraph, the decision on how Ukraine can use the missiles is not just up to London, as they are produced in close cooperation with France and the US, and are generally used alongside classified American systems.

While French President Emmanuel Macron previously said that Ukraine can use the missiles to strike sites in Russia from which the latter launches its own attacks, US officials have been reluctant to grant similar authorization. A White House source told the news outlet that the US administration is concerned that the use of long-range missiles, even without Washington’s outward approval, could escalate matters and lead to US troops being drawn into the conflict.

The UK has so far not made a formal request to Washington about Ukraine’s use of the missiles inside Russia, the news outlet claimed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly reluctant to provoke a dispute over the issue, despite his own earlier claim that Kiev was free to use UK-supplied weapons as it saw fit.

Starmer, who refused to comment on the missile issue at a briefing on Tuesday, now wants to try a “consultative approach” and discuss the matter with allies before he makes any decisions, sources told the news outlet.

“The US fear escalation more than we do because they have to deal with it. We don’t… They, after all, would have to pick up the pieces. Little Britain cannot fight Russia,” a senior military source told The Telegraph.

Moscow has long criticized the West for providing military aid to Ukraine, and warned against allowing it to strike targets deep inside Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said that such attacks would amount to direct Western participation in the conflict.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed discussions on the use of long-range missiles against Russia as “a ruse” to create the impression that the West wants to avoid excessive escalation, whereas the opposite is true.

August 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Durov’s arrest represents a new level of desperation from western elites

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 26, 2024

The arrest of Pavel Durov marks a new low point on the scumline of the side of the bath – the tub being western democracies and the line being their desperation to stay in power at the costs of controlling social media. Durov, who owns Telegram and lives in Dubai, could be in jail for months and possibly years on the trumped-up charges which the French state has conjured up simply because he refuses to allow any government to have a back door into Telegram. He has fought this tooth and nail for years with the west, in particular the U.S., playing every dirty trick in the book to get access to the platform for its own nefarious purposes – to destroy opposition figures, their strategies etc. – rather than what it is dressed up to be, identifying terrorists and international criminals.

As the UK ponders how its own state has sunk to a new totalitarian level in recent days with the arrest of its citizens who merely like a posting on a social media platform, the West has arrested this French Russian dual national genius who is charged with the crimes of those criminals active on Telegram. And so charges of terrorism and trafficking in minors, drugs and whatever else they can find on the platform will be made against him as someone abetting in the crimes. Of course, the same rules will not be levelled against Elon Musk who surely has criminals on his platform or for that matter any of the other social media platforms.

But how many of these platforms are also taking the same stand as Durov? We are led to believe that most of them aren’t but in light of his arrest we should assume that many of them have already allowed some sort of access to them for the deep state. Elon Musk likes to brag about his refusal to comply with the EU’s demands that he “moderates” who he allows onto X, adding that other social media platforms accepted the deal offered to him by Brussels: comply with our requests and we grant you some leniency on future antitrust fines. This offer, which he claims was happily accepted by other platforms is as close as you can get to the EU offering a brown envelope stuffed full of cash to a man in a pub. It’s a bribe and gives a clue as to how anti-democratic the EU is and how it operates in the shadows.

The French arrest however goes deeper in that we can assume that it was not France operating alone to nab Durov. We can assume that the FBI and CIA had probably pushed Macron to do this appalling dirty work but perhaps also Israel had a hand in it. Just recently, Netanyahu complained that data which was stolen from the government was being exchanged on Telegram and asked Durov to step in and retrieve it. He got no reply. Did Mossad have a hand in the arrest of Telegram’s boss? It seems credible given that it is hard to believe that Durov would fly into French airspace eyes wide open. Was it a kidnapping operation to get his plane and his pilot to land in Paris? French TV channel TF1 said Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Saturday 24th of August but did not state whether the plane’s ultimate destination had been France.

The details around the arrest are very sketchy, but according to Reuters, Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.

Another question which arises from the arrest is whether it is an international effort by western countries led by the U.S. – with Israel very much part of it – to test the waters for other arrests. Pundits have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists for weeks now suggesting Elon Musk will be arrested at some point, or charged in his absence, by UK authorities for some of the more controversial posts he has made about the political situation in the UK, or even by the EU which appears to have started a legal battle with him after he refused to respond to two letters sent to him by a French European Commissioner. Perhaps even the Democrats in the U.S. might play the same card given that Musk has lost all credibility as a neutral player in U.S. politics after he has so openly supported Trump who has promised him a position in a new government if he were to enter the Oval Office. There is no such thing really as free speech. It comes at a very high price for those who want to protect and cherish it and now France will test the political landscape to see how the arrest of Durov will affect Macron’s ratings. The French president has used outstandingly poor judgment in the past in calling for parliamentary elections immediately after EU ones which gave so much power to far-right groups, so he seems to be good at falling on his own sword. He may well have factored that Durov does not have the popularity of say Assange who didn’t stir so much political anger when he was banged up for years in a filthy, dank cell in the UK on trumped up charges from the U.S.

What is especially worrying is that locking up powerful people who have huge followings on the internet is becoming a trend which people are getting used to. The war between those who want to control the perceived truth and those who hold the actual one is hotting up. Scott Ritter, Andrew Tate, Richard Medhurst all arrested within days of one another, while Musk himself shuts down Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff who had 10m followers on X. What we are witnessing is a new level of desperation that western elites are more afraid than ever after wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in Ukraine and starting a world war in the Middle East that voters have no confidence any more in their decision-making, as they, the public, struggle more and more to pay for groceries or even heat their houses. It’s a new milestone in the blind dogma of elites to resort to tactics which we would have scorned China or North Korea for using just a few years ago. It’s a new level of panic which we haven’t seen before.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Debate: Is A Demonstration Project Really Necessary?

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | August 17, 2024

My repeated calls for a Demonstration Project of a zero-emissions electrical grid have led to a spirited debate among knowledgeable commenters. While most back my position, some say that a Demonstration Project is really not necessary and would be a waste of effort.

The gist of the argument of those disputing the necessity of a Demonstration Project is that it is so obvious that a zero-emissions grid powered predominantly by wind and solar generation cannot be achieved that the expense and effort of building an actual physical facility cannot be justified. Before the building of a physical demonstration project there would inevitably be an engineering feasibility study, and such a feasibility study would not get through its first day before everybody involved realized that this could never work. All it would take would be a few back-of-the-envelope calculations using basic arithmetic and the whole endeavor would be sunk.

Regular commenter Richard Greene leads the forces arguing against a demonstration project. From a comment by Richard on my August 10 post:

A good demonstration project that included manufacturing and farming is very likely not needed. A real local utility Nut Zero grid engineering plan on paper would have grid engineers laughing hysterically. The money allocated for backup batteries would be nowhere close to paying for the battery GWh capacity needed. Backup natural gas power plants could do the job, but gas backup is not wanted. . . . 100% wind and solar can never work due to compound energy droughts, wind drought and solar droughts (batteries are far too expensive).

Representative of the pro-demonstration project side is a comment from “dm” on the August 13 post. Excerpt:

Because many people doubt paper analyses, lived experience is a necessary teacher. Thus, demonstration projects are NEEDED to prove the folly of “sustainable” electricity grids. Furthermore, the demonstration projects MUST be in regions heavily populated with nut zero enthusiasts, and ALL costs MUST be paid SOLELY by households, businesses, institutions … located within the demonstration areas.

My natural sympathies here would lie with Richard’s side of this debate. How can spending what would likely be billions of dollars of public money be justified when calculations that I have made or verified myself show that the project will never come close to success?

But then we must look at what is happening in large states and countries that are proceeding toward the stated goal of a zero-emissions grid without ever having had a working demonstration project. In some of these cases (Germany, UK) the wasted resources are now into the trillions, not billions. And at some point the whole effort will inevitably be ended with some kind of hard-to-predict catastrophe (long blackouts? multiplication of consumer costs by a factor of ten or more?). By then, many of the working resources that have made the grid function will have been destroyed and will have to be re-created, at a cost of further trillions.

Consider the case of Germany. Germany is a very substantial country (80+ million people, making it twice the size of California and four times the size of New York), with the world’s fourth largest GDP at over $4 trillion annually. Germany was one of the first to start down the road to a zero-emissions grid back in the 1990s, and formally adopted its “Energiewende” fourteen years ago in 2010. Germany has proceeded farther than any other large country in converting its electricity generation to wind and solar.

And yet, as I look around for information on Germany’s progress toward zero-emissions electricity, I can’t find any concern or recognition that this might not be doable in the end. Perhaps that exists in German language sources that I can’t read. But from anything I can find, it looks like Germany is forging ahead in the blind faith that if only they build enough wind turbines and solar panels at some point they will have the zero-emissions electricity that they crave.

Go to the website of the Umweltbundesamt (Federal Environmental Agency) for the latest information. At least on the electricity front, you will not find any indication that there may be problems in achieving the zero-emissions utopian future:

The “Energiewende” – Germany’s transition towards a secure, environmentally friendly, and economically successful energy future – includes a large-scale restructuring of the energy supply system towards the use of renewable energy in all sectors. . . . [T]he switch towards renewables in the electricity sector has been very successful so far. . . . While in the year 2000 renewables accounted for 6.3 percent of electricity demand only, its [sic] share has been growing significantly over the past years, exceeding 10 percent in the year 2005 and 25 per cent in the year 2013. In 2023 renewable energy sources provided 272 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and account for 51.8 percent of German electricity demand. With wind power being by far the most important energy source in the German electricity mix.

Some 30+ years into this process, and they’re only up to barely over 50% of their electricity from “renewables.” And while they may claim that “wind power [is] by far the most important source in the German electricity mix,” in fact when you get a breakdown you find that wind and solar together provided well less than 50%. According to solar advocates Fraunhofer Institute here, in 2023 “biomass” provided some 42.3 TWh of Germany’s electricity (about 8%), hydro provided 19.5 TWh (about 4%), and “waste non-renewable” (I think that means burning garbage) provided 4.5 TWh (about 1%). That leaves under 40% for wind and solar.

If they keep building solar and wind facilities, and expect batteries to be the backup, has anybody calculated how much battery storage they will need? Not that I can find. Here is a website of a company called Fluence, which is an affiliate of German industrial giant Siemens. They excitedly predict a rapid expansion of grid storage in Germany:

Storage capacity will grow 40-fold to 57 GWh by 2030.

Wow, a 40-fold increase! It may sound like a lot. But Germany’s average electricity demand is about 50 GW, so the 57 GWh of battery storage in 2030 will come to about 1 hour’s worth. Competent calculations of the amount of energy storage needed to back up a predominantly wind/solar grid run in the range of around 500 to 1000 hours.

Here from another website is a chart of the growth of energy storage in Germany up to this year.

Look at that acceleration! But the 10 GWh of storage that they currently have will last no more than about 10 minutes when the wind and sun quit producing on a calm night.

In short, this large and seemingly sophisticated country is completely delusional, with no sane voices anywhere to be heard. A demonstration project that fails spectacularly is the only thing with any hope of saving them.

August 25, 2024 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Western sanctions have backfired — Russian tycoon

RT | August 24, 2024

Western sanctions against Russia have yielded results that are the opposite of their stated goal, metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov has said.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera on Thursday, the Russian billionaire argued that the sanctions regime has so far done more harm to the European Union countries than to Russia.

“They wanted to harm the Russian economy, and here it is growing. They wanted to punish the business elite, and the Russians brought the money back home. The Russian economy is adapting to the sanctions, while neighboring markets are suffering. Europe rejects Russian energy resources and is forced to buy them at a much higher price,” Usmanov told the publication.

Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022. The EU’s economic powerhouse Germany went through a recession last year, while the bloc’s other large economies, France and Italy, posted growth of under 1%.

Following the sanctions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022 that led to a dramatic drop in Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, the bloc started buying liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US. According to estimates published by Russia’s Energy Ministry, American LNG is 30-40% more expensive than Russian pipeline gas.

Usmanov also condemned the EU sanctions policy that targets individuals deemed close to the Russian leadership.

The West has made “a colossal mistake” by persecuting Russian businessmen for political reasons, because “they do not influence decision-making,” argued the tycoon.

The Uzbekistan-born businessman was added to the UK, EU, and US sanction lists shortly after the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, along with several other prominent business figures.

The restrictions have made Russian investments abroad impossible, the billionaire lamented, adding that the businessmen from the sanctions-hit country now invest mainly at home.

Usmanov was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2017 for financing the restoration of a massive architectural complex – the Trajan’s Forum in Rome, which dates to the early 2nd century AD.

“Sanctions are a sign of impotence,” stated the businessman, adding that the peace in Ukraine can only be achieved through compromise and negotiations.

Usmanov holds a stake in the iron ore and steel giant Metalloinvest, as well as in the telecommunications company MegaFon. Usmanov’s net worth totals $13.8 billion, making him among the world’s 100 wealthiest people, according to Forbes.

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Britain’s Kursk Invasion Backfires?

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | August 21, 2024

British Challenger 2 tanks reached Ukraine with enormous fanfare, ahead of Kiev’s long-delayed, ultimately catastrophic 2023 “counteroffensive”. On top of encouraging other proxy war sponsors to provide Ukraine with armoured fighting vehicles, Western audiences were widely told the tank – hitherto marketed to international buyers as “indestructible” – made Kiev’s ultimate victory a fait accompli. As it was, Challenger 2 tanks deployed to Robotnye in September were almost instantly incinerated by Russian fire, then very quietly withdrawn from combat altogether.

Hence, many online commentators were surprised when footage of the Challenger 2 in action in Kursk began to circulate widely on August 13th. Furthermore, numerous mainstream outlets dramatically drew attention to the tank’s deployment. Several were explicitly briefed by British military sources that it marked the first time in history London’s tanks “have been used in combat on Russian territory.” Disquietingly, The Times now reveals this was a deliberate propaganda and lobbying strategy, spearheaded by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Prior to the Challenger 2’s presence in Kursk breaking, Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey had reportedly “been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.” Ultimately, they decided “to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help – and convince the public that Britain’s security and economic prosperity is affected by events on the fields of Ukraine.” A “senior Whitehall source” added:

“There won’t be shying away from the idea of British weapons being used in Russia as part of Ukraine’s defence. We don’t want any uncertainty or nervousness over Britain’s support at this critical moment and a half-hearted or uncertain response might have indicated that.”

In other words, London is taking the lead in marking itself out as a formal belligerent in the proxy war, in the hope other Western countries – particularly the US – will follow suit. What’s more The Times strongly hints that Kursk is to all intents and purposes a British invasion. The outlet records:

“Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military… on a scale matched by no other country.”

Britain’s grand plans don’t stop there. Healey and Foreign Secretary David Lammy “have set up a joint Ukraine unit,” divided between the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The pair “held a joint briefing, with officials, for a cross-party group of 60 MPs on Ukraine,” while “Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support.” On top of military assistance, “industrial, economic, and diplomatic support” are also being explored.

The Times adds that in coming weeks, “Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Coordination Group,” an international alliance of 57 countries overseeing the Western weaponry flooding into Kiev. There, “Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia.” The British Defence Ministry also reportedly “spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.”

Evidently, the new Labour government has an ambitious vision for the proxy war’s continuation. Yet, if the “counterinvasion” is anything to go by, it’s already dead in the water. As The Times notes, the imbroglio is primarily “designed to boost morale at home and shore up Zelensky’s position,” while relieving pressure on the collapsing Donbass frontline by forcing Russia to redirect forces to Kursk. Instead, Moscow “has capitalised on the absence of four crack Ukrainian regiments to press their attacks around Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.”

Similarly, commenting on Starmer’s wideranging efforts to compel overt Western action against Russia, a “defence expert” told The Times: “if it looks as if the Brits [are] too far ahead of their NATO allies, it might be counterproductive.” This analysis is prescient, for there are ample indications London’s latest attempt to ratchet tensions and drag the US and Europe ever-deeper into the proxy war quagmire has already been highly “counterproductive”, and boomeranged quite spectacularly. Indeed, it appears Washington has finally had enough of London’s escalatory connivances.

In repeated press conferences and media briefings since August 6th, US officials have firmly distanced themselves from the Kursk incursion, denying any involvement in its planning or execution, or even being forewarned by Kiev. Empire house journal Foreign Policy has reported that Ukraine’s swoop caught the Pentagon, State Department, and White House off-guard. The Biden administration is purportedly not only enormously unhappy “to have been kept out of the loop,” but “skeptical of the military logic” behind the “counterinvasion”.

On top being a clear suicide mission, the eagerly advertised presence of Western weapons and vehicles on Russian soil “has put the Biden administration in an extremely awkward position.” Washington has since the proxy war erupted been wary of provoking retaliations against Western countries and their overseas assets, and the conflict spilling outside Ukraine’s borders. Adding to US irritations, the British-directed Kursk misadventure also torpedoed ongoing efforts to secure an agreement to halt “strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides.”

This comes as Kiev prepares for a harrowing winter without heat or light, due to devastating Russian attacks on its national energy grid. Putin has moreover made clear that Ukrainian actions in Kursk mean there is no longer scope for a wider negotiated settlement at all. Which is to say Moscow will now only accept unconditional surrender. The US has also seemingly changed course as a result of the “counterinvasion”.

On August 16th, it was reported that Washington had prohibited Ukraine’s use of British-made, long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russian territory. Given securing wider Western acquiescence to such strikes is, per The Times, a core objective for Starmer, this can only be considered a harsh rebuke, before the Labour government’s escalatory lobbying efforts have even properly taken off. The Biden administration had in May granted permission for Kiev to conduct limited strikes in Russia, using guided munitions up to a 40-mile range.

Even that mild authorisation may be rescinded in due course. Berlin, which like Britain had initially proudly promoted the presence of its tanks in Kursk, is now decisively shifting away from the proxy war. On August 17th, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner announced a halt to any and all new military aid to Ukraine as part of a wider bid to slash federal government spending. The Wall Street Journal reporting three days earlier that Kiev was responsible for Nord Stream II’s destruction may be no coincidence.

The narrative of the Russo-German pipeline’s bombing detailed by the outlet was absurd in the extreme. Conveniently too, the WSJ acknowledged that admissions of “Ukrainian officials who participated in or are familiar with the plot” aside, “all arrangements” to strike Nord Stream “were made verbally, leaving no paper trail.” As such, the paper’s sources “believe it would be impossible to put any of the commanding officers on trial, because no evidence exists beyond conversations among top officials.”

Such an evidentiary deficit provides Berlin with an ideal pretext to step away from the proxy war, while insulating Kiev from any legal repercussions. The narrative of Ukraine’s unilateral culpability for the Nord Stream bombings also helpfully distracts from the attack’s most likely perpetrators. This journalist has exposed how a shadowy cabal of British intelligence operatives were the masterminds, and potential executors, of the October 2022 Kerch Bridge bombing.

That escalatory incident, like Nord Stream’s destruction, was known about in advance, and apparently opposed, by the CIA. Chris Donnelly, the British military intelligence veteran who orchestrated the Kerch Bridge attack, has privately condemned Washington’s reluctance to embroil itself further in the proxy war, declaring “this US position must be challenged, firmly and at once.” In December that year, the BBC confirmed that British officials were worried about the Biden administration’s “innate caution”, and had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.”

The determination of Washington’s self-appointed “junior partner” to escalate the proxy conflict into all-out hot war between Russia and the West has only intensified under Starmer’s new Labour government. Yet, the Empire gives every appearance of refusing to take the bait, while seeking to curb London’s belligerent fantasies. This may be an encouraging sign that the proxy war is at last reaching its end. But we must remain vigilant. British intelligence is unlikely to allow the US to withdraw without a fight.

August 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

A strategic shift: Will Palestinian groups return to ‘martyrdom attacks’ inside Israel?

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 20, 2024

Yesterday, the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad warned Israel that they plan to return to ‘martyrdom attacks’ inside Israel.

“The Brigades affirm that martyrdom operations within the occupied territories will return to the forefront as long as the massacres by the occupation, the displacement of civilians and the assassination policy continue,” a joint statement by Al-Qassam Brigades and Al-Quds Brigades said.

Palestinian groups have refrained from using martyrdom attacks, or suicide bombings, as it is often called by mainstream media, as a central piece of their ongoing resistance against Israel.

The warning followed an explosion that rocked Tel Aviv on the evening of Sunday.

Initially, Israeli media conveyed a degree of confusion regarding what had transpired in the Israeli capital, before an Israeli police commander announced that there was a 99 per cent chance that the operation was “an attempted terror attack”.

Later, Israel said that the attacker may have originated from the Nablus area of the southern West Bank.

The attack and the announcement of responsibility by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad the following day are significant and could become the beginning of a strategic shift by Palestinians in their ongoing war against the Israeli occupation.

But why would Palestinians return to such operations?

Since 7 October, the Israeli war on Gaza has expanded to reach other domains, thus complicating the mission of the Israeli army, which has been overstretched to fight on several fronts.

While the war in Gaza itself remains the main battlefield, other war fronts began escalating with time, mainly the border war between the Lebanese Resistance Movement, Hezbollah, and the Israeli occupation army.

To prevent the West Bank from turning into a major front for the resistance, the Israeli army began carrying out bloody, but focused, attacks on Palestinian resistance brigades, which operate mostly in the northern West Bank.

Geographically isolated and operating mostly in small groups, Palestinian fighters underwent a bloody, disproportionate war against the Israeli army.

The Israeli occupation army’s confidence was buoyed by the fact that security forces and intelligence belonging to the Palestinian Authority openly cooperated with the Israeli military in their attempt to crush the resistance.

The degree of cooperation reached its zenith on 26 July, when PA security forces besieged the 26-year-old leader of the Tulkarm Brigades, and other fighters, in the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarm.

If it were not for hundreds of ordinary Palestinians who rushed to the hospital to rescue their youth, the fighters would have been apprehended, if not even worse.

But Israel’s military campaign to crush the resistance in the West Bank was hardly a success. According to Al Jazeera, 100 Palestinian operations were carried out in the last month alone.

Meanwhile, the resistance in Gaza has proved its durability, moving from the stage of defence to that of counter-attacks on more than one occasion. The operation by Hamas’s Al-Qassam fighters targeting Israeli forces inside the fortified Netzarim area in central Gaza, on Sunday, was a case in point.

These developments have been taking place in the larger context of the widening confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, with the former extending its pinpointed operations to reach Nahariya, among other areas, in northern Israel.

Despite all the setbacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to reverse his dwindling numbers among potential voters. According to a poll conducted by the Israeli newspaper Maariv on 9 August, the Likud Party, led by Netanyahu, would be the largest party in the Knesset if elections were held today. This is the first time such results have been seen since 7 October.

A combination of factors led to the resurgence of Netanyahu in opinion polls.

First, the Israeli leader’s main rival, Benny Gantz has failed to galvanize on the anti-Netanyahu and anti-government popular sentiments starting on 7 October.

Second, Netanyahu’s ability to guarantee US support for his aggressive regional policies helped reassure the Israeli public.

Third, the direct involvement of the US-British and other western navies in confronting Yemen’s Ansarallah – Houthis – in the Red Sea has partly downgraded the geopolitical threat of the Yemeni solidarity with the Palestinians.

Fourth, the daring assassination of top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 July, and the assassination of leading Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr the day before, allowed Netanyahu to sell the idea, however temporary, that Israel has regained its so-called ‘deterrence’.

And, finally, despite the interception of occasional missiles beyond the Gaza Envelope or Israel’s northmost regions, Israeli society in the central areas of the country has learned to adapt to the new reality of the war.

While the Israeli army is losing an unprecedented number of soldiers and equipment on multiple fronts, not all Israelis are experiencing that loss in their everyday lives.

The opposite is true for Palestinians and Lebanese.

For the former, the genocide in Gaza has turned into a daily reality, and the Israeli occupation forces’s war on the West Bank has proved to be the most violent since the Second Intifada or Uprising of 2002.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israel continues to target civilian areas as a matter of course, thus constantly challenging the rules of engagement that have governed the relationship between the Israeli army and the Lebanese resistance for years.

The new status quo may have assured Netanyahu that he might be able to carry on with his war in Gaza, reject any reasonable ceasefire proposal and maintain low-intensity warfare with Lebanon.

Netanyahu would also like to see the US-British war on Yemen escalate into an all-out war against Iran.

The Palestinian warning of their intention to return to striking deep inside Israel is meant to disturb Netanyahu’s calculations.

By denying Israelis any sense of security in major cities inside Israel, the Israeli public could, once more, turn against Netanyahu for failing to deliver on any of his lofty promises.

It remains unclear whether Sunday’s truck bombing was the exception or the start of a new norm. Either way, Netanyahu and his security apparatus must be aware of how such a move could prove equally costly to all of Israel’s losing wars, on all fronts.

August 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Starmer calls for comprehensive assistance to Ukraine despite the decline of Britain

By Ahmed Adel – August 20, 2024

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer asked the country’s National Security Council to consider giving more support to Kiev, the British newspaper The Times reported on August 18. Starmer’s request comes as half of British citizens believe their country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a recently published survey.

“Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support,” The Times reported, adding that foreign policy adviser to the last three Tory prime ministers, John Bew, went last week to Kiev as part of this effort.

At the same time, a military source told the outlet that Starmer’s policy of supporting Ukraine would be comprehensive.

“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said.

The Times added that a special group was created with the participation of the UK’s defence and foreign ministries to build a unified UK policy towards Ukraine.

This comes as the British newspaper The Independent reported on August 17 that the UK Ministry of Defense did not deny information that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had used British Challenger 2 tanks in the attack on the Kursk region, which Russia described as a terrorist act and called a provocation following the deaths of civilians.

The report quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying that Kiev could use the supplied weapons in the attack on the Kursk region. However, this did not apply to the Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which London allowed to be used only inside “internationally recognised” Ukrainian territory.

In January 2023, the UK also announced the transfer of 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine. At least two of them were destroyed by Russian troops in Kursk. It can be expected that Starmer’s new military package to Ukraine will face the same fate as the Challenger 2 battle tank – Russian forces destroying them.

Yet, despite British military equipment sent to Ukraine being destroyed effortlessly by Russian troops, in addition to the impossibility of Ukraine winning the war, Britain insists on maintaining a policy of trying to prolong the war despite massive domestic issues.

According to a survey by Ipsos published on August 19, 52% of citizens interviewed expressed a negative opinion about the direction the United Kingdom is taking, more than double the number who see the situation improving.

“22% said that they think things in Great Britain are heading in the right direction (-3 from Jul ’24), 52% wrong direction (+3), and 19% neither (N/C). This gives a net right direction of the country rating of -30, which is down from -24 last month,” Ipsos said of the survey results.

The poll found that the number of Britons with a favourable view of Keir Starmer has fallen to 38%, the same proportion as those without sympathy. Although Britons now view him with greater affinity, the article stresses that this is only the “honeymoon” period for the British leader.

Former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak only garnered the support of 20% of those interviewed, behind Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform UK party (25%), and Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats (22%). Respondents also ranked the Labour Party first, with 40% giving it a positive rating and 37% a negative rating. The Conservatives received 21% support, the Liberal Democrats 24%, and Reform UK 23%.

Britain’s economy has performed lacklustrely over the past decade. High living costs, elevated interest rates, and faltering productivity gains have particularly affected citizens, causing the British economy to enter recession in the second half of 2023 as households cut back on spending. Although the Bank of England earlier this month raised its growth forecast from 0.5% to 1.25% for 2024, it warned of a weaker medium-term outlook as high interest rates hit activity.

As Simon Pittaway, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, explained: “Britain’s medium-term record is far less impressive, and has been driven by a growing population rather than rising productivity. Without a return to productivity growth, living standards will continue to stagnate and Britain will continue to fall behind its peers.”

Yet, despite the grim economic situation, with most citizens believing the country is heading in the wrong direction and Starmer very far from enjoying popular support, the British prime minister has instead prioritised figuring out how to continue assisting Ukraine despite already providing support to the tune of £12 billion, rather than serving the interests of Britons and alleviating the growing poverty in the country.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »