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Craven Tokenism: The UK Suspension of Arms Export Licenses to Israel
The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to victory in the July elections, leaving the British Labour Party a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper could be found among the ranks on his attitudes […]
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“Straight as a Die”: Giving Starmer a Free Pass

The BBC’s banner headline reporting the UK’s 4 July general election result was clear: ‘Chris Mason: “Starmer tsunami” and civility after brutality’ This alliterated nicely but gave the misleading impression that there had been a massive display of public support for Starmer. Mason’s own analysis pointed elsewhere: ‘The story of this election is one of […]
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Did The West Provoke The Ukraine War? Sorry, That Question Has Been Cancelled

Is it possible for an entire ‘mainstream’ media system – every newspaper, website, TV channel – to completely suppress one side of a crucial argument without anyone expressing outrage, or even noticing? Consider the following. In February 2022, Nigel Farage, former and future leader of the Reform UK party, tweeted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine […]
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Ming Vase Politics: UK Labour and Purging the Corbynistas
By any reckoning, this was the move of a fool. A fool, it should be said, motivated by spite larded with caution. Evidently playing safe, adopting what has been called a “Ming Vase strategy” (hold it with scrupulous care; avoid danger), the British Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer is already laying its own boobytraps […]
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The West now wants “restraint” after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza

Suddenly, western politicians from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have become ardent champions of “restraint” – in a very last-minute scramble to avoid regional conflagration. Iran launched a salvo of drones and missiles at Israel at the weekend in what amounted a largely symbolic show of strength. Many appear to have been […]
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“Genocide Enablers” Gaza And The Corporate Media

A key function of the state-corporate media is to deny reality. They do supply news. But it is no accident that they supply news of a type that covers up the crimes of elite power. However, the appalling violence and destruction being inflicted in Gaza by Israel are simply too great to conceal. We may […]
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Elite Fear Of The Public: Ukraine, Gaza and Assange

It is a historical fact that powerful elites do not wish to be diverted from pursuing their selfish interests by the public. Minimal, unthreatening expressions of dissent may be tolerated in ostensible ‘democracies’. But public opinion needs to be managed, manipulated or, if necessary, simply ignored. After all, as Noam Chomsky has said, real ‘democracy is […]
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Gaza: “A Graveyard For Children”

An authentic democracy cannot be psychopathic because most people are not psychopaths. Most people would not vote to kill, wound and displace hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians for power, profit or territorial gain. Most people do not accept the great lie of ‘pragmatism’: that ‘the anarchical society’ of international relations mandates psychopathic violence: If […]

