KernowDamo

Right, so Joe Biden hasn’t had the best of weeks. The US is being thrown out of Niger, for not eliminating terrorists there in exchange for US troops being allowed to stay in the country, whilst also telling the Nigerien government not to do deals with Russia or Iran or they’ll walk away. Well, you’re being told to get out, so good going. Then there is the news that Biden is considering lifting sanctions on an Israeli businessman, who’s business model seems to basically consist of exploiting the Congolese over the last 3 decades for their mineral wealth, because Biden wants access to that mineral wealth too. Both these stories I’ve covered in recent videos. But now, where sanctions are possibly getting lifted on a wealthy Israeli rotter, Biden wants to impose sanctions again, though not on this Israeli chap, nor sadly on Israel itself, which needs a good sanctioning in my view and the view of many others. No, the sanctions are set to be place on India and just like Niger, it comes down to business dealings with Iran yet again. Right, so Joe Biden is now threatening sanctions on India, a big economy, powerful country, because they’ve done an investment deal with Iran and the US doesn’t like it and as always throws it’s weight around to get it’s own way, because still it believes that what it says on this planet should go and everyone should listen to them. It is petulant, weak and erodes diplomatic relations, it doesn’t strengthen them, but frankly this isn’t Biden’s part of the world, it has nothing to do with the US, it has everything to do with India and it’s issues with Pakistan and much like Israel and Palestine, the British Empire caused most of the problems. I’m not going to go into the history of Partition, but where people were divided based on ethno religious grounds, to form what is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, hostility has ensued over the years between them and India, not necessarily to the same extent as with Israel and Palestine, as in their case there is disputed territory between them, whereas Israel are intent on ethnic cleansing and seizing Occupied Palestinian Territories for Israel, that is if you listen to the hard right factions of Netanyahu’s government and certainly have been paying close attention to the goings on in Gaza. India and Pakistan have gone to war with each other on numerous occasions over the likes of Kashmir, peace treaties have been signed in between, but it’s always been a case of it’s a matter of time before things flare up. Now India and it’s decade long ruling Prime Minister Narendra Modi aren’t above reproach in and of themselves either. Modi is an authoritarian, many ethnic minorities in the country feel persecuted by him, he is ardently right wing, so you’d imagine he’d get on well with US administrations, and largely has. However India is also a founding member of BRICS, so has never sought US approval for it’s actions and doesn’t ask for any now. The original BRICs lineup after all, forming the initials, Brazil, Russia, India and China. Despite strong Russian links, the US have maintained a relationship with India, but now they are investing in Iran too, that’s the last straw? Iran is also a member of BRICs now. Where it began with 4 countries in 2006, it is now 9 members strong, with South Africa joining in 2010, changing the name at that point from BRIC to BRICS, and then at the start of this year, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined too, so that BRICS now encompasses some 30% of the planet and 45% of the global population. It is a very significant if still recent trade bloc and it doesn’t need the US. More and more it seems these countries are shunning them. Therefore with Iran now being part of the bloc, an opportunity to bypass Pakistan for trade opportunities has presented itself to India, which is where we get to the crux of matters. Right, now, in order to have trade negotiations with landlocked Asian countries, the ‘Stans as they are often colloquially referred to, India has to use Pakistani ports. The road to Afghanistan for example, leads through Pakistan, to the north of India lies the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir, which obviously therefore can’t be used, so it is either through Pakistan or massive detours through China and other ‘Stan countries to get to Afghanistan and I single Afghanistan out, because they are cited as one of the trade partners India want better access to in a recent Al-Jazeera article. Iran lies to the west of Pakistan, shares a border with them, but also does so with Afghanistan, therefore a new trade route via Iran would benefit India hugely. As such, India have just signed a 10 year deal to do up Iran’s Chabahar Port, to boost those trade ties with Afghanistan and other land locked countries beyond, Iran also has a border with Turkmenistan for example, with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan beyond. Lots of opportunity. You’d imagine India wanting to trade with Afghanistan, the Taliban then as that would be, would be more of an issue for the US frankly than India doing a deal with one of their BRICs trade partners, but no, Iran is the issue and frankly at this point and at this time with the US again moaning about anyone having diplomatic or economic ties to Iran, you automatically question why that is and at what point this actually becomes all about Israel again. Well the US haven’t overtly come out and said this, they do have enough beef with Iran as it is, but frankly why should their problem be anybody elses, its that old Mandela adage again, why should your enemies be our enemies ands clearly having been admitted to BRICs, Irana re not seen as the enemy of any of those countries, but sanctions from the US for any other nation dealing with Iran, would give them an excuse to and of course the US will be labelled massive hypocrites if they push ahead with sanctions against India over a trade deal with a trade partner, when they still won’t sanction Israel whilst committing genocide. More and more Biden’s administration are looking weak as a result of their support for Israel on the global stage. India risk sanctions if they do, bleat the US administration, stamping their tiny feet over it, spitting their dummies, throwing their toys out of the pram. India for their part have basically said grow up, though the actual wording was that the US should not take such a narrow view of this deal and would communicate the benefits of it to the US. The benefits don’t matter to them, it’s a but Iran moment again for them. This has been a plan for a long time, US sanctions on Iran prevented India going ahead with this back in 2003 apparently, but now they are in the same trade bloc, a new trade bloc that back then didn’t exist, things are very different now. For one thing, the US will want to continue dealing with India as they are a massively fast growing economy, but if they choose to impose sanctions, they’ll be cutting their own noses off to spite their faces, since India can probably shrug off the fallout and the new deals set to open up to them in inland Asia would probably be seen as a price worth paying if the US can’t get over itself. So what is Biden going to do then? If he imposes sanction on India over Iran, he will lose out more, the US will lose out more. India’s economy is booming right now, they’ll shrug it off and Biden will look even weaker than he already does trying and failing to throw his weight around as the US global influence continues to diminish. If after all of this rhetoric, the US doesn’t impose sanctions, why should anyone fear doing business with nations the US don’t like? The trouble is if you make threats and you don’t follow through, you just look weak. If you follow through and damage your own country more, then you just look stupid. It’s way past time the US stopped thinking it is the Big I Am, because, especially in light of everything that is happening with regards to Israel and Gaza since October 7th and the refusal to place sanctions on them, refusing to allow the UN to take measures via the Security Council, with the US using it’s veto, the nation seen more and more as the problem, is the US itsels, so why should anyone take any notice of their hypocrisy, when the biggest elephant in the room right now, is their inability or unwillingness, to do the right thing by Gaza and by Palestine and its people? If India flip them the bird at the end of the day, well they’ve brought that on themselves as well. Sanctions should be being placed on Israel, yet undermining Biden hugely is the thought of lifting them as is being mooted in regards to an exploitative Israeli billionaire’s interests in the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, wealth the US needs which also underlines their vulnerability by burning bridges with big economies like India’s. Find out all about that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Wes Streeting has this morning reminded us he’s a rancid little liar jumping to Keir Starmer’s tune as he chose to defend why Labour will not scrap the cruel poverty imposing two child benefit cap. You see, when it comes to national spending, how an elected government chooses to use public money, our money, this always comes down to a matter of choice. Dishonest politicians, dishonest parties will always make the claim that there is no money left, when the truth of the matter is, they can spend as much as they choose to create. We live in a country that controls it’s own currency and the means of production of it. If you print too much that can stoke inflation, but that is what taxation is for. So called taxpayers money doesn’t pay for anything, it’s simply a brake on inflation by taking money out of the economy as the government puts more in to it, so quite clearly when a politician says there is no money left, it simply isn’t true. When a politician says another party will bankrupt the country, it simply isn’t true and when Wes Streeting says combatting child poverty by scrapping this cruel tory device that even Suella Braverman says needs to go now, that is a political choice and a decision Labour are choosing to make. So what makes them any better than the Tories who introduced it? Right, so that was Wes Streeting, Keir Starmer’s health minion being rolled out on the Sunday morning media rounds, talking to the Trevor Phillips on Sky and first off, if you’re the sort of person who decides to bring up child poverty by invoking the Archbishop of Canterbury, inferring him calling for all parties to scrap it is none of his business and he should be more concerned with getting people into church on a Sunday morning, then you have no intentions of seriously broaching this subject, what an appalling excuse for a human being you are. No wonder Starmer welcomed him back into the party, no investigation required after Phillips was suspended over alleged Islamophobia, but Streeting, although not choosing to attack the Archbishop on a Sunday morning, he actually defended his right to virtue signal he called it – his job isn’t to virtue signal, it’s to appeal to the likes of you and try to find a sliver of humanity – subsequently lapped up the cue to be able to say well we are committee to reducing child poverty, whist not saying how and when pushed on this comment by the Archbishop and Streeting’s defence of him as to whether he would be saying yes to him, Streeting ended up stating in no uncertain terms Labour will be keeping child poverty, because Labour can’t fund it. That is what this amounts to. No semblance of an impartial lead up into this question, some hand-wringing and then an admission that Tory policy that has driven up child poverty and failed to get more people into work will actually be staying because, well we can’t afford to fix anything, the Tories have wrecked the economy. This is exactly what the Tories were saying about Labour in 2010, they fixed nothing except to set fire to public services, drive all of our bills up, inflict 14 years of hardship upon those with the least in the name of there being no money left and yet here is Labour now under Keir Starmer, saying exactly the same thing now about the Tories. At what point do you choose to make a different choice, because that is what it comes down to. This country was blown to hell during WWII and we weren’t told there was no money left then to put things back together were we? We were in a far worse financial situation, back then, but different choices were made. Attlee decided that under-consumption rather than over-production were the causes of economic collapse previously, and therefore embarked on a mission pushing for public ownership and wealth redistribution. He raised pensions, created social security, wages went up, sick leave was increased, encouraging more people back into work, all whilst restricting prices and restricting rent. Fully 20% of British industry was under public ownership, including mining, electricity, gas, steel and rail. Subsidised public housing came on offer, loans for housing were increased, all led to a million new homes being built. New nursery schools, university scholarships, free school meals, free education, increased teachers wages. The creation of the NHS is undoubtedly what this government is best remembered for and I’ve skipped loads, because this is I’ve used as an example of what is possible, what can be done by a government with the will to do it and Starmer’s Labour have none. Attlee did all of this and more in just 6 years, a single parliament basically, because the money is always there at the end of the day to do it with. There’s just no intention on Labour’s part to do it. On one part it comes down to the fact Starmer is a coward. He is afraid of bad press, he is afraid of Tory criticism, he is afraid that that criticism might jeopardise his chances of getting into power. So instead of promising pretty much anything, he chooses to tinker, to mildly change things that the Tories have done, and is therefore as a result so similar to the Tories in what he says he stands for, on what he puts on offer, that there is barely any discernible difference between the two parties. It is because he is constantly chasing this position of not giving the Tories any clear water between the two main parties, that he has also ended up in the ridiculous position of constantly being exposed as breaking his promises to the country. What the Tories think of him and his promises seems to matter more to Starmer than what the country actually does, it is what has prompted his pursuit of Tory voters too, under the Mandelson assumption that Labour voters and those on the left will still back Labour with nowhere else to go. Well they are going. Labour councillors continue to quit seemingly on a daily basis up and down the country, refusing to be sullied by this disgrace of what passes for their former party, members have gone as well in droves, both willingly or been pushed out as they choose to voice dissent and well, that can’t be allowed. But allowing kids to remain in poverty? As much as the national focus appears to be much more on the likes of Israel and Gaza and the disgust with the Labour Party is focussed on that, to my mind nothing underlines just how nasty a party Labour is than how it chooses to treat those who don’t have a vote, those too young to have a say, because the two child benefit cap is an assault on children and to say you have no money left to deal with this, scrap it, especially when Labour did originally say they would – well it seems Starmer and Co have calculated they needn’t bother because they aren’t likely to lose many Tory voters over this. To be honest, I think there is an element of doubt in how safe those poll numbers have been making them feel. The local election results showed that actually Starmer isn’t capturing all those Tory votes and he is losing support from the left to other parties or to the multitude of independent candidates springing up around the country, but clearly not enough that they are prepared to leave 250,000 kids in poverty, that lifting this cap would drag them out of. Coming from Wes Streeting however, this somehow comes across as even worse. This is a guy who grew up in poverty, a single parent household on a council estate, who has spoken of his childhood previously, but this week he was interviewed about all of this by the Independent who gave him a chance to plug his autobiography – God knows who’d buy that – called One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up, literally describing the poverty he grew up in, yet now is a politician, a shadow minister in a party, set to inflict more of that on hundreds of thousands of kids. Nothing, nobody exemplifies doing well and pulling the ladder up behind them quite like Wes Streeting does. I’d feel sick to my core to be inflicting the upbringing I had if I’d had it so tough as that on others in the here and now and I certainly don’t claim to have had it as tough as Streeting, despite having grown up through Thatcher’s far too long rule, but in no way, shape or form, would I knowingly accept doing that to others and then going on TV and defending it. All this boils down to is more of Rachel Reeves nonsense, self imposed fiscal rules, to sound sensible on the economy, when all it really means is nothing will change. This is totally affordable if Reeves would tax the rich and allow the freedom to spend more, just look at Rishi Sunak as an example – he’s increased his wealth it’s been announced by £121m, yet paid just £0.5m in tax, a 0.004% tax rate, so it is obvious - but she won’t because she’s a Red Tory, who takes advice from George Osborne and belongs, just her economic plans, in the toilet. She’d rather see kids in poverty, than tax people like Sunak more. Streeting is an absolute disgrace as well though, who betrays his own background and does so to climb that slippery pole of ambition he’s got. He is therefore amongst the very worst of MPs and very much needs deposing from his seat and there just happens to be a very special young lady who plans to do just that, Leanne Mohamad, a British Palestinian is challenging Streeting for his seat and you can find out all about what makes her such a serious threat to Streeting’s future ambitions in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so for all the talk of their needing to be sanctions placed on Israel as the Gaza genocide continues, here comes Genocide Joe, set to lift sanctions instead and of course it is because he and his administration, not to mention the US itself will benefit from doing so and as always seems to be the case, there ends up being a Billionaire businessman involved, one that has been sanctioned for corrupt business practices, having cheated an African nation out of their cut of the profits. The fact the businessman involved also happens to be Israeli, a guy who has literally made himself a billionaire off the back of impoverished Africans means the optics of this are even worse, but to get one up on the Chinese as this story seems to ultimately boil down to, Joe Biden thinks lifting sanctions on this awful individual is a price worth paying. Right, so this is a story that is going rather underreported, but the White House are reportedly considering lifting the sanctions placed on an Israeli billionaire businessman so awful in his alleged practices, that the sanctions were actually placed upon him by Donald Trump, and if you’re so corrupt that Donald Trump can’t stomach you, that does speak volumes. Of course it would be dishonest of me to not note that Trump later on lifted the sanctions on this guy himself, just days before he left office, Gertler had hired Trumps own lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to win this reprieve, only for Biden to put them back in place within two months when he came to office. However now, things have changed, Biden wants something and seems to think the way to get it, is to lift the sanctions on this wrong’un himself. Now far be it from me to imply that Israeli’s having been born, raised and living in Israel see nothing wrong in punching down on people they consider inferior or worth less, but given how Palestinian people are treated by them, considered less than human by many of them, that this is an inherent way of thinking amongst these people. I would like to think the masses of Israeli protesters disgusted with their current government and wanting Netanyahu’s resignation, show most of them are better than that, however looking at this billionaire and how he gained his fortune, it’s easy to think that some at least, really are raised to think they are better than others and that lesser beings are there to be exploited. The man in question is called Dan Gertler, founder and president of DGI Group, Dan Gertler International and is the grandson of the founder of the Israeli Diamond Exchange, the world’s largest diamond exchange as it happens, so it’s a family of means, but Gertler has very much built on that himself, though very much built on the backs of others as that is. To be honest you can say that about all billionaires, it’s such a vast sum of money nobody can actually earn that in a lifetime, but only through exploitation. There’s exploitation and there is Dan Gertler though. Gertler has invested heavily primarily in diamond and copper mining activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has been doing so since the 90’s, whilst also having major interests in Congolese gold, cobalt, oil, agriculture and banking industries, much of this possible due to his close ties with former Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who served as President between 2001 and 2019, so a significant span of time during which Gertler was active in the country. The relationship was considered corrupt. Gertler operated what was basically a monopoly, on copper and cobalt – 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves are in the DRC, so he quickly made an absolute fortune, he held sway over which companies got mining licences, he was a key emissary for Kabila and his government, very much feet under the table sort of stuff. He popped up on the International Monetary Fund’s and World Bank’s radar by 2012, as they froze loans to Congo when the Congolese government refused to publish details between state owned mining firms and Gertler’s and when one of Gertler’s partners, the Eurasian Natural Resources Company, or ENRC, bought themselves out of their partnership with Gertler at a cost of £340m, it soon became public knowledge that Gertler’s mining operations and his personal fortune were from "looting Congo at the expense of its people". Gertler’s own response to all of this was to give an interview in which he said: ‘I should get a Nobel prize. They need people like us, who come and put billions in the ground. Without this, the resources are worth nothing.’ The money not enough then, you deserve a prize for it too then? Not if you get sanctioned into the floor over it by the US, which is what happened to him in 2017, lifted briefly by Trump as aforementioned, but now sanctioned again. So why is Joe Biden now considering lifting the ban on this widely regarded as corrupt businessman, especially given the optics of him being Israeli given what Israel is currently doing and that Biden is overtly supporting, arming, supplying, to a far greater tune than any other nation going. It’s a bit hypocritical that a guy like Biden who shows such preferential treatment for Israel at the expense of Palestine, has sanctioned a guy who has looted Congo at the expense of it’s people. You’d think they had more in common than at first sight, perhaps that is the issue? Well the issue actually seems to be China. Yes, let’s shake this video up some more, we’ve gone from the US to Israel to Africa, let’s got to China with this story as well, because the crux of the matter, is the mineral wealth in the DRC and due to Gertler’s actions leading to Western sanctions, on the flipside has been the fact Gertler is so entrenched in DRC mineral deals and influence, access to Congolese mineral wealth has become a lot harder for them, but not for China. The copper and cobalt deposits are crucial components in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries and the West is finding itself increasingly reliant on China to get these minerals from, they having a significant foothold in Congolese mineral access themselves, they after all aren’t sanctioning Gertler. So in the name of remaining competitive over the matter of EV mineral components and completely unwilling to get over the China are bad, they’re mates with Russia boo hiss, kind of an attitude, the Biden administration is now looking to lift sanctions on Gertler, in a bid to just get him out of the way and by doing so will effectively be rewarding him for decades of alleged exploitation. No seizure of assets, no nothing, let him walk away with his apparently ill gotten gains, lift sanctions slightly to the point he can sell off his assets, keep all that money too and then sod off back to Israel essentially. Here’s an excerpt from Regtechtimes, a tech media outlet, explaining the deal: ‘The proposed arrangement, as revealed by anonymous US officials, involves limited sanctions relief for Dan Gertler in exchange for his complete withdrawal from Congo, including surrendering his royalty interests in key mining projects. This strategy aims to sever Dan Gertler’s ties to Congo’s mining sector, thereby potentially paving the way for more transparent and ethical investment practices. Key components of the deal include: 1. Relinquishment of Royalty Streams: Gertler would need to give up his royalty interests in major mining projects, such as those controlled by Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) and Glencore Plc. 2. Auditing and Escrow: Gertler would be subjected to an audit of his assets, with half of any proceeds from royalty sales being placed in escrow. 3. Legal Concessions: As part of the agreement, Dan Gertler would be required to drop lawsuits against various individuals and organizations that have investigated his activities, including members of the Congo Is Not For Sale consortium. This proposal underscores the Biden administration’s pragmatic approach to foreign policy, balancing the need to uphold anti-corruption standards while advancing strategic economic interests.’ Now the aforementioned Congo Is Not For Sale Consortium are not happy at all with this, arguing that allowing Gertler to walk away with the profits of his corruption only perpetuates corruption and there is also the distastefulness of choosing to negotiate a deal with someone who appears to have conducted his business for decades with scant regard for the morals or ethics of his actions and thusly that reflects on any deal which allows him to walk away with his plunder and when the only reason really at the end of the day the Biden administration can point to over this being to pint over at Xi Jinping and say but China, it’s all very weak and pathetic. The other side of this is would Biden go down this road if this guy wasn’t Israeli as well. Does that have any bearing on any of this and people will absolutely ask that question, especially of the Biden administration who are far too close to the Israeli government, but then all US administrations seem to be that. The timing of all of this may just be unfortunate coincidence on Biden’s part, but it means questions will be asked as to what his motivation to do this and do this now really are. This is the Biden administration getting involved in another African nations business, it didn’t go so well for them doing this further north, up in Niger as I spoke about in this video here, the Nigerien government so fed up with the Americans – and again, Israel comes into this story too – that they’ve just thrown the US out, a recommendation for your next watch if you care to stick with the channel and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid, Cheers folks.

Right, so following the local elections, which were underwhelming for Labour, clearly a party that needs to make inroads into the Tory vote, yet saw them lose three fifths of that vote split away to the Lib Dems, the Green Party and to Independents. They underachieved despite claims and in no small part the main issue being cited is of course the Party’s indefensible position on Israel and Gaza, but as much as that in and of itself has been enough of a subject of disgust and dismay for many Labour members and ordinary voters, it can also be seen as symptomatic of a greater Labour crisis, which is that there is a complete moral vacuum at the top of the party. It is run by awful people, with awful beliefs, who promise little but Tory lite tinkering in exchange for your vote and demand through absolute authoritarianism that those elected under the Labour banner, do exactly as they’re told or else. It is that that has led to no fewer than nine Councillors having quit the party since the local elections, May turning into a month of Labour implosion, as nothing changes, not the stance on Israel and Gaza and certainly not the diktat being handed down. More councillors will consistently bleed away, so if they can’t stand Labour any more, active representatives of the Party, why would you still want to vote for them, for them to carry on doing the same, but able to do it to you and do it nationwide? Right, so Labour is a moral vacuum and it is driving not just voters and lay members of the party away, but increasingly we’re seeing local Labour representation disappearing too and to lose no fewer than nine councillors since the local elections – and these are just the ones I’ve been made aware of, such things don’t always make the news – but those that have, have been excoriating in their reasoning and the party reaction hasn’t always been conducive to proving them wrong, if anything in some instances doubling down just proves the councillor in question right. Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire has seen Labour crumbling for some time, the latest Councillor to abandon Labour there actually being the fifth to do so just this year and having held local elections this year, it’s not a good sign that within 2 weeks of being elected as a Labour councillor, Musarrat Khan has quit the party, citing Keir Starmer’s continued lack of an apology for his ongoing stance on Gaza, the inference being made in a BBC article covering the resignation of Cllr Khan being that this comes down to Keir Starmer’s watered down amendment to the SNP permanent ceasefire motion called in February, that stitch up, the allegations of leaning on Speaker Lindsay Hoyle and his Labour amendment being called, when it went against standing orders to do so, ended up passing, simply calling for a ceasefire that lasts, the permanence of it removed, but the ability for Labour MPs to say they called for a ceasefire is now there, ignominious as that might be. Cllr Khan also cited the welcoming in to the party of Natalie Elphicke as another reason she felt she could not continue to represent the party, and frankly I don’t blame her – when a hard right Tory is welcome, but the likes of Diane Abbott look set to be replaced because their suspension for stupid factional reasoning will never be lifted. Socialists out, hard right Tories in? That isn’t the Labour Party and the Starmer faction will never relinquish control again so it will never functionally change from now being a Tory lite obstacle to change desperately needed in this country. Labour’s response was to say that Cllr Khan had been administratively suspended two days prior to her resignation, implying she was jumping before pushed, but that was just 8 days after she was elected to Kirklees Council. She was a valid candidate on the 2nd May, but by the 10th she was suspended? Why is that then? No comment. Undermining Labour’s position all the more on that score, is the fact Khan was on the shortlist to replace outgoing Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, so not only was she in good standing, she was highly rated too. Labour lost control of Kirklees Council in this years locals, another example of an underwhelming performance, now they’ve lost another councillor there already, and it seems rank dishonesty, more Tory MPs being welcomed into the Labour Party and Gaza are to blame for this, all amounting to more examples of the moral vacuum in Starmer’s Labour. Literally the day after Khan’s resignation, 5 Labour Councillors quit in North Wales, Flintshire and again this comes down to moral vacuum, though not Gaza for a change in this case. We’ve become accustomed to Tories in government certainly, having been found to have breached the rules on multiple occasions, probably the most corrupt British government we’ve seen in our lifetimes, where once upon a time when you got found out, you were expected to tender your resignation. Now it doesn’t happen, they get forgiven and carry on. That sadly sends a message out to the country that this is suitable conduct and it seems that has extended to local levels too and not unique to the Tories when Labour officials are doing it as well. Now this is a staunchly Labour controlled council, no local elections here this year, however it is still the beginning of the administrative year and therefore a new Council leader had to be elected, but with accusations by some within his own party, an unnamed Labour cabinet member was accused of misleading backbenchers, failing to correct the record and demands were made that they resign. The lead accusing councillor, Cllr Alasdair Ibbotson, said: ‘One can get away with quite a lot in politics, but it’s a hard and fast rule, whether in Parliament, the Senedd or council chamber that one does not lie to or mislead the chamber and one does not lie to or mislead a committee. Where such a thing occurs, there is a strong principle and convention in this country that where a cabinet member or minister does the same, they must resign from that position. These are issues of fundamental honour. Unfortunately, earlier this year, a cabinet member, and it could be accidentally or inadvertently, misled a committee. He has chosen not to correct the record and not to stand down. The reason this convention exists is that councillors can only have faith in what they’re told by those in leadership positions when there are consequences where wrong information is provided.’ The result of this was, when it came down to it, Ibbotson and 4 others felt they couldn’t in good conscience stand by their party and so for the sake of this chronic individual remaining in his post, whoever it is, Labour lost 5 of their councillors over this, crossing the floor and forming a new independent group. Moral vacuum, it is spreading, it isn’t just at parliamentary level this Starmer style of politics has become an infestation, a disease, but also at local level too. And then there is the latest example, as three more councillors have quit just this week, in Hackney, Diane Abbotts patch and they chose to do it in the best most hard-hitting way they could have done, by announcing their resignations from the Labour Party on Hackney Borough Council, by going to the Hackney Divestment Camp set up in the Borough to make their announcement, and announce that they were setting up a new Independent socialist group on the council, the Hackney Independent Socialists, citing Starmer’s U-turns on policy areas, including trade union freedoms, his ‘Sir Kid Starver’ policy of keeping the two child benefit cap, his support for more NHS privatisation and his treatment of their local MP, Diane Abbott, but also heavily cited Gaza in their thinking and that not only do Starmer’s Labour continue to support arming Israel, but that they do so even as the regime moves into Rafah, with all the horrors we’ve borne witness to already, nothing moves the party position on this. Labour’s response to these three quitting the party though and standing as independents? They’ve had the brass neck to tell them to resign their seats and contest by-elections! So, when can we expect the three Tory MPs that have defected to Labour to do that then? Christian Wakeford is 2 years overdue now, Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphicke though, come on, where are the demands for a by-election there then? Absolute rinsing hypocrisy and zero acknowledgement of the reasons these councillors have felt the need to leave. Are they just more fleas being shaken off? That is how Labour like to refer to people walking away from the party these days isn’t it? Meanwhile Starmer announced his first steps of a Labour government this week, six fixes as he also called them, how these fixes are more like stitch ups and first steps makes him sound like a toddler, frankly a toddler probably has more political aptitude and is definitely more honest about it too. Find out about the latest relaunch of Starmer’s leadership, which is what it really was here in this video recommendation and I’ll hopefully catch on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so this story really does underline just how much credibility the US and the Biden administration are losing their clout on the global stage over what is going on in the Middle East and that this extends beyond that region, it’s becoming a global issue for America, because for as much as the US are getting rinsed for basically being Israel’s biggest cheerleaders, they are still going around acting like they are the planet police for peace and prosperity, despite actually being the leading cause of anything but and to that end, they’ve been given short shrift in no uncertain terms in Africa, for trying to lay down the law to one nation there as to who they can and cannot do deals with themselves. Well with the US arming Israel and keeping the genocide in Gaza going, the Africans were having none of it, and they’ve just thrown the US army out on their ear, but to listen to mainstream sources, you’d think it was all Russia’s fault. Right, so the US are getting chucked out of a West African nation and the way most media are telling it, it’s all down to Russian interference, but if you listen to what the actual government concerned have to say, they tell a slightly different story. We are in Niger, you don’t hear much about Niger in the news do you? But the US have given them major beef and they aren’t having a bar it. Following on from the events of 9/11, there was of course the war on terror, pursuing bin-Laden, Al-Qaeda, which rose to prominence following the deposing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, then ISIL, but later on after they were largely routed in the Middle East, they found strongholds in northern and western Africa, the removal of Gaddafi in Libya for example, led to a power vacuum which terrorist elements soon filled, but equally the instability in many West African nations enabled them to take root their too and so by 2013, the US established a deployment of troops, around 100 of them to start with, but this has since grown to nearly 1000, in order to deal with Isil and Al-Qaeda groups that were terrorising the region and were basing themselves out of a region called The Sahel, which is like a belt across northern Africa, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Red Sea, and is basically the boundary between the Sahara Desert and green more tropical equatorial regions further south. Co-operation to eliminate terrorist threats in Niger, by terrorist groups displaced from the Middle East, this should have been win-win situation for both. Niger had US troops on able to deal with these groups who were killing their people now and the US had a base from which to conduct further missions to deal with these groups for good. OK, fine. As long as that is actually what happens. Well, the accusation now, is that it hasn’t. That the US have not dealt with these groups properly, adequately, yet maintain a presence in Niger, without living up to their side of the bargain. You can understand they might be a bit aggrieved about that. Now despite the US presence, and what hasn’t helped the US position certainly, is the fact that they apparently were sat on their hands whilst a military coup took place in Niger last year, which deposed the socialist and first ever Arab leader of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum. I daresay the ousting of a socialist wasn’t something the US were going to cry much over, so you might wonder if they chose to let this happen or were they slacking off so much they just didn’t notice? Whatever the truth of the matter, things have blown up in their faces somewhat, as the military takeover and the self proclaimed President of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, bit of a mouthful, Abdourahamane Tchiani. At this point the US appeared to notice something had changed, didn’t it seems like the idea of a military takeover, they don’t have a long history of being good news, not to mention there’s nothing democratic about them of course and chose to freeze security support and their counter terrorism activities. The new Nigerien administration then decided to cut all diplomatic ties off to the US, then come last month, Niger demanded all US troops leave the country now as well. Throw them out and if the mainstream are to be believed, they’re now going to be replaced by Russia. A Putin plot no doubt! It has a lot more to do with the fact the US had withdrawn their security and counter-terrorism duties, yet still chose to remain in the country, despite that literally being the reason they were allowed to stay there. That is the extent of most mainstream coverage of why Niger are throwing out the US, but it isn’t all of it. Despite essentially squatting in their country at this point, the Biden administration, were still trying to dictate who the new administration of Niger, could open up diplomatic ties with. We’ve seen this before. The US saying if you talk to them I won’t be your best friend, its playground stuff, but when Niger are getting no benefit from you being in their country any more AND you’re trying to tell them who they can have relations with instead, it isn’t going to wash. BUT, it isn’t Russia that are the issue here, it isn’t Russia the US have apparently been warning Niger off over, that’s just a very convenient narrative for the media to cover, because it is very easy and very popular to hate Russia, hate Putin, but when the truth drags us back to the Middle East again, all of a sudden it becomes much less clear cut. You see it isn’t JUST Niger talking to Russia that has given Biden and Co so much consternation, it is because Niger is talking to Iran too. Amazing that so many media outlets can mention Russia but not Iran. Iran of course are opposed to Israel, not least because they are aiding for example the Houthis in Yemen and their blockade of the Red Sea, but of course Israel attacked their embassy in Syria and retaliation was meted out, the US shot down drones and missiles from Iran flying through Iraqi airspace, coming to Israel’s aid. Niger are not pro Israel, they had bilateral relations up until 2002 before they were terminated, Niger has for a long time viewed Israel and Palestine in exactly the same light as apartheid South Africa, they voted yes in the famous 1975 UN resolution which determined that Zionism is a form of racism and their views since have not shifted. Now it seems allying themselves with a more proactive opponent of the Zionist regime really does have the US in a flap, but the US support for Israel given what has happened for the last 7 months, well, I wouldn’t want you on my doorstep either! Here’s an excerpt from Iranian media outlet Press TV, which quotes an article from the Washington Post, however the US outlet of course was one that omitted to mention Iran: ‘Niger’s prime minister says the termination of military cooperation and bilateral relations between his country and the United States was due to American threats and Washington’s opposition to the African nation's partnership with Iran and Russia. Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine told The Washington Post in an interview published on Tuesday that the US had tried to dictate what countries Niamey can have close relations with and had not justified its military presence in the West African country. Underlining the US failure to combat terrorism in Niger and the Sahel region for a decade, Zeine said, “The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns. It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us.” Zeine said the United States' tone and behaviour toward Nigerien officials were the “primary reason” for the broken relations. The Nigerien prime minister criticized US officials’ call on Niamey not to engage closely with Iran and Russia as they were two of Washington’s adversaries. Zeine said he had been given an ultimatum by the US administration to have security with Washington or be close to Tehran and Moscow.’ If you go off with Russia and Iran we can’t be friends anymore threaten the US and Niger basically say, well go home then. It’s like Nelson Mandela said: ‘One of the mistakes, which some political analysts make, is to think that their enemies should be our enemies.’ It’s one more in a growing list of examples of the US being on the wrong side of global consensus right now and again showing that actually more and more countries are growing not just fed up with them, but no longer fear them either. The US failed to do what was asked of them, they had a position in West Africa no doubt for their own ends as well, Israel is their foothold in the Middle East and why they are so devoted to them, is for that reason, but with Niger having this ongoing issue with national security amidst remnants of Al-Qaeda and ISIL still active, if the US can’t do the job they promised, yet are arrogant and entitled enough to try to dictate domestic policy to you when in your country, then they aren’t much of a friend. This appears to be the position of the Nigerien government right now, this is the point they’ve reached and the US are being thrown out over it and frankly with their immovable attitude regarding Israel, regarding Iran and Russia and by all means this isn’t a video extolling those countries virtues, there absolutely are plenty of reasons to criticise them, however no matter which way you look at this, the US have again only got themselves to blame for what has happened in Niger and you have to wonder, well who is it going to be next? How many more diplomatic crashes are there going to be, because of Israel, because fundamentally, this fall out, this cut off of diplomatic and military ties now, all comes down to the US placing their Israel relationship above their relationships with others. And yet despite attacking Iran and Niger considering entering into diplomatic talks with the theocracy, the US has actually been begging them for another favour and AGAIN it all comes down to helping Israel, even as the genocide rolls on, the brass neck of them is crazy, find out all about that story in this video here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so it looks like no matter how desperate you might be to maintain control of your government, things are cracking up for Benjamin Netanyahu and it all comes down to what the eventual outcome for Gaza actually is. Netanyahu cannot afford to let up on this war in Gaza that he has begun, in a bid seemingly to keep himself in power, he has led a seven month long and counting genocide in the Strip, all supposedly in retaliation for a one night incursion by Hamas on the night of October 7th, always massively disproportionate a response as it has been and an ulterior motive has long been surmised, but with the ICJ now examining a plausible case for genocide against Israel, with arrest warrants potentially heading his way as well from the ICC, with attacks coming from all around Israel militarily, from the likes of Lebanon, to Iran to the Houthis in Yemen, causing economic damage too, relying on the bank of Uncle Sam for forever and a day won’t last forever. But when it comes to not at all hiding Israel’s true intentions for Gaza, there are splits opening up in government, because now this can of worms has been opened, how it gets closed there is no agreement on and this is why it is impossible to negotiate with Israel right now, with some absolute mad men who will never accept anything less than seizing Gaza for themselves, something no country on Earth, if you take them at their word at any rate, will allow. And to point to a perfect example of such a mad man, you only need look at the loosest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ministerial cannons, the minister for security Itamar Ben Gvir, increasingly throwing his weight around in Netanyahu’s government, making a speech demanding the colonisation of Gaza. Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu is becoming increasingly isolated even within his own government. Time after time he has given in to demands from the hard right elements of his government in order to keep his coalition together, the only thing keeping him in power and out of jail it seems at this point, however it isn’t exclusively coming from the likes of Ben Gvir, but we’ll start with him anyway. We’re becoming more familiar with this loudmouth in the press and on our screens, Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister for Security, and leader of the far right Party Otzma Yehudit, an extremist, ultranationalist party, utterly anti-Arab, it’s a racist Jewish Supremacist party and Netanyahu chose to go into coalition with that, for the sake of taking back power. There is no limits it seems to what he’s prepared to do to be in control. But keeping such godawful people happy in order to keep the coalition together, has been an epic act of juggling, and for as much as you might do things, awful things, to placate people like him, in doing so, you lose support elsewhere and that is what we’re seeing. Three days ago was Israel Memorial Day, the anniversary of the state’s founding, on the 14th May 1948 and speeches were given by both Netanyahu and Ben Gvir, but where Netanyahu found himself heckled by those opposed to what he was doing, one man apparently shouting at him that he was garbage and saying that Netanyahu killed his children. But Ben Gvir picked his audience a little better, because he chose to attend his fan club, he chose to address those who seem to worship the ground he walks on, he chose to attend a rally held by the Nahala movement, hard right Israeli settlers that I’ve spoken about in other videos, led by Daniella Weiss, quite the Israeli name there, but what do expect when your parents came from the US and Poland. She was actually born Palestinian for all her devotion to Israel, because Israel didn’t exist when she was born, so she’s a bit of a walking hypocrisy really. Anyway, Ben Gvir was treated to a heroes welcome by Nahala as he always is and told them absolutely what they wanted to hear: Three broken ribs from a recent car accident in case you weren’t aware of that reference, but stood behind a podium reading ‘Colonisation in Gaza will bring security. Returning home’ Is saying the quiet part out loud. Go into Rafah, commit assassinations all received to rapturous applause. Gaza was up until 2005, settled by Israeli’s there were some 21 settlements there. We know Nahala want them restored, we know they want to build more, we know they want the Palestinians removed from Gaza and it to be assimilated into the Israeli state, Daniella Weiss herself thinks Ireland would be a nice place for the Gazan people, for example. Ben Gvir didn’t get everything his own way though. His speech to setters in Sderot might have gone down well, but when he travelled to Ashdod, he was pointed at by woman and called a criminal, which his rhetoric and the actions he’s not only sanctioned, but celebrated absolutely are. It’s not just from his far right coalition partners that Netanyahu is struggling though, it’s happening with his closer ministers too. Take his defence minister Yoav Gallant. Always a happy looking chap, a permanent expression giving off he who smelt it dealt it vibes. He, like Netanyahu is one of the three Israeli figures who are allegedly facing arrest warrants from the ICC, and whether this has prompted a swipe at his boss, very uncharacteristically or not I don’t know, but it could be he’s also sick of the hard right dictating to the boss and the boss jumping every time they do, that threat of collapsing the government always on the table from them. This is a guy in Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, so are the cracks happening not just in the Israeli government, as unstable as it is, this was always a distinct possibility, but is it actually happening inside Netanyahu’s own party too? So what’s he said then Damo? Well, in light of Ben Gvir’s comments, it seems a line has been drawn by Gallant and it adds weight to the thinking that what Ben Gvir was saying might actually be the plan, or certainly under consideration, because Gallant has said under no circumstances would he set up a military government to run Gaza. It seems there might actually be no plan right now for what happens afterwards and this appears to be coming as a surprise to some Israeli ministers, but as has been said by me and many other commentators, Netanyahu can’t afford for this to stop. Gallant wants to know what happens when they’ve eliminated Hamas, Ben Gvir has said what he wants, Gallant has said he’s not having a bar of that, Netanyahu is undecided. How does he weasel out of this one? Well it gets worse for him. Two other ministers, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot have come out in support for Gallant on this point and they too come from another coalition party, National Unity, so that’s another potential whole party that could fracture away. Worsening the situation further is that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has come down on the side of Ben Gvir, he’s also far right, so no surprise really, but he heads another coalition party, the Religious Zionist Party. So you have all these different coalition parties, Netanyahu has been holding seven separate parties together, to keep himself in power and more and more it is looking impossible for that to be sustained. And it gets worse from here too. Ben Gvir has popped up again now demanding that Netanyahu fire Gallant over what he’s saying and saying that he must be replaced to achieve the wars goals. But what are those goals? Netanyahu doesn’t seem to know and more often than not, it is what Ben Gvir says that goes. He’s said: ‘From Gallant’s point of view, there is no difference between whether Gaza is controlled by IDF soldiers or whether Hamas murderers control it. This is the essence of the conception of a defense minister who failed on October 7, and continues to fail even now. Such a defense minister must be replaced in order to achieve the goals of the war.’ Will Netanyahu sack a member of his own party in government to placate a coalition partner, who will probably threaten to collapse the government again if he doesn’t get his way? This government is totally unsustainable and it looks like it could be reaching a point of no return. Of course Israeli plans for the seizure of Gaza are nothing new, the plans to do it, were drawn up years ago and now the person who actually drew them up is in a position to enact them too as this video recommendation will tell you all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so the country is crying out for change so says Keir Starmer as he unveils a Tony Blair style pledge card that people can carry around with them to remind them of what he stands for at this particular snapshot in time and indeed have a tick chart of the lies he told in exchange for your vote as he ends up breaking every single one of them as he has broken every promise, pledge, vow, oath, guarantee, declaration or list thereof on previous occasions. Starmer since becoming leader has not stuck by a single thing he has ever said he stood for, he stood on 10 pledges to become Labour leader, pretending he was continuity Corbyn and instead has morphed into cardboard Tony Blair, now having formally announced candidacy selections for Corbyn’s replacement in Islington North, he’s put the final nail in the coffin that he is in any way an honest or trustworthy individual. So in which case, when he’s made and binned so many policy positions before, his 6 fixes for Britain, strikes me as an unfortunate choice of words, because he’s fixed the Labour Party for the establishment and for the right wing, fixed it so it is now Tory light and anything but an alternative to the Tories and will do the same to the country if given the chance. Right, so speech this morning from Keir Starmer, preaching to the faithful, we had the person who is actually in charge Rachel Reeves do a turn at the podium bleating about being a banker, not playing fast and loose with the finances when she’s not actually it seems prepared to spend on much at all, small state Tory politics, but what else do you expect by someone who goes to George Osborne for advice on how to be the chancellor, others spoke too before she let Starmer say his piece, pushing these 6 fixes, which are frankly a sick joke, not just because of how mundane, how Tory and how tone deaf to the needs of the country they actually are, but as much for what Starmer clearly isn’t prioritising instead. You have to bear in mind if these are the 6 things going on the flashcards, the 6 key items that are defining Labour going into the next election, then these are the things foremost in Starmer’s mind right now that he believes will win him the election and looking at them, he’s still banking on not being Rishi Sunak to deliver him into Number 10, because functionally he’s just taken stuff that the Tories have been saying. There’s no implication he’s listened to ordinary people, what matters in their lives, though there’s a veneer of trying to imply that in a couple, though actually when you think about it a bit more deeply as I have here, there’s nothing there. For one, none of these are actually policies, of course they aren’t, there’s zero detail to any of them. These are aspirations, things he wants to achieve and it’s all very safe ground too, anything remotely controversial, anything the Tories or other detractors might pick on don’t get a look in. So let’s look at these six fixes, you probably won’t be surprised to know if you watch regularly I will have found issues with them, but that really is because Starmer never fails to let people down when they need somebody who’s going to champion something actually transformative and positive that will change lives for the better, not to mention the running of this country. First fix is to deliver economic stability. Starting as vaguely as he ever does really, what exactly does that tell us? The economy is on the floor right now, we’re just dragging ourselves out of recession, growth was minimal before that and has been for years where the Tories have starved the country of investment, generating economic returns. Starmer’s fix is to maintain that stability. Quite the aspiration, to just keep us out of recession! Functionally it is a promise to not rock the boat, not do anything radical, basically promising to not crash the economy which really is a high bar isn’t it? Combine that with all the stuff Rachel Reeves has ruled out because of her stupid fiscal rules, so forget about any real changes to levels of government spending and investment again. We’re promising more of the same on the economy, just without the Liz Truss screw up. That is all this fix amounts to. The second one is to cut NHS waiting times, now this is probably the one that is of any of them actually something decent, waiting times must be cut, nobody disagrees with that, the knock on effect to the economy for one, is significant, people waiting for operations or treatment for various conditions unable to be economically active because of their health hold ups and of course aside from the whole economic picture peoples lives are at stake, so if Starmer can get waiting lists down, then great, but how? 40,000 new appointments a week he promises, but no information on how fast it will happen. How is he going to do this? We know where Labour are saying funding is coming from, the non dom and tax avoidance crackdowns that Reeves has pledged, that is basically paying for everything Labour is promising, demonstrating just how little that will be and how little intention Reeves has from deviating from Tory style levels of investment, but what will this money be spent on to get waiting lists down? We need staff from overseas immediately, because that’s the only way this gets fixed fast, along with the investment in what they need. The problem is, with Wes Streeting waiting in the wings desperate to roll out more private provision, my fear, is that all of this cash is going into private health coffers for them to deliver this and they won’t be able to, they simply don’t have the capacity. Cash is one thing, what Labour do with this cash they raise from non doms and tax dodgers is quite another. The third fix is red meat for the Faragists, launch a new Border Security Command. This is effectively throwing border force under the bus, because this is what they do already surely? This already exists, just renaming it and changing the remit perhaps isn’t going to fix anything, especially when the fix in regards to our borders is being dictated by hard right narratives over stopping the boats. Rishi Sunak staked his premiership on this more than anything else and he’s failed completely, because the only way you stop the boats is to make a new legal route for asylum, so nobody needs the boats anymore, nobody needs the people traffickers, people can safely, without risking their lives, make their claims and be judged on them. Combine that with a new returns policy with the EU, which doesn’t require rejoining to have one, and we don’t even need to home all successful applicants here. That is the humane thing to do. No mention of that here. Instead in his actual speech, Starmer bleated about being Director of Public Prosecutions, taking down such gangs, but you can’t get them all, more will always spring up, trying to act all tough when you sound like David Beckham on helium at the best of times just makes what he actually said all the more ridiculous. But then there is no actual mention of stopping the boats either, so this whole Border Security Command is just a means to an undefined end. We can surmise the end as I’ve done here, but Starmer avoids saying it. What is also avoided is how exactly this new Border Security Command will be any different to what we already have in border force and how will they be more successful when this is basically just carrying on from where the Tories leave off, there’s no real difference in how both party leaderships are approaching the issue of migrant boats. Starmer loves talking about sticking plaster politics, accusing the Tories of sticking plaster solutions, when that is blatantly what this fix is, because it isn’t clear it is actually fixing anything at all. The fourth fix is setting up Great British Energy, a nationalised energy provider, but as we already know, because this was not a new announcement, this will not be a direct supplier to the public, it will instead be a generator and distributor to established and very much privatised energy providers. By providing energy at a cheaper price to these companies, Starmer is thinking energy bills will drop for all of us. Classic Thatcherite nonsense, it is trickle down economics. It has never worked, it won’t work here, the energy providers will pocket extra profit and tell Keir Starmer, thank you very much. There are no guarantees this will benefit us at all because of how it is being designed and when it fails, for I’m certain it will, Blue Labour as this lot is, will say well we tried nationalisation and as we always said, it never works, but it isn’t really nationalisation for us, but for the energy companies instead. The fifth fix, is to crack down on anti social behaviour. Ahh, so it’s something to crack down on is it? This fix isn’t a fix, it’s pig ignorance when anti social behaviour is dealt with by addressing the underlying causes. What opportunities are there for young people? What happened to all of our youth clubs? Instead of addressing that, Starmer talked of people afraid to open their front doors or go out at night. Starmer in his speech has framed this as a safety issue rather than a societal and political failure of young people. More police, special officers on the streets. Completely missing the point. Rather than having been failed and recognising that, Starmer is of the view that such young people should just be criminalised. This isn’t a fix at all, it’s another failure and he'll make it bigger. The sixth and final fix is to recruit 6,500 new teachers, paid for by removing the tax breaks on private schools. That money raised implies more teachers, yet the fix itself just says 6,500 new teachers. It doesn’t say additional teachers. Teaching has become oppressive, so many are leaving the vocation all the time? This isn’t about 6,500 more, just 6,500 new ones. Is this really addressing the issue, the language is a fudge, not a fix. But look at what didn’t make the grade is as much something to fixate on as what he did pledge to fix. Poverty at all levels and all age groups, cost of living crisis, living standards, disability rights, workers rights relegated to not being a pledge card priority. Climate change and the environment, green investment, well Keir Starmer does hate the tree huggers. He’s avoided foreign policy entirely, which is especially pertinent to a lot of people right now given what is going on in Gaza, Starmer’s pro Zionist leanings well known. Nothing on housing or child care, he avoided mentioning the renationalisation of the railways and right now, with sewage outflows all over the country, an outbreak of Cryptosporidium in schools for crying out loud in Devon, ignoring water renationalisation is a massive failure too. He's binned the abolition of tuition fees, he’s binned higher taxes for the top 5% of earners, he’s binned benefits reform and scrapping universal credit. He’s keeping the two child benefit cap, he’s thrown out freedom of movement, he’s talked about wind farms, but he also refuses to roll back new oil and gas licences in the north sea, there was nothing on ecological breakdown, my God you can go on. All of these are less important by omission or have just been ditched. Which would you prioritise? This was a cowardly, safe speech, containing very little, a pledge card containing vague details to avoid criticism, given they are so open to interpretation, though that failed because, well, I wrote this video didn’t I? This is a nervous Labour Party, the polling figures are garbage, the local election extrapolations proved that, they have a lot of challengers from the Greens and from Independents and are losing ground where they shouldn’t be because of Starmer more than anything else. He’s electoral kryptonite in so many ways and they’re right to be worried, they deserve nothing less and they sure as hell don’t deserve to be elected to power with a majority when they are offering so little and you can check out this video recommendation here which will explain a bit more about why Labour’s polling isn’t really as great as many pollsters are saying it is and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so the US, having taken Israel’s side as Iran retaliated against them for taking out their embassy in Damascus, completely unprovoked, having taken to the skies to take out Iranian ordnance being fired towards Israel, towards military targets they had designated, having even asked Iran if they would mind afterwards if they would just let Israel shoot them back, do no damage, bomb a couple of shepherds huts or whatever an empty hangar somewhere perhaps and then not fire back so that Israel cans ay they won and the West can propagate the myth that Iran are the bad guys and that the media narratives their pliant client media about Iran attacking Israel unprovoked must therefore be true. Well Iran said no of course, I daresay they had a bit of a giggle about it, but now the US after all of that, has gone back to the Theocratic state and their ayatollah and are begging for another favour from them and they’ve got some real brass neck to be asking this, but also implies that actually dealing with this little problem of theirs is costing them dearly. Right, so the US have according to AP called on Iran to stop arming the Houthis, but without any good reason as to why they would do that. It’s barefaced cheek quite honestly, where was the US support in condemning Israel for striking Iran? The US tried to convince Iran to let it go, but of course, they can’t do that, it’s not in their nature and it triggered the first strike from Iran on Israel, military strikes, including the Nevatim air base south of the West Bank, where Netanyahu keeps his Air Force One knockoff, Wing of Zion and also where it is widely surmised a lot of munitions from the likes of the US is delivered onto Israeli soil, courtesy it is also widely suspected, of the UK air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri. Even after Iran struck Israel, in what was seen as a restrained attack, something of an intelligence gathering exercise, since the damage was minimal, but of course everywhere Israel retaliated from Iran now have location information, which could be used by allies. For example, you might not have heard of a successful drone strike by Hezbollah in Lebanon, which managed to evade Israeli defensive systems and successfully take out an Iron Dome missile battery, worth some $50m. The drone was worth something like 5 grand. Was that success due to Iranian intelligence gathering? Well, possibly, you wouldn’t have bet money on the drone would you? But now the US have the nerve, the brass neck, to once more ask Iran to stop arming the Houthis in Yemen. Now I’ve done a few videos on Houthi activity, harassing ships, blockading the Gulf of Aden, the southern Red Sea and the narrow stretch of water in between, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. They’ve targeted pro Israeli ships as well as US and UK shipping because they fired on them to try and stop them from attacking shipping, unsuccessfully and although there have been Houthi caused casualties now, not to mention ships getting sunk, far more Houthis have been killed operating in solidarity with Palestine, with Gaza and they’ve still no intention of letting up. It isn’t in their nature to ever quit. They might be one of the poorest Arab nations on Earth, but they’ve fought far wealthier far more powerful countries to a standstill, and have successfully created a naval blockade in the Red Sea without even having a navy! They’ve made history on that score. But of course much of that stems from having Iran as their backers. For Iran to have openly attacked Israel directly themselves was a first, they do tend to operate through proxies like the Houthis, like Hezbollah, frankly it’s western arrogance to expect them to jump when we tell them, because they are a hugely powerful and influential nation in the Middle East. You don’t have to like how that nation is run, a religious sectarian theocracy as it is, there all manner of legitimate criticisms that can certainly be said about Iran, but as the US fully know as well as other nations in the West insistent on being in charge, or trying to be, despite also supporting a genocidal apartheid regime that disgusts people globally, not just in the Middle East, all that needs to be done to stop the Houthis attacking and harassing shipping in the Red Sea, is to stop Israel committing genocide in Gaza. It is a very simple choice. Do the right thing and the Houthis stop. Carry on enabling this death and destruction and they will continue to hit you economically. It is so easy, it would be so simple for Genocide Joe Biden to cut off the arms and the funding until Israel gets out of Gaza. Instead, it is being reported, that another $1bn of military aid is going to head Israel’s way from the US and they’ve now officially come to the position that despite what Israel have done, that it isn’t genocide! White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan literally stood at a podium and said: ‘We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition.’ Well that’s in stark contrast to the initial findings of the International Court of Justice, back in February, so perhaps they might like to weigh in? Perhaps the ICC might like to draw up a few more arrest warrants and send them to Washington? The US have literally found that there are potential breaches of International humanitarian law with regards to weapons they’ve sent to Israel, but still say it isn’t genocide. They are making this s**t up as they go along and yet they think they’ve got a leg to stand on, to ask Iran to stop arming the Houthis. It’s just mad. They’ve said the Houthis must not be arms because their attacks on shipping is reckless. 1.6m people in Rafah, another £1bn in military aid for Israel to potentially drop on them, where else are they going to drop it after all? Oh yes, Israel missed a bit, oh look we’re still getting attack from Hamas in those places, we’d better get them again, I’m sure Americans must be delighted they are paying for all of this once again, Biden really does love blowing your cash on genocide doesn’t he? They’ve destroyed pretty much the whole of the rest of the Gaza Strip, now it has to be pounded into atoms, it’s certainly not the Houthis I’d consider reckless any more and for this claim to be coming from the US administration, well it is just sick at this point isn’t it? The cynic in me wonders, given a report from Middle East Monitor is saying that the presence of Hamas battalions in Rafah have been ruled out, despite claims by Netanyahu that they are there, so perhaps they’re bottling a full assault on Rafah, but plan to continue by going back to other areas they’ve already struck? Keeps the war going which keeps Netanyahu in power, but we will see, perhaps his hard right coalition won’t accept withdrawal from Rafah, though until that happens I won’t believe it myself. It’s a thought though isn’t it? Since the Houthis decided to ally themselves with the Gazan people and fight with them; since the instigation of their blockade in the Red Sea, they have attacked more than 50 ships, seized one and sunk another. Where possible, they have rescued crew and treated them well, though sadly in at least one instance crew were killed. It hasn’t been the Houthis aim, if it were, many more would have died and they wouldn’t be rescuing people but they have and they still do. We do know that their weaponry has increased too, from cheap drone strikes, they’ve since been given access to submarine drones, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles, undoubtedly from Iran, Iranian arms supplies have been intercepted by the US and allies as they’ve attempted to deliver them, so we know it is going on and certainly I’ve not seen any denials from Iran about that, but since arriving in Rafah the Houthis have announced that they plan to expand the scope of their attacks. As things have reached a more critical point in Gaza, so the Houthis are saying they will ratchet up their actions another notch and with bigger weaponry with better range, they are certainly threatening as much. Here’s an excerpt from USNI News, that being the United States Naval Institute, saying: ‘The Houthis will target any ship it believes is connected to a company supplying Israel and block it from passing through the Red Sea if Israel invades Rafah in the Gaza strip, its military spokesman announced via social media Friday. The Houthi threat also includes targeting any ship heading to Israel that it can reach with its missiles and attack drones, including those approaching the country from the Mediterranean Sea, Houthi Brig. Gen. Yahya Sare’e said via a post on social media site X. “If the Israeli enemy intends to launch an aggressive military operation against Rafah, the Yemeni Armed forces will impose comprehensive sanctions on all ships and companies that are related to supplying and entering the occupied Palestinian ports of any nationality and will prevent all ships of these companies from passing through the armed forces’ operation zone regardless of their destination,” Sare’e said in his post.’ So that’s the Houthi spokesperson, many people will be familiar with him by now from news clips, Yahya Sare’e and he’s implying that the Houthis now have the capability to reach targets arriving from the Mediterranean Sea. If true, then theoretically there is no safe docking in Israel at all and given Israeli trade is so heavily reliant on sea trade, being on such poor political terms with it’s neighbours because of it’s conduct, it’s occupation, it basically being a Western nation in effect, just in the wrong place and nothing quite sums that up than to remember that on today of all days, as Palestinians around the world mark the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, an event that continues to this day, the catastrophe as it translates to has never actually ended and 1.6m displaced people starving to death in Rafah waiting for the end as circumstances seem to be, nothing spells that out more than more images of that suffering today as it is every day, that this is a catastrophe that is very much ongoing, livestreamed daily as it still is. Will Iran stop arming the US? Well I can’t find any source implying that they’ve thusfar dignified this request with a response, however the Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi made a statement on Tuesday where he basically the blood of the 15,000 martyred children in Gaza, the proportion of the death toll that are children, so many of those living in Gaza being under 18 after all – and despite attempts to whitewash those figures as we’ve seen lately as well - will spell end of Zionism. Doesn’t sound like they plan on helping Israel or anyone allied to them one iota. The power to end all of this is in the hands of the US. Instead they are going to keep coughing up money to keep it going and other nations in the Middle East will continue of course to resist that. The US have of course already gone with begging bowl in hand to Iran already, much of their excuse making now a repeat of then and frankly they got short shrift for that too, the thought of Iranian retaliation on Israel made them rather nervous and so it should have done, all the details of that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Unite the Union has for quite some time been giving Keir Starmer the benefit of the doubt time after time when it comes to her unions support for his party, for the party of course that was built by the trade union movement, for ordinary working class people and therefore if they aren’t at the heart of Labour policy, trade unions, should be giving them a wide berth. Sharon likes to draw red lines for Starmer when he pushes her limits, or appears to, though those red lines appear to shift faster than Starmer ever seems to and so we come to what was ostensibly Labour’s last actual pitch for working class people, which was Labour’s New Deal for Workers. Well the red lines were drawn again and for the last week she’s been quite critical of the draft plans she’s seen, yet yesterday, all of a sudden, she seems to think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. So what exactly has changed then Sharon? Other than you yet again, being seen to be too close to the Starmer regime? Right, so Sharon Graham, General Secretary of the Unite Union, my union, everyone should be in a trade union, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t criticise or hold them to account and Graham for me has been a disappointment from the get go and she’s racked up quite the resume of reasons for that. For example, when independent film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie was out last year, famously banned from Glastonbury, but workarounds were found, the whole thing is now available on YouTube if you haven’t already, Graham banned it from all Unite properties, on the basis it was antisemitic, despite nothing of the kind being true, the film combats racism, combats the racism inherent in false accusations, and on one occasion when a screening was due to happen in Bristol, a book-signing by investigative journalist Asa Winstanley and his excellent book Weaponising Antisemitism was also cancelled and banned. The film and book were both heavily criticised by the Israel Lobby, they were in no small part responsible it seems for Glastonbury pulling the screening of the film, so all in all it smacks of colluding with the Lobby there, and certainly being onside with Starmer when it comes to fighting antisemitism. Then there was the time she tried to cancel the annual pro Palestine fringe event at Labour Conference, placing the official responsible for it under investigation as a result, Then there was the time she decided to ban Unite officials and Unite livery from being shown at pro Palestine protests and demos. One of her team, for it is not just she, allegedly threatened a soon to be retired regional official with the loss of their pension bonus if they didn’t cool their support for Gaza, that was March just gone. She’s also resisting being subpoenaed right now in an employment tribunal case in Ireland, accused of being a bad employer, with a guy who was returning to his post following a battle with cancer, and not just any guy, but the top official for Unite in the whole of Ireland, Brendan Ogle, on the grounds of his treatment and what has been said about him by union officials. Not only is she resisting giving evidence in this tribunal, despite literally being one of the accsued, she’s employed some of the most expensive lawyers on the planet to defend her, rather than the law firm the union retains services of in Ireland, which are good enough for anyone else in the union, but not for her it seems and the cost to members, is allegedly somewhere in the region of 150K euros a day. On top of that, she has been accused by the Unite national officers group of showing contempt for union staffs collective agreements, taking an anti-trade union stance and attempting to use legal action to intimidate staff with grievances and at least one Union branch has passed a vote of no confidence in her in Brighton, which passed unopposed, citing their reasons as being betrayals on anti-racism, Palestine, harassment and dignity at work. As for Starmer, she has consistently been seen as being too close to him and despite comments to hold him to account and to not take Unite money for granted, she has carried on funding his regime, even inviting him to Unite Conference to speak, and allegedly telling delegates there to either sit down and shut up if they attended his speech and if they couldn’t do that, then to go elsewhere. But let’s get to the here and now. Starmer’s Labour in customary style has looked at it’s one remaining reasonable policy position on workers rights and a deal for workers under a Labour government and have been watering it down. His new version of the deal states that there will be consultation with businesses rather than workers and the unions. This has led to Labour coming to a position of no longer seeking to ban zero hours contracts, but instead right to a contract reflecting the most recent work patterns of a worker. You can see how a business might be able to abuse that, for example to keep someone on a zero hour contract, they might only give them work every other week. That’s ridiculous, but that appears to be how it would work. Probabationary period were supposed to be being done away with as well but that now isn’t happening, fundamentally, whilst we wait for the full paper to come out, it has changed completely and on the 8th May, just 1 week ago to the day at time of writing, Unite published an article calling it unrecognisable, which in customary Sharon Graham style, was her attacking Labour retreating on the matter: ‘It looks like all the warnings Unite made earlier about the dangers of Labour rowing back on its pledges for the New Deal for Workers have been proved right. This new Labour document on the New Deal, issued to the unions on Monday, is a row back on a row back. It is totally unrecognisable from the original proposals produced with the unions. Unrecognisable. Workers will see through this and mark this retreat after retreat as a betrayal. “This new document is turning what was a real new deal for workers into a charter for bad bosses. Labour don’t want a law against fire and rehire and they are effectively ripping up the promise of legislation on a new deal for workers in its first 100 days. Instead, we have codes of conduct and pledges of consultation with big business. Likewise, the proposal to legislate against zero hours contracts is watered down to almost nothing. “In truth this new document is not worthy of discussion. All unions must now demand that Labour changes course and puts the original New Deal for Workers back on the table.’ Strong words. She can talk the talk and has carried on attacking this since on social media too. The following day, she put out a tweet quoting a Big Issue article also slamming Labour’s watering down of workers rights, saying: ‘This new Labour Party document on the New Deal, issued to the unions on Monday, is a row back on a row back. It is totally unrecognisable from the original proposals produced with the unions. Unrecognisable.’ She really doesn’t seem to like it at all does she? Has she finally seen the light? Well something certainly happened, because by yesterday in an LBC interview with Fraser Knight, she came out with this: So she hasn’t seen the words on the page, so, she’s been told stuff by Keir Starmer or his team and taken his word for it? You consider Keir Starmer’s word worth something then do you Sharon? Wow, that’s quite something. OK she wants to see it in print, but actually from what you say in that clip, you don’t appear to have actually been promised anything new over what you were kicking off over before, moving things forward isn’t the same as reassurance and correction, but that’s quite the change in tune coming from her compared to just a week ago. The New Deal is being put forward by Labour and it will be a very, very good thing for workers she also said, but you’ve just implied you’ve got nothing on paper yet so how can you be so sure? It got worse from there though. Knight asked her about those two things Starmer had watered down, zero hours contracts being banned and fire and rehire and all she could say, is that they’ll go back to the NPF document and use that as a guideline. That refers back to the National Policy Forum document, the big annual policy making conference that includes the trade unions with Labour and that turned into such a circus last year, several union reps walked out of it. That’s the guideline is it? That’s the framework? That’s the touchstone as you put it? Oooh little bit cringe now. Got worse when you also said you’ve got to keep holding Labour’s feet to the fire, singe Keith’s toes if he goes too Tory you’d imagine, because from my perspective as a lay member of the union, you’ve never done anything of the sort and this isn’t doing that either. Every time you seem to meet with Starmer, or his team, no matter how vocal you might have gotten through social media or other union channels, you seem totally placated again afterwards, yet Starmer never changes and so far even on this, nothing has actually changed that can pointed to in a solid form. You’ve been given spoken reassurance it appears and lapped it up, to the point you are now saying to camera this could be a very good thing for workers, that what you’ve been told could be good for workers and good for business when in my experience, that’s is rarely ever the case. It strikes me that Starmer has seen you coming and knows exactly what to tell you each and every time. We do need to see the writing on the page, we need to know if you actually have got something meaningful out of Starmer on workers rights, or whether as I strongly suspect, nothing has changed and you’ve sadly made the mistake of believing what Starmer told you. How many more times must that happen before you actually pull union funding? Do you know what makes this commentary from Graham all the more ridiculous sounding now though? That her change in stance towards Labour’s watering down of their New Deal for Workers came following the week that Starmer literally welcomed a hard right trade union basher like Natalie Elphicke into the parliamentary party. Unions should be packing up and abandoning Labour for welcoming Tory MPs in, even more of them, with more allegedly waiting to defect too, not standing there and saying he’s doing a good job in effect. Sharon Graham felt the need to gloss over the NPF documentation, what came out of the National Policy Forum and called it the touchstone, she wanted to skip over it very quickly, didn’t want to bore you. Well it’s not boring and what went down last July in that meeting should very much be better known about, Unions went ape at Labour and you’re holding it up as the foundation for what comes next? Find out all about what happened there and union reactions in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so aid trucks being stopped from trying to get through to Gaza are nothing new sadly, they continue to happen, and now that Israel has seized control of the Rafah border crossing and completely cut off aid from getting in that way, aid now having been blocked there for the last 4 days and counting at time of writing, in total violation of the orders handed down to Israel by the ICJ, but Israel do not care about such things, they don’t believe in doing as they are told, the rules of such people do not apply to them and anyone who disagrees is of course an antisemite. Such is their blatant arrogance throughout the last seven months of genocide in Gaza that we’ve borne witness to though, that they have no problem with being filmed in what they are doing, proud to block trucks, sabotage them, cause actual damage in order to stop them, criminal damage and then scatter the aid being brought in to the four winds. No authorities stopping them, adding to the famine breaking out in Gaza. Right so footage has come out all across social media of settlers having stopped trucks entering the Palestinian Occupied Territories of the West Bank bound for Gaza apparently coming from Jordan. Settlers are apparently now damaging the tyres after blocking the passage of these trucks, stopping them in their tracks so that they can climb on board the back of the loaders and desecrate the aid that is supposed to be being delivered to people driven past the point of famine by their government, who they are supporters of. They are climbing on top of the trucks, throwing the aid off, waving Israeli flags, as they do so, proud of what they are doing and in who’s name and justifying their actions by saying it is all for Hamas, truck after truck after truck, 98 of them apparently stopped up until now when of course it absolutely isn’t we’ve seen the signs of famine, we’ve seen children reduced to skin and bones and the one thing we definitely haven’t seen is bloated Hamas operative moving around looking like Jabba the Hutt because all the food was for them. These disgusting excuses for human beings, these settlers, squatting on lands that are not theirs been filmed stamping all over the boxes dragged off these vehicles and throwing them around, kicking them around, throwing aid as far as they can, they’ve completely emptied the back of the truck in one clip, all the aid scraped off and what I noticed from watching it is you could see what looked like a checkpoint in the background so where were the authorities to stop this then in which case? There’s just no will to do so is there? Just let them do it. Committing a crime, escalating the fallout from genocide, deny people who are not Hamas at all even the most very basic level of aid, simply because of who they are. The depravity on show is just extreme, but then you realise these are clearly all white people, they are in the West Bank after all, therefore these are illegal settlers who shouldn’t even be there and are themselves a symptom of the occupation, doing their part to keep the genocide going. Israel had recently opened crossings into the southern West Bank from Jordan and via two new crossings at Tarkumiya and Kiryat Arba, aid coming that way can cross to a newly opened Gaza crossing, opened just yesterday in fact, Western Erez, which would get into the north of Gaza, but of course that depends on the aid getting that far and when the trucks aren’t even able to get through the West Bank successfully, without the Zionist squatters as it were interfering, without being stopped and the aid destroyed, that’s a bit of a stretch. The thing is, what we’ve observed happening in the last few days as I’ve described above, has actually been the third such attack on aid convoys coming from the East via the West Bank, therefore the authorities by now have no excuse not to act on it, deal with these people taking it upon themselves to act like petty vigilantes taking the law into their own hands, but so big and brave that their chosen targets are literally starving death and consist mostly of women and children. Every one of those boxes I see being ripped apart, I know that’s another child who might not have eaten for days, going hungry again. When I see these people gleeful and grinning and waving their flag, I see that as being what they are celebrating, it frankly means I don’t let myself become insulated after all this time to what they are doing. AL Monitor, a Middle Eastern news outlet that is actually based in the US, said this in it’s coverage of the incident: ‘A total of 98 trucks carrying food and relief supplies were coming from Jordan early on Monday when dozens of settlers blocked their route at the Tarkumiya and Kiryat Arba checkpoints that lie near Israeli settlements in the south of Hebron, Adel Amr — a member of the Shipping Syndicate in Palestine — told the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency. They damaged the trucks’ tires and vandalized the cargo, throwing the parcels of food on the ground and tearing them apart, according to Amr. Videos circulating online showed settlers climbing a truck and throwing food supplies, as others waved the Israeli flag. Similar attacks against aid convoys heading to the Gaza Strip, where the seven-month war continues to rage, have occurred in the past few weeks. Last Tuesday, dozens of far-right Israelis blocked the roads at the Latrun junction near Jerusalem, preventing aid trucks coming from Jordan from passing through. They also attacked the convoy, damaged their content and dumped the food supplies on the ground. Israeli police later said six people were arrested in connection with the incident. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack on its aid convoy that was heading to the Erez crossing with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. In a statement last Tuesday, Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sufyan Qudah said the kingdom holds Israel responsible for the attack and considers the Israeli government's failure to prevent such incidents a “violation of its legal obligations.”’ It would be nice if Jordan did something other issue statements frankly, even Egypt at this point have had enough, now joining South Africa against Israel having for months been mediators in negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace deal, but one thing Jordan are doing, that Israel of course no longer are, is let Al Jazeera report on the situation and offer an insight into why this nonsense is being permitted: So Itamar Ben Gvir, for it is him again, according to Stephanie Dekker there, the poster boy for settlers apparently doing his favourite thing of threatening Netanyahu with collapsing his coalition government if he doesn’t get his way, has demanded the police be allowed to stay out of it when settlers attack the aid trucks, these are his people, his political persuasion, his faction, hard right nutjobs, and just let it happen and very much that seems to be the case as usual. Staying in power is all consuming to Netanyahu which is why none of this can be resolved whilst he remains in power. There’s no desire to sanction or boycott Israel that is being hampered all over the world by politicians in the Israel Lobby’s thrall, so it’s no wonder we look on and we see these things and we still feel so bloody helpless. Although there are records of arrests being made, these do seem tokenistic, certainly aren’t enough to put settlers off carrying on, this the latest of a string of attacks on aid convoys and there’s certainly no obvious police presence in any of the clips I’ve seen. The people involved here belong to a group calling themselves Tsav-9, who have dedicated themselves to no aid getting into Gaza until the hostages are released. You might want to have words with your Prime Minister about that, Hamas agreed terms which would see hostages released, it was Netanyahu who refused to agree to it in the end. No doubt with Ben Gvir the sort of politician who resonates with them though, they likely wouldn’t believe a word of that if you told them as much. Supposedly there are around 400 of these people consisting of members of the IDF, their families and the families of hostages, if these people are known, why have not been dealt with appropriately? Same reason Israel hasn’t dealt with settlers anywhere else, they’re on their side and don’t fear any real repercussions, but the repercussions are certainly being felt by those in Gaza and the violation of the ICJ orders as these acts amount to, are maddening the rest of us around the world who are still watching this happen, know how preventable it is and with more video footage coming from Egypt, from near the Rafah crossing, where truckload after truckload after truckload of aid that cannot get into Gaza anymore is seen to be sat there rotting and fouling in the desert, the message cannot be ringing in the ears of those in positions of power, to do something because so far what has been done is not enough. Unless Gaza’s borders are forced open and peacekeeping forces deployed to ensure they stay that way, aid isn’t getting in. Israel have had far too long to sort this out, aid isn’t passing through, the UN should be intervening now to force it. People are dying every day that this doesn’t happen. Netanyahu is cornered, by the worlds condemnation, by the ratbags he’s in power with, by a war he started, that can in no way be considered a proportionate retaliation to the night of October 7th any more, there’s no way out, but he’s looking for one, because if he loses power, he’s done for, so that is now all that matters to him as this video recommendation will explain all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so genocide prevention, we have such a thing in parliament, but I bet you had no idea and now that I’ve mentioned it you might be thinking, well why do I know nothing of this group, what are they doing, why is this not being broadcast more loudly? You might also be thinking, well how toothless and weak they must be to not be making lots and lots of noise regarding the events in Israel and Gaza, my goodness me, these have been going on for seven months now, where have they been? Well there’s a very good reason why you might not have heard of them and a very good reason why they’ve been so quiet, and in no small part is that to do with the chair of this group, being a Labour Friend of Israel… Right so, All Party Parliamentary Groups, or APPGs, there’s quite a few of them, the words all party at the beginning indicating that these are cross party groups working towards a common aim, the purpose of whatever the APPG group is about and they can be about anything, air pollution, breast cancer, classical music, they can be about quite serious issues and they can be quite inane, does there really need to be an APPG for stamp collecting? It’s true there is, the chair of that one is Tory MP Andrew Rossindell, go figure, but another that right now you’d really think ought to be far more vocal than they are is the APPG, for Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, which states that it’s purpose is: ‘Providing parliamentarians with the information to act together to prevent genocides and crimes against humanity; learning from past genocides; supporting victims of genocides and crimes against humanity; promoting active peace building.’ So why has hardly anybody ever heard of you? Frankly APPGs themselves are not widely known of and actually they’ve come in for a bit of criticism where they are known about, since they have been alleged to provide a vehicle to bypass lobbying registration rules. As far as declarable interests go, the APPG received in the last financial year a donation from the Aegis Trust of a sum between £22,500 and £24,000, the records only provide a range, but the Aegis Trust formed in 2000,a British NGO, a Non Governmental Organisation, which is based at the Holocaust Memorial Centre, the Holocaust obviously being the most famous genocide there is, though certainly not the only one, the instigation for Aegis to form separately from the Holocaust Memorial Trust was what happened in Kosovo and they have been vocal concerning the genocide in Rwanda as well as another example. So given the fund this Genocide APPG, what have they said about Gaza then? Having checked their website, I found two articles, the first entitled ‘Humanity needed to defeat terror in Gaza’ written by Aegis Trust and Holocaust Memorial Centre founder James Smith, which basically attacks Hamas as the genocidalists, making the claim that Hamas needed a war with Israel to further it’s own cause. What? Ending occupation? You might not agree with their methods, goodness knows we shouldn’t any more than we do Israel, but this is a very one sided piece. Here’s a particularly on the nose short excerpt: ‘When people accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, media organizations do a disservice to peace not to inform them about the nature of Hamas, who advocate a policy of genocide against Israelis and Jews. Some protestors must know this already, as they chant in streets of London “From the River to the Sea” meaning the land of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, will be emptied of Jews.’ Oh that old chestnut again? This article was also reproduced in Jewish News, so it seems a side has been taken and they are funding the genocide APPG. The second article also reproduced in The Atlantic, concerned South Africa’s case against Israel in the ICJ, again penned by James Smith and this asked why South Africa had brought a case against Israel – he didn’t dispute their atrocious actions it must be noted – but the crux of his argument was why not Hamas too? You have a one night incursion, which still needs independent investigation, which Israel are blocking, which Hamas as well as Israel need to answer for, because more and more as Israel block this, it looks like they themselves have something to hid, but equally the response by Israel on Gaza for that one night incursion, being 7 months of genocide, razing Gaza to the ground, tens of thousands of people dead, mostly women and children and you write an article trying to both sides this? Genocide when it gets committed is always done by one side against the other and both these articles, damn Hamas, fine, but don’t exactly do likewise with Israel. So if these are the money people behind the APPG, perhaps this is one part of why they are seemingly so silent. But then the APPG has to be made up of parliamentarians to be an All Party Palriamentary Group so as much as digging into the Aegis Trust is revealing, I checked out their Twitter Account too, I couldn’t find any mention of Gaza at all, so read into that what you will, happy to be corrected if I missed it, but genuinely I found nothing. Equally silent seemingly is that APPG Groups’ Twitter incidentally, the Genocide APPG account having tweeted nothing since the 26th February, but lets get into who is involved parliament wise and again the as always excellent investigative journalism of Declassified UK has done the legwork. Right now the Genocide APPG has a chair, a co-chair and 2 vice chairs, it’s not a big group right now. The chair is Labour MP for Putney Fleur Anderson and this is ostensibly on the face of things one reason why perhaps this group is silent on Gaza, not least because of who funds them, but because Anderson is listed as a Labour Friend of Israel. How can this APPG be committed to ending genocide, when it’s chair is a friend of the genocidal state of Israel? It’s impossible. Her co-chair is Tory peer Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and the vice chairs are Brendan O’Hara of the SNP and Labour Peer Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws. Here’s an excerpt from Declassified, detailing some of the hypocrisy of these individuals involved in this group: ‘A closer inspection of Anderson’s work is revealing. In November, during parliament’s vote for an immediate ceasefire, 56 Labour MPs defied the party whip and voted for it. Anderson was not one of them. Less than a month later, she spoke in the House of Commons about the importance of parliamentarians doing more to ensure genocides never happen. Ostensibly, this degree of dissonance appears to be a running theme among the other officers at the APPG. Brendan O’Hara MP, the Scottish National Party’s foreign affairs spokesperson has been fervently calling for a ceasefire. However, he attended a reception hosted by ADS Group, which represents arms companies directly linked to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, like Elbit Systems. Another officer listed on the website is distinguished human rights barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy KC. In an interview with Prospect magazine in late October, she argued unwaveringly that Israel has a right to self-defence. Two days after the publishing of that article, as Israel’s violence in Gaza intensified, an open letter was signed by more than 1,000 UK lawyers. They called on the government to fulfil its international obligations and ensure de-escalation. Kennedy was not among the signatories. In April, another open letter to the prime minister was signed by hundreds of lawyers, including three former supreme court judges. They called for a permanent ceasefire, sanctions against Israeli officials and a suspension of arms sales to Israel. Kennedy again did not sign it.’ With people involved in an APPG for genocide picking and choosing it seems which genocides to oppose, possibly tied to their other group affiliations, such as LFI, possibly tied to their funding from the Aegis Trust given their apparent bias from those two articles I read, what exactly are you spending this cash on? I think there are questions to answer about what they think right now, they are doing to oppose one of the worst examples of genocide we’ve ever witnessed in our living memory, or more to the point, why they seem to be burying their heads in the sand as it happens. Meanwhile at least, other countries are getting their acts together, as Egypt have now joined South Africa at the ICJ, I wonder what the Aegis Trust chap will have to say about that then? Well I had plenty, check that out in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Labour Friends of Israel, even once they are outside of the Labour Party and no longer part of LFI, the bending over for the apartheid state of Israel continues it seems, though when Sunak’s Tories and Starmer’s Labour seem to be in competition with each other in the sycophancy stakes in that regard, it is a bit of Animal Farm situation where you’re basically looking from man to pig and pig to man and cannot tell the difference. Red Tories within the Labour ranks are nothing new though, they certainly are far more authoritarian now and throwing their weight around a lot more, but they’ve always been there, and one example of a yesterday’s man, is former Labour MP, turned crossbench peer having been put into the House of Lords by the Tories, so underlining that man to pig example all the more, John Woodcock, now posturing as Lord Walney and indeed this is how he gets presented in the press. Not only did he accept a peerage from the Tories despite supposedly being a Labour man though, he is now the Tory government’s advisor on political violence and in that remit he’s been producing a report, which has been subject to being leaked, with plans to ban so-called ‘extremist’ protest groups. Well where does the line get drawn on that, who draws it and given that Walney is a former chair of LFI and one of the groups he’s pointing at is Palestine Action, is this not blatant bias and abuse of our human rights, not to mention an act of political violence in and of itself? Right, so political violence what is that when it’s at home? It might make you think of those two MPs who have been murdered in recent years, Jo Cox and David Amess. Perhaps you might be thinking instead of protesters rocking up outside Keir Starmer’s house and giving him a headache on his doorstep, my goodness didn’t the media slam them for that, and I don’t disagree, I don’t think people should camp out and intimidate people on their doorsteps, but where was the mainstream media when this was happening to Jeremy Corbyn? Oh they were joining in weren’t they? One rule for the pro establishment, another for everyone else. Political violence is defined in British law and it works both ways, it can be committed against governments or by them and includes already things such as torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide, police brutality, assassination, terrorist attacks, guerilla warfare and can also include rioting, kidnapping, treason, or attempted coups. Protest, you will note is not in there, but you can look at that list and look at Israel and think, there’s a good example of political violence being carried out against occupied people in which case, but it isn’t them that Lord Walney is interested in and as a former Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, I can’t imagine why he’d cast a blind eye at that, but you can absolute surmise it might be behind his decision according to leaked documentation to accuse those protesting against Israel right now as extremists. Yes, he wants to bring in a new category of protest, extreme protest and two groups, Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil are in his sights and he’s advocating for them to be proscribed and restricted in what they can and cannot do and should he get his way, sanctions could include preventing them from assembling and meeting and also fundraising. Here’s an excerpt on what’s been said: ‘"Militant groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil are using criminal tactics to create mayhem and hold the public and workers to ransom without fear of consequence," Lord Walney said. "Banning terror groups has made it harder for their activists to plan crimes - that approach should be extended to extreme protest groups too." Just Stop Oil said the government were the “dangerous radicals that are endangering all of us” through their climate policies. Palestine Action claimed its actions were in line with most of the British public who want an arms embargo between the UK and Israel, and the proposals would not deter their campaign. The new restriction orders "would be distinct from proscription on terrorism grounds", the report will say. But the mechanism could limit the activities of organisations that have a policy of using criminal offences or causing serious disruption to influence government or public debate. If a group’s actions were persistent, and used to promote a political or ideological cause, that would count against them, according to the recommendation. It will come as part of a review into tackling political violence by Lord Walney - the former Labour MP John Woodcock - which was commissioned three years ago, but is yet to be published.’ Right, so their criminal tactics means they are being accused of political violence does it? There’s no violence. Just Stop Oil, will sit in the road, they will slow walk, they will graffiti, they will throw soup at paintings, they are very fond of throwing orange paint around, but it washes off. Protest is supposed to be disruptive, it happens when people with strong feelings aren’t getting listened to. You can certainly argue that some of what they have done perhaps crosses the line of criminality, however the right to protest does not preclude this. You might not like it, but if you aren’t listening, all they can do is escalate. At no point have they, or Palestine Action acted in a violent manner towards anyone however, certainly the police have to them, we have seen police brutality at protests and that does come under political violence, how come I seem to know more about your brief than you do Woodcock? It’s a fine line, a small step between labelling these people, these groups as extreme protesters now, to labelling them as something more like terrorists later on and you can be sure the mainstream media will hurry that up and before long you end up in a situation where protesters are labelled as such, just like for example, anti-Zionists being labelled as antisemites when the two are not mutually exculsive. Indeed Walney himself gave the game away there in a quote from that piece published by the BBC, when he said: ‘Banning terror groups has made it harder for their activists to plan crimes - that approach should be extended to extreme protest groups too.’ This is intentional language to conflate the word activist with the word terrorist and it needs spotting and calling out wherever it is seen and I’d remind you, this guy, used to be a Labour MP, yet is acting like the most right wing of Tories. To weaken the right to protest is to weaken our freedom of speech and expression and of course these are protected under the European Convention of Human Rights, which Rishi Sunak keeps threatening to take us out of anyway, so this would be just another reason to try and do so, as no doubt these moves against these protest groups would result in legal action which the government would lose. There’s no violence here, but moving the goalposts of the law, frankly all the Tories have ever seemed to do for years to get their own way, is what this is all about. Starmer is apparently supportive of all of this as well, he’s certainly the same factions as Woodcock was, even if he lied about that to get where he is today, and who can forget him saying in regards to Just Stop Oil: ‘Get up, go home, I’m opposed to what you are doing.’ Protesting for change? The very thing the Labour Party was built on? You do surprise me Keith! Both Starmer and Woodcock are avowedly pro Israel, so targeting Palestine Action can be seen as nothing short of a cynical ploy in line with their biases. Israel is a genocidal state meting out political violence, yet protesting that is what will get recognised as political violence in this country if Woodcock gets his way and his report when finally published gets enacted on and law is changed as a consequence and not for the better, because that is basically a given at this point isn’t it? A genocidal apartheid state and the Tory government’s man political violence advisor will in all likelihood advocate to see protesting that labelled political violence instead. It’s all just one more reason why on top of electoral reform, Lord’s reform comes hotly after. Indeed Labour’s position on protests was underlined in no uncertain terms not all that long ago, when Palestine protesters hit a Labour Party fundraiser, being hosted by Angela Rayner and if you still think she’s somehow one of the good ones in the party, then please watch this video recommendation next and see if you still think that going by her reaction and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so how much Israeli money does it take to purchase a US Republican Senator to the point he goes on live TV and calls for Israel to be allowed to treat Gaza like the US treated Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the tail-end of WWII? About a $1m does it apparently. That is apparently how much the US senator for South Carolina, Lindsey Graham has taken from the Israel Lobby. Two million people in Gaza, let’s just wipe them out, because apparently doing it in Japan was the right thing to do, he believes it was the right thing to do, so why shouldn’t this terrorist threat as he calls it, calls the occupied people in Gaza, the vast majority of whom are not Hamas of course, be treated in the same way. Life is cheap when it isn’t yours on the line, the mass murder in effect as this would be of 2 million people, though his defenders will of course say that this isn’t a call for genocide either. This is exactly how genocides begin. Rhetoric like this, for which Graham will face no censure, no criticism and no consequence, though may well continue to accept pro Israel donations of course, which many people might well surmise to be for services rendered at the end of the day. Right, so first of all congratulations South Carolina, you elected an absolute lamb there didn’t you? The military officials, the people in the know of all things military you would imagine, are full of it so he says. All those Military officials were pointing out, as NBC host Kristen Welker tried to explain as she got a chance to get a word in edgeways, was that weaponry is no longer the blunt device it was back in the days of the Manhattan Project, that they are more precise and can prevent more casualties, yet to that, they are full of c*ap according to Graham. Preventing casualties is what it came down to and he just didn’t care, talk about drunk on power, even when in opposition. The military people are right though, weapons move on become more precise, but also more powerful. What would be the modern day equivalent of an atomic bomb be? Akin to the ones dropped on Japan? They were made of far lower quality radioactive material, which rapidly decayed and dissipated. which is why those areas were able to be colonised again. That isn’t the case with modern nukes, that is exactly why Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been recolonised, but Chernobyl for example has not been. Worlds and a good deal of time apart, terrifying technology that has sadly advanced and moved on. What Graham is calling for is no longer remotely a sane comparison or argument, if it ever was even then, back in WWII, which I heavily dispute. These weapons should never, ever be used, shouldn’t even exist anymore in my view. Fundamentally though, when it comes to calling out Israel because Lindsey Graham won’t have a bar of that, Israel should be able to do a Hiroshima to Gaza to his mind and no doubt many Zionists would cheer the thought, though that’s one heck of a sun tan you can look forward to if you plan on colonising Gaza afterwards at some point in the next 10,000 years and well, you’d better hope the wind doesn’t change and render Israel uninhabitable too due to the fallout. It is inane stupidity, from a stupid little man who doesn’t know what he is talking about and thinks saying these things makes him look big and clever to an American audience, and I daresay the MAGA cap wearing types will respond positively, but anyone with more than two brain cells fighting over third place I would hope would be justifiably horrified, I’d hope Genocide Joe Biden was appropriately horrified, but he’s remained silent on Graham’s comments, though when one of his own side, Rashida Tlaib called the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ aspirational and a rallying cry for freedom, he came down on her like a ton of bricks. Making this all the worse is that Graham’s comments come after Biden held up an arms delivery to Israel as a warning, saying there’s no way he is going to keep sending weapons to Israel if they are going to be used in Rafah. Frankly if Graham’s words aren’t incitement to genocide I don’t know what is. Step up The Hague please, though I won’t hold my breath, like I said before, there will be no consequence or censure for these words that if carried out would not only be one of the biggest travesties in modern history, one of the worst atrocities any of us will have borne witness to, but it’ll paint a target on the US for advocating it, with nuclear retaliation to potentially follow. Mutually Assured Destruction, isn’t that your excuse for having nukes, the treat of using them, but never actually doing so? Someone should fill in Lindsey Graham on that perhaps, but then when you’ve had more than $1m in Israel Lobby funding, a figure aggregated from OpenSecrets.org, a money tracking outfit in US politics, it's literally what they do, so the question therefore to Lindsey graham is what are you offering in return for that cash? Well turning into a full on out of control rage monster the moment Kristen Welker brought up the fact that Ronald Reagan suspended arms sales to Israel certainly did it, your party Lindsey, your former President, but that your next go-to response being to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki and why was it right to do that, was just an unhinged and very disturbing segue. But isn’t that just the crux of it. Defend Israel, that’s what the cash is for. We’ll help you get re-elected through AIPAC, through whatever other donations tied to Israel that OpenSecrets.org have tracked and every time you see Lindsey Graham go off on one in Israel’s defence, you have to bear in mind he’s probably got the money he has off them, off the Lobby, for doing just that, for services rendered. Right now, with arms shipments suspended because of the threat to Rafah, even Joe Biden has finally caught onto the realities of the situation despite his own unabashed Israel devotion, Senators like Lindsey Graham are saying what Israel want said in US politics. They want their weapons, they want their war, they want the US to pay for it and the likes of Graham want that too, because some of that cash, or the cash of other Zionist supporters invariably end up being used to help their own re-election campaigns. Where even Biden hesitates to keep supplying Netanyahu’s insane regime, you’ve got even worse elements now advocating for another Hiroshima moment. If we thought our political outlook here in the UK looked hopeless, the US shows it can be so much worse, but again it is lobbyists behind the scenes letting their money talk that shapes what goes down and that is definitely true of both countries right now. Lindsey Graham and his chatter needs to be seen for what it is, bought and paid for, an Israeli voice in a place where only US voices should be heard. Politicians in the pocket of other nations need holding to account for that, so really the only question for him going forwards if this is the level of his political discourse, is what exactly have Israel paid for with their £1m? Of course he’s not the only one and certainly not the only right wing crackpot falling over themselves to show their loyalty and devotion to the Israeli state. The ICC and those arrest warrants you see, you should see Republicans lining up to threaten the ICC with invasion no less over that, get the details on that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Israel have now seized control of the Rafah Border Crossing in the last several days, and are now blocking any aid whatsoever from getting through, in complete violation of the rulings handed down by the ICJ, which Israel are of course ignoring, the ICJ as Netanyahu and his hard right genocidal regime being antisemitic, because of course they are. South Africa in the last few days have made another appeal to the ICJ to review their position and the ruling they’ve handed down already, to beef it up as it were in response to Israel’s incursions into Rafah already and especially in light of the border crossing being seized. But as welcome as it is to see South Africa continuing it’s moral crusade, seemingly single handed even after 7 months of genocide, the question others are asking is where exactly are Egypt in all of this? Egypt controls one side of the Rafah Border Crossing of course, it is on the Gaza-Egyptian Border after all and by seizing control of the Gazan side, Israel have violated decades old peace accords with Egypt and seemingly with no consequence. Has Egypt lost it’s collective spine? They’ve been involved in the peace process negotiations quite heavily, are they being punished for that by a nation with no intentions of peace? Well certainly the question has been asked, but actually Egypt aren’t happy and they have no stood up to be counted. Right so, firs toff let’s deal with the ramifications regarding Egypt Israel relations when it comes to Israel having seized the Rafah Border Crossing, because actually there is legislation that prohibits Israel doing so, and it has stood for pretty much as long as I’ve been alive, the so called Camp David Accords coming into this world in the same year I did, back in 1978. Now Israel and Egypt have had several conflicts in the past, five times they have gone to war with each other and Israel bear in mind has only existed since 1948, so that’s quite some going, but the Camp David Accords put an end to this. Clearly something had to be done to de-escalate the on-off situation as it was between Egypt and Israel and on 17th September 1978, under the Jimmy Carter US administration, at Camp David, the retreat of the US President as we know and hence the name, the Accords were signed by both the Egyptian President and Israeli Prime Minister of the day and was such a big deal, both men were awarded that years Nobel Peace Prize. It is regarded as one of the biggest achievements of the Carter administration. The eventual outcome of these talks was called the ‘Framework for Peace in the Middle East’ and had three parts: (1) a process for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza – still an issue as we know. (2) a framework for the conclusion of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and (3) a similar framework for peace treaties between Israel and its other neighbours. Now on that second point, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed the following year in 1979 and has stood ever since. How much longer it stands for, is a big question right now. Now there has been talk since Israel seized control of the Rafah Border Crossing, something the peace treaty prevents them from doing, that Egypt would tear up the Accords over this, potentially leading Egypt back into war with Israel, for a sixth time as that would be and that would amount to Israel being attacked pretty much on every single border it has by that point. However Egypt have chosen another way and arguably this is a bigger blow to Israel than any offensive, and a surefire sign that Egypt has decided that negotiations involving this Israeli government are going nowhere and it’s pointless trying to continue. Therefore they have instead joined South Africa in their case against Israel at the Hague. And just to underline how big an issue this is, a former Director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Alon Liel, spoke to the now banned in Israel Al-Jazeera: A massive diplomatic blow to Israel, Egypt have been the mediators for Israel with other Arab nations for a long time, the debate as to whether Egypt had any spine given how long things have played out and how much Israel has been playing them has been a hot topic on social media, there have been some scathing reviews of Egypt apparently sitting there wringing their hands, but finally there’s be a shift, Egypt have had enough and you have to wonder given how involved with Israel they have been, as Alon Liel said, over the last 40 years certainly, how much dirt Egypt might actually have on them. Of all countries to join South Africa, Egypt actually might prove to be the most dangerous. Israel has spurned it’s pretty much only Middle Eastern – I won’t say ally, I don’t think they were ever quite that, only Middle Eastern country they were on reasonable diplomatic terms over, let’s put it that way. So it’s not been a great week for Israel generally really has it? The UN have voted by vast majority to ask the UN Security Council to reconsider it’s decision to admit Palestine as a full member, expect the US to veto this again, but the optics are bad, and made worse by Israeli representative, slash the UN’s biggest man baby Erdan Gilan getting a baby shredder out and shredding the UN charter, this is worth watching for it’s comedy value alone: I have to say I laugh every time I watch that, it is so infantile it’s mad, but doesn’t that sum up Israeli attitudes these days? Saying this is what everyone who voted in favour of Palestine’s admittance as a full member were doing, the irony not dawning on him that actually shredding everything the UN stands for is what his nation have been doing for months and their suspension from the UN is in my view grossly overdue. On top of that though, there have been the halt in US weapons being sent to Israel from the US, Spain and Ireland are planning to recognise Palestinian statehood, Hamas are still fighting in areas the IDF had apparently already cleared, desperate for good press they threw state money at ad campaigns for Eurovision and still lost, with viewer numbers way down on what was typical, and now with Egypt joining South Africa at the ICJ there is every chance they could now press the big red button that so far they haven’t done overtly, which is to vote through a ceasefire order, no doubt with Uganda’s judge once again voting against though. Oh and there’s still the spectre of those arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court coming too. What is the hold up there now folks? As welcome as this move now is by Egypt, it’s also taken far too long for them to come to this point. Diplomacy is one thing sure, but they know Netanyahu, they’ve watched Gaza get razed north to south and it is only now that the Rafah Border Crossing has been seized, that Egypt move. It makes you wonder whether fear of Israel opening the crossing and letting those in Rafah flee into the Sinai that has prompted this move, that this is a self motivated, self serving move by Egypt when they could have done what they are doing now much earlier and that is a valid criticism they must answer for. Nevertheless, let’s see how things pan out at the ICJ now they are on board, if things don’t go South Africa and Egypt’s way though, what then? Well Egypt control the Suez Canal of course, they could give the Houthis in Yemen, still hammering away at Israeli shipping as they are, they haven’t stopped and just shut the canal to pro Israel shipping, create a new Suez crisis. Do they have the backbone to do such a thing? Pass on that, but it makes for an interesting notion. Another interesting notion is the thought that Egypt might join the war against Israel though again, it is something that has thusfar failed to materialise, though it did elicit a threat of them tearing up the aforementioned Camp David Accords, which you can find out more about in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so following the defection of hard right Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to the Labour Party, there seems to be no limits to how awful a Tory you could possibly be, with the track record that comes with that, that would preclude you from being allowed to join Keir Starmer’s New Tory Party – we can hardly call it New Labour or even New New Labour, when they aren’t so much getting the Tories out, but letting them in with a warm welcome instead, so I think New Tory Party is far more fitting. That said however, the old Tory Party as it were, or at least some in it, remain critical of Labour and not only have criticised them, but done so in a way, that has actually put themselves to the left of Labour. Suella Braverman has raised her head above the parapet to apparently criticise Labour over their decision to retain the cruel poverty inflicting two child benefit cap. It was her party that introduced that of course, but rather than ditch it, Labour has chosen to keep it and not only have Labour decided to keep it, but Wes Streeting, Keir Starmer’s health minion and a glazed ham of a man about as likeable as a dose of the clap – and good luck being able to see a doctor about that once he’s in charge, you’ll probably have to go private – has defended keeping the cap, placing himself and Labour to the right of the Tories on social security as cruel as we know they have been to benefits claimants, the long term sick and disabled. Right, so when it comes to just how obviously horrible the Labour Party now is, one prominent wannabe minister who seemingly cannot resist reminding people of what a nasty piece of work he can be and loves nothing less than an opportunity to go on TV or run to the mainstream media at any opportunity to big up himself, than Wes Streeting, but to do so in a manner that now puts himself to the right of a hard right maniac like Suella Braverman is an achievement even for him, yet he’s managed it. For as Godawful a human being as Suella Braverman is, her depravity over migrant crossings, her dreams of deporting asylum seekers to an unsafe African nation, no matter what the Tories write into law, the truth rarely factors in and certainly didn’t here, she has made a surprising intervention when it comes to benefits. Now you can dismiss this as her making mischief, she doesn’t mean it, look at the Tories track record on such things and I totally hear, you, if you’ve read my YouTube video descriptions, if you’re a regular watcher, then you know I’m an unpaid carer, I’ve lived within the social security system due to being a carer for two disabled family members, I’ve experienced first hand the cruelty the Tories have dished out, and my family consider themselves survivors of that, when so many have not, so it does leave a sour taste in my mouth to actually acknowledge what Braverman of all people here is saying about the two child benefit cap, because what she has said, in an article she penned in the Torygraph, I don’t entirely disagree with. Much of the article eulogises the recently deceased Labour MP Frank Field, who she hailed for his work on benefits, though, despite being brought up to not speak ill of the dead, Frank Field was anything but, he was fully onboard with the belief that benefits were a lifestyle choice, but like many politicians who say that, they’ve never had to try living on them and Braverman underlines that by saying Field would probably have agreed with the reforms the Tories have brought in. I’d like to think that isn’t true, Tory benefit reforms have killed people and sticking with them, Labour will oversee the same, but the crux of this video, the point I want to make is that despite hailing what her party has done on benefits, Braverman has put the boot in to the two child benefit cap. Capping child benefits, whether the premiums via Universal Credit, or the likes of Child Benefit and Child Tax Credits under the old legacy system, to the first two children only, meaning any more that the family might have, are left impoverished. Now you can argue that the family shouldn’t have had more kids than they can afford, that isn’t the point really though, why punish the child? Is it the child’s fault? Is it the parents fault as well, when the Tories have screwed up the running of this country so much, that work increasingly doesn’t pay enough and more people who might have been keeping their heads above water in a large family once upon a time, now find they no longer are. The whole point of the two child benefit cap as it was introduced by Mr Austerity, George Osborne, was to force people living on benefits, who were all shirkers as that Tory government painted them, as having to make the same choices in having a family as working families did – everyone struggling, so let’s just make the poorest and disproportionately families containing long term sick and disabled people, even harder up. That’ll get them into work won’t it? Not if you’re disabled. Once upon a time there was a thing called Remploy, that helped disabled people find work they could do, created opportunities for them, this was scrapped and they’ve been failed ever since, little wonder the Tories have been accused of trying to kill such people off under their rule, and not without some good reason. The fact is, it didn’t help larger families back into work. Less money, meant no child care, less money meant poverty increased without being able to go to work. It has been a cruel abject failure and as much as the cruelty of the policy I don’t believe has moved someone like Braverman one iota, failure and wasting public money in her eyes, well that won’t do. Benefit freezes and additional cruel policies like this have left those with the least unable to afford to get by, so now even she, Suella Braverman, little miss let’s put migrants on a legionella filled prison barge, is acknowledging that the benefits reforms of George Osborne, at least in regards to this benefit cap are a failure. Someone who disagrees with her however, is Wes Streeting, who is all for keeping it. Vote Labour to get the Tories out folks I would remind you once again, really isn’t true and as I’ve also said previously, Labour under Starmer, with sociopaths like Streeting in government could be even worse. This is a sociopathic policy, it always has been. So why would Labour keep it? They were all for scrapping it at one point, but that was another Starmer pledge he never meant and now it is just one more example of where there is literally no difference between Labour and the Tories. I fail to see why any sick or disabled person looking at this, knowing what life has been like under the Tories, would want to vote Labour now, because there is nothing here to vote for if you’re in that boat in my view. So what has Streeting said then? Well just to ice this particularly rancid s**t sandwich of a Labour policy position, Streeting acknowledged poverty amongst the worst off was so bad and the fear of the benefit cap itself and what it meant if someone fell pregnant with their third child, that there had been a rise in directly related abortions. Seems like a good reason to end the two child benefit cap then eh Wes? Apparently not because seemingly in the next breath when asked about hat, he defended keeping the cap, because labour don’t want to be seen to be giving out handouts. So you don’t actually care if the abortions continue then? Streeting is a guy who makes much of having been raised by a single mother on a council estate and how much he hated it, but instead of appreciating the politics of what caused that, he appears to have just put as much distance between himself and that memory as he possibly could, to an extent that he doesn’t actually give a damn anymore about people growing up in the same of worse circumstances, because he’s alright now. That’s how this comes across and it now puts Labour benefit policy to the right of that of somebody like Suella Braverman. Here’s an excerpt from the Independent who interviewed Streeting: ‘He said: “I think that the answer on child poverty is all about social security. Of course, that's part of it. I grew up on a council estate with a single mum, and often the benefit system put food in the fridge and money in the electric meter. I am a product of a welfare state that quite literally fed me and housed me and clothed me at points in my life.” However, he went on: “I also know that that the answer to child poverty, ultimately, is not simply about handouts, it is about a social security safety net, that also acts as a springboard that helps people into work and with good work that makes the cost of living affordable for everyone. “That means that if you aren't doing the right thing, and earning a living and playing by the rules, that you don't just have enough to make ends meet, but you have enough to do the things that make life worth living. And we’re some way from that from that now. “ He also repeated the message that the state of public debt and lack of money will tie Labour’s hands.’ It’s the same old Tory excuses. There’s no money left, the Tories have trashed the public finances, we can’t just print money and hand it out, despite acknowledging his upbringing, he also by his own admission there, says there should be no handouts and people should do the right thing and help people into work. Not everyone can work. How you treat them, is how society should be judged. It isn’t even true that there is no money left, it’s just that Labour won’t spend, because that would require more tax and with the tax burden on ordinary working class people already too high, that would mean taxing wealth, taxing donors and that’s why Rachel Reeves won’t do it. The new Tory Party, of the rich, for the rich, when they are supposed to be for the ordinary working class. Streeting is rancid, his views are rancid, his attitude is rancid, his opinion on benefits so right wing, so very rancid, but equally this guy is coming for the NHS next, plans to privatise more of it, good little Tory boy that he actually is and wrote in the Murdoch Scum no less, that anyone opposed to his plans are a bunch of rotten middle class lefties! Weirdly it’s working class people most at risk of not being able to afford healthcare Wesley, find out all about that in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so whilst Israeli settlers were busy destroying olive groves in the occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank, well away from Gaza, demonstrating what the genocidal apartheid regime is really all about, the final of the Eurovision Song Contest was going on and of course it has been an absolute embarrassment of how badly the organisers of the song contest, the European Broadcasting Union, the EBU have fallen over themselves to accommodate Israel, to basically do for them, what they did for Ukraine previously, ignoring the genocide they are meting out in Gaza doing exactly what the Israel Lobby would want them to do, basically flashing up Israel’s self declared victimhood up in neon lights. And you might be thinking Damo, why are you covering what is ostensibly supposed to be a night of ridiculous entertainment, an escape from all things political, then I’m afraid to say despite how you might consider the contest and how you might believe it to not be political and certainly they do claim that themselves, but it never has been. Voting so often goes along the lines of political alliances, but if you thought just the fact that Israel have been admitted and ardently defended by the program makers was the big story, was the main political point being made, if still being denied, that the singer Israel had put up was being booed and that garnered more sympathy, certainly amongst Zionists I daresay, then there’s another point, that I haven’t seen widely talked about, which is definitely worth raising, because it blows every single claim by Eurovision to be outside of politics, clean out of the water. Right, so last night was the final of Eurovision and normally I’m not above indulging in the mad cheesefest that it is, it can be a bit of fun, it can be a bit of escapism, but it isn’t apolitical and it never has been and this years, which I of course boycotted like so many others did on the grounds the Israeli state had been allowed to perform thanks to the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, despite the genocide they are meting out in Gaza, was hypocrisy writ large, because of course, when the show was all about Ukraine previously, those attacking Ukraine, Russia and their antidemocratic dictatorship neighbours Belarus were banned from taking part in the song contest in solidarity with Ukraine. Now, you can be for or against or take a somewhat neutral stance on this however you like as the EBU claim they are, I’ve certainly covered the conflict in my own content previously and I’ve always taken the view that the Russia Ukraine conflict is a somewhat grey area, there’s no good vs evil really, because on one hand you have Russia invading another country, which can never be supported, war is never the answer, yet there’s also no denying he was provoked to an extent by NATO expansionism eastwards, something that was promised to Russia back in the day wouldn’t happen, if they assented to the Berlin Wall coming down. It still happened, NATO poked the bear if you like. Israel and Gaza is a totally different situation though, there is no grey area, it is actually very black and white. Since 1967 Palestine has been occupied territory, Israel control the entry and exit of stuff into those territories, especially Gaza, which they have now completely cut aid off to and are verging on committing an historical moment of death and destruction should they as they keep threatening go all in on Rafah, where 1.6m people are trapped, and starving to death, with nowhere to go and no aid getting in. Palestine have opposed their occupation, the formation of groups like Hamas was in response to that occupation and whether you agree with their actions or condemn them, and again I’ll say jere just as I said in relation to Russia and Ukraine, violence is never the answer, it never solves anything, wars always end when peace talks are instigated, the problem we have here with the Israel Gaza situation, is that Israel are led by a guy in Benjamin Netanyahu, leading a coalition of the worst hard right elements in Israeli political discourse, who as a consequence of that, cannot afford to let the war end. You can’t reason with this Israeli government, they are an absolute global pariah right now and more and more people, sensible people, people capable of rational thought acknowledge the truth of this and are condemning their leaders who continue to support this genocide, continue to enable it as well and so Eurovision has rightfully, justifiably come in for fallout from that too. This isn’t Russia and Ukraine, this is different. Making out that it is the same thing, is gut-wrenching, vomit inducing stuff given the images we’ve seen more than enough of coming out of Gaza, but which will still come and frankly needs to, so our anger doesn’t cool, we can’t afford to let it. There have, during the course of the song contest been several incidents, of censure against other nations contestants and other people involved choosing to walk away given the EBU’s unapologetic continued support for Israel. The incident with the Dutch contestant Joost Klein for example is probably the best known, who got barred from taking part in the final because of an incident where he apparently told a female staff member he didn’t wish to be filmed. No physical altercation, just words. This was a camera woman as several mainstream media sources have reported, though footage has emerged of the Israeli contestant’s songwriter, Keren Peles, having filmed Klein without his permission by making sure he was caught in the background whilst she and one of their dancers, basically had a giggle about it. Was this the incident Klein kicked off over? That I can’t confirm, but lots are jumping to that conclusion. Clearly Peles knew she was doing something she shouldn’t be, but since when do Israel ever get set boundaries it seems? The Israeli contestant’s designer Itai Bezalali also allegedly targeted other contestants critical of Israel such as Greece’s Marina Satti who he tried to take a photo of backstage, and also targeted Ireland’s Bambie Thug in the same manner as Peles filmed Joost Klein, allegedly choosing to misgender them and called them a monster. These were rule breaches, the EBU apparently acknowledged them as such, but no action was taken. Israel get a free pass again. Now it’s been an often asked question as to why Israel even compete in the song contest, given they aren’t in Europe, a criterion that has continued to be watered down frankly, but when you consider most Israeli’s are white, despite being surrounded by people of racial descent who are not, who they oppress, white people of European descent no less, take Benjamin Netanyahu himself is an example of that, his father Benzion Netanyahu was actually born Benzion Mileikowsky and he was Polish. Israel is a land of settlers after all and remains so to this day. His father incidentally was a rabbi in the Zionist Movement and was Russian which offers me a bit of a segue at this point back to Israel’s actual contestant in Eurovision, Eden Golan. It seems that despite Russia being banned from competing in Eurovision, if you happen to be a dual national Russian and are competing for Israel, well that’s just fine. Eden Golan was born in Kfar Saba in Israel to Russian parents, settlers. Ironically her mother is of Ukrainian Jewish descent and her father Latvian Jewish. From the time Eden Golan was 6 until she was 18, she lived in Russia and is listed on her Wikipedia page, there’s not a lot to go on on this girl, as Russian-Israeli. Now perhaps being a dual national is a grey are again for the EBU, maybe it offered them a get out of jail free card given Russia is boycotted, but to the eyes of the world, given she was representing one pariah state and is dual national of another widely regarded in the same light, this is Eurovision being anything but apolitical and where one contestant having strong words with someone saw them get banned, the Israeli candidate was able to come out at the end of the show, having been booed throughout proceedings because of who she represented, waving the Israeli flag and coming on to the song I love it, (I don’t care) by Swedish group Icona Pop, just to rub people’s noses in it frankly. How come she was allowed to do that then? Unlike the Ukrainian contestant however, Israel did not walk away with the win last night, though coming 5th, was far higher than many will have liked. The winner was Swiss contestant Nemo, a country infamously neutral, there’s probably some irony there, though Nemo was apparently the target of Israeli misdemeanour as well backstage. Israel did really well, got large vote shares from a lot of countries, 10 points from the UK disappointingly, but I like to think that was because so many boycotted it and only the Zionist lobby were watching. Certainly Labour Friends of Israel were jumping up and down and advocating people to vote for the Israeli contestant again making a mockery of the contest having nothing to do with politics. Who does fund them again? Fundamentally what this shows is we cannot back down, we cannot stop speaking out, because given literally any opportunity, even a song contest, there will be those who will use it to promote Israel and diminish what they are doing in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Indeed hostage releases on both sides, and a ceasefire could be enacted now, if a deal Hamas agreed to had also been agreed to by Benjamin Netanyahu, but it hasn’t been and it won’t be, as I said before he cannot afford to let the atrocity end because his grip on power depends on it and peace in the region effectively depends on his removal at this point, I can see no other way as I detail here in this video recommendation and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Lindsay Hoyle the Speaker of the House of Commons and a guy now as famous for being allegedly under the thumb of Keir Starmer, due to that now infamously sabotaged ceasefire vote as he is for being generally weak and not having the authority to maintain order in the Commons for very long. Well he’s back on my radar once again for the worst of reasons once more, because not only are his pro Israel leanings well recorded, and arguably he’s under more scrutiny for these, since his father, the late Doug Hoyle founded the Labour Friends of Israel Lobby, but following that botched ceasefire vote back in February, you kind of hoped he’d have a bit of self reflection in the meantime. Instead, when confronted by his own constituents about the ceasefire vote, he chose to ignore them, to film them and as he left in his car, he was photographed appearing to be actually laughing at them. That’s not the actions of a guy who is contrite and self reflecting. Those are the actions of a man who thinks he’s untouchable, so perhaps its time that Speakers of the House of Commons learned they are absolutely not. Right, so Lindsay Hoyle again it is and once again he’s being taken to task over Israel, his own Israel leanings, his impartiality, his honesty and his credibility that has been questioned by ordinary people in his constituency this time around, the matter of that ceasefire vote back in February, brought by the SNP on an SNP Opposition Day once more seeing him being challenged for that in public. Just to cast your mind back to what exactly happened previously, which sets the tone for where we are now, some 3 months later, the SNP were bringing a ceasefire vote as an Opposition Day motion, they only get 3 of these Opposition Day debates versus Labour for example getting 17 of them, so to use one of their precious days to call for a ceasefire in Gaza was a big deal, but they got well and truly shafted. Rules you see. House of Commons Standing Orders are rules and Standing 31 relates to Opposition Day debates where, to give the relevant party its say on its day, the rule is according to the standing order, that their motion will be heard first in the event that the government lays down an amendment, and if the government lays down an amendment, no other opposition parties get to bring an amendment themselves, because by convention, their amendment would have to be heard before the motion. No good on an Opposition Day debate, because the relevant party, in this case the SNP, could see their motion amended before they even bring it. It’s their day. Hence the need for exceptional rules on Opposition Days. This got set aside arbitrarily by Hoyle apparently after Keir Starmer leant on him, that is the allegation. The official line is that Starmer convinced him somehow, no details given, but the allegations are that Starmer threatened him, threatened Hoyle that Labour would withdraw support for him following the next General Election, where the Speaker once more must be selected and Hoyle would quite like to stay in post. What we saw here was a blatant breaking of convention therefore and the rules that govern these things. For a start, to set aside a standing order should have required a vote. There was none, Hoyle took it upon himself to do this, again adding weight to the threat allegation. Adding further fuel to the fire that this was a blatant stitch up, was the fact Hoyle justified this at the time, as an attempt to broaden the debate, when no such thing was needed and it broke rules to do so. However his story is inconsistent, because when he was dragged back to Parliament to justify this decision after the vote, both the SNP and the Tories were incensed at what Hoyle had done, he hid behind allegations of a terrorist threat to MPs, which we’ve still seen no evidence for. Now MP safety is of course a valid concern, two MPs have been murdered in recent years, but to say there is a threat after the vote, having not mentioned it previously, smacks of weaponising those deaths, weaponising the threat of an attack, why after all did Hoyle not just say this up front as his justification? Broadening the debate doesn’t remove such a threat if credible and how does Starmer fit into that picture? If the threat was genuine, Hoyle ought to have called all Party leaders in to discuss it, but that didn’t happen either. All we know is that Starmer went to see him, Starmer admitted as much, and all of a sudden rules were being broken. This incident has continued to follow Hoyle it seems, as on Friday, back in his constituency of Chorley, in Lancashire, this happened: Nothing quite like engaging with your constituents is there? The anger they showed is understandable, people still don’t know why Hoyle did what he did and there didn’t seem to be much effort on his part to explain himself to his constituents. Any efforts to investigate what happened have been stymied, so do we have a Speaker that is controlled by Keir Starmer or is he truly independent and in a position of actual authority? That has been called into question and with Starmer looking to be the next Prime Minister, should be extremely concerning if Hoyle is as is alleged, putting his own career prospects first and unable to stand up to Starmer. Instead of engaging with his constituents, he hurriedly got back in his car, but not before taking some photos of those demanding their parliamentary representative answer to them, what plans do you have for those then Lindsay? Going to call the police on your constituents for daring to ask you some questions? Perhaps you felt threatened, perhaps you felt they might have been terrorists despite the minders you evidently had and certainly we shouldn’t make light of legitimate threats of such against our MPs and I certainly condemn the real thing, but this certainly wasn’t that and indeed if you take MPs safety and security so seriously, so seriously in fact that you set aside standing orders on a ceasefire debate in parliament, as you indeed claimed, then what was this face all about as your car drove away? Pointing and laughing at your own constituents is that? Certainly looks that way and certainly implies to me, that you were not in anyway afraid for your safety whatsoever. Is that appropriate conduct for an MP to their constituents? Can’t imagine that makes them want to vote for you, but of course, Hoyle might feel he’s untouchable in that regard too, since by convention, parties do not stand against an incumbent Speaker, the main parties at least anyway. It is only a convention though and if that face, laughing and pointing seemingly at his own constituents, doesn’t prompt some to stand against Hoyle and break what is a preposterous convention anyway, giving the Speaker a free pass into parliament, especially one who behaves like this, if he truly is laughing at his own constituents after having seemingly stitched up a ceasefire vote they want answers over, not only would he in which case have indeed weaponised threats against MPs previously, but even if true, doesn’t actually take them seriously by his apparent conduct here. Hoyle has been the MP for Chorley since 1997. He’s quite comfortable there, a little too comfortable perhaps and absolutely should have to defend his seat and he in fact will be as at time of writing at least one Party is fielding a candidate against him, the Greens, who do not follow this convention of not standing against the Speaker. I daresay there may be more candidates to come yet, I understand George Galloway’s Workers Party are not ruling it out for one. Now Hoyle has a not indecent majority of 17,392, which he won in 2019, his first election as Speaker and therefore only had a Green and a former Brexit Party candidate, who ran as an Independent standing against him. This was a big step up from his previous majorities though, clearly a benefit of the Tories and Lib Dems not standing against him anymore, his majorities have historically been quite modest though, so actually he’s ripe for an upset in my view if the right candidate stood against him. Additionally, Lancashire has been somewhat uncomfortable territory for Labour of late, Hoyle’s Party, even if as Speaker he is strictly speaking unaffiliated. Labour have just lost control of Oldham Borough Council, in Lancashire and of course the Rochdale by-election went terribly for Labour, seeing George Galloway himself return to parliament, and there were also the huge losses of 20 councillors in Pendle, who resigned in protest from the Labour Party over Keir Starmer and his horrible stance on Israel and Gaza. For a traditional Labour heartland, there is significant discontent and Starmer aside, Hoyle is in no small part bringing more of that down on himself with his actions here towards people who wish to hold to account, yet despite being their elected representative, Speaker or not, he doesn’t seem keen on letting them do that, and in fact appears to find the idea of them doing so funny. Frankly Hoyle’s position is already untenable, but his apparent conduct towards his own constituents should make it doubly so. I went into more detail over Hoyle alleged caving in to Keir Starmer in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so David Lammy, Labour’s Foreign Secretary has this week been sucking up to Trump supporting Republicans, referring to himself as being a small c – stop that tittering at the back - that is small c Conservative, in which case being the Labour representative of Tottenham for the last 20 odd years has been a sale pitch on false pretences, but he also made a rather startling admission regarding his view of Nelson Mandela the former ANC South African President, saying that in his warped view, Mandela would have been against the Gaza protests. Not only has this triggered an excoriating response from Mandela’s grandson, but the timing of Lammy’s ridiculous comment couldn’t have been worse for him personally, but also demonstrates how appallingly out of his depth Lammy is with regards to his brief, because he clearly hasn’t the slightest notion about South Africa and Palestine relations, going back decades. If you thought voting Labour would vote a bunch of tin eared idiots out, I’m afraid this latest Lammy lash-up implies you’re just changing the idiots and very little else. Right, so David Lammy is a Labour MP who can be relied upon to flip his opinions to suit his own personal aims at the drop of a hat. When Corbyn was leader, Lammy became a born again socialist, yet under Starmer, has adopted the very same creeping sycophancy, changing his tune to suit his own careerist ends. It is frankly how he’s survived as the Labour MP for Tottenham for so long, but being a member of LFI and now using that same tactic of going native amongst whoever is in power around you, he’s now done likewise with Donnie’s Dunces stateside, by labelling himself as a small c Conservative and referred to Trump as misunderstood. Even the BBC have called him out on this, reminding people that Lammy once upon a time, referred to Trump as a ‘neo-nazi supporting sociopath,’ but this is what Lammy does, he is the leopard that is constantly changing his spots. The dictionary definition of a self serving politician. But to egg on the right wing throng he was addressing, he also chose to pass comment on the ongoing University campus protests happening in the US and also other parts of the world of course too, notably here in the UK, by bringing up Nelson Mandela. Perhaps Lammy thought he was being clever here, with South Africa having taken Israel to the International Court of Justice on the grounds of violating international humanitarian law, on the grounds of it committing genocide, in fact South Africa have just submitted an urgent request for the indication and modification of previous provisional measures that the ICJ have handed down previously, to the ICJ once more, in light of the changed circumstances specifically relating now to Rafah, stating that the remaining existence of the Palestinian people of Gaza is now at stake, and with 1.6m people trapped in Gaza and with Israel having illegally taken control of the Rafah Border Crossing, now violating peace accords with Egypt too, the escalation is plain to see and I hope the ICJ now act upon this. So Lammy bringing up Mandela when he did, which was yesterday at time of writing, 10th May, you might think this was bad timing, unlucky timing on Lammy’s part, from his perspective of what he was trying to achieve here, which I’m coming onto, but it is actually so much worse than that and if Lammy weren’t so clueless regarding South Africa and Mandela himself, he might have known this was a bad idea. You see the 10th of May this year, marked the 30th Anniversary since the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the very first, post apartheid president of South Africa and Lammy saying Mandela wouldn’t have approved of these campus protests, was just the icing on the cake of his own idiocy. Lammy said there is a difference between the peaceful protest Mandela would have advocated and the rioting and violence he claimed was being observed on college campuses. The violence was coming from the police from where I’m looking, but this also served to show Lammy had no idea who Mandela was, but one guy who does, is the former ANC politician, now resident here in the UK and has been selected to stand against Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras, Andrew Feinstein. Feinstein was literally a member of Mandela’s Party, a part of that government at that time 30 years ago. So he sent a tweet, addressing Lammy, saying: ‘I worked for Mandela David Lammy. He would have supported the students as he did the Palestinian struggle his whole life. Don’t besmirch the name of a liberator, a freedom fighter (who instigated civil disobedience & the armed struggle) a person of principle ie everything you are not.’ Bingo and yeah, Mandela wasn’t all about peaceful protest either. Liberation sometimes has to come with a fight and actually coming from somebody like Andrew Feinstein, who has since his time in South African politics devoted his life to battling the global arms sales racket that so many nations disgustingly profit out of, that point made by him, carries even more weight. Mandela himself was criticised back in his day in a very famous interview for much of what we are seeing people being criticised for now in relation to Israel, having met with the likes of Gaddafi and Fidel Castro and the then Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, and criticised that he held these people up as human rights advocates, simply because the US, where he was being interviewed and he came back with a 19 word statement, that completely destroyed the basis for that argument. He said: ‘One of the mistakes, which some political analysts make, is to think that their enemies should be our enemies.’ That is exactly what Israel demands, whilst also demanding we cans t a blind eye to the genocide they are carrying out. That is exactly what ardent allies of the Israel project demand too. The US then, just as it is now amongst others. Mandela is also credited as having said: ‘We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.’ South Africa knew apartheid when they saw it in Palestine and Israel then, just as they still do now and no other country on Earth frankly in my view, is a better authority on this subject. The world should be following their lead, not the lead of others and certainly not those David Lammy is associating himself with now, a man clearly with no idea about what he is talking about. He is either being dishonest, or he really is that much of a fool to believe this. Either way, you don’t want that in a politician. Indeed another Mandela has waded into this argument too, giving what I would argue is the biggest beasting of Lammy of them all, in a statement from Nelson Madela’s grandson, and currently serving ANC politician Zwelivelili ‘Mandla’ Mandela: ‘We call on students all over the world to emulate the student protest encampments on USA University Campuses. Friday, 10th May 2024: Today, marks 30 years since the inauguration of President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela on the 10th May 1994. I dedicate the memory of this day to the students protesting on USA University campuses calling for an immediate ceasefire of the genocide of Gaza and supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom. "We recall Madiba’s historic words on this day when he said: "We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free." "Contrary to what David Lammy, the Labour MP in the UK would like us to believe, Madiba acknowledged the heroes in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA and campuses all over the world who regularly protested for our freedom. "He himself was of that generation of South African youth who called for the armed struggle in the face of increasing state brutality in dealing with peaceful protest against Apartheid. "The youth on USA campuses are emulating and following in the brave footsteps of the youth of 1968 who came out openly protesting against the war in Vietnam. "On countless occasions acknowledged the role of the student protests of 1976 Soweto Uprising for playing a seminal role in our march to freedom. "From his prison cell he echoed the call to the students of the 1980s to make South Africa ungovernable. "David Lammy mustn't be an apologist for Apartheid Israel and for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He must echo President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's commitment to the Palestinian struggle which he affirmed during his visit to Gaza in 1995 when he said: " Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people." "We call on David Lammy to stop being an apologist for genocide and instead encourage all students on UK and European university campuses to emulate their fellow students in the USA in their call for a ceasefire in Gaza and support the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom. "Youth are the conscience of our world and their voices are the moral compass that guide us to a better future. Rather than brutalize them and criminalize their protest actions, we must encourage them to continue to stand for justice, human rights and dignity for all humanity. You are our heroes, we salute you.’ An apologist for genocide. That is damning and coming from a Mandela, infinitely more so than coming from pretty much anyone else on the planet, certainly outside of Palestine right now at least. David Lammy is completely wrong, as most mainstream media and politicians here in the UK are. If Lammy had any integrity, he would apologise, but he doesn’t. He’ll no doubt just change his spots again in future in whatever direction suits him best, Keir Starmer has taught him well in that regard I suppose. Big up the student protests, solidarity to all of those involved and Free Palestine. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer is determined to win our votes back after getting another underwhelming set of results in the local elections, despite how bad the Tories are, he just doesn’t seem to get that people are more and more looking for change now and he isn’t it, but of course there very much is other options as this video recommendation will tell you all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Keir Starmer is apparently going to stick with Rishi Sunak’s failure of a Stop The Boats policy if Labour get into power and I have to wonder giving the timing of this announcement, whether this was a demand by Dover defector, the former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke, to get her to defect, given she is so appallingly right wing and is in no way recognisable as a suitable Labour candidate. It makes me wonder whether Starmer was so desperate to bring another Tory MP on board his sham of a Labour Party, that he might be pimping out policy to convince them, because this really is right up her street. This is a woman lets not forget who complained that Suella Braverman’s plans didn’t go far enough. No safe asylum routes under Labour, Starmer doesn’t see how that will stop the small boat crossings, ultimately this is not getting the Tories out when they are jumping on board the Labour Party and the Labour Party under Starmer is taking their policies to continue with and with more Tories allegedly waiting in the wings to jump ship as well, what else could Starmer be offering them and if safe, humane asylum routes – of which there are none – don’t register as common sense to this deeply unpleasant former human rights lawyer, then his human rights credentials are truly dead and buried, if he ever truly believed in them to start with. Right, so that was Keir Starmer declaring in two video clips there that the moral case for migration should be made, which was his position just 4 years ago, compared to now, where he thinks safe asylum routes aren’t the answer to putting an end to the vile trade in human trafficking to get people into this country, despite the very obvious fact that should occur to anyone that doesn’t have a fetish for standing on the white cliffs and pointing and sneering, or gets off on such images on their TV screens, that safe asylum routes literally puts that idea out of business. What has happened to the moral case for migration then? No business can operate if you take the customers away and by instigating a safe, legal asylum route, nobody needs the traffickers anymore, nobody needs to cough up their life savings from wherever they’ve come from to risk their lives to get here in a rubber boat. I think former Corbyn Comms director James Schneider, a man of great eloquence and intellect, summed this video clip up best by quote tweeting it, and calling Starmer an amoral piece of human s**t. Hardly requires a speech to say everything that needed saying and to be 100% accurate into the bargain. It’s heartless, it is inhumane and it doesn’t work to continue to insist the boats can be stopped by just saying it loudly enough or often enough. As long as people give money to traffickers, traffickers will traffick. We’ve thrown millions at the French, who can’t police their entire coastline any more than we can. We’ve stupidly made demands of the Navy to turn boats around, the Tories and other right wing organisations have demonised the likes of the RNLI for daring to rescue people when they get into trouble at sea. But the question of the timing of Starmer’s decision to glue himself to this position right after one of the most ardent migrant bashers going, is raising suspicions, mine certainly, in former Tory MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke’s defection to Labour and certainly makes me wonder whether her move to Labour might have been along with at least some demands, which equally makes you wonder not only did Starmer let her join his Labour Party, but might have actually been actively offering concessions and sweeteners to bring her on board. This is a woman, at least according to a recent interview involving Boris Johnson knockoff Michael Fabricant, who is so right wing she wanted to drown migrants and start a war with France. Is the ruling out of a safe, legal asylum route by Labour now her doing? Is making Labour policy a price Starmer is prepared to pay to bring more Tories on board, there are more allegedly wanting to do so, not exactly getting the Tories out if Labour are just letting them join them instead is it? Plus it all serves as another reminder of why you can’t trust Keir Starmer any further than you can throw him, when once upon a time he stood for Labour leader on a pledge of strengthening migrants rights. pledge 6 reading: ‘Full voting rights for EU nationals. Defend free movement as we leave the EU. An immigration system based on compassion and dignity. End indefinite detention and call for the closure of centres such as Yarl’s Wood.’ Now it’s all stop the boats just like the Tories, no free movement, no rights as he veers not to the centre as so many disappointing political commentators keep saying, he’s sailed so far past the centre and into the right wing, he now has an MP that pretty much every Tory MP there is was to the left of and although Elphicke, just like Dan Poulter who preceded her is not standing for election for Dover for Labour, the guy who is, could just be Elphicke in a suit and actually tweeted out as blurb to a promo video, which is so bad the lip sync is a mile out, it’s tragically and hilariously awful if you care to watch it, but the tweet reads: ‘Only the Labour Party under Keir Starmer, with Yvette Cooper, will secure the borders. It's one of the reasons so many former Conservatives are coming to Labour.’ So many Tories eh? This is a guy called Mike Tapp incidentally, a wannabe politician who’s outward visage screams Tory Boy with the rhetoric to match it, saying Labour migration policy is so right wing in effect, that this is why Tories are being attracted to the Party. You shouldn’t want to be attracting Tories to the Party, you’re supposed to put an offer in to the British people that chimes with the majority of their beliefs, not instead attracting Tories in the belief people will vote for you anyway just to get the Tories out, no matter how many Tories you are actually letting in. So how does Starmer plan on smashing the smuggler gangs whilst continuing to treat migrants as pariahs, now that he’s decided that that is going to be his current position, instead of making the moral case for them? He’s been watching James Bond again and it has given him ideas, He plans to use MI5. Yes, the secret service and he’s chosen to write about it once again in the rancid Murdoch Scum, because, heck, we know who his audience for this is by now do we not? And he teed this plan of his up with a tweet saying: ‘People have a right to expect security at our borders. When I was the country’s chief prosecutor, we smashed terrorist gangs abroad. If I’m privileged enough to become Prime Minister, we will smash the people-smuggling gangs.’ Yes, remind us again how much you were director of public prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service, except I’ll now point out to you that the hardline migrant bashing Tory MP you just allowed to join Labour subverted a CPS prosecution against her own now ex husband by trying to get the judge to dismiss character references by herself and four other Tories who claim she was the ringleader. Don’t ever invoke your time at the CPS again, you sold the rights to do that with this move in my view. His excuses for such criticisms? His Labour needs to be less tribal! Well tell that to Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott then! Underlying all of this is the painfully obvious realisation to many of us who used to support Labour but absolutely cannot now. Natalie Elphicke has not changed one iota, the Labour Party has though, to suit their aims of attracting her and more like her to their side and will do or say whatever it takes to do that, including becoming the new party of migrant attacks, immigration bashing and offensive rhetoric against desperate people prepared to risk their lives for a chance of a better life. Labour is just a moral vacuum prepared to do or say literally anything it takes to get Starmer into power without any real idea of what he will do once he gets there and the cruelty of demonising migrants when the solutions are so obvious and easy is criminal. Negotiate a new returns policy so all asylum seekers here are not required to be housed here, contrary to right wing narratives we do not need to rejoin the EU for this and instigate a safe legal asylum route to put the traffickers out of business and more importantly stop any more people from drowning in the Channel. For more on Natalie Elphicke and what on Earth she’s doing now n the Labour Party, check out this video recommendation here, tells you a lot more about Labour have let in under Starmer and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Genocide Joe Biden, I’d imagine he’s aware of that nickname by now, but it appears he’s only just clicked as to why people are calling him it and with Israel’s move into Rafah and seizing control of the border crossing, in violation of the Camp David Accords, is one more move by the Netanyahu administration to derail ceasefire talks, a ceasefire he himself has already ruled out despite Hamas having accepted the deal on the table. It is now obvious and impossible to deny that the problem is Netanyahu now, even the most ardent of supporters can’t evade what is abundantly clear, though if they choose to deny it still, that is very much on them and worse if they defend it, if committing genocide against tens of thousands of Gazans, with the potential for that number to skyrocket as attacks on Rafah increase with greater ferocity, then they deserve to go down with him and that is a fate that has to be looking more and more likely, given that even Joe Biden, Israel’s staunchest global supporter and arms supplier, has just done something that appears to be a sign of rowing back on that, though any thoughts of self preservation he might have, given what he has allowed to go on for seven months already, the one man who could stop it all, is it enough and is it too late? Right, so Biden is in a panic over the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the ongoing genocide, but obviously this doesn’t concern the number of people that have been killed, if that bothered him so much, he would have stepped in before Gaza had been virtually completely razed to the ground north to south. What is making him panic is the fact that he and his administration have no control whatsoever over Netanyahu anymore and as a result of that, don’t control their colonialist project, their stake in the Middle East as they have been accustomed to in the past and that is in no small part due to the fact that when it comes down to it, and especially in light of the fact the US under Biden have sought to avoid ever placing sanctions of any kind on Israel instead offering only unabashed, unavowed support at all times even though its been obvious to the world that Israel is engaging in genocide, Netanyahu is more concerned about losing his grip on power than falling out of favour with the US and as such is clearly putting the hard right elements of his crackpot coalition front and centre. Should the government fall, Netanyahu knows his number will be up, with all the fallout of his actions that would be we would hope, soon to follow. So keeping himself in power is all that matters to him and keeping America happy, well, that doesn’t therefore end up being the top priority anymore. Equally Joe Biden and his administration are in an election year this year and as inconceivable as it might seem to we on the outside of that, Israel is giving Biden a re-election headache and there’s every chance the return of Donald Trump cann’t be ruled out. That moniker of Genocide Joe won’t just follow Biden through his election campaigning, he deserves nothing less than to be stuck with the title for life. So lets not kid ourselves that the loss of Palestinian lives has any bearing on Biden ending up in a bit of a flap and a bit of a panic now, he’s not given it anything like the focus it should have done, but what will focus his mind, is the problems he has made for himself. So what to do? How to get things back where he’d like it? How can he get some positive press, start to show that he is listening to concerns now, the voices from college campuses, from demonstrators, from the international world stage, but more importantly how can he do this whilst doing the bare minimum to upset Israel, because that is his ever present focus too. Well, he’s paused an arms shipment. I know, big deal right? In light of what has been going on in Rafah over the last several weeks, aggression from Israel towards the people trapped there, some 1.6m of them, having ramped up, with Israel now having violated peace accords with Egypt by taking control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah Border Crossing, it is all looking very, very bleak right now, seemingly nothing can stop Netanyahu from doing what he feels he must to keep control on power, no amount of loss of Palestinian innocent life seemingly too many for as long as he gets to remain Prime Minister. He’s delaying the inevitable, given the demonstrations in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel demanding his resignation, re-election seems very far fetched now for him, but who knows what else he might be prepared to do going forwards? At any rate, with a ceasefire deal agreed with Hamas, it will have come as no surprise to those of us observing and being fully aware of Netanyahu’s motivations, that he would never agree to stick by it himself, not if it meant not going into Rafah, because destroying Hamas is now so intertwined with his grip on power, to do anything less would be unthinkable. And so Biden, with this having dawned on him and his team, as held up a shipment of 2000lb bombs due to be deployed to Israel citing Rafah as their reason for doing so. With the Rafah Norder Crossing now under Israeli control, no aid is getting in at all. The attacks on Rafah continue and Israel naturally assumed – understandable all things considered as to what we’ve observed since October 7th, that the aid from the US would just carry on, that Biden can gripe and wince and complain, but ultimately he will keep supplying the regime, it is what the US have always done, ever since Israel was created, again making it obvious if it wasn’t before, that Israel is a Western project, that they basically consider too big to fail and that is why in no small part has US public money kept it afloat, to the tuen of hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 75 years that Israel has existed. That has now been officially threatened, albeit a very, very tiny bit. Without US armaments and we’ve always known this, Israel will very quickly run out of munitions, going through them like a dose of salts, with more always on the way, so to halt a delivery? Well that will definitely make Israel look up, but if Biden thought this might make Israel think twice, he really hasn’t got the measure of just how depraved and bats**t the Zionist regime is. Here’s an excerpt detailing matters: ‘On Wednesday, Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, confirmed reports that a shipment of 2,000lb bombs had been halted “in the context of unfolding events in Rafah”. Other weapons packages to Israel were also under review, said Matthew Miller, the state department spokesman. Mr Biden’s administration hopes its decision to pause the munition shipment will force Israel to reconsider its planned ground invasion of Rafah, in the south of Gaza. But Israeli officials reacted furiously to the decision, questioning the US’s repeated claim to have an “ironclad” commitment to the country’s security. Mr Erdan told Israel’s Channel 12 news that Mr Biden “can’t say he is our partner in the goal to destroy Hamas, while on the other hand delay the means meant to destroy Hamas”. It comes after Mr Biden cautioned Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, against the Rafah invasion in a phone call on Monday.’ So Israel are b*tching about it, still claiming it is all about Hamas, but with the scale of innocent lives lost and the potentially catastrophic loss of life that would be so much worse if scenes repeated elsewhere in Gaza were meted out in Rafah, this is typical par for the course dishonesty, a measure of how deranged they are, given that instead of listening, they are as usual playing the victim card, and spitting their dummies out. Equally, and perhaps sadly predictably, if Biden thought this might buy him a bit of good press and support for lets face it, doing as little as possible to hold Israel accountable, in the hope it’ll be enough to give him a bit of an election boost, it’s blown up in his face amongst other politicians in the US too, both on his side and amongst Republicans. Biden is hardly the only pro Israel nutjob in US political discourse, there are plenty of others and they are squealing almost as loudly as Israel are about holding up this shipment, and of course for purely political reasons a lot of these politicians would have been involved in stymying aid packages to Israel, financial ones, over the last several months too. Now I suppose it is what happens amongst public opinion, voter opinion right now that matters most, the US have a presidential system after all, it isn’t other politicians Biden necessarily has to worry about the most here. In his favour is the fact he’s running against Donald Trump, the worst US President in living memory, but Biden’s actions aren’t exactly raising the bar a great deal, with this mess in Israel and Gaza easily overshadowing anything else he’s ever been involved in and I very much doubt right thinking Americans, those with a soul, a social conscience, anyone who actually puts equal value on all human life, will forgive or forget what Biden has unquestioningly gone along with and despite splits each time this support has come up for debate, far more often than not, these aid packages, whatever they are, get voted through, and lets also not forget that Biden has subverted Congress to get aid through even without votes. All of a sudden, it seems to have dawned on him that he might have gone too far, all of a sudden his position is under threat. Little wonder a report on Israel’s wartime conduct has now been indefinitely delayed as well, because if that got out and American’s will readily realise they’ve been paying for this, well that’ll definitely be vote losing stuff of that I’m absolutely certain. Let’s shelve that, classify it to death for a while and hopefully every forgets about it. Not happening sunshine. Biden can hide his reports, make token gestures of holding shipments of armaments, lets face it, he hasn’t stopped the shipment, just held it up, actually changes nothing but delaying the inevitable it seems as things stand, in the vain hope he can mitigate electoral damage for himself. If Genocide Joe is panicking about re-election, then that is because he absolutely deserves to be.

Right, so it’s a fair enough point to raise in my view, especially from those of us who came from Corbyn’s Labour formerly, that with the smear machine ramping up again now against the Green Party, chiefly from the same Labour right wingers who brought the Corbyn project down, that they don’t fall into the same trap of attempting to placate those making baseless accusations, or ignore what is being said in the hope that it will blow over, because having pulled off this scam successfully before, attacks on the left, accusing them of being antisemitic and more, because all of a sudden it’s becoming a lot more prevalent and the reason for that is pretty obvious, Labour, as right wing as they are making it abundantly clear that they are, especially with the admission of hard right Tory Natalie Elphicke into their party are running scared of the Greens and they should be, because for the all the talk of the left and socialists having nowhere to go, whether Labour offer anything to them or not, it simply isn’t true in this day and age and if Starmer wasn’t getting his advice from a Blairite 90s relic like Peter Mandelson, who still believes the left have nowhere to go, he might not be making the painfully avoidable mistakes that he is. Right, so the Green Party are now the target of Labour Party weaponisers of all things dishonest. We know who they are, we know what they did to destroy the hopes of a changed country, shaped by a socialist vision. There was the sabotage, the smears, the accusations of being a racist and presiding over a racist party, all aided and abetted by an establishment media, owned lock, stock and barrel by billionaire media barons. When Labour had a socialist leader in Jeremy Corbyn, they set out to destroy him, even as he admirably tried to unite the party, bring all parts of the broad church that Labour supposedly is, to realise real transformative change for the benefit of the many and not the few. We know that failed and we know it failed because you cannot placate people who would be a better fit in the Tory Party, when their beliefs in capitalism and privatisation and Thatcherite continuity chime much more closely with that party, and I suppose it’s a combination of not wanting the Tory label and being wedded to what Tony Blair did, turning Labour into a Tory light Party, that would take turns in power with the Tories to preserve the status quo, to ensure the establishment was always protected no matter who was in power. That isn’t a democracy when that is the only outcome we can vote for and that is underlined even further by an electoral system trapping us in that cycle. We need electoral reform, both main parties are dead set against it for the aforementioned reasons. Until that wheel gets broken, this country will become more oppressive, more authoritarian and even less being run in the interests of it’s people. Where Tony Blair benefited from there being no social media to call him out for what he was doing, where Blair was capable of not giving the game away so obviously, a competent politician if still a completely rancid one, Keir Starmer isn’t. He is to politics what a toddler trying to ram a square block into a round hole on a shape sorter is. He makes his Tory intentions, his pro establishment leanings so obvious and nothing has exposed that more in recent times, than his support for Israel, his continuity Tory policies which are disgusting more and more people, now at the point where workers rights are literally being watered down by the party that is supposed to be for the workers and he’s only gone and underlined that with the equivalent of a big black permanent marker, by admitting a trade union bashing, refugee attacking, social justice opposing, hard right harridan like Natalie Elphicke into the Labour Party, the third Tory he’s opened his arms to, while decent actual Labour MPs, socialist MPs, are ostracised, suspended and purged. What do they care though? Where else will the left go? The mantra of Starmer’s guru Peter Mandelson. You don’t need to offer the left anything and certainly Starmer’s conduct is in line with that, desperately wooing Tories, the admission of Elphicke for little more than a soundbite at PMQs was risible, but equally he’s sending a message saying if we will allow someone as bats**t right wing as this into Labour, all of you who align with her are welcome too. Don’t worry about the rotten lefties, they have nowhere to go. Well it’s just not true and slowly, but surely, certainly following another set of underwhelming local elections, Labour can see where it is bleeding support off to, that it expected would stay with it, no matter how Tory they went, but instead more and more people chose to vote Green. Now I quite readily confess to being a Green Party member and a Councillor because I’m proud of it, it’s a party where being a socialist doesn’t come with a punishment and to underline just how worried Labour are, all of a sudden Mandelson seems to have changed his tune: I suppose the first thing I’d want to say to that is thank you Peter Mandelson for such an outstanding advert for joining the Green Party. It is now a place for left wingers, climate change activists and pro Palestine supporters – or a dustbin for them as he calls it - who are clearly not people wanted in Starmer’s Labour, though of course if you want to stay, that’s fine with him, you can be a tassel on Starmer’s Labour. Lucky you. If we were all such disposable material though, why are you running scared of us then? Mandelson is yesterday’s man, he’s never been with the times and has certainly never been on the side of ordinary working class people, he prefers the company of Russian oligarchs and billionaire sex traffickers, he does love to spend time on the private yachts of the super rich after all. He’s not been the only one on the attack though and as much as Mandy’s smugness is par for the course for him and his right wing of the Labour Party, then others are going for tried and tested methods of attack, such as the Jewish Labour Movement, where you need neither be in Labour of even Jewish to be a member, so it is little better than a pro Starmer, pro Israel lobbying group and it has turned the accusations of antisemitism on the Green Party and they’ve sent a two page statement to the Co-Leaders of the Green Party, Carla Denyer and Adiran Ramsay demanding they act on the antisemitism in their party. I’m not going to into the letter itself, the tweet that accompanied it was enough, which reads: ‘The Green Party have repeatedly failed to take action to stamp out antisemitism in their party & to remove antisemites from their ranks. We first warned the Green Party about this last year. Sadly, we've had to write again. There's nothing progressive about protecting racists.’ Now if a Labour linked body wants to pick on itself over allegations of racism and antisemitism, then that is up to them, we saw that with Corbyn, but as far as going after another Party, especially when you are again giving the Tories a free pass, is just an illustration of antisemitism being used as a political football by Labour figures. That is racist, that is disgusting, and the JLM should apologise. They have nothing to do with the Greens, their processes, their due diligence and they can certainly shut their holes when their party operates a hierarchy of racism where only antisemitism ever seems to matter and indeed the letter itself, is an attack on two Muslim Green Party candidates elected last Thursday, all based on the reporting it would appear of the Jewish Chronicle, a publication that has been rinsed more than any other by it’s regulator IPSO, and IPSO are basically toothless, so that really does say something. Using accusations of racism as a political tool, is itself racist. The JLM should stay in their lane. But the Jewish Chronicle isn’t the only media outlet also implicated in this apparent campaign against the Green Party and indeed Muslim Green Party candidate, who appear to be being disproportionately targeted. Another electee last Thursday in Leeds was Mothin Ali, who in celebration of his win, cried Allahu Akbar, God is Great in Arabic, but which has, thanks to media framing largely and unfairly, becoming synonymous with terror attacks. It is a cheer, nothing more nothing less. Mothin Ali is an accountant, who in his spare time runs a gardening blog called My Family Garden. Nevertheless, the claim was soon made in the Torygraph, that Ali was under investigation for what he’d said and it didn’t stop a Tory Councillor taking to Twitter to post the article complaining that Ali was only being investigated when he should be deported instead. Well he was born in Sheffield as I understand it, you prat. At any rate his only crime it appears was having stood on a pro Gaza platform. But he also isn’t under investigation as Green Party Deputy Leader Zack Polanski took to task this Tory Councillor, Iain Gall, when he posted: ‘This is totally inaccurate & wilful misleading reporting. No one is being investigated for shouting God is Great. The only people who take offense to that are the same sort of Tory & Labour councillors that engage with the same sort of Islamophobia as Iain Gall here.’ I think Polanski did exactly what was needed here, pushed back, though Ali still published a written apology for any offence caused. I would like to think he did that of his own volition and not been made to do so, certainly many people are jumping to that conclusion, I personally don’t see that he had anything to apologise for. There are lessons to be learned by what happened to Corbyn, that the Greens need to take on board now. Clearly, they are the establishments next chosen target. Therefore for anyone wanting to be where the change is clearly coming from in their view – and I agree for a change, though I’m already a member, so I’m biased – so now seems a good time to get on board and join and indeed in light of last weeks local election successes AND the attacks on the Greens that have come since, not that there could possibly be a connection you understand, many people have. The Greens are the party not just for climate change, something else Mandelson evidently thinks belongs in the dustbin, so there’s Labour again for you, but also for social justice, racial justice and economic justice. Much of what Corbyn put forward in his manifestoes was also in the Greens manifesto and remains there more importantly. The attacks will keep coming though, but they need to be seen for what they are and equally it can be turned back on other parties, so lets flip this back on Labour. Why are you letting in so many Tories if you are supposed to be the alternative? Why are Tories from the hard right allowed in, but not people from the left? We know you’ll never let Corbyn stand again as a Labour MP, but why is Diane Abbott still suspended after a year, when Tories can walk in the front door to become Labour MPs? Is Peter Mandelson an adviser to Keir Starmer and if so, why would someone with ties to the super rich, to Peter Epstein suitable to be in such a lofty elevated position in his Labour Party? What due diligence did you do on him and should we assume that was about the same as was done on Natalie Elphicke? Why are the Jewish Labour Movement the only representative body acting on behalf of the Labour Party to deal with antisemitism, when their Labour and Jewish links are arbitrary, there are other more solidly Jewish groups there, like Jewish Voice for Labour, why not use them? The Forde Report identified a hierarchy of racism, why have Labour not enacted its recommendations? Why did Starmer ban MPs from talking to Forde afterwards? Why are the JLM still overseeing antisemitism training when Forde found their training to be inadequate? I could go on and on and on. There is no shortage of attack lines, completely legitimate and proven that the Greens should be responding with if this carries on. If they don’t, then they’ll be Corbynated too. There’s a reason the Greens are doing well and attracting new members and that is because the appetite for change is still there, still in demand and it’s no longer on offer in Labour. If Mandelson thinks we won’t go elsewhere, he clearly hasn’t learned that we can and we will and we are. I went over some more ideas for Green and Indy candidates in light of their victories last week in this video recommendation here so if you enjoyed this video you might like to watch that next and stay with this channel and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so following on from the local elections and the news that Keir Starmer’s labour Party is in real terms only polling some 7% ahead of the Tory Party right now, that is according to what is called the National Equivalent Vote, a poll taken from various extrapolations of local election data and used to give a projection, rather than a prediction of a General Election result and these have certainly been indicative for decades ahead of a General Election on how things may pan out. A large National Equivalent Vote lead, generally translates into a decent majority for whichever party is leading, so as much as people can quibble that local election results do not predict general election results, they can in fact be good indicators, if read in the right way. With Starmer not having a large lead in this poll, having in the region of half the lead he needs, we’re in hung parliament territory which in my view, given the prospects before us, is a good thing. For all the reasons that Labour underperformed once again in these local elections though, having failed to win more lost Tory votes than they gained to other parties, the one much of the media are fixating on is the matter of Israel and Gaza and Starmer’s ongoing unequivocal support for the genocidalists. It’s no wonder therefore that Starmer has earned himself the nickname Tel Aviv Keith and is no small wonder that is trending on social media again today as he no promises to listen and take on board those lost votes and pledges to win them back, but given he cannot be trusted to ever keep his word and has shown no sign of criticising Israel and siding with Gaza, in fact going so far as to sabotage parliamentary votes and having advocated that Israel has the right to commit war crimes even, how on Earth does he think he can win these votes back acting and speaking on this atrocity in the way he has? Right, so Keir Starmer AKA Tel Aviv Keith. He has apparently been listening to us following so many lost votes in the local elections, following lost councils even as he saw in Oldham, with independent and Green candidates winning almost as many seats between them as Labour did, with one significant reason being the ongoing genocide in Gaza at the hands of Israel, a nation Labour and its leadership remain in unequivocal support of. The problem Starmer has is that for as much damage in the public eye as he causes for himself and his party, it’s almost impossible for him to reverse that. He has on one hand believed it didn’t matter and therefore as far as policy announcements, or more often than that, policy scrapping was concerned, having binned everything he told people he stood for to now become a Blairite clone minus any of the charisma, but even more Tory than they were, he has told the nation that he doesn’t listen to us, doesn’t listen to our wants, doesn’t care about our needs after 14 years of Tory misrule, because he didn’t think he needed to. He was getting told he had these massive poll leads, no matter what Rishi Sunak tried he wasn’t gaining any ground and it didn’t seem to matter that Labour were offering barely anything different, because a change of face and simply not being the Tory Party appeared to be all that was needed to carry Keir Starmer to Number 10 come the General Election, when Sunak finally finds a spine to call it and stop squatting mandateless in Number 10 himself. The problem for Starmer as it turns out, is that those polls appear to be woefully mistaken. For one, they’ve never taken into account at parliamentary level the inroads smaller parties are making. The Lib Dems look to be making a frankly inexplicable recovery, what do they ever stand for after all? But so have the Green Party, now looking more and more in with a chance of gaining their second MP in Bristol and there has been the rise in independent candidates being financed within their communities to be able to stand as local candidates on local issues, something Starmer has caused additional and particular ire around the country over as he has parachuted favoured Starmerroid people in all over the place, to an extent pollsters clearly underestimated. We’ve seen entire Constituency Labour Party executives collapse on multiple occasions because of the draconian diktat being handed down by the Labour leadership, that people even in the party are choosing to sit on their hands and let these authoritarians own their mistakes. Even where parties might not have enough in them to necessarily take a parliamentary seat though, they will be making inroads into Labours vote. Remember that Starmer has been wooing that Tory vote for so long now and when it came to these local election results, he took roughly speaking just two fifths of it. All whilst losing support from his traditional support base AND there’s no guarantee any Tory voters lending Labour their vote now will do so again. A poll lead built on sand and so it perhaps is no surprise that the National Equivalent Vote projection – not prediction, but projection – a snapshot basically, is giving Labour just a 7% lead over the Tories. Totally different methodology, but much more believable given there is so little difference between Starmer’s Labour and Sunak’s Tories – people don’t want this, yet Starmer refuses to offer something different. I believe there needs to be a policy shift, I believe he needs to stop letting Rachel Reeves call all the policy shots, because she’s George Osborne in a skirt ready to inflict more austerity on us given the chance and nobody wants that again, but even doing that, would anyone believe him given how much he has lied to the public on so many things on so many occasions? It isn’t so much that aspect of things that the media or indeed Labour spokespeople are fixating upon, but instead they are blaming the matter of Israel and Gaza and Labour’s refusal to budge on their pro Israel backing that is upsetting many people and influenced how they voted. I completely believe and accept this is part of the story here in no small part, however how it is being presented is appalling, with the implication being this is a Labour Muslim problem only, based upon the Muslim vote as a demographic, having spectacularly collapsed for Labour, Starmer have blown half of the Muslim vote his party relied on and frankly since that news came out some time ago, I daresay the situation has probably got worse for Labour. This has on the other hand unfortunately allowed the media to lay the blame solely at Muslim voters and presenting this as a Muslim only problem, when it quite clearly isn’t. So many more people are equally disgusted with Labour’s Israel and Gaza stance than just Muslims. We’re all horrified by what we’ve witnessed, by what our politicians keep doing and saying, never choosing to stop arms sales, never choosing to condemn Netanyahu’s regime, always seemingly putting the blame on the people who are right now on the receiving end of the violence playing out in real time on our screens. Of all politicians, it’s really hard to suggest anyone who has caused more offence to those who want Israel censured, and boycotted and divested from and sanctioned than Tel Aviv Keith has. That piece of LBC footage will never be forgiven and never be forgotten and Starmer has only made worse on that in the intervening time since, because he has refused to apologise or even acknowledge he said what is clearly on film there. Cameras don’t lie, Keir Starmer lies like a rug. Following that of course, was the incident with the SNP ceasefire vote back in February. Sabotage as that was, aided it seems by the Speaker, willingly or coerced, we’ll probably never know, but if it’s the latter, having a PM with control like that over the Speaker, is unthinkable and certainly can’t be democratic. It was a pro Israel move, that served nothing but Starmer’s loyalties towards the Israel Lobby, the same Lobby that put him where he is today, backed as he was financially by figures eponymous with it, the likes of Trevor Chinn of the Jewish Leadership Council, to become Labour leader. With all of that baggage, both Israel related, policy related, add on his treatment of Labour members too, now he tells us, now it looks like his sure thing majority at the next General Election might be in doubt, that he’s going to listen to us. Are you really prepared to listen, but more importantly believe anything he says to placate you and try and win back your vote from this point forwards given his already proven conduct? You would have to have been born yesterday surely? It can never be about what Starmer says, but what Starmer does and he would have to do a lot right now to convince us of a meaningful shift. I’m talking the dissolution of Labour Friends of Israel for one. That would be a move that’d make me sit up. I’m talking demands for the expulsion of the bats**t Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely. I’m talking a reshuffle of his frontbench to bring socialists on his backbenches, what few remain, back into the fore to reshape policy and preferably bin off the likes of Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting. I’m talking about restoring the whip to Diane Abbott immediately. Frankly if Starmer were truly putting Labour and Labour values and the desire to see change as he claims his changed Labour is and wants to convince us of that, the single most important thing he could do is resign himself. Nothing Starmer says will have the slightest impact on me because his words mean nothing. He needs to show he’s listening not just say it and the extent to which I think he has to go to do that, means it simply won’t happen either. None of these things he will do, he will not change, he will just tell you he is. More fool you if you still trust this man. Labour’s actual, realistic polling based on actual votes and not mathematical algorithms means that the likelihood of a hung parliament has increased. Sunak can’t undo the damage he and his party have done in the eyes of the public and Keir Starmer really can’t either. So bring on a hung parliament, bring on the end of First Past The Post as the condition of any electoral deals to form a government and lets end this circus of self serving politicians bought and paid for by vested interests that never serve our interests. Made worse for Starmer of course has been the commentary from those Labour spokespeople on these results and the petty racism that has actually emerged showing not only has Starmer lied about all of the above, but those claims of dealing with racism in his party? Well of course they appear to be lies as well as this video recommendation will tell you all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so Israel is supposedly the only democracy in the Middle East then is it? That’s what we keep getting told is it not? That is what the pro Israel crowd, the Zionists on social media and mainstream media always tell us, our politicians, that Israel are the advanced, civilised and reasonable nation akin to our Western values, that is the point they all try to sell us and of course for an awful long time well past the point we should have known better we believed this, thought the last 7 months have been an eye opener for many and any belief that those Western narratives were ever being honest with us have now well and truly been exposed as rancid lies, made all the worse as those same media outlets and those same politicians continue to try and tell us we should be backing Israel still and that 40,000 dead Gazans and so many more tens of thousands injured, many with life changing injuries for some reason don’t matter. That is a genie that is never going back in the bottle. Of course for as much as we’ve relied on social media to be informed about the realities of Israeli barbarism and oppression, much of that has been channelled from foreign media doing a damn sight better job than any Western media have, risking their lives and too often losing them to the Israeli regime, who have had zero respect for the Press during this conflict, to inform us via those same social media outlets, even though in some instances, we have access to the likes of Al Jazeera as a TV Channel here too, but in a move that does nothing but reinforce the fact that Israel is anything but a democracy, they’ve just banned Al Jazeera, from being able to report and broadcast to the country. Right, so it seems Benjamin Netanyahu has had enough of all these people telling the truth about what he’s doing and these massive protests that keep happening in his country demanding that he resign and call elections and he’s decided to take it out on Qatar based media outlet Al Jazeera, who have been one of the shining examples of real wartime journalism on the ground in Gaza, having reported on the situation in Gaza from the start, having been targeted by Israeli forces themselves on numerous occasions, many of their journalists having lost their lives. This war in Gaza, as much as Israel like to call it that and as much as they have called it a war against Hamas, has instead been shown, by media outlets like Al Jazeera, to instead be a war on children, a war on journalists, a war on aid workers a war of mass graves and instead of being anything remotely about Israel’s right to defend itself, has been a real time display of genocide and ethnic cleansing. So much of what we’ve seen, what we’ve observed, how the minds of people who though they knew the craic of what the truth of the Israel and Palestine dynamic was, have been jolted into reality by the scenes we’ve witnessed for the last 7 months, the acts committed by the Israeli Defence Forces, the rhetoric from the insane parliamentarians of the Knesset that Netanyahu did a deal with to take power, people so far right, that they believe the people they have been slaughtering in the tens of thousands are a price worth paying to eliminate Hamas, a resistance movement, that you can absolutely criticise for their actions, but who probably would never have come into existence either, if not for Israeli occupation and the way they mistreat the people who’s lands they occupy and who have every right under international law, to resist their occupation. This means nothing to Netanyahu, nothing to Israel, these people are less than human anyway in their view, such is the way with apartheid regimes, as this Israeli one absolutely is, no matter how much our shameless politicians, so heavily lobbied by Israel and Israeli interests, we no longer are sure any more which country they are most loyal to, as we ourselves head into a General Election this year, seemingly with a choice of one Zionist or another to lead the country and so still, we won’t get a leadership who will do the right thing here. And we know all of this in no small part because of the bravery of the journalists on the ground in Gaza and it is because of that, that Netanyahu, now seeks to blind the eyes of the world, as if that will now making any difference at all and as such, one of the key outlets reporting on all of this, Al Jazeera, has now been banned from Israel. In a vote today, Netanyahu’s hard right cabinet voted unanimously, to shut down Al Jazeera following on from a previous vote where the Israeli parliament passed a law to temporarily shut down any foreign media who were perceived to be a threat to Israel’s national security, which is just code for any outlet reporting the truth about what Israel are doing, which is committing out and out genocide. How temporary this shut down of Al-Jazeera will be, we will have to see, as we will have to see if any condemnation of this completely anti-democratic move comes from any of our leaders, or whether they’ll support the move instead. It’s no stretch of the imagination to envisage Sunak or Starmer sending Al Jazeera the same way as Press TV or RT after all is it? Netanyahu put out a gloating tweet saying: ‘The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel’ They reported the truth, they exposed your lies, you couldn’t handle it, it’s made you into a global pariah state as a result of the revelations that have come from Al Jazeera and indeed a good many other credible news outlets too. They haven’t just banned Al-Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel though, they’ve seized their equipment too. Editing and routing equipment, cameras, servers, laptops, microphones, transmission equipment, mobile phones, you name it, Israel have taken it. Where does this leave those in Palestine then? That is occupied territory after all. Well Israel’s ban doesn’t extend to them at least not quite yet, but certainly the fear is, that it will come. Certainly that is the view of one of Al Jazeera’s reporters in the occupied West Bank, Zain Basravi has said in response to the ban: ‘So to have our journalists, our operations, threatened in this way … Definitely, the worry here in the occupied West Bank is that we will be next.’ But as much as this is blatantly censorship and an attempt to supress what Israel is up to, even though that ship sailed I’d venture to suggest, there’s a political motivation here as well, because Al Jazeera is in part state sponsored by Qatar and Qatar have been a leading nation in trying to act as mediators to bring about an end to the genocide and an actual ceasefire that is permanent and not another humanitarian pause, as is the current deal Israel are trying to sell, snake oil as it is, but which David Cameron is currently crowing as something Hamas should accept because it is a very generous offer. It isn’t, it’s just a pause and you take us for fools if you think we’ll believe that, because thankfully, we in this country are not yet solely reliant on mainstream media opinion passed off as news, there are credible journalists left in this world that are delivering for us and putting UK media to absolute shame, too many of them frankly have a neck to call themselves journalists, when they are little more than stenographers offering client journalism and not actually reporting actual events. To upset Qatar therefore, coming back to them, is in Israel’s view I would think a way to upset them and allow the victim card to once again be played, claiming they are biased towards Hamas, and no doubt they’re antisemitic and all the rest of the tired, worn out attack lines the professional victims of the Israeli government like to play. Fundamentally this move can be seen quite easily as an intentional damaging of the peace process because Israel do not actually want peace. They are blocking an investigation into what actually happened on October 7th, so what does Israel have to hide there? They are now gagging the media who insist on reporting the truth, they are sabotaging peace processes and refusing to put hostage rescue before taking out Hamas, much to the disgust of the Israeli people who will now be denied information. They are threatening still more violence as they are poised to launch an attack on a tent city as Rafah has become, now home to some 1.6m Palestinians, who are living in famine and squalor as aid continues to be denied to them. Nothing Israel are doing precludes me from coming to the conclusion they want the Palestinian people gone and gaza for themselves and the world just sits on its hands and watches. For now, Al-Jazeera can still report from within Palestine, but for how much longer remains to be seen. If Israel can scupper the media, the entire world will be running blind, but if anyone continues to claim Israel is in any kind of way, shape or form a democracy now, then you deserve every ounce of the derision you get in return. If Netanyahu thinks gagging the press now will help salvage Israel’s reputation, he’s a deluded fool and his sorry backside now deserves that ICC arrest warrant to be served more than ever. We’re still waiting for that to happen at time of writing despite it looking very promising it would come this week, with Genocide Joe Biden having issued threats to the ICC over this, because nothing seems to force his support for Israel to waver. They ICC have pushed back though, catch up with that story in this video recommendation here, perhaps the arrest warrant will drop this week, my God it needs to and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so there are warning signs following the local elections for the Greens and Independent candidates and you might be surprised to hear me say such things following what were ostensibly very successful local elections for them, having snatched seats from all parties, having hurt these parties and their aims and it has been brilliant to see that a lot more people appear to be turning their backs on establishment parties, so much so that now we’re looking at hung parliament territory according to an extrapolation by Sky News. However as many people who pay attention to such things know, local election results are not always a good indicator of General Election voting intention, though certainly you can pick out factors that do carry over. There are lessons to take away from this for Green and prospective Independent parliamentary candidates too though and they really ought to take note if they’re going to genuinely cut through at that level though. Right, so brilliant results for the Green Party and for Independent candidates up and down the country in this years local elections. The Greens now have 812 councillors nationwide, having added another 74 seats to their total. They have now become the largest party on Bristol City Council, Hastings Borough Council and Stroud District Council. They took 9 council seats in Maidstone off the Tories and took seats off Labour all over the place too and they got their first councillors in Bolton, Basingstoke, Cherwell, Kirkless, Plymouth, Redditch and more as well. It was undoubtedly a very successful night for them and more and more they are being seen by more and more people as a viable alternative for their votes, goodness knows they have the policy for it. As for the Independents, many of these candidates have been created in no small part by the actions of Keir Starmer and his changed Labour Party, which despite his protestations, are not more popular, they are less so. There are now another 93 Independent councillors serving their local areas on locally important issues, as these elections are meant to be about. I’ve covered numerous resignations of Labour Councillors in disgust at what Labour have been saying they’ll do in power and their unequivocal support for Israel despite the genocide they are committing and Labour have reaped what they’ve sown in that regard. One area I covered as such was Pendle, which saw a swathe of councillor resignations, between Pendle Borough Council and two town councils of nelson and Brierfield within the Pendle Borough area, 20 Labour councillors resigned just a month ago. Following the local elections this week, Labour has now been completely wiped out on Pendle Borough Council, they won 10 seats last time these seats were contested in 2021. All on Starmer. Additionally, you can look at the West Midlands Mayoral election too. The Tories are on their backside so badly now under Sunak, so reviled across the country, that their candidate Andy Street, the incumbent was seeking to distance himself as much as possible from his own party, yet Labour only just managed to beat them there, Labour won by just 1500 votes, hence numerous recounts and one leading reason for that was an independent candidate, Akhmed Yakoob, who took third place and nearly 70,000 votes, who was standing on a platform of resolving housing issues, burial service issues, various other local issues, he wanted more foreign investment apparently, which is quite economically Conservative, but also stood as a pro Palestinian candidate backed by George Galloway. Labour’s stance on Gaza hurt them and what will hurt them still further was comment from a Labour spokesperson ahead of these results, where Labour had feared they’d lost it, with a Labour spokesperson saying that: ‘It's the Middle East, not West Midlands that will have won Street the Mayoralty. Once again Hamas are the real villains.’ An absolutely disgusting, racist, entitled comment a massive slur against the people of the West Midlands, what a way to win your vote! These are votes Labour had already lost though, Yakoob took a disproportionate number of votes from Labour, it shouldn’t have been that close if Labour weren’t just as rancid in so many ways, far too similarly to the Tories in most of them. But that isn’t to say there are not lessons to be learned here and now so that the success Greens and Independents have seen at local levels can be carried forward to general election level. The first thing they need to get across is to convince people that voting for them will make a difference. Where people right now are disgusted by the main parties, by the Tories corruption and ineptitude, by labour politically being barely any different or indeed no different in many instances and of course the disgust people feel over the matter of Israel and Gaza. The biggest obstacle to that is the media and the lack of coverage given to them and to an extent that is beyond the control of these candidates, but we’ve seen the over platformed Reform UK, in a repeat of what used to happen with UKIP turning up on BBC Question Time and the like, yet they won just 2 Councillors nationwide. This should be something that is repeated ad infinitum, but I’d also argue that the sort of media platforms that give the likes of Richard Tice a wildly disproportionate amount of media coverage, aren’t necessarily the sort of platforms that give a more left wing a more altruistic candidate a fair crack. The BBC are the most at fault for this, but equally Talk TV might as well be Reform UK’s own TV Channel. This will become much more blatant in a general election campaign, especially if it is as usual the Greens getting censored in effect by lack of coverage, much more noise needs to be made about that sort of media conduct as we’ve seen in the past. Communication is key and although there’s little time in all fairness to implement something like this now, with the general election so close, developing their own media outlets, would benefit them more. If mainstream channels won’t platform you, develop your own, it’s working for George Galloway and his Moats TV, so why not alternative political parties as well? Certainly from the Green perspective, but also for many other smaller parties and Independents and definitely amongst many voters, there is a desire to see a hung parliament, which we appear to be on course for according to Sky News’ extrapolation of these results, in order to force through electoral reform so that parliament becomes truly reflective of the views of people up and down the country, so that every vote actually counts. In that vein, in order to achieve that goal, and this might sound completely counter-intuitive coming from a Green Party member such as I am, I really do think conversations need to happen between the Greens and Independent candidates and possibly other smaller parties, I’m thinking for example, the Liverpool Community Independents for instance, so that candidates working towards that aim, which delivering everything else these parties of independents stand for hinges upon, should seriously consider not standing against each other in some areas. Theres a means to and end situation here right now, there will be time after reform to stand for everything else you believe in and against each other to make those cases going forwards once that is done, but until First Past the Post is toppled, everything else will remain academic. Where there is common ground, use it, don’t fight it. A key issue that I’ve heard come up and this has actually led to people sticking with what they know and still choosing to back Labour or whoever at the end of the day, has been a lack of knowledge about what a given party stands for. Now I can say as a Green that all policy is on the Green Party website and they email you all the time with updates, but you can’t force people to open an email and you can’t force them to take time to read through a website. It just doesn’t happen, there has to be a more proactive way of doing things here and getting the message across and there’s a lesson from the past we can take, which worked before and therefore there is no reason it can’t do so again and actually this could bring the Greens and other progressive groups and Independents too, which would be a new Chartist Movement, a nationwide movement stood on a platform of, for example, electoral reform, with mass meetings nationwide, ordinary working class organisation determined to back candidates dedicated to a given aim. It terrified the establishment back in the 19th Century after all, in this day and age with all the additional freedom of speech and freedom of expression we have, there’s no reason it can’t be done again. Now these are just my ideas, this is just me spitballing, it is harder to c ut through at a parliamentary level than at local level, especially for independents, however more and more of them are standing, are being financed locally, by their own communities to enable them to do so, so the potential is there, the question is one of opportunity. We don’t have long before a general election, there isn’t long for alternative candidates to get some much needed cut through, I hope as much as the Greens all manner of Independents and other progressive candidates had great success this week, that they are looking at what not only worked for them, but what didn’t and still isn’t and what they need to do to make sure they get heard by the people who need to hear them. Meanwhile, for as much as Green and Independent success shouldn’t be played down either, massive congratulations to all who took part, stood up to be counted, Labour narratives of success are pretty dishonest when you drill down into their results overall as I did here on this video recommendation for you to consider watching next and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.

Right, so as the International Criminal Court, the ICC, still weighs up the issuing of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence minister Yoav Gallant and the head of the Israeli Defence Forces, Herzi Halevi, attacks on the ICC from the US, warnings, threats against them have followed as their devotion to the genocide apartheid state means they are demanding Israel effectively be placed above the law even as they commit war crimes against the people of Gaza, even as they are now as I’m writing this, seemingly verging on a full assault on Rafah, where 1.6m Gazans are trapped with nowhere else to go. Despite the threats, the ICC is standing firm, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has said that the ICC won’t be intimidated and won’t allow threats of retaliation to stand in the way of them handing out potential arrest warrants, yet despite that, an unhinged letter has been signed by 12 Republican Senators, all of whom have been recipients of Israel Lobby money, it speaking as loudly in the US, if not louder, than it does here in the UK, who have collectively accepted just short of some $7m from AIPAC or similar Israel centric sources. So have Israel and those supporting them in effect then bought 12 attacks on the very court set to start bringing litigation against members of their own government? Right, so the ICC, still at time of writing is said to be considering the issuing of arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Herzi Halevi in connection with crimes committed against Gaza, which has had the usual response from Israel ,claiming victimhood and calling the ICC antisemitic, par for the course, we expect that response every single time do we not now? But for those nations still ardently supporting Israel, for those politicians doing so, so many of them in an assortment of countries who have received financial support from pro Israel sources, that is a problem, with the likes of France, the UK and the US all appealing to the ICC to not prosecute Israel, placing them above the law, seemingly for no other reason than they would lose significant donations as a result. If that is what drives them, even now after 7 months of witnessing genocide to plead and beg and scrape and grovel on behalf of those committing the genocide to not hold them to account, then how can we possibly not say they have been bought and paid for in which case? Threats have been aplenty since it was announced that the ICC were considering these arrest warrants for these Israeli figures, so much so that the ICC felt the need to issue a statement, basically telling those making the threats to stay in their lanes, part of which reads: ‘…That independence and impartiality are undermined however, when individuals threaten to retaliate against the Court or against Court personnel should the office, in fulfilment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction. Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute. That provision explicitly prohibits both “retaliating against an official of the Court on account of duties performed by that or another official” and “impeding, intimidating or corruptly influencing an official of the Court for the purpose of forcing or persuading the official not to perform, or to perform improperly his or her duties.’ So under the terms of the Rome Statute, the foundation of the ICC itself, it’s illegal to attempt to coerce the court into casting a blind eye in relation to its duties. We have to remember that the US cheered when arrest warrants were issued for the likes of Vladimir Putin, so it is complete hypocrisy now, to not do so given what we are witnessing the Israeli government ordering in Gaza, especially right now at this precise moment in time, as Rafah comes under assault as so many of us feared. Arguably the ICC has more jurisdiction with regards to Israel than they did with Russia though, since Palestine is a signatory of the Rome Statute, therefore they abide by the ICC, even if the likes of Israel or the US are not, but as is clearly now being shown, international law as far as the US seems concerned, only applies when they agree with it. In line with that thinking and also with the knowledge that Israeli Lobbying and funding works wonders to steer the minds of those who are only in it for themselves, this story has taken the most appalling turn in the US, with the issuing of yet more threats to the ICC it seems, but by a dirty dozen Republican senators, in the form of a signed letter that has to be read to be believed and if you wondered how arrogant self absorbed nightmares like Netanyahu ever reach power, it’s because of equally self absorbed arrogant politicians in other countries, providing support, even if it is ‘bought and paid for.’ The letter is brief, addressed directly to ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, but is a blatant threat too, saying: ‘Dear Mr Khan, We write regarding the reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be considering issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution. The ICC is attempting to punish Israel for taking legitimate actions of self defence against their Iranian-backed aggressors. In fact, in your own words, you witnessed ‘scenes of calculated cruelty’ conducted by Hamas in Israel following the October 7th attacks. The arrest warrants would align the ICC with the largest state sponsor of terrorism and it’s proxy. To be clear, there is no moral equivalence between Hamas’’ terrorism and Israel’s justified response. The ICC is also prohibited by its charter from proceeding in any case unless the relevant government is unwilling or unable to police themselves. You yourself have said that “Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders and a robust system intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law.” By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question Israel’s laws, legal system and democratic form of government. Issuing arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel would not only be unjustified, it would expose your organisation’s hypocrisy and double standards. Your office has not issued arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or any other Iranian official, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad or any other Syrian official, or Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh or any other Hamas official. Nor have you issued an arrest warrant for the genocidal General Secretary of the people’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, or any other Chinese official. Finally, neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC and are therefore outside of your organisation’s supposed jurisdiction. If you issue an arrest warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty, but to the sovereignty of the United States. Our country demonstrated in the American Service Members Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty. The United States will not tolerate politicised attacks by the ICC on our allies. Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees or associates and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned.’ Oh where to begin. It isn’t self defence when it is against people you occupy and oppress, dragging Iran into your argument is an excuse, an excuse to cover 40,000 dead Gazans at Israel’s hands and tens of thousands more injured or still missing, presumed dead, buried under rubble. The largest state sponsor of terrorism in that region right now and arguably globally, is the one arming and support Israel the most and that is the US and do not speak of moral equivalence when clearly your morals have been bought and paid for. The ICC’s charter conditions are met because Gaza cannot police itself and is under attack and they, as part of Palestine are signatories to the ICC, giving them remit, Israeli law doesn’t supercede international humanitarian law, so they can have the best lawyers in the world, the ICC’s remit – which is in relation to Palestine anyway – is entirely separate, do not muddy the legal waters and let’s not pretend what Israel are doing are the actions of any kind of democracy. If the ICC don’t issue arrest warrants at this point observing what is happening in Gaza right now, the only hypocrisy would be in having done so for Putin but not for Netanyahu. Issuing Iran with arrest warrants for acting in self defence would be ridiculous, after Israel targeted their embassy in Damascus, is it only Israel that has a right to self defence then, or is it only people who donate to you? As for Hamas the ICC have said they are also under investigation, the fact arrest warrants haven’t been issued, well, if Israel would let investigators investigate the scenes of the October 7th attacks and talk to witnesses that might help wouldn’t it? What are they hiding? And as for dragging China into the argument, stop straining so hard here to miss the point, you’re going to hurt yourselves. The US and Israel might be outside the ICC but so was Russia and you cheered an arrest warrant for Putin, Palestine is a member of the ICC, their rights count, no matter how much you might wish they didn’t. I love your use of the word sovereignty, when neither the US nor Israel have sovereigns, but if you want to tie your fates together, well legally, you’re most of the way there anyway in the eyes of the world and bringing up the Invade the Hague Bill you passed is nothing less than a threat, which is frankly all that drivel ultimately ended up as. What a reprehensible bunch of shills, but then, how much of that ill feeling is from the heart, or from the wallet? All 12 of these Senators that signed this letter, Tom Cotton, Mitch McConnell, Marsha Blackburn, Katie Boyd Britt, Ted Budd, Kevin Cramer, Ted Cruz, Bill Hagerty, Pete Ricketts, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Tim Scott have been recipients of pro Israel donations, from either the Israel Lobby or AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a massive lobbying body for Israel deeply rooted in Zionism. Between them, those 12 Senators have, according to TrackAIPAC.com, been given some $6.8m between them. Lobbying buys opinion, it buys votes, AIPAC in this day and age have some 100,000 members, many large very wealthy donors, exerts enormous influence and power and like all big money lobbying entities, is completely undemocratic when it seeks to shape public opinion when nobody voted for them. In response to those threats, the ICC is standing firm, frankly having been directly threatened itself, though Senator Katie Boyd Britt of Alabama has apparently said it isn’t a threat, it’s a promise, the ICC in my view should be considering some arrest warrants for some US senators too. This is disgusting, it does nothing to make the world safer, it makes it more dangerous, because none of this is conducive to bringing about peace, especially not in the Middle East right now and for the people of Gaza. It isn’t even just in government and amongst politicians that Israel have become so pervasive in however, as the ongoing US campus protests have shown, with a Columbia University Professor having been the one to call the police down on students, because she also happens to double up as a Deputy Commissioner for the New York Police Department in counterterrorism, which for some bizarre reason has an office in Tel Aviv! Find out all about that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.