UK plotting to undermine Trump's Ukraine peace efforts - Russian intelligence

Comment: MI6 playbook for years...

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RT

London is pushing for the EU to seize frozen Russian assets hoping to drag the conflict out "to the last Ukrainian," the SVR claims.

The UK is reportedly trying to convince the European Union to take control of frozen Russian assets, aiming to undermine US President Donald Trump's efforts to advance peace initiatives that could end the Ukraine conflict, according to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

After the launch of Russia's Special Military Operation in February of 2022, Kiev's Western backers froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, of which $246 billion has been immobilized by EU member states. Discussions concerning the frozen Russian assets intensified within the bloc in recent weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed using the funds to back a "reparations loan" to Ukraine.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the SVR claimed that the UK's leadership was "desperately pushing for Brussels' decision to seize Russian assets." Aside from the clear goal of providing financial support to Kiev, London is also seeking to diminish US interest in facilitating any peace mediation between Ukraine and Russia, according to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.

The SVR concluded:

"The UK's endgame is to use Kiev against Russia without any obstacles, 'down to the last Ukrainian'. Although the former grandeur of Great Britain has long sunk to oblivion, appropriation and deceit are still the creed for so-called 'London gentlemen'."

Last week, EU member states voted to keep the Russian sovereign funds temporarily frozen. To push through the controversial agenda, the bloc's leadership had to invoke emergency powers to bypass the unanimity requirement.

Several member states, including Hungary, Slovakia, and Belgium, have raised objections. The latter is the seat of the Euroclear depositary, which holds the bulk of the frozen Russian assets. Brussels has expressed concern that it would be left in the lurch by the bloc in the face of Russian lawsuits.

Moscow has characterized any use of its immobilized funds as "theft." On Friday, the Bank of Russia announced that it was filing a lawsuit seeking compensation from Euroclear for damages stemming from its "inability to manage" the assets.

Late last month, the SVR similarly claimed that Britain was concocting a smear campaign aimed at damaging US President Trump's standing, with the aim of derailing his efforts to end the Ukraine conflict.

The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker

Comment: Full blown tyranny, Orwellian style is here. It was bad before, but it's a whole new slice of totalitarianism now descending... We resist this now or the there will be no freedom left to do so. The window is closing...

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Craig Murray

I am confident that over 2 million people in the UK have shared thoughts on the Genocide in Gaza that are stronger than anything Natalie Strecker has expressed

I am quite certain that I am one of those 2 million.

Yet Natalie Strecker, an avowed pacifist, today faces up to ten years in prison under the Terrorism Act when the verdict in her case comes in.

Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry-picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account.

The tweets were rather rattled off in court and referred to occasionally again in whole and in part. There may be minor inaccuracies not affecting sense, but this is the best reconstruction of those tweets that I can make (they were not displayed to the public):

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Porton Down's Ideological Cloud

Johnny Vedmore

The Toxic Secret Experiments on Millions of British People

Porton Down is the HQ for Britain’s chemical & biological weapons programs, & it has a hundred-year history of maiming & murdering innocents. The experiments which the Ministry of Defence has conducted on the British were akin to those committed in the death camps of Nazi Germany. Now, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution begins to take hold, we should all consider the state’s past actions and demand a different, more positive future. 

I’m going to tell you a lot of information that you should already know. However, as soon as anyone begins researching the subject of this investigation—Porton Down’s chemical and biological weapons programs—they soon realise that so much of the information has been carefully managed by entities in the employ of the UK Ministry of Defence. Porton Down scientists were directly responsible for the premeditated murder of UK citizens.

Porton Down is the epicentre of an agenda of mass human experimentation with toxic materials. Their scientists have been responsible for causing miscarriages, premature deaths, birth defects, and ill health of almost every description. The organisation has ignored chemical weapons conventions, worked on offensive chemical weapons in secret, and has launched widespread chemical attacks on the British people from aircraft, automobiles, and ships.

The Ministry of Defence publicised a mission at one point: to see if they could spray the entire country with toxic chemicals in just a few hours.

This out-of-control facility has never been truly reigned in or held to account for their past actions, with the survivors of their blatant human experimentation left to die in secret, with no support, no compensation for their injuries, and no acknowledgement of the injuries they suffered.

The history of Porton Down is truly shocking. In this article, I will explore the events the facility would rather you not know about, rather than issues like Anthrax Island, and some other, more stage-managed attempts to change their reputation through gimmicky trickery and positive photo ops.

This is the story of how the UK’s chemical and biological weapons organisation, Porton Down, organised the systematic, repeated, and long-term poisoning of tens of millions of British people with a toxic carcinogen with terrifying and wide-reaching health implications.

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Anti-Russian Propaganda and Preparation for War Against Russia

Thierry Meyssan | Voltairenet.org

While deep state propaganda convinces public opinion that Russia is evil, armies are being prepared for war before our very eyes. The Chief of Staff of the French Army, General Pierre Schill, has just announced to the National Assembly that he is preparing for the next war against Russia. Meanwhile, the Polish Deputy Prime Minister has announced that he will intercept Vladimir Putin's presidential plane. Alone against all his allies, Donald Trump is trying to preserve world peace.

The confrontation between President Donald Trump and the coalition of British, American, Israeli, and Ukrainian deep states is likely to extend to the Far East. In Japan, Sanae Takaichi has just formed a LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) government thanks to his alliance with the Innovation Party, which shares his warmongering views.

Far East

Although Prime Minister Takaichi is the first woman to hold this office, she is nonetheless a champion of "Japanese imperialism" from the Showa era. Barely inaugurated, she announced her intention to rewrite the National Defense Strategy (NDS), the Defense Enhancement Program (DBP), and the National Security Strategy (NSS). These texts are, in principle, updated every ten years, but will be reformed seven years ahead of schedule.

Sanae Takaichi claims that she simply wants to honor President Trump's wish that each US ally devote 5% of its GDP to defense; everyone has understood that she wants to restore the Emperor's army, amend the Constitution to end Japanese neutrality, and attack the Korean Peninsula and the People's Republic of China.

To be clear, her predecessor and outgoing Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, sent an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine in memory of Japanese criminals against humanity. Ishiba is the largest private collector of World War II memorabilia. His home is a shrine to war criminals.

Ms. Takaichi certainly did not go to the Yasukuni Shrine this year, unlike in previous years. She refrained from using anything too provocative, and Shigeru Ishiba went there very rarely. But she did appoint seven men from among the parliamentarians corrupted by the Moon sect as ministers and secretaries of state.

Following the assassination of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, by a victim of the Moon sect, the police discovered that she had not only bribed him, but also parliamentarians from her own party, the Liberal Democratic Party. In previous years, she had paid them half a billion dollars. Yes, half a billion dollars. The largest parliamentary corruption scandal in history; a scandal that remains unsolved and has only led to three indictments.

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Dark Money British Political Operatives Interfering in American Elections

Paul D. Thacker | The Disinformation Chronicle

A few years back, I kept tripping across one of the many “disinformation experts” who popped up during the COVID pandemic like mushrooms on a rotten log after a hard night’s rain. I had no clue who Imran Ahmed was, nor his Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), but the Biden White House plucked him from obscurity to anoint him an expert on COVID vaccines and to censor their critics.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki quoted from a CCDH report, at a July 2021 press briefing, and accused Facebook of undermining Biden’s federal vaccine policies. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki claimed, warning social media companies to shut down these “misinformation” accounts. One of the people targeted by that report, just happened to be a direct threat to President Biden—Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was planning to run against Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

“They’re killing people,” President Biden told a reporter, leveling the charge of murder against Facebook for providing a platform for people such as Kennedy.

Intrigued, I began digging into the Center for Countering Digital Hate. In a 3,300-word investigation for Tablet, I exposed CCDH—not for being a trusted source on vaccines—but as a fraudulent political operation formed by two staffers working for the British Labour Party: Morgan McSweeney and Imran Ahmed. These two characters created CCDH and several other dark money nonprofits to install Keir Starmer as the head of Labour. Starmer is now the Prime Minister of England and Morgan McSweeney is his chief of staff. After its success in the UK, CCDH then began operating in DC and coordinating with Democrats to attack critics of the Biden administration. 

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West weaponizing laws to silence pro-Palestine activism: Study

Al Mayadeen 

The right to protest is facing increasing restrictions across the West, The Guardian reported on Monday, citing a new study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which accuses governments of criminalizing pro-Palestine activism and using counter-terrorism and antisemitism laws to stifle dissent.

The report focuses on the UK, US, France, and Germany, accusing authorities in these countries of “weaponizing” national security and anti-hate legislation to silence criticism of “Israel” and suppress demonstrations supporting Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

“This trend reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices,” Yosra Frawes, head of FIDH’s Maghreb and Middle East desk, told The Guardian.

Compiled from open-source data, witness accounts, and institutional reports gathered between October 2023 and September 2025, the study was released just one day after a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire that secured the release of all living Israeli captives and around 2,000 Palestinian detainees.

According to FIDH, restrictions on speech and assembly have extended beyond protests, impacting journalists, academics, and public officials who express solidarity with Palestinians.

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Checkpoint Britain: the dangers of digital ID and why privacy must be protected

Big Brother Watch UK

Our groundbreaking new report, 'Checkpoint Britain: the dangers of digital ID and why privacy must be protected’ is a timely response to the Government seeming to be on the brink of forcing every UK adult onto a giant digital ID system – all in the name of tackling illegal immigration.

Let us be clear - no one voted for a digital ID scheme and the government has no clear mandate to implement one.

The vital new report examines how mandatory digital ID would turn the UK into the kind of “papers, please” society that the British public has persistently rejected for decades. It lays out in detail how a digital ID system could work, how the government could mandate it for a range of public services, and the devastating impact it would have on privacy and civil liberties.

It also includes original independent polling we’ve commissioned showing that the clear majority of the British public (63%) does not trust the government to keep their digital ID data secure.

Download the report for free or read the key findings.

Swiss voters narrowly approve plan for electronic ID cards

Imogen Foulkes | BBC

Swiss voters have narrowly approved a plan to introduce voluntary electronic identity cards.

With all votes counted, 50.4% of those who voted said yes to the proposal, while 49.6% rejected it.

The closeness of the ballot is a surprise. Opinion polls had suggested up to 60% backed digital IDs, which also had the approval of the Swiss government, and both houses of parliament.

It was Switzerland's second vote on digital IDs. An earlier proposal was rejected in 2021, amid concerns the data would be held centrally, and controlled largely by private providers.

Sunday's revised proposal keeps the system in government hands. Data will be stored only on the smartphones of individual users, and digital IDs will be optional.

Citizens can continue to use national identity card if they choose, which has been standard for decades in Switzerland.

To further ease privacy concerns, a particular authority seeking information on a person – such as proof of age or nationality, for example – will only be able to check for those specific details.

It comes after the UK government announced plans earlier this week to introduce its own digital ID - which would be mandatory for employment - as part of efforts to curb the number of illegal migrants living and working in the country. 

Comment: It's the other way around. The flood of immigrants - illegal or otherwise - was the means to justify a new digital tyranny. Next stop full integration into a AI-SMART infrastructure from your phone. The only problem is, you won't be able to opt out and your financial, health and political freedom will be gone. All they need is a major crisis (war with Russia; civil war) and they hope everyone will be running to Daddy state to save them. Hello Dr Faustus. 

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EVERY adult in Britain will need a Government-issued ID card despite backlash at Starmer's plan for a 'dystopian nightmare'

Daily Mail

Every working adult in Britain will require a Government-issued digital ID card under a 'dystopian' plan set to be announced by Sir Keir Starmer. 

The idea of a mandatory identification system has long been advocated by Labour as a way to tackle illegal migration. 

But the proposal is fiercely opposed by civil rights campaigners, who warn it will erode civil liberties and turn the UK into a 'papers please' society. 

Meanwhile, polls show a majority of the public do not trust ministers to keep their personal data safe from cyber-criminals. 

Detailed proposals for what has been dubbed a 'Brit Card' could be announced by the Prime Minister as early as tomorrow.

The proposed "Brit Card" Digital ID

Under the scheme, anyone starting a new job or renting a property would be required to show their digital ID on an app so it can be automatically checked against a central database. 

Currently, employees and renters have the option of showing a number of different forms of physical ID, but there are fears these are too easy to fake. 

There is also little to stop unscrupulous employers claiming they have made a check when they have not. 

However, critics have dismissed the plan as a reheated version of Tony Blair's failed ID card scheme, which was axed amid concerns over privacy and soaring costs.

Sir Keir's proposals will be subject to a consultation and are expected to require legislation. The UK is one of the few countries in Europe without an ID system. 

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U.K., Canada and Australia formally recognize a Palestinian state, breaking with the U.S.

NBC News

LONDON — The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia officially recognized Palestine as a state on Sunday, marking a significant shift in foreign policy and a step away from their alignment with the United States, with several other European nations and U.S. allies set to follow suit this week.

“Today, to revive the hope of peace for the Palestinians and Israelis, and a two state solution, the United Kingdom formally recognizes the State of Palestine,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.

Canada had, moments before, become the first Group of 7 nation to recognize the state of Palestine, as Prime Minister Mark Carney promised a "peaceful future for both the State of Palestine and the State of Israel."

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released a statement shortly after formally recognizing "the independent and sovereign State of Palestine."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We will have to fight both at the UN and in all other arenas against the false propaganda against us and the calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state that will endanger our existence and constitute an absurd reward for terrorism. The international community will hear from us on this matter in the coming days.”

Netanyahu accused the foreign leaders of giving a “prize” to Hamas.

“It will not happen,” he said. “A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River.”

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‘Irrational & unlawful’: UK govt dealt landmark defeat over arms sales to Saudi Arabia

RT

In a legal challenge brought by anti-arms trade campaigners, three of the UK’s top judges concluded that it was “irrational and unlawful” of the government to allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia without making proper checks. 

The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that the British government has “made no attempt” to assess whether Riyadh had breached international humanitarian law in the Yemen war.

… the process of decision-making by the Government was wrong in law in one significant respect.

However, the judges said that their ruling does not mean that UK arms export licences to Saudi Arabia have to be suspended immediately.

See also: UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia in section on Yemen war

Facial recognition: Britain faces a dystopian future

George Harrison
spiked.com

Automated facial recognition (AFR) is the state’s latest, and most invasive, surveillance technology.

Since 2015, three police forces – South Wales, Metropolitan and Leicestershire – have made use of AFR in controversial live trials. Now, South Wales Police have been taken to court by office worker Ed Bridges, who started a crowdfunding campaign when he felt his privacy had been violated by AFR.

Bridges’ legal challenge has been backed by civil-rights organisation Liberty, which argues that the indiscriminate deployment of AFR is equivalent to taking DNA samples or fingerprints without consent. According to Liberty, there are no legal grounds for scanning thousands of innocent people in this way. It also claims the technology discriminates against black people, whose faces are disproportionately flagged by mistake, meaning they are more likely to be stopped by police unfairly.

In London, AFR has been put on hold while the Metropolitan Police carries out a review. The Met is also facing a legal challenge of its own from Big Brother Watch, another civil-liberties group. Director Silkie Carlo, a vocal critic of AFR since its inception, told spiked: ‘People are right to be concerned when they can see us moving towards a police state. The result of this technology is that the normal relationship between innocence and suspicion has been inverted.’

One camera, placed in a busy, inner-city location, can scan the faces of up to 18,000 pedestrians per minute, automatically logging the features of anyone unlucky enough to walk past. A computer immediately checks these faces against a database of wanted mugs and lets nearby officers know if there’s a match.

I have previously warned on spiked against the illiberal use of this technology, and the flaws inherent in AFR policing have since become even clearer. Around 50 deployments have taken place so far in Wales alone, including during the Champions League final in Cardiff in June 2017. On that occasion, the cameras scanned 2,470 people – 92 per cent of whom were wrongly identified as criminals.

The trials do not exactly inspire confidence in the accuracy of this technology. But even if AFR worked perfectly, its use would still violate our right to privacy and turn us all into suspects. In previous live AFR trials, it was unclear what would happen to members of the public who refuse to be scanned. Well, now we know: anyone who doesn’t consent to being turned into a walking ID-card will be treated like a criminal.

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38 arrested in Rotherham, UK, as police probe child sex abuse and exploitation on claims of 13 victims

 

© PA
(Top row, left to right/) Tayab Dad, Nasar Dad, Basharat Dad. (Bottom row left to right/) Matloob Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq and Amjad Ali groomed two girls and sexually abused in Rotherham.

Richard Spillett
Daily Mail

Detectives investigating child sexual exploitation in Rotherham have arrested 40 people over the past two months. The 38 men and two women were questioned following allegations made by 13 victims about sexual abuse against them between 1997 and 2015. The National Crime Agency said the people arrested are aged between 29 and 53 and are from Sheffield, Rotherham, Leeds, Dewsbury, and Maidstone in Kent. All have been bailed or released under investigation pending further inquiries. The spokeswoman said the victims in the latest cases were aged between 11 and 26 at the time of the alleged offences. The National Crime Agency, often called 'Britain's FBI', is conducting a huge investigation after a 2014 report found more than 1,000 young girls had been abused in the South Yorkshire town. Scandals have since engulfed other towns and cities, including Newcastle, Telford and most recently Huddersfield, with a series of similar gangs jailed.

Vulnerable young victims were typically given drugs and alcohol before being passed around between men of Pakistani heritage to be raped and sexually assaulted at will. Authorities did little to tackle the abusers or save their young victims from their terrible ordeals, often due to fears over being labelled racist.

The latest arrests are part of the ongoing Operation Stovewood investigation. Towards the end of 2018, the NCA said it had 151 designated suspects, 275 other people under investigation and 296 female survivors of exploitation actively engaging with officers.

The NCA has full control of allegations between 1997 and 2013, with 250 staff and an annual budget that will soon reach £15 million a year.

Carl Vessey-Baitson from the National Crime Agency said: 'Arresting such a large number of individuals as part of one Stovewood sub-operation shows our desire to listen to victims and bring offenders to justice is not wavering.

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Money laundering - Why the UK does not prosecute it

"Despite the UK’s rhetoric about wanting a “world-leading reputation for integrity” as a financial centre, it has never prosecuted a single company or bank for money laundering."

True Publica

A study by the CCP Research Foundation – which analyses banks’ so-called ‘conduct costs’ – revealed that the biggest 20 banks worldwide, including the biggest four in Britain, had paid or set aside £264 billion for fines in the five years to 2017. Britain’s biggest banks have paid out £71 billion for misconduct in the decade since the financial crisis. Much of these fines have related to money laundering but they were not prosecuted in the UK.

Lloyds is the bank that has suffered the heaviest penalties with at least £23.4 billion in conduct-related costs and write-offs since 2008.  RBS is second on the list. Its conduct and litigation costs since 2008, including amounts it has earmarked but not yet used, add up to £20.6 billion. The bailed-out bank also agreed to pay £3.6 billion to settle an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for misselling mortgage-backed securities – the bonds at the heart of the 2008 crisis in America.

RBS and Lloyds were bailed out when the financial crisis broke out to the tune of £45.5 billion and £20.3 billion respectively.

Barclays avoided a UK state bailout – but only by taking £12 billion what looks like illegal emergency funding from the state of Qatar. The Serious Fraud Office is involved.

HSBC has forked out nearly £10 billion in fines and other costs for its conduct since 2008.
In the last few weeks – Standard Chartered, the British bank has been ordered to pay $1.1bn (£842m) by US and UK authorities to settle allegations for breaching sanctions against countries including Iran.

But it doesn’t end there does it – it just keeps on going.

In 2019 alone, leaving aside Standard Chartered, the Financial Conduct Authority has dished out fines to the financial services sector at the rate of more than one a month. In total, to the 9th April, they have fined the industry or people in it collectively to the tune of £272,487,887.

What is interesting here is the missing link. British banks are world leaders in shovelling trillions into tax havens, most of it to evade taxation but a very good chunk of it is pure money laundering. 

Tyrants, despots, mass murderers, terrorists, traffickers – they are just as good a customer as any as far as the banks are concerned. Here, the British government and its toothless Financial Conduct Authority fail in every sense of the word. Money laundering through British tax haven islands and crown dependencies is something the state approves of – hence the lack of fines or punishment dished out for it.

Donald Toon, director at the National Crime Agency, admitted that money laundering in the UK was “a very big problem” and estimated that the amount of money laundered here each year has now risen to a staggering £150 billion. I would think that is on the light side.

Susan Hawley is Policy Director of Corruption Watch. She worked for six years at the Corner House on corruption issues, having previously worked in the policy team at Christian Aid on ethics and corruption issues. Here is her take, (originally published a year ago), on money laundering by British banks.

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UK Israel Lobby Adds Muscle as US Lobby Weakens

JonathanCook 
Jonathan-Cook.net 

For decades it was all but taboo to suggest that pro-Israel lobbies in the United States such as AIPAC used their money and influence to keep lawmakers firmly in check on Israel-related issues — even if one had to be blind not to notice that that was exactly what they were up to.

 

When back in February U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out the obvious – that U.S. lawmakers were routinely expected to submit to the lobby’s dictates on Israel, a foreign country – her colleagues clamored to distance themselves from her, just as one might have expected were the pro-Israel lobby to wield the very power Omar claimed.

But surprisingly Omar did not – at least immediately – suffer the crushing fate of those who previously tried to raise this issue. Although she was pressured into apologizing, she was not battered into complete submission for her honesty.

She received support on social media, as well as a wavering, muted defense from Democratic grandee Nancy Pelosi, and even a relatively sympathetic hearing from a few prominent figures in the U.S. Jewish community. 

The Benjamins Do Matter 

Omar’s comments have confronted – and started to expose – one of the most enduring absurdities in debates about U.S. politics. Traditionally it has been treated as anti-Semitic to argue that the pro-Israel lobby actually lobbies for its chosen cause – exactly as other major lobbies do, from the financial services industries to the health and gun lobbies – and that, as with other lobbies enjoying significant financial clout, it usually gets its way. 

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Jeremy Hunt is lying about Britain’s role in Yemen

Stop The War Coalition

In a recent Politico article Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, has defended the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Arms that are often used in perpetuating Yemen’s civil war. Hunt claims the UK-Saudi relationship ‘Helps us influence their leaders’ toward peaceful resolution. In reality, Britain’s supply of arms only feeds the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The multi Billion pound Al Yamamah (The Dove) arms deal provides Saudi Arabia with 25% of its arms imports for use fighting Houthi forces in Yemen. As the second largest arms supplier to the Saudi led coalition Britain is culpable in its infamous war crimes. Such atrocities have included bombing a wedding party killing 20 civilians; bombing a funeral killing 140 civilians and wounding 600 more; and even an air attack on a school bus leaving 40 Yemeni children dead. British firm BAE systems provides the typhoon jets used for this type of air to surface attacks. No wonder that the UK wouldn’t back a UN investigation into Saudi war crimes.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been killed in the conflict, and millions more displaced. Combined with mass starvation and a cholera epidemic Yemen is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 

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The war on No Deal is a war on democracy

Comment: Brexit has always been a mistake by the Elites overshadowing the incumbent government and most MPs who are largelt eurocratic in their worldviews. Therefore, Brexit was never EVER meant to be a genuine attempt to foster a truly independent, self-regulating country - or even something akin to the kind of sovereignty Scandanavia has. Theresa May has always been tasked with obfuscating, delaying and generally scuppering any hope of a real Brexit. People don't seem to get this still. It's not incompetence - it's purposeful subversion of democracy where voters wrong-footed the elite crowd psychology. But like similar referendums of the past (think the Lisbon Treaty) the vote is simply re-introduced are sufficient propaganda saturation and they get the answer they want. 

The same will happen in this case, albeit after a particularly tortuous route. 

The British Establishment had no intention of leaving and have spent much of their waking hours making sure that it'll never happen. This includes the Eurocrats who would suffer considerable harm if Britain did exit. 

Therefore, much of the various Euro-British meetings and the hysterical overanalysis dispensed by the MSM is pure theatre.

Doubtless many of those who believe in the elitist project of the EU for allsorts of romantic reasons will be happy that Brexit won't happen. But they are probably the same people who believe that a gaggle of muslims brought down the twin towers on 9/11 and gender equality should be taught to pre-school kids. 

How can you reason with that?

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Brendan O'Neill
spiked.com


The political elite’s hysterical hatred of No Deal is a cover for their contempt for Brexit itself. 

So there goes Brexit. Voted for by 17,410,742 people, voted down by 313 MPs. Backed by the largest number of British voters ever to back anything, seen off by a gaggle of MPs who hate what we voted for. Make no mistake: this is what last night’s slim win for Yvette Cooper’s amendment means. It means the only remaining policy option that resembles Brexit – leaving the EU without a deal – has been legally obliterated. If the House of Lords now gives the nod to the Cooper legislation – and being a hotbed of Brexitphobic elitism, there’s no reason it wouldn’t – and if the EU agrees to a further extension to the Article 50 process – which it might well do – then Brexit as we knew it is finished. 

It can feel difficult sometimes to grasp the gravity of the situation we face: the largest democratic vote in the history of this nation is being betrayed before our very eyes. Ignore the crowing Brexit-blocking MPs who say that the victory of the Cooper idea simply means that a ‘catastrophic’ No Deal Brexit will no longer be an option, and that brave MPs who are so much cleverer than us pig-ignorant plebs have saved Britain from the ‘cliff edge’ of ‘crashing out’, etc etc. These Orwellian euphemisms are simply a disguise for what the political elite’s war on No Deal represents – a war on Brexit. When you hear MPs saying ‘We have to prevent No Deal’, what they really mean is: ‘We have to prevent Brexit.’ And preventing Brexit of course means preventing democracy, disenfranchising millions, overturning 100 years of a democratic contract that defined modern Britain. This is the end of an era.

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Cambridge University rescinds Jordan Peterson invitation

Comment: The world is going utterly insane. 

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The Guardian

Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”, after a backlash from faculty and students.

Peterson, a psychology professor from Toronto who has courted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender and race, announced on Monday via his YouTube channel that he was joining Cambridge for two months.

“In October I am going to Cambridge University in the UK for two months and I will be a visiting fellow there at the divinity school and should give me the opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months, as well as students,” he said. “It’s a thrill for someone academically minded ... to be invited there, to sit in and participate for a few months.”

The University of Cambridge said Peterson requested to be a visiting fellow and was initially granted the opportunity, but after further review it decided to take back the offer.

“[Cambridge] is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot,” a spokesperson for the university said.

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Brexit and Bad Faith

Craig Murray 

My long article on the Chagos Islands sat unfinished yesterday, despite my passion for the subject, as I was horribly fascinated by the Gothic twists and turns of the Brexit debates in the House of Commons. I seldom write on the subject, but some observations seem now called for.

The Westminster system of handling business is designed purely to handle binary questions disputed between two major parties. Where those parties are both themselves hopelessly riven by internal conflict, and the issues not simply reduced to a manageable number of binary choices, Erskine May just cannot cope.

Parliament thus ended up yesterday with a vote in which the majority of MPs who voted against May’s Withdrawal Agreement view its Irish Backstop provision as almost the only decent thing in it – an opinion with which I tend to concur. They however were egging on the antediluvian DUP/ERG faction to join them, on the basis of an argument that the Irish Backstop is terrible and could be permanent, neither of which anyone sensible really believes.

It says something about the insanity of UK politics that the debate quite seriously hinged around discussions of what happens if the EU acts in bad faith and used the “backstop” deliberately to trap the UK permanently in the Customs Union. The notion that the EU is acting in “bad faith” is frankly ludicrous. No trading partner has ever accused the EU, which has the most transparent negotiating process on trade deals of any country or trading bloc, of acting in bad faith. In its own interest, yes. In bad faith – ie lying and tricking – no. 

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UK councils invest £566m in arms firms linked to Yemen war

theguardian.com

More than half a billion pounds of council workers’ pension money has been directly invested by local authorities in arms companies implicated in Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, in which thousands of civilians have been killed.

Council pension funds have sizeable shareholdings in BAE Systems, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, according to nearly 100 freedom of information requests.

Between them, 43 pension funds directly hold shares worth £566m in the five companies and earned more than £18.5m in dividends in 2018, a period in which civilian deaths reportedly surged and a punishing famine took hold.

The councils also hold hundreds of millions of pounds in shares in the five companies via pooled investments, which they do not control directly.

The holdings mean thousands of local authority staff will have their retirement payouts part-funded by the companies, some of which manufacture arms linked to incidents in which civilians and children were killed.

The Guardian gathered the data through the freedom of information website 
WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

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