The UK is guilty of war crimes

 

The British press (Guardian included) does not print stories like this. Why not?

This story was in Ha'aretz, the Israeli left-of-centre newspaper, yesterday.

Quotations

Cenk Uygu: "Whole country is waking up from a nightmare, one by one. We're all realizing that our government has been lying to us the whole time. And our media was built to prop up those lies and ostracize anyone who questioned the powerful. But the Matrix continues, as if nothing happened."

Raf Behr in an email to Guardian readers:

The MI6 run media shamelessly deceive

I first noticed with coverage of the "moderate rebels" in the Syrian war.

The Times and The Sunday Times Files expose his links to the Kremlin through ambassadors, oligarchs and intelligence officers — plus his attempts to meet Putin

Epstein tried to meet Putin to help Ehud Barak, by the way.

The Daily Telegraph stopped being a serious paper twenty years ago

In 2025 Declassified UK discovered that very senior Israeli officials, including the former chief of the IDF, held private meetings with powerful figures in the British media, including the BBC, Guardian, FT and Sky News to influence coverage of Gaza. 

The Daily Telegraph was not invited because its editorial line was already so pro-Israeli that there wasn't any point. 

How Epstein became a scandal. The media displayed a sublime lack of curiosity and still intend to suppress the most important things

There is no historical period as obscure as the recent past.

Prosecutors forged a deal with the obscure hedge fund manager Epstein in 2008 after clear evidence was found in his house of his interfering with minors. 

Alexander Acosta, the then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who handled the 2008 plea deal, reportedly said that he had been instructed to "back off" the Epstein case because Epstein "belonged to intelligence". 

He denies saying this.

Epstein avoided federal charges, which could have seen him face life in prison - and received a light sentence with "work release". 

He was released on probation after 13 months.

A scoop by Sharon Churcher of the Mail on Sunday in 2011 came next. She persuaded Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and Maxwell of having trafficked her to Prince Andrew, to give her the famous photograph taken by Epstein of her and Prince Andrew. 

This picture excited the British and Australian press and lit a very slow fuse.

Nothing much happened though until 2015 when a journalist who liked conspiracy theories called Ben Swann used the Giuffre story as part of accusations about a paedophile ring of powerful men. 

It sounded absurd to clever people but he had stumbled onto a true story.

This story became popular in corners of the internet but it centred on Bill Clinton. Epstein’s name was pretty unknown.

In 2016 American conservative conspiracy theorists were busy examining the revelation that Hillary Clinton, expected to be President, kept confidential emails on her private server. 

Huge numbers of mails had been leaked. The media pointed fingers at Russia. 

Hillary's egregious opponent Donald Trump said the Russians had done everyone a favour.

On 4chan (a place where anyone can publish anything anonymously) paedophiles and Hillary's emails were conflated and the Pizzagate theory was born and ran wild. 

Democrat paedophiles were using pizza as a code word for under-age girls, according to the theory.

Was Hillary a Satanist child trafficker? Would she be be arrested? 

At every point what was becoming the Epstein story was kept alive and transmitted by right-wingers, conspiracy theorists and the Russians, not the newspapers. 

That is until alt-light figure Mike Cernovich on Twitter made such a noise demanding the papers in the Epstein grand jury trial in Florida in 2006 be released that the Miami Herald finally started reporting it. 

This was the breakthrough. 

As a result Floridan law was eventually amended so that the grand jury papers could be released. It was at last a public scandal. 

In 2019 Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in New York and put in gaol. He died in prison supposedly by suicide but undoubtedly he was murdered. 

By whom and why? 

Cui bono?

Much of the story is told very well here. It explains a lot about where we are, in a crisis of epistemology. 

In simpler words, nobody believes any official story about anything any more. Do listen, gentle reader.

Never trust the papers

This is what Francesca Albanese actually said  and which was lyingly misreported in the media.

I am told that the files released so far are only 2% of whatever is coming.

The media struggles to maintain the status quo ante Trump and Epstein. I expected them to bury the Epstein story and they would have done so had it not been for Andrew Lownie and more importantly Congressman Thomas Massie.

The Epstein story wasn't broken by journalists but an anonymous person on 4chan and circulated on dodgy sites until it became the Pizzagate theory which everyone dismissed and finally we are where we are.

I hope trust in traditional media, who today tell us Epstein worked for Russia, is destroyed and faith in BigTech, self-made billionaires and modernity too. 

Epstein implicates the greedy leaders of our brave new world.

If only the hereditary peers still sat in Parliament Britain at least would be able to turn to an older elite rooted in the land: somewhere people not anywhere people.

The Catholic Church, badly led though it is, is the institution that resisted Epstein and which he failed to subvert.

Norman Finkelstein also needs to be commended. He said Epstein and Dershowitz deserved to be throttled.

Former MI6 man and geopolitical analyst Alastair Crooke:

After Epstein, nothing can continue as before: Neither the post war ‘never again’ values – reflecting sentiment at the end of bloody wars – and the widespread yearning for a ‘fairer’ society; nor the bipolar economics of extreme disparities in wealth; nor trust – after the exposed venality, rotted institutions and perversions that the Epstein files have shown to be endemic amongst certain of the western élites.
How to speak of ‘values’ against this background?
At Davos, Mark Carney made clear that the ‘rules order’ was but a tawdry Potemkin façade that was thoroughly known as false, yet the façade was maintained. Why? Simply because the deceit was useful. The ‘exigency’ was the need to hide the system’s collapse into radical, anti-values nihilism. To hide the reality that the élite circles – around Epstein – operated beyond moral, legal or human limitations, to decide between peace and war, on the basis of their base appetites.

Paul Anleitner

@PaulAnleitner

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations: We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity. Before the spread of Christianity, “civilized” Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage s*x slaves. This was normal. Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy. We’ve heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.

Hatred as a religious emotion

I feel like posting again something from a conversation I had with an Anglican clergyman.

His point about Islam now rings true to me.

Me: I have never felt the C of E is very religious.

Sebastian:  I never did.

Me: Hatred of Catholicism is the only genuinely religious emotion the English ever experience, someone said

Sebastian: Now Islam of course

Falling birth rates throughout Europe except Eire

 "The future belongs to those who turn up."

Francesca Albanese, a heroine of our times

She should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. She did not call Israel “the common enemy of humanity” but an increasing number of people do think it is. 

The Daily Telegraph does not and with the other British Conservative newspapers is an unhesitating supporter of Netanyahu, whatever he might do. 

The BBC and the left-wing papers criticise Israel a bit but follow the British government line.

The Daily Telegraph suggests to its readers that Epstein worked for Russia.

It published today a character assassination of Tucker Carlson who has started to be highly critical of Israel.

It has assured its readers every week for four years that the Russian economy is about to collapse.

It inflates the numbers murdered by Hamas on 7 October by three or four times, without proof accuses Hamas of rapes and falsely says they deliberately killed babies.

It rejoices that there is a warrant out for the arrest of Putin and is outraged that there is another one for Netanyahu. 

It says the Russians kidnapped many Ukrainian children. I doubt this.

I could go on forever could I bring myself to read its foreign coverage.

Russian television and websites are banned for being propaganda. Journalists who criticised Ukraine or Israel get a visit from the police and are sometimes debanked as Francesca Albanese has been.

Iran is not a threat to the United States, nor is Russia, nor China

 or Cuba, nor North Korea and nor was Syria or Venezuela

Why is this not reported in the media? - it's a huge story

An employee of Paragon Solutions shared a photograph of their Graphite spyware in action to her LinkedIn profile earlier this week. The post has since been deleted.

Reut Yamen serves as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at cyber surveillance firm Paragon Solutions. 

The press says that Britain's enemies are the Palestinians and the Russians

 

Corbyn is right, of course

Instead of condemning what we now know they knew full well were war crimes (duh) the British government ordered the RAF to help the IDF commit more crimes and when Palestine Action protested had it made an illegal terrorist organisation. This under a PM who's a left-wing human rights lawyer and whom the media call a decent man.

We now know the accusations of antisemitism against Labour MPs was just a dirty trick by Mandelson's protégé McSweeney. It was clear all along, in fact. The MPs were simply critical of and hostile to Israel.

Is Trump even worse than Biden? I suppose yes

Thank God, thank God President Trump has refused Netanyahu's plea, made in person, to attack Iran and instead will negotiate. I now feel confident that it will not come to an American attack.

Is Donald Trump worse than Joe Biden? 46 per cent of Americans say he is doing a worse job, 40 per cent say better. I wanted Trump to win to end the war in Ukraine but after his attempted regime change operation in Iran in cahoots with Israel, threatening to take Greenland and Canada, kidnapping the Venezuelan president, piracy on the high seas (aided by the Royal Navy) and failure to stop Israel slaughtering people I suppose Biden looks good. I also think the Trump family are likely much more corrupt than the Bidens. The tariffs, let's see. Anything good? Trump saying Europe is ceasing to be Europe, Vance's speech at Munich and the National Security Strategy - but these things are just words.

Mysterious men in black wearing hoods organised the Iranian disturbances - obviously it was an attempt by foreigners to overthrow the government

Kaveh Rostamkhani, an Iranian photographer and essayist wrote on Instagram about the disturbances in Iran and the role of highly organised mysterious men in black and how 'protesters' stabbed people to death. Obviously the protests were organised by foreigners. Kaveh Rostamkhani was promptly banned by Instagram but this week was reinstated. Anyone who thinks the protests were spontaneous is uninformed but can be forgiven as true information is very carefully suppressed. 

Here he speaks to the invaluable Drop Site News.

The EU has been transformed by Gaza

Isabel Schnabel apparently is a German economist who has been on the Executive Board of the European Central Bank since 2020 and writes this today in the FT.

Yes. It is important to acknowledge that Europeans never had it nearly so good but the future is dark.

Women are not having nearly enough children. This is the overwhelming threat to Europe. All else is detail. 

After depopulation, the great threat to European democracy comes from the European Commission, inherently undemocratic because to be democratic you need a demos.

Its first priority, according to its president, is to restrict freedom of expression especially on the internet.

Already some pro-Palestinian and pro-Russian voices are being forcibly silenced. 

One man was prosecuted in Czechia for writing an article deemed pro-Russian and thereby committing the offence of justifying genocide. There are numerous examples - and the same thing happens in once neutral Switzerland.

The EC also wants to regime change the government of Hungary which has won three successive landslide victories but which is regarded by the unelected EC as undemocratic.

Another threat to European democracy is that Europeans countries are ruled not by their voters but by the USA. 

They are dragged by the USA into a pointless proxy war with Russia, a cold war with China, perhaps a hot war with Iran. 

Meanwhile the defence threat comes from terrorists, illegal immigrants and refugees.

Another more subtle threat is from Israel. After supporting Israel's actions in Gaza Europeans can no longer believe in its own human rights ideology, an ideology that had taken the place of the sacred in their public imagination and replaced Christianity as a unifying creed.

Americans have the Whiggery of their Declaration of Independence and constitution but what does Europe have any more?

Quotations

Thomas Fazi

@battleforeurope

Replace “Roman” with “American,” and you would struggle to find a more fitting description of US foreign policy. [From Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome]