Color Scheme
Wolfgang Munchau
15, April

Wolfgang Munchau: The craziest thing the West…

The craziest thing the West is doing right now is funding its military expansion through debt. This is done in the name of security, but it creates massive security risks in itself, for example if a government under attack would face sudden fiscal constraints because it has no fiscal space available. Putin, by contrast, funds his military adventures mostly from revenues. Russia’s debt-to-GDP ratio is under 20%. If it ever came to a war, Putin’s biggest ally would be the bond market vigilantes. http://eurointelligence.com
Chris Williamson
15, April

Chris Williamson: I saw this message from an Aussie…

I saw this message from an Aussie telling some home truths to @realDonaldTrump following his rant about NATO not being there to help the US with it's illegal aggression against Iran... "Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage. You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail. Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates. "Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you. "And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again. And you're calling Greenland poorly run? "Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no. "NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years. And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess. "So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run is your mouth."
Robin Monotti
15, April

Robin Monotti: UK Arms Shipment to Israel Seized…

UK Arms Shipment to Israel Seized in Belgium Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms that exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter, John McEvoy reports. "Two shipments of military components bound for Israel from the U.K. have been seized in Belgium, it can be revealed. This follows an alert issued to authorities in Brussels by Declassified, Belgian NGO Vredesactie, Irish news outlet The Ditch and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Belgium has strict laws on the transshipment of military items to Israel through its ports and airports, including a ban on overflights carrying weaponry through its airspace. Customs officials were notified last month of a suspicious military shipment travelling from Britain to Israel through Liege airport. The cargo was subsequently searched by a specialised engineer who found “the presence of fire control systems and spare parts for military aircraft.” Walloon Minister-President Adrien Dolimont said: “We have to see if the legislation has been respected. Here, in this case, it’s clear that it hasn’t.” Another Belgian government spokesperson told Declassified: “No transit licence request was issued; if it had been, it would have been refused.” The Shipment The two consignments arrived in Liege on March 24 and were scheduled for onward air transport to Tel Aviv on a Challenge Airlines service two days later, according to shipping documents seen by Declassified. The U.K. arms export codes associated with the goods were ML10 and ML5, which relate to military aircraft and fire control components. Hans Lammerant, a spokesperson for Vredesactie, [a peace advocacy group] said: “We also have information on 17 transits in the past. So it was clearly a regular transit from Bierset [Liege] to Israel.” The Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms who exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter. However, a spokesperson for the Walloon government confirmed that the initial complaint focussed on Moog, a U.S. aerospace firm with factories across Britain, and did not refute that some of the seized items may have belonged to that company. Customs brokerage documents seen by Declassified indicate that some of the earlier shipments from Britain to Israel via Liege airport were sent by Moog. A post code associated with the company’s factory in Wolverhampton, for instance, sent items to Israel through Belgium last December with goods description “servo actuator.” Moog manufactures actuators for the M-346, an aircraft which is used to train Israeli pilots to fly advanced fighter aircraft including the F-35 and F-16. Actuators are machines that control the movement of other components, and can be used to help steer an aircraft."
Deborah Haynes
15, April

Deborah Haynes: So... business as usual inside government...

So... business as usual inside government it would seem despite the extraordinary intervention on the state of defence by Lord George Robertson - a Labour peer and author of Sir Keir Starmer's own defence review - to try to make ministers genuinely get the country ready for war instead of just talking about it. Instead, at Prime Prime Minister's Questions, @Keir_Starmer : - dismissed carefully considered and articulated criticism by Lord Robertson that there was a "corrosive complacency" on defence as incorrect. "My responsibility is to keep the British people safe and that is a duty I take seriously. That is why I don't agree with his comments", Starmer told MPs - doubled down on previous commitments - widely regarded by defence insiders as insufficient and far too slow to fix the hollowed out armed forces in time to confront the growing threats - to increase defence spending and again saying this mystical defence investment plan will be coming out soon - and then tried to score political points against the Tories despite a passionate plea by Lord Robertson in his speech on Tuesday to take the political mudslinging out of defence and make it a cross-party endeavour because of the gravity of the challenge
Liz Webster
15, April

Liz Webster: 🚨 WARNING…

🚨 WARNING: Britain is dangerously exposed to a food crisis. We produce too little of our own food, rely too heavily on imports, hold almost no reserves, and are failing to support the farmers we will depend on when global shocks hit. Government planning seems to assume that if we can keep supply chains moving, food will keep coming. But that ignores the bigger issue, what happens when there is less food globally. Countries feed themselves first. That’s when reliance on imports becomes a vulnerability, not a strength. Which is why domestic production isn’t optional, it’s resilience. 🧵
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