Paid-for politics has already got a grip. The private sector would have sacked employees with undisclosed conflicts of interest such as these. The principle should exist that MPs will not expect to be paid beyond their salary for intervening in public life. The problem is that the very people who could enforce this, the lawmakers, are themselves profiting in exactly these same ways.
As critics have noted, much of the mainstream media reporting has focused on the violence against Israeli citizens and have either neglected to include the context of the ongoing occupation or have buried the significant number of Palestinian fatalities.
What does it say about the BBC that the leader of the opposition, in declaring a commitment to international law and global peace, is portrayed as a danger to the country, if not the world, with no counter-view allowed?
The media do not merely generate the political weather. They play a large part in creating the climate in which information is received and understood. A notion such as ‘electability’, to take the example at hand, is unthinkable without the media, which, in their every representation of a political leader, ask (and supply the authorities to help us decide) not only who is and is not electable, but what should be the criteria by which electability is judged.
An independent, impartial investigation into what happened here should be something everyone can immediately agree is necessary.
One important piece of unspoken information conveyed in this WSJ report is that the CIA is supporting terrorists as a means to triggering “regime change” in Syria, implying the conduct of covert intelligence operations within Syrian territory:
The formula by now is clear: bombing whatever countries it wants, justifying it all by reflexively labeling their targets as “terrorists,” and then dishonestly denying or casually dismissing the civilians they slaughter as “collateral damage.”
Since the pro-Kurdish HDP party won seats in the general election in June, Turkey has once again carried out attacks on the Kurdish population living within its borders. In the past week, Turkish military and police have mounted a relentless assault on the town of Cizre, and twenty-one people have been killed within the past few days. A ten year old girl was shot dead by snipers as she left her home with her hands in the air whilst attempting to get medical help for her father
The “responsibility to protect” is not enshrined in any generally accepted international treaty – certainly nothing that overrides the provisions of the UN charter – and is not accepted by the large majority of the countries in the world. It is not customary international law and remains a propaganda phrase, not a legal concept.
But Saudi Arabia’s spare capacity to pump like crazy can only last so long. A new peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering anticipates that Saudi Arabia will experience a peak in its oil production, followed by inexorable decline, in 2028 – that’s just 13 years away.
The media are currently intent on demonising Jeremy Corbyn as a republican by inventing conflict between him and the Queen. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked him in a corridor whether he would be prepared to kneel and kiss the Queen’s hand as part of the ceremony of joining the Privy Council, and the media splashed his demurral as the lead broadcast and print story of the day. It subsequently became plain that Kuenssberg is a medieval fantasist and there is no hand-kissing involved.
The struggle captured by that video has to be seen against the backdrop of Israel’s day to day—everyday—war against the Palestinian people, men, women and children alike: shooting them, tear-gassing them, snatching them, harassing them, beating them up, burning them alive, smashing their wells, uprooting their trees, bulldozing their homes…
