whereismyPitchfork

If you don’t understand that Austerity paves the way to fascism, and you don’t like fascism, then you better learn what policies destroy austerity.

She’s 13, she supports Palestine, she believes in life, but Berlin police blindfold, terrorise her: “men” hitting on children.. all to please Tel Aviv

Picture this: the NHS gets privatised the exact same way England's water industry did in 1989. Regional health authorities are sold off to private companies (or private equity consortia, often foreign-owned). Debts are written off with a taxpayer "dowry," shiny new contracts

I'm going to keep banging on about this until someone in the media has the balls to start an investigation. Why did former Home Secretary Priti Patel block the FBI from quizzing the then Prince Andrew about Jeffrey Epstein? There are serious questions to be answered. #SkyNews

El manifiesto tecnofascista de Palantir que se publicó hace unos días hay que leerlo en tres claves esencialmente. Las cuales comparto brevemente: 1. La ultraderecha no es realmente la principal amenaza a la democracia hoy. Tampoco sus principales figuras. La mayoría de referentes del ultraderechismo no dejan de ser personajes vulgares de paso. Agitadores con poder temporal como el actual presidente estadounidense y el desquiciado que regenta el ejecutivo argentino. El peligro real para la democracia son los tecnoligarcas. Porque estos tienen un proyecto claro y no dependen de elecciones para estar en el centro. A su vez, con las desmesuradas fortunas que han acumulado pueden penetrar profundamente las instituciones. Son parte del proceso de toma de decisiones en los centros de poder globales. Sin nunca haber sido elegidos por nadie. Con un proyecto que los neonazis dueños de Palantir hicieron ya explícito: la mitad de la humanidad, debido a sus "culturas deficientes" que no aportarían nada a la civilización, se puede eliminar. Como la gente de Gaza y los migrantes pobres del sur global. Por otro lado, entienden que la democracia, con sus procesos deliberativos y empoderamiento del ciudadano medio a través del voto, es un lastre. Entonces tienen claro que necesitan tanto normalizar que hay gente que no vale como que la democracia es un problema. 2. Lo que las ultraderechas les ofrecen a estos tecnoligarcas es la posibilidad de implementar su proyecto de deshumanización del otro "inferior" y destrucción del sentido común democrático con apoyo popular. El auge ultraderechista permite que millones aplaudan la entronización de un mundo bajo control de billonarios pertenecientes a las "razas correctas". Y que los líderes ultras que dirigen la parte política de este proceso se consideren "hombres de bien" que dicen las "cosas como son". Nótese que la antipolítica juega aquí un papel clave en lo que atañe a la manera en que vacía de contenido la discusión pública (convirtiendo el debate sobre lo común en una suerte de repositorio de quejas, cada vez más ásperas, contra los políticos). A su vez, el neoliberalismo completa el trabajo convirtiendo la política en mera cadena de transmisión de la economía. 3. La posesión más importante para estos tecnoligarcas son los datos y algoritmos. Porque mediante estos pueden controlar la discusión pública. Determinando de qué hablamos y qué nos interesa. Al mismo tiempo, moldeando comportamientos a través de lo que Shoshana Zuboff (2020) definió como la "economía de acción" a la que lleva el imperativo extractivo de las grandes tecnológicas. Esto quiere decir que, por primera vez en la historia humana, individuos tan peligrosos tienen un poder tan descomunal. Nunca antes hubo élites u oligarcas con semejante poder. Ni controlando casi por completo la discusión pública desde tales desvíos morales e intelectuales (plantear que Occidente sería el centro civilizacional de la historia evidencia una ignorancia e incultura absoluta). P.D. Esta semana me publicarán un artículo donde desarrollo más estas ideas. Les invito a estar atentos para cuando lo comparta por aquí.

The Man Nobody Is Talking About. His Name Is Sir Philip Barton. Buried inside Tuesday's committee testimony, beneath the headlines about constant pressure, bullying and secret job searches, is the detail that may prove the most consequential of this entire affair. It concerns not Olly Robbins, not Morgan McSweeney, not even Keir Starmer. It concerns the man who was there before all of them. The man who said no. The man who then left his post eight months early. Sir Philip Barton was the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office when Peter Mandelson's appointment was announced in December 2024. He was, in other words, the most senior civil servant in the building at the precise moment the machinery of state was being directed to place a man with documented links to Russia and China into the most sensitive diplomatic posting in the Western alliance. What Robbins told the committee on Tuesday is this. Barton pushed back. When the Cabinet Office argued that vetting Mandelson was unnecessary, that a peer and Privy Councillor did not require developed vetting, Barton refused to accept it. He insisted that vetting was a requirement. He had to be, in Robbins's own words, very firm in person. He also voiced reservations about the appointment to Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, reservations that were noted and not acted upon. He was worried, Robbins suggested, about exactly the same reputational risks that had been detailed to the Prime Minister before the appointment was announced. Then Sir Philip Barton left his post. Eight months before his tenure would otherwise have concluded. The question Richard Foord put to Robbins on Tuesday was the right one. Why did Barton's tenure end early? Robbins said he did not know. He suggested ministers may have felt it was time for a change. That answer is not an answer. It is the absence of one. Consider what the timeline now shows. A senior civil servant pushes back against the appointment, insists on vetting when the Cabinet Office wants to bypass it, raises reservations with the National Security Adviser, and departs eight months ahead of schedule. His replacement arrives to find the appointment already treated as a fait accompli, the vetting process under constant pressure from Downing Street, and the question of outcome entirely subordinate to the question of speed. If Barton was removed because he stood in the way of this appointment, then Robbins was not the first civil servant sacrificed to protect it. He was the second. And the question of who else was moved aside, overruled or silenced in the months between December 2024 and the moment the security services finally said no, becomes the most important question this affair has yet produced. Starmer sacked Robbins for following the rules. The Foreign Affairs Committee will now call Barton to give evidence. What he says will either confirm what the timeline already suggests or provide an alternative explanation that the evidence does not currently support. There is a pattern here that goes beyond process failure. Process failures are random. They point in different directions. What this affair has produced is a series of events that point consistently in one direction. Officials who comply are retained. Officials who push back depart. The security services are bypassed. The vetting is treated as an administrative inconvenience. And the one question nobody at the top of this government will answer is why this appointment, this man, this post, mattered so much that every obstacle was removed to make it happen. Barton apparently asked that question. He left eight months early. The country deserves to know why.

The most successful piece of anti-socialist propaganda in history is the idea that nationalization, social programs, and state run enterprises are socialism. It distracts the workers from the real goal of socialism: worker control of the means of production.

This is shocking

Widespread concerns expressed in a number of constituency Labour Parties about potential vote rigging & interference in selections linked to the toxic culture of factionalism that has taken hold over the last few years. This warrants an independent inquiry bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Possibly the most bizarre intervention from anyone over madcap period of last 48 hours was Margaret Hodge on Newsnight depicting the attempt by Keir Starmer’s office to secure an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle as some sort of redeployment scheme for unemployed No 10 staff.

Yes. Very easily. He lied here, and anyone who says he didn’t lie is themselves a liar.

@Smyth_Chris @joerichlaw Welfare spending is not unsustainable at all

Louise Haigh strikingly urges Starmer to come up with new plan to reform “unsustainable” welfare spending “The projections are inconceivable at the moment, so we really want to encourage the government to come back and engage with the PLP” on how to make it “sustainable”

What’s interesting in this story is that 'UK and European stocks lost billions’ in the last week after the government announced it was going to ‘break the link’ - presumably now the detail is out and it’s not actually breaking this link - stocks will rebound in value. That tells us all we need to know - real breaking of the link would have been bad for big business - this mere weakening of it is just bad for consumers - same as it ever was. uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/sse-centr…

ITALIE : Les habitants de MILAN refusent le jumelage avec TEL-AVIV. Et le font savoir bruyamment en envahissant la Mairie .

🚨🇬🇧 This is why Tommy Robinson will never be taken seriously; he surrounds himself with clownishly unserious grifters. Exhibit A: Valentina Gomez - recently banned from attending Tommy’s FashFest - who once said that, if she was elected, she would hire the Tate brothers to work in her administration. She makes Katie Hopkins look like a wise elder stateswoman.

Ollie Robbins comes across as a man of public service & integrity: ‘Do not understand [why sacked]’ ‘Saddened’ ‘Proud of service’ ‘Profoundly important role’ ‘I miss my colleagues’ Starmer sacked him to deflect from his own warped judgement The wrong person has lost his job.

Vice-Chair of Labour Together & ex-IOF soldier Lord Kestenbaum took over Lord Rothschild’s responsibilities as Chair and Chief Executive of Five Arrows. Kestenbaum works closely with Lord Rothschild on the overall management of his family’s various philanthropic organisations.

This is the number that should end every argument about American prosperity: In 1970, at the peak of the postwar boom, the golden age, the era of the middle class, the moment they always point to as proof that capitalism works, the top 1% of Americans held approximately 20-22% of the nation's wealth. By 2025, after fifty-five years of globalization, deindustrialization, financialization, and the offshoring of every industry the working class depended on, the top 1% holds roughly 38%. Nearly double. They extracted from the whole world. And then they extracted more from their own people. The working class was the last resource. After the Global South was squeezed, they turned around and squeezed Ohio. The empire was never a partnership. It was always a hierarchy. And the American worker was always closer to the bottom of that hierarchy than to the top. He just couldn't see it through the flag.

Ed Balls: "[Diane Abbott].. somebody who Keir Starmer tried to throw out of the Labour party.. her question, all across the newspapers today, it was devastating and it goes exactly to the heart of the point.. did you ask the question.." #GMB

If the BBC would be so kind as to pull the Reform Party’s trousers back up when it’s finished round there, that’d be just swell Giving Farage’s party its own own logo in its own colours for its own segment Seriously?