Tag: united kingdom

Why has an eco-extremist been given a royal seal of approval?

King Charles has pulled off an impressive PR rehabilitation since his Coronation in 2023. The British public now hears little about the aristocratic indulgences he was famed for as a prince, from his insistence on wearing ironed shoelaces to his portable loo seat. Nor do we hear a great deal about the quixotic beliefs of this self-confessed eco-nut who used to hold conversations with his plants. But sometimes the mask slips.

This week’s announcement by the King’s Foundation was one such moment. Charles’s private charity, which he established in 1990 to advance his ‘philosophy of harmony’, has named 35 of its favourite ‘changemakers’ under the age of 35 to celebrate the charity’s 35th year. They were identified, we are told, after an ‘exhaustive search’ across the UK and selected on the basis of their ability to advocate for the ‘change we want to see in the world’.

Of course, the ‘we’ in that sentence probably means Charles. At the very least, his underlings will have chosen figures likely to chime with his sensibilities. As such, these choices offer an alarming insight into the curious priorities of the reigning monarch.

One of the ’changemakers’ is environmentalist Jack Harries, who was arrested in 2019 at an Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest. Harries, making what he presumably believed was a brave stand against the evils of the fossil-fuel industry, glued his hands to the door of a hotel that was hosting a petroleum conference.

Although XR has been edged aside recently by other eco-groups like Just Stop Oil and Youth Demand, it pioneered the use of disruptive stunts and street theatre to draw attention to its mad demands. Its members would often paint their faces white and dress in red cloaks, performing choreographed dances in public, incanting about the impending climate apocalypse.

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Ex-UK Special Forces break silence on ‘war crimes’ by colleagues

Former members of UK Special Forces have broken years of silence to give BBC Panorama eyewitness accounts of alleged war crimes committed by colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Giving their accounts publicly for the first time, the veterans described seeing members of the SAS murder unarmed people in their sleep and execute handcuffed detainees, including children.

“They handcuffed a young boy and shot him,” recalled one veteran who served with the SAS in Afghanistan. ”He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.”

Killing of detainees “became routine”, the veteran said. “They’d search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them”, before cutting off the plastic handcuffs used to restrain people and “planting a pistol” by the body, he said.

The new testimony includes allegations of war crimes stretching over more than a decade, far longer than the three years currently being examined by a judge-led public inquiry in the UK.

The SBS, the Royal Navy’s elite special forces regiment, is also implicated for the first time in the most serious allegations – executions of unarmed and wounded people.

A veteran who served with the SBS said some troops had a “mob mentality”, describing their behaviour on operations as “barbaric”.

“I saw the quietest guys switch, show serious psychopathic traits,” he said. “They were lawless. They felt untouchable.”

Special Forces were deployed to Afghanistan to protect British troops from Taliban fighters and bombmakers. The conflict was a deadly one for members of the UK’s armed forces – 457 lost their lives and thousands more were wounded.

Asked by the BBC about the new eyewitness testimony, the Ministry of Defence said that it was “fully committed” to supporting the ongoing public inquiry into the alleged war crimes and that it urged all veterans with relevant information to come forward. It said that it was “not appropriate for the MoD to comment on allegations” which may be in the inquiry’s scope.

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UK Intel’s Fake Terror Plots

Back in the “War on Terror” days, the U.K. security services fabricated multiple fake terror plots. There was, for example, the 2009 Easter Bomb Plot in Manchester, taking entire front pages of newspapers.

Gordon Brown as prime minister hyped it as a “very big terror plot.” It was a total fabrication, nobody was convicted and it eventually emerged that the trumpeted “bomb-making ingredient” the police confiscated from kitchens was sugar — in normal quantities.

The Great Ricin Plot in 2003 was again kitchen obsessed, and the media that ran screaming headlines about the discovery of ricin did not bother to later report that the amounts the police announced they had discovered turned out to be the almost undetectable trace which might be found in any kitchen.

The propaganda was the purpose, all ramping up Islamophobia to justify the Western destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

When the Manchester Arena attack eventually did happen, it turned out that MI5, the domestic intelligence service, had been the perpetrator’s sponsor and he and his father had been ferried from Libya by the British armed forces. Sponsorship of terrorism abroad is always likely to result in blowback at home.

[See: How the West’s War in Libya Spurred Terrorism in 14 Countries and Why We’re Never Told Why We’re Attacked]

The propaganda is now being ramped up again to promote the Islamophobia intended to drive public support in the U.K. for the genocide in Gaza and a forthcoming attack on Iran.

MI5 Head Ken McCallum is arguably the most prolific and sustained liar in the history of the U.K. public service. He has not yet generated the deaths with his lies that Alistair Campbell caused, but give McCallum time for his Goebbels-like repetition to pay off. McCallum has a much more compliant media landscape to work with than existed a quarter of a century ago. 

I have to remind myself that my continued outrage at the destruction of millions of very real and ordinary people in the Middle East from 2003 onwards, to secure hydrocarbons for rich and evil men and based on total lies about Iraqi weapons, is something extremely vivid and fundamental to me, but the average university student was not even born at the time.

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A Closer Look at ARIA: Britain’s Secretive £800 Million Sun-Dimming Quango

The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), established in 2023 with an £800 million purse of taxpayer funds, received a burst of publicity last week when it was unveiled that the agency was planning to “dim the sun” to fight global warming. The agency approved £56.8 million to be spent on “climate cooling” projects which include looking into the logistics of building a ‘sunshade’ in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.

ARIA is the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, a prominent British political strategist who served as the chief adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2020. Cummings pitched a lean, “audacious” agency to fund high-stakes research in AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology, sidestepping the “timid bureaucracy” of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). In a research paper published in 2018 on his website, ‘On the ARPA/PARC “Dream Machine”, science funding, high performance and UK national strategy’, Cummings proposed a high-powered publicly-funded British research agency to emulate the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC).

The latter two entities inculcated high-risk, high-reward research with minimal bureaucracy and exemplified high-performance team performance, flexible work processes and visionary leadership. They yielded many innovations such as GPS, the internet, laser printing, the graphical user interface and the computer mouse, which resulted in large societal and economic returns.

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Fire Breaks Out in British PM Starmer’s London House – Arson Suspected, Counterterrorism Police Investigating

On the very same day that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to cut migration to the Kingdom, his North London home reportedly caught fire – or was set on fire.

The fire broke out in the early hours of the morning, and British police is now investigating the case.

GB News reported:

“The London Fire Brigade attended the property in north London after they received reports of a blaze at around 1.30am on Monday. The door to the four-bedroom property was damaged but nobody was injured.”

Met Police: “The fire is being investigated and cordons remain in place while enquiries continue.”

London Fire Brigade: “The [fire] brigade was called at 1.11am and the fire was under control by 1.33am. Two fire engines from Kentish Town fire station attended the scene.”

Downing Street spokesman: “The Prime Minister thanks the emergency services for their work.”

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CENSORSHIP KINGDOM: Retired Constable to Sue UK Police After Arrest Over a Social Media Post Denouncing Anti-Semitism

The United Kingdom continues its decent into authoritarianism and censorship of social media content.

Now, a retired constable is getting ready to sue Kent Police after being arrested back in 2023 for posting a social media reply warning about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from the force he had served for a decade after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X.

The 71-year-old was detained for eight hours, interrogated and ultimately issued with a caution after officers visited his home on November 2 2023.”

Last week, Kent Police sent out a statement saying that the caution was a mistake and has been deleted from Foulkes’s record.

The local law enforcement agency admitted that it was ‘not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued’.

“On Sunday, Mr. Foulkes accepted an offer from the Free Speech Union (FSU) to fund a legal challenge against the force for wrongful arrest and detention.

‘The FSU and Lord [Toby] Young have generously agreed to fully fund a lawsuit against Kent Police’, he said. ‘I’m extremely grateful for such excellent support and would urge anyone concerned about the sustained attack on free speech to please join the FSU. They’re fighting hard every day for all of us’.”

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Epstein Files Likely Destroyed, Claims Israel and UK Still Hold Remaining Evidence — Believes ‘He Didn’t Kill Himself’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) drops a bombshell about the Epstein files during an interview with far-left blowhard Cenk Uygur on his show The Young Turks.

Greene raised serious questions about the fate of the elusive Jeffrey Epstein files and the decades-long cover-up protecting the powerful elite.

Greene didn’t mince words when asked about the Epstein case — asserting that the vast majority of the evidence has likely been destroyed and suggesting that foreign governments like Israel and the United Kingdom may be sitting on crucial information.

Cenk Uygur: Okay, so, one more thing here, along these lines — Epstein files. How disappointed are you that they have not come out yet? And do you have a theory as to why they haven’t?

Rep. MTG: Yeah, I’m glad you asked me about that. You know what I’ve been saying for quite a few years now — I guarantee you, most of that information has already been destroyed. I can’t imagine that it still exists. And I would like—of course, we want to see all the information—but I just think it’s been destroyed. That’s my own personal opinion. But I think there are other foreign countries that probably have information on that as well, and it would be nice if they would release the information that they have.

Cenk Uygur: Oh, that’s interesting. Which foreign countries do you think might have information about that?

Rep. MTG: I would guess some of our greatest allies. Israel probably has information there. I would not be surprised at all if they did. The UK, I bet, would have information. I’m not sure who else, but I would suspect those countries.

Cenk Uygur: Are you disappointed that the Trump administration has not put it out yet?

Rep. MTG: I’m disappointed that many administrations haven’t put it out. The Biden administration should have put it out. I think a lot of people should have put it out. But again, I’ll go back to this: I—I have a hard time believing that it all still is there.

Cenk Uygur: Yeah. Any theories on what happened?

Rep. MTG: I have no idea. I couldn’t even tell you. Do I think he committed suicide? Nope. I don’t think so. But again, that’s just my opinion.

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Why did 30 Met officers kick the door down at a teenage tea and biscuits meeting in a Quaker house?

When six young women gathered in central London to discuss the climate crisis and the war in Gaza, the setting could not have been more appropriate. The building in which they sat was a Quaker meeting house, the home of a movement whose centuries-long history is rooted in protest and a commitment to social justice. On the table were cups of jasmine tea, ginger biscuits and a selection of vegan cheese straws.

But the events that brought this apparently convivial gathering to an abrupt end have sparked protests of a different kind and raised questions about how justice is administered by the UK’s largest and most embattled police force.

Talk among the youth activists that evening had turned to the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama, when a flash of blue light interrupted the chatter. Seconds later up to 30 Metropolitan police officers, some armed with stun guns, smashed down the door of the Grade II-listed building and arrested the young women inside.

One of the six, 18-year-old Zahra Ali, was held in a cell for 17 hours. Another was “rear stacked”, hands cuffed behind her back and held against the wall in what she described as an hour-long ordeal. Phones were seized and laptops bagged as evidence.

The raid, described as “intelligence-led”, was targeting the protest group Youth Demand. The members in attendance were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Five remain under investigation.

Six weeks on, the operation has drawn criticism from religious groups, politicians and activists. The need for such a severe course of action, meted out in a place of worship, remains a concern, not least for those who were targeted.

“I was the last one to be taken into custody,” said Ali, the youngest of the six women. “I got to the station about 10pm-ish and I had to wait two hours to be booked in. I was taken to a freezing cold cell for hours. I wasn’t allowed a personal call. I didn’t get to speak to my solicitor until he came in person.

“We saw the blue lights a second before they marched in. We were just a bunch of young people talking about our government, about protesting, and they arrested us for that.

“I think had they rung the bell we would have let them in, obviously … They didn’t have to raid us. It’s six young women in a room, in a place that we hired, that we publicly advertised, and they could have just sat in and listened to us. I don’t really see any conspiracy in that.”

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When the Truth Is Uncomfortable – and We Want to Look Away

Both the UK grooming scandals and the medicalisation of ROGD teens highlight how the visceral reality of body horror drives us to turn away from deeply unsettling truths.

It’s striking how two seemingly unrelated issues can sometimes reveal the same deep-rooted problems in society. On the one hand there are the UK grooming gang scandals – horrifying crimes, ignored for decades, involving networks of Pakistani Muslim men who targeted vulnerable teenage girls. On the other, there’s the sudden explosion of teenagers, particularly girls, identifying as trans – many of whom are suffering irreversible harm as a consequence of inappropriate medical transition. At first glance you may not think these two crises have much in common, but scratch the surface and a disturbing pattern emerges.

In both cases, the adults in charge looked the other way. Institutions minimised. Social workers made the wrong calls. Mental health professionals rarely helped – and often caused harm. Journalists stayed silent. Officials deflected. Very few people in positions of authority had the courage to confront the shocking reality, and those who did were labelled as bigots.

Meanwhile parents’ pleas were ignored and dismissed as either “Islamophobic” or “transphobic” depending on the context. And because the parents found no societal support when they needed it, their children became out of control and their lives were ruined.

At a conference in the US earlier this year, I found myself facing blank stares when I mentioned the parallels between girls caught up in the grooming gang scandal and teenagers swept up in the world of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. One delegate pushed back, insisting that victims never feel glad to be targeted while plenty of ROGD kids say they are happy with their medical transition. But sadly, that’s not true. Many of the targets of grooming gangs believed their abusers were their boyfriends. Just like many ROGD teens, they felt flattered by the attention and even encouraged their friends to join in what they saw as fun. The gifts, the glamour, the sense of being wanted – it all had a powerful pull. Quite a number went as far as converting to Islam and marrying their abusers.

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Sun-Dimming Quango has £800 Million of Taxpayer Money to Blow – and a CEO on £450k

Recently, this site reported that £50 million worth of taxpayer money was about to be approved to blot out the Sun in the name of staving off ‘global warming’.

The Telegraph has more on developments and the eye-watering sums of money being quietly allocated to Aria to develop potentially irreversible interventions in the natural world, while also paying extravagant salaries:

Plans to block sunlight to fight global warming have inadvertently shone a light on Aria, the Government’s opaque research arm.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency was set up in 2021 by Kwasi Kwarteng, the ex-Tory business secretary, and was originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide.

Yet few people on the street know what it is, what it does, or how much taxpayer cash is flowing into its well-financed coffers.

Sure, it has a shiny website stocked with techno-waffle promising to help scientists “reach for the edge of the possible” and foster “opportunity spaces” but there has been little clarity on its day-to-day operations.

This week, we learnt it will spend £56.8 million on 21 “climate cooling” projects, which include looking into the logistics of building a “sun shade” in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.

“We’re not trying to dim the Sun,” representatives from Aria said rather disingenuously at a press briefing, knowing full well that should experiments prove successful, that is their ultimate aim.

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