@qgcampbell
Interested in Korean Peninsula & humanitarian issues in DPRK. Active volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders (pgdp.net). Radio Amateur (UK). Blog at nkhumanitarian.org. Photo of North Korean children on rollerblades, Chŏngjin city centre, May 2013.
Right now govt is making up an obviously false “saving” to justify its imm, while ignoring the obviously true cost of that policy (treasury projections assume a level of net migration Home Sec opposes and which is unlikely to happen). And these ppl wonder why trust in politics is declining.
So let me get this straight ...
1. US bombs Iran
2. Oil price goes up a bit, benefitting Russia's petrostate
3. Russia gives Iran targeting info
4. Oil price shoots WAY up
5. US unsanctions Russian oil
Obama: "We are living in a time where it can be hard to hope. Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions. Another setback to the idea of the rule of law ... but this man - Rev. Jesse Jackson - inspires us to take a harder path ... bc if we don't step up, nobody else will"
This confirms what we already knew, but what is not talked about enough.
russia, a terrorist state, is directly targeting Europe with acts intended to kill.
It is at war with us.
This will only intensify, maybe dramatically, until Moscow is completely defeated in Ukraine.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
BBC Verify has analysed verified videos and satellite imagery that show severe damage to a hospital, sporting centres, a UNESCO world heritage site and two schools since US and Israeli strikes on Iran began on Saturday, as the number of civilian casualties grows.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
graphic with the quote, "When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front-page news. I get it, the press only wants to make the president look bad."
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's response to US troops dying
This is the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Whatever the map shows, Reuters have photographs of at least one B1-B landing at RAF Fairford today, 6 March.
Ukrainian President made a surprise visit at the frontline, this time in Druzhivka. The city is one of the fortress cities in Donetsk region and the very heart of the free Donetsk region which Russians desperately have been trying to take for 4 years and now want to get for free.
President Zelenskyy made clear that not even an inch of Ukrainian territory will be given to the Russian invaders.
Freedman highlights a stark asymmetry: the US can force compliance from its tech giants in extremis, but allies like the UK are left exposed to American corporate power with no recourse. Better come to this realisation late than never: Tech sovereignty isn't just about China.
If you think I'm overstating concerns about the loyalties of US tech companies - check out this memo from Anthropic CEO to staff on their battle with the Trump administration.
"Safety theater" is exactly what I'm worried about if we're completely dependent on these companies. Sellable to ministers but doesn't mitigate the risks.
(Full memo is here but paywalled - www.theinformation.com/articles/rea...)
Again, Farage, Badenoch and their fellow travellers on X are wildly out of touch with the public on Iran.
Even the majority of Reform supporters oppose their position.
Just shows how much contempt Reform has for their own supporters. This is a policy that helps the kids of the wealthy educated liberal elites they claim to despise. And would harm the types of constituency they do well in.
This is pretty disgraceful.
It's honestly shocking, if not really surprising anymore, how disconnected these weirdos are from basic understanding of how things work.
President Trump demands unconditional surrender in respect of something his government insists is not a war.
US is not at war with Iran so its decision to sink a ship hundreds of miles from Iran, leading to the drowning of most onboard is...
#warcrimes
Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating in the war if if indirectly.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Once again we talk about how crucially important Ramstein airbase - a huge US military installation in Germany - is for US operations in the middle east and beyond.
As someone who has been working on US drone ops for ages, I have posted quite a bit about Ramstein. Like this thread 👇
Reactionaries convinced us for decades that something like gender studies has no practical use in society, and I know many reasonable people also believe(d?) this. It was the butt of the joke for as log as I can remember.
But OMG does this video drive home the point they were wrong.
Beats me how no one in Washington figured out that the logical move for anti-regime Iranians and dissident elements in the regime when faced with a military intervention led by a wildly unreliable US is to sit back and see what happens rather than go Leeroy Jenkins on day 1
At least with the Israelis it is pretty clear that they are trying to destroy the Iranian state
It will be interesting to watch JD Vance and others who've claimed that Ukraine needs to give in on territory because all wars end in negotiations, rushing to embrace Trump's demand for UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!
This week there were new arrests, though interestingly the arrests were reportedly under the section three offence, and not the section one offence. This means the basis of the arrests was not that the arrestees were suspected of obtaining or disclosing protected information prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. Instead the three arrests this week were on the basis of a suspicion that the arrestees were materially assisting the Chinese intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities, and that they would know, or should have known, this was what they were doing. The section three offence is framed in broad, fairly elastic terms. It does not require it to be shown that the conduct of the arrestees is prejudicial to the United Kingdom, merely that it would assist (in this case) the Chinese intelligence service, and that the arrestees knew or ought to have known this was the case. There does not even need
NEW
Espionage law on trial
My post at New Statesman on something interesting about the recent arrests for Chinese espionage - that it was the new s.3 offence used for the arrest. This could get interesting.
www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
I expect the breadth and vagueness of the new section 3 espionage offence is going to become a topic of some controversy.
Not so long ago the United Kingdom had a plethora of gravely named statutes protecting sensitive government information: the four venerable Official Secrets Acts of 1911, 1920, 1939 and 1989. We had the theatre of people “signing the Official Secrets Act” even though the statutes bound you whether you signed or not, though sometimes you needed to be notified that it applied. The point was that the act of signing would concentrate your mind wonderfully. And then in 2023 we had an entirely new legal regime. The Official Secrets Acts were all repealed, although the ceremony of signing them may well continue. Urban myths die hard. A new statute, the National Security Act 2023, was enacted. The law was recast. The nomenclature of official secrets gave way to that of national security. These were to be laws for a modern age.
Me on the urban myth of "Signing the Official Secrets Act"
The ultimate security theatre.
So it now appears based on many media reports that we bombed a girls elementary school and killed 175 people, and right after that Hegseth was beating his chest in a press conference saying we weren’t going to worry about “stupid rules of engagement” anymore.
