Politics & Stuff

[Fernando 6,585]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Lots of Evangelical and Rabbi weirdos think the holocaust on Gaza and attacks on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen by the Chosen People is going to bring the Messiah down from heaven.

Do you believe that as well ?

Of course not. 

If anything the Bible states that this would happen when peace and safety is proclaim. 

Nowhere near at the moment with so many wars. 

³ While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

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Gaza, Corbyn … and golf with Trump? Starmer’s summer of pain

The prime minister is facing challenges on multiple fronts as Labour’s poll ratings continue to slide

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/nigel-farage-jeremy-corbyn-trump-starmer-pain-s5j7th20c

Sir Keir Starmer is looking forward to President Trump’s visit. The prime minister is hoping that it will generate largely positive headlines, potential breakthroughs on US tariffs on steel and pharmaceuticals and an agreement to strengthen support for Ukraine.

The wargaming in No 10 has even extended to what to do if Trump asks Starmer to play a round of golf — a sport the prime minister has zero interest in. The conclusion was that Starmer would be prepared to try his hand if it helped bolster the special relationship.

But on the eve of Trump’s arrival, President Macron dropped the equivalent of a political bomb. The French leader announced that he would formally recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.

• Why Israel can’t brush off France’s recognition of a Palestinian state

“We must finally build the state of Palestine, ensure its viability and enable it, by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, to contribute to the security of all in the Middle East,” he said.

Downing Street had advance notice that a shift in the French position was likely, but did not expect it to come so soon. It now poses a potential diplomatic nightmare for Starmer, and there is a risk that the pressure — from both without and within — becomes overwhelming.

Labour is committed to recognising a Palestinian state — the party’s manifesto described statehood as an “inalienable right” — but Starmer has consistently argued that it must come when it has the “greatest impact”.

Cabinet ministers, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, have been urging him to press ahead with recognition. More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a cross-party letter calling for recognition, describing it as a “historic responsibility”.

The prime minister is hoping to seek clarification on tariffs

CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

However, any shift in position during the Trump visit would have been explosive. To say that Macron’s announcement has not gone down well in the White House is an understatement.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said: “This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7.”

Starmer responded to Macron by putting out a statement that was strong on rhetoric, describing the suffering and starvation as “unspeakable and indefensible” and warning of a “humanitarian crisis”. On Friday, he hosted a call with Macron, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, to discuss the issue.

In the end, he opted to keep the line. He said the government’s support for a Palestinian state is “unequivocal” but that it should only happen at a time of “maximum utility” as part of a “pathway to peace”. The UK’s preconditions — that there should be a ceasefire, the restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the return of hostages — remain. How sustainable that line is remains to be seen.

Recognising a Palestinian state, as President Macron will do, was in the Labour Party manifesto

TIMOTHY A CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

How Corbyn’s new party could hurt Labour

At home, Starmer is facing a new threat from an old enemy. In Downing Street, the launch of Jeremy Corbyn’s political project on Thursday was met with no little trepidation. But at Reform UK’s headquarters in Westminster, there was an air of celebration.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, said: “I think Corbyn’s going to attract a vote.

“There is growing appetite in certain quarters for old-fashioned Marxist socialism, and it will hurt Labour. If they are able to organise sufficiently and field large numbers of candidates, it will help us enormously.”

For all the farce surrounding the launch of Corbyn’s political project — which still remains nameless after initial confusion — it has the potential to do real damage to Labour.

The Corbyn pitch is simple — the “mass redistribution of wealth and power” and an end to the “genocide” in Gaza. For those on the left disenchanted with Starmer after the compromises of a hugely challenging first year in power, it may prove to be irresistible.

• Jeremy Corbyn’s new party could seriously damage Labour

Reform thinks Corbyn’s party can pick up 10 per cent of Labour’s vote in many seats, splitting the left and potentially paving the way for Farage to reach No 10. Polling by YouGov suggests that 31 per cent of those who voted Labour would consider voting for a new party led by Corbyn.

Corbyn said that 230,000 people have already signed up to support the project, which was launched sooner than planned.

James Schneider, a former Corbyn aide who is helping set up the party, said it would offer “class war with a grin”.

He added in an interview with the New Left Review: “The reason for our problem is the bankers and the billionaires. They are at war with us, so we are going to be at war with them.”

He said there will be a conference in the autumn and that there will be a “collective leadership team”. “It basically means building the car while driving,” he said. The goal was political meetings that are “lively, participatory and rooted in popular culture — with music, food, even dancing”.

Asylum hotel protests in the UK

At the same time, Starmer is having to contend with the threat of riots. Downing Street is increasingly concerned by the scenes outside asylum hotels in Essex, Norfolk and east London, especially in the wake of the Southport riots last summer.

On Monday, Farage used a press conference, given on the theme of law and order, to warn that Britain is on the cusp of “civil disobedience on a mass scale”.

Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader, is delivering speeches on failing law and order in the UK

THOMAS KRYCH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES

On Tuesday, Starmer and his ministers discussed the issue at cabinet, and in place of the usual banal readout was something far more evocative.

• Why are we seeing anti-immigration protests again?

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, warned colleagues of the “profound” impact of migration and technological change on society. It was no coincidence, she said, that 17 of the 18 places that experienced the worst disorder last summer ranked among the most deprived.

While Rayner’s diagnosis was clear, her solution — that the government needs to invest more in local areas to restore pride and deliver on its priorities — has been questioned. One minister said that Labour risked inflaming the situation further but putting the issue up in lights.

Reform will use the backdrop of the escalating tensions to continue to hammer home its message on law and order. Farage said that next week he will hold another press conference with “acknowledged experts” on the issue as he seeks to put law and order alongside migration as the party’s core message.

“I think it is societal collapse,” he said. “People sense it. They sense that something is going awfully wrong. The country is going down the drain for it, I’ve decided to make it a really big campaign.”

How junior doctors’ talks unravelled

Furthermore, the government’s clash with resident doctors has turned into attritional warfare. Starmer’s decision to take on the British Medical Association (BMA) directly means there is no hope of a quick resolution to doctors’ strikes.

• Meet the BMA leaders behind the resident doctors’ strikes in 2025

After the acrimonious collapse of negotiations, ministers concluded that the union’s leadership was unable or unwilling to negotiate a deal, and the only option was, in effect, to break the strike.

Streeting has accused the union of “holding the country to ransom”. Privately, he is said to have compared his emotions to a parent who has been “really let down by one of their children” after taking office with huge sympathy for resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, but now feeling they have exhausted his goodwill.

While there were some indications that fewer doctors were out on strike than during a previous campaign, grinding down BMA resolve will be a long, attritional process.

Government negotiations with the BMA over resident doctors’ pay have broken down

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP

Ross Nieuwoudt, the BMA resident doctors’ committee co-chair, asked: “Could this dispute last forever, if the government never negotiates with us?

“I guess theoretically, yes. If they’re not willing to genuinely take on board the warnings of resident doctors with their strike action, then it’s going to be really difficult to reconcile.”

A protracted campaign of strikes would destroy Starmer’s already fragile hopes of hitting the routine waiting lists target. Turning round the NHS is one of the main reasons voters give for choosing Labour, and a failure to make tangible improvements would be politically fatal.

In the meantime, when parliament returns in September, there will be a host of tectonic events, culminating in the autumn budget, where the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces the prospect of having to announce huge tax rises to balance the books. Some in government are already talking about it as one of the most challenging fiscal events in history.

At a reception in No 10 this week, Starmer said he is “ready for a summer break”. He’s hoping to get away for at least a week in August, and a chance to escape the “weird ways of Westminster”.

He even managed a joke at his own expense, drawing comparisons to the last Labour government when Oasis were touring the country. “The only difference is the poll ratings, but things can only get better.”

The problem for Starmer is simple. What if they don’t?

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Magic Grandpa is back — and Labour will laugh him off at its peril

Everything about Jeremy Corbyn’s party launch seemed shambolic but there are very good reasons his former party comrades should be nervous

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/jeremy-corbyn-your-party-zarah-sultana-wqv373cwh

It’s not altogether clear how seriously you’re meant to take a political party that can fit inside a single pantomime horse costume, especially when it’s riding about with no name. But still, it looked like it felt good for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to be out in the rain.

The launch event, if it can be called that, of Corbyn and Sultana’s new party took Westminster by surprise, but the party’s brand new leader denied it had been done on the spur of the moment. Launching a nameless political party was, he said, “totally coherent”, while standing in some very light drizzle in central London.

For now, it is called “Your Party” and its leader explained that he couldn’t possibly name it until he’d read through all the suggestions, which can still be submitted at yourparty.uk. Suggestions, he said, had been coming in at “more than 500 a minute”, which does raise the possibility that some of them may not be altogether serious.

When he was asked by a TV news reporter why it didn’t have a name, Corbyn cracked a little smile and said: “Well we’re open to suggestions for names so if you’ve got a suggestion for a name, bring it on. Any ideas out there, I’m ready to receive them.”

He explained that the name would be chosen “by a final assembly later in the year”, which might sound hilarious, but don’t forget that was also his big idea, back in 2019, for his own party’s policy on Brexit. Well, not his big idea, his shadow Brexit secretary’s big idea in fact. Whatever happened to him.

Things like, you know, just choosing the name yourself, is not for them. That’s the sort of thing, according to the two-page letter the pair of them published on X, that the “top-down control freaks” in the Labour Party do.

His former party is doing its best to pretend not to be worried. “The electorate has twice given its verdict on a Jeremy Corbyn-led party”, was how one anonymous Labour Party figure put it to the BBC.

But that cheery little smile on the face of magic grandpa is a little bit of an earthquake. One of the verdicts of the electorate on Corbyn wasn’t all that damning, in the sense that he received 12.9 million votes, which is about three million more than Starmer managed last year.

Corbyn announced his new, unnamed party in central London on Thursday

LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

Corbyn came within a whisper of victory, which we must believe would definitely have horrified the prime minister and half his cabinet, all of whom campaigned for him.

Even in the middle of a Labour landslide, people out there who share Corbyn’s worldview cost Starmer Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, who would both have been in the cabinet, and very nearly cost him Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips too. If smiley, twinkly, albeit still-wrong-about-everything Corbyn has got four years in him then he might even be, in a crowded field, straight in at number one as his former party’s worst enemy.

It’s easy to laugh at Corbyn. In fact I would strongly encourage it. It’s the only viable psychological coping mechanism. But if they’re laughing in Downing Street, then they might live to regret it.

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On 24/07/2025 at 14:13, Fernando said:

And I could say that is also propaganda against the hatred of Israel. 

Lately you keep bring up Ha'aerez Israeli news like if that is the mouthpiece of 100 percent accuracy. 

 

But it was all a lie.. You can't deny that can you? 

Beheaded babies etc  ffs.. 

 

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1 hour ago, KEVINAA said:

 

"Peter Sweden" Imanuelsen (who is actually a Norwegian-born British national) is a neo Nazi-adjacent crackpot CT pusher

Far-right vlogger and Defend Europe supporter Peter Sweden’s real identity revealed

https://hopenothate.org.uk/2017/08/01/far-right-vlogger-defend-europe-supporter-peter-swedens-real-identity-revealed/

Morgan Finnsiö - 01 08 17

‘Peter Sweden’ recently gained notoriety after right-wing columnist Katie Hopkins posted a selfie with him on her Twitter account – a sign of his growing fame in far-right circles.

He has over 50,000 followers on Twitter and more than 10,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, with one of his uploads racking up more than 300,000 views.

At the time of the selfie, ‘Peter Sweden’ and Katie Hopkins – whose demonisation of migrants is well-known – were both in Sicily to give favourable media coverage to the far-right project known as ‘Defend Europe’, a plan to hamper search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean, something which HOPE not hate has covered and continues to cover extensively.

Hopkins later deleted the selfie without explanation, after critics pointed out that ‘Peter Sweden’ was, until very recently, on record denying the Holocaust, saying “Hitler had some good points” and pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

 

This was in addition to spreading racist myths about migrants and sexual crime and other far-right memes on his Twitter account and as the reporter for the anti-immigration account Voice of Europe, as well as on other right-wing platforms such as Paul Joseph Watson’s YouTube account.

After his record of antisemitic statements became publicly known, ‘Peter Sweden’ issued a statement on Twitter, saying he had now abandoned some of the views he espoused as recently as last year (although failing to apologise).

 

Who is “Peter Sweden”?

HOPE not hate can reveal that ‘Peter Sweden’ is actually Peter Imanuelsen, a 22-year-old photographer born in Norway, living in North Yorkshire and a British national.

Official UK records at Companies House show that there is a Mr. Peter Imanuelsen, age 22, based in North Yorkshire, who runs a photo company. ‘Peter Sweden’ has repeatedly said that he is 22-years-old, living in North Yorkshire, and a photographer.

Unlike what he has frequently claimed on his ‘Peter Sweden’ account, however, Peter Imanuelsen’s nationality is British, according to his own company’s filings, and according to the Companies House information register.

Imanuelsen was born and spent the first year and a half of his life in Norway before coming to Sweden in 1996. He then emigrated to the United States three years later in 1999, returning in 2002, only to leave Sweden again either in 2009 (according to records) or in 2004 (acccording to the Imanuelsens themselves).

So despite his whole persona being based on being Swedish, he has spent only 5-10 of the 22 years of his life in Sweden while apparently spending most of his life abroad, particularly in the United Kingdom, where he now lives, runs a business and is registered as a national.

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'Worse than prison': Brexit Brit locked up in Swedish detention centre then deported

https://www.thelocal.se/20250728/worse-than-prison-brexit-brit-locked-up-in-swedish-detention-centre-then-deported/

A security camera next to Åstorp detention centre in Skåne. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

 

British national Nigel Davies, who missed the post-Brexit deadline to get residency in Sweden, was this month seized by Swedish police, locked up for three nights and then forcibly deported to the UK.

"I'm 63 years old. I've been living here in Sweden for 16 years. I have a house, a family home, two children, a dog," Davies told The Local.

"I'm very bitter at the Swedish police, migration authorities, and government. I've been failed by a lot of organisations. And the British embassy has been absolutely worthless," said the father of two.

Unexpected arrest

The problems began for Welsh-born Davies when he officially lost his right to reside in Sweden in February 2025 after missing the key post-Brexit residency deadline years earlier.

Brits living in Sweden and other EU countries were guaranteed their right to legally remain after Brexit as part of the Withdrawal Agreement. However British nationals in Sweden had to formally apply for their post Brexit status by December 31st, 2021.

Those, like Davies, who missed the deadline, faced a legal battle to stay and numerous bureaucratic obstacles.

Davies had been required to sign in at his local police station in Helsingborg twice a week. But when he went to sign in as usual earlier this month he was approached by two Swedish police officers. 

They read him a three page charge sheet which accused him, among other things, of "absconding" by failing to sign in on one of his required dates. He was then driven to the Migration Agency's detention centre in Åstorp, some 20 km outside Helsingborg.

He says he was then locked in a cell and only allowed out for two 30-minute exercise sessions a day.  

"People call it a 'detention centre', but it's a prison in every way, shape and form," Davies said. "The rules are exactly like a prison. The staff treat you as if they're working in a prison. The food is probably worse than a prison. It is disgusting slop." 

For the next four days and three nights, Davies tried to get help from friends and family.

"All I had was a pair of shorts and a T shirt. I had nothing at all. I only had my phone. I didn't even have my wallet with me. All of it was left in the car, which I had parked outside the police station," he said. 

READ ALSO: It's five years since Brexit but problems lie ahead for Brits in Europe

The police had taken his phone when he was arrested, so it was only when he was allowed to put his sim card in the old phone provided by the detention centre that he could contact family.  

He was promised a lawyer on his first day, but each day passed without one arriving, and then on the evening of his third night in the cell, he was told he would be deported to the UK the next day. By that time, his neighbours had brought him a small rucksack with a spare pair of socks and pants, T shirts, and shorts.  

"I was woken up at 4am and two policemen loaded me into a van, and I was treated like a prisoner. I was treated like El Chapo. Over the next three or four or five hours, I was treated like a drug dealer. It was disgusting, absolutely disgusting," he said.

The two policemen guarding him changed vehicles in a high security facility in Malmö and then he was driven to Copenhagen Airport and marched onto the plane. The two border guards remained on the flight with him.

"I was flanked by two badged police officers all the way through Copenhagen Airport, and they were making a performance, doing the pantomime, going to the front of the queue, getting on the plane first as if I was top priority," said Davies.

"It was very humiliating, considering I've never committed a crime. All the staff were looking at me as if to say, 'oh my god, have we seen this guy on the news. What has he done? Who was he killed?'. That was the feeling, and it was horrible," said Davies. 

Once they arrived in London, however, the situation changed entirely. He was given his UK passport and his smartphone back. He was given free train tickets to Cardiff, the nearest big city to his former home in the west of Wales.

READ ALSO: British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The Swedish border policeman, who had accompanied him on the flight, even went so far as to tell him that as he was a UK citizen with no stamps on his passport he was entitled to visa-free entry to Sweden, so there was in fact nothing to stop him getting straight on the next plane back to Copenhagen. 

"I said, 'well, then what was the point?'," Davies said. "I saw the paperwork. These were business class tickets that the Swedish government has paid: 7,000 kronor per person. And these two guards had to fly back to Gothenburg as well." 

Mitigating circumstances 

The detention and deportation marks the latest in what Davies sees as a succession of unfair treatment by the Swedish migration authorities and border police, starting with the refusal to grant him post-Brexit residency in 2022 - he claims because he submitted his application six days after the strict deadline. 

Davies wasn't alone, in fact hundreds of Brits were left fighting to stay on in Sweden after having missed the date to submit their applications to stay in the country post-Brexit. The country has an unusually high rate of rejections, with data at the end of 2023 showing that 22 percent of residence applications from UK nationals under the Withdrawal Agreement had not been successful in Sweden. 

The Local last year interviewed the former Bollywood actor Kenny Solomons, who was forced to leave Sweden in 2024 after failing to get post-Brexit residency, like Davies for missing the deadline. Solomons' case made national news in Sweden thanks to his marriage to the singer of the disco band Alcazar. 

READ ALSO: Brits in Sweden still in limbo years after Brexit deadline

The reason that Davies failed to sign in at his local police station on the day in question, he contends, was that it was closed.

"It was a red day [public holiday] in Sweden, and I've actually got a dated photograph of me outside the locked police station, but in their strange mentality, that counts as absconding," he said.

As for his late application to apply for post-Brexit residency in Sweden, Davies claims he was under strain due to the illness of his wife, who died three years ago. 

"My wife was at that time dying of cancer here in Helsingborg and it was during the Covid pandemic, so the hospital weren't sending people out to help in the house. They blankly refused, even though she had terminal with breast cancer."

After applying late Davies was denied residency in Sweden. He then lost his appeal against the decision which he blames on his "incompetent" lawyer. He carried on living in Sweden despite having lost his right to residency.

It was only once his daughter turned 18 years old, however, that the Swedish authorities made concrete moves to deport him, although he was detained in Gothenburg in February for four days when she was still 17 years old.

Lost all respect

Davies says he now has no desire to live in Sweden, and has returned only to sell his house, pack up and relocate, first to the UK, and then ideally to Denmark, where his children now live. 

Like many Brits living abroad, Davies wasn't eligible to vote in the referendum on leaving the EU, but said he was sympathetic in many ways to the Leave side. He said he did not expect to be personally affected by the outcome of the referendum. 

But his anger remains directed at Swedish authorities.

"I've lost all respect for Sweden and for the rest of my life and probably my children's lives, whenever we speak to someone who says, 'Sweden's a very social, accepting country. I'm going to say 'No, it's not'. That's my personal crusade, to tell people what the Swedish government, migration department and police have done to me."

The Local has contacted the Migration Agency for a response, but officials say they are not able to comment on individual cases. 

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Israel committing genocide in Gaza, say Israel-based human rights groups

Reports detailing intentional targeting of Palestinians as a group, and systemic destruction of Palestinian society, add to pressure for action

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/28/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-say-israel-based-human-rights-groups

 

Two leading human rights organisations based in Israel, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the country’s western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it.

In reports published on Monday, the two groups said Israel had targeted civilians in Gaza only because of their identity as Palestinians over nearly two years of war, causing severe and in some cases irreparable damage to Palestinian society.

A number of international and Palestinian groups have already described the war as genocidal, but reports from two of Israel-Palestine’s most respected human rights organisations, who have for decades documented systemic abuses, is likely to add to pressure for action.

The reports detailed crimes including the killing of tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people, mass forced displacement and starvation, and the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure that have deprived Palestinians of healthcare, education and other basic rights.

“What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group,” said Yuli Novak, the director of B’Tselem, calling for urgent action. “I think every human being has to ask himself: what do you do in the face of genocide?”

It is vital to recognise that a genocide is under way even without a ruling in the case before the international court of justice, she said. “Genocide is not just a legal crime. It’s a social and political phenomenon.”

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) focuses in its report on a detailed chronological account of the assault on Gaza’s health system, with many details documented directly by the group’s own team, which worked regularly in Gaza before 7 October 2023.

The destruction of the healthcare system alone makes the war genocidal under article 2c of the genocide convention, which prohibits deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group “in whole or part”, said its director, Guy Shalev.

“You don’t have to have all five articles of the genocide convention to be fulfilled in order for something to be genocide,” he said, although the report also details other genocidal aspects of Israel’s war.

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