UN experts have slammed the illegal US-Israel war on Iran. And as the UK government fails to reflect public opposition to British involvement, one newspaper is putting others to shame with its firm and honest coverage.

US-Israel war is “entirely illegal” and the media must stop covering for it

Most establishment media outlets have either been putting out war propaganda or sidestepping key context like:

The National, however, has been representing the public interest and amplifying public opposition. And it has put this sentiment front and centre:

Tomorrow’s front page 📰

Poll finds majority oppose use of Scottish airports by US to wage war on Iran pic.twitter.com/W1JEWgnX14

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— The National (@ScotNational) March 12, 2026

And they’re right to highlight this. Because although the UK and other Western governments have tried to get us to ignore international experts since 2023, the UN has been clear that the US-Israeli aggression against Iran and Lebanon is “entirely illegal”, insisting that:

U.S. and Israel should stop waging and expanding wars, and considering themselves as above international legality.

I have issued this press release with fellow UN experts about the aggression against Iran and Lebanon and the need to end the impunity of powerful States that consider themselves above the law. https://t.co/9pYqyWaWAU

— UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing (@adequatehousing) March 12, 2026

The experts also called for an end to the “total impunity” the US and Israel have had. And they’ve said that no behaviour within Iran justifies waging a potentially “catastrophic” war of aggression:

Independent human rights experts condemn the ongoing military assaults on Iran & Lebanon as “flagrant violations of international law.”

“The conflict risks engulfing the wider region in catastrophic armed violence, threatens to set yet another precedent of total impunity.” 1/3 pic.twitter.com/tWZchA0qZw

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) March 13, 2026

“The orders issued to the inhabitants of South Lebanon & southern Beirut to leave their homes are blatantly illegal. Combined with heavy and indiscriminate bombardment, these orders have resulted in the forced displacement of at least 700,000 people.” 3/3https://t.co/ANOMFnMtzL

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) March 13, 2026

Amnesty International, meanwhile, has asserted that:

All states, including the UK, must refrain from any conduct that could fuel further violations.

States have a clear obligation not to aid or assist internationally wrongful acts and a duty to bring such breaches to an end.

International humanitarian law is clear: military actions must not cause disproportionate harm to civilians or damage civilian objects.

The protection of civilians must be at the centre of all military decisions.

Attacks on energy infrastructure risk devastating civilian… pic.twitter.com/IpOCJ7KA6g

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) March 12, 2026

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The UK government, however, continues to ignore its duties in service of the US and Israel:

This is what British complicity in an illegal war looks like. https://t.co/avM4sdZuZ2

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 12, 2026

It is absolutely possible to take a stand for international law and peace, as Spain has shown. And to push our own government to act in this way, we desperately need more media outlets like the National which are willing to represent the public interest rather than the interests of US-Israeli war criminals.

Featured image via the Canary

Doctors and human rights groups are demanding that NHS trust bosses stop using a ‘nothing special’ patient data management platform provided by ‘murder tech’ firm Palantir.

Disgraced Blairite peer Peter Mandelson pushed for Palantir to receive huge UK government contracts, without a competitive process. The Starmer regime awarded them despite – or because of – the firm’s involvement in Israel’s genocide. Despite, too, the fact that Palantir’s bosses are linked to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. And boast about using their systems to murder people they don’t like and musing about spraying others with fentanyl-laced piss.

Palantir OUT

The so-called ‘Federated Data Platform’ (FDP) gives Palantir access to patients’ information from all parts of the NHS, supposedly so hospitals can provide more effective treatment more efficiently. But medics and campaigners say there’s “nothing special” about Palantir’s system and no particular benefit to using it – and they decry the government’s “drive” to push hospitals to use it.

Human rights group Amnesty has asked the NHS and all public bodies to dump Palantir completely. Its AI and human rights researcher Matt Mahmoudi said the firm:

has a track record of flagrantly disregarding international law and standards, both in the violations of the human rights of migrants in the United States, which it risks contributing to, and its ongoing supply of artificial intelligence products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services.

Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne said the company’s involvement is destroying trust in the NHS among patients and staff. She said health workers want the system dropped completely to:

put the interests of patients and workers above American big tech corporations. We know the rollout isn’t going to plan – NHS analysts have told us the software offers nothing special, implementation costs are spiralling and the drive to adopt Palantir tech risks pushing out local, trusted data solutions.

Featured image via the Canary

What did the study involve?

What are the different types of deception?

Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of Susan Abulhawa is a capitulation to the Epstein class, Abulhawa said in a searing but graceful response to the New York City mayor.

Abulhawa views on Israel and Zionism were condemned by Mamdani in a recent press conferece.

Abulhawa has a new book called “Every Moment is a life.” It is an anthology she compiled featuring the writings of young Palestinians experiencing the UK/US/Israeli genocide of Gaza. Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, illustrated a piece within the collection called “A Trail of Soap.”

Susan Abulhawa’s warning

Susan Abulhawa warned Mamdani in a post on X:

You succumbed to forces that seek to pick away at you, at your talented, beautiful wife, and at your work, they will claw harder with each apology or concession you make. If you are not careful, they will siphon your soul before you even realize it.

As the Zionist press in the USA got wind of Duwaji’s contribution — Mamdani felt compelled to publicly condemn Abulhawa. He said Duwaji never met Abulhawa and was commissied through a third party, Abulhawa confirmed this.

Mayor Mamdani says his wife, Rama Duwaji, was not aware of anti-Israel posts (like calling some Israeli citizens “parasites”) from an author she illustrated an essay for.

Mamdani calls that rhetoric “reprehensible” and says his wife booked the gig thru a 3rd party pic.twitter.com/HQqJvRYC53

— Josie Stratman (@JosieStratman) March 13, 2026

The fact that Mamdani publicly condemned a Palestinian American author whose work is crucial amid the silencing of voices witnessing the Gaza genocide has disappointed many of his supporters.

The poignancy of the story that Duwaji illustrated, a young Gazan called Deema’s first encounter with the indignity of a public toilet after her home was destroyed, was lost entirely in Mamdani’s condemnation. In his rush to distance himself from a Palestinian voice, he buried the very humanity his wife’s art sought to illuminate.

In her response to Mamdani, Abulhawa reserved her deepest sorrow not for herself but for the young writers she mentored in Gaza —children who risked their lives walking through bombed streets just to reach writing workshops she held in Gaza in 2024, in the middle of the violent, bloody genocide.

During two trips to Gaza in 2024, Abulhawa conducted eight writing workshops for young Palestinians. The workshops took place amid Israel’s relentless bombing campaigns. She said in her video reply to Mamdani:

No words can adequately capture the evil I have witnessed or experienced at their hands. I do not have sufficient language to describe what they have done to us, what Gaza smells like, feels or looks like up close now. But it is the kind of knowledge that alters one’s life.

She said it was extraordinarily difficult for the young writers to attend the workshops. They traveled for hours on foot, by bicycle, or on donkey carts just to reach the meeting places. Sometimes the journey itself put their lives at risk.

Palestinian-Americans condemn Mamdani

Other Palestinian Americans also condemned Mamdani’s capitulation.

Anas Saleh’s take down on Mamdani’s zionist position during his mayoral campaign was reshared by him.

After I heckled Mamdani, I got flooded with hate from the left for attacking “my allies.”@NerdeenKiswani reached out and told me that in a few months or a year that Zohran will expose himself to the people and they’ll realize you were right. Well… here we are. Nerdeen was right. https://t.co/ULqGUTe3ts

— Anas Saleh انس صالح (@AnasSaleh_NYC) March 14, 2026

Nerdeen Kiswani said that Palestine movement was expendable to Mamdani. She said:

He knows he’ll anger us. He just believes that when the time comes, we’ll vote for him anyway.

Zohran Mamdani throwing his own wife under the bus for not “vetting” who she made artwork for was never going to appease Zionists. They were always going to attack him anyway.

So why do it?

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Because in his political calculus, Zionists are a constituency to appease. The Palestine…

— Nerdeen Kiswani (@NerdeenKiswani) March 14, 2026

Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer recalled a conversation with Mamdani in which the mayor once warned him that criticism of politicians ‘gives people permission to go after his wife.’

Once in a meeting w Mr Mayor he told me that when I criticize him I “give people permission to go after his wife.” Very funny remark in retrospect.

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) March 14, 2026

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Yet in condemning Abulhawa, Mamdani himself had now handed his wife’s critics that very permission — sacrificing on the altar of political ambition the very principle he had once invoked to protect his family.

Zionist journalists circling Mamdani

The pressure on Mamdani has been relentless.

Since Duwaji’s illustration was discovered, Zionist journalists have targeted both him and his wife.

For instance, New York Post published a column attacking Duwaji. It accused her of holding “abhorrent, disgusting opinions” and celebrating “mass murder” based on her social media activity. The piece questioned whether Jewish New Yorkers could trust a mayor “who sleeps next to a woman” with such views!

The journalist who asked the question about Duwaji’s links to Abulhawa at the press conference mentioned above — is called Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon.

He is a Gaza Holocaust denier.

Israel’s response in Gaza was in fact far too lenient https://t.co/VBhh4BgpOb

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 12, 2026

Why Mamdani would condemn Abulhawa to a genocide denier shows the limitations of liberal politics.

Featured image via WikimediaCommons

How can bees live underwater?

Wait – but what about that “respiration”?

Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack. 

An essential part of any political party’s recovery from major defeat is reform of its internal machinery or institutions.

The Conservative Party, unfortunately, seems not to have taken this endeavour as seriously or comprehensively as is necessary to restore its status as the centre-right’s party of government, in other words to publicly show it has changed for the better over repeating such ad nauseam.

Perhaps this contributed to Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell’s decisions that conservatism may be better realised in another party. Nevertheless, the Conservatives’ history provides plentiful inspiration for reorganisation following severe defeats which, whilst not a panacea, could strive to fulfil several present challenges. In particular, the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) embodies the kind of party institution which should be urgently revived.

The chairmanships of Ralph Assheton and Frederick Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton, with a strong supporting role by R. A. Butler as head of the Conservative Research Department, were the most transformative of the postwar era. To quote Philip Norton’s The Conservative Party (1996), they “not only resuscitated the party but effectively galvanised it” following the landslide defeat of 1945; the creation of the CPC the same year was no exception.

Butler in particular, who influenced its formation, considered breaking the intellectual monopoly of socialism a crucial aspect in radically renewing the party. As its political education body and wholly independent until 1964, the CPC sought to produce well-informed and intellectually self-confident Conservatives at all levels without subjecting them to propagandising diktats or soundbite sloganeering.

Through its extensive publications, lectures, conferences, schools and study groups, it stimulated political thinking and the discussion of new ideas without formally committing the party to certain policies or forcing its members to conform to official opinions. Indeed, the body prioritised the two-way movement of ideas between the Conservative leadership and membership by circulating responses from local branches on specific topics, to which the relevant minister or senior party figure would be obliged to reply and consider in their decision-making. CPC pamphlets were also intended to reach a wider public who might be sympathetic to conservative ideas or arguments.

However, after nearly half a century of prominence in Conservative politics, the CPC appeared to atrophy in its final decade or so, with the idea of education becoming more top-down than grassroots. Perhaps its consolidation into a directorate with the Research Department in 1988 crippled whatever independence and authority it still enjoyed, forcing a greater orientation towards merely reviewing official policy directions. Its closest successor, the Conservative Policy Forum, inherited only a fraction of the role once performed by the CPC in ensuring party members are represented in policymaking, with scant reference to ideas beyond policy and no notion of political education.

Most importantly, the CPC in its prime was dedicated to explaining problems and suggesting solutions in accordance with conservative principles, its arguments thus setting it apart from conventional think tanks.

Although conservatism has frequently been the most pragmatic body of modern political thought, such considerations must be anchored in some underlying convictions to avoid being attracted into all manner of expediencies and undermining one’s own stated positions. Sometimes trusting the strength of Conservative politicians’ instinctive or dispositional conservatism has proved enough, yet other times this has failed or the right spirit towards conservation has been all but absent, whereupon dire straits ensue.

This demonstrates why the CPC was such a vital asset in policy formation and election campaigns alike, for its educational mission essentially advanced conservatism and strong, articulate conservatives within the Conservative Party. To disregard this role, it implied, would impair the party’s chances of election and the quality of government thereafter. It should be self-evident that disseminating bullet-point lists of ‘values’ via email or press releases will never suffice for thought, nor what the party forgot about itself in recent years in forsaking its distinct and rich political tradition.

Of course, there are obvious benefits in hosting a vibrant environment for ideas within the party today, or in producing competent and knowledgeable activists, both of which the CPC facilitated through its activities. Whilst some may argue the need to teach Conservatives about conservatism shows the party was never conservative in the first place, this is an inaccurate assumption.

Political education done right entails informing, articulating and deepening conservative expressions of common sense or disposition, indeed of substantiating values and the motivations behind policy proposals. The need for articulated principles and applying the conservative tradition are simply inextricable from the party’s form and function, its identity and purpose.

Reviving an institution like the CPC could begin to satisfy the immense unrealised demand for a party which represents something solid and understands itself, whilst guarding against possible future drift from leaderships seeking more convenient choices. Perhaps the window in which the Conservatives could have monopolised this potential support, however, has already closed.

It is a damning indictment against the Conservative Party of recent years that a plurality of the electorate now supports, for lack of other perceived options, a party which offers fireworks with assertive rhetoric in lieu of solidity, nuance and true depth of thought or feeling. Both options carry ample persuasive power, but only one may engender permanence, although the prominent defections to Reform could quickly upend this assessment in its favour.

Furthermore, whilst the formation of a concrete policy suite at the 2025 party conference was a positive development, recreating the CPC would give them the substance and verifiably conservative credentials they desperately need.

Again, ‘authentic’ conservatism is more than albeit important counters to Labour policies the Conservative leadership tends to promote and deeper than attempts to find merely popular taglines or policy solutions. Moreover, the realisation that contemporary conservatism ought to defend what is good in society does not make it ‘muscular’, for such an idea is so skeletal to the entire philosophy that it barely should need restating.

Nevertheless, where the party has clear ideas, a reimagined CPC could readily support, campaign for and build upon them. It could also show conservatives, rather than nostalgic centrists, remain the preponderant faction. Yet, the overriding consideration might become that of legacy, not of the past twenty years but two centuries of Conservative achievements which risk being forgotten amidst the political tumult.

In 1945, as now, the repository of wisdom in the conservative tradition demands rediscovery and readapting to present circumstances. The Conservative Party’s survival is much less assured than in 1945 or 1997, but the reinvigoration of a party cannot occur through its leadership alone.

Energy, ideas and self-confidence must be shared by the whole party; the question of sustaining them is where a party institution focussing on political education would come into its own. Given those preconditions, there is little but individual egos preventing Reform from forming an organisation along similar lines and further assimilating the core Conservative vote.

If given a fair chance, re-establishing a body like the CPC could facilitate much in a Conservative recovery, but if current trends persist might equally find itself passing the torch for the conservative political tradition.