The Washington Post has published an article calling for the murder of Iranian negotiators to force Iran to capitulate to US and Israel demands that the aggressors have been unable to achieve militarily. Pakistani intelligence and its air force thwarted alleged Israeli plans to do just that.

In “Iran thinks it has leverage. Here’s how Trump can prove it wrong“, its author, Marc A Thiessen, demands a resumption of the illegal US-Israel war of aggression if Iran does not concede everything Trump (and therefore of course Israel) wants. And he calls specifically for the US to [emphases added]:

carry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations. Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed.

Washington Post is gutter journalism

Thiessen is a former Bush speechwriter who has defended the use of torture to achieve US ends. He is also a genocide-denying Israel fanatic who, almost ten years ago, was calling for there to be no peace in Palestine. When peaceful protesters gathered outside the White House in 2023 to demand an end to Israel’s genocide, Thiessen wanted all protesters to be pursued by police and accused the Democratic party of allowing itself to be filled with “antisemites” because Israel are “the good guys”.

Thiessen has been described as “nakedly propagandistic [and] flagrantly dishonest” and “selling [the Gaza] genocide”. He is a ‘senior fellow’ of the hard-right, neocon ‘American Enterprise Institute’. He has called for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and described the fake 2025 Gaza ‘ceasefire’ as Donald Trump:

[standing] astride the world and delivered something that had eluded every Republican and Democratic president: a Middle East peace.

Israel continues to slaughter and starve innocent Palestinians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon, which it has invaded while bombing Iran.

In 2024, Thiessen said he was “stunned” by criticism of Israel’s raid in Gaza to retrieve four prisoners of war. The IOF murdered at least 274 civilians during the raid. Thiessen went on to say that anyone who criticised the raid “may be an antisemite”:

The author’s willingness to call, publicly, for the murder of peace negotiators is hardly surprising given the source. What ought to be surprising is the Washington Post giving him space to express his murderous, racist imperialism, as it does regularly. However, the paper has long served US imperialism and perhaps even more so since its take-over by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The article remains online at the time of writing.

Featured image via the Canary

The government’s Crime and Policing Bill returns to the commons for its final stages on Tuesday 14 April. MPs will consider lords amendments, including a proposal that will grant the police sweeping new powers to restrict or effectively ban protests (Lords Amendment 312).

The government introduced Amendment 312 in the lords without a vote. This means it has so far avoided scrutiny or debate in the commons. Andy McDonald MP has tabled a motion to oppose the amendment. His motion has broad cross-party support, reflecting the widespread opposition to the government’s extreme proposal. MPs will have their only chance to push it to a vote on 14 April.

‘Cumulative disruption’

If it becomes law, Lords Amendment 312 would require the police to take into account any “cumulative disruption” caused by past or future planned protests in the same “area” when deciding whether to impose restrictions.

The amendment doesn’t define what constitutes the same ‘area’. It could include an entire town or the whole of central London. And it won’t matter whether the protests involve the same cause or people.

For example, an anti-racist march could be blocked from Whitehall because a farmers’ protest happened there six months earlier. Or police could restrict a Pride march because a far-right demonstration recently happened in the same town.

Although government statements make clear these powers have come forward in response to the mass national marches for Palestinian rights since October 2023, the impact of this change of law would be wide-ranging on protest groups in general.

Over 45 civil society organisations have joined forces to demand the government withdraws this proposal. These include the Trades Union Congress, Liberty and Greenpeace. They join more than 100 leading legal scholars and lawyers and over 100 Members of Parliament.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, Gina Romero, has also warned that she has serious concerns on the knock-on effects of the proposals. For example, authoritarian governments around the world could use them as a template.

Trying to make protest toothless

Even before this proposal, the UK’s protest laws had attracted widespread criticism. Extensive police powers already exist which severely limit the right to protest. These include the previous government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023.

Lords Amendment 312 follows a succession of illiberal anti-protest laws. It represents a major assault on the freedoms of expression, association and assembly that underpin protest rights. This government, or any future one, could use it to effectively stamp out political demonstrations, actions that are part of industrial disputes, and protests altogether.

Effective protests often recur in the same or similar places. And no protest movement has ever brought about change through a one-off demonstration. Landmark democratic struggles, such as the campaign for women’s suffrage and the movement against apartheid in South Africa, all relied on the ‘cumulative’ impact of repeated protests over many years.

On Monday 13 April at 3pm, campaigners and a cross-party group of MPs handed in petitions condemning the government’s attacks on our right to protest, totalling over 40,000 signatures. On Tuesday 14 April, Palestine Solidarity Campaign has called a demonstration outside parliament at 6pm to coincide with any vote on Lords Amendment 312.

Ryvka Barnard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said:

This proposal should alarm everyone who believes that democratic freedoms must be defended. It represents the government’s latest draconian attempt to erode our civil liberties in order for it to maintain its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

The UK’s political and military support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its continued ethnic cleansing in the illegally occupied West Bank, and illegal strikes on Iran and Lebanon, continue to cause huge public outrage and fuel the ongoing protests involving hundreds of thousands of ordinary people across the country.

Instead of listening to the public and addressing its responsibilities under international law, the government is trying to repress protest through ever more authoritarian laws.

The right to protest, including in solidarity with the Palestinian people, is a precious democratic principle under threat from this government, and it must be defended.

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Featured image via the Canary

The father-of-two whose strike killed “beautiful, determined and loving soul” Zahwa Mukhtar has been sentenced to 16-and-a-half years in prison for her murder.

Duane Owusu, 36, will serve nearly 16 years before being considered for parole after his murder conviction in March at the Old Bailey.

Judge Richard Marks KC told Owusu he delivered “a forceful blow for which there was absolutely no need or justification”.

He also reprimanded his “callous and selfish behaviour” the night Zahwa, 27, was assaulted and killed.

To Zahwa’s family in court, Judge Marks expressed his “extreme sympathies and commiserations for [their] terrible loss”.

Deaf financial assistant, Zahwa, suffered unsurvivable head injuries when her head struck the ground after falling backwards in Chadwell Heath Lane, Romford, last August.

Moments before Owusu hit her, he’d pushed Zahwa out of a parked car and aimed two kicks at her face following a volatile journey.

Zahwa happened to meet Owusu and his friends, some of whom gave evidence in the murder trial, in Palatine Road, Hackney, before deciding to travel with them towards Romford.

She made no attempt to break her fall when she was struck suddenly. Zahwa was later pronounced dead at the scene by emergency services at about 6.21am on Saturday 16 August 2025.

Sentencing remarks

While passing his sentence, Judge Marks said it was “absolutely clear the only person about whom you were concerned at the time was yourself”.

He continued:

I accept that you did not know that she was gravely injured, nor indeed that the injuries were so severe as to be unrecoverable, but the point is, that you couldn’t have cared less. Whereas a moment’s investigation would have revealed she was lying unconscious.

Whatever may have been her condition, you were content to leave her there, flat out on her back as a result of a blow from you, on her own at 4.30am. Clearly, very substantially under the influence of drink and or drugs, and for all you knew, miles away from home and with no means of getting home. More callous and selfish behaviour it is difficult to imagine.

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Owusu was dismissed from court immediately after his sentence was delivered on Tuesday 14 April.

His defence barrister, Michael Borrelli KC, called him a “man who has within him, a decent moral compass”.

He added that Owusu was “somebody who’s clearly well thought of, not only by family and friends, but those who have had contact with him”.

Through his barrister, Owusu expressed “deep sorrow and regret” to the Mukhtar family before explaining how the “family man”, who has spent nearly eight months in custody, also “feels the pain of losing children”.

‘A young woman who still had dreams to fulfill’

The family’s victim impact statement read out in court was written by Zahwa’s brother, Jamaluddin Mukhtar.

It described the aspiring accountant as “a remarkable young woman whose life was shaped by both hardship and extraordinary perseverance”.

The court heard Zahwa had contracted meningitis twice, first at age three when she became deaf, and again as a teenager.

Until sixth form, she attended a deaf school and became proficient in both sign language and lip reading.

Prosecutor Henrietta Paget KC said:

Zahwa never allowed her hearing difficulties to define her or hold her back. Towards the end of her final years in secondary school, she made the decision to integrate into a mainstream state school. Despite the challenges this posed for a deaf individual, she successfully communicated with her classmates, built friendships and never isolated herself. She developed bonds with many friends who were not deaf, proving that her disability did not confine her social life.

Zahwa was known for her constant smile, infectious laughter and the joy she brought to everyone around her. She always encouraged others to believe in themselves and celebrated even the smallest achievements of her friends and family, never letting anyone’s efforts feel insignificant. Her warmth, kindness and belief in the potential of others were qualities that left a lasting impression on all who knew her.

Known as “Zee” within east London’s Deaf community, Zahwa was a much-loved member of Hackney Deaf Club.

“She also spoke passionately about one day opening a school for deaf children, a place where they could be understood, supported and given opportunities just as she wished for others,” the court learned.

The statement continued:

I say this on behalf of our entire family, what happened to Zahwa took from us a daughter, sister, a granddaughter and a niece, and it took from this world a young woman who still had dreams to fulfill and lives to touch. Losing her has left an immeasurable void in our hearts.

What factors influenced Owusu’s sentencing?

A number of aggravating factors were taken into account when deciding Owusu’s minimum prison term, including Zahwa’s “vulnerability” as a deaf person.

Mr Borrelli said he “recognised” that as a young woman on her own, she was vulnerable.

However, he asked the judge to apply “great caution” in considering her disability as an aggravating factor for Owusu’s sentence. This was due to a lack of evidence that Owusu or the group knew Zahwa was deaf.

He said:

We respectfully submit that to leave Ms Mukhtar with a label of being a particularly vulnerable person would in fact be a disservice to her memory.

Mr Borrelli highlighted a written statement from an interpreter who had known Zahwa for about a year. It spoke of her “courage and determination to get on with life in an absolutely normal way”.

The statement also made reference to solo holidays Zahwa had taken to Morocco and Dubai, and how “infused” she’d been about those.

Mr Borrelli added:

It is absolutely plain that despite a hearing deficit that would limit so many people, Ms Mukhtar was somebody who was absolutely determined to get on and enjoy life.

Nonetheless, Judge Marks said Zahwa was “unquestionably vulnerable” due to being deaf although she was “fiercely independent”. He accepted Owusu was “unaware” of her disability.

Zahwa was a young, deaf woman out by herself

He also told Owusu that he must have known from Zahwa’s “erratic” behaviour that night and the drugs he saw her take with the others, that she was “out of it”. This would’ve “impacted her self-awareness as well as her ability to look after herself as a young woman out on her own late at night”.

Judge Marks also commented on how inebriated Owusu was too and how he may have “behaved with a greater degree of restraint” had he been more sober.

The Mercedes driver drove back towards Zahwa on two occasions — the first time against Owusu’s wishes — and he failed to properly check if Zahwa was “alright or to obtain any help for her whatsoever”.

He also considered Owusu’s previous convictions: an eight-year custodial sentence in 2010 for conspiracy to rob. Aged 20, he was the getaway driver in a robbery when Matalan store manager, Jamie Simpson, 33, in east London was killed.

There was a subsequent conviction for an offence involving the supply of class A drugs and a “fresh allegation” for a drug offence that Owusu was on bail for at the time of Zahwa’s murder.

Murder carries a mandatory life sentence for adults with a typical starting point of 15 years.

Featured image via the Canary

The Spanish women’s national handball team players have sparked widespread anger in Israel after appearing on the court wearing pro-Palestinian symbols and messages on their shoes during a European Championship qualifier against Israel in Granada, Spain.

Protest on the court

Reuters reported that the Spanish players entered the court with symbols and messages supporting Palestine on their shoes, including the phrase ‘From the River to the Sea.’ The move surprised the sporting world and provoked angry reactions in Israel, with the newspaper Israel Hayom describing it as a clear political protest within an official sporting event.

This incident comes amid escalating tensions between Spain and Israel since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2013. Madrid has adopted a critical stance towards Israeli military operations, describing them as violations of international law, which has negatively impacted relations between the two countries.

Spanish government moves against Israel

In May 2024, Spain officially recognized the State of Palestine – a move that angered Tel Aviv. The crisis escalated in 2025 with a series of measures including an arms embargo, a ban on military shipments transiting its territory, restrictions on dealings with settlements, and the recall of its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Tensions intensified further in 2026 as Spain opposed a war against Iran and refused to support US-Israeli operations, permanently withdrawing its ambassador. The crisis reached an unprecedented level when Israel accused Madrid of waging a ‘diplomatic war’ and excluded it from coordination mechanisms related to the Gaza Strip.

Other steps, including the reopening of the Spanish embassy in Iran and calls within the European Union for action against Israel, contributed to deepening the political rift between the two sides, amidst a continuous exchange of criticism and escalating diplomatic tensions.

Transport union the RMT will hold a national day of action to tackle the growing threat of assaults across the rail, bus, metro and ferry sectors on 28 April.

The union is stepping up its Action Against Assaults campaign in a bid to:

• Improve the day to day working lives of members.
• Create a safer environment for passengers.
• Ensure employers and the governments in the UK take their responsibilities seriously.

RMT wants to see an end to lone working and low staffing levels. It wants increased funding for and increased presence of the British Transport Police. And, ahead of the devolved elections, it’s aiming to put pressure on politicians in Scotland and Wales.

The union is seeking commitments from Scottish political parties for a bespoke offence of assaulting a transport worker to become law in the next Scottish parliament.

Activities such as leafleting of rail stations, ports and bus depots will take place across the country on Tuesday 28 April. This coincides with International Workers Memorial Day.

Ahead of the day of action, RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said:

This campaign is one of the most important the union has ever undertaken and we require significant action to improve the day to day lives of our members who fear being assaulted at work.

Public transport must be a space where passengers feel welcome and our members feel safe.

That needs enforcement both legally and through proper resourcing of authorities like the British Transport Police with safe staffing levels on the transport network.

Only this Easter Bank Holiday, I have had reports of our members being seriously assaulted, all for just doing their jobs professionally and being of significant help to passengers during extremely busy travel environments.

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Politicians and employers have responsibility for ensuring our members safety and creating a decent environment for passenger travel.

This day of action will provide the springboard for further political and industrial campaigning until we reach an acceptable situation for our members.

Featured image via the RMT

For the second time in the past few weeks, a heckler has given Nigel Farage the business.

The latest incident took place on the Shetland Islands, and saw Farage labelled a “scrounger” for voicing the idea that the UK needs more rich people in politics:

Reform leader Nigel Farage has been met with protests in Lerwick today on his visit to Shetland.

Read more at https://t.co/DssMwxOiyG pic.twitter.com/125H4TxqCW

— Shetland News (@Shetnews) April 14, 2026

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Welcome to Shetland!

In the video above, Farage responds to the man heckling him:

Well, maybe we need some more people in politics to make money and then everybody will be richer. How about that?

What a groundbreaking idea – a party stacked full of rich people – have we tried that before?

Oh no – wait a minute – we just googled ‘party of the rich’, and apparently the UK has something called the ‘Conservative Party’.

According to the 5 seconds of research we just did, said party is stacked full of millionaires, landlords, and hereditary aristocrats. In fact, their last prime minister was worth £651m at the time of the last election.

Strangely, however, this wealthy party of government didn’t make UK citizens any richer. In fact, in-work poverty actually increased under the Tories – as did child poverty.

Odd, isn’t it?

It’s almost like the rich just make life easier for themselves.

Even more strangely, we can see that Farage previously sold Reform UK as an alternative to the Conservative Party. We’re not sure what’s so different about them, because Reform is literally stuffed to the gills with wealthy ex-Tories.

Back to the Shetlands, Farage’s heckler said:

More billionaires in politics? That’s your ideas, more successful billionaires, scroungers like yourself? Scroungers.

Farage looked surprised by the accusation, but he better get used to it.

More and more people are waking up to the fact that the rich are rinsing this country for everything we’ve got.

So yes, they are “scroungers”; and so are the politicians facilitating their money grubbing ways.

Big up this legend, who called Nigel Farage a millionaire scrounger. pic.twitter.com/8bb0PGVlGx

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) April 14, 2026

The party of the rich

As we’ve reported, Reform are the new party of the rich in terms of donation money.

Like the Independent reported, donors are now abandoning the Tories for Reform:

The latest register of donations, released on Thursday, also showed that more Tory donors are giving money to Reform UK. This included construction equipment firm JCB, which has previously backed the Conservatives but this time gave £200,000 to both Reform and the Tories.

Isabel Goldsmith, the sister of former Tory minister Zak Goldsmith, also gave Reform £100,000.

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Former Tory donor and high-profile Reform defector Nick Candy, a property developer, donated £240,000 to the party.

Do you think these wealthy people are donating out of the goodness of their hearts? Or do you think they expect something in return?

Our own Rose Cocker showed the figures for all the parties as of March this year:

£5.5m total puts Reform head and shoulders above any other party in terms of donations. For contrast, the Tories received £4.2m, the Lib Dems took almost £2.2m, and Labour were given £2m. Meanwhile, the Greens received just over £294k.

So why aren’t the rich donating to the Greens?

Almost certainly because they don’t think they’ll get a return on their money.

Writing for the Canary in April this year, James Wright pointed out:

the Green Party branded the Reform head a “performer, a con artist”. They pointed to DeSmog research that shows Farage’s party has accepted £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, big polluters and climate deniers since 2019.

Harriet Williamson of Novara Media, meanwhile, described Reform as a “handful of oil execs in a trench coat“. In that same piece, she reported:

Reform’s treasurer and billionaire property developer Nick Candy has been busy wooing wealthy offshore donors in low-tax jurisdictions like Monaco, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, in 2024, more than half of the party’s donations – £2.5m – came from those with residences in low-tax countries or business interests in offshore jurisdictions.

This explains Reform’s stance on cheap, clean renewable energy, doesn’t it?

If the US and Israel’s war on Iran has taught us anything, it’s that we need to rapidly go electric to gain energy independence. Reform, meanwhile, want to shackle us to our expensive and dirty past.

Punching bag

Back to the Shetlands, the National carried comment from the Lib Dem candidate Emma Macdonald, who said:

Nigel Farage is welcome to visit Shetland the same as any tourist, but folk here will judge him on what he’s actually done for our islands.

Farage was on the fisheries committee in Brussels for years and barely made an appearance – then when there was a big debate on the fishing industry in the UK Parliament, led by our own MP, not one Reform MP bothered to show up to contribute. Photo calls are the easy part, but Farage has not done much more than that.

In Shetland, we need more than headline visits from party leaders. We need people who will stand up for fishing day in, day out.

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Farage is visiting Shetland days after we learned that Russian submarines were taking a look at pipelines and cables in UK waters. Perhaps after Putin’s covert assets failed, he decided to send his most ‘overt’ asset?

Our communities need serious, consistent support, and a strong local voice that understands the reality here in Shetland – not more self-interested politicians who only turn up for the short term.

Farage is just getting bullied all over the place now, isn’t he?

Getting his heckles up

As noted, Farage was also heckled at a recent campaign launch. As far as we can tell, this was the last time they prominently used the ‘Reform Will Fix It’ slogan – a line which mirrors the catchphrase of dead paedophile Jimmy Saville.

🚨 WATCH: Nigel Farage is repeatedly heckled at the launch of Reform UK’s London local election campaign pic.twitter.com/QCshvLKvU0

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) March 28, 2026

So yes, he probably should expect more heckling to come.

Farage has made a career out of division, after all.

He’s certainly got what he wanted, but he isn’t enjoying the results.

Featured image via Shetland News

London c.1920: ‘Flappers’ dancing the Charleston | Image by: Pictorial Press / Alamy

4 min read11 min

With a title that conjures an image of stumbling columns of gassed men, “shellshocked” appropriately describes a nation, bewildered and traumatised, suspended between the ‘Great Silence’ of armistice and the drum beat of the coming war.

Adding to the vast canon of political and social history, poetry and novels that have tried to pin down these ‘years of illusion’, Alwyn Turner’s book aims for something different: to “take the temperature of the nation” – albeit mainly an English nation.

The nation he portrays is one seeking distraction – and who could blame them? The three political leaders at the outbreak of war, Herbert Asquith (Liberal), Bonar Law (Conservative) and Arthur Henderson (Labour), all lost sons – two in Law’s case. An estimated 1.75 million women were deemed ‘surplus’ to requirements. Postwar hopes of a better world were quickly and bitterly dashed, while class barriers, paramount in the 1926 General Strike, were as high as ever.

While political history provides the architecture – the first aborted Labour government of 1924, the coalition government of 1931, Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936, Oswald Mosley’s rise to power – the soundtrack is an engaging ‘vox pop’, assembled from an impressive excavation of newspapers, popular songs, cinema and radio.

Turner reveals a world of paradox

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Thus, Turner reveals a world of paradox catching the tides of two decades – grief and hedonism; license and repression; distress and wealth; conservatism and communism. Moods change with the decades. The Bolshevik bounders of John Buchan’s novels give way to the “golden age of detective fiction” with the toffs (the character Peter Wimsey par excellence) in charge. Gender issues make the news. In 1921, the House of Lords throws out an amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill to make lesbianism a misdemeanour, arguing that it would “put ideas into women’s heads”. In 1928, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover makes a bold entry.

New stories emerge – sometimes bizarrely. Who knew that TS Eliot had ever written an obituary of the music hall singer Marie Lloyd, or that John Reith would ask BBC candidates if they believed the teachings of Jesus Christ? Reading took on a competitive edge. Through an affordable subscription, the Daily Herald furnished two million homes with a set of the complete works of Charles Dickens (we had one at home in Tredegar) at a greatly discounted cost (£1.7s the lot). While the nation felt better together (voluntary and community activities thrived, as did trade unions and political parties), buying on credit, motor cars and the advent of Butlins in 1936 (the first in Skegness opened by aviator Amy Johnson!) widened horizons. By 1930, London had one cinema seat for every 20 people.

This rollicking read is full of gems which reveal the nation’s tendency not to take things too seriously. The Murder in the Red Barn was a more popular night out at the theatre than an evening in reading Virginia Woolf (modernism in all forms was definitely ‘unBritish’). Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933) is parodied by George Formby as Off the Dole (1935). The northern cosiness of Formby and Gracie Fields become the perfect antidote to the screaming reality of Adolf Hitler – derided brilliantly in Richmal Crompton’s Just William series in the book William the Dictator (1938); replicas of Neville Chamberlain’s furled umbrella are even reproduced in toffee.

But when it counts, another spirit surfaces. Time has run out. As Britain stands alone after the fall of France, the Daily Mail writes: “We alone defend the conscience of the world.” As the light faded on those two volatile decades, balanced between promise and despair, the words of Robert Graves a decade earlier, ‘Goodbye to All That’, took on a new and serious intent – a postwar world which had no place for hedonism, committed to the rebuilding of nations and a new world order.

Baroness Andrews is a Labour Peer

A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars

By: Alwyn Turner

Publisher: Profile Books

It’s clear at this point, as Donald Trump flounders in his illegal war against Iran, that the US president drastically underestimated his Iranian opponents. How could that happen, given the advice he would have been receiving about Tehran’s capacity to target Gulf oil infrastructure, and close the Strait of Hormuz? There was also the satellite coverage and communications penetration of his opponents that should have informed better judgement by Washington’s war criminal-in-chief.

The answer is probably that Trump is such an Orientalist, Islamophobic, generally racist, white supremacist thug, it left him with no capacity to recognise the competence possessed by Tehran.

Trump’s vile bigoted tirades are legion at this point. He’s railed against “stupid” and “low IQ” Somalis, called Mexicans rapists and ranted about banning all Muslims from entering the United States. He sees a world divided into a civilised section, populated by white northern Europeans, and contrarily, dangerous “shithole countries”.

His comments about Iran’s leaders have been straight out of decades-old anti-Iranian propaganda perpetrated by Western media and politicians. It is one that characterises Tehran (and often Iranians more broadly) as backwards, fundamentally malevolent, and irrational.

Trump deploys classic bigoted Iranian tropes

The mass murderer who has slaughtered over 3,500 Iranians has said the Iranian government “just wanted to practice evil.” He declared he intended:

…to bring them [the Iranian people] back to the Stone Ages where they belong.

He called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

…one of the most evil people in history.

Trump has called his rivals in the Iranian government “crazy bastards“. Finally, and needless to say, it takes extreme racism to consider it appropriate to threaten that:

…a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

This is all entirely in line with the prevailing message about Iran post-revolution that Western audiences have been bombarded with. Our media presents us with little more than so-called “Mad Mullahs” and crowds shouting “death to America”. Some in the West have internalised this narrative to the point where they refuse to believe a colourful coffee shop populated by uncovered young women could possibly be in Tehran.

US and Israeli politicians abuse these fictions as a means of gaining support for war crimes perpetrated against Iranians. This applies in particular to Tehran’s potential to acquire a nuclear bomb. The confections centre around an imagined lunatic state that will start launching off nukes left and right the second it has enough fissile material.

The implication is that they are so irrational they care nothing for their own survival, given the inevitable atomic retaliation that would follow. This too plays into Orientalist tropes about Muslims not valuing their own lives, or those of their families, thus permitting their wholesale slaughter. The US previously applied these same lies to Vietnamese people.

Far from being deranged, Iran has out-thought the US

The reality is that Iran has been a cautious, rational and defensive actor for decades. It has enriched uranium as a bargaining chip, but not gone after full-scale development of nuclear weapons. Tehran has assembled a vast arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles which it has used purely defensively. It has pursued a strategy of forward defence through proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine.

Much of the latter were shattered only because almost the entire world has permitted the Zionist entity to pursue genocidal violence against them for over 30 months. However, Iran’s fallback to missiles and Shaheds has proven effective and brought the US to the negotiating table.

Iran has achieved all this despite being under crippling US sanctions that have had a murderous effect on Iranians. Their deaths due to medicine shortages are among the 38 million killed by US coercive measures from 1971-2021. Despite this isolation, and being surrounded by hostile Gulf states hosting the US military, Iranians have at this point comprehensively outmanoeuvred the brutal world hegemony.

Iran has at least been aided in this period by China, another serially underestimated and maligned nation. Western media coverage of China’s impending economic collapse has been a running joke for a generation. China has constantly defied these naysayers to become the world’s industrial powerhouse.

It surpasses the US on numerous measures now, and will likely overtake it soon on life expectancy. Again, bigoted politicians disregard this, and deploy racist stereotypes of devious East Asians, who have only excelled through underhand means.

Iran is currently well on the way to having a network of high speed rail, with Chinese assistance. The US-Israeli contribution to that has been to bomb railway lines. There can be few better examples of two worlds moving in opposite directions than the main representative of a dysfunctional neoliberal order bombing something it cannot build at home. Like a petulant child kicking over the better sandcastle built by another kid, the US is now largely only capable of violence.

US and Britain represent a dying order with no capacity to learn

Yet Western ruling classes retain a remarkable lack of willingness to learn from what emerging nations do right. You’ve heard of Inglorious Basterds fighting to stop genocide – we have Incurious Bastards that commit genocide, while having little interest in what lessons could be taken from the likes of China’s state-led industrial policies. These have accounted for a huge percentage of poverty reduction worldwide.

A ruling order raised on Thatcher’s formulation of TINA – There is No Alternative (to neoliberalism) – are incapable of imagining the self-loathing state they have constructed doing anything useful. Perhaps with some basis in the case of Britain, now successive governments have ensured endless cuts have hugely hollowed out the state’s own knowledge banks and capacity to act.

The obvious riposte to this would be to point out that Iran and China are autocracies, so whatever the economic or infrastructural gains made, they matter little without meaningful political freedoms. That would be a fair point, were it not the case that both living standards and political freedom are receding in the likes of Britain and the USA.

In the case of England and devolved nations, wages have been stagnant for over 15 years as basic services decline, in effect making the majority worse off. What used to be world class public services now barely function. You wait months for an appointment in underfunded health services, then miss it because the dysfunctional privatised postal service couldn’t tell you in time. Meanwhile, police throw people into the back of vans for holding up a sign, or posting an unauthorised tweet.

Britain isn’t a democracy

Britain is a nation with an unelected second chamber. There is an unelected head of state. It has an electoral system where people’s votes don’t count. It is a place where levels of inequality and a system of political donations makes thing closer to ‘one pound, one vote’, rather than ‘one person, one vote’. Work is a largely democracy free zone – people spend the best hours of the day, through the best years of their life in places where they are simply supposed to follow orders, with little opportunity for their own input.

Britain can therefore in no meaningful sense be described as a democracy. The same policies persist year on year, whether its Labour or Tories in power. Eric Li said of the United States:

In America, you can change the political parties but you can’t change policies.

In China, you can’t change the party but you can change policies.

The same applies to Britain. Another memorable Chinese formulation is the notion of the “Kill Line“. This is in reference to the huge number of US citizens who are at:

…the point where a single stroke of bad luck—a $3,000 ambulance ride or a sudden layoff—triggers a terminal collapse into homelessness.

The Kill Line: USA’s massive precariat

At its most horrifying, the Kill Line can be seen in US streets rammed with people struggling against substance abuse, openly injecting and dying in full view of an indifferent ruling class. This too is the inevitable consequence of a society in which democracy has been worn down to the nub. A place where the priorities of the rich leave the majority to suffer. A place where in effect, a tiny number of people dictate policy and the views of most Americans are ignored.

As for the case of so-called ‘Israel’, despite our media referring to it as the “only democracy in the Middle East“, it has never been any such thing. Founded on ethnic cleansing, it has always been an apartheid pseudo-state, getting worse post-1967 and now a rabidly genocidal, deeply ill society. Once upon a time even this abomination had a strong social-democratic character – at least for its Jewish population – but that too has been hollowed out, following the same pattern of its aforementioned Anglophone backers.

Britain, the US, and the Zionist entity have effectively de-developed themselves, and can now merely be content with de-developing the likes of Iran via endless 2000lb bombs. This is virtually the only thing the USA builds anymore.

The so-called democracies have allowed oligarchic parasites to feast on their body politic for so long, all that remains is a husk. It shuffles feebly on in a zombified form that wears its mangled democracy as a kind of hideous mask, concealing the vile reality beneath – that of a brutish creature lurching between authoritarianism at home and imperial violence abroad.

Hollow shells offer only violence

Their citizens are no longer likely to enjoy a good quality of life, though they still fare better than those underneath Western bombs. When the latter people flee their countries, they inevitably seek shelter in the same places from whence those missiles came. The compensation offered to the struggling ‘native’ population is that the newcomers will be treated even more poorly.

Is this sufficient? Is it enough to be shivering in a cramped, damp-filled home, teeth rotting in your skull, because you can’t afford the cost of fuel and there are no dentists anymore, as long as you know someone has it even worse than you? Can one be cheered by a union jack on a lamp post or when told by Nigel Farage that one has the correct amount of melanin in one’s skin? Is it sufficient to know that your country is falling apart, but you can still destroy someone else’s?

Probably not. The wreckage at home and the wreckage abroad may differ in form, but they are two sides of the same coin. Both are the result of a completely unrestrained capitalism allowing a handful of reckless fuckwits to accumulate the wealth and power to determine the fate of billions. Economic and democratic renewal are essential to end this malaise.

Our racist culture deters us from accepting we have something to learn from the likes of Iran or China. Their welcome rise should grant us the humility we desperately need to follow suit.

Featured image via the Canary