The Union Jack flutters on a telegraph pole.

Once a symbol of might and power, it is now anything but in a modern and broken kingdom where poverty is rife and rising further.

The UK is still one of the richest countries in the world — a diplomatic power with a strong military and currency.

But millions of its residents live on the breadline, struggling to heat their homes and buy food.

The streets are cracked and broken. Many are strewn with rubbish. And at night, the lights are off as councils struggle to pay bills in what has become a fallen empire.

THERE ARE CONFLICTING WEIGHTED SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN REGARD TO THE UKRAINE CONFLICT. SO FAR THE WEST HAS BEEN PUSHING MASSIVE PROPAGANDA THAT GIVES THE NAZI KIEV REGIME THE UPPER HAND, OR LOSING LIGHTLY OR INFLICTING DEVASTATING BLOWS TO RUSSIA, AS THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE IS SOMEWHAT SLOW... AS WELL, THE WESTERN MEDIA AND POLITICAL CLOWNS PROCLAIM THAT RUSSIA WANTS TO TAKE OVER EUROPE, WHICH IS A SILLY PROPOSITION, BUT HAS TRACTION IN THE POLITICAL TOILETS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION...

WE KNOW THE WESTERN PROPAGANDA WELL — THAT WHICH TOLD US ABOUT "SADDAM'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"... IN THIS RUSSIA/UKRAINE CONFLICT, THE WESTERN PROPAGANDA IS AS BULLSHIT AS THEN, BUT IT IS FAR MORE SOPHISTICATED IN ORDER TO DEAL WITH A DELICATE DIFFICULT CASE. SADDAM WAS A PUSHOVER. PUTIN IS NOT. SO RUSSOPHOBIA RUNS HOT.

Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech exposed the weakness in the old right-wing politics of subtraction: in an age of scarcity, promising to take things away no longer lands on someone else, but on the voters she needs.

For decades the Australian right has won by taking things away and calling it discipline. It worked because the loss always fell on someone else, and because good times left a buffer to absorb it. Pauline Hanson has just reached for that same move in an age of scarcity, when there is no buffer left and no one else to blame, and aimed it squarely at her own base.

Kos Samaras

Every country has its catastrophic moment – the date that goes down in history as the nation’s darkest day. For Russia, disaster struck on June 22, 1941.

The Nazi attack on the USSR resulted in the deaths of 27 million people; around half of them were unarmed civilians – innocent victims of the war and the Nazis’ genocidal plans. The Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis during the war was the size of a country like Iran and had a pre-war population of 86 million.

The worst day in Russian history: How the USSR met Hitler unprepared – and still crushed him

On the 85th anniversary of the Nazi invasion, a look at why the Red Army nearly broke in 1941 – and why the USSR did not....

One of the most controversial and difficult-to-find Civil War conspiracy pieces ever published, this short work originated as two articles printed in Social Justice in February 1940. In just a few dozen pages, Coughlin presented a dramatic alternative narrative of the Civil War, arguing that the conflict was not primarily about slavery but was driven by international financial interests seeking profit, debt, and control......

Pakistan — with China behind the scenes — has emerged as the broker that ended the US–Israel war on Iran, and in this special edition Pepe Escobar and Larry Johnson join ZulfiqarAli to explain what it means for the Strait of Hormuz, the petrodollar, and the new security order taking shape from Islamabad to Riyadh.

FLASH/EX-CIA & PEPE ESCOBAR EXPOSES: HOW DID PAKISTAN’S HIDDEN TECH STOP KILL CHAIN IN IRAN?

Transition Protocol

For the first time in two years, Hungary has convened a summit of the Visegrad Group – a format designed to allow four Central European nations to coordinate, debate current agendas, and work on their own dimension of European integration matters.

In recent years, the forum has not spoken with a single voice to say the least. However, new variables in domestic political dynamics, the shifting contours of the EU, and the evolving European security landscape are forcing regional elites to rethink local alliances and seek partners among former opponents.

Gas, nukes, and historical bad blood: Can Eastern Europe pull itself together?

The draft of Japan’s 2026 Defence White Paper, published in May, offers yet another illustration of the extent to which the country’s political and military leadership has become literally wedded to the idea of magnifying both its defensive and offensive capabilities, and to constructing its own security at the expense of others.

Hell-raiser from Asia: 81 years after World War II Japan is obsessed with militarism again

Ksenia Muratshina

Shifting the Emphasis

Gina Rinehart has presented Pauline Hanson with an orange bulldozer and urged a crowd to make mechanical noises in a bizarre moment during a Queensland bush summit.

Australia’s richest person gave a speech talking up the One Nation leader this afternoon, before she called for staff to bring out the “beautiful, big, fat” bulldozer.

“We need more than one of these things, we actually need a beautiful, big, fat ... we need an orange bulldozer,” Rinehart said at a News Corp event in Townsville. 

“You might remember Elon Musk was given a big chainsaw to try and cut government tape and bureaucracies over in America.”

US automakers could begin producing missiles and other weapons as Washington moves to expand military output and replenish its arsenals, President Donald Trump has said.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said car companies with spare factory capacity are discussing deals to manufacture weapons, including Patriot air-defense missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

”They’re dealing with General Motors. They’re dealing with Ford,” Trump said. “I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now.”

He added that some plants belonging to the two carmakers are expected to be converted to military production, describing the shift as part of a “big strong economic push” to produce arms.

We are becoming aware, often belatedly, of the crimes committed by the Benjamin Netanyahu government against civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. No other government in the world considers the elimination of those who resist it to justify all collateral damage, regardless of the number.

Should the State of Israel Be Defascistized?

by Thierry Meyssan

We must also realize that this way of thinking did not arise from nowhere; it has a long and abominable history.
We must take responsibility and intervene before this government begins to attack its own citizens. Not because they are more valuable than Arabs and Persians, but because they are the same: they are human beings too.

Under the grey clouds of a late solstice

Black trees darken in a fiery el Nino

Folks wishing warming was a fake practice 

Winter is late and the Hanson woman has bravado

Promising to end future floods and fires

Promoting a forever tax-free paradise

Spruiking for votes from angry cocky farmers 

Whose Bedfords died thirty years ago

With seized engine and threadbare tyres

Still blaming the present political artifice

For a never achieved flowered garden 

That became a junky grand yard of rust

Unkept like rotten hats and boots of dust

Unhappily surviving in the best enclaves

Under eternal skies of infinite modem

Working life hard towards a mediocre eden

Where heaven is hell and earth enslaves

In country towns cemeteries full of graves

Of decent departed and century-old bods

Against the odds, the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran appears to be holding, after threats and counter-threats. It may collapse, but it has survived a first round of talks between the two sides in Switzerland over the weekend.

by Ron Paul

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that he will resign from his post and will step down as the leader of the Labour Party.

In an address outside 10 Downing Street on Monday, Starmer said he already informed King Charles III of his decision and asked the Labour Party to lay out a timetable to elect a new leader by September, adding that he will remain in his post until then.

Keir Starmer resigns

The UK prime minister has announced that he will step down from his post and will no longer lead the Labour Party

Starmer became prime minister in 2024 following the Labour Party’s victory in that year’s general election. He has repeatedly vowed to stay in the post, but has faced pressure to resign amid growing discontent and the declining popularity of his party.