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![Clive Lewis's Water Bill - bringing water back to the people 💯 Please watch, listen or read this transcript. Because this is the sort of leadership Labour needs 👏 Clive Lewis MP He even calls for PR 👏 Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) Margaret Thatcher’s revolution tore up the rulebook on political and economic management. She rewrote it with a single unwavering principle: that the pursuit of profit would serve the public good, even when it came to vital public services—even when it came to water. We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants, but giants cast long shadows, and Thatcherism’s shadow looms dark over our water system today. Whether we see ourselves standing on her shoulders or trapped in her shadow, one thing is undeniable: she proved that the world can be made differently. And if it can be made differently once, it can be made differently again. That, as the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber understood, is the hidden truth of the world. It is something we create and can choose to create anew. We can do it better. Today, I want to show this House and this country that water is the lens through which we can imagine something better—a better way of running our economy, a better way of safeguarding our environment and a better way of empowering the public, for whom democracy supposedly exists. But that requires something very difficult: it requires us to break free from the constraints of our imagination and to let go of the idea that this economic model is all there is or all there ever could be. It saddens me to say that the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 perfectly exemplifies this failure of imagination. One of its leading proponents has a particular rhetorical flourish they love to use when dismissing calls for public ownership of water. They say, “I’m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.” I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things. But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives. For those on the other side of the House—on the Opposition Benches—I get it: this is their ideology. They are defending their class, and I would imagine they would go further still if they could. But on this side of the House, we have no excuse. We should be standing up for our class: working-class people—the public. Instead, we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance. Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab) I hope the engineers can check that the microphones and speakers are working while I ask a quick question. My hon. Friend mentions Members on this side of the House. There are far more of us on this side since July last year than there were in 2019, with a very different approach taken in our manifestos. Does he fear that the shift in tone he is suggesting is one of the reasons that we did so badly in 2019 but so well last year? Clive Lewis No, I do not. We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017. Sometimes politicians have to do what they believe to be right and lead from the front. I think we should lead from the front. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) I compliment the hon. Member on his Bill. To help his argument, there was overwhelming opinion poll support for public ownership of water in 2017 and 2019, and there still is today. Clive Lewis I thank the right hon. Member for his point. I will come on to this later, and I hope other Members will pick up on it, but the fact that the public are way ahead of this House on the issue of public ownership is one of the reasons why so many people are losing faith in the two-party political system. One only has to look at some political parties whose Members are not in their place—at the Reform party, for example, which has a policy of public ownership of water. Yes, its Members will privatise the NHS, but they understand how popular this is, and they are ahead of the curve—they are ahead of us on this side. Neil Coyle Really? Clive Lewis On the issue of water, yes, I would say they are, because whether I like it or not, Reform has a policy for water to be owned 50% by pension companies and 50% by the public. As much as it grieves me to say it, that is a policy of public ownership. They are populist; they are listening to a popular voice. Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will make some progress and then give way, and I will also try to keep the volume down a little bit. This is about the maintenance of a political and economic model that was never built to serve the public—a model designed to shield the wealth of asset holders, landlords, shareholders, corporations and, yes, privatised water companies. But here is the great irony: the very greed, recklessness and contempt of the water industry—its excesses—have cracked open the door, and through that crack, we glimpse an opportunity. It is an opportunity to shatter the myth of privatisation’s inevitability, to break free from the narrow, self-imposed rules that have caged our Government’s economic choices, to expose its failures, to challenge its dominance and, above all, to show this country that there is an alternative—an alternative that is democratic, sustainable and run in the interests of the many, not the few. We can do it better. Mr Frith My hon. Friend is making a typically impassioned speech. He says the general public are ahead of us. Where might that same public be when faced with the bill for bringing in the nationalisation he is clearly wedded to? Furthermore, in the event that we do not have to buy the water industry but seize it, the implications of that seizure will cause an economic collapse. At what point will he take responsibility for either of those scenarios when confronting a public who are, he says, ahead of us on this issue? Clive Lewis I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy. Mr Frith Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis No, my hon. Friend has made his point. Mr Frith On this point? Clive Lewis No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the public— Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. Mr Lewis, I do not believe I was making a point at all. Clive Lewis My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; I should have said that my hon. Friend made his point. The clock is ticking. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. It is our lived reality. Rising droughts, creeping desertification, depleted aquifers, wildfires, systemic collapse—these are no longer projections; they are the forecast turned fact. Preparing for this future and adapting to what is now inevitable has never been more urgent. The evidence is sobering. The UK’s water resources are under mounting pressure and not just from the climate emergency, but from rising demand and population growth. Experts now project that England could face significant water supply deficits as early as 2034 unless we act decisively. That is not a distant horizon; it is a little over a decade away. But while the threat has grown, our resilience has shrunk, because while the climate crisis has intensified, our water infrastructure has stood still, or, worse, been sold off, hollowed out and left to rot. In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) asks how we can afford it; how can we not afford it? That is not mismanagement; it is a betrayal. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country— Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis One second. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security. In any other existential crisis, we might call that what it is: sabotage. And in a time of national peril, sabotage has another name: treason. Let me explain why this matters to me personally. When I served on tour in Afghanistan back in 2009—not in a boy band—I experienced something utterly alien to me: the gnawing fear of thirst; not the mild irritation of forgetting a water bottle, but the deep physical worry that there may not be enough clean water to get through the day. In Britain, we have been blessed: water falls from the sky; it fills our rivers, it soaks our fields, and we joke about it—it is part of who we are. But in Afghanistan there was no humour; only heat, dust and desperation. There I saw children trekking miles through the desert, not for food, not for money, but to beg for clean bottled water. Once we have seen that, and once we have felt that fear, we can never take water for granted again. We never again believe it is something we can waste or pollute or privatise without consequence. That is why I have brought forward this Bill: because anger is not enough; outrage, no matter how justified, will not fix the pipes, stop the sewage or fill the reservoirs. We need a plan. We need a strategy. We need a future. We can do it better. My Water Bill delivers that. It sets out the high standards our country deserves and the democratic governance our water system desperately needs. First, it establishes clear, ambitious targets to stop the sewage in our rivers and on our beaches, to restore our water to high ecological and chemical standards, and to deliver universal, affordable access to water as a basic human right—a right we have never had before in this country. It demands a system designed not just to extract profit but to adapt, to build resilience in the face of climate change, and to harness nature-based solutions that work with the environment, not against it. Secondly, it transforms governance. The Bill introduces representation for workers and local communities on the boards of water companies. It gives voting rights to employees and customers, so that those who use and maintain a system have a real say in how it is run. Water is not a commodity but a common good, and those who depend on it and pay for it should help govern it. Thirdly, the Bill lays the foundations for a democratic future. It establishes a commission on water ownership to advise the Secretary of State on long-term strategy, looking at international best practice, especially in OECD countries, where public water ownership is the norm, not the exception. Crucially, it creates a citizens assembly on water ownership to bring the public into the process, to deliberate, debate and decide how we can govern this most precious of resources. The public care, but how do I know that? I know because a small fraction of them are in the Public Gallery today, having travelled here from all over the country; I know because of the thousands of emails that have been sent to MPs across the House; and I know because those people will never stop campaigning until this injustice is resolved. They know that we can protect something not by selling it off, but by standing up for it, involving people in its care and ensuring that it serves the public, today, tomorrow and for generations to come. My Bill offers a pathway out of crisis. It offers control, resilience and democracy. It is not just about cleaning up our rivers, but about cleaning up the system that allowed them to be polluted in the first place. Privatisation is not just a problem—it is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, “But we have just passed”— Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab) You can hear thinking? Clive Lewis I can now—for my next trick, I can hear thinking! I can hear them thinking, “But we have just passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, Clive, so what are you talking about?” Yes, we have, but I am afraid to say it has been watered down—[Interruption.] Sorry, I had to get that one in—it was all going so well. The Act does not live up to what was promised, it does not deliver what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. Do not get me wrong: it is a start. Grahame Morris I congratulate my good and hon. Friend on making an excellent speech and on advocating for public ownership of water and the opportunity to make things better. Does he agree that the mismanagement of the water companies under privatisation is a huge indictment of the whole principle? In my area, bills are way above inflation and huge dividends are being paid by borrowing money. At the very least, should our Government not be looking at stopping the payment of bonuses and share dividends while sewage pollution continues, and we have appalling mismanagement of the industry? Clive Lewis I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree with him wholeheartedly and I am just about to come to that point in relation to what the Water (Special Measures) Act does and does not do. It addresses some of those points, but as we have already discussed, privatisation is not just a problem, but the problem, and it is a big part of why so much has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Water (Special Measures) Act does not live up to what was promised or what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. However, it is a start, and I praise my colleagues on the Front Bench, including the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who has done so much work in this area. Unfortunately, the Act is not a solution. Remarkably, my Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targets—just vague intentions handed over once again to a regulatory system that has already failed us and to the companies that caused the mess in the first place. It says nothing about better governance, and absolutely nothing about the big, fat, humongous elephant in the room: who owns our water? If we do not deal with ownership, we cannot deal with accountability. If we cannot deal with accountability, we can forget clean water. No—we must go further on clean water standards, corporate accountability and what happens when companies fail. Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab) Does my hon. and gallant Friend accept that there is increased accountability in the Water (Special Measures) Act through the fact that many companies in the industry are now rewriting their articles of association to ensure that they are accountable not just to shareholders, but to the customers and users of water? Clive Lewis After 35 years of abject failure, it is too little, too late. My Bill would put the final nail in the coffin of this sorry chapter of our country’s water and water system. Neil Coyle Sticking with the puns, I commend my hon. Friend on his gallons of passion; he is always making waves. He criticises the Government’s legislation, which is obviously not yet in effect, but does he think that the Cunliffe commission will go any way towards addressing some of the concerns he has outlined? Clive Lewis Unfortunately, I do not, because again the elephant in the room—who owns our water—has been ruled out of the Cunliffe commission’s operational process. It cannot actually look at that issue. I have no issue with Sir Jon Cunliffe, but let us not forget that he originates from the Treasury—he probably has Treasury brain. That economic orthodoxy is part of the reason why we are in the place that we are. I do not have so much confidence in the Cunliffe commission, but I do have far more confidence in the People’s Commission on the Water Sector, which is being run by academics and which will report at the same time. I will be very interested to hear what it says. Neil Coyle Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis Those are the reasons why I have brought forward this Bill. The Government’s Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one example— Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. I believe Mr Lewis probably cannot hear interventions, because he is so loud himself. Members should intervene loudly if they wish to intervene. Clive Lewis I did hear the intervention, but I wanted to make some progress. Take this one example. Under this Bill, if a water company breaches the terms of its licence with a major sewage discharge, it can forget shareholder payout and piling on more debt. If it does it twice, it is in the last chance saloon. After three strikes, it is out—licence terminated and on its bike—and those price-gouging, asset-stripping, river-killing vulture capitalist outfits will be rolled into the sunset without a penny in compensation. What about those water infrastructure assets that they have been sweating for private gain? They go back into the public realm, thank you very much. If they start whining about debts, do not worry: we will do a full audit of what they invested, what they racked up in debt, what they paid out in dividends and what they stuffed into bloated executive pay packets. I will tell you this, Madam Deputy Speaker: I am yet to see a single privatised English water company walk away with anything other than a well-earned spanking and a sharp haircut for its creditors. Those assets will belong to the public once again, and we will not pay a penny more than they are worth. I can hear people thinking, “Where will the money come from? How will you invest in publicly owned water without the private sector?” I will tell them where it has not come from in these past 35 years—I am mind-reading again. Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will just make some progress, and then I will give way. I am on a roll. Let me tell the House where the money has not come from for these past 35 years. It has not come from private shareholders or long-term thinking, and it certainly has not come from some mythical well of benevolent capitalism. The private companies have put in less than nothing; in fact, they have racked up more than £60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than £7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now £15.2 billion in debt and counting—work that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a £3 billion emergency loan that will cost 10% in annual interest. That is more than half a billion pounds a year, just for interest payments, courtesy of our bills. That money will not build a reservoir, fix a pipe or clean a river, but it will keep a rotten system afloat for a little longer. Noah Law My hon. and gallant Friend makes an impassioned case for public ownership—something that, in the right context, I am sure Members on all sides of the House can celebrate. On the point about the cost of financing to the public, though, does he agree that while there are some serious indiscretions in parts of the industry, such as in Thames Water’s case, this conversation about the appropriate financing model would be better entertained at a time when the cost of capital in the private water industry was not lower than the cost of public sector borrowing, on which, of course, we are in a very difficult situation? Clive Lewis The cheapest borrowing in the country, without a doubt, is public sector borrowing. The private water industry, which has had 35 years to sort this mess out, is not going to find investment. It is up to its eyeballs in debt. It is relying on a 50% increase in our bills by 2030, if we include inflation, and that is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. How can we justify that? The answer is that we cannot. Mr Frith The day after the seizure of public assets that my hon. Friend is describing, billions and billions of pounds of debt will come with it. What does he propose to do with that debt, other than refinancing, which is exactly where we are at now with the industry requirement to refinance the debt to try to keep bills down? Instead, he is advocating that the public purse take on that private debt. Clive Lewis At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work. Mr Frith rose— Mark Ferguson rose— Clive Lewis I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Water—that half a billion pounds in interest payments—will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water. We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should have—from us, the public—and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell games—just clean, accountable, democratic water. When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each other’s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbert’s novel “Dune” believed: “A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe”. It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1905614329543532962/amplify_video_thumb/1905612252947865600/img/4N7RnIbeKkSuIXsR.jpg)
![My fellow Kenyans, Many of you have seen my recent posts about the deadly cancer that is corruption in our country. In my last post, I tried to paint a picture of the disconnect between our potential as a country and the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, and the connection between corruption and the incalculable pain and suffering and cruelty that is meted out every single day to the most vulnerable among us by thieves operating out of public office. And after covering the goings-on in Mandera County, I told you that in my honest opinion, our governments exist to cater for the filthy-rich lifestyles of the vilest and most corrupt among us, at the expense of everyone else. I received tremendous support from all of you, for speaking on behalf of so many struggling Kenyans who don’t have a voice, or the audience necessary to spark the much-needed discussion about where we are heading as a country. But even with all that support, I have received messages asking me to be careful. One compatriot told me: “prepare to be relentlessly pursued, threatened, enticed, guilt-tripped, and gas-lit”. This is from a someone who knows how our government operates, and how it uses violence and its monopoly on power to silence those who question why politicians are stealing so much. I am not naive about the dangers of speaking up and calling out thieves who control state machinery, and who possess the ability to shut me up in a few seconds. But I will tell you why we CAN NOT and MUST NOT keep quiet. In November of 2023, I stumbled upon the story of a young man from Turkana, Calvin Esekon Esewit , who, despite scoring an A-, and getting an acceptance into medical school, spent two years not knowing whether his dreams of becoming a doctor would ever come true. I was moved by that story in a way that I can never adequately explain. I could not understand how it is possible that, in our country, a young man who appears to be every parent’s dream child can spend two years in limbo while we as a country possess the ability to invest in our best and brightest. And so, I spent weeks trying to chase down Calvin to see how I could help him attend college. After a lot of searching, I finally found Calvin, and by this time he had managed to get some help and is now in college. While this story has a great ending, it did not to be this way. And we know that the number of cases that end like this, with some success, are a small fraction of those ones which end tragically, with broken dreams. This is what happens when corruption consumes anything and everything in a country. It destroys lives. See attached video to learn about Calvin's story. I tell you all this story because it provides context to today's topic. For one story like this one that you see on the news, there are millions that never make the news. But they are real situations, nonetheless. There are millions of your compatriots who are devastated by this killer cancer of corruption that is perpetuated by people that you and I have put into public office ostensibly to improve our lives. They go into these offices and abuse the trust you bestowed upon them and deny you and everyone else a decent opportunity in life. You see, Calvin and millions of other victims of this shameless level of corruption and plunder have no voice, and no real ability to look the thieves that are destroying lives and generations of Kenyans in eye and tell them to stop this unbearable pain and the cruelty. This is the reason I embarked on this journey to attempt to expose this shameful situation. Watch the attached video of Calvin’s situation, and I am sure that you will agree that the millions of Calvins in our country need a voice, NO MATTER THE RISK. The thieves that are destroying the futures of millions of children just so they can have beachside homes in Miami, Dubai and other places count on the idea that most people will fear for their lives, and therefore not speak up. They count on the growing apathy in the Kenyan psyche. But we cannot give in to that. We cannot cower to thieves. We must look them straight in the eye and tell them that they MUST STOP. If we don't, our children and their children are guaranteed the same level of cruelty. And so with that, today I want to talk about the utterly insane crime scene that is Turkana County. I don’t know any other way to describe it, other than, it is a “shit-show”. Just follow along, and let me know if you disagree. As I did in my previous commentary, I will ask you to indulge me a little bit, and allow me to use a couple of pictures, because pictures speak louder than a thousand words. The first picture shows the state-of-the art County Government offices, that the County Government of Turkana decided to invest an ungodly amount of money on. Close to a billion shillings. The second picture is a classroom in session. In Turkana County. These two realities are occurring in parallel in the same county, at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just tell you that I do not go out of my way to find bad news. I want stories that would help re-affirm our belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. When I find good news as I review these Counties’ decisions and how they behave with our resources, I will be the first one to report it to you. But I don’t have any good news today. I have bad news. If you read my commentary yesterday and were offended by what you saw, I am afraid you might not make it to the end of this article, because what you will hear will be quite shocking. The cancer of corruption, particularly at the County Government level, is worse than your wildest imagination. And so, as I like to do, I like to start off by putting some numbers on the table for us to use as reference points. Bear in my that all the information I put in this article is publicly available. Nothing came to me through a whistle blower. The first number is KSH 100 Billion. With a B. In the last decade or so, you and I, through the National Government, has sent over KSH 100 billion to Turkana County. To support recurrent expenditure, and development. For example, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, we sent KSH 12.6 billion. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we sent KSH 11.4 billion. And on and on and on. The second number is 1 million. This is the population of Turkana County. The third number is KSH 18.4 billion. This was Turkana County’s budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The fourth number is KSH 190 million. This was the amount of money that Turkana County was able to generate on its own accord within the county, from all its investments and other activities in the period in question. This number is an important proxy, in my view, for the value of the county’s economic prospects for the foreseeable future, and to people that are not driven by greed and corruption, would be an important consideration when they are thinking about how and where to deploy your money as taxpayers. If you are doing the math, Turkana County, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, was only able to raise 1% of the funds needed to keep the lights on. 99% came from you and I, and a tiny amount from grants. The next number is KSH 129, 040. This is the average ANNUAL [emphasis added] income of a resident of Turkana County ( Keep that number in mind when we are discussing the massive theft of public funds by Turkana County leaders. The next number is 80%. 80% of the residents of Turkana County live below the poverty line. They have a really difficult time putting food on the table. ( The next number is KSH 12 Million. This is the basic salary of the Governor of Turkana County before other benefits that, as I explained yesterday, can often double the salary. Remember the “housing allowance”, the “hardship allowance”, the “commuter allowance”, the “risk allowance”, the “extraneous allowance”, etc.? Remember that? I still cannot figure out, for the life of me, what “extraneous” means in the context of County business, but we don’t time to dwell on this. The next number is 93. The Governor of Turkana County makes 93 times the average Turkana County resident’s annual income. 93 times! The next number is 82%. This was the percentage of people that were illiterate in Turkana County in 2013 ( Could not read or write. A point to note about the above literacy figure. Ten years later, and despite over KSH 100 billion is spent in Turkana County, including many billions for education, that literacy rate HAS NOT CHANGED ONE BIT. Only 20% of the population can read or write today. ( KSH 829 million. This is how much it cost to build the County Government offices. Yes, the ones shown in the first picture. KSH 120 million. The County Government decided that it was prudent to pay a contractor KSH 120 million to construct the Governor’s personal residence. Get this, even after this payment, no construction took place. The money was stolen. All of it. KSH 90 Million. This is the amount that the County Government paid to another contractor, to build the Governor a mansion, having previously lost KSH 120 million. So, the tally for the Governor’s residence now stands at KSH 210 million. Never mind that the limit allowed by law is KSH 45 million. KSH 5 billion. In the last days of his term in office, an outgoing Governor of Turkana, Koli Nanok, EGH. , sought to inflate pending bills by adding KSH 5 billion so that it can be paid to his criminal cartel. KSH 5 billion. We have our key numbers, ladies and gentlemen, so let us discuss. So, we have a county that is dead last in literacy, and in the top 2 of the poorest counties in the republic. Only 20% of the population can read. The Governor earns 92 times the average citizen. The Governor lives in a house that cost over KSH 200 million. When he leaves his house in the morning, he goes to his office that cost KSH 829 million. And this is all happening when 80% of the County residents struggle to put food on the table. Those are the facts, and they are not in dispute. During the same time, the County Government geniuses decide to build the Speaker of the County Assembly a house. And a home office, and a garage. The house was initially estimated to cost KSH 75 million. But due to circumstances that not a soul in the government could explain to auditors, the contract expired before the house was completed, and the County Government found a new contractor to complete the job for an additional KSH 29 million. But this palace in the jungle worth apparently worth over KSH 100 million in Turkana County was not enough. The County proceeded to build the Speaker a guest house for another KSH 19 million, and a few other amenities, and so the whole cost went to KSH 276 million! The legal limit for a Speaker’s house is KSH 35 million, and they spent close to KSH 130 million just for one residence. By this time, I am sure you are getting tired of these obscene numbers. You and I work, and pay taxes. Nobody pays you 92 times the income your average neighbor is making. And for sure nobody will drop KSH 100 million to build you a house. These are the perks of working in government in a poor country. Go figure. And so, as a country, we need to answer for ourselves the question I posed yesterday, which is, what is the point of government? What is its role in our lives. If this level of criminality and pillaging can occur in our country in the midst of so much poverty, questioning the need for government is a totally valid question. I said in my last post that, when the average citizen looks at the thug on the street and the government, and is unable to discern any meaningful difference between them, that society from that point on is on its journey to becoming a failed state. A journey to anarchy. Over the last two months or so, Kenyans have been shouting at the top of their lungs, begging for their government to listen. To hear them out. Kenyans have asked that their government stop this unbelievable level of plunder. Dozens of Kenyans have died, thousands injured, and many more are missing today. To this day, the people that govern us continue to use the power of the gun to subdue Kenyans, until they can take everything in their sight. And so, as a society, we all have to ask whether today there is any difference between the thug on the street and our governments. Every Kenyan will have to answer this question for themselves. And before answering this question, everyone needs to remember the many Calvins in our society. Smart, upright children whose only crime is to be born in an unforgiving, lawless, and corrupt purgatory that is Kenya today. For myself, I have concluded that there is no difference between the thug on the street and our governments, county and national alike. If you can see any meaningful difference, let me know. I am willing to listen. So despite over KSH 100 billion in money sent to Turkana County, there is almost no measurable improvement in people’s life today. None. And it makes sense, when you look at how that money is spent. I want you to forget for a second the obscene obsession by the County Government with spending ungodly amounts of money on themselves. The houses, etc. If you step back and look at how the government is actually spending the hard-earned money on other things, you will be depressed. I am telling you that I wept three times in the middle of the night trying to make sense of this crazy situation in Turkana County. Three times. I have never imagined that human beings can be so greedy and cold-blooded. Think about this: In the couple of years I reviewed, the County spent around KSH 400 million annually in “tourism” initiatives, including marketing, and apparently upgrading certain facilities. KSH 400 million for tourism. In Turkana County. In 1 year. KSH 400 million per year in marketing and other money pits. The government’s own website says that the county gets around 3000 visitors per month. Around 36,000 per year. That’s them saying that, on their website. Are you curious to know the return on that KSH 400 million investment? I have an answer for you. Remember that I told you that the County has never raised more than KSH 200 million in a year within the county, despite its KSH 18.4 billion budget? Let me walk you through the breakdown of the absolutely embarrassing shit-show that is the County Government’s “own source revenue” operations. In 2022-2023, the County Government collected KSH 190 million locally against their KSH 18.4 billion budget. 1% of the budget. Remember, there is absolutely no requirement on the County to cut costs, or achieve certain local revenue targets today. So they raised KSH 45 million in single business permits, KSH 72 million in CESS, KSH 8 million in market fee, KSH 9 million in “slaughter fees”. And then finally, there is the return on the tourism investment that you were looking for. A whopping KSH 209, 000 in “park fees”. KSH 209,000 in fees, after investing KSH 400 million. And so, take this as an example and extrapolate it across the entire budget, and you can see how one can spend KSH 100 billion and get NOTHING in return. You don’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of this situation. Let me explain using an example that should illustrate the utter dimwittedness of this situation. Remember the KSH 100 billion sent to Turkana by you and me? Part of this amount is supposed to be for “service delivery”, or “recurrent expenditure”. Usually about 70% of the budget. The balance, 30%, is designed to go to development projects. With that in mind, from KSH 100 billion, the County apparently has made KSH 30 billion worth of investments, right? 30% of the KSH 100 billion. Now, if you employed someone to run a business for you, and they asked you to invest KSH 30 billion, which is no small fortune, at some point you would have to start seeing returns, right? That’s common sense, isn’t it? So, when we look at the revenues streams that make up this paltry sum of KSH 190 million, and see things like “slaughter fees’ and “market fees”, what does it tell you? It tells me there is no real “development” happening in that county. Trust me, if you had real development totaling KSH 30 billion, you would have corporate taxes in the hundreds of millions or billions, a booming real estate market, rising wages and standards of living, etc., low unemployment, etc. You would not have 80% of the people living hand-to mouth, and a County Government that can not afford to support itself for 5 days out of the year that has 365 days! We do not have enough time, trust me, to deal with the shit-show that is Turkana County. Dealing with that mess would require a forensic team. I will just highlight a few of other “in your-face” type of theft of public funds, and then conclude my submission. A government that has a budget of KSH 18.4 billion annually, and which has never raised more than 1% of its budget had the wisdom to do the following with your money: · Spend KSH 222 million on a project building something that NOBODY uses. You got that right. They spent KSH 222 million on a facility that NOBODY uses. KSH 222 million gone to waste, in a county that is dead last in pretty much all measures of human progress. · Remember the County Government offices that cost KSH 829 million? The County spent KSH 82 million on “air-conditioning” for that building. · Despite the County Spending hundreds of millions for the top three officers of the County, the Governor and his Deputy, in the 2022-2023 year, illegally charged the county (you and I) KSH 2.2 million in housing allowance! · Built two facilities for KSH 16 million, that were completed, but NOBODY uses them. · Entered into a contract for the construction of a plastic use facility for KSH 13 million in 2021. The contractor gets paid KSH 4.9 million, and has never been seen since. · Paid out KSH 62 million in salaries that were not supportable in just one year. They could not point to anybody and say, that is who we paid. · Paid out KSH 27 million in legal fees that nobody could say what they related to. And the County’s Legal Advisor, who, in 2022-2023, had a budget of KSH 123 million, apparently did not know anything about it! · Had an outstanding bill at Kenya Revenue Authority in the amount of KSH 486 million, that did not show up on the County Government’s financial statements. Think about that. KSH 486 million owned to the Kenya Revenue Authority, and that liability is not on the financial statements! This only means that someone took those funds for themselves, which is why the liability would be missing from the county’s books. · Could not account for KSH 367 million in expenditures for 2022-2023. KSH 367 million, in unexplained expenses. · Awarded a contract worth over KSH 200 million to a bidder with no bank statement, against the law. This contract was entered into and approved before the statutory time after the bidding process lapsed. Someone was in a hurry to get paid. KSH 200 million, illegally awarded to a bidder who did not have a 6-month bank statement. · Apparently purchased KSH 1.5 billion in assets in 2022-2023, but kept no records of the said assets. For this reason, NOBODY can verify where these assets are located. KSH 1.5 billion. Let me just say this. In my last article, the most common critique was that it was too long. Too many words. I did not intend to make another long article. Trust me when I tell you this, we do not have the time to detail half of the problems in Turkana County. For just 1 year! We do not. Now, you recall my point about how societies descend to madness and anarchy. In our country today, our leaders are accusing those of us who are agitating for honest and transparent governance of being traitors to the country. They call us anarchists, criminals, and merchants of chaos. They are questioning our patriotism. You have all seen the government and its horde of propagandists threatening the Ford Foundation and others because they may have helped civil society keep the lights on, and investigative journalists to have the capacity to continue to do the Lord’s work of investigating criminality in government. As though citizens are so dumb and ignorant, that they cannot see what is going on. The reason why millions of Calvins in this country will never graduate from college and earn a decent living is not because of the Ford Foundation. No. It is because of the thieves we have in office today, like the ones in Turkana County. In this post, I copy our leaders, the President and his deputy. I copy them because I want them to help Kenyans understand the following conundrum, about crime and criminals. There is nothing so special or peculiar about criminals or where they pop up. There are criminals in the US, Canada, France, and other places. Just like we have criminals in Kenya. The difference between banana republics and failed states, and civilized societies, is WHAT we do to and about criminals. In civilized societies, criminals are prosecuted and punished heavily. They are shunned. In some places, those charged with serious crimes such as corruption are executed. These are societies that are committed to sending the message that corruption, which robs citizens of their rights, is not acceptable. And they demonstrate this commitment by heavily punishing those who steal from the most vulnerable in society. In Kenya, we see the opposite. Criminals are exalted. They are promoted and embraced in government. It was just last week that the president unveiled his nominees for his Cabinet. Among them, are the likes of Hassan Ali Joho, EGH. , @GovWOparanya , and Davis Chirchir, ALL people who have been accused or charged with massive corruption against Kenyans. And am sure you remember that I mentioned Koli Nanok, EGH. , the man who tried to steal KSH 5 billion in his last days in office. Would you believe it if I told you that he works in government, at State House? He plunded billions of your money, got no measurable improvement in the lives of his subjects, and now has a government job in State House. Let that sink in. And so, the question is, how is it that in a country of 55 million people, with thousands of highly qualified people who have never ever stolen from Kenyans, he ends up with the criminals and thieves in the government, despite the fact that their crimes are in the public domain? How is this possible? Is it possible that these thieves possess a certain unique ability to run government, save Kenyans billions, and solve problems in a way that the president performs a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefits outweigh the costs of their theft? If not, what message does it send to Kenyans, when their own president puts into office known thieves? I think that is a fair question, don’t you? Dr. Ekuru Aukot Rigathi Gachagua William Samoei Ruto, PhD Okiya Omtatah Okoiti Citizen TV Kenya Nation Breaking News TI-Kenya CNN County Government of Turkana](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1818840969066037558/ext_tw_video_thumb/1818834432502951936/pu/img/ab9du2ECDO-A_5N7.jpg)
![The Economics of Europe’s Descent into Warmongering – and our duty now! My speech at the European Parliament on the theme of “The Economic Conditions of Peace”, Tuesday 10th June 2025 [INTRODUCTION] A year ago, I would have started this speech with a lament about the hitherto unimaginable conversion of the European Union from a Peace to a War Project. Not so today. Over the past year, warmongering has seeped into the very fabric of the Union, it has trickled into every policy, it has soaked every one of the thinktanks that generate Europe’s dominant narratives and creeds. Today, therefore, it makes no sense to lament what is now a fact: The EU is now a fully-fledged War Project – a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both! Europe’s military Keynesianism, I shall be arguing, is guaranteed to make Europe less safe, more unequal, weaker. Only two interesting questions remain: Why has Europe taken this road? And, now that Europe is on this war path, what is ourduty to our people, to Europeans, to Peace? Let me begin at the very beginning. [THE EU WAS DESIGNED TO BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE UNITED STATES] At the risk of irking Europeanists who believe in their own creation myth, let me be clear: The European Union (from its beginnings as the European Communities of Coal & Steel) was an American Construction – a part of a US Global Plan that also comprised the Bretton Woods System, the Truman Doctrine and, of course, NATO. Yes, most Europeans hankered for no more war and no more totalitarianism. But the EU was designed in Washington DC. And it was designed specifically not as a competitive market but as a Big Business Cartel run by a democracy-free bureaucracy (also known as the European Commission) not coincidentally located a stone’s throw from NATO’s headquarters. From 1950 on, the EU was nurtured by and in tune with the interests of the United States – an inconvenient fact both for Europe’s self-important rulers and for Donald Trump. Looking back, a common thread runs through the entire history of the EU: its total economic dependence on the United States. Initially, the EU was deeply dependent on being part of the Dollar Zone. Then, from 1971 onwards, it was deeply dependent on the American trade deficit. So, one way or another, Europe’s deep dependence on the US was ingrained into its architecture. It will thus take much more than mere pronouncements - or a few hundred billion borrowed euros spent on weaponry - to shed Europe’s in-built dependence on the United States. The fact that the EU was, from the beginning, fashioned as a Big Business Cartel is the reason why the EU needed fixed exchange rates: Currency fluctuations destabilise any cartel, making it hard to maintain the necessary levels of collusion between its participating producers. From 1950 to 1971, the US took care of this problem on Europe’s behalf. As long as it was running a trade deficit with the United States, Europe’s cartel was embedded in the dollar zone – its currencies tied to the dollar But, when around 1969 Europe (and Japan) started running a trade surplus with the United States, it was game over. On 15th August 1971, the Donald Trump of that era, President Richard Nixon, jettisoned Europe from the dollar zone, his Treasury Secretary cynically telling the dumbfounded Europeans: “From today the dollar is our currency but it is your problem!” Two things happened next. First, to save their Big Business Cartel the Europeans scrambled to create their own fixed exchange rate regime. They tried everything: The Snake. The European Monetary System. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism. They all proved flimsy designs that speculators had no trouble crushing. So, in desperation, they created the most noxious currency the human spirit could fashion - the euro. The second development was that, as America expanded its budget and trade deficits, the Eurozone morphed into a German-led net exporting machine whose aggregate demand was subcontracted to the United States. In effect, America’s twin deficits operated like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucked into America Europe’s net exports as well as the European exporters’ profits which were thus invested in US Treasuries, US shares and US real estate. That’s how, once it was expelled from the dollar zone, Europe became addicted to the US deficits. That was what the Nixon Shock did: It converted Europe’s utter reliance on living within the dollar zone into an even greater dependence on the US deficits. [NEVER MISSING A CHANCE TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY] Here in Brussels they love the expression that Europe progresses from crisis to crisis. That’s another delusion. The crisis of 2008 was our greatest opportunity to render the European Union viable, and to end its deep dependence on the United States. · The French and German banks went bankrupt. · The Eurozone’s impossible rules were in tatters. · A domino effect, beginning with Greece, was bankrupting our governments. It was the perfect opportunity to transform the EU from a Big Business Cartel, inherently reliant on the US for its aggregate demand, into a functional, internally balanced federation. Instead, Europe’s radical centre (both the centre right and the centre left) decided that they would change everything so as to ensure that nothingchanges. In this vein, they did their worst: Universal austerity for the many. And frantic money printing for the financiers and Big Business. What happens when you crush the incomes of the many and hand over trillions to the very few? Since the many are too poor to buy high value added goods, business stops investing in productive capital –– while the rich use the free cash to push through the roof house prices, share prices, Bitcoin prices, art, asset prices in general. The natural result is soul-crushing levels of inequality and deep popular discontent. The people got desperate. They even voted for radical progressives like me to enter the Eurogroup! Then, in horror, Brussels and Frankfurt overthrew us, or made Mr Tsipras overthrow his own government, using not the tanks, as they did in Greece in 1967, but the banks – not that much of a difference really! A coup d’ état is a coup d’ état. [TWO SYMBIOTIC AUTHORITARIANISMS] Guess what happened next: Just as in the mid-war period, xenophobic ultra-rightists rose up from the woodwork. They proved a godsent for the shockingly unpopular radical centre whose politicians could now say to voters: It is us or them! But it was equally a godsent for the ultra-right who needed the radical centre to impose the austerity policies which created the discontent which fuelled the anger that delivered the ultra-right votes. To put it differently, if Macron and Le Pen had any sense, they would each keep a framed picture of the other on their bedside tables, saying a little prayer in their hated opponent’s name every night before going to sleep. [SMOKE AND MIRRORS] Liberal Totalitarianism and Ultra-Right-Xenophobic Totalitarianism are accomplices, they feed off each other. Meanwhile, austerity for the many and money printing for the few depletes Europe’s productive foundations, its social fabric, its sense of purpose. That’s how the European Union lost any legitimacy it had in the eyes of the public. Sensing this, the Liberal Totalitarians in charge came up with one failed Grand Initiative after another. Who can forget the eminently forgettable Juncker investment plan, the Banking Union, the Green Deal, or the Draghi Report that has now joined them in History’s Dustbin? Impressive numbers were announced that, alas, dependably failed to materialise. It was inevitable. As long as our rulers said NO to the political union that could sustain a proper, macroeconomically significant, eurobond, the money to fund the necessary investment could never materialise. Even when they – finally – during the pandemic – did issue common debt, they ended up with common liabilities but no common purpose. Every Grand Initiative ever announced was a dance with failure, smoke and mirrors by which they disguised Europe’s nakedness. The result? After fifteen years of ZERO NET PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT, · Germany is deindustrialising fast, and along with it Eastern and Central Europe, Austria, Northern Italy · Political paralysis grows on the back of fiscal pressures · Neofascism and xenophobia are rising up everywhere · Europe’s dependence on the United States grows stronger at the time Donald Trump is cutting Europe loose · The Rest of the World looks at Europe as a sad case of what could have been, an irritating irrelevance. In this sad context, our great and good leaders had another woeful idea for a Grand Initiative: Now that the Green Deal is dead-in-the-water and the Recovery Fund is spent, why not try Military Keynesianism? [THE FOLLY OF MILITARY KEYNESIANISM] Ladies and Gentlemen, Military Keynesianism works in the United States because America has the federal institutions, the monetary sovereignty, the fiscal power, the technostructure, and the common procurement process that are essential in implementing Military Keynesianism. Europe has none of that, nor does it have leaders interested in acquiring any of that. This is why Military Keynesianism cannot work in Europe. Thank goodness it can’t work, I say! For if it could work, Europe would have to emulate the United States in starting a war every year so that the stocks of ammunition, missiles et al could be depleted sufficiently to justify the new colossal orders necessary to maintain Military Keynesianism. Nevertheless, while Europe’s Military Keynesianism cannot and should not work, it serves a purpose – it is a kind of a solution for, say, Volkswagen: Now that Volkswagen can no longer sell its cars, it hands over whole production lines to Rheinmetall to produce Leopard tanks which von der Leyen makes Greece and Italy buy even though we neither want nor need them. Yes, Military Keynesianism will fail Europe badly, but not before it further bankrupts our states and throws more fuel onto the fire burning down lives and dreams in Ukraine’s killing fields. So, let me be frank: · No really-existing enemy of Europe shakes in his boots watching a stagnating, heavily indebted Europe, invest billions in weaponry. Quite the opposite! · Military Keynesianism will end up as Europe’s New Austerity for the many and a new money spinner for the few. · It will make Europe weaker while prolonging the Ukraine War in a manner that is detrimental to the stated aim of supporting Ukraine. [EUROPE’S SURRENDER TO NATO, ITS ROLE IN UKRAINE] It is at this point that angry yelps will rise up from the press gallery. Can’t you hear them ask: "“Is Russia not ante portas?” “Is Europe not in danger?” “Should Europe remain defenceless, especially now that Trump is abandoning Europe?” My answer is clear: Weakening ourselves economically through a Military Keynesianism that constitutes the New Austerity which will, with mathematical precision, diminish Europe further is no way to make Europe stronger! And lest we forget, Europe already has 1.5m men and women in uniform while, over the past decade, we spent €2.7 trillion on defence – a period during which our net productive investment was zero! Now, NATO demands that we spend three times as much - which is totally insane, given how wastefully that €2.7 trillion was spent. In this light, surrendering our foreign and defence policies to NATO, and sinking further in unsustainable debt just to satisfy President Trump’s demands for more military spending, is the surest way of making Europe more dependent, less secure, uglier and sadder. In this context, the powers-that-be here in Brussels are anxiously trying to keep their jobs and boost their budgets by spreading the lie that NATO had to expand in order to deter Russian aggression – when it is exactly the other way round: Like the Mafia, NATO expanded to create insecurity in order to sell us protection! Does this mean that Putin was right to invade the Ukraine? Of course not. What it means is that NATO and Putin are accomplices – that they needed one another in their joint bid for a confrontation that strengthened both – at Europe’s expense. It also means that anyone truly interested in Europe’s security and prosperity 1. must dispel the lie that Russia is about to invade us – it can’t even if it wants to 2. must work tirelessly to kill Europe’s Military Keynesianism, and 3. must work toward a European Peace Process which uses Russia’s confiscated monies not as a piggybank for more useless Leopard tanks and Leonardo missiles but as a bargaining chip to end the Ukraine War in the context of a comprehensive EU-Russia Peace Treaty. As for the politicians in this town who will not rest until they see Russia on its knees, I have this to say to them: If you really wanted to weaken Russia, to bring Russia to its knees, you should have worked hard to admit Russia into the… Eurozone. In one fell swoop the euro would have wrecked Russia’s productive basis, it would have indebted its people and its state, it would have made its leaders rush to Brussels and to Frankfurt with begging bowl in hand! You think I am joking. But there is too much truth in this joke for comfort! To sum up my argument so far, Europe’s economic stagnation was the product of its total dependence on the American deficits. This dependence yielded Europe’s complicity with the decade-long American project of inciting a war in Ukraine. And now that the US is decoupling, our rulers – resembling decapitated chickens – are running around without their heads screwed on, struggling to find ways of continuing to impede Peace in Ukraine so as to use military funds to prop up Europe’s faltering Big Business Cartel. [WHAT’S BEHIND EUROPE’S ETHICAL DECAY: GAZA, TOTALITARIANISM] Ladies and Gentlemen, as we speak here today, Europe is falling headlong into another ethical void: complicity in the Palestinian genocide. It is not just the embarrassment, also known as Mrs Ursula von der Leyen, posing like a cheerleader of Israel’s genocidal army in front of its tanks hours before they stormed Gaza. No, the European Union is not merely complicit due to our subservience to the United States. No, the European Union is also enabling, it is in fact funding, the war criminals of its own accord. Directly. Cynically. With no compunction. · BNP PARIBAS and ALLIANZ underwrite the issues of the Israeli government bonds that fund the Israeli meatgrinder in the Palestinian Occupied Territories · MAERSK is the prime transporter of the military machine at work in Gaza · Since 2007, the European Union has channelled €2 billion of research funding to Israeli entities producing the means by which Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, targeted, murdered and maimed. But there is something even scarier going on: Some of our top institutions depend financially on backing Israel’s genocide. If Europe were to do its duty and sanction Israel, the Technical University of Munich stands to lose €195.4 million from the EU’s HORIZON program which funds the University to carry out joint research with Israeli institutions. Ladies and Gentlemen, Europe carries an enormous guilt. The pogroms against the Jews started here, in Europe. Europeans carried out genocides across Africa, in the Americas, in Australia. By forming the EU as a Peace Project, we claimed a chance to make amends for Europe’s past genocides. However, our dependence on the US and our ruling class’s penchant to profit from imperialism have made this impossible – and so Europe’s hands are, again, covered in the blood of innocents, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the Sudan, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria. It has also brought totalitarianism back into our midst, here in Europe. When the German authorities banned me from entering Germany for the crime of co-organising with German Jews a conference on the theme of ‘A Just Peace in the Middle East’, they were making a point: To them, letting the rivers of Palestinian blood flow unimpeded represented their chance of washing off their hands the guilt over the Holocaust, over the other German genocide in Namibia, of Belgium’s crimes against humanity in the Congo… It is, therefore, a clear warning to us: Economic stagnation begets warmongering which begets a revived European white settler mentality. This Europe has fallen so far into a moral crevice that it cannot easily climb out of it. Europe’s Liberal Totalitarianism, which we in Greece experienced in all its horror ten years ago, is now everywhere – and it is throwing wide open the gates through which Xenophobic Ultra-Right Totalitarianism arrives to darken our doorstep. The time to rise up against both forms of totalitarianism is now. On behalf of the peoples of Europe. [WHAT MUST WE DO?] So, what must we do? Let us begin by grasping that: · The economic condition for Peace is to de-couple Europe's economy from America's wars! · But for that we must end, once and for all, Europe’s dependence on the United States. · This entails ending Europe’s dependence on net exports to America. · Which means rebalancing Europe’s internal economy through o new productive green investments, o an end to structural austerity o an end to the madness of cartel-infested electricity ‘markets’ o a new monetary commons by which to end the bankers’ monopoly over payments and to institute a personal dividend for all o a new EU-China deal that liberates us from America’s agenda of intensifying a pointless New Cold War at our expense. Only by transforming Europe’s political economy can we end the never-ending fragmentation which breeds war, totalitarianism and the embarrassment of being led by cheerleaders of genocide and permanent war with Russia, like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. How can we accomplish that? In two ways. First, we need a Credible Plan for a Europe worth fighting for. Second, we must organise a campaign of civil and governmental disobedience in our countries and, potentially, in the European Council until our Plan for Europe gets a chance. We, DiEM25, have worked for a decade on this Plan – our Green New Deal for Europe – and are happy to share it with you, so that you can refine, revise, adapt it. You, the 5S Movement and other parties eager to partake across Europe, have the organisation that we lack so that, together with our MERA25 transnational parties, we can together help organise the campaign of civil and governmental disobedience without which nothing will change, nothing will impede Europe’s, Italy’s, Greece’s, indeed Germany’s secular decline. [CONCLUSION] So, to conclude, seventy-five years of this European Union teach us that we face a stark choice. A choice between a Dependent-on-the-United States, Warmongering, Stagnating Europe. Or an Independent, Non-Aligned, Prosperous, Green Europe. A choice between a von der Leyen-type Commission that greenlights genocide, impedes Peace, illegally deletes her Pfizer chat history, lobbies for Lockheed Martin, and borrows money we can’t repay to buy weaponry we do not need - while condemning People and Planet to impecunity. Or European Institutions optimised against raw power and in favour of common prosperity. A choice between being at the beck and call of the boardrooms of Rheinmetall, Leonardo and Pfizer, blind to the tax havens where war profits and tax fraud hide, while our coastguards turn refugees into corpses. Or a Europe of rational, that is a radical, humanism. To even have this choice, our immediate task must be to end war, to end genocide and to terminate before it is too late the New Austerity going by the name of Military Keynesianism.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1933459747866316884/amplify_video_thumb/1933456380167364608/img/Up__hbhEoJPhHmsi.jpg)
![Abductions, Enforced Disappearances, and Unlawful Detentions: Zambia's Descent into State Lawlessness By Sishuwa Sishuwa Zambia is on a knife-edge only several hours before voters head to the ballot box on 13 August to choose political leaders in a general election that might see Hakainde Hichilema becoming the latest casualty of the anti-incumbent election wave that has recently seen the defeat of sitting presidents in other African countries such as Botswana and Malawi. As i show in greater detail below, Hichilema is racing into the final days unfettered by any rules and willing to do anything he want to steal the results. People’s rights are being arbitrarily withdrawn. Abductions, enforced disappearances, unlawful detentions, and political violence instigated by the state and ruling party cadres have characterised the descent into state lawlessness ahead of Thursday’s election. Those on the receiving end are people who question authority or do much more than what is convenient as well as opposition officials, members, and supporters (perceived or real). The sight of anguished family members pleading to the state to disclose the whereabouts of their abducted loved ones has become very common in Lusaka. A special unit consisting of officers, from the Drug Enforcement Commission, the only body that has pre-signed search warrants, has been assembled to raid houses, arrest political opponents, and forcibly abduct opposition members or sympathisers. The script is the same: those abducted by armed state agents who move in motor vehicles without license plates, are usually taken to ‘safe houses’, not police stations, which makes it difficult for families to find their illegally detained relatives. Their phones and other electronic devices are confiscated, making it impossible to communicate with the abducted or know what has happened to them. This situation has left many people living in a state of fear and paralysis. In the last few days, I have spoken to civil society activists such as Brebner Changala, prominent personalities like Mulenga Kapwepwe, and at least 14 journalists who have all resigned themselves to any possibility. “We are just waiting for our turn. We do not know when we will be abducted and where we will be taken. When you are no longer able to reach us, just know that we have been taken”, one of them told me. The profile of those abducted is largely the same: opposition members and innocent people suspected to be supporting or financing Brian Mundubile, Hichilema’s main rival in the election. Nearly all of them are being arrested daily without following due process. Many of these people have been abducted from their homes or the street rather than being summoned to the police, charged, and either issued with bond or taken to court within the prescribed legal time-frame. Musa Mwenye, one of Zambia’s most outstanding citizens who, as Attorney General, defended the Constitution in 2014 when ministers wanted to overthrow it, captured the state of things in the country when he published the following observation on 10 August: “When people are held in detention beyond the reach of the courts, contrary to the law and due process, they are being held ‘extra judicially’. Further, when people are detained for their political activities and mobilization, they are ‘political detainees’. Do we have political detainees who are being held extra judicially in Zambia today? Sadly, the answer is yes. I never thought I would ever utter the words, ‘political detainee’ and ‘extra judicial detention’ in one sentence with regards to democratic Zambia, whose democratic credentials have been a beacon of good governance and the rule of law in Africa and beyond. In the past, when persons were detained for their political activities, the accused persons were subjected to due process in courts of law. We are now witnessing detentions without even the pretension of any court process, whatsoever. This is not who we are, and, it is certainly not what we should be known for. Zambia’s well-earned name in observance of human rights and our democratic credentials is in serious jeopardy. I appeal to the Government to release all political detainees who are being held extra judicially or to present them before courts of law for the due process of the law to take its course.” On the same day, Amnesty International released its latest report on the state of human rights in Zambia. Titled “Authoritarian practices eating away at human rights in Zambia: Escalating crackdown on human rights ahead of the 2026 general elections”, the mild but relatively critical report details how the Hichilema administration has presided over “an alarming regression into authoritarian practices that undermine human rights and participation in government”, leading to “a climate of fear and impunity”. To read Amnesty’s report, click here: A coalition of 11 civil society organisations has become the latest interest group to raise alarm about this deteriorating state of democracy. The civic bodies detailed major concerns that undermine the integrity of the electoral process. These include the restrictions on opposition mobilisation, the unequal treatment accorded to the competing contestants by state institutions, the use of public resources for partisan advantage, the unchecked electoral violence, and the late/unclear guidance on valid ballot marking. They further called on the electoral body to “act with visible impartiality”, on Hichilema to stop the “use state resources for partisan gain”, and on “the police [to] hold perpetrators of violence accountable – regardless of political affiliation”. Unfortunately, their call has come too late and is unlikely to meet positive reception from the authorities. As one of Hichilema's presidential aides regularly tells some of us, ‘You can cut my finger: HH is going nowhere. It is high time you started working with him.” Given that impunity and lawlessness appear to be Hichilema’s governing principles, it is easy to see where the aide’s confidence is coming from. Much of this “climate of fear and impunity” has been created by the authorities as part of a wider effort to save Hichilema from electoral defeat. The actual details behind the effort are as chilling as they are alarming. A prominent local businessman and one of my closet friends, Stelios Sardanis, was murdered on 9 August in his house a few days after he shared fears that his life was in danger because ‘they are accusing me of financing the opposition’. Masked men came from the bush, attacked him, and vanished in the same bush. Another prominent local businessman, Valden Findlay, has been in unlawful detention since 4 August without charge! Like many of those abducted, Findlay is being kept in a shipping container in Mwembeshi, not in any prison system, or police station. His crime? Suspicion that he is financing the opposition. Only last night, nearly the entire top leadership of Mundubile’s campaign committee was either abducted and taken to unknown places or ordered by the authorities to appear before the police today. Among the affected are Mundubile’s spokesperson George Chisanga, national campaign manager Japhen Mwakalombe, and senior presidential campaign official Sebastian Kopulande (abducted). A day earlier, Mundubile’s media team was abducted and taken to an unknown place. A week before that, on 27 July, Kennedy Kamba, the official in charge of vote protection in Mundubile’s party, was arrested. He remains in detention without charge. Meanwhile, 32 artists, journalists, and other senior officials in Mundubile’s campaign team were arrested in Western Province during a lawful and peaceful rally that police deliberately disrupted for no reason using tear gas canisters. The arrested were charged with minor offences such as conduct likely to cause breach of peace, but none of them have been given bond or taken to court and consequently remain in unlawful detention, over 600 kilometers away from their families. More opposition leaders, members and supporters are earmarked for arrest and abduction today, tomorrow, and perhaps beyond. The goal of these abductions, arrests and detentions is twofold: either provoke a reaction that Hichilema can use as a pretext to declare a state of emergency, suspend the Constitution, cancel the election, and arrest even more people, or deprive Mundubile of his core support team that can help prevent industrial scale vote-rigging in Thursday’s election. In my lifetime, I have watched the end of the one-party state, the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, the protection of presidential term limits, the defence of the constitution from executive-driven manipulation, the election of a Tonga to State House, and the repeated peaceful transitions of power enabled by a professional military that chose non-intervention whenever an incumbent was defeated. After this week’s election, I remain confident that I will be witness to an even more extraordinary national story: an opposition challenger who overcame enormous obstacles to win power at the first attempt, defeating a president who promoted regionalism, nurtured corruption, eroded democracy, increased poverty, and enabled multinational plunder of the country’s mineral wealth. I maintain that Hichilema will lose Thursday's election. Although the president is doing his desperate best to try to steal the vote, I am convinced that he is going, whether he likes it or not. In fact, his desperate antics reveal his fear even at this late hour. As I have said before, the only thing that can save Hichilema from defeat is reckless industrial scale vote-rigging or the pre-ballot death of his main rival. There are several factors that militate against the opposition in African politics, but the obstacles that have been placed in the path of Brian Mundubile are considerable. This is why I am saying his victory will be extraordinary, given the lengths to which Hichilema has gone to retain power. I have nothing personal against Hichilema. It is just that my professional training empowers me to see things that many others can only see after the event. As early as June 2023, I warned that Hichilema was so desperate to retain power that he had devised a five-point plan which, “if successfully implemented, risks undermining Zambia’s hard-won democracy”. I identified the plan as consisting of five objectives: containing the Catholic Church; co-opting influential elites from civil society; capturing the two formal institutions that are critical to the management of elections: the Electoral Commission of Zambia and the judiciary; weakening opposition parties; and covering corruption tracks. In the same article, I explained the three reasons behind Hichilema’s early desperation to secure a second term: fear of prosecution, the desire to avoid the embarrassment of losing power after just one term, and the push for a sectarian agenda aimed at entrenching his co-ethnic Tongas in state positions and grossly reducing the influence of the majority Bemba and Chewa ethnic groups in public life. At the time, few people understood what I was saying. Some said I just hated Hichilema, and not even reason-based evidence to the contrary changed their false perceptions. Others like Hichilema's fellow ethnic Tongas, led by Dr O’Brien Kaaba, a law lecturer at the University of Zambia, and Dr Priva Hang’andu, a Policy Advisor at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), rose to the President’s defence, dismissing my concerns about “shrinking democratic space, mounting corruption, political intolerance, and government desperation” as entirely unfounded. To read my 2023 article, click here: To read Kaaba and Hang’andu’s response in defence of their fellow Tonga, click here: Well, the passage of time has absolved me and given practical meaning to Thabo Mbeki’s observation that “Empty stomachs can be good or bad teachers. The problem with our African intellectuals is that they too have stomachs, in addition to their excellent brains.” For the sake of Zambia, I wish my 2023 concerns were wrong. I raised them then in the hope that Hichilema, who was elected on a ticket of democratic reform, could change for the better before it was too late. Unfortunately, his transition from a promising reform to a despot only got worse with time, as I showed two years later in another opinion piece published by the Mail & Guardian several months before Hichilema's State House team asked the newspaper's new editors to stop giving me platform. To read the article in which I examined how the fear of losing power and the financial and political benefits that come with it after only one term in office was evident in President Hichilema’s increasingly panicky and politically suicidal decisions, click here: The “authoritarian practices” and ‘escalating crackdown on human rights” that Amnesty International and others were to only to notice three years later could have been stopped much earlier if many voices had stood up to Hichilema before his autocratic aspirations were emboldened by their silence. The obstacles that Hichilema has placed in Mundubile’s path to power are illustrative of how the president has, over the last five years, repeatedly abused state institutions to systematically destroy organised political opposition and any semblance or vestige of autonomy in formal institutions outside the executive. There are many obstacles that Hichilema has placed in Mundubile’s path, but I will highlight only 10 here to illustrate the point that the leading opposition challenger has had so many domestic and foreign forces working against him in this election that it is extraordinary that he has made it a competitive contest. The first obstacle was the limitation placed on Mundubile's international travel. When he tried to leave the country to mobilise resources for his presidential bid, the state blocked him. He was arrested at the airport, charged with a cyber-related offence, and had all his travel documents and phones confiscated. The latter action means that he has not been able to leave Zambia since March this year as his passport remains with the state. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work. The second obstacle was the restriction on the political party ticket that Mundubile could use to run in the election. After the state instigated divisions in all parties that were perceived as capable of serving as possible vehicles for the expression of his presidential ambition, including the main opposition Patriotic Front (PF) to which he belonged, another opposition party, namely the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) offered him a platform. However, the state quickly moved in and, as it had done to other parties, factionalised the FDD to prevent him from running on it. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, ultimately finding a home in the little-known National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity (NRPUP) on the eve of nominations. The third obstacle was mere appearance on the ballot. After Mundubile formally presented his credentials to the officials of the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), what should have been a straightforward acceptance of his nomination papers turned into a long waiting game as the authorities exerted significant pressure on the electoral body to find reason to disqualify his candidature, as was done to several other presidential hopefuls. Instead of complaining, he remained calm throughout this unnecessary attempt at electoral exclusion until the ECZ, hours later, reluctantly accepted his nomination. The fourth obstacle emerged soon after Mundubile became a presidential candidate. As soon as his campaign took off to a rapturous reception, the ECZ halted it, ordering that no one should conduct meetings that have not been sanctioned by the electoral body. The ECZ subsequently imposed a campaign schedule that required him to start in his strongest constituencies and end in the ruling party strongholds: Northwestern, Western, and Southern provinces. Any keen observer understood the motivation: to arrest whatever momentum his campaign would have built by the time he was arriving in the final three provinces where he was expected to draw the least crowds. To demonstrate their lack of impartiality, the ECZ decided against issuing any campaign schedule to Hichilema, treating him as President who can go wherever he wants rather than a presidential candidate who, like his rivals, was subject to the same rules. When thousands turned up at Mundubile's rallies in the first two provinces, the ruling party and the state employed violence in a bid to curtail his campaign activities and provoke a reaction that could be used as a pretext for arresting him. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, even as his campaign vehicles were extensively destroyed by ruling party thugs. The fifth obstacle is the scarce resources resulting in part from restrictions placed on Mundubile's capacity to mobilise financial resources for his campaign. Unable to leave the country, he turned to local businessmen for support but nearly all who tried to render a helping hand had their bank accounts frozen or faced threats and intimidation from the authorities. Others who were merely suspected to be sympathetic to him were arrested and kept in detention without charge (the earlier cited Valden Findlay is a good example here) or murdered in suspicious circumstances by unknown people (As I said, Stelios Sardanis had expressed concern about state-linked threats on his life before he was assassinated!). Instead of complaining, Mundubile quietly went about his work, successfully turning to crowdfunding to raise resources from ordinary citizens who, overlooking their own struggles, injected whatever little money they could afford into his campaign. The sixth obstacle is extremely limited media coverage. After his candidacy was confirmed, the state blocked any positive coverage of Mundubile in the publicly funded media and while the ruling party used financially rewarding ads to buy almost all the advertising space in the private media, that is in newspapers, television and radio stations. This was in addition to buying influencers and almost the entire music industry to endorse and support Hichilema. The objective of crowding Mundubile out of media coverage was to help nurture the false narrative that there is no opposition in Zambia. Instead of complaining that he is completely blacked out of coverage by the public media and has much of the private media arraigned against him, Mundubile quietly went about his work, regularly communicating with the public through his social media pages, public rallies, one radio station (Hot FM) and one television station (KBN) – the latter two suffering continued threats and intimidation from the state and ruling party for daring to carry his adverts. The seventh obstacle was the denial of permission for Mundubile to use the airspace for efficient campaign activities. At the start of his campaign, a known private charter company that should have flown him around the country approached the authorities on his behalf to seek clearance. Its application was however frustrated by the authorities who only said “those above” had denied it. Instead of complaining, Mundubile quietly went about his work. He undertook all his campaign activities across 116 districts and 10 provinces – minus the places he was unable to visit due to violent attacks from ruling party cadres – in less than 60 days using road travel. So grave was the threat of violence against Mundubile in Southern Province, what should have been his concluding stop, that he had to cancel his trip there and instead hold a virtual public rally, following credible intelligence reports that he was earmarked for assassination while in the province. The eighth obstacle has been the constant arrests and abduction of his campaign officials and even parliamentary candidates as well as high-level defections of his party functionaries to the ruling party following extremely attractive financial inducements. As stated earlier, his media team has been abducted and remains in unlawful detention. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work with remnants of his previously bigger campaign team. The ninth obstacle has been state-instigated baits to lure him into provocation. In Kitwe, his campaign team was attacked, but the attackers deliberately left behind the bus they had used to launch the attacks in the hope that he and his team would set it ablaze so that they could be arrested for arson and kept in detention. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Lusaka, his campaign team was violently attacked. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Solwezi, his campaign team was violently attacked. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. In Luampa, Kalabo and Mongu, his campaign team was violently attacked by ruling party cadres and the police. Instead of complaining, he quietly went about his work, urging his team to exercise restraint and avoid any attempts at retaliation. Had he accepted the bait, he could, by now, be in prison or six feet under the ground. The tenth obstacle has been the attempt by the state to undermine his vote protection measures. It is hard enough to go into an election that is administered by a largely compromised Electoral Commission of Zambia. Never before has the ECZ been led by a chairperson who is the incumbent president’s former personal lawyer; who, unlike all her predecessors who came from the judiciary and had a lucrative lifetime pension to fall back on in case of exit from office, knows that she will have no job if her former client loses the election tomorrow; and who has a daughter facing a no-bail murder charge that was revised to the less serious charge of manslaughter in unclear circumstances that many saw as a possible trade-off, linked to the election, between those in the executive and the accused’s mother. Amidst credible fears of vote manipulation, Mundubile managed under difficult circumstances to organise about seven million Kwacha for the payment of polling agents throughout the country. On 10 August, state agents grabbed all this money for no credible reason in a move that is clearly aimed at making it easier to bribe the polling agents and manipulate the vote, especially if, as some fear, the government will shut down the internet during the counting and employ violent thugs to remove opposition polling agents and election observers for the purpose of facilitating the swapping of the ballots or inflating the figures in support of the incumbent president in ruling party strongholds where turnout might be low. Instead of complaining, he has quietly gone about his work, believing that with the support of the people, there is little that the president can do to prevent his exit from power. Mundubile has proved his mettle. In essence, many people are supporting Mundubile in this election not because he is the best candidate but because he is the recipient of the revulsion against a president that many people see as primarily serving foreign commercial interests as well as his own private interests and those of his ethnic-regional community. Mundubile has become the figurehead of a growing movement that is determined to peacefully remove a dangerous president who, were he to succeed in stealing the vote, would set Zambia on an even more perilous path. I sincerely hope the Zambian people will turn out on Thursday to say “enough.” However, with a compromised ECZ, a police service that only arrests members of the opposition, a partisan leadership in charge of the country’s military, and an incumbent president with a character that knows no restraint, anything is possible after Thursday’s vote. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. NB: The violence in the attached video clip shows what happens when soldiers, who are not trained to maintain law and order, are deployed to handle police functions, as Hichilema did in January this year when he asked them to "sort out" informal small scale miners in the country's North-Western Province. The pro-Hichilema army commander, Geoffrey Zyeele ,whose orders resulted in this barbaric violence after he directed soldiers "to exterminate and fumigate all illegal miners" remains in his position to date.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2087156707646435407/amplify_video_thumb/2087156612624486400/img/tBq-LUqbDa9z8pmW.jpg)
![THE TRUTH ABOUT OCTOBER 7TH: Reports confirm that Netanyahu, the Mossad and the IDF deliberately allowed the October 7th attack by Hamas to take place. They knew one year in advance of the attack and did nothing to stop it. They deliberately stood down during the attack allowing many more innocent Israelis to be slaughtered in order to get domestic and international support for war in Gaza and Iran. HOW DID OCTOBER 7TH HAPPEN? On October 7th, Hamas was able to carry out its shocking terror attack against Israel, despite Israel’s intelligence, military and security apparatus commonly considered the best in the world. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself tweeted and quickly deleted a statement denying any foreknowledge of the October 7th attack. “Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas" the tweet said, before it was promptly deleted. Why did Netanyahu’s team delete that tweet? Because in fact he did have intelligence that there would be an attack by Hamas and tried to hide this from the world. Foreign security services, Israeli security services and the Israeli public all knew that Hamas was planning a violent, cross-border incursion where they would attempt to over-run and attack the kibbutz communities in southern Israel and take prisoners back to Gaza. And they also knew when. But it happened anyway. Why? Ten days before the attack, and then again three days before the attack, Egypt intelligence officials passed “repeated warnings” to the highest levels of Israel’s government. In one of these warnings, Egypts premiere intelligence minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu and warned that Hamas was about to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Unnamed Egyptian officials told YNET News that they were shocked by Netanyahu’s “indifference to the news.” But Israel didn’t have to trust or believe Egypt, because actually, most of the warnings of the October 7th attack came from Israeli civilians and the Israeli military itself. The civilians and soldiers who brought these emergency warnings to the military were ignored and in some cases, strangely enough, threatened with legal action. In 2022, the IDF, through confidential sources, or spies, in Gaza, actually obtained the detailed Hamas Al Aqsa Flood attack plans. Codenamed “Jericho Wall” by Israel, the excursion plan called for a barrage of rockets to begin the attack and for gunmen to pour into Israel en masse via para-gliders, on motorcycles and on foot and take hostages back into Gaza, all of which happened on October 7th. Hamas followed the blueprint that Israel already had with shocking precision. So Israel had the attack blueprints, but were they taken seriously by the IDF? Yes, the plans were diligently studied. A presentation on the planned attack was given to senior officers in the IDF’S Gaza division. The presentation concluded with this sentence: “This invasion constitutes the gravest threat that IDF forces are facing in the defense of Israel” So in response to this, did Israel’s security establishment beef up and enhance their surveillance of Hamas militants on the other side of the border? No, stunningly, they actually did the exact opposite. They decided to entirely stop monitoring Hamas’s handheld radio traffic. Because they saw it “as a waste of effort” even though during that same time in 2022, Israelis living in the kibbutz communities near the Gaza border, most of whom have some type of military training due to Israel’s mandatory IDF service laws, were, according to Israeli media, picking up clear evidence that Hamas was “practicing the breaching of the fence and conquering kibbutzim and seizing hostages and destroying everything in their path.” Then, In April 2023, 6 months before the attack, again according to Israeli media, the IDF “restricted the ability” of Israelis living near the border “to monitor Hamas’ wireless traffic.” In September 2023, less than a month before the attack, the head of the IDF’s “Devil’s Advocate” intelligence unit, which challenges prevailing narratives within Israel’s military, twice alerted senior decision-makers in both the army and political spheres about Hamas’ plans for a large-scale cross-border military operation. He reiterated these warnings in person at Intelligence Branch strategic assessment sessions on September 26th and 27th. Just days before the attack. So it was clear to everyone that Hamas wasn’t only planning to do something horrible, but it was also clear what that horrible and evil thing was. According to a female IDF soldier who spoke to Israel’s channel 12 news program, she was constantly trying to warn her superiors about the gravity of Hamas training exercises. She was threatened with legal action. “We were told that if we continue to harass on this issue, you will stand trial.” So, Egypt knew, the Israeli military knew, and the Israeli civilians knew. Yet, two days before October 7th, the Israeli military took two entire commando brigades, or around 100 soldiers, away from the the soon to be breached locations of the Gaza border and sent them to the other side of the country, to the West Bank village of Huwara despite no Hamas presence being in Huwara and despite there being giant Israeli dance parties taking place right along the same border fence where violent, escalating and obvious Hamas drills of breaching and kidnapping were taking place. According to Israeli media reports, Lt. Col. Sahar Fogel, an operations officer at the IDF’s Gaza Division, opposed the approval of the Nova Party based on the last minute nature of its event application and the intensifying Hamas drills at the border and because if something were to happen, more soldiers were on holiday. It was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The Lt. Col. explained his opposition to the party’s approval to his superiors. He was instructed to allow the event. Israeli Newspaper Haaretz reported that other Gaza division officers privately “told of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party.” In February 2024, Elkana Federman, the head of security for the Nova festival gave an interview to Israel’s Channel 14 where he made a statement that hasn’t been reported on by any American media. “I had a guard at the festival who had served in the Re’im Division [near Gaza border], and a week before the festival he sent me a voice message, basically warning me, saying, ‘Elkana, something is going to happen over Sukkot. I just wanted to let you know, there are a lot of warnings, I passed the voice message on to local IDF officials and they told me everything was all right.” The Hamas attacks were violent and brutal. They have been likened to tragic events such as September 11th and the Holocaust, so it comes as a surprise that Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Likud party have at times described the attacks as somewhat of a political gift. Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the Knesset, referred to the attack as sort of gift from God because they are being used to justify the current ongoing war, stating: “We were meant to fight this war against Hamas, as is happening now, and luckily for us it came from the heavens.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that Israel didn’t have domestic or international support to invade or destroy Gaza. He said the October 7th Hamas attack solved both of those problems for him, stating “We couldn’t get the domestic consensus to make a definitive solution to the problem of Hamas. That is, no one would agree across the Israeli public to go in and basically destroy Hamas, go throughout Gaza and destroy Hamas. We didn’t have the international consensus either; nobody would understand why we are doing it. Both conditions were created because of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.” Did the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community, and the political leadership of Israel allow this ghastly attack to happen to justify wiping out the population of Gaza? The evidence proves, yes. WHERE WAS THE IDF? During the October 7th attacks what did the Israeli military do? For hours they did nothing, it was a deliberate military stand down order. It's important to remember that Israel is just slightly bigger than the size of the state of New Jersey. But for some reason, once the Hamas attacks began, the time it took the Israeli army and rescue teams to arrive, fight and rescue Israelis at the different kibbutz communities and sites being attacked took anywhere from 4 hours to more than 20 hours. The New York Times has reported: “Thousands of soldiers were less than 40 minutes from the towns that were under attack.” A video that Israeli media obtained from an army helicopter, corroborated by Israeli survivors, prove that there were more than 500 Israeli soldiers directly outside of the Kibbutz entrance, fully armed, with Humvees and tanks but it took 10 hours for those soldiers to show up. Avital, a survivor of the Be’eri attack, described to Haaretz: “500 soldiers stood outside, with equipment and vehicles. I remember yelling at them, ‘We’re being slaughtered, come in, save us and no one said anything.” So why did it take so long for help to arrive? Haaretz reported: “At 7 A.M., the party organizers called Lt. Col. Elad Zandani, the man tasked with approving the festival and told him that terrorists were shooting the partygoers. He suggested that they fend for themselves. The first IDF forces arrived at the party scene at 3 P.M., that’s an 8 hour response time for one of the most efficient, capable and well militarized security forces in the world operating in a country the size of New Jersey with their Gaza division only a few miles away. And what makes this even more strange? Around 4 hours into the Hamas assault, at 10:46AM, Israel was already launching operations and bombing targets inside of Gaza. So, if Israel could begin an offensive attack into Gaza within 4 hours, why did it take more than 6 hours and in most cases more than 10 hours and even 20 hours in some cases to mobilize inside of their own country to stop the ongoing attack and to defend the lives of their own people? The New York Times quoted Ben Zion, an Israeli military reservist who spoke to Israeli media. He said his unit voluntarily left central Israel in a convoy at 1:30PM, they got together and left for the south on their own. He expected to see the roads packed with soldiers and equipment and armored vehicles heading south. “The roads were empty!” he recalled in an interview. Roughly seven hours into the fighting, he turned to the reservist next to him and asked: “Where’s the IDF?” The brutal and deadly Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th is so central to justifying Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that Israel is actually outlawing questioning the October 7th government narrative. Israelis who spread information counter to the October 7th government narrative, which the Israeli Knesset calls “falsehoods and propaganda” could face up to 5 years in prison. Between the abundance of concrete evidence that suggests Israeli military allowed October 7th to happen by ignoring dozens of reliable and specific warnings, threatening soldiers with legal actions who tried to warn their military superiors and taking troops away from the area of the Gaza border that was attacked and now evidence that suggests there was some type of military stand down order in place on October 7th, it is important to ask, what was October 7th and what kind of war is the United States supporting? WHAT IS THE HANNIBAL DIRECTIVE? Images and videos of burnt cars, blacked and charred bodies and incinerated homes in southern Israel were plastered on every phone screen and television after the October 7th Hamas attack. The images and videos were used by the Israeli government to justify the military’s heavy handed tactics in their ongoing war against Hamas, But were all the images and videos actually the result of the Hamas attack? Innocent Israeli civilians were brutally killed by Hamas on October 7th, but there is evidence that proves the IDF killed their own Israeli citizens in what is known as the Hannibal Directive. To understand what the Israeli military did to their own civilians on October 7th, you have to understand the political aspirations of Hamas and what the goal of taking hostages is, it is political leverage. There are over 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. 3,000 of whom haven’t been to trial or charged with a crime. When militant groups manage to capture Israeli civilians or soldiers it gives them leverage to force a prisoner swap and get some of their people out of Israeli prison. For example, in 1986, Hamas managed to kidnap 3 Israeli soldiers and bring them to Gaza. They demanded 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in return for these soldiers. After this, the military drafted a secret field order to prevent future kidnappings. It was called the "Hannibal Directive." The directive gets its name from the Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than allow himself to be captured alive by the romans. In 2003, strangely enough on October 7th 2003, three Israeli soldiers were taken hostage and brought into Lebanon. Following the activation of the Hannibal Directive, IDF attack helicopters fired indiscriminately on 26 vehicles thus ensuring the death of their own soldiers and therefore robbing Lebanese militants of the ability to demand Israel make concessions. The Last known application of the Hannibal Directive was in 2014. In Rafah. Hamas fighters managed to capture an Israeli soldier, Lt. Hadar Goldin. Instead of allowing the lieutenant to be used as leverage by Hamas, the military killed him. Dropping bombs, missiles and shells on the area he was being held, killing the soldier and also over 100 Palestinian civilians. The scale of the Hannibal Directive on October 7th was entirely different from those of the past. A retired Israeli air force general, Nof Erez, described it during a podcast with Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper saying “The Hannibal Directive was apparently applied at a certain stage, because at the moment they understand there is a kidnapping, they immediately say, ‘Guys, this is Hannibal.’ But the Hannibal we trained for all of the last twenty years, is for a vehicle we know at what point of the fence it enters, on what side it drives, and maybe even on which road it drives. This was a Mass Hannibal.” We know the Hannibal Directive means to kill your own, so what does “mass Hannibal” mean? A large mainstream Israeli media outlet reported: “In the week after Black Shabbat, October 7th, soldiers of elite units, at the initiative of the Southern Command, checked about 70 vehicles that remained in the area between the Otaf settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed.” 70 vehicles and in some cases, everyone in the vehicle was killed. These are Israelis killed by Israel. Again, only reported on in the Israeli media. Tuval Escapa, is a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri. He set up a hotline so kibbutz residents could communicate with the Israeli army. He told Haaretz that “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions, including shelling houses on their occupants” in order to eliminate would-be hostages as well the terrorists. They shelled entire houses. Do we hear this in the American mainstream media? That the Israeli military targeted and destroyed over 70 cars with hellfire missiles that were filled with Israelis and that they decimated entire Israeli homes with tank shells? A report in Haaretz on October 20th notes that the Israeli military also carried out an airstrike on their own military base, the Erez crossing. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time. An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat gave an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli hostages during gun battles with Hamas militants. IDF General Barak Hiram, prevented hundreds of troops from entering Kibbutz Be’eri for hours on October 7th, when he finally allowed the IDF to go in, he ordered tanks to fire on multiple homes. The tank shells killed at least 12 Israeli hostages and 3 children. Recently the UN published an investigation confirming several of these facts, namely, that the IDF had in fact activated the Hannibal Directive on October 7th stating “The Commission is aware of allegations that Israeli Special Forces used the “Hannibal Directive” to prevent the capture of Israeli civilians and their transfer to Gaza, even at the cost of killing them" The Commission documented one statement by an ISF tank crew, confirming that the crew had applied the Hannibal Directive. The Israeli military, Israeli civilians and the United Nations all admit to the IDF purposely killing their own on October 7th. How many? It’s hard to know the exact number, but the imagery of charred bodies and incinerated cars and homes are still being used to this day to manufacture consent and support for Israel’s ongoing assault of the Gaza Strip, where more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed including 15,000 innocent children. ISRAEL'S FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR HAMAS: Israel and Netanyahu helped funnel over $1 Billion dollars to Hamas in order to keep Palestine from being recognized as a State. It was Netanyahu and Israel who helped create Hamas thinking that they could control them and would be able to use Hamas as an excuse for their continued military operations and occupation in Gaza. ISRAEL'S SECRET NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The front lines of the war between Israel and Hamas are expanding and moving beyond Gaza. Yemen’s Houthis intensified their involvement, going from simply attacking Israeli bound cargo ships to now navigating an armed drone over 1,200 miles, evading Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and managed to strike inside Tel Aviv causing a massive explosions. In addition to their ongoing war in Gaza, Israel has attacked or been attacked by Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to promise Israel unconditional and limitless support. But has anyone even asked if this support is LEGAL? According to the 1976 Symington and Glenn Amendments of the Armed Foreign Assistance Act, which is now a part of the Arms Export Control Act, the United States cannot give foreign aid, whether that’s economic or military, to any nuclear armed state that is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, but the United States gives billions of dollars every year to Israel and according to all international arms organizations, Israel has anywhere from 90 to 400 nuclear warheads and Israel has not signed the NPT. So how does this legally happen? The United States and Israel simply pretend Israel does not have nuclear weapons, literally, that’s what’s done. It is called “Nuclear Ambiguity.” This nuclear ambiguity, which allows Israel to continue to receive billions from the U.S. and also operate and maintain their nuclear arsenal with absolutely no international oversight and zero regulation, is maintained and preserved through the threat of force. Due to a previously Top Secret gag order, all U.S. government agency employees and contractors are forbidden from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Even insinuating or mentioning information that’s already in the public domain is forbidden for all federal employees and contractors. It sounds hard to believe but let’s give an example: James Doyle used to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a nuclear security specialist. He violated this gag order. Doyle wrote an academic article arguing that Nuclear weapons do not do a good job at deterring countries from attacking one another, he wrote: “Nuclear weapons did not deter Egypt and Syria from attacking Israel in 1973, Argentina from attacking British territory in 1982 or Iraq from attacking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.” A clear reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons. Doyle’s security clearance was promptly withdrawn, his home was raided, his computers were seized and he was fired from the Department of Energy. So apparently that’s how it works. In 2018, The New Yorker published a stunning report in which they discuss another way Israel’s nuclear ambiguity is enforced: secret presidential letters. According to former U.S. officials and former Israeli officials, every recent US administration since Clinton in 1993 has performed the same ritual as it came into office. They all agreed to undermine U.S. law by signing secret letters, brought to them by hand by their Israeli counterparts stipulating that they’ll never acknowledge what everyone knows: that Israel indeed has nuclear weapons. The National Archives is currently refusing to release the letters, arguing that even confirming their existence would violate the secrecy pact. So there’s a gag order that stops all federal employees and contractors from simply acknowledging Israel’s nuclear weapons and U.S. presidents sign secret letters promising not to acknowledge or pressure Israel to do anything relating to their proliferation status. That means asking questions like these are entirely off limits enforced by the threat of government violence or law fare. But all of this information leads to a series of questions: Where does Israel dispose of the toxic waste its program generates? Are Israel’s nuclear weapons ever used to coerce the U.S. into making adverse policy decisions? How about our allies? Besides apartheid South Africa, has Israel offered any of its nuclear weapons for sale to other foreign countries? To U.S. adversaries? Has Israel mounted nuclear weapons onto its German supplied Dolphin class submarines? Or their American supplied F-35 jets? No questions are allowed and what is the cost, the dollar amount, for Americans, of this “nuclear ambiguity” policy? To be exact, almost $240 billion dollars of military and economic aid has gone from the U.S. taxpayer since the passing of the Symington and Glenn Amendments. That’s far more than the United States spent rebuilding Europe under the Marshall Plan. And none of that quarter of a trillion dollars should have been allowed under U.S. law. That’s the price of keeping Israel’s secret. A quarter trillion and yet where is the International Atomic Energy Agency and international nuclear inspectors? The same ones who monitor every other nuclear armed country in the world? DOES ISRAEL PERSECUTE CHRISTIANS? Before the war, Israel’s Christian minority were already being targeted with dispossession and violence. In Jerusalem’s Old City, narrow streets line the ancient neighborhood and Jewish Israeli civilians spitting on and attacking Christian clergy members is commonplace in Israel. Evidence of this shows a video from a few days before October 7th of Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem carrying a cross while a group of Orthodox Jewish Israelis many of them children walk by and spit at the Christians. It’s become mainstream to believe Christians don’t belong in Israel and only Jewish people do. A few years ago, the mission, the Virgin Mary’s place of death, was attacked and vandalized by Israelis. The graffiti on the ancient walls read “Death to heretical Christians, the enemies of Israel,” and “May his name and memory be obliterated,” in reference to Jesus. According to Haaretz, at a Jewish school, the leader of an anti-assimilation group Bentzi Gopstien told students that it’s quote “mitzvah” or a “good deed” to burn and destroy Christian churches. Should Americans, especially Christian Americans be allowing billions of their tax dollars to be used to ethnically cleanse, attack and bomb Holy sites and Christian civilians? What has happened since Israel has launched its war against Hamas? Israel has displaced 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, 80% of the buildings and homes have been reduced to rubble, at least 45,000 Palestinians have been killed with 50% being women and children. In America, we’re told we should prioritize sending billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel over dealing with our own issues here at home because Israel needs to be able defend itself. Well, it seems like what initially appeared as a defensive war, is appearing more like an offensive war with the expansionist goal of the permanent military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Did the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community, and the political leadership of Israel allow this terrible attack to happen to justify wiping out the population of Gaza, a genocide justified by an attack that Israel could have stopped had they wanted to.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1941665181420904891/amplify_video_thumb/1941627551786385409/img/gp24yzSPk-cDYjh4.jpg)
