Loading video...
Video Failed to Load
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ Victor Davis Hanson โ Hoover Institution senior fellow, military historian, fifth-generation California farmer โ just delivered the most precise autopsy of the modern Democratic Party Iโve heard. His thesis: the party died sometime around 2008 and what replaced it is ๐ง๐ข๐ก๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ๐๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ข๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐ญ๐ฎ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ... show more
16,556 views โข 4 months ago โขvia X (Twitter)
0 Comments
No comments available
Comments from the original post will appear here
![๐๐๐ '๐๐๐๐๐๐๐' ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. A new working paper out of UCLA by political psychologist Samuel Pratt has just measured something American conservatives have been claiming for ten years and pretending was anecdotal. It is not anecdotal. It is now data. Pratt and his team built what they call the ๐๐จ๐ซ๐๐ฌ ๐๐๐ง ๐๐๐ซ๐ฆ ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ โ a survey instrument asking respondents how strongly they agree with statements like "๐ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ง๐ต ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ด๐ค๐ข๐ณ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐บ ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ." Three findings. ๐๐ง๐: the belief is stable over time. People who say it this week say it next week. ๐๐ฐ๐จ: the demographic profile of high-scorers is precise. They are ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ , ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐, ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐ฐ๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐, ๐๐ง๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐๐ซ๐๐ฅ. They self-rate as higher in intellectual humility, empathy, moral grandstanding, and โ the key variable โ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐๐ง๐๐ ๐จ๐ ๐ฌ๐ข๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ง๐ ๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ซ๐ฌ. ๐๐ก๐ซ๐๐: they report lower emotional stability, higher anxiety, higher depression, and a stronger tendency to see themselves as ๐ฏ๐ข๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฌ in everyday conflicts. In one sentence, the psychometric profile of the modern American "empathy advocate" is: ๐๐ง๐ฑ๐ข๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ, ๐๐๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ๐๐, ๐ฏ๐ข๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ-๐๐จ๐๐๐, ๐๐ง๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ-๐๐๐ง๐ฌ๐จ๐ซ๐ฌ๐ก๐ข๐ฉ. ๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐ฌ๐ก๐จ๐ฐ๐ฌ ๐ฎ๐ฉ ๐ข๐ง ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ฒ Watch California Congresswoman Katie Porter at last week's gubernatorial debate, in real time, demonstrating how the empathy mechanism produces atrocious policy. "๐๐ง ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ค๐ญ๐ข๐ด๐ด [...] ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ข๐ซ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ต๐บ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฏ๐ช๐ข ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ค๐ต๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ." Empathetic. Reassuring. Compassionate. Also flatly false. Per CBS News' 2020 Los Angeles survey, only ๐๐% of homeless individuals had done any work in the calendar quarter they became homeless. A 2017 San Francisco survey found ๐๐% working part-time or full-time. The reason is no mystery โ a substantial majority of street-homeless Americans are managing untreated severe mental illness, active substance abuse, or both. The "empathetic" policy that emerges from Porter's framing is to leave them on the street. The actually humane policy involves involuntary commitment, mandated treatment, and structured housing โ every one of which the empathy-coded liberal reflexively rejects as cruel. Pratt's data and the on-the-ground reality converge on the same uncomfortable conclusion: ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐ฆ๐ฉ๐๐ญ๐ก๐๐ญ๐ข๐ ๐๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐ข๐๐๐ง๐ฌ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ๐ฅ๐๐ซ๐๐ง๐ญ, ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ข๐๐ฌ, because empathy at scale stops asking ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฌ๐ด and starts asking ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฐ ๐ค๐ข๐ฏ ๐ฃ๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ญ๐ข๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฅ. ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ง๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐ง๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ How does a fringe view โ communist Twitch streamers, candidates openly excusing full-scale mโrder, congressmen calling themselves democratic socialists โ capture an entire major American political party? Nassim Taleb has the cleanest explanation. He calls it ๐ซ๐๐ง๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง. A family of four. One daughter โ ๐๐% of the household โ only eats organic. Mom faces a nightly choice: cook two meals or cook one all-organic meal. The all-organic meal is easier. The household renormalizes to the daughter's preference. The family then attends a barbecue with three other families. The host has the same choice: two menus, or one all-organic. The all-organic menu is easier. ๐๐% renormalizes ๐๐๐% of dinner. Now imagine the daughter's "preference" is not organic food. It is the belief that bank robbery is righteous, that Israel is a colonial regime which must be dismantled, that your health insurance executive should be eliminated by force, and that anyone who objects is a fascist. The mechanism is identical. The intransigent minority creates an asymmetric cost on resistance. The majority renormalizes for convenience. French physicist ๐๐๐ซ๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ฆ has modeled the threshold formally. In his work on opinion dynamics, an extreme view captures a population at roughly ๐๐% activated support โ provided the activists do three things consistently. They activate latent prejudices already present in the population. They impose a binary choice: "๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ด๐บ๐ด๐ต๐ฆ๐ฎ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐ด ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฎ." And they refuse, ever, to compromise on their core position. Pseudo-moderates then join โ not because they have been persuaded by the full activist position, but because the binary has been imposed and the alternative ("siding with the oppressor") has been made socially intolerable. ๐๐๐ฌ๐๐ง ๐๐ข๐ค๐๐ซ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐๐๐ญ This is the most important paragraph in this post. Read it twice. Hasan Piker โ the Twitch streamer who endorses bank robberies, defends H-m-s, and lives in a $3 million Brentwood mansion โ is ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐๐๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐ข๐๐. He represents maybe 5-7% of the country. He does not move the needle by himself. The threat is the ๐ฉ๐ฌ๐๐ฎ๐๐จ-๐ฆ๐จ๐๐๐ซ๐๐ญ๐ ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐๐ซ๐๐ฅ โ the ๐๐ฆ๐ธ ๐ ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฌ ๐๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ด reporter who profiles him sympathetically, the Democratic congressman who appears on his stream, the Hollywood actor who shares his clips, the Brooklyn schoolteacher who attends his rallies, the empathetic college freshman who decides he is "๐ข ๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐ต๐ญ๐ฆ ๐ฆ๐น๐ต๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฆ, ๐ฃ๐ถ๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ด๐บ๐ด๐ต๐ฆ๐ฎ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ช๐ด ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ซ๐ถ๐ด๐ต." That coalition โ Galam's ๐๐% โ is what flips the country. Hasan is just the visible 5%. This is also why Pratt's UCLA paper matters. The trait that creates the pseudo-moderate flank is the same trait the activists exploit: ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐๐ฆ๐ฉ๐๐ญ๐ก๐ฒ, ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐๐ฆ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ, ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐ฏ๐ข๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ ๐ข๐๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ, ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ซ ๐ฌ๐ข๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ง๐ ๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ซ๐ฌ. That is the recruitable population. That is the lever Hasan and his industry operate. ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ซ๐๐๐ญ ๐
๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐ Empathy is not a virtue. It is a ๐ฆ๐จ๐ซ๐๐ฅ ๐ฌ๐๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ. Like physical sensitivity to heat, it can produce wisdom or it can produce hysteria, depending entirely on what is paired with it. What converts empathy into wisdom is ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ โ the willingness to evaluate consequences, to insist on results, to ask whether the policy that "feels compassionate" actually produces outcomes you would call humane in a year, a decade, or a lifetime. What converts empathy into tyranny is the ๐๐๐ฌ๐๐ง๐๐ of judgment โ pure feeling, with no constraint, in service of a binary moral choice imposed by an activated 20%. That is the Democratic Party of 2026. The Pratt scale measures it. The Galam threshold predicts it. Katie Porter demonstrates it. Hasan Piker exploits it. ๐
๐ข๐ฑ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ฒ. ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ฉ๐๐ญ๐ก๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐จ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2050939575993069948/amplify_video_thumb/2050938608597737472/img/59L68TDVsmWi6NJz.jpg)
![Clive Lewis's Water Bill - bringing water back to the people ๐ฏ Please watch, listen or read this transcript. Because this is the sort of leadership Labour needs ๐ Clive Lewis MP He even calls for PR ๐ Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) Margaret Thatcherโs 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 servicesโeven when it came to water. We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants, but giants cast long shadows, and Thatcherismโs 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 betterโa 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 Governmentโs 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, โIโm more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.โ 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 Houseโon the Opposition BenchesโI 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 peopleโthe 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 placeโat 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 curveโthey 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 publicโa 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 industryโits excessesโhave cracked open the door, and through that crack, we glimpse an opportunity. It is an opportunity to shatter the myth of privatisationโs inevitability, to break free from the narrow, self-imposed rules that have caged our Governmentโs economic choices, to expose its failures, to challenge its dominance and, above all, to show this country that there is an alternativeโan 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 publicโ 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 collapseโthese 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 UKโs 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: ยฃ72 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 countryโ 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 companiesโselling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our waterโare 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 2009โnot in a boy bandโI 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 itโit 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 rightโa 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 problemโit is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, โBut we have just passedโโ Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab) You can hear thinking? Clive Lewis I can nowโfor my next trick, I can hear thinking! I can hear them thinking, โBut we have just passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, Clive, so what are you talking about?โ Yes, we have, but I am afraid to say it has been watered downโ[Interruption.] Sorry, I had to get that one inโit 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 Governmentโs Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targetsโjust 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. Noโwe 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 countryโs 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 Governmentโs 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 roomโwho owns our waterโhas been ruled out of the Cunliffe commissionโs 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 Treasuryโhe 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 Peopleโs 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 Governmentโs Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one exampleโ 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 outโlicence terminated and on its bikeโand 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, โWhere will the money come from? How will you invest in publicly owned water without the private sector?โ I will tell them where it has not come from in these past 35 yearsโI 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 ยฃ60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than ยฃ7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now ยฃ15.2 billion in debt and countingโwork that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a ยฃ3 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 ownershipโsomething 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 Waterโs 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 roseโ Mark Ferguson roseโ 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 Waterโthat half a billion pounds in interest paymentsโwill 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 haveโfrom us, the publicโand 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 gamesโjust 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 otherโs backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbertโs novel โDuneโ believed: โA manโs flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribeโ. 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)
![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 Israelโs 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. โUnder 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 Netanyahuโs 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 โrepeated warningsโ to the highest levels of Israelโs government. In one of these warnings, Egypts premiere intelligence minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu and warned that Hamas was about to do โsomething unusual, a terrible operation.โ Unnamed Egyptian officials told YNET News that they were shocked by Netanyahuโs โindifference to the news.โ But Israel didnโt 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 โJericho Wallโ 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 IDFโS Gaza division. The presentation concluded with this sentence: โThis invasion constitutes the gravest threat that IDF forces are facing in the defense of Israelโ So in response to this, did Israelโs 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 Hamasโs handheld radio traffic. Because they saw it โas a waste of effortโ 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 Israelโs mandatory IDF service laws, were, according to Israeli media, picking up clear evidence that Hamas was โpracticing the breaching of the fence and conquering kibbutzim and seizing hostages and destroying everything in their path.โ Then, In April 2023, 6 months before the attack, again according to Israeli media, the IDF โrestricted the abilityโ of Israelis living near the border โto monitor Hamasโ wireless traffic.โ In September 2023, less than a month before the attack, the head of the IDFโs โDevilโs Advocateโ intelligence unit, which challenges prevailing narratives within Israelโs military, twice alerted senior decision-makers in both the army and political spheres about Hamasโ 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 wasnโt 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 Israelโs 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. โWe were told that if we continue to harass on this issue, you will stand trial.โ 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 IDFโs 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 partyโs approval to his superiors. He was instructed to allow the event. Israeli Newspaper Haaretz reported that other Gaza division officers privately โtold of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party.โ In February 2024, Elkana Federman, the head of security for the Nova festival gave an interview to Israelโs Channel 14 where he made a statement that hasnโt been reported on by any American media. โI had a guard at the festival who had served in the Reโim Division [near Gaza border], and a week before the festival he sent me a voice message, basically warning me, saying, โElkana, 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.โ 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 Netanyahuโs 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: โWe were meant to fight this war against Hamas, as is happening now, and luckily for us it came from the heavens.โ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that Israel didnโt 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 โWe couldnโt 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 didnโt 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.โ 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: โThousands of soldiers were less than 40 minutes from the towns that were under attack.โ 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 Beโeri attack, described to Haaretz: โ500 soldiers stood outside, with equipment and vehicles. I remember yelling at them, โWeโre being slaughtered, come in, save us and no one said anything.โ So why did it take so long for help to arrive? Haaretz reported: โAt 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., thatโs 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. โThe roads were empty!โ he recalled in an interview. Roughly seven hours into the fighting, he turned to the reservist next to him and asked: โWhereโs the IDF?โ The brutal and deadly Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th is so central to justifying Israelโs 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 โfalsehoods and propagandaโ 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 militaryโs 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 havenโt 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 โThe Hannibal Directive was apparently applied at a certain stage, because at the moment they understand there is a kidnapping, they immediately say, โGuys, this is Hannibal.โ 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.โ We know the Hannibal Directive means to kill your own, so what does โmass Hannibalโ mean? A large mainstream Israeli media outlet reported: โIn 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.โ 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 Beโeri. He set up a hotline so kibbutz residents could communicate with the Israeli army. He told Haaretz that โthe commanders in the field made difficult decisions, including shelling houses on their occupantsโ 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 โundoubtedlyโ killed numerous Israeli hostages during gun battles with Hamas militants. IDF General Barak Hiram, prevented hundreds of troops from entering Kibbutz Beโeri 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 โThe Commission is aware of allegations that Israeli Special Forces used the โHannibal Directiveโ 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? Itโs 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 Israelโs 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. Yemenโs Houthis intensified their involvement, going from simply attacking Israeli bound cargo ships to now navigating an armed drone over 1,200 miles, evading Israelโs 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 thatโs 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, thatโs whatโs done. It is called โNuclear Ambiguity.โ 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 Israelโs nuclear weapons program. Even insinuating or mentioning information thatโs already in the public domain is forbidden for all federal employees and contractors. It sounds hard to believe but letโs 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: โNuclear 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.โ A clear reference to Israelโs nuclear weapons. Doyleโs security clearance was promptly withdrawn, his home was raided, his computers were seized and he was fired from the Department of Energy. So apparently thatโs how it works. In 2018, The New Yorker published a stunning report in which they discuss another way Israelโs 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 theyโll 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 thereโs a gag order that stops all federal employees and contractors from simply acknowledging Israelโs 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 Israelโs 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 โnuclear ambiguityโ 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. Thatโs 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. Thatโs the price of keeping Israelโs 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, Israelโs Christian minority were already being targeted with dispossession and violence. In Jerusalemโs 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. Itโs become mainstream to believe Christians donโt belong in Israel and only Jewish people do. A few years ago, the mission, the Virgin Maryโs place of death, was attacked and vandalized by Israelis. The graffiti on the ancient walls read โDeath to heretical Christians, the enemies of Israel,โ and โMay his name and memory be obliterated,โ in reference to Jesus. According to Haaretz, at a Jewish school, the leader of an anti-assimilation group Bentzi Gopstien told students that itโs quote โmitzvahโ or a โgood deedโ 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, weโre 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)
![The Economics of Europeโs Descent into Warmongering โ and our duty now! My speech at the European Parliament on the theme of โThe Economic Conditions of Peaceโ, 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 Europeโs 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 โ a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both! Europeโs 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 โ 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 stoneโs throw from NATOโs headquarters. From 1950 on, the EU was nurtured by and in tune with the interests of the United States โ an inconvenient fact both for Europeโs 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, Europeโs 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 Europeโs 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 Europeโs behalf. As long as it was running a trade deficit with the United States, Europeโs cartel was embedded in the dollar zone โ 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: โFrom today the dollar is our currency but it is your problem!โ 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, Americaโs twin deficits operated like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucked into America Europeโs net exports as well as the European exportersโ profits which were thus invested in US Treasuries, US shares and US real estate. Thatโs 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 Europeโs 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. Thatโs 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. ยท The French and German banks went bankrupt. ยท The Eurozoneโs impossible rules were in tatters. ยท 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, Europeโs 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 โโ 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 โ not that much of a difference really! A coup dโ รฉtat is a coup dโ รฉtat. [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 opponentโs 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 Europeโs productive foundations, its social fabric, its sense of purpose. Thatโs 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 Historyโs 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 โ finally โ during the pandemic โ 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 Europeโs nakedness. The result? After fifteen years of ZERO NET PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT, ยท Germany is deindustrialising fast, and along with it Eastern and Central Europe, Austria, Northern Italy ยท Political paralysis grows on the back of fiscal pressures ยท Neofascism and xenophobia are rising up everywhere ยท Europeโs dependence on the United States grows stronger at the time Donald Trump is cutting Europe loose ยท 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 canโt 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 Europeโs Military Keynesianism cannot and should not work, it serves a purpose โ 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 Ukraineโs killing fields. So, let me be frank: ยท No really-existing enemy of Europe shakes in his boots watching a stagnating, heavily indebted Europe, invest billions in weaponry. Quite the opposite! ยท Military Keynesianism will end up as Europeโs New Austerity for the many and a new money spinner for the few. ยท It will make Europe weaker while prolonging the Ukraine War in a manner that is detrimental to the stated aim of supporting Ukraine. [EUROPEโS SURRENDER TO NATO, ITS ROLE IN UKRAINE] It is at this point that angry yelps will rise up from the press gallery. Canโt you hear them ask: "โIs Russia not ante portas?โ โIs Europe not in danger?โ โShould Europe remain defenceless, especially now that Trump is abandoning Europe?โ 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 โฌ2.7 trillion on defence โ 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 โฌ2.7 trillion was spent. In this light, surrendering our foreign and defence policies to NATO, and sinking further in unsustainable debt just to satisfy President Trumpโs 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 โ 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 โ that they needed one another in their joint bid for a confrontation that strengthened both โ at Europeโs expense. It also means that anyone truly interested in Europeโs security and prosperity 1. must dispel the lie that Russia is about to invade us โ it canโt even if it wants to 2. must work tirelessly to kill Europeโs Military Keynesianism, and 3. must work toward a European Peace Process which uses Russiaโs 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 theโฆ Eurozone. In one fell swoop the euro would have wrecked Russiaโs 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, Europeโs economic stagnation was the product of its total dependence on the American deficits. This dependence yielded Europeโs complicity with the decade-long American project of inciting a war in Ukraine. And now that the US is decoupling, our rulers โ resembling decapitated chickens โ 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 Europeโs faltering Big Business Cartel. [WHATโS BEHIND EUROPEโS 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 Israelโs 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. ยท BNP PARIBAS and ALLIANZ underwrite the issues of the Israeli government bonds that fund the Israeli meatgrinder in the Palestinian Occupied Territories ยท MAERSK is the prime transporter of the military machine at work in Gaza ยท Since 2007, the European Union has channelled โฌ2 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 Israelโs genocide. If Europe were to do its duty and sanction Israel, the Technical University of Munich stands to lose โฌ195.4 million from the EUโs 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 Europeโs past genocides. However, our dependence on the US and our ruling classโs penchant to profit from imperialism have made this impossible โ and so Europeโs 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 โA Just Peace in the Middle Eastโ, 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 Belgiumโs crimes against humanity in the Congoโฆ 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. Europeโs Liberal Totalitarianism, which we in Greece experienced in all its horror ten years ago, is now everywhere โ 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: ยท The economic condition for Peace is to de-couple Europe's economy from America's wars! ยท But for that we must end, once and for all, Europeโs dependence on the United States. ยท This entails ending Europeโs dependence on net exports to America. ยท Which means rebalancing Europeโs internal economy through o new productive green investments, o an end to structural austerity o an end to the madness of cartel-infested electricity โmarketsโ o a new monetary commons by which to end the bankersโ monopoly over payments and to institute a personal dividend for all o a new EU-China deal that liberates us from Americaโs agenda of intensifying a pointless New Cold War at our expense. Only by transforming Europeโs 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 โ our Green New Deal for Europe โ 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 Europeโs, Italyโs, Greeceโs, indeed Germanyโs 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 canโt 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)
