There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Foreign policy conducted on the sly: Britain and the repressive Gulf monarchies
British imperialism keeps its role in the Middle East shrouded in secrecy because it supports the worst objectives and most backwards regimes going — but the public can be informed and mobilised against this, explains IAN SINCLAIR
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
IN 1917, after listening to an account of fighting on the western front, prime minister Lloyd George is reported to have said: “If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know.”
Eighty years later and a similar quote from a “senior official” was included in a book published by the Establishment think tank Chatham House: “Much of our foreign policy is conducted on the sly for fear that it would raise hackles at home if people knew what we were pushing for.”
The government camouflages the reality of British foreign policy in a variety of ways, including blunt censorship by the British military in war zones, “requests” to edit reporting by issuing D-notices, the favouring of particular journalists and likely most important, the normalisation of policy discussion and decision making that excludes the general public — an arrangement largely taken for granted by the media.
More from this author
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
New releases from Allo Darlin’, Loyle Carner and Mike Polizze
New releases from Toby Hay, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging Stars
As the cover-ups collapse, IAN SINCLAIR looks at the shocking testimony from British forces who would ‘go in and shoot everyone sleeping there’ during night raids — illegal, systematic murder spawned by an illegal invasion
