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The bombs may fall from jets, but the targeting, the supply chains, the surveillance, all of it is corporate. Gaza isn’t just a warzone. It’s a testing ground. A lab. A marketplace. The killing is done with precision. The profits are logged in real time.
The bullet missed, but the image hit. And it’s the image that rules now. Trump, mid-stumble, hand to ear, flanked by agents in suits. It has already been cropped, filtered, multiplied. Not just a moment, but a message: the strongman under fire, the martyr made live. The spectacle doesn’t distract from the violence; it packages it. Sells it. Projects it across TVs, phones, and tablets until belief hardens into doctrine. This is what power looks like in the age of algorithmic memory: not stability, but survival on camera.
MP Rupert Lowe peddles a fantasy of lost greatness to mask the failures of those who’ve ruled and ruined this country. The problem isn’t immigration or identity. It’s inequality, privatisation, and a political class that sold off the future for short-term profit. You want courage? Try telling the truth about power.
Butler isn’t really about politics. It’s about belief. The bullet didn’t just graze him; it made him sacred. The messy contradictions of 2016 are gone. What’s left is atmosphere, myth, and the story of a man who bled on stage and got up again. The faithful took it as a sign. This isn’t reporting. It’s scripture. A gospel for a leader who survives everything, and so, must rule.
Trump promised to protect the safety net. Instead, he signed a law that slashes Medicaid, imposes work requirements, and purges the rolls by design. His supporters still cheer, not because the cuts help them, but because the performance does. The cap says “Make America Great Again.” The policy says: you’re on your own.
BRICS condemns the bombing of Gaza and strikes on Iran with the language of international law, civilian protection, and sovereignty. But when it comes to Ukraine (a country invaded by one of its founding members) the silence is deafening. This isn’t a blind spot. It’s the logic of bloc politics. BRICS positions itself as a voice for the Global South, an alternative to Western hypocrisy, but it has its own double standards. Anti-imperialism loses its meaning if it only runs one way. The emerging multipolar order may be less Western, but it is not necessarily more just.
The phrase “rules-based international order” has become a punchline. When Russia bombs a maternity hospital, it’s a war crime. When Israel flattens a refugee camp, it’s self-defence. The ICC pursues African warlords and Balkan generals with zeal—but stalls or retreats when the accused are allies of Washington or clients of London. The problem isn’t that international law exists. It’s that it doesn’t apply to everyone. War crimes are prosecuted not on the basis of what’s done, but who does it, and who they do it for.
Behind the talk of “humanitarian cities” and postwar development lies a brutal truth: this is a plan to herd Palestinians into ghettos, fence them in, and call it aid. When Blair’s thinktank is on calls about a “Trump Riviera” in Gaza, you know the project isn’t reconstruction—it’s removal.
The UK government’s announcement to delay the completion of HS2 and mothball major road-building schemes due to budget constraints raises concerns about the Conservative government’s levelling up agenda.