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Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN

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From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

One month after her release from ICE detention, Leqaa Kordia remains determined to challenge injustice. In an interview with Mondoweiss, Kordia discusses her arrest, the stories of the women she met in detention, and her Palestinian identity.

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From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.

IT IS clear that Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and the country is drawing to an end. It is a matter of when, not if, he is replaced.

His political authority is broken, his grip on government weakened beyond recall.  No-one any longer listens to his arguments, nor fears his displeasure. 

The sullen faces and sub-tepid cheers on the Labour benches for the Prime Minister when he made his statement on the latest twist in the Mandelson  fiasco said it all.

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From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

MEN’S CRICKET: Somerset extended their County Championship Division One lead to 15 points after Tom Abell hit an unbeaten century and James Rew weighed in with 59 in their two-wicket win over Hampshire at Southampton. Warwickshire moved into second place thanks to a 41-run win over Essex. Former professional footballer Keith Barker took 4-29 and Beau Webster bagged 2-4 as Essex struggled to 164 all out in their second innings.

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From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

CHINA expressed concern today after Japan scrapped a ban on lethal weapons exports.

The Japan is a major change in Japan’s post-war pacifist policy and ramps up tensions with its Chinese and North Korean neighbours.

The approval by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s cabinet of the new guideline scraps rules that limit Japan’s defence equipment exports to five non-combat categories — rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and minesweeping.

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From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

US President Donald Trump on Monday invoked wartime authority in an effort to boost domestic fossil fuel production—with the help of taxpayer funding—as his administration faces growing political backlash over gas price spikes, driven by the illegal assault on Iran.

The five presidential memos Trump signed cite his executive powers under the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which gives the president the ability to expand and accelerate production of key supplies. Critics accused Trump of abusing his emergency authority, once again, to give handouts to an industry profiting massively from the Iran war, which the president launched without congressional authorization.

"President Trump is abusing emergency authorities and wasting taxpayer resources through unprecedented abuse of the Defense Production Act to promote his politically favored fossil fuel projects at the expense of energy affordability and common sense," said Tyson Slocum, energy director at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen. "Today’s unjustified suite of executive orders is a wish list for the oil, gas, and coal industries, who are already enjoying record profits under Trump’s Energy Unaffordability Agenda."

“America is already—far and away—the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and the world’s largest petroleum and gas exporter," Slocum added. "Promoting more fossil fuel exports at a time when Trump has failed to deliver affordable, sustainable energy for American communities is just another example of the president’s incompetent, failed energy policies."

Trump's memos aim to bolster petroleum, coal, and liquefied natural gas production, asserting that the nation's "current inadequate and intermittent energy supply leaves us vulnerable to hostile foreign actors and poses an imminent and growing threat to the United States’ prosperity and national security."

"Action to expand the domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair national defense capability," the memos state.

Trump signed the directives hours after he publicly disagreed with his own energy secretary's assessment of when Americans can expect to see relief at the gas pump, where they're paying over $4 per gallon on average nationwide. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Americans might not see significantly lower gas prices until next year; Trump claimed that assessment was "totally wrong,” even as economists warned of lasting impacts to US and global energy markets stemming from the Iran war.

The world's largest oil and gas giants have profited massively from war-induced price spikes, with the biggest beneficiaries—including US-based Chevron and ExxonMobil—banking over $30 million an hour in windfall gains during the first month of the conflict.

Trump's memos came days after a group of Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation aimed at shielding fossil fuel companies from legal action to hold them accountable for their central role in the climate emergency.

“Big Oil companies have raked in massive profits at the pump while lying to the American people about the catastrophic harm of their products, and now they want to deny Americans their rightful day in court and stick taxpayers with the bill for the mess they made," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in response to the bill. "If fossil fuel companies have done nothing wrong, why do they need immunity?"

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From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

The Lebanese parliament speaker says the Arab nation will not allow even one iota of the country’s territory to be usurped by the occupying Israeli regime.

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From Presstv via This RSS Feed.

‎The IEA has warned that US-Israeli aggression against Iran has caused the most severe energy crisis in history.

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From Presstv via This RSS Feed.

Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te was forced to postpone a visit to the island’s last African partner after three other nations abruptly refused to allow his aircraft to fly over their territory, in a move Taipei blamed on pressure from Beijing. This is the first time any Taiwanese leader has had to delay an overseas visit at the last minute, Lai’s office said. He had been due to depart on Wednesday for a five-day trip to eSwatini, the sole African country that maintains official diplomatic...

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From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Keir Starmer’s pressure on the Foreign Office to ignore Israel-supporting paedophiles’ pals is not limited to Peter Mandelson. He did the same with ‘Labour’ peer Matthew Doyle, who has since been suspended for his support for convicted child sex offender Sean Morton.

Starmer knew about Doyle’s links to Morton when he appointed him. Which means he also knew when he pressured the Foreign Office to give Doyle a job. As the Independent’s political editor spotted:

Starmer put pressure on the FCDO to give Matthew Doyle a job and not tell the Foreign Secretary. Another person suspended because he was close to a paedophile.
That is stunning.

— David Maddox (@DavidPBMaddox) April 21, 2026

Tip of the iceberg

But these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg of Labour Zionist paedophiles and sex offenders – and Starmer’s protection of them.

Starmeroid MP Dan Norris’s recent arrest for rape was his second on suspicion of sex offences. The first, in 2025, was for alleged rape and paedophilia and is still under investigation. As noted, Starmer is currently under pressure for appointing his mentor and chief adviser Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, who has since resigned over his notorious links with serial child rapist and Israeli agent Jeffrey Epstein.

But even just in 2026 the issue goes far further. In early January, Israel fanatic Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) organiser Liron Velleman admitted child sex offences. In February, Labour councillor Conor McGrath was charged and convicted for possessing child rape images. Like Velleman and other Labour-right paedophiles, McGrath escaped jail, receiving only a ‘slap on the wrist’. In April 2026, right-wing ‘friend of Israel’ former Labour councillor Adrian Hughes was convicted of grooming three children for sex. He has not yet been sentenced.

But we’re just getting started.

In January 2025, former Blair minister Ivor Caplin was arrested in a sting operation as he allegedly attempted to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex. Local police decided to go after local left-winger Greg Hadfield for exposing explicit content Caplin posted on his X feed – Hadfield defeated the ‘vexatious’ charge in November 2025. However, no charges have yet been brought against Caplin and he is not even on bail. A court did not re-impose bail conditions after his initial bail expired. Despite the ongoing police investigation, Caplin was recently invited to speak on LBC about Keir Starmer’s move to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s bid to stand in a parliamentary election.

There’s more

Hackney councillor Tom Dewey, an organiser in pro-Israel group ‘Labour First’, admitted possession of the most serious category of child rape images in 2023. The party knew of his arrest when it allowed him to stand for election. After his conviction, it blocked local women members from its systems to prevent them discussing the case.

And in March 2025 Sam Gould, who worked for Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting, quit as a Redbridge councillor after being convicted on two separate counts of indecent exposure to a 13-year-old girl.

Cover-ups and appointments

Keir Starmer’s personal involvement in covering up alleged sex offences has been extensively documented by Skwawkbox – and not just from his time as Director of Public prosecutions when the CPS declined to prosecute rapist celebrity Jimmy Savile and others.

Starmer:

• Welcomed the London MP Neil Coyle back under the Labour whip despite Coyle being found by Parliament to have sexually harassed a staffer, as well as racially abusing a Chinese-British man.
• Turned a blind eye to then-Chester MP Chris Matheson’s sexual harassment: neither Starmer nor the party machine suspended him pending the outcome of the investigation, as would be usual practice to protect the women around him.
• Protected at least two further alleged sex pests on his front bench.

And Starmer and his then-sidekick David Evans covered up Jewish whistleblower Elaina Cohen’s allegations of serial abuse of vulnerable Muslim women by a party staffer.

Cohen repeatedly warned Starmer and Evans that a staffer working for then-Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood — and allegedly Mahmood’s lover — was engaged in ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women. The victims were fleeing domestic violence, allegedly inflicted through the now-defunct domestic violence ‘charity’ that she ran. Starmer and Evans did nothing. Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench and Cohen was sacked from her role as parliamentary aide.

One of the victims gave evidence at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal. She spoke of the horrific abuse she and others suffered. This included blackmail and sexual exploitation. Her evidence was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers. At the tribunal, Mahmood admitted under oath that he’d personally made sure that Starmer was aware of Cohen’s allegations.

Labour’s ‘paedophile friends of Israel’ problem is also so widespread as to be a defining characteristic of that faction. And Starmer’s cover-ups and blind-eye-turning regarding paedophiles and sex offenders is a defining characteristic for him. That he is still in a job shows how sick and dysfunctional the UK’s ‘democracy’ really is.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Japan has scrapped long-standing restrictions on arms exports in a major break with its post-war pacifist policy that is likely to derail any potential thaw in relations with China. The plans, given final approval by the cabinet on Tuesday, could clear the way for sales of lethal equipment that had long been banned and prompted expressions of “serious concern” from Beijing. Japan’s Three Principles on Transfer of Defence Equipment and Technology had previously limited exports to five non-combat...

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From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

There are growing signs that the United States may be on the verge of another major financial crisis, one that could start in the private credit market, which is already seeing significant turmoil, before spreading to other sectors. Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to discuss the serious problems on Wall Street. Hudson warned that the US economy is built on a Ponzi scheme that depends on continuing to pour money into a bloated, bubbly financial system based on unsustainable speculation, not industrial production. Check out our related short video about the private credit crisis on Wall Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1cx9Zk6WZk Topics 0:00 Introduction 1:37 Highlights of Michael Hudson 3:29 Interview starts 4:18 2008 financial crisis 5:04 Zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP) 7:31 Private equity 9:17 Lack of investment 10:34 Wealth inequality 12:08 Debt defaults 14:10 Depression fears 16:12 US govt supports Wall Street 19:07 Ponzi schemes 23:51 US economic problems 27:35 Iran war impact 30:16 Financialization of economy 33:46 Outro || Geopolitical Economy Report || Please consider supporting us at https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/Support Subscribe to our newsletter: https://geopoliticaleconomy.report/ Join our community on Patreon: https://patreon.com/GeopoliticalEconomy

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