The media enters the war on Palestinian activists
Monday kicked off with a feel good story for anyone supporting the current genocide being carried out by The United States of Israel. The Daily Express sent an undercover reporter to infiltrate a group of Palestinian activists. When the reporter learned they were going to try and hinder the operations of the London Stock Exchange resulting in "potentially throwing global markets into turmoil" they passed their dossier to the polis and they dutifully swooped in and arrested the "Pro-Palestine mob". People often complain that newspapers no longer do proper investigative reporting, and journalists themselves have said that it is far too costly to undertake. But look ! Sometimes they can do it. I do personally wonder who was footing the bill and if they could also fund someone to go undercover at companies like BP or Shell.
Royals royals royals
One thing I want to do this year is quantify just how many times each of the British papers have the royal family on their front page. It often feels like some are doing it every day of the week. While flicking through this week's covers it struck me immediately that the Daily Heil had royals on their front page every day from Monday to Sunday. Yes ! Seven whole days of headline stories about the royals. Even on Monday, when other papers were reporting on the Danish royals, the Heil still had a contrived story bashing the Sussexes. In fairness the story was an excerpt from a book written by a literal court scribe which is being serialised by the Heil. Presumably marketing had locked in that days cover to coincide with the books release. That or the Heil is so genuinely xenophobic that they wouldn't sully their esteemed front page with a picture of some bloody foreigner king and his 'commoner' Aussie wife.
Above: Daily Mail & Independent 15.01.2024
Let's quickly run down the seven days like Craig David:
Sussexes on the front on Monday,
Sussexes on the front on Tuesday,
Mul-tip-le Windsors on Wednesday,
And on Thursday,
And Friday,
And Saturday,
Harry took a selfie on Sunday
Most of the royal fodder is complete nonsense, and these stories were no exception. One noteworthy story was about the Harry formerly known as Prince drop his libel case against three newspapers, including the Heil, offering up more ammunition for the tabloids to fire at him. The cover of Thursday's Heil is worth reproducing here in full because, well, look :
LET'S PRAY THAT THEY'RE BOTH OK.
For the love of God, they are both having routine procedures done. I don't want to be nostalgic for his dear old Mumsie but when she was above ground she wouldn't have been putting out press releases about the state of any of her internal organs. It's obvious that Chazzer just wants us to think that underneath that pasty exterior there are just the normal, to-be-expected, nothing-to-see-here anatomical items and not the body of an ancient lizard which uses plundered gemstones as a power source. Well, jokes on you Chaz, you are as transparent as the windows of the Pizza Express in Woking.
One thing we can look at is how these two royal bombshells exploded in different outlets. A majority of the UK papers reported on it - I counted nine front covers that had the story. Only one Irish paper did (The Irish mirror, which is just an edition of the U.K. mirror sold in Ireland). What was immediately striking was the visual component. Most papers who ran a picture of them both, had Kate's picture much bigger and more prominent. She is far and away the most marketable face that the royal family have at the moment, and somehow she is just more believable as a celebrity/person of interest than Chazzer. The Express went as far as not running a picture of aul' big fingers, and just mentioned him underneath the headline about Kate. It's quite clear who the real queen is.
The Belfast telegraph had an amazing headline that ran "Operation Royal Family:King and Kate to go under the knife". There are no doubt many people in the occupied six counties who would love to see the two of them go under the knife. Is it a coincidence that these two stories appeared on the same day? I'm not one for coincidence theories so I'd have to say no. It's really not the norm for the royals to announce their medical conditions. This has to have been a step taken so that the two stories could hit the paper at the same time, ensuring that Charles' image as an elderly pampered man child could be somewhat brightened by Kate's image as a younger, female version of the same. That or they both independently decided to put out press releases about their upcoming appointments. Either way, it ensured some nice blanket coverage in Blighty, and makes a jolly good change from reading about Chazzer's brother abusing minors in the company of a Mossad agent. The Windsors really need all the sympathy and support they can get at the moment, with support for the monarchy down to less than 50% for the first time. The ratings dropped a full four percent over just six weeks when the spare heir was back in the news cycle recently. Expect to see Chazzer's prostrate milked to death for headlines over the next days as the surgery approaches.(sorry)
War, War, War...how do you like it, how do you like it, War, War, War...
Last week I said that there seems to be a growing realisation that a severe loss for the empire is coming down the tracks in Ukraine. That trend seems to be continuing and Republicans are not willing to dump more money and arms into an active warzone unless Joe agrees to "reform immigration laws" i.e. keep the pesky foreigners from entering the land of the free. This seems a big conundrum in an election year with no easy fix in sight. The conflict on the southern border between the state of Texas and federal border patrol is interesting in that it highlights the huge divisions in American politics between state and federal levels of government. Is this an early warning sign of a future civil war ? Maybe. But maybe the civil war never ended. In a further sign of the Ukraine debacle ending in a loss for the empire, a headline on Friday in the Torygraph ran "Nato warns of war with Russia in the next 20 years". Oh yes, brave citizens, prepare yourself. It is only a question of when. Ammunition prices will remain high until the threat diminishes.
Back out on the front lines of the war on children, a tiny headline on the front page of the Jerusalem post on Wednesday ran "Powerful London exhibit recreates Hamas tunnels". Yes that's right, there are now fake Hamas tunnels in the heart of the old empire. The Evening standard sent a reporter down to the secret location of the exhibition, where Liz Truss was seeming quite bored by the October 7th atrocity propaganda snuff movie that the Israeli government have been organising screenings of. Iran struck targets in the city of Irbil in Iraq which, according to the Tehran Times, belonged to "Falcon Company, a Mossad-affiliated organisation responsible for protecting and supplying the Israeli spy agency in the Kurdistan region of Iraq". This caused the Iraqis to withdraw their ambassador from Tehran. Iran also struck targets in Syria which it said belonged to Daesh, a U.S. backed group in the region. Israel struck back on Saturday when it killed five Iranian military advisors in Damascus. "Iran will send the bill to Tel Aviv" (Tehran Times 21.01). The Houthis continue the attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and the Brits and the Yanks continue attacking them back. The U.S. plans to redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist organisation. Iran also struck targets in Pakistan causing Pakistan to retaliate with strikes of their own on Iran. It's all systems go with the tit for tat at the moment, and hopefully it stays tit for tat and not rebuke via nuke.
The NYT turned out in force on Saturday at the intersection of culture wars and conventional wars with a story headlined "Israeli Women Fight on the Front Lines, a First". Oh yes, girl power is BACK! Women just keep smashing that glass ceiling above the heads of innocent children asleep in their beds. We got treated to the story of the brave Capt. Amit Busi (!) who has to sleep with her boots on, and save her soldiers from "booby-trapped buildings" and "scour the area for fighters" all while evacuating wounded soldiers from the battlefield. The article also stated that "Their inclusion has helped bolster the image of the army domestically". Previous to this of course, women were mostly utilised in the Israeli army for social media psyops operations where conventionally attractive women in uniforms prance around for the enjoyment of online, horny war enjoyers. There was no mention of that in the article however.
The cracks in Israeli politics continue to bubble to the surface and the NYT on Sunday reported that they interviewed "four senior military leaders" who said that "the dual objectives of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas are now mutually incompatible". This has been clear from day one, but with Bibi's generals getting restless, and the families of the hostages making a lot of noise, the internal pressure will continue to build. The Tehran Times spoke to this on Tuesday with a headline that ran "Israeli political, security structure on decline". The same day had a front page story about fans at an Iran-Palestine football match chanting "Death to Israel". The inclusion of this on the front page I thought was slightly odd at first, as it is something that could easily be used to smear the Palestinian cause. But then I realised it gave them the excuse to print the words "Death to Israel" on the front page and it all made sense. I didn't see this story on any other front pages this week.
Culture war items :
"Why my baby is actually the best baby" ( Irish Examiner 16.01) Everyone thinks they have the best baby, and none of them are wrong.
"My husband walked out so I started a mommune with my friends" (i 16.01) Excellent. Maybe a Neo matriarch society will be possible after the collapse.
"One of my staff posts explicit content on Only Fans. Should I stop her?" (Irish Independent 19.01) How did you find this out and why are you looking at it ? I imagine the answer could only be No.
"Minister Jack Chambers : I am proud to say that I am gay" (Irish Daily Mail 15.01). Does anyone know of any openly gay left wing politicians ? The only ones I know of seem to be from right wing parties.
Climate
Every week brings new extremes and this one saw "93 million people under wind chill advisories in the U.S." (Wall Street Journal 16.01). In a sign of things to come, a front page headline on the New York Times on Thursday ran "Icy Cold Drains E.V. Batteries And Strains Driver's Patience". It seems that the devices which we are told will fight climate breakdown, can't function well in the extreme conditions caused by climate breakdown. Batteries deplete faster and sometimes take five times longer to charge. At this moment in human history, if you want to invest in transport, start buying horses and donkeys.
Honourable mentions:
U.S. election campaigning is well underway and I will be doing my best to ignore it until closer to the election or some viral moment happens which causes me to unwillingly engage with the sham process of putting a new arse in the front row seat of the empire. Britain not only has a resurgence of traditional conservative views like fascism, but now has a resurgence of some traditional viruses to boot. "Measles is back" (Times UK 15.01). NEWSFLASH : All land is privately owned and will be sold for the maximum amount of profit. "Highgate cemetery to offer grave next to Marx for 25k pounds" (Torygraph 16.01). Davos continues to deliver us nuggets of truth from the international ruling class. "'God bless you', says world's richest banker to Ukrainian president" (Irish Times 17.01). I hate to say this, but I feel Boris is half right here. Maybe the farce of orange man in the big seat can hasten the downfall of oligarchy masquerading as democracy. "Boris: A Trump presidency may be just what the world needs" (Daily Heil 20.01).
Obituaries:
20.01 Norman Jewison - Filmmaker.
21.01 Ian Bailey Journalist & Artist. Mostly known for being the prime suspect in a high profile murder that happened in 1996. His contributions to true crime podcasts will not be forgotten.