You'd Better Shut Your Windows Tight

He would be a good age now, but any surviving member of the Shankill Butchers may well have been back out on the streets of Belfast last night. There were no roadblocks for them as they cut throats from ear to ear for seven years, earning themselves the longest combined prison sentences in the legal history of the United Kingdom.

The Shankill Butchers were largely drawn from the Ulster Volunteer Force, a proscribed terrorist organisation. Yet last April, hundreds turned out, and 30 marching bands played, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Wesley Somerville. "UVF" adorned many of the wreaths laid in honour of a man who had accidentally blown himself up while perpetrating the Miami Showband massacre. In 2024, those same elements rioted side by side with the Tricolour-wavers who returned their hospitality in Dublin, also last April. They even brought their own flags, as their hosts had done as guests. Such are the connections formed in and by the overlapping worlds of British intelligence and organised crime. All cultures have wrong 'uns. Are these new ones muscling in on carefully carved up turf?

One of the speakers was Dublin City Councillor Malachy Steenson. A Special Criminal Court convict, Councillor Steenson has been associated with the proscribed Official IRA, with the proscribed Continuity IRA, with the proscribed Real IRA, and with the proscribed INLA. He boasts that, "I was never a member of the Provos." But Steenson is a Planter surname, like Adams, McDonald or McGregor. Whereas the leader of the Shankill Butchers, eventually taken out by those same Provos, was called Lenny Murphy. Think on.

Burning Questions

Thank you, one and all. This site had 370,757 readers yesterday. That was far higher than the last published circulation figure of The Times or the Daily Telegraph. Keep coming back and keep telling your friends. We all need to do our bit now that the Summer Riots have begun with the customary burning of a bus. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is an Irish citizen, but the Union Flag-waving mob in Belfast could not walk down the street where the initial attack was committed, since it is in a staunchly Republican area where many people would regard them as Planters, with no more right to be in Ireland than a Sudanese. The victim was saved by one Maitiu Mág Tighearnán, using his son's hurl.

No such cultural confidence is evident elsewhere, with the Royal Marines having renamed 3 Commando Brigade "UK Commando Force". Yes, another one. It all started with the Yookay Independence Party, and now we are on the brink of rule by Reform Yookay. Never mind what the trade unions have predictably made of Reform UK's invitation to affiliate, as was of course Nigel Farage's intention. What do the people who had hitherto accrued to Reform make of that prospect? What say you, Richard Tice? What say you, Nadhim Zahawi?

Reform is also the party of Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister under whom the Belfast assailant was granted leave to remain. Ministerial responsibility does not depend on having seen the particular case file. Have you accepted the comparable excuse from Keir Starmer in relation to Jimmy Savile? No, of course not. Nor should you. And nor will we accept this.

The attack in Belfast does not appear to have had anything to do with Islam, but it is notable that the assailant had chosen to move to the only one of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic that still had the blasphemy law that they all had 20 years ago, so that whatever else may be said of such a law, it is no more un-British than cousin marriage, or than having children with two or more women simultaneously while sending the bill to the State.

As the already exonerated Karim Khan KC is suspended as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, then not only Belfast is burning again tonight. So is Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village on the West Bank, at the hands of the people whom Khan was being lynched to protect, and on whom the British Government had imposed sanctions that were welcome enough as far as they went, but which did nothing to remove the IDF, via Palantir, from the NHS and from a vast, ever-expanding array of other public activities in this country.

Not least in the Ministry of Defence. That is why we shall have to check the small print very carefully, although it is obviously welcome both economically and strategically that the MoD should buy British, and a clear Brexit benefit that it should be free to do so. Let that be only the start. BAE Systems should be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification in the spirit of the Lucas Plan. And instead of Trident, an extra £70 billion should be given to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. That would not entail depriving anything else of funding. As a sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency, the United Kingdom has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself, with the fiscal and monetary means to control inflation, means that therefore need to be under democratic political control in both cases.

Weeding Them Out

Immigration and asylum are not devolved. On 10 February 2023, the suspect in North Belfast caught the bus from Dublin to Belfast and claimed asylum. On 28 September 2023, he was granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom. On both dates, the Home Secretary was Suella Braverman, and the Immigration Minister, attending Cabinet, was Robert Jenrick. Reform UK, explain yourself.

There is no sign that this attack had any political motivation. Either way, though, the attacker will have been on drugs, undoubtedly at least including cannabis. The word “assassin” has the same root as “hashish”, the drug taken by the members of the Order of Assassins when they set out to murder the enemies of the Alamut state. Vickrum Digwa and his family belong to the Akali-Nihang warrior order within Sikhism. Many members of that order reject the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee’s 2001 ban on shaheedi degh, their traditional drink to aid meditation and, interestingly, to make them fiercer in battle. Interestingly, because its base is cannabis. And now, this.

Armageddon Again

Am I just getting older, or does the Apocalypse come round more frequently these days? The Third World War was supposed to break out with Iran roughly this time last year, and then on several subsequent occasions. On this anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty, has Donald Trump's patience with Benjamin Netanyahu finally snapped? Trump will be 80 on Sunday. He has other things to think about.

George Robertson is already 80 and he cannot rely on the council for social care, so he has to pretend that the country that cannot subdue more than a small corner of Ukraine might be capable of attacking Britain, which therefore had to pay even more to the arms companies.

The requirement of three different visas was always going to make this World Cup an administrative nightmare, but the treatment of the Iranian squad ought to preclude the United States from ever again hosting an international sporting tournament, not something that, with the exception of the Olympics, it particularly wanted to do, anyway. It was easier for Jesse Owens to enter Germany for the 1936 Berlin Olympics than it has proved for Iraq's Aymen Hussein to get out of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Those who were now Trump's cheerleaders in Britain used to want to "keep politics out of sport". Yet Russia was banned from so much as trying its luck because of the invasion of Ukraine in pursuit of an irredentist claim to at least part of it, while Israel could have been there in the midst of the invasion of Lebanon on the same grounds.

As could Armenia. Not that admission to either was at all realistic, but the pro-NATO and pro-EU regime has shored itself up by ceding Artsakh to the Azerbaijan that supplied two thirds of Israel's oil, and which expelled practically the entire population. Yet Russia's 102nd Military Base is still at Gyumri, there are far more Azeris in Iran than in Azerbaijan, and there are enough Armenians to warrant reserved representation in Parliament. Be afraid. Be very, very, very afraid.

Perhaps Nikol Pashinyan is angling for the FIFA Peace Prize? But who should be the FIFA Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Economic Sciences? And why?

Responsible Statecraft?

Representative Thomas Massie is making the most of having nothing left to lose, reading into the record of the House the truth about the attack on the USS Liberty, 59 years ago today. As Ron Paul writes:

Not since the notorious 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provided for indefinite detention of American citizens, has the annual funding bill been as misused as this year. Embedded in the bill is an insult to every American who values our national sovereignty. The NDAA’s Section 224, the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” would “integrate” the Israeli military with our own, fusing technology, production, intelligence-sharing, and more.

As Ben Freeman wrote last week in Responsible Statecraft:

“The US and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes ‘network integration’ and ‘data fusion.’ In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.”

It is hard to think of a more “America last” position than handing the keys to the Pentagon (and our intelligence community) to a foreign country.

The insanity of Section 224 is made even more clear with news over the weekend that the Pentagon has raised to “critical” the threat level of Israel spying on the United States and its officials!

We should not “integrate” our military with any foreign country or organization, but integrating with a country that is a “critical” espionage threat to our national security? How does this make any sense?

The “problem” for American lawmakers is that after the killing in Gaza and now Lebanon, the American people – particularly younger Americans – have turned sharply against the US relationship with Israel. This foreign entanglement has sucked billions from the US treasury over the decades, and it has sucked us into endless conflict in the Middle East, including the current US war on Iran.

Rather than listen to the will of their constituents, Congress has decided to defy the wishes of Americans in favor of the wishes of a foreign government. AIPAC largely controls our Congress and passing Section 224 would be a great victory for the foreign lobby.

It should come as no surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorses Section 224. He may have written it for all we know!

Should Section 224 remain in the NDAA, it would essentially remove future Congresses from any role in determining what level of support, cooperation, and oversight should be included in the US relationship with Israel. It would be worse even than President Obama’s 10 year guaranteed US financial support for Israel. Funding would not only be on autopilot, but the US would be further drawn into Israel’s multiple wars with its neighbors. Worse even than backing up Israel in its regional wars, the wars themselves would become ours.

Americans must speak out against plans to integrate our military with any foreign country. What we should be doing is disentangling from these overseas obligations, whether they be NATO or support for Ukraine or backing Taiwan against China.

We already spend more than a trillion dollars a year on our own military and our national debt is nearing $40 trillion. Taking on the obligation to fight even more wars overseas will hasten our bankruptcy. Section 224 must be stricken from the NDAA and it is up to every American who cares about our sovereignty to demand that Congress do so.

Not that this is purely an American problem. Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur have been banned as if they were comparable to the foreign nationals who had intended to use Unite the Kingdom to call on the United States to execute regime change in the United Kingdom, where there was already an enormous American military presence. If the treatment of Dr Michael Foran at Oxford has been disgraceful, and it has been, then what about that? And Abbi Garton-Crosbie writes:

A High Court judge has apologised for his handling of a Contempt of Court allegation against a Palestine Action activist’s barrister, telling a hearing: “I was wrong.”

Justice Johnson asked High Court judges to investigate whether Rajiv Menon KC had flouted his orders and misled the jury during a trial at Woolwich Crown Court.

The incident was sparked by Menon’s closing speech while representing Charlotte Head, a Palestine Action activist who had been involved in criminal damage at the Bristol factory of Israeli defence contractor, Elbit Systems.

Last month, the Court of Appeal ruled the judge had wrongly sent the case directly to the High Court, rather than making a referral to the attorney general or dealing with the matter at the Crown Court.

The judge is now facing a bid to recuse himself from his role sentencing Head and her co-defendants, after being accused of appearing to be biased.

Referring to his actions over the contempt issue, Justice Johnson told the Old Bailey on Monday: “I was wrong to do that and I’m sorry about that, of course.

“I’m sorry it has meant this will now take longer than it would have done.”

In the criminal case, Head, 29; Samuel Corner, 23; Leona Kamio, 30; and Fatema Rajwani, 21; were found guilty of criminal damage at the Elbit factory on August 6 2024.

An old prison van was used to smash into the property, before sledgehammers and crowbars were wielded to cause an estimated £1 million of damage.

Corner was also found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm after fracturing a police officer’s spine by striking her with a sledgehammer during the night-time raid.

The four activists are in custody awaiting sentencing, and followed Monday’s court hearing over video links from prison.

In his closing speech at the first trial of the case, Menon was accused of going against Justice Johnson’s pre-trial rulings which limited evidence and arguments, including a decision that the activists could not argue they had a “lawful excuse” for their actions because of the activities of the Israeli military in Gaza.

In his closing speech, Menon highlighted a plaque at the Old Bailey which sets out the “right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions”, in a move the judge said was in breach of his directions.

The barrister also said on six occasions that the trial judge could not direct the jury to convict the defendants.

Justice Johnson said: “The effect of Mr Menon’s speech was to invite the jury to disregard my directions that they should put views of the Middle East and the war in Gaza, and emotion, to one side.”

He added that Menon is also accused of misleading the jury when he pointed out that the prosecution had not challenged evidence put forward by the defendants about Elbit’s business interests and the Middle East conflict.

At the hearing on Monday, the judge was accused of giving the impression that he was biased because he sent the contempt allegation to the High Court while Menon was still representing Head at trial.

In light of the Court of Appeal’s decision that he acted unlawfully, the judge is accused by Head’s lawyers of an “unnecessary punitive response” at a time when Menon was on holiday and had not been given the chance to address the judge in person about the contempt allegation.

Responding to the submissions, the judge insisted he had “just sent the papers to another judge to let another court decide what to do”.

But he faces a claim from Head’s lawyers that with his action against Menon, he had “put fear and intimidation on to the most senior of our ranks” and given the impression to observers that he was biased against him and his client.

Corner, Kamio and Rajwani have supported the idea that Justice Johnson should be removed from the case ahead of the scheduled sentencing hearing on Friday.

The judge is also facing pressure from supporters of the activists that he should not sentence them on the basis that the criminal damage had a “terrorist connection”.

He made the ruling before the trials took place and could now use that conclusion when passing sentence, leading to tougher jail terms and long-lasting consequences.

The contempt of court allegation against Menon has been returned to Justice Johnson, with a view to him take a fresh decision how it should be handled.

And via Palantir, that pernicious influence stretches far and wide in this country. For example Josh Gabert-Doyon and Gill Plimmer write:

The most senior civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care was an adviser to one of Palantir’s partners at the time it was bidding for a controversial NHS patient record contract.

Samantha Jones, permanent secretary at the DHSC, was an adviser to Carnall Farrar, a healthcare consultancy that is part of a consortium with the US technology company.

Palantir won a £330mn contract in November 2023 to connect NHS patient information “with support from” a group of consultancy firms including Carnall Farrar. Jones advised Carnall Farrar between September 2023 and February 2024, although the consultancy said she did not work on the Palantir contract.

Jones’s appointment as permanent secretary in April 2025 has already attracted scrutiny because of her deep connections to companies with public contracts. The FT reported last month that, around the time of her appointment, she had worked for or held shares in a total of 12 companies that benefited from public contracts with DHSC and related health organisations.

At the time that the Palantir contract was agreed, she was lead non-executive director on the health department’s board.

Cross-party MPs are pushing for early termination of the contract amid concerns about data security and Palantir’s ties to US defence and immigration enforcement.

Carnall Farrar said Jones’s role with the consultancy had provided “leadership advisory support” focused on health investment and life sciences. It declined to provide information about Carnall Farrar’s role in the Federated Data Platform contract.

DHSC said Jones had appropriately declared all interests and resigned from private-sector posts before taking her role as top official at the department.

“The permanent secretary had no involvement with any aspect of the procurement of the Federated Data Platform before her time in government,” it added.

David Rowland, director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, a campaign group, said that there were clear conflicts of interest given that Jones, as permanent secretary, will have influence over whether the break clause in Palantir’s contract is invoked.

“The fact that the top civil servant at the DHSC was advising one of the parties to the contract at the time it was arranged raises questions about impartiality, especially given that officials are said to be considering operating a break clause in the contract,” he said.

Jones also had close ties with Global Counsel, the lobbying firm co-founded by the disgraced former minister Lord Peter Mandelson which advised Palantir.

She was chief operating officer at renewable energy company Xlinks when the company hired Global Counsel in the first quarter of 2025.

After taking the top role at DHSC, Jones helped Global Counsel to organise a roundtable to discuss the department’s 10-year healthcare plan at the firm’s offices in central London, according to freedom of information requests seen by the FT.

Emails seen by the FT between Jones and Global Counsel staff show Jones being asked to “review our proposed invite long list and invite text”.

In another message, a Global Counsel director told Jones: “We would very much like to build the focus of the discussion around issues that you are interested in and that align with GC’s client base.”

The roundtable included Palantir’s special technology adviser Stephen Childs, who is a former NHS commercial director.

Jones did not attend the meeting, in a late change to the schedule. DHSC second secretary Tom Riordan took her place as key speaker. Acoba, the advisory body on government appointments, published a letter in October 2024 stating that it did not oppose Jones’s consultancy work overall but that she “will have contacts and influence within the UK government, particularly in No 10 and DHSC”.

“As such, there are real and perceived risks her network gained in office might be used to assist her consultancy or its clients unfairly.”

The Civil Service Commission, which has taken on Acoba’s oversight role, said Jones had sought advice for her role at Carnall Farrar but the letter of advice had not been published.

One person familiar with events said Acoba’s letter had not been finalised because Jones had not given final confirmation that she had taken the role at Carnall Farrar. The Civil Service Commission plans to publish the letter in the coming week, they added.

Officials have raised concerns over Palantir’s close relationship with NHS staff. In March, senior NHS official Matthew Swindells resigned after the FT reported he had lobbied local NHS leaders on behalf of Palantir while acting as a joint chair of four NHS trusts.

Swindells is current chair of Carnall Farrar’s advisory board.

Carnall Farrar has received £36.6mn from state-funded NHS organisations, mainly from local hospital trusts and integrated care boards, since the beginning of 2023. It had around 67 employees in 2025, according to latest financial results.

Prophet Margins

There are quotations from Shakespeare in the Book of Mormon because Joseph Smith thought that they were from the Bible, but Pete Hegseth has been known to quote Pulp Fiction on the same misapprehension, which made some of us feel our age as surely as the forthcoming induction of Oasis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Why does Hegseth’s Department of Defense, which is its name, not list everyone in alphabetical order? And how many Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, or members of the Church of the Brethren, are there there in the United States Military? They must have to do a lot of explaining.

Still, that is not for the rest of us to judge, any more than it is for us to judge Hegseth for being on his third marriage, for having impregnated his present wife while still married to his last one, for having had several other affairs, and for having settled a sexual assault lawsuit for $50,000. Or any more than it is for the Secretary of Defense, as such, to judge what is or is not a Christian church. Again I say that he should just have stuck to alphabetical order, and again I ask why he did not.

As to Mormonism itself, the fullness of Christianity does indeed include priesthood, a high theology of baptism, the living Teaching Office of a person on this Earth, an intercessory relationship between those on either side of bodily death, and much else besides.

Righteous Anger

How scintillating must be the conversation between David Lammy and JD Vance. Lammy’s words will no doubt be as effective on Vance as were the Pope’s, while Vance’s intervention will no doubt be as effective in Britain as it was in Hungary. Still, Vance and Lammy could both discuss their mixed-race children, the knowledge of whose existence would presumably cause the combustion of those who were posting on Twitter against the mixed-race nephew of Henry Nowak, who was himself a British-Polish dual national through his father, a Polish immigrant such as they vocally disdained a decade ago.

A similar shift is manifest in the response to the publication in 5Pillars of “A practical guide for Muslims on how to navigate LGBTQ Pride month”. Not very long ago, many of those denouncing that would have agreed with every word of it, albeit while possibly accusing its author and publisher of taqiyya. Nowadays, though, on this as on so many other issues, Eastern European and Latin American Far Rightists have been proved right all along that those in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand were really liberals with what were once the unremarkable Boomer liberal objections to Islam.

Likewise, if the Telegraph Tendency is now opposed to a blasphemy law per se, then it has changed its tune. The old one achieved absolutely nothing, but its abolition in England and Wales as recently as 2008 was decried as the end of civilisation by those who, not without cause, berated today’s South Wales Police for having instructed its Officers to record anti-Islamic conversations as antisocial behaviour incidents. Though again to no effect, there was a blasphemy law in Scotland until 2024, and there is one in Northern Ireland to this day.

Hamit Coskun appealed from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court, which quashed his conviction. Lammy wants to abolish that right. In February, the High Court rejected the Crown Prosecution Service’s appeal to reinstate that conviction. But that was about a blasphemy law only if you worshipped Margaret Thatcher. Rather, the success of Coskun’s first appeal was a good result against the Public Order Act 1986. Who was the Prime Minister in 1986? A couple of years later, her supporters wanted to use that very Act to prosecute people who had set fire to copies of The Satanic Verses. They are very recent converts to free speech, and very selective about it.

Although she has not modified her claim to have participated in Islamic prayers at school, Kemi Badenoch no longer professes to have been “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, presumably Nigeria, having lately told both Piers Morgan and Nick Robinson that she had been born in London. Her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before Thatcher had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch may have been naturalised, and as a Commonwealth citizen she would be eligible to vote and stand in elections in this country and to hold office all the way up to Prime Minister. But that was not how she presented herself until 28 April.

Far from the Conservatives’ having any objection to Commonwealth voting, their only gain in 2024 was Leicester East, Bob Blackman at Harrow East received the highest vote share for any Conservative candidate in the country, he was the only Conservative elected with an absolute majority, and he was one of only three Conservative MPs to be re-elected with increased majorities. Blackman has repeatedly been sworn in as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita, and at the House of Commons he hosted Tapan Ghosh, who was at least as violently opposed to Christians in Bengal as he was to Muslims.

Both Reform UK and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon have also assiduously courted both Hindus and Sikhs as bulwarks against Islam, and Yaxley-Lennon, at least, is still at it from the home in Spain that his Irish passport enabled him to keep without complication. Elon Musk, Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain might consider that there were no stronger opponents of halal meat than the Sikhs, and that the original kirpan was a real sword used defensively against Mughal persecution. In wearing the kirpan today, a Sikh still declares such readiness, willingness and ability in principle, all else having failed. But as carried in Britain today, it literally could not cut cheese, and it is rarely even visible. A desire to criminalise it cannot consistently be articulated by those who would wish the United Kingdom to adopt the laws of the United States with regard to firearms. There is no known case in which the kirpan has been used as an offensive weapon in this country.

Vickrum Digwa’s murder weapon was just one of his and his family’s extensive collection of non-ceremonial bladed articles. Families like that are not peculiar to any one community. That said, the family does belong to the Akali-Nihang warrior order within Sikhism, though not at all essential to it. With its obvious attraction to Digwa’s type of weapons-obsessed young man such as might accrue to Active Clubs and the like, many members of that order reject the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee’s 2001 ban on shaheedi degh, their traditional drink to aid meditation and, interestingly, to make them fiercer in battle. Interestingly, because its base is cannabis.

Yaxley-Lennon and his motley crew visibly prefer cocaine, as was yet again evident at Southampton, where Yaxley-Lennon addressed the same riotous crowd as Laurence Fox, who then proceeded to join Restore, which must now account for him. In between complaining about having been refused service in a pub despite banging on about the fact that he was only 17, Gregory Moffitt has done sterling work in filming the Southampton rioters and posting the footage to social media. Several convictions have already resulted from that. No doubt, there will be more. In England, you have to stay in some form of education or training until you are 18. What form does Moffitt’s take?

In view of the attacks on Sikhs up and down the country, when may we expect a COBRA meeting, and the declaration of a national emergency, as happened in response to two nonfatal stabbings out of the 150 to 212 knife attacks committed per day in the United Kingdom, leading to the deployment of an extra 100 Police Officers who had apparently had nothing else to do, as well as the imposition of further obligations on universities and on cultural institutions, obligations of the kind that otherwise inspired derision from the quarters that were lauding them in that case? At least two gurdwaras in Britain are former synagogues, so perhaps there would be action if someone set fire to those?

It ought not to be a numbers game, but as in the world, there are in this country far more Sikhs than Jews. Yet no one outside their community has grifted himself all the way to the House of Lords as their self-appointed champion. Jews, though, must endure three of those, Rapey Woodcock, Fido Austin (check his hard drive), and John Mann, whose proposed ban on Palestinian flag badges and what-not in the NHS would ban poppies and all sorts, but was really designed to prevent the impactful wearing of NHS uniforms on picket lines and at other demonstrations. That would call for mass defiance.