Michael Sweeney

"This whole issue has been toxified by people primarily on the hard right." Labour MP Steve Reed says the asylum housing debate in places like Piddington has been stirred up by right-wing parties and led to "racial hatred". #Newsnight

The Head of Investigations at Byline Times is Nafeez Ahmed. Here he is claiming that the government hasn’t “proved its case” on Osama bin Laden and 911. That’s who leads their ‘investigative journalism’. Just FYI.

The curious case of Mohammed Alfatih Naim is worrying evidence that Britain really has lost the plot. His father was a senior Hamas politician. He’d been a bodyguard for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He’s been detained in Egypt on suspicion of helping Hamas smuggling. He entered Britain illegally in 2014. Yet a year later we granted him asylum. Then British citizenship. Facing trial for an altercation with a bailiff at his Brum home, some numpty of a magistrate ruled he couldn’t be named for 100 years. Thankfully The Sunday Times challenged that, which is why he can now be named. He is now facing extradition to Germany, where prosecutors accuse him of orchestrating a planned massacre of Jews in Berlin and Vienna last year. This is how he thanks us for asylum and citizenship. Which he was given under a Tory government. But has this Labour one, as it welcomes ‘refugees’ from Gaza, learned any lessons. Not if we’ve lost the plot.

Unbelievably, Iran (yes, Iran) has just been elected to the UN Committee that sets the priorities for women’s rights, counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. This, the country with an almost uniquely violent record of brutalising women, executing peaceful female protesters and of course sponsoring very widespread terrorism. Equally unbelievably, the UK nominated Iran and although the voting is secret, we must assume it subsequently voted for Iran in the General Assembly. This is the same UK that is nominally run by PM Andy Burnham who declared only a few weeks ago that “we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them.” If the young women of Iran who dare to remove their headscarves, or sing, or engage in peaceful protest to press for basic democracy aren’t the underdog in their battle with a vicious and murderous regime… who then is an underdog?  I can’t exaggerate how ashamed I am of my country. I’m sickened and repulsed by what it has become. I barely recognise it. Burnham should hang his head in utter shame. And as for the UN, it has come to embody institutional corruption and gaslighting on a global scale.  It put China, Qatar and Cuba in charge of the body charged with protecting human rights worldwide. It put China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan (all of which crush/ban NGOs in their own countries) in charge of the body that decides which civil-society groups and NGOs get UN accreditation and access.  It put Syria (under Assad) in charge the body that promotes education, culture, and press freedom. How long must this continue? The UN has no credibility whatsoever and should be stripped back to the basics- a debating chamber for the big global issues of the day. And nothing more.  How can anyone defend this?

With my hero @jessphillips who should be Prime Minister.

When that idiot at The Atlantic with the face like a sourdough bake with malfunctioning yeast pipes up, feel free to post this video in her replies

I haven't been on this site for a bit. But I haven't seen anyone share the photo the New Statesman staff staged in 2013 of Russell Brand as Christ, and themselves as his disciples. It seems to have been scrubbed from the web. It made me angry then and it makes me angry now.

Depressing to see media mission to discredit someone who stops playing their game & uses celebrity to help others. Keep going @rustyrockets.

He asks why Egypt did not open the border. A question unasked by the U.N., UK, USA, France, the BBC, SKY, NYT, the Vatican etc. and he answers the question - because Egypt knew what was inside.

Mehdi Hasan has TWO WORDS for all the Abdul HATERS: “CRY MORE!—I just wanted to get that off my chest because I’ve been F*CKED OFF with these people for so long!”