Labour Heartlands

08/01/2026

What's your take...

08/01/2026

World-renowned medical journal, "The Lancet" has published data concluding that US-imposed sanctions cause the deaths of more than 564,000 people each year.

More than half of the dead are children under the age of 5

Why isn't this front page news in Western Media?

08/01/2026

Airstrip One on Standby: When the Gunships Arrived, We Knew What Would Follow

The gunships arrived first. That should have told us everything.

Between 3 and 6 January, at least eleven US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlifters touched down at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

These were not routine training flights. Most originated from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known colloquially as the Night Stalkers. Two AC-130J Ghostrider gunships landed at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60M Black Hawks, the modified helicopters that belong to America’s most elite rapid-response forces, were reportedly unloaded and staged in British hangars.

The kind of kit that wins wars. Or starts them…

By Wednesday morning, 190 miles off Iceland’s southern coast, we learned what it was all for. US Navy SEALs, flown by those same Night Stalkers, boarded and seized the Russian-flagged oil tanker Marinera in international waters. The vessel had been pursued across the Atlantic for over two weeks. Russian naval assets, including a submarine, shadowed the chase. The boarding was successful. No shots were fired.

But the absence of gunfire does not mean the absence of escalation.

An island re-tasked

https://labourheartlands.com/airstrip-one-on-standby/

This is the Airstrip One arrangement in practice. Not formal vassalage, but functional subordination. Decisions with potentially catastrophic consequences are

07/01/2026

🇻🇪⚓ **PIRACY BY ANOTHER NAME: HOW POWER GRABS BECOME “LAW” ⚓🇺🇸

What happens when the world’s richest superpower starts claiming the right to seize other nations’ oil on the high seas, and calls it justice?

That’s exactly what’s happening right now. The U.S. has boarded and taken control of Venezuelan oil tankers, not because of some rogue sailors, but in the name of sanctions enforcement and “security”, even as Caracas howls about piracy.

Let’s be clear: theft without lawful authority has one name, piracy, and yet the same logic driving old-school buccaneers seems to have been repackaged as policy.

Venezuela’s legislature has responded by passing a 20-year prison law to fight what it sees as blockades and piracy against its merchant fleet, because this isn’t a cartoon dispute; it’s a geopolitical escalation.

💡 When the “rules-based order” means plunder by another name, it’s time to read the fine print.

📌 Read the full story here and decide for yourself: is this enforcement… or empire in disguise?

👉 Link in bio / below, don’t let power rewrite the meaning of justice.

https://labourheartlands.com/piracy-by-another-name/

Alexei Zhuravlev, first deputy head of Russia's State Duma Defence Committee, has already called for "torpedo attacks and the sinking of a couple of American

07/01/2026

Steve Witkoff comes as close as you can get to admitting the quiet part out loud: was not just devastated by war, it is now being positioned for acquisition.

What follows looks less like reconstruction and more like asset-stripping in slow motion.

This is straight out of Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism playbook. In the aftermath of shock war, collapse, displacement public institutions are weakened, populations are disoriented, and democratic oversight evaporates. Into that vacuum step private corporations, investment funds, and “partners”, ready to buy cheap, rebuild dear, and extract long-term profit.

We’ve seen this before.
Iraq.

New Orleans after Katrina.

Now Ukraine.

Public services are earmarked for privatisation.
, infrastructure, , and housing become “opportunities”

Reconstruction is handed to private capital, often with minimal scrutiny and guaranteed returns.

When BlackRock and other financial giants talk about “rebuilding Ukraine”, they aren’t talking about sovereignty or democracy. They’re talking about return on investment.

This isn’t humanitarianism.
It’s war as a business model.
Destruction first.
Acquisition second.
Profit third.
That’s not a conspiracy.
It’s a pattern.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

07/01/2026

The Carve-Up Begins: The Birth of a New Totalitarian Order?

From Caracas to Greenland: The Return of Raw Resource Imperialism
When the Chinese state broadcaster’s former interpreter warns that his country “will not allow you to fire the second shot,” we should perhaps stop pretending this is normal diplomatic theatre. When the President of the United States threatens military force to seize Greenland while his special forces kidnap a sovereign head of state for the crime of nationalising oil that was, in living memory, his country’s own property, we might consider that something fundamental has shifted.

The question is not whether we stand at a dangerous juncture. The question is what kind of danger we face. Is this the prelude to a third world war between nuclear powers? Or is it something potentially more insidious: the emergence of a new global order in which the major powers, having tired of the pretence of international law, simply divide the world into spheres of influence whilst working-class communities in every nation bear the costs?

Read more...

https://labourheartlands.com/the-carve-up-begins/

When the Chinese state broadcaster's former interpreter warns that his country "will not allow you to fire the second shot," we should perhaps stop pretending

07/01/2026

The New World Order Is Taking Shape , and It’s Not Subtle

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has just signalled a fundamental shift in Europe’s role on the global stage.

🇩🇪 Merz says Europe , led by Germany must take responsibility for Ukraine’s security and the security of the continent.

This comes after recent talks of a Coalition of the Willing and agreements on robust security guarantees.

This is not just rhetoric. Germany, long cautious about military leadership since 1945, is now openly discussing deployment to NATO borders and taking responsibility for broader European defence.

At the same time:

• The German economy is described as “very critical” and in need of decisive action.

• Berlin is stepping up support for Ukraine while negotiating peace frameworks

• European leaders are wrestling with the implications of US policy unpredictability and growing global competition.

🛡️ Europe asserting itself militarily
📉 Economic strain at home
🌍 Shifts away from US security guarantees
⚠️ Rising geopolitical tension on multiple fronts

This isn’t the old post-Cold War order.
This isn’t just about Ukraine.
This is about how power, security, and alliances are being re-written in real time.

History isn’t on pause. It’s being rewritten, and the pieces are now being set in place.

06/01/2026

📍 Are we entering the most dangerous moment for humanity since 1945?

Wars on the Russian border. A presidency threatening force in Greenland. Venezuela on the verge of US annexation. And now China issuing explicit strategic warnings to the United States.

🇨🇳📷 CHINA WARNS THE UNITED STATES “If you want war, you will get war; if you want to destroy China, you will be destroyed. China will not fire the first shot, but China will not allow you to fire the second shot” - Victor Gao, President of China Energy Security Institute

06/01/2026

This is why politics now sells comfort, not courage.

The crowd does not seek truth.
It seeks reassurance.

Promise it miracles, and it will applaud.
Confront it with reality, and it will demand punishment.
Illusion feels generous; truth feels hostile.

Masses amplify emotion, not judgment.
Responsibility dissolves into noise,
and conscience is replaced by belonging.
What flatters survives.
What unsettles is expelled.

Truth has never ruled by numbers.
It stands exposed, often alone,
not because it is weak,
but because it refuses to lie in order to be loved.

And that is why it is feared by power...

Le Bon

Kierkegaard

06/01/2026

Keir Starmer claims he is tackling the cost-of-living crisis.
His evidence is a freeze on rail fares and millions of discounted train tickets.

But most people don’t commute by train.
What we all do is pay electricity and gas bills.
What we all face is higher prices in every shop, driven by inflated energy costs and supermarket profiteering.

You don’t tackle the cost-of-living crisis with discounted train tickets while energy companies and supermarkets profiteer on every household bill and every weekly shop.

That’s not relief. That’s fussy footing around the real issue, of profiteering.

Since the energy crisis began, UK energy companies have made over £125 billion in profits, with around £30 billion in 2024 alone. That’s money flowing out to shareholders while households are told to tighten their belts.

At the same time, supermarkets are doing just fine. Tesco reported £2.3 billion in pre-tax profits, while major retailers across the sector continue to post profits in the hundreds of millions and pay out dividends.

Discounted train tickets don’t touch that.

Until energy and food profiteering is confronted head-on, this is not relief. It’s avoidance.

06/01/2026

When Contracts Trump Carriers: How Beijing Turned Trump’s Venezuela Raid Into the Opening Shot of a New Cold War

Venezuela Raid: China’s ‘Lawfare’ Response and a New World Order comes with a $105 Billion Question: Can Contracts Survive Regime Change?

What Trump may not have grasped is that he fired the starting gun on something far more consequential than another Latin American adventure. Hours after Maduro’s capture, China’s foreign ministry issued what amounted to a declaration of economic war: not with tanks or missiles, but with lawyers, arbitration tribunals, and the full machinery of international commercial law.

Never mind, nobody seriously believes that Washington’s midnight raid on Caracas was about co***ne or that Nicolás Maduro will get a fair trial.

This isn’t about one oil-rich dictatorship. This is about whether the 21st century will be governed by enforceable rules or by whoever controls the most firepower. And for once, the question may not be settled in Washington’s favour.

The $105 Billion Question Nobody in Westminster Wants to Ask

https://labourheartlands.com/when-contracts-trump-carriers/

In the early hours of 3 January 2026, over 150 American aircraft bombed Venezuela's capital while Delta Force operators plucked Nicolás Maduro from his

05/01/2026

Once again, Labour has shown just how subservient it is to Trump. It’s embarrassing for the United Kingdom, and frankly embarrassing on the world stage. We are starting to look less like a sovereign country and more like a client state to the US rising imperium.

The refusal to clearly condemn Trump’s brazen assault on international law, laid bare in interviews like the one on Sophie Ridge, tells you everything you need to know. When asked a straightforward question, Labour figures duck, weave, and hide behind platitudes about the importance of “the rules-based order” while refusing to say whether those rules have actually been broken.

That isn’t diplomacy. It’s cowardice.

If the rules-based order only applies when it’s convenient, then it doesn’t exist at all. And Labour’s unwillingness to say so openly is helping to hasten its collapse.

Figures like Mike Tapp perfectly illustrate the problem. Tough in their rhetoric against the weak. Utterly pliant when confronted by real power. Strong only where there’s no cost, and silent when it matters.

That is not standing up for Britain.
It’s not standing up for allies.
And it certainly isn’t standing up for international law.

A Labour Party that behaves like this doesn’t need rebranding.
It needs clearing out.