Hasn’t the last five years felt like a long time? In the run up to the December 2019 General Election four and a half years ago, I remember using social media to say “do your own research, and go vote for whatever you believe in”. There was, and still is, some reason in that - youth turnout in politics is still so lamentably low, and it’s partly why we see political change that does nothing to help young people. So do please vote on Thursday. But perhaps I was overly naïve in the run-up to that election, because things are a lot different now. In 2019, I was disenfranchised with the political system, cynical of all politicians looking to support their own political careers. After the wave of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected result in 2017, why was it to be too different this time? And would it have had that much of a consequence? The last five years have laid bare everything I could - and maybe should - have learnt before. There are no positive words to describe what Boris Johnson, Liz Tr
As Western governments wilfully ignore events in Palestine, they have lost the trust of their own people - and crucially, the Global South
It does not take a genius to spot the obvious contradictions in geopolitical narratives of Western governments and media evident over the past few decades. The US' post-9/11 botched "war on terror", that created a generation of instability in the Middle East, has served as the driver for European countries to lament the subsequent influx of migrants and legitimise the xenophobic desires of far-right parties. More recently, the same states have rightfully isolated Russia for their invasion of Ukraine - despite the similarity to their atrocities after 2001. Yet in the past three months, they have managed to brazenly exhibit their hypocrisy to an extent that I, and evidently many others, find astounding. And any long-time readers will know I've been more than happy to highlight duplicity of Western countries on this blog, so that should tell you something about how bizarre recent events feel. Source: UNRWA, via The Wire In response to the militant group Hamas' terror