Transparency records reveal senior trade officials held dinners and strategy meetings with the notorious lobbying firm even as controversy over its Epstein links deepened, says SOLOMON HUGHES
OVER the last few weeks of war, the Establishment has tried to stamp out all discussion of causes and contexts.
We are expected to believe this is a war without a history, a battle between good and evil, between a civilised West and Russian authoritarianism and depravity.
The war has indeed been precipitated by Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ruling class. Russia’s full-scale invasion is causing devastation and misery. Sending solidarity to the Ukrainian people and demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops have to be the first things we do.
While 69 per cent of Ukrainians want negotiated peace, Western leaders are cynically prolonging the war for their own strategic and economic goals, to the immense detriment of Ukraine and Europe, write BOB ORAM and MAGGIE SIMPSON
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES
As US hegemony crumbles and Trump becomes ever more unpredictable, European powers cling to the pact’s militarist agenda in a bid to disguise their own increasing irrelevance, writes CHRIS NINEHAM
In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it



