David S. Moon

MI5 impeded inquiry into Stakeknife agent who murdered for IRA, says official report Nine-year investigation paints highly critical picture of agency’s handling of double agent

Based upon the fallout of every other major inquiry in British history can assume nobody of any significance is going to suffer anything beyond the mildest discomfort here.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Three protestors arrested after Tory MP Ben Howlett Peter with eggs

Ben Howlett, there’s a walk down memory lane: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Young Zack confirmed as a pro-wrestling fan. But what about adult Zack? People need to know.

A picture of words on a chalkboard - comprising what looks like a mind map - inside an office on Epstein's island estate is leading to speculation about what the illegible and redacted words are, and what the message means. Among the visible and legible words are: "power", "deception", "mirror in face", "time", "intellectual", "political", "music", "truth", and "appears!" Lines also connect some of the words together.

Incredible analysis from the national broadcaster

I’m currently reading about ‘The Stalker Affair’ & related investigations into a UK ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in Northern Ireland targeting unarmed IRA members.

If only everyone had realised you could simply execute unarmed men on video & justify it by saying “they must die”. No need for shenanigans!

The Fascist Party in Wales? | UWP In this challenging work, Wales's most prominent political commentator assesses the truth of the historical charges that senior figures among Welsh nationalists were sympathetic towards Fascism during...

I only knew this because of Richard Wyn Jones’s excellent “The Fascist Party in Wales?” www.uwp.co.uk/book/the-fas...

Trump's playlist includes the Undertaker's theme before his remarks at the McDonald's Summit

That is fascinating - a little like trying to leave Audible and they offer you an extra free credit to stay… or “one month free”.

A sort of release valve for disappointment.

This is why I remember arguing that it was a mistake for Compass to open itself up to non-Labour members - because ‘the Party’ would immediately stop listening and it would lose its influence. And it did.

It’s not principle: pluralism may have been the right goal. But that’s just how Labour works.

Increasingly few people identify with a party - they don’t *feel* “I’m Labour”, etc.

A fascinating question is how quickly that sense drains away after someone exits the party & its parasocial elements. To not belong to the ‘imagined community’, both alive and dead.

And once drained, what remains

I’d also be interested to see polling differentiating between the willingness of ex-Labour voters to hold their noses and vote Labour vs. ex-Labour members to return to the fold.

For many (not all), leaving Labour is a last resort, deep decision. A key cord is cut & that release can feel visceral.

Another thing people don’t get about Labour IMO is the innate, tribal dismissal, at all levels, of criticism from outside the party. If you’re ‘not Labour’, then tbh most won’t cares about your opinion.

Even for your average member, the feeling is ‘if you won’t work to fix this inside, then STFU’.

I also understand why people stay, ofc. The grand history of ‘the Movement’, with its iconic figures and moments is a powerful emotive link and core to many if not most members’ self-understanding. “It’s our party”, etc.

If you leave, the pull remains strong - reflexively saying “we” in critiques

The cognitive dissonance of your basic Labour Party member - mainly social democrat w. liberal social views - during the Blair years was tempered by the fact there was a positive narrative in public service investment & poverty reduction. I can’t imagine what it’s like now with nothing to hold onto.

Many professional Labour watchers expressing incredulity at them pursuing racist policies for no clear electoral gain. Born & bred in this tendency, I get it. The standard view is Labour does racist things as triangulation.

But maybe (😱) they’re doing it bcs they do actually like/want these things.

So, it seems that the one rich perverted guy who *wasn’t* emailing Epstein was Vince McMahon.

Yet in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt, it was liberals, not MAGA believers, who pushed the most viral ‘bullshit’ conspiracy: that the entire event was staged by the Trump campaign. In the shooting’s wake the top two trending topics on X were “Trump” and “Staged” with a surprising number amongst these claims specifically accusing Trump of ‘blading’1, ‘like he was in WWE’.2 As one poster summed it up: ‘they staged that and he bladed when they jumped on him. i’m familiar with this WWE ass script’.3 What is blading, what does it have to do with WWE and what does its referencing here tell us about US politics, specifically regarding an underlying violence permeating it? Blading, as the editors of Performance and Professional Wrestling describe, is the act ‘wherein a wrestler will discreetly make a cut in their forehead with an otherwise concealed razor blade. The wound is self-inflicted and the actual cutting of flesh is hidden from the audience, but the blood that flows is the wrestler’s real blood’ (Chow, et al. 2017: 2). As a performative act, blading points to the strange, liminal nature of pro-wrestling, in which the fight is “fake”, but the razor and the blood are certainly real. Performed violence (in pro-wrestling lingo, ‘worked’ violence) underpinned by real violence (or ‘shoot’ violence). The very idea and the subsequent attempt to disentangle the two is something that links the conspiracy theorist and the pro-wrestling fan. In both domains, the tension between the visible and the hidden creates a dual-layered narrative that fuels public scepticism and fascination: Were Oswald’s three famous shots in Dealey Plaza a ‘shoot,’ or were they ‘worked’? The ‘blading’ accusations – that perfect mix of conspiracy with pro-wrestling – arguably reflect a broader way people engage with contemporary politics. Here we must reach for the pro-wrestling specific concept of ‘kayfabe’.

Yes! I wrote about this! (Chapter 7 of the linked magazine)

www.bath.ac.uk/publications...

Senior Labour figures tell Keir Starmer to stop making mistakes 2 months later Starmer to face PMQs as reports suggest No 10 briefings about leadership threats has backfired

He had one job

The Maccabi Tel Aviv event embodies what I call ‘Kayfabe politics’. Key to Kayfabe is not simply those performing in the ring pretending something false is real (here politicians) but how spectators (media +) also ‘keep Kayfabe’, playing along as fans-who-believe to sustain the spectacle they enjoy.

I missed this article at the time - further use of Kayfabe as the lens to understand Trump-world.

Hat-tip @pabloredux.bsky.social !

In a tale as old as time, moderate socdems & liberals arm the Freikorps to defeat the Red Menace and are shocked when the guns are turned on them.

Image of Gavin Newsom tweet of a video where his face is superimposed on HHH giving Trump ‘the pedigree’

2017: Trump tweeted out the video off him ‘clotheslining’ Vince McMahon - with the CNN logo replacing his head. One of those key “everything is becoming wrestling” media report moments.

2025: Newsom is putting out videos of him giving Trump the ‘pedigree’. 🇺🇸 🤷🏻

www.wrestlezone.com/news/1589184...

Business Insider article: Palantir CEO Alex Karp declared his company 'anti-woke' on Monday's earnings call. Karp also scrutinized border policies and said Palantir works with ICE and Israel.

On Palantir

April: Ambassador Peter Mandelson arranged for Keir Starmer to have an “informal visit” (unminuted) to Palantir, a client of his lobbying firm Global Counsel

11 Sept: UK Gov announced a strategic partnership with Palantir

18 Sept: Mandelson sacked 🤷🏻

goodlawproject.org/mandelsons-e...

I am reminded of the fact that as LOTO Keir Starmer whipped Labour MPs to abstain on the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act 2021, which allows undercover state actors to commit crimes when covertly infiltrating organisations.

Triple H Reveals Similarities Between Donald Trump And The Rock Triple H has explained how the similarities with the Rock helped Donald Trump excel in his political career and become US president

Triple H is chatting about Trump again:

“Donald Trump was very good in our world of WWE because he was okay to be himself. […] But he’s charismatic. He’s larger than life. He’s not afraid to say what’s in front of him, right or wrong. The Rock is the same way.”

www.sescoops.com/news/wwe/tri...

So Starmer *knew* Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s after he was jailed for sex crimes - but *didn’t* know about the emails where Mandelson treated him as innocent.

So the logic below was right: “it was fine if he believed Epstein was guilty but not if innocent” FFS

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Israeli military's top lawyer resigns over leak of video allegedly showing abuse of Palestinian detainee Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was facing an investigation into how the video at a detention facility holding detainees from Gaza was leaked last year.

If you read the headline only you’d probably assume the resignation was related to an investigation into the abuse (rape) of a detainee - but no, it is the *leaking* of the abuse, not the abuse itself, that is being investigated as a crime. Ofc.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

After posting this short thread on Kincora I thought, “what’s up with Colin Wallace?”

And it turns out I missed the recent news that the MoD lost or destroyed his personal files in 2023 - the year Wallace began legal proceedings against them.

Ah, Brit Pol!

www.declassifieduk.org/military-los...

The Westminster child abuse ‘coverup’: how much did MPs know? Claims that the establishment covered up a paedophile ring at the heart of Westminster are finally being investigated, decades after rumours first surfaced. Michael White, who was a parliamentary repo...

I am reminded of Michael White’s claim regarding an MP in the 1980s:

‘“Whatever you do, don’t go near the Kincora boy’s home scandal [in Belfast], it’s a can of worms from which you won’t escape,” one probing MP was warned only last year. He took the advice.’

www.theguardian.com/politics/201...