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praising democracy, constitutionalism and the liberal order....

King Charles’ address to the US Congress highlighted the tension between democratic ideals and inherited power, revealing deeper strains in the western political and economic order.

King Charles’ address to the US Congress was a strange spectacle: a hereditary monarch standing in the chamber of the world’s most powerful republic to praise democracy, constitutionalism and the liberal order.

It was meant to symbolise continuity. It revealed contradiction.

 

Stewart Sweeney

The King’s speech: hereditary power comes to rescue democracy

 

Here was the residue of feudalism including crown, bloodline, inherited office, ceremony, deference being deployed to reassure a declining capitalist hegemony that its democratic mission still had moral force. The old empire came to Washington to steady the new empire.

The irony is not accidental. Liberal capitalism has always lived with these contradictions. It speaks the language of freedom while preserving vast inequalities of wealth, class and power. It celebrates merit while protecting inheritance. It praises democracy while allowing markets, corporations, dynasties, donors and security establishments to shape the real choices available to citizens.

The monarchy survives because capitalism has often found hereditary spectacle useful. It softens power. It wraps hierarchy in pageantry. It turns class rule into tradition. It makes inequality feel ancient, ceremonial and almost harmless.

So when Charles spoke of democracy, alliance and responsibility, he was not merely defending values. He was performing repair work for an exhausted order.

Britain is no longer an empire. The United States is no longer an unquestioned hegemon. The west no longer commands the future as confidently as it once claimed. Yet the symbols remain: crown, Congress, flag, anthem, alliance, civilisation.

This was the deeper meaning of the speech. A king addressed a republic because the republic itself is in trouble. Democracy required reassurance from hereditary authority. Capitalist modernity reached backward into feudal symbolism to steady its forward march.

For Australia, still tied to crown, alliance and AUKUS, the lesson is sharp. We are not merely dependent on America’s power. We remain entangled in the whole Anglo-imperial theatre of legitimacy.

The question is not whether Charles spoke well. He did.

The question is why a democracy in crisis needed a king to remind it what democracy means.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/05/the-kings-speech-hereditary-power-comes-to-rescue-democracy/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

UK for you....

A British court has convicted four members of the pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action over a 2024 raid on an Israeli-linked defense facility in Bristol, which they suspected was supplying the Israeli military with arms.

The case has caused debate over the UK’s role in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, occupation of the West Bank and invasion of Lebanon. The government has been widely criticized for its use of anti-terror legislation to strangle reporting on the case, restrict jury nullification and legal representation, as well as the extraordinary length of pre-trial detention the activists were subject to.

The Palestine Action group has been proscribed in Britain, which has lead to a series of bizarre arrests of demonstrators bearing a placard bearing the group's name at Pro-Palestine events throughout the country. 

The defendants drove a decommissioned prison van through the gates of a plant belonging to Israel's largest defense electronics contractor, Elbit Systems, in August 2024. They destroyed computers, drones, and other equipment, while clashing with security and police, claiming to want “save lives in Palestine.” They caused an estimated £1 million ($1.36 million) in damage. 

Their lawyers said all six defendants admitted to the destruction, but denied criminal damage, telling the jury they aimed to “dismantle drones and weaponry” they believed would be used to kill civilians in Gaza.

The verdict was announced by Woolwich Crown Court, southeast London, on Tuesday. Charlotte Head, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 21, were found guilty of criminal damage; Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, were acquitted. The four convicted face sentencing on June 12.

Corner was separately convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Sgt. Kate Evans. The prosecution said that the accused struck the officer in the back with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. Evans said she was off work for three months and remains on restricted duties more than 20 months later.

Corner, however, told the jury he attacked the officer while in a panic after being pepper-sprayed, and acted to protect a colleague he believed was being seriously hurt. He also stressed that violence during the raid was not pre-planned.

The jury – which was given restricted information throughout the trial – deliberated on the verdict for more than 14 hours before clearing him grievous bodily harm with intent, capping his maximum term at five years rather than a life sentence. The maximum sentence for the other convicts is capped at ten years, but is typically much lower for first-time offenders.

Elbit Systems, which operates more than a dozen sites across the UK, denies manufacturing or exporting weapons to the Israeli military. However, media reports have claimed that components produced by UK-based Elbit subsidiaries have been used by the Israel Defense Forces.

The Filton break-in was among the events that led the British government to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization in 2025. In February 2026, London’s High Court ruled the ban unlawful, though the designation remains in force pending final judgment.

https://www.rt.com/news/639514-pro-palestine-activists-convicted-israel-firm-raid/

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….