Yearly Archives: 2024

The Bolivian people defeated another coup

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Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Bolivian President Luis Arce addresses the crowd in Plaza Murillo. Photo: Ivan Bellot

“No one can take away our democracy!”

Bolivian President Luis Arce addressed the people of Bolivia on the afternoon of Wednesday June 26 to declare that the attempted military coup had been defeated.

On the afternoon of June 26, hundreds of military personnel had mobilized under the order of General Juan Zúñiga in the center of La Paz and surrounded the Quemado Palace (the government palace) ahead of a ministerial meeting. They proceeded to break down the main door to the palace with a tank and attempted to enter by force.

Zúñiga then announced that the military personnel would mobilize to the prison and free Bolivia’s “political prisoners” including Jeanine Áñez and Luis Fernando Camacho who are imprisoned over their involvement in the 2019 coup against Evo Morales. Áñez later wrote on X that she rejected the attempt by the military to destroy constitutional order and that “MAS with Arce and Evo should leave through the ballot box in 2025. Bolivians will defend democracy.”

Former Bolivian president Evo Morales immediately alerted to the development and called on the Bolivian people to mobilize in defense of democracy.

Bolivia’s foreign minister Celinda Sosa said in a video message, “The Plurinational State of Bolivia denounces to the international community the irregular mobilizations of some units of the Bolivian Army that attack democracy, peace, and security of the country. We call on the international community, on the Bolivian population to make sure that democratic values are respected.”

While the army attempted to storm the palace, hundreds of Bolivian people began to mobilize to demand that democracy be respected and the army stand down. These protests with members of mass organizations, trade unions, and the general population were met with heavy repression by the military police officers who shot tear gas indiscriminately and blocked off access to the Plaza Murillo.

The Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB) representing over 2 million workers, declared an indefinite general strike and “the mobilization of all social and union organizations to the city La Paz to defend and restore the constitutional order and our legally established government in Bolivia.”

After an hour of the military encirclement of the Palace, Bolivian President Luis Arce held a press conference to name José Sánchez as the new military command to replace Zúñiga. Sánchez ordered the military personnel that had mobilized to the center to return to their stations to avoid any bloodshed of the Bolivian people and affirmed that he supported the legal and constitutional government of Luis Arce.

A video also emerged of Arce confronting Zúñiga in the palace and firmly telling him to stand down and respect democracy. Shortly after the pronouncement by Arce and Sánchez, the tanks that had initially blocked off the plaza and surrounded the palace began to withdraw, and thousands of people flooded the area to affirm their rejection of the attempted coup and support to Arce. “Arce you’re not alone! Long live democracy!” they declared.

The attempted coup in Bolivia had international repercussions. Political leaders across Latin America and the Caribbean vehemently rejected the attempt by a fraction of the Army to subvert Bolivian democracy and celebrated the swift defeat of the attempt. Many highlighted that this took place just five years after the coup d’état which took Evo Morales out of office and installed the de facto leader Jeanine Áñez. After a year of resistance and violent repression to anti-coup protests, the Bolivian people restored democracy and elected Luis Arce.

Xiomara Castro, the president of Honduras and the pro-tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), called on all the presidents of CELAC member countries to “condemn the fascism that today threatens democracy in Bolivia and demand the respect of civil power and the Constitution.”

The International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) wrote in a statement, “The heroic people of Bolivia have successfully defeated the coup! The people’s movements mobilized to defend the democratic government of President Luis Arce. We will always stand with democracy and sovereignty—today we saw the Bolivian people rise up against the Bolivian elites and their US masters’ attempts to destabilize the country.”

COB and other organizations in Bolivia have celebrated the people’s victory but also called on the Bolivian people and the international community to continue their vigil and state of alert against any further coup attempts.

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingThe Bolivian people defeated another coup

JULIAN ASSANGE: FREEDOM THIS TIME, NO THANKS TO THE MEDIA

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-freedom-this-time-no-thanks-to-the-media/

Assange arrives in Australia. (Photo: AAP / Alamy)

It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Assange behind bars. Their villainy will soon be erased because they write the script about what’s going on in the world.

…

Everything Assange had warned the US wanted to do to him was proved correct over the next five years, as he languished in Belmarsh entirely cut off from the outside world. 

No one in our political or media class appeared to notice, or could afford to admit, that events were playing out exactly as the founder of Wikileaks had for so many years predicted they would – and for which he was, at the time, so roundly ridiculed.

Nor was that same political-media class prepared to factor in other vital context showing that the US was not trying to enforce some kind of legal process, but that the extradition case against Assange was entirely about wreaking vengeance – and making an example of the Wikileaks founder to deter others from following him in shedding light on US state crimes.

That included revelations that, true to form, the CIA, which was exposed as a rogue foreign intelligence agency in 250,000 embassy cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, had variously plotted to assassinate him or kidnap him off the streets of London. 

Other evidence came to light that the CIA had been carrying out extensive spying operations on the embassy, recording Assange’s every move, including his meetings with his doctors and lawyers. 

That fact alone should have seen the US case thrown out by the British courts. But the UK judiciary was looking over its shoulder, towards Washington, far more than it was abiding by its own statute books.

Media no watchdog

Western governments, politicians, the judiciary, and the media all failed Assange. Or rather, they did what they are actually there to do: keep the rabble – that is, you and me – from knowing what they are really up to. 

Their job is to build narratives suggesting that they know best, that we must trust them, that their crimes, such as those they are supporting right now in Gaza, are actually not what they look like, but are, in fact, efforts in very difficult circumstances to uphold the moral order, to protect civilisation. 

For this reason, there is a special need to identify the critical role played by the media in keeping Assange locked up for so long.

The truth is, with a properly adversarial media playing the role it declares for itself, as a watchdog on power, Assange could never have been disappeared for so long. He would have been freed years ago. It was the media that kept him behind bars. 

The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the US and British governments carefully crafted against Assange.

Even now, as he is reunited with his family, the BBC and others are peddling the same long-discredited lies. 

Those include the constantly repeated claim by journalists that he faced “rape charges” in Sweden that were supposedly dropped. Here is the BBC making this error once again in its reporting this week. 

In fact, Assange never faced more than a “preliminary investigation”, one the Swedish prosecutors repeatedly dropped for lack of evidence. The investigation, we now know, was revived and sustained for so long not because of Sweden but chiefly because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, then led by Sir Keir Starmer (now the leader of the Labour party), insisted on it dragging on. 

Starmer made repeated trips to Washington during this period, when the US was trying to find a pretext to lock Assange away for political crimes, not sexual ones. But as happened so often in the Assange case, all the records of those meetings were destroyed by the British authorities. 

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-freedom-this-time-no-thanks-to-the-media/

Julian Assange speaks at London's Ecuadorian Embassy
Julian Assange speaks at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy
Continue ReadingJULIAN ASSANGE: FREEDOM THIS TIME, NO THANKS TO THE MEDIA

Jeremy Corbyn: I was asked to ‘automatically support’ Israel action

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dizzy: There’s no need to ask that of Zionist Keif Starmer

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn (technically not currently an MP since Parliament is in recess), former leader of the Labour Party

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24402478.corbyn-says-asked-automatically-support-israel

JEREMY Corbyn has claimed he was once asked to give a “blanket undertaking” that he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes while Labour leader.

Corbyn – who is running as an independent candidate at the General Election – said during an interview with Declassified UK co-founder Matt Kennard that he was confronted with the request at an “extremely hostile” meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee and declined.

He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?

“And I said no, I will give no such undertaking, because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created such incredible stress.

“By the way I’ve been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank.”

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https://www.thenational.scot/news/24402478.corbyn-says-asked-automatically-support-israel

Jeremy Corbyn makes the claim in this interview (50 min long)

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn: I was asked to ‘automatically support’ Israel action

‘Clean Power Not Paddy Power’: Greenpeace protester climbs on to Tory campaign battle bus

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https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4328144/clean-power-paddy-power-greenpeace-protester-climbs-tory-campaign-battle-bus

Image: Credit: Kristian Buus / Greenpeace

Climate activist targets Conservative election bus in protest at the government’s failure to adopt more ambitious climate policies

A Greenpeace activist climbed on to the top of the Conservative’s campaign bus this afternoon and unfurled a banner reading ‘Clean Power Not Paddy Power’, in protest at both the election date betting scandal engulfing the government and the Prime Ministers’ failure to deliver more ambitious climate policies.  

Amy Rugg-Easey was able to get on to the bus at a campaign stop near Ollerton in Nottinghamshire, ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s appearance in the last televised debate of the campaign, which is being hosted by BBC in Nottingham this evening.

“We’ve had enough of this government lurching from one scandal to the next, while gambling with our future,” Rugg-Easey said in a statement. “We need clean power, not Paddy Power.

“Fourteen years of Conservative governments has left this country broken. Sunak has gone backwards on climate action, ditching key pledges and promising to ‘max out’ the climate-wrecking oil and gas that are the cause of the cost-of-living crisis and our unaffordable bills. Our rivers are awash with sewage, and our economy, NHS and public services are on their knees. 

“Enough is enough. We’ve climbed onto Sunak’s battle bus today to remind the British public that it is the Conservative government’s consistent failure to deliver greener, fairer policies that has created the mess we’re in. Don’t back the wrong horse – a vote for the climate is a vote for a better future.”

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https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4328144/clean-power-paddy-power-greenpeace-protester-climbs-tory-campaign-battle-bus

Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Continue Reading‘Clean Power Not Paddy Power’: Greenpeace protester climbs on to Tory campaign battle bus

The Gaza Project Exposes Israel’s ‘Chilling Pattern’ of Killing Journalists

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Forbidden Stories and its Gaza Project partners investigated Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and elsewhere.
 (Illustration: Forbidden Stories/The Gaza Project)

“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” said one campaigner. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”

With more than 100 media professionals—nearly all of them Palestinian—killed in Gaza since October, a group of 50 reporters from 13 international organizations this week shared the results of a new investigative journalism initiative aimed at exposing the deadly toll Israel’s onslaught has taken on those reporting it to the world.

The Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured since October 7,” when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others kidnapped.

“Faced with what is being reported as the record number of journalists killed, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists,” the group said

“For four months, Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated the circumstances of their killings, as well as those who have been targeted, threatened, and injured in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added. “These investigations point to a chilling pattern and suggest some journalists may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”

Gaza Project member Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned what it called an “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families,” noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.

“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said of the ongoing war. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”

Basel Khair Al-Din, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza who believes he was targeted by a drone strike while wearing a press vest, said, “Whereas this press vest was supposed to identify and protect us, according to international laws, international conventions, and the Geneva Conventions, it is now a threat to us.”

“It’s this vest that almost got us killed, as has happened to so many of our fellow journalists and media workers,” he added.

Groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Italian Agence-France Presse journalist whose legs were blown off in the attack.

Reuters determined that an Israeli tank crew “fired two shells in quick succession” at the journalists, who HRW said were “clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes.” HRW “found no evidence of a military target near the journalists’ location.”

Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike was “likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime.”

Asa Kasher, the lead author of the IDF’s Code of Ethics, told Forbidden Stories that “no member of the press should have been killed under normal circumstances of hostilities in Gaza.”

“It shouldn’t happen, even a single one,” he added. “It’s illegal. It’s unethical. The person who does it should be brought to court.”

Israel’s alleged deliberate targeting of journalists is part of the evidence presented in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Separately, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation in the case of the Israelis and extermination, rape, and torture in the case of Hamas.

The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders last month filed a third ICC complaint alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 37,718 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed during Israel’s 264-day assault on Gaza, which has also left more than 86,300 people wounded and 11,000 others missing and feared dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of homes and other bombed-out buildings.

Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, and the Israeli siege on Gaza has caused widespread—and deadly—starvation and what the head of the United Nations food agency called a “full-blown famine” in northern parts of the strip.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingThe Gaza Project Exposes Israel’s ‘Chilling Pattern’ of Killing Journalists