Earlier today Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF’s) Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Director of Operations and Campaigns Rebecca Vincent arrived to visit Julian Assange inside Belmarsh prison but were denied access at the last minute.
RSF’s representatives had been granted permission to visit Assange before the four-year anniversary of his imprisonment in Belmarsh, where he has been held since 11 April 2019.
Christophe Deloire, RSF Secretary-General, said: “We are deeply disappointed by the arbitrary decision of the Belmarsh Prison Governor to prevent us from visiting Julian Assange, despite following all relevant prison procedures and rules. Julian Assange has the right to receive visitors in prison, and we are legitimate to visit him as a press freedom NGO. We call for an urgent reversal of this decision and to be allowed visitation access without further delay.”
Rebecca Vincent, RSF Director of Operations, said: “This is the latest in a long series of ludicrous obstacles that we have faced over the past three years in campaigning for the release of Julian Assange. At every level, British authorities have defaulted to secrecy and exclusion rather than allowing normal engagement around this case – from refusing to accept RSF petitions, to making it nearly impossible to access court, and now this. What do they have to hide? Regardless, we continue our campaign to #FreeAssange.“
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson commented on the news: “A press freedom NGO barred from visiting a political prisoner and a journalist (after visit had previously been confirmed). This is not Russia, China or North Korea but the United Kingdom. Remember this next time the UK Government tries to lecture you on lack of press freedom elsewhere.”
Minister had secret meeting with oil-backed think tank that warned UK government not to listen to climate scientists
Badenoch has previously said she would delay the UK’s net zero goals. 06/09/2022. London, United Kingdom. Official Cabinet Portrait; Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade – Kemi Badenoch.
Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch met secretly with a US think tank that has taken millions of dollars from climate denial groups and claimed it would be “irresponsible” for the UK to follow climate science, openDemocracy can reveal.
Badenoch met representatives of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which campaigners say has a long track record of “distorting” climate science, for dinner in November while on an official visit to the US.
Scant details of the meeting were published by Badenoch’s department last week, as the minister’s Indo-Pacific trade deal faced criticism for “making a mockery” of UK pledges to tackle deforestation.
The AEI, which also met with Liz Truss in 2018 when she was trade secretary, has sown doubt over climate change science, describing a landmark 2021 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “alarmist” and “deeply dubious”.
The IPCC report was produced by the world’s leading climate scientists and concluded that the world was approaching “irreversible” levels of global heating, with catastrophic impacts rapidly becoming inevitable.
But Benjamin Zycher and Peter J Wallison, senior fellows at the AEI, played down its findings by claiming that “we don’t understand all the elements in the complex climate system – the effects of clouds alone are understood poorly”.
The authors, neither of whom have backgrounds in science, added that it would be “beyond irresponsible” for governments to adopt policies on the basis of the report.
The think tank also separately criticised COP 26, the annual UN climate conference hosted by the UK in 2021, with one of its authors claiming that delegates spread a “false narrative” that urgent action is required to tackle climate change.
Researchers have found that AEI has received more than $330m in donations from climate denial groups since 2008, including $4.8m from US oil giant ExxonMobil.
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson told openDemocracy that Badenoch meets “all sorts of stakeholders that have different views – it’s no different to what it’s like in the UK”.
“There are various think tanks in Westminster that have sceptical views about climate change and ministers meet these people all the time,” they added.
The department has refused a Freedom of Information request by openDemocracy for minutes of the meeting with the AEI on grounds that there were “closed discussions under the Chatham House rule” – meaning that their contents are secret.
Badenoch also gave a speech at another US think tank, the Cato Institute, during her official visit in November. The institute was founded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, one of the top funders of climate denial in the US. Cato is “focused on disputing the science behind global warming and questioning the rationale for taking action”, according to Greenpeace US.
The minister, who was beaten by Liz Truss in the first of last year’s Conservative leadership elections, gave a speech promoting free trade at the institute’s headquarters in Washington DC in which she hinted that some policies to tackle climate change could “impoverish” the UK.
“We all know that climate change is a challenge for us all, wherever we live in the world. But we know that we can and should solve it by using free trade and investment to accelerate the technological progress that will protect the planet,” she claimed.
“And something that not enough politicians say: we must do this, we must protect the planet in a way that does not impoverish the UK, the US or, let’s be honest, any other country,” she said.
During her unsuccessful campaign for the Tory leadership, Badenoch came out against the UK’s net zero target, describing the policy as “unilateral economic disarmament”. She told the Telegraph she “believe[s] in climate change” but said “there is a better way of going about these things”.
The American Enterprise Institute has been approached for comment.
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “Claiming that speaking to a particular think tank implies adopting every one of their policy positions is treating the public like fools. The Secretary of State visited Washington DC to emphasise the importance of trade as a force for security and prosperity, including green trade and investment, and to promote the UK’s high-talent, business-friendly environment and highly innovative economy.”
I noticed these nasty dog-whistle politics from Braverman. It struck me that the Fascists that Braverman is reaching out to – since they are often poorly educated and engage in mistaken and misleading stereotypes – would in all likelyhood recognise Braverman and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as ‘Pakis’. It’s desperate politics.
4/3/23 To clarify the term Paki will not be applied correctly according to ethnicity or heritage. It’s abuse applied to anyone not quite white who tans easily, certainly Braverman and Sunak.
SUELLA BRAVERMAN was accused of “borrowing from fascists and Nazis” today by singling out Pakistani men as being responsible for grooming girls for sexual abuse in Britain.
The Home Secretary has caused outrage after yet more inflammatory language when addressing the government’s crackdown on grooming gangs.
She said a “predominance of certain ethnic groups – and I say British Pakistani males” saw women “in a demeaned and illegitimate way and pursue an outdated and frankly heinous approach in terms of the way they behave.”
But the singling out of a specific ethnic group flies in the face of previous Home Office-commissioned research, which found most group child sex offenders are men under the age of 30, and the majority are white.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says the “greenest thing” about the government’s revised net-zero strategy is “the recycling of already announced ideas”.
Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s fears that the UK government’s Green Day would become a “boulevard of broken dreams” were confirmed yesterday, with green groups and politicians expressing disappointment at the lack of new green funding measures. UK Green Day, the name used by the Rishi Sunak government to launch its new net-zero strategy, was rebranded Energy Security Day, likely in order to downplay its possible climate credentials.
Following a successful legal challenge by three climate-focused non-profits – Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project – the UK government was ordered by the High Court in July 2022 to publish a revised net-zero strategy by 31 March 2023. A trickle of policy papers were released throughout the morning of 30 March; as of midday yesterday, Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans counted 44 new government documents totalling 2,800 pages accompanying the revamped strategy, Powering Up Britain.
However, to the disappointment of many, the government’s revised strategy so far appears to lack any new funding or policy announcements; instead the measures are largely a repacking or reiteration of existing plans.
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However, contrary to what many anticipated, the government has so far not used Energy Security Day to approve the Equinor-owned Rosebank oil and gas field project in the North Sea, although on Thursday afternoon, the Independentreported that the government had refused to commit to stopping the development of the contentious project.
11.15am The video changed shortly after I posted. It was originally far more critical of UK government and urging people to take action, far more like this one ;)
A Just Stop Oil protester has told jurors he climbed the Dartford Crossing bridge to deliver a “warning message”.
Morgan Trowland, 40, of Islington, north London, and Marcus Decker, 34, of no fixed address, are on trial accused of causing a public nuisance.
The court has heard the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, linking the M25 in Essex and Kent, was closed between 04:00 BST on 17 October and 21:00 the following day.
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“We climbed it to deliver a warning message – to put up a banner saying ‘Just Stop Oil’ and to speak that message through interviews with journalists,” he told Basildon Crown Court.
