UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has today announced the expansion of Heathrow airport. The climate cannot tolerate that. We have a Burn, baby Burn pyromaniac in the States and seriously intellectually challenged politicians worldwide.
10.20pm GMT Correction: Rachel Reeves announced that the government would support the expansion of Heathrow and other airports.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/israels-genocide-general-welcomed-in-london-and-the-media-yawns/
…
Last week, Declassified UK carried out one of the fundamental duties of journalism. Its reporter Alex Morris sought to hold accountable a war crimes suspect evading justice. And not just any suspect.
Morris doorstepped Major General Oded Basyuk as he led an Israeli military delegation through the streets of London in meetings with the Ministry of Defence and the Royal United Services Institute, a UK “security think-tank” with close ties to the British government.
Basyuk, sometimes spelt Basiuk, heads the Israeli military’s operations directorate, whose responsibilities have included the development of the military strategy that guided Israel’s brutal 15-month assault on Gaza.
The International Court of Justice ruled a year ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. Israel has effectively been on trial ever since.
…
…
Further, Britain’s universal jurisdiction laws mean serious crimes can be prosecuted in the UK wherever they occurred, and separately from the ICC. A private application for his arrest could have been issued while he was here.
The only plausible answer is that the government of Keir Starmer gave him a gold-plated assurance that he would not be arrested under any circumstances during his visit.
That is precisely what happened back in November when Israel’s now-outgoing military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, visited Britain to meet officials from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office.
Starmer’s government issued Halevi with diplomatic immunity – a so-called “special mission certificate” – that blocked any possibility of legal redress against him.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute, it should be noted, Britain is legally obliged to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the ICC, though it has equivocated about whether in practice it would carry out an arrest of either Netanyahu or Gallant, if put to the test.
…
See the original article at https://www.declassifieduk.org/israels-genocide-general-welcomed-in-london-and-the-media-yawns/
The UK has been an active participant in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza for the last 15 months, a new report published by the British Palestinian Committee (BPC) reveals today.
The 22-page document entitled ‘British military collaboration with Israel’ says: “The UK has not simply failed to meet its third-party responsibilities to uphold international law, including its duty to prevent genocide, but has been an active participant in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza for the last 15 months.”
Cataloguing evidence of the “many layers of collaboration between the UK and Israel in this genocidal project”, the report details the UK’s active involvement in the Israeli arms industry, British provisions of logistical support and weapons transfers to the Israeli military, British protection of Israel’s military infrastructure, direct military intervention from the UK in Yemen to support Israel’s goals and repeated, ongoing intelligence provision from the UK to Israel via surveillance flights.
BPC Director, Dr Sara Husseini, said: “This report shows that UK complicity in Israel’s crimes goes far beyond arms sales.”
Highlighting the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s ruling that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to “plausible genocide”, Husseini added: “As the world looked on in horror, Israel continued its genocidal aggression in Gaza for a further 12 months. The UK has provided active military assistance to Israel throughout.”
This, she continued, implicates “its institutions and officials in the gravest breaches of international law.”
READ: Israel transfers military equipment to Syrian demilitarised zone
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Commenting ahead of the Chancellor’s speech on growth when she is expected to signal government backing for airport expansion in the South East, including a third runway at Heathrow, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said:
“The third runway at Heathrow is bad economics. There’s little evidence that airport expansion in the southeast will boost the economy – the only things that will grow for sure are noise, air pollution and climate emissions. The last thing our economy needs is more billions in damage from storms and floods.
“Fewer and fewer business people choose air travel – the vast majority of flights are taken by a wealthy elite of frequent leisure flyers. Most of the benefits of airport expansion will go to jet-setters, airlines and airport bosses, leaving taxpayers and holidaymakers to pay billions for new infrastructure and transport links.
“Chasing growth for growth’s sake is not an economic strategy. Instead of picking up any old polluting project from the discard pile, the Chancellor should focus on green industries that can attract investment and bring economic and social benefits for years to come, like secure jobs, affordable energy bills and cheaper, better transport.”
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-reevess-labour-joining-corporate-war-democracy
…
One of Labour’s few redistributive policies attempting to tap the immense wealth of the filthy rich — a crackdown on the abuse of non-dom status to avoid tax — is to be softened, Chancellor Rachel Reeves says, because she has been “listening to the concerns” raised by the non-dom “community.”
She won’t listen to concerns over children trapped in poverty by the discriminatory two-child benefit cap.
Or over the impact of restricting winter fuel payments when energy prices are twice what they were a couple of years ago, even when those concerns convince her own party to vote against the policy at its conference, and prompt Labour’s biggest affiliate Unite to challenge the government in court.
Or even over the U-turn on compensating the Waspi women, despite leading Labour politicians having championed their cause for years.
Reeves’s selective approach to people’s concerns applies to the environment too, even as yet another severe storm closes schools and transport systems, and despite years of worsening floods and failing crops. Sod the science, says Reeves, growth trumps net zero.
Limiting action on the accelerating climate catastrophe to measures which don’t affect corporate profits is one reason the world continues to warm uncontrollably.
…
Labour’s growth policies across the board simply turn government into a doormat for big business. Rather than publicly fund infrastructure projects in the public interest, Labour will scrap regulations to weaken rights to object to construction by the private sector.
Reeves dismisses the importance of ecological diversity (“bats and newts” are derided as reasons things can’t be built) though Britain has among the lowest biodiversity in Europe and the documented collapse of insect populations will have huge, and as yet partly unknown, effects on agriculture and the natural world.
The same deference to the right of construction firms to do as they please applies to housing. But it is not over-regulation which stymies house-building in Britain but land-banking aimed at keeping prices high. Urban development in major cities like London and Manchester is blighted by developers’ lack of accountability to communities, as working-class neighbourhoods are driven out by construction of luxury flats designed to accumulate value, not house locals.
…
Labour marches alongside the international radical right push to dismantle democratic curbs on corporate power. Less extreme than Trump or Musk, but in their camp. The intensified crackdown on protest is a logical part of this project.
The question of the day is democracy versus capitalism. Defending our communities and rights as citizens means building resistance through any means we can: trades councils, People’s Assembly branches, even Morning Star supporters’ groups can be hubs to bring activists together. The future is looking ugly if we cannot unite to do that.
Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-reevess-labour-joining-corporate-war-democracy