British political commentator Sami Hamdi speaks to the media in London, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, on his return to the U.K. after he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26 while on a speaking tour in the U.S
A BRITISH journalist and vocal advocate for Palestinian rights touched down at Heathrow airport today after being detained for more than two weeks by US immigration authorities.
Sami Hamdi was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at San Francisco International Airport on October 26.
He had been in the middle of a speaking tour discussing Israel’s genocide in Gaza when the government revoked his visa.
The State Department did not specify what triggered the revocation. But the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA), whose lawyers challenged Mr Hamdi’s detention in federal court, said he was detained over his support for Palestine and “punished for criticising Israel.”
After arriving back in Britain today, Mr Samdi told the press: “This wasn’t just an attack on me, it was an attack on the freedoms of ordinary Americans and citizens worldwide.
“ It was an attack on their freedom to speak the truth in the face of hatred.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Left, Bjorn Lomborg speaks at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference in 2023. Credit: ARC Forum, C0 Right, billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. Credit: DOE/Ken Shipp, C0
Tax records reveal that the billionaire’s foundation has donated for years to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center.
Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by the Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg, according to U.S. tax records reviewed by DeSmog.
The donations, which were made between 2017 and 2022, were listed on IRS 990 Forms filed by the Gates Foundation. Those donations went to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which describes itself as a “think tank that researches the smartest solutions for the world’s biggest problems, advising policy-makers and philanthropists how to spend their money most effectively.”
The center was created by Lomborg, who for years has argued in op-eds, lectures, and broadcast media that there are more important global issues to prioritize than climate change, writing in April that “it is not the existential threat that some would have us believe.”
Those views align closely with a controversial memo Gates recently published during the lead-up to the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in which the philanthropist, who is worth an estimated $118 billion, argued that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
The Microsoft founder and longtime public health philanthropist claimed that a “doomsday outlook” about the future of the climate is “causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals” and that is “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”
Gates’ “tough truths” post came on the heels of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres noting that it is now “inevitable” that the world is on track to at least temporarily burst past the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) warming target of the Paris Agreement, with “dramatic consequences.”
Gates’ arguments have drawn outcries of dismay from some of the world’s top climate scientists, who have pointed out that “this memo is already being championed by those seeking to misinform and sow doubt about climate change and delay climate progress–up to and including the executive branch of the United States government.”
But Lomborg is full of praise for the billionaire who has frequently donated to his think tank.
“Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it,” he posted on X.
Bjorn Lomborg praises Bill Gates’ climate memo in a tweet: “Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it for Brazil #COP30”
The Gates Foundation and the Copenhagen Consensus Center didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“He’s read some of my stuff”
In total, the Gates Foundation (formerly known as the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) has donated $3,519,491 to Lomborg’s think tank. The most recent tax filing on record includes a 2022 donation to the Copenhagen Consensus Center worth $1.25 million, which went to support “community engagement grantmaking.”
Lomborg’s center credits the Gates Foundation with providing “financial support” for a 2021 report identifying development priorities for Africa. That report ranked climate solutions such as “resilience to drought” and “solar energy for unreliable grids” in the bottom third of a list of investment opportunities for the continent.
The report ranked objectives such as “family planning,” “R&D for agricultural yield increase,” and “tobacco control” at the top of the list. “All other things equal, the policies producing high returns should be funded before the ones with low return,” it noted.
The relationship between Lomborg and Gates goes back at least as far as 2014.
That year, DeSmog reported that Gates had published a blog post promoting Lomborg’s views. In the post, Gates argued that as rich countries “push to get serious about confronting climate change,” telling poorer countries not to rely on fossil fuels is wrong.
“For one thing, poor countries represent a small part of the carbon-emissions problem. And they desperately need cheap sources of energy now to fuel the economic growth that lifts families out of poverty. They can’t afford today’s expensive clean energy solutions, and we can’t expect them wait for the technology to get cheaper,” Gates wrote.
In the video, Lomborg can be seen climbing a staircase with the words “Fighting poverty with fossil fuels” painted behind him.
Bill Gates was featuring the work of climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg at least as far back as 2014. This GatesNotes video shows Lomborg against a backdrop with the words “Fighting poverty with fossil fuels.”
As recently as 2023, Lomborg co-authored a GatesNotes post with Gates arguing that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are “too much of a good thing” because they say the world is not “stepping up to fund all of them.”
In response to the October 28 Gates climate memo, Lomborg told Newsweek that “I’ve met with Mr. Gates himself several times. He’s read some of my stuff.” However, Lomborg did not directly take credit with influencing Gates’ views in the “Three Tough Truths about Climate” memo.
Deniers Celebrate Gates
Shortly after the memo’s release, U.S. President Donald Trumpdeclared on his social media platform Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”
Trump is not alone in his celebration. Several long-time climate crisis deniers are cheering the statement from Gates, including Robert Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit that attacks renewables and criticizes decarbonization plans.
Alex Epstein, who himself has cited Lomborg as an influence, said last week that “we should celebrate that Bill Gates has seen the light.” Epstein, the “fossil fuel philosopher” who helped shape the clean energy cuts in Trump’s domestic policy bill, claimed that Gates’ memo is in part a response to a Trump administration that “that is pro-fossil fuel and very anti-climate catastrophist.”
Gates’ backsliding on climate is not just words, it’s money and resources. For instance, in March, he made deep cuts to the climate policy staff of Breakthrough Energy, the “clean energy” organization he founded in 2015 and whose work he touted in his October 28 memo.
Explaining his “pivot” on climate change during an interview on CNBC, Gates said, “I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.” Afterwards, Lomborg took to X to praise Gates, writing, “Exactly right!”
Arguments like this have garnered sharp criticism from climate leaders.
Gates is wrong to frame climate change and human well-being as disconnected, zero-sum issues, argues climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. “We are nowhere near maxing out investment in & implementation of [solutions] that benefit people, health, climate and nature at the same time,” the Texas Tech professor and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy posted on Bluesky. “[The climate, pollution, and nature crises] are already actively amplifying poverty, hunger, and division.”
“There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist, told CNN in response to the Gates memo. “He’s got this all backwards.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Shoppers browse produce at Sabor Tropical Supermarket in Miami Beach, Florida on July 23, 2022. Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Although President Donald Trump didn’t actually confess that his global trade war is driving up the cost of groceries for Americans, he did finally drop his dubiously named “reciprocal” tariffs on key imports on Friday.
According to a White Housefact sheet, Trump’s new executive order ends his tariffs on beef; cocoa and spices; coffee and tea; bananas, oranges, and tomatoes; other tropical fruits and fruit juices; and fertilizers.
The New York Times had reported Thursday that “the Trump administration is preparing broad exemptions to certain tariffs in an effort to ease elevated food prices that have provoked anxiety for American consumers.”
The reporting drew critiques of the administration’s economic policies, including from members of Congress such as Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who said that “Trump just admitted it: Americans are footing the bill for his disastrous tariffs.”
“While this move may alleviate some of the cost increases Trump caused, it will not stop the larger problems of rising inflation, business uncertainty, and economic damage done by Trump’s crazy tariff scheme.”
Also responding to the Times reporting, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media Friday: “After months of increasing grocery prices, Donald Trump is finally admitting he was wrong. Americans are literally paying the price for Trump’s mistakes.”
More lawmakers and other critics piled on after Trump issued the order. CNN‘s Jim Sciutto said: “Trump administration now acknowledging what economists and business leaders have told us from the beginning: that tariffs are driving up prices.”
MeidasTouch and its editor in chief, Ron Filipkowski, also called out the president on social media, with the outlet sarcastically noting, “But Trump said his tariffs don’t raise prices.”
Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va), who serves on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, said in a Friday statement that “President Trump is finally admitting what we always knew: His tariffs are raising prices for the American people.”
“After getting drubbed in recent elections because of voters’ fury that Trump has broken his promises to fix inflation, the White House is trying to cast this tariff retreat as a ‘pivot to affordability,’” Beyer said, referencing Democrats who won key races last week, from more moderate Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the incoming governors of New Jersey and Virginia, to democratic socialist Mayors-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Katie Wilson of Seattle.
In addition to those electoral victories for Democrats, last week featured a debate over Trump’s trade war at the US Supreme Court. According to Beyer: “The simple truth is that Republicans want credit for something they think the Supreme Court will force them to do anyway, after oral arguments before the court on Trump’s illegal abuses of trade authorities went badly for the administration. Trump is still keeping the vast majority of his tariffs in place, and his administration is also planning new tariffs in anticipation of a Supreme Court loss.”
“The same logic—that Trump’s tariffs are driving up prices on coffee, fruit, and other comestibles—is equally true for the thousands of other goods on which his tariffs remain,” he continued. “While this move may alleviate some of the cost increases Trump caused, it will not stop the larger problems of rising inflation, business uncertainty, and economic damage done by Trump’s crazy tariff scheme.”
“Only Congress can do that, by reclaiming its legal responsibility under the Constitution to regulate trade, and permanently ending Trump’s trade war chaos,” he stressed. “All but a handful of Republicans in Congress are still refusing to stand up to Trump, stop his tariffs, and lower costs for the American people, and unless they find a backbone, our economy will continue to suffer.”
As the Associated Pressnoted Friday, “The president signed the executive order after announcing that the U.S. had reached framework agreements with Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Argentina designed to ease import levies on agricultural products produced in those countries.”
Trump’s order also came just a day after Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report showing that US families are paying roughly $700 more each month for basic items since Trump returned to office in January—with households in some states, such as Alaska and California, facing an average of over $1,000 monthly.
The president has floated sending Americans a $2,000 check, purportedly funded by revenue collected from his tariffs, but as Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research crunched the numbers and found that the proposed “dividend” doesn’t add up.
Indigenous demonstrators shout slogans during a demonstration at Parque Central Cayambe, Ecuador, as part of the national strike on October 1, 2025 | Felipe Stanley/Agencia Press South/Getty Images
Taking from Trump’s playbook and reviving colonial trope, President Noboa labelled Indigenous protesters ‘terrorists’
Recent years have seen Western governments extoll their democratic values while leading increasingly harsh crackdowns on dissent, with activists arrested and accused of terrorism.
Now, Ecuador has gone even further. President Daniel Noboa’s far-right government met recent nationwide anti-austerity protests with a brutality that has left two protesters dead, 473 injured, 12 missing, and 206 detained, according to the Alliance of Human Rights Organisations of Ecuador.
A 31-day national strike erupted on 22 September, nine days after Noboa removed fuel subsidies, raising the price of diesel by 55% from $1.80 to $2.80 per gallon. The demonstrations, which disrupted the movement of goods and people across the country as protesters blocked main roads, were led by Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organisation, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which represents many of the people who will be the hardest hit by the price hikes.
The government responded by imposing a state of emergency and deploying troops to break up protesters, leading to state-inflicted violence that drew criticism from civil rights groups in Ecuador and across the world.
Human Rights Watch reported it had “verified 15 videos” of “soldiers or police officers forcibly dispersing peaceful demonstrations and using tear gas and other ‘less lethal’ weapons recklessly and indiscriminately”, while Amnesty International warned of “excessive use of force against protesters by the security forces, possible arbitrary arrests, as well as the opening of abusive criminal proceedings and freezing of bank accounts belonging to social leaders and protesters”.
The unrest came as Ecuadorian voters prepare to vote on a series of referendums on 16 November. Perhaps the most controversial question they will answer is over whether to accept foreign military bases on Ecuador’s territory.
The ballot does not explicitly refer to the United States, but it may as well do; this week, US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem made her second visit to the Latin American country in four months to scout out locations for new US military bases.
Noboa’s government has long pushed for greater alignment with the US. While Ecuadorian opposition leaders warn that US military bases would threaten Ecuador’s sovereignty, both Noboa and Donald Trump’s administrations argue that they would help to stop transnational crime gangs from using the country to smuggle drugs from South America into the US.
Although polls suggest a slight majority of voters are against the bases, many are still undecided. Regardless of how they vote, Trump’s influence over Noboa’s government is already clear from the reaction to the recent Indigenous-led demonstrations. Taking from the US president’s playbook, ministers accused protesters of carrying out “terrorist acts” – directly echoing language used against activists in the US – and at least 13 people have been charged with terrorism after allegedly attacking the offices of police in Otavalo, a city in northern Ecuador.
This decision to cry terrorism is part of a strategy to turn social discontent into a security threat. Rather than answering the demands of protesters – the majority of whom were the poor people, transport workers and Indigenous peoples who will be hardest hit by fuel price increases – the government has chosen to criminalise dissent and militarise social conflict to protect its austerity measures from popular resistance.
But protest is not terrorism. It is the democratic voice of those who suffer most from inequality.
Unequal sacrifices
In Ecuador, an oil-producing country, the dispute over fuel subsidies is a recurring issue.
The subsidies have kept prices for petrol and diesel artificially low since the 1970s, but consecutive governments have argued they put too much strain on the national budget, costing the state billions, while international financial institutions have criticised them for “distorting” the economy. In 2022, the subsidies were equivalent to around 2% of Ecuador’s GDP, according to a report by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
But for farmers, truck drivers and informal workers, the subsidies provide indispensable respite from low incomes and rising living costs. Therein lies the clash: what governments see as an easy way to make savings on their balance sheet will mean hunger for many ordinary people.
One key measure of the cost of living in Ecuador is the monthly price of the ‘basic family basket’, a government-defined set of goods needed to sustain a family of four, including food, clothing, medicine, household items and transport costs. In May this year, the price of that basic family basket reached $812, while the monthly minimum wage remained at $470. This disparity will only worsen with the removal of the diesel subsidy, which will make transport, food and the production of goods more expensive.
Previous attempts to scrap the fuel subsidies have caused the social unrest that has marked Ecuadorian politics in recent years. Two previous governments tried to do so in 2019 and 2022. Both instances sparked huge demonstrations that forced ministers into U-turns.
This time, Noboa’s government, which was elected in 2023, does not appear to be backing down. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities eventually called off their strike on 23 October in the wake of the state’s brutal repression, having been unable to secure any concessions.
If the government does succeed in removing the subsidies, it will lead to rising costs that will not be borne equally across Ecuador, a plurinational and multi-ethnic country where wealth is concentrated in certain areas and among certain racial groups.
The most recent data finds that 72% of the population self-identifies as mestizo, a term that refers to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. The next largest demographic group is the Montubio people (7.4%), a rural ethnic group from coastal Ecuador; followed by Afro-Ecuadorians (7.2%), who also primarily live in the coastal provinces; then Indigenous people (7%) who largely live in the highlands and Amazon; and white people (6.1%), who have historically been based in larger cities.
The Afro-Ecuadorians and Indigenous populations in the country’s Amazon and rural coastal provinces will suffer most from the increases in transport and labour costs. Many of the families who will be affected are already impoverished, with a 40% poverty rate in these areas, far above the national rate of 28%.
Ecuador’s coast is dominated by export-oriented agribusiness and ports; the Andean highlands by public administration, services and manufacturing; while the oil extraction in the Amazonian east accounts for a large part of the country’s national income, without translating into local well-being.
The paradox is evident: the territories that produce wealth also face the greatest inequalities and deficits in health, education and basic services.
Women will also be hit harder by the removal of the fuel subsidies than men. The country’s 3.6% unemployment rate masks key gender inequalities; among women the rate is 4.6%, compared to 2.8% among men. Similarly, only 27% of women have access to adequate employment, with sufficient income and stability, compared to 41% of men, according to official figures.
The greater job insecurity created by rising food and household goods prices will disproportionately affect women. They will be forced to work longer hours to survive, particularly where they are responsible for the care of children or elderly relatives – another burden that disproportionately falls on women.
There is no neutrality in austerity: there is a regressive redistribution that privileges fiscal balance at the expense of the country’s most impoverished.
‘Terrorism’ and state coercion
While protests started in the immediate aftermath of the announcement on 13 September that the subsidies would be scrapped, the coordinated national strike began on 22 September.
Over the following 31 days, news broadcasts were full of images of this resistance across Ecuador: closed roads in Cuenca, pots and pans banging in Quito, women and children fleeing tear gas in San Rafael de la Laguna.
President Noboa imposed a state of emergency in many provinces, a measure that suspends constitutional guarantees such as the freedom of assembly, the inviolability of the home and correspondence, and the freedom of movement due to curfews. Last year, the Constitutional Court issued a warning to the president over the repeated use of this tool, which it said should be applied only in “extraordinary” circumstances.
By also condemning the protesters as “terrorists”, the government aims to delegitimise collective action, depoliticise the dispute over income and enable repression. Labelling Indigenous people as ‘offenders’ revives an old colonial trope of ‘internal enemies’, where racialised bodies are seen as a threat to order.
Noboa’s discourse is also part of a well-known Latin American genealogy: during the years of counterinsurgency, the labels of ‘subversion’ and ‘terrorism’ justified massacres, states of siege and arbitrary detentions. Today, that same language is being revived to shield a neoliberal model that is based not on consensus but on coercion.
For now, the question is not whether Ecuador can sustain fuel subsidies in the long term, but who gets to decide this. Removing subsidies without dialogue or progressive compensation mechanisms is governing against the majority.
A truly democratic policy would require real dialogue with Indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and peasant organisations, and including their voices in defining policies on the prices of utilities, including fuel, water and energy.
Wage and labour reform is also needed to link the minimum wage to the cost of the basic basket of goods and reduce gender and ethnic gaps, as well as territorial investment in the Amazon and rural areas to provide health, education and basic services. Finally, the demilitarisation of social conflict and the repeal of laws that criminalise protest.
The Noboa government seems to be choosing another path: shielding austerity with repression. But labelling those who defend life and bread for their families as terrorists does not resolve the conflict: it deepens it.
Protest is the language of those who refuse to be expelled from history by a model that promises order in exchange for inequality and silence.
*Rose Barboza is a Brazilian researcher and doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal. She specialises in transitional justice, feminist epistemologies and critical race theory. Her current work explores comparative cases of state repression and social movements across Latin America.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
British political commentator Sami Hamdi speaks to the media in London, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, on his return to the U.K. after he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26 while on a speaking tour in the U.S
