Activists pour blood-red dye into US Embassy pond in protest against arms sales to Israel Photo: Greenpeace
SIX Greenpeace activists were arrested today following a demonstration outside the US embassy in London against the continued sale of arms to Israel.
Protesters tipped 300 litres of non-toxic, biodegradable blood-red dye from containers with the words “Stop Arming Israel” written on into a large pond in front of the embassy building.
The containers were delivered to the embassy on bicycles disguised as delivery couriers.
Among those arrested was Greenpeace UK co-executive director Will McCallum, on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Official data shows that since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has approved nearly $12 billion (£9.3bn) in military sales to Israel.
The group is urging the British and US governments to announce a total arms embargo on Israel to stop its genocide in Gaza.
9.35 ed: A video of the Greenpeace genocide protest at US Embassy, London.
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Four Greenpeace activists unfurl a banner saying “Lammy don’t dally” – calling for Foreign Secretary David Lammy to sign the Global Ocean Treaty into UK law – after scaling the King Charles Street Archway, outside the Foreign Office in Westminster, central London, April 3, 2025
FOUR Greenpeace activists were arrested today after scaling a building outside the Foreign Office in protest over delays in signing an international treaty protecting oceans.
The protesters unfurled a banner as they suspended themselves from columns on the King Charles Street Archway in Westminster before coming down voluntarily.
Three men and one woman were safely detained and arrested under Section 1 of the Public Order Act, and on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage, the Metropolitan Police said.
The group called for faster action from Foreign Secretary David Lammy in signing the Global Ocean Treaty, with the banner bearing a turtle and the legend: “Lammy Don’t Dally!”
The treaty, which aims to protect large areas of marine life by putting stricter regulations on deep-sea mining and fishing, was first agreed in March 2023 and has been ratified by 21 countries so far, ahead of the United Nations Ocean Conference in June.
In response to Just Stop Oil’s announcement this morning Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said:
“The history of democracies is built by groups of people like the Suffragettes, trade unionists, gay rights campaigners and anti-fracking activists who were brave enough to make themselves unpopular for a cause they believed in. With the benefit of hindsight we can see the debt we owe each of them for giving us rights and liberties, and protecting the things we care about.
“Whether you want to stand up for our planet against polluting profiteers, or save your local library from council spending cuts, the freedom to make your voice heard is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Just Stop Oil paid a heavy price for raising their voices at a time when politicians and corporations are trying to silence peaceful protesters – in the streets and in the courts. We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away, because it is the right that all other rights depend upon. Greenpeace and many others will continue to defend this proud tradition of taking action on issues that matter to make change possible.”
A Just Stop Oil participant getting arrested at Kingsbury oil terminal. A JSO / Vladamir Morozov image.Orcas are pleased that Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields are blocked and say that the killer apes need to just stop oil.
Pro-Palestinian protesters rally in support of Mahmoud Khalil outside of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, where a hearing is underway regarding Khalil’s arrest, in New York City on March 12, 2025. (Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
If the White House can punish anybody who engages in speech it dislikes, nobody will be free to criticize the government—and corporate criminals will be free to run amok.
Earlier this March, agents from the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, arrested Mahmoud Khalil at his Columbia University-owned apartment building in New York City. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was then promptly disappeared by federal agents, who refused to tell Khalil’s wife (a U.S. citizen) why he was being detained or where he was being held. He has since been found by his attorneys and partner in a private Louisiana detention facility notorious for abuse. His deportation was successfully, though only temporarily, halted by a federal judge.
An initial hearing in Khalil’s case was subsequently heard—without him present—in New York City. There, the Department of Justice defended the kidnapping, and backed the White House’s claimed rationale: the Trump administration doesn’t approve of Khalil’s speech, and therefore it has the right to forgo due process, revoke his green card without judicial order, and deport him.
Khalil is a prominent pro-Palestinian leader at Columbia University. He was one of students’ lead negotiators during the anti-genocide encampments that formed on its campus in 2024. It is this right to speech, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and affirmed over and over and over again, that President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are endeavoring to unilaterally, and with no constraints, gut.
Trump and his allies seemingly hope to manufacture a future in which any public critic of the administration or its friends can be defined, and prosecuted, as a “terrorist” for whom basic civil liberties can be summarily suspended.
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. [dizzy: Original article modified by the inclusion of this image and caption.]
To this end, the federal government has made no case that Khalil has committed a crime. Instead, the Trump administration has continuously boasted that Khalil is being targeted with the full force of the state for engaging in speech it doesn’t like; speech that is unambiguously guaranteed by the First Amendment, and that the White House now seeks to classify as “terrorism.”
Should Trump and Rubio succeed, as The Intercept aptly summarized, it will symbolize the death of free speech for American citizens and green-card holders alike.
Of course, it isn’t just Khalil—though if the government succeeds in his case it will be a chilling bellwether for the state of speech and protest in the Trump years and beyond. Even just in the weeks since kidnapping Khalil, it’s been reported that DHS officers have arrested another student protester at Columbia, stripped a different Columbia student of their visa status, denied a French scientist entry to the United States reportedly because of their expressed political disagreement with the administration, disappeared dozens of New Mexico residents, and more.
Of course, this playbook isn’t new, and Republicans have long sought to gut protected speech, and protected protest in particular. Indeed, dozens of Stop Cop City protesters and organizers are still navigating an abusive investigation and prosecution regime in Georgia that functionallyseeks to render public displays of political dissent as violent conspiracy and “domestic terrorism,” including speech activities as mundane as handing out pamphlets.
As baseless and unconstitutional as those prosecutions were and still are, it’s this principle that is being pushed to new and even-more horrifying depths, as Trump and his allies seemingly hope to manufacture a future in which any public critic of the administration or its friends can be defined, and prosecuted, as a “terrorist” for whom basic civil liberties can be summarily suspended.
Indeed, Donald Trump, while turning the White House into a car dealership earlier this month, told reporters that people protesting Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. federal government at Tesla storefronts, or protesting “any company,” should be labeled domestic terrorists, and that was something he “will do.”
Should the political persecution of Khalil succeed, it will foster a new era of the militarized American police state that greenlights the arbitrary and capricious abduction of organizers, dissidents, and critics of the Trump administration and the corporations it serves.
It should not need to be said, but to say it anyway: If foundational constitutional rights can be unilaterally suspended by the government, with no trial or even formal documentation of so-called wrongdoing, then those rights do not actually exist for anyone.
Who stands to benefit from such a bleak future? Advocates for authoritarianism for one, and corporations for another.
While the executive branch targets protesters’ rights to speech on White House orders, Trump’s own corporate allies and donors are pursuing adjacent tactics to divest normal people of the right to criticize the corporate hegemons ruining our lives.
Greenpeace, for example, just lost the trial brought against it by Energy Transfer, which seeks to functionally sue the group out of existence in the U.S. for criticizing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). That notorious project, controlled by Energy Transfer, is well-known for its environmental racism and for deploying extreme force against environmental advocates, Indigenous communities, and others who opposed it.
Greenpeace is set to appeal the verdict, but if Energy Transfer should ultimately succeed, it would not just spell the end of Greenpeace’s U.S. operations, but will also usher in a new era in which corporate money can not just silence, but wholly eradicate, organizations that are critical of corporate polluters, labor abusers, price-gougers, and more. Such a future would place a price tag on First Amendment protections, with only the most well-resourced entities in the country seemingly eligible to enjoy it, and everyone else left vulnerable to their whims and machinations.
The political kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil is an egregious attempt to undo 233 years of American constitutional law, and—regardless of what Trump or others claim—threatens to end the right to free speech, and democracy, as we know it. Should the political persecution of Khalil succeed, it will foster a new era of the militarized American police state that greenlights the arbitrary and capricious abduction of organizers, dissidents, and critics of the Trump administration and the corporations it serves. That, to be clear, would wholly cement the United States’ descent into full-fledged fascism.
Crucially, though, even if they fail to make Khalil the defining, and chilling, example of a new epoch of American political prisoners, Donald Trump and his allies in and outside of government have made it clear: They want to eliminate the First Amendment, and will do whatever it takes to do so.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Activists from Fossil Free London and Green New Deal Rising take part in a protest against a third runway at Heathrow, and expansion at Gatwick and Luton, outside Siemens Healthineers in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, January 29, 2025
HEATHROW expansion cannot be the quick fix to the economy, campaigners warned today after the government backed a new multibillion-pound investment programme.
The airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye announced funding for upgrades and expansion ahead of its proposal for a third runway, expected to be submitted to the government this summer.
The government said that the investment programme will secure thousands of steel jobs by increasing the demand for British-made steel.
But polling by climate charities suggests a majority of the public believes expansion is the “wrong priority,” with 67 per cent of respondents also saying they did not see much, if any, benefit to taxpayers.
No Third Runway Coalition chairman Paul McGuinness called the announcement “almost Orwellian,” arguing that the government had relied on a Heathrow-commissioned report to promote the project rather than its own Treasury assessment.
…
Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said that the “real winners” will be Mr Woldbye and “the rest of the polluting aviation industry.”
“The only ‘perks’ for most people will be noise, air pollution and climate emissions,” he said.
Dr Parr said a third runway is “bad economics,” saying: “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.”
