Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, October 3, 2024
HEZBOLLAH agreed to a ceasefire hours before its leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in an Israel air strike on Beirut, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said today
The sensational claim came during an interview with Christiane Amanpour on US broadcaster CNN.
Mr Habib said that Mr Nasrallah’s agreement to the ceasefire had been communicated to both the US and French governments.
He confirmed that they had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly welcomed the initiative.
The Lebanese prime minister also said he had heard that US special envoy for the Middle East Moss Hochstein was in the process of being dispatched to Lebanon to negotiate a temporary ceasefire before the assassination took place.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a statement on the situation in the Middle East from 10 Downing Street, London, October 1, 2024
THE Labour government has ordered 100 spy flights over Gaza to aid Israeli intelligence, an investigation by Declassified UK revealed today.
The intelligence-gathering flights began in December under the previous government.
Eleven flights took place in Labour’s first week in power, and during Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s first full month in office in August, the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew 42 flights over Gaza.
Declassified UK found that the flights were departing from Britain’s air base in Cyprus.
The flights may have gathered up to 500 hours of footage of Gaza, Declassified UK said, though it is unclear exactly where the British intelligence is going and what it comprises.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
MetropolitanRepublic staff celebrating at the Silverback Awards, November 2023. (Credit: MetropolitanRepublic Uganda)
MetropolitanRepublic enlisted social media influencers to promote giant oil project as climate campaigners suffered beatings and arrests.
Last November, a beaming group of staff from MetropolitanRepublic collected their gorilla-shaped trophy at the Silverback Awards, Uganda’s top advertising and public relations gala.
The South African PR agency had won its prize for promoting the “sustainable development” of Uganda’s untapped oil reserves by French oil company TotalEnergies.
MetropolitanRepublic — which is part-owned by British communications giant WPP — described the brief for the award-winning “Action for Sustainability” campaign in its entry to the Silverback Awards: to devise an approach that “squashed all the negative PR” from protests against TotalEnergies’ plans for a 1,443-kilometre pipeline to export oil from Uganda’s Lake Albert via neighbouring Tanzania.
An accompanying video featured photographs of Ugandan anti-pipeline campaigners to illustrate this “backlash” and described them as “haters”.
“How do you launch a successful project off the back of this?” asks the narrator in the video. “Well, you develop a 360 PR campaign that retells your story the way it should be told.”
A screenshot from the award submission published on the Silverback Awards’ website. The Tilenga pipeline is a feeder pipeline under construction to carry oil from the Tilenga oilfields to the start of EACOP. (Credit: Silverback Awards)
Now, DeSmog can reveal that Ugandan police or military personnel have arrested, beaten, threatened, or harassed at least eight of the 15 campaigners pictured in MetropolitanRepublic’s award submission video.
These incidents — documented via video taken at protests, interviews with the campaigners, and police records — took place both before and after the video was published on the Silverback website in March.
There is no indication that MetropolitanRepublic’s campaign or the award submission led directly to any specific incidents affecting the activists. Nevertheless, DeSmog found that the agency engaged a network of social media influencers to post hundreds of times in support of TotalEnergies’ plans to mitigate the impact of the pipeline — even as protestors were being beaten and harassed.
“These PR firms are sponsoring our oppression,” said Hillary Innocent Taylor Seguya, one of the campaigners pictured in MetropolitanRepublic’s award submission video. “The more you push misinformation to the rest of the world, the more it means that you don’t care about our rights.”
Protestors from student human rights group Justice Movement Uganda opposing the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. (Credit: Bruce Nahabwe)
Since the pipeline project was first announced in 2017, advocacy groups have highlighted concerns over the displacement of communities in Uganda and Tanzania, damage to ecosystems and wildlife, and the climate impact of burning Uganda’s oil. The outcry has prompted some banks, insurers, and the PR company Edelman — which has represented oil companies for decades — to shun the project, known as the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP.
In June this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged communications agencies to stop working for fossil fuel companies, saying PR campaigns run by “Mad Men fuelling the madness” were making the climate crisis harder to address.
MetropolitanRepublic, however, defended its role in promoting the pipeline — a joint venture between TotalEnergies and state oil companies from Uganda, Tanzania, and China.
Smoke rises from neighbourhoods hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon, October 2, 2024
Starmer accused of hypocrisy for quickly condemning Iran’s missile attack on Israel, but not condeming Israel’s genocide in Gaza, strikes on the Iranian embassy, or attacks on civilians in Lebanon
BRITAIN was accused of emboldening Israel to commit further atrocities today.
Israel continued its murderous rampage across the Middle East, bombing Yemen, Syria, and Gaza over the last week.
Tel Aviv also invaded neighbouring Lebanon after killing over 1,000 people in the country in a fortnight.
Iran launched multiple missiles at Israeli targets on Tuesday evening in response, which was “utterly condemned” by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in a national address.
Affirming his support for Tel Aviv, he said: “We stand with Israel, and recognise her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression.”
Sir Keir emphasised the need for “de-escalation” in the region and called on Iran to “stop these attacks.”
That evening, Israel stepped up its bombardment of Gaza, which has already killed at least 40,000 Palestinians, murdering dozens more in attacks on an orphanage and a school-turned shelter.
Ben Jamal, director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “Keir Starmer was quick to announce he ‘completely condemns’ Iran’s missile strikes but he has never found these words to address Israel’s genocide in Gaza, strikes on the Iranian embassy, or attacks on civilians in Lebanon. The hypocrisy is stark.
“It is appalling that the UK government would ally itself with a state committing genocide and violating the sovereignty of neighbouring states though indiscriminate bombing that in past week alone have killed over 1,000 people, mostly civilians.”
