LABOUR headquarters was blockaded by green campaigners today in protest at the party’s ties to major polluters.
Fifty activists from Stop Polluting Politics blocked both entrances to the office in London, arguing that funding from polluting corporations is to blame for Labour’s abandonment of its green investment promises.
Protesters chanted: “Labour, come off it, put people over profit” and carried banners reading: “Labour: Party of the People Polluters.”
Labour has received £41,600 from donors that are linked to pollution, including £9,600 from aviation giant Airbus and £12,000 from biomass corporation Drax since 2019.
Drax owns the largest single source of carbon emissions, a wood-burning power station, in Britain.
And Labour has stuck with Graham Stringer as a parliamentary candidate in Manchester despite his record as a climate change denier associated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with which shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also has links.
Sam Smith, a spokesman for the group, said: “Allowing polluters to sponsor major political parties is as destructive as having tobacco companies fund research on smoking and public health.
Assange arrives in Australia. (Photo: AAP / Alamy)
It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Assange behind bars. Their villainy will soon be erased because they write the script about what’s going on in the world.
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Everything Assange had warned the US wanted to do to him was proved correct over the next five years, as he languished in Belmarsh entirely cut off from the outside world.
No one in our political or media class appeared to notice, or could afford to admit, that events were playing out exactly as the founder of Wikileaks had for so many years predicted they would – and for which he was, at the time, so roundly ridiculed.
Nor was that same political-media class prepared to factor in other vital context showing that the US was not trying to enforce some kind of legal process, but that the extradition case against Assange was entirely about wreaking vengeance – and making an example of the Wikileaks founder to deter others from following him in shedding light on US state crimes.
That included revelations that, true to form, the CIA, which was exposed as a rogue foreign intelligence agency in 250,000 embassy cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, had variously plotted to assassinate him or kidnap him off the streets of London.
Other evidence came to light that the CIA had been carrying out extensive spying operations on the embassy, recording Assange’s every move, including his meetings with his doctors and lawyers.
That fact alone should have seen the US case thrown out by the British courts. But the UK judiciary was looking over its shoulder, towards Washington, far more than it was abiding by its own statute books.
Media no watchdog
Western governments, politicians, the judiciary, and the media all failed Assange. Or rather, they did what they are actually there to do: keep the rabble – that is, you and me – from knowing what they are really up to.
Their job is to build narratives suggesting that they know best, that we must trust them, that their crimes, such as those they are supporting right now in Gaza, are actually not what they look like, but are, in fact, efforts in very difficult circumstances to uphold the moral order, to protect civilisation.
For this reason, there is a special need to identify the critical role played by the media in keeping Assange locked up for so long.
The truth is, with a properly adversarial media playing the role it declares for itself, as a watchdog on power, Assange could never have been disappeared for so long. He would have been freed years ago. It was the media that kept him behind bars.
The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the US and British governments carefully crafted against Assange.
Even now, as he is reunited with his family, the BBC and others are peddling the same long-discredited lies.
Those include the constantly repeated claim by journalists that he faced “rape charges” in Sweden that were supposedly dropped. Here is the BBC making this error once again in its reporting this week.
In fact, Assange never faced more than a “preliminary investigation”, one the Swedish prosecutors repeatedly dropped for lack of evidence. The investigation, we now know, was revived and sustained for so long not because of Sweden but chiefly because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, then led by Sir Keir Starmer (now the leader of the Labour party), insisted on it dragging on.
Starmer made repeated trips to Washington during this period, when the US was trying to find a pretext to lock Assange away for political crimes, not sexual ones. But as happened so often in the Assange case, all the records of those meetings were destroyed by the British authorities.
JEREMY Corbyn has claimed he was once asked to give a “blanket undertaking” that he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes while Labour leader.
Corbyn – who is running as an independent candidate at the General Election – said during an interview with Declassified UK co-founder Matt Kennard that he was confronted with the request at an “extremely hostile” meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee and declined.
He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?
“And I said no, I will give no such undertaking, because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created such incredible stress.
“By the way I’ve been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank.”
Jeremy Corbyn says during a meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee he was confronted and asked to give assurances that as Labour leader – and potentially prime minister – he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes👇 pic.twitter.com/RIN13HkHpF
Jeremy Corbyn makes the claim in this interview (50 min long)
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Forbidden Stories and its Gaza Project partners investigated Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and elsewhere. (Illustration: Forbidden Stories/The Gaza Project)
“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” said one campaigner. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”
With more than 100 media professionals—nearly all of them Palestinian—killed in Gaza since October, a group of 50 reporters from 13 international organizations this week shared the results of a new investigative journalism initiative aimed at exposing the deadly toll Israel’s onslaught has taken on those reporting it to the world.
The Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured since October 7,” when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others kidnapped.
“Faced with what is being reported as the record number of journalists killed, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists,” the group said
“For four months, Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated the circumstances of their killings, as well as those who have been targeted, threatened, and injured in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added. “These investigations point to a chilling pattern and suggest some journalists may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”
🔴 How are Israeli drones killing journalists in Gaza?
Gaza Project member Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned what it called an “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families,” noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.
“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said of the ongoing war. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”
Basel Khair Al-Din, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza who believes he was targeted by a drone strike while wearing a press vest, said, “Whereas this press vest was supposed to identify and protect us, according to international laws, international conventions, and the Geneva Conventions, it is now a threat to us.”
“It’s this vest that almost got us killed, as has happened to so many of our fellow journalists and media workers,” he added.
Groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Italian Agence-France Presse journalist whose legs were blown off in the attack.
Reuters determined that an Israeli tank crew “fired two shells in quick succession” at the journalists, who HRW said were “clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes.” HRW “found no evidence of a military target near the journalists’ location.”
Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike was “likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime.”
Asa Kasher, the lead author of the IDF’s Code of Ethics, told Forbidden Stories that “no member of the press should have been killed under normal circumstances of hostilities in Gaza.”
“It shouldn’t happen, even a single one,” he added. “It’s illegal. It’s unethical. The person who does it should be brought to court.”
Asked about the al-Aqsa network casualties, a senior IDF spokesperson told us there was “no difference” between working for the media outlet and belonging to Hamas’s armed wing, a sweeping statement legal experts described as alarming. #Israel#Gazahttps://t.co/iD2pnrTmp6
Israel’s alleged deliberate targeting of journalists is part of the evidence presented in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Separately, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation in the case of the Israelis and extermination, rape, and torture in the case of Hamas.
The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders last month filed a third ICC complaint alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”
According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 37,718 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed during Israel’s 264-day assault on Gaza, which has also left more than 86,300 people wounded and 11,000 others missing and feared dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of homes and other bombed-out buildings.
Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, and the Israeli siege on Gaza has caused widespread—and deadly—starvation and what the head of the United Nations food agency called a “full-blown famine” in northern parts of the strip.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian doctor Hani al-Jaafarawi, Gaza’s ambulance and emergency teams chief, during his funeral in Gaza City, Gaza on June 24, 2024. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
“This cannot be allowed to continue any longer,” said one advocate. “Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”
Doctors and humanitarian organizations demanded international investigations and action on Wednesday after the United Nations announced that Israel’s military has now killed 500 healthcare workers in Gaza—roughly two per day on average—during its nearly nine-month assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement Tuesday that Israeli forces’ killing of hundreds of healthcare workers has “occurred against the backdrop of systematic attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in violation of the laws of war.” The World Health Organization has documented more than 460 attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure in Gaza since October 7.
“The latest health worker reportedly killed was Mr. Hani Al Ja’afarwi, head of Emergency and Ambulance Services at a health clinic in Gaza City on 23 June 2024,” said the U.N. Human Rights Office. “Many health workers have also died with their family members when residential buildings were struck by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”
The U.N.’s latest tally did not include Fadi Al-Wadiya, a 33-year-old Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staffer who was killed along with five other people Tuesday in an attack in Gaza City. MSF did not explicitly assign blame for the attack, which the group described as “yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and healthcare workers in Gaza.”
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said Wednesday that “hospitals, medical staff, and civilians all have protected status under international law, law that the Israel military has flagrantly ignored every day through its repeated targeting of healthcare facilities and staff.”
“Though now happening at an unprecedented rate in Gaza, attacks on Palestinian healthcare by the Israeli military have recurred over many years, ever-worsening because of chronic impunity,” said Talbot. “This cannot be allowed to continue any longer. Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”
🚨An Israeli military airstrike has killed Hani al-Jaafarawi, the director of Gaza’s Ambulance and Emergency Department during a strike on a clinic in Gaza City.
— Medical Aid for Palestinians (@MedicalAidPal) June 25, 2024
Not a single hospital is fully functioning in the Gaza Strip after months of relentless Israeli bombing, and medical workers have been forced to treat airstrike victims and other patients in overwhelmed facilities without necessary equipment and medications, including anesthesia.
As Israel’s blockade leaves the occupied territory’s population without sufficient access to clean water and other essentials, infectious diseases have been spreading rapidly as the health crisis spirals out of control, starvation proliferates, and the death toll mounts.
“Systematic attacks on healthcare by Israeli forces are exacerbating the worst humanitarian crisis ever seen in Gaza,” MAP said Wednesday. “More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed and at least 86,000 injured since Israel’s assault began, with an estimated 10,000 still trapped under rubble, most presumed dead. Instead of being able to safely provide medical care for those in urgent need, Palestinian healthcare workers have themselves come under both indiscriminate and apparent targeted attack by the Israeli military.”
Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who volunteered in a hospital with MAP earlier this year, said that “Palestinian healthcare workers have told me that when they leave the hospital, civilians give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is putting a target sticker on their back.”
“This is how systematically healthcare has been targeted in Gaza,” Haj-Hassan added.
Haider Al-Qudra, executive director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Gaza, told MAP that “as long as the international community does not take any measures against Israeli forces that continue to violate international humanitarian law, we will lose more personnel working to meet the health and humanitarian needs of citizens on the frontline.”
“Because of this systematic targeting from Israeli forces,” said Al-Qudra, “34 PRCS staff have lost their lives, most of them emergency medical services staff, including 19 while they tried to respond to emergency calls from citizens.”
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
