Demonstrators during a ‘Kill The Bill’ protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London, January 15, 2022
LABOUR was urged today to scrap Tory anti-protest laws and reject harmful rhetoric used to stigmatise peaceful demonstrations.
Peace, pro-Palestine, environmental and civil liberties groups called on ministers to champion the rights to free speech by repealing the draconian legislation aimed at silencing dissent.
Amnesty International led the calls as it published a new report warning of an increasingly wide range of means to quash peaceful demonstrations and silence free speech across Europe.
It called on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to urgently scrap the public order elements of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act as well as the entirety of the Public Order Act and the Serious Disruption Regulations.
Kerry Moscogiuri, of Amnesty International UK, said: “The new government must seize this moment to halt the alarming march towards repression in the UK by repealing the anti-protest laws pushed through by the previous government and ending the harmful rhetoric being used to stigmatise those who peacefully protest.
From nationalising public services, taxes on the rich, dropping tuition fees to green investment, the new PM’s abandoned promises raise doubts about Labour’s real commitment to its promises for ‘change,’ writes PETER KENWORTHY
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And the new PM, Labour’s Keir Starmer, has also done his fair share of U-turning. Starmer, among other things, pledged and promised to “increase income tax for the top 5 per cent earners” in 2020, during the Labour leadership election — “I will maintain our radical values [ … ] no stepping back from our core principles” as he added in the pledges. Only for him to back away from tax rises.
“We are in a different situation now, because obviously I think we’ve got the highest tax burden since World War II,” he told the BBC in May, when asked about this policy pledge.
Starmer has also essentially abandoned several other pledges, such as to nationalise public services like mail and water companies and the abolition of university tuition fees, among other of his 10 pledges from 2020.
“We are likely to move on from that commitment, because we do find ourselves in a different financial situation,” he told the BBC when asked about tuition fees.
More cake
Labour’s so-called “missions” for Britain (a “long-term plan to get Britain’s future back” that “will drive forward a Labour government”) instead include sticking “tough fiscal rules with economic stability at their heart.”
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If the new PM really wants to turn Britain around and keep his political momentum, he will need more than economic stability, growing cakes and political dilly dallying, however. He will need to improve the lives of ordinary people, as well as keep his promises, principles and integrity.
But Labour’s election manifesto does not even contain the sort of spending plans needed to protect public services from future cuts, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says in a response to the manifesto.
“Delivering genuine change will almost certainly also require putting actual resources on the table. And Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this,” the IFS adds.
Fatma Hijazi, the mother of 10-year-old Palestinian boy Mustafa Hijazi, who died due to malnutrition and lack of medication, holds the lifeless body of her child in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 14, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The starvation of Palestinians in Gaza “is a form of genocidal violence,” said 10 rights experts.
While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.
“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.
Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.
“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” said the experts. “Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.”
“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they continued.
We are now seeing famine across the whole of Gaza. All houses destroyed, food systems destroyed and healthcare destroyed. And kids are dying. Is there any humanity left? https://t.co/jjI5ZHAvbA
— UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing (@adequatehousing) July 9, 2024
At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would “be no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in to Gaza.
Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday’s statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.
The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered “irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”
“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said. “The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths… Inaction is complicity.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.
In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel’s “sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory” ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are “engaged in genocide.”
In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that “the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further” and that “famine is setting in.”
A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.
“It’s distressing to see my child… lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water,” she told the outlet.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel’s military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.
“The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel’s campaign of genocide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. “This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity.”
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.
Wes Streeting, Peter Kyle and Jonathan Reynolds leave Starmer’s first cabinet meeting. (Photo: Alamy)
Declassified Exclusive: Labour’s top team has accepted over £600,000 from pro-Israel funders.
Pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to parliament, Declassified can reveal.
The list of recipients includes prime minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves, foreign secretary David Lammy and home secretary Yvette Cooper.
Jonathan Reynolds, who will oversee arms exports to Israel as UK trade secretary, is another beneficiary, alongside Labour’s election mastermind Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security.
Some of the donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region.
Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds and technology secretary Peter Kyle were recently listed as vice-chairs of LFI.
Other major funders include pro-Israel businessmen Gary Lubner, Trevor Chinn, and Stuart Roden.
The total value of the donations amounts to over £600,000.
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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.
Green Party’s Carla Denyer arrives at the count (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC) [Ani Stafford-Townsend is immediately to the right of Carla Denyer.]
As well as Bristol’s first-ever MP, the party finished second everywhere else
A Green surge right across Bristol not only saw the party’s first-ever MP in the city, but also saw voters put them in second place in every single other constituency.
The Green Party are now officially the main challengers to Labour in all five of Bristol’s constituencies – after Carla Denyer’s victory in Bristol Central was followed by strong support right across the city. A total of 65,762 people voted Green in the five Bristol constituencies.
In Bristol East, the Green Party candidate Ani Stafford-Townsend won more than 30 per cent of the vote to cut Labour’s majority down to just 6,606, while in Bristol South and Bristol North West, the Greens leapt from fourth place last time around to second.
Victorious Green MP Carla Denyer, the party’s co-leader, showed that her success – which was matched by Green wins in three other constituencies around the country – meant that people could vote Green and potentially get a Green MP.
The article is from a Bristol newspaper. The “the party finished second everywhere else” refers to everywhere else in Bristol.
Comments by dizzy: These comments may get extended and elaborated.
This article highlights a recurring theme in many analyses of the 2024 General Election: That the Green Party are the ruling Labour Party’s main threat.
The Green Party were mistaken in restricting their ambitions i.e. targetting only 4 seats. This article suggests that another 4 were within reach and to succeed in your goals suggests that those goals were too lax.
The rest of these comments is difficult because there are so many unknowns.
I would expect the Greens to do extremely well at the next General election. That’s assuming that general elections in the same way will be held in 4 or 5 years time.
The World is warming at a seriously alarming rate. Climate change is now and needs immediate action. The action needed is to stop burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy that doesn’t damage the climate. There are also other necessary measures: basically stop the rich trashing the planet with their ridiculously climate expensive lifestyles.
People are going to get very angry when they realise how their climate and future has been destroyed by a few rich cnuts.
later: The next few years are going to be extremely demanding, certainly beyond the capabilities of prospective presidential candidates.
