Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch: Israel’s Most Powerful Supporter

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image of David Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks
David Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks

Original article by ALAN MACLEOD republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Without a sympathetic media, Israel’s powerful military would be next to useless in its attempts to ethnically cleanse Gaza. It relies on crucial Western support for its project, and no one is as important in manufacturing consent for Israel as Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born press baron has close and extensive personal ties to the Israeli political elite and myriad business connections to the country. He has used his media empire to defend Israel and sing its praises, even amidst an attack on Gaza commonly condemned as genocidal. As such, his holdings effectively serve as an unofficial arm of the Israeli propaganda machine.

The Murdoch machine comprises well over 100 newspapers – some of them among the world’s most well-known and influential, as well as dozens of TV channels and a formidable publishing empire. This power allows him to set the political agenda across much of the world. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that Murdoch was an “unofficial member” of his cabinet and that he was one of the four most powerful men in the United Kingdom.

 

Political Connections

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has described him as the world’s “most dangerous” individual. His influence on American public life – through ventures like The Wall Street Journal and Fox News – is well documented. Less understood, however, are his close ties to Israel, and in particular, to its political leadership.

In 2010, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth published a leaked list compiled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of whom he considered his best sources of campaign contributions. Murdoch’s name appears on the list alongside the designation of number two, meaning Netanyahu considered him a close ally and one of the most likely sources of funds. An estimated 98% of Netanyahu’s contributions came from abroad.

At 93, Murdoch has relinquished much of the day-to-day running of his businesses to his son, Lachlan. Earlier this year, Lachlan traveled to Israel to meet Netanyahu and former prime minister Benny Gantz. While the details of the meetings remain murky, it is clear that support for the Israeli offensive in Gaza and beyond was a principal topic.

This was not the first time the younger Murdoch had met Netanyahu, In 2016, he flew to Israel for secret meetings with the prime minister, where, according to local newspaper Haaretz, he attempted to convince Murdoch to purchase Yedioth Ahronoth, and to start a Fox News-style TV channel for Israel.

Netanyahu, however, is far from the only prime minister with a close relationship with Murdoch. Ariel Sharon, for instance, has enjoyed a decades-long friendship with the Australian mogul. Murdoch stayed with him on his farm and was treated to a helicopter tour of Israel, where the supposed vulnerability of Israel from its hostile neighbors was stressed.

Economic Ties

In addition to his political ties, Murdoch has several economic commitments to Israel. In 2010, he and banking billionaire Lord Jacob Rothschild each purchased equity stakes in Genie Energy and joined the company’s board of directors.

While he was on the board, Genie was awarded a contract to drill for oil and gas over approximately 400 square kilometers of Golan Heights, Syrian territory that Israel has illegally occupied since 1967. In effect, Genie was attempting to profit from an occupation deemed illegitimate under international law.

Murdoch also owned Israeli software company NDS, which was at the center of a hacking scandal that brought down British television company ITV Digital. NDS’s activities helped huge numbers of Britons access paid TV for free, causing the corporation to fold under reduced revenues.

Another ethically questionable connection is Murdoch’s reliance on lobbying firm LLM Communications. The billionaire hired the group, co-founded by Lord Jonathan Mendelsohn, to help them overturn British government laws that ensured trade unions could ballot for workplace recognition. Lord Mendelsohn was the chairman of the Israel lobbying group Labour Friends of Israel, which was crucial in smearing and defeating the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong peace activist and proponent of Palestinian rights.

Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.

 

Zionist Hardliner

“My ventures in media are not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs,” Murdoch said, and supporting Israel and its expansionist policies is one of the core values the Australian has tirelessly worked towards.

At a 2009 meeting of the American Jewish Committee, he explained that he saw Israel as the linchpin underwriting Western civilization:

In the West, we are used to thinking that Israel cannot survive without the help of Europe and the United States. I say to you: maybe we should start wondering whether we in Europe and the United States can survive if we allow the terrorists to succeed in Israel… In the end, the Israeli people are fighting the same enemy we are: cold-blooded killers who reject peace… who reject freedom… and who rule by the suicide vest, the car bomb and the human shield”.

In 2005, he wrote the foreword to the book, “Israel In The World: Changing Lives Through Innovation,” a fawning tome lionizing Israel as an unqualified success that has built a robust democracy and a vibrant economy despite setbacks and threats from its neighbors.

He has also put his money where his mouth is: in 2007, his News Corp business donated to the Jerusalem Foundation, a group that builds illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Murdoch has led the fight against the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, claiming that it represents an “ongoing war against the Jews.” “The war has entered a new phase,” he said.

“This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere – the media, multinational organizations, NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.”

He made these comments at an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) event, where the organization presented him with its International Leadership Award. That the ADL, which purports to be a group standing against racism, would honor Murdoch with such an award, despite his networks pumping out relentless bigotry, underlines how little emphasis it places on genuine anti-racism and how much it works to simply promote Israeli interests.

The ADL is hardly the only Jewish organization that has heaped praise on the media mogul, however. The Simon Wiesenthal Center decorated him with their humanitarian laureate award; other groups, such as the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the American Jewish Committee, have also sung his praises. The United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York declared him their “humanitarian of the year” at a lavish ceremony, where Henry Kissinger presented him with the award. 

Rupert’s Empire

Murdoch took over his father’s Adelaide newspaper in 1952 and quickly built a giant global enterprise, particularly across the English-speaking world. He used this power to spread his conservative agenda.

His British holdings, including The Sun, The Times and Sunday Times, constitute one-quarter of newspaper circulation in the country. His News Corp company also operates Sky television, TalkTV, TalkRadio and TalkSPORT.

Murdoch is widely believed to have swung both the 1992 elections for the Conservatives and the 1997 election towards Labour after Tony Blair struck a deal with him. “It’s difficult to think of a prime minister in the last 40 years who has won against the Murdoch instinct,” said former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

In the United States, Murdoch owns influential outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and much of the Fox network. This is in addition to owning the influential Harper Collins publishing house.

He is known as an unusually hands-on owner, insisting that the tone and political line of all his outlets conform to his thinking. “For better or for worse, The News Corporation is a reflection of my thinking, my character, and my values,” he admitted.

This included wholehearted support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam… I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it,” he said. He also made sure that every one of his 175 global newspaper titles expressed similar vociferous support for the invasion.

Inside the industry, Fox News is known for its particularly strict, top-down editorial procedure. One former contributor claimed that working under Murdoch was “almost as if we were being monitored by a Stalinist system … it is very much an environment of fear”. A second confided that “if you don’t go along with the mind-set of the hierarchy, if you challenge them on their attitudes about things, you are history”.

But it is in his local Australia that his power reaches almost banana republic-like proportions. Murdoch owns 7 of the country’s 12 national or capital daily newspapers. In half of the country’s state or territory capitals, there is no local alternative to the Murdoch publication. Former prime minister, Kevin Rudd labeled his empire a “cancer” on Australian democracy.

 

Piers Morgan Exposed

Until he recently went independent with his talk show, Piers Morgan was one of Murdoch’s most recognizable anchors. Hosting a popular talk show that reached millions, Morgan has played a crucial role in informing the public about Israel and Palestine. Although he has claimed he is entirely neutral on the issue and does not support either side, Morgan has a number of close connections to Israel worth noting. Firstly, he has supported the Norwood Charity on a number of occasions, helping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group.

Norwood is headed by the aforementioned Israel lobbyist, Lord Mendelsohn, alongside his wife, Lady Nicola Mendelsohn. Lady Mendelsohn is also head of global business for social media giant Meta (the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram). She has consistently lobbied for Israeli causes and even met former president Shimon Peres. During her time at Meta, the company has begun to employ dozens of former agents of the Israeli spying group, Unit 8200 – all in sensitive positions within the company. Facebook in particular has grown closer to Israel, even appointing former General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice Emi Palmor to its oversight board, the group that decides what direction the company goes and what content to allow and disallow on the platform.

Norwood’s previous president was Sir Trevor Chinn. Chinn is currently head of United Jewish Israel Appeal, a British-Israeli group whose goal is to increase young British Jews’ sense of connection to Israel. He is also on the executive committee of Britain’s largest Israel lobby group, BICOM, and has funded Labour Friends of Israel.

On October 22, at the height of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Morgan met Lady Mendelsohn in New York for dinner. Also present at the meal was Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, who has raised money for the Jewish National Fund, the largest settler-building body in Palestine. It is unclear what they discussed, but given their careers and interests, it is hard to see how news from the Middle East did not arise.

Thus, while Morgan may have invited individuals from all points of the spectrum of debate on Gaza, he does appear to move in circles filled with top Israel lobbyists.

Image of Boris Johnson sucking up to Rupert Murdoch
Boris Johnson sucking up to Rupert Murdoch

Blatant Propaganda

Unsurprisingly, given what we have seen, Murdoch’s top publications have displayed an overwhelming bias in their coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, constantly defending Israeli actions and demonizing both Palestinians and those who have opposed the violence.

On October 19, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, where hundreds of refugees had taken shelter. In describing the attack, the Wall Street Journal ran with the headline “Blast goes off at Orthodox Church Campus in Gaza,” turning what was one of the most notorious incidents in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza into a regrettable accident. At no point during the article did the Journal suggest that the “blast” might have been an attack or even hint at Israeli involvement.

The Journal has also led the attack on Americans protesting the onslaught. “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” ran the headline of one story, clearly intended to vilify people opposing a genocide as agents of a foreign power. Another story, entitled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” echoed Bush-era levels of Islamophobia in its attempts to equate the heavily Arab-American city with anti-American hatred. Campus demonstrations, meanwhile, were written off as “terrorist-glorifying protestors” who constitute “the left-wing counterparts to the Charlottesville mob that chanted ‘Jews will not replace us.’”

The newspaper has also published articles demanding the U.S. go to war with Iran. “The U.S. and Israel Need to Take Iran On Directly. Make the ayatollahs pay for sowing chaos through their Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies,” wrote former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

And for Palestine? The Wall Street Journal envisages its future as a giant arms factory making the weapons for Israel’s assault on Iran. In an op-ed entitled “A Plan for Palestinian Prosperity,” columnist Andy Kessler wrote that producing the weapons for the next Israeli attack would bring middle-class jobs to Gaza. “They can even work on Saturdays” and “without handouts from the politicized United Nations,” he claimed, although he cautioned that perhaps the explosives should be added elsewhere by more trustworthy employees.

Murdoch’s other publications have followed suit, relentlessly supporting Israel and demonizing its critics. Fox News, for example, spread the now-debunked assertion that Palestinian fighters had beheaded 40 Israeli babies on October 7. In reality, no babies were beheaded, although Israeli bombs or bullets have since decapitated countless Palestinian children.

The New York Post, meanwhile, published a remarkable article titled “Just how many of Gaza’s civilians are entirely ‘innocent’?” in which it repeatedly insinuated that essentially every adult in Gaza was a legitimate target, even using the word “civilian” in scare quotes.

On Israel/Palestine, journalists in corporate media are under enormous pressure to toe an ownership-imposed line. The New York Times, for example, has told its reporters not to employ words such as  “genocide,” “slaughter,” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israel’s actions. It has even forbidden the use of terms like “refugee camp,” “occupied territory,” or even “Palestine,” making it virtually impossible to report accurately on the situation.

Murdoch publications are surely no different. Indeed, this sort of stifling censorship has been in place for decades, if former employees are to be believed. In 2001, Sam Kiley, a former correspondent for The Times of London, revealed that he was instructed never to refer to Israel as “assassinating” or “executing” their opponents. And when he was tasked with interviewing an Israeli Army unit responsible for killing a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, he was asked to file the article without somehow mentioning the dead child at all.

Image: Boris Johnson confirms his thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Boris Johnson confirms his thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch

Friends in High Places

The nine-month-long Israeli attack on Gaza has inspired outrage across the world. While its standing has dropped even further in the Global South, Israel still maintains a considerable base of support in the West. This is down in no small part thanks to oligarchs such as Rupert Murdoch, who have marshaled their considerable resources to fight a committed media war in support of the Israeli state, attempting to hide its atrocities and shore up support for its expansionist project.

For Israel, which could not continue in its current form without outside support (particularly from the United States), the battle for public opinion is every bit as important as the fight on the ground. Fortunately for Netanyahu and his ilk, they can rely on Rupert Murdoch, who has for decades championed Israel’s cause and is now pushing his media empire into overdrive to defend the indefensible. If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then Rupert Murdoch is one of Israel’s most powerful weapons.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

MPN.news is an award winning investigative newsroom.  Sign up for their newsletter.

Original article by ALAN MACLEOD republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

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Continue ReadingRupert Murdoch: Israel’s Most Powerful Supporter

Billionaires Buy Governments to Avoid Paying Their Fair Share in Taxes

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Original article by BOB LORD of Inequality.Org republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

U.S. President Donald Trump smiles at House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) after speaking about the passage of tax cut legislation at the White House in Washington, D.C. on December 20, 2017. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

In legislatures, the courts, and our executive offices, we have a system rigged in favor of the ultra-rich, rigged by everything from acts of Congress and judicial rulings to IRS budgets and audit policies.

By all appearances, former U.S. President Donald Trump has cut a sweet deal with a dozen or two of America’s richest billionaires: Finance his campaign and he’ll keep their federal taxes super low—or even lower them—once he’s sitting back in the White House.

How much do billionaires like this deal? This much: In April, hedge fund billionaire John Paulsen held a Palm Beach fundraiser for Trump that brought in $50.5 million. Immediately after Trump’s late May conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, Timothy Mellon, the grandson of the classic plutocrat Andrew Mellon, ponied up $50 million. Miriam Adelson, the billionaire widow of Las Vegas kingpin Sheldon Adelson, appears eager to kick in as much as $100 million.

This past spring, meanwhile, billionaires Elon Musk and David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party for Trump, with attendees including the illustrious deep pockets Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, and Michael Milken.

The rich themselves have actually become more brazen about avoiding taxes. Just try to stop us, they seem to be saying.

America’s billionaires clearly see politics as one route to ensuring they pay as little as possible at tax time. But they don’t just make their presence felt at election time. America’s rich have their thumbs firmly on the scale of all three branches of government. In legislatures, the courts, and our executive offices, we have a system rigged in favor of the ultra-rich, rigged by everything from acts of Congress and judicial rulings to IRS budgets and audit policies.

Some of this rigging we can all easily see. The dividends and long-term capital gains of the ultra-rich have for decades faced a maximum tax rate barely half the maximum rate applicable to other forms of income. And the investment income of the rich, unlike the paychecks of working people, faces no Social Security tax.

In 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency, intense lobbying efforts helped rich business owners to a special tax rate for their business income. In 2018 alone, according to ProPublica, that special rate translated into a $67 million gift to Mike Bloomberg, whose personal wealth now reportedly exceeds $100 billion.

But these glaring privileges the rich enjoy at tax time only tell part of the billionaire tax story. Other parts get precious little attention. In 2004, for instance, lawmakers in Congress enacted a penalty for the failure to disclose potentially abusive tax avoidance transactions on tax returns. The penalty on the surface looked substantial: 75% of the tax sought to be avoided. But Congress capped the penalty at $100,000, a move that turned the penalty into a minor nuisance for billionaires seeking to avoid millions of dollars in taxes.

In our current rich people-friendly tax climate, IRS staff who want to do the right thing face tough going. Recently, for example, one former IRS staffer, Michael Welu, went public with his concerns that the IRS itself has both official and unofficial policies that end up treating audited rich taxpayers much more gently than small business owners.

“I was putting butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers in jail,” Welu told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “but the big stuff we really wanted to go after was being ignored.”

Welu found the upper management of the IRS division tasked with auditing the super rich—and the corporations they run—distinctly uninterested in investigating America’s richest and their “most egregious, ridiculous schemes” for avoiding taxes.

IRS officials like Michael Welu do occasionally speak out. But only tax wonks truly have any real sense of how much obscure tax code penalties and IRS audit policies favor the rich. And most of those tax wonks work for the rich.

The rich themselves have actually become more brazen about avoiding taxes. Just try to stop us, they seem to be saying.

Take the recently decided Supreme Court case, Moore v. United States. Working through an array of right-wing organizations, the conservative mover-and-shaker Leonard Leo attempted to use a challenge to an obscure one-time tax as a vehicle to preempt Congress from ever taxing the wealth or unrealized gains of the ultra-rich. Ultimately, the court decided the case without ruling on whether the rich can be taxed on their wealth or unrealized gains. But the opinions that four of the nine justices handed down made it clear that they stand prepared to do the billionaire bidding should a direct challenge to a tax on the wealth or unrealized gains of billionaires come before them.

Billionaires now have at least three Supreme Court justices firmly in their pockets. Reporting by ProPublica has revealed the massive gifts that have been flowing from Harlan Crow and other billionaires to Justice Clarence Thomas as well as the generous gifts that billionaire Paul Singer has been sending Justice Samuel Alito’s way. Justice Neil Gorsuch has had his entire career, including his appointment to the court, funded by the billionaire Philip Anschutz.

Those three justices, along with Justice Amy Coney-Barret, have now made it patently obvious they will not allow billionaires to be taxed on their unrealized gains or their wealth. Does anyone really think the billionaires won’t have the crucial, majority-making fifth vote from Justice Brett Kavanaugh when they need it?

Republican members of Congress are showing even less shame than our Supreme Court justices. Last year, these GOP lawmakers held the country hostage in negotiations to increase the country’s debt limit. Their price for agreeing to raise the debt limit, thereby avoiding a default on the country’s debt? They demanded—and won—a reduction in a scheduled IRS budget increase that would been used to increase enforcement moves against rich taxpayers.

The purported motive for this legislative hostage taking—“concern” over the federal deficit—made for an absurd justification. The proposed increase in the IRS budget would have been recovered, several times over, through increased tax collections. The IRS budget reductions the Republican lawmakers extracted will, in fact, only increase the federal deficit. But those reductions will serve a political purpose. They’ll protect the GOP’s richest patrons from tax enforcement.

The mainstream media, to no one’s surprise, did a miserable job of exposing this Republican dishonesty in the debt limit negotiations. But at one point in our recent past a courageous soul did emerge to expose the rot in our tax system. What happened? The ultra-rich and their henchmen in Congress make sure that this soul faced a punishment far more severe than any punishment ever meted out to those few rich Americans who actually get caught evading their taxes due.

That courageous soul, Charles Littlejohn, worked as an IRS contractor. He leaked tax return information related to Trump and America’s billionaires to TheNew York Times and ProPublica. ProPublica used that leaked information to write over 50 stories about billionaire tax avoidance, embarrassing and angering many of our richest in the process. Two of them even brought lawsuits, one against the IRS and the other against Littlejohn’s employer.

Ultimately, Littlejohn pled guilty to one count of unauthorized tax return information disclosure, a crime that carries a recommended sentence of four to 10 months. But 25 Republican members of Congress, undoubtedly at the behest of their billionaire patrons, wrote the judge in the case and urged the harshest possible sentence of five years. The judge obliged, stating in her sentencing remarks that Littlejohn posed a graver threat to democracy than the January 6 rioters. As tax law professor Reuven Avi-Yonah has noted, Littlejohn is now serving a sentence far harsher than any imposed on rich Americans convicted of tax evasion.

Littlejohn’s extreme sentence did not reflect the one single count of unauthorized tax return information disclosure he pled guilty to. That sentence reflects his “crime” of exposing the tax avoidance of the billionaire class.

Try this thought experiment: Imagine if Littlejohn had released the return information of 1,000 or so taxpayers with modest incomes to ProPublica. Imagine that ProPublica had then publicly detailed all the tip income that servers and bartenders among these taxpayers had failed to report and all the social meals that small business owners in the sample had claimed as business expenses. If Littlejohn had then pled to one count of unauthorized disclosure, would 25 members of Congress have intervened? Would the judge have imposed a sentence over six times the maximum recommended in federal sentencing guidelines?

Doesn’t it become dangerous to society when the punishment for a crime depends on who the victim happens to be?

We are now living that danger. Our billionaires sit firmly in control. And they will do whatever it takes to make sure they never pay tax at an appropriate level—even if that means locking a human being up for a preposterously long time just to send a message.

Original article by BOB LORD of Inequality.Org republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Continue ReadingBillionaires Buy Governments to Avoid Paying Their Fair Share in Taxes

UK Climate Campaigners Get ‘Utterly Disproportionate’ Sentences

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

An activist puts up a banner reading “Just Stop Oil” atop an electronic traffic sign along M25 on November 10, 2022 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

“Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest,” a U.N. official said.

In a decision that one United Nations official called “beyond comprehension,” a U.K. judge on Thursday sentenced five Just Stop Oil activists to a combined 21 years in prison over a Zoom call in which they discussed plans to disrupt London’s orbital M25 highway.

The sentences are believed to be the longest on record for nonviolent protest in U.K. history, The Guardian reported.

“The sentences handed to the five Just Stop Oil campaigners are utterly disproportionate,” environmentalist and author George Monbiot wrote on social media. “Four and five years in prison for peaceful protest? This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy.”

“Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?”

The five activists—Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin—were found guilty last week of conspiring to cause a public nuisance due to a four-day direct action protest on the M25 that Just Stop Oil ultimately held in November 2022. All of the defendants participated in a Zoom call in which they planned to recruit volunteers for the protest, which was intended to pressure the U.K. government to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, a policy that the incoming Labour government has now adopted. The Zoom call had been infiltrated by a Sun journalist, who shared its contents with the Metropolitan Police.

On Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Hallam to five years in prison and Shaw, Lancaster, De Abreu, and Gethin to four each.

The sentences sparked outrage from humans rights advocates and environmental campaigners.

Michel Forst, U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders who also observed part of the trial, said the sentencing “marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders, and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom.”

Forst added: “Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”

Former Green Party leader and Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the sentences “obscene.”

“Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?” she asked on social media.

Current Deputy Leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: “‘Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ is a deeply authoritarian description that should send shivers down the spine of all of us who want to live in a free society. Even worse when the real crime is consecutive governments who have played down the climate emergency.”

Campaigners and experts also criticized the trial itself, in which Hehir did not allow the defendants to present evidence about the climate crisis to explain their actions.

“Defendants should be allowed to explain why they have decided to use nonconventional but yet peaceful forms of action, like civil disobedience, when they engage in environmental protest,” Forst told The Guardian after attending part of the trial.

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London—who Hehir did not allow the defendants to call as a witness—called the trial and verdict a “farce.”

“They mark a low point in British justice, and they were an assault on free speech,” McGuire in a statement said Thursday. “The judge’s characterization of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”

The verdict and sentencing also come amid an increasing crackdown on climate protest, both globally and in the U.K. The previous longest known civil disobedience sentences in the country were also for Just Stop Oil activists.

“The U.K. is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view, in the sense that the sentences imposed in other countries are neither that harsh, nor that widespread,” Forst said July 12.

Greenpeace U.K.’s program director Amy Cameron said on Thursday: “These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric, and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It’s part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor, and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that’s been slowly being taken away from them.”

Forst also called on the new government to reverse course.

“Given the gravity of the situation, I urge the new United Kingdom government, with absolute urgency and without undo delay, to take all necessary steps to ensure that Mr. Shaw’s sentence is reduced in line with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Aarhus Convention,” Forst wrote on Thursday.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUK Climate Campaigners Get ‘Utterly Disproportionate’ Sentences

George Monbiot exposes Starmer’s hollow victory

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Rupert Murdoch supports the Red Tories (UK Labour Party) and needs his nappy changed.
Rupert Murdoch supports the Red Tories (UK Labour Party) and needs his nappy changed.
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.
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.
Continue ReadingGeorge Monbiot exposes Starmer’s hollow victory

Jury out in historic Just Stop Oil conspiracy case

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UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.

The jury is now deliberating the verdict in a case involving Just Stop Oil supporters Daniel Shaw, Cressie Gethin, Lucia De-Abreu-Whittaker, Louise Lancaster, and Roger Hallam. The five are currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court. They are charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in connection with the M25 gantry actions in November 2022.

They were first arrested in 2022 either pre-emptively in police raids at their homes after attending a Zoom call (in which a Sun journalist was present), or travelling near the M25. The Sun alleged it had ‘infiltrated’ the meeting, tipping off the police and enabling National Highways to secure a public injunction. Some of the five defendants were imprisoned for up to 113 days without trial. They were released subject to stringent conditions including a 10pm to 7am house curfew, stipulations not to be within a one-mile radius of the M25, no contact with other defendants, and not to participate in any climate change demonstration. 

The trial began on 24th June, presided over by Crown Court Judge Hehir. 

At the start of the trial, the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders released a statement expressing its views on the criminal prosecution of Daniel Shaw. Due to his “grave concerns” about the criminalisation of UK environmental defenders, Special Rapporteur Michel Forst attended the trial in person on 4th and 5th July. [1]

During the trial so far, Judge Hehir has ordered nine separate arrests from the courtroom: three times each for Roger Hallam and Daniel Shaw, twice for Louise Lancaster, and once for Cressie Gethin. Additionally, the defendants have collectively spent seven nights in remand since the trial began, with Daniel, Roger, and Louise each spending two nights, and Cressie spending one night. 

On the 4th of July, the prosecution made a historic concession by admitting to the following, in the list of agreed facts to be presented for the jury’s consideration:

“1. On 17 December 2020, Her Majesty’s Treasury published the New Zero Interim Report which states, ‘Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Without global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will change catastrophically with almost unimaginable consequences for societies across the world.’ In recognition of the risks, the UK became, in 2019, the first major economy to implement a legally binding net zero target.

2. Scientific consensus is that beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels risks catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity, which will be irreversible.

3. Over the past five years, the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times has averaged just under 1.3 degrees Celsius. For the 12 months to June 2024, it averaged 1.63 degrees Celsius and is estimated to top 1.5 degrees Celsius permanently before 2030.

4. In October 2022, the UK Government opened the 33rd licensing round to allow oil and gas companies to explore for more fossil fuels in the North Sea.”

Despite the presence of these agreed facts and the explicit provision for the defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ under section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, Judge Hehir ruled that the defendants would not be allowed any defence under law, repeating at various points in the trial as well as in his written directions to the jury that any facts pertaining to “man-made climate change” were “entirely irrelevant” to the defendants’ charges. 

Continue ReadingJury out in historic Just Stop Oil conspiracy case