A protester faces off with Met riot police during a previous ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London in September. Photograph: James Willoughby/Sopa Images/Shutterstock
Celebrities including Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes sign letter to force after pro-Palestine march route rejected
Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes are among artists who have accused the Metropolitan police of giving preferential treatment to a far-right demonstration led by Tommy Robinson over a pro-Palestine protest in London on the same day.
The pro-Palestine movement has had its preferred route through central London for its annual commemoration of Nakba – the mass expulsion of Palestinians – rejected by the Met, while the “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration will take place on the same date in Kingsway, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posted on X: “London is ours on May 16th.”
An open letter saying that the Met “must not favour the far right over Palestine” has also been signed by the actors Samuel West and Khalid Abdalla, the musicians Billy Bragg and Nadine Shah, as well as MPs, academics, lawyers, trade union and civil society leaders. The Met said the decision was based on the relative scale of the demonstrations.
Billy Howle, who starred in the TV shows The Perfect Couple and The Serpent and also signed the letter, said: “The shocking decision of the police to exclusively favour a far-right demonstration and block this important annual commemoration from the political heart of London will send shivers down the spines of every person of good conscience. It must be overturned.”
The letter says that the pro-Palestine movement informed the force on 18 December of its intention to march on the nearest Saturday to Nakba Day, in keeping with a tradition dating back more than a decade, but that the Met has “instead given over the political centre of London to a hate march called by racist thug ‘Tommy Robinson’”. It calls on the force to “immediately reverse this shameful decision”.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.Nigel Farage blames the Muzzies.
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A group of lawyers gather to protest the Israeli Knesset’s National Security Committee’s draft law that imposing the death penalty for Palestinian detainees on November 09, 2025 in Hebron, West Bank. [Mamoun Wazwaz – Anadolu Agency]
More than 1,200 former Israeli officials and public figures have signed a petition opposing a proposed bill that would impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners, according to Hebrew media reports published on Tuesday.
The signatories include former Supreme Court judges, Nobel laureates, ex-heads of the Shin Bet and Mossad intelligence agencies, academics, university presidents, former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff Dan Halutz and Moshe Yaalon, as well as former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
In the petition, the group said it “strongly opposes the death penalty bill currently being debated in the Knesset in preparation for its second and third readings” and called on lawmakers to vote it down.
The statement argued that reinstating capital punishment would impose “a moral stain” on Israel and contradict its identity as a Jewish and democratic state. It added that the death penalty is incompatible with a state committed to human rights and that there is no scientific evidence proving it deters violent crime.
The proposed legislation, promoted by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, would reportedly apply the death penalty in cases involving Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis. Critics of the bill say it creates discriminatory legal standards and would require military courts in the occupied territories to impose capital punishment without judicial discretion or the possibility of commutation.
The petition further warned that reintroducing the death penalty would run counter to global trends and could conflict with Israel’s international legal obligations, potentially increasing its diplomatic isolation.
The bill remains under parliamentary consideration.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Larry Summers at the New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, in 2019. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former treasury secretary steps away to ‘rebuild trust’ after severe backlash but will continue teaching Harvard classes
The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.
Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he told Politico in a statement.
“I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
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Besides Summers, the emails released last week revealed how Epstein maintained contact with other business executives, reporters, academics and political players despite his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren said to CNN.
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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (C) makes a speech as he attends the three-day International Palestine Conference, led by France and Saudi Arabia and attended by Turkiye at the United Nations Trusteeship Council in New York, United States on July 28, 2025. [Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency]
More than 200 prominent figures from across the world, including political leaders, academics, human rights advocates, journalists, religious scholars and cultural icons, have issued a joint letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres calling for “the dismantling of apartheid” and “an end to impunity” for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
The letter issued yesterday warns that “silence has become complicity and hesitation a betrayal of the very Charter upon which the United Nations was founded.” It accuses Israel of committing “one of the most extensive massacres in modern history” in Gaza during June and July 2025, in which more than 60,000 Palestinians – including over 17,000 children – were killed, and over two million displaced.
The letter presents what it calls “seven myths” that have sustained Israel’s oppression since before its creation. It describes the 1948 Nakba as a “deliberate erasure” of the indigenous Palestinian people, with over 500 villages destroyed and more than 700,000 Palestinians made stateless, and rejects the narrative of Israel’s “birth” as a lawful or just event.
Tracing an unbroken chain of violence, the signatories cite the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948, the atrocities at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, the brutal assault on Jenin in 2002, repeated bombardments of Gaza from 2008 to 2021, and the devastation unleashed since 7 October 2023. These, they argue, expose a “deliberate project of colonial expansion, racial domination, and cultural erasure, underpinned by… legal impunity.”
The appeal condemns Israel’s June 2025 attack on Iran as an unprovoked act of aggression against a sovereign state and accuses it of “normalising assassination” as a state policy. It warns that the regime’s “vast apparatus of disinformation” has been used to criminalise resistance, silence dissent, and invert the moral order by branding victims as aggressors.
Affirming the Palestinian right to resist occupation under UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, the letter insists that justice can only come through “a democratic referendum, inclusive of all indigenous inhabitants, be they Muslim, Christian, or Jew, and excluding those settled by colonial force.”
Declaring Zionism “not reformable” and the Israeli state “inherently exploitative, oppressive, war-mongering and unjust,” the signatories call for its dismantlement as a political and legal entity. They urge the UN to take “urgent and unequivocal action” not only in response to the June–July 2025 atrocities, but as “a historical reckoning for the accumulated crimes committed over more than a century against the Palestinian people.”
“Liberation from apartheid. Liberation from impunity. Liberation from a structure that for more than 80 years has perpetuated occupation, dispossession, and mass murder,” the letter concludes. “No arsenal of lies, no machinery of occupation, and no doctrine of impunity can withstand the long moral reckoning that history demands.”
Ammunition used against protestors, which led to the death of a young girl, Michelle Becker, from the large amount of tear gas that filled her home. Photo: Claridad Panamá
The demonstrations, which have lasted more than 70 days, have been firmly repressed by the Mulino government, which has affirmed that it will not repeal the social security law that has caused so much controversy.
On July 5, nearly 800 people from 17 countries signed a letter addressed to the president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, calling for international observation due to the increasing repression of protests in Panama. The document, signed by academics, artists, activists, workers, and trade unionists, also points out that the Central American country is witnessing growing criminalization of political dissent, which, according to the document, is reminiscent of the darkest years in its national history. Furthermore, the letter adds that the government is demonstrating an “authoritarian drift”.
The letter states: “President Mulino leads a legally legitimate government, but with minimal support. And he has responded to a wave of legitimate and democratic protests most violently and systematically ever recorded in the country’s history since 1903.”
For more than 70 days, thousands of Panamanians have taken to the streets, closed roads, and staged strikes against the neoliberal policies of the Mulino government. The demonstrators are demanding the repeal of:
A law reforming Social Security – reducing pensions and opening the door for the privatization of the system.
Growing US interference – according to the demonstrators, the US intends to install several military bases in Panama.
The reopening of a copper mine – the largest and most controversial in the country, already closed by the Panamanian justice system.
In this regard, the letter states: “The step taken by the Executive to suspend constitutional guarantees in the province of Bocas del Toro makes it, de facto, an authoritarian government willing to suspend the Constitution when it is unable to negotiate, dialogue or listen to its people… The abuse of power of the State through the security forces and the arguments used to justify the violation of human rights, repression, and the prosecution of leaders are not acceptable in any way.”
Therefore, the letter denounces that the country is “going backwards in terms of human rights” and requests the immediate intervention of international human rights agencies to address the Panamanian situation and thus guarantee the fundamental freedoms of demonstrators and citizens alike.
For this and other cases, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the Indigenous Peasant Movement of the Ngäbe Buglé region requested that the legislature establish a commission specialized in studying cases of human rights violations to monitor the protests. The CNDH presented more than 100 alleged cases of human rights violations, including alleged arbitrary detentions, humiliating treatment, deaths, etc. The legislature has not yet offered a response to the request.
Thus, the Panamanian political dispute has led to a massive confrontation between protesters and the forces of law and order, which is still not over.
However, as the days go by, more and more denunciations are surfacing in the media, increasing the discomfort for moderate Panamanians (former allies of Mulino), and raising concerns among international actors about partnering with a government that is widely seen as repressive.
