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Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place on May 11th, is being protested in Malmo, Sweden, where the event is being hosted on May 9, 2024. [Atila Altuntaş – Anadolu Agency]
After Iceland joined Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia in withdrawing from Eurovision 2026, 17 Portuguese musicians competing in the national selection show Festival da Cancao said they would refuse to represent Portugal even if selected for the next year’s song contest, Anadolu reports.
The entrants in the internal contest to elect a representative issued a statement protesting Israel’s controversial participation in the contest, according to Euronews.
“With words and with songs, we act within the possibilities we are given. We do not accept complicity with the violation of Human Rights,” the statement said.
“Despite Russia’s ban from Eurovision 2022 for political reasons, we were surprised to see that the same stance was not taken towards Israel, which, according to the United Nations, is committing acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” it added.
In response, Portugal’s public broadcaster RTP said: “Regardless of the decision of the artists who subscribe to the statement, RTP will once again organise Festival da Canção and reaffirms its participation at the Eurovision Song Contest 2026.”
Salvador Sobral, Portugal’s only Eurovision winner, also criticized RTP’s position in a video shared on social media, accusing the broadcaster of “political cowardice.”
Public outrage has meanwhile spread across Portugal, leading to the launch of a petition calling for the country’s immediate withdrawal from Eurovision.
The petition, which has gathered more than 22,000 signatures, argues that RTP’s backing of Israel’s participation “puts Portugal on the wrong side of history.”
“This stance is unacceptable in the face of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe and military offensive in the Gaza Strip, and in the face of the vote rigging scandals that marred the 2025 edition in Basel, proving the inability of the organisation (EBU) to curb the politicisation of the event,” the petition said.
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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.
In 2023, 187 nations voted in favor of lifting the US blockade against Cuba (Photo: Bruno Rodríguez Padilla via X)
The US blockade on Cuba has been widely condemned by the majority of the world, yet in recent years, instead of lifting it, successive US administrations have made it worse.
On October 29, the United Nations General Assembly began a series of debates to discuss the resolution on the long-standing economic blockade applied by the United States against the island of Cuba. Since the 1960s, the United States has systematically punished the Cuban people through a stringent blockade on its economy for having declared and built a political and economic model different from the one advocated and directed by the United States. The vote on the resolution will take place on Wednesday, October 30.
On more than 30 occasions, the United Nations Assembly has discussed the blockade against Cuba, which costs the island 5 billion dollars annually, according to some estimates. Every year the resolution is proposed and the whole world, through the vote of the absolute majority of the member countries of the United Nations General Assembly, has condemned the imperialist attitude of the United States towards Cuba.
This year, several regional platforms including, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), among others, announced their support for Cuba at the United Nations General Assembly in the face of the criminal blockade.
In this regard, the Russian delegate Vasily Alekseyevich Nebenzya said at the UN Assembly on Tuesday, “We continue to strongly advocate for the immediate lifting of the illegal embargo that has been imposed by the United States against Cuba for more than 62 years.”
The Mexican representative to the UN, Héctor Vasconcelos, stated in the session that he categorically rejects the blockade against Cuba and that it is in direct violation of international law. “It is time to open a new chapter and allow Cuba to participate fully in the global community without the restrictions imposed by this unjust and inhumane blockade,” Vasconcelos declared.
Almost all countries, except the United States, Israel, and one or two other governments allied with Washington’s policy, vote against the blockade and request the elimination of the sanctions against the socialist country. This, for many, reflects the anti-democratic attitude of the US government, which claims to represent the highest values of human rights and global cooperation, although, in this type of case, it scandalously ignores the demands of the vast majority of countries in the world.
For his part, the Cuban Secretary of State, Bruno Rodríguez, expressed his gratitude for the support given on October 29 by more than 30 delegations that expressed their desire for the United States to lift the blockade against Cuba: “We are grateful for the statements made by the 31 delegations that took the floor at the United Nations General Assembly, demanding the end of the US blockade against Cuba. Tomorrow [October 30] we will continue the debate and the vote against this genocidal policy will take place.”
The blockade tightens
Despite this enormous show of support for Cuba, the United States insists on the economic measure. It has even gone so far as to radicalize it, as happened during the administration of Donald Trump, who applied 243 new sanctions, including the removal of certain travel categories which allowed individual US citizens to visit the island, and included Cuba in the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which further hindered the development of the Cuban economy.
Instead of reversing the measures of his predecessor and returning to the opening policy started by Barack Obama, Biden maintained the more stringent measures against Cuba. In 2023, the US Department of Homeland Security added an additional coercive measure, stating that the ESTA visa waiver program, used largely by citizens of Europe, would be denied to anyone from eligible countries if they had traveled to Cuba anytime after July 2021. In essence, a direct punishment to anyone, even beyond US borders, who dares to visit the Caribbean nation.
A history of systematic political-economic punishment
The first time the US government applied an economic embargo on Cuba was in 1958, during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Although the Cuban Revolution overthrew that military government, the US government punished the Caribbean Island again in 1960.
In the beginning, the restrictions did not include food and medicine, but from 1962, during the radicalization of the Cuban Revolution, the embargo became almost absolute. Cuba’s natural and historical trading partner, both because of its large territorial extension and its purchasing power, had been the United States.
In 1959, 73% of Cuban exports were destined for the United States, which shows the enormous impact that the decision had on the island, aimed at promoting the fall of the government led by Fidel Castro. Nevertheless, the USSR and Cuba reached several economic agreements that allowed the island to somehow withstand (never easily) the portentous US punishment.
However, after the dissolution of the USSR, the blockade began to acquire increasingly challenging characteristics. This is even more so if one takes into account that since 1992, through the Cuban Democracy Act, the US government has not only prohibited US companies from trading with Cuba but also sanctioned any third party that does business with Cuba.
This makes any attempt to overcome the economic crisis induced by outside powers even more difficult. In addition, the US government in 2021 decided, without adequate technical justification, to include Cuba among the countries sponsoring terrorism.
It is foreseeable that Cuba will again feel the backing of international solidarity in the coming days, although the US government will ignore the request of the international community and continue to punish a small country that did not accept to be dominated and undertook a socialist revolution just a couple hundred miles south of the most powerful capitalist country in history.
PRESSURE mounted on Barclays to sever its ties with Israeli arms firms today, as growing numbers of customers joined calls to boycott the bank.
More than 1,500 people closed their accounts in protest against the bank’s “bankrolling of Israel’s genocidal attack on Palestinians,” on a boycott day spearheaded by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
According to PSC, Barclays has invested over £1 billion in companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel and provides nine firms with over £3bn in loans and underwriting.
The companies include General Dynamics, which produces the gun systems that arm fighter jets used by Israel to bombard Gaza, and Elbit Systems, which produces armoured drones, munitions and artillery weapons used by the Israeli military.
The bank previously faced a similar boycott campaign over its financial support for South African apartheid. It was eventually forced to divest in 1986.
The milestone, one campaigner said, should “give hope to folks that we are making an impact.”
An earlier version of this story said that 16,000 institutions had divested. The correct number is 1,600 and it has been updated to reflect that.
More than 1,600 institutions like universities, pension funds, and governments that hold more than $40.6 trillion in assets have now divested from fossil fuels, the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement announced Friday.
The announcement comes days after the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapped with a call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but stopped short of agreeing to the stronger “phaseout” of oil, gas, and coal backed by climate advocates and frontline communities.
“This number is huge,” Amy Gray, Stand.earth climate finance associate director and coordinator of the Climate Safe Pensions Network, told Common Dreams. To put it in perspective, $40.6 trillion is equal to a little less than half of global gross domestic product.
The scale of the divestments to date, said Gray, “should show and give hope to folks that we are making an impact and we are making a difference and changing things for the better, regardless of these elitist events where the everyday person and the folks in the Global South and other places are discounted.”
A Decade of Divestment
Friday’s update to the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitments Database reflects around a decade of organizing, Gray said. Organizers at 350.org started tracking divestment commitments when Gray and current Stand.earth climate finance director Richard Brooks worked there. When the pair moved to launch a climate finance team at Stand.earth, they brought the database with them.
While the divestment movement has seen ups and downs over that decade, Gray said it had picked up momentum over the last five or six years. In less than two years, the number of institutions divesting jumped by 120, holding a combined $1.4 trillion in assets.
“We’ve definitely seen a massive increase in divestment commitments as the divestment movement has built itself out and gotten stronger,” Gray said.
“This milestone follows years of attempted shareholder engagement, now a proven futile strategy, with fossil fuel corporations hell-bent on our destruction.”
Notable victories in 2023 included PMT, the largest private pension in the Netherlands; New York University, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Church of England.
The Church of England divestment was especially notable, Gray said, because of the statement that accompanied it. The church emphasized that it had tried to engage with the oil and gas companies it was invested in and urged them to adopt policies in line with the Paris agreement, but the companies did not change.
“The decision to disinvest was not taken lightly,” Alan Smith, first church estates commissioner, said at the time. “Soberingly, the energy majors have not listened to significant voices in the societies and markets they serve and are not moving quickly enough on the transition. If any of these energy companies come into alignment with our criteria in the future, we would reconsider our position. Indeed, that is something we would hope for.”
Gray remembered thinking at the time that it was the best divestment statement she’d ever read.
“It was really powerful,” she said.
The Church of England wasn’t the only institution that thought it could persuade Big Oil to change its ways without divesting.
“This milestone follows years of attempted shareholder engagement, now a proven futile strategy, with fossil fuel corporations hell-bent on our destruction,” Brooks said in a statement. “Instead of financing climate chaos-causing fossil fuels, violence, and extraction, financial institutions like big banks and pension funds must protect people and planet alike, cutting ties with fossil fuels and reinvesting in proven community-led climate-safe solutions.”
People vs. Fossil Fuels
The success of the divestment movement has been driven by “people power, 100%,” Gray said.
This includes larger organizations like Stand.earth or the Sierra Club and big-name activists like Bill McKibben or former New York Comptroller Tom Sanzillo, but ultimately comes down to smaller grassroots efforts.
“It’s the little group in Wisconsin that’s working on divesting their pension fund,” Gray said. “It’s a small group in the Bay Area who is pressuring Citi or one of the big banks, and it’s the kids at the colleges.”
“Oil companies are finding it increasingly difficult to raise financing amid rising ESG and sustainability concerns.”
There’s evidence that all this activism is making a difference for the industry. The “cost of capital” for funding new fossil fuel projects has risen steeply in the last decade, from 8% to 10% to around 20% as of 2021, according to Bloomberg.
During the same time, the cost for financing renewables has dropped from that same 8% to 10% to between 3% and 5%.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Will Hares laid the divergence at the feet of the push for environmental and social governance (ESG) in investing.
“Oil companies are finding it increasingly difficult to raise financing amid rising ESG and sustainability concerns, while banks are under pressure from their own investors to reduce or eliminate fossil-fuel financing,” Hares said.
Gray also added that Indigenous-led movements such as the Wet’suwet’en struggle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Canada have had a material impact on the industry.
The pipeline’s costs have more than doubled during that time from an estimated $6.6 billion to $14.5 billion, CBC News reported this month.
At the same time, divesting from fossil fuels is actually a financial win for pension funds and other institutions: A study released this year by the University of Waterloo found that six U.S. pension funds would actually be $21 billion richer today if they had quit fossil fuels 10 years ago.
The Next 1,600
In the context of a disappointing outcome at COP28, President Joe Biden’s greenlighting of drilling projects, and the specter of a second Trump presidency, the success of the divestment movement offers hope that climate campaigners can shift the world away from fossil fuels without needing to rely on international agreements or national legislation.
“It’s not necessary to enact the change we need to see,” Gray said. “We can change these systems of oppression from within.”
Looking ahead to 2024, Gray thinks there’s a good chance that California will finally pass legislation to divest its two pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, from fossil fuels. The two funds, the largest public pensions in the country, control a total of $685 billion, including more than $42 billion in fossil fuels.
“Even the person with the smallest amount of investments can get involved.”
If California does pass the legislation, it will “cause a massive ripple effect,” Gray said.
“If we’re able to divest the two largest pension funds in the country, there’s nothing we can’t divest.”
Another thing Gray expects to see is more coordination between the efforts to divest from both fossil fuels and the weapons industry, as more and more people react with shock watching U.S.-made and -funded arms devastating the people of Gaza.
“War is a climate issue,” Gray said.
For people not yet involved in the divestment movement, Gray recommends signing up for email updates from Stand.earth or the Climate Safe Pensions Network and looking up local climate groups and going to a meeting.
“Even the person with the smallest amount of investments can get involved,” Gray said. “Anybody can join the climate movement, and we’re always ready to help folks take that step.”
Anti-boycott law would have forced public bodies to do business with racist South Africa in the 1980s – and will force them to do business with apartheid, racist Israel now
Parliamentary friends of apartheid visit the illegal wall
The government has published its ‘anti-boycott bill’, which aims to prevent public bodies from choosing not to use products or services from countries with appalling human rights records – and in particular, to neuter the pro-Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) campaign against the use of products, services and companies involved in illegal Israeli expansion onto Palestinian territory.
BDS has long been targeted by official and ‘cut-out’ organisations of the Israeli government, which has rightly been condemned by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and, in Israel, B’Tselem, for its apartheid policies that the latest hard-right regime is entrenching even further – and the apartheid regime is avidly supported by the Tories (and ‘without qualification’ by the so-called ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer.
So there is no expectation of any significant parliamentary opposition to the bill and it is left to human and civil rights campaigners and organisations to mount resistance, such as Liberty, which has today published a statement on the anti-democratic bill, co-signed by unions, human rights groups and others, noting that such a policy would have forced public bodies to do business with apartheid South Africa and scuppered the campaign that eventually helped bring down that regime:
As a group of civil society organisations made up of trade unions, charities, NGOs, faith, climate justice, human rights, cultural, campaigning, and solidarity organisations, we advocate for the right of public bodies to decide not to purchase or procure from, or invest in companies involved in human rights abuse, abuse of workers’ rights, destruction of our planet, or any other harmful or illegal acts. We therefore oppose the government’s proposed law to stop public bodies from taking such actions.
The government has indicated that a main intention of any legislation is to ensure that public bodies follow UK foreign policy in their purchasing, procurement, and investment decisions, particularly relating to Israel and Palestine. We are concerned that this would prevent public bodies from deciding not to invest in or procure from companies complicit in the violation of the rights of the Palestinian people. We affirm that it is the right of public bodies to do so, and in fact a responsibility to break ties with companies contributing to abuses of rights and violations of international law in occupied Palestine and anywhere else where such acts occur.
From bus boycotts against racial segregation to divestment from fossil fuel companies to arms embargoes against apartheid, boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns have been applied throughout history to put economic, cultural, or political pressure on a regime, institution, or company to force it to change abusive, discriminatory, or illegal policies. If passed, this law will stifle a wide range of campaigns concerned with the arms trade, climate justice, human rights, international law, and international solidarity with oppressed peoples struggling for justice. The proposed law presents a threat to freedom of expression, and the ability of public bodies and democratic institutions to spend, invest and trade ethically in line with international law and human rights.
We call on the UK government to immediately halt this bill, on opposition parties to oppose it and on civil society to mobilise in support of the right to boycott in the cause of justice.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also spoken out to underline the importance of BDS in opposing apartheid and pledge his support in fighting the latest anti-democracy bill:
Boycott, divestment and sanctions helped end apartheid in South Africa.
They will be essential to ending the apartheid regime in Israel, too.
I will firmly oppose the government’s anti-BDS bill — a disgraceful attack on our freedom to fight for human rights, justice and peace.
The evening has also seen the Glastonbury festival cancel its planned showing of the excellent film exposing the sabotage of Corbyn’s Labour and the smear campaign against him – many are presuming that his principled stand and the cowardly Glastonbury decision are not unconnected.
