Starmer and Mahmood’s attack on protest is naked genocide collaboration
Onaquietday Editorial: UK’s Labour government enshrining Theocracy – religious apartheid – in UK
UK’s new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced that she will introduce laws further attacking and eroding the right to protest to enshrine Zionism into UK law. Institutionalized religious segregation and discrimination is a political system known as Theocracy.
Ministers are to give police new powers to target repeated protests, aimed particularly at cracking down on demonstrations connected to Gaza, the Home Office has said.
The announcement, made the morning after almost 500 people were arrested in London for expressing support for Palestine Action, a proscribed organisation, could allow police to order regular protests to take place at a different site.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, will also look at all anti-protest laws, with the possibility that powers to ban some protests outright could be strengthened.
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If a protest has caused what a Home Office statement called “repeated disorder” at the same site for repeated weeks, police would be able to order the organisers to move it elsewhere, with anyone who fails to obey risking arrest.
Mahmood, the statement added, would “also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied”, including police powers to ban some protests completely.
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The powers appear to be aimed at both mass pro-Gaza demonstrations, which took place in London and some other cities over a period of weeks, and those held to support Palestine Action.
On Saturday, police arrested about 500 people at the latest such protest. It took place despite ministers, including Keir Starmer, asking that it be postponed following this week’s deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester.
Mahmood indicated that this was directly connected to the proposed extra powers, saying: “It’s been clear to me in conversations in the last couple of days that there is a gap in the law and there is an inconsistency of practice.”
She continued: “I’ll be taking measures immediately to put that right, and I will be reviewing our wider protest legislation as well to make sure the arrangements we have can meet the scale of the challenge that we face, which is protecting the right to protest, but ensuring that our communities can go about their daily business without feeling intimidated, and also that public order can be maintained.”
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‘This Is Murder’: Trump Bombs Another Boat in Caribbean
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“The US government must be held accountable,” said Amnesty International USA.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on social media Friday that they bombed another boat in the Caribbean—at least the fourth alleged drug-smuggling vessel attacked by the US military since early September.
Critics, including congressional Democrats, legal scholars, and human rights groups, have stressed that even if any of the boats recently bombed by the Trump administration were trafficking drugs, the strikes still violate international and federal law. Such criticism has not deterred the administration.
Hegseth, who leads what Trump renamed the Department of War, said Friday that “earlier this morning, on President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with designated terrorist organizations. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no US forces were harmed in the operation.”
“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics—headed to America to poison our people,” wrote the Pentagon chief, including a video of the bombing, but no evidence that the boat was involved in running drugs.
Hegseth claimed that “our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route. These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
Trump similarly said, without offering any proof, that “a boat loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE was stopped, early this morning off the Coast of Venezuela, from entering American Territory.”
Responding to the latest lethal bombing, Amnesty International USA declared: “This is murder. The US government must be held accountable.”
Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as chief White House ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush, said, “Again, this is a violation of international law, and without the consent of Congress a violation of federal law.”
The strikes come amid Trump’s ”aggressive pursuit” of a Nobel Peace Prize. Nodding to this, Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) wrote on social media Friday, “To President Trump: They don’t give Nobel Peace Prizes to people who murder civilians without a trial.”
The first confirmed bombing, on September 2, killed 11 people. The second and third, on September 15 and 19, each killed three. In at least one case, a woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the men killed said her husband was a fisher.
Friday’s bombing followed the leak of a confidential notice that the administration sent to multiple congressional committees this week, attempting to legally justify the bombings. It says in part, “The president determined these cartels are nonstate armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
Multiple legal experts and members of Congress publicly weighed in on the memo, including Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), who said that “every American should be alarmed that President Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy.”
After the Friday attack, Tess Bridgeman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and a nonresident senior fellow at New York University School of Law, emphasized that “if it can happen at sea, it can happen anywhere.”
“Trump has offered no definition or limiting principle for who can be labeled a ‘terrorist’ and summarily killed,” she added. “And no plausible legal theory for why an armed conflict exists.”
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Israel continues Gaza attacks killing 5 Palestinians despite Trump ceasefire call
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Israeli army killed at least five Palestinians, including a young girl, and injured others in ongoing attacks across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, ignoring US President Donald Trump’s call for an immediate halt to the bombardment, Anadolu reports.
Trump had urged Israel to “stop bombing Gaza immediately” after Hamas announced its willingness to release Israeli captives according to his proposal, stating he believed the movement was “ready for lasting peace.”
Medical sources and eyewitnesses told Anadolu that despite the call, Israeli forces struck two homes in Gaza City and in the central Nuseirat refugee camp, leaving at least five dead and several others injured.
Israeli air and artillery strikes also continued across Gaza City and Khan Younis in the south, with intensified demolition operations using drones and explosives targeting residential buildings in multiple areas of Gaza throughout the night.
Since October 2023, Israeli bombardment has killed nearly 66,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The UN and rights groups have repeatedly warned that the enclave is being rendered uninhabitable, with starvation and disease spreading rapidly.
READ: UNICEF concerned for mothers, newborns in Gaza amid intense Israeli attacks, blockade
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Meta Put a Climate Change Denier in Charge of Fighting AI Bias
Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.
Right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck has a new job advising on political bias in Meta’s AI tools. His record on climate is concerning, say advocates.
A conservative political activist recently appointed to be Meta’s new artificial intelligence anti-bias advisor is a well-known climate change denier, DeSmog has learned.
Robby Starbuck — best known for opposing corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, particularly among brands popular with conservatives — has a track record of denying the science of climate change. These views could seriously compromise the climate content accessed by Instagram and Facebook users, climate advocates warn.
In August 2024, Starbuck told CNN that “corporate policies to slow down the effects of human-caused climate change do nothing positive for society,” that “the climate has always changed” and that “human beings have very little control over it.”
In his new advisory role, Starbuck will be responsible for removing alleged political bias from Meta’s artificial intelligence tools. This may result in a surge of climate change denialism and climate science disinformation on Meta’s social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, say climate advocates.
Starbuck’s appointment appears to be at odds with Meta’s stated goals of reaching “net zero emissions across our value chain in 2030” by way of a “science-aligned emissions reduction target in line with the Paris Climate agreement.”
But his appointment comes at a time when major tech companies like Meta and Google are walking back their sustainability initiatives, a process likely motivated by a broad conservative-led anti-ESG political campaign, according to a 2024 Harvard Business Review analysis.
“Putting Starbuck in charge of Meta’s AI policies is the latest reason to believe that Facebook and Instagram are billboards for disinformation,” said Phil Newell, communications co-chair of Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a global coalition of over 50 climate and anti-disinformation organizations.
Why Meta appointed Starbuck
Starbuck — who produced music videos prior to becoming a conservative activist and MAGA influencer — has no scientific background or experience in climate science.
Yet that hasn’t stopped him from promoting a conspiracy that record 2024 floods in Dubai were the result of “weather modification,” or that the U.S. should “LEAVE and DEFUND the UN!” in response to its positions on climate change.
It is the general consensus of the scientific community and most of the world’s governments that climate change is real and caused by human activity.
He was apparently appointed to the role as part of a legal settlement. The conservative influencer had sued Meta after the company’s AI chatbot incorrectly linked Starbuck to the January 6th insurrection.
Starbuck’s appointment appears to contrast with Meta’s previous climate statements, including a July 2023 document entitled “Our Path to Net Zero” which stated that “operating sustainably and addressing climate change through bold, meaningful action are paramount to our mission.”
Yet in recent years Meta and other tech companies have appeared to walk back such commitments as they build data centers that have largely been powered by fossil fuels.
They’ve also cultivated closer relationships with Trump. Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft all made $1 million donations to Trump’s second inauguration fund.
Meta’s ties to Trump
Newell argues that Meta’s retreat on climate action coincides with new leadership that takes the crisis less seriously. He pointed to the 2025 appointment of chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, who is credited with developing Meta’s Washington lobbying effort, as well as bringing CEO Mark Zuckerberg into Donald Trump’s orbit.
About a week after Kaplan’s appointment, Meta announced that it would eliminate fact checkers from moderating content on its platforms. Zuckerberg said that the company would henceforth rely on users to counter climate change denialism and misinformation.
Newell told DeSmog that the prevalence of right-wing propaganda and disinformation on platforms such as Facebook is profitable, and likely why such content isn’t being banned.
Meta’s hiring of Starbuck comes as the Trump administration is leading a coordinated attack on mainstream climate science. In July, the Department of Energy released a report on climate change that actual climate scientists condemned as “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.” The report — authored by five well-known climate science deniers — aimed to undermine the scientific consensus that human activity underlies climate change.
According to CNN, Starbuck may be involved in efforts to reduce or eliminate “AI hallucinations” – false or nonsensical information provided in response to queries. As such, an exceptionally high-profile conservative activist will have a say in one of the world’s most widely used AI systems.
Mark Zuckerberg recently claimed that as many as one billion people each month are using Meta AI across the company’s platforms, though how it measures this use isn’t clear.
Even prior to hiring Starbuck, Meta’s AI has already been criticized for leaning heavily on carbon capture as a potential climate change solution, despite the considerable expert analysis that has largely concluded the technology is an ineffective smokescreen to permit continued fossil fuel production.
AI climate denial
Researchers with CAAD have identified bigger, more systemic climate problems with AI.
CAAD estimates that even if tech companies improved AI data centers’ energy efficiency by 10 percent, but also doubled the number of data centers, it would increase carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent.
AI-generated websites appear to be spreading climate science denial, fooling major news aggregators like MSN. One recent article on MSN contained data from a nonexistent research group, was written by a person who doesn’t exist and promoted the work of climate science denier Bjorn Lomborg.
AI’s negative impact on the climate and climate discourse has had real world effects in Canada, where generative-AI chatbots are being used to spam elected officials across the country with climate change misinformation.
“There’s definitely a significant harm happening that’s already greater than the promises of pro-AI boosters,” said Newell.
Starbuck’s appointment — only the most recent example of the right-wing’s takeover of Big Tech — signals that the problem will likely get worse, especially if Meta’s AI is programmed to consider actual climate science politically or ideologically biased, he argued.
DeSmog reached out to Meta and Starbuck for comment, but did not receive a reply.
Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.
dizzy: I suggest that AI should be regarded as certainly not impartial and instead anti-Democratic and supportive of Fascism. For example Musk’s chatbot Grok is censored after confirming that Israel and the United States is committing genocide in Gaza and Google’s AI getting censored so that it fails to confirm that Trump is demented. It follows that AI should be opposed since it’s supportive of Fascism and anti-Democratic.
