human rights violations

Community action against genocide and worker’s strike: Rotterdam port brought to a halt

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Activists block railway track into Rotterdam port, April 2025. Source: Geef Tegengas

The Port of Rotterdam faced major disruptions over the past several days as dockworkers and activists launched strikes and direct actions.

The Port of Rotterdam, one of Europe’s most important logistics hubs, faced serious obstructions over the past several days as a result of dockworkers’ strikes and direct action against complicity in genocide, human rights violations, and pollution.

According to the collective Geef Tegengas, approximately 800 people took part in a blockade of the port’s railway track as part of an international campaign organized by the network alongside Soulèvements de la Terre (France), Code Rouge, Stop Arming Israel, Soulèvements de la Terre Bruxelles (Belgium), and Disrupt Germany. Coordinated actions took place between October 10 and 12 under the umbrella of the International Days of Action Against Bombs, Barrels, and Bullshit.

“The organizations are fighting back against the global, capitalist system that is raining down bombs, pumping out pollutants, creating inequality, colonizing lands, fracturing communities and destroying ecosystems,” the coalition said in a joint statement.

Read more: British parliament votes to ban Palestine Action despite public outcry

Nora Kilembe of Geef Tegengas warned about the role of Rotterdam’s port in what the groups term as the Logistics Empire: a global network of transport companies, port authorities, shopping platforms, and terminals that prioritize private profit over human life and the planet’s health. “The Logistics Empire, Port of Rotterdam up front, is destroying our planet,” Kilembe said. “Indigenous peoples are robbed of their self-determination whilst Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians. In the West, we are being brainwashed to keep on buying to fill our empty lives, leading to mass depression and alienation. All so the ultra-rich can further enrich themselves. This system of death can only be brought down if we fight back together.”

Geef Tegengas emphasized the action targeted the sector’s deep complicity in Israel’s genocide and other human rights abuses. “We demand that the port of Rotterdam immediately implement a complete arms and trade embargo on Israel, stop importing products and raw materials from areas where human rights are violated, and make a plan to phase out all polluting waste as quickly as possible,” they said.

Read more: “The law is protecting Total”

With the blockade, the group stressed, activists are reclaiming public control over vital infrastructure. “The port belongs to the people, not to big business,” they said. “They are demanding control over this port.”

The blockade coincided with the largest lashers’ – dockworkers responsible for securing cargo on vessels – strike in decades, which caused a backlog that port authorities say could take until the end of October to clear. Activists pointed out that the industrial action only reinforces the broader struggle for justice in Europe. “Their struggle for good wages and better working conditions is one that we wholeheartedly support,” they said, adding that the lashers’ demonstration of collective power should serve as an inspiration for all movements seeking a fairer society.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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/O74hZCKKdpA
Keir 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.
Keir 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.
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide and the UK government and military's active participation in genocide.
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.

Continue ReadingCommunity action against genocide and worker’s strike: Rotterdam port brought to a halt

Human rights groups intervene over Rosebank links to illegal Israeli settlements

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/human-rights-groups-intervene-over-rosebank-links-illegal-israeli-settlements

 Climate activists from Greenpeace and Uplift during a demonstration outside the Scottish Court of Session, Edinburgh, on the first day of the Rosebank and Jackdaw judicial review hearing, November 12, 2024

HUMAN rights and environmental groups have challenged Rosebank oil field’s links to illegal Israeli settlements at its owner’s AGM.

Amnesty International intervened at the AGM of Equinor — the majority owner of the controversial Rosebank oil field — in Norway on Wednesday over its links to Delek Group, an Israeli fuel conglomerate.

Equinor shares ownership of Rosebank with Ithaca Energy, which is majority-owned by Delek Group.This means Equinor’s Rosebank project could send £253 million to the group, which operates in illegal settlements and provides fuel to the IDF, the campaigners say.

Delek Group has also been flagged by the UN for human rights violations in Palestine.

Greenpeace also tabled a first-of-its-kind shareholder proposal, which calls on Equinor to conduct due diligence over its links to companies operating in Israel’s illegal settlements.

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/human-rights-groups-intervene-over-rosebank-links-illegal-israeli-settlements

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Continue ReadingHuman rights groups intervene over Rosebank links to illegal Israeli settlements

Morning Star Editorial: Protests in the US show a people’s mass movement can be rebuilt

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/protests-us-show-peoples-mass-movement-can-be-rebuilt

People carry signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against US President Donald Trump on April 5, 2025, in New York

DEMONSTRATIONS across the United States over the weekend give the lie to claims that all is lost in the struggle for people’s rights and social justice against the conservative right and its far-right allies.

Of course, there are always the defeatists — notably the “centre-left” intellectuals — who insist that the working classes on both sides of the Atlantic are too stupid, lazy, selfish and racist to resist injustice.

In the words of Private Frazer: “We’re all doomed!” Fascism is inevitable.

Meanwhile, millions of protesters of all colours, creeds and political affiliations, from the centre-right to the real left, from Los Angeles to Washington DC, marched in defence of jobs, women’s rights, the US constitution, the young, the elderly, the sick, black communities, the world’s poor and the Palestinians against the Trumpian onslaught.

They face a deeply reactionary Republican administration backed by a sizeable section of ruthless monopoly capital and a powerful state apparatus. The US working class, the labour and progressive movements and the people will need all the unity they can muster to block the advance of the resurgent right and its proto-fascist elements.

But as the worldwide pushback grows against Donald Trump’s global trade war, cracks will open up within the ruling Republicans, the monopoly capitalist class and even within and between the agencies of the state. Provided the insurgents put not their trust in Democratic Party politicians on the big-business payroll, they can generate their own vision, strategies and leadership to turn back the Maga maniacs.

In Britain, too, the “centre left” must not be allowed to divert or demoralise the emerging opposition to Keir Starmer’s treacherous regime and its pro-City, pro-Nato policies.

In many local communities, people are beginning to mobilise to defend their public services, their social facilities and their rights.
Never have such policies as a wealth tax, public-sector housebuilding and public ownership of energy and public transport been so popular. The Alternative Economic Strategy is making a welcome comeback.

Protesters march every week against the British government’s sickening silence about — and complicity in — the Israeli genocide. Britain’s armed forces can blast the Houthis and defend Israel against incoming rockets, can bomb and invade Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen — yet not a finger can be lifted to protect defenceless Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Public cynicism about the West’s real motives for pouring yet more weapons into the Ukraine war cauldron instead of genuinely seeking the end to a conflict that did not begin with Russia’s brutal incursion three years ago.

In Britain, we can build a people’s mass movement around these burning issues and, in the process, expose the anti-working-class politics of Reform UK, whose four top officers made their millions in banking, property development or the City.

Again, though, we need unity to be built on solid foundations.

These cannot include demands for Britain to align itself with the EU in a trade war against the US and even China. Nor should there be illusions that deep-seated problems which festered during decades of EU membership can somehow be more readily resolved by rejoining the big-business club or its capital and labour markets.

Nato rearmament must be opposed. The US-led cold war anti-socialist alliance has now outlived the Warsaw Pact by more than 30 years.

Clasping these two serpents to its bosom would spell suicide for any people’s movement that stands for public services, social justice, peace and solidarity.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/protests-us-show-peoples-mass-movement-can-be-rebuilt

Morningstar.co.uk copyright is recognised. I am very willing to alter this post if requested.

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Protests in the US show a people’s mass movement can be rebuilt

Why is an ‘ethical’ investor funding arms companies?

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/why-is-an-ethical-investor-funding-arms-companies

Is Norway’s money being invested responsibly? (Photo: Andrzej Rostek / Alamy)

Scandinavian countries are often held up as models for a better society. None more so than Norway, flush with North Sea oil wealth, which it can invest responsibly.

The money is put aside in a sovereign wealth fund, owned by the Norwegian government and managed by the country’s central bank, Norges Bank. It is the largest such fund in the world, worth £1.4 trillion.

Called the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), or just the Oil Fund, it is supposed to adhere to ethical guidelines by excluding certain companies from its portfolio.

That’s if they are involved in serious violations of human rights – especially in conflicts – gross corruption, the production of nuclear weapons and more.

However, in outright contradiction to these guidelines, the GPFG invests billions of pounds in many of the world’s largest arms companies. In fact, it owns stakes in exactly half of the world’s top 100 arms companies, accumulating at almost £14 billion. 

This includes arms companies here in the UK that supply Israel – despite Norway recognising the state of Palestine as recently as May 2024 and excluding companies from the GPFG involved in activities violating international law.

So why is Norwegian money finding its way into Britain’s arms industry, which supplies Israel? 

Arming Israel

Among these investments is QinetiQ in which the GPFG holds over £46 million in shares. 

The British defence tech firm has collaborated with the Israeli military to develop the Watchkeeper drone system, a joint project with Israel’s Elbit Systems, a company dropped from the fund in 2009 for supplying surveillance systems for the separation barrier in the West Bank. 

…

Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/why-is-an-ethical-investor-funding-arms-companies

Continue ReadingWhy is an ‘ethical’ investor funding arms companies?

Lawsuit Claims State Department Illegally Arming Israel via Leahy Law ‘Loophole’

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

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 12, 2023. (Photo: Eyepress Media Limited/Reuters via Getty Images)

“This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces,” said one advocate.

Palestinians and Palestinian Americans on Tuesday filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. State Department of creating a “loophole” allowing Israel to skirt federal legislation barring American military aid to foreign militaries that violate human rights law.

The lawsuit, which was filed by five individuals and supported by the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), accuses the State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken of violating the Leahy Law, legislation passed in two parts in the late 1990s that built on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961‘s proscription of U.S. military aid to foreign security forces that commit gross human rights violations.

According to DAWN, the suit “documents how the State Department has created unique, insurmountable processes to evade the Leahy Law requirement to sanction abusive Israeli units, despite overwhelming evidence of their human rights violations” including “torture, prolonged detention without charge, forced disappearance, and flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, and security, such as genocide, indiscriminate and deliberate killings, and deprivation of items essential to survival, including food, water, fuel, and medicine.”

https://twitter.com/DAWNmenaorg/status/1869116126929604998?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1869116126929604998%7Ctwgr%5E722c9214c88bdca37da3a994b4adabb07dca3986%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fstate-department-leahy-law

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Case plaintiff Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American from the southern Gazan city of Rafah who has lost numerous relatives in Israeli attacks, toldZeteo‘s Prem Thakker, “I’m hoping, through this action, through this lawsuit, that we can just call out the federal government to begin to enforce American laws.”

The State Department has sparked international outrage by repeatedly finding that Israel is using U.S.-supplied arms in compliance with domestic human rights law, citing the key ally’s right to defend itself and the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. However, Israel’s 438-day retaliation has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Thousands more have been killed or maimed in the West Bank.

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Both men have been warmly welcomed in Washington, D.C.. Congress and the Biden administration have approved tens of billions of dollars in arms transfers to Israel. U.S.-supplied bombs have been used in some of Israel’s most notorious airstrikes. The U.S. has also vetoed numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding a Gaza cease-fire.

Today, the White House welcomed Yoav Gallant, charged by the ICC with the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. What a disgrace.

— Adil Haque (@adhaque.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T20:21:30.596Z

“This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces,” DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement on Tuesday. “For too long, the State Department has acted as if there’s an ‘Israel exemption’ from the Leahy Law, despite the fact that Congress required it to apply the law to every country in the world. As a result, millions of Palestinians have suffered unimaginable, horrific abuses by Israeli forces using U.S. weapons.”

Stephen Rickard, a former U.S. official who helped pass the landmark legislation, said that “long-standing concerns that the State Department was not cutting off aid to specific Israel units as required by the Leahy Law… have been given dramatic urgency by the tragic ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

“If the State Department will not comply with the law, then it is time for the courts to vindicate the rule of law and order it to do so,” Rickard added.

https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1868764026018447375?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1868764026018447375%7Ctwgr%5E722c9214c88bdca37da3a994b4adabb07dca3986%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fstate-department-leahy-law

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The new lawsuit came a day after relatives of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi—the Turkish American woman who, according to witnesses, was deliberately shot in the head while peacefully protesting the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank in September—met with Blinken in search of justice and accountability for the activist’s killing.

Referring to another American activist killed by Israeli forces while defending Palestinian homes, Hamid Ali, Eygi’s widower, said that Blinken “was attentive in listening to us, but unfortunately repeated a lot of the same things that we’ve been hearing for the past 20 years, particularly since Rachel Corrie’s killing.”

Ali called Blinken “very deferential to the Israelis,” adding that “it felt like he was saying his hands were tied and they weren’t able to really do much.”

A journalist asked State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller during a Tuesday press conference why the U.S. has not suspended arms transfers to Israel by invoking the Leahy Law and citing the cases of victims like Eygi or Shireen Abu Akleh—the Palestinian American Al Jazeera correspondent who, according to witnesses and several independent probes, was deliberately shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank in May 2022.

https://twitter.com/AnnelleSheline/status/1869107213631189063?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1869107213631189063%7Ctwgr%5E722c9214c88bdca37da3a994b4adabb07dca3986%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fstate-department-leahy-law

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“We have taken those cases extremely seriously,” Miller claimed. Referring to Eygi, he added that he made it clear to Israel that “her death was unacceptable, that it should have been avoided, it should have never happened in the first place, that we want to see the results of their investigation, and we want to see them change their rules of engagement.”

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

Continue ReadingLawsuit Claims State Department Illegally Arming Israel via Leahy Law ‘Loophole’