This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In a move that epitomises corporate overreach and a blatant disregard for civil liberties, Asda has initiated a trial of live facial recognition technology in five of its Greater Manchester stores. This intrusive surveillance tactic not only infringes upon customer privacy but also sets a dangerous precedent for the normalisation of Orwellian monitoring in everyday life.
Asda: intruding on all our privacy with its facial recognition
Asda justifies this invasive measure by citing a rise in retail crime, reporting approximately 1,400 assaults on staff in the past year. While the safety of employees is undeniably important, resorting to mass surveillance is a disproportionate and ethically questionable response. Moreover, none of this addresses the root causes of shoplifting: poverty and capitalism.
The approach by Asda punishes the vast majority of innocent shoppers for the actions of a few, treating every customer as a potential criminal under the unproven guise of deterrence.
The implementation of facial recognition technology in public spaces raises profound ethical and legal concerns. The indiscriminate scanning of individuals’ faces without explicit consent is a gross violation of privacy rights.
Moreover, the accuracy of such technology is highly questionable, with numerous studies highlighting significant biases and error rates, particularly affecting minority communities. Misidentifications can lead to unwarranted confrontations, humiliation, and potential legal consequences for innocent individuals.
Blatant civil liberties violations
Asda’s decision to integrate this technology into its existing CCTV network lacks transparency and public consultation.
There is minimal information on how data will be stored, who will have access, and what measures are in place to prevent misuse. This opacity fuels concerns about data security and the potential for function creep, where surveillance tools are repurposed beyond their original intent without public knowledge or consent.
Civil rights organisations and privacy advocates have rightly condemned Asda’s actions. Campaign group Big Brother Watch noted that:
We are being regularly contacted by people who have been wrongly accused of being a shoplifter after facial recognition in a shop has got it wrong. We’ve supported dozens of people already – but this expansion will mean many more people will be impacted.
It is running a campaign to stop Asda from rolling out facial recognition permanently. It wants people to:
1. Copy and paste the text below onto your social media post.
2. Save the image below to include in your post.
3. Post the message.
Will you STOP spying on customers with live facial recognition cameras @asda?I will no longer shop at #Asda supermarkets if you continue to use this rights-abusive surveillance tech.
#StopAsdaSpying | @BigBrotherWatch
Big Brother Watch noted the story of:
Sara, a teenager who was falsely flagged by a facial recognition camera in Home Bargains.
She was wrongly called a criminal whilst doing her shopping, searched, forced to leave the store and told she was banned from shops and supermarkets using this technology up and down the country.
The shop admitted they got it wrong – but took no action to stop shoppers being scanned and falsely accused in future. They’re still using the live facial recognition cameras.
Asda facial recognition must not be normalised
The normalisation of facial recognition in retail settings paves the way for a surveillance state where individuals are constantly monitored and analysed. This not only erodes public trust but also chills free expression and movement, as people alter their behavior due to the omnipresence of surveillance.
Asda’s trial of facial recognition technology is a reckless and unjustifiable assault on personal freedoms. The purported benefits do not outweigh the significant risks and ethical dilemmas posed by such invasive surveillance.
It is imperative for consumers to voice their opposition to these measures and for regulatory bodies to scrutinise and restrict the use of facial recognition in public and commercial spaces. Privacy is a fundamental right, not a commodity to be sacrificed at the altar of corporate interests.
Featured image and additional images via Big Brother Watch
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Labour Party members are wholly dissatisfied with the current leadership, a new survey from Survation shows.
Keir Starmer’s Labour: even tanking with its own members
Survation’s latest poll, conducted in partnership with LabourList immediately after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement, reveals a significant downturn in the morale and confidence of Labour Party members. The findings indicate sharp declines in favourability towards key cabinet members, widespread dissatisfaction with recent policy directions, and growing concerns about the party’s electoral prospects.
The Spring Statement has precipitated a dramatic drop in the favourability of Labour’s top figures.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s net favourability has plummeted by 30 points to -41%, with 70% of Labour members now viewing her unfavourably. Then, Starmer has experienced a 26-point decline, bringing his net favourability to -13%, marking his entry into negative territory. And cabinet members overall have seen an average decline of 13 points in net favourability, with all cabinet members experiencing systematic drops in support among party members.
The poll highlights a deepening crisis of confidence regarding the party’s trajectory. 68% of Labour members now believe the party is heading in the wrong direction, a significant increase from 49% just two weeks prior. Only 24% feel the party is on the right track, underscoring broad-based discontent within the membership.
Two primary factors contribute to this growing dissatisfaction. Firstly, 82% of members feel the party is failing to communicate effectively with the public, up 9 points since the last poll. This suggests a perception that the party is increasingly out of touch with voter sentiments.
Then, a significant portion of the membership disapproves of recent policy decisions:
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Spring Statement Reception: 64% said it was worse than expected, with only 30% finding it better than anticipated.
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Overall Package Rating: 52% rated the Spring Statement negatively.
Specific policies, such as proposed changes to DWP PIP, the freeze in health-related Universal Credit payments, and the reallocation of spending towards defence at the expense of overseas aid and departmental budgets, have intensified anxieties about the party’s direction.
Spring Statement: compounding the chaos
The Spring Statement failed to build a positive policy narrative that resonated with members:
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Crackdown on tax evasion: The most popular proposal, backed by only 37% of members.
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Increased capital spending: Received modest approval at 19%.
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Guaranteed personalised employment support: Supported by a mere 11%.
These figures indicate that the broader dissatisfaction overshadows any isolated policy endorsements.
Labour members are increasingly concerned about the rise of Reform UK. A significant portion of the membership fears that the current policy direction may drive voters towards Reform UK, jeopardizing Labour’s standing in upcoming elections.
The findings from Survation’s poll paint a troubling picture for the Labour Party under its current leadership. The sharp declines in favourability, coupled with widespread dissatisfaction over policy decisions and communication strategies, suggest a party at odds with its base.
The leadership’s apparent disregard for member sentiments and the potential ramifications of their policy choices highlight a critical disconnect that could have lasting consequences for the party’s future.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
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By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter
A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament.
Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about Muslims earlier this year.
“If my language has been injudicious . . . then I have apologised for that,” he told MPs.
- READ MORE: Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ): When you think of the Jewish community, assume diversity
- Jewish groups call for for resignation of Dr Rainbow
- Racism and Islamophobia at the Office of the Human Rights Commission — Report
- Chief Human Rights Commissioner apologises to Muslim community
“I’ve apologised publicly. I’ve apologised privately. I’ve met with FIANZ [The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand] to hear their concerns and to apologise to them, both in person and publicly, and I hold to that apology.”
The apology relates to a meeting he had with Jewish community leader Philippa Yasbek, from the anti-Zionist Jewish groups Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu, in February.
Yasbek said Rainbow claimed during the meeting that the Security Intelligence Services (SIS) threat assessment found Muslims posed a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists.
In fact, the report states “white identity-motivated violent extremism [W-IMVE] remains the dominant identity-motivated violent extremism ideology in New Zealand”.
Rainbow changed his position
Rainbow told the committee he had since changed his position after receiving new information.He said was disappointed he had “allowed [his] words to create a perception there was a prejudice there” and he would do everything in his power to repair his relationship with the Muslim community.
“Please be assured that I take this as a learning, and I will be far more measured with my comments in future.”
But Rainbow disputed another of Yasbek’s assertions that he had also raised the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s going to be really unhelpful if I get into a he-said-she-said, but I did not say the comments that were attributed to me about that. I do not believe that,” Rainbow said.
“I emphatically deny that I said that.”
‘It definitely stuck in my mind’ – Jewish community leader
Yasbek, who called for Rainbow’s resignation yesterday, was watching the select committee hearing from the back of the room.Speaking to reporters afterwards, Yasbek said she was certain Rainbow had made the comments about Afghan refugees.
“It was particularly memorable because it was so specific and he said that he was concerned about the risk of anti-semitism in the community of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s very specific. It’s not a sort of detail that one is likely to make up, and it definitely stuck in my mind.”
Yasbek said the race relations commissioner and two Human Rights Commission staff members were also in the room and should be interviewed to corroborate what happened.
“There were multiple witnesses. I am concerned that he has impugned my integrity in that way which is why there should be an independent investigation of this matter.”
Alternative Jewish Voices’ Philippa Yasbek . . . “there should be an independent investigation of this matter.” Image: RNZ Raised reported comments
Speaking to RNZ later, FIANZ chairman Abdur Razzaq said he raised the commissioner’s reported comments about Afghan refugees when he met with Rainbow several weeks ago.“I raised it at the meeting with him and he did not correct me. At my meeting there were other members of the Human Rights Commission. He did not say he didn’t [say that].”
Razzaq said it was up to the justice minister as to whether or not Rainbow was fit for the role.
“When you hear statements like this, like ‘greatest threat’, he has forgotten it was precisely this kind of Islamophobic sentiment which gave rise to the terrorist of March 15, rise to the right-wing extremist terrorists to take action and they justify it with these kinds of statements.”
“[The commissioner] calls himself an academic, a student of history. Where is his lessons learned on this aspect? To pick a Muslim community by name… he has to really genuinely look at himself as to what he is doing and what he is saying.”
Minister backs Rainbow: ‘Doing his best’
Speaking at Parliament following the hearing, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said he backed Rainbow and believed the commissioner would learn from the experience.“The new commissioner is doing his best. By his own admission he didn’t express himself well. He has apologised and he will be learning from that experience, and it is my expectation that he will be very careful in the way that he communicates in the future.”
Goldsmith said he stood by his appointment of Rainbow, despite the independent panel tasked with leading the process taking a different view.
“There’s a range of opinions on that. The advice that I had originally from the group was a real focus on legal skills, and I thought actually equally important was the ability to communicate ideas effectively.”
Speaking in Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Rainbow had got it “totally wrong” and it was appropriate he had apologised.
“He completely and quite wrongfully mischaracterised a New Zealand SIS report talking about threats to the Jewish community and he was wrong about that.
“He has subsequently apologised about that but equally Minister Goldsmith has or is talking to him about those comments as well.”
‘Not elabiorating further’
RNZ approached the Human Rights Commission on Thursday afternoon for a response to Yasbek doubling down on her recollection Rainbow had talked about the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.“The Chief Commissioner will not be elaborating further about what was said in the meeting,” a spokesperson said.
“He’s happy to discuss the matter privately with the people involved,” a spokesperson said.
“Dr Rainbow acknowledges that what was said caused harm and offence and what matters most is the impact on communities. That is why he has apologised unreservedly and stands by his apology.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In America, lying by the Government is routine because the Government represents not the public but only the wealthiest billionaires who provide most of the money that funds political campaigns. Any candidate who doesn’t represent the megadonor won’t get their money and will therefore be defeated by one who DOES represent the billionaires and NOT the public. Consequently, the winningest political candidates are the best liars, who (get all lof the billionaire money that they need in order to) deceive the most voters the most — and who fulfill on their public campaign promises to the voters the least, and fulfill on their private promises to their billionaire donors the most. This fully explains what the U.S. Government actually does, which is corruption, NOT democracy.
Though some of the billionaires are Republicans, and some are Democrats, the most important political issues aren’t actually the Republicans-versus-Democrats issues, but instead are the-billionaires-versus-the-
public issues, such as is demonstrated in these examples: On February 14, the AP had headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.
On March 5, the Jeff-Bezos-owned Washington Post headlined “GOP must cut Medicaid or Medicare to achieve budget goals, CBO finds: The nonpartisan bookkeeper said there’s no other way to cut $1.5 trillion from the budget over the next decade.” Though the CBO is ‘nonpartisan’ as between the Democratic and Republican Parties, it is (since both are) entirely beholden to America’s billionaires; and, so, that term there is deceptive. What that ‘news’-report is reporting is that the sense of Congress (even including Democrats there) is that a way needs to be found to cut $1.5T from ‘Medicare or Medicaid” (which, since only Medicaid, health care to the poor, is ‘discretionary’, Medicare is not) means cutting Medicaid over the next ten years.
On March 8, ABC News and Yahoo News headlined “DOGE is searching through Social Security payments looking for fraud.”
On March 31st, Business Insider and Yahoo News headlined “5 takeaways from Elon Musk’s 100-minute town hall about DOGE and America: ‘It’s costing me a lot to be in this job’,” and reported:
Elon Musk spoke for roughly 100 minutes on Sunday at a town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he was campaigning for Brad Schimel, a conservative judge running in the state’s upcoming Supreme Court election.
The session evolved into a freewheeling discussion on Musk’s thoughts about the future of the US and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as he fielded questions from supporters and bashed Democratic leaders.
Musk said little about concrete plans for DOGE but gave attendees a glimpse at what he thinks should be cut.
Here are the top five takeaways from Musk’s town hall.
Musk gave two attendees $1 million for their support
Musk said the checks would be made to “spokespersons” at the event, amid concerns that his $1 million lottery would violate Wisconsin state law.
Musk, who started the event wearing a cheesehead hat, kicked off the talk by handing giant $1 million checks to two supporters.
Musk had originally offered Wisconsin voters $100 each to sign a petition opposing “activist judges,” and they’d be entered to win a $1 million lottery prize.
But amid concerns the giveaway would violate state law, Musk later said the payment would be compensation for the winners to be spokespeople at the event.
Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, tried to block the $1 million lottery, but the state’s Supreme Court declined on Sunday to hear his case.
Musk’s high-profile campaign stop underscores the importance of the judicial election, set for April 1, for Republicans.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has a 4-3 liberal majority, and one of its left-leaning judges, Ann Walsh Bradley, is set to retire — paving the way for a realignment of the state’s ideological future. The vote is also being hyped as a litmus test for sentiment on the Trump administration’s actions in the last few months.
On April 2, the New York Times headlined “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, Despite Musk’s Millions,” and reported that “Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate for a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, overcame $25 million in spending from Elon Musk to defeat her conservative opponent. … With over 70 percent of the vote counted on Tuesday evening, Judge Crawford held a lead of roughly 10 points.” So, the candidate of Democratic Party billionaires (such as George Soros) defeated the candidate of Reublican Party billionaires (such as Elon Musk).
The billionaires control corporate America, and — via their corporations, both profit and nonprofit — they own, and advertise in their media, their corporations; and hire, to write their ‘news’ stories, the reporters that are the best ones to get their candidates elected to public offices. (Other reporters won’t be able to stay long in their media — they’ll fail, just like the candidates the billionaires don’t like will fail.)
The inevitable result is that because the candidates are constantly lying to the public, the public are constantly being disappointed in the Government. And, since the public aren’t intelligent enough to recognize that the source of all this constant corruption and lying is the billionaires-control over the Government and the press, the public don’t blame the billionaires but instead “the Republicans” or “the Democrats” or “the minorities” or “the immigrants” or whatever. So, they never learn, but instead just stick with whatever their prejudices happen to be. And, of course, the Government officials, and the billionaires who made them so, are publicly calling this “democracy” and privately laughing at it, because they’re in perfect positions to know that it’s just another lie. The problem isn’t that they don’t respect the public, but that they don’t serve the public. In a democracy, the public officials serve the public even if they don’t respect them. It’s their job — regardless of what they think of the public. But in an aristocracy or other kind of dictatorship, serving the public isn’t a Government official’s job. And that’s the way it is in this country — and they need to lie about that, too.
The post The Public Way Underestimate How Much “Their” Government Lies first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Gill
It is difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel‘s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.
It is fully on board with genocide.
- READ MORE: Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the Israeli war on Palestine
- It will take more than an Oscar to stop Israel’s West Bank plans
- Other No Other Land and West Bank reports
- Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports
Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.
Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:
“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.
“Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.
“Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”
As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned…
— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) March 30, 2025
Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).
Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.
This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.
Brutally targeted
Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.
Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.
That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.
The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.
“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.
Under fire: Israel’s war on medics. Video: Middle East Eye‘Killed on way to save lives’
The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”
Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.
Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.
Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.
The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.
#GAZA – New images emerge from the execution and burial site of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense members in Tal al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
On March 24, the #IDF surrounded the five ambulances and their crew members, handcuffed them, executed them, buried them in a… pic.twitter.com/KM5DLWpfyH— Brunella C. (@BrunellaCapitan) April 1, 2025
Official silence
On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.
Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.
His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”
No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.
In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.
“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”
As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”
Age of lawlessness
The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.
Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).
This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.
Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.
International law and international aid are out.
In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.
Police stormed the building and arrested six young women.
Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.
This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.
Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Independent politician Theo Dennison beat the Labour Party in a local council election earlier this month. And he said one of the reasons he was able to beat his former party was that it seriously harmed its reputation by being so “obnoxious”.
Speaking to the Canary, he said Labour had essentially made the election a choice between them and him, which he called “an absolute gift”. This was partly the case because Labour was “so obnoxious to the local press and to local residents”. And campaigners “badmouthing” him on the doorstep did “irreparable harm” to their reputation.
Dennison’s team also tried to get “as many doors knocked as we could”. In fact, he stressed:
You cannot do enough knocking on doors.
While he noted the importance of getting out and speaking to voters, however, he highlighted Labour’s aversion to that.
Labour arrogance and rule breaking
In 2006, he said, Labour lost power locally:
because they just stopped listening to people, started thinking they were so big and so strong they didn’t really need to do that. They got quite arrogant and out of touch.
And this didn’t change much when they actually got back into power. As he explained:
increasingly, between 2010 and 22, I think it became apparent that if they could get away without listening to vote they would.
The party, he asserted, “started breaking the rules because they could rather because of an accident”. And in 2022, the candidate selection process “was riven with rule breaking, which was well supported by the regional office and by the party nationally”. In Hounslow, he stressed, “it was an absolute disaster”. And he explained that:
while it might have been intended at one time as to have been a purge of Momentum and the like, there were no Momentum councillors to purge, so people purged everybody they didn’t like or everybody who was a threat to them in the selection battle
He added:
There was no attempt to keep the selection process fair.
That’s when he left Labour and stood as an independent. And while he didn’t manage to defeat Labour in 2022 and 2024, the situation changed in 2025 as voters experienced how awful Keir Starmer’s Labour was in government.
Labour keeps hurting ordinary people
Dennison was highly critical of his former party, saying councillors in 2022 had been “committed to putting up the council tax, whether they needed to or not”, with a “£700m budget decided in seven minutes”. He added that there was:
no oversight of what the office is doing, no attempt to actually set priorities for the council. It was an absolute mess.
And at the same time, they were putting back on the council tax deduction scheme, which is the scheme that supports local households who are unable to pay their council tax. They took £7m out of the support for those poorer families in 2022, and they’ve done it again this year, taking another £4m out of their pockets.
And then, thirdly, on the same day they were raising their own councillors’ allowances, which was, I think, not just symbolic, but entirely the priority, as far as they were concerned. And they’re going to do exactly the same thing this year. So the same problems I had in 22 are still alive in 2025, and for as long as they’re on that direction, that lack of moral compass, that lack of political direction – that will define them
Labour has “lost track of all sense of value both nationally and locally”
Dennison criticised the “partial interpretation of the rule book” in Labour, where the party has increasingly allowed right-wingers to get away with things it would turf left-wingers out for. This takeover, he said:
helped, essentially, bury them as a progressive force.
And he stressed that:
to be successful in a democracy, a party also needs to be democratic and trust its members rather than treat them as simply fodder… They’ve lost track of all sense of value, both nationally and locally, and are seeking either a range of policy solutions which are generally untested or already failed Conservative ‘solutions’ or just stuff they’re making up as they’re going along. So I think it’s a bloody mess. And actually, I don’t really see a very positive future for the Labour Party.
He also saw the effects of Labour’s heartlessness on voters locally. As he described:
I didn’t have any great expectation that Keir Starmer’s leadership was going to be transformative or that progressive. And so… I don’t think I was as disappointed as many other people who had actually just believed that things could not get worse, and their experience over the first 6 to 9 months is that, oddly enough, the Labour Party seemed determined to make them worse than they had been, and the distress that actually you met on doors – people who just could not believe that that hope had been entirely false. It’s very, very palpable. And I’m not in the least bit surprised that people were just too desperate, too cheesed off, too bothered by other personal concerns to turn out and vote now.
“Representation for local residents rather than for parties”
The key argument of his campaign was that:
what we really needed was representation for local residents rather than for parties. So rather than being a plain party candidate who would represent all that was good about the council and all that was good about the Labour Party to the electorate, we were very much focused on trying to express the views and frustrations of residents back to the council, which is the way it’s meant to be.
And because the cost of living crisis was such a major issue in the ward and Hounslow in general, he said:
We had to focus on the fact that people couldn’t afford to have another Labour councillor who would simply nod through increases in [councillors’] allowances and increases in local taxation.
Giving tips on campaigning for others, meanwhile, he said his election agent suggested “don’t waste your time with keyboard worries”. And Dennison emphasised:
The virtual campaign is very, very different from the real door-to-door campaign. And actually, that would be a definite you must do – you cannot do enough knocking on doors.
The mission now? ‘To try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund councillors’ self-serving machine’
In his role as a councillor, Dennison insisted that he will:
try and clean up the local Labour Party and the way the council is run, to try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund this rather self-serving machine, to try and get a grip on the priorities of the council so that local services in Brentford and Isleworth are not just protected but also improved – at the moment, there’s quite a number of significant services under threat, try and do something about the attitude on dealing with people who frankly don’t have the household budget to actually manage at this particular time, and to stop them putting up the council tax again, or at least make it so bloody hard that they regret every single second.
And he asserted:
At every single meeting, I will be raising these concerns. And they can shout me down, hound me down, try and stop me speaking as much as they like, but that voice will be heard.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Independent politician Theo Dennison beat the Labour Party in a local council election earlier this month. And he said one of the reasons he was able to beat his former party was that it seriously harmed its reputation by being so “obnoxious”.
Speaking to the Canary, he said Labour had essentially made the election a choice between them and him, which he called “an absolute gift”. This was partly the case because Labour was “so obnoxious to the local press and to local residents”. And campaigners “badmouthing” him on the doorstep did “irreparable harm” to their reputation.
Dennison’s team also tried to get “as many doors knocked as we could”. In fact, he stressed:
You cannot do enough knocking on doors.
While he noted the importance of getting out and speaking to voters, however, he highlighted Labour’s aversion to that.
Labour arrogance and rule breaking
In 2006, he said, Labour lost power locally:
because they just stopped listening to people, started thinking they were so big and so strong they didn’t really need to do that. They got quite arrogant and out of touch.
And this didn’t change much when they actually got back into power. As he explained:
increasingly, between 2010 and 22, I think it became apparent that if they could get away without listening to vote they would.
The party, he asserted, “started breaking the rules because they could rather because of an accident”. And in 2022, the candidate selection process “was riven with rule breaking, which was well supported by the regional office and by the party nationally”. In Hounslow, he stressed, “it was an absolute disaster”. And he explained that:
while it might have been intended at one time as to have been a purge of Momentum and the like, there were no Momentum councillors to purge, so people purged everybody they didn’t like or everybody who was a threat to them in the selection battle
He added:
There was no attempt to keep the selection process fair.
That’s when he left Labour and stood as an independent. And while he didn’t manage to defeat Labour in 2022 and 2024, the situation changed in 2025 as voters experienced how awful Keir Starmer’s Labour was in government.
Labour keeps hurting ordinary people
Dennison was highly critical of his former party, saying councillors in 2022 had been “committed to putting up the council tax, whether they needed to or not”, with a “£700m budget decided in seven minutes”. He added that there was:
no oversight of what the office is doing, no attempt to actually set priorities for the council. It was an absolute mess.
And at the same time, they were putting back on the council tax deduction scheme, which is the scheme that supports local households who are unable to pay their council tax. They took £7m out of the support for those poorer families in 2022, and they’ve done it again this year, taking another £4m out of their pockets.
And then, thirdly, on the same day they were raising their own councillors’ allowances, which was, I think, not just symbolic, but entirely the priority, as far as they were concerned. And they’re going to do exactly the same thing this year. So the same problems I had in 22 are still alive in 2025, and for as long as they’re on that direction, that lack of moral compass, that lack of political direction – that will define them
Labour has “lost track of all sense of value both nationally and locally”
Dennison criticised the “partial interpretation of the rule book” in Labour, where the party has increasingly allowed right-wingers to get away with things it would turf left-wingers out for. This takeover, he said:
helped, essentially, bury them as a progressive force.
And he stressed that:
to be successful in a democracy, a party also needs to be democratic and trust its members rather than treat them as simply fodder… They’ve lost track of all sense of value, both nationally and locally, and are seeking either a range of policy solutions which are generally untested or already failed Conservative ‘solutions’ or just stuff they’re making up as they’re going along. So I think it’s a bloody mess. And actually, I don’t really see a very positive future for the Labour Party.
He also saw the effects of Labour’s heartlessness on voters locally. As he described:
I didn’t have any great expectation that Keir Starmer’s leadership was going to be transformative or that progressive. And so… I don’t think I was as disappointed as many other people who had actually just believed that things could not get worse, and their experience over the first 6 to 9 months is that, oddly enough, the Labour Party seemed determined to make them worse than they had been, and the distress that actually you met on doors – people who just could not believe that that hope had been entirely false. It’s very, very palpable. And I’m not in the least bit surprised that people were just too desperate, too cheesed off, too bothered by other personal concerns to turn out and vote now.
“Representation for local residents rather than for parties”
The key argument of his campaign was that:
what we really needed was representation for local residents rather than for parties. So rather than being a plain party candidate who would represent all that was good about the council and all that was good about the Labour Party to the electorate, we were very much focused on trying to express the views and frustrations of residents back to the council, which is the way it’s meant to be.
And because the cost of living crisis was such a major issue in the ward and Hounslow in general, he said:
We had to focus on the fact that people couldn’t afford to have another Labour councillor who would simply nod through increases in [councillors’] allowances and increases in local taxation.
Giving tips on campaigning for others, meanwhile, he said his election agent suggested “don’t waste your time with keyboard worries”. And Dennison emphasised:
The virtual campaign is very, very different from the real door-to-door campaign. And actually, that would be a definite you must do – you cannot do enough knocking on doors.
The mission now? ‘To try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund councillors’ self-serving machine’
In his role as a councillor, Dennison insisted that he will:
try and clean up the local Labour Party and the way the council is run, to try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund this rather self-serving machine, to try and get a grip on the priorities of the council so that local services in Brentford and Isleworth are not just protected but also improved – at the moment, there’s quite a number of significant services under threat, try and do something about the attitude on dealing with people who frankly don’t have the household budget to actually manage at this particular time, and to stop them putting up the council tax again, or at least make it so bloody hard that they regret every single second.
And he asserted:
At every single meeting, I will be raising these concerns. And they can shout me down, hound me down, try and stop me speaking as much as they like, but that voice will be heard.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest defiance of the courts — this time refusing to follow an appellate judge’s order to halt migrant deportations — has triggered another round of liberal outrage. Critics are calling it an authoritarian move, a blatant assault on the rule of law, and a warning sign that American democracy is on its last legs.
But if this is the end of democracy, it’s been ending for a long time. And not just at Trump’s hands.
The central truth we keep missing — especially on the left — is that Trump is not an aberration. He’s a grotesque continuation.
The post Trump’s Rule By Fiat A Bipartisan Legacy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Global press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza this week, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.
And protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated their week 77 rally and march in the heart of Auckland to their memory, declaring “Journalism is not a crime”.
Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya, media reports said.
- READ MORE: ‘Tell the world the truth,’ father tells dead son as Israel kills two journalists
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- ‘Catastrophic’: Journalists say ethnic cleansing taking place in a news void in northern Gaza
- Other Gaza journalist reports
Video, reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.
Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today television was killed earlier on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.
One Palestinian woman read out a message from Shabat’s family: “He dreamed of becoming a journalist and to tell the world the truth.
“But war doesn’t wait for dreams. He was only 23, and when the war began he left classes to give a voice to those who had none.”
Global media condemnation
In the hours after the deaths, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programme director.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour.
“Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”
Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat – killed by Israeli forces at 23 and shattering his dreams. Image: Del Abcede/APR In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as “terrorists” — without any evidence to back their claim.
The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.
In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”
In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.
The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.
However, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.
Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.
Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocide in the blockaded enclave since October 7, 2023.
The Israeli carnage has reduced most of the Gaza to ruins and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.
New Zealand protesters wearing mock “Press” vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists documenting the Israeli genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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By Mar-Vic Cagurangan for BenarNews
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reaffirmed the Trump administration’s defence commitments to America’s Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and that any attack on them would be an attack on the mainland.
Hegseth touched down in Guam from Hawai’i on Thursday as part of an Indo-Pacific tour, his first as Defence Secretary, in which he is seeking to shore up traditional alliances to counter China.
Geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific has seen Guam and neighboring CNMI become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
Both territories are also within range of Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles and the US tested a defence system in Guam in December.
Any attack on Guam and the Commonwealth Northern Marianas Islands would be met with “appropriate response,” Hegseth said during his brief visit, emphasising both territories were central to the US defence posture focused on containing China.
“We’re defending our homeland,” Hegseth said. “Guam and CNMI are vital parts of America, and I want to be very clear — to everyone in this room, to the cameras — any attack against these islands is an attack against the US.”
“We’re going to continue to stay committed to our presence here,” Hegseth said. “It’s important to emphasise: we are not seeking war with Communist China. But it is our job to ensure that we are ready.”
Key US strategic asset
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers, and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.The pledge from Hegseth comes as debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified, with competing calls by some residents for full statehood and UN-mandated decolonisation, led by the Indigenous Chamorro people.
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth (left) meets with Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero (far center) and CNMI Governor Arnold Palacios (far right) on his visit to the US Pacific territory on Thursday. Image: US Secretary of Defence Defending Guam and CNMI, Hegseth said, aligns with President Donald Trump’s “goal to achieve peace through strength by putting America first”.
He delivered remarks at Andersen Air Force Base and took an aerial tour of the island before meeting with Lou Leon Guerrero and Arnold Palacios, governors of Guam and Northern Marianas, respectively.
Guerrero appealed to Hegseth about the “great impact” the US military buildup on Guam had had on the island’s residents.
“We welcome you, and we welcome the position and the posture that President Trump has,” Guerrero told Hegseth, during opening statements before their closed-door meeting.
“We are the centre of gravity here. We are the second island chain of defence,” she said. “We want to be a partner in the readiness effort but national security cannot happen without human health security.”
Funding for hospital
Guerrero sought funding for a new hospital, estimated to cost US$600 million.“Our island needs a regional hospital capable of handling mass casualties — whether from conflict or natural disasters,” she told Hegseth.
“We are working very closely in partnership with the military, and one of our asks is to be a partner in the financing of that hospital.”
Afterwards Guerrero told reporters she did not have time to discuss the housing crisis caused by the US military buildup.
Earlier this month, Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address of US neglect of Guam’s 160,000 residents, where one-in-five are estimated to live below the poverty line.
“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.
At the end of his visit to Guam, Hegseth announced in a statement he had also reached an “understanding” with President Wesley Simina of the Federated States of Micronesia to begin planning and construction of US$400 million in military infrastructure projects in the State of Yap.
Territorial background
Simina’s office would not confirm to BenarNews he had met with Hegseth in Guam, saying only he was “off island.”As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power.
The US acquired Guam in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and CNMI from Japan in 1945 after its defeat in the Second World War. Both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
On Tuesday, Hegseth was in Hawai’i meeting officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Speaking with the media in Honolulu, he said his Asia-Pacific visit was to show strength to allies and “reestablish deterrence.”
Hegseth’s week-long tour comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness. Its coast guard vessels have recently encroached into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
His visit will be closely watched in the Pacific for signs of the Trump administration’s commitment to traditional allies following a rift between Washington and Europe that has tested the transatlantic alliance.
The trip also threatens to be overshadowed by the fallout from revelations that he and other national security officials discussed attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.
Flagrant violation
Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols.During his first term, Trump revived Washington’s engagements in the Pacific island region after long years of neglect paved the way for China’s initiatives.
He hosted leaders of the US freely associated states of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia at the White House in 2019.
The Biden administration followed through, doubling the engagement with an increased presence and complementing the military buildup with economic assistance that sought to outdo China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The new Trump administration, however, cut the cord, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and along with it, the millions of dollars pledged to Pacific island nations.
The abolition of about 80 percent of USAID programmes sent mixed signals to the island nations and security experts have warned that China would fill the void it has created.
From Guam, Hegseth has travelled to Philippines and Japan, where he will participate in a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and will later meet with Japanese leaders and US military forces.
Republished from BenarNews with permission. Stefan Armbruster in Brisbane contributed to this story.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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It’s past time we move to an organizing model that prioritizes rank-and-file members of our unions.
This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Jacob Goodwin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war on many fronts. He has ended the tense ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza in spectacularly bloody fashion and resumed bombing of Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. Missiles fired at Israel from the Houthi rebels in Yemen also risk seeing a further widening of hostilities.Domestically, he has been conducting a bruising, even thuggish campaign against Israeli institutions and their representatives, an effort that is impossible to divorce from his ongoing trial for corruption. He has, for instance, busied himself with removing the attorney journal, Gali Baharav-Miara, a process that will be lengthy considering the necessary role of a special appointments committee. On May 23, the cabinet passed a no-confidence motion against her, prompting a sharp letter from the attorney general that the Netanyahu government had ventured to place itself “above the law, to act without checks and balances, and even at the most sensitive of times”.
High up on the Netanyahu hit list is the intelligence official Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief he explicitly accuses of having foreknowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. “This is a fact and not a conspiracy,” a statement from the prime minister’s office bluntly asserted. At 4.30am that morning “it was already clear to the outgoing Shin Bet head that an invasion of the State of Israel was likely.”
The PMO failed to mention Netanyahu’s self-interest in targeting Bar, given that Shin Bet is investigating the office for connections with the Qatari government allegedly involving cash disbursements to promote Doha’s interests.
While Bar has been formally sacked, a measure never undertaken by any government of the Israeli state, the Israeli High Court has extended a freeze on his removal while permitting Netanyahu to consider replacement candidates.
It is the judiciary, however, that has commanded much attention, pre-dating the October 7 attacks. Much of 2023 was given over to attempting to compromise the Supreme Court of its influence and independence. Some legislation to seek that process had been passed in July 2023 but the Supreme Court subsequently struck down that law in January 2024 in an 8-7 decision. The relevant law removed the Court’s means to check executive power through invalidating government decisions deemed “unreasonable”. In the view of former Chief Justice Esther Hayut, the law was “extreme and irregular”, marking a departure “from the foundational authorities of the Knesset, and therefore it must be struck down.”
Even in wartime, the Netanyahu government’s appetite to clip the wings of an active judiciary remained strong. In January 2025, it made a second attempt, with a new, modified proposal jointly authored by Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The law, passed by the Knesset in its third and final reading on March 27, alters the committee responsible for appointing judges. The previous nine-member judicial selection committee had been composed of three judges, two independent lawyers and four politicians, equally divided between government and opposition. Now, the relevant lawyers will be government and opposition appointees, intended to take effect after the next elections.
The convulsions in Israeli politics have been evident from various efforts to stall, if not abandon the legislation altogether. The law changing the judicial appointments committee had received 71,023 filed objections. While it passed 67-1, it only did so with the opposition boycotting the vote. Benny Gantz, the chair of National Unity, wrote to Netanyahu ahead of the readings pleading for its abandonment. “I’m appealing to you as someone who bears responsibility for acting on behalf of all citizens of this country.” He reminded the PM that Israeli society was “wounded and bleeding, divided in a way we have not seen since October 6 [2023]. Fifty-nine of our brothers and sisters are still captive in Gaza, and our soldiers, from all political factions, are fighting on multiple fronts.”
The warning eventually came. To operate in such a manner, permitting a parliamentary majority to “unilaterally approve legislation opposed by the people, will harm the ability to create broad reform that appeals to the whole, will lead to polarization and will increase distrust in both the legislative and executive branches.”
Before lawmakers in a final effort to convince, Gantz, citing former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, issued a reminder that “democracies fall or die slowly when they suffer from a malignant disease called the disease of the majority”. Such a disease advanced gradually till “the curtain of darkness slowly [descended] on society.”
Gantz also tried to press Levin to abandon the legislation ahead of the two Knesset plenum readings. In a report from Channel 12, he called it a “mistake” to bring the legislation forward. The response from Levin was that the legislation was a suitable compromise that both he and Sa’ar had introduced as a dilution on the previous proposal that would have vested total control in the government over judicial appointments. The revision was “intended to heal the rift of the nation”.
Healing for Netanyahu is a hard concept to envisage. His authoritarian politics is that of the supreme survivalist with lashings of expedient populism. Sundering the social compact with damaging attacks on various sacred cows, from intelligence officials to judges, is the sacrifice he is willing to make. That this will result in a distrust in Israeli institutions seems to worry him less than any sparing from accountability and posterity’s questionable rewards.
The post Netanyahu’s War on Israeli Institutions first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The following article is a comment piece from the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC)
The Spring Statement from chancellor Rachel Reeves announced further cuts in Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits that the UK’s largest food bank provider, Trussell, described as “catastrophic”. About 3.2m people will lose an average of £1,750 a year, according to an impact assessment by the DWP.
As the currently suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana said in the Commons after the statement:
Disability benefit cuts will push over 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, into poverty. Does the Chancellor – who earns over £150,000, accepted £7,500 in free clothes and took freebie tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter – believe Austerity 2.0 is the ‘change’ people voted for?
Truly, Labour isn’t Labour anymore. We need to use the opportunity of the May local elections to challenge Austerity 2.0.
The local election: time to send a message to Labour
Over one hundred candidates have been accepted by the TUSC steering committee to use one of the registered descriptions on their ballot paper in May’s council elections after the latest meeting of the committee on Monday – and, while the official nomination deadline is coming up fast, there’s still time for more.
This year, there are only elections in 23 councils after the government, in a completely undemocratic move, cancelled polls in nine councils pending re-organisation plans. Millions have been denied the chance to vote, on who should run their local services and on how their local councils should be organised – and what they think of the government’s new austerity agenda!
But that still leaves 1,600 seats or so being contested in the scheduled elections on 1 May, and in some council by-elections elsewhere, and in 101 of them there will be a clear socialist and trade union alternative to the establishment parties – plus a TUSC candidate in the contest for the Mayor of Doncaster.
The last time these particular seats were up for election, in 2021, there were 60 candidates who used a TUSC description on the ballot paper (and just 31 in the election cycle before that, in 2017). The greater interest in standing this time is another sign of the growing conviction that a new, mass, working class alternative must be built – and that you have to start somewhere.
And there’s still time for more trade unionists, anti-cuts community campaigners, protesters at the latest vicious attacks on disabled people – and socialists from different parties or none – to join what will be the biggest working class left-of-Labour challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘Continuity Tories’ New Labour Party in May.
Final Deadline to be a TUSC candidate
The final deadline for the steering committee to consider candidate applications has been extended to Sunday 30 March, with the TUSC National Election Agent – Clive Heemskerk, at cliveheemskerk@socialistparty.org.uk – needing to receive completed applications by then. But that will be really cutting it fine so applications should be sent in as early as possible.
The form to use a TUSC description can be downloaded here.
The current list of candidates planning to stand in May’s elections using one of the TUSC descriptions is now available here. Most candidates will appear on the ballot paper with the description Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition next to their name but a number are using the new Independent Trade Union and Socialist Candidate descriptor, including two former Labour councillors in Doncaster.
TUSC has no rich backers. Some supporters generously make standing orders of a few pounds a month to help our campaigns. If you haven’t done so, particularly if you are in an area that doesn’t have elections this May, please consider, if you are able, sending a ‘Tenner4TUSC’ via our donations page at https://www.tusc.org.uk/donate/
Featured image supplied
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
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The new documentary The Encampments, produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News, is an insider’s look at the student protest movement to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli weapons industry and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The film focuses on last year’s student encampment at Columbia University and features student leaders including Mahmoud Khalil, who was chosen by the university as a liaison between the administration and students. Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident, has since been arrested and detained by immigration enforcement as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to deport immigrants who exercise their right to free speech and protest. “Columbia has gone to every extent to try to censor this movement,” says Munir Atalla, a producer for the film and a former film professor at Columbia.
We speak with Atalla; Sueda Polat, a Columbia graduate student and fellow campus negotiator with Khalil; and Grant Miner, a former Columbia graduate student and president of the student workers’ union who was expelled from the school over his participation in the protests. “Functionally, I was expelled for speaking out against genocide,” he says. All three of our guests emphasize their continued commitment to pro-Palestine activism even in the face of increasing institutional repression. The Encampments is opening nationwide in April.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Democracy Now! Friday, March 28, 2025
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
