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Category: Protest

  • ‘Silver’ protest democracy activist keeps marching for Hong Kong

    In her youth, 72-year-old Yeung Po Hei was a staunch communist, delivering a public eulogy for late supreme leader Mao Zedong and later joining the ranks of nationalistic supporters of Beijing during the labor movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.

    But by 2019 she was spearheading a ‘silver protest’ in Hong Kong as part of the city’s fight to hold onto its vanishing freedoms.

    Concerned about the subsequent crackdown on public dissent that followed, Yeung, like many other Hong Kongers, headed to democratic Taiwan.

    Now, five years after the 2019 protests that began as a mass popular movement against extradition to mainland China and broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections, she is on the move again, seeking a new life in the United Kingdom.

    “I remember telling my friends that I wouldn’t leave [Taiwan], even if there was war in the Taiwan Strait,” Yeung told RFA Cantonese as she left the island with her luggage en route to the U.K. “I could just tend to my vegetables and make myself food out back.”

    But that changed with the 2022 local government elections.

    “I was pretty disappointed with [those] elections, mainly because a lot of candidates had been accused of corruption, with a good deal of evidence against them, but they still got elected anyway,” Yeung said.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.2.jpg
    Yeung pores over her extensive newspaper cuttings collection as she packs to move to the United Kingdom. (Cheng Hao-nan/RFA)

    “What were Taiwanese voters thinking? I always thought Taiwan was a democratic society, but how is it being implemented?”

    But it wasn’t just the politics. Yeung’s plan to make a living by running a bookstore in a quiet backwater in Taiwan’s Yilan county proved harder than she had imagined.

    ‘A lot of rationalizing’

    Back in Hong Kong, Yeung was a staunch supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, keeping faith until the fall of the Gang of Four in 1979. 

    Yeung took a large personal archive of newspaper reports and other material documenting her years of social activism in Hong Kong with her to the U.K.

    “Firstly, it’s about the memories, and secondly, it’s a record of Hong Kong’s history,” said Yeung, who took part in the blind labor movement of the early 1970s that campaigned for better pay and conditions for blind workers, alongside fellow Maoists and communist-leaning students.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.3.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui in her former home in Taiwan’s Yilan county. (Alice Yam/RFA)

    When late Mao died in 1976, Yeung was head of her university’s students’ union, and gave a public speech eulogizing him.

    “There was a lot of rationalizing,” she said of her idealism at the time. “I thought that if you wanted socialism, then that had to be led by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    “Later, I saw the bad things the Communist Party did, the blood on its hands,” she said. “It wasn’t until June 4, 1989, that I realized that the Chinese Communist Party is really evil.”

    After the Tiananmen massacre shocked the world in that year, Yeung withdrew from political movements to raise her kids and be a housewife for a few years.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.4.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui as the first female president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong students’ union in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Yeung Po Hui)

    It wasn’t until Hong Kong’s teenage activists led by Joshua Wong rose up in protest at plans to force “patriotic education” on Hong Kong’s schools in 2012 that she started to get involved in activism again.

    “Someone in the pro-establishment camp [in Hong Kong] was saying that national education was a necessity,” Yeung said. 

    Lin Bao quote

    For her, the attitude seemed to recall a quote by late disgraced Chinese leader Lin Biao: “Those who understand have to implement it. Those who don’t understand, also have to implement it.”

    “That really got me thinking, because that’s how we came out [during the Cultural Revolution] at the time, only to be deceived by the Gang of Four,” she said. “I thought, if that’s still the way things are today, then I want to stand up and oppose this.”

    Yeung started to be more engaged in social activism after that point, but no longer as a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

    “My only regret is that I was so ignorant and naive,” she said of her early support for Beijing. “If I had to it all over again, I would read more books and reports.”

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.5.jpg
    Yeung at a rally marking the anniversary of the 2019 protest movement in the U.K., June 2024. (Matthew Leung/RFA)

    By the time millions were turning out onto the streets to oppose extradition to mainland China, Yeung was one of the organizers, gathering other people of her generation to take part in marches and rallies as the “Silver Parade.”

    But now, years of passionate engagement with politics have started to take a toll on her, both physically and mentally.

    “People who stay behind in Hong Kong, who stay in that environment, are the brave ones,” Yeung said. “But I don’t agree that people who leave have given up on Hong Kong.”

    To the people of Taiwan living under the threat of encroaching Chinese political and military power, Yeung said: “Don’t waste the experience of the anti-extradition movement … It is really a good lesson and I hope the Taiwanese people can learn from it.”

    Even in the U.K., Yeung has continued to attend events marking the 2019 protest movement, saying that everyone can contribute to the campaign for democracy in Hong Kong ‘according to their own abilities.”

    “What you can’t do in Hong Kong, you can do after you leave,” she said. “If I am able to go, I always do, sometimes out of a sense of responsibility.”

    But she is now also focusing more on her health, and enjoying her retirement.

    “You can only keep going longer if you rest when you’re tired,” she said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alice Yam and Matthew Leung for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Silver’ protest democracy activist keeps marching for Hong Kong

    In her youth, 72-year-old Yeung Po Hei was a staunch communist, delivering a public eulogy for late supreme leader Mao Zedong and later joining the ranks of nationalistic supporters of Beijing during the labor movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.

    But by 2019 she was spearheading a ‘silver protest’ in Hong Kong as part of the city’s fight to hold onto its vanishing freedoms.

    Concerned about the subsequent crackdown on public dissent that followed, Yeung, like many other Hong Kongers, headed to democratic Taiwan.

    Now, five years after the 2019 protests that began as a mass popular movement against extradition to mainland China and broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections, she is on the move again, seeking a new life in the United Kingdom.

    “I remember telling my friends that I wouldn’t leave [Taiwan], even if there was war in the Taiwan Strait,” Yeung told RFA Cantonese as she left the island with her luggage en route to the U.K. “I could just tend to my vegetables and make myself food out back.”

    But that changed with the 2022 local government elections.

    “I was pretty disappointed with [those] elections, mainly because a lot of candidates had been accused of corruption, with a good deal of evidence against them, but they still got elected anyway,” Yeung said.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.2.jpg
    Yeung pores over her extensive newspaper cuttings collection as she packs to move to the United Kingdom. (Cheng Hao-nan/RFA)

    “What were Taiwanese voters thinking? I always thought Taiwan was a democratic society, but how is it being implemented?”

    But it wasn’t just the politics. Yeung’s plan to make a living by running a bookstore in a quiet backwater in Taiwan’s Yilan county proved harder than she had imagined.

    ‘A lot of rationalizing’

    Back in Hong Kong, Yeung was a staunch supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, keeping faith until the fall of the Gang of Four in 1979. 

    Yeung took a large personal archive of newspaper reports and other material documenting her years of social activism in Hong Kong with her to the U.K.

    “Firstly, it’s about the memories, and secondly, it’s a record of Hong Kong’s history,” said Yeung, who took part in the blind labor movement of the early 1970s that campaigned for better pay and conditions for blind workers, alongside fellow Maoists and communist-leaning students.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.3.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui in her former home in Taiwan’s Yilan county. (Alice Yam/RFA)

    When late Mao died in 1976, Yeung was head of her university’s students’ union, and gave a public speech eulogizing him.

    “There was a lot of rationalizing,” she said of her idealism at the time. “I thought that if you wanted socialism, then that had to be led by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    “Later, I saw the bad things the Communist Party did, the blood on its hands,” she said. “It wasn’t until June 4, 1989, that I realized that the Chinese Communist Party is really evil.”

    After the Tiananmen massacre shocked the world in that year, Yeung withdrew from political movements to raise her kids and be a housewife for a few years.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.4.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui as the first female president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong students’ union in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Yeung Po Hui)

    It wasn’t until Hong Kong’s teenage activists led by Joshua Wong rose up in protest at plans to force “patriotic education” on Hong Kong’s schools in 2012 that she started to get involved in activism again.

    “Someone in the pro-establishment camp [in Hong Kong] was saying that national education was a necessity,” Yeung said. 

    Lin Bao quote

    For her, the attitude seemed to recall a quote by late disgraced Chinese leader Lin Biao: “Those who understand have to implement it. Those who don’t understand, also have to implement it.”

    “That really got me thinking, because that’s how we came out [during the Cultural Revolution] at the time, only to be deceived by the Gang of Four,” she said. “I thought, if that’s still the way things are today, then I want to stand up and oppose this.”

    Yeung started to be more engaged in social activism after that point, but no longer as a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

    “My only regret is that I was so ignorant and naive,” she said of her early support for Beijing. “If I had to it all over again, I would read more books and reports.”

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.5.jpg
    Yeung at a rally marking the anniversary of the 2019 protest movement in the U.K., June 2024. (Matthew Leung/RFA)

    By the time millions were turning out onto the streets to oppose extradition to mainland China, Yeung was one of the organizers, gathering other people of her generation to take part in marches and rallies as the “Silver Parade.”

    But now, years of passionate engagement with politics have started to take a toll on her, both physically and mentally.

    “People who stay behind in Hong Kong, who stay in that environment, are the brave ones,” Yeung said. “But I don’t agree that people who leave have given up on Hong Kong.”

    To the people of Taiwan living under the threat of encroaching Chinese political and military power, Yeung said: “Don’t waste the experience of the anti-extradition movement … It is really a good lesson and I hope the Taiwanese people can learn from it.”

    Even in the U.K., Yeung has continued to attend events marking the 2019 protest movement, saying that everyone can contribute to the campaign for democracy in Hong Kong ‘according to their own abilities.”

    “What you can’t do in Hong Kong, you can do after you leave,” she said. “If I am able to go, I always do, sometimes out of a sense of responsibility.”

    But she is now also focusing more on her health, and enjoying her retirement.

    “You can only keep going longer if you rest when you’re tired,” she said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alice Yam and Matthew Leung for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Silver’ protest democracy activist keeps marching for Hong Kong

    In her youth, 72-year-old Yeung Po Hei was a staunch communist, delivering a public eulogy for late supreme leader Mao Zedong and later joining the ranks of nationalistic supporters of Beijing during the labor movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.

    But by 2019 she was spearheading a ‘silver protest’ in Hong Kong as part of the city’s fight to hold onto its vanishing freedoms.

    Concerned about the subsequent crackdown on public dissent that followed, Yeung, like many other Hong Kongers, headed to democratic Taiwan.

    Now, five years after the 2019 protests that began as a mass popular movement against extradition to mainland China and broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections, she is on the move again, seeking a new life in the United Kingdom.

    “I remember telling my friends that I wouldn’t leave [Taiwan], even if there was war in the Taiwan Strait,” Yeung told RFA Cantonese as she left the island with her luggage en route to the U.K. “I could just tend to my vegetables and make myself food out back.”

    But that changed with the 2022 local government elections.

    “I was pretty disappointed with [those] elections, mainly because a lot of candidates had been accused of corruption, with a good deal of evidence against them, but they still got elected anyway,” Yeung said.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.2.jpg
    Yeung pores over her extensive newspaper cuttings collection as she packs to move to the United Kingdom. (Cheng Hao-nan/RFA)

    “What were Taiwanese voters thinking? I always thought Taiwan was a democratic society, but how is it being implemented?”

    But it wasn’t just the politics. Yeung’s plan to make a living by running a bookstore in a quiet backwater in Taiwan’s Yilan county proved harder than she had imagined.

    ‘A lot of rationalizing’

    Back in Hong Kong, Yeung was a staunch supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, keeping faith until the fall of the Gang of Four in 1979. 

    Yeung took a large personal archive of newspaper reports and other material documenting her years of social activism in Hong Kong with her to the U.K.

    “Firstly, it’s about the memories, and secondly, it’s a record of Hong Kong’s history,” said Yeung, who took part in the blind labor movement of the early 1970s that campaigned for better pay and conditions for blind workers, alongside fellow Maoists and communist-leaning students.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.3.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui in her former home in Taiwan’s Yilan county. (Alice Yam/RFA)

    When late Mao died in 1976, Yeung was head of her university’s students’ union, and gave a public speech eulogizing him.

    “There was a lot of rationalizing,” she said of her idealism at the time. “I thought that if you wanted socialism, then that had to be led by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    “Later, I saw the bad things the Communist Party did, the blood on its hands,” she said. “It wasn’t until June 4, 1989, that I realized that the Chinese Communist Party is really evil.”

    After the Tiananmen massacre shocked the world in that year, Yeung withdrew from political movements to raise her kids and be a housewife for a few years.

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.4.jpg
    Yeung Po Hui as the first female president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong students’ union in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Yeung Po Hui)

    It wasn’t until Hong Kong’s teenage activists led by Joshua Wong rose up in protest at plans to force “patriotic education” on Hong Kong’s schools in 2012 that she started to get involved in activism again.

    “Someone in the pro-establishment camp [in Hong Kong] was saying that national education was a necessity,” Yeung said. 

    Lin Bao quote

    For her, the attitude seemed to recall a quote by late disgraced Chinese leader Lin Biao: “Those who understand have to implement it. Those who don’t understand, also have to implement it.”

    “That really got me thinking, because that’s how we came out [during the Cultural Revolution] at the time, only to be deceived by the Gang of Four,” she said. “I thought, if that’s still the way things are today, then I want to stand up and oppose this.”

    Yeung started to be more engaged in social activism after that point, but no longer as a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

    “My only regret is that I was so ignorant and naive,” she said of her early support for Beijing. “If I had to it all over again, I would read more books and reports.”

    ENG_CHN_INTERVIEW SILVER PROTESTER_06252024.5.jpg
    Yeung at a rally marking the anniversary of the 2019 protest movement in the U.K., June 2024. (Matthew Leung/RFA)

    By the time millions were turning out onto the streets to oppose extradition to mainland China, Yeung was one of the organizers, gathering other people of her generation to take part in marches and rallies as the “Silver Parade.”

    But now, years of passionate engagement with politics have started to take a toll on her, both physically and mentally.

    “People who stay behind in Hong Kong, who stay in that environment, are the brave ones,” Yeung said. “But I don’t agree that people who leave have given up on Hong Kong.”

    To the people of Taiwan living under the threat of encroaching Chinese political and military power, Yeung said: “Don’t waste the experience of the anti-extradition movement … It is really a good lesson and I hope the Taiwanese people can learn from it.”

    Even in the U.K., Yeung has continued to attend events marking the 2019 protest movement, saying that everyone can contribute to the campaign for democracy in Hong Kong ‘according to their own abilities.”

    “What you can’t do in Hong Kong, you can do after you leave,” she said. “If I am able to go, I always do, sometimes out of a sense of responsibility.”

    But she is now also focusing more on her health, and enjoying her retirement.

    “You can only keep going longer if you rest when you’re tired,” she said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alice Yam and Matthew Leung for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Sunak just got a taste of his own, sh*tty medicine – or he will if he goes for a dip in his lake

    Rishi Sunak may well come across the one floating voter of the general election if he happens to go for a swim in his private lake. Because thanks to direct action group Youth Demand, the PM’s own body of water has a new resident – and his lake is now like the rest of Britain’s waterways: teeming with shit.

    Sunak’s shitshow is over

    As a thankyou and a parting gift to Sunak and the Tories for the last 14 years of service, a Youth Demand supporter has ‘sunk the Bismarck’ in Rishi Sunak’s lake. Youth Demand is a campaign calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the incoming UK government to revoke all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

    At around 12:50 pm on Tuesday 25 June, Oliver, 21, a student from Manchester visited Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire mansion and ‘murdered a brown snake’ in the multi-millionaires’ lake, whilst wearing a shirt emblazoned with ‘Eat Shit Rishi’:

    https://x.com/youth_demand/status/1805607636949176639

    Police arrived on the scene almost immediately and detained four people, including a press photographer, which may lead to their arrest:

    Before shitting in the lake, Oliver said:

    We have so much to thank the Tories for: from crumbling schools, shit in the rivers and a collapsing NHS; to creating a nation with more food banks than McDonalds and 4.3 million UK children living in poverty. From allowing their mates to get filthy rich from selling weapons to battle-test on toddlers in Gaza, or by drilling for more oil as the world burns – it’s quite a legacy!”

    Yet this shit-show is set to continue with yet another party led by a pathological liar who will be taking office next. Both Labour and the Tories are content to keep shitting on Gaza, and on every future generation, by continuing weapons trading with Israel and by not revoking all oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

    The two party system is just two cheeks of the same arse. We deserve better! Take action at youthdemand.org.

    Youth Demand: better at the puns than the Sun (and a lot nicer, too)

    A Youth Demand spokesperson said:

    From Number 10 to Number 2, let’s face it: he’s done a shit job, and the Tories are facing an electoral wipe-out. As a final goodbye, we’re issuing a ‘code-brown’ to Mr Sunak and his colleagues in government for 14 years of total failure, by delivering them some much needed moral fibre.

    They’ve landed us all up shit-creek and so we hope they accept these ‘gorilla fingers’ as a heartfelt gesture of our feelings towards them.

    But although we’ve unloaded some timber, we’re not out of the woods yet. Our political system is broken. Labour has to lose the policies from the bottom-drawer and convince floating voters by putting the skids on arms trading with Israel and flushing all oil and gas projects licensed since 2021- policies which stain the UK’s reputation.

    It’s a big job, but it’s time to sort shit out. Join us for a week of action in London from the 13th July, sign up at youth demand.org.

    Sunak: wiping his arse with £50 notes

    This mansion is one of several properties owned by Mr Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty. Murty owns a reported £400m stake in her billionaire father’s company Infosys, which signed a $1.5bn deal with BP in May 2023.

    Sunak and Murty bought the £2m Grade-II listed Georgian manor house in the picturesque village of Kirby Sigston, before Mr Sunak became MP for Richmond in 2015.

    However, this isn’t the only property in the couple’s extensive repertoire, which include a £6.6m mansion in Kensington, London, and a vacation home in California. The couple have an estimated combined net worth of £730m.

    Last year 16 Just Stop Oil supporters were arrested outside Sunak’s London Mansion, after Louise Harris sang her chart-topping track ‘We Tried’.

    Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Palestine Action block Elbit factory with cars, smash up Barclays, and deface JP Morgan – all in one day

    In the space of just two days, Palestine Action have smashed up banks, stopped production at an arms factory, and sent Cambridge Uni a message. It is, of course, all over these companies and institutions’ complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The actions collectively show that the group will not be stopped.

    Barclays and JPMorgan get another dose of Palestine action

    First, on Monday 24 June two groups from Palestine Action targeted JP Morgan Chase’s offices new offices in the Landmark building and Barclays branch in Altrincham:

    Both banks saw their windows shattered and red paint covering their offices, symbolising their complicity in Palestinian bloodshed:

    Both JP Morgan Chase and Barclays bank are both investors in Israel’s biggest weapons firm, Elbit Systems — a company which is the primary target of Palestine Action’s direct action campaign. Elbit manufactures 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land based equipment, as well as munitions, bullets, and missiles.

    Bezhalel Machlis, CEO of the Israeli weapons maker, publicly states the company has “ramped up production” to arm the ongoing Gaza genocide.

    Last month, JP Morgan Chase reduced their stake in Elbit Systems shares by 70%. However, their remaining investment is still significant and is currently valued at approximately $16m.

    A Palestine Action spokesperson said:

    Our actions cause economic disruption to those who make a killing out of genocide. By doing so, we make deadly dealings a less attractive investment for banks who only value profit. All investors must understand investing in Elbit comes with the additional risk of Palestine Action.

    Elbit shut down – again

    Then, also on 24 June seven Palestine Action activists were arrested after they attached themselves to two vehicles and blockaded the only road into the British headquarters of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, for nine hours:

    Police had to drill through concrete within the vehicles in order to remove and arrest the activists:

    Palestine Action Israel

     

    The action successfully grounded Elbit’s operations to a halt today, disrupting an integral part of the genocidal arms company which Palestine Action vows to see forced out of Britain.

    Elbit’s Bristol premises, at 600 Aztec West, Almondsbury, is used to oversee all British operations – including their drone-parts factories in site in Staffordshire and Leicester, and their weapons sights factory in Kent, all of which have found their activities severely disrupted by Palestine Action activists.

    By managing all of these operations, the factory is a key operational hub for ‘Elbit Systems UK Ltd’ and its contributions to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not least by processing the immense volume of arms that Elbit exports to Israel from Britain.

    From across their global presence, Elbit manufactures munitions, combat vehicles, missiles and other Israeli arms and weapons components, and their British sites are used particularly for drones parts – with Elbit overall providing up to 85% of Israel’s drone fleet.

    Palestine Action have shut down the Bristol HQ numerous times, by various means including person-to-person lock-ons, vehicular lock-ons, and occupations of the factory. Activists have also frequently targeted Somerset council, the landlords of Elbit’s Bristol HQ.

    This action, as with every one undertaken by direct action network Palestine Action, has been taken to cease the operations at the premises, and to cease their contributions to Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine:

    A spokesperson has stated:

    Elbit Systems uses Gaza as a laboratory to develop their weaponry, a business model which has no place in any society. By arming Israel and allowing Elbit to operate in this country, our political establishment have failed to abide by their legal and moral obligations to end complicity in the Gaza genocide. That’s why it’s up to ordinary people to take direct action and shut Elbit down.

    Cambridge Uni: also in Palestine Action’s sights

    Meanwhile, on Saturday 22 June action takers sprayed the University of Cambridge’s historical Senate House in blood-red paint, in an act undertaken in collaboration with Palestine Action:

    Palestine Action IsraelThe site, used for the University’s upcoming graduation ceremonies, now reflects the Palestinian bloodshed which soaks the University’s financial records, research output, and historical legacy:

    This action marks the end of an entire academic year where the University of Cambridge has funded, enabled and normalised the ongoing Palestinian genocide. Cambridge University has failed to take any meaningful action against, or even release a statement opposing, UK/US-backed-Israeli atrocities in Palestine.

    The administration has repeatedly ignored student, staff, and alumni pleas for dialogue. The University has additionally refused to engage with escalating disruption which has been pursued in response to their silence, including the longstanding Cambridge University Encampment.

    As one action taker said:

    Uni administration sit in ivory towers, and don’t bat an eyelid at their involvement in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The white pillars at Senate House prop up a legacy of white supremacy and colonialism, which continues to this day through investments in and partnerships with arms companies like Elbit. Cambridge’s graduation hall is stained with the blood of Palestinians and now these stains have been made visible.

    Senate House stands as the imperial heart of Cambridge and is the educational birthplace of its Zionist alumni, most infamously Arthur Balfour, author and signatory of the Balfour declaration. Balfour graduated from this very building, as did many others who actively aided the foundation and establishment of the modern-day apartheid state, and continue to support it today.

    The University of Cambridge continues to actively invest in weapons companies and research partnerships enabling and normalising the UK/US-backed Palestinian genocide. “Defence” research and grants conceptualising the development of AI systems, drones, and surveillance technologies abused for the deliberate starvation and decimation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

    Overall, Palestine Action said:

    As long as these [companies and institutions] continue to support the brutal Zionist project, actions will escalate.

    Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action and Neil Terry

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A group of young people just forced Hawaiʻi to take major climate action

    The government of Hawaiʻi and a group of young people have reached a historic settlement that requires the state to decarbonize its transportation network. The agreement is the first of its kind in the nation and comes two years after 13 Hawaiian youth sued the state Department of Transportation for failing to protect their “constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.” 

    The settlement, announced last Thursday, requires the department to develop a plan and zero out greenhouse gas emissions from all transportation sectors by 2045. The agency is also required to create a new unit tasked with climate change mitigation, align budgetary investments with its clean energy goals, and plant at least 1,000 trees a year to increase carbon absorption from the atmosphere. 

    “It’s historic that the state government has come to the table and negotiated such a detailed set of commitments,” said Leinā‘ala L. Ley, a senior associate attorney at Earthjustice, one of the environmental law firms representing the youth plaintiffs. “The fact that the state has … put its own creativity, energy, and commitment behind the settlement means that we’re going to be able to move that much quicker in making real-time changes that are going to actually have an impact.”

    According to a press release from the office of Hawaiʻi Governor Josh Green, the settlement represents the state’s “commitment … to plan and implement transformative changes,” as well as an opportunity to work collaboratively, instead of combatively, with youth plaintiffs, “to address concerns regarding constitutional issues arising from climate change.”

    “This settlement informs how we as a state can best move forward to achieve life-sustaining goals and further, we can surely expect to see these and other youth in Hawaiʻi continue to step up to build the type of future they desire,” Green said in a statement.

    The 13 teenagers who brought the suit, Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, have cultural practices tied to the land. They are divers, swimmers, beachgoers, competitive paddlers, and caretakers of farms and fishponds. Many are Native Hawaiian. In the lawsuit filed in 2022, they alleged that the state’s inadequate response to climate change diminished their ability to enjoy the natural resources of the state. Since they filed, at least two plaintiffs were affected by the Lāhainā wildfire, the deadliest natural disaster in the state’s history.

    Hawaiʻi has been a leader in recognizing the effects of climate change. The archipelago is battling rising sea levels, extreme drought, and wildfires among other climate calamities. In 2021, it became the first state in the nation to declare a “climate emergency” and committed to a “mobilization effort to reverse the climate crisis.” But the non-binding resolution did not translate directly into statewide transportation policies that reduced greenhouse gas emissions, according to the youth plaintiffs. 

    Between 1990 and 2020, carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector increased despite advances in fuel efficiency, and now make up roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions in the state. The plaintiffs argued that the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation is largely to blame. Instead of coordinating with other agencies to meet the state’s net-zero targets, it has prioritized highway construction and expansion. The agency operates and maintains the state’s transportation network in such a way that it violates its duty to “conserve and protect Hawai‘i’s natural beauty and all natural resources,” the plaintiffs noted. 

    Other similar constitutional climate cases are pending across the country. Our Children’s Trust, a public interest law firm that represented the Hawaiian youth with Earthjustice, has also brought cases against Montana, Alaska, Utah, and Virginia on behalf of young people. Ley said Hawaiʻi is a “great model” for other states to follow. “This settlement shows that these legal obligations have real effects,” she said. 

    The settlement requires the state transportation department to meet a number of interim deadlines and to set up a decarbonization unit. The agency has already hired Laura Kaakua, who was previously with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, to lead the unit. Ley said that they plan to monitor every report the agency publishes, submit comments, and educate their young clients on how they can stay involved. 

    “Often in the climate field, young people feel betrayed by their government,” Ley said. “But this settlement affirms for these young people that working with the government can be effective and that this is a way that they can make a difference in their lives and in the world.”

    Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A group of young people just forced Hawaiʻi to take major climate action on Jun 24, 2024.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Foxes descended on London to protest over continued illegal hunting

    On Saturday 22 June, hundreds of foxes marched through Westminster. The skulk of campaigners-turned-canines were calling on the next government to clamp down on illegal hunting.

    Illegal hunting campaigners at the Restore Nature Now rally

    National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports organised the fox demonstration to highlight the prolific levels of illegal hunting that still goes on today. Significantly, this is nearly 20 years after parliament implemented the Hunting Act. This banned trail hunting – the practice of pursuing wild animals with dogs.

    Fox campaigners turned out as part of the Restore Nature Now march and rally:

    Extinction Rebellion with support from Chris Packham set up the event which brought together huge numbers of nature and environment groups. This included a mix of larger organisations, mingling with grassroots activist groups:

    Around 80,000 to 100,000 people representing these organisations turned out for it. The crowd included former Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, and a menagerie of wildlife presenters and celebrities like Liz Bonnin, Steve Backshall, and Emma Thompson:

    Outfox politicians at the ballot box

    Collectively, the attendees raised their voices to call out politicians ahead of the general election. In particular, the march called on politicians of every stripe to prioritise the biodiversity crisis – or lose support on polling day:

    The hundreds of anti-hunting campaigners saw the march as a (sly) opportunity to outfox the cruel industry’s biggest political voices at the ballot box. Specifically, the group had a series of demands for whoever forms the next government:

    The League’s acting chief executive Chris Luffingham was among those marching for the foxes through London. He said that:

    For years politicians have been getting away with sidelining their pledges on nature and climate, playing politics with issues that have a very real impact on our environment and our wild animals.

    Hunting was one of those. When the Act was brought in hunting was supposed to be made illegal, but loopholes in the law has allowed foxes and other animals to continue to be killed purely for entertainment.

    The next government needs to step up where previous administrations have failed: strengthen the hunting act as a matter of priority and renew pledges to safeguard other wild animals.

    Our nature and environment urgently needs protecting, and British wildlife is part of that. It’s time for change.

    Featured image via the League Against Cruel Sports

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Golf final sees Extinction Rebellion take far less severe action than the lightning strike the previous day

    On Sunday 23 June, in a disruption far less severe than the previous day’s lightning strike, Extinction Rebellion activists interrupted play at Travelers Championship as Scottie Scheffler was playing at the 18th hole:

    Travelers Championship disrupted

    With this action, Extinction Rebellion said it was not protesting any individual or organisation. Rather, the protest highlighted the worldwide danger of climate breakdown.

    Case in point: the last 13 months were the hottest on record, with extreme weather events around the globe. The activists pointed out that natural disasters are already causing large-scale loss of human, animal, and plant life, as well as significant damage to infrastructure, property, and agriculture.

    On Saturday 22 June, they noted, at least two fans were injured due to a lightning strike at the Travelers Championship. This was of course due to increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather conditions.

    Why “no golf on a dead planet”?

    Climate catastrophe threatens everything we love on this planet, including golf. Many tournaments have been cancelled due to inclement weather. Golf, more than other events, is heavily reliant on good weather. Golf fans should therefore understand better than most the need for strong, immediate climate action.

    During a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, actor Jeremy Strong responded to Extinction Rebellion’s disruption of his Broadway performance in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People this past March. He said that he’d:

    be a hypocrite if [he] didn’t support what [the climate activists] were saying.

    Strong understands that to achieve the necessary change, we must first acknowledge the truth of the current situation.

    Golfer Rory McIlroy, currently ranked #2 in the world, has stated that he too takes climate change seriously and believes that everyone can play a part in addressing the crisis.

    Golf courses and tournaments like the Travelers Championship have long paid lip service to the need to reduce the game’s grave environmental costs, which include profligate use of water and carbon-intensive fertilisers, as well as wanton destruction of forestlands.

    Not addressing the seriousness of the crisis

    However, the golf world’s minor interventions do not rise to the scale of the catastrophe. They are, in fact, a resounding failure says Extinction Rebellion:

    This golf protest action and other, similar ones are the recourse of a movement that has tried all other approaches. Voting, marching, petitioning, and lobbying have all failed, and failed again.

    The science makes clear that the window of time remaining for drastic reductions in carbon emissions is rapidly closing, and that if we don’t make such cuts we’ll face catastrophes far greater even than what we’re seeing now. At this point, the sole option remaining is to engage in unconventional forms of protest that bring attention to the severity of the climate emergency.

    Moreover, as spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion Shayok Mukhopadhyay summed up:

    Insurance companies are raising premiums, cutting back coverage, and leaving entire states altogether. This is only going to be disastrous for the financial markets and homeowners. We’re disrupting this event to make it clear to everyone that, just like insurance companies such as Travelers Insurance, the government needs to take the risks posed by the climate crisis seriously.

    Extinction Rebellion demands

    The world’s top scientists have stated unanimously, unambiguously, and repeatedly that in this century, global temperatures will rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above pre-industrial levels, surpassing internationally agreed targets.

    Many scientists also say that climate breakdown has plunged them into a state of despair, as have the long years of having their predictions ignored. Extinction Rebellion says our political, economic, and social systems have proven incapable of addressing the challenges posed by modern civilisation, In which profit, industry, and consumerism trump all.

    A discussion of demands and solutions requires a collective understanding of the issues. Most climate solutions now being proposed, such as electric cars, carbon capture, and renewable energy, are inadequate responses to the climate catastrophe occurring before our very eyes.

    Any discussion of real alternatives is impossible without agreed-upon baseline facts and without prioritising the most vulnerable among us. The United Nations has warned that humanity faces a “code red” situation as a result of our fossil fuel addiction.

    Right now, millions of people are experiencing climate catastrophe, as a result of the “developed” nations’ unsustainable standard of living. Recognising that we must act now, Extinction Rebellion demands Citizens’ Assemblies to determine next steps.

    Featured image and video via Extinction Rebellion

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Now the National Trust is under pressure to drop Barclays over Israel and fossil fuel complicity

    Fossil Free London activists unfurled a large banner reading ‘National Trust: Protect Nature, Drop Barclays’ across a tower at the iconic Bodiam Castle, East Sussex, on Friday 21 June. the protest was over the organisation’s links to the fossil fuels and arms manufacturer-supporting bank.

    Barclays: climate-wrecking investments

    Bodiam Castle, which was built in 1385 and is famous for its beautiful, moated setting, is one of hundreds of sites owned by the National Trust; the guardian of nature reserves, national parks, coastline, historic buildings and estates across the country.

    Activists claimed the National Trust were ‘hypocrites’ for banking with Barclays, Europe’s worst funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, drawing attention to one of the trust’s core aims; to protect nature and climate. In 2023 alone, Barclays provided $24.221bn of financing to fossil fuel companies:

    Barclays

    Recently, other institutions have announced their intentions to stop banking with Barclays for ethical reasons. Christian Aid and Oxfam have removed their funds from Barclays already. Cambridge University is withdrawing its support for Barclays and is leading a group of universities and colleges that are investigating more sustainable financial products.

    Pressure is building on Barclays and those institutions with links to the bank, since its sponsorship of Latitude, Download and Isle of Wight festivals was suspended when bands threatened to withdraw from the festivals because of Barclays funding of arms used by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza.

    Barclays Bank holds over £1bn in shares and provides over £3bn in loans and underwriting to nine companies whose weapons, components, and military technology are being used by Israel in its genocidal attacks on Palestinians.

    Complicit in Israel’s genocide

    This includes General Dynamics, which produces the gun systems that arm the fighter jets used by Israel to bombard Gaza, and Elbit Systems, which produces armoured drones, munitions, and artillery weapons used by the Israeli military.

    Amongst Barclays £3bn investments and loans in companies facilitating the Gaza genocide, the bank holds shares in Elbit Systems which is the primary target of Palestine Action’s campaign. Elbit Systems provide 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment, as well as bombs, missiles and other weaponry.

    The Israeli weapons maker market their weapons as “battle-tested” after they are developed during bombardments on occupied Palestine.

    Joanna Warrington, spokesperson for Fossil Free London, said:

    The National Trust’s core mission is to protect our environment, nature and heritage; but they are failing to do this for as long as they bank with Barclays. Because our world and all we love in it is in crisis, yet Barclays is still pouring billions into the fossil fuels destroying it. It’s time for the National Trust to stand up and protect nature, by ending their relationship with this oily bank.

    Featured image via Fossil Free London

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Youth Demand hit Oxford Circus, blocking central London – after warning the government it would

    Hundreds of Youth Demand supporters blocked Oxford Circus, London to demand a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the incoming UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

    Youth Demand: bringing central London to a standstill

    At around 12pm on Saturday 22 June, a large group of Youth Demand supporters gathered at Victoria Embankment Gardens. The group heard speeches and held a people’s assembly – a deliberative discussion about the crisis and what to do about it:

    The group then dispersed, with groups marching through central London before reconvening at Oxford Circus, at around 2:50pm:

    Of course, Youth Demand did previously warn it would be disrupting London each Saturday. As the Canary previously reported, the group gave the UK government one week from 23 May to stop all arms licences to Israel. Spain, Canada, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands have all paused arms licenses or shipments to Israel over fears that they may be used in violation of international humanitarian law.

    That deadline passed – and now Youth Demand are acting, starting at Oxford Circus.

    One of those taking action at Oxford Circus was Poppy Jabelman, 23, a human geography student from Exeter who said:

    We’re demanding a two way arms embargo with Israel, as it’s appalling that the UK is still providing the bombs being dropped on starving people forced into refugee camps in Palestine. Each of the over 37,000 people brutally murdered had dreams, families and futures.”

    Meanwhile Keir Starmer still refuses to call it what it is: genocide. Labour are set to win the general election with an unprecedented landslide, but this is no cause for celebration whilst they are complicit in the murder of children. The Youth Demand better! If you’ve similarly lost faith in our broken political system, and are outraged by the crimes against humanity we’re witnessing, head to youthdemand.org to sign up for action.

    “We deserve better”

    Another of those taking action at Oxford Circus was Violet Powell, 23, a student from Leeds who said:

    Our country is complicit in genocide. Both major parties refuse to acknowledge the horrors they’re enabling or to call for an arms embargo on Israel. What good is voting when the outcome is the same? For a future to be liveable, and to not have regrets, I must take action now. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. Join us for a week of action in Central London from the 13th-20th July.

    The group said in a statement:

    Young people will not accept a political system bought by weapons manufacturers, oil oligarchs and media barons. We deserve better. Young people all over the country are coming together to resist. Youth Demand will be taking action in Central London from the 13th-20th July.

    Join us at https://youthdemand.org.

    Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • One woman just brought the entire UK fossil fuels industry to its knees

    A landmark decision by the Supreme Court on Thursday 20 June has raised major barriers to all new fossil fuel projects across the UK, including the proposed new coal mine in Cumbria and the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea.

    Horse Hill: unlawful planning permission

    The Supreme Court has ruled that it was unlawful for Surrey County Council to grant planning permission for oil production to UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) at its Horse Hill site, near Gatwick, as it failed to assess the impact of downstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

    Not only does today’s Supreme Court ruling destroy UKOG’s plans to drill for up to 3.3m tonnes of crude oil for 20 years at its Horse Hill site, near Gatwick Airport, but also has huge implications for all future fossil fuel projects in the UK.

    Neither the Cumbrian coal mine in Whitehaven nor the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea sought consent for their projects. Nor did they provide any information on downstream emissions in their environmental statements. Both projects are the subjects of legal challenges.

    The groundbreaking judgment follows a legal challenge brought by Extinction Rebellion climate crisis campaigner and former Surrey resident Sarah Finch, on behalf of the Weald Action Group.

    Years of direct action over fossil fuels

    Finch’s legal fight was part of a wider campaign of opposition, launched by Weald Action Group and supported by local Extinction Rebellion activists, who regularly carried out direct actions at Horse Hill, including scaling and occupying one of the oil rigs on site, locking themselves onto the main gate, slow walking and climbing onto the roofs of oil tankers entering the site and staging lock-ons at the gate.

    Finch launched her case in 2019 and argued that, under the correct interpretation of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations 2017, environmental impact assessments must take into account downstream emissions caused by burning extracted oil.

    Today’s ruling marks the end of Finch’s long running legal campaign which she took to the Supreme Court after three Appeal Court judges were split over the lawfulness of Surrey County Council’s decision to grant permission for 20 years of oil drilling and production.

    What the ruling said

    The ruling makes clear that downstream emissions must be taken into consideration in the environmental assessments of fossil fuel projects, dismissing both the High Court’s ruling that refining the oil could break the chain of causation and the Court of Appeal ruling which left the issue to the planning authorities.

    The court stated this would be “a recipe for unpredictable, inconsistent and arbitrary decision-making” adding that this inconsistency “would be all the more regrettable when issues relating to climate change and the extent to which disclosure of information about GHG emissions should be required are becoming more and more salient in policy-making and public debate”.

    The ruling also emphasised the importance of public participation as a way of increasing the democratic legitimacy of environmental decision, and serving an educational function. As Lord Leggatt summarised: “You can only care about what you know about.”

    The Court also said that while national policy on oil extraction must be taken into account, it said that did not mean a planning authority “has to ignore [the] adverse effects on climate.”

    The majority judgment also stated that climate change “is a global problem precisely because there is no correlation between where GHGs are released and where climate change is felt”.

    The majority ruling also rejected the argument that resulting GHG emissions are “outwith the control of the site operators with the Court stating that it found that such emissions “are entirely within their control” in that they could choose not to extract the oil.

    Grassroots action on fossil fuels does work

    Local Extinction Rebellion campaigner reverend Helen Burnett said the ruling is a testament to the power of grassroots organising.

    I feel so much gratitude for the perseverance of the few, the ones who, in spite of ridicule and opposition, have gathered at the site for over five years to raise awareness of Horse Hill and shale oil extraction.

    This verdict sends encouragement and hope to grassroots organisers everywhere that we can tell the truth about the climate emergency and demand that the impact of fossil fuel extraction be truly acknowledged as a current and future harm.

    We have held a space at the Horse Hill gate monthly for years, honouring this little patch of land as a place where nature can flourish and now Horse Hill will be remembered because of the sheer determination and perseverance against all odds of those who just kept turning up whatever the weather to walk, to stand witness, to occupy by camping, to lock on, to block oil tankers, to make speeches, to pray. This is a day of jubilation and a day to remember all those who have raised their voices against the monolith of the oil and gas industries.

    Campaigner Sarah Finch said:

    I am absolutely over the moon to have won this important case. The Weald Action Group has always believed it was wrong to allow oil production without assessing its full climate impacts, and the Supreme Court has shown we were right.

    This is a welcome step towards a safer, fairer future. The oil and gas companies may act like business-as-usual is still an option, but it will be very hard for planning authorities to permit new fossil fuel developments – in the Weald, the North Sea or anywhere else – when their true climate impact is clear for all to see.

    Featured image via Extinction Rebellion

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The LSE has stained its own reputation with its conduct over pro-Palestine protesters

    The following article is a comment piece from students at the LSE Liberated Zone

    On 17 June 2024, after serving student protesters with an Interim Possession Order (IPO) during the festival of Eid al-Adha, LSE evicted students and staff from the Bloom Building.

    The following day, the LSE administration unilaterally broke off negotiations with student protesters concerning their demands, reneging on previous public commitments in which they had promised six weeks of negotiation between students and administrators, regardless of the status of the encampment:

    A pattern of bad faith and bad behaviour from LSE

    The behaviour of LSE administration since the beginning of the Bloom Building occupation on 14 May demonstrates a pattern of bad faith and refusal to engage with students’ demands, particularly for divestment from crimes against the Palestinian people and disaffiliation from institutions complicit in violations of international law.

    Students and staff have refused to accept business as usual in an institution materially complicit in genocide. Yet instead of faithfully engaging with this position, LSE administrators have attempted to end the student occupation through an escalation of measures that leveraged their extensive resources.

    The school has made history here, as the first of the UK universities to evict a pro-Palestine student encampment.

    This stain on their reputation draws into question claims of academic excellence and diverse critical thought. Crucial to the continued prestige of the institution is the consideration that this young generation is paying attention to the news and paying attention to systems of power, therefore will be deterred from attending a university in which their right to free speech is repressed.

    Opposition from the school came in various forms:

    LSE

    Spurious claims, violent actions

    Firstly, through spurious claims of a commitment to fire safety and student wellbeing (belied by their refusal to allow the Fire Brigades Union into the building).

    Secondly, through legal means which both threatened to criminalise students and infringed upon their human rights to freedom of association and assembly.

    Finally, through a refusal to engage seriously with safety concerns, culminating in outright violence as security shoved and pushed windows onto students’ hands in the course of decampment.

    After this repeated pattern of bad faith tactics, the LSE administration then had the audacity to renege on promises they made to the student community regarding the continuity of negotiations regardless of the status of the occupation.

    The actions of LSE administrators mark a serious breach of trust between the leadership of the institution and the rest of the school community, as well as a profound disregard for the democratic mandate behind the movement for divestment – as per a Student Union referendum, a record-breaking 89% of students voted in support of divestment:

    A legal precedent

    LSE’s decision to evict student protesters following a County Court ruling in favour of their application for an IPO also marks a dangerous precedent in which administrators have chosen to prioritise proprietary rights over the human rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as outlined in Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

    The court ruling means that it is a criminal offence if members of the encampment return to the Bloom Building as protesters in the next 12 months. However, given that the court order applies to ‘persons unknown,’ even students and staff who were not part of the encampment – and indeed future students joining LSE in the new academic year – are at risk of being prosecuted for exercising their rights to expression and assembly.

    Such a precedent undermines the entire LSE community’s right to protest, and will also have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech in the university, belying LSE’s core values as an institution committed to dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

    The LSE administration’s failure to uphold its duty of care is shaped by a pattern of institutional Islamophobia, exemplified by the fact that LSE administrators chose to evict students and staff during Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals of the Muslim calendar, while knowing that a significant contingent of student occupiers are Muslim:

    Ignoring students’ concerns

    Throughout the occupation, LSE administration refused to acknowledge students’ repeated requests to take health and safety and surveillance concerns seriously. Specifically, the administration ignored our emails regarding the discrimination faced by Muslim students for 14 days and only responded after we repeatedly demanded a response.

    Reported incidents included security staff forcing Muslim women entering the encampment to unveil, interrupting Muslims in prayer, and in one case a male member of security barged into the women’s restroom in the early morning and harassed an unveiled Muslim woman camping in the building.

    The response of security on 17 June, guided by administrators’ mandates and the encouragement of senior security staff, is a continuation of the universities’ failure to uphold their duty of care to students and staff. This is especially concerning within the context of an established pattern of inaction on alleged sexual assault from those in positions of power at the LSE:

    LSE has trashed its reputation

    Ultimately, LSE’s actions demonstrate a callous refusal to engage with students’ ethical concerns regarding £89m the school has invested in crimes against the Palestinian people, fossil fuels, arms, and financing for these egregious activities, as per the student and staff-authored report Assets in Apartheid.

    These actions also belong in a continuum of violence that finds its most extreme expression in the genocidal brutality exercised by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people – a genocide that includes the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes, the repressive curtailment of rights to protest and assembly, and the attempts destroy of all forms of Palestinian life.

    Featured image and additional images via LSE Liberated Zone

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Palestine Action cause ONE MILLION POUNDS of damage at Israel-supplying arms factory

    Palestine Action has caused £1m of damage to an Elbit-owned factory that supplies weapons parts to Israel. Of course, the militarists would call it criminal damage. However, activists would call the operation a success – as it means none of the kit made at the site can be used by Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.

    Palestine Action: Elbit smashed to bits

    Palestine Action’s ‘decommissioning’ of Elbit Systems’ electro-optics weapons sights factory in Kent has left the ‘Instro Precision’ site immobilised, unable to produce weapons parts for export to Israel.

    After tens of activists stormed the premises – bypassing security guards and cutting through three layers of wire fence – seven activists made it inside the factory itself, laying waste to the weapons of war being produced inside:

    During their 36 hour detention, before their release under strict bail conditions, police interrogators put it to the seven arrested that over £1m of damage was caused in their few hours inside the factory.

    “Good”, said Palestine Action in a statement:

    Fewer sniper sights manufactured at Instro Precision means fewer guns for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    Cops then released the seven, pending further investigation:

    Destroying cables on the outside of the factory, and wrecking machinery, computer technology, and parts being produced for Instro’s product line, the action sought to – and has successfully – put the site out of action.

    Instro: complicit in Israel’s genocide

    In a five year period, Instro Precision was granted over 50 weapons export licenses for sale of arms for military end-use in Israel, mostly of the ‘ML5’ category – weapons sight and target acquisition products. Many of these are the weapons sights ‘likely to be used in ground operations in Gaza’ by Israeli ground troops.

    In 2019, an Elbit press release stated that thousands of XACT th64 and XACT th65 weapons sights had been delivered to the Israeli military, for use by “marksmen of both Infantry and Special Operation Forces”.

    Besides products for snipers and infantry, Instro also manufactures sights and components for vehicular mounting, including the SpectroXR system fitted to Israel’s ‘Skylark’ drones. Instro products the ‘COAPS’ (Commander Open Architecture Panoramic Sight), which has been integrated with Main Battle Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles with “hunter-killer capabilities”, in use by the Israeli military.

    Featured image via Palestine Action

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Marina Hyde just EXPOSED herself as the liberal chancer she really is on book festival boycotts

    Liberal shill and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has thrown her toys out the pram with the most privileged take imaginable. It was over book festival boycotts against climate-wrecking and genocidal investments.

    Predictably, Hyde was incensed at the supposed “politicisation” of literary art and laid into the protesters fighting it. Or translation: she couldn’t give a toss about the Israel massacring people in Gaza, or people dying on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Because god forbid these get in the way of her little literary self-promoting event.

    In a six-minute rant of epic cognitive dissonance proportions, Hyde showed all that’s wrong with the Western liberal media class.

    Marina Hyde harping on about Baillie Gifford

    On 17 June, Marina Hyde and Richard Osman’s media and TV podcast The Rest is Entertainment turned its attention to book festival boycotts.

    Specifically, the pair opined on investment management company Baillie Gifford pulling out of or getting banned from major literary festivals. As the Canary has previously reported, this has largely occurred in response to protests against the company’s controversial investments.

    In this particular instance, Hyde lambasted one specific group: Fossil Free Books. The group comprises literary workers who are calling for their industry to divest from fossil fuels and businesses propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As its website explains:

    Baillie Gifford currently has up to £5bn invested in the fossil fuel industry,[2] including the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)[3] and Petrobras.[4]

    CNOOC is a shareholder in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which is already displacing people from their homes in Uganda and, if it goes ahead, will be the world’s largest heated crude oil pipeline.[5] Petrobras is one of the top ten companies for projected fossil fuel development and exploration this decade.[6] These investments are funding destruction and harm in very real terms.

    We’ve just renewed our call for Baillie Gifford to divest from the fossil fuel industry and from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide. Read our updated open letter, signed by 800 members (and counting) of the literary community.

    However, Hyde took umbrage with Fossil Free Books’ aims, arguing that the festivals shouldn’t be “politicised”.

    The Canary won’t regale you with the nitty-gritty details of her soapbox tirade. The crucial point is, Hyde harped on about the wonderful philanphropic sponsorships of Baillie Gifford, and lambasted the boycotts. If you’re so inclined, you can watch her shit the bed here:

    Largely, it was a media masterclass in rank hypocrisy. Thankfully, the good people of X have graciously well and truly ratioed her for it.

    Hyde on her landed gentry high horse

    Marina Hyde also branded the cultural boycotts a “contraction of the mind”. We hear you Marina, Fossil Free Books equipping themselves with the tools and information to fight the oppressors is evidently an exercise in shrinking the cerebrum.

    A poster on X postulated that perhaps its those big Oxford bods that are festering in mindless mediocrity. What, like Hyde herself perhaps, who read English at Christchurch College?

    Of course, her high-horse shit is also rich from someone preaching from the landed gentry with an enormous media platform:

    Lest we forget, Hyde – or Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams – is the literal daughter of a baronet:

    What’s more, she shamelessy peddled the position that “not all art is political”, so why punish the spineless book festivals taking blood money?

    Except of course, Hyde quite literally makes a living out of just such snivelling liberal media takes herself:

    And, for Hyde, it’s blatantly about high-tailing it on the profiteering gravy train more than anything else too:

    Did we mention Hyde is a frequent-flier of the literary festival circuit? In May, she was a speaker at the Stratford Literary Festival. And you guessed it, Baillie Gifford is its sponsor. We’ll just leave that there…

    Mind-bending athletics

    Naturally, that might explain her doing mind-bending athletics to point the finger of blame at – *checks notes* – the protesters:

    In short, between ditching the book festival scene and divesting from fossil fuels and genocide, Baillie Gifford chose the former. Because ultimately, capitalists will always sacrifice their environmental and social goals for profit. It’s literally their MO. Nothing political about that. But of course it’s the boycotters fault that book festivals are short on funding.

    In other words, she has it quite backwards:

    In fact, as some on X highlighted, investment companies sponsoring cultural events is precisely this ‘politicisation’ she so despises:

    According to Marina Hyde, what’s not to love about laundering the image of climate crisis and genocide-funding corporations?

    Planet-wreckers or polite little literary festival wreckers

    Of course, that’s the rub. For the media establishment, it’s all about protecting the status quo:

    Because boo-hoo, your middle class book soiree is cancelled. Meanwhile, Hyde couldn’t even masquerade as someone who cared about the climate crisis or Gaza:

    Nevermind that Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s cultural institutions and sites, including over 140 historic monuments. Or that the climate crisis is decimating the natural world.

    It’s almost as if Marina Hyde isn’t actually interested in protecting art at all. Instead, reactionary punching down is the bread and butter of Western liberal chancers like Lady Dudley-Williams. Compare and contrast:

    Marina Hyde: hypocrisy on high

    Some on X exposed her as the hypocritical opportunist she really is. Notably, on the one hand Marina Hyde has spoken out against sports-washing for prolific human rights violator Saudi Arabia. Yet, when it comes to fossil fuels and Israeli genocide, art-washing is golden:

    Hyde brazenly flirts within the politically permissible – that is, the media has manufactured the conditions for her flaccid criticism of these boycotts. Largely, it has done this by dehumanising Palestinians and colonised Black and brown communities in the Global South. By contrast, as one astute X user suggested, she’d likely be champing at the bit to stick it to Russia:

    Yet, if Hyde’s rattled – she’s right to be. Because, with drivel like this, it’s only a matter of time before readers tire of her liberal lickspittle. Ultimately, Hyde’s selective outrage is not surprising. She predicates her privilege on massaging the image of criminal capitalists tyrannising people and the planet for profit. What is surprising, is that anyone still listens to her shite.

    If you weren’t already folks, now would be a good time to boycott the Guardian and its corporate capitalist-abetting band of two-faced stenographers.

    Feature image via The Rest is Entertainment – X

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Kyiv Holds First Pride March Since Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine, Soldiers Protest For LGBTQ+ Rights


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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  • Tibetan activists clash with Pro-China supporters during a protest in Australia’s capital


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  • Baltimore says enough: Protest against deadly coal trains choking city


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  • Manchester cops beat peaceful pro-Palestine protesters in crowd with elderly people and children

    At yet another pro-Palestine demonstration, cops have been out enacting violence against peaceful protesters. This time, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) force was the culprit.

    As usual, the police appeared to be lying through their teeth to get out of it.

    Manchester protests for Palestine

    On Saturday, protesters in Manchester held a march in solidarity with Gaza, in central Manchester:

    However, what started out as a peaceful demonstration, soon turned violent. Naturally, it was GMP that charged into the crowd and carried out the brutality, as protesters showed on X:

    Predictably, the GMP statement closed ranks in the usual way. Notably, the Manchester Evening News reported that four officers “suffered ‘non-serious’ injuries”. Perhaps a few officers strained a vein in their temples, because protesters highlighted that it was the actually the police that injured people on the demo.

    In some staggering levels of spin, GMP said that:

    Whilst public order policing is complex and challenging, we will not tolerate violence or threatening behaviour and will take action to protect ourselves and the public when necessary.

    However, as one X poster pointed out, this is evidently simply the behaviour of a police force ‘protecting’ itself:

    It almost sounds straight from the deluded Zionist apologist’s playbook of the same old sycophantic mantra about Israel’s “right to defend itself”.

    Manchester cops: endangering elderly people and children

    People on X underscored that elderly people and children made up some of the peaceful demonstration. Of course, this didn’t stop the police from throwing some protesters to the floor and endangering them:

    Moreover, pro-Palestine campaigners have held eight months of non-violent protest in Manchester. By contrast, this wasn’t GMP’s first assault on their democratic rights to peaceful assembly:

    In particular, Netpol referred to GMP officers previously assaulting two legal observers with batons. As it reported at the time:

    One of the legal observers held up his hands as the police became more violent and informed officers that he was not a participant in any of the protests, but fell to the ground after he was struck painfully in the back, he believes by a police baton. He then described how three officers stood over him with their batons drawn before he was picked up – and thrown violently back onto the floor. He has bruising to his legs. This excessive use of force was captured on video, which also verifies the legal observer’s description of events.

    The other legal observer, who was behind the police line some distance from this incident, told us how she was confronted by an inspector with an extended baton. She said she was pushed backward and struck twice before two other officers, one an ‘evidence gatherer’ (normally responsible for filming protests), came aggressively towards her with their batons drawn. This too has been verified by video footage. As a result of the police violence, she has a suspected perforated ear drum and received bruises to her face.

    From Peterloo to Palestine

    Of course, it barely needs pointing out after months of oppressive policing of Palestine solidarity protests, but this is the cops operating exactly as intended. That is, as a violent tool of the oppressive state. Many on X were quick to state this:

    And as astutely highlighted by others, there’s a long history of police forces violently repressing the working class. In fact, in the very spot the pro-Palestine protesters marched, a paramilitary force protecting the interests of the Tory elite, enacted just such violence against pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters. Only, that was the Peterloo Massacre in 1819:

    Abolish the police

    Independent socialist candidate standing for Cardiff West John Urquhart said the quiet part we’re all thinking out loud:

    It’s a reminder, if we still needed it, that the police exist to shield the interests of the state, and its capitalist elite. Since the political establishment is drenched in complicity of Israel’s genocide, it’s not surprising that its enforcers continue to turn on those showing solidarity with Palestine.

    Feature image via Manchester Palestine Action – Twitter

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Tory-led North Warwickshire council using public money to protect private oil terminal

    North Warwickshire Borough Council are seeking to use public money to make an interim injunction banning protest at Kingsbury oil terminal, permanent. Just Stop Oil supporters took action at the terminal in 2022 and are currently demanding an emergency plan to end the extraction and burning of fossil fuels by 2030.

    North Warwickshire: public money to protect private profit

    More than 15 Just Stop Oil supporters, named in the injunction filed by North Warwickshire Borough Council, appeared before Judge Kelly at the Royal Courts of Justice for a hearing that commenced on Tuesday 11th June.

    The council, currently under no overall control but Tory-led, aims to extend the injunction against ‘persons unknown’ to prevent all future protests outside the terminal in Tamworth, operated by Shell, Essar, and Valero Energy Corporation.

    Lawyers for North Warwickshire Borough Council argued that the interim injunction granted in 2022 should be made permanent to stop protests at the terminal. This effectively means the council is using taxpayers’ money to protect a private oil company facility. Judge Kelly is likely to take a few weeks to reach a decision on whether the injunction can be extended.

    In a surprising development, counsel revealed in court that the council would not be seeking costs from any named defendants regarding the injunction.

    At the start of the trial, the judge highlighted the council’s failure to comply with a previous order concerning the service of notice to defendants. Some defendants received notice as late as two days before the trial began.

    None of the defendants had any legal representation and were informed in court that each individual wishing to give a closing statement in the civil proceedings would need to file a new application, costing £300 each. Ultimately, three supporters made the application in record time and were granted permission by Judge Kelly to deliver closing statements.

    Just Stop Oil: trying to stop an existential threat

    Alyson Lee was allowed to give a closing statement. In 2022, she was sentenced to 16 days at Foston Hall prison in Derby for holding a sign on a grass verge outside the terminal. In part of her closing statement, she said:

    We find ourselves in unprecedented circumstances where governments of the world are supporting the fossil fuel corporations in their genocidal businesses.

    There is something particularly distressing about a local authority spending time and resources on protecting one of the richest industries on earth, whilst its own residents are vulnerable to harms caused by that industry (e.g. flooding, heatwaves, food inflation and food insecurity).

    The council needs to be putting its time and money into preparing for climate breakdown and protecting its citizens from all the consequences of that.

    Another defendant named on the injunction is Chloe Naldrett. She was sent to Foston Hall prison in Derby for six days in 2022, also for holding a sign outside the terminal. She said in part of her closing statement:

    The people listed on this injunction did not break it for fun. We did it out of a sense of duty and moral and social responsibility, and because we have tried literally everything else to raise the alarm and try to persuade the Government to respond appropriately to the existential threat that is posed by our relentless heating of the planet.

    The group of people named on this injunction includes doctors, social workers, electricians, clergy, teachers, nurses, farmers, students. Deeply moral, deeply responsible, entirely ordinary people. A huge number of us are parents. Many are grandparents. We love our children, our families, our communities, and we love this beautiful, fragile world to which we are doing so much damage.

    Ordinary people are being abused by oil companies: not the other way around. I broke this injunction to make a point about how justice in this country can be purchased, and how it is therefore open to exploitation by wealthy companies.

    ‘Persons unknown’ in North Warwickshire

    The trial comes amidst growing criticism of the use of “persons unknown” injunctions, which have proliferated over the past two years.

    These injunctions target unknown defendants to ensnare as many individuals as possible, often without their knowledge. Sixteen people have already served up to 85 days in jail for breaching the same injunction that the council now seeks to extend.

    On a single day in September 2022, over 50 people were arrested based on this injunction, with six jailed and most receiving two-year suspended sentences.

    Friends of the Earth is challenging the use of injunctions against “persons unknown” at the European Court of Human Rights. Katie de Kauwe, a lawyer at Friends of the Earth has described anti-protest injunctions as a “confusing, opaque, parallel system of prohibitions” used by private companies and public authorities to create their own public order laws.

    The UN Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders has strongly criticised the draconian clampdown on the right to protest in England and Wales, particularly the use of civil injunctions.

    Featured image via Just Stop Oil

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Palestine Action just created more metaphorical ‘fires’ across the UK than the cops can put out

    Palestine Action were causing problems for Israel’s war machine up and down the UK on Monday 17 June – leaving cops scrabbling to contain the metaphorical fires the group created.

    Palestine Action: carry on camping

    Activists have set up camp at the premises of Elbit Systems’ UAV Engines, Shenstone, increasing pressure on the Israeli drone manufacturer which has found its weapons-sights factory in Kent, and the offices of its major shareholder Scotiabank, shut down by Palestine Action.

    The camp, far from the first that Palestine Action has undertaken against the Israeli-owned Staffordshire factory, has been established in the trees surrounding the Lynn Lane, Lichfield site:

    Limiting the operational capacity of the factory, the Palestine Action camp threatens the production of the drone engines and components therefore which UAV Engines is currently producing for the Israeli military.

    UAV Engines is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, the parent company producing for 85% of Israel’s drone fleet. This includes the Hermes 450 and 900 drones terrorising Gaza, the rotary Wankel-style engines for which originate from UAV Engines in Shenstone.

    While UAV Engines regularly claims that they produce solely for the British Ministry of Defence, export license information, showing their regular shipment of ML10 UAV parts, along with Freedom of Information requests detailing the company’s non-disclosure agreement in place with the Israeli ‘military end-user’ of their products, suggests that this is a falsehood.

    Shut Israel’s war machine down

    On the same day, Palestine Action activists took on another Elbit site – storming and breaking apart the premises of Instro Precision, the Kent-based manufacturer of weapons sights and targeting systems similarly exported for use by Israel’s genocidal military:

    Scotiabank, the Canadian bank which is Elbit’s largest foreign shareholder, had their London offices blockaded by a lock-on action:

    Cops arrested 10 people:

    It came a week after Palestine Action activists smashed and sprayed red the premises of 20 Barclays branches across the country as a result of their billions invested in Israel’s genocide. As the Canary previously reported, activists broke windows of Barclays branches and offices across England and Scotland on Monday 10 June to demand the bank divests from Israel’s weapons trade and fossil fuels.

    Featured image via Palestine Action

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Another jury just IGNORED a judge and STOPPED five climate protesters being convicted

    A jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court has resisted a judge’s invitation to convict six medical professionals, charged with ‘criminal damage’, after they broke windows at JP Morgan in July 2022, on the eve of the UK’s record-breaking climate crisis-induced heatwave. Despite more than two days of deliberations and the judge’s direction that they had no legal defence, the jury were unable to agree on a verdict.

    The JP Morgan Six: no verdict reached

    Just before lunch on Friday 14 June, the jury asked the judge whether a medical emergency could be a lawful excuse, by inference rejecting the prosecutor’s position that the action concerned not objective reality, but ‘political opinion and belief’. The judge told them that in this case it was no defence.

    The outcome casts further doubt on the GMC’s position that doctors who take direct action to protect the public from climate breakdown undermine public trust in the profession. It was on this basis that the GMC suspended Dr Sarah Benn from practice in April, after she held a sign saying ‘Stop New Oil’, in breach of an injunction obtained by Valero, the US-based fossil fuels company.

    Speaking after the verdict, Dr Alice Clack said:

    It’s hard to express what we’re all feeling right now. We’re grateful to the jury for bringing moral sense and humanity into the courtroom.

    Their deliberations can’t have been easy given the directions of the judge. The outcome doesn’t bring back the countless lives already lost to JP Morgan’s fossil fuel addiction, in this country and around the world. But it gives an indication of the public support for medical practitioners willing to put their bodies on the line.

    The climate crisis is a health crisis. We can’t protect our patients by treating the symptoms, and we won’t stand by while JP Morgan and others cover up the truth and pour petrol on the flames of the climate crisis. It’s our duty as evidence-based professionals to take proportionate and effective action to protect public health.

    Today the jury, by refusing the judge’s invitation to find us guilty, has sent a powerful message to the GMC that public trust in the medical profession is not eroded by their engagement in civil disobedience.

    Dr Fiona Godlee, former editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, said:

    None of these experienced and dedicated doctors and nurses wanted to be up in court on these charges. They wanted to be treating patients and protecting the public as they have sworn to do. But the world is facing an existential climate emergency that threatens our very survival, and our government and corporations like JP Morgan are completely failing us by continuing the madness of investing in fossil fuels. In view of this, I fully understand why these doctors and nurses felt the need to act as they did and I thank them for their leadership and courage.

    Action taken ahead of 40˚C heatwave in 2022, which claimed thousands of lives

    Taking action against JP Morgan

    On 17 July 2022, the group of six medical professionals (two consultants, two GPs and two nurses) knew what was coming. The UK’s record heatwave, that would cause thousands of deaths across the country, in particular among the young, elderly and the vulnerable, most in need of medical care. 19 July 2022 remains the hottest recorded day in UK history, with the mercury hitting  40.3˚C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.

    At 8am that day, Dr Juliette Brown, a consultant psychiatrist, Maggie Fay, a Dementia Specialist Nurse, Dr David McKelvey, a GP, Dr Alice Clack, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Patrick Hart, a GP, and Ali Rowe, a child and adolescent mental health specialist and former mental health nurse, carefully cracked a number of panes of glass at JP Morgan’s offices in Canary Wharf and put up posters which read “IN CASE OF MEDICAL CLIMATE EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS”.

    At the time of their action, JP Morgan, the leading financier of the global fossil fuel industry, had poured $384.2bn into the sector since the Paris Agreement on Climate Change called for an urgent reduction of carbon emissions. This despite JP Morgan themselves producing a report, leaked to the press in 2020, warning that climate change was a threat to the survival of the human race. The report also stated:

    The human cost of climate change will play out through worsening health outcomes.

    Growing number of health professionals arrested

    More than 130 health professionals have been arrested for climate protest in the last few years. Information published by the British government on climate change and health in May 2022, which quotes from the Lancet, a leading medical journal, helps explain why so many are ready to risk their livelihoods for the public:

    The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.

    As the International Energy Agency and others have made clear, the new fossil fuel developments being supported by the banking sector in general, and JP Morgan in particular, are inconsistent with keeping warming under 1.5˚C. Medical professionals who understand the catastrophic consequences feel duty-bound to take proportionate action to protect life and public health. In 2019, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, the leading medical journal, called on all medical practitioners to take direct action:

    All health professionals have a duty and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency’ because it represents ‘the most existential crisis facing our communities in the world today.

    In September 2022, the World Health Organisation joined calls for a binding treaty to end what it referred to as the ‘self sabotage’ of addiction to fossil fuels, before prioritising in May 2024 the escalating climate change impacts on health in its next programme of work. The British Medical Journal has reported that air pollution from fossil fuels is causing more than five million deaths a year. Rising temperatures are now driving the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, into Europe.

    Justice lottery across the country

    Following a pattern of jury acquittals in protest cases, some judges have been taking exceptional measures to preclude ‘not guilty’ verdicts, undermining the certainty and predictability that is meant to define the rule of law. In some cases defendants have even been banned from mentioning ‘climate change’ in court, and sent to prison just for doing so.

    On the other hand, others have continued to allow defendants to explain their motivation to protect life and health and to defend themselves on that basis. Last November a jury acquitted nine women who broke windows at HSBC in 2021, causing an alleged £500,000 of damage. By the end of 2022 HSBC had committed to end funding for new oil and gas projects.

    On the last Friday before the trial begun, Judge Pounder removed all legal defences from the defendants, changing the legal goal-posts at the last minute and frustrating prior trial preparation.

    On Wednesday 12 June, at Inner London Crown Court, Judge Silas Reid sentenced a group of five women who had also broken windows at JP Morgan for the same reason. He imprisoned Amy Pritchard, one of them, for 10 months, suspending the sentences of the others.

    In doing so, Judge Reid remarked “none of you pleaded guilty despite your obvious guilt”, a comment contradicted not only by the verdict of this jury, but by others such as the jury who acquitted nine women at Southwark Crown Court last year who broke windows at HSBC.

    Indeed, the five women were only found guilty after Judge Reid had warned the jury they could face criminal prosecution if they applied their conscience to the case, prompting an anonymous King’s Counsel to tell Private Eye:

    I’ve never encountered a judge threatening jurors in the way that Judge Silas Reid did. That suggests a clear determination by him  to deter them from returning a verdict independently.

    The case is being appealed to the Court of Appeal on the basis that Judge Reid’s warning to the jury was unlawful, and led to a formal complaint to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, signed by more than 1,800 people including naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Filipinos protest China’s new South China Sea rule | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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  • Filipino activists protest China’s new South China Sea rule | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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  • Lloyds of London gets an early Father’s Day present but not one it wanted

    ‘Super Dad’, supported by Mothers Rise Up – a group of concerned mums who campaign for action on climate breakdown – delivered a giant Father’s Day card and poem to Lloyd’s of London on Thursday 13 June as a gift to CEO John Neal in time for Father’s Day this weekend. It was over the insurance giant’s complicity in the climate crisis due to its huge fossil fuels underwriting.

    Lloyd’s of London: superhero or climate villain?

    Accompanied by a group of brightly dressed mini superhero children in capes, and mums, Super Dad presented the card and gift to Lloyd’s of London:

    Lloyd's of London

    The card asks John Neal if he will be a climate hero and a super dad… or a climate villain:

    Mothers Rise Up calls for Lloyd’s of London to cease insuring fossil fuel expansion, along with phasing down current insurance cover, in line with climate science.

    The poem, Mum-Splaining The Apocalypse, was written by leading climate poet Liv Torc, and speaks of how to win back the future from profiteering fossil fuel companies, and the available clean, renewable energy solutions:

    Insurance companies can be pivotal in accelerating a fair, rapid transition to a world powered by clean, renewable energy. Yet insurers in the Lloyd’s marketplace continue to insure and enable dangerous fossil fuel projects and continue oil and gas expansion.

    Fossil fuel underwriters

    Lloyd’s of London is the world’s biggest insurance market and the single largest source of fossil fuel insurance globally. Its members insure some of the most damaging fossil fuel projects in the world, such as oil and gas expansion in the North Sea and the Adani Coal Mine in Australia.

    It has also refused to rule out insuring the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which if built would be the world’s largest crude oil pipeline, destroying communities, livelihoods, and endangered wildlife in Uganda and Tanzania. Without insurance, these dangerous projects could not go ahead.

    In line with the science-led recommendations of the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and António Guterres – the UN secretary-general, insurance companies must cease underwriting fossil fuel expansion and phase down current underwriting for fossil fuels.

    Mothers Rise Up’s Lorna Powell said:

    Today we are delivering a giant card and a crucial Father’s Day message to John Neal, CEO of Lloyd’s of London, the mega fossil fuel insurance marketplace: be a climate hero or continue enabling the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our children and planet.

    Fossil fuel companies represent a dying, destructive industry. We need insurers to turn away from polluting projects and supercharge the green energy revolution. Without insurance, new fossil fuel projects can’t go ahead. Many European insurers are starting to do the right thing. Yet Lloyd’s of London remains intent on propping up lucrative new fossil fuel deals, wreaking more and more climate chaos.

    Our children deserve better. We will continue to demand insurers prioritise a safe future for children everywhere.

    Feature image and additional images via Anna Gordon

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Turkish photojournalist shoved to the ground by police at NYC protest

    Fatih Aktaş, a photojournalist for the Turkish state-run outlet Anadolu Agency, was shoved to the ground by multiple New York City police officers while covering a pro-Palestinian protest in Brooklyn on May 31, 2024.

    Protesters gathered outside Barclays Center arena at 3 p.m., NBC News reported, before walking the mile to the Brooklyn Museum, where they occupied the plaza and entered the building, hanging banners both inside and on the facade and calling for a cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

    Aktaş told Anadolu he was photographing the violent police response to the protests when he became a target of it. “While I was trying to capture the police intervention in the protests, a police officer strongly pushed me backward,” Aktaş said. “To avoid damaging my camera, I had to fall on my back, hitting my elbow hard on the ground.”

    In footage of the incident, Aktaş appears to be standing and photographing police while demonstrators march in front of the museum. At least three officers can then be seen shoving Aktaş, with the photojournalist landing on the ground approximately 10 feet back from the officers. Moments later, another officer can be seen helping him to his feet as two supervisory officers walk past, with one of the higher-ranking officers then pushing him again and ordering him to back up.

    Aktaş said that he didn’t initially notice the scrapes and bruises on his elbow, but was grateful that his injuries weren’t worse. “I could have hit my head on the ground at that moment, which could have had more severe consequences,” he told Anadolu.

    In a video published by a Turkish media association, Aktaş described the incident and showed the injury to his elbow. Neither Aktaş nor Anadolu responded to requests for further comment.

    Turkish public officials condemned the attack and stated their support for Aktaş and Anadolu.


    This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

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  • England’s most NOTORIOUS judge just sent a climate activist to JAIL for breaking a window

    Just weeks after JPMorgan Chase was identified as the largest lender to fossil fuel companies by far in 2023, five women from Extinction Rebellion who “broke glass in case of climate emergency” at the bank’s European headquarters have been sentenced by a notorious judge for what the bank claimed to be £306,000 worth of criminal damage. It comes after they took the action over the climate crisis.

    Extinction Rebellion: sentenced to 10 months for breaking a window

    Appearing at Inner London Crown Court in front of Judge Silas Reid, Extinction Rebellion’s Amy Pritchard was given a 12 month sentence which was reduced to 10 months due to overcrowding, while the other four were given a total of 45 months suspended sentences between them plus a total of 330 hours of unpaid work in their communities.

    A date for the appeal against these convictions is expected soon and may lead to the convictions being deemed ‘unsafe’.

    The five women sentenced on Wednesday 12 June are: Stephanie Aylett, 29, a former medical device representative from St Albans; Pamela Bellinger, 67, a vegetable grower from Leicester; Amy Pritchard, 39, an agricultural and woodland worker from Liverpool; Adelheid Russenberger, 33, PhD student from Richmond, London, and Rosemary (Annie) Webster, 66, a retired cook and beekeeper from Dorchester, Dorset.

    Before she was sent to jail, Amy Pritchard, who has previously been sent to jail by Judge Silas Reid for mentioning climate change in front of a jury, said:

    I support and stand by proportionate and appropriate action to prevent harm. As Naomi Klein says: “Our economic system and our planetary system are at war … only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.” I call on people to continue to engage with injustice with as much courage as possible.

    JPMorgan should have been in the dock

    In his extraordinary World Environment Day “Moment of Truth” speech last week UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on financial institutions to “stop bankrolling fossil fuel destruction and start investing in a global renewables revolution.”

    The latest Banking On Climate Chaos report (May 2024) shows that JPMorgan Chase committed $40.8 billion to fossil fuels in 2023 – way more than any other bank. It was also the leading lender to companies expanding fossil fuels, and the bank that has pumped the most into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement in 2016 – an ‘investment’ of $430 billion.

    Such funding makes achieving the Paris Agreement targets unachievable and keeps us locked in to the business as usual trajectory of 3C-4C of average planetary warming of untold suffering and destruction.

    The bank is operating in the full knowledge that it is putting all of humanity in grave danger as a leaked report produced by the bank’s own economic advisors warned its directors that carrying on with business-as-usual:

    would likely push the earth to a place that we haven’t seen for many millions of years… something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.

    Judge Reid: notorious

    The sentencing comes after all defendants lodged appeals on grounds of abuse of process by Judge Silas Reid.

    During the JPMorgan trial Reid threatened the jurors with criminal charges if they brought their conscience to bear on their deliberations. What Reid said told the jury would be criminal however has subsequently been affirmed in the high court to be actually:

    an established feature of our constitutional landscape and has been affirmed, as set out below, in the highest courts.

    Reid also cast doubt on the existence and severity of the climate crisis during the trial in front of the jury. Commenting on this development Professor James E. Hansen, the former NASA scientist and ‘godfather of climate science’, said:

    The cruelty of such ‘know nothing’ judges is not so much to the defendant as it is to our children and grandchildren.

    As a result of these actions Reid is the subject of a public complaint and a call for his suspension that is supported by more than 1,800 people. Signatories include Chris Packham, leading international lawyers, James E. Hansen, Jonathon Porritt CBE, health professionals, retired police and probation officers, and people from all walks of life.

    Extinction Rebellion: not stopping

    Last November nine Extinction Rebellion women were acquitted for breaking windows at the headquarters of HSBC. The trial was run by a different judge who did not threaten the jury with criminal charges.

    Natasha Walter, writer and campaigner, said:

    The women who took this action against the biggest financier of fossil fuels in the world are carrying forward a vital legacy of nonviolent civil disobedience. As with the Suffragettes who broke the law in order to make the case for progressive change, these women should not be seen as criminals. The real criminals are those who, despite all the evidence that we are on track to create an unliveable climate for future generations, continue to pour money into oil and gas and continue to drive us into a dangerously warming world.

    Arizona Muse, fashion model, mother and environmentalist said:

    I have so much admiration for the forward-thinking, community-minded actions taken by these brave women waving the XR flag. I know that in the future we will look back on them and we will all be grateful for their selflessness and courage.

    Featured image via Extinction Rebellion 

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Guardian view on the rule of law in Hong Kong: the verdict of foreign judges is damning | Editorial

    The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown

    Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.

    That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Right wing genocide apologists cry hard over Palestine Action’s latest Barclays hit

    Palestine Action’s latest assault on Barclays, over its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, was its most effective yet. And by effective, we mean the volume of right-wing war crimes apologist’s tears that were cried.

    Palestine Action: smashing across the country

    Activists broke windows of Barclays branches and offices across England and Scotland on Monday 10 June to demand the bank divests from Israel’s weapons trade and fossil fuels:

    Palestine Action and friends shattered glass, sprayed paint, and stencilled over the façades of around 20 buildings from Glasgow to Brighton:

    In Edinburgh, rocks were thrown through windows, inscribed with the names of Palestinians killed in the genocide:

    Shut the System, a recently launched underground climate movement, has partnered with Palestine Action’s underground division to mastermind this nationwide campaign of targeted property damage.

    Barclays: propping up Elbit, propping up genocide

    Palestine Action aims to halt the Palestinian genocide by undermining suppliers of weapons to the Israeli military, including Elbit Systems, along with financial companies involved with these weapons suppliers. Shut the System targets banks and insurance companies which enable fossil fuel expansion.

    Both groups have adopted radical direct action tactics which include sabotage of key infrastructure to physically prevent continued support for destructive and lethal business operations. Collaboration between the groups is designed to maximise effectiveness.

    Barclays have funnelled billions of dollars worth of loans and underwriting to companies facilitating the Gaza genocide. The bank’s investments include shareholdings in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons firm.

    Elbit Systems provide 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment, as well as bombs, missiles and other weaponry. The Israeli weapons maker market their weapons as “battle-tested” after they are developed during bombardments on occupied Palestine.

    The continuing illegal land grabs, apartheid regime, and unfolding genocide perpetuated by Israel are clear reasons to boycott the state, but companies such as Barclays are continuing to invest in its military industry, all in the name of profit.

    Cry more

    Of course, none of this matters too much to the right wing; more concerned with some smashed glass and red paint on branches on one of the world’s richest banks:

    A GB News grifter called Palestine Action’s campaign “domestic terrorism”. Stop laughing at the back, please:

    Others quietly screamed ‘ANTISEMITISM’ when it very clearly wasn’t:

    An escalation in tactics

    Shut the System’s strategy involves targeting companies and institutions most responsible for causing the climate crisis. Between 2016 to 2022 Barclays provided $190.5bn to fossil fuel companies and recent commitments to phase out project finance are way off what is necessary for keeping within safe levels of global warming.

    This latest action marks a significant escalation in activist tactics. Up until now most groups have relied on peaceful demonstrations and open engagement with staff and managers.

    Now this has proven futile, groups like Palestine Action and Shut the System are escalating matters.

    Frustration with Barclays limited progress towards stopping their genocidal and climate-destructive financing, has helped spawn this new radical flank of activism. According to Palestine Action, targeted actions will continue until Barclays completely eliminates this financing from its business model.

    The only evidence that remains at the scene are splintered windows, shards of broken glass and red paint:

    Palestine Action won’t be stopped

    Of course, this was all too much for snivelling ex-Labour MP John “Walney” Woodcock – the guy the Tories jumped into bed with to advise them on ‘political violence’. The ‘lord’ who is an adviser to arms and fossil fuel lobbyists posted on X:

    Cry more, Woodcock – because Palestine Action aren’t quitting any time soon.

    An activist who wished to remain anonymous stated:

    Barclays is funding the crises of climate collapse and genocide in Palestine. Decades of polite campaigning, petitions, letter writing and lobbying MPs have failed. We will continue to escalate until Barclays pulls it’s finger out and stops funding genocide and climate destruction.

    Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Student journalist arrested while covering Stanford protest

    Dilan Gohill, a student journalist for The Stanford Daily, was arrested while reporting on a protest at the university’s campus in Stanford, California, on June 5, 2024.

    The Daily reported that a group of students barricaded themselves into a building housing the president’s office at around 5:30 a.m., while more protesters gathered outside. The students demanded the school divest from weapons manufacturers, disclose endowment investments and drop disciplinary and criminal charges against pro-Palestinian students at Stanford.

    Officers from the Stanford Department of Public Safety and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office entered the building at approximately 7:20 a.m., according to the Daily, and arrested at least a dozen protesters. The Daily reported that one of its reporters — later identified as Gohill — was among those detained, despite identifying himself as a journalist and showing law enforcement his press credential.

    Gohill was transported to the Santa Clara County Jail alongside the protesters, where he was held for approximately 15 hours before being released on $20,000 bail, the Daily reported. He faces a felony burglary charge, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, whose office was also in the occupied building, issued a statement that day saying they were appalled and saddened by the protest, and that in addition to pursuing the criminal charges, all arrested students would be suspended and seniors would be barred from graduating.

    In a subsequent letter to the Daily’s board of directors on June 7, Saller and Martinez claimed that the incident raised “serious questions of journalistic ethics,” and that Gohill had no First Amendment right to cover the protest.

    “The First Amendment does not protect the right to break, enter and/or trespass in a locked private building, and this case did not involve a police line or rolling closure,” the letter read. “Moreover, as a matter of policy, allowing reporters a right to trespass in private buildings merely because there are newsworthy materials or events of interest inside would create a multitude of problems.”

    Saller and Martinez added that while they fully support having Gohill criminally prosecuted and have referred him to Stanford’s Office of Community Standards alongside the other students arrested that day, they have lifted his interim suspension and campus ban.

    In an op-ed about Gohill’s arrest, the Daily’s editors wrote, “His arrest constitutes a threat to the freedom of the press, including protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and we are disappointed in the actions of officers and the University.”

    Neither Editor-in-Chief Kaushikee Nayudu nor an attorney representing the Daily responded to requests for additional information.


    This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Corporate Media Push Conspiracy Theories to Discredit Student Protesters

     

    Across corporate media, journalists and pundits introduced conspiracy theories to discredit the pro-Palestine student protest movement, particularly that they are funded by foreign countries or “outside agitators.”

    Morning Joe: Hillary Clinton on the College Campus Protests

    Joe Scarborough and Hillary Clinton on MSNBC‘s Morning Joe (5/9/24) to talk about “misinformation,” agreeing that student protesters are “extremists…funded by Qatar.”

    MSNBC‘s Joe Scarborough (5/9/24) went on a rant about the college students who have been staging the protests, suggesting to guest Hillary Clinton that they were influenced by China or Qatar:

    I’m going to talk about radicalism on college campuses. The sort of radicalism that has mainstream students getting propaganda, whether it’s from their professors or whether it’s from Communist Chinese government through TikTok, calling the president of the United States “Genocide Joe.” Calling you and President Clinton war criminals.

    Eventually, he called the students “extremists—I’m sorry—funded by Qatar.”

    Clinton responded: “You raised things that need to be vented about.”

    Scarborough’s claim that Qatar funds the students likely comes from a Jerusalem Post article (4/30/24), which called the protests “despicable.” The story reported, “Qatar has invested $5.6 billion in 81 American universities since 2007, including the most prestigious ones: Harvard, Yale, Cornell and Stanford.” Of course, funding  universities is not the same as funding student protests; the university administrations that actually received the Qatari funding have often been quite hostile to the protesters.

    ‘Mr. Putin’s message’

    CNN: Pelosi suggests some pro-Palestinian protesters are connected to Russia

    Nancy Pelosi, interviewed by Dana Bash on CNN (1/28/24), accused protesters of being “connected to Russia” because “to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message.”

    House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) suggested on CNN’s State of the Union (1/28/24) that Russia has played a role in the protests:

    And what we have to do is try to stop the suffering and gossip….. But for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message…. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some I think are connected to Russia.

    CNN’s Dana Bash asked, “you think some of these protests are Russian plants?” Pelosi responded: “I don’t think they’re plants; I think some financing should be investigated.”

    Like MSNBC, Fox News (5/2/24) has also pushed the narrative suggesting that China is behind the protests: “China may be playing a significant role in the anti-Israel protests by using TikTok to foment division on college campuses,” Alicia Warren wrote.

    Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the far-right, anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, told Fox that “China is using the curation algorithm of TikTok to instigate protests.”

    The presence of pro-Palestinian advocacy on TikTok has been cited by lawmakers as a justification for censoring the social media platform (FAIR.org, 5/8/24). But the messages on TikTok, which is popular among younger people, may simply reflect public opinion among that demographic. According to the Pew Research Center, “Younger adults are much less supportive of the US providing military aid to Israel than are older people.”

    In a story headlined, “Campus Protests Give Russia, China and Iran Fuel to Exploit US Divide,” the New York Times (5/2/24) described “overt and covert efforts by the countries to  amplify the protests.” The story included some speculation about foreign influence: “There is little evidence—at least so far—that the countries have provided material or organizational support to the protests,” Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu wrote. If there was any evidence, they did not present it.

    The journalists blamed the protests for having “allowed” these “foreign influence campaigns…to shift their propaganda to focus on the Biden administration’s strong support for Israel.”

    ‘Professional outside agitators’

    CNN: Police in Riot Gear Arrest Students at University of Texas Austin

    ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt on CNN (4/29/24): “There’s no rule that says the school needs to tolerate students or, again, outside activists dressing like they’re in Al Qaeda.”

    Beyond foreign influence, another conspiracy theory pushed by corporate media about student protesters is that they are influenced by “outside agitators.” While people who are not students have joined the protests, the term has long been used to delegitimize movements and portray them as led by nefarious actors.

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams was an early source of this claim, announcing at a press conference (4/30/24) that Columbia students have “been co-opted by professional outside agitators.” He made a similar statement in mid-April as well (4/21/24).

    On MSNBC (5/1/24), NYPD deputy police commissioner Kaz Daughtry defended the claim, holding up a bicycle lock with a substantial metal chain that police had found at Columbia. “This is not what students bring to school,” he said. In fact, Columbia sells the bike lock at a discount to students (FAIR.org, 5/9/24).

    CNN‘s Anderson Cooper (4/29/24) asked the Anti Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt about the outside agitators, “How many of them are actually students?” “A lot of them are not students,” Greenblatt replied, adding unironically: “You can’t even tell who’s an outside agitator and who’s an actual student.”

    CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod tweeted (4/30/24): “It will be interesting to learn how many of those arrested in Hamilton Hall at Columbia are actually students.”

    Fox: Trump condemns 'brainwashed' anti-Israel mob as NYPD moves in, dings Dems: 'Where is Schumer?'

    “I really believe they are brainwashed,” Donald Trump (Fox News, 4/30/24) said of student protesters.

    Former president Donald Trump made a similar claim on Fox (4/30/24). “I really think you have a lot of paid agitators, professional agitators in here too, and I see it all over. And you know, when you see signs and they’re all identical, that means they’re being paid by a source,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. He continued: “These are all signs that are identical. They’re made by the same printer.”

    It’s worth noting that a political movement is not like an intercollegiate athletic competition, where it’s cheating for non-students to play on a college team; it’s not illegitimate for members of the broader community to join an on-campus protest, any more than it’s unethical for students to take part in demonstrations in their neighborhoods.

    “If you’re a protester who’s planned it, you want all outsiders to join you,” Justin Hansford of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center told PolitiFact (5/6/24). “That’s why this is such a silly concept.”

    That didn’t stop the New York Post (5/7/24) from publishing an op-ed by former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey  headlined “Pursue Anti-Israel ‘Outside Agitators’ Disrupting Colleges—and End the Nonsense for Good.” McCaughey wrote, “Ray Kelly, former NYPD commissioner, nailed it Sunday when he said the nationwide turmoil ‘looks like a conspiracy.’” It looks like a conspiracy theory, anyway.

    Tents situation

    Good Day NY: Protests Grow on Columbia University Campus

    NYPD deputy police commissioner Kaz Daughtry (Fox 5 New York, 4/23/24): “Look at the tents. They all were the same color. They all were the same type of tents.”

    One key piece of evidence offered for the “outside agitators” claim was the uniformity of many of the encampments’ tents. When Fox 5 New York (4/23/24) invited two NYPD representatives to discuss the protests, NYPD’s Daughtry said: “Look at the tents. They all were the same color. They all were the same type of tents.” He continued: “To me, I think somebody’s funding this. Also, there are professional agitators in there that are just looking for something to be agitated about, which are the protests.”

    “Somebody’s behind this, and we’re going to find out who it is,” Daughtry said.

    That students might be observing the world and their role in it, and acting accordingly, was not considered.

    Newsweek (4/23/24) quoted Daughtry’s claim with no rebuttal or attempt to evaluate its veracity, under the headline, “Police Investigating People ‘Behind’ Pro-Palestinian Protests.” Fox News anchor Bret Baier (4/23/24) also cited the tents as a smoking gun: “We do see, it is pretty organized. The tents all look the same. And it’s expanding.”

    The problem with this conspiracy theory is that the look-alike tents at most encampments were not expensive at all. As HellGateNYC (4/24/24) pointed out, the two-person tents seen at Columbia cost $28 on Amazon (where they’re the first listing that comes up when you search “cheap camping tent”), and the ones at NYU were even cheaper, at $15. While many Columbia students receive financial aid, the basic  cost of tuition, fees, room and board at the school is $85,000 a year. What’s another $15?

    ‘Soros paying student radicals’

    Fox: Anti-Israel protests nationwide fueled by left-wing groups backed by Soros, dark money

    Fox News (4/26/24): “Progressive anti-Israel agitators across the country…are associated with groups tied to far-left groups with radical associations backed by dark money and liberal mega-donor George Soros.”

    And finally, some news outlets alleged that the student protesters are funded by financier George Soros. For example, Fox (4/26/24) reported that a group that funds National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) received a donation from an unnamed nonprofit that is funded by Soros. Fox was apparently referring to the Tides Foundation, a philanthropy that Soros has given money to; Tides gave $132,000 to WESPAC, a Westchester, N.Y., peace group that serves as a financial sponsor to NSJP in Palestine (PolitiFact, 5/2/24; Washington Post, 4/26/24). In standard conspiratorial reasoning, this three-times-removed connection means that, as Fox put it, protests attended by SJP members are “backed by dark money and liberal mega-donor George Soros.”

    The New York Post (4/26/24) published a similar piece, headlined “George Soros Is Paying Student Radicals Who Are Fueling Nationwide Explosion of Israel-Hating Protests.”

    On NewsNation (5/1/24), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also suggested Soros may be connected, saying that the FBI should investigate:

    I think the FBI needs to be all over this. I think they need to look at the root causes and find out if some of this was funded by—I don’t know—George Soros or overseas entities. There’s sort of a common theme and a common strategy that seems to be pursued on many of these campuses.

    “It looked pretty orchestrated to me,” NewsNation host Blake Burman agreed.

    Soros is a billionaire philanthropist who survived the Holocaust. He has come to represent an antisemitic trope among right wingers of a puppet master controlling events behind the scenes (see FAIR.org, 3/7/22). To put it simply, these supposedly antisemitic protesters are now on the receiving end of antisemitism.

    Featured image: New York Post graphic (4/26/24) alleging that Jewish billionaire George Soros is bankrolling “Israel hate camps.”

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.