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Police charge Palestine Solidarity activist for backing legal right to resist occupation
Mick Napier charged with ‘support for proscribed organization’ under Terrorism Act as Establishment attempt to suppress solidarity with Palestine continues
Palestine Solidarity Activist Mick Napier, a founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been charged under anti-terror legislation after giving a speech in Glasgow in which he said:
I agree with the Palestinian right to resist by means that they choose.
Napier has been charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a ‘proscribed organisation’. He also thanked Hamas for ‘breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp’. He was arrested at the demo, shortly afterward. According to Electronic Intifada, police officers told Napier that he was being arrested for ‘religiously aggravated’ offences.
Hamas was made a proscribed organisation by the UK government on the basis of its rocket attacks on Israel – but is not listed as a terror group by the United Nations and the UN defeated an attempted 2020 US resolution condemning the group for its rocket attacks. It is widely recognised that the right to resist occupation is protected under international law as part of the human right of self-determination, including the use of force consistent with the UN charter. It appears the UK Establishment is applying the Terrorism Act in a way inconsistent with international law.
Napier is not the only human rights advocate targeted by police. As Skwawkbox exclusively reported, Brighton-based Tony Greenstein was arrested earlier this week and suffered the confiscation of his electronics, for a single tweet, after what is believed to have been a complaint from a right-wing pro-Israel group. He was released without charge on police bail, but under a series of draconian bail conditions that attack his freedom of speech as well as his privacy.
Mick Napier was released on bail under similarly draconian conditions banning him from attending any protest in Scotland and from entering the centre of Glasgow. He pleaded not guilty to all five charges and is due to appear in court 9 January. PSC Scotland – a separate organisation from the English PSC – has said it will give him full support.
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Exclusive: police try to gag Greenstein, invade privacy through bail conditions
Human rights activist arrested by anti-terror police for a single tweet faces censorship and snooping for speaking out against genocide
Image: S Walker
Brighton-based Jewish left-winger and human rights activist Tony Greenstein faces censorship and an assault on his privacy after he was arrested last week for a single tweet supporting Palestinian resistance in Gaza against Israeli genocide.
Greenstein was bailed until spring after a nine-hour detention and the confiscation of his electronics, but Skwawkbox understands that the bail conditions imposed upon him represent a severe invasion of his privacy and an assault on his freedom of speech:
- Greenstein must reside at his flat and sleep there every night – a significant issue when he has a son with special emotional needs living at a separate address
- He is banned from commenting on Twitter/X about Gaza and Palestine
- If he buys a new phone – his previous one remains with police – he must notify police of the phone number and also of the IMEI number of his handset
Phone manufacturer Blackview strongly recommends that anyone with a mobile phone keep their IMEI number – the unique 15-digit identifier of the physical handset – private and do not share it with anyone untrustworthy(!), because of the grave security risks, because possession of the IMEI allows a third party to:
- Track your phone. If your phone is stolen, the person who stole it can use your IMEI number to track your phone’s location [even if it is switched off or the SIM card is swapped]
- Block your phone from being used on a network. If you report your phone as stolen, your phone carrier can block your IMEI number from being used on their network. This will prevent the phone from being used to make calls, send text messages, or use the internet.
- Use your phone to commit fraud. Some criminals use stolen phones to commit fraud, such as making unauthorized calls or sending spam messages. They can also use your phone to access your personal information, such as your bank account details.
- Clone your phone. It is possible to clone a phone’s IMEI number. This means that the criminal can create a duplicate of your phone that has the same IMEI number. This can be used to commit fraud or to track your movements.
Of perhaps even greater concern is the ban on posts about Gaza and Palestine. As one of the UK’s most outspoken Jewish advocates of Palestinian rights and Israel advocates’ war on freedom of speech in the UK and elsewhere – and a fearless critic of Israel’s fake news and invented evidence used to justify its genocide in Gaza – Greenstein’s importance to the political debate is considerable – which may well be a contributing factor to his targeting by police, presumably acting on complaints from pro-Israel right-wingers.
Greenstein was given a suspended sentence in September after a farcical trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court in which he and fellow Palestine Action activists were convicted of criminal damage against Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit despite no damage being done, and so faces the imposition of that sentence if convicted of the latest accusation. The pro-Israel lobby, however, has no qualms about seeing troublesome opponents jailed for speaking out against mass murder and apartheid.
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Owen Jones finally felt shadowbanning. Others have been there a long time
Guardian journalist has put out a video about his shadowbanning by Facebook, with an appeal for funds – Skwawkbox and others have been on the sharp end of that since 2017
Guardian journalist Owen Jones has published a video complaining of being shadowbanned by Facebook since he started covering Israel’s genocide in Gaza – and saying that this sudden ‘falling off a cliff’ of his reach has never happened to him before, forcing people to have to click specifically onto his page to find anything. He accompanied his announcement with an appeal for donations.
This is happening to Jones now – but it has been happening to Skwawkbox for more than five years, when the social media companies attacked Skwawkbox and other new left media after Jeremy Corbyn came within an inch of government. This site was also targeted by tech attacks to try to prevent followers accessing its content.
The shadowban is still happening, Skwawkbox regularly receives messages like this:
Jones’s output on Gaza has been decent and nobody should be shadowbanned – but as he noted himself, it has never happened to him before. In the days of his flipflopping over Corbyn – including in the run-up to the 2017 general election – perhaps he wasn’t inconveniencing the Establishment seriously enough.
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Labour shrinks Starmer’s wife so he doesn’t look so short on Xmas card
Cringeworthy insecurity, apparently – and poor editing work (again)
The Labour party – presumably on the orders of, or at least after consultation with, Keir Starmer and his team have edited a photograph of the ‘Kid Starver’ used on official Christmas cards – shrinking Starmer’s wife so she looks shorter than him instead of considerably taller, at least in heels.
Analysis of the image shows up Mrs Starmer’s apparent change in height – and also that she’s been dimmed down significantly while he has been lightened, presumably to make his wrinkles less obvious. The clumsy editing has also broadened Starmer’s left arm unnaturally:
For those who prefer a moving image to show up the difference, see the video below by ‘The Agitator‘:
This is not the first time Labour has had to resort to shoddy photoshopping to cover for Starmer’s, well, shortcomings. In 2020 (and again in 2021), the party couldn’t find any photos of huge crowds cheering for Starmer’s Labour (there aren’t any) – so edited out references to his predecessor from a photo of a crowd at a Jeremy Corbyn rally:
Conversely, when Starmer’s real self is on show in a string of outrageous or embarrassing comments and performances, his supporters have even tried to claim that AI has been used to create the video evidence, such as when he told Islamophobe Trevor Phillips that he wanted to treat the UK families of refugees as terrorists if he gets into government.
Starmer’s insecurity about his height is reminiscent of short film stars, such as western movie actor Alan Ladd, who famously stood on a box so he looked taller than Sophia Loren in the film Boy on a Dolphin, despite her being a good two inches shorter than him.
Starmer has also taken to being photographed from comically low angles, to create the appearance of greater height:
Nothing wrong with being short, of course, but the show of insecurity about it speaks volumes and not about anything desirable in a so-called ‘leader’ – and it raises questions (again) about issues with the appalling treatment of women by Starmer and his acolytes.
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Exclusive: Greenstein arrested by anti-terror cops – for one tweet
Brighton-based Jewish human rights activist targeted for standing against genocide
Tony Greenstein in Wolverhampton
Jewish human rights – and therefore pro-Palestinian – activist Tony Greenstein has been arrested by police – for a single tweet supporting Palestinians against genocide and oppression.
In the 15 November post, Greenstein – responding to yet another right-wing attack on Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker – told the person baiting Walker that he supported Palestinians and preferred Hamas to the occupying Israeli army that is perpetrating genocide in Gaza:
The gaslighting pro-Israel troll was one of many attacking Walker for condemning Israel’s repeated bombing of hospitals in Gaza, war crimes that have taken hundreds and probably thousands of civilian lives and that Israel has invented evidence to try to justify:
Seized
Police arrived at Greenstein’s home at around 7am this morning, seized his phone and laptop and held him for around nine hours. His electronics were not returned on his release.
Greenstein was released around 4pm and has not, as yet, been charged with any crime. He was one of several Palestine Action supporters convicted of criminal damage against one of Israeli weapons-maker Elbit’s UK factories, despite no damage being done – and who received a suspended sentence at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
It seems the UK Establishment considers Greenstein to be supporting the wrong ‘terrorists’ against the ones who are actually perpetrating mass murder, including against their own Israeli citizens.
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2023 in Review – The end of academic social media as we know it?
Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk academic social media has undergone a period of change and fragmentation. This review highlights the range of responses featured on the blog this year, from coverage of new and emerging platforms, to reflections on what made academic twitter good and why we even bothered with it in … Continued
Video: Jerusalem deputy mayor exposed claiming ‘no churches or Christians in Gaza’
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum’s denial of reality shown up live on air
No churches and no Christians?
Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum – supposedly a ‘media expert’ – was shown up live on air on LBC when she tried to claim there are no Christians and no churches in Gaza. Israel is currently besieging one of the churches and murdering the Christians inside by sniper fire, prompting the Pope to say today that Israel is committing terrorism – and even her right-wing interviewer was unwilling to let that pass.
Caught out, Nahoum could only claim she hadn’t seen the report – but that hadn’t stopped her making the emphatic and emphatically false claim in the first place.
Gaza in fact has more than a thousand Christians – and the two thousand or so who left in the past fifteen years did so to escape the occupation and for economic reasons, not because they were driven out by Palestinian Muslims, with whom they have peacefully co-existed for millennia.
Israel’s shoddy propaganda attempts fall apart again.
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Two Palestine Action activists acquitted by jury for putting ketchup on Balfour statue
Pair charged ludicrously with criminal damage for putting sauce on a statue have been found not guilty
Protestors who squirted tomato ketchup on to a Commons statue of Arthur Balfour, after whom the UK’s commitment to the creation of an Israeli state on Palestinian land is named, have been found not guilty of criminal damage by a unanimous jury decision.
The protest by the two women took place on the 105th anniversary of the ‘Balfour Declaration’ by the British Government in 1917:
Video released by Palestine Action
According to the defendants’ legal firm,
this case is thought to have been the first trial to take place in the Crown Court as a result of Section 50 of the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 – which amended the mode of trial for low value criminal damage to memorials.
Legal argument during the trial included whether the protest amounted to damage, whether the defendants had a lawful excuse in accordance with their right to freedom of expression protected under Article 10 of the EHRC, and also due to their belief that the public would consent to their protest as a form of expression and if they were aware of the history, consequence and legacy of the Balfour Declaration.
The pair were defended by Hamish McCallum of Garden Court North Chambers’ protest rights team.
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Video: designer and actor use fashion show to call for peace for all Palestinians
Emraan Rajput and Ahsan Khan demand peace ‘for every child for every home’
Fashion designer Emraan Rajput and actor Ahsan Khan have used Khan’s appearance in Rajput’s Pantene Bridal Couture Week fashion show to call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Khan held a placard, as he walked along the catwalk, demanding “FOR EVERY CHILD FOR EVERY HOME PEACE FOR PALESTINE:
Israel is losing the propaganda war, with its attempts to excuse its war crimes a shambles, the news that it killed hundreds of Israelis during the 7 October Hamas raid percolating globally despite the best efforts of the regime and its political and media allies, and millions marching every week around the world to demand a ceasefire, a lasting peace, and justice. Some Israeli analysts are even saying it is losing its whole assault on the innocents of Gaza, as the occupation and its armed forces try to hide the reality of their losses.
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Is data surfacing the future of empirical social research?
Taking a broad sweep of the history of empirical social research and its use by the state, Steve Fuller argues that as data analysis moves increasingly to commercial non-state actors, researchers and civil servants might learn from and harness the empiricist style of ‘data surfacing’ deployed by data analytics companies. Civil servants were the original … Continued