humanity
Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity – review
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam‘s Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity examines the roots of racism in AI algorithms, tracing them to Enlightenment ideologies. Marta Soprana finds the book a densely-packed and thought-provoking caution on the dystopian consequences of our current trajectory of techno-racism, which we may still have time to avert.
Since the launch of ChatGPT by Open AI in November 2022, the debate surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in our everyday life has intensified. Although many recognise that AI has the potential to generate significant economic and social opportunities, its use raises substantial ethical concerns. Besides the misuse of personal data, particularly worrying are risks associated with the discriminatory outcomes of algorithmic decision-making, frequently reported in the media.
In his book Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam – Professor of Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS University of London and Fellow of Huges Hall, University of Cambridge – addresses this issue by discussing how and why racism permeates algorithms and what a misogynistic and discriminatory AI means for the future of humanity. His position is clear: current social manifestations of AI are rooted in Enlightenment racism, and if nothing is done about it, the future for society and human security will be under threat. If techno-racism and its underlying “anti-human perfectionism” go unchallenged, he forewarns, we might face a dystopian future where Artificial General Intelligence systems will see humans as inferior and unworthy, threatening human beings’ very existence.
If techno-racism and its underlying “anti-human perfectionism” go unchallenged, [the author] forewarns, we might face a dystopian future where Artificial General Intelligence systems will see humans as inferior and unworthy, threatening human beings’ very existence.
The book’s stated ambition is to “contribute to the supervision of AI systems in accordance with shared ethical standards to ensure our individual human security”. It flags dangerous dilemmas created by AI which humanity never faced before and contextualises it in an historical analysis.
Adib-Moghaddam organises his analysis around five themes, one for each chapter, before concluding with a proposed manifesto for the future of AI. Chapter One (“Beyond Human Robots”) sets the stage for the core argument, as it explains how the widespread racism and bias that permeate today’s algorithms and society find their roots in the Enlightenment, which formalised and legalised a hierarchical system of discrimination between people based on race and gender. Positing that supervising machines and preventing algorithmic biases from destroying equal opportunity is first and foremost a philosophical challenge, the author argues that for AI to develop with human security, justice, and equality in mind we must reappraise the problematic legacies of the Enlightenment and work towards reforming its hierarchical and imperialistic system.
The widespread racism and bias that permeate today’s algorithms and society find their roots in the Enlightenment, which formalised and legalised a hierarchical system of discrimination between people based on race and gender.
Further elaborating on this point, in Chapter Two (“The Matrix Decoded”) he warns against the dangers of techno-utopianism, arguing that the various narratives surrounding the development of AI systems are imbued with ideas of positivism, causalism, and parsimony that help to explain how and why technology facilitates various forms of misogyny and discrimination. In particular, he contends that the controversial social and cultural legacies of the Enlightenment will continue to pollute both the thinking of software developers as well as the datasets feeding into AI systems, “as long as modern racism is accepted as part of our social reality”.
[Adib-Moghaddam] uses the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a US air strike to warn of the dangers associated with automated, remote weapon systems and AI technologies
Across the remaining three themes, Adib-Moghaddam reiterates his warning about the dangers of the unsupervised development and usage of AI for humankind, as he describes the profound impact that racist and discriminatory AI technologies can have on society, human rights, international security, and the world order in Chapter Three (‘Capital Punishment), Chapter Four (‘Techno-Imperialism’) and Chapter Five (‘Death Techniques’). For example, he uses the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a US air strike to warn of the dangers associated with automated, remote weapon systems and AI technologies, such as lack of accountability, bypassing of international law, and “democratization of death”.
The author concludes his book with a manifesto for the future. Advocating for a “GoodThink” approach, he calls for the decolonisation of AI and for infusing algorithms “with a language of poetic empathy, love, hope and care” in order for this technology to be a constructive rather than destructive force. While Adib-Moghaddam maintains that we are fully equipped to embrace the challenges posed by AI at this “pivotal juncture of our existence as homo sapiens”, he warns that we need to act now in a manner that integrates national and industry-led efforts to promote ethical and trustworthy AI with international UN-led initiatives.
We need to act now in a manner that integrates national and industry-led efforts to promote ethical and trustworthy AI with international UN-led initiatives.
With its philosophical approach to understanding how the past influences AI development and how actions in the present can help change the future of humanity, Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? offers a new and interesting perspective on one of the key questions that permeate today’s debate on the ethics and regulation of AI. In this thought-provoking book, the author strikes a good balance between his harsh assessment of the perils of uncontrolled techno-utopianism rooted in the problematic legacy of the Enlightenment and a somewhat encouraging view that the battle for humanity is not lost if we are able to seize the moment and work together to develop ethical AI systems based on equality and inclusivity.
While its relatively short length and catchy title may appeal to a large audience, Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? is not for everyone. In its less than 150 pages, Adib-Moghaddam packs so much food for thought that readers who are less well versed in philosophical studies and used to a more straightforward and linear argumentation may find this book somewhat difficult to grasp. They may require multiple reads to fully understand the intricacies of the philosophical schools and theories at the basis of the analysis and to digest the book’s core arguments. Still, if one is up to the challenge and wants a book that will make them think, Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? will not disappoint.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Gorodenkoff on Shutterstock.
How The Hell Did We Get Here?
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/f0d5bc45cfe304442294041762da5b4e/href
We could have been so much more. We have the ability to create a healthy and harmonious world and collaborate to give everyone on earth everything they need, and instead we’re killing the biosphere while arguing about whether or not it’s anti-semitic to oppose an active genocide.
We could have peace on earth and move from competition-based systems to collaboration-based ones to maximize our creative and innovative potential and spend our existence exploring the outer universe and the universes within ourselves, and instead we’re ramping up brinkmanship between nuclear-armed states and arguing about whether or not it’s ethical to rain military explosives on a giant concentration camp full of children.
We have the technology to let every scientist on earth share ideas and information with each other around the world in real time in any language, and instead we’ve fractured scientific development into atomized little echo chambers of closely-guarded secrets in the name of profit generation and “national security”.
How did we get here? How were we duped into trading paradise on earth for this lunatic dystopia? How did we allow ourselves to give up everything our species has the capability to be in exchange for this nightmarish paradigm of endless ecocide and exploitation and oppression and war and militarism?
Near as I can tell, it’s ultimately because our species evolved these massive brains very quickly which we still haven’t learned how to use in a mature way, like a kid learning to ride a bicycle right after the training wheels have been removed. This has allowed us to dominate the planet while still ourselves being dominated by primitive fear-based impulses which were much better suited for our early evolutionary ancestors as they strived to survive the dangerous plains of Africa as small prey animals.
We develop egos in early childhood to help us feel safe and secure in a confusing world full of giants, which most of us go on to use in highly maladaptive ways throughout the remainder of our lives. Our psychology is riddled with cognitive biases, which the clever manipulators among us can use to dupe us into mass-scale behavior which benefits them rather than behaving in a way which benefits each other and our ecosystem.
The most clever of these manipulators are able to use their cleverness to rise to the top of our political, governmental, commercial and financial systems around the world, and they use increasingly sophisticated methods of propaganda to dupe the rest of us into moving in alignment with their will. And their will is not wise or intelligent; it’s driven by the same primitive fear-based impulses that the rest of the humans trapped in egoic consciousness are driven by.
So here we are. That’s why we now find ourselves in this profoundly dysfunctional civilization where the biosphere is treated like an enemy and human beings are treated like fuel and minds are being marinated in an increasingly vapid mainstream culture where everything is fake and stupid. That’s why we don’t have paradise on earth, and that’s why the bombs are falling on Gaza today.
But it is just a phase. A kid who’s learning to ride a bike doesn’t remain on wobbly wheels forever. Eventually we’ll get the hang of this thing. Eventually we’ll grow into these giant new brains of ours and become a conscious species.
Assuming we don’t wipe ourselves out first, of course.
______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.
Huge victories for humanity as German courts rule Gaza chants protected speech
‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and other chants for freedom and against genocide are freedom of expression, despite government efforts to criminalise pro-Palestinian protest
Image: Die Linke
In a huge victory for human rights, for humanity and for the Palestinian people, the Münster Administrative Court in north-west Germany has ruled that chants and slogans frequently used in pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide rallies and marches are not illegal.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Child murderer Israel” are not only legal but are protected by freedom of expression laws. “Stop the genocide in Gaza” has already been ruled legal by the Cologne Administrative Court.
The German state, which has some of the most extreme laws protecting Israel from criticism of its actions, has used riot police and draconian action to try to quell the protests.
Palestinian legal advocacy group the European Legal Support Center, which has been fighting the cases on behalf of the movement, noted that:
In both decisions, the judge reiterated that criticism of the Israeli state is protected by freedom of expression, stressing that the slogans are directed against Israel & not against the Jewish population of Germany, thus rejecting any inflammatory allegations of antisemitism.
Both court decisions followed protest bans issued by the Police. We congratulate the activists and their lawyers who refused to be silenced and boldly challenged the bans!
The decisions come as the UK government continues to try to demonise protesters and to use anti-terror laws to persecute activists working for human rights and justice in Palestine and to stop Israel’s mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of civilians, which has taken approaching 30,000 innocent lives so far, around half of them children. Many more have been hideously wounded and more than seven out of ten of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are reported to be in severe hunger.
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As Gaza burns, Labour organises ‘Keir-aoke’ to raise party funds
Starmer’s party isn’t satisfied with making us cringe through billionaire donations, support for war crimes and contempt for Palestinian suffering
With more than 20,000 slaughtered in Gaza by Israel – around half of them children – and many more maimed, Keir Starmer is rightly facing jeers and heckling everywhere he goes, because of his support for Israel’s ‘right’ to ‘defend itself’ by the mass murder of civilians and the razing of schools, hospitals and homes.
Labour’s response? A fundraiser titled ‘Keir-aoke’ – not to raise funds for oppressed Palestinians facing an illegal occupation and an apartheid system that treats them as lower than animals, but for whatever purposes the party thinks fit:
Despite donations from billionaires and corporations, Labour is still telling its members that it depends on their donations to survive – but clearly the regime’s numerous begging letters aren’t getting a good response and the party machine is somehow deluded enough to think mutilating language to name an event after Starmer is going to be more, not less appealing.
The lowest price for a ticket to this cringe-fest is £16.96 (but only for ‘concessions’), though people can save money by not going and instead buying – seriously – a ‘solidarity’ ticket for a mere £15:
Labour has already had to cancel one event because of protests by human rights supporters outraged by Starmer’s and local MP Steve Reed’s enthusiastic support for genocide, but the party is clearly not inclined to think, let alone learn, and its delusion runs deep.
Meanwhile, people with actual human feeling will be marching in their hundreds of thousands, in London and around the country, for justice, a ceasefire and an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine:
Check here for the actions near you – but be aware that at the time of writing, the PSC event page appears to be under an attack that is suspiciously affecting only that page on the PSC’s website.
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Israeli government ‘ordered assassination’ of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer
Netanyahu cabinet approved murder of Palestinian poet who mocked discredited atrocity propaganda, says Tikkun Olam security site
The Netanyahu government officially approved the murder of Palestinian poet, academic and activist Refaat Alareer, according to a website known for its sources inside the Israeli security apparatus.
Tikkun Olam, a news site run by writer Richard Silverstein, whose title refers to a concept in Judaism of healing the world, has broken a string of firsts since its creation in 2003 – and it has this to say about the assassination of Prof Alareer, who had mocked Israel’s now thoroughly-discredited atrocity propaganda about the murder and dismemberment of babies during the 7 October Hamas kibbutz raid:
Israel ordered Refaat Alareer’s assassination after derided Israeli claim of babies burned in an oven as hoax. He was right, but died for it.
Refaat was a Palestinian poet and professor. It’s rare that countries assassinate poets. Not just murder them in wartime, but intentionally assassinate them…
But Refaat was an unusual combination of teacher and activist. He not only taught his students Palestinian poetry. He also taught them Hebrew poetry. For this, he was profiled in the New York Times: In Gaza, a Contentious Palestinian Professor Calmly Teaches Israeli Poetry. And the Times published an op-ed by him as well: My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’
Unlike Israel’s educational system, which promotes a triumphalist ideological indoctrination, Alareer’s teaching of Hebrew poetry analyzed and appreciated the beauty of the language, but critiqued that ideology underpinning it. This clearly unnerved the Times editors, presumably pressured by one of alphabet soup of pro-Israel media watchdog groups (CAMERA, MEMRI, Honest Reporting, etc), and published a “correction” to the profile.
He responded to them (unfortunately they did not offer a full quotation of what he wrote):
…He denied that there was a “substantial change” in his teaching and said that showing parallels between Palestinians and Jews was his “ultimate goal.” But he said that Israel used literature as “a tool of colonialism and oppression” and that this raised “legitimate questions” about Mr. Amichai’s poem.
Apparently, this sort of social-political-ideological analysis of literature, a method taught at almost all educational institutions, troubled these editors. Instead, their correction implied he was a propagandist, rather than an academic professor…
I broke the story here about Israel’s security cabinet issuing the Amalek Directive to assassinate six senior Hamas leaders and their families. It also similarly targeted specific journalists and their families. The IDF has murdered 80 journalists suggesting that it is deliberately targeting them for execution. This is a war crime.
An Israeli security source confirms my suspicion that the cabinet ordered Refaat’s execution, because his joke marked him as being a member of the tribe of Amalek. An eternal enemy of the Jewish people. He was no such thing of course.
He was a poet, a teacher who loved literature. He was also a champion of his people. He was an implacable enemy of injustice. For that he died. Along with him, Israel killed his brother, sister and their four children. It knew it would them along with the intended target. But killing entire families is now the Israeli modus operandi...
Refaat was displaced multiple times during this war and ended up at his sister’s home along with his parents, wife and children. A few days ago, Refaat moved with his wife and children to an UNRWA school in al-Tufah neighborhood in Gaza according to his family.
However, a close friend of Refaat’s told Euro-Med Monitor that he had received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located and were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops.
While the credibility of the threat itself is unclear, it contributed to prompting Refaat to move back to his sister’s apartment, believing it was more concealed than an open and overcrowded school where it would have been difficult to hide.
For weeks since the start of this war, Refaat has been receiving numerous death threats and hateful messages from Israeli accounts on social media after prominent public figures [Bari Weiss, among others] singled him out for harassment and incitement.
In 2014, Israel bombed Refaat’s home in Shejaiya and killed over 30 of his and his wife’s families.
Read the full story, including details of how Refaat Alareer was stalked, threatened and ultimately murdered, and details of how Silverstein’s attempts to spread the news on social media were censored, here.
Many if not most of the Israeli victims of the Hamas raid are now known to have been killed by Israeli forces as part of the so-called ‘Hannibal doctrine’. Despite the abundance of evidence, the UK and other western media continue to ignore it.
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Images/video: Thousands gather in Liverpool for biggest Gaza march yet
Corbyn, McCluskey and others speak to packed crowd that grew still bigger as it marched
The people of Liverpool gathered in their thousands today in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to demand a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, in what appeared to be the biggest rally and march yet.
Former Unite head Len McCluskey and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were among the speakers – and received a huge welcome, as well as praise for their clear solidarity with the oppressed compared with the dire performance of their replacements:
And as the march processed down Hope Street and then Leece Street toward its Derby Square rally point, it grew larger and larger:
Solidarity from Liverpool to Gaza and all Palestinians. Palestine will be free. Ceasefire now!
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Only Truth And Clear Seeing Can Lead Us To Peace And Harmony
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/257ca74e92aed6b3708b94c8f6a56a77/href
The Independent has an article out titled “Inside a southern Gaza hospital: Screaming orphaned children, amputee toddlers and the stench of rotting flesh,” which begins as follows:
“A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn’t know is dead — and screaming because doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year-old boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl, her eye surgically removed, because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee, whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him.
“And in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots ‘creep out of untreated wounds’.”
These horrors are all caused by a genocidal onslaught that is being backed to the hilt by the US government, who just single-handedly blocked a UN resolution demanding a ceasefire to end this nightmare. Instead of focusing on the unfathomable depravity of all this, Americans are being propagandized into worrying about a completely fictional epidemic of university demonstrators chanting for the genocide of Jews.
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: "There are, by all appearances, millions of people who now believe that there's an epidemic of students marching around chanting "gas the Jews" and "kill all Jews."I've asked around 100 people in the last week for examples. Nobody can give one, let alone show an epidemic. / Twitter"
There are, by all appearances, millions of people who now believe that there's an epidemic of students marching around chanting "gas the Jews" and "kill all Jews."I've asked around 100 people in the last week for examples. Nobody can give one, let alone show an epidemic.
But for all the efforts to spin, justify and distract from the mass atrocity Israel and its allies are perpetrating in Gaza, more and more people are opening their eyes to what’s happening, and are ceasing to fall for the propaganda any longer.
This is largely because for the last two months the horrific images described in text by The Independent have been cascading down our social media feeds in jarringly graphic photos and videos. Those who’ve only been peripherally aware of Israel’s actions in Gaza may find those descriptions astonishing, but for anyone who’s been following the Gaza massacre it’s just a verbal description of what we’ve been looking at since October.
It’s much, much harder to propagandize the public into accepting military atrocities when they have decent visibility into how those atrocities are actually manifesting as they inflict themselves on human flesh. In an age where photos and videos of events can go viral within minutes of their occurrence, and in an area where it’s still possible to upload some footage onto social media, it’s far more difficult to persuade people to believe this is anything other than what it is.
If everyone on earth could really truly see what’s happening in Gaza, and actually viscerally grasp and appreciate what they were seeing, the killing would end tomorrow. It would end tomorrow because the entire world would force an end to it by any means necessary. These atrocities would no longer be tolerable by humanity’s collective consciousness once they had been fully seen.
Briahna Joy Gray on Twitter: "I saw a video the other day of Palestinian parents sifting through charred remains of little hands and legs trying to identify their kids. But congratulations on this. https://t.co/NYVowhS3wY / Twitter"
I saw a video the other day of Palestinian parents sifting through charred remains of little hands and legs trying to identify their kids. But congratulations on this. https://t.co/NYVowhS3wY
And really all of humanity’s problems are like this. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend how horrific war is, war and militarism would end immediately. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend how insane and self-destructive ecocide is, ecocide would end immediately. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend the horrors of poverty, abusive prison systems, police brutality and institutional injustice, these things would no longer be permitted to exist in our society.
Seeing is all that’s required for humanity to begin moving out of dysfunctionality and towards health. That’s true regardless of what scale of humanity you’re talking about, from the largest problems of global civilization right down to the subtlest dysfunctionality in the inner processes of the individual. Once enough seeing has happened, the dysfunctionality cannot continue.
Corruption and malfeasance doesn’t stop until it has been exposed to the public. Abuse doesn’t stop until the abusiveness has been clearly seen for what it is and brought to an end. Addiction and other self-destructive behavior patterns don’t abate until the inner dynamics which drive them have been brought into consciousness and seen clearly. Self-realization only occurs when there’s been a clear seeing into the nature of awareness and perception.
Seeing is crucial to ending dysfunction at every scale of human life. That’s why Julian Assange figured that the best way to help the world would be to find a way to make it easier for the public to see what’s going on behind the veils of secrecy that the powerful enshroud themselves with, and that’s why Assange is now currently in prison. Those who want more health and harmony are always trying to find ways to make things more seen, while those who want to preserve the status quo of domination and dysfunction are always trying to keep things hidden.
In this sense we actually are kind of looking at a struggle between light and darkness, because there is an ongoing battle between the impulses within our species to make things seen and the impulses to make things unseen. On one side you have real journalism, true education, authentic activism and dedicated inner work trying to bring the unseen into the light of awareness, and on the other side you have government secrecy, censorship, propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and the war on journalism trying to obstruct and obfuscate the truth from the public eye. Those who desire peace, health and harmony will always find themselves on the former side, while those who desire domination, destruction and exploitation always find themselves on the latter.
worms cited on Twitter: "They just struck the specific apartment he was in https://t.co/DGuIK9yvZd pic.twitter.com/uiw9C2xqT7 / Twitter"
They just struck the specific apartment he was in https://t.co/DGuIK9yvZd pic.twitter.com/uiw9C2xqT7
That’s why Israel has been systematically exterminating journalists, artists and academics in Gaza, and why it tries to restrict internet access and communications as much as it can get away with. It’s why the US empire is imprisoning Julian Assange and continually working to control what information the public sees online while hiding a tremendous amount of its activities behind government classification. It’s why the abusive husband works to isolate his wife from her friends and family and tells anyone who says anything about his abusiveness that it’s none of their business. It’s why when we sit in meditation there are forces within us which squirm and flail around rather than allow stillness and inner clarity to set in. Humanity is in a constant struggle with itself — between staying hidden and becoming a truly conscious species.
But we can’t hide from ourselves forever. Already more and more cracks in the walls are appearing, and the light is streaming in through them. The aspects of our species which want to remain hidden are leaving fingernail marks on the floor as the aspects of ourselves which want to be seen are dragging them kicking and screaming into the light of consciousness.
There can only be one winner in this fight. We’ll either become a conscious species that is guided by truth and lucid understanding or we’ll kill ourselves by nuclear war or climate catastrophe in our frantic efforts to remain hidden. Either way, the tower of lies and secrets is coming tumbling down eventually.
______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Video: Newham councillor quits Labour on live TV to join independent group
Cllr Zuber Gulamussen resigns over Keir Starmer’s support for Israeli genocide and also issues withering resignation statement
Newham councillor Zuber Gulamussen has dramatically resigned his membership of the Labour party on live television – and issued a withering resignation statement to go with it, condemning the Starmer regime’s betrayal of millions of Gazans by supporting Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and his refusal to call for a ceasefire.
Speaking at a rally covered on the Islam channel, Gulamussen said he could no longer bear to be associated with Starmer’s party and was joining former Labour councillor Mehmood Mirza’s independent group:
Mirza was hounded out of Labour by the Starmer machine – then trounced a Starmer staffer in Newham’s Boleyn ward by-election in July, despite a mass Labour campaign to try to defeat him.
Gulamussen’s statement adds more detail, accusing Labour of ‘giving cover for Israel to commit heinous war crimes’ and of ‘irreparably damag[ing] its relationship with Muslim communities’:
Two Newham branch party chairs also resigned their membership in solidarity with Cllr Gulamussen. Chair of East Ham ward Tariq Hussain and Green Street East chair Parvez Sheikh announced their decision after his speech. East Ham’s long-serving secretary Syed Taqi Shah and women’s officer Sophia Naqvi have also resigned:
Starmer’s party fears that Newham will become ‘another Tower Hamlets’ – the London borough that the party lost catastrophically to the Aspire group run by Lutfur Rahman, the former – and again current – mayor ousted after a racist smear campaign by the Labour right. Those fears may well be coming true.
Labour has shredded its standing with not only Muslim communities. Millions are now appalled and marching for Gaza, seeing the Labour right for what it is.
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