Lies
US refuses to say it won’t kill Assange
Wikileaks journalist remains imprisoned as US continues to pursue discredited extradition case – and refusal to give binding guarantee would result in his immediate release if UK justice system was fit for purpose
The US has refused to give a specific, binding guarantee to a UK court that it will not execute journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has been held for years in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison while he fights the US government’s attempt to extradite him so it can imprison him for years beyond his lifespan, after Assange exposed war crimes in Iraq by the US military.
The case should have been laughed out of court three years ago, when the main US witness admitted he had been lying all along in his claim that Assange induced him to hack US systems. Instead, Assange has been submitted to what former UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer described as sustained psychological torture – and still faces the likelihood of imprisonment for more than a century.
His recent appeal was adjourned to give the US time to affirm properly that it would not kill him if he was extradited, a sick joke when there has been longstanding evidence of US plans to murder him outside the US.
Incredibly, the High Court has refused to admit fresh evidence of CIA plots to kidnap or kill Julian Assange.
The judges say the rationale for kidnapping or killing Assange would be removed if he is extradited, and the evidence is thus not worth consideration.
Read that again. pic.twitter.com/PqwJIg4yAn— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) March 26, 2024
The judges even refused to admit fresh evidence of the US’s plans to assassinate Assange, instead offering the US another opportunity to have him in their hands if they would promise not to put him to death. The US.
But Assange’s wife Stella has revealed that the US has refused to say that it will not kill him and has offered only a boilerplate statement about the death penalty, while denying Assange the free speech protections it would offer to any US citizen:
The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty.
It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can “seek to raise” the First Amendment if extradited.
The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future – his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism.
The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.
The US statement says the death penalty will be ‘neither sought nor imposed’, but this is non-binding and meaningless given its previous attempts to kill him. The refusal to guarantee there will be no death penalty in Assange’s specific case should mean under UK and European human rights laws that the extradition is immediately refused by the UK court and Assange should already be free. Even if the assurances had been given, the likelihood that the US’s treatment of Assange would lead to his death should be enough to quash the bid.
The fact that he is not yet free of the threat of extradition, let alone walking around in the freedom he should have, is a damning indictment of the state of UK justice and democracy.
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Victorious smear victim takes aim at ‘antisemitism’ lawyer who misled court
Zionist Mark Lewis panned by James Wilson in series of Twitter posts
Earlier this month, university lecturer James Wilson won substantial damages from two so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’ who had foully smeared and endangered him and his family in their efforts to discredit him as an opponent of the ‘left antisemitism’ narrative that supporters of Israel have weaponised for almost a decade now against supporters of Palestinian human and political rights.
Now the victorious Wilson has taken aim in his social media feed at Zionist lawyer Mark Lewis, who at one time represented at least two of the defendants. Lewis, a pro-Israel activist who spoke about ‘unapologetic Zionism’ at the launch of a UK pro-Israel group considered by many to be far-right and boasted of wanting to make people whom he considered ‘antisemites’ homeless, has been lionised by the Zionist right for his pursuit of their opponents.
He has also been sanctioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for abusive conduct on social media – and wished a young Jewish supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour dead – and was heavily criticised by a judge in a different case for his conduct of the case and his lack of proper research on behalf of his clients:
a matter of very real concern that the Claimants put evidence before the Court, on an ex parte application, that was not true…
…he had simply failed to carry out sufficient (or any) research or to take adequate instructions from his clients.
And, as James Wilson has pointed out – alongside much more – Lewis was forced to apologise to the court for providing misleading information in Wilson’s suit about the financial health of one (by the time of the hearing, apparently former) client, Edward Cantor who, he had claimed, did not own property that could be sold to pay any penalty levied by the court:
As Luke Turner, who responded to Wilson’s posts, pointed out, Lewis’s distaste for ‘antisemites’ did not prevent him representing two extreme right-wingers – described by the judge in the case as bullying and ‘whiffing’ of antisemitism – when they wanted to sue Turner for posts about them:
The irony of that particular quote is really quite something, given who he was representing in my case, and the "whiff of threat and antisemitism" described by the judge in their "aggressive" course of "bullying" towards me. https://t.co/Dly6C3Aqwb
— Luke Turner (@Luke_Turner) April 20, 2024
And in a pair of posts showing screenshots of communications from Lewis, Wilson – himself a now non-practising solicitor – showed that Lewis demanded thousands of pounds, from the victim of the smear, to settle Lewis’s case against them, while expressing his and his clients’ expectation of victory in the case and repeating that Cantor owned nothing that could be used to pay any penalty. The tactic and the refusal to accept Wilson’s settlement proposal racked up enormous legal costs for the failed defendants:
I am worried about recovering my costs. I do not want to bankrupt Mr Mendelsohn or make Mr Cantor and his family homeless.
But if Mark Lewis @MLewisLawyer), Daniel Berke (@DanielBerke1) and Beth Grossman (@DoughtyStreet) refuse to pay my costs, then I may have no choice.— James Wilson (@per_incuriam2) April 21, 2024
And Wilson concluded his posts – for now at least – by taking aim at Simon Myerson, a supporter of Israel and part-time judge recently sanctioned for abusive comments on social media. Myerson had shared a post calling Wilson the ‘scum of the earth’, which the judge in Wilson’s case described as:
abuse of the same dehumanising kind as was used of Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s.
The judge also rejected the defence’s claim that Wilson’s correspondence with Myerson about his sharing of the abusive post demonstrated any kind of aggression or unreasonableness on Wilson’s part.
As Jewish author Michael Rosen, who was also targeted by some of the same people, pointed out, perhaps with his tongue firmly lodged in his cheek, it is noteworthy that the UK ‘mainstream’ press – which will run for weeks with any allegation against a left-winger or supporter of Palestinians – has shown no interest in covering the outcome of the Wilson case or the abusive conduct of those on the losing, pro-Israel, side:
However, Skwawkbox has covered the case in full and a timeline of it can be found here.
The case is not the first conducted by Lewis against supporters of Palestinian rights that ended poorly for his clients. In 2020 Jane Heybroek, a human rights barrister, won a stunning victory when actress Tracy-Ann Oberman and TV presenter Rachel Riley dropped their libel claim against her over an article retweeted by Heybroek criticising their behaviour and contributed toward her legal costs defending the action.
Mark Lewis was asked for comment about Wilson’s comments and analysis but had not responded at the time of writing. He was also ‘tagged’ by Wilson at the start of his Twitter analysis about Lewis’s involvement in the case:
Since one of the Defendants’ solicitors, Mark Lewis (@MLewisLawyer) of Patron Law (@LawPatron), is mentioned in the statement, I am tagging him here. If he wishes to reply, I’ll post his reply below my statement.
— James Wilson (@per_incuriam2) April 13, 2024
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Video: BBC forced to apologise to Webbe for ‘acid’ smear – but only does half the job
Newsnight’s bare minimum apology barely qualifies as journalism
The BBC has been forced to apologise to Leicester East independent MP Claudia Webbe – after repeating a lie for which the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has already been made to pay compensation to her.
Thursday’s Newsnight programme repeated the wholly untrue claim that Webbe had been found by a court to have threatened to throw acid at her then-fiancé’s lover – but the court found that she definitively did not make any such threat.
The smear was repeated by Newsnight hack Joe Pike on his Twitter feed – and rapidly deleted after Webbe rightly warned him it was untrue.
Your report is libellous. There was no threat or violence. It was a deliberate lie. Denied a Jury. There was an appeal. Appeal Judge said person was an "unsatisfactory witness" who "told lies". I’m told I must give you an opportunity to review and remove your @BBCNewsnight report
— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) April 19, 2024
But the BBC’s ‘journalism’ only goes so far. While Newsnight apologised for its ‘inaccuracy’, it did not bother to find out or report that Webbe’s supposed ‘victim’ was found by the court to have lied repeatedly – or that the Metropolitan Police withheld evidence that would have helped Webbe’s defence:
The BBC’s web page for Thursday’s programme now says it’s been ‘edited for legal reasons’:
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A timeline of Wilson’s victorious case over ‘antisemitism campaigner’ smearers
How the case developed that ended with uni lecturer James Wilson’s hard-fought win in court after smears put him and his family in danger – and saw LAAS director Newbon commit suicide
Last week, university lecturer James Wilson won £30,000 in damages from two defendants, James Mendelsohn and Edward Cantor, who had contributed to a smear against Wilson by a third ‘antisemitism campaigner’, Peter Newbon, that put the lives of Wilson and his family at risk. Newbon, a director of the right-wing pressure group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS), was a defendant in the case but died by suicide, after a row with his wife, before the case was concluded. The judgement in the Wilson case revealed that Newbon had ‘concealed’ the case from his wife
The case never involved much-loved Jewish author Michael Rosen. However, Newbon’s fellow ‘campaigners’ have tried hard to associate Newbon’s death with Rosen because Rosen dared to complain about the antisemitic doctoring of his famous children’s book, Bear Hunt, in a social media post by Newbon used to attack former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The coroner presiding at the inquest into Newbon’s death made no such connection, nor even mentioned Rosen throughout the proceedings, but this has not stopped the trolls’ efforts.
For readers unfamiliar with the Wilson vs Mendelsohn et al case, below is a timeline showing the chronology of the smears and the subsequent legal victory:
- Nineteen months before August 2020: a confrontation takes place at Wilson’s children’s school with ‘Mrs A’. The trial judge has ruled that Wilson was blameless, but A posts a picture and libellous claim to Facebook
- August 2020: Wilson disputes with Newbon on Twitter about the so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism – a definition that has been heavily criticised, not least because it doesn’t define, is used to suppress criticism of Israel and enables false accusations of antisemitism – by Jewish legal experts in the UK and even by its original author, Kenneth Stern
- August 2020: in a manoeuvre typical of so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’, Newbon resorts quickly to ad hominem personal attacks and responds with libellous claim that Wilson is a ‘freak who takes photos of kids’
- August 2020 onwards: Wilson tries to negotiate with Newbon to remove the libel and warns that he will sue if it is not taken down
- Around August 2020: Newbon’s university employers warn Newbon that he is in breach of the university’s social media code
- November 2020 Newbon gets into dispute with another person on social media – and receives a second warning from university
- Around the same time, Newbon also becomes involved with the so-called ‘University Antisemitism Map’ which targets academics who criticise Israel or dispute the right-wing claim of ‘Labour antisemitism’, labelling them antisemitic and identifying their place of work so collaborators can target their employment. Newbon contacts one institution with an allegation about an employee – the employee is exonerated by institution
- May 2021: Newbon posts a doctored screenshot of a famous ‘tweet’ that originally showed Jeremy Corbyn reading ‘Bear Hunt’ to a group of children. The book held by Corbyn has been photoshopped to make it appear that Corbyn is reading from a notorious antisemitic text, ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’. The image is accompanied by a parody of the words from the Bear Hunt book
- May 2021: numerous Twitter users object and write to Newbon’s university, whose name is displayed on his Twitter profile. Rosen is informed of the tweet and comments publicly that the doctoring was an antisemitic thing to do. The university says it will take action
- May 2021: As revealed during the subsequent Wilson case, Newbon prepares an apology to be issued to Rosen, then withdraws the apology and starts legal proceedings, presumably having been advised by lawyers that he has a case against Rosen
- December 2021: Newbon escalates by issuing a ‘Particulars of Claim’, the formal opening of a libel case, in which he accepts that Rosen is ‘in’ the tweet but claims Rosen is not the target, as the target is Corbyn who is reading Rosen’s book to children in the image. Rosen prepares defence
- January 2022: Newbon ends his own life after a row with his wife
- January 2022 onwards: Rosen is blamed for Newbon’s death by various parties either by implication or actual accusations. In articles at the time, another case (ie Wilson’s) is mentioned, but not by name. Some people note that Newbon was running two cases at the same time, defending against Wilson, claiming against Rosen
- March 2022: Wilson and Newbon’s wife settle Newbon’s involvement in Wilson’s case against Newbon, Mendelsohn and Cantor
- February 2023: a High Court judge rejects an attempt by Mendelsohn and Cantor to have the case against them thrown out. The pair had attempted to claim that Wilson could and should have minimised the damage they did to him by backing out earlier from the online conversation in which he was smeared. The judge described the attempt as ‘not very attractive’
- April 2023: The inquest into Newbon’s death takes place. The coroner makes no mention of either the Wilson or Rosen legal cases. The coroner does mentioned that Newbon had a ‘disagreement’ with his wife and that he left the house in a ‘fragile state’.
- December 2023: the Wilson v Mendelsohn, Newbon (deceased) and Cantor case leads to a four-day trial.
- April 2024: the judge’s findings are published. The judge finds against Cantor and Mendelsohn, dismissing the claims of a string of their witnesses and awarding a total of £30,000 in damages to James Wilson. In the judgment narrative, the late Newbon is described as a bully
The case, which involved the disclosure by Newbon’s widow of his personal communications, also revealed interesting aspects of his conduct toward Michael Rosen and the behaviour of the trolls who have tried to exploit his death to attack Rosen. Analysis to follow.
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Israeli media: Israel ‘totally defeated’ – and terrified of Iran
Source close to discussions about Iran says millions would be fleeing Israel if they knew what was being said
Israeli media are often far more honest about what their country is doing – and what is going on in it – than western ‘mainstream’ media are about the same issues. While UK ‘msm’ still maintain the lie that Hamas ‘beheaded babies’ and raped women on 7 October, Israeli media sometimes freely discuss the truth – and frequently and openly write about the ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis killed that day by the Israeli military.
And now, Israeli media are discussing two further truths that will not be aired by UK broadcasters or printed by UK papers.
First, Haaretz – one of Israel’s major dailies – has splashed a headline concluding that Israel has lost – totally lost – the ‘war’, the genocide, it has been raining down on the innocent civilians of Gaza. Lost so badly that Israel cannot be secure – and will not either regain by force the captives taken by Hamas, or end its pariah status:
And second, journalists with sources close to the Israeli regime’s discussions about Iran – which yesterday achieved a measured but compelling attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus – are saying openly that those discussions are so terrifying that if the Israeli populace knew what was being said, millions of them would be flooding Israel’s main international airport to try to get out of the country:
The UK government, opposition and media are incorrigibly dishonest about Israel’s genocide and its terrible consequences for the millions of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank – and the ruination of both Israel’s and the West’s always-thin pretence as democratic, humane and law-abiding. But the truth is out there – and will percolate through.
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Uni lecturer wins damages from ‘antisemitism campaigners’ who endangered him and family
James Wilson wins defamation case against Mendelsohn and Cantor in judgment that speaks volumes about methods and attitudes of so-called ‘campaigners against antisemitism’
University lecturer James Wilson has been awarded £30,000 in damages against James Mendelsohn and Edward Cantor for defamatory material published about him during an argument about supposed antisemitism in the Labour party. The false claim, that Mr Wilson was a ‘freak [who] takes pictures of kids’, put Mr Wilson and his partner in fear of physical danger, as well as seriously damaging his reputation. The judge had previously rejected an attempt by Mendelsohn and Cantor to quash the lawsuit.
The judgement lays bare that:
- Mendelsohn and Cantor kept private information and recycled it to the late Dr Pete Newbon – a director of the anti-left group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS), so that he could use it to defame Wilson – the information was untrue and based a) on statements from someone the judge found to have lied about Wilson and b) on false claims about a university disciplinary investigation. Newbon was described by the judge as ‘bullying’
- that Newbon, who committed suicided in 2022 after a row with his wife and has been lionised by so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’ despite his awful record as a serial troll repeatedly disciplined by his employers Northumbria University for his appalling social media conduct, had not told her of Wilson’s lawsuit against him for the defamatory posts
- Mendelsohn and Cantor refused to apologise, mediate or settle, forcing the legal action to proceed to its conclusion
- a key witness for the defendants said that she had been offered £5,000 by Mendelsohn and Cantor to testify for them (though the judge did not make a finding that her claim was true)
- the defendants further abused and insulted Wilson in the course of their defence – despite, in the case of Cantor, being warned by the judge not to do so
The defendants – who represented themselves in court apart from the use of a barrister to cross-examine Wilson – wheeled out a number of figures who are well known for their attacks on the left in an attempt to shore up their defence. The judge dismissed them:
- University lecturer David Hirsh, a prominent, pro-Israel proponent of supposed ‘left antisemitism’, who wrote an unintentionally revealing elegy to Pete Newbon after his suicide. Hirsh was called to bolster the defendants’ claim that Wilson had shown ‘unwarrantedly aggressive and belligerent conduct’. The judge rejected Hirsh’s evidence that Wilson was ‘aggressive, unpredictable, persistent and irrational’ and found that Wilson’s communications with him over the spreading of a crowdfund for the defendants’ legal costs were ‘not unreasonable’
- Nathan Comiskey, another advocate of ‘left antisemitism’, who claimed that Wilson contacting him about insulting remarks was ‘highly intrusive and upsetting’ and that he had felt ‘harassed and targeted’. The judge ruled that there was nothing unreasonable in Wilson’s communications and that Comiskey’s testimony did nothing to support the defendants’ claims about supposed unwarranted aggression or belligerence
- Simon Myerson – a founding signatory of LAAS and supporter of Israel, and a part-time judge recently sanctioned for judicial misconduct for abusive social media posts. Myerson was also a vocal supporter of Newbon, trying to link Jewish author Michael Rosen to Newbon’s suicide, despite a coroner not mentioning Rosen at all in his inquest findings. Mendelsohn and Cantor put forward Wilson’s communications with Myerson, who had shared a post describing Wilson as ‘scum of the earth’, as evidence to support their claim of aggressive behaviour. The judge ruled that it did nothing of the sort
- Joanne Bell and journalist Adam Cailler – more well-known anti-left activists whose correspondence with Wilson was put forward by the defence as supporting evidence. The judge ruled, “I can find nothing in the emails which is particularly aggressive or which points to conduct of the kind said to demonstrate the pleaded propensity [to aggression]”
A Myerson attack on Michael Rosen
The findings, as well as being clearly welcome to the smeared and endangered James Wilson, illuminate much of the approach of the right-wingers who created and propagated the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear. While so-called ‘antisemitism campaigners’ – lauded by Hirsh in his document supporting the creation of the so-called ‘Pete Newbon award’ – are ready to doxx, insult, smear and abuse those with whom they disagree, the conduct of the defence and the witnesses it put forward or quoted reveal a group that is quick to describe their supposed hurt and fear when someone challenges them and, even in the most reasonable terms, takes issue with the smears and abuse. Happily, the judge saw through such asymmetrical nonsense.
Mr Wilson, in a statement about the result, said:
The Judge has found that Mr James Mendelsohn gave Dr Pete Newbon confidential and defamatory information about me. It included a screenshot of a Facebook post that said I was “a freak who took pictures of kids” outside a school with a clear photo of me. The impression was, as the Judge decided, like a ‘wanted’ poster. When the Facebook post was published originally, there were incidents that made me fear for the safety of me and my family. The police secured its deletion within 24 hours.
The Judge found that the allegations in the Facebook post were untrue. Mr Mendelsohn took a screenshot of the Facebook post in the 24 hours it was published and, having kept it for 19 months, gave it to Dr Newbon in August 2020 knowing Dr Newbon was making abusive attacks on me on Twitter/X and so he could use the screenshot as a weapon against me.
Dr Newbon and Mr Eddy Cantor then published the screenshot on Twitter/X to, as the Judge has found, abuse and bully me. When Dr Newbon realised the screenshot he and Mr Cantor had published put the safety of me and my family at risk, he took no action. I suspect this was on the basis of advice he got from his solicitor.
Even when Dr Newbon deleted the screenshot from his feed, he sent it to other people by private message. He also invented seriously defamatory allegations about me that he sent to other people.
I did not want the litigation to start. The Defendants could have settled for zero damages and zero costs, and an agreement to delete and not to further publish the screenshot. Litigation only started because all the Defendants, presumably on advice from their solicitors, insisted that publication of the screenshot was in the public interest. They claimed this despite knowing of the intimidatory incidents.
I did not want there to be a trial. What made a trial inevitable was the conduct of the Defendants. I suspect some of the Defendants’ conduct was the result of advice from their solicitors. The Defendants’ conduct included:
- Refusing to comply with the Civil Procedure Rules on pre-action conduct.
- Refusing mediation in favour of litigation to drive up my costs and to try to bankrupt me.
- Making repeated threats to bankrupt me, explicitly referring to the impact this would have on my employment and children.
- Making false allegations of anti-Semitism to try to get me to abandon my claim.
- Making misogynistic allegations about my partner and falsely accusing her of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and breaching professional conduct rules.
- Taking the case to trial having stated: (a) they had no money and I would not recover any costs or damages; (b) they did not care about the outcome (they were “blasé about the result”); (c) they saw what they were doing as some sort of revenge (they “regard this as payback time”).
- Refusing to engage sensibly in negotiations to settle the whole claim when both Dr Newbon’s widow and I wanted to quietly and cheaply settle the claim and avoid further publicity after Dr Newbon’s tragic death.
The Defendants received encouragement on social media and financial help in pursuing their
defences. The crowdfunding claims made by the Defendants were outrageous. The most distasteful aspect was using Dr Newbon’s death to raise money (“One of us is now sadly silent. Those remaining must today come together and fight”).
The reality was that, having used Dr Newbon’s death to raise money, no serious effort was made to defend Dr Newbon at trial. I tried to protect Dr Newbon’s posthumous reputation by settling the claim without a trial and judgment. Mr Cantor rejected in principle a settlement for nominal damages and zero costs in November 2021. Rather than getting Mr Cantor out of the litigation for a nominal sum, [his lawyer] insisted I would have to pay him money before Mr Cantor would settle the claim. I do not know whether Mr Cantor himself knew about this, given his subsequent expressions of bemusement about being involved in the proceedings at all.
Both Defendants refused an offer to settle before trial for just a quarter of the damages the Judge has awarded. When the trial started, I avoided seeking a finding of harassment against Dr Newbon. It is unfortunate that detailed information about Dr Newbon’s conduct has been put in the public domain after his death.
In my opinion, the Defendants and/or their solicitors tried to cause me devastating reputational and, through the costs of the proceedings, financial harm because they disagree with my views on the State of Israel. The Defendants’ conduct was encouraged by others who share their views.
Dr Newbon also brought a separate defamation claim [against author Michael Rosen, who had complained about the antisemitic editing of an image showing one of his books]. He had intended to apologise for the conduct which was the subject of that case, but seems to have received dreadful advice to sue rather than simply say sorry. He ended up involved in two completely unnecessary and hopeless legal cases.
As the Judge found, it seemed the Defendants were motivated by an intense dislike if not hatred of me. For my part, I have no antipathy towards the Defendants despite their conduct and its impact on me and my family. I have never published confidential or defamatory information about the Defendants. I have never been abusive to them. I never retaliated to the Defendants’ abuse and bullying. It is ironic that while the Defendants are convinced that I am motivated by prejudice against them, it is they who had an obsessive and irrational dislike of me. I find it sad that the Defendants, their former legal advisers, and others believed that defending the State of Israel from criticism justified their conduct to me and my family.
It is my hope that what has happened to the Defendants and their families, and me and my family, never happens to anyone else again. Please do not use the judgment in my case as a reason to attack or abuse others on social media. Mr Mendelsohn and Mr Cantor definitely do not deserve to be attacked or abused and I urge people not to do so.
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Video: friend of Israel Hodge says ‘very few dare’ in Labour to support Palestine
Newly-uncovered video from Labour’s last conference shows shocking comment – and Hodge falsely claiming fellow right-winger Luciana Berger needed ‘police protection’ to move around 2018 conference
A Times Radio video clip reveals right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge – who has continued to accept funds from Labour Friends of Israel to visit the country even during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – telling interviewer John Pienaar that ‘very very few’ people within the Labour party ‘are daring to express support’ for Palestinians.
The clip, which does not appear to have been circulated before now, was posted by Steve Powers after he found it couched in a much longer video from the Murdoch station. Hodge then goes on to repeat the long-debunked claim, still (of course) widely circulated by right-wingers and the so-called ‘mainstream’ media, that former Labour/Tinge party/LibDem MP Luciana Berger needed a police escort to ‘get around’ the 2018 party conference, the last one she had attended before deserting the party:
Merseyside Police confirmed at the time that there was no special police detail for Berger, whom Keir Starmer has welcomed back into the party despite her efforts to prevent a Labour victory in 2019.
But even more damning is the arrogance of the claim – no doubt accurate under Starmer’s Stalinist, pro-genocide regime – just as Israel was preparing to launch its genocide, that ‘very very few’ would now ‘dare’ to show support for Palestinians.
Within the rotting shell that now passes for Labour, that may be correct – but the millions marching every weekend for freedom for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s war crimes make clear that Starmer’s Labour, like the blue version of the Tories, is utterly out of touch with the three quarters of the UK public who despise the murderousness that has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, and the apartheid states’s contempt for international law and want the genocide to end.
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Video: Israel’s ‘error’ killing of WCK food aid workers was 3 attacks over 1.5 miles
‘Error’? The facts say different but western governments still complicit
Israel has claimed that its slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen food aid workers was an ‘error’ and says it is investigating. The attack consisted of three separate bombings – across a distance of 2.4km.
And as a White House correspondent pointed out in questions to government spokesperson John Kirby this evening, the attacks were spread across time, too – with the first strike hitting one vehicle then two more as survivors tried to escape with their wounded in the remaining two: an attack designed to make sure no one got out of it alive:
The ‘error’ also happens to have achieved Israel’s objective of cutting off the only remaining significant supply of food to the two million civilians of Gaza – WCK fed some half million Palestinians – after Netanyahu ordered his forces to prevent any shipping of food by UN agency UNRWA.
Yet the US and UK political establishments remain more than happy to collude in Israel’s fictions – and to allow the war criminals to investigate themselves. The UK has not even ordered Israel’s far-right ambassador to appear to explain Israel’s actions, despite at least one UK citizen being among the murder victims.
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Breaking: complaints assessor rules CPS must give Webbe compensation for ‘acid’ slur
CPS and media fake news led to death threats, hate speech, depression and isolation toward wronged Black MP – which she has described as ‘a slow death’ – after a prosecution she has linked to former DPP Keir Starmer
Claudia Webbe, left
The Independent Assessor of Complaints (IAC), responsible for investigating the conduct of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), has ruled that the CPS must give Leicester East MP Claudia Webb compensation for the CPS’s false reporting of a court’s findings in relation to Ms Webbe – fake news that put her life in danger and led to a flood of hate speech toward her.
The CPS falsely told the media that the appeal court had said it ‘could not be sure’ that Ms Webbe had made an acid threat to another woman, when in fact the court had said it was sure that she had not made such a threat. Only Skwawkbox reported the court’s real findings, along with the repeated lies of her accuser and the Met Police’s withholding of exonerating evidence from the first trial.
Webbe had to complain to the CPS three times before it eventually fully corrected its fake claim.
Ms Webbe said:
The CPS falsely and unnecessarily reported that ‘I threatened to throw acid’, when it knew this was never part of the charge against me and further that any inference to ‘acid’ was dismissed at appeal. The CPS continued to run with this false narrative as part of their press release, even after the appeal court confirmed it had never happened. The actions of the CPS have contributed to me receiving constant death threats, silent calls, vile online social media abuse. I have been told that I am the MP that has received the most of such threats and abuse and particularly online.
The finding of the Independent Assessor of Complaints that the CPS had published false information about me is welcome and I hope it will put an end to this foul smear about me. The claim was one of a series of lies, exposed in the appeal, told about me by my accuser in a case where the Metropolitan Police also eventually admitted withholding a large amount of evidence that was in my favour.
The IAC ruled that it is ‘clear’ that I ‘suffered an injustice’, that the CPS statement ‘was both incorrect and reputationally damaging’ and that it ‘had an adverse effect on [my] health and wellbeing’. This is accurate as far as it goes but barely conveys the impact.
No amount of compensation can address what I have been through, but the offer of just £100 when the IAC acknowledged the seriousness of the suffering this caused me is derisory and the explanation by the CPS that their choice of wording was ‘in good faith’ is astonishing.
It has not escaped my attention that the CPS was formerly run by Keir Starmer. The damage done to me politically and professionally is enormous and the CPS continued to run its false reporting about me for a considerable length of time after the court case. I believe this was done to cause me maximum hurt and harm and, as I told the IAC, has inflicted on me perpetual anxiety, stress and poor health that has felt like a slow death. I believe the actions of the CPS were political, because I am on the left, and their actions were motivated by racism and sexism.
This is yet another example of the difficulty that Black people face in obtaining justice in a system stacked against them.
Claudia Webbe has faced horrific racist abuse and smears because of the CPS’s misleading statements – and received no support from Keir Starmer’s Labour. The IAC ruling puts the record straight, but the level of compensation and the claim that this was an error in good faith are an insult to all Black people and to women in particular – and prolongs the injustice and racism she suffered when the court found she had been accused by a serial white liar yet did not completely overturn the initial travesty of a verdict for a phone call that her accuser made to her and not the other way round.
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Assange: justice denied again as court declines to admit new evidence of US murder plots
Wikileaks founder will remain in Belmarsh prison while judges seek further meaningless ‘assurances’ from US
The High Court has this morning again denied justice to persecuted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Despite admitting that the US is denying Assange’s rights to free speech and is pursuing him in a way that it would not pursue one of its own citizens, judges have decided to keep Assange in Belmarsh prison while it asks for further ‘assurances’ that the US will not kill him – even though there has been longstanding evidence of US plans to murder him outside the US.
Shamefully, the court has also declined to admit fresh evidence of US plots to assassinate him, claiming that the evidence is irrelevant because the US’s incentive to murder Assange would not apply if it had him in custody, as Declassified UK has pointed out:
Incredibly, the High Court has refused to admit fresh evidence of CIA plots to kidnap or kill Julian Assange.
The judges say the rationale for kidnapping or killing Assange would be removed if he is extradited, and the evidence is thus not worth consideration.
Read that again. pic.twitter.com/PqwJIg4yAn— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) March 26, 2024
The extradition case should have been laughed out of court three years ago, when the main US witness admitted he had been lying all along in his claim that Assange induced him to hack US systems. Instead, Assange has been submitted to what former UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer described as sustained psychological torture – and still faces the likelihood of imprisonment for more than a century in US retaliation for Wikileaks exposing its war crimes in Iraq and as a deterrent to other journalists who might expose its crimes in future.
Shame on the UK and its travesty of justice and democracy. Free Julian Assange. Protect real journalism.
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