scandal
Israeli AI ‘using WhatsApp data’ to target Gaza families for bomb strikes
‘Lavender’ AI set to prioritise hitting targets at home with their families and is said to be using WhatsApp data for its process – but how is Israel getting hold of it?
Israel’s AI system for targeting people for murder in Gaza uses WhatsApp data among its targeting criteria, according to a report in the Israeli 972 magazine and analysis by Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine.
The platform is marketed as encrypted ‘end to end’, supposedly offering complete security, and WhatsApp told Middle East Monitor that:
WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested. Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
However, a 2021 Freedom of Information Request to the FBI revealed that WhatsApp’s owner provides ‘near real-time’ information to US authorities – not the content of messages in most cases, but of who is sending and receiving messages:
WhatsApp will produce certain user metadata, though not actual message content, every 15 minutes in response to a pen register [a special type of federal request], the FBI says. The FBI guide explains that most messaging services do not or cannot do this and instead provide data with a lag and not in anything close to real time: “Return data provided by the companies listed below, with the exception of WhatsApp, are actually logs of latent data that are provided to law enforcement in a non-real-time manner and may impact investigations due to delivery delays.”
This potentially fits with reports in Israeli media that Israel is using an artificial intelligence platform named ‘Lavender’ to identify thousands of human targets in Gaza and flag them for an airstrike, with WhatsApp data forming a key part of the AI’s decision process, based on the WhatsApp connections of supposed ‘militants’ – and that the system is designed to kill large numbers of civilians. One source told 972 that when Lavender identifies a target, Israeli forces:
bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
But of course, people are in WhatsApp groups of all kinds of topics and for all kind of reasons – and merely being in a group which has a ‘militant’ member is no guarantee of any kind of ‘guilt’ – even if the right to resist occupation is disregarded, as Israel, the US and UK do.
This pattern raises the possibility that Israel is obtaining WhatsApp data, whether directly or from the US government. Another possibility is that Israel is accessing the data through the notorious ‘Pegasus’ hacking programme that has been shown to target WhatsApp users, hijacking their phones through WhatsApp even, in the later Pegasus versions, if they don’t open any suspicious links. Journalists, politicians, human rights activists and others are known to have been hacked by governments using the software, including its use by the Saudis against dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
So serious was the issue that in 2021 tech firm Apple sued NSO, the maker of Pegasus, for targeting Apple users. NSO claimed that the software is used only against ‘terrorists’ – as which Israel, the UK, US and some others have designated Palestinian resistance groups – but there is clearly no guarantee that the definition of ‘terrorist’ is not extended in practice to anyone targeted by Israel. Biggar has accused WhatsApp’s owners of breaking international law and violating human rights.
Facebook, which belongs to the same Meta parent group as WhatsApp, has been accused of shutting down the circulation of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist posts and treating the term ‘Zionist’ as hate speech. In 2020, the company admitted changing its algorithms to filter out left-wing news and analysis from users’ feeds while allowing right-wing propaganda to flow unchecked.
However Israel is accessing the WhatsApp data it is said to be using to target Palestinians and their families, undoubtedly a war crime, the news that it is doing so is a warning for those who dissent from Establishment narratives and use ‘private’ messaging services to do so.
Meta continued its statement to Middle East Monitor:
Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
The US and UK governments, however, continue to insist that Israel is following international law and recognised human rights standards, even as it murders tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
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TSSA union staff strike to go ahead this week after reps accuse Eslamdoust of bad faith
The first planned strike day by staff working for the TSSA union will go ahead on Tuesday after mediation talks turned to farce, with the staff’s GMB union reps accusing TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust of approaching the talks without good faith and of failing to engage with staff’s concerns.
Staff are striking over what they say is renewed abuse and bullying – Eslamdoust’s predecessor as general secretary was sacked after a huge scandal of bullying and sexual harassment by senior management, and workers say the situation, which Eslamdoust was supposed to fix, has deteriorated again. Now an update from the workers’ union reps updates them of the failure of the talks:
Eslamdoust, who was recommended to members by the union’s executive despite what appears to be a complete lack of relevant experience, wrote a bizarre article for the Guardian in which she accused the GMB union of attempting to bully her so it could take over the TSSA and distract from its own renewed sexual harassment scandal, and tried to blame others for her failure to take meaningful action to implement the Kennedy Report’s recommendations.
She then followed up her attack on the GMB by emailing all TSSA member branches with an astonishing assault branding the union’s workers as greedy and lazy, and treating the GMB union as if it, and not the unhappiness of TSSA staff, was the driver of the impending strike action for which more than 93% of staff voted last week.
Such is the anger among members at the situation that earlier this month the TSSA’s branch for members working in Network Rail in South London passed a unanimous motion of no confidence in Eslamdoust and the union’s president Melissa Heywood.
GMB reps among TSSA staff have accused Eslamdoust and her team of not informing them that they had approached ACAS, and of bypassing them to try to negotiate the dispute with GMB general secretary Gary Smith instead of engaging with workers and their representatives.
The workers’ first strikes will take place this week on Tuesday 30 April and then on 4 June, including pickets of TSSA offices.
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Video: Israel targeted SIX international aid groups that had shared their coordinates
Groups hit repeatedly when IDF knew where they were, killing aid workers and their families
A still from the NYT video shows a traumatised aid worker
A New York Times investigation has revealed that at least six international aid groups working to help starving Palestinians in Gaza were targeted by Israeli forces – hit despite having repeatedly shared their locations with the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from France, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) based in the UK, the US International Rescue Committee, Anera from the US and the Red Cross/Red Crescent from Switzerland were all hit, along with the well-known repeat attack on three World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles spread across a 2.4km distance.
The analysis of photographic evidence and communications between the groups and the IDF has been published today. The IDF claimed that the WCK attack was a ‘mistake’ and admitted that the WCK workers had reported their locations and movements as requested to – but the attacks on five other groups also known to have communicated their positions establishes what was already clear: the attacks were intentional.
Some of the attacks targeted the aid workers’ homes, killing them and multiple family members including children. Watch below:
The UK continues to arm and assist Israel, despite several British citizens being among those murdered. Israel has slaughtered well over forty thousand civilians since 7 October, mostly women and children, and is starving two million more. The country is on trial for genocide before the ICJ, which has repeatedly ordered Israel to stop killing and starving Palestinians.
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Sky deletes its video of Falter claiming he was only trying to cross the road
Page now gives 404 result after overwhelming evidence challenging claims emerged
As Skwawkbox reported earlier today, ‘Campaign against Antisemitism’ (CAA) chief executive Gideon Falter’s claim that he had been prevented by police from crossing a road after just happening to ‘come across’ a pro-Palestine march looks to have fallen apart after a huge volume of eyewitness, photographic and video evidence emerged challenging the veracity of the claim.
Falter, whose CAA group has been shown to have taken large amounts of funding from a ‘quasi-governmental’ Israeli organisation and featured prominently in the campaign to take down then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has also been shown to have made false claims of antisemitic speech – leading to the prosecution, conviction and unanimous acquittal on appeal of a Foreign Office official. His claim about Saturday’s events fuelled calls for the banning of pro-Palestinian marches and the removal of Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley – who just happens to have previously refused the demands of right-wing, pro-Israel campaigners and politicians for the marches to be banned.
And now Sky News, which had run hard with the false claims and the ensuing narrative, has deleted its video of Falter’s staged stunt. Footage and photographs shot by bystanders strongly suggest that Falter was at the site of the march for some time before the incident – and that he was there with bodyguards and had already tried to disrupt it, a stark contrast with his narrative that he had just bumped into the march on his way home from synagogue.
While emails containing the link will still show a preview of the original content, clicking through to the link leads to a ‘404’ ‘page not found result, as the combined screenshots below show:
It will be interesting to see whether the rest of the so-called ‘mainstream’ media follow suit, or leave up the misleading video and claims despite the flood of contrary evidence.
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Exclusive: Eslamdoust’s bizarre email to TSSA branches attacking staff and their union
‘She doesn’t understand how unions work’ – general secretary of union reeling from abuse scandals sends bulk email to branches attacking staff striking over bullying, and the union representing them
Melissa Heywood, left, and Maryam Eslamdoust (image: TSSA website)
Crisis-hit TSSA rail union general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust and her team have followed up their attacks on the GMB union representing TSSA staff in their dispute with the union’s management over bullying and abuse – by emailing all TSSA member branches with an astonishing attack branding the union’s workers as greedy and lazy, and treating the GMB union as if it, and not the unhappiness of TSSA staff, is the driver of the impending strike action for which more than 93% of staff voted last week.
Ms Eslamdoust was recommended to members, despite what appears to be a complete lack of relevant experience, by the TSSA executive after former general secretary Manuel Cortes was sacked over sexual harassment and bullying exposed in the Kennedy Report, and was supposedly going to clean up the union after the scandal. However, the union has been rocked by fresh allegations of abuse and deep resentment against the new general secretary for the treatment of staff, particularly women.
She recently wrote a bizarre article for the Guardian in which she accused the GMB union of attempting to bully her so it could take over the TSSA and distract from its own renewed sexual harassment scandal, and tried to blame others for her failure to take meaningful action to implement the Kennedy Report’s recommendations, outraging staff members who have pointed out that their dispute pre-dates the new GMB revelations, prompting TSSA staff to pass a unanimous vote of no confidence in Eslamdoust and the union’s president, Melissa Heywood.
Now the pair, along with assistant general secretary Brian Brock, have sent this bizarre message to all the union’s members, via their branches:
Message from TSSA General Secretary
To: Branches
Dear colleagues,
Some of you will have heard that GMB intends to take industrial action against TSSA.
GMB’s dispute with TSSA
TSSA regrets GMB’s decision and wants to resolve the dispute. Thus far GMB have made it impossible to resolve any genuine issues that TSSA staff may have by refusing to set out any specific details of the matters they say are in dispute.
GMB have also refused or ignored every proposal we have made for talks. TSSA have proposed direct talks to resolve the dispute with GMB’s General Secretary, GMB’s Regional Secretary, GMB’s Regional Officials, and GMB’s lay reps among our own staff – all of which proposals have been refused or ignored. TSSA has therefore asked ACAS to facilitate talks, but again GMB have not yet responded to ACAS’ approach for talks.
Nevertheless, TSSA is a good employer, and we will continue to seek resolution with GMB in good faith, just as we have done in all our relations.
There are limits to how far we will go to satisfy demands made to us, and red lines that simply cannot be crossed.
We are seeking to reform and improve TSSA in the wake of failings in our past culture that were identified in the Kennedy and Conley reports.
An example of this is that TSSA proposed to the GMB representatives among our own staff that we would have independent observers in staff recruitment processes, so that everyone could have confidence in the fairness of those processes. Instead of accepting this measure, GMB demanded that there must be 2 GMB appointees involved in every TSSA recruitment process. We will not allow the process of cultural change to be misused to hand control of our staff recruitment to another organisation, removing the control of TSSA’s own democratically elected Executive Committee (EC) and General Secretary. We are completely clear that we will not allow our union to be bullied by anyone.
Many TSSA staff had 3 separate pay rises over the course of 2023, while many of our own members suffered from years of pay freezes. Instead of recognising that TSSA staff are being well paid, GMB have instead demanded that we must reduce staff working hours by more than 10% and increase pay significantly above inflation. Despite our desire to settle disputes with our staff, we will not allow members’ money to be misused for pay awards far in excess of anything that our members could ever expect.
Emphases added by Skwawkbox
Furious TSSA members have told Skwawkbox that Eslamdoust’s proposal to meet GMB general secretary Gary Smith to resolve the dispute shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how unions work and that the attack on workers as greedy and demanding mirrors the tactic of the bad employers that TSSA and other unions are supposed to fight, not copy.
A ‘frequently asked questions’ document issued by the striking workers and their union reps addresses Eslamdoust’s claims:
The General Secretary has claimed that the GMB union are using an in-house agreement to block staff recruitment. Is this true?
GMB members are not seeking to block the appointment of new staff. All we want is for our existing transparent procedures to be upheld, which is not happening. We would welcome recruitment to fill the 9 existing Organising vacancies, which could do much to increase our ability to recruit and organise in the workforce.
When the General Secretary emailed GMB Reps on 16 November 2023 to state that the TSSA Executive Committee had approved recruitment of three new vacancies (Campaigns and Media Role, Stakeholder and Engagement Role, Legal and Governance Role) on an interim basis of six months, we asked for job descriptions so that we could consult over the grading and pay for the roles. This is the same as we would do for any new job role and is in line with our established collective bargaining procedures. Further, it ensures that there is no potential for discrimination.
Five months later the General Secretary has yet to provide us with job descriptions. Had she come to us with the job descriptions at any point in the last five months we would have been happy to consult so that the roles could move forward to advertising. What we couldn’t do is sign off on roles without any information on their grading, pay or duties, or how these new roles fit in within a Staffing and Operational plan (which we have also never seen).
Existing roles do not need negotiation over grading and pay, so over the last six months the General Secretary could have recruited to fill a number of roles, including 9 Organiser vacancies, and roles in the Membership services, and Comms teams. She has not done so.
She has, however, advertised for a part time Political Officer, and appointed an interim HR Manager role (twice in three months, without following any agreed recruitment procedures). She has also appointed a part-time, temporary Assistant General Secretary, (changed from a full time to part time post without explanation) advertising that post in the week before the Christmas shut down with just a two-day window for staff to apply while half the staff were already on leave. Just this week TSSA has advertised for a new Assistant General Secretary.
It is simply not true to say that the GMB is blocking recruitment. We are just insisting that the creation of entirely new roles follows our existing transparent processes.
How about the General Secretary’s claims that the dispute has been fabricated as part of a takeover plot by the GMB, or to distract from other problems within the GMB?
These false allegations seem designed purely to distract from the very real problems at the heart of this dispute.
Our dispute existed last autumn, well before the latest allegations about the GMB came to light. Our General Secretary is well aware of this. We are disappointed that she has chosen to misrepresent our dispute and make false allegations to the Guardian rather than meet us at ACAS.
The accusations of bullying are well-founded, detailed, and were being investigated by the whistleblower service, Howlett Brown, until the EC and GS terminated their service without a replacement lined up. The President has been aware of the bullying allegations against Ms Eslamdoust, for months, but chose not to follow TSSA’s procedures for managing bullying grievances.
The GMB withdrew from merger talks with TSSA in April 2023 and has no desire to change the status of our current relationship.
The idea that the GMB is making staff manufacture a dispute in order to force a merger is insulting to our members who are experienced trade unionists and more than able to make their own decisions.
Why haven’t you met with the EC to discuss your concerns directly?
We have not received any invitation from the EC. We are open to meeting with them and would welcome the opportunity to explain our issues to them. If the EC requested a meeting with the GMB that has not been conveyed to us by the GS or AGS, this is a worrying reminder of the previous Cortes regime when the EC and staff were kept apart from each other.
Three GMB Reps sit on the Change Management Oversight Group, with two EC members and the GS. As part of this group, we have repeatedly expressed concerns that culture change had stalled in the last 6 months and has now in fact regressed.
In addition, since the publication of the Kennedy and Conley reports in February 2023 (14 months ago), the EC have never met with the whole staff once.
We have, however, met with delegates from the EC, including the President and Treasurer, in meetings trying to resolve this issue on several occasions. In addition, the president has been copied in on all the correspondence about issues we have sent to the GS since last December.
The General Secretary says that nothing has been raised through the agreed internal processes? Why not?
The GMB reps have raised collective concerns through the established bargaining machinery at meetings in November, January, and twice in March, and also in correspondence, since November 2023, to no avail.
Individuals have also raised concerns through the internal and external whistleblowing services. Two staff are currently off work sick with work-related stress, which is itself an indicator of problems in the workplace.
Claims that there is no bullying or harassment
The General Secretary is aware of complaints about bullying, and a culture of fear, within the TSSA. They have been raised repeatedly in formal negotiation meetings between November and March.
In addition, one member of staff submitted a complaint under TSSA’s bullying policy against the General Secretary to the independent investigator Howlett Brown in December last year. This was after a vindictive and targeted bullying campaign against this member for a period of months.
At the beginning of this year the contract with Howlett Brown was terminated without any consultation with the GMB reps or any consideration of the consequences to staff with active complaints and queries.
This decision has caused our member additional distress and anxiety seriously affecting their health and wellbeing without any clarity or certainty regarding the status of their complaint, who will be investigating it and when. During this time the General Secretary has gone out of her way to damage the professional reputation of the member, repeatedly criticising and denigrating them.
To date no alternative independent provider has been appointed which is in direct contravention of the Kennedy report.
Bullying of a trade union rep
One of our Trade union representatives has been subject to hostile behaviour and bullying by the General Secretary, since last November. This has included sending an intimidatory email to the rep, circulating that email to every member of the staff body, and repeatedly lying about him and denigrating him to other staff, in what appears to be an attempt to destroy his reputation.
Emphases added
Approached for comment yesterday, the TSSA doubled down on its blaming of the GMB, compounding the impression of a lack of understanding or recognition that the issues are with the unhappiness of people working for the union and not with the management of the union they are instructing to coordinate the strike on their behalf. A spokesperson told Skwawkbox:
We would encourage GMB to start talking with TSSA to focus on resolving the workplace issues they say they have. It is genuinely extraordinary that GMB are so blatantly seeking to interfere in (and misrepresent) the internal administration of a sister union. TSSA EC took the decision that the last tranche of HS2 compensation would be reserved for strategic objectives to grow and strengthen our union. That is what is happening.
Invited to amend its statement in light of how Skwawkbox would be forced to report it, the union declined.
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Breaking: TSSA union staff set strike dates after 93% ‘yes’ ballot
Union turbulence continues as staff confirm dates for pickets over union management’s alleged bullying, avoidance and abandonment of agreed procedures
Staff members of the TSSA rail union who are represented by the GMB union have agreed strike dates, following their overwhelming vote for industrial action last week. On a huge turnout of 86%, 93.3% of staff voted yes to both strike action and ‘action short of a strike’ in their dispute over what they say is bullying and high-handed behaviour by the union’s general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust and her team. Strikes will take place 30 April and 4 June, including pickets of TSSA offices.
Eslamdoust was recommended to members, despite what appears to be a complete lack of relevant experience, by a TSSA executive reeling after former general secretary Manuel Cortes was sacked over sexual harassment and bullying exposed in the Kennedy Report. The union has seen fresh allegations of abuse and deep resentment against the new general secretary.
Ms Eslamdoust attacked Skwawkbox during the general secretary election for scrutinising her and her supporters’ campaign claims that she had ‘high level trade union experience’, an article that led to accusations of ‘losing the plot’. She also recently wrote a bizarre article for the Guardian in which she accused the GMB union of attempting to bully her so it could take over the TSSA and distract from its own renewed sexual harassment scandal, and tried to blame others for her failure to take meaningful action to implement the Kennedy Report’s recommendations, outraging staff members who have pointed out that their dispute pre-dates the new GMB revelations.
In an ‘FAQ’ document sent to all GMB members working for TSSA, the group explains the reasons for the strike and answer the union management’s attempts to blame workers for the dispute:
Why haven’t you met with the EC to discuss your concerns directly?
We have not received any invitation from the EC. We are open to meeting with them and would welcome the opportunity to explain our issues to them. If the EC requested a meeting with the GMB that has not been conveyed to us by the GS or AGS, this is a worrying reminder of the previous Cortes regime when the EC and staff were kept apart from each other.
Three GMB Reps sit on the Change Management Oversight Group, with two EC members and the GS. As part of this group, we have repeatedly expressed concerns that culture change had stalled in the last 6 months and has now in fact regressed.
In addition, since the publication of the Kennedy and Conley reports in February 2023 (14 months ago), the EC have never met with the whole staff once.
We have, however, met with delegates from the EC, including the President and Treasurer, in meetings trying to resolve this issue on several occasions. In addition, the president has been copied in on all the correspondence about issues we have sent to the GS since last December.
The General Secretary says that nothing has been raised through the agreed internal processes? Why not?
The GMB reps have raised collective concerns through the established bargaining machinery at meetings in November, January, and twice in March, and also in correspondence, since November 2023, to no avail.
Individuals have also raised concerns through the internal and external whistleblowing services. Two staff are currently off work sick with work-related stress, which is itself an indicator of problems in the workplace.Claims that there is no bullying or harassment
The General Secretary is aware of complaints about bullying, and a culture of fear, within the TSSA. They have been raised repeatedly in formal negotiation meetings between November and March.
In addition, one member of staff submitted a complaint under TSSA’s bullying policy against the General Secretary to the independent investigator Howlett Brown in December last year. This was after a vindictive and targeted bullying campaign against this member for a period of months.
At the beginning of this year the contract with Howlett Brown was terminated without any consultation with the GMB reps or any consideration of the consequences to staff with active complaints and queries.
This decision has caused our member additional distress and anxiety seriously affecting their health and wellbeing without any clarity or certainty regarding the status of their complaint, who will be investigating it and when. During this time the General Secretary has gone out of her way to damage the professional reputation of the member, repeatedly criticising and denigrating them.
To date no alternative independent provider has been appointed which is in direct contravention of the Kennedy report.
Bullying of a trade union rep
One of our Trade union representatives has been subject to hostile behaviour and bullying by the General Secretary, since last November. This has included sending an intimidatory email to the rep, circulating that email to every member of the staff body, and repeatedly lying about him and denigrating him to other staff, in what appears to be an attempt to destroy his reputation.
In an additional note, the group adds:
Finally we have recently discovered via ACAS that TSSA have made contact but we only found this out yesterday when they contacted GMB. There has been no communication from TSSA to any of the reps or our FTO to discuss with us or inform us that they were considering or even doing this.
More big TSSA news will follow this afternoon, after the expiry of a press deadline.
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Disgraced Vaz’s ‘right-hand man’ returns to Labour from Tories
Vaz has been heavily leafleting in Leicester, sparking rumours of an attempted political come-back despite scandals
Deepak Bajaj, the (now-former) leader of Leicester Tories, has defected back to the Labour party, accusing the Conservatives of being “more interested in their own psychodrama” than the needs of local people. Bajaj is known locally as the ‘right-hand man’ of disgraced former Labour MP Keith Vaz, who resigned as Leicester East MP in 2019 after being secretly filmed offering to buy drugs for male prostitutes.
In 2021, Vaz was found guilty by Parliament of ‘sustained bullying’ – yet still allowed by Labour to run the party’s local campaigns, with often disastrous results.
In 2023, Vaz ramped up his personal campaigning and is said to have been leafleting heavily this year, sparking rumours that he intends to stand again for election, despite Labour having already selected a candidate in Leicester East, where incumbent independent MP Claudia Webbe is likely to defend her seat.
The immediate acceptance of another Tory by Labour leads to the obvious conclusions about the lack of difference between two parties really divided, under Starmer’s tenure, only by their rosette colour – but may also reinforce expectations that Vaz plans a comeback attempt despite his shredded political reputation.
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Labour frontbencher McFadden: Israel is an ally and Labour will continue arms sales
Sky News shows Starmer’s Labour happy to turn blind eye to clear genocide
Pat McFadden, a Starmer front-bencher, has made clear during an interview with Sky News this morning that Labour considers Israel an ‘ally’ and is happy to continue selling weapons to the genocidal regime if Labour gets into government.
And McFadden – who must know, like the rest of the country since last weekend’s leaked recording, that the government has already been told by its lawyers that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and is covering it up – tried to hide behind the government’s failure to state the obvious, to excuse his and his boss’s readiness to keep providing Israel with arms that are killing Palestinians and international aid workers:
Video grab by Saul Staniforth, subtitling by Skwawkbox
McFadden also blathered about hostages, even though it is clear that Netanyahu and co are killing Israeli hostages as well as tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians – and, of course, did not once refer either to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) findings against Israel, Israel’s flouting of the ICJ’s orders to end its starvation and bombing of Gaza, or the UN Special Rapporteur for occupied Palestine’s confirmation that Israel is, as we all knew, committing genocide.
McFadden is a vice-chair of the Zionist group Labour Friends of Israel of which Keir Starmer is an avid supporter – or as it should now accurately be named, Labour: friends of genocide.
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20 councillors quit Labour in NW over regime’s bullying and attack on free speech
Councillors in Pendle, Brierfield and Nelson – including Borough Council leader – say Labour no longer reflects their views and is bullying and threatening dissenters
“THE LABOUR PARTY LEADERSHIP NO LONGER REFLECTS OUR VIEWS; IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE.”
That is the statement from twenty Labour councillors who resigned last night citing a draconian shift in the national party, which is targeting local councillors, preventing them from standing for elections and using aggressive bullying tactics to suppress fairness and free speech.
The resignations represent the biggest mass departure from Labour in local government since Keir Starmer became leader. The group, from Pendle Borough Council, Brierfield Town Council, and Nelson Town Council – including borough council leader Asjad Mahmood – has decided against joining any other political party and will form independent groups on their respective councils.
Cllr Asjad Mahmood, who leads the newly formed independent group, said:
I, along with my colleagues, were elected by local residents to represent them in the council chamber. As a Labour Councillor, I have always felt that the party’s policies were aligned with my own beliefs and those of the constituents who have honoured me with their votes. Sadly, over a recent period, senior party officials have attempted to impose their ideas at a local level. I was elected to serve the public, not party officials.
Cllr Yvonne Tennant added:
At a time when 14 years of Tory cuts are affecting local people across Pendle, the Labour Party leadership should be allowing local hard-working councillors the opportunity to challenge the Tories. Instead, colleagues are being hindered from fulfilling their roles.
Cllr Mohammed Iqbal MBE said:
I was suspended from the party for 18 months before it was lifted in December 2023 for advocating on behalf of my constituents. I joined the Labour Party over 30 years ago and have always been encouraged to speak out on issues. However, senior figures within the party are attempting to stifle free speech and threaten dedicated councillors with removal as candidates. I, for one, cannot stand by and allow this to happen. The bullying needs to stop.
Last week, Keir Starmer promised voters to push out power to regions if he gets into Downing Street. He made a similar promise to Labour members during the party leadership campaign, pledging to empower and foster local democracy, especially in candidate selections.
Since getting the job, he was waged war on members, imposing candidates in many areas. In many others, members and incumbents have complained about widespread vote-rigging to ensure selections supportive of Starmer’s red-Toryism, often candidates with serious questions to answer about their own conduct. Police are currently investigating one such incident of apparent voter fraud.
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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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