Tag: censorship

Protest to Survive!

Tony Staunton1 Comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (7.10.25), challenging the Police powers in relation to protest. In particular, whilst there is no universally agreed definition of discretion given to Police as agents of the Capitalist State machine places democracy and all of us individually in danger. We must oppose, we must protest for the right to protest.

As printed:

Protest is political. Obviously. Politics, especially the decisions governing the distribution of power and resources, is always contentious. Democracy demands we debate and argue, vigorously!
Any power seeking to curb or prevent protest is seeking to impose their preferred political position and belief. When protest is banned the cry of injustice rings loudest. Telling people they have no right to believe what they believe is symbolic of absolute power and control.
It gets more complicated. Some political beliefs and actions are seriously threatening, harmful or perilous to other groups or individuals. Lines are drawn as to the acceptable levels of risk and threat, always prioritising openness and freedom over any upset to sensibilities. Prohibition has to be the last act set against only the most devastating threat to democracy.
Current protests against the prohibition of the Palestine Action group are supported by the Quakers, a contemplative religious group encouraging peace, truth, justice, equality and simplicity. When their values are threatened they must act. Faith enters the political realm.
Successive UK governments have changed the legal definition of terrorism in order to curb opposition, now proscribing Palestine Action as a terror group despite any published evidence of fact. The current Labour government attached Palestine Action, a protest group seeking to expose genocide in Gaza, to two tiny fascist organisations in order to compel Labour MPs to vote to proscribe all three together. A dirty trick.
Those of us observing the complicity of the UK military and arms manufacturers in the genocide of Palestinian people of Gaza could only be outraged at such injustice. Many started to sit down, in silent and passive protest at the proscription, hand-writing cards stating “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. Thousands have been arrested for this “thought crime” of support for actions exposing a crime against humanity.
The wider context, of openly fascist organisations now being allowed to parade on our streets with mass chants of racial and religious hatred without police action offers us evidence of a level of political bias both within the Home Office and the Police Force.
It’s all too easy to expose the racist and misogynist culture ever-present in police stations and the plethora of private security firms. Every generation has seen scandals of organised fascist groups inside police and military services.
The result is political bias in policing. Look at the racist bile spewed-out by tens-of-thousands at the London protest addressed by Elon Musk and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon on 11th September, inciting hatred and violence. Police hospitalised by the violent mobs throwing bricks and bottles resulted in only 27 arrests for common assault. Conversely, aged Christians sat silently protesting an injustice are roughly man-handled, thousands arrested under terrorism legislation for exposing mass murder.
This week the Labour Government will further limit and ban the right to protest. In practice they are specifically targeting protests that are “left-wing” – protesters for equality, peace, universal human suffrage and social justice.
Meanwhile, the ultra-nationalist flag-wavers terrorising asylum seekers in dilapidated hotels are given free reign to incite and threaten. The recent burning of mosques, street rape of Muslim women by white thugs, the racist gang murder of a Muslim man are not designated as terrorist.
However more prescriptive and authoritarian Starmer’s government goes, the reactionary Tories and Reform UK will demand more restrictions and harsher punishments. Britain’s ruling class is letting the anti-democratic far-Right and fascist organisations off-the-leash here, copying the rampaging race-hate mobs on the streets across the USA.
The trade unions better mobilise quickly, because we’re the next to be targeted and broken.
There’s no time to lose. Protest to Survive.

It Is OK to Support the People of Palestine!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (8.7.25), written to evade censorship and to a deadline 12 hours before the Netanyahu/Trump talks. There, they finalised a plan to transport 600,000 of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to the destroyed city of Rafah in the far South, as the first trenche of clearing North and Central Gaza completely.
They are looking to create a beach-side Mediterranean holiday resort for the super-Rich, Trump part of the billionaire property-speculating investments. Partying on the bodies of tens-of-thousands of Palestinians. This is Capitalism/Imperialism on steroids. Quite beyond words, really.
This is a catalogue of multiple war crimes, crimes against all humanity, undertaken in broad daylight, recorded and broadcast globally. We can and will hold these bastards to account.
Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Netanyahu, not so surprising when you think of the previous warmongers who have won. But their sheer audacity and narcissism, their sociopathy, is a statement of absolute Power that exposes their real weakness. Our protests, our boycott, our worldwide outcry can build such a movement as to mobilise billions and overturn their entire system.
Keep protesting. Build the Campaign. Free Free Palestine (and all of us)! We are all Palestinians!

The article (for what its worth):

It is OK to Protest for Palestine (Fly the Flag!)

Amidst all the confusion it is important to note that it is not illegal to offer support for the civilian population of Palestine, themselves subject to an illegal invasion and occupation. It’s OK to fly the flag!
Palestine is recognised as a sovereign State by 147 countries of the United Nations, including Spain, Ireland, Norway, and the huge nations of Venezuela, Brazil, China, Russia and India. Palestine is recognised and politically supported by most countries of the Global South, and UK trade unions. Palestine sits at the UN General Assembly.
Palestine is seemingly only not supported by the countries of the North West, especially the UK and USA. These two countries, more than the rest of the world put together, are arming Israel from their citizens tax-money, exporting munitions, military equipment and military advisers, training to facilitate the ongoing genocide (illegal under international law) in Gaza and settler colonialism in the West Bank.
Palestine’s two non-contiguous territories have been separated by illegal military invasion, land clearances and military occupation over the past 77 years. Israel has constantly waged military and political warfare against its Palestinian neighbours before and since its inauguration.
The current catastrophe of disproportionate death and destruction of Gaza by Israel – possibly 1500 Israelis killed and at least 60,000 Palestinians including 20,000 children (the bodies are there to be counted) since October 2023 means this is not a war of two sides, it is the drive towards the continuous extermination of just one people and an entire nation.
Supporters of such Israeli action justify the ethnic clearance (illegal under international law) on the grounds of Israel’s right to exist, whilst critics of this genocide are labelled as “Islamist sympathisers” and even “terrorists” by some, for demanding an immediate ceasefire, help and reparations for the people of Palestine and security for the Palestinians’ homeland.
Ironically, the fascist descendants of Hitler and Mussolini who systematically rounded-up and killed over 6-million Jews in the horrific Holocaust during the Second World War are now supporting Israel alongside far-right white supremacists and racists here and across the West. Why?
Because Israel is a racist colonial Apartheid State with a constitution which render Israeli citizens much higher rights and powers than any non-Israeli citizen.
The country’s laws are very similar to those of Apartheid South Africa which was supported by fascists everywhere as representing the separation of so-called human “races” and the domination of the superior “Whites”. In the Israeli context, the term “White” represents a political allegiance to Zionism rather than skin-colour.
White-supremacists in the UK, including the notorious Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson, would like Britain to develop an Apartheid system, Whites over Blacks, from a belief in racial superiority and genetic ethnic purity. They whip-up anti-Muslim hatred and blame refugees and migrants for the crisis of housing and health services that, in truth, have been sucked dry by privatisation and corporate greed.
At this time, the overwhelming majority of the British people do not share such beliefs or sympathies, our friends and relations ethnically diverse and multicultural.
The active support for Palestine by ordinary people includes Jews not affiliated to the political creed of Zionism – a world view distinct from Judaism. It is not anti-semitic to oppose Zionism.
Across the West we have seen huge political protests for Palestinian rights. These must continue and grow. It is therefore of extreme concern that Starmer’s Government is clamping down on support for Palestine, targeting those of the progressive Left seeking Peace with Social Justice. It appears the government would prefer us proscribed rather than the far-Right. Democracy ensures the right to protest for Palestine. We are not illegal!

Julian Assange should be set free – now!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth herald (21.5.24). Individuals can rarely claim responsibility for changing the course of history, and those that can are usually tyrants to be deposed. But some individuals symbolise a political cause or movement or call-to-action that makes them headline news, perhaps despite themselves and in any case for political demands far more important than themselves. so to champion Assange’s case is not to glorify the individual, although his tenacity and then his own suffering should deserve empathy and concern from us all. This is about the freedom of press versus censorship, the public “right to know”, the public interest, the continuation of war crimes in the name of western imperialism that is now ramping-up again towards a third world war. So the demand for freedom for Assange is of critical importance, even more so for our own futures than for his.

The meme screamed out, “if I were lying, no-one would be trying to silence me!” And so his Appeal continues. But he should be set free, now!

The treatment of Julian Assange, Australian journalist, has certainly been aimed at ensuring his silence. Alleged, under US law more than a century old, of being a spy, he has been incarcerated in Belmarsh prison, London, coined as “Hellmarsh” by Jeffrey Archer who spent four years there. Human Rights activists are routinely imprisoned there, making Bellmarsh the symbol for Britain’s political prisoners.

As with Guantanamo Bay, Bellmarsh is globally notorious for detention of suspects without charge, with a brutal regime without any element of comfort or congregation. Assange has no criminal charges under UK law, yet faces charges if extradited to the USA. The most powerful nation in human history has stretched out the long arm of it’s internal laws across the Atlantic as if UK, and indeed Australian, citizens are all subjugated under the dictates of the evil empire.

Assange’s “crime” was exposing atrocities committed by the US in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Information provided by US Army Intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks from 2010 and 2011 included around 750,00 documents.

They revealed how the US military killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan, alongside military videos from the Iraq war showing a total of 66,000 civilians being killed. Assange, as an investigative journalist, thought the public should know.

Were Assange to be ultimately found guilty in the USA, the most vital journalistic freedoms would also be criminalised, including the requirement to divulge sources of information, ending all rights to confidentiality or protection of identity. 

This importance of journalistic search for and exposure of the Truth in war is as pertinent as ever amid today’s deepening military tensions. We all know that the protection of “state secrets” is used as the excuse for a constant propaganda streaming of untruths by every government on earth, including our own. 

In the absence of substantiated facts we are at the predatory mercies of conspiracy theorists. Citizens are the last to know what’s actually taken place. What’s the real story behind the death of President and Foreign Minister of Iran at the weekend? How many children have actually been killed in Gaza. Is the figure higher or lower than the United Nations estimates of 37,000 civilian non-combatants so far? 

How do we decide whether to trust the statements from the UN or the UK? If we choose to believe war propaganda, are we also choosing to believe lies told us about “the enemy within” – the daily government-sponsored stream of false threats to our welfare at the hands of refugees, welfare benefit claimants and trade unionists?

This is not only a question of whether we, the ordinary working class masses, have a “right to know” or not. It is about the consequences for us of allowing governments to perpetrate and act upon flagrant lies in their own interests, not ours. The Iraq war happened because of lies, the mass murders of civilians condoned because of lies, and the subsequent destabilisation of Arab states only continuing because of our State’s lies.

Assange’s only true crime was his own naivety. Of course “they” would seek to shut him down by any means necessary. It’s what they do. It is only when we stand hand-in-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder in our millions that “they” feel threatened enough to back-off from their own imperial ambitions. That’s why all of us who care about the rights of citizenry, the pursuit of democracy and freedom, should care about Assange. And more, we should demand the facts, not the spin. Investigative journalism, however much in short supply, is not a crime.

Support for Palestine Will Be Maintained

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald, published on 6th February 2024, ranting again about the genocide in Gaza. This 100+ days of rabid slaughter and wanton destruction exposes the true face of western imperialism, and the level of institutional hegemony sustained by the military-industrial complex, apparently unassailable. So confident are our masters that we can put into print almost anything, we can protest in our millions, yet they do as they please, and they bomb with pleasure. The Movement must grow.

Almost absent from news media has been the prolonged and immense amount of protest for Palestine. The numbers are enormous.

Last Saturday more than 200,000 marched from the BBC to Downing Street in London, demanding coverage of the call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the end of financial and military support to Israel  from the British Government.

The numbers in London were fewer than the November march of 800,000 largely because of the simultaneous numbers of local protests in most towns and cites, including Plymouth.

This time, a large array of of trade union banners were brandished and trade union General Secretaries spoke at the rally. Their call was for a workplace day of action on Wednesday 7th February, with students and workers showing their solidarity with stoppages, lunchtime walkouts and open air meetings. There will be such a lunchtime protest at Plymouth University.

The horror of the last 100+ days of the War on Gaza is observable through social media and on the Al Jazeera news channel, so transparently opposite to all coverage on BBC, ITV and Ch4 News as to question the ideological bent of editors on all media.

Much of the mortal statistics cannot be denied simply because of the video imagery. To see the entire North of Gaza flattened by aerial and ground bombardment makes any challenge to the numbers said to be dead and injured quite incredible. High Tech weaponry and high explosives against defenceless and homeless civilians.

67,000 Palestinians injured and 35,000 killed including at least 30,000 civilians: 15,000 children and 7,000 women, 700 healthcare professionals killed. Two million people displaced, more than two-hundred thousand homes collapsed, three hundred schools destroyed, twenty six hospitals bombed. Cultural centres, universities and mosques completely destroyed in an effort to eradicate any trace of the heritage and culture of Palestine completely.

Perhaps of the most immediate concern, the denial of food, clean water, sanitation and medicines is now resulting in hundreds of thousand of the entrapped two million human beings suffering all the deadly illnesses that sit alongside disease, malnutrition and starvation. 

All this is visible daily online. 

Quite openly, Israeli government ministers state their aim of permanently occupying the entire area and ending Gaza as a Palestinian homeland.

It should be of little wonder that the International Court of Justice has opened an inquiry into the charge of “genocide” against the Israeli State military and government. Probably of more surprise is the United States demanding Israel stop the killing and displacement in Palestine’s West Bank, albeit at the same time as supplying more military aid to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

The hypocrisy and duplicity of the United States and United Kingdom, continually blocking any negotiated permanent ceasefire should be investigated as part of the crime of genocide. 

It is impossible for anyone to suggest this is a two-sided war. The scenes of suffering in Gaza are indescribable. The withdrawal of US/UK/German aid the the UN relief agency UNWRA on the challenged basis that a handful out of their hundreds of thousands of local staff may or may not have worked with Hamas is now so questionable and unconscionable that many countries are increasing their funding for UNWRA, including Span, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland.

Why is this so poorly reported? And why is our political class supporting and funding this horror so enthusiastically? The answer is a toxic mix of political opportunism, support for the power of western imperialism to impose economic and military control across the rest of the world, and protection of the profits of the oil corporations and arms manufacturers over-and-above any humanitarian considerations.

The question of social justice is always paramount for trade unionists, focussed as we are upon challenging oppression and exploitation, at home and abroad. There are undoubtedly those who seek to condemn the entire Palestinian people as deserving of this fate, but the vast majority recognise the suffering of fellow human beings as a cause for care and compassion.

Justice for the Palestinian people will require more than compassion. We need to challenge the corporations here who fund the Israeli military either by investments or the selling of Israeli goods. To end the mass killing we have to challenge the Israeli State as a settler-colonialist endeavour based upon forcing Palestinians out of their homelands. And we have to expose the political creed of Zionism as a wholly abhorrent racist ideology wholly separate from Judaism and the human rights of Jewish people. It s not antisemitic to challenge Zionism.

The protests will not end until there is a permanent ceasefire, and that means challenging support for Israel in workplaces and colleges. We need to increase the mass pressure for a ceasefire. We’ll be marching again locally every Saturday, and nationally on the 17th. The campaign will not end without justice for the Palestinian people – Freedom for Palestine!