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London
Next Wednesday sees the launch of Double Down Newswatch, a new weekly magazine programme that will showcase the best of independent media. Here I explain why it's needed. piped.video/watch?v=O8OBmdrB…
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The Greens have voted comfortably in favour of the motion Zionism is racism. Given the ferocity of the backlash it will provoke I’m sympathetic to anti-Zionist Greens who feel that, tactically, they could have done without it at this time. The problem is Zionism IS racism. If you can work out a way to create an ethnically defined political entity in a territory that, at the start of the process, was almost entirely populated by people of a different ethnicity, without resorting to ethnic cleansing and Apartheid, then you need to tell the Israelis. Because they’ve certainly never worked it out. Zionists’ key weapon is their ability to obfuscate and complicate. This cuts through that and provides the moral clarity they dread. We will live in a time of genocide. If not now, when?
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Very unwise for Sagal Abdi-Wali, Labour’s candidate in Holborn & St Pancras, to campaign with Steve Reed MP. His rabid anger at critics of Israel’s genocide was reprehensible. Listen to actor @nadiasawalha discuss how Reed publicly humiliated her husband was a racist - with NO evidence - for his criticism of Israel in my interview on @zeteouk here: piped.video/vU86gzR09d4?si=-8-Q…
Ok. This has gone too far. What on earth is Sagal Abdi-Wali doing inviting this man to campaign with her? Why is she walking around with a politician whose friends and allies tried to destroy the lives of local residents and journalists in her constituency - to protect Reed and Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer. It is genuinely an outrage he is here. Reed was an absolute central character in the Morgan McSweeney/Labour Together war on democracy that produced Starmer. He is implicated in so much wrongdoing I don't even know where to start. Reed is a key character in The Fraud. He was a director of Labour Together from 2016 to 2022. During this period, Labour Together broke the law by failing to report donations as required by law. They used this money to, among other things, purposefully undermine the electoral prospects of the Labour Party. They wanted to give the Tories five more years of corruption and austerity so that they could take over the Labour Party they believed belong to their tiny, regressive faction. The strategy document setting this out was literally printed out in Steve Reed's office and handed to insiders. I exposed the dodgy money when I took documents to the Sunday Times, and then what they did with it in the Fraud. In response, Labour Together hired a reputation management firm called APCO Worldwide to investigate me and my colleagues. They ended up producing a disgusting dossier filled with outright lies and falsehoods about me, my family, my colleague Andrew Feinstein, and other journalists like Gabriel Pogrund at the Times, who I worked with on the story. They found my home address, in Camden where Abdi-Wali is standing, and found out the name of my partner, and then tried to dig up dirt on her family. They did this while my partner pregnant. Labour Together used this dossier to report me to the security services and then handed its despicable content to journalists. We now know that dossier was given to Morgan McSweeney and distributed at the very highest levels of the Labour Party and was even sent to the Cabinet Office. I had to threaten to sue the Guardian stuff defamation to stop them printing stories based on that less that would have destroyed my reputation and livelihood. Almost exactly a year ago, Reed appeared at an event at Labour conference. The Fraud had not been published. Reed attacked me and the book, saying all sorts of things about my family, which were private. Was Reed quoting from this dossier? Maybe. We also know, for certain, that the Labour Party somehow got a PDF copy of my book as it was sent to print. How? I have no idea. Only a tiny number of people had access to it. Why were they so scared of the book? Because it repeatedly laid bare the misconduct of Reed and his friends. One example? Files showed that Reed received emails criminally hacked from a local journalist in Croydon, who had been hacked to find his sources - who were blowing the whistle on the incompetence of Reed's allies on Croydon council who were driving it to bankruptcy. In government, Reed did extraordinary damage in just two years. He first blocked moves towards nationalising water while at Defra. At Local Government and Housing he passed guidelines to allow mega property developers slash the number of affordable houses they must build in new developments. He passed new laws to stop local council's divesting from companies complicit in genocide - after promising the Board of Deputies in a meeting in 2020 that he would stop local governments exercising their power to boycott Israel. The irony is that it was Labour Together's insane attack on journalists that ended Starmer. Josh Simons, who directed Labour Together when it appointed APCO, resigned this year after being managed out of Cabinet. That allowed Burnham to stand in Makerfield, then as leader - to the fury of Reed, the last Starmerite. Now Sagal is claiming to bring hope again. Well in Camden she's just brought a scumbag to campaign.
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Reed's toxic factionalism also features prominently in The Labour Files.
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Richard Sanders retweeted
Mind-boggling - just mind-boggling Now expected to peak at an extraordinary 4.2C in December
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"There is no Palestine." Israel supporters helpfully turn up to focus minds ahead of the Green Party "Zionism is racism" vote.
A fierce protest erupted outside the Green Party conference in Brighton, with dozens of pro-Israel demonstrators shouting at Green members. The protesters chanted "terrorist supporters off our streets" and "there's no Palestine, there is no Palestine" middleeasteye.net/news/uk-pr…
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What’s really happening on the ground in Ukraine? And how and why did the conflict start in the first place? Prof Anton Lieven from the Quincy Institute joins us on Double Down Newswatch for your Sunday deep dive. piped.video/watch?v=bk79Rbrc…
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In the last 24 hours the Israeli army killed 9 Palestinian civilians in Gaza including 4 women and a child and injured several others.
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Jesus, the Daily Mail is a repellant paper. You would have no idea from this these schools operate in a wasteland where children's former classmates lie buried beneath rubble.
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION for the Mail on Sunday:: I had direct access to people inside Gaza’s education system or those that had been through it who are desperately fighting Hamas’s grip on their children’s minds. One mother, “Shireen,” told me of the moment she realised that ideology had reached her own young son: “When I become a martyr, I will receive houris.” Her ten year told her told her . At enormous personal risk, Gazan educators and parents are fighting back—trying to teach life instead of martyrdom. These are brave people you rarely hear about and must be applauded. Their warning is urgent: the space for independent education is disappearing. If we want a different future for Gaza, we cannot abandon those Gazans fighting for the minds of the next generation. LINK here : mol.im/a/16180853
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Richard Sanders retweeted
This is an appalling & shameful article BELOW by @freedland in @guardian I am a Jewish Green I have read the motion he talks about carefully. It would absolutely NOT lead to expulsions for Jews attending synagogues. This is pure fabrication & fear-mongering The problem with Zionism is that it was based on the idea of “a land without people, for a people without land”. BUT the land was NOT without people. Millions & millions of Palestinians have been persecuted, ethnically cleansed & killed BECAUSE of Zionism Freedland basically IGNORES the Palestinians - the victims of Zionism theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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Richard Sanders retweeted
Watch this important first episode of @MiddleEastEye’s podcast, The Gaza Podcast, featuring Palestinian doctor Maryam Youssef, who describes what it’s like to work as a training doctor in Gaza during the genocide: piped.video/HcrKtCGf-7g?si=Td9l…
🎙️ Hosted by Hussam Tannera, a teacher, father and survivor of the ongoing genocide, MEE's The Gaza Podcast, will centre the voices and experiences of ordinary Palestinians living in the enclave mee.s.gy/vhKA4i
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At least 8 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the early morning in ongoing Israeli attacks
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- @Freedland wheels out the old "Zionism means different things to different people" argument here. In practice Zionism has always meant the brutal dispossession of Palestinians. Palestinians have every right to relate to it as it has been inflicted upon them. "There are leftwing Zionists who think [Israel] should be broadly within the much smaller boundaries that existed before the 1967 war." That's 78% of the territory. From which 80% of the previous inhabitants were expelled. Because they belonged to the wrong ethnicity. theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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Come on! You can dispossess horribly or dispossess nicely. Fair?
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indeed
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Richard Sanders retweeted
Ok. This has gone too far. What on earth is Sagal Abdi-Wali doing inviting this man to campaign with her? Why is she walking around with a politician whose friends and allies tried to destroy the lives of local residents and journalists in her constituency - to protect Reed and Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer. It is genuinely an outrage he is here. Reed was an absolute central character in the Morgan McSweeney/Labour Together war on democracy that produced Starmer. He is implicated in so much wrongdoing I don't even know where to start. Reed is a key character in The Fraud. He was a director of Labour Together from 2016 to 2022. During this period, Labour Together broke the law by failing to report donations as required by law. They used this money to, among other things, purposefully undermine the electoral prospects of the Labour Party. They wanted to give the Tories five more years of corruption and austerity so that they could take over the Labour Party they believed belong to their tiny, regressive faction. The strategy document setting this out was literally printed out in Steve Reed's office and handed to insiders. I exposed the dodgy money when I took documents to the Sunday Times, and then what they did with it in the Fraud. In response, Labour Together hired a reputation management firm called APCO Worldwide to investigate me and my colleagues. They ended up producing a disgusting dossier filled with outright lies and falsehoods about me, my family, my colleague Andrew Feinstein, and other journalists like Gabriel Pogrund at the Times, who I worked with on the story. They found my home address, in Camden where Abdi-Wali is standing, and found out the name of my partner, and then tried to dig up dirt on her family. They did this while my partner pregnant. Labour Together used this dossier to report me to the security services and then handed its despicable content to journalists. We now know that dossier was given to Morgan McSweeney and distributed at the very highest levels of the Labour Party and was even sent to the Cabinet Office. I had to threaten to sue the Guardian stuff defamation to stop them printing stories based on that less that would have destroyed my reputation and livelihood. Almost exactly a year ago, Reed appeared at an event at Labour conference. The Fraud had not been published. Reed attacked me and the book, saying all sorts of things about my family, which were private. Was Reed quoting from this dossier? Maybe. We also know, for certain, that the Labour Party somehow got a PDF copy of my book as it was sent to print. How? I have no idea. Only a tiny number of people had access to it. Why were they so scared of the book? Because it repeatedly laid bare the misconduct of Reed and his friends. One example? Files showed that Reed received emails criminally hacked from a local journalist in Croydon, who had been hacked to find his sources - who were blowing the whistle on the incompetence of Reed's allies on Croydon council who were driving it to bankruptcy. In government, Reed did extraordinary damage in just two years. He first blocked moves towards nationalising water while at Defra. At Local Government and Housing he passed guidelines to allow mega property developers slash the number of affordable houses they must build in new developments. He passed new laws to stop local council's divesting from companies complicit in genocide - after promising the Board of Deputies in a meeting in 2020 that he would stop local governments exercising their power to boycott Israel. The irony is that it was Labour Together's insane attack on journalists that ended Starmer. Josh Simons, who directed Labour Together when it appointed APCO, resigned this year after being managed out of Cabinet. That allowed Burnham to stand in Makerfield, then as leader - to the fury of Reed, the last Starmerite. Now Sagal is claiming to bring hope again. Well in Camden she's just brought a scumbag to campaign.
Lovely evening door-knocking with the wonderful @Sagal_AW Vote Labour on Thursday 8th October 🌹
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Richard Sanders retweeted
Issa has now been released and we have been in touch. Thank you to anyone who shared 🙏🏼✊🏼🇵🇸
❗❗❗ URGENT❗❗❗ I have just been advised that my good friend & award winning Human Rights Defender, @Issaamro, who featured in @louistheroux documentary & known as the Palestinian Gandhi has been kidnapped by the IOF & whereabouts are unknown. Issa was one of my character references in court during my trial last year. Please contact your local MPs & political representatives & ask they demand Israel release him & use any other avenues you have available, including media contacts, to raise awareness. DM me if you have any questions. Thank you #FreeIssaAmro
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"Corbyn era motions" For the likes of @lewis_goodall, @maitlis and @jonsopel it's as if the genocide never happened.
"The Green Party conference is set to be dominated by Corbyn-era motions around Gaza, Zionism, Palestine. "These are dividing this party and risks, on some level, tearing it apart." Have the Greens got lost in 'fractious' politics? thenewsagents.co.uk/article/…
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This is deeply concerning. Issa is one of the bravest, most principled men I have ever met. Plse do what you can to raise awareness of his detention.
❗❗❗ URGENT❗❗❗ I have just been advised that my good friend & award winning Human Rights Defender, @Issaamro, who featured in @louistheroux documentary & known as the Palestinian Gandhi has been kidnapped by the IOF & whereabouts are unknown. Issa was one of my character references in court during my trial last year. Please contact your local MPs & political representatives & ask they demand Israel release him & use any other avenues you have available, including media contacts, to raise awareness. DM me if you have any questions. Thank you #FreeIssaAmro
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Richard Sanders retweeted
Six hours have passed and Issa Amro has not been brought to a police station or given his right to call his lawyer. This is a matter for grave concern, knowing today's practices against Pal activists. We demand to know where Issa is and what are the grounds for his detention!
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