My own contribution to this very special Special Issue is on the meta-politics of climate change. It combines, finally, my climate intervention & governance-object sides, & offers a novel distinction between gov objects that can just b protected, versus more 'malleable' ones🧵👇

Last night's Dispatches on British complicity in the genocide in Gaza by @Basement_Films was excellent. Sadly buried at 11.05 pm and entirely ignored by British media. channel4.com/programmes/brit…

Just been to see LIFE SUPPORT, remarkable film about Gaza as seen through the eyes of British and other international doctors. Utterly harrowing. Genocide. It is on Apple TV but should be on the Beeb. And every MP should see it.

This is an outrage. I will do everything in my power to prevent Morgan McSweeney from being elevated to the House of Lords. I believe there is simply no way he can be considered a fit and proper person, having broken the law for years, and I will place all the evidence at my disposal (including the very substantial new disclosures made to me by Labour Together and other parties) before the House of Lords Appointment Commission. It is now incontrovertible that McSweeney was aware of his legal duties to report donations as required by law to the Electoral Commission while company secretary of Labour Together - but that he failed to do so for two years. I believe that there is compelling evidence that McSweeney chose not to report donations in violation of the law, and that he used these undisclosed donations to procure political power for himself, his allies, fellow directors of Labour Together and Sir Keir Starmer. I have now received disclosures showing incontrovertibly that McSweeney was consulted on and received a copy of the despicable, defamatory APCO Worldwide report that targeted me, my family my colleagues and other journalists because I was revealing McSweeney's history of unlawful conduct and how his unlawful conduct benefited Sir Keir Starmer. I have also received, in the last weeks, confirmation that APCO's disgraceful report on me and others was sent to the Cabinet Office. The Cabinet Office, in plain violation of my rights under data protection laws, is now refusing to reveal precisely how it was transmitted, to who, when and for what reason. This is a patent cover-up by the Cabinet Office. It is utterly inappropriate that the man who helped make Mandelson the ambassador to the US, after engaging in years of dishonesty and unlawful conduct on his own account, should be given a lifetime sinecure deciding our laws. Although it will challenge constitutional convention, Burnham should refuse McSweeney's appointment. At the very least he must refer it to the Appointment Commission. Could there be a more fitting, disgraceful denouement to Starmerism? And will Burnham have the backbone to do the decent thing? Or will he allow his administration to be tainted by the sins of his predecessor?

Keir Starmer is almost a comically wretched, selfish, mendacious man. He spent years campaigning for assisted dying. He made a personal and public pledge to Esther Ranzen, dying of a terminal illness, that he would stay in Parliament to see it through. He then resigns as an MP ten days before Parliament votes on the Bill, which fails by a tiny margin - after telling everyone for over a month that he intended to stay on the back-benches after resigning as PM.

I guess no Palestinians were available for interview. Strange that.

"Baby, an Update: He's Just Died... We got tired of beating them': After a Palestinian prisoner died at Ketziot Prison, investigators uncovered Israeli Prison Service guards boasting about beatings & implicating their commanders, exposing routine abuse" archive.ph/2026.09.08-100041…

This is utterly chilling and Kafkaesque. An outrageous assault of free speech and media independence. The Canary is a legitimate media outlet, independently regulated, and is being driven out of business. This will put its journalists in a position of serious hardship as they can't be paid. And the crazy thing is that they don't even know why the accounts are being closed and have no way of rebutting evidence they can't see! This is the second time The Canary has been targeted by phantom allegations made by faceless actors. This absolutely STINKS of political targeting. A country that shuts down journalism challenging the status quo and putting grannies in prison for holding signs... where are we going?

Huge story about the ethnic cleansing of two million Palestinians that has been completely ignored by @BBCWorld, @nytimes, @thetimes and most of the legacy media "Far-right Israeli minister outlines plan for removal of all Palestinians from Gaza" theguardian.com/world/2026/s…

This piece by the great Amira Hass, published in Haaretz today, is too urgent and important to be behind a paywall, so I've copied the whole thing here. Please read and share. * * * * * * * Israel Isn't Debating a Palestinian State. It's Preparing for Expulsion. Gadi Eisenkot's position on Palestinian statehood is beside the point. Across Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself, the machinery for making Palestinian life impossible is already operating, laying the groundwork for mass expulsion Gadi Eisenkot, the election frontrunner and leader of the Yashar party, has a stance on a Palestinian state that is ultimately irrelevant. What is at stake today is not a "diplomatic solution," but the very existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli forces striving to "erase" them recognize no limits or restraints. Their supporters are too numerous for us to rely solely on the steadfastness and resilience of a people that has already endured expulsion plans carried out by Israel. The world stands by. The left is tiny, weak and hoarse from sounding too many warnings. The anti-Bibi opposition oscillates among downplaying the danger, remaining indifferent to it and outright supporting expulsion. The sporadic condemnations, prompted mainly by something the U.S. ambassador posted on X, are about as useful as a sieve in a rainstorm. The Jewish Phalangists attack constantly and everywhere, not only in Qusra. The debate over one state, two states or a federation is more theoretical than ever. Any agreed-upon solution requires first acknowledging the problem and agreeing on what it is. Too many Jews in Israel have been conditioned to believe that the problem is the very presence in this land of a Palestinian people with roots, historical and economic continuity, cultural capital and material assets, a rich agricultural heritage and a profound love of homeland. "Erasure" is the nightmare solution being written into reality every day. Knesset laws, politicians' declarations, military orders, school textbooks and the holy real estate battalions operating in Gaza, the West Bank and the Negev all work, together and separately, to advance this "solution" diligently and without fear of international condemnation. Israeli policy is directed toward making life unbearable for Palestinians wherever they live, so that their emigration can be described as an act of free will. Within Israel itself, the authorities give Arab crime organizations free rein to arm themselves and kill Palestinian citizens in their homes. In the West Bank, those same Israeli authorities give "God's battalions" free rein to arm themselves, kill and expel, while the official army continues its raids day and night. In devastated and thirsty Gaza, the government and the army cultivate armed militias of criminal collaborators, while Israeli pilots continue to launch missiles of revenge and retribution that claim the lives of still more children. All these testosterone-fueled displays are interconnected. At the same time, Israel is destroying or severely restricting Palestinians' ability to earn a living. In Gaza, that mission has been completed. A "living dead" population of aid recipients, two million people carrying the weight of some 74,000 fresh graves, families and memories, talents and professions, and evaporated savings, is crammed into roughly 150 square kilometers of scorched earth. Creativity, resourcefulness and mutual aid are dwarfed by the scale of the destruction and by Israel's prohibition on rebuilding and recovery. In the West Bank, the Finance Ministry's financial noose is tightening around the necks of approximately three million people and the Palestinian Authority. The systematic theft of revenues is compounded by the army's campaigns of destruction in cities and refugee camps, as well as by the other methods used to prevent Palestinians from cultivating and developing their land: checkpoints, bureaucratic prohibitions, fences and Israeli-Jewish shepherds. Within Israel itself, the "Judaization of the Galilee and Negev" was and remains code for stealing land and resources from Palestinian citizens of Israel. Discrimination against them in allocations, subsidies and employment, along with building prohibitions and demolitions, has always featured prominently in official policy within the Green Line. Let me reiterate: The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger. Too many active forces are creating that danger: Israel's military might and capabilities; the cult of military service under all conditions and under every government; obedience as a value; weapons and military attacks as the default modus operandi; the normalization of PTSD among soldiers and of soldiers dying by suicide; the attractions of a military career and the doors it opens; the lure of an affordable villa in a Galilee exclusionary community or a settler suburb in Samaria; the falsehoods of official and unofficial propaganda; indifference to the hell on earth Israel has created in the Gaza Strip; denial of 60 years of occupation and forced rule; the Pavlovian response, "But October 7"; the synergy among the army, the government, the rabbis and the kippa-wearing militias in the West Bank; equanimity in the face of Lebanon's destruction; disregard for the occupation of more parts of Syria; the normalization of expulsion discourse; justice and education systems tainted by secular and religious racism; and the army of jailers who abuse thousands of Palestinian prisoners, both under orders and by choice. Together, these and similar forces are creating the material, ideological and psychological infrastructure within Israeli-Jewish society for another mass expulsion of Palestinians and for what might accompany it: mass slaughter. The heroes of the settler militias openly declare that expulsion is their goal. They clearly recognize the readiness of large segments of Israeli-Jewish society to participate in carrying it out, actively or passively, directly or indirectly. Through their daily provocations and crimes, committed in broad daylight and made possible only by institutional support, the Phalangists constantly seek to provoke a Palestinian act of rage and revenge that "succeeds," so that it can be exploited as the match that ignites a new holy war. The Jewish Phalangists and the right-wing organizations that fuel them are counting on broad mobilization, including from the leaders, voters and supporters of Yashar and the liberal Democrats party, for a war that could already be given the slogan: "One people, one army, one land cleansed of Arabs."

Astonishing fact: the BBC has not broadcast an iv with Francesca Albanese since Dec '23. Almost 3 yrs of genocide & they've not once felt the need to talk to the UN's Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. /1

Keir Starmer's phantom constituency was Labour Together and he was their phantom "representative". When this fell apart, he had to go. Please read 'The Fraud' by Paul Holden. @pauleholden Here it is: orbooks.com/catalog/the-frau…

Israel sends in trained terrorists to invade #Palestine.

An antisemitic last few lines in the Times editorial today which both states that action against Israeli violations of international law (settlements) is drowning out the "voices of Britain's roughly 300,000 Jews" - this identifies the interests and views of British Jews ....

Burnham is planning to sanction some Israeli settlements. But who invited construction bids for the E1 illegal West Bank settlement? The state of Israel. Who should therefore be sanctioned, in order to exert any meaningful influence? The state of Israel. thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…

"Officials said there was a significant risk that “legitimate” Israeli businesses would be hit by the ban and that it risked undermining trade with Israel more broadly." Just the worst instinct of the Labour soft-left on this. It's "controls on immigration" mugs in response to genocide and escalating settler violence. Targeting ALL Israeli businesses is the bloody point and the only way to force any change. Some half-baked settlement bans and "targeted sanctions" on settlers who couldn't give a damn is worse than doing nothing. It shows Israel the we can see their horrors and their genocide and we're not willing to do anything meaningful about it. It's genuinely galling this is being briefed as a "beefing up" of sanctions when it's political and economic impact is either marginal or counterproductive. A four year old boy was just killed in a bombing hours ago in Gaza and the government is pussy-footing about how to minutely focus sanctions on the smallest target so "legitimate" businesses like Elbit and Rafael can carry on as usual. Stupid and maddening. BTW, Apartheid didn't end because the world only sanctioned goods produced by white-owned factories in bantustans. It ended because the world said that the apartheid state, their officials and statesmen (and it was all men), citizens, sportspeople, academics and companies would be excluded from world affairs until apartheid ended. People forget the scope and scale of sanctions on apartheid South Africa, including the impact of disinvestment campaigns and cultural boycotts. It was a truly global movement that sought to totally isolate Pretoria (often against the wishes of the likes of Thatcher and Reagan). Ultimately when South African businesses realised that their profitability would suffer or collapse altogether, this broke the political coalition that saw benefit in maintaining the system.

Zia's little joke, presumably, because the truth is:

Disappointed the BBC cancelled my interview on Israel's killing of Hind Rajab 2 producers eagerly reached out. They confirmed the time & one called to prepare a brief for the anchor She asked me whether Israel's announcement is positive, I explained in detail it was a cover up. The IDF is blaming the killing of Hind, her uncle, aunt & 4 cousins on the family itself for trying to flee by car & on the ambulance sent to rescue her for "failures in the co-ordination of the movement." None of this is remotely true! The Red Cross immediately informed the IDF about 5-year-old Hind who was hiding in that motionless car, & they requested permission from Israel to allow an ambulance to rescue them. After multiple long hours, Israel granted greenlight to the ambulance & provided them with a designated route on a GPS to drive on. As soon as the ambulance reached Hind's car, the IDF ambushed & bombed them immediately with an American made anti-tank missile then opened fire on Hind's car. The car was hit with 355 bullets. Israel then kept that area under lockdown for 12 days, & prevented anyone from approaching. Hind's mom went daily to the Ahli baptist hospital hoping to find her daughter, until her lifeless body was brought in along with the charred remains of the ambulance men. Israel then claimed after an "initial investigation" that its troops were NEVER in that area to begin with. They maintained that claim for 2 years despite ample recordings & satellite images debunking this lie. The only reason Israel is now making this new announcement of a deeper investigation is to shield its soldiers & generals from the International Criminal Court by invoking the principle of "complementarity;" that the ICC cannot investigate a state that is already investigating itself in good faith. I told the BBC producer Israel today also quietly shut down the investigation into the triple tap killing of American, Canadian, British, Australian & Polish citizens in the WCK massacre. Israel blamed the massacre on the aid workers themselves for "deviating from the predesignated route" & for hiring an armed security guard "without informing the IDF" (both claims where debunked by WCK themselves, who had coordinates their every step with the IDF). I told the producer the Israeli commander responsible for this massacre, Nochi Mendel, is a fanatical settler who had signed a petition calling for starving Gaza & that he was celebrated by settler leaders & supported by Israeli government leaders after what he did. Mendel even received a box of chocolate from the settler council's leader & a letter of support for what he did. Mendel was initially dismissed by the IDF & blamed for the massacre, but was quickly & quietly reinstated & promoted in the Defence Ministry as the head of the settlements and national infrastructure unit. It's abundantly clear Israel is NOT serious about prosecuting any of the atrocities committed in Gaza. Since the genocide began, only two soldiers were punished by the IDF; one for microwaving a living frog & another for cooking sausages in the army kitchen on Shabbat. The producer asked me: What about the 150 cases the IDF said are pending review? I answered: it's just a number designed to give the appearance of seriousness, but it's essentially meaningless. If it took the IDF two whole years to admit the simplest of facts that the entire world had already known, which is that their troops were the ones who fired on Hind Rajab's car, how do you expect them to do with the remaining cases that are not as high profile? Five minutes after the call, the producer wrote me that they decided to cancel the interview & will not even host anyone else to comment on the issue, & instead they'll play archival footage!

I remember my father, a Holocaust survivor, being attacked for being a "bad Jew", the "wrong kind of Jew", a "self-hating Jew", for supporting Palestinian human rights. Plus ça change, eh.🤷‍♀️ Full solidarity with @ZackPolanski and all human beings supporting human rights, really.

I would take a thread and a needle and I’d interweave love into our society.” Jason Arday (2023 @Channel4News interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy) facebook.com/watch/?v=178514…

Alonso is right. It’s ironic that Eve Barlow cites Lemkin because he analysed genocide as a method of occupation, and his approach is highly relevant to Israeli rule in Palestine, as I discuss in my new open-access article: digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/v… After the last sentence that Alonso quotes, Lemkin went on to say that the imposition of the perpetrators’ national pattern “may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.” Mass murder or extermination was not even one of the most typical methods. This debate shows once again the pitfalls for pro-Israeli commentators with little knowledge about genocide wading into a literature they don’t understand.