truthaholics

Truth2Power Counter-narrative The Law is Broken! Respect Existence Or Expect Resistance. Welfare Not Warfare! Who Should Respect Whom? @truthrazor backup #BDS

[truthaholics @truthaholics]

Complicity and Criminalisation: How the US and UK Arm the Gaza Genocide While Shielding a Pipeline of Death https://t.co/B5AZ9ujIOn

[truthaholics @truthaholics]

O’HAGAN, GREENSTEIN AND THE LINE THE STATE MUST NOT CROSS https://t.co/hCNnxJMwhP via @truthaholics

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

The problem the Labour Friends of Israel government faces with juries is that at this point in the Genocide,
in any random gathering of 12 sane citizens,
at least 3 will think that destroying Israeli weapons factories is necessary.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

In Ukraine, Zelensky's Chief of Staff and other presidential aides stole £2.5 million of public money
to post bail for Zelensky's Energy Minister awaiting trial for corruption.

Yes, you read that right.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

A constant theme of multiple trials of Palestine supporters recently has been extreme limitations on what the jury are allowed to hear and know.

In Tony's trial the jury have been sent out of the court as much as they have been present.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

My guess as to things the judge banned from the jury in the Greenstein trial:

The history of Israel/Palestine
Previous Israeli attacks on Gaza
Greenstein's own writings
Israel's human rights record
Genocide
Casualty figures in Gaza

Things she allowed:

The Israeli version of the events of October 7

Please note this is a guess. I have no information from inside the courtroom and I have seen nothing published. It would be illegal to report what she has banned, lest a jury member see it.

I only know as reported she has placed substantial restrictions.

This is just my expectation of what she will have banned. After the trial we can see how accurate I was or not once reporting restrictions are lifted.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Bloody Hell Israel is even losing Radek Sikorski.

Did he clear this with the missus?

[Defend our Lawyers @DefendourLawyer]

Rajiv Menon KC gives interview to @DuncanGardham at The Observer about the contempt proceedings against him - denying that he invoked jury equity, and revealing that the proceedings prevented him from seeing his father before he died.

https://t.co/SWdykNhFeT

[Solo Monk @JJKALE2]

"The Israel lobby wrote itself a dictionary. Governments adopted it, regulators enforced it and police made arrests under it. Then it met a judge who required evidence, and it collapsed in an afternoon."

Andrew Brown on the Fagan judgement.

https://t.co/1JDhgmEQMC

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

If you’re an Israeli occupier, you can terrorize Palestinians, steal their land, burn their trees, kill their animals, shoot, paralyze and kill them, and you’re called a “settler.”

If you’re Palestinian and try to defend yourself against any of this, you’re called a “terrorist.”

[Tanita Tikaram💙 @tanita_tikaram]

How is what's happening in US to children not a bigger story in the UK ? Over 6200 kids in ICE camps Imprisoning families will happen here too on an industrial scale if Restore / Reform are in power , they want a UK ICE . Why aren’t UK media questioning them about it ?

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

New Zealand's PM get embarrassed by this courageous man who shouts at him that he supports the Gaza Genocide and the blood of murdered children is on his hands.

Members of the audience even clap.

No one supports these disgusting War Crimes.

[John Wight @JohnWight1]

'If the devil exists, it is amongst those who prohibit anaesthetics entering Gaza. It is amongst those who deliberately starve children to death, those who bomb tents and burn children alive, and those who call Palestinians “human animals”.

This was Tony Greenstein's finest moment. God bless him.

Gallery applauds as Tony Greenstein is unanimously acquitted of inviting support for terrorism https://t.co/IyHGxlevBg

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

Trump threatened to use the U.S. military to intervene in the bond market. What exactly would that entail? Would the U.S. force other countries not to sell their U.S. bonds?

[John Simpson @JohnSimpsonNews]

More than 100 French and British former diplomats have said Palestine is being erased in front of the world’s eyes and called for urgent action including trade and arms sales bans to press Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

There's one interesting dimension of the US's sanctions on the ICC 👇 that, as far as I saw, no media caught.

The US has sanctioned many ICC officials over the past few years but Abdoulaye Seye - one of 2 persons sanctioned this time (the other being ICC President Tomoko Akane) - was the first non-elected one.

So there is something quite unique about his case.

Seye's role at the ICC? Senior Trial Lawyer and Head of the Team handling the Situation in the State of Palestine (I know, quite a mouthful): in other words, the guy is the ICC's lead lawyer on the Palestine case.

Already, that alone should make it absolutely obvious that these sanctions have nothing to do, as Marco Rubio wrote, with "protecting Americans" but everything to do with protecting Israel.

But that's not the only thing special about Abdoulaye Seye.

See, ICC judges are elected officials: they serve non-renewable nine-year terms, and these terms are staggered so that one-third of the bench (6 judges out of 18) comes up for replacement every three years. All 124 member countries vote by secret ballot.

And that's where things get interesting: the next election is coming up in December this year and Seye is actually candidate to becoming a judge, proposed by his country of Senegal (https://t.co/z8fNaXMqME).

There are 14 candidates running for the 6 judge seats (https://t.co/6D2AXA7tCF) and Seye is the only one sanctioned by the U.S., which actually puts him at enormous practical disadvantages versus the other candidates.

For one thing, very concretely, the election takes place at the UN in New York, and being on the US sanctions list means being physically barred from entering the United States.

And it's not just about the vote itself. The whole campaign plays out in New York over months: in particular during the UN General Assembly in September, the High-level meetings, the candidate public roundtable interviews on November 4–5, and the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) session in December. That's where candidates meet delegations and lobby for votes.

The other 13 candidates will be freely doing this. Seye cannot do any of it.

So there is actually a huge election meddling angle to this: with these sanctions, the US is effectively rigging the race by banning one candidate from the entire campaign trail.

Perhaps more importantly, it also re-raises the question of whether the US is a fit place to host international institutions at all.

It's painfully obvious that a host country that weaponizes its territory to influence elections at international institutions (which, in the case of the ICC, it doesn't even belong to) is not an appropriate ground: for their own survival, these institutions should be as far away and as insulated from the US as possible.

It also raises the crucial question of how the rest of the world should respond.

The insanity here is that almost no other country globally - be in the West or the Global South - stands with the US on this, save for a handful of exceptions (like Israel). Yet they all behave like deer in the headlights (or, as we say in French, like "ostriches burying their head in sand") and do absolutely nothing concrete about it besides meaningless "we're preoccupied" statements.

The EU's behavior is particularly egregious in this regard. They too host a number of international institutions, such as... the ICC! ICC bench elections may be occurring in NYC but it's in The Hague, Netherlands, that the institution is physically located (I visited the place last year with my daughters: https://t.co/WyUgXUylj8).

So, given that they oppose these sanctions and literally host the court, you'd expect the EU to take some measures to protect the institution and the officials targeted by the sanctions.

All the more because they have a tool designed EXACTLY for this purpose: the so-called "blocking statute", a regulation that prohibits EU entities from complying with extraterritorial US sanctions.

On its own website the EU describes it as "an important achievement of unified EU action to protect EU operators, whether individuals or companies, from the extra-territorial application of third country laws" (https://t.co/W3IbD6Ummg)

It's perfect: activate the blocking statutes, and European banks can no longer close ICC officials' accounts, cancel their credit cards, or freeze their transactions just because Washington says so.

It's exactly what China did (they have their own "blocking statute") when the US started sanctioning Chinese refineries to prevent them from buying Iranian oil (see ): they activated their blocking statutes, making it illegal for Chinese companies to comply with these US sanctions and there is jack shit the US can do about it. It's a very powerful legal tool.

Yet, incomprehensively, the EU refuses to activate it. The blocking statute sits there, purpose-built but completely unused, while European companies have no choice but to enforce America's sanctions.

It's insane: the EU literally standing by while Washington destroys the lives of people on European soil - they oppose it, have the perfect tool to fight it, but they stand by. Again: incomprehensible.

All the more incomprehensible because it's actually a golden geopolitical opportunity for Europe: if Europe wants to be taken seriously as an independent actor on the world stage - as it keeps saying it does - there is literally no easier win than this. Activate a tool you already have, protect an institution you already host, defend a principle you already claim to believe in.

The fact that even this is too much unfortunately tells the rest of the world everything it needs to know about what European "sovereignty" actually means in practice.

[Palestine Solidarity Campaign @PSCupdates]

NOW: We're protesting in an ASDA supermarket, demanding Israeli goods and Coca-Cola are removed from the shelves.

While the government “considers” banning goods from Israel’s illegal settlements, we're acting.

By selling this produce, supermarkets profit from Israel’s crimes 🧵

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

Now the Greenstein trial has concluded, the Canary can reveal the extent to which the judge interfered — but the jury weren't swayed

Via @financialeyes
https://t.co/HK9MLXYXO3

[Clare Hinchcliffe @Subversivite]

Wow!! Tony Greenstein's closing speech will surely go down in history, while the bias of a Zionist judge is laid bare. So happy to hear of this acquittal 🇵🇸

[Alon Mizrahi @alon_mizrahi]

This letter shows us one thing with brutal clarity: if you are anything in the West - if you have any position in any establishment, you are morally and intellectually as good as dead. This civilization and all its institutions are rotten to the core, and highly contagious

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

End all military cooperation with Israel.

https://t.co/mYFFLlUd56