GOVERNMENT WANTS TO ADD ‘LIFE SCIENCES’ TO THE LIST CREATED TO REPRESS CLIMATE PROTEST ~ Nathan McGovern ~ Whether it’s blocking roads, destroying Israel-bound weapons, or rescuing puppies from animal testing, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Parliament and the Courts are out to get you. The 2020’s have been a story of repeated anti-protest legislation, ping-ponging between the Houses of Commons and Lords, until painfully becoming law If anybody thought this would come to an end when a Labour supermajority swept into power in 2024, they couldn’t have been more wrong. Now, the Government is attempting to further bolster the Public Order Act 2023 by adding Life Sciences to its list of Key National Infrastructure, threatening a year in prison and unlimited fines on those who disrupt live experimentation on animals. The Conservative Government’s Police, Crimes, Sentencing, and Courts Bill presented to the Commons in 2021 started with 70 pages of reforms dealing with violent and sexual crimes, then swerved to a full-frontal assault on freedom of expression, assembly, and action. While the Lords rejected many of these measures, the Bill became law in 2022 and police powers suddenly expanded beyond comprehension. The sentencing for anyone convicted of causing a public nuisance jumped to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The Public Order Bill, presented in 2022’s Queen’s Speech, essentially repackaged and built on just those aspects of the PCSC Bill that were rejected by the Lords, and by the time it became law in 2023 the Public Order Act criminalised “locking-on,” introduced “Serious Disruption Prevention Orders,” and formalised a list of — seemingly sacred — Key National Infrastructures. Directly targeting Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, this list included motorways, the fossil fuel industry, and the print media. Labour’s current attempt to expand this to Life Sciences (read: animal testing) is a direct response to successful animal liberation actions, in in particular at MBR Acres, previously known as Interfauna. This is a facility that breeds thousands of beagle puppies yearly for use in toxicology and other testing. In 2022, on two separate occasions, Animal Rising successfully rescued puppies from the site; a total of 23 dogs were saved, and 20 people subsequently charged with burglary. In the first of five jury trials for these actions the verdict was ‘guilty’, but in the second which has just ended it was ‘not guilty’. It hasn’t been easy for the Government. Their attempt to smuggle change through secondary legislation has failed, and the decision will ultimately go to a full vote in the Commons tomorrow. Many MPs from all parties have indicated they intend to vote no. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathan McGovern is Beagle Rescue Campaign Lead at Animal Rising The post Animal testing to be designated Key Infrastructure appeared first on Freedom News.

IN BERLIN, RADICAL SPACES FACING CAPITALIST EXPROPRIATION CONTINUE TO RESIST WITH SOLIDARITY AND A REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ It starts with a match, a small wooden stick squeezed into the cracks of our urban decay. It can take a drill, a dozen mates and material for barricades to get it going. Don’t talk to bailiffs and keep the door locked. Landlord lives in Barbados, the neighbourhood lives in hell. Rents have doubled in ten years and only 1% of homes are ‘on the market’. Cops are at the door, the heating is cut. In the early hours of the morning on Habersaathstrasse, the cops break down the door of number 46 in an attempt to evict it’s residents. “The cops have entered to ‘prevent danger’ and yes, it’s true, we pose a threat to vacant property managers, speculators, and their accomplices,” wrote the residents of Habersaath46 (Ha46) “but the violence is coming from those who drag people out of their apartments at 6am.” “The operation ended in our hallway. No-one was evicted,” Ha46 reported to the community. The next day, the police came back with a construction crew and attempted to seal the basement door shut, which acts as their emergency exit. The police had earlier confiscated fire extinguishers, making the entire situation a potential fire risk to the tenants. They failed in this attempt and so came back days later to brick up the exit. For the next weeks, the residents of Ha46 have reported that the law firm von Trott zu Solz Lammek has turned the area into a security fortress for their clients Arcadia Estates, using private security to make apartments systematically uninhabitable as a tactic to prevent re-occupation. The law firm is infamous among squatters in Berlin for their reputation of successful evictions by any means. Across the world it is the same story as the corporations owning our homes are international. Yet the solutions can be found locally in our neighborhoods as we resist evictions and intimidation. This revolutionary dynamic between international and local is what is known as the Interkiezionale. In May of this year, squatters attempted to re-occupy the Meuterei (Mutiny) in Kreuzberg, “a place that was not only a bar, it was a place of collective meeting and sharing,” the squatters wrote. “By re-opening the Meuterei one more time, we want to bring to the present those collective moments that brought closer the idea that other worlds are possible.” “We fought in the streets to reclaim our subversive and political ideas through the defence of Liebig34, Potse, Syndikat, Meuterei, Köpi Wagenplatz and Rigaer94. We remember those times with nostalgia, but also with the powerful thoughts that if one time we were able to confront the state and his mercenaries with fierceness, we can and will do it again,” they wrote. REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY A year ago today, an explosion ripped apart an apartment three floors up on Arkadias Street in Athens. Marianna Manoura was inside the apartment when the detonation occurred. “Time froze, everything went black,” Marianna wrote, “and I was unable to move.” Two figures appeared and offered Marianna help as she went looking for her comrade. “I showed them the place where I last saw my companion, the place where our guilty gazes met, glances filled with rage at the world we live in, filled with faith and hunger for moments of true freedom” Marianna wrote in the aftermath. The anarchist Kyriakos Xymitiris was processing explosives in the next room when a technical issue lead to an early detonation and his death. October 31 commemorations in Athens “Although the thread of my comrade’s action would be abruptly cut short, his life and fighting choices would be a historic flash of determined resistance, perseverance, and dedication,” Marianna writes about her late comrade from prison. She was taken to Evangelismos Hospital following the explosion and was unconscious for the next three days. As Marianna regained consciousness, the Greek authorities began to isolate her and held her under 24/hr constant police watch. As is usual with militant partisans, the Greek authorities decided to prosecute the anarchists under terror legislation based on Article 187a. Marianna and Kyriakos were classified as a terrorist organisation and their apartment was defined as a ‘yiafka’ or a kind of crime operation centre. This would pull two other individuals into the investigation to face charges connected to the anarchists, as well as two other anarchists who had no connection to the original defendants. A flimsy case, as usual. To push the narrative, the Greek media did a circus run of pop-psychology takes on the defendants, speculations on class origins and outright character assassination, repeated into a moral panic projected onto a largely religious audience. The role of the Greek state after these anarchists are detained is to cut off prison solidarity and activism by attacking those close to them – seeking total political and social isolation. “But the question is,” writes Marianna, “Who will name whom a terrorist? Who will judge whom?” The role of the mainstream media is to depoliticize resistance into fear-based narratives, projecting the paranoia of the state directly onto the audience. The explosion on Arkadias Street was the incendiary end to the life of an anarchist who was known by the people who survived him beyond militancy and armed revolution. Kyriakos was known as participating locally and internationally. “For a long time Kyriakos walked together with us in the struggles of Berlin,” write the squatters of Meuterei. “Together we defended our self-organised spaces and fought against the process of gentrification that consumes this city and changes it’s social geography benefiting some, while expelling the poor and marginalised people.” “Through Interkiezionale we confronted this process fighting together with other collectives against evictions.” Kyriakos was part of the Meuterei collective before it’s eviction in 2020. “Our community here has changed time and again,” the residents of Rigaer94 wrote this month, currently under the threat of eviction. “We remember you as a tireless fighter,” they write on the coming anniversary of the death of Kyriakos, “as a friend, as a guest and part of our community. You brought people together instead of losing yourself in the stream of the metropolis.” INVESTIGATE YOUR LANDLORD In 2019, I was hiding in an apartment in Neukölln when my local bar announced they were facing eviction from their British landlords. The Syndikat, and Meuterei in neighboring Kreuzberg, were safe havens for me as well as other “danger zones” (kriminalitätsbelasteter orte) designated by the state. “A place to celebrate our friendship and comradeship,” as the squatters of Mutiny wrote. Further investigation revealed that the landlords of the Syndikat is Pears Global, a multi-billion network of 200 companies, subdivisions and shell companies in tax havens like Luxembourg. One company that had gained notoriety in the UK was Bankway, known for focusing evictions on the disabled, elderly, unemployed and single parents. “We are not social landlords” defended Nick Stanley, Bankway’s Estate Manager, “we’re in it to make money. The idea is to maximise the income from the building.” After years of disputes over the ownership of Rigaer94, the Berlin senate in 2020 failed to clarify the identity of the landlord who was seemingly hiding behind a letterbox company based in the British tax haven of Guernsey. Since then there have been multiple police raids on the building in order, according to authorities, to establish the identities of the residents of Rigaer94. 28 August 2025 — The police forcibly entered Rigaerstraße 94 and broke into all apartments. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv In reality, the police raids only served to attempt to isolate the house and intimidate its occupants, despite the fact that the Berlin authorities could not prove the identity of the individual who owned the building. The owner of Lafone Investments Limited was kept secret through a system of trustees, those who own the company on paper on behalf of those who would rather not be named. Leonid Medved is one of these people. A Ukrainian citizen born in Berlin, Leonid is the managing director of 20 companies all based at the same address in Berlin, along with Igor Lipiak. Some of these companies operate vending machine casinos, others like Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH exploit the property market. Since Lafone’s trustee stepped down, its managing director is now Leonid Medved. Rigaer94 is now in an absurd situation where the landlord demands anonymity and ownership, and his lawyer is not even sure if they own the property. “I think we even have a house in Germany… I’m not sure though,” Bernau told the court. “We know we have a house here,” Rigaer94 said in response. “We are sure of it. And we will not give up this house without a fight.” A few days before the raid on Rigaer94 this year, a group of people broke into the offices of Leonid Medved and leaked a trove of documents that gives “insight into the machinations of Lafone Investments Limited, Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH, and the coordinated efforts of police and politicians with the real estate industry,” they said in a statement. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv As part of the publication of the documents, it was revealed that Igor Lipniak was named by German tax authorities and accused of distributing laptops with software for manipulation of slot machines, cheating both the tax man and in his own gambling halls. “Here, the destruction of existence is enriched,” those behind the leaking of the documents wrote on the damage of gambling halls on the community. INTERKIEZIONALE! “Right from the start of the proceedings, the court announced its clear tendency – Lafone… seems unable to act legally in Germany,” Rigaer94 write. Despite this clear violation of the process, the judge actually offered suggestions on how to resolve the issues and become a legal entity to operate in Germany. This corruption is open for anyone to see, if they could only look. “Solidarity from those whom joined the manifestation in front of the court, those who visited Rigaer94 to reconstruct what was broken after the raid, as well as actions in other cities,” R94 writes on actions  by the community following police repression of the radical space. On September 7, the windows and doors of a restaurant on Orianientburger Strasse were smashed in. Activists used heavy tools to enter through the closed shutters and spray painted “R94 Bliebt!” on the facade. “To avoid traumatising underpaid employees,” they wrote in a statement, “we decided not to conduct the operation during business hours.” The restaurant is owned by the daughter of Leonid Medved. One day later in the Siemensstadt district, four vans belonging to the multi-national real estate corporation Vonovia went up in flames. “For the majority of people in Berlin,” activists wrote in a statement, “the housing situation is an existential catastrophe… rents in the “lower market segment” rose by 11.6% in Berlin.” Vonovia made a profit of €984 million before taxes in the first half of this year. “We sent Vonovia a message in a language they understand,” activists wrote. “We used the tired-and-tested Berlin model as the incendiary device,” referring to a popular time delay igniter. Yet beyond the fire and fury of armed resistance is a politics of solidarity that brings us together as anarchists. “Solidarity is the weapon of the people,” Marianna writes, still in pretrial detention in Korydallos. October 31 must be remembered “as a day of struggle, a day of responsibility, a moment of resistance. Because struggle doesn’t want compromises, it doesn’t want barriers or egos. There’s no room for laws, conventions, or limits. Because struggle requires determination and vision. It requires faith and commitment, it requires true relationships and dedication.” “Because struggle requires humble and willing people. People who are essentially rebellious and consistent,” Marianna writes, “People like Kyriakos.” The post When they kick at our front door appeared first on Freedom News.

WIDE COALITION OF TEACHERS’ AND PARENTS’ GROUPS ORGANISED PROTEST OVER SCHOOL CONDITIONS ~ Kit Dimou ~ Six children required medical care at a nearby clinic and one 7-year-old boy ended up in hospital after police tear-gassed and attacked a protest at a primary school in Exarcheia, Athens last Thursday (23 October). MAT and OPKE riot police set on a demonstration of around 100 parents, teachers, union members and schoolchildren from the 36th Primary School with beatings, tear gas and flash bangs. The protest, outside of the regional Directorate of Primary Education, opposed plans to merge school classes and highlighted lack of care for children with disabilities.  The protest was called groups including the Parents Federation, all the teachers’ associations from this part of the city, as well as the parents’ associations of 15 separate schools. Nevertheless, the police and right-wing press blame the incidents exclusively on the presence of parents who are members of the two local collectives “NO metro in Exarcheia Square” and “Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill”, accusing them of trying to break police lines and force their way into the building. While anarchist parents and children may have been present, other workers and parents in the protest were anything but anti-authoritarian. As stated by the Strefi hill assembly, parents and collective members are not “horrible aliens from Andromeda” but “parents who fight for their children as they have learnt to fight for their neighbourhood, Hill, park and square“. This is not the first time the schoolchildren at 36th Primary face violence and tear gas. In April, following the eviction of the “Exostrefis” squat on its first birthday, a number of cultural and educational activities took place around Strefi hill, with the support of the School’s parents’ assocation. The climbing and tightrope walking activities were interrupted violently by riot police.  So far, the parents’ attempts to bring this up in the supposedly “progressive” Athens City Council have fallen on deaf ears. The post Athens: Police tear-gas schoolchildren, blame anarchist parents appeared first on Freedom News.

STATE BLAMES FABRICATED “CHAOS STAR” ANARCHIST NETWORK FOR INSTIGATING GRASSROOTS UPRISING ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Anarchists in Indonesia are calling for international support for comrades imprisoned and tortured following the August uprisings. In the wake of mass protests against corruption and inequality, around 900 people are being detained and named as suspects, many of them anarchists or sympathizers, spread across various cities. The latest solidarity call named over 40 anarchists arrested in West Java, accused of being part of the so-called “Chaos Star” network, which the government describes as a “foreign-backed anarchist group”. According to an activist source, the arrests were triggered by social media posts showing actions such as Molotov cocktail attacks. The detainees face charges ranging from property destruction to online incitement. While many are still awaiting trial, some of the accused face up to 20 years in prison. The imprisoned comrades have been isolated, and their access to legal representation has been severely restricted. Many are young, and their families report widespread torture and abuse, with some forced to give false confessions. Among those accused of “leading” the network and the recent anarchist uprisings are Bima Satria Putra, an anarchist jailed since 2021 on cannabis charges. Recently transferred to solitary confinement at Lapas Merah Mata, his family and lawyers have been blocked from seeing him. Another is Reyhard Rumbayan, known as Eat, who was arrested in Makassar on 23 September 2025 and is currently held in solitary confinement and denied contact with others. The unrest began in August 2025, when widespread anger against former military leader Prabowo Subianto’s regime sparked protests that quickly turned violent, and later spread to Nepal and the Philippines as well as Morocco, Madagascar and Peru. The Indonesian government has since responded with mass arrests, media manipulation, and brutal policing. The crackdown is seen as part of a broader government effort to suppress anarchist movements, echoing past anti-communist purges. International solidarity is crucial, as anarchists call on supporters to send letters and postcards to the imprisoned comrades. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Verified machine-assisted edit. Image courtesy of CrimethInc.com   The post Crackdown in Indonesia, anarchists appeal for solidarity appeared first on Freedom News.

MASS DEMONSTRATIONS ACCUSE GOVERNMENT OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND CORRUPTION ~ from ANRed ~ Tensions have surged in Peru after interim president José Jerí Oré declared a 30-day state of emergency in Lima and the neighbouring province of Callao, citing what he called a “crisis of public security”, days after police repression left one young demonstrator dead. The state of emergency suspends the right to assembly and allows joint patrols by the police and armed forces. It also restricts visits to prisons and permits warrantless searches. More than ten million people are affected in Lima and Callao alone. Civil liberties groups warn that the decree amounts to the militarisation of public life, aimed less at crime than at quelling dissent. Jerí, appointed by the congressional coalition that forced out president Dina Boluarte earlier this month, justified the measure as “the beginning of change” in tackling violent crime. Yet critics note that it follows an eruption of street protests rejecting his unelected government. Peru has cycled through seven presidents since 2016, a sign of the profound political and institutional crisis gripping the country. Last week, thousands marched through Lima and other cities to denounce what they describe as a “mafioso and authoritarian pact”. Witnesses report that police opened fire on demonstrators near Plaza Francia, killing 24-year-old rapper and community organiser Eduardo Mauricio Ruíz Sáenz, known as Trvko. According to eyewitnesses, an undercover officer fired several shots after being confronted by protesters. The National Human Rights Coordinator confirmed 15 people injured, including four journalists, while the Health Ministry acknowledged one death and three critical cases. Public outrage has mounted ahead of a new national mobilisation called for today (Saturday 25 October) by the youth collective Generación Z, demanding justice for Trvko and the lifting of the emergency decree. The demonstration will again converge on Plaza Francia, while pro-government groups have announced a counter-rally in the Campo de Marte park. The government’s response has been unapologetic. Interior minister Vicente Tiburcio, a former counter-insurgency officer under the Fujimori regime, denied police responsibility and branded student protesters “violentists”. Meanwhile, Jerí used social media to praise the “firmness” of the police while accusing demonstrators of seeking chaos. Despite the repression, public anger shows no sign of abating. “They are killing our youth to defend a corrupt pact,” read one banner carried through Lima’s centre this week. For many Peruvians, the murder of Trvko has come to symbolise the enduring impunity of a political class clinging to power through force. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine edit. Photo: José Francisco Rubio / Contranoticia.pe The post Peru: State of emergency after young rapper killed in protests appeared first on Freedom News.

THE GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA ARE PRETENDING TO SUPPORT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY—BY OBEYING THE FAR RIGHT ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have just been rioting in Tel Aviv itself, with the match banned as a result. For the previous 72 hours, the British public were once again instructed, by the media and politicians, not to believe their lying eyes. Forget videos of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters running riot in Amsterdam in November, or of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters beating someone in Athens unconscious in March last year: banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from a game at Aston Villa is, according to the UK’s prime minister, antisemitic. It did not need confirmation from the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs that the British government is now entirely obeying the diktats of the State of Israel. “A line must be drawn” Gideon Sa’ar reports having told foreign secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday (19 October), listing the measures necessary further to spread fear among, and alienate, British Jewish people. This included the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Sa’ar: “expressed our clear and unequivocal expectation that this disgraceful decision be revoked and that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans be allowed to attend the game”. The resulting campaign is just the most recent in a redoubled wave of attacks on fact and community, clearly at the Israeli state’s behest. It is worth examining the run up to it. At the start of October, thirteen UK citizens were among those kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli military. Millions of people worldwide had been watching live-streamed footage from the Global Sumud Flotilla; around 50 small, civilian boats on a humanitarian mission to break Israel’s 17 year-long blockade of Gaza. By 2 am on Thursday 2nd, around 13 of the boats had been boarded and seized by Israel, with the rest still under pursuit. In total, 462 peaceful flotilla activists, from around 45 countries, were eventually taken hostage. Many would later report being tortured. By Thursday evening, emergency protests in support of the flotilla crew had erupted across the world, through the whole of Europe through to Dhaka, Rio and beyond. The UK public’s response, while comparatively muted, was no different. Earlier that day, the British Transport Police had issued a warning. Protests were expected “in response to Israel detaining activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla in the early hours of this morning”. Emergency gatherings indeed sprang up that evening around the country, from Edinburgh to London Piccadilly. Later that morning, in Manchester, two Jewish people had tragically been killed, and others injured, after a terrorist attacked a synagogue. The feelings of shock, dismay and horror across the population were heartfelt: condemnations of the act, and support for the victims and the wider Jewish community poured in from across all spectrums – religious, political and communal. And then one of the largest of disinformation campaigns slammed into action. It was spread by a variety of actors with a variety of motives, but the strategy was the same. To start with: tell people that the UK flotilla protests were not protests in support of the flotilla. Tell them they were protests in celebration of the Manchester terrorist attack. The flotilla protests were “a shameful response to the Manchester attack” according to The Spectator. “Vicious Jew-hatred was indulged, yet again” agreed the Scotsman. “They weren’t demonstrating. They were, actually celebrating. I can’t even imagine whoever’s seen such vile scenes on our streets” Farage told his followers. “I could not take it that after such a horrendous terrorist attack, I could see marches of celebrations in London and other cities that celebrated this murderous attack”, Israeli deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel said, on Good Morning Britain. The next immediate target was larger; hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people: those who had marched peacefully through London, month after month,  against their government’s complicity in genocide. Suddenly, once again, the marches were “hate marches”, specifically a mass of “Jew hate”, and directly linked to the Manchester terror attack. “Everyone on pro-Palestine marches this weekend is complicit” threatened the Express. Social media was bombarded by posts from right wing accounts: “Anti Semitic mobs have been allowed to march through our streets, waving their terrorist flags and shouting Death to Jews” was one exemplar. “People like killing Jews” the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges clarified. Until now, coverage of the silent, seated, placard-holding Palestine Action protests had been sympathetic. It would, you would think, from the footage of priests, pensioners, Quakers and disabled people being arrested under the Terrorism Act, and carried off by reluctant police, be difficult to sell this as an antisemitic hate event. But not this time. “We’ve had Swastikas, pro-Hamas posters, pro-terror posters and calls for Intifada”, Dan Hodges asserted, of the most recent Palestine Action protest in Trafalgar Square on 4 October, which he does not appear to have attended. The supposed evidence for this came from three photos of people on the fringes of the protest: a grey-haired man with a t-shirt which compared the Israeli government to Nazis, and one person with a placard saying they supported Hamas’ right to resistance. A banner from Cage, the campaigning civil rights organisation demanding that the government “Abolish terror laws” was presumably “pro terror”. The Times’ Matthew Syed, wandering around the sombre square on Saturday, was asking people, there to protest their government’s support of an ongoing genocide, whether “Hamas were partly responsible”. Told to piss off with his stupid questions by women there to witness the protest, Syed extrapolates this into a “hatred of Jews”. Many participants in the protest were Jewish and the protest itself was supported by Jewish organisations, including Jewish Voice for Labour and Na’amod. There were placards affirming the general grief for Manchester, but Syed comes away with “the pervasive view that the Manchester atrocity was not a heinous attack but righteous comeuppance for an evil people”. The protestors, from priest to Quaker, were “almost gloating over the Yom Kippur attack” the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews later told his Jewish audience. Coasting on the back of this, like a surfer upon sewage, was the British government. Naturally they wanted to end the protests; the public accusations of their engagement in the mass slaughter of defenceless people. And yet, interviewed by Owen Jones and Rivkah Brown at the Labour Party conference last month, it was clear that they were not about to do this by stopping their diplomatic and military support for the current Israeli government. Indeed, the government can do nothing to go against the Trump/Netanyahu axis, or so it has persuaded itself. Consider the haunted grey face of Yvette Cooper, questioned by Jones over Gaza. Or Jess Phillips, pursued by an incredulous Rivkah Brown with questions about the proscription of Palestine Action. “We’re just doing what we’re told” shrugged Phillips’ body language. “Are you daft, or something?” “I just do as I’m told, you know”, Labour’s Peter Prinsley confirmed to Declassified UK outside the conference. So this ideologically authoritarian, blindly in thrall government doubles down. The Prime Minister told the country that there are “people on our streets calling for the murder of Jewish people”. He did not mean the threat, to all people, of insane extremist violence; he meant what Gideon Sa’ar has instructed him to mean: the schoolgirls, students, pensioners, white and brown, singing “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. According to Sa’ar, and the right wing press, and their supporters, this calls for “the elimination of the State of Israel” – and is therefore antisemitic. Legislation, said Sa’ar, was needed. And thus the UK’s right wing, and its convenient dupes, flog the fallacy that the majority of the country who demanded arms sales to Israel be suspended, or who think banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans is a good idea, simply hate Jewish people. Meanwhile, the Israeli state not only invites in, but parades, a man known as one of the UK’s most unwanted Nazi-adjacent mortgage fiddlers. The shock among the British Jewish community when Tommy Robinson’s trip was announced was palpable, including from the British Board of Deputies of British Jews, which described him as a “thug” who represented “the very worst of Britain”. Robinson was urging supporters to rally at the Maccabi Tel Aviv/Villa game, where the Prime Minister and his accomplices are simultaneously attempting to expedite, as directed by Sa’ar, an influx of notoriously violent foreign race-haters, screaming “antisemitism” if challenged. If there were a better way to spread fear, division and hatred among our Muslim and Jewish communities, it is difficult to think of one. “If Tommy Robinson wants to show he’s a friend of Jews I urge him not to go after Jewish journalists just because they happen to disagree with him” pleaded one Jewish journalist. It is a terrible and damning game that this government and its allies are attempting: pretending to support the Jewish community by obeying the far right. Meanwhile, excluding figures from London, religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims rose by 19% in the year before March, including direct attacks on mosques and Muslims themselves. Communities are standing up to this, as they have, and they can, and they will.  The government, clearly, will not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Israel Police / Sports5. Maccabi Tel Aviv banners read “We’re back from reserve duty” and “Harbu Derby“ The post Red card for reality appeared first on Freedom News.

ARRESTS OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT RISK CENTRING LIBERAL FREEDOMS INSTEAD OF PALESTINIAN SURVIVAL ~ Kell w Farshéa ~ Its 9pm, last Saturday (6 September). I’m standing on the pavement in the dark, watching the arrests. Police vans queue down the side of Parliament Square, engines idling. Police in high-vis jackets wade through the crowd of chanting singing people. Every five minutes cops emerge from the crowd carrying someone pron,e whilst another cop walks alongside telling them that they are being arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. A group of supporters chanting “we are the revolution” accompany a man walking to the police van. Others shout “shame, shame” or “are you proud of yourself”. On and on it goes. Yet how English and polite and obedient it is. People are quietly carried to the vans where they climb inside unaided. I see people chat to the police officers as if we are all on the same side—decency, civility, democratic values, common outrage. The hours pass, more people are driven off through the police road block to the police cells. Its relentless. Google tells me that in August 2025 there were only 900 cells available in UK men’s prisons. Yet almost 1,500 people have been charged for explicitly stating they support Palestine Action. Indeed the internet suggests many people charged will face a fine rather than imprisonment. The Prime Minister and his new Home Secretary look like paper tigers, not resolute law makers. 1,500 people showing they are not afraid of the consequences in breaking one of the more serious crimes on statute because the law is seen as morally bankrupt. There is something powerful in this spectacle of defiance played out in front of parliament at night. And yet If passive resistance is so powerful, if the prison and police cells are in such short supply—why have the mass protests against genocide not brought 100,000 marchers to sit down in the streets of London? Indeed why was it only when UK citizen’s rights were threatened that people were prepared to be arrested en masse? I am absolutely sure that members of Palestine Action still want the focus to be on Gaza, but it seems like white liberalism is now more focussed instead on the proscription itself. And beyond the sight of elderly pensioners bedecked in military medals being arrested—how effective is this protest at stopping the genocide and ending the occupation? How much has the proscription taken the focus off the millions being starved to death in Gaza? Perhaps in the face of almost two years of mass demonstrations, emails and petitions it is understandable that people grasp for some kind of meaningful protest. Yet in an age when Parliament is uninterested in moral, genocidal, ecocidal or democratic principles, this may no longer be relevant. And yet, the questions must be asked. How can we more effectively resist the actual genocide? How can we avoid centring the debate over liberal democratic ideas and conditional freedoms, and instead re-centre it on the colonial capitalist murder of the people of Palestine? Let us remember that Mr. Starmer is not sympathetic to principled ‘gesture’ arrests. He is on record saying XR actionists should get long sentences. Starmer endorses segregationist policies for trans people and leans into Farage and the EDL’s fascist language on immigration. He would leave every pensioner in London on bail and still not allow PA to return. The mass arrests on Saturday were magnificent, cinematic even. But lets not pretend it’s not a sideshow distracting from the real issue—ending the genocide and fighting for a Free Palestine. Not one Palestinian child’s life will be saved by any of these arrests unless they refocus on the key issue: that while the government mouths platitudes about the man-made famine, it provides logistical support for drone attacks on children and targeted assassinations of journalists. > — “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre” (French General Pierre > Bosquet on the charge of the British Light Brigade at Balaclava, 25 October > 1854) > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Photos: Peter Marshall The post Proscription Action: It’s magnificent, but it’s not war appeared first on Freedom News.

DEFEND OUR JURIES SAY 1,000 PEOPLE SIGNED UP FOR SATURDAY’S MASS DISOBEDIENCE IN LONDON ~ Scott Harris ~ Defend Our Juries (DOJ) has pledged the “largest ever day of defiance” of the Palestine Action ban this Saturday, after seven key members were arrested in home raids by counter-terrorism police. The arrests, carried out yesterday (2 September) under section 12 of the Terrorism Act, targeted DOJ spokespeople who had hosted public Zoom calls for those signing up to the campaign. Among those detained were lawyer Tim Crosland, care worker David Nixon, and retired engineer Tony Harvey, who has already been charged in Scotland. At the time of a press conference on Wednesday, the group said several of those arrested had been held for more than 24 hours, exceeding the custody time limit. Amnesty International condemned the raids as “a blatant attempt to muzzle freedom of speech” and called for the immediate release of those detained. The organisation has now launched a global campaign urging prosecutors in all three UK jurisdictions to drop charges against protesters. Saturday’s Parliament Square action will see over 1,000 people pledge to risk arrest by holding signs stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. Organisers say the number of signatories is already double that of last month’s action, when more than 500 people were detained in London in the Met’s largest mass arrests since the Committee of 100 protests in 1961. Defend Our Juries has advised participants to reject “street bail” and insist on their right to station-based legal advice, predicting that police will not have capacity to process the numbers. The 6 September protests mark the first coordinated defiance of the ban across all three legal systems in the UK. A sit-in is planned at Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh, where Scottish prosecutors recently dropped cases against Palestine Action supporters after the Scottish Human Rights Commission warned the arrests risked breaching the law. In Derry, campaigners will also defy the ban, adding pressure on Stormont and Holyrood not to enforce Westminster’s measures. Home secretary Yvette Cooper announced the proscription of Palestine Action in July, the first time a domestic protest group has been banned as a “terrorist” organisation. The move has been widely condemned by rights groups, UN rapporteurs, and Labour members, with polling showing over 70% of the party’s base opposed. A judicial review of the decision is due to be heard in November. The post Mass defiance of Palestine Action ban “will not be silenced” by home raids appeared first on Freedom News.

FAR-RIGHT NATIONAL GOVERNMENT PUSHED FOR THE SURPRISE EVICTION DESPITE ONGOING TALKS WITH MUNICIPALITY ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Police in Milan, Italy this morning (21 August) evicted the Leoncavallo occupied social centre, one of the most longstanding spaces of the Italian autonomous left. Hundreds of police officers in riot gear participated in the eviction and entire streets were blocked in the surrounding neighbourhood. The centre—a space for music, art, culture, and political organising and debate—had been located on Via Leoncavallo since 1975, and since 1994 on Via Watteu. “I am saddened”, said local poet Olmo Losca in a Facebook post, describing the centre as “a place that offered many people different moments of coming-together, always open to migrants and vulnerable people, the unemployed, the families destroyed by poverty”. Sources close to the centre attribute the eviction to political antagonism on part of Italy’s far-right government—particularly Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, a civil servant allied with the Northern League, and neo-fascist Senate president Ignacio La Russa, a resident of Milan. Prime Minister Georgia Meloni spoke approvingly of the eviction on national media. Earlier this year, an Italian court ruled that either the social centre or the ministry should pay compensation of 3 million Euro to the owners of the real-estate on which the centre was located. However, activists had been given assurances no action would be taken until 9 September. The early morning, midsummer timing of the eviction is thought to have been chosen due to the expectation of little resistance. The surprise eviction is said to have blindsided the municipality as well as the activists, with the mayor of Milan having offered an alternative location for the centre—albeit on what activists claim is toxic land. “The country’s real problems lie elsewhere, but they prefer to target symbolic spaces and fuel the idea of a single-track mindset”, said activist Alex C. “Because it’s not just the closure of a place: it’s the loss of opportunity, of choice, of awareness that something ‘other’ can exist beyond what TV and the system impose”. Supporters of the centre have called for a public assembly this evening at via Watteu. “We feel pain and rage”, said Marina Boer, spokesperson of the Leoncavallo mothers’ association. “This feeling confirms how good our ideas are. The Leoncavallo can’t end up like this. We will find a way forward, because the city needs cultural spaces. It can’t just be a desert of skyscrapers”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: milanoinmovimento on Instagram The post Italy: Eviction of historic Leoncavallo social centre in Milan appeared first on Freedom News.

FROM LA STREETS TO SALVADORIAN PRISONS, THE US ESCALATES ITS WAR ON MIGRANTS ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ On the streets of Los Angeles, California earlier this summer, several masked and armed men attempted to kidnap a street vendor in broad daylight. Despite the gang showing no identification to authority, the community knew who they were. Luis Hipolito arrived on 9th street and witnessed the attempted kidnapping. He pulled out his phone and hit record. The armed men ordered him to leave but Luis refused and continued to film. The community began to gather, as they do across the country to resist this fascist repression and support each other in standing up to violence and authority. Andrea Guadalupe Velez arrived with her 17-year-old sister. Her mother Margarita was dropping them both off. Andrea got out the car and immediately saw a man running directly towards her. “He thinks I am illegal”, Andrea thought to herself bracing for impact, “because of the color of my skin”. Holding her hands up, the man collided into her. Luis was then pepper sprayed by the masked men, later identified as agents from Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department for Homeland Security (DHS). Now blinded, Luis attempts to steady himself with his arms. Federal agents threw him down to the curb and assaulted Luis until his body goes into convulsions. Both Andrea and Luis have been charged with assaulting a police officer, released on bonds between $5000 and $10,000. In the view of the Department Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, the act of Luis filming the original abduction “kept ICE law enforcement from arresting the target illegal alien of their operation”. In other words, he was blamed for his own illegitimate arrest – based on his right to record an arrest. Over the next two weeks, 1,618 people were deported from Los Angeles and the surrounding area at a rate of around 95 a day. SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOUR ICE raids have been observed to feature heavily armed and aggressive officers—masked and wearing tactical gear—arresting people at their place of work or on the streets. “A systematic pattern”, according to an ACLU lawsuit, where “individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified Federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from”. At an immigration court in San Francisco, ten masked and armed Federal agents violently forced their way through a blockade of demonstrators to abduct a male detainee following his court hearing. One officer brandished a rifle and pointed it at both protesters and the press, as other agents from ICE used pepper spray and violently pushed people to the ground. After resistance from the crowd, agents threw the man into the back of a black unmarked SUV. As ICE agents speed through the crowd of protesters, a woman was thrown off the hood of the car and onto the streets. ICE agents and protesters clashing outside the San Francisco immigration courthouse at 100 Mongtomery St. on July 8, 2025. Photo by Frankie Solinsky Duryea/ Mission Local The community gathers at the immigration court on 100 Montgomery street every Tuesday to resist the multiple abductions by Federal agents to the nearby ICE field office. This tactic of waiting outside the courtroom and taking people had escalated from simply arresting those who had come to ICE voluntarily. On 5 June, 15 people were arrested at the ICE field office on Sansome street including at least four children, one of them as young as three years old. As repression escalated, protesters took to the streets and courtrooms as a response to the abduction of thousands of members of their community, detained without charge and separated from their families. Despite this systematic targeting of the migrant community however, few migrants rights organisations support the rights of sex workers and are suspiciously silent when it comes to their arrest, detention and deportation. “Police cars, plainclothes cars, we all hide when (we) see them”, a migrant massage worker told Red Canary Song, a NY-based collective of Asian and Migrant sex workers. “We’ll be arrested as soon as we go out”. Respectability politics is to blame, organisers have pointed out, as groups attempt to sanitise their message and divide those who are deserving of solidarity and those whose rights are disposable. This is not something new and ironically by excluding sex workers from the struggle for migrant rights, we suppress a collective memory of resistance. Between January and February there were nearly 1,000 arrests in Queens, New York that directly targeted immigrant sex workers. Police raids have focused on massage parlours, arresting women and creating a climate of fear across these under-represented workers. “I’m scared to go to work”, the migrant massage worker reported anonymously. Authorities have justified a number of repressive police and immigration tactics in the past, using surveillance, racial profiling, raids, detentions and deportations as anti-trafficking measures. Law enforcement have claimed these measures are designed to protect women and children, yet in reality only expose migrants to more systematic violence. DHS has now begun using artificial intelligence to profile those walking on the streets, using flawed patterns over evidence for “suspicious behaviour”. These patterns includes factors like “foreign accent” or “short skirt” as part of it’s evaluation of sex work through live-streaming public cameras. Palantir currently has a $30 million contract to build a “master database” of all of those targeted by ICE, and various government agencies have received their pay for the building of this architecture of hate. As these technologies are applied to the general population, including facial recognition, we will see as with all surveillance, the only purpose is to build cases for prosecution and deportation. Photograph taken by the El Salvadorian government press department at the Centro De Confinamento Del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison system, after the U.S. deportation of 261 men on March 16th 2025. MONSTER OR TERRORIST? Agustín was sixteen-years-old when a group of armed men came to take him away but this was not the first time he had faced organised violence. When he was younger, local gangs had attempted to recruit Agustín. When he refused they threatened to kill his mother. Together, they fled to San José Guayabal to start a new life. For the second time, there was a knock on the door. Agustín was taken from his home by the El Salvadorian army and driven to a deserted road. He was ordered out of the truck and the soldiers simulated Agustín’s execution, making him believe he would die on his knees facing the barrel of a gun. This mock execution of the teenager was followed by his detention in an overcrowded cell with 70 other children. Agustín was kicked virtually every day by the other detainees in front of the guards who did nothing but watch. Detainees would count up to thirteen while assaulting him, in reference to MS-13. There are now 3,000 children within the sprawling Centro De Confinamento Del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison system, as reported by Human Rights Watch in 2022 El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has been in power since 2019 and for the last six years has radically eroded rights and freedoms through a repressive “war on gangs” that seeks to enrich the security sector at the expense of local communities. 40,000 people are now held within this prison system and an estimated 375 detainees have died in custody – all justified through a state of emergency or Bukele’s “state of exception”. In exchange for 261 men deported from the United States, El Salvador received $6 million to humiliate and warehouse them in this public theatre of dystopia. The men were escorted off three planes and taken through lines of heavily armoured and armed police officers. New inmates have their heads shaven upon arrival. Eighty men share a single cell. Most of those detained have no criminal record, inside or outside the United States. Yet they were convicted on the basis of administrative violence through intentional error and faulty symbolic criteria that categorised detainees as “monster”, “terrorist” or “gang member”. A point system that determines if tattoos, graffiti, hand signs or social media posts are ‘evidence’ of association to gangs. Most of those detained by ICE and DHS are taken to facilities within the United States. In Florida’s Everglades, a prison camp with the projected capacity for 5,000 people has been set up at the cost of $450 million. Testimonies reveal the typical state of the U.S. prison industrial complex. “They only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots”, Leamsy La Figura, a detainee at the prison said. “They never turned off the lights for 24 hours… we’re like rats in an experiment… I don’t know their motive for doing this, if it’s a form of torture. A lot of us have our residency documents and we don’t understand why we’re here”. MEMORY OF RESISTANCE “In terms of ICE detention”, Panagioti Tsolkas says in conversation with Max Granger, “we know the goal isn’t to remove every undocumented person; it’s to create a climate of fear and terror, to make people controllable, more scared to speak up or act in their own interests”. Tsolkas recommends looking into our collective memory and the political activism against ICE during Obama’s administration. In a documentary called The Infiltrators, young undocumented activists “intentionally got themselves arrested with the goal of organizing in prison centers”. By getting inside the prisons, the activists were able to document who was inside, taking down their names for their families to organise solidarity on the outside. A demonstrator marches with the community in the attempt of intercepting and preventing Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Chicago, June 10th 2025 “No-one dies but those who are forgotten”, Peter Gelderloos recalls an assertion from an armed group in the Chilean state who had taken over a street outside of a prison to show their solidarity. “In other words”, Gelderloos writes, “we all exist through our relations”. We resist through a collective memory of resistance. “When I was a boy”, the late anarchist Willem Van Spronsen once wrote, “in post-war Holland, later France, my head was filled with stories of the rise of fascism in the ’30s, I promised myself that I would not be one of those who stands by as neighbours are torn from their homes and imprisoned for somehow being perceived as lesser”. Willem was killed by police while taking direct action to sabotage a fleet of buses that served Northwest immigrant detention centre in Washington on July 13, 2019. His action in attempting to burn the buses coincided with the one year anniversary of a hunger strike from those detained inside, as well as over a decade of resistance from the community and La Resistencia, a grassroots organisation for undocumented migrants. “Anyone who is determined to carry out his or her deed is not a courageous person”, wrote Alfredo Bonanno. “They are simply a person who has clarified their ideas, who has realised that it is pointless to make such an effort to play the part assigned to them by capital in the performance… in doing so they realize themselves as human beings… the reign of death disappears before their eyes”. “You don’t have to burn the motherfucker down”, Willem wrote before his death, “but are you going to just stand by”? The post US: Community resistance to forced disappearances appeared first on Freedom News.