If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars.

The one-size-fits-all smear deployed to define and dismiss the concerns of these troublemakers – people who often pay a high price for their dissent – is ‘narcissist’.

Consider the case of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which last week attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade to deliver baby formula and food to Gaza’s starving population. And that, by the way, is not hyperbole. In May, the World Health Organisation reported that ‘half a million people’ in Gaza were ‘in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death’. The flotilla was led by the UK-flagged vessel Madleen, with renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg onboard.

Perhaps shaken by his recent, uncharacteristic display of principled moral outrage, the eponymous host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, last week wrote on X:

‘Oh shut up, @GretaThunberg – you attention-seeking narcissist. What an insult to the actual hostages in Gaza who really WERE kidnapped. This stupid stunt is all about your ego, and will make zero difference to the plight of innocent Palestinians caught up in this dreadful war.’

In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill felt Morgan’s pain in a piece titled, ‘Greta Thunberg’s narcissism has escalated to terrifying levels.’

The ‘terrifying’ Thunberg, no less! O’Neill opined:

‘Of all the smug stunts of the faux-virtuous activist class, this is surely the most preposterous. The idea that 12 woke fainthearts from Europe might “liberate” Gaza would be funny if it were not so dangerous.’

That was not the intention at all, of course. The intention was to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in that aim, the flotilla was a great success.

The Mirror noted that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had branded the Madleen a ‘selfie yacht’. By eerie coincidence, much of the ‘mainstream’ media followed suit.

In the Daily Mail, Sam Greenhill’s headline read: ‘Israeli forces storm Greta’s “selfie yacht” and make her watch Hamas terror footage.’ (Greenhill, Daily Mail, 10 June 2025). Greenhill commented:

‘Critics suggested it had been a “gap-year protest”, and the Israeli government said Ms Thunberg had been “feeding her ego” rather than the people of Gaza.’

What could be more natural, more ‘mainstream’, than passing on, with approval, a slur supplied by a government committing genocide?

If ‘kidnapping’ won’t do for Piers Morgan, let’s try ‘hijacking’. Journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News commented:

‘Let’s be clear: Israel, an occupier, has no authority under international law to board or divert the Madleen.

‘This is a hijacking, plain and simple. A hijacking of a UK-registered ship, with multiple *European* citizens on board.’

Hasan invited readers to imagine the Western response if Iran had rammed and hijacked a boat full of European citizens in international waters in the same way.

Morgan’s fiercely expressed idea that Thunberg was merely engaged in an attention-seeking ‘stunt’ reverses the truth. Narcissists do not seek attention by taking on a genocidal army that has devastated both Gaza and previous vessels attempting the same journey. On X, Alonso Gurmendi of the London School of Economics noted that there had been five similar flotillas prior to the Madleen’s voyage. Israel used force against four of them:

‘2010: 10 killed

‘2011: no incidents

‘2015: crew detained for 6 days

‘2018: crew tasered

‘2025: drones shot at the ship’

In the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, 10 activists were killed by Israeli forces with dozens wounded. Last month, the Conscience, a vessel carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid for Gaza, organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters off the coast of Malta:

‘The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that the ship was struck twice by drones at around 00:23 (CEST), with both attacks targeting the vessel’s generators at the front of the ship. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull, placing the vessel at imminent risk of sinking.’

Given the genocidal actions of the Israeli army over the last 20 months – including ‘at least 220 journalists killed’ since 7 October 2023, as Channel 4’s Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson noted last week on X – no-one on the Madleen had any compelling reason to feel safe. Far from being an attention-seeking ‘stunt’, Thunberg and her companions showed real courage.

In the Telegraph, former Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore pumped bile:

‘What matters above all are the images of the selfie-yacht and the attention they can garner. Being boarded and detained (or, as she puts it, “kidnapped”) by Israeli forces gave her exactly what she had hoped for to kick against…’

Thunberg’s ‘stunt’, it seems, had been ‘self-aggrandising and vacuous’. In a comment that typifies the tendency of hard-right merchants of smear to overreach, Moore added:

‘Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window.’

And, as ever, the young and compassionate – people who aren’t just banking a salary, people who care – are just naïve fools blundering in the dark:

‘The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next “wrong” thing.’

But it is right to protest Israel’s genocide, which is wrong, just as the insane indifference to the destabilisation of the climate is wrong. In 42 seconds, in this video on X, Thunberg explains why it is absolutely coherent to protest both of these crimes.

When working for the Guardian, Moore distinguished herself by tweeting of Julian Assange in 2012:

‘He really is the most massive turd.’

Moore then commented to a colleague:

‘I never met him. Did you?’

Moore later wrote in the New Statesman:

‘O frabjous day! We are all bored out of our minds with Brexit when a demented looking gnome is pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state. Or “the met” as normal people call them.’

Jake Wallis Simons, who writes regularly for the Jewish Chronicle (JC), which he edited from December 2021 until January 2025, has been busy smearing Thunberg in the Daily Mail and Telegraph with damning articles titled:

‘Greta Thunberg is deeply immature, lacks all shame … and there is a dark truth about her crusade to Gaza’ (Daily Mail, 7 June 2025)

‘It’s staggeringly offensive of Thunberg to claim she’s been “kidnapped” when we know what real kidnap looks like’ (Daily Mail, 10 June 2025)

‘Greta’s blind eye to murder’ (The Telegraph, 10 June 2025)

In September 2024, when Wallis Simons was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, no dissident, wrote an open letter to him on social media, under the comment:

‘I have today told the editor of the Jewish Chronicle that I can no longer continue my relationship with the paper.’

Freedland’s reasoning:

‘Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.’

Jonathan Cook commented:

‘One such example was a tweet (since deleted) from Wallis Simons last December, when Israel had already killed thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Over a video of a huge explosion killing untold numbers of Palestinians in Gaza City, the JC’s editor wrote: “Onwards to victory.”’

It seems Wallis Simons has Thunberg all worked out:

‘Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.’

Without a trace of evidence, then, Thunberg is reflexively smeared as an anti-semite. Cook noted the sudden obsession with selfies:

‘Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.’

Ricky Hale said it best on X:

‘Amazing that we live in a time when starving people are being lured into the open to be gunned down by Israel and the media thinks the villain of the story is a tiny autistic woman who tried to feed them.’

Of Tans and Byronic Haircuts

Thus, if it was not already the case, Thunberg has joined the long list of dissidents dismissed as self-aggrandising ‘narcissists’.

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek featured an article entitled, ‘The Unbearable Narcissism of Edward Snowden.’

In 2016, Labour MP Chris Evans noted Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘self-indulgence, egotism, arrogance and narcissism’.

Janice Turner commented on Corbyn in The Times:

‘He’s beloved of narcissists and conspiracists, such as Julian Assange, George Galloway, John Pilger and Ken Livingstone …’

Narcissists all! In the Observer, Charles Jennings described how Pilger’s narcissism was obvious from ‘his tan, his Byronic haircut, his trudging priestly delivery and his evident self-love’. (Jennings, The Observer, 24 January 1999) We knew Pilger well; he was one of the most generous, compassionate people we have met. What was so striking, even startling, about him was his willingness to risk his access to ‘mainstream’ media by exposing their lethal propaganda – he savaged the hands that fed him. That is forbidden, of course, and it cost him his columns in the Guardian and the New Statesman. None of his critics would be willing to pay a fraction of that price.

In 2020, Andrew Rawnsley wrote in the Observer of the conspicuously humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

Julian Assange, of course, has been endlessly labelled the same way. A typical headline from the Daily Mail in 2011 read:

‘The WikiFreak: In a new book one author reveals how she got to know Julian Assange and found him a predatory, narcissistic fantasist’

In the Sunday Times, Katie Glass described Russell Brand as ‘an exhibitionistic narcissist obsessed with celebrity’. (Katie Glass, ‘The ultimate Marmite Brand,’ Sunday Times, 22 September 2013)

And according to the Guardian, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a peddler of ‘strutting and narcissistic populism’.

Readers might wonder where that leaves us at Media Lens. Alas, in his Guardian column, then Associate Editor Michael White observed that Media Lens ‘betrays the narcissism of small difference that is so destructive on the left’.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars.

The one-size-fits-all smear deployed to define and dismiss the concerns of these troublemakers – people who often pay a high price for their dissent – is ‘narcissist’.

Consider the case of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which last week attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade to deliver baby formula and food to Gaza’s starving population. And that, by the way, is not hyperbole. In May, the World Health Organisation reported that ‘half a million people’ in Gaza were ‘in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death’. The flotilla was led by the UK-flagged vessel Madleen, with renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg onboard.

Perhaps shaken by his recent, uncharacteristic display of principled moral outrage, the eponymous host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, last week wrote on X:

‘Oh shut up, @GretaThunberg – you attention-seeking narcissist. What an insult to the actual hostages in Gaza who really WERE kidnapped. This stupid stunt is all about your ego, and will make zero difference to the plight of innocent Palestinians caught up in this dreadful war.’

In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill felt Morgan’s pain in a piece titled, ‘Greta Thunberg’s narcissism has escalated to terrifying levels.’

The ‘terrifying’ Thunberg, no less! O’Neill opined:

‘Of all the smug stunts of the faux-virtuous activist class, this is surely the most preposterous. The idea that 12 woke fainthearts from Europe might “liberate” Gaza would be funny if it were not so dangerous.’

That was not the intention at all, of course. The intention was to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in that aim, the flotilla was a great success.

The Mirror noted that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had branded the Madleen a ‘selfie yacht’. By eerie coincidence, much of the ‘mainstream’ media followed suit.

In the Daily Mail, Sam Greenhill’s headline read: ‘Israeli forces storm Greta’s “selfie yacht” and make her watch Hamas terror footage.’ (Greenhill, Daily Mail, 10 June 2025). Greenhill commented:

‘Critics suggested it had been a “gap-year protest”, and the Israeli government said Ms Thunberg had been “feeding her ego” rather than the people of Gaza.’

What could be more natural, more ‘mainstream’, than passing on, with approval, a slur supplied by a government committing genocide?

If ‘kidnapping’ won’t do for Piers Morgan, let’s try ‘hijacking’. Journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News commented:

‘Let’s be clear: Israel, an occupier, has no authority under international law to board or divert the Madleen.

‘This is a hijacking, plain and simple. A hijacking of a UK-registered ship, with multiple *European* citizens on board.’

Hasan invited readers to imagine the Western response if Iran had rammed and hijacked a boat full of European citizens in international waters in the same way.

Morgan’s fiercely expressed idea that Thunberg was merely engaged in an attention-seeking ‘stunt’ reverses the truth. Narcissists do not seek attention by taking on a genocidal army that has devastated both Gaza and previous vessels attempting the same journey. On X, Alonso Gurmendi of the London School of Economics noted that there had been five similar flotillas prior to the Madleen’s voyage. Israel used force against four of them:

‘2010: 10 killed

‘2011: no incidents

‘2015: crew detained for 6 days

‘2018: crew tasered

‘2025: drones shot at the ship’

In the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, 10 activists were killed by Israeli forces with dozens wounded. Last month, the Conscience, a vessel carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid for Gaza, organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters off the coast of Malta:

‘The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that the ship was struck twice by drones at around 00:23 (CEST), with both attacks targeting the vessel’s generators at the front of the ship. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull, placing the vessel at imminent risk of sinking.’

Given the genocidal actions of the Israeli army over the last 20 months – including ‘at least 220 journalists killed’ since 7 October 2023, as Channel 4’s Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson noted last week on X – no-one on the Madleen had any compelling reason to feel safe. Far from being an attention-seeking ‘stunt’, Thunberg and her companions showed real courage.

In the Telegraph, former Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore pumped bile:

‘What matters above all are the images of the selfie-yacht and the attention they can garner. Being boarded and detained (or, as she puts it, “kidnapped”) by Israeli forces gave her exactly what she had hoped for to kick against…’

Thunberg’s ‘stunt’, it seems, had been ‘self-aggrandising and vacuous’. In a comment that typifies the tendency of hard-right merchants of smear to overreach, Moore added:

‘Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window.’

And, as ever, the young and compassionate – people who aren’t just banking a salary, people who care – are just naïve fools blundering in the dark:

‘The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next “wrong” thing.’

But it is right to protest Israel’s genocide, which is wrong, just as the insane indifference to the destabilisation of the climate is wrong. In 42 seconds, in this video on X, Thunberg explains why it is absolutely coherent to protest both of these crimes.

When working for the Guardian, Moore distinguished herself by tweeting of Julian Assange in 2012:

‘He really is the most massive turd.’

Moore then commented to a colleague:

‘I never met him. Did you?’

Moore later wrote in the New Statesman:

‘O frabjous day! We are all bored out of our minds with Brexit when a demented looking gnome is pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state. Or “the met” as normal people call them.’

Jake Wallis Simons, who writes regularly for the Jewish Chronicle (JC), which he edited from December 2021 until January 2025, has been busy smearing Thunberg in the Daily Mail and Telegraph with damning articles titled:

‘Greta Thunberg is deeply immature, lacks all shame … and there is a dark truth about her crusade to Gaza’ (Daily Mail, 7 June 2025)

‘It’s staggeringly offensive of Thunberg to claim she’s been “kidnapped” when we know what real kidnap looks like’ (Daily Mail, 10 June 2025)

‘Greta’s blind eye to murder’ (The Telegraph, 10 June 2025)

In September 2024, when Wallis Simons was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, no dissident, wrote an open letter to him on social media, under the comment:

‘I have today told the editor of the Jewish Chronicle that I can no longer continue my relationship with the paper.’

Freedland’s reasoning:

‘Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.’

Jonathan Cook commented:

‘One such example was a tweet (since deleted) from Wallis Simons last December, when Israel had already killed thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Over a video of a huge explosion killing untold numbers of Palestinians in Gaza City, the JC’s editor wrote: “Onwards to victory.”’

It seems Wallis Simons has Thunberg all worked out:

‘Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.’

Without a trace of evidence, then, Thunberg is reflexively smeared as an anti-semite. Cook noted the sudden obsession with selfies:

‘Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.’

Ricky Hale said it best on X:

‘Amazing that we live in a time when starving people are being lured into the open to be gunned down by Israel and the media thinks the villain of the story is a tiny autistic woman who tried to feed them.’

Of Tans and Byronic Haircuts

Thus, if it was not already the case, Thunberg has joined the long list of dissidents dismissed as self-aggrandising ‘narcissists’.

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek featured an article entitled, ‘The Unbearable Narcissism of Edward Snowden.’

In 2016, Labour MP Chris Evans noted Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘self-indulgence, egotism, arrogance and narcissism’.

Janice Turner commented on Corbyn in The Times:

‘He’s beloved of narcissists and conspiracists, such as Julian Assange, George Galloway, John Pilger and Ken Livingstone …’

Narcissists all! In the Observer, Charles Jennings described how Pilger’s narcissism was obvious from ‘his tan, his Byronic haircut, his trudging priestly delivery and his evident self-love’. (Jennings, The Observer, 24 January 1999) We knew Pilger well; he was one of the most generous, compassionate people we have met. What was so striking, even startling, about him was his willingness to risk his access to ‘mainstream’ media by exposing their lethal propaganda – he savaged the hands that fed him. That is forbidden, of course, and it cost him his columns in the Guardian and the New Statesman. None of his critics would be willing to pay a fraction of that price.

In 2020, Andrew Rawnsley wrote in the Observer of the conspicuously humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

Julian Assange, of course, has been endlessly labelled the same way. A typical headline from the Daily Mail in 2011 read:

‘The WikiFreak: In a new book one author reveals how she got to know Julian Assange and found him a predatory, narcissistic fantasist’

In the Sunday Times, Katie Glass described Russell Brand as ‘an exhibitionistic narcissist obsessed with celebrity’. (Katie Glass, ‘The ultimate Marmite Brand,’ Sunday Times, 22 September 2013)

And according to the Guardian, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a peddler of ‘strutting and narcissistic populism’.

Readers might wonder where that leaves us at Media Lens. Alas, in his Guardian column, then Associate Editor Michael White observed that Media Lens ‘betrays the narcissism of small difference that is so destructive on the left’.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

If you imagined Western politicians and media were finally showing signs of waking up to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, think again.

Even the decision this week by several Western states, led by the UK, to ban the entry of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, is not quite the pushback it is meant to seem.

Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway may be seeking strength in numbers to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States. But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.

• READ MORE: Israel launches ‘major strike’ on Iran’s military, nuclear sites
• Other Israeli aggression in the Middle East reports

Their meagre action is motivated solely out of desperation. They urgently need to deter Israel from carrying through plans to formally annex the Occupied West Bank and thereby tear away the last remnants of the two-state comfort blanket — the West’s solitary pretext for decades of inaction.

And as a bonus, the entry ban makes Britain and the others look like they are getting tough with Israel on Gaza, even as they do nothing to stop the mounting horrors there.

Even the Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper’s senior columnist Gideon Levy mocked what he called a “tiny, ridiculous step” by the UK and others, saying it would make no difference to the slaughter in Gaza. He called for sanctions against “Israel in its entirety”.

“Do they really believe this punishment will have some sort of effect on Israel’s moves?” Levy asked incredulously.

2500 sanctions on Russia
Remember as Britain raps two cabinet ministers on the knuckles that the West has imposed more than 2500 sanctions on Russia.

While David Lammy, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, worries about the future of a non-existent diplomatic process — one trashed by Israel two decades ago — Palestinian children are still starving to death unseen.

The genocide is not going to end unless the West forces Israel to stop. This week more than 40 Israeli military intelligence officers went on an effective strike, refusing to be involved in combat operations, saying Israel was waging a “clearly illegal” and “eternal war” in Gaza.

Yet Starmer and Lammy will not even concede that Israel has violated international law.  

What is clear is that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s sighs of regret last month — expressing how “intolerable” he finds the “situation” in Gaza — were purely performative.

Starmer and the rest of the Western establishment have continued tolerating what they claim to find “intolerable”, even as the death toll from Israel’s bombs, gunfire and starvation campaign grow day by day.

Those emaciated children — profoundly malnourished, their stick-then legs covered by the thinnest membrane of skin — aren’t going to recover without meaningful intervention. Their condition won’t stabilise while Israel deprives them of food day after day. Sooner or later they will die, mostly out of our view.

Parents must risk lives
Meanwhile, desperate parents must now risk their lives, forced to run the gauntlet of Israeli gunfire, in a — usually forlorn — bid to be among the handful of families able to grab paltry supplies of largely unusable, dried food. Most families have no water or fuel to cook with.

As if mocking Palestinians, the Western media continue to refer to this real-life, scaled-up Hunger Games — imposed by Israel in place of the long-established United Nations relief system — as “aid distribution”.

We are supposed to believe it is addressing Gaza’s “humanitarian crisis” even as it deepens the crisis.

On the kindest analysis, Western capitals are settling back into a mix of silence and deflections, having got in their excuses just before Israel crosses the finishing line of its genocide.

They have readied their alibis for the moment when international journalists are allowed in — the day after the population of Gaza has either been exterminated or violently herded into neighbouring Sinai.

Or more likely, a bit of both.

Truth inverted
What distinguishes Israel’s ongoing slaughter of the two million-plus people of Gaza is this. It is the first stage-managed genocide in history. It is a Holocaust rewritten as public theatre, a spectacle in which every truth is carefully inverted.

That can best be achieved, of course, if those trying to write a different, honest script are eliminated. The extent and authorship of the horrors can be edited out, or obscured through a series of red herrings, misdirecting onlookers.

Israel has murdered more than 220 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 20 months, and has been keeping Western journalists far from the killing fields.

Like the West’s politicians, the foreign correspondents finally piped up last month — in their case, to protest at being barred from Gaza. No less than the politicians, they were keen to ready their excuses.

They have careers and their future credibility to think about, after all.

The journalists have publicly worried that they are being excluded because Israel has something to hide. As though Israel had nothing to hide in the preceding 20 months, when those same journalists docilely accepted their exclusion — and invariably regurgitated Israel’s deceitful spin on its atrocities.

If you imagine that the reporting from Gaza would have been much different had the BBC, CNN, The Guardian or The New York Times had reporters on the ground, think again.

The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel’s denials foregrounded, with Israel’s claims of Hamas “terrorists” in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter.

British doctors volunteering in Gaza who have told us there were no Hamas fighters in the hospitals they worked in, or anyone armed apart from the Israeli soldiers that shot up their medical facilities, would not be more believed because Jeremy Bowen interviewed them in Khan Younis rather than Richard Madeley in a London studio.

Breaking the blockade
If proof of that was needed, it came this week with the coverage of Israel’s brazen act of piracy against a UK-flagged ship, the Madleen, trying to break Israel’s genocidal aid blockade.

Israel’s law-breaking did not happen this time in sealed-off Gaza, or against dehumanised Palestinians.

Israel’s slaughter of the two million-plus people of Gaza is the first stage-managed genocide in history. It is a Holocaust rewritten as public theatre

Israel’s ramming and seizure of the vessel took place on the high seas, and targeted a 12-member Western crew, including the famed young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. All were abducted and taken to Israel.

Thunberg was trying to use her celebrity to draw attention to Israel’s illegal, genocidal blockade of aid. She did so precisely by trying to break that blockade peacefully.

The defiance of the Madleen’s crew in sailing to Gaza was intended to shame Western governments that are under a legal — and it goes without saying, moral — obligation to stop a genocide under the provisions of the 1948 Genocide Convention they have ratified.

Western citizens wring hands
Western capitals have been ostentatiously wringing their hands at the “humanitarian crisis” of Israel starving two million people in full view of the world.

The Madleen’s mission was to emphasise that those states could do much more than tell two Israeli cabinet ministers they are not welcome to visit. Together they could break the blockade, if they so wished.

Britain, France and Canada — all of whom claimed last month that the “situation” in Gaza was “intolerable” — could organise a joint naval fleet carrying aid to Gaza through international waters. They would arrive in Palestinian territorial waters off the coast of Gaza.

At no point would they be in Israel territory.

Any attempt by Israel to interfere would be an act of war against these three states — and against Nato. The reality is Israel would be forced to pull back and allow the aid in.

But, of course, this scenario is pure fantasy. Britain, France and Canada have no intention of breaking Israel’s “intolerable” siege of Gaza.

None of them has any intention of doing anything but watch Israel starve the population to death, then describe it as a “humanitarian catastrophe” they were unable to stop.

The Madleen has preemptively denied them this manoeuvre and highlighted Western leaders’ actual support for genocide — as well as let the people of Gaza know that a majority of the Western public oppose their governments’ collusion in Israel’s criminality.

‘Selfie yacht’
The voyage was intended too as a vigorous nudge to awaken those in the West still slumbering through the genocide. Which is precisely why the Madleen’s message had to be smothered with spin, carefully prepared by Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued statements calling the aid ship a “celebrity selfie yacht“, while dismissing its action as a “public relations stunt” and “provocation”. Israeli officials portrayed Thunberg as a “narcissist” and “antisemite”.

When Israeli soldiers illegally boarded the ship, they filmed themselves trying to hand out sandwiches to the crew — an actual stunt that should appall anyone mindful that, while Israel was concern-trolling Western publics about the nutritional needs of the Madleen crew, it was also starving two million Palestinians to death, half of them children.

Did the British government, whose vessel was rammed and invaded in international waters, angrily protest the attack? Did the reliably patriotic British media rally against this humiliating violation of UK sovereignty?

No, Starmer and Lammy once again had nothing to say on the matter.

They have yet to concede that Israel is even breaking international law in denying the people of Gaza all food and water for more than three months, let alone acknowledge that this actually constitutes genocide.

Instead, Lammy’s officials — 300 of whom have protested against the UK’s continuing collusion in Israeli atrocities — have been told to resign rather than raise objections rooted in international law.

Bypass legal advisers
According to sources within the Foreign Office cited by former British ambassador Craig Murray, Lammy has also insisted that any statements relating to the Madleen bypass the government’s legal advisers.

Why? To allow Lammy plausible deniability as he evades Britain’s legal obligation to respond to Israel’s assault on a vessel sailing under UK protection.

The media, meanwhile, has played its own part in whitewashing this flagrant crime — one that has taken place in full view, not hidden away in Gaza’s conveniently engineered “fog of war”.

Much of the press adopted the term “selfie yacht” as if it were their own. As though Thunberg and the rest of the crew were pleasure-seekers promoting their social media platforms rather than risking their lives taking on the might of a genocidal Israeli military.

They had good reason to be fearful. After all, the Israeli military shot dead 10 of their predecessors — activists on the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza — 15 years ago. Israel has killed in cold blood American citizens such as Rachel Corrie, British citizens such as Tom Hurndall, and acclaimed journalists such as Shireen Abu Akleh.

And for those with longer memories, the Israeli air force killed more than 30 American servicemen in a two-hour attack in 1967 on the USS Liberty, and wounded 170 more. The anniversary of that crime — covered up by every US administration — was commemorated by its survivors the day before the attack on the Madleen.

‘Detained’, not abducted
Israel’s trivialising smears of the Madleen crew were echoed uncritically from Sky News and The Telegraph to LBC and Piers Morgan. 

Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.

As Thunberg headed back to Europe on Tuesday, the media continued with its assault on the English language and common sense. They reported that she had been “deported” from Israel, as though she had smuggled herself into Israel illegally rather than being been forcibly dragged there by the Israeli military.

But even the so-called “serious” media buried the significance both of the Madleen’s voyage to Gaza and of Israel’s lawbreaking. From The Guardian and BBC to The New York Times and CBS, Israel’s criminal attack was characterised as the aid ship being “intercepted” or “diverted”, and of Israel “taking control” of the vessel.

For the Western media, Thunberg was “detained”, not abducted.

The framing was straight out of Tel Aviv. It was a preposterous narrative in which Israel was presented as taking actions necessary to restore order in a situation of dangerous rule-breaking and anarchy by activists on a futile and pointless excursion to Gaza.

The coverage was so uniform not because it related to any kind of reality, but because it was pure propaganda — narrative spin that served not only Israel’s interests but that of a Western political and media class deeply implicated in Israel’s genocide.

Arming criminals
In another glaring example of this collusion, the Western media chose to almost immediately bury what should have been explosive comments last week from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He admitted that Israel has been arming and cultivating close ties with criminal gangs in Gaza.

He was responding to remarks from Avigdor Lieberman, a former political ally turned rival, that some of those assisted by Israel are affiliated to the jihadist group Islamic State. The most prominent is named Yasser Abu Shabab.

The Western media either ignored this revelation or dutifully accepted Netanyahu’s self-serving characterisation of these ties as an alliance of convenience: one designed to weaken Hamas by promoting “rival local forces” and opening up new “post-war governing opportunities”.

The real aim — or rather, two aims: one immediate, the other long term — are far more cynical and disturbing.

More than six months ago, Palestinian analysts and the Israeli media began warning that Israel — after it had destroyed Gaza’s ruling institutions, including its police force – was working hand in hand with newly reinvigorated criminal gangs.

Israel’s immediate aim of arming the criminals — turning them into powerful militias — was to intensify the breakdown of law and order. That served as the prelude to a double-barrelled Israeli disinformation campaign.

Instead of the UN’s trusted and wide distribution network across Gaza, the GHF’s four “aid hubs” were perfectly designed to advance Israel’s genocidal goals

Prime looting position
These gangs were put in a prime position to loot food from the United Nations’ long-established aid distribution system and sell it on the black market. The looting helped Israel falsely claim both that Hamas was stealing aid from the UN and that the international body had proven itself unfit to run humanitarian operations in Gaza.

Israel and the US then set about creating a mercenary front group — misleadingly called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — to run a sham replacement operation.

Instead of the UN’s trusted and wide distribution network across Gaza, the GHF’s four “aid hubs” were perfectly designed to advance Israel’s genocidal goals.

They are located in a narrow strip of territory next to the border with Egypt. Palestinians are forced to ethnically cleanse themselves into a tiny area of Gaza — if they are to stand any hope of eating — in preparation for their expulsion into Sinai.

They have been herded into a massively congested area without the space or facilities to cope, where the spread of disease is guaranteed, and where they can be more easily massacred by Israeli bombs.

An increasingly malnourished population must walk long distances and wait in massive crowds in the heat in the hope of small handouts of food. It is a situation engineered to heighten tensions, and lead to chaos and fighting.

All of which provide an ideal pretext for Israeli soldiers to halt “aid distribution” pre-emptively in the interests of “public safety” and shoot into the crowds to “neutralise threats”, as has happened to lethal effect day after day.

Repeated ‘aid hub’ massacres
The repeated massacres at these “aid hubs” mean that the most vulnerable — those most in need of aid — have been frightened off, leaving gang members like Abu Shabab’s to enjoy the spoils.

On Wednesday, Israel massacred at least 60 Palestinians, most of them seeking food, in what has already become normalised, a daily ritual of bloodletting that is already barely making headlines.

And to add insult to injury, Israel has misrepresented its own drone footage of the very criminal gangs it arms, looting aid from trucks and shooting Palestinian aid-seekers as supposed evidence of Hamas stealing food and of the need for Israel to control aid distribution.

All of this is so utterly transparent, and repugnant, it is simply astonishing it has not been at the forefront of Western coverage as politicians and media worry about how “intolerable the situation” in Gaza has become.

Instead, the media has largely taken it as read that Hamas “steals aid”. The media has indulged an entirely bogus Israeli-fuelled debate about the need for aid distribution “reform”.

And the media has equivocated about whether it is Israeli soldiers shooting dead those seeking aid.

Of course, the media has refused to draw the only reasonable conclusion from all of this: that Israel is simply exploiting the chaos it has created to buy time for its starvation campaign to kill more Palestinians.

Calibrated warlordism
But there is much more at stake. Israel is fattening up these criminal gangs for a grander, future role in what used to be termed the “day after” — until it became all too clear that the period in question would follow the completion of Israel’s genocide.

It comes as no surprise to any Palestinian to hear confirmation from Netanyahu that Israel has been arming criminal gangs in Gaza, even those with affiliations to Islamic State.

It should not surprise any journalist who has spent serious time, as I have, living in a Palestinian community and studying Israel’s colonial control mechanisms over Palestinian society.

For years, Israel’s ultimate vision for the Palestinians – if they cannot be entirely expelled from their historic homeland – has been of carefully calibrated warlordism

Palestinian academics have understood for at least two decades — long before Hamas’ lethal one-day break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023 — why Israel has invested so much of its energy in dismantling bit by bit the institutions of Palestinian national identity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The goal, they have been telling me and anyone else who would listen, was to leave Palestinian society so hollowed out, so crushed by the rule of feuding criminal gangs, that statehood would become inconceivable.

As the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada observes of what is taking place in Gaza: “Israel is NOT using [the gangs] to go after Hamas, they’re using them to destroy Gaza itself from the inside.”

For years, Israel’s ultimate vision for the Palestinians — if they cannot be entirely expelled from their historic homeland — has been of carefully calibrated warlordism. Israel would arm a series of criminal families in their geographic heartlands.

Each would have enough light arms to terrorise their local populations into submission, and fight neighbouring families to define the extent of their fiefdom.

None would have the military power to take on Israel. Instead they would have to compete for Israel’s favour — treating it like some inflated Godfather —  in the hope of securing an advantage over rivals.

In this vision, the Palestinians — one of the most educated populations in the Middle East – are to be driven into a permanent state of civil war and “survival of the fittest” politics. Israel’s ambition is to eviscerate Palestinian social cohesion as effectively as it has bombed Gaza’s cities “into the Stone Age”.

Divinely blessed
This is a simple story, one that should be all too familiar to European publics if they were educated in their own histories.

For centuries, Europeans spread outwards — driven by a supremacist zealotry and a desire for material gain — to conquer the lands of others, to steal resources, and to subordinate, expel and exterminate the natives that stood in their way.

The native people were always dehumanised. They were always barbarians, “human animals”, even as we — the members of a supposedly superior civilisation — butchered them, starved them, levelled their homes, destroyed their crops.

Our mission of conquest and extermination was always divinely blessed. Our success in eradicating native peoples, our efficiency in killing them, was always proof of our moral superiority.

We were always the victims, even while we humiliated, tortured and raped. We were always on the side of righteousness.

Israel has simply carried this tradition into the modern era. It has held a mirror up to us and shown that, despite all our grandstanding about human rights, nothing has really changed.

There are a few, like Greta Thunberg and the crew of the Madleen, ready to show by example that we can break with the past. We can refuse to dehumanise. We can refuse to collude in industrial savagery. We can refuse to give our consent through silence and inaction.

But first we must stop listening to the siren calls of our political leaders and the billionaire-owned media. Only then might we learn what it means to be human.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Eleven peace activists and one journalist on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship, the Madleen, were detained by Israeli soldiers as their ship carrying vital humanitarian aid for starving Palestinians approached Gaza. The ship was intercepted by Israeli forces in the middle of the night in international waters. Its supplies were seized and communications jammed. The unarmed activists will likely be transported to Israeli detention or “immediately deported,” says Ann Wright, a U.S. military veteran who has participated in four Freedom Flotilla journeys and now serves on the steering committee of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. She calls on citizens of countries around the world to push for the activists’ release and an end to Israel’s war on Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. The Madleen ship was launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and initially planned to sail from Malta last month, but the group’s ship was damaged in a drone attack. The new mission includes the renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who speaks with Democracy Now! live from the Madleen. “We deem the risk of silence and the risk of inaction to be so much more deadly than this mission,” says Thunberg.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“The fight has only just begun,” Thunberg wrote in an announcement on Twitter on Friday. 

Thunberg began skipping school in 2018 to sit outside the Swedish Parliament building as a form of climate protest. She quickly attracted attention from the press and solidarity from other students similarly frustrated by their governments’ lack of action on climate change. Within a year, millions of young people around the world were skipping school on Friday to take part in protests affiliated with Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future” movement. 

Building on this momentum, Thunberg took a year off from school to pursue climate activism. In August 2019, she sailed for two weeks on a zero-emissions yacht across the Atlantic to speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City. There, she blasted world leaders for failing to address a global crisis that will irreparably harm the lives of young people and future generations. 

“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” Thunberg told policymakers. “You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you.”

Three days before the summit, millions of young people and other activists in more than 160 countries took to the streets in a global climate strike led by the Fridays for Future movement that was likely the largest coordinated climate protest in world history. A few months later, Thunberg spoke at the U.N. COP25 climate summit in Spain. That year, she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. 

Fridays for Future joined a rising tide of youth-led climate activism in the late 2010s, along with groups like the Sunrise Movement and Zero Hour. Though the arrival of COVID-19 forced protests to move online in 2020, Fridays for Future school strikes are still alive and well. The group is currently organizing a global climate strike in September.

Thunberg remains active in climate activism. In January this year, she was detained by police in Germany at a protest against the expansion of a coal mine attended by tens of thousands of people. In March, Thunberg joined Indigenous Sámi youth to protest an illegal wind farm in Norway. She regularly makes headlines for taking positions on prominent issues — for example, arguing against Germany’s use of coal in its phaseout of nuclear power and decrying Russia’s apparent bombing of a dam in Ukraine.

But some advocates have noted that the media’s spotlight on Thunberg often comes at the exclusion of young climate activists from the Global South. In a particularly damning example, the Associated Press cropped Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate out of a photo of climate activists including Thunberg in 2020. 

“Frustratingly, these other activists are often referred to in the media as the ‘Greta Thunberg’ of their country, or are said to be following in her footsteps, even in cases where they began their public activism long before she started hers,” writer Chika Unigwe observed in The Guardian. Over the years, Thunberg has asked reporters to focus on climate activists from other countries. 

The end of school strikes is one of a few recent shifts in Thunberg’s activism. She chose to not attend either COP26 or COP27, the last two major U.N. climate conferences in Scotland and Egypt, respectively, saying, “the COPs are not really working, unless of course we use them as an opportunity to mobilize.”

“Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go,” Thunberg wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After 5 years, Greta Thunberg holds her final school strike for the climate on Jun 12, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

“The fight has only just begun,” Thunberg wrote in an announcement on Twitter on Friday. 

Thunberg began skipping school in 2018 to sit outside the Swedish Parliament building as a form of climate protest. She quickly attracted attention from the press and solidarity from other students similarly frustrated by their governments’ lack of action on climate change. Within a year, millions of young people around the world were skipping school on Friday to take part in protests affiliated with Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future” movement. 

Building on this momentum, Thunberg took a year off from school to pursue climate activism. In August 2019, she sailed for two weeks on a zero-emissions yacht across the Atlantic to speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City. There, she blasted world leaders for failing to address a global crisis that will irreparably harm the lives of young people and future generations. 

“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” Thunberg told policymakers. “You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you.”

Three days before the summit, millions of young people and other activists in more than 160 countries took to the streets in a global climate strike led by the Fridays for Future movement that was likely the largest coordinated climate protest in world history. A few months later, Thunberg spoke at the U.N. COP25 climate summit in Spain. That year, she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. 

Fridays for Future joined a rising tide of youth-led climate activism in the late 2010s, along with groups like the Sunrise Movement and Zero Hour. Though the arrival of COVID-19 forced protests to move online in 2020, Fridays for Future school strikes are still alive and well. The group is currently organizing a global climate strike in September.

Thunberg remains active in climate activism. In January this year, she was detained by police in Germany at a protest against the expansion of a coal mine attended by tens of thousands of people. In March, Thunberg joined Indigenous Sámi youth to protest an illegal wind farm in Norway. She regularly makes headlines for taking positions on prominent issues — for example, arguing against Germany’s use of coal in its phaseout of nuclear power and decrying Russia’s apparent bombing of a dam in Ukraine.

But some advocates have noted that the media’s spotlight on Thunberg often comes at the exclusion of young climate activists from the Global South. In a particularly damning example, the Associated Press cropped Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate out of a photo of climate activists including Thunberg in 2020. 

“Frustratingly, these other activists are often referred to in the media as the ‘Greta Thunberg’ of their country, or are said to be following in her footsteps, even in cases where they began their public activism long before she started hers,” writer Chika Unigwe observed in The Guardian. Over the years, Thunberg has asked reporters to focus on climate activists from other countries. 

The end of school strikes is one of a few recent shifts in Thunberg’s activism. She chose to not attend either COP26 or COP27, the last two major U.N. climate conferences in Scotland and Egypt, respectively, saying, “the COPs are not really working, unless of course we use them as an opportunity to mobilize.”

“Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go,” Thunberg wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After 5 years, Greta Thunberg holds her final school strike for the climate on Jun 12, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

A Swedish court on Tuesday ruled that hundreds of youth climate activists including Greta Thunberg can collectively sue Sweden for the government's "insufficient climate policy."

More than 600 people under age 26, including 20-year-old Thunberg, signed the 87-page document that is the basis for the lawsuit, which was filed in Stockholm in November and coincided with a march through the city.

"Sweden has never treated the climate crisis like a crisis," Anton Foley of the youth-led group Aurora, which prepared and filed the class-action suit, said at the time. "Sweden is failing in its responsibility and breaking the law."

The Nacka District Court determined Tuesday that the case can proceed and gave the Swedish government three months to respond.

"The district court has today issued a summons in a high-profile class-action lawsuit," the court said. "In the case, demands have been made for the district court to determine that the state has an obligation to take certain specified measures to limit climate change."

"Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires drastic emission reductions starting now."

"At present, the district court cannot give a forecast as to when the case may be finalized or when it may be necessary to hold hearings in the case," the court continued, adding that the case could go to trial or be settled in writing.

As Aurora's webpage for the case explains, the young activists believe the climate emergency "is a problem we all have to solve together, but the responsibility is not evenly distributed between the countries of the world" and "Sweden, as a rich country with historically high emissions, has a particularly big responsibility to take the lead."

Referencing the 2015 Paris agreement's more ambitious goal for global heating by the end of this century, the activists argue that their country's climate action "is insufficient to be in line with Sweden's fair share of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C" and therefore "constitutes a violation of human rights."

"Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires drastic emission reductions starting now," the youth warn, noting calculations that suggest Sweden doing its fair share would involve moves to cut emissions by 6.5-9.4 million tons annually from 2019-30.

"The consequences of the climate crisis in Sweden are a serious threat to life and health," Aurora's webpage says, pointing to forest fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and the spread of diseases.

The climate crisis also negatively impacts mental health, "partly as a consequence of the extreme weather and environmental changes that are happening and will happen, but also due to anxiety and stress during youth," the site stresses. "Everyone who is involved in the class action is young and therefore runs a high risk of suffering these consequences during their lifetime."

The Swedish court's decision came a day after the release of a highly anticipated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called "a survival guide for humanity" which shows the 1.5°C goal for this century is still achievable but requires "a quantum leap in climate action."

Thunberg, founder of the global Fridays for Future movement, tweeted Monday in response to the report, "The fact that people in power still somehow live in denial, and actively move in the wrong direction, will eventually be seen for and understood as the unprecedented betrayal it is."

"Today, after yesterday's IPCC report, everything is back to normal—as always," Thunberg added Tuesday. "We continue to ignore the climate crisis as if nothing happened. Our societies are still in denial, and those in power go on with their never ending quests to maximize profits. We cannot afford this."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Demanding that all countries center climate justice as they take steps to transition away from fossil fuel-sourced energy, Fridays for Future leader Greta Thunberg joined dozens of Norwegian Sami people and their supporters Monday at Norway's Energy Ministry to protest wind turbines that have been constructed on Indigenous lands.

"Indigenous rights, human rights must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action," Thunberg toldReuters. "That can't happen at the expense of some people. Then it is not climate justice."

Thunberg was among hundreds of people who blocked the entrance to the ministry, with many participants chaining themselves together as they displayed a sign reading, "Land Back."

The Sami people are demanding that the ministry abide by a 2021 Supreme Court ruling which found that two wind farms in central Norway violate the Samis' international rights.

The Indigenous group has traditionally herded reindeer on the land used by the Roan Vind and Fosen Vind farms, and the Sami protesters said the wind turbines used disturb the animals.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling handed down 16 months ago, the two farms remain in operation.

"It is absurd that the Norwegian government has chosen to ignore the ruling," Thunberg told the Associated Press.

The Swedish climate leader joined the protest days after Sami demonstrators began occupying the ministry's reception area last Thursday. Police forcibly removed about a dozen Sami people at about 2:30 am on Monday, before the group assembled outside the ministry and participants chained themselves together.

By using chains, "we make it practically more difficult to move us," Sami activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen toldNRK.

The Supreme Court did not specify in 2021 what the companies should do with the 151 wind turbines constructed on the land, and Reutersreported that the ministry is "hoping to find a compromise."

"We understand that this case is a burden for the reindeer herders," Minister of Energy and Petroleum Terje Aasland told Reuters. "The ministry will do what it can to contribute to resolving this case and that it will not take longer than necessary."

After the ruling was handed down, Sami Parliament president Silje Karine Muotka told Reuters that the decision "must have consequences."

"The consequence is that the wind farms need to be removed," Muotka said. "This is an opportunity for the minister to make right the wrongs of many others."

The wind farms—which are owned by Germany's Stadtwerke Muenchen, Norwegian utilities Statkraft and TroenderEnergi, and Swiss firms Energy Infrastructure Partners and BKW—say they are waiting for a decision from the government about how to proceed.

"We trust that the ministry will find good solutions allowing us to continue the production of renewable energy while maintaining the rights of the reindeer owners," said Roan Vind in a statement.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg took aim at those profiting off of the climate emergency Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual summit in Davos, Switzerland.

The Fridays for Future leader has previously attracted global attention for delivering impassioned speeches at earlier summits, urging the Davos elite to "act as if you loved your children above all else" and calling on policymakers to stop "basing your 'pledges' on the cheating tactics that got us into this mess in the first place" and start to "implement annual binding carbon budgets."

Early into a panel discussion Thursday with fellow climate activists and an international energy expert, Thunberg said that "we are right now in Davos, where basically the people are who are mostly fueling the destruction of the planet, the people who are at the very core of the climate crisis, the people who are investing in fossil fuels... somehow these are the people that we seem to rely on solving our problems when they have proven time and time again that they are not prioritizing that."

"The changes that we need are not very likely to come from the inside, rather I believe they will come from the bottom up."

"They are prioritizing self greed, corporate greed, and short-term economic profits above people and above planet," she charged. "We seem to be listening to them rather than the people who are actually affected by the climate crisis, the people who are living on the frontlines, and that kind of tells us the situation, how absurd this is."

"The people who we really should be listening to are not here," she said of the yearly meeting that brings people from around the world to the Swiss resort town. "Instead, we are bombarded with messages from people who are basically the people who are causing this crisis."

After the moderator asked Thunberg—who was detained at a protest against coal mining in Germany earlier this week—why she is talking "outside" the summit rather than with high-profile figures "inside" as she has before, she said that "there are already activists doing that, and I think that if there should be activists inside speaking to these people, it should be those on the frontlines and not privileged people like me who are not experiencing the firsthand consequences of the climate crisis."

"I think that right now, the changes that we need are not very likely to come from the inside, rather I believe they will come from the bottom up," the 20-year-old added. "Without massive public pressure from the outside—at least, in my experience—these people are going to go as far as they possibly can."

"As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus for their own gain," she stressed. "We need to build and create a critical mass of people who demand change, who demand justice."

DAVOS LIVE: Greta Thunberg takes part in a WEF event with IEA's Fatih Birolwww.youtube.com

Thunberg—who twice has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for climate activism that has included global school strikes—said that "we know that the changes we are advocating for are not going to happen overnight, and that is why we have to stay strong during a longer period of time" and grow the movement of people demanding an end to the fossil fuel era.

"The people standing up and raising their voices against all that is happening—that's the hope right now. The hope comes from the people," Thunberg concluded—a sentiment echoed by the other young climate activists on the panel, Vanessa Nakate of Uganda, Luisa Neubauer of Germany, and Helena Gualinga of an Indigenous community in Ecuador. They were joined by Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, which has also highlighted the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Thunberg, Nakate, Neubauer, and Gualinga are also spearheading a "cease-and-desist" letter demanding that fossil fuel CEOs attending the summit in Davos "immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need." As of press time, it had been signed by over 921,000 people.

The activists aren't the only ones taking aim at the fossil fuel industry and their corporate and political allies in Davos this week. As Common Dreamsreported, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also did so in a speech Wednesday.

"This insanity belongs in science fiction, yet we know the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact," he said of continuing to burn fossil fuels despite the catastrophic consequences. "We must act together to close the emissions gap. To phase out coal and supercharge the renewable revolution. To end the addiction to fossil fuels. And to stop our self-defeating war on nature."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

After arriving in Germany last week to support local campaigners battling the expansion, 20-year-old Thunberg joined activists staging a sit-in nearly six miles from the Lützerath, at the edge of the mine owned by energy utility RWE.

"Greta Thunberg was part of a group of activists who rushed towards the ledge. However, she was then stopped and carried by us with this group out of the immediate danger area to establish their identity," a spokesperson for Aachen police toldReuters, noting that one activist jumped into the mine.

According to Reuters:

It was not yet clear what would happen to Thunberg or the group she was detained with, or whether the activist who jumped into the mine was injured, the spokesperson said, adding the police would provide an update within the hour.

Thunberg was carried away by three policemen and held by one arm at a spot further away from the edge of the mine where she was previously sat with the group.

She was then escorted back towards police vans.

As Common Dreams previously reported, while visiting Lützerath on Friday, Thunberg said that it was "horrible to see what's happening here" and called out the "outrageous... police violence" occurring in the area.

"We expect to show what people power looks like, what democracy looks like," she vowed. "When governments and corporations are acting like this, destroying the environment, putting countless people at risk, the people step up."

On Saturday, the Fridays for Future founder joined thousands of people who rallied against the destruction of Lützerath. The New York Timesnoted that police used "water cannons and nightsticks to prevent protesters from charging the site, even though by then the village was virtually empty and many of its trees already felled."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Supporters of climate leader Greta Thunberg cheered late Thursday into Friday after Andrew Tate, the latest right-wing influencer to attack Thunberg online, was arrested in Romania after bragging to the activist about owning dozens of emissions-heavy vehicles.

The arrest—on human trafficking, rape, and organized crime charges—came shortly after Tate addressed Thunberg in a video uploaded to Twitter in which he was holding a pizza box from a Romanian pizza chain, although authorities in Romania "said that it was not the case that Tate's arrest had been made as a result of the pizza boxes," according to The Guardian.

Tate and Thunberg's interactions this week began after Tate addressed her on Twitter Tuesday regarding his "33 cars" and asked her to provide an email address "so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions."

"Email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com," replied Thunberg.

\u201cyes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com\u201d

— Greta Thunberg (@Greta Thunberg) 1672225626

Thunberg's response provoked Tate to post a video in which he, clad in a red bathrobe and smoking a cigar, said the Swedish climate action advocate "doesn't realize she's been programmed" and is "a slave of the matrix" before calling her "hate-filled" and "bitter."

"Please bring me pizza and make sure that the boxes are not recycled," Tate said to someone off-camera, who handed him two boxes labeled "Jerry's Pizza."

Romanian authorities, who have been investigating Tate and his brother, Tristan, since April, said that the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) mobilized to arrest them "after seeing, including on social networks, that they were together in Romania."

"The authorities waited for the right moment to catch the Tate brothers, who were always out of the country," reported the Romanian news agency Gandul.

Although authorities said the pizza boxes were not what tipped them off and didn't confirm whether the video had been part of what they observed when examining Tate's recent social media presence, Thunberg joked, "This is what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes."

Earlier this year, Tate was banned from several social media platforms for posting violent and misogynistic content in which he described how he would assault a woman and said women who are raped are partially responsible for their attacks.

Tate and his brother are accused of recruiting victims who they forced to perform pornography "through physical violence and mental coercion." The Romanian investigation into the two brothers began in April when the U.S. embassy received a tip that a 21-year-old American woman was being held at their mansion in Bucharest against her will.

Tate and his brother were reportedly detained for 24 hours after the arrest. Reuters reported Friday that prosecutors asked a court in Bucharest to extend Tate's detention to 30 days.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Climate leader Greta Thunberg was among 636 young adults and children who submitted a class-action lawsuit against the Swedish government at a district court in Stockholm on Friday, arguing that the country's right-wing leaders are failing to obey the Swedish constitution as they continue allowing planet-heating fossil fuel extraction.

About 2,000 people marched through Stockholm on Friday at the 223rd "school strike" against climate inaction—part of the global Fridays for Future movement Thunberg began in 2018 with a one-person protest outside Swedish Parliament.

Thunberg and her fellow plaintiffs symbolically delivered their lawsuit to the district court, following an earlier official filing by Aurora, the organization leading the suit.

"Today on Black Friday is the perfect day to sue the state over its insufficient climate policies," Thunberg tweeted, referring to the holiday shopping day that originated in the U.S. "So that's what we did.See you in court!"

Sweden adopted a law in 2017 requiring the government to draw down its fossil fuel emissions to net-zero by 2045, but Statistics Sweden reported earlier this year that greenhouse gas emissions increased by 3% in 2021 compared to the previous year, driven by the transport sector.

"If we win, there will be a verdict that says the Swedish state is required to do its share of the global measures needed for the world to meet the 1.5° target."

The right-wing government that took power last month after September's elections has proposed a budget for 2023 which would further increase emissions. It also eliminated the Ministry of Environment, which left climate action advocates expecting "huge cuts in green funding leading to a devastating impact on climate policies."

"The Swedish state fails to meet the constitutional requirement to promote sustainable development leading to a good environment for present and future generations," Aurora said in a statement Friday.

Ida Edling, a member of the organization, told Agence France Presse that the lawsuit is the first "large-scale case in the Swedish legal system."

The lawsuit demands that the government take its "fair share" of global action to help limit planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures, in line with the Paris climate agreement.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said in a report last month that there is currently "no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place" as governments continue to support fossil fuel extraction.

"If we win, there will be a verdict that says the Swedish state is required to do its share of the global measures needed for the world to meet the 1.5° target," Edling told Al Jazeera.

On Friday, some of the plaintiffs carried a sign reading, "Now we sue the state" at the march through Stockholm.

The plaintiffs are the latest climate campaigners to use the legal system to force policymakers to heed the warnings of energy experts and climate scientists.

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled in 2019 that the government must cut the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 25%.

Another case brought by six Portuguese youths is pending in the European Court of Human Rights, where the plaintiffs argued 33 countries, including Sweden, have violated human rights by failing to mitigate the climate emergency.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg on Tuesday joined the growing chorus of calls demanding that United Nations Climate Change Conference host Egypt release hunger-striking political prisoner Alaa Abd El Fattah.

"Human rights and climate movements are stronger when we stand in solidarity together."

El Fattah, who is Egyptian-British, has been jailed almost continuously for the past decade for his activism, especially his prominent role in the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East in the early 2010s. He is currently serving a five-year sentence after being convicted of spreading "false news undermining national security," a common charge against activists in Egypt.

El Fattah's health has dangerously deteriorated as a result of the hunger strike he's been on since April 2 to protest the torture—including brutal beatings and solitary confinement—and other abuses he says he's endured at the hands of authoritarian President Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's forces. 

"It is depressing to see that human life is at risk," Scholz told reporters in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on Tuesday. "A decision needs to be taken, a release has to be made possible so that it doesn't come to it that the hunger striker dies."

Referring to the U.N. climate conference, Thunberg wrote on Twitter that "during COP27, we urge the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those held simply for peacefully exercising their human rights, implementing criteria set by local NGOs for these releases: fairness, transparency, inclusiveness, and urgency. One of these prisoners is Alaa Abd El Fattah."

"A system that doesn't address the needs for climate justice and securing human rights is a system that has failed everyone—we need to keep both in mind," the 19-year-old Fridays for Future founder added. "Human rights and climate movements are stronger when we stand in solidarity together. There is no climate justice without social justice and human rights."

On Tuesday, Amr Darwish, an Egyptian lawmaker with close ties to el-Sisi, confronted El Fattah's sister, Sanaa Seif, as she spoke at a press briefing, accusing her of "inciting foreign countries to put pressure on Egypt" before being escorted away by security.

Human rights groups have sounded the alarm in recent months over the Egyptian government's persecution of climate activists, as well as voicing concerns that the official app being used at COP27 could be exploited to spy on environmentalists and other dissidents.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Twitter user @Navrang shared these photos with the caption, “Scene around #Pyramid stage in #Glastonbury after the ‘performance’ of great environmentalist Greta Thunberg!”.

Various users have shared these photos with similar captions. All of these tweets attempt to portray Thunberg as a hypocrite.

Scene around Pyramid stage in Glastonbury after the ‘performance’ of #GretaThunberg

Environmentalist ?? pic.twitter.com/AQ7AX5IBiA

— Kangana Ranaut (@TeamKangana2) June 28, 2022

Scene around #Pyramid stage in #Glastonbury after the ‘performance’ of great environmentalist Greta Thunberg! pic.twitter.com/NB0mQRn3ev

— Jai Sri Ram (@JaiShriRam10008) June 28, 2022

Amish Devgan, the managing editor of News18 Hindi, also quote tweeted one of the viral tweets saying, “You are environmentalist Really [sic].”

You are environmentalist Really @GretaThunberg https://t.co/cZfl6JfXdF

— Amish Devgan (@AMISHDEVGAN) June 28, 2022

Fact-check

We started with verifying whether Greta Thunberg had actually attended the 2022 edition of the Glastonbury Festival. A quick scroll through Thunberg’s Twitter profile informs that she did.

”We are approaching the precipice and I would strongly suggest that all of those who have not yet been greenwashed out of our senses to stand our ground. Do you not let them drag us another inch closer to the edge. Right now is where we stand our ground.”

Thank you Glastonbury! pic.twitter.com/1AN44Ff8hG

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) June 25, 2022

Comparing the viral photo of Thunberg on stage with the one tweeted by her on Twitter, we can easily verify that this image is indeed from 2022. This can also be confirmed through news reports published on June 26, the same day as Thunberg’s tweet.

Photo 1

The photo of a man in camouflage attire walking through a pile of trash near the Pyramid Stage is from 2011. We performed a Google reverse image search and came across a blog by photographer Ben Birchall of Press Association. In his blog, Ben has documented the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The photo is available in this blog.

When we opened this image in a new tab, the URL also helped us confirm that the photo was uploaded on the WordPress blog in 2011.

Photo 2

The photo of where we have a direct look at the stage, with trash scattered all around, is from 2015. We yet again performed a Google reverse image search and came across a news report by Daily Mail published in 2015. In the bottom-left corner of the photo, we can see that the image has been credited to David Hedges of SWNS.

Photo 3

The photo of the abandoned chairs with trash surrounding them is most likely from 2017. Using Google reverse image search, we came across a blog called Expert Skip Hire, where a blog post titled ‘Cleaning up the waste at Glastonbury‘ carries the same image. The blog was published in 2017.

While it is not credited to a photographer, it is still safe to conclude the image is not from 2022 as the image can be found on multiple blogs prior to 2022.

The official Twitter handle of Glastonbury Festival also tweeted a photo of a clean field on June 27 – thanking those who helped clean up the trash post-festival.

Huge thanks to everyone who’s been making such an effort to pack everything away and leave no trace. pic.twitter.com/cLBSOY5Bad

— Glastonbury Live (@GlastoLive) June 27, 2022

To conclude, old photos of the Glastonbury Festival were shared by multiple users on social media to target Greta Thunberg.

The post Old photos of trash at Glastonbury Festival shared to target Greta Thunberg appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kalim Ahmed.