Hamas Agrees to Disarm, But Only If Israel Leaves Gaza
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UPDATE: On August 5, I spoke to Chris Cook for his Gorilla Radio show in Canada, about this article, and about the ongoing persecution of Palestine Action activists and their supporters in the UK. Listen to the whole show on Substack here. I’m in the second half-hour; Yves Engler in the first.
The world’s media has briefly remembered the beleaguered Gaza Strip today, after Donald Trump claimed, in a post on his inaptly-named Truth Social account, that the Board of Peace — the body set up under his administration last October to supervise the future of Gaza — has “reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all the other armed groups in Gaza”, which he described as “a monumental step towards lasting PEACE and SECURITY”, and “a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people.”
“At the same time”, he added, “Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks.”
To briefly summarize the situation to date, last October, after two years of genocide, in which at least 70,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians) had been killed, a ceasefire was negotiated whereby Hamas and the other armed factions in Gaza agreed to hand over the remaining Israeli hostages seized on October 7, 2023, in exchange for an end to Israeli hostilities, the withdrawal of their forces to a “Yellow Line”, behind which they retained military control of around 53% of Gaza, and the provision of adequate humanitarian aid for the surviving population, set at 600 trucks a day.
While Hamas faithfully adhered to its obligations, Israel did not. In at least 3,500 violations of the ceasefire agreement, it has killed around 1,300 Palestinians, has expanded its control of Gaza to around 70%, and has failed to allow in anything even vaguely resembling the agreed amount of humanitarian aid.
Broken Justice: Filton 6 Activists to Be Sentenced on Terrorism Charges That Were Not Disclosed to the Jury
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What do we call a legal system that allows a judge to add a terrorism conviction at the sentencing phase of a trial, when the jury, who convicted the defendants of criminal damage, were not even told about it? Rigged, broken and a travesty of justice.
I haven’t published an article about Palestine Action here on my website since July last year, when I posted Why We Are All Palestine Action, and Why Direct Action to Prevent Genocide Is the Opposite of Terrorism, after MPs voted to support the scandalous proscription, by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper, of the direct action group as a terrorist organization.
I have, however, continued to cover developments on my Substack. See Mass arrests in London for opposing genocide last August, as hundreds of concerned citizens were arrested for peacefully holding up placards stating, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, and Palestine Action ban ruled unlawful in February, covering the High Court ruling that is now being contested by the government in the Court of Appeals.
Two weeks ago, I posted Defending direct action to prevent a genocide, at the end of the retrial of the Filton 6, activists who, in August 2024, undertook direct action against a factory in Bristol owned by Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms company that manufactures drones and other weapons used in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and which included a powerful closing statement by one of the defendants, Charlotte Head. The first trial of the Filton 6, who had been held on remand (without charge or trial) since August 2024, in punitive conditions that encouraged many of them to engage in hunger strikes, began last November and ended in February with the jury dismissing some charges and unable to reach a verdict on others, but, instead of backing down, the government immediately launched a retrial.
The “War” on Iran and the Extraordinary, Overreaching Hubris of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu
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When Ancient Greek thinkers first began analyzing and categorizing the world around them, the role human beings play in it, and the workings of the human body and the human mind, one enduring concept they came up with was hubris, conceived as a dangerous revolt against the natural order, whereby those who became so caught up in their own sense of self-importance — via “extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with arrogance” — would be punished by the gods.
Last October, in a post on Medium, Manfred Kets de Vries, a Dutch psychoanalyst, described how, for the Greeks, hubris “wasn’t just poor judgment. It was a serious moral failing, a kind of arrogant blindness that led people to overstep human boundaries. Those caught in the grip of hubris begin to believe that the world should conform to their view of it. They overestimate what they can do, ignore the consequences, and often reject criticism entirely. Even when things go wrong, they remain convinced they were right all along.”
As the world reels from the decision by the United States and the State of Israel to launch an illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran on Saturday, everything about the attacks screams ”hubris” at the highest amplification imaginable.
Israel Murders Anas Al-Sharif to Create a Media Blackout For Its Imminent Annihilation of Gaza City
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UPDATE: Please free free to check out my one-hour interview with Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio, recorded on August 13, in which we discussed the targeted murder of Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Israel’s war on journalists and its persistent lies, as well as the self-inflicted problems created by the British government following its proscription of Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization.
Yesterday, at around 11.35pm, in a deliberate targeted attack on the press tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Israel murdered the whole of the remaining crew of Al Jazeera Arabic in northern Gaza — the journalists Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, the cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and an assistant, Moamen Aliwa. Also killed was a freelance journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi, and Al-Sharif’s teenage nephew Musab, who had hoped to follow in his uncle’s footsteps.
My heart sank when I read the news last night. Al-Sharif, 28, was probably the most hard-working journalist in history, relentlessly chronicling the genocide for 22 months with barely a break. It’s unimaginable how, hurrying from one atrocity to another, repeatedly reporting on shattered bodies and erased families, and always enveloped by the smell of blood, he carried on working.
Well known in the Arabic-speaking world, and with millions of followers on social media, where he posted in both Arabic and English, Al-Sharif, who leaves a wife and two young children he adored, kept going even though he must have known that his days were numbered. He was the last of the tireless and ever-visible Al Jazeera journalists, surviving as his closest friends and colleagues were picked off one by one — journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al-Rifi, who were killed on July 31, 2024, cameraman Fadi Al-Wahidi, who was paralyzed after an attack on October 9, 2024, and Hossam Shabat, who was targeted and murdered on March 24 this year.
The Alarming Kafkaesque Basis of Trump’s “War on Migrants”
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NOTE: On June 18, I was interviewed by Chris Cook for his weekly, hour-long Gorilla Radio show about this article. You can find the show here, and I’m in the second half, after Dan Kovalik talking about Israel’s war on Iran in the first half.
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On June 4, in a memorable, 69-page memorandum opinion, Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District Court in Washington, D.C., began a ruling relating to Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to a mega-prison for alleged terrorists in El Salvador by quoting from Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” in which the protagonist, Josef K., “awakens to encounter two strange men outside his room,” and “realizes that he is under arrest.” However, “When he asks the strangers why, he receives no answer. ‘We weren’t sent to tell you that,’ one says. ‘Proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course.’”
As Judge Boasberg added, “Bewildered by these men and distressed by their message, K. tries to comfort himself that he lives in ‘a state governed by law,’ one where ‘all statutes [are] in force.’ He therefore demands again, ‘How can I be under arrest? And in this manner?’ ‘Now there you go again,’ the guard replies. ‘We don’t answer such questions.’ Undeterred, K. offers his ‘papers’ and demands their arrest warrant. ‘Good heavens!’ the man scolds. ‘There’s been no mistake.’ ‘[O]ur department,’ he assures K., is only ‘attracted by guilt’; it ‘doesn’t seek [it] out . . . That’s the Law.’ ‘I don’t know that law,’ K. responds. ‘You’ll feel it eventually,’ the guard says.”
As Judge Boasberg proceeded to explain, “Such was the situation into which Frengel Reyes Mota, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, and scores of other Venezuelan noncitizens say they were plunged on March 15, 2025. In the early morning hours, Venezuelans held by the Department of Homeland Security at El Valle Detention Facility in Texas were awakened from their cells, taken to a separate room, shackled, and informed that they were being transferred. To where? That they were not told. When asked, some guards reportedly laughed and said that they did not know; others told the detainees, incorrectly, that they were being transferred to another immigration facility or to Mexico or Venezuela.”
Updates on Trump’s Deportation Obsession and His Open Warfare on the US Courts, and My Interview on Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook
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Many thanks to Chris Cook in western Canada for having me on his weekly Gorilla Radio show on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in the horrendous “war on migrants” that Donald Trump initiated when he took office three months ago. The interview is available here, on Gorilla Radio’s Substack, taking up the first half of the hour-long show, with Canadian author Ray McGinnis in the second half.
Chris and I last spoke in February, just after Donald Trump had started using Guantánamo to hold migrants — the majority of whom were Venezuelans, who were accused, without evidence, of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. I wrote about the use of Guantánamo for migrants in a series of articles here, here, here, here, here and here, with a summary on the Close Guantánamo website on March 21.
By that point, Trump had begun shifting his focus to an even more alarming location than Guantánamo, sending 238 Venezuelan migrants and 23 Salvadorians — all, again, accused of being gang members, without any evidence being provided — on a one-way trip to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison (the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or, in English, the Terrorism Confinement Center) on March 15.
To Hold 30,000 Migrants in Prison at Guantánamo, How Does Trump Propose to Redefine Them So They’re Beyond the Reach of the Law?
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This article is a much-expanded version of “Monthly Close Guantánamo Vigils Resume Amidst Trump’s Chilling Promise to Expand a Neighboring Facility to Hold 30,000 Migrants“, an article published on February 3 on the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
On January 20, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it seemed that the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which had recently marked the 23rd anniversary of its opening, might become as marginalized and generally forgotten as it was in his first term in office, when he largely sealed it shut for four years.
Last Wednesday, however, and seemingly out of the blue, Trump suddenly announced that he had just issued a new executive order, “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to Full Capacity”, to expand an existing migrant detention facility at the naval base, where the “war on terror” prison is located, “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”, as part of his intention to “halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
Announcing his executive order, Trump claimed that the expanded migrant detention facility was intended to house 30,000 migrants, stating, “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” It was, however, unclear on what basis these migrants would be held, just as Trump also failed to acknowledge that Congressional approval would be required for its construction.
Check out here my half-hour interview about Trump’s plans, with Chris Cook, for his weekly Gorilla Radio show, which, for 25 years, has been “providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.”
I Discuss Julian Assange’s Council of Europe Testimony and Social Media Censorship with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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On Wednesday, I was delighted to talk once more with Chris Cook, for his Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, which has been running weekly since 1999, and, in Chris’ words, “providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.” Chris first found me about 15 years ago, and has interviewed me regularly ever since, and if you’d like to hear our 30-minute interview, as well as an interview with the Canadian journalist, author, and activist Yves Engler, you can find it here on the Gorilla Radio Substack page.
My interviews with Chris often deal with the main focus of my work, the seemingly uncloseable prison at Guantánamo Bay, although we’ve also discussed numerous other topics over the years, including, over the last year, the grotesque genocide being undertaken by the State of Israel in the Gaza Strip.
We’ve also spoken frequently about Julian Assange, with whom I worked on WikiLeaks’ release of the Guantánamo Files in 2011, and much of our interview on Wednesday was taken up with a discussion of Julian’s testimony at a hearing of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on Monday.
Radio: I Discuss the Aborted Guantánamo Plea Deals and the UK’s Far-Right Riots with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Last week I was delighted to speak yet again with Chris Cook, who, for 25 years, has been running his Gorilla Radio show out of western Canada, “providing a forum”, as he describes it, “for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.”
Chris and I have spoken countless times over the last 15 years or so, and last week we discussed the latest news regarding Guantánamo, as well as the recent far-right riots in the UK. The show is available on Gorilla Radio’s Substack page here, and our interview is in the second half of the one-hour show.
On Guantánamo, we followed up on my recent article, Lloyd Austin Cynically Revokes 9/11 Plea Deals, Which Correctly Concluded That the Use of Torture Is Incompatible With the Pursuit of Justice, looking at the plea deals agreed with three of the five men charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks, which, however, only survived for 48 hours until they were revoked by defense secretary Lloyd Austin.
Radio: I Discuss the Death of the Tories, Labour’s Dubious Victory and Israel’s Guantánamo with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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Many thanks to my truth warrior colleague Chris Cook, in western Canada, for having me on his Gorilla Radio show again to discuss last week’s General Election in the UK, following up on my article, Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly.
Our interview, available on Chris’s Substack here, took place in the second half of the one-hour show, following his interview with journalist and author John Helmer about Russia and Ukraine.
Chris and I spent most of our half-hour interview discussing the collapse of the Conservative Party — who lost two-thirds of their seats — after the 14 unbearably long years of their increasingly deranged rule, which became noticeably more septic after the vote to leave the EU in 2016, and also discussing the largely empty promise of their replacements, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer, who, because of the vagaries of Britain’s antiquated and anachronistic ‘First Past the Post’ voting system, won a landslide victory, despite securing less votes than Jeremy Corbyn did as Labour’s leader in the General Elections of 2017 and 2019.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
