Episodes
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Israelâs attack on its neighbors could not be sustained without support from the West. And much of that support comes from the United Kingdom. Only a few hundred kilometers from Gaza, the British military base in Akrotiri, Cyprus, serves as the âheartbeatâ of the Israeli assault. Israeli warplanes fly there to be serviced and repaired, while Western supply planes fly into the base before making the final trip to Israel.
âAlmost no one in this country [the United Kingdom] had heard about it before Gaza and before our work on it,â investigative journalist and returning guest Matt Kennard told Lowkey today, adding:
This is a colony that Britain retained after awarding independence to Cyprus in 1960. But it wasnât really independent because Cyprus gave 3% of its land mass to the British, on which they built a massive air base on Akrotiri and a massive intelligence base at Dhekelia. And now, they are being used to facilitate a genocide in Gaza, through [supplying] arms, personnel and intelligence.â
Kennard is a writer and journalist for Declassified UK. He has broken several stories about secret British collaboration and support for Israeli actions. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Financial Times and was a fellow and a director of the Center For Investigative Journalism in London. His latest book is âSilent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy.âFor Kennard, Britainâs active support of Israeli actions makes them participants in the ongoing genocide. Last October, the British government issued a âD Noticeâ instructing media outlets not to report on any elite U.K. SAS commando operations in Gaza. This action immediately raises the question, âWhat are British special forces doing in Gaza?â
In addition to weapons sales, logistical aid and political support, Britain also secretly trains Israeli troops. Despite this, the Israeli government has continued to attempt to infiltrate and surveil top-level British politicians. Boris Johnson, for instance, revealed that Benjamin Netanyahu personally attempted to place a listening device in his quarters. Kennardâs investigation revealed that one-third of Johnsonâs cabinet had their political careers funded either directly by Israel or by the pro-Israel lobby.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
In less than one year, Israel has managed to turn Gaza into rubble. A recent estimate by a global health expert suggested that around 335,000 Gazans could have been killed as a result of the Israeli attacks.
Today, âWatchdogâ host Lowkey speaks to one of the survivors of the Israeli bombing, Ahmed al-Naouq. Ahmed al-Naouq grew up in central Gaza and moved to the United Kingdom to attend Leeds University. In 2015, he co-founded We Are Not Numbers, a non-profit group that seeks to tell the stories of Palestinians to the world.
The grief began right away for al-Naouq. âOn the 7th of October, my fiancĂ©âs house was bombed, and she lost her brother,â he told Lowkey, adding:
We were lucky because, only two days before the war, she managed to escape Gaza and go to meet with me. And I know that if she did not travel with her parents, all of them would have been killed on the first day of the war.âFor Lowkey, the Israeli attack on Gaza is of historic proportions. He compared it to the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Baghdad in its similarity in that it destroyed thousands of years of civilization. What has been done, he said, was so intensely violent, not just physically but culturally, that it is almost incomparable. On al-Naouq, Lowkey noted that his story:
Really tells us the wider way in which Palestinians have been stripped of their humanity and killed on an industrial scale in Gaza. And it stands as a testament to the will to survive, regardless of the bullying, gangsterism and intimidation from the Zionist project.â
The media doesnât care about its own audiences. They donât care if they donât know the truth or not. They are seeking their own interests. And clearly, those interests do not correlate with the truth, so we are challenging that by writing our own stories.â
Al-Naouq, a journalist by training, lambasted the deceitful Western media coverage of the attacks, stating:
After nearly twelve months of bombing, those attacks show little sign of slowing down, primarily because Western governments continue to supply Israel with the hi-tech weaponry it needs to continue and defend its actions in international bodies such as the United Nations.Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
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On this episode of The Watchdog, host Lowkey is joined by three guests to discuss how progressive or radical change is blocked in the U.S. and the U.K. by our political establishment, specifically by the Democratic and the Labour Parties.
Chris Williamson and his communications officer, Ammar Kazmi, join the show to discuss the political situation in the U.K. Between 2010 and 2019, Chris Williamson was a Labour member of parliament and was a shadow cabinet minister under Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He was eventually forced out of the party he had joined in 1976 as a 19-year-old after he was the subject of a smear campaign depicting him as an antisemite.
Also joining the show today is MintPress CEO and founder Mnar Adley. Adley notes that U.S. politics is set up to fundamentally limit the debate and framework for change by privileging the Democrats and Republicans over third parties, who are shut out of debates, ignored by corporate media, and censored by big tech platforms. All of this is done in order to promote voting for one of the two major parties. But âvoting for the lesser evil is still evil,â she said.
While in Corbynâs cabinet, Williamson pushed him to take more radical positions, such as committing to ending poverty altogether. âWe are the sixth-biggest economy in the world. There is really no excuse for anybody to be living in poverty in this country,â he explained to Lowkey. Corbyn, however, was âfar too timidâ and, ultimately, did not stand up to the vicious waves of attacks and smears against him and his followers, particularly on the question of anti-Semitism. As Williamson said:
It was clear that antisemitism was being weaponized in order to destroy the Corbyn project, to destroy the prospect of a socialist, anti-imperialist government coming to power. But Jeremy lost the plot because he listened to idiots around him who said that he had to placate the Zionist lobby.â
No matter how hard they try, however, there is a growing movement in both countries demanding radical change. And if it continues to gather momentum, both Labour and the Democrats could be overtaken and consigned to the trashcan of history.Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
The British public has spoken, and they have collectively let out a sigh of apathy. The latest election results might have produced a landslide for Sir Keir Starmerâs Labour Party. But going beneath the surface, Britons appeared less than pleased with the options they were given. Turnout was among the lowest seen since the 1880s when women (and most men) could not vote.
The notorious British press relentlessly promoted the far-right Reform U.K. party, but to little avail: Reform U.K. ended up with only five seats. Chief amongst those outlets were those of Rupert Murdochâs empire. The Australian billionaire â described by former prime minister Tony Blair as one of Britainâs four most powerful people and an unofficial member of his cabinet â has worked for decades to push a reactionary agenda into British public life. This has included near-total support for the Israeli government and its expansionist project.
Today, âWatchdogâ host Lowkey is joined by Alan MacLeod to discuss the U.K. mediaâs relentless support for Israel. Alan MacLeod is a senior staff writer and podcast producer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017, he published two books on media and propaganda and regularly teaches media studies at universities. He has recently published investigations into Murdochâs close connections to the Israeli government and on Cyabra, an Israeli intelligence cutout organization posing as a neutral fact-checking group.
While Israel has failed to defeat Hamas militarily, it has been able to rely on the support of corporate media in the West, and most of all from Murdoch, who has extensive economic and ideological ties to the state of Israel.
Earlier this year, conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph went after Lowkey, claiming that a network of Russian, Chinese and Iranian bots was artificially inflating his online pro-Palestine messaging. The basis for this extraordinary claim was an intelligence report from private firm Cyabra.
Yet Cyabra is far from a neutral organization. It was co-founded by Israeli military intelligence veterans and continues to work hand-in-glove with the Israeli government. Moreover, around fifty percent of its employees are military reservists who have been called up to serve in Gaza.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
While the Labour Party may have triumphed in the recent British parliamentary elections, the real victors may have been Israel. Israel and its lobby have deep connections to the British Labour Party, headed by Sir Keir Starmer, and are likely pleased to see him come to power.
On todayâs episode of âThe Watchdog,â Lowkey is joined by John McEvoy to discuss his work uncovering Israelâs surprisingly firm grip over the British political system. John McEvoy is an investigative journalist for Declassified UK, a media outlet covering British foreign policy and intelligence agenciesâ true role around the world.
While Labour has achieved a landslide victory, McEvoy warns that this was not because of widespread public support. Instead, it was down to a split in the vote between the Conservatives and their far-right challengers, Reform U.K. And while the public yearns for change, Starmer has been steadfast in his refusal to adopt bold policies to deliver what the people want. âKeir Starmer is poised to destroy a lot of hopes of British people and those who have wrongly invested their hopes in him. And that's a recipe for political disaster and a wider shift to the right here,â McEvoy told Lowkey.
Perhaps even more worrying is the level of Israeli influence within the Labour Party. Pro-Israel money has flooded in; more than half of the new cabinet has been bankrolled by the British pro-Israel lobby, McEvoyâs recent study revealed.
Starmer has repeatedly refused to condemn Israel or do anything to concretely support a ceasefire in Gaza. His Labour Party has also elevated some of the most shameless propagandists into key positions. One example is Luke Akehurst, the former director of the pressure group, We Believe in Israel.
Throughout its bombardment of Gaza, the U.K. has remained one of Israelâs closest allies. Arms exports have increased since October 7, and London has continued to provide diplomatic cover for the genocide. Moreover, British spy planes continue to fly over Gaza, while military supply planes have made dozens of trips to Israel since the bombardment began, making Britain an accomplice in war crimes.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
A surprise general election has been called in the United Kingdom, and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is the overwhelming favorite to become the next prime minister. But todayâs guest is looking to upset that grim future.
Andrew Feinstein is standing against Starmer for his Holborn and St. Pancras seat in central London. Feinstein is an expert in the arms trade, a former member of the South African parliament under Nelson Mandela, and a tireless activist, who Watchdog host Lowkey describes as someone who âcampaigned for decades on important issues that really cut to the core of power and the way it functions in society.â
Under Starmerâs leadership, the Labour Party has ruthlessly purged leftist, anti-establishment voices from its ranks, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn. Feinstein described Starmer as holding an âauthoritarian, undemocratic approach to politics,â accusing him of weaponizing anti-Semitism to carry out a witch hunt against radical elements within the party.
Starmer has given his full-throated endorsement to Israel, even as it carries out a genocidal onslaught against the people of Gaza, and strong-armed the Speaker of the House into shutting down a motion brought to parliament calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, he has expelled more Jews from the Labour Party than all other leaders combined, all under the guise of fighting anti-Jewish bigotry.
Feinstein is a white Jewish man who grew up in Apartheid South Africa. His mother is a survivor of Hitlerâs genocidal ambitions, having hid for three years in a Viennese coal cellar to avoid detection by the Nazis. He became active in the anti-Apartheid struggle and became an elected official for the African National Congress during the countryâs transition to democracy. He eventually resigned after being refused the right to investigate billions of dollars worth of arms deals signed by Mandelaâs successor, Thabo Mbeki.
He warns that Starmerâs approach to politics represents a threat to democracy in the United Kingdom, and wants his campaign to be completely different, the antithesis of Starmer.
Feinstein stressed that local issues, such as hunger, unemployment, and a lack of housing, would be the key issues he would fight on. Nevertheless, he maintains an international perspective and is hopeful things are about to radically change across the globe. âThis period of late neoliberal capitalism, which has bequeathed the world such injustice and such inequality, must be on its last legs. And thatâs what gets me out of bed every morning,â he said.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
One of the most sickening aspects of the continued Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza is the near-total support it is receiving from Western governments. That is what our guest today on âThe Watchdogâ tells Lowkey.
âGaza has also exposed the true hypocritical face of the Western countries and those Western values which they have been claiming for years and years,â Dalloul Neder said, adding: "Values such as human rights, the wartime protection of civilians, the rights of patients, doctors, protection of hospitals and of civilians. Gaza was enough to expose Western hypocrisy and complicity â whether it is the United Kingdom or the United States â all such values fell like leaves in Gaza.â
Dalloul Neder is a Palestinian man living in Manchester, U.K., who lost five members of his family in a December Israeli attack. He still has many relatives trapped in Gaza, including some who have the right to live in the U.K., but, despite their requests for help, have heard nothing from British authorities. A recent clip of him confronting senior Labour Party MP Angela Rayner went viral as he interrupted her public event, showing the room images of his murdered relatives before he was assaulted and detained by British police.Today, he told Lowkey that his intention was to put pressure on the Labour Party to abandon its near-total support for the Israeli project of destroying and colonizing Gaza. However, as the pair discussed today, that is easier said than done, given that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer built his career on purging left-wing, anti-war activists from the party, framing their opposition to Israeli aggression as anti-Semitism. Starmerâs predecessor as leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for example, was kicked out of the party, along with many of his supporters. âWho is more deserving of a suspension from the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn or [Iraq War architect] Tony Blair,â Neder asked Lowkey, who noted that the years of dehumanization Corbyn received from the British establishment was an extension of the dehumanization Palestinians receive to this day.
Neder and Lowkey contrasted the duplicitous actions of the West with those of nations in the Global South, especially those of South Africa, which has led the way in attempting to hold Israel accountable for its crimes at the International Court of Justice.
âThe whole world decided to let us down and kill many more women just like my mother. My mother was part of a wider structure in Gaza: we are now talking about more than 31,000 martyrs, among them 12,000 innocent children killed⊠God willing, we shall see more examples like South Africa, and justice will be served,â Neder said.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
Even after more than 100 days of genocidal attacks on Gaza, the Israeli assault continues to rage. The onslaught itself is very well documented by courageous Palestinian journalists who risk their lives daily. However, the role of Western governments in all this is not nearly as widely reported.
Joining âThe Watchdogâ today to talk about this issue is returning guest Matt Kennard, a writer and investigative journalist for Declassified UK. Kennard has broken several stories about secret British collaboration and support for Israeli actions, which he will discuss today. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Financial Times and was a fellow and a director of the Center For Investigative Journalism in London. His latest book is âSilent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy.â
On October 13, the U.K. government announced it was deploying a wide range of military assets to the Eastern Mediterranean area, including spy planes and 1,000 troops. From its military bases in Cyprus, the British military has been flying large numbers of supply flights to Israel, helping sustain the Israeli attack. As Kennard noted, in December 2020, the U.K. government signed a secret military agreement with Israel that likely commits it to âdefendingâ the apartheid state if it comes under attack.Britainâs military hub in the region is RAF Akrotiri, a vast, sprawling military compound in southern Cyprus. It is not only the center of British imperialism in the Mediterranean but is also home to more than 120 U.S. airmen and hosts of spies from the N.S.A. From there, both countries project their power across the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa.
But even as the British government supports Israel, the Israeli state is attempting to penetrate and interfere in U.K. politics. In 2019, Alan Duncan revealed that he was blocked from becoming Middle East Minister in Theresa Mayâs cabinet at the behest of the Israelis because of his mildly pro-Palestine positions. The Conservative Friends of Israel â which acts as a front group for the Israeli state â wields enormous power within the party, including the ability to make and break political careers.
The Labour Party is also deeply connected to Israel, to the point where Israeli lobbyists have funded 40% of Keir Starmerâs shadow cabinet. This kind of âentrenched espionageâ eats away at and makes a mockery of the idea of British democracy, Kennard told Lowkey today
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
For nearly a decade, Professor David Miller has been in the crosshairs of the pro-Israel lobby. But in recent years, their campaign against him has intensified. Miller was fired by Bristol University in the U.K. following a ferocious campaign by the Israel lobby, which even led to direct government intervention in the case. He has been holding the university to account in an employment tribunal and expects the results very soon. In this episode of âThe Watchdogâ, host Lowkey catches up with Miller to hear the latest on his case.
Professor Miller has a long background in studying P.R. and propaganda, originally focussing on media spin on Northern Ireland, the HIV/AIDS crisis and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was the latter that first brought him to study Islamophobia and how it functions in society.
Today, Miller and Lowkey described how so much of the hostile atmosphere towards Muslims is actually driven by the state and committed Zionist organizations that try to influence it. For example, 12 of the top 13 funders of the Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank that influences U.K. public policy, were groups founded by Zionists. And three-quarters of the organizations that fund these Islamophobic groups also bankroll the building of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Miller was sacked from his position as Professor of Sociology after a pressure campaign involving Zionist student groups and even members of parliament, who accused him of âinciting hatred against Jewish students.â
In 2019, a student filed a complaint against him, claiming he was racist toward Jewish people.
But that was only the start of the affair. After Miller was acquitted, there began a massive media campaign against him, leading to more than 100 members of the House of Commons and House of Lords signing a letter demanding he be sacked.
This massive state intervention into the freedom and independence of academia is a free speech issue that few of those who make it their business to supposedly champion the free flow of ideas have touched.
The Kafkaesque witch hunt against Miller bears a strong resemblance to how Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was hounded out of politics. Ironically, Millerâs book, âBad News for Labour: Anti-Semitism, the Party and Public Belief,â details how bogus charges of anti-Semitism were weaponized against Corbyn in order to defame and destroy him.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
The British state â and quite possibly its Israeli counterpart â are attempting to shut down Palestine Action. Since its founding in 2020, the activist group has launched hundreds of operations against arms factories across the United Kingdom, especially Israeli ones. Its goal is to break British complicity in the Israeli military-industrial complex. Palestine Action has already caused serious economic damage to companies like Elbit Systems.
Joining Lowkey on this edition of âThe Watchdogâ is Huda Amori. Born in the U.K., Amori is a Palestinian-Iraqi whose father was chased out of his home by Israeli soldiers in 1967 and forced to flee without even a pair of shoes.
Decades later, Amori has found a way to fight back, using direct action to occupy and shut down Elbit Systems, Israelâs largest arms firm. With the help of the community in her native Oldham, Amori and Palestine Actionâs occupation has forced Elbit Systems to leave the town and sell their factory at a substantial loss. Last summer, they abandoned their London headquarters. And last winter, the British Ministry of Defence canceled around ÂŁ280 million (around U.S.$340 million) of contracts with the company.
Amori is about to go to court and stand trial for her actions. She is looking at the possibility of receiving considerable jail time. Apart from the usual offenses, she and others have been charged with blackmail â a charge with serious consequences, as she explained to Lowkey today:
One of the most concerning things about the blackmail charge is that it allows [the authorities] to put on orders. If you are convicted and imprisoned, even after your release from prison, you can be banned for life from campaigning, from signing a petition, from doing anything towards campaigning for the freedom of the Palestinian people. So it is clearly extremely politically motivated.â
Amori and the other members of Palestine Action maintain they are not criminals and are, in fact, attempting to disrupt a criminal enterprise whereby Britain aids an illegitimate occupation by an apartheid regime by supplying it with weaponry crucial in harassing, surveilling and killing Palestinians.Despite the smears and condemnation from mainstream politicians, and despite the serious consequences they are facing (nine group members have been sent to jail), Palestine Action remains resolute in its determination to shut down the illegal occupation.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
9/11 is a date that will live in infamy. But for much of the world, September 11 conjures up images of another deadly assault against freedom and liberty. Exactly 50 years ago today, the democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a far-right military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Today, âWatchdogâ host Lowkey talks to two guests who know the story of âthe First 9/11â better than almost anyone. Roberto Navarette was a 17-year-old medical student at the time of the coup, and was imprisoned â like tens of thousands of his countrymen â in open air stadiums. He survived being tortured and shot by the regime, and eventually escaped, settling in the United Kingdom.
Ironically, the U.K. government had actually been working very hard to ensure Allendeâs downfall, and later to keep Pinochet in power, as John McEvoyâs work has revealed. Based on documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws, McEvoy has shown how the U.K.âs MI6 had been training Latin American police and militaries in torture tactics and other ways in which to suppress domestic dissent. Britain had long had strong economic interests in the region, considering it an unofficial part of its empire. McEvoy is an academic, historian and journalist specializing in uncovering Britainâs relationship with Latin America. He is currently producing a documentary film â âBritain and the Other 9/11â about the U.K. governmentâs covert campaign against Allende and its subsequent support for Pinochet.
Today, Lowkey speaks to Navarette and McEvoy about the coup and its legacy on the world.
Allende was a particular threat to the establishment in Washington and London. Not simply because he was a Marxist head of state, but because he was democratically elected and believed in coming to power through entirely legal means. This, for Navarette, terrified many in the West, as it undermined completely their claims about socialism being an anti-democratic ideology.
The 1973 coup reverberated around the world. Not only did it become the blueprint for further U.S.-backed operations in Latin America, but Chile became a laboratory for neoliberal economics. The country was flooded with economists from the University of Chicago, who promised to transform it into a modern utopia.
Instead, the nation was ruined, with economic crashes and total devastation for ordinary Chilean citizens. The rich, along with foreign corporations made out like bandits, and neoliberalism began to be adopted wholesale across the world, leading to the rampant inequality that plagues the planet today.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
The world holds its breath. Last month, the Nigerien military overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, declaring an end to his corrupt reign and a new era of anti-imperialist, pan-African struggle. While most Nigeriens actually support the move (a new poll found that 73% of the country wants the army to stay in power) Nigerâs West African neighbor Nigeria has strongly objected, and has tried to organize an invasion force to restore Bazoum.
The regional body, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has condemned the events in Niger. But its 15 member states are split on how to react. Western powers, however, including France and the United States, have supported boots on the ground, and even considered sending troops themselves â a move that could draw Russia into a conflict that could make Libya or Syria look minor by comparison.
Here to explain the tense situation that could ignite a world war is David Hundeyin. Hundeyin is an investigative journalist from Nigeria and the founder of âWest Africa Weekly.â
While the coup has been opposed in the West, Hundeyin explains that inside the country, the military is seen â rightly or wrongly â as leading âanti-imperialist movement; a popular movement against French imperialism.â\
The threat of invasion is far from an idle one. Since 1990, ECOWAS has launched military interventions in seven West African countries, the most recent being in the Gambia in 2017. The groupâs actions have ignited significant pushback across the region, with many describing it as a tool of Western imperialism.
Currently leading ECOWAS is Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu. Tinubu has earned plaudits in the West as a defender of democracy and someone not willing to let another country be taken over by the army. While Tinubu has been praised in the media, his own background calls into question his democratic credentials. As Hundeyinâs reporting exposed, Tinubu made his fortune from trafficking heroin in Chicago and had hundreds of thousands of dollars seized by the U.S. government. There are many other U.S. cases against Tinubu which have never seen the light of day, prompting many to speculate that he is an American intelligence asset.
Will the new government succeed? Will African be plunged into war? And what is the U.S. role in all of this? To find out more, watch the full interview here.
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The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is many bookmakersâ favorite to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. Yet behind the politicianâs bland, squeaky-clean image lies an individual relentlessly obsessed with power and how to attain it.
From being an ally of socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn as recently as 2019, Starmer has pulled the Labour Party far to the right in an attempt to return them to their position as the red wing of the British oligarchy.
Todayâs guest on âThe Watchdogâ with Lowkey is Matt Kennard. Kennard is a writer and investigative journalist with the British outlet Declassified UK. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Financial Times and was a fellow and a director of the Center For Investigative Journalism in London. He has recently published a five-part series of articles on Starmerâs past and his connections to British and American state power. His latest book is âSilent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy.â
Before becoming an elected politician, Starmer was a barrister and served as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), a body that oversees roughly 800,000 prosecutions per year. âStarmer started at the Crown Prosecution Service in 2008. And his time at the CPS is marked by how reactionary and how establishment-friendly he is,â Kennard told Lowkey. Kennardâs recent journalistic work also showed that Starmer secretly served on the Trilateral Commission, a shadowy organization with deep connections to the U.S. national security state. Starmer did not tell his boss, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as the latter would surely have vetoed the appointment, especially as Starmer worked closely with two former heads of the CIA at the Trilateral Commission. Meanwhile, CIA chief Mike Pompeo declared that the U.S. would do everything it could to stop Corbyn from coming to power.
All the while, Starmer was living it up on the public purse. Kennardâs research has found that Starmer billed the British taxpayer nearly ÂŁ500,000 (around U.S.$630,000) in expenses, including ÂŁ160,000 on a chauffeur-driven car during his first two years in the position. âThis is a guy who likes living it up, basically,â Kennard said.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
Today in âThe Watchdogâ studio, Lowkey is joined by Assangeâs wife Stella. Stella Assange is a South-African born lawyer and human rights defender. Her most famous case is undoubtedly that of her husband, whom she married in 2022. For years, Stella has tirelessly traveled the world raising awareness of Julianâs situation. Before marrying Julian, she attained degrees from the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London and from the University of Oxford. Earlier this year, she met with Pope Francis to discuss the situation of whom Lowkey described as âthe political prisoner of our time.â
For Lowkey, Assangeâs brilliance was taking his anti-war passions and finding a way to directly work with units within the U.S. military to make the public aware of the illegal, immoral, and deeply unpopular decisions being taken in our name. As he said today:
Some of the most deeply heinous and hideous aspects of the Iraqi and Afghan occupations by the U.S., Britain and their allies, have been revealed within the WikiLeaks files. We are talking about millions of documents being made available to the public to understand truly what was happening.â
Despite this, the media cheered Assangeâs arrest. The Washington Postâs editorial board, for example, claimed Assange was âno free-press heroâ and insisted the arrest was âlong overdue.â Likewise, The Wall Street Journal demanded he faces some âaccountability,â claiming, âHis targets always seem to be democratic institutions or governments.â Yet, as Lowkey and Stella discussed today, the implications for a free press from this case are extraordinary and perilous.Stella also put a human face to the story, discussing how difficult her husbandâs persecution has been. âItâs a daily struggle. It is up and down⊠Prison life is part of our daily life,â she said, noting that prison authorities limit how much they can speak. When she first met Julian, he was 39. He is now 52, and his health has seriously deteriorated.
Yet even if Assange is somehow liberated, he has still suffered greatly, as Stella told Lowkey. âWe will still have been robbed of our lives together. Our children will have been robbed of their early childhood with their father. We are never going to get that back,â she said.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
The election of longtime peace activist and anti-imperialist Jeremy Corbyn to the position of leader of the U.K. Labour Party inspired hope and dread across the nation. Hope from millions of ordinary people, who, for once, saw a politician that represented them, and dread from the British establishment, who feared what a radical like Corbyn could do if he were elected prime minister.
Corbyn was subjected to one of history's most prolonged and intense propaganda campaigns. He has been labeled everything from a terrorist sympathizer a communist spy, and a national security threat.
However, the most sustained attack on Corbyn was that he was a raving anti-Semite. We now know this was in no small part down to a coordinated smear campaign from the Israeli government and its supporters. Here to talk about the forces working in harmony to destroy Corbynâs movement is returning guest Asa Winstanley.
Asa notes how the movement to topple Corbyn started by targeting his allies. âPeople around Corbyn started to be picked off, one by one. And that, ultimately, just a few years later, led to Corbyn's political assassination and the movement's decapitation. It was a war of attrition,â he noted. Unfortunately, Corbyn did not see the danger and âappeasement became a knee-jerk instinctive responseâ from the people around him.
While Asaâs work has shown how the Israeli Embassy was intimately involved in the skulduggery, the British deep state was also a key player. In 2015, a senior British Army general claimed that if Corbyn were elected, this would precipitate a military coup. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA at the time, said that the U.S. would take measures to prevent Corbyn from reaching power.
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
It is often better to talk about solutions rather than problems. And today, on "The Watchdog," Lowkey talks to British-Palestinian intellectual Ghada Karmi about her new book, "One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel."
In "One State," Karmi envisages uniting the land, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, under one secular, democratic nation, allowing refugees to return to their homeland in safety and enjoy the same rights and securities that those currently living there have. She insists that this is the only way to end the anti-democratic nature of the Israeli state.
Lowkey and Karmi have previously teamed up to debate at the Oxford Union together, and earlier this summer, they were scheduled to discuss her new book in person at a London book launch with the Balfour Project. Yet the night before the event was planned, Karmi received a phone call telling her that it had been canceled. The reason? A Zionist organization called Yachad had pressured the Balfour Project over Lowkey's inclusion.
For the Balfour Project, she alleges, "keeping them [Yachad] happy was more important than keeping me and you happy." Thus, the event was canceled. There is likely more to this cancellation than a misunderstanding; while the organization's official mission is to "empower British Jews to support a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," in reality, it works closely with Israeli intelligence organizations Shin Bet and Shabak.
Karmi is a survivor of the Nakba of 1948 â the nascent Israeli state's systematic expulsion of Palestinians from their land. While many understand the Nakba as an ongoing process, there is no doubt that 1948 stands out as a particularly bloody and genocidal year in Palestinian history. Today, she talked of her childhood memories, how, despite her parents' assurances, she had a premonition that her family would never be back, and how her family never talked about Palestine because it was simply too traumatic.
One of the little-publicized aspects of the Nakba was the severance of human ties so that people who had been your neighbors, friends or employers somehow disappeared. Because in the rush to save oneâs family, where were those people? And as so often happened, they were never reclaimed. Those people went, we donât know where, and they didnât know where we had gone. And that is a significant aspect of our eviction of our homeland that often is not talked about.Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
The truth canât be racist, wrote British Home Secretary Suella Braverman in April of this year, as she peddled xenophobic and debunked tropes about South Asian men being a particular threat to British children. Bravermanâs comments come after nearly a decade of national hysteria about so-called Pakistani âgrooming gangsâ roaming around the country, sexually abusing white children while overly woke authorities watch on, helpless, too scared to act, lest they be called racist.
Braverman, who herself is of South Asian (Indian) origin, made these comments in the far-right magazine The Spectator, an outlet that has published articles with titles such as âIn Praise of the Wehrmachtâ and "A fascist takeover of Greece? We should be so lucky." Nevertheless, her screed breathed new life into the relentless push to demonize British Muslims.
Here to talk about âgrooming gangs,â academic malpractice, pseudoscience, and the malfeasance of the ruling British Conservative Party is Dr. Ella Cockbain, an associate professor in the Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London. Cockbain has been at the heart of scrutinizing the dangerous media tropes presenting Muslims as a threat. She is the author of the article âFailing Victims, fuelling hate: challenging the Harms of the âMuslim grooming gangsâ Narrative,â published in the academic journal Race & Class.
Cockbain claims that Braverman is an âovertly racistâ politician, noting her (false) comments that members of grooming gangs are âalmost all British-Pakistaniâ and that their victims are âoverwhelmingly white girls from disadvantaged or troubled backgroundsâ have done much to undermine tolerance and coexistence in the United Kingdom.
âThese things are not facts,â Cockbain said; âactually, they [Bravermanâs claims] directly contradict the findings of her own department, the U.K. home office.â While Cockbain agrees that men of Pakistani origin have committed horrific crimes against children, so have people from all other racial, ethnic, religious and class backgrounds. Yet when other offenders â particularly white men â attack children, their race is never singled out as a causal factor. Thus, when Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, Prince Andrew or a host of other high-profile white abusers hit headlines, there is no campaign to demand all white men be put under high surveillance, and there are no far-right marches demanding payback for what whites have done to âour children.â
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
It is now over four years ago that Julian Assange was spirited away from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and detained in Belmarsh's maximum security prison. Being locked in a tiny concrete room for more than 1500 days has taken a serious toll on the Australian publisher; reports from this week suggest that his health is âdeteriorating by the minute.â
One man who has covered the Wikileaks co-founderâs case closer than almost anyone is Kevin Gosztola. Gosztola is an American journalist, the managing editor of Shadowproof and co-hosts the Unauthorized Disclosure Podcast with Rania Khalek. He is the author of the new book âGuilty of Journalism: The Political Case against Julian Assange.â Today, he joins âWatchdogâ host Lowkey to talk all things WikiLeaks, Assange, leaks and cybersecurity.
The U.S. government has always been hostile to leakers revealing embarrassing or compromising information about its actions. But Gosztola states that the Central Intelligence Agencyâs âgloves came offâ in 2017 as it ramped up its attacks on Assange. By 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo had labeled WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence service and began turning the screw. For Gosztola, the CIAâs response was a symptom of the agencyâs insecurity; âAnd so at that point, the CIA probably feels they are threatened, their whole regime of pursuing the global war on terrorism is in jeopardy as a result of WikiLeaks,â he told Lowkey.
It is often forgotten how much incredible, extraordinary information WikiLeaks provided the world. This included the GuantĂĄnamo prison manuals, which showed that the U.S. Army hid prisoners from Red Cross inspectors and illegally held captives in solitary confinement to soften them up for interrogation.
What WikiLeaks published was barely a toothpick in a forest compared to the amount of information the U.S. national security state keeps secret. Every day, Gosztola said, Washington produces tens of millions of pieces of classified information. This means, he added that it is becoming increasingly difficult and unwieldy to keep all these secrets under lock and key. If this continues, it might become âimpossible for the U.S. government to keep doubling down and adding more infrastructure⊠eventually, the system might actually collapse in on itself because it isnât able to support all of the stresses that are being put on it to protectâ itself, he adds
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
Even as Israelâs war against Palestine continues unabated, a new movement has arisen in the United Kingdom, challenging the Israeli war machine â and it has been winning some impressive victories.
Founded in 2020, Palestine Action is a grassroots activist movement that seeks to end British complicity in Israeli war crimes by shutting down arms manufacturing sites across the U.K. Today, Lowkey welcomes back Palestine Action co-founder Huda Amori to talk about the rise of her organization that has taken the country by storm and has weapons manufacturers fleeing. Born in the U.K., Amori is a Palestinian-Iraqi whose father was chased out of his home by Israeli soldiers in 1967, and forced to flee, without even a pair of shoes.
Decades later, Amori has found a way to fight back, using direct action to occupy and shut down Elbit Systems, Israelâs largest arms firm. With the help of the community in her native Oldham, Amori and Palestine Actionâs occupation has forced Elbit Systems to leave the town and sell their factory at a substantial loss. Last summer, they abandoned their London headquarters. And last winter, the British Ministry of Defence canceled around ÂŁ280 million (around U.S.$350 million) of contracts with the company.
Elbitâs products, such as drones and surveillance tech, are directly used on the civilian population of Palestine, Amori explained. They are then marketed as âbattle testedâ around the world and sold to countries like Australia and India.
âIf you are building weapons here to be sent back to Israel to be used against Palestinians, or if you are a customer of weapons that have been developed on the Palestinian people, then you are just as guilty,â Amori said, adding:
For example, the British Ministry of Defence buy many of these weapons after they have been developed and used against the Palestinians, which only encourages the further development and use of weapons on Palestinians, and to continue the occupation. This cycle of violence just continues to benefit the oppressors and work against the oppressed.â
While Amori and Palestine Action are constantly charged and regularly appear in court for criminal damages, they are yet to be convicted. Indeed, once they get in front of a jury to tell their story, it is often Elbit Systems that seems to be on trial. At the end of last year, a jury at the Crown Court unanimously found Amori and her colleagues innocent, accepting that they were trying to prevent an even bigger crime from taking place. The jury even proceeded to thank the activists for their bravery publicly. Some, Amori claimed, went so far as to blow kisses at them.Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. -
Israel is currently engulfed in strife, as hundreds of thousands have come out to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuâs controversial power grab. Netanyahu is attempting to overhaul the judicial system and has dismissed defense minister Yoav Gallant, a move that ignited a storm of indignation.
But as returning âWatchdogâ guest Asa Winstanley notes, observers should not mistake this for a liberatory movement. âThe protests are not for democracy as they claim. They're for preserving the Jewish citizens of Israel's own privileges within the settler colonial entity. That's what they're for,â Winstanley told Lowkey today, adding:
They're not advocating for an equal state, even of all its citizens. Even of all the Palestinian citizens of Israel who live within Palestine, not even advocating for equality for them, let alone the equality of the majority of the population between the river and the seaâŠthey're not seeking equality.â
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who has been writing about Palestine and the Israel lobby since 2005. He is also the author of the new book âWeaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Took Down Jeremy Corbyn.â It focuses on the Corbyn era and how an effective smear campaign against him destroyed the movement that brought him to power.Nevertheless, the scale of the protests and the fact that they have so much support from among the establishment makes this something worth watching, argued Lowkey, who notes that Mossad chief David Barnea has broken protocol and allowed his agents to join the movement and publicly protest.
For many, Netanyahuâs attempts to bend the judicial system to his will signal a dangerous descent into authoritarianism. Winstanley, however, is not convinced, telling Lowkey:
Some are trying to kind of posit what's happening as a slip into fascism. But the fascism was always there. You don't get much more fascistic than the cleansing and displacement of three quarters of a million people simply for existing from the land that they were in!â
The United Kingdom, where both Winstanley and Lowkey are from, has long collaborated with Israel, even before it was established. The Balfour Declaration, which the British government signed in 1917, paved the way for the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. Since then, the U.K. has been a close ally of Israel, promoting its interests and defending it from criticism to this day.This collusion includes, if Winstanleyâs new
Support the show
The MintPress podcast, âThe Watchdog,â hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know â including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times. - Show more
