Biden Admin Wants To Spend Around $1 Million on University “Disinformation” Monitoring Program
Despite legal scrutiny, the Biden administration continues its interest in speech monitoring.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 23, 2024
The White House’s latest initiative to carry out its brand of combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (which is now referred to by the handy “MDM” initial) continues to co-opt the education sector.
The Department of Justice agency the National Institute for Justice (NIJ) is behind the funding effort that is said to be designed to study and research “effective technologies and tools for identification, moderation, and/or removal of extremist content.”
A grant worth $1 million will be spent to come up with a dashboard featuring an MDM tracker, which is supposed to surveil the internet for both speech, and narratives, and do so in real time. The project’s official name is, “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns.”
And reports say that the targeted speech coincides with “contentious political events.” Critics say that the taxpayer dollars here are in reality going towards suppression of conservative and religious groups, rather than as declared, violent extremists.
The recipient of the grant is South Carolina-based Clemson University. Researchers there are expected to come up with computer models that will keep an eye on accounts singled out as MDM peddlers and identify people associated with allegedly spreading MDM.
Eventually, the effort should produce the real-time tracking dashboard.
Regular citizens may not benefit from this project – considering the “fluid” nature of the very definitions of misinformation and its companions (some reports mention the initial, and subsequent treatment of the Covid origin and Hunter Biden laptop stories as examples of this.)
But the grant does specify who will benefit: law enforcement and policymakers.
This is by no means the only initiative of the kind coming from the Biden administration – since the current US president came to power, $39 million went to “MDM research” from the National Science Foundation (NSF) alone, also in some cases involving prominent educational institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
And while Clemson researchers are reassuring that their efforts are not politically or ideologically biased, the Internet Accountability Project and the Foundation for Freedom Online are voicing their fears that the end result will be yet another tool facilitating censorship, specifically by suppressing conservative voices.
Arms transfer to Israel must stop immediately: UN experts
Press TV – February 23, 2024
UN experts have called for an immediate halt to weapons transfer to Israel, warning that state officials involved in arms exports to the regime “may be individually criminally liable for aiding and abetting any war crimes” in the Gaza Strip.
The experts said on Friday that any delivery of weapons or ammunition to the regime that would be used in the genocidal war on Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law and must cease immediately, according to a statement by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The UN experts reiterated that weapons transfers to Israel “are prohibited even if the exporting State does not intend the arms to be used in violation of the law – or does not know with certainty that they would be used in such a way – as long as there is a clear risk.”
They said that “the need for an arms embargo on Israel is heightened,” since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in late January that “there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then.”
“This necessitates halting arms exports in the present circumstances.”
The experts warned the US and Germany, in particular, since the two countries have increased arms shipments to Israel, since October, when the regime started its war on the Gaza Strip. Other military exporters include France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The UN experts welcomed the suspension of arms transfers to Israel by Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the Japanese company Itochu Corporation.
Washington, the regime’s main supporter, is still preparing to send more bombs and other weapons to Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday.
The arms are estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars, the journal cited current and former US officials. They said that the proposal which is still undergoing internal administration review, needs to be sent to Congress for approval.
However, US President Joe Biden’s administration has so far twice bypassed Congress to urgently send bombs and other munitions to Israel to support the regime’s war machine that has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women.
PCHR condemns the killing of its lawyer, and her family by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah
PCHR | February 21, 2024
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of our dear colleague, Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and seven of her family members, including her two-years-old daughter, by an Israeli airstrike on her family house in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The killing of Nour along with seven of her family members, comes as the latest example of the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and a reminder that all Palestinians, including human rights defenders, are a target for the Israeli government and army. This heinous crime also constitutes further evidence of the lack of safe space for Palestinians in the Strip and an example of what the Palestinians in the Strip have been subjected to for the last 137 days of ongoing Israeli aggression. Nour and her family are among of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, unjustly, illegally and cruelly killed as result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, which members of the international community have not only failed to bring to an end, but have been complicit by providing Israel with the necessary political, diplomatic and military support.
Our dear colleague Nour worked in the Women’s Rights Unit at PCHR since 2019. She holds a master’s degree in law and worked with distinction, perseverance and dedication until the last days, documenting the violations committed by the Israeli occupation, particularly against women and children, providing legal consultations, and trying to provide self-care to the women victims in shelters despite the difficult conditions. Several weeks ago, Nour was forced to move to her family’s house after Israeli war planes targeted a neighboring house, causing significant damage to her house.
According to information collected by PCHR, last night, 20 February 2024, at approximately 10:00 pm, Israeli war planes directly targeted without any prior warning the house of Nour’s Father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the Islamic University in Gaza, located in Al-Jeneina neighborhood in Rafah, on top of its residents. The targeting resulted in the killing of our dear colleague Nour Abu Al-Nour (30), who works as a lawyer in the Women’s Rights Unit, her child, Kenzi Jumaa (2), her father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour (60), her mother, Mjida Farid Abu Al-Noor (55), three of her sisters, Amal Nasser Abu Al Nour (35), Mona Nasser Abu Al Nour (24), and Ayat Naser Abu Al-Nour (19), and her brother, Abdulrahman Nasser Abu Al Nour (23), and the wounding of dozens others.
The crimes committed by the Israeli occupation have not spared anyone, including human rights defenders, who have become themselves, along with their families, actual victims of the aggression by being subjected to targeting, starvation, torture and forced displacement as part of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in the Strip.
PCHR extends its deepest condolences to the remaining members of Nour’s family and to the Palestinian human rights community and calls upon the international community to abide by their moral and legal obligations and act promptly to end the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people. With every day that passes, more civilians are targeted and killed. Despite this heinous crime and the challenging working environment, PCHR reiterates its commitment and dedication to documenting and exposing the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian civilians to ensure justice and dignity for the victims.
Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones. May the soul of our beloved Nour and her family rest in peace.
Despite coordination with Red Cross, Israel targets municipality vehicles
Palestinian Information Center – February 22, 2024
GAZA – Israeli occupation forces (IOF) targeted the Gaza Municipality parking once again, and destroyed what has remained of public service vehicles on Tuesday night.
The IOF had previously targeted the same place several times in an attempt to hinder the access to municipality services, as part of the Israeli genocidal war against the trapped people in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
The municipality said in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Wednesday that the IOF targeted the municipality’s cars despite being marked in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza.
The Gaza Municipality explained that its vehicles were given special marks that show the kind of service provided and the identities of its drivers to be distinguished and accordingly protected in times of emergency.
The statement added that the vehicles that were completely destroyed encompassed 3 road-repair bulldozers, an excavator used to repair water and sewage lines, a water pump and sewage suction truck, and a car used for administrative purposes, in addition to multiple damages to the garage and its facilities.
The municipality reported a severe shortage in operating vehicles after repetitive Israeli targeting of the garage led to the destruction of about 95 vehicles of various types and sizes, in addition to the destruction of the maintenance workshop.
The Gaza Municipality called on the international community and human rights organizations to intervene urgently to improve the humanitarian conditions in the city, by the provision of fuel and electricity and the implementation of urgent projects that would enable the municipality to provide basic municipal services such as water, sanitation, and waste collection services.
Since the beginning of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October last year, the IOF has been deliberately destroying the infrastructure, service facilities, water, and sewage networks, and preventing the arrival of fuel, causing health and environmental crises as a result of sewage overflow and waste accumulation in the streets.
China backs Palestinians’ right to ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli occupation
The Cradle | February 22, 2024
China expressed support for the right of Palestinians to engage in “armed struggle” against Israel, stressing this is not “terrorism” during the fourth day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.
“In pursuit of the right to self-determination [the Palestinian people have the right to the] use of force to resist foreign oppression and to complete the establishment of the Palestinian state,” Ma Xinmin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry legal adviser, told the World Court on 22 February.
Citing examples of “various people [who] freed themselves from colonial rule” through armed resistance, Xinmin argued that acts of resistance against the Israeli occupation are “not terrorism” but a legitimate armed struggle and an “inalienable right.”
“Numerous other resolutions recognize the legitimacy of struggle by all available means, including armed struggle by people under colonial domination or foreign occupation to realize the right of self-determination,” the Chinese official said.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed on multiple occasions that China calls for a comprehensive ceasefire and the early solution to the question of Palestine on the basis of a two-state solution through negotiation,” he added.
Xinmin took to the podium ahead of Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Reza Najafi, who highlighted Israel’s historic violations of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“The establishment of the Israeli regime was done through a violent process which involved the forcible displacement of native Palestinian people to create a majority Jewish colony in line with the Zionist movement,” Najafi said.
He also listed a series of ongoing violations by Tel Aviv, which include the prolonged occupation and manipulation of the demographic composition in the occupied Palestinian territories, the alteration of the character and status of Jerusalem, and the discriminatory measures and violations of the rights of Palestinian people to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources.
“The expansion of settlements, segregated roads and barriers as well as checkpoints has created a system of apartheid which is isolating Palestinian communities,” Najafi added before addressing the UN Security Council (UNSC) for their “inaction or insufficient action,” saying this was one of the “main causes of prolonged occupation of the Palestinians” and highlighting that the top UN body is “paralyzed due to the stalemate” caused by a “certain permanent member.”
“All the atrocities and crimes committed by the Israeli regime in the past almost eight years are a consequence of such inaction,” the Iranian official concluded.
The Iraqi representative to the ICJ, Hayder Shiya al-Barrak, took to the podium next and called on the ICJ to respect previous court orders against Israel, such as the provisions made after South Africa’s case to “stop the systematic killing machine against the Palestinian people.”
“We hope that the court’s commitment to justice will lead to additional decisions … affirming its dedication to ending the campaign of mass murder and preventing acts of genocide as well as policies of harassment, blockade, and starvation against the Palestinian people,” he said.
Barrak concluded his intervention by calling on the World Court to take decisions “that safeguard the lives of the Palestinian man, women, children, and elders, allowing them to enjoy a dignified and secure life where all human rights are achieved.”
Buffer zone in Sinai: Is Sisi preparing to displace the Palestinians?
By Osama Gaweesh | MEMO | February 22, 2024
‘Conspiracy theorists’ threaten mainstream media, says Canadian PM
RT | February 21, 2024
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday blamed social media for preventing major news outlets from shaping public opinion the way they used to.
The Liberal Party leader took his message to the Conservative stronghold of Alberta, sitting down with radio host Ryan Jespersen for an exclusive 30-minute interview on his Real Talk podcast.
“There is out there a deliberate undermining of the mainstream media,” Trudeau said, answering a question towards the end of the interview. “There are the conspiracy theorists, there are the social media drivers who are trying to do everything they can to keep people in their little filter bubbles, to prevent people from actually agreeing on a common set of facts, the way CBC and CTV – when they were our only sources of news – used to project across the country, at least a common understanding of things.”
Earlier this month, Trudeau denounced the move by Bell Media to lay off many of its local journalists and sell 45 of its 103 regional radio stations, arguing that local journalism holds Canadian democracy together.
“There are massive changes that need to happen in our media landscape, and [the] government can try and create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” he told Jespersen on Wednesday.
“We’re putting money towards local independent media,” Trudeau added, having argued a moment earlier that such overt funding would compromise news outlets as mouthpieces of the government.
In June 2023, the Canadian parliament passed the Online News Act (ONA), under which search engines and social media platforms would have to compensate news outlets for posting their content. While Google has complied, Facebook is “choosing to be bad guys about this,” Trudeau told Jespersen. Meta has responded to ONA by blocking all news content by Canadian publishers on Facebook and Instagram.
Ultimately, it’s up to Canadians to declare they don’t want to accept the “encrapification of news,” Trudeau said, borrowing the phrase from British Columbia Premier David Eby.
Trudeau’s comments on the podcast also echoed those made by former US President Barack Obama in a May 2023 interview to CBS. Obama named “a divided media” as one of the things he was worried about, noting that the US once had “three TV stations … and people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn’t, what was real and what was not.”
“How do we return to that common conversation? How can we have a common set of facts?” the 44th US president wondered at the time.
Trampling on a Symbol of Liberty
By James Bovard | Future of Freedom | February 21, 2024
Last August, 12-year-old Jaiden Rodriguez was kicked out of a public-school classroom in Colorado Springs after school officials decreed that the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack was “disruptive to the classroom environment.” Those Colorado officials didn’t know the meaning of “disruptive.”
Thanks to savvy, thoughtful retorts by Jaiden’s mother in a video showdown at the school, the incident spurred a fierce backlash around America. Less than a week later, the school district raised the white flag on its assault on the Gadsden flag.
The flag’s real history
That flag, with its yellow background and coiled rattlesnake, helped rally Americans to vanquish the British Army and Navy almost 250 years ago. As the Encyclopedia Brittanica noted, “The rattlesnake symbol originated in the 1754 political cartoon “Join, or Die” published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. The cartoon, which depicted the colonies divided as segments of a cut-up snake, exhorted the colonists to unite in the face of the French and Indian War (1754–63). The symbol was later used to represent unity during the Revolutionary War.” The flag became one of the most iconic symbols of the American Revolution, venerated far and wide until recent years.
Where did the Gadsden flag go wrong? Tea Party activists waved the “Don’t Tread on Me” banner during anti-Obama protests. According to the liberal media, regardless of Obama’s oppressive, intrusive policies, any opposition to his presidency was automatically racist. Thus, the Gadsden flag was irrevocably tainted by association.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission added fuel to this fire:
On January 8, 2014, a U.S. Postal Service maintenance mechanic in Denver, Colorado filed a complaint of discrimination based on race (African American) and reprisal for prior EEO activity when: (1) beginning in the fall of 2013, a coworker repeatedly wore a cap to work with an insignia of a flag with a rattlesnake ready to strike and slogan “Don’t Tread on Me,” (2) the coworker continued to wear the cap after management had assured Complainant that they would tell the coworker not to, and (3) on September 2, 2013, a coworker photographed him on the work room floor without Complainant’s consent. According to the federal sector process, that complaint was filed with the employing agency — the U.S. Postal Service.
On January 29, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service dismissed the complaint for failure to state a cognizable claim of discrimination. On June 20, 2014, the EEOC Office of Federal Operations reversed the agency’s dismissal, determining that Complainant had raised a cognizable claim of harassment, and ordered the agency to investigate the claim…. The U.S. Postal Service argued that the previous decision clearly erred because the Gadsden Flag and its slogan do not have any racial connotations.
But the EEOC insisted that the flag could justify a harassment complaint. The EEOC decreed that
while the Gadsden Flag originated in a non-racial context, it has since been “interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts,”… Importantly, the Commission did not find that the Gadsden Flag in fact is a racist symbol. Rather, the Commission found only that the complaint met the legal standard to state a claim under Title VII, and therefore should have been investigated by the agency rather than dismissed.
The EEOC has a long history of knuckle-headed decrees, including its 2012 ruling that made it a federal crime not to hire ex-convicts. (The chief of the EEOC repeatedly publicly denounced my articles in the 1990s, but I don’t hold a grudge.)
The EEOC’s prattle was “close enough for government work” for commentators to howl that the Gadsden flag had been condemned by federal civil-rights watchdogs.
The flag ain’t woke
The Gadsden flag was further vilified by the New York Times–spurred 1619 campaign to paint the American Revolution as a vast conspiracy to perpetuate slavery. This notion is popular with journalists who have never read a book that was published before 2010. Denouncing the Founders as racists absolves wokesters from having to learn anything about the “slavery by Parliament” that Britain sought to impose — the mass confiscation of firearms and other private property, the sweeping censorship, the total destruction of privacy, and the suppression of jury trials.
The Colorado Springs school district declared that the flag was an “unacceptable symbol” linked to “white-supremacy.” It further claimed that the Gadsden flag had its “origins with slavery” because it was designed in 1775 by a South Carolinian who owned slaves. By the same standard, the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights could all be condemned since Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason were slaveowners. Do the wokesters want to condemn and expunge all of American history prior to the creation of the LGBT rainbow flag?
The Colorado hubbub occurred because many school officials and students are even more ignorant of American history than freshmen members of Congress. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor groused in 2014 that fewer than 20 percent of high-school seniors “can say what the Declaration of Independence is, and it’s right there in the title.” Americans’ ignorance of history helps explain their docility nowadays.
The Massachusetts colonists rebelled after the British agents received “writs of assistance” that allowed them to search any colonist’s property. Modern Americans submit passively to endless government intrusions at the airport, online, and on the nation’s highways and sidewalks. Virginia revolted in part because King George imposed a two-pence tax on the sale of a pound of tea; Americans today are complacent while Congress imposes billions of dollars of retroactive taxes — even on people who have already died. Connecticut rebelled in part because the British were undermining the independence of judges; nowadays, federal agencies have the power to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in suits against private citizens. New Hampshire revolted in part because King George claimed that he automatically owned every Pine Tree in the Colonies; modern Americans are largely complacent when the federal government asserts a right to control every acre of private land that is wet for more a few weeks each year.
Many astute Americans are mystified at the retroactive demonization of this cherished symbol of liberty. Olivia Rondeau, co-host of a Foundation for Economic Education online program, scoffed, “No one ever told my black family that the Gadsden flag was racist. I grew up seeing it around the house all the time. 2023 is something else.”
The Colorado ruckus was popular with pundits who know only enough history to hiss and boo on cue. Two months before the Colorado uproar, the Washington Post published a piece headlined: “The disgraced Confederate history of the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag.” Since a Confederate ship had hoisted that flag in 1861, that meant that the flag was forever damned. And anyone who showed or countenanced that flag was collectively guilty for all the crimes of American history.
But the Gadsden flag became increasingly vilified even before the Tea Party protests. The real objection by officialdom is to the flag’s message: “Don’t Tread on Me.”
That flag got swept up in the vilification of dissent after the 9/11 attacks. The Department of Homeland Security warned local law-enforcement agencies in 2003 to keep an eye on anyone who “expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government.” DHS pushed to treat the Gadsen flag practically as a terrorist warning signal. DHS-funded Fusion Centers attached the “extremist” or potential terrorist tag to the individuals and groups displaying the Gadsden flag — as well as to individuals who assert a “right to keep and bear arms,” individuals “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority” (like many Founding Fathers did), people who were “reverent of individual liberty,” and anyone with a “Know Your Rights or Lose Them” bumper sticker.
Law-enforcement agencies have come a long way since targeting Deadhead stickers on Cadillacs in the 1970s. The FBI Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide included the Gadsden flag as one of the “commonly referenced historical imagery or quotes” used by violent militia extremists. Maybe the feds should formally announce that “distrust of government” is now a hate crime?
Jaiden, an honor roll student, watched wide-eyed as his mother lured the school official to become a nationwide laughingstock. The mother justified Jaiden’s patch: “The Founding Fathers stood up for what they believed against unjust laws, and this is unjust.”
The school official glowered: “I am here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district” after repeating the vexing phrase: “Don’t tread on me.” Did Jaiden threaten the public-school system’s divine right to tread on students and scorn parents’ values?
A victory for free speech
Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute in Utah, helped publicize the case. After the school conceded, he declared on Twitter: “Let this be a lesson — document your encounters w/ government employees. Had Jaiden’s mom not recorded the video, this wouldn’t have got nearly the attention that it did.” Jaiden was a reader of the Tuttle Twins — the pro-freedom series written by Boyack.
Permitting wokesters to turn the Gadsden flag into the moral equivalent of the Nazi swastika will only encourage more demolitions of American heritage. Will a Babylon Bee headline prove prophetic?: “FBI Seizes Jaiden’s Backpack in Predawn Raid.” Colorado’s liberal governor Jared Polis sought to end the lunacy when he endorsed the Gadsden flag for providing an “iconic warning to Britain or any government not to violate the liberties of Americans.”
The school board backed down but with a huge caveat: Jaiden could express his values only as long as no school staffer or student caterwauled. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) objected, “So long as the school district maintains that Jaiden may wear the Gadsden flag patch only if no student or staff member complains, this controversy is not over.” FIRE warned the school district: “The First Amendment does not allow the ‘heckler’s veto’ as envisioned by the district’s assistant superintendent, where anybody can suppress a student’s speech or viewpoint simply by objecting to it.” The heckler’s veto is especially perilous when domineering government officials are seeking any pretext to suppress whom they please.
Ironically, students would face no official pushback if they came to school wearing t-shirts and backpacks decorated with the logo of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (despite its crimes at Ruby Ridge and Waco), the Drug Enforcement Administration (despite DEA’s persecution of peaceful citizens), the National Security Agency (despite its preemptive destruction of privacy online and beyond), the Centers for Disease Control (despite their falsehoods and fear-mongering during the Covid pandemic), the Food and Drug Administration (despite the shenanigans it used to give full approval to dubious Covid vaccines), the Transportation Security Administration (despite their endless molesting of hapless travelers), the Department of Homeland Security (despite its secret censorship regimes seeking to suppress dissent), and even the Internal Revenue Service — which has wrongfully pilfered legions of Americans.
The Gadsden flag will be needed as long as government officials keep trying to trample Americans’ rights and liberties. None of the pundits who condemned that flag have offered any evidence that politicians nowadays are less perfidious than they were 250 years ago.
How I established anti-Zionist views should be protected under UK law
By David Miller | Press TV | February 20, 2024
In a landmark judgement on February 5, the Bristol Employment Tribunal handed down its decision that I had been wrongfully dismissed from my position as Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol.
In addition, the court found that the reasons given by the university for sacking me – that some Zionist students had been offended or claimed to feel ‘unsafe’ – were untrue.
The court determined instead that I had been dismissed for my anti-Zionist views.
And in the most significant element of the case, the court also ruled – for the first time in the UK – that anti-Zionist views as set out by me in court filings are protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010.
The judgment stated:
The claimant succeeds in claims of direct discrimination because of his philosophical belief contrary to section 13 Equality Act 2010.
It went on:
The claimant’s anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a philosophical belief and as a protected characteristic pursuant to section 10 Equality Act 2010 at the material times.
What this means is both that anti-Zionist views are declared by the court not to be racist and that they are “worthy of respect in a democratic society”, which is the language used in the Equality Act.
What was the anti-Zionist position I espoused and the court endorsed as protected?
First, I defined Zionism in a neutral way as an ideology that holds that a state for Jewish people ought to be established and maintained in the territory that formerly comprised the British Mandate of Palestine.
Zionists, of course, agree with this ideology. But, as the judgement put it:
[The Claimant’s] belief that Zionism (as he defines it) is inherently racist, imperialistic and colonial is based on the claimant’s analysis that it “necessarily calls for the displacement and disenfranchisement of non-Jews in favor of Jews, and it is therefore ideologically bound to lead to the practices of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide in pursuit of territorial control and expansion.”
The Employment Tribunal accepted that these ideas reached the level of coherence and cogency required of protected philosophical belief.
Among the specific statements made by me, for which I was sacked, were:
“The enemy we face here is Zionism and the imperial policies of the Israeli state”;
“It’s not just a question of being allowed to say, ‘Zionism’s bad’ or ‘Zionism’s racism’ – which, of course, we should be allowed to say because it is. But it’s not just a question of that; it’s a question of how we defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice.”; and
“Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing. It is an endemically anti-Arab and Islamophobic ideology. It has no place in any society”.
These views are now to be regarded as protected anti-Zionist statements with no connection to anti-Semitism.
As the judgment stated:
“The Claimant explained, in his witness statement, that his opposition to Zionism is not opposition to the idea of Jewish self-determination or of a preponderantly Jewish state existing in the world, but rather, as he defines it, to the exclusive realization of Jewish rights to self-determination within a land that is home to a very substantial non-Jewish population.”
The case therefore establishes a very important precedent that will surely be relied upon and built upon in future employment cases.
And it declares to employers everywhere – that no matter how loudly Zionists scream and shout – it is not permissible to sack anti-Zionists for their views, which are henceforth protected in law.
Furthermore, the judgment drives a coach and horses through the long-promoted Zionist talking point that anti-Zionism is the “new antisemitism”.
This is a view that underpins the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which must now be put to serious question.
I hope and believe that in the future this will be seen as a turning point in the battle to end the racist and genocidal ideology of Zionism.
But how did I win this case? A key element was that the witnesses provided by the University of Bristol did not support the case the university was making.
Indeed they fatally undermined it.
The concessions made by the University of Bristol witnesses were firstly by Professor George Banting, a retired Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences.
Under cross-examination, he was shown the university policy on investigations which emphasizes getting to the truth and testing evidence.
He was then taken through example after example where he admitted he had not properly taken into account the evidence that I and my team had submitted and he admitted that he had, in effect, treated the evidence from the Zionist student activists credulously, even though there was plenty of evidence that they had provided contradictory or false evidence.
Banting caused some amusement in court when toward the end of his testimony he disclosed that he was something of an anti-Zionist himself:
“I would be more aligned with the position that Professor Miller puts forward in terms of Zionism being a racist ideology and settler colonialism.”
Similar admissions were made by Professor Jane Norman the Dean of Health Sciences at Bristol. She admitted that she lacked knowledge of the Zionist movement and of sociology, subjects where she acknowledged I was more knowledgeable than she was.
She had claimed in her letter of dismissal that the Union of Jewish Students was simply a faith society and thus by inference not Zionist – a case that stretched credulity, but which also indicated her partiality.
She also reluctantly admitted that she had not properly analyzed the contending evidence in the case in her written decision to sack me. Norman has subsequently been promoted to the second top job at the University of Nottingham.
These concessions were enough to show that I had been wrongly dismissed.
As the judgment put it: “The claimant succeeds in his claim for unfair dismissal pursuant to section 98 Employment Rights Act 1996”
But both Banting and Norman also conceded other points that fatally compromised the university case. The university and specifically Professor Norman had claimed that the reason I had been sacked was because Zionist students had been offended or felt ‘unsafe’ as a result of hearing my anti-Zionist views.
But they both confirmed under cross-examination by the British Palestinian barrister Zac Sammour that the key reason that I was sacked was precisely because of the anti-Zionist content of my views and not my comments about Zionist student groups.
This was enough to show that I had been dismissed specifically for my anti-Zionist views.
But the most dramatic moment was when the university’s Deputy Principal Professor Judith Squires took the stand. Squires is a professor of political theory by background, so should be more familiar with the issues under discussion.
She has been prominent at the University of Bristol in its responses to the Black Lives Matter movement and the call for divestment in relation to slavery.
She can be seen here delivering a speech in which she calls for the “eradication” of racism, a position which, as I said at the tribunal, I wholeheartedly endorse. As the most senior witness from the university she, of all people, had to support the overall university case that my views were not “worthy of respect in a democratic society”.
And Squires did from the outset, but immediately after she was asked if she thought that my views were views ‘akin to Nazism’. She seemed confused by the question as if she had not realized that affirming the university case entailed this position.
But she eventually agreed. At that moment she was lost.
My barrister proceeded to demonstrate that by asking about a hypothetical case where Anglo-Saxons in Britain forced 75 percent of non-Anglo-Saxons to leave and go and live in Cornwall or Wales, then denied the remaining 25% rights in jobs, education and voting, would that be racist? “Yes”, said Professor Squires.
And he went on if no non-Anglo-Saxon could return, but any Anglo-Saxon, anywhere in the world, could come and live in Britain. Would that be racist? “Yes” And, the barrister went on would it be wrong for a Professor to say that Anglo-Saxonism is racism? And that it should be opposed? “No”, said Professor Squires.
The University of Bristol, in other words, undermined and eventually destroyed its own case in court.
David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy.
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New Book: No Autoimmunity The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
Lies are Unbekoming | September 24, 2026
The label for Humira, once the best-selling drug in the world, lists its risks in plain print. One of them, in the label’s own words, is new “autoimmune” disease.
A drug prescribed for a condition labelled autoimmune carries a warning that it can cause a condition labelled autoimmune. That contradiction sits in every box, on a folded paper almost nobody reads.
My new book starts there.
No Autoimmunity: The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
For seventy years, “your body is attacking itself, and we don’t know why” has ended the conversation for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s, Type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s and psoriasis. More than eighty conditions now carry the autoimmune label. The diagnosis comes with a prescription for life. It almost never comes with a question about cause.
This book asks the question and answers it from the framework’s own records: its drug labels, its journals, its regulatory filings, and its own experiments. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- DEATH SPIKES & RISING CANCER IN OUR YOUTH EXPLAINED
- Iran offers Trump deal before US election
- Merz regime wants ‘secret police’ – opposition
- Israeli settlers terrorize West Bank Palestinians with state-provided drones: Report
- They see them, then kill them: Israeli quadcopters track, deliberately target civilians in Gaza
- Debunked: Trump’s egregious UNGA claims on war against Iran crumble under scrutiny
- Europe was part of the infrastructure of US aggression against Iran: Deputy FM
- New evidence on the Bucha Massacre
- Italy and France debunk reports CIA issued ‘Russian drone threat’ warning
- How Russia is Rewiring the Global South
- If Americans Knew
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- Israel displaces hundreds of Palestinians amid wave of demolitions in West Bank
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
