Assange Joins Pro-Palestinian Protest On Sydney Harbour Bridge
Assange, who returned to Australia last year after his release from a high-security British prison, was pictured surrounded by family and marching alongside former Australian foreign minister and New South Wales premier Bob Carr.
France, Britain and Canada have in recent weeks voiced, in some cases qualified, intentions to diplomatically recognise a Palestinian state as international concern and criticism have grown over malnutrition in Gaza.
Australia has called for an end to the war in Gaza but has so far stopped short of a decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
But in a joint statement with more than a dozen other nations on Tuesday it expressed the "willingness or the positive consideration... to recognise the state of Palestine as an essential step towards the two-State solution".
The pro-Palestinian crowd braved heavy winds and rain to march across the bridge, chanting "ceasefire now" and "free Palestine".
New South Wales police said it had deployed hundreds of extra staff across Sydney for the march.
Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, told the crowd gathered at central Sydney's Lang Park that the march would "make history".
She called for the "harshest sanctions on Israel", accusing its forces of "massacring" Gazans, and criticised New South Wales premier Chris Minns for saying the protest should not go ahead.
Dozens of marchers held up banners listing the names of thousands of Palestinian children killed since the Gaza war broke out after an October 2023 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Labor backbench MP Ed Husic attended the march and called for his ruling party, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, to recognise a Palestinian state.
Assange did not address the crowd or talk to the media.
Israel is under mounting international pressure to end the bloodshed that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Hamas's 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Harbour Bridge is over a kilometre long and was opened in 1932.
Since then its twin parabolic arcs have become world famous, a symbol of both Sydney and of Australia. WkikLeaks founder Julian Assange (L) and former Australian minister for foreign affairs Bob Carr (R) chat during a pro-Palestinian rally against Israel's actions and the ongoing food shortages in the Gaza Strip, in Sydney on August 3, 2025. AFP
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DW
25 minutes ago
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Fact Check: Fake claim of UK officers 'captured' in Ukraine – DW – 08/07/2025
A demonstrably made-up story of British military officers being "captured" during a Russian raid in Ukraine has spread online this week, even being repeated by former British lawmakers. DW takes a look. The AI-generated images resemble cheap cartoons, the floating passport covers are illegible and there is no evidence that their alleged holders even exist. Nevertheless, an entirely fabricated story of three British military officers being "captured" in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base has spread online in the past week – even being shared by two former British members of parliament and gaining traction from Norway to Pakistan. DW takes a look at a narrative which bears all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and the channels via which such stories spread. Claim: "Russian Spetsnaz RAID and capture senior UK officers in Ochakov!" DW Fact Check: False A story appeared in Russian media last week that three British military officers – supposedly two colonels in the British Army and an officer from British military intelligence (MI6) – were captured in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base in the small southern city of Ochakiv (known in Russian as Ochakov). One of the most prominent social media posts (screenshot above) regurgitating the story has accrued almost 500,000 views on X (formerly Twitter), another has almost 400,000 and another has over 222,000. The "colonels" were named as "psychological ops specialist Edward Blake" and "Richard Carroll – a Ministry of Defence official with Middle East experience" who were captured during a "lightning-fast" nighttime raid by elite (special forces) troops in an operation codenamed "Skat-12." A spectacular military and diplomatic coup were it true – which it's not; it's completely made up. As Craig Langford from the specialist UK Defence Journal (UKDJ) analyzed, there is no trace of "Edward Blake" or "Richard Carroll" in any recent British Armed Forces or Ministry of Defence (MoD) records. "In short, there is no proof these individuals exist, let alone that they were captured," wrote Langford, while a spokesman for the MoD refused to even acknowledge the story when asked by DW. What's more, four different images used to illustrate the story across various media outlets and social media channels don't only depict six different men (who don't exist); they have also demonstrably been generated using artificial intelligence. The AI image detection tool SightEngine puts the probability of the four images being AI-generated at between 91% and 99%, but obvious visual errors suffice: cartoonish faces, oversized limbs, upside-down rifles, illegible passport covers, gibberish documents and an officer's cap missing its peak. "The uniforms worn by the kneeling men also reveal the image as a fake," explained Langford for the UKDJ, referring to one of the main image at the top of this article, which appeared in some of the fake reporting. "While the camouflage superficially resembles British Army patterns, the details are wrong. Military clothing follows strict patterns and standards, especially in operational environments, and these deviations suggest that the uniforms were generated based on visual approximations rather than real references." But this didn't stop the story from appearing in several Russian outlets (here, here and here) before being reproduced in English on the Kremlin-controlled and Serbia's state-owned . DW is banned in Russia but B92 didn't respond to a request for comment on why they ran the story. 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Indeed, the story soon found mouthpieces in western Europe, including the Norwegian communist and conspiracy theorist Pal Steigan – who later retracted the story after recognizing that it was "poorly fact-checked on our part." In the United Kingdom, the story was amplified by former members of parliament George Galloway – who worked as a presenter on the Russian state-owned RT broadcaster for nine years until 2022 and has blamed NATO and the West for Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the center-right Conservative Party in 2023 for tweeting that the use of COVID-19 vaccines was "the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust." While DW approached both Galloway (who has over 825,000 followers on X) and Bridgen (over 300,000) for comment, requests which have gone unanswered, the story even made it as far as Pakistan. According to Osadchuk, the target audience abroad is "disgruntled people who believe that 'the mainstream media won't publish this.'" But he thinks the bigger audience is actually inside Russia itself, "to show Russians how mighty the military is." This is supported by an element of the story which would likely strike a greater chord among Russian readers than elsewhere; the idea of the United Kingdom as a shadowy geopolitical operator. "A key trope of Russian propaganda is that the 'Anglo-Saxons' are puppeteers conducting the war," explains Osadchuk. "It's the trope of the external enemy. It's not Ukraine resisting; the British must be behind it. The British in particular are often considered responsible for military intelligence and covert operations, hence the claim that they captured a 'psychological operations officer' specifically." So, when confronted with intentionally erroneous stories such as this, how best to respond? Is it best to simply ignore them to prevent them spreading? Or does there come a point when some engagement is necessary? "We can ignore disinformation until certain thresholds, which vary according to topic, platform and country," advises Roman Osadchuk. "If it's just a crazy comment beneath a social media post with five views, then just ignore it. But if a story starts to be disseminated on multiple platforms or if, in this case, former members of a country's parliament are sharing it, it starts to become more substantial and should be debunked."
Int'l Business Times
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Int'l Business Times
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