Shadow World Investigations

Help us expose the lies of the global arms trade. SWI + @andrewfeinstein are writing a book on how the West profits from enabling the slaughter in Gaza & Yemen. Please support if you can. crowdfunder.co.uk/p/making-a-kil…

My letter to @Arsenal about their appalling treatment of a long-time employee fired because of his views on Palestine:

A drone symposium in Vienna this week! Why are these Merchants of Death being welcomed with open arms?

Joint Statement: Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein Regarding Labour Together, APCO and the Labour Party On Wednesday last week we received documents from Labour Together following Subject Access Requests that we submitted to Labour Together in February 2026. The documents provided by Labour Together are deeply disturbing. They show that Labour Together and APCO targeted us, our colleagues, our associates and Paul’s family with utterly false and highly defamatory allegations, and that this was done with the knowledge of the highest levels of the Labour Party. Indeed, we are now of the view that the operation to investigate us, our families and associates was effectively a joint operation run by the Labour Party, Labour Together and APCO. This highly invasive campaign was launched because of Paul’s factually accurate reporting. This reporting raised serious questions about whether Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney deliberately failed to report £730,000 in donations to the Electoral Commission in violation of the law. It is now plain that Sir Keir Starmer benefited from the work funded by these donations and that they facilitated his rise to power. We are calling for a full inquiry into Labour Together. We also call on Sir Keir Starmer to clarify his role in this scandal. Considering the documents that have been disclosed to date, we find it nearly inconceivable that Sir Keir Starmer did not know about this despicable project that included Labour Together reporting us to the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, based on utterly false and highly defamatory allegations. These highly defamatory allegations were then shared with at least one major newspaper outlet. The newly released documents reveal six important facts. First, they show that Morgan McSweeney and Paul Ovenden were aware of the APCO and Labour Together investigation into us from at least January 2024. McSweeney was the Labour Party’s head of campaigns and subsequently Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff in Number 10. Paul Ovenden was the Director of Labour Party communications and subsequently Head of Strategy in Number 10. The emails show Simons arranging a meeting between himself, Ovenden, McSweeney and Tom Harper, a senior APCO employee, to discuss the investigation into us. A third Labour employee was copied into the email, but, because of redactions, we do not know who this is. We ask the Labour Party to confirm who else was copied into this correspondence. The excellent @PeterKGeoghegan and Democracy for Sale have confirmed with a Labour Party source that the intended meeting did take place. Second, they show that APCO’s Tom Harper actively coached Josh Simons and Labour Together on how to submit a ‘crime complaint’ about us to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ. Harper provided text for Simons to submit to the NCSC. The decision to complain about us to the NCSC was made only days after Simons had emailed McSweeney, Ovenden and Harper about APCO’s upcoming report into us, asking for a meeting to discuss its contents. Third, Josh Simons has repeatedly claimed in public that he appointed APCO to investigate a ‘hack’ of Labour Together materials. But the new documents show that Labour Together and Simons did not conduct any meaningful cybersecurity review to establish whether materials had been hacked from Labour Together, or where else they may have been sourced from. Labour Together did, however, appoint a cybersecurity expert to review a potential hack in late 2025. This review, a summary of which has now been disclosed to us, shows that there was no ‘hack’ of Labour Together. This is obviously true, as we have repeatedly explained that the investigation into Labour Together was based on documents legally leaked from the Labour Party by whistleblowers concerned about misconduct by the Party’s most senior officials, open-source materials, and Freedom of Information requests. Fourth, they show that Josh Simons and Labour Together told the NCSC that they were reporting us because they were concerned that Paul’s reporting ‘may be a co-ordinated effort to discredit Labour Together in order to undermine Mr McSweeney and by extension, Mr. Starmer in the run-up to next year’s general election.’ It is our view that this joint Labour Together, Labour Party and APCO operation was launched because Paul’s factually accurate reporting would have shed light on the highly problematic and unlawful aspects of Sir Keir Starmer’s rise to power. Fifth, they show that APCO had sent a ‘case summary’ to Josh Simons of Labour Together on the 20th of November 2020, on the basis of which APCO were contracted by Labour Together two days later. The ‘case summary’, setting out a proposed scope of work, clearly identified us as journalists. From the very beginning, therefore, APCO and Labour Together knew that they were looking to investigate journalists – the very journalists who were reporting accurately on Labour Together, Morgan McSweeney and undeclared donations. Sixth, they show that Simons wrote to an unknown person at the Labour Party in November 2023 asking for ‘intel’ on us. This shows that Simons’ immediate response to announcement of Paul’s book was to seek the assistance of the Labour Party. At the time, we were both Labour Party members. The reply to Simons’ request has been redacted in our documents. We call on the Labour Party to release all documents to us relevant to this scandal, and to confirm whether Josh Simons, Labour Together or APCO were provided with any of our private, personal information.

New Case 🚨 | The Leonardo Panama Affair corruption-tracker.org/case/leonardo-…

MP Barry Gardiner sitting behind the Prime Minister at PMQs with the book “The Fraud” sitting on his lap.

They paid nearly $1.7 million to settle. Both cases centralised around Moog’s supply of aerospace actuators. For full details please visit the website link here: corruption-tracker.org/case/moog-brib…

MOOG. The US company Moog Inc settled out of court in 2024 over its role in a bribery scheme in India, where third-party intermediaries were used to secure contracts with state-owned arms company, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Two shipments of military components bound for Israel from the UK were seized in Belgium following an investigation by @declassifiedUK @Vredesactie @wereontheditch & @palyouthmvmt. The company behind the supply of components was revealed to be none other than…

New Case 🚨 | Moog’s Bribery Scheme in India. corruption-tracker.org/case/moog-brib…

NEW: Voters Will Reward Zack Polanski for his Defiant Moral Position @StarmertheFraud

NEW: All Starmer’s Labour Party Can Offer is Authoritarianism and Crack Down @StarmertheFraud | @AlnaouqA | @HalaHanina

Superb. A gale of fresh air as Double Down Newswatch debuts with ‘The News They Don’t Want You to Watch’. This independent weekly analysis of the news stories ignored or distorted by the mainstream/commercial media will offer a real & vital alternative to the sclerotic status quo

@johnmcdonnellMP on the Free Speech Union Podcast calling for an inquiry into Labour Together and APCO, the PR firm they hired to investigate journalists, including our very own Paul Holden @StarmertheFraud and @andrewfeinstein youtu.be/9MkLa3Ca7OI?si…

News therapy. The first episode of Double Down Newswatch is now out. Spread the word. youtube.com/watch?v=1kI9pl…

UNCOVERED: The Plot To DESTROY Zack Polanski @StarmertheFraud

Zack Polanski & The Weaponisation of Antisemitism @starmerthefraud doubledown.news/watch/2026/may…

Fed up of the media lying to you every single day? Double Down Newswatch will hold them to account. Never before has aggressive scrutiny and fearless independent journalism been so important, yet never before has the mainstream media been so narrow in its perspectives, so infected in groupthink, and so tied to this failed political class and system. If you find yourself screaming at the telly at the established pundits and news providers. The Laura Kuenssbergs, the Robert Pestons, the Trevor Phillips, Dana Bash and Bari Weiss, you are not alone. There are millions of people like you and we’re here for you. This is not a program that will tell you what to think, the aim is to provide you with the information and knowledge you need to be able to make informed decisions in a functioning democracy, something that mainstream media is failing to do. Like millions of others I’ve watched in horror and astonishment as the Israelis have used Western weapons and diplomatic protection to maim, mutilate and murder tens of thousands of small children and other civilians. There’s no other issue where the divide between the mainstream media and political class, which apparently regards this as tolerable, and the rest of us who’ve reacted like normal human beings, is so profound. Above all, I feel deep shame and guilt at my own profession which continues to peddle a perverse inverted journalism, where allegations of racism are hurled not at the perpetrators and supporters of ethic cleansing, apartheid and genocide, but at their victims and their supporters, smeared and disempowered as antisemites. Gaza encapsulates the political and intellectual and moral bankruptcy of those who rule over us and those who are to tell us what to think. Western politics and Western journalism is in desperate need of renewal, we want to be a part of that and we hope you join us. @PulaRJS Double Down Newswatch, covering the stories that mainstream media misreports, underreports or simple doesn’t report at all. Premiers this Wednesday 6 May at 6pm

🚨🇬🇷 Greece has opened a preliminary investigation into Israel Katz following a complaint filed by the #HindRajabFoundation and Greek lawyers. Today, lawyer Thanasis Kampagiannis testified in front of authorities, and additional evidence was submitted by HRF. More info ⬇️ hindrajabfoundation.org/posts/complain…

Palantir is a militarised tech firm in bed with the right-wing establishment— its defenders can do little to restore any modicum of legitimacy. It's not so much a case of the mask slipping — the mask was never even on, @jjgjourno writes. thecanary.co/global/2026/05…

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote to Stoltenberg in May last year, warning that the fund's ongoing investments in companies implicated in war crimes risked putting Norway in breach of international law middleeasteye.pulse.ly/2qxbduohhc