Britain has flown 50 spy missions over Gaza in support of Israel
▻https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-has-flown-50-spy-missions-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel
The UK military refuses to tell Declassified what intelligence it is sharing with Israel as we reveal the extraordinary number of surveillance flights Britain is undertaking over Gaza from its base on Cyprus.
]]>Anna Dushime über Berlin: „Wedding hat für immer mein Herz gestohlen“
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/panorama/anna-dushime-ueber-berlin-wedding-hat-fuer-immer-mein-herz-gestohle
9.10.2023 von Anne Vorbringer - Berlin hat rund 3,8 Millionen Einwohner, und jeder hat seinen eigenen Blick auf die Stadt. Was macht Berlin aus, wieso lebt man hier – und tut man es überhaupt gern?
In unserer Rubrik „Fragebogen Berlin“ fragen wir bekannte Hauptstädterinnen und Hauptstädter nach ihren Lieblingsorten und nach Plätzen, die sie eher meiden. Sie verraten, wo sie gern essen, einkaufen oder spazieren gehen. Aber auch, was sie an Berlin nervt und was man hier auf keinen Fall tun sollte.
Diesmal hat die Journalistin und Moderatorin Anna Dushime unsere Fragen beantwortet, die in Ruanda zur Welt kam, als kleines Kind mit ihrer Mutter und ihren Schwestern vor dem dortigen Völkermord floh und mit zehn Jahren schließlich nach Deutschland kam. Inzwischen lebt sie schon viele Jahre in Berlin und ist nach mehreren Bezirkswechseln glücklich in Charlottenburg gelandet.
Ebendort, in der schicken Bar des Luxushotels Waldorf Astoria, um genau zu sein, empfängt die 35-Jährige auch die illustren Gäste ihrer neuen Talkshow „Der letzte Drink“. Statt oberflächlichem Promo-Geplänkel soll es mit Dushime als Gastgeberin um eine ehrliche, offene und spannende Unterhaltung gehen. Das Gespräch ist der Star!
In der Pilotfolge, die demnächst in der ARD-Mediathek zu sehen sein wird, trifft Anna Dushime auf den Entertainer Roberto Blanco, der bei Mojitos und Whiskey Sour kein Blatt vor den Mund nehmen wird – ebenso wenig wie die Moderatorin, versteht sich.
1. Frau Dushime, seit wann sind Sie schon in der Stadt – und warum sind Sie nach Berlin gekommen?
Ich würde am liebsten sagen für die Liebe, aber eigentlich bin ich 2010 für ein Marketing-Praktikum (fast das gleiche) gekommen und wäre am liebsten direkt geblieben, aber meine Mutter hat’s mir ohne Abschluss nicht erlaubt (danke Mama!). 2012 bin ich dann nach meinem Abschluss mit meiner besten Freundin Tina endgültig zurückgekommen.
2. Welcher ist Ihr Lieblingsort in Berlin?
Einerseits der Schlosspark Charlottenburg wegen der Gärten und weil’s fancy klingt. Aber auch mein Bett, weil alles Wichtige in greifbarer Nähe ist (Baby, Netflix und Essen). Und Weißensee, weil die oben erwähnte beste Freundin da wohnt und ihre Wohnung mein Wohlfühlort ist.
3. Wo zieht es Sie hin, wenn Sie entspannen wollen?
Ehrlich gesagt in mein Bett, aber wenn ich mal raus muss, dann laufe ich eine Runde um den Lietzensee. Also mit Laufen meine ich gehen, nicht joggen! Joggen und entspannen passt für mich nicht zusammen.
4. Welche Ecken der Stadt meiden Sie?
Den Alexanderplatz, weil er so stressig ist, und das Soho House, weil da so viele prätentiöse Werber und „Kreative“ sind. Aber falls die Soho-House-Betreiber mitlesen: Wenn ihr mir eine Mitgliedschaft schenkt, komme ich!
5. Ihr ultimativer Gastro-Geheimtipp?
Ich habe keinen einzigen Geheimtipp auf Lager, weil ich einen sehr mittelmäßigen Geschmack habe und eher faul bin. Wenn Freunde zu Besuch kommen, muss ich immer googeln, was gerade angesagt ist. Außerdem bin ich eine überzeugte Essen-Bestellerin, deshalb sind meine „Geheimtipps“ die Läden, die ich bei Wolt oder Lieferando finde. Ich esse gerne das persische Essen von Aftab und afrikanische Spezialitäten von Didipa. Bier trinke ich im Hecht, und in der Lang Bar im Waldorf Astoria gibt es sehr gute Drinks.
6. Ihr ultimativer Shopping-Geheimtipp?
Ich bestelle seit Jahren nur im Internet, aber wenn’s schnell gehen muss, gehe ich in die Wilmersdorfer Arcaden. Ist kein wirklicher Geheimtipp, aber vielleicht ist das hier einer: Neulich, als ich durch Charlottenburg lief, sah ich eine Werbung für die Mall of Shisha. Seitdem will ich unbedingt hin.
7. Der beste Stadtteil Berlins ist …
Ich habe wirklich schon überall in Berlin gelebt: Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Neukölln und Wedding. Und was soll ich sagen, letzterer hat für immer mein Herz gestohlen, aber Charlottenburg ist auch sehr schön. Im Wedding habe ich als Praktikantin gelebt, bin spät aufgestanden, spät ins Bett, habe mich nur von Döner und Tiefkühlpizza ernährt und war ständig unterwegs: Alles war günstig, entspannt und ich hatte wenig Verantwortung. In Charlottenburg lebe ich ein anderes Leben, aber so ist es wohl, erwachsen zu sein. Wobei: Ich gehe immer noch spät ins Bett und liebe die Spinat-Tiefkühl-Pizza von Lidl.
8. Das nervt mich am meisten an der Stadt:
Menschen, die neben Bars und Clubs ziehen und sich dann ständig wegen des Lärms beschweren. Dass U-Bahn, S-Bahn (kaputte Aufzüge), Freibäder, Cafés oft nicht wirklich barrierefrei sind, und dass es gefühlt immer weniger Orte zum Verweilen gibt, ohne direkt etwas konsumieren zu müssen.
9. Was muss sich dringend ändern, damit Berlin lebenswert bleibt?
Der Mietendeckel und wie gesagt: mehr barrierefreie Plätze und Orte zum Verweilen, ohne Geld ausgeben zu müssen.
10. Ihr Tipp an Unentschlossene: Nach Berlin ziehen oder es lieber bleiben lassen?
Falls ihr euch wegen des Lärms beschweren wollt, bitte in Kassel bleiben! Falls nicht: Kommt, probiert’s aus und wenn’s nichts ist, könnt ihr ja wieder weg.
11. Cooler als Berlin ist nur noch …
Kigali, wo ich geboren bin und wohin mich Rassisten im Internet ständig zurückschicken wollen. Pech: Ich bleibe erst mal hier.
Zur Person
Anna Dushime ist 1988 in Kigali geboren, in England zur Schule gegangen, hat am Niederrhein Abitur gemacht und in den Niederlanden studiert. Sie arbeitet als Autorin, Moderatorin und Redaktionsleiterin unter anderem für das preisgekrönte Satireformat Browser Ballett.
Als Kolumnistin schrieb sie bis 2022 für die taz regelmäßig über Dating, Rassismus und alles dazwischen. Sie moderierte außerdem die erste Staffel des Erfolgspodcasts „1000 erste Dates“, den Ärzte-ohne-Grenzen-Podcast „Notaufnahme“ nahm sie von 2019 bis zu ihrer Elternzeit wöchentlich auf. Für Podimo sprach sie im Format „18“ mit interessanten Persönlichkeiten über das Jahr, in dem sie 18 wurden.
Derzeit ist sie auch als Co-Host im Podcast „Enter Sandman“ zu hören. Sie ist Mutter eines Sohnes und lebt in Berlin. Demnächst erscheint ihr neues TV-Talkshow-Format „Der letzte Drink“ in der ARD-Mediathek.
#Ruanda #Kigali #Royaume_Uni #Allemagne #Berlin #culture #médias
]]>Noble House, film d’après le roman de James Clavell
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7gAAG-S3x0
C’est une belle histoire sur l"impérialisme et la création de ses structures pour exploiter le monde. A mi-mots la série télévisée parle de la HongKong and Shanghai Bank qui est toujours vonnue comme partenaire pour toute sorte de #racket douteux.
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House_(miniseries)
Deborah Raffin as Casey Tcholok
Ben Masters as Linc Bartlett
John Rhys-Davies as Quillan Gornt
Julia Nickson as Orlanda Ramos
Khigh Dhiegh as “Four Finger” Wu
Gordon Jackson as Supt. Robert Armstrong
Burt Kwouk as Phillip Chen
Nancy Kwan as Claudia Chen
John van Dreelen as Jacques DeVille
Ping Wu as Paul Choy
Lim Kay Tong as Brian Kwok
Lisa Lu as Ah-Tam
Damien Thomas as Lando Mata
Dudley Sutton as Commissioner Roger Crosse
Ric Young as Tsu-Yan
Tia Carrere as Venus Poon
Steven Vincent Leigh as John Chen
Irene Tsu as Dianne Chen
John Houseman as Sir Geoffrey Allison
Denholm Elliott as Alastair Struan
Harris Laskawy as Charles Biltzmann
Leon Lissek as Christian Toxe
Keith Bonnard as Tip Tok-Toh
Edward Petherbridge as Jason Plumm
Bennett Ohta as Richard Kwang
Brian Fong as “Goodweather” Poon
Helen Funai as Mrs. Kwang
David Shaughnessy as Dr. Dorn
John Fujioka as “Baldhead” Kin
Richard Durden as Paul Havergill
David Henry as Bruce Johnjohn
George Innes as Alexi Travkin
Choy-Ling Man as Mary Li
Pip Miller as Inspector John Smyth
Michael Siberry as Linbar Struan
Duncan Preston as Richard Pugmire
Vincent Wong as Lim Chu
Galen Yuen as “Smallpox” Kin
Nicholas Pryor as Seymour Steigler
]]>Ken Loach at Cannes: ’working class is undefeated’
▻https://www.rfi.fr/en/people-and-entertainment/20230526-ken-loach-at-cannes-working-class-is-undefeated
Cannes (France) (AFP) – At 86, British director Ken Loach showed he still had fighting spirit at Cannes, presenting his latest moving homage to working class solidarity and saying: “we’re still in the game”.
Ken Loach’s new film ’The Old Oak’ shows there is still solidarity in working class communities
Loach has had no fewer than 15 films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival — and won the top prize Palme d’Or twice.
His dedication to left-wing causes and showing the often harsh reality of working class Britain remains undimmed in his 16th entry, “The Old Oak”, which premiered on Friday.
It tells the story of a struggling pub in a depressed ex-mining town in northern England, whose landlord helps Syrian refugees despite his own problems.
Deadline called it a “vital, moving social parable” and The Guardian a “fierce final call for compassion”.
Despite widespread anti-immigrant feeling in Britain, Loach said there are still many working class communities who have shown solidarity with refugees.
“We have a tradition of solidarity born out of industrial struggle,” Loach told AFP at the festival. “There are whole sections of people who campaign for refugees.”
He said “The Old Oak” was a necessary blast of positivity after more downbeat recent films, “I, Daniel Blake” (which won the Palme in 2016) and “Sorry We Missed You”.
“Without hope there’s despair, and then you’re open to the far right and that destroys us,” Loach said.
“The working class is not defeated, we’re still in the game.”
Asked about still directing in his mid-80s, Loach joked: “If you get up and read the obituary columns and you’re not in them, it’s a good day. But I’ve been lucky to keep some health.”
Hard graft
His long-time writing partner Paul Laverty was full of praise for Loach’s dedication, saying the director still worked late for months on end to cast the film from local communities.
“That was like six months hard graft,” Laverty said, before having a friendly dig: “That’s fine when you’re 30 but when you’re 105...”
Solidarity used to mean “joining together and sharing,” Loach said.
“Today, it means charity... giving a small amount to the poor provided they are grateful and deserving and don’t cause a fuss and look like victims.”
Speaking about the deterioration of the National Health Service, Loach said “the extent of the crisis is catastrophic”.
“We have the most sophisticated political class in the world controlling the image of Britain, but you look inside and it’s rotten to the core.”
]]>French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge
►https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/18/french-publisher-arrested-london-counter-terrorism-police-ernest-moret
Tous des Feltrinelli ... dorénavant nos idées et informations sensibles ne passeront les frontières que dans le coffre fort de notre tête (ou dans une figure de la danse des électrons composant une connexion chiffrée).
Rien n’a changé depuis l’époque de Heinrich Heine.
▻http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Heine,+Heinrich/Versepen/Deutschland.+Ein+Winterm%C3%A4rchen/Caput+2
Ihr Toren, die ihr im Koffer sucht!
Hier werdet ihr nichts entdecken!
Die Konterbande, die mit mir reist,
Die hab ich im Kopfe stecken.
Le poème de 1844 donne un sens au fait divers. Cet éditeur ne prend pas au sérieux les textes de révoltés qu’il publie. Soyons clairs, les libertés garanties par les constitutions des états bourgeois ne le sont que pour les bourgeois, les vrais, pas pour les petits bourgeois rebelles.
18.4.2023 by Matthew Weaver - A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.
Ernest Moret, 28, a foreign rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, was approached by two plainclothes officers at St Pancras station on Monday evening after arriving by train from Paris to attend the London book fair.
He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer. His treatment was condemned as an attack on the right to demonstrate, amid calls for protests outside the UK embassy in Paris and the French Institute in London.
Moret arrived at St Pancras at 7.15pm with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house, to be confronted by the two officers.
Magliani-Belkacem told the Guardian: “When we were on the platform, two people, a woman and a guy, told us they were counter-terrorist police. They showed a paper called section 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and said they had the right to ask him about demonstrations in France.”
She added: “I’m still shaking. We are in shock about what happened.”
She said French publishers had drafted a joint letter calling for a protest outside the British embassy in France on Tuesday evening about Moret’s treatment.
When the officers began questioning Moret, Magliani-Belkacem called her friend Sebastian Budgen, a senior editor at Verso Books in London, at whose home she and Moret had arranged to stay.
Budgen arranged for a lawyer to visit Moret. The lawyer called Budgen at 1am on Tuesday to confirm that Moret had been arrested over his refusal to tell police the passcodes to his confiscated phone and laptop. He was transferred to a police station in Islington, north London, where he remained in custody on Tuesday. He was later released on bail.
Éditions la Fabrique is known for publishing radical left authors. Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio and had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair.
A joint press release from Verso Books and Éditions la Fabrique condemned Moret’s treatment as “scandalous”.
It said: “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”
It added: “We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of the freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism laws.”
The statement said a protest was planned at the French Institute in London and called on France’s ambassador to the UK, Hélène Duchêne, to request Moret’s immediate release.
Budgen said: “It is causing a stink at the London book fair and there’s a big stink in France as well … there’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence, but also in terms of a security clampdown.”
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in France last month over Emmanuel Macron’s use of constitutional executive powers to push through an unpopular increase in the pension age. The protests caused King Charles’s planned visit to France, his first overseas tour as monarch, to be postponed.
The writers’ association Pen International said it was “deeply concerned” that Moret was detained on counter-terrorism grounds.
Pamela Morton, senior books and magazines organiser for the National Union of Journalists, also expressed concern.
She said it seemed “extraordinary that the British police have acted this way” in arresting a publisher on the way to the London book fair. “We will be taking this up with the police,” she added.
A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “At around 7.30pm on Monday 17 April, a 28-year-old man was stopped by ports officers as he arrived at St Pancras station, using powers under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
“On Tuesday 18 April, the man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of wilfully obstructing a schedule 7 examination, contrary to section 18 of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
#Royaume_Uni #France #frontières #répression #liberté_d_expression
]]>SILENT COLLABORATOR - Declassified Australia
▻https://declassifiedaus.org/2023/03/04/silent-collaborator
Julian Assange once said: ‘I understood this a few years ago. And my view became that we should understand that Australia is part of the United States. It is part of this English-speaking Christian empire, the centre of gravity of which is the United States, the second centre of which is the United Kingdom, and Australia is a suburb in that arrangement.
‘And therefore we shouldn’t go, “It’s completely hopeless, its completely lost. Australian sovereignty, we are never going to get that back. We can’t control the big regulatory structure which we’re involved in in terms of strategic alliances, mass surveillance, and so on”.
‘No, we just have to understand that our capital is Washington. The capital of Australia is DC. That’s the reality. So when you’re engaging in campaigns, just engage directly with DC, because that’s where the decisions are made.
‘And that’s what I do, and that’s what Wikileaks does. We engage directly with DC. We engage directly with Washington, and that’s what Australians should do.’
]]>Missing Link: Warum die britische Chatkontrolle den EU-Plänen so sehr gleicht
▻https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Missing-Link-Warum-die-britische-Chatkontrolle-den-EU-Plaenen-so-sehr-gleicht-
11.2.2023 von Erich Moechel - Koordinierter Angriff auf Verschlüsselung / Verschlüsselung systematisch nicht erwähnt / Allmächtige Behörden, Gerichte nicht gebraucht / Wie es nun weitergeht
In Großbritannien hat die „Online Safety Bill“ bereits die zweite Lesung im „House of Lords“ absolviert. Derzeit werden die Änderungen durch das Oberhaus eingearbeitet, einige offensichtlich weit überschießende Passagen wurden dabei entfernt. Geblieben ist allerdings das Prinzip, dass sämtliche Kommunikationen aller Provider darunter fallen werden, egal ob sie im Klartext vorliegen oder sicher verschlüsselt sind. Es ist derselbe totalitäre Ansatz wie in der „Chatkontrolle“, die von EU-Kommissarin Ylva Johansson vorangetrieben wird.
Koordinierter Angriff auf Verschlüsselung
Dieses britische Gesetz zum Kinderschutz im Netz fällt nicht nur zeitlich mit der EU-Chatkontrolle zusammen, die im Dezember gestartet ist. Auch inhaltlich und sogar methodisch sind die Parallelen kaum zu übersehen, denn beide Gesetzesvorhaben gehen auf ein gemeinsames strategisches Ziel zurück. Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung (E2E) von WhatsApp und den anderen Messenger-Diensten soll durch Auflagen aus dem Netz verdrängt werden, die E2E-Anbieter technisch nicht erfüllen können. Erst Ende Januar hatte die schwedische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft behauptet, dass Strafverfolger durch E2E-Verschlüsselung „blind und taub“ würden.
Im Abschnitt 98 der Online Safety Bill, der alle sanktionierbaren Arten von Verstößen auflistet, findet sich auch verschlüsselte Kommunikation. Wenn ein Provider die im Durchsuchungsbefehl verlangten Kommunikationen nicht im Klartext liefern kann, so wird das ebenso strafbar, wie das Verfälschen oder nachträgliche Löschen dieser Kommunikationen.
Verschlüsselung systematisch nicht erwähnt
E2E-Anbieter werden in Großbritannien also alleine schon wegen ihres Angebots potenziell unter Strafandrohung stehen. Dasselbe ist im EU-Raum zu erwarten, denn der vorliegende Entwurf für eine europäische Kinderschutz-Verordnung geht von derselben Prämisse aus, nämlich dass E2E-Verschlüsselung die öffentliche Sicherheit bedrohe. Die Methoden, wie Verschlüsselung in diesen beiden Gesetzesentwürfen dargestellt wird, sind überhaupt identisch. Verschlüsselung wird, soweit es irgendwie möglich ist, nicht erwähnt. Im obigen Ausschnitt wird sie etwa mit „für OFCOM nicht lesbar“ umschrieben, insgesamt kommt der Begriff „encrypted“ sowohl in der „Online Saftey Bill“ wie auch in im Text der EU-Chatkontrolle überhaupt nur dreimal vor.
Der eigentliche Schlüsselbegriff wird also bewusst ausgespart, die Auflagen an die Provider werden jedoch so gestaltet, dass sie nur dann erfüllbar sind, wenn die Unternehmen über Nach- oder Generalschlüssel für die Kommunikationen verfügen. Die folgende Passage zeigt, welche Folgen ein E2E-Angebot nach sich ziehen kann, wenn die Regulationsbehörde einen Durchsuchungsbefehl ausstellt und der Provider nur verschlüsselte Daten liefern kann.
In Großbritannien stehen damit nicht nur die Unternehmen unter Strafandrohung. Von Angestellten in leitender Position bis ganz hinunter stehen alle mit einem Fuß im Gefängnis, die für Foren, Chats oder auch E-Mail-Services operativ verantwortlich sind. Ursprünglich war sogar das mögliche Strafausmaß im Text enthalten, neben Geldbußen können auch bis zu zwei Jahre Haft verhängt werden. Will Cathcart, der CEO von WhatsApp, hatte bereits mehrfach angekündigt, im Falle einer Verabschiedung in dieser Form, den britischen Markt zu verlassen.
Allmächtige Behörden, Gerichte nicht gebraucht
Die Durchsuchungsbefehle an die Plattformbetreiber kommen nicht etwa von einem ordentlichen Gericht, sondern von der britischen Regulationsbehörde Ofcom. Quasi auf Zuruf dieser Behörde werden WhatsApp und alle anderen Anbieter verpflichtet, die Kommunikationen ganzer Segmente ihres Netzes zu scannen, wenn eine Beschwerde vorliegt. Auch Einsprüche und alle weiteren Interaktionen laufen über die Behörde. Ofcom erhalte durch die „Online Safety Bill“ weit mehr Überwachungsbefugnisse als der „Investigatory Powers Act“ 2016 dem britischen Geheimdienst GCHQ zugestanden habe, heißt es in einem Rechtsgutachten für die Bürgerrechtsorganisation Index on Censorship.
Auch im EU-Raum wird es für einen Durchsuchungsbefehl keine Gerichte brauchen. Das geht aus den Begleitdokumenten des Kommissionsentwurfs zur Chatkontrolle hervor. Anzeigen wegen Verbreitung von „Kinderpornografie“ gehen von den Polizeibehörden des Mitgliedsstaats direkt an das im Rahmen der EU-Verordnung vorgesehene, neue „EU-Centre gegen Kindesmissbrauch“. Von dort ergeht eine „Detection Order“ an den betreffenden Betreiber, der dann die Kommunikationen in bestimmten Segmenten seiner Plattform mit einer zentralen Datenbank abgleichen muss, die das EU-Centre gegen Kindesmissbrauch unterhält.
Mit einem jährlichen Aufwand von mehr als zwei Milliarden Euro und 100 Mitarbeitern wird da eine völlig neue Behörde geschaffen, die direkt bei Europol in Den Haag angesiedelt wird. De facto ist das gleichbedeutend mit einer Erweiterung der Befugnisse von Europol.
Aus Anlass der „Online Safety Bill“ hatten die britischen Behörden Mitte Januar ihre gemeinsame Erklärung zur E2E-Verschlüsselung von 2018 mit einem Update versehen. Unterzeichnet wurde sie von den Innen- und Justizministern Großbritanniens, der USA, Australiens, Neuseelands und Kanadas. Das sind alle fünf Staaten der Spionage-Allianz „Five Eyes“.
Akkordiert wurde der oben geschilderte Ansatz weder von Politikern in London noch in Brüssel, sondern auf den Konferenzen der „Five Eyes“ und den Treffen im „Club de Berne“, dem informellen Gremium europäischer Geheimdienste. Verschlüsselung fällt in Kernkompetenz dieser Dienste und deshalb waren sie auch als erste damit befasst, erst dann wurden FBI und Europol im Jahr 2017 vorgeschickt. Die Kampagne unter dem reißerischen Titel „Die Polizei wird blind“ wurde 2018 mehrere Monate lang vorangetrieben. Im November publizierten dann zwei ranghohe technische Mitarbeiter des GCHQ ein Manifest im renommierten LawFare-Blog. Der Inhalt ist die Langversion der Five-Eyes-Erklärung von oben.
In Australien wurde das Ziel schon wenige Tage nach diesem Manifest erreicht. Im Dezember 2018 verabschiedete das australische Parlament ohne Debatte oder Änderungsanträge den Assistance and Access Act. Es handelt sich um ein reines Ermächtigungsgesetz für den Geheimdienst „Australian Signals Directorate“ und die Polizeibehörden zum Zugriff auf verschlüsselte Kommunikation.
Wie es nun weitergeht
Die britische „Online Safety Bill“ kommt möglicherweise schon kommende Woche wieder ins Oberhaus zur dritten und letzten Lesung, dann folgt die finale Abstimmung. In den USA wiederum ist in den nächsten Tagen oder Wochen mit dem „Kids Online Safety Act“ (KOSA) rechnen, der Entwurf dafür liegt seit Mitte Dezember im US-Senat. Nicht wirklich überraschend enthält dieser vom demokratischen Senator Richard Blumenthal stammende Gesetzesentwurf ziemlich genau alle Bestimmungen, die auch in der Chatkontrolle der EU-Kommissarin Ylva Johansson sowie den einschlägigen Gesetzen in Großbritannien und Australien enthalten sind.
#espionnage #surveillance #liberté #Europe #Royaume_Uni #chatcontrol
]]>Was Orwell secretly a reactionary snitch ?
▻https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/george-orwell-snitch-list-reactionary-grass-blacklist-communists-info
Pendant la guerre froide il était difficile d’être de gauche car tous tes alliés potentiels étaient compromis. Tous entretenaient forcément des relations avec « Moscou », « Pankow », « Pekin » ou la #USIA. George Orwell préférait les services de son pays natal. Le film « Animal Farm » d’après sa novelle était financé en bonne partie par des services étatsuniens qui considéraient son oeuvre comme une arme anticommuniste efficace. Là, 39 ans après 1984 la brutalité des pratiques de surveillance des pays capitalistes dépasse de loin celle de son imaginaire et le problème de la liste orwellienne nous rappelle le bon vieux temps quand il fallait un délateur pour se retrover sur une liste noire.
« Orwell was a snitch », il n’y a pas de doute. Apparamment dans sa vie quotidienne il il était aussi un peu réactionnaire comme la plupart des communistes, anarchistes et verts. C’est humain, n’est-ce pas ?
24.6.2018 by Adam Lusher - George Orwell, born 115 years ago on Monday, was the writer who challenged the iniquities of imperialism and capitalism, who took a bullet in the throat fighting fascism, and who taught a Western audience about the horrors of Stalinist communism.
That he died young, of tuberculosis at the age of 46, in 1950, served only to enhance his posthumous reputation. He became, in the words of one astute critic, “the James Dean of the Cold War, the John F Kennedy of English letters”.
Death may also have saved him from curdling into the kind of bitter, contrarian conservatism that seems to have been the fate awaiting many a one-time youthful socialist.
Instead, Orwell is often remembered as a man of “genius”, the “greatest political writer of the 20th century”.
The commonly accepted view of the man is encapsulated in the aims of the foundation bearing his name. Through the coveted Orwell Prize, the Orwell Foundation seeks “to celebrate honest writing and reporting, to uncover hidden lives, to confront uncomfortable truths, to promote Orwell’s values of integrity, decency and fidelity to truth”.
And yet there is one blemish – or complication – in the reputation of St George.
It lay hidden until 1996 when Foreign Office file FO 111/189 was made public under the 30-year rule.
The hitherto secret file revealed that in 1949 the great writer had, via his friend Celia Kirwan, given a semi-secret government propaganda unit called the Information Research Department (IRD) what became known as “Orwell’s List”.
Orwell effectively handed over to the British authorities the names of 38 public figures whom he thought should be treated with suspicion as secret communists or “fellow travellers” who sympathised with the aims of Stalin’s Russia.
When the existence of Orwell’s List was revealed in 1996, and when the Foreign Office finally divulged who was on it in 2003, the initial reactions seemed tinged with sadness and hedged about with qualifications.
But the internet was young then.
Now it has grown into a giant bristling with social media channels and anger; swift to judge, slow to reflect.
Orwell worked for the BBC during the Second World War despite once describing it as being ‘halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum’
And so George Orwell, a hero to so many, is now demonised online as a “fake socialist”, a “reactionary snitch”, a traitor, a McCarthyite “weasel”.
“Orwell’s List is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left,” declares one fairly widely circulated condemnation. “At the end of his life, he was an outright counter-revolutionary snitch, spying on leftists on behalf of the imperialist British government.”
“He was an anti-socialist,” asserts another indictment, “corresponding with British secret services and keeping a blacklist of writers.”
So widespread has the vilification become, that “Orwell as snitch” is sometimes played with – not entirely seriously – as an internet meme.
And yet, when you consult DJ Taylor, author of the acclaimed biography Orwell: The Life, you do not encounter boiling indignation.
“I can’t get very worked up about the list,” he says mildly. “I don’t see it particularly as a mistake.
“You just have to see it in the context of the time.”
And that context, reveals Taylor, was explained to him by the left wing former Labour leader Michael Foot.
Taylor recalls: “Foot told me that the great difficulty if you were a left wing Labour MP in the 1940s was working out exactly where your friends stood. You didn’t know whether some were listening to you and agreeing, and then going straight to the British Communist Party’s headquarters in King Street and telling them everything.”
“Another example of the kind of thing they were facing,” says Taylor, “was the man who worked in the Foreign Office in the room next to Orwell’s IRD friend Celia. His name was Guy Burgess.
“There were at least a dozen elected parliamentarians taking their orders from a foreign country,” adds Taylor. “What could be more traitorous than that?”
Years after Orwell listed him as giving the “strong impression of being some kind of Russian agent”, the Mitrokhin Archive of KGB documents revealed that journalist Peter Smollett had indeed been a Russian agent.
Laying aside the irony that Michael Foot was himself once falsely accused of being a KGB agent, it is, then, perhaps no coincidence that the IRD was in fact set up, not by a headbanging Tory, but by Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin.
“This was at a time when the Soviet Union was swallowing up what had previously been independent East European states,” says Taylor. “The IRD was producing reasoned expositions, pamphlet literature, telling people on the ground in Eastern Europe why they should resist this kind of stuff.
“But a lot of British people were still seduced by the idea of our ally ‘good old Uncle Joe Stalin’, when in fact the bloke was a mass murdering psychopath. And you were also dealing with some really hardline ideologues.
“So Orwell’s idea was, if you are going to get somebody to write these kinds of pamphlets, they have to be genuine democrats.
“He was a democratic socialist who wanted democratic socialists, not right wingers, to be writing this propaganda. But he wanted them to be people who had seen through the Soviet illusion, not covert stooges for Stalin’s Russia.”
And so Taylor’s anger – such as it is – is reserved, not for Orwell, but for those like the late Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, who greeted the revelation of the list with the “pathetic” remark: “Orwell was a Big Brother too”.
“This wasn’t Orwell denouncing anybody,” says Taylor. “He wasn’t writing public articles in the press saying ‘these people are evil’.
“This was him giving private advice to a friend [Celia Kirwan] who was working for the IRD and wanted to know whom to avoid when asking people to write for her department.”
It should perhaps be noted that Celia Kirwan was a bit more than just a friend. Three years earlier, Orwell had actually proposed marriage to her in the emotional turmoil that followed the death of his first wife Eileen.
Kirwan rebuffed his advances, but some have suggested that Orwell, aware of his failing health, might have been seeking the comfort of a beautiful woman when on 6 April 1949 he wrote offering to name those who “should not be trusted as propagandists”.
He certainly knew the list was not for Kirwan’s eyes only. As noted by Timothy Garton Ash, the historian who persuaded the Foreign Office to reveal the document in 2003, Orwell sent his list to Kirwan with a reference to “your friends” who would read it.
And as Garton Ash also noted, the IRD did not confine itself to relatively innocuous pamphleteering.
In the New York Review of Books article that formed the first detailed analysis of the list’s contents, Garton Ash wrote: “By the late 1950s, IRD had a reputation as ‘the dirty tricks department’ of the Foreign Office, indulging in character assassination, false telegrams, putting itching powder on lavatory seats and other such Cold War pranks”.
When he sent his list to Celia Kirwan in 1949, Orwell might not have known that this was the IRD’s direction of travel, but of all people, the author of 1984, who envisaged the Ministry of Truth, should surely have been aware of the possibility.
That said, as Garton Ash also wrote, not much seemed to have happened to the people on Orwell’s List (apart from missing out on the IRD pamphlet-writing gig). It seems their names weren’t even passed to MI5 or MI6.
In America, Hollywood actors blacklisted during the McCarthy era had their careers and lives ruined. In England, Michael Redgrave appeared on Orwell’s List in 1949 and starred in the film adaptation of Orwell’s novel 1984 seven years later.
Peter Smollett, named by Orwell as a likely Russian agent, got an OBE.
In other words, what happened to those on Orwell’s List seems to have borne no comparison to the fate of Big Brother’s fictional victims or the real millions who died in the purges and repression ordered by Stalin.
“The list invites us to reflect again on the asymmetry of our attitudes toward Nazism and communism,” wrote Garton Ash, whose own experiences of being spied on by the communist East German Stasi informed his book The File.
What if Orwell had given the government a list of closet Nazis, he wondered. “Would anyone be objecting?”
And in truth, there does seem a certain asymmetry in the online articles of denunciation.
Indeed it is hard not to sense the inspiration of Private Eye’s (fictional) veteran class warrior Dave Spart in some of the articles condemning Orwell as “a social democratic traitor collaborating with the capitalist state against revolutionaries trying to create socialism.”
“Sure, the USSR did a lot of objectionable things,” says one writer. “But … Western imperialist countries commit much more heinous crimes throughout the world every day.”
A stronger charge against Orwell might be that of antisemitism. The private notebooks that formed the basis of the list he sent to the IRD included labels like “Polish Jew”, “English Jew”, and “Jewess”.
But Orwell did also devote an entire 1945 essay to discussing how best to combat antisemitism, while having the honesty to admit – and regret – his own occasional lapses into jokes at the expense of Jews.
And at the moment, antisemitism might be a problematic charge for some left wingers to level.
Taylor, though, is convinced that some amongst “the newly emergent hard left” would secretly love to unleash something against Orwell.
And yes, by “newly emergent hard left”, he does mean some Corbynistas.
Younger party members, Taylor concedes, might not have the personal memories of the Cold War, still less an instinctive understanding of the context in which Orwell produced his list in 1949.
But, he adds: “I am a Labour Party member. I have been to hear Corbyn speak and noticed how an awful lot of the people there were aged left wingers for whom there had not really been a place in the Labour Party for the last 20 or 30 years.
“An awful lot of the hard left these days would pay lip service to Orwell as a beacon of sanity, while secretly having doubts.
“There are still a load of extreme lefties out there to whom Orwell is this snivelling little Trotskyite telling them things they don’t want to hear and pointing out things that shouldn’t be pointed out because they get in the way of the revolution.”
And to the ideological, Taylor would add the psychological: “Tall poppy syndrome – Orwell is this secular saint, so let’s have a go at him.”
This battle over Orwell’s reputation, of course, is more than just a matter of idle literary historical curiosity.
Its relevance to the political struggles of today is suggested by the remark of one of the more ferocious online critics.
“George Orwell,” he says, “was the first in a long line of Trots-turned-neocons”.
It is certainly true that far-right commentators have started trying to co-opt Orwell to their cause, even to the point of suggesting that the man who once chased a fascist across a battlefield with a fixed bayonet would deplore the Antifa movement.
This, says Taylor, is pretty much what Orwell feared.
“At the time he was giving Celia Kirwan his list, 1984 was about to be published. Orwell’s great fear was that right wingers would use it as a piece of anti-communist propaganda, and that’s what happened. Immediately after 1984 was published, it was used by the CIA as a propaganda tool.
“Orwell wrote a very interesting letter to people in the US saying: ‘Look, this is not so much anti-communist as anti-totalitarian.’
“He feared what right wingers would do with 1984, but thought it was the price you had to pay for exposing evils like totalitarianism.
“And a writer can’t be blamed for how their books are used by people who are determined to twist meaning for malignant ends.”
Orwell never wanted to be seen as a secular saint
Taylor, though, can’t help wondering whether Orwell would really have been that upset by the comments of “slightly disconnected people” on the far left of the internet.
Orwell himself, he points out, never sought secular saint status. Quite the reverse: “He was very wary of that kind of thing. In an essay on Gandhi he effectively says that when people start being referred to as saints there is something very odd about them and it usually ends in disaster.”
Instead Taylor has a sneaking suspicion that Orwell might have been rather amused by his online detractors.
“People undervalue Orwell’s wry sense of humour,” he says. “David Astor, who used to edit the Observer and employed him, told me about the time Orwell came to him saying, ‘You should hear the abuse I have been getting from some of the communist newspapers.’
“Orwell said: ‘They call me a fascist octopus. They call me a fascist hyena.
“Then he paused: ‘They’re very fond of animals’.”
la liste et une introduction
▻https://www.orwell.ru/a_life/list/english/e_list
▻https://libcom.org/article/orwells-list
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agency
]]>Black and Tans
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Tans
A propos de l’histoire des brutalités envers la population de la Palestine
The Black and Tans (Irish: Dúchrónaigh) were constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence. Recruitment began in Great Britain in January 1920 and about 10,000 men enlisted during the conflict. The vast majority were unemployed former British soldiers from Britain who had fought in the First World War.
...
(1922) Many Black and Tans were left unemployed after the RIC was disbanded and about 3,000 were in need of financial assistance after their employment in Ireland was terminated. About 250 Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, among over 1,300 former RIC personnel, joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Another 700 joined the Palestine Police Force which was led by former British Chief of Police in Ireland, Henry Hugh Tudor.
cf. Irish War of Independence
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence
Come Out Ye Black And Tans
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doegoa3spKo
Come Out Ye Black & Tans Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I was born on a Dublin street where the loyal drums did beat
And those loving English feet, they walked all over us
And every single night when me da’ would come home tight
He’d invite the neighbours out with this chorus
[Chorus]
Come out ye black and tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra
[Verse 2]
Come let us hear you tell
How you slandered great Parnell
When you thought him well and truly persecuted
Where are the sneers and jeers
That you loudly let us hear
When our leaders of sixteen were executed
[Chorus]
Come out ye black and tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra
[Verse 3]
Come tell us how you slew
Them old Arabs two by two
Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows
How bravely you faced one
With your sixteen pounder gun
And you frightened them damn natives to their marrow
[Chorus]
Come out ye black and tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra
[Verse 4]
Now the time is coming fast
And I think them days are here
When each English seánín, he’ll run before us
And if there’ll be a need
Then our kids will say “Godspeed”
With a verse or two of singing this fine chorus
[Chorus]
Come out ye black and tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra
#Royaume_Uni #Irlande #Palestine #guerre_de_libération #colonialisme #ompérialisme #musique #IRA
]]>Au service de notre grande famille impériale
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/Au-service-de-notre-grande-famille-imperiale.html
En 1947, la princesse Elizabeth a promis de servir « la grande famille impériale », en vue de refaire de la Grande-Bretagne une puissance mondiale. L’Empire britannique s’est effondré, mais ce langage a permis à la Reine d’aborder les préoccupations postcoloniales du XXIe siècle.
#International #études_postcoloniales #Empire_britannique #Royaume_Uni
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/pdf/20221213_elisabeth-fr.pdf
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/docx/20221213_elisabeth-fr-2.docx
La Lutte de classe n°228 (décembre 2022) est en ligne. Avec les textes du Congrès de LO (2022).
Ou comment comprendre, avec la boussole de l’analyse de classe, dans quel monde nous sommes & vers quoi le capitalisme pourrissant entraine l’humanité entière.
Au sommaire :
▻https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/le-52e-congres-de-lutte-ouvriere_450517.html
Le 52e congrès de Lutte Ouvrière
▻https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/le-capitalisme-en-crise-vers-le-chaos_450518.html
Le capitalisme en crise vers le chaos
►https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/crise-guerres-et-changements-des-rapports-de-force_450519.ht
Crise, guerres et changements des rapports de force
►https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/la-guerre-en-ukraine-une-etape-majeure-dans-lescalade-vers-l
La guerre en Ukraine, une étape majeure dans l’escalade vers la troisième guerre mondiale
▻https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/combativite-des-masses-et-direction-revolutionnaire_450521.h
Combativité des masses et direction révolutionnaire
►https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/situation-interieure_450522.html
Situation intérieure
▻https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/discussion-sur-les-textes-dorientation_450523.html
Discussion sur les textes d’orientation
►https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org//2022/12/10/interventions-des-groupes-invites_450524.html
Interventions des groupes invités
#guerre_en_Ukraine #Russie #Guerre_mondiale #impérialisme #capitalisme #crise_économique #Haïti #Guadeloupe #Martinique #Italie #Etats-Unis #Turquie #Royaume_Uni #Rassemblement_national #RN #parlementarisme #impérialisme_français #financiarisation, #parasitisme #régimes_autoritaires #NUPES #classe_ouvrière #marxisme #Lutte_Ouvrière (#LO) #congrès
]]>GB : une campagne de #propagande attisait la haine d’Israël pour avoir l’air authentique - The Times of Israël
▻https://fr.timesofisrael.com/gb-une-campagne-de-propagande-attisait-la-haine-disrael-pour-avoir
… l’IRD a tenté de semer la division entre Moscou et ses alliés arabes au Moyen-Orient en créant de toute pièce des publications prétendument musulmanes accusant la Russie soviétique de la défaite.
« Pourquoi la nation arabe est-elle en ce moment affligée par tant de chagrin et de désastre ? Pour quelle raison les valeureux soldats ont-ils été vaincus dans le djihad par les méchants sionistes païens ?… La réponse est [facile] à trouver… nous partons rapidement du bon chemin, nous suivons la voie choisie pour nous par les communistes-athées pour qui la religion est une forme de maladie sociale », peut-on lire dans un communiqué publié par l’IRD et signé d’une organisation islamiste radicale fictive appelée la Ligue des croyants.
]]>Sur les traces de Lapsus$, un groupe de pirates informatiques entre extorsion de fonds et vantardise
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2022/03/25/sur-les-traces-de-lapsus-un-groupe-de-pirates-informatiques-entre-extorsion-
Sept adolescents ont été arrêtés, jeudi 24 mars, au Royaume-Uni, dans le cadre de l’enquête sur Lapsus$, un groupe de pirates informatiques qui a revendiqué ces dernières semaines plusieurs attaques très médiatisées contre des entreprises célèbres, comme Microsoft, Nvidia ou Samsung. Ces interpellations tombent alors que l’étau se resserrait autour d’un jeune britannique, mineur, soupçonné d’être un membre important de ce groupe.
#jeu_vidéo #jeux_vidéo #piratage #sécurité_informatique #royaume_uni #lapsus #microsoft #nvidia #samsung #ubisoft #police #justice #telegram #genesis #fuite_de_données #narimane_lavay #sekoia #sim_swap #sim_swapping #livia_tibirna #dev-0537 #4c3 #ea #electronic_arts #doxbin #white #doxbinwh1te #brian_krebs #cybersécurité #cybercriminalité
]]>HKFP Lens: Artist displays ’overlapping memories’ of Hong Kong and UK on film - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
▻https://hongkongfp.com/2021/11/28/hkfp-lens-artist-displays-overlapping-memories-of-hong-kong-and-uk-on-fi
Hong Kong artist Eva Leung, who relocated to the UK in September last year, has produced a series of double-exposed analogue photographs that combine scenes from her home city and her new home to depict the complex identity of Hongkongers living abroad.
]]>5 September 2007 PAUL HARRIS - Their names could hardly sound more British - Harry, Geoffrey and Sid; Ernest, Willy and Eric.
▻https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479882/Reunited-The-German-refugees-fled-Nazis-fight-Britain.html
In their uniforms they looked just like any of their chums, united in wartime against the common enemy of Hitler’s Germany.
But they shared a fascinating secret. For this was an unsung army of refugees who fled the Nazis to fight for Britain during the Second World War.
And only their real names - among them Horst, Helmut, and Ernst - betrayed the story of their German links.
Yesterday - most of them still proudly bearing the home-grown names they acquired to blend in all those years ago - they came together for the first time in a unique tribute to the part they played in Britain’s victory over Germany.
Their service was recognised by the Imperial War Museum in a ceremony to mark the courage of more than 100 surviving men and women who joined British forces in the liberation of Europe.
The event coincides with the publication of a book, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens, that tells their stories for the first time.
These were not merely evacuees seeking safe haven in England, but a generation of Germans and Austrians determined to do their bit for the war.
Some saw frontline service as commandos, marines or tank crew.
Others fought in the D-Day landings, or played vital roles in communications and code-breaking, using their native German in aid of the Allied cause.
Scroll down for more...
Ernest Goodman
One of them even has the distinction of being the man who shot and arrested “Lord Haw Haw”, the traitorous propagandist William Joyce.
But being an “alien” in Britain during wartime - not to mention having a German accent - meant that this particular band of brothers sometimes faced danger from both sides.
Harry Rossney was among them. He was born Helmut Rosettenstein in the Baltic port of Koenigsberg, and partly raised in a Berlin orphanage.
Even now, nearly 88 years later, he still speaks with a heavy German accent.
Six decades ago on a moonless Devon beach, it nearly cost him his life.
Mr Rossney joined the Pioneer Corps after coming to England in 1939. He was dispatched to the North Devon coast one evening, armed only with a pick-axe handle, and ordered to keep watch for an enemy invasion.
Unfortunately, a squad of soldiers was also patrolling the beach. “Halt! Who goes there?” was the cry that rang out in the dark.
Harry identified himself - and immediately heard a rifle being cocked in front of him.
“He heard my accent and thought he’d found the enemy,” Mr Rossney said. "I thought that was it - this was how my war was going to end. But a sergeant’s voice shouted ’Hold your fire!’, which allowed me to explain who I was.
“I don’t think they understood, but that split second saved my life.”
Mr Rossney, a craftsman and signwriter, was drafted to Normandy after D-Day, where his skills were employed to hand-write the names of fallen Allied soldiers on the temporary crosses that eventually became Commonwealth War Graves.
There were so many, he said, he could barely keep up.
“I loved my country but it rejected me,” said Mr Rossney, who married 53 years ago and still lives in North-West London.
"Now, I’m as English as I can possibly be. But it was different back then. My christian name couldn’t really be more German, and everyone at that time was suspicious.
"I suppose it was pointless to have an English name with an accent like mine, but that’s the name I took. I just looked through the telephone book and picked one out.
"I’m proud of what I did, although there were so many others like me who did so much more, and exposed themselves to great danger.
“But I’m very grateful someone has acknowledged that we existed.”
Some 75,000 German and Austrian refugees arrived in Britain during the 1930s, many of them Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.
Most were interned when war broke out - the Government failed to distinguish between those who had fled and those who might pose a threat.
But many were determined to fight for Britain.
So in 1940, more than 4,000 were allowed to enlist in the non-combatant Pioneer Corps, with many later drafted into fighting units in the Army, Royal Navy and RAF.
All signed a loyal oath to the King, and mischievously nicknamed themselves The King’s Own Enemy Aliens.
Geoffrey Perry, now 85, was born Horst Pinschewer and grew up in Berlin, before coming to Britain as a Jewish schoolboy evacuee.
He was educated at Buxton College in Derbyshire, where, he said, “the headmaster made it his duty to turn us into little Brits”.
It was Mr Perry - who became a Press photographer and broadcaster - who captured William Joyce.
In May 1945, he and a British officer with the unlikely name of Bertie Lickorish encountered an odd-looking figure in a forest near the German border with Denmark.
Mr Perry had been drafted in to broadcast from Radio Hamburg when the Allies liberated Germany, and did so from the same microphone that Joyce used to transmit his sneering, English-accented propaganda to Britain.
“I shot him in the bum,” Mr Perry recalled gleefully. "It was one shot but four holes - in one cheek and out the other side; then through the other cheek and out again.
“I’d asked him if he was by any chance Lord Haw Haw. His hand went to his pocket as if to pull out a gun - so I fired.”
Mr Perry, who is widowed with two sons and four grandchildren, and also lives in North-West London, is modest about his role in the war, even though he fought in the wake of the D-Day landings and was among those who witnessed the horrors of Belsen concentration camp after it was liberated.
“I had a personal and national motivation for joining the Army, and I’m proud that I did, but I don’t regard it as a big deal,” he said. “I’m sure that the next generation would do precisely the same thing if the need arose.”
• The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens: Germans Who Fought For Britain in the Second World War, by Helen Fry (Sutton Publishing)
THE KING’S OWN ENEMY ALIENS
Ernest Goodman
• Ernest Goodman, now 82, was born Ernst Guttmann in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) and evacuated to England in 1939. He served with the Coldstream Guards, and was on the front line through France, Belgium and Holland. He was wounded during the assault on the Rhine.Eric Sanders
• Eric Sanders, now 88, was born Ignaz Schwarz in Vienna and arrived in England in 1938. Joined Pioneer Corps and later volunteered for “hazardous duty”. Trained for the Special Operations Executive to be dropped behind enemy lines, he was one of 30 “refugee” SOE men. At end of the war, returned to Vienna in British uniform as a translator with a unit reconstructing Austria.Geoffrey Perry
• Geoffrey Perry, now 85, was born Horst Pinschewer and grew up in Berlin before being evacuated to England. Took part in D-Day landings and carried out prisoner of war interrogations. On May 28, 1945, he arrested Lord Haw-Haw. “Historically, I think I’m more excited by the fact that I broadcast from his actual microphone when we took over Radio Hamburg.”Harry Rossney
• Harry Rossney, now 87, was born Helmut Rosettenstein in Koenigsberg. Partly brought up in Berlin before coming to England in March 1939. Joined Pioneer Corps before serving with the Graves Restoration Unit in post D-Day Normandy. “I was not a hero,” he said. “I would rather see this in the wider context as a history lesson for the younger generation.”Sidney Graham
• Sidney Graham, now 83, was born Szaja Gumpricht in Danzig, West Prussia, (now Gdansk in Poland). Evacuated to England in February 1939 and was one of only two known “aliens” to serve in the Royal Navy, decoding enemy transmissions. All his family, except for his sister, were murdered in the Holocaust. He said: “My life belongs to England - they saved me from certain death.”Willy Field
• Willy Field, now 87 and a keen Arsenal fan, was born William Hirschfeld in Bonn. Sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938, allowed to emigrate to England in 1939 - but arrested as an enemy alien and sent to Australia. Volunteered to fight for Britain, and trained as a tank driver with the Royal Armoured Corps 8th Hussars. Fought in Normandy. He said: “I’m very British.”
#guerre #histoire #espionnage #pinschewer #shoa #résistance #Royaume_Uni #Allemagne
]]>Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror : Internet Archive
▻https://archive.org/details/sherlock-holmes-and-the-voice-of-terror
by Universal Studios
Publication date1942-09-18
Topics Sherlock Holmes, Dr John Watson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Universal Studios
Language English
Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson engage with the “Intelligence Inner Council”.
Based on the 1917 story His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Sherlock Holmes - Basil Rathbone
Dr John H. Watson - Nigel Bruce
Kitty - Evelyn Ankers
Sir Evan Barham/Heinrich von Bock/Voice of Terror - Reginald Denny
R. F. Meade - Thomas Gómez
Sir Anthony Lloyd - Henry Daniell
General Jerome Lawford - Montagu Love
Admiral Sir John Fabian Prentiss - Olaf Hytten
Captain Roland Shore - Leyland Hodgson
Director - John Rawlins
Producer - Howard Benedict
Screenplay - Robert Hardy Andrews, Lynn Riggs
Music - Frank Skinner
Cinematography - Elwood Bredell
Editor - Russell F. Schoengarth
Production and distribution - Universal Studios
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_and_the_Voice_of_Terror
Plot
The film begins with a title card describing Holmes and Watson as “ageless”, as an explanation as to why the film is set in the 1940s rather than Holmes’ era of 1881–1914, as the preceding 20th Century Fox films were. There is a nod to the classic Holmes, in a scene where Holmes and Watson are leaving 221b Baker Street, and Holmes picks up his deerstalker. Watson protests, and Holmes reluctantly puts on a fedora instead.
Holmes is called into the “Inner Council” of British Intelligence by Sir Evan Barham (Reginald Denny), to assist in stopping Nazi saboteurs operating in Britain, whose activities are announced in advance in radio broadcasts by “The Voice of Terror”.
Gavin (Robert Barron), one of Holmes’s operatives, is killed with a German dagger in his back. Before he dies, Gavin utters the word “Christopher.” Later, Holmes and Watson go to the Limehouse district of London, where they meet with Gavin’s wife Kitty (Evelyn Ankers).
Holmes tells the council that, through the use of an oscilloscope to carefully analyze and compare sound wave patterns from radio broadcasts of live vs. pre-recorded voices, he has determined that “The Voice of Terror” is actually recorded on phonograph records in the United Kingdom, but broadcast from Germany. Using a tip from Kitty, Holmes and Watson go to the old Christopher Docks, where they are followed by Sir Anthony Lloyd (Henry Daniell) of the council. The three men are captured by a group of Nazi spies led by Meade (Thomas Gómez) however Sherlock, Watson & Lloyd are freed by some of the East End men as they attack the Nazis, although Meade manages to escape through a trap door to a waiting speedboat.
Kitty pretends to be a thief on the run and joins Meade. She finds out that Meade plans to go to Sir Evan’s country estate that night. There Holmes and Sir Evan watch a German plane attempt to land, but gunshots fired by Sir Evan disrupt the Nazi rendezvous; all the while Meade hides in the dark.
After one of Holmes informants traces Meade and Kitty to the south coast of England, Holmes forces the council to go there with him. With the support of British troopers, Holmes captures Meade and a group of German soldiers stationed in an abandoned church.
There he reveals the true identity of “The Voice of Terror” as Sir Evan Barham, who happens to be an impostor. Holmes then reveals that in World War I, the real Barham was a prisoner in a German war camp and had an uncanny resemblance to a Heinrich Von Bock, a member of the German Secret Service; one day the real Barham was taken out and executed; the gentleman who called Holmes into the case was Von Bock himself who had been posing as Barham for 24 years; Holmes then adds that Barham had no immediate family, so his private life was well studied by Von Bock, who also studied at Oxford and had knowledge of English language and manners. So, with a little help of plastic surgery, not to mention the resemblance to Barham in the first place, the deception was carried out thoroughly. Holmes also concludes that the real Sir Evan Barham carried a scar from childhood, the one Von Bock carried from plastic surgery was approximately 20 years old – the clue that gave away the fact that he was an impostor.
Holmes then informs the spies that the German invasion force has been destroyed. The angry Meade shoots and fatally wounds Kitty, but is killed himself as he attempts to escape. The Council stand around the murdered Kitty and swear that her heroic death will not be in vain.
The film ends with a direct quote from “His Last Bow”:
Watson : It’s a lovely morning, Holmes.
Holmes : There’s an east wind coming, Watson.
Watson : I don’t think so. Looks like another warm day.
Holmes : Good old Watson. The one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same. Such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less. And a greener, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm is cleared.
]]>White english woman ...
[l] (▻https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9ed7222c) Die neue Filmreihe von Adam...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/12460284
[l] Die neue Filmreihe von Adam Curtis ist draußen. Und es ist mal wieder ein krasser Trip. Diesmal besonders interessant für Deutsche, weil auch die RAF und Horst Herold.
Wie üblich bei Adam Curtis ist es mal wieder eine Collage aus Erzählsträngen, die einen geradezu betäubt zurücklässt.
]]>Grande-Bretagne : Boris Johnson admet un meurtre de masse alors que le bilan officiel du COVID-19 dépasse les 100.000 morts - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2021/01/28/brit-j28.html
▻https://www.wsws.org/asset/a4e69278-c98d-4f59-a59e-2a928ddf7851?rendition=image1280
Plus de gens sont morts au Royaume-Uni des suites du COVID-19 que de civils durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
]]>Zum Tod von George Blake: Er bereute nichts
▻https://taz.de/Zum-Tod-von-George-Blake/!5740515
Über den englischen Tee, den ich ihm nach Moskau mitgebracht hatte, freute er sich am meisten. Das war 1991. Der KGB-Doppelagent George Blake war – seit seinem Ausbruch aus dem Londoner Gefängnis Wormwood Scrubs Mitte der Sechziger Jahre – damals der meistgesuchte Mann in Großbritannien.
Blake spionierte erst für das Vereinigte Königreich, dann für die Sowjetunion. Nun ist er laut russischem Auslandsgeheimdienst SWR im Alter von 98 Jahren gestorben.
Der irische Kleinkriminelle Seán Bourke und die beiden Friedensaktivisten Michael Randle und Pat Pottle hatten ihm geholfen, aus der Haft zu entkommen. 25 Jahre später standen Randle und Pottle dafür vor Gericht. Obwohl sie die Tat zugaben, sprachen die Geschworenen sie im selben Saal des Londoner Old Bailey frei, in dem Blake verurteilt worden war.
Als Freund der beiden war ich bei der anschließenden Feier in Pottles Londoner Haus zugegen. George Blake rief an und weil ich ohnehin einen Flug nach Moskau gebucht hatte, organisierte Pottle für mich ein Treffen mit dem Spion. Blake empfing mich in seiner Wohnung, in der sich eine umfangreichen Bibliothek mit Büchern in sieben Sprachen befand. Wir redeten fünf Stunden lang, bevor er mir „sein Moskau“ zeigte.
Mit der Strickleiter über die Gefängnismauer
George Blake wurde 1922 in Rotterdam geboren, seine Mutter war Niederländerin, sein Vater ein ägyptischer Jude mit britischem Pass. Blake arbeitete im Zweiten Weltkrieg im Widerstand gegen die Nazis und floh 1943 nach Großbritannien. Er trat der britischen Marine bei und wurde 1944 wegen seiner Sprachkenntnisse vom Geheimdienst MI6 angeworben.
Der schickte ihn 1948 nach Seoul, um Informationen über Nordkorea, China und die Sowjetunion zu sammeln. 1950 wurde er im Korea-Krieg von nordkoreanischen Truppen bei der Einnahme von Seoul gefangengenommen. Danach spionierte er für die Sowjetunion.
Blake leitete unter anderem ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt des MI6 mit der CIA: den Bau eines Tunnels von West-Berlin bis unter die sowjetische Telefonzentrale in der DDR. Das KGB war von Anfang an eingeweiht.
Als aufflog, dass Blake die Seiten gewechselt hatte, verurteilte ihn ein britisches Gericht 1961 zu 42 Jahren Haft. Im Gefängnis lernte er Randle und Pottle kennen, die dort eine 18-monatige Haftstrafe für die Besetzung des US-Luftwaffenstützpunkts Wethersfield absaßen. Nach ihrer Freilassung fassten sie den simplen Plan, Blake mit einer Strickleiter über die Gefängnismauer zu verhelfen.
Nach einer Odyssee durch verschiedene Verstecke in London schmuggelten Randle, seine Frau Anne und ihre beiden Kinder den Doppelagenten in einem umgebauten Wohnmobil nach Ost-Berlin. Von dort reiste Blake weiter nach Moskau. Er bereue nichts, sagte er mir 1991. „Mein Leben ist wunderbar.“
#Royaume_Uni #URSS #espionnage #histoire #
]]>#Covid-19 : le choix des maux
▻https://joellepalmieri.org/2020/10/20/covid-19-le-choix-des-maux
La chose est maintenant claire. En utilisant le terme « couvre-feu » pour qualifier le 14 octobre 2020 l’ensemble des mesures gouvernementales liées à l’aggravation de la crise sanitaire en #France, le Président de la République continue de banaliser ses choix militaristes. Ce parti pris a été relevé : Macron utilise une locution qui a marqué l’Histoire du … Lire la suite →
#Humeurs #Afrique #Allemagne #Andrée_Michel #Belgique #Domination #Espagne #Europe #Italie #Luttes #Média #Militarisation #Résistance #Royaume_uni #Violences
Cast away : the UK’s rushed charter flights to deport Channel crossers
Warning: this document contains accounts of violence, attempted suicides and self harm.
The British government has vowed to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, responding as ever to a tabloid media panic. One part of its strategy is a new wave of mass deportations: charter flights, specifically targeting channel-crossers, to France, Germany and Spain.
There have been two flights so far, on the 12 and 26 August. The next one is planned for 3 September. The two recent flights stopped in both Germany (Duesseldorf) and France (Toulouse on the 12, Clermont-Ferrand on the 26). Another flight was planned to Spain on 27 August – but this was cancelled after lawyers managed to get everyone off the flight.
Carried out in a rush by a panicked Home Office, these mass deportations have been particularly brutal, and may have involved serious legal irregularities. This report summarises what we know so far after talking to a number of the people deported and from other sources. It covers:
The context: Calais boat crossings and the UK-France deal to stop them.
In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed as Channel-crosser processing centre; Britannia Hotels; Brook House detention centre as brutal as ever.
The flights: detailed timeline of the 26 August charter to Dusseldorf and Clermont-Ferrand.
Who’s on the flight: refugees including underage minors and torture survivors.
Dumped on arrival: people arriving in Germany and France given no opportunity to claim asylum, served with immediate expulsion papers.
The legalities: use of the Dublin III regulation to evade responsibility for refugees.
Is it illegal?: rushed process leads to numerous irregularities.
“that night, eight people cut themselves”
“That night before the flight (25 August), when we were locked in our rooms and I heard that I had lost my appeal, I was desperate. I started to cut myself. I wasn’t the only one. Eight people self-harmed or tried to kill themselves rather than be taken on that plane. One guy threw a kettle of boiling water on himself. One man tried to hang himself with the cable of the TV in his room. Three of us were taken to hospital, but sent back to the detention centre after a few hours. The other five they just took to healthcare [the clinic in Brook House] and bandaged up. About 5 in the morning they came to my room, guards with riot shields. On the way to the van, they led me through a kind of corridor which was full of people – guards, managers, officials from the Home Office. They all watched while a doctor examined me, then the doctor said – ‘yes, he’s fit to fly’. On the plane later I saw one guy hurt really badly, fresh blood on his head and on his clothes. He hadn’t just tried to stop the ticket, he really wanted to kill himself. He was taken to Germany.”
Testimony of a deported person.
The context: boats and deals
Since the 1990s, tens of thousands of people fleeing war, repression and poverty have crossed the “short straits” between Calais and Dover. Until 2018, people without papers attempting to cross the Channel did so mainly by getting into lorries or on trains through the Channel Tunnel. Security systems around the lorry parks, tunnel and highway were escalated massively following the eviction of the big Jungle in 2016. This forced people into seeking other, ever more dangerous, routes – including crossing one of the world’s busiest waterways in small boats. Around 300 people took this route in 2018, a further 2000 in 2019 – and reportedly more than 5,000 people already by August 2020.
These crossings have been seized on by the UK media in their latest fit of xenophobic scaremongering. The pattern is all too familiar since the Sangatte camp of 1999: right-wing media outlets (most infamously the Daily Mail, but also others) push-out stories about dangerous “illegals” swarming across the Channel; the British government responds with clampdown promises.
Further stoked by Brexit, recent measures have included:
Home Secretary Priti Patel announcing a new “Fairer Borders” asylum and immigration law that she promises will “send the left into meltdown”.
A formal request from the Home Office to the Royal Navy to assist in turning back migrants crossing by boat (although this would be illegal).
Negotiations with the French government, leading to the announcement on 13 August of a “joint operational plan” aimed at “completely cutting this route.”
The appointment of a “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander” to oversee operations on both sides of the Channel.
The concrete measures are still emerging, but notable developments so far include:
Further UK payments to France to increase security – reportedly France demanded £30 million.
French warships from the Naval base at Cherbourg patrolling off the coast of Calais and Dunkirk.
UK Border Force Cutters and Coastal Patrol Vessels patrolling the British side, supported by flights from Royal Air Force surveillance planes.
The new charter flight deportation programme — reportedly named “Operation Sillath” by the Home Office.
For the moment, at least, the governments are respecting their minimal legal obligations to protect life at sea. And there has not been evidence of illegal “push backs” or “pull backs”: where the British “push” or the French “pull” boats back across the border line by force. When these boats are intercepted in French waters the travellers are taken back to France. If they make it into UK waters, Border Force pick them up and disembark them at Dover. They are then able to claim asylum in the UK.
There is no legal difference in claiming asylum after arriving by boat, on a plane, or any other way. However, these small boat crossers have been singled out by the government to be processed in a special way seemingly designed to deny them the right to asylum in the UK.
Once people are safely on shore the second part of Priti Patel’s strategy to make this route unviable kicks in: systematically obstruct their asylum claims and, where possible, deport them to France or other European countries. In practice, there is no way the Home Office can deport everyone who makes it across. Rather, as with the vast majority of immigration policy, the aim is to display toughness with a spectacle of enforcement – not only in an attempt to deter other arrivals, but perhaps, above all else, to play to key media audiences.
This is where the new wave of charter flights come in. Deportations require cooperation from the destination country, and the first flight took place on 12 August in the midst of the Franco-British negotiations. Most recently, the flights have fed a new media spectacle in the UK: the Home Office attacking “activist lawyers” for doing their job and challenging major legal flaws in these rushed removals.
The Home Office has tried to present these deportation flights as a strong immediate response to the Channel crossings. The message is: if you make it across, you’ll be back again within days. Again, this is more spectacle than reality. All the people we know of on the flights were in the UK for several months before being deported.
In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed
Once on shore people are taken to one of two places: either the Kent Intake Unit, which is a Home Office holding facility (i.e., a small prefab cell complex) in the Eastern Docks of Dover Port; or the Dover police station. This police stations seems increasingly to be the main location, as the small “intake unit” is often at capacity. There used to be a detention centre in Dover where new arrivals were held, notorious for its run-down state, but this was closed in October 2015.
People are typically held in the police station for no more than a day. The next destination is usually Yarl’s Wood, the Bedfordshire detention centre run by Serco. This was, until recently, a longer term detention centre holding mainly women. However, on 18 August the Home Office announced Yarl’s Wood been repurposed as a “Short Term Holding Facility” (SHTF) specifically to process people who have crossed the Channel. People stay usually just a few days – the legal maximum stay for a “short term” facility is seven days.
Yarl’s Wood has a normal capacity of 410 prisoners. According to sources at Yarl’s Wood:
“last week it was almost full with over 350 people detained. A few days later this number
had fallen to 150, showing how quickly people are moving through the centre. As of Tuesday 25th of August there was no one in the centre at all! It seems likely that numbers will fluctuate in line with Channel crossings.”
The same source adds:
“There is a concern about access to legal aid in Yarl’s Wood. Short Term Holding Facility regulations do not require legal advice to be available on site (in Manchester, for example, there are no duty lawyers). Apparently the rota for duty lawyers is continuing at Yarl’s Wood for the time being. But the speed with which people are being processed now means that it is practically impossible to sign up and get a meeting with the duty solicitor before being moved out.”
The Home Office conducts people’s initial asylum screening interviews whilst they are at Yarl’s Wood. Sometimes these are done in person, or sometimes by phone.
This is a crucial point, as this first interview decides many people’s chance of claiming asylum in the UK. The Home Office uses information from this interview to deport the Channel crossers to France and Germany under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU legislation which allows governments to pass on responsibility for assessing someone’s asylum claim to another state. That is: the UK doesn’t even begin to look at people’s asylum cases.
From what we have seen, many of these Dublin III assessments were made in a rushed and irregular way. They often used only weak circumstantial evidence. Few people had any chance to access legal advice, or even interpreters to explain the process.
We discuss Dublin III and these issues below in the Legal Framework section.
In the UK: Britain’s worst hotels
From Yarl’s Wood, people we spoke to were given immigration bail and sent to asylum accommodation. In the first instance this currently means a cheap hotel. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Home Office ordered its asylum contractors (Mears, Serco) to shut their usual initial asylum accommodation and move people into hotels. It is not clear why this decision was made, as numerous accounts suggest the hotels are much worse as possible COVID incubators. The results of this policy have already proved fatal – we refer to the death of Adnan Olbeh in a Glasgow hotel in April.
Perhaps the government is trying to prop up chains such as Britannia Hotels, judged for seven years running “Britain’s worst hotel chain” by consumer magazine Which?. Several people on the flights were kept in Britannia hotels. The company’s main owner, multi-millionaire Alex Langsam, was dubbed the “asylum king” by British media after winning previous asylum contracts with his slum housing sideline.
Some of the deportees we spoke to stayed in hotel accommodation for several weeks before being moved into normal “asylum dispersal” accommodation – shared houses in the cheapest parts of cities far from London. Others were picked up for deportation directly from the hotels.
In both cases, the usual procedure is a morning raid: Immigration Enforcement squads grab people from their beds around dawn. As people are in collaborating hotels or assigned houses, they are easy to find and arrest when next on the list for deportation.
After arrest, people were taken to the main detention centres near Heathrow (Colnbrook and Harmondsworth) or Gatwick (particularly Brook House). Some stopped first at a police station or Short Term Holding Facility for some hours or days.
All the people we spoke to eventually ended up in Brook House, one of the two Gatwick centres.
“they came with the shields”
“One night in Brook House, after someone cut himself, they locked everyone in. One man panicked and started shouting asking the guards please open the door. But he didn’t speak much English, he was shouting in Arabic. He said – ‘if you don’t open the door I will boil water in my kettle and throw it on my face.’ But they didn’t understand him, they thought he was threatening them, saying he would throw it at them. So they came with the shields, took him out of his room and put him into a solitary cell. When they put him in there they kicked him and beat him, they said ‘don’t threaten us again’.” Testimony of a deported person.
Brook House
Brook House remains notorious, after exposure by a whistleblower of routine brutality and humiliation by guards then working for G4S. The contract has since been taken over by Mitie’s prison division – branded as “Care and Custody, a Mitie company”. Presumably, many of the same guards simply transferred over.
In any case, according to what we heard from the deported people, nothing much has changed in Brook House – viciousness and violence from guards remains the norm. The stories included here give just a few examples. See recent detainee testimonies on the Detained Voices blog for much more.
“they only care that you don’t die in front of them”
“I was in my room in Brook House on my own for 12 days, I couldn’t eat or drink, just kept thinking, thinking about my situation. I called for the doctors maybe ten times. They did come a couple of times, they took my blood, but they didn’t do anything else. They don’t care about your health or your mental health. They are just scared you will die there. They don’t care what happens to you just so long as you don’t die in front of their eyes. It doesn’t matter if you die somewhere else.” Testimony of a deported person.
Preparing the flights
The Home Office issues papers called “Removal Directions” (RDs) to those they intend to deport. These specify the destination and day of the flight. People already in detention should be given at least 72 hours notice, including two working days, which allows them to make final appeals.
See the Right to Remain toolkit for detailed information on notice periods and appeal procedures.
All UK deportation flights, both tickets on normal scheduled flights and chartered planes, are booked by a private contractor called Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT). The main airline used by the Home Office for charter flights is a charter company called Titan Airways.
See this 2018 Corporate Watch report for detailed information on charter flight procedures and the companies involved. And this 2020 update on deportations overall.
On the 12 August flight, legal challenges managed to get 19 people with Removal Directions off the plane. However, the Home Office then substituted 14 different people who were on a “reserve list”. Lawyers suspect that these 14 people did not have sufficient access to legal representation before their flight which is why they were able to be removed.
Of the 19 people whose lawyers successfully challenged their attempted deportation, 12 would be deported on the next charter flight on 26 August. 6 were flown to Dusseldorf in Germany, and 6 to Clermont-Ferrand in France.
Another flight was scheduled for the 27 August to Spain. However, lawyers managed to get everyone taken off, and the Home Office cancelled the flight. A Whitehall source was quoted as saying “there was 100% legal attrition rate on the flight due to unprecedented and organised casework barriers sprung on the government by three law firms.” It is suspected that the Home Office will continue their efforts to deport these people on future charter flights.
https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/0437c0d1-1844-4fd9-a8df-5da6d3a0d65b.jpg https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/61730d2e-1552-40f2-b675-b366eb6ce855-768x569.jpg Who was deported?
All the people on the flights were refugees who had claimed asylum in the UK immediately on arrival at Dover. While the tabloids paint deportation flights as carrying “dangerous criminals”, none of these people had any criminal charges.
They come from countries including Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait. (Ten further Yemenis were due to be on the failed flight to Spain. In June, the UK government said it will resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia to use in the bombardment of the country that has cost tens of thousands of lives).
All have well-founded fears of persecution in their countries of origin, where there have been extensive and well-documented human rights abuses. At least some of the deportees are survivors of torture – and have been documented as such in the Home Office’s own assessments.
One was a minor under 18 who was age assessed by the Home Office as 25 – despite them being in possession of his passport proving his real age. Unaccompanied minors should not legally be processed under the Dublin III regulation, let alone held in detention and deported.
Many, if not all, have friends and families in the UK.
No one had their asylum case assessed – all were removed under the Dublin III procedure (see Legal Framework section below).
Timeline of the flight on 26 August
https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/flights-600x315.png https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/flights-600x315.png Night of 25 August: Eight people due to be on the flight self-harm or attempt suicide. Others have been on hunger strike for more than a week already. Three are taken to hospital where they are hastily treated before being discharged so they can still be placed on the flight. Another five are simply bandaged up in Brook House’s healthcare facility. (See testimony above.)
26 August, 4am onwards: Guards come to take deportees from their rooms in Brook House. There are numerous testimonies of violence: three or four guards enter rooms with shields, helmets, and riot gear and beat up prisoners if they show any resistance.
4am onwards: The injured prisoners are taken by guards to be inspected by a doctor, in a corridor in front of officials, and are certified as “fit to fly”.
5am onwards: Prisoners are taken one by one to waiting vans. Each is placed in a separate van with four guards. Vans are labelled with the Mitie “Care and Custody” logo. Prisoners are then kept sitting in the vans until everyone is loaded, which takes one to two hours.
6am onwards: Vans drive from Brook House (near Gatwick Airport) to Stansted Airport. They enter straight into the airport charter flight area. Deportees are taken one by one from the vans and onto Titan’s waiting plane. It is an anonymous looking white Airbus A321-211 without the company’s livery, with the registration G-POWU. They are escorted up the steps with a guard on each side.
On the plane there are four guards to each person: one seated on each side, one in the seat in front and one behind. Deportees are secured with restraint belts around their waists, so that their arms are handcuffed to the belts on each side. Besides the 12 deportees and 48 guards there are Home Office officials, Mitie managers, and two paramedics on the plane.
7.48AM (BST): The Titan Airways plane (using flight number ZT311) departs Stansted airport.
9.44AM (CEST): The flight lands in Dusseldorf. Six people are taken off the plane and are handed over to the German authorities.
10.46AM (CEST): Titan’s Airbus takes off from Dusseldorf bound for Clermont-Ferrand, France with the remaining deportees.
11.59AM (CEST): The Titan Airways plane (now with flight number ZT312) touches down at Clermont-Ferrand Auvergne airport and the remaining six deportees are disembarked from the plane and taken into the custody of the Police Aux Frontières (PAF, French border police).
12:46PM (CEST): The plane leaves Clermont-Ferrand to return to the UK. It first lands in Gatwick, probably so the escorts and other officials get off, before continuing on to Stansted where the pilots finish their day.
Dumped on arrival: Germany
What happened to most of the deportees in Germany is not known, although it appears there was no comprehensive intake procedure by the German police. One deportee told us German police on arrival in Dusseldorf gave him a train ticket and told him to go to the asylum office in Berlin. When he arrived there, he was told to go back to his country. He told them he could not and that he had no money to stay in Berlin or travel to another country. The asylum office told him he could sleep on the streets of Berlin.
Only one man appears to have been arrested on arrival. This was the person who had attempted suicide the night before, cutting his head and neck with razors, and had been bleeding throughout the flight.
Dumped on arrival: France
The deportees were taken to Clermont-Ferrand, a city in the middle of France, hundreds of kilometres away from metropolitan centres. Upon arrival they were subjected to a COVID nose swab test and then held by the PAF while French authorities decided their fate.
Two were released around an hour and a half later with appointments to claim asylum in around one week’s time – in regional Prefectures far from Clermont-Ferrand. They were not offered any accommodation, further legal information, or means to travel to their appointments.
The next person was released about another hour and a half after them. He was not given an appointment to claim asylum, but just provided with a hotel room for four nights.
Throughout the rest of the day the three other detainees were taken from the airport to the police station to be fingerprinted. Beginning at 6PM these three began to be freed. The last one was released seven hours after the deportation flight landed. The police had been waiting for the Prefecture to decide whether or not to transfer them to the detention centre (Centre de Rétention Administrative – CRA). We don’t know if a factor in this was that the nearest detention centre, at Lyon, was full up.
However, these people were not simply set free. They were given expulsion papers ordering them to leave France (OQTF: Obligation de quitter le territoire français), and banning them from returning (IRTF: Interdiction de retour sur le territoire français). These papers allowed them only 48 hours to appeal. The British government has said that people deported on flights to France have the opportunity to claim asylum in France. This is clearly not true.
In a further bureaucratic contradiction, alongside expulsion papers people were also given orders that they must report to the Clermont-Ferrand police station every day at 10:00AM for the next 45 days (potentially to be arrested and detained at any point). They were told that if they failed to report, the police would consider them on the run.
The Prefecture also reserved a place in a hotel many kilometres away from the airport for them for four nights, but not any further information or ways to receive food. They were also not provided any way to get to this hotel, and the police would not help them – stating that their duty finished once they gave the deportees their papers.
“After giving me the expulsion papers the French policeman said ‘Now you can go to England.’” (Testimony of deported person)
The PAF showed a general disregard for the health and well-being of the deportees who were in the custody throughout the day. One of the deportees had been in a wheel-chair throughout the day and was unable to walk due to the deep lacerations on his feet from self-harming. He was never taken to the hospital, despite the doctor’s recommendation, neither during the custody period nor after his release. In fact, the only reason for the doctor’s visit in the first place was to assess whether he was fit to be detained should the Prefecture decide that. The police kept him in his bloody clothes all day, and when they released him he did not have shoes and could barely walk. No crutches were given, nor did the police offer to help him get to the hotel. He was put out on the street having to carry all of his possessions in a Home Office issue plastic bag.
“the hardest night of my life”
“It was the hardest night of my life. My heart break was so great that I seriously thought of suicide. I put the razor in my mouth to swallow it; I saw my whole life pass quickly until the first hours of dawn. The treatment in detention was very bad, humiliating and degrading. I despised myself and felt that my life was destroyed, but it was too precious to lose it easily. I took the razor out from my mouth before I was taken out of the room, where four large-bodied people, wearing armour similar to riot police and carrying protective shields, violently took me to the large hall at the ground floor of the detention centre. I was exhausted, as I had been on hunger strike for several days. In a room next to me, one of the deportees tried to resist and was beaten so severely that blood dripping from his nose. In the big hall, they searched me carefully and took me to a car like a dangerous criminal, two people on my right and left, they drove for about two hours to the airport, there was a big passenger plane on the runway. […] That moment, I saw my dreams, my hopes, shattered in front of me when I entered the plane.”
Testimony of deported person (from Detained Voices: ▻https://detainedvoices.com/2020/08/27/brook-house-protestor-on-his-deportation-it-was-the-hardest-night-of).
The Legal Framework: Dublin III
These deportations are taking place under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU law that determines which European country is responsible for assessing a refugee’s asylum claim. The decision involves a number of criteria, the primary ones being ‘family unity’ and the best interests of children. Another criterion, in the case of people crossing borders without papers, is which country they first entered ‘irregularly’. In the law, this is supposed to be less important than family ties – but it is the most commonly used ground by governments seeking to pass on asylum applicants to other states. All the people we know of on these flights were “Dublined” because the UK claimed they had previously been in France, Germany or Spain.
(See: House of Commons intro briefing; Right to Remain toolkit section:
▻https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-is-the-dublin-iii-regulation-will-it-be-affected-by-b
▻https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/dublin)
By invoking the Dublin regulation, the UK evades actually assessing people’s asylum cases. These people were not deported because their asylum claims failed – their cases were simply never considered. The decision to apply Dublin III is made after the initial screening interview (now taking place in Yarl’s Wood). As we saw above, very few people are able to access any legal advice before these interviews are conducted and sometimes they are carried out by telephone or without adequate translation.
Under Dublin III the UK must make a formal request to the other government it believes is responsible for considering the asylum claim to take the person back, and present evidence as to why that government should accept responsibility. Typically, the evidence provided is the record of the person’s fingerprints registered by another country on the Europe-wide EURODAC database.
However, in the recent deportation cases the Home Office has not always provided fingerprints but instead relied on weak circumstantial evidence. Some countries have refused this evidence, but others have accepted – notably France.
There seems to be a pattern in the cases so far where France is accepting Dublin III returns even when other countries have refused. The suspicion is that the French government may have been incentivised to accept ‘take-back’ requests based on very flimsy evidence as part of the recent Franco-British Channel crossing negotiations (France reportedly requested £30m to help Britain make the route ‘unviable’).
In theory, accepting a Dublin III request means that France (or another country) has taken responsibility to process someone’s asylum claim. In practice, most of the people who arrived at Clermont-Ferrand on 26 August were not given any opportunity to claim asylum – instead they were issued with expulsion papers ordering them to leave France and Europe. They were also only given 48 hours to appeal these expulsions orders without any further legal information; a near impossibility for someone who has just endured a forceful expulsion and may require urgent medical treatment.
Due to Brexit, the United Kingdom will no longer participate in Dublin III from 31 December 2020. While there are non-EU signatories to the agreement like Switzerland and Norway, it is unclear what arrangements the UK will have after that (as with basically everything else about Brexit). If there is no overall deal, the UK will have to negotiate numerous bilateral agreements with European countries. This pattern of expedited expulsion without a proper screening process established with France could be a taste of things to come.
Conclusion: rushed – and illegal?
Charter flight deportations are one of the most obviously brutal tools used by the UK Border Regime. They involve the use of soul-crushing violence by the Home Office and its contractors (Mitie, Titan Airways, Britannia Hotels, and all) against people who have already lived through histories of trauma.
For these recent deportations of Channel crossers the process seems particularly rushed. People who have risked their lives in the Channel are scooped into a machine designed to deny their asylum rights and expel them ASAP – for the sake of a quick reaction to the latest media panic. New procedures appear to have been introduced off the cuff by Home Office officials and in under-the-table deals with French counterparts.
As a result of this rush-job, there seem to be numerous irregularities in the process. Some have been already flagged up in the successful legal challenges to the Spanish flight on 27 August. The detention and deportation of boat-crossers may well be largely illegal, and is open to being challenged further on both sides of the Channel.
Here we recap a few particular issues:
The highly politicised nature of the expulsion process for small boat crossers means they are being denied access to a fair asylum procedure by the Home Office.
The deportees include people who are victims of torture and of trafficking, as well as under-aged minors.
People are being detained, rushed through screening interviews, and “Dublined” without access to legal advice and necessary information.
In order to avoid considering asylum requests, Britain is applying Dublin III often just using flimsy circumstantial evidence – and France is accepting these requests, perhaps as a result of recent negotiations and financial arrangements.
Many deportees have family ties in the UK – but the primary Dublin III criterion of ‘family unity’ is ignored.
In accepting Dublin III requests France is taking legal responsibility for people’s asylum claims. But in fact it has denied people the chance to claim asylum, instead immediately issuing expulsion papers.
These expulsion papers (‘Order to quit France’ and ‘Ban from returning to France’ or ‘OQTF’ and ‘IRTF’) are issued with only 48 hour appeal windows. This is completely inadequate to ensure a fair procedure – even more so for traumatised people who have just endured detention and deportation, then been dumped in the middle of nowhere in a country where they have no contacts and do not speak the language.
This completely invalidates the Home Office’s argument that the people it deports will be able to access a fair asylum procedure in France.
▻https://corporatewatch.org/cast-away-the-uks-rushed-charter-flights-to-deport-channel-crossers
#asile #migrations #réfugiés #UK #Angleterre #Dublin #expulsions #renvois #Royaume_Uni #vols #charter #France #Allemagne #Espagne #Home_Office #accord #témoignage #violence #Brexit #Priti_Patel #Royal_Navy #plan_opérationnel_conjoint #Manche #Commandant_de_la_menace_clandestine_dans_la_Manche #Cherbourg #militarisation_des_frontières #frontières #Calais #Dunkerque #navires #Border_Force_Cutters #avions_de_surveillance #Royal_Air_Force #Opération_Sillath #refoulements #push-backs #Douvres #Kent_Intake_Unit #Yarl’s_Wood #Bedfordshire #Serco #Short_Term_Holding_Facility (#SHTF) #hôtel #Mears #hôtels_Britannia #Alex_Langsam #Immigration_Enforcement_squads #Heathrow #Colnbrook #Harmondsworth #Gatwick #aéroport #Brook_Hous #G4S #Removal_Directions #Carlson_Wagonlit_Travel (#CWT) #privatisation #compagnies_aériennes #Titan_Airways #Clermont-Ferrand #Düsseldorf
@karine4 —> il y a une section dédiée à l’arrivée des vols charter en France (à Clermont-Ferrand plus précisément) :
Larguées à destination : la France
ping @isskein
Is it time to forge a new narrative about race?
►https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/is-it-time-to-forge-a-new-narrative-about-race
This is a video of the premiere event of The Equiano Project where, with some distinguished guest speakers, we examined the question: Is it time to forge a new narrative about race?
Speakers...
]]>We Can’t Just Oppose Racism: We Must Transcend Race
►https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/we-cant-just-oppose-racism-we-must-transcend-race
What does it mean for a racially designated person to no longer accept that designation?
I didn’t fully realise the significance of being coded as black until I was thirteen. I grew up in a proud...
]]>‘I’ve not been to the city centre for months’: UK suburbs thrive as office staff stay home | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/28/ive-not-been-to-the-city-centre-for-months-uk-suburbs-thrive-as-office-
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c659d2a713e64c788a47de0e1e56c22f51bfde8a/0_300_4000_2400/master/4000.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
It’s not yet lunchtime but the queue outside Joe’s Bakery on Gloucester Road in Bristol’s northern suburbs is already growing. Five shoppers clutching canvas tote bags and rucksacks wait patiently in the sunshine on taped lines for their turn to buy vast crusty sourdough and dark rye breads or white sandwich loaves.
“I can’t remember when I was last in the city centre,” says accountant Tom Adams, 30, queuing up for some croissants. “There’s nothing there for me, to be honest. You can get all the produce you need here.”
]]>The low-paid need Britain to reopen. But this outbreak isn’t over | Business | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/28/low-paid-britain-reopen-outbreak-isnt-over
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/216437f763c49c9300c088a9b6af74e4d7be9c93/0_0_4286_2573/master/4286.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as many as 80% of the bottom tenth of earners in Britain are either unable to work from home or are in sectors that have been closed. This compares with about 25% of workers in the top-paid tenth.
The continuation of tough controls risks the emergence of a two-tier society, split between those able to work from home, and those for whom work vanishes entirely.
Resuming economic activity across the country will inevitably bring people into closer contact as businesses reopen and social life gradually resumes, increasing the risks of a second wave of infections later this summer. Such an outcome would require renewed lockdown controls later this year, inflicting further pain on companies and workers.
For this reason, many restrictions will remain in place. But there are glaring inconsistencies in the government’s approach. People will be able to down a pint at the pub but remain barred from gyms. Teenagers can head to the shops with their friends but their schools remain closed.
The mixed messages create confusion and erode trust in a government that has already depleted much of its political capital thanks to its late, chaotic, and costly approach to entering lockdown, as well as its double standards over the lockdown behaviour of No 10’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.
]]>Jeremy Corbyn interview: Full transcript | Middle East Eye
▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeremy-corbyn-labour-interview-transcript-full
Published date: 3 June, b David Hearst and Peter Oborne
in London - The Labour Party’s former leader on the antisemitism claims, Palestine, Israel, Brexit, coronavirus, the tabloid media, UK foreign policy and his allotment
Editor’s note: David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, and contributor Peter Oborne sat down with Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in late May 2020. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
David Hearst: Hello, my name is David Hearst, I’m editor of Middle East Eye, with me is Peter Oborne. We are here to interview the Right Honourable Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party, about what was a tumultuous, but important, leadership of his party.
Mr Corbyn, you have now had time to reflect on what happened during your period as leader. What would you say are the achievements of your time in office?
Jeremy Corbyn: More than trebling Labour Party membership. Changing the political debate on austerity into one of an investment-led economy and changing the political debate on the treatment of the poorest and most vulnerable people within our society. The way in which the government eventually responded to the corona crisis indicates that everything I was saying in the general election in November and December about investment in housing, health, education and support for manufacturing industry jobs has now come full circle.
And it’s a Tory government that has, in many ways - not perhaps in the way I would have totally wanted - but in many ways, the principle of public spending in order to protect people in a crisis is now accepted as a political norm, it hasn’t been, ever since the austerity budget of 2010 that [then-Chancellor of the Exchequer George] Osborne brought in. So, I’m proud of that.
I’m also proud of the way in which we developed the idea of a national education service, developed the idea of a green industrial revolution, and perhaps not as developed as I would have wanted, but we did go in the direction of a human rights-, peace- and democracy-based foreign policy, including the proposal of a war powers act and a re-examination of our role in the world. And so, I’m proud of a lot of what we achieved and in those areas, obviously very, very sad at the election result. In a sense, Brexit was a bridge that was too big for the Labour Party to traverse between strongly Remain areas, that were very strong for Labour, such as in London and my own constituency, for example; and equally strong for Labour areas in the north-east, south Yorkshire and the north-west that were strongly for Leave. I tried to bridge that gap with the proposal that we should do a trade deal with the European Union and put that alongside Remain as a choice for the people. And that was a decision taken at last year’s Labour Party conference, and so it turned out not to be possible.
So obviously, I’m very, very sad at that, but I remain determined that, personally, I will spend the rest of my life as I spent my life up to now: campaigning on the issues that I strongly believe in and representing people who are going through such terrible times in Covid. I’ll just say this about Covid - because it does dominate everything - it’s exposed the health inequalities around the world. It’s exposed the interdependence of countries around the world and it’s exposed the risk to even healthy people in healthy countries of a pandemic like this. It’s also exposed the inequalities in our own society.
Where we’re sitting now, it’s in my office, in my constituency. Three minutes’ walk from here, there are several large housing estates. Those people going through lockdown, small flat, three or four children, no balcony, no play space, very hard for them to stay in lockdown. A more affluent middle-class family in a nice house in the suburbs, garden, work at home, it’s not that difficult. And these are the people that are suffering through this, and it’s the black and minority ethnic communities and the oldest, poorest and most vulnerable people that are dying because of Covid. It’s exposed the fissures in our society. We’ve got to heal them.
DH: Do you think that shift you’re describing leftwards, ie you claim to have shifted the agenda leftwards, is a permanent shift or a temporary one under Boris Johnson?
JC: I think it’s a permanent shift because when people go out every Thursday night to applaud the NHS, it’s very interesting. The whole country does it, everybody, and they recognise we need our National Health Service. Now, there might be arguments about how it’s run and so on, and so on. Fine. But the principle of healthcare free at the point of need is one that is now universally accepted in the whole of society. And those people are going out applauding the NHS are now demanding PPE, are now demanding decent pay. And they’re no longer tolerating horrible language like “unskilled migrant workers”, who are care workers and cleaners. They suddenly realise if you didn’t have a good cleaner in a hospital, you’re going to get disease. They are skilled workers as well.
Peter Oborne: I think I could add more to your list of achievements, for instance you were ridiculed about universal broadband, that was your call and now the government’s going to do that. You can argue, very convincingly, that you won the argument in the election and it wasn’t just before coronavirus. Already, that first Rishi Sunak budget [on 11 March ] incorporated an awful lot of your fiscal arguments and indeed, you know the Johnson government now is absurdly reckless compared to what you were proposing. But, there is this but... you know, the election result and those red wall seats, you know, the former mining communities...
JC: Obviously, devastated by the result. In fact, the number of people [who] actually switched from Labour to Conservative was quite small, about 300,000 I believe. You can argue about the figures, but it wasn’t huge. The election resulted, as we all know, in a relatively close result, and it was a two-party race almost back to the 1950s map of Britain when, well, 89, 90 percent –
PO: - 95 percent –
JC: - 95 percent of the population voted either Labour or Conservative, it was back to that. This time, there was some growth in the Liberal Democrat [vote], but also the Brexit Party and its shenanigans of dropping candidates, putting candidates up in various place and so on obviously had a... was... it was a factor in all of this. The Brexit Party was always really a tool of the Tories anyway, in some form or another, in my view.
PO: But you didn’t answer the question. Sorry [phone ringing interruption]. I mean, but you didn’t answer the question. How do you explain the fact that these absolute core Labour seats, ex-mining seats in many cases, switch from your Labour Party to the Johnson Tory Party?
JC: The results we got there were bad in 2019, but in some of the constituencies, they were not great in 2017. We did very well in big, urban areas in 2017, but we didn’t do so well in some of those older industrial, white, working-class areas except where there had been a complete change in the structure of the local community.
The sense of disillusionment in those areas with [the] modern economy is huge, and they’ve also had a steady diet for five years of unbelievable attacks on the Labour Party, on me personally and it had an effect. There’s no question about that, it has an effect, if you’re told, day after day in your daily newspaper, that the leader of the Labour Party is an evil person. Something gets through.
PO: It’s more than just the press, isn’t it? I mean in those areas, they were Leave areas, they obviously felt that your message was not really –
JC: Yeah. They were not in favour of the offer we’d put forward of a referendum between an agreement with the EU and Remain. I was faced with a problem after 2016 from the referendum then, that the vast majority of Labour members, Labour Party members, were for Remain. The majority supported a concept of a second referendum, which was a huge issue, as you know, up until... well, for a long way through all this it’s been a huge issue. And a majority of Labour voters were in favour of Remain, but a substantial minority, probably 40 percent, 35, 40 percent, something like that, were... were for Leave. And the Labour Party Conference of last year had this very difficult chasm it had to cross. And they came to a compromise that was agreed by, put forward by all of the unions, both those very strongly Remain unions like TSSA Unison and those very strongly Leave unions like ASLEF and Bakers [Food and Allied Workers’] Union. And the bigger unions were reflective of their membership on this. And so, it was a compromise that, clearly didn’t find favour with Labour voters in those areas. But had we gone in any other direction, I’m quite clear we would have lost support in London and the south-east. And there are, what, nearly 57... I think it is... Labour MPs in London, for example.
DH: So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t -
JC: Whatever we’d done was going to be difficult, and in the election campaign I was trying to point out that if we reached an agreement with the EU on trade, it would be about protection of workers’ rights, environmental standards, consumer rights, and it would not be a bargain basement economy to please Donald Trump, which I suspect is what Boris Johnson was then trying to do. What he’ll try and do now? I’m not entirely sure.
Fundamentally, whether we’re in or out of the European Union, a Labour government led by us would be one that would want high-quality jobs and an investment-led economy, hence the National Investment Bank, hence the infrastructure investment, hence the green industrial evolution, hence the broadband offer that we made during the election campaign. And I tried to get that message across.
DH: Did you personally get Brexit wrong, in the sense that there’s this persistent claim that you didn’t campaign hard enough? That yes, in the referendum, it was a bit wishy-washy, that you pleased virtually no one? Looking back on your time, are there honestly points at which you would say: “Actually, I should have done something else?”
JC: Well, in the referendum in 2016, the Labour policy was for Remain and reform of the EU because the EU, yes, it has quite good basic environmental standards, it has quite good intentions on workers’ rights, they’re not as strong as they ought to be, but it also has a bit of a penchant for neoliberal economics. Look at the way it treated Greece, look at the lectures that they’re given to southern European countries during the financial crisis. And my view was that if we remained in the European Union, ours would be a voice for interventionist economics, would be for full employment, would be for minimum welfare standards and a European-wide minimum employment standards, because at the moment there are very low wages paid in eastern Europe and that means that people leave eastern Europe to work somewhere else and send the money home. And the issues of inequality and the treatment of those migrant workers when they come to western Europe is disgraceful. So mine would have been a voice that would have been very, very different.
So, in the referendum campaign I was trying to articulate why I thought we should remain and reform the European Union, I was not going to go down the road of the Better Together campaign, which was so disastrous for Labour during the [2014] Scottish referendum. But the media during the referendum campaign were quite interesting, because from their point of view, the only show in town was the blue-on-blue war. So, the stories, day in, day out, were between [then-prime minister David] Cameron and Boris Johnson, basically, who were obviously on opposite sides on the EU referendum issue.
Did I campaign hard enough? I did more visits, more, more miles, more meetings, more rallies than the rest of the shadow cabinet put together. I spoke at rallies on Perranporth beach in Cornwall, and I spoke to fishermen in Aberdeen. I travelled the length and breadth of the country on it. And so, did I not do enough? I think that is, frankly, a bit unfair. Nobody said that during the campaign. They only sort of concocted the story afterwards.
PO: George Osborne I think was the first to blame –
JC: And how much did he do during the campaign? [Laughs] He was probably busy applying for his seven jobs then.
PO: Following up, I mean, given what you’re saying about a more human, more worker-friendly Europe, do you now feel that you should have backed Mrs May’s deal? Because it was open to you at any moment, to throw the weight of the Labour Party behind Mrs May’s deal, which would have been a much softer Brexit, potentially even continued membership of the single market, conceivably the customs union. Did you ever feel that in retrospect, that was a mistake?
JC: We did go into negotiations with her. We were serious about it and we went on for six, seven, weeks and, we had teams of people involved dealing with the environmental aspects, dealing with the workers’ rights aspects and dealing with future trade arrangements. We made quite a lot of progress on the workers’ rights side of things. Becky led on that part, [shadow secretary of state for business] Becky Long-Bailey. We didn’t make as much progress as I wanted on environmental standards and protection of those, and it seemed to me that that was the area that we could not reach agreement on. And so, there were, obviously, a lot of discussions and I deliberately made sure the teams doing the negotiating were balanced between the individual views of people that were known to be Remain and known to be Leave in the talks that went on. Eventually, the shadow cabinet concluded the talks had reached their natural conclusion. So, we then left them at that point.
Could we have done a deal? I’m not sure that deal would have stuck within the parliamentary Labour Party anyway if we had done a deal. The parliamentary Labour Party, as you know, was divided on the subject and indeed, the deal that finally went through - the Johnson proposal, the one bill that Johnson put up - went through with Labour support, not mine, but with a minority of Labour MPs, voted for it from strongly Leave areas, thinking it would save their seats.
PO: But the thing is, now we’ve got what looks like the ultimate hard Brexit, no deal Brexit, from [the] Johnson government. A year ago, just over a year ago, there was a real, there was on the table a soft Brexit from Mrs May’s government, which you could have led Labour towards.
JC: Well, Labour as a whole were not going to buy into that and one of the litmus tests of this was the referendum issue. There was never a parliamentary majority for a second referendum. The closest it came was a minority of 30 I think, or some, something around there, and there was never a parliamentary majority for that.
And, looking back on it, could things have been done differently? Well, obviously, things can always be done differently. Would the result have been any different? I’m not really sure. I think the problem was that many parts of this country have seen no investment for a very long time. They’ve seen deindustrialisation that started in the 1980s, have never seen the replacement of cherished and now lost industries with good quality jobs. And you have communities where there’s very low levels of union membership, there’s very high levels of insecure work and very high levels of institutional poverty within those areas. And our economic success in the past has actually been predicated on cheap Chinese imports as much as anything else. And so, the economic system that developed in this country during the 90s and early 2000s was actually [based on the] ever-reducing price of Chinese imports, a deindustrialisation at the same time, the replacement of manufacturing jobs by service industry jobs.
And we therefore have a fundamental economic weakness in Britain, which is not the same particularly in Germany, because you have essentially a kind of agreement across the political spectrum in Germany that it is the job and duty of government to be involved in industry and major investment decisions. [Also] to a slightly lesser extent in France. And so, we have a structural problem which has to be addressed, which is why [then shadow chancellor] John McDonnell, Becky and myself made a great deal about investment in a green industrial future for this country, were very serious about that.
DH: You were savagely attacked as leader... a lot of the attacks were against you personally. You were called a racist, you were called someone who tolerated antisemitism, you were attacked by the former generals for being a danger to the security of the state. Were you prepared for that? You were also undermined by your own party, not least [by] your deputy leader.
Were you prepared when you entered this job for that level of personal hostility, aimed at you? It’s an irony that, in fact, a lot of the attacks were personal, and they weren’t policy based, in fact what you were saying received actually a good press, and what John McDonnell said received a good press. It was you personally that they were going for. Were you prepared for that?
JC: No, you know, you can’t be prepared for it. I mean, obviously, in a whole lifetime of political activity, I’ve had lots of issues where, I think, the media have been very unfair to me. And there was a process of personal abuse against me, against my wife, against my sons, family and so on. And the obsessive nature of the British media, it was quite extraordinary. But also, the way in which stories would suddenly take hold.
There was a time last year when apparently a group of civil servants said that I was unfit, that I was not capable of concentrating on anything, and that I wasn’t medically or physically capable of doing the job. So, I asked for a Cabinet Office inquiry into which civil servants had said this. And I was told in terms that “no stone would be left unturned” in sorting out who had actually made these foul allegations against me. Apparently, there are still a lot of stones that need to be turned: nobody has been identified as making these remarks.
DH: How did you react to this between the four walls of your family? Were you tearing your hair out? Were you calm?
JC: No, you know, I’m very calm. I’m a very calm person, which actually makes my family very annoyed. Sometimes –
PO: Let me read out –
JC: Sometimes they wish I was a bit more like... one other point just to make about media is, at some level, it’s kind of laughable, that the various papers, Mail, Express, Telegraph particularly, were kind of obsessed with me and my family. The Express dug up somebody who was apparently a great, great, great, great uncle removed, who I’d never heard of, who apparently ran a workhouse in 1830. Oh, I’d never heard of this guy, nobody in my family ever heard of this guy, where did that come from?
And then, another paper sent a whole team of people tramping all over Mexico looking for Laura’s family [Laura Alvarez, Corbyn’s wife], people she used to work with and so on and so on, to ask what they thought of me. I mean, some of these people had never heard of me. I mean: “Huh? Huh? What are you on about?” And it was this sort of obsessive stuff, which was kind of at one level laughable, but all designed to be undermining. So, it meant every day, when I would want us to be pursuing a political agenda on homelessness, on poverty in Britain, on housing, on international issues, what was our media team doing? Rebutting these crazy stories, abusive stories, about me the whole time.
And it was... um... is it unpleasant? Yes, it is unpleasant, yes. Do you feel that you’re under a constant microscope? Yes, you do. I mean, when you’ve got photographers that hide behind trees in a park while I’m using an open-air gym. I was in Finsbury Park one day at the open-air gym and there was apparently a photographer, I suspect from the Daily Mail, hiding behind a tree. And these young men going by said: “Oh yeah Jezza, there’s some guy over there I think he’s really dangerous. Do you want us to sort him out?” So, I said: “No, no. Leave him alone. Just tell him to go away.” Well, this is bad. This isn’t politics. This is an obsession with destroying an individual. Well, you know what? It didn’t work.
PO: I had a look at some of your newspaper headlines before coming here –
JC: God, you must have got up early -
PO: “Jezza’s Jihadi Comrades.” "Blood on his hands." “Corbyn and the Commie Spy.” "Corbyn’s ISIS Past Revealed." “Corbyn Not Upset Enough Over Paris Terror Attacks.” "Jezza’s Jihadi Comrades, Apologists for Terror." And, I think, when you finally came to election day, “Waking Up to Corbyn as PM on Friday 13th Will Be The Start of a Nightmare.” When you get those day after day, how do you deal with it?
JC: Well I read The Daily Mail for election day after the election, because I got a copy that day and I read it a week later. I read it from cover to cover on a Sunday afternoon, a wet Sunday afternoon, when I was tidying up my study and at the end of it I put the paper down. “Wow. This Corbyn guy, God he’s evil. I wouldn’t want to live in the same street as him.” And it was just crazy.
PO: I’ve got the Daily Mail. [holding up newspaper]
JC: Oh, you’ve got it there. Is that the election day one? Or is it a Brexit one? Oh, yeah. But the Czech spy stuff was extraordinary. That this claim, somehow or other I was involved with Czech spies and was spying for the Czech Republic, and indeed somebody libelled me on this and it cost him a lot of money, which was all given to an appropriate charity. And I remember meeting this guy from the Czech embassy in the Pugin Room, which is the very nice tea room between the Lords and the Commons. And we had tea, which I paid for, lemon tea, and I believe there was a cake involved, or a biscuit, it was very excessive - two biscuits, possibly. And this guy is [a] completely inconsequential conversation. I was utterly bored by it. I saw another Labour MP wandering down the corridor who didn’t seem terribly busy, so I shamelessly went up to him and asked him if he’d like to meet some interesting people from the Czech Republic. And he came and joined us and then I disappeared. And I put in my diary that night: “I met two people from the Czech embassy. God, they were boring. I have no idea why they came.”
PO: Do you have a, do you keep a diary?
JC: No, not always. I did at that time.
PO: You do have one?
JC: No, no, no, not all the time. I do write notes from time to time, and I’ve also got probably three or four hundred notebooks. I kept notebooks all my life when I was a union organiser, and before that when I was travelling around Latin America, when I worked in various jobs. And they’ve become an almost, a social history. So, I’ve got notebooks of my work as a union organiser, which have things like the issue of the safety in a particular school kitchen, because I used to represent some school meals workers in schools around here, alongside a meeting I would have spoken at that night as a councillor in Haringey.
So, you’ve got these sorts of notes of all aspects of my life, which are almost like a diary. And I’ve got hundreds of these notebooks that take up a great deal of space. They should be scanned, I’m sure.
PO: Perhaps you will one day.
JC: There’s always one day for that. Yes.
PO: But what David Hearst was referring to earlier... you have, on the one hand, a very, very concentrated, calculated press campaign, day after day. The same point, which is more concerning in many ways, were these briefings from inside the military, that you are a “danger to security”. And as somebody brought up with the idea of the British system being that anybody can govern so long as they’re elected, and it’s the job of the military, the civil service, to work with them, to get briefings from inside the armed security services and the armed forces were appearing, I think, mainly in The Daily Telegraph and elsewhere. What is your view of that?
JC: Well, the briefings were designed to undermine, and designed to disagree with my world view. My world view is of the fundamental problems facing this planet are the environmental crisis, are the levels of inequality across the planet. And that... the way in which Britain went into wars in Afghanistan, and particularly Iraq, have very serious long-term consequences, and at the risk of quoting myself, if you forgive me, when I spoke at the huge rally in Hyde Park on February 15th 2003, I said: ‘This war, if it goes ahead in Iraq, will lead to the refugee flows of tomorrow, the terrorism of tomorrow, and the wars of tomorrow, and the misery of tomorrow all across the region." You look at the refugee camps in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Libya, in Turkey, in Greece. All of those are a consequence of both the Afghan War and of the Iraq War. And so, I don’t want to—
PO: You haven’t mentioned the Libyan intervention where you were one of 12 MPs in the House of Commons who voted against. And that, of course, has led to the catastrophic refugee flows, return of slavery. I mean it’s been -
JC: And we were accused of being stooges of Colonel Gaddafi. I never met Colonel Gaddafi. I’d never been to Libya, despite invitations from his government to go. But I said I was not prepared to visit Libya as a guest of the government, I would visit Libya independently if I could have independent access to any group I wanted to, that’s my basis of when I go anywhere. And so, I never went there. But so far as I was concerned, there could and should have been agreements reached with Gaddafi - and indeed, [former prime minister Tony] Blair reached some levels of agreement with Gaddafi.
We then got into the idea that, somehow or other, [that] bombing Libya would bring about a peace and security. What it’s done is unleash proxy wars in Libya now, with Turkey supporting the recognised government or recognised by some people, other Middle Eastern states supporting those that are opposed to that particular government. We’ve got a ghastly civil war going on in there, compounded by the numbers of very desperate people that have ended up in Libya, who’ve come from Senegal, who’ve come from other parts of west Africa, where they’re living in terrible poverty, Burkina Faso and so on. And you’ve got really there a microcosm of all of the world’s problems and the deaths of thousands over the past decade, trying to cross the Mediterranean to get to a relative place of safety at Lampedusa or somewhere else in Europe. And so, my view was the bombing of Libya would actually make the situation worse. Where was I wrong? I was pilloried at the time.
DH: Were you a tough enough leader –
JC: [clearing throat] Sorry.
DH: Were you a tough enough leader? Did you have enough teeth as a leader? Did you tolerate attacks? For instance, [Labour politician] Margaret Hodge called you a racist to your face inside the House of Commons, she repeated that in the Guardian the next day. Shouldn’t you have sued? Shouldn’t you have defended yourself and said: “No, I’m not a racist, prove it”?
JC: Well, I do defend myself by pointing out my record on opposing racism in any form whatsoever in society, and I have done all of my life. Was I too tolerant of people? Well that’s an interesting question. My style of leadership is very different to others. I didn’t want to be a dictator, I wanted to be a leader that built by consensus. And-
DH: But there was no consensus in the Labour Party. Half of them were desperately trying to get you out.
JC: Well, the coup that took place in 2016 was a dramatic time. The referendum result was what we all know. And a few days later, I dismissed Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary because he had written an article in the Observer attacking me, which was published, of course, and others then resigned. And there was then a meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party, which passed a motion of no confidence in me. I pointed out that I’d been elected by the party membership, not by the parliamentary Labour Party, and that as leader, I would seek support from the party members. A challenge was mounted, as you know, and I was re-elected with a larger majority in 2016. Three hundred thousand people voted for me to remain as party leader, despite all the attacks of that year - well it was less than a year since I’d been first elected.
The problem is the parliamentary Labour Party is obviously of finite size, you can only be a member if you’ve been elected to parliament, and I had to work with the parliamentary Labour Party that was there in order to fulfil the various appointments and positions. And I did appoint a balanced shadow cabinet and then, after the 2017 election, I changed the shadow cabinet quite a lot and brought in a lot of new people, new faces and it worked together actually quite well, despite all the endless debate we had over Brexit, we probably had [as] many debates over Brexit as the cabinet itself had.
It’s a style of leadership issue. I think leaders who dictate tend to isolate themselves and therefore everything falls upon them and it doesn’t motivate others to be involved. And so, what I wanted to do was create a more democratic atmosphere within the Labour Party and the Labour movement as a whole.
Could things have been done differently? Obviously, you can do things differently. That was my way of doing things. That was my whole lifestyle of doing things. But, do I have strong principles that I won’t deviate from? Yeah, I do. Of course, I do. I believe in social justice. I believe in environmental sustainability. I believe in trying to bring about a world of peace. I do believe that the poverty and insecurity in this country and across the world is actually a danger to everybody. Corona crisis has proved that to be the case.
PO: Do you feel though, that you, again in retrospect, [when] these very serious and strongly put allegations were made against you, that if you’d sued and taken them on, dealt, confronted them at that point, it might have been more cathartic in the end? You might have dealt with the allegations?
JC: There’s always a temptation to go to court on cases when nasty things are said about you. And it is very tempting. You think, wow, that is just so wrong, so nasty, so dishonest. I’ll sue them for libel. Tony Benn once said to me, he said: “Jeremy, libel is a rich man’s game, and you’re not a rich man.” He said: “You can’t afford it. Go to, go to a libel case - even if you win the case, you’ll be destroyed financially in doing so.” And we do have an issue surrounding media and media balance in this country. And I was trying to bring forward proposals on media ownership, on access to media and I gave a MacTaggart lecture on this in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival in 2018, which was about proposals for future media ownership, which I think are important. And I do think we have to look at this whole question, media control. Obviously, things could have been done differently. There could have been a different style and way of doing things, but that was my way and that was my style.
DH: The internal Labour Party report, which has been leaked, contains a great deal of evidence that there were elements inside the machinery of the party that were actively working against you, particularly before the very good result you had in 2017. Do you have anything to say about that?
JC: I won’t comment on the leaked report itself because that will be subject to inquiry and so on, but what I would say is that when I was nominated to be leader of the party in 2015, it was a very difficult process to get on the ballot paper. But I made it easily, with 90 seconds to spare when the last nomination was made. And so, I was a candidate and at that point the bookmakers gave me a 200-1 chance of winning. I wished I put money on it. I’m not, I’m not a betting man, but y’know, anyway.
I always knew that there was a culture in the Labour Party that was not a healthy one, of an almost self-perpetuating bureaucracy. All organisations have a degree of self-perpetuating bureaucracy about them. And I wanted to change the way in which the party operated by changing from being a solely bureaucratic machine that administered the party, disciplined members and observed the rules and so on, into a community-organising base of the party. And when I was first elected, I met the executive board of the party and the General Secretary at the time, Iain McNicol, and so on. And I said: “I’m not here to start a war with you, I’m not here to get rid of you all, what I want to do is develop the party in this kind of direction”. And we had the utmost resistance to bring in community organising, which is where Iain McNicol and I finally parted company. And in the 2017 campaign, there were people saying this has got to be a defensive campaign, there’s no way we can win it, there’s no way, we’re too far behind and so on. And I said: “Look, it’s a long campaign. We can go out there. We can mobilise a bigger electorate. We can mobilise people who will see hope in what we’re doing.” And then Andrew Fisher was the main author of For the Many, Not the Few and that was an absolute gamechanger.
I realised when we launched that manifesto, we had a real chance of winning. We did it at Bradford University. I was standing there in the atrium of the university where we launched it and all above there were various galleries in the building, all of which had glass screens in front of them. And it was like that last scene out of The Graduate when Dustin Hoffman is waving through the glass in the church. And I looked up there and every single gallery had students listening to what we were saying, listening to what we were saying. Listening to what we were saying. And it was clear to me that the leaked manifesto - I was really angry about it being leaked, it was absolutely not me that leaked it - had actually a much better reaction than we expected and the support for that manifesto was huge. The party bureaucracy was so leaden-footed it couldn’t appreciate what was actually happening on the ground. That’s why every time I got back to London –
DH: Was it leaden-footed or was it hostile?
JC: Well, interesting question. I took it. [This refers back to] your earlier question about my innate generosity. I said: “Look, think of what’s going on out there. There are a lot of people getting involved in politics for the first time. There’s more people involved in our campaign than ever been involved before. There are people just forming their own campaigns to support Labour candidates. Think about it. This is the great moment.” And when Theresa May said something like Corbyn’s afraid to go to the north-east as she addressed a rally of 20 people at a golf club, we then organised a rally, which we were going to do anyway, outside The Sage in Gateshead. We had 10,000 people there at two days’ notice. That was a sign of what was happening.
And I obviously deeply regret the result of 2017 because we came so, so close. Maybe we weren’t going to get an overall majority - that, that would have been a huge, a huge jump - but I thought we were in a position where we would have formed a minority government. And I made the point all along, we would not form a coalition with the SNP or with anybody else. We would form a minority government and take our chance.
PO: I must say, I mean, the internal Labour report - this is one official quoted in it: “As the exit polls predicted a hung parliament, we are silent and grave faced opposite to what I have been working towards for the last couple of years.” It must be pretty gut-wrenching for you to read stuff like that.
JC: Yeah, of course. Because I didn’t spend much time in the party head office in 2017. It’s not my job to be there all the time. I was out on the road. And indeed, the manifesto was signed off by a combination of emails and text messages on trains, with me around the country during the whole campaign and my job was to be out and about. And I did 100 events all over the country during that period. There were others on my behalf, having these arguments about what were the priorities and there was still this argument, “we’ve got to be defensive” and I said, no, go out there, go to all the constituencies where we’ve got the outside chance of winning and go for it, and look at look at the places we gained.
PO: A few years ago now, I had a conversation with somebody who’d been inside Conservative Central Office. He said something really interesting, which was when they saw you go out after the terrible tragedy of the Manchester bombing [in May 2017] and you went and said something along the lines of “British foreign policy carries its share of responsibility for this”, he said in Central Office, they watched this, and they said: “We’ve won the election.” And they realised two days later from the polls that no, what you’d said had really resonated. Is that the sense you saw?
JC: That was the toughest decision we had to take during that campaign. The Manchester bomb was appalling and abominable in every way, obviously, and I remember I was in Doncaster when it happened, we were on our way from Hull to Doncaster and we then stayed overnight there. And the prime minister called me at about one o’clock in the morning and we discussed what had happened. Then I went to Manchester the next day to join in the silence and commemoration outside the town hall. And then the campaigning was suspended for a few days and we then discussed it all. And I was of the view that we had to have a considered response to this which said, there is an element, an element, of British foreign policy that is causing this in Britain.
I decided I would make this speech and we made it on the following Friday morning, I think it was at the Mechanics Institute in London, and I was very strongly advised by a lot of people, don’t do it, don’t do it, no, this is wrong. This will actually play against us. And I said: “No, it’s the honest response to give. It’s a serious response. It’s not condoning in any way whatsoever, what happened was abominable and appalling.”
And so, I made the speech in the morning and waited for the reaction. And a few hours later, I didn’t know they were doing it, YouGov did a telephone poll, which came out with 60 percent saying Corbyn’s on the right lines here. I stand by every word I made in that speech and... I think it was the right thing to do because it also helped to frame a debate about the kind of foreign policy we had. And I did then - I’m not sure the sequence of events - but I also did during that campaign a quite long event at Chatham House in which we had a discussion about world affairs, about refugees, inequality, and poverty and so on, and the need to have the basis of our foreign policy being respect for human rights in every country in the world.
I’ve always sought in all my meetings with any leaders, to raise issues of human rights. So, when I met President Xi, I raised issues of human rights in China. We got into a very long discussion about collective versus individual human rights because the Universal Declaration in 1948 actually recognises both. As far as he was concerned, it was all about collective rights and housing, and education and health and so on, and not about individual rights. I had a meeting with Prime Minister Modi and raised a number of issues about human rights in India, in which I can’t pretend we reached agreement, but it was an interesting discussion.
I also met President Obama for a quite long meeting, I had an hour with President Obama. And while he was still president at the time, he was on a state visit to Britain, and it was a very interesting discussion and, about what his view was and his concerns about the powers of global corporations over national government. And I sort of complimented him on Obamacare and he looked at me and he said: “That’s very generous and very kind of you, but I think it’s my greatest failure because I wanted a real health service, - like you’ve got.” So, whoever I meet, whoever they are, I raise these issues, however uncomfortable it is, because if you don’t raise it when you’ve got the chance, what’s the point?
DH: You’re a lifelong anti-racist campaigner. And yet you never shrug off the repeated claims that you tolerated antisemitism in the Labour Party, that antisemitism was a problem in the Labour Party and, you apologised. Did you, do you regret not fighting that smear more stringently? And do you accept that you were targeted, principally, not because of an inherent problem in the Labour Party or that you consorted in any way with antisemites, but because you were a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause?
JC: Look, let’s unpick that. Antisemitism is an evil and is wrong. Jewish people have suffered antisemitism from the 13th century or before. You look at the books, the legend of the Wandering Jew, the way in which Jewish people were expelled from Britain in the 13th century and came back under [Oliver] Cromwell, but nevertheless were still discriminated against. Antisemitism is rife and has been historically in Europe and indeed around the world.
It is evil. It is wrong. The Nazis exploited antisemitism for their advantage, decided that all the problems of the Weimar Republic were nothing to do with the chaos of the Weimar Republic, or the results of the conference at the end of the First World War, the Versailles Conference, but instead, all the problems, all the fault of the Jews. They started by opposing Jewish people, they then moved on to beating up Jewish businesses, they moved on to killing people, and that ended up with the extermination camps at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen and all the others. It is an absolutely appalling history of where racism and antisemitism lead to. I grew up in a family that were obviously opposed to racism in any form. My mum was there at Cable Street in 1936. That’s the sort of background I come from.
When I became leader of the Labour Party, I discovered that there were a small number of cases where people had been accused of antisemitic work, remarks within the party and there should be a process for dealing with them. I asked for what the process was, and I was not very satisfied. I didn’t feel we had a very strong or robust process for dealing with this, and then allegations were made about people making antisemitic remarks at meetings and trolling people and being abusive to Jewish Labour MPs. Absolutely, totally unacceptable in any form. The numbers involved were actually very small.
So, I asked Shami Chakrabarti to do an investigation into this and produce a proposal, which she did, which was to have a stronger governance unit, have it independent of the party leadership, and that cases should be referred to them for process. I had a very strong view in my office that I was not to be the judge, jury and decision-maker on each case. Any case that was brought to my attention - and some were, people wrote in and things like that - I didn’t deal with it, I passed it straight on to the governance and legal unit. That process needs to be examined very closely, how efficiently they dealt with those or didn’t deal with those, and the party policy has to be one that we don’t tolerate antisemitism in any form.
It also has to be clear that we do not tolerate any form of racism within our party, any more than any other party should. So, the allegations of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party also deserve to be investigated. And unless we, as a society, recognise the cancer that racism in any form is, then we’re weakened as a society because that leads to wasted opportunities, it leads to damaged lives, it leads to violence against individuals on our street.
DH: But why did this happen under your leadership as opposed to [predecessor] Ed Miliband’s? Objective evidence says there were actually more incidents of antisemitism under a Jewish leader than it was under you, before all this started.
JC: Well, it came up very heavily against me and I believed –
DH: Why you?
JC: They attacked me all the time on this. I think it is wrong, because I think I’m the one that actually introduced a process for dealing with it. There has to be an examination of the way in which that process operated. I then realised there was a logjam building up in the party on individual cases. And so, I proposed the expansion of the National Constitutional Committee, which was duly done in order to deal with cases more quickly. I also introduced a system where egregious cases could be dealt with very quickly, but still within the ambit of rules of natural justice. And so, I feel that the attacks on me have been extremely unfair on this.
PO: [The BBC investigative programme] Panorama says, or contains, very serious claims that you actually impeded antisemitism investigations by the Labour Party.
JC: That is absolutely not the case, I was the one that introduced a system to ensure they were properly dealt with. What I inherited was a system that was not effective, that wasn’t clear, that wasn’t definitive. And that’s why I asked Shami Chakrabarti to do her report and she also recommended in that there should be a process of education as well, as to what antisemitism is or what any form of racism is and the use of language and behaviour. And historically in Britain, the tolerance of antisemitism is huge. When you think of Churchill’s antisemitic remarks all through his life... And the degrees of acceptance of antisemitism throughout our history is huge. And I think there has to be a challenge to that or any form of racism. And that is what I tried to do within the party as party leader and it’s what I spend my life doing.
DH: But do you accept that as a result of this whole storm, that never really died away and is continuing as we speak, with the future publication of the report by the Equalities Commission -
JC: Remember the Equalities Commission is now an arm of government. Remember that. It’s not a –
PO: Why do you say that?
JC: Because I think it’s quite significant that the Conservative government has underfunded the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, indeed I went on demonstrations outside its office to demand better funding of it and took place. And for some reason, which I don’t fully understand, they decided to take it away from its independent status and make it part of [the] government machine. And I think it’s quite important, and had we won the election, I would have reinstated the principle of its complete independence, but also of a wider Equalities and Human Rights Commission, so it dealt with, maybe in separate arms of it, age discrimination, gender discrimination and so on, within our society. Because I do think, the Equalities Act of 2010 was an important step forward in the direction we should go as a society.
DH: Are you suggesting that that could colour their decision on the Labour Party?
JC: Let’s see what happens.
DH: Do you accept that as a result of you having lost this battle to clean up the Labour Party, or the label that there is an antisemitism problem specifically in the Labour Party, stuck under your leadership, that it has now become much more difficult to campaign for the Palestinian cause? All sorts of people, including a very distinguished Middle East Eye columnist, are now being accused of antisemitism simply and solely because they’re sticking up for the Palestinian cause.
JC: Shami made it very clear in her report that antisemitism was completely unacceptable and that in any discussion of the issues of Palestine, of Israel-Palestine relations, or of the future of Palestinian people, it is perfectly possible to have those discussions without indulging in any form of antisemitism. And it is. And I indeed have been, as you know, a member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and I’ve been at Palestine Solidarity Campaign meetings where somebody has made antisemitic remarks and they’ve been removed from the meeting as a result. PSC did that. They’re very clear about that and they’re right to be, of course.
And so, I have always supported the need for recognition of the state of Palestine. And I propose that, and it was in both of our manifestos and I hope that will remain their full recognition. I’ve also made very clear my opposition to the Trump plan, because I think if the Trump plan goes ahead, then the chances of a two-state solution just disappear with it because, in fact, there would be no contiguous Palestinian area at all. It would be a series of islands of what would be called Palestine, which would be Ramallah and Jericho, and one or two other places. I mean, it is a proposal which essentially is [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s dream of taking over virtually the whole of the West Bank.
PO: Can I ask you, do you think that the British government, the foreign secretary and the Middle East minister have protested enough about this plan?
JC: No, I don’t think they protested enough about this at all. And it’s quite interesting that a cross-party group of MPs have written on this, and I support that letter, saying that there has to be the strongest possible protests.
My worry is that the Trump plan is so extreme that it will be rejected. But, and I say this sadly, in reality, the Trump plan is actually a continuation of the demands of the Right in Israel politics for a very long time. The danger is there would be some slightly less aversion of the Trump plan proposed where there’s not quite as much expansion, not quite as many settlements, and this will be somehow seen as a victory. The whole process has been that Israel has continuously put in more and more settlements, denied Palestinian people access to land, built a wall through farms that have made it impossible to run a sustainable farm and put the people of Gaza under siege.
I’ve been in Gaza, I’ve been in the West Bank, I’ve been in Israel, I’ve spoken to people of all sorts of views there. And it’s very hard to put yourself in the place of somebody else. But I remember the first time I went to Gaza, this was in the 90s, I met this lady who was, it turned out, exactly the same age as my late mother, exactly the same age within a month or so. I don’t know how the conversation got onto that.
PO: We bring our mothers with us wherever we go.
JC: Indeed, we do. This is true. And so, I sort of reflected on the rich and varied life that my mother led. And then I said to this lady: “What’s your life been like then?” And she described the village that she came from in 1948, which is now where Israel is. And she said since then she’s been living in Gaza, and she’s grateful to the UN Relief and Works Agency for educating her children, and providing food and water supplies, and so on. But she says: “We’ve been living under siege ever since.” And I said: “What about your sons?” None of them lived with her. None of them lived nowhere near. They were away somewhere; one was in prison, one was abroad and so on, and so on. And you just reflect on her life and then look at the lives of, of young people in Gaza.
Gaza is the most educated place in the world. The highest level of a population with degrees is Gaza. The highest level of people with PhDs is Gaza. They can educate themselves, there’s great universities and colleges and so on, but they can’t travel anywhere. And so that sense of isolation. I remember going to a primary school, the top end, the northern part of the Gaza Strip, you can go to the top floor of this primary school. You can look one way and you can see the fence with Israel beyond it. You can look the other way and you can see the sea. Out in the sea, you can see the Israeli boats that are preventing the Gaza fisher people going further out. On the other side of the fence, in Israel, you can see cars, you can see life, you can see irrigated land and so on. And these kids, being brought up in this school, with a very good school but underfunded and so on.
And last year, and the year before, I was in Jordan visiting a school in a refugee camp there, and I asked the head teacher: “How much money do you have to run the school?” And he gave me the figures and I sort of did a rapid calculation in my head. And it was quite a good secondary school, I met the school council, students, as impressive as in Jordan. And I worked out that his capitation funding was much less than half that would be available in a secondary school in Britain. And he said it’s going to be halved again, straight away, and it’ll be cut more, and the school may have to close in two months’ time because the US, at that point, Trump had cut the funding for it, for UNRWA. And so, it’s that sense of anger among Palestinian people that I’m not sure people outside fully understand.
But also, there’s an underestimate of the feelings of people in Israel against it. Last week, I was on a conference call with people from both Palestine and Israel, people from Meretz Party, people from Gush Shalom, from B’Tselem, different peace groups within Israel who said there was a lot of anger and concern that the Trump plan will actually make their lives more dangerous, will make the situation for people in Israel more dangerous. So, the Trump plan is, I think, an absolute disaster waiting to happen.
DH: Do you think that the future will regard you more kindly than the present?
JC: Well, it depends who you mean regarding me more kindly.
DH: I mean that you would have been genuinely a radical prime minister.
PO: Can I put it in a different way? AJP Taylor gave his lectures in 1956 at the University of Oxford about the British radical tradition. It turned into a wonderful book, The Troublemakers. And he traces a tradition of Englishmen and Brits from Tom Paine to [William] Cobbett, Keir Hardie. And he says that these, and he goes through these characters, they’re outside the governing tradition. They are troublemakers. They’re radicals, he calls them. They never win power in their lifetimes, but they win the future. They become, whatever their views, their views, 20 years after that. And they’re not always right. Taylor said they were against World War Two as a whole these radicals. They were against World War One, that was right. They were against it. But whatever their view is at any given time becomes the orthodoxy 25 years later. Do you buy into any of that?
JC: Yes, I do. The future is getting closer. Yeah. I mean, I, AJP Taylor wonderful guy. I loved the way he always brought in coincidences as well. The worst - if somebody had, if only they delayed a bit longer at the ticket office and not caught that train, they’d have survived, and so and so would have happened and the X, Y, Z would not have taken place in history. Wonderful. And his talks on television, I remember them as a child. They were absolutely brilliant, I was riveted by these things. The rest of the family: “Well, what you watching that for?” I said: “Oh shut up it’s really good.” Yeah, you know what it’s like with groups, I grew up with three brothers who...
Anyway, I do think that that great radical tradition is a very strong one. And we deny our understanding, our own history at our peril, because there is a very strong radical tradition throughout Britain, which is often denied by the teaching of normal history. My mum and dad wrote a history of the village they lived in before they died. And at one level, a history of a village is about the church, it’s about the buildings, it’s about the streets, it’s about who owned the land and so on, and so on, and so forth. But they decided to write about the machine riots of the 19th century, about the way in which the agricultural workers tried to destroy the machines that were being brought in because they were able, these machines, [to] thrash corn very quickly, could plough fields very quickly and so on, and deny them work. And of course, there was a purpose behind that, to drive them into the cities to work in making those very same machines in the cities. And so, there’s that radical history that runs all through our lives.
Now, the people you mentioned, Peter, such as Keir Hardie and Tom Paine and others, Tom Paine is a fascinating figure. And his writing of the Rights of Man was obviously enormous, and his role in the supporting the French Revolution, and then going to America, and so on, was absolutely critical. But the interesting one was Mary Wollstonecraft. She lived just down the road from him, just a 15-minute walk from here in Newington Green. And she was really naffed off by Tom Paine. “Hang on what’s all this? What about the rights of women?” So, she wrote the treatises on the Rights of Women and founded the girls’ school in Newington Green. And she is one of my great heroes because of the complicated life that she led, the tragedy of her death at the birth of her daughter Mary [Shelley] and, of William Godwin and all of those, that great radical tradition. And so, I think we have to remember all of them and the contribution they made.
Hardie is to me, an absolutely fascinating figure, a child labourer in the mines, quite religious and strong in the temperance movements, ended up working for the church and the temperance movement. Eventually becomes a miner’s agent organiser and eventually becomes the first Labour MP. And he had this amazing internationalist view. Now, where did that come from? Because this is a man who had grown up with very limited education, taught through the church and, taught himself a great deal, became a member of parliament, and during the time as a member of parliament, he travelled to South Africa, he travelled to India, he travelled the United States. And it wasn’t a question of hopping on a plane and getting to Mumbai six hours later. It was a question of two weeks on a ship. And the same for South Africa, same for the USA. And then he built this relationship with people and stood up against the indentured labour system in South Africa, against the caste system in India, and against the exploitation of migrant workers in the United States and brought all that back. He opposed the First World War because he felt, and he’d worked with Jean Juares and others in opposing the First World War and trying to build this workers unity across Europe. And Adam Hochschild’s book about the opponents, the First World War, is a very instructive book. And in doing all of that, he eventually was defeated by the, I don’t know, the xenophobia of the time, the nationalism of the time, and he was unable to sustain that and eventually died from a heart attack.
I think it was brought about by his depression at the way in which the basic tenet of international solidarity of the working class in Germany as well as in Britain and France and so on, had been so defeated by the Kitchener campaign. And I think he’s somebody that we should think about and remember quite a lot, of standing up against the tide.
PO: Yes, he lost his immediate political battles, but he won his long-term political battles.
JC: Well, he’s the one who’s remembered.
PO: Can I just ask Jeremy one final thing? Unless it’s too late?
DH: Go on. One more question.
PO: So, you’ve had a very bruising and must have been exhausting, morally challenging, four, five years. How do you plan to spend your future?
JC: Well, as busy as ever. I am the MP for Islington North and very proud to be so and I have never neglected my constituency, and never would, and didn’t while I was leader of the party either. This is one of the big arguments in the office. I said: “Fridays is constituency day. I’ll be there.” They said: “Yeah, but we’d like you to –” I said: “No. I will be there.” It may be I’ll travel somewhere in the evening or whatever, but I [will] always be there, and I think it’s important for two reasons. One is because it’s your duty, if you’re elected to represent an area, you have to represent an area and you can’t, there’s no substitute for actually being there and getting involved in the random conversations on the doorstep, on the street and so on, about people’s lives. It keeps you grounded. It keeps you regular. And so, I’ve done that. So, I’m doing plenty of that. I’ve been volunteering at all the food banks in the constituency during the corona crisis, and I’m doing a lot of work on international issues, peace and justice and human rights, and working on environmental issues as well.
So, I’m extremely busy, as I’ve always been, and I have never given up my allotment either, and won’t. And indeed, I’m about to plant out all the maize next weekend. It’s growing nicely in the back garden and it will be taken up to the allotment, growing, we grow two varieties of maize. One is F1 hybrid maize, which is developed in Europe and grows very fast and looks very good and all the rest of it. But we have a far more interesting maize that’s Mexican maize in honour of Laura. And it is multi-coloured and it’s beautiful to eat. But it’s slower growing in this country, but it grows very well in Mexico. We just need a bit more sun here.
PO: Well it looks like it will be a hot summer.
JC: One hopes.
DH: Thank you Mr Corbyn for a very full interview and good answers. You can watch this on www.middleeasteye.org and associated platforms. Thanks also to Peter for joining me.
JC: Thank you very much. Really enjoyed it.
]]>(COVID-19) Shanghai signale un nouveau cas importé de COVID-19
#Covid-19#migrant#migration#Chine#Shanghai#cas_importé#Royaume_Uni#retour
▻http://french.china.org.cn/china/txt/2020-06/13/content_76159067.htm
Il s’agit d’un ressortissant chinois qui est parti du Royaume-Uni le 28 mai. Après une escale au Sri Lanka, il est arrivé à l’aéroport international Pudong de Shanghai le 29 mai. Le patient a présenté des symptômes au cours de la période d’observation en isolement et a été testé positif au COVID-19.
Avec la crise du Covid-19, les syndicats signent un retour en force
▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/royaume-uni-avec-la-crise-du-covid-19-les-syndicats-signent-u
Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the #COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study - The Lancet
▻https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30854-0/abstract
We included 3 862 012 individuals (1 957 935 [50·7%] women and 1 904 077 [49·3%] men). We estimated that more than 20% of the study population are in the high-risk category, of whom 13·7% were older than 70 years and 6·3% were aged 70 years or younger with at least one un
]]>Ken Loach : « La crise du #Covid-19 expose l’échec de la #privatisation de la #santé »
▻https://www.franceinter.fr/ken-loach-la-crise-du-covid-19-expose-l-echec-de-la-privatisation-de-la-
Mais au-delà des hôpitaux, il faut parler de ce qui se passe dans les maisons de retraite et dans les établissements pour personnes handicapées, il faut parler des soignants et des aidants, y compris de ceux qui vont à domicile s’occuper des gens qui en ont besoin. Ces personnes-là n’ont aucune sécurité de l’emploi. La plupart ont des revenus misérables. Et la plupart n’ont pas d’équipements de protection.
Pourquoi ?
Les maisons de retraite sont détenues par des sociétés privées. Et les aidants sont employés par des sociétés privées. Ils y travaillent au jour le jour, sans contrat sur la durée, parfois via des boîtes d’intérim. Ils touchent le salaire minimum et, souvent, n’ont aucune garantie horaire. Ils peuvent être appelés ou renvoyés dans la minute. Et pourtant, on leur demande de mettre leur vie en danger, sans équipement de protection, pour prendre soin de personnes par ailleurs très vulnérables.
How the NHS is being dismantled in 10 easy steps | The Independent
▻https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/how-the-nhs-is-being-dismantled-in-10-easy-steps-10474075.html
(Article de 2015)
]]>#Coronavirus: The NHS workers wearing bin bags as #protection - BBC News
▻https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52145140
Britische Regierung tritt mit dem umfangreichen Corona-Gesetz in den Ausnahmezustand ein | Telepolis
▻https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Britische-Regierung-tritt-mit-dem-umfangreichen-Corona-Gesetz-in-den-Ausnahmez
25. März 2020 Christian Bunke - Die ärmsten und verwundbarsten Bevölkerungsschichten sollen den Preis für die Krise zahlen, der Überwachungs- und Disziplinierungsstaat wird ausgebaut
329 Seiten ist es dick, das Corona-Gesetz, welches in Großbritannien im Eilverfahren und ohne nennenswerte kritische Stimmen aus der Opposition durch die Parlamentskammern gepeitscht wurde. Es ist auf eine Laufzeit von zwei Jahren angelegt. Offiziell gilt eine „Sonnenuntergangsklausel“ zur automatischen Beendigung der Wirkungsmacht des Gesetzes, aber es gibt auch Bestimmungen wonach dessen Gültigkeitsdauer wiederholt verlängert werden kann. Großbritannien tritt damit in mehr als nur einer Hinsicht in eine Phase des Ausnahmezustands ein.
Dabei schien die britische Regierung die Sache zunächst eher lax zu nehmen. Erst am 24. März wurden weit reichende Ausgangsbeschränkungen verhängt und das öffentliche Leben zu großen Teilen stillgelegt. Manche Unternehmen wollten es auch da noch immer nicht verstehen. So plante der in ganz Europa aktive Sportartikelhändler Sport Direct zunächst die Öffnung seiner Geschäfte, bis das Unternehmen von Regierungsmitgliedern im Frühstücksfernsehen zurückgepfiffen wurde.
Ende des neoliberalen Dogmas
Die Corona-Krise trifft in Großbritannien auf ein Gesundheitswesen, welches in den vergangenen 30 Jahren rund 40 Prozent seiner Bettenkapazität durch Einsparungen verloren hat. Privatisierungsmaßnahmen haben das System weiter zerstückelt und geschwächt. Nun sieht sich die Regierung gezwungen, den privaten Gesundheitssektor im Rahmen der Corona-Bekämpfung wieder administrativ in das staatliche System einzugliedern.
Das ist nicht die einzige denkwürdige Entscheidung welche im Gegensatz zum neoliberalen Dogma der vergangenen Jahrzehnte liegt. Die Eisenbahnen sind per Dekret großenteils der Kontrolle der privaten Betreibergesellschaften entzogen worden. Nun legt der Staat Fahrpreise fest und garantiert für den Betrieb der Bahnstrecken, bei Androhung vollständiger Enteignung, sollte eine Betreibergesellschaft nicht mitspielen.
Lohnabhängigen, welche aufgrund von Unternehmensschließungen ihre Jobs verlieren, wird von der Regierung eine Lohnfortzahlung von 80% bis zu einem Monatsgehalt von 2.500 Pfund garantiert. Davon profitieren allerdings nicht jene fünf Millionen Menschen, die in unterschiedlichen prekären oder Scheinselbstständigkeitsverhältnissen ihren Arbeitsalltag bestreiten. Sie gehen leer aus, auch wenn der Druck auf die Regierung steigt, hier etwas zu unternehmen.
Auf eine gewisse Weise setzt sich hier ein Trend fort, welcher schon seit einiger Zeit zu beobachten war. In seinem kurz vor Ausbruch der Corona-Krise vorgestellten Haushaltsentwurf hatte der konservative Finanzminister Rishi Sunak bereits eine Abkehr vom neoliberalen Prinzip der „schwarzen Null“ verkündet und Investitionspakete in die öffentliche Infrastruktur versprochen. Nun zwingt die aktuelle Lage die Regierung weiterzugehen als geplant. Ähnlich und in einem stärkeren Umfang als beim Bankencrash 2008 werden hektisch und fast täglich neue milliardenschwere Rettungspakete für immer größere Teile der Wirtschaft geschmiedet.
Machtergreifung der Regierung
Und doch handelt es sich hier um eine Rechtsregierung. Ihre Maßnahmen dienen der kurzfristigen Verhinderung sozialer Unruhen sowie der Absicherung von bei den Wahlen im Dezember 2020 hinzugewonnenen Wählerschichten. Wenn man das Corona-Gesetz durchliest, zeigt sich das zweite Gesicht der Johnson-Administration. Es sind die ärmsten und verwundbarsten Bevölkerungsschichten, welche den Preis für die Krise zahlen sollen. Im Gesetzestext und dem beiliegenden „Impact Assessment“ steht es schwarz auf weiß, bislang schlagen nur einige Verbände und Menschenrechtsorganisationen Alarm.
Das Corona-Gesetz hat eine große Bandbreite und Wirkungsmacht. Wahlen können nun beliebig verschoben werden. Es ermöglicht der Regierung die sofortige Schließung von Häfen und Grenzen. Der Zentralstaat und nicht mehr lokale Behörden beschließen zukünftig, ob Schulen auch gegen den Willen von Lehrkräften und Betreibern offen gehalten oder geschlossen werden müssen. Für die Wirkungsdauer des Gesetzes gibt es für bedürftige Kinder kein Recht mehr auf kostenlose Schulspeisung. Gerichte dürfen nun per Videokonferenz tagen und entscheiden. Beschäftigte im Gesundheitswesen können angewiesen werden, unter bestimmten Umständen auch fachfremde Aufgaben, für die sie vielleicht gar nicht qualifiziert sind, wahrzunehmen. Medizinstudierende sollen im Notfall zu Tätigkeiten im Gesundheitswesen verpflichtet werden können.
Am ausführlichsten hat sich bislang die Menschenrechtsorganisation „Liberty“ mit dem Gesetzestext befasst. Die Organisation stellt die Notwendigkeit, den sozialen Kontakt von Menschen untereinander größtmöglich einzuschränken, nicht in Frage, kritisiert aber die angebliche Notwendigkeit eines neuen und im britischen Fall ausufernden Gesetzes. So moniert „Liberty“ unter anderem den Ausbau des Überwachungsstaates durch das Gesetz. Tatsächlich richtet das Gesetz eine Art schnellen Dienstweg für den Beschluss von Durchsuchungsbefehlen oder Überwachungsmaßnahmen gegen Privatpersonen ein. Als Begründung wird im „Impact Assessment“ angeführt, man müsse durch Corona mit Personalausfällen bei der Justiz rechnen.
Auch die Möglichkeit, Menschen mit psychologischen Behinderungen in Gewahrsam zu nehmen, wird durch das Gesetz vereinfacht und kann nun im Schnelldurchlauf passieren. Schon jetzt besteht die große Mehrheit der britischen Gefängnisinsassen laut Angaben der Gefängniswärtergewerkschaft POA aus Leuten, die eigentlich nicht ins Gefängnis gehören, sondern psychologische Betreuung brauchen. Stattdessen gilt seit Montag auch in Gefängnissen ein Quarantänezustand, Häftlinge werden die nächsten Wochen den Großteil ihrer Zeit in den Zellen verbringen. Die Tageszeitung Financial Times spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von einer „tickenden Zeitbombe“.
Kommunen sind außerdem zukünftig nicht mehr verpflichtet, eine universelle Sozialbetreuung für ältere Menschen oder Menschen mit körperlichen Beeinträchtigungen zu gewährleisten. So soll eine Prioritätensetzung in Richtung Corona-Bekämpfung gewährleistet werden, heißt es im Impact Assessment. Die Kehrseite davon ist, dass in den kommenden Wochen die von dieser Entscheidung betroffenen Menschen keine Versorgung mehr bekommen und entsprechend höheren gesundheitlichen Risiken ausgesetzt sind.
Überhaupt keine Rede ist im Gesetzestext von Migranten oder Asylsuchenden. Sie werden unsichtbar gemacht und haben somit nichts Positives für die Dauer der Notstandszeit zu erwarten. Das Fazit von Liberty-Direktorin Martha Surrier ist entsprechend drastisch: „Wir sind besorgt darüber, dass dieses Gesetz einen gefährlichen Präzedenzfall schafft, und es ist enttäuschend, dass in Zeiten einer Gesundheitskrise die Reaktion der Regierung in der Aushöhlung von Menschenrechten und einem disziplinierenden Ansatz besteht.“
]]>Die kontrollierte Abwicklung der Sowjetunion | Telepolis
▻https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-kontrollierte-Abwicklung-der-Sowjetunion-4666425.html?seite=all
Cet article décrit des machinations qui font pâlir d’envie même plus grands complotistes.
Die Marktradikalen, das Organisierte Verbrechen, die Geiselnahme 1979 in Teheran und die Iran-Contra-Affäre: Wie sich die USA anschickten, die kommunistische Weltordnung auszuradieren
Im Schatten des offiziellen Europas versteckt sich ein anderes, ein diskreteres und weniger vorzeigbares Europa. Es ist das Europa der Steuerparadiese, die ohne Barrieren dank des internationalen Kapitals wachsen, ein Europa der Finanzplätze und der Banken, für die das Bankgeheimnis zu oft ein Alibi und einen Schutzschirm darstellt. Dieses Europa der Nummernkonten und der Geldwäscherei wird benutzt, um Geld von Drogen, Terror, Sekten, Korruption und Mafiaaktivitäten in den Wirtschaftskreislauf einzuschleusen. Diese dunklen Umlaufkreise, die von kriminellen Organisationen benutzt werden, entwickeln sich zur gleichen Zeit, in der die internationalen finanziellen Transaktionen explodieren, die Unternehmen ihre Aktivitäten ausbauen oder ihre Hauptsitze über die nationalen Grenzen hinaus verlegen. Gewisse politische Persönlichkeiten und Parteien haben selbst bei bestimmten Gelegenheiten von diesen Umlaufkreisen profitiert. Im Übrigen erweisen sich die politischen Autoritäten aller Länder heute unfähig, diesem Europa des Schattens klar und effizient entgegenzutreten.
Genfer Appell
1
Prolog in der Hölle - Der Vormarsch des Organisierten Verbrechens
Klarer kann man die realen Machtverhältnisse in der heutigen Welt kaum noch auf den Punkt bringen. Die Herren, die ihrem Zorn Luft machen, müssen es wissen. Es handelt sich hier um den so genannten Genfer Appell von sieben führenden Richtern und Staatsanwälten aus verschiedenen europäischen Ländern, veröffentlicht im Jahre 1996. Die Presse erwähnte diesen Notruf der Juristen mit keinem Wort.
Dabei war der spanische Untersuchungsrichter Balthasar Garzon schon damals international bekannt. Er sollte später den chilenischen Horrordiktator Augusto Pinochet mit Haftbefehl verfolgen, und er kümmert sich aktuell um den Wikileaks-Gründer Julian Assange. Weil Garzon so unerschrocken die Mächtigen herausfordert, wurde gegen ihn ein mehrjähriges Berufsverbot verhängt.
Das Elend, das die wackeren Sieben im Genfer Appell für Europa so treffend anprangern, das aber genauso in der ganzen Welt vorherrscht, hat seine Ursprünge in den späten 1960er Jahren aufzuweisen. Durch den Terror des US-amerikanischen Geheimdienstes CIA waren integre nationalistische Regierungen in der Dritten Welt gewaltsam gestürzt und durch korrupte Militärregime ersetzt worden. Deswegen erhob der streitbare spanische Richter Garzon auch gegen Henry Kissinger Anklage. Kissinger war der Drahtzieher der Operation Condor: in Lateinamerika wurden reihenweise Horrordiktaturen wie jene des Augusto Pinochet in Chile installiert. Dasselbe traurige Bild ergibt sich für die 1960er und 1970er Jahre für Afrika oder Asien.
Die Folge: abrupt unterbrochene wirtschaftliche und politische Entwicklungen. An die Stelle einer Aufbruchsstimmung nunmehr Angst, Einschüchterung, Lähmung und innere Kündigung der Bürger. Über die bleierne Duldungsstarre herrschten ab jetzt Militärdiktatoren und kriminelle Banden. Die Regierung mit dem ihr anvertrauten Volksvermögen war für jene Kreise zum Selbstbedienungsladen verkommen. Gelder und andere Vermögenswerte wurden massenhaft außer Landes geschafft.
Anstelle demokratischer Abstimmungsprozesse und regelbasierter Konfliktlösung nunmehr der blanke Terror der Waffen, flankiert von strangulierenden Vorschriften des Internationalen Währungsfonds und der Weltbank. In jener ohne Not verwüsteten Welt sind nur noch die Kirchen und andere religiöse Gemeinschaften, das Militär sowie kriminelle Netzwerke voll funktionsfähig.
Das alleine ist schon schlimm genug. Es gibt aber einen Brandbeschleuniger, der dafür sorgen sollte, dass das Organisierte Verbrechen als vierter großer globaler Spieler neben den Multinationalen Konzernen, den aus Bretton Woods entstandenen Nichtregierungsorganisationen und den zusammengestutzten Nationalstaaten am Runden Tisch der Weltregierung Platz nehmen konnte. Ermöglicht wurde der Eintritt der Al Capones dieser Welt in das Zentrum der Macht durch das so genannte Clearing-System. 1968 hatte die private Citibank die Firma Clearstream gegründet. 1970 folgten konkurrierende Banken mit der Gründung der Clearingfirma CEDEL im biederen Luxemburg.
Die Clearing-Stellen sind sozusagen die „Notariate des Globalkapitals“. Wenn früher Wertgegenstände, sagen wir mal: ein Goldbarren, den Besitzer wechselte, dann musste der Goldbarren mit allerlei Transportaufwand von Verkäufer A zu Käufer B transportiert werden. Wenn z.B. die Nazis ihr Gold, das sie eroberten Zentralbanken oder ermordeten jüdischen Mitbürgern geraubt hatten, zum Umschmelzen zur Basler Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich mit LKWs transportierten, war das eher auffällig.
Die Clearing-Stellen dagegen bürgen ganz einfach dafür, dass die Goldbarren in einem bestimmten Safe deponiert sind. Der Besitzer wechselt, aber nicht der Standort des Wertgegenstandes. Auf diese Weise kann jede Art von Wertgegenstand transferiert werden, ob nun teure Gemälde, Aktienpakete, Devisen, wertvolle Teppiche, einfach alles. Clearing kümmert sich nicht um die Herkunft oder die Legalität der transferierten Werte.
Das wird möglich dadurch, dass die Besitzerwechsel nicht in Textform protokolliert werden, sondern in chiffrierten Zahlencodes, deren Bedeutung nur ganz wenige Mitarbeiter in den höheren Rängen der Firmenhierarchie kennen. Der untere Sachbearbeiter verschiebt den ganzen Tag nur stumpfsinnig Zahlenkolonnen. Auf diese Weise gibt es kaum Mitwisser oder gar Whistleblower über die getätigten Transaktionen.
Passend zur Einrichtung dieser Clearingstellen sorgte die Gründung des weltweiten Kontoführungssystems SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) im Jahre 1973 für sichere Wege, auf denen Kontobewegungen weltweit über 11.000 angeschlossene Banken abgewickelt werden können. Clearing-System und SWIFT sind sozusagen die Entsprechung zur digitalen Informationsrevolution, für die Finanzwelt: alle Transaktionen sind gleich, ungeachtet der qualitativen und quantitativen Unterschiede.
#privatisation #néo_libéralisme #putsch #Chili #USA #Royaume_Uni #droits_sociaux
]]>Großbritannien : Dominic Cummings: Wie der Chefberater von Boris Johnson den Umbau des Landes plant
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/dominic-cummings-wie-der-chefberater-von-boris-johnson-den-umbau-de
24.2.2020 von Peter Nonnemacher - Der Brexit war für den gefürchteten Außenseiter unter den Regierungsmitgliedern nur ein Etappenziel. In Cummings reaktionärer Agenda hat die „etablierte Ordnung“ keinen Platz. Seine Gegner werfen ihm vor, die britische Demokratie zu untergraben.
Für die einen ist er ein unerschrockener Freigeist, der die Politik im Vereinigten Königreich in gänzlich neue Bahnen lenkt und „den Vergessenen“ im Lande helfen möchte. Für die anderen ist er eine Art machtbesessener Eigenbrötler, der das Tageslicht scheut, Übles ausheckt und die britische Demokratie nach Kräften demontiert.
An Dominic Cummings scheiden sich die Geister. Nicht einmal die Tory-Hardliner, auf deren Seite er steht, trauen ihm so recht. Der Chefstratege und De-facto-Stabschef Boris Johnsons ist ein derart eigenwilliger Zeitgenosse, dass er jedermann verunsichert. In Wirklichkeit verachtet „Dom“ konventionelles Denken im konservativen Lager ebenso wie das, was er für Scheuklappen-Sozialismus am anderen Ende des Spektrums hält.
Für Grobheiten und rabiate Sprüche bekannt
Ein Wunder ist es nicht, dass Westminster und Whitehall in latenter Angst vor ihm leben. Respekt vor anderen zu zeigen, ist nicht seine Natur. Für Grobheiten und rabiate Sprüche ist er bekannt. Theresa Mays ersten Brexit-Minister David Davis hat er ja einmal „dumm wie Minze und faul wie eine Kröte“ genannt.
Und im vorigen Sommer fuhr er den damaligen Wirtschaftsminister Greg Clark an, Clark und die anderen „bescheuerten Abgeordneten“ pro-europäischer Orientierung wollten offenbar einfach nicht begreifen, woher der Wind wehe. „Wir werden euch alle eliminieren“, warnte er unverblümt.
Das tat er denn auch, oder genauer gesagt: Das ließ er Boris Johnson tun. 21 „Tory-Rebellen“, darunter prominente Veteranen, Ex-Minister und der Winston-Churchill-Enkel Sir Nicholas Soames wurden unmittelbar nach Johnson Wahl zum Parteichef aus der konservativen Fraktion ausgeschlossen. Der Brachialakt kostete Johnson seinerzeit den Rest seiner schon brüchigen Unterhaus-Mehrheit. Aber sie war eine Lehre für alle Aufmüpfigen, die bis heute niemand vergessen hat.
Jüngster Coup: Die Entmachtung des Schatzkanzlers
Von jener spektakulären Aktion spannt sich ein Bogen zum jüngsten Coup Cummings – der rabiaten Entmachtung des Schatzkanzlers, also Finanzministers, Sajid Javid, nach dem Premier wichtigstes Regierungsmitglied, im Zuge einer Regierungsumbildung vor wenigen Tagen. Javid wollte dem Kurs nicht widerspruchlos folgen, den Johnson aufs Geheiß Cummings hin eingeschlagen hatte. Auch er, Javid, begriff offenbar nicht, woher der Wind wehte. Oder er wusste es und nahm die Folgen in Kauf.
Zum Verhängnis wurde ihm, dass Cummings sich von Johnson ausbedungen hatte, das gesamte Netz ministerieller Berater in der britischen Regierung kontrollieren zu dürfen. Schon voriges Jahr hatte Cummings, zur Empörung Javids, eine Mitarbeiterin und enge Vertraute des Schatzkanzlers wegen Unbotmäßigkeit an die Luft gesetzt.
Sonia Khan wurde damals von einem bewaffneten Polizisten aus der Regierungszentrale abgeführt. Diesmal verlangte Cummings die Köpfe ausnahmslos aller Berater des Schatzkanzlers und totale Kontrolle über den Mitarbeiterstab in No 11 Downing Street, der gleich neben No 10 liegenden Residenz des Finanzministers. Das hielt Javid nicht für vereinbar mit seinem „Selbstrespekt“. Lieber eliminierte er sich selbst.
Alle fürchten die Macht des „rechten Revoluzzers“
Einig ist man sich in London darin, dass kein Kabinettsmitglied und kein anderer Mitarbeiter des Regierungschefs über derart viel Macht verfügt wie Johnsons Topstratege, der seinen Gegnern mal wie ein „rechter Revoluzzer“, mal wie ein „neuer Rasputin“ vorkommt – und den alle fürchten. Wann immer Cummings neueste „Ideen“ an die Öffentlichkeit durchsickern, rührt das mehr Schlagzeilen auf als die Politik aller Johnson-Minister zusammengenommen.
Bezeichnend für den Einfluss des 48-Jährigen ist, dass Donald Trumps Stabschef Mick Mulvaney sich bei einem London-Besuch vor kurzem weniger an einem Treffen mit seinem nominellen Gegenüber, dem eher moderaten Sir Edward Lister, interessiert zeigte als an einem mit Dominic Cummings. Auch in Washington scheint man davon überzeugt zu sein, dass der „Meister der finsteren Künste“ die maßgebliche Stimme in Downing Street ist, das Gehirn der Operation im Büro des Premiers.
Was ihm zu dieser Position verhalf, ist kein Geheimnis. Cummings spielte, hinter den Kulissen, für die „Vote Leave“-Kampagne die zentrale Rolle beim Brexit-Referendum vor vier Jahren. Sein genialer Slogan „Take back control“ (Verschafft euch wieder die Kontrolle über euer Leben) ist unvergessen geblieben. Johnson war damals, in seinem „Battle Bus“, das Gesicht der Kampagne. Er lernte Cummings brillianten Einsatz, sein Gespür für die Stimmung im Lande und seine skrupellose Taktik in jener Schlacht zu schätzen.
Johnson benötigte „Dom“ für die Umsetzung des Brexit
Schon damals beschrieben Mitarbeiter und Gesprächspartner Dominic Cummings als totalen Außenseiter im Herzen der britischen Politik und ihrer traditionellen Club-Atmosphäre. Nicht nur wegen seiner saloppen Kleidung, dem ewig heraushängenden Hemd und Gürtel, den Sportschuhen und der wollenen Teewärmer-Mütze, die er noch heute zur Arbeit in No 10 Downing Street trägt.
„Normale Arbeitsstunden“ habe Cummings nie gekannt, berichtete einer, der mit ihm ein Büro teilte. Manchmal sei er ganz aufgeregt vor seinem Bildschirm herumgesprungen, habe dann wieder stundenlang verdrossen und verschlossen in einer Ecke gesessen. „Arrogant und aggressiv“ habe man ihn stets erlebt. Dann wieder wartete Cummings aber mit Ideen auf, die es in sich hatten. Das machte ihn für Leute wie Johnson unverzichtbar.
Für Gesinnungsgenossen war Cummings eh immer „ein Genie“. Und selbst jemand wie Sir Nicholas Soames, der erst aus der Partei verstoßen und dann wieder aufgenommen wurde, nannte Cummings „ausgesprochen begabt, einen cleveren Menschen“. Jede Regierung brauche schließlich einen Störenfried.
Als „Boris“ 2019 zum Premier aufrückte, benötigte er „Dom“ jedenfalls, um den Brexit endgültig umzusetzen und ihm bei Neuwahlen mit einem zündenden Wahlkampf zu helfen. Er stellte ihn als seinen Chefberater ein, erlaubte ihm, sein altes, handverlesenes „Vote Leave“-Team mit in die Downing Street zu bringen und räumte ihm außergewöhnliche Befugnisse ein. Bereits in den ersten Monaten stießen sich viele Tories und hohe Staatsbeamte an der Macht des in Johnsons Schatten operierenden Cummings, der niemandem sonst Rechenschaft schuldete. Der Günstling des Premiers, klagten sie, übe in No 10 die reinste „Terrorherrschaft“ aus.
Gegner werfen ihm Anti-Parlamentarismus vor
Cummings ließ in der Tat niemanden darüber im Zweifel, dass diese Show seine Show war. Schockiert verlangte Ex-Premier Sir John Major von Johnson, Cummings loszuwerden, bevor der die politische Kultur im Lande „vergifte“. Mit seiner Einschüchterung des Kabinetts, den Tiraden gegen alle staatstragenden Organe und seinem ungenierten Populismus und Anti-Parlamentarismus untergrabe Cummings schlicht die britische Demokratie, fanden seine Gegner.
Das kümmerte Johnson, der auf seinen erfolgreichen Berater schwor, allerdings wenig. Mit der neuen brillianten Parole „Get Brexit Done“, bringen wir den Brexit hinter uns, wusste Cummings die Stimmung wieder richtig zu deuten und Johnson zum heroischen Verteidiger des Volkswillen gegen eine störrische Volksvertretung zu stilisieren. Mit 80 Sitzen Mehrheit gingen die Tories aus den Dezemberwahlen hervor.
Mittlerweile, da auch der formelle Austritt Großbritanniens aus der EU vollzogen ist, hat es sich Dominic Cummings zur Aufgabe gemacht, sehr viel weiter reichende Änderungen in Gang zu bringen. Brexit war für ihn nur ein Etappenziel. Er hatte von Anfang an viel mehr geplant.
Denn Cummings Überzeugung ist es, dass die ganze „etablierte Ordnung“ im Lande aus den Angeln gehoben werden muss. Viele Regierungsstrukturen kommen dem Chef-Planer in Downing Street untauglich vor. Die Staatsbeamtenschaft, meint er, sei verkrustet und unbeweglich und müsse mit Schockmaßnahmen aus ihrer Selbstzufriedenheit aufgeschreckt werden. Macht müsse zentralisiert werden. Das Militär brauche eine neue Struktur.
Die BBC muss „zerschlagen“ werden
Auch das Bildungswesen, findet Cummings, müsse vollkommen umorganisiert werden. Und die Justiz brauche eine effizientere Aufsicht. Politiker sollen über die Berufung von Richtern mitentscheiden können. Den Einfluss der etablierten Medien müsse man endlich beschneiden. Was Trump mit seinen Tweets erreiche, solle London mit Online-Videos versuchen – nämlich sich direkt an die Bevölkerung zu wenden. Die BBC und ihr öffentlicher Auftrag müssten „zerschlagen“ werden: „Und wir bluffen nicht.“
Letzterer Programmpunkt scheint bei Premier Johnson immerhin ein paar Zweifel ausgelöst zu haben. Dem „weniger ideologischen“ Regierungschef, war jetzt aus einer anderen Ecke der Regierungszentrale zu hören, sei „mehr an Reform als an Revolution“ gelegen. Und allmächtig sei Cummings nicht. Gegen Cummings Willen setzte Johnson diesen Monat denn auch die Schnellbahntrasse HS2 von London nach Birmingham durch, die der Premier als wichtiges Stück Infrastruktur betrachtet. Und auch das Entwicklungshilfe-Ministerium ist nicht, wie von Cummings geplant, im Foreign Office aufgegangen. Noch zögert Johnson in manchem. Noch hängt einiges in der Luft.
Mit einer anderen, ganz außerordentlichen Aktion aber hat sich sein Super-Stratege nun selbst in Schwierigkeiten gebracht – ganz unerwartet. Im Rahmen einer witzig gemeinten Stellenausschreibung, über die Cummings unbürokratisch denkende „Spinner“ und „Sonderlinge“ zur Vermehrung „unkonventioneller“ Denkweise anwerben wollte, stieß er auf einen 27-Jährigen namens Andrew Sabisky, den er auch umgehend für sein Team anheuerte.
Kritiker warnen: Cummings könnte Regierung schaden
Wie sich gleich danach herausstellte, handelte es sich bei dem „Sonderling“ Sabisky freilich um einen extrem rechts gestrickten Zeitgenossen, der rassistischem Gedankengut verhaftet war und entsprechende Erbgut-Vorstellungen propagierte. Nach einem Tag betretenen Schweigens in No 10 war Sabisky seinen Job wieder los.
So etwas sei nun wirklich nicht akzeptabel, grollten zwei Staatssekretäre der Johnson-Regierung. Und Londons liberale Tageszeitung The Guardian meinte besorgt, Cummings verfolge nichts als eine „zynische Politik der Provokation“. Er suche das Land zu spalten, statt sich um echte Lösungen zu bemühen. Dominic Cummings selbst ließ solche Kritik kalt. Die „Polit-Brigade“ in London, fand er, habe doch „keine Ahnung, wovon sie spricht“.
Freilich nimmt auch in konservativen Kreisen neuerdings die Unruhe über Cummings Visionen und seinen Einfluss auf die Arbeit der Exekutive zu. Einer, der mit rücksichtsloser Radikalität Wahlkämpfe und Volksabstimmungen bestreite, meinen zahlreiche Tories, eigne sich nicht auch automatisch fürs zähe und auf Konsens angelegte Regierungsgeschäft.
Besorgnis erregt vor allem, dass Boris Johnson seinem Helfer bisher keine Zügel hat anlegen wollen. Sitzt Johnson selbst in einer „Blase“ in Downing Street? Cummings Macht in No 10 und sein „überaus aggressiver Stil“ seien dabei, die Regierung Johnson ernsthaft zu beschädigen, „noch bevor sie die Arbeit richtig aufgenommen hat“, warnte an diesem Wochenende in der Tory-freundlichen Londoner Times deren Kommentator Iain Martin. Wenn Johnson Cummings nicht bald die Tür weise, „zerstört der No 10 noch von innen heraus“.
]]>British Nazi set self on fire trying to burn down synagogue▻https://boingboing.net/2020/01/08/british-nazi-set-self-on-fire.html
Il y a une vidéo.
]]>We spent 10 years talking to people. Here’s what it taught us about Britain | News | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/03/anywhere-but-westminster-vox-pops-understanding-uk-political-landscape
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7c33fe0ae3499763f577f862ea71bc66e6cf14f7/112_153_2525_1515/master/2525.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
If you do the kind of political journalism that involves talking to the general public, something faintly magical can sometimes happen. As events swirl around and you try to make sense of huge, complicated themes, a single conversation will bring everything into focus. And not via words alone: facial expressions, gestures, and the way individual words are emphasised can give you a vivid sense of how people think, and the way their feelings could create political change. The encounter might be fleeting, but a connection can be made; as one side understands, the other feels heard.
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Since 2010, we have been responsible for the Guardian video series Anywhere But Westminster, in which we try to explore the gap between high politics and life as it is lived. With so much political coverage now based on opinion polling, we are interested not just in how people might vote, but what is behind their political choices. Vox pops have long been a crucial part of what we do.
]]>ARTE Regards - Pays riches et #pauvreté_infantile | ARTE
▻https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/084754-013-A/arte-regards-pays-riches-et-pauvrete-infantile
Le #Royaume_Uni compte parmi les pays les plus riches de la planète. Pourtant, comme plus de quatre millions d’enfants britanniques, Noah et son petit frère vivent dans la #pauvreté. Un chiffre qui a même progressé de 100 000 par an ces cinq dernières années.
]]>War crimes scandal: Army ‘covered up torture and child murder’ in the Middle East | News | The Sunday Times
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/army-covered-up-torture-and-child-murder-bfdc5rsmw
Military detectives unearthed disturbing allegations that senior commanders had tried to hide war crimes by British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, a year-long investigation by The Sunday Times and the BBC Panorama programme has established.
Evidence had been found of murders by an SAS soldier and deaths in custody, beatings, torture and degrading sexual abuse of detainees by members of the Black Watch. The military detectives also discovered allegations of the falsification of documents serious enough to merit prosecutions of senior officers.
#crimes #guerre #irak #afghanistan #grande_bretagne #royaume_uni
]]>Military spending: 20 companies profiting the most from war
▻https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/02/21/20-companies-profiting-the-most-from-war-4
#guerres #complexe_militaro_industriel
#etats-unis
#France
#royaume_uni
#Russie