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More on UKIP.
The sad truth is that a lot of people who aren’t especially prepared to read unbiased news reports will often go for a right-wing party that dresses up its more nasty policies in populist clothes when times get hard. Rather than look at one’s own failings, it’s always easier to find a scapegoat to blame your troubles on. Thankfully, this shower •••
Baghdad & Granai Airstrikes, Iraq and Afghan War Logs
Big Brother
Boris Johnson
A Bully Hates to be Laughed at
Wraysbury Citizens’ Abuse
Collapse of Civilized Government
Falkland Islands referendum
Gay marriage
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda
American and Israeli ‘Justice’
Chelsea (Bradley) Manning
Trayvon Martin
Monroe Doctrine
People en masse
Police “Execution” & August 2011 Riots
Are British Police Immune From Guilt?
Police shoot naked student
Police taser blind man
Police wasting taxpayers’ money
PRISM
Am I Racist?
Edward Snowden
Thatcher
Anti-E-mail Surveillance and US Extradition
Text Speak Guide
Ian Tomlinson
Totalitarianism
Spongers on the State
UKIP
••• are more than adept enough at shooting themselves in the foot, so only the most stubborn or stupid will end up actually voting for them come next May.
Camoron on UKIP: “An inconsequential party populated mainly by ‘fruitcakes, lunatics and closet racists’.” It was one of the few times Camoron has got anything right.
See also these quotations and one-line opinions.
And Guántanamo Bay still isn’t closed. Read this hand-written account by a prisoner in there, not serving a ‘sentence’ nor even having been charged with anything.
Am I missing something about Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL? It is abhorrent and sickening when they behead a western journalist. But when the West bombs the hell out of “terrorists” who don’t fit into the western ideal of a democracy, killing thousands of civilians, that’s OK? Yes, I know about 9/11 and all the lies that took George Dumbya Bush and Tony Bliar into a war of revenge, but why do we have to meddle continually in others’ affairs? Oh, I get it, it’s the oil!
Eric Pickles
Wraysbury
Somerset Levels
Many properties adjacent to the River Thames were flooded in February 2014. One place was the village of Wraysbury in Berkshire. A government minister, Eric Pickles (Communities Secretary), piled blame on the Environment Agency’s (EA) chairman Chris Smith. Pickles criticised Smith for refusing to say sorry for the failures when he was besieged by angry locals on a visit to an area that had experienced flooding.
According to the GMB union (General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union), staff of the EA were pulled out of Wraysbury after they suffered abuse from residents; they had suffered hostility from members of the public. Justin Bowden, national officer of the GMB union commented: “This report of hostility from the residents on the Thames is a direct result of the irresponsible attack by Pickles and others on the EA. His incitement has led to the very people on the front line who are actually helping to alleviate the situation bearing the brunt of people’s frustrations. For more than seven weeks since Christmas the EA’s staff have been run ragged helping and supporting the victims of flooding. GMB members have been working double and triple shifts around the clock to protect and assist.”
Regarding the flooding in the Somerset Levels (which are very close to sea level, and have been drained since before the Domesday Book), Pickles admitted that the Government had made a “mistake” in not dredging rivers but said it was done on the advice of the EA. Repeated calls for dredging were made to Downing Street and other Whitehall departments by farmers and others in the region for at least six months but funding was declined. The GMB said David Camoron had repeatedly refused to say whether he would halt planned redundancies at the EA when asked by Labour leader Ed Miliband. Grants to the EA have been cut in real terms by more than a quarter over the past three years, said the GMB. “The Government must immediately reverse the ludicrous cut of 1,700 EA jobs, followed by an independent inquiry into what are the realistic funding levels necessary to ensure the EA has both the capital budget to protect the country from flooding and drought and a big enough revenue budget to maintain, service and run these vital defences,” added Mr Bowden.
One interesting thing about these abusive people is that, almost without exception, the people of Berkshire have elected Tory MPs (the only one without a Tory MP is Slough which is Labour), and what’s more the runner-up in almost every constituency at the 2010 General Election was a Liberal-Democrat, the partners of the Tories in the present government. Tory party policy is to reduce the size of government agencies, to “get Westminster off our backs”. In my opinion, residents of Wraysbury and other similar places deserved what they got; if you vote in a party that advocates reducing public spending, you reap the consequences. Perhaps the government cut-backs should have gone on reducing spending on expensive aircraft carriers and jet fighters. But the wealthy voters there wouldn’t tolerate that! By Jove, no! (In Somerset, four of the five constituencies are held by Lib-Dems, the other by a Tory. Labour didn’t even come second in any of them.)
See also Thames floods and Railway floods.
Just watch this snippet of an interview (Eddie Mair, interviewing Boris Johnson on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, confronts him about claims he made up quotes while working for The Times, lied to his party leader about having an affair and provided a friend with the address of someone they wanted to ‘beat up’. Mair also asks Johnson about his refusal to discuss whether he wants to be the prime minister, to which he replies ‘I don’t want to talk about this’). Could you bumble better? How could the people of London elect such a barefaced and devious liar?
Mr Johnson said that plans to expand Heathrow would be too expensive joking that: “It would probably be cheaper to move London slightly to the east”.
Chelsea (Bradley) Manning is escorted to the court at Fort Meade, Maryland
Whistle-blower Chelsea Manning caused one of the largest leaks of government secrets in United States history. In April 2010, the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks released a video called Collateral Murder, a classified US military video from July 2007, from an Apache attack helicopter over Baghdad. The video shows a group of men walking, then the systematic killing of them in a barrage of high-powered automatic fire from the helicopter. Soldiers’ radio transmissions narrate the carnage, varying from cold and methodical to cruel and enthusiastic. Helicopter gunners hunting down and shooting an unarmed man in civilian clothes, clearly wounded was murder, a war crime. Manning also released to Wikileaks details of the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing some of the 251,000 American diplomatic cables and 500,000 army reports, the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs.
Another “Cablegate” release exposed details of an alleged 2006 massacre by US troops in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi, north of Baghdad. Eleven people were killed, and the cable described eyewitness accounts in which the group, including five children and four women, was handcuffed, then executed with bullets to the head. The US military then bombed the house, allegedly to cover up the incident.
Now Manning faces 35 years in prison, describing the leaks as “one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetrical warfare.” History will no doubt use the same words as irrefutable proof of Manning’s courage.
See these from The Guardian:: US Embassy video (from The Guardian); Manning’s lawyer alleging trial is ‘a mockery’ of rights; and “Chelsea Manning’s lawyer speaking of a blemish on nation’s history”
The 12th July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was a series of air-to-ground attacks by a team of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters, which directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of nine to eleven men, of whom one had an AK-47 and another an RPG-7; most were unarmed; two were war correspondents for Reuters – Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, whose cameras were mistaken for weapons; eight men, including Noor-Eldeen, were killed; Chmagh was wounded; the second airstrike using 30 mm fire was directed at Chmagh and two other unarmed men as they were attempting to help Chmagh into their van; two children inside the van were wounded, three more men were killed, including Chmagh and the children’s father.
The 2009 Granai airstrike involved the killing of approximately 86 to 147 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, by an airstrike by a B-1 Bomber.
The Iraq War logs record 66,081 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths; the leak resulted in the Iraq Body Count project adding 15,000 civilian deaths to their count, bringing their total to over 150,000, with roughly 80% of those civilians; it is the biggest leak in the military history of the United States.
The Afghan War logs are 91,731 documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009, mostly classified Secret; they revealed information on the deaths of civilians, increased Taliban attacks, and involvement by Pakistan and Iran in the insurgency; the three newspapers which had received the documents in advance, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, all concluded that they are genuine when compared to independent reports; Der Spiegel wrote that “the editors in chief of [the three newspapers] were ‘unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material’”.
Watch this cartoon of How the NSA files affect you, and this on GCHQ Surveillance.
Fact: Much of the world’s communications flow through the US
The United States National Security Agency (NSA) has a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program PRISM programme that is gathering up and archiving online data and metadata on a massive scale from the world’s leading technology companies. The existence of the program was leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian and The Washington Post in 2013. His revelations have again framed the debate over the balance between privacy rights and the need for security. However innocently you (in the US, Europe or wherever) Google something, the NSA will have a record of it! They’re also after your tweets, phone calls and e-mails.
The US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been requiring the telecommunications company Verizon to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers’ telephone calls on an ongoing daily basis.
US government officials have asserted it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant, and that the program receives independent oversight from the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. Communications surveillance ‘helped’ prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide between 2001 and 2013, and the PRISM web traffic surveillance program contributed in over 90 percent of those cases.
PRISM involves collection of data “directly from the servers” of several major internet service providers. Corporate executives of several companies (Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, Apple, Dropbox, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL,...) said that they had no knowledge of the PRISM program in particular and also denied making information available to the government on the scale alleged by news reports.
You are probably being spied on! George Orwell, eat your heart out! Your predictions are coming true. Former CIA worker Edward Snowden is another revealer of the immoral, illegal and disgusting activities of the United Stasi National Security Agency and their United Kingdom accomplices. Watch his story unravel on TV or in the newspapers. If Americans need protecting from anyone, it’s their gun-toting right-wing fellow citizens, not those who try to uphold their human rights.
Here’s a recent interview with him.
Edward Snowden in Moscow, 2014: “I, spy: Edward Snowden in exile”
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden suggest that the UK data-gathering centre GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) operates a clandestine security electronic surveillance program named Tempora and has had access to PRISM since at least June 2010. (See NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden interview video.)
According to Snowden (see this and other Guardian articles) the two principal components of Tempora are to collate as much online and telephone traffic as possible. The vast volumes of data utilised by GCHQ in Tempora are extracted from over 200 fibre-optic cables and processed; full data are preserved for three days while metadata (e.g. the fact that you sent an e-mail to someone but not its contents) are kept for 30 days. GCHQ produces larger amounts of metadata than the NSA. About 850,000 people have security clearance to access the data.
GCHQ, Cheltenham
No distinction is made between innocent people or targeted suspects. The scope of Tempora includes recordings of telephone calls, e-mail messages, Facebook entries and the personal internet history of users. Snowden said of Tempora that “It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight... [GCHQ] are worse than the US”.
Tempora was possible only with secret agreements with “intercept partners”. GCHQ staff were urged to disguise the origin of material in their reports for fear that the rôle of the companies as intercept partners would cause “high-level political fallout”.
Lawyers for GCHQ said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted by Tempora because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage”. Ongoing technical work is expanding GCHQ’s capacity to collect data from new super cables that carry data at 100 gigabits a second.
German Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said that the program is a “nightmare” and demanded that European institutions investigate the matter. [That should delay anything happening for decades!]
The NSA director Keith Alexander said that Snowden’s disclosures of widespread US surveillance on phone records and Internet communications caused “significant and irreversible damage” to the US and its allies. Yes, he’s right there! They are showing what snooping, 1984-style tactics these so-called democracies are prepared to use.
See also this article about Snowden, and especially the readers’ comments that follow.
There’s petition calling for a UK inquiry into Tempora here.
David Miranda and Glenn Greenwald
18th August 2013.
THE UK GOVERNMENT IS NOW INTIMIDATING PARTNERS OF JOURNALISTS INVOLVED IN WHISTLE-BLOWING STORIES:
Greenwald interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong. Greenwald’s (Brazilian) partner, David Miranda, was held up while passing through Heathrow Airport en route to Brazil for NINE HOURS before he was released without charge; his laptop, mobile phone and other items were confiscated and not returned to him.
Read these two articles:
Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours
and Glenn Greenwald on Security and Liberty:
Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation.
“The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended.”
See this report from the BBC News web site which I found from “Guardian on-line”; I also located this Anonymous forum and the Encyclopedia Dramatica sites – but they may have been closed down by the time you read this (as previous sites have).
Anonymous in Los Angeles
This is one of a series of attacks on official websites claimed by the hacktivists since the start of 2012. In January hackers who indentified themselves under the Anonymous banner targeted the FBI and US Department of Justice following the takedown of the Megaupload file-sharing site, posting notice of the assault on Pastebin. The action was dubbed Tango Down — a military term adopted by hackers to reference an important site successfully taken offline. The following month the same phrase was used by the YourAnonNews twitter feed when the CIA’s site went offline – although the feed later noted that just because it reported a hack did not mean it caused it.
Other attacks credited to the group include take-downs or defacements of sites belonging to the Vatican, Interpol and the Polish and Chinese governments, as well as the release of e-mails alleged to have been stolen from the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs. This was dismissed by a Downing Street spokesman — but access to Number 10’s site was slow and intermittent for a time.
One tweet said: “You should not give UK citizens to foreign countries without evidence. If an offence happened in the UK, so should the trial.” The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee said major changes were needed to the UK–US extradition treaty to “restore public faith”. The MPs said it was “easier to extradite a British citizen to the USA than vice versa”.
Gary McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, had been fighting extradition to the US for 10 years. Mr McKinnon, of north London, was accused of hacking US military computer systems in 2002. [Fuller details below.]
Chris Tappin, of Orpington, south-east London, was extradited to the US over allegations of arms dealing. It has been claimed he conspired to sell batteries for use in Iranian missiles.
Student Richard O’Dwyer, of Chesterfield, is also fighting extradition on copyright infringement charges on a website he ran from the UK.
The Home Office said it planned to “legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows” to bring in e-mail surveillance measures. Ministers say change is needed to help fight crime and terrorism, but critics warn it is an attack on privacy.
Anonymous is a loose group of “hacktivists” who came to the fore in 2010 in the wake of the emergence of Julian Assange’s Wikileaks website. Anonymous began by aiming DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks on websites, but it has gradually changed into a grouping which claims to battle government surveillance and attempts to police the internet.
Anonymous has claimed to have defaced almost 500 websites in China. A message put on the hacked sites said the attack was carried out to protest against the Chinese government’s strict control of its citizens.
Gary McKinnon who has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, was arrested in London in March 2002 for computer misuse and was under virtual house arrest for over 10 years while fighting extradition to the US.
He (a UK citizen) was arrested (by the UK authorities) for allegedly hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers from his bedroom in London while searching for evidence of UFOs and free energy that Gary believed was being suppressed by the US government. Gary also left a cyber note saying that American foreign policy was akin to state-sponsored terrorism. Had this been scrawled on a wall few would have noticed and to a young man with Asperger’s syndrome, telling the truth as he saw it was as natural as getting out of bed in the morning. However Gary had now not only embarrassed the US by highlighting their lack of any basic security, but he had angered them.
In 2012, much to the surprise of most people and much to her credit, Theresa May eventually announced that she would block the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States. However thanks to bastard politicians in the UK and US, this ill young man’s life has been totally ruined by a simple schoolboy joke.
A man with Asperger’s Syndrome has spoken of his shock at being told by an MP that he should maintain a dignified silence on political matters lest he “create problems” for himself. Guto Bebb, the Conservative MP for Aberconwy, Wales, made the astonishing comments within emails to Dylan Barlow after the constituent enquired about foreign affairs matters.
“If you have mental health issues then you should possibly refrain from commenting in the public domain since it might create problems for you,” Mr Bebb advised. He also knocked Mr Barlow’s Asperger’s as a “sob story”.
The two began wrangling over emails after Mr Barlow asked about “Danish military involvement in the Faroe Islands”. Mr Bebb took umbrage with some previous comments made by Mr Barlow on social media and so refused to take up the query. Mr Bebb also said “Oh behave” twice to his constituent during the dialogue – an exchange which has been posted in its entirety online by Mr Barlow.
Here is that exchange, unedited except to remove personal e-mail and postal addresses and detailed timings. This exchange took place on Mon, Sep 1, 2014 between 1:39 PM and 2:48 PM, Subject: Danish Military Involvement In The Faroe Islands
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
Dear Mr Bebb,
As you are my MP, I wish you to investigate the Danish military involvement in the Faroe Islands. I am led to believe that the Danes actions are in violation of European law.
I wish to lodge my utmost contempt to the Danish navies support of the illegal whaling operation in the Faroe islands.
The Danish navy have illegally detained a number of Sea Shepherd volunteers who were acting in accordance with the international ban on whaling, which Denmark complies.
Therefore, Denmark is violating its own laws in supporting the Faroe islands.
The fact that military assets have been deployed against unarmed civilians have sent alarm bells ringing across the world, and it is time that the Danish Government listens to international pressure.
Citizens worldwide are sickened by the annual vision of whales marooned in blood-red waters. Islanders stone, gouge, spear, hack and bludgeon some 2,000 to 3,500 long- and short-finned pilot whales under the bizarre notion that God created these animals for the Faeroese to butcher alive.
During a pilot whale “grind” boats chase whales into shallow bays, where the disoriented creatures are easily gored with metal gaffs. Waters turn a brilliant red by the time killers sink a 6-inch blade past blubber and flesh to sever a whale’s spinal cord.
Finally, vital blood vessels are cut, leaving a bay littered with mangled whales. Unbelievably, whale drives are festive community events. Young children even take part in the massacre of terrified animals.
I cannot support tourism in the Danish Faeroe Islands until whale kills are permanently terminated. I urge officials to legally shield wildlife from abuse, including the senseless slaughter of whales for sport.
Moreover, the population count for North Atlantic long-finned pilot whales is unknown. The Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats classifies them as “strictly protected.” Each time the Faeroese kill even 100 whales, entire pods and family groups are erased. This weakens the their gene pool and harms ecosystems in the North Atlantic and the North Sea.
The whale drive is illegal in other European states. Residents of the Faeroe Islands don’t use the toxin-contaminated flesh left behind. Tradition, entertainment and sport never justify outright torture. For these reasons, I respectfully ask you to outlaw whale drives in the Danish Faeroe Islands.
I hope you will take the time to read this, and I look forward to your reply.
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dear Mr Barlow,
I think this issue, being a foreign matter, is above my pay grade.
Yours etc., Guto Bebb
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
I thank you for your very prompt reply, however As my Member of Parliament , Im sure you could have at least provided me with someone in parliament who would be willing to take up my issue!
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Me Barlow, [sic]
So I should show you a degree of respect that you have opted not to show me?
Your comments on social media were clear that as your MP you thought that foreign affairs were “above my pay level”.
What has changed your mind?
Yours,
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
So every member of the electorate who disagrees with your actions loose their right to representation by their MP? I asked you to point me in the right direction, unfortunately it would seem you now choose which parts of the community you now represent.
I was trying to be civil on this matter as it is one very close to my heart, unfortunately now it would seem i will have to make a formal complaint and take your actions up with the local press.
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Oh behave. You opted to treat me with disdain and specifically stated that I should not get involved with Foreign Affairs. So what has changed? Sounds as if you simply jumped on a bandwagon because you could.
The MP / constituent relationship is a two way process. You made it clear the disdain you had for my involvement in Foreign Policy so stick to your principles which you have previously made in the public domain.
Best, GutoBebb
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
Actually You are paid to represent the interests of your constituency, so now can I just confirm for the record that you are not willing to discuss my issue in any way and you are stepping away from your elected duties?
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dylan, grow up.
Explain to me in simple terms why I must take up your foreign affairs issue whilst it is your much tweeted view that for your MP to have a view on foreign affairs is above their pay grade?
I have no idea where you stand on any foreign affairs matter (apart from your stated disdain for North Sea fishing communities) and care even less. I would, however, as I do with all constituents, research the issue and respond.
However, in view of your stated opinion that Foreign Affairs are above my pay grade I do feel that you need to explain why on this issue your stated position does not stand.
I look forward to your explanation as to why I should be interested in your foreign policy issue but not that of other constituents. It will, I have no doubt, be worth reading.
Best,
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
I will not be explaining anything to yourself from now on Mr Bebb. full copies of these emails will be sent to the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards along with a full complaint. Also full copies have been sent to the Daily Post and the Weekly news
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dylan,
By all means.
Shame that you can happily hand out stick on Twitter but when asked to simply explain the inherent contradiction in your views it seems slightly too difficult. Not surprised to be honest, the contradiction is pretty clear and can only be explained by reference to the view that I should be interested in your pet foreign affairs issue but not those that do not interest you.
Surprise, surprise, that is not how democracy works.
I do look forward to receiving a copy of your complaint. It will keep me amused.
Best,
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dear Dylan,
I often find that those who are brave on twitter are cowards in real life.
You seem to fit the bill.
Best, Guto
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
Dear Mr Bebb,
I think that comment was completely uncalled for, you know nothing about me or my daily struggles!
I suffer from aspergers and find some aspects of life extremely difficult, so before you brand people a coward, maybe you should think before sending childish emails.
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dear Dylan,
What I know is that you are willing to attack me in a public forum with no justification.
That is, in my view, the work of a coward. As for your daily problems and struggles; is that a justification for attacking me?
I have always treated you with respect, you chose not to extend the same respect to me. Fine, so be it, but do not start a sob story now.
Yours, Guto
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
So just because I disagree wholeheartedly with your support of Israel and speaking out against your views in public, I am now a coward?
As to you calling my condition a sob story, I find that extremely offensive! How dare you
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
Dylan, are you just obstinate or just not very clever?
I do not care what your view is on Foreign Affairs and you have every right not to agree with me. What I highlighted was your rude and disparaging comments about foreign affairs being above my “pay grade”. Whilst that might be your view it takes a certain type of cheek to then ask for my support on a foreign affairs related issue.
As yet you have not had the decency to try and explain the inherent contradiction in your position and I suspect that I will be waiting until the cows come home for an explanation.
Best,
From Dylan Barlow to Guto Bebb
I have found your emails today to be extremely offensive and they have caused some distress (not that I expect you to understand in any way!).
Attacking my mental health issues as a sob story has shown your true colours!
Todays set of emails will be passed along to with yesterdays to the Chair of the Aberconwy Conservatives and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
Yes I disagree with your actions in Israel, but that is not a reason to attack me in such a manner!
If you cannot take criticism, I suggest you find a new line of work (which I suspect come May, you will be anyway!)
From Guto Bebb to Dylan Barlow
O behave!
As for your complaints they have to come to me first so the meeting I have offered might be worthwhile.
Guto
PS – If you do have mental health issues then you should possibly refrain from commenting in the public domain since it might create problems for you.
Mr Barlow, 27, later said the MP was living “in the dark ages” and fumed: “We live in an age of free speech and for a politician to believe otherwise, goes to show the problems we face in our daily struggles.”
Mary Wimbury, Labour’s general election candidate for Aberconwy, said the Tory MP’s comments were inexcusable. She said: “This lack of courtesy and respect towards constituents is clearly an inappropriate way for any MP to behave – he should think long and hard about his future behaviour.”
Mr Bebb denied his comments were derogatory. He said: “If Dylan claims that some of his online comments should be understood in the context of his mental health issues then I think it was a generous piece of advice for him to think twice before he posts such comments. I do have a close family history of mental health issues and find the idea that I would be derogatory of such an illness highly offensive.”
He also added to The Independent: “It is very disappointing that the local Labour candidate is seeking to make political capital out of a constituent who has mental health/learning difficulties, who has had a long and difficult history with this office. “Due to confidentiality issues in the MP/constituent relationship I am unable to offer any further comment.”
Mary Wimbury told her twitter followers: “I differ from Guto Bebb not just on politics. I think MPs should treat constituents with respect not discrimination. “Well, @GutoBebb really knows how to keep me motivated to beat him. There’s a reason they call them the nasty party.”
Mr Barlow took to twitter to say that he has Asperger’s, depression, anxiety, ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] and dyslexia.
AP foreign, Saturday October 6 2012
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) – A police officer at the University of South Alabama has fatally shot a naked student whom authorities said repeatedly charged the officer.
University officials said the confrontation happened early Saturday morning when the officer went outside a police station to investigate a banging noise at a window.
Once outside, the officer was confronted by a naked man acting erratically.
Authorities said the man repeatedly charged the officer, who pulled his gun and retreated several times in an attempt to defuse the situation. When the man made a final charge, the officer shot him once in the chest.
The student has been identified as 18-year-old Gilbert Thomas Collar of Wetumpka.
Local prosecutors are investigating the shooting. The officer who fired the shot has been placed on paid administrative leave.
British Police have deployed a Taser stun gun on a blind stroke victim Colin Farmer in October 2012. Mr Farmer, aged 61, was tasered in the back after police received reports of a man running through Chorley, Lancashire, with a sword. The innocent blind man was shot with a stun gun; the “samurai sword” was his white stick!
Earlier that month, James McCarthy, a 22-year-old man from Liverpool, suffered a cardiac arrest after he was tasered four times by Merseyside police. He was left critically ill in hospital following a disturbance at Albert Dock after a night out with friends.
In another case, a mentally ill man on a roof was hit with a taser by police and the muscle spasms led to him falling off the roof. There was also a case in Birmingham of a disabled man who was tasered after he was physically incapable of leaving his mobility vehicle as demanded by police.
The stun guns were fired by police at 27-year-old Dale Burns in Barrow, Cumbria, last year, who later died. In the US, where they are more regularly used, there have been hundreds of deaths. Taser use in England rose by 45% in 2011. The Police Federation wants to treble the number of officers using tasers from the 12,000 currently in use to 36,000. Forces in England and Wales fired the weapons on more than 1,500 occasions in the year ending March 2011.
Officers are supposed to use the tasers only as a last resort where they “would be facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use such force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject”. However there is poor scrutiny of taser use, which is an issue. Of particular concern is when they are used on people who are vulnerable through mental health issues or pre-existing medical conditions.
Check out this video: “A Brighton policeman kicks a tasered man lying on the ground”.
The totalitarianism of the security mindset protects itself with that sentence.
But first, that contains a presumption: we have not asked the NSA and GCHQ to “protect” us. And second, the sentence is a stupid one: we all have something to hide, whether it pertains to our private lives or to our business secrets.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” – George Orwell.
Who was it who said that if somebody wants to be a politician, they’re the last person we should think of electing?
Much of the World’s (or at least the Western World’s) problems are of its own making. The serious ones are becoming too numerous to try to list here. Governments everywhere are becoming less and less popular with their subjects, as is demonstrated by lower turn-outs in elections.
I suggest that much of the problem is derived ultimately from the Monroe Doctrine, formulated in 1823 under US President James Monroe (but not known as such until 1853), when the United States was finally shedding itself of the last vestiges of foreign (i.e. British) colonialism, and was beginning to assert itself. Essentially the Doctrine claimed that any further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring US intervention. At the same time, the Doctrine noted that the United States would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries.
In the 1870s, President Grant endeavoured to replace European influence in Latin America with that of the United States. Part of their efforts involved expanding the Monroe Doctrine by stating “hereafter no territory on this continent [i.e. Central and South America] shall be regarded as subject to transfer to a European power”. The (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904 asserted the right of the United States to intervene in Latin America in cases of “flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation”. It was invoked to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence. It was used to justify the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States when Manuel Noriega was removed from power, captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992.
Critics of the Monroe Doctrine, such as Noam Chomsky, argue that in practice it has functioned as a declaration of the right of the US to dominate countries under its influence against others and a right of unilateral intervention over the Americas: a sphere of influence “to leave America for the Americans” that would grow stronger with the Roosevelt Corollary. Chomsky points to the work of people like William Walker, who tried to conquer and annex various countries in Latin America.
The Monroe Doctrine is not of itself the cause of the practices of modern western governments, but it is symptomatic of the attitude of the United States as the dominant World leader. President John F Kennedy almost precipitated another World War during the Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962; fortunately Nikita Khrushchev had the sense to give way. Nevertheless Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador remain a thorn in America’s side. Since the end of the Cold War, the USA’s principal challenger has gone. As a result, the United States has grown in power and has increased its own view of its own self-importance.
The consequence of this is that the USA goverment and its agencies, often emulated by its allies like the United Kingdom, has taken upon itself to decide who’s the “good guy” and who’s the “baddie”. Any citizen who is able to expose any wrongdoings by or in the name of its government, is “unpatriotic” at least, or a “traitor” at worst.
How quickly has our attention been diverted from the crimes committed by the Armed Forces or the Police to those who have exposed these crimes?
This is nothing less that institutional paranoia; public fury is whipped up by the government and its supporters (mainly the right-wing press) treating people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden as enemies of the state. In fact, by exposing the inhuman and immoral crimes of their own government and its agencies, these men should be treated as heroes. It doesn’t stop with its own citizens. Anyone else, like Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who aids these whistleblowers, is a target. For that he has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for over a year.
Who were the villains in London? The fat-cat bankers and politicians who caused economies to collapse, or the protesters on the streets? Who walked away with a million-pound “bonus” for bringing a bank to its knees, or the tens of thousands made unemployed by the collapse? Who was killed on a London street by a police thug while trying to find his way home through the crowds?
Am I missing something about Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh? It is abhorrent and sickening when they behead a western journalist. But when the West bombs the hell out of “terrorists” who don’t fit into the western ideal of a democracy, killing thousands of civilians, that’s OK? Yes, I know about 9/11 and all the lies that took George Dumbya Bush and Tony Bliar into a war of revenge, but why do we have to meddle continually in others’ affairs? Oh, I get it, it’s the oil! And fanatical religion!
To discover why the name “Daesh” suddenly popped up, see this long but authoritative explanation.
Facebook, the social media site, removed stand-up comedian Jason Manford’s profile after an expletive-filled post condemning “murdering cowards”. Defending his post Manford said: “I was sharing my opinion online like everybody else”. His post read:
“F**king cowards. Slaughtering innocent unarmed people for what? Families and children enjoying life, theatre, meals? Not an army vs army you f**king cowards.
“For what? In whose name? Are you doing this in the name of your god? Cos I’ve got news for you, if you think your ‘god’ is gonna reward you for this type of atrocity then your [god] is a massive c**t.
“I hope you are all caught and murdered in a similar agonising way you f**king scumbags.
“You are an embarrassment to humanity and a s**t stain on all of humanity. You will never defeat us, we are too strong you utter b**tards [sic].”
OK, so perhaps his language was a bit over the top, but his sentiments were bang on.
Isn’t there an analogy in the West to the so-called Islamic State? If countries like the UK and USA want to rid themselves of IS, shouldn’t they secularise themselves to set an example of why they object to a state that is absolutely bound by religious faith and law? “In God We Trust” is the official motto of the United States. The head of state of the United Kingdom is also the head of the Anglican church. Yet many of their citizens are not believers in either anglicanism or christianity, although admittedly they are rather more tolerant towards their infidels than IS is.
by Steve Bell in The Guardian
In 2013 we celebrated the death of Margaret Thatcher, the glorifer of individualism and the nation state, but despising the communities, the traditions and the social bonds that existed between them. When she spoke about “our people” she did not mean the people of Britain, or even England; she meant people who thought like her and who shared her many prejudices.
She abhorred disorder, decadence and bad behaviour, but her legacy is one of public division, private selfishness and a cult of acquisitiveness. Her policies and attitudes to working people resulted in the riots of the early 1980s in Brixton, Toxteth and other places. In part they were because of racist attitudes in the police, some of which remain to this day.
What no-one can forgive is the deliberate destruction of working class communities, especially mining villages. She destroyed the miners because she hated their leader, Arthur Scargill. In removing the employment base of such communities she paved the way for disaffection and multi-generational unemployment that seeded the social problems of today. No doubt her cronies will want to erect a public statue to her — I hope it gets defaced and pulled down, like Sadaam Hussein’s was in Baghdad.
Thatcher made millions unemployed, de-regulated the banks (think of the 2008 crash which was part of her legacy), privatised the utility companies (gas, electricity, water,...) which we are all still paying for through the nose, sold off North Sea oil and gas at a pittance (Britain could have been a rich nation). She was responsible for “greed is good” – provided it was for her lot. History will not put Thatcher in a good light. The old witch has gone, but the damage she left behind will affect generations to follow. She flogged off the “family silver”.
However, the ‘Iron Lady’ stirred up anti-British sentiments in Argentina, where she is remembered, correctly, as a war criminal who ordered the British submarine Conqueror to sink the General Belgrano even though it was 36 miles outside the maritime exclusion zone set by the UK government and steaming away from the Falklands! The resulting loss of 323 lives made up more than half the Argentinian casualties in the war – a total of 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and 3 Falkland Islanders died. Anyone who could count the murderous General Pinochet among her friends must have been evil herself.
Palestinian reaction to Gaza conflict
The US military announced that no criminal charges would be brought against the US marines in Afghanistan who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Nor would any criminal charges be filed against the US troops who “tried to burn about 500 copies of the Qur’an as part of a badly bungled security sweep at an Afghan prison in February, despite repeated warnings from Afghan soldiers that they were making a colossal mistake”. The US military brushed aside demands of Afghan officials for legal accountability for the destructive acts of foreign soldiers in their country, instead imposing “disciplinary measures”, “letters of reprimand, a reduction in rank, forfeit of some pay, physical restriction to a military base, extra duties or some combination of those measures”. Both incidents triggered intense protests and rioting that left dozens dead in February 2012.
US marines urinating on dead Taliban
Parallel to that, an Israeli judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Israeli government brought by the family of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American student and pro-Palestinian activist who was killed by a military bulldozer in 2003 as she protested against the demolition of a house in Gaza, whose family she had come to befriend. This is simply a by-product of the “virtual impunity for Israeli troops no matter who they kill or in what circumstances”. That’s because Israeli courts, like American courts, have submissively accepted the supreme fiction: anyone impeding government actions is a terrorist or terrorist-enabler who gets what they deserve, while the actions of the state, no matter how savage, can never be anything other than legitimate. Despite Corrie’s wearing a bright orange vest, the judge ruled that the bulldozer driver did not see her and her death was thus an accident.
Israeli border police use pepper spray as they detain an injured Palestinian protester during clashes after Friday prayers outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City.
It makes you proud to be a member of the Human Race, doesn’t it?
The commonality in all of these episodes is self-evident: the perversion of the justice system and rule of law as nothing more than a weapon to legitimize even the most destructive state actions, while severely punishing those who oppose them. The US has long demanded that other states maintain an “independent judiciary” as one of the key ingredients for living under the rule of law. But these episodes demonstrate, yet again, that the judiciary in the US, along with the one in its prime Middle East client state, is anything but “independent”; its primary function is to shield government actors from accountability.
Not a single victim of America’s “war on terror” abuses – even those now acknowledged by the US government to have been completely innocent – have been allowed even to have their cases heard in an American court on the merits. Crimes committed by the state or in advancement of its agenda are simply immune from the rule of law in the US.
It is expected, inevitable, that those who wield political power will abuse it for corrupt and self-serving ends. That is why there are institutions designed to check and combat that abuse. The rule of law, and an independent judiciary applying it, is ostensibly one of those institutions. But – like establishment media outlets and most academics – this justice system now does the opposite: it is merely another weapon used to legitimize crimes by the powerful and crush those who oppose them.
Paul Chambers tweeted this some time ago, and was fined £1,000 because his tweet was a menacing threat to security. Judge Jacqueline Davies dismissed his appeal. Hasn’t she ever heard of a joke? (See this report from The Guardian among others.)
It’s what comedian Al Murray calls the law having one of its periodic Monty Python-does-Kafka brainfarts.
The High Court (another bunch of time-and-money wasting old farts) has now reversed the verdict on Paul Chambers, and acquitted him! But what a waste of time, effort, and emotion!
Why was this case ever brought to court? How much has it cost the British taxpayer? How much has it cost Paul Chambers in defending himself against these ludicrous charges? Why aren’t the Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions not prosecuted for wasting everyone’s time (including their own which is paid for by the British tax-payer) and money (again, the British taxpayer’s)? Why don’t these “authorities” concentrate on proper prosecutions of, for example, Police officers who (among other things) slaughter innocent 47-year-old newspaper-sellers trying to get home? – see Harwood or shooting dead unarmed hooligans – Mark Duggan. Why, when a so-called rioter is arrested, does his case get processed within days, ending up in jail? But a Police Officer committing violent acts is cautioned, perhaps put on trial several months or even years later, and given a disciplinary caution from his superiors when everyone (except the innocent civilian) has ‘forgotten’ the whole episode?
Some of us are getting more than a little fed up with the Police State that Britain has become!
On a similar subject, there’s an offence of “wasting police time” (by claiming something happened that apparently didn’t). The British tax-payer spent £8 million chasing Harry Redknapp for an alleged tax bill on a few tens of thousands of pounds; he was exonerated.
Why isn’t there an offence of “wasting tax-payers’ money”? Of his co-accused the Guardian reported this comment: “Now, suddenly he’s sitting there at 74 years of age, accused of nicking fucking £30,000 of income tax. It’s unreal, isn’t it? He’s paid millions in tax, employed all these people, kept football clubs going, paid everybody’s tax, and suddenly he’s accused of this. Four times, we tried to get it thrown out. My barrister was saying: ‘This should not be going to court,’ but they [the Crown] wanted to go with it. They thought they had nothing to lose. It’s not their money... that was the attitude they had.”
Scotland Yard has apologised for re-employing a riot policeman with a chequered disciplinary record after he was acquitted of killing Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London in 2009. The jury took four days to clear PC Simon Harwood of manslaughter on a majority verdict; they were not told that the officer had been investigated a number of other times for alleged violence and misconduct.
Harwood quit the Metropolitan Police on “health” grounds in 2001, shortly before a planned disciplinary hearing into claims that while off-duty he illegally tried to arrest a man in a road-rage incident, altering notes retrospectively to justify his actions. He was nonetheless able to join another force, Surrey, returning to the Met in 2005. In a string of other alleged incidents Harwood was accused of having punched, throttled, kneed or threatened other suspects while in uniform, although only one complaint was upheld. The Independent Police Complaints Commission described the chain of events around Harwood’s rejoining his old force before becoming part of its elite Territorial Support Group as “simply staggering”.
British Policemen are always innocent!
A still from Guardian footage of Ian Tomlinson being pushed to the ground by a Metropolitan police officer in riot gear during the G20 protests in London.
Tomlinson was going home; his route home took him through the G20 rallies, where protesters had clashed with police. He had his back to officers and hands in his pockets when Harwood stepped forward, struck him with a baton and shoved him to the ground. Tomlinson rose to his feet and then collapsed and died. Three forensic pathologists concluded that he died of internal bleeding from injuries sustained in the fall.
Read The Ian Tomlinson case shows why the police cannot investigate themselves by Jules Carey. It includes this report:
Within 48 hours of this death, the City of London police had received evidence that indicated Ian had been violently assaulted by a police officer, and that his injuries could have caused or contributed to his death.
Three Metropolitan police officers had come forward to say that they recognised press pictures of Ian as the man who had been struck and pushed by a police officer in Royal Exchange Passage. A member of the public provided a statement describing how the crowd gasped at the horrific sound of Ian hitting the ground. The Guardian reported to the investigation that they had photographs of Ian sitting on the ground in front of a line of officers at a different spot to where he died. And finally there was significant evidence of injury marks on Ian, including a baton mark on his thigh, a dog bite on his calf, a bruise on his head and a huge internal bleed.
Despite this Ian’s widow was phoned and read a statement by the police family liaison officer (FLO) that she was asked to agree for public release. The statement said there was no evidence that the police had caused Ian’s sudden and untimely death and that he had been caught in a crowd of marauding protesters. The FLO said that officers tried to protect Ian from the protesters but were pelted with missiles as they provided him with first aid. He told her that Ian had died of a heart attack and that he had no other injuries that could have contributed to his death. He then recorded in his log that after agreeing the statement she “burst into tears”.
Harwood was put on trial for manslaughter. After three days of deliberation, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict; told by the judge they could return a majority 10 to 2 verdict, they found Harwood not guilty.
The case leaves in its wake something of a legal quandary: previously, after hearing similar evidence, an inquest jury ruled that Tomlinson was “unlawfully killed” by a police officer. They did so on the same standard of proof – beyond reasonable doubt. Neither jury was told about Harwood’s chequered disciplinary background.
British juries are notoriously reluctant to convict police for serious alleged crimes carried out on duty. No police officer has been found guilty of manslaughter in 25 years, despite hundreds of cases in which families have alleged wrongdoing.
Mark Duggan, a black man, was shot dead by police on 4th August 2011 in Tottenham, north London. He was believed to be a small-time drug dealer and gang member.
Mark Duggan
There was no CCTV coverage of the place where the police stopped the cab carrying Duggan as a passenger, and some witnesses allege that police chased away onlookers. According to an unnamed firearms officer at the trial in September 2012 of Kevin Hutchinson-Foster – who gave a gun to Duggan – Duggan pivoted out of the cab and pulled a self-loading pistol or handgun from his waistband.
How many people does the Met have to murder before we return to a police force that doesn’t carry guns? They threatened to shoot the minicab driver.
The official story of Duggan’s death has undergone numerous changes, drawing criticism and suspicion from Duggan’s family, residents of Tottenham, and other supporters. Shortcomings in the police response have also been blamed for stoking the riots, and for fueling ongoing discontent. Police waited a day and a half to inform the Duggan family of the death. Several days later they apologised for this delay. Disturbances began on 6th August, after a protest in Tottenham. Overnight, looting took place in Tottenham and continued the following days in other parts of London and other cities in England.
According to the taxi driver, Mark Duggan left the car and ran: “The car that had stopped – men got out of it very quickly who were carrying guns in their hands. Then I heard the sound of my rear door opening. I saw that Mark Duggan got out and ran. At the same time, I heard firing from the front. I saw shots strike Mark Duggan. He fell to the ground. “At the same time a man came and he opened my door. Very angrily he pulled me out by my arm and then he dropped me or knelt me down on the ground by the rear tyres of the car.” The police then fired twice, hitting Duggan in the thigh and chest, killing him. A firearm was not found on Duggan after he had been shot. Duggan was pronounced dead at the scene. The police who shot Duggan were part of the Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), accompanying officers from Operation Trident, a London Metropolitan police unit responsible for gun crime within the black community.
According to an eyewitness cited by The Independent, Duggan “was shot while he was pinned to the floor by police.” According to another eyewitness cited in The Daily Telegraph, a police officer had “shouted to the man to stop ‘a couple of times’, but he had not heeded the warning”. According to a witness cited by the BBC, a police officer twice shouted: “Put it down” before Duggan was shot.
A police officer was also shot, apparently by someone other than Duggan, taken to a hospital and released the same evening.
Initially, a spokesman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was stated that they “understand the officer was shot first before [Duggan] was shot;” police later called this statement a mistake. A bullet was found embedded in a radio worn by a policeman, and ballistics tests on the projectile indicate it was a “jacketed round”, or police issue bullet fired from a Heckler & Koch MP5 semi-automatic carbine used by the police. Its presence may have been due to a ricochet or overpenetration.
The IPCC stated that a loaded Bruni BBM blank-firing pistol converted to fire live rounds was recovered from the scene. The IPCC announced that there was no evidence that the gun had been fired, that this had not been ruled out and further tests were being conducted.
On 18th November 2011, the IPCC announced that the 9mm gun associated with the scene of the killing had been found 10–14 feet away, on the other side of a fence. Witnesses told the IPCC that they saw police throw the gun over the fence. The IPCC initially reported that three officers had also witnessed an officer throw the gun, but later retracted this report.
Duggan’s fingerprints were found on a cardboard box which appeared to have contained the gun when he collected it. A sock and gun were taken out of the box before Duggan was shot. His DNA and fingerprints were not recovered from the sock which wrapped the gun, nor from the weapon itself. Additional tests found no gunshot residue on Duggan.
In response to rumours that the killing of Mark Duggan was an “execution”, the IPCC announced: “Speculation that Mark Duggan was ‘assassinated’ in an execution style involving a number of shots to the head are categorically untrue.” Duggan’s family stated that they did not trust the IPCC to conduct a fair and independent investigation of the killing. In November 2011, two members of the public who were appointed to liaise with the IPCC, resigned from those posts. A third remained in post. One of those who left said that the IPCC work was “shoddy.”
The 11 officers involved initially refused interviews with the IPCC. The officer who killed Duggan, now known as “V53”, later submitted testimony in writing. Police stated that “no officer had done wrong” but announced that the person who shot Mark Duggan would not remain on active firearms duty.
Dr Simon Poole, a pathologist who had performed a post-mortem on Duggan’s body, testified in January 2013 that the injuries Duggan sustained in the shooting were not consistent with the account of the incident that was given by the police officer who fired the lethal shot. Poole also later agreed with the prosecution that the bullet’s trajectory might be consistent with the same angle of firing if Duggan had turned to face the officer. A December 2011 IPCC statement had cited Poole for discovering that a second bullet struck Duggan’s arm.
Many residents of Tottenham do not trust police or investigators, and say that Duggan was executed by police.
In May 2012 it was announced that the 31 police witnesses would not be required to answer questions – instead submitting written testimony. (This, of course, allows the Police to ensure that they are all ‘singing from the same hymn-sheet’.)
Duggan’s family does not believe that the police have been honest about the shooting, and has pressured the police and IPCC for greater transparency. Duggan’s sister, Paulette Hall, has stated: “We want justice. We want them to come clean and tell us what happened. The police are human like us. If you kill someone, you should do the time, just like we would have to do.”
Mark Duggan’s mother, Pamela Duggan has said: “We still don’t have justice. I won’t give up until I get justice for Mark. People need to be held to account for my son’s death. There needs to be a full inquest, in front of a jury of ordinary men and women, to find out the truth.” London’s High Court of Justice rejected her application.
The family has criticized the IPCC for delaying the investigation. A barrister for the Duggan family commented: “It is absolutely shocking to find ourselves here today and to hear your counsel saying that there are further investigations, basic investigations, to be conducted such as a reconstruction and forensics.”
Stafford Scott, an independent advisor to Operation Trident who deals with race relations, resigned from the investigation because he felt that it was not being conducted fairly. Writing in The Guardian, he stated: “The IPCC has broken its own guidelines by giving out erroneous information to journalists regarding the ‘shoot-out’ involving Duggan and police that didn’t actually happen. And its investigation is flawed and in all probability tainted – so much so that we can never have faith in its final report.” Scott blames the police response to the Duggan shooting for the escalation of the 2011 riots. He later criticized authorities for treating Hutchinson-Foster (who gave the gun to Duggan) as a proxy for the Duggan investigation, while continuing to delay the official inquest on Duggan’s death. He says that members of Duggan’s community feel ignored and lied to by authorities, writing in March 2012: “In August 2011 the word on the streets was that ‘they executed Mark’. Seven months later the word is that the police had control of the gun or worse.” After the Hutchinson-Foster trial, Scott criticized the Trident police for inaction, writing: “So it is now clear that the police had a golden opportunity to remove an identified gunman and a firearm off of the streets but somehow managed not to do so. And this is all the more shocking because the police have a special unit, Trident, established specifically to deal with gun crime in the black community.”
See also Mark Duggan Coroner: Police created perception of collusion (The Guardian, 4th June 2014) and Mark Duggan family lose attempt to overturn inquest verdict (The Guardian, 14th October 2014)
Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13th July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn’t like the look of him.
You decide who’s innocent and who’s guilty.
In Florida: Three members of the jury involved in acquitting George Zimmerman initially favoured convicting him over the death of Trayvon Martin from The Independent.
Trayvon Martin isn’t the first nor will he be the last victim of a racist killing. Remember Michael Brown in Ferguson, Ohio, killed by Darren Wilson who was not indicted by a Grand Jury; and the fatal police shooting by Timothy Loehman of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio who was playing with a replica gun.
Remember “I can’t breathe”, the last words of Eric Garner in New York where a Grand Jury refused to indict Daniel Pantaleo, a police officer who placed the unarmed black man in a chokehold, having confronted Garner for selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island.
And the United States isn’t the only country where it happens; remember Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and Mark Duggan.
I like to think the answer is “no” but I’m not so sure, especially when trying to adjust to the junk spouted by Nigel Farage and his ilk. I know his party line is essentially “I don’t mind black people or eastern Europeans; I just don’t want them here”. He harks back to the good old days when there were a few Caribbean nurses to keep the Health Service going, and some Pakistanis to drive the buses. They were OK if, like the white working classes, they knew their place and behaved themselves. Now there are millions of them, “taking our jobs and sponging on our welfare state.”
Then, when I was a teenager, we had a Nigerian doctor! Shock! Horror! But he was OK. But I can’t even recall seeing a non-white pupil at my school; the closest we got was half a dozen jews.
Fast forward to the present; I live in Spain and most years I take a holiday or two in London. What a culture shock. A more cosmopolitan society you’d find nowhere else. But with thousands of women in burqas, not seeming to integrate themselves with the indigenous population, I can’t help feeling a foreigner in my own country. I cannot claim to be fully integrated into Spanish or Catalan society, but I don’t feel a misfit here and we get on pretty well with most of the locals.
The reason for my question I can make more specific by an example. Some time ago I was in Islington (London) waiting at a bus stop for a 205 to Paddington. A woman (I assume it was such) in a full-length black burqa joined the bus queue. She was so well-hidden from view with her eyes covered by gauze. Eye-contact was impossible. (I know it’s a religious custom, and, if you read my piece about religions you’ll understand my views in that area.)
But thoughts of the 7/7 bombings on the London Underground and buses came to mind, and I resolved that I would not get on the next 205 if she did. Was she a jihadist, about to blow the hell out of, well who? My immediate problem was resolved when she got onto an earlier bus.
Another incident that springs to mind dates back to the 1990s. I stood on a platform at a railway station here in Spain, when two agents of the Guardia Civil (police) came onto the opposite platform, looked up and down, and then took a long walk to the underpass joining the platforms, came up onto where I was and walked straight past me. They had seen a man who was obviously of north African origin. They made him turn out his pockets and eventually were satisfied that his papers were in order. They walked off; they were obviously racists and I felt sick in the stomach to have witnessed what happened (though I neither did nor said anything).
So I come back to my original question Am I Racist? Or just a neoliberalist do-nothing?
With the exception of the 1982 occupation by Argentina – which sparked Thatcher’s Falklands War with 649 Argentine and 255 British lives lost – the Falkland Islands have been under British control since 1833. Argentina has claimed the islands since 1833, saying it inherited them from the Spanish on independence and that Britain expelled an Argentine population. Argentina says the sovereignty dispute can only be decided between London and Buenos Aires.
In this Vote for Motherhood referendum, some 1,649 British citizens – out of a population of about 2,900 – could vote. The turn-out was 92% – 99.8% voted in favour, with three no votes cast out of 1,517 [and I bet they didn’t stick their heads above the parapet]. But what does it prove? Will Argentina care? Will the United Nations care? Does anyone (apart from the yes-voting Union-Jack-waving brigade) care?
The referendum is similar to a poll in Gibraltar in 2002, in which the idea of Britain sharing sovereignty with Spain was rejected (surprise, surprise) by 98.5% of the population.
I looked up the Falkland Islands flag in Wikipedia and it gives the name in several languages. Apart from my surprise at it being given in Welsh and Cornish, Wikipedia uses the British name in Spanish (the language of Argentina), Russian and German, but the Spanish Malvinas (or their local equivalents) in French and Italian:
English: British flag of the Falkland Islands
Cymraeg [Welsh]: Baner Ynysoedd y Falklands
Español [Spanish]: Bandera de las Falkland Islands
Italiano [Italian]: Bandiera delle Isole Malvine
Kernowek [Cornish]: Baner Ynysow Falkland
Русский [Russian]: флаг фолклендских островов
Français [French]: Drapeau des Îles Malouines
Deutsch [German]: Flagge der Falklandinseln
At last, a positive political matter...
See these two articles from The Guardian which say more than I ever could:
Sandi Toksvig: ‘Today we can all celebrate whom we choose to love’ and
UK’s first same-sex marriages go ahead as PM speaks of ‘powerful message’. [Ashley and I have been married for eight years in Spain]
Somewhere between the deranged yelps that gay marriage will herald incest, polygamy and the destruction of all that is good and pure, and the dogged fighting of Peter Tatchell, Stonewall, and everyone campaigning for the last piece of the equality pie, one of the profound effects of equal marriage has gone unuttered. And so, when the Queen signed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill into law she’ll have had no idea what it will really mean for gay people.
To explain, I need to describe another day: 16th December 1991. I was 14, spotty, leaving a classroom after registration, lagging behind with my best friend Jane. Clumsily, I lunged at the truth: “I’m gay.” She was the first person I came out to, a trembling act that allowed me oxygen, a breath, the option of at least sharing how sad and scared I felt.
Cold terror was entirely rational for a gay kid in the nineties. Only two weeks earlier Freddie Mercury had died of an Aids-related illness. One of thousands: Derek Jarman, Keith Haring, Rock Hudson, Rudolph Nureyev. Even the ethereal were doomed. What hope would I have? But it wasn’t just HIV/Aids, it was the law – the very mechanism designed to protect and defend loomed down unjustly, ensuring my vision of the future was Chekhov-bleak.
What did it feel like to be a gay teenager back then? The following thoughts ran in a depressive loop: I will not be able to have sex legally until I am 21. My teachers are not allowed to talk to me about being gay [remember Section 28?]. Any business can refuse my custom. Future employers are free to fire me. Violence and hatred will stalk me, a prison for no wrongdoing. Aids could well bring a gasping, early death. I will never have children. I will never enjoy the family life I was raised within. I will never marry.
Imagine inflicting those thoughts on a child.
No one can go back and comfort me – or anyone from my generation. But at no time since then have I wished more desperately that I could return brandishing a newspaper to bring the Good News: Look! In 22 year’s time the law will be completely on your side! Protection and equality! Teachers can talk to their pupils. Drugs give people with HIV near-normal life expectancy. You can have children. And the change that would have meant the most, because we all lean towards love’s light like saplings: you can get married.
This is what the Queen, the Lords and the Commons did this week. They ensured that icy dread of what a gay adulthood could deliver won’t ever sit so heavily for our youngsters. The dismal days my generation endured will now mean nothing to children today, just as this day means everything to me.
From www.theguardian.com: It seems the PM (prime minister!) is a little off-message when it comes to using the right txt msg acronyms.
Andy Coulson (ex-Camoron spin doctor, News International big-wig), Rebekah Brooks (ex-editor of Screws of the World, Sun) and David Camoron (who thinks he’s the Prime Minister).
Rebekah Brooks has revealed that David Camoron signs off some of his texts with LOL, in the belief the acronym means “Lots Of Love”. She told the Leveson Inquiry that she explained to him it actually means “Laughing Out Loud”. In fact, they’re both right and they’re both wrong, as it means both. Here, to help both of them, is a list of other popular acronyms and what they absolutely don’t mean, tempting though it might be for them to believe otherwise if Camoron happened to use them:
ROFL: Rebekah, On For Lunch?
FFS: Freud Fixed Shenanigans
FFS: Fuck! Farewell Sky
WTF: Was Tony Funnier?
OMG: Oh, Murdoch’s Gorgeous
IMHO: Is My Horse OK?
After Brooks’s revelation, Twitter got a bit excited imagining what else Camoron might mean. Here are some of the best:
IMHO: In Murdoch’s Humble Opinion
LOL: Look Out, Leveson!
BRB: Bloody Rebekah Brooks!
RSVP: Rupert’s Son Very Persuasive
IMHO: Is my horse outside?
MILF: Murdoch I’d Like To Fu...
WTF: Where’s the Footman?
BTW: Butler, the wine! [an order]
FFS: Fight For Sky
FTW: Fuck the Working-Class
BRB: Brussels Rules Britain
DC: Delete Correspondences
[...did she didn’t get this one]
LMAO: Let me ask Osborne
TBF: Top Bullingdon Friend
IMHO – Is My Horse OK?
It may have escaped your notice so far, but the more observant reader may have seen that I hold very strong views on a number of subjects, including the very existence of the British royal family – and now there’s another one on the way! (If you saw the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games you can’t have missed that HM The Queen looked, whenever she appeared on TV, to have wondered who had just farted. She’s supposed to be our Head of State, so should have shown a bit of enthusiasm, I’d’ve thought.)
As for the rest of the “Royal Family” – Andrew, the Wessexes, and all the others – away with them, put them into Council flats, make them earn an honest living and stop draining the meagre resources that Britain has – get rid of the lot. (See Sue Townend’s book The Queen and I.) Liz and Phil-the-Greek could probably be accommodated in a Rest Home, if the Tory government hasn’t ‘saved money’ by selling them all off to rich property magnates to redevelop.
So I make no apology for publishing here the ‘scandalous’ pictures of Harry and Kate that were banned elsewhere. If you’re a royalist, don’t bother to go to this site. Otherwise, enjoy (if that’s the right word).
The trouble I can foresee in replacing the Monarchy is that the Republics of the World seem even worse (e.g. the USA); their Presidents come from the same group of people who currently form awful Governments; maybe a Benevolent Dictatorship could be a solution. I wish I knew.
Try this view for size: The Sabotage Times
It is probably a psychological problem, but I find that almost any collection of people of the same type make me wish that they didn‘t exist. The collection can be of a nationality, of a religious faction, of sports fans — you name it!
I used to watch football matches in England when I lived a small distance from the Southampton ground. And I enjoyed it. But when I see so-called British football fans almost anywhere, I simply hate the lot of them; they often make me feel ashamed to be British, even when I see them where I live, in Spain.
The same applies to British tourists visiting here each summer. ‘Go Home’ and leave the paella to me.
When we first moved here, the few neighbours we had were very pleasant to us. There were a lot of undeveloped plots of land around, so we seemed like a small sparse community. Now, twenty years later, the whole area has been built up, so there are few free plots. Many of the old group of neighbours are still here and say buenos días, but the atmosphere seems sourer. I think it’s that the group has become larger than some critical mass.
As an example, I know or have known quite a few Americans, each of whom has been really friendly, and in many cases I think the feeling has been mutual. But looking at America as a nation makes me abhore their arrogance, self-assuredness and general attitude to the rest of the world. I’m not picking on the Americans particularly; the same goes for the French, the Spanish, the Arabs, and even, yes, the British.
We in the so-called democracies of the western world, proclaim that one of our principal aims in interfering in the affairs of other countries is to bring them to an acceptable state of democracy. We see the regimes of most African, Latin American and other countries as being inherently corrupt and undemocratic. We, on the other hand, in Western Europe are the paragons of virtue in such matters.
I found this short article in Diari Més, the local daily paper of Tarragona of 28th October 2015, buried on page 17. Although my knowledge of Catalan is poor, I believe it translates to:
On 27th September the elections for the Parliament of Catalonia took place. Yesterday, at the Courts of Justice in El Vendrell, there were still some boxes – of the type seen in the picture – which contained at that time ballot papers. They were behind a refreshment machine. Nobody has yet taken them away...
Obviously there was no proper system in place to ensure that the number of votes counted tallied with the marked-up election register. A minor matter, perhaps, but shouldn’t we put our own house in order before lecturing, or worse, to others.
