UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, addressing the UN Conference on The Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, said it was “660 days since the Israeli hostages were first cruelly taken by Hamas terrorists. There is no possible justification for this suffering.” Lammy had spent most of that time deliberately misinterpreting the Genocide Convention and insisting that no genocide was being committed.

“Our support for Israel, its right to exist and the security of its people is steadfast,” he said. Considering Israel’s massacres and other crimes against humanity since the first day of its statehood in 1948 this frequently repeated statement has never convinced anyone.

“However, the Balfour declaration came with the solemn promise ‘that nothing shall be done, nothing which may prejudice the civil and religious rights’ of the Palestinian people’…. This has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold.” True, but he misquotes Balfour even here. That part of the declaration actually reads: “… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….”

The Balfour declaration also came with dire warnings. Lord Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the Cabinet at the time, called Zionism “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. Lord Sydenham remarked: “What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

Well, we know now. And it will stain Britain’s reputation forever.

Lammy continued: “Hamas must never be rewarded for its monstrous attack on October 7.” Of course, he said nothing about Israel having been continuously rewarded for its monstrous attacks on Palestinians over the last 77 years and will likely be rewarded again for its genocide.

“It [Hamas] must immediately release the hostages, agree to an immediate ceasefire, accept it will have no role in governing Gaza and commit to disarmament.” Coincidentally Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also called on Hamas to disband. Along with a number of other countries they’ve just signed a statement saying, “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.” Quite how this squares with international law isn’t clear, and no-one explains. It is for the Palestinian people to decide who governs their sovereign state.

Lammy: “His Majesty’s Government therefore intends to recognise the State of Palestine when the UN General Assembly gathers in September…. unless the Israeli government acts to end the appalling situation in Gaza, ends its military campaign and commits to a long-term sustainable peace based on a two-state solution. Our demands on Hamas also remain absolute and unwavering.” So what happens if Israel actually complies, or appears to comply? Does HMG then see no reason to recognise statehood? That would suit Israel very well. Note that there’s no requirement in all this for Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, which is central to the whole problem. So the Starmer-Lammy proposal purposely misses the point.

Lammy maintains “there is no better vision for the future of the region than two states. Israelis living within secure borders, recognised and at peace with their neighbours, free from the threat of terrorism. And Palestinians living in their own state, in dignity and security, free of occupation.” Just a minute: how about Palestinians, whose land this is, “living within secure borders, free from the threat of Israeli terrorism and occupation”, the terrorists being (as if he didn’t know) the Israelis and their backers the US? Furthermore, UK leaders have banged the drum about a two-state solution for decades without ever describing what it would look like – especially now that Israel has been allowed to establish irreversible ‘facts on the ground’ that make a proper, workable Palestinian state almost impossible.

“The decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be managed or contained,” he says. True, and that’s been obvious for decades.

“It must now be resolved.” True, and that too has been obvious for decades.

That same day, 29 July, Prime Minister Starmer was delivering “words on Gaza” from Downing Street.

“On the 7th of October 2023 Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre in Israel’s history. Every day since then, the horror has continued.” He makes it sound like the 660 days of horror have been Hamas’s doing.

“Ceasefire must be sustainable and it must lead to a wider peace plan, which we are developing with our international partners. This plan will deliver security and proper governance in Gaza and pave the way for negotiations on a Two State Solution”. Yes, but under international law Palestinians should not have to ‘negotiate’ their freedom and independence, it’s theirs by right regardless of what other nations think or say.

“Our goal remains a safe and secure Israel, alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” Oh dear, the same old lopsided spiel. Parity isn’t on the West’s agenda.

“Now, in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: Images that will stay with us for a lifetime.” The horror is not due to “a catastrophic failure of aid” but failure over the years to end Israel’s illegal occupation and, in particular, its cruel 18-year siege and blockade of Gaza and the sickening practice of ‘mowing the grass’. The UK especially has been complicit in enabling Israel to maintain its stranglehold.

Starmer: “I’ve always said we will recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process, at the moment of maximum impact for the Two State Solution.” UK governments have been saying that for years. Britain was supposed to grant Palestinians provisional statehood under its Mandate responsibilities back in 1923 and failed to do so. We’ve been ducking the issue ever since while eagerly recognising Israeli statehood with their terrorist militia and Ben-Gurion’s plan to take over the entire Holy Land by force.

“This is the moment to act,” Starmer continued. “So today – as part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank.” This is unbelievable vague and gives Israel endless wriggle-room. Much of the West Bank, of course, is already annexed. To give peace any kind of chance conditions must include Israel withdrawing its squatters, quitting all annexed lands and ending its illegal military occupation forthwith.

Starmer ends with the familiar mantra: “Our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.” No mention of the Israeli terrorists disarming and no ban on Likud (Netanyahu’s demented party) from any future government of Israel.

Starmer and Lammy never use the terms ‘international law’ or ‘justice’. Don’t they understand that there can be no peace without justice? Perhaps they do but won’t admit it because their friends and allies Israel and the US, for selfish strategic reasons, don’t want peace and never have.

Starmer and Lammy compromised and untrustworthy

Starmer told The Times of Israel, “I support Zionism without qualification”. Lammy has made similar declarations. The Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life state very clearly (seer ‘Integrity’): “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.” How do they get away with it?

So it’s hardly surprising that Lammy and Starmer show no concern for the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, held in Israeli jails on 7 October under appalling conditions. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’. Or the fact that in the 23 years up to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women. Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem). Were they and their friends in Israel expecting Palestinians to take all that lying down?

Our dynamic duo were not so appalled by the sight of “starving babies and children too weak to stand” that they provided protection for the British-flagged aid vessel Madleen and the Handala bringing much-needed supplies to Gaza. They allowed these vessels to be hijacked in international waters, their cargo stolen and crews abducted by Israel’s thugs, just as the Mavi Marmara, the Al-Awda and other mercy ships had been similarly assaulted. Israeli piracy is the new normal in the eastern Mediterranean and Western nations don’t give a damn. The British government are more than happy, though, to instruct the RAF to fly surveillance missions over Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide programme and to continue sharing intelligence with the apartheid regime.

And if their concerns about the suffering and devastation were ever genuine, why didn’t they proposed forming a UN multi-nation intervention force to take over the Gaza crossings to ensure aid gets through as it should? They have now been shamed and their ‘no genocide’ stance utterly discredited by two of Israel’s own human rights organisations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – who declare that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza and its Western allies have a legal and moral duty to put a stop to it. B’Tselem’s summing-up of the situation is worth sharing:

Since October 2023, Israel has shifted its policy toward the Palestinians. Its military onslaught on Gaza, underway for more than 21 months, has included mass killing, both directly and through creating unlivable conditions, serious bodily or mental harm to an entire population, decimation of basic infrastructure throughout the Strip, and forcible displacement on a huge scale, with ethnic cleansing added to the list of official war objectives.

This is compounded by mass arrests and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, which have effectively become torture camps, and tearing apart the social fabric of Gaza, including the destruction of Palestinian educational and cultural institutions. The campaign is also an assault on Palestinian identity itself, through the deliberate destruction of refugee camps and attempts to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The term genocide refers to a socio-historical and political phenomenon involving acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Both morally and legally, genocide cannot be justified under any circumstance, including as an act of self-defense.

Genocide always occurs within a context: there are conditions that enable it, triggering events, and a guiding ideology. The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel was established, the apartheid and occupation regime has institutionalized and systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective. These foundations laid by the regime are what made it possible to launch a genocidal attack on the Palestinians immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

The assault on Palestinians in Gaza cannot be separated from the escalating violence being inflicted, at varying levels and in different forms, on Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and within Israel. The violence and destruction in these areas is intensifying over time, with no effective domestic or international mechanism acting to halt them. We warn of the clear and present danger that the genocide will not remain confined to the Gaza Strip, and that the actions and underlying mindset driving it may be extended to other areas as well.

The recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community, and use of every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

British society has been dealing with organised child exploitation through grooming gangs for an extended period. Official data contradicts media perceptions about who engages in these criminal activities by showing Pakistani men are not the main offenders. Official Home Office data indicates that defendants facing child sexual abuse prosecution in England and Wales are predominantly white since their number reaches 88 percent. News reports on offences by South Asian individuals receive unusually high attention from media outlets thus perpetuating racial misconceptions that deepen societal rifts.

The Origins of a Racialized Narrative

Forces of public discussion concerning grooming gangs grew stronger as three important cases occurred in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford during the early 2010s. Policing and child protection institutions revealed organisational breakdowns in their investigations while media discussion primarily focused on the racial backgrounds of the offenders. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) produces reports showing child exploitation happens throughout all racial and social backgrounds but Pakistani and South Asian men still face political accusations as chief perpetrators.

The selective nature of this presentation has occurred previously. A series of investigative reports from The Times during 2011 identified Pakistani men as responsible for most grooming incidents. The overall issue of child sexual abuse transcends specific ethnic groups even though select cases linked South Asian offenders to the crime. Statistics from the National Crime Agency (NCA) confirm that white men carry out most cases of organised child exploitation but these crimes remain substantially underreported in the media.

How the Stereotype Affects Pakistani Families

The institutionalised stereotyping of Pakistani families in the United Kingdom has produced severe negative results. The students of Pakistani descent experience school discrimination through stereotype abuse which links them to sex exploitation gangs. A 2020 Runnymede Trust report documented Pakistani students who described teacher and peer bullying together with being labelled as “rapists” and experiencing suspicion. Community members and employers also share the same prejudice toward Pakistani families that starts in educational institutions.

Research shows doses of bigotry against Muslim communities have grown because of recent media accounts. Statistics gathered by Tell MAMA demonstrate that reports about South Asian male grooming incidents led to an increase in Islamophobic incidents. Social isolation and vandalism attacks against Pakistani businesses and their families can be found in certain areas.

Systemic Failures in Addressing Child Exploitation

The genuine matter at hand concerns institutional missteps rather than the ongoing focus on ethnicity in political discussions. Vulnerable children received failed protection from both the police force and social services departments and government agencies because these institutions did not respond to abuse reports because of limited resources and poor management. The Jay Report (2014) uncovered that agency authorities neglected multiple reports of child exploitation in the Rotherham child abuse scandal for more than a decade.

The collective resources should move away from ethnic considerations so they focus on enhancing child protection legislation while training police forces and improving victim assistance services. The Children’s Commissioner has reported significant issues in both the reporting and handling of child sexual abuse incidents regardless of the racial background of abusers.

Why Pakistanis Are Targeted in This Narrative

The way grooming gang discussion has turned racial shows how British society generally views Asians and Muslims. Right-wing media together with politicians exploit this topic to advance immigration control measures and strengthen Muslim community monitoring. The English Defence League (EDL) uses Pakistani and Muslim communities as a focal point to rally their members while they organise protests that lead to violent incidents.

Throughout history the United Kingdom tends to blame minority communities for addressing broader social issues. The criminal investigation of Pakistani men for grooming gangs matches historical patterns of moral panics that previously targeted black muggers during the 1970s and Irish immigrants throughout the 20th century. Extending responsibility to an individual ethnicity creates diversion from institutional breakdowns that exist in police organisations and welfare agencies.

A Call for Evidence-Based Solutions

To combat child exploitation effectively, the UK must adopt a zero-tolerance policy that is not influenced by racial biases. Recommendations include:

• Improved police training to handle child exploitation cases effectively.

• Better data collection on grooming gangs that avoids racial profiling.

• Stronger victim support services to ensure survivors receive adequate care.

• Accountability for institutional failures, including oversight of law enforcement agencies.

The UK is implementing key recommendations to combat child exploitation effectively. These include improved police training, better data collection, stronger victim support services, and accountability for institutional failures. Police training should focus on recognising signs of exploitation and understanding grooming complexities. Data collection methods should focus on behaviours and patterns, avoiding racial profiling. Stronger victim support services should ensure survivors receive adequate care and support. Independent oversight bodies should monitor law enforcement and other institutions. Additional strategies include community engagement and awareness campaigns, partnership and collaboration between law enforcement, social services, schools, and community organisations, and the development and enforcement of robust legal frameworks. These strategies aim to move towards a more equitable approach to combating child exploitation. For more insights, refer to the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report.

National authorities in the UK execute essential recommendations to overcome child exploitation better. The UK is adopting four primary measures to enhance child exploitation combat through upgraded police teaching combined with better statistical data acquisition and enhanced victim care programs and institutional oversight systems. The training curriculum for police officers must teach them to detect exploitation indicators as well as complex grooming procedures. Data collection systems should analyse behavioural activities and detect patterns instead of adapting racially biased approaches. The delivery of victim support should achieve complete care and support for survivors through improved service approaches.

External supervision institutions need to monitor both law enforcement departments along with other institutions. Effective child exploitation prevention strategies necessitate active collaboration between law enforcement, social services, schools, and community organisations, as well as community outreach and public education programs. Strict legal systems are also necessary. Such measures work toward building a more fair method of fighting child exploitation. The complete UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report contains additional detailed information about this subject.

Conclusion: Separating Fact from Fiction

The obsessive focus on Pakistani males in grooming gang stories produces misleading information which proves detrimental to both social harmony and genuine investigation. Racial stereotyping exacerbates social tensions, obscures institutional shortcomings, and places an undue burden on communities that bear no responsibility. The UK needs to stop blaming racial groups for its child protection problems while establishing complete child safety measures that approach the fundamental causes of child exploitation. Society guarantees child protection for children of every background through such measures alone.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Syed Salman Mehdi.

The reorganization will create four HBC businesses: Hong Kong, UK, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and International Wealth and Premier Banking.

In the announcement, HSBC wrote that the restructuring “will reduce the duplication of processes and decision making that are built into the current structure and will result in greater alignment and agility in serving our customers.”

HSBC did not mention increasing difficulty dealing with the human rights environment in places like Hong Kong as reason for the shake up.

Outside observers, however, noted that the shake-up comes as the bank with a deep history in Asia was struggling to navigate rising geopolitical tensions between China and the west.

The Guardian reported that the overhaul of the company “reflects historical complications in its global banking model. The bank makes most of its profits in Asia, but it remains headquartered in London, giving western leaders an opportunity to exert pressure over its relationship with the ruling Communist party in China.”

The New York Times also emphasised how the “changes come as Europe’s largest lender looks to cut costs and navigate a diplomatic minefield between China and the West.”

Diaspora retirement savings

People working on human rights in Hong Kong and among the diaspora that has fled the city’s tough new security regime in the last half decade are seizing on the restructuring to press HSBC to address the problem of more than 120,000 recent Hong Kong exiles who have been cut off from their retirement savings since 2021.

Hong Kong Watch has found that Hong Kongers were being denied access to over £3 billion (US$3.8 billion) of money they paid into the city’s retirement scheme, known as the Mandatory Provident Fund.

The MPF is a compulsory retirement savings scheme for the people of Hong Kong. Ordinarily, once a Hong Konger proves that they have permanently departed from Hong Kong, they are entitled to the early withdrawal of the full amount of their MPF savings.

However, after the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that it would no longer recognise British National (Overseas) (BNO) passports used by tens of thousands of Hong Kongers who moved to the UK and Canada.

The move, in retaliation to the UK government launching the BNO visa scheme in January 2021, has caused approximately 126,500 Hong Kongers around the world to be blocked from accessing an estimated £3.26 billion (US$4.1 billion) of their MPF savings.

The declaration by the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities was conducted by fiat, with no laws or regulations in Hong Kong changed in regards to the operation of the MPF.

HSBC continues to be one of 12 MPF trustees complicit in preventing the release of BNO Hong Kongers’ hard-earned savings.

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As the largest trustee of the MPF, HSBC oversees five MPF schemes and manages approximately 30 percent of the total MPF market, with assets totalling HK$371 billion (£37 billion).

From this, Hong Kong Watch has estimated that HSBC is denying Hong Kongers access to as much as £978 million worth of assets in MPF holdings.

‘Financial transnational repression’

This week 13 Parliamentarians from every major political party in the UK wrote new HSBC Group Chief Executive Georges Elhedery urging him to resolve the frozen funds issue.

“As Members of Parliament, we welcome information on how the restructuring of HSBC, specifically the creation of separate ‘Hong Kong’ and ‘UK’ businesses, will impact the more than 180,000 BNO Hong Kongers living across the UK who attempt to withdraw their MPF savings,” said the letter.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a signatory to the letter, called on HSBC to make “meaningful changes” for the affected Hong Kongers during the restructuring.

“If HSBC has not yet taken into account how its reorganisation, specifically in regard to the split between the Hong Kong and UK markets, will affect Hong Kongers abroad, it should carefully consider how to protect its Hong Kong customers from further financial transnational repression,” wrote Patten, a patron of Hong Kong Watch.

It has been nearly four years since the UK government launched the BNO scheme, which is far too long for Hong Kongers to be blocked from the very savings that, for some, would unleash the path to their new life in Britain.

I continue to hear accounts of struggle as Hong Kongers long to adjust to their new lives in the UK, including a single mom who is again worried about not being able to afford heating this winter, as well as one family which cannot afford accessibility features in their home for their child with disabilities.

HSBC must seriously consider how it will handle Hong Kongers’ MPF savings as they rearrange the foundations of the company to split the Hong Kong and UK markets, as it is time for their funds to be rightfully released.

In addition, the new UK government should seek to further understand the issue, raise the freezing of BNO Hong Kongers’ savings in every bilateral meeting with China and Hong Kong, and take immediate action to issue guidance to MPF trustees regarding the use of BNO passports as valid, UK government-issued identity documents.

This would ensure that Hong Kongers who are part of the UK’s BNO community do not have to face another cold winter nor a sleepless night trying to figure out how they will provide for their family while still in the shadow of trauma from escaping political repression in Hong Kong.

Megan Khoo is policy director at the international NGO Hong Kong Watch. Khoo, based in London, has served in communications roles at foreign policy non-profit organizations in London and Washington, D.C.. The views expressed here do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Megan Khoo.

The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.

By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:

1. The source says that the advice to Cameron on Israeli war crimes was “so obvious” it could not have been misunderstood by him or anyone else in the previous government. Given that the new Labour government has been similarly advised, forcing it to partially suspend arms sales, one conclusion only is possible: Cameron is complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The International Criminal Court must immediately investigate him. Its British chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, needs to issue an arrest warrant for Cameron as soon as possible. No ifs or buts.

2. Now in government, Labour has a legal duty to make clear the timeline of the advice Cameron received – and who else received it – to help the ICC in its prosecution of the former Foreign Secretary and other British officials for complicity in Israel’s atrocities.

3. The current furore being kicked up over Labour’s suspension of a tiny fraction of arm sales to Israel needs to be put firmly in context. David Lammy, Cameron’s successor, is keen to evade any risk of complicity charges himself. Leaders of the previous government are denouncing his decision on arms sales only because it exposes their own complicity in war crimes. Their outrage is desperate arse-covering – something the media ought to be highlighting but isn’t.

4. Labour needs to explain why, according to the source, the advice it has published has apparently been watered down from the advice Cameron received. As a result, Lammy has suspended 30 of 350 arms contracts with Israel – or 8 per cent of the total. He has avoided suspending the British components most likely to be assisting Israel in its war crimes: those used in Israel’s F-35 jets, made in the US.

Why? Because that would incur the full wrath of the Biden administration. He and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, dare not take on Washington.

In other words, Lammy’s decision has not only exposed the complicity of Cameron and the previous Tory leadership in Israeli war crimes. It also exposes Lammy and Starmer’s complicity. Put bluntly, following this week’s announcement, they are now 8 per cent less complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity than Cameron and the Tories were.

5. There has been lots of fake indignation from Israel and its lobbyists, especially in Britain’s Jewish community, about how offensive it is that the government should announce its suspension of a small fraction of arms sales to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza the day six Israeli hostages were buried.

The chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, for example, is incensed that the UK is limiting its arming of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, saying it “beggars belief”. He is thereby calling for the UK to trash international law, and ignore its own officials’ advice that Israel risks using British weapons to commit war crimes. He is demanding that the UK facilitate genocide.

The British Board of Deputies, which claims to represent British Jews, has retweeted Mirvis’ comment. The Board’s president has been all over the airwaves similarly decryingLammy’s decision.

Israel would, of course, have always found some reason to be appalled at the timing. There is an obviously far more important consideration than the bogus “sensitivities” of Israel and genocide apologists like Rabbi Mirvis. Each day the UK government delays banning all arms to Israel – not just a small percentage – more Palestinians in Gaza die and the more Britain contributes to Israel’s crimes against humanity.

But equally to the point: according to the rules Starmer imposed on the Labour party – that Britain’s Jewish leaders get to define what offends Jews and what amounts to antisemitism, especially on issues concerning Israel – the Labour government is now, judged by those standards, antisemitic. You can’t have one set of rules for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left, and another for Starmer and the Labour right.

Or rather you can. That is precisely the game the entire British establishment has been playing for the past seven years. A game that has facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza even more than the sales of British weapons to Israel.

6. Many have dismissed the significance of recent rulings against Israel from the International Court of Justice – that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza and that its decades of occupation are illegal and a form of apartheid – as well as moves from the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal.

Here we see how mistaken that approach is. Those legal decisions have set the two wings of the British establishment – the Tories and the Starmerite Labour right – at loggerheads. Both are now desperate in their different ways to distance themselves from charges of complicity.

The rulings have also opened up a potential rift with Washington. The State Department spokesman has been shown having to frantically justify why the US is not banning its own arms sales.

Journalist Humeyra Pamuk questioned State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on why the US has not followed the UK's decision to suspend arms sales to Israel over concerns about potential violations of international law. pic.twitter.com/mujwDyblgZ

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 4, 2024

Admittedly, these are only small fissures in the western system of oligarchy. But those fissures are weaknesses – weaknesses that those who care about human rights, care about international law, care about stopping a genocide, and care about saving their own humanity can exploit. We have few opportunities. We need to grasp every single one of them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Photograph Source: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street – OGL 3

“The entire clown show caught up with us.”

– Anonymous senior Tory speaking after the election result

Last week the Conservative Party received an absolute drubbing in the UK general election.

The Tories had their worst performance in their 190-year history, losing almost half their share of the vote and 252 parliamentary seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, surpassing their previously greatest electoral catastrophe, when the Balfour government went under in 1906, losing 246 seats. There are now 121 Conservative MPs, and no Tory MPs in Central London, Wales, Oxfordshire (one of the leafy shires that were previous Tory strongholds), and Cornwall (which has had at least one Tory MP since 1924).

The Tory campaign was woefully inept. Rishi Sunak, hardly the most prepossessing of physical specimens, held its launch outside the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street during a torrential downpour, while spurning an umbrella—he ended-up looking like a tormented drowning rat.

A Sunak campaign visit to Titanic yard in Belfast (near where the Titanic was built, but now populated by luxury condominiums), was an open invitation to journalists to ask if he was the captain of a sinking ship.

Another Sunak campaign stump at Silverstone, the UK’s Formula One racing venue, simply brought to mind the contrast between the sleekly high-performing racing cars and a rickety Tory campaign with wheels that were falling off.

Sunak also made the terrible mistake of bailing on the second-half of the 80^thyear commemorative D-Day ceremony in Normandy. The Tories pay lip service to the notion that they are the patriotic party, and Sunak’s refusal to be at what was probably the last such D-Day commemoration attended by aging veterans, created a barely concealed racist hullabaloo in the rightwing media (with snide insinuations about Sunak’s brown skin and Indian immigrant background, overlooking the fact that 87,000 colonial Indian soldiers died fighting for the Allies in World War II). Sunak was taught the hard way that no one can be a Tory leader with being heedful of perceived patriotic obsequies.

Sunak’s campaign was not helped by the fact that several prominent Tories, seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, decided to retire rather than contest the election, while others who remained election candidates simply went into hiding. As a result the Tory media campaign was fronted by second-raters who were unrecognizable to all but the most dedicated political aficionados, and they were of course no match for the sharpest TV and radio interviewers. (Unlike the US, the top British media interviewers do not pose “soft ball” questions— Sam Donaldson, and Helen Thomas in the White House press room, were probably the last US media figures seriously to challenge politicians on screen and in the air, and their prime years were during the Reagan, Bush I and II, and Clinton presidencies.)

As a last straw, the closing days of the election campaign saw disclosures of Tory officials and politicians using insider knowledge to bet on the setting of the date of the general election. This is now the subject of a police investigation.

Bereft of ideas, and mired in sleaze and corruption, the Tories resorted to a “war on woke”. Alas for them this only served to wake up the British public.

With regard to the election itself, the low turnout of 59.9% was a sharp decrease from the 67.3% that voted in the 2019 election– it was the lowest turnout at a general election since 2001, when just 59.4% voted, this being the lowest percentage since before World War II.

Labour’s vote-share was just under 34% (though it won 64% of the seats), the lowest score for a majority-winning party since 1832, and not much greater than the 30.7% that Tory John Major received in 1997, when he was annihilated by New Labour’s Tony Blair. Blair won 43.2% of the vote and 418 seats (to the Tories 165 seats). In 2024 the Tory vote-share plunged from Boris Johnson’s 2019 44% to Sunak’s 24%.

These figures indicate overall that Starmer’s majority was wide but relatively shallow. For one thing, Labour did not achieve the 253-seat super-majority that Blair did in 1997. So what preempted a more deep-rooted victory?

Obviously the above-mentioned low turnout played a part—historically Tory voters, more prosperous in general and more resolute than Labour supporters in defending their class interests, turn up in proportionally greater numbers at polling stations.

Labour also benefitted from gains made by the hard-right Reform, which ate significantly into the Tory vote. Although it only won 5 seats,

Reform came 2nd in 103 constituencies, primarily those which had voted for Brexit in 2016 (and thus Tory in 2019). Over 4 million people voted for Reform, giving it 14% of the total vote. The vagaries of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system translated this into a mere 5 Commons seats (including one for its leader Nigel Farage), but Farage now has a base from which he can capitalize even further on Tory disarray, as well as potential dissatisfaction with Labour on immigration (Reform’s pet theme, based largely on approximations of Schroedinger’s Cat fantasies about “furriners” taking jobs from native Brits, but also somehow coming over to milk the UK’s unemployment benefits system). Something like a challenge to Labour on this issue is bound to happen, given that Labour has pledged to reform the UK’s chaotic immigration structure to make it fairer and more coherent, and shows no signs of faltering in this undertaking. There is nothing altruistic about this stance, since everyone knows that voters with proximate immigrant backgrounds tend to vote Labour.

The combined Tory–Reform vote, at 38%, was larger than Labour’s 34% share. So in the end was the result more of an anti-Conservative vote, than a pro-Labour one?

Another contributing factor to Labour’s landslide but shallow electoral outcome was due to areas with a Muslim electorate of 20+% who baulked at Starmer’s Zionism regarding Gaza– Labour lost 5 seats to pro-Palestinian candidates who stood as Independents, including the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who had been expelled from the party by Starmer.

Labour gains were also enabled by the Scottish National Party’s implosion in Scotland. The SNP, which won 48 seats in 2019, won 9 this time, while Labour, who won a single Scottish seat in 2019, now has 37. This creates a conundrum for independence-seeking Scots, who number around 45% consistently in opinion polls, but who now have no viable political party to further this aspiration.

Yet another factor contributing to the Tory defeat was the strongest Lib Dem showing since 1923. The Lib Dems got 71 seats, at the expense of the Tories in the main, indicating fairly clearly that many voters who were anti-Tory preferred the Lib Dems to Labour.

The Greens, more progressive than the now centrist or even centre-right Labour, increased their vote share from less than 3% to 7%, but  gained a mere 4 seats. The Greens came second behind Labour in dozens of seats, thus highlighting yet again the fundamental unfairness of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

Green voters are largely  in urban areas with an often varied and younger electorate. Many live in rental properties, often carrying the burden of student debt, and with a large proportion in precarious jobs. Labour, with its greater determination in catering to capitalist interests and the asset-manager class in particular, poses less appeal for this kind of individual.

As a result, more Labour MPs in urban areas will have to compete for votes with the more progressive Greens. This will be reflected in growing incentives to tax the wealthy, enhancing public ownership of now privatized industries, the abolition of tuition fees, greater investment by the government, the amelioration of child poverty, and

stronger measures in addressing the climate crisis. Labour will not have the alibi of treating the Tories and Reform as its sole electoral competitors, thereby competing with them in endless rounds of  spurious measures to thwart asylum seekers and in race-to-the bottom cuts in public expenditures.

14 years of Conservative rule brought Brits cruel austerity, ruinous Brexit, Boris Johnson’s Covid-era Partygate, Covid pandemic PPE corruption, economic decline, the proliferation of food banks, the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, and so forth. The Tories came to power in 2010, and everything in 2024 has become worse for most Brits.

“Change” was Keir Starmer’s constant refrain during the campaign. At the same time, all he offered voters were Tory-lite policies and retro-patriotism. The fare offered was so light that the Murdoch-owned media endorsed him. So what is the context in which “change” can occur?

In addition to problems caused by harmful Tory policies since 2010, the UK faces longer-term and more deeply entrenched structural problems.

Wage growth from 2010 to 2020 was the lowest over any peacetime 10-year period since the Napoleonic Wars. The UK’s annual growth rate in productivity since 2007 has been a paltry  0.4%, its lowest over an equivalent period since 1826.

Per capita GDP has grown by a feeble 4.3% over the past 16 years, compared with 46% in the previous 16 years. Moreover, GDP growth over the past few years has been generated almost exclusively by the size of overall population growth. That is to say, by the immigration that both Labour and the Tories say they want to curtail.

Tory governments go by the mantra of  low taxes, but this government has had to increase taxes to a level not seen in almost 75 years, when the UK was still suffering from economic burdens incurred in World War II. A flatlining economy reduces the government’s revenue streams, and the reduction of these streams has had to be countered by increased taxation.

The average annual real wage has fallen by about $14,000 below the level existing before the financial crash of 2008.

The new Labour government will have to confront these seeming intractables. Keir Starmer has said Labour needs two terms in office to remedy these problems. He is being optimistic.

The UK’s economic problems are long-term and systemic. They can’t be dealt with in the span of a single government’s two (or even more) terms in office.

The social contract which existed from the end of World War II until it was dissolved by Margaret Thatcher ensured that wages kept up with productivity. That generation had decent incomes, and assets (especially housing) were reasonably priced.

What came with Thatcher, however, was a switch of emphasis from the productive economy to financialization– basically speculation and arbitrage on asset prices. Asset prices were jacked up in a series of speculative bubbles to create “wealth,  for those possessing assets.

But inflating asset prices also meant that they were increasingly out of reach for a newer generation trying to acquire them for the first time.

An entire generation– a recent Guardian piece called it ‘Generation Rent’ (though rents are unaffordable for young families in 66% of the UK) — has been wiped-out when it comes to having a long-term stake in the economy.

To remedy this at least 2 things will have to happen: (1) the UK’s productive economy will have to be restored: and (2) the UK’s archaic and dysfunctional political system will have to be realigned drastically if the first objective is to be achieved.

Nothing proposed by Starmer, who uses the word “delivery” as often as “change”, comes remotely near to delivering on these 2 objectives.

The post The UK’s Major Political Shifts appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

The story of this deal has been a long one.  On April 14, 2022, the government of Boris Johnson announced the Asylum Partnership Arrangement with Rwanda, which was intended “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership”. Rwanda, for a princely sum, would receive those whose asylum claims would be otherwise processed in the UK through the “Rwanda domestic asylum system” and have the responsibility for settling and protecting applicants.

This cynical effort of deferring human rights obligations and not guarding asylum seekers and refugees from harm has been made all the more hideous by Kigali’s less than savoury reputation in the field.  Refugees have been shot for protesting over reduced food rations (twelve from the Democratic Republic of Congo died in February 2018).  Refugees have also been arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation about Rwanda’s less than spotless human rights record.  And that’s just a smidgen of a significantly blotted copybook.

Notwithstanding this, UK home secretaries have gushed over Kigali’s seemingly falsified credentials.  Suella Braverman, who formerly occupied the post, was jaw dropping in her claim that “Rwanda has a track record of successfully resettling and integrating people who are refugees or asylum seekers”.  This is markedly ironic given that the Rwandan government has been accused of creating its own complement of refugees running into the tens of thousands.

The UK government has a patchy legal record in trying to defend the legitimacy of the exchange with Rwanda.  The Court of Appeal in June 2023 reversed a lower court decision on the grounds that those asylum seekers sent to Rwanda faced real risks of mistreatment prohibited by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  Rwanda, it was noted, was “intolerant of dissent; that there are restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of speech; and that political opponents have been detained in unofficial detention centres and have been subjected to torture and Article 3 ill-treatment short of torture.”

The government also failed to convince the UK Supreme Court, which similarly found in November 2023 that people removed to Rwanda faced a real risk of being returned to their countries of origin in violation of the principle of non-refoulement.  That principle, by which persons are not to be sent to their countries of origin or third countries if they would be placed at risk of harm, is a cardinal rule in several instruments of international law and enshrined in British law.

In what can only be regarded as a legal absurdity, the Safety of Rwanda bill essentially directs the home secretary, immigration officials, courts and tribunals to deem Rwanda a safe country in accordance with UK law and UK obligations to protect asylum seekers.  It also bars decision makers from considering the risk of refugees being sent by Rwanda to other countries and disallows UK courts from drawing upon interpretations of international law, including the European Convention of Human Rights.  Effectively, a sizeable portion of the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 has been rendered inconsequential in these determinations.

A final, nasty feature of the legislation is the grant of power to a Minister of the Crown to decide whether to abide by interim measures made by the European Court of Human Rights regarding any removal to Rwanda.  This is astonishing on several levels, not least because it repudiates the binding nature of such interim measures.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, could barely believe the passage of such an obnoxious bit of legislation.  Not only did it fly in the face of obligations to protect refugees, it constituted a direct interference in the judicial process. “The United Kingdom government should refrain from removing people under the Rwanda policy and reverse the Bill’s effective infringement of judicial independence.”

Shadowing these proceedings is an unmistakable, ghoulish legacy of Australian origin.  The former Home Secretary Priti Patel openly acknowledged that elements of the “Australian model” of processing asylum claims in third countries were appealing and something to emulate.  The particularly attractive element of the plan was the refusal by Canberra to ever permit those found to be refugees to ever settle on Australian soil.  Other countries, including such European states as Denmark, have also chosen Rwanda as an appropriate destination for unwanted asylum seekers.

The entire affair is a stunning example of political entropy, a howl from an administration marching before the firing squad.  With each failure, the Tories have tried to claw back respectability in the hope of appearing muscular in the face of irregular migration.  They have accordingly cooked up a scheme that is not merely cruel, but one of staggering cost (each asylum seeker of the current cohort promises to cost the British taxpayer £1.8 million) and ineffectualness.  Sunak, a laughably weak and unpopular prime minister, is, politically speaking, at death’s door.  Despite getting the legislation through, legal struggles from potential deportees are bound to tear into the arrangements. What Britain’s judges do will prove a true test of character.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Photograph Source: Raph_PH – CC BY 2.0

Jonathan Freedland is a senior columnist for the Guardian, and its point-person in providing commentary and reporting on the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Freedland gives every impression of being fair-minded and “objective” in this commentary, unlike the less-knowledgeable and far-from-impartial US commentator Thomas Friedman, who is little more than a fan-boy of Likud and its political allies (aside from the occasional muted demurral when Israel turns its overwhelming military might on hapless Palestinians, though in the end Friedman always finds ways to exculpate Israel).

Freedland went to Israel to cover its current conflict with Gaza. In a Guardian piece from there he enjoined his readers to “listen to the phone call made by one of the Hamas murderers of 7 October to his parents back in Gaza. Hear his pride, his ecstatic joy as he tells them he has “killed Jews” with his own hands, including a husband and wife and eight others. “Dad, 10 with my own hands!”.

The Guardian invited readers of this article to submit a response to what Freedland’s wrote. Here is what I sent in (it did not get published):

“This unspeakable bloodlust [referred to by Freedland] called to mind a parallel episode during Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp two decades ago:

Moshe Nissim, IDF Bulldozer Operator in Jenin: “Before we went in [to Jenin] I asked some guys to teach me [how to operate a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer]. They taught me how to drive forward and make a flat surface… For three days I just erased and erased… I kept drinking whisky to fight off fatigue. I made them a stadium in the middle of the camp! I didn’t see dead bodies under the blade of the D-9… But if there were any I don’t care”. Originally published in a report by Tsadok Yeheskeli, Yediot Aharonot, May 31 2002.

Unlike Mr Freedland I’m not sure what lessons are precisely to be drawn from such cases of untramelled bloodlust”.

International law requires these war-criminal berserkers (on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides) to be brought to account, and it is not unreasonable to expect fair-minded journalists to acknowledge both such situations accordingly.

In a later article from Israel Freedland says:

“There is, in fact, a terrible price to pay as long as Israel keeps fighting in Gaza, in the form of the deaths of thousands of innocents. And there is a terrible price to pay if Israel stops fighting in Gaza, leaving intact a murderous, eliminationist threat. Neither option is bearable. It is a tragic choice. We cannot do much for the two peoples trapped by that choice, but we can at least admit that we see it”.

But: is Israel not also “a murderous, eliminationist threat” for Gazans since it imposed its draconian siege on that territory in 2007? So why not point this out, instead of pointing this accusatory finger solely at one of the parties involved? And why can’t we “do much for the two peoples trapped by that choice”? There is a clear way out of this supposed tragedy. But first another contention in this article requires attention.

Freedland says “responsibility for a death toll estimated to be in excess of 15,000 – in less than two months – rests squarely with a Hamas enemy that deliberately embeds itself in population centres, including in schools and hospitals”.

Freedland is right to say that Hamas blurs the line between its combatants and non-combatant Gazan civilians—this of course is a prima facie violation of international law, though the application of this law in asymmetrical warfare lacks the clear-cut applicability present in wars of a more regular and standard character.

Freedland’s claim however occludes the fact that Israel also blurs the line between its active-duty combatants and those of its civilians who are designated as “reservists”.

In Israel, military service is compulsory for most citizens, with men serving for two and a half years and women for two years, starting at the age of 18. After completing their required service, these men and women typically become part of the Israeli Defence Force’s (sic) Reserves. That is to say, these individuals, usually up to the age of 40 (50 in certain specialist fields), can be summoned back to active duty at the behest of their government.

So is an Israeli aged 18-40 in civvies really and routinely to be regarded as a non-combatant civilian? After all, reservists are allowed to take their weapons home with them when they finish their service in the regular military, and the media is replete with images of Israelis in civvies shouldering guns in the middle of towns and cities.

Soon after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israel expanded its mobilization of reservists to 360,000.

Any Jewish person anywhere in the world is a citizen of Israel by virtue of this fact, regardless of their place of birth. As a result, many “Israelis” possess dual-nationality, and can be called-up to serve in Israel’s military while living abroad. According to the Washington Post,  about 10,000 people living in the United States alone have reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices that were part of the mass mobilization after Hamas’s attack in October (incidentally, this includes someone who lives and works as a financier in Los Angeles— hence a likely case of making money in one country and killing Palestinians in another).

Israeli airlines El Al, Israir and Arkia added more flights to bring “home” these reservists, according to their websites and Israel’s airports authority.

The demarcation between combatants and noncombatant civilians is thus blurred indisputably by both sides in this conflict.

As mentioned above, Freedland contends we can’t “do much for the two peoples trapped” in what he regards as an inexorable tragedy. But of course we can! Freedland scarcely mentions Israel’s countless illegalities in its dealings with the Palestinian people. A start can be made by addressing some of these.

Every international legal body regards the siege/blockade of Gaza as contravening the law prohibiting the use of collective punishments against civilians. International law permits an occupied people to engage in armed resistance against the occupier. As long as Israel maintains its illegal siege, there will be justified resistance against the blockader/illegal occupier (with the caveat that noncombatant civilians are not to be targetted). Israel– so far shielded and abetted by its US paymaster– has to be brought to an acknowledgement of this situation.

At the same time, Freedland and others maintain that this step will not be a practical proposition for Israel as long as Hamas maintains its “eliminationist” stance towards Israel.

While Hamas pledged to “eliminate the Zionist entity” in its 1988 founding charter, which called for the creation of an Islamic state over the entirety of the land of historic Palestine, its May 2017 “Document of general principles and policies” abandoned eliminationism in favour of a long-term truce in which Israel exists within its 1967 borders as a condition of further negotiations leading to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Neither the exact nature of this putative Palestinian state nor that of a future Israel was specified in the May 2017 document, leading Hamas doubters to maintain that this was merely a playing-for-time diplomatic smokescreen employed by Hamas while it pursued its longer-term eliminationist goals. But in any event, contra Freedland and others, Hamas has not been committed publicly to the elimination of Israel since 2017.

Zionists such as Freedland have of course a visceral distrust of Hamas.

Hamas is however in no position to destroy Israel militarily, so why not create an internationally supervised framework, in the context of a long-term ceasefire or truce, in which Hamas is held accountable for each and every one of its policy declarations and subsequent actions? The same of course would apply to Israel.

Will anyone take bets that a principled procedure of this kind is unacceptable to Israel and its supporters in the western media?

Meanwhile, in Gaza Hamas will doubtless be crippled by Israel’s brutal techno-militarism, but in the longer-term Hamas or one of its approximations or proxies will almost certainly find ways to continue the resistance.

An American state, New Hampshire, uses “Live free or die” as its official motto.

What if the long-suffering Palestinian people insist on joining New Hampshire in adhering to this simple motto? Saying this in the knowledge that 75% of Gazans are now internally displaced,  and 400,000 have lost their jobs since Israel began its retaliation after October 7.

The post Zionist Jonathan Freedland, the UK’s Nuanced Version of Thomas Friedman appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

Asia Fact Check Lab found that some of the paper’s claims are missing important context. While specific claims about several broad and potentially abusive powers granted by the law are mostly accurate, the paper failed to address fundamental differences in the rule of law between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong under Chinese rule. 

Ta Kung Pao published an editorial on July 17 titled “British national security law exposes the true face of anti-China politicians in the West” while running one more on Aug. 15 titled “I have something to say/The US and UK security laws are more stringent.”

In both articles, Ta Kung Pao claimed British authorities “demonstrated hypocrisy and double standards” by introducing  their own national security law after having severely criticized the Hong Kong national security law that came into effect in 2020 over its threat to the rule of law and international human rights and the city’s Basic Law promised to protect.

The U.K. passed a new National Security Act, or the NSA, on July 11, which aims to increase British law enforcement and intelligence agencies power in order to combat hostile foreign states. 

Ta Kung Pao also criticized the NSA for granting the British government numerous expansive and potentially oppressive powers. These include allowing the government to arrest foreign nationals, search and detain suspects without a warrant, conduct secret tribunals, and impose mandatory restrictions on the behavior and movement of specific individuals. The Hong Kong security law contains many similar provisions.

While the above powers do exist, a Home Office spokesperson told AFCL they “are exceptional” and only available to be used against people “suspected of being involved in hostile activity linked to foreign states.” 

AFCL also found that the articles still failed to address fundamental differences in the rule of law between the U.K. and Hong Kong under Chinese rule. 

Differences in the rule of law

For one, the British legal system has significantly more constraints in place to curb potential government abuses of the NSA, including an independent judiciary and prosecuting attorney. 

In contrast, China and Hong Kong currently have no legal institutions with sufficient power to stop Beijing’s interference in legal cases, particularly in cases related to national security.

Apart from that, British citizens can appeal to the European Court on Human Rights if they believe that their government has violated one of basic human rights ensured in the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights, including a fair trial and free expression. The court’s binding decisions can compel the U.K. government to redress any part of the NSA that conflicts with these rights.

However, there is no similar international legal tribunal able to constrain Beijing from interpreting Hong Kong’s national security law according to its own political needs. 

The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, which measures adherence to the rule of law from the citizen's point of view, shows the U.K. and China ranked 15 and 95 in 2022, respectively. Hong Kong saw a drop in ranking from 16 in 2020 to 22 in 2022 after introducing the national security law.

Make contact ‘transparent’

The U.K. government has repeatedly emphasized that the NSA will not limit either freedom of speech or diversity of political opinion. 

The government’s primary objective is to ensure that individuals representing foreign powers are transparently registered. Once registered, these individuals are free to express support for any foreign government or criticize the British government.

“There is nothing in the Act about expressing opinions sympathetic to foreign government, let alone to penalise that; its aim is to make contacts [with foreign governments] ‘transparent’,” said Lord Wallace of Saltaire, a member of Parliament who participated in the act’s amending.

Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a branch of RFA established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of public issues.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By AFCL.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Susan Hawley.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Cherry Casey.

Labour Member of Parliament David Lammy, who serves as Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, said he “would act multilaterally with our partners” to get China’s actions recognized as genocide through international courts, he told  Politico.

“What we’ve seen from China is that they continue to be more internally repressive and obviously there were huge concerns in Xinjiang,” Lammy told Politico on Tuesday during an event arranged by the left-wing think tank the Fabian Society, where he introduced Labour’s  foreign policy plan for government.

“We’ve got to challenge China and they are definitely a strategic competitor in essential areas, and we’ve got to hold them to account on human rights — but there are areas where it’s important to cooperate,” he said, according to the report.

“Parliament took a decision about genocide, the international community is very concerned about genocide,” he was quoted as saying.

Lammy’s comments come as pressure builds to stop China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid a growing body of evidence documenting the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-educations” camps, torture, sexual abuse and forced labor. 

The U.S. has branded China’s actions genocide and the United Nations has said they may constitute crimes against humanity. 

But the United Kingdom has avoided doing so, preferring that the matter be determined by international courts. 

In April 2021, most members of the UK Parliament voted in favor of a motion declaring that the Chinese government was committing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, though it did not compel the British government to act to recognize it.

China has consistently denied the allegations and said the camps were vocational training centers to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

Polls indicate that the Labor Party is favored to win the next election after more than a decade in opposition. The next general election is scheduled to be held no later than Jan. 28, 2025.

Rahima Mahnut, the UK director for the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed Lammy’s comments. 

“I am so pleased that the shadow foreign secretary has confirmed the Labour Party shares this policy and that he has committed to working multilaterally with international partners to secure accountability for Uyghur people,” she told RFA on Thursday. “I hope that this means that countries in Europe and across the world see that it is time to follow suit.”

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, noted that Labour shadow ministers have regularly described what is happening to Uyghurs as genocide.

“The real test will be whether Labour sticks to this line when in government,” he said. “Of course, if the UK were to act to declare genocide, it would engage our responsibilities under the Genocide Convention and necessitate serious action.”

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Uyghur.

Labour Member of Parliament David Lammy, who serves as Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, said he “would act multilaterally with our partners” to get China’s actions recognized as genocide through international courts, he told  Politico.

“What we’ve seen from China is that they continue to be more internally repressive and obviously there were huge concerns in Xinjiang,” Lammy told Politico on Tuesday during an event arranged by the left-wing think tank the Fabian Society, where he introduced Labour’s  foreign policy plan for government.

“We’ve got to challenge China and they are definitely a strategic competitor in essential areas, and we’ve got to hold them to account on human rights — but there are areas where it’s important to cooperate,” he said, according to the report.

“Parliament took a decision about genocide, the international community is very concerned about genocide,” he was quoted as saying.

Lammy’s comments come as pressure builds to stop China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid a growing body of evidence documenting the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-educations” camps, torture, sexual abuse and forced labor. 

The U.S. has branded China’s actions genocide and the United Nations has said they may constitute crimes against humanity. 

But the United Kingdom has avoided doing so, preferring that the matter be determined by international courts. 

In April 2021, most members of the UK Parliament voted in favor of a motion declaring that the Chinese government was committing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, though it did not compel the British government to act to recognize it.

China has consistently denied the allegations and said the camps were vocational training centers to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

Polls indicate that the Labor Party is favored to win the next election after more than a decade in opposition. The next general election is scheduled to be held no later than Jan. 28, 2025.

Rahima Mahnut, the UK director for the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed Lammy’s comments. 

“I am so pleased that the shadow foreign secretary has confirmed the Labour Party shares this policy and that he has committed to working multilaterally with international partners to secure accountability for Uyghur people,” she told RFA on Thursday. “I hope that this means that countries in Europe and across the world see that it is time to follow suit.”

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, noted that Labour shadow ministers have regularly described what is happening to Uyghurs as genocide.

“The real test will be whether Labour sticks to this line when in government,” he said. “Of course, if the UK were to act to declare genocide, it would engage our responsibilities under the Genocide Convention and necessitate serious action.”

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Uyghur.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Zoe Gardner.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Ruby Lott-Lavigna.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lauren Crosby Medlicott.

The recent Australia, U.S., and UK $368 billion deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, as the “worst deal in all history.” It commits Australia to buy conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that will be delivered in the early 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by the UK. Meanwhile, starting from the 2030s, “pending approval from the U.S. Congress, the United States intends to sell Australia three Virginia class submarines, with the potential to sell up to two more if needed” (Trilateral Australia-UK-U.S. Partnership on Nuclear-Powered Submarines, March 13, 2023; emphasis mine). According to the details, it appears that this agreement commits Australia to buy from the U.S. eight new nuclear submarines, to be delivered from the 2040s through the end of the 2050s. If nuclear submarines were so crucial for Australia’s security, for which it broke its existing diesel-powered submarine deal with France, this agreement provides no credible answers.

For those who have been following the nuclear proliferation issues, the deal raises a different red flag. If submarine nuclear reactor technology and weapons-grade (highly enriched) uranium are shared with Australia, it is a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Australia is a signatory as a non-nuclear power. Even the supplying of such nuclear reactors by the U.S. and the UK would constitute a breach of the NPT. This is even if such submarines do not carry nuclear but conventional weapons as stated in this agreement.

So why did Australia renege on its contract with France, which was to buy 12 diesel submarines from France at a cost of $67 billion, a small fraction of its gargantuan $368 billion deal with the U.S.? What does it gain, and what does the U.S. gain by annoying France, one of its close NATO allies?

To understand, we have to see how the U.S. looks at the geostrategy, and how the Five Eyes—the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—fit into this larger picture. Clearly, the U.S. believes that the core of the NATO alliance is the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada for the Atlantic and the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia for the Indo-Pacific. The rest of its allies, NATO allies in Europe and Japan and South Korea in East and South Asia, are around this Five Eyes core. That is why the United States was willing to offend France to broker a deal with Australia.

What does the U.S. get out of this deal? On the promise of eight nuclear submarines that will be given to Australia two to four decades down the line, the U.S. gets access to Australia to be used as a base for supporting its naval fleet, air force, and even U.S. soldiers. The words used by the White House are, “As early as 2027, the United Kingdom and the United States plan to establish a rotational presence of one UK Astute class submarine and up to four U.S. Virginia class submarines at HMAS Stirling near Perth, Western Australia.” The use of the phrase “rotational presence” is to provide Australia the fig leaf that it is not offering the U.S. a naval base, as that would violate Australia’s long-standing position of no foreign bases on its soil. Clearly, all the support structures required for such rotations are what a foreign military base has, therefore they will function as U.S. bases.

Who is the target of the AUKUS alliance? This is explicit in all the writing on the subject and what all the leaders of AUKUS have said: it is China. In other words, this is a containment of China policy with the South China Sea and the Taiwanese Strait as the key contested oceanic regions. Positioning U.S. naval ships including its nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons makes Australia a front-line state in the current U.S. plans for the containment of China. Additionally, it creates pressure on most Southeast Asian countries who would like to stay out of such a U.S. versus China contest being carried out in the South China Sea.

While the U.S. motivation to draft Australia as a front-line state against China is understandable, what is difficult to understand is Australia’s gain from such an alignment. China is not only the biggest importer of Australian goods, but also its biggest supplier. In other words, if Australia is worried about the safety of its trade through the South China Sea from Chinese attacks, the bulk of this trade is with China. So why would China be mad enough to attack its own trade with Australia? For the U.S. it makes eminent sense to get a whole continent, Australia, to host its forces much closer to China than 8,000-9,000 miles away in the U.S. Though it already has bases in Hawaii and Guam in the Pacific Ocean, Australia and Japan provide two anchor points, one to the north and one to the south in the eastern Pacific Ocean region. The game is an old-fashioned game of containment, the one that the U.S. played with its NATO, Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) military alliances after World War II.

The problem that the U.S. has today is that even countries like India, who have their issues with China, are not signing up with the U.S. in a military alliance. Particularly, as the U.S. is now in an economic war with a number of countries, not just Russia and China, such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. While India was willing to join the Quad—the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India—and participate in military exercises, it backed off from the Quad becoming a military alliance. This explains the pressure on Australia to partner with the U.S. militarily, particularly in Southeast Asia.

It still fails to explain what is in it for Australia. Even the five Virginia class nuclear submarines that Australia may get second hand are subject to U.S. congressional approval. Those who follow U.S. politics know that the U.S. is currently treaty incapable; it has not ratified a single treaty on issues from global warming to the law of the seas in recent years. The other eight are a good 20-40 years away; who knows what the world would look like that far down the line.

Why, if naval security was its objective, did Australia choose an iffy nuclear submarine agreement with the U.S. over a sure-shot supply of French submarines? This is a question that Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, the Australian Labor Party’s former PMs, asked. It makes sense only if we understand that Australia now sees itself as a cog in the U.S. wheel for this region. And it is a vision of U.S. naval power projection in the region that today Australia shares. The vision is that settler colonial and ex-colonial powers—the G7-AUKUS—should be the ones making the rules of the current international order. And behind the talk of international order is the mailed fist of the U.S., NATO, and AUKUS. This is what Australia’s nuclear submarine deal really means.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Prabir Purkayastha.

He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street.  The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country.  According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go.  It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.

The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled.  For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the title suggests.  In time, the courts may well also find fault with this ghastly bit of proposed legislation, which has already sailed through two readings in the Commons and resting in the Committee stage.

On Good Morning Britain, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had to concede she was running “novel arguments” about dealing with such irregular migration, not making mention of Australia’s own novel experiment which did, and still continues, to besmirch and taint international refugee law.

In her statement on whether the bill would be consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined by the UK Human Rights Act, Braverman was brazen to the point of being quixotic: “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”

The long title of the bill does not even bother to conceal its purposes.  It makes “provision for and in connection with the removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have entered or arrived in breach of immigration control”.  It furnishes a detention regime, deals with unaccompanied children, makes some remarks about “victims of slavery or human trafficking” and, more to the point makes “provision about the inadmissibility of certain protection and certain human rights claims relating to immigration”.

The central purpose of the bill is to destroy the very basis of seeking asylum in Britain, along with the process that accompanies it.  Much of this is inspired by the fact that the United Kingdom does not do the business of processing asylums particularly well.  Glorious Britannia now receives fewer applications for asylum than Germany, France or Spain.  Despite having fewer numbers, its backlog remains heftier than any of those three states.

The proposed instrument essentially declares illegal in advance any unauthorised arrival, an absurd proposition given that most asylum seekers arriving by boat will not, obviously, have the paperwork handy. (This is a nice trick borrowed from Fortress Australia.)  Those seeking asylum by boat will be automatically detained for 28 days.  During this time, those detained will be unable to make a legal challenge nor seek bail.  After the expiration of time, a claim for bail can be made, or the Home Secretary can release them.

In truth, the authorities can refuse to process the claim, thereby deferring responsibility to some other source or agency. Dark, gloomy detention centres are promised, as are third countries such as Rwanda or a return across the English Channel back to France or another European state.  Then comes the issue of return to the country of origin, a state of affairs in gross breach of the non-refoulement obligation of international refugee law.  It is fantastically crude, a declaration of savage intent.

Even with these provisions, chaos is likely to ensue, given that the options are, as Ian Dunt points out, essentially off the table.  The Rwandan solution has so far failed to materialise, bogged down in litigation.  Were there to be any sent, these would amount to a few hundred at best and hardly arrest the tide of boat arrivals.  The UK has also failed to secure return agreements with other European states.  The most likely scenario: a large, incarcerated, miserable population housed in a burgeoning concentration camp system, a nodding acknowledgement to Australia’s own version used in the Pacific on Manus Island and Nauru.

Even some conservative voices have expressed worry about the nature of it.  Former Tory PM Theresa May has questioned the breakneck speed with which the Bill is being debated, wondering if Sunak and company are acting in undue haste to supersede fresh and as yet untested legislation.  “I am concerned that the government have acted on Albania and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, when neither has been in place long enough to be able to assess their impact.  I do not expect government to introduce legislation to supersede legislation recently made, the impact of which is not yet known.”

Sadly, the entire issue of discussing the critical aspects of the bill were lost in the media firestorm caused by an innocuous tweet from England’s football darling and veteran commentator Gary Lineker.  “There is no huge influx,” went the tweet.  “We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries.  This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

According to the BBC, fast becoming a fiefdom of Tory regulation, he was.  Suspension from the Match of the Day followed.  Within a few days, a humiliated management had to concede defeat and accept his return to the program.  Solidarity for Lineker had been vast and vocal, though much of it seemed to be focused on his shabby treatment rather than the asylum seeker issue.  In terms of defeating this bill, such debates will do little to box the demons that are about to be unleashed.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled. For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the title suggests. In time, the courts may well also find fault with this ghastly bit of proposed legislation, which has already sailed through two readings in the Commons and resting in the Committee stage.

On Good Morning Britain, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had to concede she was running “novel arguments” about dealing with such irregular migration, not making mention of Australia’s own novel experiment which did, and still continues, to besmirch and taint international refugee law.

In her statement on whether the bill would be consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined by the UK Human Rights Act, Braverman was brazen to the point of being quixotic: “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”

The long title of the bill does not even bother to conceal its purposes. It makes “provision for and in connection with the removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have entered or arrived in breach of immigration control”. It furnishes a detention regime, deals with unaccompanied children, makes some remarks about “victims of slavery or human trafficking” and, more to the point makes “provision about the inadmissibility of certain protection and certain human rights claims relating to immigration”.

The central purpose of the bill is to destroy the very basis of seeking asylum in Britain, along with the process that accompanies it. Much of this is inspired by the fact that the United Kingdom does not do the business of processing asylums particularly well. Glorious Britannia now receives fewer applications for asylum than Germany, France or Spain. Despite having fewer numbers, its backlog remains heftier than any of those three states.

The proposed instrument essentially declares illegal in advance any unauthorised arrival, an absurd proposition given that most asylum seekers arriving by boat will not, obviously, have the paperwork handy. (This is a nice trick borrowed from Fortress Australia.) Those seeking asylum by boat will be automatically detained for 28 days. During this time, those detained will be unable to make a legal challenge nor seek bail. After the expiration of time, a claim for bail can be made, or the Home Secretary can release them.

In truth, the authorities can refuse to process the claim, thereby deferring responsibility to some other source or agency. Dark, gloomy detention centres are promised, as are third countries such as Rwanda or a return across the English Channel back to France or another European state. Then comes the issue of return to the country of origin, a state of affairs in gross breach of the non-refoulement obligation of international refugee law. It is fantastically crude, a declaration of savage intent.

Even with these provisions, chaos is likely to ensue, given that the options are, as Ian Dunt points out, essentially off the table. The Rwandan solution has so far failed to materialise, bogged down in litigation. Were there to be any sent, these would amount to a few hundred at best and hardly arrest the tide of boat arrivals. The UK has also failed to secure return agreements with other European states. The most likely scenario: a large, incarcerated, miserable population housed in a burgeoning concentration camp system, a nodding acknowledgement to Australia’s own version used in the Pacific on Manus Island and Nauru.

Even some conservative voices have expressed worry about the nature of it. Former Tory PM Theresa May has questioned the breakneck speed with which the Bill is being debated, wondering if Sunak and company are acting in undue haste to supersede fresh and as yet untested legislation. “I am concerned that the government have acted on Albania and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, when neither has been in place long enough to be able to assess their impact. I do not expect government to introduce legislation to supersede legislation recently made, the impact of which is not yet known.”

Sadly, the entire issue of discussing the critical aspects of the bill were lost in the media firestorm caused by an innocuous tweet from England’s football darling and veteran commentator Gary Lineker. “There is no huge influx,” went the tweet. “We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

According to the BBC, fast becoming a fiefdom of Tory regulation, he was. Suspension from the Match of the Day followed. Within a few days, a humiliated management had to concede defeat and accept his return to the program. Solidarity for Lineker had been vast and vocal, though much of it seemed to be focused on his shabby treatment rather than the asylum seeker issue. In terms of defeating this bill, such debates will do little to box the demons that are about to be unleashed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Dan Evans.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Dan Evans.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Dan Evans.

"As police hurried to block access to the doors, protesters lit smoke bombs," according toThe Guardian, which noted that the Tory government "is pressing ahead with moves to crack down on disruptive protests" by giving law enforcement new powers.

Michael Gove, the Conservative secretary of state at the Department for Leveling Up, Housing, and Communities, last month greenlighted the mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria. The coal will be extracted for steelmaking versus energy, and 85% of it is expected to be exported to mainland Europe.

"Where is the government's ambition to act on this climate and ecological emergency? How dare they even think of opening a coal mine now?"

"Opening a coal mine today means the U.K. can't argue that China and India should decrease their own coal emissions," declared Dorothea Hackman, a 70-year-old grandmother from Camden, in a statement from Extinction Rebellion (XR). "Whitehaven coal isn't even wanted by British steelworks, it's going to be exported, there is no argument for domestic production."

Gove's decision has been widely criticized by campaigners, scientists, and some politicians, due to estimated planet-heating emissions from mining and the coal. Climate groups have launched two legal challenges to the project.

"2022 saw record global greenhouse gas emissions, and record global temperatures," said Sarah Hart, a mother from Farnborough and one of the two XR protesters who laid down in front of the department office on Wednesday with one arm in a lock-on tube featuring the message "End Coal."

"Where is the government's ambition to act on this climate and ecological emergency? How dare they even think of opening a coal mine now?" she continued, blasting Gove's claims about the mine and demanding an end to all new fossil fuel projects.

Members of Extinction Rebellion protested coal mining at the U.K. Department for Leveling Up, Housing, and Communities in London on January 18, 2023. (Photo: Extinction Rebellion)

Wednesday's demonstration was part of XR's "Cut the Ties" actions, which launched in November at 13 sites across London and led to 17 arrests, according to the group. Hart highlighted at the time that "behind incomprehensible government decisions to double down on fossil fuel development, sign off new oil exploration licenses, and allow the big energy companies to rake in record profits, lies a network of companies and organizations that are profiting from this destructive path."

"While the rest of us worry about the cost of turning the heating on our government is prioritizing the profits of the very companies that are jeopardizing our climate and environment," Hart argued, adding that XR is "sending the message that it's time to cut the ties with fossil fuels or lose the social license to operate in the U.K."

The new action notably comes after Extinction Rebellion's U.K. arm announced at the beginning of the year that it will no longer use "public disruption as a primary tactic," explaining that "this year, we prioritize attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore."

As part of that aim, XR is planning a nonviolent mass direct action for April 21. Because "100,000 is the number of signatories on a petition that gets a question raised in Parliament," the group hopes to bring together at least that many people in London "to demand a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era."

Marijn Van Der Geer of Extinction Rebellion U.K. said Wednesday that the group "wants a citizen-led transition away from fossil fuels via a citizens' assembly on climate and ecological justice."

"Providing unstable jobs in the coal sector during a climate crisis in a region where there are limited economic opportunities is not justice," Van Der Geer stressed. "Opening a coal mine in a region that is already disproportionately affected by the climate crisis with floods increasing and unprecedented rainfall is complete madness."

The BBCpoints out that "West Cumbria Mining, the firm behind the project, promised to create 500 direct jobs and 1,500 in the wider community," but "critics questioned those figures."

Due to rising sea levels, swaths of Cumbria could be underwater by 2040, according to an analysis published last year by Climate Central, which noted that "our maps are not based on physical storm and flood simulations and do not take into account factors such as erosion, future changes in the frequency or intensity of storms, inland flooding, or contributions from rainfall or rivers."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Gemma Stone, Lee Hurley.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lauren Medlicott.

Photograph Source: UK Prime Minister – OGL 3

The Twilight Zone is an American television series, inaugurated in the 60s but with several subsequent iterations, involving various genres listed as fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, supernatural drama, black comedy, and the psychological thriller.

Most of these genres happen to apply to the current state of UK politics– fantasy, absurdism, dystopian fiction (though dystopian nonfiction is perhaps less of a misnomer where the UK is concerned), horror, and black comedy are likely to feature prominently in any plausible characterization of contemporary Ukanian politics.

The country’s political comedians are experiencing a boom-time not seen since the days of Margaret Thatcher (some may recall she was widely reported to be entirely lacking in a sense of humour, and comedians cashed in on this).

The current prime minister, the ex-Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager, Rishi Sunak, is a shameless plutocrat who is said to be worth £800m/$980.5m. His wife, who is richer than the king, is worth even more.

Britain’s flatlining economy has just entered what the Bank of England says could be the longest recession and steepest fall in living standards on record.

Britain is the only G-7 nation whose GDP is still lower than before the pandemic— no more does it seem like the 6^th richest country in the world,   as its economic performance comes to resemble that of an Eastern European country with an emerging economy. Government figures show the following:

+ the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 11.1% in October, a 41-year high,

+ the UK’s top energy companies are set to make almost $200bn/$245bn in excess profits over the next 2 years. In the same time energy bills are set to rise to their highest levels in 40 years causing a cost of living crisis. Average bills for electricity and home-heating natural gas have doubled in the last year and are expected to rise further in April. The government does nothing about this bare-faced price gouging,

+ the purchasing power of the pound decreased by 13.20% in 2022 compared to 2021, fuelling a resulting rise in import prices,

+ 1 in 6 British households rely on some form of social welfare,

+ almost a third of British children live in poverty,

+ the number of children eligible for government-funded free school meals is just under 25%,

+ 1in 4 households are in financial difficulty or on the verge of it,

+ almost 1 in 10 households have failed to pay bills,

+ in the 12 months to March 2022, 2.1m emergency food parcels were distributed by a continuously expanding web of more than 2,000 food banks — an increase of approximately 1 million from 2014-15, according to the food-bank organizing charity, the Trussell Trust. This need is driven by spiraling food and energy prices (the price of cooking oil and pasta, for example, has risen 60% in the last year), and plunging wages.

+the sharp decline in public services and public sector wages has ensued in months of industrial strikes by train workers, postal workers, London bus drivers, university teachers and staff, paramedics and ambulance drivers, road workers, workers at Heathrow airport, passport and visa staff, courthouse staff, with nurses due to have their first ever strike beginning on 15 December. This has all the makings of a general strike as the winter starts to intensify.

The meretricious Tory government blames the war in Ukraine and the pandemic for causing these problems, without however fooling too many Brits as people realize several other countries have also had to deal with the consequences of the war and the pandemic.

Certainly never mentioned by the Tories in the way of self-exculpation are 12 years of economically-illiterate austerity compounded by the increasingly disastrous Brexit (which takes 4% – £100bn/$122.6bn a year – from GDP and approximately £40bn/S49bn from the UK’s annual tax revenues), both of which have sapped the UK economically and politically and made it incapable of dealing with jolts to the support systems relied on by tens of millions of Britons.

As the Tories sink in the polls, their MPs are starting to jump like rats off the proverbial sinking ship.

Fifteen MPs, including 3 former ministers, have said so far they won’t be contesting the next general election due in 2024.

This number is bound to increase—  Tories since Thatcher have begun to view politics not so much as a form of public service, but rather as a way to embark on lucrative careers in and after their times in office. More Tory MPs will be seeking “opportunities” outside parliament as the voting-booth guillotines start to loom for them.

In the meantime the remaining Tory MPs engage in internecine warfare, as they put their personal fortunes ahead of the supposedly “patriotic” Tory party and their rotting country.

Sunak, the third premier since 2019, chosen solely by Tory MPs for the job, is thus hostage primarily to his far-right “colleagues”, and makes U-turn after U-turn to placate this or that party faction. Asked to describe Sunak’s task as prime minister, an unnamed Tory MP said Sunak was there “to manage decline”.

It is no surprise therefore that the opposition Labour party has been trouncing the Tories in opinion polls for the last few months. The general election, as of now, is being handed on a plate to Labour and the other opposition parties.

All that Labour and its leader Keir Starmer have done so far is to sit on numerous political fences and watch passively as the ramshackle and decayed Tory party immolates.

Nothing Starmer does conduces to even a veneer of social democracy, and the opposition Scottish National Party MP Stephen Flynn’s got it absolutely right when he asked in a parliamentary debate:

“What is the greatest achievement of the Tories: leaving the single market, ending free movement, denying democracy to Scotland, or getting Labour to agree with all of these?”

Hardly an endorsement of the state of Ukanian politics.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Cockburn.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Richard D. Wolff.

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This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lucas Amin.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Ruby Lott-Lavigna.

Progressives welcomed right-wing British Prime Minister Liz Truss' Monday decision to scrap a widely condemned tax break for wealthy individuals but warned of looming public spending cuts tied to planned corporate giveaways and called for a reversal of the decadeslong neoliberal model that has brought the United Kingdom to the brink of an economic calamity.

"They need to reverse their whole economic, discredited trickle-down strategy."

The proposed elimination of the U.K's top income tax rate of 45% was a small part of the regressive fiscal and deregulatory framework unveiled by Truss, who was picked by the ruling right-wing Tory Party less than a month ago to become the nation's fourth prime minister in the last six years.

Her entire "mini-budget"—an assemblage of £45 billion ($50.7 billion) in unfunded tax cuts announced September 23 by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng—triggered chaos in financial markets and pushback from across the political spectrum, with the left-wing Enough is Enough campaign organizing massive anti-austerity protests this past weekend.

Even some Tory lawmakers expressed resistance to parts of Truss' package, especially the now jettisoned plan to nix the 45% tax rate—an additional levy paid by Britain's richest 1%, or roughly 600,000 citizens with annual incomes above £150,000 ($168,390). Beneficiaries of the tax break would have gained an estimated £10,000 ($11,275) per year, on average, while the nation's top 0.1% would have gained at least £22,000 ($24,805) per year.

Ben Houchen, the Tory mayor of Tees Valley in northeast England, said Sunday at the party's annual conference in Birmingham that pursuing a move that so nakedly favors the rich amid a cost-of-living crisis is "very naive," while an unnamed Tory MP described it as "deranged," and former Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove called it wrong to implement when "people are suffering."

During an emergency meeting convened by Truss and Kwarteng after several Tory MPs indicated publicly that they would vote against the measure, one senior cabinet minister reportedly said that "the politics of this were just awful and I am amazed the idea has lasted as long as it did."

Less than 24 hours after Truss tried to defend the contentious policy one last time on Sunday, Kwarteng issued a statement Monday declaring that "we get it, and we have listened."

"We are not proceeding with the abolition of the 45% tax rate," said Kwarteng, who called it "a distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing our country."

While welcoming "the U-turn," left-wing Labour Party MP Jeremy Corbyn wrote on social media that "if you really wanted to 'listen,' you'd also raise benefits, reverse cuts to [the] corporation tax, and reinstate the cap on bankers' bonuses."

"Twelve years of failed Tory economics have plunged millions into poverty," Corbyn added. "Do you 'get it' now?"

Zarah Sultana, another left-wing Labour Party MP and co-founder of Enough is Enough, told Kwarteng in no uncertain terms that he doesn't "get it" and urged him to "ditch this Tory class war."

Truss' abandoned attempt to axe the U.K.'s top income tax rate would have cost between £2 to £3 billion ($2.3 to $3.4 billion), representing just a portion of the £45 billion ($50.7 billion) in unfunded tax cuts proposed by her administration.

As the Financial Times reported:

Having retreated on the 45% tax rate plan, Kwarteng and Truss could now come under pressure to reverse other proposed unfunded tax cuts that have blown a hole in the public finances.

They include a £13 billion ($14.7 billion) reduction in national insurance, which gives the biggest benefit to better-off voters, and a £17 billion ($19.2 billion) plan to reverse a corporation tax rise—a policy that business leaders have said is not a priority.

Just minutes after announcing the preservation of the 45% tax rate, Kwarteng confirmed that up to £18 billion ($20.3 billion) in annual public service spending remains on the chopping block even though economists have warned that this would have devastating impacts on the nation's public healthcare and education systems.

The level of impending public service cuts is nearly identical to the £18.7 ($21.1 billion) billion corporate tax cut still being pushed by Truss.

The Tories' plan for a simultaneous corporate tax cut and reduction in public services is "a direct trade-off," Enough is Enough tweeted Monday. "Our pain for their profits."

At one of the dozens of Enough is Enough rallies held Saturday, Eddie Dempsey of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers characterized Truss' austerity budget as a "diabolical disaster."

After having crashed the British pound, he warned, Tories are "going to massively cut expenditure on public services."

"We've got to have a change in direction," said Dempsey. "We need an economy for the people with public ownership, outside of the chaos of the market, so we can have a decent standard of living rather than making this country one big trough for the corporate privateers to stick their noses in and cream off all of our wealth."

That message was echoed by Labour Party MP Rachel Reeves, who said Monday in a statement responding to Truss and Kwarteng's about-face on slashing taxes for Britain's richest households that "they need to reverse their whole economic, discredited trickle-down strategy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

“The Queen’s final act of service to the nation was to selflessly buy the economy one last fortnight,” said one tweet when all four wheels finally came off the British economy.

The Queen’s death and funeral took up the first twelve days of Liz Truss’s tenure, so the new prime minister’s work of destruction could not get properly underway until last Friday. Then, however, Truss and her faithful sidekick Kwasi Kwarteng, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), got to work with amazing speed.

Kwarteng’s ‘mini-Budget’ on Friday was a suicide note that virtually guarantees defeat for the Conservative Party at the next election, two years from now. There is growing doubt that Truss’s government can even survive that long.

She is the fourth Conservative prime minister in the past six years, and at each turn of the wheel the party she currently leads has grown more mutinous. Moreover, it did not choose her as its leader.

That choice was made not by her fellow Conservative members of parliament but by the party’s 160,000 paid-up members, who tend to be old, white, non-urban and very ideological. 

What drew them to her was her fanatical devotion to the cause of lower taxes and a smaller state, as exemplified in a book she and Kwarteng co-authored ten years ago called ‘Britannia Unchained’.

So as soon as the Queen’s obsequies were safely past, she and Kwarteng gave them what they longed for: a Budget that is the political equivalent of asset-stripping. It contains unfunded tax cuts, mostly to the benefit of the rich, of around $50 billion a year.

Where will the money come from to make up the lost tax income, plus an extra £65 billion to help voters cover horrendously high energy costs this winter due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Why, they’ll just borrow it all. All that extra spending will allegedly boost the growth rate of the British economy from an average of 1.5% a year to 2.5%, and the extra tax revenue will easily cover that.

At least that’s what Liz Truss believes, in the firm belief that she is walking in the footsteps of her heroine, sainted former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. She is not.

The Blessed Margaret cut taxes, but she also cut government spending. The Truss-Kwarteng partnership is spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave. It’s not ‘Britannia Unchained’; it’s ‘Britannia Unhinged’.

Nobody believes this will work except a few right-wing think tanks that try to justify low taxes for the rich by touting the old ‘trickle-down’ model, also known as the ‘horse and sparrow’ theory: feed the horses enough oats, and eventually there will be lots of horse-poop for the sparrows to eat.

The sad news for Truss and Kwarteng is that the ‘free market’ they so revere isn’t stupid. The value of the British pound is already collapsing.  Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers says: “My guess is that the pound will find its way below parity with both the dollar and the euro.”

Meanwhile, investors look at Truss and Kwarteng’s business model, do the math, and flee. In the words of Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, they now see the Conservative Party as a ‘doomsday cult’.

And as interest rates soar to fight runaway inflation, millions of Britons find they cannot afford to pay their mortgages. The poor cannot even afford to feed their children. The strikes and protests proliferate.

It’s probably around this time – midwinter, say – that the next rebellion occurs in the Conservatives’ parliamentary party. However, changing horses would make little difference unless the policy changes. It wouldn’t.

The next prime minister would be chosen by the same tiny band of Conservative Party members, no matter who the MPs want – and the members’ mindset favors the ideological purist over the pragmatic realist.  As one MP said: “You can have as many leadership elections as you like. You are only going to end up with the nutter winning.” 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has already issued its first warning to the United Kingdom to get its house in order. Larry Summers accuses the British government of “behaving like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market,” but Truss is not shifting.

It’s a bit like the slow-motion car crash that brought the Sri Lankan government and economy down, which took more than six months from start to finish. Liz Truss’s government will not last a year, and the Conservative Party may then split, leading to an early election (due anyway by 2024).

The Labour party is already seventeen points ahead in the polls, and its lead may even widen. It will be a wild ride, but the next British government will be led by Labour, which will rapidly reverse everything that Truss aspires to do.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Gwynne Dyer.

The post The First Billionaire to Become UK’s King appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sam Pizzigati.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona

The looting of artistic and religious objects from Africa and Asia by British invaders in the 19th century causes much rancorous debate about whether the artefacts should be returned to the countries they were originally stolen from. But discussion is much more muted about equally acquisitive expeditions launched by Britain today that may ultimately cause more suffering than those imperialist ventures long ago.

At issue is the policy of deliberately luring badly needed and expensively trained doctors and nurses from poor African and Asian countries to Britain. This happens because we train far too few doctors and nurses, offering only 7,500 medical school places when twice that number is needed. The shortage is made up by battening on the disintegrating health systems of poor and middle-income countries, mostly in Africa and Asia.

The exodus from there of medical professionals is high and getting higher. From the start, the National Health Service (NHS) has recruited from overseas. But within the last decade the influx has vastly increased, with the share of doctors recruited by the NHS from outside the UK and EU rising from 18 to 34 per cent and nurses from seven to 34 per cent between 2015 and 2021, according to statistics compiled by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit. The proportion of British-trained doctors in the health service has fallen from 69 to 58 per cent and nurses from 74 to 61 per cent over the same period.

On occasion, the scale of the loss of skilled medical staff has caused a scandal in their own country. In July 2020, for instance, Nigeria’s immigration service stopped 58 Nigerian doctors from flying out of Lagos international airport on a single plane bound for Britain. The Nigerian press protested that there were already 4,000 Nigerian doctors working in Britain, despite the fact that Nigeria has less than 15 per cent of the doctors needed by its 182 million people.

Syphoning off skilled medical workers from those who can least afford to lose them is not new, but the numbers involved have risen sharply. The NHS has always known that it is training too few doctors but the Treasury has refused to pay for more. Britain has tried to have a first-class health service on the cheap, but this has meant recurrent crises even before Covid-19 along with increasing reliance on medical expertise paid for by others.

Since Brexit the proportion of doctors and nurses coming from EU members has fallen and the numbers coming from poorer non-EU states has increased. Dr Alexia Tsigka, a consultant histopathologist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, is quoted by the BBC Data Unit as saying that in her specialty only three per cent of UK departments are fully staffed.

“And I haven’t seen anyone European coming after Brexit, at least in our department,” says Dr Tsigka. “Doctors that have applied to our department mostly come from India, Egypt and some from Sri Lanka.”

In the past the NHS has denied or played down its dependence on poaching staff abroad. In August, the then Health Secretary Steve Barclay was reported as wanting to send NHS managers to countries like India and the Philippines to recruit thousands of nurses. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said the department would be “working with recruitment experts to examine how to recruit staff from overseas more effectively”.

“It is a ghastly development since most of the recruits will come from low and middle income countries that have a low proportion of doctors [to patients] and high infant and maternal mortality rates,” says Rachel Jenkins, professor emeritus of epidemiology and international mental health policy at King’s College London, who has previously emphasised the damage done to poor countries by lessening their already limited medical resources which they cannot afford to replace.

She is scornful about the British health authorities’ claim that they are only accessing a global pool of doctors and nurses, saying “there is no pool but a desert out there”.

Despite knowing that the biggest problem facing the health service is the lack of doctors and nurses, the Government makes clear that it will not train more of them in Britain. A letter to Jesse Norman MP from the Department of Health and Social Care says that it has increased the number of places in medical schools it funds each year from 6,000 to 7,500. “The Government currently has no plans to increase the number of places beyond this,” says the letter.

The parasitic dependence of the UK heath service on recruiting staff who would naturally prefer to work and live in a rich country than a poor one is set to grow rather than diminish. It is foreign aid in reverse, flowing from the poor to the rich and works too much to the advantage of the latter for them to give it up. Bogus claims made in justification for this include the claim that doctors go back to their countries of origin bringing back fresh expertise, but in reality there are few who return.

The real reason for sticking with the present toxic system is simply that the NHS would cease to function without foreign trained medical staff in huge numbers. Personal experience fully supports the statistics as in every medical facility I have been in in the last few years, foreign born staff have been in the majority.

When I broke my leg in 2009, the three doctors who carried out surgery were all from the Middle East. Impressed by their expertise, I wondered about the gap their departure must have left in Cairo or Beirut.

The impact on the NHS of its dependence on non-EU foreign staff is becoming greater, but the same thing has happened in other walks of life. This is strange since Brexit was in part propelled by the belief that Britain was being swamped by immigrants over whose inflow the British government had no control.

A Leave voter might naturally have assumed that, once Britain had left the EU, that the flow of immigrants would be reduced. But instead the number has soared. The Home Office says that 1.1 million visas were issued to those coming to work or study in the UK in the last year, which is an 80 per cent increase on the year before.

This is all legal immigration and it completely dwarfs the 23,000 migrants who have crossed the Channel illegally so far this year. But it is the pictures of migrants being picked up at sea or landing on the beaches of south east Kent that dominate the newscasts about immigration.

So far, the arrival of great numbers of legal immigrants has had surprisingly little political effect. The Government is happy to point to its non-functional plan to deport migrants to Rwanda as its response to the boat people. Labour wants to keep away from the topic. The fact that many migrants are qualified and are being absorbed into big diverse cities makes them less of a rival for jobs in the eyes of poorly educated workers.

Unlike 2016, no political party or media outlet has whipped up anti-immigrant feelings. Nevertheless, I would be surprised if such a big demographic change will not create some sort of backlash.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Cockburn.

Free expression advocates in the United Kingdom are warning that law enforcement agents in the country appear ready to eliminate Britons' right to free speech as several arrests have been reported at events taking place during the 10-day nationwide mourning period following Queen Elizabeth II's death.

"As precious, if not more precious than the monarchy, is the real beautiful web of freedoms and civil liberties that we've built up here over centuries, and we'd be very wrong to begin to sacrifice those in this kind of moment."

Critics of the monarchy have been arrested, detained, forced to leave public areas, and intimidated by police officers in Scotland and London as Queen Elizabeth's coffin has traveled across the U.K., along with members of the royal family including King Charles III.

The first arrest was reportedly made in Oxford, where Symon Hill asked, "Who elected him?" as a proclamation officially naming Charles as his mother's successor was read. Hill reported that police officers placed him in handcuffs and eventually told him he'd been arrested under the "Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022," which has been condemned by rights advocates.

Hill wrote that he was never "given a clear answer as to why I had been arrested," but was told his comments in Oxford could have led to "harassment or distress."

Ruth Smeeth of the Index on Censorship called arrests like Hill's "deeply concerning" and warned that the queen's death may be "used, by accident or design, to erode in any way the freedom of expression that citizens of this country enjoy."

"The fundamental right to freedom of expression, including the right to protest, is something to be protected regardless of circumstance," Smeeth told Bloomberg.

A demonstrator holding a handmade sign reading, "Not My King" was also filmed being led away by police from the Palace of Westminster in London on Monday, and climate campaigner and lawyer Paul Powlesland reported that he attracted negative attention from a police officer when he held up a blank sheet of paper in Parliament Square.

The officer warned Powlesland that if he wrote "Not My King" on the paper, he would be arrested under the Public Order Act "because someone might be offended."

"I believe actually as precious, if not more precious than the monarchy, is the real beautiful web of freedoms and civil liberties that we've built up here over centuries, and we'd be very wrong to begin to sacrifice those in this kind of moment," Powlesland told "Good Morning Britain" on Tuesday, adding that he protested only to make a statement about freedom of speech, but the police response to critics of the monarchy this week has pushed him to adopt an anti-monarchist view.

Member of Parliament and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called the arrest of anti-monarchy protesters "wrong, anti-democratic and an abuse of the law," while Zarah Sultana, another Labour MP, expressed shock that Britons' right to speak out against the monarchy is being debated.

In Edinburgh, a 22-year-old student named Mariángela was arrested after holding up a sign that read, "Fuck imperialism. Abolish monarchy" outside St. Giles Cathedral, where the queen's coffin lay before being taken to London.

Mariángela told openDemocracy that she was detained in a cell for nine hours and that the officers who were arrested later expressed "doubts over whether the arrest was lawful." She was nevertheless charged with "behavior likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm" under Scotland's Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010 and ordered to appear in court on September 30.

Police Scotland's actions were "clearly a violation of freedom of speech, which is supposed to be enshrined in the laws of the United Kingdom," she told openDemocracy. "If I'm not allowed to express my opinion, I don't see how that law is being observed."

Also in Edinburgh, videos posted on social media appeared to show a protester being removed from a crowd by officers and arrested after shouting, "You're a sick old man" at Prince Andrew. The prince has been accused of raping Virginia Giuffre, a woman who was allegedly sex-trafficked by financier Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied the accusation but paid a settlement to Giuffre earlier this year.

"Protest is not a gift from the state, it is a fundamental right," Jodie Beck, policy and campaigns officer at civil liberties group Liberty, told Bloomberg. "Being able to choose what, how, and when we protest is a vital part of a healthy and functioning democracy."

"Whoever you are, whatever your cause, it is vital you are able to stand up for what you believe in without facing the risk of criminalization," Beck added. "It is very worrying to see the police enforcing their broad powers in such a heavy-handed and punitive way to clamp down on free speech and expression."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lauren Medlicott.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

Journalism is under attack – yet MPs will line up on Tuesday to pay lip service to ‘World Press Freedom Day’

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Martin Williams.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Jack Barton.

Human rights campaigners celebrated late Tuesday after a European court ruling led to the cancellation of a flight to deport asylum-seekers from the United Kingdom to Rwanda as part of a controversial deal the governments unveiled in April.

"We will continue the fight tomorrow and against EVERY racist deportation."

"We fought back against the government's racist Rwanda plan and WON," tweeted the London-based Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI). "Today's victory shows that, when we come together, we CAN beat this government's toxic anti-migrant agenda."

While also welcoming the news that "nobody will fly to Rwanda," the U.K. group Freedom from Torture said on social media that "we know the [government] won't be giving up. So let's give this everything we've got, starting now. Together we can win."

Vowing to keep up the fight, JCWI similarly warned that "this is just the beginning" and predicted that U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson "will blame anyone but himself for this abhorrent failure of a plan: He will scapegoat refugees and migrants. He will try to scrap the Human Rights Act."

Referring to the money that the United Kingdom gives Rwanda under the deal, JCWI also said that "it shouldn't take a European court to tell the U.K. government a simple fact: It's morally repugnant to trade human beings for cash."

According to BBC News, "up to seven people had been expected to be removed to the east African country," but a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of a 54-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker "led the remaining men to appeal—some to judges in London."

The broader policy is set to be reviewed in British court next month. In its decision Tuesday, the ECHR said that "the applicant should not be removed until the expiry of a period of three weeks following the delivery of the final domestic decision in the ongoing judicial review proceedings."

Plans for the £500,000 ($600,585) chartered deportation flight to depart a military airport in Wiltshire late Tuesday sparked protests against the policy, blasted by human rights experts around the world but championed by top Tories in the United Kingdom, including Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel, along with Rwandan leadership.

"Rwandan authorities have said the agreement would initially last for five years, with the British government paying £120 million ($158 million) upfront to pay for housing and integrating the asylum-seekers," The Associated Press noted. "Britain is expected to pay more as Rwanda accepts more migrants, although the exact number of people the U.K. is expected to send isn't known."

Patel on Tuesday described the U.K.-Rwandan deal as "world-leading" and said she was "disappointed" by the ECHR's decision but "we will not be deterred." She added that "many of those removed from this flight will be placed on the next," preparation for which "begins now."

The New York Times reported that after the flight was canceled, Yolande Makolo, a spokesperson for the Rwandan government, said that "Rwanda remains fully committed to making this partnership work," and "stands ready to receive the migrants when they do arrive and offer them safety and opportunity in our country."

Meanwhile, critics of the deal—from activists across the United Kingdom to members of Parliament—remain determined to defeat it.

"We're pleased the courts have ruled to stop this flight," said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, according to The Guardian. "It's time for the government to stop this inhumane policy, which is the basest of gesture politics, and start to engage seriously with sorting out the asylum system so those who come to our country seeking refuge are treated fairly and according to the law."

Following protests outside Patel's office on Monday, demonstrators with Stop Deportations laid down in the road outside a detention center in an effort to block the transfer of asylum-seekers to the flight—an action that led to some arrests, according to the group.

"We have won today," Stop Deportations said after the flight was grounded, "but we will continue the fight tomorrow and against EVERY racist deportation."

Some leftists British politicians spoke out in support of the protests and against the policy on Tuesday.

MP Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour Party leader, called the ECHR's intervention "a very welcome decision" and "a devastating blow to the government's inhumane plans to deport refugees to Rwanda." He also thanked "the many brilliant campaigners who have fought tirelessly for the rights of refugees."

Labour MP Paula Barker also celebrated the "superb news," adding: "Well done those involved. The fight against this policy is not over yet, but you can all be proud of what you have achieved tonight."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Caroline Molloy.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Ruth Bergan, Alexander Carnwath, Sandra Martinsone.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Gilane Tawadros.

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The climate movement Extinction Rebellion on Wednesday revealed plans to bring millions of people into the United Kingdom's streets on September 10 in response to the government's latest efforts to enact new limits on protest.

"Our organizations were set up to break the law to drive positive change. Your actions show that we are winning."

In the Queen's Speech—which outlines the government's priorities at the ceremony to open a new session of Parliament—Prince Charles on Tuesday announced the Public Order Bill containing anti-protest measures that the House of Lords last year rejected as "draconian and anti-democratic."

Charlie Waterhouse of Extinction Rebellion (XR) said in a statement that "it is foolish to think that announcing new curbs in the Queen's Speech will stop people taking to the streets to demand their government act to ensure a safe future for people in the U.K. and around the world."

"As we in Extinction Rebellion know full well: what we do works," he continued. "It's worked countless times before. It has worked to give us weekends and the vote, human rights, and freedom. And it will work again. Faced with a government incapable of anything other than a desperate attempt to shore up its own power and cover up its criminality it is the only thing we can do. To be a bystander is not enough."

Waterhouse noted that "w​hen juries are asked to sit in judgment of their peers, they are acquitting. The government's increasing reliance on private injunctions shows that they know they cannot rely on the courts, because the courts agree with us."

"So Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, we thank you," he added, taking aim at the U.K.'s Tory prime minister and home secretary. "Our organizations were set up to break the law to drive positive change. Your actions show that we are winning."

Plans to take to the streets in opposition to the looming anti-protest measures—which clearly target not only Extinction Rebellion but also Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil (JSO)—follow a wave of climate actions in the U.K. and around the world last month.

The actions in April included XR members blocking multiple London bridges, scientists gluing climate research and their own hands to the windows of a U.K. government building, and Just Stop Oil campaigners shutting down terminals across the United Kingdom.

XR's Wednesday statement highlighted YouGov polling from April which showed that 58% of U.K. adults support the demands of Just Stop Oil, with just 23% opposed and 19% neutral, and in a three-week period, the number of respondents who said they are likely to engage in some form of climate action over the next year jumped from 8.7% to 11.3%—an increase of approximately 1.7 million people.

The Guardian reported Tuesday that the anti-protest measures include:

• New criminal offenses of locking on, and going equipped to lock on to others, objects, or buildings—carrying a maximum penalty of six months' imprisonment and an unlimited fine;
• The creation of a new criminal offense of interfering with key national infrastructure, such as airports, railways, and printing presses—carrying a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison and an unlimited fine; and
• Measures to make it illegal to obstruct major transport works, including disrupting the construction or maintenance of projects like HS2—punishable by up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine.

"The bill is expected to extend stop and search powers so the police can seize articles related to these new offenses," the newspaper noted. "New preventive 'serious disruption prevention orders' will also be available for repeat offenders."

XR wasn't alone in responding with alarm to the anti-protest measures and other priorities addressed in the speech, including repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a narrower Bill of Rights.

"This highly regressive legislative agenda represents a systematic gutting of key legal protections for ordinary people," Amnesty International U.K. CEO Sacha Deshmukh said broadly before blasting the Public Order Bill. "It's frightening to see the home secretary demonizing people who are simply exercising their right to peaceful protest."

"These authoritarian provisions, recently removed by the Lords from the policing bill, are similar to repressive policies in countries the U.K. regularly criticizes—including Russia, Hong Kong, and Belarus," Deshmukh added. "It follows a pattern of a government voicing support for protest around the world but cracking down on the right to speak up here at home."

Sam Grant, head of policy and campaigns at the human rights group Liberty, said Tuesday that "these rehashed measures to crack down on protest in today's Queen's speech are yet another power grab from a government determined to shut down accountability."

"Protest is a right, not a gift from the state—and measures like these are designed to stop ordinary people making their voices heard," the campaigner continued. "Parliamentarians and the general public rejected these dangerous measures when they were first rushed through in the policing bill, but the government has refused to listen.

"From restrictions on protest to scrapping the Human Rights Act," Grant warned, "this is all part of the government's continued attempts to rewrite the rules so only they can win, and prevent ordinary people from having their say."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Susan Hawley.

Following a district court order referring the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back to the United Kingdom’s Home Office, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has launched a new petition calling on Home Secretary Priti Patel to reject Assange’s extradition to the United States.

RSF urges supporters to join the call on the Home Secretary to #FreeAssange by signing and sharing the petition before May 18.

On April 20, the Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued an order referring Julian Assange’s extradition back to the Home Office, reports RSF.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Julian Assange case

Following a four-week period that will now be given to the defence for representations, Home Secretary Priti Patel must approve or reject the US government’s extradition request.

As Assange’s fate has again become a political decision, RSF has launched a new #FreeAssange petition, urging supporters to sign before May 18 to call on the Home Secretary to protect journalism and press freedom by rejecting Assange’s extradition to the US and ensuring his release without further delay.

“The next four weeks will prove crucial in the fight to block extradition and secure the release of Julian Assange,” said RSF’s director of operations and campaigns Rebecca Vincent, who monitored proceedings on RSF’s behalf.

“Through this petition, we are seeking to unite those who care about journalism and press freedom to hold the UK government to account.

“The Home Secretary must act now to protect journalism and adhere to the UK’s commitment to media freedom by rejecting the extradition order and releasing Assange.”

Patel’s predecessor, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid initially greenlit the extradition request in June 2019, initiating more than two years of proceedings in UK courts.

This resulted in a district court decision barring extradition on mental health grounds in January 2021; a High Court ruling overturning that ruling in December 2021; and finally, refusal by the Supreme Court to consider the case in March 2022.

RSF’s prior petition calling on the UK government not to comply with the US extradition request gathered more than 90,000 signatures (108,000 including additional signatures on a German version of the petition), and was delivered to Downing Street, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ahead of the historic first-instance decision in the case on 4 January 2021.

The UK is ranked 33rd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lu Xi.

Photograph Source: U.K. Prime Minister – OGL

“I don’t think any government could conceivably be doing more to root out corrupt Russian money – and that is what we’re going to do, and I think we can be proud of what we’ve already done and the measures we have set out”.

– Boris Johnson, speaking in the House of Commons, 23 February 2022

For Boris “BoJo” Johnson, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is both an opportunity and a potential trap.

A possible trap, because £1.9m/$2.5m has been given to the Tory party by Kremlin oligarchs since BoJo came to power.

London/”Londongrad” property markets and banks are flush with Russian money, while BoJo has turned a blind eye during this time.

Many, including some in his own party, say BoJo has in fact turned 2 blind eyes, while he cavorted at oligarch parties, pocketed their donations, and did nothing to regulate the inflow of dirty money into the UK.

The Ukraine war is opportunity for BoJo because he was on the verge of losing his job as PM as a consequence of the Partygate scandal, until the Ukraine war created a potential diversion that has come to his rescue (so far) where Partygate is concerned.

Social media postings contain trolling images of BoJo phoning Putin apologetically, saying he appreciates the fact that the Tories are in the pockets of Kremlin oligarchs. At the same time, BoJo says to Putin, since the UK is a NATO member, it has no alternative but to toe the NATO line on Ukraine.

BoJo has therefore to play a game of “On the one hand, but on the other….”

On the one hand, signal to the Londongrad Kremlin oligarchs that the steps taken against them will be cosmetically rendered as far as possible, the “fierce” appearance of these steps notwithstanding.

On the other hand, at least give the appearance that Ukania is now doing NATO’s bidding in the Ukraine war.

BoJo gives the impression that now is the time to ditch his Kremlin oligarch benefactors; albeit as slowly as possible, while allowing them the time and loopholes to move their loot and superyachts to less vulnerable locations.

Friendly Dubai, where transactions in cryptocurrencies are welcomed, is becoming a favourite destination for oligarchs looking to relocate their dough.

This “slowly does it” approach is for now BoJo’s preferred option. Some oligarchs, those less directly connected to the Tories, will be sanctioned, and their yachts and private jets sequestered if they are docked or housed in territories under British jurisdiction (e.g. Gibraltar).

The Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, has said the following about this “slowly does it” tack espoused by BoJo:

“The Russian banks that Boris Johnson put on the sanctions list… aren’t the major players: they’re the spare change in the Russian economy. The three individuals he named have already been sanctioned in the US since 2018. So, we’re picking off the minnows but allowing the basking sharks to swim freely. Johnson didn’t even know whom we had already sanctioned, claiming that Roman Abramovich was on the list and refusing to correct the recordwhen I asked him about it. Later in the day, his office had to own up that he was wrong. Is it too much to expect that a prime minister at a moment of international crisis would actually know some of the details?”.

So far, no British-based Kremlin oligarchs have had their massively-expensive Ukanian luxury properties impounding by BoJo’s government.

Italy, by contrast, has imposed a freeze on Alisher Usmanov’s $18 million resort compound in Sardinia. The step taken by the Italian government does not involve a confiscation of Usmanov’s resort (that would create a minefield of legalities), but only a ban on its use or sale and transfer—the property is still owned by Usmanov.

In addition to these legal intricacies, there is another Ukanian complexity when it comes to tracking the assets of oligarchs, not just the ones who are Russian, but also those from Nigeria, the Central Asian ex-Soviet republics, and even Ukraine.

The dirty money flooding into London is deeply embedded, some would say buried, in its vast financial sector, where a horde of lawyers, tax experts, accountants, financial advisers, investment brokers, real estate agents, and luxury car dealers provide the requisite “laundering” for the tainted money streaming into Londongrad.

The legacy of Empire then provides access to another level of opacity for the possessors of dirty money.

Eight of the top 10 tax havens in the world are to be found in British territories– the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Anguilla, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey provide a surfeit of shell companies which make the true ownership of assets all but impossible to establish.

The UK has 87,000 properties whose ownership is wedged into these overseas shell companies.

Even the later Mrs Thatcher, who prided herself on her stern adherence to “Victorian values” (whatever they are), lived for 20 years in a London house “owned” by a company called Bakeland Property Company Ltd registered in the British Virgin Islands.

This arrangement was to the ultimate benefit of Thatcher’s 2 children—it was estimated at that time the house was worth £6m/$8m, so both inheritance tax at 40% (£2.4m/$3.17m) as well as Stamp Duty Land Tax at 7% on any subsequent sale (£420,000/$553,000) were avoided.

There is a notion going round today that Thatcher would have been horrified at the prodigious largesse extended by her presentday Tory counterparts to those depositing their corrupt monies in these off-shore shell companies.

Her own example shows that optimism on the part of those who peddle this view is probably misplaced.

Oliver Bullough, an investigative financial journalist once based in Moscow, has a very recent book– Butler to the World: The Book the Oligarchs Don’t Want You to Read – How Britain Helps the World’s Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything—which provides the indispensable context for the inroads made by dirty money in the UK’s economy.

Bullough has indicated why we should not be confident about the UK’s ability to stem the influx of such money. He says that where the UK is concerned, extremely recent reverences to financial rectitude notwithstanding, eradicating laundered money is akin to trying to remove the eggs from a cake after it has been baked.

BoJo’s posturing during the Ukrainian crisis was not well-received by other leaders in last week’s NATO summit in Brussels. A dishevelled and bleary-eyed BoJo showed-up looking as if he had slept in his car the night before.

While the other leaders shook hands with each other no one bothered to greet the arch-proponent of Global Britannia. Even the normally sycophantic BBC News reported that the visibly uncomfortable BoJo seemed “lonely” at the meeting.

The participants in the summit are well-aware that BoJo’s stunt at repristinating his supposed hero Winston Churchill in the Ukraine war is a wretchedly contrived and probably doomed attempt to mask his several problems at home.

One such problem includes of course his longtime ties with Kremlin oligarchs now being sanctioned by the European and North American countries represented at the NATO summit.

BoJo’s connections with Russian oligarchs are not recent. They go back to the time (2008-2016) when he was mayor of London.

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Thousands of scientists and doctors in the United Kingdom on Monday rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnon's assertion that it is time to begin "living with Covid" and demanded to know how his government is justifying its decision to end nearly all pandemic-related public health restrictions in the coming weeks, warning the policy change could worsen the spread of future variants.

Writing to Patrick Vallance, Johnson's chief scientific officer, and Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, more than 2,900 physicians, epidemiologists, and other experts in science and public health called on the officials to share the "scientific advice underpinning" the new policy.

"We believe humanity is in a race against the virus. We believe the science strongly supports using vaccines combined with public health interventions to slow transmission and regain the upper hand on viral evolution."

Under the plan announced by Johnson on Monday, people in England will no longer be legally required as of this Thursday to self-isolate after testing positive for Covid-19 or if they suspect they have the disease.

The same day, the government will also terminate a program under which some people with lower incomes have been able to receive nearly $700 in "test and trace support" funds if they have to self-isolate.

In most cases, the government will stop providing free coronavirus tests to the public on April 1, and as of March 24, sick pay for Covid-related reasons will only be paid after four or seven days of absence from work instead of immediately.

The "weakening of sick pay" is "proof once again the Tories simply aren't on the side of workers," said Jonathan Ashworth, a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.

The scientists and doctors said they "do not believe there is a solid scientific basis for the policy" and warned the government's call for the public and employers to treat the pandemic as though is it is over "is almost certain to increase the circulation of the virus and remove the visibility of emerging variants of concern."

The letter cited a document released less than two weeks ago by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), a government panel.

"The emergence of new variants and a resultant wave of infections can occur very quickly, potentially within just several weeks," wrote SAGE on February 10. "The ability to rapidly detect and characterize new variants and to scale up necessary responses (such as [test-trace-isolate] and vaccinations) quickly will be very important."

"Considerations for future response preparedness and surveillance infrastructure should take this into account," added the panel.

Despite that warning released earlier this month, Johnson on Monday also asserted that the country's rate of vaccination would allow officials to "tackle" new variants when they arise.

"We have no reason to assume that all future new variants will be mild," said the signatories of Monday's letter.

The health experts cited data released by SAGE on February 2 which showed that if self-isolation guidelines and testing availability were eliminated, transmission could increase "by between around 25% to 80% if the population were to return to pre-pandemic behaviors and no mitigations."

"We believe humanity is in a race against the virus. We believe the science strongly supports using vaccines combined with public health interventions to slow transmission and regain the upper hand on viral evolution," wrote the doctors and scientists. "For the one in four people in the U.K. who are clinically vulnerable, the current approach appears a perilous and politicized pandemic response."

The concerns expressed in the letter were echoed by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who said Johnson's plan amounted to "inexcusable negligence."

Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Charitable Trust, which includes more than 50 schools across England, said the government's decision to lift public health measures was "a huge gamble" for immunocompromised students, teachers, and family members around the country.

"I think it will become a forced form of exclusion of those who are vulnerable, those immunosuppressed children and staff who are put at increased risk," Chalke said of Johnson's new plan. "They will not be able to afford to take the gamble. I think we will see a group of children turning away from education."

"Removing the requirement for positive cases to self isolate puts them all at increased risk," he added.

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