Extinction Rebellion: Loving Animals to Death

Extinction Rebellion: Loving Animals to Death

Will anarchist extremists save the world from destruction
through organised chaos and compulsory veganism?

http://www.darkmoon.me

By Lasha Darkmoon

PUBLISHED ON TRUTHSEEKER

Oct 14, 2019

“First the eco warriors shut down British cities,” the Daily Mail screams in a recent report. “Now their militant vegan wing—with close links to the RSPCA—are opening a new battle front to stop us eating meat, fish and dairy products.” (October 5, 2019, p. 20-21).

Britain’s most popular newspaper, the Daily Mail, whose special appeal is to the older generation of respectable middle class citizens, waxes eloquent in deploring the imminent doom of the Carnivorous Generation.

No more slaughter houses, those architectural gems hidden away from all human habitations! No more friendly family butchers, porcine and pink-cheeked,  in their spotless white aprons! No more picturesque street sellers flogging us sizzling hamburgers, hot dogs bursting with health, and steak-and-kidney pies oozing with pure goodness!

A dying generation of noble carnivores is being kicked into the long grass. So sad. The Carnivore Haters appear to have won the long battle. Over 200 years ago (in 1813) we have the vegetarian poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, pictured,  complaining, “It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and [for this reason] the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.”

Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA, would agree with the great English poet, who died, incidentally,  at the early age of 29 in a drowning accident and who subsisted almost entirely on bread and water.  Ms Newkirk advises—and her advice would have delighted the veggie poet, “Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic and pesticide laden corpse of a tortured animal.”

The Daily Mail will have none of this soppy sentimentality.

“Lovers of bacon butties, breakfast yoghurt, milky coffee and juicy steaks might consider all this to be dystopian science fiction,” the paper warns grimly, “but the plan is deadly serious“

Extinction Rebellion intends to bring London to its knees within the next fortnight by staging scantily clad demonstrations. In pursuit of their evil aims, the semi-naked fanatics (pictured) of Extinction Rebellion are prepared to get arrested. 20,000 activists, it is reported, are on the march, flashing their brazen tattoos. They are prepared to go to prison and fast to death—if anyone in the prison service should be tactless enough to offer them a bacon sandwich or fried egg on toast  for breakfast.

All fast food outlets, beginning with McDonalds, should be bombed or burnt to the ground at once. And replaced with open green spaces sparkling with rivers of mineral water imported from Greenland. Fountains of soy and almond milk should be dotted round the idyllic landscape. No more dark Satanic mills! And shrines should be built everywhere to the Great God Quorn—with altars piled high with tofu, tahini, vegan fudge, veggie burgers, and Chinese noodles fried in virgin olive oil.

Pardon my flight of fancy.

To summarise: Animal Rebellion, an extremist faction of Extinction Rebellion, wants all animal farming and fishing banned. It also plans to “occupy” both Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, from which many of London’s restaurants and takeaways source their meat and fish.

Policing the last ‘Rebellion’ in April cost the Metropolitan Police £16 million. “For a blockade or an obstruction of the highway, the police can only hold you for 24 hours,”  Jane Tredgett, the spokesperson for the group explained.  Jane, as you might expect, is “woke”.

Unlike the bulk of the population, the carnivorous majority are now seen as the Enemies of Mankind. As minions of Satan who need to be ground up in mincing machines. And fed to the sharks.

‘They’re going to put you away for a maximum of 24 hours,” Ms Tredgett explains helpfully to her followers. “Then [they will] release you. It will go to court several months later. Usually, you’ll get a couple of hundred pounds in fines and a smack on the wrist.”

So that’s all right then.

Sipping cups of organic tea—laced with sexy soy milk—the vegan activists in Newcastle sat through a lengthy presentation by Ms Tredgett (pictured here) on the “urgent” need for government bans on animal farming and fishing.

Her talk culminated in a minute’s silence for a beef cow called Hero who has now entered legend.

Hero became instantly famous last year when she hit the headlines.

After escaping from a Polish abattoir, “Hero Cow” (as she is now known in Poland)  managed to launch a plucky resistance movement against her cruel human tormentors. Swimming heroically over rushing rivers and taking refuge in the most unlikely places, Hero was the talk of the vegan community for the next four weeks.  But it was a losing battle for the plucky bovine beauty (pictured here).

Hero finally died of stress or a heart attack—after being bombarded with tranquillizer darts by her kindly human “rescuers”.

Hero Cow has now entered the pantheon of Feminist Martyrs. Had Hero been a bull—a hated chauvinist of patriarchal provenance—he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Belonging as she does to the eternally oppressed and persecuted female sex, Hero’s fame is now guaranteed. She is first feminist martyr of the bovine species! 🙂

—   §   —

One of the principal beliefs of the Animal Extinction brigade is that meat and fish products leave a greater carbon footprint than vegetables. Eating meat produces more greenhouse gases. Moreover cows produce an enormous amount of methane every time they pass wind. Which, according to one of my learned informants, is tiresomely frequent. They are among the world’s most efficient producers of flatulence. So they need to be phased out of existence pronto.

Veganism is the only way, it is argued, to prevent environmental catastrophe and save the planet.

This view has gained momentum ever since Cambridge University removed beef and lamb from its menus in 2016. The boffins of Britain’s second most prestigious university appear to be on the side of the vegan zealots.

The Daily Mail reports:

Animal Rebellion compares its efforts to ban meat, fish and dairy products (plus, one must assume, leather) to the 19th-century campaign against slavery. They say they are following in the footsteps of a long list of people including Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. One of Animal Rebellion’s most oft-repeated slogans is: “Kill capitalism, not animals”.

According to the Mail, other key figures in Animal Extinction’s campaign for compulsory veganism are Roger Hallam, a veteran political activist recently in custody over an alleged plot to use drones to disrupt Heathrow airport. Then there is Tim Speers, a 33-year-old Londoner arrested a few days ago while filming himself spray-painting this alarmist slogan on the walls of the Old Bailey:

“ANIMAL EMERGENCY  =  CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY! “

Finally, there is the formidable Jane Tredgett, already mentioned above. Aged 52, Jane has had a seat on the RSPCA’s ruling council for 18 years. She is an important person who wields enormous influence over various groups and splinter groups, all deeply concerned with two vital issues: animal welfare and the looming environmental catastrophe from the plastic pollution of the world’s oceans.

It is in our own interests, Jane Tredgett argues convincingly, that we should stop caging animals in cruel conditions and slaughtering them without mercy.

It is in our own interests to stop eating their flesh and drinking their blood, which is what we do every time we have a hamburger.

Given the close kinship between man and beast, eating these helpless creatures is indefensible. It is almost akin to cannibalism, it is often averred with a passion verging on hysteria. After all, would you eat your own dog? Would you roast your own pet in the oven and serve it up for dinner? Doesn’t the very idea give you the creeps? So how on earth can you be so heartlessly cruel and feast on the flesh of an innocent cow?

Yes, that’s how it is. Passions run high, and it is not my intention to ridicule these anarchist extremists but to understand them.

It is my theory that there has been a recent upward spike in human sensitivity. In the ability to empathise with the lower animals and feel their pain.  There is now the compulsion  to defend innocent creatures in the same way as a good mother springs to the defence of her baby when it comes under attack.

I could be wrong. I probably am. But I refuse to brand every animal rights activist a raving lunatic. I’ll leave that to the Daily Mail.

Let me end with a moving story.

“How would you feel,” I was asked recently by a beautiful vegan poetess in a pub, “if invaders from Outer Space landed on Planet Earth and put all us human beings into cages?  Say they then decided to slaughter us in cold blood and turn us all into sausages and hamburgers? Would you like that?”

I was impressed not only by her willowy and ethereal beauty but by the burning sincerity with which she spoke.

The young man who sat next to me in the pub was amused. He stretched his long legs, sniggered, and drawled flirtatiously: “I wouldn’t mind at all, provided my killer is as beautiful as you!”

The beautiful poetess burst into tears.

“You poor little bastard.” she sobbed. “You don’t deserve to live!”

The Daily Mail, crude and insensitive as ever, concluded its report with these flippant words:

“So as thousands of angry protesters once more descend on London, we should be in no doubt: these people are coming for our Sunday roast.”

VIDEO   :   1.48 mins

UK mom sues Tavistock children’s clinic over ‘misleading’ and ‘experimental’ gender change treatments

Source

http://www.rt.com

12 Oct, 2019

©  Pixabay

England’s first state-sponsored child gender reassignment clinic has been slapped with a lawsuit by a mother of a patient and a former nurse at the center, who say “experimental” treatments are being forced on kids as young as 11.

The suit, first reported by the Times, alleges the Tavistock clinic in Leeds, and its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), painted an “inaccurate and potentially misleading” picture about the risks of hormone blockers, which are used to delay sexual development in children who wish to switch genders.

The case was brought by the mother of a 15-year-old patient at the clinic – who has only identified as “Mrs. A” – and Sue Evans, who worked there as a mental health nurse between 2003 and 2007. Evans told the Times she was concerned with how rapidly children were recommended for hormone treatment at the clinic, which some experts say can have serious medical risks, including loss of fertility and the ability to have an orgasm. Families are not made aware of some of those dangers, Evans said.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Experiment on kids’: Cross-sex hormone therapy age down to 8 in US govt-funded study, doctor finds

Mrs. A – who said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her child’s identity – expressed concern that “no one, let alone my daughter, understands the risk” of the hormone procedure, which she called an “experimental treatment.” Proper informed consent cannot be obtained under those conditions, she added.

There are many parents, like me, who are anxiously trying to support their children … We want the best for our children, but we need this to be from a position of evidence-based, not experimental, medicine.

On its website, Tavistock describes its GIDS program as a “highly specialised clinic for young people presenting with difficulties with their gender identity.” However, the facility has increasingly come under fire in recent months over concerns doctors there were misleading patients and rushing them into potentially dangerous treatments.

In an open letter published over the summer directed at Tavistock head Polly Carmichael, another former employee at the clinic, psychologist Kirsty Entwistle, said the center was moving too fast with too little evidence.

“It is a problem that GIDS clinicians are making decisions that will have a major impact on children and young people’s bodies and on their lives, potentially the rest of their lives, without a robust evidence base,” Entwistle wrote.

ALSO ON RT.COM17 children from one UK school, majority with autism, in ‘process of changing their gender

’The Tavistock clinic said it would not comment on any pending legal matters in a statement to the Times.

“It is not appropriate for us to comment in detail in advance of any proposed legal proceedings,” the clinic said. “The GIDS is one of the longest-established services of its type in the world with an international reputation for being cautious and considered.” 

Brexit is a necessary crisis – it reveals Britain’s true place in the world

 

Source

http://www.theguardian.com

David Edgerton

Wed 9 Oct 2019 

A determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism is bringing about a long-overdue audit of British realities

 The Commons in 1966: ‘The Conservative party was the party of national capitalism.’ Photograph: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images

Who backs Brexit? Agriculture is against it; industry is against it; services are against it. None of them, needless to say, support a no-deal Brexit. Yet the Conservative party, which favoured European union for economic reasons over many decades, has become not only Eurosceptic – it is set on a course regarded by every reputable capitalist state and the great majority of capitalist enterprises as deeply foolish.

If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening.

Why not? One answer is that the Tories now represent the interests of a small section of capitalists who actually fund the party. An extreme version of this argument was floated by the prime minister’s sister, Rachel, and the former chancellor Philip Hammond – both of whom suggested that hard Brexit is being driven by a corrupt relationship between the prime minister and his hedge-fund donors, who have shorted the pound and the whole economy. This is very unlikely to be correct, but it may point to a more disconcerting truth.

The fact is that the capitalists who do support Brexit tend to be very loosely tied to the British economy. This is true of hedge funds, of course – but also true for manufacturers such as Sir James Dyson, who no longer produces in the UK. The owners of several Brexiter newspapers are foreign, or tax resident abroad – as is the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe of Ineos.

But the real story is something much bigger. What is interesting is not so much the connections between capital and the Tory party but their increasing disconnection. Today much of the capital in Britain is not British and not linked to the Conservative party – where for most of the 20th century things looked very different. Once, great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests sat in the Commons and the Lords as Liberals or Conservatives. Between the wars, the Conservatives emerged as the one party of capital, led by great British manufacturers such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. The Commons and the Lords were soon fuller than ever of Tory businessmen, from the owner of Meccano toys to that of Lyons Corner Houses.

After the second world war, such captains of industry avoided the Commons, but the Conservative party was without question the party of capital and property, one which stood against the party of organised labour. Furthermore, the Tories represented an increasingly national capitalism, protected by import controls, and closely tied to an interventionist and technocratic state that wanted to increase exports of British designed and made goods. A company like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) saw itself, and indeed was, a national champion. British industry, public and private, was a national enterprise.

Since the 1970s things have changed radically. Today there is no such thing as British national capitalism. London is a place where world capitalism does business – no longer one where British capitalism does the world’s business. Everywhere in the UK there are foreign-owned enterprises, many of them nationalised industries, building nuclear reactors and running train services from overseas. When the car industry speaks, it is not as British industry but as foreign enterprise in the UK. The same is true of many of the major manufacturing sectors – from civil aircraft to electrical engineering – and of infrastructure. Whatever the interests of foreign capital, they are not expressed through a national political party. Most of these foreign-owned businesses, not surprisingly, are hostile to Brexit.

Continue:

Source

UK: ‘Work Less, Make More’: Labour Party Introduces Plan For 4-Day Work Week

We will be battling the greedy and souless corporations soon, as there will not be enough jobs for everyone within the next 20 years. I have heard some estimates that claim that over 50% of the population will be jobless. 

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Tue, 09/24/2019

As Labour’s 2019 party conference started yesterday, the party’s leadership was busy selling their slate of far-left policies.

In addition to support for a ‘Green New Deal’ (not dissimilar to the one from the US) and the abolition of private schools, the Labour Party is pushing a plan for a four day work week. But don’t worry: workers will still earn the same amount of money, they’ll just need to work less for the money.

By Labour’s reasoning, since the link between increasing productivity and expanding free time has been broken, it’s time for the government to step in and set the trend right. After all, increasing automation was supposed to allow Britons to work less, not more.

But with the next general election expected in the coming months, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell pledged during a speech on Monday that Labour would implement the 32-hour-work-week within 10 years if votes deliver a majority.

McDonnell’s pledge stopped short of making a 32 hour week compulsory, saying that only “average” hours worked would be cut. But he insisted that lower in the number of hours worked by most Britons is the right course of policy: “millions are exhausted from overwork,” McDonnell said to the audience at Labour’s Party conference in Brighton. And that must end.

“As society got richer, we could spend fewer hours at work. But in recent decades progress has stalled,” McDonnell added. “People in our country today work some of the longest hours in Europe.”

That’s actually not true, according to official EU data, which found that Greeks put in the longest work weeks (at an average 42.3 hours per week), followed by Bulgaria and Poland. The only western European nation that made the top ten was Portugal.

Before the conference, a report commissioned by crossbench peer Robert Skidelsky found that working fewer hours would be good for Briton’s wellbeing but that “a rigid four-day week was not realistic or desirable.”

But Labour clearly can’t resist the headline: A 32 hour work week! With no loss in pay!

Unsurprisingly, McDonnell received a standing ovation when he finished his speech. But just wait until this crosses the pond.

zerohedge@zerohedge

Biden: I promise a 4 day work week

Harris: I promise a 3 day work week
Warren: I promise a 2 day work week
Bernie: I promise a 1 day work week
Yang: I will pay you to never work again https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1176094961349144576 …

zerohedge@zerohedge

Democratic presidential candidates just had a eureka moment https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1176094085930729475 …

2,473

4:30 AM – Sep 23, 2019

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UK INFECTED WITH CYBER FUNGUS

Sam Spruce

Studied at Fuck Off Facebook

Went to Fuck Off Facebook

Lives in Boston, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom

July 27, 2019

UK INFECTED WITH CYBER FUNGUS

Britain is in grave danger of a rapid transformation into what could be recognised as an apartheid state. The number of people in a precarious position is so great that one failure of the extremely fragile status quo would likely cascade into an avalanche of catastrophes. The current political and economic influences are inherently bereft of any mechanism to avert such a collapse. Society has been sucked dry of any reserves to mitigate such a disaster. It is not within the prevalent available political paradigms to understand how to redistribute the economics to avoid a complete meltdown.

Stock markets, mortgage markets, and banking crises are all examples of how, when the bottom layer collapses, every subsequent layer attempts to mitigate their potential losses by pulling their resources out of the market. As welfare payments fail to meet rent, gas, electric, water, food, and travel requirements millions of people will rapidly face evictions which the courts can’t manage and destitution will rise and the almost fictional ‘job market’ will evaporate causing millions more to be out of work and without an income. In no time at all the country will have millions of homegrown ‘refugees’ which would lead to refugee camps and ultimately concentration camps if there were not already a superior way to manage the crisis.

I doubt the conscious desire to create concentration camps is in the minds of the wealthy overlords. After all, someone will have to pay for them. It is more a case of the wealthy overlords simply focusing on grabbing as much wealth as they can whilst the ship sinks. I proposed many years ago that Israel was simply a research and development establishment for the US and the UK and that Palestine is Israel’s laboratory. As the fabric of UK society collapses the right-wing political powers that be have all the equipment and expertise developed by Israel to ‘manage’ Britain as a divided society. Concentration camps will not look like Auschwitz with neat railway delivery infrastructure but rather will appear in a virtual form like extending sinews and invasive tendrils of a black cyber fungus devouring the detritus of superfluous humans silently in their own homes isolated from social connections and hidden from view for the still functional corporate drones servicing the hyper-wealthy oligarchs.

The current political trend can only escalate this process. The Tories are out of control, they are destroying the entirety of British society, and it is urgent that they are disposed of and a social paradigm of circulating financial resources within society is immediately put into place. Failing that the situation may be unrecoverable.

Why not turn the UK parliament into a holocaust memorial?

Source

http://www.redressonline.com

By Gilad Atzmon

17th May 2019   

Britain’s prime minister and four of her predecessors, some of whom are renowned war criminals, have united in calling for a holocaust memorial to be built in proximity to parliament. “A sacred, national mission” is how Theresa May described the idea and, for once, I totally agree with this tragic, sad woman. I would take it further: don’t just build a holocaust shrine in Westminster, make the UK parliament itself a holocaust monument. We don’t really need a House of Commons; as things stand, it would be more transparent if we were to be governed by our true rulers in Tel Aviv.

But there is a deeper ethical rationale that justifies the erection of a holocaust memorial instead of our dysfunctional parliament. Every political commentator in Britain knows by now that the more Jewish pressure groups terrorise Britain, its human rights campaigners, artists, writers and poets, the more Britons become aware of the crimes of Zionism, Israel and their ruthless lobby. The more British politicians join parliamentary friends of Israel clubs, the less Britons will trust their political system. The more holocaust indoctrination is shoved down our throats, the more suspicious Britons become of the manner in which history is told.

Watch Britain’s compromised prime minister and her predecessors in this video:

According to May: “By putting our national holocaust memorial and education centre next to our parliament, we make a solemn and eternal promise that Britain will never forget what happened in the holocaust.” Is that true Mrs May? Do you really mean what you say? Will our holocaust memorial bring to light the embarrassing fact that Britain made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to seek a safe haven in the UK or in other parts of the empire?

In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the holocaust monument?

In 1937, as the rate of Jewish refugees looking to immigrate to Britain increased, the British government created stricter standards for those whom they would admit. One was that refugees had to have ₤50 deposited in an overseas bank, but in Germany it was against the law to possess foreign currency. If this was not enough to stop Jewish immigration from Germany, the British government limited the number of immigrants in 1938 and 1939. Practically speaking, the British government turned its back on German and Austrian Jews.

The prime minister vowed that “in the face of despicable holocaust denial, this memorial will stand to preserve the truth forever”. I am here to tell you with confidence that the British holocaust memorial will in fact conceal British complicity in the destruction of European Jewry.

Mrs May was joined by all the living former UK prime ministers: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major. With the exception of Major, all the other living ex-prime ministers have been involved in a lot of death and carnage. While Blair and Brown led this country to a disastrous criminal war in Iraq that resulted in millions of casualties, it was Cameron who managed to pull this country into a chain of disasters in Libya, Syria and beyond.

Blair, whom a third of the British people see as a war criminal, said in his message that “anti-Semitism and hate did not end in 1945. Unfortunately, today some of this poison is back from the political fringe to parts of the political mainstream.” Blair was probably referring to his own party, which is struggling to disown the criminal past he himself inflicted on it. But the truth of the matter is that anti-Semitism didn’t die in 1945, certainly not in Britain. The postwar Labour government went out of its way to make the lives of Jewish holocaust survivors impossible. In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the holocaust monument? 

Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised prime minister and her predecessors are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?

It doesn’t take a genius to gather why Blair and Brown are so enthusiastic about a museum that chronicles Nazi crimes rather than a proper and timely institute that would explore their own crimes in Iraq. It is pretty clear why Cameron prefers to divert attention from his own blunders in Syria and Libya. But it goes further. Britain and its empire have a long list of crimes against humanity to account for: slavery, concentration camps in the Boer war, the partitioning of India, the destruction of Palestine, famines in Ireland and Bengal. Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised prime minister and her predecessors are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?

I have learned that Jeremy Corbyn, the person who according to the polls is destined to become Britain’s next prime minister, is not at all different from his predecessors. Corbyn, who at a certain point claimed to care for the many, is now subscribing to the primacy of Jewish suffering. Corbyn was quick to announce that he also would “strongly support permanent commemoration, including a national memorial, alongside extra investment in educational programmes”. I guess that supporting a holocaust memorial is an entry ticket to 10 Downing Street.

Valley of the sex dolls: Our post-apocalyptic future is grimmer than you thought

Sam Spruce

April 23, 2019

“OUR INCREASINGLY DESECRATED LANDSCAPE”
[Warning: Adult content. Offensive image.]

After reading this excerpt by Cory Morningstar I could not help but recall my recent findings on the picturesque banks of the Haven. Since she seems to write better than I do, I felt I would have said something like this if I could, and so I decided to present the least offensive, whilst still informative, image I have of my encounter along with Cory’s excerpt. What I have read of her work to date leads me also to recommend her work in general. I’ve included a link to her Patreon account.
==============================

Valley of the Sex Dolls: Our Post-Apocalyptic Future Is Grimmer Than You Thought
by Cory Morningstar
Published December 12, 2018
Excerpt:

The near-term and even more so post-apocalyptic future will be grim – a reflection of the neoliberal and patriarchal ideologies that will bring us face to face to a new form of mind pollution – a collective conditioning to the continued social degradation of women. With the rise and proliferation of plastic sex dolls and sexbots – our increasingly desecrated landscapes will soon be filling up with disposable bodies. Many dismembered and almost exclusively, female in form.

Industrial scale production is already here. Akin to a slaughterhouse, these life-like forms hang suspended from the ceiling on chains bound to the neck. Row upon row, the headless forms represent a new era in commodification, exploitation and ultimate degradation – the socially acceptable and financially profitable desecration of the female body.

The irony of the politically correct backlash toward plastic straws in contrast to the acceptable growing tsunami of plastic waste exclusively in female form – is lost. Silicone heads, torsos, breasts, arms, legs, removable vaginas, dirty and worn, will protrude from garbage bags and trash bins. A growing number of these forms will resemble dead children – the discarded remains of the anatomically-correct imitations of five-year-old girls, created exclusively for paedophiles. After all, according to the manufacturers, “It’s not worth living if you have to live with repressed desire.”

As a sign of the depravity of man, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans and all other places of waste disposal will overflow with plastic corpses that grossly mimic the female form. The sheer abundance of female bodies floating face down – or face up – will become so commonplace, an already desensitized society will become even more indifferent to the grotesque spectacle. Left solely to the machinations of men, female body parts fill up landfills by the tens of thousands – to such an extent – real women will be indistinguishable from the plastic corpses, literally lost amongst the rubbish.
==============================

WATCH Julian Assange dragged out of Ecuadorian embassy and arrested

RT.com

11 Apr, 2019

© Ruptly

Video shows whistleblower and Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange being carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London by force, before being shoved into a police vehicle.

In exclusive footage from RT’s Ruptly video agency, a disheveled Assange complete with full white beard is seen being carried out of the building by several men holding him by the limbs.

The whistleblower had been living in the embassy for the last seven years protected by political asylum, which was dropped earlier in the day by Ecuador.

UK Absolute Child Poverty Hits 3.7m Amid Brexit Chaos, Jumps 200,000 In One Year

Roughly 3.7m children are living in absolute poverty across the UK, an increase of 200,000 in a year, new data from the UK government has revealed.

© East News / Hazel Thompson

sputniknews.com

28.03.2019

Whilst the rate of absolute child poverty has decreased gradually since 2012, figures have begun to rise again, new UK government data revealed on Thursday.

Roughly 3.7m children are living in absolute poverty across the UK, an increase of 200,000 in a year, new data from the UK government has revealed.

The new figures have challenged claims from British cabinet ministers who said last year that absolute poverty rates had been falling.

The news comes after a Resolution Foundation study showed last month that the number of children living in poverty would instigate a crisis by 2023 — 2024 if the government failed to implement effective changes to universal credit and other UK benefits systems.

The Resolution Foundation said that the main factors driving UK income inequality were benefits and tax credit cuts, which hit lower and working class families with over two children the most.

© AFP 2019 / LINDSEY PARNABY

Research from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in line with the new data also showed that the Cabinet’s four-year freeze on child benefits would result in losses of roughly £240 per year for families.

CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: “Despite high employment, today’s figures reveal that 70 per cent of children living under the poverty line have at least one parent in work. That is not an economy that is working for everyone.”

She added that the increase in child poverty for working families had been “widely anticipated and could have been avoided” but that the government chose to ignore the dangers and missed “another opportunity to do the right thing for children and families despite the fact that the freeze had already achieved its planned savings”.

“At this critical point in the UK’s history, we need to step back and ask what kind of country we want for our children.”

Such cuts to social welfare systems, in addition to Brexit, were fuelling the increasing poverty numbers, according to a report in November from the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

UK ministers were “looking at what more can be done to help the most vulnerable and improve their life chances,” a government spokesperson said. “Tackling poverty will always be a priority for this government, and we take these numbers extremely seriously.”

“Employment is at a record high, wages are outstripping inflation and income inequality and absolute poverty are lower than in 2010,” the spokesperson added. “But we know some families need more support, which is why we continue to spend £95bn a year on working-age benefits.”

4.5 million UK children living in poverty: Study

More than 14 million people, including 4.5 million children, are living below the breadline in the UK, a study showed.

Source: PressTV-4.5 million UK children living in poverty: Study

PressTV.com

Mon Jan 21, 2019

The UK government abolished child poverty targets in 2015. (File photo)

More than 14 million people are living in poverty in the UK, according to a major report proposing a new measure of financial hardship which considers the impact of “inescapable” costs such as childcare and disability.

The research by the Social Metrics Commission (SMC) found that 14.2 million people were living in poverty under the new measure, of which 4.5 million were children and 1.4 million were people of pension age, according to The Independent.

Of that total figure, 7.7 million people were found to be living in “persistent poverty”, meaning they had spent all or most of the last four years or more in poverty, while 6.9 million were living in families with a disabled person.

The figure in the report marks a rise on findings by the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) last year which showed 14 million people in the UK were in poverty.

The SMC said its work over the last two and a half years has given rise to a new measure which makes “significant changes to our understanding of who is in poverty”.

The new measure accounts for the negative impact on people’s weekly income of “inescapable” costs such as childcare and the impact that disability has on people’s needs, and includes the positive impacts of being able to access liquid assets such as savings.

It also takes the first steps to including groups of people previously omitted from poverty statistics, like those living on the streets or in overcrowded housing, SMC chair Baroness Stroud said.

The report finds that the majority (68 percent) of people living in workless families are in poverty, compared to 9 percent for people living in families where all adults work full time.

There are 2.5 million people in the UK who are less than 10 percent above the poverty line, meaning that relatively small changes in their circumstances could mean they fall below it, the commission found.

Margaret Greenwood, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “The government’s strategy to tackle poverty consists of trying to mask the deep cuts it has made to social security by disputing the numbers of people in poverty.”

“The new measure importantly shows the impact of debt, housing and child care costs, and the extra costs that disabled people face. The extent of poverty it reveals among disabled people and their families is a major concern given the severe cuts to support to them in Universal Credit.”

Sam Royston, director of policy and research at the Children’s Society, said it was “extremely worrying” that nearly a third of children – around 4.5 million – were living in poverty according to the proposed new measure.

“This important report rightly suggests that inescapable costs like childcare, housing and support for children with a disability should be taken into account when measuring poverty,” he said.

“When these are considered children sadly make up a greater proportion of those in poverty than previously recognised and they can contribute to situations in which families are left struggling to make ends meet and facing impossible choices between essentials like eating and heating.”

The report also revealed “some areas of good news” with far fewer pensioners living in poverty than previously thought following a “significant fall” in pensioner poverty over the last 15 years.

Philippa Stroud, chair of the SMC, said: “For too long it has been possible to have a debate about the measurement of poverty.”

“I call on people and organisations across, and outside of, the political spectrum to support this new measure of poverty so that we can all put our energy into creating the policies and solutions that build pathways out of poverty.”

A UK government spokeswoman said: “Measuring poverty is complex, and this report offers further insight into that complexity and the additional measures that can be taken into consideration.”

”This government is committed to making a positive difference to the outcomes for poor and disadvantaged families and children.”

“Through our welfare reforms we are providing personalized support, helping people overcome their specific barriers and allowing them to progress into work and then progress in work – as we know this still remains the best route out of poverty.”

”Running parallel with that support, we continue to spend £90bn a year on working age benefits to provide a safety net for those who need it when they need it, and we will be spending £54bn this year, more than ever before, to support disabled people and those with health conditions.“

Hundreds die on UK streets as homelessness reaches record levels

Over the last five years, an estimated 2,627 homeless people have perished on the streets.

Source: Hundreds die on UK streets as homelessness reaches record levels – World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org

By Margot Miller
3 January 2019

Thousands of people are living on the streets in every UK town and city and a record number of roofless people are dying.

One encounters homeless people on every major high street—sitting, sleeping, begging, wrapped in a sleeping bag or blankets in an attempt to keep out the winter cold.

Homelessness shot to national prominence again over the holiday period when a man died just feet from Parliament on December 20. Hungarian national Gyula Remes had been homeless for the last three months. According to friends, he had just found a job as a chef’s assistant and was hoping to be off the streets soon.

His death came as the Office for National Statistics revealed figures showing that almost 600 people died in 2017 while sleeping rough on the streets. The grim tally of 597 dead marks a 24 percent increase over the last five years, with the highest numbers in London and the north west of England. Over the last five years, an estimated 2,627 homeless people have perished on the streets.

There were 50 deaths on the streets of Greater Manchester last year, with homeless people dying at a higher rate, relative to population, than London, where 136 homeless people died.

In the region’s main city, Manchester, on December 26, Tony Lawless, who had been a rough sleeper on and off since the death of his father, was found dead in Rochdale canal. The former market worker had just been released from North Manchester General after collapsing on Christmas Day and was 51 years old.

Homeless people often resort to sleeping in refuse bins, which has led to several deaths. Last January, Russell Lane, 51, died from his injuries after being tipped into the back of a refuse lorry in Rochester, Kent. He had wrapped himself in a disused roll of carpet in the bin.

The number of rough sleepers in England doubled in 2017 to 4,571, from 1,768 in 2010, according to the House of Commons Library, which also reported average life expectancy for a rough sleeper at just 47 for a male and 43 for a woman.

The first published deaths of the homeless on the street coincide with the latest figures released by the Crisis charity, revealing a record 170,000 families and individuals without homes. The number is expected to rise.

Research carried out at Heriot-Watt University on behalf of Crisis found a year-on-year increase in homelessness between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 38,000 under-25s and 4,200 over-65s are homeless.

There are 170,800 homeless households in comparison to 151,600 in 2012. Included in this figure are those who are rough sleeping, sofa-surfing, or staying in hostels.

Crisis lays the blame at the doors of government, including policies which have created an acute shortage of genuinely affordable social housing, reduced Housing Benefit which no longer covers rent and is not available to under 25s, and youth thrust out of the care system aged 18 without provision. John Sparkes, chief executive, said, “This new research echoes what we see every day in our front-line work—that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ homeless person … this crisis is affecting people who range from young care-leavers to pensioners. … This is a wake-up call to see homelessness as a national emergency.”

These figures are corroborated by housing charity Shelter, which revealed at the end of November that there are 320,000 homeless people living in Britain, an increase of 25,000 since last year. This figure, which includes people in working families, is likely an underestimate. Official figures only include those in contact with local authorities and not the hidden homeless residing with family or friends.

Shelter Chief executive Polly Neate said, “Due to the perfect storm of spiralling rents, welfare cuts and a total lack of social housing, record numbers of people are sleeping out on the streets or stuck in the cramped confines of a hostel room.”

The charity cited one of the causes of rising homelessness as the low level of housing benefit—a means-tested welfare benefit to help meet costs for rented accommodation—which does not cover average rent. The local housing allowance in Manchester, for example, is set at £532 a month for a family needing a three-bedroom house. However, private landlords, apart from student lets, ask for rents of £800 per month and upwards.

The homeless crisis has become so visible and public anger so widespread that Theresa May’s Conservative government has been forced to retract its previous denial of responsibility. Just prior to Christmas, Housing Minister James Brokenshire said the Conservatives “need to ask ourselves some very hard questions” regarding the increase in rough sleepers since the government came to office, and that what was necessary were “changes to policy.”

This was just PR, with the government doing virtually nothing to ameliorate an appalling crisis. After announcing “the end of austerity” in September, May allocated a measly £100 million—a repackaging of money already announced—as part of the government’s “Rough Sleepers Strategy” that is supposedly to eradicate rough sleeping by 2027!

Leading politicians of all parties, whose austerity policies over decades are responsible for the crisis, interrupted their Christmas celebrations for a show of sympathy for the homeless and destitute.

In recent weeks, the public have been forced to endure the obscene spectacle of Conservative MPs visiting food banks and supermarket food bank drop-off points for photo-ops. Among these were Dominic Raab, who infamously said in 2017 that those using foodbanks were people “who had a cashflow problem episodically.” The reality is that huge swathes of the population are going hungry and being forced onto the streets due to more than a decade of brutal anti-social policies, such as the bedroom tax and universal credit.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn visited a homeless hostel run by Crisis in his Islington constituency on Christmas Eve. In his Christmas message he invoked the spirit of the Good Samaritan, while his government-in-waiting has bent over backwards to reassure the rich it will not encroach on their ill-gotten gains to provide essential services.

Labour’s promise of initial funding of £100 million for one year into a rough sleepers’ cold weather fund is derisory and would not end rough sleeping. Corbyn acknowledged as much when he suggested Labour in office would repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act, under which there have been 2,365 prosecutions in 2015-2016. This would make it legal to sleep and beg on the streets but would not eradicate the causes of destitution.

The homeless crisis is an indictment of a failed system, capitalism. Beginning in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, and pursued enthusiastically by subsequent Labour governments, over 1.5 million council houses were sold off as the building of new stock ground to a halt. Last year only 6,463 homes were built in England for social rent, while 1.25 million families are on the waiting list.

Labour councils throughout the UK have implemented every cut imposed by central government and implemented privatisation of services with zeal. In London, residents have organised in opposition to the regeneration plans of Labour’s mayor Sadiq Khan, which involve the demolition of 8,000 council estate homes so property developers can get their hands on prime real estate to make a killing.

Greater Manchester’s social housing stock has declined by 5 percent in the six years since 2012 and 85,639 households languish on Labour council-run housing waiting lists. This led to 2,000 children spending their Christmas in emergency accommodation.

Gentrification and social cleansing are happening everywhere, with city skylines crowded with cranes and newly built luxury high-rise blocks that are unaffordable to everyone but the richest.

The resources can and must be found to provide safe, decent homes for all. The wealth of the billionaires and super-rich, acquired by exploiting the working class, must be expropriated to meet urgent, life or death, social needs.

$1.07 Trillion Wasted In Afghan War In 17 Years

The 2001 US-led military invasion in Afghanistan has caused incalculable suffering, civilian casualties, with record levels of territory retaken by a growing Taliban insurgency.

Source: What Could NATO States Do With $1.07 Trillion Spent on Afghan War Since 2001? – Sputnik International

sputniknews.com

Dec 6, 2018

© AP Photo / Mohammad Anwar Danishyar

What Could NATO States Do With $1.07 Trillion Spent on Afghan War Since 2001?

The 2001 US-led military invasion in Afghanistan has caused incalculable suffering, civilian casualties, with record levels of territory retaken by a growing Taliban insurgency.

A damning 2016 report from the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also revealed that US expenses on the War in Afghanistan were astronomically high, opaque and endless due to a mixture of corruption and substandard contracting work opening a black hole in NATO budgets.

As of 26 November 2018, the NATO Afghan National Army (ANA) Trust Fund estimated the defence bloc’s total contributions to surpass $2.5 billion alone, despite the Taliban controlling over 50 percent of Afghanistan.

17 years later, the US has spent $1.07 trillion, including a total initial cost of $773 and $243 Department of Defence (DoD0 increase, among others. People are left scratching their heads as Afghan High Peace Council and Taliban forces prepare to strike peace accords in Moscow, not Washington.

Analysts at Sputnik have crunched a few numbers to determine how $1.07tn could have been spent on better, more productive activities.

Ending Poverty Across the Planet 

It would cost $175bn (£137bn) a year for 20 years to end world poverty, which is pence on the pounds for the wealthy elite and a mere four times the annual US military budget, according to the Borgen Project. With 3.5 trillion quid, you could pretty much make the whole planet great again.

With the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank worth twice that of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, $100bn alone is a worthwhile investment for tackling global inequality.

Paying Off the F-35 Nightmare 

US taxpayers will pay roughly 1.508 trillion up to 2070 for the Pentagon’s F-35 Lightening II Joint Strike Force “flying boondoggle” programme. With the extra funds saved by using diplomacy, the US could have bought 11,888 F-35 units, or nearly 410 per NATO country. Conversely, the Pentagon could nearly pay off the cost of funding the programme altogether and fixed the fighter jet’s 966 deficiencies. However, one F-35 costs $30,000 per hour to fly, so budget accordingly.

Speeches from Hillary Clinton. Anytime. Anywhere. 

Disgraced 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received a one-off $675,000 payout from Goldman Sachs to speak privately at Wall Street functions in 2016, whilst earning a total of $22m in speeches since leaving her Secretary of State post 2013.

Costs saved from the Afghan invasion could have allowed Americans $4.4m per year, $366,666 per month and $12,222 per day to listen to Hillary Clinton squawk about Russian aggression and losing elections — a small price to pay for protecting freedom.

© Recode

Hillary Clinton moments after making a racist joke in an interview with Recode.

The Great Border Wall of America

The Trump administration has asked Congress for a staggering $25bn to fund the roughly 2,000-mile-wide US-Mexico border wall, a Government Accountability Office report found. Should President Trump’s assessment prove correct, the US could have used its Afghan expenses to fund an efficient and timely border wall programme along the US border 42.8 times, surpassing the Great Wall (13,171 miles) of China 6.4 times in length.

© AP Photo/ Rustam Nazari

‘Hasn’t Been Smart’: 49 Percent of Americans Call 17-Year Afghan War a Failure

350 million on NHS, Brexit Divorce Bill 

According to 2016 figures, the UK Ministry of Defence spent £58.3bn, or 2.2% of GDP on NATO expenses, with plans to inject £178bn in weapons over 10 years, a 2017 UK government document showed. With the money UK’s defence ministers plan to spend, Britain could instead fund missing £350m NHS hole 509 times and could also pay off 4.5 Brexit divorce bills.

© AP Photo / Rui Vieira

Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister Theresa May dances as she arrives on stage to address delegates during a speech at the Conservative Party Conference at the ICC, in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, Oct. 3 , 2018.

NATO Puppies for Peace Programme 

© Photo: Screenshot

Leave Me Alone: Golden Retriever Annoyed by Fellow Puppy

Owning a dog will cost roughly £12k-17k throughout their lifetime, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals states. Based on this, the US could have supplied 71.3m Americans with low-maintenance puppies. With a population of 35.5m people, you could buy every Afghan citizen two puppies for life instead, ending the war by uniting a divided and battle-weary Afghan population in mere minutes, with billions to spare.

Finian Cunningham: From Brexit to ‘Brokexit’

British Prime Minister Theresa May has repeatedly urged that the “national interest” is at stake over her Brexit plan. She is calling for businesses and politicians to rally around safeguarding ordinary people’s jobs and livelihoods – and to back her draft divorce deal with the European Union. A parliamentary vote is due in the coming weeks.

Source: From Brexit to ‘Brokexit’ – Sputnik International

sputniknews.com

Finian Cunningham

20.11.2018

© REUTERS / Simon Dawson

British Prime Minister Theresa May has repeatedly urged that the “national interest” is at stake over her Brexit plan. She is calling for businesses and politicians to rally around safeguarding ordinary people’s jobs and livelihoods – and to back her draft divorce deal with the European Union. A parliamentary vote is due in the coming weeks.

However, the timing of a shocking report on British poverty by the United Nations makes May’s appeals rather hollow, and it sounds an alarm about the dire direction the country is headed.

Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur, spent two weeks visiting diverse communities across Britain, and his report on growing poverty makes a damning case against the economic policies of present and past Conservative governments.

READ MORE: British Compassion ‘Replaced By Punitive, Callous’ Policies — UN Rapporteur

CC0

London’s Knife Crime Epidemic ‘Public Health Issue’ – Study

One-fifth of the British population — or 14 million people — are living in poverty, according to the UN report. The miserable social conditions for communities has become particularly worse since 2010 under two successive Conservative governments.What’s more, the report concludes that poverty in Britain is likely to become even more acute and widespread following the country’s departure from the European Union. While the deadline for divorce is at the end of March next year — only four months away — Britain is facing years of economic uncertainty in its transition out of the bloc, during which period the impact will be hardest on low-income people, according to the UN study.

Another factor is that Britain will no longer receive social development funds from the EU which had helped mitigate deprivation in many marginalized communities. Those who advocate for Brexit often complain that British taxpayers’ money is funneled to Brussels as part of its membership of the bloc. They claim that after Britain quits the EU, then these funds will be available for spending on British public services.

Such logic is questionable in light of the UN poverty report. Prof Alston’s investigation found that social deprivation in Britain has been compounded by “mean-spirited” and “callous” government policies which have prioritized economic austerity cutbacks over public welfare.

So, if successive British governments have not shown much care towards poor people over the past eight years, out of a dubious ideological conviction, then why would they suddenly adopt a caring attitude in a post-Brexit period?

READ MORE: ‘Bit of a PR Stunt’: UK Austerity End is ‘Really No More Than Lip Service’

Much more realistic is the expectation that as Britain undergoes wrenching changes to its economy over Brexit, the callous attitude of the political establishment will ensure that the disadvantaged become even more disadvantaged in order to pay for the costs of transition.

Admittedly, if a Labour government were to come to power in the next few years, then social policies could be more humane and progressive to improve the conditions for ordinary workers and their families, the unemployed, pensioners and those requiring long-term health care. But that’s speculative. It might not happen.

What we can say for now is that the present government under Theresa May is making an insulting appeal that her Brexit plan is in the national interest. Whatever about the consequences for the rich elite, May’s Brexit plan is certainly not in the interest of low-income Britons and the burgeoning ranks of the poor.

© AP Photo / Tim Ireland

Million Mask March London Plan to Show ‘Contempt’ for ‘Those Who Govern us’

It is true that many working-class Britons voted for Brexit in the June 2016 referendum. But did they envisage what the consequences would entail? They were also sold a lot of false promises by the likes of Boris Johnson and other British toffs who fantasize about rejuvenating Rule Britannia Empire.READ MORE: Millionaire Hammond Delivers Nothing But Spin — The Rich Are Protected Again

The UN report notes that Britain is the fifth richest economy in the world. Yet it has one of the highest rates of poverty among so-called developed nations. That’s dysfunctional capitalism for you.

Since Conservative governments embarked on an ironclad policy of economic austerity, over the past eight years some £39 billion ($50 billion) has been axed from public welfare and services. Those cuts have directly impacted communities and social conditions turning cities, towns, villages and housing estates into depressed zones of blighted lives for millions of people. The UN report found record numbers of Britons subsisting by going to food banks and other charitable centers in order to get their next meal. That is even the case for people who have jobs, such is the rampant poverty-in-work culture across Britain.

Record numbers of people are living rough on the streets. Some have resorted to prostitution just to buy food. Or joined criminal gangs as a way to survive. Charles Dickens would have lots to write about if he were still alive.

© AP Photo /

UK Modern Slavery Act ‘Leaves Children Vulnerable’, Charity Wants Overhaul

READ MORE: UK Domino Effect: Lack of Welfare Funding Brews Social Catastrophe — Activist

A damning figure is this: the $50 billion that Conservative governments have cut in public spending over eight years is comparable to what Britain spends every year on its military budget.

The only way that Brexit would be in the national interest is if the country somehow acquires a government that is truly democratic and committed to social justice. A government that is courageous and willing to challenge the abysmal gap between rich and poor, to embark on social and economic policies that prioritize the needs of workers and ordinary people, not the rich elite.

The record of the British establishment shows that it has negligible concern for the working people of Britain, and is only dedicated to enriching the oligarchy and fueling its war machine for aggression against foreign “enemies” like Russia.

Under prevailing British politics, one thing is sure. Brexit means Brokexit — more hardship and poverty for the people of Britain.

The views and opinions expressed by the contributor do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Britain’s enemy is not Russia but its own ruling class, UN report confirms

“Overall, 14 million people in the UK are now living in poverty, a figure which translates into an entire fifth of the population.”

“The values responsible for creating such a grim social landscape are compatible with the 18th not 21st century. They are proof positive that the network of elite private schools – Eton, Harrow, Fettes College et al. – where those responsible for this human carnage are inculcated with the sense of entitlement and born to rule ethos that defines them, are Britain’s hotbeds of extremism.”

Source: Britain’s enemy is not Russia but its own ruling class, UN report confirms — RT Op-ed

RT.com

John Wight

Nov 20, 2018

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

Police officers search an area next to a homeless man, Windsor, Britain, October 11, 2018 © Reuters / Darren Staples

As the UK political establishment rips itself to pieces over Brexit, a far greater crisis continues to afflict millions of victims of Tory austerity.

A devastating UN report into poverty in the UK provides incontrovertible evidence that the enemy of the British people is the very ruling class that has gone out of its way these past few years to convince them it is Russia.

Professor Philip Alston, in his capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, spent two weeks touring the United Kingdom. He did so investigating the impact of eight years of one of the most extreme austerity programs among advanced G20 economies in response to the 2008 financial crash and subsequent global recession.

What he found was evidence of a systematic, wilful, concerted and brutal economic war unleashed by the country’s right-wing Tory establishment against the poorest and most vulnerable section of British society – upending the lives of millions of people who were not responsible for the aforementioned financial crash and recession but who have been forced to pay the price.

Read more

‘Punitive, mean-spirited & often callous’: UN tears apart legacy of austerity in UK

From the report’s introduction:

“It…seems patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty. This is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense growth in foodbanks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the Government to appoint a Minister for Suicide Prevention and civil society to report in depth on unheard of levels of loneliness and isolation.”

Though as a citizen of the UK I respectfully beg to differ with the professor’s claim that such social and economic carnage seems “contrary to British values,”(on the contrary it is entirely in keeping with the values of the country’s Tory establishment, an establishment for whom the dehumanization of the poor and working class is central to its ideology), the point he makes about it being “obvious to anyone who opens their eyes,” is well made.

For it is now the case that in every town and city centre in Britain, it is impossible to walk in any direction for more than a minute before coming across homeless people begging in the street. And the fact that some 13,000 of them are former soldiers, casualties of the country’s various military adventures in recent years, undertaken in service to Washington, exposes the pious platitudes peddled by politicians and the government as reverence for the troops and their ‘sacrifice,’ as insincere garbage.

Overall, 14 million people in the UK are now living in poverty, a figure which translates into an entire fifth of the population. Four million of them are children, while, according to Professor Alston, 1.5 million people are destitute – that is, unable to afford the basic necessities of life.

And this is what the ruling class of the fifth largest economy in the world, a country that parades itself on the world stage as a pillar of democracy and human rights, considers progress.

The values responsible for creating such a grim social landscape are compatible with the 18th not 21st century. They are proof positive that the network of elite private schools – Eton, Harrow, Fettes College et al. – where those responsible for this human carnage are inculcated with the sense of entitlement and born to rule ethos that defines them, are Britain’s hotbeds of extremism.

Read more

‘Millions still in poverty’: UN send poverty rapporteur to UK over austerity

Professor Alston:“British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach apparently designed to instill discipline where it is least useful, to impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping with today’s world, and elevating the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest levels of British society.”

Here, set out above in bold relief, is the barbarism that walks hand in hand with free market capitalism. It is the same barbarism that was responsible for pushing post-Soviet Russia into a decade-long economic and social abyss in the 1990s, and the values that have pushed 14 million people in the UK into the same economic and social abyss in our time.

Austerity, it bears emphasizing, is not and never has been a viable economic response to recession in a given economy.

Instead, it is an ideological club, wielded on behalf of the rich and big business to ensure that the price paid for said economic recession is borne exclusively by those least able to bear it – namely, the poor and working people. It is class war by any other name, packaged and presented as legitimate government policy.

However, in Britain’s case in 2018, this is a war like no other because, as Professor Philip Alston’s report lays bare, only one side in this war has been throwing all the punches and only one side has been taking them.

With Christmas season upon us, the scale of human suffering across the UK ensures that the elaborate ad campaigns inviting us to shop and indulge to our heart’s content – ads depicting the middle class dream of affluence and material comfort – take on the character of a provocation. In fact, they call to mind the truism that wars take place when the government tells you who the enemy is, while revolutions take place when you work it out for yourself.

In austerity Britain, who the enemy is has never been more clear.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

How Julian Assange Became the Political Prisoner of Our Time

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antimedia.com

Written by Common Dreams

November 4, 2018

(CD Op-ed) — Over 7 months have passed since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was deprived of his ability to communicate with the outside world in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted asylum with the risk of extradition to the US, relating to his organization’s publications. Recently, after UN Special Rapporteurs for Freedom of Expression and Refugees visited the country, it appeared that Ecuador would finally end this isolation of its refugee and own citizen, which Human Rights Watch general counsel described as being similar to solitary confinement.

Yet, injustice on Assange continues. President Lenin Moreno who was said to partially restore Assange’s communication, now with a special protocol, imposes prison-like surveillance and restriction on his free speech. Under the new rules, Assange is banned from expressing opinions that are considered political or could interfere with Ecuador’s relationship with other nations. Journalists, lawyers and anyone else who seek to visit Assange are required to disclose their private details including email accounts and links to their social media, which then will be shared with UK authorities.

On Monday, a judge in Ecuador ruled against the suit filed by WikiLeaks lawyer, the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon who argued that this Ecuadorian government’s inhumane treatment of Assange violates his basic human rights. This came while there is an increasing pressure from the US on Ecuador to evict Assange. Joining the aggression of the Trump administration, members of the US Congress urge the Ecuadorian President to persecute Assange, calling him a ‘dangerous criminal’ and a ‘threat to global security’.

Assange has become a high profile Western dissident. He has been arbitrarily detained for 6 years without charge, deprived of fresh air, sunshine and an access to a proper medical care. What made him be considered dangerous by the most powerful government in the world? WikiLeaks has published material that exposed the crimes and corruptions of governments and institutions. Their disclosure of secret documents challenged those in power. But this is not the only reason that made him become an enemy of the state. He has been silenced and attacked because of a particular voice he carries that is critical for a future of our civilization.

Ghandian Struggle for the Oppressed

Assange, an Australian born computer programmer and journalist, together with a small group of dedicated people, launched a media outlet that radically altered the face of modern journalism. He is not just an excellent journalist or an editor in chief of a publisher that performs its job better than other media organizations. Over the years, through his work with WikiLeaks, Assange has become a champion of the oppressed, regarded as a hero around the world, especially by those who live under authoritarian and oppressive regimes, where human right abuses are rampant.

At its inception, WikiLeaks was conceived with aspiration of human civilization to better itself, which was manifested in common people’s desire for liberation. In his Oslo speech in 2010, where he spoke in front of an audience who was just about to witness a huge tide shift in the media landscape, Assange articulated the organization’s vision and its goal of achieving justice. He made it clear that the aim of WikiLeaks is to create intellectual records of how civilization actually works in practice, and by using that knowledge to stop abuse before it happens.

As the whistleblowing site has blazed into a mainstream spotlight with a series of sensational publications, Assange never wavered in his commitment to justice and ordinary people’s struggle for freedom. Until before he was cut offline, from a tiny room in the embassy, he spoke in defense of Catalans’ non-violent resistance against Spanish Central government’s abuse of their democratic rights. He called their peaceful self-determination in the face of police brutality “the most disciplined Gandhian project since Gandhi” and said that “its results will spread everywhere.”

In a sense, WikiLeaks has become a modern embodiment of the Gandhian project. Almost a century ago, Mohandas Gandhi, a spiritual and political leader led India’s independence from Britain. For Gandhi’s time, it was the colonial rule of the British Empire that his people fought against. Now, this old empire’s ambition for domination is carried on by American hegemony. It is this unaccounted Western power that WikiLeaks came to confront through a trove of original source documents with a pristine record of accuracy.

Cryptography as a Weapon for Non-Violent Resistance

So, how does WikiLeaks make itself become a modern day Gandhian project? Gandhi put the principle of non-violence at a center of his efforts. He wanted to end wars and state abuse of power, not by the methods of oppressors, perpetuating further violence, but with different means. For this, he employed a non-violent civil disobedience as a way for people to engage in the peaceful resistance against injustice.

Now, in this digital age, WikiLeaks revived this Gandhian tradition of peaceful resistance online at a global scale. Assange saw potential in cryptography to offer a way for common people to non-violently resist the domination of powerful states. He once articulated the potent revolutionary force inherent in cryptography:

“Cryptography can protect not just the civil liberties and rights of individuals, but the sovereignty and independence of whole countries, solidarity between groups with common cause, and the project of global emancipation. It can be used to fight not just the tyranny of the state over the individual but the tyranny of the empire over smaller states.”

Specifically, with creative application of cryptography, Assange enabled a free speech right in a form that is resilient to government censorship and restriction. In the colonization of the past, the empire’s aggression was naked, where people who were oppressed by colonial masters were able to see their savagery and brutality. Now, the beast inside civilization hides its claws behind a façade of democracy and conspires to bring humanity down in secret.

Permissionless free speech that has been distributed across the Internet offered ordinary people a non-violent democratic weapon to combat against the patronage network that tries to control people through deception and secrecy. An invention of an online anonymous secure drop box made it possible for people anywhere in the world, regardless of their jurisdiction, to expose governments’ wrongdoing and corruption of institutions, without fear of political retaliation. They then could stop violence and mitigate the harm inflicted by those in power.

Pursuit of Truth Through Scientific Journalism

Gandhi has shown the world the effectiveness of his non-violence in opposing oppression. He characterized the revolutionary force inherent in his peaceful method with the term “satyagraha (from the Sanskrit for ‘truth-force’)” (as cited in Dear, 2002, p. 19). He noted satyagraha means “resisting untruth by truthful means” (p. 22) as well as “‘steadfast, nonviolent direct action for truth’ and ‘nonviolent civil disobedience’” (p. 83).

With the creation of WikiLeaks, Assange made an investigative journalism into a platform for pursuit of truth. He firmly believed that for justice to prevail, people ought to have an accurate knowledge about how the world works. He once noted, “If we are to produce a civilized society, a more just society, it has to be based upon the truth.”

In his engagement of people in this search for truth, Assange recognized how the media has become not a purveyor of truth, but of lies, actively promoting and defending the force that violates and destroys truth. Speaking in defense of the disclosure of classified US military documents on the Iraq War, Assange pointed out how “most wars that are started by democracies involve lying,” and noted how “the start of the Iraq war involved very serious lies that were repeated and amplified by some parts of the press.”

WikiLeaks, with its method of transparency steadily upheld a doctrine of satyagraha. Through scientific journalism, Assange found a way to resist governments’ perversion of truth by truthful means. Full archives of the original source material countered media propaganda that works to distort truth through censorship, omission and manipulation of information.

Sword of Love

Gandhi reminded how “realizing Truth ‘means realizing that all human beings are one” (as cited in Dear, 2002, p. 84). For him, justice meant to restore this truth. Calling a person who is dedicated to truth a satyagrahi (p. 89), Gandhi noted how “the sword of the satyagrahi is love and the unshakable firmness that comes from it” (p. 93). For his fight for justice, Gandhi voluntarily submitted himself to suffering, being imprisoned and in the end was assassinated.

This Gandhi’s fierce commitment to truth ignited the minds and hearts of revolutionaries, inspiring movements for civil rights around the world. Political leader Nelson Mandela took up a sword of satyagrahi to bring unity between blacks and whites in South Africa. By uncovering the truth of human rights violations that had occurred during apartheid, he facilitated the country to attain restorative justice. The leader of the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his stride toward freedom for African Americans, surrendered himself to the ethics of love to combat racist laws. Just like Gandhi who was willing to suffer for his cause, both out of their own volition chose to engage in speech and an action that would bring consequence. Mandela was being put on a US terrorist watch list and served 27 years in prison. Dr. King was put into jail and shot dead.

Similarly, WikiLeaks derives its courage from ordinary people around the world who are willing to take great risk on behalf of truth. What drives WikiLeaks scientific journalism is inspiration of its sources—their love for humanity, manifested in their concern for their fellow men and women that transcend nationality, color of skin and language. On April 5, 2010, with the publication of the collateral murder video, the sword of satyagrahi once again struck a chord on the Internet. The conscience of whistleblower Chelsea Manning cut through deception, shedding light on human affairs that were kept in the dark.

In uncensored images of modern war that depicted a US Army helicopter gunship killing innocent civilians in New Baghdad, American people were able to see the real face of those who are made into enemies, being kept on the other side of the barrel of the gun held in their name. Manning’s compassionate account of this forbidden landscape, seen from a perspective of not either American or Iraqis, but from a view of humanity opened up a vantage point of equality, where we were able to recognize our shared humanity and truly witness atrocities and violation of human rights committed by the powerful. For this courageous act to restore truth, she was condemned, being tortured and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Give Peace a Chance

With the work of WikiLeaks, Assange took up a Gandhian tradition of peaceful resistance, instigating a worldwide non-violent movement on the Internet. Through publishing full archives, the organization made it possible for ordinary people to directly connect with the source of legitimacy and begin a quest for truth that has so long been obstructed by the media that functions as a gatekeeper of power.

WikiLeaks opened a path of redemption for our civilization. By enabling free speech rights, this Gandhian investigative journalism restored the laws of peace, helping people reconnect with the true impulse behind enlightenment ideas. The idea of free speech brought a departure from the old rule of the jungle and its logic of might and conquest. It made it possible for humanity to learn to solve problems through dialogue and diplomacy rather than violence.

As released documents began illuminating the way of peace, a shadow of a colonial past grows to resist this new light emanating from the conscience of ordinary people. In 2012, a small country of South America showed enormous courage to stand up to protect the journalist who was seeking refuge from Western governments’ persecution. Now, the US with the UK and Spain rekindles old colonialism, bullying this sovereign nation of Ecuador to go outside both international and Ecuador’s own constitutional law to act subservient to its power.

Recently, Ecuador indicated that it would no longer intervene in diplomatic talks with Britain on behalf of Assange. As the former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa has spoken, there is a grave concern that his successor will hand over Assange to the British authorities. The UK government, by ignoring the UN ruling that indicated Assange’s situation at the embassy as arbitrary detention, refuses to give assurance that they will not extradite him to the US.

Assange is a revolutionary of our times. He sacrificed his liberty in order to give civilization a chance. He now has become a world-renowned political prisoner. Just as his forerunners who fought for emancipation were attacked by the empire states, he has been subjected to a political persecution at a scale that has never been seen before. In a tiny room of an embassy under heightened security, he now quietly suffers in solitude, fighting against character assassination that is now slowly turning into a real murder.

When the justice system is controlled in the hands of oppressors, justice of this founder of the publisher of last resort relies on the court of public opinion. As Julian Assange’s plight for freedom intensifies, we can remain silent, allowing tragedy brought upon all those legendary peacemakers to repeat itself. Or, we can act with moral courage to end oppression and change the course of history. Will humanity find strength to claim its own dignity to open democracy? Or, will crudeness and barbarianism take over, bringing a society into despotism? Future of civilization rests on each individual’s ability to seek in love to unite with those who struggle for the rights of ordinary people. Now it is up to us to carry out this great work of justice and realize the truth of liberty and equality for all people.

Legalising medical marijuana shows no effect on crime rates in US states

“Our findings show that we can safely rule out that medical marijuana laws and the associated marijuana use cause increased crime. The strong correlation between marijuana use and criminal activity is mostly spurious.”

“Our study provides robust evidence that medical marijuana legislation does not contribute to crime, and possibly helps to reduce it. This conclusion may relieve a major concern for countries considering to legalise medical marijuana, including New Zealand and Canada.”

Source link

theconversation.com

Author   Yu-Wei Luke Chu

Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington

September 18, 2018

Those who oppose medical marijuana legislation often cite the strong association between marijuana use and criminal activity. This includes the US federal government, which continues to classify marijuana as a schedule one drug.

We analysed city-level data from states across the US and found that medical marijuana laws have little effect on violent or property crime in nearly all medical marijuana states. In the case of California, the crime rates actually show a substantial decrease of around 20%.

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Read more: Medical cannabis users could still be criminalised in UK despite government accepting its benefits

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A natural experiment

Medical marijuana laws represent a major change in marijuana policy in the US. Since California passed the first medical marijuana law in 1996, 30 US states and the District of Columbia have legalised medical marijuana.

Several recent studies have found that marijuana use has increased among the general population (including non-patients) in medical marijuana states. It is difficult to disentangle causal effects of marijuana use from spurious correlations because of individual heterogeneity. Individuals who choose to use marijuana are likely different from those who don’t.

The passage of medical marijuana laws offers researchers a good natural experiment to study the causal effects of marijuana use on a variety of health outcomes, including drunk driving, hard drug use and opioid painkiller use.

Users and crime

The perception that marijuana use leads to crime can be traced back to the 1930s. In an effort to gain public support for marijuana prohibition, the Narcotics Bureau chief Harry Anslinger collected dubious anecdotes of marijuana causing crime and violence in his infamous Gore Files.

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Read more: Re-criminalizing cannabis is worse than 1930s ‘reefer madness’

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There is indeed a strong correlation between marijuana use and criminal activity. For example, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program shows that more than half of adult male arrestees tested positive for marijuana use. Financial needs can lead to property crime for some heavy users.

Research also shows that long-term neuropsychological effects of marijuana can harm the brain, causing violent behaviours. Some studies have identified brain abnormalities in MRI images among casual and abstinent users.

Nevertheless, such correlation could be entirely spurious because marijuana users have a higher propensity to commit crimes. Only people who are willing to break laws would use marijuana under prohibition.

Effects of medical marijuana laws on crime

In our paper, we used data on criminal offence, spanning more than 25 years (1988–2013). We analysed relatively large cities with at least 50,000 residents. In addition to traditional regression analysis, we adopted the state-of-the-art synthetic control method that allows us to estimate the effects of medical marijuana laws in each city.

To make cities with and without medical marijuana laws comparable, we created a synthetic city from a pool of cities without medical marijuana laws. That way the pre-law crime rates in the synthetic city and the city of interest are as close as possible.

We then used the post-law crime rate in the synthetic city as an estimate for the medical marijuana city’s counterfactual crime rate – the rate you would expect if the medical marijuana law had not been passed. The difference in post-law crime rates between the synthetic city and the medical marijuana city is the causal effect of medical marijuana law on crime.

We found that the actual crime rates in medical marijuana cities generally move closely with the synthetic cities. This suggests no substantial effect on both violent and property crime. The results remain similar when we look at specific crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and theft.

Our findings show that we can safely rule out that medical marijuana laws and the associated marijuana use cause increased crime. The strong correlation between marijuana use and criminal activity is mostly spurious.

Californian experience

Violent and property crime rates dropped by 20% since California passed medical marijuana legislation more than two decades ago. It was reported that there are more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks or McDonalds in cities like Los Angeles.

California’s medical marijuana law may have shrunk the marijuana black market and its associated violence. It may have helped to reallocate police resources towards deterring crime instead of enforcing drug laws. The presence of dispensaries may also deter crime. They are required to deal in cash and thus invest heavily in security.

Another study found a similar decrease in violent crime in states bordering Mexico, including California. It argues that medical marijuana legislation reduced crime associated with drug trafficking through Mexican cartels.

The US experience suggests that most stigmas associated with marijuana use are not supported by empirical evidence. Although medical marijuana laws increase heavy marijuana use among non-patients, they do not lead to negative social outcomes.

Our study provides robust evidence that medical marijuana legislation does not contribute to crime, and possibly helps to reduce it. This conclusion may relieve a major concern for countries considering to legalise medical marijuana, including New Zealand and Canada. The US experience is unique, especially because of its war on drugs. But the main conclusion that increased marijuana use does not cause more crime likely applies in other countries.

‘The rich in UK use economic capacity to their own advantage: Analyst

Source link

http://www.presstv.com

Sun Sep 9, 2018

The widening wealth gap between the poor and rich in the UK and other parts of the West is the result of an outdated economic system in which the affluent classes exploit the economy to their own advantage, an academic from London says.

“The existing system only serves the interests of a narrow elite and now when they have got their hands on the mechanics of power they use it to their advantage,” Rodney Shakespeare said in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.

The expert said there is a “nasty phenomenon” underlying the politics in UK, Europe and in the US where the masses do not enjoy the benefits of economic growth.

“When productive capacity has massively increased and is capable of producing sufficient for everybody, [but] what happens is rather the opposite,” he said.

“The capacity is underused and not developed and what capacity exists goes to the hands of rich and wealthy and rich get richer and poor get poorer, he added.

 A chart provided by the Economist.com shows the gap between rich and poor is several developed countries.

Shakespeare said a main reason for the current situation in the UK and many other Western countries is their outdated economics which maintains that there is nothing wrong with the existing system.

He said that the middle class and the poor are becoming increasingly fed up with the elite as they have no proper share of the wealth created in the country.

“The economic situation of most people now is not that of a secure middle class, but of an insecure no longer working class,” he said.

Many workers in modern Western economies have temporary jobs with low wages that cannot even satisfy their daily needs.

Shakespeare said old economic theories which maintained that the wealth would trickle down from the wealthy to the poorer are no longer tenable in the current economic situation.

“Wealth does down trickle down to the masses of the population because the really reach just cannot spend all their income let alone get rid of their capital,” he said.

“We have a ludicrous situation in which the rich get richer and richer and it is impossible for the rich to spend all their money.”

The UK Gov’t is Falling Apart

Source link

With permission from

geopolitics.co

July 11, 2018

The UK govt is falling apart, but as PM May sinks, she still calls out ‘look over there’ at Russia.

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing,” Oscar Wilde said on the Dickens story. The disintegration of this incompetent administration makes me laugh – clearly my heart isn’t hard enough.

And this even as I agree with Mrs. May’s departing cabinet heavyweights: Boris Johnson the foreign secretary, David Davis the Brexit secretary, Steve Baker the Brexit minister  – whilst despising them on every other matter. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

It is true that Mrs. May has supported the Brexit decision by 17.4 million people, the largest vote for anything or anyone in British history, as the rope supports the hanging man. And she hopes to see it dangle to death.

It is true that her elaborately constructed ‘Chequers Agreement’ (Chequers is the Country House of British prime ministers) would have left Britain a Vassal State of the European Union, a rule taker forever, from a sclerotic neo-liberal protectionist bankers ramp which has impoverished half of Europe and enraged maybe most of the other half.

It would have left Britain effectively in the Customs Union effectively tied to the single market and subject to endless harassment by the European courts on trade matters. It would have neutered the possibility of a new British internationalism which an incoming Jeremy Corbyn Labour government would want to advance. And perhaps above all, the British would continue to be dominated by a financial and economic orthodoxy presided over by people we didn’t elect and cannot remove.

Events are moving fast and this article may have to be updated. Three cabinet members (and counting) have resigned. Other minsters and their aides, too. The prospect of a leadership challenge are now more likely than not, even though the clock is ticking steadily toward Brexit Day next March.

I have been here before.

On November 13, 1990, I sat on the green benches of the British Parliament and watched a previous foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, in his resignation speech, snap Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – the Iron Lady – like a twig with a series of devastating metaphors which had the whole House wincing and laughing in equal measure.

The whole House – that is, except Mrs. Thatcher, who left the chamber that day a broken woman – opened, wide open, to an inevitable leadership challenge, which duly forced her from power after a decade of unassailability.

The resignation letter from Boris Johnson – the speech is yet to come – is equally devastating. And may well lead to the same outcome. And Mrs. May has not the mettle of Mrs. Thatcher – more ‘tinfoil’ lady than ‘iron’.

As the government sinks in a morass of its own making, however, it has become increasingly reckless with its ‘look over there!’ tactics of diversion.

Discombobulated by the surge of respect, even affection for Russia in Britain (always far higher than the elite were ever prepared to acknowledge) as a result of the best World Cup in living memory, the Theresa May government has doubled down on its discredited state narrative over the Salisbury-Skripal affair.

The death of an indigent homeless woman in nearby Amesbury has seen ministers, press, and even Blairite Labour MPs return to their anti-Russia campaign like a dog returning to its own vomit.

The 44-year-old mother of three, Dawn Sturgess, was both an alcoholic and a heroin user, living in a hostel, but with a boyfriend – Charlie Rowley. He, too, is literally clinging to life in intensive care.

This sorry, tragic story has been the casus belli for a new wave of attacks upon Russia and even President Putin.

Grown men and women, educated men and women, working in media and politics in Britain are actually seriously speculating that Russian assassins sought to murder this tragic couple. And that the president of Russia, in the closing stages of Russia’s triumphant World Cup, ordered the hit!

The Amesbury story has even more holes than the Skripal story – and that is saying something.

I will return in depth to those holes and that story on another day, but I wanted to leave you with, if you will pardon the pun, a taste of it.

Such was the parlous lifestyle of this poor couple we are told that they were often seen raiding dustbins and skips for what they could use or sell. But also that they were in the habit of picking up discarded cigarette butts in the streets of Salisbury.

For three full days last week, the Daily Mail – Britain’s most successful newspaper – actually ran the story that one of those cigarette butts may have been laced with “Russian” Novichok. The whereabouts of the dead body of the smoker of the rest of the cigarette is presumably still in the Salisbury undergrowth!

George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.

• https://www.rt.com/op-ed/432466-theresa-may-boris-johnson/

How The United Kingdom Became A Police State

“In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day. The Labour Party continued this madness under Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his megalomaniac predecessor.”

Source link

http://www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden

Sat, 07/07/2018

Authored by Neema Parvini via The Mises Institute,

This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth. It will demonstrate, contrary to official narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger. It will also expose how the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers. I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.

In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day. The Labour Party continued this madness under Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his megalomaniac predecessor. In 2010, Labour’s last year in power before handing over the reigns to the Blairite social radical, David Cameron, there was a 54% surge in privacy cases brought against public bodies, and the Cabinet were refusing freedom of information requests at a rate of 51%. The vast number of new laws under Labour does not count the 2,100 new regulations the EU passed in 2006 alone, which apparently is average for them.

Many of these vast changes under Blair and Brown were in the area of criminal law. By 2008, Labour had created more than 3,600 new offences. Many of these, naturally, were red-tape regulations. To give you an idea:

• Creating a nuclear explosion
• Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
• To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
• Disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
• Obstructing workers from carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
• Offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
• Allowing an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
• A ship’s captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the International Grain Code on board
• Scallop fishing without the correct boat
• Breaking regulation number 10 of the 1998 Apple and Pear Grubbing Up Regulations
• Selling Polish Potatoes

There are many more. However, there were also some more serious breaches of civil liberty.

One common tactic of the Blair government was to use a moral panic to pass radical new legislation. For example, in 2006, he passed the Terrorism Act that overturned habeas corpus and gave the British police the right to detain anyone for any reason for 90 days. At the time, this got widespread public support because of the recent 7/7 bombings in London. This means that, in the UK, the police can arrest you without you necessarily having committed a crime if they can brand your activities as “terrorist” or “extremist.” Although these laws were ostensibly brought about to combat Islamic terrorism, the ever-expanding definitions of “far right” and “extremist” demonstrate how they can be weaponised against the British people.

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This Is What Modern War Propaganda Looks Like

I’ve been noticing videos going viral the last few days,  with , about Muslim women bravely fighting to free…

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Another area in which the Labour government used moral panic cynically to overturn longstanding common law principles was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which they used to eliminate the double jeopardy rule and, as per the MacPherson report, to put an end to colour-blind policing.

Recently there have been an increased number of cases in which the British state has encroached on civil liberties in a near-openly tyrannical way. The Count Dankula case, for example, in which a man was arrested for “hate speech,” then tried and made to pay a fine for telling off-colour jokes about the Nazis on Youtube. Then there was the young woman who was found guilty of being “grossly offensive” for posting Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram account. And, most recently, the political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested and tried in mere hours for recording outside a courtroom. In each of these cases, despite some protests against the legal rulings, the media broadly sided with the courts, citing the technicalities of the law – in the former two cases section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 (another Blair special) – and brand anyone who would protest “far right” or “extremist.”

“Gaslighting” is a word from the world of psychology; it is a technique of manipulation to achieve power. Here are eleven warning signs:

1. They tell blatant lies.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
7. They know confusion weakens people.
8. They project.
9. They try to align people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

The British state has become increasingly Orwellian in its gaslighting of the British public since at least 1997 with near-total complicity from the media. In a recent article for Quillette, I argued that this has been the case in both Britain and the USA for years.

This has especially been the case in the area of crime. During a period in which both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have become increasingly statist and interventionist on both an economic and civil level, we have been continually told that one of the positive effects of ever-increasing government control is that society is becoming more peaceful. This is the narrative, for example, of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. In 2005, The Guardian told us that since 1995 overall crime had decreased by 44%. Almost a decade later the same publication wondered out loud what could be causing the continued decline in crime rates in the UK. And just a few years after that, they had changed their tune completely decrying sudden increases in violent crime and blaming this on cuts in police numbers. In the first few months of 2018, the shocking increases in instances of violent crime in Sadiq Khan’s London, which in the past year has seen rises of 31.3% in knife crime, 78% in acid attacks, 70% in youth homicides, 33.4% in robberies, 18.7% in burglaries, 33.9% in theft and 30% in child sex crime.  But this story told by The Guardian – of a general trend down in crime over the past twenty years followed by a sudden and inexplicable spike – is simply not true, as I will demonstrate in this paper.

In 1997, Tony Blair famously ran on a platform of being ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Unfortunately for him, the reality of empirical crime data had stubbornly refused to comply with his anointed vision through his first years in power. “New Labour” were famous for the efficiency of their propaganda machine. American readers will no doubt be aware of Mr. Blair’s complicity in making exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” in the run up to the war in Iraq, but few readers – British, American, or otherwise – will know that the Blair government was also lying about the extent of crime in Britain. The Labour Party, who were so much about media perceptions and political spin, needed to find a way to show on paper that their “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” agenda was making good on its promise. So, in 2003, Tony Blair permanently changed the way crime is reported in the UK by introducing the National Crime Recording Standard’ (NCRS). Up until that point, crime in the UK was reported using hard data drawn from actual arrests and convictions from the police. However, from that point onwards, the official statistics were to be drawn from the British Crime Survey which estimates crime based on a survey of 50,000 people aged 16 or over. This works much like how television companies produce estimates for their show ratings. So that means that the statistics you see quoted in newspapers like The Guardian are not hard figures, but estimates drawn from surveys. Whatever the merits of this method, it produced a graph for the Blair government that looked like this:

This change ostensibly came about because – as part of the “tough on the causes of crime” part of their pledge, Labour wanted to count victims as opposed to the total number of offenders. Of course, this takes a huge number of crimes out of the data. For example, as it was introduced in 2003, because only over 16-year olds could be interviewed, crimes against minors were not registered in the official statistics. Also, because interviews had to take place in private properties, street crime habitually would not show up in these numbers. Of course, so-called “victimless” crimes – fraud or online crime – do not show up in this data either. Once you start to account for some of these caveats, it becomes more obvious why this extraordinary change in methodology would produce a downwards trend in the data. In fact, it was explicitly designed so that, because of these changes, it could not be compared with numbers before 2002.

In 2007, Ken Pease and Graham Farrell estimated that the survey data could be underestimating violent crime by as much as 82%, with the real number of victims closer to 4.4 million than 2.4 million. This massive margin of error means that the real crime rate becomes a matter for debate as opposed to a question of hard evidence. It seems to me that this was a deliberate choice by the Blair government. Hence, we now find the BBC wondering about what the real crime rate might be.   And this is where the true extent of the Orwellian nightmare of the Blair and Gordon Brown years dawns: by making the crime rate an estimate neither political party can reliably point to the facts, and it always becomes a question of one difficult to substantiate narrative against another. “Post-truth” did not start with Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump – Tony Blair was doing it from the minute he stepped into office.

However, real numbers of convicted offenders are still recorded and kept, although they are somewhat difficult to obtain. In the run-up to the 2010 British election, Conservative MP and Shadow Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, requested the real numbers from the House of Commons library which duly produced a series of independent reports. Incidentally, once the leader of the Tories, David Cameron, became prime minister in 2010, Chris Grayling became the Secretary for Justice and, to my knowledge, was happy to let this little detail slide and continue with the survey-based methodology. It is funny how power can change the incentives for action.

In any case, the numbers that Grayling requested are damning for anyone who claims that either overall crime or violent crime decreased in the UK between 1997 and 2010.

The population of the UK was about 58 million people in 1997. In 2008, that had increased to 62 million, an increase of 6.87%. In that same period male violent crime convictions in England and Wales increased by around 63.92% from 49,153 in 1997 to 80,574 in 2008. So violent crime convictions increased by more than ten times the growth of the population.

Increases like this can been seen across virtually every category of crime. Convictions for persons under 18, for example, increased by 60.18% from 12,806 in 1997 to 20,513 in 2008, in keeping with the average increase in violent crime, this is ten times the rate of population growth in the same period. Knife crime practically doubled during the Blair years, from 3,360 offenders in 1997 to 6,368 in 2008. In 1998 there were 5,542 robberies, in 2008 there were 8,475. From the year 2000 to 2008, the total number of arrests for any offence went up from 1.2 million to 1.4 million, an increase of about 17%.

For the claim to be true that violent crime went down 44% during the 00s in the UK, it would have to be at a time when violent crime convictions went up 64%. For the claim to be true that overall crime went down in from 1997 to 2008, it would have to be at a time when overall convictions for crime went up by 17%. Both claims seem extraordinary: how could there be a rise in convictions without a corresponding increase in crime? The methodology that measures victims through estimates from survey data clearly is not getting this correct.

If we use recorded convictions in this way, as opposed to estimates, we can make meaningful comparisons to the past as Peter Hitchens does in The Abolition of Liberty. As we have seen, the total number of convictions in England and Wales for 2008 was around 1.47 million for a population of 62 million people, around 2.25% of the population. According to Hitchens the comparable number in 1861 at the height of laissez-faire was 88,000 for a population of 20,066,224, or around 0.44% of the population. In 1911, before Leviathan and the welfare state had really had a chance to grow, the number was 97,000 for a population of 36,075,269, or around 0.27% of the population. The claim that crime has risen because of government cuts to the numbers of police also cannot stand since in 1911 there were 51,203 officers whereas by 2009 there were 144,353 officers. The increase in police officers from 1911 to 2009 therefore is 181.92% compared with an increase of 71.86% in total population. So the size of the repressive apparatuses of the state have increased greatly, and with it the total number of criminals.

It is clear that with less personal freedom and a bigger and more invasive state comes less personal responsibility and greater lawlessness. It is also clear that as the British state has become more top-down in orientation than in its common-law past, it has levied increased coercive legislative power against the British people it supposedly serves. The state is now behaving in an openly Orwellian manner with near-explicit contempt for the public.

Young people are leading a growing movement against low pay and precarious work

theconversation.com

June 1, 2018

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Wil Chivers

Social Media Research Associate, Cardiff UniversityHelen Blakely

Research Associate, Cardiff University

Steve Davies

Senior lecturer in Social Sciences

TGI Friday’s employees are joined by McStrikers during a demo in Covent Garden. Wil Chivers, Author provided

Strikes have taken place at McDonald’s and TGI Friday’s restaurants across the UK in recent months. These strikes are the first of their kind in the UK, instigated by a new generation of trade union members fighting for better pay and fairer working conditions.

At the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD for short), we’ve been following these strikes on social media and at the picket lines, to discover what’s driving this fledgling movement, and how it differs to those that went before.

Most young people in the workforce have experience with low pay and zero hours contracts. At TGI Friday’s, table staff were told earlier this year, with two days’ notice, that 40% of their tips from card gratuities would be taken and redistributed among kitchen staff, as part of the move towards a central pool of tips called a “tronc”. We heard from workers in London that this amounts to wage losses of around £60 a week – or £3,000 a year.

McDonald’s has also drawn criticism previously, for its use of zero hours contracts. Last year the company reported it would offer 115,000 of its workers employed in this way the chance to switch to minimum hours contracts – though 80% of those asked chose to remain on flexible contracts. Nevertheless, critics have attacked these arrangements as exploitative, and workers have responded with sustained collective action to fight for better wages and more secure employment around the world – most notably with the Fight for $15 in the US.

Building a movement

Although staff at both chains vary in age, it is the younger generations who are represented the most on the picket lines. This may just be a product of the low average age of service sector employees. But it may also signal that young people are becoming more inclined to organise and campaign for their rights.

Trade unions are capitalising on the appetite among this generation of workers for change – as well as the potential for young, savvy social media users to extend the reach of their campaigns. McStrike is organised by the Bakers’ Union (BFAWU) while the TGI strike has the support of Unite. This is a strategic decision: both unions offer each other mutual support – and together they hope to build a broader movement across the service sector.

McDonald’s workers from five restaurants gather at a demonstration in Watford on May 1. Wil Chivers

Far from the stereotype of the apathetic youth, the young workers involved on the picket lines are passionate and well informed. They are tuned into party politics, appreciate the wider labour movement they are becoming a part of and give confident speeches to the public to that effect. There is a clear ethos of collective action: as Shen Batmaz – former McStriker, now BFAWU organiser – told us: “This has been about working together, helping each other, to make things better.”

We’ve also witnessed a carefully crafted continuity between the two strikes. McStrikers stand side-by-side with TGI employees on the picket line. Solidarity is forthcoming from other quarters, too. BECTU members from Picturehouse cinemas and workers from the Intercontinental Hotels Group have both been fighting for the London living wage, and both had representatives at the TGI strike. All are determined to build on the momentum that is emerging.

A new frontier

Digital tools including social media are often heralded as the key to revitalising trade unions. Inevitably, young people have also been getting involved with trade unions and protests online. We collected 90,000 tweets during the first McStrike, and witnessed how McStrikers’ images and stories were used to personalise the strike and generate support from the wider public. Protesters’ tweets were retweeted thousands of times, creating an online network that spread far beyond those directly involved.

A retweet network in the week preceding the first McStrike. Politicians and news media were vital for spreading the message. Wil Chivers/WISERD

This online presence has continued to accompany the strikes, spreading the message that this is not just a McDonald’s or TGI’s issue, it applies to anyone – young or old – working for low pay on precarious contracts. So far, these strikes have maintained their own online identities: “#McStrike” (adopted from a New Zealand-based campaign) and “#AllEyesOnTGIs” are instantly catchy, while “#FightFor15” has gained international recognition.

There is already a strong sense that these strikes, and the movement they are building, can be successful. After the first McStrike in September last year, McDonald’s recommended pay increases for its 115,000 staff, across all ages. But whether these will be passed on to staff in franchises is yet to be seen, as franchises set their own pay rates. Although these strikes are small scale for now, they show that young workers on precarious contracts are not impossible to organise.

It began in the US with Fight for $15, but the determined cooperation between unions representing workers in similar positions has brought that fight to the UK. Online and offline, workers and trade unions are developing a model that can be replicated and expanded across different industries and in different countries. And while it’s important to celebrate the small victories, the lasting success of these campaigns may be the fact that a new generation of young people are joining unions and throwing themselves into campaigning for their rights.