On February 20, the United Nations Security Council approved a statement, described in the media as a ‘watered-down’ version of an earlier draft resolution which would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
US President Joe Biden (L) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House, Washington, DC, March 3, 2023The dash for the White House in Washington on Friday by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery. Scholz landed in DC, drove to the White House and was received by President Biden in Oval Office for a conversation that lasted over an hour. No aides were present. And he flew back to Berlin.
A century has passed, but faraway leaders still leave the common soldier to face the consequences of their decisions.It is always interesting to look back upon history if only to draw parallels with the present, and a review of British operations during the First World War caused the author to reflect upon mistakes made in the past and to compare them with the policies of today. This shorter article will examine the similarities between the trenches of the Somme and the truths of today. Before we examine the analogies between the past and present, we have to take a look at what went before.
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Since our last newsletter in which we reported on the eruption of violence in Knowsley, Merseyside, we have seen the spreading of a relentless campaign targeting hotels accommodating asylum seekers across England, with protests in Rotherham, Skegness, Newquay, Long Eaton and Dunstable in the past weeks.
INVESTIGATION:
Executives at the software giant Oracle have made it clear that they’re loyal to the settler-colonial government of Israel that’s occupying Palestinian land. They have also managed to win contracts that put Oracle in charge of sensitive data from the UK government.
On February 6th, Syria and Turkey were brutally rocked by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, one of the most devastating recorded in the Levant’s history. Ever since, residents of these countries and the region more widely have been subjected to a particularly unforgiving – yet illuminating – crash course in Western double standards over humanitarian aid.
Tuesday, 28 February 2023
The Digital ID they are proposing is a slippery slippery slope as they are bringing it in on the basis that they can add any types of data that they want to in the future.
Furthermore it will be very hard to avoid as they will make it a requirement to do so many things.
I don’t want to consent, you don’t want to consent, but there’s things on that list that I do want and need.
It is why we must object now as they will take our silence as consent.
Take these two actions now if you haven’t already:
1️⃣
Use the guide linked below so you can fill out the online consultation (the link to which is on the first slide of the guide).
This is best viewed on a desktop with two windows open; one for the guide and one for the consultation.
2️⃣
Below the guide is the option to send an email response to the consultation which also sends a copy to your MP. This takes less than 30 seconds as it finds your MP for you.
This means they get more responses and the MPs know before it even comes to Westminster that thousands and thousands of us object.
We all need to respond to the government’s public consultation on digital Identity before the first of March 2023.
This is, as Neil Oliver puts it, ‘The End Game’. We collectively must reject it or it will be passed into law. Once that has happened our new rulers will be able to totally control our every move.
Please share the document with as many people as you can & ask them to respond via the government website before 1st March 2023.
Just two days after William Shawcross, reviewer of the government’s Prevent Programme, criticised its ‘expansive approach’ towards the ‘extreme right’, it was supporters of the far Right, some armed with hammers, that orchestrated a riot, hurling lit fireworks at the Suites Hotel, Knowsley, Merseyside, which housed asylum seekers (Far-right leaflets claimed ‘5-star Hotels for Migrants Whilst Brits Freeze’.) Displaying the patrician’s knack for ignoring the blatantly obvious, Shawcross had loftily surmised that ‘mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream right-leaning commentary’ have ‘no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation’. No doubt, those politicians who, in the past months, have indulged in stigmatising rhetoric and inhumane policy will find consolation in Shawcross’s conclusion.
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We can reveal that the newly-appointed Conservative Party chairman, Greg Hands, helped Luxe Lifestyle Ltd, a company closely associated with the then Chair of his local constituency party, Mark Higton, land a £25m ‘VIP’ PPE deal. This is despite the company having no experience in providing protective equipment.
Next week, IRR News publishes parts one and two of Britannia Enchained, the latest four-part series examining the state of human rights in the UK, by IRR Vice-Chair and retired barrister Frances Webber. In the meantime, you can recap on last year’s Impunity Entrenched.
Air Partner and Carlson Wagonlit are the grease spinning the wheels of the UK deportation machine, organising logistics for mass-deportation flights for years.
International travel megacorp Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) holds a £5.7 million, seven-year contract with the Home Office for the “provision of travel services for immigration purposes”, as it has done for nearly two decades. However, a key part of its work – the chartering of aircraft and crew to carry out the deportations – has been subcontracted to a little-known aviation charter outfit called Air Partner.
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“The theories of John Maynard Keynes provide the sound intellectual framework for the views which trade unionists had always instinctively held and known to be right” (TUC, 1968, p. 85)
The ideas and theories of John Maynard Keynes still dominate the economic views and policy proposals of the leaders of the labour movement in the major capitalist economies. Keynes is seen as offering a ‘third way’ between the pro-capitalist ‘free market’ economics that dominates the universities (and among the strategic advisers of government) and the opposite of dangerously revolutionary Marxian economics. Keynes argued that, with a judicious range of policy measures, capitalism can be made to work better and can be managed so that it meets the needs of the many, without disrupting the social structure of society.
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss a recent special by the UK’s Channel 4 showing British hosts of Ukrainian refugees complaining about their new guests’ fear and loathing of their Black and Muslim neighbors.
A survivor of the German-led European genocide during World War II resigned from the British Labour Party following a threat of expulsion because he was to speak at an online Holocaust memorial event organized by a left-wing group.
In slapping down an MP for decrying Israel’s new government, the Labour leader has left supporters of Palestinian rights politically homeless
Middle East Eye – 2 February 2023
What’s become all too clear over the past three years is that Labour leader Keir Starmer tolerates no criticism of Israel whatsoever – even when such criticism accords with international law, the verdict of the human rights community or just plain common sense.
This week, tough new rules came into force under the Nationality and Borders Act, potentially denying ‘foreign criminals’ sentenced to over 12 months access to modern slavery protections. At the same time, amendments made to the online safety bill will, if passed, lead to the criminalisation of social media companies that show online videos of Channel crossings in a ‘positive light’. But when it comes to the ‘hostile environment’, it’s not just primary legislation we should be concerned about. As we report in this week’s calendar of racism and resistance, the hostile environment also grows through incremental measures, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and other dubious practices, both official and unofficial. A new Home Office taskforce is set up to intensify controls and checks in banks, schools and the NHS. Yet this government department is unable to provide basic safeguards for asylum-seeking children, with hundreds disappearing from Home Office hotels. It is only thanks to the vigilance of journalists and campaigners that this has come to light. Thanks to them we know about other practices and acts of institutional neglect that are taking place under the radar, such as the failure to communicate successful asylum decisions to those living in Home Office hotel accommodation, or to provide medical and vaccine records to Tower Hamlets GPs seeking to provide care for asylum seekers dispersed from Manston.
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Last week, the government announced the creation of a new Home Office taskforce that will attempt to expand Hostile Environment immigration policies.
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The draconian Public Order Bill is due to enter its report stage in the House of Lords on Monday 30th January. The bill was already a vicious attack on our right to protest, but a new amendment has made it even worse. Last minute changes to the bill include loosening S12 and 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act so that the police can take into account previous protests when imposing conditions on demonstrations – even if the protests are organised by different people with different groups attending. It has also removed protest being a “reasonable excuse” as a defence in court and lowered the threshold of serious disruption to disruption that is “more than minor”.
The New Dark Age 