UK
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Julian Assange and the Inhumanity of the British State: ‘Unofficial’ Solitary Confinement as Torture
26 January 2020 — 21st Century Wire By Nina Cross Up until this week, Assange has been held in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison. Incredibly, it was the other prisoners along with Assange’s legal team, who have pressured the government officials to respect the law and allow Assange to be removed from solitary confinement, resulting… Continue reading
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Split Hearings: The Assange Extradition Case Drags On
It is being increasingly larded with heavy twists and turns, a form of state oppression in slow motion, but the Julian Assange extradition case now looks like it may well move into the middle of the year, dragged out, ironically enough, by the prosecution. Curiously, this is a point that both the prosecutors, fronted by… Continue reading
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The NHS is opening up to US business – the reassurances are demonstrably false
British officials dodged invitations to exclude the NHS from a US-UK trade deal. Not surprising, given how much public money already goes to the US healthcare industry. Continue reading
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UK: Here Comes the Breakdown Decade
In the decade from 2010 to 2020, a period in which the Conservative government oversaw the Great Recession and managed the slowest recovery from any economic slump on record – it heaped misery on millions in the shape of a failed policy called austerity. Continue reading
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Book Now: The Media Democracy Festival 2020
We are delighted to invite you to this year’s Media Democracy Festival on Saturday 14 March at Birkbeck University*, Central London. Free registration tickets are now available. Continue reading
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New Report – In the Frame: UK media coverage of drone targeted killing
Our new report looks at UK involvement in drone targeted killing and in particular at media coverage of British citizens killed in such strikes. It argues that the government’s refusal to discuss key details or policy issues around these operations has helped to curtail coverage, creating a climate where targeted killing has become normalised and… Continue reading
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NHS: Matt Hancock Still Doesn’t Tell You How Your Data Is Used – December 2019
Since our last update, and our first update in 2014, what a Data Usage Report should contain has reached consensus. The NHS has made some progress – not that you as patients will have seen any of it – and while NHS Digital calls it a Statement, rather than a Report, that is probably a… Continue reading
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Propaganda – Gov’t creates film factory to rewrite Brexit history
Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code once wrote – “History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books – books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable… Continue reading
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Rebecca Long-Bailey Labour leadership campaign marks end of “project Corbyn”
The nominally “left” candidate in the Labour Party leadership contest, Rebecca-Long Bailey, launched her campaign at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester Friday. The event confirmed that four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership have changed nothing fundamental about the Labour Party. Continue reading
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UK home secretary defends naming Extinction Rebellion as extremist
The inclusion of climate activists Extinction Rebellion (XR) by police in a guide to “ideological extremism” marks a serious escalation of the assault on democratic rights. Continue reading
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Marx on British politics … and cab drivers
If you get nauseated by the perverse state of contemporary world politics and the slavish way in which mainstream media help to sustain the spectacle that is Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte or their local variants, here is the perfect antidote: read Marx’s journalistic articles for the New York Daily Tribune. Continue reading
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BBC an instrument of government foreign policy
In January 2015, the BBC warned the government that its global news presence will end up marginalised by overseas rivals such as Russia Today and al-Jazeera unless multimillion-pound cuts were reversed. The global news division included the BBC World Service, which had suffered big cuts. It was a stark warning that Britain’s global ‘soft-power’ was declining.… Continue reading
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Julian Assange News Links 12-17 January 2020
17 January 2020 — The New Dark Age There may be some duplication due to cross-posting and may be updated throughout the day, so please check back Julian Assange At The Westminster Magistrates Court https://orientalreview.org/2020/01/17/julian-assange-at-the-westminster-magistrates-court/ Now twenty years later, how did Putin do it? https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/01/16/now-twenty-years-later-how-did-putin-do-it/ Continue reading
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UK: Lead Us Not Into Oblivion
The simple response of course is to blame it all on Corbyn. Let’s face it, no more comprehensive bogeyman has ever been offered to the British electorate. Continue reading
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Short of Time: Julian Assange at the Westminster Magistrates Court
Another slot of judicial history, another notch to be added to the woeful record of legal proceedings being undertaken against Julian Assange. The ailing WikiLeaks founder was coping as well as he could, showing the resourcefulness of the desperate at his Monday hearing. Continue reading
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Body Bag Britain
In November 2017, landmark research found that approximately 120,000 people had died as a direct result of the Conservative party policy of driving austerity in what has since become an era now associated with what some have branded ‘economic murder.’ And even today the number of deaths is calculated to reach 200,000 by the end… Continue reading
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Democracy in Focus: A post-austerity state
Lowering the voting age. Restoring and entrenching the powers of local government, including the power to build public housing. Ensuring that people are able to fulfil their potential (including outlawing many of the practices of the gig economy that drive its workers to suicide). Establishing a proportional election system, so that voters have a real… Continue reading
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UK: Welfare Weekly 11 January 2020
11 January 2020 — Welfare Weekly Up to 2,000 terminally ill people have died awaiting DWP benefit decisions Read more Continue reading
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Knight of Darkness – Iain Duncan Smith’s Directory Of Death
Part of this headline is taken from an article that features in Welfare Weekly. That article is a roll-call of death caused by an ideology that, in part, ended up looking like a policy to deliberately kill the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. The headline is borderline when it comes to being libellous… Continue reading
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DWP: The case for the prosecution
This time last year, The Independent published a story where Ministers were accused of ‘failing people at the most vulnerable point in their lives’ after it emerged that nine disability claimants die each day (270 per month) while waiting for decisions on disability support. The story also stated that figures at the time revealed that… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 