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  • More than a diagnosis, part 3: the power of a new perspective

    Content warning – this article discusses trauma, suicide, self-harm, and substance use. Reader discretion is advised.

    Mental health services in the UK are failing thousands of trauma survivors. Throughout this four-part series, I will be analysing some of the reasons behind this, and looking at some of the potential solutions. In part one, I looked at the current tendency to pathologise emotional distress. Part two considered how current treatments to trauma are often retraumatising, rather than dealing with the root causes of distress. In this part I will focus on two potential alternatives to our current psychiatric system, and how these could benefit trauma survivors. Part four will be published shortly.

    What are the alternatives to our current psychiatric system, which – as we have seen previously – diagnoses, medicates and blames? There are many problems with the current system as it is. However, not many people, either working in or accessing the services, realise that there are alternatives. We have to remember that every person who has survived trauma is unique and needs different things to begin healing.

    The Power Threat Meaning framework

    The first potential alternative is the Power Threat Meaning framework (PTMF), which offers an alternative way of viewing emotional distress – one that is not based on psychiatric diagnoses.

    Clinical psychologist Dr Lucy Johnstone, who I spoke to in part one of this series, gave up clinical work in 2016 to finish developing the framework, which was co-produced with a group of 40 professionals and survivors of psychiatry.

    The framework borrows some assumptions from the established trauma literature and, like trauma-informed practice, asks for a change in direction: from asking ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what’s happened to you?’

    Johnstone explained to me: 

    Not everyone has experienced abuse, or neglect, or other obvious sources of distress – but the framework expands on the trauma informed approach by offering principles that help us to understand why even people without an obvious history of trauma can be severely distressed and struggling.

    The PTMF suggests that non-diagnostic narratives can be based on the following core questions:

    • What happened to you?
    • How did it affect you?
    • What sense did you make of it?
    • How did you survive?
    • What are your strengths? 
    • And to integrate all of the above: what is your story?

    The PMTF is about all of us

    The framework is based on the assumption that all emotional distress is understandable when we view it in the context of a person’s relationships, life events, social circumstances, and the societal standards we are expected to live up to. This means that the PTMF is about all of us. It highlights the strong links between social contexts and personal, family and community distress – especially when there is injustice and inequality involved.  

    We all make meaning out of what happens to us, and this shapes the way we experience and express our distress. The PTMF provides us with tools to create new, hopeful narratives about the reasons for our distress – narratives which are not based on psychiatric diagnoses. 

    Johnstone told me:

    It’s been taken up much more widely than we ever anticipated, both within and outside services. It’s very far from the dominant model, of course, but there are six translations in progress. In Central and Northwest London Trust, a very committed group of clinicians has introduced trauma informed practice supported by the PTMF on two pilot inpatient wards. That was so successful, they’ve now rolled it out across their 14 inpatient wards.

    There’s been a dramatic reduction in levels of seclusion and restraint on those wards, and very significant increases in staff morale. And it’s only early evaluations still, but there is good feedback from inpatients on the wards about how helpful the approach was.

    Redefining reality

    Johnstone continued:

    A lot of people already have a gut feeling that ‘this approach doesn’t work and my distress must be something to do with the difficult things that have happened to me’. So for those people, the PTMF adds an extra degree of validation, and the realisation that. ‘Thank goodness, I’m not alone, I’m allowed to think this and other people are feeling the same’.

    However, as Johnstone explains, some people don’t even get that:

    But also there are many people who never even get offered that explanation at all, and who come across it with astonishment. And sometimes it’s quite upsetting and sometimes it takes a while to get your head around it. But it can also been enormously helpful, if people choose to think about their distress in that way.

    The power of a new perspective

    I came across the PTMF last year, at a time when I was particularly struggling. Previously, I’d only ever thought about the way I was feeling through the lens of the medical model: as ‘symptoms’ and ‘mental illness’. After some friends introduced me to the framework and we had lots of conversations, I realised I’d always viewed myself as ‘ ill’ and ‘disordered’. Over the past year I’ve learnt a lot about trauma responses. I’ve slowly come to realise that the way I’ve responded to my trauma over the years has been perfectly understandable. It’s been really helpful to look at it from a different point of view. To some extent, this stopped me blaming myself for how I was feeling. As Johnstone told me, my experiences are not uncommon:

    Labels and diagnoses can be welcomed, but also found tremendously damaging. For some people, it feels like an explanation. It may give relief from guilt and access to certain services and benefits and that’s fine. But this sometimes comes with a very, very high price. So it’s a powerful way of redefining reality in a way that people aren’t usually given a choice about. They’re told ‘you have bipolar’ or ‘you have a personality disorder’ as though it is an unquestionable fact.

    Trust in the medical system means that some people are actually harmed by diagnoses that don’t take into account the context of their trauma.

    Peer support

    I spoke to Sophie Olson, founder of The Flying Child CIC, in part two of this series. The Flying Child project is a non-profit organisation which aims to bring “lived experience into the heart of professional settings” – its website says:

    Real stories help to break down barriers and dispel myths that lead to victims of abuse being overlooked, and their normal reactions to trauma being misunderstood.

    In addition to this education and training, the organisation is aiming towards providing peer support groups for survivors. It was Olson’s own experiences of peer support groups that led her to want to set up her own for other survivors. The hope and belonging that she found there was not something she’d experienced anywhere else. Olson told me:

    What struck me immediately was that every woman in the room had similar experiences to me. And that was really comforting to look at them and just know that they had experienced sexual violence without hearing them speak. And to know that they knew what that I had as well. I’ve never experienced that before.

    It is clear that a sense of community and connection is really important to each individual starting to heal from their trauma.

    ‘The real me was trapped in trauma’

    Olson continued:

    My secrets were hidden from the outside world, the abused version of me. The real me was like a Russian doll encased in layer after layer of carefully constructed other needs – acceptable versions of myself that are presented to the world. The real me was trapped in trauma.

    When I went into peer support, it was like announcing my abuse without having to say anything at all. Like shedding all of these layers of me and just leaving them at the door and going in as the real me. Which was sort of liberating, but also very exposing. I felt really vulnerable and couldn’t make eye contact with other people. It felt really uneasy at first and I wanted to walk out. But I was also really curious because it was a sensation that I’ve just never had before.

    As Olson explained, being able to connect with people at different stages of their trauma journey can be really helpful:

    So I stayed and I was silent, and I listened to other people talk. I then went on to meet women at another peer support group who were further along in their journey than me. Seeing how they were living their life, despite what had happened to them, and despite the fact that they didn’t have any justice. It was just amazing.

    It took a long time before I was able to live like that, and specialist therapy. But peer support was a really important step up to that. I don’t think I could have done that as successfully as I did without peer support.

    All I needed was a cup of tea, a hug and someone to sit with me. It gave me a huge amount of hope. That kept me going.

    As we have seen so far in the series, NHS approaches to mental health are focused on making individuals “well” enough to go to work, and nothing else. Whereas we should be considering the person as a whole – helping them to feel connected to the world in what can be a really isolating and terrifying time.

    In the final part of the series I will consider the importance of a whole-body approach to healing.

    Featured Image via Instagram – Megan Louise Photography 

    By Hannah Green

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Time running out for Julian Assange as Tories introduce law to savage our human rights

    As reported by The Canary, on 17 June, home secretary Priti Patel gave her approval to a court ruling to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. He will face 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Assange’s lawyers are planning to appeal Patel’s approval of extradition and cross-appeal on other grounds – including a breach of client-lawyer confidentiality. But the High Court will have to approve those appeal requests. A judicial review of Patel’s decision is also possible.

    In addition, Assange may appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). However, proposed UK legislation could make such an appeal problematic – and not just for Assange.

    ECHR rulings easier to override

    A British Bill of Rights (BBR) has been introduced by UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister Dominic Raab and is currently at the second reading stage. The bill is bypassing measures for pre-legislative scrutiny, which will allow it to “avoid demands from parliamentary committees”.

    If enacted, the BBR will replace the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated rights defined by the European Convention on Human Rights (the ‘Convention’).

    The ECHR is the judicial wing of the Council of Europe, which the UK joined in 1949 with Winston Churchill as a prime mover. Raab has made it clear that the UK will not leave the ECHR. However, the BBR as written would allow UK courts to more easily override rulings by the ECHR. Indeed, the BBR makes “explicit that the UK Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial arbiter”. In a press release, it emphasises “that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights does not always need to be followed by UK courts”.

    ECHR role weakened

    Alongside the BBR, a government memorandum specifically addresses future UK dealings with the ECHR. For example, it states there will be a change in approach as to the: “interpretation and application of Convention rights (clauses 3 – 8)”.

    The memorandum also makes it clear that “the Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial authority on questions arising in domestic law in connection with the Convention rights”. And the bill adds that “the new clauses [in the bill] are intended to lead to a greater willingness by the domestic courts to decline to follow Strasbourg jurisprudence”.

    The BBR further intends that human rights claimants will have to demonstrate they have “suffered a significant disadvantage” before permission is granted for their claim to be heard in court.

    All in all, the clauses listed in the bill appear to weaken the role of the ECHR, while providing greater opportunities for parliament to intervene.

    “Rights removal bill”

    Law Society president I. Stephanie Boyce said that the proposed legislation “would make it harder for all of us to protect or enforce our rights”. She added:

    Dismantling [the Human Rights Act] will have far-reaching consequences, conferring greater unfettered power not just on the government of today, but also on future ruling parties, whatever their ideology.

    If the new Bill of Rights becomes law, it would make it harder for all of us to protect or enforce our rights. The proposed changes make the state less accountable. This undermines a crucial element of the rule of law, preventing people from challenging illegitimate uses of power.

    UK chief executive of Amnesty International Sacha Deshmukh commented:

    Ignore the name of this new legislation. It is a rights removal bill, and it will leave us all the poorer.

    Case study: Julian Assange

    Assange’s defence lawyer Jennifer Robinson said that he will cross-appeal in the UK courts on grounds of free speech, the inability to get a fair trial in the US, the political nature of the case, and the spying that took place on Assange and his legal team.

    If necessary, she adds, he will also appeal to the ECHR:

     

    Back in August 2020, Lawyers for Assange published an open letter that outlined the articles of the Convention and other bodies that the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder would arguably contravene.

    For example, in regard to the breach of client-lawyer confidentiality, it stated:

    Mr. Assange’s legal privilege, a right enshrined in Art. 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and long recognised under English common law, was grossly violated through constant and criminal video and audio surveillance at the Ecuadorian embassy carried out by the Spanish security firm, UC Global. …

    The surveillance resulted in all of Mr. Assange’s meetings and conversations being recorded, including those with his lawyers. The Council of Bar and Law Societies of Europe, which represents more than a million European lawyers, has expressed its concerns that these illegal recordings may be used – openly or secretly – in proceedings against Mr. Assange in the event of successful extradition to the US. The Council states that if the information merely became known to the prosecutors, this would present an irremediable breach of Mr. Assange’s fundamental rights to a fair trial under Art. 6 of the ECHR and due process under the US Constitution.

    In February 2020, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights issued a strongly-worded statement on the Assange case, concluding:

    In view of both the press freedom implications and the serious concerns over the treatment Julian Assange would be subjected to in the United States, my assessment as Commissioner for Human Rights is that he should not be extradited.

    But should an application to the ECHR be lodged after this act is passed, and the court rules in Assange’s favour, the BBR as currently worded, will enable UK courts to more easily ignore that ruling.

    Dangerous times

    Rather than enhance our rights, the BBR will serve to diminish them. For example, UK courts will be better positioned to ignore ECHR rulings in relation to the offshore processing of refugees, which will no doubt please Johnson’s xenophobic constituency.

    The BBR also comes at a time when other contentious bills are being examined. They include the National Security Bill, which seeks to jail journalists, and the Public Order Bill, which seeks to further criminalise protests.

    These are dangerous times

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/CherryX cropped to 770×403 pixels

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The DWP is facing another potential court battle

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing another potential legal challenge to its policy. This time, it’s over what a claimant alleges is its failure to meet his accessibility needs. The claimant says that the department has been a “nightmare”.

    DWP: not meeting accessibility needs?

    Dr Yusuf Ali Osman is a blind, self-employed worker. His job only entails a small amount of work. So, he also claims Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Given his disability status as blind, you’d think that the DWP would take his accessibility needs into consideration as standard – but this has not been the case.

    Law firm Leigh Day is representing Osman. It said in a press release that the DWP has repeatedly failed to send him accessible letters and documents. This would be either in braille or in a form that text-to-speech AI could interpret. Leigh Day noted that Osman has asked the DWP to use these methods:

    but instead they frequently use printed hard copy letters or scanned PDFs attached to email, which are not accessible.

    [The DWP should] either send the communication in the body of an email, or attach it as either a Word document or as a PDF with selectable text. If the PDF does not contain selectable text, it cannot be accessed by Screenreaders which blind and visually impaired people rely on to read out the text of a document. Instead, the DWP has sent Dr Osman documents that they have scanned in and attached to an email. These PDFs are not compatible with Screenreaders and are therefore inaccessible.

    The DWP’s failures have, according to Leigh Day, caused Osman to ‘miss vital communications and deadlines’. So, he is asking the Royal Courts of Justice for a judicial review of the situation.

    A potential judicial review

    Leigh Day said that Osman’s grounds for a judicial review are that the DWP has failed to:

    • “Make reasonable adjustments in sending disability and employment benefits communications”. This may breach the Equality Act.
    • “Provide individual communications in an accessible format in breach of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)”.
    • “Have regard to the Accessible Information Standard, under section 250(6)(a) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which requires that certain communications, which are related to health and social care, are sent in an accessible form”.

    The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is supporting Osman’s case. Its legal adviser Samantha Fothergill said in a press release:

    In our view, the systems and processes being operated by the DWP to secure the provision of accessible information to blind and partially sighted people are simply not fit for purpose. Time and again we receive complaints from blind and partially sighted individuals which show that lessons from the past decade have not been learned and that the Department continues to fail to meet its legal obligations.

    DWP: a “nightmare”

    Osman himself said of the situation:

    It has been a nightmare trying to get the DWP to communicate with me in a way that I can actually read and understand. I have tried asking on the telephone and in written letters but the problems have continued which is why I have now resorted to legal action. The consequences of not knowing, or not understanding the DWP’s rules can be significant – ultimately the loss of benefits – which are my means of survival.

    As The Canary has documented, claimants have repeatedly taken the DWP to court across many years. They have had varying degrees of success. Osman’s case is only in the early stages. However, if it’s successful, it could result in a court ruling that the DWP has acted unlawfully – and force it to change its policies.

    Featured image via Dan Perry – Flickr, resized to 770×403 pixels under licence CC BY 2.0, and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Priti Patel must be rubbing her hands with glee as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act finally comes into force

    Police officers across England and Wales will be eager to flex even more macho muscle as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act finally comes into force on 28 June. The controversial act, which is commonly known as the Police Bill, received royal assent back in April, but police forces around the country couldn’t act upon it until now. The act is the biggest assault on our rights this generation has ever seen. In 2021, thousands of people took to the streets to try and fight the bill, leading to a massive crackdown by the state – it still continues to imprison a number of those who took action.

    The PCSC Act is deliberately massive in content. There’s so much included in it that it’s difficult for the average person to grasp exactly what is now illegal, and what we can be arrested and imprisoned for.

    ‘Serious disruption’

    Most famously, the act will affect our right to protest. But until we’re on the streets, we won’t know exactly what we’ll be arrested for. This is because the act is – in many sections – ambiguous, and will give police forces the freedom to interpret the law as they see fit. For example, the police will be able to impose conditions – such as when and where the protest can take place – if the noise of a protest will cause ‘serious disruption’. Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) stated:

    Many of the new powers in the Act are poorly defined, with the Home Secretary having powers to regulate the meaning of “serious disruption”. In practice, the police themselves will often be able to decide when and how to impose conditions, opening the door for widespread abuse.

    Netpol continued:

    This means that protesters, especially if they are near a business or a public building, may find themselves facing threats of arrest in circumstances that they have not previously encountered.

    Senior police officers will be able to impose conditions on a protest if they decide that “disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation” might take place. But, of course, the whole point of a protest is to disrupt. If our actions didn’t make an impact in some way, then we may as well have stayed at home.

    Even more ludicrously, the police can impose conditions on a one-person protest. The act also states that you can be arrested if you ought to have known about these conditions – which will vary from protest to protest. This means that you could be convicted of breaching a condition even if you didn’t know it had been imposed.

    ‘Serious annoyance’

    On top of all this, the act creates a new statutory offence of public nuisance. This includes actions that cause “serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity”. However, just like with causing “serious disruption”, if we didn’t cause “serious annoyance” what would even be the point in protesting? If you’re convicted of this offence, you could face up to ten years in prison.

    It should come as little surprise that the government has included “serious loss of amenity” in its list of imprisonable protest offences. After all, protecting business interests is something that the Tories do well.

    Obstructing a highway, an offence that protesters are often arrested for, has now also become an imprisonable offence. If you’re arrested for it, you can spend up to six months in prison, just for sitting or standing in a road.

    Trespass in a vehicle

    Of course, it isn’t only protest that will be affected. The act makes it a criminal offence if you’re “residing on land without consent in or near a vehicle” and you are “likely to cause serious damage or serious disruption”, or if you’re likely to cause “significant distress” – yet another ambiguous piece of legislation that the police can use as they see fit. Under the act, a vehicle means any chassis “with or without wheels”, as well as caravans. This law effectively increases the criminalisation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, who will now be even more at risk of their very homes being taken from them.

    Worryingly, we don’t know how the police will enforce the PCSC Act on van-dwellers. We can only assume that each individual police force across England and Wales will behave slightly differently, depending on their tolerance of Traveller communities or of homeless people who live in their cars.

    Secure schools

    The act has given academies the right to apply to run secure schools. These are essentially prisons for young people aged between 12 and 18 years. The government describes these secure schools as a “planned new form of youth custody”. They can also be run by charities – and will see yet more money being funnelled into the private sector. This will, of course, affect the most marginalised families in our society: those who live in the most deprived areas, and who have been failed by the state.

    Serious violence reduction orders

    As if all this wasn’t enough, the government also managed to push through the implementation of serious violence reduction orders (SVROs). Liberty has described SVROs as:

    a new civil order that can be given to an individual, including if they knew, or ought to have known, that someone else had a knife or would use a knife. The police will be given the power to stop and search people who have an SVRO without suspicion at any time in a public place.

    Through SVROs, the police will gain even more power to harass someone, as they will no longer require the ‘reasonable grounds’ they previously needed to stop and search an individual. Instead, if a person has been issued with an SVRO, the police now have the power to search them at any time, whenever that person is in a public space. This will, of course, disproportionately affect the Black community, which is already 9.7 times more likely to get stopped and searched.

    Fight back

    Although the act has now passed, we do have some powers to fight back. It’s important to remember that protest is still legal. Likewise, just because the PCSC Act is now law, this doesn’t make it enforceable, and there will be challenges to the legislation.

    There are a number of things that you can do, such as monitoring the police in your area. You can set up a neighbourhood police monitoring group or a local Copwatch group.

    You can also report police incidents surrounding the act to Netpol, who will be monitoring exactly how the police enforce their new powers. Netpol is also running a campaign to #DefendDissent to resist the new legislation.

    It will be Black, brown and Traveller communities who bear the brunt of these new laws. Let’s look out for each other, stand together and resist this draconian act.

    Featured image via Shoal Collective

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • With more strikes on the cards unions must ditch Labour

    Some trade unions have signalled that they are moving towards striking over pay. This comes as others are either actively taking industrial action or balloting members for it. However, once again Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has made its position clear – it’s not the party of industrial action. So, it’s time for unions to ditch the party for good.

    Strikes across the UK

    At the minute, several unions are striking. These include:

    Other unions are currently balloting, or have balloted, members on strike action. These include:

    On top of all this, several other unions are making noise about potential strike action. These include:

    This is perhaps looking set to be the largest-scale series of strikes since 2011. But will the alleged ‘party of working people‘, Labour, support all these strikes? Probably not.

    Labour: anti-trade unionism

    So far, Keir Starmer has made it clear that his party doesn’t support the RMT strike. He even tried to stop his frontbenchers going to picket lines. Then, on Tuesday 28 June, Labour’s shadow economic secretary Tulip Siddiq was on Sky News. She said of the RMT action:

    We didn’t support the strikes, as they happened now, because we felt they were very disruptive to the country.

    Host Kay Burley also asked if Siddiq would support a BMA strike. Siddiq said:

    I support a situation where we pay people properly.

    Yes, Siddiq really did say that. You’d be forgiven for thinking those words came out of a Tory’s mouth.

    General strike now

    If Labour was living up to its founding principles, then as a minimum it would support every strike. In an ideal world, it would be calling for a general (national) strike – as some unions have already hinted at.

    Given the surge of ongoing and potential industrial action, unions would do well to call a general strike. If Labour won’t support it, or any other action, then so be it. Working-class people don’t need a Tory-lite party to be able to affect change.

    Power lies within the hands of the people. Now, the unions need to step up and bring the UK to a standstill – while ditching Labour at the same time. Nothing less will do.

    Featured image via RTÉ News – YouTube and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Police have finally admitted that Oladeji Omishore was just carrying a lighter when they Tasered him

    On 4 June 2022, Oladeji Omishore fell to his death off Chelsea Bridge after police Tasered him multiple times. Initial police reports claimed that Omishore was “armed with a screwdriver”. But on 21 June, police watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) revealed that Omishore was only holding a cigarette lighter.

    This serious case of police misinformation shows that we can never trust what officers say when it comes to deaths following police contact or use of force. Particularly if their victims are Black and experiencing a mental health crisis.

    The death of Oladeji Omishore

    On 4 June, Metropolitan Police officers Tasered Omishore several times on Chelsea Bridge in London. In an attempt to escape the police’s advances, Omishore jumped into the River Thames. He died in hospital later that day.

    In a press statement regarding the fatal incident, the Met claimed that Omishore was “armed with a screwdriver”. However, on 21 June, the IOPC released a statement explaining that Omishore was actually carrying a cigarette lighter when officers attacked him.

    Expressing the ‘deep distress’ caused by their loved one’s untimely death, Omishore’s family said in a statement:

    Deji was clearly suffering from a mental health crisis and he was vulnerable and frightened. We have set out our concerns to the IOPC about how the officers communicated with him, their repeated use of force on him, and its impact.

    They added:

    We sincerely hope that the IOPC investigation, and ultimately the inquest, will hold the Metropolitan Police accountable for their actions and also shed further light on the very necessary policy and social justice changes that we need to see.

    The IOPC investigation into Omishore’s death is ongoing. Omishore’s family is now fighting for the IOPC to include the Met’s misinformation regarding the cigarette lighter in the terms of reference of the watchdog’s investigation of the police.

    Omishore’s family are also calling for the IOPC to investigate the officers involved for misconduct, and have expressed concern that they are still on active duty.

    Excessive and disproportionate use of force

    INQUEST – a charity which supports victims and bereaved families affected by state violence – is working to support Omishore’s family.

    In a statement regarding the incident, senior casewoker at INQUEST Selen Cavcav said:

    Deji’s death is part of a longstanding pattern of the disproportionate use of force against Black men by police, particularly those in mental health crisis.

    Indeed, Home Office data shows that in 2020, police in England and Wales were five times more likely to use force against Black people than their white counterparts.

    And according to BBC data, 8% of people who died in custody between 2008 and 2018-19 in England and Wales were racialised as Black, despite making up just 3% of the population.

    As Omishore’s family highlighted in their statement, in August 2021 the IOPC published a review of 101 cases involving the police’s use of Tasers in England and Wales between 2015 and 2020. In this report, the watchdog raised concerns about the police’s disproportionate and inappropriate use of the electronic weapon against Black people and people experiencing a mental health crisis.

    Police continue to target Black people with force. This is rooted in false, racist, and dehumanising narratives which frame Black men as inherently ‘criminal’, violent threats. This is compounded by ableist and punitive approaches to mental health.

    Misinformation

    Initial reports framed Omishore as a violent threat, not a vulnerable man in need of support.

    In INQUEST’s statement, Cavcav said:

    Misinformation and false narratives immediately following a death are a common tactic which deflect attention from serious public concern, and protect police from necessary criticism. These tactics must be independently investigated along with the wider circumstances of the death.

    This is another example of the police’s use of misinformation to justify deaths following police contact and police use of force.

    We saw this in the case of Lewis Skelton, who Humberside Police fatally shot in the back, then falsely framed as “aggressive”. And, when Bristol police officers told a “rather different” story from the reality reflected in CCTV footage of them Tasering an autistic man in 2018. We can’t always rely on footage, as there have been a number of cases of police withholding bodycam footage from bereaved families and the general public.

    Meanwhile, in 2017, health charities found the Police Federation to be spreading misinformation to justify officers’ brutal use of spit hoods.

    All this undoubtably contributes to the police’s ability to escape accountability time and time again when it comes to deaths in police custody and cases of police use of force, particularly against vulnerable and marginalised people. By actively denying bereaved families access to any form of truth, justice and closure, the police and those who protect them are exacerbating the pain and trauma of losing a loved one to state violence.

    The police don’t protect us

    In spite of evidence of the harm they can cause, the Home Office announced in 2019 that it would spend £10m on arming more police officers with the electronic weapon. This money would be better invested into public infrastructures of care – which the state has savagely defunded over the last decade – such as mental health services.

    Meanwhile, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act – which the queen granted royal assent on 28 April 2022 – gives the police more powers and even less accountability. This will further harm people who already overpoliced, including Black men and those experiencing a mental health crisis.

    One thing’s for certain: the police don’t protect the public. They only protect themselves. We must rally together to defend our rights and protect our communities from all forms of state violence and authoritarianism.

    Featured image via INQUEST

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

  • If in doubt, compare things to WW2 – the Tory guide to public communications

    What do you do if you are part of an embarrassingly bad government populated by posh chancers? On the evidence we have, you must constantly compare everything to WW2. Or, if you are foreign secretary Nadine Dorries, even go all in and cite World War Eleven.

    Yes, this most hilariously gaffe-prone of Conservatives has done it again. In a three tweet thread detailing her incredibly well-thought out analysis of world politics, Dorries argued that today is very much like “WW11”:

    Oh Nadine

    It is hilarious in itself that she is citing a war which hasn’t happened yet while trying to instrumentalise one that has. And naturally, Twitter was on hand to point out the error of her ways.

    The rationing of food was a major feature of wartime Britain and so someone dug up what may be original footage of Nadine tucking in to some tasty 1940’s scran:

    Footage of Dorries serving in the jungle in WW11 was also located and brought to the public’s attention:

    Another veteran of the 11th world war posted an image of themselves during the conflict, riding atop a tank from Labour’s 123rd Future Armoured Division:

    Smoked

    Others were so distraught by Dorries’ latest clanger that they smoked their entire ration of cigarettes in one:

    One cat appeared confused to have popped off for a bit of shut eye only to discover upon waking that they’d missed no less than eight major global conflicts:

    The Fast and the Spurious

    Someone moonlighting as a government minister reminded us of the details of World War 11. Which in all fairness was actually really high octane:

    The banter developed so rapidly that some were left struggling to contribute. Another case of wartime rationing methinks:

    Never forget

    One Twitter user reminded us that the World War 11 documentary, presumably by Ken Burns, is in fact available to watch. Thought it doesn’t sound like his best work:

    And we were reminded that we must always keep in our hearts and minds those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom, secretly, nine more times than we originally thought:

    This has been The Canary. That’s been Nadine Dorries. Until the next time she opens Twitter, stay safe, respect the fallen and don’t fret. Because Britain is in safe hands.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under Public Domain Mark 1.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Fascist Tories want to scrap the Human Rights Act

    A new bill of rights is set to replace the Human Rights Act, if the Tories get their way. They’ve been threatening to do this for some time. But it looks like the temptation to reverse the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling on deportations to Rwanda was too much.

    And there are plenty of reasons to be extremely worried.

    What will the bill do?

    In its press release, the government said that the bill would:

    strengthen freedom of speech and curb bogus human rights claims.

    Well, we’re all sick of too many human rights claims, aren’t we? Er, no.

    The bill will:

    make clear that the UK Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial decision-maker on human rights issues and that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights does not always need to be followed by UK courts.

    What could that be about, then? The government makes the connection itself, as it says the bill will:

    Confirm that interim measures from the European Court of Human Rights under Rule 39, such as the one issued last week which prevented the removal flight to Rwanda, are not binding on UK courts.

    It took a combination of protest and the intervention from the ECHR to stop the sickening policy to deport refugees to Rwanda – at least for now.

    Amongst other things, it’s also going to:

    Prevent courts from placing new costly obligations on public authorities to actively protect someone’s human rights and limit the circumstances in which current obligations apply, for example, police forces having to notify gang members of threats towards them from other gangs.

    The entire point of human rights is that they apply to all humans. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done, you have a right to be treated in a certain way. Human rights aren’t conditional. At least, they’re not supposed to be.

    What’s the reaction been?

    Meanwhile, Dominic Raab said:

    The Bill of Rights will strengthen our UK tradition of freedom whilst injecting a healthy dose of common sense into the system.

    Yes, that’s the same Dominic Raab who is sketchy on UK geography, hasn’t read the Good Friday agreement, and can’t always remember the party line. Does that sound like someone who we can trust to have common sense?

    People on social media also weren’t very impressed.

    The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, said:

    Martha Spurrier, director of the human rights organisation Liberty, described one of the huge problems with the bill:

    Spurrier concluded:

    A researcher at Human Rights Watch, Kartik Raj, said it was a “dark day” for the UK:

    Amnesty International called the bill a “power grab”:

    The charity Freedom from Torture warned the government to expect resistance:

    This bill is yet another instance of this government trampling over civil liberties. Its own press release shows that it’s targeting the most vulnerable people in society. The Tories don’t care about what it looks like – how else could they go ahead with wanting to withdraw us from international human rights standards? This is fascism, plain and simple.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Marcus Spiske

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The hot takes on Labour’s Wakefield win are laughable

    Labour has won the Wakefield by-election, taking the seat from the Tories. But the data shows this isn’t any kind of resounding victory. Yet if you believed the party and the pundits then the result was ‘beyond their wildest dreams’.

    Wakefield: wild?

    As Britain Elects noted, Labour won Wakefield with 47.9% of the vote:

    Across the media and on Twitter, Labour MPs are oozing positivity about the result. For example, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh told BBC Breakfast:

    We were obviously hoping for victory last night in Wakefield, but the result went beyond our wildest dreams. It was a higher turnout than we expected, a much bigger swing, and a much bigger vote share as well.

    Haigh must have pretty tame dreams if the Wakefield result was beyond her “wildest” ones. Because actually, as pollster John Curtice noted, what actually happened was the Tories’ vote share collapsed more than Labour’s share rose. Never mind, though – because Keir Starmer branded the result as:

    A historic victory — this city deserved a fresh start.

    “Historic” is debatable. Because given the scandals surrounding Boris Johnson – Labour should have hammered the Tories. Plus, based on the size of the electorate in 2019 and the turnout – in reality only around 19% of the voting public voted for Labour.

    Status quo, maintained

    Ultimately the Wakefield by-election is useless as a public opinion gauge. Because the turnout was just 39.5% – way down on the general election. This is much like 2021’s Batley and Spen by-election, where Labour spun-it as some sort of victory when turnout was less than 50%. Both constituencies have higher rates of poverty than other parts of England. Hartlepool was a similar story: poverty met a by-election and the result was a turnout of less than 50%.

    Our systems of politics and democracy, and their proponents, disenfranchise the poorest people. So much so, that they rightly feel voting will change nothing. The difference in a richer area, like Tiverton and Honiton, is clear. Its by-election saw a 52% turnout and the Lib Dems got in – while the constituency has much lower rates of deprivation.

    So, no – the Wakefield election wasn’t a victory for Labour. It was a victory for the political and media class, who’ve maintained the status quo. And it’s all thanks to their disenfranchisement of the poorest people.

    Featured image via Good Morning Britain – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • RMT general secretary Mick Lynch left a trail of stunned establishment hacks in his wake this week

    Establishment hacks had a rough week. Smug, pompous and overpaid, the likes of Kay Burley, Richard Madeley, and Piers Morgan probably feel pretty invincible most days. But these three media cronies bit off more than they could chew this week. Their nemesis came in form of Mick Lynch – straight-talking secretary-general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)  – who was doing the media rounds on behalf of the union’s membership as they went out on strike.

    Big Mick’s media adventure

    Shock and awe is an overused term. But Lynch left interviewer after interviewer slack-jawed and panicking – with his quickly emerging fanbase cheering along. Sky’s Kay Burley was one of his first wins.

    The presenter, who didn’t seem to know what a picket was, rambled about what would happen if a worker tried to cross one. Burley then tweeted the interview, claiming – in a masterclass on projection – that Lynch had been “flustered”. For his part, Lynch showed no sign of being flustered and just tried to answer the rather poorly framed questions:

    Marxist supervillain?

    Meanwhile, Piers Morgan had acquired a screengrab of Lynch’s Facebook. As a joke, Lynch had changed his profile picture to an image of The Hood, a 1960s puppet supervillain from the Thunderbirds, to whom he bears a resemblance. Morgan spent several minutes embarrassing himself by talking about the picture without asking about the actual strikes.

    Lynch calmly watched this meltdown before asking why Morgan was so obsessed with his Facebook profile:

    And it wasn’t just Lynch’s quick wit or his tendency to toy with the media wing of the ruling class. His no-nonsense analysis of the state of the country was absolutely bang-on.

    For example, in a few minutes he captured how billionaires were sucking up money while telling everyone else to tighten their belts. And how there was a major power deficit in the UK which only organised workers could address:

    Who even are you?

    In another hilarious interview, Labour politician Jenny Chapman bumbled through a debate with the RMT leader while muttering about her class background with Lynch declaring he didn’t even know who she was:

    Presenter Richard Madeley went full Alan Partridge by bizarrely asking Lynch whether he was a Marxist. To which Lynch replied that Madeley was talking “twaddle”:

    Class warrior

    The media, including the left-leaning media, is filled with tedious middle class voices. The RMT strike has placed working class politics centre stage, and Mick Lynch has done a rousing job arguing for their interests. As he has pointed out, it doesn’t take a Marxist revolutionary to figure out that things need to change.

    Workers, not bosses, produce all that is good and necessary in this country. It’s time to start making sure they get what they deserve.

    Featured image via the RMT

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Tories are trying to silence you!

    Here’s what you need to know about the Priti Patel’s authoritarian public order bill.

    Video transcript

    Have you ever wanted to change the world? Want to take action against a multinational corporation that’s destroying the planet? Blockade an arms company? Protest against an environmentally devastating transport project like HS2? Or do you want to save a local green area from development by greedy capitalists? 

    Well, you can go straight to jail under new laws proposed by Priti Patel.

    Yes, that’s right, the home secretary is introducing yet more powers to stifle protest – powers that are a massive threat to our civil liberties.

    The police haven’t even had a chance to exercise their new powers in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the government has introduced a new Public Order Bill.

    We’ve been here before. The bill is basically a rehash of some of the worse amendments to the PCSC act that were chucked out in the Lords. 

    New offences include locking on, going equipped to lock on, and obstructing national infrastructure. 

    There are new stop and search powers, including a suspicionless power for protest-related offences. This will be used to harass anyone who looks like a protester. But it will particularly impact marginalised communities who already bear the brunt of an institutionally racist police force. 

    Protest too much and you could receive a serious disruption prevention order. You don’t even need to commit an offence to get one. Restrictions can include not seeing certain people, not going to protests, and not using the internet for protest-related activities. Orders can even be enforced with electronic tagging. 

    But the government’s logic for introducing this new repressive legislation doesn’t even make sense.

    In the same speech, Priti Patel described protesters as “a mob” engaged in “disruptive and self-defeating tactics” whilst saying that she wants to free up police who are diverted away from the communities where they are needed most to prevent serious violence and neighbourhood crime”.  She cited the cost of policing XR and Just Stop Oil protests.

    MP Matt Vickers described protesters as ‘verging on domestic terrorism’ before labelling protest policing as a ‘waste of time’.

    There’s a massive contradiction here.

    Introduce a load of new offences and police powers, and guess what? The police will use them.

    This will mean more money spent on protest policing and bigger policing operations. Not to mention the amount of money it’ll cost to prosecute and imprison more activists. That’ll mean even less cops available to tackle the sort of crime the Tories claim they want the police fighting.

    Because protests aren’t going to stop. There have been 1000s of arrests on XR protests. That’s people who’ve already committed to risking arrest because we are living in a climate emergency. 

    And at some point, people will start fighting back in the class war masquerading as a cost of living crisis that’s currently being waged against us.

    This is what the government is really worried about. It is cracking down on dissent because it’s lost all legitimacy. It knows it won’t be long before people rise up and start fighting back.

    We will continue taking action. Not because it’s fun or because we want to get arrested. But because we don’t have a choice. Our planet is on fire, we can’t afford to pay the bills, and we want a future for our children. 

    So we all need to send a clear message to the government. New legislation will not stop us. We will resist these new powers. We will be ungovernable and we will fight back.

    By Emily Apple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The truth about the rail strikes

    There’s lot of nonsense flying around in the establishment media about the rail strikes. Curtis Daily explains why the strikes and unions are an essential line of defence against the destructive capitalist system the press and politicians are fighting to uphold.

    By Curtis Daly

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • In a parallel universe where the media is owned by the workers…

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Outsourced cleaners at London Bridge Hospital are campaigning against poverty pay

    Outsourced cleaners at London Bridge Hospital demonstrated on 17 June against poverty pay. The protest took place outside the London headquarters of the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) – the world’s largest private healthcare company – which runs London Bridge Hospital. HCA cleaners’ contracts are handled by the outsourcing firm Compass.

    The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) tweeted:

    London Bridge Hospital cleaners are a majority-migrant workforce, and are being paid less than the London Living Wage

    According to anti-capitalist research group Corporate Watch, Samuel Hazen – HCA’s chief executive – earned $30.4m in 2020. That’s 556 times the average salary of HCA’s employees.

    The demonstration was part of a campaign launched in February this year. The cleaners’ struggle has already started to worry their bosses. The day before last week’s protest, IWGB revealed that Compass had offered the cleaners a “poverty pay rise” in order to – in the unions’ words – “keep them quiet”. However, the cleaners are determined to get more than just the crumbs from the table. IWGB tweeted:

    The cleaners have launched a petition for better pay and proper sick pay, and against unsafe conditions and harassment from management. They have released a video letting people know how to support their campaign:

    One cleaner said:

    My name is Ramona, I’m a cleaner at London Bridge Hospital. We do vital, risky work for a multi-million dollar company but we are treated as second class citizens. We are outsourced on poverty pay. We are bullied and harassed, we lack basic rights like proper sick pay and access to the hospital facilities. When we get sick we cannot afford to stay at home. Enough is enough!

    Profiting from the pandemic…

    HCA has been implicated in numerous scandals in the UK and the US. An investigation by Corporate Watch details how HCA “made billions” from the pandemic by swooping in and hoovering up lucrative COVID contracts, while cutting corners on health and safety and personal protective equipment (PPE). HCA received a massive £1.69bn contract in 2020 for extra NHS bed capacity. Corporate Watch argues that this massive expenditure didn’t translate into any significant benefit for the NHS:

    This billion-pound payout didn’t translate into significantly higher capacity for the NHS. In fact, overall “private hospitals delivered 0.08% of COVID care”. Out of an estimated 8,000 private beds, the highest number ever occupied by Covid patients on one day was only 78.

    HCA also received about £3m in furlough payments in 2021.

    …While paying poverty wages

    But HCA’s massive profits haven’t translated into better conditions for the workers either. According to Corporate Watch:

    HCA made profits of $3.75 billion in 2021. Yet cleaners at HCA’s London Bridge Hospital had to go through the pandemic without even basic protections.

    One HCA cleaner told Freedom News back in March:

    We risk our lives working here. The managers have sent us to clean areas full of infected people without PPE. When I caught covid at work, I was forced to isolate for two weeks without the sick pay that directly-employed workers get. The pay is already so low, I can’t afford to take two weeks off on £96.35 a week. When I asked Compass for support in accessing the statutory sick pay, they did nothing so I ended up at home for two weeks with no money.

    In the US, the story was the same; HCA cut costs at the expense of workers’ lives. According to Corporate Watch:

    in the US, where nurses and other workers spoke out about the lack of PPE in several HCA hospitals during the pandemic. Outcry over worker safety in HCA hospitals there increased in 2020 following the deaths of nurses Celia Yap-Banago and Rosa Luna, who worked at HCA hospitals in Kansas City and California, respectively. Both had contracted coronavirus, despite the alarm having been raised about the lack of PPE at work.

    HCA is pushing a privatization agenda

    Meanwhile, HCA is pushing a privatisation agenda in the UK. According to Corporate Watch, the company joined the Private Hospitals Alliance – a pro-privatisation lobby group – in 2010. Since then, HCA has donated money to the Conservative Party, while lord Clive Hollick – a HCA shareholder – has been busy making donations to politicians on the right of the Labour Party, including Keir Starmer.

    On top of running London Bridge Hospital, HCA also runs five other hospitals and partnerships around the UK, but the company obviously wants to use its influence to get its hands on as much of the NHS as it possibly can. Corporate Watch argues that the pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for that to happen. The NHS is stretched to breaking point, and publicly funded services are being left to rot. The government is eager to set the NHS up to fail so that private companies can step in and make a fast buck.

    Solidarity with the cleaners

    Meanwhile, workers that we briefly recognised as ‘essential’ during the pandemic are being treated like dirt. Zrinka Bralo of Migrants Organise sent a message of solidarity to the cleaners’ campaign:

    For a brief moment during the pandemic we called our migrant workers, including cleaners, essential workers. That is what they are and continue to be. Not just for the economy, but for our entire society. Their work needs to be recognised, respected and paid properly. Being paid the London Living Wage at the time of a harsh economic crisis is the bare minimum. We stand in solidarity with all migrants seeking justice and dignity. Profiting from the exploitation of essential workers is [unnacceptable] and we applaud the IWGB members for taking action

    According to Henry Chango Lopez of the IWGB:

    It is totally unacceptable that a multi-billion dollar private healthcare provider is overworking its long-term staff on pay well below the London living wage, while bringing in temporary agency workers at much higher pay to plug the gaps. This majority-migrant workforce worked hard all through the pandemic in dangerous working conditions but are denied proper sick pay and cannot afford to take time off when they get ill. With the cost of living skyrocketing, and inflation approaching 11% for low-paid households, these workers urgently need pay that enables them to support themselves and their families.

    The London Bridge Hospital Cleaners are just one of the groups of workers who are at the knife-edge of the class war being waged in the UK right now. We need to stand in solidarity with them and support their campaign. One way to do that is to sign their petition here or click here to find out how to support their struggles

    Featured image via IWGB

    Tom Anderson – the author of this piece – is also part of Corporate Watch, the research group involved in producing the report referenced in the article.

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Campaign of direct action forces an Israeli drone maker to close its London office permanently

    Palestine solidarity campaigners have been involved in an intense campaign of direct action against Israeli arms company Elbit for years.

    On 20 June they announced the closure of another of Elbit’s UK locations:

    Earlier this year, Elbit was forced to shut down its Ferranti factory in Oldham, after a years-long community campaign combining a groundswell of local opposition, mass demonstrations, and direct action.

    Elbit is Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer, and produces around 85% of Israel’s drones – which have been used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza. The company is also responsible for manufacturing small-calibre ammunition for the Israeli army.

    Palestinians have been calling on people around the world to take action against Elbit. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) calls for global campaigns against the company.

    Victory

    Commenting on the recent victory, campaign group Palestine Action wrote:

    77 Kingsway has become the second Elbit site permanently shut down by Palestine Action, in less than 2 years of sustained direct action.

    Our inaugural action saw activists storm the company’s former central London office, trashing site facilities and spray painting ‘Shut Elbit Down’ and ‘We will be back’ across the walls. As the campaign continued, tactics included disruptive entry, outdoor & indoor occupations, paint throwing and chain-and-lock blockades. The 15 separate actions at Kingsway and simultaneous sister actions against its landlords, have culminated in dozens of arrests — 60 in total, for which many activists still face trial. Elbit’s closure comes after weeks of dramatically-intensified action targeting their Kingsway headquarters.

    The direct action at Elbit’s Kingsway office were complemented with an intense campaign of direct action against their landlords, Jones Lang LaSalle:

    Outpouring of solidarity

    There has been an outpouring of messages of solidarity for the campaign on Twitter from supporters of Palestine:

    “We won’t stop”

    Palestine Action has vowed to close the eight remaining Elbit sites in the UK:

    We will build on the success of this closure and we won’t stop until all eight remaining sites follow suit. It’s a victory for all those who sacrificed their liberty and to all those who supported the movement, but most importantly the Palestinian people. It brings us another step closer to the day Israel’s arms trade is out of Britain for good.

    Israeli forces attack Palestinians on a daily basis using weapons manufactured by Elbit. It is paramount that we stand in solidarity with Palestinans, and one way to do that is to join the campaign to push Elbit out of the UK.

    Featured image via Guy Smallman (with permission)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • 5 things I wish people knew about domestic abuse

    Watching the Depp vs. Heard trial play out was truly horrifying. Yes, we know misogyny is an issue in society and yes, we know that there are many misunderstandings about domestic abuse. But, no one could have guessed it would have gone so badly for Amber Heard. These are five things I wish people understood about domestic abuse before siding with Johnny Depp.

    1. Perpetrators of domestic abuse are people we know and like

    1 in 4 women are abused by a partner or family member, usually a man. Abusers are amongst us; they are people we know. They are not big, built, angry guys with shaved heads, scars, and tattoos: they’re just as likely to be good-looking, sweet-talking men in suits.

    Most abusers are charmers – that’s how they get victims into a relationship with them in the first place. They use these very same manipulation tactics to fool everyone around them: friends, family, social workers, juries, and in the case of celebrities cases, apparently also millions of the public. Charm, good looks and a ‘nice guy’ persona are certainly advantages for an abuser – who would ever believe they are abusive behind closed doors?

    2. Victims of domestic abuse fight back

    Most victims of domestic abuse are not passive. Surviving in an abusive relationship takes strength and resilience; living in constant fear takes its toll. Victims often act out of fear or resentment; they may physically fight back, yell, or carry out small acts of revenge. This is known as resistive violence.

    We would applaud a woman who hit an unknown man who attempted to rape her, but when it’s her partner, apparently fighting back makes you ‘just as bad’ as the abuser.

    3. Claiming victimhood is a common perpetrator tactic

    Abusers often use the courts to continue their power and control after separation. This is often when we see the abuser claiming to be the victim – the very common DARVO tactic. They Deny the abuse, Attack the person accusing them (often discrediting them by talking about their mental health), and then Reverse Victim and Offender, making themselves the victim.

    Often, abusers will wind up their partner, pushing all the right buttons, to provoke them to react so that they can then use this as evidence to claim the victim is the abuser.

    4. Domestic abuse is about power and control

    In domestic abuse, one person has power and control over the other. Often, the abuser has societal advantages over the other partner. This typically takes the form of a male partner having male privilege over a woman, but factors such as age and wealth can also be important, as with Johnny and Amber.

    The domestic abuse perpetrator controls every part of a victim’s life using fear and intimidation. They will isolate their victim as much as possible, by cutting them off from friends and family, for example. They will also use emotional abuse and gaslighting to destroy their self-esteem and ability to see things clearly. Abusers are full of entitlement, and expect their partner to prioritise them and their needs over the victim’s own or anyone else’s. When we understand this, we can more easily see when someone’s actions are intended to control, or if they are just reactions to being abused.

    5. Perpetrators are misogynists

    Research into the beliefs and behaviours of male abusers has shown that more often than not, they have a strong belief in traditional gender norms. They believe that women should cook, clean, look after kids, be caring, and look after their man. They believe that men should be strong and in control, and that they should be providers. Often, it is when this expectation is challenged or goes unmet that they use abuse to get things back to how they want them.

    Usually, abusers are sexist and see women as weaker and less important than men; they are misogynists. Any man that uses terms like “idiot cow”, “withering cunt”, “worthless hooker”, “slippery whore” or “waste of a cum guzzler” (Depp’s words) to describe women is clearly a misogynist.

    The impact on survivors

    It may seem that the Depp vs. Heard case is not worth worrying about; after all, they are high-profile celebrities many miles away. However, the level of attention the case has received, with social media rife with the bashing and ridiculing of Amber, there is no question that it will impact survivors here who have seen friends, family and colleagues back Johnny and claim that Amber is a liar.

    Women have already been pulling out of cases due to the fear of going through what Amber did. Not only that, this case has also emboldened abusive men. We have already seen that alleged abuser Marilyn Manson has started his own defamation case against Evan Rachel Wood (Manson is also the godfather of Depp’s daughter, funnily enough).

    It won’t just be famous men who have a renewed confidence in the fact that the system always sides with men, we’ll see this play out in courts across the country.

    Featured image via screenshot/YouTube – Law&Crime Network

    By Annie Stevens

  • The Sunday Times changed an article backing-up the RMT strike

    Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times published and then changed an article about the railways. It showed part of the reason why the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union are striking. Little wonder really that the right-wing shitrag wouldn’t want the piece to continue as it was. Fortunately, the internet doesn’t forget.

    Closing all ticket offices

    As the Association of British Commuters (ABC) tweeted:

    The Sunday Times ran the article on 19 June. Originally, the headline was:

    Secret plan to close all railway ticket offices as strikes grip Britain

    It reported that:

    All ticket offices are to close on the railways, forcing passengers to book online under plans to save up to £500 million a year.

    The rail industry has drawn up a confidential strategy to phase out paper tickets and close or “repurpose” 980 ticket offices in England, starting in September.

    The Sunday Times continued by saying that three million people over the age of 65 do not have internet access, and:

    The switch to online ticket sales will worry those who struggle with digital services or do not have a smartphone. While many people already download train tickets to their phones, some older people are used to paper ones and will not welcome the switch to online-only.

    It carried on talking about the RMT strike. Then, at 12:30pm on 19 June, the Sunday Times altered the article.

    Sunday Times: editing the truth

    The headline now reads:

    We will keep striking until we get a deal, warns RMT

    It leads with the RMT strike and general secretary Mick Lynch’s comments to Sky News. The Sunday Times moved the story on ticket offices further down the article. And suddenly, associate political editor Henry Zeffman was additionally credited as the author.

    Essentially, the Sunday Times has dampened the story down – possibly because it shores up the RMT’s strike action. The ABC tweeted that readers weren’t happy:

    Not that you’d think all of this if you believed Zeffman. He defended the Sunday Times‘ post-publication editing of the article:

    Doing the Tories’ bidding

    Zeffman can spin it all he wants. The clear implication is that the original Sunday Times article:

    1. was damaging to the Tory government;
    2. showed just why the RMT is striking; and
    3. prompted an angry backlash from readers.

    Therefore, the editors had no choice but to alter it – Murdoch’s paper couldn’t possibly be seen to give weight to a trade union’s strike, after all.

    Featured image via the Association of British Commuters

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • IFJ calls on Canberra to act against Assange extradition order to US

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Following the United Kingdom’s decision to extradite Julian Assange to face trial in the United States, the International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called on the Australian government to take swift steps to lobby for the dismissal of all charges against Assange.

    The IFJ stands with the MEAA in condemning the extradition order and calls for Assange to be pardoned and allowed to be with his family.

    On June 17, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition to the US to face charges, primarily under the nation’s Espionage Act, for releasing US government records that revealed the US military committed war crimes against civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists.

    Assange, a member of the MEAA since 2007, may now only have a slim chance of challenging the extradition.

    If found guilty, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.

    The WikiLeaks founder is highly likely to be detained in the US under conditions of isolation or solitary confinement, despite the US government’s assurances, which would severely exacerbate his risk of suicide.

    WikiLeaks was awarded the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2011, an annual prize to reward excellence in Australian journalism, in recognition of the impact of WikiLeaks’ actions on public interest journalism by assisting whistleblowers to tell their stories.

    According to the MEAA, Walkley judges said WikiLeaks applied new technology to”‘penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup”.

    Whistleblowers have since been used by other media outlets to expose global tax avoidance schemes, among other stories.

    In the case of WikiLeaks, only Julian Assange faces charges, with no other WikiLeaks media partners cited in any US government legal actions.

    In 2017, Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who released classified information to WikiLeaks, was pardoned by former US President Barack Obama.

    MEAA media section federal president Karen Percy said: “We urge the new Australian government to act on Julian Assange’s behalf and lobby for his release. The actions of the US are a warning sign to journalists and whistleblowers everywhere and undermine the importance of uncovering wrongdoing.

    “Our thoughts are with Julian and his family at this difficult time.”

    The IFJ said: “The United Kingdom Home Secretary’s decision to allow the extradition of Julian Assange is a significant blow to media freedom and a dire threat to journalists, whistleblowers, and media workers worldwide.

    “The IFJ urges the government of Australia to act swiftly to intervene and lobby the United States and United Kingdom governments to dismiss all charges against Assange. Journalism is not a crime.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • People who complain about strikes don’t care that we all benefit

    Rail strikes are set to go ahead this week after the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) voted for them. The strikes are about rail workers pay, working conditions, and threats from bosses of compulsory redundancies.

    RMT made it clear that the strikes reflect how every worker deserves fair pay and good conditions. They said:

    We want a transport system that operates for the benefit of the people, for the needs of society and our environment – not for private profit.

    We call on our members to stand firm, support the action, mount the pickets and demonstrate their willingness to fight for workplace justice.

    Transport secretary Grant Shapps has so far refused to even enter into talks with unions.

    Meanwhile Cat Hobbs, We Own It director, told The Canary:

    Grant Shapps should be improving services, not making them worse. The RMT are not only fighting a cost of living squeeze, but for the very future of our railway system.

    But unfortunately, there’s plenty of opposition to the strikes.

    ‘Misery for millions’

    As usual, every time there are strikes the mainstream media does what it can to criticise the striking workers. The BBC had the strike story on their front page:

    They claimed that “Travellers face ‘misery’“, but there’s no mention of the workers who have to deal with miserable working conditions.

    And the Daily Mail splashed the following headline on their front page:

    SUMMER STRIKES PLAGUE SPREADS

    The Daily Express went with:

    VOTERS WON’T FORGIVE RAIL STRIKE BETRAYAL

    Who is doing the betraying? Well, not who you might think. Their story read:

    The public will never forgive Labour’s failure to condemn the rail strikes that will bring the nation to a halt from tomorrow, Grant Shapps has warned.

    Yes, the very same Grant Shapps who hasn’t entered into negotiations with the unions.

    As Labour MP Christian Wakeford said:

    High stakes

    However, that doesn’t mean getting round the table is going to be enough. The Guardian reported that:

    A wave of 1970s-style economic unrest is threatening to spread from the railways across the public services, as unions representing teachers and NHS workers warn of potential industrial action over pay.

    Barristers have also voted to go on strike from next week. The Criminal Bar Association said that over 80% of its members voted to support industrial action. This will affect many ongoing cases, as barristers warn that court backlogs will only get worse.

    Moreover, British Airways and Ryanair workers are considering strike action this summer.

    And bus drivers across Yorkshire have forced bosses to indefinitely suspend some services after drivers refused to work. Drivers can’t afford to live on wages that haven’t increased in keeping with inflation.

    Bin workers could also join the strike, with disputes cropping up across the country.

    What cost of living crisis?

    It’s no accident that more workers are considering their position.

    For all the talk of the cost of living crisis, and the rising prices of everyday essentials, there’s more to it than that. As The Canary’s Steve Topple argued, it’s not a cost of living crisis – it’s a war on the poor.

    An investigation from the union Unite shows that:

    It’s inflation and corporate profits, not workers’ wages, which are at the heart of the cost of living crisis currently gripping the UK.

    The report ‘Unite Investigates: Corporate profiteering and the cost of living crisis‘ looks at how bosses are actually making money whilst workers are left struggling to eat and heat their homes.

    It found that profit margins for the biggest companies in the UK were 73% higher than before the start of the pandemic. During that time, labour income only rose by 2.61%.

    What this means, as the Independent reports, is that:

    almost 60 per cent of recent price rises have been driven by excess company profits, compared with just 8 per cent due to labour costs.

    The biggest companies are making huge profits that come at the expense of workers. The rail strikes are just the first of what will probably be more strikes this summer. Teachers, bin workers, cleaners, nurses, doctors, and many more are being forced to strike by greedy bosses.

    Undoubtedly, the strikes are disruptive. As they should be! The whole point of a strike is to withdraw labour so that everyone can see the value of that labour. We can’t believe mainstream media outlets when they make it seem like it’s rail workers who are causing ‘misery’. We need to show complete solidarity with rail workers, because labour conditions affect us all.

    Boris Johnson isn’t running the country. It’s workers who run the country. It’s a national disgrace that people can work full-time and still not afford rent, food, and bills. By supporting the rail workers, and any other strikes, we can show that it’s people who have the power – not corrupt bosses.

     Featured image by Wikimedia Commons/Emmett via CC 2.0, resized to 770 x 403

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Julian Assange’s brother confirms UK appeal to include breach of client-lawyer confidentiality

    On 17 June, home secretary Priti Patel gave her approval to a court ruling to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. He will face 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

    Assange’s lawyers are to appeal Patel’s approval of extradition within 14 days of her announcement, but the High Court will have to approve the appeal request. A judicial review of Patel’s decision is also possible.

    Assange’s defence team has issued a statement giving some indication of what happens next:

    The statement says that Assange will appeal Patel’s decision. And it adds that he will “file grounds for appeal not able to be proceeded with during the past one and a half years”.

    ‘New’ information brought to court

    According to Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton, the appeal to the UK courts will be partly based on information that they couldn’t bring to the courts previously:

    It will likely be a few days before the (14-day appeal) deadline and the appeal will include new information that we weren’t able to bring before the courts previously. Information on how Julian lawyers were spied on, and how there were plots to kidnap and kill Julian from within the CIA.

    Previously, The Canary reported that Spanish legal sources were confident the extradition process could be annulled. That assessment was based on ongoing revelations during the trial in Spain of David Morales, head of the surveillance company that spied on Assange’s lawyers in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

    That surveillance meant client-lawyer confidentiality was breached. And the law in England on client-lawyer confidentiality is clear, as this 2018 judgement in the Court of Appeal indicates.

    The same Spanish court has summoned former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo. This is to answer questions about alleged CIA plots to spy on, kidnap, or kill Assange.

    A matter of weeks?

    Meanwhile, Assange’s defence lawyer Jennifer Robinson said Assange may also appeal, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). But that’s assuming the UK is still a member of the European Convention on Human Rights (the ‘Convention’), upon which the court is based, by the time the ECHR appeal happens.

    That may not be the case.

    In a separate but possibly linked development, the Strasbourg-based ECHR intervened and halted the flight that Patel planned to transport refugees to Rwanda. Consequently, prime minister Boris Johnson spoke of laws that would ensure such intervention can’t happen in the future. These remarks were interpreted as meaning he intends to pull the UK out of the Convention, which underpins the ECHR.

    Johnson has also made it clear that in the coming weeks he intends to introduce a British bill of Rights. This would affirm “parliamentary sovereignty in the exercise of the legislative function, in the context of adverse Strasbourg rulings”. In other words, a Tory version of the Convention.

    ECHR: a UK-led body

    As The Canary already pointed out, the Council of Europe oversees the Convention. The UK joined the Council in 1949, with Winston Churchill as a prime mover:

    And Johnson’s maternal grandfather James Fawcett was actually president of the European Commission of Human Rights for more than 20 years. The Commission, which became defunct in 1998, functioned as a gateway for individual claims to the Court.

    Safeguarding role

    The ECHR was created in 1959 and has jurisdiction over 47 countries. Over the years, it’s impacted on a number of human rights issues. It has also intervened on:

    various social issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, body searches, domestic slavery, adoption by homosexuals, wearing religious symbols at school, the recognition of transsexuals, the protection of journalists’ sources and even environmental issues.

    The ECHR and the Convention act as safeguards against breaches of human rights, often committed by governments.

    A very recent and pertinent example where the ECHR intervened in the UK involved one of Assange’s lawyers, as previously reported by The Canary:

     

    Stepping in where UK law falls short

    Another example of how the ECHR changed UK law for the better was the McLibel case, the longest trial in English legal history.

    Helen Steel and David Morris, two environmental activists, handed out leaflets accusing McDonald’s of environmental destruction. McDonald’s sued for libel. Steel and Morris denied publishing the leaflets. The case was taken to the ECHR and the court ruled that a number of the Convention’s articles had been violated, including:

    Applicants’ right to a fair trial was violated under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights and that their leaflets were protected under Article 10’s freedom of expression.

    It also found that denial of legal aid to the defendants was unfair, setting a new benchmark for future similar cases.

    The importance of the ECHR and the UK’s membership of the Convention cannot be overemphasised. Particularly when the UK has a government that intends to criminalise the Fourth Estate – i.e. journalists.

    Retaining power

    As for Johnson’s recent pronouncements on the ECHR, they’re more about pandering to a xenophobic constituency to help him retain power. This comes at a time when the popularity of Johnson and his government has plummeted in the wake of numerous scandals. Partygate and the story of Rishi Sunak wasting £11bn are the most prominent in a long list. Patel’s National Security bill, which seeks to jail journalists for life, is also extremely concerning, if not contentious.

    Should the Johnson government go ahead and pull out of the Convention and replace it with a Tory bill of rights, it will be a disaster for everyone in the UK. Such a move would be regressive and will present yet another threat to our ever-decreasing liberties. Moreover, if that move is expedited, Assange may lose out on an appeal to the ECHR.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Tory saboteurs of the Animals Abroad Bill face questions over their motives

    Until recently, the UK planned to ban tourism advertisements linked to the brutal mistreatment of elephants, particularly endangered Asian elephants. But senior Conservatives – reportedly Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and commons leader Mark Spencer in particular – have succeeded in blocking the legislation that would deliver the ban.

    They apparently believe that the move would be ‘un-Conservative’ – seemingly because it would limit people’s freedom to enjoy the fruits of other animals’ agony. But recent attempts to force these Conservatives to explain or defend their so-called ‘conservative values’ have gone unanswered.

    Now they face calls to come clean about whether they’re “collaborating” with tourism companies. An upcoming Oral Question in the House of Lords will also put pressure on the government to move forward with the ban.

    Tortured for tourism

    As The Canary has previously highlighted, many elephants used in tourism endure a training process called pajan. It essentially involves torturing elephants into obedience at a young age so they will perform unnatural behaviours like allowing people to ride on their backs. This training process can involve beating, crushing, and starving the elephants, to name but a few of the horrors, in order to subdue their natural spirits. If they survive pajan, their fear-induced obedience can be maintained throughout their working lives too, such as through the use of a bull hook. This is a weapon that mahouts (keepers) jab elephants’ sensitive parts with – such as behind their ears – to keep them compliant.

    Thanks to the efforts of NGOs like Save the Asian Elephants (STAE) and others, parliament was on course to tackle the UK’s complicity in this abuse. According to STAE, 1,200 companies operating in the UK tourism market advertise venues implicated in brutality against elephants. The Animals Abroad Bill contained a promise to ban their advertising of such unethical tourism.

    Tory backtracking

    The government now appears to have shelved this bill, however. It claims that it’s committed to moving forward with some of its provisions like banning the import of body parts from trophy hunting. But the government hasn’t confirmed whether it plans to progress the ban on unethical tourism advertising.

    As the Independent reported, STAE’s CEO Duncan McNair wrote to Rees-Mogg and Spencer over their reported role in the u-turn. In the letter, McNair challenged both politicians to publicly debate the issue in their constituencies and join STAE on a fact-finding mission to elephant tourism venues.

    Neither of them have agreed to McNair’s proposals. The Cabinet Office told him that Rees-Mogg had “diary pressures”. Meanwhile, a source close to Spencer suggested to the Independent that he’s unlikely to engage at all on the matter.

    Grievous damage

    In comments to The Canary, McNair said:

    Fellow Tories may have little idea what grievous damage Mr Mogg’s and Mr Spencer’s blocking of their Government’s promises to ban advertising of tourism brutality to endangered Asian elephants and their babies will have on the species. They have persuaded the Prime Minister to abandon the promised measures as “Un-Tory” and that animal welfare has no priority.

    He pointed out that voters in Rees-Mogg’s constituency are strongly in support of a ban, according to a recent poll. The same is true in Spencer’s constituency. McNair also asked whether the two individuals would:

    explain if they are collaborating with the 1,200 UK travel companies profiting from advertising nearly 300 of the most brutal elephant “attractions” abroad.

    The Canary contacted the Cabinet Office for comment. None was provided by the time of publication.

    Under pressure

    The STAE CEO accused Rees-Mogg of “causing havoc” with the “huge strides” taken towards protecting endangered Asian elephants. STAE’s involvement in those strides has included drafting a bill for the advertising ban, which McNair says the government asked it to do in 2019. That draft bill, titled the Asian Elephants (Tourism) Bill, would stop advertising of attractions involving Asian elephants unless they’re genuine sanctuaries.

    McNair says that STAE is in talks with opposition parties on the matter and is “making headway”. He added that the organisation:

    still hopes Government will restore its promise to help prevent tourism torture to the elephants, which huge numbers of Conservative MPs as well as the vast majority of Tory (and other) voters strongly support

    According to McNair, on 20 June Labour peer baroness Hayman of Ullock will also ask the government outright in the House of Lords whether it intends to introduce a ban. McNair expects other opposition parties to table further questions too.

    The time is now

    During the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, some elephants used for tourism got a brief respite. Their owners released them to sanctuaries that offered to take them in under adoption and fostering schemes. Now that the tourism industry is opening back up, however, elephants risk being forced back into servitude – and all the horrors that come with it. McNair told The Canary:

    As unregulated, ruthless elephant tourism markets reopen, God help the Asian elephants in their pain and peril.

    This is exactly the right time to implement a ban and limit the UK’s complicity in what these elephants are facing. But it appears that some Conservatives’ abhorrent ‘values’ are standing in the way.

    Featured image via Sky News / YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Assange Is Doing His Most Important Work Yet

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    British Home Secretary Priti Patel has authorized the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to be tried under the Espionage Act in a case which seeks to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports inconvenient truths about the US empire.

    Assange’s legal team will appeal the decision, reportedly with arguments that will include the fact that the CIA spied on him and plotted his assassination.

    “It will likely be a few days before the (14-day appeal) deadline and the appeal will include new information that we weren’t able to bring before the courts previously. Information on how Julian lawyers were spied on, and how there were plots to kidnap and kill Julian from within the CIA,” Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton told Reuters on Friday.

    And thank goodness. Assange’s willingness to resist Washington’s extradition attempts benefit us all, from his taking political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 until British police forcibly dragged him out in 2019, to his fighting US prosecutors in the courtroom tooth and claw during his incarceration in Belmarsh Prison.

    Assange’s fight against US extradition benefits us not just because the empire’s war against truth harms our entire species and not just because he cannot receive a fair trial under the Espionage Act, but because his refusal to bow down and submit forces the empire to overextend itself into the light and show us all what it’s really made of.

    Washington, London and Canberra are colluding to imprison a journalist for telling the truth: the first with its active extradition attempts, the second with its loyal facilitation of those attempts, and the third with its silent complicity in allowing an Australian journalist to be locked up and persecuted for engaging in the practice of journalism. By refusing to lie down and forcing them to come after him, Assange has exposed some harsh realities of which the public has largely been kept unaware.

    The fact that London and Canberra are complying so obsequiously with Washington’s agendas, even while their own mainstream media outlets decry the extradition and even while all major human rights and press freedom watchdog groups in the western world say Assange must go free, shows that these are not separate sovereign nations but member states of a single globe-spanning empire centralized around the US government. Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, more attention is being brought to this reality.

    By standing his ground and fighting them, Assange has also exposed the lie that the so-called free democracies of the western world support the free press and defend human rights. The US, UK and Australia are colluding to extradite a journalist for exposing the truth even as they claim to oppose tyranny and autocracy, even as they claim to support world press freedoms, and even as they loudly decry the dangers of government-sponsored disinformation.

    Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, it will always reek of hypocrisy when US presidents like Joe Biden say things like, “The free press is not the enemy of the people — far from it. At your best, you’re guardians of the truth.”

    Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, people will always know British prime ministers like Boris Johnson are lying when they say things like, “Media organisations should feel free to bring important facts into the public domain.”

    Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, more of us will understand that they are being deceived and manipulated when Australian prime ministers like Anthony Albanese say things like “We need to protect press freedom in law and ensure every Australian can have their voice heard,” and “Don’t prosecute journalists for just doing their jobs.”

    Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, US secretaries of state like Antony Blinken will have a much harder time selling their schtick when they say things like “On World Press Freedom Day, the United States continues to advocate for press freedom, the safety of journalists worldwide, and access to information on and offline. A free and independent press ensures the public has access to information. Knowledge is power.”

    Because Assange stood his ground and fought them, UK home secretaries like Priti Patel will be seen for the frauds they are when they say things like “The safety of journalists is fundamental to our democracy.”

    Extraditing a foreign journalist for exposing your war crimes is as tyrannical an agenda as you could possibly come up with. The US, UK and Australia colluding toward this end shows us that these are member states of a single empire whose only values are domination and control, and that all its posturing about human rights is pure facade. Assange keeps exposing the true face of power.

    There is in fact a strong argument to be made that even all these years after the 2010 leaks for which he is currently being prosecuted, Assange is doing his most important work yet. As important as his WikiLeaks publications were and are, none of them exposed the depravity of the empire as much as forcing them to look us in the eye and tell us they’ll extradite a journalist for telling the truth.

    Assange accomplished this by planting his feet and saying “No,” even when every other possible option would have been easier and more pleasant. Even when it was hard. Even when it was terrifying. Even when it meant being locked away, silenced, smeared, hated, unable to fight back against his detractors, unable to live a normal life, unable to hold his children, unable even to feel sunlight on his face.

    His very life casts light on all the areas where it is most sorely needed. We all owe this man a tremendous debt. The least we can do is try our best to get him free.

    _______________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    Feature image via Espen Moe, (CC BY 2.0)

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Advocacy group calls on NZ to ‘end silence’ over Assange extradition

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    A media freedom advocacy group has called on New Zealand to end its silence over the Julian Assange case in what it called a “dark day for global press freedom”.

    The UK Home secretary Priti Patel yesterday signed the extradition to send Australian journalist Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, to the US, which has charged him for publishing leaked evidence of their war crimes.

    The Guardian’s editorial said the decision “ought to worry anyone who cares about journalism and democracy”.

    Assange, 50, has been charged under the US Espionage Act, including publishing classified material. He faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty by a US court. This action potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington.

    Human rights groups have called for Assange’s release.

    The International Federation of Journalists, representing more than 600,000 journalists tweeted: “The UK decision to allow the extradition of Assange is vindictive and a real blow to media freedom.

    “He has simply exposed issues that were in the public interest and Patel’s failure to acknowledge this is shameful and sets a terrible precedent.”

    Lack of accountability
    Aotearoa 4 Assange (A4A) said in a statement that the New Zealand government could no longer remain silent on this case.

    A4A’s Matt Ó Branáin asked: “What will our government’s position be when it’s a New Zealand investigative journalist being imprisoned or extradited?

    “What will this total lack of accountability mean the next time the US asks us to send our troops to die in another war?.”

    The Guardian warned this “potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington”.

    The editorial said: “The charges against him should never have been brought. As Mr Assange published classified documents and he did not leak them, Barack Obama’s administration was reluctant to bring charges.

    “His legal officers correctly understood that this would threaten public interest journalism. It was Donald Trump’s team, which considered the press an ‘enemy of the people’, that took the step.”

    Ó Branáin said: “We reiterate our call for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to stand with Australian Prime Minister Albanese’s calls for our allies the UK and US to bring an end to this, and bring Assange home.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Dark day for press freedom as Priti Patel approves Julian Assange extradition

    Home secretary Priti Patel has approved the US extradition request for journalist and Wikileaks editor Julian Assange. The Australian national, whose work on massive Iraq and Afghanistan war leaks earned him the ire of Western leaders, has been held in Belmarsh prison since 2019. Before that, he had been living in the the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012.

    Press organisations and allies of Assange called the decision a dark day for press freedom around the world.

    His own organisation, Wikileaks, condemned the decision immediately:

     

    And UK investigative outfit Declassified UK re-shared their graph on the connections between what they consider anti-Assange figures involved in his years-long extradition process:

    In a statement, the US media freedom organisation Freedom of the Press said:

    By continuing to extradite Assange, the Biden DOJ is ignoring the dire warnings of virtually every major civil liberties and human rights organization in the country that the case will do irreparable damage to basic press freedom rights of U.S. reporters.

    Hellhole

    Legendary reporter John Pilger, a stalwart ally of Assange, said Patel had condemned the Wikileaks founder to “an American hellhole”:

    Some MPs voiced their opposition to the decision, pointing out that Assange had exposed western crimes carried out during wars in the Middle East:

    Meanwhile US journalist Kevin Gozstola, who closely covered the Assange extradition proceedings, warned that press freedom was diminishing all over the world with the decision:

    Mainstream concerns

    And even mainstream journalists like John Simpson added their voices, warning that the implications of the decision would have far-reaching consequences for journalists everywhere:

    A former UN expert on global democracy and equity said the extradition evidenced “the breakdown of the rule of law in the UK”:

    Moreover, journalist Matt Kennard tweeted a screenshot of the famous Collateral Murder video. The leaked film showing a US helicopter murdering civilians, including civilians in Iraq, was one of Wikileaks’s most powerful exposes:

    Assange’s wife Stella Morris said:

    He is a journalist and a publisher, and he is being punished for doing his job

    Wikileaks confirmed they would appeal against the extradition. Powerful forces are aligned against Assange, and many journalists must worry for their own safety. Especially when they see other reporters treated in this way by two ostensibly democratic states like the UK and US.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Snapperjack, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Assange extradition order a ‘dangerous assault on international journalism’, says MEAA

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The UK government’s decision to uphold the application by the US Department of Justice to extradite Australian publisher Julian Assange imperils journalists everywhere, says the union for Australia’s journalists.

    The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance calls on the Australian government to take urgent steps to lobby the US and UK governments to drop all charges against Assange and to allow him to be with his wife and children.

    Assange, a MEAA member since 2007, may only have a slim chance of challenging extradition to face espionage charges for releasing US government records that revealed the US military committed war crimes against civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists.

    If found guilty, Assange faces a jail term of up to 175 years.

    MEAA media section federal president Karen Percy said it was a dangerous assault on international journalism.

    “We urge the new Australian government to act on Julian Assange’s behalf and lobby for his release,” she said.

    “The actions of the US are a warning sign to journalists and whistleblowers everywhere and undermine the importance of uncovering wrongdoing.

    “Our thoughts are with Julian and his family at this difficult time.”

    In 2011, WikiLeaks was awarded the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in recognition of the impact WikiLeaks’ actions had on public interest journalism by assisting whistleblowers to tell their stories.

    At the time the Walkley judges said WikiLeaks applied new technology to “penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup”.

    This type of publishing partnership has been repeated by other media outlets since, using whistleblowers’ leaks to expose global tax avoidance schemes, among other stories.

    In the WikiLeaks example, only Assange has been charged.

    None of WikiLeaks media partners have been cited in any US government legal actions because of their collaboration with Assange.

    #FreeJulianAssange


    Background on the Julian Assange case. Video: Al Jazeera

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tories want to leave the ECHR, but they’re not ready for bottom up resistance

    A dramatic late intervention saw a deportation flight to Rwanda halted on Tuesday 14 June. The decision, which would have seen asylum seekers sent to the African nation, was a victory for human rights. And it caused an outpouring of rage from the worst sections of British society.

    The critical call was made in Strasbourg’s European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The judicial wing of the Council of Europe, the ECHR emerged following WW2 to protect citizens from their governments. Today, it’s hard to imagine that Britain was a key player in the ECHR’s development. It was also the first signatory of the 46 member states subject to its decisions.

    As one Twitter user pointed out, Boris Johnson’s maternal grandfather was a central figure in the ECHR’s history:

    Euro confusion

    Critics of the ECHR decision, with typical attention to detail, were quick to claim that this kind of thing should have stopped with Brexit. But their error is in thinking that the ECHR is an EU initiative simply because it has ‘European’ in the title.

    This is incorrect. And it is a distinction which even arch-centrists seem to be able to grapple with:

    Many fundamental rights are enshrined in, and protected by, the ECHR. These include everything from anti-slavery laws to freedom of speech, citizenship rights and much more:

    Enraged Tories, including Boris Johnson, were already attacking the ECHR ahead of the court’s decision. As human rights NGO Liberty pointed out, the abandonment of the organisation would be disastrous for many vulnerable groups:

    But Johnson’s rhetoric is a startling turn from his previous views. The Independent unearthed a video of Johnson from 2016. In it, he claims that the ECHR was “one of the great things” the UK had created.

    Equally striking is the fact that Winston Churchill, one of Johnson’s idols, was himself a key figure in the development of the ECHR and the Council of Europe.

    All-out assault

    The ECHR’s intervention is justified, and the decision should be welcomed. However, liberal institutions are not the only factor here. Many individuals and organisations campaigned tirelessly to stop the deportations. Organisations like the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) mounted legal challenges alongside charities like Care 4 Calais and Detention Action. Stop Deportations took direct action, and the law firm InstaLaw also challenged the plans.

    This led top Tories to fall back on accusations of left-wing lawyers disrupting their plans. This was a tactic wheeled out over their plans to stop British soldiers being held to account for war crimes. In 2016, then-PM Theresa May used the Tory conference to insist:

    …we will never again in any future conflict let those activist left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave the men and women of our armed forces.

    Since then, critics of hardline Tory asylum policies have had the same trope used against them.

    Grassroots

    Bottom-up anti-deportation protests have become more high-profile. Only days before the Rwanda flight was cancelled, Peckham locals blockaded an immigration raid until the police and immigration officers left the scene.

    This is despite the police getting rough with the protestors, as video footage of the event shows:

    In May, Glasgow locals stopped authorities in another raid directed against two men who live in the city. On 15 May, the refugee and migrant charity Positive Action in Housing told The Canary they were considering legal action:

    The Home Office have referred to these men as illegal.

    Well they are wrong, and we are now investigating legal action against the Home Office for casting such aspersions.

    The term illegal in this context is part of the hostile environment. It’s not appropriate to use it for people who have lived in the UK for several years and are part of a community.

    War on human rights

    There is a war on human rights in the UK. Refugee solidarity is a vital front in that conflict. The Tories are going all out against some of the most vulnerable in our society. And if they win, we all lose. Why? Well we can do worse than remember the words of the late Tony Benn:

    The way the government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.

    And he was right. Because if they can strip refugees and migrants of their humanity and drag them off to some gulag, you can bet they’ll do the very same to the rest of us if it suits their whims. The buck stops with us. The ECHR won out for now, but we can’t rely on far-off courts. Resistance begins in our own communities

     

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/CherryX, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Dawn Butler being threatened with police reflects the racism and misogyny at the heart of parliament

    Labour MP for Brent Dawn Butler has revealed that House of Commons officials threatened her with police if she didn’t leave the building. This was after the speaker removed her from the chamber in 2021. Her treatment reflects the racist, misogynistic treatment of women of colour MPs at the heart of government.

    Threatened with police

    In July 2021, Butler told MPs that prime minister Boris Johnson had “lied to the House and the country over and over again” throughout the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

    Temporary deputy speaker Judith Cummins ordered Butler to leave the House of Commons after the MP refused to apologise for her comments.

    In an interview that the BBC is due to air on Sunday 19 June, the MP told BBC 1Xtra‘s Richie Brave:

    When I got thrown out, I thought that was it. I was going to get myself a drink in one of the many bars in parliament because I was a bit shaky.

    She added:

    And then I got approached and I was told I needed to leave parliament now, and they said ‘are you going to leave now or do we need to get the police to escort you off the premises?

    This response from Commons officials reflects the widespread over-policing of Black people in Britain. Indeed, police in England and Wales are nine times more likely to stop and search Black people than their white counterparts. And they are over three times more likely to arrest Black people than their white counterparts.

    Butler has experienced racist over-policing firsthand in the streets and in parliament. For example, Met Police allegedly racially profiled the MP and a friend in an August 2020 car stop. And according to Butler, a police officer once physically removed her from a tea room in parliament.

    No support from Labour ‘comrades’

    In the BBC interview, Butler added that fellow Labour members failed to support her following the incident.

    Indeed, although Labour leader Keir Starmer agreed with Butler, stating that the prime minister is “the master of untruths and half-truths”, he also stated that the deputy speaker was right to eject the MP from the Commons.

    Butler told the BBC:

    People in my own party were ready to disown me […] because I broke Parliamentary rules. It’s like they didn’t feel proud of me that I was brave enough to call the prime minister a liar.

    She added:

    The people who I expected a phone call from to say ‘Dawn we’ve got your back’… no it didn’t happen. And I got a lot of abuse as well.

    This speaks to the lack of support and antagonism that women of colour MPs face from within their own ranks. For example, it was a group of Labour MPs who started the hashtag #PrayForDiane to mock Britain’s first ever Black female MP Diane Abbott while she was ill.

    Incidents such as this show that women of colour can’t even rely on the support of those who are supposed to be allies.

    Racism and misogyny at the heart of British government

    Butler’s experience reflects the routine racism and misogyny that women of colour MPs experience while carrying out their duties in parliament.

    Indeed, a 2020 ITV investigation found that most MPs of colour have experienced racism during their time in parliament, with over half experiencing racism directly from other MPs.

    For example, Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq told ITV that someone advised her to run for parliament using her white husband’s surname because:

    people wouldn’t vote for ‘Tulip Siddiq’.

    And for years, Labour MP for Hackney North Diane Abbott has spoken out about the racist and misogynistic abuse she has experienced from online trolls and from fellow politicians.

    Despite their widely documented lived experiences, no Black MPs were initially chosen to take part in an emergency House of Commons debate about racist online abuse. The Commons speaker only invited two Black MPs to take part in the debate after shadow secretary for women and equalities Marsha de Cordova expressed her ‘disappointment’ at having not been selected.

    In December 2021, Tory MPs argued against proposals to introduce a new parliamentary behaviour code to protect members against racism and misogyny.

    All this shows that parliament regards calling out the country’s elected leader for his consistent, dangerous lies to be a far greater crime than the racist and misogynistic treatment of marginalised MPs who stand for truth and justice.

    This country needs more fearless, outspoken politicians like Dawn Butler to challenge the Tories’ discriminatory, fascist agenda and Labour’s politics of ‘sitting on the fence’. But as things stand, the next generation of potential MPs will be put off from entering the elitist, misogynistic and racist Houses of Parliament. Maintaining a hostile environment for those who would seek to represent people from minority communities only serves to marginalise them further.

    Featured image via Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash and Rwendland/Wikimedia Commons resized 770 x 403 px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser quits

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Herding unicorns: UK woos 60 Aussie tech companies

    More than 60 Australian technology scaleups have arrived in the UK for London Tech Week, Europe’s largest technology event. The cohort are being supported by the UK government, which wants to tap the Australian companies to bolster its own trillion-dollar-sector and attract more foreign investment. The group is being assisted by Australian state trade agencies…

    The post Herding unicorns: UK woos 60 Aussie tech companies appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • The government’s class war just got a new weapon

    The government just got a new weapon in the armoury of its ongoing class war. It comes in the form of wages. Official figures show that workers’ take-home pay is, for some, now in deflation. And so far, the government has done nothing to address this.

    Class war: ongoing

    The Canary has been reporting on the government’s ongoing class war. It’s being framed by much of the media and many politicians as a ‘cost of living crisis’. The reality is that the government is failing to enact policies that will protect the poorest people in society – or it is actively putting policies in place that are harmful to them.

    For example, the government’s windfall tax put in place measures like £650 grants for families reliant on social security. The Tories and others trumpeted this as supporting the poorest people. However, the most deprived families will still be £300 a year worse off due to spiralling inflation. The government knows this – and yet fails to act further. This is one example of class war.

    Now, however, we also know the state of wage growth for UK workers. And the situation is looking dire whilst the government stands idly by.

    ONS: wage collapse

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released its latest labour market data. It found that year-on-year wage growth, from February to April 2022, was:

    • 6.8% for total pay (including bonuses).
    • 4.2% for regular pay.
    • 8% in the private sector.
    • 1.5% in the public sector.

    Finances and business services grew by the most (10.6%). But this was due to bonuses – which, as The Canary previously reported, were through the roof if you were a banker, running into billions of pounds. Meanwhile, the ONS reported that wholesaling, retailing, hotels and restaurants wages grew by 8.4%. However, this was partly because a year earlier, furlough was in place, meaning that wages in these sectors were lower. Therefore, the 8.4% growth is based on the lower starting position from the earlier year.

    Overall, though, all of this masks the reality. As the ONS reported, when you take out bonuses and adjust wages in real terms (factoring in inflation), then they actually fell by 2.2% from February to April. This is the biggest three-month decline since 2011 – even more than during the height of the pandemic. In April alone, regular wages fell in real terms by 4.5% – the biggest one-month collapse since records began.

    A spiralling disaster

    This is a disaster for many workers – and the situation will only get worse. The ONS figures only run up until April, and use an inflation figure of 6.5%. The Bank of England is saying that inflation will hit 10% this year.

    Moreover, what’s not included in wage growth are people who are reliant fully or in part on social security. The government is only giving them a just-over-3% increase in payments this year. Therefore, based on the ONS inflation rate of 6.5%, in April 2022 their real-terms income dropped by around 3.4%. And as for workers, the situation will only get worse.

    As always, the government knows all this. And yet, as at every turn in its ongoing class war, it’s failing to act.

    Featured image via Frantisek_Krejci – pixabay

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.