– Not The BCFM Politics Show comes this week from The Kuumba Centre Cafe after being CANCELLED by Keith Cowling's PRSC LGBTQ+ Trans-rights activists – Farage blames EU/NATO for Ukraine war, Reform UK surge 3% ahead of Tories in UK election poll – Julian Assange Arrives a free man in Australia. Who can stop Ukraine, Gaza wars? – Jude English, expelled Bristol Green Councillor, joins Tony and Martin. What Bristol Council was like under Marvin. What working with the Greens was like. – The FSU is a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the free speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely. – Politicians pretending to know what they’re doing. Big business controls politics. Marvin the ex-mayor’s new job at Bristol University: honorary professor of planning monstrosities. – Green Women’s Declaration – Jude’s complaint. Free Speech Union letter supporting Jude. Jude was cancelled from the Green Party for saying you can’t choose your sex. – – – – Freedom of speech. Green Party not professional. Intellectual rigour needed. – Eight Green Party Members Expelled in Gender Critical Purge including one former councillor, claim to have been expelled from the party for expressing gender critical views. – Tony, Dave and Martin’s NOT The BCfm Politics show CANCELLED/EVICTED from People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) arts centre – email from Chloe Slater and Keith Cowling explaining why: – ‘Transphobic’ leaflets were left in the building by a recent guest! Compromise and political discourse lacking: Subject: Use of the Radio Studio – The irony of a man taking hormones, and trying to become a woman, being judge and jury on how women’s rights are allowed to be discussed. Staff Picks: Pride by Chloe Slater: – But this cancellation of NOT The BCfm Politics Show show by PRSC was a decision really made by the PRSC board, hand-picked and chaired by Keith Cowling. – PRSC founder Chris Chalkley was expelled in an upsetting 2019 coup, organised by the same Keith Cowling. So who is Keith Cowling – 11th Hour Blog with Jennifer Bilek – The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI) The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird – Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology by Jennifer Bilek – How has the transgender issue become so toxic? Or was it always designed to be so in order to fracture and destroy communities, campaigns and organisations, particularly on the left? – Origins in CIA interference with 1960s French politics. Many believe postmodernism and post-structuralism have been deliberately funded to infiltrate the left in order to destroy it. – BIG, HIDDEN, Constitutional changes coming to the UK with Keir Starmer next week – Peter Hitchens – what he thinks is real agenda of Labour Party under Starmer. – Paul McDonald, Reform Party candidate for NE Somerset and Hanham, joins Tony and Martin. He used to do lobbying for big business two economic views – Keynesian and Austrian – – C4 expose of Reform ‘Undercover – Inside Reform UK’ – racist and homophobic opinions. Exclusive: Undercover inside Reform’s campaign – – Nigel Farage’s view on the Ukraine war. Farage 10 years ago in EU predicting war in Ukraine due to provocation from West. Covid lockdowns. Modern thinking left brained – The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff – – Talk Radio, Peter Cardwell – David from Exeter on Labour rejoining the EU and EU army. UK’s Labour would target defense ‘pact’ with EU – The opposition party plans to create a ‘bespoke’ defense relationship with the EU if it forms the next government. – Reversing Brexit: How Labour plans to bring the UK back in line with the EUSir Keir Starmer wants to forge closer ties with Europe if his party wins the election – – Not The BCFM Politics Show comes this week from The Kuumba Centre Cafe after being CANCELLED by Trans-rights activists from (PRSC) arts centre – Kuumba Community Centre: Council trying to shut them down. Community stand off with council over eviction threat of beloved Kuumba Centre in St Paul’s – Julian Assange is finally free and back in Australia! His lawyer Jen Robinson at the press conference in Australia – the plea bargain Julian had to agree to. – EXCLUSIVE Kristinn Harfnsson, present editor of Wikileaks, on Julian being free and what Wikileaks is doing now. Invisible digital fingerprint now on leaks. May be traced. – EXCLUSIVE Craig Murray, ex-ambassador, journalist, standing in Blackburn for The Workers Party of George Galloway. Ukraine war and Assange being free. – A timeline of the legal case involving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange The drawn-out legal case involving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has concluded – EXCLUSIVE: Wafa Aludaini, Palestinian journalist, gives an update on the terrible situation in Gaza. Drones. Famine and the rising death toll in Gaza by Wafa Aludaini – – Naomi Wolf, Jewish author, relates verses from Old Testament on Jews and tpromised land’.hese promises from God come with conditions such as mercy, kindness and justice . – And we STOP being “God’s people” when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, “God’s people.” – And the “contract” to “give” us Israel is conditional — we can live in God’s land IF we are “God’s people” in this way — just, merciful, compassionate. – Annual #1984symposium: Two Orwell-loving tech writers by the name of Christian at George Orwell’s grave this week on his birthday giving their views on latest tech dangers. – Mass surveillance by another name Amnesty International UK / Blogs Into the ether The Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, introduced by the UK government on Wednesday – Why 2024 Is More Like 1984 Than We Realise, Daily Express Fergus Kelly TIMELESS WARNING: Author George Orwell his iconic novel 24th June 2024 – not published online – Three-quarters of a century after publication of his most famous novel, George Orwell’s bleak dystopian vision remains a clarion call for everything we must strive to avoid … – NOT The BCfm Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling
Jude English, expelled Bristol Green Councillor, joins Tony and Martin. What Bristol Council was like under Marvin. What working with the Greens was like. Jude was part of Place Scrutiny – Bristol Arena. No democracy under Marvin. No-fault suspensions of Green Party Members The FSU is a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the free speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely. We write on behalf of two our members, Zoe Hatch and Jude English. Both have been active members of the Green Party of England and Wales, and held elected office. Both have been subject to disciplinary procedures by the party, resulting largely from their involvement with the Green Party Women group, and the positions they have openly taken on the issues of sex and gender. We believe that the treatment of our two members, and the handling of wider issues pertaining to sex and gender, have implications for freedom of expression and its proper place within political parties. We are therefore writing to draw your attention to concerns we have with how the Green Party may not be giving due regard to the importance of this fundamental democratic principle in its handling of policy discussions. We ask that you give these matters careful and serious consideration. We have seen evidence to suggest that the problem extends well beyond the two members on whose behalf we write here, and may be systemic to the Party. Disciplinary procedure is being weaponised to settle legitimate debate around policy and bypass the democratic process. For reasons set out below, we believe this may be unlawful. Factual and conceptual backgroundThe issues relate to the debate between two schools of thought on sex and gender. This is a debate which is taking place not just within the Green Party, but within wider society. The first school of thought, which may be described as the ‘gender identity’ belief, summed up by the statement‘trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid’. This view is also written into the Green Party’s charter of Rights and Responsibilities, at RR530…..
Politicians pretending to know what they’re doing. Big business controls politics. Marvin the ex-mayor’s new job at Bristol University: honorary professor of planning monstrosities. Twitter X – Jude Brew. Green Women’s Declaration – Jude’s complaint. Free Speech Union letter supporting Jude. Jude was cancelled from the Green Party for saying you can’t choose your sex. Freedom of speech. Green Party not professional. Intellectual rigour needed. Eight Green Party Members Expelled in Alleged Gender Critical Purge Eight members of the Green Party, including one former councillor, claim to have been expelled from the party for expressing gender critical views. This week, eight members received a letter notifying them of their expulsion from the party. The letter claimed they had broken a clause of the party constitution which prohibits members from campaigning for someone who is standing against a Green Party candidate. Seven of the eight members expelled had supported the campaign of Alison Teal, who was suspended from the Green Party in 2022 for arguing that sex is a biological characteristic which cannot change over time. She is now running as an Independent in Sheffield Central at the General Election. However, with six of the eight expelled previously signing the Green Women’s Declaration, which advocates for women as a sex, and three as current or former members of the Green Party Women Committee, those expelled saw this as “a fundamental attack on women who defend their sex-based rights”. A statement by the Green Women’s Declaration following the expulsions said “the Green Party has no agreed definition for ‘campaigning’ and some of the expelled did as little as sharing social media posts acknowledging a candidacy.” It added: “At least 17 signatories to the Green Women’s Declaration have now been expelled or suspended, mirroring the actions of the Scottish Green Party who expelled 14 members for signing our sister declaration.” While PoliticsHome previously reported the Green Women’s Declaration “were considering” taking legal action, English now said that with “about 20 people who have had their membership of a political party denied purely on the grounds of their belief”, they are “now at the point where we report to the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission]”. English was expelled this week for retweeting three tweets in support of Teal. However, English claims she is technically no longer a Green Party member so cannot be expelled. She said: “I’ve been expelled with no disciplinary process. The reason they think they can do this with no disciplinary process is because I campaigned against another Green Party candidate in Sheffield. “But I am not a member of the Green Party at this point, so that can’t be used. So we have to go back to the original complaint, which was the complaint about my gender critical beliefs which originally expelled me on 16 March. “What it really makes clear is this is just a process where they’ve got a list of people, and they’re just going: ‘[let’s do] anything we can do to get rid of these people outside out of our party’”. English said her expulsion was evidence that members of the Green Party Regional Council, which oversees disciplinary processes, are “just shooting down anyone left, right and centre” who disagrees with gender identity ideologies within the party.
Tony, Dave and Martin’s NOT The BCfm Politics show CANCELLED/EVICTED from People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) arts centre – email from Chloe Slater and Keith Cowling explaining why: ‘Transphobic’ leaflets were left in the building by a recent guest! Compromise and political discourse lacking: Subject: Use of the Radio Studio From: Chloe Slater <chloe@prsc.org.uk> Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2024 10:35. Hi Tony, We understand it hasn’t been too easy to share the space over the last few months and we appreciate your efforts to make it work. We also appreciate all of the work that you and Dave have done around the radio suite over the years and we take responsibility for not pushing the radio further, when you were willing to help us out. We’ve recently become aware of some transphobic material that was left both in the leaflet box outside the studio and pinned to the board outside. You’ve been asked previously to be careful about the type of material brought into the building by you or your guests and we don’t believe that you would have been unaware of just how inappropriate and offensive it would be to users of our building. It’s vital that we maintain an environment that welcomes all of our community and we consider this an extremely serious breach of that trust. In light of this, we will no longer be able to offer you use of the radio suite. Please let us know when you or Dave would like to come and retrieve your equipment and drop off your keys. Kind regards PRSC Directors (Keith Cowling, chair) PRSC / Stokes Croft China 17-35 Jamaica St Bristol BS2 8JP.
The irony of a man taking hormones, and trying to become a woman, being judge and jury on how women’s rights are allowed to be discussed. Staff Picks: Pride by Chloe Slater: I was originally planning on writing this as a personal piece on what Pride means to me as a trans person and what inspired me to create this set of designs. Events of the last two weeks have jolted me into a rethink of what Pride means to all of us, and why it’s more important than ever to remember its origins and that the fight for rights is not a battle won. Pride is such an important time for so many in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s become a month when we celebrate being able to express our identities and remember the efforts of so many and the lives lost in the struggles to gain our rights, freedoms and the relative safety enjoyed by many in this community. And for so long it’s felt like society has been moving slowly but inexorably in the direction of progress, towards more equal rights and opportunities and greater acceptance by the public at large. These last weeks have been a stark reminder of how far we still have to go, and how easily those rights can and will be lost if we lose focus and allow others to spread misinformation and fear about the community and our goals and needs. Billionaire author JK Rowling, at a time of global unrest and protest over the Black Lives Matter movement, decided to use her considerable influence and platform to pen an essay in response to criticism she received over a number of transphobic tweets. I’m not going to link it, you can find it on her blog, but it’s honestly one of the most disheartening and distressing anti trans pieces I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot! – because it’s carefully presented to seem moderate and reasonable, and comes from the author of one of the most successful and loved series of all time – with a personal twitter following larger than the entire UK trans population. It’s a skilled piece of manipulation, full of misinformation (not sourced, of course), misinterpretations and gentle slurs that, if you aren’t well versed in the type of language used by those who seek to curtail our rights, might appear to be common sense and right minded thinking. I don’t have the time to address the specifics of the essay but thankfully you can find a thorough rebuttal here. And if you’re in the mood to learn more about how a subset of left leaning ‘gender critical’ feminists ended up with attitudes towards trans people that are more akin to those of the far right then this superb piece taught me a lot and might be helpful for you too! On the back of Rowling’s essay came a leak to the Times on Sunday about how the Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss plans to reject reforms to the Gender Recognition Act – reforms that would simply have removed some of the cost and bureaucracy around getting a Gender Recognition Certificate – supported by 70% of respondents to the consultation (which were deemed irrelevant seemingly due to respondents being too close to and caring too much about the issue). But further to this, and much more worrying are her plans to roll back rights that have been in place without issue for a decade – to use public facilities that correspond to our gender identity. This will put trans people, one of the most vulnerable populations in our country, as well as any non gender conforming cis women, at direct risk of harassment and harm. You can read more about the reforms and single-sex spaces here.
But this cancellation of NOT The BCfm Politics Show show by PRSC was a decision really made by the PRSC board, hand-picked and chaired by Keith Cowling. PRSC founder Chris Chalkley was expelled in an upsetting 2019 coup, organised by the same Keith Cowling. So who is Keith Cowling who also underhandedly removed Tony Gosling from the Bristol Community Land Trust (BCLT) board, which Tony helped found, seven years ago? Bristol’s community housing success story It might not single-handedly solve Bristol’s housing crisis, but a ground-breaking project in Fishponds has certainly transformed the lives of the people who now call it home. Keith Cowling, chair of BCLT’s volunteer board, has believed in the project from the start and played an integral role in getting it off the ground. Speaking on Monday, he admits it has been challenging to say the least and nearly failed on more than one occasion. “This little development has changed a number of lives and they all have their own moving stories,” says Cowling. “Until we proved that we could build houses, CLT didn’t warrant much attention, but now we have proved we can, everything has changed. “Although this programme hasn’t solved the problems of how to build a lot of high quality, low cost homes, it has shown that a solution is possible. The project has created a process for a bunch of Bristol people in housing need.”
11th Hour Blog with Jennifer Bilek – The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI) The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology by Jennifer Bilek June 14, 2022 One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions. I first wrote about the Pritzkers, whose fortune originated in the Hyatt hotel chain, and their philanthropy directed toward normalizing what people call “transgenderism” in 2018. I have since stopped using the word “transgenderism” as it has no clear boundaries, which makes it useless for communication, and have instead opted for the term SSI, which more clearly defines what some of the Pritzkers and their allies are funding—even as it ignores the biological reality of “male” and “female” and “gay” and “straight.” The creation and normalization of SSI speaks much more directly to what is happening in American culture, and elsewhere, under an umbrella of human rights. With the introduction of SSI, the current incarnation of the LGBTQ+ network—as distinct from the prior movement that fought for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, and which ended in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that LGBTQ+ is a protected class for discrimination purposes—is working closely with the techno-medical complex, big banks, international law firms, pharma giants, and corporate power to solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic species—which contradicts reality and the fundamental premises not only of “traditional” religions but of the gay and lesbian civil rights movements and much of the feminist movement, for which sexual dimorphism and resulting gender differences are foundational premises.
How has the transgender issue become so toxic? Or was it always designed to be so in order to fracture and destroy communities, campaigns and organisations, particularly on the left? Origins in the CIA interference with 1960s French politics. Many believe postmodernism and post-structuralism have been deliberately funded to infiltrate the left in order to destroy it. On the origins and development of postmodernism …This brings us to the postmodernists themselves. A significant theoretical trend in this period was the wave of post-structuralist theorists. Structuralism, broadly, argued that things had to be understood in terms of their structural interrelations. A core premise of structuralism is that “consciousness is structured like a language.” They believed that our thoughts and ideas weren’t a reflection of objective material reality, but rather that the “symbolic order” of language, along with all of its linguistic rules, stood in a mediator between reality and our conception of reality. This premise isn’t fundamentally opposed to Marxism. As Stalin said in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”, “Whatever thoughts arise in the human mind and at whatever moment, they can arise and exist only on the basis of the linguistic material, on the basis of language terms and phrases. Bare thoughts, free of the linguistic material, free of the ‘natural matter’ of language, do not exist.” Siraj explains in Post-modernism Today that the problem with the structuralist understanding is that “all aspects of the social world are shaped by the structure of language.” In other words, for the structuralists, it isn’t class struggle, but language that shapes society. Stalin’s main point was that language doesn’t act as a superstructure. The structuralists go into the realm of idealism by arguing that language is determinant. Post-structuralism seeks to expand upon this by arguing that these linguistic structures are constituted by systems of power. These theorists, such as the French philosophers Michel Foucault, drifted into abstraction, relativism, and subjective idealism. The post-structuralists argued that we cannot criticize systems of power by relying on binary notions like exploiter and exploited that ground Marxist class analysis. Instead, they argued that we should use textual interpretation, drawing from linguistics, anthropology and psychology, to criticize power. Furthermore, since reality is shaped by language and power, the postmodernists opposed any notion of objectivity and universalism as what Jean-François Lyotard called “meta-narratives.” These “meta-narratives,” they said, were just big stories, or overarching myths, that we tell in a futile attempt to make sense of a reality that we cannot ultimately comprehend. Historical necessity and universality therefore were discarded as everything is judged to be contingent and relative. As the postmodernists would have it, Marxism is mythology. Therefore, they subjected these “meta-narratives” to the same idealist linguistic criticism. Since we could only analyze language and not reality itself, language came to stand in for material reality. The post-structuralists, therefore, focused largely on critical analysis of art and literature, but the ideas they developed spread into the then largely petit bourgeois and student-led social movements. There, postmodern discourse based on difference, identity and language struggle to displace the centrality of class analysis and the universality of Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the working class struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression. Michel Foucault was probably the most influential postmodern theorist, so we should examine his main ideas. He was a student of Althusser who devoted himself to developing the thought of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in a postmodern context. Foucault was originally drawn to Western Marxism, but later rejected Marxism completely. Nevertheless, he presents himself as a friend of the oppressed, focusing his work on the treatment and mistreatment of mental illness (in Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic), prisoners (in Discipline and Punish), and sexual repression (The History of Sexuality).
BIG, HIDDEN, Constitutional changes coming to the UK with Keir Starmer next week – Peter Hitchens – what he thinks is real agenda of Labour Party under Starmer. PETER HITCHENS: Vote in Labour and you will have 20 dispiriting years in which to rue the mistake By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday This country’s Left-wing elite feel it in their fingers and toes, the prospect of full political power flowing back to their faction. They’re not supposed to gloat before Labour win – as they expect to do on Thursday. Professional radicals such as Sir Keir Starmer keep their glee under control. They know that you can lose elections in the last 36 hours if you look too sure of yourself. But the Left’s new aristocracy of showbiz grandees have no such discipline. This is why you should take careful note of the outburst, at yet another awards ceremony, by a very rich and famous actor called David Tennant. I believe he is often on TV. Mr Tennant decided to attack the Tory Minister Kemi Badenoch, saying he would like to live in a world where Ms Badenoch ‘doesn’t exist any more’. He also said she should ‘shut up’. Sir Keir will have ground his teeth when he heard this. The last thing he wants is for people to notice just how nasty, arrogant and dangerous the Blairite project he leads has become. But he cannot control this branch of his movement, in the way he can discipline MPs and sycophantic media. What was Mr Tennant saying? He was saying Ms Badenoch should be silenced because he disagrees with her opinions. But far worse than that, he was wishing she was dead. Don’t be shocked. What else does it mean to say he wishes she did not exist? She does exist. How else can she cease to exist except by dying? This is common currency on the modern compassionate Left. Barely a week passes on anti-social media when some idealist does not go on Twitter to suggest that I should become dead. I take it as a compliment. They think themselves so good that those who disagree with them are not just wrong (as I think they are) but evil. Now, this does not mean that Keir Starmer, if he wins on Thursday, will begin building Stalin-style Gulag camps in which his opponents can be worked and starved to death. Modern Leftism is far more sophisticated than that. Why lock people up when you can simply threaten them with unemployment if they step out of line? Amnesty International will never intervene because some local authority worker has lost her job for wearing a cross or whatever it is. And there is no need at all to actually shoot people you wish did not exist. You cancel them instead, denying them access to broadcasting, publishing, and of course to anti-social media – where we learned during Covid of the many methods by which unwanted persons or opinions can be suppressed or made invisible. Do you think that, under a Starmer government, the BBC and Ofcom will become more sympathetic to conservative points of view? Or that school teachers and university lecturers who do not conform will prosper? The children of conservative patriots will be taught, even more than they are already, to despise their parents and their opinions. This will be a big part of the coming wave of changes, in taxation, in the justice system, in the constitution, in the operation of new ‘rights’ for favoured categories, in the granting of votes to people friendly to the Left. Then there will be a continuing stream of appointments, to the House of Lords, to state bodies, to key committees, of people loyal to Starmerism. I agree with those who accuse the Tories of failing to counter any of this. But the mere existence of a non-Labour majority in Parliament has been a brake on the total swallowing of the state machine by people who think like Mr Tennant and talk like Sir Keir Starmer. If Labour wins, all this will happen. But it is still preventable. The election does not take place until Thursday. For most of us there is still time to avoid a terrible mistake. The polls mean nothing if we defy them. Why let your mind, will and hand be influenced by a (quite possibly inaccurate) survey of what other people will do? Be a human, not a flock animal. No doubt many of my readers think the Tories are useless, but they cannot believe this as strongly as I do. Even so, this week’s poll is not a referendum on the Tories. It is an election which will choose the next government. And if you fail to vote against Labour in sufficient numbers, I reckon you will have 20 hard, dispiriting years in which to regret your mistake, in putting into government people who think they are so good that they wish you and I were dead.
Paul McDonald, Reform Party candidate for NE Somerset and Hanham, joins Tony and Martin. He used to do lobbying for big business. Difference between two economic views – Keynesian and Austrian – planned vs free economy. Candidate – Paul MacDonnell Paul MacDonnell was executive director of Global Digital Foundation—a technology-policy think tank which he co-founded—from 2016-2024. He is a specialist in public policy that affects the development and use of digital technology. He is currently researching the threat to free speech posed by government regulation, organisations’ speech-codes, and censorship by digital platforms. Prior to founding Global Digital Foundation, Paul was head of European policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Brussels. Before that he spent 12 years as director of regulatory policy and EU affairs at Insurance Ireland, the industry association of the national and international Irish insurance industry. In 2015 he launched an initiative, supported by the OECD, to develop a workplace auto-enrolment pension for all Irish workers. He began his career with Hill & Knowlton’s government affairs division in London where he provided advice to a number of Fortune 500 companies. In 2001 he co-founded an economic policy forum in Dublin, Open Republic, which, as well as hosting events aimed at policy-makers and politicians on such issues as pensions, taxation and the EU, was the Irish publisher of the Economic Freedom of the World Report. Paul has extensive broadcast and print media experience and has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The Critic Magazine, Economic Affairs, EurActiv, EU Observer, and Europe’s World.
C4 expose of Reform ‘Undercover – Inside Reform UK’ – racist and homophobic opinions. Exclusive: Undercover inside Reform’s campaign – evidence of homophobia and canvasser’s racism Channel 4 News has gone undercover in Nigel Farage’s prospective seat in Clacton, following individuals closely associated with Reform UK’s campaign Channel 4 News has carried out an undercover investigation within the Reform UK campaign in Clacton, exposing examples of racist language and an apparent admission that the party has breached the local electoral campaign spending limit in the seat. An undercover investigator conducted filming for Channel 4 News within the Reform UK campaign in Clacton, with filming concluding last week. The recorded footage reveals a Reform UK canvasser openly making racist and Islamophobic comments to potential voters on the ground, as he represents the party. It also includes footage of a conversation between: George Jones, a veteran of UKIP and the Brexit Party now running events for Mr Farage’s campaign; Rob Bates, a senior Reform UK campaigner; and Roger Gravett, Reform UK’s regional manager for London and candidate for Tottenham. Central to the footage is discussion of apparent challenges facing the campaign, including local spending restrictions. Referring to the legal spending limit for a campaign in a single seat, Mr Gravett says: “A short campaign you’ve got, I don’t know, twenty grand or whatever it is, the figure”. In response, Mr Bates is heard saying: “We’ve spent double that already, don’t worry”, before Mr Jones adds: “It’s twenty grand minus… It’s six for VAT. So actually it’s only f****** fifteen.”
Nigel Farage’s view on the Ukraine war. Farage 10 years ago in EU predicting war in Ukraine due to provocation from West. Covid lockdowns. Modern thinking left brained reliance on ‘science’ and power grabs. Sunak failed to deter Reform ..Express ‘NATO provoked war in Ukraine’ says Farage – Reform UK surges ahead of Tories in bombshell new poll despite raging Ukraine row EXCLUSIVE – Nigel Farage’s party could be on course for swathes of seats according to a new poll for the Daily Express. The rows surrounding Nigel Farage’s views on Ukraine have failed to deter momentum for Reform UK ahead of the General Election, a new poll has revealed. An exclusive poll for the Daily Express by Whitestone Insight, which surveyed 2,012 people across Wednesday and Thursday of this week, found Reform UK up one point to a whopping 21 percent compared to last week. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have dropped another percentage point to just 18 percent, resulting in the gap between Mr Farage and Rishi Sunak widening to three points. The latest poll will spark more jitters at Tory high command with less than a week to go until polling day. Labour meanwhile is down one point to 38 percent, but the gulf between Sir Keir and Mr Sunak still means Labour is on course for an unprecedented super majority. Sponsored Feeding the poll into Electoral Calculus’ seat prediction model, it suggests Labour is on course for a majority of 244 seats over all the other parties. In stark contrast, the Tories would crash to just 57 seats according to this poll, with Reform UK taking to the Commons with a substantial 31 wins. The Lib Dems, who are down one point to 11 percent in today’s Whitestone poll, would become the official opposition with 72 seats in the Commons. Lachlan Rurlander, a consultant at Whitestone Insight, reacted: “With one week to go until polling day, these results suggest that the job of Leader of the Opposition is all to play for. “Reform UK have managed to sustain some momentum and have achieved a three-point lead over the Conservatives, despite what has widely been seen as a difficult week for Nigel Farage.”
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff – creep of health and safety. In this book, free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigate a new cultural phenomenon of “safetyism”, beginning on American college campuses in 2014 and spreading throughout academic institutions in the English-speaking world. Looking at the consequences of paranoid parenting, the increase in anxiety and depression amongst students and the rise of new ideas about justice, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that well-intended but misguided attempts to protect young people are damaging their development and mental health, the functioning of educational systems and even democracy itself. – No one is omniscient or infallible, so a willingness to evaluate new ideas is vital to understanding our world. Yet universities, which ought to be forums for open debate, are developing a reputation for dogmatism and intolerance. Haidt and Lukianoff, distinguished advocates of freedom of expression, offer a deep analysis of what’s going wrong on campus, and how we can hold universities to their highest ideals. — Steven Pinker Our behavior in society is not immune to the power of rational scientific analysis. Through that lens, prepare yourself for a candid look at the softening of America, and what we can do about it. — Neil deGrasse Tyson We can talk ourselves into believing that some kinds of speech will shatter us, or we can talk ourselves out of that belief. The authors know the science. We are not as fragile as our self-appointed protectors suppose. Read this deeply informed book to become a more resilient soul in a more resilient democracy. — Philip E. Tetlock Their message is an urgent one… it is one that resonates well beyond dusty libraries and manicured quadrangles, into all of our lives — Josh Glancy ? The Sunday Times
Talk Radio, Peter Cardwell – David from Exeter on Labour rejoining the EU and EU army. UK’s Labour would target defense ‘pact’ with EU The opposition party plans to create a ‘bespoke’ defense relationship with the EU if it forms the next government. BRUSSELS — The U.K. Labour Party wants a much closer relationship with the EU, France and Germany on defense, if it takes power after a general election in 2024. Shadow Defense Secretary John Healey told POLITICO that Labour will upend the Tories’ defense and security policy, by aiming to deepen military cooperation around the EU. “We would look to put in place systematic cooperation and a defense and security pact with the European Union,” Healey said following a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. “We would begin work directly after the election.” A year out from a general election, with his opposition Labour Party 19 percentage points ahead of the ruling Conservatives in the polls, Healey is on a mission to make it clear that a Labour government will want the United Kingdom back at the table when it comes to EU defense cooperation. “If we win the election … we must rebuild relationships with key allies and with the European Union,” Healey said. “Relationships that were badly damaged, sometimes deliberately so, during the Brexit process.” That’s a dramatic shift from the Conservatives. A defense and security treaty that would have formalized U.K.–EU cooperation was included in the political declaration that set out the terms of a post-Brexit relationship, but ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson killed that offer. There are still areas of cooperation. The U.K. is part of a defense project under the EU’s sector coordination group — known as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) — on military mobility. But Healey says a Labour government would look to expand that to include cooperation on logistics projects and cyber-security along with a broader strategic dialogue. “We in the U.K. have particular expertise in military and security intelligence,” he said. EU-led peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and off the coast of Somalia offer further obvious areas of cooperation. “I know from the EU that they would welcome U.K. support in those sorts of areas,” Healey said…
Reversing Brexit: How Labour plans to bring the UK back in line with the EUSir Keir Starmer wants to forge closer ties with Europe if his party wins the election – but exactly how is he plotting to do so? Back in 2019, Sir Keir Starmer and other Labour heavyweights including David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary in line to oversee the next generation of Brexit talks, called for a second referendum on the UK’s EU membership. Had they been successful, they would have urged Labour to back Remain. But the fact remains that the EU’s hard-nosed negotiators won’t be prepared to cut Sir Keir any slack, just because they are dealing with Labour and not the Tories. The European Commission has its own interests, its own red lines and its own goals and will demand London aligns with EU rules as the price for the agreement. It will seek to limit divergence from EU rules because the UK is a large and close market to it – and is now an economic competitor as well. It will insist that Labour cannot “cherry-pick” the benefits of EU membership without the obligations and will argue that the bloc’s bigger size and huge market gives it the right to dictate the terms of any new Brexit deal. Any Labour ask will also be met with demands from Brussels for access to British fishing waters and a ‘lite’ freedom of movement deal to boost youth mobility and increase European students’ access to UK universities. Labour has ruled out a return to the EU’s single market and customs union, as well as the youth mobility deal called for by Brussels. However, as in any negotiation, those red lines will come under pressure.
North East Somerset and Hanham constituency Barmy Brunch, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party Edmund Cannon, Green Party Nicholas Hales, Independent Paul MacDonnell, Reform UK Dan Norris, Labour Party Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative and Unionist Party Dine Romero, Liberal Democrats
Blackburn constituency Kate Hollern, Labour Party Adnan Hussain, Independent Jamie McGowan, Conservative and Unionist Party Denise Morgan, Green Party Craig Murray, Workers Party of Britain Natasha Shah, Independent Tommy Temperley, Reform UK Adam Waller-Slack, Liberal Democrats
Clacton constituency Matthew Bensilum, Liberal Democrats Nigel Farage, Reform UK Craig Jamieson, Climate Party Tony Mack, Independent Natasha Osben, Green Party Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, Labour Party Tasos Papanastasiou, Heritage Party Andrew Pemberton, UK Independence Party (UKIP) Giles Watling, Conservative and Unionist Party
Bitchute video of complete show – Essentials: Michael Hudson | Blackrock/Vanguard | Tony on Brexit & The Traitors of Arnhem | Evolution | War between God & Lucifer | Plan for three World Wars | Nuclear Armed IDF Doomsday Cult | Armageddonists I have known: Nick Land (1975-8) | George Monbiot (1995-8) | Aanirfan | Manna for the Revelation Generation: CONSPIRACY CLASSICS, longer interviews/lectures
want your cooperation, we want to get back on track – end of story.” Originally named Inkworks, Kuumba was transferred to the Inkworks Management Committee in 1974 as a community asset. It was agreed that volunteer builders would convert an abandoned ink factory into a community centre, run by and for the St Paul’s community. It would provide essential social services, skills workshops and a day nursery. Sister Nwani says that the Rasta community in the area have played a leading role in the centre since its formation. It has since served as a nursery, a late-night music venue, a space for religious gatherings, and a venue for cultural and political events. Its units now house a record label, café, library, and historical archive documenting Bristol’s struggle for Black liberation. During our visit, stories about the space were exchanged, reminiscing about past events with reggae stars, a Polish neighbour who found solace in the Rastas’ drumming during his terminal illness, the women’s groups that cooked, crafted, and raised children together in the space. Both occupiers and the Cable were shown the drums and rhythms used by Rastas for worship and protest, exemplifying the exchange of cultures that takes place here.
Julian Assange is finally free and back in Australia! His lawyer Jen Robinson at the press conference in Australia – the plea bargain Julian had to agree to. Julian Assange wakes in Australia as a free man, after more than a decade of jail cells and embassy walls Julian Assange is standing on Australian soil, having spent his first night in his home country in nearly 15 years. His lawyer Jen Robinson, filled with emotion as she addressed a rowdy media pack in Canberra, said Assange’s return home had “saved his life”. Stella Assange, human rights activist, Julian’s wife, and the mother of their two children, said she could not describe the moment when he rushed from the plane, across the tarmac, and into her arms. “I was overcome by emotion when I first heard there were crowds cheering, that I didn’t even know were there,” Ms Assange said, recounting their reunion. “We embraced, and I think you’ve seen the pictures. I don’t want to express in words what is obvious from the image.” On social media, she offered one simple word next to the photo of their embrace: “home”.
EXCLUSIVE Kristinn Harfnsson, present editor of Wikileaks, on Julian being free and what Wikileaks is doing now. Invisible digital fingerprint now on leaks. May be traced. !HOW IT HAPPENED! Assange plea came after warning that U.S. would lose extradition fight …….Then, in March, a British court ruled that it was preparing to send Assange to the United States — if the Americans affirmed he was entitled to the same free-speech protections as a U.S. citizen. Otherwise, the judges said, Assange could argue he was being discriminated against based on his Australian nationality. The U.S. prosecutors said they could not and would not make that commitment. In a 2020 civil case, the Supreme Court said that “foreign organizations operating abroad have no First Amendment rights.” Rulings from the high court in other cases have held that foreign nationals do not have the same free-speech rights as U.S. citizens. That dilemma spurred the April 4 warning that without an immediate deal, the extradition effort might collapse. Without the First Amendment assurance, one trial attorney said in an email, the British lawyers representing the U.S. government concluded they would run into “an ethical obligation to drop the case” because of “their duty of candor” — they could no longer argue for extradition when a condition required by the court had not been met. The U.S. trial lawyers on April 4 pleaded with their superiors to get Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to approve the deal, multiple people said. If they missed the deadline in 12 days, one attorney told leaders in the counterintelligence and export control section of the department by email, they would “face a situation where we lose our leverage and the UK potentially abandons us.” Frustrated by the delays and disagreements, the entire team from Virginia disengaged from the case, a highly unusual move. Attorneys from the Justice Department’s National Security Division picked up the negotiations with Assange’s lawyers. To meet the April 16 deadline, U.S. Embassy officials sent a letter to the British court promising Assange could “raise and seek to rely on” the First Amendment at trial but saying “a decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.” The British judges were unimpressed and, in May, let Assange pursue his appeal. For the Justice Department’s British representatives, it was game over. “They asked for an assurance the United States government couldn’t give,” said Nick Vamos, former head of extradition for the Crown Prosecution Service. “It could have gotten really messy.”…
EXCLUSIVE Craig Murray, ex-ambassador, journalist, standing in Blackburn for The Workers Party of George Galloway. Ukraine war and Assange being free. What Really Happens in Blackburn – When I stood in Blackburn against foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2005 as an anti-Iraq war candidate, Jack Straw’s campaign manager was Ibrahim Master. He is now the campaign manager of “Independent” candidate, vote-splitter Adnan Hussain. This is him on the right campaigning with Adnan. When I attended a meeting with Adnan until 2.30am three nights ago to try to resolve the vote split that could let Labour back in, Ibrahim Master was in the meeting as Adnan’s second, and did much of the talking. Jack Straw was the Foreign Secretary personally responsible for the war in Iraq and the death of a million Iraqis, with the blatant lies about Iraqi WMD which he personally told as Foreign Secretary. Yet in 2005 Master openly campaigned for Straw on the basis that the war in Iraq was not important in Blackburn. Master drew great criticism for this pro-Straw stance from the wider Muslim community outside Blackburn, but the Muslim community here was under such tight control they voted overwhelmingly for Straw. Now consider this. When my candidacy for Blackburn was announced in March, Jack Straw issued an attack on me on 3 April, stating that I had “no cause” to stand in Blackburn.
A timeline of the legal case involving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange The drawn-out legal case involving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has concluded with his guilty plea to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets. In a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, Assange was sentenced Wednesday to the five years he’d already served in a British prison while fighting extradition. It allows him to walk free and resolves the case that centred on the publication of a trove of classified documents. Here is a look at key events in the case: — 2006: Assange founded WikiLeaks in Australia. The group begins publishing sensitive or classified documents. — 2010: In a series of posts, WikiLeaks releases almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. — August 2010: Swedish prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. The warrant is withdrawn shortly afterward, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence for the rape allegation. Assange denies the allegations. — September 2010: Sweden’s director of prosecutions reopens the rape investigation. Assange leaves Sweden for Britain. — November 2010: Swedish police issue an international arrest warrant for Assange. — December 2010: Assange surrenders to police in London and is detained pending an extradition hearing. The High Court grants Assange bail. — February 2011: A district court in Britain rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden. — June 2012: Assange enters the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, seeking asylum, after his bids to appeal the extradition ruling fail. Police set up an around-the-clock guard to arrest him if he steps outside. — August 2012: Ecuador grants him political asylum. — July 2014: A judge in Sweden upholds the arrest warrant against him that alleges sexual offenses against two women. — March 2015: Swedish prosecutors ask to question Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy. — August 2015: Swedish prosecutors drop investigations into some allegations against Assange because of the statute of limitations; an investigation into a rape allegation remains active. — October 2015: Metropolitan Police end their 24-hour guard outside the Ecuadorian Embassy but say they’ll arrest Assange if he leaves, ending a three-year police operation estimated to have cost millions. — February 2016: Assange claims “total vindication” as the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finds that he has been unlawfully detained and recommends he be immediately freed and given compensation. Britain calls the finding “frankly ridiculous.” — September 2018: Ecuador’s president says his country and Britain are working on a legal solution to allow Assange to leave the embassy. — October 2018: Assange seeks a court injunction pressing Ecuador to provide him basic rights he said the country agreed to when it first granted him asylum. — November 2018: A U.S. court filing that appears to inadvertently reveal the existence of a sealed criminal case against Assange is discovered by a researcher. No details are confirmed. — April 2019: Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno blames WikiLeaks for recent corruption allegations; Ecuador’s government revokes Assange’s asylum status. London police haul Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and arrest him for breaching bail conditions in 2012, as well as on behalf of U.S. authorities. — May 2019: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012. — May 2019: The U.S. government indicts Assange on 18 charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents. Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. — November 2019: Swedish prosecutor drops rape investigation. — May 2020: An extradition hearing for Assange is delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic. — June 2020: The U.S. files a new indictment against Assange that prosecutors say underscores Assange’s efforts to procure and release classified information. — January 2021: A British judge rules Assange cannot be extradited to the U.S. because he is likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. — July 2021: The High Court grants the U.S. government permission to appeal the lower court’s ruling blocking Assange’s extradition. — December 2021: The High Court rules that U.S. assurances about Assange’s detention are enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely. — March 2022: Britain’s Supreme Court refuses to grant Assange permission to appeal against his extradition. — June 2022: Britain’s government orders the extradition of Assange to the United States. Assange appeals. — May 2023: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Assange should be released and “nothing is served” by his ongoing incarceration. — June 2023: A High Court judge rules Assange cannot appeal his extradition. — Feb. 20, 2024: Assange’s lawyers launch a final legal bid to stop his extradition at the High Court. — March 26, 2024: Two High Court judges in London give U.S. authorities three more weeks to submit further assurances, including a guarantee that Assange won’t get the death penalty, before deciding whether they will grant him a new appeal against his extradition. — May 20, 2024: The two High Court judges rule that Assange can mount a new appeal based on arguments about whether he will receive free-speech protections or be at a disadvantage because he is not a U.S. citizen. The date of the hearing has yet to be determined. — June 26, 2024: Assange pleads guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information. The judge in the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands sentences him to time served in the British prison and pronounces him a “free man.”
EXCLUSIVE: Wafa Aludaini, Palestinian journalist, gives an update on the terrible situation in Gaza. Drones. Famine and the rising death toll in Gaza by Wafa Aludaini – Wafa_Gaza – Two Palestinian children died last week of starvation, dehydration and lack of medicine amid desperate conditions in the southern areas of the besieged Gaza Strip. The Ministry of Health announced the death of Abdulqader Sirhi, 13, and seven-month-old Fayiz Abu Ataya, from malnutrition and lack of food and medicine at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. The ministry said that the number of famine-related deaths has risen to 37, with only those who reached the hospitals able to be counted. It added that many died in their homes and their deaths have not been registered, while others are fighting for their lives. Over 3,500 children, under the age of five, are facing an imminent risk of death due to shortages of food, nutritional supplements and vaccinations. Fayiz Abu Ataya’s father said: “My child was born at the beginning of the current sweeping pogrom, in our shelter school, and died in it. He needed a special kind of formula and food missing in Gaza.” The infant’s short life is a chronicle of the deprivation overwhelming aid-starved Gaza. In a statement, 70 international rights organisations – including the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Geneva International Centre for Justice, and Brussels Court – called on all relevant authorities and international institutions to officially declare a famine in the Gaza Strip. The statement stressed that food insecurity is increasing across the tiny enclave because of Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people. The joint statement also warned: With the crossings closed and humanitarian aid being prevented from entering by Israel, the threat of famine and acute malnutrition has resurfaced and swiftly spread. “This affects the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, half of whom are children, and particularly the people in the northern Gaza Valley, where supplies have run out.” Before Israel unleashed its current carnage, the poverty and unemployment rates in Gaza had reached heights of 64 per cent and 45 per cent respectively, according to data from the World Bank and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Some 63 per cent of the people of the Strip were food insecure, while 80 per cent of Palestinians in the besieged enclave depended on international aid. Now, living under the genocidal war, things are aggravated. All families in the narrow enclave depend on foreign humanitarian aid, so their basic survival needs are affected by its cessation.
Naomi Wolf, Jewish author, relates verses from the Old Testament on the Jews and the ‘promised land’. These promises from God come with conditions such as mercy, kindness and justice . Patrizia Opulenza poem. A Jewish woman, Dr. Naomi Wolf understands the concept of a chosen people. I share her words below. The ‘chosen people’ that Jews and the Christian Zionist churches have been sold is a easily disproven Biblical lie. Dr. Naomi Wolf: “Okay, so I was challenged below: “Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.” So….I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it — most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew — as I do — you see that God did not “give” Israel to the Jews/Israelites. We as Jews are raised with the creed that “God gave us the land of Israel” in Genesis — and that ethnically ‘we are the chosen people.” But actually — and I could not believe my eyes when I saw this, I checked my reading with major scholars and they confirmed it — actually God’s “covenant” in Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy with the Jewish people is NOT ABOUT AN ETHNICITY AND NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT. IT IS ABOUT A WAY OF BEHAVING. — Again and again in the “covenant” language He never says: “I will give you, ethnic Israelites, the land of Israel.” Rather He says something far more radical – far more subversive — far more Godlike in my view. He says: IF you visit those imprisoned…act mercifully to the widow and the orphan…welcome the stranger in your midst…tend the sick…do justice and love mercy ….and perform various other tasks…THEN YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND THIS LAND WILL BE YOUR LAND. So “my people” is not ethnic — it is transactional. We are God’s people not by birth but by a way of behaving, that is ethical, kind and just. And we STOP being “God’s people” when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, “God’s people.” And the “contract” to “give” us Israel is conditional — we can live in God’s land IF we are “God’s people” in this way — just, merciful, compassionate. AND — it never ever says, it is ONLY your land. Even when passages spell out geographical “boundaries” as if God does such a thing, it never says this is exclusively your land. It never says I will give this land JUST to you. Remember these were homeless nomads who had left slavery in Egypt and were wandering around in the desert; at most these passages say, settle here, but they do not say, settle here exclusively. Indeed again and again it talks about welcoming “zarim” — translated as “strangers” but can also be translated as “people/tribes who are not you” — in your midst. Blew my mind, hope it blows yours.”- Dr. Naomi Wolf
Annual #1984symposium: Two Orwell-loving tech writers by the name of Christian at George Orwell’s grave this week on his birthday giving their views on latest tech dangers. Mass surveillance by another name Amnesty International UK / Blogs Into the ether The Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, introduced by the UK government on Wednesday, threatens to institutionalise some highly intrusive surveillance powers, the likes of which the UK has never seen before. This flies in the face of the UK’s international human rights legal obligations to protect peoples’ rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and others. While we welcome the government’s commitment to proper public and parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation, which is something that has been missing with previous Bills, and the stated attempt to bring clarity to the whole area, we have serious reservations about the content of the draft IP Bill. The excessive procedural detail, apparent multiple complex layers of authorisation, and use of linguistic trompe l’oeils such as “equipment interference” (apparently nothing to do with hacking) and “bulk interception” (nothing like mass surveillance) in this Bill could easily distract readers of the legislation from appreciating the true nature of the powers contained therein. But make no mistake, currently this Bill is about surveillance and hacking on a mass scale. Blanket, indiscriminate interception and retention of people’s communications by any other name is still mass surveillance and it can never be proportionate. If adopted in its current form, the IP Bill will authorise the intelligence services to intercept, in bulk, all email, text and internet communications in and out of the UK; demand phone and internet companies hand over entire databases full of records about what their customers do online and on their phones; acquire databases of other personal information from other companies and government departments, and hack into whole networks and millions of smartphones consecutively, rummaging through individuals’ most private thoughts and records. Such mass surveillance activities would be triggered without there being any suspicion of wrongdoing on any particular person’s part, and would be authorised by a Minister. The role of “judicial commissioners” – proposed by the government as a means to introduce a safeguard into the process – is something we’ll want to look at further to ensure it doesn’t amount to little more than a rubber stamp. It’s essential that, if established, this post will be tasked with challenging the merits of the Minister’s decision and examining the facts on which it was based. The Bill contains other concerning provisions as well, including powers for police and intelligence agencies to hack into the phones and computers of people in the UK without establishing any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, and to require telecommunications providers to retain records of every website visited by every person in Britain for up to one year.
Why 2024 Is More Like 1984 Than We Realise, Daily Express Fergus Kelly TIMELESS WARNING: Author George Orwell, main. Inset right, his iconic novel Daily Express Monday 24th June 2024 – not published online – Three-quarters of a century after publication of his most famous novel, George Orwell’s bleak dystopian vision remains a clarion call for everything we must strive to avoid … even as its reality inches ever closer, warns FERGUS KELLY WHEN I first read George Orwell’s 1984 in the Seventies, I thought it could never happen here. That’s despite the fact it was the height of the Cold War at the time. And that the West’s adversary in that conflict, the Soviet Union, epitomised the grim, one-party tyranny Orwell had depicted so chillingly in his most famous novel. Yet now, 75 years after its first publication, the chilling concepts introduced in 1984 – of Newspeak and doublethink, unperson and telescreen, the Two-Minutes Hate and the Party’s insistence that 2+2=5- appear only too prescient. The Britain of the 1970s in which I grew up had plenty of woes. When rubbish piled up and the bodies went unburied during the so-called winter of discontent, it might even have resembled the drabness and neglect of the Britain renamed Airstrip One in 1984. But the prospect of us becoming a Big Brother state back then seemed no more likely to my mid-teen self than the Anarchy in the UK that the Sex Pistols were predicting would prevail at around the same time. Or as remote as the dystopia of Diamond Dogs, the album David Bowie partly based on Orwell’s classic (which itself marks a 50th anniversary this year). Today, mercifully, it would still be absurd to suggest we are prey to the murderous extremes of Soviet -style communism, in which countless people perished in secret police cells or labour camps, and valiant dissidents were hurled into psychiatric hospitals and damned as mentally ill. But in many other significant ways, from facial recognition cameras to algorithms predicting crimes before they happen, we have become worryingly more like the sort of society Orwell portrayed in 1984. Take, for instance, the ever shifting speech codes which are designed not just to make people hesitate before talking out on any subject, but succeed in narrowing the parameters of debate on most given subjects to the point of silencing them. Such codes only ever move in one censorious direction – just as in Orwell’s 1984, the official language of Newspeak simplified grammar and limited vocabulary precisely to render critical thinking ever less likely. Censorship of this kind is straight from the totalitarian script adopted by the Soviet Union, China, and every other communist state of the past century, as well as the fascist regimes that represented the other side of the same coin. The exiled Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei today regards political censorship in the West as ever more similar to that of his former homeland, so that, “Society becomes so timid, to really avoid any kind of questioning or argument”. Then there is the ruling party’s assertion in 1984 that, to subordinate objective truths to its political will, two plus two must equal five. Orwell first tackled such reality-denying by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. He wrote: “Nazi theory, indeed, specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that ‘two and two are five’ – well, two and two are five.” In his ninth novel, published on June 8 1949, the final book completed in his lifetime, this process of indoctrination is called doublethink. But in the West today we see numerous real-life examples of the same phenomenon. At the more harmless – and gormless – end of the scale, it’s evident in the Duke of Sussex’s claim in his memoir, Spare, when he writes: “There’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.” It becomes more serious on subjects like climate change. Here, proponents of the theory of “climate extinction”, insist that “the science” is settled, when the most cursory reading of the many sources of research into the subject confirm it is anything but. But, as far as what passes for a guiding philosophy for the likes of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil is concerned, there is not just no debate; anyone with the temerity to question the theory is morally wrong, smeared as a “denier” – a grotesque perversion of a term only previously used to describe those who claimed the Holocaust never took place. We see it too in the absurd contortions which the majority of our political leaders performed while trying to placate the trans ideology. Biological fact and rational thought were suspended. We had politicians actually insisting some women could have a penis, claims some Labour MPs still seem strangely reluctant to backtrack over. Author and commentator Douglas Murray says: “All the time now there are things which we’re told to believe that nobody believed yesterday. Biological reality is denied in order to remain in what passes for polite society.” While the courageous JK Rowling, who has been vilified and physically threatened over her pro-woman campaigning, wrote this weekend of the battle for “vulnerable women and girls, for single-sex spaces, for the right to speak about our own bodies as we please, and to retain the ability to call a man as a man, without which no analysis or activism around sex-based issues and inequalities is possible”. How frightening that, for many, these issues are still not nailed down by the likeliest next government. We might not yet have reached the point, as in 1984, when everyone must have a telescreen in their home – the two-way video device that allowed the Party to indoctrinate and also put them under round-the-clock surveillance. Yet who can deny most of us are already chained to our smart-phones which, while offering previously undreamt of opportunities for learning and entertainment, through their software monitor our every move and second-guess our thoughts and desires? Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the new online world is social media. For the first time in history, it has enabled thousands, millions even, to directly vilify and persecute at the same time individuals for their beliefs. At worst, these virtual lynch mobs demand either a criminal sanction or at the very least a loss of livelihood for their victims. And they resemble nothing so much as the Two Minutes Hate that Orwell described in 1984, when Party members were compelled to vent their hatred for enemies, depicted in specifically prepared footage at mass screenings. The actual year of 1984 came and went without Orwell’s nightmarish vision becoming reality, at least here. Only a few years after that same year, that spectre appeared to recede with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But three-quarters of a century since its publication, it is the West – home of the supposed victors against that dismal ideology – that is in danger of forgetting his novel’s warnings.
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