“I don’t know what to say to be honest. There’s no tears left to shed. There’s no pleas left to make. What else is needed to happen? Are they are they waiting for our complete annihilation, because they are annihilating Gaza as we as we speak.” — Shahd Abusalama
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Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian academic who was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp on the Gaza Strip. Her grandparents were among the first wave of Palestinian refugees to be forcibly expelled from their home village of Beit Jerja during the Nakba in 1948. Today her entire extended family is resettled behind the illegally blockaded prison fences of Gaza.
On November 6th, Shahd wrote:
What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It is a genocide, accompanied by an ethnic cleansing campaign against the mostly refugee population in that besieged enclave.
The process is targeting other Palestinian communities surviving under Israeli settler-colonial and military domination between the river and the sea.
No one is spared from Israel’s killing machines: children, women, elderly people, journalists, doctors, paramedics, fire fighters. Nowhere in Gaza is safe: residential buildings have been levelled, UNRWA schools sheltering the displaced have been hit.
Hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, universities, ambulances, too. My parents and extended family are amongst over a million people who have been forcibly displaced – nearly half of Gaza’s entire population.
They have fled to Al-Nusairat refugee camp, which is “south of Gaza river” according to Israel’s criminal military order, but they are at close encounters with death every day amid relentless Israeli bombardment.
There is no time to process all the horrors of the past four weeks, but my family survivors keep stressing that “time passing means more bloodshed”.
On 23 October, my cousins and their little angels were amongst 23 relatives killed while asleep at their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp.
Click here to read Shahd Abusalama’s full article entitled “I was born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp where Israel killed 23 of my relatives” published on November 6th 2023 by Declassified UK.
Speaking to Electronic Intifada on Wednesday 17th [embedded above], she says:
“Every day for everyone in Gaza, every day they survive by chance and every day is about struggling to find the basics to feed the little ones, the children, to find enough water and food. And they go through great ordeals to even find wood to make fire, so they can cook or do laundry. Everything is such a great struggle.”
Adding: “The great majority of Gaza population they have no place to go to, even if the war ends today. So like what is the world is waiting for?”
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In truth, I don’t know what the world is waiting for either. What more can be said or done to halt this ongoing genocide?
In solidarity I recently sent another letter to my constituency Labour MP Paul Blomfield after he’d replied to me over the “Anti-Boycott Bill” [more formally: Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill] that will make it unlawful for public bodies to consider ethical and human rights issues in procurement and investment decisions.
He wished to remind me that he had opposed the bill at its Second Reading back in July [you can read Paul Blomfield’s speech here] and in his letter highlighted further actions along with fellow Sheffield Labour MPs, who are collectively helping to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians “to support their work providing food, medical supplies and hygiene kits to Gaza. You can find out more and, if you’re able, donate here.”
I do not wish to belittle these initiatives or downplay the importance of supplying aid to desperate people in Gaza. And in the letter I express my sincere thanks for voting against a “dangerous and draconian” bill that Amnesty Internationalreports will provide “special status for Israel [that] will shield it from accountability for human rights violations and breaching international law.”
But none of this is enough. Not nearly enough. Treating the Palestinians as if they are merely unfortunate victims of an unavoidable disaster involves playing along with an outrageous lie. It denies the intentional agency of Netanyahu’s murderous Israeli regime in its policy of scorched earth destruction, population displacement and indiscriminate killing.
Members of Parliament not only have the power but also the duty to call for an immediate ceasefire to end the killing in Gaza and to demand a complete withdrawal of British support from Israel, but few show any real commitment to upholding international law or bringing justice to the Palestinians. In the end, there is no defence for those who enable ethnic cleansing and genocide, however passive their involvement.
Exasperated but respectfully, I replied as follows:
Dear Paul,
Thank you for voting against this bill. That much is greatly appreciated.
However, I feel it is necessary to be frank with you. Although I have previously delivered leaflets and canvassed on your behalf, due to the stance Keir Starmer has taken regarding Palestine I will certainly not vote for Labour again next election. In truth, I may never vote for Labour again. And I am not alone.
As you know, Israel is facing genocide charges at the ICJ. Whether the international court finally judges Israel guilty is largely a question of politics, since the case against them is essentially open and shut. The aim to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its native population has been repeatedly stated and backed up by the relentless aerial bombardment of the largely civilian population of mainly women and children who are forced to flee and then bombed again.
Israel has now been carpet bombing the terrified people of Gaza for over three months. A unremitting murder spree. They are still flattening hospitals, residential blocks, schools, refugee camps, even attacking ambulances, while simultaneously restricting access to food, energy and clean water. The spread of disease is already rife in Gaza. Further restrictions on medicines mean that hundreds of Palestinian children have faced amputations without anaesthesia. In the twenty-first century we can watch this horror show unfold on a daily basis, and yet still nothing is being done to stop it.
Gaza is already a death camp. As I said in my original email to you [read here] a holocaust is taking place. A collective punishment and a ‘burnt offering’ as revenge. This is no exaggeration, just an uncomfortable statement of the facts. Those in power in Israel also candidly say as much and talk about the full clearance of the land – a final solution to their Palestinian problem.
Meanwhile, the US and UK governments are enabling this genocide against the Palestinians whether by votes at the UN, or by arming the IDF and directly offering military support. In consequence, our nation is culpable too. Indeed, the entire western world must bear its share of responsibility for the worst atrocity in living memory (certainly of most people). And Keir Starmer has likewise done nothing at all to end the carnage. Instead, whether through calculated inaction or by his outspoken support for Israel, he too is complicit in this ongoing genocide.
Finally, there is no need to reply to this email. I shall not write again on the subject. In any case, the shame and sadness I feel is well beyond words. Nor can any words express the horrors or the sickness I feel whenever I fully reflect on the plight of the Gazans. Likewise, the underlying dread that what is happening to the Palestinians may come home to us. It is all completely beyond words. So please don’t reply. Just reflect.
***
Shahd is currently based in London. After completing her masters with distinction at the School of Oriental and African Studies, she was given a scholarship to do a PhD at Sheffield Hallam University where she became an associate lecturer. However her academic rise soon stalled after she was targeted by a pro-Zionist smear campaign. Just a fortnight later, the university management having capitulated, she was suspended from her post.
The basis for the university action against her? Shahd explains:
“The Jewish Chronicle published two articles, one online and a shorter print version two days later, accusing me of anti-Semitism over a tweet I made in 2012 when I was barely twenty years old. The irrational wave of hate and racism kept flooding my way, despite deleting the tweet, recognizing its unintended offensive content, and clarifying that in my whole life in Gaza’s prison until September 2013, I had never interacted with any Israeli Jew outside the framework of the ongoing wars which cost us horrific human and material loss.”
Click here to read a full statement from the Sheffield Left Labour (SLL), one of the groups that had campaigned in support for Shahd.
Shahd first came to my attention in May 2020, when a 32-year-old autistic Palestinian, Eyad el-Hallaq, was shot dead by Israeli police officers in occupied East Jerusalem. In a call for justice, she had written to her constituency Labour MP, Louise Haigh, and shared her letter with the Sheffield Labour Friends of Palestine (SLFP). With her permission I afterwards republished Shahd’s letter on my blog.
My family’s survivors couldn’t give a goodbye or a proper funeral as Israel’s killing machines have haunted them. My auntie’s son Khalil is the only survivor of his family.
The lifeless bodies of his wife Heba (35) and children Leen (12), Jihad (10) and Sham (5) were pulled from under the rubble after six hours.
Heba, a skilled nurse at the Indonesian hospital, and her children had left their home and sought refuge at the home of another cousin Rana, who is married to Heba’s brother Jawad.
Jawad survived but Rana (40) was killed, alongside two of her five children, the little ones, Mohammed (5) and Naama (7), while the twin girls Jana and Jinan (12) and Husni (10), survived with wounds.
I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to Shahd and her family who lost 23 relatives killed while asleep in their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp on October 23rd.
Richard Boyd Barrett is an Irish MP for the People Before Profit/Solidarity party who was elected at the 2011 general election. On Friday (March 4th) he made an impassioned speech at the Dáil calling out Irish parliamentarians and the international community as a whole for its consistent failure to condemn Israeli apartheid after seventy years of systematic oppression of Palestinians and raising the issue of blatant double standards on Ukraine and Palestine describing it as “utter hypocrisy”:
Treating the Arab population as a whole, the Palestinian population as a whole, as an inferior race. I mean it doesn’t get stronger than this and yet you want to be careful about your language. You’re happy to correctly use the most strong and robust language to describe the crimes against humanity of Vladimir Putin, but you will not use the same strength of language when it comes to describing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians when it is now being documented and detailed by two of the most respected human rights organisations in the world, and indeed has been alleged by dozens and dozens of non-governmental organisations. And to be honest, anybody who looks honestly at the decades of brutal inhumane persecution of the Palestinians; successive assaults on Gaza; the annexation of the land and territory; the systematic application of apartheid rules; you don’t want to even use the word ‘apartheid’, never mind sanctions.
[It took] five days for sanctions against Putin and his thugs, seventy years of oppression of the Palestinians and it wouldn’t be – what was the word you used? Uh, it wouldn’t be “helpful” to impose sanctions. Amnesty international are calling for Israel to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Will you support it? They are calling for targeted sanctions against Israeli officials who are perpetuating the system of apartheid: just exactly the same types of sanctions you’ve just initiated against Vladimir Putin. Will you support it? And I think the answer is clearly you’re not going to.
Speaking with independent journalist Katie Halper, he describes how the Israeli government is now in the process of confiscating his family’s land in the West Bank village of Battir, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is nothing unusual, Abunimah explains. It’s just what Israel does: “No Palestinian is safe from a criminal entity whose whole existence is based on theft.”
"Israel" has ordered the confiscation of my family's land in the West Bank village of Battir, some planted with olives. It's been in our family for generations. It's registered & taxes are paid. No Palestinian is safe from a criminal entity whose whole existence is based on theft pic.twitter.com/dH4WafiK0y
“The whole area, the whole village is surrounded by Israeli settlements, you know, like any other Palestinian village in the West Bank. Any time the Israelis could show up and establish or expand another settlement, this is what any Palestinian can go through, any time, and so literally, you know, you can be killed with impunity, your land can be taken with impunity, your home can be demolished with impunity; that’s the reality and it’s a slow grind year after year, day after day, month after month, and that’s why Israel gets away with it. Because it’s like ‘yeah, well just one more house’, but it’s one house and another house and another house, day after day, week after week, month after month, and all of a sudden there goes the neighbourhood – all Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem – demolished, depopulated and new settlements put in its place.”
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A full transcript of the interview is provided below:
Israel is smart. You know when they want to take over a Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem they don’t go in and do it all at once. You know they don’t go in on Wednesday and demolish a hundred houses at the same time, because that will generate unwanted international attention. They do it house by house, street by street, and they wear Palestinians down. They make it impossible.
If you’re a Palestinian in your native Jerusalem, it’s impossible for you to get a permit to build a house on your own land; land your family may have owned for generations. My family is experiencing this right now – not in Jerusalem – I tweeted about this a couple of weeks ago.
My father’s family is from a village in the West Bank called Battir, south of Jerusalem. It’s actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site: you can look it up because it’s been continuously farmed; it has this incredible irrigation system (this ancient irrigation system) that goes back two thousand years: that the people there, the people of Battir, including my family, still tend and still look after.
About three weeks ago, one of my cousins showed up at the piece of land we have, and have had for generations; we have Ottoman records for it. He showed up – it’s an area where we have olive trees planted – and found a notice from the Israeli army saying that we have 45 days to vacate the land, and that we are illegally occupying the land. So that’s something I can attest to, but we’re not special. This is something that is happening to Palestinians across the occupied West Bank every single day.
There is a legal process. We have lawyers looking into it. I don’t want to say too much about that, but I will say that you’re dealing with – you’re under military occupation – so you’re going to courts that are not there to provide you justice. They’re there to justify the crimes of the occupier.
So you are put in a position where it’s like you may well have to go through the process simply so as not to relinquish your rights, but you’re not going to any kind of court which is part of a fair system. It’s occupiers’ justice. It’s a military occupation. But what do you do, do you let them take the land without a fight, or do you try to fight?
That’s the dilemma that every Palestinian is in, and in Jerusalem this morning they – the Israelis – demolished a home, a family home, in a tour, and put a family out on the street. A couple of days ago they did the same in Sheikh Jarrah. And they can get away with it, because you know US doesn’t do anything – we’re happy, you know even some of our so-called ‘progressives’ are voting to give Israel, the Israeli military, more money – the European Union is fine with it right, even some of the Arab dictatorships that are clients of the United States are, you know, embracing Israel: the Saudis, the Emiratis and others.
So what’s the incentive for Israel to stop doing this to us?
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Additional: Amnesty International calls Israel an apartheid state
The video report embedded above was uploaded yesterday [Feb 1st] by Amnesty International on their official Youtube channel. The notes below have been reproduced in full and with capitals retained as they appear attached to the video upload:
DEMOLISH APARTHEID NOT PALESTINIAN HOMES TAKE ACTION HERE
Millions of Palestinians live under Israel’s system of apartheid, and at the heart of this violently racist system, is the Palestinian experience of being denied a home.
For over 73 years, Israel has forcibly displaced entire Palestinian communities and demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinians’ homes causing terrible trauma & suffering. Over 6 million Palestinians remain as refugees and today at least another 150,000 are at real risk of losing their homes.
Israel has created and maintains laws, policies, and practices that deliberately oppress Palestinians and work to ensure Jewish Israeli domination across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This includes racist seizures of property and planning laws and policies that make it impossible for many Palestinians to build homes. It also allows for mass demolitions of homes built without a permit, something that is routinely denied for Palestinians.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity and is committed with the specific intent of maintaining a cruel system of control by one racial group over another. Every week, the Israeli authorities displace Palestinians through demolitions or forced evictions, which shows how Israel deliberately disadvantages Palestinians, giving them inferior status to Israeli Jews.
With more stories coming to light and more people around the world mobilising against these injustices, now is the time for us to work together. As a first step, we must speak out for Palestinians living under Israel’s apartheid. We have the power to demolish this system even if it means one pillar at a time.
Take action against demolitions and forced evictions now by writing to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Call on him to immediately cancel all orders for forced evictions and home demolitions against Palestinians in Israel/OPT and to end the forced displacement of Palestinians.
A police officer murdered the former Aston Villa striker Dalian Atkinson, first shooting him with a Taser stun gun for 33 seconds, then kicking him in the head as though striking a football, causing his head to snap back violently, a jury heard on Tuesday.
PC Benjamin Monk denies murder and manslaughter following the incident on 15 August 2016 in Telford, Shropshire, which began at the home of Atkinson’s father.
Monk is alleged to have also fired a Taser electrical weapon at Atkinson for nearly seven times longer than the standard five-second deployment.
Then, while Atkinson was on the ground and apparently unresponsive, the officer had kicked him in the head twice with such force that the imprint of Monk’s laces was left on Atkinson’s forehead, Birmingham crown court heard.
Click here to read the full report by Vikram Dodd published in the Guardian published on Tuesday May 4th.
At the time of Dalian Atkinson’s death in 2016, his was the latest of eleven deaths attributable to the use of Tasers by British police (a rate of one per year). The number of incidents has since increased.
In December 2018, Amnesty International released a report entitled “Public should ‘resist drum-beat of calls for all police to carry a Taser’” stating:
In the UK, a total of 18 people have died after a Taser was discharged against them by police. The most recent case was in May last year when a 30-year-old father-of-two died in hospital after he was Tasered by police in Falmouth.
In July 2020, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)’s monthly magazine E&T, produced an investigative review entitled Why Tasers are being misused by British police which “spoke to experts about why British police appear to be using Taser tactics disproportionally against black people”.
The article records 26 deaths from Taser-related incidents and highlights the clear disparity in numbers of cases based on ethnicity, noting that 20% of Taser events are against black people who make up just 3.3% of the population:
Why do the police use CED [‘conducted energy device’ or Taser] tactics against black men? Few want to talk. It’s a big question, says Sarah Uncles, policy and communications officer at The Inquest, a human rights activist group. It’s not just Taser tactics that are disproportionally used against black, Asian and other members of minority groups, she says. “It’s all use of force” that stands out for these groups.
Home Offices figures show that all forms of force, from restraint up to firearms, are used more commonly against black people than would be expected by their share of the population.
Use of Tasers against different ethnic groups by British police
The author of the piece, Ben Heubl, also cites three more recent incidents of Taser use that led to deaths:
The Home Office finds it difficult to connect deaths directly to Taser tactics, E&T confirms. 2017 saw at least three fatality cases where Tasers played a dominant role, but Home Office data shows no CED fatalities for that period.
In February 2017, Paul Williams was tasered twice after police officers noticed him being in possession of part of a Stanley knife blade (which he used to inflict injuries on himself). He died in hospital due to an injury to his neck during the incident.
Then there is Darren Cumberbatch, who died in July 2017 after what the coroner called “excessive” force involving CED tactics by Warwickshire police officers.
Three months earlier, Marc Cole died. The jury stated he died from excessive use of cocaine resulting in paranoid and erratic behaviour, but the use of the Taser by Devon and Cornwall Police assisted Cole into cardiac arrest, the inquest said. Among other reasons, the medical cause of death was the discharge of a Taser X26 device – a weapon Axon makes, now in the form of the X26P, a more compact version. A 2017 Reuters investigation found the X26 was being taken off the market due to posing a higher cardiac risk than other models.
The same article concludes with statistics that show an alarming 30 percent rise in the use of Tasers by British police over the period 2017–2019:
Last year’s figures show CEDs rank among the more dangerous tactics in terms of hospitalisations. In contrast, Tasers made limited progress on arrests. With a third more CED events between 2017/18 and 2018/19, the number of people that escaped following Tasers surged 56 per cent.
Click here to read the full article published by Engineering and Technology magazine in July 2020.
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To mark ten year’s blogging, this is the fourth of my re-uploads from the WoC archive. Originally posted on August 25th 2016, eleven Taser deaths in as many years – RIP Dalian Atkinson reported on the tragic death of Dalian Atkinson, which received surprisingly little media coverage at the time. I also drew attention to the eleven known Taser-related deaths that had previously happened in Britain, as well as the far more widespread and lethal use of Tasers in America.
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Well-loved ex-footballer Dalian Atkinson (aged 48) lost his life last week (in the early hours of Monday, August 15th) shortly after he was Tasered by police outside his father’s home in the Trench area of Telford, Shropshire. This is testimony of Paula Quinn, an eyewitness to the events leading up to Atkinson’s violent death:
“They were shouting and kicking so much all I could hear were the boots hitting him. And then the officer who released the Taser stepped back while the other officer still continued to kick and then I could hear him shout to the other officer that was still kicking, ‘Back off, back off, back off.’ And then the officer with the Taser asked the gentleman to put his hands behind his back and did so probably two or three times and reactivated the Taser another four or five times after that.” 1
[bold highlight added]
On Thursday [August 18th], following a postmortem examination determining the cause of his death as ‘inconclusive’, the Independent Police Complaints Commission released a statement that two West Mercia police officers were being served with gross misconduct notices and put under criminal investigation:
The IPCC commissioner Derrick Campbell said: “Having carefully considered the evidence gathered so far, we are undertaking a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr Atkinson’s death and the level and type of force used. Two police officers will be interviewed under criminal caution by IPCC investigators.
As this is a criminal investigation, the IPCC is limited in the amount of information which can be released into the public domain. I would ask people to be patient during the progress of our investigation and not to add to speculation about the circumstances of Mr Atkinson’s death. Speculation across the media as a whole can risk prejudice to the investigation process. 2
The IPCC says there will be “a thorough examination of the circumstances surrounding the death” but sadly there are historical reasons to be doubtful, and Atkinson’s death inevitably adds extra weight to already confirmed suspicions that in Britain, as in America and elsewhere, black people are still disproportionate victims of police brutality – including being Tasered. 3
Moreover, Atkinson’s tragic death highlights the often overlooked fact that Tasers, which deliver a 50,000 Volt shock, are not non-lethal weapons but classified as “less lethal” firearms. In fact, according to official statistics there has been at least one ‘Taser-related’ death in Britain every year for the last ten years – 11 in total. 4 Meanwhile, in America, where Taser use is more established, the number of fatalities may well be in the hundreds 5, although deaths are often attributed instead to ‘excited delirium’.
The introduction and, inevitably, the increasing use of the Taser is, in truth, indicative of unsettling trend in our culture – which unfortunately once again takes its lead from America. For as law enforcement does away with the blunter instruments of previous decades and centuries, the public is trained instead to tolerate the semi-detached, hi-tech violence administered by twenty-first century technology: yesterday’s more savage methods of coercion continually upgraded and superseded by less bloody, more hands-free techniques of ‘pain compliance’ – and Tasers do not simply disable the victim, they are torture devices too, as countless internet videos testify, and as the UN’s Committee against Torture declared in 2007:
“The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use,” the committee said in a statement.
“Well, it means that it’s a very serious thing,” Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox told CBS Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. “These are people that have seen torture around the world, all kinds of torture. So they don’t use the word lightly.” 6
[bold highlight as original]
So let us take stock. Beneath the science fiction brand name, these ‘stun guns’ are more literally cattle-prods for people. Is this how we expect fellow humans to be treated in modern Britain?
At this stage the IPCC is justifiably asking the media to refrain from detailed speculation about the circumstances surrounding Dalian Atkinson’s death since it could be prejudicial to the inquiry. Obviously I respect this request. Whatever the eventual findings of the IPCC, however, it is irrefutably the case that Dalian Atkinson was just the latest victim of the creeping militarisation of the British police force. Tasers torture and kill – they should be banned.
Click here to add your support to a petition calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to hold an urgent review of Tasers and the medical implications of their use.
Black people are three times more likely have a Taser used against them by police than white people, according to figures that have raised the alarm among race relations campaigners.
5 Jared Feuer, who heads the U.S. southern regional office of Amnesty International, said the group has documented that 277 people in the United States have died after being shocked by a Taser since June 2001.
Keir Starmer became Labour leader one year ago today, having comfortably won the leadership race against Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, gaining an unassailable 56.2% of the vote in the first round of the election. As leader, Starmer has since failed to offer any effective opposition to what has been and continues to be an incompetent, corrupt, reactionary and increasingly authoritarian Tory government.
Moreover, rather than unifying the Labour Party as he pledged to do, under the guise of tackling antisemitism, Starmer set his sights instead on crushing the progressive wing with a series of attacks to undermine those closest to former leader Jeremy Corbyn, promptly sacking Long-Bailey from the shadow cabinet. Starmer’s war on the left culminated with his full endorsement of the decision to suspend Corbyn, who is yet to have the whip re-instated and now sits as an independent backbench MP, where even in this diminished capacity he still offers more effective opposition than Sir Keir:
And here is Corbyn speaking out to protect our civil liberties and democratic right to protest at yesterday’s #KillTheBill rally:
We will always defend the right to demonstrate against injustice. Proud to address today's #KillTheBill demonstration – together we will stop Boris Johnson's protest ban pic.twitter.com/R3TTzy1NlY
On Wednesday 24th February inspired by a short interview featuring the editor of Tribune, Ronan Burtenshaw (embedded below), I penned a quick letter to my local MP Paul Blomfield, the former Shadow Minister for Brexit and EU Negotiations, inviting him to watch the video in question. Reproduced below is the full exchange of letters unabridged and augmented with further links and additional video:
*
Dear Paul,
I think you should know how I and many other members of the Labour Party are feeling at this moment. I encourage you therefore to spend just ten minutes watching this short film:
Ronan Burtenshaw speaks for literally hundreds of thousands of us, some of whom have already torn up their membership cards and walked away from the party in disgust.
If the leadership and the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] continue to act in this way then Labour will lose many more members. Its grassroots base will very likely collapse. And if this isn’t already concerning enough, then I ask you also to consider the broader impact on our democracy once the party is divorced from the people, and the electorate again stops trusting our politicians. Look at the effects in America.
I cannot put my true feelings into words here which is why I very sincerely encourage you to watch the film.
Hope you are well in these difficult times.
Kind regards,
James
*
Respectfully he did watch the video and replied to me on Friday 5th March:
Dear James,
Thanks for your email sharing your views about Keir’s leadership of the Labour Party.
I watched the video, but I don’t think it provides a very accurate picture of what’s happening in the party at the moment. I find it extraordinary that it criticises the current party leadership for serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet while disagreeing with some of his policies. It suggests that this is duplicity, where actually it’s loyalty to the Labour cause. We come together in political parties around shared values, with lots of different views; we make our arguments on specific policies but back what is agreed.
I’ve disagreed with every leader of the Labour Party on something, but we should always work positively to engage, not simply look to oppose at every turn which I fear that some in the Party are seeking to do at the moment. You’ll know that Jeremy’s suspension is due to his refusal to apologise for his comments on the EHRC report, not to do with his leadership or any other issue.
I also don’t recognise your characterisation of the huge loss of members during Keir’s tenure either. In November 2019 (the last set of NEC elections during Jeremy’s leadership) there were around 430,000 members. In January this year there were around 459,000.
You’re right that it’s a serious problem for democracy when people stop trusting politicians; and turning to populism – of the right or left – is not the answer. We obviously lost the trust of a significant section of our traditional supporters in recent years, leading us to the worst electoral defeat since 1935. It’s a long haul back, but we have picked up more than 20 points in the polls since last April and Keir is rated as the most popular Labour politician (see more here).
I’m a bit puzzled by your comments about the USA where there has been a troubling polarisation of politics, with the left losing some of its traditional base, but people put their faith in the biggest charlatan in the country’s history. Let’s take comfort from the fact that Trump lost the Presidential election, and the Biden Administration has used its position to begin to set right some of the most divisive policies – such stopping the ‘building of the wall’, launching a government initiative on racial equality, cancelling the racist ‘Muslim ban’ and rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.
Thanks again for writing and for your good wishes. I hope you’re keeping well too.
With best wishes Paul.
*
I then replied to Paul Blomfield the same day but at greater length – supporting links with URL addresses are as in the original but I have also included further links and Youtube clips including the interview with Andrew Feinstein:
Dear Paul,
Thank you for watching the video I sent and for your thoughtful and full reply.
Firstly, I would like to address the issue surrounding membership. Since I do not have access to the Labour database I am forced to rely on what I hear from fellow members and from the most recent newspaper reports. Regarding anecdotal evidence, it is very clear to me that I am not alone. Of the members I know personally or know through social media, many have resigned their membership; countless others feel betrayed and deceived by Keir Starmer’s calls for unity and reconciliation; and the vast majority are now terribly demoralised. As for reliable numbers:
LABOUR has lost over 50,000 members since Keir Starmer became leader, according to the party’s own election records.
UK Labour held its National Executive Committee (NEC) elections this week, which was won by the party’s left-wing faction.
In the NEC election, 495,961 members of the party were listed as eligible to vote.
When Starmer was elected to the leadership position after Jeremy Corbyn stood down, there were 552,835 registered Labour party members.
Those figures mean the party has lost 56,874 members since April
When it comes to Labour’s electoral chances, if this decline is true then, as I wrote before, it will have a devastating effect on doorstep canvassing. The drop in revenue also means that the party will now have to become increasingly reliant on wealthy and corporate donors.
You say that “we obviously lost the trust of a significant section of our traditional supporters in recent years, leading us to the worst electoral defeat since 1935. It’s a long haul back, but we have picked up more than 20 points in the polls since last April and Keir is rated as the most popular Labour politician.”
Labour lost its traditional base once it came to be seen as untrustworthy. This happened when it flip-flopped over Brexit and moved from its successful stance of accepting the referendum vote in 2017 (losing by the tiniest margin of just 2.5%) to its slow adoption of calls for a second vote. Many on the left forecast this repercussion; as you may recall, I was one [see here]. The chief architect of Labour’s Brexit strategy was Keir Starmer, so he must take some of the responsibility for Labour’s dreadful 2019 defeat.
I don’t trust opinion polls very much and I think that constantly relying on them to guide us is a bad habit, and indeed one that smacks of populism. That said, at the time of the last election, the Tories won with short of a 12% lead over Labour whereas the latest opinion poll currently gives them a 13% lead. This evaluation comes after a truly disastrous year when abject incompetence and corruption in the government’s handling of the pandemic has resulted in more than a hundred thousand deaths and will leave millions of people unemployed or otherwise desperate. Of course, Corbyn’s popularity figures remained comparatively low throughout his leadership (for reasons I shall come to), but Starmer’s figures have recently nosedived too and now fallen below Corbyn’s peak. Perhaps the latest report from Yougov is illuminating in this regard:
“Starmer’s main cause for concern is that a quarter (24%) of those who voted Labour in 2019 have an unfavourable view of their party leader, although 60% still hold a favourable opinion. In fact, his personal approval rating is now better amongst 2019 Lib Dem voters, who have a favourable opinion of him by 68% to 19%. He also has the support of one in five (21%) 2019 Conservative voters.”
That he is most favoured today by Lib Dem voters certainly does not support the view that he will begin winning back traditional Labour supporters any time soon.
Keir Starmer’s decline in net satisfaction over first 12 months image
Click here to find the same graphic on page 15 of the Ipsos MORI report from March 2021.
You write that: “I’m a bit puzzled by your comments about the USA where there has been a troubling polarisation of politics, with the left losing some of its traditional base, but people put their faith in the biggest charlatan in the country’s history.” The point – not really my point – is that when people lose faith in democracy they often seem to turn to fascism. And I think we may agree that with the election of Trump, America has already moved to the cusp of turning fascist.
The difference here is that I put no faith in Biden at all because I see no reason to do so. Under Biden I fully anticipate a return to the kinds of policies that we had under Obama and without going into the details of what was wrong with Obama’s domestic and foreign policy, I would simply make the obvious point that Trump’s success followed immediately on the heels of Obama’s two terms in office. Clearly those eight years of “hope and change” left many Americans feeling little more than despair and desperation. After Biden, the same will very likely happen although with still more dangerous consequences because the situation gradually worsens with each cycle of neoliberal failure.
Finally, I shall address the most contentious of the points you have raised. To those on the left of the party the suspension of Corbyn is very evidently a politically-motivated act. In the statement in question, Corbyn said anti-Semitism was “absolutely abhorrent” and “one anti-Semite is one too many” in the party. These views are ones he has consistently upheld and are views that most of us share.
He then went on to say: “The scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.” There are actually two issues here. Firstly, on what grounds is it improper for him to defend the party and himself against perceived smears by political opponents and the media? Secondly, is his opinion false? What is the available evidence here?
I refer you to Al Jazeera’s undercover investigative series “The Lobby” broadcast in 2017. In light of Al Jazeera’s revelations, then-shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry called on the government to launch an immediate inquiry into “improper interference in our democratic politics”.
She said in parliament: “The exposure of an Israeli embassy official discussing how to bring down or discredit a government minister and other MPs because of their views on the Middle East is extremely disturbing.”
Although this story briefly hit the headlines, the main focus of Al Jazeera’s investigation and its disclosure of a dirty tricks campaign against both pro-Palestinian Labour members and also to subvert Corbyn’s leadership has been quietly buried by the media.
Moreover, in January 2017, BBC Trust felt obliged to issue a retraction and an admission that it breached its own accuracy and impartiality rules during a news report about Jeremy Corbyn’s view on shoot-to-kill policy, writing: “The breach of due accuracy on such a highly contentious political issue meant that the output had not achieved due impartiality.” Here is another indication of the media’s hostility toward Corbyn, and I will add that in response, James Harding, Director of BBC News, remained unapologetic saying (as the BBC itself reported): “While we respect the Trust and the people who work there, we disagree with this finding.”
I remind you that Keir Starmer also sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey merely for retweeting a quote with a link to respectable newspaper article on the grounds that it promoted a “conspiracy theory”.
Below is the first part of Rebecca Long-Bailey’s Twitter thread apology and retraction:
https://t.co/XyTPHR40Qd I retweeted an interview that my constituent and stalwart Labour Party supporter Maxine Peake gave to the Independent. Its main thrust was anger with the Conservative Government’s handling of the current emergency and a call for Labour Party unity.
Without wishing to get into the weeds, the claims made in the article in question were untrue only in the specific case of the George Floyd killing, because it irrefutably is the case that police officers in the US are being trained by Israel Defense Forces [as Amnesty International reported in 2016] and that the IDF does use a similar kind of neck restraint against Palestinians [as Jonathan Cook reports here]. As you are no doubt aware, they also routinely shoot at unarmed protesters using live ammunition.
Here is a video report also posted by Amnesty International:
And here is a video showing an IDF soldier using the same neck restraint against a Palestinian man:
Going back to Corbyn’s statement, in my view he is justifiably defending himself against an attack-dog media and those who were actively working within the party to undermine him. But my own central points are actually these: Firstly, that Corbyn is not and has never been a racist. Indeed, even his fiercest opponents have never seriously charged him with racism and that is because his antiracist position is active, long-standing and unimpeachable. Secondly, and more broadly, we must never allow criticism of Israel to be suppressed on the totally spurious charge of antisemitism. I fear that even writing this may put me somehow in breach of the party’s current position, since I fail to understand how Corbyn’s statement is more sanctionable than any of the thoughts expressed here.
Embedded below is an interview with Andrew Feinstein, former South African MP who served under Nelson Mandela and author of “The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade”, discussing Keir Starmer’s ‘New’ New Labour, how the factional and weaponised use of ‘antisemitism’ is used to purge the left from the Labour party:
In this regard I stand with Jewish Voice for Labour who released the following statement:
We are appalled that Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended and had the whip withdrawn. He has a proud record of fighting all forms of racism including antisemitism. We call on Labour Party members to protest against this unjustified outrage in the strongest terms and through all channels available to us. This is an attack not just on Jeremy, but on the party membership. Do not leave, organise and fight back.
Very glad to hear that you are well and I’d like to thank you again for taking the time and trouble to reply to my letter.
Best wishes,
James
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I received a reply from Paul Blomfield on Tuesday 16th March:
Dear James
Thanks for your further email. I just wanted to respond on a couple of your points.
Membership numbers fluctuate and, while the figures showed some decline from the highest-ever level in January 2020, they are still well above the 430,359 in November 2019. Any decline in membership is clearly disappointing, but the increase in public support is encouraging. I don’t know the potential negative affect this might have on canvassing teams. After the mass influx of new members in 2015 and 2016, there was no noticeable increase in campaigning members, so I’m not sure there’s a direct correlation.
You also make the point that Labour is in danger of losing more of its ‘traditional base’ voters, or not winning them back soon. It is a real issue; democratic socialist parties across Europe have faced a gradual loss of this support over at least the last 15 years, and in the UK this far pre-dates Brexit. In 2017, under Jeremy’s leadership, the trend continued and, while we won seats in metropolitan areas, we lost Mansfield, North East Derbyshire and other such ‘traditional Labour’ seats. Bringing together a winning electoral coalition is a complex challenge – but one that we have been considering and working on for a decade. I would also point out that our 2019 Brexit policy was not Keir’s, but one that Jeremy wanted and was secured at Conference with the support of Len McCluskey, who later wrote this piece claiming that it “should be a vote-winner”.
I agree with you that over-reliance on polls outside election periods isn’t always helpful, but as you will recognise, in the days before Keir became leader we were 20 points behind and we’re now in a much stronger position – while Johnson enjoys a current ‘bounce’ from the successful vaccination programme (which is frustrating as it’s the hard-working NHS staff that his Government has denied a fair pay settlement to who are rolling it out!)
With best wishes
Paul
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My final thoughts: Although I reject Paul Blomfield’s contention that “our 2019 Brexit policy was not Keir’s, but one that Jeremy wanted…” I have not replied to him since it seemed that our sequence of correspondence had run its course. I’d like sincerely to thank him again for taking such trouble to reply in fullness to my concerns.
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Additional:
Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani of Novara Media marked the anniversary with their own review on Friday 2nd:
If I was to describe Muslim migrant workers arriving here from the south as cockroaches and then go so far as you recommend eradication as a solution, not only would I expect my readers to be absolutely disgusted, but I would think it quite justifiable for WordPress, Facebook and Twitter to censor such incendiary racist content. And I say this as an ardent proponent for free speech who fully supports the right for others to hold and spread contemptible opinions, not even debarring vile racism so long as it is within well-established restrictions that make it illegal to incite violence.
With this in mind, now watch “Alexei Navalny Certified Nationalist” (as his own caption reads) rallying his base by speaking to supporters in precisely this way in a political promo broadcast from 2007:
Navalny’s infamous “Muslim migrants are cockroaches” video with English subtitles. At the end, Navalny shoots person representing Muslim migrants from North Caucasus. [Small correction: opener is “Alexei Navalny Certified Nationalist” not “specialist”] https://t.co/XERk5qBMtn
Click here to find the same content uploaded on the Internet Archive.
Ten years later in 2017, Navalny, already the darling of western liberals, was featured by the Guardian in an interview with Shaun Walker. A perfect opportunity to issue his apology and express some modicum of regret (even if phoney) for what the article lightly describes as “a number of disturbing videos, including one in which he is dressed as a dentist, complaining that tooth cavities ruin healthy teeth, as clips of migrant workers are shown.” Instead, however, we learn, Navalny remains “unapologetic”:
He sees it as a strength that he can speak to both liberals and nationalists. But comparing migrants to cockroaches? “That was artistic license,” he says. So there’s nothing at all from those videos or that period that he regrets? “No,” he says again, firmly.
Well hey ho, Navalny may speak in terms no different from Le Pen and Trump and with less restraint and worse manners, and be unrepentant in his choice of rancid language and imagery so long as it appeals to a slavering nationalist base, but quite unlike Le Pen and Trump he somehow still manages to tick all of the liberal boxes; his single discernible quality being his hostility towards Putin, which is evidently all that finally counts. The Guardian certainly gives Navalny a pass, Shaun Walker continuing:
Perhaps he has a cynical belief that, with the support of the liberal elite sewn up, the anti-migrant rhetoric can potentially help him appeal to a broader audience. Certainly, most opposition politicians, even if they don’t like Navalny much, are aware that he is the best hope for swelling anti-Putin sentiment. 1
However, not everyone is so forgiving. For perfectly understandable reasons therefore, and with public pressure mounting, on Tuesday Amnesty International quietly downgraded the status of Navalny, determining that he no longer fits their criteria for “prisoner of conscience”.
New: @AmnestyUK withdraws designation of Navalny as a "prisoner of conscience." In email, Amnesty says it's "no longer able to consider Aleksei Navalny a prisoner of conscience given the fact that he advocated violence and discrimination and he has not retracted such statements." pic.twitter.com/E9m0e6lzT8
A spokesman for the human rights organisation in Moscow told the BBC that he believed the wave of requests to “de-list” Navalny was part of an “orchestrated campaign” to discredit Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic and “impede” Amnesty’s calls for his release from custody. 2
To be honest, I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing about Alexei Navalny, and though our own liberal media has got into the unfortunate habit of fawning over Russia’s own Trump, his “anti-corruption” shtick (to drain the Kremlin swamp presumably!) seems to strike less of a chord with the average Russian. In the west, Navalny is endlessly held up as the poster child of Russian opposition, and yet in truth his political sideshow is seen more as a dubious irrelevance and especially by those on the left who are actually taking the battle to the oligarchs.
To better gauge Russian public opinion and hear a genuine left-wing take on Alexei Navalny, I recommend this recent Grayzone interview in which Katya Kazbek, the editor-in-chief of arts and culture magazine Supamodu.com; and Alexey Sakhnin, activist and a member of the Left Front, who was one of the leaders of the anti-Putin protest movement from 2011 to 2013, spoke with Aaron Maté:
*
Unrelated but with perfect timing, the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) yesterday released its long-awaited report. In it they are calling for new laws to tackle the spread of hate speech and the glorification of extremism.
Set up by Theresa May’s government back in 2017 in the shadow of the Manchester Arena and London Bridge attacks, the “independent” CCE, “a statutory body to help fight hatred and extremism in the same way as we have fought racism,” 3 was headed up by a little-known activist called Sara Khan and ex-senior police officer, Sir Mark Rowley. At the time, the appointment of Khan came as a shock to many and was heavily criticised by anti-racist voices as politically diverse as former Conservative minister Baroness Warsi, Labour MPs Naz Shah and Diane Abbott, as well as the Muslim Council of Britain, and CAGE, the London-based advocacy group for Muslim detainees.
Writing in Middle East Eye, Siema Iqbal expressed her own outrage at Khan’s appointment as follows:
An article Khan wrote that was published in a report by Hope Not Hate in 2017, which amounts to a collection of smears directed at dissenting Muslim individuals and organisations, is just the tip of the iceberg.
The broad-brush strokes with which she portrayed these organisations, many of which are stalwarts of the community, does not command confidence. It is true that Khan is from the Pakistani and Muslim communities, but without legitimacy and without trust, this amounts to little.
Continuing:
[W]hat is more extraordinary, is that the government has launched a Commission to Counter Extremism when there is no actual legal definition of the term itself. How is it possible to work on something the government has failed to define?
Instead, why not engage more widely with Muslim community organisations and address the concerns around Prevent and the lack of transparency around the Home Office’s Extremism Analysis Unit and its work?
Numerous academics, organisations and individuals have expressed their concerns around the discriminatory aspects of the Prevent policy and its pseudo-scientific basis, yet the government still refuses to call an independent enquiry.
The government may have found itself a Muslim woman to serve as a “mouthpiece” for the Home Office alongside others. However, she is outnumbered by those who will not. 4
Click here to read Siema Iqbal’s full article entitled “I am insulted at Sara Khan’s appointment”.
The details of this new CCE report recommend the further tightening of controls on activities the commission describes as “hateful extremism”, which according to Mark Rowley is “where one group targets another to ‘to advance a political, religious or racial supremacist ideology’ and wanting ‘to create a climate conducive to hate crime, terrorism or other violence’”:
It is based on a concept already in use in terrorism trials, the “mindset material” where extremist material, such as from the far right or Islamist terrorist videos, are accepted as evidence of pre-existing extremism. […]
Rowley said a tougher approach for the internet was needed but technology companies had pointed out there was little more they could do until they [sic] was an accepted definition of what counted as extremism: “The magnifying effect of social media had transformed it from a sideshow to a major threat.”
The report said there were worrying signs the young were being duped by extremists.
From an article in the Guardian which also includes a response from a spokesman for CAGE – an organisation Sara Khan now claims could meet ‘the threshold for action’ – who in turn accuses the commission of “implementing an ‘official’ state-sanctioned policy of ‘cancel culture’ arguing for further restrictions on lawful speech”:
“After 3 years, and at great taxpayer expense, the CCE concludes its work without any further clarity on what ‘extremism’ is. Instead it promotes ideas from some of the most stridently Islamophobic and censorious organisations in the industry.” 5
While seemingly unconnected, the latest twist in the Navalny saga and the concurrent release of the CCE report throw abundant light on the double standards we see operating throughout the media. More alarmingly, the difference in the way cases are being treated seems to be indicative of a divergence at the level of law: what is deemed politically acceptable potentially informing what kinds of freedom of speech will be legally sanctioned in the future.
On the one hand, anyone in Britain presumed to be creating “a climate conducive to hate crime, terrorism or other violence” may soon find themselves faced with the threat of prosecution. The big question is, of course, to whom will this legislation actually apply? Muslims understandably fear that once again they will be the ones targeted.
Meanwhile, censorship on the grounds of such vaguely defined infringements as “hateful extremism” provides yet another pretext to deplatform alternative opinion, which is deeply worrying at a time when freedom of speech, especially on the internet, is already under sustained attack and unwanted alternative opinions are already subjected to unprecedented levels of censorship.
On the other hand, describing Muslim migrant workers as cockroaches and openly calling for their eradication will doubtless continue to be passed over as a minor indiscretion and more actively defended as a justifiable ploy for gaining political traction against the enemy, just so long as your name is Alexei Navalny.
2 From an article entitled “Amnesty strips Alexei Navalny of ‘prisoner of conscience’ status” written by Sarah Rainford, published in BBC News on February 24, 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56181084
3 From Theresa May’s statement following the terrorist attack near a mosque in Finsbury Park, London, published in full by BBC News on June 19, 2017. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40327996
4 From an article entitled “I am insulted at Sara Khan’s appointment” written by Siema Iqbal, published in Middle East Eye on January 29, 2018. https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/node/68777
“The ruling class exists, it’s not a conspiracy theory. They operate as a class, too. They share the same values, the same sensibility and in Europe and North America they are white. They act in accordance with their interests, which are very largely identical. The failure to understand this is the single greatest problem and defect in left discourse today.”
— John Steppling, Author, Playwright
“This report is crucial reading for anyone interested in creatively considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world could evolve.”
— Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation
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Scenario planning for corporate strategy was pioneered by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s. [Further reading on scenario planning: The Art of the Long View] The following excerpts are highlights from the May 2010 “Scenarios for the Future of Technology & International Development” report produced by The Rockefeller Foundation & Global Business Network.
Please note: The excerpts below are from the “Lock Step” scenario, but excerpts from all four scenarios are available in the original article published by Wrong Kind of Green.
“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven months, the majority of them healthy young adults. The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.” […]
“The pandemic blanketed the planet — though disproportionate numbers died in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, where the virus spread like wildfire in the absence of official containment protocols. But even in developed countries, containment was a challenge. The United States’s initial policy of “strongly discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but across borders. However, a few countries did fare better — China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter postpandemic recovery. [p 18]
“China’s government was not the only one that took extreme measures to protect its citizens from risk and exposure. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems — from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty — leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.” […]
“At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval. Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty — and their privacy — to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability. Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests. In many developed countries, enforced cooperation with a suite of new regulations and agreements slowly but steadily restored both order and, importantly, economic growth.” [p 19]
Click here to read the full article entitled “The Clairvoyant Ruling Class” published by Wrong Kind of Green.
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Fighting the invisible enemy today
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
In the fight against Covid-19, the government of South Korea has arguably shown a way for other democracies to follow. First and foremost it established a comprehensive system of testing to confirm positive cases. This was backed up by contact tracing, targeted isolation and quarantine. Imposing sensible restrictions on travel also helped to slow and limit the spread of the outbreak. By acting promptly and enacting the precise measures called for by the scientists at the World Health Organisation, the Koreans managed to swiftly and effectively control the spread of Covid-19 infection and thereby averted a developing crisis.
One criticism of the South Korean approach surrounds its intrusive use of mobile phone technology to track movement and contacts. Though understandable perhaps (given cultural differences), such an infringement of privacy was non-essential, and there is really no need or justification whatsoever for western democracies to follow a similar course. That GCHQ in Britain and the NSA in America are already able to access and record private digital information including personal communications, metadata and location is actually an open secret. Of course, the opportunity now presents itself for such covert practices to be rolled out very publicly and given full legal sanction; moves that ought to be opposed. In other regards, however, the Korean model is surely exemplary.
The graph below is a snapshot of an interactive chart that you can access here.
Snapshot taken on March 28th
In stark contrast to Korean efficiency that halted the spread of infection, government responses across the western world have been comparatively slow to act, muddled, and in some respects negligent. The unfolding situation in Italy tragically illustrates a clear lack of preparedness on the part of the authorities there, where in spite of several weeks advantage over the Koreans, an initially lax approach allowed community-spread of the infection. It was not until a full-blown public health crisis emerged that increasingly draconian and sometimes overnight emergency measures were put in place.
On this Sky News report from March 11th, which was recorded prior to the full lockdown, many Italians were already asking why so little, so late:
Virtually all other European countries have failed to learn the lessons from Italy.
A fortnight later on March 27th, Sky News reported from Spain, where once again action to prevent and slow the spread of the virus came too late:
In France and Britain, where the clampdown has been more gradual and less severe up to now, the implementation of restrictions has been similarly confused and inexplicably overdue. Who knows how many more people became infected in the days and weeks leading up to the eventual (and inevitable) closure of sporting events, entertainment venues, gyms and pubs, let alone during the time lost as schools, offices and building sites continued to operate; the government’s preference for business as usual.
Even UK's Trump admits too little, too late virus testing. Orders lockdown for public health. Asks other nations' help.
On the other hand, the overreach shown by North Derbyshire police who decided to fly their drones over The Peak District last week in order to shame anyone out walking the dog or just taking a quiet stroll was not just unwarranted, but entirely counterproductive. In a time of national crisis, you have to ask why our news media chose to broadcast this footage and reinforce such a stark police state message:
The situation facing America is set to be worse, with its lack of social safety nets and a system of healthcare provision that makes it a privilege millions simply cannot afford. Compounding these problems, the response so far has been more complacent and shambolic than our own governments in Europe; Trump theatrical as ever, recently telling everyone that it’ll all be over by Easter. Meanwhile, after weeks of non-intervention and exponential rates of infection (a terrible spike in numbers in New York especially) with other states like Florida taking no actions at all to check the spread of disease, one indication of the growing desperation is the panic-buying not just of toilet rolls, but of firearms.
On March 26th, ‘Democracy Now!’ interviewed New York City emergency room doctor Craig Spencer, a survivor of Ebola, which he contracted while fighting its outbreak in Africa. He says: “I think, in a week, we will be Italy. At least here in New York City, we’re already seeing that” [at 15:30 mins]:
Behind the scenes, on the other hand, dramatic moves are now being taken to tackle the pandemic, including ones that will sideline constitutional rights altogether. Indeed, there are clear parallels with actions taken during immediate aftermath of 9/11, its shadow lengthened by the coincidentally mysterious anthrax attacks, which enabled then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to fast-track the Patriot Acts. Likewise, today’s Justice Department is in the process of launching a raft of new legislation that further undermines civil liberties and chips away at fundamental human rights:
Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted. POLITICO also reviewed and previously reported on documents seeking the authority to extend deadlines on merger reviews and prosecutions. […]
In one of the documents, the department proposed that Congress grant the attorney general power to ask the chief judge of any district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”
The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress. […]
The request raised eyebrows because of its potential implications for habeas corpus — the constitutional right to appear before a judge after arrest and seek release.
“Not only would it be a violation of that, but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest,’” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.” 2
Click here to read the full article published by Politico.
For people clamoring for full on military rule, please consider that all the freedoms you are willing to give away because you are afraid are freedoms you will likely NEVER get back.
When the virus is gone, the junta will still be there.
In an article published by Mint Press News a few days later, Whitney Webb picked up where Politico left off, highlighting plans for ‘Continuity of Government’ (COG) and the use of a controversial database known simply as ‘Main Core’ that lists American dissidents and “potential troublemakers”:
Though Main Core was reportedly in use after September 11 to target “unfriendly” individuals for increased domestic surveillance, concern that COG plans in the age of coronavirus could take a more drastic turn and involve the detention of Americans included in that database now seems more plausible than ever. On Saturday,Politico reported that the Department of Justice has demanded new “emergency powers” during the current pandemic and these powers include being able to indefinitely detain Americans without trial. Politico also noted that the DOJ’s controversial new requests “span several stages of the legal process, from initial arrest to how cases are processed and investigated.” Per the DOJ’s requests, indefinite detention would emerge through a new ability whereby the Attorney General or a judge could pause court proceedings whenever courts are “fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”
WhatPolitico did not include in its report is that current Attorney General William Barr has spent the past several months fine-tuning and implementinga “pre-crime” program. Officially known as the “National Disruption and Early Engagement Program” (DEEP), it aims to “identify, assess and engage” potentially violent individuals “before they strike.” Barr first announced this program last October in an official memorandum and therein stated that the program was to be implemented sometime over the course of 2020 and would involve “an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.”
Whitney Webb continues:
In his memorandum, Barr further notes that the program’s “early engagement tactics” were “born of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats” following the September 11 attacks, essentially stating that this pre-crime program will utilize methods from the “War on Terror” domestically and on a massive scale.
Adding:
Furthermore, with the FBI having recently flagged “conspiracy theorists” (and by extension those who distrust or question government narratives of both past and present) as a “domestic terror threat,” the DOJ could even make the case that failure to blindly trust government narratives presents a threat to the public order. Given that the Main Core database in its current form contains bulk surveillance gathered from social media, phone conversations/messaging apps and even financial information (i.e. purchasing history, etc.) on Americans deemed unfriendly “often for the slightest and most trivial reason,” this unprecedented power grab by the DOJ has an authoritarian and Orwellian potential to target legitimate dissent like never before. 3
Click here to read Whitney Webb’s full article entitled “Coronavirus: What Newsweek Failed to Mention About ‘Continuity of Government’”.
Moreover, under the pretext of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, Washington recently extended FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), and specifically the three Patriot Act provisions:
With the nation’s attention fixed on the rapidly spreading coronavirus, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation to extend FBI surveillance powers that were set to expire on March 15.
The bill, formally titled the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, cleared the House by a vote of 278 to 136, with 152 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting yes. View the full roll call here.
The legislation, strongly opposed by civil liberties groups and privacy advocates, is the product of bipartisan negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.).
Attorney General William Barr voiced his support for the measure in a statement on Wednesday.
— Jonathan 'Boo and Vote' Cohn (@JonathanCohn) March 11, 2020
If passed by the Senate, advocacy group Free Press warned, legislation would “reauthorize abusive government surveillance powers.”
“The bill would reauthorize Section 215 powers Congress established under the USA Patriot Act in 2001,” Free Press noted. “Section 215 is the provision national security agencies cited in the past to support their unwarranted collection of phone records of hundreds of millions of people in the United States.” 4
Click here to read the full report published by Common Dreams.
There has been a terrible recent history when it comes to the emergency management of disasters in America. These legislative preparations and the tightening of lockdowns to tackle coronavirus recall not only the power grab after 9/11 but also, and just as alarmingly, the institution of de facto martial law when New Orleans was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
When Hurricane Katrina forced New Orleans poet Shelton Alexander to evacuate his home, he took his truck and video camera to the Superdome. He escaped the chaotic shelter a few days later with a truckload of people and video documentation of history:
It is rather too easy to take our rights and democratically enshrined freedoms for granted, when in fact these are constantly under attack. And during times of crisis, when an opportunistic executive is able to avoid scrutiny, when lawmakers can retreat into the shadows to begin reshaping long-held constitutional rights, democracy is especially vulnerable. In abandoning its democracy principles, all in the name of protecting its citizens from this new invisible enemy, America seems to be trailing the way as it did after 9/11 (Israel too – see the video below), and the rest of the world would do well to pay attention.
On March 25th, Greg Wilpert, host of ‘The Real News Network’, spoke with Antony Loewenstein, author of ‘Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe’, about how the Israeli government’s state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic is being used to shut down political debate and the right to protest:
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Update: New coronavirus law ‘bestows unlimited powers’ on Orbán government
On the same day I posted this article [March 30th] Amnesty International issued the following press release:
Following a decision by the Hungarian parliament to pass a new law that will allow the Government to rule by decree – without a clear end date or periodic reviews – under an extended state of emergency, David Vig, Amnesty International’s Hungary Director, said:
“This bill creates an indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency, and gives Viktor Orbán and his Government carte blanche to restrict human rights.
“This is not the way to address the very real crisis that has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need strong safeguards to ensure that any measures to restrict human rights adopted under the state of emergency are strictly necessary and proportional in order to protect public health. This new law bestows unlimited powers to the government to rule by decree beyond the pandemic.
“During his years as Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán has overseen a rollback of human rights in Hungary, stoking up hostility towards marginalised groups and attempting to muzzle Hungary’s critical voices. Allowing his government to rule by decree is likely to speed up this rollback.”
Rule by decree
The new law will allow Hungary’s Government to rule by decree without a sunset clause or any other provision that would guarantee parliament can exercise proper oversight. It also creates two new crimes which would mean that anyone who publicises false or distorted facts that interfere with the “successful protection” of the public, or that “alarm or agitate” the public, could be punished by up to five years in prison. Anyone who interferes with the operation of a quarantine or isolation order could also face a prison sentence of up to five years, a punishment that increases to eight years if anyone dies as a result.
Amnesty is warning that these measures are inconsistent with international human rights law and standards. Plans for the new law were criticised last week by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the International Press Institute, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Click here to read the same press release on the Amnesty International website.
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1 Quote originally used by Benjamin Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its “Reply to the Governor” (November 11, 1755).
[The current hearing is] about whether this show trial should go ahead, because there’s going to be nothing else than a show trial in the US. There’s no chance he’s going to get a fair trial.
It’s not just about Julian Assange. This really is a battle over press freedom, over the rule of law, over the future I would say even of democracy. Because democracy, which means that the people control governmental power; this cannot exist with secrecy. You deprive the public of the right to know, and you deprive them of the tools to control the government.
When Nils Melzer visited Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison during May last year, he afterwards reported that “Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma”, describing the evidence as “overwhelming and clear”. He also made an official appeal to the British Government not to extradite Assange directly to the United States or to any other State failing to provide reliable guarantees against his onward transfer to the United States.
Melzer concluded: “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” adding simply, “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”
Embedded above is a short interview with Nils Melzer broadcast on today’s ‘Going Underground’. The full transcript below is mine:
Afshin Rattansi: Special Rapporteur welcome back to Going Underground. Before we get to issues around the court case at Woolwich Crown Court – the Belmarsh crown court – we are hearing from people from the Labour Party, pretty mainstream, now coming onboard to support Julian Assange. Is what you have been saying since your report into the alleged persecution of Julian Assange becoming more mainstream?
Nils Melzer: I think that’s a fair assessment, yes. I’m actually surprised to see, compared to last June, which is about a month after my visit when I tried to place an op-ed on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture [June 26th] in the mainstream press around the world, I was unable to place an op-ed demasking the torture of Julian Assange: after having visited and examined him with medical experts.
I contacted The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Australian mainstream media, the British mainstream media. It was impossible to place it.
Today what we see is really that the mainstream press starts to realise through publications in alternative media that they probably got it wrong. And so they get more interested in discovering the truth about the story.
AR: Less face saving and more they know that if Assange is convicted, the next people could be them?
NM: Well, we do have indicators of that and perhaps they start to, as we say, smell the coffee. After the raids on the ABC headquarters and after Glenn Greenwald was arrested in Brazil and is being accused, you know according to the same kind of playbook that we see playing out with Assange. And also public funds being cut from mainstream broadcasters. Perhaps they start realising that they really did first come for Assange, then for Greenwald, and now they may be coming for the BBC.
AR: Okay, but Boris Johnson is on the record for saying it is only right that Julian Assange finally faces justice. That was when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy and thrown into jail here.
NM: I think we all agree it would be about time for him to face justice, it’s just that what he’s facing here in Britain is not justice. And what he would be facing in the US is not justice.
AR: Well, Johnson went on to say, “It was a credit to Foreign Office officials who worked tirelessly to secure this outcome” meaning the dragging of him [out of the embassy] the pictures of which were caught by Ruptly, the news agency. I mean are you saying every one of those Foreign Office officials has facilitated what could amount to torture and arbitrary detention?
NM: You see Julian Assange has been expelled from the embassy based on a decision made by the President perhaps even with the support of the parliament in Ecuador. But it was communicated to him on the morning that he had been deprived of asylum status and deprived of his citizenship, because the Ecuadorian Constitution does not allow the extradition and expulsion of nationals, without any due process. And the British police just went in and dragged him out without any…
AR: So what do you make of the now Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying ‘credit to foreign officials’ for that?
NM: Well he’s crediting that because he likes the outcome. It certainly has nothing to do with the rule of law.
AR: Well, Amnesty International, they’ve refused to make him a Prisoner of Conscience. Why do you think there are still other NGOs who refuse to take onboard the Julian Assange cause?
NM: I very much support Amnesty International when they try to protect people by declaring them Prisoners of Conscience. But when they use their worldwide influence to exclude individuals from that category, I think then it becomes very problematic. Especially when we are talking about a journalist who has been exposing grave violations of human rights, and who is prosecuted precisely because he has exposed violations of human rights.
AR: And this is political? I mean in your view you don’t think that if a whistleblower exposed alleged crimes say in the Russian government who had found asylum here, there would be no chance of extraditing them to Moscow?
NM: Well the first issue is the one of the whistleblower. There’s Snowden who’s now in Russia, or if you have an equivalent, let’s say a Russian whistleblower who has asylum in the West – and there are people like that. But Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. He did not leak information. It was leaked to him.
AR: Okay. You don’t think this anymore has anything to do with what you call ‘fabricated rape allegations’. In fact, you believe those allegations could be linked to the Afghan war logs: revelations of Anglo-American/Nato troops in Afghanistan.
NM: Yes, well, I’m not in a position to you know confirm or deny whether there has been some kind of a sexual offence at some point between the women and Julian Assange. All I can say [is] I have seen the original Swedish police documents where the women are not claiming to have been raped.
But you can see even the woman sitting in the police station sending a text message to her friend saying ‘I don’t want to accuse Assange of anything – I just want him to take an HIV test’. But the police wants to get their hands on him. So I mean who would write a message like that? Not a raped woman.
Then you see a consecutive series of grave violations of due process in the Swedish case. And all of this happens within a month of the publication of the Afghan leaks. So where the US has asked their allies to initiate prosecutions against Assange wherever possible.
So you know the choreography of this – how it plays out and how Sweden actually at no stage in the proceedings really tries to protect the women’s interests, refuses to question Assange when he is still in Sweden, and offers and actually demands to be questioned, but the day he leaves Sweden, and he receives written permission by the prosecutor to leave Sweden, they issue an arrest warrant against him for trying to evade justice.
So there is a series of contradictions that is clear.
AR: Which was acted upon by the now supposedly leading candidate to take over from Jeremy Corbyn in this country: the then- Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer.
NM: Yeah, I’m not aware of who exactly acted at the time, but clearly that plot then played to push Assange into corner where everybody had this image of him. And I was influenced by this image as well, beginning with this narrative of him being a suspected rapist, being a hacker, being a narcissist, being a spy. And as soon as you scratch the surface a bit of this case, you realise, there is nothing to back it up.
AR: Okay, you also discovered the trail that led to Swedish Justice Minister, Thomas Bodström, the former Justice Minister, who you claim effectively supervised a kind of rendition/torture that was perhaps documented by Wikileaks.
NM: Well, he was the Justice Minister when Sweden, and the security police of Sweden, kidnapped two people – who were registered asylum-seekers in Stockholm – and handed them over to CIA without any due process. And they were immediately ill-treated on the airport territory and then flown to Egypt where they were tortured and detained arbitrarily.
Of these two people we know because they survived. Both of them filed complaints with the United Nations, and Sweden was obliged to pay them, I think, each of them about half a million dollars in compensation.
AR: So you think that when the rape allegation was used to smear Assange, it was an admission of guilt on the part of Sweden when it dropped all the allegations?
NM: Well they admitted that they never had any evidence that was sufficient to even press charges against him. Five days later, the leading prosecutor of Stockholm closed the case saying ‘I believe these women, but nothing they said indicates a crime’.
There could be an explanation but when I asked Sweden formally in a formal letter as I am mandated to do by the United Nations – I submitted all the contradictory evidence to them and said please make sense of this; explain to me how this complies with human rights law before I draw my conclusions – and now the first response of Sweden was ‘you’re criticising the judiciary which is independent from us and we’re the government so we can’t comment of this’.
I wrote back to them and said please, you know, you’re my counterpart but please transmit my concerns to the judiciary and let them answer to me. On which they then responded in a one-page letter saying ‘we have no further observations’.
My experiences where states don’t want to respond to my questions, then probably they have something to hide.
AR: As the court case gets underway here in London in two parts – another part in May – Chelsea Manning, who was let out early by President Obama, a source for Wikileaks, has been virtually bankrupted by the United States for refusing to testify against Julian Assange. So UK authorities here, are they basically deciding on whether a show trial should go ahead?
NM: Absolutely, yes. It’s about whether this show trial should go ahead, because there’s going to be nothing else than a show trial in the US. There’s no chance he’s going to get a fair trial.
It’s not just about Julian Assange. This really is a battle over press freedom, over the rule of law, over the future I would say even of democracy. Because democracy, which means that the people control governmental power; this cannot exist with secrecy. You deprive the public of the right to know, and you deprive them of the tools to control the government.
AR: But you know we have a supposedly independent judiciary here. Having said that, the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, newly-elected Prime Minister, has previously expressed reservations about the conduct of the Iraq War and wars after 9/11. Can you even call on Boris Johnson to do anything in the case of Julian Assange?
NM: The Home Secretary of the previous government [Sajid Javid] signed the extradition request, and granted it. And that was now challenged at the court, and that’s why it’s with the court. If it had not been challenged he’d just be extradited.
AR: Although that tends to be just a formality when it’s the United States, one of Britain’s closest international partners.
NM: Well, I think to be fair there have been individuals that have not been extradited to the United States by Britain. Which I believe is one reason why they wanted to go through Sweden, because Sweden has a track record of extraditing just about anybody to the United States, with or without due process. Now that is obviously off-the-table with the case being closed in Sweden, and now they’ll just go through the British system.
AR: Special Rapporteur, thank you.
NM: Thank you.
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Additional:
Also broadcast to coincide with the start of this week’s hearing in London, The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté spoke with political satirist, broadcaster and a friend of Assange, Randy Credico, who issued a stark warning:
“The message is, if this were to work: if, in fact, he’s extradited here. That particular case leans into fascism; if they can bring a journalist over here and put him in jail. I mean you get to that point, that long reach of the US government where the laws internally don’t apply to the people externally. This is something like in Rome – the citizens of Rome, they enjoyed the laws that protected them, but nobody in Egypt did, in Mesopotamia did, nobody throughout their empire did except for the citizens in Rome.
“I mean if this happens, I’m telling you that it’s just put most of the nose inside the camel’s tent and people had better stand up for Julian Assange. You know, I’m not a Julian Assange fanatic, but I’m a free speech and First Amendment fanatic. This is bigger than Julian Assange. This is about protecting free speech and the First Amendment… This is the First Amendment at stake. The very core of this democracy, what’s left of it, really functions on a free press. Without a free press there is no chance, no hope of a democracy continuing.” [from 1:05 mins]
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And from Craig Murray’s latest post published on his official website yesterday and entitled “Roger Waters on Julian Assange”:
Roger Waters has become one of the most eloquent and persistent supporters of Julian Assange. He is prepared to challenge the propagandists of the mainstream media head-on in a way that many more people should do.
For yesterday’s rally for Assange Roger had prepared a talk putting Julian’s persecution in a global context. He did not have time to give the whole speech, and so I asked him if I could publish it:
WE ARE HERE TODAY FOR JULIAN ASSANGE.
But I have four names on this piece of paper.
The First and last of course is Julian Assange, A Journalist, a courageous shiner of light into the dark places from which the powers that be would dearly like to have us turn away.
Julian Assange. A name to be carved with pride into any monument to human progress.
Julian is why we are here today, but this is no parochial protest. We are today part of a global movement, a global movement that might be the beginning of the global enlightenment that this fragile planet so desperately needs.
Ok. Second Name. Sent to me by my friend VJ Prashad.
Second name is Aamir Aziz, Aamir is a young poet and activist in Delhi involved in the fight against Modi and his rascist Citizenship law.
Everything Will Be Remembered
Kill us, we will become ghosts and write
of your killings, with all the evidence.
You write jokes in court;
We will write ‘justice’ on the walls.
We will speak so loudly that even the deaf will hear.
We will write so clearly that even the blind will read.
You write ‘injustice’ on the earth;
We will write ‘revolution’ in the sky.
Everything will be remembered;
Everything recorded
This out pouring of the human spirit from India is taking place in a time of revolt, when the fetters of propriety are set aside.
As we meet here in London, across the Atlantic in Argentina thousands of women are taking to the streets to demand the legalization of abortion from President Fernandez.
It’s not just Argentina. This last year we have seen major protests erupt across the whole world against neoliberal/fascist regimes. In Chile, The Lebanon, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti,France and now, of course also in Bolivia fighting the new US imposed military dictatorship there.
When will we see the name of England appended to that noble list? I sense the scratching of heads in drawing rooms across the home counties, “What’s he talking about, the man’s a bloody pinko pervert, bloody antisemite, what’s he talking about? We don’t live in a dictatorship, this is a free country, a democracy, with all the finest traditions of fair play, pah!”
Well, I’ve got news for you Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells. We’d like to think this is a free country, but are we really free? Why, when Julian Assange is brought to the dock in the tiny magistrates court inside Belmarsh prison are so many seats occupied by anonymous American suits, whispering instructions into the attentive ear of the prosecution’s lead barrister, James Lewis QC?
Why?
Because we don’t live in a free country, we live in a glorified dog kennel and we bark and/or wag our tails at the bidding of our lords and masters across the pond.
I stand here today, in front of the Mother of Parliaments, and there she stands blushing in all her embarrassment. And just upstream from here is Runnemede, where in 1215, we, the English, laid out the rudiments of common law. Magna Carta, ratified in 1297 article 29 of which gave us Habeus Corpus. Or did it? It stated:
“The body of a free man is not to be arrested, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way ruined, nor is the king to go against him or send forcibly against him, except by judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
Sadly, Article 29 is not enforceable in modern law. Magna Carta is only an idea, and in this propaganda driven modern world, it provides no check in principle to Parliament legislating against the rights of citizens.
We do however have an extradition treaty with the USA and in the first paragraph of article 4 of that treaty it states. “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.” Julian Assange has committed no crime but he has committed a political act. He has spoken truth to power. He has angered some of our masters in Washington by telling the truth and in retribution for the act of telling the truth they want his blood.
Yesterday in front of Battersea Power Station I did a TV interview for SKY news to promote this event, there was no visual link, so my only contact with the lady asking me questions was via an ear bud on a curly wire. I learned something about telling truth in the phrasing of her questions to me. She came at me like some crazed Don Quixote every question laced, thick with the smears and innuendo and the false accusations with which the powers that be have been trying to blacken Julian Assange’s name. She rattled off the tired, but well prepared narrative, and then interrupted constantly when I made reply. I don’t know who she is, she may mean well. If she does, my advice would be to stop drinking the Kool-aid, and if she actually gives a fig for her chosen profession get her sorry ass down here and join us.
So England. I call upon our prime minister, Boris Johnson, to declare his colours, does he support the spirit of Magna Carta? Does he believe in, democracy, freedom, fair play, free speech, and especially the freedom of the press? If the answer to those questions is yes, then come on Prime Minister be the British Bulldog you would have us all believe you are? Stand up to the bluster of American hegemony, call off this show trial, this charade, this kangaroo court. “The evidence before the court is incontrovertible.” Julian Assange is an innocent man. A journalist doing very important work for “we the people” by exposing the crimes of powerful sociopaths in the corridors of power.
I call on you to free him today.
I cannot leave this stage without mention of Chelsea Manning, who provided some of the material that Julian published.
Chelsea has been in a federal prison for a year incarcerated by the Americans for refusing, on principle, to give evidence to a grand jury specifically convened to make an example of Julian Assange. What courage. They are also fining her $1,000 a day. Chelsea yours is another name to be carved in pride, I’ve been reading the latest on your case, it looks as if your legal team are finding light at the end of the tunnel, please god, you get out soon back to your loved ones, you are a true hero.You exemplify the bulldog spirit that I was talking about a few moments ago.
Also Daniel Hale
Daniel is a whistle-blower you may not know yet. He was in a great documentary movie National Bird, made by my good friend Sonia Kennebeck. He was part of the US drone program targeting Afghans in their own country from some mobile command center in Navada. When his stint in the USAF was over. Daniel’s good heart refused to edit out the burden of remorse he carried and he very bravely decided to tell his story. The FBI/CIA have pursued Daniel remorselessly ever since and he is now in prison awaiting trial. Daniel’s is another name to be carved in pride. Those of us who have never compromised our liberty in the cause of freedom, who have never picked up the burning torch and held it trembling over the crimes of their superior officers, can only wonder at the extraordinary courage of those who have.
There are other speakers here, so I will make way, I could stand here all day railing against the dying of the light should we not stand Bulldog like, with arms linked, ranks closed in front of our brother and comrade Julian Assange. And when the lackies of the American Empire come to take him, to destroy him and hang him in the hedge as a warning to frighten future journalists, we will look them in the eye and steadfast with one voice we will intone.
“Over our dead fucking bodies.”
Roger Waters Feb 22nd 2020
You can see Roger delivering the truncated version, with force but still self-deprecation, on this video of yesterday’s event. You can also see great speeches including by Yanis Varoufakis and Brian Eno.
Following the announcement that Israel is facing a possible International Criminal Court war crimes probe over its 2014 assault on Gaza, Democracy Now! invited Finkelstein into their studio to give an extended interview.
Click here to watch the first section of the interview and read the full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
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Norman Finkelstein is the son of Holocaust survivors. A leading scholar on Israel-Palestine and veteran political activist, Finkelstein is the author of many books, including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Human Suffering and Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End. His latest book is titled Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom.
The full interview lasts more than 90 minutes and was broadcast in two parts [January 10th and 19th] – it is embedded below with all sections kept in the original sequence. For the purposes of clarity, however, I have decided to republish a selection of what Finkelstein said under three separate headings: criticisms of human rights organisations, of the UN and Ban Ki-moon in particular, and of recent US administrations. For the same reason, sections from the interview are cut and pasted not always in the original sequence. I very much encourage readers to watch to the full interview.
Click here to watch the second section of the interview and read the full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
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The big lies
The Big Lie about Gaza is that it’s an aggressor, that Gaza is aggressing against Israel, and Israel is reacting in self-defense. It’s a double lie. The first lie is, most of the Israeli attacks on Gaza don’t even have anything to do with Gaza. So, if you take Operation Cast Lead, in 2008, ’09, why did Israel attack Gaza? Not because of Gaza. Not because of anything Gaza did. The Israelis were very honest. This is revenge for Lebanon. In 2006, Israel suffered a major defeat in Lebanon against the Hezbollah, the Party of God. And then Israelis began to panic. They’re losing what they call their deterrence capacity. And their deterrence capacity simply means—it’s a fancy, technical term for the Arabs’ fear of us. […]
The second big lie is, what does Gaza consist of. When you read the official reports, even when you read the human rights reports, they talk about this big arsenal of weapons that Hamas has accumulated. Number one, how do you know how many weapons they have? If you knew how many weapons they had—have, then you must know where they are. And if you know where they are, then Israel would preemptively strike. If it’s not preemptively struck, it’s because it doesn’t know anything about the weapons. Israel plucks numbers out of thin air, and then all the official media, and even the critical human rights organizations, repeat these numbers. They talk about Grad missiles and Fajr missiles.
What is Gaza? What are its weapons? What is its arsenal? Let’s take the last attack. We have exactly—we know exactly how much damage was done by these weapons. There were 5,000 so-called rockets and 2,000 mortars fired at—mortar shells fired at Israel. So, altogether, that’s 7,000 projectiles. You know the damage done? Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it had a diary, listing all the damage done each day. Five thousands rockets, 2,000 mortar shells. One house was destroyed. One house. How is it possible that 5,000 rockets and 2,000 mortar shells can only destroy one house? Because they’re not rockets. They’re fireworks. They’re enhanced fireworks.
Click here to watch the third section of the interview and read the full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
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On justifications for the 2014 military offensive
Well, Benjamin Netanyahu says two things: Number one, Israel had no option, and, number two, that it used the minimum amount of force. Well, let’s look quickly at those two points.
Point number one, everybody agreed that the reason they went—once the fighting began, Hamas had one goal. The goal was to end the siege of Gaza, to lift the siege. Under international law, that siege is illegal. It constitutes collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. The siege has been condemned by everybody in the international community. He had an option. He didn’t have to use force. He simply had to lift the siege. And then there wouldn’t have been a conflict with Gaza.
Number two, he claims he used minimum force. There’s a lot to say about that. You can decide for yourself whether it’s minimum force when Israel leveled 18,000 homes. How many Israeli homes were leveled? One. Israel killed 550 children. How many Israeli children were killed? One. Now, you might say, “Well, that’s because Israel has a sophisticated civil defense system, or Israel has Iron Dome.” I won’t go into that; I don’t have time now. But there’s a simple test. The test is: What did the Israeli combatants themselves see? What did they themselves say?
We have the documentation, a report put out by the Israeli ex-service—ex-combatant organization, Breaking the Silence. It’s about 110 pages. You couldn’t believe it. You know, I’ll tell you, Amy, I still remember when I was reading it. I was in Turkey. I was going to a book festival. I was sitting in the back of a car and reading these descriptions of what the soldiers did. My skin was crawling. I was like shaking. Soldier after soldier after soldier. Now, bear in mind, you want to say they’re partisan, the soldiers? Read the testimonies. They’re not contrite. They’re not remorseful. They’re just describing what happened. There’s no contrition. These aren’t lefties, supporters of BDS. What do they describe? One after another after another says, “Our orders were shoot to kill anything that moves and anything that doesn’t move.” One after another after another says, “Israel used insane amounts of firepower in Gaza. Israel used lunatic amounts of firepower in Gaza.”
Click here to watch the final section of the first part of the interview and read the full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
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Human rights organisations
In my opinion, Israel has a problem, has always had a problem. The problem is, it keeps getting bad press, because when it keeps carrying out these massacres or these shootings, it gets bad press. And so, obviously, what’s the solution? Eliminate the press, eliminate the witnesses. So, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, ’09, they prevented any reporters from coming in. So, for three weeks, it was a free-for-all. Then, after Operation Protective Edge, they didn’t let any human rights organizations in, so they couldn’t see what was the damage done. So, then the human rights organizations, what they did was, in my opinion, crazy. They said, “If Israel doesn’t let us in, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn’t commit the war crime.” But that just incentivizes Israel not to let human rights organizations in. You get an agnostic verdict rather than a guilty verdict. […]
There were no human rights reports. Human Rights Watch published—for Operation Cast Lead in 2008, ’09, it published seven quite substantial reports. After Operation Protective Edge, it published one tiny report, one tiny report of 15 pages. Amnesty International was the only major human rights organization that published major reports, but they were all whitewashes of Israel. They were a disgrace. I go through them systematically. The Amnesty chapter is one of the longest chapters in the book. Just going through it, as I said, Gaza is a big lie composed of tiny lies.
Blame on both sides? Look at the numbers…
And the main propaganda, even—or especially by the human rights organizations, is the pretense that there’s blame on both sides, there’s blame—there’s death and destruction on both sides. But when you look at the numbers, I mean, it’s just ridiculous to put them in the same category. I gave you a chart, you know, to illustrate the numbers in Operation Protective Edge. Civilians killed, roughly 1,600—1,600 to six, civilians killed. Houses destroyed, 18,000 to one. Children killed, 550 to one. You go down the list. How can you create balance out of a balance sheet like that? You know? Out of a grotesquely imbalanced balance sheet like that? And what the human rights organizations do is they simply inflate what happened on the Israeli. So, for example, you take Amnesty International. One child was killed. One child was killed. They describe the child’s death over two pages. So, you say, “OK, you know, it’s a child’s death. What’s wrong with two pages?” Well, then let’s have balance. Five hundred fifty Palestinian children were killed. Did you give that 1,100 pages? […]
You take Operation Protective Edge. Again, there is no evidence. I’ve read through all the human rights reports. None of them finds any evidence of human shielding. What they do claim they find is—there’s a technical term under international law that when you’re engaging in a military combat, you have to take feasible precautions to protect civilians, and that if you fighting in the vicinity of civilians, you are then guilty of a violation of international law. It’s not a war crime. It’s a violation of international law. They claim Hamas fired or attacked Israel in the vicinity of civilians, so is guilty of not taking all feasible precautions, which is different than human shielding, which is a conscious practice of, as it were, inserting a human being between you and the enemy, for which there’s no evidence. […]
But then, Amnesty says something outrageous—in my opinion, outrageous. You know what it says? It says that Hamas should go to open areas and fight in the open areas of Gaza. Now, on its face, that might sound reasonable, except for, number one, there are very few open areas in Gaza; number two, the law does not say you have to do that. The law does not say you have to relocate all your troops in an open area. But then, number three, Gaza is not occupied internally by Israel. Gaza is surrounded by Israel, and it’s an occupation that is executed externally. So, here’s the problem. […]
Now, international law—according to these human rights organizations, they all say all of Hamas’s weapons are illegal under international law, because they’re indiscriminate. The law is, you can’t use indiscriminate weapons. Hamas’s weapons are very primitive, to say the least. So, international law says its so-called rockets are illegal, its so-called mortar shells—its mortar shells are illegal. Now, what are you left with? Amnesty says to Hamas, “You have to go into an open space, but you can’t use any of your weapons.” But if you can’t use any of your weapons, because they’re indiscriminate, how do you defeat an externally controlled occupation? The only thing Amnesty didn’t tell them to do was to line up like ducks and let the Israeli airplane come in and mow them down.
Now, you might smile at that, but that’s literally—that’s where you’re left. That’s where you’re left, with what these human rights organizations are saying. It’s not to defend Hamas. It’s just to look at the law objectively, rationally, and ask yourself, “Is what—are what the human rights organizations saying fair? Is it true?” All the human rights organizations, they’ll always say Israel used disproportionate force. They’ll say Israel used indiscriminate force.
But there’s one thing they’ll never say. You know what they’ll never say? Israel targeted the civilians. Because that’s the no-no. You see, under international law, indiscriminate attacks are war crimes. Disproportionate attacks are war crimes. Targeting civilians are war crimes. That’s the law. But then there’s public opinion. Public opinion, it’s willing to turn a blind eye to disproportionate attacks. Actually, how can you even prove an attack is disproportionate? It’s almost impossible. They’ll even say, yeah, indiscriminate attacks, because it’s hard to separate civilians from soldiers. The one thing public opinion won’t tolerate is the targeted attack on civilians. That’s exactly what Israel does in every one of its massacres, and that’s exactly the thing that the human rights organizations—now, not during Operation Cast Lead, now, after the Goldstone debacle—that’s the one thing they all shy away from. They don’t want to say Israel targets civilians. […]
Israel is always targeting children. You have so many cases, like you have children playing on a roof. Right? A drone comes in. Human Rights Watch says—its report was called “Precisely Wrong,” after Operation Protective Edge—excuse me, Operation Cast Lead. The drone comes in. Human rights report says the drone can see very clearly what it’s targeting. The drone, it could—up to the very last minute, very last minute, it could divert. Goes right for the kids.
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UN and Ban Ki-moon
In 2014 there was a more notorious incident when an Israeli gunboat targeted a group of children playing games on a beach. The murders were carried out directly in front of a hotel packed with reporters.
So, what does the U.N. Human Rights Council report say, the one by Mary McGowan Davis? “Israel didn’t take all feasible precautions.” All feasible precautions? There was no battle going on. There was no—there was no combat. There were only children there. “We don’t know why Israel mistook these children for militants.” […]
Yeah, when [Ban Ki-moon] was U.N. secretary-general, he does all the bidding for the United States when it comes to Israel-Palestine. I don’t want to go through—I can’t go through this whole sordid record, but the—Israel attacked seven U.N. shelters, which were housing civilians during Operation Protective Edge. And then, on August 3rd, finally, Ban Ki-moon has to say something. And he says, “This is a disgrace, this is outrageous, attacking civilian shelters.” August 3rd, Obama, he no longer has a fig leaf. Ban Ki-moon backed out.
And now—and now Obama is alone on the world stage. So, August 3rd, the same day, Obama attacks Israel for the shelters, bombing the shelters. And now, Netanyahu, the day before, August 2nd, he says, “I’m not leaving Gaza.” After Obama says, “You can’t do this,” he leaves. Same day, August 3rd. Now, it is true, it did go on for another three weeks. It went on for another three weeks because you entered into the negotiation period, where Israel always brings in its most force to try to extract the best terms.
Click here to watch part two of the interview and read the full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
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US administrations past and present
On the bipartisan support for Israel
Well, it’s a little complicated question, how U.S.-Israeli policy works. But in general, you could say, when major U.S. national interests are at stake, the Israel lobby has very little power. We saw that, for example, during the negotiations over the agreement with Iran. That was a major U.S. international interest. The lobby was dead set against it. Netanyahu was dead set against it. But the agreement went through. And many of Israel’s strongest supporters—Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, the whole gang—they supported the agreement.
But when a major U.S. interest is not at stake, the lobby is quite powerful. So you take, in this particular case, it was clear the Saudis, which is a U.S. major interest, didn’t care what the U.S. did with Jerusalem. They gave the green light: “If you want to give it to Israel, that’s fine with us. We don’t care.” So, no U.S. natural interest is at stake, and so Trump does what anybody does: He rewards his donors. In this case, it was Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire, who was strongly supporting the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.
But we have to bear in mind, it wasn’t just Trump. You know, sometimes the media wants to pile up on Trump. And they forget it’s not just Trump. Charles Schumer, the current Senate minority leader, Schumer was constantly attacking Trump, right after he got elected: “Why aren’t you recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital?” When Trump did recognize it, Schumer, Charles Schumer, he said, “He did it because of me. I was the one that urged him to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.” So that’s the Senate minority leader speaking. And for the same reason—if you look at Schumer’s money, he gets it mostly from conservative, right-wing Jews and from Wall Street, the same sources of income as Trump, the same streams of income.
And on these questions, a lot of the Democrats, including Schumer—or especially Schumer, I should say—are worse than Trump. So, for example, after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, when Israel killed the passengers aboard the humanitarian vessel, the Mavi Marmara, killed 10 passengers, Charles Schumer, he went before a group of Orthodox Jews, and he said, “The people of Gaza voted for Hamas. They voted for Hamas, and therefore economic strangulation is the way to go.” Now, bear in mind what that means. We’re talking about a population, more than half of which are children, who are living under a medieval siege. And what he’s effectively saying is we should continue starving them, until they vote or get rid of Hamas. Now, what do you say about something like that?
Under Obama
Look, the Obama administration was—played a really wretched role in all this. Let’s just take the obvious examples. Operation Cast Lead, it ends on January 17th. Now, remember, Obama was elected in November 2008. Operation Cast Lead ends January 17th, 2009. Obama didn’t say anything after he was elected. Do you know why it ends January 17th? Because Obama signals to the Israeli government, “Don’t mess up my inauguration, January 20th. I don’t want any distractions. You’ve got to end the operation.” That’s why they ended.
Now, you go to Operation Protective Edge, 2014. Every day, Obama or one of his officials said, “Israel has the right to protect itself. Israel has the right to protect itself,” as Israel is leveling Gaza. There was no—actually, there was no comparison between Protective Edge and Cast Lead. It was so much worse.
Under Trump
They’re using this moment—with Trump in power, they’re using this moment to try to eliminate as many witnesses as they can, keep everybody out. They want to do to the West Bank what they did to Gaza. It’s very hard for an outsider to get into Gaza. And now, the Israelis are carrying on in a very brazen way—the land grabs, the merciless killings of civilians, the brutal killings of civilians. And so, they want to clear the field of any witnesses. And they’re using the Trump presidency as a moment to seal off Gaza from any—excuse me, seal off the West Bank from any potentially hostile witnesses, to turn the West Bank into what they turned Gaza into. It’s hermetically sealed. There’s no way to witness the crimes as they unfold in real time.
And on the threat of the U.S. cutting off millions of dollars to UNRWA
First of all, you have to bear in mind that 70 percent of Palestinians in Gaza—let’s just call them Gazans—70 percent of Gazans are classified as refugees. That means, technically, actual refugees and children of refugees. But under the categorization used in Gaza, they’re all classified as refugees. So that’s 70 percent. Secondly, half of Gaza’s population, or slightly more, are children. And so you have this overwhelmingly refugee child population, and they rely overwhelmingly on UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
UNRWA is financed between 25 and 30 percent by the United States, and that comes to about $300 million a year. And so, the threat of cutting the money to UNRWA would be—it would be devastating for an already devastated population, overwhelmingly children. Nonetheless, I would like to keep things in proportion. So, it would be a catastrophe, no doubt about it, if UNRWA is defunded by the United States. However, let’s look at the numbers. We’re talking about $300 million annually. Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, he paid $500 million for a yacht. That would have covered all of UNRWA’s expenses, American—the American portion, for more than a year. He paid $450 million for a da Vinci painting. That would have covered all U.S. expenses, again, for more than a year. He paid $300 million for a house in Versailles. That would have covered all the U.N. expense—UNRWA expenses by the United States. And God only knows how much money he paid for Tom Friedman’s column in The New York Times.
Well-loved ex-footballer Dalian Atkinson (aged 48) lost his life last week (in the early hours of Monday, August 15th) shortly after he was Tasered by police outside his father’s home in the Trench area of Telford, Shropshire. This is testimony of Paula Quinn, an eyewitness to the events leading up to Atkinson’s violent death:
“They were shouting and kicking so much all I could hear were the boots hitting him. And then the officer who released the Taser stepped back while the other officer still continued to kick and then I could hear him shout to the other officer that was still kicking, ‘Back off, back off, back off.’ And then the officer with the Taser asked the gentleman to put his hands behind his back and did so probably two or three times and reactivated the Taser another four or five times after that.” 1
[bold highlight added]
On Thursday [August 18th], following a postmortem examination determining the cause of his death as ‘inconclusive’, the Independent Police Complaints Commission released a statement that two West Mercia police officers were being served with gross misconduct notices and put under criminal investigation:
The IPCC commissioner Derrick Campbell said: “Having carefully considered the evidence gathered so far, we are undertaking a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr Atkinson’s death and the level and type of force used. Two police officers will be interviewed under criminal caution by IPCC investigators.
As this is a criminal investigation, the IPCC is limited in the amount of information which can be released into the public domain. I would ask people to be patient during the progress of our investigation and not to add to speculation about the circumstances of Mr Atkinson’s death. Speculation across the media as a whole can risk prejudice to the investigation process. 2
The IPCC says there will be “a thorough examination of the circumstances surrounding the death” but sadly there are historical reasons to be doubtful, and Atkinson’s death inevitably adds extra weight to already confirmed suspicions that in Britain, as in America and elsewhere, black people are still disproportionate victims of police brutality – including being Tasered. 3
Moreover, Atkinson’s tragic death highlights the often overlooked fact that Tasers, which deliver a 50,000 Volt shock, are not non-lethal weapons but classified as “less lethal” firearms. In fact, according to official statistics there has been at least one ‘Taser-related’ death in Britain every year for the last ten years – 11 in total. 4Meanwhile, in America, where Taser use is more established, the number of fatalities may well be in the hundreds 5, although deaths are often attributed instead to ‘excited delirium’.
The introduction and, inevitably, the increasing use of the Taser is, in truth, indicative of unsettling trend in our culture – which unfortunately once again takes its lead from America. For as law enforcement does away with the blunter instruments of previous decades and centuries, the public is trained instead to tolerate the semi-detached, hi-tech violence administered by twenty-first century technology: yesterday’s more savage methods of coercion continually upgraded and superseded by less bloody, more hands-free techniques of ‘pain compliance’ – and Tasers do not simply disable the victim, they are torture devices too, as countless internet videos testify, and as the UN’s Committee against Torture declared in 2007:
“The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use,” the committee said in a statement.
“Well, it means that it’s a very serious thing,” Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox told CBS Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. “These are people that have seen torture around the world, all kinds of torture. So they don’t use the word lightly.” 6
[bold highlight as original]
So let us take stock. Beneath the science fiction brand name, these ‘stun guns’ are more literally cattle-prods for people. Is this how we expect fellow humans to be treated in modern Britain?
At this stage the IPCC is justifiably asking the media to refrain from detailed speculation about the circumstances surrounding Dalian Atkinson’s death since it could be prejudicial to the inquiry. Obviously I respect this request. Whatever the eventual findings of the IPCC, however, it is irrefutably the case that Dalian Atkinson was just the latest victim of the creeping militarisation of the British police force. Tasers torture and kill – they should be banned.
Click here to add your support to a petition calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to hold an urgent review of Tasers and the medical implications of their use.
Black people are three times more likely have a Taser used against them by police than white people, according to figures that have raised the alarm among race relations campaigners.
5 Jared Feuer, who heads the U.S. southern regional office of Amnesty International, said the group has documented that 277 people in the United States have died after being shocked by a Taser since June 2001.
wall of controversy 