The Authorities’ Failure to Prosecute Men Accused of Threats to Devon Charity

This is very disturbing, and suggests that some extremely dangerous, violent crims have friends in high places. On Tuesday Mike put up a piece about the failure of the Crown Prosecution Service to take to court the alleged perpetrators of a series of attacks and threats against a Devon charity, Humanity UK, or Humanity Torbay. Elaine Waugh, one of the charity’s trustees, had talked about the threats the men had made against her and her charity as well as series of attacks against its offices and her car. The men had threatened in May last year to break the arms of the charity’s trustees and throw acid in their faces. The case has only just come to crown court, but despite the men pleading guilty, the CPS has decided not to prosecute. The case would be too costly.

Waugh also told how the charity’s offices had been broken into, and destroyed with bleach. She said that the police weren’t interested in it when they came. The cops were there for about 25 minutes and then left after giving her a crime number. After that she heard nothing. But they did take a list of the charity’s donors, who were members of the Labour Party. In July last year there was also an attack on her house in which the family car was firebombed. The police told her it was an anti-Semitic attack. She doubts this as her husband and two children are Jews, but she is herself Roman Catholic. She therefore feels it was political. She also said that she has been informed that there are 465 other charities suffering similar attacks.

She said too that the charity had also lost its chief source of funding after a she made and posted a video on YouTube criticising the Conservative government. This was seen over six million times during the election campaign.

She believed that her alleged harassers had a ‘hate’ page on Facebook, but complained of the company’s double standards. Although the harassers got away with their comments, she found that her charity’s page was taken down if they said anything to upset the right.

Mike also says in his piece that it costs about £1,400 a month to run, and provides services for the poor and homeless. He provides a link so that readers may donate to it if they choose.

Court case over acid attack threat to charity trustees is cancelled – because the CPS says it’s too costly

This is very disturbing, as it suggests that someone in power is actively protecting these men, if they are guilty of these crimes. I remember the scandal back in the 1980s when it was revealed that a number of policemen were members of the League of St. George. I believe this outfit was founded during the Second World War as an SS auxiliary regiment for English Fascists. It also reminds of the ‘social cleansing’ carried out by South American Fascists in the 1990s. Inspired by the ethnic cleansing by the Serbs and the other belligerents during the war in the former Yugoslavia, these thugs attacked and killed the poorest in their societies. There was a chilling video on the news of a group of them burning a homeless man to death. In Jamaica in the 1970s there was also an alliance between corrupt politicians and the Yardie gangs. The politicos would hire them to threaten and kill their opponents. And the ultimate end of such relationships is the violence and lawlessness of Weimar Germany, when the Nazis and other extremist groups ran amok beating and  killing their left-wing and democratic enemies.

This raises a terrible question: does the authorities refusal to prosecute this case mean we can expect similar right-wing lawless protected and encouraged by senior politicos and members of the judiciary in Boris’ post-Brexit Britain?

Violence and the Conservative Campaign of Hate against the Disabled

Mike and the other disability bloggers and campaigners have posted any number of articles about the massive increase in violence towards disabled people. This has its origins in the Conservatives’ vilification of them as welfare cheats or spongers, along with other underprivileged and marginalised groups like asylum seekers, the unemployed and the poor. This connection and the massive rise in hate crimes and violence against both immigrants and the disabled is described by Jon Burnett in his chapter, ‘Austerity and the Production of Hate’ in Vickie Cooper’s and David Whyte’s The Violence of Austerity.  While the attacks on immigrants and the disabled are separate issues and are managed separately, they are linked by an underlying ideology. Burnett writes

Such campaigns are organised separately. But they feed off and into each other. And they are replicated day after day to the point where they have become a routine aspect of popular culture. Both are voyeuristically treated in television programmes like Benefits Street and Immigration Street. Those programmes stem from the same ideological enterprise: to reduce their subjects to objects of ridicule and contempt, turning human struggles into a sneering form of entertainment. (p. 217)

He notes that David Cameron, dubbed by Paxo ‘the worst Prime Minister since Lord North’, explicitly linked migration with the British welfare system. He said that we need immigrants to do work that the welfare system encouraged British people not to do, and that therefore the welfare system needed to be reformed.

Migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work. That’s where the blame lies – at the door of our woeful welfare system, and the last government who comprehensively failed to reform it… So immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin. Put simply, we will never control immigration properly unless we tackle welfare dependency. (p. 219).

Burnett states that five years later, this is now Tory orthodoxy. It, and the Tory policies based on it, have reduced immigrants to units of labour denied social rights, while welfare reforms are also reducing British workers into an expendable workforce. Immigration is a separate issue I shall tackle elsewhere. In this piece I’ll just talk about how the Tories’ rhetoric of hate against the disabled has resulted in an horrific increase in violence against them. Burnett writes of this

And when resentment to welfare and free movement is legitimised, hate becomes normalised. As campaign groups, support centres and self-organised networks have repeatedly shown, certain forms of violence have intensified under the rubric of austerity. But they are rarely given official recognition. In a survey published by the Disability Hate Crimes Network in 2015, ‘scrounger rhetoric’ was highlighted in the testimonies of around one in six of 61 disabled people who described themselves being verbally or physically assaulted in disability hate crimes. Six charities in 2012 stated that a narrative of ‘benefit scrounging’ or ‘faking’ was fuelling hostility. Discussing an increase in disability hate crimes coming before the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008/9 and 2013/14, one of the co-founders of the activist group Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) remarked that the figures were ‘no doubt fuelled by the constant media-fuelled campaign against benefit claimants.’ There were around 62,000 disability-related hate crimes each year in 2012/13 and 2013/14, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). In 2014/15 the last year for which figures are available, 2508 offences were recorded by the police – and increase of 15 per cent from two years earlier. (pp. 219-20).

There can be absolutely no doubt about it. The Tories are generating a violent hatred against immigrants and the disabled. And Mike’s also right that they aren’t going to make conditions any better. Because they enjoy causing suffering and misery to the poor and disabled.

 

Private Eye on the Real Reason the Americans Don’t Want Anne Sacoolas Investigated: RAF Croughton is a Spy Base

This fortnight’s edition of Private Eye, for 15th – 28th November 2019, has a very interesting article in its ‘In the Back’ pages. Titled ‘RAF Croughton – Base Motives’, this alleges that the real reason Trump and the Americans have been so reluctant to see Anne Sacoolas, the women, who allegedly killed Harry Dunn in a road accident, is married to an American intelligence officer and the base on which they lived was a communications intelligence base run by the CIA and the NSA, with links to Britain GCHQ. The article is worth quoting in full

It is hardly surprising the US is reluctant to see Anne Sacoolas put on trial in a UK court over the death of 19-year-old Harry Dunn in a crash outside “RAF” Croughton given what goes on inside the Northamptonshire base.

Sacoolas left the UK shortly after the August crash, initially claiming “diplomatic immunity” because her husband works at Croughton, described as housing an “annexe of the US embassy”. But that is not the full picture. The base is a major CIA/Pentagon communications centre. It is not staffed by diplomats; Sacoolas’ husband is an intelligence officer. It has satellite and fibre-optic links to US bases around the world and to the UK’s own signals intelligence-gathering and eavesdropping headquarters, GCHQ, in Cheltenham.

From Croughton, with British contrivance, more than 200 US personnel control and monitor US air strikes by drones based in Djibouti on the Red Sea, including attacks on targets in Yemen and Somalia. The base is also the hub of a CIA/ American National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network, intercepting communications throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It was from there, for example, that the Americans were found to have tapped into the mobile phones of prominent politicians, including German chancellor Angela Merkel.

The US also describes “RAF” Croughton (under the purely nominal command of a British officer) as the home of its 422nd Air Base Group. But that too, is just another cover, designed to hide its CIA/NSA activities. However, under the 1952 Visiting Forces Act, which covers US bases in Britain, military personnel come under the jurisdiction of the British police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for any action outside their bases.

After Donald Trump’s botched attempt last month to broker a resolution, when Harry Dunn’s family visited Washington seeking justice for their son, it seems the US has now dropped all pretence at “immunity”. The fact that the UK police have been to the US to interview Sacoolas and submitted a file to the CPS would suggest that they may also drop any argument that the 1952 act does not apply to civilian operatives.

Reports in both the UK and US suggest those representing Sacoolas might now be looking to negotiate some kind of plea deal – which might prevent scrutiny in court of what staff do at Croughton. It’s clear that neither the US nor British intelligence agencies would welcome such attention. Not least because the US hopes to expand Croughton and set up a “joint intelligence analysis centre”, a headquarters for all American intelligence communications in Europe and Africa.

Lobster Review of Pro-Jewish, Pro-Zionist Book Against Israel, and Against Israel Lobby In America: Part Two

Neumann then moves on to what Israel should do now in ensure its survival: it must leave the Occupied Territories.

‘with the acquisition of the
Occupied Territories in 1967,
Israel had a chance to make
handsome amends for the crimes
on which it was built. Saint-
lines or selfless optimism
were not required. Israel could
have sponsored and supported,
with true generosity, the
establishment of a sovereign
Palestinian state by backing
those amenable to reconciliation
and attacking those who were not.
This might not have been a just
settlement, but it would have
worked.’

American support for Israel following 1967 has made that possibility harder to achieve, and an exploration of this relationship is the subject of the book by James Petras. He dedicates the Power of Israel in the United States to Rachel Corrie, ‘US citizen and humanitarian internationalist volunteer in Palestine murdered by the Israeli military’. His style is that of the committed activist, in sharp contrast to the cool rigour of Neumann. There re times when his use of capitals, as in Terror Experts or Zionist Power Configuration, irritate. But while his writing is urgent, at times to the point of stridency, it is well sourced and invites the reader to inquire further into the areas he explores. Here is a flavour of the Petras style:

‘Through overseas networks the
Israeli state can directly inter-
vene and set the parameters to US
foreign aid in the Middle East.
The overseas networks play a major
role in shaping the internal debate
on US policy toward Israel.
Propaganda associating Israeli
repression of Palestinians as the
righteous response of the victims of
the Holocaust has been repeated
throughout the mass media. President
Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that
Holocaust victims might more properly
be compensated by land located in
Europe or in the countries that
victimised them was misreported, then
highly circulated to fuel, instead,
the notion of a rabid, anti-Semitic
Iran. From the height of the network
to the lawyers’ board-rooms, and the
doctors’ lounges, the pro-Israel
supporters of the network aggressively
attack as “anti-Semites” any critical
voices. Through local intimidation and
malicious intervention in the
professions, the zealots defend Israeli
policy and leaders, contribute money
organise voters, and run for office.
Once in office they tune in to Israel’s
policy needs.’

But hasn’t the United States always been subject to pressures exerted by those of its citizens with connections in other countries, be they links with Ireland or the countries of the former Eastern bloc? Petras accepts this, but answers:

‘The Cuban exiles in Miami
exercise significant influence
in both major parties. But in
no other case has linkage led
to the establishment of an
enduring hegemonic relationship:
an empire colonised by a
regional power, with the US
paying tribute to Israel, subject
to the ideological blinders of
its overseas colons, and launching
aggressive wars on its behalf.’

Who are these ‘overseas colons’? Petras has a very long line of ‘Israel Firsters’, people both inside Congress and electoral politics, and those unelected, such as Paul Wolfowitz and his friends in the Office of Special Plans driving the Iraq invasion, as well as many in the media. He tells us about the muscle asserted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations
with its Daily Alert (www.dailyalert.org/) prepared by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs; the American Jewish Committee; the Anti-Defamation League, and the Zionist Organisation of America.

Petras looks critically at the four principal US sources of financial support for Israel he lists as:

‘1. Wealthy, Jewish contributors
and powerful disciplined fund-
raising organisations. 2: The US
government – both Congress and
the Presidency. 3: The mass media,
particularly the New York Times,
Hollywood and the major television
networks. 4: The trade union bosses
and the heads of pension funds.’

In addition there are well-organised fundamentalist Christian groups with close links to Israel. Petras also sees the emergence under President Yeltsin of the Russian oligarchs (most possessing Israeli passports and having major financial interests in that country) as in part being due to President Clinton’s closeness to the Zionist lobby in the United States.

At times Petras is a little breathless in his description of the activities of those close to Israel, especially the people against whom legal proceedings have been taken after spying for that country while holding important Washington positions. This seems to be a measure of his anger and frustration at his native country being drawn into conflicts that he believes do not serve its interests. While I prefer the cooler logic of Neumann I also recognise the value of an emeritus professor of sociology like Petras alerting his readers in matters they can then look into in their own way and about which they can reach their own conclusions.

If Attorney General Lord Goldsmith advises prosecutions over cash for honours we may learn something of the financial network to which Tony Blair’s Middle East ‘envoy’ seems so central, and then perhaps something of the extent to which the Israel lobby has been influential on the politics of New labour. Whether or not the Crown Prosecution Service gets to dig a little below the surface of our political life, Britain could use both a Neumann and a Petras
to provoke examination of the way our electoral politics is linked to the fortunes of Israel. We should not be distracted by controversy over the veil covering the faces of Muslim women: there are other forms of concealment requiring our more urgent attention.
(Pp. 40-2, Winter 2006/7).

Vox Political on Hillsborough Victims’ Legal Victory

Mike over at Vox Political put up two pieces yesterday reporting the judgment that the 96 football fans, who died in the Hillsborough disaster, were the victims of unlawful killing. In the first article, he notes particularly that the victims and people of Liverpool were smeared, and the people of Britain deceived, by three people in particular: the head of the police, Margaret Thatcher, and the Sun under its editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. And he posted up this mock-up of how the sun’s cover should have looked in 2012 to make the point.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/04/26/fans-were-unlawfully-killed-in-the-hillsborough-disaster-and-we-were-all-deceived/

Mike’s second article also reported that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering pressing charges after the decision of the jury. They ruled that the police, Sheffield Wednesday, and Eastwood and Partners, the construction company that built the Hillsborough Stadium, were at fault and made the serious errors that led to the deaths of the 96 fans. Crucially, the fans Thatcher and co blamed for the disaster, weren’t responsible.

CPS to consider criminal charges over the unlawful killing of 96 people at Hillsborough

It isn’t remotely surprising that Maggie, the police chief and Kelvin MacKenzie all lied about the fans’ behaviour. Maggie had a visceral hatred of the Left and the working class, and Liverpool was a thorn in her side because of the Labour council led by the controversial Derek Hatton. The Tories wasted much taxpayers’ money launching pointless inquiry after pointless inquiry trying to prove Hatton was a crook. There was corruption on Merseyside. Merseyside council was so dodgy that it used to appear in Private Eye’s ‘Rotten Boroughs’ column as ‘Murkyside’. But to my knowledge nothing was proved against Hatton.

As for Kelvin MacKenzie, he shared the political animosity of the Leaderene to Liverpool, along with the peculiar hatred of the city common to Fleet Street. For some strange reason, a large number of hacks of the time had little but contempt for the town and its people. This even extended to some of the hacks writing for the liberal papers, like the Graoniad and the Absurder. The Scum’s smears led to the paper being publicly burnt in the city, and wiped out its circulation there. In more recent years, it has apologised and tried to put the record straight. But only after Kelvin MacKenzie had departed. He hadn’t changed, and took his bile and hatred of the town to whichever rag he started editing after he left the Sun.