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  • Police admit eviction of homeless people who had tents destroyed was unlawful

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    Original article by at OpenDemocracy republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

    Met chief Mark Rowley has apologised for the incident outside a London hospital in November

    Met Police commissioner Mark Rowley has apologised for unlawfully ordering people sleeping rough to move from outside a hospital during an operation that also saw their tents destroyed.

    The eviction in central London, first covered by openDemocracy, sparked outrage when videos showed tents being thrown into the back of a bin lorry by officers working for Camden Council.

    It happened in November, days after disgraced former home secretary Suella Braverman declared homelessness was a “lifestyle choice” and was reported to be planning a crackdown on tents in urban areas.

    Anthony Sinclair was arrested after refusing to leave the area and while in custody had all of his belongings and his tent binned. Backed by human rights campaign group Liberty and outreach workers at Streets Kitchen, Sinclair threatened legal action against the Met chief on the grounds that dispersal orders should not prevent people from accessing the place where they live. Liberty also said the actions of police breached his human rights and put him and others at risk of harm.

    Now, in a letter, Rowley’s lawyers have stated: “The commissioner accepts that the decisions were unlawful in the circumstances, in particular as regards the direction for your client to leave a place where he had been living for some time.”

    The ‘section 35’ dispersal order was issued by the Met after concerns from University College Hospital (UCH) about anti-social behaviour from people living in the tents outside. The landmark case could now stop such orders being used against people experiencing homelessness who have been in the same area for an extended period of time.

    Sinclair said: “The treatment that I and others received at the hands of police officers was inhumane.

    “I was arrested for refusing to leave the place where I had been living for eight months, and while I was held for six hours in custody, my tent and other belongings were taken away and destroyed.

    “I am glad to see this admission from the police that this was wrong, and I hope that no-one in the future receives the treatment that I did.”

    The Met Police will also discuss compensation with Sinclair.

    Elodie Berland, Streets Kitchen co-ordinator, said: “We were shocked, though not surprised, to witness the Metropolitan Police and Camden Council’s cruel actions attacking those at perhaps the lowest points of their lives experiencing homelessness.

    “This was not an isolated incident where powers were used unlawfully to disperse people and destroy their possessions. This is sadly something we witness regularly.

    “The Met’s acknowledgment that they indeed acted unlawfully and their apology are certainly a step in the right direction and highlights the need to always be observant and resist such cruel acts whenever they occur anywhere. Being homeless is not a crime – the fact that it exists should be.”

    Camden’s Labour council initially said it had had “no role in enforcing this eviction” but, after looking into the matter further, vowed to carry out an “urgent investigation”. Its acting leader Pat Callaghan said at the time she was “deeply concerned” by the videos.

    Liberty lawyer Lana Adamou said: “We all have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, whatever our circumstances. But increasingly, people living on the streets are being subject to unfair and degrading treatment by police, putting them at risk of harm.

    “This government is criminalising poverty and homelessness, and police are misusing powers they have been given such as dispersal orders as a short-term fix to remove people from an area, instead of providing support or dealing with the root causes of these issues.

    “We’re glad to see the police admit that their officers should not have treated our client or the other people affected in this way and that our client’s rights were breached, and we welcome the commissioner’s apology. This sends a clear message that dispersal orders should not be used against people living on the streets in this way.”

    In their letter, Rowley’s lawyers said: “The MPS will be taking actions to ensure that in future, proper consideration is given to whether the Part 3 dispersals powers are appropriate for homeless persons.”

    Chief superintendent Andy Carter, who is responsible for policing in Camden, said: “We don’t underestimate the impact of this incident on the man and will be meeting him to apologise in person, and listen to any views he might have.

    “My officers will be taking part in further legal training around use of their dispersal powers so that we can ensure this does not happen again and that we use this tactic responsibly.”

    Original article by at OpenDemocracy republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

  • Argentina’s far-right libertarian president warns in Davos, “the West is in danger”

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    [While a serious issue, there are some amusing parts to this article.]

    Original article by ARG Medios at peoples dispatch republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    On the morning of January 17, Argentine President Javier Milei gave his first speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The far-right libertarian was sworn in on December 10, 2023 and since then has launched all-out attacks on the working class through presidential decrees and omnibus laws, all of which have been vehemently opposed on the streets.

    Milei began his speech at Davos by telling those present: “I am here to tell you that the West is in danger. All over the world, leaders who must defend the values of capitalism assume a vision that leads to socialism and poverty. “The main leaders of the world have abandoned freedom for so-called collectivism, which is the cause of the problems.”

    The strongest argument of his speech was going to be that capitalism is the only tool to end hunger and poverty in the world, although he added: “the leftist thinking attacks capitalism for being, according to them, unjust. They say it is bad because it is individualistic and they fight for social justice. This concept has become fashionable around the world, but social justice is an unfair, violent idea, because taxes are coercively collected. Nobody pays taxes voluntarily. The State is financed through coercion. If a company generates a good product it will do well, if the State punishes the capitalist for being successful it destroys their incentives, and the cake will be smaller. Collectivism ties the entrepreneur’s hands.”

    He also spoke of enemies, who for him are those who use the State as a tool: “everyone. There are no substantive differences. Socialists, conservatives, communists, fascists, Nazis, social democrats, centrists. They are all the same.”

    In this same sense, Milei attacked two of the most important agendas at the Davos Forum, gender inequality and climate change: “The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between men and women. Libertarianism already establishes equality between the sexes. The founding stone of our creed says that all men are created equal, that we all have the same inalienable rights granted by the creator, among which are life, liberty and property,” he maintained.

    He went further and said: “the only thing that became of this agenda of radical feminism is greater intervention by the state to hinder the economic process, giving work to bureaucrats who do not contribute anything to society, be it in the format of women’s ministries or international organizations dedicated to promoting this agenda.”

    In the same sense, he denied human responsibility for climate change: “another one of the conflicts that socialists raise is that of man against nature. They maintain that human beings damage the planet and that it must be protected at all costs, even going so far as to advocate for population control mechanisms or the bloody agenda of abortion.”

    Finally, the only praise in Javier Milei’s speech was for the businessmen, whom he treated as heroes and also told them: “do not let yourself be intimidated by the political caste that wants to remain in power. You are heroes, you are benefactors, let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral, do not give in to the advance of the State, The state is the problem itself, you are the protagonists of history. Long live fucking freedom!

    The president returned to Argentina on Wednesday on a commercial flight, after a couple of meetings and a bold speech that was not very widely accepted in Davos. He will face a massive national strike on January 24, called for by all the major trade unions and confederations in Argentina in opposition to his pro-capitalist, pro-businessman policies.

    This article was first published in Spanish on ARG Medios.

    Original article by ARG Medios at peoples dispatch republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Rishi Sunak’s legitimacy deficit

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    Rishi Sunak is UK’s Prime Minister following the appalling former Tory Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson was elected in the 2019 general election despite wide recognition that speaking truth was alien to him. He got kicked out over the Partygate scandal – that he was partying at number 10 and repeatedly denying it during the Covid lockdowns. There is a further scandal still developing about enriching Tories with government contracts for excessively expensive inaquate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during Covid. Liz Truss was deposed following her ‘bonkers’ budget* that took from the poor to give to the rich and forced the Bank of England to intervene.

    Rishi Sunak, UK's janitor prime minister.
    Rishi Sunak, UK’s janitor prime minister.

    Rishi Sunak was quickly installed by the Conservatives as a ‘caretaker’, janitor or interim prime minister to replace Liz Truss. Not elected as prime minister he doesn’t have a mandate to do anything. He’s a Neo-Con climate denier providing huge fossil fuel subsidies for foreigners to take North Sea oil and a Zionist actively supporting and therefore very complicit in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.

    * It wasn’t called a budget. Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng called it a statement to avoid scrutiny by the Office of Budget Responsibility.

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  • ‘This Is Not Self-Defense… This Is Ethnic Cleansing’: Israel Blows Up Gaza University

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    The Israeli military used hundreds of mines to blow up Israa University in Gaza on January 17, 2024.  (Photo: Screengrab)

    “All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,” said one international relations expert.

    The Israel Defense Forces’ detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel’s objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.

    “This is not self-defense,” said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament. “This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing.”

    The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel’s latest attempt to carry out a “cultural genocide” along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.

    The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that “Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture,” including libraries, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.

    “The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage,” Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed.

    Now, international relations professor Nicola Perugini of the University of Edinburgh said, “all the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.”

    On its Facebook page, the university said the IDF had occupied the campus for about 70 days before planting 315 mines and detonating the institution’s main building, its museum, a university hospital, and other buildings.

    The IDF occupied Israa University, said administrators, “and used it as a military base for its mechanisms and a center for [the] snatching of isolated civilians in the areas of Rashid, Maghraqa, and Zahraa streets, and temporarily detained [them] to investigate with citizens before moving them.”

    Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, said the fact that 315 mines were detonated meant that “by definition… it was not a legitimate military target.”

    “Israel would have to have full control to plant so many mines,” said Plitnick. “This is a clear example of a war crime and destruction for the fun of it.”

    Eight universities in Gaza have now been targeted since the IDF began its bombardment on October 7, according to the IMEMC.

    Birzeit University, in the occupied West Bank, condemned the destruction of the school and accused Israel of stealing 3,000 rare artifacts from Israa’s museum.

    “Birzeit University reaffirms the fact that this crime is part of the Israeli occupation’s onslaught against the Palestinians,” said the school on social media. “It’s all a part of the Israeli occupation’s goal to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide being carried out in Gaza Strip.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).