[Guardian] Exclusive: Chloë Deakin tells how she wrote to Dulwich college master to argue against Farage’s nomination as prefectSun 28 Dec 2025 06.00 GMTShare
It was 1981 and Nigel Farage was turning 17. He was already a figure of some controversy, as would become a lifelong habit, among the younger pupils and staff at Dulwich college in south-east London.
“I remember it was either in a particular English lesson or a particular form period that his name came up,” said Chloë Deakin, then a young English teacher, of a discussion with a class of 11- and 12-year-olds. “There was something about bullying, and he was being referred to, quite specifically, as a bully. And I thought: ‘Who is this boy?’”
Deakin conferred with colleagues in the staff room who corroborated accounts of harassment of fellow pupils and of Farage’s apparent fascination with the far right, including claims that he had been “goose-stepping” on combined cadet force marches.
“But initially I had heard it from boys,” she said. “I was shocked to hear that this Dulwich boy was apparently getting away with this kind of behaviour, at cadet camp etc, and I thought: ‘This is seriously out of order. It’s horrible.’”
Despite the chatter in the playground and staffroom, Farage was put on a draft list of prefects by the headteacher, David Emms, and his deputy, Terry Walsh. There was a meeting where strong views were aired, though Emms and Walsh were of the opinion that Farage was naughty, rather than being a malevolent racist.
“So when I heard that Farage’s name was on the finalised prefect list, I was appalled and that was why I wrote independently to Emms, because I felt strongly about it – I still do,” Deakin recalled.
A Dulwich college magazine, the Alleynian, shows members of the combined cadet force including a boy believed to be Nigel Farage seated on the ground (centre, reaching towards his feet). Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
Deakin’s letter of June 1981, first revealed by the Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick in a report in 2013, is uncompromising. She has never spoken before of this episode with the letter – written after Farage’s 17th birthday – emerging only as a result of her having given a copy of it to a senior teacher at the time, as was the practice at the school.
She wrote: “You will recall that at the recent and lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was a ‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set that he had to be removed from his lesson …
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Original article by republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Healthcare workers and allies rally to demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers held in Israeli jails, in New York City, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We won’t forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023,” said CodePink.
Ahead of Saturday’s one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
“One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza,” Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. “Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all.”
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: “It’s been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don’t forget him. And don’t stop calling for his release.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
A year has passed since the detention of my father, In this white coat, he walked alone amidst death, destruction, and in front of tanks—not because he was fearless, but because his oath and his humanity were greater than any fear. He refused to abandon the children and the… pic.twitter.com/8NtuIGBeYf
— Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya د.حسام أبو صفية (@HussamAbuSafiya) December 26, 2025
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor’s wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
An Israeli soldier was filmed running over a praying Palestinian man with his ATV outside the village of Deir Jarir, outside Ramallah in the West Bank, on December 25, 2025. (Screenshot from video posted by Nurit Yohanan/Times of Israel)
A group of Israeli military veterans called his punishment “just a slap on the wrist” and “state-backed impunity for state-backed terror.”
Israeli police have released a soldier from custody after he was filmed running his vehicle over a Palestinian man who was praying outside the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
A silent video of the incident, which both Israeli and Palestinian outlets reported on Thursday, shows an Israeli settler with a rifle slung over his back driving his all-terrain vehicle (ATV) toward a 23-year-old Palestinian man as he knelt in prayer on the roadside.
After barrelling over the man, the settler shouted something in his direction and backed up, then gestured for him to move.
The settler then turned his ATV around, got off, and shouted something at a Palestinian taxi driver. The injured Palestinian man then stood up, approaching the cab. The settler again shooed him off before hopping back on the ATV and speeding away.
חייל מילואים על טרקטורון דרס פלסטיני בזמן שהתפלל לצד הכביש מוקדם יותר היום, ליד דיר ג'ריר באזור רמאללה. בצה"ל מתחקרים את האירוע pic.twitter.com/SjVDddBHmR
Majdi Abu Mokho, the father of the Palestinian man, said his son now has pain in both legs after he was struck.
Mokho toldAgence France-Presse: “The assailant is a known settler. He set up an outpost near the village, and with other settlers he comes to graze his livestock, blocks the road, and provokes the residents.”
He also said the settler blinded him with pepper spray after hitting his son, though this is not shown in the video.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) identified the driver as an Israeli reserve soldier with one of its regional defense units. These battalions have dramatically expanded in recent years with backing from Israel’s right-wing government, which contains many officials at the center of the settler movement.
Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli military veterans critical of the occupation of Palestine, has referred to the regional defense units—which have been responsible for many other attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank—as “no more than settler militias in uniform.”
The IDF said the soldier’s weapon has been confiscated and that he’s been suspended due to the “severity of the incident,” which the IDF said it was investigating. The IDF has not released the soldier’s name.
An initial probe found that the same settler had opened fire in the village of Deir Jarir, north of Ramallah, earlier that same day, in an incident that resulted in a young Palestinian man being injured by gunfire.
During that altercation, which was also caught on film, a group of masked settlers was seen hurling rocks at the village’s entrance. According to Palestinian sources who spoke with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,the targets of the attack were villagers who were grazing their cattle near their homes.
In another video, a masked man—who the IDF identified as the same reservist responsible for the ATV attack—is seen firing his weapon in the direction of the camera. The IDF said that by opening fire inside the village while in civilian clothes, the soldier had committed a “serious breach of his authority.”
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli police released the settler reservist from custody on Friday. He has been placed under house arrest for five days and is banned from approaching Deir Jarir, where the incident occurred, or from contacting anyone else connected with the case.
The violent incident is the latest in a year that has seen a record number of attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinian villagers.
According to official figures, Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 1,130 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, injured nearly 11,000, and detained around 21,000, since October 2023, when Israel launched its two-year genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ attack.
إصابة طفلة رضيعة بحجارة مليشيات المستوطنين خلال هجوم نفذته فجر اليوم في منطقة الربيعة ببلدة سعير شمال الخليل، تخلله حرق مركبات وهجوم على المنازل. pic.twitter.com/GIr31vMNBZ
On the same day as the ATV attack, Israeli police announced that they had arrested five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an ambush against a Palestinian home, which resulted in “moderate injuries to the face and head” of an eight-month-old Palestinian girl, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
While the IDF says it is investigating the ATV attack along with local police, attacks by Israeli settlers are often treated with leniency.
In January 2025, the Israeli watchdog group Yesh Din reported that across more than 1,700 reports of religious or politically motivated hate crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past two decades, nearly 94% of them were closed without any indictment being filed, and only 3% resulted in a conviction.
Although there has been a documented rise in killings by Israeli settlers since October 2023, not a single one of those cases has resulted in an indictment, and only about a quarter have resulted in investigations by Israeli authorities.
Critics found the punishment of the reservist to be similarly lackluster and the latest example of settlers’ immunity from justice.
“Israeli reserve soldier intentionally runs over Palestinian praying on the side of the road,” said Rabbi David Mivasair, an activist with the Canadian group Independent Jewish Voices. “His punishment: his weapon was taken away, and he was suspended from the reserves… nothing more.”
Breaking the Silence called the punishment “just a slap on the wrist” and “state-backed impunity for state-backed terror.”
Others noted that nearly 8,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons indefinitely without trial, including in Israel’s “administrative detention” system, which allows them to be confined based on secret evidence that they and their lawyers cannot see.
Israel has justified it as a measure to prevent terrorism. However, in January, the government banned Israeli settlers from being held under those same administrative detention orders, with Defense Minister Israel Katz saying the goal was “to convey a clear message of strengthening and encouraging the settlements.”
Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian human rights activist, said of the ATV attack: “Had the victim been Israeli and the attacker Palestinian, the sentence would be life in prison. That is why it is called apartheid.”
Following the attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reiterated its calls for the US Congress to stop sending military aid to the Israeli government.
“This shocking and dehumanizing act is yet another example of the unchecked violence and abuse Palestinians face daily under Israel’s illegal occupation,” the group said. “Brazenly running over a man while he prays is enabled by a system that grants near-total impunity to illegal settlers. The Trump administration must end its silence and take concrete steps to hold the Israeli government accountable for these ongoing human rights abuses.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on December 19, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s latest threat came shortly after he once against lashed out at late-night host Stephen Colbert.
President Donald Trump sent out a cheery Christmas greeting early Wednesday morning just three minutes after threatening to shut down US broadcasters if their programs did not provide him with more positive coverage.
In a Truth Social post sent out at 12:36 am, Trump renewed his threat to once again strip broadcast licenses from networks that cover or portray him and his administration in a negative light.
“If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated?” Trump wrote. “I say, YES!”
Just three minutes afterward, at 12:39 am, Trump posted an all-caps message that read, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”
It is unclear what sparked Trump’s latest threat, although shortly before it was posted he lashed out at comedian Stephen Colbert, whose time hosting CBS’ “The Late Show” is set to end in May 2026.
“Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success,” he wrote. “Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings. Stephen is running on hatred and fumes. A dead man walking! CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!”
While Trump frequently delivered angry rants about media coverage throughout his first term, his words appear to be carrying significantly more weight during his second term.
For example, the announcement of Colbert’s cancellation raised eyebrows earlier this year because it came shortly before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signed off on an $8 billion deal for CBS parent company Paramount to be bought by Skydance Media, the company founded by David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison.
Weeks after this, Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to rescind broadcast licenses for Disney-owned ABC unless it took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, off the air. Hours after Carr’s threat, Kimmel’s show was suspended before being put back on the air days later amid a public outcry.
Over the weekend, CBS News boss Bari Weiss spiked a segment on the network’s flagship news program “60 Minutes” that cast a critical eye on the Trump administration for sending hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious El Salvadoran prison where they were allegedly subjected to abuse and torture.
Weiss’ decision to at least temporarily quash the story came as Larry Ellison is making a hostile bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery that will once again need FCC approval in the future in order to succeed.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
President Donald Trump makes phone calls to US troops on Christmas Eve, from the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 24, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump—who calls himself “the most anti-war president in history”—has now bombed more countries than any president in history.
President Donald Trump—the self-described “most anti-war president in history”—has now ordered the bombing of more countries than any president in history as US forces carried out Christmas day strikes on what the White House claimed were Islamic State militants killing Christians in Nigeria.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social network.
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” the president continued. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”
“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” Trump added. “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
.@POTUS “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and… pic.twitter.com/ct7rUW128t
A US Department of Defense official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that the United States worked with Nigeria to conduct the bombing, and that the government of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu—who is a Muslim—approved the attacks.
It was not immediately known how many people were killed or wounded in the strikes, or whether there are any civilian casualties.
The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “terrorist violence in any form, whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities, remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”
The US bombings followed a threat last month by Trump to attack Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if the country’s government did not curb attacks on Christians.
Northwestern Nigeria—including Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, and parts of Kaduna State—is suffering a complex security crisis, plagued by armed criminal groups, herder-farmer disputes, and Islamist militants including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP/ISIS) and Boko Haram. Both Christians and Muslims have been attacked.
Since emerging in Borno State in 2009, Boko Haram has waged war on the Nigerian state—which it regards as apostate—not against any particular religious group. In fact, the majority of its victims have been Muslims.
“According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, more Muslims than Christians have been targeted in recent years,” Chloe Atkinson recently wrote for Common Dreams. “Boko Haram has massacred worshipers in mosques, torched markets in Muslim-majority areas, and threatened their own coreligionists.”
“The crisis in Nigeria is not a holy war against Christianity.”
“It is true that Christian communities in the north-central regions have suffered unimaginable horrors as raids have left villages in ashes, children murdered in their beds, and churches reduced to rubble,” she said. “The April massacre in Zike and the June bloodbath in Yelwata are prime examples of the atrocities taking place in Nigeria.”
“The crisis in Nigeria is not a holy war against Christianity,” Atkinson continued. “Instead, it’s a devastating cocktail of poverty, climate-driven land disputes, and radical ideologies that prey on everyone and not just any distinct group.”
“By framing Nigeria’s conflict as an existential threat to Christians alone, Trump is not shining a spotlight on the victims,” she added. “Instead, he is weaponizing right-wing conspiracy theories to stoke Islamophobia, the same toxic playbook he used to fuel his ban on Muslims, and which left refugee families shattered at America’s borders.”
Former libertarian US Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) noted on X that “there’s no authority for strikes on terrorists in Nigeria or anywhere on Earth,” adding that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—which was approved by every member of Congress except then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—“is only for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.”
“The War Powers Resolution doesn’t grant any authority beyond the Constitution,” Amash added. “Offensive military actions need congressional approval. The Framers of the Constitution divided war powers to protect the American people from war-eager executives. Whether the United States should engage in conflicts across the globe is a decision for the people’s representatives in Congress, not the president.”
What constitutional authority supports these strikes without a Congressinal declaration of war?
In addition to Nigeria, Trump—who says he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—since 2017 has also ordered the bombing of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Trump has also deployed warships and thousands of US troops near Venezuela, which could become the next country attacked by a president who campaigned on a platform of “peace through strength.”
That’s more than the at least five countries attacked during the tenure of former President George W. Bush or the at least seven nations attacked on orders of then-President Barack Obama during the so-called War on Terror, which killed more than 940,000 people—including at least 432,000 civilians, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Trump continued the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria started by Obama in 2014. Promising to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS fighters and “take out their families,” Trump intensified the US campaign from a war of “attrition” to one of “annihilation,” according to his former defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis. Thousand of civilians were killed as cities such as Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria were flattened.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
