new authoritarianism

The government’s plans for unlimited surveillance on benefit claimants’ bank accounts should worry us all

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/the-governments-plans-for-unlimited-surveillance-on-benefit-claimants-bank-accounts-should-worry-us-all/

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

The UK government is taking statutory powers for unlimited snooping on bank and building society accounts connected with receipt of social security benefits and the state pension, even when there is no suspicion of fraud. This is the latest chapter in the right-wing coup that began in the 1980s.

Millions of individuals, landlords, charities, clubs, voluntary organisations and companies will become subject to 24/7 surveillance. No court order is needed and you won’t be told anything about the information extracted and how it is used or abused. There is no right of appeal.

The source of latest rush towards totalitarianism is the misleadingly titled Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. It has been passed by the House of Commons where the government used its big majority to stifle debate. It is now going through the House of Lords.

The attack on civil liberties is dressed up as a fraud prevention measure, but the government is unable to provide relevant data. The government claims that mass monitoring is needed to check benefit fraud, estimated to be around £6.4bn a year or 2.7% of the total benefit payments. Under the Social Security Fraud Act 2001, the government can request information from bank accounts on a case-by-case basis, if there are reasonable grounds to suspect fraud. This is being replaced by mass surveillance of bank accounts. A Minister told parliament that “proportionately fraud in the state pension is very low”, and was unable to provide any financial numbers but the government will place 12.7m retirees under surveillance.

The government claims that mass surveillance would reduce fraud by £600 million over the next five years though this somehow became  £500m during the debate in the Commons, i.e. £100m-£120m a year. To put this into context, during 2023-24, the government spent £1,189bn.

Financial institutions will be paid unspecified millions to conduct mass snooping and look for cash flow sources and patterns or the level of savings, and flag people exceeding thresholds for benefits. There is a danger that gifts to loved ones to buy clothes or a new bed could be counted as income, and result in loss of benefits. The inherent assumption in the Bill is that information generated by IT systems would be correct. The Post Office scandal shows that computer generated information isn’t necessarily correct, and can lead to injustices. Neither financial institutions nor the Department of Work and Pensions will owe a ‘duty of care’ to any injured party.

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/the-governments-plans-for-unlimited-surveillance-on-benefit-claimants-bank-accounts-should-worry-us-all/

Continue ReadingThe government’s plans for unlimited surveillance on benefit claimants’ bank accounts should worry us all

“Kill All Arabs”: The Feds Are Investigating UMass Amherst for Anti-Palestinian Bias

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https://theintercept.com/2024/04/24/umass-amherst-palestine-protests-harassment/

Students march across campus following a walkout at University of Massachusetts Amherst on Oct. 25, 2023. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The Department of Education is probing claims that the school discriminated against Palestinian and Arab students amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst in response to a complaint that alleges that the school took months to address the harassment of Palestinian and Arab students.

In the previously unreported civil rights complaint, 18 students said that they have “been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance, actually being assaulted.” The result, the students said, was a hostile environment for all Arab and Palestinian students, those perceived to be Palestinian, and their allies on campus. Among the most chilling allegations involves a student yelling“kill all Arabs” at fellow students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. 

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Over the past six months, students across the country have conducted protests, sit-ins, and other demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza and for their institutions to divest from Israel’s occupation of Palestine. While universities have largely responded with an iron fist, the Department of Education has been increasingly brought in to investigate civil rights claims. Since October 7, Palestine Legal has filed five complaints with the OCR, including against Northwestern Law and the University of North Carolina. Conversely, pro-Israel groups have used the civil rights law to target students speaking out in support of Palestinian rights.

Tariq Habash, a former political appointee in the Department of Education who resigned in January in protest of President Joe Biden’s policies on the Gaza war, said that universities’ widespread crackdowns against anti-war protests is connected to the discrimination students have complained of. 

“The condemnation has been so swift against largely peaceful, non-violent anti-war protests that are calling for an end to an ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” Habash said. “They’re arresting faculty who are trying to protect students who are in the middle of prayers. They are suspending students. They are kicking them out of their dorms and throwing their belongings into alleyways — this is not how you create safe, inclusive environments. This is not how you prevent discrimination. This is how you enable it and how you make it normalized.”

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The 49-page complaint lays out allegations of harassment going as far back as the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7. The complaint alleges that a student began appearing at Students for Justice in Palestine and other related off-campus protests, “shouting threats such as ‘Kill all Arabs,’ playing a speaker with a recording of the sounds of bombs and other explosions and attempting to ram student protestors with an electric scooter.”

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https://theintercept.com/2024/04/24/umass-amherst-palestine-protests-harassment/

Pro-Israel Advocates Are Weaponizing “Safety” on College Campuses

Amid Gaza Protests, Universities Are Cracking Down on a Celebrated Protest Tactic: Sit-ins

Continue Reading“Kill All Arabs”: The Feds Are Investigating UMass Amherst for Anti-Palestinian Bias

Student movement for Palestine stands defiant in face of police repression

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

Students set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Harvard Yard (Photo: Micah Fong)

Police continue to crack down on growing movement of Gaza Solidarity Encampments, students stand their ground

Police throughout the country have continued to heavily repress students engaging in protest in solidarity with Gaza. Despite the brutalization of student protesters on campuses such as University of Texas – Austin and the University of Southern California, students continue to stage encampments across the globe.

This is happening in the backdrop of US President Biden signing a bill into law that would provide USD 26 billion to Israel as it conducts genocide in Gaza. Even the European Union has backed a UN call for an investigation (which the US refuses to support) into the over 300 killed Palestinians found in mass graves beneath the ruins of two hospitals. Israel has also begun its attack on Rafah, killing five people in an air strike on a residential building in Rafah City. 

Students at UT Austin have had to withstand brutal repression, as ultra-right wing Texas Governor Greg Abbot called in State Troopers, some mounted on horses, who violently clashed with protesters and made multiple arrests. 

Despite the downpour of state violence, student protesters held their ground, chanting ““You don’t scare us!” and “Get off our campus!”

Protesters also experienced a wave of repression at the University of Southern California, where arrests are currently underway as Los Angeles Police attempt to clear the encampment.

Earlier in the day, Los Angeles police used batons and fists to violently beat organizers. Organizers continued to be defiant in the face of such repression, however, and managed to successfully de-arrest a protester who had been detained in a police car, surrounding the car and chanting, “Let him go!”

On the morning of April 24, Columbia student organizers made important announcements to those participating in the week-long protest, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Butler Lawn. The previous night, Columbia administration had threatened to bring in the National Guard to sweep the encampment, in a disturbing echo of the Kent State massacre in 1970 of four students protesting the US war in Vietnam by the Ohio National Guard. 

However, that morning, students announced to the entire encampment that “we won a huge concession—we have it in writing that we are here for 48 hours and we will not be swept; we will not be moved!”

Due to a mass mobilization of both students and supporters, inside and outside campus gates, the administration was deterred from sweeping the camp, according to organizers. The administration has set a new deadline for an encampment sweep: Friday at 3 am.

As student organizers at Columbia plan for repression, other campuses across the country and around the world continue to establish their own encampments in solidarity with Gaza at universities such as Harvard and Brown. On April 24, students Sciences Po in Paris erected their own encampment in solidarity with Gaza.

Students across the globe have issued messages of solidarity with the US students braving repression in solidarity with Gaza. The Arab and Maghreb Youth Student Front Against Normalization and in Support of Peoples’ Causes has called for a “global youth student battle in support of Palestinian resistance and all solidarity forces with it,” stating that “what happened at Columbia University in the United States today is the best evidence of what we say, as after six days of sit-ins inside the campus, many other American universities like the University of California witnessed student movements supporting Palestine, shaking the throne of the entity and pushing the Biden administration to ruthlessly suppress protests supporting the Palestinian people and demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.” 

The Student Front has called for a mobilization of all Arab and Maghreb youth students to “to intensify field movements in support of the Palestinian cause and to stop the genocidal war in steadfast Palestine, strengthening the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and protesting in front of American embassies and their symbols.”

The International People’s Assembly (IPA) also issued a statement denouncing the  “brutal repression and mass arrests of students peacefully protesting their administrations’ investments in the Zionist entity and demanding an end to all academic partnerships and cooperation.” 

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

Continue ReadingStudent movement for Palestine stands defiant in face of police repression

Why are human rights groups condemning the Rwanda bill? Here’s what you need to know

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/why-are-human-rights-groups-condemning-the-rwanda-bill-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ Many articles from LeftFootForward today.

Despite the findings of the Supreme Court, the government is compelling judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country.

The passage of the Rwanda Bill late last night, after a parliamentary showdown ended between the Commons and the Lords, has been met with condemnation and outrage by a number of human rights groups.

Some have described it as a ‘national disgrace’ while others slammed it as cruel and inhumane.

Sunak had made stopping small boat crossings across the channel a major priority, with his Rwanda Bill a key part of his plans in doing so. The Prime Minister says that the first flights removing asylum seekers who arrive illegally to the UK to the east African country are due to take off in 10-12 weeks time.

So why are human rights groups condemning the legislation and why are they concerned?

Rwanda is not a safe country, Supreme Court rules

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Disregarding domestic and international law

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‘Genuine refugees would be at risk of being returned to their home countries, where they could face harm’

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/why-are-human-rights-groups-condemning-the-rwanda-bill-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ Many articles from LeftFootForward today.

Continue ReadingWhy are human rights groups condemning the Rwanda bill? Here’s what you need to know

Morning Star: Defending democracy – how can we beat back Gove’s dangerous authoritarianism?

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/defending-democracy-how-can-we-beat-back-goves-dangerous-authoritarianism

Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove speaking during the Scottish Conservative party conference at the Event Complex Aberdeen, March 2, 2024

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The left cannot confine ourselves to condemning what the government does. We need strategies to undo it. This applies to the toxic new definition of extremism announced by Michael Gove last week, which could have catastrophic long-term consequences.

The new definition — and its associated practice, the labelling of certain organisations as extremist by ministerial decree — must not be allowed to bed in. We need mass refusal to accept it, declarations by devolved and local government, trade unions, charities and campaigns that we wholly reject it.

The joint statement by key organisers of the mass street movement for Gaza that Gove’s “redefinition of extremism … is in reality an assault on core democratic freedoms” is the right approach.

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Our defence must be to go on the attack against the extremism definition, to campaign publicly for its reversal and to sign up every organisation that cares for its democratic image to officially oppose it.

The next government should inherit a policy that is already utterly discredited and unworkable because its right to define extremists is universally rejected.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/defending-democracy-how-can-we-beat-back-goves-dangerous-authoritarianism

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Defending democracy – how can we beat back Gove’s dangerous authoritarianism?