UK police to fire plastic bullets “spontaneously” at rioters

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

A further toughening of police tactics when dealing with rioters is on the cards in Britain, according to a report in the Guardian on 1 December.  This follows a report in the same newspaper on 30 November – the subject of our blog yesterday – on raising the possibility of more aggressive policing of riots.
The London Metropolitan Police (the Met)is considering the purchase of three water cannon to use against rioters.  According to the Guardian, the Met is also training more officers to support its baton round teams so that plastic bullets can be deployed more “spontaneously” against rioters.
Comment by Antigone1984: Here we go again! How our western police forces must envy their counterparts in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or China where there are just no restrictions on police brutality! We are particularly tickled by the idea of plastic bullets being fired “spontaneously” at rioters.
The aristocrats now back in government in the UK are at one with their 18 C forebears in the ruthlessness with which they are prepared to stamp out public dissidence. There has been much talk in government quarters of beefing up law-and-order provisions. There has been virtually no emphasis on dealing with the causes of the recent riots: poverty, educational disadvantage and unemployment. It’s much easier – and far cheaper – to deal with the symptoms of public discontent by cracking a few heads than by mobilising public investment to eliminate the root causes of the present discontent.
Posted in Police, UK, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

UK police told to respond more aggressively to future disorder

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Blog : Police in UK are being asked to adopt more aggressive tactics in future when quelling riots, according to a report in the Guardian on 30 November. The paper said that  Sir Denis O’Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, was calling for the current defensive “stand, hold and protect” tactics to be replaced by more proactive “go forward and arrest tactics”. His remarks follow extensive rioting and looting in English cities this August, the police response to which was criticised by the law-and-order lobby for being too laidback. The British Prime Minister David Cameron described the riots as “sheer criminality, nothing else”.

Comment by Antigone1984: The riots in August led to exceptionally severe sentences being meted out to convicted rioters, normal sentencing guidelines being mysteriously ripped up, with lower courts being advised that they could impose harsher than normal sentences on those convicted of crimes (generally theft or causing damage) that, in the absence of a riot, would usually have attracted lesser penalties. This tougher approach was subsequently upheld in an appeal court.

You do not have to look far to see why the rioting in London and elsewhere provoked a massive reaction from the powers that be. Hardly a day goes by without media coverage of the popular uprisings in the Arab world. Most of that coverage is positive, with the western authorities encouraging the revolutionaries. Indeed, in the case of Libya, the western powers gave active military support to the rebels.

However, while that is all very well abroad, we certainly aren’t going to tolerate that sort of thing in the so-called western democracies. That is why the judiciary in the UK has cracked down so heavily on the first signs of street dissent. It is also why police in the US have cracked down so hard on members of the anti-banker Occupy Movement, pepper-spraying some of them at point-blank range. The British police, for their part, have been itching to dislodge the Occupy protesters camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London, but have had to hold back for the time being because of the dithering response of the cathedral authorities. The hypocrisy of the western elites in supporting the Arab rebels while repressing dissidents at home has attracted little comment in the generally pro-establishment western media.


Posted in Bahrain, Egypt, Justice, Libya, Police, Syria, UK | Leave a comment

Our attitude towards religion

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Blog: Today, 30 November 2011, by way of a second posting, we reprint an email we sent about a year ago to a Jehovah’s Witness. This summarises our attitude not only towards Jehovah’s Witnesses but also towards religion in general. However, as we have stressed in our Mission Statement, we respect the right of others to take a different view to the one we take.

“28 November 2010

Dear Jehovah’s Witness,

I am replying to your email of 12 November 2010.

As you know, I concluded around the age of 15 that there was no such thing as god and I have never had the slightest interest in religion since then. All my studies and my experience of life since then have confirmed to me the wisdom of this conclusion and I have never at any time had the slightest doubt about its correctness. I do not believe that there is the slightest evidence that god exists.  When I stopped believing in god, I felt an immense relief. It was like throwing away a crutch when I realized that I could walk perfectly well without it. And that is still the case.

Let me set down my view of how religion arose. Primitive peoples generally could not – and many people today still cannot – bring themselves to face up to the alarming fact that they face extinction when they die. As a result, they invented, out of thin air, an elaborate mythology involving the existence of a god or gods, sometimes accompanied by angels and saints, and usually – this is the key point – involving an afterlife for themselves in which they would be “saved”, ie would not face extinction.  Some of these myth-makers wrote down their fairy tales in books, which they called “sacred”. Some of them went further and claimed that this anthropomorphic character they had invented, which they called god, had actually written their books for them. In my view, this is all claptrap resulting from wishful thinking.

The earth is round but for a long time – until the Portuguese navigator Magellan circumnavigated the globe in 1519-1522 – most people believed that it was flat.  If someone who still believes that the earth is flat wanted to discuss their belief with me, there would be absolutely no point in such an exchange of views.  Just as there is not the slightest evidence whatever to substantiate the view that the earth is flat, the same is true, from my standpoint, as regards the view that there is a god.

Of course, people can delude themselves into thinking that something is so when it is not. And there is no proposition for which the mind of man cannot piece together some kind of apparent justification, often using complex arguments, detailed calculations, selected quotations cherry-picked from scientific papers, etc.  However, the driving force in the case of those who believe that god exists is the wishful thinking I have already mentioned. They want to believe. Therefore they find reasons to believe.

It is all so easy.  For believers, their destiny is mapped out for them. Their private life, their social life, their public life – and, not least, their supposed afterlife – are all settled and arranged. They don’t even have to think. Their thinking has been done for them.  They just sit back and do what they are told. The Bible says this, the Koran says this, the Bhagavad Gita says this – so that is what we must do. This is to abnegate each individual’s personal responsibility for doing their own thinking – not leaving it to some other person or institution to do it for them.

I am a democrat. This means that if someone believes that 2 and 2 equal 5 or that the moon is made of cheese, I accept that this is what they believe. However, it does not mean that I think that their view is reasonable. On the contrary, I think their view is baloney. However, they have a right to think what they think if that is what they think. This is what tolerance of diversity means. However, to tolerate the views of others does not necessarily mean to approve of them.

To take an example. Suppose two architects are considering where to install windows and doors in a new house. One of them may have one view of where they should be positioned, the other may have a different view.  However, both opinions may be sensible and both parties, while having their own view, may still find the views of the other to be reasonable.

This is emphatically not my view as regards people who believe in god. While I respect their right to do so, this does not mean that I think it is a reasonable position to hold. On the contrary, I think it is an absurd view to have, particularly in this day and age when so much progress has been made in terms of human knowledge compared with the time of our primitive ancestors and even compared with the 19th century when lots of eccentric religious sects were part of the furniture. Now, however, we are in the 21st century and there is no intellectual justification, in my view, for clinging on to antiquated superstitions that most educated people have rightly abandoned.

Indeed I go further than this. It is my view that religion is not something anodyne, something neutral, but rather a set of beliefs which is positively harmful.

I have noticed, for example, that missionary creeds like your own latch on to less well-educated people, often immigrants, and provide them with a ready-made community of friends and acquaintances in exchange for a readiness to be brainwashed. Religious people also tend to brainwash their own children.

As is often the case, there is also the question of money. There are a number of religious creeds in which senior figures have acquired substantial wealth as a result of contributions from their congregations.  I have no doubt that the acquisition of wealth from gullible believers is a major incentive for those pulling the strings.

There may be special problems, moreover, with Jehovah’s Witnesses, if my information in this regard is correct. Here are three instances:

Some religions, regardless of their beliefs, do at least engage with people in this world and seek to help the poor and the disadvantaged (eg Christian Aid or CAFOD). However, I have been told by a Jehovah’s Witness that the focus of Jehovah’s Witnesses is on the next world, saving souls for the afterlife, etc, rather than on alleviating the plight of those suffering in the actual world in which we happen to be living.

I have also been told that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not vote in elections. In the West the right to vote and hence influence the political framework that directly affects people’s daily life in the here and now has been painstakingly secured over many centuries and at great personal cost. Indeed many of the world’s peoples still lack that right and, as a result, remain subject to tyrannical regimes.  To refuse to take part in the political process when one enjoys the right to do so strikes me as worse than perverse.

Then there is the appalling refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to accept blood transfusions. To me, this is nothing short of criminal. If someone dies as a result of not having a blood transfusion, then I believe that anyone who is responsible for preventing that person from having a blood transfusion should be prosecuted either for murder or for aiding and abetting.

Enough said, I think. I devoted an inordinate amount of time and thought to religion up to the age of 15. I dealt in depth with all conceivable questions ranging from the “proofs” or “evidence” for the existence of god to the origin of the world and our species. I came to the conclusions that I have outlined above. I see no reason to reopen this particular Pandora’s box.

With best wishes

Antigone1984“

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“Independent” panel appointed by government

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Blog:Reporting in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 29 November on the interim conclusions of a body looking into the riots in England this August, reporter Caroline Davies described the committee as an “independent panel – set up by the government”. Irish bull?

Later in the same issue of the paper, a report by Chris Arnot points out that the chair of the panel – the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel – is the former chief executive of a government department, Jobcentre Plus.

Comment by Antigone1984: For a reporter to describe a government-appointed committee as “independent” is to abdicate their responsibility as a journalist to write as objectively as possible.

When a government appoints a judge or a panel to investigate something, that government will act as follows. It will first determine what conclusions it wants the judge or panel to come to. It will then set about finding a judge or panel that it feels, after interview and on the basis of the past form of the person or persons involved, are likely to come up with those conclusions.  This is an invariable rule in the establishment of investigatory bodies set up by governments.

Naturally, governments themselves are most anxious that the public should be led to believe that the carefully selected panels or judges are completely independent. It is the role of a journalist to ensure that the wool is not pulled over people’s eyes. They must ensure that the public is not set up as well as the committee.

Posted in Justice, Politics, UK | Leave a comment

Asylum seekers “tortured in Congo” after forcible repatriation from UK

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Blog: People from the Democratic Republic of Congo seeking asylum in UK have been forcibly repatriated to Congo only to be persecuted there by the authorities, according to a report by the human rights charity Justice First highlighted in the Guardian today 26 November.

According to the Guardian, the report outlines the fate of 17 adults and nine children forcibly removed from the UK between 2007 and 2011. Most of the adults had been active in political opposition movements in Congo.

The report claims that:

  • two adults disappeared shortly after arriving in Congo, while nine were arrested and imprisoned;
  • thirteen experienced persecution, two of the women being raped and two of the men being sexually abused;
  • six were badly beaten and two were subjected to electric shock treatment;
  • six of the children were imprisoned and three kept apart from their mothers;
  • four of the returnees had to pay a ransom to buy their freedom from detention.

According to the report, before the asylum seekers were forcibly removed from UK, they were given assurances by the UK Border Agency that they would not be in danger in Congo.

The report claims that the UK fails to monitor the fate of people forcibly returned to conflict zones such as Congo, where cases of torture are well documented.

A Congolese immigration officer interviewed for the report described how people with “political problems” were taken to a detention centre. “The returnees have no excuse,” he said. “There will be no pity shown.”

According to the Guardian, the UK Border Agency commented: “The agency only enforces the return of individuals whom we, and the courts, are satisfied are not in need of protection and who do not elect to leave voluntarily.”

Comment by Antigone1984: The allegations made in the report by Justice First – the torture and persecution in Congo of Congolese asylum seekers forcibly repatriated by the UK – should be raised in court, at international level if necessary.  Both the UK and Congolese Governments should have to account for their actions before a judge. 

Posted in Congo (DR), Justice, Politics, Torture, UK | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A black day for Egyptian democracy: parliamentary elections

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

The elections which started in Egypt today 28 November would be a farce if the situation in Egypt were not as menacing as it is. These elections have been deliberately designed to be strung out over four months. No democratic election anywhere in the world has ever, to our knowledge, been deliberately scheduled to take place over four months. The scope for stuffing ballot boxes is unlimited. Moreover, the ballot is taking place while demonstrations continue in Tahrir Square. In the last nine days, according to press reports, 42 people have died and thousands have been injured in clashes between young revolutionaries and the security forces.  Yet only a few days ago the military commander-in-chief Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi said that the army had not killed a single Egyptian.

In a significant development, if it turns out to be the case,  the Muslim Brotherhood, which benefits from a well-oiled political machine, appears to have cut a deal with the military chiefs. Allow the elections to go ahead, they appear to have said. We shall win them. When we do so, we shall make sure that the army has no grounds for regretting our victory. The army needs this assurance. It has worked hand-in-glove with Mubarak during the 30 years of his brutal dictatorship. As a result, it needs an amnesty for the economic and human rights crimes it committed under the dictatorship.  Secondly, the army wants to retain the extensive assets it has built up in Egypt’s economy over the Mubarak years. Thirdly, the army wants the future “democratic” constitution – the current elections are for the purpose of electing a parliament which will then choose a panel to draw up a constitution – to allow the army a free hand to act as it thinks best in the interests of the country regardless of the government in power. The Muslim Brotherhood looks likely to oblige on all three fronts. Significantly enough, the Muslim Brotherhood did not attend the anti-army demonstrations in Tahrir Square last week. Another significant absentee from the demonstrations was political wheeler-dealer Amr Moussa, secretary-general until recently of the Arab League, who appears to have had a comfortable relationship with Mubarak when the latter was in power. One possible outcome is that the Muslim Brotherhood will provide the bulk of government ministers, including the Prime Minister, while Amr Moussa will become President. The army in the meantime will keep an eye on things in the background unless or until trouble breaks out. Even this weekend Tantawi was threatening to deal forcefully with “trouble-makers”, suggesting (as Kaddhafi did and Assad has been doing) that foreign hands were behind the mounting turbulence in the country. One man excluded from the cosy arrangement with the army is the democrat Mohamed Elbaradei, the former UN nuclear weapons chief. Not surprisingly, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood or Amr Moussa, Mr Elbaradei did show up at the demonstrations in Tahrir Square last week. What happens to Elbaradei will indicate which way the wind is blowing in Egypt.

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Eva Joly may be defenestrated by the French Green Party

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Blog: It looks very much as if former French judge Eva Joly will be deselected as presidential candidate for the Greens in the March 2012 elections. She has failed to speak in favour of the recent deal between her Green Party and the Socialist Party and has also refused to pledge to vote for the Socialist candidate in the second round of the elections.

The Greens want France, which derives a higher proportion of its energy supply from nuclear power than any other country in the world, to end its reliance on nuclear energy. However, they have just cut a deal with the Socialists to abandon their opposition to the completion of a new nuclear reactor at Flamanville in northern France. In exchange, the Socialists will not stand against them in a specified number of parliamentary constituencies. It is also understood  that the Greens will be allocated government portfolios if the Socialists succeed in unseating Nicolas Sarkozy as President.

Presumably, Joly is not prepared to accept that the Greens abandon their principled opposition to nuclear power in exchange for seats in Government (where, in any case, they would be largely in the minority).  However, the lure of office is very strong and Green Parties elsewhere have succumbed to it without much scruple. In Germany, for instance, the Greens held the Foreign Ministry in the cabinet of Socialist Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. However, no Green policies of any kind were adopted by Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

However that may be, it is hard to see Eva Joly lasting the course. Her bête noire, the rightwing Green MEP, Daniel Cohen-Bendit, a friend of Joschka Fischer, must be rubbing his hands with glee.

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Ripe pickings for Western supermarket giants in India

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Blog: The go-ahead for Western supermarket mammoths to set  up shop in India received the green light last night from the Indian Government, according to press reports today. Giant supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco are said to be salivating at the prospect of the profit bonanza that they are certain to harvest as a result.

The procedure is well-honed. The foreign superstores will use their massive overseas earnings to subsidise prices during their initial onslaught on the massive Indian market. The aim and result will be to lure customers away from the country’s ubiquitous family-run small retail businesses. Most of those businesses, unable to compete with the predatory pricing of the multinationals, will fold. Masses of small shopkeepers and local entrepreneurs, who currently run their own businesses, will be thrown on the scrap heap. Those few lucky enough to acquire jobs in the new supermarkets will have to content themselves with competitive (ie minimum) pay rates and, after being their own bosses, will have the mind-numbing task of filling shelves or manning tills in the new supermarkets. Initially, customers may be attracted to the new stores by the introduction of new lines of western merchandise hitherto not sold in India, but the novelty will soon wear off and very quickly they will find themselves faced with the invariable consequence of the westernization of long-established native markets, ie the homogenisation of products and a reduction in choice – which was the aim of the exercise in the first place as far as the western supermarket giants were concerned. At the same time, of course, once native competition has been eliminated, prices will rise, the market being at the mercy of the oligarchy of five or six major international combines who will have carved it up between them. After all, the multinationals have to find some way of recouping the subsidies they intially funded in order to break into the market. Globalisation, don’t we love you!

With a population of 1.2 billion, India is set to overtake China (1.3 billion) as the world’s most populous nation. Ripe pickings beckon!

The late James Goldsmith, an Anglo-French businessman, was once sitting in a village on a mountain in Bhutan surveying the scene. It was market day and the village was thronged with peasants come to town from the surrounding villages. The stalls were colourful, the market bustled, the sun shone. It was a typical scene that had not changed for centuries in this peaceful Himalayan Kingdom. But for Goldsmith this was his Road to Damascus. He had come to Bhutan to sell Western widgets of one kind or another, but he suddenly saw the light. These people had lived together satisfactorily for hundreds of years in this mountain fastness largely cut off from western influences. What business had he or any other western interloper to march in with his bag of shiny baubles and seek to destroy a way of living that had by itself and without outside help withstood the test of time?

Goldsmith’s elder brother, Edward, developed this vision more fully, founding the Ecologist magazine and making the preservation of the planet his life’s work.

Wikipedia: “Throughout the 1960s he [Edward Goldsmith] spent time travelling the world with his close friend John Aspinall witnessing firsthand the destruction of traditional societies, concluding that the spread of economic development, and its accompanying industrialisation, far from being progressive as claimed, was actually the root cause of social and environmental destruction.[3][4][5]“

Is the Government of India listening today? Unfortunately, it is not. And it is the Indian people that will suffer as a result, their age-old way of life inevitably crushed to smithereens under the bull-dozers of western capitalism.

Posted in Globalisation, India | Leave a comment

“The people have spoken – the bastards!”

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Blog: Well, we were absolutely right – albeit for the wrong reasons! There is to be no referendum in Greece. Brussels would not allow it. So Papandreou had to do a volte-face. After receiving a dressing-down from Brussels over his decision to hold a referendum, which was unacceptable to the Euro-elite, the Greek conjurer suddenly produced a novel argument out of his political hat. He claimed that the referendum – consultation of the Greek people – was not an end in itself. It was a means to an end. That end was acceptance by the whole Greek political elite – the parliamentary opposition as well as the party in government – of whatever austerity package the EU and the IMF wanted to impose on Greece. Up till then, the opposition New Democracy Party had refused to accept the austerity measures. Faced with the threat that the people of Greece might be allowed to decide whether or not to obey the instructions from Brussels, the New Democracy Party of Antonis Samaras caved in and okayed the cuts. Consequently, having secured the backing of the Greek establishment, Papandreou felt able to do without the view of the actual Greek people. “Thank you very much,”he told them. “I don’t need you any more”. Never in the history of  modern democracy has a politician shown such contempt for his people.  Consultation of the people, according to Papandreou, is an optional extra, which can be wheeled out as and when it suits the political elite – and can be wheeled in again as the whim takes them. The implications are not limited to Greece. They go right to the undemocratic heart of the European Union. On this occasion, as on numerous occasions in the recent past when electorates have failed to obey the dictates of Brussels (referenda in  Ireland, Denmark, Holland and France), the EU has said “stuff you” and has either abolished the practice of holding referenda at all or has insisted that the people vote again until they got it right. Perhaps this latter procedure could be adopted in elections to national parliaments in Europe: the people must vote again and again till they elect the right candidates. As the man said when the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty: “The people have spoken, the bastards!” Sums it all up, really.

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There will be no referendum in Greece

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Blog: 20h45 Paris time 1.11.11
As regards the Greek referendum announced last night by the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, developments are happening thick and fast, even as I write, with the Greek PM holding an emergency meeting of his cabinet.
As of now, this is what I am thinking:
There will be no referendum.
Papandreou knows full well that Greece is descending into chaos and that the Greek people oppose the externally imposed austerity “bail-outs”.
A wily fox, Papandreou announced the referendum in the full expectation that it will never be held.
This is why.
He knows that the pro-EU element in his party want to stay in the eurozone at any cost (to the people of Greece).
He knows also that the right-wing opposition New Democrats  of Antonis Samaras – who have had the cheek generally to vote against the bail-outs in parliament (to curry popular favour, while knowing that they did not have enough votes to defeat Papandreou and that therefore the bail-outs would receive parliamentary approval)  – are opposed to a referendum. They have said as much today, saying they wanted to stay in the eurozone.
So, producing a second rabbit out of the hat, Papandreou has called a vote of confidence this Friday 4 October in the Greek Parliament.
Since his parliamentary  majority is paper-thin, this vote he will lose, as his pro-EU socialists are going to vote against him or abstain.
A  new election will be held. Samaris will win it, since PASOK and the New Democrats are the only two parties with realistic prospects of forming a government (the choice is between tweedledum and tweedledee, as it is throughout the “democratic west”).
Samaris will say that his win in the election obviates the necessity for a referendum. Austerity will continue. And we shall see a great deal of political violence in Greece as the months roll on.
Papandreou will, in the meantime, bask in the warm glow of being the only politician who was prepared to submit the emergency measures to the wishes of the people. He will then return to power at the next  election with the  New Democrats taking the flak for the austerity that they have imposed (people having by then forgotten that Papandreou supported the very same measures).
End of  prophesy. DON’T FORGET. YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
It was a great pleasure to witness the reaction of the European elite today to the sudden announcement that the people of Greece were to be consulted. Guardian headline: “EU stunned by referendum plan” !  Stunned! The Guardian also quotes a certain Sony Kapur, the MD of an economic thinktank: “….a referendum would be good for democracy and legitimacy, but it’s very hard to see how it can possibly be won.” Won? I like it! Sums it all up. Politicians have been lining up all day in the French media to condemn the referendum as “a mistake”.  Yes, yes, of course, it’s always a mistake to ask the people what they want!!  Go on like this and the next thing is you’ll find people wanting democracy!!!! Imagine.
Posted in Europe, Greece, Media | Leave a comment