Israel

Breaking: new Labour Files episode sees Forde respond to Labour racism

Republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

The Al Jazeera ‘Labour Files’ documentary series exposed afresh the rampant racism and war on democracy of the Labour right, both to sabotage the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and to purge the left from the party under Keir Starmer.

Now a new episode sees Martin Forde – the barrister Starmer reluctantly commissioned to investigate the report’s allegations and whose findings have been ignored by the Labour right and their media allies ever since – respond to the programme’s evidence and conclusions:

Watch and share widely.

The Labour Files – The Forde Response I Al Jazeera Investigations

Republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Continue ReadingBreaking: new Labour Files episode sees Forde respond to Labour racism

Israeli Anti-Government Protests Hit New Heights as 200,000 March in Tel Aviv

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

“There’s a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship,” warned one protester.

Ongoing protests against the far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu were larger than ever on Saturday night as an estimated 200,000 people or more took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities to denounce judicial reforms they warn put the nation on a path towards dictatorship.

For over two months, weekly protests—mostly on the weekends but increasingly during the workweek as well—large demonstrations have taken place in response to Netanyahu and his coalition government pushing a judicial takeover that critics say would curtail democracy.

Haaretzreported Saturday’s turnout as a record since the movement started in early January.

“There’s a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship,” Ophir Kubitsky, a 68-year-old high school teacher at the demonstration, toldReuters. “We came here to demonstrate over and over again until we win.”

The demonstrations in Tel Aviv and other locations “began peacefully,” reports Reuters. “However, footage released by police later showed protesters breaking down barriers in Tel Aviv and igniting fires as they blocked roads. Police sprayed water cannons at the protesters.”

While Israeli liberals increasingly register fear and discomfort over the direction of its government’s growing autocratic tendencies, Palestinian rights advocates have noted that the right-wing slide is a direct and predictable continuation of a system that denies its Palestinian citizens full rights under the law while overseeing a brutal and repressive apartheid regime.

As American-Palestinian scholar Yousef Munayyer recently wrote in a column about the protest movement for +972 Magazine:

As tens of thousands of Israelis protest the reforms that Netanyahu’s government seeks to ram through in hopes of “saving the essence” of Israeli democracy, they are largely avoiding a confrontation with the foundational problem, namely that the essence of the Israeli system is to put settler colonialism ahead of any liberal principles around democracy, equality, or human rights.

A key question for many concerned not only about Israel’s increasingly autocratic and right-wing lurch, but its ever-worsening treatment of the Palestinians living under hostile military occupation is this: “Does this loose group oppose the settler-colonial system that these legal reforms would further enable, or does it simply seek a return to the settler-colonial system, but without Netanyahu at its head?”

Munayyer believes all evidence thus far indicates the latter is the unfortunate answer, which is why Palestinians are noticeably absent from celebrating the display of dissent and opposition in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

“For all Palestinians, including those with Israeli citizenship, there is little urgency to try to ‘save’ Israeli democracy, primarily because for them it has never existed,” Munayyer concluded. “Not only is a political system that is constructed to be democratic toward some, but not all, not a democracy, it is also not going to seem worth saving to those it disadvantages.”

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

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk addresses the high-level segment of the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council on February 27, 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland.

UN Human Rights Chief Condemns Israeli Minister’s​ ‘Unfathomable’ Threat to Huwara

Noting that communities like Huwara are often targeted by Israeli settlers, Amnesty’s regional director urged Israel “to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians.”

Jessica Corbett

Mar 03, 2023

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for saying that Huwara, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, “needs to be wiped out” and “the state of Israel should do it.”

Smotrich’s comment Wednesday came after Israeli settlers on Sunday rampaged through Huwara, killing a 37-year-old Palestinian man—mass violence that came just hours after a Palestinian gunman murdered a pair of Israeli brothers, who were 19 and 21.

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Jewish New Yorkers protest the U.S. government's military support for Israel

Jewish New Yorkers Rally to Demand ‘End to All US Military Funding to Israel’

“As Jews who support freedom and dignity for all people, no exceptions, we will not just sit in horror as the state of Israel carries out ethnic cleansing in our names.”

Jake Johnson

Mar 06, 2023

Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers rallied and marched on the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday to protest his embrace of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid growing violence against Palestinians—violence that demonstrators said is enabled by the U.S. government’s unwavering military and diplomatic support.

“As Jews who support freedom and dignity for all people, no exceptions, we will not just sit in horror as the state of Israel carries out ethnic cleansing in our names,” said Jewish Voice for Peace member Jay Saper. “We are calling for an end to all U.S. military funding to Israel now.”

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Continue ReadingIsraeli Anti-Government Protests Hit New Heights as 200,000 March in Tel Aviv

About Starmer following Blair and Corbyn

https://johnwight1.medium.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-a-better-man-than-starmer-and-starmer-a-lesser-man-than-blair-a300c7ba116b

Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos
Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos

…

Shakespeare himself could not conceive of the dramatic fall from grace experienced by Jeremy Corbyn, under whose leadership between 2015 and 2019 the UK Labour Party could boast a mass membership of 600,000 to make it the largest political party in Europe, and under whose leadership Labour came within just under 2500 votes of winning the 2017 general election on a transformational programme of wealth redistribution, meaningful policies to end homelessness and poverty, and a foreign policy placing a priority on peace over war and hope over fear.

That his outstanding performance in 2017 came in the face of a concerted attempt by Labour Party officials to undermine his leadership and election campaign, and despite a treacherous PLP of unreconstructed bastards, this only makes the question of ‘What if?’ all the more salient and also tragic.

His successor, Starmer, went out of his way to court Corbyn’s supporters in order to get himself elected as leader, while announcing with the sincerity of a mafia boss that “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.”

…

The issue of antisemitism has again been weaponised to demonise the most principled anti-racist politician in Britain, again at the behest of an establishment of bastards in the eyes of which the Palestinian people are deemed children of a lesser God.

The issue within a Parliamentary Labour Party stacked full of apologists for apartheid and white supremacist Zionist ideology that underpins it, has never been antipathy towards Jewish people; it has and continues to be the thoroughly dishonest smearing of those who dare stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and their just struggle against occupation, siege, and the most sustained apparatus of injustice in modern history.

…

https://johnwight1.medium.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-a-better-man-than-starmer-and-starmer-a-lesser-man-than-blair-a300c7ba116b

23/2/23 The quote “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.” appears not quite correct. Unless it’s quoting a different occasion it should be “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague”. I wouldn’t truncate it like that without making it clear, that’s your academic rigour eh? Can be watched here

Apologies, this one

Continue ReadingAbout Starmer following Blair and Corbyn

Israel kept over 600 Palestinians children under house arrest in 2022

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

The data published by the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs does not include all the children arrested by Israeli occupation forces this year, which, according to some sources, is above 750December 27, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

More than 600 Palestinian children were kept under house arrest by Israeli occupation forces in 2022, according to the Commission for Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, a prisoners’ rights body, which issued a statement on Monday, December 26. Minors were detained by the Israeli state for periods ranging between a few days and, in some cases, years, Wafa news agency reported. 

The detained children are not allowed to move freely, or even go to school without an escort. They are also forced to wear tracking devices throughout the detention period. 

The commission describes two kinds of detention of Palestinian children. One is in which the child stays with their family while an Israeli court decides on the case. This often takes months, and the family is often forced to pay a heavy amount as surety. To access such large sums of money, families often have to take loans or sell their property. In the second category, Israeli forces make Palestinian families take their children outside the city or town during the period of the trial, and arrange for their own stay there while the court decides the matter.  

The commission notes that such Israeli detention leaves prolonged physiological effects on both the children and their families. It deprives the children of their right to education and creates a constant feeling of fear, anxiety, and deprivation. 

Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children violates the provisions of international humanitarian law, which specifically addresses protecting the interests of children while setting the conditions of their detention. 

Until 2009, when Military Order 1644 was promulgated by Israel in the West Bank, Israeli courts would try Palestinian children as young as 12 in the same courts as adults, and with no specific protections in place. Military Order 1644, however, set up separate military courts for the trials of children, and determined the Palestinian age of maturity to be 16. Israel does not classify Palestinians over the age of 16 as children, despite the age of maturity for Israelis being 18 years.  

Deadly year for Palestinian children 

At least 54 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied territories in 2022. Out of these, 35 were killed in the occupied West Bank, and 19 in the occupied Gaza strip. At least 958 Palestinian children were wounded by Israeli forces or settlers across the occupied territories in the same period, and over 750 have been arrested or detained. 

At least 150 Palestinian children, below the age of 18, are in different Israeli prisons serving various sentences. 

Some sources quote a higher number of children killed by Israeli forces this year in the West Bank. According to Defense of Children-Palestine, one of several Palestinian human rights groups the Israeli government has branded as “terrorists” and banned, “Israeli forces repeatedly and systematically shoot to kill Palestinian children in violation of international law.” It claims that 13 Palestinian children were killed in Jenin alone this year.

The youngest Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces was 7-year-old Rayan Suleiman. He was being chased by Israeli forces, who were threatening to arrest him near Bethlehem, when he died of cardiac arrest. 

2022 was also the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005, when the UN started recording daily deaths. According to the UN, more than 166 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank this year.  

Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, has been particularly targeted by occupation forces this year under the so-called “break the wave” operations launched in March. In near daily raids, Israeli forces have killed 59 Palestinians in Jenin alone this year. 

Apart from Israeli armed forces, illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank have also killed at least four Palestinians this year, and carried out numerous attacks on Palestinian villages, their farm lands, and their businesses. 

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

Continue ReadingIsrael kept over 600 Palestinians children under house arrest in 2022

Al Jazeera asks ICC to investigate Israel over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/al-jazeera-asks-icc-to-investigate-israel-over-the-killing-of-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh

NEWS channel Al Jazeera formally asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) today to investigate the fatal shooting of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as she was reporting from a Palestinian refugee camp in May.

Al Jazeera has accused the Israeli government of specifically targeting its journalists, calling Ms Abu Akleh’s death a war crime.

The news outlet wants ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to include the reporter’s killing, as well as last year’s Israeli air strike on Al Jazeera’s offices in the Gaza Strip, in his ongoing investigation into allegations of war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.

…

Continue ReadingAl Jazeera asks ICC to investigate Israel over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

State of the UK Labour Party

Two articles about the UK Labour Party, Craig Murray discusses the pointless Keir Starmer:

…

Starmer’s role has been simply to emasculate the Labour Party, and to purge it of any elements that might seek to pose a threat to rampant neo-liberalism and wealth inequality. His efforts to ban Labour MPs from supporting striking railway workers must be anathema to anybody who has the slightest feel for the history and traditions of that party and indeed the most basic understanding of its very raison d’etre.

This Tony Benn quote from the 1980’s has come into vogue because it is prophetic, and the process appears now complete:

If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its Socialists and reunited the remaining Labour Party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed off the National agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed… it would in fact profoundly endanger British society. For it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the last 50 years.

Starmer is in one sense the apotheosis of this process. Not only has he acted to purge the Labour Party of socialism, he also offers so very little of a meaningful alternative to the Tories that there is very little danger of the Tories being voted out of office. Not only is he a safe right-wing backstop, he is a self-redundant safe right-wing backstop.

…

Jeremy Corbyn Sophie Brown, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

and Jeremy Corbyn openly discusses the many parties that obstructed him. The article also discusses Julian Assange.

…

The Guardian has long been viewed as the voice of the liberal-left in Britain, so it surprised many during the Corbyn leadership to see it act as one of the main media vehicles through which the campaign to bring him down was fought. 

The paper was a key part of the “anti-semitism crisis” that engulfed Corbyn’s leadership. From 2016-19, the Guardian published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. 

In the same period, the Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party’s much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister. 

The Guardian’s coverage of anti-semitism in Labour was suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggested that the issue was being used politically.

The late Jewish anthropologist David Graeber commented after the 2019 election: “As for the Guardian, we will never forget that during the ‘Labour antisemitism controversy’, they beat even the Daily Mail to include the largest percentage of false statements, pretty much every one, mysteriously, an accidental error to Labour’s disadvantage”.

…

Keir Starmer says he is scrapping Labour’s manifesto and ‘starting from scratch’ on policy

Continue ReadingState of the UK Labour Party

Sanders Says US Must ‘Take a Hard Look’ at Nearly $4 Billion in Annual Military Aid to Israel

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/17/sanders-says-us-must-take-hard-look-nearly-4-billion-annual-military-aid-israel

“It is illegal for U.S. aid to support human rights violations,” said the Vermont senator. by Jake Johnson, staff writer

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Sunday that lawmakers must “take a hard look” at the nearly $4 billion in military aid the U.S. sends to Israel on an annual basis as the Netanyahu regime continues its devastating assault on Gaza and attempts to forcefully expel Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

“The devastation in Gaza is unconscionable. We must urge an immediate ceasefire,” Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, tweeted Sunday. “The killing of Palestinians and Israelis must end. We must also take a hard look at nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. It is illegal for U.S. aid to support human rights violations.”

“Now is the time to send a clear message to the Israeli government: Not one dollar more of U.S. military aid can be used to demolish Palestinian homes, annex Palestinian lands, and torture or kill Palestinian children.”
—Rep. Betty McCollum

The senator’s call came after Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed 42 Palestinians early Sunday, bringing the death toll since last week closer to 200.

Thanks to a 10-year deal inked during the Obama presidency in 2016, Israel receives roughly $3.8 billion a year in military assistance from the United States. In a budget blueprint released last month, President Joe Biden indicated that he intends to adhere to the terms of the 2016 deal, which sends Israel $3.3 billion in military aid and $500 million for missile defense systems each year.

In the wake of Israeli security forces’ attack on worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound last week, several members of Congress vocally reiterated their support for adding strict human rights conditions to the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to pressure the Israeli government to end its brutal repression of Palestinians.

Under legal provisions known as the Leahy laws, the U.S. government is barred from providing military assistance “to any unit” of a country’s security forces that is committing “a gross violation of human rights”—mandates that have been applied only selectively in practice.

“American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to Congress, tweeted last Monday. “Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed.”

In a joint statement that same day, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), André Carson (D-Ind.), and Tlaib lamented that “we continue to provide the Israeli government with over $3 billion in military aid every year—with no conditions or accountability for wanton human rights abuses and continuing illegal seizures of Palestinian land.”

Last month, before Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza began, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) introduced legislation that would prohibit Israel from using U.S. military aid in the occupied territories for “military detention, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention”; seizing or destroying Palestinian property and homes; or supporting the annexation of Palestinian territory.

The bill currently has just 19 co-sponsors in the House, including Omar, Carson, and Tlaib as well as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

“Now is the time to send a clear message to the Israeli government: Not one dollar more of U.S. military aid can be used to demolish Palestinian homes, annex Palestinian lands, and torture or kill Palestinian children,” McCollum told The Intercept last week. “Members need to decide if they want to talk peace and perpetuate conflict or if they want to really work toward reducing violence and conflict while actually taking a stand to advance human rights.

Originally published by Common Dreams. Shared under Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Israel/OPT: Pattern of Israeli Attacks on Residential Homes in Gaza Must Be Investigated As War Crimes

WASHINGTON – Israeli forces have displayed a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians by carrying out a number of airstrikes targeting residential buildings in some cases killing entire families – including children – and causing wanton destruction to civilian property, in attacks that may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, said Amnesty International today.

The organization has documented four deadly attacks by Israel launched on residential homes without prior warning and is calling for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently investigate these attacks. The death toll in Gaza continues to climb with at least 198 Palestinians killed including 58 children and more than 1,220 injured. Ten people in Israel, including two children, have been killed and at least 27 injured by Palestinian attacks.

“There is a horrific pattern emerging of Israel launching air strikes in Gaza targeting residential buildings and family homes – in some cases entire families were buried beneath the rubble when the buildings they lived in collapsed.  In the cases documented below, no prior warning was given to the civilian residents to allow them to escape. Under international humanitarian law, all parties must distinguish between military targets and civilian objects and direct their attacks only at military objectives. When carrying out attacks, parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians,” said Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

…

Continue ReadingSanders Says US Must ‘Take a Hard Look’ at Nearly $4 Billion in Annual Military Aid to Israel

Jerusalem Pogrom: Extremist Jewish Mobs injure 100 Palestinians, chanting “Death to Arabs”

( Middle East Monitor ) – The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a pogrom as “a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority”.That is exactly what is happening today against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem.

Middle EastEye: “Hundreds of far-right Israeli activists chant “death to Arabs” in East Jerusalem”

Palestinians are not a minority in Palestine – the country that lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But due to Israel’s apartheid regime that has ruled the country since 1948, the majority of Palestinians were expelled from the areas that today form so-called “Israel proper”, and which many Palestinians term “1948 Palestine”.

Due to a slow process of Israeli ethnic cleansing since then, Palestinians are no longer the majority in Jerusalem. But in recent weeks that process has sped up in that city, the historic capital of Palestine.

Some truly terrifying clips have been circulated online – including by credible journalists – showing rampaging mobs of mostly young Israeli men attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem and chanting “Death to the Arabs” (while being incited and led by mainstream Israeli political and religious leaders).

This is not a new phenomenon, but it has increased in recent weeks, partly due to a ruling by an Israeli court demanding new expulsions of Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The families have been until the start of May to leave their homes and hand them over to Israeli settlers.

These actions by the apartheid state of Israel have only encouraged the “Death to the Arabs” hate mobs. And therein lies the key to understating the essence of a pogrom.

https://twitter.com/TamaraINassar/status/1385321445006397446?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1385321445006397446%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.middleeastmonitor.com%2F20210423-israels-pogroms-in-jerusalem%2F

A pogrom is carried out by violent mobs, who are deemed in the discourse of the government and of the corporate media to be “extremists”. There is no doubt that these mobs are far-right Jewish-supremacist extremists by any objective definition.

France 24 English: “More than 100 Palestinians wounded in Jerusalem clashes

https://videopress.com/embed/EsIdDFSj?hd=1&loop=0&autoPlay=1&permalink=0

But they are not extremists in terms of the mainstream of Israeli political discourse and – crucially – of the actions of the racist state itself.

You can see this very clearly in a viral video clip that was circulated by the American anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace.

The clip was from a 2009 film about Sheikh Jarrah. But as JVP notes, it could easily have been filmed today. Expulsions of Palestinians by mobs of highly ideological religious Zionist fanatics are still frequently carried out, in the same way seen in the clip.

But the most telling part of the video is perhaps not so much the actions of the mob itself, but how they are endorsed and backed by the racist state.

You see the thugs of Israel’s highly-armed military “Border Police” force standing by and watching the takeover, making sure that the Palestinians are not able to defend themselves or their homes.

This is the very definition of a pogrom.

In the clip posted by JVP, Israeli settler leader Jonathan Yosef is shamelessly explicit about all this, saying: “We take house after house. All this area will be a Jewish neighbourhood … We are going to the next neighbourhood and after that we’ll go [to] more. Our dream [is] that all East Jerusalem will be like West Jerusalem. [A] Jewish capital of Israel.”

He then gives a far clearer, far more honest – and frankly more accurate – definition of Zionism than the lying dissimulators of liberal and “left-wing” Zionism ever could (with their nonsense about “Jewish self-determination” in a country which has never been exclusively Jewish):

“I see this as a continuation of the Zionist project. The return to Zion. Is it at the Arabs’ expense? Yes. But our government institutions were also built at the expense of Arabs who lived here. And so was the state itself,” he says.”

Everything Yosef said in this definition of Zionism is objectively true. The difference though, is that he thinks that such violent, racist extremism is good and praiseworthy, while I (and the vast majority of people around the world) reject it as a horrifying injustice.

Yosef is no marginal figure or merely some obscure wild-eyed extremist. As my colleague David Sheen reports, he sits on Jerusalem’s city council for Shas – a religious extremist party which also happens to have won the third highest number of seats in Israel’s parliament in the election last month.

But the Palestinians show no sign of backing down, lying down, giving up, or, – in the words of Zionism’s racist founder Theodor Herzl – allowing Israel to “spirit the penniless population across the border” of Palestine.

Middle East Monitor

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingJerusalem Pogrom: Extremist Jewish Mobs injure 100 Palestinians, chanting “Death to Arabs”

Checking in

Just checking in and addressing a few diverse issues.

I should really do the long promised Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) expo particularly since UK govt is to review the HHSRS scheme in the private rental sector https://www.localgov.co.uk/Whitehall-to-review-health-and-safety-standards-in-rental-sector/46276. I’m very relieved to be moving out of my slum private rented flat very soon.

Briefly,

Council Housing is maintained strictly to HHSRS standards. [21/1/19 Council housing should be maintained strictly to the HHSRS standard i.e. it is the minimal legal standard so councils should meet that standard. The reality is that – no doubt due to austerity – it’s often extremely difficult for council tenants to secure maintenance or repairs to that standard.]  It’s utilitarian but adequate.

Problems with HHSRS in the privare sector are that

Environmental Health Officers (EHO) who enforce HHSRS in the private sector have absolute discretion over the application of HHSRS leading to the very real possibility of corruption. I got the impresson that EHOs were biased and very concerned to excuse landlords from their responsibilities e.g. building regulations. The senior EHO who was attending my slum flat to protect my landlord’s interests was very friendly with him as if they were members of the same club.

The HHSRS scheme is only concerned with appearance and it is perfectly acceptable to EHOs that problems are simply hidden. At my slum flat ceilings and walls damp from the sieve-like roof are hidden behind false walls and ceilings.

[25/11/18 Combi boiler has failed this weekend so no heating or hot water. This was the reason for my first report to EH in Nov/Dec 2 years ago. Attending EHO exercised absolute discretion by deciding that it was acceptable since it worked when she attended. There is some support for that decision since HHSRS is at the time of inspection except that she was biased and quite clearly protecting the slum landlord’s interests.

Combi boiler was installed by an unqualified cowboy* approx 10 years ago. Combi boiler has been unreliable since a ‘service’ a fornight ago. Landlord rushes around to satisfy legalities when expecting a HHSRS inspection i.e. those legalities are otherwise not satisfied. I have had to have HHSRS inspections to force landlord to do necessary repairs e.g. ceiling repair.

*cowboy is a UK slang term for workmen with little training or experience who will take your money for extremely poor service and workmanship.

Combi now briefly working.]

[28/11/18 I got the message that some people oppose my intended move. I’ll do wtf I like. I  can’t see my current flat existing in five years or so – it is seriously falling away from the rest of the street. The neighbouring property filled a 2″-wide gap recently and I often see new cracks at mine. Need to name my new flat.]

I was successful at a benefit’s appeal on 20 September after it taking about 16 months. The tribunal recommended that I was not reassessed for 24 months from that date. I was reassessed on Thursday, 22 November. I had the same assessor as last time so I had overturned her recommendation at appeal 2 months previously. It appears that the policy is to require appeals because so many claimants simply can’t manage that. I’m expecting it all again.

Lots of Brexit nonsense at the moment. While I am personally opposed to Brexit as a democratic Socialist I feel bound by the vote despite the all sorts of illegality in the Brexit campaign. The Brexit deal choice with one option reminds me of Blair and Campbell.

There are parallels between Brexit and the oppressively intelligent Donald Trump. He was elected and now he’s owned by the Israeli-Saudi Arabian axis. His Achilles’ Heel is fairly obvious – he was in a certain Israeli paedophile’s book of contacts, his daughter’s hinted at it, the way he treats women …

Continue ReadingChecking in