Protests erupted in over 60 Russian cities on Saturday to demand the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent foe. Russian police arrested more than 850 protesters, some of whom took to the streets in temperatures as frigid as minus-50 Celsuis (minus-58 Fahrenheit)
.
In Moscow, about 5,000 demonstrators filled Pushkin Square in the city center, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested.
The protests stretched across Russia’s vast territory, from the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk north of Japan and the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus-50 Celsius, to the Russia’s more populous European cities. The range demonstrated how Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign have built an extensive network of support despite official government repression and being routinely ignored by state media.
The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said at least 191 people were detained in Moscow on Saturday and more than 100 at another large demonstration in St. Petersburg. Overall, it said 863 people had been arrested by late afternoon in Moscow.
Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny. Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 criminal conviction, while Navalny says the conviction was for made-up charges.
The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin’s government.
His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — risking more protests and criticism from the West if it keeps him in custody but apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free.
Navalny faces a court hearing in early February to determine whether his sentence in the criminal case for fraud and money-laundering — which Navalny says was politically motivated — is converted to 3 1/2 years behind bars.
Moscow police on Thursday arrested three top Navalny associates, two of whom were later jailed for periods of nine and 10 days.
Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof of his poisoning. Russia refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.
Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake.
Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.
He has been jailed repeatedly in connection with protests and twice was convicted of financial misdeeds in cases that he said were politically motivated. He suffered significant eye damage when an assailant threw disinfectant into his face. He was taken from jail to a hospital in 2019 with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction but which many suspected was a poisoning.
CHRIS DRAPER reviewing the English film 'THE ROAD TO HELL' which he claims was the 'first socialist film' writes:
'Premiered in London on Friday 28 July 1933, Lansbury himself attended the show and a couple of months later introduced the film to delegates attending the Labour Party’s annual conference in the White Rock Pavilion, Hastings. Although the film was generally well received where shown it proved impossible to secure a general release. Cinemas were dominated by Hollywood and ultimately controlled by local authority licensing committees eager to ban Socialist Film Council films as did Birmingham Council in 1935.'
This film fills a very narrow canvas much of it filmed in George Lansbury's home portraying the impact of the then National Government's Means Test on a family in a city, London. Most of the domestic scenes were filmed in George Lansbury’s 39, Bow Road home making it, as Chris Draper himself says: 'an accomplished though economical production.' It shows the struggles of an urban lower middle-class family dealing with the difficulties of the economic depression.
It is tempting now to compare this film with the European film Kameradschaft produced in 1931 shortly before 'THE ROAD TO HELL'. Kameradschaft is also based on a real life disaster, perhaps one of the worst industrial accidents in history; the Courrières mine disaster in 1906 in Courrières, France, where rescue efforts after a coal dust explosion were hampered by the lack of trained mine rescuers. Expert teams from Paris and miners from the Westphalia region of Germany came to the assistance of the French miners. There were 1,099 fatalities.
Kameradschaft (English: Comradeship, known in France asLa Tragédie de la mine) is a 1931 dramatic film directed by Austrian director G. W. Pabst. The French-German co-production drama is noted for combining expressionism and realism. It reflects the spirit of European internationalism, while the English film is much more parochial.
It would be hard to find an better example of the Little Englander phenomena of an island people contrasting so vividly with the concept of continental co-operation as in these two films.
The plot of the European film Kameradschaft is as follows:
'Two boys, one French and the other German, are playing marbles near the border. When the game is over, both boys claim to have won, and complain that the other is trying to steal their marbles. Their fathers, border guards, come and separate the boys.
'In 1919, at the end of World War I the border changes, and an underground mine is divided, with a gate dividing the two sections. An economic downturn and rising unemployment adds to tension, as German workers seek employment in France but are turned away, since there are hardly enough jobs for French workers. In the French part of the mine fires break out, which they try to contain by building brick walls, with the bricklayers wearing breathing apparatus. The Germans continue to work in their section, but start to feel the heat from the French fires.
'The fire gets out of control, igniting gas and causing roof collapses that traps many French miners. In response, the German miner, Wittkopp, appeals successfully to his bosses to send a rescue team. As the German rescue team leave in two lorries, its leader explains to his wife that the French are men with women and children and he would hope that they would come to his aid in similar circumstances. In the mine itself, a trio of German miners breaks through the grille on the border between the two countries. On the French side, an old retired miner sneaks into the shaft hoping to rescue his young grandson. The Germans rescue the French miners, not without difficulties. After all the survivors are rescued, there is a big party with speeches about friendship between the French and Germans. French and German officials then reinstall the underground border grille and things return to the way they were before.'
It is very apt that these reviews are appearing now as the EU and the UK are arguing over rights to fishing.
CAMILLA CAVENDISH writing in the FT on 4th, October, wrote: 'The gulf between academic and vocational education in the UK has depressed productivity and exacerbated skills shortages.' She added that: 'Many of the largest shortages reported by employers are in sectors such as construction, health and IT.'
Meanwhile, in the UK only one one in ten adults hold a higher technical qualification as their highest qualification compared to about one in five in Germany and one in three in Canada. Camilla Cavendish estimates that 'as much as 20% of the UK workforce will be significantly under-skilled for their jobs by 2030'.
In this country the government wants to bridge the gap, and according to Ms. Cavendish 'create a "world-class, German-style further education system".' The government has promised a 'lifetime skills guarantee' with the offer of free further education courses to adults without A-levels or the equivalent. Yet Ms. Cavendish insists 'The challenge [for the government] is to make them good enough ans to offer people who didn't enjoy school something better the second time around' and she says: 'Until now, the UK has not done this well.' And she argues that in the 'UK ministers must fight their urge to centralise'.
The trouble is that anyone in the UK can set-up as a joiner without any qualifications. Yet in Germany you can't be a carpenter or plumber unless you have mastered a trade doing an apprenticeship of about three years, often followed by evening classes. The handwerk curriculum is also guided by master craftsmen who know the job, and not what Ms. Cavendish calls: 'pseudo-academics'.
She viciously compares the two systems saying: 'In contrast, vocational training in the UK is a Wild West. There are a bewildering array of more than 12,000 different qualifications. Students are often jammed through courses in which "competition", not actual learning, commands the fee. Sub-contracting is rife, making it hard to monitor quality. There are some excellent courses; but also mis-selling. Good further education courses have also been denuded of funding with their teachers paid less, on average, than their counterparts in schools.'
It may be argued that the German guild system is a bit 'inflexible', and it could opperate a bit like closed shops. Also in the rapidly shifting situation even a gold standard apprenticeship may not last a lifetime. Yet surely it offers a better set-up than we've got now with all kinds of chancers and scallwags passing themselves-off as tradesmen in this country. This decline in workmanship was brought forward with Margaret Thatcher's attack on the trade unions in the 1970s and 80s, and the replacement of the one-to-one traing on the job with the 'pseudo-academics' and the prioritisation of classroom learning.
The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was clearly aware of this vast gulf between practical know-how on the job and speculative classroom efforts to solve problems when he remarked to his student Maurice Drury:
'You think philosophy is difficult enough but I can tell you it is nothing to the difficulty of being a good architect. When I was building the house for for my sister in Vienna I was so completely exhausted at the end of the day that all I could do was go out to a "flick" every night.'
Based on his own building site experiences and observations, Wittgenstein noted the language games employed by building workers giving orders and obeying them in building a wall: such as for example shouting 'brick' and not 'bring me a brick' and so forth to his mate (see his Philosophical Investigations). Classroom learning creates a completely different language game which somehow lacks the quality of the practical situation. In Wittgenstein's terms they are two distinct 'forms of life' and two different 'language games'.
The snobbery of the middle class will naturally continue to prefer the full time graduate degree as the ideal. But it will still not help when we want to get the roof fixed.
SIR
John Hawkins
is considered
the first English trader to profit from the
demand
for African
slaves in the Spanish colonies of Santo
Domingo
and Venezuela
in the late 16th century. In
other words he, along with Sir
Francis Drake,
wasa
slave
traders as well as privateer.
From
1577 onwards Hawkins was Treasurer
of the English Navy. He rebuilt older ship and helped design newer,
faster, sleeker,
more
manoeuvrable ‘race-built
galleons’.
These
were the ships that he and Drake commanded when withless
than
fifty ships they took on and defeated the 130 strong Spanish
Armada
in 1588.
The
stories around this
have
sometimes been described
as forming
the ‘foundation
myth’
of English
identity; plucky little England standing up to more powerful bullies
and giving them a ‘bloody
nose’.
Nearly
five hundred years later it was woven into another now British
myth in Edward
Shanks’
poem ‘The other
little boats’(see
below)
On
13 July 1916 my uncle Tom died during the battle of the Somme,
when ‘lions
were led by donkeys’.
His
name is on the war memorial in Littleborough near Rochdale.
Somewhere in Germany there will be memorial with the name of a man
who died the same day. On the island of Tiree
there is a tiny graveyard and in it are fifteen
stones
recording Merchant
Seamenwhose
bodies washed up on its beaches in
WW2.
Near
Kiel
is the Möltenort
U-Boat Memorial
it records the names of the 30,000 submariners who died in the same
war.
In
Europe we have learned to live with the knowledge that our past and
those who peopled it, were imperfect. We do not demand that the
names of the U boat crew who fought for the Nazis be erased from
memory. We honour them as brave men, like
we honour the imperfect men who ran up the beaches of Normandy in
1944.
It
is that capacity, to not
forget
what happened, but also not to hold grudges about
it,
that gives me a sense of pride in being British. Perhaps
that is just something that my generation, who knew people on
both sides who
had
lived
through WW2 and
are thankful it did not happen to them, can
feel. Particularly amongst students it seems that
it is
being replaced by an
intolerant andpuritanical
insistence that only those whose
views are deemed acceptable in the present should be remembered.
Hawkins
and Drake had better watch out.
If
I take a somewhat jaundiced view of this it is nothing to how I feel
about thoseprivileged
academics
who, no doubt with an eye on furthering
their
careers, have decided that ‘the
sins of the fathers shall be visited upon us even unto the third and
fourth generation’.
Yes,
Hawkins
and Drake had better watch out.
The Other
Little Boats
A pause came in the fighting and England held her breath
For
the battle was not ended and the ending might be death
Then out
they came, the little boats, from all the Channel shores
Free
men were those who set the sails and laboured at the oars.
From
Itchenor and Shoreham, from Deal and Winchelsea,
They put out
into the Channel to keep their country free. Not of Dunkirk this story, but of boatmen long ago,
When
our Queen was Gloriana and King Philip was our foe,
And galleons
rode the narrow seas, and Effingham and Drake
Were out of shot
and powder, with all England still at stake. They got the shot and powder, they charged the guns again,
The
guns that guarded England from the galleons of Spain,
And the
men that helped them do it, helped them still to hold the sea
Men
from Itchenor and Shoreham, men from Deal and Winchelsea,
Looked
out happily from heaven and cheered to see the work
Of their
grandsons' grandsons' grandsons on the beaches of Dunkirk.
A
FEW hoursafter
war was declared at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914, the
paddle driven cable laying ship Alert
was sent out from Dover
on a planned mission to drag for, and cut, the
five German
cables in the English
Channelwhich
linked to the rest of the world.
The idea was to force German communications
on to radio where they
could be intercepted more easily and
so give
British
codebreakers a better chance of gaining useful information.
Although
they may seem old and outdated undersea
cables,
now having the benefit of fibre optic technology, still carry the
majority of the Internet
traffic around
the world. The amount of Internet traffic which a cable can carry at
any one time is called its ‘bandwidth’.
The more people who want to use the Internet at any one time, the
more bandwidth is necessary. Compared with America,
Asia
and Europe
the cables linking Africa
to the rest of the world are seriously lacking in bandwidth.
Whether
changing this situation is more important than improving access to
clean water and sanitation, and improving access to health care, is a
moot point, though
in my book I regard these as
a ‘human
right’.
But
earlier
today I heard two
Africans,
one in Ethiopia
and one in South
Africa
claiming that access to the Internet was itself a human right.
(Remember
how
six
months ago Corbyn was laughed at when he said a Labour government
would promote free Internet access?)
Within
Africa mobile phones and the Internet have expanded what people can
do even in areas where not everyone has access to an electricity
supply. Some enterprising individuals allow mobile phone owners to
recharge their device for a small sum. Potentially there is a huge
unsatisfied market in Africa. Unsurprisingly this has attracted the
attention of cash rich multi-national businesses.
Facebook
and Google
are intending to team up to lay 37,000 kilometres of fibre optic
cable to link African countries with the rest of the world. The
Chinese
company Huawei,
Microsoft,
like Facebook and Google a USA based company and the Norwegian
company Opera, (see below), also have projects targeting Africa.
Should
we be worried about this? Should Africans be worried?
Huawei’s interest seems clear.
It supplies the hardware which makes systems run. Microsoft has an
interest in making sure that the millions of new users become hooked
on its software.
Potentially
the ownership by Facebook and Google of the physical network and
their control over what content Internet users have access to, seems
to me problematic. It
has been suggested that Facebook has harvested up to 4,000 snippets
of data about many users.
This is enables
the company to form a profile of every individual user. Likewise
Google has the power to harvest a great deal of information from the
search terms we
use.
There
is good evidence that Facebook was used to sway the outcome of the
2016 elections in the USA
when about 77,000 voters in three states were targeted. Trump lost
the popular vote by about 3 million ballots, but gained the
presidency because the make up of the electoral college had been
influenced via
Facebook. Not
all African leaders are models of integrity and defenders of
democracy.
Another
issue is that Europe in particular has gone a long way to recognising
the importance of personal privacy and protection of personal data.
This
is not the case in other countries and many African states may have
legal systems which are very weak in this regard. Facebook
and Google will only respect these issues if they are made to.
We
are familiar with the term ‘Scramble
for Africa’
which refers to the invasion, occupation, colonisation and annexation
of African territories by European countries in the period 1880 to
1914. Are we about to see this process happening again, but this
time led not by nation states. Has
colonialism been privatised?
(I
struggled
to determine the exact ownership of ‘Opera’. It may be owned by
a Chinese private equity firm or it may still be Norwegian. I am not
sure which of these is correct.)
Author's Note:
Les May
said...
In the above piece I suggested that many African states which may have
legal system that are weak with respect to personal privacy and data
protection, and that Facebook and Google will be in a position to take
advantage of this.
A report by several non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) published today (18 June) highlights the problems
facing a country, Nigeria, which had weak laws regarding the protection
of the environment, which was taken advantage of by Shell. So polluted
by oil contamination is the water supply for people living in the delta
of the Niger that the cannot by any reasonable standards be said to have
access to a clean water supply.
Ludwig Wittgenstein said: 'Humour is not a mood but a
way of looking at the world.''So if it is correct to say
that humour was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that
does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or
anything of that sort, but something much deeper and
more important.'
Perhaps to understand what that 'something' is, it would be best
to look at humour as something strange and incomprehensible.
For example, the philosopher Wittgenstein enjoyed reading
American detective novels and the casual humourous way
they bumped off their characters. For instance in
'Rendezvous with Fear' by Norbert Davis desribes a man
named Garcia cross-eyed with a thin yellowish face sat
drinking beer the colour and consistency of warm
vinegar. Meanwhile, when Doan shoots Bautiste Bonofile,
another 'bad man', the romantic but naïve heroine, Jane
asks with concern: 'Is he hurt?' 'Not a bit' says Doan, 'he's
just dead.'
****************
JOHN CLEESE has laid into the
"cowardly and gutless and contemptible" BBC after an episode of Fawlty
Towers was removed from a BBC-owned streaming platform.
A 1975 episode titled The Germans was taken off UKTV's streaming service because it contains "racial slurs".
In it, the Major uses highly offensive language, and Cleese's Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war". Cleese wrote on Twitter: "The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats."
He added: "I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of human behaviour.
"One
is to attack it directly. The other is to have someone who is patently a
figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour."
He went on to compare the situation with that of Alf
Garnett, the racist character in sitcoms Till Death Us Do Part and In
Sickness and in Health. "We laughed at Alf's reactionary views. Thus we discredited them, by laughing at him,"Cleese wrote.
"Of
course, there were people - very stupid people - who said 'Thank God
someone is saying these things at last'. We laughed at these people too.
Now they're taking decisions about BBC comedy."
He continued:
"But it's not just stupidity. The BBC is now run by a mixture of
marketing people and petty bureaucrats. It used to have a large
sprinkling of people who'd actually made programmes. Not any more. "So
BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing
their jobs... That's why they're so cowardly and gutless and
contemptible. I rest my case."
'Audience expectations'
UKTV
also operates channels including Gold, and many of its channels and its
digital player were taken over by the BBC's commercial arm BBC Studios
last year. A BBC spokesman declined to comment.
A UKTV spokesman said: "UKTV has temporarily removed an episode of Fawlty Towers The Germans from Gold's Box Set.
"The
episode contains racial slurs so we are taking the episode down while
we review it. We regularly review older content to ensure it meets
audience expectations and are particularly aware of the impact of
outdated language.
"Some shows carry warnings and others are edited. We want to take time to consider our options for this episode."
Experts debate ‘anomaly’ as other countries record higher death rates
Experts have been debating Germany’s ‘coronavirus anomaly’,
as cases continue to grow in the country but deaths caused by the virus
remain low.
Currently, Germany has confirmed over 16,000
cases of coronavirus infections among its citizens – the virus which
causes the respiratory disease COVID-19.
Although the virus is
spreading fast within the country, the confirmed number of deaths has
remained low – standing at 44, according to data from John Hopkins
University.
In comparison to the UK, which has far fewer confirmed
cases – just over 2,500 – the number of deaths of individuals who
tested positive for the virus is 138, more than in Germany.
The
disparity between Germany’s confirmed cases and death rate has left
experts trying to explain why some countries have lower case numbers but
higher deaths than the country, including France and the US.
Some
have attributed the low death rate to the high level of testing in the
country, with Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute,
revealing that German laboratories are undertaking approximately 160,000
test per week.
That is well above the number of tests being
carried out in other countries in Europe and around the world. The high
level of testing allows for the identification of individuals who have
little to no symptoms, and hence have a higher chance of survival.
Also,
Germany’s confirmed cases are more likely to reflect the true number of
infections because of this widespread testing, compared to other
countries where the confirmed cases likely do not reflect the real
picture of the virus’ spread.
So far, the majority of those
confirmed to have the contracted the virus in Germany are under the age
of 60 – over 80% – which may also explain the low death rate.
“Especially
at the beginning of the outbreak in Germany, we saw many cases
connected to people returning from skiing trips and similar holidays,”
said Matthias Stoll, a professor of medicine at the University of
Hanover, in the Financial Times.
“These are
predominantly people who are younger than 80 and who are fit enough to
ski or engage in similar activities. Their risk of dying is
comparatively low,” he added.
Despite the relatively low levels of
death in Germany, experts have warned that the country is still in the
early stages of the outbreak, and the mortality rate is expected to
grow.
“We are still at a relatively early stage in the outbreak in
Germany. The overwhelming share of patients became infected only in the
last week or two, and we will probably see more severe cases in the
future as well as a change in the fatality rate,” Hans-Georg Kräusslich,
a professor of medicine and the head of virology at the University
Hospital in Heidelberg, told the Financial Times.
Many answers can given according to A.J.P. Taylor: 'German complaints against the peace settlement of 1919 and the failiure to redress them; failure to agree general controlled disarmament; failure to agree collective principles of security; fear of communism and, on the Soviet side, of capitalism and its impact on international policy; German strength, which destroyed the balance of power in Europe; American aloofness from European affairs; Hitler's unscrupulous ambition - a blancket explanation favoured by some historians; at the end, perhaps only mutual bluff.'
The second world war started, apparently, because of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the dual invasion of Poland. It was the
dismemberment of free and independent Poland by the “totalitarians” that
started the war.'
Here he is reacting to the decision on September 18, 2019 by the European Parliament to vote by 535 votes to 66 to support a
resolution 'On the Importance of
European remembrance for the future of Europe.'
The historian A.J.P.Taylor wrote 'English History - 1914-1945' that 'On 23 August he [Ribbentrop] and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact.' And 'Soviet Russia promised to stay neutral if Germany were involved in war' He adds: Thus 'Hitler assumed almost certainly that, without the Soviet alliance, the Western Powers would run away.' And Taylor thinks: 'Stalin probably made the same assumption.' adding 'Both seem to have expected that Poland would be diminished or dismembered without general war,'
The totalitarians, Hitler and Stalin, both got it wrong with regard to Britain, but Taylor says 'The French almost came up to these expectations.''French statesmen stood aside' writes Taylor, 'and let things happen during the days which settle their destiny.'
In Britain reactions were different and the 'Nazi-Soviet Pact was regarded as an affront, a challenge to British greatness'. Thus, Conservatives turned against Hitler and Labour were equally bitter against Stalin. Taylor records: 'Even members of the Left Book Club were determined to show that they, at any rate, were sincere in their anti-fascism. The stir was confined to parliament. There were no great public meetings in the week before the outbreak of war, no mass marches demanding "Stand by Poland". It is impossible to tell whether members of parliament represented the British people. At any rate, the M.P.s were resolute and the government tailed regretfully after the house of commons.'
Anglo-Polish Treaty Signed & War Begins
Despite what Johnathan White now says about the Nazi-Soviet Pact; Taylor observes that: 'On 25 August the Anglo-Polish treaty of mutual assistance was at last signed. The British government had announced on the 22 August that the Nazi-Soviet Pact would not change their policy towards Poland'
In consequence the British ultimation was delivered to the German government at 9 a,m. on the 3 September 1939, and the Germans made no reply, and the ultimatum expired at 11a.m.
Despite all the post-facto chatter of a 'world campaign against fascism', now echoed by Comrade White in the Morning Star, only 'France, Great Britain, and Dominions were, the only powers who declared war on Germany.' As Taylor writes: 'All other countries which took part waited until Hitler chose to attack them, the two World Powers, Soviet Russia and the United States, as supine as the rest... Perhaps the British and French could boast that they alone joined the crusade for freedom of their own free will.'
Aa A.J.P. Taylor writes: 'Probably the British people were surprised at the noble part which events had thrust on them.'
The last shall be first. A saying of Jesus; in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus declares that in the world to come, “The last shall be first and the first last.”
by Brian Bamford
A MONTH ago I was Bavaria with some women discussing the English art of queueing and I introduced the Spanish solution to the problem by saying that the Spaniards avoid queueing in an orderly way by standing in a crowd and when someone new turns up they simply ask: 'Quien es el ultimo?' To which the Germans said: 'No German would ever admit to being the last one!'
I was put in mind of this discussion when I recently had occasion to point out to a lady councillor from Crewe involved with the International Brigade Memorial Trust that the International Brigades had left Spain on the 28th, October 1938 not 1939 as she had proposed on an inscription to commemorate two local volunteers. Perhaps with justification she quickly argued: 'I would suggest that there were those who remained fighting alongside
their Spanish comrades right up to the end after the IB had marched out
of Barcelona.'
On their official departure the in October 1939 the International Brigaders had left behind 9,934 dead, 7,686 missing and had suffered 37,541 wounded. But more than that it was later discovered by the international commission of the League of Nations overseeing the withdrawal of foreign volunteers, were to find about 400 International Brigaders in prisons in and around Barcelona, including Montjuich and the 'Carlos Marx' prison'. Colonel Ribbing. the Swedish member of the international commission reported: 'As regards the international volunteers, they had sometimes been convicted for pure trifles, sometimes for definite and serious undisciplined behaviour. Many stated they were accused of espionage and sabotage; most of them protested their complete innocence.'
To any decent person it must have seemed quite shocking that even though the Negrin republican government had agreed to the repatriation of the International Brigade prisoners, the international commission was to find some 400 had been left behind as late as January 1939 just as the nationalist troops were advancing on Barcelona.
Bavaria celebrates most successful referendum ever – to save its bees
Nearly 18.5 percent of eligible voters in
Bavaria participated in a referendum to strengthen organic farming
practices - setting a record and potentially changing the course of the
country's environmental protection.
For language learners: we've highlighted some useful vocabulary in
this news story. You'll find the German translations at the bottom of
the article.
According to the preliminary official result, 18.4 percent of the
eligible voters (or 1,745,383 people) took part in a petition for the
protection of species diversity in Bavaria - setting a new record for referendum participation in the southern state.
The referendum could also carry far-reaching consequences for the German farming industry and environmental protection.
The number of people who descended on city halls across the state to
sign the petition far surpassed the one million required to obtain a
referendum
within six months, under the state's direct democracy system.
The proposal for a vote to protect species diversity sets a target to
have 20 percent of farmland meeting organic standards by 2025, before
reaching 30 percent by 2030.
It also states that 10 percent of green spaces in Bavaria should also
be turned into flowering meadows, while rivers and streams must be
better protected from pesticides and organic fertilizers.
Already on the first day of the two-week initiative, which ran under the slogan "Save the Bees", Bavarians braved the frosty weather to cast their vote. SEE ALSO: Bavarians brave cold to campaign to 'save to bees' A historically high turnout
The highest turnout to date on a referendum in Bavaria - or 17.2 percent - was recorded in 1967.
According to Bavaria's Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber, of the Free Voters party, the success of the petition increases pressure for more species protection in cities and communities.
The initiative is aimed at changes to the Bavarian Nature Conservation
Act: in addition to expanding organic farming, it states that biotopes
(or ecological zones) should be better connected to each other, and that
riparian strips (the area between land and a stream or river) are strongly protected.
The success of the petition also came despite opposition from the powerful regional farmers' association, which has urged the population to "stop bashing farmers" and warned of the potential financial costs to the industry.
The petition also puts the Bavarian government led by the CSU --
sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU -- under intense
pressure, as it counts farming communities among its staunchest
supporters.
Having ruled the wealthy state known for its Oktoberfest and lederhosen
traditional dress almost uninterrupted for decades, the CSU in October
lost its absolute majority as voters angry with its hardline stance
against migrants turned to the Greens party.
Many also turned to the Greens in a bid to improve air quality and protect natural resources. SEE ALSO: Why is the Green Party suddenly flying so high in Germany?
Daily Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that with Bavaria now poised to decide
on the future of bees with a popular vote, the region "could become a
forerunner in Europe on environmental protection".
Many voters and political parties, such as the Greens, hailed the
success of the referendum. "18.4% of eligible voters are for a better nature protectionlaw," tweeted the Greens.
Next steps
The representative of the people's petition, Agnes Becker (of the
Ecological Democratic Party, or ÖDP) said that she would hold a round
table with Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) to discuss the demands from
the bill of the people's petition.
"We are going into the discussion with all our good will," Becker told
the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper hailed the initiative as a
"revolution" and "too progressive" for the CSU.
A letter from SNP frontbencher Carol Monaghan, co-signed by the
party’s other 34 Westminster MPs, warns that Bibi lives in extreme
danger in Pakistan
where “violent mobs are calling for her execution”.
Monaghan and her colleagues 'commend Canada, Spain and France
for their offers of asylum, and note that Germany and Italy have
reportedly held talks with Pakistan on the issue'.
I
was brought up to believe that World War One, known until 1939 as
the Great War, started in August 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918.
It didn’t, it ended on 28 June 1919 when the peace treaty was
signed. The 1918 date refers to when an armistice was signed and the
warring armies ceased shooting at each other.
This
is not me being pedantic, it matters because the difference between
the two date embraces a period when things happened which brings no
credit to the British state and the politicians of the time.
At
the battle of Jutland in 1916 the German High Seas Fleet came off
rather better than the British ships sent to intercept it. But the
Kaiser was in no mood to risk his favourite toy in another encounter,
so effectively ‘Britannia Ruled the Waves’
and the naval blockade of Germany, which had been in place since
1915, continued. Unable to produce enough food and no longer able to
import it, Germans slowly starved as their daily intake fell to less
than 1600 calories in 1916/17. Food, or lack of it, had become a
weapon of war.
The
Armistice required the German’s to hand over to Britain and France
their navy and their weapons, which they did. With Germany
effectively neutralised one might have expected that the British and
French would agree to the German request that the naval blockade be
lifted. They refused. Even after fighting stopped, the British
government continued to blockade German ports, creating the
conditions for famine. The
economic blockade of the Central Powers was to continue until a peace
treaty was signed.
One
woman who thought this was wrong was Eglantyne
Jebb.
She
had leaflets printed showing the effect of the continuing blockade on
children in Austria and Germany. One of these showed an Austrian
child two and a half years old. It weighed 12 pounds 2 ounces. It
should have weighed 16
poundsmore.
Another
showed two children looking like the images we associate with the
liberation of Belsen in 1945. In
her poster Eglantine asked ‘What
does Britain stand for? Starving Babies; Torturing Women; Killing the
Old?.’
When
she put
up her poster and handed
out her
leaflets she was arrested under the Defence of the Realm
Act. At her trial she conducted her own defence. The Crown
Prosecutor, Sir Archibald Bodkin did not spare his condemnation of
her; she was found guilty and fined £5. Before
the court was cleared Bodkin went over to her and pressed a £5 note
into her hand. Next day the story was on the front page of the Daily
Herald
complete with pictures of the offending leaflets and the poster. She
may have lost the case but she had scored a moral victory.
Not
everyone saw it like that. At a meeting held in the Albert Hall many
of the audience arrived with rotten fruit and vegetables to throw at
the ‘traitor’ who wanted to give succour to 'the enemy’. It
did not happen. Eglantyne
asked ‘Surely
it is impossible for us, as normal human beings, to watch children
starve to death without making an effort to save them’.
The
crowd turned out to be ‘normal human beings’ and a spontaneous
collection
was taken. It
was enough for Eglantyne and her sister to invest in a herd of dairy
cows to provide a sustainable source of nutrition to the children of
Vienna.
Today
we routinely see nations using the tactic of a blockade to enforce
their will on others. Ironically Eglantyne
Jebb went on to found the organisation ‘Save
the Children’which
runs the Health Facility in the
Yemeni port city of Hodeidah which
came under attack a few days ago. Yemen of course is blockaded by
the Saudi and United
Arab Emirate
forces, and is a country where millions are in danger of famine.
The continued blockade of German
ports after the Armistice in November 1918 is not one of the most
glorious events in our history. But who are we to judge? A
hundred years on
Eglantyne Jebb’s
rhetorical question,‘What does
Britain stand for? Starving Babies; Torturing Women; Killing the
Old?’,still
lacks a convincing answer.
IT
would appear that my reaction to Margaret Hodge’s preposterous
comments about possibly facing a Labour party inquiry about her
conduct bearing
comparison with being a Jew in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, is shared
by others.
Labour
MP Ben Sellers caught
the right note of ridicule when he tweeted;
‘The
other day I had to queue for five minutes for a poor-quality mince
pie and a Bovril at a local non-league ground. It was a bit like
being rounded up by Pinochet’s forces and getting a bullet through
the temple in Chile’s national stadium in 1973.’
In
response Anna Turley MP tweeted:
‘The
Holocaust didn’t happen in a vacuum. It
happened because ordinary people turned a blind eye to racism and
anti-Semitism.’
Sounds
good doesn’t it?But
wait a minute it’s we ‘ordinary
people’
who cannot see this supposed antisemitism in the Labour party. We
are constantly being told it’s there, but we struggle to see any
examples of it in
the Labour supporters we know.
Anti-semitism
is
expressed as
hatred of Jews.
That
hatred manifests itself through discrimination, verbal
and physical
attacks on
Jews,
and attacks on their
individual or collective property.
These
are the province of the adherents to extreme right wing parties, not
members of the Labour party. They
are not the sort of thing that come to light years later by someone
trawling the web looking for something to make a fuss about in an
attempt to discredit Corbyn. They
are what we and
the Jewish Chronicle should
be worried about. For
Anna Turley to even hint that we are ‘turning
a blind eye’is
arrogant in the extreme.
As
for the ‘ordinary
people’
in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 is Anna Turley sure, and I mean
REALLY sure, that if she had been one of them she would have opposed
the Nazis? This is not a question for Anna Turley alone, it is one
that we
should all
ask ourselves. It’s one thing to live in the UK in
2018 where
the cost of expressing opposition to Nazi ideology is small to
non-existent and doing it in Germany in
1933 to 1945 where
it would get you a visit from the Gestapo and much
worse.
Nor
am I willing to privilege the killing of Margaret Hodge’s
antecedents over the murder of millions of Russians and Poles, or the
death of even one Allied serviceman who fought to liberate Europe
from the Nazis. All
these deaths have their origin in Nazi ideology. Let
us not forget this.
Recently
Jeremy Corbyn tweeted:
“The
nation state law sponsored by @Netanyahu's
government discriminates against Israel's Palestinian minority. I
stand with the tens of thousands of Arab and Jewish citizens of
Israel demonstrating for equal rights at the weekend in Tel Aviv.”
Long
may he continue to be able to do so and
still
remain
a member of the Labour party.
Anna
Turley’s Wiki CV makes interesting reading. Do you think she
qualifies as an ‘ordinary
person’?
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