Tag: united kingdom

How the British were forced to reveal secret files on torture of Kenyan resistance fighters

As the colonial forces were preparing to leave Kenya, in the days leading up to its independence from Britain in 1963, they were given one last order.

Before they left, they took with them crates upon crates of files; the contents of which painted a gruesome picture of the violence and torture they’d inflicted on Kenya’s resistance movement, the Mau Mau.

For decades afterwards, the British government denied the files existed and hid them from the world.

But as a result of the determination of Mau Mau survivors, the truth was eventually forced out. 

“They’re trying to control a narrative, they’re trying to control a perception of how they’re seen,” Kenyan historian Chao Tayiana said.

“There was torture, there was violence and this took place on a mass scale.” 

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RAF squadron ditches ‘Crusaders’ nickname after complaint claiming moniker is ‘insulting’ is upheld

One of the RAF‘s most historic squadrons will no longer be called ‘The Crusaders’ after claims the name is offensive to Muslims.

14 Squadron got its nickname after its airmen flew sorties over Gaza and Palestine during World War I. But The Mail on Sunday has learned an RAF crew member filed a formal complaint with top brass insisting the term was insulting.

To the dismay of many, senior officers upheld the grievance. Now crews have been ordered to remove any references to ‘Crusaders’ around their hangar.

The Crusades were religious wars between Christians and Muslims in the medieval times to secure control of holy sites in the Middle East.

14 Squadron has connections to the region dating back to both world wars. The squadron’s motto ‘I spread my wings and keep my promise’ is taken from the Koran and even appears in Arabic on its royal crest.

Yet despite these historic associations dating back many decades, just a single complaint from a disgruntled member of RAF crew convinced service commanders to ‘cancel’ the name. And last night, furious aviators told the MoS: ‘We have to take down every mention of Crusaders from our base.

‘Squadron associations will have to be renamed, it is like we’ve been cancelled. Somehow, now, in 2024, “Crusaders” is an offensive term. Previously, nobody was offended.

‘If they’d have asked members of the squadron, rather than dictating this change, almost everyone would have been in favour of retaining “Crusaders”, because it is so much part of our history.

‘There was never any prejudice or malice in the name. Every squadron, every regiment has a past. But if that past doesn’t suit current thinking it will be erased.’

RAF officials confirmed the move last night, stressing the service had to change with the times. The complainant’s identity remains a secret as Service Complaints (SCs) are strictly confidential. 14 Squadron is based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. Its role has evolved since its inception in 1915.

During World War I its aircrews pitted themselves in aerial combat against German fighters in Bristol Scout biplanes. Today they are surveillance specialists flying Shadow R1 aircraft.

It is one of the RAF’s most senior and longest-serving squadrons.

The squadron spent the first 30 years of its operational life in the Middle East, initially as part of the Royal Flying Corps.

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Britain Funds Nazis, Condones Political Assassinations, the Odessa Trade Union Massacre and Banning Political Parties

On May 2, 2014, heavily-armed fascist militia forces attacked the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, Ukraine. Trapped inside were demonstrators opposed to the government in Kiev that had been put in place in a U.S.-orchestrated coup against the democratically elected government just weeks earlier. A campaign of ethnic cleansing had been launched against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, with the Russian language being banned from public life.

In the aftermath of the attack and fire 48 deaths were confirmed. Openly nazi militia shelled civilians in the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk (now not surprisingly independent republics). Those militia have since been armed and trained by Britain and the USA with the full knowledge of their trainees’ extreme politics. See this. By the end of 2021 some 15,000 Russian Ukrainians had died including hundreds of children. None of this was covered in the UK press or discussed in parliament.

“Ukraine a Democracy” – Stoltenberg

In recent days, as NATO/EU continues to stoke their war against Russia at the cost of some 500,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded the NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg called Ukraine a “democratic country.” 

Zelensky, coming to power by banning the main opposition party and arresting its leader, then abolished 12 political parties. He has just cancelled elections for the presidency. Ukrainian intelligence services arrest anyone who expresses a critical opinion. Neo-Nazi gangs rule the streets. Churches are attacked and closed. Men are press-ganged from the streets and sent within days to die in the trenches. (If the (TCC) press gangs fail then they are sent to the front!) The Border force shoots Ukrainians crossing the border and lays mines to stop them and political assassinations are commonplace – see this.

Zelensky’s Assassinations

On June 8, 2024 the former mayor of Kupyansk Gennady Matsegora was shot on the doorstep of his house in Stary Oskol (Belgorod Region). Despite the efforts of doctors, Matsegora died without regaining consciousness. He had been threatened by Ukrainians and Kiev authorities (specifically the GUR, the Intelligence Directorate) admitted their involvement. 

On 1/4/2024, in a car explosion in Starobelsk, Luhansk Region, Valery Chaika, the deputy head of the Luhansk “Center for Services to Educational Organizations,” was murdered – an evident political assassination. The explosion occurred near the Starobelsky Faculty of the Lugansk Pedagogical University.

SBU (Ukraine State security service) head Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk admitted assassinations inside Russia, see this.

Ukraine raised its attacks on the Donbas republics as elections were being held there. A  woman who died as a result of a terrorist attack in Berdyansk was a member of the election commission; a bomb was planted under her car, the Investigative Committee reported. See this.

Popular Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Sharij just survived an assassination attempt in Spain. Two unknown gunmen shot at his car using a machine gun affixed with a silencer. In February of 2021, Shariy was accused of treason by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) which unsuccessfully attempted to extradite him from Spain back to Ukraine.

In November 2023 a Russian hit man was arrested who had been employed by Ukrainian Intelligence to assassinate the American journalist Tucker Carlson. See this.

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Prince Philip and the showgirls: How a secret file contains the truth about the Duke and the Profumo affair – and why the Government refuses to let anyone see it

Even now, after more than 60 years and when it seemed every secret had been unearthed and every sordid detail pored over, the Profumo affair remains as murky and intriguing as ever.

The Mail on Sunday last weekend revealed that Prince Philip was named in FBI documents about this most enduring of British political sex scandals.

In a cable sent to the US Embassy in London in 1963, the bureau’s autocratic director J. Edgar Hoover suggested that Philip may have been ‘involved’ with the two women at the heart of the affair, models Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies.

Speculation about the Prince’s supposed connection has been the subject of drawing-room gossip for decades and it was a scurrilous plotline in an episode of season two of The Crown, the controversial Netflix series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

But the revelation that his name appears in an official lengthy memorandum about the saga will cause discomfort on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hoover’s interest was hardly surprising. A notorious meddler and feared figure who for years orchestrated often illegal campaigns against suspected subversives and political foes, he had always been fascinated by sexual impropriety involving famous names.

All the same, the possibility of the Duke of Edinburgh, who died aged 99 in 2021, featuring in the FBI chief’s scheming – albeit indirectly – would have caused severe damage to UK-US relations at a time when the Cold War was at its height.

But the Profumo affair was not just a tawdry British scandal, but one with international consequences and that contributed to the fall of the Conservative government in 1964.

Remarkably, after an Old Bailey trial, parliamentary questions and an official inquiry, books and even a Hollywood film, successive governments have continued to protect certain people’s involvement in the sexual shenanigans from exposure by keeping one file about the case under lock and key.

Even though all the central players in the story are now dead it will be another 22 years before that file sees the light of day. But more of that later.

While many of the details have been contested over the decades, there is no dispute about the cast of characters.

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UK Sports Commentator Faces Court for “Malicious Communications” Charges Over Social Media Posts

Free speech supporters are alarmed after former Premier League player Joey Barton has been slapped with charges of alleged “malicious communications” directed towards sports commentator and past England Women’s team star Eni Aluko.

Responding to the accusations, Barton labeled the judiciary as a “banana republic.” A court date has been set for July 30 following a probe by Cheshire Police in England.

Earlier this year, Barton likened Aluko and fellow commentator Lucy Ward to Fred and Rose West.

Fred and Rose West were a British married couple who committed a series of murders, sexual assaults, and acts of torture against young women and girls, including some of their own children, between the 1960s and 1980s in Gloucestershire, England.

After a police investigation into Barton’s contentious actions, charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service. The 41-year-old ex-footballer is set to face these charges at Warrington Magistrates’ Court.

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Is this the end of 1p and 2p coins? Treasury orders NO new coins to be minted for first time amid decline in cash payments as officials consider scrapping coppers altogether

The Treasury has made no orders to the Royal Mint for new coins to be minted for the first time amid a decline in cash payments, with officials considering scrapping coppers altogether. 

No new 1p and 2p coins are expected to be ordered in the coming years with proposals being worked on to be put to ministers over the future of the coinage, reported the Evening Standard. 

If the coppers are scrapped it would be the first time a coin was taken out of circulation in 40 years when the half-penny ceased in 1984. 

The 1p and 2p coins’ future has been in a precarious state in recent years with Bank of England governor Mark Carney previously hinting they could be ditched as Britons increasingly move towards a cashless society. 

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New UK Government Signals Potential Backtrack on Plans to Drop Digital ID

It’s been mere days since former UK Labour PM Tony Blair, a globalization extraordinaire, and a (digital) ID cards enthusiast remarked that it might take “a little persuading” for his country’s new government to get with that particular program.

And it seems the new Labour government really only needed a little persuasion – after “rejecting” Blair’s call to implement digital ID cards on July 7, by July 10 there were statements by an influential party figure calling that path “inevitable.”

However, that figure – former Home Secretary David Blunkett – is not a member of the just-formed cabinet, and was with his statements challenging current Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who opposed the idea.

But, Blunkett – who served in Blair’s government – said that “the government would have to streamline (growing digital records) into a single ID.”

Fast forward one week, and it seems Cooper’s cabinet colleague, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle, is starting to reverse course.

Somewhere in the meanwhile, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds first said the government would be “looking at all sources of advice” – only to quickly backtrack and say there were no ID card plans.

All this leaves observers puzzled as to what the government’s actual stance on this important issue is.

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U.K. Manhunt Underway For Colombian Migrant Suspected of Slicing Up Victims, Dumping Them in Suitcases

A manhunt is underway in the United Kingdom for a Colombian man accused of slicing up his victim’s body parts and putting them in suitcases.

Police found remains in a flat in London, linking them to body parts discovered two days earlier near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the southwestern city of Bristol, the BBC reports.

A 34-year-old man had already been arrested in connection with the incident, but was later released without charge.

Authorities have now identified 24-year-old Yostin Andres Mosquera, a Colombian national, as their main suspect. His immigration status in the country remains unclear.

Neither of the two victims have been named, although they are understood to have been known to Mosquera.

“This is a fast moving enquiry with detectives in London and Bristol actively pursuing a number of lines of enquiry,” said Met Police deputy assistant commissioner Andy Valentine.

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New leftist British PM plans to use emergency powers to RELEASE 40,000 PRISONERS

Newly elected leftist U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is planning to use his office’s emergency powers to release approximately 40,000 so-called “non-violent offenders” in a bid to address overcrowding in England and Wales prisons.

The current prison system of England and Wales has a capacity of up to 88,815 inmates. However, the prison population in the United Kingdom has surged dramatically from approximately 41,000 in the early 1990s to over 87,000 last month due to tougher sentencing laws and court backlogs over the past few decades. (Related: Leftist Keir Starmer becomes new British prime minister, pledges to put “country first, party second.”)

Newly installed Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood has been informed that only about 700 spaces remain in the male prison estate. If the day comes without intervention, these spaces are projected to reach full capacity by Aug. 1. Additionally, the British think tank the Institute for Government noted a 13 percent increase in the prison population over the past three years, with projections suggesting it could reach 99,300 by the end of next year.

As a temporary measure, a policy introduced last October permits the early release of some less serious offenders by up to 18 days, which was extended to 70 days in May. But then, the current situation needs more immediate action.

In an interview with BBC political editor Chris Mason a few weeks before the election, Starmer admitted that he could not “magic up a new prison on Friday morning” if elected prime minister.

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Israel Lobby Funded Half of New UK Cabinet

Pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to parliament, Declassified can reveal.

The list of recipients includes Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner,  Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Jonathan Reynolds, who will oversee arms exports to Israel as U.K. trade secretary, is another beneficiary, alongside Labour’s election mastermind Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security.  

Some of the donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region.

Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle were recently listed as vice-chairs of LFI.

Other major funders include pro-Israel businessmen Gary Lubner, Trevor Chinn, and Stuart Roden.

The total value of the donations amounts to over £600,000.

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