Thursday, June 15, 2006

One hundred and twenty detainees at an immigration removal centre in Oxford, UK, are on hunger strike. The protest started when some detainees refused breakfast on Wednesday 14th June 2006. A letter from the hunger strikers explaining why they are seeking to draw attention to their plight in this way has been reproduced in full below.

Those detained at the centre are mostly men who have sought asylum in the UK and whose asylum applications have been rejected. These people are then held without knowing how long they will be detained for – some end up being held for many years while awaiting deportation.

The removal centre, known as Campsfield, or Campsfield House is approximately 5 miles north of Oxford and has been in operation since 1993. It was managed on behalf of the UK Government by Global Solutions Limited, until may 2006 when it was taken on by GEO UK, the centre has a capacity of 198. Only males are detained at Campsfield.

According to the campaign group Barbed Wire Britain Over 2,600 individuals, mostly asylum seekers, are detained indefinitely in the UK without trial and with no automatic right to bail.

There have been reports in the UK press of the state taking people to detention centres without notice, in the early hours of the morning using excessively heavy handed tactics, taking children out of schools and separating families.

Many UK people and politicians express their disgust at the way detainees are treated, yet it continues. Perhaps this action by the detainees themselves will further highlight their plight and result in more UK electors writing to their MPs and demanding improvements to the way in which rejected asylum seekers are treated.

“We are detainees at Campsfield removal centre in Oxford. Most of us have been here for a long while now. There are people who have been detained for up to two years and down to three months. We are cramped in here like animals. We are treated like animals and moved around different detention centres like animals. The immigration service have taken husbands from their families and taken people who ran away from persecution in their various countries, and dumped everyone in here.

Once you are put in here the immigration service forget you. There are detainees who have applied to go back to their own countries that are still being held here for months without any news about their cases, just so that the private security companies get more money.

Detainees are asked to seek asylum and then refused. The immigration service also ask detainees to apply for bail. When you get a bail hearing date all of a sudden they serve you with removal papers that are not valid. There are many of these situations. In most cases the immigration service don’t take you to your court hearings. And then they tell the judges you refused to turn up, just so the hearing goes ahead in your absence. Many detainees have been served with removal papers and travel documents but nothing happens on the removal day.

Campsfield has become a slave house. We detainees are treated like slaves, to do odd jobs for officers. Detainees are handcuffed to see doctors or dentists in hospitals or clinic appointments. We have some racist security officers who make racist comments to detainees and go out of their way to make you feel like committing suicide. Detainees have to be at the point of death before they get to see the doctors.

The food is not worth eating. Even dogs would refuse to eat what we eat. But we don’t have a choice; every single day we eat the same food (the food we eat is rice, chicken, sandwiches, and left-over eggs)”.

• “120 Immigration Detainees on Hunger Strike at Campsfield IRC” — Oxford Indymedia, June 14, 2006
• UK Home Office webpage on Campsfield
• Close Campsfield Campaign
• “Dawn raid furore family deported” — BBC, September 29, 2005
• Barbed Wire Britain
• “Asylum seekers on hunger strike” — BBC, July 14, 2005
• “Construction/Building Press Releases” — PR Newswire, Oct 01, 2005

Friday, March 13, 2009

According to a government report released on Tuesday, six inmates of a Regina, Saskatchewan jail managed to escape last summer after spending four months using nail clippers and other makeshift instruments to break out.

The report stated that no fewer than 87 prison guards had supervised the inmates’ unit, but did not discover the prisoners’ escape plans.

The inmates, four of whom had faced murder charges, used the instruments to remove a steel plate and grill, and finally break through with a shower rod, reaching an exterior brick wall. The inmates used sheets and blankets to climb up the exterior walls of the compound.

Some of the prisoners played cards at a table in the corridor to block the guards’ view.

The prisoners were later caught and sent back to prison. “We didn’t think we would get away with it. We started working on it. It was something to do and we just kept at it. When we didn’t get caught, we picked our night and just went,” said one of the escapees to the team investigating the incident.

Monday, November 28, 2005

U.S. Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R–CA) pled guilty today to conspiring to take bribes in exchange for using his influence as a member of the House Appropriations Committee to help a defense contractor get business. In total he pled guilty to one count of income tax evasion and four counts of conspiracy, namely mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery of public official and accepting bribes. U.S. District judge Larry A. Burns scheduled Cunnigham to be sentenced on February 27. He is facing up to 10 years in prison and nearly $500,000 in fines, as well as forfeiture of unspecified amounts of cash and property.

In the court hearing, Cunningham admitted to accepting “bribes in exchange for performance of official duties” between “the year 2000 and June of 2005”, taking “both cash payments and payments in kind” and following up by “trying to influence the Defense Department”.

The federal investigation against Cunningham was triggered by his sale of his California residence to defense contractor Mitchell Wade in late 2003. However, Wade never moved in and sold the house at a $700,000 loss three quarters of a year later. At the same time Wade’s company MZM won tens of millions of dollars in defense contracts. Subsequent investigations discovered more questionable business transactions, including interactions with the defense contractor ADCS. In his plea agreement he testified that, among other charges, he “demanded, sought and received at least $2.4 million in illicit payments and benefits from his co-conspirators in various forms, including cash, checks, meals, travel, lodging, furnishings, antiques, rugs, yacht club fees, boat repairs and improvements, moving expenses, cars and boats.”

Cunningham announced his resignation after the hearing. In a written statement released by his law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP he declared “The truth is — I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.”

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The United States automobile manufacturing firm General Motors announced on Wednesday that most of its bondholders did not exchange GM’s US$27 billion debt for a ten percent share in the company’s stock.

The automaker, in financial straits, has a June 1 deadline to finish a government restructuring plan that includes plant closures and other debt reduction measures. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration said it would not give more financial aid to the firm unless 90% of GM’s bondholders would agree on compromises that would significantly reduce the firm’s costs.

“The principal amount of notes tendered was substantially less than the amount required by GM to satisfy the debt reduction requirement,” GM said in a statement.

“They said no. That’s it. They tried. That’s why they’re going to have to file for bankruptcy,” said a university professor from the University of Michigan who specializes in bankruptcy.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

A letter and motion to be debated by Italian Parliament this week calls for action to address speculative bubbles and potential future financial crashes in the global economy. The motion asks for a global summit similar to the 1944 Bretton Woods United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, which gave us the IMF and World Bank.

The letter raises questions about the sustainability of current financial trends, based on the highly speculative nature of today’s markets. For example, according to the letter, “It is estimated that the entire financial bubble, counting all financial derivatives and all other forms of existing debt, is equal to about $400 trillion, compared to a worldwide GDP of slightly more than $40 trillion”.

Last years collapse of Italian dairy company Parmalat, with “14.3 billion euros that must still be accounted for”, is given as evidence for “a lack of effective tools and controls regarding financial operations”. Enron, which famously collapsed in November 2001 revealing faudulent accounting practices from previously respected accounting firm Arthur Andersen, is given as another example.

Oddly, the largest collapse on record, that of WorldCom, is not mentioned, though the set of examples is not purported to be exhaustive. A number of other crashes are mentioned: the LTCM fund, Argentine bonds, Cirio, and Finmatica.

The motion, linked to supporters of the Lyndon LaRouche movement, is signed by Parliamentarians Lettieri, Soro, Delbono, Tolotti, Widmann, Villani Miglietta, Rosato, Albertini, Morgando, Diana, Luigi Pepe, Damiani, Ostillio, De Brasi, Maccanico, Carbonella, Paola Mariani, Grandi, Pistone, Giovanni Bianchi, Giacco, Benvenuto, Piscitello, Camo, Realacci, Squeglia, Rocchi, Iannuzzi, Intini, Meduri, Santino Adamo Loddo, Boccia, Villari, Chianale, Siniscalchi, Sandi, Cusumano, Cennamo, Annunziata, Rotundo, Bonito, Buemi, Pennacchi, Fanfani, Tarantino, Rodeghiero, Angioni, Detomas, and Nesi.

Debate was scheduled for March 14-18.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the state of the housing market in the United Kingdom is the current biggest domestic threat to the country’s economy, due to lack of house building, and regulatory issues.

In an interview to be aired on Sky News today, he said the housing market is the “biggest risk” to the economy and has “deep, deep structural problems”. Of house building he said: “There are not sufficient houses built in the UK. To go back to Canada, there are half as many people in Canada as in the UK, twice as many houses are built every year in Canada as in the UK and we can’t influence that.”

“We’re not going to build a single house at the Bank of England. We can’t influence that. What we can influence […] is whether the banks are strong enough. Do they have enough capital against risk in the housing market?”

Carney also said the Bank of England would look into the procedures used to issue loans and mortgages to see if they were being granted appropriately: “We’d be concerned if there was a rapid increase in high loan-to-value mortgages across the banks. We’ve seen that creeping up and it’s something we’re watching closely.”

Kris Hopkins responded to Carney on behalf of the government, saying the government “inherited a broken housing market, but our efforts to fix it are working”. “We’ve scrapped the failed top-down planning system, built over 170,000 affordable homes and released more surplus brownfield sites for new housing. We’ve also helped homebuyers get on the housing ladder, because if people can buy homes builders will build them. Housebuilding is now at its highest level since 2007 and climbing. Last year councils gave permission for almost 200,000 new homes under the locally-led planning system and more than 1,000 communities have swiftly taken up neighbourhood planning. It’s clear evidence the government’s long-term economic plan is working.”

Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on the UK government to “tighten” access to the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme introduced by George Osborne and the coalition government in 2013. ‘Help to Buy’ has also recently been criticised by three former Chancellors of the Exchequer — the Conservatives Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson, and former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling. Darling said: “Unless supply can be increased substantially, we will exacerbate that situation with schemes like Help to Buy.”