In this week's issue
- How pro-Palestine activists became first protesters in Britain to be sentenced as terrorists without being convicted of terror offences
- As billionaires incited far-right violence in Belfast, ordinary people mobilised to protect our neighbours
- Is Keir Starmer rushing into plans to ban social media for under-16s?
- Trump has threatened a military intervention in Cuba, but there is no guarantee it would deliver a democratic transition
- Netanyahu is facing his biggest loss: A collapse in US support
- If Andy Burnham becomes PM, he must invest in care to grow the UK’s economy
- Despite privacy concerns, getting rid of Palantir now may not solve the problems its Federated Data Platform has created
- From the Archive: Swedish teen’s murder exploited by the far right
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Imagine a trial where the jury doesn’t know what the defendants are being tried for, the defendants aren’t allowed to explain their actions, and the police arrest citizens peacefully holding signs saying “Jurors deserve to hear the whole truth”. Could this happen in the UK?
Yes, if you are one of four Palestine Action activists who yesterday became the first protesters in Britain to be sentenced as terrorists without being convicted of terror offences, as Nandini Naira Archer reports in this week’s issue of The Weekly. The activists will now be officially recorded as terrorists for the rest of their lives. Read Nandini’s piece to find out more about what the ruling means and the terrifying precedent it sets for protest rights.
Meanwhile, let’s talk about Belfast. After the protests in Southampton earlier this month, a blueprint is emerging: A grisly crime is committed, Nigel Farage demands the disclosure of the nationality and immigration status of the perpetrator, rising tensions are further inflamed on X by its now-trillionaire owner, Elon Musk, rioters spread fear and chaos, prime minister Keir Starmer flaps helplessly.
But as our politicians fail us, the people of this land draw on deep wellsprings of community and solidarity.
“People in Northern Ireland have muscle memory of violence, murder and riots in our not-very-distant past. We also have muscle memory on how to organise and help each other,” writes contributor Nicola Browne, in a letter from Belfast in this week’s newsletter. “Ordinary people from every background, community and colour are carrying out thousands of acts of care and repair, looking after people they do not know, and showing clearly that none of this is in their name.”
Also in this issue, privacy and technology experts are worried that Starmer’s proposed social media ban for under-16s could backfire. As one expert told openDemocracy’s tech reporter, Jade-Ruyu Yan, “I don’t think the government really knows where they’re going with a lot of this stuff.” That pretty much sums up the Starmer project.
Finally, there is still time to donate to support our continuing investigations into Big Tech accountability, after we revealed how Palantir is opening NHS health records up for surveillance. Next week, we will be publishing a major investigation into the harrowing world of those paid to filter abusive content on social media platforms.
Thank you, as always, for reading our newsletter. We are lucky to have you read us!
Aman Sethi, Editor-in-Chief
Nandini Naira Archer
Big tech firms like Palantir spend millions lobbying to secure lucrative public contracts. At openDemocracy, we don't have corporate backers or billionaire owners - we have you.
If you think it is vital to have independent journalists scrutinising Palantir and other big tech organisations, please help us keep digging.
Nicola Browne
Jade-Ruyu Yan
Rut Diamint
Jade-Ruyu Yan
Michael Colborne
Erin Mansell
Weekly Poll
This week in history
The Soweto Uprising • 16 June 1976
On 16 June 1976, South African schoolchildren in Soweto marched to protest being forced to learn in Afrikaans — the language of their oppressors. Police opened fire. Hundreds of students were killed in the months that followed. The uprising radicalised a generation and marked the beginning of the end of apartheid's social control. June 16 is now Youth Day in South Africa.
This week's archive piece uses the Soweto uprising as a reference point for examining why states and institutions seek to depoliticise student unions, connecting historical student resistance to contemporary attempts to suppress it.
Juman Asmail
What we're reading
My women, Yuliia Iliukha, trans by Hanna Leliv
Lots of books have already been written about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and many more will be in the years and decades to come. Most focus on tactics, international statesmen, weapons and strategy – but not My Women. In a short and devastatingly impactful volume, Iliukha uses a series of vignettes to tell the story of women from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city that sits around 30km from the border with Russia. These are stories of loss, of bravery, of fear, of heartbreak. A record of the impact of war on women’s lives, it is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the day-to-day reality of this conflict.
Sian Norris, senior investigations reporter
