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Christ Church, Chatham, Ontario. Source: http://christchurchchatham.ca/
An article written in a local Chatham newspaper relates the service at Christ Church in honour of two local men who were killed in action gives us insight into the attitudes of the citizens through the address of Canon Howard. The date that this event transpired was after the death in action of Private Frederick John Watson (Military Medal) of the 1st Battalion, C.E.F. who perished September 23, 1916. The other soldiers, a member of the 18th Battalion, was Sergeant George Swainsbury, who perished at the hell of St. Eloi on June 6, 1916.
The 18th Battalion War Diary relates the circumstances of a German Trench Raid that was sure to result in Sergeant Swainsbury’s death:
“Position as yesterday. Heavy evening bombardment of BEAN and POLLOCK and reserve trenches from 1 to 5 pm. Small party of enemy penetrated right junction of BEAN and POLLOCK consequent upon the destruction of the M.G. emplacement and Garrison at BEAN JUNCTION. Enemy was enabled to do so by means of an old communication trench but were driven out by remainder of Garrison at the BEAN under Cpl. ROUTLEY[i]. They evidently hoped to find trench unoccupied. Garrison of the LOOP were called upon to “Stand To” by the sentry Pte. MONTGOMERY[ii] and rapid fire was opened as the BOSCHES retired. A wounded Hun was secured in front of POLLOCK. 10 o.r.s Killed in Action. 30 o.r.s wounded. 24 o.r.s arrived as reinforcements.”
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Born in London, England, Sergeant Swainsbury emigrated to Canada and established his presence in Chatham and he worked as a machinist for the Dowsley Spring and Axle Plant. It is interesting to note that the Plant, established in 1895, still exists and after many iterations still operates in Chatham as MSSC owned by Mitsubishi Steel Manufacturing Company.
Dowsley Works Chatham Ontario. Source: Unknown.
His relationship with the plant was strong enough to bring fellow workers to the service at Christ Church. Sergeant Swainsbury was quick to enlist having completed his enlistment papers on October 22, 1914, just days after the 18th Battalion was created. He enlisted in Chatham and had prior military experience, first with the “5th Devons” and then in Canada with the local militia regiment, the 24th.
News clipping Circa 1916 from an unkown news source.The top of the clipping has be damaged and the transcription is incomlete due to this. Source: Dawn Heuston.
The article relates:
Honor Memory Of Two Soldiers Who Have Died
Service in Christ Church Largely Attended by Former Associates of Heroes
In memory of the late Sergt. George Swainsbury and the late Private Fred Watson, service was held in Christ church yesterday afternoon at four o’clock. Canon Howard conducted the service, assisted by Rev. R. Lee.
The church was well filled with friends of the bereaved families and representatives of the Sons of England[iii]; the Dowsley employees and the city council. Mayor Kerr was also present.
Rev. Mr. Lee read from Corinthians 1:15, and appropriate hymns were rendered. At the close of the service, which was most impressive, Mr. Scherer[iv], organist, played The Dead March in Saul, and a bugler sounded The Last Post.
Canon Howard, who gave an address, telling of the lives of the two heroes, said in part:
“We are here in memory of two men, Sergeant George Swainsbury and Private Fred Watson.
“Sergt. Swainsbury, as you know, was one of the workers in the Dowsley works and men of these works are here this afternoon to do honor to his memory. It was through some mistake at the time of his death that a service of this kind was not held at that time. George Swainsbury left here, I believe, with the 18th battalion and was in that portion of the battalion that was under the immediate command of Lieut. George Kerr. He was killed at St. Eloi, the 6th of June, 1916, and those who knew him know the kind of man he was and that he would bear himself like a soldier and a man in all his undertakings…[v]and would have received the Military medal the day following his death. Whether or not it will be received by his friends we do not know but we hope so. We have this assurance concerning him, the he deserved it and risked his life for the sake of saving others.
“In regard to Fred Watson, he was well known by the Sons of England, who are represented here today. He went over in the beginning of the war, served for a considerable time and received for honor the medal for the saving of life. The Military medal is a valuable silver medal given by British authorities for bravery. He went out and after all the stretcher bearers where shot down or disabled to rescue some nine wounded men under fire. He and some others were responsible for bringing nine wounded men in under fire, one of the hardest task a soldier can do[vi]. Private Fred Watson had the Military medal given to him and it is now in the possession of his family. He lived some time after to enjoy the honor and distinction for which it was given. Acts of this kind show the real character of the man we should be proud of and to whom we desire to pay honor and tribute today.
“We gather to honor the memory of those men and to express our sympathy for those who are bereaved and by your presence. I take it you intend these things. We know they bravely died in a good cause and distinguished themselves in the work. To show sympathy for those who are left behind in their sorrow we wish to do. We cannot enter in their sorrow and we cannot know the sorrow and darkness of their hearts, but we can show them we do sympathize by an act like this.
“In conclusion, I think the life of a man who does bravely in the face of the conditions that prevail on the field of battle out to help us understand how noble life is. To save others is the highest deed that any man can do for his fellowmen. We do not all have the opportunity to do brave things, but we all have the opportunity to live a good life. Thank God for the memory of brave men. Let us take a lesson from a solemn occasion of this kind.”
The service is well attended, and appropriate care and organization appears to be applied to this service of remembrance to the two local men. Christ Church is an Anglican church and given the timeframe of the service, coupled with an expected deep solemnity of an Anglican service at the time, one can imagine the attendees dressed in dark suites, perhaps with black armbands on their left arm. Some of the men may have been in uniform having enlisted with a local battalion, no doubt curious to the way they or their comrades may be remembered if the worst was to befall them during their service with the C.E.F. The church fills with the strains of Handel’s music and the congregation reflects on their loss.
Canon Hall gives an overview of the men’s service and the men’s military service is aligned with a muscular and militant Christianity. Sergeant Swainsbury, according to Canon Hall Sergeant Swainsbury “…would bear himself like a soldier and a man in all his undertakings…” and that his actions would warranted the Military Medal, though, as noted earlier in the speech, this medal had already been accorded Swainsbury.[vii] In the case of Private Watson Canon Hall relates that: “Acts of this kind show the real character of the man we should be proud of and to whom we desire to pay honor and tribute today.”, further reinforcing the connection between religion and the performance of valorous duty in the service to King and Country. He summarizes this sentiment further by stating: “We know they bravely died in a good cause and distinguished themselves in the work.” After the speech he reinforces the value of the “lesson” that these men’s lives offer to the congregation.
It is a language not completely foreign to us. Its religiosity and strong patriotic tone is. The Canon’s speech reflects the sentiments of that time and the Canon, being a senior member of the clergy, would be the philosophical litmus test for the community to which he serves and represents. The mourners would look to him to place meaning and value to the men for which they are honouring at the service. The act of such of service acts as a community expression of how this audience would feel. One wonders how well Canon Hall knew these two men. He focuses on their service and relates in summary to Sergeant Swainbury’s life in Chatham. Perhaps he did not mention any details of Private Watson’s life in Chatham out of sensitivity to his widow, Mrs. Annie Watson, who may have been in attendance at the service.
Sons of England Float during a parade at Paris, Ontario. Circa 1914 -1919. Source: Paris Museum and Historical Society.
The article also points to the strong connection between Canada and the United Kingdom through the attendance of the members of the Sons of Empire. This organization, founded in 1876 and lasting until 1971, was an organization offering insurance to its members and to foster the connection between Canada and England and the love for the Empire. It is no coincidence regarding the founding and dissolution year. Nine years after the founding of Canada and shortly after the American Civil War with the attendant fears of American aggression. More pointedly, in 1871 England recalled all its troops from Canada, save for those stationed at the Citadel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As Canada matured, and each step of its independence was expressed in formal acts of parliament and the changing social and economic make-up of Canada our identification with the United Kingdom and its effective loss of Empire after the Second World War made such an organization obsolete.
The article does leave some questions. One may assume that both soldiers attended Christ Church, as they had listed an affiliation to the Church of England. Were there other speakers offering eulogies to these men and what caused the delay of the service for Swainsbury to be held almost three months after he perished. The Canon makes mention of this “mistake at the time of his death that a service of this kind was not held at that time.” A rather glaring omission explained by a contrite clergyman.
Private Watson’s Grave Marker. Grave marker – Photo courtesy Keith Boswell, England. Source: CVWM.
Original Grave Marker for Sergeant Swainsbury. Source: Dawn Heuston.
Both soldiers perished thousands of miles from home. Their service was honoured together, and they died at different times and circumstances. Their deaths brought them together at this service and this speech shows the tone of the time. It also offers a focal point in our history of the Battalion recognize this soldier and to honour his sacrifice.
[i] Later Sergeant Chester Elmer Routley, reg. no. 53160 (Distinguished Conduct Medal).
[ii] Possibly Private Thomas Montgomery, reg. no. 54297.
[iii] See the following article for a summary of the Sons of England – Route to the Past: Sons of England Once Big in Ingersoll by Scott Giles.
[iv] Possibly Frederick Whitney Scherer (1889 – 1957) mentioned in this article.
[v] The article is cut off at the top, therefore the transcription is incomplete.
[vi] Private Watson was killed in action at the Somme. The 1st Battalion War Diary for September 22, 1916 is replete with details about the very active attack and action of that day and the following day’s entry reflects a lower level of activity. It does not relate any experiences relating to Private Watson or the event Canon Hall relates, and its origin is unknown.
[vii] A narrative that was consistently related to in two news articles indicated that Sergeant Swainsbury had earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal. His service records do not reflect this, and it is likely this rumour was related to some other article. Note that the 18th Battalion War Diary relates that the day BEFORE Sergeant Swainsbury’s death recorded the awarding of five Military Medals to soldiers of the 18th.
An article written in a local Chatham newspaper relates the service at Christ Church in honour of two local men who were killed in action gives us insight into the attitudes of the citizens through the address of Canon Howard.
#18th Battalion C.E.F.#1st Battalion C.E.F.#24th Regiment#Anglican Church#Canon Howard#Chatham Ontario#Christ Church#Church of England#Distinguished Conduct Medal#Dowsley Spring and Axle Plant#Empire#Military Medal#MSSC#Private Frederick John Watson#Sergeant George Swainsbury#Sons of England#United Kingdom
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In a system buoyed by soaring household debt and speculation, thrift and providence are not the dominant values. Rather, today’s rewards allegedly accrue to innovators and risk-takers. Still, the basic idea that effort is rewarded remains extremely popular: not just among “entrepreneurs”, but among the poor. I recall, in the darkest days of austerity, Guardian journalist John Harris’s heart-breaking interview with an unemployed man in Warrington. He was applying for dozens of jobs every week, usually getting no reply from employers, but when asked if he thought being unemployed was his fault, he replied: “Yeah, I do. I think I should have applied for more. I should have picked myself up in the morning, got out… tried more.”
One has to grasp the strange mixture of class shame and personal dignity in such a statement. We experience class shame when we internalise social situations, and defeats, over which we have little control. But just at the point where we have least control, it’s important to our self-respect, and our hope for the future, to claim some sliver of responsibility. The modern version of the self-help ethos can appeal to the poor precisely because it operates on this emotional contradiction. It is exemplary of what the American cultural theorist Lauren Berlant called “cruel optimism”. It makes people believe that anyone can achieve anything they want if they work hard enough. But that belief, because it is a fantasy, actively impedes the goal of personal flourishing that makes the fantasy appealing.
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Superweeds — that is, weeds that have evolved characteristics that make them more difficult to control as a result of repeatedly using the same management tactic — are rapidly overtaking American commodity farms, and Palmer amaranth is their king. Scientists have identified a population of Palmer amaranth that can tolerate being sprayed with six different herbicides (though not all at once), and they continue to discover new resistances. By now, it’s clear that weeds are evolving faster than companies are developing new weed killers: Just six years ago, in response to the onset of resistance to its marquee product, Roundup (active ingredient: glyphosate), Monsanto began selling a new generation of genetically modified seeds bred to resist both glyphosate and dicamba. By 2020, scientists had confirmed the existence of dicamba-resistant Palmer amaranth. The agribusiness giant took a decade to develop that product line. The weeds caught up in five years.
A January paper on a Palmer amaranth population shown to resist multiple weed killers put the problem succinctly: “Weed resistance to herbicides, especially multiple-herbicide resistance, poses a serious threat to global food production.” (Herbicide-resistant weeds are generally less of a concern on organic farms, but these make up less than 1 percent of total U.S. acreage.) It’s hard to estimate exactly how much damage has already been wrought by herbicide resistance; the weeds are gaining ground faster than scientists can survey them. But research published in 2016 by the Weed Science Society of America found that uncontrolled weeds could cause tens of billions of dollars of crop losses every year. Bob Hartzler, a retired weed scientist at Iowa State University, estimates that the tipping point when weed killers cease to be effective on some problematic species, including Palmer amaranth, is just five to 10 years away. “There’s general consensus among most weed scientists that the problems we see are just going to continue to accelerate,” he says. “And that’s why we’re sort of pessimistic that we can continue this herbicide-only system.”
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As people get richer, diets tend to diversify and meat consumption rises. We’d need a second Earth if everyone had the diet of an Australian or Brit. The average American in 2019 ate 53 pounds of beef—the most carbon intensive meat—according to USDA. But families in Argentina and Uruguay—where a lot of cattle are farmed—consumed even more than that, according to an industry website. Growing middle classes in developing countries from China to South Africa are eating more meat than ever.
Far higher up the income distribution, the emissions increase exponentially. The single-most polluting asset, a superyacht, saw a 77% surge in sales last year. An 11-minute ride to space, like the one taken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is responsible for more carbon per passenger than the lifetime emissions of any one of the world’s poorest billion people.
One-tenth of all flights departing from France in 2019 were on private aircraft. In just four hours, those individually-owned planes generate as much carbon dioxide as an average person in the European Union emits all year. Four-fifths of the people on the planet never get on an airplane in their entire lifetime, according to market analysis by Boeing.
#climate change#inequality#compost the rich#billionaires#disable javascript to read this one comrades!
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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, air-conditioning accounts for nearly a fifth of annual U.S. residential electricity use. This is more energy for cooling overall and per capita than in any other nation. Most Americans consider the cost of energy only in terms of their electricity bills. But it’s also costing us the planet. Joe Biden’s announcement to shift toward a renewable energy infrastructure obscures the uncertainty of whether that infrastructure could meet Americans’ outrageously high energy demand—much of it for cooling that doesn’t save lives. Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far. The rest of the work is cultural. From Freon to HFCs, we keep replacing chemical refrigerants without taking a hard look at why we’re cooling in the first place.
Comfort cooling began not as a survival strategy but as a business venture. It still carries all those symbolic meanings, though its currency now works globally, cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat. Despite what we assume, as a means of weathering a heat wave, individual air-conditioning is terribly ineffective. It works only for those who can afford it. But even then, their use in urban areas only makes the surrounding micro-climate hotter, sometimes by a factor of 10ºF, actively threatening the lives of those who don’t have access to cooling. (The sociologist Eric Klinenberg has brilliantly studied how, in a 1995 Chicago heat wave, about twice as many people died than in a comparable heat wave forty years earlier due to the city’s neglect of certain neighborhoods and social infrastructure.) Ironically, research suggests that exposure to constant air-conditioning can prevent our bodies from acclimatizing to hot weather, so those who subject themselves to “thermal monotony” are, in the end, making themselves more vulnerable to heat-related illness.
The troubled history of air-conditioning suggests not that we chuck it entirely but that we focus on public cooling, on public comfort, rather than individual cooling, on individual comfort. Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.
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In April, Bill Gates launched a bold bid to manage the world’s scientific response to the pandemic. Gates’s Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator expressed a status quo vision for organizing the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of treatments and vaccines. Like other Gates-funded institutions in the public health arena, the Accelerator was a public-private partnership based on charity and industry enticements. Crucially, and in contrast to the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, the Accelerator enshrined Gates’s long-standing commitment to respecting exclusive intellectual property claims. Its implicit arguments—that intellectual property rights won’t present problems for meeting global demand or ensuring equitable access, and that they must be protected, even during a pandemic—carried the enormous weight of Gates’s reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader.
How he’s developed and wielded this influence over two decades is one of the more consequential and underappreciated shapers of the failed global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Entering year two, this response has been defined by a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side.
As of this writing in early April, fewer than 600 million vaccine doses have been administered around the world; three-quarters of those in just 10 mostly high-income countries. Close to 130 countries containing 2.5 billion people have yet to administer a single dose. The timeline for supplying poor and middle-income countries with enough vaccines to achieve herd immunity, meanwhile, has been pushed into 2024.
These numbers represent more than the “catastrophic moral failure” the director general of the WHO warned about this January. It is a stark reminder than any policy that obstructs or inhibits vaccine production risks being self-defeating for the rich countries defending exclusive rights and gobbling up the lion’s share of available vaccine supplies. The truth repeated so often throughout the pandemic—no one is safe until everyone is safe—remains in force.
#coronavirus#covid19#bill gates#intellectual property#big pharma#disable javascript to read this one comrades!
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Unlike traditional labour models, in which employees’ interests are roughly aligned, the gig economy pits workers against each other. Riders are generally too busy getting their jobs done to converse. There are few opportunities to build up the kind of solidarity that underpins collective bargaining. In this fragmented workplace, couriers are kept constantly busy under the panoptic gaze of the apps.
Jonathan Nunn, Gulp! The secret economics of food delivery
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Imagine calling out the fire brigade to a blaze, then watching them sit around discussing how first to rescue a cat from a nearby rooftop. That is where we are. London suffered flash floods twice in the past month. Water poured through Tube stations. Raw sewage gushed through homes. People were rightly alarmed. Did Boris Johnson or his ministers seize the moment? Did they wade through the water, and explain that worse would come unless we acted? Did they bring out charts showing that the trend in extreme weather is even worse than climate scientists forecast? Did they announce new policies to reduce emissions? They did not. If only the floods had carried a few dinghies of asylum seekers — the government might have done something.
Henry Mance, Political inaction is dragging the UK deeper into the climate crisis
#uk politics#climate change#tories#disable javascript to read this one comrades!#also its from the Financial Times so just be wary of that
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Through its War Production Board, the United States cast aside restrictions surrounding intellectual property rights and, officials and researchers worked tirelessly to share information. Guided by a singular objective to maximize the production of lifesaving drugs and medicines, the WPB compelled pharmaceutical companies to share their recipes — notably forcing Pfizer to give up a special fermentation method for making penicillin, a move that yielded a more than tenfold increase in its production over the following two years.
Yet, beyond the level of rhetoric, this wartime spirit and the kind of dynamic public effort it once implied have been woefully absent from the global response to covid-19 — a response that has seen a handful of pharmaceutical giants, abetted by powerful governments, take the lead in vaccine production and mask narrow self-interest with boilerplate corporate arguments about the sanctity of intellectual property.
Vaccines have overwhelmingly been distributed to wealthy countries, and a mere 7.1 percent of people in low-income nations have received at least one dose. If the status quo is allowed to persist, production will continue to lag far behind demand, increasing the likelihood of future variants and leaving, at minimum, hundreds of millions unvaccinated while people in the affluent West receive their booster shots.
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A burgeoning scene of young people are encouraging each other to buy up large properties and lease them.
Some TikTokers advertise the tactic as “house” or “home hacking,” a clever way to live “rent free.”
Their critics call it “being a landlord.”
“This is how my parents live in this beautiful gray stone triplex for free. It’s called ‘house hacking,’” one woman’s recent video, announced. (The clip has since been reposted across Instagram and Twitter, by enthusiast capitalists and disgusted leftists, alike.) “I invited my parents to move into the bottom unit and rented out the other two units for $1,600, each. The two rents give me a total monthly revenue of $3,300. My mortgage payment and expenses are approximately $2,300. That leaves me with $1,000 in my pocket, and my parents live for free.”
It’s not a newfangled lifehack, critics noted in the comments—it’s literally just charging rent, in a moment of uncertainty for renters, millions of whom have lost income during the pandemic.
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“The criminalization of migrants as a means of deterrence has been a strategy for a long time,” said François Crépeau, an expert on international law and a former top United Nations official on the rights of migrants. “The latest step is what we’ve seen in Greece recently, which is obscene numbers of years in prison for people who are basically trying to save their lives and protect their families.”
Over the past two years, smugglers have been increasingly limiting the time they spend on boats, abandoning migrants when they approach Greek waters, or training them to take the wheel, according to Dimitris Choulis and Alexandros Georgoulis, the lawyers defending Mr. Mohammad and others in similar predicaments.
When boats arrive on Greek shores, one migrant is typically singled out by officials, Mr. Choulis said. But the decision is often made without real evidence, he added, noting that one Afghan man is facing smuggling charges simply for having the GPS open on his cellphone during a crossing.
Casting a refugee as a smuggler is “treating a small-time drug offender like Escobar,” said Clio Papapadoleon, a prominent human rights lawyer, referring to the Colombian drug lord. She said there were no real efforts made to trace the actual traffickers.
“In none of these cases has there been an investigation by the police and judicial authorities to trace the smugglers,” she said. “Those arrested are never asked who gave you the boat, who abandoned you at sea?”
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Transactions on the Bitcoin network are processed by so-called miners -- mostly companies operating vast arrays of computers. As competition increased, many smaller participants became unprofitable and dropped out, while the larger operations have entered into various partnership agreements. As a result, five mining entities -- all of them based in China -- control 49.9% of all computing power on the network, the highest concentration of mining power ever
#bitcoin#Cryptocurrency#internet#seems very good and normal#disable javascript to read this one comrades!
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Western-trained researchers and governments are increasingly recognizing the wealth of knowledge that Indigenous communities have amassed to coexist with and protect their environments over hundreds or even thousands of years. Peer-reviewed scientific journals have published studies demonstrating that around the world, Indigenous-managed lands have far more biodiversity intact than other lands, even those set aside for conservation.
Bridging Indigenous and Western science also means respecting the ecosystem of values in which the knowledge systems are embedded. For instance, the practice of planting a diversity of crops and building healthy soil for water retention — today known as “regenerative agriculture” — has existed in Indigenous communities around the world throughout history. Yet the growing push to adopt regenerative agriculture practices elsewhere is often selective, using industrial pesticides, for example, or leaving out the well-being of people who farm the land.
“In Indigenous sciences, it’s not possible to separate the knowledge from the ethics of the responsibility for that knowledge — whereas in Western science, we do that all the time,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The scientific method is designed to be indifferent to morals or values, she adds. “Indigenous knowledge puts them back in.”
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As the virus spread, central banks injected $9tn into economies worldwide, aiming to keep the world economy afloat. Much of that stimulus has gone into financial markets, and from there into the net worth of the ultra-rich. The total wealth of billionaires worldwide rose by $5tn to $13tn in 12 months, the most dramatic surge ever registered on the annual billionaire list compiled by Forbes magazine.
#coronavirus#inequality#billionaires#compost the rich#disable javascript to read this one comrades!#FYI: the article is literally written by a guy employed by Morgan Stanley
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For almost two weeks, tens of thousands of Burmese, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, have taken to the streets to protest against the coup. But it is a subtler form of protest that is causing the generals the most grief. Thousands of public-sector workers, from at least 245 districts and 21 ministries, are on strike, according to Kim Jolliffe, an analyst. Government offices are deserted. So too are classrooms. Many public hospitals have in effect shut. Those that have not are so understaffed they are turning new patients away. “Operations at many government departments all but halted this week,” reported the Irrawaddy, a news website, on February 16th.
The banking system is also seizing up. Online banking remains possible, at least when the army allows the internet to operate, but most branches are closed. Reports suggest lending has dried up and most administrative work has stopped. “A dysfunctional financial sector would definitely hurt the regime,” says Ko Ko (not his real name), a manager at a branch of aya bank in Yangon. He and almost all his colleagues have been on strike since last week.
The government pays bills and salaries and disburses pensions via Myanma Economic Bank (MEB). But so many of its employees are on strike that it is at a “near standstill”, says Mr Jolliffe, who is studying the civil-disobedience movement. With many tax collectors on strike, too, the coup leaders may end up with neither the infrastructure nor the money to pay staff. “This is a real pressure point and is something the military probably did not include in their game plan,” says Mr Jolliffe.
The commander-in-chief probably hopes that the protests will quickly peter out. “At the end of the month, people will need to draw their salaries,” points out Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadida Institute, a think-tank in Yangon. But if other civil servants are as determined as Mr Ko Ko, the regime will need to think again. “We aren’t afraid of losing our jobs,” he says, noting that many mutual-aid funds are being set up to support workers who are sacked for their activism. “We want our freedom back.”
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In 2020, more than 8,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Britain by crossing the English Channel in flimsy boats mainly from France, compared with around 300 in 2018. Hiding in vehicles on board ferries or trains had become more difficult as the pandemic reduced travel, so the smuggling networks redirected the migrants to the water. Although this did not mean a rise in the number of average arrivals, the cinematic quality of seaborne migrants approaching the white cliffs of Dover provided ideal fodder for government-fomented hysteria. Broadcasters attempted to conduct live interviews with asylum-seekers adrift in the channel.
An ex-Royal Marine was appointed to the preposterously named position of clandestine channel threat commander. But the discourse became more menacing; newspapers reported that the Home Office had discussed deploying naval vessels to the channel, employing wave machines to buffet migrant boats away from British waters, or shipping them to remote outposts in the South Atlantic.
There is no refugee crisis in Britain; in the year ending June 2020, the country received some 32,000 asylum applications, while countries like France and Germany typically receive triple or quadruple that number. Though it does resettle modest amounts of refugees (but hasn’t for a while), it insists on doing so from regions bordering conflict zones and not from those who have supposedly “jumped the queue” and are already in Europe, erroneously arguing that it acts as a pull factor. It shouldn’t be a binary decision; one can do both.
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