Petition calling for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas impeachment has more than 1 million signatures


Mr Thomas was the sole dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case the ruled Mr Trump had to turn over presidential records to the House Select Committee

Graig Graziosi
July 4,2022

Related video: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas criticised for conflict of interest

More than a million signatures have been registered to a petition calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Mr Thomas has come under fire for his support of the the court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade, paving the way for women to lose their right to end a pregnancy in nearly half the country.

He has further infuriated Americans in his concurring opinion by saying the court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Those cases deal with Americans' fundamental right to privacy, due process, and equal protections rights, like same-sex marriage.

The petition was posted to MoveOn, and currently has more than one million signatures.

"Thomas—who sided with the majority on overturning Roe—made it clear what's next: to overturn high court rulings that establish gay rights and contraception rights," the petition says. "And if that's not enough: Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas voted against a Supreme Court decision to compel the release of Donald Trump's records regarding the January 6 insurrection and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election."

It remains highly unlikely that Mr Thomas would be removed from the Supreme Court, but the petition reflects the growing angst towards the justice.

Critics of Mr Thomas have also pointed to his wife, Ginni Thomas, and her role in the attempts by Republicans following the 2020 election to fraudulently overturn Joe Biden's victory.

Mr Thomas did not recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election despite his wife's communications with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Arizona election officials supporting Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Ms Thomas twice emailed the Republican Arizona House speaker and another Arizona Republican lawmaker urging them to "do their constitutional duty" to swing the state for former President Donald Trump.

“The nation’s eyes are on you now,” she said, adding, “Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”

The New York Times also reported that Ms Thomas is a board member of CNP Action, a conservative group that directer letter-writing campaigns to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to use alternate electors to undermine the will of the voters in their states by casting votes for Mr Trump at the electoral college.

It also claimed that Ms Thomas played a "mediating" role in organising the Stop the Steal rally that became the Capitol riot. She denied those allegations following the report.

Her husband was the sole dissenting opinion in a case determining whether or not Mr Trump's presidential records should be turned over to the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot.

"He must resign—or Congress must immediately investigate and impeach," the petition says.

TO: Justice Clarence Thomas; the United States House of Representatives and Senate

Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas

Justice Clarence Thomas must resign from the Supreme Court immediately or else be impeached.

Why is this important?

The right-wing rigged Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, effectively taking away the right to privacy and bodily autonomy that's been considered legal precedent for the past 50 years. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—who sided with the majority on overturning Roe—made it clear what's next: to overturn high court rulings that establish gay rights and contraception rights.

And if that's not enough: Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas voted against a Supreme Court decision to compel the release of Donald Trump's records regarding the January 6 insurrection and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

It has become clear that his wife—longtime conservative activist Ginni Thomas—was actively urging the White House to overturn election results both leading up to January 6 and after the deadly insurrection.

Thomas' failure to recuse himself warrants immediate investigation and heightened alarm. And it's only the latest in a long history of conflicts of interest in the service of a right-wing agenda and mixing his powerful role with his conservative political activism. He has shown he cannot be an impartial justice and is more concerned with covering up his wife's coup attempts than the health of the Supreme Court.

He must resign—or Congress must immediately investigate and impeach.

Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas | MoveOn

BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID

Clarence Thomas wrote dissent opinion on assault rifle ban in Highland Park nearly a decade ago

The right-wing Supreme Court justice called assault rifles ‘modern sporting rifles’

Maroosha Muzaffar
JULY 5,2022

US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion against an automatic weapons ban in Highland Park almost a decade before the 4 July mass shooting at the Illinois city in which six were killed and 36 injured.

An ordinance, signed by Mayor Nancy Rotering on 24 June 2013, read: “The City Council has determined that assault weapons are traditionally not used for self-defence in the city of Highland Park and that such weapons pose an undue risk to public safety.”

Mr Thomas had, in his dissent in 2015 when the Supreme Court had refused to hear the challenge on the ordinance, said it “criminalises modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semi-automatic rifles), which many Americans own for lawful purposes like self-defence, hunting, and target shooting.”

“Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles,” he wrote, describing assault rifles as “modern sporting rifles”, a terminology often used by those favouring bans on restrictions of guns.

He continued: “The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defence and target shooting,” he wrote in his dissent. “Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.”

He was joined in his dissent by his former conservative colleague Antonin Scalia in accusing the court of abdicating its responsibility to enforce the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Police took a suspect, Robert E Crimo, into custody on Monday evening over the shooting. The FBI said he was being sought for his “alleged involvement” in the shooting.

It has been revealed that Mr Crimo’s YouTube channel included a video with a drawing of a figure aiming a rifle with a high capacity magazine at two figures, one sprawled on its back and the other on its knees, arms raised.

The shooter had reportedly climbed onto a rooftop of a business and opened fire on a 4 July parade about 20 minutes after it began.

Eyewitnesses described scenes of chaos after the shooting.

“It looked like a battle zone, and it’s disgusting. It’s really disgusting,” Zoe Pawelczak, who attended the parade with her father, was quoted as saying by CNN.

The United Kingdom is broken. It’s time for a new British federation

Celtic grievances have erupted once more, and can no longer be waved away by Whitehall

A Celtic cross at Kilnave Chapel, Islay, Scotland.

 Photograph: Richard Handley/Alamy

Simon Jenkins

Tue 5 Jul 2022 

The legendary Welsh rugby star Phil Bennett, who died last month, would rouse his team against England, calling them “bastards … taking our coal, our water, our steel … They exploited, raped, controlled and punished us – that’s who you are playing.” It was fighting talk, only half in jest. It was Celts against the English.

In British history and politics, the Celts have grievances that wax and wane, but they never heal. They have erupted once more over Brexit and Ireland and in a revived demand for Scottish independence, a process Boris Johnson and latterly Keir Starmer have vowed to resist. The result of this relentless nagging pressure has been to make the boundaries of the United Kingdom among the most unstable in Europe.

That a once-imperial nation on a small archipelago in the Atlantic cannot hold its domestic union in place is astonishing. Partly underlying its disunity is a notional split of the population into “Celts” and “Anglo-Saxons”, based on a fanciful conquest of one by the other supposedly in the fifth century. Modern genetics has shown the divide to be meaningless, yet it is embedded in the politics of the so-called Celtic fringe – or at least in England’s reaction to it.

Traditional histories maintained that some time in the late bronze or iron ages a group of European tribes called Celts invaded and overwhelmed the ancient Britons, spreading their disparate but related languages over the entire population. They survived the Roman occupation intact but tradition again holds that, on the Roman retreat, they were overwhelmed in turn by invading Saxons. These invaders reputedly drove the Celts westwards and created an English empire of the British Isles. No trace of the preceding Celtic remained in its language.

The details of both these invasions have long been challenged by scholars. In the 1960s, the historian JRR Tolkien dismissed the Celtic age as a “fabulous twilight … a magic bag”. The archaeologist Grahame Clark protested against “invasion neurosis”, the idea that all social change required a conquest. Since the 1990s, DNA archaeology has indicated that the diverse peoples of the British Isles were many and various, their settlement dating back to the stone age. As the prehistorian Barry Cunliffe has argued, today’s Celtic speakers probably migrated up the Atlantic littoral from Iberia long before anyone knew of Celts.

This might be of no account were it not for the manner in which the eastern Britons asserted supremacy over their western neighbours and maintained it ever since. From the Normans onwards, the rulers of the half of the British Isles called England created one of the most centralised states in Europe. Medieval wars against the Welsh and Scots and later conflicts with the Irish duly bred a passionate western and northern aversion towards the English. In the 19th century this was reciprocated by an English invention of a “Celtic” stereotype. Matthew Arnold dismissed Celts as “romantic and sentimental … lacking the temperament to form a political entity”, so unlike the “disciplined and steadily obedient” Anglo-Saxons.

Scotland’s future won’t be settled until there is a second vote on independence

Andrew Rawnsley

It is significant that this collective abuse of the Welsh, Scottish and Irish never met a collective response. There was no Celtic solidarity, never one nation, language or culture, let alone a military or political alliance. To the English these peoples should see themselves as what amounted to English counties, like Yorkshire or Kent, to be assimilated into a “great British” union. Wales was forced to join in 1536, Scotland in 1707 and Ireland in 1801.

Wales came into union peacefully, Scotland grudgingly and Ireland never. Irish rebellions followed one after another until it won its independence in 1922. Thereafter a rump United Kingdom did cohere. It was sustained by a Tory unionist obsession and by a Labour party that saw it as embodying Aneurin Bevan’s “unity of the British working class”. Celts were for fairy tales and antiquarians.

This makes the more extraordinary what happened at the end of the 20th century. Infuriated by Thatcher’s centralism, in 1989 a majority of Scottish MPs demanded the return of a Scottish parliament. Seizing the moment, Labour’s Tony Blair would later deliver a modest devolution to new Scottish and Welsh assemblies. These assemblies sparked a sudden outbreak of regional identity politics. Nationalism surged back to life. In Scotland, the Tory party all but vanished.

In 2007, Scottish nationalists took power in Edinburgh and have never lost it. Though the popularity of independence among the Scots has risen and fallen, voters under the age of 50 are overwhelmingly in favour. The odds at present are on Scottish independence one day. Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, Brexit chaos has fuelled an expectation of a vote for reunion with the south in the future. Even in Wales, the nationalist Plaid Cymru has acquired new vigour, with support for an “independent” Wales at between a quarter and a third of voters.

The response of England to this burst of dissent has been inert. Across Europe, nation-building has been long been a vexed art. Violently in Yugoslavia and Ukraine, and relatively peacefully in Spain and Italy, central governments have struggled ceaselessly to hold the loyalty of their component peoples. As the political historian Linda Colley has shown, this has required respect for identity and ingenuity in devolution. German Länder enjoy considerable autonomy. Spain’s Basques and Catalans have degrees of economic, fiscal and judicial sovereignty. Swiss cantons even have differing definitions of democracy.

Britain’s Boris Johnson really could not care less. The prime minister has called devolution in Scotland “a disaster”. After Brexit, he insisted that all EU powers and subsidies be repatriated not to the devolved governments but to London. On trade, he appeases the wildest Northern Ireland unionism. A mere one in five of voters in England now profess to care if Scotland goes independent, yet Johnson fights to retain this first English empire with all the fervour of Edward I.
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If I were Northern Irish, I would vote to rejoin the prospering south. If I were Scottish, I would wonder why I was once richer than Ireland and Denmark but am now poorer, and would opt for independence, whatever the pain. Yet I am neither of these things. I believe that a federated United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales benefits greatly from its diversity.

Lumping Celts together as one people and one problem that can be swept under a unionist carpet is demeaning to the ambitions of Irish, Scots and Welsh. It will not silence them. It will not help the search for what is now critical, a bespoke autonomy for each nation in a new British federation.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist. His book The Celts: A Sceptical History is published this month by Profile

Europe’s Geopolitical Turn Needs a Democratic Reboot

After a decade of crises in Europe, historic decisions were taken at the EU and NATO summits to strengthen the continent. To overcome today’s challenges, Brussels must confront the causes of its paralysis in the 2010s.

ROSA BALFOUR

Carnegie Europe
July 05, 2022

“Europe will be forged in crisis” must be the most frequently used and abused Jean Monnet quotation about European integration. Brussels-based EU observers have heard it time and again as the continent somersaulted from crisis to crisis.

In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia and the eurozone crisis started. In 2015–16 the EU seemed on the brink of collapsing under the weight of refugees seeking protection from conflict, the British vote to leave the EU, and the election of a viscerally anti-European U.S. president. Throughout, governments trembled at every election, fearful of being swept away by a populist wave.

Yet very little was forged. “Muddling through” became the norm throughout the 2010s. The reasons for which the EU was unable to better address its crises were brushed under the carpet.

The combined force of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Europe seems to usher in a historical turn: a Zeitenwende, as the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it, a Hamiltonian moment, and a “geopolitical awakening”—the rhetoric of EU leaders is rather repetitive.

The promise of enlargement to Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia will require a commitment to build a stronger and deeper union where a geopolitical choice is melded to democratic reform. Treaty reform—a taboo idea since the Lisbon Treaty entered into force—has even been mentioned by a few leaders and called for by the citizen conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe. But will the EU live up to this?

War fatigue and inflation are likely clouds on the horizon of European unity and purpose, instigated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To deal with the present crisis and to avoid further turmoil, the EU needs to address the three major weaknesses exposed by the decade of muddling through.

The first was the lack of economic convergence between the European core and periphery, which created a rift between those advocating for fiscal austerity and those in favour of more burden sharing in the eurozone.

The pandemic swept away austerity politics and EU leaders broke eurozone rules when they agreed to the NextGenerationEU back in 2020. This is a work in progress, but advances have been made.

The second was divergences in threat perceptions, with Russia as the most divisive issue for Europe’s foreign policy historically. Deep strategic divisions on European foreign and security policy have held back the development of the EU’s international posture.

The remarkable array of decisions that EU leaders have taken since Russia invaded Ukraine is closing that gap, even if wrinkles remain between the member states; Paris and Warsaw, for example, have differing emphases on European strategic autonomy and NATO. Admittedly, leadership of the response to the war has come from Washington, but the EU too has taken bold steps that will shape its future, with the Strategic Compass, energy diversification, and a wide range of economic and financial tools.

Strategic cleavages run deep not just among political elites, but also in public opinion. These are relevant also to the third area of weakness that has been brushed under the carpet: the health of Europe’s democracy.

Eurosceptic populism has been blamed for many of Europe’s past ills. What is overlooked is that populism is also a revolt against the way democracy is conducted.

The EU has always relied upon the quality of democracy of its members as a source of legitimacy; unfortunately, that quality has been steadily eroding. Even if Europe continues to be one of the most democratic regions of the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, it hosts the worst-performing democracies since 2006 together with North America.

Europe’s geopolitical turn cannot be sustained without investing in democratic reform. This is not just a matter for the EU, nor it is merely a question of institutional reform; democracy at the national and local levels is even more important in the complex multilevel system governing the European Union.

This story, of the interconnection between the quality of democracy and foreign policy, is unfolding in the United States, which has been rocked by the inquiry into the insurrection at Capitol Hill and the overturning of women’s rights. Privately, European political leaders wonder about the United States’ ability to continue leading the West’s war effort and worry that this new unity will end in 2024.

But Europe is not immune to some of the democratic weaknesses that are troubling American society.

Democrats in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans who want their countries to join the club also look at the quality of democracy in the union. Europe’s domestic failures are mirrored in the eyes of observers. Twinning democracy with geopolitics is the only way to ensure that the process of bringing in new EU members will be credible and effective.

Exiting today’s crises will require much self-examination, reform, and ingenuity. The wartime posture will ring hollow if Europe’s underlying troubles are not addressed. Perhaps a more apt Jean Monnet quotation for Europeans to reference is, “war is in men’s minds [sic—but he was writing in the 1950s], and it must be opposed by imagination.”


Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe. Her fields of expertise include European politics, institutions, and foreign and security policy.
@ROSABALFOUR

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

Swedish PM gives Zelensky copy of letter of Charles XII on recognition of Zaporizhia Sich as independent state

05.07.2022

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson handed over to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a copy of a letter from King Charles XII recognizing Zaporizhia Sich as an independent state.

"I am handing over a copy of a letter from the National Archives of Sweden, written in 1711. King Charles XII wrote a letter about Pylyp Orlyk. There he gives instructions to the Swedish ambassador to recognize Zaporizhia Sich as an independent state. So that there would be no harassment from the Moscow tsar," she said at a press conference and in Kyiv after talks with the President of Ukraine.

"I think it fits well into the modern context. Some 300 years have passed, and we see that one of our successful projects in Ukraine is municipal self–government and also democratic processes," Andersson stressed.

"The Russian aggression must end. We must end this war by supporting Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. And this should continue as long as necessary. There is a simple way to end this war – Russia must stop and go home," she said.

"Today I saw not only the ruins, but also the courage of the Ukrainian people under your leadership," the Swedish Prime Minister stressed.

South Korea returns to nuclear power



President Yoon Suk-yeol is going all in on nuclear power, both at home and abroad, marking a shift from his predecessor's undecided approach.

President Yoon Suk-yeol is banking on nuclear energy to feed South Korea's power-hungry industrial sector

South Korea's new President Yoon Suk-yeol has wasted no time in committing his administration to resurrecting the nation's nuclear energy sector. This marks a dramatic policy reversal from his immediate predecessor, whose approach was condemned by both sides of the atomic energy debate.

Yoon was recently in Europe for the G7 and NATO summits, where he held meetings to promote South Korean nuclear energy technology. The issue was discussed with the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic — both of which are close to selecting contractors for their new nuclear power plants — while Britain, Romania and the Netherlands are also seen as potential customers.

"We will go all in to win orders for nuclear power plants," Choi Sang-mok, senior presidential secretary for economic affairs, told reporters in Madrid this week.
'Contradictory situation'

"For the past five years, we saw a contradictory situation where at home we were seeking to go nuclear-free, but overseas we were pursuing exports of nuclear power plants," Yonhap News quoted Choi as saying, referring to the policy of the previous administration under Moon Jae-in, who stepped down in May.

"The nuclear industry was practically on the brink of collapse, but now we plan to resume nuclear power exports," Choi added.

Moon was elected in 2017 on a platform of scrapping the country's nuclear reactors following heightened concerns about safety. Once in power, however, his staunch opposition to atomic energy weakened, and he even spoke out strongly in favor of selling Korean nuclear know-how overseas — a position that saw him labelled as a hypocritical.

Yet South Korea's relationship with nuclear energy is a complicated one, says Daul Jang, a nuclear energy analyst with the Seoul office of Greenpeace.

"South Korea got its first nuclear reactor in 1978, under the Park Chung-hee military dictatorship, but there was opposition from the outset among people who lived near the plant and were worried about an accident, and there has also been the long-running issue of how to dispose of high-level nuclear waste ever since," he told DW.

Korea built up its domestic nuclear energy sector with US technology securing confidence in its safety and reliability. And while the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant was largely dismissed as being impossible in South Korea, attitudes changed dramatically after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant in nearby Japan in 2011, Daul said.

"The attitude in Korea was that an accident like Chernobyl could never happen here because we believed our technology was simply better, but then Fukushima happened and that changed," he said.

The industry's case was not helped by a series of major scandals at companies in the nuclear sector, including the use of substandard equipment in plants, corruption and cover-ups. Opposition became so fierce that two communities earmarked as the sites of new power plants held referendums that overwhelmingly rejected the government's plans.
Earthquake impact

Fears reached new heights in 2016, when a magnitude 5.8 earthquake — the largest in recorded history — rocked the southeastern region of the Korean peninsula, where the majority of the nation's nuclear plants are clustered.

Sensing the public's mood, Moon incorporated a plan to do away with South Korea's nuclear energy sector into his election manifesto, landing him the victory in the 2017 election.

Moon cancelled six reactors that were in the planning stages. However, conscious of South Korea's power-hungry industry and lack of abundant natural resources, he permitted the continuation of work on a further five that had already broken ground. And while the operational lifetimes of other reactors would no longer be extended, the new reactors were set to continue operations until 2085, Daul points out.

That perceived duplicity, combined with Moon's continued efforts to push Korean nuclear technology abroad, was seized upon by his political rivals, including the up-and-coming Yoon.

"The opposition, the nuclear industry and even environmental groups said it made no sense that Moon said he was committed to phasing out nuclear energy at home at the same time as he was promoting it as a key export," said Park Saing-in, an economist at Seoul National University.

"Those groups rarely agree, but on this they did agree: He was being hypocritical."

And Park suggests there was more public support for nuclear energy than environmental groups believe.

"The confused policy on nuclear energy has caused a lot of resentment in many communities," he said. "When work on plants was halted, a lot of small, local companies that were relying on those projects went bankrupt and people lost their jobs."

"Those people probably voted for Yoon in the last election and they are happy that he is putting so much emphasis into nuclear energy again," Park said.
Safety concerns

Park also played down safety fears in communities close to plants and the potential dangers posed by seismic activity, insisting earthquakes on the Korean Peninsula are invariably smaller and less destructive than in Japan.

"In comparison with the safety concerns of people in Japan, the US and Europe, I think Korean people are more relaxed and even positive about nuclear energy," he added.

And with the world seeking long-term solutions to fossil fuels and atomic energy gaining acceptance as a "green" energy, Park believes South Korea's nuclear sector is in a good position, both at home and abroad.

"A lot of countries are looking for the skills and know-how required to safely produce nuclear energy and the government and domestic industry are confident they can deliver that," Park said. "This is a good opportunity to export a Korean capability to other parts of the world."

Edited by: Alex Berry

Belief in false information is a mental health concern

New research links belief in fake news about COVID-19 with anxiety and depression. Could better mental healthcare reduce the spread of false information?

Is it fake news or "fakt" (as the Germans say)? You may find the facts depressing but if you

 have mental health issues like anxiety and depression, you be more prone to believing what is fake.

A study has found people who believe in false information about the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to suffer from symptoms of anxiety and depression. 

"Our study shows the potential negative impact of false beliefs about COVID-19 on mental health," said the study's lead researcher Paweł Dębski. 

But the study does not show that depression and anxiety symptoms directly drive belief in false information. Nor does it provide explanations of how belief in false information might drive mental health difficulties. 

False information is depressing

Using two online questionnaires — the COVID-19 Conspiratorial Beliefs Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale — the researchers looked for correlations between false beliefs and mental health conditions.

They say they found that common false beliefs about COVID included those that governments exaggerated the number of COVID-19 deaths, that 5G spreads COVID-19 and that wearing a mask causes oxygen deficiency and carbon dioxide poisoning.

And they say they also found that depression had a high relationship with belief in false information about COVID, while anxiety was more moderately linked.

The study suggested high correlations between belief in false COVID information and belief in broader conspiracy theories.  

The pandemic hit mental health hard 

Experts have described the pandemic as highlighting a crisis in mental health.

The World Health Organization reports that mental health issues spiked across the world due to COVID and restrictions brought in to curb the pandemic, such as lockdowns.

Depression and anxiety rose by 25% in the first year of the pandemic, with young people and women showing the sharpest rise in symptoms.

Social isolation, anxiety for one's own health and that of loved ones were said to be among the biggest stress factors. Key workers like healthcare professionals also cited exhaustion as affecting their mental health.

Research from the UK-based mental health charity Mind suggests that those who struggled with their mental health prior to the onset of COVID-19 were most affected by restrictions and lockdowns. 

Is social media to blame for fake news about COVID?

More than half of Europeans believe they have been exposed to disinformation online, according to a report published by the European Commission. 

The pandemic saw online and social media use at all-time highs, according to research by Statista, and a study in the journal Science suggests false information reaches more people than factual information on social media.

It's a phenomenon that psychologists call "negative bias." It happens when people focus on what is potentially harmful rather than what is helpful.  

And the theory is that focusing on negative information makes depressive symptoms worse, and that that in turn drives further belief in false information. 

Better mental health support needed to keep things factual 

The study suggests that belief in conspiracy theories appeals to people whose key psychological needs are unmet, such as a sense of control over one's life. For example, people who feel powerless in their lives may use false information as a way to control what they believe. 

"We think belief in false information contributes to a weakened sense of security, causing the development of anxiety and depression," Dębski said.

But mental health charity Mind says that supporting people with reliable information about mental health itself would help.

"We encounter lots of misconceptions around mental health every day in the media and online," said Mind's Stephen Buckley. "Tackling negative attitudes is key to reducing stigma, which can help to play a part in addressing social isolation and potential susceptibility to fake news."

So, supporting people through mental health issues may also help them build trust in factual information.

And that may be especially true, says Buckley, for people from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, or people living in poverty, who are "nearly twice as likely to use online communities to get information about their mental health. It's essential that we ensure these spaces are safe, trustworthy and reputable." 

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

Former top official says No. 10 not telling the truth over scandal hit MP

Simon McDonald piles pressure on Boris Johnson.

Former U.K. chief diplomat Simon McDonald said PM Boris Johnson 

was aware of sexual harassment allegations against a Conservative MP 

| Will Oliver/EPA-EFE

BY ANNABELLE DICKSON
July 5, 2022 

LONDON — A former top U.K. official has accused Boris Johnson of not telling the truth when the prime minister said he was not aware of specific allegations about the behavior of an MP who he appointed to a key government job but later resigned following allegations he groped two men.

In a letter to the U.K. parliamentary commissioner for standards, which he posted on Twitter on Tuesday morning, the former chief diplomat Simon McDonald said that in 2019, a group of officials had complained about Chris Pincher’s behavior and an investigation had upheld the complaint. Pincher had apologized and promised not to repeat the inappropriate behavior.

“Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation,” McDonald wrote.

Pincher resigned last week over claims he groped two men, prompting questions about what the prime minister knew about his past behavior before he promoted him. McDonald’s letter puts more pressure on Johnson, whose leadership has been weakened following the so-called Partygate story and only narrowly survived a vote of confidence in his leadership by Tory MPs.

McDonald said he was speaking out because of Downing Street statements in recent days. A spokesman for the prime minister first claimed Johnson had not been aware of specific allegations when appointing Pincher as deputy chief whip in February, and later clarified the prime minister knew of allegations but that they were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint.

“The original No. 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate,” McDonald writes.

In a later interview with the BBC, McDonald said: “They need to come clean. I think that the language is ambiguous. It’s sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning.”

Also speaking to the BBC, then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, said everything had been “done by the book” and the 2019 allegation “didn’t trip the wire into disciplinary action.” Raab, who is now deputy prime minister, told the broadcaster he did not think it was “factually accurate” that the PM had been briefed.

“I have discussed this with the prime minister over the last 24 hours, it is not my understanding that he was directly briefed.”

Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said: “It is now clear that the prime minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.”

UK

LABOUR PARTY PURGE

Reaction as Angela Rayner sacked as party chairman

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the decision to remove Ms Rayner was a “cowardly avoidance of responsibility”.

by Jack Peat
2021-05-08 20:03
in Politics
LONDON ECONOMIC EYE

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has been sacked from her role as chairman after the party’s poor showing in the Super Thursday elections, PA news agency understands.

Labour received a drubbing in the local elections in England, losing control of a host of councils and suffering defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election – the first time the constituency has gone blue since its inception in the 1970s.

The sacking signals cracks at the top of the party, with rows over who was to blame for the election strategy.


Speaking on Friday, leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was “bitterly disappointed” with the results and vowed to take responsibility and to fix Labour’s election woes.
“Cowardly avoidance of responsibility”

But former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the decision to remove Ms Rayner – a former social care worker who hails from Stockport – as Labour’s chairman and campaigns chief was a “cowardly avoidance of responsibility”.

Mr McDonnell tweeted: “Keir Starmer said yesterday that he took full responsibility for the election result in Hartlepool and other losses.

“Instead today he’s scapegoating everyone apart from himself. This isn’t leadership, it’s a cowardly avoidance of responsibility.”

As well as the shock defeat in Hartlepool, Labour had a net loss of six councils and more than 200 seats in the local elections, losing control of the likes of Harrow, Essex, and Plymouth local authorities in the process.

The party also failed to topple Tory mayoral incumbents in the Tees Valley and the West Midlands, although did produce a surprise victory in the West of England mayoral contest and comfortable wins in Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region.
Party conference

Richard Burgon MP, former shadow justice secretary and prominent left-wing critic, has called for a bespoke party conference to produce a plan to reverse Labour’s polling fortunes in the aftermath of the losses.

“Instead of making progress in the key areas we need to win back, at these elections we’ve gone backwards – this can’t go on,” he tweeted.

“There should now be a special Labour Party conference where the leadership outlines its plan to turn this around and seeks the confidence of the party for it.”
Social media reaction

Reaction on social media has been fiery too.

 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/07/making-labour-better-tory-party-make.html

SIR KEIR SAYS LABOUR THE BETTER TORY PARTY

Keir Starmer slammed for having 'more positions on Brexit than the Kama Sutra' as Labour leader vows to hand power back to Brussels

The Labour leader set out a five-point plan to "make Brexit work" during a speech last night

Aden-Jay Wood

DIGITAL PRODUCER
PUBLISHED Tuesday 05 July 2022 - 

Sir Keir Starmer has been slammed for having “more positions on Brexit than the Kama Sutra” as the Labour leader set out a five-point plan to “make Brexit work”.

Speaking to the Centre for European Reform during an event at the Irish Embassy in London last night, Sir Keir ruled out rejoining the EU or the single market if Labour comes to power, insisting such moves would spark further division in Britain.

Sir Keir said Labour is “claiming the centre ground of British politics once again”, not from a “mushy place of compromise”, but driven by “purpose” and “optimism”.

But he essentially vowed to hand power and initiative back to Brussels at the same time, as he said he would “sort out” the Northern Ireland Protocol by agreeing a veterinary deal with the EU and stick to the bloc's rules on food and livestock exports.

Martin Daubney GB News

Sir Keir Starmer outlined plans to "make Brexit work" Stefan Rousseau

Deputy leader of the Reclaim Party, Martin Daubney, isn’t convinced by the new plans.

Speaking on GB News’ Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel, Mr Daubney said: “I mean you could say: 'Thank the lord, six years on, Keir Starmer has finally accepted the Brexit referendum.'

“You could however deduce that he’s doing this purely for cynical reasons because anyone who has campaigned in national elections, as I have twice, knocked on doors all over the East Midlands, West Midlands, the North will tell you, Keir Starmer has a massive Brexit problem.

"People don’t believe him and that’s for good reason.

Emily Thornberry GB News

“48 times Keir Starmer voted against Brexit, at every turn he led the people’s vote campaign to overturn the referendum."

He continued: “More positions on Brexit than the Kama Sutra, in, out, in, out, shake it all about.

“Here’s a guy we simply cannot trust, suddenly he’s saying 'trust me on Brexit to try and win over the voters.'

“Now I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, the voters don’t and his own party don’t.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has since spoken out against Sir Keir's comments, arguing for a return to the single market.

He said: “I believe our city and our country’s future is best served being members of the single market.”



Conservatives have to replace Boris Johnson to remain in power says Neil Parish: 'It's not if, it's now when'

But Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry has come out in defence of the plan.

She told GB News' Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel: "Many of us in the Labour Party campaigned to remain in the European Union, we lost the referendum.

"There were then campaigns in the two general elections, 2017 and 2019.

"2019, in particular, which was about Brexit. It was a single issue general election, we lost it.

"So now what we have to do is accept the reality, it’s a one-way street we have gone, and the fact of the matter is we would not be able to rejoin the European Union on the same term as we were before, it is simply impossible.

"So what we should be doing is making the best of the situation and we should be moving on and looking forward and being optimistic.

"But being prepared to face the problems we have as a nation, face the problems that we have with our nearest neighbours and make sure that we sort it out, not just be afraid as the Government are, they spend their time running away from it going 'don’t criticise us, you’re being unpatriotic'."

Starmer unveils new three-word Brexit slogans for Labour Party

The Labour leader said there is "no going back" and that he would "make Brexit work" in an era-defining change of tack.

 by Jack Peat
2022-07-05 
in Politics


Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU or the single market if Labour comes to power, insisting such moves would sow further division in Britain.

He also said the UK would not join a customs union under his party’s leadership, as he set out a five-point plan to “make Brexit work”.

Sir Keir said Labour is “claiming the centre ground of British politics once again”, not from a “mushy place of compromise”, but driven by “purpose” and “optimism”.

He said he would say more about how it intends to get the country’s economy growing again “in the weeks and months to come”, but the first step is to make a success of leaving the EU.

“Make Brexit work”

In a speech to the Centre for European Reform at an event at the Irish Embassy in London, he said: “There are some who say, ‘We don’t need to make Brexit work – we need to reverse it’. I couldn’t disagree more.

“Because you cannot move forward or grow the country or deliver change or win back the trust of those who have lost faith in politics if you’re constantly focused on the arguments of the past.

“We cannot afford to look back over our shoulder because all the time we are doing that we are missing what is ahead of us.

“So let me be very clear. Under Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.”

“Stuck”

Sir Keir claimed the country is “stuck” with a Government without a plan – one that was elected on a promise to get Brexit done but “has now decided to re-open those old divisions” to keep Prime Minister Boris Johnson in charge.

He acknowledged some may not want to hear Britain would not return to the single market or a customs union under Labour, but added “it is my job to be frank and honest”.

“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world,” he said.

“It would simply be a recipe for more division, it would distract us from taking on the challenges facing people and it would ensure Britain remained stuck for another decade.”

Sir Keir said the “starting point” of Labour’s plan for making Brexit work is to “sort out the Northern Ireland Protocol”.

Border checks

The party would eliminate “most border checks created by the Tory Brexit deal”, he said, and implement a “new veterinary agreement for Agri-products between the UK and EU”.

It would also work with business to put in place a “better scheme” to allow low-risk goods to enter Northern Ireland without “unnecessary checks”, he said.

The Labour leader admitted Britain would not be able to deliver “completely frictionless trade” with the EU outside of the bloc, but said there are “things we can do” to ease the process.

“Labour would extend that new veterinary agreement to cover all the UK, seeking to build on agreements and mechanisms already in place between the EU and other countries – benefiting our exporters at a stroke,” he said.

He pointed to a “hulking ‘fatberg’ of red tape and bureaucracy” under the deal brokered by the Conservatives, claiming this is “hampering the flow of British business”.

“We will break that barrier down, unclog the arteries of our economy and allow trade to flourish once more,” he added.

It comes amid a fierce row over the Government’s plans to overwrite parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol to allay concerns over its impact on the UK.

Post-Brexit treaty

Legislation to grant ministers the necessary powers to see this through cleared its first Commons hurdle last week, with no Tory MPs voting against it despite warnings the plans are illegal.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Mr Johnson claimed few global leaders raised the issue of the post-Brexit treaty with him at recent summits.

In response to questioning from Sir Keir, he said: “He talks about the UK’s diplomatic ability to win people over.

“It was very striking in the conversations I had with leaders from around the world how few of them, if any, raised the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol and how much people want to see common sense and no new barriers to trade.

“What the UK is doing is trying to reduce pointless barriers to trade and you’d have thought that he would support that.”

The remainder of Labour’s plan would see Britain’s industries supported by “mutual recognition of professional qualifications” and restored access to funding and research programmes, new security arrangements to defend the nation’s borders, and the delivery of “good, clean jobs of the future to our shores”.

Vote for change

Concluding his keynote speech, Sir Keir added: “In 2016, the British people voted for change. The very narrow question that was on the ballot paper – leaving or remaining in the EU – is now in the past.

“But the hope that underpinned that vote – the desire for a better, fairer, more equitable future for our country is no closer to being delivered.

“We will not return to freedom of movement to create short-term fixes, instead we will invest in our people and our places and deliver on the promise our country has.”

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow international trade secretary, suggested the party would not change its position on the matter even if public opinion shifted decisively against Brexit.

Asked on LBC’s Tonight With Andrew Marr if his party would think again if this were the case, he said: “We are not going to change our minds.”

Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Sir Keir of a “half-cock” attempt at copying the Conservatives’ plans.

Ahead of the Labour leader’s speech, he told LBC: “I’m fascinated by what he’s got to say, or reports of it … and what he wants to do, by and large, is things either that the Conservatives are doing (because) they want to change the Northern Ireland Protocol, so I hope he’ll support us on our Bill.

“And he wants recognition of qualifications, which we’ve already legislated for. So you do wonder if he was half asleep last year.

“I think all that Sir Keir is going to be saying later on today is that he wants to do what the Conservatives are doing but half-cock, so it’s not much of an announcement by him today.”

Earlier, during a round of broadcast interviews, Sir Keir said recent election results show Labour is making significant progress on the road to regaining power.

He told Sky News: “They (the Government) are on a downwards spiral and we are coming up.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/07/making-labour-better-tory-party-make.html

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