United Kingdom: Children being kidnapped from residences set up by Home Office

 Another day, another scandal

Dozens of asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south coast, an Observer investigation can reveal.

A whistleblower, who works for Home Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources describe children being abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars.

“Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers,” said the source.

It has also emerged that the Home Office was warned repeatedly by police that the vulnerable occupants of the hotel – asylum-seeking children who had recently arrived in the UK without parents or carers – would be targeted by criminal networks.

About 600 unaccompanied children have passed through the Sussex hotel in the past 18 months, with 136 reported missing. More than half of these – 79 – remain unaccounted for.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, described the revelation as “truly appalling and scandalous” and called on the government to reveal how many children had disappeared and what was being done to find them.

She added: “Suella Braverman [the home secretary] has failed to act on the repeated warnings she has been given about totally inadequate safeguards for children in their care.

“It is a total dereliction of duty for the Home Office to so badly fail to protect child safety or crack down on the dangerous gangs putting them in terrible risk. Ministers must urgently put new protection arrangements in place.”

The Mitie whistleblower also described witnessing children being in effect trafficked from a similar hotel run by the Home Office in Hythe, Kent, estimating that 10% of its youngsters disappeared each week.

The child protection source said some of the children missing from the Brighton hotel may have been trafficked as far away as Manchester and Scotland. One case is under investigation by the Metropolitan police in London.

Data published in October showed 222 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were missing from hotels run by the Home Office. Ministers admitted that they had no idea of their whereabouts.

This is Britain today. Well, while the mass media dwell in scandals surrounding the Royal Family, Harry and Meghan, and so forth, the stench of criminality in the United Kingdom is spreading in every direction. Under Labour, and for more than 16 years, children were drugged, raped and killed while local MPs chose to look the other way for fear of being called 'Racists'. A Labour government ignored the plight of thousands of vulnerable children that were taken away from child refuges. Now, it is happening under a Conservative government. Yvette Cooper MP, who now denounces what is happening under a Conservative government, was a member of the said Labour government.

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that no new guidance for police has been issued for tracking down missing asylum-seeking children, with sources saying it remains in “development”.

New data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that newly arrived unaccompanied children spend an average of 16.5 days in Home Office hotels before being transferred into council care around the country.

When asked to comment, Brighton and Hove city council, which traditionally cares for child asylum seekers when they arrive in the UK without parents or guardians, referred queries on criminals targeting children to the police. Sussex police said queries on criminals targeting the children should be addressed to the Home Office.

The Home Office said: “Local authorities have a statutory duty to protect all children, regardless of where they go missing from. In the concerning occasion when a child goes missing, they work closely with other local agencies, including the police, to urgently establish their whereabouts and ensure they are safe.

“We have robust safeguarding procedures in place to ensure all children in our care are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority.”

Brighton and Hove city council added: “We have been actively involved when any child is reported missing and have worked with the police and other agencies to try to trace them.”

Catherine Hankinson, National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for missing persons, said regular multi-agency meetings by police reviewed the response to every missing migrant child who had not been located.

 

Ukraine: Dwight Einsenhower was right all along

 

General Dwight Einsenhower
(later President Dwight Einsenhower)

When the then Commander of Allied Forces in Europe raised the alert about the power of weapons industries to get completely out of control, he was right all along and what happened along decades has proven that he was rightly concerned about the consequences of the fever to make vast amounts of money by promoting conflicts everywhere.

During a recent interview, Oliver North - a former advisor to President Ronald Reagan - merely confirmed that the military escalade not just in Europe but also across areas bordering China - is a business much more than a geopolitical issue. This is the place where geopolitical reasons are used as a pretext to spend and spend taxpayers money to enrich the military industrial complex.

William Hartung, especialized in defense analysis and coverage of economics of the Pentagon, indicates that the United States and its NATO allies have spent tens of billions in the conflict in Ukraine, but that the Pentagon, the military services and the big weapons contractors appear to be poised to seize on this crisis to permanently expand the size and scope of the US arms industry in ways that go far beyond what is needed.

Amont the plans being floated, indicates William Hartung, is the construction of new weapons factories, dramatically increasing production of ammunition, anti-tank weapons and others systems, and easing oversight of weapons procurement. This is reducing controls in terms of the monies spent.

Lack of supervision of monies spent to create something that William Hartung indicates is both unnecessary and unwise. There is the certain risk of lowering safeguards against waste and poor performance. To put in everyday language, there is the danger of producing bad quality equipment and wasting resources that could be used to meet other urgent priorities.

The issue remains that, as Oliver North stated, so called aid for Ukraine is in fact monies that never reach Ukraine, but benefit directly the military industrial complex in the USA transforming aggresion into a very profitable business for corporations but being very bad deal for the USA.

More will be revealed once Congress passes the Fiscal Year 2023 Pentagon spending bill and the administration announces its proposal for Fiscal Year 2024 early next year, states William Hartung. Given the present impass concerning the election of the Leader of the House of Representatives with Republicans that don't seem to be to agree who is going to replace the outgoing Nancy Pelosi, one can imagine that the present political entanglement will add delay upon delay. In the meantime, there is every sing that procurement will go ahead without much needed supervision. The amount involved much exceed the amount  committed to the conflict in Ukraine.

Apparently, Army Acquisition chief Doug Bush announced that there are plans to triple ammunition production and double production of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers. The Pentagon's overall weapons acquisition chief William LaPlante is said to be pushing measures to speed up production of weapons and this would include multy-year production commitments. William LaPlante counts on Congress to add billions of dollars into the so called industrial base to fund these production lines.

Going back to Ukraine being used as justification for massive long term military investment, this looks and sounds like preparation for another conflict - namely a war against China. Having said that the equipment being made would be for fighting on the ground and there is no prospect of the US fighting a war against China on land.

Judging by other endeavours like the F-35, that has been seen as overpriced and underperforming, there is the issue that the numbers being built will exceed what is needed as a trend towards unmanned aircraft is prevailing. With regards to aircraft carriers, William Hartung says that aircraft carriers are extremely expensive and increasingly vulnerable and that this makes them a very poor investment.

No need to be reminded of Admiral Erich Raeder who gave priority to the construction of big ships like the Bismark, ship that ended up being sank no long after a naval encounter. Karl Dönitz asked for more U-Boots, but Admiral Raeder had other ideas. After a major encounter, the surface fleet with its expensive ships could not play a major role and by the time Karl Dönitz became Admiral crucial had been lost because Germany did not have enough U-Boots to take advantage of a temporary window of opportunity. This risk is ever present when it comes to weaponry. By the time the Eurofighter became available it was already outdated. Mechanical failures and delays have the F-35 not a very good choice.

In recent months, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany was planning to invest more than 230 billion Euro to beef-up German Armed Forces and among his plans was the acquisition of F-35 aircraft. While the now President of the European Commision Ursula von der Leyen - was then German Defense Minister - Germany had big issues with the F-35. At one point, only a few of all F-35 were actually fit for flying. Having to depend of supplies provided by foreign providers is always an issue. Something similar happenend when Britain launched its two newest aircraft carriers going to sea without fix wing aircraft. There were problems of either availability or of lack of maintenance parts.

If far too many aircraft are built that end up being obsolete even before they leave the factories, it all becomes a massive waste. This is why with American military expenditure at Pentagon level set to reach 850 billion US Dollars in 2024, William Hartung believes that the time is long overdue for a more realistic strategy and more disciplined spending priorities. 

The danger is that almost always greed takes precedence over sound decision making and that there are always excuses to over spend.