Day: November 12, 2020

With Donald Trump just months away from leaving the White House, talk has turned to what will become of his favourite child.

Daughter Ivanka is currently serving as an adviser to her presidential pop, but is seeking to distance herself from the fallout that has resulted from his administration’s refusal to recognise Joe Biden’s victory in the recent election.

According to the Daily Mail, sources claim that Ivanka “has been quietly urging her father to throw in the towel and concede the election to Biden, as she sets her sights on her own future White House run”.

A Washington insider told the paper: “Ivanka has her own agenda. She’s has had her eyes on the desk behind the Oval Office since day one and she’s not about to burn any bridges by mouthing off like [her brother] Don Jr, who keeps lashing out on Twitter.

“Everything she puts out is calculated and well thought out, because she’s always looking at the big picture.”

Until then, Ivanka may return to The Trump Organization, where she worked prior to officially joining the White House team in 2017.

But the family business “may not be the most stable workplace when her father leaves office”, with the Manhattan district attorney’s office seeking Trump’s tax returns in a “complex financial investigation”, says The Guardian.

“The New York state attorney general’s office is also investigating whether the Trump Organization and its agents wrongly inflated the value of Seven Springs estate, a property north of New York City,” the paper adds.

One option that is definitely out for Ivanka is returning to her fashion line, which was shut down in 2018.

At the time, she characterised the move as being “driven by a commitment to the work she is doing as part of her father’s administration”, The New York Times reported.

But as The Guardian notes, the circumstances preceding the announcement “weren’t promising”.

Luxury department store chains “Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom dropped her line in 2017, claiming poor performance”, says the paper, and a campaign calling on online retailers “to drop the brand in protest of Trump administration policies” had also been launched.

A major inquiry into undercover policing in the UK has finally begun almost six years after being announced by then home secretary Theresa May.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is “one of the most complicated, expensive and delayed public inquiries in British legal history”, the BBC reports. The investigation centres on allegations of systematic abuses by so-called spycops that date back more than four decades.

Why was the inquiry launched?

The UCPI was established in early 2015 in response to a series of allegations that May said amounted to evidence of “historical failings” by undercover policing units. Among these allegations were that the parents of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence had been spied on while campaigning for justice – claims that the police admitted were true.

After finally getting under way in London last week, the jury-led inquiry is looking at how at least “139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups” over a period spanning back to 1968, writes investigative reporter Rob Evans, author of Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police.

Two undercover units are at the heart of the inquiry: the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which worked in London, and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) which operated across the UK. Both units have since been disbanded.

The inquiry, which is expected to continue for at least three years, is focusing first on the SDS.

The group was put together in the late 1960s amid protests over the Vietnam War, in response to “official concerns that public anger over the issue and unrest in Europe, particularly in Paris, signalled that far-left groups in England and Wales were planning disorder on home soil”, says The Independent.

“At first, officers were deployed undercover for weeks or months,” says the newspaper, but as the unit extended its investigations to infiltrate a long list organisations and trade unions, some of these assignments lasted for years.

The inquiry to expected to hear evidence from more than 200 witnesses, including politicians and Whitehall officials who oversaw the undercover operations.

Thousands of confidential documents that police “assumed would never see the light of day” are also due to be published, The Guardian reports. “However, one large tranche of documents, which may have shed light on operations since the 1990s, will not be released because it was recently destroyed by police.”

Policing the bedroom

One of the most sensitive issues to be explored by the inquiry are allegations that multiple undercover police officers deceived women into sexual relationships while using fake identities. One undercover officer, Bob Lambert, fathered a child with his unwitting partner, an animal rights campaigner, before disappearing from their lives when his deployment ended in the late 1980s.

The Independent‘s home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden quotes a woman named only as Lisa, to protect her identity, describing how another spycop – Mark Kennedy – was “put in my life deliberately to deceive me”.

“Over 30 women have found they were also in relationships with people who didn’t exist,” Lisa added.

These cases date back to the 1970s and suggest that the “targeting of women may have been considered a justified means for officers to embed themselves deep into the movements they were targeting”, says the BBC.

In 2015, the Metropolitan Police issued an “unreserved apology” and paid compensation to seven women who had been deceived into relationships.

But many more are still waiting for justice – and other women have also suffered. Last week, a statement was made to the inquiry on behalf of three women who “believed they were making personal sacrifices” so their police officer husbands could go undercover to infiltrate political groups during long-term deployments.

“Those women fulfilled their role dutifully, towards both their husbands and the honourable causes they believed they were serving – the fight against crime, terror and violence,” the statement read.

“These sacrifices came with a heavy price for their own lives and their families, and they believed they were making them for all of us, the public.”

Spy games

Another major issue being tackled by the inquiry is the police’s use of undercover officers to infiltrate political groups, as well as intensive surveillance of private citizens.

Particular focus is being placed on how officers “circled” the family of murdered teenager Lawrence, “looking to smear them instead of catching their son’s killers”, the Daily Mail says.

The inquiry has heard that the family “were not terrorists, criminals or any threat to public order” and that there was “no conceivable justification” for the snooping.

A statement prepared by Imran Khan QC on behalf of Lawrence’s mother said that the family is “losing confidence” in “this inquiry’s ability to get to the truth”.

Another spying victim in the spotlight is left-wing writer and public intellectual Tariq Ali, who was monitored by at least 14 undercover police officers due to his anti-war campaigning.

“Previously secret reports disclosed how police spied on Ali as he helped promote political campaigns against the Vietnam War, violent racist assaults, fascism and other progressive causes,” investigative reporter Evans writes in The Guardian. Ali told the inquiry that “grotesque” police reports detailing such operations showed the spying network was “utterly out of control”.

Are the undercover operations still happening?

The Metropolitan Police has “repeatedly sought to paint the scandal as largely historical, and has never been drawn on whether such operations continue”, Evans reports.

The retired judge leading the inquiry, John Mitting, last week demanded to know whether the force is currently infiltrating political groups or helping the MI5 to monitor people considered to be subversives.

But Met Police barrister Peter Skelton failed to answer the question, simply saying that his opening statement had not been intended to “imply anything about the scope of the Metropolitan Police’s present undercover work”.

In response, Mitting warned that “they are questions that in due course I will want to be answered”.

Numbering a minimum total of eight million archived objects, the British Museum’s collections hold many surprises. Along with Neolithic animal remains, a shaman’s amulet carved from an antler tine and a pet cat’s wooden sarcophagus, this historical treasure trove hides an anatomically-shaped find with a difference. Crafted in Italy from polished silver, object number 2007,8006.18 is in fact a piece of contemporary jewellery produced by American brand Tiffany & Co. and dreamed up by Elsa Peretti.

The Italian designer’s Bone cuff forms part of a group of 30 Peretti creations that the London museum acquired in 2009. This collection includes a Japanese hardwood hairpin lacquered gold, a teardrop-shaped medallion pendant and a clear rock-crystal perfume flacon carved by Hong Kong artisans.

Peretti joined Tiffany & Co. in 1974, and her Bone cuff – which the designer had finished four years earlier – featured in her debut collection for the luxury brand. Its design and make-up proved revolutionary. When it came to moulding her cuff, Peretti had championed the use of sterling silver, which was then a rarely used alloy in fine jewellery despite being more affordable than gold. Jewellery lovers embraced her pioneering approach, with Tiffany & Co. ringing up the till for customers including Liza Minnelli, who was guided by her friend, fashion designer Halston. His advice was that “you can’t afford gold, and men have to give you diamonds, so you’re going to wear silver”.

Peretti had also rebelled against traditional with the Bone cuff’s pared-back finish, in a period dominated by gem-set, ornamental finery. The cuff’s anatomical curved outline encases the wearer’s wrists – separate versions are sculpted to fit either the left or right wrist – and a circular rise gives space for the nodule-like ending of the arm’s ulna bone.

To Peretti, the Bone cuff is highly personal: its inspirations stem from the Italian creative’s biography. Peretti was born in Florence but was educated in Rome and Switzerland. Memories of childhood visits to the crypt of a 17th-century Capuchin church in Rome that featured walls decorated with bones were a key source of inspiration when sketching the cuff. Also on her moodboards were images of the undulating walls of Casa Milà, the last private residence that Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí mapped out for this hometown of Barcelona.

Peretti had lived in Barcelona in the early 1960s while working as a model, following previous stints as an Italian language teacher, ski instructor and trainee to a Milanese interior designer. From Barcelona, she crossed the Atlantic to arrive in New York in 1968. Here, her career took off.

Peretti had begun making jewellery during her modelling years, with her early creations including vase-like pendants inspired by bud vases that she found at flea markets. The design would later appear on the runway of Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo. For Halston, Peretti authored pale ivory amulets and horseshoe belt buckles. Her work garnered the attention of many, including Tiffany & Co.

Her subsequent designs for the New York City-based brand are noted for their sensual interaction with the human form. Her tactile second-skin Mesh necklaces are a joy to touch and drape harmoniously against the wearer’s skin; while the chain necklace of her best-selling Bean measure 18in, calculated to centre on clavicles. Elsewhere, her approach is that of a sculptor, manipulating her materials – jade, lacquer and rattan count among Peretti’s favoured mediums, along with silver — to shape organic forms.

Her Bone cuff is viewed by many as her finest creation, however. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of its marquee designs, Tiffany & Co. has issued new styles of Peretti’s anatomical gem. In May, the brand unveiled a trio of vibrantly finished designs – green, red and blue – made from lightweight copper. Cuffs finessed with hand-set carved stones, including white, black or green jade, golden-hued tiger’s eye and turquoise, followed this September.

When the British Museum added Peretti’s creations to its collection, it did so to highlight the many relationships between designers, brands – in this case, Tiffany & Co. – and specialist makers, and how these ties can extend across cultures and borders. The institution’s selection also includes a red lacquer minaudière bag; a bean-shaped accessory carved from hardwood by artisans working in the Japanese city of Wajima. Japanese artisanship has long influenced Peretti’s work too, and in a nod to this inspiration, Tiffany & Co. has collaborated with experiential retailer Dover Street Market on a special-edition Bone cuff fitted with densely-surfaced snowflake obsidian that will be available until January.

“Dover Street Market’s curated style edit, and the iconic collaborations it is known for, makes it the ideal partner for Elsa Peretti’s timeless Bone cuffs,” says Reed Krakoff, Tiffany & Co.’s chief artistic officer. “It’s a great way to expose the pieces to new consumers who value unique design and style.”