tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6781103182959789412024-03-12T18:32:41.988-07:00FREEDOM MATTERSUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-44550778179327127942013-08-19T06:35:00.005-07:002013-08-19T06:35:43.314-07:00The Last Word<span lang="EN-US">I am bringing this blog to an end, for
several reasons. The first is that it has not attracted an audience or
stimulated a debate - pity about that (but I did not promote it or advertise it
at all - I didn't even tell my friends that I was writing it.)</span>
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<span lang="EN-US">The other issue is my despair. Our freedoms
are not simply under attack - they have been grossly undermined by the actions
of the US and UK governments in the last few years. As for the UK police, words
fail me!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This week, the Guardian, which I have now
given up reading because it makes me so sad, has revealed the 'Prism' program
which apparently allows the US government to monitor telephone and internet
records of any US citizen communicating with any foreigner.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It has been suggested (and denied) that
GCHQ in Britain benefits from this information. But that is clearly untrue -
see the Guardian 22.06.13.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It has also come to my attention that a
major re-fit at Menwith Hill is under way. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, is an immense
American communicatons monitoring station on British soil and I have always
suspected that British spooks go to Menwith Hill with their requests for
surveillance rather than applying to the Home Secretary or a judge when they
need a suspect monitored.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">How happy I would be, if I knew that
suspicion were wrong.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The British state has been grossly
over-powerful, mendacious and ruthless for as many years as I have been alive.
Seventy, this year.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In 1959 or 1960 in a school boy's debate at
St. Paul's School, at the age of 16 or 17, I put to Lord Hailsham (then in the
Cabinet), the accusation that British troops had tortured and killed Kenyans
who supported (or were accused of supporting) the Mau Mau independence movement
in their country.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">He brushed it off.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It has taken 53 years for those Kenyans to
get near to justice and to receive compensation for the ghastly injuries
(including castration) inflicted by soldiers from the British army.
Compensation was agreed last week.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Hypocrisy is the British disease. Hypocrisy,
venality and lock-tugging subservience to a class system and a country which
makes us 'subjects' instead of citizens, serfs and slaves instead of
individuals with hope.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I am very frightened for my grand-children.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-72115188012769296492012-11-18T03:26:00.002-08:002012-11-18T03:26:41.850-08:00The Hillsborough disaster<br />
I have been meaning to write about Hillsborough - the disaster, many years ago, when 96 football fans died and the police tried to lie and blame the catastrophe on the victims.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, it makes me so sad, so angry that I have been unable to do so.<br />
<br />
This account, from a survivor of that day, says everything I could possibly say - and then some:<br />
<br />
(from the Guardian, September 14th., 2012)<br />
<br />
"First of all, apologies are due to Our Lady, for the language. When the Hillsborough Independent Panel filed in to the press conference in the chapel of Our Lady in Liverpool's majestic Anglican cathedral, just before midday on Wednesday, the mood was sombre. Within half an hour, the air was a shade of blue; 100 journalists gathered in the chapel swearing in disbelief at the revelations contained in this landmark report.<br />
<br />
As a survivor of the disaster, I had a rare perspective among the media. I survived the crush in pen 3; many of the 96 died in front of me. Unable to move for over half an hour, I was condemned to watch them cry for help, throw up, plead for their lives and die. When the police finally opened the gate in the fence and the crush abated, around a dozen of them simply keeled over and hit the concrete. A heap of corpses piled up in front of me. One police officer said the scene "was like Belsen".<br />
<br />
The noise will never leave me. Yesterday, there were periods of profound silence between the many questions directed first towards the panel and then the family groups. I almost broke that with my own tears when it was revealed that 41 of the dead might have been saved.<br />
<br />
A shocking number – so large that, had those 41 been saved, Hillsborough would not stand today as the biggest disaster in British sport. That claim to notoriety would belong to the Ibrox disaster of 1971, which claimed 66 lives.<br />
<br />
The fact that the outrageous lies of the South Yorkshire police, accepted by Kelvin MacKenzie, were chiselled away, slowly, carefully and forensically over 23 years, lent this process a weight in the public mind that a judicial review, convened perhaps over a few short months, could not have achieved.<br />
<br />
This, however, should not be time for a celebration of the peculiarly evolutionary nature of British justice: this was driven by grief left to fester for 23 years. People can accept that terrible things happen if accountability and truth follow. "We will always be the losers in this," Margaret Aspinall said. But as one reporter replied: "Yes, but Margaret, this is the first time I think I've ever seen you smile."<br />
<br />
Survivors and families have lived with very different nightmares since 1989: the bereaved suffered intense grief; survivors bore the trauma.<br />
<br />
They are different conditions, and require different treatments. Justice and truth are perhaps the only remedy that can heal us both.<br />
<br />
What did I realistically hope for this week? I hoped that the lies peddled by the police and the Sun would be exposed. They were detonated. I hoped that people would recognise the families as we know them, ordinary people who retained their dignity amid extraordinary grief. They were magnificent. I could not possibly have hoped that the panel would do such a fine job, and it must take enormous credit, propelled by the remarkable Phil Scraton. And while I expected some form of vindication, I did not expect to find myself at the heart of a historic event. When the Daily Mirror's Brian Reade asked if we had seen the biggest cover-up in British history, Michael Mansfield QC simply answered: "Yes."<br />
<br />
I felt a sense for the first time that this tragedy was no longer mine, or other survivors', or the families' – it belongs now to the nation, both as a wake-up call, a warning of how systemically justice can be corrupted, and as a reminder that right can still triumph over might. Liverpool and Liverpool fans have done the nation a great service here. We never gave up: we had to take on not one police force but two (one curious omission for me was the role of the West Midlands police), the rightwing media, the legal system and successive governments. And we won.<br />
<br />
There is no bitterness on my part that the public took 23 years to wake up to our nightmare. Their ignorance was their faith in the media and in the police. This has suffered a huge blow and the fact surely cannot go unnoticed by Lord Justice Leveson. I also hope, as a southerner, that the people of Liverpool will no longer be subjected to the lazy, callous stereotypes peddled off the back of the Sun's lies.<br />
<br />
As the rain fell outside the chapel, the panel began proceedings with its distinctly 21st-century language (it would offer no "value judgments"). But last night, in the Ship and Mitre pub in Liverpool city centre, an 80s revival was in full swing. Fleet Street's finest sunk beers and sang songs with Labour MPs Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham, with the families, survivors and other campaigners. And through a night when the streets of Liverpool appeared to be paved with springs, there was still magnanimity: I heard not one note of scepticism about David Cameron's speech. He was universally applauded for setting the tone of a historic day with a compassionate and unequivocal response in the Commons. Credit where it's due. Now let's have justice where it's due."<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-18236722567920599822012-07-21T00:21:00.001-07:002012-11-18T03:32:45.420-08:00Laugh 0r Cry<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Guy Taylor, now 45, enquired what data the police held on him, as he is entitled to under the data protection act.</span><br />
<br />
He was (and is) a political activist and he discovered, probably to his delight, that the police had been seriously interested in the stall he helped to set up at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 and that a police spy reported that this stall "was selling political publications and merchandise of an XLW (extremely left wing) anti-capitalist nature."<br />
<br />
Good on them, say I. Anyone who hadn't turned anti-capitalist by 2009 can't have been reading the newspapers.<br />
<br />
Mr. Taylor deserves the last word:<br />
<br />
"I can't understand what use information about what I did at Glastonbury has for the Metropolitan police. If they need to know the plans and schemes of anti-capitalists, the worst place to look is Glastonbury as we were rarely in a fit state to plan the downfall of a parish council, let alone the world financial system as we know it."<br />
<br />
Mr. Taylor has one conviction, for spray painting in 1991, when he must have been about 15 years old.<br />
<br />
His attendance at political demonstrations and at Glastonbury has been monitored ever since.<br />
<br />
(Guardian, 16 July 2012)<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-62385812016514591022012-06-12T09:20:00.000-07:002013-08-19T06:40:20.367-07:00Stunnning!<br />
The most obstreperous, bad-tempered and argumentative Prime Minister of recent times (Gordon Brown) did not believe he could get away with telling the Murdoch Press to fuck right off even when the suggestion was that they should publish intimate and confidential information about the illness of his child. Which they did.<br />
<br />
Murdoch and his operations have disgusted and repulsed me ever since he first graced these shores. But this is the ultimate measure of his corrupting influence on British life and British politics.<br />
<br />
Do everything you can to take Murdoch down. Don't buy his newspapers and books, don't go to his movies, vote and agitate against him and his cohorts whenever you can.<br />
<br />
(Oh, and do anything you can to get rid of Jeremy Hunt, the 'Minister for Murdoch' as well. It is time he went too.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-75974914735531841322012-04-27T13:04:00.000-07:002012-06-04T22:55:04.259-07:00It gets worse - broadcasting<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 14px;">Polly Toynbee in the Guardian 26th. April:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">"... here's a reminder of what Hunt was about to unleash on the country, with Cameron and George Osborne's approval. If Murdoch were allowed to own all BSkyB, within a year or two he would package all his newspapers on subscription or online together with his movie and sports channels in offers consumers could hardly refuse, at loss-leading prices. Other news providers, including this one, would be driven out, or reduced to a husk. His would be the commanding news voice. Except for the BBC – which his media have attacked relentlessly for years.</span></div>
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Sky's dominance over the BBC is already looming: now past its investment phase, Sky's income is multiplying fast at £5.5bn a year, against the BBC's static £3.5bn. Sky's growing billions can buy everything, not only sports and movies, but every best series: the BBC trains and develops talent, predatory Sky will snatch it. Nor is Sky that good for the Treasury: for every £1 in Sky subscriptions, 90p flees the country, straight to News Corp and Hollywood in the US.</div>
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The BBC is remarkable value for money: Sky subscribers can pay £500 a year, the licence fee is £145 for masses more content. Sky is parasitic, as its own subscribers watch many more hours of BBC than Sky, so Sky would collapse if the BBC denied it its channels. Yet the BBC still pays £5m a year for appearing on its platform, a deal struck by Thatcher to help Murdoch.</div>
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The sum was cut, but in all other countries commercial broadcasters pay national broadcasters for the right to use their content – not the other way round. The BBC should be paid a hefty fee from BSkyB to compensate for the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/19/bbc-licence-fee-frozen" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="">16% cut it suffered</a>, partly as a result of Murdoch lobbying. The cut was pure spite, since the licence fee has no connection with Treasury deficits. Pressure persists to deprive viewers of listed national events saved to watch free on BBC: Wimbledon and the rest would go the way of Premier League football ...."</div>
<br />
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/26/murdoch-cameron-shameful-tale?INTCMP=SRCH">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/26/murdoch-cameron-shameful-tale?INTCMP=SRCH</a></div>
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</h6>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-47525286016972706352012-04-27T02:53:00.002-07:002012-06-04T23:00:58.821-07:00Uncle Rupert<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Rupert Murdoch, under interrogation at the Leveson enquiry, revealed 67 meetings with the last five Prime Ministers over the last thirty or forty years.. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This man, let us remember, is not even a British citizen. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">(I wonder if he pays any British taxes?)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I wrote immediately to the Guardian.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Dear Sir,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A private dinner with Mrs. Thatcher just before she allowed him to</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">acquire the Times and Sunday Times? A whole afternoon telling Tony </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Blair what to think about the EU? A quiet breakfast with David Cameron </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">a few days before the Sun switched sides to support the Tories?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Could someone let us know how many </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">similarly convivial and mutually convenient sessions the Editor of the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Guardian and the BBC's Director General have enjoyed with the last </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">four or five Prime Ministers?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Yours etc.,</span><br />
<b>My letter was not published. I got no answer ....</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-16530859334686816412012-04-21T01:16:00.001-07:002012-04-22T01:39:45.385-07:00Understatement - the British virtue<br />
A British citizen with a black skin, aged 28, stops to give information to the police in London.<br />
<br />
He is driving a smart car, dressed in a pin-stripe suit. Admittedly it is 3.30 in the morning and the police have been under attack from people with the same skin colour.<br />
<br />
But that is what he wants to tell them, that he has seen, that he can identify, one of the black boys throwing things at them.<br />
<br />
His name is Edric Kennedy-Macfoy.<br />
<br />
About a year and a half later, the matter has finally been resolved and has been referred to the IPCC at last.<br />
<br />
"Kennedy-Macfoy's solicitor, Shamik Dutta, of Bhatt Murphy solicitors, voiced concerns at his client's allegations, saying: "The question many people are bound to ask is why an off-duty firefighter, wearing a pinstriped suit and offering assistance to the police, should have been dragged from his car, shot with a Taser, locked up for many hours and then prosecuted for an offence he did not commit by the very officers he was trying to help."<br />
<br />
Good question?<br />
<br />
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/19/metropolitan-police-accused-racism-firefighter?INTCMP=SRCH
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-40796600385264824392012-01-17T06:21:00.000-08:002012-01-17T06:23:05.915-08:00State Executions<div>I am always depressed, and overwhelmed at Christmas. It is a sad time of the year. This year I can't walk properly, which does not make things any better.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, I must post a link and comment on an outstanding article in the Guardian today. It is written by Mehdi Hasan, described as a Senior Editor on the New Statesman. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is timely because the British government has just lost the case for deporting Abu Qatada, a fundamentalist Muslim whom the government would dearly like to get rid of. </div><div><br /></div><div>He cannot be deported but it would be OK for us to assassinate him? Does that make sense? </div><div><br /></div><div>See Hasan's striking article in full at:</div><div><br /></div><div>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/16/iran-scientists-state-sponsored-murder?INTCMP=SRCH</div><div><br /></div><div>And think about these issues in the light of the very recent assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment programme. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>".... western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals .... fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments h</i>a<i>ve arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law")."</i></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-416476828547264502011-10-29T12:38:00.000-07:002011-10-29T12:39:06.731-07:00Police and the Frailty of Truth<div><br /></div><div>"Britain's most senior police officer," (Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner) "has defended the practice of undercover officers using fake identities in court."</div><div><br /></div><div>He claimed, when he appeared before the Metropolitan Police Authority, that "there's no law that says it can't happen."</div><div><br /></div><div>That was, according to Lord Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, "a bold assertion."</div><div><br /></div><div>It is stupendously, horrifyingly, cretinously, unbelievable that a senior police officer can suggest for a moment that committing perjury in open court is OK if you happen to be a policeman. </div><div><br /></div><div>And this amazing statement was not made headline news by the supine, stupid, lazy, wicked people who run our newspapers and other media. </div><div><br /></div><div>I did not see it mentioned in Metro, the Evening Standard or on the news on Radio 4 or BBC tv. I only found out about it from the Guardian (28th. October, main section, page 8).</div><div><br /></div><div>Even the Guardian did not put this most revealing comment on the front page.</div><div><br /></div><div>What's wrong with people now? </div><div><br /></div><div>Don't they see the creeping corruption that is infecting and has infected our society? </div><div><br /></div><div>To assert that dishonest police behaviour, if tolerated and authorised by senior police officers, should also be tolerated by the courts, means that ALL our standards have gone down the path of dishonesty well trodden by the fat cats of the city and British industry, where bosses' salaries have risen hugely in the past few years while ordinary workers salaries have been rigidly controlled or even diminished.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is that the country we all want to live in?</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't understand why it is so difficult to shout these simple truths from the roof tops and get people to listen. </div><div><br /></div><div>Morality is important. </div><div><br /></div><div>Lying is wrong. </div><div><br /></div><div>Greed is not good, it is intolerable and the invidious distribution of wealth in our society will be paid back in blood.</div><div><br /></div><div>Probably soon.</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-87913715468300301062011-10-28T23:51:00.000-07:002011-10-29T11:39:22.133-07:00The Protests at St. Paul's<div><br /></div><div>St. Paul was a tent-maker. </div><div><br /></div><div>St. Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of the City of London, is currently surrounded by tents occupied by protesters opposed to capitalism and the greedy excesses of capitalism which the City now represents.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Greed is good," said the (fictional) icon, Gordon Gekko, in a movie made in the '80s. </div><div><br /></div><div>It seems otherwise now, as Western capitalism starts to collapse in upon itself like a dying star.</div><div><br /></div><div>The cathedral has been closed "for health and safety reasons" for the last week. The police are about to be called in to evict the tent-dwellers by force.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is sad, says the Canon Chancellor of St. Paul's, who has resigned from his post on this issue, that the protesters "came to occupy the Stock Exchange but ended by closing a cathedral."</div><div><br /></div><div>But what do the protesters want? What are their demands? What answers do they propose? </div><div><br /></div><div>"Answers?" wrote an anonymous commentator on the Guardian's internet column. "They barely have questions."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why should they have all the answers," retorted another, "There is no such thing as all the answers."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's pretty obvious what people want first off," wrote a third. "To show how damn angry and frustrated they are with the status quo and how much they want change. It will take a long time, longer even than a winter's camping on St. Paul's cobbles, but this is as good a place to start as any."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >(Sources: Guardian 29th. October, G2 p. 15 and main section interview.)</span></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-73750168633667807112011-10-04T12:03:00.001-07:002011-10-29T11:40:25.341-07:00Britain is best .... but at what?<div><br /></div><div><b>UK has 'worst quality of life in Europe'</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Survey of 10 developed European countries puts UK at bottom of the pile due to high costs of living, while France takes top spot</div><div><br /></div><div>Mark King</div><div>Thursday September 29 2011</div><div>The Guardian</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/29/uk-worst-quality-of-life-europe</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The UK has been named the worst place to live in Europe for quality of life, behind countries with damaged economies such as Ireland and Italy, according to the latest uSwitch [http://www.uswitch.com/" title="uSwitch website] quality of life index.</div><div><br /></div><div>The UK emerged as having the second lowest hours of sunshine a year, the fourth highest retirement age, and the third lowest spend on health as a percentage of GDP.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite above average household income ? the fourth highest in Europe ? Britons have 5.5 fewer days holiday a year than the European average and endure a below average government spend on education.</div><div><br /></div><div>UK households also struggle with a high cost of living, with food and diesel prices the highest in Europe, and unleaded petrol, alcohol and cigarettes all costing more than the European average.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a result, more than one in 10 Britons (12%) said they are "seriously considering" emigrating, with "broken society" the biggest concern for 59% of those questioned, followed by the cost of living (49%), and crime and violence (47%). Just 5% of those questioned are happy in the UK.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >(A later report, a few days later, from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, seemed to suggest the opposite of this, that Britain was rather popular with its inhabitants, but few details were published and they did not seem very convincing. When I tried to look up the report on the OECD's web-site, I could not find any mention of it. Did it ever exist? Was the newspaper 'story' about it just that, a story?)</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-58572946591527641922011-08-23T12:10:00.000-07:002011-09-21T12:24:49.803-07:00Another thing I love about Britain - hypocrisy!<span lang="EN-US">Politicians have waxed lyrical about the "evident criminality" of the rioters and looters who took part in disturbances in London and many other English cities last week. They have also demanded the most severe penalties.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The legislature and the judiciary are (supposedly) separate bodies in the U.K. It is not, as one columnist put it, for politicians to cheer or boo the decisions of the supposedly independent judges and magistrates. This did not seem to constrain anyone. Indeed, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service went out of its way to clarify the position:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"Sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary," it said. (But) "... justices' clerks and legal advisers in magistrates courts have a responsibility to give advice to magistrates on sentencing guidelines .... Accordingly magistrates in London are being advised by their legal advisers to consider whether their powers of punishment are sufficient in dealing with some cases arising from the recent disorder."<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">So that is clear then. The judiciary and magistrates are independent. On the other hand all their professional advisers are telling them to ratchet up the sentences they give and send offenders to the Crown Courts if magistrates' powers seem insufficient.<span style=""> </span>This advice reflects the vengeful ambitions of the politicians (led by the Prime Minister). </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">From the Guardian, 16th. August: "The Chair of Camberwell Green magistrates' court, Novello Noades, went so far as to claim that the court had been given a government "directive" that anyone involved in the rioting be given a custodial sentence. She later retracted her statement and said that she was mortified to have used the term 'directive'."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Whatever you call it, the 'directive' has had its effect and the results of this advice from the politicians have been ludicrous. It would be a laughable situation were the sentences imposed not so extreme that they will wreck the lives of some young people and incite rather than deter active expressions of protest and dissent. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span>A youth was sent to prison for six months for stealing bottled water valued at £3.50. Two others were sent to prison for four years each (FOUR YEARS) for posting riotous suggestions on Facebook (though absolutely no one responded and one of them took the suggestions down as soon as he sobered up.)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was - for once - completely right when he stated (before he came into office) that austerity policies and excessive deflationary pressures would lead to riots. These were his words before the last election, which Gary Younge recalled in an excellent article in the Guardian on Monday 15th. August:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"Imagine the Conservatives ... get an absolute majority, on 25% of the eligible votes .... They then turn around in the next week or two and say we're going to chuck up VAT to 20%, we're going to start cutting teachers, cutting the police, and the wage bill in the public sector. I think if you're not careful in that situation ... you'd get Greek-style unrest."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Tories got 23% of the eligible vote. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nick Clegg and his party have actively supported cutting teachers' pay, cutting the numbers of the police and axing the wage bill in the public sector.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Result? Unsurprisingly?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">".... Greek-style unrest."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Given how much politicians pocketed before the expenses scandal and the autocratic disdain with which they paid back the money (without remorse) when forced to do so, it does not behove them to call for poor people to be sent to prison for ludicrously long periods. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Most of the politicians stole much more than £3.50. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-67229420749450654562011-08-13T23:51:00.000-07:002011-09-21T12:21:20.234-07:00The riots and the death of Mark Duggan<span lang="EN-US">It seems a long time since Murdoch and the News of the World were the most important things going on in the world - yet it is only a few weeks. In the last seven days, Britain has been rocked by the unexpected and amazingly destructive riots that have taken place in many English cities. </span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> The riots started in Tottenham in London where a young black man was killed by the police in circumstances which the police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission have successfully made suspicious. The first accounts of the incident were (probably deliberately) intended to mislead. This was the Guardian internet headline, over an article by Paul Lewis and Sandra Laville dated 13 August:</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Mark Duggan death: IPCC says it inadvertently misled media<br /></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Police watchdog says it led media to believe shots were exchanged but Duggan was carrying gun that was never used</span></p> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span lang="EN-US">The text of the internet version of this article is at:</span></span></p> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span lang="EN-US">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/mark-duggan-ipcc-misled-media?INTCMP=SRCH</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It is very convenient, if the police shoot a man hastily, mistakenly or by accident, to discover a gun in his pocket or near his cold dead fingers. American cops used to carry unidentifiable 'throwdown' weapons for just this purpose. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The weapon that Mark Duggan is said to have been carrying has variously been described as a converted starting pistol or a replica gun converted to fire real bullets. There was, it has been said, just one bullet in it. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If Duggan was, as the police allege, a major drug dealer and pusher, could he not have got himself a more impressive weapon?<span style=""> </span>And should he not have been in a luxurious Range Rover rather than a mini-cab when he was shot?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The whole thing stinks. And it was to find out what the police would say about it that a protest march led by Duggan's family members went to the police station on Friday 6th. August.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">They were kept waiting for, it seems, five hours. No one would come out and tell them what was going on, what the IPCC were doing or why the police had shot Duggan. Instead, the trail was muddied into obscurity by the misleading statements about Duggan opening fire on the police which are reported above.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That was when a peaceful demonstration turned into a riot; when supporters of the family of a man murdered or at least killed by the police sought a peaceful explanation for his death and, failing to find it, tore bits of their own community apart in protest. And a ready well of frustration in other areas, in other cities, flooded the streets with copycat violence as a result. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> As I texted to a friend later, when a Cabinet full of millionaire old Etonians informs a whole nation that it is to be impoverished, that the young now have no hope and the old have no security, it is hardly surprising when mindless mob violence born of anger and frustration erupts onto our streets.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">P.S. To my surprise, I find the Daily Telegraph's Chief Political Correspondent, Peter Oborne, expressing views very similar to those in my last paragraph in an excellent recent 'think piece'. You can read his views at this addresss:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-55512319852633901702011-07-20T09:47:00.000-07:002011-07-20T09:49:16.766-07:00She knew - she knew all the time<div>from the Guardian, 17/7/11</div><div><br /></div><div>"... (The Spectator's) current issue also carries an illuminating anecdote by the columnist Toby Young, who recalled Lis Murdoch's hen night before her marriage to Freud, when she and Rebekah Wade (then editing the News of the World, and not yet Mrs Brooks) were in a party of "boozed-up ladies" being ferried around London in "a white stretch limo". Noticing they were being followed by a Ford Mondeo in a way that suggested a paparazzo pursuit, Wade "called her picture desk and rattled off the Mondeo's number plate. In less than a minute, she had the name and telephone number of the car's owner, a notorious paparazzo." She rang the number and, Young says, told him: "If you don't stop following us, I'll personally see to it that you never work in this town again." Cue an immediate U-turn by their pursuer."</div><div><br /></div><div>OK - very amusing. </div><div><br /></div><div>So Rebekah Wade KNEW eight or ten years ago, how to get her staff to hack police or phone company data bases? </div><div><br /></div><div>HELLO! Did you all hear me? </div><div><br /></div><div>Rebekah Wade KNEW eight or ten years ago, exactly who to phone, on her staff, who could hack police or phone company data bases? In real time?</div><div><br /></div><div>And how to use that information to threaten retaliation?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, blow me - what a surprise!</div><div><br /></div><div>She seems to have forgotten that this was part of her range of talents ..... her ruthlessness, her aggression, her disregard for the legalities and, of course, she had no knowledge whatsoever of her staff doing similar bad things in the years that followed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wow!</div><div><br /></div><div>The sheer cheek makes you blink and recoil.</div><div><br /></div><div>The casual incompetent arrogance of News International is (please God) going to kill them dead!</div><div><br /></div><div>I cannot wait.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-69240697224125806182011-07-11T11:39:00.000-07:002011-07-12T10:38:53.568-07:00What I love about Britain (1-7)<div><b>What I love about Britain (1)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That an unknown Australian with a lot of his Daddy's money could come here 30 or more years ago and buy up three of the most influential newspapers and bankrupt a respectable and properly regulated satellite television company and gain monopoly control of all the satellite broadcasting in this country.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (2)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That when the same Australian transformed himself into an American we let him go on owning all that stuff. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (3)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That is was only when his staff tried to hack the Royal Family's phones that his Evil Empire started to collapse.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (4)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That in 2009, when the Guardian accused Murdoch and his staff of bad stuff like this, the Metropolitan Police rubbished the Guardian in a report which its author, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, yesterday described as "pretty crap" in a remarkably frank Sunday Telegraph article.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (5)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That Yates worked really closely, on his "crap" 2009 report with Ken Macdonald, then Head of the Crown Prosecution Service.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (6)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That Ken Macdonald, now Lord Macdonald, is currently retained by News International to "advise them on their dealings with the police." </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What I love about Britain (7)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That you couldn't possibly make it up.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>PS - What I also love about Britain:</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The Guardian correction this morning. </div><div><br /></div><div>Lord Macdonald "has given some advice to the company (News International) about the ... issue of allegedly corrupt payments to police on the part of News of the World journalists." </div><div> </div><div>Which sounds like he is advising them on their newspaper's dealings with the police?</div><div><br /></div><div>He has not been "retained" but he does "give them some advice."</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, does he give them this advice for free?</div><div><br /></div><div>Or, can we assume, he invoices them accordingly? </div><div><br /></div><div>The advice of somebody of Lord Macdonald's legal standing should be worth - what - 500 pounds sterling per hour? 1,000 pounds or more for a written opinion? I am not a lawyer - I am guessing - but that is probably in the appropriate scale of charges. He may be able to charge much more.</div><div><br /></div><div>In other words, Lord Macdonald has been paid to help News International as it wriggles and jiggles and squiggles inside the British body politic which is trying (like the old lady who swallowed a fly) to rid itself of this parasitic, cruel and mischievous organization.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think Lord Macdonald would do well to review his choice of clients.</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-22280157154097195952011-07-05T03:09:00.001-07:002012-04-21T02:25:46.047-07:00British Police - and how they behave<div>
A terrible, shocking story - which you all ought to read and remember:</div>
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/03/football-fan-attacked?INTCMP=SRCH">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/03/football-fan-attacked?INTCMP=SRCH</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Last year, returning from a football match, student Tommy Meyers was savaged by a police dog while being arrested for assault. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Now, following his acquittal, he and his family talk about the incident.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Until 11 September last year, the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/police" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Police">police</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">were rather admired in the Meyers household. Tony Meyers is a firefighter, a profession in which you work closely with the police and tend to get on with them, and his younger son, then 17, had done work experience with the police and was considering it as a career.</span><br />
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All that changed in a few dreadful seconds on Reading station, when the two of them were forced to watch as officers handcuffed Tony's older son, 20-year-old Leeds University student Tommy, forced him on to the ground, and set a police dog on him. The dog bit fiercely into Tommy's face – he couldn't even raise his handcuffed hands to protect himself. The injuries will be with him for the rest of his life, partly because the police refused him access to antibiotics for 14 hours, by which time infection had taken hold.</div>
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Tommy, a slightly built, taciturn and rather serious student of medical biochemistry who is thinking about training to be a doctor, was acquitted of assault and resisting arrest last month. I ask him what he thinks of the police now. He pauses for a moment to put his thoughts in order and says quietly: "They're cruel, inhumane, barbaric and brutal. They look on people with disdain. They think they are above everyone else. I have no faith at all in the police." Tony says: "The only trouble I witnessed that day was caused by the bullying police thugs who think they can do what they want and get away with it."</div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-65924801322967701632011-05-06T02:51:00.000-07:002011-05-21T05:18:20.509-07:00Why Do They Lie To Us?<span style="font-weight: bold;" lang="EN-US"><br />British atrocities against the Mau Mau in Kenya, in the 1950s</span> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The murder of Blair Peach by a British policeman in 1979<br /></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The unlawful killing of Ian Tomlinson in 2011 ...</span><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">What can these petty British events have in common with the successful U.S. military raid on an unspectacular compound near the Pakistani Military Academy which resulted in the long-awaited death of Osama Bin Laden a few days ago?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Set aside the callous triumphalism with which Americans greeted the news of the execution ….. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Set aside doubts about the legality of pursuing and executing Bin Laden when he was unarmed and therefore incapable of resisting arrest and resident in a sovereign state with which the U.S.A. was not at war ……. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">What Bin Laden's death and those British events have in common is that the U.S. and British governments lied about them. Blatantly, obviously, stupidly.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">They have been lying through their teeth.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">These governments did not simply withhold information or mislay information or put the best spin on information - they lied openly and very very stupidly to their own people, to their own newspapers, to public opinion and in the plain sight of their ultimate authorities, the peoples of their democracies.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Bin Laden affair is hot news, as are the U.S. government's "mis-statements" about the circumstances of the terrorist leader's death.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Associated Press has, this morning, written at length about it. I found the bulletin at:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110506/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_bin_laden</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It is reproduced in full below. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">British lies about the Mau Mau freedom fighters in Kenya who were tortured and killed in hideous and utterly illegal ways, are now becoming clear but, in the late Fifties it was obvious to me (a schoolboy) that this was happening, that British soldiers and officials and administrators had colluded in murder, torture and rape. It was obvious to me, as a young man, that Blair Peach had been struck over the head by a policeman wielding an illegal weapon, that this caused his death. It is now completely obvious, after the obfuscations and lies he produced at the inquest, that PC Simon Harwood 'unlawfully killed' Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests, attacking him, from behind, when his hands were in his pockets and he was moving away from the police lines, with such severity that he fell and was fatally injured. Tomlinson was 47 years old. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">PC Harwood's identification badge was missing at the time and his face covered with a balaclava. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">His attempts to explain these facts away would have been very entertaining if it were not such a serious matter.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">From evidence at the inquest, it appears completely clear that Simon Harwood did not intend to kill or even seriously injure Tomlinson, who might easily have survived the assault if he had not been a sick man with a badly swollen liver. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It is also completely clear why Harwood would want to lie or tell less than the truth when he found out, to (it seems) his complete surprise, that the man he had thrown to the ground had, in fact, died.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But what motivated the press office at New Scotland Yard to issue clear and completely false statements that Tomlinson had died from a heart attack, that police officers going to his aid when he fell had been assaulted by a rain of bottles?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">What motivated the White House to state without equivocation that Osama Bin Laden was shot while shooting at the U.S. 'Seals' (Special Forces soldiers), that he was using a woman as a human shield to protect himself when he died?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Does it not occur to the incompetents, the lying incompetents, who govern Britain and (it seems) America that telling lies is not only wrong, morally and in every other way, but incredibly stupid and inept, that a democracy that uses grossly tainted means to achieve honourable or laudable aims makes those same aims not merely unattainable but intolerable, worthless and disgusting to its own citizens?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Why do they lie to us? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Why did the White House not decide in advance that <span style="font-weight: bold;">nothing should be said until everything could be said</span>, that nothing would do except the truth, the plain unvarnished truth.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We have been lied to for long enough. For the whole of my long life, the British government and others have not simply been 'economical with the actualite', they have laboured energetically to deceive their own citizens. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Truth is important. It is an ultimate, an absolute. It is not negotiable.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Morality is important. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If the democracies can not be trusted with the truth, they can not be trusted with our futures and the futures of our grand-children.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">5th, May, 2011</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORT - found at:</b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110506/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_bin_laden</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Only single bin Laden defender shot at SEALs</b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Robert Burns And Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press – 1 hr 32 mins ago</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">WASHINGTON – The Americans who raided Osama bin Laden's lair met far less resistance than the Obama administration described in the aftermath. The commandos encountered gunshots from only one man, whom they quickly killed, before sweeping the house and shooting others, who were unarmed, a senior defense official said in the latest account.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In Thursday's revised telling, the Navy SEALs mounted a precision, floor-by-floor operation to find the al-Qaida leader and his protectors — but without the prolonged and intense firefight that officials had described for several days.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">By any measure, the raid was fraught with risk, sensationally bold and a historic success. U.S. officials said some of the first information gleaned from the scene indicated that last year al-Qaida was considering attacking U.S. trains on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The officials said they had no recent intelligence indicating such a plot was active.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The compound raid netted a man who had been on the run for nearly a decade after his terrorist organization pulled off the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Even so, in the administration's haste to satisfy the world's hunger for details and eager to make the most of the moment, officials told a tale tarnished by discrepancies and apparent exaggeration.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Whether that matters to most Americans, gratified if not joyful that bin Laden is dead, is an open question. Republican House Speaker John Boehner, for one, shrugged off the backtracking to focus on the big picture: "I had a conversation with the president, and the president outlined to me the series of actions that occurred on Sunday evening. I have no doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">President Barack Obama's visit to New York's ground zero on Thursday was a somber and understated event, and he avoided mentioning bin Laden by name. A day earlier, he said the government would not release images of bin Laden's body, a decision taken in part to avoid the perception that America was crowing about killing him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"We don't need to spike the football," Obama said. He plans to go to Fort Campbell, Ky., on Friday to meet aviators from the mission.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The senior defense official spoke to The Associated Press anonymously because he was not authorized to speak on the record. He said the sole bin Laden shooter in the Pakistan compound was killed in the early minutes of the commando operation, the latest of the details becoming clearer now that the Navy SEAL assault team has fully briefed officials.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">As the raiders moved into the compound from helicopters, they were fired on by bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was in the guesthouse, the official said. The SEALs returned fire, and the courier was killed, along with a woman with him. The official said she was hit in the crossfire.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Americans were never fired on again as they encountered and killed a man on the first floor of the main building and then bin Laden's son on a staircase, before arriving at bin Laden's room, the official said, revising an earlier account that the son was in the room with his father. Officials have said bin Laden was killed, shot in the chest and then the head, after he appeared to be lunging for a weapon.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">White House and Defense Department and CIA officials through the week have offered varying and foggy versions of the operation, though the dominant focus was on a firefight that officials said consumed most of the 40 minutes on the ground after midnight Monday morning in Pakistan, Sunday in Washington.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"There were many other people who were armed ... in the compound," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday when asked if bin Laden was armed. "There was a firefight."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"We expected a great deal of resistance and were met with a great deal of resistance," he said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"For most of the period there, there was a firefight," a senior defense official told Pentagon reporters in a briefing Monday.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan originally suggested bin Laden was among those who was armed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," Brennan said Monday, before the administration announced bin Laden actually was unarmed although there were weapons in his room.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The success of the bin Laden raid gave the White House a spectacular story to offer without any need to dress it up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The revelation on Thursday that the raid scooped up valuable intelligence was another positive note. A Homeland Security intelligence warning sent to law enforcement officials around the country said that as of February 2010, al-Qaida was considering tampering with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall off at a valley or a bridge. The warning, marked for official use only, was obtained by The Associated Press.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Some of the inconsistencies in the U.S. accounts seemed designed to score extra propaganda points. Brennan, for one, using information that turned out to be flawed, portrayed bin Laden as a man "living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Officials soon dropped the contention that bin Laden tried to hide behind women. They said what really happened is that bin Laden's wife rushed the SEALs when they entered the room. They injured her with a shot in her calf.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The issue of who among the bin Laden group was armed can be a matter of interpretation. To a soldier — and particularly in the case of the SEALs confronting the world's most wanted terrorist — an empty-handed person with a weapon nearby can be considered an armed threat.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The gaps and flaws, while striking, do not seem to approach the level of exaggeration and error in some other cases, such as the 2003 capture and eventual rescue of a female Army supply clerk in Iraq at the outset of the war. Initial military accounts of Jessica Lynch's resistance to her captors were part of an effort to rally public support for the war, and were factually wrong.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It's taken as inevitable in military circles that initial reports of combat operations are almost always imperfect. Sometimes major details are wrong in the first telling, due either to misunderstandings or errors. As a result, the armed forces generally take the time necessary to double check key pieces of the story before making it public.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In the bin Laden case, the Pentagon was not the lead provider of information for an operation led by the CIA and followed in real time by the national security team and by Obama, who gave the order to proceed late last week. And the bin Laden killing stood head and shoulders above most other military operations in the demand for fast details.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The U.S. account of what happened inside bin Laden's Abbottabad compound is so far the only one most Americans have. Pakistan has custody of the people rounded up afterward, including more than two dozen children and women. Differing accounts purporting to be from witnesses have appeared in Pakistani and Arab media, and on the Internet.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Pakistan's army on Thursday called for cuts in the number of U.S. military personnel inside the country to protest the American raid, and threatened to cut cooperation with Washington if it stages more unilateral actions on its territory.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In the Pentagon's first on-the-record comment on the raid, defense policy chief Michele Flournoy said Thursday that the U.S. has no "definitive evidence" that Pakistan knew that the targeted compound was bin Laden's hideout. Regardless, the Pakistanis must now show convincingly their commitment to defeating al-Qaida, Flournoy said. Anything short of that, she said, will risk losing congressional support for continued U.S. financial aid to Islamabad.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who supports withholding aid to Pakistan until it demonstrates such a commitment, was among those who found it hard to believe that authorities there were unaware of bin Laden's presence in a military town with a military academy.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"Bin Laden's hideaway was just a stone's throw from Pakistan's West Point," he said. "That's like John Dillinger living right down the street from the FBI and the FBI not knowing about it."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Once elements of the official version began changing, and in an effort to slow the demand for more details, White House press secretary Jay Carney referred reporters to the Pentagon for more information, even though the Pentagon had already said it would say no more. The Pentagon canceled its daily public press briefings each day this week.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">"The nature of the mission, the nature of what happened Sunday, combined with the effort to get that information quickly, resulted in the need to clarify some facts," Carney said aboard Air Force One en route to New York. He said the administration should be given credit for correcting mistakes when it found them.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">___</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Stephen Braun, Calvin Woodward, Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-90466548737771064282011-01-17T03:20:00.000-08:002011-04-08T10:31:34.409-07:00Great SpeechesA few days ago, in Tucson, Arizona, a young man went out to buy a gun. He was a disturbed young man, someone who scared the people around him. But he got his gun, a Glock machine pistol, a brutally effective rapid-firing semi-automatic widely used by American police forces.<br /><br />No one asked about his mental health or his intentions.<br /><br />"This is America," said - or thought - the salesman, "he is entitled to carry arms."<br /><br />A few days later, he went to the local mall and shot a politician, a member of Congress, called Gabrielle Giffords. The bullet traversed her skull but did not kill her.<br /><br />Then he turned his gun at random on the people around him, shooting a judge, a nine year old girl and many others.<br /><br />In hospital, yesterday, Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes and moved her arm again. She is not dead but will probably never live a normal life again.<br /><br />Barack Obama spoke about this outrage the other day.<br /><br />It was, by all accounts, a great speech. Even a Fox TV commentator called Glenn Beck congratulated him. Beck is rabidly opposed to Obama and what he stands for.<br /><br />In his speech, the President talked about the lives of those who had died and of those who were injured by the gunman.<br /><br />He talked about the heroism of the passers by who had disarmed and subdued the gunman.<br /><br />Above all, thinking, perhaps, of his own young daughters, he talked about the nine year old girl who died, Christina Green. This is what he said:<br /><br />"In Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic. Christina was given to us on 11 September 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called Faces of Hope."<br /><br />"On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child's life. 'I hope you help those in need,' read one. 'I hope you know all of the words to the national anthem and sing it with your hand over our heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.'"<br /><br />"If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today."<br /><br />His words move me to tears.<br /><br />I hope his words will also move Americans to take actions against the bilious hatred which has dishonoured their political discourse in recent months and the naked racism which has helped to fuel the disrespect which some Americans have shown to their properly elected leader, Barack Hussein Obama.<br /><br />America, as a country and as a society, is a mass of contradictions. It can throw up political and spiritual greatness more often than Britain. But it sometimes wallows with relish in its own ignorance, spite and bile.<br /><br />Yet the idealism of the founding fathers is still available and their spirit can invoked to refresh the libertarian impulses to which America was originally dedicated.<br /><br />I cannot remember when I heard a British politician make a speech that either inspired me or moved me.<br /><br />What a disappointing country mine has become when great events (and there have been great events in my lifetime) produce no tears, no ideals and little or no hope for the young.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-62140188976299504972011-01-14T02:18:00.000-08:002011-02-16T11:30:00.050-08:00Christmas - a time for taking stockOverwhelmed again. I always seem to be at this time of the year.<br /><br />Is Christmas a time when I notice more injustice, more incursions into the shrinking stock of personal and social liberties which we used to think we owned?<br /><br />Or a time when more injustices are reported (in the hope that they will remain un-noticed because we are all drunk and stupefied with preparations for Christmas)?<br /><br />First, there is the curious case of the undercover policeman who went by the name of Mark Stone and who spent seven years, no less, at an estimated cost of £250,000 per year infiltrating environmental movements and buddying up with Green activists.<br /><br />He helped them with money and transport and to organize their entirely peaceful protests, all the while reporting back as much as he could to the shadowy and sinister National Public Order Intelligence Unit to which he had been seconded by the Met.<br /><br />When six of the activists were charged with conspiracy, his evidence would have made it clear that they were not conspirators in the legal sense, that this particular group of six (out of some 146 people who were originally arrested) did not know the target of the planned non-violent demonstration.<br /><br />It seems that he offered to come forward and reveal this and the case was immediately dropped.<br /><br />What is truly shocking is that the Crown Prosecution Service either did not know about or chose to ignore his presence within the movement and his possible testimony.<br /><br />The CPS would happily have fought to convict six innocent people if he had not crawled out of the woodwork in time to upset the legal applecart.<br /><br />Indeed, it successfully convicted 20 people previously, from the same group, without revealing the existence of the police informers or appearing to take their prejudicial activities into account. These 20 people are appealing their sentences.<br /><br />It all reminds me (as some newspaper columnists and correspondents have also pointed out) of GK Chesterton's novel, The Man who was Thursday, first published in 1908.<br /><br />Seven bearded Anarchists meet each week to discuss plans for the violent overthrow of Britain and neighbouring states.<br /><br />But, it transpires, every single one of them (including the Big Boss) is a plain clothes policeman working undercover.<br /><br />If the British police spend millions of pounds on surveillance of peaceful and non-violent protesters, it seem that we are all, as I have often suspected, continually under surveillance and in danger of active repression or persecution if we attempt to defy the wishes of the government or the prevailing orthodoxy.<br /><br />Certainly a group of letters in the Guardian on 28th. December, written in the wake of student protests about the huge proposed rises in university tuition fees, confirmed this feeling.<br /><br />One correspondent, who lives in France, went so far as to suggest that British police are now even fiercer and more out of control than the notorious (and rightly feared) French riot police, the CRS.<br /><br />"The police need to be made truly acccountable to prevent them turning into brutal bullies."<br /><br />Other correspondents thought that it was too late, that the police already had turned into bullies - and worse.<br /><br />A student writer drew attention to the police's 'kettling' tactics, confining peaceful demonstrators in a small area for long periods until the crowd's frustrations and the cramped conditions provoked exactly the types of disorder that the police were, in theory, there to prevent.<br /><br />"People just wanted to go home and instead were crushed, left screaming and, in some cases, gasping for breath."<br /><br />"This is not democracy, but repression." wrote a third correspondent. "The police are clearly being used for political ends. I look forward to .... the restoration of our right to protest without intimidation and violence."<br /><br />Well, so do I.<br /><br />But I don't think I will hold my breath.<br /><br />And is 'restoration' the right word?<br /><br />Did such a 'right' ever exist?<br /><br />Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the Guardian in June 2008, made the following comments when discussing the proposal to make it possible for terror suspects to be detained for 42 days (seven weeks - just think about it - in a 'free country') without any formal charge.<br /><br />"Let us be clear. Our liberties are under threat from two sides. They are threatened by terrorists, especially takfiri jihadist ones, exploiting new technologies and open society in order to kill, maim and terrify the innocent. And they are endangered by the overreaction from the state, eroding those liberties in the name of defending us against these threats. Taken to the extreme, that means strangling freedom to save it."<br /><br />Repression and surveillance can have humorous aspects. This next letter made me laugh.<br /><br />Liam O'Farrell to the Editor, the Guardian, December, 2009:<br /><br />"I was stopped and searched twice near London City airport - for watercolouring! I was not even facing the airport. I was painting the Tate and Lyle sugar factory opposite. They said they saw me on a camera and thought that "no one would want to paint a factory." I explained that L.S. Lowry did loads. Then they said I could be an anarchist and I was carrying "suspicious paraphernalia" - this being a flask of coffee and an IPod. Oh, and a box of watercolours.<br />Once they had all my gear out, rummaged through what identity documentation I had and double-checked it on a few radios, they were satisfied that I was just "weird" and left me to it. Until the next week, when I went back to finish off the picture and had to go through the same rigmarole again.<br />I have painted in Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and plenty of other "controlled" states and have never been questioned about watercolour anarchism."<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Note: "In 2004/5, stop -and-search powers under Section 44 (of the Terrorism Act 2000) were used 33,000 times; the figure rose to over 117,000 by 2007/8. People were being stopped at random - children, tourists, photographers. Moreover, no one knows of a single conviction for a terrorist offence that arose as a result ..... The police were out of control." David Allen Green, New Statesman, 17th. January, 2011</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-65522814565649365582010-09-17T05:59:00.000-07:002010-09-17T06:12:42.028-07:00Freedom or License - about burning books<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pastor Terry Jones's plan to burn 200 copies of the Qur'an in Florida on 9/11 was widely condemned. But the unique symbolism of book-burning has a long and sinister history.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">by Jon Henley - The Guardian, Friday 10 September 2010</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On the night of 10 May 1933, a crowd of some 40,000 people gathered in the Opernplatz – now the Bebelplatz – in the Mitte district of Berlin. Amid much joyous singing, band-playing and chanting of oaths and incantations, they watched soldiers and police from the SS, brownshirted members of the paramilitary SA, and impassioned youths from the German Student Association and Hitler Youth Movement burn, at the behest of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, upwards of 25,000 books decreed to be "un-German".</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">.......</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The volumes consigned to the flames in Berlin, and more than 30 other university towns around the country on that and following nights, included works by more than 75 German and foreign authors, among them (to cite but a few) Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Engels, Sigmund Freud, André Gide, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Lenin, Jack London, Heinrich, Klaus and Thomas Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Karl Marx, John Dos Passos, Arthur Schnitzler, Leon Trotsky, HG Wells, Émile Zola and Stefan Zweig. Also among the authors whose books were burned that night was the great 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine, who barely a century earlier, in 1821, had written in his play Almansor the words: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" – "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, also burn people."</span><br /><br />Pastor Jones, in Florida, abandoned his plans. But they had been greeted with world-wide revulsion and helped fuel anti-American, anti-Western feelings in several Muslim countries. The damage had been done. Even the threat to burn the Koran was enough for that.<br /><br />In other parts of America, people did go ahead and burn copies of the Koran. The news media hardly recorded their activities at all, deciding (despite the American reverence for free speech) that inflammatory rhetoric and self-publicising are not worthy causes for which to risk American lives and American principles.<br /><br />Thank goodness for self-restraint. It matters. There are few absolutes in anyone's life and that is as it should be.<br /><br />It is worth noting in passing that Jesus is honoured in the Koran, as a prophet equal to Mohammad.<br /><br />Also that Jews, the people of the book, receive similar respect.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-67671130387016039402010-09-17T03:03:00.000-07:002010-10-04T14:10:36.356-07:00What the Police say and doThe British police seem uncertain whether their activities can or should be governed by the law of the land and by all the ethical considerations and considerations of honesty which ought to be upheld by everyone, even policemen, in a civilized and democratic society.<br /><br />They target minorities of various sorts at various times (just as the Jews were targeted in Hitler's Germany). They oppress minorities of various sorts at various times, sometimes in ways that may be as punitive and as destructive as actions against the Jews before the Second World War.<br /><br />Muslims are one of the principal current targets.<br /><br />From the Guardian, 27th. August, 2010<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Police chiefs misled Birmingham city council over Muslim CCTV, inquiry told</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Sir Paul Scott-Lee, former West Midlands chief constable, and Stuart Hyde, his assistant chief constable, face disciplinary action after telling Birmingham councillors the CCTV scheme for Muslim areas was not terror-related</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Paul Lewis</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 August 2010 20.26 BST</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Two police chiefs could face condemnation and disciplinary action after an inquiry was launched into claims they deliberately misled councillors about surveillance targeted at Muslim communities in Birmingham.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The £3.5m initiative to ringfence two Muslim suburbs with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras was shelved in June after an investigation by the Guardian.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sir Paul Scott-Lee, who was West Midlands chief constable until April 2009, and Stuart Hyde, who was assistant chief constable, stand accused of deliberately misleading councillors over the true motives behind the monitoring programme. Several councillors who attended a meeting about why the cameras were being installed in their wards say they were told they were part of a Home Office scheme targeting antisocial behaviour and vehicle crime.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A network of 169 ANPR cameras was erected this year to form "rings of steel" around Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, two largely Muslim neighbourhoods. There was no public consultation before the project, which also included the installation of additional CCTV and covert cameras.<br /><br /></span><span>Paul Lewis reported again in the Guardian on 1st. October, 2010. For some reason, this article is not available on the Guardian web-site. But it began like this:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />"A secret police operation to place thousands of Muslims living in Birmingham under permanent surveillance was implemented with virtually no consultation, oversight or regard for the law, a report found yesterday .... police had misled residents into believing that hundreds of counter-terrorism cameras installed in streets around Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath were to be used to combat vehicle crime and antisocial behaviour.<br />In fact the £3m project was being run from the West Midlands police counter-terrorism unit with the consent of security officials at the Home Office and MI5."<br /><br />"Police devised a "storyline" that concealed the true purpose of the cameras. Counter-terrorism insignia was removed from paperwork as part of a deliberate strategy to "market" the surveillance operation as a local policing scheme to improve community safety."<br /></span><span><br />So it's OK to lie then? Officially? If you're a copper?</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-20206702550920569692010-09-17T02:59:00.001-07:002010-09-23T02:12:47.825-07:00The Rule of LawThomas Bingham (Lord Bingham of Cornhill) died this month. His obituary in the Guardian, published on 11th. September, included the following remarks:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"He was also to the fore in promoting a strong, independent judiciary. At a time of growing executive power and a diminishing influence for parliament, and in particular following the terror attacks of 9/11 in New York and 7 and 21 July 2005 in London, the Labour government adopted an increasingly authoritarian approach. This included the power to detain certain foreign nationals indefinitely without charge, and the right to use evidence that may have been obtained by torture in certain legal proceedings. The government also argued for a strong role for the executive, with which the judiciary should not interfere.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In two seminal decisions, in 2004 and 2005 in the two cases of A & Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Tom wrote leading judgments rejecting the government's arguments. In so doing, he advanced the rights of all individuals, while recognising the reality of the threat presented by certain forms of terrorism. He rejected – with characteristic firmness, clarity and authority – the government's approach to the judiciary. "The function of independent judges charged to interpret and apply the law is universally recognised as a cardinal feature of the modern democratic state, a cornerstone of the rule of law itself," he wrote in 2004. While the attorney general, on behalf of the government, was entitled to insist on the proper limits of judicial authority, he was "wrong to stigmatise judicial decision-making as in some way undemocratic"."</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-28126166150500872382010-07-26T01:09:00.000-07:002010-07-26T01:12:09.920-07:00The Tomlinson case<div>On July 23rd., the director of public prosecutions announced that no charges would be brought against the policeman who, with his badge covered, attacked Ian Tomlinson who afterwards died. </div><div><br /></div><div>Ian Tomlinson was attempting to walk home from his job as a newspaper seller in the City of London. The attack was recorded on video. There was no scuffle or surrounding struggle to justify or account for the aggression. </div><div><br /></div><div>The reason for inaction given by the DPP is that pathologists who conducted the (three) autopsies on Mr. Tomlinson's body did not reach identical conclusions. The Guardian's editorial included the following paragraph:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"It is clear from the report of the Crown Prosecution Service that efforts were made to reconcile the findings of the postmortems. Its inability to do so, however, is not some catastrophic misfortune. It is a symptom of an institutional failure. The problem is this: there is a climate of impunity among Britain's police services that is fostered by the reluctance of the CPS to bring prosecutions. It was clear in the events surrounding the death of the teacher and activist Blair Peach more than 30 years ago; it was clear in the events surrounding the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 for which no one has been prosecuted; and it is as clear now in the response to Ian Tomlinson's death. Things may have improved since the Cass report into the death of Blair Peach, finally published earlier this year, which found members of the Metropolitan police (none of whom was ever charged or even disciplined) telling "easily recognisable lies". How, after all, could police officer A deny that he had hit Mr Tomlinson when the world had seen him doing just that. Yet the sense of impunity is unchanged. This was never acceptable. Now it is unsustainable."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>In the letters column of the Guardian, on the next day, a doctor reflected that he did not fear crime or terrorists, which do not impinge on his daily life. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>"However, I now hesitate to express my freedom of speech by attending political demonstrations, for fear of the violence and intimidation of the police ..."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Another correspondent wrote:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"It is impossible to imagine the Crown Prosecution Service taking the same decision if a police officer had collapsed and died minutes after being struck by a demonstrator. That says it all."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Many years ago, in 1957, the great American writer, Norman Mailer, wrote the following in an essay called "The White Negro", published in Dissent Magazine. I was in my late teens when I read these words and they have stayed with me ever since:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"A man knew that when he dissented, he gave a note upon his life which could be called in any year of overt crisis."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I have lived my life differently because I read those words. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have hardly ever dared to express my political views openly (still less loudly) and I have never attended a political demonstration of any sort from fear of the police and the spooks as well as from a well-founded belief in their essential uselessness. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have lived my life in fear of the covert and overt repression of the British State. </div><div><br /></div><div>Is that not a sad comment to have to make when your next big birthday will be your seventieth?</div><div><br /></div><div>What sort of freedom do we really enjoy in this country when a white, thoughful, well-educated person like me carries this burden of mis-trust throughout his life?</div><div><br /></div><div>Freedom is an empty concept when British police can behave as they did to Ian Tomlinson, when British soldiers become murdererers, as they did on Bloody Sunday and have in Iraq, when the institutions of government and of justice are subverted and distorted, as they have been in the last decade through collaboration with the American-led global "war on terror" and by falsely and dishonourably protecting the "culture of impunity" by which MI5, MI6, the Metropolitan police and others operate in their bizarre and twilit worlds.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-28609879137107963092010-07-16T13:59:00.000-07:002010-07-16T14:21:11.443-07:00The game is almost up .... for the Government!<div>The Government has announced a judicial enquiry into the torture allegations involving MI5. As part of the package, they are attempting to persuade the six former detainees who are suing for wrongful imprisonment to abandon their litigation and to abort requests for the documents (some 500,000 of them) which spell out the callousness of Britain's official response to the imprisonment and torture of some of its Muslim citizens. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Government has failed. The former detainees seem startlingly insistent. It is almost as if they think they have the right to know why their own elected representatives stood by while they were tortured by the Americans, Pakistanis and others.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"Yesterday,"</i> states the Guardian, 15th. July, 2010, <i>"the government failed in an attempt to bring a temporary halt to the proceedings that have resulted in the disclosure of the documents. Its lawyers argued that the case should be delayed while attempts were made to mediate with the six men, in the hope that their claims could be withdrawn in advance of the judicial inquiry. Lawyers for the former Guantanamo inmates said it as far from certain that mediation would succeed, and insisted the disclosure process continue."</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>One of the detainees, when interviewed by MI5, complained of internal bleeding and violent mis-treatment. <i>".... what kind of world was it,"</i> he asked, <i>"where the Americans were more barbaric than the Pakistanis? We listened," </i>wrote an MI5 officer,<i> "but did not comment."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>(How very British!)</div><div><br /></div><div>MI5 did not believe that this prisoner, Omar Deghayes, was telling them the truth. </div><div><br /></div><div>The officers <i>"proposed disengaging and allowing events here to take their course."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>As a result of this official British 'disengagement', Deghayes was rendered to Guantanamo Bay and stayed there for more than five years. </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>"At one point he was so severely beaten that he was blinded in one eye."</i></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-678110318295978941.post-3309695624126231762010-06-16T14:35:00.000-07:002010-07-26T01:17:09.831-07:00Bloody SundayThe Saville Enquiry has reported at last. On Bloody Sunday, 30th. January, 1972, British soldiers committed murderous acts. They fired on unarmed protesters. They continued to fire as the wounded attempted to crawl away and save themselves.<br /><br />They lied when they gave evidence about these events and what they did. There were no attacks on them, no provocation, to justify their actions.<br /><br />Thirteen people were killed immediately and one died later from his wounds. Fourteen people were wounded.<br /><br />A statement by Tony Doherty, whose father, Patrick, was killed:<br /><br /><i>"When the state kills its citisens it is in the interests of all that those responsible be held to account. It is not just Derry, or one section of the people, but democracy itself which needs to look out."</i> (Guardian 16th. June, p2)<br /><br />A copy of the 1972 Widgery report, now proved to have been a whitewash, "a travesty", was torn to pieces on the steps of the Guildhall in Derry after Lord Saville's conclusions became public.<br /><br />"What happened was unjustified and unjustifiable," said the Prime Minister to the House of Commons.<br /><br />"It was wrong."<br /><br />The Parachute Regiment has brought disgrace on itself and on all of us.<div><br /></div><div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>So who was in charge?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Guardian, 17th. June, 2010</div><br />by Henry McDonald<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; ">The civil rights activist who led the Bloody Sunday march has expressed his disappointment that the Saville report failed to criticise the man who took the decision to deploy paratroopers in Derry.<br /><br />Ivan Cooper said "overall responsibility" should have been levelled at the army's most senior officer in Northern Ireland at the time of the massacre, Major General Robert Ford, then commander of land forces.<br /><br />"I saw General Ford in William Street shouting at the troops 'Go Paras, go,'" said Cooper.<br /><br />"If you examine the evidence during the tribunal that stated that General Ford wanted action against the so-called Derry Young Hooligans, he is the officer who had overall control of the operation. I firmly believe he should have been held accountable for the action of his troops. After all, it was he who, as commander of land forces, was ultimately responsible."<br /><br />Cooper, a Protestant, was an independent MP and peace activist at the time of the killings, and was a vocal advocate for Protestants and Catholics to fight together for civil rights.....<br /><br />Cooper said that Ford should have received the same criticism in the report as Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, the officer in charge of 1 Para on the day. Saville was damning of Wilford's conduct.<br /><br />"The general ordered the paratroopers into Derry even though they had just returned from operations in Aden where they already had a reputation for being gung-ho and ruthless. They should never have been used and Ford should have known that," said Cooper<br /><br />The Saville report, published yesterday, concluded that there was "no evidence to suggest that the use of lethal force against unarmed rioters, who were not posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, was contemplated by General Ford".<br /><br />That assessment, Cooper said, was the most disappointing aspect of what was an otherwise historically significant report.<br /><br />He also disputed Saville's assertion that Martin McGuinness, at the time the IRA's number two in the city, had probably been carrying a sub-machine gun on Bloody Sunday.<br /><br />"All my life I have been opposed to Martin McGuinness but on the day I saw him and he was not carrying a sub-machine gun. He certainly wasn't hiding it in his trousers because I would have seen that too. I don't know why Saville said he was probably armed with a sub-machine gun but I certainly did not see him with any gun," he said.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0