Новостиотличающ самой последней на inquest Princess Диана, включая выдержки интервью с Al Mohammad Fayed и Princess Диана.
Сплоченность Columbia - Отчет о протесты поставленные Bristol Кампания сплоченности Columbia против спонсированного положения расправа в Columbia. Делать соединение между великобританскими корпорациями и колумбийскими squads смерти в драматически типе вне парадного входа университета Bristol.
DJ Samurai от Проломы DC talk about производить нот барабанчика и баса и на показателях винила.
Гость студии Wentland -го Джун, автор книг детей, talk about возможности и вознаграждения собственн-опубликовывать ее собственные рассказы.
Салли Allnutt muses на день, котор она попыталась измерить высота ее потолка.
Находится на направляющем выступе и песня недели с Джеф Sparkes.
`Всегда получает ощупывание, котор вы были обжулены?» Тухлое Джонни famously насмеханное к аудиториям на San Francisco Winterland в 1978, just before пистолеты секса split up. Наилучшим образом, 30 лет дальше, мы все были обжулены: сорвано, смошенничано, стежк вверх как kippers. Случилось последней неделей в вотуме на договоре Lisbon была выходка доверия былинных пропорций.
Во первых, и однако grudgingly, весь кредит к grifters которые вытянули это awesome scam: было мастерски политической деятельностью. Гордон коричневеет, Дэвид Miliband и Джим Murphy, министр Europe, сыграло совершенно blinder, в чувствах идиоматичных и литерала: они чуть-чуть положили неправду ноги в их регулировать вотума референдума, и они управляли, путем держать их холодно, остально покер-смотреть на и хоронить debate в obfuscation, для того чтобы отвлечь внимание публики почти вс от шло дальше.
Моя челюсть упала последняя среда по мере того как я слушал к премьер-министру говорю Дэвид Cameron что было временем для Tories двинуть «к центру Europe вместо быть ым на допустимые пределы Europe».
Rarely has Gordon sounded so like Tony. I don’t believe for a second that Mr Brown has become a true believer in the European Union. But - however much the words stuck in his craw - he was willing to say just about anything to get this one out of the way.
When the Prime Minister and his allies looked ahead to the referendum vote in the Commons, not in their wildest dreams could they have imagined that the headlines the morning after would focus on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem split over Europe. Talk about missing the big picture: it was as if the press the day after the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 had led on drainage problems in Petrograd.
Much as I like Mr Clegg, I do not think his parliamentary management skills are of greater significance to the real story of Wednesday night: the denial to the British public of a referendum that all three parties promised to them in the 2005 election. The arguments deployed to justify this treachery were remarkable for their sheer effrontery.
We were told, first of all, that the Lisbon Treaty is not the same as the original EU Constitutional Treaty. Come on, guys: everybody knows that the two texts are so similar that any claim to the contrary is either sophistry or an outright lie.
It is true that some European leaders have joined in the sophistry to claim that the two documents are not the same. But the overwhelming majority concur with Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s declaration that “All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
Next, it was argued by the Government that the Lisbon Treaty is no longer “constitutional” and so does not require a referendum. This is a moot point, to say the least: the deal establishes a permanent EU presidency, an EU foreign minister, wide-ranging extensions of qualified majority voting, dramatic changes to the “passerelle” or escalator system which enables the European Council unilaterally to extend its powers, and - perhaps above all - the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the precise legal significance of which Foreign Office lawyers admitted is unknowable in testimony to the Commons European Scrutiny Committee.
However, let us say, for the sake of argument, that the Government is right and that the Lisbon Treaty is not “constitutional”. This is, as it happens, irrelevant.
When Tony Blair made the original promise of a referendum to the Commons on April 20, 2004, he was absolutely explicit: the proposed deal, he claimed, “does not and will not alter the fundamental nature of the relationship between member states and the European Union”.
He was not constitutionally obliged to hold a referendum, he said, but driven to do so by the “partly successful campaign to persuade Britain that Europe is a conspiracy aimed at us”, and by his own growing desire for a grand reckoning. “Let the issue be put and let the battle be joined!” he declared. To be clear: Labour made the promise on the grounds that it was ready for a punch-up, and could win. So it is not that there was a constitutional hurdle that the original treaty cleared, but the Lisbon Treaty does not.
What has changed is that there is a new Prime Minister, who is not ready for a punch-up on Europe, and knows he would not win such a confrontation.
The breach of trust in shifting from one position to another is extraordinary. Three days before he entered Number 10, Mr Brown said that “The manifesto is what we put to the public. We’ve got to honour that manifesto. That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate.”
Well, apparently not. No referendum for us lot.
And why not? Because we are too thick, apparently. On Thursday’s Question Time, the PM’s close ally, Ed Miliband, said that all the technical stuff in the Treaty was really not the sort of thing to be bothering us dimwit voters with.
“I don’t think those issues are issues which people in my constituency want to have a referendum on,” said Mr Miliband in a performance of Sesame Street didacticism. “If you’re interested in improving democracy in this country, having a referendum on issues that don’t speak to people’s lives is not the way to achieve it.”
Best left to clever folk like you, eh, Ed? How fortunate we dunces are to have a ruling elite of brainy Fauntleroys to do our thinking for us.
It is interesting, too, that we now hear the Treaty does not “speak to people’s lives”, having been told so often by ministers that to jeopardise its passage in any way would lead to the downfall of Western civilisation. In fact, this particular Bill speaks to our lives in a sense that has nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with the drainage of trust from the political system.
Osmotically, this latest betrayal will compound the question that all voters now ask about all politicians: why can’t they keep a promise? Why has the Government that came to power 11 years ago with a pledge card become a gang of card sharks?
The battle is not quite over. This week’s Spectator urges the Lords to make imaginative use of the Salisbury Convention when the Bill goes to the Upper House. This tradition holds that the second chamber will not reject a manifesto bill at second reading. In this case, however, the Lords should demand, as a matter of conscience, that MPs honour their manifesto commitments to vote for a referendum and send the Treaty back to the Commons.
Lord Strathclyde, the Tory leader in the Lords, is already talking to pro-Europeans and cross-benchers, urging them to see this as an issue of principle in which the second chamber has a moral responsibility. There is all to play for, and Strathclyde’s intellectual and persuasive powers are immense. But the odds are not in his favour.
In his book The Politics of Consent, Francis Pym, who died on Friday, wrote “the politics of consent are neither a luxury nor a soft option. They are the only form of democratic politics that will ultimately work or that can have a moral basis.” He was right, and it is a shame that this principle, so scandalously breached last week, has come to mean so little to those who govern us. They must be very proud.
Last Friday, the Labour government took out a high court injunction to prevent a former member of the British Special Air Services, Ben Griffin, from revealing further details about the government’s involvement in “extraordinary rendition”
The US administration coined the term to cover the practice of sending arrested terrorist suspects to dozens of detention facilities where torture is often carried out. Ever since reports of rendition and torture began to surface after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001, the British government has adamantly denied any knowledge or collaboration with these activities.
In his last public address before the gagging order came into force, Griffin told an antiwar rally, “I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra-judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless.”
He called for former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown to face trial for breaking international law.
Griffin served in the army for eight years, including a three-month tour in Baghdad working on secret joint operations with US Special Forces. He quit in 2005 because he believed the war was illegal and aimed at seizing control of the natural resources in the region.
He is strongly opposed to the tactics being employed by US occupation forces, including indiscriminate detention of people, a trigger-happy mentality among soldiers and routine torture of prisoners that is advocated through the chain of command. Although he had not witnessed torture first-hand, Griffin said, “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”
The secret joint US-UK task force within which he was posted was “responsible for the detention of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
He added: “British soldiers are intimately involved in the actions of this task force. Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Geoff Hoon, Des Browne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown—in their respective positions over the last five years they must know that British soldiers have been operating within this joint US/UK task force. They must have been briefed on the actions of this unit.”
The gagging order was placed under the Official Secrets Act, which has been used repeatedly since the war began to silence critics of the occupations within the civil service and armed forces on grounds of “national security.” If he makes further disclosures relating to renditions that implicate government ministers in war crimes, he could face a jail sentence.
The Foreign Office refused to comment on the allegations on the grounds that statements are never released on the activities of Special Forces soldiers.
When allegations about the government’s involvement in extraordinary rendition first surfaced in December 2005, Blair told the press, “I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all, and I am not going to start ordering inquiries into this, that and the next thing, when I have got no evidence to show whether this is right or not. And I honestly, it is like all this stuff about camps in Europe or something, I don’t know, I have never heard of such a thing, I can’t tell you whether such a thing exists.”
And again, in March 2007, Blair assured an intelligence and security committee that “he was satisfied that the US had at no time since 9/11 rendered an individual through the UK or through our Overseas Territories.”
This position became increasingly untenable as leaks from individuals within the armed forces, such as those from Griffin and former United States Army General Barry McCaffrey, as well as numerous civil servants, conflicted with official government denials.
Responding to allegations that Britain was co-operating with renditions to the UK protectorate of Diego Garcia, an Indian ocean island that is leased to the US as an air base for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in September 2003, “The United States Government have explicitly assured us that there have never been any prisoners in detention on any US vessels moored in Diego Garcia waters. The British Government are satisfied that this is correct.”
In December 2006, McCaffrey revealed that he knew of renditions to the base. He said of suspected terrorists, “They’re behind bars, they’re dead, they’re apprehended. We’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram Airfield, in Guantanamo.”
According to a report from the civil rights group Statewatch, “Diego Garcia has been the subject of repeated, credible and concurrent claims that the island has played a major role in the US system of renditions and secret detention.”
The mounting evidence culminated in the government being forced to make limited admissions, whilst attempting to distance itself as far as possible from the US practice of renditions and torture. A carefully worded statement to parliament on February 21 by Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that Britain had recently been made aware of two US extraordinary rendition flights, which had stopped at Diego Garcia in 2002 to refuel.
Miliband said, “Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent US investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred. An error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light.”
He went on to spell out that the US and UK policy on counter-terrorism will continue as before: “Our counter-terrorism relationship with the United States is vital to UK security. I am absolutely clear that there must and will continue to be the strongest possible intelligence and counter-terrorism relationship with the US, consistent with UK law and our international obligations.”
It was Miliband’s evasions and denials about UK involvement in rendition that prompted Griffin to issue a statement a few days later. He pointed out that the government always talks about rendition as purely the process of flying detainees to a foreign country in the hope of deflecting attention away from the British Army’s vital role in the first stages of the process in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the Diego Garcia admission “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place.”
“Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF [United Kingdom Special Forces] has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force. This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task Force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.”
“Whilst the government has stated its desire that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed, it has remained silent over these other secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinitely without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.”
Griffin detailed human rights abuses at Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport in 2004, where individuals captured by the US/UK Task Force were detained and torture was carried out that was “systematic and sanctioned through the chain of command.” He also relates a story he was told by two soldiers that torture was carried out using partial asphyxiation and cattle prods.
Numerous human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, which has obtained damning firsthand evidence about abuses in secret detention facilities, have corroborated Griffin’s statements on abuse of detainees. Witnesses relate that the use of torture, including prolonged sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, beatings and humiliating treatment were widespread and sanctioned by commanding officers. Soldiers who objected to the treatment of prisoners were lectured on the exceptional circumstances of the “war on terror.”
The latest gagging order follows a series of similar cases where the government has forcibly silenced critics of its “war on terror” policy. Civil servant David Keogh and political researcher Leo O’Connor were jailed last year—for six months and three months, respectively—after being convicted of leaking a secret government memo from 2003, alleged to contain minutes of a meeting between then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush in which the latter reportedly advocated bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar.
The growing body of evidence exposing the crimes of detention without trial and a global network of prison camps has also implicated countries other than the UK and US. Statewatch obtained a document in 2005 that confirmed the European Union (EU) had agreed to rendition flights in CIA planes as part of a wider programme of joint security operations with the Bush administration in 2003.
In a recent report from the European Parliament on the alleged use of European countries for the illegal transport and detention of prisoners by the CIA, the EU Rapporteur Claudio Fava said, “Many governments co-operated passively or actively (with the CIA). They knew.”
According to the report, more than 1,000 CIA-operated flights used European airspace between 2001 and 2005. It also states that detention facilities may be located at US military bases in Europe and that some EU members turned a blind eye to flights operated by the CIA being used for extraordinary rendition or the illegal transportation of detainees.
The report mentions 21 well-documented cases of extraordinary rendition in which rendition victims were transferred through a European country or were residents in a European state at the time of their kidnapping. The national governments specifically criticised for their unwillingness to co-operate with investigations were those of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK.
Amnesty International has previously reported on more than 1,000 flights linked to the CIA, many of which used European airspace.
President George W. Bush stated in September 2006 that “alternative procedures” were necessary to deal with the new threat of global terrorism. Thanks to the courage and conviction of those like Ben Griffin, we now know more of the substance that lies behind those ominous words.
The global network of CIA “black sites” that have been established under the pretext of the “war on terror” are being used to suppress growing opposition to the imperialist aims of the United States to control the natural resources of the Middle East and Central Asia. According to the US Congress, up to 14,000 people may have been victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001.
PRINCE Harry’s tour of duty in Afghanistan was a “PR stunt” that has not fooled the British public, publicist Max Clifford has claimed.
The Royal’s 10-week deployment at the front was “virtual reality” because Army chiefs would have kept him away from any actual danger of being hurt, the PR guru added. He said the plan could backfire as the public would soon turn their thoughts to the thousands of ordinary British troops serving in Afghanistan who had not received special treatment.
His claims last night prompted an angry rebuttal from the Ministry of Defence which insisted that Prince Harry was there are an ordinary soldier.
Clifford claimed: “To me it’s blatantly obvious. It’s a PR stunt. The whole thing has been put together. The climate when he went out (he] was getting increasing bad publicity from hanging around in clubs and pubs, and coming out drunk. It happened immediately after that. I don’t think you’re cynical for saying: ‘Hold on a minute.’”
Clifford continued: “(The press coverage] has been favourable, but I do think that the public are maybe a bit more questioning than the media have been in this instance.
“A lot of people have been saying, if he was Private Harry Smith, would he have been looked after in the same way, and how much of this was just a public relations exercise?”
The publicist said Harry was “a brave lad” and the public perception of him was “pretty good generally”, but he went on: “It just comes across, the whole thing, as a very, very calculated public relations exercise. There are, I think, a lot more people out there than the media seem to realise that are saying: ‘Hold on a minute, this is virtual reality.’ I don’t think that they would have dared to put him in real danger.”
Clifford added: “The other aspect of it is he has been shown firing a machine gun at Muslims. What does that say? He becomes a big target. Harry likes to go to clubs and pubs – does that make them targets? It’s not black and white, it’s not a simple situation.”
But the publicist does not think there will be a backlash against the media for keeping news of Harry’s deployment secret. “That’s easily defused – it would have placed him and others in danger,” he said.
The MoD furiously denied Clifford’s claims. A spokesman said: “This was definitely not a publicity stunt. We have made it absolutely clear that what he did was very brave.”
Clifford is the UK’s best known publicist and regarded as a consummate media manipulator. His targets have included David Mellor, Neil Hamilton and Jeffrey Archer.
THE UK Government is set to miss its target of halving the number of children living in poverty by around one million, MPs warn today.
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee said that it was still possible to turn the situation around before the target date of 2010 – but only if ministers were prepared to make more resources available.
The target to halve child poverty – with a view to eradicating it completely by 2020 – was first announced by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1999, when the number of children living in poverty stood at 3.4 million.
Since then the number has fallen by 600,000 to 2.8 million – still well short of the goal of 1.7 million.
On current trends, the committee said that the Government will miss the target by about 1 million – or 1.5 million if housing costs are taken into account.
“We believe the 2010 target could be met, but only if further investment is forthcoming,” it said.
The committee pointed to the way some groups of children had a much higher risk of growing up in poverty, such as those who were disabled or had a disabled parent.
It was “particularly concerned” that one-in-five families with a disabled child were so hard up they had to cut back on food.
Poverty rates among Pakistani and Bangladeshi children were twice those among white children, while black children also experienced higher rates of poverty than whites. The rates were particularly high in London.
The committee endorsed the Government’s strategy of lifting families out of poverty by helping parents find “sustainable” work.
However it expressed concern that the Jobseekers Allowance was too inflexible to cope with the “complexity” of many lone parents’ lives, particularly those with disabled children.
It also urged the Government to do more to change public attitudes towards poverty at a time when sympathy for the poor was at a “low level”.
“Many assume that poverty is only a problem in developing countries and the UK’s economic success means that if someone is poor it must be due to their own poor choices or personal failings,” it said.
“The Government needs to take a lead on challenging these misconceptions.”
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said that the Government had made significant progress, but acknowledged that more needed to be done.
Is Notes from the Borderland (NFB) a magazine or a series of pamphlets? One could be forgiven for thinking the latter, since the first issue of this very substantial magazine came out in the Winter of 1997, and the latest issue, issue 8 , only came out last year. This has been the story all along for NFB readers, who have to wait approximately a year between issues, produced by Larry O’Hara (a regular contributor to Rob Ramsay’s similar, now veteran, magazine Lobster) and the rest of the ‘NFB Collective’. To what extent NFB is an offshoot of ‘Lobster’ this reviewer does not know. But NFB shares concerns with it’s elder magazine in it’s attempt to scrutinize the activities of the ’security services’, their assets, and how they seek to maintain and project the power and privilege of the ruling class and the establishment,by various methods of subversion, infiltration, and manipulation of the agendas of progressive causes and movements. From the outset, it has been clear that NFB has had no interest whatsoever in pandering to any mainstream aesthetic. NFB looks like it was produced on a shoestring by a bunch of anarchists, which is not a million miles from the truth.The front of NFB can either be a cartoon use of classic art - such as the first issue’s use of Delacroix’s ‘Madame Liberté’ - or more recently we have seen covers sporting a much more radical (not impossible!) version of the satirical covers used by Private Eye. Given that Larry O’Hara seems to view Private Eye as a source of semi-radicalism and security service disinformation, perhaps this is more than coincidence.
So is the annual release of the latest NFB worth the wait? Read on. The first issue of NFB is as good an introduction as any. It concentrates on news and investigations of various far-right and racist organisations, such as the International Third Position and those trying to export the Ku Klux Klan to the UK. It should be said from the beginning that NFB maintains that there is much more than meets the eye on the racist far-right,which NFB regards as a hot-bed of not only fascist but security service activity. Indeed, subsequently NFB has made a case that this is no surprise, given the usefulness of fascists to the secret state. (More on this below, when we come to the fascinating tale of -he whom NFB call- ‘multi-party animal’ Aidan Rankin, and the state-destabilisation of the UK Independence Party.)
Many on the left have had long experience, and longer suspicions of, the activities of state infiltrators and agents-provocateurs from demonstrations to picket lines to ordinary meetings of the local TU branch or CND. People who have become involved, for the first time, in such organisations have often had a rude and extremely disturbing awakening as to the kind of beast the British state and broader establishment really is, and the interests it really -and exclusively- serves. From the Gandalf trial to the experience of middle-England when involved in trying to stop live animal exports, the examples are numerous.
Enter Searchlight magazine. Suspicion of this magazine did not begin with NFB. But it should be pointed out that one of the very first articles to dissect Searchlight appeared more than 15 years ago in ‘Lobster’, written by one Larry O’Hara. NFB regard Searchlight as a ‘honey trap’ ie used to both attract and then spy on the left. Evidence for this began in Lobster a good few years ago, when it published the ‘Gable Memorandum’,in which Searchlight editor/founder confesses to years of spying on the left.
Issue 2 breaks the story of the NFB position on what it calls ‘MI5 shyster’ David Shayler, whose position, they say, does not add up - re his unwillingness to comment on ongoing state acts against dissidents and does he still say nothing on MI6?
Issue 3 investigates the strange aspects of soho nail-bomber David Copeland ie that the security services knew more than they let on and effectively did nothing while Copeland gave them the excuse to inflate their budgets.
Issue 4, from 2001-02, is the pièce de résistance for readers of Spectrezine.
In this issue, NFB gives us another lengthy and extremely well-researched article detailing many of the forces ranged against the left and other opponents of the pet-project of the British and European ruling classes: The European Union.
This superb article details not only the general way in which the state used it’s assets on the far right to smear and discredit the UK Independence Party (UKIP), leading its founder, LSE academic Alan Sked, to withdraw, disillusioned, from politics, but also gives us a sidelight on how state assets work in the form of an analysis of a one Dr Aidan Rankin.
NFB declare that Rankin’s career is so bizarre it would seem out of place in a Le Carre novel. Rankin has been a member of at least six political parties, from left to right: Labour,Tory,Albion Party, Third Way, Conservative Democratic Party and UKIP. Readers may recall an article in the New Statesman a couple of years ago, in which Rankin strongly protested the ‘racism’ of UKIP in order to politically discredit UKIP as much as possible. Well, here’s what: Recall Third Way, of which Rankin is a former member. Third Way is a post-National Front grouping led by Patrick Harrington (is this the same Harrington who caused a scandal as a student for his fascist views?). What do you know, while a member of this far-right organisation, Rankin tried to move it’s position from anti-EU to pro-EU, an attempt he has made in many if not all of the organisations of which he has been a member.
So precisely why is Rankin complaining about the alleged racism at UKIP when he himself was previously a member of a far-right organisation? More fundamentally, why has Rankin been all round the political houses, and why does he try to do the same thing in each house? Why does someone whose views on the EU fit with those of New Europe , then go and join UKIP?
Issue 5 continues with these themes and much more - including unearthing a secret Searchlight strategy dosument, written by leading Searchlight contributor Nick Lowles, on how to spread propaganda against the anti-EU movement, to ‘influence and educate public opinion’ by the ‘drip flow of information’.
The full document is available for a couple of stamps, from the NFB address.
Issues 6,7 and 8 of NFB give us more of the same excellent in-depth coverage, all so exhaustively researched that NFB’s opponents seem to know they are onto a loser if they try to take NFB on.Issue 8, the latest, features ex-MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller saying to her successor Jonathan Evans ‘I’m sure you’ll do as well as I did’ , to which Evans replies ‘That’s what I’m afraid of’.
Give this unusual, committed magazine a try. It doesn’t come out often, but it’s worth the wait. All that research must surely take time!
In response to the recent Home Office consultation titled ‘Managing Protest around Parliament’, which threatened further restrictions on demonstrations throughout the UK, a second day of action [1] called by the Campaign for Free Assembly will take place on Saturday 1 March. Campaigners opposed to the Government’s proposals will assemble at London’s Trafalgar Square (north side) at 1pm.
The Government consultation on ‘Managing Protest around Parliament’, which closed on 17 January, began as a review of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005, s.132-138, which controversially restricts demonstrations in a 1km zone around Parliament [2,3]. While it had previously been reported that Prime Minister Brown intended to repeal the unpopular provisions of the legislation [4], the consultation paper’s questions on the possible ‘harmonisation’ of the existing legislation suggest that the Government plans to extend current restrictions on protest around Parliament to the whole country. This means giving the police the power to censor the number, size and content of banners and placards; and existing laws requiring prior notification of and the power to impose restrictions on, and even ban, protest marches - covered by the Public Order Act 1986 – could be extended to all demonstrations.
The proposed powers and those already granted to the police create a climate of criminalisation of political activism; with arbitrary arrests and police violence and heavy-handedness relatively commonplace at protests - even entirely non-violent ones - such as at last summer’s Heathrow Climate Camp. Even members of the press documenting protests are no longer spared police brutality, as illustrated by the case of photojournalist Marc Vallée [5]. Furthermore, despite the current review of SOCPA, it is clear the Met has no immediate plans to stop using it to harass and intimidate activists, as shown by the arrests only this week of three long-term supporters of Brian Haw and his Parliament Square Peace Camp for an ‘unauthorised protest’ outside Parliament [6]. Overall, it seems such tactics are designed to exert a ‘chilling effect’, whereby people are deterred from engaging in grassroots activism for fear of the consequences.
Whatever campaign people are involved in, whether it’s for a safer school crossing or to end a war, the new proposals will affect them. Campaign groups who run a weekend stall in their local high street would be moved on, and political rallies and meetings could be broken up.
A spokesperson for the Campaign for Free Assembly said: “We are tired of the Government’s relentless determination to silence the public. We must act now to stop the further erosion of our freedom to assemble, and make it clear that we will not allow our liberties to be consulted away. The plans outlined in the consultation demand a response on the streets. Our message is simple: we claim the freedom to assemble without prior notification or permission, and this is not open to negotiation.”
Notes:
1. On the Campaign for Free Assembly’s first day of action on January 12, 2008, there was a spontaneous tour of sites within the designated area around Parliament, where it is an offence under SOCPA to demonstrate without prior written authorisation from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. The tour included Downing Street, Whitehall, Parliament Square, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, MI5 headquarters and New Scotland Yard.
A number of participants held a sit-down protest in the middle of the road in Parliament Street, and later in Whitehall, directly facing Downing Street, disrupting traffic for a while. There was much pushing and shoving outside Downing Street from the Metropolitan Police riot squad, the Territorial Support Group (TSG). A number of arrests were made, the highest profile being that of Brian Haw. Mr Haw, who had been quietly filming the demonstration, had his camcorder violently shoved into his face by a police officer, causing a bloody gash on his cheek. He was subsequently arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act on suspicion of swearing at the officer concerned, and was allegedly assaulted shortly afterwards by a number of officers in the back of a police van whilst in handcuffs. It is understood Mr Haw may well take legal action against the officers concerned.
Claims the Royal Family was being bugged by GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) have been denied at the Princess Diana inquest.
Rumours were rife by 1993 that the Government’s intelligence and security organisation may have been behind the infamous Squidgygate and Camillagate tapes.
Under the law GCHQ would have needed to get the Foreign Secretary to sign off on such a phone tap and no such green light from the Government was sought, the inquest heard.
Sir John Adye, the GCHQ director between 1989 and 1996, said: “It could not have been done without a warrant.”
Ian Burnett QC, for the coroner, said: “And intercepting the Royal Family is simply not within the scope of the intelligence the Government was seeking?”
Sir John replied: “Indeed, it was not.”
Mr Burnett asked: “And there was no such warrant?”
Sir John answered: “I am sure there was no such warrant.”
On the tapes, James Gilbey, who was named as one of the princess’s lovers, repeatedly told her “I love you” and referred to her as “Squidgy” 53 times.
A conversation between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles (now the Duchess of Cornwall) in the early 1990s was also recorded and came to light around the same time.
Sir John told the jury he was “satisfied” that GCHQ had not been involved in those tapes.
And in an “unprecedented” move, given the intelligence services golden rule never to comment on its operations, a statement was released denying any involvement.
The court heard that ministers were briefed so they could “truthfully” tell Parliament that “none of the security and intelligence agencies had been intercepting the communications of the Royal Family”.
Denials were repeatedly made in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
In a written statement John Major, the then Prime Minister, said: “There is no substance in the rumours about the involvement of the security and intelligence agencies intercepting the communications of the Royal Family.”
The jury have heard claims that Diana felt she may have been bugged.
Mohamed al Fayed has maintained that the fatal car crash that killed his son Dodi, Diana and driver Henri Paul in Paris’s Alma Tunnel in 1997 was set up by MI6 at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.
We Own The Streets - Campaign for Freedom of Assembly
Saturday 1st of March, top of Trafalgar Square (North side), 1 pm.
t’s time we had freedom to publicly assemble in the UK. The Campaign for Freedom of Assembly is calling for a second national day of action against the existing legislation restricting our freedom to protest around Parliament and its possible extension to the rest of the country.
We need to respond to continued police repression and the Government’s consultation paper ‘Managing Protest around Parliament’. This consultation, which ended on the 17th of January, began as a review of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005, sections 132-138, which restrict demonstrations in a 1km zone around Parliament. While the review was originally with an eye to possibly repealing these controversial sections of the legislation, it turned into a consultation on ‘managing protest’. The consultation paper’s questions on the possible harmonisation of the existing legislation shows the Government’s intention to extend current restrictions on protest around Parliament to the whole country. This means giving the police powers to censor the content of banners and placards, and the existing laws asserting restrictions and prior notifications to marches - currently covered by the Public Order Act 1986 - being extended to all demonstrations.
The proposed powers and those already given to the police create a climate of criminalisation: a vast confusion of laws are applied arbitrarily so people are arrested simply for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time or having the wrong face. This combines with a police culture that evades accountability even when people are killed, as shown by the Menezes case and others. There should be no complacency that the court system can be relied on to prevent injustice. The ability to exercise effective protest is crucial in order to defend ourselves and others from the abuses of those in power.
Whatever the issues that matter most to you, whether you are concerned about a safer school crossing, a new runway or ending a war, this proposal will affect you.
The government consultation needs a response not on paper but on our streets. The message is simple: we claim the freedom to assemble without prior notification or permission and this freedom is not open to negotiation.
We plan to hold a second national day of action on Saturday 1st of March proclaiming this freedom as the next step in establishing a new era when it will be impossible for our liberties to be consulted away.
We are meeting at 1pm at the top of Trafalgar Square. Come with your mates and discuss with them what you want to do with the day. Bring placards, banners, whistles or anything else you can think of. Let them know you won’t be easily silenced.
There are serious concerns for the welfare of the three protestors who were arrested by inspector fox outside the gates of parliament last night. Their protest was about about the iraq war, the genocide occuring there, and the war criminals here who still evade justice.
Police have admitted in previous instances that arrests are not a proportionate response to ‘unauthorised protest’, and they generally use ‘report for possible summons’ instead.
However, last night at around 9pm, the three protestors, barbara tucker, stephen jago, and ‘ant’, were taken to belgravia police station. police then tried to search tents to seize ‘evidence’ - they wanted to confiscate barbara’s ‘blood on their hands’ banner - but backed off when brian haw pointed out that it’s been shown in court that police have no power of seizure under SOCPA and that they did not have warrants.
Inquiries for information at belgravia police station this morning were flatly refused by the custody officer, but it was revealed that the three are still in custody, having been held for 14 hours, and are due to be ‘processed’ shortly. Nothing is known about their welfare, whether any additional charges have been laid, or why they have been detained so long.
Any station support is will be welcomed.
To contact, call 020 7730 1212 and ask for belgravia custody suite
Almost everybody hates paying taxes. I certainly do. But as hard as it might be to part with a wadge of one’s hard-earned cash, one still grudgingly admits that it is necessary to maintain the smooth running of our society, to provide public works and goods, to fund our common health service, and to provide for those unable to provide for themselves, the hallmark of our civilisation.
It is infuriating when those entrusted with the management and distribution of public money - through negligence, incompetence, or plain bad luck - don’t manage to get value for that money or achieve what we, as a society, expected. It is irksome when that money is spent on things we might not personally approve of, but most understand that it is ’swings and roundabouts’ anyway.
However, the one category which is unforgivable, is when those in receipt of public money take the piss with the public purse.
If, as thetabloidpress are alleging, House of Commons speaker Michael Martin, has been dipping into the public purse for bogus housing claims, taxi rides for his wife, and free flights for his family, then this is a very serious breach of trust.
As The Guardian (a ‘berliner’ not a tabloid… yet) says”
“Dozens of MPs have been accused of expenses irregularities over the years. But Martin is in a different position. As Speaker, he is the public face of the House of Commons and one of his roles is to defend its reputation. As a result, some MPs believe that it is important for him to set an example.”
Though, Michael Martin has always been hostile to watchdogs and scrutineers. The more cynical might, in light of recent events, say “duh!”. In 2001, according to the BBC, Parliament’s standards watchdog, Elizabeth Filkin, accused Martin of undermining her role (which was checking complaints about the financial declarations and interests of MPs) and threatening the independence of her office. Last year he was accused of trying to block the Freedom of Information Act being used to publish details of MP’s travel expenses. More recently, The Guardian reported that Martin, “resisted greater independent scrutiny of MPs’ expenses”, was to chair an in-house inquiry following the Derek Conway scandal last month.
And now even his PR Agent has resigned, angry at not being told the truth and consequently inadvertently telling porkies to the press.
Last year, the BBC reported that Martin spent more than £20,000 of taxpayers’ money on laywer’s fees to challenge negative press stories about him.
Tax evasion is a serious crime. If you evade your duty as a tax-payer to contribute your fair share to the public fund, you can go to jail. Is it not far worse when those entrusted with this money dip into it for private and selfish ends?
If not paying in is such a serious crime, then what is dishonestly spending what others have contributed?
If the allegations are true, Michael Martin should go to prison, and so should all the other sleazy MPs and officials from Westminster, to City Hall, to the local council, who treat yours and my money - entrusted to them - as a personal slush fund.
Indeed, as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown asks in today’s Independent, is corruption “now endemic in our political culture”?
Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.
Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.
But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries. According to a questionnaire circulated to all EU capitals by the European commission, the UK is the only country of 27 EU member states that wants the system used for “more general public policy purposes” besides fighting terrorism and organised crime.
The so-called passenger name record system, proposed by the commission and supported by most EU governments, has been denounced by civil libertarians and data protection officials as draconian and probably ineffective.
The scheme would work through national agencies collecting and processing the passenger data and then sharing it with other EU states. Britain also wants to be able to exchange the information with third parties outside the EU.
Officials in Brussels and in European capitals admit the proposed system represents a massive intrusion into European civil liberties, but insist it is a necessary part of a battery of new electronic surveillance measures being mooted in the interests of European security. These include proposals unveiled in Brussels last week for fingerprinting and collecting biometric information of all non-EU nationals entering or leaving the union.
All airlines would provide government agencies with 19 pieces of information on every passenger, including mobile phone number and credit card details. The system would work by “running the data against a combination of characteristics and behavioural patterns aimed at creating a risk assessment”, according to the draft legislation.
“When a passenger fits within a certain risk assessment, he could be identified as a high-risk passenger.”
A working party of European data protection officials described the proposal as “a further milestone towards a European surveillance society.
“The draft foresees the collection of a vast amount of personal data of all passengers flying into or out of the EU regardless of whether they are under suspicion or innocent travellers. These data will then be stored for a period of 13 years to allow for profiling. The profiling of all passengers envisaged by the current proposal might raise constitutional concerns in some member states.”
The Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said: “Where is this going to stop? There’s no mature discussion of risk. As soon as you question something like this, you’re soft on terrorism in the UK and in the EU.”
Britain is pushing for a more comprehensive system based on the experience of a UK pilot scheme that has been running for the past three years. Officials say Operation Semaphore, monitoring flights from Pakistan and the Middle East, has been highly successful and has resulted in hundreds of arrests.
The scheme has seen one in every 2,200 passengers warranting further investigation, with a tenth of those “being of interest”. British officials say rapists, drug smugglers and child traffickers have been arrested and want the EU scheme to cover “all fugitives from crown court justice”.
But Ludford said: “If you ask the UK government how many terrorists have been picked up, I don’t think you get a very straight answer.”
EU officials have asked the Home Office minister Meg Hillier for information about the arrests of suspected terrorists.
Journalists, anti war activists and religious groups held a protest outside the Daily Express offices today against a series of stories and headlines in the paper which they say encourage “racist stereotyping and contempt”.
Around forty protesters and journalists turned up to the event organised by Media Workers Against War and the Stop the War Coalition. They waved banners saying “stop media attacks on Muslims” while chanting slogans such as “Daily Express, Daily abuse”.
MWAW sent a letter to Northern and Shell proprietor Richard Desmond and Daily Express editor Peter Hill outlining examples of what they believe are inflammatory headlines published in the Express such as: “Over 860 migrants flood in every day”, “Muslim laws must come to Britain” and “Migrants send our crime rate soaring”.
It appealed to the company to stop “pedalling lies” and to allow journalists to refuse to write stories they believe break the Editors’’ Code of Practice.
The letter said the headlines “do nothing to inform Express readers – on the contrary they encourage racist stereotyping and contempt.”
It states: “Your ‘facts’ are highly selective, you make little attempt to give context or comparisons and you publish no opposing views.”
Chair of MWAW and FT journalist David Crouch said: “We’ve decided to protest here at the Express because since mid-January they have run a series of what we believe are inflammatory front page splashes targeting Muslims and immigrants more generally. So we decided to start with the Express but the interest that has been shown in this protest will encourage us to take the protest elsewhere.”
In July 2003, in the week following the death of David Kelly, a reader contacted the New Statesman and suggested that the media were missing the obvious. The Commons foreign affairs committee had just cleared the government of “sexing up” the September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - a claim, first made by Andrew Gilligan on the BBC’s Today programme, for which Dr Kelly may or may not have been the source.
Our caller pointed out that although the Commons committee had said it was satisfied the “first” draft dossier, produced on 10 September for a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), was the unspun work of intelligence, it had missed the true significance of a meeting the day before, chaired by Alastair Campbell.
Our caller was Chris Ames, whose name will for ever be etched on the memory of all those in government, particularly in the Foreign Office, who have resisted making public what has become known as the Williams draft (after John Williams, the Foreign Office press officer who wrote it). Using the Freedom of Information Act, Ames has doggedly pursued the evidence that he believed would show that the September dossier was the work not of intelligence experts, but of spin doctors whose intention was to “sex up” the known intelligence.
From denying that the document existed, to seeking to have it withheld because publication threatened government confidentiality, to claiming that the Williams draft was an uncommissioned activity by a bored press officer (who just happened to come up with conclusions similar to those of the JIC), the government has ducked and dived and done its utmost to obstruct Ames in his pursuit of the truth.
Now, almost five years after he first contacted us, Ames’s efforts have borne fruit. On 18 February, just two days before the deadline set by the Information Tribunal, the Foreign Office released the Williams draft.
Interpretations of its contents will differ, but on many counts the document speaks for itself. From it we learn that the draft was, without question, intended as part of a process of producing a dossier that would persuade the British people and parliament of the case for war. And, importantly, it shows us how much of the final dossier was the work of a spin doctor. Let’s not forget that the Blair government lied repeatedly about this. The draft also reveals the extent to which Williams reworded and rewrote - and occasionally invented - intelligence assessments that were later presented to the public as the work of intelligence experts and “judgements of the JIC”.
We have also learned how raw intelligence was pumped up to make a strongly worded “executive summary”. Thus, a draft report from the JIC which claimed that Iraq had “sought to develop” mobile facilities to produce a biological agent becomes, in Williams’s draft, “has developed transportable laboratories”. The strengthened Williams version fed into the 10 September dossier (still being claimed as the unspun work of intelligence) and the final document. Williams does not attempt to disguise the fact that his task is to produce a document which will persuade. Judge for yourself whether the following is driven by spin or intelligence:
The bombs that fell on Halabja that Friday morning were equipped with (what chemical?). (what does the chemical do to the body - how does it kill? Sorry to be grisly, but this will have real impact on real people, not journalists who take it as read).
As our political editor, Martin Bright, argues on page 10, the release of the Williams draft leaves no room for doubt that the Blair government set out to deceive us. Cynics may shrug. Governments lie. But the consequences of this deception have been catastrophic and tragic. The roll-call of victims runs into tens of thousands and includes that early casualty in July 2003, the government scientist whose suicide started an angry debate over whether the case for war had been “sexed up”.
Thanks to Chris Ames, we at last have an unequivocal answer. And it shames all those involved in the process.
The saints stop marching in
You can’t get to heaven,” went the old song, “in a limousine,/ ‘Cause the Lord don’t sell no gasoline.” Perhaps not, but under the last pope some felt that transport to the upper echelons of heaven was a little too swift. So many saints were created by John Paul II that it did seem as though he was running some form of celestial limo service, or “saint factory”, as others put it: 482 people were canonised and 1,338 beatified (the first stage to sainthood) by the pontiff - more than all his predecessors put together since the current procedures were laid down in 1588.
So news that Benedict XVI is to tighten the rules is to be welcomed by those who take such matters seriously. It may also be a relief, however, that the new rigour is not to be applied retrospectively. It is just possible that not all the “miracles” performed by or attributed to some saints would withstand modern scientific scrutiny.
What, say, are we to make of the Belgian shrine to the 11th-century St Godeliva? Drinking from her well is said to have a powerful, yet curiously specific, effect on sore throats. Or the 15th-century St Francis of Paola? Fame of his miracles spread in his own lifetime, yet they were occasionally of a rather prosaic nature. One involved setting a pot of broad beans boiling: handy if you’d run out of kindling, no doubt, but surely a power more appropriate to a domestic goddess than a holy man. What next - St Nigella? Not under the new rules, thank goodness.
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