Saturday, November 10, 2007 

I believe in nothing but it is my nothing.

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
- Manic Street Preachers, Faster.

Only Pinter left.

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11/10/2007 08:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Those prisons, they're hotels, guv. Know what I'd do? String 'em all up, it's the only language they understand.


One has been in a secure hospital, one hasn't.

Another day, another new Scum campaign. Faced with so many evil monsters putting on weight while behind bars, the leader argues for the bringing back of hard labour, or at the least, those inside being put to work on chain gangs repairing the roads, cleaning canals and tiding up after fly-tippers.

There are so many obvious problems with this proposal, none of which are anything to do with human rights laws, as the Scum churlishly insinuates, that it's almost laughable. Setting up such schemes would necessitate a huge rise in the numbers employed in jails, in order so those let out during the day to perform such works would be properly supervised, and those left behind would not be left without adequate cover. There's enough outcry when someone walks out of an open prison, so you can just image the opprobrium were a whole group of prisoners able to escape at some point from one of these jaunts. It would also take time away from those who spend their time in jail learning a skilled profession - the numbers of which are large.

The Scum's tiny amount of evidence for why such hard labour is necessary is also threadbare, reliant on the more famous inmates who have put on weight since going inside. Of two of the killers mentioned - Peter Sutcliffe and Beverley Allitt, both are held in secure hospitals, Broadmoor and Rampton respectively, not prisons. There are also numerous reasons for weight gain, not just pigging out; it can be as much a sign of stress as weight loss for instance, and medication can also play a role.

The belief that life in prison has become soft, with them often referred to as holiday camps, as the Sun does, and with Tim Spanton, previously responsible for a whole article of lies about the human rights act, claiming that "Aromatherapy and massages have largely replaced work for today’s inmates," has become insidious. It's complete nonsense, as with so much other thought on the right dedicated to what they see as political correctness and going soft on crime etc, but that doesn't stop the rhetoric. A more representative view of the prison system was presented earlier this year in the Grauniad, when it interviewed 42 individuals about one day in their life, from Category A prisoners to the head of the prison system himself. That however will never stop tabloid journalists who have never so much as been to one, let alone served time, from telling the public how much like hotels they are.

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11/10/2007 07:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, November 09, 2007 

How I stopped worrying about the Muslims...

The "lyrical terrorist" and her rhymes of doom.

Those Muslims. They're a worry, aren't they? We worry about them integrating. We worry about the books they read. We worry about the religious premises they attend. We worry about the library stock dedicated to their religion. We worry about offending them. We worry about how some of them talk in funny languages called "Arabic" and "Urdu", whatever they are. We worry about what they're thinking. We worry about whether some of them are AS WE SPEAK plotting our demise, brainwashing children, and writing poems about the joys of beheading infidels. We worry about whether the anti-terrorist legislation which is clearly targeted at "them" is tough enough; the home secretary doesn't know how much longer the pre-charge detention limit should be, but she does know that it isn't long enough.

To add to all of these existential problems and threats, the Sun today cheerfully informs us of another problem with Muslims. Apparently, the numbers of Muslims behind bars has risen by 120%. This undoubtedly means that BRITAIN'S jails risk becoming breeding grounds for Islamic extremists:

Figures obtained by The Sun show there are 8,000 Muslims in our jails – up from just 3,700 in 1997.

And the number of Muslim inmates – from both Britain and abroad – is growing FOUR TIMES faster than the prison population as a whole.


The Sun appears to be adding two and two together and getting five. The simple fact that there are more Muslim prisoners doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to have jails full of radicalised young men. The conditions might be right in prison for radicalisation - but those who tend to find themselves serving time usually don't fall into the same demographic categories as those who have previously taken part in terrorist plots: overwhelmingly decently educated, reasonably prosperous and who have either done their own research or met like-minded individuals online.

The paper relies on the general secretary of the Prison Officers' Union for the actual evidence:

Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said his members were struggling to cope.

He said: “We have already seen how shoe-bomber Richard Reid was converted and radicalised in prison. We don’t want that being repeated. We have a massive lack of language skills. Very few officers can speak Urdu or Arabic, which means prisoners could be doing or saying anything.”


If we're going to be pedantic about it, Reid converted to Islam while he was in a young offenders' institution. Whether he was radicalised there is something in dispute - Feltham has had a number of imams suspended over fears they were anti-American or radical - but Reid also undoubtedly spent time at Finsbury Park mosque during Abu Hamza's tenure.

This itself poses a problem with the Sun's alertness. Reid was a petty criminal before he entered Feltham, and although his father encouraged him to learn about Islam, he most certainly wasn't religious prior to entering the YOI. Is it those who don't already have their own interpretation of Islam when they're imprisoned we should worry about, or those with little information on it?

As with everything else, it's worth getting this into perspective. According to the prison service, there are currently 130 prisoners being held under terrorist legislation - even if all of them are Muslims, that's an incredibly low percentage of the total currently imprisoned, and they're also spread out throughout the prison system, for the exact reason that keeping them altogether, ala the Maze in Northern Ireland is only storing up even further problems for the future.

It is however indicative of how we're either increasingly afraid of or meant to see the very fact that someone is a Muslim as a potential problem. The Tories added their concern to the Sun's article:

Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said: “Officers are right to warn about the challenge posed by a large number of Muslim inmates.”

Shouldn't we be similarly concerned about the challenge posed by a large number of inmates full stop? The prison system, as the Sun falls over itself to tell us, is at breaking point. Overcrowded prisons makes it near to impossible for any real rehabilitation to take place; prisoners are increasingly banged up in cells for longer periods of time, making those vulnerable to the advances of their cell-mates, whatever their religion or otherwise. The projections that up to 1,600 terrorists could be behind bars in ten years' time shouldn't be surprising when we're imprisoning those such as Atif Siddique for 8 years
(Abu Hamza got 7 years). Who knows how long the "lyrical terrorist" will receive?

The Scum's leader inevitably takes it all up a notch (the actual page seems to have since disappeared into the ether, replaced by tomorrow's leader, so you'll have to trust me on what it says):
Jihad jails

 BRITAIN’S bulging prisons are being turned into hothouse training and recruiting posts for Islamic terror.

For which there is no evidence whatsoever.

 Overworked warders live in fear of bullying minorities who form gangs and run their own jail culture.

And why are they overworked? Because the Sun and others keep demanding that sentences become ever tougher while demanding more prisons that unsurprisingly no one wants in their backyard. Prisons are full of gangs and their own cliques, it's not as if that's anything new.

The officers dare not enter prayer meetings held in a foreign language.

Nobody knows for sure whether imams are preaching from the Koran or an al-Qaeda manual. But we can be certain their message is not peace and goodwill to all men.


Again, does the Sun have any evidence whatsoever to back this up? Of course it doesn't. In fact, prison imams have been receiving special training to help identify those who might be falling victim to radicalisation. Imams have often got the blame in its pages when few other than Hamza have had a direct hand in radicalising those who have gone on to take part in attacks. If they made such a blanket statement about prison chaplains they'd rightly get smacked down for such a generalisation with no evidence.

As we reveal today, one inmate allegedly launched his terrorist career after studying jihad in Wandsworth prison library.

The article says nothing of the sort (click "more" to see it.). It says that he had a single document on jihad which he obtained while in prison. Al Figari is one of those currently on trial for taking part in the "paintball jihad".

MI5 chief Jonathan Evans this week warned the number of radicalised Muslims has more than doubled in a year, with thousands more yet to be identified.

No he didn't. He said that the numbers of those who pose a "direct threat to national security and public safety, because of their support for terrorism" had increased by 400 from 1,600. How much stall you want to put by such figures is up to you.

Now we know where they are coming from.

The question is — why aren’t we sending them home?


Probably because most of them are already British citizens. And so the "fear" dial is turned up yet another point.

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11/09/2007 10:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 08, 2007 

de Menezes: Blair as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.


Finally then, a year and ten months it was first formally finished, we receive the IPCC investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (PDF).

What once would have been explosive and damning reading has been rendered, both by the leaks and the trial of the Met under health and safety legislation, into something almost familiar. It documents failures at all levels, from the officers conducting the surveillance on the morning all the way up to "Sir" Ian Blair himself.

The one thing that overwhelming sticks out from quickly speed-reading the entire document is that of the differing accounts between both the public witnesses of what happened on the tube train and that of the CO12 Special Branch officers and SO19 firearms officers, the first (section 13) who state the police made no mention of who they were when they entered the train, except from the CO12 officers stating "he's here", and the latter (section 18) who all claim that they shouted "police" or "armed police".

Similarly, Cressida Dick and the others inside "Room 1600" all maintain that de Menezes had been identified as Osman on a number of occasions, up to 5 in all. The CO12 officers (section 12) deny ever making a positive identification; indeed, the chronicle of events suggest that one officer decided it definitely wasn't Osman, while the others were uncertain, and thought that the surveillance should continue as a result. Although one managed to come to the conclusion that de Menezes had distinct "Mongolian eyes", there was never a definite positive given to Room 1600. Again, despite none of the surveillance team mentioning that the suspect was "jumpy" or "nervous", Room 1600 came to believe that de Menezes was agitated and "definitely their man." Dick and Detective Superintendent Boutcher requested that the surveillance team give a number on the scale of 1 to 10 on how sure they were that de Menezes was Osman (section 12.22), a request that the receiver, 'James', said was ridiculous, but said that when he had previously seen him over 15 minutes earlier he thought it was a "good possible". This was taken as "they believe it to be Osman."

Despite all the talk after the death of de Menezes of the police's use of "Operation Kratos", the shoot-to-kill policy on those suspected of being suicide bombers, it was never actually put into effect on the morning of the death. The report does go further into the background of Kratos (section 9) and how it came to be police policy, with there being little to no government input. The only real advice the police sought was that of the Treasury Counsel as to the legality of shooting to kill, which came to the conclusion that it was. One of the IPCC recommendations is that there should have been a public debate prior to the implementation of the policy, but that it wasn't thought necessary, or even worthy of discussion in parliament is an indictment of the secretive way of which the police continue to operate.

Even though Kratos was not in actual operation, de Menezes' fate may well have been sealed by the briefing delivered to the firearms officers at Nightingale Lane police station, which dropped everything but the actual shoot-to-kill policy itself into the mix. The individuals involved in the bombings were described as being "deadly and determined" and "up for it" (section 11.11); never was it mentioned that they might encounter those who were entirely innocent in the course of the day. The two officers who shot de Menezes, referred to as "Charlie 2" and "Charlie 12" in the report both said how they believed it was very likely that they would be asked to "intercept deadly and determined terrorist suicide bombers," in the words of Charlie 2 (section 18.21). Charlie 12 was more verbose (section 18.31):

‘We were possibly about to face subjects who had training and had attempted to commit atrocities on innocent human beings with complete disregard to their own lives. They had prepared devices in order to achieve this. There was a real tangible danger that if we didn’t act quickly and correctly there would be an extreme loss of life”.

Both felt as they entered the tube that de Menezes was about to detonate his explosives and they had no choice but to use deadly force, even though it had not been authorised by any officer. The report asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether the actions of of Charlie 2 and 12 amounted to murder, given their justification for shooting de Menezes. (section 20.74). They decided against. Cressida Dick's abject failure to properly either know what was being sent to Room 1600 from the CO12 team, or to make clear to the SO19 team that she wanted de Menezes arrested and not shot, something she failed to make significantly clear, was of no help. One witness from within Room 1600, as had been leaked, claims that Dick added "at all costs." (section 12.36) Whether, if true, it would have made any difference we'll never know.

The report does possibly help clear up some of the initial eyewitness reports given to the media which were so horribly wrong. Many of the witnesses mistook "Ivor", the officer first on the scene and who grabbed hold of de Menezes for an Asian man, and with him also being thrown and a gun pointed at him, he could have easily been mistaken for the man who was shot.

There are a few more minor points in the report that are interesting or indicative of what already was happening on the scene in the aftermath; the pathologist who was on the scene by 13:33 on the 22nd of July was apparently briefed that de Menezes had vaulted the ticket barrier (section 14.16) and ran down the stairs before being shot after tripping, and included those "facts" in his report. It also notes how officers took statements from some of the witnesses inside nearby pubs while music was playing and with the news of what happened on the TV. One of the witnesses described how an officer tried to influence her statement (section 14.8):

“You have to be careful what you say in this sort of situation, or it will be just one more copper with a family losing his job or worse”.

It also shows how officers were allowed to draw up their statements on what happened together and come to a general consensus, whereas the witnesses were denied any opportunity to do just that.

This report really ought to have been the final nail in the coffin of Sir Ian Blair's term as head of the Met. The most damning condemnation is really reserved for him. The IPCC was not allowed any access to Stockwell tube station until the Monday, following Blair's order that the IPCC should be refused access, sent to the Home Office within an hour of the shooting. If we are to believe that Blair didn't know until the following morning that an innocent man was shot, it can't even be said he was trying to instigate a cover-up; he was simply opposed to the IPCC doing the job they was set up to do. Nick Hardwick, in his statement on the issuing of the report, made clear that the delay in the IPCC being able to investigate led directly to much of the "difficulty" that has faced the Met since then. The fact alone that Blair worsened the situation that the police has faced since the tragic death of de Menezes is reason alone for his resignation or sacking. That he presided over a police force that lied through its teeth, smeared de Menezes on a number of occasions and even now seems to deny that the failures were "systemic" makes him almost as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.

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11/08/2007 09:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: The Le Worm that turned and propaganda victories to evil men.

Just the latest lame-brained arguments from today's Scum leader:

IT is only a few months since America regarded Britain as its greatest ally.

France, under sneering Jacques Chirac, was unreliable at best and downright anti-American at worst.


Oh yes, the man the Scum nicknamed Le Worm if I recall correctly. Unlike the Sun and Blair, Le Worm got it right over Iraq, although the Scum could never bring itself to ever admit anything of the sort.

Today, President Nikolas Sarkozy is warmly embraced as a friend — and invited to address the joint US Congress.

By contrast our Prime Minister’s first White House trip was a stiff and formal affair.

Why the difference?

Gordon Brown set out to make clear America can no longer automatically count on the UK as a military ally, as in Iraq.


Rubbish. Brown, if some reports are to be believed, certainly hasn't made clear that Britain wouldn't take part in any action against Iraq. Brown was only making clear that the cozy, rudderless days of meekly following America while having no influence over it were in the past, along with Blair. If the Sun doesn't like a relationship that isn't completely obsequious and which led directly to the disaster Iraq, then tough.

Our Prime Minister would do well to watch and learn . . .

And listen less to the malign chatter of his lightweight new Foreign minister, Mark Malloch Brown.


That would be the whole point of this spurious leader then, another opportunity to take aim at Malloch Brown. Malloch Brown you might remember had the temerity to suggest that the US used the UN for its own ends abroad without defending it at home, and leaving it to the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to lambast the organisation for daring to exist. Attacking any part of the Murdoch empire instantly makes you person non grata, and subject to random, consistent vilification. The Sun is merely continuing its expected role under the watchful eye of the great proprietor.

Even by its standards, the argument the Scum is making for Sir Ian Blair staying in his job is wafer-thin:

Sacking Sir Ian won’t bring Jean Charles back.

But it would hand a massive propaganda victory to the evil men who seek to justify 7/7 and other civilian atrocities.


Err, how exactly? That the man ultimately responsible for what happened to de Menezes will be sacked for being more successful in killing the dirty kuffars than the 21/7 bombers themselves were? Are they really going to be glad that someone who didn't even know that an innocent man had been killed until the following day, even though his secretary did, is gone? Or will they be more fearful of someone who isn't so obviously incompetent and obstinate being the head of the Met? Even if it would somehow hand a propaganda victory to "evil men", what have they got to do with it? The public weren't endangered on the 22nd by "evil men", they were endangered by police who shot dead an innocent man and were so unhinged they nearly shot another police officer and then the driver of the train. Blair's resignation is the first step towards ensuring that the Met doesn't continue to hold both the public and the truth in such contempt.

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11/08/2007 08:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 07, 2007 

The crisis in Pakistan.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but has there been an actual condemnation of what is currently occurring on the streets of Pakistan? Thousands of those opposed to General Musharraf have been arrested, including a number of well-known political activists, the police have been viciously beating those who ignored Musharraf's declaration on Saturday of martial law to protest, television stations have been shut down, the media has in some cases been silenced, yet the only real comment we've made is that Musharraf must keep his promise of holding elections and stepping down as the head of the army. As for all those currently imprisoned for challenging Musharraf's second coup, they may as well consider themselves forgotten.

It's clear that Musharraf's one and only intention in declaring an emergency is to enable him to hang on in power. Although recently overwhelmingly re-elected president after the opposition parties mostly boycotted the vote, the real challenge to his authority has come not from the likes of Benazir Bhutto, who has returned to Pakistan to almost unaminous fanfare in the western media, but rather from lawyers and a number of recalcitrant judges, led by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a judge who Musharraf suspeneded earlier in the year before he was reinstated after mass protests, with the supreme court overruling Musharraf's initial misconduct charges. It was widely expected that the supreme court was about to similarly declare Musharraf's re-election null and void, with the general preemptively acting against the threat.

While Musharraf's other justification for declaring a state of emergency, the spiraling Islamist violence across the country after the siege of the Red Mosque, which lead bin Laden among other takfirists to call for a jihad against the country, has been widely parroted abroad, little mention has been made that the "judicial interference" was also a major factor, with Musharraf claiming that it was making Pakistan ungovernable. Apart from the defiance of Musharraf's will, Chaudhry's other crime was his and other judges' approach to the mass human rights abuses being committed in Pakistan's own "war against terrorism", involving torture and the disappearance of some of those arrested. While no one can deny that Pakistan is in the frontline when it comes to tackling jihadists and extremist Islam, the brutal tactics involved are undoubtedly having the usual effect of filling the ranks of those not only involved in the insurrection in Waziristan, but also that of the Taliban and the insurgency in Iraq.

To begin with it was thought that Musharraf might well have overplayed his hand in declaring an emergency, but the slow and far from unanimous response to what has happened since have quashed any such hopes. The BBC might have just reported that President Bush has personally called Musharraf to urge him to hold elections as planned and step down as army chief, but his real interests have already been overwhelming served. His most bitter opponents in the courts have been removed; the opposition politicians are either in hiding or under house arrest; the public is cowed, thanks to the way the police have cracked down on the few protests that some have staged; and those who were already in negotiations with him about power-sharing, such as Bhutto, have been so slow to respond, partly due to how her party, the Pakistan People's, was mostly ignored to begin with, further undermining any remaining real political standing she had. Even if elections are to be staged as planned now, it seems unlikely that they could be any way be either free or fair, which is exactly what Musharraf intended.

The rehabilitation of Benazir Bhutto shows how desperate politics within Pakistan has become. Anyone would think that she was a new, untainted figure, not someone who spent her time while previously in office turning at best a blind eye to the emergence of the Taliban, at worst using the ISI, Pakistan's security services to help them take control, or a figure with numerous corruption charges in multiple countries hanging over her. There is however no accounting for someone's personal vanity, or for their ability to woo foreign politicos with talk of democracy, human rights and opposition to extremism, all of which Bhutto didn't have much time for previously except as long as it kept her in power. The lack of personal criticism which followed the horrific suicide bombing that targeted her return parade, killing at least 140, was shocking: the takfirists made clear how they would attempt to attack her, yet she still showered in the adulation of her remaining supporters in the most nauseating fashion, endangering them far more than she did herself.

Parallels with Burma and the response to what occurred there only a matter of weeks ago are apt. Burma may not be as quite as internally fracturous as Pakistan currently is, but the crackdown could have been modeled on how the Burmese military and police responded to the mass protests by the Buddhist monks. As opposed to how the world responded to the situation there, Musharraf could not be more pleased with the lack of demands for the instant reinstitution of democracy and release of those arrested.

Like with so much else, post 9/11, it all comes down to Pakistan's admitted major role, not just in stopping fighters from crossing into Afghanistan, something it's failed to do, but also in the increasingly lawless and violent regions in the west, with the Grauniad reporting on how the Swat valley, previously popular with tourists has itself fell victim to "Talibanisation," giving all the more ammo both to Musharraf and the US in continuing the support given to him and the military assault on Waziristan. The last thing the US, or even Nato wants to consider while both are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively is the increasingly likely spread of the conflict into Pakistan itself. Democracy, despite all the rhetoric, will undoubtedly come second to the further shoring up of the discredited and bankrupt Musharraf.

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11/07/2007 09:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Ellee Seymour, Nadine Dorries and all that.

I tend to find the majority of blogging-battles or mini civil wars about as interesting as how much the house I'm currently sitting in is worth, but Tim's latest post on Ellee Seymour and her tooth and nail defense of Nadine Dorries, involving the removal of all of Tim's comments while leaving up numerous ones smearing him is pretty astonishing in its one-handedness. Seymour, whose blog resembles some of the most inane of the Daily Mail's output, somehow came tenth in Iain Dale's top 500 political blogs list.

Seymour regards Nadine Dorries as "a superb woman, a superb MP and a superb blogger." It's a shame then that Dorries makes baseless accusations against those who question the science behind her minority submission to the Parliamentary Science and Tech Select Committee. Dorries removed comments from her blog after those in them asked her to retract her idiotic complaint that Ben Goldacre's "personal attack" represented a "serious breach of parliamentary procedure," as she claimed that he could only have obtained Professor Wyatt's evidence from a member of the select committee. Goldacre downloaded Wyatt's evidence from the committee's website, where it had already been posted.

Dorries herself claims not to be anti-abortion or pro-life and as someone who accepts abortion as a fact of life. It's strange then that she talks in the same language as those who are completely opposed to abortion in all instances. In her own words:

The Committee was hi-jacked by those who have powerful financial vested interests in the abortion industry.

Considering that the vast, vast majority of abortions in this country are carried out on the NHS, this comment alone is breathtakingly disingenuous. Unity has spent far more time and effort breaking down her arguments, which are best summed up by him as:

In fact, reading her ‘commentaries’ on the proceedings of the Committee I think I can safely say that rarely, if ever, have I encountered such a continuous stream of crude, vapid, abject, disingenuous, ill-conceived and intellectually dishonest bullshit as that emanating from the keyboard of Mad Nad over the last week.

Which is probably why she's a superb woman, a superb MP and a superb blogger.

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11/07/2007 08:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Erratic publishing.

If anything's broken or snafued here at the moment, it's down to the problems Blogger is currently experiencing with FTP publishing, which'll hopefully be fixed shortly.

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11/07/2007 12:07:00 AM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 

Around as enthralling as a dead dog.

Part of the reason why the Queen's speech (how much longer does the ridiculous and inane opening of parliament have to continue? Until Brenda's legs stop working?) was both so underwhelming and stale was that we really had heard it all before. As part of Brown's initial attempts to re-engage the public and prove how he was nothing like that control freak Blair was to "preview" the bills likely to be announced before the rise of parliament in the summer. All well and good, but it allowed David Cameron to continue his similarly moribund claims that Brown is offering nothing new. Reasonably accurate, but then neither are the Tories.

For once, the Tories actually have something of a point over their opposition to the extending of the compulsory education age to 18, which will be enforced with a great big stick rather than carrots. Those who refuse to turn up will get fined - the perfect way to enthuse our disillusioned youth with the idea that it's for their own benefit. Either you turn up or we take the (tiny) amount of money you might be earning. The next year will see reforms to secondary education that might well help with the actual problems faced: that at 14 most are already either so disenfranchised with school or accepting of failure that they don't even try. The introduction of diplomas, both vocational and academic, could prove to be vital. At 16 currently, those who go on to colleges or sixth forms are generally those who want to learn; the compulsion to keep learning until 18 will remove the relief that many feel on leaving behind those who either were disruptive or simply unpleasant. It's not their fault, it's that they're currently be failed by the strictness of the system, either taking the academic route with GCSEs or the more vocational course with GNVQs, which are decent qualifications but not worth the number of GCSEs they claim to. Getting the mixture between the two right will do far more to improve results than any threat of compulsion. By 2015 it might have been achieved, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.

As noted in the previous post, Labour is currently far too cowardly to come out with how it wants to double the pre-charge limit for "terrorist suspects", although everyone knows another battle is ahead. The latest knee-jerk on the criminal justice front is violent offenders' orders, which are bound to trouble the courts, while the sop to the tabloids is the long trumpeted and downright illiberal banning of "extreme" pornographic images, in the BBC's lexicon, which means the banning of "dangerous pictures" in actuality. The only truly radical piece of legislation is the climate change bill, and it's likely to be not radical enough.

It makes you wonder whether the government really was so set upon that autumn election, built around Brown personally, that it didn't bother to come up with any actual policies or details, both of which were wholly lacking today. This was less a vision than a panicky brainstorm in the middle of the night after Brown realised he'd forgotten all about having Brenda reading out his plans for the next year. There was talk of meritocracy, getting in tune with the aspirations of the people, but behind those rhetorical flourishes the bills themselves were as flat as the Queen's voice. It's a shame that Vince Cable is himself lacking in gravitas, as his spell as stand in Liberal Democrat leader has been something of a success. He certainly got it right on the tepidity of today:

"The anticipation was acute - but the anticlimax is deafening. The legislative programme is firmly rooted in the Blair era. There is very little new. No ideas, no vision. Is this what we have been waiting for?"

"The one-time editor of the Red Paper has penned a Queen's speech in the bluest ink. Across wide swathes of policy, his approach is indistinguishable from the Tories."

This though is intended. When the Electoral Reform Society identifies that the election could have been decided by 8,000 voters, the cross-dressing and tailoring of policies to those that most turns on the exalted floating voter is only natural. The lack of choice is acute, but no one's prepared to move beyond that dead end of radical centrism.

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11/06/2007 10:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Spin? Under Brown? Say it ain't so.

If we were still suffering under the burden of Blairism, you can bet that the Tories and Lib Dems might have made a little more out of the fact that Jonathan Evans, the new head of MI5, not only delivered the latest speech on the "threat" in front of the society of newspaper editors, ensuring that they knew in no uncertain terms the horror that could be unleashed at a moment's notice on our nation, but that it also came the day before the Queen's speech, where the government was preparing to unveil its latest proposals on how to beat back the extremist scourge. As it turns out, the most controversial measure, the extension from 28 days to 56 days pre-charge detention for "terrorist suspects", which has been long trailed, wasn't unambiguously set out by Brenda, the government preferring to still pretend that it's making its mind up while seeking "consensus". It's hard to believe though that the speech was anything other than a warning, from both the security services and the government, for the press which previously and continues to object to what more or less amounts to the reinstatement of internment.

Most of what Evans sets out is of little difference to Eliza Manningham-Buller's speech of last year. He considers the current "threat" to be the most "immediate and acute [in] peacetime" in the 98-year history of MI5. It's unclear whether he counts the cold war as an actual war, as I somehow find the threat of being vaporised by nuclear weapons more menacing than that from terrorists armed with patio gas canisters and cans of petrol, but that like so much else, doesn't really matter. The current day threat, whatever it is, is always the most deadly and insidious which we have ever faced. The National Union of Mineworkers during the strike in 84/85 was opposed to democracy and wanted to overthrow the Thatcher government. Saddam Hussein in the early 90s was the justification, with Russia descending into the chaos of the Yeltsin years to keep defence spending high.

Predictably, what the papers' picked up on was Evans's claim that

As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country. They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism.

which the Express distorted into suicide bombers in our schools. This isn't a new message either; last year John Reid warned Muslim parents to look out for the "telltale" signs of radicalisation, and even go so far as to spy on them. Evans's evidence that this is happening is the number of young people now being linked into networks, with Abdul Patel, linked to last year's "liquid bombs" plot being the favourite example. He was found to have a manual meant for the use of American bomb disposal units, which the prosecuting counsel said that "in the wrong hands, the information contained in this manual can have catastrophic consequences, including causing explosions of the most terrifying kind in the UK and abroad." The jury agreed that he was guilty of having the document, but the judge in sentencing him to six months said he was not a "radicalised or politicised Islamist" as the prosecution had claimed.

The young are always going to be targeted; but it's also true that the young are also those who are inevitably going to be the most potentially radical anyway. The inexperience and rebelliousness of youth is going to be a motivating factor, but the evidence is not overwhelming that the young are being systematically radicalised or "brainwashed" as Evans appears to be claiming. Those most likely to be involved in radical takfirist Salafism are usually well-educated, from respectable backgrounds and far removed from poverty. Two of the 7/7 bombers were relatively young, but again they don't fit the profile of coming under the wing of any particular radical preacher or influence. Strangely, unlike the news reports covering Evans's speech, he didn't mention the internet in being a major factor in radicalisation, when we know that it plays an incredibly important role. Most of those becoming radicalised don't gain their knowledge through radical preachers, the favoured bogeyman, but from the internet through their own research. While English language jihadi websites are few and far between, the number of Arabic forums dedicated to discussing the conflicts around the world and the posting of videos by the groups fighting is ever growing.

The other major talking point was the numbers game, with Evans now letting us know that there are 2,000 individuals that MI5 consider a "direct threat to national security and public safety, because of their support for terrorism," up 400 from Buller's speech last year. In addition, he estimates there's enough 2,000 that the service doesn't know about of similar thinking. Like with Buller, he doesn't distinguish between those that are prepared to become suicide bombers and those that are likely to have a role in the funding of such attacks, or those who support the insurgency in Iraq say, but not bombings back home. It doesn't really tell us anything except provide us with a number which seems massive in order to cause concern. If there are after all 2,000 individuals actively supporting terrorism, and if even a quarter of that number were willing to launch either suicide attacks or a bombing campaign, why are the number of plots so apparently low? Isn't Evans slightly contradicted by how Sir Ian Blair recently suggested that the number of active investigations into plots is now lower than previously? Is it that the threat, despite what they're saying, is receding somewhat, or that there are plans being made that we don't know about?

Also questionable was this statement:

"And it is important that we recognise an uncomfortable truth: terrorist attacks we have seen against the UK are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups."

Which seems to indulge the myth that the hand of al-Qaida can be found behind nearly every terrorist plot there is. Was al-Qaida really responsible for the laughable "suicide bombing" at Glasgow airport or the bombs which were "potentially viable" in London? If so, their recruits are getting even weaker and more obsessed with plots next to impossible to pull off but look spectacular and terrifying on paper than ever before. Was al-Qaida involved in the alleged beheading of a British soldier back in Febuary? We know for a fact al-Qaida wasn't involved in the "ricin plot". The danger is that we see al-Qaida as some kind of multi-layered organisation driven from the top down, when the reality is that al-Qaida as it existed in 2001 could collapse entirely tomorrow and we'd still be facing much the same problem of extremist Islamists. The trial of those involved in the Madrid attacks set out where the threat is most likely to come from: those with radical views that need little help from those holed up in Pakistan or wherever but who are influenced by the ideals and ideology behind bin Laden enough to carry out their own attacks in the name of al-Qaida. Evans does sort of recognise this, as he does mention the spread of the al-Qaida brand: the first suicide bombing in Algeria coming after the GSPC pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, changing its name to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. al-Qaida might be conducting a deliberate campaign against us, as Evans says, but those with no real connection to the organisation are doing so also.

Have you noticed however what Evans notably doesn't pay much attention to? Iraq garners just two mentions - to note that al-Qaida in Iraq "aspires to promote terrorist attacks outside Iraq". Nothing about Iraq's undoubted role in helping with the radicalisation process, even if it isn't the only cause, or that the threat is likely to increase once those who've gone to fight in Iraq return, from what the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq has himself described as the "university of terrorism." It's probably true that al-Qaida in Iraq has designs on exporting terrorism, but the state of the insurgency in Iraq has shifted in a remarkably short time. al-Qaida's media wing in Iraq has now not released a new video of its activities for going on a month - an extraordinary length of time signifying how the infighting amongst the insurgency has escalated to such a scale that what happened in Algeria to the Islamic groups there is routinely mentioned. At the moment the emphasis is certainly on what is going on within Iraq itself rather than attacking anywhere else.

One thing Evans certainly does get right is that

"Anything which enables it to claim to be representative of Islam; anything which gives a spurious legitimacy to its twisting of theology will only play into its hands."

As will furthering the victimhood factor by extending the detention without charge period. The one thing this speech seems to have been intended to influence is one of the things that will do most to damage the fight against extremism. How's that for irony?

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11/06/2007 08:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

So there is a liberal conspiracy after all...

Nice to see that Liberal Conspiracy, the latest project from Sunny of Pickled Politics fame has launched, and has a roster of bloggers on its books to rival the very best group sites.

I'm not too sure on the name, as it seems a little too provocative for my liking (and calling this island upon which we live septic isn't, dipshit?) and will quickly grow stale, but the thinking behind it certainly can't be faulted, even if I worry that it could become something of a circle jerk. As Dave Hill writes:

I hate to tempt fate but, fingers crossed, touching wood and stroking a rabbit’s foot, this blog could turn out to be a rarity: a place where liberals and lefties gather to debate that I don’t feel an immediate urge to leave.

There might still be some further surprises to emerge from Sunny's sleeve, so it's worth watching for sometime yet in any case.

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11/06/2007 01:38:00 AM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 05, 2007 

Enoch Powell was right - and completely and utterly wrong.

If there's one thing we can be glad about when we talk about immigration and its effects, it's that we that none of our politicians are as rabid as some of those currently in office in Italy. Unlike here, Italy imposed no restrictions on Romanian or Bulgarian free movement when they joined the European Union at the beginning of the year, and like with the result when we were only one of three countries to not impose similar restrictions on the A8 countries in 2004, Romanians especially have moved to Italy in search of work. Armed with dubious figures which suggest that although they only make up 1% of the population, Romanians make up 5.6% of those charged with murder, it took the violent death of Giovanni Reggiani for the centre-left government of Romano Prodi to pass what can only be described as panic legislation which allows for the deportation of any other EU national judged to pose a "threat to public security." Vigilantes have since attacked Romanians and the post-fascists have called for mass repatriation.

From Italy we move to Halesowen and Rowley Regis, the constituency for which the Conservative Nigel Hastilow was until Sunday the prospective candidate for. His decision to resign over his article in Friday's Wolverhampton Express and Star which commented that "Many insist: “Enoch Powell was right”, is hardly a one-off event. Every couple of years an MP, a councillor or a candidate gets exposed for holding less than salubrious views, and they either sit it out, resign, or are summarily sacked. Earlier this year we had Patrick Mercer, who shouldn't have had to resign or be sacked for his explanation of the reality of army life, but went anyway. Late last year there was the Conservative councillor who sent on a highly offensive and racist email about Pakistani immigrants. Prior to that there was Ann Winterton and her joke about the Chinese cockle pickers, and two years previously a joke about Pakistanis "being ten a penny." You could write a whole post purely on Tories and their "jokes."

Even the most naive person must realise however that mentioning Enoch Powell and his infamous speech is career suicide, yet Hastilow did it anyway while noting that he was marginalised afterwards. Rightly or wrongly, and you can argue that Powell was, as the apologists for Hastilow would also say, simply speaking for what many others are thinking and telling them, his whole political life has been reduced to just one simple phrase: rivers of blood. Hastilow himself in his actual article only mentions the rivers of blood in inverted commas, and the mention of Powell being right is not his own, but that of "most people" in the Black Country.

More than anything, his article in indicative for what it isn't: it isn't racist, nor is it even slightly original. It's the atypical rant which will appear every so often in any of the right-wing tabloids. He uses an example of a family that may or may not exist that in their own view have been forgotten about and ignored by the local authorities because the "immigrants" have taken all the accommodation. Powell himself used a couple of such examples in his speech, one of a man who said he wanted his family to move abroad because "in 15 or 20 years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man" and appropriately enough, of a white elderly woman in Wolverhampton supposedly the only white person remaining on her street, who had "excreta pushed through her letterbox." These are the stock, possibly apocryphal tales which make up these "I'm not a racist but.." stories which enable the politician or writer to push an agenda which they're too frightened to come out with and say openly. Later he makes use of Asian Britons who've told him exactly the same, which is the latest example of the above. To be fair, there was an Asian man on Question Time last week who was of the same opinion, and it does for a second make you wonder whether they've forgotten the racism they must have undoubtedly suffered at some point in their lives, or their own struggle for acceptance which their parents underwent, but to pretend that anyone who has a skin colour other than white can't be racist is a self-deluding fantasy. Just because they've said it doesn't make it any less racist or wrong.

Hastilow continues: the nub of his argument is that there are far too many people, that our services can't cope, that we only need these migrants because our own indigenous potential workforce is all on benefits, all so predictable and also easy to disagree with. If anything, the current balance of people is about right, our services are coping admirably well, as the reports recently have shown, and the numbers of those on incapacity benefit are overwhelmingly those who lost their jobs in the 80s and haven't worked since, and aren't going to again. Society may be getting healthier, as he writes, when he perhaps ought to say we're living longer, but if the government's predictions are anything to go by, half of us might well be obese shortly. He claims the population is growing by almost half a million every year but he seems to have forgotten to deduct those emigrating from those migrating, which leaves a net increase of about 200,000. He asks whether we want 3 million more houses, which we'll need regardless of immigration or not, even though he's a member of the party that created the problem through the selling off of council stock that hasn't been replaced. He implies we'll need higher taxes to cope, when we what really need is better targeted funding to the places that need it.

Trevor Phillips last week praised David Cameron for helping to "deracialise" the whole issue of immigration, and Hastilow is equally vehement that it's not about race but numbers. Cameron does deserve a certain amount of credit for a calm, measured speech on immigration, but his policy of not actually coming up with a number for his magical cap is politically bankrupt. The only real reason why the debate has become "deracialised" is that the migration itself is now overwhelmingly deracialised. Those who have come here since the ascension of the eastern European countries to the EU in 2004 might speak a different language, but they sure look like "us" and have the same colour of skin as us. True, the tabloids have tried to whip up the occasional furore about the Polish, notably the Daily Mail (see FCC ad nauseam and here for the most recent most egregious attempt), but most of it has been half-hearted. There's a reason why the British National Party hasn't turned its fire entirely on the new wave of immigration from Europe and has instead concentrated on Muslims, and that's because they're overwhelmingly as Aryan as "we" are. If the migration was coming from either northern Africa or the Middle East, you can bet, "political correctness" or otherwise that the debate would most certainly not be as "deracialised" as it currently is.

Along comes then Hastilow's solution. Police our borders. Deport without debate "bogus asylum seekers". There's no such thing as a bogus asylum seeker, as the Press Complaints Commission set out 4 years ago in a recommendation to editors. There are only failed asylum seekers. Illegal immigrants get the same treatment. Abandon the "human rights" merry-go-round. Get rid of the 11,000 foreign criminals. Note how many of Hastilow's recommendations are the government's own, yet you can't suggest such things. It's all right though, as Hastilow is humane enough to care about "genuine" refugees who we should always allow in. We, not the immigrants themselves are being exploited, and we're a soft touch seen around the world. As a graduate of the university of reading Sun editorials, I can testify I've read the term "soft touch" dozens of times.

If anything, the whole article shows Hastilow's cowardice. He hides behind the granny of the family for saying that Enoch was right. He quotes the Asian Britons who tell him that too many immigrants now come to benefit purely from the welfare state. He instead mainly lambasts the Brits who can't be bothered to work or who can't work. No sir, he hasn't said anything offensive. The others can do that for him. It serves however to perpetuate the myths of political correctness and that you can't talk about immigration without being called a racist and lambasted. Never mind that almost the exact same article could be read in the pages of many papers in this country without anyone batting an eyelid, Hastilow has been silenced and freedom of speech is threatened. Those who fought the Nazis have been betrayed.

There is a debate to be had about immigration, and it does need to be decided on whether there is an optimum rate. The numbers currently coming though are not set in stone. The restrictions that have resulted in those from the A8 coming to either here, Ireland or Sweden might be lifted; circumstances back home will change, with the figures suggesting that the numbers might have already peaked. There's the small matter that shortly the boomers will be moving in retirement, putting pressure on the pensions schemes; unless we all intend to work far longer than our parents, it might well be immigrants that come to the rescue. While no one is suggesting completely cutting off the flow, the farming industry would undoubtedly collapse without migrant labour, as might the care industry that looks after the elderly we so casually toss aside. We might storing up problems for later, but for the moment the economy and the country are benefiting with only minor instances of pressure on services.

Powell in one sense was definitely right - immigration has irrevocably changed this country, but it's changed it for the better. Britain as a result is both more tolerant and pleasant because of it. It's not because of "political correctness" that we've reacted differently to say Italy; it's because of our personal experience of immigration and the challenges that it brings. I saw the comedian Stewart Lee recently, and in a part of his routine about political correctness and why he thought it was a good thing, he mentioned that when he was at school there was one Asian child in his class, and the teacher always referred to him, every single time, as the "black spot". It's unimaginable and shocking today because of how we've been changed. Powell was completely and utterly wrong because the change has come about, not with the black man gaining the upper hand, far from it, but without the rivers of blood he predicted. There have been riots, but mercifully few, and with little loss of actual life. People do regularly say "Enoch Powell was right", I've even heard my father saying it and later rebuked him for it. Like Powell, they were wrong then and they're still wrong now. Hastilow shouldn't have been made to resign or to apologise - he should still stand and see where his article gets him. I have more faith that the people Halesowen and Rowley Regis would make the right decision than I do in those that have supposedly been contacting him from around the world to back him up.

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11/05/2007 10:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

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