Cath Elliot has a scathing piece on Comment is Free today. As she points out, police officers guilty of gross incompetence (and possibly more) are being promoted. Cath Elliot highlights two officers, Cressida Dick (now a deputy assistant commissioner) and Angela Cornes, shortly to be a sergeant. DAC Dick was considered responsible for giving the order to shoot Jean Charles De Menezes, while PC Cornes repeatedly failed to help Banaz Mahmod when her life was in danger. PC Cornes’ discplinary hearing before the Metropolitan Police Service collapsed after the key witness refused to testify. Now, in fairness to the disciplinary hearing, there is only so much you can do if your key witness refuses to testify. However, she could have at least received a written warning, as some other officers did:

Shops in England and Wales will no longer be allowed to display tobacco openly. This is the latest in a series of attacks on an apparently still legal product. There are two problems with this new legislation. One is the obvious one; namely the attack on the right of shopkeepers to display legal products that they are allowed to sell.

The other is the money spent on this legislation. The ’survey’ used to justify it cost money. Someone had to write it, cross-reference it and money will have to be spent on enforcing it. Yes, this money is likely to be a drop in the ocean in terms of government spending. And yes, calling for the money to be returned to its rightful owners (i.e. us) never seems to attract much support. But what about the areas that this money could have been spent on, but wasn’t? What about the lack of spending on domestic violence shelters, or the lack of help given to people released from prison? Unless we stand up to the small abuses of taxpayers’ money, the state will continue to spend money on what ideological whim of the day it is enthused by, rather than on services that really matter.

(Via The Filthy Smoker)

Its finally happening. Britain is being gently shuffled into pooterish mediocrity. Whilst the generation of artists that had to face up to Mary Whitehouse and her hateful brigade were confrontational and interesting the generation of British artists that has emerged post cool-britannia produce generic crap.

They don’t have the ability to fathom what the interesting topics are let alone contribute in any meaningful way to breaking taboos or saying something interesting.

From the London Daily News:

The Metropolitan Police are set to racially profile gig goers by asking promoters to fill out a form on what acts are playing and what ethnicities are likely to turn up.

Form 696 compels licensees who want to hold live music events in 21 London Boroughs to report to the names, addresses, aliases and telephone numbers of performers, and controversially, the likely ethnicity of their audience.

Speaking to the Independent, Creation Records’ founder Alan McGee called the legislation ‘outrageous’ and just ‘reinforces racial stereotypes’, continuing:
“I think it’s absolutely shocking that anyone is doing this – it reinforces racial stereotypes and creates a Big Brother state. What I worry about is the totalitarian aspect, people knowing what the likely audience will be. It’s another step in the CCTV, fingerprint, eyeball scanning direction.“

This is outrageous, and not all too surprising. I was a regular at a club where they suddenly introduced ID checks because, according to the (white) club promoter, the police were concerned that the place played black music and hence wanted added security. Everyone not only had to show ID, but people’s driver’s licenses were also scanned and recorded in a database. But who will make a noise about this eh?

The Mumbai terror attacks have been referred to as India’s 9/11 so many times I’ve lost count. In such circumstances its easy to reach for emotions and hyperbole to make sense of it all, but I would prefer to be a bit more dispassionate.

There are two broad elements to a response: intelligence led counter-terrorism, and political diplomacy.

Political diplomacy
1) Saying ‘we never negotiate with terrorists’ is a naive idea when its unclear who the terrorists are. In every such situation you have to wean away the moderates and non-violent agitators while minimising the danger that violent extremists can cause. This means winning hearts and minds. There are legitimate reasons for anger against the Indian govt: the Gujarat riots and subsequent failure of justice, discrimination against Muslims generally and human rights violations in Kashmir. These need to be resolved for human rights reasons anyway, regardless of whether its portrayed as ‘appeasement’.

At the same time, its also worth stating that: there’s no reason why Muslims should be angry at ordinary Indians for what happened in Gujarat and; its not just Muslims who are discriminated against - the Dalits are generally in a worse situation (and there’s more of them).

Crikey! There’s going to a good few pissed off BNP members today!

The British National Party has lost its membership list - the whole thing has been published online.

The list includes names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of all members up to September 2008. It also includes some people’s ages, especially those under 18 - the BNP offers family membership for £40. Many entries also contain more personal comments about jobs or hobbies. That’s how we know that that BNP members include receptionists, district nurses, amateur historians, pagans, line dancers and a male witch.

Members have unsurprisingly reacted with outrage. One commenter said: “I’m also on the list, what the f#ck is going on? I could lose my job.” Another: “The most shocking thing is some of the comments by the names! God help anyone who is in the army, the pison [sic] service, health care, police officer or a teacher.”

A shocking violation of the Data Protection Act I would have thought, although due to the context I’m not sure now much sympathy will be generated…

No doubt there a fair few people who’s job will be on the line should this list get wider distribution.

Rumbold adds: Regardless of what you think of the people on the list, or the ethical nature of publishing such information, please do not link to the list, as it may be a breach of the law. Thank you.

California is being rocked with protests against Proposition 8 - a measure that Californians passed in a statewide vote during the national elections - banning gay marriage. Last weekend protests were even held across the country demanding a change in the law so gays could marry. Of course, I believe gays should be allowed to marry as heterosexual couples are.

The problem I have is - what the hell is the point of organising yourselves now fools? This should have been done before the vote, no? This is what happened. Most people thought Prop 8 wasn’t going to pass because California is the liberal hub of America after all. Except, money poured in from the Mormon Church and religious conservatives also rallied hard to ensure a high-turnout on election day. By a small measure the vote was passed and people were stunned. There has been some discussion about the lack of proper strategy prior to the elections, but all that is no use now.

Liberals in America are generally more organised than lefties here, mostly because civic participation and activism is just more common there. Nevertheless, we don’t seem to get that political victory should not be taken for granted ever. We don’t seem to get that for progress we must organise instead of lamely complaining from the sidelines, like Italians do. We need to discuss and take forward strategy, rather than lamely fighting on the sidelines with each other (which makes the far-left so electorally useless). Prop 8 was the wake-up call for liberals there. I wonder what will it take here. Maybe when Nadine Dorries becomes Home Secretary for the Conservatives.

This is really chilling:

“Britain’s security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.”

The existing, voluntary system works pretty well. Nor would such stringent rules necessarily make Britain safer, as surely the security services benefit from scrutiny. Oh, and does anyone believe that these powers would only be used for national security matters, when we have seem how anti-terrorism acts have been used?

“Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has asked the attorney general to investigate possible “criminal wrongdoing” by the MI5 and the CIA over its treatment of a British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, it was revealed tonight.

The dramatic development over allegations of collusion in torture and inhuman treatment follows a high court judgment which found that an MI5 officer participated in the unlawful interrogation of Binyam Mohamed. The MI5 officer interrogated Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan in 2002.”

While this seems like good news, I doubt that anything concrete will come of it.

(Hat-tip: Douglas Clark)

Whilst many of us deplore the way in which the tabloids act on occasions, we can at least console ourselves with the fact that our press is one of the freest in the world. We have a wide range of newspapers, TV channels and blogs to choose from, and even the BBC, though paid for through tax, is at least independent in the sense that the government does not control its world view (not that it needs to). Yet a new report from Reporters Without Borders ranks the UK only 23rd in the world for press freedom (up one place from last year), behind a number of Eastern European countries and level with Namibia. The USA does even worse, finishing 36th (albeit up from 48th), one place behind France, which traditionally has had an image of a restricted press. India also did worse then I would have thought, finishing only 118th (up from 120th). Looking at the criteria for measurement, I suspect that our restrictive libel laws had something to do with our relatively lowly position:

There has been much written about the upcoming vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, especially about the proposal to liberalise abortion further in Northern Ireland. Sarah however has spotted a little-discussed government amendment, which, if passed, raises a serious issue of medical ethics (ironically a restriction of same right that the government wishes to defend; namely the right of a person to decide what happens to their own body).

If the amendment is passed, tissue samples for creating human/animal embroys can be taken from people who are not considered mentally capable of making their own decisions. Now, obviously there are some areas (such as financial ones), in which it is right for carers/relatives to have a degree of control, as that might be the only practical situation. I cannot, however, see any rationale for this. As Sarah points out:

Leading learning disability charities said they knew little about this amendment to the Bill, which has, not surprisingly, received very little publicity… if this amendment to the Bill is passed on Wednesday, it will not only sweep away 25 years of progress in medical ethics. It will also sweep away too many years of hard work by Disability Rights campaigners to convince the mainstream world that we are human, too, and that they should do Nothing About Us, Without Us.

Riazat Butt reports that the government announced that a new post of ‘Communities adviser’ is to be created. From the description below it seems that the main function of such a post is to explain to Muslims why the government is pushing so hard to throw them in jail for six weeks without charge:

[The Communities Adviser should] develop an understanding of communities and how they are reacting in real time, providing feedback and contacts to enable OSCT [Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism] to ascertain true community reaction … [and ensure the] positive public perception of counter terrorism activities within our communities and ensure work is clearly and accurately explained to the community in a cogent and understandable format.

Are the government just falling back on the tired old colonial prescription of dealing with minorities through ‘representatives’? Or is this something different? As Riazat puts it:

Right now though the questions are: who should get the job, who will get the job and is such a post needed?

Oliver Stone’s George Bush biopic W is released this Friday in the States, two weeks before the elections. And from all accounts, it is said to be a little patchy but brilliant in places. So typical Ollie Stone fare.

As for the trailer, it is probably up there as one of those trailers which could arguably be better than the movie. The use of ‘Once in a Lifetime’ by the Talking Heads is a stroke of genius.

W goes into general release here in the UK on November 7, three days after the elections.

Enjoy.

Update: David T notes that the trailer’s backing track is “possibly one of the greatest songs ever written”. And of course, he’s right:

The government is going to give up on its attempts to bring in detention without charge for 42 days after accepting that the House of Lords would never pass it.

Ministers admit privately that there is not “a cat in Hell’s chance” of the legislation, which returns to the Lords this week, being passed into law.

The Government has decided against using the Parliament Act to force the measure through after peers reject it, The Times has learnt. That decision will effectively confine the controversial proposal — which the Prime Minister fought tooth and nail to get through a Commons vote in June — to the legislative dustbin.

But watch out for a shoddy compromise, and a confirmation of the 28 days limit.

(via Tim Worstall)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, racist, overt homophobe and President of Iran has changed his mind about the existence of gay people in his country. He has even been on the American news show Democracy Now to reveal the extraordinary news that there are indeed some gay people in Iran: “There might be a few people who are known. In general, our country would not accept it.”

But Mahmoud, didn’t you say last year that there are no gay people in Iran?

“I didn’t say they don’t exist; I said not the way they are here. In Iran, it’s considered as a very unlikable and abhorrent act. People simply don’t like it. Our religious decrees tell us that it’s against our values, and all divine laws, actually, believe in the same. Who has given them permission to engage in homosexual acts? It’s considered as an abhorrent act. It shakes the foundations of a society, the family foundation. It robs humanity. It brings about diseases.”

From the Guardian today:

The National Black Police Association is threatening to run a public campaign urging ethnic minorities to boycott the Metropolitan police in an escalation of the race row engulfing the force.

Leading members have drawn up battle plans after a week in which the internal disputes of the Met have spilled out in public in a bitter war of words. The NBPA told the Guardian it is planning a march on Scotland Yard of black and Asian officers from across the country, a vote of no confidence in the management and a campaign warning young would-be officers from diverse backgrounds not to join the Met.

Given the appalling treatment of Tarique Ghaffur over the past few weeks, and I’ve not known anyone more loyal to the Met Police, I think this is a good move.

Like him or loathe him, the right-winger Peter Hitchens can always be relied to bring the most unfashionable ideas to the table with a compelling probity that only a fool would dismiss. This time round, in today’s Mail on Sunday, his opinions on the veracity of the al-Qaeda narrative are only going to give more fodder to his detractors. The usual partisan New Labour attack dogs are not going to like this, but they will find it difficult to fault the logic.

There is no such organisation as ‘Al Qaeda’. The spooks know this, Cabinet Ministers know this and so do the ‘security correspondents’ who so readily trot out the spooks’ point of view on our broadcasting networks.

Of course, there are terrorists, and there are also fantasists, fanatics, low-lifes and camp followers who plot and attempt horrible things. Some of them even call themselves ‘Al Qaeda’ these days because they have learned that this is a good way to scare us.

But, while they are a menace, they are not as big or as organised a menace as the Government likes to make out.

The State and the vainglorious bureaucrats of the ‘security’ services need to pretend that the terrorists are a tightly organised and terrifying threat, to make themselves look big as well – and to help them get hold of new powers to snoop on us and push us around.

Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s pre-eminent contemporary artist, was cleared by three supreme court judges of the charge of offending Hindus, for his painting Bharat Mata (Mother India). The petition seeking prosecution claimed that the painting, which depicts a nude woman, was sacrilegious.

“Does the sentiment of the petitioner get scandalized by the large number of photographs of erotic sculptures which are in circulation?” the judges asked. “It is an art like the sculptures. None get scandalized looking at the sculptures.”

The artist, known in India as MF Husain, told the Associated Press: “At last, the dignity of Indian contemporary art has been upheld by the supreme court as expected.” He could not be contacted today.

That’s what he thinks. MF Husain will not be returning to India, from where he has been in self-imposed exile since 2006, until the hundreds of cases claiming damages for hurting “Hindu sentiment” are withdrawn. The supreme court ruling has done nothing for MF Husain.

No surprise there then. The ‘controversial’ book, Jewel of Medina, has found a US and a UK publisher. This comes after all the hoo-haa when Random House shelved publication and I wrote an article for CIF on free speech.

Some of you can put away your ‘end of western civilisation‘ banners away now.

Habib ‘Paapu’ Ullah died on Thursday 3rd July 2008 during a stop and search by Police Officers on a vehicle in a car park in High Wycombe at approximately 7.15pm. He was 39 years old and leaves behind a young family.

A group of friends have set up a campaign to raise awareness of his death in custody. On the Facebook page, they say:

We are concerned how a man can die in the process of being arrested and how he came to have breathing difficulties. There is an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation taking place into his death.

The release of the IPCC investigation is here. There was a peaceful protest about this last week. According to their campaign blog, five police officers are now under investiation by the IPCC. If you can, spread the word. I’ll bring updates when they come in.

Last weekend the New Scientist reported on the harrowing developments in the world of surveillance technology. The week before, the Home Office announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people’s text messages, emails and internet activity. New technology has been developed by Seimens to ensure this kind of absolute surveillance can be integrated into one system.

This software is trained on a large number of sample documents to pick out items such as names, phone numbers and places from generic text. This means it can spot names or numbers that crop up alongside anyone already of interest to the authorities, and then catalogue any documents that contain such associates.

Once a person is being monitored, pattern-recognition software first identifies their typical behaviour, such as repeated calls to certain numbers over a period of a few months. The software can then identify any deviations from the norm and flag up unusual activities, such as transactions with a foreign bank, or contact with someone who is also under surveillance, so that analysts can take a closer look.

The system has been sold in 60 countries and 90 phone call “monitoring centres”, developed by the joint-venture company Nokia Siemens Networks, are already being used around the world, although we don’t know which countries are using it.

Whatever the level of accuracy, human rights advocates are concerned that the system could give surveillance-hungry repressive regimes a ready-made means of monitoring their citizens. Carole Samdup of the organisation Rights and Democracy in Montreal, Canada, says the system bears a strong resemblance to the Chinese government’s “Golden Shield” concept, a massive surveillance network encompassing internet and email monitoring as well as speech and facial-recognition technologies and closed-circuit TV cameras.

I’m more worried about its use by non-repressive regimes.

An extract from the article:

And yet it’s unarguable that a prickly feeling of censorship still hangs over us, not just with Muslims but other religious minorities too. Remember Bezhti? How about MF Husain? If you think only Muslims get angry over perceived religious offence, then think again.

To some extent, we do need some controversies to play out and the clash over free expression to happen so that people understand the boundaries. We can’t expect Muslims, or any religious minority, to like what is being said, but we can expect them to protest peacefully. And largely we’re getting to that stage, until we reach a point where those shrieking about a clash of civilisations become irrelevant, people start becoming less jumpy, normal self-censorship comes back into play, and the Daily Mail finds another minority group to pick on. Then we’ll come full circle.

But until then, this necessary clash over free speech has been delayed for another time. But it is inevitable and it is necessary and we’ll all be fine after it. Let’s just get it over with.

Al-Qaeda’s violent methods and tactics have been coming under mounting criticism this year from Islamist scholars who once supported it. One by one they have been coming out in public to denounce the organisation’s actions as being counterproductive.

.. says this BBC article last week. It goes on to point out that:

At one level there is the intellectual debate, the Arab thinkers within the jihadi movement. These are the people who are standing back and questioning whether al-Qaeda’s extreme methods aren’t actually doing more harm than good to Muslims. But then down at the grass roots level, things are moving the other way, because there are still growing numbers of potential recruits to violent jihad, including in Britain.

Often these recruits have only a shallow knowledge of Islam, and they are far less impressed by theological debate than they are by more day-to-day, down-to-earth factors like TV reports of western airstrikes on civilians in Afghanistan or the presence of US and British troops in Iraq.

As thabet points out, “So, yes, foreign policy is part of the problem. But not the only problem.”

But here’s the crunch. Some will say the answer is to teach these wannabe jihadis proper Islam so they can be guided away from terrorism. Secularists are likely to balk at that approach, saying the best way forward is for them to forget about religion. If foreign policy is only part of the problem, a fact neither Islamists nor the pro-war anti-Islamists want to acknowledge, what are other parts to the problem?

The Guardian has this poorly written story today:

A romantic novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad, has been withdrawn because its publisher feared possible terrorist acts by Muslim extremists.

The Jewel of the Medina, a first book by Sherry Jones, 46, was to have been released on August 12 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House. But the publishers apparently panicked after Islamic scholars objected to the work.

I call it a poorly written story because Suzanne Goldenberg doesn’t seem to have bothered to present a balanced case here, it’ll typically become a Muslim censorship story. Shahed Amanullah, who is quoted in the story, explained this side of the story in this blog post:

I believe in free speech, which means that people have the right to publish whatever they want about Islam and Muslims without fear of censorship and/or violence, but also that Muslims have the right (and responsibility) to comment vigorously on any writings about them or Islam, so long as they do not resort to the aforementioned censorship and/or violence.

It was in that spirit that I forwarded an inquiry regarding the book “Jewel of Medina” on a private email list. Unfortunately, nothing is private these days, and the mail got circulated around various lists until it reached the publisher, who promptly pulled the book. You can read all about it here at the Wall Street Journal. As was the case with “The Satanic Verses” and the Danish cartoons, the best Muslim response is civil speech in return, and that should have been the case for this book.

I’m a bit perplexed why Suzanne contacted the author of the book but couldn’t be bothered to ask Shahed his views on the subject? Hmmm.

Meanwhile, it seems its not just Muslims getting angry about religious offence: Cartoonist gets death threats over Sarkozy ‘Jew’ quip

Elsewhere, people are getting upset over who joined what Facebook group.

I posted this on the thread below but I think this point needs to be made more loudly.

I do find it really amusing that supposedly “progressive” people these days are so easily dismissive of of police harassment as nothing major or to get annoyed about.

I was at Climate Camp last year and the police presence was enormous, and for no fucking reason. One media report by the Evening Standard said there was going to be potential terrorists there. Of course, it was pure rubbish. This time a police report went around saying the environmentalists were going to stab police horses (as if!) etc.

There is a concerted campaign of misinformation and harassment spread by the police and aided by the right-wing media, when British citizens should be perfectly allowed to protest as is their democratic right.

I don’t care for all the poncy middle class media commentators and bloggers who dismiss it since they’ve most likely never seen the end of a police truncheon because they bother protesting about anything anyway. After all, the police isn’t going to harass them is it? But when it does, they’ll suddenly start wondering how the police got so heavy-handed and where they got all these powers from. The answer is right in front of your eyes suckers.
Related:
Police arrest Climate Camp protestor for carrying Vit. C
Protesting penguins kicked out of town park