Did I dream it, or is Spire coming to York Minster? I
have the idea from somewhere that it is, but now I can’t find it anywhere.
Meanwhile, Parlane, Jeck and Fennesz will be at the NCEM later this month.
Part of Sightsonic 2006.
Come on, I’ll buy you a pint.
Buried amongst the untold affronts to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the very spirit of America, the torture bill contains a definition of “wrongfully aiding the enemy” which labels all American citizens who breach their “allegiance” to President Bush and the actions of his government as terrorists subject to possible arrest, torture and conviction in front of a military tribunal.
01:27 GMT UPDATE
After five hours of searching through the 80-plus page bill, Alex Jones, who won the 2004 Project Censored award for his analysis of Patriot Act 2, uncovered numerous other provisions and definitions that make the bill appear as almost a mirror image of Hitler’s 1933 Enabling Act.
In section 950j. the bill criminalizes any challenge to the legislation’s legality by the Supreme Court or any United States court. Alberto Gonzales has already threatened federal judges to shut up and not question Bush’s authority on the torture of detainees.
“No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever, including any action pending on or filed after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions under this chapter.”
The Bush administration is preemptively overriding any challenge to the legislation by the Supreme Court.
The definition of torture that the legislation cites is US code title 18 section 2340. This is a broad definition of torture and completely lacks the specific clarity of the Geneva Conventions. This definition allows the use of torture that is, “incidental to lawful sanctions.” In alliance with the bill’s blanket authority for President Bush to define the Geneva Conventions as he sees fit, this legislates the use of torture.
The media has spun the bill as if it outlaws torture – it only outlaws torture for “enemy combatants,” and in fact outlaws the retaliation of any military against the United States as “murder.” Those deemed “enemy combatants” are not even allowed to fight back yet the government affords itself every power including the go-ahead to torture.
- Further actions that result in the classification of an individual as a terrorist include the following.
- Destruction of any property, which is deemed punishable by any means of the military tribunal’s choosing.
- Any violent activity whatsoever if it takes place near a designated protected building, such as a charity building.
- A change of the definition of “pillaging” which turns all illegal occupation of property and all theft into terrorism. This makes squatters and petty thieves enemy combatants.
In light of Greg Palast’s recent hounding by Homeland Security, after they accused him of potentially giving terrorists key information about U.S. “critical infrastructure” when filming Exxon’s Baton Rouge refinery (clear photos of which were publicly available on Google Maps), sub-section 27 of section 950v. should send chills down the spine of all investigative journalists and even news-gatherers.
“Any person subject to this chapter who with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign power, collects or attempts to collect information by clandestine means or while acting under false pretenses, for the purpose of conveying such information to an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a military commission under this chapter may direct.”
Subsection 4(b) (26) of section 950v. of HR 6166 – Crimes triable by military commissions – includes the following definition.
“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.”
For an individual to hold an allegiance or duty to the United States they need to be a citizen of the United States. Why would a foreign terrorist have any allegiance to the United States to breach in the first place?
This is another telltale facet that proves the bill applies to U.S. citizens and includes them under the “enemy combatant” designation. We previously cited the comments of Yale law Professor Bruce Ackerman, who wrote in the L.A. Times, “The compromise legislation….authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”
The New York Times stated that the legislation introduced, “A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.”
Calling the bill “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts,” the Times goes on to highlight the rubber stamping of torture.
“Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.”
Since with this bill, in the aggregate, Bush has declared himself to be above the Constitution and the laws of the United States, the allegiance of American citizens is no longer to the flag or the freedoms for which it stands, but to Bush himself, the self-appointed dictator, and any diversion from that allegiance will mandate arrest, torture and conviction in a military tribunal under the terms of this bill.
Similar to the UK’s Glorification of Terrorism law, which top lawyers have slammed as vague, open to interpretation and a potential weapon for the government to kidnap supposed subversives, the nebulous context of “wrongfully aiding the enemy,” could easily be defined to include publicly absolving an accused terrorist of involvement in a terrorist attack.
That renders the entire 9/11 truth movement an aid to terrorist suspects and subject to military tribunal and torture. In addition, Bush’s recently cited National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which is available on the White House website, labels conspiracy theorists as terrorist recruiters. […]
Something must break…
[S]till they keep coming, those hubristic monuments to big government,
the living dead that walk the well-trodden path from Downing Street and
the Treasury to New Labour’s graveyard of initiatives.The NHS computer: delayed, disorganised, a £20 billion shambles.
Forced police mergers: the direct opposite of the community policing we
need.And then the perfect example.
ID cards.
When a half-way competent government would be protecting our security by
controlling our borders……these Labour ministers are pressing ahead with their vast white
elephant, their plastic poll tax, twenty Millennium Domes rolled into
one giant catastrophe in the making.They’ve given up trying to find a good reason for it.
Last week Tony Blair said that ID cards would help control immigration,
when new immigrants won’t even have them.Does he even know what’s going on in his Government?
ID cards are wrong, they’re a waste of money, and we will abolish them. […]
Well, it looks like Tories are the only way to go next time, if only for this single reason; jettisoning the ID card and the NIR. I am sure that many people will not be for the Tories, but will be against the ID card, against the warmongering, against the sweaty, stocky, unctuous, murdering ‘grotesque’ Brown. For whatever reason, the ID card is so central to complete tyrrany, the first and absolutely essential step, the key to lock you and your children up forever – it alone is reason to abandon all your previous loyalties and support the Tories, because if they lose and ID cards and the NIR are introduced, it is THE END of Britain on a level and at a depth that few people can imagine.
You think that shouting CCTV cameras are bad? Imagine a shouting CCTV system that shouts your NAME OUT as it tells you to ‘move along you are not allowed to gather here’…or… ‘stop kissing your secretary JANE, MR. THOMPSON, your wife PEG has been informed’.
Yes, that will happen. They will be able to access the NIR automagically and correlate your CCTV image with your NIR entry, which will pull up your name, address, marital status, workplace, EVERYTHING, all in the name of ‘stopping crime’ or ‘security’.
Of course, if you are not in the NIR, or even better, there is no such thing as ‘the NIR’ then none of this dystopian crap can ever happen to you. You can shag your secretary right there in the street, and no one will ever know.
You know what I mean.
You will be free from a type of insidious, invasive, unnecessary, vile, inhuman, dehumanizing, revolting, voyeuristic and monstrous surveillance, that no decent person would ever have thought was fit to roll out.
Without the NIR as the key to your activities, without that locus, that single identifier, that binding element, Oyster becomes less of a threat, Nectar becomes less of a threat, your cellphone becomes less of a threat – because you can control how you identify yourself to all of these people. They will not be able to DEMAND that you present your NIR linked ID card. The biometric net will be broken, and you will be able to protect yourself as you move freely between services by compartmentalizing your valuable personal information. The service providers will have no choice but to deal with you on your terms, or lose your money.
And they will never do that.
Flights from UK ‘escape US bans’
Passengers flying from UK airports will not be affected by a EU-US row over US demands for information on passengers, the British government has said.
The Department of Transport (DoT) said it had taken out an air navigation order, so planes flying to the US would escape potential American landing bans.
So, where there was actually no potential at all for any sort of ban, since the economic damage would be so great as to make such a move impossible, HMG decides to cave in anyway.
It means airlines can pass information to the US without running into legal trouble under data protection laws.
The action came as a deal between the EU and US remained in doubt.
A DoT spokesman said: “We took out an air navigation order so planes could have a legal basis for data transfer while the EU-level talks are ongoing.
“It’s a patch, if you like.”
Only in the ‘up is down’, ‘black is white’, ‘day is night’, ‘fast is slow’, ‘true is false’ world of this insane war criminal government could anyone possibly call an action that FACILITATES LEAKS be called ‘a patch’.
You cant make shit like this up.
Planning ahead
Paul Charles, Virgin Atlantic’s director of communications, said the British government had good foresight to put the legal patch in place.
“They took it on that if there was not a deal between the EU and the US then this patch could take effect.
“It means airlines can carry on as normal as if the argument had never occurred, and the agreement was not about to run out.
“It means airlines can go on providing the passenger data that the US require without facing possible legal action.”
In other words, Virgin Atlantic doesn’t care about the privacy of its passengers. And that is a very serious thing indeed. It is one matter to be compelled by the law to do something immoral and then to be affronted by it, but to say that violating your passengers privacy is a GOOD THING is simply astonishing.
Deadline
European and American officials had been holding talks to resolve the dispute on the transfer of airline passenger data before it ran out on Saturday.
The row began in May, when the European Court of Justice ruled against a deal set up following the 9/11 attacks.
Under this agreement, European airlines agreed to supply the American authorities with detailed information about passengers flying into the US.
The two sides had until Saturday to replace the deal, with the Americans warning it may fine airlines or deny them landing rights if they refused to provide such data.
The US government believe the information is vital in their fight against terrorism and called for even more access to information. […]
We all know that this is completely bogus, and the only reason why they want this is to violate the ordinary citizen going about his totally lawful business. I wonder if any other EU countries have ‘patched’ their regulations, and wether or not a legal challenge can be mounted against HMG for violating the rights of the passengers that leave from here to the usa.
Now, for those that feel the compelling need to go to the usa, it is the best bet to take another, non British, carrier so that your personal data remains just that; personal.
He leads me around the corner to Wardour Street. We enter a dark and dank warehouse and negotiate our way past men making a mighty din as they fill metal cages with brown boxes of consumer stuff. We take a lift – which stinks – two floors down to the sub-basement. There, we walk through sub terranean concrete corridors, past industrial-sized dustbins emitting odours of rotting food, towards a pristine wooden door that seems out of place in this sewer-like setting. Brown taps in a code, and we walk through.
Interesting critique of CCTV from the New Statesman with a few factoids:
I ‘knew’ this one: 12 number of people per CCTV camera in Britain
But this is quite astounding: 20 per cent of all the world’s CCTV cameras are in the UK
Also the Telegraph has a report that shows the non-effect of speed cameras on vehicle accidents.
PRETEXTS TO JUSTIFY US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN IRAN
(Note: The courses of action which follow are a preliminary submission suitable only for planning purposes. They are arranged neither chronologically nor in ascending order. Together with similar inputs from other agencies, they are intended to provide a point of departure for the development of a single, integrated, time-phased plan. Such a plan would permit the evaluation of individual projects within the context of cumulative, correlated actions designed to lead inexorably to the objective of adequate justification for US military attack on Iran).
1. Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate provocation as the basis for US military attack in Iran a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions such as has been developed in response to Task 33 c, could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Iranian reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Iranians of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to attack if Iranian response justifies.
2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around The Persian Gulf to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Iranian forces.
a. Incidents to establish a credible attack (not in chronological order):
(1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
(2) Land friendly Iranians in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on Iraq.
(3) Capture Iranian (friendly) saboteurs inside Iraq.
(4) Start riots in Tehran (friendly Iranians).
(5) Blow up ammunition inside Umm Qasr; start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft in Iraq airport (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells into Iraqi Mosques. Some damage to Mosques.
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Bagdad.
(9) Capture militia group which storms Basra.
(10) Sabotage ships in harbors; large fires — napthalene.
(11) Sink ships near harbor entrances. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be lieu of (10)).
b. United States would respond by executing offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying artillery and mortar emplacements and Nuclear installations which ‘threaten Israel’.
c. Commence large scale United States military operations.
3. A “Remember the Maine” incident could be arranged in several forms:
a. We could blow up a US ship in the vicinity of Doha and blame Iran.
b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Persian Gulf. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Iranian attack from the air or sea, or both. The presence of Iranian planes or ships merely investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship was under attack. The nearness to Kuwait or Bahrain would add credibility especially to those people that might have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to “evacuate” remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.
4. We could develop a Islamist Iranian terror campaign in the Abu Dhabi area, in other Gulf cities and even in Riyadh.
The terror campaign could be pointed at Iranian refugees seeking haven in the U.A.E.. We could sink a boatload of Iranians enroute to Abu Dhabi (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Iranian refugees in the U.A.E even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Iranian agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Iranian involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.
5. A “Iranian-based, Ahmednejad-supported” filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Gulf nation (in the vein of the 14th of June invasion of the Dominican Republic). We know that Ahmednejad is backing subversive efforts clandestinely against the USA in Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon at present and possible others. These efforts can be magnified and additional ones contrived for exposure. For example, advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Iraqi Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. “Iranian” Saegheh Fighter Jet aircraft could make raids at night. Iranian incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with “Iranian” messages to the Al Qaeda in Iraq and “Iranian” shipments of arms which could be found, or intercepted, on the beach.
6. Use of F-5 aircraft by US pilots could provide additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by F-5 type planes would be useful as complementary actions. An F-5 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Iranian Saegheh, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact. The primary drawback to this suggestion appears to be the security risk inherent in modifying and deploying an out of service F-5 aircraft. However, reasonable copies of the Saegheh could be produced from US resources in about three months.
7. Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Iran. Concurrently, genuine defections of Iranian civil and military air and surface craft should be encouraged.
8. It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Iranian aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the anywhere to U.A.E, Iraq, Kuwait or Quatar. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross near Iran. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
a. An aircraft at an Iraq AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Iraq theatre. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.
b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Baghdad. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at the Iraq AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When near Iran the drone will being transmitting on the international distress frequency a “MAY DAY” message stating he is under attack by Iranian Saegheh aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO radio stations in the Persian Gulf to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to “sell” the incident.
9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Islamic Iranian Saeghehs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack.
a. Approximately 4 or 5 F-16 aircraft will be dispatched in trail from Iraqi AFB to the vicinity of Iran. Their mission will be to reverse course and simulate fakir aircraft for an air defense exercise in southern Iraq. These aircraft would conduct variations of these flights at frequent intervals. Crews would be briefed to remain at least 12 miles off the Iranian coast; however, they would be required to carry live ammunition in the event that hostile actions were taken by the Iranian Saeghehs.
b. On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly tail-end Charley at considerable interval between aircraft. While near the Iranian coast this pilot would broadcast that he had been jumped by Saeghehs and was going down. No other calls would be made. The pilot would then fly directly west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base in Iraq. The aircraft would be met by the proper people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The pilot who had performed the mission under an alias, would resume his proper identity and return to his normal place of business. The pilot and aircraft would then have disappeared.
c. At precisely the same time that the aircraft was presumably shot down a submarine or small surface craft would disburse F-16 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately 15 to 20 miles off the Iranian coast and depart. The pilots returning to Homestead would have a true story as far as they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched and parts of aircraft found.
[…]
Now we know what to look for. Of course, we also have the alternative plans not included in this document, that involve ‘gaming’ the United Nations. I will leave it to you to figure out how that works.
Yes John Reid, we will.
We will;
not submit to State interference of our lives
not register our ‘identity’ on the NIR
not contribute to the charade that is the ‘war on terror’
not allow the government to define and limit our rights
never believe talk of liberty and freedom from a party devoted to centralism
conduct our private business in private
continue to resist and inform of the deceit at the heart of UK politics
repeal or ignore the legislative burden of government
And if you don’t like it you can fuck off to Belarus
The ban on liquids such as toothpaste and perfume being carried through airport security in hand luggage will be lifted at UK airports in November.
This is inadequate, either there is a (non-)credible threat from liquid explosives or there is not. As there is not, neither practically nor created by F.E.A.R. then there is no reason for the ban to lifted IMMEDIATELY. It took a matter of days to ease the total ban on hand luggage, why so long for liquids.
The banning of all-but-essential liquids in hand luggage was introduced after an alleged plot to blow up planes was thwarted last month.
Under a new Europe-wide agreement to be approved next week, passengers will be able to carry on board 100ml containers of liquid in a transparent plastic bag.
So despite the ‘lifting of the ban’ the impositions and subtle degredations of passengers will continue. People are supposed to feel grateful that they are now allowed a simulacrum of ‘normaility’?
Since the tightening of restrictions on Aug 10, passengers leaving UK airports for all destinations except the United States have been allowed to take liquids in carry-on luggage as long as the items were bought after travellers have passed through security checks.
But those travelling to America cannot take liquids on board even if purchased at “airside” outlets.
Good, good continue to shoot yourselves in the foot.
Earlier this week, US authorities said liquids could be taken on board flights leaving America if they were purchased from secure airport stores.
The UK’s deception still subject to junior role in the ‘special relationship’.
On Aug 10, all carry-on bags were banned, leading to huge queues at airports and numerous flight delays and cancellations.
After a few days, smaller hand luggage was permitted to be taken on board and last week the DfT announced that larger bags would once again be permitted on planes.
This is not the road back to normality. This is the road to the State increasingly defining/controllling perceptions of normality.
Civil liberties
“Let liberty stand up for the law-abiding”, Mr Blair insisted as he defended his record on civil liberties and ID cards. He said there was a fundamental dilemma: “How do we reconcile liberty with security in this new world?
“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.” […]
Independent
???!!!
Run that by me again?
‘Liberty’ is not a person. It is a property that human beings either have or do not have. It cannot stand for or against anything. Only people can stand up for something.
There is no ‘fundamental dilemma’ this is another Bliar lie. The world is no different now to what it has been in the past, and human nature has not changed over the last twenty years. We have clear evidence of this in Bliar’s predilection for lying, his lust for Orwellian ‘Police State on Crack’ superpowers and his total disregard for the rights of human beings both here and abroad.
The fact that he can even ask such a question, “How do we reconcile liberty with security” puts the badge of fascism on his breast. Security can never be paid for by anything other than humility and respect for other human beings. When you BOMB THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of other people’s countries, YOU MAKE YOURSELF INSECURE. This is obvious, to anyone who is a normal human being, and anyone with even a slight understanding of foreign policy in the twentieth century.
Liberty is the same as life itself for a human being. With that in mind, how can you possibly say, “how do re reconcile life with security?”. Its all nonsense on stilts of course. But you know this.
“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society…”
That is a lie. His sons are going to have to live in such a place if nothing is done to undo the damage that Bliar has done to Britain. His own son was caught drunk on a bench in Leicester Square, and had it happened more recently, he would find himself on the DNA database, with a criminal record, just for being drunk. This is the very police state that Bliar has brought into being. For him to say that he does not want to live in such a place, can only mean that he intends to leave Britain, since he has no intention of fixing what was not broken and which he smashed with his communist hammer.
Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.
Your ‘idea of liberty’ is not the true face of liberty. Period. Liberty is fixed. It does not change over time, as human beings do not change over time. Liberty is a principle that is immutable. Our freedoms belong to US, and are not currency to be bartered while you experiment with foreign policy adventures (matches). Bliar is right that our freedoms are in jeopardy; in jeopardy from the likes of him and his slobbering mad dog successor, ‘the gargoyle turd’, Brown.
The final insult cam thusly:
in the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do. I’m with you. […]
Full Text
Bliar puts himself in the position of GOD.
Good riddance to bad rubbish: Bliar.
`The world changed after Sept. 11,” Brown said. “No one can be neutral in the fight against terrorism.”
Good lord, how many times have we heard this crap ? It should be a glaring clue that such a pre-soiled gargoyle seeks to print his ticket to power on the back of 9/11 and paint this hideous deranged picture of himself as some sort of winged saviour to the plebs, showering them in ID cards, laws, and other drivel. It makes you wonder what constituency Brown is trying to appeal to with this incessant stream of garbage, which proves already beyond a shadow of a doubt that Brown is not a fit candidate.
Of course, just in case you didn’t know, the world did not change after 9/11, this is the most noxious lie of all, written down in fact by 9/11 Commission director Philip Zelikow three years before 9/11, and should be a warning sign not only to the British, but to some Americans who think that the bloody nose gleaned on Bush’s wars (and domestic police state in the making) from Blair’s departure, will somehow be eased if Gordon Brown is coronated to power in the UK.
To tell you the truth, I’m sick of writing about Gordon Brown, because in reality Brown is a meaningless, dreary, boring little turd, but I make no apology for doing so because he is also a poisonous and very dangerous one, already stained in the blood and hell of Blair’s years, and contrary to all reasoned reality, believes he has a divine right to install himself one notch up and make things even worse.
So it needs to be constantly loudly rebroadcast to the world that the last decade of unbearable misery has not been due to Tony Blair alone. Gordon Brown has been very much the other half of that partnership; helping to deliver perpetual war, a sickening police state in the UK, and a host of other repulsive crap. Indeed as Ewen MacAskill recently reminded us in the Guardian,
“After that meeting, Mr Brown briefed a group of his supporters, one of whom recalled him producing a memo he had written at the restaurant listing 12 points, including promises of posts in the shadow cabinet for allies, a promise to stand aside for Mr Brown in the second term and control not only of the Treasury but of other domestic departments related to the economy.
The promise about domestic control meant that when Labour won the general election in 1997, Mr Blair was deliberately left in the dark by Mr Brown about much of domestic policy and the prime minister began to focus more and more on foreign policy, with disastrous results in the case of Iraq”
To let Gordon Brown in, is not to renew or reinvigorate a soiled, damaged and worthless political party or to lift the burden of disgrace from the UK. On the contrary, it is to moronically applaud the horrors inflicted on Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and our own troops, as well as to celebrate the relentless, crushing, humiliating police-state in the UK which Brown himself has been eagerly inflicting for the last decade.
And on the latter, I find it quite extraordinary that Brown’s star policy would be a written constitution which far from empowering anyone, will mercilessly and permanently lock-in Brown’s extended-ID slave grid, databases, CCTV, DNA stockpiling, terror laws and so on.
Aside from the grotesqueness of pretending to give back democratic rights, processes and essential liberties stolen by Brown when he was ‘only’ half-leader, Gordon Brown will exalt and make lasting and constitutional these attrocious wounds on the population. Do not be fooled for a second, you are being led into a trap, now is not the time for a constitution and Labour parties should not be touching constitutions in any event. […]
It seems that there is no free public access to a complete database of all the laws in the UK. The Guardian reported in August 2006 the following:
Shhh – don’t pass it on. It’s the kind of secrecy one might expect for a database of proposed nuclear reactors or plans to go to war. But a database containing the laws of the land? Surely the only way to obey the law is to know what it is in the first place? On August 2, the government rolled out the second stage of a long-delayed project to make the consolidated law of parliament accessible to the people. So how does it look? The public – who paid for the whole project – can’t get a look in. […]
No free public access sites have been granted permission to view the current system and testers of the database – predominantly from commercial legal publishing firms – have been told not to share their login and password. Even so, some testers are not entirely happy with what they’ve found after logging on to the top secret database of our country’s laws. […]
Firstly, an astounding Crown copyright notice greets the reader: “The Statute Law Database and the material on the SLD website are subject to Crown copyright protection. The Crown copyright waiver that applies to published legislation generally does not apply to SLD because it is a value-added product. Any reuse of material from SLD will be the subject of separate and specific licensing arrangements. No such arrangements have yet been entered into. Users should not therefore reproduce or reuse any material from SLD until further guidance is issued.” […]
No matter that the value was added by public officials at taxpayer expense. Small commercial legal publishers and democracy advocates are outraged. “It is appaling that a government feels it should sell the laws it makes to the general public who must obey them,” said developer Francis Irving, who last month won two New Statesman new media awards for his web sites www.writetothem.com (the contribution to civic society award) and www.pledgebank.com (advocacy award). “Because the DCA’s data cannot be reproduced, it makes it impossible for anyone else to compete by providing new and innovative ways of accessing and learning the law.”
Irving had hoped to create a free, user-friendly legal database to rival his previous successes. As such he filed Freedom of Information Act requests last year asking for the raw data held by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Instead of thanking Irving for his interest, the DCA denied his request. Matthew Elliot, the chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, is appalled by the government’s response: “Any information collected by the government at taxpayers’ expense should be freely available to the public. If private organisations are willing to collate information at no expense to the taxpayer, why on earth is the government spending money doing exactly the same thing?” […]
US law is copyright free
This is not how it could, or should, have happened. In the US, where information compiled at public expense by public officials is copyright free, the public has had access to consolidated law for decades. Since 1992, the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University in New York has been the leading online resource for US law and Supreme Court decisions. “The raw material for our United States Code collection is provided us by the law revision counsel’s office in the House of Representatives,” says institute director Thomas R Bruce. “They have actively helped us with the things we publish.”[…]
The Guardian
I was aware that crown copyright exists on documents created by the state; when helping prepare a database of all the schools in the UK we found that none exist for download as a single SQL file, and the companies that compile and rent lists charge one hundred pounds per 1000 entries, for a one time use.
We managed to put together an entire list by hand. The same needs to be done with the law.
Look at this:
© Crown Copyright 2002
Acts of Parliament printed from this website are printed under the superintendence and authority of the Controller of HMSO being the Queen’s Printer of Acts of Parliament.
The legislation contained on this web site is subject to Crown Copyright protection. It may be reproduced free of charge provided that it is reproduced accurately and that the source and copyright status of the material is made evident to users.
It should be noted that the right to reproduce the text of Acts of Parliament does not extend to the Queen’s Printer imprints which should be removed from any copies of the Act which are issued or made available to the public. This includes reproduction of the Act on the Internet and on intranet sites. The Royal Arms may be reproduced only where they are an integral part of the original document. […]
Which is from the Office of Public Sector Information.
it seems that you CAN make available the law free of charge as long as you do not use the Queen’s Printer imprints or Royal Arms. This means that it is doable to make a complete and accurate copy of the entire UK law, to make it available to the public for free, and to do interesting things with it in a Web 2.0 context.
It needs now, to be compiled by hand. It is as simple as that.
If we cannot get a hold of the raw SQL dump of all the laws in the UK we will have to build this database ourselves, by hand, with a front end (a Wikipedia of UK law?) and lots of volunteers. We will license this work under a GPL style license, meaning no copyright on our work (crown copyright will continue to persist), and if you want to use any of our work (the typing out, the SQL dump), what you make must also be made available in an SWL dump.
The Guardian article in typical fashion, does not say how big the law is; how many laws there are, and how long it would take for an army of volunteers to type it all in to a database. It doesn’t quote the copyright statement from the site that the article itself links to. As usual they talk only about ‘the problem’, without describing it in detail, and don’t even attempt to offer a solution, and this is in the Technology section. Same old Guardian!
Now, we have some choices to make. Should be create a wiki of laws that we want removed, or create a wiki of all the laws and then build the Web 2.0 service that is described in this post. Its a chicken and egg problem; how can you create a service to prune bad law when the entire text of the law is not freely and easily available to search and read?
hmmmmmmm!
I just saw this webisite thanks to SpyBlog. It is from the Liberal Democrats who are proposing a ‘Great Repeal Act’ to sweep away unnecessary laws.
“We need a single act to roll back a generation of illiberal legislation and illiberal regulations; a single act to dismantle the apparatus of authoritarianism that has been forced on the nation,” says Nick Clegg.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have identified a list of the top ten laws we don’t need, but you can also submit your suggestions, whether they are for a small piece of annoying detail, laws that have been overtaken by events or laws that were never a good idea.
Now. I know for sure that somewhere on BLOGDIAL I talked about setting up a website where people can enter legislation that they want removed from the statute books and vote on other laws that other people have inserted, but I cannot for the life of me find the post, either in the new or the old BLOGDIAL. A lollipop to the person who finds the text.
Either way, here is the LibDem List:
1. Restrictions on protests in Parliament Square
Sections 132 to 138; Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005The police can now impose any restrictions they think fit on demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament Square. Citizens of this country should not have to ask for the right to protest outside the Parliament that they elect.
2. Identity Cards
Identity Cards Act 2006Identity cards are unworkable, expensive and illiberal. Labour is already spending £95,000 a day on developing the project but it will not stop terrorism, crime, illegal immigration or benefit fraud.
3. Extradition to the US
Part 2, Extradition Act 2003This act makes it much easier for the US to extradite people from the UK than it is for the UK to extradite people from the US. Not only is the treaty unbalanced, but it means that British citizens can extradited without any evidence being provided.
4. Conditions on public assemblies
Section 57, Clause 123, Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003Labour has given the police the power to impose conditions on any protest or gathering even if just two people attend. Until 2003, these restrictions could only be imposed on larger gatherings, of 20 people or more. There is no reason to curtail the right to protest in this way.
5. Criminalising trespass
Sections 128 to 131, Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005Thanks to this part of the act, a Home Secretary can make trespass a criminal offence on any land where they say it is in the interests of national security. This is defined very broadly however – and there is no need for them to justify their decision. If there is a need for restrictions like this they should be agreed democratically.
6. Control orders
Section 1, Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005These allow restrictions, potentially going as far as house arrest, to be imposed on the mere basis of ‘reasonable suspicion’. They can be made for up to 12 months and renewed indefinitely. The Home Secretary can also decide to opt-out from the European Convention on Human Rights and issue control orders that amount to detention without trial. Liberal Democrats would repeal the law and start again: the Home Secretary should not be allowed to opt out of our human rights agreements, or impose control orders outside the judicial system.
7. DNA retention
Sections 78-84, Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001
Sections 9-10, Criminal Justice Act 2003The UK has the largest DNA database in the world, but many of those stored on the system have never been charged with, let alone convcited of, a crime. Thousands of innocent children are on the database – because the police have the power to take DNA when they arrest someone and then keep it permanently, even if the person turns out to have done nothing wrong. Ethnic minorities make up 8% of the UK population but 24% od the database. We understand the case for keeping DNA of the convicted, but innocent people’s DNA should not be kept indefinitely.
8. Public interest defence for whistleblowing
Official Secrets Act 1989It is important that national security is protected, but sometimes it will be the case that it is in the public interest that malpractice or illegal activity is exposed. The Official Secrets Act includes no public interest defence, however – so whistleblowers remain unprotected, even if their action is very much in the public interest. Part of the reason for this was a series of high-profile embarrassments for the Conservative government of the time; ministers’ embarrassment should not be allowed to overrule the public good.
9. Right to silence
Sections 34-39, Public Order Act 1994 – England and WalesIt was a long-established principle of a fair trial that defendants had the right not to be forced to incriminate themselves. In 1994, however, the Conservatives allowed juries to draw adverse inferences from a defendant’s silence. This represented a major attack on the idea of “innocent until proven guilty.”
10. Hearsay evidence
Sections 114-136, Criminal Justice Act 2003Protections against the use of hearsay evidence were in place to ensure that a trial was decided on the facts of the case. Hearsay evidence cannot in practice be cross-examined in court, which removes a vital safeguard for the accused. Labour, in 2003, widened the circumstances in which it could be used. We would repeal these changes and return to focussing on securing fair trials and reliable convictions.
Applicability: this item refers to the UK. […]
Amazing, the first one is the LEAST OF OUR PROBLEMS, and the most symbolic.
Liberal Democrats have their hearts in the right place (hell, they HAVE a heart unlike the other monsters!) but sadly are as thick as shit…..
Before we fire up Rails, lets add to this list shall we?
Oh dear, there are SO MANY.
To repeat, in case no one finds my original text, you do this list by setting up a website, where the entire legislation of the country is stored. You then invite people to go there and search for law that is bad. They are then presented with some radio buttons and a form to post comment in that is attached not only to the ‘top’ of every law, but to every clause and section of each piece of legislation.
The radio button will give you two choices;’keep’ and ‘discard’. Votes are tallied and we present a REAL top ten THOUSAND of laws that need to be repealed.
The comment boxes are for posting your rationale for any piece of law being kept or discarded.
Its that simple. Some MySQL, Rails (or PHP) and its done. Then we can …. hmmmmm … I might have found it:
What we need to do now is to complete these documents using the above guidelines. We then need to take the next step, which is to prune the existing legislation of the UK, removing all offensive and illiberal laws. We do this by writing down a list of laws that are to be removed from the statutes at the next election on an emergency basis.
We will charge the conservatives with this task since that is the easiest route; should they balk or refuse, we will create our own party with this sole agenda. If we win the same number of votes that Bliar did to gain power, we will consider ourselvs the winners, and then assert our rights. Parliament would be nullified and our new government put in place by default; a government created by the electorate and obedient only to the electorate. […]
Which takes care of the ‘Liberal Democrats will never win an election’ problem.
While I’m at it, the LibDems want to remove ID cards, but they want you to pay a LOCAL INCOME TAX to replace your rates, which means that every council has to get into your private stuff; another layer of mass intrusion. Like I said, they are not very smart people. BUT they seem to be getting smarter…by definition, anyone that moves towards the BLOGDIAL position is smarter.
But you know this!
The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.
The former officials said the CIA interrogators’ refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished.
When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections.
The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.
But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush’s hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.
Senior officials and Mr Bush himself have come close to admitting this by saying CIA interrogators sought legal clarity. But no official has confirmed on the record how and when the secret programme actually came to an end.
John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, who was interviewed by Fox News on Sunday, said in response to a question of whether CIA interrogators had refused to work: “I think the way I would answer you in regard to that question is that there’s been precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now, and certainly since the Supreme Court decision.”
In an interview with the Financial Times, John Bellinger, legal adviser to the state department, went further, saying there had been “very little operational activity” on CIA interrogations since the passage last December of a bill proposed by Senator John McCain outlawing torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
Mr Bellinger said the secret prisons remained empty for the moment. But he defended the US position that use of such prisons did not contravene international conventions as some in Europe have argued. He also said that, theoretically, the Pentagon as well as the CIA had the legal right to run such facilities. The CIA declined to comment.
Key figures among the 14 prisoners transferred to Guantánamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been held in secret centres for three years or more. […]
“You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are the wind that blows newspapers down a gutter on a windy night… and sweeps the gutter clean.”
If only….
The truth is, these CIA torturers KNEW that they could be sacrificed to placate the international community should the whole facade fall to pieces. Bush would get away with ordering the war crimes because all presidents give unconditional pardons to their predecessors. Someone would have to pay, and that would be the people who did the dirty work.
This means that they (the CIA) believe that it is possible that everything can change and that civilization can indeed re-assert itself and that the USA will be made to back down.
They are frightened.
We can win!
One of the greatest leaders of any country today is His Excellency President Perves Musharaf.
We have just had confirmed what we suspected all along; The Great Satan threatened to obliterate Pakistan if they did not go along with the bogus, illegitimate, murderous and totally insane ‘war on terror’.
What is interesting is the pathetic simpering denial by Murder Drone Richard Armitage; does this demonic minion REALLY think that his phone call to Pakistan WAS NOT RECORDED?! Should he continue his denial, this tape MUST BE RELEASED, to prove once again, as if it needed proving, that these people are the most violent uncivilized bunch of venal lying murderers ever to hold the reigns of a modern nation.
His Excellency President Perves Musharaf is a great strategist and leader. He has kept Pakistan off of the Neocon radar, kept his nuclear weapons, kept his relations with whomever he wants, AND he is finally making peace with India. He has his cake and is eating it.
After this storm, this Terrorstorm is over, and civilization re-asserts itself, Pakistan will have weathered it intact, and they can then forge ahead into the clean future. Iranians I am sure, are looking at this very carefully. The Gardens of Isfahan should not be burned up over a short term dispute over nothing…over ‘honor’. Iran should weather this storm intact….how can they do it?
If you have seen any of the ‘interviews’ with His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (like the appalling one that recently appeared on CNN where the human vermin ‘interviewer’ quipped that he worked in a country where there is a ‘free press’ after His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked him wether he asked questions that he wanted to ask or wether the questions were given to him by someone else) you will see that despite being 100% in the right, with all moral authority, His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ruins the perception of Iran every time with his poor PR skills. His Excellency President Perves Musharaf has these skills and more. That is why Pakistan is in such an enviable position. Not only do they have all of the above, but now, they have TGS on the defensive, and The Times of London on their side; the side of an Islamic nation!
Its astonishing actually.
Reading about John Reid’s visit to Waltham Forest, and it’s ‘critical reception’ I couldn’t help but think of other authoritarian scum, ahem, political figures who have gone to ‘immigrant areas’ in East London.
The Battle of Cable Street or Cable Street Riot took place on Sunday October 4, 1936 in Cable Street in the East End of London. It was a clash between the police, overseeing a lawful march by the British Union of Fascists, on one side and anti-fascists including local Jewish, socialist, and communist groups on the other. The majority of both marchers and counter-protesters travelled into the area for this purpose.
In spite of the East End at that time having a large Jewish population, and the anti-Semitic nature of the B.U.F., the government refused to ban the march.
The anti-fascist groups erected roadblocks in an attempt to prevent the march from taking place. Although the police attempted to clear the road to permit the march to proceed, after a series of running battles between the police and anti-fascist demonstrators, the march did not take place, and the B.U.F. marchers were dispersed towards Hyde Park instead.
(Wikipedia)
Solley Kaye
[…]
The fascists had their strongholds in places like Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, South Hackney, parts of Poplar, all of which were on the edge of Stepney where the large Jewish population lived. So that they could involve people on the basis of envy fear, or whatever, by saying “OVER THERE the Jews, they’ve got your houses, OVER THERE the Jews, they’ve got your jobs.” Even though we were living in bloody poverty with bugs crawling all over us in the night.
[…]
Charlie Goodman
Charlie Goodman’s arrest on 4 October 1936 was notable for two things – the sheer brutality of the police and the guts of this 16 year-old kid who faced up to them.
At one point in the battle at Gardiner’s Corner, when after literally hours of police charges the crowd retreated a bit, Charlie climbed up a lamp post and shouted at the top of his voice: “Don’t be yellow bellies, forward, we are winning”. The police eventually caught up with him in Commercial Road and he was clubbed, punched and kicked all the way to Leman Street police station. (Things have not changed much. How many Asians have suffered similarly at that police station in the last 15 years?)
[…]
“The names change, the streets are the Same, and so are the problems. The glorious struggle of 1936 must be remembered today.”
There will be the 70th anniversary events on the 8th October. What would be an appropriate way to remember it?
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are many great documentaries out there today. We are finally seeing the critical mass of both near zero cost distribution and super cheap filming and editing equipment coming together in a runaway chain reactoin of information that is literally changing the world before our eyes.
Now all we need is the next element to go critical; the mass refusal of the population to engage with the global insanity that has gripped this world. A world-wide chain reaction of non cooperation with the nonsense, warmongering, waste and unrefined sleaze that makes all of our lives less pleasant than they should be.
Here it is. Recorded and transmitted July 11th 2002. Someone emailed me asking about Monster Music, and so I have dug this up, the 11th Monster music show, commissioned by THESE Records for their Bermuda Triangle program.
Enjoy.