Moving the Roadmap?
Housing units
Yesterday the US National Security Adviser, confirmed the US administration's support for increased Israeli settlements within the Occupied Territories. Is this a change in US policy?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/politics/21diplo.html?hp
Smuggling Statutes
A week or so ago Brian Barder’s ‘blog,
http://ephems.blogspot.com/2004/08/mr-blunkett-his-new-plans-for-our.html contained an piece about how David Blunkett’s Home Office seemed to have plans to deal with some of our most cherished liberties. Brian used a couple of recent examples; “ Diversity: Towards a Community Cohesion and Race Equality Strategy” and the draft proposals to introduce identification cards.
I cannot disagree with anything written here, Brian. But as I came to your last words, I asked myself, “Do enough people care?”. I mean really care enough to make sure these Draconian measures are not, as you put it, “smuggled” onto the statute book? I’m afraid my confidence level is not much above absolute zero.
The examples of statutory “smuggling” within the criminal law, in my professional career alone, are terrifying.
No longer does an arrested person have an untrammelled right to say nothing when questioned in the police station.
No longer does an accused person have the right to keep his defence to himself until trial. In cases of rape and now other sexual offences, a defendant facing, on conviction, many uncomfortable years in jail, finds it increasingly difficult to challenge the complainant’s sexual history. The chances of miscarriages in this area alone increase as juries are now being asked to believe either the complainant or the defendant. No need for corroboration!
Thousands of kids are being criminalised by the use of the powers contained in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The civil law provisions in the Act allow the police use second-hand hearsay evidence to obtain Anti-Social Behaviour Orders.
The government has not exhausted this crafty procedure; a civil order followed by criminal proceedings, with substantial periods of custody for breach. Five years in the case of an ASBO. And Blunkett’s teeth have been sharpened.
Have a look at Section 5 of the Domestic Violence and Victims Bill introduced in the House of Lords at, I think, the turn of the year.Conviction is no longer a pre-requisite for an Order!
5A Restraining orders on acquittal
(1) A court before which a person (“the defendant”) is acquitted of an offence may, if it considers it necessary to do so to protect a person from harassment by the defendant, make an order prohibiting the defendant from doing anything described in the order.
(2) In proceedings under this section both the prosecution and the defence may lead, as further evidence, any evidence that would be admissible in proceedings for an injunction under section 3(civil procedure-AEH)
The maximum penalty for breach of an order-five years.
I shudder to think what the Labour Party’s manifesto for the next election will contain. Law'n'Order, we are told, will be at its heart. I wonder if anyone will really mind, if amongst its provisions are the implanting, under the skin, of a chip to which details can be added during the lifetime if the citizen. Or the compulsory taking of DNA to complete the gaps in present database, which now contains a miserable collection of those arrested or reported for any criminal offence.And yes, Number 51, the national database behind the ID card! A few years ago the limits to the digital storage of information made these ideas fanciful. Today, the technologies are increasing exponentially whilst the costs of storage are moving with equal speed in the opposite direction. We are now a nation of involuntary Prozac users who find “Big Brother” an entertainment.
t
The Conformist
After many years promising Anne that I would sort out four or five shelves supporting forty or fifty recorded VHS, and the same quantity of Betamax, tapes, I’ve eventually got round to the job.
The first tape from which I blew the dust was Bertolucci’s “Il Conformista” The Conformist. Set in Fascist Italy, it’s a wonderfully architectural evocation of that period.
When I searched the movie database, I was mystified to see the film is not available in the United Kingdom either on VHS or, better still, DVD.
I believe Paramount hold the rights over this masterpiece. How about e-mailing
http://www.paramount.com/ and pestering them to issue the film?
Cheers
t
BOOOOO!
In Michael Moore's "Dude Where's My Country", the fourth chapter is entitled "The United States of Booo!"Moore goes on the describe how, since 9/11, the US nation has been scared witless into giving up long cherished civil rights. This has been achieved by creating endless wars: "war on terror, a war to liberate and rebuild Iraq, war against Iranian clerics, a war against the North Korean madmen, a war against the Columbian drug lords, a war against extremism, a war against Communism in Cuba, a war against Hammas, a war against...." . The press has been gulled.The American public has been completely taken in by this stuff. And now we are seeing the same tactic, with a slight variation, used by Saint Tony, Bush's ally in prayer. It started off with the "sexing up" of the threats from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and moved on to local grown Al Q'aida cells. Remember the tanks rolling up and parking outside Heathrow's terminals last winter. Remember the arrests of those Iraqi Kurds in their mobile phone shop in Manchester? None were charged with any terrorist offences. Then we set up bogey-men-Abu Hamza. And of course Downing Street are always asking. "How will this be reported in the Standard, the Mail or the Sun?"So now from the same source who told us in Dodgy Dossier ver1 Sept2001 "I am in no doubt that the threat[from Iraqi WMD] is serious and current, that he has made progress on WMD, and that he has to be stopped" we now have the government's Emergency Advice Booklet.Of course contains helpful advice if your house is flooded or if you find someone with a broken leg. But just about every news bulletin on the day of publication used the word "terror" in its headline. No mention of Reducing Fire Hazards in the Home-page 7. Or How to Deal with Burns-page 13. And, believe me, the written media were even more lurid. In fact the title of the booklet on the government's website is "26_07_04_terror". Try it. So we do know how it did play in the media. And what has Blunkett offered for protection. Emergency procedures under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Part 4 of which provides for indefinite detention without trial of non-UK citizens. No charge is required. The presumption of innocence, traditional rules of evidence and other procedural protections thrown away. And by November 2001, the Government has derogated from its obligations under Art5(2) of the Human Rights Act. A step taken by no other signatory to the European Convention. Even Spain, after the Madrid bombing, felt much more attached to it's Convention signature! The Home Secretary clearly wants to build on these Draconian powers. There's a growing crescendo of calls for identification cards linked to a substantial database storing a huge amount of private information. And of course it's the database that's the villain. The card itself, even with biometric details, is unimportant. And we now hear that the Labour manifesto for the next election is one which will have law'n'order and the fight against terrorism at its heart
t
Yesterday the US National Security Adviser, confirmed the US administration's support for increased Israeli settlements within the Occupied Territories. Is this a change in US policy?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/politics/21diplo.html?hp
After many years promising Anne that I would sort out four or five shelves supporting forty or fifty recorded VHS, and the same quantity of Betamax, tapes, I’ve eventually got round to the job.
The first tape from which I blew the dust was Bertolucci’s “Il Conformista” The Conformist. Set in Fascist Italy, it’s a wonderfully architectural evocation of that period.
When I searched the movie database, I was mystified to see the film is not available in the United Kingdom either on VHS or, better still, DVD.
I believe Paramount hold the rights over this masterpiece. How about e-mailing http://www.paramount.com/ and pestering them to issue the film?
Cheers
t