Prosecuting Assange for Espionage?
Dianne Feinstein has got to be kidding:
When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove—more than 250,000 secret State Department cables—he intentionally harmed the U.S. government. The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.
The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit “information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
The Espionage Act also makes it a felony to fail to return such materials to the U.S. government. Importantly, the courts have held that “information relating to the national defense” applies to both classified and unclassified material. Each violation is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Feinstein is bonkers if she thinks that publishing as a whistleblower is the same as espionage. Just plain bonkers. John Pilger argues:
WikiLeaks, says its founder Julian Assange, has “created a space that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself”. This year, WikiLeaks has released tens of thousands of official documents that describe the casual, almost industrial killing of civilians, assassination squads, and attempts at cover-up.
Anyone watching the leaked cockpit video of an Apache helicopter gunning down cameramen and children in Baghdad will not forget the pilot’s reaction: “Nice.” Having witnessed the brutalising effects of war, I felt like cheering when this was exposed and I read that it was viewed 4.8 million times in one week. This is the new “space” for a truth-telling we need urgently, as great power promotes its “perpetual war” and strives for what it calls “information dominance”.
Let it be known here that if Feinstein gets her way I’ll fucking burn my American passport in front of her goddamn embassy. America was set up to find a better way than arbitrary tyranny – if she gets the chance to blow freedom of the press out of the water entirely (which make no mistake is what this would represent), the final route to dictatorship will be clear. No thanks. I’m in full agreement with someone who knows the position in which Assange finds himself better than anyone:
@DanielEllsberg RT @RepRonPaul: In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.
Wikileaks: Whose Side Are You On?
Julian Assange and Wikileaks have changed the playing field entirely for journalism, whistleblowing and freedom of information. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been laid bare; international diplomacy itself has been laid bare. They’ve also rapidly exposed the double standards in Western governments’ attitudes towards the internet and freedom of speech. Assange in response has been threatened with assassination and execution, even in some, largely high profile, American political circles, whilst he’s lauded as a hero in others.
Here’s Ed West in the Telegraph, who cautions about the consequences of the mass scale leaks:
As liberal commentator David Allen Green wrote in the New Statesman, WikiLeaks’ mission is not necessarily a good thing for freedom. Transparency is not liberal if it tramples over other liberal values such as accountability, legitimacy and privacy. And then there are the consequences.
When WikiLeaks was launched, Assange said: “To radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly, for if we have learned anything it is that regimes do not want to be changed.” And yet he is almost certainly making regimes change for the worse.
As my colleague Guy Walters argues, the 265 million-words megaleak will only make governments more secretive, while aid worker Scott Gilmore wrote: “It will lead to a more closed world, where repressive governments will be more free to commit atrocities against their own people and the people who try to stop them will have even less information to help prevent this. Thankfully, for the Timorese at least, WikiLeaks did not exist in the 1990s.”
Investigative journalist John Pilger blames the extreme reaction to Wikileaks on the failures of mainstream journalism:
The WikiLeaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism, devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the WikiLeaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having skilfully published the WikiLeaks exposé of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.
Open Democracy argues a healthy democracy’s need for whistleblowers:
There is no doubt in my mind that a good number of the people screaming for Assange’s head would like the news media either to go away, or to function as a docile servant of the powers that be. Of course a society can exist without watchdog media, and many do. But those are generally awful places to live, except for the people who own them.
If the government has secrets, let it try to keep them. Any adult understands that running an organization may require its leaders to lie from time to time. But the job and duty of journalists is to expose those lies and their consequences. Julian Assange has shown that one does not need to be a journalist to help. That does not make him a spy.
Hounding Assange and criminalizing whistleblowers will do far more damage to democracy than a pack of scribes and hackers ever could. You don’t need to be a spy to guess that secret. The people screaming for Assange’s blood are the architects and allies of disastrous policies that are being rejected even within the government. They are trying to conceal their failure, and Wikileaks is the proof that they failed. It must not be silenced, and journalists should be the first to know it.
John Naughton argues Wikileaks’ action is all that’s left, given the failure of Western politics to hold any political leaders to account for their behaviour:
What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
As Simon Jenkins put it recently in the Guardian, “Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure.” What we are hearing from the enraged officialdom of our democracies is mostly the petulant screaming of emperors whose clothes have been shredded by the net.
Which brings us back to the larger significance of this controversy. The political elites of western democracies have discovered that the internet can be a thorn not just in the side of authoritarian regimes, but in their sides too. It has been comical watching them and their agencies stomp about the net like maddened, half-blind giants trying to whack a mole. It has been deeply worrying to watch terrified internet companies – with the exception of Twitter, so far – bending to their will.
But politicians now face an agonising dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won’t work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables – and probably of much else besides – are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent. Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet.
The Wikileaks saga for me sits at the heart of the realities behind the pact John Kampfner writes about in ‘Freedom for Sale’ – political elites getting away (literally) with murder, because they succeed in effectively either bribing or terrifying the middle classes into allowing them to perpetuate themselves. Assange and his organisation have thrown that entirely up in the air – how can they hold their precious ‘pact’ together if it’s thoroughly exposed and unpacked? It’s hardly surprising that politicians and the elements in the media who cravenly leave them unchallenged should want to go for the jugular – this is the biggest attack on vested interests at the heart of the neoliberal, neoconservative project I’ve ever seen. Check out Joe Lieberman:
Some columnists like Christopher Hitchens have dismissed Assange as a nutcase with an agenda (which may well be true), but I would argue that’s irrelevant if he’s exposing criminality at the heart of government. If David Miliband was circumventing clusterbomb treaties I should know about this and be able to hold him to account, but of course that’s not the entire story. Much of the reason why this hasn’t exploded into the administration-shattering series of revelations it was no doubt intended to be is because of Kampfner’s ‘pact’ – a great swathe of every electorate, left- and right-leaning, responds to authoritarianism – they like being told what to do. Not only has Assange exposed the true inner mechanics of politics, he’s exposed the way in which people identify with the state too – it’s no wonder players other than the vested interests are closing ranks too. New Labour after all didn’t arise from nothing.
I think Richard Wilson makes about the best point I’ve seen so far about the lengths to which Assange’s freedom of speech in this matter should be limited:
if it did transpire (and I’m not aware of any direct evidence to date) that an innocent person had been injured or killed at the hands of someone who had identified them via a document published on Wikileaks, this would, in my view, be a serious moral indictment. But it would not necessarily mean that Wikileaks were at fault in seeking to publish the document in some form – only that they were negligent in failing to redact all identifiable personal details.
While the issue of “harm minimization” cannot simply be brushed aside, it is clearly not the only ethical issue at stake in the debate about Wikileaks. One of the most serious charges made against the UK and US governments in the light of the Afghan War Logs and the more recent “cablegate” revelations is that the political elites who determine policy – both the politicians and the bureaucrats who advise them – have systematically deceived their electorates about the realities of the war in Afghanistan.
The second Gulf War may have changed a lot – we are just left with the smug sureness of the people who took us to war, with no evidence to back it up at all, just the certainty of their convictions. But that simply isn’t enough in the internet age. People want to see the data for themselves. They want to know what ‘intelligence’ it is that led to the tragedy of so many wasted lives. Being told that we can’t handle the truth doesn’t wash any longer. That’s the culture into which Wikileaks has arrived, and why it is seen as such a sea change; it’s seen as the handing over of information from those who want to keep it secret to the citizens who want to know, often by passing the journalists in the middle altogether. You can see why the secret-keepers and the journalists alike might be startled by this.
Assange has now been arrested in the UK on an international extradition warrant from Sweden, on allegations of rape. They may of course be true but they’re unconnected to the greater issue surrounding Wikileaks. Multinational companies such as PayPal and Amazon are withdrawing services to Assange left, right and centre, suggesting strongly that he’s hit a nerve, and vested interests (like Lieberman) who don’t want us to know what we now do are out to get him. It’s also shown that his experience on the internet isn’t secure anywhere in the world, indeed his life may not be. The gap between us and China or Russia is wafer thin – if you piss off the ruling elites they’ll shut you down or kill you. Their hypocrisy is being noticed:
@acre56 Just saw huckabee call for execution of julian assange for revealing secrets.. Didnt remember him calling for same for scooter libby!
@blacflag @Re_Asylum gotta laugh at the ‘leak will lead to the murder of innocents’ comment, like 100,000s of innocents haven’t already died.
It puts even Richard Wilson’s comment into perspective, doesn’t it? Johann Hari puts it into even greater perspective:
Each of the wikileaks revelations has been carefully weighed to ensure there is a public interest in disclosing it. Of the more than 250,000 documents they hold, they have released fewer than 1000 – and each of those has had the names of informants, or any information that could place anyone at risk, removed. The information they have released covers areas where our governments are defying the will of their own citizens, and hiding the proof from them.
Assange himself yesterday added:
The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.
Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
I would argue that ultimately we need to see what Assange has actually done. Unintentionally he may have exposed how prepared ruling elites are in Western ‘democracies’ to abandon the very principles they accuse dictatorships like China of abusing, but Johann Hari details the rest:
Every one of us owes a debt to Julian Assange. Thanks to him, we now know that our governments are pursuing policies that place you and your family in considerably greater danger. Wikileaks has informed us they have secretly launched war on yet another Muslim country, sanctioned torture, kidnapped innocent people from the streets of free countries and intimidated the police into hushing it up, and covered up the killing of 15,000 civilians – five times the number killed on 9/11. Each one of these acts has increased the number of jihadis. We can only change these policies if we know about them – and Assange has given us the black-and-white proof.
I know whose side I’m on, but Assange has trodden on more than just political toes. Where this will end is anyone’s guess.
What’s The Truth Behind the Trafigura Witnesses?
Links to my previous posts:
and here
Free Speech on Twitter Please!
By Charlie Brooker in The Guardian, the ‘Free Speech Manifesto’ by David Wales
The moment I’ve finished typing this, I’m going to walk out the door and set about strangling every single person on the planet. Starting with you, dear reader. I’m sorry, but it has to be done, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.
And for the sake of transparency, in case the powers-that-be are reading: this is categorically not a joke. I am 100% serious. Even though I don’t know who you are or where you live, I am going to strangle you, your family, your pets, your friends, your imaginary friends, and any lifelike human dummies with haunted stares and wipe-clean vinyl orifices you’ve got knocking around, perhaps in a secret compartment under the stairs. The only people who might escape my wrath are the staff and passengers at Nottingham’s Robin Hood airport, because they’ve been granted immunity by the state.
Last week 27-year-old accountant Paul Chambers lost an appeal against his conviction for comments he made back in January via the social networking hoojamflip Twitter, venting his frustration when heavy snow closed the airport, leaving him unable to visit his girlfriend.
“Crap!” he wrote. “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Anti-terror experts intercepted this message and spent hours deciphering it, eventually uncovering a stark coded warning within, cunningly disguised as a series of flippant words.
Chambers’ use of multiple exclamation marks is particularly chilling. He almost seems to find the whole thing rather funny. The violent destruction of an entire airport – hundreds of passengers and staff being blasted to shrieking ribbons by tonnes of explosive, all because one man’s dirty weekend has been postponed – yet all this senseless carnage is little more than an absurdist joke in the warped mind of Paul Chambers.
Funny is it, Mr Chambers? A big old laugh? Tell that to the theoretical victims of your hypothetical atrocity. Go on. Dig them out of the imaginary rubble. Listen to their anguished, notional screams. Ask how loudly they laughed as you hit the make-believe detonator. Go on. Ask them.
If you dare.
At least when Osama bin Laden broadcasts a warning to the west, his intentions form part of an extremist ideology informed by decades of resentment. Chambers issues bloodcurdling threats at the drop of a snowflake. This makes him the very worst kind of terrorist there is – the kind prepared to slaughter thousands in the name of inclement weather conditions.
Mercifully, in this case, before any innocent blood could be shed, Chambers was arrested, held in a police cell, and convicted of sending a “menacing electronic communication”. His appeal was rejected last week by Judge Jacqueline Davies who described his original tweet as “menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed.”
Quite right too. In fact, throughout this case, the authorities have behaved impeccably – which is why it’s such a crying shame I’m going to have to strangle all of them too. But strangle them I must.
Why? Because many of his fellow tweeters, outraged by Judge Davies’ ruling, have retweeted Chambers’ original message in a misguided show of solidarity. Thousands of people, all threatening to blow Robin Hood airport “sky high”. Clearly they have to be stopped – but infuriatingly, many of them hide behind anonymous usernames. The only way to ensure they all taste justice is to punish everyone equally, just to be sure. Hence the strangling, which doesn’t feel like too much of an overreaction under the circumstances. I’m just following the authorities’ lead. They ought to give me a medal. From beyond the grave. After I’ve strangled them.
Still, loath as I am to strangle every man, woman, and child on the planet, it won’t be an entirely thankless task. Clearly I will feel no remorse while strangling Chambers. He is a dangerous madman, and I look forward to sliding my hands around his neck and slowly choking the life out of him.
I also relish the prospect of strangling another tweeter-in-crime: Gareth Compton, the Tory councillor who ran afoul of the authorities last week for tweeting the words “can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”
He later apologised for what he claimed – outlandishly – was “an ill-conceived attempt at humour”, even though I’m sure Judge Jacqueline Davies would agree that it was menacing in its content and obviously so, and in fact could not be more clear, and that any ordinary person reading it would see it in that way and be alarmed.
Reassuringly, the bloodthirsty maniac Compton was arrested hours later, presumably after being cornered in his lair by a Swat team. I’d like to shake every member of that team by the hand, which sadly won’t be possible while I’m strangling them.
Anyway, I’m writing this on Friday, so by the time you read this on Monday my strangling rampage will have begun – unless the authorities have intercepted these words and arrested me in the interim, in which case I’d like to make it absolutely clear that I intend to strangle everyone in the prison before turning my hands on myself. Attention home secretary: you’ve got three days and a bit to get your shit together. Otherwise I’m strangling this planet sky-high.
Twitter Joke Trial: Appeal Lost
Once upon a time Paul Chambers made a flippant joke on Twitter. Then he was convicted of ‘menace’ for it:
Paul Chambers, the Twitter “bomb hoax” guy, was found guilty on Monday of sending a menacing message on Twitter and fined approximately £1000. This was his first criminal offence. I wrote about this in an earlier entry as I was preparing a letter of complaint to the South Yorkshire CPS. My complaint failed to deter the CPS from pursuing their charge under section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003. It did however contribute to the defendant’s decision to seek to have his initial guilty plea vacated. This was successful, to the surprise and renewed hope of many. Our hopes were dashed when district court judge Jonathan Bennett delivered his guilty verdict, which legal blogger Jack-of-Kent has described as a disgraceful and illiberal judgement.
Yesterday Paul lost his appeal:
The man convicted of “menace” for threatening to blow up an airport in a Twitter joke has lost his appeal.
Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old accountant whose online courtship with another user of the microblogging site led to the “foolish prank”, had hoped that a crown court would dismiss his conviction and £1,000 fine without a full hearing.
But Judge Jacqueline Davies instead handed down a devastating finding at Doncaster which dismissed Chambers’s appeal on every count. After reading out his comment from the site – “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” – she found that it contained menace and Chambers must have known that it might be taken seriously.
He was also saddled with a legal bill three times higher than his original £384 with £600 costs, as the court ordered him to pay a further £2,000 legal bill for the latest proceedings.
“The words in the message speak for themselves and they were sent at a time when the security threat to this country was substantial.”
Some responses on Twitter itself:
David Allen Green (his lawyer): I wish I’d never used words ‘misconceived’ and ‘illiberal’ before now, so I could use them for first time for#TwitterJokeTrial judgment.
Dara O’Briain So that’s the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN-UPS.
David Schneider All we need now is Gareth Compton telling us to stone the #twitterjoketrial judge and the Law and Twitter will implode.
Armando Iannucci The jury at #twitterjoketrial need to be sh…Oh, hang on, there’s someone at the door.
Dr Evan Harris I would feel differently if it wasn’t a joke & if it had any chance of causing the act allegedly incited.
David Mitchell A disgrace. He’s being punished for flippancy.
The blogosphere has reacted similarly. Heresy Corner adds:
This is not about modern technology, but about the new threat to deep-seated English habits of mind. What has changed is officialdom’s loss of a sense of proportion, or of their ability to use discretion and common-sense. That represents a more radical change than the coming of Internet. And the police, the CPS and the judges are on the leading edge of it. The old-fashioned traditionalist who doesn’t get it is Paul Chambers, doing what comes naturally to almost any English person and finding himself in the kind of situation once described so eloquently by Kafka. Who wasn’t English at all.
Twitter may have made Chambers’ witticism accessible to a member of staff dredging the search facility for mentions of Robin Hood Airport. Without Twitter, his joke would never have become public. But the medium is just that – a medium. What the police, the prosecutors and the judges didn’t get is the joke. Except that, being English themselves, they almost certainly did. That’s what makes this whole saga so tragic.
I’m not sure what else I have to add. As with the Compton case I blogged about yesterday – he made an ill advised but harmless joke, and has a criminal record for it, with all the damage that will do (and has done) to his reputation, ability to travel, emigrate and gain future employment. If you agree with me that this shocking attack on free speech needs to be reversed, you can donate to Paul’s legal defence fund here.
Arrested for Joking About Stoning
A Conservative Birmingham City councillor has been arrested over allegations he called on Twitter for a female writer to be stoned to death.
Erdington councillor Gareth Compton made the remark about Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on his Twitter page.
Ms Alibhai-Brown confirmed the comments were reported to the police.
West Midlands Police said Mr Compton had been arrested under the Communications Act 2003 and bailed. Mr Compton has since apologised.
Ms Alibhai-Brown had appeared on Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show on Wednesday discussing human rights in China.
Afterwards, Mr Compton allegedly tweeted: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”
Tasteless, without question. But arrestable? Sir George Young, Leader of the House, said of Compton’s tweet:
“Stoning to death is a barbarous form of punishment which the government and I am sure every honourable member of this house deplores, and I hope that no elected person will threaten any member of our society with that sort of punishment,” he said.
As with the Paul Chambers case, who on earth could have taken this seriously? I don’t even know the guy but even in a 140-character medium it’s completely clear he was being distastefully sarcastic. Here’s something: he should be allowed to be. Did he incite racial hatred? No – he was foolish and tasteless. Who cares? Something’s gone horribly wrong in this society if on a medium like twitter you should have to add disclaimers to avoid potential arrest because you might just cause something as harmless as offence. Alibhai-Brown however appears to disagree:
Alibhai-Brown said she regarded his comments as incitement to murder.
The journalist, who writes columns for the Evening Standard and the Independent, told the Guardian: “It’s really upsetting. My teenage daughter is really upset too. It’s really scared us.
“You just don’t do this. I have a lot of threats on my life. It’s incitement. I’m going to the police – I want them to know that a law’s been broken.”
At the very least she’s being overly sensitive about this. I would be the first to go after (metaphorically, you zealots) Compton if there were any indication that this were incitement to hatred or murder, but I completely disagree with her assessment of his tweet. Dr Evan Harris said on Twitter of the case:
Look, Yasmin’s a mate but police shld not arrest people for obvious joke tweets, even if offensive
He’s right.
A Lesson From Lady Chatterley
Almost a week ago now I went to a public lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE) called ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover: 50 Years On‘, and it did not go as I’d expected. I was hoping for a retrospective by the great Geoffrey Robertson QC, on the 50th anniversary of the acquittal of Penguin Books, in its obscenity trial for publishing an uncensored British edition. He duly did just that, but he also brought with him Lord (Jeremy) Hutchinson QC, one of the two men who actually won the trial, helping to kick start an evolution in social norms in this country. What a beautiful evening it turned out to be, listening to a 95 year old man rail against intolerance, against censorship and faux puritanical behaviour. He ended with this rant which inspired me more than anyone has in years:
I end by saying to you, this audience, what’s wrong with this country of ours, what is wrong with us? Lawrence loved this country so deeply, we still flounder around in our embarrassment and our treatment of sex. Can’t we accept two fundamental things: one, that since the creation of man most humans are attracted by the opposite sex and a minority are attracted by the same sex, and a minority are attracted by both? Secondly that nobody can and nobody ever will know what one human being feels for another human being in the privacy and depth of their own heart. Can’t we treat sex with a little more seriousness and respect as Lawrence wanted people to do? Can’t we grow up and calm down? We still have the four-letter words unpurified and no other words we could use. The Times is still full of asterisks, the Church is torn from head to foot and continues to humiliate women and gays and yet they still sit in the House of Lords. Martin Amis had announced that it’s impossible to write about sex; perhaps Lawrence did have the last word.
Zealots Claiming Gay Rights Eroding Christianity
It’s the normal garbage you hear from modern day Christian soldiers (read ‘bigots’), determined to try to retain any legal right to discriminate against gay people. And of course it’s presented by the Daily HateMail:
Gay rights laws are eroding Christianity and stifling free speech, Church of England bishops warned yesterday.
Senior clerics, including former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, spoke out ahead of a High Court ‘clash of rights’ hearing over whether Christians are fit to foster or adopt children.
The test case starting today involves a couple who say they have been barred from fostering because they refuse to give up their religious belief that homosexuality is unacceptable.
Unacceptable to bigots maybe, but it’s a spurious argument to suggest that this is about whether or not Christians are fit to foster or adopt children. If they’re Christian bigots of course they shouldn’t; if they are determined to break equalities legislation because ‘God’ told them to do so then of course they shouldn’t, but this isn’t a secular/Christian argument – there are plenty of Christians who don’t oppose gay people or gay rights. That’s not what senior Bishops would have you think though:
The [open] letter is signed by Lord Carey, the Bishop of Winchester Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Chester Rt Rev Peter Forster, and Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester.
They wrote: ‘The High Court is to be asked to rule on whether Christians are “fit people” to adopt or foster children – or whether they will be excluded, regardless of the needs of children, from doing so because of the requirements of homosexual rights.
‘Research clearly establishes that children flourish best in a family with both a mother and father in a committed relationship.
‘The supporters of homosexual rights cannot be allowed to suppress all disagreement or disapproval, and “coerce silence”.’
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better case for removing these bigoted liars from the House of Lords. Research of course doesn’t prove anything of the sort, and supporters of gay rights aren’t remotely interested in ‘suppressing’ disagreement in this matter. It’s a question of equality before the law – of course they’re right in acknowledging that there will be times (many of which I’ve blogged about before) where rights are in conflict with each other and decisions will have to be made in court which should win out. But this is pretty clear – they are allowed to practice their religion, as are Owen and Eunice Johns, but noone is allowed to discriminate against gay people in areas codified by law, and rightly so.
It’s a real pity that these Men of God, who demand their beliefs be unconditionally respected, can’t even back their own argument up without resorting to lies. Still though, that’s theists for you. A repugnant case, which I hope the High Court will see sense on.
I Don’t Care If This Offends Catholics
And yet the Advertising Standards Agency banned this ad as ‘potentially offensive to Catholics’:
The advertisement for Antonio Federici ice cream shows two priests who appear to be on the verge of kissing, with the tag line “We Believe in Salivation”. On the basis of six complaints, the ASA has banned the advertisement as potentially “offensive to Catholics”. This is the second advertisement from the firm that the ASA has banned. A previous one showed a pregnant nun eating the ice cream with the tag: “Immaculately conceived”.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “It seems our celebrations about the end of the blasphemy law were premature. The Advertising Standards Agency – which is elected by no-one and seems to be answerable to no-one – has reinstated the law unilaterally. Anyone who has seen the Antonio Federici ads knows that they are mildly humorous, in no way threatening, abusive or insulting. It is entirely wrong that these advertisements have been banned by such an unaccountable body, which needs to be reined in.”
Aside from the clear homophobia, I want to comment on the question of offence. It’s right that the National Secular Society should be worried about blasphemy being reintroduced into Britain by the back door, but it’s only a lesser function of the greater question about whether anyone in the country should be protected from offence. The ASA themselves said:
We noted the ad used the text “We Believe in Salivation” as a theme to refer to the taste of the product and to the image of the priests, who were portrayed in a seductive pose as if they were about to kiss passionately. We considered the portrayal of the two priests in a sexualised manner was likely to be interpreted as mocking the beliefs of Roman Catholics and was therefore likely to cause serious offence to some readers. We concluded that the ad breached the Code.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 11) clause 5.1 (Decency).
Interesting that the ASA should choose, in bending over backwards (ahem) not to offend the sensibilities of SIX THEISTS, to legitimise homophobia. Something has gone horribly wrong in this society when religious homophobes should have their bigotry protected from offence - not discrimination, not violence but merely from gentle mockery. Offence doesn’t involved discrimination – protecting from offence doesn’t involve protection from incitement to hatred. Why on earth should there be any system in place in this country which allows for protection from ideas or images people (in this case SIX) just don’t like, even though they aren’t harmed by them in any way? The majority of Catholics after all don’t appear to have been remotely bothered.
Protecting Tony Blair’s Free Speech
I’m quite torn on this one. David Allen Green (formerly ‘Jack of Kent’) asks in the New Statesman whether it’s correct that Tony Blair’s PR events supporting his book launch are being cancelled:
A retired politician is promoting a publication to those who may wish to purchase it.
This is not some extremist politician, but a former mainstream democratic politician.
And this is not just any former mainstream democratic politician, but the only UK party leader to have won a decisive general election with a sustainable majority since 1987.
But that politician cannot do any events. The events are being cancelled. Is this a cause for concern?
I don’t think it’s an immediate cause for concern because noone is forcing Blair to cancel the promotional events. Stop the War promised to conduct non-violent protests against him at the book signings and the (now-cancelled) event at the Tate Modern, but it was his choice to cancel them. Was he worried about the cost of policing or about the damage to his already destroyed reputation? And should people not be able to protest against a former Prime Minister who many believe to be a war criminal? Green continues:
[Padraig ] Reidy is the news editor for Index on Censorship and is establishing himself as one of the most thoughtful and intellectually-consistent commentators on free expression issues. Reidy says that this raises censorship concerns, even though the politician in question is Tony Blair.
This surely must be correct, if the situation is approached from a principle-based approach. The defence of free expression is often most important when the beneficiary is unpopular.
So, if this is this a case where free expression is threatened, should all people of goodwill now shout out: For Tony Blair and Free Speech?
As comments under the article point out it’s seriously ironic that we should be discussing the protection of free speech of a man who’s done so much to undermine it in this country. And it’s also not true that his free speech is being curtailed – tried to read a single newspaper or look anywhere on the television without him putting his story forward, still with barely any critical evaluation of what he’s saying? The article reeks of bias against Stop the War. Just because Padraig Reidy is a thoughtful commentator on free expression issues doesn’t mean he’s right in this instance.
Blair and Free Speech
I couldn’t agree with Harris’, Glanville’s & Heawood’s position on this more. Blair is a despicable man but suggesting that Waterstone’s should censor him is entirely wrong. I agree he should be arrested and tried on war crimes charges, but that’s not Waterstone’s business. If he hasn’t been charged (and let’s face it he’s unlikely ever to be) they shouldn’t interfere in the book’s promotion in any way.
(cross-posted from The Guardian)
We respect the writers of yesterday’s letter (18 August) and share their view on the illegality of the Iraq war and Tony Blair‘s nefarious role in engineering this country’s participation in it. But we can not share their call for Waterstone’s to desist from promoting it on the grounds that the event “will be deeply offensive to most people in Britain”, even if that were the case.
When it comes to literature, drama, journalism, artistic expression and scientific publication we must be consistent in our support for free speech. How can we defend the right of the Birmingham Repertory to put on and advertise a play like Behzti, despite it being deemed offensive to some Sikhs, and then call on a bookseller not to promote one of its books – or a library not to stock it – on the grounds of offence? The answer, in a liberal society, is to not read the book if it offends you, and to not buy a copy if you don’t wish royalties to go to the author.
While Iain Banks and colleagues say “Waterstone’s will seriously harm its own reputation as a respectable bookseller by helping him [Blair] promote his book”, we think its reputation would now be harmed by caving in to this sort of pressure.
Dr Evan Harris Trustee, Article 19
Jo Glanville Editor, Index on Censorship
Jonathan Heawood Director, English PEN
On Trial for Inappropriate Tweet
While the newly re-elected politicians discuss the voting system, the surveillance state continues to criminalise objectively innocent people:
A 26-year-old man will go on trial today for allegedly posting a message on Twitter threatening to blow an airport “sky high”.
Paul Chambers denied “tweeting” the message about Robin Hood Airport, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, on January 6.
Chambers, of Byram Court, Balby, Doncaster, was arrested after the post was picked up on the social networking site by routine investigations.
He pleaded not guilty to a single charge of sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.
As I said after his arrest, it’s an absolute insanity that an ill-judged comment, intended only for his Twitter followers, should then be put on trial for sending a ‘malicious message’. Absolutely insane. Hopefully Allen Green is right and there’ll be a not guilty verdict or better momentarily.
UPDATE: Chambers has just been found guilty.
The Murder of Blair Peach
The Metropolitan Police killed teacher/activist Blair Peach at an anti-fascist rally in 1979:
The anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was almost certainly killed by police at a demonstration in 1979, according to a secret report released today.
Documents published on the Metropolitan police’s website shed new light on the death of Peach, a 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, whose death marked one of the most controversial events in modern policing history.
A campaigner against the far right, Peach died from a blow to the head during a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London.
A crucial report into the death, which Peach’s family have campaigned to see for more than 30 years, was finally released today. It said it could “reasonably be concluded that a police officer struck the fatal blow”. A police van carrying six officers was identified as having been at the scene when the fatal blow was struck.
Except of course this doesn’t tell the whole story. The Met want you to think that it’s all gone murky, that the killer can’t possibly be found and that releasing this report should draw a line under the matter once and for all. The evidence suggests otherwise:
• suspicions centred on the SPG carrier U.11, the first vehicle to arrive on Beechcroft Avenue, the street where Peach was found staggering around and concussed. [Commander John] Cass said there was an “indication” that one officer in particular, who first emerged from the carrier but whose name has been redacted from the report, was responsible;
• the criminal investigation into Peach’s death was hampered by SPG officers, who Cass concluded had lied to him to cover up the actions of their colleagues. He “strongly recommended” that three officers should be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, giving detailed evidence to show how they were engaged in a “deliberate attempt to conceal the presence of the carrier at the scene at that time”. None were ever charged;
So the Met knows who murdered Peach, and knows who covered it up? Can someone in the know explain why they aren’t being charged now? The problems continue:
It was already known that when Cass raided lockers at the SPG headquarters he uncovered a stash of unauthorised weapons, including illegal truncheons, knives, two crowbars, a whip, a 3ft wooden stave and a lead-weighted leather stick.
One officer was caught trying to hide a metal cosh, although it was not the weapon that killed Peach. Another officer was found with a collection of Nazi regalia.
In his report, Cass said the arsenal of weapons caused him “grave concern”, but claimed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the officers involved.
A total of 14 witnesses told investigators they saw “a police officer hit the deceased on the head” but, according to Cass, there were discrepancies in their evidence and most could not identify the officer.
Insufficient evidence? What should we make of Commander Cass, when he’d seen what seems abundantly sufficient evidence, yet labelled it ‘insufficient’? And why then should it be abundantly clear to others who killed Peach:
The six officers with the SPG (the forerunners of today’s brutal and equally notorious TSG) are known to be Insp Murray, PC White, PC Richardson, PC Scottow, PC Freestone and PS Lake. Although the published version has been censored by the Met to obscure the truth it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that Blair Peach was killed by a blow from Inspector Murray’s police radio.
It is shameful that it has taken so long for the report to be published. It would be more shameful if the lessons in it – about honesty and transparency and about the dangers of creating an elite force-within-a-force like the SPG then and the Territorial Support Group now – were not recognised.
They’re still not being recognised, just as the lessons of the G20 protest last year haven’t been learned. Indeed just recently Sergeant Delroy Smellie was acquitted for his attack on a peaceful protester, following the Met’s killing of Ian Tomlinson. Not only was Smellie’s defence palpably absurd, but the reasons for his violent behaviour were never questioned. The current TSG might not be quite as bad as the SPG but having this elite force-within-a-force seems still to lead to a serious level of needless brutality, serious injury and death. And just what is happening about Ian Tomlinson? Any charges anyone?
British ‘justice’ – nothing changes.
Nick Clegg Promises to Repeal Digital Economy Act
In his first masterstroke after his enormous success in the first leaders debate, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has promised to repeal the Digital Economy Act if elected:
“We did our best to prevent the Digital Economy Bill being rushed through at the last moment. It badly needed more debate and amendment, and we are extremely worried that it will now lead to completely innocent people having their internet connections cut off,” said Clegg.
“It was far too heavily weighted in favour of the big corporations and those who are worried about too much information becoming available. It badly needs to be repealed, and the issues revisited.”
And the Lib Dems immediately aim for the so-far ignored youth vote. Clegg is putting his money where his mouth is on freedom, missing nothing out that I know of. I’m increasingly convinced, particularly with the influence rapidly heading his way, that it’s vital that those of us who care about reversing the authoritarian agenda so loved by Labour must vote Lib Dem. Right principles, right priorities and credible, focused leadership: I’m sure impressed.
Lib Dems Open Up a Front on Civil Liberties
After a first week with Labour and the Conservatives (henceforth Labservatives) refusing to talk about civil liberties and human rights, both completely ignoring issues around the government’s authoritarian agenda, the Lib Dems have finally created an opening with the release of their manifesto:
Speaking to the Guardian, the Lib Dem leader said he was shocked by the lack of reference to civil liberties in the Labour manifesto, and highlighted his own plans to scrap the next generation of biometric passports, and its communication base.
He said: “It’s a measure of the authoritarian streak of the Labour party that it didn’t refer once to liberty in its own manifesto.
“Civil liberties and individual freedoms are part of the DNA of the Lib Dems. It makes a compete mockery of the claim by Gordon Brown that he can speak for progressive voters in other parties when his own party has turned its back on one of the cornerstones of progressive politics.
The manifesto, part of which has been seen by the Guardian, proposes to set up a “stop unit” inside the Cabinet Office responsible for preventing anti-libertarian legislation, including the creation of new criminal offences.
Now that really is a clear blue line between the parties. I fully accept that many outcomes of the authoritarian project have been accidental – the RIPA legislation for example hasn’t been used remotely as intended, and nor for that matter has Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, although it’s probably debatable whether either piece of legislation was ever necessary. Joined up thinking like this is what we were promised in 1997, but it never happened.
The Liberal Democrats claimed scrapping biometric passports could save £3bn over the course of a parliament, the first time the party has mentioned this saving. It also calls for regulation of closed-circuit television, measures to stop councils spying on people, and new guidelines to prevent unfair extraditions to the US.
The manifesto says the Lib Dems would stop children being fingerprinted at school without their parents’ permission and promises to restore the right to protest by reforming the Public Order Act to safeguard non-violent protest.
Restrictions would be introduced to narrow the scope of injunctions and there are proposals to protect free speech and investigative journalism.
Very nice. It’s something which was discussed last night at the Hostile Reconnaissance event. Grand principles are being brushed aside in the name of ‘security’, and it’s time particular protections such as these were itemised, codified and legislated for.
The party is in favour of reforms to the English and Welsh libel laws: corporations would have to show damage and prove malice or recklessness to mount a successful court challenge against journalists. The party also calls for a £10,000 cap on individual donations, down from its previous pledge to impose a £50,000 cap.
More like it yet again. Just what were Labour promising again?
At the manifesto launch on Wednesday, Clegg will promise to scrap control orders, which can use secret evidence to place people under house arrest, as well as reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days. The second-generation biometric passport, which includes fingerprints, is not due to be scrapped by the Tories, even though they do propose to drop the national identity register.
What’s clear here is that the Lib Dems are committed to rolling back the authoritarian agenda itself. The Tories are promising to make tweaks here and there and changes of focus, but the agenda itself under them would without question remain. These commitments give voters a reason to vote for them actively, rather than just voting against the other main parties. I wonder though what pressures they would find themselves under if they really were in government, given that (again as came out in the Hostile Reconnaissance event last night) the party is wedded to neoliberal economic policies? So much of Labour’s agenda has arisen from that reality, and I wonder what any Lib Dem’s views on this are.
But the Lib Dems will argue it is not necessary to spend billions of pounds on storing fingerprints in passports, and say Britain already has a type of biometric passport known as an e-passport, which stores 16 facial measurements (along with your name and passport number) in the chip at the back.
Clegg said he would also scrap the communications database for which companies would be paid to store information about everyone’s email and internet use, including storing data about what you do on social networking sites such as Facebook and online computer games.
It sure sounds good. Is it now incumbent for as many of us as possible to vote Lib Dem at any cost in order to express our feelings on this vitally important issue?
