Be Offensive: It’s Allowed!
David Mitchell discusses the furore about the Islamist march ‘planned’ by Islam4UK in Wootton Bassett. Considering the group hasn’t even made the necessary initial representation to the police in order for the march to take place, I’ve found myself astonished at the level of invective raised, particularly the calls for it to be banned. Firstly it obviously was never going to take place anyway, so why make such a fuss, but doesn’t freedom of speech also bring with it the freedom to be offensive or to cause offence? Mitchell is thoroughly right in his support for the freedom to offend for all:
The thing about freedom of speech is that people are allowed to say offensive, indefensible things; that we needn’t fear that because we’re sure that wiser counsels are more likely to convince. “Let the idiots and bullies speak openly and they will be revealed for what they are!” is the idea. It’s a brilliant one and, in confident, educated societies, it almost always works – certainly much more often than any of the alternatives. Why has Alan Johnson lost confidence in this principle? Why have the 700,000 signatories of a Facebook petition calling for the event to be banned?
I know there are circumstances in which freedom of speech is rightly limited – I’m not arguing for a repeal of all libel or incitement to hatred laws. But it’s difficult to see how this demonstration would incite hatred of anyone other than the demonstrators. Public safety can also be an issue. I understand that the police couldn’t let the protest go ahead without a reasonable expectation that it wouldn’t become violent. But if it is banned, let us be 100% sure, let our consciences be absolutely clear, that public safety was the reason, not the excuse.
Entirely right. Of course it’ll never even get that far, because Islam4UK never intended for it to get that far; they merely wanted (as Mitchell says) the free, anti-Muslim invective to prove their case against the establishment. Alan Johnson has said he’d be prepared to ban the march on public order grounds, but contained as that was in the language of having himself felt offended by the march, it’s unclear on what grounds he was really prepared to do so. Let’s be clear: although it was never intended to take place, that march should have had the nominal right to take place in the same way that reprinting the Danish cartoons of Mohammed remains something we all have the nominal right to do. It may cause offence, but being offended is part and parcel for all of us of living in this society. Islam4UK’s Anjem Choudary articulates his own position:
Watch how he deftly blurs the lines between religion and race for his own, self-serving intent. What a bastard, right? He’s then followed by Gordon Brown:
And I couldn’t agree less with Brown’s reasons for wanting the march stopped – being ‘disgusting’, ‘not having public support’ and an ‘abuse of goodwill’ along with being (you guessed it) ‘offensive’ aren’t anywhere near good enough reasons for limiting anyone’s freedom of speech. I agree with his sentiments, and I suspect David Mitchell is right when he says Choudary and Islam4UK’s real intent is merely to ‘defile our holy places’, but is our offense at this really something we need protection from? At what point did our we lose our ability to cope with being offended, when there are so many straightforward strategies available to deal with speech we just don’t like, such as ignoring it?
Tenth Doctor Says ‘Don’t Vote Tory’
David Tennant, a long-time supporter of the Labour Party has come out sharply against David Cameron:
David Tennant has urged people not to vote Tory, warning that life under David Cameron would be a “terrifying prospect” for the future of Britain.
The Doctor Who star branded the Conservative leader a phoney who jumps on every bandwagon going and insists Gordon Brown is the man best placed to look after the interests of all Brits, not just a privileged few.
In an emotionally charged interview, Tennant said: “Clearly, the Labour Party is not without some issues right now and I do get frustrated. They need to sort some stuff out, but they’re still a better bet than the Tories.
“I would rather have Gordon Brown than David Cameron. I would rather have a Prime Minister who is the cleverest person in the room than a Prime Minister who looks good in a suit.
“I think David Cameron is a terrifying prospect. I think he’s a regional newsreader who will jump on whatever bandwagon flies past.
“I get quite panicked that people are buying his rhetoric, because it seems very manipulative.”
It’s a great line, and one which skillfully bypasses Brown’s numerous deficiencies. And it’s going to be a decisive issue in May. Whilst there are terrible things being done in the name of New Labour (Digital Economy Bill, ID cards, ISA, policing), the same would be true under the Tories but far worse. Gutting the BBC as well? Chumming up with the vilest racists and homophobes in the EU Parliament? Repealing the Human Rights Act? No thanks. I’m with The Doctor on this.
Brown Stays Put
Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon didn’t have the guts to knock Gordon Brown out of Downing Street, and he survives again to lead to New Labour to eventual election disaster in May. No surprises there. David Miliband fails to act, the party screams blue murder about fractiousness so close to a general election and everyone goes on as they were. But this didn’t come from nowhere – they all know Brown is going to destroy them, whatever else the spineless two may have said on camera last night. What they didn’t have, and what noone else in the party is offering (at this stage) is new thinking. Extreme neoliberalism is the order of the day, be it Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Jack Straw, Ed Balls, Miliband (either of them I suspect) or any of the other non-entities who would have to carry the can for the next five months, and it is that which is poisoning politics more than anything else, regardless of the nominal advantage it’s giving governments around the world to do as they please most of the time.
No doubt we’ll see more of this as May approaches and the campaign continues to become more urgent. Brown could have been secure by winning on his terms in 2007, but as we know now he’s not a natural (or effective) leader and couldn’t even make that decision. We do deserve better, but while our electoral system remains first-past-the-post I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Britain’s Hypocritical Fury About Akmal Shaikh
So China did the obvious and executed Briton Akmal Shaikh anyway:
Gordon Brown and other senior British politicians have angrily condemned China for executing a British man said to have had mental problems. Akmal Shaikh, 53, was killed early this morning by lethal injection after being convicted of drug smuggling.
Despite frantic appeals by the Foreign Office for clemency, Shaikh was executed at 10.30am local time (2.30am British time) in Urumqi. Campaigners believe he is the first European in 58 years put to death in China.
Shaikh, a father of three from Kentish Town, north London, was found with 4kg of heroin in his suitcase in September 2007. His supporters say he had suffered a breakdown, was delusional and was tricked into carrying the drugs.
Shaikh learned only yesterday that he would be killed today. He was informed by two cousins, who flew to China seeking a reprieve.
“We are deeply saddened, stunned and disappointed at the news of the execution of our beloved cousin Akmal,” said Soohail and Nasir Shaikh in a statement.
The two men said they were “astonished” that the Chinese authorities refused to investigate their cousin’s mental health on the grounds that the defendant ought to have provided evidence of his own fragile state of mind.
“We find it ludicrous that any mentally ill person should be expected to provide this, especially when this was apparently bipolar disorder, in which we understand the sufferer has a distorted view of the world, including his own condition.”
Amid an angry exchange of words between London and Beijing, the British prime minister said: “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted. I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken. At this time our thoughts are with Mr Shaikh’s family and friends and I send them our sincere condolences.”
Of course it’s appallling that anyone has been executed for any reason. The state has no more right to take an individual’s life than another individual – it’s barbaric. But consider Brown’s words and then think for a moment about Gary McKinnon – apparently it’s ‘concerning’ that no mental health assessment was undertaken by China of Akmal Sheikh, yet one was conducted on Gary McKinnon – he has Asperger’s Syndrome. For some reason that makes it perfectly ok to extradite him to an uncertain future in the US penal system, despite what effect that is already having on his mental health. It’s a disgusting double standard which says more about Brown and his government’s public support for, and private indifference to human rights, than China’s longstanding disregard for them. Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said:
it was “reprehensible” and “entirely unacceptable” that the execution had gone ahead without any medical assessment. “This execution makes me personally feel sick to the stomach but I’m not going to make idle threats.
“This morning is not the time for a kneejerk reaction. It’s true we must continue to engage with China but it needs to be clear as that country plays a greater role in the world they have to understand their responsibility to adhere to the most basic standards of human rights. China will only be fully respected when and if they make the choice to join the human rights mainstream and incidents like this do not help the international community’s respect or relationship with China.”
It isn’t even an idle threat – it’s an idle remark. China is now so powerful it can disregard any other’s country’s disapproval of its behaviour. China is currently only concerned about increasing its influence and its wealth, not its international respect – it can easily afford to ignore Britain’s diplomatic attack, particularly considering its desperate, self-serving nature; if the British government really cared about Akmal Shaikh they’d prove it by blocking Gary McKinnon’s extradition, but I assure you that won’t happen. Amnesty International said:
Shaikh’s execution again highlighted the “injustice and inhumanity of the death penalty, particularly as it is implemented in China”. Amnesty estimates China executes at least three times as many people as every other country put together.
Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia programme director, said: “Much information about the death penalty is considered a state secret but Mr Shaikh’s treatment seems consistent with what we know from other cases: a short, almost perfunctory trial where not all the evidence was presented and investigated, and the death penalty applied to a non-violent crime.
“Under international human rights law, as well Chinese law, a defendant’s mental health can and should be taken into account, and it doesn’t seem that in this case the Chinese authorities did so.
“It’s simply not enough for the Chinese authorities to say ‘we did the right thing, trust us’. Now there can be no reassessment of evidence, no reprieve after a man’s life has been taken.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said of the execution:
“it is a reminder of how different can be our perspective. We need to understand China (and the massive public support for the execution). They need to understand us.”
They’d do that a lot better if we weren’t sending out such a disgustingly hypocritical message. Gary McKinnon’s extradition must be stopped and he should be tried in the UK (except he wouldn’t be because the Department of Public Prosecutions acknowledges there isn’t enough of a case to answer).
Gordon Brown Meets Vote for a Change
The only way this country is going to get on the right track once more is by changing the way we elect our MPs. First-past-the-post worked in an age where adversarial politics led to a certain degree of perceived stability, when class politics determined the electoral cycle and was the main determinant of how people voted. Those days are long gone, and we now live in a diverse country where the wishes of the majority are ignored in the quest for the floating voter in marginal seats. Apathy in ‘safe’ seats has become endemic, as the electorate realises there’s no point in voting, because their votes really don’t make a difference. We can change that by changing the system to reflect the wishes of the majority – oh you keep hearing the nonsensical attack stories, complaining the BNP would make it into Westminster, that we’d end up with coalition government. But look at Germany – absorbing an entire Communist east into a PR system in only a generation. Is Germany any less stable now than it was 20 years ago? They were run by monsters half a century ago – there isn’t even a hint of that now.
It’s great news that Vote for a Change’s Willie Sullivan has met with Gordon Brown and Jack Straw. Nothing may come from it right now, but the fact that the meeting has even taken place suggests the government is oh-so-slowly realising that the solution to the expenses scandal might very well rest with a referendum on the voting system. Brown may be finished come what may next summer, but he could well enable a system which could also make the Tories’ return far briefer than they would wish, at least governing alone; I think he knows this too. Will the timidest of Prime Ministers make a bold, last move? We can only hope. The future success of our democracy and our civil liberties could rest on it.
Labour Party in Denial
I couldn’t agree with with Mick Hume at Spiked more:
The storming reception accorded to Mandelson on Monday was widely hailed as the moment when New Labour’s fortunes could start to turn. To me it signalled the opposite. The sight of Labour activists cheering their Blairite bête noir showed how bad things have got, and how desperate they have become. After all, Lord Mandelson is the unelected, widely reviled symbol of all that the old Labour left is supposed to despise about the Tony Blair years: a backroom fixer and backstabber for whom politics is about positioning and image more than principles and ideas. That he has been brought back into the centre of government owes less to his own self-styled status as a giant of politics than to the standing of the political pygmies around him.
It is not Mandelson who has changed. He remains the embodiment of the fact that New Labour believes in nothing beyond its own re-election. Yet there were the rank and file Labour Party delegates, cheering him to the rafters. It sounded like a death rattle, a case not so much of whistling past the graveyard as singing from the grave.
And this is why they are going to lose next summer. It’s also entirely avoidable. They could wipe ID cards out today, but they’d rather pretend otherwise. They could end the ISA today, but they’d rather ‘review’ it instead. They could improve their environmental standing, but would rather stick with the neoliberal idea of growth and pretend there’s a reason for a new runway at Heathrow. They could deal with the issues such as a terminal lack of new social housing, which the BNP are feeding off, but even the Home Secretary would rather just stick his head in the sand. Electoral reform? Try a solution which will boost their fortunes rather than the Greens or Lib Dems. Reform the House of Lords? In a generation or so. House of Commons? Not any more…
The party which introduced the Human Rights Act is going to sacrifice itself needlessly to one which has insisted it’s going to repeal it, and is best friends in the European Parliament with the far right. Proportional representation couldn’t be more needed to help get a better deal for us.
Teenage Mothers To Be Put Into Care
It’s almost like John Major’s government never left. Gordon Brown, in what might be his last Labour party conference speech as Prime Minister has repackaged ‘family values’:
Teenage parents on benefits will be forced to live in “supervised homes” instead of being given council houses, Gordon Brown declared today in a bid to cut the number of pregnancies.
The Prime Minister said it was not right that a 16-year-old girl could “get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own”.
Instead, he told the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, groups of young mothers and fathers would be taught responsibility and how to raise their children “properly”.
“It’s time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken: the number of children having children,” he declared.
“For it cannot be right for a girl of 16 to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.
“From now on all 16- and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.
“These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly.
“That’s better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run.”
He told delegates: “We won’t ever shy away from taking difficult decisions on tough social questions.”
A difficult decision or a lame decision? Yes there is a problem, yes the rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK has gone up again, but to suggest it’s because girls just want a council flat isn’t just ignorant, it’s stupid; I mean anyone would think there was an election under a year away. The reasons are complicated and interconnected, from British attitudes towards sex, to mixed messages about sex education provision in schools, through to various governments’ disinterest or inability to tackle child poverty. I’m sure there are many other reasons too, not to mention answers to the problem, but a ‘network of supervised homes’ is just insane. What exactly is likely to change the mentality of teenage parents by being in care? Will boys be put into ‘supervised homes’ as well as girls, or is this a staggeringly mysoginistic policy? For that matter where will the extra money which social services will need to enforce this policy come from? I can’t be the only one thinking these very simple thoughts, surely?
Ending ID Cards? Don’t You Believe It…
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that ID cards will be abandoned:
2.02pm:
Only another 20 minutes to go. The hall is almost full now. The latest reports are that Brown is going to announce plans to allow voters to “recall” MPs found guilty of misconduct (an idea first floated this year by Nick Clegg).
And I’ve just heard that he’s also going to announce the suspension of the ID cards programme.
Alan Johnson has already said he was opposed to making them compulsory, and so it’s not clear what practical impact this new move will have. But it’s bound to go down well with ID-sceptics – a fairly large proportion of the Labour party.
Clearly though, as DigitalID points out:
The Home Office in the UK wants to make identity cards an integral part of the identification system. The ID cards are very important for the development of the country, according to the Home Office.
The identity cards will be compulsory if you want to get a job and to travel in Europe. The Criminal Records Bureau and the Home Office wants to make the livelihood of the people dependent on this system. Lastly, these ID cards would be directly linked to the police stations and this scoring system will decide the suitability of their jobs.
What a colossal fraud. The Home Office has a whole identity strategy which is entirely dependent on ID cards; they won’t abandon the scheme. They are indeed manoevering to make getting a job dependent on having an ID card. They have already made your addition on the National Identity Register immediate, upon renewing your passport. And of course skilled migrants coming to the UK with a job offer will be forced to carry ID cards from the beginning of next year. Not compulsory? Great rhetoric, but it’s yet another lie.
The Eight Stages of Genocide
How can we predict and prevent genocides? Greg Stanton outlines his groundbreaking theory on the eight stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial.
Genocide in Darfur, he argues, has proceeded through these stages before our eyes. Genocide could have been prevented by means of intervention at any one of a number of critical points in the past, but the international response has amounted to too little, too late.
This has always been the case and I don’t see this changing anytime soon, despite the best efforts of fantastic groups like Avaaz though groups like them remain our best hope, as does the work of people like Stanton who help people understand that – yes – things can be done and that genocide is not some ‘natural, unstoppable force’ like an earthquake or a tornado.
One starting point would be for those responsible for doing nothing to be seen to learn lessons and admit their errors. For ‘never again!’ to mean anything, it’s essential. This is why the campaign around Belgium, for example, to own up to its horrific history in the Congo is so important, as important as for Serbia to own up to its role in the Balkan’s genocides in the 90s.
It’s also close very close, to home. This is from a post if mine last year about Hillary Clinton’s claim that she tried to stop the Rwandan genocide.
Rewriting history over Rwanda
The Americans weren’t alone. The British, the French, the Belgians and much of the rest of Africa all either didn’t do anything or actively stopped aid. They all looked for their own interests and none had any interest in stopping genocide.
It was Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Sir David Hannay, who proposed that the UN reduce its force. A year after the slaughter, the Foreign Office sent a letter to an international inquiry saying that it still did not accept the term genocide, seeing discussion on whether the massacres constituted genocide as “sterile”. Then Ministers John Major, Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker have never even been asked about their role.
Virtually no-one emerges heroically (Canadian peacekeeper Roméo Dallaire is one and his view on Clinton’s claims would be interesting to hear). In fact I would urge anyone to make themselves read the harrowing background as an object lesson in international power politics and its victims – a million of them in Rwanda. There’s a blog which covers the 100 days before and during the slaughter in detail. ‘A People Betrayed’ by Linda Melvern is very good.
For Hillary to now try to adopt that heroic mantle is, as commentators have noted, worse than ‘monstrous’.
Almost – almost – as monstrous as this comment from Gordon Brown:
Hat Tip: Domino
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Where is Twitter on the genocides happening right now in the DR of Congo? Or the slaughter of indigenous people in Peru? Where is Brown? Where is Sarah Brown!?
Here is a list of the genocides taking place now in the world.
The media doesn’t give a damn and, unfortunate but true, neither do most Twitter users.