Jonathan Cook August 14. 2009
TZIPORI, ISRAEL // Amin Muhammad Ali, a 74-year-old refugee from a destroyed Palestinian village in northern Israel, says he only feels truly at peace when he stands among his ancestors’ graves.
The cemetery, surrounded on all sides by Jewish homes and farms, is a small time capsule, transporting Mr Muhammad Ali – known to everyone as Abu Arab – back to the days when this place was known by an Arabic name, Saffuriya, rather than its current Hebrew name, Tzipori.
Unlike most of the Palestinian refugees forced outside Israel’s borders by the 1948 war that led to the creation of the Jewish state, Abu Arab and his family fled nearby, to a neighbourhood of Nazareth.
Refused the right to return to his childhood home, which was razed along with the rest of Saffuriya, he watched as the fields once owned by his parents were slowly taken over by Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. Today only Saffuriya’s cemetery remains untouched.
Despite the loss of their village, the 4,500 refugees from Saffuriya and their descendants have clung to one hope: that the Jewish newcomers could not buy their land, only lease it temporarily from the state.
According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.
But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.
The new law begins a process of creeping privatisation of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.
Mr Netanyahu and the bill's supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices.
In practice, it will mean that the 200 Jewish families of Tzipori will be able to buy their homes, including a new cluster of bungalows that is being completed on land next to the cemetery that belonged to Abu Arab’s parents.
The privatisation of Tzipori’s refugee land will remove it from the control of an official known as the Custodian of Absentee Property, who is supposed to safeguard it for the refugees.
“Now the refugees will no longer have a single address – Israel – for our claims,” said Abu Arab. “We will have to make our case individually against many hundreds of thousands of private homeowners.”
He added: “Israel is like a thief who wants to hide his loot. Instead of putting the stolen goods in one box, he moves it to 700 different boxes so it cannot be found.”
Mr Netanyahu was given a rough ride by Israeli legislators over the reform, though concern about the refugees’ rights was not among the reasons for their protests.
Last month, he had to pull the bill at the last minute as its defeat threatened to bring down the government. He forced it through on a second attempt last week but only after he had warned his coalition partners that they would be dismissed if they voted against it.
A broad coalition of opposition had formed to what was seen as a reversal of a central tenet of Zionism: that the territory Israel acquired in 1948 exists for the benefit not of Israelis but of Jews around the world.
In that spirit, Israel’s founders nationalised not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state.
The disquiet provoked by Mr Netanyahu’s privatisation came from a variety of sources: the religious right believes the law contravenes a Biblical injunction not to sell land promised by God; environmentalists are concerned that developers will tear apart the Israeli countryside; and Zionists publicly fear that oil-rich sheikhs from the Gulf will buy up the country.
Arguments from the Palestinian minority’s leaders against the reform, meanwhile, were ignored – until Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, added his voice at the weekend. In a statement, he warned that the law “validates and perpetuates the crime of land and property theft from the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba”.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer from the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, said the law had been carefully drafted to ensure that foreigners, including wealthy sheikhs, cannot buy land inside Israel.
“Only Israeli citizens and anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return – that is, any Jew – can buy the lands on offer, so no ‘foreigner’ will be eligible.”
Another provision in the law means that even internal refugees like Abu Arab, who has Israeli citizenship, will be prevented from buying back land that rightfully belongs to them, Ms Bishara said.
“As is the case now in terms of leasing land,” she explained, “admissibility to buy land in rural communities like Tzipori will be determined by a selection committee whose job it will be to frustrate applications from Arab citizens.”
Supporters of the law have still had to allay the Jewish opposition’s concerns. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that only a tiny proportion of Israeli territory – about four per cent – is up for privatisation.
But, according to Mr Yiftachel, who lobbied against the reform, that means about half of Israel’s developed land will be available for purchase over the next few years. And he suspects privatisation will not stop there.
“Once this red line has been crossed, there is nothing to stop the government passing another law next year approving the privatisation of the rest of the developed areas,” he said.
Ms Bishara said among the first refugee properties that would be put on the market were those in Israel’s cities, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Haifa and Lod, followed by homes in many of the destroyed villages like Saffuriya.
She said Adalah was already preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees, and if unsuccessful would then take the matter to international courts.
Adalah has received inquiries from hundreds of Palestinian refugees from around the world asking what they can do to stop Israel selling their properties.
“Many of them expressed an interest in suing Israel,” she said.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0413.htm#Top
Saturday 15 August 2009
Thursday 13 August 2009
Hebron: the truth, from an exile in Bristol
Iqbal Tamimi - Abraham bought a cave, he did not buy Palestine
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
Monday 10 August 2009
UK Government torture complicity - more weasel words
The Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary claim that Britain does not collude in torture.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
Surveillance: Guidelines are not enough
Lib Dems demand curbs on 'spying'
Councils have been criticised for using CCTV/phone tapping powers to tackle dog mess.
The Lib Dems want tighter controls on surveillance powers for authorities including councils and the police, adding that only a magistrate should be able to approve a request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
More than 500,000 requests to access phone and e-mail records were made in 2008, according to the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The Home Office said the powers should be used only when "proportionate".
An average of about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain in 2008, according to figures which have emerged from an annual report by commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 adults being targeted.
Although slightly down on 2007, the total number of requests last year was up by more than 40% on 2006, and it included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief".
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year. We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state, but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning and not a blueprint."
Local authorities in England are still spying on suspected minor offenders despite being banned from doing so by law. Since 2003 they have only been able to use undercover methods against those suspected of breaking criminal law, but the chief surveillance commissioner said it was of "significant concern" that some local authorities were going beyond what was allowed. He was especially worked up about the use of CCTV to monitor people.
In his annual report for 2008, published on 21st July, Sir Christopher Rose raised concerns about "directed surveillance" - such as bugging of a public place or taking photographs of suspects - and the use of covert human intelligence, such as informants and undercover officers.
He mentioned "a continuing failure on the part of authorising officers properly to demonstrate that less intrusive methods have been considered and why they have been discounted in favour of the tactic selected. If, for whatever reason, the government does not wish public authorities to use powers conferred by Parliament, the proper course, it seems to me, is for Parliament to remove those powers."
Authorising officers are senior officials in local authorities, government departments and other public bodies who sign off surveillance requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Surveillance by local authorities is not yet allowed to be intrusive, such as bugging of phone lines or entering premises.
In England /Wales it is restricted to suspected breaches of criminal law and should not be used to investigate suspected tax dodgers, for example, or on economic or public safety grounds.
Such exemptions do not apply in Scotland.
Sir Christopher warns that public bodies such as local authorities need to stick more closely to the rules.
He says: "A specific act of surveillance may not be intrusive but a combination of acts may enable the construction of a profile; this requires careful consideration when judging whether an individual's private life is subject to interference."
He added that authorising officers sometimes do not understand the need to gain specific authorisation to target people in a public place.
"It is not where the CCTV is placed (which may be overt or covert) but the manner in which the camera is used that is determinative of whether the surveillance is covert," the report says.
And he adds: "CCTV operators employed by local authorities are required to pass rigorous examination for the use of this controversial equipment, yet it appears that some police officers operate CCTV without obvious qualification."
Obviously, merely setting out guidelines is not good enough; there has to be a way of regulating this, and local bodies that overdo it must be accountable in law.
Having operated a CCTV camera myself, as a security guard, I'm aware of the traps. If something looks interesting you will close-in and follow it. That may be nothing more than a beautiful pair of legs. But legs belonging to a woman who has not signed any contract before becoming an unwitting performer. And a crowd of people - any crowd, may be suspect.
On the international level, the operators of remote-control armed drones take this to its extreme, by applying a 'rule of thumb' and just 'taking them out'. That is why it's dangerous to have a wedding celebration in Afghanistan. If you think this jump in context is fanciful, don't forget that Merseyside police began using (unarmed) drones in 2007.
Councils have been criticised for using CCTV/phone tapping powers to tackle dog mess.
The Lib Dems want tighter controls on surveillance powers for authorities including councils and the police, adding that only a magistrate should be able to approve a request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
More than 500,000 requests to access phone and e-mail records were made in 2008, according to the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The Home Office said the powers should be used only when "proportionate".
An average of about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain in 2008, according to figures which have emerged from an annual report by commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 adults being targeted.
Although slightly down on 2007, the total number of requests last year was up by more than 40% on 2006, and it included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief".
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year. We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state, but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning and not a blueprint."
Local authorities in England are still spying on suspected minor offenders despite being banned from doing so by law. Since 2003 they have only been able to use undercover methods against those suspected of breaking criminal law, but the chief surveillance commissioner said it was of "significant concern" that some local authorities were going beyond what was allowed. He was especially worked up about the use of CCTV to monitor people.
In his annual report for 2008, published on 21st July, Sir Christopher Rose raised concerns about "directed surveillance" - such as bugging of a public place or taking photographs of suspects - and the use of covert human intelligence, such as informants and undercover officers.
He mentioned "a continuing failure on the part of authorising officers properly to demonstrate that less intrusive methods have been considered and why they have been discounted in favour of the tactic selected. If, for whatever reason, the government does not wish public authorities to use powers conferred by Parliament, the proper course, it seems to me, is for Parliament to remove those powers."
Authorising officers are senior officials in local authorities, government departments and other public bodies who sign off surveillance requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Surveillance by local authorities is not yet allowed to be intrusive, such as bugging of phone lines or entering premises.
In England /Wales it is restricted to suspected breaches of criminal law and should not be used to investigate suspected tax dodgers, for example, or on economic or public safety grounds.
Such exemptions do not apply in Scotland.
Sir Christopher warns that public bodies such as local authorities need to stick more closely to the rules.
He says: "A specific act of surveillance may not be intrusive but a combination of acts may enable the construction of a profile; this requires careful consideration when judging whether an individual's private life is subject to interference."
He added that authorising officers sometimes do not understand the need to gain specific authorisation to target people in a public place.
"It is not where the CCTV is placed (which may be overt or covert) but the manner in which the camera is used that is determinative of whether the surveillance is covert," the report says.
And he adds: "CCTV operators employed by local authorities are required to pass rigorous examination for the use of this controversial equipment, yet it appears that some police officers operate CCTV without obvious qualification."
Obviously, merely setting out guidelines is not good enough; there has to be a way of regulating this, and local bodies that overdo it must be accountable in law.
Having operated a CCTV camera myself, as a security guard, I'm aware of the traps. If something looks interesting you will close-in and follow it. That may be nothing more than a beautiful pair of legs. But legs belonging to a woman who has not signed any contract before becoming an unwitting performer. And a crowd of people - any crowd, may be suspect.
On the international level, the operators of remote-control armed drones take this to its extreme, by applying a 'rule of thumb' and just 'taking them out'. That is why it's dangerous to have a wedding celebration in Afghanistan. If you think this jump in context is fanciful, don't forget that Merseyside police began using (unarmed) drones in 2007.
see also: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/ripa-council-snooping-is-growth.html
Thursday 6 August 2009
G20 videos won't change the Met
By George Monbiot
On the day when The Metropolitan Police at last admitted that Ian Tomlinson had not died through a heart attack but from internal haemorrhaging caused by police violence, this (April 2009) article from The Guardian says just about everything that is worth saying:
"If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire on an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty's constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.
The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses.
Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone), until Amnesty International got involved.
But none of this featured in the conservative press. The story was always the same: we would stagger home after our peaceful protests were attacked by uniformed skinheads to discover that we were "Anarchist thugs on the rampage" whose attempt to destroy civilisation had been thwarted only by the calm professionalism of the police. Violent police action mutated into violent protests. The papers believed everything the police told them.
This began to change when the police foolishly attacked a Countryside Alliance march in 2004. In the spirit of impartial policing, the cops gave these reactionaries the treatment they had doled out to generations of progressives. It was grotesque, disproportionate and familiar policing, but there's a world of difference between bloodstained hemp ponchos and bloodstained tweeds. The exposure of the lies the police then told about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar made the papers – which had reproduced the official version – feel stung.
In other circumstances, Ian Tomlinson, the passerby who died after being thrown to the ground by police at the G20 protest, would have been treated by the press as a violent anarchist who had assaulted the road with his body. But video footage and disillusionment has changed that – for a few days at least. On Friday, the front page of the Daily Express carried lurid pictures of the injuries sustained by a woman at the G20 protests, under the headline "Police did this to me: it was just like being whipped by the Taliban".
Yesterday the Daily Mail posted a film made by climate camp activists. Its columnist Melanie Phillips, who is yet to be celebrated for her support of radical causes, opined that "there are always elements in the ranks [of the police] who want to give people a good kicking". An opinion column in the Telegraph explained that "there are individuals who join the police just because they like hitting people", while the Spectator lamented the "disgraceful actions of a few Met officers". Tomorrow's Guardian poll suggests the police are losing the wider battle for public opinion, too.
The papers maintain that a few rogue officers got out of control. But as testimonies collected by Climate Camp's legal team show, police violence at the G20 demos was organised and systematic. It is true that the police appear to have been carried away by testeria (a useful word which describes testosterone-fuelled male rampages). But this keeps happening, and senior officers make no attempt to prevent it.
Before the protests, the police fed the media stories about terrorist plots supposedly being hatched by G20 demonstrators. "We're up for it and we're up to it," Commander Simon O'Brien told the press. Organisers from Climate Camp asked if they could attend police briefings given to journalists in order to put their side of the story. They were rebuffed. The police initially refused to meet them even to discuss the protesters' intentions. The police plan was called Operation Glencoe: it was named after the site of a notorious massacre.
If the police at the G20 protests were pumped up, testerical, itching for a fight, it was partly because their commanders have for years blurred the distinction between peaceful campaigners and terrorists. Until recently, this strategy worked: by turning quiet protests into angry confrontations, the police could show the public that unless they had ever greater powers and resources, the country would be overrun by violent mobs. Now it has backfired.
Don't expect this momentary backlash to change anything. The police appear impervious to criticism. Just eight days before the G20 protests, the parliamentary select committee on human rights published a report on the policing of protests. It recommended that "counter-terrorism powers should never be used against peaceful protesters"; and that "the presumption should be in favour of protests taking place without state interference". The police ignored it. They used counter-terrorism powers to stop and search climate campers eating in a restaurant; they sought to halt peaceful actions. Interestingly, they also appeared to allow genuine rioters to break into a branch of RBS. This, too, is a familiar pattern: the police beat up peaceful protesters and stand by when vandals create some easy headlines for the tabloids.
The public revulsion towards the police lies about De Menezes didn't prevent them attempting a similar cover-up over the death of Ian Tomlinson. Just as the furore reached its peak, the police again curtailed the right to protest when they pre-emptively arrested 114 people close to a power station. Their purpose was to impose sweeping bail conditions on the protesters, which will come in very handy when the decision to build a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is announced. Today the Guardian published evidence of collusion between the police and Kingsnorth's operator, E.ON.
The police behave like this, despite the opprobrium of left and right, because they know they will get away with it. They know the government won't rein them in; that the Independent Police Complaints Commission appears to eat out of their hands; that the sternest sanction an officer can expect for beating or killing a passerby is some extended gardening leave. They know that in a few days' time the rightwing press will revert to publishing stories about the anarchist baby-eaters seeking to turn Britain into a bloodbath.
But something else has changed in this country: the resolution of the protesters. Despite repeated assaults, they appear to have become better organised and less afraid. That, so soon after Operation Glencoe, 114 people were prepared to risk arrest and another beating testifies to the resilience of this movement. These people know that protest is not a threat to democracy but its cornerstone. They know that the issues they contest outweigh any harm they may suffer. They know that getting beaten up is a sign that the state has lost the argument."
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009
Distraction
The metropolitan police have introduced a new, U.S. style euphemism into British discourse. Nick Hardwick, chairman of the IPCC, who was accused on 4th August by the Police Federation of running a "witch-hunt" against G20 officers, told the committee he had received 185 complaints from G20 protests, including more than 50 complaints from members of the public who say they were assaulted or witnessed an assault.
Mr Hardwick said the IPCC received twice as many complaints from the 2001 Countryside Alliance protests, but he said the severity of the G20 complaints and injuries alleged is greater - although the difference may be accounted for by the presence of camera-toting citizen journalists at the protest.
"One of the consequences of this exposure through citizen journalism is that we will all see much more clearly what it is - and sometimes it looks ugly - what we expect the police to do," he told MPs.
Later the IPCC said it had received 185 complaints about the G20 protests, 40-something of which were regarded as 'ineligible', more than 50 were about police tactics and over 80 of which were from people who saw or experienced excessive force by police officers.
Mr Hardwick said there was a need for police to explain better so-called "distraction" techniques they are trained to use in violent confrontations, which he said was a "euphemism" for "kicking, hitting, punching". This is a mild criticism, but as the police are accustomed to being supported by all authorities, MPs and the tabloids through 'difficult times', for a public official to stand up and actually tell it thus represents a Small Step for a Man, and could lead to calls for greater control over the Force. If only. As they are now sanctioned to use guns and tasers as well as their clubs, and the laws of assault and perjury do not apply to them, it's a distant possibility. The Police Federation should relax.
Also- The Guardian interview:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/ian-tomlinson-family-accuse-police-of-cover-up
On the day when The Metropolitan Police at last admitted that Ian Tomlinson had not died through a heart attack but from internal haemorrhaging caused by police violence, this (April 2009) article from The Guardian says just about everything that is worth saying:
"If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire on an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty's constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.
The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses.
Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone), until Amnesty International got involved.
But none of this featured in the conservative press. The story was always the same: we would stagger home after our peaceful protests were attacked by uniformed skinheads to discover that we were "Anarchist thugs on the rampage" whose attempt to destroy civilisation had been thwarted only by the calm professionalism of the police. Violent police action mutated into violent protests. The papers believed everything the police told them.
This began to change when the police foolishly attacked a Countryside Alliance march in 2004. In the spirit of impartial policing, the cops gave these reactionaries the treatment they had doled out to generations of progressives. It was grotesque, disproportionate and familiar policing, but there's a world of difference between bloodstained hemp ponchos and bloodstained tweeds. The exposure of the lies the police then told about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar made the papers – which had reproduced the official version – feel stung.
In other circumstances, Ian Tomlinson, the passerby who died after being thrown to the ground by police at the G20 protest, would have been treated by the press as a violent anarchist who had assaulted the road with his body. But video footage and disillusionment has changed that – for a few days at least. On Friday, the front page of the Daily Express carried lurid pictures of the injuries sustained by a woman at the G20 protests, under the headline "Police did this to me: it was just like being whipped by the Taliban".
Yesterday the Daily Mail posted a film made by climate camp activists. Its columnist Melanie Phillips, who is yet to be celebrated for her support of radical causes, opined that "there are always elements in the ranks [of the police] who want to give people a good kicking". An opinion column in the Telegraph explained that "there are individuals who join the police just because they like hitting people", while the Spectator lamented the "disgraceful actions of a few Met officers". Tomorrow's Guardian poll suggests the police are losing the wider battle for public opinion, too.
The papers maintain that a few rogue officers got out of control. But as testimonies collected by Climate Camp's legal team show, police violence at the G20 demos was organised and systematic. It is true that the police appear to have been carried away by testeria (a useful word which describes testosterone-fuelled male rampages). But this keeps happening, and senior officers make no attempt to prevent it.
Before the protests, the police fed the media stories about terrorist plots supposedly being hatched by G20 demonstrators. "We're up for it and we're up to it," Commander Simon O'Brien told the press. Organisers from Climate Camp asked if they could attend police briefings given to journalists in order to put their side of the story. They were rebuffed. The police initially refused to meet them even to discuss the protesters' intentions. The police plan was called Operation Glencoe: it was named after the site of a notorious massacre.
If the police at the G20 protests were pumped up, testerical, itching for a fight, it was partly because their commanders have for years blurred the distinction between peaceful campaigners and terrorists. Until recently, this strategy worked: by turning quiet protests into angry confrontations, the police could show the public that unless they had ever greater powers and resources, the country would be overrun by violent mobs. Now it has backfired.
Don't expect this momentary backlash to change anything. The police appear impervious to criticism. Just eight days before the G20 protests, the parliamentary select committee on human rights published a report on the policing of protests. It recommended that "counter-terrorism powers should never be used against peaceful protesters"; and that "the presumption should be in favour of protests taking place without state interference". The police ignored it. They used counter-terrorism powers to stop and search climate campers eating in a restaurant; they sought to halt peaceful actions. Interestingly, they also appeared to allow genuine rioters to break into a branch of RBS. This, too, is a familiar pattern: the police beat up peaceful protesters and stand by when vandals create some easy headlines for the tabloids.
The public revulsion towards the police lies about De Menezes didn't prevent them attempting a similar cover-up over the death of Ian Tomlinson. Just as the furore reached its peak, the police again curtailed the right to protest when they pre-emptively arrested 114 people close to a power station. Their purpose was to impose sweeping bail conditions on the protesters, which will come in very handy when the decision to build a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is announced. Today the Guardian published evidence of collusion between the police and Kingsnorth's operator, E.ON.
The police behave like this, despite the opprobrium of left and right, because they know they will get away with it. They know the government won't rein them in; that the Independent Police Complaints Commission appears to eat out of their hands; that the sternest sanction an officer can expect for beating or killing a passerby is some extended gardening leave. They know that in a few days' time the rightwing press will revert to publishing stories about the anarchist baby-eaters seeking to turn Britain into a bloodbath.
But something else has changed in this country: the resolution of the protesters. Despite repeated assaults, they appear to have become better organised and less afraid. That, so soon after Operation Glencoe, 114 people were prepared to risk arrest and another beating testifies to the resilience of this movement. These people know that protest is not a threat to democracy but its cornerstone. They know that the issues they contest outweigh any harm they may suffer. They know that getting beaten up is a sign that the state has lost the argument."
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009
Distraction
The metropolitan police have introduced a new, U.S. style euphemism into British discourse. Nick Hardwick, chairman of the IPCC, who was accused on 4th August by the Police Federation of running a "witch-hunt" against G20 officers, told the committee he had received 185 complaints from G20 protests, including more than 50 complaints from members of the public who say they were assaulted or witnessed an assault.
Mr Hardwick said the IPCC received twice as many complaints from the 2001 Countryside Alliance protests, but he said the severity of the G20 complaints and injuries alleged is greater - although the difference may be accounted for by the presence of camera-toting citizen journalists at the protest.
"One of the consequences of this exposure through citizen journalism is that we will all see much more clearly what it is - and sometimes it looks ugly - what we expect the police to do," he told MPs.
Later the IPCC said it had received 185 complaints about the G20 protests, 40-something of which were regarded as 'ineligible', more than 50 were about police tactics and over 80 of which were from people who saw or experienced excessive force by police officers.
Mr Hardwick said there was a need for police to explain better so-called "distraction" techniques they are trained to use in violent confrontations, which he said was a "euphemism" for "kicking, hitting, punching". This is a mild criticism, but as the police are accustomed to being supported by all authorities, MPs and the tabloids through 'difficult times', for a public official to stand up and actually tell it thus represents a Small Step for a Man, and could lead to calls for greater control over the Force. If only. As they are now sanctioned to use guns and tasers as well as their clubs, and the laws of assault and perjury do not apply to them, it's a distant possibility. The Police Federation should relax.
Also- The Guardian interview:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/ian-tomlinson-family-accuse-police-of-cover-up
Tuesday 4 August 2009
The Art of Sinking in Poetry
Alexander Pope
It’s difficult not to imagine Alexander Pope as some sort of emaciated, intellectual grandee; but he and John Gay, Jonathan Swift and John Arbuthnot, fellow members of the Scriblerus Club, were among the leading satirists of their time.
Credited to Martin Scriblerus, this slim volume is a piss-taking satire much like Machiavelli’s The Prince. As Machiavelli modelled his book on fawning works of ‘advice’ given to powerful leaders by lesser men hoping for elevation, Pope had a knock at those who were prey to the then current obsession with the ‘sublime’ in poetry as well as painting, to the extent of making all the right noises or shapes but in the end saying nothing; his work following the shape of classical aesthetic treatises. Having identified bathos (and adding this Greek word to the English lexicon) as being as worthy of striving after as more lofty concerns, he gently sets out the rules for producing perfectly bad poetry. He singles out for praise, chapter by chapter, examples of grandiose mediocrity, listing examples of awkward synecdoche and metaphor while shoving in chunks of unbelievably silly contemporary works to illustrate those he describes as 'A-la-mode' and 'Pert' styles.
As well as being a warning to writers who strive for effect rather than content, this is a quietly entertaining read. It’s also, having been written in the 18th century, a fascinating and colourful glimpse of the social and cultural mores of the times. There could not be a better time to see it republished: we have rarely been more bothered with the misuse of language, both by writers and politicians.
But this is not only a textbook for aspiring bad poets. It could be required reading in many art schools, particularly those that follow Goldsmith’s example, where they promote self-interpretation or statements of intent over actually making things that mean something in themselves.
A genuine writer of the profound will take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the same time. His thought will appear in a true mist, and very unlike what it is in nature. It must always be remembered that darkness is an essential quality of the profound or, if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be as Milton expresses it:
No light, but darkness visible.
This, for a start, is invaluable advice to all those who simply present found or commissioned objects or who make ‘installations’ consisting of rooms containing nothing that will stimulate either the senses or the intellect, all relying totally on the pieces of paper which explain the intended meaning of the objects or which list the metaphors that these objects are intended to represent. If they defenestrate all sense of irony they will certainly feel a benefit through reading this.
As an example of how prescient Pope was, two sub-headings are The Jargon, and The Antithesis, or Seesaw.
When conjecturing how the low populace should be coached in appreciation, he had a go at critics too, and even looked forward to the TV age:
It may be convenient to place the Council of Six in some conspicuous situation in the theatres, where after the manner usually practised by composers in music, they may give signs - before settled and agreed upon - of dislike or approbation. In consequence of these signs the whole audience shall be required to clap or hiss, that the town may learn certainly when and how far they aught to be pleased.
The Art of Sinking in Poetry
Alexander Pope
Oneworld Classics £8.99
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