Even the dying are deported

We're familiar with people being deported despite being under the threat of death if they return 'home', which is bad enough, but it really does take some doing to deport someone who's actually dying, yet this is what's happened to a Ghanaian woman whose visa ran out:

A Ghanaian woman who came to the UK five years ago and became a student is being flown back to the African country, despite being terminally ill.

Ama Sumani was taken by immigration officers from a Cardiff hospital where she has been receiving dialysis for a year after cancer damaged her kidneys. [1]

How low can you get? How can people who take decisions like this carry on a normal, human life? I'm sure the civil servants who make decisions like this are (mostly) human and are capable of compassion in their personal lives, yet when they come to work any compassion, solidarity and empathy for other humans goes out of the window. It must take a degree of doublethink and compartmentalisation that is beyond you and I. That, and complete unaccountability. Lives may be irreparably ruined and people may be killed because of what they do, but they'll go happily into an index-linked retirement and live out their days untouched by their own actions.

Yeah, I know, responsibility is diffused in bureaucracies, and the ultimate responsibility rests with politicians who make the laws, who themselves would blame the electorate for voting for them in the first place, but someone, somewhere has to be responsible and accountable. Bureacracies may be machines of State, but they're machines composed of human beings who ought, at the least, to feel some shame for what they're part of. Or maybe they don't even realise, viscerally, that there's a real person at the end of the chain of decisions - maybe being part of the machine means that you don't see people, you just see names on paper, abstractions that have no corporeal existence. Or maybe, if you do have a conscience and sense of responsibility, you don't get appointed to posts where such decisions are made, or you quit the bureaucracy in shame and disgust.

[1] Cancer patient loses visa battle, BBC News online, 9/1/08

Liberty in Scotland

According to a story on today's BBC website, Scotland is freer, or rather less unfree, than England by some margin. The group Privacy International apparently scored Scotland higher than the UK as a whole:

The UK as a whole scored 1.4 on the report's scale - the worst of any European country. But Scotland fared much better, with a rating of 2.5.

The report quoted a SNP MP:

Mr Wishart, the MP for Perth and North Perthshire, said: "This report highlights how people's civil liberties are safer in Scotland - particularly after the Scottish Parliament voted to oppose ID cards just last month."

The last bit of which came as news, though welcome news, to me. Sadly the Scots don't have control over such 'strategic' home policy, in the same way as they've no sway over immigration policy, despite the fact that Scotland is crying out for more people to arrest the decline in its population. The privacy rating isn't surprising as I've always considered Scotland to be a civilised country compared to its barbarian neighbour to the South.

It's about time that the country obtained its long-awaited, and much-needed independence, of which it was so mendaciously cheated back in the 70s when the independence referendum was rigged by the Callaghan regime and the true income from North Sea Oil was deliberately concealed. When independence eventually arrives, which I'd hope would be in the next decade before England's rapid decline drags the Scots down with it, I want to be sure to be on the right side of the Border.

Civil Liberty praise for Scotland, BBC Online, 6/1/08

The road is real life, really

If you were walking on the pavement and your way was blocked by a slower pedestrian, would you shout abuse at them to force them to move aside? Would you stand right behind them breathing down their neck until they moved aside? If another pedestrian moved in front of you without giving notice, would you curse and swear at the top of your voice and give them the finger? The answer, for most folk, would be a plain 'no' - you might curse under your breath, you might say 'excuse me', you might even shout 'coming through', but you wouldn't display naked aggression unless you were an irredeemable bampot with serious 'anger management issues'. Aside from all the strong social constraints on aggression and violence, you'd fear getting a mouthful, or even a mouthful of fist, from the object of your anger.

Why, then, when you're behind the wheel, do you feel free to honk, shout abuse, tailgate, flash lights, and generally be nakedly aggressive? Because being in your metal box insulates you and alienates you from the world. Other cars aren't driven by real human beings, but are just obstacles, frustrations to be disposed of by any means necessary. So you'll drive up someone's arse on the fast lane doing 90 in your Beamer (funny how so often it's a Suit in a Beamer giving you grief, eh?) with your headlights on full beam, until they move aside and you whizz on to the next blockage. Or you'll tailgate someone doing the speed limit on an urban road. Or you'll flash your lights angrily at someone who pulls out in front of you. Or you'll shout abuse at someone who's not indicated properly at a roundabout because he's delayed your entrance onto it by a half-second. Or you'll give the finger at someone who's dithering on lane changes in an unfamiliar area.

You know who you are. You're the sort of person who normally wouldn't say boo to a goose, or would decry with moral indignation the levels of crime and violence in society, or would deplore today's lack of civility and respect towards others. Yet put you inside a metal box powered by volatile hydrocarbons and you suddenly became the pure selfish individual, driven (literally) by naked self-interest, divorced from society, because you feel you're entering a Hobbesian war of all against all, where clubs are trumps. How many of you have fantasised about having weapons to wipe other incompetent/dangerous/irresponsible (unlike you, naturally) drivers off the road with the flick of a switch?

Yet, if someone you've given the finger to suddenly screeches to a halt and gets out of the car to confront your aggression, you shit yourself and leg it, then if you escape unscathed you bang on later about 'road rage' and how dangerous the roads have become when such nutters are loose. Even though it was you who provoked the violence with your own aggression. What's surprising is not that people get out of their cars to have it out with drivers who've been abusive, but that so few people do so given the levels of aggression on the roads. If someone shouted abuse in your ear when you're walking along the pavement, you'd turn round and shout abuse back and maybe even twat them one, yet just because you're inside a car you think that you can aggress against others without any comeback. I've got news for you, pal - other drivers are people too, just like you.

Why all this ranting? Because I've had it with drivers who drive with their balls and not their brains. It's no coincidence that most abuse, tailgating and aggression comes from men behind the wheel, for whom masculine identity and testosterone are an integral part of their 'identity' as a driver - just witness some of the witlessly macho ads for cars shown on TV, or that TV nutter Jeremy Clarkson getting a hard-on over a sports car and talking of it as if it were some pneumatic bimbo off a top shelf mysogynist fantasy mag (though if it were a bimbo it would be the only way an ugly emotionally-stunted toad like him would ever score). I've thought for a long time now that male drivers should take testosterone-reducing pills before getting behind the wheel, because it's their hormone and machismo problems that maim and kill other people.

Not that women drivers are immune from being aggressive, but at least to them the car isn't an extension of their being, an existential part of their gender identity - most women view cars, rightly, as vehicles to get them from A to B in reasonable comfort. Even they, though, can fall prey to the false separation from the world that the metal box provides, and start to view other drivers as obstacles rather than real people.

The principle is simple: do inside the car as you would do outside it, in real life. If you'd never shout abuse in real life, don't do it in the car. If you give the finger, then if you're an honest person you should be prepared to fight it out if it comes to it - if you carry out an action, you should bear responsibility for the consequences. If you're not prepared to back up your aggression with violence, then don't be aggressive in the first place. Piece of piss.

"Illegal" protest - a PS

Further to my previous recent blog entry on the Camp for Climate Change, State repression of, two letters appeared in The Independent on Saturday 25/8/07 which are worth quoting in full, in case they 'go off' on the Indy site:

Heathrow police act like the bad guys

Sir: Last Sunday, I witnessed, on the climate change march at Heathrow, what can happen when innocent members of society decide to express their concerns to the government. I was not at the camp; I was not one of "the activists". I am a middle-class mother and teacher. I have participated in many demonstrations before, most recently the anti-Iraq war protest.

As I approached the family march, I was surprised to be told by police that if I came any further I would not be allowed to leave. I joined the march. We were predominantly women and children, yet we were surrounded by many police, with their vans in front and behind. We were forced to crawl along at a snail's pace and took four hours to complete a distance of probably less than two miles. No one, not even the children or pregnant women were allowed to take a toilet break. It felt as though we were being marched to a prison camp.

But the most shocking aspect was the attitude of the police. I believe the police are the good guys, there to help and protect us. I brought my children up to respect and trust the police. I think all my efforts may have been undone by what my children witnessed. With only a couple of exceptions, the police were aggressive, rude and inhumane.

My friendly advances were dismissed in a rude belligerent fashion. It felt like they were just waiting for the opportunity to lay into the crowd with their truncheons.

I did wonder if they were trying to provoke us. I am proud to say the behaviour of the marchers was exemplary. And I will not be put off. I will continue to stand up for what I believe in, at all costs. But I will live in fear for my daughter who was camped out with the activists.

Andrea Farndon

Godden Green, Kent

Sir: As grandmother of an environmentalist in the Climate Camp, I followed the media reporting with interest. What soon became apparent was the discrepancy between what some newspapers reported and the experience of those taking part.

The event was a huge success, bringing a vital issue to the attention of the country in an entirely peaceful way. Heathrow passengers were not delayed and direct action was taken without violence by the environmentalists. But they were harassed by 1,800 police, who did everything they could to turn a peaceful protest into a criminal action. They failed, in spite of free use of truncheons resulting in several injured campers.

This unnecessary use of force cost some £7m. If a real terrorist incident had been committed in London while the police were busy strong-arming protesters at Heathrow, how would the emergency services have coped?

Surely the police authorities must see how their response to the obvious harmlessness of the Climate Camp makes them look foolishly obsessed, and alienates ordinary citizens?

Jane Power

London N16

Spy in the Sky

Today's Grauniad reported that the cops were using an automated drone to spy on crowds at the V Festival. According to the report, the drone is almost inaudible above 30m, and so small as to be practically invisible. So there's just no getting away from the all-seeing eye of the law, it seems. How long before the cops suggest building surveillance into new buildings, Big Brother style, on the grounds that if you've nowt to hide, you've nowt to fear? Not long, I expect.

Another little wrinkle of this drone is that it can spray a fine mist containing marker DNA, which invisibly marks 'suspects' so that they can be picked up and identified later. Talk about being pissed on from a great height...

"Illegal" protest

There's been much made of the "illegal" nature of this week's Climate Camp protest outside Heathrow, by the right-wing Press, the government, and of course the cops. In an act of serious OTT-ness, the British Airways Authority sought to ban up to 5 million people, including members of subversive groups such as the National Trust and RSPB, from travelling to the environs of the airport [3]. They still succeeded in obtaining an injunction against members of the protest group Plane Stupid from travelling to the area - an injunction, mind, which in law should be based on the high probability that a criminal act would occur if it weren't granted, so effectively the protesters were branded as criminals before they even had the chance to take any action, and their movement - supposedly, free movement and free assembly are keystones of 'democracy' - curtailed on the basis that they might cause a bit of a fuss. Ho hum.

Whether or not the protest is "illegal" isn't clear to me, but then I'm no Brief. What is clear is that the State is determined to treat the protest with as much repression as it can get away with, seeing as the camp is in the media spotlight. By all accounts, at least those not carried by the barking Right press, the protesters are a pretty meek, mild and moderate bunch. There are no hardened anti-globalisation activists, no Black Bloc, no Wombles, and the very clear emphasis has been on nonviolence. Not one of the protesters has acted violently towards either person or property, unless you consider supergluing yourself to doors as 'violent'. The slogan of the protest has been "We are only armed...with peer-reviewed science", which hardly counts as insurrectionary. On the whole, despite lurid warnings from the cops about the camp being "infiltrated" by "anarchists" [1] bent on causing trouble [2], they were a pretty peaceable and moderate bunch, and with the participation of locals they were less dog on a rope than Afghan on a designer lead.

Yet still the cops threw everything they could at them. As is now common practice at protests, cops shoved cameras into people's faces [4]. They stopped and searched people under the newly-passed anti-terrorist laws, despite NuLabor apparatchiks (sorry, MPs) promising loudly during Commons rubber-stampings (sorry, 'debates') that such laws would only be used for, well, anti-terrorist purposes, and wouldn't be indiscriminately targetted at anyone whose faces the cops didn't like - so much for that wee assurance, eh? There were twice as many cops at the camp as protesters, and they harassed protesters as a matter of routine, sometimes physically attacking them garbed in full riot gear. And this is against a protest in the public eye, for a cause many people sympathise with. Imagine what the State does to less public protests for less cuddly causes, such as 'animal rights extremism'.

All this for a non-violent protest with some headline-grabbing but far from destructive direct action. No doubt the cops and State and barking Press will go on about how the protesters could carry out 'legal' protests, but what can you now do, legally? If you want to demo, you have to give the cops at least a week's notice and let them vet your route - if you go on to the streets without such notice, you'll be nicked. The cops can tell you where and when to demo, and you'd better be careful what banners you carry or what you say or they'll nick you for behaviour likely to cause 'distress' to the public, and this was before the recent raft of anti-terrorist legislation [5][6]. That's if they allow the demo at all - the cops have the power to ban demos on the nebulous grounds of 'public order'. And if you do demo, you'll be corralled and controlled and surveilled, and woe betide you if you deviate from the planned route as you may well find yourself up against vanloads of riot cops itching for a scrap.

There are no legitimate means of mass demonstration these days, let alone any kind of direct action. The sorts of 'People Power' [TM] that brought down repressive regimes elsewhere, and were lauded by the West as prime examples of liberty in action, are completely illegal here - you simply couldn't have tens of thousands of people gathering spontaneously on the streets, let alone camp there as happened in Prague and Kiev. The only legitimate protest you can now make, and that heavily circumscribed by laws on 'glorifying terrorism', is in writing, but the State doesn't mind that because nobody cares - there are millions of blogs and web fora and newsgroups out there, so what does it matter if a few ranters bang on about this or that? They'll never be noticed, and even if they are they'll never have an effect, but at the same time this 'freedom' to write is held up as proof that this is still a liberal democracy that preserves 'traditional liberties'. Put simply, writing doesn't scare the State and the ruling classes - it's people on the streets that scare them, and this has been so for centuries.

What ought to worry many is that, if there are no legitimate outlets for protest, then any protest, no matter how mild, is illegal and liable to State suppression. A simple corollary of this, for the protester, is that you might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat - if you're going to get your skull cracked for being peaceful, why not go the whole hog and start throwing rocks? This is the lesson from countless oppressive regimes in history, one of the most recent being the repression of legitimate protest in N Ireland which kick-started The Troubles. The State will know this only too well, and is trying, through the exponential increase in surveillance and police powers, to so control and surveil its population that it can nip any protest in the bud. This is a dangerous, high-stakes game that it's playing, and one in which there will be more and more 'innocent casualties'...

In the meantime, if you want to carry out a legal protest ... go abroad to a country where civil liberties are written into constitutions. Italy and France come immediately to mind, or Spai. Not that that's ever stopped cops breaking heads (just look what happened at the Scuola Diaz in Genoa years ago) but it does put a rein on them, and does mean that they might be held accountable for their actions. Right now, over here in our Green and Pleasant Land, cops can shoot unarmed civilians at point-blank range without any fear of comeback. The killers of Jean Charles de Menezes, though known, will never be held to account, and neither will their commanders. Similarly the cops who burst into the house in Forest Gate and shot and wounded two of its occupants, who were completely innocent of anything other than being Muslim, will enter a long and happy retirement without a stain against their careers. When cops can get away with murder, and can lock up people for any reason or none, at any time, for up to a month, then they can do most anything they want. This is a very, very dangerous time to be a protester who ventures away from the keyboard and into real life...

Indymedia Climate Camp site
[1] Police: 'Heathrow camp infiltrated by anarchists', Guardian Unlimited, 16/8/07
[2] As an armchair anarchist myself, in my wilder youth an activist, the idea of anarchists "infiltrating" anything is a hoot. A prime characteristic of anarchists is their openness to declare themselves as such - you want infiltration, go to the Trotskyites for lessons. Or to the sewer Press, who "infiltrated" the camp with a few of their jackals during the protest looking for tasty copy.
[3] 'Bullying' BAA seeks Heathrow protest injunction, Guardian Unlimited, 1/8/07
Camp for Climate Action
[4] For photocops being photographed in their turn, see the Indymedia report on a demo outside a Heckler & Koch plant in Nottingham on 24/7/07.
[5] Airport rebels take on police, Observer online, 12/7/07
[6] Protest as harrassment, George Monbiot, 22/2/05
[7] Protesters are criminals, George Monbiot, 4/10/05

Fitting-up time

How long does it take the cops these days to fit up a suspect? Back in the old days they could pick a bunch of Irishmen (and occasionally Irishwomen) up off the street or bash their house doors down, give them some serious verbal and physical in the nick, and have them confessing to any old crime within a few days, after which the courts would lock 'em up for long enough so that, when they were released from "miscarriages of justice" (a nice euphemism for bent coppers framing innocent folk), the cops would have long since retired on fat pensions. Now, though, it looks like even banging someone up for a whole month without any sort of charge, or any access to Briefs, and with unlimited access to the suspect's whole electronic lives laid out in front of them, isn't enough to manage a clean fit-up and 'result'. No, now the cops are after an unlimited internment - sorry, "detention period" - so that they have "as long as it takes" to stitch someone up and get a result. Asked on the Radio 4 1 o'clock news today whether this meant that cops should be able to hold someone indefinitely, Ken Jones, the cop's capo dei tutti capi (aka Chief of ACPO), blustered indignantly about not wanting a UK version of Guantanamo, and produced the best laugh-out line of the week: "the police care as much about civil liberties as anyone else", which nearly made me pull the car over for safety reasons as tears were streaming from my eyes after that little gem. With lines like that, who needs satirists? Yet when asked what limit he'd be after, he basically said "as long as it takes", which is near as dammit unlimited detention without charge.

Of course, you'd expect this from cops, particularly the barkingly authoritarian ACPO. Basically, yer average cop wants to be able to do anything to anyone at any time anywhere for any reason, and to have complete access to all sources of information about anyone. Steve Bell's fine creation Chief Constable Badger Courage, modelled closely on real CCs such as James Anderton (remember him? God's Cop?), has it bang on - what the cops want is the No Argument I Don't Like Your Face, Up Against The Wall Or I'll Kick Your Head in, John law, and will moan like buggery about any and all "obstructions" put in their way (such as irritating and costly trial by jury) and "paperwork" they have to carry out. This is in the nature of cops everywhere, and you'd no more expect police to accept any limitations on their actions than you'd expect Ian Paisley to kiss the Pope's ring. What is more concerning is that the State and its current ruling regime are giving the cops everything they want and far, far more, rather than putting some brakes on now and then. There's a name for a State that does everything the cops and spooks want and strives for total information on, and control over, its citizens, and it accurately describes what we now have - a Police State.

Not that ACPO will get their unlimited detention, at least not yet - this smells of a classic kite-flying exercise, almost certainly coordinated on the sly with the Home Office, such that, when the regime proposes a 'moderate' 2-month period it'll seem to be a 'reasonable compromise' between the demands of the police and 'civil liberties'.

On the same day that ACPO was dropping this little bombshell, two guys who'd been held for 2 weeks without charge, on suspicion of being Asian and Moslem - sorry, "involvement in terror attacks" - were quietly released without charge, with seemingly the only reason they'd fallen under suspicion being that they'd been colleagues of the doctor who tried so amateurishly to blow up Glasgow Airport a couple of weeks back[2]. Think of it, and imagine yourself in their place - someone at work you vaguely know turns out to be a homicidal religious nutter, and the next thing you know you've been banged up without charge and the media are pouring over every detail of your life because you're the same colour and/or religion as him. For two weeks you're stuck in a cell whilst the cops work you over and you're put under trial by media. You've no contact with lawyers or friends or family and are completely on your own. Then after failing to fit you up on a conspiracy charge the cops just show you the door - no apology, no fanfare, probably not even the bus fare home. What would your life be like after that? What do you think your chances of keeping your job, or of getting another one if/when you're sacked, would be? How would you ever get rid of the stigma of being suspected of terrorism? That guy Lofti Raissi, who was held without charge for 5 months by the UK State pending extradition to the US to face charges of involvement in the 9/11 massacres and was eventually released when there was clearly fuck-all evidence against him, has never worked again as a pilot, and has had his life ruined [3].

Oh, and just because you may not be brown-skinned and/or Moslem don't think that this couldn't be you or someone you know. The 'enemy of the State' may be the green of Islam these days, but not so long ago it was the green of Irish Republicanism, and before that the Black of Anarchism and the Red of Socialism. As in Orwell's 1984, the enemy du jour can change in the blink of the State's eye...

[1] "Police defend longer terror limit", BBC News online, 15/7/07
[2] "Two bomb attack suspects released", BBC News online, 15/7/07
[3] "Algerian pilot demands public apology", BBC Today programme archive, 14/8/02