Certainly madam, if you’d just like to first smile for the video camera…
“Hell is where the cooks are German, the lovers Swiss, the mechanics French, the organizers Italian, and it’s all policed by the British” (1)
We can’t find the plot, so let’s harrass some harmless tourists instead.
Officers of the Met treating guests to our country with contempt, behaving as if they’ve been trained in North Korea, and frankly, demonstrating that they lack sufficient common sense and judgement to be entrusted with the rights-circumventing powers they’ve been given:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos
How long ago it now seems that we used to regularly hear government ministers resolutely declare “If we let the terrorists change our way of life, they’ve won”. We don’t bloody well hear it now, do we?
(Title quip shamelessly nicked from commenter on Craig Murray’s blog)
Not content with ignoring due process (post pending), the rule of law, demonstrating utter contempt for democracy and civil rights, beating young girls over the head with clubs, manslaughtering those down on their luck (2), and spying on our personal communications, our government, police and security services also want us to rummage through our neighbours’ dustbins, you know, in case there’s anything in there that can be used to denounce them.
Frankly, I’ve long harboured suspicions that one of my neighbours is a democrat, committed to open, accountable government. Obviously, I’m reluctant to report him without good evidence for it’s a serious, unsavoury allegation, one that could ruin his career and family life, But rest assured, I’ll be scratching and sniffing his wheely bin for the tell-tale signs. If he so much as drops an Open Rights Group pamphlet in there, it’ll be the salt mines for him and his counter-revolutionary brood.
Note for the smug cynics, bullies, thugs and rule-breakers within our police force. This government won’t be in power forever. You might want to start thinking about your exit strategies. At the very least, consider how to CYKCA (Cover Your Kevlar-coated Arses). Oh, and here’s some advice, this time around “I was just following orders” isn’t going to cut any ice.
How did democracy end up in this mess? “It just fell down the stairs, honest M’Lud”.
Insanity, just fucking insanity. The world is going mad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yPmtQDWZ1s
Gestapo > Stasi > Khmer Rouge > Copyright industry: all disrespectors of human rights and enemies of free people and society.
I think it’s about time that people started to refuse to buy copyright governed media from the large copyright holding corporations. Let’s buy direct from independents, cut out the SWAT team-backed “entertainment” corporations who invade our privacy and connive with government, threatening our lives and our families with arrest and prosecution in order that their tired, outmoded and increasingly unfeasible business model can survive.
We need an entertainment equivalent of the Grüne Punkt, a sign that media doesn’t come bundled with trojan horse licensing conditions which, once brought into our homes and lives, then threaten our rights and liberty. “Big content”, from here on in it’s going to be a slippery slope all the way down to your demise.
Oh, and while I’m talking about the copyright Stasi, here’s the latest consumer-rights friendly news from Glyn Moody’s blog:
Fantastic, Jake is going to grow up in a world where some black-kevlar clad, combat-fantasizing thug working on behalf of the entertainment industry may end up pointing a Heckler and Koch at his chest, commanding him to “Step away from the iPod”.
Bastards, how dare they do this to us! How dare they betray our hard won freedom like this — and for such trivial reasons!
EDIT: OK, comparing litigious corporate copyright holders to the Khmer Rouge may have been over-egging the rant, just a tad… but I make no apologies for invoking the totalitarian spectres of the Gestapo and the Stasi, certainly not given broader legal and political trends at present.
I’ve uploaded a few dozen images to my flickr account that I took at a couple of recent London events, the Peace in Gaza rally at Hyde Park in January and yesterday’s Mass Picture Taking Rally at New Scotland Yard, organized by the NUJ.
I had quite ambivalent feelings about the Hyde Park rally. Marching alongside people supporting an organization that strives for the development of a religion governed state and one that encourages suicide bombings, among other horrors, is not usually my idea of a good fun, worthy day out. My concerns were purely humanitarian. I’ve heard the arguments from both parties in the conflict, reiterated many times over the years and nothing changes my view that it is unconscionable for a powerful, high-tech military controlled by a post-industrial state, to be pumping artillery shells into and dropping bombs onto what is in effect a giant refugee camp. The relative numbers killed and maimed by Hamas’ rockets and by the IDF’s strikes tell their own story. If you want to argue that Israel’s response has been proportional, please don’t do it here. Frankly, I’m sick of hearing it.
Back to domestic matters, I attended the NUJ protest outside New Scotland Yard yesterday despite not being a member of the union and despite not working within the media. I went along to register my support for the aims of the event and to express my outrage at the nature of the relevant articles within the Amendments to the Counter Terrorism Act, which came into force yesterday. I’ve posted the images I took to my flickr account. It felt quite presumptuous, this amateurish amateur taking pictures of some the UK’s most experienced photojournalists. I hope no one looking at my pics assumes that I’m claiming to be a pro-photographer. That “Pro” flickr account label implies only that I’ve paid for the unlimited (well, less limited) flickr service. It does not imply that I regard myself as an accomplished photographer! (Something that will anyway be obvious to anyone viewing the images).
The NUJ members who attended the event were a great bunch of people. Welcoming, witty, pragmatic and mischievous. The police can have few complaints about the behaviour of the several hundred who turned up, it was all constructive and good natured. I was however a little disappointed at the narrow focus on the rights of professional photographers at the expense of ordinary, camera-wielding members of the public. The focus of the event may not have been surprising given its organiser, but I feel that the amendments to the act at issue are equally relevant to all citizens, regardless of their occupation. It’s hard to see how democracy and accountability would be better served if the only citizens allowed to photograph our police and security services were paid up members of the NUJ. Still, not wishing be unduly critical. The NUJ is taking a stand against bad, authoritarian laws, which is more than most UK organisations are doing.
UPDATES:
“The House of Lords report on Britain’s surveillance society is a devastating analysis of the systems that have been installed by the authoritarian Labour government and the controlling forces emerging in local government. There is no question now that Britain’s free society is under threat, and it is time for the public and opposition parties to declare an end to this regime of intrusion.”
Reaction to the House of Lords report on surveillance society
I suspect that this is as close as a professional journalist is likely to come to openly calling for public and political revolt.
It’s such a relief to finally see a mainstream media organization nailing these issues and making a concerted attempt to track the progress of the creeping totalitarianism that is ongoing today. At last, people more eloquent than the average blogger, or El Reg hack, are pitching in and comprehensively covering the erosion of our civil liberties and the employment of digital technology as a pervasive and overbearing mechanism of control.
Henry Porter writes:
“There will come a day when everyone understands that the Justice Minister Jack Straw ranks as one of the bigger menaces to our free society. Whatever issue you care to consider – the macro or the micro – Jack Straw is chipping away at freedom, accountability and openness. He really should be hauled before a commission of good democrats, exposed and made to account for his sins with community service order and a Day-Glo jacket.
Today we will look at a micro issue – the disgraceful behaviour of his department over the Courts and Tribunal Enforcement Act, the law which ends 400 years of the tradition that an Englishman’s home is his castle and allows bailiffs to march into that home and seize what goods they like in settlement of a fine (think ID card fines; think of the pressure people are going to experience in this recession).”
Has your government secretly classed you as a “pre-terrorist” on account of your political actions or beliefs? Alberto Toscano has written a disturbing article on the Liberty Central website that highlights the stakes involved with the development of the “new authoritarianism” that is infecting so many of Europe’s political leaders.
It’s not only political dissenters who are in the sights of those who prefer to focus on “ruling” rather than “serving”. Whatever you may think of football and the fans who follow it, you should be aware of current police treatment of football supporters, if only because what is happening to football fans today will no doubt be happening to runway protesters (and their ilk) tomorrow. [UPDATE: it's happened: Campaigners monitored by civil servants]
And while on the subject of the police acting in an illegal overbearing manner, let’s not forget that many police officers are due to be equipped with Tasers this year. These are devices the ostensible purpose of which is to reduce the need to use firearms against citizens, but which, as the American police have repeatedly demonstrated, often end up being used to simply compel unruly, noisy or merely irritating citizens to obey the wielding officers’ commands. (EDIT: never mind the US police, you don’t have to go that far to find officers gratuitously electrocuting citizens)
Just checking for pre-terrorists.
*Image from Mike Langridge’s flickr collection. Mike has kindly made this picture available for public use using the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.