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This first posted on Two for Tea

I have been trying to put my finger on what made Blair’s “I don't destroy liberties, I protect them” so chilling. Then I remembered this quote

“In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence.”

Tony Blair’s modernity appears to be fashioned from the same cloth as Benito Mussolini's world view.

First posted on Two for Tea

When I was a child of four or five, I woke one evening and screamed the house down. My mum came into my bedroom to see what all the fuss was about. I had had a nightmare and was convinced there were monsters in the street out side my window. My mother opened the curtains and challenged me to show here where the monsters were.

At first I thought they might be hiding behind the lampposts. An idea which my mother found very amusing. Eventually I had to admit that I could not see any. Maybe it was the feeling of safety that having my mother around induced. Or maybe it was the self evident lack of monsters that did it. Either way I soon forgot about the monsters and went back to sleep.

As I grew up I learnt that along with Father Christmas and the tooth fairy, monsters did not exist. I learnt that fear of them was for babies, and not something that big boys indulged in.

As I grew into my teens I learnt that whilst fear is a good thing for self preservation, it is a strong instinct we inherited from our animal ancestors. As rational beings we can control our fear and not allow it to control us. I was taught that well balanced adults examine their fears to see if they are rational or not, and act accordingly.

As my life experience grew I began to put together a theory of people. I decided that those who try to rule by fear, the playground bullies, and pub thugs are often themselves ruled by fear. And if you cease to be afraid of them, like my childhood monsters they cease to be a problem.

I learnt that the most common fear people have is the fear of the unknown. Be it an unknown future or a stranger. I noticed how unscrupulous people manipulate these fears in order to give themselves power.

Through the study of history I learnt of The Enlightenment. Of the time when great minds turned their back on superstition and fear and started to use science to create rational explanations for the physical world. How political theories began to develop based on reason and not fear. How the idea of the “Universal Rights of Man” came into existence.

History also taught me that there are monsters in this world after all. I learnt that these monsters look a lot like me, and so are not always easy to spot. But often they thrive on and encourage fear and ignorance. They empower and are empowered by bigotry. And they despise The Enlightenment and it’s fruits.

Modern western leaders can be split into two broad categories. The ones that use visions and dreams to lead their people away from fear towards justice and liberty, and the ones that empower fear and
ignorance to lead their people back into the dark.

Hence Martin Luther King, Jr “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Or JFK “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Compare these to Tony Blair’s launch speech of his Respect Action Plan. “My view is very clear: their freedom to be safe from fear has to come first“

I wonder what Blair says to his kids when one of them complains about monsters outside the bedroom window.

Something like “As no one can prove there are no monsters behind the lampposts I will have all them all removed. If anyone complains that we are now living in the dark I will make it very clear your
freedom to be safe from fear has to come first.”

“Don’t worry about the monsters, Daddy is here, Daddy will ALWAYS be here”

Technorati tags : New Labour, Respect Agenda, Tony Blair

First posted on Two for Tea

Google is setting up a new site - Google.cn - which it will censor itself to satisfy the authorities in Beijing. This has been done in order to gain greater access to China's fast-growing market see here

In a statement the company insists the move is entirely high minded “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission,
providing no information... is more inconsistent with our mission

Google refuses to comment on the claims that Beijing is insisting that it replace it’s present motto of “Do no Evil” with the more appropriate “See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil”

First post on Two For Tea

Henry "Hank" Crumpton, the newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the US State Department, has told the Telegraph that it is simply a matter of time before international terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda
acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them in attacks.

Now I realise it would be a very cold day in hell before a new government appointee went on record as saying “Nope I’m not really that important, halve my budget and shrink my department”. But this “You’re all going to die, slowly and horribly” is getting a bit old.

A far from exhaustive Google on the inevitability of our deaths over the last decade give us

Consequence Management: Domestic Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chris Seiple Autumn 1997

Expert: Massive WMD attack 'inevitable'
Yossef Bodansky November 29, 2004

Al-Qaeda and WMD: A Primer
Tiina Tarvainen June 2, 2005

But there is competition for govenment cash

Asteroid in near miss
Dr David Whitehouse 2 October, 2003

Global warming: Is it too late to save our planet?
Ian Johnston 17 Jan 2006

Hank has a new angle. He tells us

“…if you look at a worst-case scenario or a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack…”

Which kinda sounds like Hank is getting worried that those bastards over at the CDC might be out doing him in the doom mongering and so is planning to lay claim to bird flu in as his own.

Obviously no one has told these guys the storey of the little boy who cried wolf.

This firat published on Two for Tea

To explain to non-UK residents- Tony Blair’s respect agenda is better named fear agenda.

He feels that the best way to encourage us to respect each is to remove 800 year old legal safe guards. Some of his more shocking proposals are

• All civil liberties will become secondary to the civil liberty to live without fear, including the fear of being offended.

• Summary justice for anti-social behaviour, you will be guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

• Families will be turned out on the streets and their homes boarded up (even if they own them) for persistently bothering their neighbours

• Suspected “drug-dealers” can have their property confiscated without all that tiresome business of having to prove them guilty.

I am not making this up (I wish I were). The PM's Respect Action Plan launch speech can be found in full here

The problem I have with putting together any reasonable critique of Tony Blair’s latest nonsense is that I only need to read about 3 paragraphs before I come across something so dumb I stop reading in disgust.

What made me turn off my PC and walk away in disgust this time was this

“In practice, to prove that person X with £10,000 on them in cash in the middle of the city at 2am got this money through specific acts of drug dealing is too hard. You may know it. But how do you prove it? So it doesn't happen.”

Where the f**k do New Labour buy their drugs. Seriously. What planet are they living on? Around here any one stupid enough to be walking around with £10000 on them at 2am in the morning would
survive about 5 seconds (if they were lucky). Perhaps if they were packing enough fire power with a couple of body guards the might be OK, but then the police would have something to arrest them for.

“You may know it, How you prove it?”, well what you do is put a undercover sting together, Does no one in New Labour ever watch the TV? If someone is so obviously flaunting their criminality surely it can not be that hard to get evidence against them. If not what are the police doing exactly?

“I know it, but can’t prove it’“ is a bigots charter. Reminds me of Tony Blair on WMD in Iraq before the war – and didn’t that work out well.

Tony Blair’s Respect Agenda far from encouraging us to respect each other will empower bigotry and codify contempt.

Right I’m off to start a blog on knitting because having to read the trash these idiots are coming out with these days is giving me a
headache.

Technorati tags : Drugs, New Labour, Police, Respect Agenda, Tony Blair

This first published on Two for Tea
The government will announce plans early 2006 for a national zero
tolerance campaign against kerb crawlers and street prostitution see here from
the Guardian.
See also the BBC on the subject here.
Previous position
In July 2004 the Home Office launched a consultation document,
initiation what could have been radical rethink on prostitution laws in
the UK. Ministers were saying they were “open-minded”

The document (here) estimates 80,000 people are involved in
prostitution, the vast majority of them women who were addicted to hard
drugs.

The then Home Secretary David Blunkett said the rethink aimed to do three things:
Prevent girls being coerced onto the streets.
Protect those already in the sex trade
Bring to justice criminals controlling the lives of these women.

The proposals in the document were mostly based on methods used in
other countries. They included creating "managed tolerance
zones", areas of a city or town where prostitutes are allowed to work
while also being targeted with appropriate support in getting out of
the trade. Other ideas included licensing brothels and
registering sex trade workers.

All Change
That has now changed. Ministers are now expected to rule out overhauling the 50-year-old prostitution laws.

The Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart told the Guardian that
effective policing rather than an overhaul of the laws was the
answer. But she does not explain what the question now is, or why
and how it has changed in the last 6 months

Ms Mactaggart wants a national zero tolerance campaign against kerb
crawlers and street prostitution. She observers that “The power
to confiscate driving licences already exists. We want the police to
use that power more."

The police are expected to be encouraged to set up safe houses and
other schemes to help the women involved get out of the trade. Greater
efforts will also be made to close brothels masquerading as massage
parlours and saunas.

She said tough measures were needed to tackle the markets for
prostitution. "I'm not tolerant of the view that prostitution is the
oldest profession in the world and there's nothing we can do to reduce
it"

She may or may not be able to reduce prostitution, but she will certainly push
it further underground, making prostitutes more vulnerable. But
out of sight is the same as reduction if
you only worry about opinion polls.

You Can Not Be Serious
Ms Mactaggart says she wants to ensure her good work on trafficking is
joined-up with a prostitution strategy that helps women out of
prostitution but also deals with the demand for prostitutes,"

Basically she plans to “join up” trafficking which is illegal and
prostitution which is not, without any new legislation.
So avoiding any parliamentary scrutiny. It is hardly
surprising she wants to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. Her
arguments so far are not impressive.

She points out that men who choose to use prostitutes are
indirectly supporting drug dealers and abusers. The same thing could be
said of any one who employs a drug user in any way. Does she
intend to use this as an excuse to crack down on any one unknowingly but legally
employing a drug user?

Nor does she explain how she plans to rehabilitate 80,000 hard drug
users or
how she expects all these hard drug users to fund their habits once
there customers have been removed. She does not seem to
appreciate that these peoples problem is the drugs not prostitution.

Most worryingly she claims prostitution is a form of child abuse, as
most women who are prostitutes started being prostitutes at the age of
13 or 14.

It is a crime to sexually abuse a child of 13 or 14 whether or not
money is involved. This should be reason to act in itself.

An adult choosing to sell sex is not committing a crime. There is
no legal or moral basis to equate the two. She seems confused as
to what is illegal and what is not.

Someone Who Actually Knows What They are Talking About
Carrie Mitchell, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, told the BBC
that while the Home Office was talking about crime and drugs, women
became prostitutes because of poverty - and punitive measures would do
nothing to help.

"The plan goes against all the evidence that shows that criminalisation
and crackdowns make sex workers more vulnerable to rape, other violence
and even murder," Ms Mitchell told BBC News.

"In Sweden legislation introduced to criminalise the buying of sex has had a devastating effect on prostitute women.

"Neither the poverty that forces women into prostitution to support
themselves and their families - or any of the grave injustices in the
existing legislation - have been addressed."

Ms Mitchell said the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and prison
sentences against women were counter-productive as they made it more
likely they would return to prostitution rather than leave it behind.
She also attacked an increase in immigration raids on brothels run by
international gangs, saying the women ultimately deported at the end of
the process were extremely vulnerable.
We Know What’s Best For Everyone

Ms Mactaggart for her part says she considers it was wrong to regard
those involved in prostitution as sex workers. Although
there was no report as to how she does regarded them. Not to be
trusted with making decisions as to what to do with there own bodies
obviously.

These proposals are expected to form a key part of the next phase of
Tony Blair's drive against antisocial behaviour. Further
reinforcing the perception that anti-social behaviour is now defined as
any kind of behaviour that Tony Blair does not personally approve of.

If the government has decided to outlaw prostitution on moral grounds
then it should come out and say so, and legislate accordingly, rather
than use anti-social behaviour orders in its latest attempt at moral
engineering.

A good post and comments on the subject can be found at
samizdata.net where I found some interesting background on the
Contagious Diseases Acts. Which was all new to me.

Technorati tags : ASBO, New Labour, prostitution, sex

Originally posted on Two for Tea
UK blogs are full of the call for a public enquiry into the London bombings
of June. There are many good reasons to have a public
enquiry. See Rachel From North London and BlairWatch for a start.

One thing I would like to see examined is the policing that followed the attacks.

People I know working in central London tell tales of continuous police
sirens, repeat security alerts, helicopters overhead throughout the
day. Central London swamped with Police with automatic
weapons.

I live 30 miles out from central London, on the main line to Kings
Cross. And Kings Cross is where the suicide bombers joined the
London Underground. But there were two armed police standing
outside Stevenage station in the weeks that followed the
bombings. I asked friends why this was necessary and was told
that this was to reassure the public.

Personally I did not find this reassuring, in fact I found it
oppressive and decidedly weird. I know I am not the only
one.
Was this massive police operation an intelligence driven response
to a known threat or a PR exercise? A PR exercise which
did more to spread fear and dislocation than the attacks themselves.

Any one would think the government was trying to scare the population
into support for unpopular restrictions on our civil liberties.

Like many middle aged Londoners I am a veteran of terrorist attacks.

I have vivid childhood memories of sitting in my grandparents flat on a
summer evening and hearing bombs going off in Oxford Street, then
seeing the newsflash 20 minutes later - 1 dead. I can remember as
I student, walking down the shops to buy some cigarettes and
finding the area cordoned off because the IRA had put bombs in
the rubbish bins near High Street Ken.

People would just shrug, life went on. Compared to that, the massive police operation in June seems ridiculous.

Were things really so different then? If so how and why?

The only thing we
have been assured of recently is that many of us will
die unless we stop questioning the judgement of our betters.

If the government is genuine about its desire to reassure the public, then a full public enquiry is the only way open to it.

There is no legitimate excuse to deny us this enquiry into their competence.

Rachel says this better than I can, and she has the moral force that
comes from being one of the survivors from the Piccadilly line bombing.
So if you are British, British born or plan to visit London in the near future then please take the time to read her posts and sign the petition if you feel you can support us.

First published on Two for Tea
Reading this in today’s Guardian about a Pentagon psychological warfare operation (psyops)

“It was revealed yesterday, on the eve of elections in Iraq, that
the Pentagon had set up a $300m (£170m) psychological warfare operation
that involves placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets
across the world, including those of its allies, without disclosing the
US government as the source.”

This crystallised some thoughts I had been having about this comment on Two for Tea, an extract below,

“How many of you have to die before you wake up, I wonder? Do you
need an Israel-like intifada with weekly explosions on your busses, in
your coffee-shops and your theaters before the reality of your
situation dawns upon you? Do you need children dead on your streets
with no visible external wounds but who's internal organs have been
turned to liquid by the blast wave from some jihadi's Allah-glorifying
act of murder?”

Notice the emphasis on dead children without any external
wounds”. Now there is no rational reason why dead children’s
bodies with no-external wounds should be any more horrifying than those
with limbs missing. But it is a psychological fact that it is.

Reading the comment I was struck that it looked like carefully composed propaganda.

Now it could well be that the commentator is just passing on statements
that they have heard over and over again. Another psyops tactic
(but also an electioneering one).

The thing I can not understand is that such propaganda is normally
targeted at an enemy you intend to bomb yourself in order to break
their will to resist. So it makes no sense that the Pentagon
should be targeting the US people with this kind of stuff.

One of the more robust counters in the post basically points out
that while Americans are obsessing with children dead in the streets
without any external wounds they are not demanding scalps for the
appalling intelligence failures of the last few years.

Psyops being used to cover ass - maybe that is too cynical.

Interestingly the same article covers how George Bush now takes full
responsibility for the intelligence failures in the run up to the Iraq
invasion. I wonder how he was persuaded to do that.

Maybe the conversation went along the lines of “You either carry the
can for this Mr President or there will be dead children in the street showing no external wounds”

This is probably all just coincidence and paranoia. But let me
make it 100% clear I am not planning any holidays in Eastern Europe or
North Africa soon, no matter how many emails you receive to the
contrary.

I always work on the assumption that I am being monitored anyhow.
I figure I am not doing a very good job at fighting the politics of
fear if its main beneficiaries have not even noticed me ;-)

This article first published on Two for Tea

Today in Parliament, The Prime Minister made it clear

“In respect of the allegations of so-called torture facilities or
detention facilities across Europe, I really know nothing about them at
all. I clearly know there aren't any such here."

He also said

"Torture cannot be justified in any set of circumstances at all"

Ok so now we all know where the UK stands on that. So why did he feel it necessary to add

"It is just as well to remember that some of the people we are
talking about are people that we need to detain for reasons of action
against international terrorism.

Some of these people are highly dangerous. Some of them can provide
information that is of absolutely fundamental importance in preventing
terrorism. There should, of course, be proper treatment of anyone
detained."

Could it be that he accepts the USA's definition of torture based on the definition of the word ‘severe’.

The 1984 UN "Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as

"...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a
third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind...”

In a memorandum on 1 August 2002, the then Assistant US Attorney
General Jay Bybee said that "the adjective severe conveys that the pain
or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is
difficult for the subject to endure." He even suggested that "severe
pain" must be severe enough to result in organ failure or death.
This memo was subsequently disowned by the Bush administration.

Recent reports on the American ABC News network, quoting CIA sources, listed six so-called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."

1. Grab: the interrogator grabs a suspect's shirt front and shakes him.

2. Slap: an open-handed slap to produce fear and some pain.

3. Belly Slap: a hard slap to the stomach with an open hand. This is
designed to be painful but not to cause injury. A punch is said to have
been ruled out by doctors.

4. Standing: Prisoners stand for 40 hours and more, shackled to the
floor. Said to be effective, it also denies them sleep and is part of a
process known as sensory deprivation (this was a technique used by
British forces in Northern Ireland for a time until it was stopped).

5. Cold Cell: a prisoner is made to stand naked in a cold, though not freezing, cell and doused with water.

6. Water Boarding: the prisoner is bound to a board with feet raised,
and cellophane wrapped round his head. Water is poured onto his face
and is said to produce a fear of drowning which leads to a rapid demand
for the suffering to end.

And this in the week when Sadam’s trial in Iraq started hearing evidence of torture suffered under his regime.

Perhaps Sadam's defense team should think about hiring Bybee to explain
that torture must involve pain severe enough to result in organ failure
or death.

Or if they can not afford to pay for an ex-Assistant US Attorney
General maybe they should use the “Rice Defense” of “It saved someone’s
life somewhere at some point, somehow, so that’s ok then”.

Or the “Blair defense” of “Someone in a uniform told me to do it and who am I to question them?”

Or even the “Bush Defense” of “I did not know what was going on and you can’t prove otherwise”

But instead Sadam yells at the judge and boycotts the hearing.
Apparently the Iraqis have a long way to go yet before they understand
the subtleties of liberal democracy.

This article first published on Two for Tea

Terry White, a man working for the Labour Party Communications
Unit wins this weeks “Think before you press send” award.
His email to the Campaign for An English Parliament Blog is copied below

Dear Correspondent,

Terry White
Communications Unit
The Labour Party

This has been well commented on by lots of people see here.

I find myself sympathetic to many of the points made even though I would not consider myself an English nationalist.

But I am a keen England fan. (And no the two are not the same
thing!). I have travelled all over the world supporting England
including Japan in 2002 and Portugal last year. Speaking from
experience, England fans come from a wide range of backgrounds and have
a wide range of political views.

The hooligan element are often not genuine football fans just drunken
blokes in England shirts (The Algarve). Sometimes they are not
even English (Dublin).

What annoys me most is the blatant hypocrisy of people like Mr
White. If any one made such sweeping judgements of people based
on race or religion they would rightly be castigated as a bigot.
Mr White obvious fear and loathing of England Fans gets him a plumb job
with the Labour party.

The Labour party have tried to play down Mr White’s email. Pointing out he is near retirement anyway.

But when people like Mr White have time on their hands that’s when the
trouble really starts. These are the kind people who are
currently setting the Police on any teenager who dresses in such a way
as to suggest that they might commit a crime at some point.

It is people like Mr White who will soon be handing out summary ASBO’s
to any one they feel like, and answerable to no one but themselves.

New Labours “Precautionary Principle” empowers bigotry and
prejudice. Rather than encouraging respect, New Labour is
codifying contempt.

And the Terry Whites of this world will sit in judgement of us all (but only after a 3 day training course)