Impunity For State Sponsored Death Squads
As Homer Simpson said: “Mmm, doughnuts, is there nothing they cannot do!”
As Jacqui Smith might have said: “Mmm, the War on Terror and anti-terror legislation, is there no end to repressive legislation we cannot squeeze unnoticed onto the statute book under the guise of being tough in the War on Terror?”
Apparently not. Now, even coronors courts are to become the emasculated playthings of the Home Secretary, where proceedings may have to be conducted in secret and without a jury or access by anyone other than Jacqui Smith or her successors, not for reasons connected with national security, but purely on whim and diktat, despite the fact that this little piece of spiteful deviousness to curtail even more freedoms is stuck onto ant-terror legislation.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“On first inspection we find this an astonishing provision with the most serious implications for the UK’s ability to comply with the positive obligation in Article 2 (of the) ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] to provide an adequate and effective investigation where an individual has been killed as a result of the use of force, particularly where the death is the result of the use of force by state agents.”
The legislation would mean that if anyone was killed by agents of the New British state or any other country or, in fact, under any circumstances in which the Home Secretary felt that she or he was entitled to interfere for no given reason, then nothing connected with a possibly unlawful killing would ever enter the public domain.
Andrew Dismore MP, the Labour chair of the Committee [Joint Committee on Human Rights], said: “We are seriously alarmed at the prospect that under these provisions, inquests into the deaths occurring in circumstances like that of Jean Charles de Menezes, or British servicemen killed by US forces in Iraq, could be held by a coroner appointed by the Secretary of State sitting without a jury.
“Inquests must be, and be seen to be, totally independent and in public to secure accountability, with involvement of the next of kin to protect their legitimate interests.
“When someone dies in distressing, high-profile circumstances their family need to see and feel that justice is being done, and where state authorities are involved there is a national interest in accountability as well.”
According to The Daily Mail:
Helen Shaw, co-director of Inquest, a pressure group which works with bereaved families, said: “The public will find it difficult to have confidence that these coroner-only inquests, with key evidence being suppressed, can investigate contentious deaths involving state agents independently.”
The group said the proposal could even affect the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot dead at a Tube station in 2005.
So, let’s say your son or daughter worked for the state as a civil servant on sensitive issues to do with something like growing vegetables. He or she is then run over and killed by a drunk driver who happens to be a senior policeman.
An inquest is then held in secret with only the coronor and the Home Secretary privy to the details of the case. It is announced later that your child was passing secrets to a foreign power and was killed while attempting to cross a busy road when drunk and high on drugs. The driver of the vehicle involved is receiving grief counselling and will be awarded massive compensation.
So, what are you going to do about it, eh, scum?
War On Terror Becomes War Of Words
We should all choose our words carefully, if only to avoid confusion and to make sure our message is interpreted correctly.
As an example, we should no longer, according to government diktat, use the phrase War on Terror, as this has connotations of violence and, er, terrorism.
The problem is that War on Terror is a catchphrase which sticks in the mind like an advertising slogan and governments are full of such straplines when they launch initiatives which they think will work and lodge in the collective consciousness of the public at large. Think of “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” or “Education, education, education” or “moral compass”.
You don’t hear those bandied about much now. Is that because they all failed?
It is only when the, shall we say, ‘crusade’ starts to unravel that governments want to change their advertising campaign. War on Terror has been replaced, but the problem is that nobody can remember by what. Something like “Telling off Mr and Mrs McNaughty” or “Wagging the finger if disapproval - but with no connotation of blame”. Something catchy like that.
So, it is with no great reaction of surprise that the government publishes an advisory pamphlet on how to deal with terrorist suspects in the continuing War on Terror. The document has been delivered to “key delivery partners” as part of this new strategy.
You might think that “key delivery partners” means people who drive around in vans helping to get you back in your shop or office when you have locked yourself out. In short, a mobile locksmith. Not a bit of it. In government newspeak, this simply means agents of the state.
Anyway, people like the New Britain state police, in their black shiny uniforms which make them look like a Darth Vader impersonators convention which has got lost, will no longer be able to shout “On the floor, terrorist scum, before I blow your brains out!” to an elderly man who mumbles “Nonsense!” at Jack Straw at a New Labour conference.
No, the state stormtroopers are to avoid words and phrases like “jihadi fundamentalist” and “Islamist extremist” (always assuming that they use such sophisticated words anyway) and “scum” because these might be construed as a “confrontation/clash between civilisations/cultures”. It does not, for example, mention Tony Blair’s phrase: “the crescent (which is like a cross to Muslims) of evil”.
The information pack, created by the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government says: “This is not intended as a definitive list of what not to say but rather to highlight terms which risk being misunderstood and therefore prevent the effective reception of the message.”
A government spokesperson also adds:
“The pack is the first of a series of communications intended to brief partners about recent work to develop the ‘prevent’ strand of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy and help them to identify further contributions they can make to this agenda.
“The ‘prevent’ strand relies on all sectors - public, private, voluntary and community - working with central Government in its aim of stopping people becoming or supporting violent extremists.
“Coherent and effective cross-Government communications are important in relation to countering terrorism. Language is part of this work.”
The document also states:
“No perceived grievance can justify terrorism. But where concerns are legitimately expressed then we must be prepared to debate them.
“We are committed to better explaining existing policies, such as the UK’s foreign policy, refuting claims made about them in the language of violent extremists.”
So, you can expect a government document soon which will explain why New Britain, a secular state, was taken into an illegal war by a Christian fundamentalist in order to extend the oil colonies of America and as a crusade against non-Christians.
Oh, and while you are at it, knock together something to explain why New Britain allowed illegal CIA extraordinary rendition flights to land in Britain, thereby making the British government complicit in torture and human rights abuses and why MI5 allowed people they knew to be innocent to be tortured in ghost prisons and at Guantanamo Bay.
In plain English, so that even George Bush stands a chance of understanding at least some of it.
Fake War On Fake Terror
The thing about The War On Terror is that nobody actually believes any of it any more.
Nobody, that is, except politicians who have become so embedded in the rhetoric that they are actually inhabiting their concocted fantasy world, like a mentally unhinged method actor; along with their undiscriminating cheerleaders, for whom a politician’s pronouncement is a substitute for independent thought.
Simon Jenkins, in an article in The Guardian, has it just right. He finishes with this:
It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world’s most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.
This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf’s wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.
jsbachUSA responds:
It is absolutely, 100%, completely, totally IMPOSSIBLE for any organization (country, state, city, etc.) to protect its members from random acts of violence.
Unfortunately most people are extremely uncomfortable with the fact they could randomly die tomorrow, so they are willing to believe any fool that will lie to them and tell them that the fool has a “plan” that will somehow magically prevent so-called terror.
The reality is, out of 6 BILLION plus people on this earth, the number of crazy people that are trying to kill others for irrational reasons, numbers in the low thousands! Yes, that is the bare truth, the people that are out to kill you are a minuscule number of the people on the earth and there is nothing you can do about it.
No matter how many innocent people you kill, those irrational folks will still exist and just may succeed in killing you or someone you know.
We need to start putting the deaths from so-called terrorism in a better perspective. Sure there were 3000 “innocent” people killed on 9/11 but several orders of magnitude more “innocent” people have been killed in response. The US has more people killed every year from drunk drivers than were killed on 9/11. Is it sad they are dead? yes, but not the huge tragedy that it has been portrayed as. Lets face it, ALL HUMANS DIE sooner or later. Some die fairly young and others die much older (95 for the LDS Church President), but everyone dies. Death is not a big deal and we shouldn’t make more of it than it is.
The sad news is it takes an extremely brave and intelligent leader to bluntly say … “yes it is unfortunate that those people died, and in the future others will die, but there is nothing we can do to prevent it and in fact anything we do will be counterproductive and lead to more deaths. The only thing we can do is quietly hunt down and kill any of the perpetrators that are still alive, since the killers are already dead, there is nothing we can do to them. Fighting any type of war will not solve the problem.”
Bush is an egotistical fool and was able to take advantage of many scared fools to create a phony “war” that while it has succeeded in getting lots of people killed has not actually accomplished anything useful. The irrational idiots are still running around and will randomly kill again until they are killed themselves.
Until the people of the US, Israel UK, etc. realize they can never be safe, they will continue to make stupid decisions that only make their world LESS SAFE.
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