On prisoner suffrage and the euro-elections

Dizzy Thinks...are the euro-elections validity going to be legally challenged?
Jailhouse Lawyer aka John Hirst has been working for prisoner suffrage for a very long time. Let's see if this gets anywhere.

And before people appear in the comments to have a go at me for linking to John: I am quite aware of John's past, and it has always been my opinion that people who commit horrendous crimes should go to jail, and not only be punished but if possible, rehabilitated. And if whilst they are in there they decide to learn law, take an interest in bettering the lives of others, and then having served their time, go on to do useful and helpful things, such as become a human rights campaigner and live a law-abiding and peaceful life, they should be commended for it, though nothing can make right taking a life, or bring comfort to the victim's family and friends. And prisoner suffrage is a good thing, and the right to vote is a human right, and unpopular as this may be, I will support it.

Today's speech on liberties

Hello, I've just rushed here from up the road where the Convention on Modern Liberty is taking place and would like to thank you for inviting me here today to speak. I've been asked to talk on 'Why did we lose the argument on liberty versus security?'

This is pretty defeatist stiff, isn't it? We are having the argument, we have lost much but we have not lost everything yet. The very fact that there are two ram-packed events about liberty, freedom and justice going on a few miles from each other is a good sign. Despite the at-times overwhelming sense of impending doom, it has at least never been easier to find out about the loss of our freedoms, to speak out, stand up, push back and mobilise for change. We live in an interconnected world linked together by a web that transmits words and images at the speed of thought, from Gaza to Guantanamo. Now a million pairs of eyes can scrutinse truth and lies. There is no such thing as a good day to bury bad news anymore.

But in a world overloaded with information, we have a thousand claims on our attention. Perhaps that is why is has been easy to whittle our freedom away: we have been too easily distracted, too beguilingly entertained, letting the good times roll. Perhaps our attention span is too short and our aspirations too greedy and selfish to care for things when they do not directly impact us.

We have been told that 'the rules of the game have changed'. Like the metaphorical frog in the saucepan of slowly-heating water, our complacency has seriously endangered our chances of a healthy future.

Only cheats try to change the rules of the game. And unpacking the language shows how dangerous that phrase by Tony Blair, the smiling salesman of a 'war on terror' really was.

By 'rules', he meant the rule of law, the rights that enshrine our freedoms.The right not to be detained without reason, the right not to be tortured or degraded, the right to a fair trial. The right to freedom of thought, conscience or religion, the right to respect for privacy, family life and the home. The right to freedom of speech, protest and association, and to protection of property, including your most intimate data.

Those were the rights, the basic, human rights that we signed up to after a world war that left millions dead, injured, dispossessed, countries in economic ruin, beggared by a fight against a fascist ideology that killed and tortured on an industrial scale. After such trauma, such horror, that human rights were needed was a truth that was self-evident.

These are our birthright human rights that our government is so keen to take away, in the name of our current security. To get away with this, it relies on our apathy, and our fear of terrorism, anti-social behaviour and crime. Now human rights are presented to us by the very government minister who introduced the act as some kind of criminal -cuddling charter. The collection of smooth-talking political salesman waiting in the wings tell us we don't need the human rights of the human rights act. We need a British Bill of Rights, for British people.

For God's sake.

Human rights are the rights of all humans. They are not British rights, they are not to be re-cut to re-fit the latest body politic by the designers of the latest fashionable election strategy.

The battered and broken men who are slowly coming out of Guantanamo show us that the unspeakable evil of torture has been sanctioned and outsourced at the highest levels. If we will stoop to this, we will sink to anything. We are not only in danger of losing our human rights, we are in danger of losing our common humanity, our right to call ourselves human.

Yet there is hope. Those who are bent on wickedness always go too far and show their hand, drop their mask. Boiling frogs can jump out of saucepans, and stupefied people can wake up and demand change, hold their leaders to account. They are more afraid of us than they let on, you know. We should trust ourselves, and each other more.

When the world goes dark, when horror and fear and shock are overwhelming, that is when you find out the truth about people. This is what I have learned: when terrorists bomb a crowded train, those left alive do not fight and attack each other to survive. They call out for calm. They grab each other's hands. I've seen that people are better and braver and stronger than the government give us credit for. This truth is bigger than any lie they can tell.

We are not sleepwalking prisoners of our own nightmares. We are awake. We can see what they are doing. We are the guardians of each other's liberties and lives. This is the time; we are late, there is much to do and we are greatly needed to defend our ancient liberties and future freedoms.

It is not over yet, and we are better than this. Now is the time to show it.

Happy Birthday Liberty

75 years of fighting to protect civil liberties, defending human rights.

Liberty is a small team of cheerful, committed, clever, generous, dedicated, passionate, brave people, crammed uncomplainingly into a far-too-small, messily over-crowded office in Southwark. They do everything on a shoe-string, they garner enormous respect for what they do, they work bloody hard as a team - and they deserve your support in defending our common values for precious little reward.

You might want to join them, right now we need them more than ever. See this piece from Shami in today's Guardian to remember why.

Happy Birthday Liberty, from lots of fans

Liberty, justice, torture and bollocks

"We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism...Well, that was clearly bollocks."

Lord West, security adviser to PM Gordon Brown, 27 January 2009

For the last three years I have been saying, on this blog and elsewhere, that there is a bloody obvious direct link between the growth of extremism in the UK, with the attendant danger of terrorist attacks from a tiny hardcore fringe of ultra-radicals who advocate horrific violence against civilians as a 'legitimate tactic', and an unethical UK/US foreign policy that outsources torture, allows the secretive and illegal 'rendition' of people to be held without charge, supports corrupt regimes and causes thousands of civilian deaths as a result of the invasion of sovereign territories, in defiance of international law.

Let's get this straight: I don't think we should change our behaviour, still less our foreign policy, to placate terrorists. I do think we should change our behaviour and foreign policy because it is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, as well as the smart and sensible thing to do in terms of making us safer.

I have said, repeatedly, and so have many other people far cleverer and braver than me, that the whole strategy of the 'war on terror' is stupidly flawed and ultimately, self-defeating, that human rights and civil liberties are far too precious to be given up in its name - they are our best weapons against living in a permanent state of traumatised paranoia, danger and fear - and that we do ourselves no favours at all by abandoning the moral high ground and sacrificing our sweetest ideals, the very best that we are and can be - on the dubious altar of 'increased security'.

In fact, we are handing those who despise us a propaganda gift by behaving as unfairly and hypocritically as they paint us to be; our leaders have blood on their hands which belies the words from their mouths, and far from keeping us safe and secure, their actions in the last decade have actually increased the risk to the lives and liberties of the very people they are elected, and paid large sums, to lead and serve. There will always be fanatics, murderers and disgusting criminals amongst us. We do not have to stoop to beat them. We are bigger and better than that, or we should be. We damn well ought to be.

After three, nearly four long years of what has felt like banging my head against an establishment wall, I sometimes feel in danger of developing a permanent headache, (which is why I took time out from blogging), and yet it gives me little pleasure to remark that, all of a sudden, some of the establishment seems to have suddenly started agreeing with me, and with all those other people who have been saying what I have been saying.

Last month, Foreign Secretary David Milliband finally said that the war on terror is wrong, then this month he promptly found himself neck-high in the bloody aftermath of that particular eight-year demented orgy of self-justifying lies and violence, when appearing to attempt to hide the evidence of our government and security services' complicity in the torture of a British resident. Milliband actually claimed to a high court that there was a 'threat' by the US to withdraw co-operation in intelligence matters if documents about Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohammed were revealed, then back-tracked, leading to furious demands that the documents about the torture be released after all.

Well, of course they should be. And whilst we are at it, let's get all the horrors and injustices out into the open, have a proper independent inquiry into it all, apologise profusely, say 'never again' and start anew, turn over a new leaf and try to learn some lessons from this horrendous mess. Nobody can say there isn't the appetite for it, and it certainly wouldn't kill us to try it. But they'd never have the guts to try, this government, I expect, even as the tortured Binyam Mohammed steps back onto the soil of the UK, the land he took refuge in as a teenager and shames them all by having refused to die quietly of madness and despair thousands of miles away.

I don't know what he was planning when he left the UK a few years ago. If there was evidence enough to charge him with a crime when he was picked up and then give him a fair trial, then that is what should have happened. There is no excuse for - and no point in - torturing him, or anyone else. None. Ever. Torture is a complete waste of time as well as degrading and damaging us all when we condone it, or outsource it to people who will wield scalpels and tighten ropes whilst asking questions our spies prepared earlier. I can say this, and I wish I didn't have to say it, but when you are being tortured, tied up, humiliated, beaten, put in fear of your life and your sanity, you will say and do absolutely anything to get it to stop. You will say anything, tell any lie. That is the way it is and the way it will always be.

A few weeks ago I was asked to go on Newsnight again, and I said in my interview, pointing to furious comments left on a radical Islamist movement's website after a thunderous anti-Government article, that what was going on in Gaza was fuelling huge anger. Entirely legitimate anger in my opinion, and you don't have to be Muslim to feel it - but that anger was being used by radical groups who were busily recruiting on the back of it, and lo and behold, Hazel Blears then comes on, agrees about the anger-foreign policy-radicalisation link - and says

'I am very concerned indeed that the events in Gaza could well be used by those people who want to peddle pernicious extremist views to draw particularly vulnerable young people into that kind of extremism'.

So, finally someone in the Cabinet admits it: radicalisation does not come out of a vacuum, it is an ideology shaped by events, reactions to other actions, themselves undertaken because of policies, politics, power-dynamics, and there is such a thing as cause and effect.

But put away the party poppers, because this is not as good as it looks on the surface. When the government gets to decide who is an extremist, everyone had better be careful.

Yes, everyone. You, woman-who-doesn't-want-hundreds-of-planes-booming-over-her-house. You, man-who-has-lost-his-job because of the catastrophic financial incompetence of someone paid hundreds of thousands a year. You, who-used-to-have-a-pension-fund. You had better be careful with your reasonable and legitimate anger over the next few years. The police are expecting a 'summer of rage' in 2009, and all those shiny new those anti-terrorism laws, the ones that you thought were just there to deal with religious people, political people, angry people who are nothing like you at all - those laws are the ones that will be used to crack down on the people who take to the streets, who raise their voices in protest.

The same anti-terror laws have already been used to harass and harry protesters, poets, photographers, priests, students and parents and grandparents. They can stretch to accomodate you too, if necessary.

You thought they were carefully and calmly drafted, that it wouldn't apply to you? Nothing to hide and nothing to fear?

Wait and see. And pray you are right. Best pray privately and without raising your voice and stay well out of the exclusion zone outside the Houses of Parliament, just to be on the safe side. Don't email friends about your anger and what you're tempted to do, don't talk about it on the phone. Don't make jokes about it, or idle threats. With plans to log every call, every email you make, this summer of 2009 might be the very last chance you have to say that you are upset and angry and furious with the government. So it might be good to start practicing biting your tongue now, just to be on the safe side.

Are you thinking, what the hell? Are the government planning on using anti-terror laws to control and contain an entire citizenry? That's shocking!

Well, then get out there and say something, do something, before it's too late. You don't have to march, and I don't advise rioting. You can write to your MP, your local paper, talk to your friends, your children, voice your displeasure at this torturing, terrorising, mendacious, malevolent executive that lies and lies and lies and wants to frighten and control us all just because it wants power. Non-violent righteous anger and a refusal to condone this by staying silent is what we need now. Enough, just say it, enough. Please.

Because despite what they insinuate, extremely strong feelings do not make a person an extremist, still less a terrorist. Just because those who attack animal testing laboratories are generally vegans or vegetarians with extremely strong feelings about the suffering of animals, it does not therefore follow that every vegan or vegetarian or animal-lover is a suspected animal rights extremist who condones or participates in attacks on property or people. Nobody sensible would ever suggest such a thing. It's actions that count, not words, after all.

Our government's actions have included: condoning torture, allowing extraordinary rendition to secret hell holes. Allowing British residents and British subjects to be swept up and carted off to foreign countries without a prima facie case being made in this country. Playing fast and loose with the right to trial by jury, the right to privacy, snooping, spying on us with a million cameras, taking our private data and selling it and losing it, and wasting our money and lying about that as well. Lying about the case for war, lying about the weapons of war that we export to states with appalling human rights records, and much more besides, and what have we done to try to stop them? A few marches, a few voices raised in protest.

Not much then.

Dame Stella Rimington, the ex Director of M15 for goodness sake, said that the government is exploiting people's fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights, handing a victory to terrorists, and she is quite right. I was asked to go on More4 News last week and discuss this point with Keith Vaz, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, whom I gave evidence to when the government was debating whether it was a good idea to introduce a law allowing people they had their eye on to be held without charge for a month and a half - and I said that I wondered sometimes who the British government were more afraid of, terrorists or the anger of the British people.

I think terrorists are criminal scum. I think the British people are braver and better and bolder than anything that a cowardly, lying idealogue can throw at them. And that they know what is clearly bollocks and what is worth fighting for, living for, if it comes down to it, dying for, not that we are at that stage yet, thank God.

Fortunately, there is a rising tide of men and women who have mobilised, who are speaking out, who are fighting back - and you can get involved.

This Saturday, the Convention on Modern Liberty happens. Hurray!
Meet the new freedom fighers
Check out the marvellous Henry Porter blog
Visit the website - tickets for London have sold out, but this is nationwide.

And there's also more stirring stuff this weekend - I will be at the Convention on Modern Liberty and also leaping into a taxi halfway through the day to make a speech at

6 BILLION WAYS - Making Another World Possible

10am-8.30pm, Saturday 28th February 2009

at the Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA

(The nearest tube stations are: Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Old St. & Liverpool St.)

As climate, food and financial crises start to look like a GLOBAL MELTDOWN ...
Come to 6 BILLION WAYS and start making another world possible!

* DEBATES * FILMS * WORKSHOPS * ART *

Including discussions on:

Speakers include: Prof Tariq Ramadan (Islamic theologian), Mark Thomas (comedian/activist), Susan George (anti-globalisation writer), Karma Nabulsi (Palestinian academic), Meena Raman (environmental activist Malaysia), Ken Livingstone (former Mayor of London), Tariq Ali (writer/activist), Trevor Ngwane (Anti-privatisation forum South Africa), Yash Tandon (South Centre Uganda), Tony Juniper (environmental activist), Neal Lawson (Compass), Jean Lambert MEP (Green Party), Prof Gilbert Achcar (SOAS), Bianca Jagger (EU Goodwill Ambassador), Amit Srivastava (India Resource Centre, India), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour MP), Colin Firth (actor), Salma Yaqoob (anti-war activist) , Alistair Crooke (Conflicts Forum, Lebanon), Daud Abdullah (MCB), Usama Hasan (City Circle), John Pandit (ADF), Moazzem Begg (ex-Guantanamo detainee), Gareth Peirce (human rights lawyer), Baroness Lola Young (media/cultural activist), Taysir Arabasi (Palestinian Farmers Union), Nora Fernandez (Debt Commission, Ecuador), Andrew Simms (nef), Tarek el-Diwany (author) and many more ...

FILMS: War on Democracy, Palestine Blues, An Independent Mind, With or Without Fidel & In Prison My Whole Life

10am - 7pm Workshops, debates and discussions.
7pm - 8:30pm Final plenary with keynote speakers

Attendance is FREE but REGISTER and find out more here.

See the full programme by clicking here.


6 Billion Ways is organised by City Circle, Friends of the Earth, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, People and Planet, Rich Mix, War on Want and the World Development Movement.

There's plenty of ways to get involved and there's plenty of people jumping at the chance to do so. There's so much going on that there are 2 major events happening on the same day this weekend, and they're both going to be rammed. There is an energy and a spirit abroad, at last, thank God.

I'm proud and grateful to be a small part of this. Let's roll.

Monday's speech

'Thank you very much to Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International, and to all the Amnesty team for the invitation to speak tonight at this protest against the government's latest counter-terrorism bill which includes the plans to detain terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge. It's a privilege and an honour to be here, and it is great to see how many people have come out on a cold Monday night in their dressing gowns to show that they are passionate about defending their liberties and to show that they will not sleepwalk into giving up essential rights and freedoms.

We have a long and honourable tradition of freedom in this country - an idea of freedom and democracy that we have shared all over the world. One of the most important freedoms we have is the ancient right of habeas corpus; the right not to be detained without being charged, and to be brought before a court who have the authority to say whether you are being lawfully held and why you are being charged.

Over the years, millions of men and women have made great sacrifices to preserve our freedoms against enemies who wanted to destroy them. Older generations have fought and died in terrible wars. Not so very long ago, hundreds of thousands of people said goodbye to their loved ones and friends, not knowing if they would return alive or badly injured. Parents evacuated their young children to live with strangers, hoping they would escape the dangers of aerial bombardment from the weapons of mass destruction of the time. People undertook war work – usually hard and boring, sometimes dangerous. The fight to defend our nation's freedom from our enemies' threats was something that was an inescapable part of everyone's daily lives.

Why am I going on about the second world war in 2008? To make the point that the threat we face now is not anything like the daily threat our grandparents and great-grandparents faced. It is shameful that when others risked so much and gave so much to preserve our freedoms, we seem to barely notice as they are taken away.

Many of the men and women debating the terrorism bill in the House of Lords today are old enough to remember a real war of terror, very different to a 'war on terror'. They remember that out of the horrors of that war came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and prohibiting torture and inhumane treatment. The nations of the world came together after that terrible war to focus on human rights; to say 'never again'.

Human rights are precious. History teaches us what happens when a political party, or a charismatic leader begins to spread the lie that not every person deserves human rights...that some kinds of people are 'different' and the normal rules do not apply...
We all deserve the right to be treated as fully human and accorded full human rights. Yes, even the suspected terrorist. Especially the person suspected of terrorism, in fact.

These last few days in America, we have seen a politician giving a speech to a large and excited crowd of people, and we have heard voices in that crowd begin shouting 'Terrorist! Kill him! Behead him!'
The person that crowd suspected of being a terrorist is the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama. Meanwhile, also last week, the government of Iceland were very surprised and upset when they found out that the UK government were using terrorism laws to seize the UK assets of Icelandic banks last week.
Do you see my point? Look at who is being suspected of terrorism. A potential President? An Icelandic banker? Is this what 'suspected of terrorism' really means? In fact, UK terrorism laws have recently been used to arrest pensioners and protesters, parents and poets and priests – all sorts of people – people like you and me. Terrorism laws have been used by councils to spy on barking dogs and noisy children and muddled recyclers and people parking in disabled spaces without the right badges and even people 'selling unauthorised pizzas'. It's crazy. It would be funny, except it isn't funny at all.

Since 9/11, 1228 people have been arrested under UK terrorism laws – only for 669 of them to be released later as entirely innocent. That's more than half of them.

We can be sure of something. If you give State officials powers, they will use them.

We can also be sure of another thing: giving up freedom doesn't make you more free. Nor does it make you particularly safe.
In fact many distinguished people whose entire career has been about keeping us safe from criminals and terrorists, and prosecuting those who mean us harm, have said that legislation like the 42 days clause is counter-productive and actually dangerous.

Here's another thing we can be sure of in uncertain times. Giving up your freedoms does give the State a lot more power over you – not just now, but in the future as well. And we do not know what the future will bring. We can only, as I said, look to the lessons of recent history.

Over the last week, we have seen 'suspected terrorist' be used in a very strange way. It has been used to mean 'someone we, the party in power don't like the look of, doing something we don't approve of.' It has been used to ratchet up fear for political reasons. It has been used to look tough.

Well, we know politicians find it useful to look tough and in control, especially when events are changing fast and they are not in control as much as they would like. Events can change things very suddenly, as we have seen with the recent pandemonium in the world economy. Politicians can come and go, financial markets can be gripped with panic and spiral out of control and none of us can predict the future.

What we can do is protect the human. We can protect ourselves and each other by choosing to focus on our freedoms, not our fears. We can stand up, as we did today, shoulder to shoulder, and show that we will not sleepwalk into a very different future. We can learn the lessons of the past about our better and worse natures, and remember how a war-torn world came together to say that human rights must be protected and preserved for all time, that the dignity of all human people is the foundation of justice and peace in the world; that freedom of speech and belief, freedom from fear and want are proclaimed as 'the highest aspiration of the people'.

Nothing has changed in the last sixty years to change that. Nothing ever will.

Human rights and freedoms remain something worth cherishing, worth loving. Worth living for. Worth dying for.

Thank you, all of you, for standing up to protect and preserve freedom today, tonight, and always.'

End the violence in Tibet campaign

Fellow-blogger and neighbour Rachel writes and urges everyone to spend a moment asking for the violence to stop in Tibet and surrounding regions....

I just signed an urgent petition calling on the Chinese government to respect human rights in Tibet and engage in meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. This is really important, and I thought you might want to take action:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. But violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now considering a choice between increasing brutality or dialogue, that could determine the future of Tibet and China.

We can affect this historic choice. China does care about its international reputation. Its economy is totally dependent on "Made in China" exports that we all buy, and it is keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a celebration of a new China that is a respected world power.

President Hu needs to hear that 'Brand China' and the Olympics can succeed only if he makes the right choice. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to join me and sign a petition to President Hu calling for restraint in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama -- and tell absolutely everyone you can right away. The petition is organized by Avaaz, and they are urgently aiming to reach 1 million signatures to deliver directly to Chinese officials:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

Thank you so much for your help!