Thursday, June 19, 2008 

Scum-watch: Did we get it wrong on 42 days? Oh look, here's Abu Qatada!

Imagine, if you will, that you've spent the best part of the last 3 years in the highest security prison without charge, awaiting deportation to a country that has routinely practised torture and where the trial in your absentia was almost certainly centred on evidence achieved under torture. Prior to that, you'd spent time on a control order, again without any charge actually being made against you. Your short time on a control order was the result of the law lords striking down your indefinite detention without charge, simply because you were a foreigner rather than a actual British citizen.

Now, after the latest legal challenge that won on the one remaining argument that the British state cannot be complicit in torture whether in a foreign state or not, you've been released on bail. This isn't the sort of bail where you can go and potentially kill someone else, as others recently have. This is 22-hour curfew bail, harsher than a control order, where your freedom amounts to your house and a very small surrounding area around that house, where you can spend those two hours after 10am and after 2pm, with a tag that sends your movements directly to the police who'll be monitoring 24 hours a day. Your points of contact with the outside world will be your telephone, which will naturally be bugged. Anyone else who wants to visit will have to be approved in advance, and don't expect that they will be. You can't visit your place of worship, and if you wanted to get into contact with any of three named gentlemen for some reason, then you specifically can't.

Anyone would think that this is a very funny short of freedom and that this is a very arbitrary form of justice. When you're alleged to be the right-hand man of Osama bin Laden in Europe however, and despite being given asylum, albeit after you arrived on a false passport, then it's perfectly OK, and in fact, complete madness to not deport him immediately straight back to where he came from.

Here's where if you're a tabloid journalist and happen to be completely losing an argument over a related matter that you can do: start a hysterical, typically emotional campaign, conflated with a completely unrelated issue to try and get over your embarrassment. Hence "Sarah dies while Qatada is freed." This is apparently an "insult to our dead", which is especially curious. Generally when you're dead you can't decide what is and what isn't an insult to you, although grasping, opportunistic journalists will attempt to do just that.

The staggering hypocrisy and and contradiction at the heart of the Sun's argument needs to be seen to be believed. According to the paper, those like Sarah are fighting (and dying, in a pointless, unwinnable war which is currently being sickeningly spun as going tremendously well because the Taliban are turning to "terror tactics") for our freedom and for the freedom of the Afghan people. The latter is debateable; the former is complete nonsense. The Sun's solution to this is what we've seen over the last few weeks: to actually remove the very freedoms which those we are meant to be fighting hate, while also conspiring and giving the OK to the sort of mistreatment which breeds resentment and radicalisation.

Qatada is of course the most extreme example of this. No one is going to defend what he believed and preached, or at least, what he believed and preached. I have contended on multiple occasions that there would be enough evidence, were the authorities so inclined, that a case based on his teachings could be brought against him under our criminal justice system, not Jordan's. The Sun's own "discovery" of footage showing him preaching alongside all the other most notable extremists increases the possibility that this could be achieved. Instead, it has to be questioned exactly why we're so determined to get rid of him rather than try him. The suspicion has to be that this is because Qatada, like both Hamza and Bakri Muhammad, had an association with the security services. Unlike Hamza and Muhammad however, where the meetings and cooperation were slight, allegations have been put directly into the public domain that Qatada was a double agent, or at the least much more closesly associated with them than the others.

It was partly these swirling rumours that led directly to his stock dropping hugely amongst those who had previously looked to him as a spiritual leader. While on the run during 2002, even the French security services speculated that MI5 was directly helping to hide him. That appears not to have been so, but what has also directly left Qatada bereft of any support or real sympathy amongst jihadists was his direct appeal for the release of Norman Kember, held in Iraq by those who executed one of his co-captures. When such takfirists that support the likes of the Islamic State of Iraq bend over backwards to try to defend the atrocities that were and are being committed in that benighted country, including the gruesome beheadings of foreign hostages, Qatada was instead calling for the release of a man they considered as a crusader and indistinguishable from the other foreign troops. This lead some to speculate that his stays in prison had mellowed him, and even potentially turned him against al-Qaida, and he wouldn't be the first that has changed in such a manner after a period of imprisonment that inevitably leads to

True or not, the Sun's pathetic campaign is still resorting to casual smears. They complain about him sponging benefits worth £1,000 a month, but how is he meant to work when he can only use the telephone and leave the house for 2 hours a day, let alone how no one would employ him in any case? They moan of the £1 million cost of his bail, without mentioning how much it was costing to hold him in prison and how much it would cost to prosecute him rather than continuing with the deporting charade that shames us all.

Yesterday's Sun leader has disappeared in the ether, so we'll have to make do with tomorrow's:

THOUSANDS of Sun readers are backing our campaign to bundle hate preacher Abu Qatada onto the next plane out of Britain.

They simply can’t fathom why our judges put the “rights” of Osama bin Laden’s top man in Europe before the rights of every man, woman and child in the land to a life free from fear.


Here, let's check, does the HRA guarantee everyone a life free from fear? Hmm, nope. The prohibition of torture is however right there in Article 3, and unlike most of the other articles, there are no limitations on that right. The Sun's argument is, in any case, bollocks. Abu Qatada at the moment poses no threat to anyone, and if he were to be prosecuted, with the evidence against him put through an open court, with it possible that he would be convicted, he would pose even less than no threat.

As the case waits to go to the House of Lords, Britain’s highest court, our message is simple ....

We don’t want to wait till Christmas before you give Qatada the Order of the Boot.


Thankfully, the law lords don't tend to listen to tabloid threats and bullshit, and judging by past decisions, it seems highly unlikely to disagree with the appeal court ruling.

Elsewhere, Kelvin MacKenzie treats us to why he decided not to stand against David Davis. Strangely, none of these reasons include the fact that he was going to get his backside handed to him over 42 days. They do however include his calling of Hull a "shocking place" (a joke, obviously, as he's never been) and the opinion polls that showed him on 17%. This is the real reason though:

But the clincher for me was the money. Clearly The Sun couldn’t put up the cash — so I was going to have to rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct my campaign as candidate for the Red Mist Party.

As Tim points out, this is something of another reverse ferret. Last Friday, "the boss", Mr Murdoch, was good for it. What changed? It couldn't be that Murdoch rather decided that he was on the wrong side of the argument for once, could it? Still, Rebekah Wade has now come up her revenge: torture is fine as long as it's happening to nasty people. Who could possibly disagree?

Related:
Gareth Peirce - Is this what it was like for the Irish?

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Monday, June 16, 2008 

Cowardy custard.

Can you say reverse ferret? On Friday Kelvin MacKenzie told the Today programme that he was 90% certain that he was going to run against David Davis in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election; by Monday it appears apparent that neither he nor the Sun have the stomach for such a battle over the policy which they have done the most to support and defend of any newspaper.

Some are ascribing this to the overwhelmingly positive response outside of Westminster to Davis's decision to resign and re-fight his seat on a civil liberties platform. I think that's certainly a factor, and the Sun doesn't want to be seen to be on the wrong side of public opinion, but I also think that it was a daft idea from the start. We know that this was mooted at Rebekah Wade's birthday party, attended by both MacKenzie and Murdoch himself, where doubtless all were well lubricated and tired and possibly emotional, and that MacKenzie then first let slip about it on the This Week sofa which he'd gone straight to from the party, without necessarily being given the go-ahead by Murdoch in anything beyond platitudes.

Firstly it was a strange idea because as we know, Murdoch always wants to back the winner, and one thing's for sure, MacKenzie was not going to win, and going by his completely feeble arguments on This Week on why we shouldn't be afraid of either the state or the police, no one outside of the Monster Raving Loony party circle was going to be convinced. Secondly, how MacKenzie was going to be funded was always going to be difficult: Murdoch himself can't because he's a foreigner, the Sun can't be seen to be funding any candidate, and it was always going to be something questioned as to where his money was coming from. Thirdly, even if Davis has told the Cameron tendency to sit and spin and royally annoyed them by his stand, running a candidate directly against Davis on the measure which they've opposed is not going to make them more amenable when the Sun is likely to be shortly sucking up to Dave and co as the election looms into view. Fourthly, part of the reason as to why Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the Screws was appointed as Cameron's chief spin doctor was to attempt to woo the Murdoch press which had previously been incredibly sniffy about him. It still is, but it's hard not to believe that Coulson will have been dispatched to attempt to reach some sort of agreement with his old friends so as not for both sides to fully fall out.

More importantly, Murdoch and others at the Sun, when not thinking through alcoholic stupor, would have realised that it set a rather silly precedent. If the Sun is so certain that it is on the side of the public in all its fiercely expressed views rather than the politicians it so lambasts, why doesn't it put its money where its mouth is and formerly stand candidates at general elections? The fact is that it isn't that certain, that its campaigns which it starts and often so frighten politicians are often over-egged and given figures of support from its readers which are unrealistic, and above all, it's lazy. Running a campaign would take effort which certainly doesn't show itself in the pages of its newspaper, and what's more, there's no more certain way to annoy your readers than to keep permanently talking about how you're right and great and that you must pledge complete allegiance to the brand.

Probably most importantly, someone reminded both MacKenzie and the newspaper of that toxic word: Hillsborough. All that was needed was for any of the groups associated with that disaster to turn up at a canvassing, or a debate which would undoubtedly have been held, and all the unpleasantness of MacKenzie's refusal to apologise and the Sun's constant flagellating that will never appease the rightly aggrieved would have been brought back to the surface.

Hence there wasn't a single word published in the paper itself of MacKenzie's apparent fledgling candidacy. After the mauling which Davis received in the paper in Friday's leader, the mood completely changed over the weekend. Today the real ideological power behind the paper, Trevor Kavanagh, called him an "ego-driven maverick" but admitted he had a stuck a cord. Even more amazingly, and signalling the paper has done a full reverse ferret, there's probably one of the biggest attacks on the paper's own repeated leader line that has ever appeared within its own confines tomorrow courtesy of Fergus Shanahan, which will be incredibly handy whenever the paper reminds us again if we have nothing to hide we've got nothing to fear:

Three myths are peddled by Davis’s opponents.

The first is that if you are against 42 days, you are soft on terror.

Rubbish. I have backed capital punishment for terrorist murderers while many of those kicking Davis are against it. How am I soft on terror?

The second myth is that weary old chestnut: “If you’ve nothing to hide, why worry?” That’s what German civilians told each other as they looked the other way while the concentration camps were being built.

The third myth is that there is massive public support for 42 days.

Of course, there's the usual Sun idiocy we've come to expect about executing "terrorist murderers" when most of them will either be dead or want to be martyred anyway, but this is pretty incisive stuff for a paper which usually has no truck with any of these woolly ideals. Even more astonishing is this bit earlier on:

Davis has hit the nail on the head. We HAVE allowed ourselves to be browbeaten by fears of Islamic terror attacks into abandoning too many of our freedoms — something I have said for months. Many Sun readers agree with me.

But Shanahan's own leader line doesn't; it wants to give away even more freedoms. Although as the leader line is directly decided upon by Murdoch himself, Shanahan isn't likely to have done anything to alter it.

All these reasons for MacKenzie rolling his tanks back however though don't hide that most of all, the decision not to stand for something the Sun and he so believe in is cowardice. Davis stands up to be counted, and the Sun sits down. If this really is a victory for the overwhelming opinion being expressed online, then it's something worth celebrating and cherishing. New Labour and the Sun: united in their weakness.

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Friday, June 13, 2008 

On the media's response to Davis and the Sun's entering of the fray.

The overwhelming response of the media to David Davis's decision to resign and fight a by-election on 42 days and civil liberties seems only confirm the increasing disconnect, not just between politicians and the public, but also between the media and the country outside the Westminster village. Almost universally, Davis has been insulted, slurred, accused in some cases of succumbing to mental illness, and disparaged. The Guardian, while being sympathetic to his decision, variously throughout its pages calls him an "oddball", "egotistical" and a "loner", suggests his campaign may turn "quixotic" and has "Sir" Michael White saying that "such unpredictability unsettles the trade". At the other end of the spectrum, the Sun is even more vitriolic, headlining its leader "Crazy Davis", asking rhetorically whether he's "gone stark raving mad", and then goes on to declare that his stepping down was an act of "treachery", that he's a second-rate politician, serially disloyal which "provides further evidence of a deranged mind", that this is "petulant grandstanding" and finally, that he's "loopy". And this is before it's even launched its likely campaign for Kelvin MacKenzie.

All of this would be very well if the fourth estate was only catering for the Westminster village; this is almost undoubtedly exactly what they think of Davis and his very different to Ron Davies' moment of madness. The bloody man's resigned over a principle! We can't have that sort of thing going on here! The Conservative front-benchers have been completely flummoxed because they can't get their heads round how someone could do something that so endangers his actual career prospects. When you're as focused and ambitious as some of the filth that passes for the next generation, like Michael Gove and George Osborne, to potentially ruin your chances of getting your hands on the power to run the country seems akin to stripping naked, smothering yourself in butter and running around the houses of parliament with a gag in your mouth and a hedgehog up your backside. They're agog and aghast at the embarrassment and most of all, the difference to what is routinely expected of them. Forget 42 days and terrorists, to them this seems a far more dangerous outbreak of independent thinking and action.

Outside of that prism, even if they don't necessarily agree with Davis over 42 days, most ordinary people seem to respect him just because his decision was both so unexpected and outside of the norm. The online response to it seems to have been mostly positive, apart from those who have voiced their more than valid concerns that Davis is a social conservative rather than a true libertarian, which dulls his stance to an extent. This though seems to me to miss the point. For all those who have suggested that it'll turn into farce, today's coverage does generally seemed to have towards the issues itself rather than the personalities involved, and Davis, pledging to make the case and attempt to turn public opinion over 42 days in a way in which the wider political class has failed to do so is more than admirable, it's essential. At the moment we're stuck in the rut of this being framed as a vital measure that is needed by the police just in case; what it actually is just the most vivid example of the slow dilution of essential liberties which have in some cases, but not in all, been taken away without the slightest of comment and consultation, or where there has been, under the pretence that it's needed because our security demands it and not to do so is to be either irresponsible or "soft" on either crime or terror.

This view could be not more crystallised by the quite brilliant decision by Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Wade and Kelvin MacKenzie to involve themselves. Never before has there been such a great opportunity to puncture the Sun's claimed stranglehold on the public mood and to make clear that rather than speaking for the people, it tells them what to think in coalition with whichever current politician has made a pact with the Prince of Darkness himself. The Sun doesn't represent the traditionally small-c conservative view on liberty, or the liberal-statist view on liberty as espoused by the Guardian, it represents the chuckleheaded, moronic, complacent and acquiescent view of it. Witness the great oaf of a man, who still can't bring himself to apologise to the people of Liverpool for publishing the most vicious of lies about how they behaved in the aftermath of the worst football tragedy this country has ever seen, telling everyone that he doesn't care whether terrorist suspects are locked up for 420 days, about CCTV cameras or ID cards, not because he actually believes they will make things any better, but because he simply is Kelvin MacKenzie. It doesn't affect him because no one's going to accuse him of terrorism, or follow his movements and spy on him, or attempt to steal his identity, because he's a middle-class opinion-former that's more than comfortably off and has the ear of one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. He doesn't have anything to hide because he couldn't really do anything lower than he's already managed in his tabloid career.

Here's the paradox of the Sun's position on civil liberties and the state. Murdoch and his papers believe in the smallest state achievable, the lowest taxes and the most business friendly environment for himself. When it comes to the actual power of the state over the citizen rather than faceless corporations, then he and his papers are all in favour of it. Give the police what they want! Constant CCTV surveillance! A DNA database containing everyone's fingerprints and blood samples! As tough on crime and thugs and yobs, regardless of the consequences as feasible! You only have to read the shopping list of demands that the Sun drew up in co-operation with the "mothers in arms" to get an inkling of what the paper in its wildest dreams would like the state of civil liberties in this country to look like: everyone a suspect, everyone assumed guilty until proved innocent, and you being strung up in public by the knackers for looking at a kid the wrong way. I exaggerate slightly, but only slightly, as it doesn't support capital punishment; castration of paedophiles, well, that's another matter.

The Sun's arrogance was exposed on Question Time last night. The paper's political editor, George Pascoe-Watson, was going through the usual routine of rather than giving his personal opinion instead using every opportunity to give the paper's view, and to plug it at the same time. Hence he made much of the Sun's "help for heroes" campaign, but came unstuck on one of the later questions when he began with something along the lines of "Well, as you know we on the Sun..." to which David Dimbleby interrupted with "Not everyone reads the Sun, you know", to which the audience heartily applauded. The Question Time audience is hardly representative, but what it did show was that the Sun's positioning is nowhere near as popular as it imagines, even among its readers which devour the sport and the celebrity but couldn't care less about its atrocious politics. This is exactly what Davis's campaign should pick up upon if Kelvin MacKenzie does stand, which will be incredibly interesting purely because of where his funding will come from, considering Murdoch is barred from donating as he's not a British citizen. No doubt some convoluted structure will be found that will be allowed. Instead of listening to people, what the Sun does is decide upon a line and then dictate it, regardless of what anyone else says, and if anyone suitably outspoken comes along and challenges it, then the smearing commences. Its cynical use of those that don't support it, such as the head of the British Muslim Forum, who said the opposite of what the Sun said he had on 42 days, and the completely misleading interpretation of MI5's statement are prime examples.

For if Davis's decision to contest a by-election on 42 days is vanity, then the Murdoch decision to oppose him is a potential disaster for both them and the Labour party. If Labour doesn't stand a candidate, and despite all the nonsense, if the Liberal Democrats aren't standing then Labour's chances will be greatly improved, MacKenzie will be in effect their candidate, making their arguments in an even more inarticulate way than they've managed in parliament, and by God, that's saying something. Gordon Brown can call it a stunt turned into a farce all he likes, but if his party refuses to stand, then it only shows them up as doing what the Sun does: taking the public completely for granted and not seeking their opinion at all, instead telling them what their opinion should be. Even if MacKenzie decides against standing and Davis is up only against a Monster Raving Loony, he's still made his point, and what's more, it just shows the contempt that those who are above the law for the civil liberties of the majority. The more I think about it, the more Davis's stand gives us an opportunity and a chance that we previously didn't have: to make the case for the rolling back of the state's authoritarian but completely ineffective incursion on the daily life of the citizen. When our opponents are either this pipsqueak or the worst the Sun has to offer, it really will be impossible not to force at the least a pause in the slow but consistent momentum towards something resembling a police state.

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