New powers to seize terror “suspects” passports… yet another thought crime…

On the Guardian website today (29 August 2014) is a top-of-the-page headline: “New powers to seize terror suspects’ passports”. Now maybe that seems fine to you – can’t have terrorists suicide-bombing their way around the world on British passports, can we? But that is not the intent of prime minister Cameron’s plan, and by wording their headline as they have, the Guardian (and, I expect, other newspapers) are deliberately misrepresenting what the government are up to.

The current law already allows for the confiscation of terror suspects’ passports – “terror suspects” meaning people who are suspected of engaging in terrorism. This new law is rather an extension of the old, much-criticized “control orders”, which allowed the authorities to keep people under virtual house arrest because the police think the individual might engage in terrorism. The law allowed for control orders to be imposed on individuals without telling the “suspect” what evidence existed. If you’re put under a control order as a result of evidence that you and your legal representatives aren’t allowed to see, how are you supposed to effectively defend himself? What if the evidence is faulty? How can you appeal, when you don’t know what lies the authorities are using to impose the control order?

And now the thought crime is going one step further. “Oh look, there’s a British Muslim trying to leave the country. He’s got a return ticket to Paris on the Eurostar, but maybe he isn’t really planning to return. Maybe he’s going to travel on to Syria or Iraq and behead people. After all, that’s what Muslims do, isn’t it? Look on Youtube, you’ll see a video of an American journalist being beheaded by a British Muslim. Bloody British Muslims, all the bloody same. Better take away is passport.”

Secret evidence, secret courts, all makes me think “secret police”, and “police state”. Maybe you don’t care because you’re not a Muslim? Well, who do you expect to come rescue you when the authorities decide that people like you might be a threat? Pull your head out of your butt; and don’t give me any of that “Can’t happen here” crap, because it is happening here, now.

Incidentally, the UK terror threat was raised from substantial to severe for the first time since 2010. This means that an attack is deemed to be “highly likely” – although not necessarily imminent. Who decided that? Them. And you must never question what they say or do…

***TOTALLY OFF-TOPIC ANNOUNCEMENT***
According to WordPress, this is my 399th post. Which means the next post will be #400!! That’s got to be a cool anniversary, yeah? So get in touch, tell me what you’d like me to write about, and I’ll try to please you all. If you’re familiar with I HATE HATE!!! you know I’m perfectly capable of writing about anything, even stuff I know absolutely nothing about. And if no one makes any suggestions, I’ll pretend someone did and write some drivel about something no one knows or cares about. Something else you know I’m perfectly capable of, if you are at all familiar with this blog…

Why don’t you love me any more?

Just checking out my blog’s visitor counter, and discovered a horrible truth: you don’t love me any more!

Oh Goddess, I’m so very very sad. Why doesn’t the internet love me any more?

2013 was my best year. Thousands and thousands of visitors, so many it made my head spin (like that nice little girl in “The Exorcist”). But this year the stats have taken a dive. I still have regular visitors, but not as many as I used to. And drive-by hits have plunged. You seem to hate I HATE HATE!!! And I don’t know why…

So, those few of you who still read my blog: please please please let me know through Comments or the Contact link, and tell me what I can do to win back my beloved users. Porn? Online gambling? Role-playing games in which you can be a hobbit, lightly toasted by a dragon for its supper? I’m open to all ideas. Well, maybe not all ideas; but you get my drift, yeah?c

Israel kill a woman and child. Completely justifiable, of course…

After 8 days of relative quiet in Gaza, an Israeli air strike killed the wife and son of the Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif. As the attack was targeted at Deif, Israeli military consider the Hamas commander’s home as fair game. They have tried to kill Deif several times. They use air strikes as a method of assassination, and of course a missile will kill not only the intended target but also anyone near him. This is what happened overnight (20 August).

Scene of the air strike that killed the wife and child of Mohammed Deif

I wonder: if Hamas bombed the home of an Israeli commander and killed his family, would Israel shrug its collective shoulders and say “Fair enough”? Or would they condemn it as an evil terrorist attack slaying innocent children etc? What do you think? Seriously, I’d love to know your opinion. Please let us know via Comments.

Using air strikes to carry out assassinations is a cowardly act. Israel is known to have efficient special forces and other soldiers. So when they want to kill a particular military individual, why don’t they send in troops to find and shoot him? Why do they prefer to use missiles launched from fighter planes or drones, which will kill arbitrary people in the area, such as innocent passers-by or, as in this latest case, non-combatant family members? To me it seems plain: the much vaunted Israeli Defence Force is commanded by cowards. Much better to kill 100 children than to risk losing a single soldier.

I do not support Hamas, or the Al-Aqsa Brigades or Islamic Jihad. But Israeli arrogance and cowardly aggression makes me sick. And the fact that only 6% of Israelis recently polled think that too much force is being used against Gaza makes me wonder why this so-called free, developed democratic state gets so much support from the UK and other governments. Israel is a blustering, cowardly terrorist state.

Why aren’t terrorists considered as political prisoners?

Seems to me that many terrorists are the epitome of political prisoners. According to MI5:

Although there is no generally agreed definition of terrorism internationally, in the UK the Terrorism Act 2000 new window defines terrorism as:

The use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause; and it involves or causes:

serious violence against a person;
serious damage to a property;
a threat to a person’s life;
a serious risk to the health and safety of the public; or
serious interference with or disruption to an electronic system.

See my emphasis there? If someone is in jail for a politically-motivated act, surely he is a political prisoner?

Groups like Amnesty International pick and choose amongst politically-motivated prisoners – from Wikipedia:

AI uses the term “political prisoner” broadly. It does not use it, as some others do, to imply that all such prisoners have a special status or should be released. It uses the term only to define a category of prisoners for whom AI demands a fair and prompt trial.

In AI’s usage, the term includes any prisoner whose case has a significant political element: whether the motivation of the prisoner’s acts, the acts in themselves, or the motivation of the authorities.

“Political” is used by AI to refer to aspects of human relations related to “politics”: the mechanisms of society and civil order, the principles, organization, or conduct of government or public affairs, and the relation of all these to questions of language, ethnic origin, sex or religion, status or influence (among other factors).

The category of political prisoners embraces the category of prisoners of conscience, the only prisoners who AI demands should be immediately and unconditionally released, as well as people who resort to criminal violence for a political motive.

See how airy-fairy their definition is? It’s a nonsense.

Look at the case of Nelson Mandela. He was almost universally viewed as a political prisoner. But was he non-violent? Again, from Wikipedia:

Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

Bloody hypocrisy. “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” blah blah, okay, but surely he’s a political prisoner whether you sympathise with him or not?

Go see Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and ask him if he was a political prisoner. When he was tried for being near a car containing 250 pounds (110 kg) of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition, he refused to accept the legitimacy of the court and declared his membership of the Provisional IRA without equivocation: “We have fought against the killing of our people… I am a member of Óglaigh na hÉireann and very, very proud of it.”

Martin McGuinness of the IRA… political prisoner or not?

World War One Commemoration: Atrocities, by Siegfried Sassoon, uncensored version

As everyone is commemorating the start of World War One (“The Great War”, “The war to end all wars”) today, I thought I’d do my bit. The famous war poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote a poem “Atrocities”, one of the many he wrote concerning the first world war. When it was published in 1919, it was censored to hide any anti-war sentiment it might contain. It was republished in uncensored format in July 2014. You can hear actor Samuel West reading it here. And here’s the text.

You bragged how once in savage mood
Your men butchered some Saxon prisoners; that was good.
I trust you felt no pity as they stood
Patient and cowed and scared as prisoners should.
How did you kill them? speak now, don’t be shy,
You know I love to hear how Germans die
Downstairs in dug-outs, ‘Camerad!” they cry;
And squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
I’m proud of you; perhaps you’ll feel as brave
Alone in no-man’s land when no one can shield you from the horror of the night.
There’s blood upon your hands
Now go out and fight.
I hope those Huns will haunt you with their screams
And make you gulp their blood in ghoulish dreams.
You’re great at murder; tell me, can you fight?

Never forget.