by Chris Bertram on September 16, 2005
I hesitate to come over all Mel P here, but I was astonished to read “the following bit of opportunism”:http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/breaking/view=newsarticle.law?GAZETTENEWSID=252206 in the Law Society Gazette from the Solicitors’ Pro Bono Group:
bq. The government should not profit from compensation payments made to victims of the London bombings when its own policies may have contributed to the attacks, the Solicitors Pro Bono Group (SPBG) claimed last week. SPBG acting chief executive Robert Gill said that lawyers had not provided advice to victims free of charge ‘so that the government could save money’. ….
bq. ‘It is normal for CICA payments to be taken off benefits, but in these circumstances it should be different. It is about a particular set of actions which in part were brought about by the fact that Britain has taken a prominent role in Iraq – which was a government decision. Government action is part of the reason [for the events], so it is not fair that the government should benefit from private citizens who are injured.’
The government quite reasonably insists that the same rules apply for all Criminal Injuries compensation cases and that bomb victims should be treated the same as everyone else.
Need some good news?
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Authorities arrested the nation’s most-wanted militant, the head of al-Qaida operations in Pakistan who had a $10 million bounty on his head, and said Wednesday they now were ”on the right track” to catch Osama bin Laden.
Abu Farraj al-Libbi, who allegedly orchestrated two assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was arrested after a firefight on the outskirts of Mardan, 30 miles north of Peshawar, capital of the deeply conservative North West Frontier Province, the government and security officials said.
Via praktike, who has more.
by Chris Bertram on April 2, 2005
Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the St Pauls in Bristol riots that initiated a period of urban unrest in Britain which ultimately led to the “Scarman”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Scarman report. The riots followed a police raid on the Black and White cafe on 2nd April 1980. The Bristol Evening Post has “some”:http://www.thisisbristol.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144936&command=displayContent&sourceNode=144919&contentPK=12141802&moduleName=InternalSearch&keyword=riots&formname=sidebarsearch “coverage”:http://www.thisisbristol.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144936&command=displayContent&sourceNode=144919&contentPK=12145074&moduleName=InternalSearch&keyword=riots&formname=sidebarsearch , but I’ve not managed to find much on the web (the BBC’s “On This Day”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/default.stm page ignores the events entirely). The following day’s Daily Telegraph headlined with:
bq. 19 Police Hurt in Black Riot
and editorialized thus:
bq. Lacking parental care many (black youths) ran wild. Incited by race-relations witchfinders and left-wing teachers and social workers to blame British society for their own shortcomings, lacking the work-ethic and perseverance, lost in a society itself demoralized by socialism, they all too easily sink into a criminal sub-culture. (Quotes from “an academic paper”:http://www.psa.ac.uk/cps/1995%5Crowe.pdf .)
I doubt that even the Telegraph would dare to cover such events in these terms today. Contrary to the Telegraph’s fantasy version, neither these riots nor the ones of the following year in Brixton, Handsworth, Toxteth and elsewhere were race riots — black and white youths were involved together, though systematic racial harrassment by the police (throught the “Sus” law) and pervasive racial discrimination undoubtedly underlay the events. This was an important moment in postwar British history, now all but forgotten.
by Henry Farrell on March 17, 2005
I was writing a post about Eugene Volokh’s “defence”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_13-2005_03_19.shtml#1111021309 of the “deliberate infliction of pain, “slow throttling,” and “cruel vengeance” when I saw that Chris had “beaten me to the punch”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/17/volokh-on-capital-punishment-and-cruel-and-unusual-punishment/. I find the argument that the justice system should be used as a means to inflict cruelty in order to satisfy victims’ – and society’s – desire for vengeance rather appalling. It’s a return to the idea that the animating ideal of justice should be vengeance and public display rather than the correction and dissuasion of wrongdoing. Which is not to say that the modern idea of justice doesn’t have its own, more abstract cruelties, as Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff have pointed out – but the claim that the justice system sometimes needs to inflict pain for the purpose of inflicting pain is something which we should have gotten rid of a couple of centuries ago. At least Eugene is being honest here. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that most of the “nonsensical defences of torture”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/15/needles-under-the-nails/ that we see, invoking “ticking bombs”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/06/18/by-the-power-of-stipulation-i-have-the-power and the like, are so many insincere public justifications of an underlying desire to torture the terrorists not to get information, but because they’re terrorists (and if a few innocents get caught up in the system, you can’t make an omelette &c &c). But that Eugene’s defence is sincere doesn’t mean that it’s not repugnant to a set of minimal liberal commitments that are shared by many leftists, classical liberals, Burkean conservatives and others.
by Chris Bertram on March 17, 2005
“Eugene Volokh writes”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_13-2005_03_19.shtml#1111021309 :
bq. “Something the Iranian government and I agree on”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4353449.stm : I particularly like the involvement of the victims’ relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he’d killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there’s a good explanation.
And there’s more …..
bq. I should mention that such a punishment would probably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. I’m not an expert on the history of the clause, but my point is that the punishment is proper because it’s cruel (i.e., because it involves the deliberate infliction of pain as part of the punishment), so it may well be unconstitutional. I would therefore endorse amending the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause to expressly exclude punishment for some sorts of mass murders.
Those, like me, who are startled and upset to read Volokh writing like this, might want to visit the website of the “National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty”:http://www.ncadp.org/ or visit David Elliot’s “Abolish the Death Penalty blog”:http://www.deathpenaltyusa.blogspot.com/ .
by Maria on February 23, 2005
Via Statewatch, a story of four Air Horizon passengers being prosecuted by the French government for objecting to a forced deportation on their flight. Probably the most chilling aspect is the insistence by cabin crew, policy, the airline and the state that it’s perfectly normal to share a plane with a hysterical man crying “I am not a slave” as he is assaulted and gagged by a glove shoved into his mouth.
This is the reality of European immigration policy, whether we like it or not. And as bizaare and Kafka-esque as it is to prosecute people who object to being made a part of the machinery of expulsion, the fact is that the young Congolese man was safer on a commercial flight than using another means.
Perversely, I’m glad that four articulate and well-connected Europeans are being prosecuted for doing their moral duty. It seems to me that every time we accept a narrowing of human rights as a trade-off for better security, we do so on the unspoken assumption that the person suffering will never be ‘one of us’.
As most readers will know, it has recently come to the attention of the world that lawyers in the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel have prepared a memo arguing that torture can be authorized by the President. The argument, as I understand it, is that when the President believes that he is operating in his capacity as Commander in Chief, he has unlimited power, which cannot be constrained by the Legislature. It goes so far as to say that authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”
Michael Froomkin’s analysis of the torture memo is an invaluable example of the best of blogging. (Also see Jim Henley, Eric Muller, von from Obsidian Wings, among others.)
On pages 22-23 the Walker Working Group Report sets out a view of an unlimited Presidential power to do anything he wants with “enemy combatants”. The bill of rights is nowhere mentioned. There is no principle suggested which limits this purported authority to non-citizens, or to the battlefield. Under this reasoning, it would be perfectly proper to grab any one of us and torture us if the President determined that the war effort required it. I cannot exaggerate how pernicious this argument is, and how incompatible it is with a free society. The Constitution does not make the President a King. This memo does.
Via TalkLeft, I see that Sen. Dick Durbin has introduced:
an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill to reaffirm US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and to affirm unequivocally the prohibition against torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
TalkLeft has a good deal of information about this, including a sample letter of support for this amendment which can be adapted and forwarded to your representatives in Congress. Here’s a good resource for contacting them. Please do this.
One last point, in which I get a little emotional.
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by Maria on March 25, 2004
Today, European leaders meet to wave through a raft of measures purported to fight terrorism. The public story is that the bombings in Spain have galvanised EU member states into wider and deeper cooperation to prevent and detect terrorism. The reality is that many of the measures to be agreed have little directly to do with fighting terrorism, and much to do with increasing police powers and budgets.
Update Thanks to Maurice Wessling for the correction that the ‘anti-terrorism co-ordinator’ is actually Gijs de Vries, and not Klaas de Vries. Reuters had a mix-up between the two and I followed along. Gijs de Vries’ biog is here in dutch. He was secretary (under-minister) of the Interior from 1998 to 2002, an MEP from 1984 to 1998, and the Dutch representative in the EU Convention negotiations. Maurice reckons de Vries’ appointment still signals a lack of seriousness in co-ordinating European intelligence agencies, saying ‘he has little experience in counter-terrorism and he will have no powers to force any policy. His task will be to write a report. So the name ‘counter-terrorism tsar’ is way over the top.”
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by Daniel on December 19, 2003
Just “feeding the baby” with a couple of links really …
Stuff from Maxspeak, Paul Krugman and Calpundit relevant to our own discussion of “Equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity”. Read them all. (If you want to that is, I mean it’s not like I’m ordering you to read any of them or even suggesting that you’ll be materially less well-informed if you don’t. I’m just sort of suggesting that they might be a little bit more interesting than what’s in the newspaper today)
Personally, I’ve always had a hard time taking this debate seriously. Specifically, I’ve never received (not for want of asking) a satisfactory answer from anyone who talks about “equality of opportunity” to the following two questions (also inspired by my time at business school, which I am coming to believe may have been less wasted than it seemed to be at the time)
1. What’s the point of doing anything if you’re not going to check whether it worked or not?
2. How do you find out whether a course of action worked or not, other than by the results?
by Maria on September 11, 2003
“The legislative measures which I have outlined will protect and enhance our rights – not diminish them, justice for individuals are reaffirmed and justice for the majority and the security of our nation will be secured.” So David Blunkett told Parliament when he introduced the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill, in autumn 2001. The Act allowed the UK to derogate from Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concerning the liberty and security of individuals. Today, the UK is still in the ‘state of emergency’ used to justify these derogations to its international human rights commitments.
“I don’t want anyone to be under the misapprehension that some group of very innocent individuals who just wandered into this country are somehow going to be banged away for life.” Last week, three law lords ruled that the House of Lords should hold a hearing on the legality of the indefinite detention without charge of a dozen foreign nationals.
On the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop and search 995 anti-war protesters at an RAF base earlier this year; “The Terrorism Act 2000 is not being applied in the prevention of protests at RAF Fairford. Powers under this legislation are applied solely for the prevention and investigation of acts of terrorism.” On the use of Section 44 to stop and search protesters outside an arms fair in London this week; “I have asked that the head of the counter-terrorism branch should report back on why it was that they chose to use that particular part of the counter terrorism legislation rather than wider public order legislation.” UK police forces cannot use Section 44 without informing the Secretary of State. The Act in question is intended to target terrorists, not citizens invoking freedom of expression and assembly in a democratic country. Either Blunkett is giving the nod to using terrorism legislation to curb legitimate protesters, or the police are running out of control.
“We could live in a world which is airy fairy, libertarian, where everybody does precisely what they like and we believe the best of everybody and then they destroy us”. Or we could live in a country where the foremost legal experts believe human rights have been fatally undermined by the ‘war on terror’; the Law Society of England and Wales*, Liberty, and Amnesty International. Surely there is a middle ground.
On seeing the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act through Parliament; ‘I genuinely think that the British people will say, “Well done. Parliament has shown itself in a good light and we are proud of what you have done.”‘
Update
Statewatch reports on use of Section 44 too, noting that while peace protesters were detained under terrorism legislation outside the arms fair in London. Inside, there are cluster bombs a-plenty for sale. Using terrorism provisions police have arrested two protesters for “behaving suspiciously”.
Disclosure; I wrote the chapters on communications data retention and Third Pillar powers.
by Maria on September 9, 2003
Next month I plan to go to Washington D.C. for a fellowship event of the 21st Century Trust. But with the new visa rules to the US, I can’t simply rely on being white and English-speaking to get me through immigration without a scratch. Luckily, citizens of countries belonging to the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) won’t need a visa as long as they have a machine readable passport. My passport isn’t ‘machine readable’, so from 1st October I’ll need to either have a new passport or apply for visa.
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by Maria on August 9, 2003
The Canadian justice ministry has published the results of last year’s consultation on communications interception. Reading it is like entering an alternate universe where sanity and moderation prevailed. There’s no sign of the draft legislation yet, but the signs are good that it may actually contain the ‘balance’ between law enforcement, human rights and industry interests we’re always hearing about but I have yet to see. And for a justice ministry, the Department of Justice of Canada runs an exemplary consultation.
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