I'm Turning Into Tony Blair...

It was only a matter of time. I've done a quick appraisal of the last weeks posts on this blog, and they seem the writings of a man obsessed with his own media image, desperately clinging on to the crumbling empire he has built up around him and deluded to the point of insanity on how the public will perceive his legacy. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that I've stopped living off adrenaline for the first time in a year and a half, and my immune system seems to have been detained without trail, resulting in a revolting cold that has rendered me completely incapable of enjoying our moderate success. Anyway, in the interests of this Blog not turning into a self serving ego trip for the director (posts saying "too late" will be deleted...) it seems like we are long overdue some...

Liberty News

Where to begin? We have to start with Tony Blair's final sideswipe at the Media. Tony has either now just completely lost it on the happy pills or is practising for a future career in surreal stand up comedy.



After posing with Wallace and Gromitt outside downing street, the mad king hopped in a limo and went down to Docklands, and blasted a group of stunned hacks for not taking him seriously enough. At one point he appeared to sound slightly self critical when he said that "when he began his premiership there was too much of a reliance on spin". but this turned out to be part of a spiteful rant against newspapers that have stopped reporting facts and stated reporting views. Presumably he was referring to:
-The unquestioning reporting of the government line by most newspapers on The Ricin Case.
-The mad rush to print the governments lies and spin on WMD's the 45 minutes claim and the dodgy dossier.
-The slavish misreporting of the use of the French Veto days before the Iraq War.
-The smearing of David Kelly - after he was dead.
-The blatant use of political arm twisting to win the Hutton case and successfully neuter the BBC.
-The smearing of the Forest Gate brothers, while they detained without charge.

But sadly no. The mad king was talking about further regulations and restrictions on the media, and singled out The Independent as an example of a publication that was getting out of control. Even thought The Indie did not make many friends in this blog by giving us one of the few unkind reviews, Blair has simply descended into childish sniping by attacking the one paper that has actually done it's job over the last 10 years and been a healthy check and a balance on an ever more demonic and authoritarian executive.

Police to sell your DNA Abroad

Yes the British Police have decided that it's not fair to amass the DNA of millions innocent people on a big leaky computer in Britain alone, as it means that only people in the UK can abuse the system. So they have now opened the DNA Database up to all EU member states so that any Tobias, Jaques or Henri can steal and replicate your unique biological blueprint. At least when the access was to UK authorities only, we had some clue of who could have access to your DNA. Now that they have let 15 other countries get their mitts on the database, so practically anyone can access your DNA for a high enough fee. Also the Europeans get a far better deal than we do, as the UK DNA Database is bigger than that of all other member states put together.

Latest Terror Proposals

Are still in complete tailspin. Everyone has revolted over "Dr" John Reid's stop and question powers, but Gordon is still pressing ahead with his 90 days proposals. I haven't had time to do a full response to the consultation paper of last week, but Tim has gone through it and has got it spot on, so check out the detailed criticism here.

Yes there are lots more scary things that we've been sent and will be writing about. Please keep tips and suggestions coming.

And yes I did write a piece for the daily mail. Sort of - I ranted and they ghost wrote it for me - I'm not sure if that makes the situation better or worse. Anyway you can read it and mock here.

The time has come...

Contributor Screening Tonight! Which should be interesting considering the massively diverse groups of people who have taken part. By the looks of things most people who have been involved in the film will be coming along. Notable exceptions will be Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw - but we're going to keep seats free just in case.

Anyone who thought that individual liberty is going to flourish under the stewardship of Gordon Brown, need only scan some of today's news to see that the gradual drift towards authoritarianism will not be slowing down when TB kicks the political bucket.

-Heckler bundled out of Brown's hustings.

Admittedly this was not an 82 year old refugee from the Nazis, so maybe things have improved slightly since Walter Wolfgang was booted out the Labour conference for daring to disagree with New Labour. Gordon's speech on Iraq could well have just been cut and pasted from any of Blair's recent diatribes on this subject. Rather than admit that the country has descended into out and out civil war and make a decision about when pull out the troops, he is copying Blair's favourite trick and avoiding any rational approach to the argument and just insisting that the decision "was right".

The other key similarity in the Brown/Blair rhetoric is the phrase "I acknowledge that this is an issue that has divided the country." Which sounds like an admission of fault but is actually nothing of the kind. It also implies that the country has been divided on the issue equally which is also slightly inaccurate. There's everyone in the country who still thinks the decision to invade Iraq was a good idea (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown & Rupert Murdoch) and those people who don't (the rest of the population).

Russians Refuse to Extradite Litvinenko suspect

The Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett showing, once again, that Britain has less clout on the world stage than Azerbaijan. When other countries (eg The USA, most of Europe, Russia) want to extradite British nationals to stand trail in America, the US simply fills out a form, and off they go - without the need for the tiniest shred of evidence to be presented in a British court. The Natwest Three are still under house arrest in Texas awaiting trial and Alex Stone had his life ruined thanks to a chronic miscarriage of Justice - all because New Labour gleefully hands over British Citizens for extradition even if it's blatantly obvious they are innocent. But when it comes to extraditing people the other way, then suddenly it's a different story. The evidence against the Andrei Lugovoi - the KGB officer accused of poisoning Litvinenko - is compelling, and the head of the DPP has publicly said he should stand trial. But because Britain has a risible record of negotiating extradition treaties, he will probably never face justice in the UK. And there's fat chance of him facing justice in Russia as if he did carry out the poisoning he did so at the behest of teh Russian state itself. When Margaret Beckett requested extradition, The Russians basically told her to get stuffed, and she has scuttled back to the Foreign office to angrily count paperclips with Geoff Hoon.

ID Cards to be used for racial profiling

After soothing noises from the government over the past 3 years that in no way would some one's ethnic background be a reason for them to be stopped for ID, an all party committee of MP's has just announced that this is precisely what will happen. The very fact that they will be brought in for foreigners first, means that statistically you will be more likely to be asked for your ID card if you have dark skin. Papers Please!

Control Order Contradictions

It can't be easy being John Reid. On the one hand you have to justify your hard man image by making wild announcements in the tabloids about being "tough on terror", and on the other hand you've got to sit in front of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and justify these authoritarian measures. His recent performance is riddled with contradictions - first of all saying that Control Orders are not "completely effective" - even though when passing the legislation they said it was "vital to protect the nation from future attacks". And when 3 people had been under control orders for a long period of time (because - according to John Reid - they were all about to commit major terrorist outrages) suddenly escaped, "Dr" Reid then turned around and said there was no need to panic as they were not a threat to the public...

Jarvis Rocks

Jarvis said yes… well he had to really. Write a song called “c*nts are still ruling the world” and you’ve got to expect penniless film-makers banging on your door asking to use it for polemical documentaries about civil liberties. And so the great music chase is complete. Better get the film released before any of the bands change their minds…

Freedom Of Speech – US military style
Isn’t it nice that the US and Britain are exporting their democratic values to the unfortunate people of Afghanistan. The US and UK backed government is now openly arresting journalists who disagree with it. They have presumably taken the lead from US soldiers who enforce censorship among the locals at gunpoint. Recently a convoy of Marines shot and killed 10 people and wounded 33. A budding reporter managed to take some pictures of the incident, but was accosted by the marines and had his pictures deleted. A US commander later justified the deletions on the basis that “untrained” Afghans might capture “visual details that are not as they originally were.” A preliminary enquiry later found that all those killed were unarmed civilians.

Full Guardian Story

Bring out your dead – just don’t count them
Clearly embarrassed by the Iraqi body count, the US backed government in Iraq has now found a cunning way to hide this embarrassment. Stop counting and not letting anyone into the country who looks like they might have a go. Dr Latfa is a respected scientist who was barred from travelling to Iraq by the British Foreign office as he was intending to carry out a study into civilian deaths. Possibly this is an existential argument now being pushed by New Labour – if no-one actually counts dead Iraqis, are they actually dead? Discuss.

iraqi death count story


John Reid attempts to sign Memorandum of Understanding with Foxes
Well it’s the next logical stage isn’t it? While Amnesty International has a fat file showing that the fox has eaten over 300 chickens in the last year, John Reid wants to deport a chicken into the foxes den, and has strict assurances from the fox that this particular chicken will not be eaten, even though the fox signed the memorandum of understanding with the blood of the chicken it ate for lunch.

This is of course New Labour’s long running attempt to deport people back to countries where they face torture. No one knows how much public money they’ve spent trying to bypass the torture conventions, but if they keep this up then the Olympics could be in trouble. Then again if they turned trying to deport people to be tortured into an Olympic sport then John Reid and Tony Blair would be in with the chance of the gold.

On April 27th the court of appeal ruled that John Reid’s precious memorandum of understanding with Libya is not worth the paper it’s written on, so he cannot deport the 2 Libyan nationals back there. This might have something to do with the fact that:
1) Libya is still run by the bloodthirsty lunatic Colonel Gadaffi.
2) The head of Human Rights in Libya is said lunatic’s son.
This is the latest in a long line of Home Office screw ups when trying to send people back to countries where they might be tortured.

John Reid loves torture story

Mouloud Shihali (who is in the film) is in a very similar position. New Labour like to pretend that Algeria is now a land of peace and harmony and it’s perfectly safe for him to return – even though the last two people that they deported (with strict assurances that they would not be harmed) have since been banged up and their show trial is any year soon.