It's all kicking off

It's been a mental couple of days. In no particular order....

First 5 star review!

From the Birmingham Mail - which is nice of them. And an extended plug for the film's first public screening which is at Warwick Arts Centre on Saturday 26th May. Tickets still available but starting to shift so book now to avoid heartache.

ITN News

Used a scene from Taking Liberties in piece on Control Orders. More on the Control Order story below, but it was deeply satisfying to have us inter cut with "Dr" John Reid trying to look tough outside Downing Street.

See The Clip

Myspace traffic still very strong. We should have a new viral/sketch/webclip coming very soon, so watch this space...


The Brummies are revolting!

Even though the press in the midlands is raving about the film, it is still not showing anywhere in the midlands on the opening weekend. A few people in Birmingham have started a campaign to see it, which just involves emailing your local cinema and telling them that they should screen it. Apparently Cineworld Broadstreet Birmingham is the most likely to go for it, so please email them and tell them you want them to open it along with the rest of the country on June 8th. Write to customer.services@cineworld.co.uk

It's been a busy couple of days in the news for civil liberties...

Google launches Fortune Teller Service

Google has taken it's smug hype to a whole new level by saying that it will soon be able to use what it knows about you from your Internet behaviour, to start telling you how you can live your life. The CEO Eric Schmidt (a man who is so damn cool and smug he has a full size snooker table in his toilet) gleefully told a conference in London "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask questions such as:
-'What shall I do tomorrow?', and
-'What job shall I take?'."
Presumably the correct responses are:
-'Tomorrow I shall remove Google from my homepage as they are using private data to make even more money out of me', and
-'any job other than work for google as they obviously have less respect for individual privacy than New Labour.'

John McCarthy Condemns "24"

For helping make torture acceptable. John knows better than anyone what a barbaric and completely counter productive practice torture is, so it's good to see him lining up to slate the crypto-facist wankfest that is "24". Taking Liberties has it's own pop at "24" for much the same reason, he also uses the same clip in his argument as we use in the film (Jack Baur shoots man in the knee and threatens to do the other one unless he talks)

The current resurgence in the use of Torture in The War Against Terror stems from the myth that is the "ticking clock" argument: A bomb's about to go off, and the only way to stop it is to torture someone to get the information you need. The only problem with this argument is that this has never happened once in the history of the world ever. When the proponents of Torture (George Bush, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, "Dr" John Reid and Rupert Murdoch) tell us that Torture is sometimes necessary, they can never describe a single occasion where the ticking clock scenario has actually happened.

Control Order Suspects still on the run.

So to avoid embarrassment, John Reid wants to declare a state of emergency. This was the subject of the ITN news story that used a couple of clips on the film, and the row is still showing no signs of going away. A quick recap:

-A cornerstone of the the Rule of Law is that no one can be detained unless they have been charged with a crime.
-When Britain has tried Internment (ie locking people up without charge) in Northern Ireland in the 70's, it backfired completely and actually helped recruit people to the IRA.
-After 9/11 Blair and Blunkett panicked and brought in a law that gave them the power to detain foreign suspected terrorists without charge. They tried to derogate from the Human Rights Act with the claim that there was "a genuine threat to the life of the nation".
-When the law was tested in 2004, the Law Lords threw out this argument and declared that the real threat to the life of the nation was not from terrorism, but from laws like that.
-Blair and Charles Clarke went back to the drawing board and came up with "Control Orders". This means that the home secretary can now put anyone under house arrest without charge. All he needs is a reasonable suspicion (no need for evidence) and you can be held indefinitely.
-The first problem with this is that completely innocent people end up getting completely screwed - one of them is Mouloud Shihali whose devastating story is told in the film (and this is the clip they used on ITN News)
-The other problem is that people who really are dangerous aren't charged and locked up properly... they just get left on control orders from which anyone can escape from if they put their mind to it.
-At the moment 6 of the 17 people who were placed under control orders are currently on the run. The Government on the one hand has said that these men are so dangerous that they need to be placed under house arrest without charge, but as soon as they do a runner we are told they aren't dangerous in the slightest and there is no need to panic.
-"Dr" John Reid yesterday blamed the whole scenario on whinging Liberals like us, and said that if only he had the power to lock up anyone he wants and throw away the key, we would all be completely safe.
-"Dr" Reid, has also said that he is going to declare a "state of emergency" in order to overturn the offending part of the human rights act (ie the presumption of innocence, Habeas Corpus and other pesky rights) so that he can detain who he wants with impunity.

But what is this state of emergency? Where are all these terrorist attacks that we keep being told are going to happen? And if these men really are that dangerous, why don't the police charge them in the usual way, try them before a jury, and if guilty put them in prison where they belong? New Labour is the very first to howl about "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to the cash for honours affair, but as soon as the "suspect" is a dodgy looking Muslim bloke with a beard then the rule of law no longer applies.

Amnesty International condemns New Labour. Again.

Not that New Labour is going to take a blind bit of notice, but Amnesty's annual report has condemned Britain's record on Human rights, from curtailing the free speech of anti war protesters, to failing to stand up to the US over Guantanamo Bay. Tony Blair's response? Books himself in for a manicure before his tough day on the sofa with Richard and Judy...

And finally...

Robert Rodriguez to remake Barbarella

OK nothing whatsoever to do with civil liberties, but looks pretty damn cool.

We’ve locked picture!

Over a year spent working on this film, hundreds of hours of footage, over 100 contributors and countless stories, reduced to an hour and a half. Dare we say so ourselves it is bloody marvellous.

Now we just have to convince people to come and see it…

Liberty News

On 5th April Amnesty released its latest report on conditions in Guantanamo in which they estimate that 80% of the population are being held in solitary confinement with little or no access to sunlight and exercise. Anyone who is any doubt about the illegality of Guantanamo and the War on Terror needs to read this report.

In other news NPower recently obtained an injunction against the peaceful protesters to stop their protest at the sight of a proposed ash dump in what had been a local beauty spot near the village of Radley. The corporation used the Protection from Harassment law, which was originally conceived as a way of protection people from harassment and anti-social behaviour, but is now being used by large corporations to protect themselves from inconvenient peaceful protesters. The lawyer who specialises in protecting these multinationals is Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden. His law firm is representing NPower in this particular case and also represented EDO against a similarly dangerous group of individuals in our documentary, including an 80-year old painter and his daughter.

What dastardly deeds had the protesters done to deserve this injunction I hear you cry? The most serious allegation was that a guard’s leg had been hit by a van driven by one of the protesters. The protester denies that this ever happened and even the guard admits that the incident did not cause any bruising. Another security guard testified to having overheard one of the protesters referring to the security firm as “the enemy” this made him, “only slightly afraid”. Since most of the security guards are ex-armed forces you would hope that they could withstand a campaign run by, amongst others, a vicar (Malcolm Carroll who is in our film) and a 67 year old physician. NPower claim that this injunction prevents anyone from filming their employees and one of the principal six named individuals was a press photographer, so it is not only being used to stop the protest but also to prevent reporting on the situation. If you want to know more about the protest, here is a link to the website:http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk/

2 Weeks to picture lock.

Yeah right. Film now standing at a whisker under 2 hours which is still too long. Really, really not keen to loose any further stories. In fact have actually added in a cheeky story that we have been chasing for ages… Riz Ahmed, actor and musician. He played one of the Tipton Three in Michael Winterbottom’s excellent film Road to Guantanamo. He went out to the Berlin Film Festival last year where the film deservedly won the Silver Bear. Anyway, Riz flew back to England and was detainted under the Terrorism Act at Luton Airport. The Police knew he was an actor but decided to cause him some grief as he had acted in a film that critisised the government. This McCarthyite incident happened last year and is just one of the tens of thousands of incidents of unwarranted Police behaviour towards young Muslim men. Riz maintains a healthy sense of humour about the whole thing, and still laughs at the irony. The incident inspired him to write the brilliant song The Post 9/11 Blues which was banned on Radio (yes another McCarthy parallel) but has got a massive following on MySpace. The video is also superb and we may be using a little bit of it in the film. Or not.

Note to self for future films, do not keep shooting 2 weeks before picture lock!

Oasis are on board! Not sure if we’re allowed to make this public yet but no doubt I’ll get shouted at if not. The Iraq War montage has always been crying out for a massive epic number. We cut it to Whatever (my favourite Oasis track by miles) and it works perfectly. Ian (our sensational music supervisor) pulled some favours and managed to get a DVD of the cut to Noel Gallagher. Noel gave it the thumbs up and the track is in the film… still can’t quite believe it. The soundtrack is shaping up really well, with confirmations from Annie Lennox, The Stranglers, Franz Ferdinhand. All the artists have agreed to let their music be in the film for basically pennies, and for every copy of the soundtrack that is sold £1 goes to Amnesty International. We are still awaiting some more confirmations, so hopefully in a couple of weeks time we can announce some more big names…