Actions not words

It emerged in the Guardian this week that secret tapes of people being waterboarded by the US have been wiped. And guess what? The CIA agents who did the wiping have been exonerated of any wrongdoing. So that is alright then.

This from the country who bang on about democracy and the rule of law until 'National Security' is mentioned. Then its throw away the rule book.

There is now a mound several metres high in Washington. 

It is made up of discarded rule books.

Frocking Hell

What have we here? A handful of men in frocks, unhappy that women will soon be wearing similar frocks are going to join another frock-wearing fraternity. And this fraternity has decreed that to be a female frock-wearer in their community is on a par with child abuse. And they should know. For their fraternity has committed, covered up and colluded with systematic child abuse for generations. 

Frocking lunacy.

David Cameron - a PR disaster

The news that Cameron has engaged his own personal photographer and cameraman on short-term contracts (to avoid the usual appointments procedure) says a great deal about 'Call me Dave.'

At a time when thousands of citizens face losing their jobs without much chance of getting another for some considerable time, it is a spectacular own goal for a so-called PR maestro. Or is it? Maybe he doesn't give a damn. 

As shallow as the scum on a stagnant pond.

Airport Security disgrace

Further to yesterdays posting about airport security. Dominic Lawson went into more personal reasons for concern in his Independent article.

"If we are to continue with the present arrangements and ignore the pleas of BA's chairman, however, then at least we have a right to demand this: that the whole rigmarole is carried out pleasantly and in a civilised fashion."

"This is by no means always the case, as illustrated by last week's story of how the X Factor contestants known as Jedward were regularly mocked by staff at Heathrow Airport (which they use three times a week to fly home to Dublin). The twins complained that they were continually pulled up for extra screening, for the amusement of the security officials; they finally made a formal complaint when a member of Heathrow's staff tried to force one of the twins to remove his trousers and the leg brace he wears to protect a broken ankle."

"BAA has now emailed an apology to the twins, admitting that "nothing excuses the behaviour". One would very much like to have the official responsible named and identified, but that will never happen, a fact which became apparent to me after my father had a similarly unpleasant experience at Gatwick last year. He has a lot of trouble with his legs (which has involved surgery) and so complained that he could not take off his shoes, as demanded at the security check, unless a chair were provided. This was eventually done with such spectacular gracelessness that my father told the security officer, after all the scanning was completed, that his attitude was disgraceful. At this point a uniformed, more senior, officer emerged, demanded my father hand over his passport and, when he refused, rang ahead to the easyJet flight and told them not to allow my father on the plane, lying that he had "not passed through security".

Eventually my father managed to get on a later flight to his destination. When he wrote to BAA to complain about its staff's behaviour, he was immediately reimbursed his extra fare – an admission of improper behaviour, one would have thought – but then the company's response to his request to know the identity of the security officer, and whether or not the man had been reprimanded, was to say that this was not possible "because of the Data Protection Act". Isn't it priceless that people who act with such contempt for the freedoms of others can be so quick to hide behind civil liberties legislation in order to evade proper exposure?" Independent 2/11/10

What a litany of abuse is taking place in the name of 'security.' A passenger travelling from Glasgow to Islay by plane had an even more alarming incident. As she waited in the Departure Lounge she asked a female official if there was a place to buy a bottle of water. The official was very offhand and dismissive. So much so that the passenger asked for her name. At this, the official turned her name badge over so her name could not be read and stonked off. End of story? No way. What followed illustrates perfectly what happens when nameless officials are given powers beyond their wildest imaginings.

The passenger boarded the small plane. After settling in she was approached by another official and asked to leave the plane. As she got off she was met by two armed policemen who said she was being questioned under anti-terror legislation. She was escorted away in full view of the remaining passengers. 

What happened next on the plane was astonishing. The Stewardess asked all the passengers to check that every item of luggage was theirs and could be accounted for. The seat where the removed passenger had sat was then systematically stripped of all its foam padding, right down to the bare metal frame. While this was going on her bag had been removed from the cargo hold, loaded onto a trolley and carried away to remote part of the airfield. By this time several passengers had become very alarmed at what was happening. The flight had also been seriously delayed while all this went on. 

The passenger was interviewed by the police who explained that she had been reported for taking pictures with her mobile phone in the Departure Lounge. She told the officers that she had a new mobile phone and was using the waiting time to get acquainted with its applications. She also told them about her run in with the official. The officers apparently realised they were involved in something innocent and became very helpful. They reunited her with her bag and also helped her get somewhere to stay.

As a frequent user of the Glasgow Airport the passenger found the experience very scary and intimidating. To her massive credit she took action and complained to the Airport Authorities. One of whom apologised but the airline did not. And there it stands. What happened to the malicious official? 

Just how many of these 'revenge' accusations are taking place? How many malicious searches happen on a daily basis? How many good looking young women get called over for extra attention? And what right of redress has someone with the bottle to challenge these bastards got? 

It takes a lot of nerve to take on 'authority' in all its pomp and especially over so-called 'security' issues. Our supine Parliamentarians can harrumph all they like but the balance between the state and the individual needs redressing urgently.

Dominic Lawson

Not a favourite columnist (and a loathsome Chancellor) but his thoughts in the Independent this week about the latest security incident are well worth reading.

"A novelist would regard it as too crudely ironic, yet these are the facts: the very day after the chairman of BA broke cover to denounce the "completely redundant" security checks to which his passengers are subjected, the security services discover ink cartridges rigged with explosives on board a cargo plane at East Midlands airport, en route to the US from Yemen."

"Despite the fact that the booby-trapped cartridges were addressed to two synagogues in Chicago, David Cameron declared that the intention was for the explosive devices to be set off while in mid-air, allowing the more excitable newspapers to declare that this would have been "another Lockerbie". In such an atmosphere of fear, the BA chairman's demand that we stop "kowtowing to America" in imposing "redundant" security checks (such as those involving the scrutiny of passengers' footwear) seems doomed to be dismissed, even though it is objectively as reasonable a remark now as when he uttered it. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that the people denounced yesterday by Ryanair's Michael O'Leary as "the securocracy" are actually pleased by this development; no, the happier crew will be the bomb-makers themselves, because the disruption of Western lives and businesses through the implementation of ferocious security measures is a principal objective, which means that the mere discovery of a device with potential to kill is a strike in their favour: even their failures can be judged a success, as long as we in the West react disproportionately or, better still, hysterically."

"The Prime Minister told the News of The World at the weekend that we "must not compromise with security". But we do, of course, and must. The only mass-murder successfully achieved by Islamist terrorists in the UK occurred not on an aeroplane but on the London Underground. Are we checked by scanners as we enter the Tube? Are even those wearing rucksacks required to show anyone their contents? No, and no. Why is this not done? Principally because if it became intolerably oppressive and time-consuming to negotiate the Underground network, London would be gridlocked and the economy of the region would experience something akin to a stroke. So, of course, a compromise is made with security."

"There is a second reason why the security services are relatively relaxed about the fact that checks are not made on the Underground: they know that in reality such procedures are not the way in which devices – let alone plots – are detected. The discovery of the allegedly explosive ink cartridges was typical in that it was the result of prior work by an intelligence service, in this case the Saudi Arabian one, which tipped off the British and American authorities. So far as I am aware, there have been no al-Qa'ida explosive devices unearthed as a result of airport scanning checks: the "airline bomb" plot of August 2006 was absolutely characteristic in being uncovered at an earlier stage by the intelligence services."

"The chances of detecting devices by random checks on the day of delivery are far lower than the long-suffering public may think. The US Transportation Security Administration each year runs dummy tests in the nation's biggest airports to measure the success of its scanners and security staff in detecting deliberately planted "devices". In its most recent report, it revealed that roughly 75 per cent of the fake bombs or component parts were not detected by any of the screening processes."

So the vast panoply of people, scanners, sniffer dogs and surveillance only works a quarter of the time. A fact the securocracy would prefer to keep hidden.

Anti-terror

Oh dear! Just a couple of days after airline bigwigs talked sense about the ridiculously OTT airport security along comes manna from heaven for the security industry. Two ink refills were found with explosives in them. What an opportunity for the doom-mongers and vested interests to get their twopennorth into the supine media. First out of the blocks was notorious bully and former Home Secretary John Reid. He used the incident to pooh-pooh the airline chiefs. Well he would wouldn't he, he works for the security industry. 

As Julian Glover reported in yesterdays Guardian, "Jack Straw has given the game away. In the Observer on Sunday, he let slip the secret of the war on terror. "Never, ever, downplay the possible consequences." Ghouls under the bed, germs in the kitchen and al-Qaida's out to get us all: this is alarmist, and the coalition shouldn't fall for it. The telling word in Straw's statement is "possible". 

Any quote from the egregious Straw should be treated with extreme caution. He too is involved in the arms trade.

Glover went on, "There is another danger we need to be aware of too: the symmetry of self-interest between the would-be bombers and the security services assembled to stop them. Both have a tendency to magnify serious but isolated incidents into one great interconnected global battle. The American military likes to describe the arc of terror that supposedly runs from Afghanistan through Pakistan into Yemen and down through Somalia. The British security services warn us, as Sir John Sawers did in a generally wise speech last week, about "the plotting of terrorists who are bent on maiming and murdering people in this country".

These people aren't making it up. But they are part of a mentality that encourages us to believe there really is a clash of civilisations under way and that if we don't give them the tools to destroy the other side first, they will destroy us."

Years ago, a retiring President Eisenhower warned that the greatest danger facing the world was the arms-industrial complex. And so it came to pass in the Cold War. 

How convenient for the Soviet Bloc to be replaced by terrorism.

Jobsworths and pompous little prats at airports and in local authorities across the country have relished (and abused) the authority given to them by Parliament. MPs alarmed by the consequences of their disastrous Iraq War vote reacted to the warnings of the security services with alacrity. The self-same security services who assured us and them that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction…..

Many MPs were incapable of comprehending that to bring in all these security measures reinforced the terrorists and accorded them a power they do not merit. Handing over long-held freedoms is not the way to win the absurd 'war on terror.' Last week it was reported that the Police used anti-terror laws to stop and search over a thousand black and asian men without there being one follow up charge.  

The LibDems and the Tories said they would repeal and revoke the many anti-civil liberty orders pushed through by the last government and declared as such in their Coalition Agreement document.   Andrew Rawnsley said in his article in the Observer that the siren songs of the security services were weaving their spell over the Coalition. He concluded, "if they cannot hold true to their pledges on such fundamentals as justice and human rights, it will be hard to resist the conclusion that they can’t be trusted with anything".

Deeply deeply shaming

"Two passengers who attempted to voice their concern as a man was "violently" deported aboard a flight from Heathrow say they were thrown off the aircraft and quizzed by armed police.

The pair, both students, claim the man screamed as he was restrained by three guards from private security firm G4S, who were pinning him in his seat.

"He was handcuffed, clearly in pain and being violently restrained," said Matt Taylor, 29, an undergraduate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

There has been concern about the treatment of deportees since the death earlier this month of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan failed asylum seeker who collapsed as he was being heavily restrained by G4S guards on a British Airways plane at Heathrow. After his death, fellow passengers who heard his cries for help said they regretted not having intervened.

"The passengers around me looked at each other in disbelief as they were confronted by the scene of this restrained man calling out for help," said Taylor. "Clearly the man was in considerable distress and pain."

He said the man screamed for several minutes as more passengers boarded the plane. "He was asking for his medication, with a minder telling him, 'You'll get your medication in Nairobi.' The man called out 'Help, help' repeatedly and shouted that he would kill himself in Kenya [if the deportation went ahead]."

Taylor said one of the G4S guards then leant over and pinned the man in his seat as other passengers became increasingly upset. Taylor went to approach the flight attendants but a guard told him to go back to his seat.

"I was immediately pushed in my back by one of the men that had been violently restraining the African man; he told me to sit down, keep quiet and that the African man was being deported, that these men were his escort or minders."

As the deportee continued to scream, Taylor decided he had to do something. "I was sitting there and decided I had to stand up for my values. I did not want to sit there for the next eight or nine hours feeling like I had sold out, like I had let this man down."

The pair demanded to see the captain but the request was initially refused. After the plane began to taxi the captain appeared and Taylor raised his concerns, but says they were dismissed.

"I was told by the cabin crew I could sit at the front of the plane so that I would not hear the man screaming. Which misses the point really."

The pair continued to voice their concerns before the captain ordered the plane to return to the terminal, where armed police were waiting for Taylor and Bowman.

"They were crowding around the exit and gave me the 'option' of leaving the plane – which I did. I had every privacy of mine invaded by the police, who analysed my passport, inquiring why I had visited countries such as Sri Lanka and UAE."

Taylor said he was questioned under anti-terrorism powers (my emphasis) for several hours before the pair were escorted to the underground station at Heathrow, where "it was suggested" he get on a train to London.

Taylor said: "Witnessing the extreme distress of that man being violently restrained against his will and being detained myself was extremely distressing. Perhaps this shows what happens when passengers do voice concern over the treatment of a deportee, but I would do it again because what we went through is nothing compared to the trauma that poor man had to endure."

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said: "The safety and security of our passengers and crew is of paramount importance."

She added: "The Home Office makes the flight and security arrangements for all deportee passengers. It is not for the airline to refuse to carry a deportee passenger on the grounds of their immigration case as the airline has no knowledge of individual cases." Guardian Online 31/10/2010

Voicing concerns over the treatment of a fellow human being is now deemed to be within the remit of the anti-terror laws? What a disgraceful use of police powers, what an indictment of the last government and its attitude to civil liberties and what a legacy of thirteen years of NewLabour strutting its macho stuff on the world stage. And what does it say about our society and our attitude to illegal immigrants? Is this the best we can do?

Deeply shaming.