Dangerous Judges USA

Does The BBC count?

Well done, have a walnut whip. Anything US-side yet?

Why, thank you. It now appears to have gone out on AP and to be the lead on American Yahoo, so may I have another walnut whip, please?

No, they're bad for your teeth. The BBC reported it rather mildly, as if assuming most non-US people presumably can't empathise with the supposed hallowed nature of the Constitution and quite what Bush was doing to it.

CNN has it sort-of second after the JonBenet case, which while rather horrible is hardly up there in importance with a war or Constitutional violation, in my book.

You concern for my teeth is most thoughtful. You may buy me a coffee, instead.

Boing Boing report that the Electronic Frontier Foundation have launched a class action lawsuit against AT&T:

'EFF, on behalf of a nationwide class of AT&T customers, is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for its illegal collaboration in the government's domestic spying program, which has violated the law and damaged the fundamental freedoms of the American public. The lawsuit request an injunction and damages under the statute. The laws provide that the victims can receive damages of at least $21,000 for each affected person.'

It's all over Google News and elsewhere. This story is getting major coverage. Good.

Craig Murray's posts on the phony terror alert is all over blogdom and moving up the media food chain. Christian Science Monitor has picked it up. Others will follow, I bet.

There's a drop left in the coffee pot, if you'd like it. I've run out of Walnut Whips.

The Guardian doesn't seem to have anything on the story this morning, although they lead with a report lifted from the BBC who got it from a 'police source' and hasn't been confirmed or denied by Scotland Yard. Thin stuff, really. Show us the evidence and charge the suspects, if it's that serious.

The Telegraph has it on its News page, the Independent has it in the 'Americas' section of the front page.

they have found Police probing an alleged plot to bring down airliners have found martyrdom videos, the BBC has learned.

oooHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!fuckin scary.

The future terrorist
will be wearing the following.

The future terrorist
will be wearing the following.

plus exploding trousers.

Given that today's Guardian is saying that the reason we've seen no evidence of any plot officially is 'contempt of court', the old bill are as leaky as a sieve when there's no attribution. Silly people.

'Martyrdom video' covers a whole heap of things - if it's one of the suspects saying 'I'm blowing myself up for Allah' then that's an important development - if it's a copy of the Siddique Khan tape, then you might as well arrest the entire BBC, it's not like it proves anything other than an interest in terrorism, which isn't the same as being a terrorist. The Sun is pretty interested in terrorism, after all. It lends credence to the theory that, for example, taking photographs of Big Ben when you're brown and bearded is an offence, whereas if you're white and clean shaven it isn't. Ali Dizaei nearly had it right, but we seem to be tackling 'terror' by creating an implied offence of 'Existing Whilst Asian', which is straight out of early-1980s satire - remember Griff Rhys Jones as Constable Savage?

Guardian also writes of the plot: 'It was an apocalyptic scenario challenged at the time by journalists'.

I didn't see much challenging journalism at the time. Anyone?

Don't they normally make it easy to find the 'martyrdom' tapes / dvd's etc much easier to 'find' or is this a John Reid feed-the-press-something-anything-so-that-they keep-this-on-the-headlines kinda story. And make sure that the PFI's for NHS hospitals is now showing to be such a bad deal for the tax payers? In fact NHS hospitals often go into dept now just so they can pay their PFI fees.
read on here

Publishing details of supposed evidence isn't contempt of court, because no one's been charged with anything yet. What I think they meant is that its publication might, if and when charges are brought, scupper the chances of a trial because the defence would argue that jurors would tend to have pre-judged the issue on what they've read. That sort of application is likely, anyway, since Dr Reid and senior police officers have already repeatedly given their view that 'the "main players" in the plot seemed to have been accounted for'. The defence will also probably argue that publishing the names of suspects whose bank accounts have been frozen was prejudicial, too.

Reid, of course, has form for this sort of thing (as have previous Home Secretaries -- e.g. Straw and the Afghan hijackers) in that he took part in that highly publicised arrest of some alleged illegal immigrants; possibly not a wise move in that he's supposed to sit in a quasi-judicial capacity on their final appeals against deportation and may very well thus have disqualified himself from so doing.

To my mind, it's a bit unfair to blame the old bill in general (as opposed to senior officers who give statements) for being leaky. In a case like this, when there's massive public interest and hundreds of cops involved, it's inevitable that things are going to leak -- that's one reason I take any claims of huge cover-ups and hoaxes with a pinch of salt. If you're going to blame anyone, blame the press for publishing the details.

The boys-in-blue do have some form with regard to leaks - remember the misinformation following the execution of de Menezes? The police, MI5 and Downing Street all have their own PR departments.

As to blaming the press, many senior journalists within the press are security service shills (Dominic Lawson, Leonard Doyle, Charles Moore etc.). Even those that aren't shills are in bed with the government media departments.

http://www.williambowles.info/media/2006/0306/media_spooks.html

Reid is an incompetent, but there aren't many people for Tony to choose from in appointing a government minister:

"You have to find maybe ninety people to form a government. You have perhaps 350 or so people to choose from. Once you have eliminated the bad, mad, drunk and over-the-hill, you've got rid of a hundered. Then you have to pick ninety people out of a pool of two hundred and fifty. Is it any wonder the calibre is so low?"

- Tristan Garel-Jones, Foreign Office Minister in John Major's government.

You also have to factor in the specific restrictions Blair has when forming a cabinet, he can only consider those who are prepared to back his[the government] position over Iraq... That limits the pool still further, and explains appointments like Des Browne at defence - described by Iain Dale as:
"so overpromoted he makes Ian McCartney look positively statesmanlike"...

Certainly the cops have got form for leaking. My point, though, which is why I specified the old bill in general as opposed to senior officers, is that there's a difference between senior officers and the press office manipulating things deliberately and individual cops far lower down the pecking order keeping their favourite reporters and local stringers informed of anything interesting, in return for 'a drink'. You'll always have the latter happening, to my mind, on a major investigation, sometimes to the fury of senior officers because of the havoc it can cause at a trial.

Story about Dr Reid from his academic days, when he was still drinking. An historian friend of mine tells me that people doing research at the Public Record Office in Kew used to gather for a drink in a pub near the station after the PRO closed, before catching the train back to London. It got to the point that they had an alternative pub for the days when John Reid was doing research because people got fed up with drunken Glaswegian tirades from him either when they tried to leave before he wanted to -- 'Not good enough to drink with you, am I?' -- or had the temerity to order a glass of wine rather than a beer; as my friend said, 'I may well be a fat, stuck-up Tory bitch, but I also happen not to like the taste of beer very much'.

Quote: 'The defence will argue that publishing the names of suspects whose bank accounts have been frozen was prejudicial, too.'

Excellent point. If we were living in the real world. But there seems to be some doubt as to whether there is any defence, or whether the 'main players' have been granted lawyers, and I can't find anything concrete to suggest that the all the people on the list even exist.

Remember that the 19 hijackers in 9/11 were never on any passenger lists, at least six were found to be living in another country at the time and the only 'positive' ID of a muslim was Mohammed Atta's passport - the only intact item ever to be miraculously found in the rubble.

Anyone who believes a word of this terror plot is playing with half a deck.

There might be extra problems in securing any convictions in this alleged terror plot if it turns out that information was gathered through torture in Pakistan as seems likely if this Guardian article is anything to go by.

If the case (such as it is) collapses because of this or leaks from the police or assertions from John Reid, then it is possible that America will want the suspects extradited to face what passes for justice over there. That could cause all sorts of problems for the British Government.

If the case collapses, then I think they're safe from the Americans; at least according to Statewatch, double jeopardy -- at least if the first trial has taken place here -- is one of the few remaining bars to extradition. And surely not even this shower would be able to get away with handing over British citizens for trial in the USA on charges concerning an alleged conspiracy hatched in Britain to murder British citizens on flights from a British airport, particularly if one of the reasons they couldn't be tried here was that Dr Reid had shot his mouth off too readily and thus scuppered the chances of a fair trial.

That makes sense, but what if the case doesn't go to trial here because of lack of evidence or John Reid's gob? If America spins it as a plot against the USA because it might have been American airliners targeted, I suspect Blair will have a hard job saying "no". The unbalanced extradition treaty was supposed to have been drafted for suspected terrorists. But I hope you're right.

Trying to extradite them to the US, though, if the case couldn't be brought to trial here because of John Reid, would make the Government look complete idiots. No matter how much Blair tried to spin it about nineteenth (Dickensian, even)century notions of the legal process not being appropriate to the C21st and the unprecedented threat terrorist present to our way of life, along with complaints about unelected, out-of-date judges not balancing the rights of the law abiding majority against those of the criminals, he'd still find himself trying to explain, above howls of protest and hoots of derision from all sides, that these guys were being sent abroad for trial because the Home Secretary's a div.

I can't imagine they'd let it get to that stage. Would they?

I don't suppose that Reid has much time for the bourgeois masquerade of "trial according to the law". Torture them until they squeal, parade them in court to spill their guts, take them to the cellar and shoot them in the back of the head - that's the form, as perfected by his old pals in the KGB. As for whether they're guilty, what the hell has that to do with anything? Lavrenty Beria didn't get where he did by concerning himself about whether people were guilty or not - he just had them killed regardless. Although a more convincing parallel could perhaps be drawn between Reid and Stalin. (Stalin succeeded Lenin, who talked about "useful fools"; Reid aspires to succeed Blair, who is one).

Since he is one of the few remaining members of the bliararchy who have any chance of being taken seriously as a potential anti-Brown leader, Reid no doubt feels he can stick his neck out a very long way without any danger of having Tony chop it off.

It certainly doesn't look as if the good doctor has much time for such bourgeois niceties, at least not if The Independent is to be believed. Just when you think it can't get much worse...:

'Powers to detain terror suspects without trial are being sought by the Home Secretary. John Reid wants much tougher anti-terrorism powers in the wake of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights, and has instructed his officials to draft new measures that would allow him to bypass human rights legislation.'

I'm not at all sure that he can 'bypass human rights legislation' so easily; AIUI, all he could do -- and this might be enough for him, of course -- is delay the inevitable for some years by forcing appellants to take their cases all the way to the ECHR in Strasbourg at enormous public expense. But please, God, let the Tories and Labour backbenchers, at least, remember what a huge success internment without trial wasn't last time round.

Come to think of it, this loops back rather nicely to the discussion of the potential problems with any trial... How on earth is this to be discussed, in Parliament and outside, without frequent, and massively prejudical, discussion of the alleged events that supposedly necessitate such draconian measures?