Yet There Is Method In It

I’ve recently been reading a biography of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish Catholic priest who became chaplain to the striking Warsaw Steel workers in the early 1980’s. He was to become heavily involved in the Solidarity movement (the first non-communist controlled trade union federation) providing spiritual guidance and material assistance to prisoners and dissidents and their families particularly in the repressive period of Martial Law between 1981 and 1983 imposed by the Military Council of National Salvation (the cadre of Polish and Soviet Army officers who enforced totalitarian military rule on behalf of the Polish Workers Party). The Solidarity movement, which although quickly banned survived underground and eventually became the first democratically elected government of the post-soviet Polish Third Republic, was comprised of an unusually broad range of political positions including persons associated with the Roman Catholic Church (socially conservative) and the anti-soviet Left.
The Church though severely restricted was not virtually wiped out as in the Soviet Union and as a consequence provided one of the few public forums for political dissident gatherings. As a consequence the Solidarity movement acquired a non-violent character. Fr Jerzy’s sermons which lead to his numerous arrests and interrogations by the secret police became major sources of political inspiration to the Solidarity movement even when it was forced underground.
The religious aspect of the Solidarity movement could be described as a theology of liberation (though distinct from the Marxist inspired Liberation Theology of South America) and recieved public support from the Polish Pope John Paul II.

Here follow some interesting quotes from Fr Jerzy.

“Love cannot exist without justice, love outgrows justice but at the same time it finds reaffirmation in justice…
And justice means acknowledgement of the rights due to each individual; fair pay for honest work, with no fear of dismissal or demotion for holding personal views concerning the good of the nation. Justice is the equality of all citizens before the law. Every court must be free and impartial…
Justice means pluralism for trade unions, and for creative groups which were promised under martial law. Justice would allow young people to form their personality according to models chosen by themselves and not those officially imposed upon them…
These are the fundamental features of a lawful government:
1. The government must play the part of a servant towards the nation…
2. The government must always follow the truth and justice…
3. The government should create happiness for all, asking from each individual only what he or she can give, without any kind of coercion…
Any government which has no means of implementing its policies other than the use of force is not a government but a blasphemous usurper, and the people are as defenceless as an unarmed man confronted by a highway robber. Even if this man were as innocent and as holy as Christ Himself, nothing could save him, neither his religion nor the law nor any moral norms. The cry of Abel only arouses the fury of his brother Cain. You cannot expect anything good from people who do not respect your dignity or freedom.”

Fr Jerzy was kidnapped and murdered in a bungled operation by agents of the State Security Police in 1984 and only after massive nationwide protests were the officers responsible (including a Captain Piotrowski) tried and imprisoned for murder. However as a wry Polish national joke observed at the time “Question: Why did Piotrowski get twenty-five years imprisonment? Answer: One year for killing Father Jerzy and twenty-four for messing it up.” the popular belief since reinforced by documentary evidence is that the order came from high up in the government in order to silence this “turbulent priest”.

Quite aside from the religious imlpications of his words I am often reminded of them when considering the role that the state plays in the governance of our own country today.

Speaking on BBC One’s Fern Britton Meets programme, Tony Blair was asked whether he would still have gone on with plans to join the US-led invasion had he known at the time that there were no WMD.

He said: “I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat.” BBC

In case any world leader reading this blog has forgotten what it says:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. Charter

Anti Citizen One

I noticed two news stories that really “grind my gears”. Firstly, the case where MEP Daniel Hannan called for the abolition of the British National Health Service. The government’s health secretary commented:

“I would almost feel… it is unpatriotic because he is talking in foreign media and not representing, in my view, the views of the vast majority of British people and actually, I think giving an unfair impression of the National Health Service himself, a British representative on foreign media.” Andy Burnham

Now, I find it odd that he presumes that politicians may not to talk to journalists that are from beyond the UK and also that politicians may not disagree with public opinion. And to voice disagreement with public opinion is “unpatriotic”? Very worrying signs… (hello, thought police…) Perhaps it would be better for Andy Burnham to stick to the topic of discussion without resorting to name calling.

A second case concerns David Miliband and his comments on Joe Slovo, a South African anti-apartheid activist. When asked if violence (or “terrorism” in the parlance of our time) could be justified in some circumstances:

Presenter Matthew Parris asked Mr Miliband: “Are there circumstances in which violent reaction, terrorism, is the right response?”

Mr Miliband said: “That’s such a hard question, ‘right’ has to be judged in two ways doesn’t it? Whether it’s justifiable and whether it’s effective.

“I think I’m right in saying that one of the ways in which the ANC tried to square the circle between being a movement of political change and a movement which used violence, was to target installations rather than people.

“The most famous ANC military attack was on the Sasol oil refinery in 1980. That was perceived to be remarkable blow at the heart of the South African regime.

“But I think the answer has to be yes – there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective – but it is never effective on its own.”

He went on: “The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: the apartheid regime looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down.” BBC

He has come under fire from various sources, including William Hague, for apparently condoning terrorism generally. This is an instance of the slippery slope argument (and an appeal to consequences). But “violence is necessary in some circumstances” is as true as any other statement I care to think of. History of all peoples and places are full of illustrations that this is the case. To claim otherwise requires a total lack of the historical sense and gross double standards.

For example, Churchill planned civilian and military suicide attacks in case of invasion of the UK (Their finest hour, Winston Churchill, p149). Another case is the firebombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons against mainly civilian targets. Also the French resistance to Nazi occupation using sabotage and assassination. Attacks are called “terrorists” by one side and “martyr”, “liberation” or “freedom” fighters by the other. Chomsky and others questioned if states are capable of terrorism? Or even is there an agreed definition of terrorism? No, often there is not, because this would implicate many military operations/actions as state terror. (And “operation” is another case of “words as weapons” – implying they are competently and justifiably applied.)

Anti Citizen One

A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them “so you won’t think you’ve neglected something.” The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers “No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I am now going to shut it.”

This is a condensed version of Kafka’s “Before the Law“, taken from Wikipedia.

My attention has just been drawn to this controversial article written in The Australian by Hal Colbatch entitled “Thought police muscle up in Britain“.

I call it controversial mainly because the incidences it describes are obviously being discussed across the world. It is also controversial because the cases mentioned are extremes and often the over zealous applications of well-meaning laws (i.e. equality and diversity laws). But I believe the points he makes are accurate.

In describing Britain as a soft Totalitarian state he concludes his article with the following:

“Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together – and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day – they add up to a pretty clear picture.”

Do we citizens have cause for concern?

The UK Liberal Democrats are proposing what I think is a dream legislation on civil liberties. I can’t help smiling when I read the list of measures. If we live in an open society, all these civil rights should be a matter of course.

In a more philosophical sense, these reforms can avoid the concept of “natural rights” by considering they are “rights of the state” over the individual that must be abolished.

* Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
* Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
* Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
* Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
* Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
* Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
* Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
* Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
* Stop criminalising trespass.
* Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
* Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
* Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
* Prevent bailiffs from using force.
* Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
* Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
* Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
* Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
* Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
* Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
* Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras. Lib Dems

Basically a work of genius But the existing powers that be are likely to resist this attempt to moderate their influence…

Anti Citizen One

There are interesting happenings on the terror front:

“We want to move away from just challenging violent extremism. We now believe that we should challenge people who are against democracy and state institutions”, he [a Whitehall insider] said. BBC

Interestingly, it is legal to hold views that are anti-democracy and anti-state. My worry is what does “challenge people” mean in this context? Pressure people to avoid conservative preachers? This is similar to having black lists of people suspected of being anti-government (and McCarthyism) and since “challenge” probably does not mean legal sanction, the people who are black listed have no legal recourse in the case of false accusation.

This ties in to the view of a study by the International Commission of Jurists. The use of extra-legal measures against society are the biggest menace to our “open” society.

Mr Chaskelson, chairman of the panel, said: “In the course of this inquiry, we have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world.

“Many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights.

“The result is a serious threat to the integrity of the international human rights legal framework.” BBC

This also agrees with a former head of MI5.

“It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism – that we live in fear and under a police state,” she said. BBC

The two things we need to consider in a response to terrorist threat are:

• Is the mere accusation of terrorism being used to silence rational debate by assuming the guilt of the accused?
• Do the proposed measures mitigate or aggravate the problem? What evidence supports this claim?

I have to think about the curious case of Geert Wilders

Anti Citizen One

On BBC’s question time:

Goldsworthy: How far is he [Hoon] prepared to go to undermine our civil liberties to protect us… [from terrorists?]
Hoon: …To stop terrorists killing people in our society, quite a long way.
[and later]
Host: The words Julia [Goldsworthy] used were “undermining peoples civil liberties”. You said you would go quite a long way to undermine people’s civil liberies?
Hoon: Because the biggest civil liberty is not to be killed by terrorists.

Now I would grant that the right not to be killed is a human right. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” But it is not correct to put this single natural right over the others in the way Hoon argues. With this logic, all the other rights may be abridged to serve the right “not to be killed by terrorists”. If anything, staying alive is less important than the other civil rights. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”. If you don’t have the other civil rights, some might think it justified in risking one’s own life to achieve civil rights – this is the case of revolutionaries, freedom fighters and “terrorists”.

I notice that article 12 begins “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy….”. I guess one way to get around this right is to attempt universal surveillance so no individual can claim their privacy was arbitrary violated?

Anti Citizen One

Plans to extend pre-charge detention from a maximum of 28 days to 42 were defeated in the Lords by 191 votes. BBC

They still plan to introduce it if there is an emergency – which means civil rights can be abridged when inconvenient for the state. Keep paying attention to this.

I doubt we will be needing this power anyway.

AC1

Update 21/10 UK’s top prosecutor warns against growing state power

Several very interesting news items:

“A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.” Interesting state and religion issue. SFGATE

UK Government proposes wide reaching surveillance powers to investigate … well anything. I expect we will soon be given a helpful reminder by an anonymous camera operator when I forget to turn the oven off. I am now thinking the balance of power to the government from the individual is getting extreme. Individual rights are fraying at the edges and are almost torn apart. PCPRO

China: where an application to hold a protest is met with arrest for “disturbing social order”. BBC

Interesting piece on atheism in the US – The Guardian

And a subscription only news item, the New Scientist had a issue exploring the boundaries of reason. I have not finished reading all of it yet!

AC1