Bolivian coca-farmer protest Bolivia demands coca plant legalized - 17. February 2011
Across Bolivia, people protest against the coca-chewing by the UN are illegal. For Bolivia's indigenous coca plant is quite a natural part of everyday life.
One of the first things Evo Morales promised in 2005 when he was elected president of Bolivia, was to legalize coca cultivation.
Morales is himself a former coca farmer and leader of coca farmers' movement. Chewing coca is now legal in Bolivia, but in the rest of the world coca leaf still considered an illegal substance. It would Morales and his government now do something about.
Specifically, the Bolivian government started a campaign in the UN to change the UN convention of 1961 which classifies the coca plant as illegal.
But the U.S. does not want the Convention as amended, and Denmark has placed himself on America's side in the conflict. (Read: Denmark in the embarrassing role).
Protests
In past weeks, the Bolivian peasant movement and indigenous movements all over Bolivia backed the government's campaign in the UN. Especially, the movements protested over the West's obstructions against their campaign.
The protests have specifically targeted against the United States will not support the Bolivian government's desire to legalize coca. Among others, coca farmers and indigenous peoples' movement demonstrated in front of U.S. Embassy in La Paz. Here they kept talking and then of course chewed coca leaves, writes several media.
Besides the protests have also been held more positive events across Bolivia.
Among others were held festive events at several of the regional parliaments around the country. There have been chewed coca leaves, and have been informed about the plant and how it has for generations been used by the indigenous peoples of Bolivia.
Special focus has been on it representing a quite a familiar thing to chew coca leaves and not a criminal act.
Criminally
According to the Bolivian government is where the UN goes wrong in town. They criminalize coca tyggerne by putting coca leaf in the list of banned substances.
Since cocaine was discovered as a powerful and addictive narcotic substance is coca been demonized. The poor farmers who grow it, has been equated with drug traffickers by previous Bolivian governments and particularly the U.S., writes the International Forum of the Association's magazine Gaia.
The assistance programs that would help farmers to find alternative crops has previous governments and foreign aid agencies refused to cooperate with peasant organizations.
Coca peasants have thus since time immemorial been the victims of foreign hunting coca plant and peasants and indigenous peoples against the plant has not been accepted among those in power.
Sacred
In Bolivia, and among the population of the country looks entirely different on the coca plant and significance
- Coca is sacred, and many could not live without, says a Quechua woman who sells coca at a market in Cochabamba. The Swedish magazine Latinamerika.nu have talked with the woman who has much more to tell:
- Koka-leaf is the best natural medicine. It is good for stomach problems, diabetes and many also use coca to calm nerves.
- Coca can also be used as a cure for rheumatism, by that bogs leaf and mix it with urine, says Quechua-woman. You put the mixture on for example the knee, which was sore and the day after the pain is gone. Urine may also be swapped out with alcohol.
That coca is a medical plant, supports Lidio Guerrero Toro, director of the landless movement MST-B, Movimiento Sin Tierra, Bolivia, Santa Cruz:
- Koka is a medical plant which can also be used to keep awake. It gives a strength and potential. It is medicine for stomach ills and against colds. Some say it is a drug, a drug, but only when it is being smuggled it from being considered a narcotic substance.
Felipa Merino, head of an organization that organizes indigenous people and women in Santa Cruz also believe that coca is sacred:
- Coca is sacred and our people have been using it since past. Our government here in Bolivia have asked to get done coca legally. Coca is not cocaine, it is people who make it to cocaine. Coca chewed by people in the village, but also by those working in transport and of students to enable them to cope with studying. We are going to fight to the last for coca legally must be throughout the world.
Koka is also used ritually as an offering and incense.
/ Ln
this is translated from danish with google translator and cut from;
Bolivianerne kræver koka-planten legaliseret
Dagbladet Arbejderen
birds and fish? Anyone know whats going on with all these birds droping from the sky and dead fish being washed ashore?
I know there testing haarp type devices and submerines detecting sonars are very powerful now, but i have no idea who to listen to or what to read without them ending up saying its the jews, its planet neburi and the return of the king.12
05/02/11 treat it like a rave… hello partyvibe have'nt been here for sometime asking for your help as
THE ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAUGE are going to luton on 5th of feb and i know you guys are not worlds away from what they stand for if you could head that way on that date show some support for you country and maybe pull abig fat party there as 5 - 7000 people are going there for 1 big festival and from all over europe iam a raver but duties call 'never been religous in my life but god is calling you too.
(work that 1 out 'you will find your more religous about england than you could ever belive.)
please as a raver myself i have to go for the futre of kids and familys of england
please please please concider imagine what a party all them flags waving at a after party make a day of it spread the word spread the love EDL 'what we stand for.
luton is gonner be a place for maybe a monster party.
spread the luv12
Left Wing? My misses was telling me about this recent study where they scanned the brains of both right wing voters and left wing voters.
The long and the short of it is that right wing voters think more using the emotive areas of the brain. And left wing voters use the more logical reasoning parts of the brain.
:weee: happy day
I had always suspected such things but perhaps now there is a bit of evidence.
(note that is a summery of a summery of what she told me and I dont know the study but she said it was good and she is qualified, dont shoot me if I am not 100% correct!)12
OOops whos lying????????? ahh well we'll find out see, but remember what the bbc & the U.N. said about it when we do Smiley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2946715.stm
http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news440.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0108-05.htm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/041204F.shtml
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Has_depleted_Uranium_081803.htm
Boyz in the Hood (Investigation into freemasonry and the British police force) The recent Home Office recommendation that all members of the criminal justice system should declare masonic affiliations opened a can of worms in public. Peter Panatone reviews the evidence and the significant rift the issue has caused amongst the British police force.
Weird isn't it? To think that policemen, judges, MPs, council officers and a multitude of other public servants go through such bizarre rituals.
Wearing a shoe on one foot and a slipper on the other, they roll up their trouser leg, bear their chest, are blindfolded and tied with a hangman's noose and, whilst standing on a marble chess board with a dagger pressed to their heart, swear oaths of secrecy, allegiance and mutual aid.
And yet this ritual is performed by every one of the 350,000 masons in England and Wales, the 30,000 in Scotland and the estimated six million world-wide.
Such occult practices would normally be easy fodder for tabloid derision but one look at the kind of names known to be Freemasons explains why public criticism has up until now remained so scant. In Britain, aristocratic members of the 'brotherhood' - for they are all men - include the Duke of Edinburgh; the Earl of Cadogan; the Marquess of Northampton and the Duke of Kent. Among the political figures known to be 'on the square' are Willie Whitelaw, Cecil Parkinson and the current head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Sir Frederick Crawford.
Whilst a few high profile 'brethren' break cover to perform a public relations role and a few others are 'outed' by tenacious researchers, most Masons in public positions, including those populating the two Masonic lodges thought to operate in the Houses of Parliament, remain clandestine. When author and researcher Martin Short wrote to Willie Whitelaw asking him if he was a Freemason, the ex-Home Secretary replied: "I have never been an active Mason since I entered the House of Commons in 1955." However, the 1987 yearbook for the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland - not publicly available but shown to Squall- reveals that he is still an active Freemason and a Scottish representative of Australia's Grand Lodge of New South Wales. The casual ease with which such an influential political figure was prepared to lie about his Masonic affiliations casts further doubt upon Masonic integrity. It is a doubt many see will only be assuaged by enforced public declaration of Masonic membership by all public officials.
According to Sir Maurice Drake, a top ranking Royal Arch Mason and the High Courts' principal libel lawyer before retiring in 1995, the public's concern is misplaced: "It involves play-acting. An outsider might say it is a lot of grown men behaving like children. I can understand that but it is fun. The secrecy was always silly and I think the majority of people think that it is not very important." His fellow judicial Mason, Lord Justice Millet, concords: "It involves a certain amount of learning and performing which is quite fun. We claim to have secrets but they are harmless. There is nothing in the slightest bit sinister."
However, the oaths of secrecy sworn by Freemasons sound anything but innocuous. Upon entering the first level of Masonry, an initiate promises to guard its secrets upon pain of "having my throat cut out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark... or the more effective punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral worth." This so-called "harmless play-acting" seems remarkably effective in ensuring secrecy. Even those who have ceased to be Masons refuse to speak of its ceremonies and practices, whilst the very few people with experience of Masonry who have dared to speak to researchers have done so anonymously. There is little doubt that retribution for public disclosure is a real threat in the minds of all those who have ever been initiated.
Commander Michael Higham wriggled in his chair in visible discomfort. In front of a packed press gallery, his pallor grew ever more pale as he sat cornered by questions thrown at him with increasing frustration by members of the Home Affairs Select Committee. As grand secretary to the United Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, the governing body for English and Welsh Masons, he had been requested to provide the committee with the names of Masonic police officers involved with units responsible for several miscarriages of justice. Despite indicating to the committee in November 1997 that the United Grand Lodge would reveal these names, a 50-strong meeting of the Masonic Board of General Purposes had ordered Higham not to reveal them afterall. The miscarriages of justice in question were major ones: the scurrilous ruining of John Stalker, the ex-Chief Constable of Manchester who got too close to the truth in his investigations into the Royal Ulster Constabulary's shoot to kill policy in Northern Ireland; the disgraced West Midlands Serious Crime Squad which, after 30 charges of misconduct, was closed down in 1986, and the discredited police investigation into the Birmingham pub bombings which led to the malicious prosecution and imprisonment of the now pardoned Birmingham Six.
Ex-police officers had made allegations that Freemason officers in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had operated a "firm within a firm". Serious allegations of malign Masonic manipulation extended to police officers in the John Stalker affair and to both journalists and police officers implicated in the Birmingham Six scandal. The Home Affairs Select Committee, which had been considering the influence of Freemasonry on the judiciary and police since 1995, wanted to know which of the 161 names under suspicion in these cases were Masons so that it could assess the validity of these allegations. But now, Commander Higham - who once gave a speech asserting "there is very little secret about Freemasonry" - was refusing to comply with one of the most powerful select committees in parliament. "I hope you will accept that is 'no', but not with contempt," he whimpered in his impossible situation as public fall guy for the clandestine Masonic hierarchy.
For a while a constitutional crisis looked on the cards. The Serjeant at Arms issued an order giving the United Grand Lodge 14 days to comply with the request of the Committee or else........ what? No one had ever defied parliament in this way before but now the Freemasons thought themselves powerful enough to try. Both parliament and the press held its breath. Finally, as the deadline approached, a deal was made. The United Grand Lodge agreed to provide Chris Mullin, the Chairman of the Select Committee, with the requested names on condition that only he and the clerk to the committee would see them. Not even the other members of the Committee would be allowed to see them and many argued that the necessity to strike a deal at all provided further evidence of the extant political power still wielded by Masons. The hapless Commander Michael Higham, who many view as a relatively harmless Mason occupying a public relations role, informed the Committee that the United Grand Lodge was to retire him early for reasons that he did not know.
The persistent public impression that masonry provides a conduit of perniciously manipulative influence in the police force finally found direct evidence to back up its concerns in the 1960's, when 12 officers from Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad were jailed for taking bribes from pornographers. All 12 were found to be Freemasons, with one of them, Chief Superintendent Bill Moody, discovered to have helped one of the pornographers to become a fellow Freemason. The integrity of the police force in general took a serious denting from the scandal and non-Masonic police officers weren't keen to take the rap. Public condemnation of freemasonic influence was, however, slow to appear.
In a pamphlet entitled "The Principles of Policing and Guidance for Professional Behaviour" published in April 1985, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Kenneth Newman concluded: "The discerning officer will probably consider it wise to forego the prospect of pleasure and social advantage in Freemasonry so as to enjoy the unreserved regard of all those around him. It follows from this that one who is already a Freemason would also be wise to ponder, from time to time, whether he should continue as a Freemason; that it would probably be prudent in the light of the way that our force is striving in these critical days, to present to the public a more open and wholehearted image of itself, to show a greater readiness to be invigilated and to be free of any unnecessary concealment or secrecy." Despite this call, the Manor of St James Lodge No9179 was set up exclusively for Metropolitan Police officers in 1989. At least two Deputy Assistant Commissioners and 12 commanders, including the heads of the Anti-Terrorist Squad and the head of Scotland Yard's intelligence service, are known to have joined this lodge. The present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Condon, reiterated Sir Kenneth Newman's call with a similar degree of unsuccess: "Because of the public's concern surrounding this issue I would advise my colleagues that it is better that they are not involved in Freemasonry."
Condon is presently being sued by a former metropolitan police officer for several malicious prosecutions brought after a Masonic dispute. Graham Peacock, a police constable for 26 years and a member of Masonic lodges in both London and Surrey, claims to have been victimised after a "bitter dispute" with a fellow Masonic police officer in 1992. Since that time he is alleged to have been maliciously prosecuted on three separate occasions for cannabis cultivation, murder and the illegal possession of firearms. He was acquitted of all these charges but spent time in prison on remand. He also claims that his wife has been phoned up and threatened, and that his cat went missing only to be found dead later with "horrific injuries", thrown in the neighbour's garden. If such exchanges go on between fellow Masonic police officers, what happens to others who have run-ins with Freemasonic officers? Two Leicester businessmen found out when they decided to have a late night drink at the Goat Moat House Hotel in Blackburn where they were staying in April 1988. Sidney and Shaun Callis (father and son) were unaware they had walked into the 'Ladies night' organised by the Victory Lodge of Blackburn. Two Masonic Lancashire police officers approached the pair and ordered them out of the hotel bar. After refusing to leave, the couple were beaten up and then charged with assault by other Masonic police officers also present. When the two men were released on bail the following morning, they found that the hotel management had seized the Callis' belongings demanding compensation for damage to the bar. The Hotel manager was later found to be a Mason and a member of the Victory Lodge. The Callis' also found that the tyres of their car had been drained of air and the hub caps removed.
When their assault charge reached court the following year, the jury rejected police evidence and acquitted the pair. The Callis' subsequently sued Lancashire Police for malicious prosecution and won £85,000 in compensation. The total pay out, including court costs, came to £170,000. However, the retribution did not stop there. Since 1989, unknown police officers put phoney criminal records for Sidney and Shaun Callis on the police national computer. Another unnamed person wrote to police suggesting that Sidney Callis was responsible for murdering two people, shot dead on the Pembrokeshire Coast in 1989. He was arrested for murder and interrogated at Hinckley Police Station before being released. Leicestershire Police also made efforts to revoke Sidney Callis's 12-bore shotgun licence. As Callis told Private Eye magazine in April: "I've never had so much as a parking fine."
The Home Affairs Select Committee was told that the Victory Lodge in Blackburn, whose members triggered this catalogue of retribution, is a lodge set up for police Masons.
According to Martin Short, author of 'Inside the Brotherhood' and a major testifier before the Home Affairs Select Committee, an estimated 25 per cent of Metropolitan Police officers and 20 per cent of national police officers still belong to Masonic lodges. The United Grand Lodge of England estimate that membership of freemasonry has declined by an estimated 200,000 over the last 30 years. Partly as a result of this diminution of power, more non-masonic public service officials have felt braver about publicly criticising the masonic network's influence on promotion prospects within their profession.
The pace of this dissent in the police force picked up considerably when the powerful Home Affairs Select Committee instigated its inquiry into the influence of Freemasonry on the police and the judiciary in 1995, an event which immediately split the police force in two. Whilst the Police Complaints Authority and the Association of Chief Police Officers called for public declaration, the Police Federation and the Police Superintendents' Association were vehemently against. The rift reached public airing after the 1995 Police Complaints Authority (PCA) annual report called for compulsory public declaration of Masonic membership by all police officers. Its chairman, Sir Leonard Peach, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the PCA wanted to allay public fears that Masonry was being used to influence the outcome of its investigations.
The Police Superintendents' Association's backlash was remarkable. They told the committee: "Over the past two years our confidence in the impartiality of the PCA has been shaken. Many of our members no longer see the PCA as being truly independent."
Indeed, public confidence in the PCA, whose investigations are predominantly staffed by members of the police force, has never been that strong. As the body responsible for investigating malpractice in the police force, many have pointed out the questionable validity of having the police investigate the police. However, for the Police Superintendent's Association to criticise the PCA's impartiality was unheard of, and provided further indication of the tenacity with which Masonry would fight to avoid public exposure.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which acknowledged to the Committee that between five and ten Chief Constables (out of 43) are Masons, were nevertheless in favour of a declaration of membership in order to restore public confidence. This caused an internal rift within ACPO itself. Paul Whitehouse, ACPO's vice chairman and Chief Constable of Sussex, asserted that "It's the secrecy that is cause for concern", whilst David Wilmott, Chief Constable of Manchester and presumably one of the five to ten Masons in ACPO, called it "an infringement of personal liberty".
The Police Federation, which represents the rank and file of the police service, acknowledged to the committee that "there may well be a significant number" of their members who were Masons and were critical of ACPO's pro-declaration stance: "It is for those who allege that Freemasonry does have such harmful consequences to establish a case, and so far such persons or bodies that take this view, have totally failed to furnish such evidence. Rumour and innuendo are not enough to make the case." The paradox of the Federation's position was there for all to see. Which policeman, for instance, could hope to firmly establish any case if the identity of all potential suspects was kept secret from them?
Indeed, the Home Affairs Select Committee received a number of submissions from individual police officers who remained anonymous in the Committee's subsequent report. Whilst six of these submissions were from Masonic policemen insisting their membership had no adverse affect on their professional conduct, ten submissions were from policemen who claimed malign Masonic influence at work. The allegations they cited included suppression of serious criminal and disciplinary allegations, promotion preferment for Freemasons; cheating in promotion exams facilitated by Masonic connections and falsifying blood test results for Freemasons charged with drink driving. A constituent of Chris Mullin's (the current chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee) wrote to the MP saying: "I am a retired Chief Superintendent who commanded the Commercial Fraud Squad and Complaints and Discipline Department in a big metropolitan force and, as such, I conducted many enquiries in various parts of this country and abroad. I have frequently experienced interference from Masonic sources calculated to impede the progress of an enquiry and do not doubt that improper decisions have been made along the way." Mullin was charged with not revealing any details of his case in order to protect the ex-police officer. From what?
More fearless was PC Kitit Gordhandas, from West Yorkshire Police, who wrote to the Police Review saying: "I feel that Freemasonry stands for white, male, middle-class members working for the advancement of themselves and their fellow Masons."
After a two year enquiry, the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report in 1997: "We believe that nothing so much undermines public confidence in public institutions as the knowledge that some public servants are members of a secret society one of whose aims is mutual self-advancement." The report recommended that "police officers, magistrates, judges and crown prosecutors should be required to register membership of any secret society and that the record should be available publicly."
Home Secretary Jack Straw has acknowledged this recommendation and looks set to insist it covers the entire criminal justice system. Earlier this year, Straw told the House of Commons: "The Freemasons have said they are not a secret society but a society with secrets. I think it is widely accepted that one secret they should not be keeping is who their members are in the criminal justice system."
Exactly how this is to be implemented is not yet known or indeed whether such public declaration might be extended to public servants both national and local. Certainly the clandestine leviathan of Freemasonry still has a multitude of friends in high places and has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point. The battle against the malignant opportunities for political and social manipulation offered by the extensive and secret network of Masonic influence is far from over.
Ain’t No Stopping Them Now (Interview with Ya Basta! activist) One of the stunning sights of the anti-capitalist demonstrations in Prague last September were a cohort of disciplined Italian activists marching through police lines dressed in inflated padding and white overalls. Originally inspired by Mexico's Zapatista guerillas, from whose rally cry they take their name, the Ya Basta! association don't know the meaning of the words 'Halt! Police'.
Their inner tubes and body foam render them immune to truncheons, their determination drives them across reluctant border controls and through police lines. Steve Wright talks with Hobo from Radio Sherwood, a media project closely linked with Ya Basta!, about the motivations for their militancy.
SW: What are the origins of Ya Basta and the tute bianche? What are their connections to the social centres movement in Italy?
Hobo: Ya Basta and tute bianche are not synonyms. The Ya Basta! association is a network of many groups across many Italian cities. It was formed after Italian militants participated in the first Encuentro in in 1996. It has the dual purpose of supporting the Zapatista struggle and of spreading the deep meaning of the struggles against neo-liberalism in Europe. In 1998 most Ya Basta militants also joined the emerging movement called the tute bianche (white overalls). This comprises young people from the social centres, unemployed and casual workers, people searching for their first job, all united against the pressure of neo-liberalism, asking for a universal basic income, but also asking for better conditions of life for everybody. White overalls were chosen as a strong image to symbolize the condition of invisibility imposed upon all those people forced to live without guarantees, without social security, on the margins of a normal life.
SW: How did Ya Basta become involved in S26? How was the demonstration organised?
Hobo: As I said, Ya Basta is not only a support network of the Zapatista movement, but also accepts their principles of democracy, dignity and humanity as universal categories in an increasingly globalised world. So it wants to affirm these principles in Europe as well. Neo-liberalism is the same, the multinationals are the same, the few people (World Bank, IMF, etc.) who rule the whole world are the same, the battle we have to fight is the same....... in Chiapas as in Seattle or in Prague. So s26 in Prague was the first important occasion to send a signal in Europe of a real resistance to the plans of globalised capital. Ya Basta and tute bianche were involved from last summer in the meetings held in Prague to organize the demonstrations and direct actions. We decided to reach Prague by train, given the large number of people involved. We had done this for earlier Euro-demonstrations in Amsterdam and Paris, squatting a thousand seats in a train and affirming our right to freely demonstrate wherever in Europe. This time we didnt want to spend most of our energy in defending our right to leave, so we negotiated an agreement with the railways and we paid a nominal political price to get a train for Prague. But things didn't go so well at the Czech border. The train was blocked for almost two days by the police, who wanted to reject a number of people as 'persona non grata'. Finally, after international media attention was focused on the case, the demonstrators were allowed to reach Prague.
SW: What led to the decision to use padding and shielding at demonstrations? How successful has this tactic proved to be?
Hobo: For years our practice of self-defence has been instrumentalised by the media. Every time the police charged a legitimate and peaceful march or demonstration, it was always the fault of the autonomists. The papers would carry headlines like violence returns to the streets, the years of lead are back, or urban guerrilla warfare again. We realised that the communication of events often modifies things more than the events themselves. We decided to send strong images and signals that left no doubts as to intentions. So we invented, rummaging through ancient history, systems of protective apparel, like plexiglass shields used tortoise-style, foam rubber armour, and inner-tube cordons to ward off police batons. All things that were visible and clearly for defensive purposes only. We wanted people to understand on which side lay reason, and who had started the violence. When we decide to disobey the rules imposed by the bosses of neo-liberalism, we do it by putting our bodies on the line, full stop. People can see images on the TV news that can't be manipulated. A mountain of bodies that advances, seeking the least harm possible to itself, against the violent defenders of an order that produces wars and misery. And the results are visible, people understand this, the journalists can't invent lies that contradict the images. Last but not least, the batons bounce off the padding. But the question goes beyond the purely practical aspect and is symptomatic of what we call bio-politics, the new form of opposition to power. This is what Judith Revel writes in the first issue of Posse, a new Italian journal edited by Toni Negri: Comrades dressed up in inner tubes. The papers are wrong to talk of that is, of a defensive armament. There were shields present, but what's striking is the attempt to interpose between bodies -- the bodies of demonstrators, the bodies of police agents -- an element that blocks both visibility and contact. That is, one that affirms its own political space as something no longer disciplinary, but rather bio-political. The bio-political is a form of politics that, from within the post-disciplinary paradigm of control, reconstructs the possibility of a collective acting. The danger lies in mistaking the epoch, returning to the only collective acting that we believe we know: that of face-to-face, the facing off which is so clearly a part of the old conflict-form of discipline. The padding on the comrades bodies signifies instead the passage to another political grammar.
SW: How do you respond to those critics (e.g. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/353/pragues26.html) who accuse Ya Basta of manipulating other demonstrators during the encounter with police in Prague?
Hobo: I don't believe that anyone was manipulated by anyone else. There were affinity groups, and everyone freely and consciously chose what to do and with whom. We don't think that anyone, including ourselves, has a monopoly on truth. Each does what they consider most useful and effective. Some sections of the demonstration, such of those involving these critics, were few in number, whereas, during the demonstration our numbers grew. Other comrades chose to join our section: not only Tute bianche or Italians, but also anarchists and Trotskyists of various countries and nationalities. Clearly the vetero-communist vision of some, linked to a strictly Marxist-Leninist style of politics, has stopped them from seeing past their own noses. We have no grounds for reproaching other sections of the demonstration that engaged in direct action elsewhere in the city, just as most of them have nothing to reproach us for. On the contrary, we wish that there had been many more of them, so that we could have forced the police blockades. But probably even all together we wouldn't have succeeded. We did our bit, what we had upon in the joint assembly, committing a huge number of police in a face off on the bridge with continuous charges, resisting and advancing.
SW: Can s26 be considered a success?
Hobo: In terms of Europe, it was certainly a success. The forum ended a day early because of the curfew atmosphere created in Prague. The movements from across Europe finally found themselves together, visible and determinate against an economic globalisation that threatens to create a dual society. For Europe, Prague was the beginning but in the minds of everyone were memories of Seattle, Washington, Melbourne . . . This begins to confirm the validity of a new way of finding ourselves side by side in the world's streets, confronting global problems.
SW: What are Ya Basta"s connections to other radical circles in Europe and beyond?
Hobo: We have many contacts in several European countries: Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Finland, to name a few. Back in 1997 we held a European meeting in Venice, where we presented to others our program -- borrowed from the Zapatista struggle -- of fighting for a Social Europe, where people not money come first. In a sense, that was the first step in our current direction, trying to escape the isolation which many radical groups found themselves in, and to connect with vast parts of what Marcos [Zapatista Subcommandante] calls civil society.
SW: Relations between Ya Basta and some other circles in the Italian movement became increasingly strained in the late nineties, with strong disagreements about orientation and activity. What were the terms of this debate, and have relations improved in the meantime?
Hobo: We chose to abandon ideologies, others didn't. The split can be very simply defined in this sense. Our analysis of the current world has led us to consider some aspects of this society, like the profound modification of the production system, the dominant role of information, the importance of the environment and other themes until now considered more social than political; and to act accordingly, trying to cut the chains that tied us too tightly to Marxist orthodoxy. We've always been heretics anyway, believing that you must have the courage to change and to follow new paths when you suspect that they could lead to results. Other groups, more tied to traditional ways of understanding Marxism and politics, don't agree with us. Some of them accuse us of being reformist or media-fixated. Recently, though, we have seen a point of commonality in the struggles we are doing together, a sort of re-acquaintance with people who can appreciate the big results obtained by our struggles..... from forcing the closure of immigrant detention centres in Milan and Trieste, to the symbolic blocking of NATO bases in the Veneto which reopened debate about the Balkans' war, to the [direct action] ship in solidarity with Albanians and against the criminalisation of immigrants, to the recent Prague demo.
SW: Within the Veneto region, Ya Basta and Radio Sherwood are two aspects of a broader network. Can you tell us something about the other organisations they're connected with?
Hobo: Radio Sherwood has now evolved into something more complex: the Sherwood Communications Agency. This involves a massive use of the internet (Sherwood Tribune), along with the ability to intervene in the media, so as to give voice and visibility to the whole network, from Ya Basta and the social centres to ADL and Razzismo Stop. ADL (Workers Defence Association, is a bit like a union, although rather different from the traditional form of European unions. It has more than one thousands members in the region, organised in twenty workplace collectives, and is affiliated to the radical union confederation CUB. Its main activity is legal defence for workers, while its political activity is very similar to that of the tute bianche. Razzismo Stop is an association for the defence of immigrant rights; it works side by side with immigrants to spread a new culture. It offers legal advice and concrete aid, from Italian language courses to welcome camps for refugees from ex-Yugoslavia, as well as social and educational activities for detained immigrants. Over the years it's become a real reference point of anti-racism, even for some institutions. Razzismo Stop has been in the front line opposing expulsions and detention camps for immigrants, linking its daily social to a strong political activity.
For those who read Italian, check the Ya Basta website at Ya Basta - Home Page or Associazione YA BASTA! per la dignit. Radio Sherwood's website at Radio Sherwood - La migliore alternativa ADL (worker's defence association) is at http://www.adl-cobas.org Razzismo Stop at Pagina di errore A UK site of activists inspired by Ya Basta can be found at mrnice.net
Showdown In Prague (Czech art squatters face eviction) Prague has hosted some of Europe's most active cultural squat communities. But with western capitalism stomping through Bohemia, property developers are replacing artists. Linda Ohman paid a visit to one of the last of Prague's great art squats, once again under imminent threat of eviction.
Stare Stresovice is usually a quiet neighborhood of Prague. But in summer 2001 a production of Modra Ptak (Blue Bird) presented by a creative collection of squatters set the place on fire.
To watch the play meant walking through the streets or taking a horse drawn carriage ride; peering into the houses that belong to the sponsoring group Dobrocinny Spolek Medaku ve Stresovicich (the Charitable Organization of Merrymen at Stresovice, DSM).
Musicians, cabaret artists and lecturers - both adults and children - performed in a collection of open houses. A mad professor mixed glowing chemicals frothing and foaming in the living room.
The staging - which included a room with white feathers glued to the walls, ceiling and ground - played a key role in the extravagant production. Just as the space was central to the story, DSM’s houses have become integral to their organization. Members talk of them as living breathing objects, with a life of their own.
Jiri Weberschinke, who has lived in Stresovice since 1999, says that his group hardly think of themselves as squatters – but they hold no actual, legal claim over the houses.
DSM’s creative squatters not only live in the houses, they constantly open them up for community usage. Besides cultural events like concerts, exhibitions and lectures, the group runs a dramatic arts program for children and facilitate a meeting place for the neighborhood’s older inhabitants.
So when on 31 October 2001 the Prague Six municipality left notes to tell the organization they were going to be evicted, the members felt as if their very foundation was being rocked. The eviction notices said the squatter would be removed that same day, but no one from the municipality came.
DSM sent letters to the municipality for more details, but no answer came. Later, they were notified that inspectors from the municipal's property management company, SNEO, would be arriving on November 19.
"We know that the municipality wants to sell the houses," states Weberschinke. Over the years, the land has become increasingly valuable and a group of property developers have been buying the nearly 200 year-old houses simply to acquire the land for the construction of modern buildings. "We’re afraid that their new buildings will destroy the last, authentic fragments that remain of this neighborhood," says Weberschinke.
Unsure of what SNEO would do on arrival DSM rallied around fifty supporters to join them on 19 November 2001. The squatters restated their demand for an officially stated reason why their thriving community centre and cultural venue was to be sacrificed simply to create more expensive office space and luxury apartments. When the SNEO representatives arrived they offered no answers, simply measuring the house in silence and going away again.
After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a reclamation plan gave the original owners six years to re-buy their houses. Some returned home, but many buildings were left empty. With the permission of their neighbors, Martin Skalsky - who now heads DSM - occupied one of the properties in 1995.
Having stood empty for years, the windows and doors were missing and roof caved in. The properties were in such a state, that when Skalsky first approached the City of Prague to stake a legal claim on the house, he was told it was uninhabitable.
Working with no real legal experience, Skalsky continued to pressure the City officials. He even dressed his father in a suit and sent him to City Hall on his behalf, in an attempt to show some authority. Skalsky Sr was offered no explanation, just a cup of coffee.
"We were just new to this type of legal action and needed help," says Skalsky. Shortly after moving in, he realized that people living in two neighboring houses were also squatting. "I just thought they owned them," he laughs. In 1999, the squatters formed DSM as an umbrella organization for their cultural activities and legal actions. Using their own money, DSM members completely renovated the houses and began a whole series of cultural community events.
In 2000, the City announced that it intended to auction off one of the houses which was the center for most of the activities. Because the houses are so important to the organization, Skalsky and Weberschinke believe the City's intent to sell them was also meant to destroy their organization. With local support the DSM collective managed to raise enough fuss to stem the sale.
While neighbors have said that they think DSM is a good addition to their community, the property developers are, unsurprisingly, less enthusiastic. Besides occupying valued space, DSM has begun to inform neighbors about zoning laws that the developers are breaking, delaying their projects.
Early in 2001, control of the houses shifted from City Hall to the Prague 6 municipality, and the alarm bells began to ring at DSM. To Weberschinke the move clarified the government’s intent because it is the municipality’s task to sell property. Within a year, the eviction notices came.
In December 2001, DSM learned that one of their houses would be sold and the remaining two would be rented out. The news was actually greeted as a small victory for the group, finally giving them an opportunity to claim the houses. Because of DSM’s efforts there was no set minimum asking price and any plans for what was to be done with the houses was to have been taken into account in the sale.
Bids to the tender were due on 31 January 2002, and DSM submitted a detailed proposal encompassing all three houses. The plan proposed an open community centre to the neighborhood, offices, rooms for workshops and meetings, performance space, and lastly, a small living area for the members.
However, despite having the opportunity to officially present the project’s intentions, DSM members remained cautious. They were aware that the municipality could still throw them a curve ball at any time.
Lessons from the past demonstrate the City’s antipathetic attitude to cultural squats. Ladronka, which was once the Czech Republic’s most famous squat also located in Prague, was closed down in 1999. The City authorities who controlled the land on which Ladronka once served up its copious cultural offerings promised that Ladronka’s cultural projects would continue to run in the building. It is now a training ground for Prague's police dogs.
It didn’t take long for the curve ball to come flying at the DSM crew either. Not even a full week after DSM submitted its proposal, the city municipality cancelled the auction with no notice of any future plans.
Unsure of what will happen next, DSM continue to plan towards realizing its project. To the group, the most important thing is to maintain the houses as a centre for their cultural programs: "We think it's the reason for why we're here," says Weberschinke, "to open the houses for the public."
With the battle between creative squatters and property developers now reaching its end game, Prague's legendary reputation for fostering creative bohemianism teeters on the edge of annihilation.
Reclaiming the News (a short history of Indymedia UK) Indymedia websites now exist all over the world. Offering unfiltered access to news publication, their aim is relax the grip mainstream media has on the news agenda by offering everyone the facility to be a newshound. Two of the founding organisers of Indymedia UK, Annie and Sam, chart the birth of the Indymedia phenomenon and describe how its growing network of volunteers are revolutionising media access.
City of London, 18 June 1999: Soundsystems, puppets, colourful banners. Dancing crowds swinging in the glistening sunshine. Europe's Financial Centre Numero Uno has been taken over by a Carnival against Capitalism, cyberconnected to dozens of venues around the world all hosting their version of a Global Street Party.
In the vicinity of the Jack the Ripper pub near the old Clink prison on the south side of the River Thames was Backspace, an alternative internet cafe. Cables, dusty boxes, keyboards, dirty mugs. Projections of the party on the wall. A sound- and video studio run by various media collectives. Typing, coding, converting, uploading. This was the seed of Indymedia UK.
The London J18 street party was coordinated by Reclaim the Streets (RTS). Inspired by the road protest camps and free party culture of the early 90's, RTS's unauthorised street parties evolved as a means to 'reclaim the commons of the city'. In late 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act civil protests and free parties criminal acts. Squatters, travellers, free party people and grassroots activists moved from the remote countryside to Britain's urban landscapes.
With the first Global Street Party in protest against the Birmingham G8, RTS contributed to the development of a globally synchronised and grassroots-mediated form of political articulation which has since become the trade mark of the global movement.
After four years and 65 recorded RTS parties, J18 was the first event with an explicitly anti-capitalist agenda. While corporate media had covered previous RTS parties sympathetically as 'environmental' events, J18 was represented as a violent riot (a search on Guardian Unlimited brings up 126 articles on Reclaim the Streets since 1999. Earlier material is not anymore accessible). The subsequent criminalisation led to a media strategy as a means of self-protection.
Based on the experience on J18, the Reclaim the Streets media group decided to go for a media outlet of their own, rather than lobbying with corporate media. The group soon became independent from Reclaim the Streets. N30, the 'Battle of Seattle', was reported on a basic, manually maintained website. On Mayday 2000, the Indymedia 'brand' crossed the Atlantic. Meanwhile the Guerilla Gardening event co-ordinated by RTS in Parliament Square was reported under the name 'Indymedia UK'. The fully fledged Open Publishing IMC-UK site was ready for the S26 protests against the WMF/Worldbank conference in Prague (S26 2000).
Like many other IMC's, we used an improved version of the free open source software 'active'. The 'active'-code was developed within the Australian activist community (Sydney). The acknowledgements for 'active' document were an impressive collaboration both in virtual and physical space.
From the beginning, the London based IMC collective regarded Indymedia as a project in both virtual and physical space. Open publishing allowed the streets to enter cyberspace, but it also brought technology to the streets. From the mission statement: 'Through this system of 'Direct Media', Indymedia erodes the dividing line between reporters and reported, between active producers and passive audience: people are enabled to speak for themselves'. Direct media = media as party, education, direct action, entertainment, empowerment. Film screenings, radio programs, printed materials and public access terminals created a presence outside the web.
Our internal process had an emphasis on face to face meetings in real space. Ironically, we never managed to find a room of our own. Fluid nomadism seems to suit the urban landscape better than settlement. Most community centres were closed down by the Thatcher government, and even public toilets and the pavement at the Southbank are privatised. So we embarked on a journey through the guts of London - an artists' caff at King's Cross, a freezing-cold disused warehouse in the East End, a pub in Kentish Town, a friend's kitchen, the basement of a pub in trendy Hoxton, a squatted button-factory in Brixton, the People's Palace, until we finally arrived back at the bosom of the activist ghetto in a resource centre in a former synagogue in Whitechapel. The journey continues to take us physically to demo's, free and commercial parties, conferences, festivals.
BLAGGING, SHARING AND THE GLOBAL COMMONS 'blag' - (a) to carry out a robbery. (b) to scrounge, cadge, deceive or bamboozle, or the booty from such an activity. Has been in widespread use in both senses in underworld and police circles since the early 1950s.
Tony Thorne: Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, London 1999 (1990), p. 34.
While all Indymedia sites are part of the claim for a global commons on the web, the people who run them locally are extending this claim to the material sphere, drawing on existing values and practices. If you have neither money nor the will to acquire it, how do you run a media centre in London, with its long history of capitalism and its attitude of charging £2 for every breath you take? You learn to find the cracks in the smooth surface of urban consumerism. Emerged from the spirit of ravers, travellers, squatters and grassroots groups, the first IMC-UK collective embraced an economy of non-monetary exchange of materials and support.
Blagging, bartering and sharing are much closer to our hearts than proper fundraising: an Indymedia stall at a festival against free tickets, a few old computers from some company or other, connectivity for major reporting. When we use IT-equipment in our office jobs for Indymedia tasks, we embrace a traditional working class tactic for re-distribution. Cameras, minidisk players, mics, laptops are multiplied by sharing them - they are never idle, although the process to trace them can be tiring.
This practice tunes in with the free software philosophy - (free as in both 'free beer' and 'free speech'). Our metropolitan dwelling place suggests that resources and even knowledge are scarce and expensive. We try to treat them as plentiful, ever multiplying 'commons'. The commitment to non-hierarchical collaboration and the DIY-philosophy is a vital element of this process. The synergy extends beyond the boundaries of the collective. Groups like Deckspace, Blag, or Socialsoftware give technical support. Generator X provides a solar-powered truck as a mobile media centre for events like the Glastonbury Festival or the no-border demo at the refugee camp in Calais. Undercurrents and Pirate TV collaborated in the streaming project. Slowly, Indymedia became a presence in the alternative media scene - but the step out of London and into a more community-based structure took a long time.
FROM IMC UK TO UNITED KOLLECTIVES Indymedia UK was designed as an alternative news platform for all regions in the UK - a vision supported by experienced alternative media groups like Undercurrents, I-contact, Pirate TV, SQUALL and SchNEWS. The news stories focused on a UK-wide active audience. In contrast, IMC-Bristol was founded as a community news platform. We realised that a UK wide project would need a decentralised structure, both technically and socially. The worldwide anti-war protests in February 2003 became a catalyst for this process.
The long-delayed decision to work on a new codebase gained momentum. After three mad months and many IRC sessions, a new website with pages for each local collective went live on 26 June 2003. Presently, the website is run by nine local collectives under the Mir code. Concepts for IMC-reporting on a local scale are being developed. Each collective has a different story to tell - and our name changed to 'United Kollektives'.
The expansion of the project didn't come without flaws. The fallout of activist burn-out is considerable. Self-exploitation, over-ambitiousness, carelessness, lack of communication and exaggerated feelings of responsibility have lead to breakdowns, clashes, frustration and deep disappointment - but also to adrenalin highs and a steep learning curve.
Unlimited public-ness can be scary, but as a large network, IMC UK relies even more than before on openness and transparency. We are learning to make confident use of publicly archived e-mail lists, open-access collaboration tools and chatrooms. IT-tools are now vital to report major events. Information flows through an increasingly complex international dispatch system. The informal mode of self-organisation within a small collective is becoming more accountable to suit the needs of a large network.
Building consensus about editorial guidelines, mission statement and working practices is an ongoing process. IT-tools mean both exclusion and empowerment, hierarchies emerge in fluid as well as in static structures. IMC UK remains in the in-between space between DIY-culture and professionalisation, open for both sides of the divide.
Tales of Trees and Tunnels
The protest camps at Manchester Airport took three and a half months to build and one month to evict. The costs to one side were an estimated 7 million pounds, the cost to the other was over one hundred arrests and several prison stretches. It focused the attention of the nation on a new environmental battle and found supporters in the unlikeliest quarters (step forward Neil Hamilton).
At least one baby was conceived and at least one ear was nailed to a tree (by the protester himself!) The evictions began with allegations of brutality and secrecy, and ended with a smiling Matt Benson hugging the tunneller who had brought him out of a network of tunnels after an incredible seventeen days underground. Every one of the 120 people escorted off site had a tale to tell. Squall collected three stories, from the very first to the very last.
Danny and Eli. Zion Tree Camp. Just Visiting.
"We'd arrived about 11.30pm, Sunday May 25th, with gallons of water and spent a while stumbling about in the dark with these containers. We'd never been to the camp before so we decided to have a bit of a wander and ended up round a campfire drinking tea. We got a bit off our faces by about half three in the morning. There was a rumour of evictions starting at four, but nobody seemed very convinced, and there were so many camps we never really thought we would get it then. Of course four o'clock came and as a plane was taking off, someone said 'did anyone just hear bolt cutters?' A couple of people went off to investigate, and then out of nowhere these 'men in black' just pounced all over us. There were about eight of them in camouflage trousers, black jackets, balaclava helmets and police issue side-handle batons.
"We were feeling distinctly confused and somewhat anaesthetised. Anyone that was moving around just got clubbed to the ground. Rob got clubbed in the back of the head and Jamie got held face down in the mud with a baton across his neck. They were screaming and swearing. They were really big, really brutal. One of them picked up an axe and started chopping fuck out of a ladder to no apparent purpose other than to scare people. One guy who tried to get into a tunnel lock-on got his head battered in by these guys using the tunnel door. People up in the trees were shouting 'what's going on?' and they were hissing at us 'don't say anything', but I think it was pretty obvious what was happening. You wanted to shout back but they really did look like they were about to kill us so yes, we shut up. They wandered around for about five minutes, then as they stepped back out of the way the other police moved in in luminous jackets. We asked 'who were those guys?' 'What guys?' they replied.
Mia. Sir Cliff Richard OBE Revolutionary Vegan Camp. Tree Dweller.
"We'd spent a week living fairly normal camp life while the evictions were going on all around. We were constantly expecting them to move in but they didn't until 9am on the second Tuesday. We'd been expecting them since four, and then it took them ages to get through our ground defences, so we had plenty of time to prepare. They took three tree-houses and two lock-ons that day, they didn't clear the camp until the third day, when I was the second last person out. Most of the eviction was done quite carefully, the scariest stuff was from the tree surgeons who were felling trees around cargo nets and a suspended bender and broke some of the support ropes. I couldn't believe how irresponsible they were being, they could have killed someone and they didn't give a shit.
"The second night was really horrible. They'd stripped the branches off a couple of ancient Beech Trees including Zion tree and were ready to fell them. These were trees that they had promised to transplant, and we were watching them being killed and couldn't get to them. At night we saw this squirrel running round and round the one of these trees looking for its nest. It couldn't understand what was happening to it. The next morning it was strange to hear the birds. There were fewer of them singing than we'd ever heard before.
"I was really proud of our defences. One woman was locked on through both arms and with a noose around her neck attached to a door above her head. I think it took them about three days to move her. Disco Dave stayed down the tunnel for six days until it was no longer safe. I was locked into a tyre in the last tree house and this guy who was with us stood waiting until the climbers reached us and then darted along a single line walkway to this really high spindly sycamore tree and grabbed on. He stayed there in the blazing sun and with no water for five hours, the climbers refused to go up after him saying the tree was unsafe. As heatstroke set in he had to come down, but he was the last off camp and he walked off in his own time, they never brought him down.
Matt. Cakehole Tunnel, Flywood Camp.
"The period between the first eviction at Zion Tree and the start of Flywood was mad. The waiting is always the hardest bit, we spent weeks just sitting by a hole in the ground. Once we were inside the exciting things were like brushing your teeth, having a shave or a wash, the sorts of little jobs you wouldn't normally think about. I saved them up and did one a day, tha's how exciting it was.
"Since the 'men in black' had stormed the first camp and beaten up protesters and journalists and all that they'd been trying to reclaim the moral high ground and were failing badly. The stuff that was happening in the trees perhaps wasn't as bad as we've come to expect, but we had complete psychological intimidation in the tunnels all the time. Air was turned off every night in an attempt to asphyxiate us out. They work twelve hours a day so you can't get any sleep during the days, and then for three nights bailiffs came down and banged on the doors with hammers every half hour. After those three nights Muppet Dave gave up, you can't take much more than that. It stopped once I was on my own, but I didn't get to sleep properly at all for the next five days. That was really why I came out. I was exhausted even though I wasn't doing anything. I was in pain from lying down all the time, I was in tears a lot of the time and things were reaching a natural conclusion.
"By the time I came out I was really friendly with the tunnellers, it was a weird psychological thing that was going on. They call it Stockholm Syndrome, I loved them and still do now. I keep telling everyone how nice they are, and I didn't expect that. If they'd just asked me to come out I probably would have done, I'd have done anything for them. They are very good at talking to you, I'm not sure if they were using deliberate psychological tactics or not, I like to think they just wanted to be friendly, but who knows.
"It's quite unusual in the protest movement for people to just give up and walk away, but it's different with tunnels. The lengths of time we are talking about are simply unheard of. If I'd chosen to stay down it would have been another two weeks work at least for them. The morning the tunnel collapsed was my seventeenth day and I was coming out anyway, which is quite ironic really. It is quite easy to build a tunnel that is unevictable, it's just a question of how long you can stick it out, because it is really, really weird. Maybe next time we'll do a month. Yeah, easy.
Police Demand New Powers to Stop and Search "Suspects are stopped and searched by police in London Police say they need a boost to their counter-terrorism powers, which they worry are now too weak. Photograph: Martin Godwin
Police have asked the government for a new counter-terrorism power to stop and search people without having to suspect them of involvement in crime, the Guardian has learned.
Senior officers have told the government the new law is needed to better protect the public against attempted attacks on large numbers of people, and are hopeful they can win ministers' backing.
A previous law allowing counter-terrorism stops without suspicion, section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, was scrapped this year by the home secretary, Theresa May, after European judges struck it down for breaching human rights.
But police, including the Metropolitan force, which leads the UK fight against terrorism, say they need a boost to their counter-terrorism powers, which they worry are now too weak.
They have asked for a law which would be much more limited than section 44. It would be restricted to a specific period of time and to a limited geographic area or a specific place or event.
The new stop and search power would need primary legislation to become law and it is believed it could be introduced within months. Police believe it will be needed to protect events such as the 2012 Olympics in London, state occasions such as trooping the colour, and major summits such as the G20 when they are held in the UK.
Stop and search powers are controversial because ethnic minority people have been targeted more than white people, triggering claims that some officers are using them in a discriminatory way.
A source with knowledge of the discussions told the Guardian: "The key thing is to get this power without its use being random. You can't have a random power because of the judgment, but some new power is needed. The power would need to be signed off by a senior officer, maybe even a chief constable, and the home secretary. It could cover an event of high importance such as the Olympics. It would be for a limited time and in a limited geographical place, and at a time when the threat level is severe."
Currently section 43 of the Terrorism Act allows searches, but an officer must have reasonable suspicion for the stop to be lawful. The source added that police were now tactically hampered in the fight against terrorism.
Another source with knowledge of the plans said: "Everyone now realises it [section 44] was a blunt instrument. If it is time-limited, it should comply with the European ruling."
The issue of powers to fight terrorism that infringe on civil liberties is causing friction within the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. A review of counter-terrorism powers has already been delayed after a row over whether control orders should be retained.
Section 44 fell into disrepute because it is believed that it failed to lead to the capture of a single terrorist, and it was used in some cases against protesters and photographers. It was struck down by the European court of human rights after a case brought by Liberty, the civil liberties pressure group.
In that case, police had used the counter-terrorism power against a peace protester, Kevin Gillan, and a journalist, Pennie Quinton, as they travelled to a demonstration outside the annual arms fair at the ExCel centre in east London in 2003.
The crucial aspect of the ruling, and thus the hurdle any new power must clear, is not to be random and indiscriminate in its scope. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said that with the right safeguards her organisation might not oppose the new power: "The devil will be in the detail. What safeguards will there be, who can trigger the power, what is the threshold for turning it on, what public scrutiny will there be?"
Under the old power all of London was designated for months on end as a place where police could stop people without suspicion. Chakrabarti said: "The geographical area can't be an entire county or all of London as it was before, but an area no greater than a square mile. It must not be for months on end but for a specific period of 24 to 48 hours.
"It must target specific places, not classes of people, on the basis of intelligence and risk for narrow windows of time, with adequate authorisation and transparency. Then it will satisfy proportionality and equal treatment whilst providing a rational, flexible aid to anti-terror policing."
Ben Bowling, a professor of criminology at King's College London and founder member of Stopwatch, which campaigns against alleged police abuses of stop and search powers, warned the new power could be used to discriminate against ethnic minority Britons: "Where officers have the maximum discretion, that is where you have the greatest racial discrimination in the way police have used their powers. We would want to be absolutely certain that police are not targeting ethnic minority communities for unfair stops and searches."
The debate about the proposed new power will be shaped by the memory of section 44. Some police leaders now accept they were too slow to realise the damage it was doing to community relations and to their own reputation, while proving of questionable value in catching terrorists. In 2009 more than 100,000 stops were carried out under section 44, but not a single arrest was made for terrorism under the power.
Britain is facing a double terror threat for the first time in a decade. Counter-terrorism officials believe the risk of attack from al-Qaida-inspired violent extremists is "severe".
But added to that, officials assess as "substantial" the risk of an attack on the mainland by dissident republican terrorists. That is one level lower than the threat posed by Islamist violence. Northern Ireland has this year been hit by repeated terrorist attacks and attempted attacks, one source said, as the capability of dissident republican terrorists grows."Police demand new powers to stop and search terror suspects | Law | The Guardian
Given their appalling abuse of the old law this is a bit crap. But hardly surprising I guess
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