Category Archives: War

UK T.W.A.T. ratio of arrests to convictions less than 41:1

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Support TWAT!Stolen  from Horse Badorties, who put it in a comment here on Guido‘s blog.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): Statistics provided to the Home Office by the Police on arrests and charges from 11 September 2001 until 31 December 2004 under the Terrorism Act 2000 are on the Home Office website. (These are compiled from recent police records and are therefore subject to change as cases go through the system.)

Key Facts and Statistics
Police records show that from 11 September 2001 until 31 December 2004, 701 people were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Charges
119 of these were charged under the Act. Of these, 45 were also charged with offences under other legislation.
135 were charged under other legislation. This includes charges for terrorist offences that are already covered in general criminal law such as murder, grievous bodily harm and use of firearms or explosives.

Convictions
17 individuals have been convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act

Other Information
The following table gives the outcome for those not covered above:

Outcome
Transferred to immigration authorities 59
On bail to return 22
Cautioned 7
Dealt with under mental health legislation 7
Awaiting extradition 1
Returned to prison service custody 1
Released without charge 351

maximum security for flyer distribution

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Free stater arrestedAre we all so very sure that the Swastika isn’t becoming more and more appropriate? Several years ago, The Memory Hole reported on an American who was thrown in jail for days, simply for taking a photograph of a major chain hotel in which Dick Cheney was staying.

Note that this is not, in fact, against any law.

Now BoingBoing reports that an American libertarian has been thrown into maximum security for sending leaflets to IRS agents.

Homeland Security nabs Free Stater
Anonymous says:

 A member of the Free State Project, Russell Kanning, was arrested recently for attempting to distribute a flyer to IRS agents in his home town asking them to quit their job. The flyers contain anti-war content, criticism the Bush administration for its erosion of civil rights, and a form resignation letter addressed to President Bush, which he is asking IRS agents to sign.

Kanning remains in a maximum security and will not be allowed visitors.

And just in case anyone thinks I’m playing favorites here, I’m not a fan of the Free State Project (they are the types who are the worst bores at parties) but even I don’t think they should be thrown in prison. Check it out:

A new strategy for Liberty in our Lifetime

Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated? Do you want to live in strong communities where your rights are respected, and people exercise responsibility for themselves and their dealings with each other?

If you answered “yes” to those questions, then the Free State Project has a solution for you.

What the Free State Project is…
The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.

cartoon o’ the day: Lebanon ceacefire

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Israel go home

from Latuff via Cold Desert

picture this: photojournalism and fairness in the War in Lebanon

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Fair and balanced? 

Here’s an interesting articticle from the New York Times about how the American media is dealing with the challenge of showing the war. Traditionally, media have displayed images from one side of the conflict against images from the opposite side, striving for that journalistic impartiality that everyone worships except Hunter Thompson, and look what happened to him.

But is that really fair or objective, when one sides casualties outnumber the others’ by a factor of ten? What is objective coverage in that case? Ten photos of dead Lebanese for every one of a dead Israeli? And of course, Hezbollah has fired more on Israel than Israel has on Lebanon, although with less effect. So do you show ten times the tracers going south as going north?

What is objective journalism when the facts themselves can be interpreted as prejudicial?

Particularly vexing for many American news organizations is the struggle to determine how and in what proportion images of civilian dead and injured should be displayed in their coverage, when one side’s casualties greatly surpass the other.

The journalistic calculus is made tougher by the involvement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a topic that bedevils news editors like no other, and an organization, Hezbollah, that is considered a terrorist group by the United States government. But the decision-making becomes even more fraught because of the power of photographs and TV images, which are evocative — and provocative — in ways the written and spoken word are not.

T.W.A.T. Soup…coming immediately to an airport near you

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Airports. Kinda busy latelyBoingBoing has an interesting post from a couple of days ago. What, you ask, are the airport security people doing with the liquids they confiscate? Why, they’re dumping them into big bins, that’s what they’re doing.

Does anyone else see the problem with this?

What's in your cauldron?

If the liquid could be explosive, why are you dumping it in a crowd?
xopl asks a fair question:

 So CNN is reporting: “Because the plot involved taking liquid explosives aboard planes in carry-ons, passengers at all U.S. and British airports, and those boarding U.S.-bound flights at other international airports, are banned from taking any liquids onto planes.”And then they have the photo of the TSA guy dumping a tub of confiscated possibly explosive liquids into a garbage can in a crowd of people.

Figure that shit out for me.

Link

Reader comments:

Gabe says

 And check out this article from Asheville, NC. “Maya Leoni, who is held by Angela Perez, cries as her mother, A.J. Leoni, pours the last of her drink into the receptacle while in line for the security checkpoint at the Asheville Regional Airport.”POUR IT INTO A RECEPTACLE? Don’t you think that some of these potentially explosive liquids might be more dangerous when, I don’t know, mixed in a big vat in the middle of an airport?

Christ, why don’t they just have people put their liquids into a big bonfire?

May one respectfully suggest that, if they really believed people were bringing poisons and explosive chemicals onboard, to mix for activation, that mixing them in a big open bin in the middle of the passenger screening area is, perhaps, not the most efficient way to dispose of said liquids?

They may be this stupid, but even I don’t really think so. 

In related news:

The latest theory is that, rather than an explosive, the bombers may have been set up to make hydrogen cyanide, cyanide gas. It’s easy enough; even I can do it. It would effectively kill everyone in the cabin fairly quickly (and painfully). Not quite the explosive destruct-o-con that the British and American governments led us to believe, with potential casualty estimates of up to 300,FUCKING,000. Reality check, people.