Torture
More Taser Terror
Jesus’ General, whose indefatigable heretosexuality we salute, has an excellent post up on one of my favourite subjects, tasers, and the misuse thereof, as does Martin over at his own personal blog Wis[s]e Words. ( See also this description of the reporting of apolice tasering in Vermont from Blazing Indiscretions and many YouTube tasering videos, with outraged commentary, from LAist)
Given that these torture weapons are now in daily use by British police, even if they have no weapons training, a fact which seems to have been lost in all the media panic over the economy, it might be a good time to revisit the subject and see what it is we British subjects might now find ourselves subjected to should we presume to resist a police officer.
So here are my previous posts on the subject. and a sample of the kind of casual brutality that taser use encourages US cops to adopt and which has now been exported to Britain. An increasingly violent, repressive police force has been been enabled in pursuit of – what else – personal profit.
{…]
But it’s not just Texas and not just America. It’s a British issue too. UK Indymedia alleges:
A 15-year-old boy has been shot with a Taser gun during a police raid in Moss side Manchester.
Police “”claim”” the teenager began threatening officers during the search of a property on Broadoak Road in Moss Side on Monday the 15 year old child had to have a ambulance called after police appear to have used the Tazer on the unarmed child because he was dis-obeying officers after he became concerned at having the front door smashed in.
And Amnesty International reports:
Amnesty International today (16 October) expressed concern after a man died in County Durham, three days after he was shot with a Taser electro-shock weapon and a baton round. Brian Loan, 47, is believed to be the first person in the UK to die after being shocked with a Taser. A Home Office post-mortem reportedly found that he had died of natural causes.
It doesn’t take a degree in jurisprudence, criminology or psychology to realise that if you give people (and people inclined towards militarism and authoritarianism at that) weapons, tell them they are the less-lethal option and then put those people in stressful situations, that they’ll use them.
If it were just the stupidity, perhaps it could be dealt with by legislation banning the sale and use of the device.
Fat chance.
Taser has made multiple millions from producing and marketing cattle prods for controlling the populace and it’s had the help of many prominent UK and US government figures to do so: not least the horribly corrupt Bernie Kerik, (who Bush tried to make director of Homeland Security before his exposure) as have a host of other Republican worthies.
WASHINGTON – Bernard Kerik, President Bush’s choice to run the Homeland Security Department, made $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received from a company that sold stun guns to the department — and seeks more business with it.
Taser International was one of many companies that received consulting advice from Kerik after he left his job as New York City police commissioner in 2001, when he was earning $150,500 a year. Kerik remains on Taser’s board of directors, although the company and the White House said he planned to sever the relationship.
Partnering with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and also operating independently, Kerik has had business arrangements with manufacturers of prescription drugs, computer software and bulletproof materials, as well as companies selling nuclear power, telephone service, insurance and security advice for Americans working abroad.
Even the UK police have made money from coercive technology:
THE American manufacturer of Taser, the controversial stun gun, gave the exclusive British distribution rights to a senior serving police officer who helped win Home Office approval for the weapon.
Inspector Peter Boatman had a 50% share in a company that sold Tasers at the same time as devising Britain’s first police training programme for the use of weapons.
Boatman was in charge of assessing the merits of Taser as head of operational training for Northamptonshire police and was regarded as an impartial expert on the weapon.
Since he left the force a little more than three years ago, his firm has provided 1,500 Tasers worth about £1m to 20 British police forces. It is the exclusive UK distributor for the US company, Taser International.
Disclosure of the apparent conflict of interest comes after Taser International, the US manufacturer, was accused of providing American police officers with share options potentially worth $1m.
Police repression is a dirty business all right:
Companies House records show that Boatman took a 50% stake in a start-up company, Pro-Tect Systems, in December 2000. He became a director of the firm on December 5 and resigned three weeks later, on December 27, but held on to his stake in the company.
In February 2001, Pro-Tect received the Taser contract for the UK. Within two months Boatman was acting as an adviser to the Home Office on whether to issue Tasers to British officers. He was “regarded as a national and international expert” on Tasers, Chris Fox, the former chief constable of Northamptonshire, said yesterday.
In December 2001, three months after the Home Office approved trial imports, Boatman publicly rebutted claims by Police Federation officers that Tasers could be dangerous. Boatman wrote “with sadness” to Police Review that “this technology is very effective — more than any other technique, device or equipment for establishing control over violent and dangerous subjects”.
He retired from the police on April 16, 2002. Two days later he was installed as chairman of Pro-Tect Systems. His fellow founding director and friend, Kevin Coles, had been running the firm in the meantime.
More…
The development sale and use of coercive technologies for controlling rebeliious civilians is a big business and a dirty business. If this were just an issue of a a few rogue cops acting outside their remit, then the problem could be solved by better training, legislation and codes of practice.
But there is just so much money involved and there’s so many vested interests in the sale and use of these torture gadgets, that their use will only proliferate.
When shooting an innocent man seven times in the head on a tube train while he’s going about his lawful, innocent private business attracts no opprobrium whatsoever for the guilty officers, then I don’t hold out much hope for any redress against an illegal police tasering.
Much more on police taser incidents at Bad Cop. No Donut!
Those UK incidents occured when the taser was just on trial with British police. Now that they’re available to any helmeted meathead, I fear that taser violence will become so prevalent, like polcie beatings, that it’s not even reported any more.
Arms and The Man
When it comes to the arms trade the British government are the deranged offspring of a Ferengi and Franz Kafka, insatiable greed and bureacratic ineptitude combined in one nightmare package.
Here’s a nice encapsulation of the sick situation by activist/comedian Mark Thomas at the 2007 Birmingham Police and Security Fair :
[…]
In the middle of the hall was Mr Xia, a Chinese man with three electro-shock weapons on display for all to see. He demonstrated them for me while I filmed him. A bargain at £3.25 each. At least, I thought, it shouldn’t be hard to find a cop at the police and security fair. How foolishly naive. The Association of Chief of Police Officers had a stall around the corner from Mr Xia, but with no one there. The nearest Customs officer, I was told, was at the airport. The closest thing I found to an on-duty officer were two life-size cardboard cutout cops, on sale as a deterrent to thieves. Eventually, I found the fair organiser’s office.
Mr Xia was arrested, and two weeks later I got a phone call from Solihull CID. “Mr Xia has pleaded guilty to the possession of prohibited firearms,” said the voice, “but I think it is illegal to try and sell these weapons.”
“You would be right.”
“And I think Mr Xia was trying to sell them.”
“He was at a trade fair.”
“Would you give us a statement and let us see the film you shot at the fair?”
“Yes, I would be happy to.”
“And one more thing – if you wouldn’t mind, could you bring up copies of the relevant legislation?”
While it’s long been an open secret in Britain that our national earnings are underpinned by international arms sales – we make 46 billion a year out of it – what’s not often mentioned is that we’re also one of the biggest enablers of the worldwide and domestic trade in illegal small arms and torture equipment.
The British government’s attitude to arms sales is hypocritical to the nth degree. On one hand it subscribes to the “Guns bad, mmmkay?” school of thought for domestic consumption; on the other it allows illegal arms and torture weapons to be sold under its nose to pretty much anyone from at home and abroad, so long as they have the money.
You’d be surprised at who has a financial interest in the arms and repression industry:
45 UK UNIVERSITIES own over £15m worth of shares in the arms trade. Three institutions – University College London (UCL), Trinity Hall Cambridge and the University of Liverpool – each own shares worth over £1million.
British academics, MPs, police and media alike bemoan the growing gun culture that leads to the murders of so many young men and shed crocodile tears even as they condemn: “Tsk tsk”, they say. “Oh dear, black drugs and gun culture, tragic isn’t it? Oh well, at least it’s not our children.”
Yet while all that international money is sloshing around London they’ll happily turn a blind eye either by passivity or ineptitude,to the international gun culture that is the Daddy of the gun culture in our cities.
As a spokesperson for the University of Liverpool explains; “The university has a legal obligation to maximise returns on its investments as it is accountable to its beneficiaries. We would not choose to invest in arms if other opportunities to fulfil our financial obligations were equally available.”
Oh well, then, that’s fine. Profit trumps morals, my duh.
It’s a sad fact that in our post-imperial and industrial days of decline we are a fading, insignificant offshore island in a big scary world. Our only remaining diplomatic bargaining chips are a] guns and b] money. These days we can only wield power in the world by
a] enabling, supporting and protecting the international trade in arms and weapons of repression, come what may and
b] by having a whole city full of handy banks for managing the subsequent profits and lots of accountants and lawyers to evade any inconvenient legislation (that’s when they’re not actually orchestrating it on a massive scale).
and
c] By knowing where the bodies are buried. *Cough* Banco Ambrosiano.*Cough*
that last’s influence probably outweights the first two.
Mind you, the relevant laws are such an absolute dogs breakfast as to be almost totally ineffectual anyway and of course lets not forget that we in our turn are mere passive instruments of US foreign policy, just another tool to be used by Washington to do politics by the back door.
The voters have expressed their justified disgust with this hypocrisy by demonstrating peacefully yet forcefully, only to find themselves subjected to the most draconian of the post-911 terror laws. A state of terrorist emergency was first declared in metropolitan London in Feb 2001, but no-one knew until the law was used not against terrorists but against legitimate arms trade prorestors.
The Metropolitan Police are using anti-terrorist legislation against protesters demonstrating at Europe’s biggest annual arms fair which was opened today by Geoff Hoon, UK defence minister, in London’s Docklands. The police have invoked Section 44 of Terrorism Act 2000 which allows assistant chief constables (or the commander in the case of the Metropolitan police) to authorise extended stop and search where they
“consider it expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism”
Section 44 was also used extensively during the protests and peace camp at Fairford RAF airbase in the build-up to the Iraq War (1). This is contrary to clear undertakings from the Home Secretary to the House of Commons that Section 44 notices would only be used where there is good reason to suspect terrorist activity. Protestors have already won a judicial review of police mass detention tactics during the Fairford protests (2), while Liberty has said it will seek a judicial review of the Met Police’s use of Section 44 in the Docklands.
There has been much made in the press of how the police have “braced themselves for violent protests” (e.g. The Guardian, 6 September 2003) and the £1 million pound cost of the policing operation. Sixteen arrests were reported on the evening news, while inside, cluster bombs, which the exhibition organisers had last week said should not be included, were among the exhibits.
That that state of emergency hasn’t been lifted since and it was what eventually resulted in the effective ‘shoot to kill’ policy that then allowed the extra-judicial murder of Jean-Charles Menezes by trigger happy police.
Which makes the persistence of anti arms-trade protestors all the more admirable.
A nondescript large industrial unit in Lenton, Nottingham had its anonymity taken away by local Disarm DSEI / anti-arms trade protesters on Tuesday when they descended on Heckler and Koch’s UK headquarters.
H&K are the world’s second largest maker of pistols and machine-guns for soldiers and death squads across the world, including Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Burma/Myanmar. Their weapons are in use in over 90 countries, including by British police, and the company has evaded EU arms controls to sell weapons to war-zones in Sudan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone. Over half a million people are killed worldwide by small-arms annually.
A productive bit of research led a couple of intrepid investigators to buzz the company and ask “Excuse me, is this the Nottingham Small Arms Factory?” Although they didn’t get a response as such, their suspicions were confirmed when armed police turned up minutes later and detained them for 45 minutes under the Terrorism Act.
The subsequent demo made it clear that gun merchants are not welcome in the city (which, by the way, has the highest gun crime rate in the UK). The peaceful protest obviously hit a raw nerve as the forty or so people in attendance attracted an almost equal number of cops, including members of the (London-based political squad) Forward Intelligence Team.
Local rag, the Nottingham Evening Post, showed just how weak its commitment to reporting is when they pulled the story from page 2 after being told by a police press officer that it would be ‘irresponsible’ for the media to publish the arms company’s address (…yes, so obviously it’s: NSAF Ltd, Unit 3, Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7 2PX). See http://disarmdsei.evey.org
It’s easy to see a grand establishment conspiracy in all this but I’m inclined to think it’s more a typical mixture of jaw-dropping venality, sheer ineptitude and passive complicity.
Or am I?
When you think of a world in the grip of accelerating climate change, potential social disorder and subject to an increasing scramble, even to the death, for temperate land and resources and you consider how few natural resources we actually have, then controlling the weapons of repression and the gold begins to look less like conspiracy and more like an actual strategy.
Looked at in that light the arms traders’re doing our young a favour by training them in weapons skills for the the apocalyptic future. You could even say it’s a public service.
See what I mean about Kafka and the Ferengi…..
MI5 and Rendition – “A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away”
The Commons Security and Intelligence committee has decided that British aid to the US in rendering two British resident businessmen, Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, from the Gambia to Guantanamo Bay was….nor criminal, not negligent, but ‘inadvertent’. Oops.
Shorter UK: “Not us guv, it was all those mean Americans!”
“We are satisfied that the (domestic) Security Service (MI5) did not intend for the men to be arrested or for a ‘rendition to detention’ (extra-judicial transfer for detention outside the normal legal system) operation to take place,” the committee said.
“Indeed when sharing the intelligence they used caveats specifically prohibiting any action being taken.
“The Security Service did not foresee that the US authorities would disregard the caveats, given that they had honoured the caveat system for the past 20 years.
“This case shows a lack of regard on the part of the US for UK concerns — despite strong protests — and that has serious implications for the intelligence relationship…
“In international law, it is clear that the US will take whatever action it deems necessary, within US law, to protect its national security,” it said, noting that British concerns “do not materially affect” their strategy.
Just so we’re clear, what the committee appear to be saying is tnat US intelligence is doing what the hell it likes and there’s nothing we can do to stop them because they just don’t give a fuck. The ‘within US law’ is just a figleaf put there to avoid a nasty letter from the US Ambassador..
What wry understatement they continue:
The intelligence and security committee said Britain’s overseas intelligence service MI6 and MI5 had been slow to appreciate the change in US policy and should have exercised greater caution earlier.
Personally I’d translate that as ”they knew the Yanks had gone batshit crazy but were too scared to do anything about it’.
Torture porn
The pretty woman as helpless victim of the evil maniac/torturer/rapist has been a cliche of horror movies for as long as there have been horror movies and the idea of the uppity bitch getting her comeuppance from the man she spurned is even older than that (listen to some murder ballads someday for some examples). Torture or the threat of torture has likewise been a long staple of horror and filthy exploitation movies have a long tradition as well.
But what is new is the open voyeurism with which torture porn movies like Saw or Hostel have been embraced by the American movie audience. These no longer are movies in which torture is just one part of the horror, but the main attraction. And now it seems there’s a new movie on the same times, Captivity which goes just that little bit further, combining the promise of torture porn with the old bitch getting her comeuppance revenge plot, starring professional victim straight out of 24 Elisha Cuthbert. From the post
at Kindly Póg Mo Thón it seems to combined the worst in misogyny with the worst in torture voyeurism:
You know Captivity, the movie with the torture-porn ad campaign, including a huge four-panel billboard in LA, showing Elisha Cuthbert being Abducted, Confined, Tortured and Terminated. I’ve seen her being buried in sand on the side of a bus stop in New York, and seen her crying behind a chain-link fence that she held with her bloody fingers on the subway.
[…]
My brother worked on it. He doesn’t have a credit, but he worked part-time on the crew during the shoot in Moscow, where he lived at the time, in 2005. Before it became torture-porn. When it was “just” a movie about a psycho who kidnapped a model whose only crime was not being available to him and held her captive in his basement. Before the eyeball milkshakes, designed to appeal to Elisha Cuthbert’s “fan base” and the people who dig the Saw movies. And bonus! The emotionally-stunted, pretty-people-hating psycho kidnapper is fat.
It reminded me of something. It reminded me of Abu Ghraib, which showed the same confusion of sex and torture. At Abu Ghraib prisoners weren’t just tortured and humiliated, their captors used sex as torture, creating images reminiscent of BDSM porn, which was also how it was defended by the likes of Rush “druggie” Limbaugh. (Forgetting real BSDM practicioners of course don’t rape people…) I’m convinced that for a large number of Americans, Abu Ghraib gave them permission to enjoy torture: if the president allowed it, it must be alright. Hence the market for Saw and Hostel and Captivity.