Autoritarianism – Page 4

Suspicious behaviour: if he was Brazilian he would be dead by now

Published on September 26, 2005

PC plod hasn’t learned much from the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes it seems, as the experiences of David Mery, arrested for suspicious behaviour on the Underground, shows:

7.21 pm: I enter Southwark tube station, passing uniformed police by the entrance, and more police beyond the gate. I walk down to the platform, peering down at the steps as, thanks to a small eye infection, I’m wearing specs instead of my usual contact lenses. The next train is scheduled to arrive in a few minutes. As other people drift on to the platform, I sit down against the wall with my rucksack still on my back. I check for messages on my phone, then take out a printout of an article about Wikipedia from inside my jacket and begin to read.

The train enters the station. Uniformed police officers appear on the platform and surround me. They must immediately notice my French accent, still strong after living more than 12 years in London.

They handcuff me, hands behind my back, and take my rucksack out of my sight. They explain that this is for my safety, and that they are acting under the authority of the Terrorism Act. I am told that I am being stopped and searched because:

they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;

I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;

two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;

I am wearing a jacket “too warm for the season”;

I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;

I looked at people coming on the platform;

I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.

This is not a list of suspicious behaviour, this is a list of pretexts under which anybody can be arrested. In fact, one of those criteria, keeping a “bulky rucksack” with you at all times is in direct conflict with what every Londoner has been taught for over twenty years, to always keep your luggage with you in case it is mistaken for an IRA bomb! If you can be arrested for that, you can be arrested for anything and any pretence at living in a free society is gone.

What is worse, as the article makes clear, this whole incident will be kept in police databases, in the UK and abroad for an unknown period of time, marking Mery as a suspicious character –in other words this wrongful arrest will in itself make it much more likely Mery will be arrested again! No smoke without a fire after all and if the police stopped you once, they must have had a good reason…

I’ll shown mine if you show yours

Published on December 17, 2004

From January 1st 2005, we’re back to the German occupation here, as everybody 14 years or older is obliged to carry an ausweis, with the police allowed to ask for them everytime they feel like. (Alright, officially they can only do so if they need to “keep the public order”, but we all know that that can be anything.) This is not something I am planning to adhere to and I’m fortunately not the only one. However, if asked for papers and you cannot or will not show them it’ll cost ya fifty euros (with which we neatly discover the real reason for this new law: bugger security, it’s all about the do-re-mi.)

Fortunately, as Hiram of Ipse Dixit (in Dutch) discovered, us peons are at least allowed to asks police agents for their papers as well. So Hiram thought of a plan: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours“. Every time we are asked for our papers, we should ask the agent as well. This way, it’ll cost all those jumped up little h–lers twice as much time, they’ll discover how obnoxious this law is first hand and those few who would abuse the new law for their own ends can be registrered…

No, I’m not sure the practise will match the theory, but it is worth a try…

Tranquility Bay

Published on July 1, 2003Leave a comment

It’s been difficult these last few years not to become anti-american, to judge the US by the actions of its government, to not let the stupidity and venality of a minority (I hope) of its citizens sour me on the country as a whole. Articles like this two part series in the Observer don’t help, because they confirm all the stereotypes of Americans I’ve been tempted to believe lately, that y’all are halfway on your way to fascism and happy with it:

Were you to glance up from the deserted beach below, you might mistake Tranquility Bay for a rather exclusive hotel. The statuesque white property stands all alone on a sandy curve of southern Jamaica, feathered by palm trees, gazing out across the Caribbean Sea. You would have to look closer to see the guards at the wall. Inside, 250 foreign children are locked up. Almost all are American, but though kept prisoner, they were not sent here by a court of law. Their parents paid to have them kidnapped and flown here against their will, to be incarcerated for up to three years, sometimes even longer. They will not be released until they are judged to be respectful, polite and obedient enough to rejoin their families.

The last Resort, part I

The last Resort, part II

The first article goes on to describe the routine inside Tranquility Bay, how the children are treated, e.g. how they get to it in the first place:

The first most teenagers hear of Tranquility is therefore when they are woken from their beds at home at 4am by guards, who place them in a van, handcuffed if necessary, drive them to an airport and fly them to Jamaica. The child will not be allowed to speak to his or her parents for up to six months, or see them for up to a year.

The second article follows up with interviews with some of the people involved: staff, parents and the children itself.

Susie is 16, from New York, and here ‘because of having sex. Not going to school. It was my attitude. It wasn’t, like, drugs. The problem was, me and my mom, we just didn’t have a relationship. We could say how was your day, that was about it.’ The possibility that this was a normal phase is adamantly rejected by Susie.

‘No, that wasn’t normal. I would be doing the same thing all my life. I would never have got out of it.’ Her friend Michelle believes, ‘I’d be living on the streets now. And I think one of the biggest things I’ve learnt here is that everything happens for a reason. I came here for a reason. You see, I just wasn’t meant to be living the life I was living. I wasn’t meant to be homeless.’

What emerges from these articles is a picture of what I could only call a re-education camp; it would fit right in with current practises in North Korea. There’s the isolation from society, the constant supervision, the emotional abuse and breakdown of personality, the brainwashing by constant repetition, the punishement for unwanted behaviour and thoughts culminating in a “rewiring” (as they call it
themselves) of the children’s personality. Can you imagine sending your children there? Yet the article asserts it’s legal in the US and would be legal in the UK as well…

UPDATE: Long Story, Short Pier has more about this, including eye witness reports of survivors.

Found via PolitX, an excellent (UK) political blog.

Just another day in the War against Drugs

Published on February 14, 2003Leave a comment

You probably have seen this story elsewhere, about the 19 year old kid who got 26 years in jail for
selling marijuana:

Alexander was 18, a senior at Lawrence County High with two classes left before graduation. The “new kid” turned out to be an undercover drug agent. And four sales, together worth about $350, landed Alexander a 26-year prison sentence.

Which is bad enough and has been the cause of much outrage and astonishment in the blogworld. But if you read on, it gets worse:

Alexander was not arrested with marijuana at school. Prosecutors secured enhancements on his sentence because of a state law that adds five years when someone sells drugs within three miles of a school or housing project.
Though on an isolated country stretch, the Alexanders’ property met both standards.

Now I can understand the law being tougher on people selling (illegal) drugs to minors, but this sort of automatic sentencing is just silly, as you can see in this case. This is a case of a teenager selling dope to other teenagers, not an evil drugs dealer addicting kindergarten kids. That the place of the “crime” was in technically in the limits but in reality fairly isolated makes it all the more absurd.

He doesn’t deny he sold marijuana. It was easy money. But authorities’ depiction of him as some sort of kingpin is far from the truth, he said. “I’ve been in maybe one fight in school my whole life, and now I’m sentenced to 26 years in the pen,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

After his arrest and expulsion, Alexander found a private school where he completed his classes and got a high school diploma. He also graduated from a drug treatment program, found a job as a bricklayer and enrolled in Calhoun Community College.

In other words, even after his life got ruined and with the threat of along prison sentence hanging over him he’s doing quite well. Doesn’t sound like a dangerous criminal who needs to be kept away from society, does he?

But what lead to Alexander’s arrest in the first place? Overzealous school officials.

The crackdown that led to Alexander’s arrest began soon after Ricky Nichols took over as principal in fall 2001.

Nichols, an Army Reservist who target-shoots with sheriff’s deputies, considers himself a front-line soldier in the war on drugs. His training includes police courses on drug identification. The drug task force has given him pointers on searching students’ cars for contraband.

Once a girl came in the school office asking for aspirin. She admitted having a hangover and failed a breath test. Nichols searched her car. “She didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “I don’t have to have probable cause. The police have to have probable cause.”

Glad I went to school in a sane country. Sure, drugs prevention should be part of a principal’s job, but car searches? Undercover police officiers? In this sort of fascistoid climate it’s easy to justify hitting a teenager with a prison sentence longer then he has been alive, for a “crime” that didn’t hurt anybody, which is only a crime because the government choose to make it a crime, not because it’s inherently immoral.