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Thursday, June 29, 2006 |
Replacing Jack Straw in Foreign Office with Margaret Beckett, apparently a woman with balls, seems to be indicated by her willingness not to rule out military action against Iran.
"'Fuck', she told Tony Blair at the time, who was nothing if not amused. 'He told me he wanted me to go on working on climate change issues but to do it from the foreign office. I was stunned.'"
There we have it: Blair is not planning to do very much about climate change in his own country, he is stalling the issue by making it an international affair.
Blair's Home Office received a severe blow.
Guardian: "A high court judge last night demolished a central plank of the government's anti-terror policy when he quashed 'control orders' on six suspected terrorists, saying the home secretary 'had no power to make them under human rights law'.
Mr Justice Sullivan had declared that the system of control orders, which places the terror suspects under 'draconian' restrictions just short of house arrest for up to 12 months, was incompatible with the European human rights convention."
Independent: "In the guise of fighting terrorism and maintaining public order, Tony Blair's Government has quietly and systematically taken power from Parliament and the British people.
Blair's campaign against rights contained in the Rule of Law - that is, that ancient amalgam of common law, convention, and the opinion of experts, which makes up one half of the British constitution - is often well concealed. Many of the measures have been slipped through under legislation that appears to address problems the public is concerned about.
For instance, the law banning people from demonstrating within one kilometre of Parliament is contained in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005. The right to protest freely has been affected by the Terrorism Act of 2000, which allows police to stop and search people in a designated area - which can be anywhere - and by antisocial behaviour laws, which allow police to issue an order banning someone from a particular activity, waving a banner, for instance. If a person breaks that order, he or she risks a prison sentence of up to five years. Likewise, the Protection from Harassment Act of 1997 - designed to combat stalkers and campaigns of intimidation - is being used to control protest. A woman who sent two e-mails to a pharmaceutical company politely asking a member of the staff not to work with a company that did testing on animals was prosecuted for 'repeated conduct' in sending an e-mail twice, which the Act defines as harassment.
The right to a jury trial is removed in complicated fraud cases and where there is a fear of jury tampering. The right not to be tried twice for the same offence - the law of double jeopardy - no longer exists. The presumption of innocence is compromised, especially in antisocial behaviour legislation, which also makes hearsay admissible as evidence. The right not to be punished unless a court decides that the law has been broken is removed in the system of control orders by which a terrorist suspect is prevented from moving about freely and using the phone and internet, without at any stage being allowed to hear the evidence against him - house arrest in all but name.
Freedom of speech is attacked by Section Five of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which preceded Blair's Government, but which is now being used to patrol opinion.
There can be few duller documents than the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 or the Inquiries Act of 2005, which is perhaps just as well for the Government, for both vastly extend the arbitrary powers of ministers while making them less answerable to Parliament. The Civil Contingencies Act, for instance, allows a minister to declare a state of emergency in which assets can be seized without compensation, courts may be set up, assemblies may be banned, and people may be moved from, or held in, particular areas, all on the belief that an emergency might be about to occur. Only after seven days does Parliament get the chance to assess the situation. If the minister is wrong, or has acted in bad faith, he cannot be punished."
12:35:11 PM 
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NRDC: "Conservation groups intend to file a federal lawsuit today to stop the U.S. Navy from illegally using high-intensity sonar, which is deadly to whales, during an eight-nation naval exercise that began Monday in a 210,000 square-mile area around Hawaii. The exercise area comprises some of the richest marine habitat in the United States, including waters near the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, created just two weeks ago by President Bush.
The lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups will challenge a last-minute authorization granted yesterday by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) allowing the Navy to 'take' as many as 25,000 protected marine mammals by blasting high-intensity, mid-frequency sonar during the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise. 'Take' is a legal term meaning to harass, hunt, capture or kill."
12:07:05 PM
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USNewswire: "The DontSilenceThePeople.org Coalition today launched a campaign to defend the First Amendment rights of all Americans to communicate with their elected officials via postal letter, fax, and yes, even e-mail."
DontSilenceThePeople: "Recently Congressional offices began implementing a new technology, called Logic Puzzles, that will effectively block millions of emails from the constituents they represent. In a time when our political culture is increasingly becoming a pay to play exercise, any limit placed on the ability of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard is an unacceptable threat to our democratic principles and First Amendment rights."
11:59:52 AM
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