September 29, 2011
September 27, 2011
Reaping the (censorship) whirlwind
Mick Hume points out that the recent threat of police cracking down on the press — the Guardian in particular — was illiberal and unjustified, yet quite in line with what the Guardian had encouraged be done to Murdoch’s media empire.
It was, as all liberal-minded people (and Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail) agreed, an egregious assault on press freedom for the Metropolitan Police to threaten legal action to force the Guardian to reveal its sources. So there was much celebration and not a little smug satisfaction in media circles when the Met, under pressure from within and without the legal system, dropped the action last week.
Where, the Guardian editors and their outraged high-level supporters demanded, did the Met ever get the ‘ill-judged’, ‘misconceived’ and ‘perverse in the extreme’ idea that they could order the Guardian to tell them who leaked details of Operation Weeting, the phone-hacking investigation?
It’s a good question. Where on earth could Inspector Censor and PC Prodnose have got the notion that it was their business to investigate, arrest and prosecute journalists, or interfere with the operations of a free press? Step forward the moral crusaders at of the Guardian and its allies.
For years they have been demanding more police and legal action against the Murdoch press and those allegedly involved in phone-hacking, inviting the authorities to police the media more closely. Then these illiberal liberals throw their arms up in horror when the authorities try to take advantage of their invitation to investigate the high-minded ‘good guys’ at the Guardian as well as the lowlife at the defunct News of the World. Their naivety is only exceeded by their elitism. Give the state a licence to interfere with the press, and you should not be surprised if it tries to exploit it — even if today’s spineless state officials ultimately lacked the gumption to take on the Guardian.
September 25, 2011
Police “told her she had to stay tied up until they could document the scene, which she said took five hours”
A new lawsuit has been filed in the Russell Williams case:
Laurie Massicotte was a neighbour of Williams in Tweed, Ontario, and was bound, stripped and sexually assaulted in September 2009.
The Toronto Star reported, the more than $7-million law suit filed on Friday claims police failed to provide her with any information about the identity of her assailant while he remained her neighbour for five months following the assault.
Massicottee told the Star, it was only after her assault that she heard another woman who lived on the street had been sexually assaulted twelve days before she was attacked.
She also said after she called the police, they told her she had to stay tied up until they could document the scene, which she said took five hours.
The police left a rape victim tied up for five hours? No wonder she’s suing the Ontario Provincial Police!
September 23, 2011
Mexico to try market solution to drug wars
Jesse Kline reports on the sudden conversion to drug legalization on the part of the Mexican government:
The United States imports a majority of it’s cocaine from Mexico, which has been embroiled in a brutal war among rival gangs for control of the lucrative trade.
Over 42,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a result of gang violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. Not a moment too soon, it appears the President is starting to recognize that the current approach to dealing with illicit drugs is not working.
“We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs. But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions — including market alternatives — in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations,” Calderon said in a speech in New York.
Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.
The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.
September 21, 2011
Tories drop “lawful access” provisions from omnibus crime bill
That’s a bit of good news on the civil liberties front:
A controversial Internet surveillance bill has been omitted from the federal Conservative party’s proposed crime legislation.
Today, Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Rob Nicholson held a press conference to introduce the Conservatives’ promised omnibus crime act, titled The Safe Streets and Communities Act, which focuses on crime and terrorism. However, an expected component of the act regarding Internet surveillance known as “Lawful Access” legislation was nowhere to be found.
The set of Lawful Access bills would have warranted Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies the power to acquire the personal information and activity of web users from internet service providers (ISPs). ISPs would also be required by an additional provision to install surveillance equipment on their networks.
The legislation would essentially give law enforcement the ability to track people online without having to obtain a warrant. The federal NDP and Green parties, and civil liberties groups among others decried the bill as overly-invasive, dangerous and potentially costly for internet users.
That’s the good news. The rest of the bill, as Grace Scott points out, is awash with “tough on crime” noises:
The Safe Streets and Communities Act will increase penalties for sex offenders, those caught with possession or producing illicit drugs for the purposes of trafficking, and intends to implement tougher sentencing on violent and repeat youth crime. It also plans to eliminate the use of conditional sentences, or house arrest, for serious and violent crimes.
September 20, 2011
China’s local and regional governments may be sitting on massive hidden debts
As with the US or Canadian government’s debt, not all debt is held at the federal level. It may take some digging to discover what the actual debt levels might be, but it’s possible. In China, however, as local governments are forbidden to issue bonds or to borrow from banks, they’ve had to become extremely creative in finding ways to borrow money for their pet projects. Not just creative — at least in some cases — legally dubious:
About 85% of Liaoning province’s 184 financing companies defaulted on debt service payments in 2010 according to a report from the province’s Audit Office. The report also noted that 120 of these borrowers, de facto government agencies, operated at a loss last year.
Since 1994, provinces and lower-tier governments have not been permitted to issue bonds or borrow from banks. Despite the strict prohibition, their debt has skyrocketed as local officials incurred obligations through LGFVs, local government finance vehicles. The central government’s National Audit Office said these companies, at the end of last year, had taken on 10.7 trillion yuan of debt. No one, however, knows the true amount of LGFV indebtedness, and some have calculated the real amount to be more than double the official figure.
Why the disagreement as to the amount of debt? Local governments have gone out of their way to hide borrowings, perhaps in part because of their doubtful legality. As famed economic journalist Hu Shuli points out, new local officials sometimes do not know the extent of obligations left by their predecessors. There have been a number of stratagems employed, from the issuance of illegal government guarantees to the transfer of funds in roundabout routes.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.
About that “ethnic cleansing” in Basildon
All the great and the good are girding for battle over the Dale Farm evictions:
A terrible episode of ‘ethnic cleansing’ is looming. It promises to be so bad that a spokesman for the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has been helicoptered in to ‘oversee negotiations’. Amnesty International has set up a special ‘priority action’ page on its website, pleading with people to write letters of outrage to politicians. Head-tilting celebrities have turned up to raise awareness about what one journalist refers to as the ‘racist hysteria’ of the coming cleansing, including that grande dame of right-on causes, Vanessa Redgrave. Things are so dire that the BBC has sent in Fergal Keane, its softly spoken, Irish ponderer of all things evil, who doesn’t only wear his heart but also his lungs, liver and spleen on his sleeve, who cut his teeth reporting on the war in Bosnia and the calamity in Rwanda. ‘It’s a very apprehensive situation’, he intoned on last night’s news.
Oh god, what has happened? A new war in Africa? A rekindling of the old wars in Bosnia? No. Basildon Council in Essex in south-east England is planning to evict some Travellers from their plot of land in Dale Farm. That’s all. Yet watching the media coverage, perusing the millions of tweets of tear-stained concern, you could be forgiven for thinking that the so-called Battle of Dale Farm was a rerun of Bosnia 1992. That is because moral opportunists, cause-hunters, those desperate for some political momentum in their lives, have cynically transformed a small-scale spat between a council and some Gypsies into an epochal stand-off between the forces of racist hysteria and the massed ranks of decent UN cheerleaders. It speaks to the desperation of today’s wannabe moral crusaders that they are willing to infuse even the Dale Farm fallout with the kind of simple-minded moralistic lingo they usually reserve for foreign wars.
Of course, the threatened Dale Farm eviction, which was supposed to take place yesterday until the High Court in London imposed a temporary injunction against it, will be bad and distressing for the Traveller families involved. Eighty-six families could be forcibly removed, simply for building homes on land which they own yet which Basildon Council says is protected Green Belt territory. But is that any justification for using phrases such as ‘racist hysteria’ to describe Basildon Council’s actions and even conjuring up the Holocaust to describe the plight of the Travellers, with Vanessa Redgrave talking about ‘what happened during Hitler’s rule’ and demanding that ‘minorities shouldn’t be destroyed’? If there’s any hysteria here, it is among those who fantasise that we’re witnessing a rerun of Nazi evil and that it is down to conscience-exercising celebs and Amnesty letter-writers — the heroes of the hour — to stop it in its tracks.
September 19, 2011
HMS Astute seaman convicted for murder of officer
Able Seaman Ryan Samuel Donovan has been sentenced to life in prison for his shooting rampage on board HMS Astute earlier this year:
Able Seaman Ryan Samuel Donovan, admitted murdering Lt Cdr Ian Molyneux, 36, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, on board the nuclear submarine HMS Astute.
He also injured a second crewman, Lt Cdr Christopher Hodge, while the sub was docked in Southampton on 8 April.
Donovan, 22, of Dartford, Kent, was told he must serve at least 25 years by the judge at Winchester Crown Court.
Donavon of Hillside Road, also admitted the attempted murders of Lt Cdr Hodge, 45, Petty Officer Christopher Brown, 36, and Chief Petty Officer David McCoy, 37
Donovan, who was put on sentry duty despite being drunk, fired six shots from an SA80 rifle in the control room as local dignitaries, including Southampton City Council’s mayor, chief executive and leader, were being given a tour of HMS Astute, the court heard.
After reading about the attack, I posted an entry calling for Royston Smith’s heroism to be recognized in the next honours list.
That’s a civilian, charging a gunman armed with a battle rifle, and disarming him before the trained military personnel could intervene. There are very few people who could have reacted so quickly — and correctly — in that situation. That’s heroism.
September 18, 2011
September 16, 2011
No free speech, please, we’re Canadian
Ken at Popehat has a lovely summary of the “all Jews should be sterilized” fracas at York University:
Pity poor Professor Cameron Johnson at York University. He was just trying to make this fundamentally Canadian concept clear to the students in the class he was teaching by giving examples of unacceptable opinions. Really, reminding them that some opinions are unacceptable was, in the Canadian context, an act of great patriotism, akin to starting an American lecture with the Pledge of Allegiance and possibly a barbecue. In the course of being so very Canadian, Prof. Johnson mentioned that the sentiment “all Jews should be sterilized” was “unacceptable.”
[. . .]
By uttering the words, Prof. Johnson committed speechcrime. That’s a strict liability crime; intent is irrelevant. Moreover, in thinking that he could utter a series of offensive words by putting them into a specific disapproving and pedagogical context, Prof. Johnson committed a hate crime against the Moron-Canadian community, which is too stupid to grasp context, and the Entitled-Canadian community, which believes that it is un-Canadian to require them to pay close enough attention to follow context. Prof. Johnson knew or should have known that his class of 450 people would include members of the Moron-Canadian and Entitled-Canadian community.
And indeed it did — in the form of Sarah Grunfeld, a member of the Moron-Insipid-Entitled-Canadian community. Sarah Grunfeld was outraged to hear, sort of, that her professor thought that all Jews should be sterilized, and started quite a stir, complaining to York University officials and various community members. Tumult and inquisition ensued. The Canadian media acted in an appallingly un-Canadian manner, focusing on the so-called “context” of Professor Johnson’s words and the utterly irrelevant detail that he was Jewish. Grunfeld, raised by her actions into a position of leadership in the Entitled-, Insipid-, and Moron-Canadian communities, did her best to set them back on the path of right thinking
September 14, 2011
“Government frequently doesn’t think about what it’s doing, doesn’t understand what it’s doing, and can’t predict the probable outcome of what it’s doing”
Ken at Popehat examines one particular example of government’s good intentions leading to unexpected results:
The problem: 16- and 17-year-olds are shitty drivers.
The legislative solution: dramatically tighten the license requirements and driving restrictions on 16- and 17-year-olds.
The result: At least according to one study (though there is conflicting data) higher fatality rates are shifted from 16- and 17-year-olds to 18- and 19-year-olds.
[. . .]
Arguments for driving regulation are stronger than many other realms of government regulation. My point is that the government frequently doesn’t think about what it’s doing, doesn’t understand what it’s doing, and can’t predict the probable outcome of what it’s doing. High-minded regulations do not necessarily have good effects just because they are meant well. Government should exercise humility; citizens should exercise skepticism.
September 12, 2011
The increasing militarization of the police
Radley Balko shows how the tools given to the authorities to fight the war on terror have instead been used to further expand the war on drugs:
New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.
It’s a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America’s police departments.
The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs.” Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America’s drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.
[. . .]
The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, “Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.
Update: Also from Radley, a look inside the SWAT team leader’s world.
[. . .] note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.
September 9, 2011
When drug smugglers go high tech
Strategy Page has more information about the submarine factory that was recently discovered, and the boats they were constructing:
Colombian police recently arrested eighteen members of a gang that specialized in building submarines and semisubmersible boats for transporting cocaine from Colombia to Central America and Mexico. As police suspected, some (five) of those arrested were retired or on active duty with the Colombian Navy (which operates two 1970s ear German built Type 209 submarines). These arrests are part of an intense effort to find the people responsible for building subs for cocaine gangs. Find the builders, and you stop the building efforts.
[. . .]
The submarines that have been captured have, on closer examination turned out to be more sophisticated than first thought. The outer hull is made out of strong, lightweight, Kevlar/carbon fiber that was sturdy enough to keep the sub intact, but very difficult to detect with most sensors. The hull could not survive deep dives, but this boat didn’t have to go deep to get the job done. The diesel-electric power supply, diving and surfacing system and navigational systems of captured (by the army, while under construction) subs were all in working order. It was believed that some of those who built these boats probably had experience building recreational subs. The sub builders also had impressive knowledge of the latest materials used to build exotic boats. It had already become clear that something extraordinary was happening in these improvised jungle shipyards.
The two fiberglass/Kevlar submarines found so far were obviously built to transport cocaine to North America. Neither the United States, nor anyone else who might know, are talking about how many of these subs are out there, or believed to be in operation or under construction. Similar type boats could be built for terrorist or espionage missions.
September 8, 2011
The bold gendarmes, redux
David Hughes has a list of recent events showing the modern British police attitude:
Last week, this newspaper carried a striking photograph of a passer-by at the Notting Hill Carnival trying to trip up a young knifeman who appeared to have just stabbed someone.
At the back of the picture, a man was clutching a bleeding stomach wound. On the left were two uniformed police officers, watching events unfold. They appear to have made no attempt to intercept the man: indeed, he seems to have run right past them. It was left to the sightseer — later identified as Valentine Simatchenko, a former Russian policeman — to try to intervene. Fortunately, the man with the knife was later arrested and charged.
[. . .]
The common theme in all these cases — and many more — is the institutional petulance displayed by some police officers. They throw their weight around because they can; they go for the easy, not the hard, arrests; they act as though they are the law, rather than its upholders. Such officers may be a small minority, but they have a disproportionately damaging impact on the image of the police. It has helped sour the force’s relationship with those who should be its natural allies.
As you can see, this isn’t new, although it seems much more prevalent than back in the day:
H/T to Chris Greaves for the original link.
Play it again, Gibson
Allahpundit posted the video clip above, saying:
If I’m understanding the applicable law correctly, Gibson is as much a victim of Indian protectionism as they are federal meddling. Watch the quickie John Roberts segment for the gist of it. The wood they use to make guitar keyboards is sufficiently rare/endangered that it can’t be exported legally from India unless it’s already been finished by Indian workers, and under U.S. law, if the export is illegal under Indian law, then it’s illegal here too. The governing statute, the Lacey Act, was passed in 1900, but only in 2008 was it expanded to include plants as well as animals, which is why Gibson’s now being hassled about the wood. All of which is jim dandy — except for the question of why Gibson seems to be getting so much federal attention vis-a-vis other firms. Roberts touches on that.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who commented “I like the way he pulls the finished guitar fret out of his ass.”
Update: Speaking of Jon, he’s all over this issue with another link and extra commentary:
CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?
HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.
[. . .]
He’s even warned clients to be wary of traveling abroad with old guitars, because the law says owners can be asked to account for every wooden part of their guitars when re-entering the U.S. The law also covers the trade in vintage instruments.
As Jon points out, this is more than just an issue for the musical instrument makers and musicians:
It’s only a matter of time until this is applied to tools and furniture.
I wonder where [hand tool maker] Lie Nielsen’s politics lie — but he should be safe, using domestic cherry for his totes and knobs.
Lee Valley might have a problem exporting to the US, what with bubinga and rosewood components and being based in Ottawa, which is now a hotbed of hard-right conservative political thought. (A co-worker is wondering why I’m giggling to myself here).
