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Thursday, 25 November 2010
On alleged police brutality, and the need for investigation
My post last night may have seemed rather unsympathetic to those who took to the streets in protest against education cuts. And, indeed, I maintain that occupying a university library and pushing students' work off desks is a rather juvenile and foolish thing to do.
But there is another side of the story, too. And in the aftermath of yesterday's protests in London, there are several as-yet-unconfirmed reports of several instances of police violence and abusive behaviour, some directed against protestors as young as fourteen or fifteen. Demonstrators were, reportedly, "kettled" - forced into a limited area and kept there by police cordons for hours at a time, in cold weather. In a press release today, the Education Activist Network is claiming that police "charged protestors on horseback". The BBC reports one eye-witness account from a teenager:
But these allegations of abuse are serious enough to merit an immediate inquiry. Any violent interference with a peaceful protest needs to be investigated, immediately, by an independent civilian body. It may be that the police will be cleared of wrongdoing, and we should not, of course, pre-judge the issue; but we are entitled to know the truth, and I think we are justified in calling on Parliament to demand an inquiry.
But there is another side of the story, too. And in the aftermath of yesterday's protests in London, there are several as-yet-unconfirmed reports of several instances of police violence and abusive behaviour, some directed against protestors as young as fourteen or fifteen. Demonstrators were, reportedly, "kettled" - forced into a limited area and kept there by police cordons for hours at a time, in cold weather. In a press release today, the Education Activist Network is claiming that police "charged protestors on horseback". The BBC reports one eye-witness account from a teenager:
Arkady Rose, from London, is mother of 15-year-old Kathy, who was kettled in Wednesday's protests. She said she was proud of her daughter's participation in the protest.
She added: "After all, it's her life and education that's going to be affected by the changes.
"Kathy wasn't released until after 8pm and she says that there were still students younger than her in there, despite the police saying there weren't. She says she saw teenagers of her age being beaten with batons and people who were asking to leave for medical treatment being refused.
"It seems like the kettling started around the time that most students had had enough and were wanting to go home. The police seem to have kept them moving around by changing the story and moving them from exit to exit with the intention of tiring them out.
"There was no food or water, despite what they say. All my daughter managed to eat all day was a bag of Minstrels."The Guardian repeats the allegation that mounted police charged protestors, citing an email received from a protestor named "Dylan" who claims to have been at Downing Street yesterday evening.
Police in riot helmets were gradually pushing us back on foot, but when that proved ineffectual, they brought forward a line of horses. Assuming the horses were just there for show, we continued protesting. Then the horses charged. This sounds like a complete exaggeration but there's no other word for it. The horses charged forward at a canter, through the crowd. I pulled my friend out of the way just in time, but I saw a girl, around sixteen or seventeen, get trampled. I didn't see her get up. Another man was trampled and immediately helped up by other protesters.
Earlier I had also noticed an incident in which a police officer was clearly out of control. A girl at the front of the crowd, nearest the police, was yelling, "Peaceful protest, peaceful protest!". He screamed "FUCK OFF!" and punched her in the face. It's interesting how, despite the presence of reporters at the scene, none of this has been in the news.We can't, of course, yet confirm the truth or falsehood of any of these allegations. The police, like everyone else, are entitled to be presumed innocent until guilt is proven, and I'm naturally wary of relying on hearsay when such serious accusations are involved.
But these allegations of abuse are serious enough to merit an immediate inquiry. Any violent interference with a peaceful protest needs to be investigated, immediately, by an independent civilian body. It may be that the police will be cleared of wrongdoing, and we should not, of course, pre-judge the issue; but we are entitled to know the truth, and I think we are justified in calling on Parliament to demand an inquiry.
You know Christmas is coming...
... when certain right-wing bloviators start to serve up the traditional seasonal mulled whine, and the next battle in the War on Christmas™ begins. After all, we need to be reminded that we heathen unbelieving Grinches are steadily destroying the True Meaning of Christmas™ with our every thought, word and deed. Because every time you wish someone "Season's Greetings", God kills a reindeer.
Cuttlefish, the Poet Laureate of the eeeebil godless blogosphere, rallies the troops with a stirring verse or two here.
On a vaguely related note, Roy Zimmerman has promised that "Christmas on Mars" will return to YouTube this weekend. Something for my fellow benighted heathens to look forward to.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Political activism. You're doing it wrong.
It's being reported that student anti-cuts protestors in Oxford occupied the Radcliffe Camera today.
The Camera is, of course, part of the Bodleian Library, and, in Full Term, is likely to be full of worried-looking finalists working on essays. I wasn't there, and did not witness today's events, but there are reports of protestors "dancing on tables" and "throwing students' work off desks". Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would venture to suggest that this, if true, probably isn't a terribly sensible way to win support for one's cause. (Nor, indeed, to demonstrate one's commitment to the social value of education.)
There are, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the government's proposals. The cuts to arts, humanities and social science research funding, in particular, risk permanent harm to the intellectual and cultural life of our country. And in a democratic society, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully, whatever the cause, is an immensely important one.
But this kind of puerile, destructive idiocy isn't really helping anyone. And these particular zealots are doing their own movement a serious disservice: because adolescents dancing on library tables will, with tomorrow morning's front pages and TV reports, quickly become the iconic image of today's protests. After the London demonstrations, the image that filled the public consciousness wasn't a picture of thousands of non-violent students assembling in the streets to express grievances. It was a scene of broken windows and projectile fire-extinguishers at Millbank. Shock sells newspapers: and in an age of visual media, such things tend to be indelible. It doesn't do the anti-cuts cause any favours. It simply gives ammunition to those who would prefer to depict all radical students (grossly unfairly) as out-of-control adolescent vandals.
I'm not denying that, on occasion, there are legitimate justifications for radical action and lawbreaking. But this is not one of them. And even if it were, it's rather hard to see why a university library would be deemed a suitable target. Whatever you think about government policy, the harried undergraduates trying to work in the Rad Cam are certainly not to blame for it, and they do not deserve to suffer.
(Postscript) For your daily dose of ridiculously inflated hyperbole: a lecturer in pharmacology proclaims grandly that the anti-cuts protestors "stand in the proud tradition of the suffragettes and the civil rights movement". Seriously.
The Camera is, of course, part of the Bodleian Library, and, in Full Term, is likely to be full of worried-looking finalists working on essays. I wasn't there, and did not witness today's events, but there are reports of protestors "dancing on tables" and "throwing students' work off desks". Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would venture to suggest that this, if true, probably isn't a terribly sensible way to win support for one's cause. (Nor, indeed, to demonstrate one's commitment to the social value of education.)
There are, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the government's proposals. The cuts to arts, humanities and social science research funding, in particular, risk permanent harm to the intellectual and cultural life of our country. And in a democratic society, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully, whatever the cause, is an immensely important one.
But this kind of puerile, destructive idiocy isn't really helping anyone. And these particular zealots are doing their own movement a serious disservice: because adolescents dancing on library tables will, with tomorrow morning's front pages and TV reports, quickly become the iconic image of today's protests. After the London demonstrations, the image that filled the public consciousness wasn't a picture of thousands of non-violent students assembling in the streets to express grievances. It was a scene of broken windows and projectile fire-extinguishers at Millbank. Shock sells newspapers: and in an age of visual media, such things tend to be indelible. It doesn't do the anti-cuts cause any favours. It simply gives ammunition to those who would prefer to depict all radical students (grossly unfairly) as out-of-control adolescent vandals.
I'm not denying that, on occasion, there are legitimate justifications for radical action and lawbreaking. But this is not one of them. And even if it were, it's rather hard to see why a university library would be deemed a suitable target. Whatever you think about government policy, the harried undergraduates trying to work in the Rad Cam are certainly not to blame for it, and they do not deserve to suffer.
(Postscript) For your daily dose of ridiculously inflated hyperbole: a lecturer in pharmacology proclaims grandly that the anti-cuts protestors "stand in the proud tradition of the suffragettes and the civil rights movement". Seriously.
Torture doesn't work: or, why James Delingpole is a morally bankrupt moron
I would hope my readers agree that torture is, in all circumstances, a moral atrocity. For as long as we wish to claim to be a free society, we should never descend to the level of authoritarian regimes by legitimizing torture, by whatever name. Speaking for myself, despite the Daily Mail's best efforts at scaremongering, I'm considerably less worried about the danger of dying in a terrorist attack (an eventuality far less probable than my dying in, say, a car accident) than about the serious moral evil of entrusting our government with the power to abuse and brutalize those in its custody. The appalling evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo Bay - including the indefinite imprisonment and torture of the demonstrably innocent - ought to illustrate, even to the most illiberal reader, the perils of trusting the state with unlimited power for our "protection".
Unfortunately, the odious James Delingpole, writing in the Telegraph, jumped recently on a classic authoritarian bandwagon - invoking the old "ticking time-bomb" canard, and accusing his straw-liberal of elevating the wellbeing of "murderous al-Qaeda terrorists" over the lives of the innocent.
Even if one descends to Delingpole's level of moral bankruptcy, however, it's also clear that, if one's goal is to obtain accurate information, torture doesn't work. From time immemorial, authoritarian regimes have tortured people: and in the process, they have discovered that torture is a very effective means of extracting false confessions, but a very ineffective means of extracting truth. People being tortured typically say whatever their torturers want to hear, in the hope of getting them to stop. Hence why evidence obtained under torture is rightly regarded, in the courtroom and elsewhere, as inherently unreliable.
Which brings me to the point of this post: Brian Michael Jenkins, an intelligence and counter-terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation - hardly an organization renowned for its liberal pacifistic inclinations - also opines in the LA Times that torture doesn't work. (via Ed Brayton)
Delingpole is welcome to assert that he knows more than Jenkins about what works, and what doesn't, in interrogations. I know who I'm more inclined to believe.
Unfortunately, the odious James Delingpole, writing in the Telegraph, jumped recently on a classic authoritarian bandwagon - invoking the old "ticking time-bomb" canard, and accusing his straw-liberal of elevating the wellbeing of "murderous al-Qaeda terrorists" over the lives of the innocent.
Even if one descends to Delingpole's level of moral bankruptcy, however, it's also clear that, if one's goal is to obtain accurate information, torture doesn't work. From time immemorial, authoritarian regimes have tortured people: and in the process, they have discovered that torture is a very effective means of extracting false confessions, but a very ineffective means of extracting truth. People being tortured typically say whatever their torturers want to hear, in the hope of getting them to stop. Hence why evidence obtained under torture is rightly regarded, in the courtroom and elsewhere, as inherently unreliable.
Which brings me to the point of this post: Brian Michael Jenkins, an intelligence and counter-terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation - hardly an organization renowned for its liberal pacifistic inclinations - also opines in the LA Times that torture doesn't work. (via Ed Brayton)
I don't think torture belongs in the American arsenal. I think torture is illegal, is immoral, but I would go further and argue that it doesn't work.
These silly scenarios [in which] the terrorist knows where the bomb is that's about to go off in 30 minutes -- that's not reality. Further, you have to judge what you get in information versus the strategic loss that you take when it is revealed, as it will be inevitably, that a country is employing torture.
In Madrid, [I chaired] a working group on intelligence at the time of the revelations of the abuses in Iraq. I was being pummeled by men who are not squeamish, not hand-wringing compassionate folks, [who said] it was worse than immoral -- it was stupid. The information really had very little value, and yet the loss that we took strategically to our reputation is tremendous. This is like going to Las Vegas and throwing down a million dollars to win a nickel.
Finally, you take into account that [using torture] changes the nature of our own society, and that is a tremendous cost.
[As for legal justifications], I would find a legal brief more compelling if I knew the lawyer had witnessed an actual waterboarding -- more so, had the author been waterboarded. Let's waterboard a panel of lawyers and see where they come out.
Delingpole is welcome to assert that he knows more than Jenkins about what works, and what doesn't, in interrogations. I know who I'm more inclined to believe.
An update on the protests, and why we shouldn't trust the police
As mentioned in my last post, today is the NUS's designated "National Day of Action against [higher education] Fees and Cuts." True to form, this morning I encountered a marching column of protestors in central Oxford on the corner of Turl and High Streets, many holding Socialist Worker Party signs, chanting "Fuck fees! Fuck fees! Education should be free!"
I've already written extensively about the cuts themselves, but a couple of things caught my eye. Firstly, I spotted a young policewoman surreptitiously filming the proceedings on a small video camera. As the press has already reported, it is routine police practice in the UK, relying on the reams of enabling legislation enacted by the previous Labour government, to retain videos of protestors in police intelligence databases. If you have participated in a high-profile political protest, they probably have a file on you, whether or not you were ever charged with a crime.
This disturbing McCarthyish practice is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. As in most countries, British police regularly arrest peaceful protestors and later release them without charge, as a means of intimidation. But under one of the last Labour government's more Orwellian schemes, DNA samples are taken - by force, if need be - from everyone who is arrested, and retained on the 5.1-million-strong central DNA database for ever. This practice has already been ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights, but, as with so many ECHR decisions, Parliament has thus far taken no action to bring British law into line with our international commitments.
Whether or not one agrees that "education should be free" - and I certainly do not - the right to peaceful protest, whatever one's views, is a cornerstone of freedom. And if police are given an inch of power to regulate protests, they will take a mile. It's time to start standing up to the police, demanding the repeal of the innumerable authoritarian enabling-measures enacted by governments of both parties in the last twenty years, and refusing to comply passively with illiberal practices. And regardless of your opinions of the substantive merits of this protest, all of us should stand in solidarity today with the victims of abuses of police power.
As an unrelated addendum, I was also deeply disheartened to see so many SWP protestors proudly holding aloft signs bearing pictures like "Bad romance" and "Leave him, he'll hurt you in the end" alongside photoshopped images of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Outside primary school, "HAHA UR GAY!!!" is neither a funny insult nor a clever one. And homophobic "jokes" do not become any more enlightened merely because they come from the left.
I've already written extensively about the cuts themselves, but a couple of things caught my eye. Firstly, I spotted a young policewoman surreptitiously filming the proceedings on a small video camera. As the press has already reported, it is routine police practice in the UK, relying on the reams of enabling legislation enacted by the previous Labour government, to retain videos of protestors in police intelligence databases. If you have participated in a high-profile political protest, they probably have a file on you, whether or not you were ever charged with a crime.
This disturbing McCarthyish practice is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. As in most countries, British police regularly arrest peaceful protestors and later release them without charge, as a means of intimidation. But under one of the last Labour government's more Orwellian schemes, DNA samples are taken - by force, if need be - from everyone who is arrested, and retained on the 5.1-million-strong central DNA database for ever. This practice has already been ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights, but, as with so many ECHR decisions, Parliament has thus far taken no action to bring British law into line with our international commitments.
Whether or not one agrees that "education should be free" - and I certainly do not - the right to peaceful protest, whatever one's views, is a cornerstone of freedom. And if police are given an inch of power to regulate protests, they will take a mile. It's time to start standing up to the police, demanding the repeal of the innumerable authoritarian enabling-measures enacted by governments of both parties in the last twenty years, and refusing to comply passively with illiberal practices. And regardless of your opinions of the substantive merits of this protest, all of us should stand in solidarity today with the victims of abuses of police power.
As an unrelated addendum, I was also deeply disheartened to see so many SWP protestors proudly holding aloft signs bearing pictures like "Bad romance" and "Leave him, he'll hurt you in the end" alongside photoshopped images of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Outside primary school, "HAHA UR GAY!!!" is neither a funny insult nor a clever one. And homophobic "jokes" do not become any more enlightened merely because they come from the left.
Action against fees and cuts?
Apparently, today has been chosen by the NUS and other activist groups as the "National Day of Action against Fees and Cuts", protesting both the planned rise in undergraduate tuition fees (from £3,000 to £9,000 a year) and the cutbacks in education and research funding.
For reasons I already explained, I'm vehemently opposed to the cuts in research funding - which will, inter alia, virtually eliminate public funding for arts, social sciences and humanities research, something which is a very bad idea for our society. And I don't like the government's proposals, by any means. It's also fair enough to point out that Liberal Democrat MPs have broken their express pledges to vote against any rise in tuition fees, which does not speak well of their honesty.
Nonetheless, I remain undecided about the rise in tuition costs. It should be borne in mind that Britain's generous student loan system gives British undergraduates an interest-free loan to cover their fees - which is not repayable until you're earning a salary, and is deducted automatically thereafter from your salary with the amount of repayment linked to your income. It amounts, in effect, to an extra payroll tax paid by employed graduates. In other words, it's hard to see how this proposal is particularly different from the "graduate tax" proposed by the left. It doesn't seem that it will require students to find more money up-front, so it shouldn't prevent young people from low-income households from going to university. And it's beyond doubt that something needed to be done: the status quo in higher education could not have been sustained for very much longer. With more than 40 percent of young people going to university (which I believe to be a very good thing for our society), it has to be funded somehow. These proposals aren't great, but I don't see that they are as bad as they appear at first blush.
So, despite sincere sympathy with the protestors, I won't be demonstrating today. I don't really think "You say: cut back! We say: fight back against *some* aspects of the cuts, particularly the planned elimination of arts and humanities funding, while being somewhat more ambivalent about undergraduate tuition fee rises, and acknowledging that the status quo in education funding is financially unsustainable and requires reform!" would fit on a sign.
(Addendum: This government, like the last, is doing plenty of other things which are certainly more iniquitous than education cuts - our country's barbaric treatment of asylum-seekers, for a start, and slashing housing benefit for the poor. I'm certainly not intending to praise Cameron and Clegg. But it is perhaps disheartening that education cuts get so much more political attention, and provoke so much more popular outrage, than do the British state's ongoing abuses against the genuinely poor and marginalized.)
For reasons I already explained, I'm vehemently opposed to the cuts in research funding - which will, inter alia, virtually eliminate public funding for arts, social sciences and humanities research, something which is a very bad idea for our society. And I don't like the government's proposals, by any means. It's also fair enough to point out that Liberal Democrat MPs have broken their express pledges to vote against any rise in tuition fees, which does not speak well of their honesty.
Nonetheless, I remain undecided about the rise in tuition costs. It should be borne in mind that Britain's generous student loan system gives British undergraduates an interest-free loan to cover their fees - which is not repayable until you're earning a salary, and is deducted automatically thereafter from your salary with the amount of repayment linked to your income. It amounts, in effect, to an extra payroll tax paid by employed graduates. In other words, it's hard to see how this proposal is particularly different from the "graduate tax" proposed by the left. It doesn't seem that it will require students to find more money up-front, so it shouldn't prevent young people from low-income households from going to university. And it's beyond doubt that something needed to be done: the status quo in higher education could not have been sustained for very much longer. With more than 40 percent of young people going to university (which I believe to be a very good thing for our society), it has to be funded somehow. These proposals aren't great, but I don't see that they are as bad as they appear at first blush.
So, despite sincere sympathy with the protestors, I won't be demonstrating today. I don't really think "You say: cut back! We say: fight back against *some* aspects of the cuts, particularly the planned elimination of arts and humanities funding, while being somewhat more ambivalent about undergraduate tuition fee rises, and acknowledging that the status quo in education funding is financially unsustainable and requires reform!" would fit on a sign.
(Addendum: This government, like the last, is doing plenty of other things which are certainly more iniquitous than education cuts - our country's barbaric treatment of asylum-seekers, for a start, and slashing housing benefit for the poor. I'm certainly not intending to praise Cameron and Clegg. But it is perhaps disheartening that education cuts get so much more political attention, and provoke so much more popular outrage, than do the British state's ongoing abuses against the genuinely poor and marginalized.)
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