Indigo Jo Blogs

Yesterday a campaign was launched to ban a device called the Mosquito, which emits a high-pitched sound audible only to young people, intended to disperse groups of them who loiter in public places and cause a nuisance. Small shop owners say they are effective against such groups and protects the public from them. The "Buzz off" campaign is backed by the children's commissioner of England and Wales, Al Aynsley-Green, who lays out the fairly obvious disadvantage: that they are indiscriminate.

Continue reading "The Mosquito: why it really sucks" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

BBC - Radio 4 - News and Current Affairs - Recruiting Muslim Spies

This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about attempts by the British security services to recruit Muslims as informants, supposedly to help them track down terrorists. People allege that they have been pressured to join by threats related to their immigration status or past criminal activities, and on one occasion setting up an arrest in Pakistan as an attempt to force them into joining. The reasons why Muslims are reluctant to become spies is obvious - it's against Islam and specifically forbidden in the Qu'ran, which is made clear in the programme, but another aspect not discussed in the programme is the fact that employees of the security services are required to lie about their occupation to even their close family, by telling them they work for the Foreign Office or the Government Communications Bureau. Given Muslims' past experience with the security services elsewhere, particularly in the USA where people were set up by government agents recruiting for fake terrorist plots, I don't believe MI5 et al will have much luck in recruiting Muslims to inform on each other.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning they were talking on Today about the woman who called herself the "Lyrical Terrorist", who wrote ghoulish poems about slicing people's heads off and was convicted of possessing material "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" last month. The conviction has caused an outcry, with some, like Matthew Parris, alleging that she was prosecuted for "thought crime".

For myself, I suspect that the reason there has been an outcry over Samina Malik, to the extent that serious talk is now being made, and not just in civil libertarian circles, of rewriting the laws under which she was convicted, is simply that Samina Malik, unlike those previously convicted for such offences without any evidence of actual terrorist activity, is a woman. She may or may not be an aspiring terrorist, but what she has been, like anyone else who downloads such material over the internet, is pretty naive and stupid.

Continue reading "Online terrorism and stupidity" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

CCTV is no silver bullet - it risks making life less safe - Guardian Unlimited

A timely article by Libby Brooks about the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK. We have 20% of the world's total and there is no restriction on private organisations putting them up. I notice it most when I'm out driving, because every few yards there is yet another camera or set of cameras, and the feeling of being spied on is unsettling. Why do they need to have so many? Of course, being caught inadvertently doing 3mph over the speed limit is also a worry.

The article mentions how the CCTV epidemic has even found its way into small towns, how its effectiveness in guaranteeing our safety is limited and unproven, and its effect of making us value our privacy much less, hence the rise of programmes like Big Brother, something I had never thought of.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chicken Yoghurt » Public Service Announcement

Yesterday, several British political blogs were pulled down, including Bloggerheads, that of the former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, Bob Piper and Boris Johnson, when their web host gave in to threatening letters from lawyers acting for the Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is trying to buy Arsenal football club. The threats were in response to allegations posted on Murray's blog, which were reproduced here among other places. I can't testify that what Murray says is true, of course, but Murray himself says has not received any correspondence from Usmanov's lawyers. They have gone for the easy option of simply censoring his claims by leaning on his web hosts. (The whole article is still available at Indymedia. More: Pickled Politics, Serious Golmal, David T @ Harry's Place, Iain Dale.)

Continue reading "Libel law censorship" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Guardian Unlimited: Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here's why

This is a reaction by a feminist to the decision by the Catholic church in Ireland to tell schools to shut down their Amnesty International groups (as one school in Belfast has already done) on account of the organisation's move to support women's "right" to abortion. I opposed this at the time, not only because it could cost the organisation support for its core work - freeing prisoners of conscience - but because it simply has nothing to do with that core work; it is a distraction from it.

However, for the Catholic church to tell schools not to support Amnesty anymore is reprehensible - it gives the impression that the Catholic church, or that section of it, is so concerned with opposing abortion that it is willing to stop those under its control from helping other innocent people. I fail to see why such groups cannot continue to work with AI on the issues in which they were previously involved, which is presumably the bulk of ordinary supporters' work, such as writing letters to governments telling them to free prisoners of conscience. I don't agree that it justifies ending state-funded faith schools, but it's a sad reflection on the attitudes of some religious people.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati Tags: amnesty international

Amnesty International last week announced that it had abandoned its policy of neutrality on the issue of abortion in favour of supporting it "in some circumstances", including pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or when the mother's life or health is at stake. Naturally, this has caused a lot of upset, with the Catholic church threatening to withdraw support from the group. Cath Elliot, "a feminist and a trade unionist" who works in local government, wrote an article for Comment is Free supporting the new position, alleging that "forcing a woman to continue with a pregnancy against her will is a continuation of the violence against her"; Sunny at Pickled Politics agrees.

Given that I'm a Muslim, you might guess what my position on abortion is (not pro, although not as strictly anti as the Catholic church is). However, it seems like another example of an organisation succumbing to "mission creep", involving itself in matters which have nothing to do with the reason it was set up - rather like the Soil Association threatening to remove organic status from air-freighted African produce because of the environmental damage air-freighting causes. Amnesty's main work is to free prisoners of conscience, people jailed for peacefully-held beliefs. It also opposes capital punishment - a policy adopted more recently, and sometimes controversial; I remember seeing a letter in their magazine from someone "shocked" at being asked to write on behalf of a mass murderer facing execution in Guatemala.

However, abortion is a totally separate issue, and it seems that they have opted for a "western secular liberal" stance rather than remaining a broad organisation fighting for political freedoms. Surely there are already enough people fighting for women's abortion "rights"; for Amnesty International to take this on as a side issue hardly helps that cause but hurts its own, because of the inevitable falling-off of funding. It is a mistake.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

This morning I heard a news item, marking a month since a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces came into force, involving one Dave West, a club owner on Jermyn Street, London W1, who was attempting to defy the ban. He apparently had a sign on the entrance to his lap-dancing joint saying "smokers welcome", and was insisting that the smoking ban was an infringement on some 14 million people's civil liberties. He has hired Cherie Blair's legal firm, Matrix Chambers, to fight his case. Excuse me while I decide whether to wheeze or throw up.

Continue reading "Giving civil liberties a bad name" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati Tags: apple store, bentalls, kingston

This afternoon I had my third encounter with the police under the present anti-terrorism régime. However, it's the first time that suspicion has been raised about me personally.

Kingston has an Apple Store, which like other such shops, has a room full of Macs which offer free internet access. When I'm near an Apple Store, I always go in to check my email and my blog, so as to approve any legitimate comments and delete any spam. Others go in for similar email-related purposes and to engage in long chats over various chat systems in various languages. The staff must know me: I go in there often, visit the same websites, stay about 15 minutes (less than I do in Regent Street, because Kingston is near my home and I've no need to stay an hour) and go.

Continue reading "Stopped for looking at Muslim websites" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

In the wake of the recent disappearance, as yet unresolved, of Madeleine McCann on the Algarve in Portugal, nobody who listens to the British media could have missed the flood of smug mums and drive-by dads castigating the McCann family for leaving their daughter unsupervised for half-an-hour at a time while they ate just yards away (more here). On the Vanessa Feltz show the other day, however, a crazy idea which was first mooted a few years ago was resurrected: that of implanting chips into kids' bodies so that their location can be detected any time and anywhere. Feltz dug up the inventor who had first proposed such technology a few years ago, but had dropped it due to the controversy it caused. Now, it's back, with this nutty inventor having received enquiries from numerous countries, and what better time to discuss it than when a little girl has gone missing?

Continue reading "Why chip-tagging kids is a bad idea" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Is the smoking ban a good idea? | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

In a few weeks' time, smoking in enclosed public spaces will become illegal in the UK; such places include pubs and bars, the usual places people go to socialise. The Guardian, today, dedicated its entire G2 section (its magazine-sized feature section) to the subject: of how smoking was perceived, and represented in culture through the decades, and how its advertising changed, particularly with increasing legal restrictions until its advertising was banned in 2003. The lead feature, however, consists of two articles, one by Christopher Hitchens opposing the ban, the other by Simon Hoggart, the paper's political sketch-writer, supporting it. It's worth quoting Hoggart's closing statement:

In America I saw this sign in an office: "My pleasure is beer, and this creates urine. Your pleasure is smoking, and this creates poisonous fumes. Don't pollute my air space, and I promise not to piss on your desk." Precisely.

Continue reading "The martyrology of the smoker" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Naomi Wolf has an article in today's Guardian entitled Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, which lists ten things governments generally do when turning a country from a democracy to a dictatorship. It's not the first time I've seen a comparison between Bush's America and fascism (see this animation with fourteen characteristics of a fascist state which, it is argued, the USA under Bush clearly displays), but although Wolf refers to other types of dictatorship, including military and communist ones, using the term "fascist" prominantly misses the point. There have been plenty of countries, particularly in the third world, which have slipped into dictatorship by steps similar to those Wolf outlines - there are several countries in the Middle East right now which have fake democracies with freedoms curtailed by "states of emergency" which have lasted decades. Screaming fascism leads people to retreat to a misguided sense of security; what the USA - and, to a lesser extent, other western countries - show signs of relapsing into is the state of a miserable third-world banana republic. (More: Lenin's Tomb.)

Posted by Indigo Jo at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday Telegraph: A passport to misery, if you ask me...

Jenny McCartney, in today's Sunday Telegraph, on the bureaucratic nightmare that the British government's demand that all new passport applicants attend a face-to-face interview at one of twenty interviewing centres (at their own expense, of course). Among those to be asked is when, precisely, they moved into their present address, something I could not answer off the top of my head. I know it was in the second half of September 2001, but that's about all. A few weeks ago, of course, they used the excuse that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing - now they are telling us that people renewing their passports will have to do the same from 2009.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

George Monbiot: A glut of barristers at Westminster has led to a crackdown on dissent

This was in today's Guardian (also find it, with references, here at George Monbiot's own archive). The context is the injunction against the people of an Oxfordshire village forbidding them from protesting against the replacement of a local lake with a waste dump for a nearby power station; he observes that the law criminalising harrassment, passed in the last days of the Major government, has often been used against peaceful protestors.

Continue reading "Westminster's plague of lawyers" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 6:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some people just don't get it about the "road charging" situation.

I signed the petition, along with well over a million others. No doubt, the government will simply brush it off, as they brushed off the mass protest against the war in Iraq.

Does it mean that I want them to just build more roads? Does it mean that I don't believe that congestion needs cutting for the sake of both the health of the country, and the towns in particular, and the environment? Does it mean I don't think global warming is taking place?

Continue reading "Why I signed the road tax petition" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)