henry porter, london editor of 'vanity fair' magazine, has written to met commissioner sir ian blair, asking for his assurance that it is safe to carry a copy of his magazine article on freedom and civil rights within the socpa zone.
on the 18th june, steve stood outside downing street with a banner on which he had written two quotations. "in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - george orwell, and "no man deserves punishment for his thoughts" - anon. (full story and film at 
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/06/343058.html )
police wanted to report him to the crown prosecution service with a view to prosecuting him for organising or taking part in an unauthorised demonstration within the socpa exclusion zone. as he did not feel he was committing any crime, steve refused to give any more than his first name. police subsequently said they would arrest him. as part of this arrest, although steve showed no signs of violence or resistance, they told him they would handcuff him. he resisted the use of handcuffs, and three policemen then violently assaulted him, witnessed by many passers-by and tourists outside downing street (and fortunately for his defence, this indymedia cameraman!).
when searched at charing cross police station, he was found to be in possession of several copies of the 'vanity fair' article by henry porter about the massive erosion of civil rights under tony blair. in questioning steve, police described the articles as 'politically motivated' material, and thus strengthened their case that he was holding an unauthorised demonstration.
henry porter, who held a very public exchange of emails on civil liberties with tony blair in the independent newspaper earlier this year, has now written to sir ian blair at the met as follows:
Dear Sir Ian,
This is a small matter but one which seriously concerns us. On June 18 a man named Steve Jago was arrested in Whitehall under SOCPA. He was carrying a banner which quoted George Orwell. He was later found by the police to be in the possession of several copies of a Vanity Fair article, entitled Blair's Big Brother Britain. As it happens, I am the author of this article but that is not relevant to the issue. The point is that the police told Mr Jago that this was "politically motivated" material, and suggested that it was evidence of his desire to break the law. The word sedition was not used, but clearly that is the light in which the article was regarded by the
Metropolitan police. The reason I write is to ask for your assurance that
anyone carrying one or more copies of the article, or indeed the magazine,
within a kilometre of Parliament Square does not risk arrest and charge
under the new laws. The facts of the article have not been contested by the government - we have a very thorough fact-checking procedure in the US - and as far as I know the government has not yet removed the right to publish such criticism or the right for a person to read it and make as many copies as he or she likes.
You will no doubt see the point I am making . If Mr Jago's prosecution is
supported by the fact that he had copies of an article from a legitimate
mainstream publication about his person, the freedom of the press is
critically affected. I therefore seek your assurance that possession of
Vanity fair within a designated area is not regarded as "politically
motivated" and evidence of conscious law breaking.
I look forward to your response.
Your sincerely
Henry Porter
Editor, United Kingdom.
vanity fair have issued a press release and the independent newspaper is covering the story tomorrow (unless some editor pulls it tonight of course)
steve himself was back at downing street a week later, with a placard appealing for witnesses to the assault. guess what - he was arrested! (story and film at indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/06/343499.html)
next week, he may try his luck standing outside downing street with copies of vanity fair - depending on sir ian blair's reply of course!!
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/06/343058.html ) police wanted to report him to the crown prosecution service with a view to prosecuting him for organising or taking part in an unauthorised demonstration within the socpa exclusion zone. as he did not feel he was committing any crime, steve refused to give any more than his first name. police subsequently said they would arrest him. as part of this arrest, although steve showed no signs of violence or resistance, they told him they would handcuff him. he resisted the use of handcuffs, and three policemen then violently assaulted him, witnessed by many passers-by and tourists outside downing street (and fortunately for his defence, this indymedia cameraman!).
when searched at charing cross police station, he was found to be in possession of several copies of the 'vanity fair' article by henry porter about the massive erosion of civil rights under tony blair. in questioning steve, police described the articles as 'politically motivated' material, and thus strengthened their case that he was holding an unauthorised demonstration.
henry porter, who held a very public exchange of emails on civil liberties with tony blair in the independent newspaper earlier this year, has now written to sir ian blair at the met as follows:
Dear Sir Ian,
This is a small matter but one which seriously concerns us. On June 18 a man named Steve Jago was arrested in Whitehall under SOCPA. He was carrying a banner which quoted George Orwell. He was later found by the police to be in the possession of several copies of a Vanity Fair article, entitled Blair's Big Brother Britain. As it happens, I am the author of this article but that is not relevant to the issue. The point is that the police told Mr Jago that this was "politically motivated" material, and suggested that it was evidence of his desire to break the law. The word sedition was not used, but clearly that is the light in which the article was regarded by the
Metropolitan police. The reason I write is to ask for your assurance that
anyone carrying one or more copies of the article, or indeed the magazine,
within a kilometre of Parliament Square does not risk arrest and charge
under the new laws. The facts of the article have not been contested by the government - we have a very thorough fact-checking procedure in the US - and as far as I know the government has not yet removed the right to publish such criticism or the right for a person to read it and make as many copies as he or she likes.
You will no doubt see the point I am making . If Mr Jago's prosecution is
supported by the fact that he had copies of an article from a legitimate
mainstream publication about his person, the freedom of the press is
critically affected. I therefore seek your assurance that possession of
Vanity fair within a designated area is not regarded as "politically
motivated" and evidence of conscious law breaking.
I look forward to your response.
Your sincerely
Henry Porter
Editor, United Kingdom.
vanity fair have issued a press release and the independent newspaper is covering the story tomorrow (unless some editor pulls it tonight of course)
steve himself was back at downing street a week later, with a placard appealing for witnesses to the assault. guess what - he was arrested! (story and film at indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/06/343499.html)
next week, he may try his luck standing outside downing street with copies of vanity fair - depending on sir ian blair's reply of course!!
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The regime of any mass murdering monster will follow the same pattern
29.06.2006 01:22
Baiting the nazis therefore, merely allowed one to understand how bad things had become at any particular moment. No doubt those that risked (and lost) their lives were sincere, but served no purpose, given that every witness to their fate already knew what the nazis were capable of.
Blair's uniform thugs are limited by no human code, or moral consideration. If they were able to inflict a beating with no penalty, they would have beaten Steve Jago to a pulp without a second thought. If they were able to murder without penalty, they would have happily pumped as many bullets into his head as with the poor Brazilian guy murdered with Ken Livingstone's full approval.
The same applies to the Blair appointed scum that run his courts. ANY PENALTY Blair provides for punishing protesters, no matter how draconian, WILL BE HAPPILY APPLIED by the New Reich criminals that judge those people that Blair has dragged before them. If Blair is able to get the death penalty for protest, every last sitting judge will happily whip out the black cap, and smirk as, like the nazi judges before him/her, another innocent human is sent to be murdered by the state.
So do we, like in the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons, have a situation where 'freedom fighters' think their actions allow us to measure the extent of 'Spike's' chain? Problem is, this isn't a cartoon, and Blair's bite doesn't heal in the next frame.
Blair's uniformed thugs will transition to full blown gestapo psychopaths in the blink of an eye, with ZERO resignations, once the time is right for Blair. And this is the point. Their is no humanity in the British police force. Just a lot of very wicked people paid to hate and hurt. That there is a current limit to the degree of hate and hurt that may be shown is neither here nor there. That limit reduces daily, and one day soon will be totally gone.
Playing 'clever-clever' games over stupid issues like "will I be arrested just for walking around with a magazine" achieves exactly NOTHING (which was the self-same thing it achieved in the time of Hitler). Only the imminent defeat of Blair's regime can change anything. While Blair is allowed to grow his power (and remember, Blair is more powerful today than at any time in his past), Blair's police state laws will magnify, and his methods of enforcement will become ever more violent.
Blair is a monster, in case this fact passed you by for the millionth time, when he was glorifying Israeli terrorism at the exact same moment when Israel was butchering the family on the beach. Blair has murdered hundreds of thousands of humans in Iraq. Because Blair is too evil to be racist (racism is a very flawed evil, pure evil is way beyond racism), the death of a person in Iraq is NO DIFFERENT to him from a death in the UK, beyond considerations of whether such an event furthers his plans. Like Hitler, Blair finds that it is worth limiting the harm he inflicts on his own people in the early stages. But also like Hitler, Blair won't hesitate to expend any number of UK lives when the time is right.
With this knowledge, you should understand that Blair probably considers a simple beating given to a protester to be a 'kindness'. Blair knows that in the future, would be protesters will BEG for that kind of leniency.
Our main national product at the moment is new laws and prisons. Old laws have their penalties increased each and every year. Written law has now been joined by NEW REICH BOSSMAN laws called ASBO's, and New Reich bossmen have been given powers of issuing fines. A police state defines every thug that has power under the perverted ruling regime as being policeman, judge, jury and executioner. British people just do not want to understand this, despite having vast numbers of examples from past history to learn from.
A smart person draws a graph to measure a trend. A dumb person (ie., most that live in the UK) refuses to extrapolate a trend, and thus understand what things are going to be like in the future. The dumb person says "I don't care if the graph shows a trend, I KNOW things won't be as bad in the future as the graph shows, because this is Britain". Give them a time machine, and they could go back and listen to the citizens of 1930's nazi Germany say the exact same thing.
Testing the extent of Blair's current power will tell you nothing that people like myself don't already know. Exposing the extent of Blair's power may shock a few people, but most of the population are now cynical and fearful, and would claim to be unsurprised by anything. Protesting en masse to some REAL anti-Blair purpose would achieve something, but where are the masses going to come from. Teddy bears picnics, and cycle meets, and protests that aren't protests, are going to make no difference whatsoever, except to give Blair a good laugh.
At the moment, Blair allows so-called 'legal' protest, to put those that correctly refuse to get state permission to exercise their Human Rights in a difficult situation. This strategy is well thought out, and one can find anti-Blair protesters that get permission idiotically attacking those that don't. Divide and conquer never loses its potency. However, I would have to say that a 'legal' protest that seeks to put Blair's feet to the flame would hurt Blair infinitely more than a non-legal protest that was designed to appear to be no form of protest whatsoever.
Let me make myself clearer. Remember Romania, that East European commie hellhole? What transformed this nation? Endlessly inviting state thugs to cave in ones head? Or getting rid of the regime by getting rid of the leaders of the regime? I'm sure the suckers of Romania were told every year that the monster Ceauşescu would be gone by the next year as well. In reality, the victims of the monster Ceauşescu only got rid of him by bringing him to trial and executing him. You see, monsters NEVER leave of their own free will. They are either forcefully removed, or keep power until they die of old age (having first ensured that vast numbers of other Humans died of anything BUT old age).
twilight
remember you saw it here first
29.06.2006 16:53
the london evening standard also covers this story tonight
rikki
LINKS TO MAGAZINE & NEWSPAPER ARTICLES MENTIONED
02.07.2006 16:14
The Indepedent article (near enough identical article, but with a different headline and an addition suffix describing some high profile abuses of SOCPA and the Terrorism Act 2000).
The Observer story containing Henry Porter and Tony Blair's email exchange about liberty in Britain.
Alistair