We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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More than 10,000 people, falsely declared dead in northern India by greedy relatives and corrupt officials in order to steal their land, are trying desperately to prove that they are really alive.
Fifty of the ‘dead’ staged a protest last week by shaving their heads in front of the state assembly building in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state. Lal Bihari Mritak, secretary of a pressure group, the Association of the Dead said:
The state refuses to accept that they are alive. If it did, it would mean altering the district revenue records and restoring to them their properties, which is something that dishonest officials oppose.
Mata Prasad, a petitioner explains how court cases can get bogged down for years in the over-burdened and corrupt judiciary.
I haven’t had a hearing of my case simply because I can’t afford to pay a bribe. My documents disappeared from court overnight and I now have to start from the beginning.
Lal Bihari fought for eight years to be declared alive again, and a Bombay producer now plans to make a film about his struggle.
I finally won the battle and was brought back to life in the revenue records.
It seems that the Indian state has achieved nirvana all states aspire to – the ability to literally decide about the life and death of their citizens.
Whilst Tony Martin’s case continues to ignite a spark of common sense in the public as well as forcing Blunkett in the face of public outrage to promise new laws to protect the rights of householders, people in the rest of the world (i.e. in the US) continue to defend their own…
The last time police came by his Tripe Street home to investigate complaints about drug dealing in the West Ashley neighborhood, William Gates [ed. no relation!] made it clear to them that he had had enough.
“I told the police, ‘Bring the coroner and body bags the next time you come out here,’ ” he said. “Nobody is going to run me out of my home.”
Last Friday morning Gates made good on his statement as he shot a man in his front yard.
Roused from his sleep by the sound of gunfire about 4:30 a.m. Friday, the 67-year-old Gates took up his 12-gauge Browning automatic shotgun, stepped out onto his front porch and fired three blasts at men he said were drug dealers having a shootout in his front yard.
He only wounded the men he shot. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. “I shot to kill,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
The attitude of the local police was rather different from the one taken by ‘best police in the world’ towards Tony Martin. While they did not publicly approve of what Gates did, they filed no charges against him. Charleston Police Chief Reuben Greenberg explains:
We have no plans to arrest him. We can’t see from where we sit where a crime’s been committed. People have the right to provide for their safety, and we believe that is what he was doing.
Are you listening, Mr Blunkett?
Mr Gates vows that he will be ready if friends of the three men try to retaliate, and he smiled as he said he planned to acquire a gun to protect himself.
They better make sure they get me if they come back, because if they don’t get me, I’m going to kill all of them.
That’s the spirit. And I bet that the ‘friends’ of the drug dealers will think twice about stepping into Mr Gates front yard. Think of all the taxpayer money saved by not having to ‘protect’ the harassed homeowner. (In the case of Mr Martin, a team of Norfolk police officers had to install security and surveillance devices inside and outside of Martin’s farmhouse and prior to his release Scotland Yard’s considered placing him under the witness protection scheme. The cost of giving Martin a new identity was indicated as £500,000, which would be paid by the taxpayer.)
Although the final decision whether to charge Mr Gates will be made by the solicitor’s office early this week, something tells me that his story will have a radically different ending to that of the unfortunate Tony Martin…
A ‘legal opinion’ about the incident that made our Jonathan Pearce “mighty queasy”.
The adverts to UCMJ and the U.S. Army Field Manual only prove that hostage taking is illegal under U.S. law, but don’t prove that the action in question here was in fact a hostage taking.
So far I’m not convinced that there was a violation of either international or U.S. law — not in spirit nor letter. The only thing I’m convinced of is that lots of people are wanting to make a big deal out of an incident that doesn’t deserve the attention.
Via Instapundit
From WorldNetDaily:
Congressional investigators say they can’t assure the public that individuals’ personal data is being adequately protected from unauthorized reading, alteration or disclosure.
In a survey of 25 federal agencies and departments, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found a lack of compliance with the federal Privacy Act of 1974 significant enough to conclude “the government cannot assure the public that individual privacy rights are being protected.”
“Federal agencies are not following the law and, as a result, the personal data of citizens may be improperly collected and poorly protected,” Brase adds, “One system of records holds data on 290 million people. If that system happens to be one of the systems that’s out of compliance, the privacy rights of every citizen have already been violated, perhaps many times.”
This is from the ‘The Basra Rose’, the Iraq deployment section of the Red Rose, the newsletter of the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment:
WEATHER
Mon – HOT
Tue – VERY HOT
Wed – UNBELIEVABLY HOT
Thu – SO HOT YOU’LL CRY
Fri – AS HOT AS THE SUN
Sat – SO HOT LOCALS BURST INTO FLAMES
Sun – AS HOT AS THE DEVIL’S SCROTUM
In other words, it is a tad hot in Basra. Just so you know.
Silicon.com reports that David Blunkett is being called upon to incorporate his national ID card proposals into wider strategy to boost the adoption of smart cards for authenticating use of e-government services.
Concerns have been raised in a new policy framework on a ‘joined-up’ e-government smart card strategy issued by the e-Envoy this week that local and central government bodies will develop their own card schemes that will not be interoperable and result in people carrying a wallet full of different cards for different services. The document said:
The rollout and development of smart card schemes across the public sector has to date been somewhat fragmented and co-ordinated, resulting in duplication. If this continues, smart cards will not fulfil their potential to impact significantly on the e-government agenda and support e-commerce.
‘Multi-application’ cards have been touted by the e-Envoy for some time and another possibility put forward in the framework is the piggybacking of government services onto new or existing private sector schemes.
A British mother and her two sons were given jail sentences yesterday, less than four days after they were arrested for allegedly attacking an Athens shopkeeper.
During a four-hour hearing at Athens criminal court the main prosecution evidence was read, with no opportunity for cross-examination. Police statements were contradictory and the British defendants had only five minutes each to state their case.
The family believes it has been the victim of a Greek backlash against the drunken and lewd behaviour of young British holidaymakers on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
We are being made scapegoats for the antics of hooligans on some of the islands. There have been despicable occurrences on the islands, but we are not that type of people.
No forensic evidence was presented, although it had been stated that Mr Karamichalous was bleeding heavily after the brothers kicked him.
The metal bar referred to both by the Britons and Mr Karamichalous was not recovered from the scene. Although the Johnsons had been locked up since the early hours of Sunday, officers did not take a statement from any of them.
Their only opportunity to give their side of the story was when each took the stand for about five minutes.
Regardless of the facts of the case, of which I have no detailed knowledge, the speed and manner in which the family of Britons living in Greece were sentenced smacks of political and nationalist gestures. Their prosecution is seen as backlash against the loutish behaviour of British tourists on Greece’s holiday islands. The case has made headline news in Greece where the Johnsons’ story has been illustrated with photographs and footage of British tourists misbehaving on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
Blimey! The Greek legal system makes the British courts seem like the pinnacle of civilisation.
The Telegraph reports:
The introduction of identity cards is still some years away, Tony Blair indicated yesterday. Although he supported ID cards in principle, he said huge logistical and cost issues must be resolved.
In the long term it was right to move towards a system of ID cards. But it was not a quick fix for dealing with the influx of asylum seekers.
Mr Blair’s concerns are well-placed given Whitehall’s experience with less-ambitious IT projects.
The ID card is to be backed up by a “citizen’s database” on to which the details of 50 million people aged over 16 would have to be entered. The intention is to use biometric data – such as an iris recognition system – to verify a person’s identity. But this technology would be hugely expensive.
So no change of mind, just an administrative delay. In the meantime, we blog away…
The Telegraph reports that Britain is to reopen attempts to change key sections of the proposed European constitution despite warnings by its chief author that this risks undoing months of painstaking negotiations.
The Government will issue a White Paper in early September setting out its ‘red lines’ – the issues that it will not compromise on – in the final round of bargaining for the constitution that will be launched by European Union leaders in October. Senior officials said the issues include a determination to remove a mutual defence pact that would undermine Nato, clauses regarded as a backdoor attempt to harmonise taxation, and proposals for an EU public prosecutor.
For once the Conserative opposition sounds almost reasonable. Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative defence spokesman, said:
They said the constitution was just a tidying-up exercise. They have realised late in the day that it’s much more than that. Even if they win on their red lines, they have already given much more away, not least the principle of having a constitution in the first place.
Mr Jenkin maintains that, despite phrases ostensibly respecting countries’ obligations to Nato, the draft constitution would give the EU primacy over the transatlantic alliance. It is not yet clear how far Britain will resist the proposals to create a common defence policy.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who presided over 16 months of debate at the European Convention, has warned all sides that tampering with the text risks creating a free-for-all.
And we wouldn’t want that, right?
The BBC is to show a series of documentaries exploring the gun and gang culture among Britain’s urban underclass, it said yesterday. The Guns & Gangs Season on BBC2 will look at the rise of gun crime and whether groups such as So Solid Crew contribute to the culture of violence.
For the uninitiated So Solid Crew are at the centre of a debate over rap music and gun crime after a government minister said the increase in violence was down to “idiots like the So Solid Crew glorifying gun culture and violence”. Culture minister Kim Howells was speaking about the shooting of four girls in Birmingham at a New Year party – two of them were killed. Gun crime has doubled in the last five years, and he reckons the music industry is part of the problem:
For years I’ve been very worried about the hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiots come out with from these rappers and so on, it is a big cultural problem.
There you have it. It is obviously not the fact that you are not allowed to defend yourself but rap music that makes criminals bolder. And the BBC just adds to the blunder. Other programmes in the season include a documentary examining the alleged links between the gun culture and rap music, another about the source of illicit arms and Sons And Guns, about the mothers of men murdered in gang-related killings in Manchester. In the new £97 million BBC2 autumn season, the corporation promises to focus on “the harsh realities of the modern world”.
Oh dear. So off the mark, you can’t even see the target…
From Liberty’s press release:
Shami Chakrabarti is to be the new Director of Liberty. She succeeds John Wadham who has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
…
Shami Chakrabarti joined Liberty in 2001 as the group’s ‘In-House Counsel’ and is now recognised as one of the UK’s leading authorities on anti-terror laws. She says that the measures adopted by the Government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks have made her “ashamed to be a lawyer.”
The Guardian reports:
All asylum seekers who fail to register with the government should be deprived of access to British schools and hospitals, the former cabinet minister Stephen Byers said yesterday in a controversial speech designed to reassure working class voters that Labour understood their concerns about immigration.
At his monthly press conference yesterday, Tony Blair promised that the government would go further on asylum, and said he thought identity cards were right in principle even if the logistical cost was daunting.
In principle there is a case, in my view, for Britain moving towards … ID cards. However, there are huge logistical and cost issues that need to be resolved. It’s worth looking – which is what we are doing – at how you can resolve them, but it’s not a quick-fix for the system because of the amount of time and the logistical process in introducing them.
Mr Byers, in his proposals on illegal entrants who fail to claim asylum, proposed that all employers should get automatic fines of £2,000 for each illegal immigrant found at work.
This would make the body creating the demand for labour – the farmer, hotel or restaurant owner, multinational company or government department – take responsibility for the people employed on their behalf. Special squads should target known areas of illegal working.
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