In countries where capital punishment has been banned the alternative can be inhumane life imprisonment without parole Amnesty International’s recently published death penalty statistics hailed a “decade of progress”. For opponents of capital punishment, this annual tradition of significant documented falls in executions is a victory – of sorts. As Amnesty reported, of the 67 countries that handed down death sentences in 2010, only 23 actually carried out executions. These statistics, however, do not tell us this: what happened to the prisoners who escaped state execution in the remaining 44? Very little attention is given to the sanctions that should replace capital punishment, or to what happens after it is abolished. Consider Uganda. A landmark legal challenge in 2009 abolished mandatory death sentences for certain crimes. But the Ugandan criminal justice system was unprepared for the change. Under pressure from politicians facing a backlash from a public highly supportive of capital punishment, and in the absence of any new sentencing guidelines, judges handed down draconian prison sentences instead – including life without parole, previously nonexistent in Uganda. The attraction of life without parole, now the commonest alternative to capital punishment, is understandable. It allows governments to claim they are protecting the public by permanently removing serious offenders from society. It appeases public outcry at the early release of dangerous convicts on parole. And it means abolitionists can show they are not soft on crime, while at the same time eliminating the danger of executing innocent people. But life without parole trades one severe punishment for another: execution is swapped for a protracted, hopeless death in unspeakable conditions. HIV rates in Ugandan prisons are more than double the rest of the population. In Malawi, where no one has been executed since 1992 , prisons are vastly overcrowded and rife with infectious disease; prisoners are denied contact with families, and sexual and psychological abuse by inmates and guards is routine . Across the world today, those lucky souls who escape death by hanging, beheading, electrocution, lethal injection, shooting or stoning live out their lives in conditions tantamount to a breach of international prohibitions of cruel and inhuman punishment, as an emerging jurisprudence recognises . Whole life imprisonment can also be a form of legal disappearance. In 2009, after Kenya’s last elections , some 4,000 prisoners had their sentences commuted to life to without parole by President Kibaki. Some of those prisoners – living in some of the world’s most crowded and worst funded prisons – have not been heard from since, by their lawyers or families. These are hardly arguments for retaining capital punishment. But if a sentence of 75 years, with hard labour and without review or hope of release – the current alternative in Trinidad and Tobago – is considered a “victory”, it is surely time to rethink our indices of success. Amnesty, for its part, does not propose any particular substitute, other than opposing alternatives that constitute degrading punishment. In Death Penalty: Questions and Answers , Amnesty rightly highlights the brutalising effect of state execution, the cost, the travesties of justice, its disproportionate use against poor and minority communities, its negative impact on victims’ families . But Amnesty fails to challenge itself with the most crucial questions of all: “What alternatives do you propose, and how can we convince governments to implement them?” On the one hand, Amnesty is right not to preach. Finding affordable and publicly acceptable alternatives in desperately underfunded prison systems is an enormous challenge. Overwhelming majorities – including in Britain – support capital punishment, often under the influence of misleading statistics on the deterrent effect of the death penalty and unproven links between serious crime and capital punishment. And in the absence of decent victim support services, it becomes convenient for supporters of capital punishment to exploit crime victims’ grief, arguing that they will settle for nothing less than ultimate retribution or alternatives that do not involve throwing away the key. Yet Amnesty’s neutrality among alternatives is symptomatic of a wider problem: who will tackle the way the criminal justice system operates in countries that retain the death penalty? Politicians are reluctant to expend scarce resources or political capital on properly rehabilitating unpopular and vilified groups of prisoners. A lawyer’s work, meanwhile, is done once their client’s death sentence is commuted. Few headlines focus on the aftermath, and few international advocates jet in to ensure that those released from death row are not tortured in prison, contract tuberculosis or HIV, lose contact with their families or die in appalling squalor. Indeed, litigation can often cause unintended harm. In the United States, as Peter Hodgkinson of the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies (one of few organisations raising this issue) has pointed out , a government backlash against death-penalty litigation has directly or indirectly led to an increase in the number of capital crimes, and to severe restrictions in the appeal process. Life without parole cannot be the alternative. Both the UN and Council of Europe guidelines on managing long-term prisoners recognise that very small numbers of convicted prisoners may have to stay in prison for their natural lives – but only with regular reviews of their risk of reoffending. Some states refuse to extradite suspected offenders to countries where they might face a whole-life tariff. And in Europe, as Edward Fitzgerald QC has noted , there is growing legal recognition of the capacity for redemption and rehabilitation – and that “any sentence that effectively closed the door for ever would be contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment”. Three British whole-life prisoners are currently challenging their sentence in the European Court of Human Rights on those grounds . The abolitionist campaign’s goal should be a humane, proportionate and human rights-compliant response to perpetrators and victims of serious crime. It might require global guidance to standardise the huge, and often grossly disproportionate range of sentencing decisions. It will certainly require building and sustaining capacity among lawyers to challenge human rights abuses in prison, and training police and prison staff to cope in effective and positive ways with serious offenders. It will also mean recognising that the high proportion of mentally ill prisoners on death row might be better dealt with in clinical rather than punitive settings. And as for the most serious crimes of all, those against humanity? Compare the approach of post-apartheid South Africa, where many offenders took part in the truth and reconciliation process rather than receiving punitive sentences, or the participation by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in community service and open dialogue with victims, to the grisly spectacle of Saddam Hussein’s execution. A falling execution rate is not the only measure of rising humanity. We cannot simply declare victory when capital punishment is removed from the statute book, or when fewer prisoners are executed. Moving to a humane penal response to serious crime, in societies in which the death penalty has flourished for centuries, cannot be done at a stroke. The entire abolitionist project is undermined if wholesale infrastructural change is not addressed. Too often, current alternatives to the death penalty raise the uncomfortable question: “what would you rather?” Those that do not are not easy – but silence does no justice to our cause. • This article was written with the assistance of Professor Peter Hodgkinson and Kerry Akers at the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies Capital punishment Prisons and probation Human rights Tom Stoate guardian.co.uk
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Jenin residents claim public opinion turned on director for performing plays that went against Islamic conservative values He wanted to create an “art revolution” to help liberate the Palestinian people, but he only managed to alienate those he most wanted to inspire. The murder earlier this month of Juliano Mer-Khamis was condemned all over the world but met with a grim silence by the residents of the Jenin refugee camp where he founded his Freedom Theatre. It has emerged that the residents of the camp had serious grievances against the actor-director that may have provided the excuses for an unknown gunman to kill him. The 52-year-old, born of a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, attracted funding from the UN, Sweden and the UK for his theatre school and productions but many camp residents found his activities offensive. His death and attitudes to the theatre highlight the conflict of interest between western donors, local elites and the populations they aim to aid; between liberal western values of freedom of expression and a more conservative, traditional world view. A fatwa-style leaflet circulated in Jenin this week and seen by the Guardian, lists criticisms of Mer-Khamis and suggests that the final impetus for the murder was his plan to stage a controversial German play that explores teenage sexuality. Mer-Khamis’s mother, Arna, started a drama workshop in Jenin to help children traumatised by the first intifada which began in 1987. In 2002, Mer-Khamis returned to Jenin after the Israeli army’s destruction of a large part of the refugee camp and the theatre his mother founded. He discovered that many of the children his mother had worked with had become gunmen and suicide bombers which he documented in his award-winning film, Arna’s Children. But he decided that he wanted to continue his mother’s work and create a platform for Palestinian youth to stand up to authority through creativity rather than violence. The Freedom Theatre taught theatre and acting to students, including former gunmen, and staged plays such as Animal Farm and Alice in Wonderland which satirised Palestinian and Israeli authorities. But while Mer-Khamis entertained thousands and inspired devotion among his disciples, his methods disturbed conservative groups in the refugee camp. The theatre was firebombed twice and Mer-Khamis often envisaged his death at the hands of “a crazy Palestinian gunman”. A community leader said that Mer-Khamis was respected in the camp for highlighting damage inflicted by the Israeli army but his creation of a politically and social liberal theatre was more controversial. Adnan al-Hindi, the chairman of the refugee camp’s “popular committee” said that Mer-Khamis had very different values and ideas from the residents, which caused disagreements. The nature of the disputes varied. Local leaders were offended when David Milliband, the British foreign secretary, visited the theatre in 2009 without co-ordination with Palestinian officials. They were also offended by groups of theatre visitors touring the camp and by comments made by Mer-Khamis in interviews. “He said that his message was to liberate citizens from the authority of their leaders and children from their parents. Then there was mixing of sexes and dancing. We tried to discuss it with him and persuade him that he was mistaken but to no avail. Public opinion turned against him,” said Hindi. Inside the camp, rebuilt since its partial destruction in 2002, people were reluctant to speak about Mer-Khamis. A group of elderly women sitting by the roadside, gave their opinion: “God only knows what happened but the theatre was a shameful place.” A butcher was more forthcoming. Standing in a small room with a portrait of Saddam Hussein and a sparsely stocked cold cabinet, he said he and others were offended by the theatre. “We are Muslims. We have traditions. We looked for our children and found them at the theatre dancing. If he came here to bring jobs that would be good but instead he comes here to corrupt our girls and make women of our boys,” he said. The leaflet justifying the killing of Mer-Khamis also demands the closure of the theatre and other western organisations, including the British Kenyon Institute, under threat of “jihadi action”. The leaflet attacks Mer-Khamis for his belief in co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians, “as if we could live with those who stole our land and killed our children”. It goes on to attack his plays: “What kind of resistance [to occupation] is the play Animal Farm, which made the young men of Palestine bark like dogs and lick the ground in shame and the young women wear the costumes of pigs and roll around the ground in degeneracy?” The leaflet describes Mer-Khamis as a Jew, a communist and an infidel. “He was not killed for a scene in a play. He was killed for the accumulation of his activities since he came here,” it says. Mer-Khamis’s most recent project, Spring Awakening, is singled out for particular criticism. The play by Frank Wedekind was banned in Germany in 1891 for its portrayal of teenage sexuality. In recent years a musical adaptation won awards in London and New York. The leaflet then refers to a telephone conversation between Mer-Khamis and the Arab-Israeli actor, Makram Khouri, in which Khouri advises his friend not to stage the play. According to theatre staff, very few people were aware of the conversation. The leaflet then praises the man from Jenin refugee camp who carried out the killing. “He did not do it with a silencer, or in the dark but in broad daylight, face to face, and he made sure not to harm the woman and child who were in the car at the time,” the leaflet says. Palestinian police say that their investigation into the murder continues. Meanwhile, at the theatre staff remain determined to continue the work of Mer-Khamis despite a sense of paranoia that the killer had a connection to the theatre. Rawand Arkavi, the theatre co-ordinator who is from Jenin, said: “We were cautious before but now we don’t care if they shoot all of us. We will keep the theatre going.” Palestinian territories Theatre Middle East Israel Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
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The absurd claim that Barack Obama was not born in the US shouldn’t get airtime – but rightwing cynics keep giving it new life America is a country facing serious problems. The crisis in Libya shows little signs of abating – even as US troops continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Across the Arab world, people’s revolutions dissolve old certainties about US policy. At home, the government faces $38bn of brutal austerity cuts, which would be bad enough except for the fact they make barely a dent in the country’s staggering $1.5tn deficit forecast for this year. With a presidential election looming next year, one would expect these troubling dilemmas – or other issues like high levels of joblessness, Wall Street reform, border security – to dominate debate. That should be the priority of Republicans and Democrats alike and, indeed, the media classes, too. But no. Instead, the current hot topic is one that is quite literally unreal: was Barack Obama actually born in America? Donald Trump has used this singular issue to catapult himself into the giddy heights of early polling for the Republican nomination. In an act of breathtaking cynicism, Trump has converted to “birtherism” in order to generate headlines for his own outlandish ego and his reality TV show. It has worked a treat. Trump has been interviewed on numerous TV shows and spouted birther nonsense as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Serious journalists engage with him and debate these issues. Fox lauds him, MSNBC slams him: both end up falsely validating him by trying to look at the (complete lack of) evidence. The birther “debate” should be reduced to this: it’s OK to mention birtherism, if one then immediately qualifies the mention with the rider that anyone who believes it is a moron or a cynic or both. And then one moves swiftly on. But now here comes a second massive wave of birther debate to torment us and flood the media space where more important things need to be discussed. Next month will see the publication of a birther book by Jerome Corsi , a rightwing activist who previously produced a bestseller that helped stoke the Swift Boat controversy that helped derail John Kerry in 2004. Corsi’s new tome is already sitting near the top of the bestseller lists on Amazon. By Thursday morning, it was ranked No 1, after the Drudge Report had heavily plugged it this week : an astonishing result for a book not yet released or even reviewed. Sadly, Corsi’s new birther book is likely to sell tens of thousands of copies when it slouches towards 17 May to be born. Matt Drudge will, no doubt, continue to give it a huge publicity push. Its title says it all: “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.” It is being published by conservative publishers WND Books , a niche producer of rightwing conspiracy theories, religious books and “family values” tracts. A selection of titles from WND includes such fun-sounding tomes as “America’s War on Christianity”, “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism” and “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror”. It is tempting to laugh all this off as a joke: a jovial sideshow with no real importance. But it really is not funny. The birther conspiracy theory began life on the outer reaches of the 2008 campaign. It was a whispered rumour from the tin-foil hat brigade at the back of town hall meetings or by drunks at bars. Then it hit the blogosphere and, from there, the cable news shows. So it became a subject that newspapers could write about. Now, it is forming the basis for a possible bid for the White House and a book that is set to be a bestseller. That journey from extremism to the mainstream of an idea that is so palpably and stupidly misguided sets a dangerous precedent. Other similarly outlandish fantasies are already treading the same path: that Obama is a secret Muslim; that Obama is a secret communist; that Obama intends to scrap American democracy; that he will take away everyone’s guns. These are fringe ideas deserving of nothing but scorn. Instead, they too may soon top the bestseller lists and form real-life campaign slogans. If they do, every American will be the worse for it. Barack Obama US elections 2012 US politics Republicans Donald Trump United States Newspapers & magazines John Kerry Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The absurd claim that Barack Obama was not born in the US shouldn’t get airtime – but rightwing cynics keep giving it new life America is a country facing serious problems. The crisis in Libya shows little signs of abating – even as US troops continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Across the Arab world, people’s revolutions dissolve old certainties about US policy. At home, the government faces $38bn of brutal austerity cuts, which would be bad enough except for the fact they make barely a dent in the country’s staggering $1.5tn deficit forecast for this year. With a presidential election looming next year, one would expect these troubling dilemmas – or other issues like high levels of joblessness, Wall Street reform, border security – to dominate debate. That should be the priority of Republicans and Democrats alike and, indeed, the media classes, too. But no. Instead, the current hot topic is one that is quite literally unreal: was Barack Obama actually born in America? Donald Trump has used this singular issue to catapult himself into the giddy heights of early polling for the Republican nomination. In an act of breathtaking cynicism, Trump has converted to “birtherism” in order to generate headlines for his own outlandish ego and his reality TV show. It has worked a treat. Trump has been interviewed on numerous TV shows and spouted birther nonsense as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Serious journalists engage with him and debate these issues. Fox lauds him, MSNBC slams him: both end up falsely validating him by trying to look at the (complete lack of) evidence. The birther “debate” should be reduced to this: it’s OK to mention birtherism, if one then immediately qualifies the mention with the rider that anyone who believes it is a moron or a cynic or both. And then one moves swiftly on. But now here comes a second massive wave of birther debate to torment us and flood the media space where more important things need to be discussed. Next month will see the publication of a birther book by Jerome Corsi , a rightwing activist who previously produced a bestseller that helped stoke the Swift Boat controversy that helped derail John Kerry in 2004. Corsi’s new tome is already sitting near the top of the bestseller lists on Amazon. By Thursday morning, it was ranked No 1, after the Drudge Report had heavily plugged it this week : an astonishing result for a book not yet released or even reviewed. Sadly, Corsi’s new birther book is likely to sell tens of thousands of copies when it slouches towards 17 May to be born. Matt Drudge will, no doubt, continue to give it a huge publicity push. Its title says it all: “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.” It is being published by conservative publishers WND Books , a niche producer of rightwing conspiracy theories, religious books and “family values” tracts. A selection of titles from WND includes such fun-sounding tomes as “America’s War on Christianity”, “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism” and “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror”. It is tempting to laugh all this off as a joke: a jovial sideshow with no real importance. But it really is not funny. The birther conspiracy theory began life on the outer reaches of the 2008 campaign. It was a whispered rumour from the tin-foil hat brigade at the back of town hall meetings or by drunks at bars. Then it hit the blogosphere and, from there, the cable news shows. So it became a subject that newspapers could write about. Now, it is forming the basis for a possible bid for the White House and a book that is set to be a bestseller. That journey from extremism to the mainstream of an idea that is so palpably and stupidly misguided sets a dangerous precedent. Other similarly outlandish fantasies are already treading the same path: that Obama is a secret Muslim; that Obama is a secret communist; that Obama intends to scrap American democracy; that he will take away everyone’s guns. These are fringe ideas deserving of nothing but scorn. Instead, they too may soon top the bestseller lists and form real-life campaign slogans. If they do, every American will be the worse for it. Barack Obama US elections 2012 US politics Republicans Donald Trump United States Newspapers & magazines John Kerry Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
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In Restrepo and in his photography, Tim Hetherington put himself in harm’s way to help convey the realities of a warzone The question of the exact cause, and exact number, of non-combatant casualties in Libya has been put into sharp focus. One of the latest civilian victims is the award-winning photojournalist and Oscar-nominated film-maker Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Misrata just after tweeting that the attacks on the city were coming from Muammar Gaddafi and not Nato . With Sebastian Junger he created the extraordinarily powerful documentary Restrepo , about a US platoon’s mission to build and defend a forward outpost in the terrifyingly dangerous Korengal valley in Afghanistan. The outpost was named after an army medic, Juan Restrepo – killed on the first day of their tour of duty. Hetherington and Junger show how this naming was an act of defiance as well as remembrance – a way in which a bunch of very scared young men could impose their identities on an alien, hostile landscape. It was also a way of containing and controlling their fear of death. Hetherington’s own terrible fate shows that the fear and danger with which his film was saturated was not a Hollywood device or a journalist’s macho rhetoric. They were actually present. Hetherington began his career as a stills photographer – though he and Junger appear genuinely to have shared the filming and directing responsibilities on Restrepo. It was an inspired collaboration, but Junger must surely have relied greatly on Hetherington’s razor-sharp visual sense. The images in Restrepo are viscerally powerful. There’s an incredible moment when the film, having shown us these soldiers getting aboard a helicopter, switches to their point-of-view as they look down into the valley from hundreds of metres above. It is a moment of pure vertigo: you can feel your heart plunge into your boots. When these men were under fire, Hetherington was under fire, too, and arguably in more danger: he was armed only with a camera. But perhaps the film’s most extraordinary scene was one that was (ostensibly) calm. One of the soldiers is being interviewed afterwards about his experiences. Mid-sentence, he stops; he can’t carry on. It is not simply that he is emotional – he is in the middle of a flashback, actually caught on camera remembering horrifying events he had clearly suppressed until that moment. To understand the realities of a warzone, to transmit those realities back to us, Hetherington put himself in harm’s way: a brilliant journalist and a courageous, radical film-maker. Documentary Tim Hetherington War reporting Journalist safety Photography Libya Afghanistan United States Middle East Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In Restrepo and in his photography, Tim Hetherington put himself in harm’s way to help convey the realities of a warzone The question of the exact cause, and exact number, of non-combatant casualties in Libya has been put into sharp focus. One of the latest civilian victims is the award-winning photojournalist and Oscar-nominated film-maker Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Misrata just after tweeting that the attacks on the city were coming from Muammar Gaddafi and not Nato . With Sebastian Junger he created the extraordinarily powerful documentary Restrepo , about a US platoon’s mission to build and defend a forward outpost in the terrifyingly dangerous Korengal valley in Afghanistan. The outpost was named after an army medic, Juan Restrepo – killed on the first day of their tour of duty. Hetherington and Junger show how this naming was an act of defiance as well as remembrance – a way in which a bunch of very scared young men could impose their identities on an alien, hostile landscape. It was also a way of containing and controlling their fear of death. Hetherington’s own terrible fate shows that the fear and danger with which his film was saturated was not a Hollywood device or a journalist’s macho rhetoric. They were actually present. Hetherington began his career as a stills photographer – though he and Junger appear genuinely to have shared the filming and directing responsibilities on Restrepo. It was an inspired collaboration, but Junger must surely have relied greatly on Hetherington’s razor-sharp visual sense. The images in Restrepo are viscerally powerful. There’s an incredible moment when the film, having shown us these soldiers getting aboard a helicopter, switches to their point-of-view as they look down into the valley from hundreds of metres above. It is a moment of pure vertigo: you can feel your heart plunge into your boots. When these men were under fire, Hetherington was under fire, too, and arguably in more danger: he was armed only with a camera. But perhaps the film’s most extraordinary scene was one that was (ostensibly) calm. One of the soldiers is being interviewed afterwards about his experiences. Mid-sentence, he stops; he can’t carry on. It is not simply that he is emotional – he is in the middle of a flashback, actually caught on camera remembering horrifying events he had clearly suppressed until that moment. To understand the realities of a warzone, to transmit those realities back to us, Hetherington put himself in harm’s way: a brilliant journalist and a courageous, radical film-maker. Documentary Tim Hetherington War reporting Journalist safety Photography Libya Afghanistan United States Middle East Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk
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Six Greek citizens are suing a German magazine for its assertion that their country tricked its way into the eurozone Insulted Greeks are suing a German magazine over a cover story showing the Greek goddess Aphrodite sticking up her middle finger and an article which called them the “cheats in the Euro family”. Six Greek citizens are taking action against journalists working for the weekly German magazine Focus , including the magazine’s then editor-in-chief and publisher, Helmut Markwort. “Will the Greeks make off with our money?” the magazine asked on its front cover last February. Tapping into growing German fears of a Greek bailout at the height of the financial crisis, the article depicted a country swamped in debt which had cheated its way into the eurozone. More than a year after the article appeared, a state prosecutor in Athens is now investigating the magazine for libel and insult, according to the German newspaper, Handelsblatt. “It was a legitimate, satirical commentary,” said Markwort. In fact, he said, he was playing them at their own game. “After all, the Greeks invented satire.” But the arguments made then still ring true today, according to Markwort. “The Greeks tricked us. Their problems haven’t gone away,” he said. “Quite the opposite. The government lied, but instead of getting angry with their government, they’re getting angry with us.” When the magazine hit the newsstands, it triggered an extended slanging match between the German and Greek tabloids. Eleftheros Typos, an Athens daily, responded by printing a doctored photograph of the statue atop Berlin’s victory column holding a swastika and warning of financial nazism in Europe. The media brawl also had diplomatic consequences when the president of the Greek parliament summoned the German ambassador to complain about the media coverage. Although Focus employees say they have not been charged, a freelance journalist has received a court summons, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Markwort is not sure he would appear in an Athens court. “Don’t get me wrong. I love Greek culture,” he said. “I learned ancient Greek for years at school. I’d go there on holiday, but I don’t want to end up in jail. I don’t trust the Greek justice system.” Greece Germany Euro Europe Magazines Financial crisis Global recession guardian.co.uk
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Prime minister ‘uneasy’ over superinjunctions and judges’ role after high court prevents identification of sex scandal footballer The prime minister has waded into the debate on the use of superinjunctions by the rich and famous to avoid allegations of scandal, declaring that parliament and not the courts should decide where the right to privacy begins. David Cameron said the development of a privacy law by judges based on European regulations made him feel “a little uneasy”. His comments, made while touring a car factory in Luton, follow judgments in the high court this week that prevent the identification of a married Premier League footballer and someone who works in the entertainment industry, both of whom are said to have had extramarital affairs. Cameron said: “I think there is a question here about privacy and the way our system works. “What’s happening here is that the judges are using the European convention on human rights to deliver a sort of privacy law without parliament saying so. “… We do need to have a proper sit back and think: is this right, is this the right thing to happen? “The judges are creating a sort of privacy law, whereas what ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is parliament – which you elect and put there – should decide how much protection do we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press and the rest of it. So I am a little uneasy about what is happening.” He added: “It might be odd to hear it, but I don’t really have the answer to this one, I need to do some more thinking about it. It is an odd situation if the judges are making the law rather than parliament.” Although superinjunctions refer strictly only to legal orders whose existence cannot even be reported, the term has been used more loosely to describe injunctions aimed at suppressing the identification of individuals who claim they are entitled to anonymity under “the right to respect for private and family life” incorporated in Article 8 of the European convention on human rights . There is disagreement within the legal profession about whether there has been a significant increase in such injunctions, which have been granted in the past to victims of blackmail or, for example, in the case of the killers of James Bulger amid fears they would be at risk if identified. Mark Stobbs, the Law Society’s director of legal policy, said: “This is a new development and it is something which needs to be watched very closely. “There is a huge debate between the right to privacy and the right to public knowledge. “We support open justice and transparency as a basic principle, but there must be occasional cases where there is a public interest in privacy. You might get it sometimes in the context of terrorist trials where there are real national security implications.” But Cameron Doley , of the law firm Carter Ruck, which has obtained privacy orders for clients, doubted there had been an increase in their frequency over recent years. “The newspapers have decided that the way to change policy is to shout about it from the rooftops,” he told The Guardian. “There’s a lot to be said for a reasoned debate about it that won’t be one-sided. But judges will still have to interpret the Human Rights Act.” One of the problems, he added, was that people comment about cases in which they had not seen the evidence while the most widely-reported cases were those where the courts ruled there was insufficient justification for maintaining an injunction – such as the one involving the England football captain, John Terry. “The rich and famous can’t pay their way out of scandal. These things are high risk,” he said. “It’s not just the rich and famous and the law shouldn’t be for the rich and famous. “The protection of privacy is perhaps more important to genuinely private people. None of us, unless we are in the courts, see the evidence.” Privacy & the media Media law National newspapers Newspapers TV news UK civil liberties David Cameron James Bulger murder Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media A new video was released today by the folks at Strengthen Social Security in order to highlight the brutal absurdity of today’s political debate about “entitlement programs,” and specifically to address proposals that would raise the retirement age. These programs were supported by Democrats and Republicans for fifty years and are widely popular among voters across the political spectrum. Defending them should be the at the center of centrist thought. Instead it has fashionable in Washington for otherwise reasonable Democrats like Sen. Dick Durbin to push for cuts to these programs. The retirement age is already scheduled to increase, and raising it even more is nothing less than cruel. That idea’s part of the political trend toward “austerity economics,” a resurgent downsize-government ideology that’sengendered a wave of enthusiastic – no, make that orgiastic prose – from well-fed pundits. Their display of almost snuff-movie-like excitement should have been predictable, but I found it shocking anyway . The entire idea of raising the retirement age is based on the false premise that Social Security has a financial problem because we’re living longer. The numbers say otherwise. And proposals like Simpson/Bowles would do other terrible things, too: shift more of the tax burden onto the middle class, lower taxes even further for the rich, disproportionately harm women and minorities, and impose drastic financial hardship on the elderly. In other words, this entire debate is based on a radical right-wing agenda which poses as “a good bipartisan starting point.” (For more, see ” 10 Reasons Why the (then) Deficit Commission Proposal Is Still Unconscionable and Unacceptable .”) Anyone who disagrees with the new draconian agenda is called “impractical,” even though Reagan’s chief Social Security actuary supports our conclusions , as do many (if not most) economists. And anyone who supports the pro-entitlement agenda support by Americans of all political persuasions is called “extreme,” while anyone who gets heated when discussing the suffering and loss of life these plans would create is called “uncivil.” Washington’s treatment of these policies resembles the Polynesian practice of tabu , so any mention of their real-world implications is a gross violation of propriety (if not downright sacrilegious). (For more on the selling of this extreme agenda, check out the 20-year old, top secret PowerPoint presentation on selling right-wing radicalism that I discovered recently. It’s eye-opening, shocking, and completely made up.) This video takes a “Twilight Zone”/”alternate reality” tack, which suits me just fine. We’ve used that approach plenty of times ourselves over the years. (Here’s the latest .) With that in mind, we’ll adopt our best Rod Serling voice: Submitted for your consideration … The Ryan budget proposal is called “serious” by the likes of Ezra and others, yet Ryan voted to preserve a tax break for hedge fund billionaires that allows them to be taxed at 15% of income while the rest of us pay much higher rates. That will never people from writing sentences like this one from Ezra: “I like Ryan personally, and appreciate his policy-oriented approach to politics.” Submitted for your consideration … The top 25 hedge fund billionaires made $22 billion last year. If they had been taxed under the same rules that are used for cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers … for anyone who actually helps society, for that matter … the government would have received $4 billion in revenue last year. Submitted for your consideration … That revenue would have been enough to write a check for $1,400 to everyone that turned 65 last year – all 2,858,000 of them. Submitted for your consideration … Or that revenue could have paid the entire Social Security retirement benefit for more than three hundred thousand people – more than four hundred thousand, if they were women. Submitted for your consideration … And that’s just by establishing tax fairness for 25 people. Imagine what a return to Reagan-era tax levels would do. Back then, the top marginal rate was 50%. It’s 35% now (except for those hedge fund managers, who pay 15%), and both the Simpson/Bowles recommendations and Ryan’s “policy-oriented approach” would lower it even more. While, of course, cutting Social Security and Medicare … Of course, nobody’s proposing to pay anybody’s retirement benefits out of general taxation – just lift the payroll tax cap so that the wealthy contribute more. Is that unfair? Not if you consider this: The changes made to Social Security under Reagan would have kept it solvent forever, if not for the fact that the extremely wealthy have captured more of our national income than even Alan Greenspan expected. Lifting the cap just redresses that wrong. Submitted for your consideration … These unpopular cuts to Medicare and Social Security wouldn’t even be possible politically unless Democrats like Dick Durbin were accquiesing, and unless Democrats like Barack Obama weren’t refusing – at least so far – to offer unequivocal opposition. When Obama makes a Harry Reid statement about Social Security, we’ll be fine. Until then I’ll worry. If I have any complaint about the video, it’s that it’s too lighthearted. The reality behind raising the retirement age is a brutal one. (They’ll undoubtedly try to mask the cruelty by creating a “hardship exemption” that will fail to protect workers. We’ve explained why that won’t work .) And the same people pushing this “solution” want to cap Medicare benefits. If that happens, people will die . That’s not funny at all. Submitted for your consideration … The new consensus that’s being so warmly embraced by Dick Durbin and others will increase the death rate among elderly Americans, and force millions to continue working despite the brutality of the effort. And nobody’s outraged. Nobody at all. But then, why am I surprised? Outrage isn’t civil.
Continue reading …It’s Day II of our C&L donation drive . Won’t you please help us to continue to grow and keep the news flowing? We’ve been the leaders of covering the rise of right wing extremism in the GOP after the 2008 election when the traditional media refused to cover it. There’s plenty of corporate money flowing in from the MSM types that are trying to buy up all the Internet real estate and push out progressive blogs altogether. We’re here to stay, but we’d like to be able to bring you more original reporting and expanded coverage heading into the 2012 election. I have five “Over The Cliff” books to give away today so the first five people that donates 100.00 or more will receive a copy. I won’t forget about the rest of our donors because any amount you can contribute will be a great help to us, especially in this economy. Here’s our mailing address if you’d rather snail mail a check. C&L POBOX 66310 Los Angeles, CA 90066
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