I face investigation for terrorism
craigmurray.org.uk
craigmurray.org.uk
> I was not arrested but detained, and therefore had no right to a lawyer.
> I had no right to remain silent. I had to give full and accurate information in response to questions. It was a criminal offence to withhold any relevant information.
> I had to give up any passwords to my devices. It was a criminal offence not to do this.
This is what I find so terrifying about the terrorism act. I cannot understand how this is legal. The right to silence and privacy should be a human right.
Law enforcement is basically allowed to lie to you
Most of those claims were BS but you have to call their bluff to find out.
He didn't have to answer questions or give them passwords, and they will always tell you that you have to
Edit: "allowed to" as in there's no consequences because of how difficult it is to prosecute them. It's intentionally ignored
Edit more info from the Scottish police (the institution in question):
https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/how-we-do-it/schedul...
It's a feature they aren't afraid of ignoring
(The 'Police Caution', see: https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights )
This is, as I understand it, very different to the US right against self-incrimination where the courts are specifically not allowed to infer guilt from silence. (Although I suspect many juries may be influenced negatively by someone remaining silent, despite direction.)
In a very similar way, if I were ever detained in this manner in the UK, I'd be very likely to say "I am not refusing right now to answer your questions. However, since I cannot trust you to tell me the truth about my rights and responsibilities, and because of the power imbalance, I will wait until I have independent legal advice before participating any further in this interview".
Except if questioned under schedule 7 of the terrorism act of 2000, maybe.
IANAL. Ask an actual lawyer for advice!
That's if you've been arrested which doesn't apply in this case. He was detained under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act which allows up to 6 hours of detention without cause and up to an hour without legal advice.
> During that time, ...then your lack of answer can be used by a court to infer guilt
I don't believe that's true in the case where legal advice has been restricted by the police. As per PACE Code C. It is however true if you have legal advice or if you've refused legal advice.
Edit: This last bit wrt PACE Code C applies to someone who is arrested. Under Section 7 it can be a criminal offence to not answer the examining officer's questions, as Craig Murray mentioned.
The "we can infer guilt" seems to be more because there's a bunch of corner cases where an absolute right to silence CAN have kind of stupid outcomes. Many countries choose to accept those outcomes because they don't want to convict the innocent. Britain -otoh- seems to try to thread the needle here by giving the judge a bit of leeway.
But I'm not an expert on british law. I just online-searched the the heck out of it.
In theory, but there are so many exceptions that it isn't really a thing in practice. Driving a car? You have to identify yourself. Crossing a boarder? You are open to total inspection. Using a credit card, your transaction is open to inspection and you need to identify. Called as a witness? You have to participate by answering questions. You can even be imprisoned, for years, as a "material witness" without any hint of accusation. They sometimes do need a "trip through the courts" but that doesn't mean you are going to be part of that trip, or even know about it until after the warrants have been issued. The list of exemptions from the default rules allowing silence are so long as to make them meaningless.
Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 requires that if you know the information required and refuse to provide it, you can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years imprisonment.
However, the notice must be given properly in writing.
So, while these officers perhaps were deceitful in asking verbally for passwords rather than giving a written notice, the meaning of what they were saying was still correct - there is a legal requirement to hand over passwords.
See how power works?
You are not giving them password so you are withholding it from them. Law doesn't have exemption for whatever excuse you are trying to use. So it's jail time for you. There is no way to prove you forgot it. And this law logic is "guilty until proven innocent".
What bothers me even worse is situation when you think you knew password but it didn't worked. Had similar situation with LastPass, I was entering one password and no matter what it failed to open vault. Tried different spellings nothing, only after a month of frantic thinking I entered correct one. Most likely I would be accused of lying to cops
If they confiscate the device during the initial detention then them issuing written notice that they need the password doesn't really change much since they're going to be getting access to your device whether you like it or not.
So being given verbally with a tape recorder or note-taker recording the interaction is actually sufficient. Sounds like the police had exactly that.
And then they charge them with obstruction of justice and destruction of potential evidence.
The system sucks but this is how it works
Yeah, but that involves a charge, and you get a lawyer.
I would have refused to answer anything without first consulting a lawyer; I won't take legal advice from the investigating policeman. "You say I have to answer? Fine, I'll answer if my lawyer confirms that." What can go wrong? The worst that can happen is that they charge you (with something?) for refusing to answer. Voila: legal advice.
I guess Craig's devices didn't have much of interest on them; he travels a lot, and has been mauled by the law more than once. So he can give up the passwords with confidence. And presumably they already knew what meetings he'd attended, with whom.
That's the fucker about these laws; in a lot of constitutions (note that the UK does not have a constitution so I'm not sure how it works over there), you have the right to not provide evidence that may lead to your conviction. But rules like this go counter to those.
Worth calling their bluff, I reckon.
You're gonna leave your family, lose your job, have to explain to everybody you know that you were in jail for a while. For a good story?
Don't live in fear, that is not worth it.
For millions of people it would be a disaster that you don't just smile your way out of with some optimism and a laughingly good story. It's not just about "don't live in fear", Instead it's often a harshly practical matter of "oh shit, i'm going to jail for months, the bank will foreclose on my home, my job will fire me and my kids are fucked".... You might be okay with that, but it's no fucking joke for many, no matter how lightly they try to take the burden.
Is this pretty universal or is it an American thing?
And it's not just a current events thing
It is not universal. Not sure why you'd claim so unless you've looked up the laws for every country.
One example, Sweden:
> 23 kap. 12 § rättegångsbalken (https://lagen.nu/1942:740#K23P12S1)
> Under förhör må ej i syfte att framkalla bekännelse eller uttalande i viss riktning användas medvetet oriktiga uppgifter, löften eller förespeglingar om särskilda förmåner, hot, tvång, uttröttning eller andra otillbörliga åtgärder [...]
Meaning, the one who is doing the interrogation is not allowed to "use deliberate misrepresentation, promises or promises of special benefits, threats, coercion, hardship or other improper measures.", basically not allowed to lie.
How it works usually works out in practice, is most likely different though. I've only been to one interrogation with Swedish police and they definitely lied about a bunch of stuff.
I'm sure there are other countries where the police isn't allowed to lie either.
There are two truths:
1. It is forbidden by law in many places (including the US).
2. They will get away with it regardless, in nearly every case. So often that practically speaking it's allowed
Well, be more clear and maybe we could avoid it :) In some US states, the police are legally allowed to lie, it's not forbidden for them to do so. In some other states and outside countries, they are allowed, in others, they're not.
The sentence you refer to seems to refer to 'pressurization'.
Probably because humans are not formal proof automata. When the parent said universal they meant "it is a thing across the world and across periods", and not "no X exists, where X is a country, and in X it's against the law".
So I could accurately say "English language is universal" even though there are countries where people generally don't speak English at all?
In math or formal logic, no. In casual english all the time.
Here is an example from the dictionary for universal, that's not actually formally universal:
(a) One reason for the author's success is that her novels have a universal appeal.
Obviously not everyone, even if they do read a lot of novels, would like the author's novels, or even the genre they are in. Some will also just hate them.
Or how about:
(b) Love and relationships will always be a topic of universal interest.
(c) Music is often thought of as a universal language.
There are of course absolutely people who don't care for "love and relationships" or are totally indifferent to music.
Or here's an example from a blog:
https://www.thelanguagegallery.com/blog/why-has-english-beco...
"According to statistics shared by Babbel Magazine, the English language is spoken by 20% of the world’s population. Apart from being one of the most popular languages in the world, English is also the most commonly studied foreign language. Before we learn how it became a universal language"
Note how they call it "universal" even though just spoken by 20% of the people at best.
In general universal in such contexts means "quite common or prevalent, within different population groups (even if the groups belong to a specific type)", e.g.:
"the Latin language (qua Medieval Latin) was in effect a universal language of literati in the Middle Ages"
"In a more practical fashion, trade languages, such as ancient Koine Greek, may be seen as a kind of real universal language, that was used for commerce" (note that the Koine "universal" language was just spoken in the regions around the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Middle East).
(both examples from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_language )
While absolutes shouldn't be used for formal writings, English speakers will very often use them in casual settings. I itallicized some spots where I could have used absolutes, and if you replace those words with "never" or "always", I think you'll understand what I'm saying better.
> "English language is universal"
This is an absolute or hypberbole, but most native speakers will understand what the author meant by that.
If you don’t know, just don’t answer.
This doesn't mean everything has to be true : an example from an earlier comment of mine is lying about which evidence they actually have.
edit: https://nieuws.nl/algemeen/20180203/de-politie-in-nederland-...
Good question.
The thing is, this doesn't just work against suspects. This works when prosecutors lie in court in order to protect the informants that they have been using in an illegal manner to commit crimes against non-criminals.
And every single person in all of the parts of government will just roll over to allow the injustice to continue. Except for Peter Omzigt...
Do you have a source for that? I live in The Netherlands, and I have never heard of this.
In hindsight we can see that police are very dishonest, lying, thugs. They have no real ethics. FBI was caught sleeping with female “suspects”’for intelligence. Think about that. Fucking for intelligence. They were exploiting women.
NSA has intelligence analysts that were using and still are using a program called “section 702” of the intelligence act to spy on women they want to have sex with, ex girlfriends, others. Intimate details of their lives. It was written up in Wired. It looks to be renewed.
So you have power hungry cops, FBI, NSA Analysts who are ugly, fat and corrupt. Can’t get laid, ethical issues. Who the Supreme Court says can lie straight to your face. But they can arrest you if they think you are lying? Stop trying to help them. Let them drown. They are the real threat. The real terrorists. If we did this we be in jail.
I assume you're talking about Mark Kennedy[1], but it's even worse! He was dating one of the people of interest for over a year while undercover, and I believe he was married at the time too
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxbpj/kate-wilson-mark-kenn...
You don't accidentally end up in a situation where cops tell you that you don't have the right to a lawyer. The west still isn't Iran.
> Is this pretty universal or is it an American thing?
In court: You: They lied to me about my right to a lawyer Cop: No we didn't, also he admitted during this talk to being on the site of theft and taking of someone else property.
Now who will Jury or Judge believe, cop or a thief?
> > Is this pretty universal or is it an American thing?
> In court: You: They lied to me about my right to a lawyer Cop: No we didn't, also he admitted during this talk to being on the site of theft and taking of someone else property.
> Now who will Jury or Judge believe, cop or a thief?
And cops lie because no one is willing to prosecute them.
Conducting an examination 34. The examining officer must explain their role to the person and that Schedule 7 is a part of counter-terrorism policing at the port/UK border, but that this does not mean that they are suspected of being involved in terrorism. The purpose of the examination is to determine whether the person appears to be someone who is or who has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. If requested, the examining officer must provide sufficient information, such as an identification number and location, to the person or his or her representative to enable the officer to be identified in the event of any query or complaint.
35. The examining officer will explain how the examination will be conducted and must offer a Schedule 7 Public Information Leaflet. The Public Information Leaflet is available in multiple languages, and outlines the purpose and provisions of Schedule 7, duties under Schedule 7, key points of the code of practice, including an individual’s rights, and relevant contact details (including those needed to provide feedback or make a complaint).
39. Where an officer decides it is necessary to examine a person for longer than an hour, then questioning under paragraph 2 and 3 of Schedule 7 may only continue beyond the hour point if the person has been detained under paragraph 6 of Schedule 7. Any period of examination, including detention, must not exceed six hours from the commencement of the examination.
At least then you get a lawyer, and don't have to say anything, and don't have to give any passwords
That's an offence.
Is that actually true in the UK though? I was once "detained" in far less intimidating circumstances. I had a meeting in Bradford(UK) at 9am at some business client's place and I arrived by car half an hour early so I parked my car in an empty parking lot overlooking one of the main streets and I was sitting there waiting. Then a policewoman appears out of nowhere and asks me what am I doing there etc. I answered, and next she's asking if I have any id. When I asked what for, she used that phrase that "I was detained (but I forgot the reason why, something about assessing what I'm doing there)".Fine,I gave her my drivers license. She wrote the details down and then filled and gave me a piece of paper with various things along the lines of "you were detained today for the following reason..., you can complain here if you want etc.". She said thank you and walked away.
Later I learned some important person was visiting Bradford and they were doing security in advance. I wonder if they had a right to stop people like that prior to the" terrorist act".
> Who can be examined?
> The examining officer may only stop and question a person for the purpose of allowing a determination of whether that person appears to be someone who is or who has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of “terrorism” as defined in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000
I guess that makes sense... But then in the end of the same paragraph:
> An examining officer may stop and question a person whether or not there are grounds for suspecting that the person is or has been concerned in terrorism.
So, essentially anyone can be examined for any reason (or no reason at all)?
Basically, the officer must currently be working on a terrorism case to be able to use these powers.
I mean how am I supposed to know if you don't intend to use that banana you didn't pay for as part of a phalic terrorism display without getting access to your text messages?
So, while they deliberately ignored an honest explanation, they also had a legitimate point.
No one sincerely thinks Craig Murray might be a terrorist. Those who would say such a thing are in fact not sincere. They just say it as a political loyalty statement, or to psych themselves up to abuse him/gloat in his abuse.
Here the answer is: Pretty bad
Your laws don't have to survive a well meaning democratic government. They have to survive one that is cunning, evil and tries to actively abolish the Rule of Law and democracy.
This is a bad law.
Spot on.
Even the actual Nazis had to fake a reason for why they need to abolish democracy ("Reichstagsbrand"). The reason why they could do that were laws. Laws that might have looked okay in democratic times.
When you have a healthy, strong democracy your division of powers and opposition should be able to hold off a evil government for enough time voters can vote them out again. That is a core idea of democracy and the reason why there are the different branches.
Now your governments can create/modify/remove laws in a way that weakens that division between the branches and makes it easier for evil government to remove their opposition, influence the justice system and command the military to break their oaths etc.
Our task during non-evil governments is to avoid accidentally weakening those defenses.
Governments in Asia, Africa, and South America routinely ignore laws for petty reasons.
If you're down that road and eroded that seperation, getting that thing back into the bottle is really hard without revolutions or massive public uproar. If you never had that seperation to begin with, even worse.
TL;DR: evil governments can ignore laws if the justice system is not independent. Hence the inportance of keeping it independent.
Step two; redefine everything as terrorism.
For the record, Israel is killing medics and press members, and have done so for their entire existence. Their status as a state, and the US's backing of them at any cost including threats of violence and terrorist accusations if we don't just 'fall in line'.
Maybe you should realize the character of who you're supporting. Israel is not a legitimate country and the US has no right instigating more bullshit in that region.
There are no correct sides in this conflict except with innocent civilians which nobody seems to genuinely care about.
Accuse me of whatever you want, the alternative is being okay with one side raping and pillaging, which imo is worse.
Strange that favoring peaceful civilians, of any ethnicity btw, means hatred. People are so binary in their thought that they assume only two sides exist.
The surveillance programme, codenamed Phantom Parrot, is designed to copy the personal data of individuals at airports and border crossings.
There's a trailer for it here: https://youtu.be/8QzZteMWbww
Simple: power balance determines what's legal and what's not.
I don't think we can call them "laws", because are clearly against the most fundamental values of any democracy.
No country is free anymore. Not even the US, which enjoys bolstering itself as "the free world".
Any freedom you enjoy in a democratic state nowadays is merely circumstantial and can disappear instantly at any moment.
(George Carlin)
But it's fine because it's the most powerful country in the world that does it. If anyone objects, they get dropped. If it comes to a vote in e.g. the UN security councel, they use their veto power.
I don’t want to be partisan but the most striking example I remember was when Comey weighed in on Secretary Clinton’s email server saying “there was no criminal intent”
If you’re ignorant of the law, you cannot have a criminal intent, or am I missing something?
In USA if police doesn't know it breaks your rights it cannot be sued directly. Qualified immunity I think. So ignorance is a shield if you have a shield.
This is a misstatement of the rule. Qualified immunity applies if the alleged action would not have violated a "clearly established Constitutional right", which does not depend on the personal knowledge of the individual being sued. (It's also applies to all public employees/officers, not just police, though its application in the domain of policing has frequently been controversial.)
> Governments took advantage of the extreme fear created after the 9/11 attacks to pass these absurd laws.
Unless I misunderstand the legislative history, the law that was used here (Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000) dates from July 2000, so before 9/11.
Still part of the same trend as what happened after 9/11, of course, but we shouldn’t pretend 9/11 was the beginning of this, especially not in the UK.
For US readers who weren't taught this in history class, the UK suffered a number of terrorist attacks by the IRA from the 1970's til roughly 2001.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-security-bombings...
I was just thinking about this, imagining being indefinitely detained for terrorism because 4chan is in my browser history[0]. I'd take the fifth, and they would charge me with a crime, and so, the US Constitution is basically void.
But then I wondered: was it ever really not? Was there ever a time I could have relied on legal justice if I happen to be in an unsympathetic jurisdiction? Before there was an unconstitutional terrorism act, there would still probably have been DAs willing to look the other way on a police beating and willing to add bogus criminal charges because I'm uncooperative.
Has justice ever been reliable? Right now it seems like maybe it has always been a psychological blanket.
[0]hyperbolic obviously. Hopefully. Just a thought experiment, as that's the only/closest activity of mine that could be construed as terrorism.
As a more specific example of why it's 'dangerous', a recent meme I've seen a bunch tells the reader that if they are drafted (in a theoretical future US draft), the moral thing to do is to shoot officers as soon as you get a rifle.
You aren't responsible for what people post online. Anyone can post anything on a forum and you may be looking at it because of other interesting stuff doesn't mean you have bad intentions.
I think it's mainly paranoia, I still think the odds of falsely being charged with terrorism are incredibly low.
Right now, sure. I'm merely speculating about the future.
They might be referring to a couple decades ago when 4chan users were referred to as "domestic terrorists" in a hyperbolic fox news report
Rights are arbitrary limits made up by people which can be changed or eliminated by people. Nothing more, nothing less.
Especially the US. My government has no rights to do anything like that. Please don't project your non freedom to the world.
It's legal because Parliament passed the legislation. Anything Parliament passes is legal. It's the very definition of legal.
Those who don't like that need to get the relevant people elected and change the law.
It's not a difficult system. We all have a vote.
There is no legal god in the British system and we recognise no external one. It's all down to the British people and their representatives.
Far better we are all involved, even if just notionally, than have it handed down by self-appointed betters.
That's why an appointed chamber works. They have no mandate and no legitimacy to do anything other than suggest.
And which then stops the stalemate you get in other systems with multiple conflicting mandates.
I'm thinking either a rotating password that you learn only when you need to access a device/file that is on a separate device that you store somewhere else.
Or we take a leaf out of nuclear launch keys and two people have part of the password- if any of this is remotely different- obligatory IANAL
It's more difficult for three letter agencies if you fill the memory with random stuff and encrypt before wiping.
If you don't want your phone used in impersonation while out of your hands, adb shell can be used to take out IMEI, BT and WiFi.
Simpler to just swap mainboards - available on Alixxxx
May not be tight enough for the NSA but could work for some glorified traffic cops at the airport.
At least that's the theory, I haven't messed with it to see.
If you’re really lucky, you can convince them that whatever they’re looking for doesn’t exist but consider how hard it is to prove a negative like that. In most cases, that devolves to the second outcome above, possibly with some destruction of evidence charge.
I think I may have been misled but apparently if you're on the border you aren't allowed to refuse to talk/refuse searches/etc. So they forced me to search my phone and spent about 6 hours interrogating me about my political opinions, family history, etc.
Ie. It can be very broadly abused.
With customs everywhere, you're usually better off answering their questions without asking why they want to know. Coming back from a visit to family, they wanted to know my three sisters' ages among other irrelevant stuff.
> Craig John Murray is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former diplomat [...] he became a political activist, campaigning for human rights and for transparency in global politics as well as for the independence of Scotland [...] Murray was one of few people granted access to Julian Assange's extradition hearing which started in the Old Bailey on 7 September 2020. He published detailed reports of each day's proceedings on his website.
Seems absolutely bananas that law enforcement can cite anti-terrorism laws in order to confiscate and detain an individual with absolutely zero ties to anything violent. What terrorism are they stopping here?
The only clue I see is the reference to a tweet. Anyone know which tweet this could refer to? Sounds like advocating violence, with a poorly stated context of self-defense.
But I couldn't find any tweet that openly calls for violence either way. Mostly seems to be reactions and criticism about Israel's ongoing killing of civilians in Gaza, which would hardly count as terrorism (edit: well, at least shouldn't).
> I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation.
> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
Edit: typo
Palestine is an apartheid state. Israel is not.
AFAICT, Israel would rather just not deal with them at all. Countries shouldn't be forced to annex their neighbors and administer them. Didn't they even try to get Egypt to take Gaza back, and Egypt refused?
I'm sorry, this doesn't fit the definition of "occupation" at all.
That situation is the perfect breeding ground for extremism. Israel is not at all innocent in the FUBAR that is the middle east and Gaza in particular, regardless of the excuses Israel finds.
Before the attack, Israel was issuing work permits to Gazans to let them work and earn badly-needed money in Israel; so much for that.
I can see why Israel doesn't want Gazans participating in normal life there: they keep shooting rockets at them. And after the latest atrocity, they'll probably never entertain the idea of good relations with them.
Is Korea an "apartheid state" because North and South Korea refuse to let each other's citizens "participate in normal life" on the other side of the DMZ?
>Israel is not at all innocent in the FUBAR that is the middle east and Gaza in particular
It seems like the reverse to me: their actions in the West Bank continue to be wrong and cause problems (illegal settlements). But I don't see how they've done anything wrong in Gaza in 17 years: they simply don't want that group of people in their country, and they have that right.
Also, why is it that people like you never criticize Egypt for not taking in the Gazans? There's really nothing stopping Egypt from annexing Gaza.
a) they never occupied Gaza to begin with
b) they have yet to bomb Gaza
Egypt gets the same criticism when it comes to the embargoe so.
But you know who is stopping Egypt from annexing (interesting choice of words, by the way) Gaza? Israel. And you actually have not the slightest idea what apartheid is and how it works.
b) Gaza doesn't shoot rockets into Egypt regularly, so of course they don't bomb them
c) I've never seen it
d) Last I heard, Israel tried to get Egypt to take Gaza back. How is Israel preventing Egypt from taking them?
I do know what apartheid is: it's what happened in South Africa, when two groups of people lived in the very same place (i.e., in the same towns and cities) and were treated differently by the state. It's just like how Black people were treated in the US during the Jim Crow era. What's happening with Gaza is nothing like this.
>> The United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, and many human rights organization however continue to consider the occupying power as Israel controls Gaza's borders, with the exception of the Egyptian border, airspace and access to the sea and exercises what they consider to be effective military control over the territory.[21][22][23]
>> In his statement on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur wrote that international humanitarian law applied to Israel "in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war."[181] Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, Oxfam, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, international human rights organizations, US government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and a significant number of legal commentators (Geoffrey Aronson, Meron Benvenisti, Claude Bruderlein, Sari Bashi, Kenneth Mann, Shane Darcy, John Reynolds, Yoram Dinstein, John Dugard, Marc S. Kaliser, Mustafa Mari, and Iain Scobbie) maintain that Israel's extensive direct external control over Gaza, and indirect control over the lives of its internal population mean that Gaza remained occupied.[182][183] In spite of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Hamas government in Gaza considers Gaza as occupied territory.[184]
>> Several rights groups have characterized the situation in Gaza as an "open-air prison", including the United Nations,[193] Human Rights Watch,[194] and the Norwegian Refugee Council.[195] This characterization was often cited by a number of human rights activists, politicians, and media news outlets reporting on the Gaza-Israel conflict and the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict.[196][197][198][199][200][201] Former British Prime Minister David Cameron,[202] US Senator Bernie Sanders,[203] former Israeli diplomat Gideon Levy,[204] and Israeli historian Ilan Pappe have endorsed this characterization as well.[205]
>> Human Rights Watch issued a report on the situation in the Gaza Strip, which it called an "open-air prison" due to the blockade and held Israel responsible as the occupying power, and to a lesser degree Egypt, which has restricted movement of Palestinians through its border.[194]
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
Seems we have a choice now, either we believe all the entities having prepared extensive reports (all cited in the wikipedia article) or we believe Israelian PR and legalese on the status of Gaza according to international law (which doesn't change the an iota when it comes to the humanitarian situation there). Your choice.
I am not saying Hamas actions are justified. And I am not saying Israel shouldn't get support. Ehat I am saying is, that we cannot ignore the humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people that is at the core of the conflict. And whatever support the West can give should aim at renewed, and serious, peace talks. That means that Israel has to give up something, too. After all, Israel has the right to exist as a state the same way Palestinians have the right to live freely, un-oppressed and peacefully.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan
> The Pretoria government established ten Bantustans in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South West Africa (then under South African administration), for the purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating autonomous nation states for South Africa's different black ethnic groups. Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the government stripped black South Africans of their South African citizenship, depriving them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these homelands.[3]
The Jim Crow era was very different from apartheid. There was redlining and segregation, but African Americans weren't stripped of citizenship and marshaled into enclaves the way South Africa did with the Bantustans and their Citizenship Act. Apartheid means "kept apart," South Africa, like Israel, sequestered its undesirables into enclaves.
Apartheid was different, it combined a version of the forced relocation and reservation system that the US used for Native Americans (only with the pretense -- with very little substance, but merely as an excuse for the central government to disclaim responsibility -- that the reservations ("bantustans") were independent states rather than territories of subordinate sovereigns) with the racial discrimination in services and facilities within the rest of the country proper that Black Americans faced in the Jim Crow era.
> Egypt used to own Gaza
Egypt occupied Gaza, the same as Israel later did, but did not claim it, establishing a separate protectorate (it was merged into the UAR with Egypt and Syria, and from which Syria later rebelled, but even then it was considered distinct from Egypt, and it was formally transferred to the authority of the PLO (though practical governance was exercised by Egypt) after 1964.
> Last I heard, Israel tried to get Egypt to take Gaza back.
Egypt can't take it back, because Egypt never claimed it.
The UAR can't take it back, because the UAR has been disbanded.
Egypt could reoccupy it, but why would they want to? (Especially given that the people there don't want Egypt to do so, and have been rather...prickly...about occupations imposed on them.)
I have worked closely with young educated Gazans on projects that outsourced to them. They claimed that they would love to get access to the Egyptian labor market, and get an Egyptian passport so that they could have a hope of working in other markets internationally. They’d leave Gaza for better opportunities elsewhere in a heartbeat. Yes, of course some other Gazans wouldn’t want to leave at all, and Hamas wouldn’t permit Egypt authority over the area. But Egypt’s refusal to open the borders to Gazans is about a series of security concerns of its own, and not so much about universal Gazan resistance to the idea.
Egypt's refusal to assist Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza via forced deportation is a different issue than the one raised upthread about Egypt’s earlier refusal reoccupy Gaza.
Because, yes, the closures prior to the crisis, between the openings, have been due to Egyptian security concerns (mostly breakdowns of various agreements between Egypt, Hamas, PIJ, and the Palestinian Authority on border management), COVID-19, and various other issues.
Between that and the blockade of their coast, they're 100% sealed off from any trade, fishing or immigration that Israel doesn't choose to allow.
Maybe "occupation" isn't the right word but they don't get to act like an independent state.
> Adam and Moodley cite the marriage law as an example of how Arab Israelis "resemble in many ways 'Colored' and Indian South Africans".[237] They write: "Both Israeli Palestinians and Colored and Indian South Africans are restricted to second-class citizen status when another ethnic group monopolizes state power, treats the minorities as intrinsically suspect, and legally prohibits their access to land or allocates civil service positions or per capita expenditure on education differentially between dominant and minority citizens."
Imagine if Russia manages to annex most of Ukraine, and converts the rest of Ukraine into an open-air prison. If twenty years later the people in that part of Ukraine manage to gather weapons and launch a counter-attack on Russia, wouldn't that count as resistance?
For those not familiar with background context of why i say post-2005, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_G...
Israel didn't annex Gaza, it (via the UK) annexed Palestine upon its creation, with Gaza and the West Bank being the land that remains un-annexed.
To annex something means to add it to an existing state. Israel by definition can't annex something before it exists.
The UK controlled the area at the time, but they basically gave up and left. I don't understand how you could say they were annexing it at this point in time either.
Israel is closer to being a succesor state to mandatory palestine than anything else. Generally international law recognizes the right for ethnic groups to self-determination (Palestinians often rightly complain that they effectively have not had this in the modern period, but the right applies to both sides). It is not considered annexation for a group from one state to split off and form a new state via self-determination.
To give a comparison, i think your argument would be the equivalent of saying ukraine annexed russia because they unilaterally left soviet union.
That seems like a purely semantic argument. If a bunch of people from a particular political movement show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land and declare it's part of their nation, whether that nation is completely new or existing doesn't change the morality of that anywhere. E.g. the formation of South Ossetia on Georgian territory is widely recognised as either annexation or something morally equivalent to it.
> Generally international law recognizes the right for ethnic groups to self-determination (Palestinians often rightly complain that they effectively have not had this in the modern period, but the right applies to both sides). It is not considered annexation for a group from one state to split off and form a new state via self-determination.
That's arguably true for people who declare independence in the territory they're already living in. Not for people who settle on someone else's territory and then claim it as theirs.
I'm under the impression it is seen as occupation (not annexation) by russia with a thin vaneer over top. You still have a separate state being involved, with russia arguably continuing to be in control.
> That's arguably true for people who declare independence in the territory they're already living in. Not for people who settle on someone else's territory and then claim it as theirs.
Well there was significant migration to the area in the lead up, its not like the jews just showed up in 1948 and declared independence. From what i understand there was a continous jewish presence in the region throughout history, albeit at various point as a much smaller minority.
AIUI it pretty much was; yes the zionist movement existed to a certain extent before WW2, but the overwhelming majority of jewish people living on the territory of Palestine in 1948 had moved there at most a few years before (with a huge increase in those who felt the desire or need to move there as persecution escalated in Europe in the 1930s and ultimately lead to the holocaust).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusal...
There's certainly reasons one could doubt the number in absolute terms, there was certainly nothing like a modern census, but i think its more than enough to counter the narrative that there were no jews there right up until just before 1948.
To be clear not saying the jewish population didn't significantly expand in the 40's, it clearly did (at the same time many of those were basically forced from their previous homes, which i don't think fits with the "colonist" metaphor as that usually implies more choice), just that there were always jews in the region.
AIUI colonists usually tend to be at least partly fleeing bad situations at home - occasionally nothing more than a lack of opportunity, but often debts, criminal records and the like.
Australia was literally a penal colony.
(Of course this probably doesn't apply to all colonies, I wonder if those that started as trade depots fare differently ?)
This is the root of your confusion. A bunch of people didn't just "show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land". This bunch of people were steadily migrating and acquiring land legally. The only real "seizure" happened within the context of war caused by their growing, legal presence on the land.
If I am not mistaken, the first colonies in the USA also "legally" acquired land ? (In the sense that the natives agreed to their presence.)
Really? My grandfather talked about having to intercept or shoot the boatloads that were arriving illegally, and not being able to catch them all, and a quick look into the history seems to back that up.
Gaza is essentially half controlled by Egypt.
There's absolutely no evidence this happened.
There's evidence that Hamas beheaded children I haven't seen any evidence they tortured them infant of their parents.
Bombs are brutal.
I am reminded of the colonization of the USA : some of the Native American tribes were infamous for their atrocities (if I am not mistaken, ramped up against the colonists compared to what they usually did in war ?).
Of course in the long term the Resistance committing atrocities only hurts their own cause : it gives a justification for the Empire to commit genocide.
We will see whether Israel will take the opportunity, or will only leave genocide as a publicly made promise - note also that under the current situation, genocide is going to happen by sheer neglect if a significant fraction of the needed humanitarian aid is not let in.
It's like saying that Cherokee would be colonizers if they moved to North Carolina, which is their original homeland before they were forced to move to Oklahoma (the Trail of Tears).
Roman Judea was renamed to Palestine in 135 AD (after the Philistines) by the Romans after numerous revolts by the Jews attempting to overthrow their colonizers.
It was freed from Roman colonialism in 634 AD... by being colonized by Arabs. Many empires colonized it afterwards, the last being the British.
Most of today's Israelis are from Muslim countries, some are from Europe, and the rest never left. But many of Arabs of the land (which have adopted the name Palestinians after the province, not the people) are from neighboring countries.
The sad thing is, there is now, realistically, no way out of the current situation that involves reconciliation - that chance was missed in the last century. The animosity is now likely unsurmountable, the military disparity is entrenched for good, and a sustainable resolution can only involve the complete purge of Gaza and West Bank. Israeli citizens have chosen to belong to another nationalistic ethnostate, right when the Western mainstream started to move towards more modern and inclusive models of statehood - ironically, on the example of Israel's best ally. As such, they are busy repeating all the sins such states have been guilty of during less enlightened ages.
This is also a handwave.
Minor quibble over "theological" - I think "tribal" would fit better. Humans are a funny animal.
The chance for peace was extremely slim. It's been an existential conflict since before 1948, and Camp David's alternative required that the doves on both sides be stronger than the hawks. Unfortunately, there's an asymmetry there.
> This is also a handwave.
No, that's a statement of fact. It's been almost 80 years since the founding of Israel, its overall historical trajectory is not really in question anymore. Election after election, these choices have been made for three generations; the ideological scenario is entrenched for good. It's sad but it is what it is.
> Minor quibble over "theological" - I think "tribal" would fit better.
I could agree there, but it's a fine line. There is a religious symbol on the very flag.
The problem is the countries that are empires : where non-national ethnicities are subjects. This includes Israel because of its control of Cisjordania and, yes, also the USA (though to be fair, there's hardly anything left of the Native Americans, and as you say, they get the excuse of immaturity).
Pick a fight with the government, not senior citizens at a bus stop.
What Hamas did on 7 October wasn’t a “counter-attack,” it was literal genocide.
Nobody has ever annexed Gaza.
I mean, russia did make that claim, in essence that they were resisting nato expansion.
In fact i would say its a pretty common thing across many conflicts. The side that starts the conflict usually tries to shift blame (whether legitly or not) to the other side because its bad PR to be seen as the side starting shit.
This particular conflict is complex as the sides have basically been in low levels of conflict (and somdtimes not so low) for about a century, however the oct 7 attack by hamas seems like a totally new level of violence and crime against humanity compared to what came before.
If the international community cared about international law the ICC would be issuing warrants against hamas for crimes against humannity.
Brundi and the Philippines? Maybe i misunderstand your question as i don't know what you are getting at.
Israel has never ratified. However Palestine did ratify so the ICC does have juridsiction here.
> Would this be akin to claiming Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch?
If the Ukranian army starts entering internationally recognized Russian territory and killing civilians, then if the citizens of that territory were to fight back, that could accurately be called "armed resistance".
> I was under the impression they were the aggressor, no?
Israel has been illegally occupying and settling parts of Palestine for a long time. The most recent flare-up was trigger by reprehensible attacks from Hamas, but there is a long history of violence and aggression by both sides and lots of shared responsibility on both sides for the many needless civilian deaths. However I tend to hold Israel more responsible because of two factors: 1) Israel is wealthier and more powerful 2) Israelis consistently kill more Palestinians than vice versa.
Oof. I am very sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, but that's just too broad.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/then-we-retake-gaza-hardline-m...
Even the most hawkish person would probably say the same thing. "War is terrible except when i think one side is justified" is hardly a pacifist take.
Was 9/11 justified because america might commit genocide in the future? Sure it hasn't happened yet but still might because time hasn't ended?
> Nobody has a crystal ball - you can't justify actions based on things that haven't happened yet.
Speaking of experts, see this piece by an Isareli historian Raz Segal (who's also a controversial figure, because nothing about this conflict is without controversy): https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/gaza-un-expe...
The article doesn't seem to be using an evidence based approach.
No conclusions should be made about that incident, either way. Other than the fact that innocent people are being slaughtered because of hatred.
“Israel, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada said that their intelligence sources indicate the cause of the explosion was a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) from within Gaza, while the PIJ has denied any involvement. Hamas said that Israel carried out an airstrike on the hospital. Most experts speaking in the days after the strike agreed with the Israel Defense Forces' analysis that a misfired Palestinian rocket launched at Israel from within Gaza and captured on video was the likely cause of the explosion.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explos...
I've seen no convincing evidence that shows that Israel did it, the creator and damage size is way too small for any Israeli bomb or missile even airburst does not match the features found at the explosion.
The difference between a pacifist and a hawk is the frequency of such appeals and the definition of its necessity.
I've always been a pacifist, but I struggle to condemn the actions of a populace that has now been subjected to brutal apartheid conditions for several generations.
Hamas is on the proscribed organisation list.
Here's the relevant legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/12
And the list of proscribed organisations and a more accessible explanation of the law: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...
I think most people in the UK think of this law as being about the Troubles and banning the IRA, etc, but it looks like the list is mostly Islamic extremist groups now.
This law is very clearly being selectively enforced, as lots of people have "express[ed] an opinion or belief that is supportive of" Hamas in recent days, but the police aren't knocking at their doors. (Yet.)
Every law in the UK is selectively enforced. Except maybe laws regarding speeding if they have evidence.
The laws in this country are so vague that I am certain that every adult has broken some of them.
If the Police don't like you, they just pick something vaguely relevant which you have probably broken and hassle you for it.
Sounds like India learnt a thing or two from the British, here.
* Atomwaffen Division (AWD)
* Feuerkrieg Division (FKD)
* Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD)
* National Action
* The Base
Out of all these, I’d only heard of National Action.
It’s not clear (to me) that all the proscribed groups are actually active in the UK though, with the Internet, I guess they can be recruiting people to their cause.
I also wasn’t too surprised to see that the most recent addition to the list is the Wagner Group (proscribed in September 2023).
On the other hand, I was surprised to see that Basque separatists, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) are still listed – despite the fact that they renounced the armed struggle over a decade ago and dissolved their organisation five years ago.
Curiously, their “List of proscribed groups linked to Northern Ireland related terrorism” is even more out-of-date. Since the second-wave of feminism, Cumann na mBan is essentially an historical relic. Some of the organisations (e.g. Saor Éire) haven’t been active since the 70s. The IPLO were (violently) eliminated in the early 90s. The Irish Republican Army is listed but there’s no distinction made between the multiple different groups that refer to themselves as the “Irish Republican Army”; the largest of these (by far), the Provisional IRA abandoned the armed struggle two decades ago and committed themselves to constitutional means of achieving their political aims (as per the 1998 Belfast Agreement aka the Good Friday Agreement) – though splinter IRAs remain opposed to the Peace Process.
> The Base is a predominantly US based militant white supremacist group, formed in 2018. It draws influence from a collection of essays by prominent National Socialist, James Mason, which advocate the use of violence to initiate the collapse of modern society through a ‘race war’ and the subsequent creation of a white ethno-state. This ideology is known as ‘accelerationism’.
Al Qa’ida (AQ) are listed separately:
> Inspired and led by Usama Bin Laden, its aims are the expulsion of Western forces from Saudi Arabia, the destruction of Israel and the end of Western influence in the Muslim world.
I don't know, but I'm assuming that his support of Hamas is a nice pretext for the British Establishment to have another pop at him.
As we predicted when the UK proposed these monstrous laws: they are being abused to go after anyone who annoys the establishment. That's what they were always intended to do. The whole "terrorist" thing was a way of getting popular support for them, just like the popular fears of child abuse have been used to pass yet more police state surveillance laws.
That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right? Do random UK civil servants really abuse the system to this extent for personal or political gain?
Whole departments are set up to work on internal "enemies of the state". Pressure from foreign governments (cough) also points to their undesirables. People above a certain station can trivially tell what is the establishment political winds, short and long term, and which are the "annoying" people that go against them. They also know that furthering the cause against them looks good to their superiors. They can and do build organizational "vendettas" and keep tabs, harass, prosecute them, for years, or even decades.
This goes all the way. Judges and prosecutors making decisions on such cases know who can help their career and what can hurt it, and so on. No explicit coordination needed, though there's a lot of that too - e.g. some established enterpreneur calling their favorite politician and asking them to "do something about that person", special interest groups created ad hoc, and so on. Check a comment by someone called Scott in TFA.
>That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right?
Oh, sweet summer child.
That's roughly it.
The British Establishment (leaders of the main parties, intelligence officials, senior judges, senior police) wanted to make an example of him, because of his persistent exposure of their arbitary persecution of Assange. He was charged with contempt of court, for "jigsaw identification" of a witness in another case, that of Alex Salmond. That charge was prosecuted before a single judge, who was very much a member of "The Establishment", and he got 6 months in the slammer.
It's still not clear which remarks he made on his blog that contributed to jigsaw identification. Maybe it was a commenter on his blog that made the troublesome remark. But apparently other, more-mainstream journalists had been much more explicit, and most of the Scottish political class knew who the witness was from those sources, not from Craig's blog.
Basically, he was fitted-up for loudly espousing Scottish independence.
Worth mentioning a couple of details about that case.
Alex Salmond was the leader of the Scottish independentist party.
Arrested in 2019 with the accusation of 14 instances of sexual abuses from 8 anonymous women.
The subsequent trial cleared him of all charges.
Also, probably, the reason that the SNP leadership are now pushing for jury-less trials for sexual abuse cases.
If true, it's a staggeringly cynical abuse of the Me Too movement, feminism and the wave of popular support for sexual abuse victims.
I don't know the details, but when 8 separate individuals accuse you, all without cause, it's hard to believe it's a coincidence.
I don't mean to go off-topic, but the last few years have shown that this is how power and influence really works in our world. There is no other way to explain (for example) why no clients of Jeff Epstein's brothels have as yet been named and prosecuted. Conveniently, a few have identified themselves through their actions. But they are all free men still, with no signs of any pending comeuppance, or really even an investigation into their involvement.
Probably no-one sat down and designed the system to work like this. But it works well for everyone involved, so...
I could not find any.
Craig Murray - @CraigMurrayOrg To be entirely plain. I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail. 7:24 PM · Oct 14, 2023 · 167.9K Views
according to https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/terrorism
So the question is whether "I will support Hammas" constitutes "inviting support". That's not clear-cut to me. Probably be able to get him on section 12 though, "reckless" is a movable feast.
No, it's not, because he's clearly being investigated for supporting Hamas' actions (which classified as a terrorist organization by the UK).
If the government seriously thinks he's capable of following through on violent acts because he wrote a Tweet saying "I support Hamas", I suspect the government is badly mismanaging its anti-terrorism resources. If the government doesn't think he's going to follow up that Tweet with action and is "merely doing it because the law says they can", that's pretty much the definition of harassment.
Whether or not that’s enough to search him is another debate, but that’s what their thought process was when they decided to detain him.
If they think that then why just him and not the thousands of other people tweeting similar things?
The thought process is evidently "oh, it's that bloody git again, have we got anything we can pin him for this time?"; if you don't see that it's you who's being naive. (I'm agnostic about whether it's specifically about Scottish independence, the Assange case, or something else; one way or another he's a thorn in the side of the powerful, and that's why the book is being thrown at him)
Just read the history of his recent legal hassles, which are a farcical misuse of legislation intended for other purposes. He went to jail for (basically) pointing out all the flaws in the prosecution's case against Alex Salmond.
As the old joke goes; It's not paranoia if they actually are out to get you ;)
say what now? is there any proof he supports those terrorists? in which case, it's pretty clear why he was detained.
edit: found it: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
yup, terrorism charges incoming. from the same guy that did this: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/former-ambas...
His own comments are about desperate measures when carpet bombed.
That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.
Every single human being alive has the capacity to manifest the totalitarian-authoritarian personality. We are not immune to it as individuals - our only safety from this viral meme is social. It is only when we have a social order that provides more motivation to eschew the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, at an individual level, that we are actually free of it. The irony is, this personality also arises when an individuals' own personality is challenged by society.
where did i write that? he'll have a fair trial according to the law. he can then convince the judge he doesn't actually support a terrorist organisation (as it's illegal to do that in the UK).
Yes, according to the law, his trial will be fair. The law doesn't around admitting it isn't fair.
But what do you know, I looked under the robe and wig of the law, and would you believe it was just a person! An ugly, naked, shameless person at that.
In reality, there will be no fairness if smirking people like you get your way.
you did what now?
I am not sure I want to give the government the power to prosecute even such disgusting people, because I can't trust the government with such powers. But pretending like he is completely uninvolved and it's just random out of the blue thing when he specifically endorsed terrorists is bullshit.
I don't think there's any PM who wants to be the PM who allowed the UK to break up.
Luckily for them, as Mr Murray's blog details, the SNP is very comfortable being Westminster MPs and aren't that interested in actually doing anything about independence.
if anything the UK gov would want him freely associating with the SNP
not locked up where he's prevented from embarrassing them
Murray is also a crank and conspiracy theorist, who has been a vociferous supporter of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian regime.
Saying this is about Scottish independence is hilarious.
And in terms of who he has upset, he has lots of recent run-ins with the SNP in Scotland. He is currently appealing a sentence he got for "jigsaw-identifying" the woman/women that accused Alex Salmond (previous head of SNP) of rape/sexual assault, on the basis that he believed that Alex Salmond was falsely accused on the basis of some SNP in-fighting.
Outside of what Craig is alleging, SNP the party seems to see themselves as synonymous with the Scottish government and several senior legal positions seem to be in their gift with constitutional implications.
They came to my parent's house at a weekend to question me. I'd just happened to have gone home for the weekend to see my folks. I was running perhaps the largest warez site on the Internet at the time, so I thought I was super busted.
The detective sat me down and said to me, "What do you know about a plot to kill the President?" and I burst out laughing, mostly out of relief. He stares daggers at me and says "You're not taking me very seriously, are you Mr Charles?"
Luckily he did not detain me. We came to the conclusion that one of the hundreds of people I'd given an account to on one of my Linux servers had sent a death threat to president@whitehouse.gov. Apparently it contained information about the president's movements that was "not well known."
I never saw the email, but the detective called me on the day they were going out to pick Kushil up. I'd given him an account a few months previously so he could play MUDs and download porn. Seemed like a really nice guy. The detective read the end of the email to me over the phone, "Come get my ass you bastards," it said, and then had his address and map co-ordinates to his house.
Nobody ever saw Kushil again after that.
I would not be surprised at all if my name is on a list somewhere, despite me being very much inactive on social media and does not subscribe to any remotely radical ideology. Perhaps as a unmarried millennial male I just had that Unabomber vibe and must be stopped before I turn.
I do sympathize with Mr Murray , however there is really no need to act like it was a brand new development when similar stuff has been going on for pretty much my entire adult life and his recent career.
Can you describe what you mean when you say cash is heavily monitored?
And what if you forgo banks entirely? Well, governments have also been legislating to slowly stigmatize cash use. Google "civil forfeiture" and you will find countless examples of the police taking people's money away without due process, as if carrying large amounts of cash itself is a crime.
Recently, I flew SFO and they seemed to have a shortage of TSA officers or something (all security booths were empty). There were a couple old guys, they just randomly selected people for screening but everyone else were just let go without baggage screening.
[1]: https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/answering-holiday-trav... [2]: https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/sfo-armed-robbery-un...
It is a real atrocity that most devices are unable to lie for us when a wrong password is typed and create a mock profile to waste time
However, it may not be very smart to do this. Law enforcement aren't dumb, they'll see the signs of your hidden partition, and you can end up in prison for up to two years for your little stunt.
Unless you're hiding something much more incriminating, cooperation is probably your best bet.
Hidden partition are definitely more dangerous. Also if these people took your device out of your view point, you need to sell the device and buy a new one before restoring anything.
You can even set a different fingerprint so that different fingers unlock different profiles.
The feature is called Second Space
Though I’m not sure I want it.
The possibility of no-trace hidden partitions I can’t disprove the existence of does not seem like it would serve me well in the backroom of some government facility where my rights have been revoked.
Or, if you get smart - "Oh yes, officer, I did, but I just reset this phone this morning, because I forgot the password!" - "Too bad, but then you won't object us seizing this phone for further investigation, given that there's nothing on it. There's nothing on it, right? No tricky OSes, no double partitions, no secret codes, nothing like that?" - "Oh yes, officer, absolutely nothing like that!" - "OK, our forensic team would be glad to hear that". In a week: "Our forensic team discovered the presence of Hide My Real Data Super Secure Double Password Toolkit on the phone. You have lied to a government agent and now are under indictment for it. Welcome to hell!".
That a country which for centuries was considered a bastion of fundamental individual freedoms should pass hideous deformities of the rule of law like the Terrorism Act (among the other things they've been doing) is sad.
It's not explicitly stated anywhere, but when you enter the UK you give up your human rights. Easy mistake to make assuming you had those here.
>"But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support." >“If that is a crime, send me back to jail.” > https://x.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1713335006121140511
You can't openly support a terrorist group in the UK.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
To make the situation better you should have compassion and also strive towards compromise and not just pick your side and root for them to dominate the other - it doesn’t have to be zero sum.
The settlements themselves don't displace any Arabs from their home, they were built either on Jewish land (Jews lived in Judea and Samaria until 1948) or on a land which didn't have a specific ownership. Usually if an Arab can show that they have ownership for a parcel of land they will get it in court.
In any case, Gaza is not occupied and except from the hostages there are no Jews in Gaza. They could live peacefully side by side near Israel without any "siege" if only they accepted that Israel should have a right to exist.
People that argue that one side deserves the land because of x, y and z while the other side doesn’t are part of the problem. Your view of the world is a huge part of the problem. It is partisan and zero sum and justifies discrimination and ethnic cleansing using pseudointellectualism and cherry picked historical facts.
At the same time, if hysteric antisemitism is spreading like wildfire, then I wonder what the right tool to address it is. I'm guessing it must be a surreal time to be a Jewish person on the left.
a) in which one does not have the right to remain silent
AND
I could imagine a potential world in which one or the other might briefly apply, but both together would be a complete license for abuse of course. So that can't be entirely right.
Reading the actual text of the law [1] I can't quite see how that would be the intended interpretation. I hope someone with more knowledge of British Law can clarify.
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/7
(edited for clarity)
It could be interesting to simply waste time for that hour, while still being co-operative. Answer extraordinarily slowly, be as verbose as possible, go on as many tangents as possible and go into as much detail on your first answer as you possibly can imagine, so the first answer takes the entire hour.
You're still being co operative and answering questions, they just run out of time before you get a lawyer or they cut you loose.
When talking to colleagues, family, and even my Israeli friends there's a plurality of opinion, sadness, serious discussions, but when looking at mainstream media, even relatively moderate it seems like everyone and their grandma is screaming for bombs and are "tired of the stupid poor palestinians" like everyone forgot the enormous plights they have gone through, the hundreds of thousands dead over decades, the property stolen by settlers and that they were mostly moderate farmers before they were annexed and carpet bombed (There's countless of videos of this).
It's like living in a Black Mirror episode.
The worlds largest military carpet bombing a tiny strip of land and a downtrodden people, and i have never seen politicians this bloodthirsty.
At the same time i see very, very few public figures, colleagues included having the courage to call out the atrocities done by Israel continuously, for fear of "something" while there's never ending stories from the opposite side.
Can anyone tell me what that something is - and if this is some extreme geopolitical importance of Israel to the west that the idea of the western "free society" has finally come to some screeching halt?
How can there be such an enormous difference between "the man on the street" and the media landscape?
My grandparents fled war, and the way the west talking and behaving is so incredibly shameful to me, but i don't recognise this war hunger when i turn off the TV.
I have family both here in the US and the UK, and everywhere seems to be the same. It's almost like there's been some secret doctrine implemented.
As an example the "relatively" moderate labour parties of both Denmark and the UK as come out as pretty extreme militaristic hardliner supporters of Israel doubting the effectiveness of ceasefires, using vulgar language about the Palestinians and refusing to acknowledge any crimes committed by "their side".
This is very surprising to me as i have family who fled the London bombings in WW2 and have always talked about the extreme importance of thinking clearly in conflicts, being merciful, never being going "hardliner" and most importantly being sceptical of military industrial complexes.
What do you think Jeffrey Epstein's island was being used for? Do you think he was filming rich and influential people sleeping with underage girls purely for his own amusement, with no intention to generate blackmail material on anyone? If not, who do you think inherited that blackmail material when he passed away under suspicious circumstances?
At least during Cold War, people were aware that there's a Cold War going on. Now everything is supposed to be fine and dandy, yet it feels we're constantly subjected to psy-ops even from "our side".
I don't think that the rise of conspiracy theories in recent years is a coincidence: Something is in play, some people can "sense it" but there's just not enough information to pin it down. Moreover, existing preoccupations are exploited to push these people to fringe theories and make them a laughing stock.
This is just the past few decades of Western coverage of this conflict on steroids, or exaggerated so much that the bias is becoming obvious to people who never paid much attention before.
I'm in the UK. It depends what you mean by "balanced". What I'm seeing on TV news has been changing. At first, they didn't try to link Hamas to terrorism. They've been berated by Israelis for that; so now every time they mention Hamas, they add a clause like "Hamas, an organisation that is proscribed in the UK and many other countries for terrorism".
Apart from that, the "balance" I'm seeing is a kind of passive-aggressive pseudo-balance. For example, they do report statements from Israeli leaders calling for the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza; in some cases, favourably (as if moving two million people from Gaza into refugee camps in the Sinai desert is a sensible compromise). So, they express hope that Egypt will open the border at Rafah, which is exactly what these Israeli extremists want.
There's no serious questioning or investigation of the claims from the IDF or Israeli government. You just see lots of wailing grandmas (in Israel and in Gaza), which seems to be the MSM's standard way of reporting conflicts these days. So it's war-porn.
Is it the same media that reprinted without any checking Hamas claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli hospital and 500 people were dead and over 600 wounded (the real situation was an Islamic Jihad rocket fell in the parking lot near the hospital, and likely about 10 to 50 people were hurt by it), and run with it for days trying to present it as if it was reliable information? Or there's some other US press which I'm not aware of? Some of this "particularly pro-Israel" press even refuses to name Hamas a terrorist organization. I don't know how much pro-Israel one can be than that.
Israel is a strong strategic partner of the US, so NATO members usually side with them in this conflict.
They want the war because it sells bombs.
Terrorism laws are so obviously hugely disproportionate to what they allegedly protect against at this point.
Governments should balance two kinds of freedom. "freedom to (do as we please)" and "freedom from (others harming us)".
If these terrorism laws were really about protecting "freedom from" then they would also have a blanket ban on cars, guns, knives, alcohol and tobacco, all of which cause orders of magnitude more harm. Of course bans like that have been historically attempted and populations very clearly told Governments attempting to enforce them in which direction to fuck off to.
But these kind of abuses are a lot easier for people to ignore when they always happen to "someone else" but "probably will never happen to me".
The main concept is "parliamentary supremacy", which means that the parliament (house of commons/lords) can pass any law except one that would bind their action in future. Basically, they can pass whatever law they want, and pass a law repealing it later. The expectation is that they wouldn't do anything too heinous because reasons. The idea that the monarch can forcibly disband parliament doesn't really exist anymore. (although, some laws occasionally do get blocked by that apparatus)
I learned way too much about this while their high court was deciding on the constitutionality of the process of leaving the EU. I wonder how much of it is baby-duck syndrome, but I love living in a republic.
Veracrypt hidden partition, plausible deniability, use it.
> They asked how considered my tweets were
That’s exactly the reason why, he definitely made a tweet that put him in some arbitrary list that feeds into an official “anti-terrorism” list, believe it or not, there’s a whole business and scheme on adding people on these lists and cancel them just because they tweet something, and sometimes, even taking an out-of-context and make an article about it somewhere, and use that as a “reference” to cancel you and put you in many hidden lists. Besides what some are mentioning here about privacy act and what not, I would go in a different approach, these lists should be searchable online just like any public records, and you have the right to challenge it in court if someone put your name in there and sue for it, but keeping it secret meaning there’s a hidden entity actively blackmailing individuals for their thoughts, the “CI/CD” for these lists goes like this: article about you (fake or real won’t matter) => some unknown list maintained by shady organization => feeding into an official country anti-terrorism list => feeding into a regional one like EU or similar, leading to travel ban, banks ban, etc. and none of them will question the source of such list.
This is really disturbing and would this be my government I would try to change whatever I can or flee.
And don't travel to Europe, the US or Israel if you've openly supported a terrorist organization.
Weird that he got questioned you say?
The voting public have no interest in freedom.
Last I checked UK wasn't a direct democracy.
You can start a campaign. They can bring about change, in the long run. If a think tank was campaigning for something you didn't like, I bet you'd be first to complain about it...
You can forget passwords but you can't forget passkeys.
“I volunteered that I thought I understood the tweet that worried them and agreed it could have been more nuanced. This was the limitation of twitter. It was intended to refer only to the current situation within Gaza and the Palestinian people’s right of self-defence from genocide.”
> Murray questioned the official UK government account of the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury, March 2018, writing on his blog that Israeli security services were more likely to be behind the poisoning than Russia and that, while Russia lacked a motive, "Israel has a clear motivation for damaging the Russian reputation".
He also served 8 months in jail for disclosing the identities of women testifying in sexual harassment and rape case, which the court explicitly prohibited to disclose. All-around nice person, as it seems.
Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq.
The whole Western media and political landscape somewhat fails to appreciate that small, but incredibly important difference lately. Heck, I am even getting Youtube propagan... I mean ads from the Israeli ministry of defence. But as the saying goes "One death is a tragedy, thousands are a statistic".
> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
Umm, that's literally what distinguishes whether or not it is a war crime*?
Not saying you need to take israeli claims at face value - but if one side accuses the other side of a crime, and the other side says they didn't do it, generally the burden is on the first side to provide proof. Saying it doesn't matter whether or not they actually did it isn't the right response.
* technically its more complex than that. There are times where it could still be a war crime even if civilians weren't targeted specificly. What matters more is the balance between military benefit vs civilian damage.*
Russia pays complete lip service to always trying to make it look like they don't attack civilians (they do) yet are unequivocally accused of war crimes (as they should be).
It got to a point where Israeli officials had no problem publically declaring thinly veiled threats of extermination like:
>On October 10th an Israeli official told a television station: “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings.” Daniel Hagari, an idf spokesperson, boasted that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had been dropped on Gaza. Then, he added: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
Again, only a western ally could get away with this with such a massive support at all level from all western countries after such statements.
I don't know why "numerically" matters. There is a big difference morally between someone accidentally killed while persuing a legal military target, and intentionally gunning down a rave or children at a day care.
The idea that if someone converts a house into an ammunition store depot it can never be targeted ever under international law is just straight up wrong.
Of course how that translates to what is being done on the ground is very complex. Which is why numerically approaches are wrong - you have to put every incident in appropriate context to judge it
Regarding the house being an ammunition depot: Sure, legitimate target. Blowing up the whole highrise, debatable. Blowing up the neighbouring highrise, even more debatable. And airstrikes are nowhere precise enough for that kind of work.
Insurgents are people who are fighting their own government (with guns) so they are armed, but they're not fighting Hamas, they're fighting Israel, so they're not insurgents.
Many of them don't even wear military uniforms in combat, that makes them unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions and don't have rights. They almost always attack civilians, so they're terrorists.
You know what that doesn't mean? That those people, and everyone in their vincinity, forfeit all, every and each right they ever had. Last time I checked, the IDF had pretty decent rules of engagement around that very question. On paper, and unfortunately rather loosly respected, but still.
??? I don't think that follows. What is your basis for this.
You may care about the finer legal minutia, but I doubt it matters very much to the death people and their relatives.
Not all of us agree with this. The idea of “legal military target” grows out of the idea of “just war”, which many of us reject outright.
- Hamas falsely attributes civilian deaths to Israel (as you can see from the "hospital strike")
- Hamas vastly inflates civilian casualty counts, somewhere between 2-5x as you can also see from the "hospital strike" which was immediately claimed by Hamas to have killed more than 500. US estimates have it between 100-300, and I think the photos of the damaged parking lot are extremely damning for Hamas's claims - yes, an explosion and fire in a crowded refugee camp could kill lots of people, but 500 is absurd.
- Hamas tells civilians in Gaza to ignore text messages from the IDF telling them to evacuate because their residence may be bombed.
- Hamas sets up road blocks to prevent civilians in Gaza from evacuating.
- Hamas sets up military installations and ammunition caches next to or in civilian installations, including kindergartens and mosques. (You can find videos of bombings resulting in massive secondary explosions as ammunition caches pop off.) They hide in refugee camps (https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hama...).
I think it's worth asking whether there is any way to wage a just war against a government like this, that is literally trying to maximize the number of its own civilians killed. And if not, what kinds of behavior does that incentivize?
If you refuse to go to war with Hamas because of this fact, you incentivize that behavior.
I can't really think of a more just case for war than "the government of a neighbor just brutally, intentionally slaughtered civilians in a surprise attack in our country." It doesn't matter whether the neighboring country is a dictatorship or a democracy.
It very much sucks for the people of Palestine that Hamas chose to start a war with Israel and is using tactics that purposefully result in the death of Palestinians. I hope that they stop putting rocket launchers in and next to schools. I hope that they start allowing people to evacuate. I hope that they stop lying to their people about "psychological warfare" in an effort to get more of them killed. I wish that neighboring countries would allow Palestinians to escape the carnage, and adopt strategies that actually support the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinian cause.
But the IDF and Israel do not control that. And I'm honestly not sure what people expect from them. If you can't fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, then hiding behind civilians is an obvious winning strategy. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the government most willing to sacrifice their own people automatically wins any conflict.
Second, the Israeli military has killed much, much more people, including thousands of civilians, kids and mothers over a half a century.
There are countless of videos and reports of rich settlers, harassing, stealing property and straight up killing regular palestinian farmers and families just living in their houses.
And third. Israel has actively supported Hamas to destroy moderate opposition like the PLO - the good old divide and conquer strategy.
So unless you also want to detain supporters of Israel this doesn't really make sense.
And no, you shouldn't detain them either like this.
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
he's done exactly that. and he's done this as well: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/former-ambas...
> This is not support of Hamas though, it is an acknowledgement that there will understandable reactions
that guy wrote:
> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
this isn't "acknowledgement", this is support for the terrorists.
Point being, there’s far more nuance to the whole situation than “Palestine bad.”
> To be entirely plain.
> I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation.
> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
> If that is a crime, send me back to jail.
I think this is pretty clearly supporting Hamas. The "in the coming" bit gives him a bit of leeway, of course, since he's not actually saying he supported the October 7 massacre itself (though presumably he is saying he would support another one, if it were it to occur now?), but he certainly doesn't seem to be making the sort of "I support Palestinians, not Hamas" argument that you assume.
Personally, as an American, I've been told by Europeans here that our attitudes towards free speech are bizarre, and that government has an important role to play in, ah, curating the information ecosystem. Despite that, I still believe that people like Murray should be perfectly free to argue for their views, however much I personally find them abhorrent.
[I don't have a Twitter account, and try to avoid the site since access seems to be hit-or-miss since Musk took over]
> PROSCRIBED TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS
> Proscription makes it a criminal offence to:
> belong to or invite support for a proscribed organisation;
> arrange a meeting in support of a proscribed organisation; and.
> wear clothing or carry articles in public which arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of the proscribed organisation.
i think he broke the first rule.
He didn't say that anyone else should support a proscribed organisation; he didn't even invite support for their actions. He just said that he intended to support them. And he's not a member of Hamas; so I don't see how you figure that he broke rule #1.
But the Home Secretary is now demanding that the police arrest and charge anyone carrying a Palestinian flag (note: not just a Hamas flag). In that context, the letter of the law seems a bit irrelevant.
i think the problem here is the medium. he didn't say he supported the terrorists in private to a friend. he posted it on twitter for everyone to see. i guess one could make a case that it's an invitation for support?
Hamas was elected by the whole of the West Bank and Gaza, in Palestine-wide elections. Fatah immediately launched a coup attempt. That failed in Gaza, but succeeded in the West Bank. It's Fatah (Israel's preferred "negotiating" partner) that won't allow elections; Hamas could only hold an election in Gaza, not in the West Bank. Hamas has no desire to validate the claim tht Gaza and the West Bank are distinct territories, which is the effect that holding an election in Gaza only would have.
So, like I said, there's a lot more nuance than many Americans recognize. That was my only point. And, based on the author's tweets (now shared in this thread), he actually does support Hamas, which based on British law (also shared in this thread) could actually be illegal.
Sure, and I get a say in my government. Every five years. We've had three prime ministers since the last time I was allowed to vote in national elections, including two certifiable crazies.
Some people seem to think that a government isn't legitimate unless it's appointed the way we appoint our government (FSVO "we"). I happen to take the view that an election isn't legitimate, however well it's run, if it's conducted while under military siege.
> people forget (or likely don’t even know) that, when Israel was not yet in a position of asymmetric power and secure statehood, Israeli paramilitaries often committed terror attacks which are indistinguishable from what we have seen Hamas do in recent decades. Deir Yassin, the King David Hotel Bombing, al-Husayniyya Safad, and so on. Now they do not have the need for such acts, when high tech bombing and artillery barrages, international legal sanction, highly trained police, are available. Beheading children and setting off car bombs at shopping centers looks bad internationally, and there’s little reason for it when you are the one with a “legitimate” state. But Israel got to that position in part by using methods indistinguishable from Hamas. Granted, one will say— that wasn’t Israel, it was the Irgun, or the Palmach, or some particular militia: more extremist factions of the Zionist movement. But it’s the same for Palestine. What is the great difference between the Irgun and Hamas, except in terms of success? Israel still engages in extreme brutality, and have even abetted on the ground massacres since the 1970s, but usually in ways that extricate themselves from the same level of responsibility (whether by setting up Lebanese militias to do their dirty work, or by allowing massive Palestinian casualties to be categorized as collateral damage). I can recognize that civilians being killed by artillery in a war zone is categorically different than civilians being assaulted, tortured, raped and executed by ground forces. But the crazy thing that’s forgotten is that Israeli forces did use those same tactics, when it’s situation and power position was more desperate, and it’s reputation not yet based on maintaining the appearance of civility.
Nobody's going to get in trouble for opposing the conflict, or pointing out civilian casualties, displacement, war crimes, etc. But you WILL get on a List if you support Hamas in any way shape or form. Pick your battles, know the risk. Yeah it's not fair, just or morally correct, but this is the reality of things.
The only difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is which side you're on (or: which side the victors write into history).
But instead all major western governments are busy sucking up to Israel (this article is just one example) and declaring that Israel will always be our best ally.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630368973/israel-passes-contr...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-vote-resolution-israel...
[3] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/11/702264118/netanyahu-says-isra...
What if the entire history of US settlement and expansion, from 1600s to present, was compressed to 70 years, then our government declared that it existed solely for white people regardless of Democracy and laid siege to all remaining Indian reservations?
Yet the same major news organizations and politicians that supposedly stand against racism cannot find any backbone to stand up for their principles when it comes to Israel. We were supposed to be better than this.
It's true that many Jews lived in harmony with Arab nations prior to the founding of Israel. Founding Israel is what made those relations go sour. That literally was where this whole conflict started for the aboriginal peoples of the Middle East.
> Well, I can think of a better demonstration, because we saw it two weeks ago.
The attacks wouldn't have happened if the founders of Israel (not all of whom were Jews, looking at you Britain) hadn't decided to interpret an ancient holy book in a genocidal way.
The Palestinians lived there. Israel has been in the process of kicking them out ever since its founding. It doesn't get to blame the victim here. Yes, I know about the holocaust etc. etc. but one genocide doesn't warrant another.
You seem to interpret the history in really one way here...
A good introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGVgjS98OsU
This is the one that bothers me the most to be honest, how is this possible ?
Couldn't one just claim they don't remember constantly, as it seems there is no 'probable cause' or even any traditional 'evidence'.
To find out who the criminals are in our system, we just need to identify those who are giving the commands. Unfortunately, a lot of people in high positions up the chain are likely compromised individuals (higher ups have dirt on them) so they will not reveal their source.
It seems like society is held up by a hierarchy of blackmail. We need to obtain info on compromised individuals and use them to spill the beans on their superiors via plea bargains.
What governments did to Julian Assange and what they're doing to Craig Murray is criminal. Those who are responsible should be prosecuted and the victims should be compensated.