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Enemies of the state

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    Enemies of the state

    Charged for quoting George Orwell in public

    In another example of the Government's draconian stance on political protest, Steven Jago, 36, a management accountant, yesterday became the latest person to be charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

    On 18 June, Mr Jago carried a placard in Whitehall bearing the George Orwell quote: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." In his possession, he had several copies of an article in the American magazine Vanity Fair headlined "Blair's Big Brother Legacy", which were confiscated by the police.

    "The implication that I read from this statement at the time was that I was being accused of handing out subversive material," said Mr Jago. Yesterday, the author, Henry Porter, the magazine's London editor, wrote to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, expressing concern that the freedom of the press would be severely curtailed if such articles were used in evidence under the Act.

    Mr Porter said: "The police told Mr Jago this was 'politically motivated' material, and suggested it was evidence of his desire to break the law. I therefore seek your assurance that possession of Vanity Fair within a designated area is not regarded as 'politically motivated' and evidence of conscious law-breaking."

    Scotland Yard has declined to comment.

    Enemies of the state?

    Maya Evans 25

    The chef was arrested at the Cenotaph in Whitehall reading out the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. She was the first person to be convicted under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which requires protesters to obtain police permission before demonstrating within one kilometre of Parliament.

    Helen John 68, and Sylvia Boyes 62

    The Greenham Common veterans were arrested in April by Ministry of Defence police after walking 15ft across the sentry line at the US military base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Protesters who breach any one of 10 military bases across Britain can be jailed for a year or fined £5,000.

    Brian Haw 56

    Mr Haw has become a fixture in Parliament Square with placards berating Tony Blair and President Bush. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 was designed mainly with his vigil in mind. After being arrested, he refused to enter a plea. However, Bow Street magistrates' court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf in May.

    Walter Wolfgang 82

    The octogenarian heckled Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, during his speech to the Labour Party conference. He shouted "That's a lie" as Mr Straw justified keeping British troops in Iraq. He was manhandled by stewards and ejected from the Brighton Centre. He was briefly detained under Section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act.
    If you have done no wrong then you have nothing to fear ...perhaps.

    #2
    Wow

    Belarus is starting to sound good.
    There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think

    Comment


      #3
      Enemy of the State Simon Davies London School of Economics


      The second invisible change that has occurred in Britain is best expressed by Simon Davies, a fellow at the London School of Economics, who did pioneering work on the ID card scheme and then suffered a wounding onslaught from the Government when it did not agree with his findings.

      The worrying thing, he suggests, is that the instinctive sense of personal liberty has been lost in the British people. "We have reached that stage now where we have gone almost as far as it is possible to go in establishing the infrastructures of control and surveillance within an open and free environment," he says. "That architecture only has to work and the citizens only have to become compliant for the Government to have control.

      "That compliance is what scares me the most. People are resigned to their fate.

      They've bought the Government's arguments for the public good.

      There is a generational failure of memory about individual rights. Whenever Government says that some intrusion is necessary in the public interest, an entire generation has no clue how to respond, not even intuitively And that is the great lesson that other countries must learn. The US must never lose sight of its traditions of individual freedom."

      Those who understand what has gone on in Britain have the sense of being in one of those nightmares where you are crying out to warn someone of impending danger, but they cannot hear you. And yet I do take some hope from the picnickers of Parliament Square.

      May the numbers of these young eccentrics swell and swell over the coming months, for their actions are a sign that the spirit of liberty and dogged defiance are not yet dead in Britain.
      If you have done no wrong then you have nothing to fear ...perhaps.

      Comment


        #4
        Enemy of the State Winston Churchill


        "If you will not fight for the right,when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival.

        There may be a worse case.

        You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."


        If you have done no wrong then you have nothing to fear ...perhaps.

        Comment


          #5
          Enemy of the State George Galloway

          In October 2003, he was expelled from the Labour Party when a party body ruled that he had brought the party into disrepute over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when he called the Labour government "Tony Blair's lie machine"

          Galloways address to the US Sentate


          I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

          I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

          I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

          I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

          Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
          If you have done no wrong then you have nothing to fear ...perhaps.

          Comment


            #6
            Is this a call to arms then?

            Lots of stabbity stab stab stabbings?
            How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think

            Comment


              #7
              Are you with us or against us Troll ?
              If you have done no wrong then you have nothing to fear ...perhaps.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Central-Scrutiniser
                Are you with us or against us Troll ?
                You would not believe how much I am with you!!
                How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think

                Comment


                  #9
                  Yo

                  Dalek reporting for ex-ter-min-ation duties

                  EX-TER-MIN-ATE,EX-TER-MIN-ATE,EX-TER-MIN-ATE,EX-TER-MIN-ATE,

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Ex-ter-min-ate,ex-ter-min-ate,ex-ter-min-ate,ex-ter-min-ate,ex-ter-min-ate

                    Comment

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