> I was detained under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act
> 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.
> 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)?
He is not likely taken part in terrorist activities personally, but he admitted to supporting terrorists, so it's not out of the realm of plausible he also provided material support and aid to them. I'm not saying it necessarily happened, but it's not unbelievable.
Stop with this cheap "all Palestinians" baiting. He explicitly and directly endorsed Hamas and Hezbollah on his social media. And directly said he endorses any action by them right after Hamas murdered 1400 people, so there's no doubt whether or not he makes any distinctions. Maybe you should do at least minimal research before regurgitating formulas the media stuffed your head with.
Show us some proof. Tall claims require tall evidence.
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.
I'm not going to debate your ignorance and your hate. The proof that Murray supports terrorism is in his own tweets, which are quoted many times here. You are free to remain blind to it, as you are obviously blind to many other things, in service of your hate, which makes you support murderers and rapists. That still doesn't change the facts.
Neither Hamas or Israel are correct in their aggression. I urge you to read about the formation of Israel and ask yourself what value colonialism has in the modern age.
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.
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?
But does the answer actually say what the law states, or does the law state what the (ignoring) response is describing. What was intended by a law and what the law actually says can vary wildly; and calling that out, when the law gives far greater power than it was intended to, is both reasonable and important.
The law says you just have to say the magic words, then you get full power. If you slip up and admit you were doing it for another reason, you might get a slap on the wrist.
You are correct. But in historical practice, we see that laws get misused. Powers, however legitimate, get abused. Restrictions gets stretched, and then stretched to the breaking point, and then obliterated.
So, while they deliberately ignored an honest explanation, they also had a legitimate point.
No, they're pointing out the ways that explanation is dishonest. You cannot look at the political landscape and tell anyone in good conscience that officials will use an honest interpretation of the law.
And again, that's not at all a theoretical exercise here.
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.
With every law that is as... vague.. as this, I always ask myself one question: "If the Nazis would rise to power, how badly could they abuse it by doing only slight changes to how it's interpreted?"
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.
Historically there are not many instances of this happening tho, unless we are speaking of truly absolute majorities that follow already dictatoric governments. Evil governments have it very easy if the laws they encounter when they get into office are ones that are practical for evil governments.
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.
Yeah, that means you didn't have the proper seperation of powers to begin with, which was kinda the point of my argument.
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.
And how is the detained going to ascertain that the officer really is working on a terrorism case and not conducting their own fishing expedition? Given that no lawyer may be present, I'm also sure that the target of the investigation is not to be disclosed to the victim.
They're not laws, they're the exemption of laws, just like outlaws - "a person declared as outside the protection of the law". Terrorist means you're not protected by the law, do not get rights, don't fall under the Geneva Convention as a prisoner of war, etc. It means you get to go to Guantanamo Bay and rot for two decades without charge or anything.
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 agree with you in general, but regarding this specific phrase in this specific context:
> 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.
Not everything in the world revolves around the USA. The UK had an ongoing terrorism problem in Northern Ireland, and had instituted plenty of draconian laws of its own pursuant to that, even before Biden became a Senator in 1972.
The terrorism history is not much more than a pretext though. The source of these draconian Laws are highly stratified societies, with inept elites for seeing troubled times and accidentally accelerating them.
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.
It's kinda like reddit in that there's multiple boards with a broad array of topics. A few of the boards regularly have threads with pretty extreme racism/hate. Recently the president of a Detroit synagogue was stabbed to death outside her home and there were multiple threads openly celebrating the murder. But elsewhere on the site people are sharing clips of cute cows doing cute cow things.
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.
Why would that implicate you on terrorism charges?
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.
"Ignorantia juris non excusat" is precedent for any democratic state. It's there for long time. And it could end your freedom any time if your are not encyclopedia of all current laws, regulations and restrictions of country where you live.
> "Ignorantia juris non excusat" is precedent for any democratic state. It's there for long time. And it could end your freedom any time if your are not encyclopedia of all current laws, regulations and restrictions of country where you live.
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.
> In USA if police doesn't know it breaks your rights it cannot be sued directly. Qualified immunity I think.
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.)
Ok but I remember a few occasions where people have got off easy for being ignorant of the law.
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?
UK law is such complete ass. There is no getting around just how stupidly bad the Parliamentary Supremacy doctrine is. Parliament passed it so it is constitutional. There aren't enough insults in the world for the people who would think any of this qualifies as a good idea.
The UK is the epitome of a surveillance society. It’s very creepy. Cctv everywhere, no right to silence or counsel because terrorism… it’s a surveillance state.
Is there any 'legal' way to get around sharing a password if asked to?
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
This is a legal problem, not a technical one. If you’re required to turn something over your choice is to do it or sit in jail (or worse if you get the full NYPD/Gitmo treatment).
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.
That’s a misattribution. Not bringing your phone means you are choosing not to do something perfectly legal due to abuse of power — and doing so is likely to encourage further abuse because the culprits know they are less likely to be recorded.
I'd disagree, you taking your phone through customs is indeed legal, and the border goon's seizure of your phone (by force if they prefer) and demand for your password on penalty of imprisonment is also legal. So this is not a legal issue, everyone is acting within the law. One could argue that it is a political issue, that the law should be changed (and I'd agree), but that's a different question.
That’s the point: there are multiple laws involved, court cases trying to establish where things like rights to privacy end, etc. – none of those are technical issues.
To expand on that, the idea is that a password-protected encrypted volume may have, in its empty space, another password-protected volume, which is indistinguishable from random noise. You can't tell whether it exists or not. Inside that could be another one, and so on.
At least that's the theory, I haven't messed with it to see.
I ran into a similar problem entering the US on a ferry from the Bahamas.
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.
If you're a US citizen, they have to let you in – eventually. In the meantime you may be sitting in a room without access to your phone.
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.
This is the importance of the state in keeping the populace in a perpetual state of fear with their propagandists in the media. It's what allows garbage legislation like this to proceed in the first place.
Nothing necessarily. In a situation like this many people would feel ill. If you are ill an interview is not reasonable to answer questions. If you are ill you should see a doctor. If you felt really bad like you might be sick you would have to lie down!
At CPH:DOX this year they showed the documentary "Phantom Parrot" about human rights activist Muhammad Rabbani that was prosecuted for refusing to give up his passwords at a border crossing into the UK.
The surveillance programme, codenamed Phantom Parrot, is designed to copy the personal data of individuals at airports and border crossings.
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.
Sure, but you're also on video committing the crime in front of police officers. The lawyer isn't going to help you get out of the charge for not answering questions, and if they still want your passwords the judge will absolutely just order you to give them up and keep stacking prison sentences until you comply.
> He didn't have to answer questions or give them passwords
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.
> you can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years imprisonment
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.
Yeah but, you refuse to give the information, so that's a crime; even with a lawyer you're then liable for a maximum of two years imprisonment.
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.
Maximum of two years, in practice means you'll be out in a few months on probation. You'll keep most of your life and get a story to tell for the rest of it.
Possible months, for a new experience, and perhaps the consequences aren't so catastrophic. Lots of people go to jail and live long and happy lives afterwards.
You do understand that in many places (and certainly in the U.S.) a criminal conviction, even a minor one, can mean the crushing destruction of your professional career, job prospects and all sorts of future opportunities. It's a shit show of a discriminatory system that keeps this alive but it's what it is and very real.
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.
Far more likely that you'd just bankrupt your family, lose your home and your job, only to have the courts uphold that same unconstitutional law. I'd respect the hell of anyone who tried and sacrificed everything they had to force the courts to confirm that the constitution is being ignored to satisfy an oppressive and power hungry government, but I sure as hell wouldn't recommend it or be able/willing to myself.
How does this work? If they have to provide writing what's the point? Surely the individual could just wipe their device in that time?
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.
re-reading the act, it actually says "must be given in writing or (if not in writing) must be given in a manner that produces a record of its having been given;"
So being given verbally with a tape recorder or note-taker recording the interaction is actually sufficient. Sounds like the police had exactly that.
Man, I totally forgot my password. Over the last 3 weeks I started forgetting passwords, only passwords. (Make note to mention this offhand to my dr at next appointment)
The anti-terrorism act used in this case allows detention of no more than 1 hour, or no more than 6 hours under certain conditions. Arrest involves other charges so what you described could happen, but not without turns.
How could they tell if you withheld anything or genuinely forgot? It's a stressful situation. I'm not sure if I'll remember even my mother's name in such situation.
> How could they tell if you withheld anything or genuinely forgot? It's a stressful situation. I'm not sure if I'll remember even my mother's name in such situation.
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
As I said in another comment - even though obviously there is no objective way to prove it, like many other things in the justice system it's about what the judge/jury will believe. If they pull up logs that show you've used your password just before your interrogation then you can bet you'll be found guilty even if you really forgot the password.
Those are the kinds of cases that should be handled through jury nullification - too bad it's a crime to explain that right and how it should be used to jurors.
>Law enforcement is basically allowed to lie to you
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".
I think it’s universal. It started in the United States though. Look at this case: Frazier v. Cupp (1969). That is what started it all. Many other nations picked up on it. This case was argued before the Supreme Court.
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.
> They have no real ethics. FBI was caught sleeping with female “suspects”’for intelligence. Think about that. Fucking for intelligence. They were exploiting women
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
More than that. In the Netherlands the prosecutors are allowed to lie under oath in court. You might then ask "Well what value has the court then?
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...
Are you sure? I don’t believe that this is the case, esp for super heavy stuff like telling someone they don't have a right to a lawyer when actually they do.
> > Law enforcement is basically allowed to lie to you
> 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?
> > > Law enforcement is basically allowed to lie to you
> > 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.
> 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.
>It is not universal. Not sure why you'd claim so unless you've looked up the laws for every country.
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".
Ah, maybe it's my non-native English-ness that shines through, but I've always understood "universal" as something implies like it is everyone, not "just in some places".
So I could accurately say "English language is universal" even though there are countries where people generally don't speak English at all?
This would be an example of "absolutes." Using an absolute will usually make your sentence incorrect; "never" and "always" are rarely true. When writing something formal--essays, news, research papers--you should try not to use absolutes.
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.
>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.
"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).
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.
Indeed. That was a much better response – and there was no call for laughing their ass off at a genuine question. They may have been laughing at the concept of a police force that doesn’t lie to citizens but it still came across as a rude response.
Is the "detained without a lawyer" thing actually true in the UK? It was my understanding in the US, that's a pretty concrete feature, and law enforcement can't actually compel you to do anything without a trip through the courts.
>> enforcement can't actually compel you to do anything without a trip through the courts.
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.
Yes, in the UK you can be detained for 36 hours without the right to a lawyer, or 48 hours for suspected terrorism cases. During that time, you can be questioned, and if you do not answer, then your lack of answer can be used by a court to infer guilt ("why did you not say you were just out walking your dog when first asked?").
> in the UK you can be detained for 36 hours without the right to a lawyer, or 48 hours for suspected terrorism cases
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.
I think the court does actually take into account why you refuse to answer. If it's "because I was waiting for my lawyer to arrive, and then I answered the question just fine", I'm not sure a court could rightly draw an adverse inference there.
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.
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
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.)
Except (as I hear it) that's not even true in the US. Apparently, it's not enough to stay silent - you actually have to say that you are exercising the right to be silent, otherwise they are allowed to infer guilt from silence.
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".
Even the right to a lawyer has been denied because a judge chose to endorse a police interpretation of "I want a lawyer dawg" as a nonsense request for a dog-attourney.
Under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act you can be detained for up to an hour without access to legal advice. That's very likely why they were so diligent in keeping it to an hour.
Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, very simple and fair system! In the end society was not able to come up with anything better than a twitter poll to decide their destiny.
The least bad system in the worst constraints, where all people must be labelled by blood or soil of origin and moving around is a privilege. The best illusion of control engineered however
Except for the fact that the house of lords is a lifelong appointment and people have taken cash bribes for appointments. Which is the very definition of undemocratic
> 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?
In the UK there's the concept of a 'proscribed organisation', that is an organisation which is illegal and the promotion of that organisation is illegal.
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.)
>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.
It's just always been the case, everywhere. The history of Law is effectively about the powerless (or rather the less-powerful) slowly carving out all circumstances in which they cannot be thrown in prison on a whim.
Well, not necessarily everywhere. In the lens of history, new countries with a new constitution don't have that problem. Over time, they create layers of new laws, then cruft when those laws make little sense to enforce, then they can crack down on the letter of that law when enforcement is socially acceptable.
Thanks for posting the official position of the UK state. I was curious how many far right, non-Islamic organisations are listed as proscribed organisations so I counted them:
* 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.
No, although the name was likely picked to cause exactly such confusion. 'Al Qaeda' is commonly translated as 'the base' but there's no connection between the two. AQ was a pretty elaborate and complex organization in its heyday though it seems mostly moribund now. The Base existed mostly virtually and was more focused on promoting stochastic terrorism by disseminating incitement and instructional materials, but without any real infrastructure/finance.
According to this list, this particular group is described as:
> 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.
The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement.
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.
Looks more to me like he's a human rights activist that has been targeted by the security state as Naom Chomsky et. al comments in the just posted article.
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.
He said every act by Hamas is justified, a week after Hamas murdered 1400 people. As terrorism support goes, you can't be any clearer. He's not "human rights activist", at least human rights of murdered Israelis don't concern him a single little bit. He's pro-terrorist activist who is open and brazen at calling on terrorists to murder more civilians right after they murdered 1400 of them. He's not some innocent bystander. He specifically thrust himself into this on the side of terrorists.
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.
>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.
> That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.
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.
> 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.
I'm from the UK, and my instant reaction is that this is an evidence-free conspiracy-theory. If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.
Well, it's also possible they read his Tweet and looked at his background and said "this dangerous person really is going to conduct violent acts in this country, we have no choice but to thwart him by seizing all his electronic devices using the most powerful law in the land, even if it de-legitimizes our use of this law for more serious matters." But since that hypothesis is so obviously cartoonish, it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)
> it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)
No, it's not, because he's clearly being investigated for supporting Hamas' actions (which classified as a terrorist organization by the UK).
I don't know anything about this person other than what's on his Wikipedia. And what that says is: he's a 65-year old former diplomat and noted human rights activist with (as far as I can tell) zero history of violence or terrorist acts.
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.
You can’t be that naive, can you? It’s obviously not the Tweet they’re worried about. They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”
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.
> They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”
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)
Probably if Mary-Sue from Idaho, a shop clerk tweets this it’s not exactly the same if a former diplomat with international connections and public influence does it?
You're grossly overselling his influence. He doesn't have the ear of the powerful or the mob. Even if he were to explicitly call his followers to take up arms - which is a long way past the quoted statement - I very much doubt any of them would.
No, I think that the tweet is an excuse that allows them to hassle him more, because he's a prominent supporter of Scottish Independence. I don't think this has anything to do with Hamas itself.
> If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.
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 ;)
Pro Palestine doesn’t necessarily mean pro Hamas. It usually doesn’t, but of course some people (pro Israel usually) always manipulate/turn it that way. So please let us know where it shows he is pro Hamas vs pro Palestine (and actually against Hamas, which is what I would expect he is).
Somehow every time somebody goes out to prove "it doesn't mean pro Hamas" it turns out it does. Maybe there's some pattern in it - like if a guy goes to pro Hamas rallies just days after Hamas brutally murdered 1400 people, there's a tiny bit of suspicion he might be pro Hamas?
> The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement.
>
>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.
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.
How does this look in practice? I’m not saying you’re wrong but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.
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?
It's the same as any other large organisation. Someone at the top says "oi, so-and-so has been a real pain lately huh". Someone one level down says "is there anything we can do about so-and-so?". Someone the next level down says "well, let's start a file on so-and-so, see if he's up to anything, no harm in that". And then since UK antiterrorism law is terribly written (or brilliantly written, depending on your perspective) such that essentially everyone with even a vague interest in politics breaks it all the time, and the surveillance state means the proof will be a couple of keystrokes away, once you look for a reason to go after someone you find one.
Probably no-one sat down and designed the system to work like this. But it works well for everyone involved, so...
>but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.
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?
Yes, but you can strip "UK" away from that. People habitually and casually abuse their power in almost any instance they have it. If this sounds outlandish to you, that's really nice and you probably shouldn't take that naivete away from yourself. It won't improve your life to know otherwise.
> some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.
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.
> faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club
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.
And there's evidence (as Mr Murray documents, which was obviously his "real" crime) that this was all a fit-up by the current SNP leadership to discredit Mr Salmond so that they would be free from criticism from him about the lack of movement on independence and the SNP pivot from independence to culture war issues.
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 am struck by the fact that you can be publicly disgraced while your accusers remain anonymous, and remain such (and I bet suffer no consequence) even after their accusations against you are proven false or irrelevant.
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.
Is it? Most members of the Conservative Party would be overjoyed at Scottish independence - it would give them a permanent majority (or at least, would have done had they not had their ridiculous dalliance with Liz Truss).
The Conservative Party have always been against the breakup of the United Kingdom. I'm not a member so I don't know why, but I suspect any/all of the following: loss of North Sea Oil rights, history, weird effect on the monarchy, reunified Ireland immediately afterwards, Scotland rejoining the EU leaving England and Wales as this weird little bit of non-EU island.
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.
Not sure how formatting will go, from desktop twitter:
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
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Section 1 extends the offence of inviting support for a proscribed organisation in section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to cover expressions of support that are reckless as to whether they will encourage others to support the organisation;
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.
Murray wrote Zionism is Bullshit in 2017. It's just as old as his pro-independence stuff.
> Humanity shouldn't wait for another holocaust.
Agreed. An international coalition must militarily intervene to repeal rules such as Military Order 158 (blocking construction of water infrastructure), rebuild important infrastructure (like the airport blown up by israel), restore critical life services like hospitals (which have been bombed 62 times), stop the murder of civilians, destroy checkpoints, walls, sniper nests and other infrastructure imprisoning the people who have lived here for millenia. The murder, displacement, apartheid, and genocide that has occurred for the past 70 years must be stopped before the terrorist ethnostate finally fills the last graves of those who did not flee their homes.
The people responsible for these atrocities -which stand alongside My Lai, the Rouge, Rwanda, the Kulaks, etc- must be held to an international trial, and should never see a life of freedom ever again. God forbid that the murder should escalate to the true eradication of the Gaza strip- if those millions were exterminated, there would truly be no event that could even be compared except for the Holocaust.
Given recent events, I consider support for Hamas to be on extremely shaky moral ground, and in very poor taste. Still, I don't think that verbal support for Hamas calls for investigation. (Material support? Sure, investigate that.)
Wait for another holocaust? Israel is inflicting one on the people (mostly children!) in Gaza right now. I think it's in rather bad taste to yell holocaust when an occupier faces resistance from a people they are violently oppressing.
That “resistance” took the form of indiscriminately murdering and raping over a thousand unarmed civilians, including Israeli Arabs, in their homes, in the streets, and even at a music festival for peace.
Take this however you will - I'm pretty far from Craig Murray politically but he seems sincere in his beliefs and doesn't seem to care who he upsets.
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.
He cites "support for Palestine" in his first paragraph. It's not "zero ties to anything violent" if you didn't sleep through the last month. I mean, he probably isn't a member of Hamas or anything like that, but he very well may have donated to Hamas-affiliated NGO, either knowingly or unknowingly. It'd be not a huge link but also not zero link. He also publicly endorsed Hamas and Hezbolah in his tweets and dared the security services to arrest him. Also not zero. Well, now he got his wish as if seems.
> 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.
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.
Seems he has tweeted a lot about Israel/Palestine as of late, hard to know exactly which one is being referred to. https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg
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).
UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman is on the very-far-right-authoritarian side of the government, and she's been very vocal in her support for Israel. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that detentions like these are at her direct instruction. Perhaps not at a "lift this guy" level, but certainly at the level of directing the authorities to step up their harassment of people.
He's claiming that it is justified because israel might commit genocide at some unspecified time in the future, despite that being unlikely. It seems like a rediculous argument to me. Nobody has a crystal ball - you can't justify actions based on things that haven't happened yet. It seems more an attempt to deflect the criticism that hamas has comitted genocide.
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?
This article is headlined and leads with an accusation about the recent hospital tragedy being due to an Israeli air strike. I believe that the preponderance of sources (neutral or otherwise) have attributed that explosion to a malfunctioning PIJ/Hamas rocket or missile .
The press release is kind of undermined by using as its premise that israel targeted Al Ahli Arab Hospital despite there being significant evidence that it was actually a Palestinian group that did that.
The article doesn't seem to be using an evidence based approach.
You fell for Qatari state and Hamas terrorist propaganda. All physical evidence points to a more minor event caused by a failed rocket within Gaza. Only the initial confusion caused the ridiculous claims of 500 dead and the entire hospital up in flames to spread. Do some light reading based on current understanding that isn’t Al Jazeera.
“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.”
> Just for the record, there are also claims supported by evidence, that Israel did it.
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.
May be you're right. I'm no expert. And I'm certainly not Craig to tell you just what their thinking was/is.
> 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
Even Gandhi allowed for armed conflict where there is no peaceful alternative, and Nelson Mandela was in a paramilitary group.
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.
What I don’t understand, how is it considered resistance? I was under the impression they were the aggressor, no? Why would the aggressor be in a position of resistance? Would this be akin to claiming Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch? Aren’t those two things at odds with each other?
>What I don’t understand, how is it considered resistance
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?
I cannot believe I have to say this. No, beheading children and torturing them in front of their parents is not a "counter-attack", nor is it "resistance". This statement is actively evil.
One does not preclude the other. This is not a Hollywood movie, the Resistance fighting against the Empire are more likely to commit atrocities, not less (because they are in a position of weakness).
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.
You have to imagine very hard to consider gaza to have been annexed. You could make an argument for "occupied" (although that in itself is debatable post 2005), but "annexed" does not make sense.
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.
> Israel by definition can't annex something before it exists.
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.
> E.g. the formation of South Ossetia on Georgian territory is widely recognised as either annexation or something morally equivalent to it.
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.
> its not like the jews just showed up in 1948 and declared independence
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).
It seems like firm numbers are pretty hard to find, but wikipedia suggests there was significant jewish population concentrated in Jerusalem, even in the early 1500s (about 20% of the city) with conflicting reports of them becoming a plurality in the mid 1800s. (Arguably that's cherrypicking a single city)
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.
> 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
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.
> show up somewhere and seize a bunch of land and declare it's part of their nation
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.
> 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.
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.
Your analogy is wrong because Jews were there before Arabs.
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).
I suppose you refer to the relatively short period that Israel existed almost 3000 years ago? And we're just conveniently forgetting about all the people who lived there before and after that?
Weren't the Philistines in the old testament the ancestors of the Palestinians? Meaning they were there first presumably, since the Israelites had to fight them to take the region in the first place
The Philistines settled in a small part of modern Israel at around 1175 BC, and disappeared (were assimilated) by the 5th century BC.
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.
So we can go back to antiquity to make territorial claims? Hell, better not tell that the Persians, Romans and Mongols! Or the British... Maybe Macedonia wants another shot at conquering India so, who knows?
Or... when you have to go back 1300 years to shed light on a complex issue, naive people should consider that they might not fully grasp the basis of the conflict
That's a classic handwave to avoid going into the fundamental merit of the problem: which is that, based on claims that were last valid more than 1000 years before, a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force, pursuing a slow but methodical ethnic cleansing of the land. Unlike similar efforts in previous centuries (i.e. the purge of Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, or pre-Colombian South Americans), the Israeli effort doesn't even have the excuse of philosophical immaturity of the mainstream: it was pursued well after the post-colonial fundamentals had already been established between WWI and WWII. These are hard facts, no matter how you spin who started what in which year.
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.
There's nothing wrong with "nationalistic ethnostates", that's just a weird way to say "nation" (ethnicity is fractal).
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).
> a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force
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.
>> a fundamentally-theological apartheid state was installed and then supported with brutal force
> 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.
My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that this goes all the way back to Jacob and Esau, if one considers the Bible as purely a historical reference and not a religious text.
> Russia is in “armed resistance” after throwing the first punch?
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.
I guess we can put that on list of all those other crimes that never got prosecuted in Den Hague. Remind me so, who did ratify that court and refuses that their milotary falls under its jurisdiction?
> 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."
I'm saying that it's ridiculous to say it's an apartheid state when Israel has Muslims with full citizenship, but if Jew crossed into Gaza unarmed he would be slaughtered on the spot.
The better metric would be how many Arabs, including in the occupied territories, are Israelian citizens. By the way, apartheid doesn't depend on citizenship per se.
AFAICT, the West Bank could be called "an occupied territory", but Gaza definitely cannot. I don't know why people keep repeating this: Israel pulled out of Gaza 17 years ago and let it govern itself. A place can't be "occupied" when you don't have soldiers there and you're not administering the place.
How much self government do you really have when you are under embargoe by all neighbouring states, are not recognized as sovereign nation and depend dor basix essentials (water, fuel...) on the former occupier? It is an occupation by all measures but name.
How is it Israel's fault that they're embargoed by other neighboring states? And what's been keeping all the other states from supplying those basic essentials? Last I heard, they got a lot of humanitarian supplies from many other countries worldwide, even as far away as Japan.
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.
I'm not arguing that Gaza has been occupied, but was there anything stopping from leaving by sea, besides access to boats and not having recognized passports?
Gaza is described, by Amnesty International and the Norwegian Refugee Council, as the world largest open air prison. It depends for all life necessities on Israel and has all of two neighbours, Israel and Egypt. The former being also the former occupier which refuses to lift the embargoe and prevents Gazans from participating in normal life in Israel, incl. working there. All Israel did to technically not make it an occupation is to withdraw troops, getting rid of that cost and risk. They did not so get rid of accountability and responsibility.
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.
Why should they be obligated to allow Gazans to participate in normal life in Israel? They're de-facto two separate countries. Why isn't Egypt getting the same criticism? They could do the same, but they don't. And there are many other Arab nations in the region that, while not directly bordering Gaza, could help out if they wanted. Iran does (though not Arab), but they provide them with weapons.
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.
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.
a) Egypt used to own Gaza (they lost it in a war they started, along with a big chunk of Sinai, which was later returned in a peace deal)
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.)
> Especially given that the people there don't want Egypt to do so, and have been rather...prickly
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.
> But Egypt’s refusal to open the borders to Gazans
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.
Again, the Gazans I have known complained about being forced to stay; they saw it that way, and not being forced to leave if the border with Egypt opened. Some people want to fight for their ancestral homeland or whatever, but other people want money and opportunities. But yes, as I suggested in my post, Egypt’s behavior re: opening the border or annexing the Strip has always been significantly driven by how its own population and other Arab states would perceive things, and not necessarily what a young educated Gazan might want.
Are you referring to the refusal to open the border crossing that Israel has repeatedly bombed during the present crisis or the on-again-off-again status of the crossing in the years prior?
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.
>> 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]
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.
Well people view israel as the aggressor because they have been pushing palestinians off their land by force (as for the truth of this claim, ive no clue, consult an expert)
It could be considered resistance to the ongoing occupation of Gaza and the war crimes that Israel commits there (according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem etc)?
Gaza isn't occupied, it's besieged. Has been for about 15 years; before that it was occupied (and settled). Before that it was under Egyptian administration, and before that it was under UN administration.
The tweet refers to the "coming genocide" which seems to be a reference to Israel's plan to invade more of Palestine.
> 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.
> 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.