Critical Mass under attack

Sometimes on my way home on the last Friday of the month I cross the route of Critical Mass and ride along for a bit. This has been an enjoyable way to chat to other cyclists as we meander around London. In the past the police have been friendly, with cyling cops riding along and preventing car traffic attacking the ride.

Now CM is under threat under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005). The police have distributed leaflets threatening participants with arrest

“Organisers of public processions are required by law to notify police at least 6 days before the event occurs of the date, time, proposed route and the name and address of an organiser. Failure to do so makes the event unlawful

Demonstrations within a designated area around Parliament must also be notified, and anyone taking part in an unauthorised demonstration commits an offence.”

Critical Mass has no organizers and is not a demonstration (except that it demonstrates that there are lots of people who like cycling in London).

The preamble to the Act states:

“An Act to provide for the establishment and functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency; to make provision about investigations, prosecutions, offenders and witnesses in criminal proceedings and the protection of persons involved in investigations or proceedings; to provide for the implementation of certain international obligations relating to criminal matters; to amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002; to make further provision for combatting crime and disorder, including new provision about powers of arrest and search warrants and about parental compensation orders; to make further provision about the police and policing and persons supporting the police; to make provision for protecting certain organisations from interference with their activities; to make provision about criminal records; to provide for the Private Security Industry Act 2001 to extend to Scotland; and for connected purposes.”

This preamble already goes far beyond what any lay person would understand as ‘Serious Organised Crime’ – the link between Reggie Kray or Tony Soprano and ‘parental compensation orders’ certainly escapes me. The extension to Critical Mass goes even further. This is a part of mission creep that all police and anti-terrorism powers are highly prone to. One major purpose of the Act was to remove Brian Haw’s protest from Parliament Square (a Serious Organised Crime if ever there was one), but the courts ruled that lax drafting had meant the Home Office had missed its target.

It seems the cyclists are next. Future issues of this blog may be renamed News from Belmarsh- but I hope not. Join me at the next Critical Mass ride; assemble around 6.30 p.m. on 28 October outside the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. It’s the annual Halloween ride so many riders will be in fancy dress (but not me I’m afraid).

Thoughts from a boiled frog

I arrived at work today as a boiled frog. When I left home this morning on my bike it was barely drizzling, so it wasn’t worth putting on my waterproofs. As I cycled the intensity of the rain gradually increased, until I was soaked. If it had been raining like this when I set off, I would, of course have covered up: I’m not (that) stupid. I had become a victim of the boiled frog syndrome (which I was reminded of recently by Christopher Brookmyre in his dark, but hilarious thriller, Boiling a Frog.)

How do you boil a frog? If you put a frog in boiling water, it has the sense to jump straight out. If you put it in lukewarm water and gradually increase the temperature the situation never gets quite threatening enough to provoke alarm and action and the frog relaxes in the increasingly warm, and apparently comfortable, environment - until it is boiled. (Note to readers: no frogs were hurt in the writing of this blog; I have relied on secondary sources for descriptions of this behaviour.)

Is this syndrome only of concern to frogs, cyclists and thriller writers? No. Imagine you wanted to introduce a police state in to Britain, with few restrictions on the arbitrary actions of police. Would you legislate for unlimited powers of detention immediately? Not if you were wise, subtle and determined. You would play a long game, increasing the historic 24 hours limit to detention without charge and court appearance to 48 hours then to 7 days then to 14 then, say to 90, then to … It is of course possible that moving from 14 days to 90 days in one leap, would be to clumsy a hand on the regulator and it would wake up the frog. Never mind, you are playing the long game, turn the dial back to 28 and the frog will go back to sleep, warm and cosy, there is always next year for 90 and beyond.

There are of course other frogs, in other pans. One marked CCTV surveillance; another marked identity databases; another is the frequency of gun use by police. The great thing is that the frogs are warm relaxed and somnolent and never talk to each other, never make the connections which enable them to see they are all being boiled alive (sorry make that dead).

The government and the police have learned an important lesson in life. You don’t take the money and run: you take the money and walk slowly away without drawing attention to yourself.

Creating the Party

While sorting the newspapers for recycling last night, a job advert caught my eye: one for General Secretary for the Labour Party. Nothing surprising about that, they turn over fast, so they always seem to be looking for a new one.

What made me look was the section it was listed in. It was in the Media Guardian's Creative, Media and Sales section. It would seem that media management is even more the central concern of the party than we feared - 'we are moving beyond spin' was, well, spin. The role of the General Secretary used to membership and policy development and ensuring that the views of the members were taken note of by the leadership, oh happy days. Now it would appear to be branding and selling and that which is to be sold must first be created, not any longer through the labourious and labarynthine processes of inner party democracy. No, by a group of creatives in a London office snorting their way through ideas for ad campaigns and slogans. If not, why trawl there for candidates.

God and New Orleans

1. The Power of prayer

I was struck by the interviews with people who escaped the New Orleans flooding with their lives. Many of them said that they prayed hard and God had saved them. There was a disconnect that no reporter seemed to question, or even to notice: did these people think that their neighbours who had drowned had prayed any less hard?

2. What happened to the levees?

Hurricane Katrina has been described as an act of God - consideration of what notion of a God acts like that is beyond the ambit of today's posting. It is widely known that the US is God's Own Country (despite many other competing claims, presumably from simple minded anti-Americans); further, in their words (and Dylan's), they ' have God on their side'. This being so how could God have breached the levees and wrought so much destruction and death?

The answer is clear, only America's enemies, not their celestial champion, must have been responsible. This being so why have the US intelligence services, which were so efficient in discovering WMDs in Iraq, been so tardy in discovering the Al Qu'ida operatives who callously blew holes in the levees?

However, if I trawled the wilder reaches of the US blogsphere I fear I will discover many references to their sighting and interminable discussion of the reasons for the federal Government cover-up.

The Skies Are Weeping

I have just booked tickets for a very exciting concert - The Skies are Weeping - to be held at the Hackney Empire on 1 November.

This is a concert for justice and peace. In memory of all the lives lost during the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Introduced by Harold Pinter.

The Skies Are Weeping is a cantata for soprano, chamber choir and percussion ensemble, Op 75 by Philip Munger, in memoiriam Rachel Corrie, peace activist in Gaza. The original US premiere cancelled after threats were received by principals involved.

• Peter Crockford Conductor
  
• Deborah Fink Soprano
  
• Dominic Saunders Piano
  
• Coro Cervantes
  
• The London Percussion Ensemble
  

The concert also includes two other interesting items

• UK Premiere of The Singer of Wind and Rain – Five songs on Palestinian poems
  set by Gregory Youtz.
  
  
• Traditional Palestinian dance and music performed by the Dabka group Al-Hurriyya.
  

Tickets are £10.00 to £17.50 from The Hackney Empire

(Any surplus from the concert will go to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the Gaza
Community Mental Health Programme)

Sad, if predictable, news from Gaza

Anyone who thought that Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza was a move towards peace will be ruing their naivety. Those of us whose cynicism, or worldly experience, runs deeper will have had our pessimism confirmed.

The process of removal of the settlers was instructive. Each one was carefully nursed out of their homes, helped to pack by the Israeli Defence Forces, and taken to resettlement centres with the promise of replacement homes. It was interesting to note that several of the most militant settlers interviewed on the television appeared to be refugees form that hotbed of anti-Semitism, Brooklyn; seeking refuge on other people’s land.

This removal process contrasts with the usual practice of the IDF in Gaza, to send in the Caterpillar Tractors at dawn with no warning, crushing homes, possessions and those inhabitants not nimble enough to escape in time. This process has been documented by the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions.

On 23 September, soon after the withdrawal, there was an explosion at a Hamas rally killing 15. Responsibility for the explosion was contested, although the usually reliable Alternative Information Centre reported that the Palestinian Authority declared it was an accidental explosion of Hamas material rather than an Israeli attack.

In any case, the Hamas response of firing rockets from Gaza into Israel was ill-judged, even if it resulted in no fatalities, as it provoked a far greater Israeli response which was far from fatality free. By 26 September Hamas appeared to realise their error as they speedily asserted they were re-instating their case-fire; the Israelis however did not: continuing to attack and bomb and to launch attacks within the West Bank. Sharon was determined not to be out-flanked by Netanyahu, showing he still wore the mantle of butcher of Sabra and Shatila, lightly and would not give up leadership in killing without a struggle andwould fight to the last Palestinian. Read Uri Avnery's description of the 'struggle' between Sharon and Netanyahu

Sharon made no secret that the withdrawal from Gaza was tactical and was only undertaken to enable the easier defence of the larger and more valuable West Bank settlements. Construction on the West Bank is unabated and theft of Palestinian land, especially round Jerusalem, continues.

The closure of the Gaza settlements appears to be creating a situation even worse than many of us expected: a free fire zone. The latest IDF tactic is supersonic over flying of Gaza in the middle of the night, creating distress to the residents. A move that was impossible while Israelis lived within the strip. See electronicintifada's report from a Gaza doctor of Israeli pressure on Gaza.