Media Fuss about Qatada is Part of their Attack on Habeas Corpus

The fuss about Abu Qatada is nonsense. All of it is to work up popular opinion against the Human Rights Act, and the European Court. Other countries have no trouble with either, and the UK Minister of Justice, Kenneth Clarke, only last week said it had nothing to do with the human rights court, but everything to do with justice. Like all of those captives in Guantanamo Gaol who have received no trial but nevertheless are imprisoned indefinitely, Abu Qatada has had no justice, but has been locked up for seven years. Since when has it been legal to jail anyone for life on an unproven allegation. Only since the odious Bush puppet, Tony Blair! Blair broke a principle of the law by bringing in his version of the US Patriot Act.

Blair effectively abolished habeas corpus, a fundamental principle of British law for 800 years. It meant that no one could be detained without trial. If this man, Qatada, is a danger, and all the news media seem to know he is, then he should be tried. If he is persona non grata here, but other countries like the USA want him for suspected acts of terror, then he can be extradited to them. We are extraditing Assange to Sweden en route to the USA, and various naïve hackers to the USA where they can legally be incarcerated for life over petty offences, and about three million imprisoned blacks in US jails vouch for it. He can even be extradited to Jordan, his home country, because it has enshrined guarantees against the use of torture, and evidence produced by torture, in a recent act (in 2011) to assure Europeans it respects human rights, and to facilitate the return of people like him to Jordan.

If the our secret services allege they have secret evidence that any of us are a danger to the public, any of us could be banged up indefinitely without proof of our guilt—because even if it exists, it is secret! Do not be taken in by emotive propaganda by the right wing media. It is in their interest to be able to jail anyone without evidence or trial. It is in our interest to have the protection of due process of the law.

Defend habeas corpus. It has saved thousands of people from arbitrary detention, and, if it goes, they’ll be able to bring back dungeons.

Join the Protests against the Greedy Bankers and their Rich Clients

Politicians, most recently European ones, tell us the bankers know best, and so we are wise to let them be in charge of defaulting economies like Greece and Italy. No democratic elections have been held to let the voters pick a new government but technocrats are bringing in total banking domination, as the world’s real economies go down the tubes. So much for the democracy that our banking paid politicians go to wars so frequently in the name of.

Now bankers lent money to weak economies in the first place, so, in the logic of capitalism, bankers made bad investments, and when those weak nations default on their debts, the bankers ought to carry the can. Instead they are given control of the defaulting countries—with the cover propaganda echoing through our ever so fair and democratic media that the countries are bankrupt—so that they must impose austerity, squeeze the people, sack government employees, thereby increasing government costs and decreasing tax income, with the outcome that the banks can lend more to the blighted nation to incur more returns for the banks! It is insane for everyone except bankers and their clients, the über rich class.

At one time, pre-Reagan and Thatcher, if banks took undue risk, they were penalized by the system, but, since Reagan and Thatcher set the greed ball rolling, the more risk bankers take the greater the rewards they get, being bailed out at the cost of empty treasuries when necessary rather than letting the duds and cowboys go bankrupt, and to jail.

Interest rates are zero or fractional per cent so the money is not fed back to customers as a reward for keeping their assets safe, as they used to be, and banks were intended to do. While the banks pay negligible percent, they are lending the money, everyone put in their care, to defaulting countries at exhorbitant interest rates, effectively directly extracting the difference in interest earned from the people working in that country into the banker’s coffers. With bank deposits yielding almost nothing, and inflation growing, the banks are effectively robbing the accounts of their customers. Such blatant larceny and theft has not been seen since the Nazis stole from Jews and opponents in Germany in the 30s.

Yet these gangsters, banksters, bandits are being put in charge of our destinies to preserve the fortunes of the 1 percent of very wealthy people. Join the protests against them. Your own rights are rapidly disappearing. Defend them!