Gonzales’ latest remarks are indicative of the contempt shown by the current American administration for one of the greatest political documents and institutions of the past five hundred years.

I Am Not A Lawyer, nor an American, ergo he may be factually and legally correct. But arguing for this position is beyond the pale.

I rest my case.

Some notable examples from the past few days’ media coverage:

Swedes favour more bugging
Supreme court refuses to hear challenge to air passenger identification requirements
The continuing air passenger data-sharing disagreement between the EU & USA
US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

I personally find some of these developments to be more than a little disturbing: however I am conscious that, particularly outside the United States (where many of the most egregious challenges to civil liberties occur nowadays), people don’t seem to care about privacy any more. Or else, they see these developments as inevitable and (to some extent) a necessary compromise.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the political context of the ‘war on terror(ism)’, or whether it’s part of a trend of passivity toward individual rights which pre-dates 9/11. In any case, many seem willing to trade privacy for ’security’. Ben Franklin aside, people apparently fail to recognise the dangerous, and quite possibly permanent trade-off they are making.

The arguments used always go something like this: “We are facing a radically new threat, that of violent and suicidal terrorism. This terrorism seeks to destroy our essential liberties”.

And then the logical complement which is usually given:

“Therefore, we must give up some individual liberties in order to guarantee the security of the community as a whole”

For the life (and liberty) of me, I can’t make this argument flow. We hear it every day from people like John Reid, Tony Blair and any number of chief police officers, yet as far as I can see, it’s analytically hollow.

The final gambit often turns out to be a suspension of due legal process, as a corollary of the compromise made. New threats = suspension of tried and tested principles. To take an example: Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000’s stop-and-search powers.

I’d like to throw this one open to my intelligent and well-informed readership. So, answers on a postcard please:

Is 9/11 entirely to blame for society’s acceptance of measures like these, or were people already willing to make the compromise?
Does the example argument presented have merit?
Is it justified, necessary or effective to make compromises in privacy and civil liberties for the purposes of defeating terrorism?
Are privacy and civil liberties contested concepts in the first place?
Do you think that measures such as Sec. 43 will be repealed - or is the loss of civil liberties a relatively one-way street?

Several students admirably take up Tabatabainejad’s cause, repudiating the officers’ advances, and (as the video proves) recording the events so that ample evidence now exists for a high-profile lawsuit.

Laura writes:

The questions I would ponder are:

1) Would the reaction on the part of the security staff had been as fierce if the student was white and/or female?

2) Were the actions of the student and the police influenced by the large number of students gathering to see what was going on?

I’d be interested to know what you think.

It’s a shocking video, and a brutal indictment of the police involved and the climate of hysteria which exists in some circles in the U.S. regarding Arab-Americans.

More: Detailed coverage from Andy Sternberg; BoingBoing’s first and second post on this; Pictures of Friday’s student protests at UCLA over this incident; UCLA chancellor’s response

I have included Laura’s post below, along with the video of the arrest. Don’t watch if you’re squeamish.

I originally saw this video posted on kensei’s journal. It shows a student being tasered by security staff at a university library. Apparently it is policy for people to be IDed in the library after 11pm for the safety of the students.

Personally I’m wondering if this incident would have happened if the student was white. Or female for that matter.

And no, the title/headline is nothing to do with me - so send your groans/complaints elsewhere!

A leaked draft memorandum has revealed the UK government gave serious consideration to asking senior university staff to pass on information regarding Muslim or “Asian-looking” students to the security services. This approach appears to be the latest in a series of faltering efforts aimed at tackling ‘extremism’ in Muslim communities, for which the government believes campuses are “fertile recruiting grounds”.

The memo, which is not publicly available but was obtained by The Guardian, calls for university staff to cede information to Special Branch units of regional police forces regarding the activities of Muslim societies on campus.

It has provoked outrage among students, university staff and among Muslim communities.

Ousman Sadiq, a Masters student on Strathclyde’s Computer and Electronic Systems course described the measures as “a largely unhelpful bit of guidance that will end up only making Muslims feel more oppressed, while still not being a deterrent to those who tend towards an extremist viewpoint”.

NUS National President Gemma Tumelty criticised the plans as likely to introduce a “McCarthy-like atmosphere of suspicion between students and lecturers”, and the Universities and Colleges Union joint secretary Paul Mackney warned that the memo had the implication of “blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable”. “UCU members have a pivotal role in building trust - these proposals, if implemented, would make it all but impossible”. The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC) even went so far as to issue a press release to reassure students studying in Australia that such measures would never be implemented there.

While plans to distribute the memo itself among senior university staff appear to have been shelved, its essentially ill-founded premises, unhelpful tone and ham-fisted terminology are further evidence of the Government’s increasingly desperate attempts to foster better community relations from the top down.

The memo is ostensibly aimed at averting acts of terrorism, but confuses terrorism on the one hand, and radicalisation on the other. To say that universities sometimes radicalise people in their religious and political views is hardly controversial, but to consider this radicalisation in the context of Muslim communities a stepping stone to committing acts of violence implies a very dim view of students’ morality. Tumelty suggests that “indiscriminate monitoring of groups on campus assumes collective guilt”.

The accusatory tone of the document also has implications for student recruitment and retention. The numbers of Muslim students on many university courses is already unrepresentative of the wider social mix in many British cities - and Mackney fears that proposals like those in the memo, mixed with unhelpful comments from government ministers in recent weeks regarding issues such as the veil, could undermine the “enormous strides” made in recent years in university diversity and race relations.

The government’s approach of ethnic profiling, as evidenced by the ‘Asian-looking’ reference in the memo, has also come in for sharp criticism. Labony Choudhury, a student at Sheffield University interviewed by The Guardian, pointed out that “being Muslim has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, nor terrorism of any description. It’s like trying to define what a rapist looks like. Far too simplistic.”

By Graeme West

29th October 2006

Exhibit #1:

If you had any reason to doubt that Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, is a malign thug, here’s more proof: a before-and-after pair of satellite photos showing the destruction of a two-million-person shantytown on the outskirts of Harare.

Link

(Thanks, Toni!)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Exhibit #2:

Mugabe Begins the Genocide

VIDEO OF FARM SEIZURES IN 2000 HERE.

Interesting how the fears of these people played out.

With a program called “Drive out the Trash” you get a sense of how President Mugabe feels about certain Zimbabweans. And, when the government destroys their homes, destroys their means of earning a living, and destroys their food, in a country already threatened with famine,… only time separates these people from certain death.

The genocide has begun in Zimbabwe.

The United Nations estimates up to 1.5 million people are homeless.

Three children left with only a drum after soldiers destroyed their family’s home in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has displaced nearly one tenth of the population of Zimbabwe.

A police spokesman says that the government is already seeing results since their planned destruction of homes in Zimbabwe:

More than 42,000 people had been arrested or had their goods seized as Zimbabwe pressed ahead with a crackdown on shanty-towns that has sparked worldwide condemnation.

(Via Gateway Pundit.)