O afastamento britânico da União Europeia

A rejeição britânica da proposta de orçamento europeu, cartoon de Steve Bell para o jornal Guardian

"Números elásticos e contabilidades que se prestam a confusões tornaram as negociações mais difíceis e, no fim de contas, podem permitir aos opositores encarniçados brandirem os mesmos documentos e gritarem vitória. (in Financial Times)". Ver texto integral de comentário ao cartoon na Presseurop

16.000 polícias para retomar o controlo de Londres

 David Cameron today warned rioters that they would face the 'full force of the law' as he recalled Parliament, after violence swept across the country for a third night.
An unprecedented 16,000 police officers will be on the streets of the capital tonight, the Prime Minister announced, compared with just 6,000 last night. Today huge swathes of the capital woke up to the charred debris of burned out buildings and streets littered with waste.
Theresa May caused fury today by appearing to rule out using the Army and water cannons to quell any future disorder. Police were last night criticised for being absent when much of the looting and ransacking took place and, when they were present, keeping their distance from rioters.
Today a 26-year-old man who was shot as he sat in a car during rioting in Croydon died in hospital [...]

Ver notícia no Daily Mail 

Grandes donativos árabes a universidades britânicas levam a ensinamentos ‘hostis‘

Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, has at last done the honourable thing and resigned from the university’s governing council. The LSE’s shameless prostituting of its good name in return for Muammar Gaddafi’s blood money (as the Tory MP Robert Halfon has rightly called it) is as great a betrayal of the spirit of a university as there has ever been in Britain.

But while it will take the LSE quite some time to regain a seat at the table of respectability, it is not the only university that has reason to feel ashamed. The LSE is said to have received no more than £300,000 of the £1.5 million it was due from Libya.

Yet, on the most conservative estimate, other British universities have received hundreds of millions of pounds from Saudi and other Islamic sources – in the guise of philanthropic donations, but with the real intention of changing the intellectual climate of the United Kingdom.

Between 1995 and 2008, eight universities – Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the LSE, Exeter, Dundee and City – accepted more than £233.5 million from Muslim rulers and those closely connected to them.

Much of the money has gone to Islamic study centres: the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies received £75 million from a dozen Middle Eastern rulers, including the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; one of the current king’s nephews, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, gave £8 million each to Cambridge and Edinburgh. Then there was the LSE’s own Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, which got £9 million from the United Arab Emirates; this week, a majority of the centre’s board was revealed to be pushing for a boycott of Israel. [...].

Ver notícia no Telegraph 

As universidades ocidentais e os donativos de países árabes: lições do escândalo Kadhafi na LSE

A donation of €1.78 million from the Gaddafi family and a PhD granted to one of the Libyan dictator's sons has put the London School of Economics in a pickle, just as a fresh study on EU universities highlights the problems of dwindling public funds for education.

The London School of Economics, one of the top-ranking universities in Europe, on Monday (21 February) acknowledged it had received a gift of €1.78 million from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, chaired by Saif al Islam, one of the Libyan dictator's seven sons and a former graduate.

The university also admitted it had "delivered executive education programmes to Libyan officials", but said it had now decided to sever all those links "in view of the highly distressing news" about hundreds of protesters killed by armed forces.

"The school intends to continue its work on democratisation in north Africa funded from other sources unrelated to the Libyan authorities," it said in a statement published on its website.

Seen as one of the 'reformists' in the Gaddafi clan, Saif al Islam had spent four years at the LSE researching his PhD entitled "The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From Soft Power to Collective Decision Making?"

But in a speech broadcast on Sunday on public television, the LSE graduate threatened demonstrators with "rivers of blood" and called them Western agents and drug addicts, warning about civil war, an Islamist take-over and the splitting of the country into a petro-rich east and a poor west.

One of his LSE mentors, David Held, a professor of political science, on Monday also dissociated himself from his former student.

"My support for Saif al Islam Gaddafi was always conditional on him resolving the dilemma that he faced in a progressive and democratic direction. The speech last night makes it abundantly clear that his commitment to transforming his country has been overwhelmed by the crisis he finds himself in. He tragically, but fatefully, made the wrong judgement," the professor said in an emailed statement. [...]


Ver notícia no EU Observer

A "Entente Frugale" franco-britânica em matéria de defesa

Britain and France will sign a new entente cordiale today which will put the security of the UK and her overseas territories in the hands of the French for 50 years.
The ground-breaking agreement will even see French generals taking command of the SAS as part of a rapid reaction force.
Nuclear secrets - which have been preserved for five decades – will also be shared under unprecedented plans to merge the testing of warheads.
Senior defence officials claim the historic deal, dubbed the ‘Entente Frugale’, will save millions and boost the fighting power of both countries.

But critics claim  that the pact has been forced on Britain by budget cuts and will leave the Armed Forces dependent on their historical rivals, who opposed conflicts in Iraq and the Falklands.

David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarzoky will sign two treaties designed to end years of mutual suspicion and bind the Armed Forces of both nations together for 50 years.
The historic deal will see Britain and France:

• Share aircraft carriers from 2020, so that at least one is at sea at all times, leaving Britain dependent on French support to defend the Falkland Islands
• Launch a brigade-sized Combined Joint Expeditionary Force - about 6,000 troops – including the SAS, SBS, Marines and Paras, to deploy on civil and military operations together.
• Britain will surrender testing of nuclear warheads which will be done at Valduc, near Dijon, from 2015. The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston will focus on developing new technology.
• Share more intelligence, air-to-air refuelling and cyber-warfare capabilities
• Work more closely on counter terrorism, particularly with regard to the Channel Tunnel
• Force British and French defence companies to collaborate on future missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles

Ver notícia no Daily Mail

Sharia no Reino Unido: ameaça a uma lei para todos e à igualdade de direitos

A new report by One Law for All has found Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals to be in violation of UK law, public policy and human rights.

The report is being launched to coincide with a 20 June 2010 rally on the issue of Sharia law.

Based on an 8 March 2010 Seminar on Sharia Law, research, interviews, and One Law for All case files, the report has identified a number of problem areas:

- Sharia law’s civil code is arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular. With the rise in the acceptance of Sharia courts, discrimination is being further institutionalised with some UK law firms additionally offering clients advice on Sharia law and the use of collaborative law.

- Sharia law is practiced in Britain primarily by Sharia Councils and Muslims Arbitration Tribunals. Both operate on religious principles and are harmful to women although Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are wrongly regarded as being of more concern because they operate as tribunals under the Arbitration Act 1996, making their rulings binding in law. [...]

Ver notícia em One Law For All

Islamistas radicais ‘infiltraram-se‘ no Partido Trabalhista britânico in Telegraph

The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.

“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.

“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and “corrupted” his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.

In a six-month investigation by this newspaper and Channel 4’s Dispatches, involving weeks of covert filming by the programme’s reporters:

• IFE activists boasted to the undercover reporters that they had already “consolidated … a lot of influence and power” over Tower Hamlets, a London borough council with a £1 billion budget.
• We have established that the group and its allies were awarded more than £10 million of taxpayers’ money, much of it from government funds designed to “prevent violent extremism”.
• IFE leaders were recorded expressing opposition to democracy, support for sharia law or mocking black people. The IFE organised meetings with extremists, including Taliban allies, a man named by the US government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a man under investigation by the FBI for his links to the September 11 attacks.
• Moderate Muslims in London told how the IFE and its allies were enforcing their hardline views on the rest of the local community, curbing behaviour they deemed “un-Islamic”. The owner of a dating agency received a threatening email from an IFE activist, warning her to close it.
• George Galloway, a London MP, admitted in recordings obtained by this newspaper that his surprise victory in the 2005 election owed more to the IFE “than it would be wise – for them – for me to say, adding that they played a “decisive role” in his triumph at the polls.

Mr Galloway now says they were one of many groups which supported his anti-war stance and had never sought to influence him.

The IFE has particularly close links to Tower Hamlets council. Seven serving and former councillors said Lutfur Rahman, the current council leader, gained his post with the group’s help.

Some said they were canvassed by a senior IFE official on his behalf. After Mr Rahman was elected, a man with close links to the group, Lutfur Ali, was appointed assistant chief executive of the council with responsibility for grant funding.

This was despite a chequered employment record, a misleading CV and a negative report from the headhunters appointed to consider the candidates. The council’s white chief executive was subsequently forced from his post.

Since Mr Rahman became leader, more council grants have been paid to a number of organisations which our investigation established are closely linked to the IFE.

Funding for other, secular groups was ended or cut. In the borough’s well-known Brick Lane area, council funds were switched from a largely secular heritage trail to a highly controversial “hijab sculpture”, angering many residents who accused the council of “religious triumphalism”.

Schools in Tower Hamlets are told by the council should close for the Muslim festival of Eid, even where most of their pupils are not Muslim.

Mr Rahman refused to deny that an IFE activist had canvassed councillors on his behalf. He said: “There are various people across Tower Hamlets who get excited, who get involved.”

He would not comment on concerns about infiltration, saying they were “party matters”. He said: “If you look at our flagship policies, like investing £20 million to tackle overcrowding, you can see that we are working for everyone.”

The IFE said it did not seek to influence the council and had not lobbied for Mr Rahman. “If anything, existing members of the Labour Party have joined the IFE, rather than the other way round,” it said.

The group insisted it was not a fundamentalist or extremist organisation and did not support violence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7333420/Islamic-radicals-infiltrate-the-Labour-Party.html

Ilhas Malvinas: aliança sul-americana contra a ‘ameaça colonial‘ britânica à região in Times

It has been a good few days for Latin American unity and rhetoric against the evils of Western imperialism, and yesterday was no exception.

At centre stage was the row over oil rights in the South Atlantic as a British oil rig began drilling 60 miles north of the Falkland Islands. As 32 regional leaders gathered in Mexico yesterday, however, the talk turned to a diplomatic onslaught against the “old colonialism” and a new formal alliance, words that reopened historic wounds left over from the days of conquest, empire and slavery.

“The question of Las Malvinas is not only a question about a sovereignty dispute,” President Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, using the Spanish name for the Falklands, said. “It has to do with the history of the region and the world over the last two or three centuries.”

Mrs Kirchner got the approval she wanted, with the rest of the Rio Group signing a declaration affirming their backing “for the legitimate rights of the republic of Argentina in the sovereignty dispute with Great Britain”. She did more than rally support for its cause over drilling for oil in the South Atlantic — she framed the dispute in terms of a colonial threat to the entire region.

Argentina’s claim to oil rights was an “exercise in self-defence” of the continent, she said. After the meeting, the President said that winning such strong backing in the territorial dispute was an important development but warned that “even more important will be to achieve a change of attitude in the big powers, in this case those which have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council”.

Mrs Kirchner has made the recovery of the islands a key theme of her presidency. At home the arrival of the Ocean Guardian oil rig has revived long-simmering resentment at what is perceived as a foreign occupation.

Furthermore, current estimates put Falklands reserves at anywhere between 8 billion and 60 billion barrels, meaning a potential bonanza for whoever claims ownership of the oil.

The regional leaders insisted on negotiations between Britain and Argentina, flagging up UN resolutions that require both parties to abstain from unilateral actions with respect to the islands while they remain under contention.

“We have approved a declaration in which leaders of countries and governments present here reaffirm their support for Argentina’s legitimate rights in its sovereignty dispute with the United Kingdom,” President Calderón of Mexico said.

Last week Mrs Kirchner moved to obstruct supplies to the oil operations, imposing shipping controls requiring all maritime traffic moving through Argentine-claimed waters to the Falklands to seek its authorisation. She sought to dispel speculation yesterday over the potential for conflict, insisting that Argentina would not blockade the islands but instead pursue legal options to halt the exploration.

However, she kept up the war of words. In the 21st century “the great challenge is going to be the management of natural resources, renewable and non-renewable — in this case oil — and fundamentally also the behaviour of the big powers of the world, who systematically break UN resolutions but impose on other countries compliance with those same resolutions referring to other issues when it affects their interests”.

This double standard was one of “principal sources of tension” in international relations, she added.

It was a theme leapt upon by the staunchly anti-imperialist President Chávez of Venezuela, who decried Britain’s presence in the Falklands as “the most gross expression of the old colonial era, allied to neocolonialism”.

The day before, he had addressed his remarks to the Queen, saying: “Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then.” British control of the islands was “anti-historic and irrational”, he continued, adding: “Why do the English speak of democracy but still have a queen?”

He did not waste the opportunity to raise his own colonial complaint — Dutch control of the Caribbean territories of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire “in the noses of Venezuela”, their closest neighbour.

Yesterday, at a meeting in Cancún between the Rio Group and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), leaders discussed plans for a pan-American alliance that would exclude Canada and the United States — a move backed by the continent’s vocal left-wing governments.

This could serve as an alternative to the Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the North American neighbours and has been the main forum for regional affairs in the past 50 years.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, rejected accusations that Britain was acting illegally. “British sovereignty in respect of the Falklands is absolutely clear in international law ... There is no question about it,” he said. “The exploration that is going on off the Falklands ... is fully within international law, fully based on precedent.” The islanders had the right to a decent life and to build their own economic future, he added.

Chris Bryant, the junior foreign minister, said that the Rio Group’s position was nothing new and that it was not unexpected that Latin American countries would throw their weight behind one of their own.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7038490.ece

A crise de deflação: ‘Reino Unido abaixo de zero ‘ in Financial Times, 28 de Fevereiro de 2009

Deflation is coming to the UK. In fact, it is already here. Prices have fallen 3.8 per cent since last September, according to the official retail prices index. When the February figures are published, economists are certain the annual comparison will be negative for the first time in almost half a century.

While Britain is far from alone in watching the inflation figures tumble, it is unusual internationally in the number of contracts for savers, investors, pensioners and employees that are linked to the RPI – many of which were written at a time when falling prices were inconceivable “[Negative inflation] is striking because it hasn’t happened for such a long time,” says Jonathan Loynes of Capital Economics.

Peculiarities in the RPI may make the UK’s plight look worse than it is. The index’s treatment of housing costs – assuming all owner-occupiers have standard variable rate mortgages, which have plummeted as interest rates have come down – is not followed anywhere else and has been the main factor driving it down this year.

As such, the falls in prices already experienced can be viewed as “good” deflation, says Mr Loynes, since they will raise real incomes and help foster a recovery. The danger, though, is that the experience of a falling price index will change expectations about inflation, induce greater caution among consumers and foster further liquidation of assets to repay debts.

This is a significant risk, recognised by the Bank of England and causing worries at the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. All have reiterated their ambition to maintain public expectations of low but positive inflation in recent weeks.

SAVERS

In a deflationary environment, there is little question that savers get a bad deal on interest rates. Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, said as much recently when he expressed “sympathy” with those who had done the right thing and not spent too much.

In January, the British Bankers’ Association reported a sharp outflow of deposits as savers sought higher interest rates elsewhere. Meanwhile, the UK’s building societies – which are dependent on retail deposits for funds – have expressed concerns about the impact that official rates near zero are having on fund flows. Data from the Bank of England show that interest rates on instant-access deposits are now comfortably below 1 per cent and likely to fall even further.

The prospect of outright deflation has even raised questions about whether savers could end up paying for the privilege of keeping cash on deposit. “Absolutely not,” says a spokesman for the Building Societies Association. “Most contracts say that interest is payable from the building society to the customer and not the other way around.”

What tends to happen, he says, is that savings rates linked to inflation promise to pay interest at some spread above the retail price index. If an account paid interest at 2 per cent above RPI and the index registered a 1 per cent decline, the rate paid would be 1 per cent. If RPI fell by 2 per cent or more, the account would pay zero interest.

Economists point out that deflation increases the purchasing power of savings. Some of what savers stand to lose in interest may be recouped by much lower prices for key staples such as food and energy.

Interest rates near zero seemed to have little effect on savers in Japan during the deflationary 1990s. Between September 1995 and January 2001, central bank rates were 0.5 per cent. The savings rate hovered between 10 and nearly 12 per cent of income until 2000. Savings slid after September 2001, when rates were cut to 0.1 per cent, but even then there was no net outflow.

PENSIONERS

Pensioners whose income provider is secure could be some of the big winners from deflation. Helen Ball, a partner at Sackers, the London-based pensions law specialists, says that at the very least they are unlikely to lose out.

Most trust deeds, which govern the award of discretionary increases, were written long before anyone contemplated the possibility of deflation. Even trustees of schemes where the deed implies that pension payments can fall would find it difficult to trim in line with RPI. “Morally, that is very difficult to do. People are expecting an increase to fixed incomes,” she says.

Most UK schemes rise in line with inflation, she says, albeit often up to a set limit. Some trust deeds make no reference to RPI but require annual minimum uplifts, say of 3 per cent, regardless of what inflation is doing.

UK rules require that deferred pensions – the benefits of those who leave their employer before they reach retirement age – have payments adjusted to reflect the effects of inflation. A short bout of deflation is unlikely to significantly dent their incomes.

The one group of retirees who could be harmed are those who have purchased annuities that allow for cuts in the event of deflation, according to Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdowne.

UK social security payments for retirees are index-linked and, even if inflation is zero, there is a small guaranteed annual uplift.

Most European state pension benefits and some private sector benefits are also index-linked. In France they are adjusted for the costs of living, while in Denmark disability pensions are adjusted in line with wages growth.

In the US, private sector pensions are never uprated for inflation and, in most cases, retirees see incomes fall in real terms as price increases erode purchasing power, according to Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Deflation could help such pensioners, she says.

INVESTORS

Investors in almost every asset class bar government bonds are likely to be worse off in a deflationary environment, according to Graham Secker, equities strategist at Morgan Stanley. “Deflation is not good news for equities markets generally,” he says. “It is a signal that the economy is very, very weak and that sales and profits are going backwards.”

However, for companies that remain profitable, there will be pressure to maintain dividends, he says. While many companies have a dividend policy of maintaining a pay-out in real terms – ensuring that rises at least keep pace with inflation – they will be under pressure not to reverse themselves in a deflationary environment.

During some of the UK’s most torrid periods of inflation in the 1980s, corporate profits rose strongly because producers could put prices up. In a deflationary environment, the reverse pressures will be in force.

Investors in corporate bonds may find themselves somewhat better off. Interest payments are generally fixed – and even when floating are at a premium to some other interest rates, providing hard cash at a time when prices are falling. However, in a deflationary environment, the companies that issued these bonds are much more likely to default and investors may not get all their principal back.

There are real risks for investors in other asset classes, too. Commercial property, often seen as a risk halfway between equities and bonds, is rapidly falling in value. In the UK, virtually all gains since 2002 have been wiped out, and values are falling in continental Europe and in the US. Those who purchased it for the rental income are feeling the pinch, too; insolvent occupiers cannot pay rents.

The one group of investors certain to do well – at least initially – are those buying government bonds, Mr Secker notes. Governments rarely default and these bonds still carry regular income payments.

WORKERS

Pay is likely to be one of the most contentious issues debated during a bout of deflation.

Alistair Hatchett of Incomes Data Services, which tracks pay claims, says employers and workers are in uncharted territory. For decades, the rule of thumb was that salaries edged out inflation by 1.5 to 2 percentage points, allowing wages to grow in real terms. But in recent years, national average earnings have been subdued and lower than inflation, he says. A number of employers in the UK have already announced pay freezes, while others are discussing pay cuts as a jobs-saving measure.

The Engineering Employers’ Federation, whose members work largely in manufacturing, says that results of its wages survey for the quarter ending in January showed the average pay rise agreed over the period was 1.8 per cent, down from 2.7 per cent in the three months to December.

In January alone, the average wage rise was 1.6 per cent, down from 1.8 per cent last December and 2.9 per cent in November. “We had to double-check the numbers a few times because the scale of the movement was so unprecedented,” says a spokesman for the federation, noting that pay deals rarely move by more than 0.1 or 0.2 per cent over rolling three-month periods. The January survey, he adds, is particularly important because that is when most pay bargains are struck in the manufacturing sector.

Indeed, in light of the current outlook for inflation, the three-year wage deals that government struck with public sector workers last year, where annual pay rises range from 2.3 to 2.6 per cent, look generous.

Several UK unions struck deals last April at 5 per cent, while others settled in September and October 2008 with pay rises of over 4 per cent. Only one of the employers involved, British Midlands, is seeking to renegotiate. “The interesting thing is that there has been very little reneging on long-term deals,” Mr Hatchett said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac70b0fa-050c-11de-8166-000077b07658.html
JPTF 2009/02/28

Abu Qatada: O islamista radical que se ‘converteu‘ aos direitos humanos para não ser deportado in Daily Mail, 19 de Fevereiro de 2009

Radical preacher Abu Qatada was today awarded compensation of £2,500 by judges, who ruled that his detention without trial breached his human rights.

Qatada, often described as Osama Bin Laden's ambassador in Europe, had demanded tens of thousands for being unlawfully held in Belmarsh prison.

Ten other terror suspects today received similar levels of compensation from the European Court of Human Rights - which were lower than feared.

This was 'in view of the fact that the detention scheme (the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001) was devised in the face of a public emergency, and as an attempt to reconcile the need to protect the UK public against terrorism with the obligation not to send the applicants back to countries where they faced a real risk of ill-treatment'.

Today's victory came after Qatada claimed that his detention under anti-terror laws introduced by the Government after the 2001 attacks on America violated the Human Rights Convention.

Today's ruling acknowledged that at the time of the detentions, 'there had been a public emergency threatening the life of the nation'.

But it said the issue was whether the legal measures adopted by the Government in response were 'strictly required by the exigencies of the situation'.

The judges said when someone is detained on the basis of 'an allegedly reasonable suspicion of unlawful behaviour', that person must be given an opportunity effectively to challenge the allegations.

At the time the Government considered there was an urgent need to protect the UK population from terrorist attack and a strong public interest in obtaining information about al-Qaida and its associates, and keeping the sources of such information secret.

But balanced against that, went on the judges, was the detainees' rights to 'procedural fairness'.

Yesterday the preacher lost the latest round of his UK legal battle to stay in Britain.

Critics had branded the human rights case yet another example of human rights and European law madness.

They pointed out that the men could have walked free at any time if they had simply agreed to leave Britain.

News of the case, which by-passed British courts altogether, overshadowed a victory by the Home Office in the long-running saga over whether Qatada can be deported to Jordan.

Law Lords ruled that booting out the preacher of hate would not breach his human rights. But Qatada, 48, - who has already cost the taxpayer £1.5million in legal fees, prison costs and benefit payments - lodged an immediate appeal to the European court. The case could drag on for years, at enormous further cost.

Terror suspects get anonymity protection

Eight of the 11 terror suspects claiming compensation are protected by anonymity orders.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission - which hears all deportation cases involving terror suspects - grants automatic and immediate anonymity to anyone who appears before it.

This can be lifted only if the suspect decides to place his or her name in the public domain, as Abu Qatada did.

It gives terror suspects a protection not afforded to people in the regular court system, where all defendants over 18 are routinely named.

But SIAC's stance reflects the fact that the men have not been charged with any criminal offence and some of the evidence against them is heard in secret.

Qatada, who has been linked to senior Al Qaeda figures, will be allowed to remain in the UK - where his wife and five children live in an £800,000 West London house - while the appeal is heard.
The 11 men awarded compensation today include six Algerians and Abu Rideh, a Palestinian refugee with Al Qaeda connections.

There was no limit to how much the Strasbourg court could order the Government to pay them, which sparked fears that the payouts could be huge.

A family of Congolese asylum seekers was recently awarded £150,000 for being unlawfully detained for only two months. Some of the men in the Qatada case had claimed for three years in prison.

Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a security adviser to the Prime Minister, said last night: 'This is crazy. Qatada and the others were free to leave this country, and consumed our taxes while living here. The whole thing is a nonsense.'

The compensation claim was based on the time the men spent in Belmarsh under a crackdown in the direct aftermath of September 11.

Ministers passed an emergency law which allowed the detention without charge or trial of international terror suspects, who could not be forcibly removed because of human rights law.

It was made clear to the detainees that they would be released immediately if they agreed to leave the UK. In December 2004, the Law Lords ruled their detention was unlawful under the Human Rights Act and quashed the legislation which allowed it.

In March 2005 it was replaced with the controversial control orders.

The 11 men claimed for inhuman and degrading treatment', and unlawful detention, based on the Law Lords ruling.

Their lawyers went direct to Europe because no compensation is available in the British courts.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'It's ridiculous that this hateful man is continuing to cost British taxpayers so much money.

'If we weren't tied down with all this EU human rights legislation then we could have slung him out years ago and saved a huge amount of money.

'It's wrong that law-abiding people are landed with massive bills for extremists just because we have sacrificed our national right to deport undesirables.'

Qatada is wanted in his native Jordan, where he was sentenced to life in 1999 for terror offences.
Jordan is one of a number of countries with which the UK has signed a 'memorandum of understanding' which the Home Office insists will ensure deported suspects do not face torture.

Qatada was released on bail last summer but returned to prison in November over fears he would try to abscond. His detention costs an estimated £50,000 a year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1148622/Preacher-hate-awarded-2-500-judges-rule-jailing-breached-human-rights.html#
JPTF 2009/02/19

‘O holandês voador‘ e a derrota da liberdade de expressão no Reino Unido, in Guardian, 13 de Fevereiro de 2009

Editorial

We live in censorious times: the Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been turned back at Heathrow, Prince Harry is attending a racial awareness course, Carol Thatcher is still puzzling over the offence implied by "golliwog" and, in what is surely a case of otiose activity, the General Synod of the Church of England has formally proscribed membership of the BNP for its clergy. It is also 20 years tomorrow since Ayatollah Khomenei issued the notorious fatwa on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, renewed by the Majlis in Tehran yesterday. The tension between free expression and respect for racial and religious sensitivities is always present.

Setting the boundaries to this is invidious. Any attempt risks becoming a victim of a battle for sectional capture as faith vies with faith in a league table of offence. That is why free speech is only limited by its potential to cause harm to others. But even that limitation has to be exercised with extreme caution, if at all. Take the latest example. Mr Wilders is an egregious example of a racist provocateur. But his principal campaign is not his claimed struggle to defeat the ideology of Islam. It is to promote himself by exploiting the ordinary if unlikable human mistrust of strangers. Look back 20 years and see how the row over The Satanic Verses was inflamed by political ambitions within Muslim communities. Mr Wilders and his opponents are up to the same tricks.

Few would ever have heard of him, let alone his hectoring exercise in filmic propaganda, had he not set out to promote it as a test of what was permissible. He openly declared his intention of depicting the Qur'an as a violent and warmongering text. He has done so (and faces prosecution in the Dutch courts as a result). A Ukip peer, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, invited him to show the film in the House of Lords. On Tuesday the government warned Mr Wilders that he threatened community harmony and told him he would be refused entry to the UK, but of course he came anyway. The consequences of the entry ban are greater than those of allowing his nasty film to remain unknown. Responding to the fear of violence does not always reduce disorder; it can make it more likely. Any faction might now see the potential of making alarming noises. Meanwhile Mr Wilders's deliberately distorted view of Islam has been widely circulated.

It was Mr Rushdie himself, 20 years ago, who argued that people "understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the unsayable; not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men." He was right. Mr Wilders should have been allowed to come. His film is offensive. The ban is a defeat for the freedom of expression.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/13/free-speech-geert-wilders
JPTF 2009/02/13

O que aconteceu à liberdade de expressão no Reino Unido?: ‘Geert Wilders não devia ser banido‘ in Guardian, 12 de Fevereiro de 2009

por Padraig Reidy

How do you solve a problem like Geert Wilders?

The solution certainly doesn't lie in barring him from entering the country.

Wilders' film Fitna, for those of you who haven't feverishly YouTubed it yet, is an unpleasant rant about Islam, and the Islamicisation of Europe. He follows the line that Islam, more than any other religion, is inherently violent. It's a poorly made, poorly argued, diatribe.

But the poverty of the argument, and indeed the editing, is irrelevant. If we are to defend freedom of expression, then we cannot pick and choose what expression we defend. This point seems problematic for some liberals. Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, has previously – and rightly – argued against prosecution for Holocaust denier Frederick Töben, saying: "In Britain, we value freedom of speech too highly to see it sacrificed because of the racist views of an oddball academic."

No such leeway for an oddball politician. Speaking about Wilders, Huhne said: "Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it. But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred against someone or some group."

This is not in the least bit consistent. But the problem is not with Huhne. The problem is that a man who is legally entitled, as an EU citizen, to enter this country, has been barred from doing do because of his opinions.

This is bad enough, but it is made even worse by what the ban suggests.

I've spent the morning, in my capacity as news editor of Index on Censorship, debating the Wilders affair on various radio phone-ins.
Among many reasonable points made by callers, many, sadly, held the opinion that this was another sign of the government giving in to "the Muslims".

This, of course, is precisely Wilders' argument – and it's an argument that is reinforced by this attempt to censor him (nevermind that his film has been out for almost a year now).

Traditionally, censorship has been used in an attempt to quell dissent and opposition, and in large part of the world it is used against progressive movements. But when we seek to censor reactionaries, such as Wilders, the BNP, or Hizb ut-Tahrir, we allow them to see themselves, and portray themselves, as the dissenters, the truth-tellers. The notion of oppression, of suppression, is now almost essential to any political movement's sense of self.

Censorship lends an air of legitimacy to arguments that may not necessarily warrant it. In this sense, it is as insidious when used against bad arguments as when used against good ones.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/12/geert-wilders-freedom-of-speech-islam
JPTF 2009/02/12

‘O direito de expressão de Geert Wilders‘ in NRC Handelsblad, 11 de Fevereiro de 2009

The United Kingdom does not want to admit anyone to its territory that would threaten “community harmony and therefore public security.” This argument was used to deny member of parliament Geert Wilders of the populist party PVV entry to the country on Tuesday. Too high a barrier to the free movement of people and the freedom of expression has thus been erected. Besides the fact that the law of both the European Union and the Council of Europe seems to be violated by this, the political concept of a free European space has also been damaged.

Ironically, striving for freedom often entails the prospect of confinement. That has now occurred. The fact that the ban affects a member of parliament makes the decision political, in addition to symbolic. The British are concerned about a well-defined political program that is democratically legitimised in the Netherlands. Voltaire is often credited with pointing out that freedom of expression means defending someone’s right to assert that with which one disagrees. That certainly applies to Wilders, who gives plenty of occasion for disagreement. But his freedom to express such disagreeable sentiments should prevail all the more. As should the duty to defend that freedom. Moreover what is at stake here is political freedom, without which other freedoms are all but unthinkable.

Incidentally Wilders himself falls short as a politician when it comes to defending this freedom. On January 25 he urged in parliamentary questions that religious leaders of “radical mosques” be divested of Dutch nationality and deported. Limiting access to Europe and the Netherlands to all those to whom he objects is a main theme in his platform. The British entry criterion of “harmony in the community” should not sound unfamiliar to him therefore. It is however far removed from the fundamental right to express opinions anywhere in Europe that may “shock, hurt and disturb.”

On February 3 the European Court of Human Rights confirmed for example the right of Dutch abortion activists ‘Women on waves’ to moor a boat in Portugal. The decision by Portuguese authorities to deploy a warship was disproportional. The women were not planning anything illegal – Portugal certainly had less drastic means at its disposal to counter any disturbances to order. That is all the more true of Wilders, who wanted to show his film Fitna, at the invitation of the British Upper House no less. Would the security of the United Kingdom be threatened by what an outsider came to say in one of the world’s oldest parliaments? And by means of a film that was intended to provoke and which has long been available on the internet?

Extremists and radicals from all over the world used to find shelter in London. Russians, Chechens, Algerians, but also radical Islamic groups were able to settle there. Karl Marx fled there from Paris. Wilders will be buying a return ticket. That should be permitted, even with a tightened up entry policy.

http://www.nrc.nl/international/Opinion/article2149476.ece/Wilders_right_to_speak

JPTF 2009/02/12

Reino Unido: ‘Greves podem aumentar após Mandelson chamar aos protestos xenófobos‘ in Telegraph, 2 de Fevereiro de 2009

The Business Secretary said that he had concluded there was "clearly no policy of discrimination" at the oil refinery at the centre of the disputes. However, trade unions insist that British workers are being automatically rejected when applying for work, with firms using an obscure European law to bring their own workforces to carry out work in this country.
Strike action spread on Monday with workers at two nuclear power stations and several other sites joining the unofficial action.
The dispute is also threatening to escalate into a major diplomatic incident. The Italian Government described the strikes as "indefensible". The Governor of Sicily warned that the employment of Britons on the Italian island may be threatened.
The British ambassador in Rome was sent to reassure the Italian Government that Italians would not face discrimination in this country.
The dispute is centred on a £200 million construction project at the Total oil refinery at Lindsey in north Lincolnshire. The contract was awarded to an Italian firm, IREN, which has brought a large number of Italian and Portuguese workers to Britain to complete the work. It is claimed that a British firm was initially awarded the contract but was unable to complete the work.
Lord Mandelson and Gordon Brown have seized on assurances from Total that British workers are not discriminated against. Total has also pledged to work with its contractors to ensure that Britons are employed.
The Business Secretary told the House of Lords: "On the Lindsey site, the great majority of the workers are actually British, so clearly no policy of discrimination or exclusion of British nationals is being operated at the refinery.''
He added: "Membership of the European Union, and taking advantage of the opportunities for trade presented by the EU, are firmly in the UK's national interest. Free movement of labour and the ability to work across the EU has been a condition of membership for decades."
He had earlier rebuked an interviewer asking questions about workers' concerns, saying: "Stop feeding this xenophobia."
However, the comments have been undermined by the managing director of IREN who said that he was forced to only use Italian workers for most of the contract.
Mario Saraceno said that the contract had to be finished within four months. Therefore, he said: "That's why it was absolutely necessary to send to England our specialized workers, a close-knit team that could communicate with each other without language problems, which was particularly important from a safety point of view.
"There was no time for training and so, with the agreement of the British unions, we contracted out the work [to Italians]. But we also took on 30 British workers, among them technicians and labourers."
Strike action spread to nuclear sites and power plants across Britain on Monday. More than 900 workers walked out at Sellafield. The workers, who are liaising via web sites and mobile phone text messages, are thought to be planning a co-ordinated national strike later in the week.
The issue is causing a split at the highest levels of the Labour Party. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary and former union leader, has called for European directives to be renegotiated if necessary. It is claimed that firms are using loopholes in European law to only hire workers from certain countries. The proposal for the Government to intervene is also backed by senior Labour figures including former ministers Peter Hain and Frank Field.
Ministers are awaiting a formal report from Acas, the independent arbitration service, into the causes of the strike. Trade unions are calling for all contractors working on public infrastructure projects to sign contracts guaranteeing fair access to British workers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/4436818/Wildcat-strikes-threaten-to-escalate-after-Lord-Mandelson-calls-protests-xenophobic.html
JPTF 2009/02/02