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Interesting that it’s the frame titled “United Kingdom” which has the dividing wall.
Serves him right for having a beard.
42 lives saved.
(ooo controverisal!)
42 lives saved.
Forty two new people radicalised.
This seems to me to be a problem of balance. A problem in which, we simply have no idea of what the weights are or where they should be placed.
If you saw a police officer choosing to ignore someone being badly hurt or an allegation of criminal harrassment or abuse being sidelined by the authorities until they had all the necessary evidence then I would be somewhat disturbed.
Part of the evidence gathering process is usually asking those accused for their evidence. Now in most democracies someone is arrested and detained for a set period of time to ask them for their evidence.
If the affects of the action they are being accused of is massive and the evidence is hard to gather, then it stands to reason that you need more time.
Now everyone who regularly visits ASBOland seems to me to be reasonable and burdened with more than a little common sense and all that jazz.
If someone wants to do something that bad and the evidence is not there then they will be released (in the UK at least) is 42 days too long – lets be honest I suspect none of us have a clue what needs to happen or the time it really takes.
42 days could be too long, it could be criminal in itself; or it could be the shortest time possible to do the job. It might even be too short – I have no idea!
Really, I have no idea. But know when I don’t know enough about something to offer any kind of anything, except blind and ignorant opinion.
Thats not much help really is it – sorry.
Im glad you said that (No.5) I think I agree with you. I have no idea either, but something just isnt right is it.
Suppression of freedom for the sake of preservation of freedom.
Just like everywhere else.
According to Liberty’s website, there have been no cases yet where the full 28 days were needed to gather evidence to charge someone. They also say that reasonable alternatives might be allowing the use of phone tap evidence in court, which may make the polices job of gathering evidence easier, and therfore less time would be needed. The idea of someone being locked up and no-one telling them why, and the prisoner therefore having no idea how to defend themselves seems abhorrent to me. This could far too easily be mis-used.
I am not a fan of terrorism, but I don’t see how locking people up for that long will help; if they were not a terrorist to start with, they will have more reason to become one afterwards. I am not convinced that 42 day detention will save lives.
The argument always seems to reduce to “if we don’t neutralise them, they’ll neutralise us”.
Which risks turning into a pre-emptive “eye for an eye”.
The issue has particular resonance because we are talking about terrorists – people we’ve defined as ‘beyond the Pale’, about whom society does not allow us even to express understanding (evidence: the ridicule heaped on public figures who try to open up the debate).
But there are two ways to neutralise violence. One is to shut it out of site (though in Jon’s cartoon, who is praying for whom to be freed? They’re both behind bars.) The second is to join it at point of detonation, and ‘love’ it out of the danger zone.
The second is Jesus’ way, isn’t it? Walking with criminals and freedom-fighters; mixing with hated authority figures like the tax-collectors and centurions. The gentle, generous, courageous way.
Can I be frank? I think most public statements by christians have been pretty lily-livered, or at best obtuse, about identifying with terrorists up until now. Probably because the shape of our religion has been one of form and structure, and terrorists blast that sort of thing (with themselves) to pieces.
But our religion need not be like that. So let’s take a leaf out of the terrorists’ book, and ditch the form and structure, and see if there is anything beyond it. My contention would be that beyond and before the form and structure is precisely where we find the Love we preach about. So, far from being hurt by them, we have been taught something important by the terrorists. And thank God none of us has been forced to learn that lesson by blowing ourselves up. We are in their debt, and by sharing our Love, not our fear, we honour that debt.
Drewman: “This seems to me to be a problem of balance.” That’s it exactly, and I agree that most of us don’t know enough about it, but then it could be argued that those who do are, inevitably, biased in favour of their own agenda.
I think the key issue is not whether we do, or don’t, lock people up prior to trial, and if we do, for how long. It is about whether we (or the authorities on ‘our’ behalf) treat other people – who may or may not have done truly terrible things.
Do we want a country in which people’s right to dignity, freedom and (by the law of the land) a fair trial is ignored or violated, or one in which it is upheld? On the other hand, do we want a country in which we are too afraid to say ‘No, this is unacceptable and we consider you a danger or believe you should be punished for what you have done’?
I don’t believe most people want either extreme, but steering a path through the middle is always difficult. Sooner or later someone will make a mis-judgement and people will suffer, no matter where the line is drawn.
I guess for me, it’s about drawing the line somewhere that assumes people are innocent until proven guilty (which might reduce the radicalisation of those whose experience seems to have been to the contrary), but in saying that, I’m well aware that sooner or later, someone with a different view will have an opportunity to do something I could never in my wildest imaginings support.
Which I suppose makes it a question of responsibility too. ‘Ours’ and ‘theirs’.
I’ve rambled on enough. It’s Friday …..
“It is about whether we (or the authorities on ‘our’ behalf) treat other people.”
I meant “HOW we … treat other people”
Like I said, it’s Friday …
Kester Brewin says it well:
http://kester.typepad.com/signs/2008/07/goodbye-for-now.html#comments
okay… so let’s look at what we do know.
1. 42 days is enough time to completely ruin an innocent person’s life. (so far there has been no talk of compensation).
2. there has been no use of the full 28 days yet.
3. when you give someone longer to do a job, they generally take longer to do it.
4. imprisonment with no trial will lead to communities becoming even more marginalised and fearful.
5. it will become another excuse for terrorism.
6. a degree of liberty and justice is being given up. a victory for terrorism.
7. not all policemen are trustworthy. many are.
8. intelligence is by it’s very nature untrustworthy… it is all about being covert and not showing your hand. whatever the public is told is not necessarily the truth. that’s the way it has to be if you want to remain covert. i’m not saying that’s bad. just that that’s the way it is.
9. no explanation as to why 42… why not 43?
10. a life ruined over the ‘possibility’ of others being hurt is not ethical and a false dilemma.
11. imprisoning guilty people will save lives.
12. once again we are playing the same game as the terrorist.
13. terrorists are people too.
14. we know as much as anyone else… barring a very few people ‘in the know’.
15. nothing will get resolved whilst there is no dialogue.
16. it will go wrong. it always does.
17. you cannot protect your liberty by giving up those things which allow you liberty.
18. gordon brown is wanting to look tough. i thought better of him.
19. we can, if we choose, put ourselves (by using our imaginations) in the position of those wrongly imprisoned for a great length of time. we can imagine, if we choose, what it is like to be the wife or child of a man wrongly imprisoned. we can imagine, if we choose, what that does to a community which already feels under great strain… and we can, if we choose, put compassion first.
20. fighting terror with terror is not a good idea.
Steve: I think the term ‘love’ has often been misinterpreted as a weak, naive ‘lets give them what they want’ approach and, to be fair, that’s often the impression given by Christian commentators. You’re right: the love Jesus demonstrated (and Ghandi, and others) wasn’t like that. He was willing to be crucified, for goodness sake, if that was what it took!
I wonder, though, how much this view of ‘love’ is also a product of the fact that its opponents are looking at the situation from precisely the position of fear (“shut it out of site ” sic) you describe. If it is, we need to include those people in the radical love you suggest.
Easier said than done.
Jon: Yep.
kester says it very well.
21. there are those who would wish to stir up fear among the general populous. this allows those in power to do as they please. not good.
steve… how clever of you notice that both men are are behind bars in frame 2. it was not intentional and makes it far more poignant. thanks!
Hi all I’m a newbie to AsboJ liked what drewman said in 5 about a ‘problem of balance’, “I feel” over time the balance is constantly and slightly weighted one way and it is slowly and gently slipping towards more control by government but we don’t notice it (here in UK).
I rememeber the first time I went to Northern Ireland back during the troubles over there. I found it quite frighting in that every shopping centre you went into you went through a metal detector and guards went through your bags etc arm vans with confidential phone numbers to report people to drove about the streets, soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons walking about everywhere. I found it frighting but my wife who grow up with it just excepted it as the norm.
is that level of invasion exceptable because of the threat. I surpose the greater question is what is the excepted level of freedom within a society that feels (or is told that it feels) that it is threaten by a extremist element within and without that society.
I don’t know the answers but being able to lock anyone up for 6 weeks without charge seems extreme to me and as Sophie in 8 says the old 28 day rule was never used so why extend it?
(14)JanetP
“I wonder, though, how much this view of ‘love’ is also a product of the fact that its opponents are looking at the situation from precisely the position of fear (”shut it out of site ” sic) you describe. If it is, we need to include those people in the radical love you suggest.
Easier said than done.”
Yes! (I love challenges like that, don’t you?
)
A fuller answer: how to puncture the boil of fear? The only cure has ever been to lead by example. So love without borders, indiscriminately. Start from the assumption that whoever you are about to meet is right, is loved into righteousness already by a loving God, whoever they are, then make eye contact and work with what you find.
I’m sure, BTW, that’s why Jesus said one’s eyes are the window of the soul (as opposed to one’s dress, colour of skin, or age, or language). We know when we make eye-contact with someone – we feel it to the core of our being.
Steve
X
(who is embarrassed to typo ‘sight’ as ‘site’, and contemplated pretending it was a geographical pun riffing off the derivation of ‘beyond the pale’ from ‘Beyond the [site in Ireland under British Colonial rule] Pale’, but it wasn’t: it was just a typo)
(17) Jon,
…Yes, and who is on their knees, praying?
(But not clever – just responding intuitively to the design you intuitively created!)
I feel that this entire subject has so much fear about it.
On the one hand we fear that locking anyone up is just not a ‘good’ thing to do.
What if we get it wrong? What if by detention, we incite further extremist converts or activities. What if, regardless of how many folk – who will always be good folk, from a perspective – we lock up and for how long, the situation just gets worse. What about their families etc etc.
On the other hand we fear that choosing not to invoke some kind of action, for ‘good’ reasons simply has bad consequences.
What if it all goes to crap tomorrow because a choice is made today not to detain? What if when I look someone in the eye in love all they do is spit in it – How does this then affect my family, my loved ones. Are they less or more important than anyone elses? (they are to me!) What do I do when the democracy that I so value is threatened and in order to deal with it I have to become undemocratic? – Aaaarrrggghh.
There are ideals which I hope we all aspire to and then there are realties that I know we all experience. Sometimes the two just will not fit together.
The deal here is to somehow hold the tension between the two. To deny either is to sit on the wing of the eagle and fly in circles. (486)
fear inspires me to want to lock people up for 42 days. acting out of fear means not posting my thoughts here. i agree with the quandary drewman… but 42 days! that’s what i’m saying is ludicrous. 42 days is not necessary, wholly unethical and goes against the core of everything we believe, surely.
great to have you here andy t.
Jon I go with that and I hear and share the concerns. The flip side is that doing nothing goes against all we hold dear as well.
This about evidence gathering above the normal though. For instance -the parents and families of most burglars do not hold that being a burglar is a worthy and holy ideal. The evidence of being Billy the burglar is usually pretty easy to spot. Its also unlikely that Billy will be checking in with other burglars on new and interesting techniques using a cat flap. I suppose they could be!
The evidence of being a terrorist is somewhat more subtle and somewhat broader. the terrorist is much more likely to be linked to a wider network, all of whom may be equally dangerous.Families are often as sold on the chosen ideal as the terrorist especially if blowing oneself up gets a direct ticket to heaven.
For me the 42 days says ‘Help we have enough evidence to know we should be really worried – but not enough to get a conviction, Oh crap, what do we do now?’.
My difficulty in simply throwing the 42 days out is that whilst I know the arguments are good and valid for it being shorter. I do not know the arguments for it being longer.
Liberty are likely to have facts and figures, examples and interviews with folk who quite rightly feel abused.
We are never going to get the ‘real’ story from the intelligence services as that just would not be very intelligent would it. Besides they are not allowed to!
Ideally I would like to join you and say unequivocally 42 days is wrong – But I have no idea, I don’t think our intelligence services would be helping us if we did.
I return to my earlier comment – Aaaaaarrrggghhh.
Duh – This is about evidence gathering ……..
the problem is… all extra powers eventually get abused. look at the way some councils have been using anti-terrorist legislation to spy on people over a pooing dog. pretty trivial until you work out how much this costs. this country has been subject to terror before and diminishing our standards was not the way forward then and it isn’t now. no case has been presented as to why 42 days is a good idea… one can only assume that there is no case. it all looks very much like cynical politicking from a man who should (does) know better.
Thanks jon
Yes i agree 42 days is ludicrous but what about 28 is that exceptable is it exceptable to lock any one up with out reason or justification for any amount of time? or is it right that by limiting a few peoples liberties we are protecting the rest and how far should that stretch? as I always ask myself what would Jesus do or say about this…
Re 23 above are we saying its about faith, either we have faith in the government/intellegence agencys and trust them 100% to take care of are security tick 42 or we don’t reject 42?
btw. thanks for the debate.
andy t – I have no idea, if only it were that simple- thats the difficulty here.
Jon your are right that extra powers are often abused. But councils only spy on folk who let their dogs crap all over the place precisely because they do let their dogs crap all the place! There are some parallels here. For what its worth I do think that 42 days is simply not just or fair.
we already know that the government and intelligence agencies between them are not 100 percent trustworthy. i will never forget the reasons we were given for going into iraq… i didn’t agree with it even with the reasons… in fact i never believed the reasons…
we assume politicians must know something we don’t. but often they’re just making it up as they go along to suit their immediate needs. for goodness sake, some of them can’t even be trusted with the petty cash it turns out!
not being trustworthy is part of what defines an intelligence agency. so whatever they say will be whatever suits their needs. it’s their job to pull the wool over people’s eyes. they wouldn’t be very good at their job if they didn’t.
we don’t know the reasons for 42 days, but we do know right from wrong. 42 days with no charge is inhuman, just like the death penalty is inhuman and for similar reasons.
haha! yeh, dogs crapping is crap…
but once 42 days goes through there’ll be no going back. 1 nil to the terrorist. 
“For what its worth I do think that 42 days is simply not just or fair.”
too right.
Could we force irresponsible dog owners to be locked up for 42 days or until they pick up there poo!
‘their’ poo
I find this whole topic totally outrageous. I can’t believe you can be locked up for 42days on suspicion of being in an inter-racial gay relationship.
cat owners are worse… by a mile! they buy a cat, open the door and let it crap on everyone elses garden. we should bring back the stocks for such felons!
But what is the difference 4 weeks or 6 weeks “I feel” the fundamental point is, is it right to bang someone up for any length of time without reason, maybe their needs to be a system of justification no we don’t have the evidence to convict but we have evidence of implication so yes we can intern for 28/42 days. I don’t know just a thought…..
the thing is, we already have 28 days. that won’t be repealed. let’s not make it worse. there are one hell of a lot of working hours in 28 days.
I don’t have a huge opinion on the 42 days (it does seem long!) BUT I thought this ‘toon was awesome! And I like the way it speaks about ATTITUDES in general. The prejudices. It could say something else underneath as well. Very good Jon!
Off-topic, but…
…Would appreciate some wisdom/prayer about a mother within earshot of the house who has an edge in her voice as she shouts at and hits her daughter.
After posting about seeing the love in the terrorist who, lets face it, where I live, is relatively far from me, this troubles me and others in the street.
I’m a 37 year old male southerner in a northern town and I want to be there for the daughter and the mother.
Jon (34)
Amen!
…although the stocks is way too good for them!
The 42 days thing doesn’t anger me the way it perhaps should. I sense there are bigger injustices in the world right now than a very small number of people potentially spending too long in our hotel-like remand centres. Some things really get my goat, but this doesn’t.
Steve,
How old is the daughter – that must bear some weight in the action you take. If you are Steve in Lancaster rather than Steve Lancaster then i’m just up the hill in South Lakes, also a 37 year young southerner in the north!
Standing up for those who cannot do so themselves is part of who we are. In this case, if you can hear her actually striking the child, I would recommend authorities mate. Its what they are there for, however nervous we sometimes feel about them – as per this blog run in case of point.
keep up with the times folks – gay guy’s have been able to come out for decades now.
“this troubles me and others in the street.”, it’s horrible to be aware of children who are at risk in some way, and not have enough info to do anything.
NSPCC HelpLine 0808 800 5000 If you’re worried about a child’s safety or welfare or if you need help or advice, ring our helpline on 0808 800 5000.
Steve
You’ve got it.
Sas x
Steve #38 You must report it. I had to pass on something I heard of a child protection nature recently. I was really worried it was a false allegation and that the accused would suffer (and have to live evermore with “no smoke without fire” attitudes), but that’s not the point. If it’s true, or potentially true, it’s our legal and moral duty to intervene and inform social work/police.
What an interesting debate.
The biggest two factors in the debate (one on each side) as far as I can see are that:
1) FOR 42 DAYS: If a shopping centre is blown up and lots of people killed, the police are going to be annihilated by all and sundry if it is shown that they had an inkling that the perpetrators were planning something but let them walk about free.
2) AGAINST 42 DAYS: SOME young Muslim men already feel isolated, victimised, ostracised, and generally unfairly treated by society. They are very vulnerable to radicalisation. The 42 day thing is HIGHLY likely to make this much much worse, and will already be doing so. This endangers us all.
I know a Muslim man who is delightful to talk to and incredibly earnest in his faith. He was one of the leaders in his mosque. I like him. On the other hand he’s in prison for the attempted honour killing of a young woman in his family (which is an appalling crime). The local police don’t want him to attend the mosque because he’s seen as a kind of martyr for Islam by younger Muslim men. They know that they can’t legally stop him though. It’s very interesting, very complex and not a little worrying.
Jon (34) & JF (39): As a cat owner, I have to protest against your blanket assertion that I “buy a cat, open the door and let it crap on everyone elses garden”.
My cats crap in my garden. I know – I pick up the crap!
(Funnily enough, much as I love my cats, I don’t want crap in MY garden either.
)
janetp… you are in the minority… thank you for being a responsible cat owner. maybe you’d like to throw the first rotten tomato, given that it is your good name being damaged. let she who is without sin cast the first piece of rotten veg!
hi anneon.
you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Anneon, I think you have highlighted the complexity of the situation nicely. I don’t feel qualified to comment.
As for domestic pet faeces, that is an area I do have some experience in. I own neither a dog nor a cat but I like both. I find cat poo on my lawn quite regularly, there being a number of people in my road with cats. However, having once owned a cat, I know they are independent spirited creatures and I do not hold owners responsible for where they, as my dear old dad used to say, ‘drop their cargo’. Instead I use non-violent means to persuade them that my territory is not a good place to engage in such anti-social behaviour.
As for doggy-doos, I must say that bagging and binning has caught on like wild fire in this neighbourhood. But several months ago, travelling on the top deck of a bus, I noticed a little orange bag hanging from a tree, stripped of its foliage, in winter nakedness. I realised it was a bagged doggy poo which someone had obviously flung into the air. Each day as I pass, I feel compelled to look to see if anyone has removed it. With the tree in full summer leaf, its curious fruit still awaits harvest…
The pavement outside my house is covered in dog crap. It is a total mine field. If you walk to the pub there is somewhere in the region of 7 dog crap mines and one horse weapon of mass destruction. In my 30 years I have never encountered any cat crap other than when I change the litter tray or venture near my £300 rug.
Carole, thatnks for sharing
Anneon thankyou for talking about the practice, not just the theory – its very easy to get dogmatic about these things (regardless of our PoV) and forget how real and complex people are.
The problem with any kind of detention without charge is it is saying: you are ‘one of them’ not ‘one of us’, i can’t prove it, but i’m going to believe it about you, and because of this belief i no longer have to treat you like a human being – i can deprive you of rights that i would not withhold from “one of us”
The only caveat that i can see on this is where to tell people what they have been charged with might in itself be a breach of security relating to an ongoing investigation. But this is not an excuse for not having to charge someone – i can’t see how there is any justification for locking people up unless you have enough evidence to charge them.
Presumably even with the new law the police have to justify the incarceration to someone – a judge? There has to be some grounds or reason for holding people?
Thanks for prayer, encouragement and suggestions – esp. re: NSPCC helpline. After the shouting and single strike heard the day I posted (38), we’ve not heard anything more. Though wife and I have been on holiday more recently – hence reply now. These issues do not go away – but maybe one of the first things prayer can do is open up enough ‘wriggle room’ for God to act (through us as well as without us) and for situations to start to resolve themselves, with or without intervention by authorities? Still praying, anyway.
Drewman (40) – Lancaster=surname, not location, though holidayed in the Lakes.