SOCIALIST UNITY

Obvioulsy we all hope that the brutal killer of 18 year old Sally Anne Bowman is caught soon and brought to Justice.

But the police plan of taking DNA from 2500 local men does seem to have one basic logical flaw. Surely the murderer won’t volunteer? If this fails, what is the police’s next plan: to put an advert in the local paper asking the murderer to hand themselves in exchange for free chocolate?

There are two very real problems. One of which is a misunderstanding by the public, and the police, of how reliable DNA testing is to gain unique identification . One of the misguided people, Lecturer Jeremy Johnson, 31, who volunteered to give their DNA told the BBC: “I just wanted to get myself eliminated and the test will definitely help catch the killer. There’s only a one in a billion chance you’ll be wrongly convicted.”

One in a billion? Well according to Professor Ross Anderson a world famous security specialist at Cambridge University, one white person in 120 has an identical twin, with excatly the same DNA. Some twins may be adopted and not even know that they have a clone out there!

Also, let us assume human error in testing of even as low as one in 10000, this still leaves a reasonably high chance of a false identification. This is the famous “birthday paradox” - that the chances of there being two people who share the same birthday in group of 20 or so people is very high. If there is an error of testing, then the chances of an innocent person being identfied is much higher than non-statisticians might believe.

Testing errors and shared DNA lower the odds to a lot lot more than one in a billion.

Remember that fingerprint evidence used to be argued as infallible, but a system that used to compare a set of prints manually with 57 local burglars may be pretty reliable, but when you start using a national database, the chances of false matches becomes increasingly high.

But the second problem is that juries place excessive trust in DNA evidence as being conclusive, which means it is very tempting for police (who may be genuinely convinced of someone’s guilt) planting DNA evidence. Having a database of samples just makes it easier for them to fit people up. Or even for a criminal to frame you.

You do have to wonder about David Irving’s basic grasp on reality.

He knew that he was wanted in Austria for making a speech there years ago denying the holocaust, and could face gaol. So what did he do – he went to Austria. What part of “being on the run” doesn’t he understand?

So now, he is appealing against the severity of his sentence, and at the same time the prosecutors are appealing that his sentence was too short. Remember that the sentencing judge cut him some slack because he had recanted his earlier lunacy in court. “I said that the [the holocaust was a hoax] based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn’t saying that anymore and I wouldn’t say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews.” Irving admitted from the dock.

So while he is waiting for the judges to decide whether not to increase his sentence, he gives an interview with the BBC where he says he now only believes: “there had been isolated cases of Jewish people being gassed during World War II.” And here is his brilliant piece of deductive reasoning: “Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?”

Of course, the utter rubbish spouted by the holocaust deniers has been completely refuted, including this latest preposterous claim by Irving. Personally I think that making holocaust denial a crime is a political mistake, but on a personal level I would not be too upset if Irving’s sentence were increased to the maximum 10 years.

One letter that caught my eye in the latest issue of Socialist Worker was a letter from Pauline Campbell on behalf of the organisation No More Prisons (LINK), an organisation committed to alternative forms of justice. The issue of how we treat people who have committed criminal offenes is not an issue that th left typically agitate on. This, in a way stands to reason: ‘progressive’ positions on justice are difficult to make popular given the potential of crime to genuinely destroy the lives of masses of ordinary people . Yet is becoming clearer and clearer that prison ruins lives and doesnt work. In America, the conservative lock ‘em up mentality that has prevailed over the last two decades has simply seen the prison population mushroom to the extent that it now exceeds 2 million (There is a great System of a Down track - Prison Song - which deals with the American prison system). Meanwhile enormous rates of reoffending in britain demonstrate the actual effect of prison on people, and their ability to relate to society at large. The best thing about theno more prisons site is that it is not dominated by ‘do-gooders’ - people who have little direct experience of either crime or criminal justice but want to improve the lot of the wretched. Instead if you go to the forum you will find extremely illuminating reports from people whose voices are rarely heard - the mothers, fathers and partners of people who end up inside. To be sure their idea of abolishing prison altogether raises a great number of questions. Yet now more than ever is a time when we can forgive them for bending the stick in the other direction. check out waht they have to say

Reuben

Well, according to Aljazeera the occuppying forces are clearly to blame for the mosque bombing.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10813

Here’s an extract “Wednesday’s attack on al-Askariya shrine is an insult to the sanctities of all Muslims that could be seen as the continuation of the offensive move by some Western newspapers that published disrespectful cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)… With Iraq heading closer to civil war, many feel like Dr. Nabil Salim, a political science professor at Baghdad University who says that U.S.-led occupation forces share blame, directly or indirectly, for the shrine bombing.”

Now we don’t know who is responsible for the bombing but I was shocked by the attempt to directly link the publication of the racist cartoons (our take on the cartoons row) with the bombing. The Hindustan Times gave prominence to this “[Mahboob Ahmed] vehemently denied the US charge that the recent bombardment of Shia shrine in Iraq was the work of Al Qaeda. Entire Iraq, he pointed out, was at the mercy of US and British troops and nothing could be done without their connivance.”

Some other voices seem to share the idea that the occupiers might not simply be indirectly responsible (which I think is completely reasonable) to actually saying they might be directly responsible - despite there being no evidence for this at all, other than a respectable hatred of the occupying powers.

For example the normally excellent Lenin’s Tomb moves into this territory here, but I wonder if this isn’t a little hasty… Now the occupiers are dirty bastards - no question - this report from Socialist Worker is very useful at showing this, or this piece from the San Hose Mercury News, but that does not mean we should jump in feet first blaming every act of barbarism in Iraq on US special forces or whoever because “nothing could be done without their connivance” which is just plain rubbish.

The occupation has created the conditions where horrific acts of violence have become a daily occurence and human beings are perfectly capable of acting against their own self interests at the slightest provocation. I’m not ruling out the possibility that US forces are to blame - but I’m certainly not going to suggest they were until I actually have a reason to think it.

Otherwise the anti-war movement is just going to be a mirror image of the pro-war ideologues like in this CBS piece which blames Al Qaeda without evidence. I suppose if we have a world full of goodies and baddies we know without the necessity of proof that the bad things are all done by the bad people and the good things by our lot. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) the world is slightly more complex and we actually need to investigate things before we know what happened.

This piece in the Guardian is far more reflective for example (Martin Kettle) and what it helps clarify is that the allied forces can be held responsible for the mayhem, of which the recent bombings are a part, without necessarily being the people who laid the explosives. Of course there are also lots of things in this article that the anti-war movement will have an issue with, and rightly, but there is much here that’s worth engaging with too.

I think it would be worth moving away from the good / bad sloganising model of analysis on the war, particularly because most of the public are now convinced that the war was a bad idea. What we need more of is an understanding and discussion of the complexities of the situation - a bit more depth and a little less posturing perhaps.

There has been a great fuhrer, sorry, furore, in the media recently about Nazis. Everywhere we turn, the spectre of Nazism seems to be raising its ugly head, from Nick Griffin and Mark Collett’s trial, to the sentancing of David Irving, from neo-Nazi music documentaries to Labour Party Chairman Ian McCartney’s comments on the BNP’s leaflet printing the most offensive of the Danish cartoons as being “straight out of the Nazi textbook.”

But in all this, we have to remember, that Nazis are people too. They are a minority who find themselves at a severe disadvantage in society, a severely handicapped group and one that needs our care, consideration and sympathy as this video clearly shows:

www.apolitical.info/videos/handicap.mpeg

One story that caught my eye this week was a piece in the Telegraph (i dont buy it - I just read it). It related to an 18 year old student and voluntary youth worker who was fined 80 quid for swearing, during a private conversation in a public park. Kurt is refusing to pay the fine claiming that swearing is a normal part of the way young people converse. Coming from the foul mouthed generation myself I am tempted to agree. In fact my own personal feeling is that people who are emotionally upset because they hear a swear word should be referred to a psyciatrist.

I recognise that not everybody feels like this, but the uncomfortability caused to some people by the word fuck is hardly a matter for policing and certainly not a matter for an £80fine - which for most students would account for two days wages.

Now here is the really interesting part. The police force in question justified the action on the basis that swearing in public is an offence under the *PUBLIC ORDER ACT*. If this is the public order act i am thinking of (and it has been updated several times) it was brought in with the declared intention of undermining Mosely’s BUF. Rather relevantly, it goes to show that if we support government authoritarianism - even whe nthe ddeclared targets are people we dont particularly like - it will in the long run come back and bite us up the arse, for want of a more articulate way of putting it.

Reuben

Have people seen this very interesting blog Daily News from Iraq

It hosts reports every day from what’s happening in Iraq - in the wake of the mosque bombing and the news reporting the possibility of a ‘religious civil war’ (in the Guardian and in the Independent and on the BBC) trying to keep an eye out for what is really happening in Iraq is more and more important.

I also note that the excellent Iraq Occupation Focus has a new newsletter which you can read here (pdf)

And a quick reminder that the Stop the War Coalition (click here) are trying to build as large a demonstration as possible for the anniversery of the invasion on Saturday March 18th - although I suspect Paul Holbourgh’s call for a one day general strike may well go unheeded.

I bank with Nat West.

They have closed my local branch, and whenever I ring I get a call centre in Bristol.

So I am not over impressed with those adverts on TV, that claim that Nat West are different. You know

“My pub, local,
- my bank – a call centre in India”

I wonder if they will be bringing out a new version:

Our government, shameless poodles of the Americans.
Our ex-employees: banged up in a high security Texas prison despite no evidence being offered in a UK court.

After centuries of persecution various christian and jewish leaders have established a fairly elaborate facade of mutual love and respect. If you read the letters pages of the Times (or perhaps any other C of E read paper) you will see that this facade has been momentarily broken by that ridiculous man - the chief rabbi. In response to C of Es decision to divest from catterpillar, on account of the involvement of their products in the building of the apartheid wall the Chief Rabbi stated that ‘The Church’s gesture will hurt Israelis and Jews without helping the Palestinians.’A fucking stupid thing to say which deserves no further comment

I was however disturbed by the response from general synod member, Paul Oestreicher that Tragically, Israel’s policies feed it [anti-semitism] - and when world Jewry defends Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not only against Israel, but against all Jews.

To be honest I thought the phrase ‘world jewry’ had gone out of fashion. I certainly did not think it was still acceptable to talk about ‘world jewry’ doing this wrong or that wrong as if we were homogeneous mass. Mr Oestreicher if he is enlightened enough to engage with secular thought would not have to look very far within the Palestine solidarity movement or even within contemporary commentary to find elements of ‘world jewry’ that do not suppport Israel full stop.

I suppose expecting religious leaders not to say stupid thingss is like expecting the royals to lead the revolution.

Surely there can be few people in the world less deserving of sympathy than dodgy historian David Irving. Especially as he is (literally) author of his own misfortune, as he chose of his own free will to go to Austria where his published denial of the holocaust is illegal.

Nevertheless it is excellent that following his guilty plea in court he has admitted: “Obviously, I’ve changed my views. History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989….. I would call [the holocaust] the Jewish tragedy in World War II. … Yes, there were gas chambers … Millions of Jews died, there is no question. I don’t know the figures. I’m not an expert on the Holocaust.“

Interestingly, at the same time there is a growing row between the German and American governments about the refusal of the Germans to release all the documents from the concentration camps, that are currently held by the International Tracing Service (ITC) in Bad Arolsen. There are apparently 15.5 miles of filing cabinets with meticulous details of the 17 million people who passed through the camp system. According to today’s New York Times the German and Italian governments, along with the ITC itself, are dragging their feet on releasing the documents to scholars because they fear further claims for reparations – the German government has already paid out $80 billion. Tempers are flaring over the issue, and Paul Shapiro, a director of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, has accused Germany of “abusing efforts to achieve consensus … exerting a stranglehold on the process.” He has even gone as far as saying “Hiding this record is a form of Holocaust denial.” I presume he has no aspirations to become a diplomat.

It is not clear that the documents even belong to the German government, or the Red Cross, as the USA disputes whether ownership was ever transferred, and obviously the legal owner after the end of WW2 were the victorious Allied powers. German sovereignty was restored in 1955 by the Bonn treaty, but this did not necessarily include evidence of crimes committed by the Third Reich and seized by allied armed forces.

There is a rising tide of anti-Semitism today, for example a major newspaper in Iran, Hamshahri, is offering gold coins to cartoonists to produce 12 drawings to lampoon what they call the “alleged” holocaust. It is good news that David Irving has recanted his holocaust denial, which is a serious blow for the lunatic right, and their friends. But the growing respectibility of holocaust denial in some parts of the world shows why it is absolutely necessary for all the Nazi documents to be open to scholarly review and appraisal.