An issue I see is that actually the UK is more in to this that even the US. Might not have the depth and scope, but certainly the intention, with out even the fig leaf of a constitution. American citizens have some rights to work with, we dont. When you get down to it, we are facilitating the US spying on the EU, as we seem to be some sort of gateway hub between the EU and the US, and we, for some reason I do not understand, favor the US over Europe. While much of the embarrassment is on the US, the Snowden lark puts the UK in a very exposed piggy in the middle position where we might get forced to pick sides. The US can take care of its self, but the UK could be left deservedly politically stranded.
On the other hand, the EU has a lot of its own problems and Im not sure it has the motivation to pick a proper fight with the UK. All we'll probably get is some posturing to appease who ever is complaining, and normal BS will resume.
I have to say, given all that, it rather amuses me that a few years ago Obama was telling the UK it should look more to Europe than the US. Heh, I suppose now we know why: We are the US agent in Europe.
I have to wonder if long term the Snowden leaks are more damaging to the UK than the US. People will still deal with the US because of its economic and military power, neither of which apply to the UK.
I hope the EU has the guts to give us a short, sharp shock - or I fear your last hypothesis, about UK isolation, may be accurate.
Freedom to protest and demonstrate has been steadily eroded in the UK. The police have long term spies within pressure groups such as Occupy, green issues and animal well-fare.
Remember that an estimated 1 million UK citizens marched in the Stop the War anti-war protest [1]. Worldwide on Feb 15th 2003, millions more.
These protests had no effect.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_prot...
It's easy to counter mass protests. Either under-report them or co-opt them. If the power structure ignores voters and protests, the only other recourses are apathy or violence, both which don't have good consequences either.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/editor-blog/162/just-why-...
In a separate article for this website Professor Antony
Glees wrote: "Sky News itself is having a field day with
the eurozone crisis. Of course, Murdoch never liked the
euro or the EU for that matter." Murdoch's anti-EU stance
could quite possibly stem from the desire to avoid
regulation of his media empire, from Brussels. We know for
sure that he had plans for even greater penetration and
influence in the UK media market. I mean, whether you are
a Europhile or a Eurosceptic, do we really believe that
Murdoch is interested only in defending British institutions
like the pound rather than expanding News Corporation's
portfolio in mainland Europe and beyond?
I personally feel that his media interests are a cancer in British society. The Leveson inquiry demonstrated just how poisonous his corporate interests are [1].
As I see it, potential prime ministers go visit Murdoch on his private yacht [3]. They apparently don't discuss anything that interesting, but the Murdoch media do seem to then back that horse in the next general election. Murdoch wanted the BSkyB deal done. Whether that was the deal, nobody will ever know publicly.
The BSkyB deal got canned after the phone hacking scandal and the 'powers behind the throne' took the gloves off on the Murdoch empire. The current Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to give up on his society friend, the former NoW editor Rebekah Brooks and also his former press secretary, Andy Coulson [2], who are both currently facing serious charges (and trying desperately to weasel their way out of it [4]).
They tried to 'influence' the old 'establishment' (i.e. old money and power). They did so for years. Maybe even through the use of information obtained illegally [2]. In the end, they played the game, lost and the establishment is now going to keep kicking them while they are down, until they don't get up again.
David Cameron has to watch it, knowing damn well that he had to feed them to the wolves or join them. It doesn't appear to be bothering him that much.
- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry - [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_hacking_scandal - [3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/24/david-cameron... - [4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/28/rebekah-brooks-andy... - [5] http://www.thecommentator.com/article/310/rupert_murdoch_doe...
SO in some ways, having a written Constitution is worse, because you still are ultimately ruled by the centuries of caselaw and precedent, but you think the words actually mean something.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-2278...
I doubt if it will come to anything, but the idea that we had prisoners who were on their way to be tortured transported through our country and we did nothing about it make my blood boil.
Secondly, don't write the Scottish off just yet. They let that Lockerbie bomber go home, and that really annoyed both the UK and US. They did the humane decent thing, despite the pressure, which in the end came to nothing. Remember too the politics between Scotland and the UK. I am fairly sure that if they can prove anything, they will make a big deal out of it.
BTW, makes my blood boil too. Rendition was, and still is, a disgusting abuse of human beings and national power. Kidnap and torture by a state is something that should be internationally outlawed and offenders properly punished. Yes, even former US presidents and UK MP's. I'd like to see both Bush and Blair rendered to an international court and face jail for this. Yeah, I can dream.
The Scottish goverment took the least worst option - I imagine the UK government was delighted that they got to say it was the fault of the Scots to the US.
This puts me in the odd position when the weirdos call "bring back hanging" of saying "yes, but only for politicians."
Ever seen a rich powerful person get the death penalty in a western democracy? Look at the US. Its pretty much all economically poor minorities on death row. No politicians, businessmen, bankers, senior military officers, just poor people.
I understand your motivation, I "feel" the same way, but I have to disagree with any one who supports the death penalty, for any reason. It is wrong. And for me, that is an absolute.
Put it this way, are you prepared for you, your partner, or children to die at the hands of a court in a miscarriage of justice? Are you prepared to even risk that? Do you trust the system enough top gamble your own life or that of your loved ones? Yeah, politicians and associated scum are humans as well.......... unfortunately.
I am happy for anyone who seeks power over others as absolute as political power (and military power, since they can also commit war crimes which are international crimes) to be subject to the death penalty if they misuse that power. Including me.
I am not gambling the life of my "loved ones" on such a system, nor am I defending the death penalty in 99.99% of the cases where it is used today (I am just as appalled as you at the way it, and the prison system in general, are used to subjugate ethnic minorities in America.)
EDIT: some more clarifications.
I hugely respect alan_cx's position, which was mine for many years.
I also want to point out that I don't want to change UK law - I want to augment the powers of the ICC (international criminal court) to allow it to punish crimes by death, where the current maximum is life imprisonment. I actually thought they already used the death penalty, but I've just checked and I was wrong.
Given that, even if you support the death penalty for certain crimes or kinds of individuals (crimes against civilians during war or prisoner abuses can test my own anti-death penalty stance) it can still make sense not to support the death penalty as an institution.
[And yes, this applies to all the genocidal murderous maniacs of history - if it was my call I wouldn't execute anyone ever].
Police, militaries and individuals should all have the right to employ potentially deadly force if required and justified within a legal context.
Killing someone in self-defense (if your own life is in danger and there is no other way out) is quite universally accepted I would think.
Of course this will get quite interesting very fast if an invading army just walks around not trying to shoot anyone.
* Spending the rest of your life in solidarity with terrible food and no entertainment * Death
That sounds like torture to me.
Here in Brazil most of the population want death penalty back, simply because we are expending enormous amounts of money in dangerous criminals (murderers, rapists, thieves that murder, drug lords...) and it is not fixing anything, crime continue rising, and the more people we lock up, the more people show up.
Worse, some people even after 30 years in prison (our maximum prison sentence), as soon they get released, they commit crimes again.
To not mention escapees... Every time a mass escape happen, there is a surging crime wage.
So people here outright think criminals must be killed, the problem is that without death penalty, people then kill instead of criminals, suspects, voiding the "innocent until guilty".
In that perspective what is better, death penalty, but you have a trial first, reducing (but obviously not eliminating) miscarriage of justice, or a angry population that might impale the head of a soccer judge on a stake?
Yes, that happened here!
This week, during a amateur soccer game, one particularly violent player got kicked out of the game, unhappy he decided to attack the judge. The judge after getting kicked a couple of times and fighting the guy, pulled a knife and stabbed in one single stab the guy chest (seemly the heart, since the guy died with that single stab).
The team of the violent player was extremely unhappy with that outcome, tied the judge to a tree, stoned him, and then they removed his limbs (I forgot the term in english)and impaled his head in a stake.
And the most absurd this might look, the population is HAPPY this happened, and want to prevent the police to catch the perpetrators, because the population WANTS more stuff like this to happen, because the commonly spelled belief here that: "A good bandit, is a dead bandit."
The important thing for Brazil (this is my personal opinion as someone from a developed nation, so by all means ignore me!) is to build the economy so that crime doesn't pay anymore. The new economies (BRIC) are doing a great job of this, and you need to stick at it!
You should also know that here in the UK "most of the population" want the death penalty back (I don't know if this is true anymore, but it certainly was until relatively recently) - but the political establishment understand that this is not a vote winner. Much like EU membership, most people who want hanging, or to leave the EU, won't vote against you if you disagree with them on that - they will choose who to vote for on something else. Woe betide any pro-death penalty politician though - as many people would vote against them for this reason (maybe not so much with the EU,) thus, politicians in the 80s and 90s were by and large anti-death-penalty, even though a referendum on it would have brought it back.
This, by the way, is not "undemocratic" or anything - it's about what issues are important to people, as well as their direct opinion (this is why many polls about the EU in the UK are misleading - people don't like it, but it's not very important to them.) I suspect that even in Brazil people would (or will eventually) place economic policy ahead of death penalty stance when choosing who to vote for - and so it won't change.
I suspect that is usually the case in the immediate aftermath of some horrible murder. I wonder what percentage of people would be in favour of capital punishment immediately after being reminded of the Guildford Four.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seve...
Here the few pro-death penalty politicians are extreme far right... So noone want to vote for them (specially because here most of politics are around the left... we have no really power right-wing party, the mainstream party that most people consider "right" is the socialist party (that obviously is still left, even if center-left).
But it is obvious that the population DO put killing criminals in high regard, otherwise they would not kill them quite frequently (and I must confess, if I could, I would kill a bunch of guys too, my parents house got robbed 8 times already, and because of some broken laws these people cannot be arrested, and for other reasons the police even refuse to come visit a crime scene, they just ignore it... thankfully, I don't need to kill all of them, one of them already got a sword on his gut after a failed robbery, and others are going toward the same path, considering they also even tried to rob house of cops, even a SWAT cop once...)
And it is not just matter of... economics. Here it is cultural, the amount of rich people that are criminals here is very high too, Brazil has the famous Gerson Law in effect ("Gerson Law" is how people nicknamed here the theory that most people here will do ANYTHING to achieve personal advantage...)
I remember when a pool was made here, that asked two questions: "Are most politicians corrupt?" and "If you were elected, would you be a corrupt politicians?"
The reply to the first was around 90%, no surprise here...
The reply to the second, was 60%
Clearly these guarantees are meaningless in today's world.
I'm also glad they're investigating the criminality of the UK government - I had assumed they would get away with it, rather like extraordinary rendition, because they didn't take the data directly. A big fat fine for Westminster could be just what the doctor ordered here (and I say that as a UK taxpayer.)
Now we just need similar investigations into the NSA under the 4th Amendment - I wonder what the US is waiting for...