Dirty Shami

I’ve never been convinced by those folks who claim you need two axes to represent political opinion: a left-right scale, and a libertarian-authoritarian scale. In my experience, Liberal opposition to authoritarianism extends only as far as them opposing attempts to enforce laws they don’t agree with anyway.

For proof of that, consider the latest shenanigans. Not forty-eight hours ago, Liberals were waxing lyrical about civil liberties, now suddenly they’re channelling Dirty Harry. What’s the diff ? Ah yes. Yesterday, the subject was anti-terrorist legislation, now it’s the utter collapse of a murder case against British soldiers. So it looks like Al-Quaida members aren’t necessarily terrorists, but members of the Parachute Regiment definitely are.

Here’s Liberty’s chief idiot Shami Chakrabarti:

As the death occurred under British jurisdiction we would hope for the highest standards to be employed in the investigation and trial

See ? The Court didn’t convict so obviously there’s a question mark hanging over the process. Not that Shameless Shami can actually name any specific grounds for doubting the procedure but…c’mon, paras – they’ve got to be guilty of something right ? Besides:

Rather than just trying individuals in these cases, the entire system should be under review to ensure that there is not a culture which would allow the alleged abuses to take place.

Let me spell this out to any Libs reading this: There. Was. No. Abuse. You can’t have a culture which allows abuse if there’s no abuse to allow in the first place. But no – Shami, soi-dissant civil libertarian, is arguing in effect for over-turning one of the central principles of British justice, the idea that people can only be convicted of a specific offence, in favour of some kind of murky charge of ‘being the type of person who might commit an offence’.

Of course, there’s no Punch without Judy, so where the ratweasels of Liberty go, the weaselrats of Amnesia Intentional are sure to follow.

[Amnesty International's UK director Kate Allen] said: "International law requires a prompt, impartial, thorough, effective and independent investigation into alleged abuses.

Hey, I agree – it’s a disgrace that such a lousy case was able to drag on for two years. Maybe Amnesia ain’t so bad after all ?

Or maybe they are:

A decision over whether to bring charges should be taken independently of the commanding officer and other military bodies.

See if you can see the flaw in that point. Here’s a clue: the case went to trial. Call me excessively anal, but I’d have thought the basic qualification for a cover-up would be things actually being covered up.

Courts martial were inappropriate forms of justice in cases other than purely military offences, she added, saying they would inevitably considered biased.

...because, y’know, there’s nothing the Army wants more than unstable criminals in its ranks. Also, the RAF actually goes out of its way to recruit smackheads.

The use of ordinary civilian courts will strengthen national and international public confidence that justice is being promoted in our armed forces.

Well, that does rather beg the question doesn’t it. I’m quite prepared to believe we don’t have the confidence of the international public, but some of us regard that as a feature not a bug. I’m guessing Amnesia are still hazy about this whole sovereignty thing.

As for national public confidence ? Huh ? At least those of us in the VRWC are under no illusions about public support for our plans to make gun ownership compulsory, these nuts actually think the average member of the public is a transgendered, vegan, social worker from Islington. Hey – there’s only one way to settle it: let’s send out Amnesia’s staff onto the streets to explain their view that the British Army is a collection of murderous sociopaths. And let's film it so we can sell the DVD as ‘Moonbat Massacres’ and clean up on the merchandising rights.

Of course, we can’t have a real Moonbatfest without a contribution from the Treason Party. Here’s their aptly-named spokefool:

But Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Michael Moore said: "The collapse of this court martial raises some very serious questions about the way cases like this are investigated and conducted.

"These issues must be addressed in the forthcoming armed forces bill."

Yowser. At least you can’t accuse him of burying the lede. The case collapsed so there must be something wrong with the system. The corollary to that is, of course, that the system would have worked fine if only the accused had been convicted. Whatever the word is for the view that the courts are a factory to produce convictions, ‘libertarian’ isn’t it. Reading all these responses from the guardians of civil liberty, you have to remind yourself that what we’re talking about is a case where, well, this happened:

Three women had admitted lying about being assaulted by British soldiersand one witness had told the court that Mr Abdullah's family encouraged othersto tell lies, Judge Blackett said.

Witnesses some distance from the scene "could not possibly have seen what they said they saw", he added.

And Iraqi court witnesses had used the case to seek "compensation to
what were patently exaggerated claims", he said...

[One witness], along with other witnesses, was paid $100 a day to give
evidence at the trial and that she only agreed to give evidence after being told
she would be paid.

Collusion amongst witnesses. Obviously absurd evidence brought up in court. Witnesses being paid for their testimony, with the possibility of huge compemsation claims being dangled before them.

If you wanted a textbook case of the dangers of the State bending the rules to get a conviction, this would be it. Yet when our soi-dissant civil liberties campaigners speak out, it’s only to berate the State for not going far enough to obtain convictions. It’s like the RSPCA holding a sponsored hare coursing meet.

To quote the great Rush Limbaugh, they’re telling us who they are. They were almost convincing when they were taking out onions for all those innocent citizens that were going to be victimized under the new anti-terrorism legislation, but now twenty-four hours later, it turns out that they think the whole ‘due process’ thing is kind of a drag.

The Left’s opposition to anti-terrorist legislation isn’t based on any particular principle, except the principle of throwing their hand in with anyone who hates Britain. This is the sheer nihilism of the modern Left. Everything they ever believed has been proven to be nonsense, so now they don’t actually believe anything more concrete than vague fantasies of the Golden Age that will follow when they're no longer oppressed by the system, man. They’re a bunch of angry losers endlessly shrieking out their hatred for the civilization that seems to get along fine without following their asinine ideology. No wonder they get on so well with the Islamopaths.