Censorship by intimidation
6:55pm
A study by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre claims that a rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in London is being encouraged by mainstream politicians and sections of the media. In the Guardian Vikram Dodd has written:
The study mentions no newspapers or writers by name, but alleges that the book Londonistan, by the Mail writer Melanie Phillips, played a part in triggering hate crimes.
The text of this study, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime by Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert, does not in fact mention my book Londonistan (although it is cited in the bibliography). What it says is this:
...Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, terrorist sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to
February 1, 2010 Why is Pete Doherty not in jail? Daily Mail, 1 February 2010 The Babyshambles lead singer has more than 22 drug convictions. In September 2003, he was jailed for six months for breaking into a friend’s house. Since then, he has spent hardly any time behind bars, even though he has been up before the courts on dozens of occasions on drug and related offences. In February 2005, bail conditions which were set after he was charged with robbery and blackmail were relaxed so that he could perform in a concert. On another occasion, he was allowed to miss a drug rehabilitation review because he was touring in France. How terribly considerate of the magistrates! After more than 25 court appearances for a string of drug crimes, as well as assaults and motoring offences, he was finally jailed in April 2008 — for breaking probation and drug rehabilitation orders — for a grand total of 14 weeks. Since then, he has been fined for yanking a camera from a photographer’s neck and for drink-driving (twice); and a few days ago, while up in court yet again for dangerous driving, he was also convicted of possessing drugs after 13 wraps of heroin fell out of his pocket in the courtroom. Yet, once again he escaped jail after the judge accepted his excuse that he had left the drugs in his coat by mistake a long time ago. He had been, said the judge, ‘idiotic’ — but it is surely the judges and magistrates who have made themselves a laughing stock over this dangerous young man. In any rational universe, a serial drug offender such as this would be locked up. Yet time after time, Doherty has somehow been able to persuade the courts to let him off with a fine or a community or rehabilitation order — leaving him at liberty to draw still more young people into his drug-infested world. One of his friends reportedly said that Doherty would turn up at get-togethers and treat everyone to free heroin. ‘He often put a grand’s worth of the stuff on the table bold as brass and told people to help themselves.’ Now the latest victim of his lifestyle, 27-year-old photographer and film-maker Robin Whitehead, is dead of a suspected drug overdose after being sucked into Doherty’s seedy drug milieu. This educated and privileged young woman died in squalor in a dingy flat in East London after spending days secreted away with Doherty’s close friend Pete Wolfe, a crack cocaine and heroin addict — who seems to be unable to give a coherent account of Ms Whitehead’s last days, since he spent much of that time shooting up. This sordid debacle follows the mysterious death of actor Mark Blanco, who died after he fell from a balcony following a row with Doherty at a party — and whose family has claimed it has ’significant new evidence’ to prove he was unlawfully killed. However Blanco died, both his death and that of Robin Whitehead are bound up in a lifestyle of drug-fuelled chaos, degradation and violence around a celebrity addict. Yet judges and magistrates have shown Doherty, the spider at the centre of this squalid web, quite extraordinary latitude. At Thames Magistrates’ Court, where he had already clocked up multiple court appearances for drug-related offences, District Judge Jane McIvor chose not to jail him in 2006 after he admitted possessing heroin and cocaine, saying she was ‘impressed’ with his attempts to come off drugs — even though his record obviously showed such attempts had not succeeded. The following month, she said the outlook for beating his drug addiction was ‘optimistic’. The month after that, he was up again for assault, the next month for possessing cocaine, heroin and cannabis. Yet the month after that, Judge McIvor praised his ‘great effort’ to give up drugs and even told him: ‘Your song The Blinding is very good. The music is very good.’ What on earth is going on here? Why are judges and magistrates behaving like starstruck teenagers? Is the bench teeming with soppy middle-aged rock music fans? Do their hearts bleed, perhaps, at the apparent vulnerability of this waif-like singer? Or are they determined to keep people out of prison because of overcrowding, and don’t think drug offences are serious enough to warrant a jail sentence? This last explanation is the most likely. It all goes together with the general downgrading of the seriousness of drug use and the corresponding belief that the law against drugs is an ass. It’s not the law that’s stupid, however, but those who administer it who appear to have lost their marbles. It seems all you have to do is murmur the word ‘treatment’ and the judges leap to the conclusion that the addiction is being conquered and that jail would jeopardise that recovery. They are so keen to believe that treatment is working, they cling to the illusion even when 13 wraps of heroin tumble out of the addict’s pockets. Faced with this evidence that, ahem, rehab did not seem to be working, the judge merely remarked that Doherty looked better than he had done the last time he’d appeared in court, because on that occasion he had been sweating. And so the judge accepted the absurd excuse that Doherty had somehow overlooked the bags of heroin in his pocket, and that he was indeed ‘ recovering’ from his addiction. You really do have to wonder what they’re putting in the judges’ tea. How many more young people in Doherty’s lethal circle are going to have to die before those lumps of jelly currently presiding over our courts finally wake up to the fact that Doherty needs to be taken out of circulation to protect everyone else? The accepted orthodoxy appears to be that addicts are victims who need treatment rather than (heaven forbid) punishment. Certainly, they may need treatment; but they are not victims but criminals, whose drug activities don’t just affect themselves but cause untold harm to others. Yet it has come to be accepted, even within the criminal justice world, that actually enforcing the law against drug use is merely vindictive and counterproductive. The result is that characters such as Pete Doherty and his friend Pete Wolfe are at liberty to continue to draw more and more young people into their louche and deathdealing milieu. More broadly still, such indulgence shown to the drug habits of the rich and famous sends the worst possible signal to those in the wider society who are vulnerable to the lure of drug-taking. The fact that Doherty has escaped prison so often increases the risks for young fans who need to be given an unequivocal message that drugs are not only illegal and dangerous but that they simply will not be tolerated, and that those who take or deal in them are sleazy and disreputable. Instead, the fact that Doherty is able to cock a snook at the law like this confers upon him even greater mystique. His celebrity continues to glamorise drugtaking and reinforce the deeply destructive message that the law against drugs is, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, ridiculous. The courts’ leniency towards Pete Doherty is an example of judicial irresponsibility and is a positive menace to public safety. |
Posts
