Amnesty and Gita Sahgal - keeping it in perspective
Posted by Andrew Adams on February 23, 2010
Filed Under Human rights | Leave a Comment
Flying Rodent has an excellent post here which pretty much nails the arguments over Amnesty International and its dispute with Gita Sahgal, the head of its gender unit over its “association” with Mozam Begg and CagePrisoners. There isn’t much more I can really add, except that if people are making a fuss over this because they are genuinely concerned about Amnesty protecting its reputation (and I don’t doubt this is true in some cases) then they might take care to keep their concerns and the tone in which they express them in proportion on the basis that AI is generally run by pretty decent people who are not terrorist huggers and on the whole does a large amount of very important work which dwarfs any individual (possible) errors of judgement like this. And also take care to distance themselves from those who don’t have such noble motives but are either using this to promote a wider agenda, either to portray all liberal lefty types as appeasers of terrorists and Islamists, or to actively undermine AI itself.
Of course AI should not be immune from criticism - like any organisation it can make mistakes and it hasn’t handled the whole situation very well. But it is perfectly possibly to make pointed but constructive criticism while at the same time making a wider defence of the organisation and its work as well.
The Guardian’s Fred Pearce seems to be confused
Posted by Andrew Adams on February 3, 2010
Filed Under Climate change, Media, Science | Leave a Comment
The Guardian is not the first place one expects to see stories jumping on the “climategate” bandwagon, but they made a big splash this week with this story by Fred Pearce.
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
The “evidence” which supposedly incriminates Jones seems to me to be rather flimsy, but my point is not to argue the rights and wrongs of the accusation. What I find a bit odd is that Fred Pearce seems to have rather changed his view of the hacked emails - after all he had previously published a piece with the headline “How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies” with the sub-heading “Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation” in which he wrote
Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.
Of course people do sometimes change their positions on particular issues, there’s nothing wrong with that. So how long did it take Pearce to undergo this rather drastic conversion? Well the piece alleging malpractice based on evidence in the hacked emails was posted on the Guardian website at 21:00 on 1st February, whereas the piece claiming that the “climategate” scandal was bogus was posted at , er, 18:04 on the same day, less than three hours earlier.
Is it just me or does Fred Pearce seem to be somewhat confused?
Dendrochronology scuppered by guy on a blog
Posted by Andrew Adams on December 15, 2009
Filed Under Climate change, Science | Leave a Comment
The world of climate science was dealt a stunning blow today when the world’s dendrochronologists, who study past temperatures by analysing tree rings, issued a collective statement announcing that they were abandoning their studies and declaring the discipline of dendrochronology itself to be invalid. Although no reason was officially given, an insider revealed the background to this astonishing event.
Read more
Daily Mail spreading climate change misinformation again
Posted by Andrew Adams on December 14, 2009
Filed Under Climate change, Crime, Daily Mail, Media, Science | Leave a Comment
Note: This piece has been updated on 15th December
The Daily Mail seems to have found yet more evidence to persuade its readers that they should be skeptical of man-made global warming. This piece by David Rose has two startling revelations - that both proxy data and an important diagram in an IPCC report were manipulated to make past temperatures appear cooler than they actually were, and that weather station data was also manipulated to show warming in recent times which may not have actually occurred. I don’t have time now to address the latter claim, but you can see a good summary here. However, I would like to address the question of the temperature data in some detail. Read more
Speaker’s wife in “didn’t spend college days doing ironing” shock!
Posted by Andrew Adams on December 7, 2009
Filed Under Daily Mail, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
I can’t say I have any interest in the recent revelations about Sally Bercow, wife of the speaker - what people got up to in their college days is a matter for them as far as I’m concerned. However, I couldn’t help noticing this in the Mail on Sunday yesterday.
Mrs Bercow, 40, shocked the Commons last week by revealing her promiscuous, binge-drinking past
Yes, I can imagine that to our esteemed Members of Parliament the notion that someone (and a woman at that!) might indulge in a bit of casual sex or, heaven forbid, binge drinking, and at university of all places, is entirely shocking and so at odds with their own clean-living background.
It’s another one for the “Audience from clean-living TV and media industries shocked at mildly risque joke by presenter at awards ceremony” category.
AGW deniers in “statistically illiterate” shock
Posted by Andrew Adams on October 29, 2009
Filed Under Climate change, Science | 2 Comments
One of the most popular myths promoted by those skeptical about man-made global warming is that warming has stopped and, in fact, the trend has even reversed in recent years. This illusion largely stems from the fact that 1998 was an exceptionally hot year and 2008 relatively cool due to the respective el Niño and la Niña events of those years.
Despite the fact that the current decade is actually the hottest on record, that eight of the last ten years are among the twelve hottest ever and that ten years is in any case too short a period to represent a meaningful trend, this myth has been remarkably successful - it is not just the usual suspects who are promoting it, even the BBC seem to have been taken in.
Climate scientists and other interested parties have already attempted to correct this misapprehension based on science, unfortunately without much success, but now Associated Press has made an excellent contribution to the debate which demonstrates that the claims made by the deniers are nonsensical from a statistical point of view.
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
…
The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA’s year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.
Saying there’s a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.
Identifying a downward trend is a case of “people coming at the data with preconceived notions,” said Peterson, author of the book “Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis.”
They also nailed the way the deniers have cherry picked the data to suit their agenda.
Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics’ satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a “mild downward trend,” he said. But doing that is “deceptive.”
The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said.
I doubt it will silence the deniers but we now know that on this particular question their arguments are both scientifically and statistically illiterate.
Hat tip: Climate Progress
Thoughts on assisted suicide
Posted by Andrew Adams on September 24, 2009
Filed Under Crime, Human rights, Society | Leave a Comment
I have to say that euthanasia is one issue on which I genuinely find it impossible to reach a firm opinion. Still it’s right that the CPS has issued guidelines clarifying the law on assisted suicide - if people really feel moved to carry out such a drastic act they should at least know where they stand legally. What I don’t quite understand though is, given that these guidelines have mainly arisen from people travelling to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end their lives, why citizens of this country should be prosecuted for something they did in a foreign country which is not illegal in that country. While there are some crimes (such as torture) which are so grave as to transcend national boundaries I think in general that people should be expected to obey the laws of whichever country they happen to be in at the time.
Incidentally, watching a report on this issue on last night’s news I was slightly disconcerted to hear my wife wonder aloud how much places such as Dignitas charge. I mean I’ve only got a slight cold FFS.
An unsatisfactory conclusion
Posted by Andrew Adams on August 15, 2009
Filed Under Crime, Terrorism | Leave a Comment
So Abdelbaset al-Basit al-Megrahi has abandoned his appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing and will now presumably be allowed to return to Libya on compassionate grounds, to live out his last days there before he finally succumbs to his prostate cancer. And a long and controversial chapter in British legal history somes to an end.
Al-Meghrahi was found guilty by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands with a panel of judges and no jury. The case against him appears to be flimsy - the Crown’s star witness was shopkeeper Tony Gaudi who sold the clothes which were in the suitcase containing the bomb originally gave a description which bore little resemblance to al-Megrahi and eventually only identified him after seeing his photo in a magazine which named him as the suspect. The only hard evidence was a fragment of a circuit board said to come from a timer of a type used by the Libyan secret service. Against that, the bomb is known to have been concealed in a Toshiba cassette recorder of the type previously used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLB), the group initially thought to be responsible for the bombing.
The other evidence is circumstantial at best - for example there is no real evidence that the suitcase containing the bomb was put on the plane in Malta, as claimed by the Crown. Certainly some of the families of those who died in the bombing are unconvinced.
We don’t know what the result of al-Megrahi’s appeal would have been, and the government was trying to supress certain documents which were crucial to his case. But this outcome suits no-one - for those who believe he is guilty the perpetrator of one of the worst terrorist outrages of modern times will now be free, for those not convinced the questions remain. All in all an unsatisfatory end to a controversial and, of course, tragic saga.
When Straw did show mercy to an old and frail man
Posted by Andrew Adams on July 3, 2009
Filed Under Crime, Human rights, New Labour | Leave a Comment
I can’t say I have any strong views on whether Ronnie Biggs should be released from prison. Yes it may seem harsh to refuse him parole given the parlous state of his health, but he refuses to show any remorse for his crime, a normal condition for parole, and if he had stayed and served his time to start with instead of doing a runner to Brazil he would be free by now anyway.
So one can understand to an extent why Jack Straw was not inclined to be lenient towards an old man with failing health. However, as Duncan Campbell points out in today’s Guardian, he hasn’t always been so unsympathetic
A frail old man, barely able to communicate, guilty of a crime committed many decades earlier, but unrepentant about his past, wants only to be released so that he can spend his final days with his family. Some people object, saying that the nature of the crime is such that the old man deserves to die in custody. Enter Jack Straw, the member of the government who must make the onerous decision on the old man’s future. He realises that the old man is barely able to walk and is in a confused state of mind. He allows him to return home.
The old man was General Pinochet. In 2000, the then home secretary Jack Straw declined requests from Spain for Pinochet to stand trial for gross human rights violations and sent him back to Chile. Pinochet was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people, the torture of many thousands more, the removal of a democratically elected president and the looting of the national coffers. Straw still felt that mercy was appropriate.
Standing in the way of control orders
Posted by Andrew Adams on June 11, 2009
Filed Under Civil liberties, New Labour, Politics | Leave a Comment
Of the various illiberal and authoritarian measures introduced by Labour in the last few years one of the most pernicious is the use of control orders against people who are suspected of terrorist activity. People subjected to control orders are effectively under house arrest - they have a curfew of up to 16 hours a day and there are strict restrictions on where they can go and who they can meet, access to telephones and the internet is strictly limited, any vistors have to be notified to the authorities and approved in advanced. Worst of all, control orders are imposed in a way which breaches two of the most fundamental principles of justice - that people suspected of criminal activity should not be subjected to punishment without a fair trial and that they should be allowed to see and contest the evidence against them. They do have legal representation from”special advocates” but although the advocates are allowed to see the supposed evidence against their client they are not allowed to discuss it with them to establish grounds to challenge it.
The government claims that control orders are an essential element of the fight against terrorism, but it is hard to judge how true this is when we do not know what the people concerned are accused of or the evidence against them, and we are entitled to be skeptical when we hear of cases such as this, as described in an excellent article by Gareth Pierce (I would recommend anyone to read the whole piece)
On trial just before Christmas was a young Essex Muslim, Ceri Bullivant, who had been placed under a Control Order and then charged with a criminal offence when he absconded, unable to cope with the restrictions of that order. In his case the jury magnificently acquitted him on the basis that he had a reasonable excuse to breach his order. It was only later, however, in the High Court, that what lay behind the secrecy became suddenly clearer. Mr Justice Collins quashed the order itself; before he did so, an Intelligence agent giving evidence from behind a screen admitted that the tip-off which had led to the decision that Bullivant was a risk to national security and ‘associated with links to terrorists’ had come from a friend of Ceri’s mother who, after drinking heavily, had phoned Scotland Yard, which failed ever to contact the caller to ask for further explanation.
That is why we should welcome yesterdays ruling by the law lords that the use of secret evidence was a breach of the right to a fair trial under section six of the ECHR. One of the law lords, Lord Hope of Craighead summed it up perfectly -
If the rule of law is to mean anything, it is in cases such as these that the case must stand by principle. It must insist that the person affected be told what is alleged against him.
This doesn’t mean the end of control orders but if the government is now forced to release evidence which it would have previously been able to keep secret then hopefully this will be the first step to them finding a way to use such evidence, assuming it is sufficient to make a decent case, in a proper criminal trial so those people subject to control orders can have their rightful day in court. And if it is not sufficient, well it’s a pretty basic principle that in a liberal democracy if you don’t have enough evidence to convict someone of a crime thay have to be released.
The government is predictably bleating about the outcome and resorting to scare tactics
the new home secretary, Alan Johnson, called it “an extremely disappointing judgment” and said it would make it much harder to protect the public.
This of course the same Alan Johnson who many of us were talking up as our preferred successor to Gordon Brown. Well as a member of the public all I can say is that yes, I expect the government to try to protect me but I also accept that it can be very difficult, that they won’t always be successful and that there should be limits to the methods they can use.
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