flag that anarchists have faith in judges

The anarchist paper Edinburgh Black Flag is shitty in attitude, and has not even got a base address that it's published from or any regular place of finding it any more frequently than annually. For it was at the Meadows Festival, annual, that I picked up one.

Its attack on Justice For Innocent Men Scotland, where it sides with dangerous dogma that defending men from injustice is anti-women, contradicts absurdly the usual healthy scepticism of the justice system in radical writings. This is the type of literature you expect to see call out court short cuts or politicised contrivance of charges. Indeed this is self-named anarchist literature which means against laws. Yet instead, without any analysis, it calls it "fearmongering" to call out easy miscarriages of justice in sexual cases, or to say there is a witch hunt, and it depends the sections 274/275 powers for judges to deny applications to present defence evidence that socially embarrasses the accuser. Completely looking glass.

At JIMS's demo at parliament 2 days before, rape/abuse survivors had banners that they are not defended by jailing the innocent !! There is no logic at all in claiming, in one line unsupported by any analysis, that a justice campaign is bound to turn into misogyny. Look at the Salmond case followed by the present SNP scandals. This is another case among so many where radicals have worshipped dogma to a point that betrays the common sense of ordinary folks' situation !

stall mart

Both sides had stalls inside an Asda shop, at Chesser in west Edinburgh, on successive Sats. Both sides as a result have an ethical responsibility to their volunteers, to continue to lean on Asda for an answer, until it gives one, as to how safe we were. Politicans who supported or took part in the stalls need to do this, to make sure their own ethical position is secure for the future, to make sure it stands that they supported something ethcial and cared about participants' safety. In the postmorteming of the referendum, this scrutiny will be there.

The problem? It dates back to the 1990s without it having ever been exposed as a big consumer story and without it yet being known to have ended. There was an issue known to solicitors then, where Asda security would arrest anyone high-handedly on arbitrary accusation from anyone else without willingness to listen to any explanation. A solicitor in Fife recounted from an actual case, that they refused to admit even in court to a sheriff's question, that there had been any error of judgment in refusing urgent toilet access to a person they were holding, with the result of forcing him to defaecate on the floor, in a food shop.

Asda security still stride around in black slack uniforms with a heavy thuggish air unlike in any other supermarket. Their hand may have been stayed, protecting us, by the note I handed into customer service 20 minutes before we began, raising this. But they have never given any actual answer to it. Not while we were there, nor ever since. Undoubtedly they never want to. Sorting out all outstanding questions of campaign ethics from this campaign after it is over, which wil happen for both sides, will include forcing this question with Asda, getting them for broken ethics unless they give an answer that means the end of that bad corrupted security culture.

Among Asda's responsibilities to show we were safe, is to force the question that no one who has ever experienced that security culture shall fins they have any difficulty in visiting the US. Its position as an American-owned company, part of Walmart, helps in enabling it to do this. It arises because the US has long had a practice, in violation of the oldest basic human right of all, innocent until proved guilty, of judging foreign visitors from arrests where there was no conviction and asking them as a single question "Have you ever been arrested or convicted?" The lack of media focus on this, happening even to citizens of the US's closest allies, has always been a particular failiure in our political system. This is a moment of opportunity to work against it, so it must be seized.

You are all suspects now

johnpilger.com/articles/you-are-all-suspects-now-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it : You are all suspects now. A really important article by John Pilger on the cooperation between the Western powers to get rid of the presumption of innocence to an alarming extent, on grounds of security. How this is still going on as intensely as ever since 2001 despite the War on Terror petering out of the media.

Ask the SNP whether their new Scotland will still be part of this process. Watch out for whether they give any commitments otherwise, let along to reverse specific dangerous losses of civil liberty that have happened already.