The all-new anti-terror laws and what they mean to you.
"Returning from Genoa and the G8 summit I was stopped by a copper at Dover and questioned under the Terrorism Act. I find it a bit worrying that a nurse carrying a Unison banner is now deemed a threat to the state!"
Anti-globalisation protester from the UK.

As the government's Terrorism Act hit the statute books earlier this year, over twenty overseas political groups with bases in the UK found themselves outlawed. In one stroke, the criminalisation of immigrant communities reached new levels.
But it's not only aimed at them. There's no doubt the new "anti-terrorist" proposals are not simply aimed at political refugees from abroad. Already police can "demand the removal of facial covering or gloves", clearly targeting anti-capitalist and anti-GMO activists.
The Act has also already widened the definition of terrorism to include "interfering with an electronic system" or causing "serious damage to property" if it's "for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause". So if you smash a McDonald's window because you're drunk, you're just a drunk. If you do it because McDonald's are, well, the personification of everything that's worst about today's world, you're a terrorist.
But those tireless warriors for freedom in the Cabinet aren't content with that. Also on the big scary table are new powers for the police and other agencies of the state to monitor bank accounts and financial transactions, as well as our communications data including e-mails, faxes, Internet usage and mobile phone calls.
Hidden in the small print of these proposals is a new definition of "terrorist" that has received surprisingly little publicity. The new terrorist will be someone who aims to "seriously alter the political, economic or social structure". Sure, all terrorists want to do that, but so does every person involved in politics, from Tories who want to reform the EU, to anti-capitalists who want to create a world that does not reward and encourage greed.
Within days of the September 11 attack, ministers were clamouring for the introduction of ID cards and increased police surveillance powers. All these laws pose a genuine and immediate threat to the very freedoms they claim to defend. But there are campaigns underway to reverse this corrosive legislation, often run by the outlawed groups themselves. It could be time for the direct action movement to work out how far to extend solidarity to outlawed groups.

Something rotten on the home front
On September 26th, whilst most Americans were nervously eyeing suspicious envelopes, the police officer who shot 19 year old Timothy Thomas was acquitted of reduced manslaughter charges by a municipal judge. Timothy was shot in the US, but for observers of the Noble Defenders of Democracy in this country, the scene is depressingly familiar. A young unarmed black man is shot dead with little or no justification and the agencies of the state, including the justice system, close ranks to protect the murderers.
In the past 30 years there have been 1000 deaths in British police custody. Not one officer has been convicted.
These include Gambian asylum seeker Ibrahima Sey, who was forced to the ground, sprayed repeatedly with CS gas and held face down for 15 minutes, by which time he was dead. And Joy Gardner who died of suffocation after police officers wrapped 13 feet of medical tape round her head.
After a lot of hard work by families and friends, an inquest ruled that the death of Shiji Lapite in custody was an "unlawful killing". The Crown Prosecution Service, however, declined to prosecute the officers responsible. The list goes on. And on.
The claim that police are here for the protection of us, the people, is revealed by this list as the absurd and offensive lie that it is. The remit of the police force is to keep things exactly the way they are, to keep power firmly in the hands of the rich and powerful and away from the poor and oppressed.
Let's challenge this. Next time you see someone being harassed, or unjustly arrested, ask the cops for their numbers, and for their reasons. Just imagine you were stopped on the streets for no other reason than your looks. Wouldn't you like passers-by to do something more than to see how the police car takes you away?
To find out more, see the film "Injustice". Police have been extremely successful in preventing people from seeing it, by threatening libel cases that nobody except them can afford to take on- regardless of whether they'd win in the end.

Or visit their website: www.injustice film.co.uk

Does your photofit?
Now who else can we suspect? Everyone's favourite scapegoats, asylum seekers, are also at the sharp end of the stick as usual. New draconian measures were revealed by David Blunkett on 29th October 2001, targeting some of the most vulnerable members of UK society. And this terrorising of innocent, disadvantaged and often bewildered refugees and asylum seekers is taking place under the umbrella of the "War on Terror"!
The new "reforms" include the introduction of smart cards containing fingerprint and photographic details in January 2002, which by September will replace the voucher system, allowing the Home Office to determine the location of any asylum seeker wherever they use it. And use it they must if they wish to eat. Various high security centres are being established to ensure that asylum seekers can be arrested, isolated and deported as quickly and efficiently as possible. Those even suspected of terrorism will have their application for asylum automatically rejected. This can include any form of radical dissent - under new laws both Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi would be classified as terrorists.
Most of these people are direct victims of our foreign policy and consumption-centred lifestyles; forced to leave their homeland because their way of life and their independence has been destroyed. When they try and seek a safer place to live here, we arrest and process them as if they were electric goods on a conveyor belt. They may well suffer abuse, beatings, detention, and isolation before they're sent straight back to the misery ­ or the death they were trying to escape. That's if they are not murdered by some random act of racism, as happened in Glasgow in August, to a young man who had been here for two weeks.
In a global economy, based on free movement of capital, where businesses can move where they like, preventing the free movement of people not only doesn't work, but it is also hypocritical. Trying to stop refugees seeking asylum and demonising those that try, fuels the fires of prejudice, instead of facing the real enemy. But no borders will ever stop people when they have absolutely nothing left to lose. And the more that ordinary people come to see things that happen to other people, can also happen to themselves, the more we will see what we have in common.