Border Agency wrong to be silent over FBI Most wanted in Chatham



Tracey questions Border Agency's decision

In May of this year one of the FBI's most wanted was arrested in Victoria Road, Chatham, Kent. Sean
Lopes who was wanted for kidnap and attempted murder and was convicted in absentia to 15 years in Prison had been on the run since 2005. Lopes has been in the UK for several years and even got a job at Gravesend Sainsbury's as a night manager - all under his name.

Local MP Tracey Crouch had written to the Home Secretary, Theresa May to request details on how he managed to get past the Border Agency and customs. Her request has been turned down as it would be in violation of the Data Protection act.

This is interesting as the Data Protection act is there to protect an individual's personal information held by any agency or company. This however should be void in this case for two reasons.

 Firstly it is part of an investigation, possibly criminal as he may have fraudulently entered the country and used a fake passport.

Secondly, it is not accessing personal information. The request was for information on how he entered the country and got passed customs rather than an invasion of his privacy and his life.

I share Tracey's concerns that a wanted man who has kidnapped and attempted murder has managed to slip past the Boarder agency's radar and live openly in Chatham.

The failure of entry officers to stop this fugitive potentially could have put my constituents, and others at risk from an extremely dangerous man and I shall be writing again to the Home Secretary to make this point. - Tracey Crouch MP

The good news is that no one was hurt or killed in this slip up but there remains the possibility that they could have and in the interests of Public safety these questions should be asked and answered as part of a general investigation into this case. The Border Agency needs to look at this apparent loop hole immediately to examine how easy it really is and how stringently they do their background checks on those immigrating to this country.

One is forced to wonder are the Border Agency keeping a lid on what has happened until they have done a thorough internal sweep for information, in which case they should just answer the letter with that fact.

The case will continue but let's hope that Tracey is answered by the Agency and a thorough investigation is conducted.

(Also - Happy Birthday to Tracey too!)

US government says No to the Deathstar

It is indeed a dark day for the Empire.

Recently some 35,000 signatories signed a petition to lobby the US government to begin construction of a Deathstar in orbit.

Such a project would arguably create hundreds of thousands of jobs and have epic National defence implications.

The Whitehouse has predictably declined. Their response, laden with Star Wars clichés does have some good points too.

The overall cost to building a Deathstar is fairly astronomical. OK, so you don't have to build a fully functioning hyperdrive (after all if we had hyperdrive technology we would have access to the Galaxy!!!) which will save a vast amount of money but on the flip side the US will be paying its construction teams rather than using Wookie slaves and convicts from the planet Despayre.

Also there is the problem of resources. The Empire were able to strip mine whole planets for resources and leave them dead or heavilly polluted. We've only got one planet and if we were to construct a Deathstar on the scale of the Second Deathstar, which would be preferable, it would have a diameter of 900 km which, although small compared to the moon's 3476.28 km diameter, is still an lot of metal, more than would be attainable from this one planet.

There is of course the problem of the gravitational pull of this new small moon effecting the tides, weathers and seasons on Earth and interfearing with the Moon's own effects. For further details from renowned Star Wars physist Curtis Saxton on a much more detailed level try here.

As for the operational use of the station, the US government are indeed wrong. The Second battle station, perfected by Limelesk's team got rid of the thermal exhaust port that proved so hazardous to the first station and instead vented exhaust through 2cm square vents across the skin of the whole station. Had it been completed the station would have been somewhat indestructable from an external battle fleet and would have only been vulnerable to sabotage from the inside. Should the station explode in high orbit then the results planet side would be horrendous. As Curtis Saxton theorised the Forrest moon of Endor would have been plunged into a Nuclear winter. This may be a risk that religious fundamentalists are willing to take, in the resulting chaos and collapse of Government they could indeed take over. It is however not a risk the US government are willing to take.

As for the ability to destroy a planet, it would be seriously unlikely that any US officer would give the order to fire at full Primary ignition, but then again it only takes one! The weapon also has a powered down setting and can be used for orbnital bombardments or merely used for cutting the crust down to the molten core. A very powerful diplomatic tool yet would attract a lot of protesters and world wide condemnation as the US could hold the rest of us to ransom.

Although painful, I am going to admit the construction of my favoured battle/space station is best put on the backburner for now...

Instead let us commence lobbying the Americans to build a more efficient alternative:

Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is a much cheaper station with less high tech gizmos on her. She is only 8kms long built around a spinning hull (or O'neill hull) that creates an artificial gravity.

There are no scary superlasers, wings of TIE fighters and its destruction, although dangerous, would not plunge the Earth into a nuclear winter!

There is also the peaceful applications of the station with a UN style chambers and quarters which could allow ambassadors and delegates to have a better persective of the planet and scale of things. A truly neutral standpoint and one where groups could learn to understand one another.

My response to US Conservative Outpost on the Second Amendment

Gillingham,

Kent,

United Kingdom,

1st January 2013

Dear Sir,

         I am writing to you in response to your open letter to Senator Rubio that was posted on the Conservative Outpost website.

As an Englishman, I do not presume to be familiar with your politics or systems, however I'd like  to maker a few suggestions and observations in response to your letter.

Firstly and foremost, the Second amendment says a little more than The right to bare arms.

For the benefit of other readers please allow me to quote the text;

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The historical context is buried in an older document, the English constitution which was written in reaction to a period of state oppression by James II. It was felt that the protestant populace should be ready to fight for their freedom and be ready to mobilise against an invasion from the Catholic continent.

The Redcoats are certainly not coming

Similarly in the fledgling United States, and at the insistence of George Washington, who was against the foundation of a National army (which could be used as the British Colonial Army was) to suppress rights. A militia was seen as a more local and representative force.

Your fore-fathers also had many other problems to deal with. Law enforcement was limited and everyone had to defend themselves and community. There was also a threat on the frontiers from Native Raiding parties and the possibility of a British incursion from Canada. Communities would need to be mobilised quickly.

Times have indeed changed.

After the massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890 there has been no threat from the native population. There is a police system, federal, state and city based, in place to deal with crime, Britain no longer has an Empire nor designs on marching south and the United States military exists for your defence and the National guard representing the militia somewhat loosely.

Also weapons have evolved. The weapon the Founding fathers had in mind were flint lock muskets like the English "Brown Bess" which in the hands of an expert (A British Grenadier guard, the World's best in the 1770s) could be discharged three times in a minute. In the hands of a novice it could manage one shot maybe two.

Today's semi-automatic weapons can fire many times that. Even in the hands of a novice who no longer has to contend with complicated reloading procedure. Careful aim at a target can be replaced with spray fire which, in an enclosed space like a cinema or school room can cause many casualties by sheer amount of fire.

I suppose our middle ground would be that Semi-automatic weapons should only be issued to people who know how to use them and kept secured where any Tom, Dick or Harry could not reach them. However as a former service man I'm sure you will have seen perfectly sane, well trained men crack under pressure. Who is to say that someone who is well adjusted and knows how to use such weapons may not snap and go on a killing rampage with a semi-automatic one day. After all Timothy McVeigh was considered safe and had served his country in the military. Private William Jones RA who had served at Rorke's and received this country's highest honour also became unstable with Post traumatic stress syndrome but it was kept hushed with in the family until his suicide.

There are countless people with Mental illness that spans from paranoid Schizophrenia to depression, most are not reported. If such a move was to become mandatory you would be impinging upon their civil liberties. Who's liberty is more important? Would they have to carry identification papers, make themselves known to communities all because they have an illness?

With the US military and the Law enforcement agencies carrying the most up to date weaponry would it not be prudent to leave those weapons in the hands of an expert and have civilian grade weapons for home use? Then you would have your Arms and defend yourselves but it would also make communities safer as someone armed with a 9mm pistol can be disarmed quicker by an unarmed person than someone with an M-16 or Uzi. I would also consider a hand gun, rifle or shotgun more than adequate to defend yourself against a;

a deranged lunatic created by their secular progressive humanist agenda to take my only defense against their miscreant bastard offspring

After all, it only takes one bullet to kill or seriously wound.

As I say, I'm an Englishman with a centrist political standpoint but you must be aware that the whole world is watching and judging. The USA sets itself up as a paragon of freedom and democracy but is being seen as a place where children can be murdered at anytime in their schools, where cinema goers can be mowed down in their very seats, where street corners are just not safe. This is what your liberty to bear arms has bought sir, for the freedoms and liberties of the many you should cede the right to bear Semi-automatic weapons.

Yours Faithfully

Chris Sams

Ps. You may be interested to read my other work on the subject here.

Right to bear arms? Time for change

Before I begin I should state that I am not making a judgement about American national politics, nor am I lining myself up as a Foreign national claiming to be an expert or telling them what they should do. Just making observations.

The Second Ammendment of the US constitution states that citizens have the right to bear arms. Fairly black and white. However it was written in 1791 and had it's origins in the English constitution from the century before that. For the English it was a necessity that the population could be quickly mobilised into an anti Catholic rebellion should James II or any of the Stuart pretenders retake the crown and enforce armed dictatorship.

In the US it was a knee jerk to their own successful rebellion against the British which ended in 1783 but left Canada firmly under the British crown and the perfect springboard for an invasion. There was also the need to let people have arms incase the Republic turned to a dictatorship as it did in France. It provided the people with a fail safe that should Washington become a Robespierre they could overthrow him - unlike the British, who under General Gage marched on an arms cache at Lexington and sparked the rebellion.
There was also the native question. During the revolutionary war the native populations fought for Britain, some for Washington others made assaults on settlements for their own ends. Citizens wanted, needed, the right to defend their homes otherwise all might be dead before the army arrived. This was true through the 19th century in the central and western states. However after the massacre of Wounded Knee (1890) the question of a full native rebellion was cruelly answered.

Let's be honest, the type of nations that would invade the US are the type who's military would destroy a village for the death of one soldier at a civilian's hands. Why do you think British citizens weren't routinely armed incase of Nazi invasion? It isn't up to Mrs Homersham of 69 Vale drive to grab a Sten gun and have at the Paratroopers - leave it to the regular or irregular forces.

The only possible threat for the average citizen in the states is from a home invasion or possibly from a wild animal out in extremely rural areas.

As President Obama stated, the sort of incidents like the Newtown school accident that broke the hearts of people the world over, have become all to common in recent times. According to this report the NRA believe that getting rid of schools is the solution - but I sincerely hope this is a hoax!

The US needs to look to Canada where there is a greater gun ownership but a lot fewer incidents like this.

Another suggestion is - well I'm confused as to why anyone needs an automatic, a Kalashnikov or Uzi as "home defence" or for hunting purposes. These sort of weapons should be Military or Police grade equipment. It isn't sporting to hunt a deer with a gun that can fire a full autoburst of 100 rounds a minute - what's wrong with a bolt action rifle?

A bullet fired from a 9mm pistol or rifle will wound or kill an attacker just as surely as an automatic weapon so why do you need more firepower?

I know many factions, usually sited on the right of the American spectra will call this an attack on their constitutional right or liberty but they need to think about the bigger issues here. Twenty six people were killed, mostly children aged between 6 and 8, the most innocent of innocents. How can the liberty to carry a gun be valued more highly than the lives of children or innocent people in a cinema, a university campus, walking down the street in Washington?

As I said, I am not casting judgement upon the US or it's politics. All I will say is that every innocent life taken is one life too many and something must be done.

Nick Clegg's response to Gary McKinnon announcement

Here follows Nick Clegg's response to Theresa May's announcement in the commons yesterday:

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In opposition, we were unequivocal: Gary McKinnon should not be extradited. I said at the time that he was too vulnerable to be uprooted from his friends and family and sent across the Atlantic, and if there was a case to answer it should be here in the UK.

So today I am absolutely delighted by the Home Secretary’s decision to withdraw his extradition order.

I want to congratulate Gary and his mother Janis on their deserved victory. They have campaigned tirelessly and I pay tribute to their strength and determination.

But there was another significant moment as well: the Coalition Government has announced that we will seek to amend the US-UK extradition process to make it fairer in future.

We’re adding a so-called “forum bar” which will mean that British courts can decide to block a request for extradition if it is in the interests of justice to try the case here. This will increase the overall transparency of our extradition arrangements and will better balance the safeguards for defendants.

We will let you know more detail in due course on this announcement because today is about Gary. Today is a day for celebrating