Today I need to defend a person I don’t like very much. I’ll explain why I don’t like it in a moment, but that’s not the point.
What matters is this: If the government can come in and ruin a man’s life, without the need for a fair trial or guilty verdict, then we don’t live in a free country. This is what just happened to video blogger Graham Phillips.
The danger is that because Mr. Phillips is so hard to please, the government will get away with it. And then when he uses the same powers on someone else, it will be too late to protest.
like the great united states Supreme Court Judge Felix Frankfurter once said: ‘Guarantees of freedom have often been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.’
What matters is this: If the government can come in and ruin a man’s life, without the need for a fair trial or guilty verdict, then we don’t live in a free country. This is what just happened to video blogger Graham Phillips
Some of Mr. Phillips’ activities have been questionable, although he strongly denies many of the charges against him. For me, the worst action of his was his cruel and stupid interrogation of a seriously wounded Ukrainian prisoner of war. Others have condemned his interview with Aiden Aslin, a British citizen who had been fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces and was captured by the Russians.
It has been suggested that the interview was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Phillips, contacted in Luhansk, says Aslin asked for the interview himself, has never complained and has given several other interviews since then.
Be that as it may, last week Mr Phillips was placed on the UK Government’s sanctions list. The Foreign Ministry, which is in charge of this process, is no longer answering the phone, responding only once to emails, with nondescript official communications, so I don’t have some of the details that I would like to have.
But to my knowledge, he is the first British citizen to be treated in this way. His assets have been frozen. His bank accounts are blocked. He also cannot pay those to whom he owes money.
Some of Mr. Phillips’ activities have been questionable, although he strongly denies many of the charges against him. For me, the worst action of his was the cruel and stupid interrogation of a seriously wounded Ukrainian prisoner of war, writes Peter Hitchens (pictured)
For example, your home insurance has now been canceled because your insurers are prohibited from accepting your premiums. All your bills are now bouncing, soon the utilities will be cut off at your London home. He can’t even pay his council tax. He will be faced with incessant claims for debts, about which he can do nothing.
As he says: ‘How can I pay these debts when I don’t have access to the funds? If it goes to court, how can I defend myself if I won’t be able to afford legal representation? Actually, how am I going to find the money to travel to court penniless, or even to feed myself?’ Franz Kafka, the great Czech author of The Trial, a classic on oppression, could not have invented such an inescapable legal trap as this one.
Leading British lawyers have accurately described the objects of this action as “prisoners of the state”. All right, you may say, this is how we should act against money launderers and terrorists abroad.
It could also be said that such powers could be used against Russian government officials or Syrian army officers. And if you look at the list of people treated in this way under the Money Laundering and Sanctions Act 2018, those are the ones you will find.
Of course, none of these people is a former UK civil servant with a British passport, as Mr Phillips is. As long as they remain out of our hands, sanctions are just an inconvenience to most of those under his command.
But for Mr. Phillips, they spell real ruin. Regardless of what you think of him, is this a proper use of state power? Is it permitted by the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, let alone the ‘human rights’ that the Foreign Office claims to hold so dear?
The official statement says that Phillips is being sanctioned because he is “a video blogger who has produced and published media content that supports and promotes actions and policies that destabilize Ukraine and undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine.” .
Yeah, so what? None of these actions is or should be a crime under UK law. These are blanket charges, the kind that Stalin used in his trials in the 1930s. Any protest or criticism of a foreign state (or our own) could be said to do these things.
Many of us have quite critical views on the way various foreign countries behave and on our own government.
Britain is not, in fact, at war with Russia. Therefore, none of us has a legal obligation to support that war or refrain from saying things that upset the kyiv government.
This is the dictatorial use of arbitrary power by the state against an individual it does not like. It is a direct outrage against the rule of law. If the Government gets its way, who will be next?
If we don’t protest that now and stop it, then we should shut up forever about being a free country or fighting for freedom elsewhere.
Tangled ties political problem
Why should it be right-wing to wear a tie? A major dispute has broken out in the French parliament over the use of this strange garment, extremely expensive, prone to getting caught in food and impossible to clean afterwards.
Conservatives say they should be used. Leftists refuse. Ingenious parliamentarians have responded by adopting ties themselves.
In fact, they look better on women than on men. Although that is not difficult.
May the word ‘appeaser’ rest in peace
We love to hate appeasement, don’t we? If someone suggests that we try to make peace in the Ukraine (as I do), he is immediately denounced as a ‘conciliator’. But what did Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble do except help appease the IRA?
Upon his death last week, he was highly praised. But in a slightly different universe, he would have been despised. One man’s peacemaker is another man’s peacemaker, and vice versa. Wow, even Winston Churchill appeased Stalin at Yalta, handing over Eastern Europe to him.
I think it’s time we give this worn word a proper burial.
TV cameras will harm justice
One of my weirdest journalistic jobs was the Bobbitt case, in which Mrs. Lorena Bobbitt severed the manhood of her husband, John. Since this happened outside of Washington DC, where I was working at the time, I had to attend both of her trials: hers for her lurid act, his for ‘spousal sexual assault’.
His was televised. His – because it was for a sexual offense – was not. Both, as it happened, were acquitted. But the contrast between the two essays was enormous. On the telecast, everyone was very aware of the large audience outside the courtroom and, in my opinion, was influenced by it.
Television has done terrible damage to Parliament, with hideous organized barracks and false outrages all the time. It will do even more damage to criminal justice. Juries are bound to be influenced by television cameras, just like judges and lawyers. The ‘experiment’ with TV courts should end now.
