Pro-what now?

In case you hadn't heard, Dr George Tiller, one of the USA's few late-term abortion providers, was shot dead by 'pro-life' terrorists in Wichita today as he was going to his Sunday morning church service.

Via Feministe:

Dr. Tiller was one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country. He had previously been shot, his clinic burnt down, harassed by ideological anti-abortion attorney generals, and threatened with death countless times. Still, Dr. Tiller continued to provide abortions to women who desperately needed them, to save their own lives or health, or due to tragic fetal deformities. He put the health of women above his own life. And now he is dead.

This is the first time an abortion provider has been killed in over a decade, although in that time countless numbers of brave men and women have faced death threats, attacks and intimidation and continued to do their jobs. My thoughts are with the family, friends and co-workers of Dr Tiller, and with all of those held morally and physically hostage by the crass hypocrisy of the mindless terrorists responsible for his murder.

Cath Elliott has more.

Breaking news: violent rape of civil liberties takes place in Whitehall.

I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on the day Magna Carta was repealed. That's what Tony Benn was heard to spit a few hours ago as the people's party voted in an extension of the detainment time limit to 42 days without trial for under the Terrorism Act. This disgusting pyrrhic victory was passed by a measly nine votes, provided by a sullen and harrassed Democratic Unionists party, who know exactly what terrorism at home means and exactly why laws like this will mean so little. In a Pulitzer-worthy piece, Simon Hoggart reported that:

We saw the great lumbering figure of the old turtle, Ian Paisley, pad down the steps, pause, be nudged by his colleagues, and roll off with them into the "aye" lobby. So we knew that, in Austin Mitchell's words, Gordon Brown had been saved for the nation. But when the gossamer majority was announced, the Tories and Lib Dems erupted in an outburst of rage and hatred, swivelling round on the nine DUP members, waving and shaking their fingers, yelling "Shame!" "Traitors!" and "What were you paid?"

I never thought the government that promised so much in 1997 would sell us with such teeth-gritting ignorance down a river that will probably inevitably carry the Cameron regatta into Downing street in 2010. I never thought I'd see such a victory for spite and oninism in the Commons as the bullying and cajoling of MPs into voting in a law which would not even be necessary had the government listened to its people and its representatives and not gone to rattle sabres in the Gulf in the first place. What idiots. What limp-dicked cowards. And my god, what a debate.

Diane Abbott was bloody fantastic. She had become an MP, she said, her voice rising to angry shrillness, to defend the marginalised, the unpopular and those who were suspected. These were the very people parliament had to stand up for. And in the end, they hung back. They voted in favour of a law that will punish a small minority of already marginalised citizens who, whatever their politics, will almost certainly emerge from jail and interrogation ready to sign up for state-sabotage with the first nutter they meet.

None of those voting in favour of the bill have ever done time in British prisons. None of them know what it means to already feel alienated, emasculated and shunned in a country where your own government thinks you're a dangerous freak who needs to be locked up. They let us down for a stunt that started out as a PR move and ended up as a right royal tantrum from a Premier who doesn't know when to let go. All those hushed rumours about MPs Brown had never met previously met being harangued in person and by phone, stalwart back benchers having their pet causes dangled tantalisingly before them in return for support. The ugly spectacle of a Prime Minister yelling and in tears on the telephone. Brown is throwing all his toys out of the pram.

The fact that his latest little stunt is one blunt, rusty nail in the chest of his government's re-election hopes is patently obvious even to his supporters. So why has he done it? Why fight so viciously for a piece of fantastically uncouth legal repression when the incumbent law, even if it makes it through the Lords, will almost certainly do more harm to Brown and his supporters than good to national security? Why? Panic. Sheer, vicious, bloody-minded panic. Brown has always been a bully, but now he's a frightened bully in a corner. And suddenly he's showing his teeth.

I want to claim then there are no words to describe the let down. Given that I'm about to be a qualified journalist, that's not something I'm allowed to say anymore. Set down, then, a suitable amount of raw rage about this, along with a hefty measure of bewilderment and a chaser of neat despair. I don't know how this has happened, and I don't know why. My ancestors came to this country to escape persecution, poverty and violence, running from bombs and state terrorism and asking for nothing but the chance to work hard and educate their children in peace. Now that longed-for liberty is being sliced up and sold off piece by piece in the name of freedom, for the sake of a thuggish politician's pride and a bit of schmoozing to the tabloids.

Bugger this. I want a better world.

Thoughts on Lyrical Terrorism.

I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

There are many things wrong with me, the top three being that I'm young, foolish and not as clever as I think I am. I have not posted for two days because I spent all of Saturday on a balcony somewhere in the depths of Haringey, being pumped full of dubious substances and ranting to anyone who would listen about how George Eliot was a disgrace to the revolution. I then spent all of Sunday sipping weak tea, watching Doctor Who, nursing a thoroughly deserved hangover and trying not to move my hands, as the sound of skin on blankets was upsetting me.

I am 21-and-almost-a-quarter years old. This sort of behaviour might not be clever, nor might it be setting me up for a glittering career in industry; it is, however, allowed, even expected, that young people in their early twenties do do thoroughly silly things from time to time. Drink too much, say, or take too many drugs; hurt themselves and other people through ignorance or cowardice or naivety or panic or sudden lust. In a fit of pique, one or two errant young things have even been known to vote Tory, although I've heard that you can now get pills for that on the NHS.

The point is that this sort of weird, destructive, fucked-up behaviour is not unexpected for bewildered, thrill-seeking young people in their early twenties. Really, deep down, most of us just want to look cool in front of our friends. Thankfully, most of us are also able to get away with a few indiscretions as we ramble our sticky, sordid way towards adulthood.

No such leniency for the Lyrical Terrorist, though. At the end of this week, Miss Samina Malik, 23, became the first woman to be convicted under the UK terrorism act. Malik had been working at a branch of WHSmiths at Heathrow airport, and spent her spare time writing really terrible poetry praising Osama Bin Laden, scribbling cryptic messages to herself on the backs of till receipts, and possessing a copy of the Al-Quaeda manual. At no point do any press releases give details of firm evidence that Malik is linked to any terrorist group whatsoever; she simply claims to have called herself 'The Lyrical Terrorist' because 'it sounded cool'.

Malik remains under house arrest until her sentencing on the 6th of December.

Probablyblonde has pointed out, quite rightly, that Malik has been convicted for thoughtcrime, pure and simple. In the abscence of concrete underground activity or rebellion, merely the idea of such activities constitutes crime. Oh dear. Looking through my bookshelves, I possess the following seditious texts: The Scum Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas; Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin; 1984, by George Orwell; The Female Man, by Janet Russ ...and many more, actually. I've written some really shocking poetry in my time, too, mostly to a boy called Ian Waples who was two years older and had dreadlocks. Moreover, whilst bimbling around the house cleaning things, I can often be heard singing punk songs alarmingly out of tune (one of the many reasons I like punk: it's forgiving to the anarchically passionate, yet musically average participant). Some of these songs even contain anti-establishment sentiment. I like folk music, my god - most folk songs are about rape, murder, rape-and-murder, or political insurrection. Do I have no shame? Does this mean that I, personally, am about to storm Dublin with a backpack full of nailbombs? Does owning 'The Scum Manifesto' make me a potential muderous man-killer, just drooling to aid and abet bio-terrorists in their ceasing struggle against our male overlords?

Of course it bloody well doesn't. Why, then, is a naive, rather stupid, politically curious, quite possibly mentally disturbed young woman - probably dissatisfied with a boring job and with her disenfranchised status as an Islamic young woman of colour in the UK - now under house arrest? Why is she being convicted for possessing material 'likely to be useful for a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism', when what's really useful to people preparing terrorists acts are not volumes of childish dogma but, say, phone-numbers. Any contacts at all. Weapons, or materials for making weapons. All of these would constitute potential evidence of planned terrorist activity: the ramblings of an addled young woman with delusions of grandeur, scribbling on the back of a stationary receipt, are not.

That Malik is being treated in this way because she is Muslim, of Middle-Eastern origin and female, is not up for debate. What this young woman needs is some compassion, and perhaps a few days off work and a decent therapist to listen to her problems. What she's got, however, is a slap-down conviction for nothing more than thoughtcrime, a conviction that will no doubt prevent her from securing decent employment for a significant period of her young life.

Something is deeply, deeply wrong here.