There is a long story behind this but basically, at the time I was in litigation with Searchlight magazine and a number of its stockists, some of whom had pleaded innocent dissemination. One of these was the Centerprise Bookshop in Hackney.
Being a public spirited citizen and not wishing to see local authority money, funds from national government, and charitable donations used to promote publications that incite violence against innocent people, and gloat over the murders of our wonderful boys in blue - who for all their sins deserve better than this - I decided to do something about it. Or try to. The official response was deafening. This was in stark contrast to the way racists were treated at the time, and continue to be treated on a purely arbitrary basis. There have been at least four substantial prosecutions and attempted prosecutions from the 1990s onwards which were aimed exclusively or predominently against cartoons.
In 1996, I was myself thrown into gaol where I languished for six months and escaped conviction by a hairsbreadth when an off the cuff remark directed at a particularly obnoxious individual who had tried to destroy me was dressed up as a “threat to kill with intent”. On top of that they added a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, a charge based entirely on the contents of a document, and which was so bizarre that even a biased and bigoted trial judge threw it out. Afterwards I experienced literally years of unwarranted persecution by a small clique of thoroughly evil men and women based at New Scotland Yard, the CPS and elsewhere, who were determined to secure some sort of conviction against me, however trivial.
The same vendettas continue to be waged today, the same selective prosecutions, and the same harassment by small-minded, petty, spiteful and vindictive men and women; the only difference is that this time it is largely Moslems who are being targeted rather than racists. One of these is Samina Malik, whose crime was to write bad poetry. Fortunately, in a rare outburst of common sense, the Court of Appeal quashed her conviction.
The latest nonsense - in August 2008 - is the arrest of a number of men for plotting to murder Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on a website(!) - the Islamic equivalent of pub banter. All the accused were remanded in custody charged with “terrorist offences”; this is in stark contrast to the younger brother of Colin Stagg - the man the Metropolitan Police tried to frame for the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell. After making what can only be construed as a direct threat to kill, he was let off with a caution.
Meanwhile, there are real terrorists out there plotting real crimes, including quite likely the murders of politicians and police officers. While valuable human resources are being wasted chasing the Samina Maliks and Colin Jordans of this world, the real terrorists, and sundry other murderers, rapists and violent felons are laughing up their sleeves.
Alexander Baron,
September 13, 2008
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The files below link to the 2nd Edition of a pamphlet which I published in May 1996, and to a leaflet in a similar vein.
Sydenham,
London
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