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Denis the Menace must account for his pennies I see on Guido Fawkes that arch-Europhile Denis MacShane is to be investigated by the police. He has had the Labour Whip withdrawn.
To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”. On the other hand he was once Minister of State for Europe.
This article gives a sample of his thought.
Commenters are requested to bear in mind the principle that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes, even a man who said:
In 2004, a major step forward was taken with the creation of a European arrest warrant
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What’s wrong with that last quote? I mean, a lot of the crimes you could be arrested for with that warrant are BS, but the warrant procedure itself is fine, that’s just better administration of justice.
Never mind what he has done with his pennies. He is a traitor and if there is any justice he will die with a rope around his neck.
What’s wrong with that last quote? I mean, a lot of the crimes you could be arrested for with that warrant are BS, but the warrant procedure itself is fine, that’s just better administration of justice.
Posted by Alsadius at October 14, 2010 06:03 PM
Umm, I’m not all up on this, but doesn’t the EU AW allow you to be arrested for crimes which are not crimes in your country? Thus, you are subject to laws which you have no hand in making.
I may be totally off base here, and if I am then ignore me, but to this ignorant colonial that sounds an awful lot like the total repudiation of “consent of the governed” to me.
Britt – yes, it does.
I posted in 2005 about an Austrian cartoonist in danger of being extradited to Greece for blasphemy.
It also allows you to be extradited for double-jeopardy convictions. There was a long tradition in British law that double-jeopardy is not allowed. That principle has been weakened in recent years but scarcely exists at all in some countries.
This article describes how Michael Binnington and Luke Atkinson were extradited to Cyprus to serve sentences for a crime of which they had once been aquitted.
I posted earlier about Deborah Dark arrested for a crime of which she had been acquitted twenty years ago. She had no knowledge that she had later been convicted on appeal of the same crime in France.
What’s with the “HIS pennies”? They were OUR pennies!
@Britt: indeed we are subject to laws we have no hand in making.
All EU law (which becomes UK law automatically, without any vote or even discussion in our local parliament), originates with the unelected EU commission, over whom we have no influence, and whom we can never sack or get rid of or vote out, because they were never voted in, in the first place.
There is an EU parliament, but it cannot originate legislation, and cannot veto it either: all it can do is the ask the commission to think again. They can think again, and then say just do it. And we have to.
So much for democracy. But that was the whole idea all along.
But that’s to protect us from government, not government from us. In fact, “presumed innocent” means we start from the premise that the government is either mistaken or lying and must prove it isn’t. It’s perfectly consistent with this to presume that official actors are crook in their official actions and must prove they aren’t. It’s only if they’re acting privately, or are actually charged with a crime, that they get the benefit of the doubt.
A difficult one for me.
I despise this man – however, as a libertarian, I believe that everyone should have a fair trial.
To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”.
Well he’s an expert in the subject. OTOH there are plenty of likeable Europhiliacs, MacShane is not one of them.
I missed this news until today. I’m not sure how.
I missed this news until today. I’m not sure how. It can’t have been on the radio.
To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”.
Well, he’s an expert on that subject. Are you sure it was not in praise?
OTOH though admiration for the EU is an error, there are plenty of likeable Europhiliacs. MacShane is not one of them.
@Alcidus:
“…the warrant procedure itself is fine, that’s just better administration of justice.”
Not necessarily. The warrant will issue under 25 different sets of procedure, the EU law element being just a common wrapper. It amounts to every member state recognising the criminal procedure of every other, so the administration of justice for residents of any particular state has got markedly less predictable – or even knowable – as a result.
That is adminstrative expediency at the expense of justice, even before one starts to consider whether some states have better procedure than others. It seems unlikely that they are all of equal justice and efficiency, surely. (And there are differences in policy, too – which is why a huge proportion of those arrested under the procedure are Poles.)
There are tworeasons why EU-worshippers particularly love the EAW. They are inconsistent, but not necessarily exclusive under doublethink.
1. It embodies the myth (not a falsehood, but an aspirational story) that every member state is essentially the same and all the EU’s people are becoming brothers under the protection of its wings.
2. To the extent that in practice it falls short of the destruction of falsehood, it creates political pressure for the harmonisation of criminal law and procedure under the third pillar of EU cooperation.