Police admit illegal stop and searches on 11-year-olds at Kingsnorth protest | guardian.co.uk

High court admission of illegal searches on minors in case challenging police tactics at power station protest

Activists protest against the development of Kingsnorth power station

Protestors march towards Kingsnorth power station from the Camp For Climate Action 2008 on August 9, 2008. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Police today admitted that they conducted illegal "stop and searches" on 11-year-old twins and other activists at an environmental demonstration.

The chief constable of Kent, Mike Fuller, made the admission in a high court case that challenged the tactics he used to contain a demonstration against a proposed coal-fired power station.

He and his force have already been heavily criticised over their handling of the demonstration, after allegations of brutality by officers who hid their badge numbers, and the use of loud music to stop activists sleeping.

The admission came after a ruling by the European court of human rights in a separate case that it was unlawful for police to use arbitrary stop and search powers against peace protesters and photographers under terrorism legislation.

Kent police is fighting to avoid paying a huge bill for damages to thousands of protesters.

The high court heard that the twins, who cannot be named, and more than 3,500 protesters were herded into airport-style "checkpoints" during the week-long climate camp demonstration at Kings­north power station in Kent.

The twins' mother described how her son was left "crying and shaking" and "very pale". She said that he had overheard that protesters had stickers confiscated by police, and feared he would "go to prison" because he had a sticker in his bag. Nothing was taken from their bags.

They were searched under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which requires officers to have a reasonable suspicion that an individual is carrying prohibited weapons that could be used for criminal damage.

At today's hearing, Richard Perks, barrister for the chief constable, said it was now accepted by Kent police that the twins and a veteran environmental protester, David Morris, were unlawfully stopped at the Kingsnorth demonstration in 2008.

Perks added that the chief constable also admitted that unspecified numbers of other climate camp protesters had also been unlawfully stopped and searched.

The twins and Morris, from north London, launched the legal action last year as a test case for the thousands stopped and searched at the demonstration. Kent police have offered to settle in their case but are refusing to admit that thousands of others should be paid damages.

John Halford, the trio's lawyer, said: "Kent police are seeking to buy off these test cases in a desperate attempt to avoid court scrutiny of what amounted to an unlawful frontline policy geared to bring about large-scale breach of civil liberties and protest rights."

Today Perks told the court that Kent police did not admit that they had covertly applied a blanket, unlawful stop-and-search policy at the camp.

There had been a clear and lawful policy, and the huge majority of activists had not been stopped unlawfully. But it was accepted there had been "a misapplication of a clear policy by officers on the ground", he said.

Alex Bailin, barrister for the twins, accused Kent police of failing to obey a court order to disclose documents about the stop and searches. Lord Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Openshaw adjourned the case so that further evidence could be produced.

Last July an official review concluded that the "widescale deployment of stop and search tactics was both disproportionate and counter-productive" at the Kingsnorth demonstration.

It found that fewer than a quarter of the forms recording the reasons for the stop and searches were legible.

via guardian.co.uk

 

Teen Sex | Cory Doctorow

My first young adult novel, Little Brother, tells the story of a kid named Marcus Yallow who forms a guerilla army of young people dedicated to the reformation of the US government by any means necessary. He and his friends use cryptography and other technology to subvert security measures, to distribute revolutionary literature, to liberate and publish secret governmental memoes, and humiliate government officials. Every chapter includes some kind of how-to guide for accomplishing this kind of thing on your own, from tips on disabling radio-frequency ID tags to beating biometric identity system to defeating the censorware used by your school network to control what kind of things you can and can't see on the Internet. The book is a long hymn to personal liberty, free speech, the people's right to question and even overthrow their government, even during wartime.


Marcus is 17, and the book is intended to be read by young teens or even precocious tweens (as well as adults). Naturally, I anticipated that some of the politics and technology in the story would upset my readers. And it's true, a few of the reviewers were critical of this stuff. But not many, not overly so.

What I didn't expect was that I would receive a torrent of correspondence and entreaties from teachers, students, parents, and librarians who were angry, worried, or upset that Marcus loses his virginity about two-thirds of the way through the book (secondarily, some of them were also offended by the fact that Marcus drinks a beer at one point, and a smaller minority wanted to know why and how Marcus could get away with talking back to his elders).

Now, the sex-scene in the book is anything but explicit. Marcus and his girlfriend are kissing alone in her room after a climactic scene in the novel, and she hands him a condom. The scene ends. The next scene opens with Marcus reflecting that it wasn't what he thought it would be, but it was still very good, and better in some ways that he'd expected. He and his girlfriend have been together for quite some time at this point, and there's every indication that they'll go on being together for some time yet. There is no anatomy, no grunts or squeals, no smells or tastes. This isn't there to titillate. It's there because it makes plot-sense and story-sense and character-sense for these two characters to do this deed at this time.

I've spent enough time explaining what this "plot-sense and story-sense and character-sense" means to enough people that I find myself creating a "Teen transgression in YA literature FAQ."

There's really only one question: "Why have your characters done something that is likely to upset their parents, and why don't you punish them for doing this?"

Now, the answer.

First, because teenagers have sex and drink beer, and most of the time the worst thing that results from this is a few days of social awkwardness and a hangover, respectively. When I was a teenager, I drank sometimes. I had sex sometimes. I disobeyed authority figures sometimes.

Mostly, it was OK. Sometimes it was bad. Sometimes it was wonderful. Once or twice, it was terrible. And it was thus for everyone I knew. Teenagers take risks, even stupid risks, at times. But the chance on any given night that sneaking a beer will destroy your life is damned slim. Art isn't exactly like life, and science fiction asks the reader to accept the impossible, but unless your book is about a universe in which disapproving parents have cooked the physics so that every act of disobedience leads swiftly to destruction, it won't be very credible. The pathos that parents would like to see here become bathos: mawkish and
trivial, heavy-handed, and preachy.

Second, because it is good art.  Artists have included sex and sexual content in their general-audience material since cave-painting days. There's a reason the Vatican and the Louvre are full of nudes. Sex is part of what it means to be human, so art has sex in it.

Sex in YA stories usually comes naturally, as the literal climax of a coming-of-age story in which the adolescent characters have undertaken a series of leaps of faiths, doing consequential things (lying, telling the truth, being noble, subverting authority, etc.) for the first time, never knowing, really knowing, what the outcome will be. These figurative losses of virginity are one of the major themes of YA novels — and one of the major themes of adolescence — so it's artistically satisfying for the figurative to become literal in the course of the book. This is a common literary and artistic technique, and it's very effective.

I admit that I remain baffled by adults who object to the sex in this book. Not because it's prudish to object, but because the off-camera sex occurs in the middle of a story that features rioting, graphic torture, and detailed instructions for successful truancy.

As the parent of a young daughter, I feel strongly that every parent has the right and responsibility to decide how his or her kids are exposed to sex and sexually explicit material.

However, that right is limited by reality: the likelihood that a high-school student has made it to her 14th or 15th year without encountering the facts of life is pretty low. What's more, a kid who enters puberty without understanding the biological and emotional facts about her or his anatomy and what it's for is going to be (even more) confused.

Adolescents think about sex. All the time. Many of them have sex. Many of them experiment with sex. I don't believe that a fictional depiction of two young people who are in love and have sex is likely to impart any new knowledge to most teens — that is, the vast majority of teenagers are apt to be familiar with the existence of sexual liaisons between 17-year-olds.

So since the reader isn't apt to discover anything new about sex in reading the book I can't see how this ends up interfering with a parent's right to decide when and where their kids discover the existence of sex.

via locusmag.com

 

Goodbye Halloween, Hello “Safety” | FreeRangeKids

Can we think up some great trick to play on  the town supervisors in quaint and quaking Bobtown, Pennsylvania, who are  OUTLAWING HALLOWEEN in order to “keep kids safe”?

Perhaps they missed Chapter 7 in the book Free-Range Kids, “Eat Chocolate! Give Halloween Back to the Trick-or-Treaters.” Allow me to quote myself a little bit:

Was there ever really a rash of candy killings? Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, took it upon himself to find out. He studied crime reports from Halloween dating back as far as 1958, and guess exactly how many kids he found poisoned by a stranger’s candy?

A hundred and five? A dozen? Well, one, at least?

“The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,” says the professor. The fear is completely unfounded.

Now, one time, in 1974, a Texas dad did kill his own son with a poisoned Pixie Stix. “He had taken out an insurance policy on his son’s life shortly before Halloween, and I think he probably did this on the theory that there were so many poison candy deaths, no one would ever suspect him,” says Best. “In fact, he was very quickly tried and put to death long ago.” That’s Texas for you.

Best added that at one time another child was poisoned by accidentally ingesting his uncle’s stash of heroin and the family tried to pass it off as a stranger poisoning. But it didn’t work.

So, Bobtownians, please re-consider axe-murdering an ancient holiday in order to keep children safe from a danger that does not exist. While we applaud the notion of that communal party you want to throw, save it for a day when it does not intefere with one of childhood’s greatest joys.  Or else?

Be afraid of a force more powerful than magic. A force that likes its candy and knows how to scream.  – Lenore

via freerangekids.wordpress.com

 

Dutch bid to stop 13-year-old girl sailing round the world on her own

Laura Dekker (c) and her father (l) and laywer
Sailor Laura Dekker says she wants to 'live freely'

Social workers in the Netherlands have taken legal action to try to stop a 13-year-old girl from sailing around the world on her own.

They want Laura Dekker to be made a ward of court, so that her parents, who support her plans, temporarily lose the right to make decisions about her.

Laura's father, Dick Dekker, has had a request for her to miss two years of school turned down.

Laura had a yacht by the age of six and began sailing solo when she was 10.

"Since I was 10 years old, I've known that I would like to sail around the world," she told Dutch television.

"I want simply to learn about the world and to live freely."

'More vulnerable'?

The current record is held by American Zac Sunderland, who completed the 45,000km (28,000-mile) voyage at the age of 17, after 13 months at sea.

Miss Dekker, who was reportedly born on a yacht off the coast of New Zealand during a seven-year world trip, plans to break that record.

I want to do it while I'm still young, so I can break the record
Laura Dekker

"My parents always knew it was a dream of mine to do this," she is reported to have told a children's TV programme.

"And I want to do it while I'm still young, so I can break the record."

The trip, on an 8.3m-long yacht called Guppy, would be paid for by sponsorship, AFP reports.

Local media report that the girl spent seven weeks sailing alone at the age of 11.

But Junior Education Minister Marja van Bijsterveldt-Vliegenthart recently told parliament: "A solo voyage around the world would not be in the best interests of the child."

Experienced sailors have also highlighted the risks Miss Dekker might face if she attempts to sail single-handedly around the globe.

"When she's got a broken mast on heavy seas, can a girl make herself safe again? I can't see it happening," Bernt Folmer, director of the Enkhuizen School of Seamanship, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

"You're much more vulnerable on your own than you are with other people," he added.

The court is due to make a ruling this week.

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via news.bbc.co.uk