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therobertfrasergang · 1 year

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Robert Fraser in the Evening Standard, July 28, 1967

Robert Fraser had appealed his sentence for heroin possession but was denied. He ended up serving 4 months of a 6 month sentence (he'd already been in prison for 5 weeks at the time of this hearing).

The entire article is transcribed below the cut.

Evening Standard, Jul 28, 1967

‘Heroin is a killer’

Art Gallery Man Loses Appeal by Gordon Corner

The six-months prison sentence passed on Robert Hugh Fraser, 29-year-old art gallery director, on drug charges, is to stand.

This was decided in the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeals this afternoon after Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice, had termed heroin as a killer.

Fraser had pleaded guilty at West Sussex Quarter Sessions at Chichester to possession of 24 tablets of heroin and had been refused bail pending his trial.

The appeals of Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, who were also sentenced on drug charges, are to be heard on Monday.

Fraser’s appeal was turned down after his counsel, Mr. William Denny, who made a strong plea that the five weeks his client had already served was sufficient, had revealed that Fraser was now cured of his addiction.

Lord Parker said Fraser had been found in possession of heroin in a house raided at West Wittering: He had 24 tablets in his jacket pocket. Fraser had claimed he was a diabetic and that a doctor had prescribed for this. But this was completely untrue, for the tablets were his daily dose. Fraser by then was a heroin addict.

After being found in possession of the tablets Fraser had had the courage to go to a doctor who had started treatment of an extremely disagreeable kind. The court had been told that he was no longer an addict.

Lord Parker said the court wanted to make it clear that in considering Fraser’s case they were paying no attention whatsoever to any connection there might have been with the case of Jagger and Richard.

Good Family

What the court knew about those cases it was putting completely out of its mind in the case of Fraser. His case was approached in complete isolation.

Fraser, went on Lord Parker, could not expect any special treatment by reason of privileges through his station in life. He came from an extremely good family, had been to a famous public school and served with two renowned regiments.

But these privileges, if anything, carried greater responsibility and would tempt a court to give more rather than less in the way of a sentence.

A man in Fraser’s position was not sentenced because he was an addict. Everybody was extremely sorry for him. What he was being sentenced for was for commencing the taking of this drug.

In this particular case the court was dealing solely with heroin, and where heroin was concerned the court was satisfied that in the ordinary way, where there were no special circumstances, public interest demanded that some form of detention should be imposed.

“Heroin has been termed a killer and it must be remembered that anybody who takes heroin puts there body and soul into the hands of the supply or the supplier,” said Lord Parker.

The court was firmly of the opinion that a sentence of detention in the absence of special circumstances was a proper one.

The court, in considering whether the sentence was excessive, bore in mind that Fraser had the courage to go to a doctor and was now cured. But it was not satisfied that the sentence passed in any way erred in principle.

Earlier Mr. Denny had said that Fraser had an excellent background with a father who was a famous financier and had gone to a top-class public school. Five years ago he established his own art gallery in London’s West End which had met with considerable success.

Explaining how he had been introduced to the drug, Mr. Denny said that about a year ago Fraser was overworked and tired and was offered some drugs by an employee. He had never touched drugs of any kind before, but after four or five doses he was addicted.

After describing the steps Fraser had taken to get cured, Mr. Denny said: “Having heard the defendant had broken his addiction, one would have felt it possible that the Quarter Sessions would have leavened the condemnation of the offence with congratulations for its remedy.

“For here was a man who was himself the only victim of his offence. But of these matters put before the court one is bound to say that there is no indication that these matters weighed in terms of mitigation with the court.”

Greater responsibility

Mr. Denny added that there was no reason given by the court for imposing such a severe sentence.

Lord Parker then intervened to say: “I think personally that the greater the privileges of a man, his home, his background, his station in life, education at a public school and two renowned regiments—these very privileges give greater responsibility, and one is tempted to say that a man with these privileges must get more than an unfortunate man who has had no privileges.”

Lord Justice Winn also intervened during Mr. Denny’s argument and said: “Parliament must be taken to know the facts—heroin is a killer apart from complete moral destruction, death will follow inevitably from taking heroin. Only eight per cent of heroin addicts have lived for more than a few years.”

Mr. Denny said that Fraser had already served five weeks and he felt no further useful purpose would be served by keeping a person who had not harmed anyone else in prison any longer.

The resentment felt by Fraser when sentence was passed was understandable because the merits and the perspective of his particular case were lost in the events and the supercharges atmosphere in what happened in the following two days in the trial of his co-defendants Jagger and Richard.

Although Fraser had pleaded guilty he had been ordered to pay £200 costs. Jagger, who had pleaded not guilty in a case which had been fought and in which he was sentences to three months, was ordered to pay £100 costs. “One cannot see the rational of it,” said Mr. Denny.

Said Lord Justice Winn: “I cannot see that has anything to do with the sentence passed. One was for amphetamine and the other one was for heroin.”

And he added that here Fraser was getting a fresh hearing before a court which was paying no attention to the Richard and Jagger cases.

#robert fraser #1967 #evening standard #rolling stones #drug charges

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equatorjournal · 2 years

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All of us on the beach at West Wittering, Sussex, 1968. 'What we have here is Virginia McKenna as she sees herself; her life, full of passion and grace and fun and wisdom and friendship, is the main feature tonight, so settle back as the lights dim and watch her as she appears as herself in her greatest role of all.' - Joanna Lumley From "The life in my years" by Victoria McKenna. https://www.instagram.com/p/CgH4MqXN2Ho/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 23 days

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By: Tom Slater

Published: Nov 30, 2023

Why do so many leftists struggle to condemn Hamas? Why do so-called progressives make excuses for Jew-killing, misogynistic, gay-bashing Islamists? It’s a long and damning story. Here, Tom Slater traces the history of the Islamo-left, an unholy alliance between left-wingers and Islamists that has once again burst out into the open following the pogrom in Israel on 7 October. Watch, share and let us know what you think in the comments.

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Tom Slater: Is Hamas a terrorist group? Most people wouldn't struggle with that question. After all, this brutal Islamist organization, which rules over Gaza with an iron fist, just butchered 1,200 people on the 7th of October. The youngest victims were infants, the oldest were Holocaust survivors. Women were raped, hostages were taken.

When former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked this question on talk TV a few weeks back, he couldn't bring himself to utter the t-word.

Jeremy Corbyn: Can we have a discussion? Piers Morgan: Can you call them a terror group? Corbyn: Can we have... Morgan: Can you call them a terror group? Corbyn: Is it possible to have a rational discussion? Morgan: Are you prepared to call Hamas a terror group? Corbyn: Is it possible to have a rational discussion... Morgan: You can't, can you? Corbyn: Is it possible? Come on, answer that question? Morgan: You can't, can you? Corbyn: You answer it. Morgan: No.

Host Piers Morgan invited Corbyn to describe Hamas as terrorists no fewer than 15 times. But he refused. He couldn't. Instead, Corbyn just wittered on about needing to start a process that leads to a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He has since found the mineral to call Hamas a terrorist group in an article for Tribune. But that would perhaps be more reassuring if it wasn't for his long history of cozying up to Hamas and other Islamist terror groups. In 2009 addressing a public meeting, Corbyn infamously referred to Hamas and Lebanese Islamist Hezbollah as quote, "friends," unquote. He went further, railing against the designation of Hamas as a terrorist group.

Corbyn: And the idea that an organization that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organization by the British government, is really a big, big historical mistake, and I would invite the government to reconsider its position on this matter and start talking directly to Hamas and Hezbollah. That is the only way forward to bring back...

Slater: And that's not all. In 2011, Corbyn invited Riyadh Salah, an alleged Hamas fundraiser who believes the Jews were behind 9/11 to tea in Westminster. During a visit to Tunisia in 2014, Corbin was filmed laying a wreath near the graves of the Palestinian Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

You can see why, after all these sordid details trickled out, Corbyn proved to be such electoral cyanide, helping to deliver Labour's worst election defeat since 1935.

But there has been an unhelpful tendency to see Corbyn's dalliances with Islamists as a kind of personal moral failing on the part of him and his hangers on. The truth is that the rot runs much deeper. Corbyn is just one useful idiot among many on the dregs of the British left who have come to see Islamism not as the fascistic terroristic menace it is, but as a movement at the vanguard of global resistance to a malevolent West.

This is the unholy alliance that we've seen out in force on British streets in recent weeks, where Islamists and left-wingers have marched side by side, united in their hatred for Israel and barely batting an eyelid as antisemites shout Arabic War slogans and wave Jew hating placards.

Welcome to the Islamo-Left, a sinister marriage of convenience that all good people, whether left or right, religious or irreligious, must confront and reject.

This story begins with the radical left's abandonment of the working class and its decision to seek out new constituencies and embrace identity politics.

From the 1980s onwards, figure son the left perversely came to see working-class Brits as a reactionary block on progress, while mistaking radical Islamists, among other groups, as a potentially revolutionary force. This coincided with the rise of state multiculturalism, which had the effect of elevating and funding reactionary Muslim community leaders who were falsely presented as the supposedly authentic voice of British Muslims.

It is from this ecosystem of a growing Muslim identity politics that the grassroots British Muslim campaign against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses sprung up in the 1980s. Indeed, some of these groups were instrumental in pressuring Iran's supreme leader to issue his Infamous fatwa against Rushdie.

During the 1990s, sections of the Left, these supposed radicals and progressives, became increasingly, disturbingly sympathetic to the fundamentalists who continue to rage against Rushdie and his supposedly blasphemous book. Muslim identity politics was particularly appealing to a disoriented Left because it mapped onto their support for Palestinian self-determination. Many Leftists were prepared to overlook the dark heart of even full-blown Islamists in the interest of backing the supposed struggle against Western imperialism. The Palestinians became merely pawns in some grand conflict between the west and the rebellious global OIther. This is why today you'll notice that many Leftists ignore Hamas' trampling of the rights of the Palestinians and Islamism's usurpation of the Palestinian national cause.

Back in 1994, Chris Harman, then editor of the Socialist Worker, the party newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, wrote a bizarre but revealing pamphlet entitled "The Prophets and the Proletariat." In it, Harman admitted that Islamism has some pretty fascistic qualities. From its opposition to modernity to its murderous intolerance and its brutal treatment of minorities. Which is all very good of him.

But the Islamists aren't all bad, he concluded. Islamists, Harman wrote, had opposed the state and elements of imperialism's political domination, particularly Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. In this, he presented Israel as little more than a Western imperial outpost. And so Islamism, Harman concluded, is born of a quote, "feeling of revolt that could be tapped for progressive purposes," unquote.

Failed Western revolutionaries were increasingly keen to outsource radical agency to Islamists, and to whitewash these reactionaries as a progressive force. This marriage of convenience was then consummated in the 2000s in the aftermath of 9/11 and amid the war on terror.

In 2002, the Stop the War Coalition, dominated by the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Britain, formed an alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain. Both Stop the War and the MAB had a pronounced presence on the anti-Iraq war protests of the early 2000s. And both groups are among the most prominent organizers of the quote, unquote, "Pro Palestine" demos that have recently been roiling London.

The Muslim Association of Britain might sound benign, but it was founded by none other than Mohamed Solwa, a former Hamas chief who now lives in London. His son is its vice-chair.

Over the years, leading figures from Stop the War have' been pretty open about their fondness for Hamas. One of Stop the War's co-founders, John Reese, once dubbed these antisemitic terrorists a, quote, "legitimate resistance movement," unquote.

At a Stop the War conference in 2006, Lindsey German a leading SWP figure said quote, "whatever disagreements I have with Hamas and Hezbollah, I would rather be in their camp. Democracy in the Middle East is Hamas, is Hezbollah," she said. Followers of the conflict will know that there hasn't been an election in Hamas-run Gaza since 2006 when German made that ridiculous speech.

Jeremy Corbyn was, of course, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition from 2011 till 2015 when he became Labour leader. German served as his vice chair. Stop the War consolidated the fledgling relationship between sections of the hard Left and actual Islamists. In doing so, it also fatally undermined many of the things that used to be essential to being left-wing, such as universalism, reason and humanism.

Anti-imperialism was reduced to little more than anti-Westernism, transforming regressive Islamists from Iran or Gaza into anti-colonial heroes in the process. And all this has fuelled identity politics here in the UK, transforming us from citizens with interests in common, into members of competing ethno-religious groups.

In particular, this anti-war Left and their Islamist allies have cultivated a divisive Muslim identity politics. Their cynicism paid off for the 2005 general election, when Respect, a Stop the War spin-off party led by George Galloway, won the East London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, which has a large Muslim population. it was a triumph of militant anti-Westernism and pork-barrel identity politics.

These malign trends have since spread to the broader bourgeois left. Take Novara Media, a popular Corbyneaster YouTube channel and website run by a group of perennial postgraduates. In 2014, the Novara website published a glowing profile of Muhammad Deif as part of a Radical Lives series. It described him as an, "uncompromising and shrewd freedom fighter," who has contributed to the, "impressive evolution of the resistance in Gaza." Deif is the commander of Hamas' military wing and a vicious Islamist. Nine years after Novara's puff piece was published, he became one of the architects for Hamas' brutal incursion into Southern Israel earlier this year.

No wonder that one of Novara's editors, Rivkah Brown hailed the events of the seventh of October as a quote, "day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide."

After Hamas launched its brutal pogrom in Israel, many were shocked at the apologism and even cheerleading that some on the British left engaged in. The Socialist Worker, the paper once edited by Chris Harman, greeted the massacre with the headline, "Rejoice."

But while we certainly had a right to be shocked at such inhuman and depraved talk, we probably shouldn't have been surprised. For decades now, Britain's radical Left has been morally self-immolating. Its deranged alliance with Islamists has stripped it of any claim it might once have had to the moral high ground. So now, weekend after weekend, we see supposed anti-racists and anti-fascists march alongside people chanting for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.

They can dress this up as resistance or anti-imperialism all they want, but it really is nothing of the sort. The supposed left-wingers have embraced barbarism. They've got into bed with bona fide fascists. Identity politics has rotted their brains and their souls.

A while ago we were hearing that "pro-Palestine does not mean pro-Hamas." Except it does and it always has. ever since Hamas was elected in the region. They've been endorsing and supporting terrorists for almost 20 years.

The irony is that there's no more imperialist, colonialist ideology than Islam. The entire objective of Islam is to establish a worldwide Caliphate under which everyone will be subjugated to Allah's sharia, per the quran and the sunnah. And where you won't get to march in the streets chanting pithy slogans against those in power. Instead, you'll be publicly beheaded.

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joetavis · 11 months

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I'm so torn apart, because I loved (and I mean LOVED) Ted Lasso. I watched the first two seasons in two days, barely slept and was obsessed with it. I urged people to watch it, I literally talked about nothing else for weeks.

And then the third season came, and to say it with Roy's words: it's fine (and partly it was shit), but we didn't deserve just fine. We deserved better, the characters deserved better and especially Ted deserved better.

This absolute shitshow of season three paired with a mediocre conclusion to the characters just pisses me off. I don't fucking know what changed with the writers but almost every decision they made in season three was horrible and leaves me super bitter about the final episode that could have been way better.

I like the ending of the team as a sports team, I like Colin's ending, I like that they didn't make Ted and Rebecca end up together (because I like that sometimes people are just friends), u like the Roy and Jamie storyline (even the immature fight I didn't mind), but the even the season told these stories badly.

And I hated so much about the season. I hated that downright immoral THERAPIST/CLIENT relationship. What was that? You would loose your fucking licence for that, how could neither Ted, nor anyone else say something about that, Michelle's new partner should have been anyone else, really. I hated Jack, she was a complete unimportant character, she added nothing except making Keeley's (already wonky) storyline worse. It was a bad relationship. I don't like that they broke up Roy and Keeley for no reason. They should have stayed together. Especially if the Witter's don't even have the guts to show the break up on screen.

Keeley's whole story was horrible. She was a bad CEO (or whatever her position was) the story should have ended with her actually losing her PR-firm. (Because the end with Barbara was a good and heartfelt moment) and maybe let her figure out something better suited for her.

I liked Zava, but I would have preferred if him leaving the team was more of an on-screen moment.

Nate's whole story line is fucked. He shouldn't be with Jade, I don't really understand why she would like him. His dad 'apology' was clearly a lie and did not fit with what we've seen from Nate's Dad before (like I know I told you that you're worthless, but I only wanted you to be happy, what?). Nate was the villain (!) In season two, just like Rebecca in 3, but where she had to apologize to the people she hurt, Nate just came back, and we, the audience, never sees how and why this decision was made.

I was ready to forgive him, I really was, but he doesn't apologize to Colin, only to Ted. And that doesn't sit right with me. Nate's problem was, that he had so little self-worth, that he seeked it through abusing power. He should have apologizes to his Team at West Ham, to Ted, but he should have grown and start to love himself, instead we don't see any of that on screen.

In general I was so disappointed that all big moment were cut from our view and happened 'off-screen'. Like this is a TV-series, this is your purpose. Why would you stop showing us the moments that matter to the story you're telling.

(I know that this CAN be a stylistic device, but if ALL moments happen off screen, it's just lazy and leaves us nothing to watch.)

And lastly: The Lasso Way. That should have been the title of the book, and everyone knows it, especially Trent. And while it is on character for Ted to insist otherwise, The Richmond Way is a shit title, because the Team has always existed, and it was Ted that moved them, that changed them. That's why the series is called Ted Lasso and not AFC Richmond.

It is his story, and like many things season three got wrong, season three forgets about that.

Where were the coaching moments? Where was the inspiration, the kindness, the believe?

A private investigator? Really? Ted Lasso would never? And I still love him, and he had his moments, but there were just overall too little.

The big farewell was too little, too late. Ted Lasso deserved the world, he deserves personal, meaningful goodbye with each of the characters, even with the unimportant side characters, because to Ted, there are no unimportant people. I should have wept, I should be devastated, because yes, of course he has to leave, this is about his son, the most important thing in the world, but the team loves Ted too much for one goodbye dance. We, the audience, love Ted Lasso too much to get this bleak ending.

I loved Ted Lasso. Season one and two changed me as a person, they rewired my brain and I swear, I breathed and bled its essence. Until season three. Season three is so horrible, that I lost all love for the series, and I don't think I can revisit it ever, because I know that season three will come, with only three fine episodes.

#ted lasso #the lasso way

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