Slashdot Mirror
Some Rights May Have To Be 'Eroded' For Safety
Turn-X Alphonse writes "The BBC is reporting on a speech given by the head of MI5 in the UK. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller claims in the future some civil rights may have to 'erode', in order to keep everyone in the country safe from terrorism." From the article: "MI5 has recently let it be known that it is in favour of making telephone intercept evidence admissible in court. Previously the intelligence and security services had expressed concern such that evidence might reveal operational details. Meanwhile, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has been calling for EU states to keep mobile phone and e-mail records for longer, to help fight terrorism and crime."
Yet another great one from Alan Moore, soon to be a disowned waterdown hollywood lackluster (he's already disowned it). However the actual comic is exactly what this so-called erosion of rights is all about. If your going to allow this in the UK or anywhere else you need to do two things;
Bring your own KY Jelly.
Grab your ankles really really tight.
and I want you to know speaking as a life long leftist, I have NO SYMPATHY FOR YOU.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
People used to die all the time. And they still do, in car crashes and victims of poverty or drugs. It was 3k people that died here and what a couple hundred in britain? It's small potatoes. Maybe that offends somebody that knows somebody who died but people die all the time regardless.
An exploding subway is annoying and scary, but it's not a serious threat to our way of life. But taking away our democracy is a serious threat to our way of life. The only actual solution to a biological or nuclear threat is to restructure our society into islands with less interaction. Kinda like a jail with a village in each cell. You might know your neighbors too and you wouldn't even have to rat on them! It might be a good thing, if only that's what we were talking about instead of more politburos.
You've quite possibly written the stupidest thing I've ever read.
>>An exploding subway is annoying and scary, but it's not a serious threat to our way of life.
And neither is a collapsing skyscraper? Oh,well, then... what the hell. I guess we're all just overreacting! I mean, what's a few thousand countrymen dead just because some brutal fuck wants his 71 virgins? But first, before you answer that rhetorical question, I'd like to try a little test. Let me turn this around then and see how you like it.
I propose that cannibal child molestors not be arrested nor prosecuted. After all, children die all the time. And canibals only eat a few every year. What the hell? It's not a serious threat to our way of life.
Outrageous, isn't it? See. It's not about numbers, it's about INTENT. Evil is evil, and if you can't see the difference, then you're a fool at best and a co-conspirator at worst.
If you don't think that radical islamic fundamentalists will take away your precious freedoms, then you're sorely ignorant of modern and recent history. One needs look back no further than Afghanistan circa 5 years ago to find evidence of the hideous brutality of the terrorists' intent. The sore of islamic ignorance has been allowed to fester for forty years, unchecked and fueled by proceeds from drug trade and oil sale. Now, they've brought the fight to the Western World and we can either respond with fight or surrender. Radical islam is a threat to our way of life, even if cowards and fools such as you choose ignorance over courage.
My father grew up within a society that valued "being a man": being responsible for your own station in life...
Would this be the same times when a woman "did what she was told", "children were seen, not heard", or when civil rights for minorities were but a pipe-dream? Would this be the time when McCarthyism was running rampant out of control? Or while Hoover was "dressing up"? Maybe it was while the Americans were fulfilling their "Manifest Destiny". Maybe it was during the depression...oh, those were the days.
And you knew who you were then... Girls were girls and men were men...
Whatever happened to "there's no time like the present"? We only have two things that we didn't have in the past, easy travel(made needlessly difficult by bureaucracy) and instant communications. Other that those, very little has changed in 5000 years. War, famine, and disease have not diminished much. They simply relocate.
What?
Admittedly there are differences - most of the struggle against the IRA was carried out in Northern Ireland and occasionally the Republic, and they did things there like death squads and imprisonment in inhuman conditions that they didn't do much of in England, whereas now the threat is dispersed around the world in places that are no longer British colonies, so they're doing more in England itself. But it's still appalling dishonesty on the part of the politicians.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Huh? If I loan you, $100, you have $100 to stimulate the economy or generate more money/happiness for yourself.
You can spend $100 on Marx's books (stimulates the book industry)
You can spend $100 screening your own Che T-shirts to sell for $300.
You can spend $100 on buying your marijuana, stimulating the drug economy or reselling it for $200.
You can spend $100 on posters and signs for your Vote Nader rally, stimulating the paper industry.
You can spend $100 on your porn sites, stimulating yourself and the internet industry.
And my post gets modded troll. My post had nothing but one ad hominem, but the socialist high school mods here don't agree with me, so I'm a troll.
I'm the OP.
Welcome to Slashdot, Comrade. If you'd like to be modded up in a political discussion, please write an angry diatribe railing against Bush, corporations, Christians, Fox News, or capitalism in general. Dissenting opinions, regardless of presentation, are not welcome.
Please don't blame the Mayor of New Orleans...he is black, after all. Didn't you hear? The people in NO died because Bush doesn't care about black people.