Slashdot Mirror
Is the West Building Its Own Iron Curtain?
New submitter pefisher writes "The British are apparently admitting that they track their citizens as they travel the world (through information provided by intelligence agencies) and are arresting them if they have been somewhere that frightens them. 'Sir Peter, who leads the Association of Chief Police Officer's "Prevent" strategy on counter-terrorism, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that those returning from Syria "may well be charged and investigated, but they will be put into our programmes".' The program seems to consist of being spied on by the returnee's cooperative neighbors."
The Iron Curtain kept people from escaping from oppressive regimes. This article is just talking about prosecuting people who have been fighting for terrorists, and scrutinizing those suspected of hanging around with terrorists. It has auras of creepy surveillance, but definitely is not an Iron Curtain.
In discussions about government spying and surveillance, there is often a vocal group who says "if you don't have anything to hide, then this spying should not bother you."
The counter argument is that governments have tended to take information they are given and when the right person is in power, or the right sentiment strikes the public, those programs are expanded and distorted beyond their original intent.
I'm sure in the 1970s and 1980s when these programs were first beginning to be set up, they had noble intentions of only ever targeting known criminals and spys, and eventually were justified by saying that if makes people feel more secure in a post-9/11 world.
But the reality is, even without these programs, we live in the safest time that humanity has ever seen. The odds of dying of a freak accident like choking on a grape are more real to the average person than terrorism, or crime.
This is not the right solution to this invented problem.
The notion of this being an Iron Curtain is a bit silly IMHO.
However every country on Earth has laws against their citizens defecting to the enemy, and serving as enemy combatants. Why should Muslims get a free pass, because it's currently unfashionable to call them out on antisocial and illegal behaviour (under the rubric of "anti racism")?
You don't, as a Muslim or anybody else, move to the land of milk and honey, take advantage, and then go and wage war against your country's interests. If you do so, then your adopted country is well within its rights to deal with you as they would any traitor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Nuff said
The Iron Curtain's primary goal was to keep the information (about West's superiority) out — and own citizenry in.
As long as the British are free to leave their country, things are Ok... Letz, I believe, once said: "A country you can leave is the country you can live in."
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
More seriously, it is getting a bit that way here and the idea that you can be held simply for travelling to a country the government of the day doesn't like is outrageous.
For a start anything you do outside the country is none of their damn business. Secondly people may well have very legitimate reasons for going, perhaps they have friends/family there, perhaps they're working for an aid agency, amnesty, independent media or doctors without borders? This country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Additionally, this scumbag government is trying to get rid of the human rights act and withdraw us from the european convention on human rights, the tabloid fodder they're using to justify it is that prisoners may get the vote if we stay in. (which they should have anyway, they're supposed to lose their liberty, that is all, not be tortured/raped/beaten in private prisons or detention centres and not disenfranchised.)
There are British citizens or residents who, in a private capacity, engage in armed conflict abroad, often due to alliegance to ideologies and religious beliefs that deem their home country to be a target, and they come to the attention of the state, and other states who also fear being targeted by the same people for the same reasons. They may have to explain themsleves on their return home, and may be arrested if suspected of criminal activity. In the mind of some slashdot submitters and editors this can apparently be equated to the imprisonment of hundreds of millions of people, and the killing of many hundreds or even thousands simply for trying to travel abroad.
Dear fucking cretins at slashdot,
here is a small hint: there was no equivalent of Heathrow or Gatwick airports or Dover or Southampton ferry ports in the DDR, the USSR, or any of the other "people's" republics. If you're British and you want to travel abroad do you know how hard it is? You go to the ferry port and get on a ferry. You need some money and some ID such as a driver's license. That's it.
I'm pleased that people who train for and engage in murder and kidnapping are actually faced with the prospect of being held to account, whether they do it here or in Syria or Pakistan or Ulster or anywhere else.
So if you think just getting on a boat or aplane and crossing a national boundary should amount to a license to do as you please and some kind of immunity then just fuck off and get a clue or if that is too difficult maybe you can ask mommy, but please stop whining and regurgitating your misunderstandings, half truths, and flat out lies.
Well, George Orwell, who was British, wrote the novel.
Spot on. I just lost my modpoints, or I wouldn't be commenting, I'd be promoting.
Like all rational policy, there needs to be some sort of risk/reward analysis objectively performed on the "security" aparatus in the West. For 100 years of claiming superiority as the "first" world, we seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater at an alarming rate seemingly in reaction to the various growing pains in the "second" (and, in some cases, "third") world. What happened to our example? Even more frighteningly, what WILL happen? The massive security aparatus of the West (and, obviously, the US first and foremost) represents an enormous risk to future security of the freeman. And, it counters an absolutely miniscule risk in comparison. This is no sensible policy. I pray to God (literally) that this is reversible.
After WWII, technology grew by leaps and bounds, and lots of naive optimism about how we'd have a leisure society or end world hunger. Instead we're regressing to how humans have always behaved: high school students with armies.
Iron curtain, no. Stasi, maybe.
This Britain is where 2014 is actually happening, and is making 1984 look outdated, and optimistic.
I pray to God (literally) that this is reversible.
I see. Well, thanks for nothing. Some of us are trying to do something about it. Maybe you could help instead of chatting to your invisible friends about it...
> Geopolitics make for strange bedfellows [...]
And we should approve of all this because?
Listen. I can understand why a Palestinian who has lost half of its family to Israeli bombings blows himself up taking with him a bus of Israeli schoolchildren. *That doesn't mean that I approve of that!*. It stays an horrible act and shouldn't have happened.
I can understand that Oliver North, Keith Alexander or whoever does the nasties he does. *But still, as a citizen, I stay firm that those are no-nos and they should be chased off their positions, because they're harming democracy*