World Challenges for the XXIst century

There is an interesting article in The Guardian about the state of freedoms in UK. An excerpt:

Britain has such broadly drawn and elastic surveillance laws that Poole borough council could exploit them to spend two weeks spying on a family wrongly accused of lying on a school application form. The official spies reportedly made copious notes on the movements of the mother and her three children, whom they referred to as “targets”, and watched the family go home at night to establish where they were sleeping. And this is supposed to be modern Britain?

(…) Yes, fighting terrorism requires some restrictions. Yes, you can make a crime reduction case for some CCTV. But we have more CCTV, a larger DNA database and a more ambitious (and unworkable) National Identity Register scheme, as well as more police powers and more email snooping than any comparable liberal democracy. On top of which we have a bureaucracy so centralised and incompetent in managing this mass of data that it lost two computer discs containing the child benefit details of 25 million people.

(…) A couple of years ago I asked a very senior New Labour politician if his government had not got the balance between security and liberty wrong. “Well”, he replied, “one thing I can tell you is that if you ask the British people they will always choose more security.” And this is where the ball comes back to us. Since our leaders are now mainly followers – following the latest opinion poll, focus group or newspaper campaign – it’s up to us, the people, to change their view of what “the people” want.

I really want everyone to read it and to think about it. Are really Governments worrying about their citizens’ security or are they worrying only about their own security?

Some days ago I founded this post from UK Labour MEP Richard Corbett, that (I think) is not a very intelligent man, apart from being a liar. Apart from not letting his own voters (or readers) tell him clearly what do they think about his posts (comments and backlinks are disabled in his blog) he wrote this:

It is particularly sickening that UKIP and Mr Wilders are making themselves to be martyrs in this case, claiming that they are being denied the right to free speech. This is fatuous and they know it. In the same way that the likes of Abu Hamza have been arrested for inciting hatred and violence in Britain, so should Mr Wilders be barred from showing and then discussing a film that, in the words of Dutch Prime Minister Jens Balkenende, serves “no purpose other than to offend”.

Gee, that part written in bold characters, is the most truly funny piece of hypocrisy I have seen written since a long time ago. Why? Just remember what the MI5 told Abu Hamza, when he reached UK preaching violence and hate against non-Muslims: that he could continue doing it, as long as there were no terrorist attacks inside UK:

the cleric told the court that he had been approached in 1997 by officers from MI5 who had indicated that his speeches did not break the law, but who had then modified that view in 2000.

Mr Hamza told the court: “I said, ‘My sermons, is it a problem?’ They said, ‘Well, it’s freedom of speech, you don’t have to worry as long as we don’t see blood on the streets.’

“Only in 2000 they said, ‘We think you are walking on a tightrope’. They said there were some things that they don’t like.”

The preacher said he was also questioned by Special Branch: “They told me they had been watching me since 1994. I asked them myself about being vocal. He said it’s freedom of speech.”

Referring frequently to a copy of the Koran in front of him, Hamza explained his views on the tenets of Islam, claiming that his antipathy for Jews extended only to those who “use Judaism to pass off other ideas such as Zionism, globalisation and certain issues in a way that is harmful to the Muslim nation”.

But there was another worse consequence of Government’s inaction during 25 years in that case: moderate Muslims from Hamza’s mosque denounced him as a rabid hater. But nothing was done about it:

Abdulkadir Barkatullah, one of the management committee ousted by Abu Hamza, said he and community representatives went to the police seven times to complain about assaults and extremist activities inside the mosque. No action was taken.

The Prime Minister had urged the Muslim community to do more about the scourge of extremism within its own ranks but, Barkatullah said, “When we did do precisely that with Abu Hamza, we were ignored.”

And that even when everyone told British Government he was a rabid hater preacher:

If those who raised the alarm at home were overlooked, then foreign intelligence agencies were discounted. Those of France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands all accused Abu Hamza of being the ringmaster of a terrorist operation. The French and the Algerians had spies inside the mosque, and were horrified at what they uncovered. Egypt wanted to swap a British prisoner for Abu Hamza. All shared their findings with Whitehall, but nothing happened.

Read it all.

So, what is really this reduction of freedoms for? Is it really for defending citizens? For fighting terrorism? Are we really sure?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Islamism, Society, terrorism.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.