I haven't been away from it but rather, it's been taken from me by the Labour party conference. Everywhere you look, you see Labour posters hanging from street lamps, the streets are full of policemen carrying automatic weapons and the air is decidedly un-Brightonesque and so are the goings on.
Last week, Paul, who's doing some J2EE programming for us on a current project and who cycles in to work told me that the police had closed off the cycle-lane by the sea-side. No doubt afraid of suicide bombers on bicycles pedalling into the conference. Unfortunately, as a sorry example of the state of affairs, there actually have been suicide bombings, in Iraq and Israel at least, where suicide bombers did use bicycles.
We need a stronger word than madness, it just doesn't cut it any more.
Yesterday, Walter Wolfgang, an 82-year man who fled Nazi Germany and who has been a member of the Labour party for over fifty years was forcibly removed from the Labour conference and held under the Terrorism Act. His crime? Yelling out "That's a lie and you know it" during Foreign Minister Jack Straw's speech when he stated (apparently with a straight face) "We are in Iraq for one reason only - to help the elected Iraqi government build a secure, democratic and stable nation - and we can and will only remain with their consent." He later reportedly yelled "Nonsense!" when Jack Straw tried to compare Iraq to Germany after World War II.
This led to widespread criticism. My favorite being the Conference Sketch in the Telegraph that concludes "The Blairite regime has suffered a disaster in its battle for hearts and minds. Last night it was loading its possessions into armour-plated limousines and preparing to abandon Brighton."
Tony Blair issued an apology today but it had more to do with Mr. Wolfgang's age than his being thrown out for voicing his opinion or his being held under the Terrorism Act. "We will obviously have to make sure in the future when that happens and someone is elderly ... we should make sure that people handle it sensitively." So what about when someone is not elderly, Blair?
In other news, the family of an innocent man who was murdered on the London Underground by being shot repeatedly in the head by police are in London to visit the scene of their son's death. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was killed aboard a subway train on July 22 when police misidentified him as a terrorist. There is currently an investigation into the apparent cover-up that followed the incident. The police did nothing wrong in that case according to the current law in the United Kingdom which allows them to shoot and kill anyone they believe to be a potential terrorist.
It is a very scary time indeed to be living in this country. I, personally, am unsure which fundamental freedoms we still have under the Terrorism Act and have some reading up to do...
The Troubling times article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Once again Aral, I am very happy that you bring this up. I completely agree with you and find it very interesting and important to hear someone English analyzing things in a slightly more critical way. I wish more Danish people would do the same in Denmark. At times I am not exactly proud of being Danish.
I think it is incredible that people so easily give up their well deserved freedom for the illusion of being more safe from “the evil”. I think it is unbelievable that people just blindly “eat” whatever the government says.
What scares me is that instead of using the terrorism incidents as a wakeup call so they’d take care of the Middle East issues, they’re spinning it to provide justification for removing liberties and advancing their political agendas which have little to do with fixing the situation. I mean it doesn’t take a lot to figure out that the rise of radicals, oppressive regimes, an increasing disparity between rich and poor, thirst for oil and US foreign policy are all more or less interrelated.
Thankfully I’m in Canada which has entertained the idea of having its own foreign policy at the price of economic sanction from the US government. I’m betting though they’ll pass similar laws by the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, with arguments along the lines of “If we can’t freely arrest people or shoot at them, this is going to turn into Atlanta/Munich/London/NY/whoever got bombed last”. The worst part is that people are going to eat it up, just like they did in 1970 when the FLQ kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte. The Trudeau government instilled war measures, and they wrongfully arrested a bunch of left-leaning French people (several hundred actually), to ‘protect the people’. With friends like that, no need for enemies
Guys, you don’t seem to realize how lucky you are living outside Russia
or Denmark.
Although i believe there are a plenty of places even worse but that’s definately
NOT UK (especially Brighton and London which i’m absolutely crazy for
Cheers,
Alex
I think the whole fear experience is quite subjective as Alex pointed out, but it is incumbant on those of us that disagree with this new governmental paradigm to actually speak out loud and speak out early. Here in the US it was hard for us to speak out against fear and war mongering because of some self imposed censure after 9/11. It was a mistake that citizens and journalists made that only helped to excacerbate the situation here to the critical levels we see today.