UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida 681
D Afifi writes "Two political researchers at the University of Nottingham, in the UK, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for downloading Al-Qaida material from a US government website. The material was to be used for research in terrorist tactics. There has been a huge public outcry, with university staff planning a march to demonstrate against the attack on academic freedom. Yet, one of the students, an Algerian, is still held in custody under immigration charges and is being fast-tracked for deportation."
No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an awful state of affairs when academics are being prosecuted under terror legislation.
I've lost all faith in the the UK and US governments since 9/11.
~Rob
they need to spread fear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear is a common tactic used since the begging of civilization to manipulate people.
- Zeus will destroy you all!
- The devil will come for you and burn you for all eternity!
- Terrorists! omg! seek shelter at once!
Spread it around? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is proof they are not terrorists: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's like reading an article on how to improve your country's economy written by George Bush.
No offense to any American's reading btw - it's the agencies I have no respect for.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wanted to clarify why he's being deported. The brits' reaction to the downloading of the document was a bit extreme, but if ya want to live in a country then ya gotta play by their(sometimes idiotic) rules.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe in the central US we get a different class of immigrants than those Britain deals with -- but the folks I meet here are smart, hard-working, well-educated, practical people more interested in good lives for themselves and their families than ideology from back home.
s/freedom/security/g (Score:4, Insightful)
Another line a long line of insults (Score:3, Insightful)
The quotations of American and British patriots that warn that liberty at the cost of security is folly are now sadly worn out. My British friends have less hope because they believe that Tory and Labor, just like Democrats and Republicans, are largely the same. This is a dangerous time in the world for people not to believe in the integrity and veracity of their governments; more is at stake in interdependency than ever before. I hope, no pray, they listen to their constituents.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
~Rob
Terror (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they need to spread fear... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Pete Townsend defense, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Knowing terrorist tactics neither makes you a threat nor makes you a terrorist.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here is proof they are not terrorists: (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, we (the U.S.) did invade a foreign country, kill their leader and throw it into violent chaos. Sounds like terrorism to me. Maybe those UK folks are onto something.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
More like "Brazil" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another line a long line of insults (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, they didn't say it was a competently planned war for oil.
University admin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Pete Townsend defense, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe in the central US we get a different class of immigrants than those Britain deals with -- but the folks I meet here are smart, hard-working, well-educated, practical people more interested in good lives for themselves and their families than ideology from back home.
This isn't Kansas we're talking about
It's not just the class of immigrant, it's the fact that US culture is far more assimilationist. The fact is that in the UK, there are a large number of angry muslim men, and there are muslim preachers (or have been before they were arrested) who openly preach the message of terrorism.
Maybe this was a false alarm (maybe it wasn't), but don't you think there would be many people in the US who would be happy if Mohammed Atta had of been arrested on similar charges. Well no, of course, they wouldn't know what had been prevented and instead would be righteously discussing what a terrible infringement of free speech poor Mr Atta had been subjected to.
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Immigrant. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the guy is "Facing Imminent Deportation Without Hearing" and that's the real issue here. Looks like the police just wants him swept under the rug. As reported, he has a visa, but there are questions: due to confusion over his visa documentation, charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He sought legal advice and representation regarding these matters whilst in custody. On Friday 23rd May, the Home Office informed his solicitor that he was being removed on Sunday 1st June and Hicham was moved to an immigration detention centre. Now, is it reasonable to deport someone (who lived in the country for 13 years) within only 7 days, without proper court hearings, presentation of witnesses, debates about the applicable law? The Home Office just wants him out, and with him being out there will be no hearings, and no inconvenient truth will come out. But until his status is investigated, and his lawyers can speak for him and argue his status, we can not say that he is legal or illegal immigrant. That is to be determined, and the fight is for his right to be heard in court, and his status determined by the judge - not by a bureaucrat.
Re:There is NOTHING wrong with this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing that Mr AC doesn't remember that other 'terrorist' attack in the US. Down in Oklahoma? Memory getting better? There is very little reason to think that a Muslim is more likely than a white to create an act of great violence inside the US borders... school shootings anyone? Kent state? There are lots of examples. My how the black man cheered when the DC snipers turned out to be black... their first notable serial mass murderer. Up till then, all mass murderers were expected to be white.
How many Muslims are in the world?
Of that, 25 or so have attacked US citizens. Lets be generous and say 50 have attacked western countries. That amounts to... uhmmmm about 3.1047801194719389972802126153426e-6 percent of the Muslim population seems to be hell bent on knocking down buildings. The rest are trying to survive where they are. That, by the way, is a huge bunch of non-violent Muslims. Racial profiling does seem to make sense on face value, but dig a bit deeper and you find that the risk of violence from not invading privacy and personal rights is smaller than
I don't care if you are afraid of shadows, diminishing MY rights because of your irrational fears is still wrong, will always be wrong, and always has been WRONG.
Thanks for playing
Re:Immigrant. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another line a long line of insults (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the definition of terrorist anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
except there is still a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
But there is something fundamentally wrong with the government if you're an academic and visiting a web site brings you to the attention of the immigration departmnet in the first place.
An alternative approach to change? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why aren't we actively protesting to those people? These people are responsible for their actions and are responsible for acting on their own conscience. It's easy to show that various campaigns to influence government policy and direction even in small degrees.
How possible might it be to influence the arms and legs of bad government to refuse to act against its conscience?
Re:There is NOTHING wrong with this (Score:3, Insightful)
Well considering they're in the UK and getting it off a US site, entrapment would probably be a far stretch.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tagged (Score:2, Insightful)
Mr. Atta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell I dont care anymore now... The only real thing you can do to stop the terrorists is to stop being afraid. 9/11 happened *1* time and in *1* place... The odds of you dying in a terrorist attack are infinitesimally small... You'd have a better shot at winning the lottery.
The only thing you can do is be smart and sensible about security.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, what if I don't want to live in a country? What choice do I have? Who has the right to tell me I must live in some country, or choose where they're going to send me when I don't live in it? I pretty much have to live in Antarctica.
That is simply not reasonable. When countries form a cover of all the reasonably habitable land, then people who seek personal freedom have nowhere to go. There is no more freedom. This has led to my own working definition of overpopulation.
Re:Another line a long line of insults (Score:4, Insightful)
In the UK and in the EU, the price of fuel is far higher. Still, mass transportation and dealing with the high price is assuaged by decades of astute planning. Instead, we in the US have been spending money on airports without thought to what might happen if air travel wasn't quite as cost-effective sometime in the future. And we've built endless strip malls designed around people with cheap fuel to burn to get to them, rather then neighborhood-focused, easily/cheaply accessible shops.
Oil was bound to skyrocket at some point, but in the US, our preparation for such disasters is very poor; look at Katrina and how the fabric of a vibrant economy went to hell in just six hours, lasting until who knows when?
due process? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wanted to clarify that the UK still has due process. Being *charged* with an immigration crime is not the same as being guilty of said crime. Your reaction to the arrest was a bit extreme, but if ya want to have free speech then ya gotta put up with reactionary (sometimes total bullshit) posts on message boards.
Re:No surprise... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Pete Townsend defense, eh? (Score:1, Insightful)
The question on your mind really should be "How many people have researched terrorist tactics before they went off and killed no one?" TLAs are a good place to start looking -- they're full of people who specialize in terrorism. Military men of all stripes are now familiar with at least the basics of urban guerrilla warfare. Curious gawkers, military aficionados, Medal of Honor players.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but you don't often hear that.
You can get into the US if you have a job offer.
Or just walk across the border.
Re:Another line a long line of insults (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mohammed Haneef, an Indian doctor in Queensland was arrested by the federal government over the most idiotically flimsy link to the airport attacks in the UK one could imagine.
Well, it quickly became was pretty clear they had nothing on him. In fact the government had so little on him that they purposefully and carefully fabricated, spun and lied to the press about what they did have on him. It all began to unravel and the truth came out thanks to his lawyer and a healthy grain of salt taken with the obvious rubbish the government was dishing out, so what do they do? Try cancel his visa on "Character Grounds" so that they can deport him before it gets to the courts and people find out how ruthless, and quite frankly evil that that particular government was being. Fortunately the courts saw through their bullshit and gave him back his Visa.
The government eventually dropped all charges, being that it had all been shown to be an obvious and complete farce.
The immigration line is bullshit, ALL immigrants in western countries can be deported for any reason what-so-ever if the respective Depts of Immi get told to get rid of them.
Mark my words this bloke's being deported because it's going to be an embarrassment to the government. It's the easiest way for them to get rid of him.
The worst thing is so many fools buy it hook, line and sinker. just like they did here with Haneef, there was plenty of people left looking like idiots when it came out what the government really was up to. Four months later that government (that had been in power for 12 years) was swept out of power in the biggest loss of power by a government in this countries history. It was that sort of dishonest, ruthless behaviour that caused it.
Hopefully the UK will be next.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:University admin (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like Baldrick has a cunning plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
well, obviously (Score:1, Insightful)
We had a War On Poverty, which widened the gap between rich and poor.
We're in a War On Terror, and there is more war and fear and uncertainty about the future of the world than at any other time since World War II.
What makes you think a War For Oil would mean more oil?
Just like all of these other wars on concepts, the War For Oil means two things. Firstly, the oil is not for you, and the control of said oil is not for your benefit. Secondly, thanks to Hubbert's Peak, the war was probably already lost before it started.
(AC: posting from work)
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kansas or not, I'm pretty certain you didn't bother to read the article.
I did.
From the material presented, this is a pretty obvious case of abuse of power.
Please re-read my comment, I'm working on the presumption that it was a false alarm, I mention paranthetically that it may not have been. Nothing in the quote you cite (nor anything mentioned elsewhere in the article) pursuades me either way. Specifically ...
Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research.I'm reminded of the surprise and discomfort of Prof Fulton (an historian specialising in the history of facsism) when he became aware that the student he'd accepted to do a masters thesis on the organisational methods of the NSDAP was none other than Jim Saleem [wikipedia.org]. Moral of the story, interest in researching a subject does not conclusively indicate that a student is uninvolved in the subject being researched.
More pursuasive is the fact that they let Rizwaan go.
That being said, this was a power made for abuse, arresting people without charge and holding them for 6 days is an outrage. So is blowing people up on the bus to work. This question is not an unproblematic. I'm not actually supporting what was done. I'm just trying to slow people down a bit and get them to think before they get on their high horses and deal with this as if the academic and individual rights was the only side of the equation. ie. I'm being the devil's advocate (which is why I'm posting AC, this is not actually my personal position.
The last paragraph was really in the way of a Gedankenexperiment. It's possible the German police could have arrested Atta on something as slight as suspicious personal associations (which there were), or dangerous reading materials. And we would be here ponitificating about the evil Germans falling back into their old ways. Tell me we wouldn't.
Please read the source material and comment afterward. If your opinion differs, please provide relevant citations supporting your position.
Don't be such a prat! I'm allowed draw a different conclusion from you on the basis of the same text. I obviously read more carefully and don't make presumptions as freely as you. You had as little basis for assuming that I had not read the article, as you have for presuming Rizwaan's innocence.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when did invading countries and wasting money = making you any safer?
Re:Immigrant. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:except there is still a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Well its a good thing they cant lock me up for a month without proving i did anything wrong?
Oh well at least there's no chance that they'll just turn blind eye while i go for a vacation on the Cuban cost?
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
But since you're just beating the straw out of that poor man, I suppose you don't really care what I have to say.
Re:There is NOTHING wrong with this (Score:5, Insightful)
As an atheist, I am a little disturbed how you said:
Is this supposed to imply you'd EXPECT such behaviour from those of us with no belief in a higher power?! Or even consider it to be more likely?
Atheists are, in general, far LESS likely to tend towards extreme terrorist acts than religious people, for the simple fact that we are pretty well convinced that when we die it's GAME OVER - no afterlife - NOTHING is worth dying for. Plus of course, we are in general a more intelligent bunch (on the average... there are smart religious people, and dumb atheists, but averaged out, we're smarter) and fully realise that any kind of behaviour like this is pretty likely to get us killed, even if it's not a suicide attack specifically.
You weren't in Northern Ireland a decade or two back were you?
I consider most religions to be very dangerous things that can lead people to doing horrible things, but I don't consider Islam to be any more dangerous than Christianity. The religious texts are very similar (in fact, a lot of the religious texts are the same) and the standard teachings of peace and love are also identical. If you go to an average Islamic religious service, you'll hear exactly the same things being preached to the people there as if you went to an average Christian one. You could cherry pick and find an extremist Islamic teacher, and the same could be done for Christianity.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teela_Brown [wikipedia.org]
Re:BBC (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a gross mistake anyway, but it's a quite a bit less 1984-ish than one might think from the summary.
The fact that university staff was behind it is worse than if it were just the police. If the government is evil but the populace is pure then you have hope. If the populace is complicit in the evil then it becomes vastly harder to get rid of it.
what are you doing reading this slashdot news? (Score:2, Insightful)
In some jurisdictions you'd be put on a list just for reading this post on slashdot.
Come to think of it, imagine what they'd do to you if you actually bothered to type a response and pressed sub...
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, the idea that the UK is a hairs breadth from going Sharia is utter bullshit put out by the right-wing media to scare people.
The actual threat in this country comes from the far right whose rhetoric you are mouthing. The BNP, with financial support from certain people in America, managed to basically double their share of the vote each time over the past few elections. The Daily Wail and other such trash papers have got about 60% percentage of the British public believing in key BNP policy points.
Our main threat is not from angry young Muslims who wouldn't know an explosive device from a gas canister. The threat is from white youths who attack racial minorities converting that undirected anger into support of a fascist regime.
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's all right then. No, of course there have never been any problems with terrorism in the UK before the eeeeevil Muslims came.
Re:Sounds like Baldrick has a cunning plan... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is NOTHING wrong with this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure that it isn't just that they basically want to be non-starving?
I really do suspect that most of them, if they could be just as well off (money, safety and a future for their kids, etc.) back home, would be outta here like a shot.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like it's going to happen any day now, but it's Britain's future. It's the future of many European countries. Societies consists of people, so what do you think is going to happen when the majority of the population consists of people who think Sharia law is a jolly good idea? This is only a matter of time due to immigration and birth rates. There are already many "no-go" zones in Europe that are off limits, or at the very least unfriendly, to white people. Here's [jihadwatch.org] just one example from Denmark, and here's [jihadwatch.org] another from Britain.
The only reason parties like the BNP can gain power is because they're the only ones willing to do anything. People have no alternatives. Of course, if it wasn't for Britain's suicidal policy of "multiculturalism," this problem would not even exist.
Yes, it is very fortunate that Muslim terrorists have no yet struck in Britain. But seriously, it's not terrorism that's the real problem. Terrorism is a non-issue compared to some of the other problems that Britain is facing.
It's possible that white people attacking racial minorities (well, minorities for now) will become an issue in the future, but the only reason it will happen is because people will be given no choice. Their government has sold them down the river, and aside from voting for parties like the BNP they have no legal means of resistance. The cultural, religious and racial segregation enforced by Muslims inevitable and unavoidably results in violence and instability. Possibly even civil war.
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
In these cases, and probably in your cited one, the innocents were condemned to appease the clamouring masses, rather than to serve any form of justice. And when such individuals make weak judgements initially, it is hardly surprising that they make even weaker ones when pressed further. 'Rock and a Hard Place' as it were.
Political democracy is at fault here, in that the 'masses' are generally as guilty of such ignorance as the politicians - not that I'd change it, but it is important that 'the system' can correct itself, as it seems to have done in the Australian cases.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds exactly like assimilation to me. After all, you're saying they're behaving exactly the same as the Italians, the Polish, the Irish, and every other previous group of immigrants who came to America behaved when they arrived. They all wanted to keep their culture, too. And they all did, in fact. "Assimilation" into to America has never meant not keeping your culture, it's always been making your culture a part of America. It's also always been the case that the first generation never really fully plugs into things like language -- wasn't too long ago where you had to speak to your friend Tony's dad through him unless you knew Italian. And so on. I don't doubt all the things you said are true, the only false statement is the part where you say "Unlike previous waves of American immigrants" rather than "Exactly like all the previous waves of American immigrants".
As for your border policy, I think that kinda sucks. Border policy should be pretty simple: is this guy a known criminal? If so, deny entry or arrest and extradite him. If not, let him go to whichever side of the fence he wants, because the government has no right to restrict the liberty of any person barring criminal behavior. What bizarre value system gives government to right to dictate the movements of supposedly free people? Doesn't make any sense to me.
Re:they need to spread fear... (Score:4, Insightful)
We were told repeatedly at the time that to change the way that we did things, to impose draconian measures, would be counter productive in that it would be seen as a success by the terrorists. The best thing that we could do would be to look out for anything suspicious but carry on our normal lives much the same as before.
What has changed? The IRA were a credible threat, carried out multiple attacks, but we didn't need huge changes in daily life or restrictions to freedom, to deal with them. Why do we need them now?
"Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Any reports to the contrary are mistaken." - George Orwell, 1984.
Substitute 'The West' and 'Al Qaeda' and you have today's situation. The 'War on Terror' whilst a real, but insignificant threat, is as useful to the UK government as the war in 1984. It allows them to engender a climate of fear and get people to accept restrictions on liberties that would not otherwise be tolerated.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
This tripped my sarcasm detector; apologies if it was meant to be serious. Blaming everybody is exactly the problem - it ignores the fact that violent, extremist Muslims are a tiny minority of the Muslim population. Terrorists may be Muslim in most cases, but it does not follow that all Muslims are terrorists.
Many indigenous Britons are not loyal to the United Kingdom as a single entity, myself included, but I'll admit that that's not quite the same thing once you consider the UK as a union of four nations.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you will find there are very few racist attacks by white people in the UK now, it seems to me that most people now have been brought up living and working with black and asian people for so long that this sort of racial tension is largely a thing of the past. The main problem we have to deal with are the pockets of society who do not subscribe to or have little interaction with mainstream British culture and now that the spectre of multiculturalism is being well and truly put to the sword there is a good chance this can be addressed through simply initiatives such as making sure everyone here can speak English and taking away the props we have provided which have worked to ensure people didn't have to take part in mainstream British culture if they didn't want to.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's already precedent [wikipedia.org] for the transformation of culture and religion (taking the two as one and the same at the time) through the use of violence within the UK.
Re:except there is still a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, he is, and he's right, and you're wrong. It's truly frighting how many people think government investigation of "thought crimes" is a good idea.
There IS something fundamentally wrong with a government if how it treats you is AT ALL based on what you're reading. The fact that the government even knows what you're reading is fundamentally wrong. And I don't have to know a flying frak about what you're reading to be in a position to say that.
Re:No surprise... (Score:2, Insightful)
They're called generalizations. Generally speaking, Muslims do not believe in peaceful co-existence with other religions.
Let me guess: you believe your limited personal experiences can accurately describe the entire world, and you believe information is only valid when it's acquired through direct personal experience? I'm also going to guess that if I said "some Muslims robbed me, ergo most Muslims are robbers" you would disregard it as a stupid generalization, even though it's exactly the same thing.
Thanks to the Internet and other forms of modern communication, there's an infinite amount of information available to anyone who wants it. That's what my views are based on. If you simply rely on direct personal experience, you'll know nothing, because the world is too big for that (unless you have a very, very substantial amount of experience). Even if you read the news on a daily basis, you'll still have only a superficial grasp on all the things that Muslims say and do, which is why it would be a better idea to read sites that specialize in the subject (analogy: if you want to know what's going on in the Half-Life community, it's better to read Planet Half-Life rather than a generic gaming site). That's what I do.
Simply put, your pool of information is too small to be worth anything.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod this fucking idiot down (Score:2, Insightful)
Yo renounce your citizenship you clown, it happens all the time.
Oh please shut the fuck up. You don't want "personal freedom" as it really exists, because if you did you could just move to one of the many near lawless locations ALL OVER THE FUCKING WORLD where you could have all the freedom you like.
But that's REAL freedom, i.e., the unsafe, unclean, unruly, uncivilized kind. The kind of freedom people talk about wanting until they have it.
You want the safe, clean, happy freedom that so many people idealize, without appreciating that it's artificial and never lasts.
Long story short, move to Africa. You can get "freedom" out the ass, just don't be a crybaby when you realize the true cost.
Re:There is NOTHING wrong with this (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly, I see this argument all the time from religious folk, but have never met another atheist that would agree with this. This really seems to be the "religious person's view of the atheist mind" rather than the actual "atheist mind".
I am an atheist, and I don't want to die. The fact that there's no "judgement" doesn't comfort me in the least! I fully intend to live as long as I possibly can, and have as happy a life as I can during that time.
I believe the argument about there being no "judgement" allowing an atheist to do whatever he wants (including be very evil) fails to account for the fact that there's also no GOOD REASON to be very evil. Religious folk can say, "I did it because my deity commanded it" or similar. Atheists don't have that. So, the only reason to do bad things is to gain power. And most of us are clever enough to realise that this generally doesn't work. (note: MOST, not all - there have been some pretty nasty atheists in history, but that's because they're nasty PEOPLE, not because they're atheists)
Ummmm (Score:3, Insightful)
So, in actual free nations, we have to work towards a balance of freedoms. You have to make sure that one person's freedoms don't infringe on another person's freedoms. That way everyone can be free to do pretty much what they want, and not have to worry about others forcing their will on them.
If you can't accept that kind of freedom, well, then you are a very selfish individual.
Re:they need to spread fear... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's changed is that the generation who remembered WWII weren't mostly dead or too old to care when the main IRA bombing campaigns were taking place, and they were (a) extremely difficult to intimidate because both they and their parents (the WWI generation) had experienced far worse things; and (b) extremely sensitive to anything that was too authoritarian because there were two living generations who'd paid an extremely high price to keep it out of their country.
And because most of those in the three main political parties in both houses also came from those two generations, they were likewise extremely suspicious of anyone who proposed authoritarian laws, so it would have been very difficult for anybody to get such things through parliament irrespective of whether they happened to be in government at the time.
"Why do we need them now?"
They aren't needed, but they're still passed by politicians and tolerated by the public (many of whom seem to welcome them) because people who haven't had to fight and die for their freedoms don't venerate them in the same way as those who paid the cost of preserving them against authoritarian regimes who wanted to take them away by force.
"The 'War on Terror' whilst a real, but insignificant threat, is as useful to the UK government as the war in 1984."
The difference of course being that George Orwell was writing in the 1940s, and therefore wasn't incapable of imagining that the British would turn into a bunch of whining pussies, so Eastasia was presented by the authoritarian government as being a gigantic power, not a few hundred loosely associated religious fanatics who killed far less people in all their operations combined than Britain lost on a single morning at The Somme in 1916.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
The BNP are the only ones willing to 'do anything'? If by 'do anything' you mean turn Britain into a fascist state, then yes. They advocate ethnic cleansing and military expansionism - including the insane policy of reclaiming the Republic of Ireland by force.
Your comments regarding the BNP betray your far right sympathies. You are one of the many fascist scum rotting this country from the inside as you worship Enoch Powell's ghost and long to return to our blood-stained imperial past. You, not the immigrants, will destroy this country.
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been reading articles that hypothesize that in a few decades, that much of Europe as we know it...culture, etc, will pretty much cease to exist. With the low birthrate of 'native' peoples, like in the UK...countered with the higher birthrate of the muslim population over there....they will be overrun soon. The new voting block of muslims will put them in more and more power democratically. I have to imagine that all the CCTV would be a useful tool in enforcing the rule of the koran...
Re:Mr. Atta (Score:4, Insightful)
The govt. will more likely affect my normal every day life....the odds of getting hit by a terrorist attack are much lower.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
But immigrants are demonstratively dangerous to British culture, by the fact that they're resisting assimilation. That's the point: the immigrants have no right to be angry because they should have realized they'd be expected to assimilate, rather than import their old culture. If they wanted to remain in a traditional Muslim community, they should have stayed home!
And that goes for all immigrants, everywhere: Muslims in Britain should become [culturally] British, Mexicans in the U.S. should become American (or more precisely "USian," but that's not really a word), Americans in China should become Chinese (disregarding the fact that relatively few Americans immigrate), etc. Expecting the incumbent culture to accommodate you, as a newcomer, is disgustingly arrogant!
Re:No surprise... (Score:3, Insightful)
And you would know this how?
Generally speaking, it is far easier to appeal to your own authority and make unsubstantiated generalizations than to engage in any intelligent discourse...
Since when did ignorance become a valid point of view? I must have missed that memo...
Pot, kettle, black...
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the parent post was correct. Two of the guys in my office are 3rd generation Americans; their great-grandparents were German immigrants. Both of them, growing up in different states, tell the same story: their grandparents learned to speak English because their great-grandparents beat the crap out of them if they heard them speaking German at home. The U.S.A. was their homeland now, and they would learn to be American. This wasn't something that resident Americans forced upon my coworkers' great-grandparents -- it was a choice they made willingly. I don't see that with illegal immigrants in the U.S.
I don't know if it's a difference in attitude or a difference in opportunity. I suspect that, being illegal immigrants and therefore fearing being discovered and deported, they might be considerably less inclined to send their kids to English-speaking schools or mingle with natural-born citizens, but I don't know that for a fact.
Why? What is wrong with telling someone, "look, it's your country...fight for it!" Every freedom in the world exists because someone somewhere decided it was a freedom worth fighting for.
Ummm...what planet are you from? Every country in the world restricts the liberty of free people who want to cross it. That is one of the essential functions of government -- to protect its borders. If I am a citizen of the U.S.A. (and I am), then it is only by the graces of Canada or Mexico or any other country of the world that I have permission to enter their country. Why should the U.S. border be any different? It shouldn't be unduly difficult to cross the border if, as you say, the person isn't a known criminal, but a government should by all means take reasonable steps to protect its borders.
Re:they need to spread fear... (Score:1, Insightful)