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Blair's Defeat Yesterday
Nov. 10th, 2005 01:10 pmMy first thought, when I hears Blair earlier yesterday, before his defeat, was "The hubris of that man." The first thought, on hearing his comments post - defeat later that day, was exactly the same.
What Blair's not telling us is as important as what he is telling us. Namely, that once he'd got this internment - without - trial thing up and running, it would have become so insidiously easy to change the definition of "terrorism" to include more domestic examples such as, oh, dissent against the Prime Minister.
It would have become so easy to establish the sort of state where someone could get rid of troublesome rivals, such as pesky next door neighbours who insist on parking the car in front of your drive, by denouncing them as "terror suspects," and getting them hauled off to Belmarsh for three months for no reason at all.
What if, for example, you have some foreign national on whose vote a crucial decision hinges, and rather than attempt to sway that person directly, the authorities merely decide to lock up that person's relatives living over here for 90 days, using their detention as a means of coercing that foreign national to amend their stance in favour of a more pro - Blair one?
Sorry, but unless someone is actually guilty of committing an actual offence, you can't just lock them up for something they are only thinking of doing, or even just talking about. That's freedom of speech, freedom of thought, right out of the window: and I'm not talking about discussions of terrorism: I'm talking about the freedom to believe that the Prime Minister, and particularly Tony Blair, could well be (a) wrong; (b) deliberately or inadvertently basing his opinions on erroneous information; (c) lying (which he has done in the past, and it's well known that a deceiver revelaed is still a deceiver); (d) possibly stupid; (e) a toady, a quisling, a poodle to Bush; (f) all of the above.
I have the freedom to believe all of the above. I don't want the Government to decide that only they have the right to believe otherwise.
What Blair's not telling us is as important as what he is telling us. Namely, that once he'd got this internment - without - trial thing up and running, it would have become so insidiously easy to change the definition of "terrorism" to include more domestic examples such as, oh, dissent against the Prime Minister.
It would have become so easy to establish the sort of state where someone could get rid of troublesome rivals, such as pesky next door neighbours who insist on parking the car in front of your drive, by denouncing them as "terror suspects," and getting them hauled off to Belmarsh for three months for no reason at all.
What if, for example, you have some foreign national on whose vote a crucial decision hinges, and rather than attempt to sway that person directly, the authorities merely decide to lock up that person's relatives living over here for 90 days, using their detention as a means of coercing that foreign national to amend their stance in favour of a more pro - Blair one?
Sorry, but unless someone is actually guilty of committing an actual offence, you can't just lock them up for something they are only thinking of doing, or even just talking about. That's freedom of speech, freedom of thought, right out of the window: and I'm not talking about discussions of terrorism: I'm talking about the freedom to believe that the Prime Minister, and particularly Tony Blair, could well be (a) wrong; (b) deliberately or inadvertently basing his opinions on erroneous information; (c) lying (which he has done in the past, and it's well known that a deceiver revelaed is still a deceiver); (d) possibly stupid; (e) a toady, a quisling, a poodle to Bush; (f) all of the above.
I have the freedom to believe all of the above. I don't want the Government to decide that only they have the right to believe otherwise.
