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Aug. 11th, 2006 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrphI'm feeling very cynical today.
I'd like to think that our security forces have done their work well in the last couple of days, stopping a serious plot that could have caused hundreds of deaths.
I look forward to seeing some of these people convicted and sentenced to long jail terms. Assuming that they're guilty, of course.
The catch is that we really don't have the best track record on this sort of thing. Most recently we've had the Forest Gate "cyanide bomb" fiasco.
We've had tanks at Heathrow. Nobody seems quite sure how this would have helped to stop plain-clothes bombers, but it made for some good headlines at the time.
We've had that very unfortunate incident with Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly shot dead.
We've also had the ricin poisoning plot - which did have a man who was genuinely intending to commit acts of terror, but didn't seem to have a terrorist conspiracy (or any ricin...)
Not the best record, really. It doesn't inspire confidence.
As for the political side of things, I'd just like to remind people that this government famously described 9/11 as "a good day to bury bad news".
Even if the security forces did their job perfectly yesterday - and I'd like to believe that they did - then someone behind a desk will be working out how to turn this to their political advantage, to hide bad news or silence opposition.
I'd like to think that our security forces have done their work well in the last couple of days, stopping a serious plot that could have caused hundreds of deaths.
I look forward to seeing some of these people convicted and sentenced to long jail terms. Assuming that they're guilty, of course.
The catch is that we really don't have the best track record on this sort of thing. Most recently we've had the Forest Gate "cyanide bomb" fiasco.
We've had tanks at Heathrow. Nobody seems quite sure how this would have helped to stop plain-clothes bombers, but it made for some good headlines at the time.
We've had that very unfortunate incident with Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly shot dead.
We've also had the ricin poisoning plot - which did have a man who was genuinely intending to commit acts of terror, but didn't seem to have a terrorist conspiracy (or any ricin...)
Not the best record, really. It doesn't inspire confidence.
As for the political side of things, I'd just like to remind people that this government famously described 9/11 as "a good day to bury bad news".
Even if the security forces did their job perfectly yesterday - and I'd like to believe that they did - then someone behind a desk will be working out how to turn this to their political advantage, to hide bad news or silence opposition.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 09:25 am (UTC)Of course, Hitler came into power by use of The Enabling Act, itself an act designed to fight "Terrorism" by allowing the Nazi government to pass laws without going through Parliament... Something Labour have been trying to implement since the 1950s (As a means of allowing them to pass unpopular socialist policies without any opposition.).
"Papers, please!"
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 11:22 am (UTC)Getting thoroughly paranoid, how would one actually *know* there was any terrorist plot? We won't be shown any proof of it. We're just expected to take the word of the Government. And I wouldn't trust *them* as far as I could throw them.
When I read 1984 at school, I read it in the smug satisfaction of being completely sure that it could never happen, because, well, this is England, innit. Now? I think if George Orwell had called it 2010, he'd have got it bang on.
I'm scared, frankly. And it's not the *terrorists* who scare me.