Originally Posted by dr wadd

These "terrorists" actually do not cause me great concern. I know full well that my personal risk is only slightly higher now than it has been throughout my life as I simply do not buy into the FUD that gets thrown about like so much fact.

What does scare me and cause concern is the attitude that we should simply abandon all concept of human and civil rights in order to protect ourselves from a largely non-existant threat that has been cooked up by the powers that be. I`m not saying that there is no risk of terrorist attack but various governments have attempted to sell us a steaming pile of propaganda.

Originally Posted by skunk4u

Would you say the same if you lived in the USA?

Originally Posted by skunk4u

Originally Posted by skunk4u

Oh and the other 2 are dictators the 1 in the middle is not.

Originally Posted by dr wadd

The absolute numbers do not matter, one case is too many.

Originally Posted by Chris T

So, what do these three men have in common:

http://homepage.mac.com/towny/house-arrest.jpg

Answer: They all think that House Arrest is a convenient way of dealing with people you don't like the look of, but whom you happen not to have hard evidence against.

This country is beginning to scare me.

EDIT

Here's a link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4211127.stm

Originally Posted by Incognitas

I for one do not intend to become like my enemy.They may torture,kill,maim,steal,hold hostages as long term prisoners but I intend not to allow myself or my country to adopt their practices.

If we do then we become no better and we need not fight them because we are them. :(

Originally Posted by Ramrod

....and one atrocity is too many............you seem to have forgotten Madrid, Tailand, New York............

Originally Posted by Chris T

I beg to differ - please do read the link which was the source of my stats for the Northern Ireland troubles. In 1972, 249 civilians (i.e. not army, not police and not members of any terror group) were killed. In the following four years, the civilian death toll was 119, 192, 174 and 207.

To suggest that these figures are less significant than the Madrid train bomb because each set took 12 months to accumulate, rather than being incurred in any single event, is to wilfully misrepresent the seriousness of the situation in Northern Ireland. The fact that the Troubles occurred over 30 years and generally saw people die in ones, twos and sometimes tens, should not detract in any way from the seriousness of them. There was virtually a civil war on British territory and yet we did not start eroding liberties as we are now doing, or talk about threats to the very fabric of our nation.



As above, this is simply not true. In 1972, the single worst year, while there were 249 civilian deaths, there were 149 police and army deaths and 78 paramilitary deaths. Civilians took more than 50% of the total casualties. Civilians were the single biggest casualty group in 18 of the 29 years for which stats are available on this site.



IRA warnings were as often as not designed to confuse the security and emergency services, rather than to prevent loss of life. Security establishments were heavily fortified because they were the obvious targets, not because they were the only targets. Again, the statistics prove that soft, civilian targets were most frequently the target of IRA attacks. Canary Wharf, Warrington, Manchester, pubs in Guildford and Birmingham, the Grand Hotel, Brighton, good heavens, 10 Downing Street itself ... need I go on?



There is no 'new breed' of terrorist. Just the same bunch of religious nutters the world has endured throughout history. It so happens that one particular bunch of nutters were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time - just when an incredibly rich nutter with a grudge against the USA was looking for someone to do his dirty work for him.

The religious nutters may be still less respectful of life and property than were the IRA, but they are not fundamentally cleverer or more powerful. They are more disparate, which might make them harder to catch, but I am confident the security services will catch up with them the way they caught up with the IRA.

Originally Posted by Incognitas

I for one do not intend to become like my enemy.They may torture,kill,maim,steal,hold hostages as long term prisoners but I intend not to allow myself or my country to adopt their practices.

If we do then we become no better and we need not fight them because we are them. :(

Originally Posted by cookie_365

Absolutely. Freedom and democracy and rule of law are the weapons we should be using to defeat terroism.

Originally Posted by dr wadd

Not at all, but if we become, in our own way, as bad as the minority which do pose a risk we may as well give up now and join them. Miscarriages of justice aren`t going to prevent terrorist attacks, and as scary as it is to agree with a Tory, only risk turning moderate Muslims against the "West", thus being counterproductive.

As I pointed out in the earlier post, the real increase in the risk level is actually very small, therefore the response of the authorities must be equal to that. The current situation is a sledgehammer/nut response. Even a proportionate response runs the risk of resulting in a miscarriage of justice, I cannot see that possibility ever going away, but the widesweeping measures in place now will only increase that risk many times over.

Originally Posted by Ramrod

Good answer. I am not happy with the way things are going either.....who would be? The point made on Radio4 this AM was that (iirc) those under house arrest will be hardcore types who they cannot prosecute because the evidence is inadmissible or disclosing the evidence against them would jeopardise an ongoing investigation.