Deport me now…
Hold up!
See that little date above?
This post was published years ago.
My opinions have changed over time: I think it's quite fun to keep old posts online so that you can see how that has happened. The downside is that there are posts on this site that express views that I now find offensive, or use language in ways I'd never dream of using it today.
I don't believe in airbrushing history, but I do believe that it's important to acknowledge the obvious: some of what I've written in the past has been crap. Some of it was offensive. Some of it was offensively bad. And there's may be some brass among the muck (you can make up your own mind on that).
Some of what I've presented as my own views has been me—wittingly or unwittingly—posturing without having considered all the facts. In a few years, I'll probably think the same about what I'm writing today, and I'm fine with that. Things change. People grow. Society moves forward.
The internet moves on too, which means there might be broken links or embedded content that fails to load. If you're unlucky, that might mean that this post makes no sense at all.
So please consider yourself duly warned: this post is an historical artefact. It's not an exposition of my current views nor a piece of 'content' than necessarily 'works'.
You may now read on... and in most cases, the post you're about to read is considerably shorter than this warning box, so brace for disappointment.
Charles Clarke’s new terror plans scare me. Let’s look at just one of the new powers:
Home secretary automatically to consider deporting any foreigner involved in listed extremist bookshops, centres, organisations and websites
The Government wants to have the power to deport any foreigner who it considers ‘extreme’. I can’t begin to beleive that any government would even suggest such measures – how can anyone seriously think that a government has the right to deport those who, essentially, it disagrees with? And, just to clarify, Mr Blair has already made it quite plain that we’re not solely talking about bombers and murderers:
We are dealing not with an isolated criminal act but with an extreme and evil ideology
This government wants to legislate against an ideology, not just the crimes which might stem from that ideology. Not only that, but we’re now allowing our politicians to use judgement laden words like ‘evil’ to describe sets of people – that’s just wrong, and further alienates the sizeable Muslim minority with sympathetic views. In fact, it doesn’t just indirectly alienate them, it actively does it:
Make justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere an offence
If I sit here and try and understand the rationale behind terrorist attacks, and try to draw conclusions about how it is justified in the minds of the terrorists, I’m breaking the law. We’re being asked to continue an ill-defined ‘war’ against an enemy we’re forbidden to try and understand. Surely that kind of thing shouldn’t happen in a healthy democratic society? And whatever happened to free speech?
I’ve previously said that we’re bordering on the political situaition of Germany circa 1933, and the semantics are getting ever close: Hitler branded large groups of people (most noticeably the leaders of Czechoslovakia) as evil terrorists.
Besides which, in the age of global communication, does it really matter if the people attempting to incite terrorism are in a different country? The suspected nineleven hijackers were allegedly indoctrinated in Afghanistan, and that didn’t seem to harm the scale of their attack.
This is bad, dangerous, and unnecessary legislation which restricts our freedoms – including our freedom of thought – even more than ever before, and should be strongly opposed.
This post was filed under: News and Comment.
