Explosion heard in London - political part

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by C0ckney


and don't we just know it!

you know when i said individual freedom, i was talking about the rights and freedoms of...you know...individuals, not some leftie local authorities that got dismantled or whatever.

You mean the democratic right to have a say in whether or not those local authorities should be arbitrarily removed after people had used their rights and freedoms to elect them in the first place ?

My goodness your definition of individual rights and freedoms seems to exclude the exercise of the franchise- a right, not a privilege since the 19th century.


Or how about the proliferation of QUANGOS under the Tory governments, again replacing local bodies which have been democratically elected by individual voters with organisations which are not accountable to voters, staffed by unelected individuals and answerable only to central government ?


It seems that my memory trumps your selective definition of rights and freedoms- and this is all without recalling amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act, Clause 28, et cetera.


But don't let the Conservatives' lamentable record on human rights and voting powers get in the way of your dislike for the Labour Party or Ken Livingstone.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Explosion heard in London - political part

Originally posted by DAVOUT

By the way, Rachid Ramda is still in UK, ten years after the request made by a French juge.

As I recall Francois Mitterand dealt with Corsican terrorists fighting for an independent Corsica by granting a general amnesty to terrorists under arrest in 1981.

France has also been home to Red Brigade members (some tried in absentia by Italian courts) found guilty of terrorist acts. Only now in some cases are they facing the possibility of extradition to Italy with respect to those crimes.

I agree however that two wrongs do not make a right, and a policy of granting asylum to political dissidents which may have served well in cases such as the Spanish Civil War would not necessarily work with the likes of Abu Nidal or Carlos the Jackal.

It is interesting to see that one may blow up children in Kabul airport and be received at 10 Downing Street and the White House and be hailed as a freedom fighter, but that Thatcher (for instance) certainly would not have extended such a courtesy to either the I.R.A. or the A.N.C. .

[C0ckney]

i'm not surprised you won't answer my post molly...

[DAVOUT]

Molly Bloom,

Your Mr Clark intends to ask fore more cooperation at a meeting next wenesday. I suggest that he also offers more cooperation, rather than critical views on our police and justice system.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Velociryx
PS: The market is *excellent* at delivering mass transit transportation.

The problem, however, is that demand isn't there, and there's no profit in it.

That can (fairly easily, in certain specific instances--see above) be changed, at which point, you'd see several private companies leap forward to take the reins.

If the climate isn't there...if the profit isn't there...no, the market's not gonna budge.

That's not exactly a secret tho.

The trick is...to change the rules.

-=VEl=-

Have you got an example of the market's 'excellent' delivery of public transport?

Changing the rules until the 'market' starts working... presumably that consists of regulation and subsidies. Why bother creating a load of companies dangling from the government's teats when you could just have a state-owned service for the same price? Since a lot of public transport consists of natural monopolies, competition won't have much effect, either.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by C0ckney


i don't know much about the miners strike, since it happend around the time i was born, from what i do know, it was at the time a national crisis. i don't think you can compare how a goernment acts in a crisis to the erosion of rights that we've seen in the last eight years.

A strike is not a crisis- unless the government in question is too incompetent to deal with any such situation without panicking. It was a planned, orchestrated and provoked confrontation.

It's a great story. MI5 and MI6 bugging anyone connected to unions. The right to travel denied to tens of thousands. People prevented by law from walking down their own home streets. The police overtly used for party political ends. Astonishing brutality.

The current gang don't come near that litany.

[C0ckney]

well because of your post i've been doing a bit of reading about the strike, i thought the bbc website's '20 years on' thingy might be a good place to start, for a reasonably unbiased view.

there's a lot there and i've been working so i'll have to get back to you.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
The idea that the west will become independent of Middle Eastern oil is absurd- economically unfeasable, and besides the "West" is not even going to be the main oil customers in the next few decades.

Fusion power

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Fusion power

Right.....

That and flying cars by 2010 in every garage.

[Kuciwalker]

Fusion power is a lot better and a lot more likely than flying cars...

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


A strike is not a crisis- unless the government in question is too incompetent to deal with any such situation without panicking. It was a planned, orchestrated and provoked confrontation.

It's a great story. MI5 and MI6 bugging anyone connected to unions. The right to travel denied to tens of thousands. People prevented by law from walking down their own home streets. The police overtly used for party political ends. Astonishing brutality.

The current gang don't come near that litany.

It could be a crisis if trade unions decide that they do not like the verdict of the ballot box and instead decide to bring the nation to its knees until the government learns its place and gives up on trying to govern in accord with the platform they campaigned and won an election on.

[Dis]

has it already been mentioned in this thread about the BBC editing out the word terrorist? What's up with that?

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/12/nbbc12.xml

[DAVOUT]

Bombs should be named *physical argument* or *dialectical tools*.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Fusion power

Fusion power may well be the answer, and by that I mean hydrogen bombs on Arab population centers.

[Velociryx]

Sandman, sorry...almost forgot about this one!

You mean big mass transpo. companies like Delta, TWA, United, and American, or the smaller ones like the innumerable charter companies (planes, boats, busses, etc), or the regional transpo companies?

(short answer, yes. There are lots of examples out there).

-=Vel=-