Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [3]

[Mrs Figg]

well as we dont have the death penalty its besides the point. the point is he has had ten years to build up a nice cozy nest of terrorist cells thanks to cash from the gvt, which is embarrassing. it all been a stalling technique as he was persona non grata in Jordan, he couldnt operate there. he saw it was full of pc goody two-shoes in the UK and laughed all the way to the benefits office.

[Pettytyrant101]

Actually pre 7/7 the UK intelligence services has an unofficial deal with people like him.
We allowed him to stay, and we even allowed him to preach, so long as they didnt commit any acts here.
When the London bombings happened in Blairs first tv speech he worded it quite clearly in regard to that covert deal, telling them it was over as they had broken the rules.

Since then he has had publicity and public space because the government has kept him in the public eye with this crusade, spanning two governments to deport him.
Labour wanted to do it to show they were tough on terror and the Tories that they are tough on europe- neither have the interests of the law or justice anywhere in their minds. Its not a motivating factor.

If he is guilty of inciting violence in this country then the government should have arrested, tried and convicted him- they only didnt because they knew they didnt have the evidence against him to secure a prosecution.
I cant be the only one surely to see the danger in sending someone to be tried in another country just because our laws are to strict and wouldnt convict him?

[Lancebloke]

No... I dont see the danger. If someone comes to our country and breaks the law they should be deported. We shouldn't have to waste our money on keeping them holed up in a cosy prison. They choose the life, they accept the consequences.

When it comes to politicians... Salmond personified what it wrong with them on Sunday. Most are born and bred for that lifestyle and it seems that power is the topmost priority.

[Mrs Figg]

''Since then he has had publicity and public space because the government has kept him in the public eye with this crusade, spanning two governments to deport him.
Labour wanted to do it to show they were tough on terror and the Tories that they are tough on europe- neither have the interests of the law or justice anywhere in their minds. Its not a motivating factor.'' Petty

I actually think the last thing the gvt wanted was this man in the public eye. its a great embarrassment to them, why on earth would they want to keep it in the forefront. If I was the PM I would have wanted it as hush hush as possible. Now if the press and media kept it in the public eye thats a different thing all together, they were doing it because it was embarrassing to the gvt, they probably thought it was good scandalous stuff for the red tops.

[Pettytyrant101]

Cameron got exactly what he wanted out of this- he got to say it was his government who finally deported him. He got to show the Tories will stand up to Europe, and he used it as an excuse to attack the European Human Rights Court scoring points with three major groups- his own back benchers who have been giving him trouble of late, his grass roots supporters who have been losing members, and UKIP, who have used the case to taunt the Tories with up till now in a who can be tougher on foreign criminals and immigrants one-upmanship game.

Make no mistake, in political terms, this was a very good day for Cameron and he knew it, beaming ear to ear on the tv about it.
Politically he has upped his game a good bit this year, Cameron. God help us but I think he is learning.

[azriel]

I found this on the net earlier,
"Following the deportation of Abu Qatada, Theresa May told MPs the government would look at how to make it harder for the likes of the radical cleric to claim benefits.

She also did not rule out the UK's withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Abu Qatada was deported on Sunday, following an eight-year legal battle.

The Palestinian-Jordanian had been wanted in Jordan over a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists during Jordan's millennium celebrations.

His deportation was finally able to proceed after the UK and Jordan signed a treaty agreeing that evidence obtained through torture would not be used against him.
'Crazy interpretation'

Mrs May said lessons needed to be learnt from the case to ensure such a lengthy deportation process "never happens again".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

He is a dangerous man whose values we in this Parliament condemn.”

Yvette Cooper Shadow home secretary

As part of this, she said Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith would be investigating how to "curtail the benefit claims of terror suspects and extremists whose behaviour is not conducive to the public good".

She also said the government was looking at reforming the legal aid available to defendants.

The fight to deport Abu Qatada has cost British taxpayers over £1.7m. This includes £430,000 towards Abu Qatada's own legal fees.

Removing layers of the appeal process for foreign nationals facing deportation would also be looked at, Mrs May said, as would the "crazy interpretation" of human rights law by the European Court of Human Rights.

She accused the court of delaying Abu Qatada's deportation and "moving the goal posts" by establishing new legal grounds to block his deportation.

"I have made clear my views that in the end the Human Rights Act must be scrapped," she said.
'Dangerous man'

"We must also consider our relationship with the European court very carefully, and I believe that all options - including withdrawing from the convention altogether - should remain on the table.

"But those are issues that will have to remain until the general election."

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the deportation of Abu Qatada was a "good result for the country".

"He is a dangerous man whose values we in this Parliament condemn."

She said Labour would look at any government proposals on removing the available options for appeal for those facing deportation.

And she urged the home secretary to look at the reasons why cases at the European Court of Human Rights take so long, saying the court now faced a backlog of 150,000 cases."

[Mrs Figg]

I agree it was a good day for Cameron, but people wont forget the 10 years it took to get there. the ten years someone accused of terrorist crimes was free to continue, like any normal law abiding Citizen, to walk around, living at the expense of the British people and no doubt having a good laugh at us to boot. It made the gvt look weak and toothless.

[Pettytyrant101]

Anyone remember the David Cameron that got elected? Green Dave that cared about the environment and went to work on a bike, hug a hooodie Dave that said we should try to understand and prevent the causes of crime through tackling poverty and unemployment? The Dave that told us he would ring fence health spending and promised there would be no top down reform or backdoor privatization of the NHS? The Dave that welcomed immigration and multi culturalism?
Anyone remember him? No?
Im not surprised, he's barely recognisable to the one we actually got.

[Mrs Figg]

dunno I had left England before I had the pleasure.
talking of which I keep getting Skype requests from US soldiers based in Syria wishing to be friends, is this normal?

[Pettytyrant101]

 

No it bloody well is not!! Are you advertising your eel wrangling skills on there?!  

[Mrs Figg]

um no. Its funny they all seem to be on peace keeping missions. where do they get my Skype thingie from, is it random, I dont get it.

[Pettytyrant101]

'peace keeping mission'- thats a new name for it!  

I dont know how people get your contact details, I avoid skype for this sort of reason- that and its a pig ugly user interface.
Cant you block them?

[Eldorion]

talking of which I keep getting Skype requests from US soldiers based in Syria wishing to be friends, is this normal?

I'd be skeptical of them, considering that the US military does not currently have any deployments in Syria.

[Mrs Figg]

I just block em anyway, just wondered what was going on.

[leelee]

sorry to lighten the mood but, dear sweet LeeLee brought this guy up.....


actually Weird al has got a great voice, when he's not taking the mickey !

Az. that was the BEST. He is an awesome singer, and so intelligent. That made me and Hasia laugh and laugh.
When you see all the atrocities and your mind cant cope it is so good to watch someone like this. And Chris, I love the Andes music. Ever since I first saw the people and how they dress I imagined that a small party of wealthy Victorians who dressed to the nines went through on some sort of snobbish holiday. When they left the people copied their British head dress and capes and then colored them in wild riotous colors and bob's your uncle, an amazing presentation!
But you can't have your cake and eat it too You can't say freedom and then be shocked at atrocities You can't say you can say this and not that and not have some dictatorship.
You cannot say that entrepreneurship is in and not have the hungry lined up and you cannot say we shall share everything and not have the people not fired up anymore or looking for ways to cheat and go underground and along comes the cartels and maffias.
As long as people don't have genuine respect and love for one another there can never be anything but chaos, and hatred and jockeying for position. I have seen middle class people at a picnic that were so kind, they inspired all there to be kind and giving and never thinking one is better and it was the best picnic ever. I have seen the opposite and before ten minutes were up everyone hated everyone else,
When it comes to governments it is the fool in my opinion that thinks they should be up front and tell us everything. Then we are compromised and will be under another country before long. I have a friend who is a weapons engineer in New York and he said the amount of people that compromise the US thinking they were doing a noble thing ended up being the ones who caused many to die on both sides We in Canada know we are not going to get the truth so we either make sure about who we vote for or become a candidate if we are worried. With so many people with so many interests, many in other countries, how can you really do anything. There is always someone to be bought, we have had recently traitors that are terrifying.
As Miss Marple says " I never trust anyone I haven't for years..

[Pettytyrant101]

Well I'm just an old crabbit leelee,not a pessimist and Im afraid that view is too pessimistic for me.
You dont need everyone to know what is going on- what you need is committees and judicial reviews and the like that we do know about who are tasked with the job with making sure the stuff that has to be secret is carried out according to the law.
It should not be carried out entirely in secret and the oversight should be judical, independent and not part of the government.

But to my mind thr whole political, countries, secrets,power ect all hinges on one basic fact- we are completely bonkers.
Totally and utterly hatstand.

We live on a single planet with finite resources and x amount of living things that are necessary to keep the whole show going in a way we can live comfortably in.
And what do we do?
We parcel it all up into little areas, declare them separate from one another, draw borders on maps and pretend they are a real thing on the planet, and then have to start wars because resources we need are in someone elses bit of parceled up land.
And we do the same thing with ourselves-we live on a planet where their is only one species of human- us, and not only that we all come from one relatively small group of people, so we are related.
Yet we managed to divide ourselves up into different little groups many of whom have denied that they even are the same species as other humans.

For so long as we persist in this complete insane view of reality we will keep this nonsense going forever, by its nature it can never end, new victors just make new countries and it all keeps going.

[leelee]

aw Petty, your heart shows even when we are talking about serious things. I think that is why Hasia loves you so much. She sort of sees between the lines with you and thinks you are, like her daddy, a knight in shining armour. 

[leelee]

um no. Its funny they all seem to be on peace keeping missions. where do they get my Skype thingie from, is it random, I dont get it.

It is strange, but whenever I see lady Aeowyn I think of you . She is my absolute highest heroine. I identify with her so much.

[Lancebloke]

Petty. Couldn't agree with your more. That is why this scottish independence thing gets on my bloody nerves. To be fair, I dont live there and dont feel the day to day things that are dictated from Westminster that make people feel they need to be separated from it. But if it is just about being Scottish for any one... then maybe it is time people realised they should start being human and work together to achieve rather than draw up another line.

btw - was looking last night and london generates 18.8% of the U.Ks fiscal revenue and accounts for 14.5% of U.K spend. Shows how skewed income across the whole country is really. I wonder what would happen if the government really pushed for something like a technology hub in the north of the U.K or a second financial centre in the midlands. I mean really pushed. .. committed to infrastructure and used some kind of incentives the the docklands enterprise zone that is now canary wharf. London is such a bubble of its own right now.

[Mrs Figg]

I think thats the crux of the problem, its the us against them mentality. But its wired into us like an ancient memory I think. thousands of years ago it was a fight for survival every day, with roaming groups attacking and taking each others resources, it only got collaborative probably around the time we went agricultural, I dont know if we can ever get over this sense of the enemy over the hill, or having these invisible borders. sometimes it does save our bacon though, like during the 2WW, without a strong sense of nationality and us against them, we wouldnt have collectively fought off the threat. Its an inbuilt territorial thing like animals have, but we are animals after all.

[Pettytyrant101]

Lance,I am aware there is a contradiction between my desire for independence and my belief the whole idea is mad.
Its something I hope as a species we outgrow.
Its certainly not about being 'Scottish' for me- I dont believe that idea- if you transported me back 50 years, a 100 years or 1000 years in time Id be in a Scotland I didnt know, where the idea of Scottish was something different, the beliefs, morals and attitudes largely alien to me- its not a real, fixed thing national identity.

"Shows how skewed income across the whole country is really."- Lance

Yes, there is the root of the north- south divide. Although I thnk the gap, or at least the perceived gap, is probably worse between the south and north of England than between the south of England and Scotland.

I agree Mrs Figg with the reasons you give for why we are like that- but I dont think it can last in a world where our children can go online and talk to people from anywhere in the world or go on google earth and stroll about the planet. I hope anyway.

[azriel]

"Man" will never change in my view, sorry that sounds as negative as you can get ! Id LOVE to see a united world. My head says one thing but my heart says another. For some reason Humans have been a waring animal. We've had enough centuries on this planet to turn things around but "we" havnt. and as you say Petty, we are all the same fooking species !! THATS why I sometimes wonder how would "we" behave if we didnt have religion ? Animals dont, birds dont, fish in the sea dont. They act & live on instinct. Sadly religion has caused many many wars & unrest, its a fact. "We" are designed biologically to be as we are IMO, You can work as hard as possible to be a better person, you can make all the promises you can, but, for as many as there are Good people in this world theres 10 times more Bad people. I know I sound pessimistic, but "mans" underlying thing is..greed. Greed for land, power, wealth, you name it. I dont think you can alter humans to be a united species anymore than you can get Siberian hamsters to live in a commune. We just dont seem wired up properly ?? How wonderful to be in a world were ALL peoples of whatever colour, creed etc were on an even keel !! There wouldnt be any Nationalism, cus theres no Countries as such. And IF we WERE united, no Countries as we know it now,i.e. Germany, France, USA, etc, I wonder what Language we'd all speak ?

[leelee]

No... I dont see the danger. If someone comes to our country and breaks the law they should be deported.  We shouldn't have to waste our money on keeping them holed up in a cosy prison. They choose the life, they accept the consequences.

When it comes to politicians... Salmond personified what it wrong with them on Sunday. Most are born and bred for that lifestyle and it seems that power is the topmost priority.

That is so true. This false politeness and political correctness stops the proper sequence of events. If everybody is
yelling that a bad bad person did not get treated with political correctness or freedom of speech and action, it gives all the underminers  and the terrorists all kinds of leverage to do their evil and get away with it. We had here a Hitler fanatic that tested our lack of dealing with this type of barrage.
Hitler black and white documentaries , blaring his rhetoric loud all through the night. The police did nothing. It scared my father who had just retired to that city . The screaming of Hitler and the walking on the wall of men dressed like the SS inspired whole groups to desecrate cemetaries, write on the lockers of suspected Jewish citizens death threats that caused a huge group of children to have to stay home and go for counselling
But it was freedom of speech.
This person was from Germany and he handed out pamphlets to show the holocaust never happened but it should be done now
Finally he was asked to leave or just left, I cannot remember. But not before he did so much damage.
There he started the same and was arrested and thrown in prison, just like that. But we did zip, zero and told people by our ridiculous silence that any body can do the same and destroy the peace and lawful actions of people in a very short time. It was so scarey.

[Lancebloke]

Leelee -there seems to be plenty of that going on everywhere in the world. Obviously this isnt limited to foreigners... we have plenty of homegrown psychopaths... but those are the ones that we need to deal with ourselves and also accept that other countries may deport them back home.

Azriel - im not so sure that we wont ever see it. As someone mentioned earlier, the world has never been so open. Right now I am sitting in a room with 2 guys from India and having seen 2 americans, 2 french and 1 polish person come in to offer their opinions on something... all in the middle of london.

Western culture is becoming more tolerant of 'outsiders' and are becoming far more multicultural. While we are still a long way off, I think we are much further along than many other countries probably because we had been forced together much earlier (ww2, cold war etc).

Lots of middle eastern and asian countries are really starting to open up. Many are beginning to cooperate because of necessity (ASEAN countries for example) just like the beginnings of NATO and the EU etc.

if we manage to not destroy ourselves over resources in the next hundred years.... I think technology will have provided answers to hunger and power and water issues which I think are the next big world war inciters. People will have less need to 'protect interests' and many more will already be in alliances and more multi cultured.

I would say the next 100 or so years are probably the most critical in human history.

[Mrs Figg]

yes thats terrible Leelee. I think its easy for some politicians to take the moral high ground and talk about criminals or suspected hate merchants having their rights violated under this or that law, but sometimes the law is an ass, and common sense should prevail. If its your family thats been victims of race or religious hate you need protection from the law not limp wristed softly softly approaches from people whos high moral stance rides roughshod over the pain of the victims. I remember many years ago the treatment of the IRA in prisons (Bobby Sands) would have curled many politicians hair today, I dont think we should ever go back to treating people with that amount of callous disregard, but today its swung over too far to the mamby pamby and ineffectual. Basically anyone who promotes and stirs up hate of any description should be stopped.