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Institute Says British People
Ready To Forget Freedom
Alleges that vast majority will accept total
erosion of civil liberties in face of "terrorist threat"
The
foremost social research institute in the United Kingdom has today
revealed results of its annual 'Social Attitudes' survey that show
an overwhelming majority of people in Britain are ready to accept
ID cards, phone tapping, curfews, electronic tagging, the opening
of private mail and extensions to detention without charge.
The
Guardian reports the findings from the National
Centre for Social Research, a not for profit organisation that
conducts research for public bodies such as central government,
universities and charitable organisations.
In a series of questions that
ask whether certain measures are "a price worth paying"
in order to to reduce the threat of terrorism, the
survey (PDF) found the following:
• 81% think that following
people suspected of involvement with terrorism, tapping their
phones
and opening their mail is ‘a price worth paying’.
• 80% think that putting
people suspected of involvement with terrorism under special rules
–
which would mean that they could be electronically tagged, prevented
from going to certain
places or prevented from leaving their homes at certain times
– is ‘a price worth paying’.
• 79% think that allowing
the police to detain people for more than a week or so without
charge
if the police suspect them of involvement in terrorism is ‘a
price worth paying’.
• 71% think that having
compulsory identity cards for all adults is ‘a price worth
paying’.
Conor Gearty, professor of human
rights law at the London School of Economics and joint author of
the report's civil rights chapter, said: "The very mention
of something being a counter-terrorism measure makes people more
willing to contemplate the giving up of their freedoms. It is as
though society is in the process of forgetting why past generations
thought these freedoms to be so very important."
I would suggest, however, that
the results here are misleading. These answers only reveal the fact
that when the word "terrorism" is used in a question,
many more people automatically become less inclined to support civil
liberties.
This is borne out by the fact
that recent
surveys on ID cards concluded that around 50% were still against
them. Furthermore, if people had been asked "would you accept
tapping of YOUR phone to combat terrorism?", the results would
have looked very different. People still do not associate the erosion
of THEIR OWN freedoms with the war on terror.
The only thing these results
proves is that people are being trained to be more susceptible to
the fear of terrorism and hoodwinked into giving up their liberties
in the name of false security.
And make no mistake it is a false
security. The questions in this survey make no sense when you take
into account the fact that measures such as ID cards will have no
bearing on the threat level of terrorism. The government has even
admitted
this themselves. So you may as well ask the question "Is
having compulsory dancing lessons 'a price worth paying'?"
Further results from the survey,
garnered from questions about more severe restrictions of civil
liberties, reveal some disturbing signs:
• 22% think that torturing
terror suspects in British jails to get information, if it is
that the only way the information can be obtained, think this
is ‘a price worth paying’.
• 35% think that banning
certain peaceful protests and demonstrations is ‘a price
worth paying’.
• 45% think that denying
the right to a trial by jury to people charged with a terrorist-related
crime is ‘a price worth paying’.
• 22% think that ‘during
war it is acceptable for the armed forces to torture people’.
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Those who answered in the affirmative again fail to realise that
the questions being asked here are ABSURD.
The results are mind boggling when you take into account the fact
that Peanuts
kill more people than terrorists, you have more chance of being
struck by lightening than being a victim of terrorism, and its more
likely that a lost deer or your own swimming pool will kill you
than a terrorist attack will.
As
Ohio
State University's John Mueller concludes in a report entitled
A False Sense Of Insecurity, "For all the attention it evokes,
terrorism actually causes rather little damage and the likelihood
that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic."
If you were to ask people "Is
banning all forms of nut based snacks a price worth paying to reduce
the threat of choking on a peanut?" they would simply laugh
at you or think you were mad.
People are being asked whether
giving up their rights is acceptable in order to protect them from
a threat that is just not there.
They do not realise this however
as it has been shoved down our throats for the past five years that
terrorists are everywhere, lurking behind every corner just waiting
to kill everyone.
In a famous speech in the early
eighties, before the "war on terror"had been cooked up,
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said "Democratic nations
must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of
the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.". Now I am no
supporter of Thatcher, but the quote is key.
As soon as we lose the fear,
the terrorists lose their power over us to control our behavior.
If western governments were really trying to win a war on terror
as they claim then they would downplay and sideline acts of terror,
pointing out that an individual has more chance of being struck
by lightning than being killed in a terror attack.
The British director of public
prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald,
today rightly warned that a "fear-driven and inappropriate"
response to the threat of terrorism could lead Britain to abandon
the values of fair trials and the due process of law.
Giving up our liberties is what
the real terrorists want and it shouldn't even be an issue. The
main problem with the fallout of this bogus "war on terror",
as the National Centre for Social Research has today shown, lies
in the fact yet the vast majority of people don't actually believe
they are giving up anything when in actual fact they are giving
away everything they have ever had.
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