Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

5 April 2012

CONCEALING TORTURE

In a draconian crackdown on civil liberties redolent of the totalitarian regimes of North Korea or China, the UK Government has launched a blitzkrieg against immemorial rights and freedoms with a raft of kafkaesque proposals for secret police surveillance of all private internet communications together with the establishment of secret courts to prevent evidence of crimes by the state, particularly its involvement in torture, from seeping into the public domain.

This from a Government Coalition of Tories and Liberal Democrats who, on coming to office in 2010, had pledged “to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power”.

Civil rights defenders, members of both Houses of Parliament, press editorialists and media pundits have predicted all-out resistance to the crackdown.

No laggard in its condemnation of the proposed encroachments was today’s leader in the centre-right Guardian newspaper, which boasts of its liberal radicalism while simultaneously professing an unwavering allegiance to the free market economics of 19 C Manchester.

However, Antigone1984 sensed a strangely jarring note within the editorial’s generally negative critique of the Government proposals when it spoke approvingly of “the normal – and proper – readiness of the courts and of parliament to accept the word of the government on national security issues”.

Given that governments are only too ready to lie, deceive, falsify, exaggerate, hoodwink, downplay, prevaricate, misinform, equivocate,  fudge, dissimulate, stall, distort and spin-doctor in all other aspects of political life without exception, why on earth should their word be accepted when it comes to national security?

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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