I am not permitted to discuss politics, because it is bad for my health. That said, however, it is far from clear that the Great Heathrow Exploding Shampoo Plot warranted the response it received.
There have, so far, been no charges for possession of explosives/firearms/conspiracy to commit x/y/z. It's been over a week. They arrested over twenty people. They should have charged someone with something by now.
With the IRA and the other Northern groups, every unjustified - and yes, even justified - arrest created more committed partisans. Apart from small issues of fairness and justice, this is something that disturbs me about arrests that are looking more and more likely to be at least partially politically motivated with every day that passes without charges being brought.
It seems that the impetus for the whole thing started from information obtained in an interrogation in Pakistan, a nation not known for its human rights record. This, combined with both British and American willingness to make political capital out of the alleged threat (before full details are known) is driving me slowly but steadily onto the edges of the camps of the conspiracy theorists. :)
I also dislike the tenor of authoritarianism - approaching fascism - that seems to be seeping into political rhetoric in Britain and America, but that's another issue entirely.
(Irish nationalism was always a religious - or at least sectarian - issue, as communities divided along largely [though not entirel] Catholic-republican / Protestant-unionist lines.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 07:56 pm (UTC)There have, so far, been no charges for possession of explosives/firearms/conspiracy to commit x/y/z. It's been over a week. They arrested over twenty people. They should have charged someone with something by now.
With the IRA and the other Northern groups, every unjustified - and yes, even justified - arrest created more committed partisans. Apart from small issues of fairness and justice, this is something that disturbs me about arrests that are looking more and more likely to be at least partially politically motivated with every day that passes without charges being brought.
It seems that the impetus for the whole thing started from information obtained in an interrogation in Pakistan, a nation not known for its human rights record. This, combined with both British and American willingness to make political capital out of the alleged threat (before full details are known) is driving me slowly but steadily onto the edges of the camps of the conspiracy theorists. :)
I also dislike the tenor of authoritarianism - approaching fascism - that seems to be seeping into political rhetoric in Britain and America, but that's another issue entirely.
(Irish nationalism was always a religious - or at least sectarian - issue, as communities divided along largely [though not entirel] Catholic-republican / Protestant-unionist lines.)