The head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Bulle has warned that civil liberties may need to be eroded to "protect" us from terrorist attacks.
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! When will these obsessive control freaks ever let up? How many times must we repeat Ben Franklin’s mantra; trading liberty for security costs both? How many bloody times do we have to put up with these people trying to control and subvert us, sniping away at freedoms my grandparents’ generation fought and died to preserve?
We do not need to make such a trade. Even during the darkest days of the IRA bombings, even when they targeted the British government, we did not give up our liberties; because it was not necessary; it never is. When we trade our freedoms and hand them placidly to the security services in exchange for "protection", we move towards totalitarianism, a state of serfs and masters. The terrorist wins.
Dame Manningham Butler tells us that the world has changed. Well, bless me, I’d never have guessed that. It’s been changing for millennia and will continue to do so – that is no bloody excuse for allowing her seedy little agency to steal our liberties. Frankly, we are in more need of protection from our government and its agencies than we are from terrorist cells.
I was going to post something more important, but found the following in checking the background. Am I wrong in thinking this is too good to miss?
The introductory paragraph from Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s speech of 1st September 2005 is: “I am delighted to be here to celebrate the 60th Birthday of the AIVD. The friendship between the AIVD and my Service, the British Security Service – commonly known as MI5 – pre-dates even those 60 years.”
How can a friendship predate the existence of one of the parties to that friendship?
We know what she means, and she does clarify it in the next paragraph (citing records dated 1946, concerning “the Dutch Security Service in London”).
But is it really so difficult to say what one means?
And this from someone whose own biographical notes state she has a degree in English from Oxford and used to teach (presumably that subject)!
From the MI5 website: “Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller was educated at Northampton High School and Benenden School, and read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She worked for three years as a teacher before joining the Security Service in 1974.”
Best regards
The problem is that the current climate of fear being whipped up by the media and the govt. is a smokescreen to allow them to have carte blanche to erode whatever libertarian legislation they wish. It is the sort of thing that many right-wing governments would always have liked to do but never had the balls to do it. As for that bird in charge, if she comes from Northampton that does explain a lot!