[lbo-talk] Fidel drops in

[Lance Murdoch]

England dealt with the IRA freedom fighters "without the sort of
repressive legislation and adminstrative action that Ashcroft has unloosed
with the consent Congress"?  Does that include the 13 civilians killed by
British paramilitaries on January 30th, 1972?  And what were those people
marching against?  Internment - on August 9th, 1971, the government began
arresting and indefinitely detaining people without trial for the mere
suspicion that they belonged to a paramilitary group - by the year 1975
there had been 1981 people so detained, many of them who had not been
connected to any paramilitary groups in any context.  As bad as the US's
current internment is, it's of foreign-born people in the US - not
native-born people who are being interned because they want the right of
self-determination.  John McGuffin, an anarchist who was the only person
of a Protestant background who was locked up when internment was initially
implemented, wrote a book called "The Guineapigs" about the fourteen Irish
political prisoners the British Army used to experiment with modern
torture techniques on.

There certainly was repressive legislation and administrative action used 
by England with dealing with the IRA (and with any Irish republican for 
that matter).  Also, I would disagree with the idea that Franco did not 
use repressive legislation and administrative action to deal with the ETA.  
I'm not thoroughly familiar with the ETA/Aznar situation currently, Aznar 
might be less repressive than Franco, but that is relative, meaning Aznar 
only looks good when compared to Franco.

-- Lance

On Mon, 12 May 2003, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> The fact is that terrorism is not (demonstrably not!) such a threat to
> civilized life as to require serious curtainlment of civil liberties.
> We know this because Europeans societies have dealt with terrorism
> from the IRA, the ETA, the Red Brigades, etc., for decades without the
> sort of repressive legislation and adminstrative action that Ashcroft
> has unloosed with the consent Congress, including the Dems who almost
> unanimously voted for USAPA.