Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 12:49:42 +0000 From: Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> To: Allan Bowhill <abowhill@blarg.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Personal patches Message-ID: <3FFC0066.4090704@iconoplex.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20040107025601.GC65133@kosmos.my.net> References: <20040106202408.GC63867@kosmos.my.net> <20040106233751.A32387-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> <20040107001001.GA65133@kosmos.my.net> <3FFB56CE.3030109@iconoplex.co.uk> <20040107025601.GC65133@kosmos.my.net>
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Allan Bowhill wrote: >Your right to convenient passage as a visitor do not override our >right to take measures to protect our own safety and security. > Except, fingerprinting at customs is not a measure that will protect your safety or security. >It has worked not only in a single case, but in many cases, tourists, >terrorists, serial killers, and freeing innocent people who were wrongfully >convicted. > Please provide an example where mass compulsory testing has catched one of the above criminals. The fact that you are implying catching tourists is a good idea is troubling however. >The area of genetic testing has signifcant merit, although you appear >not to accept this. > Oh it does, in establishing identity. I just don't think fingerprinting or genetic testing at airports helps to eastablish identity any more than the passport I carry. >I heard that Brits are exempt from fingerprinting. I hope this changes. >Simply out of fairness to everyone else. > It's the whole EU. We all carry EU passports now. Also, I believe a few states like Taiwan and Singapore are going to be mostly exempt. >The U.S. economy, when healthy, relies on %75 internal spending. >If EU businessmen have a problem with this, they can go fish. > Yeah, 25% is so insignificant. You'd hardly notice it, eh? Despite the dollar being at it's lowest point in decades due to a drop off in investment somewhere around 5-8%, I hear. >I doubt the EU will impose trade sanctions, or sacrifice good business >for the sake of a few irate travelers. > They did for the sake of a few steel workers in the EU. >So what. My Father is a British Citizen, and he thought we should have >dropped every nuke we had on Afghanistan. He would agree you're talking >trash. That doesn't make his hypothetical views relevant to the >discussion. > So, all Afghans are terrorists then? >We are not new to this, as you seem to believe. Terrorism, Piracy and >Organized Crime are all intertwined. > Hahahaha. Now I know you're trolling. >I'm sorry to hear you were almost killed. I don't know much about the >particulars of your domestic terrorism problems, but I am under the >impression that Britain's handling of it is somewhat less than >exemplary. > OK, here's a 101 in Irish Republican Terrorism. Most people who aren't from Britain have an innaccurate/skewed view of what happened. This is obviously not comprehensive, but it'll suffice as an introduction to understanding there were faults all round. But as it might give some scope to your understanding... When the British agreed to pull out of Ireland in the early 20th century (prior to this, the whole of Ireland had been British for several centuries), a large section in the North wished to remain part of the United Kingdom. These loyalists were going to cause one hell of a stink-up, and at the time 80% of the population of those counties were loyalists. So, the Irish and British governments agreed that this area should remain part of the UK. The IRA (as their name implies) didn't want Ireland to be seperated and so started a terrorist campaign. This was all managed reasonably well until 1969. At that stage, the Catholic Unionists in the North were being attacked on a regular basis by the Loyalists. The people who wanted to stay part of the UK were attacking those who wanted NI to become part of the Irish Republic. These attacks against innocent citizens developed to the point where the British army had to intervene. As a result, the army moved in to protect the Catholic unionists from attack. Within about a year though, the loyalists were rejoicing and the unionists were most peeved that NI had become a police state run by the British Army. Attacks from Catholics against the army started to occur, and the IRA ramped up their terrorist campaign. This campaign accelerated after "Bloody Sunday", a day where British Army soldiers fired on unarmed protesting (unionist) citizens. The enquiries into what exactly happened are still going on, but the best guess is a soldier got twitchy, accidently fired, and all hell broke loose as a direct result. Between then and the mid-1990's, the IRA regularly detonated large bombs in the UK against civilian targets. The infighting in NI has continued, and "the troubles" are currently reckoned to have result in approximately 4,000 deaths, mostly of civilians. I have no doubt that number would have been much higher if it wasn't for an agreement between the IRA and the British Security Services (god knows how they did it), that the IRA would phone a keyword warning to a local police station about an hour before a bomb was going to go off, and law enforcement could at least attempt an evacuation. As we stand now, terrorism has ceased on the UK mainland, but there are still incidents in NI itself. Power is being given to the politicians of NI to look after themselves, increasingly important as the unionist/loyalist split in population is no longer 20/80 but more 49/51. It should be pointed out that Gerry Adams (who is to British politics what Osama Bin Laden is to American politics) is in fact an elected British MP. He is unable to take his seat in the House of Commons however, as to take the seat he would need to swear an oath of allegiance to the Monarch of the United Kingdom. Something a former leader of the IRA is unlikely to do... Even so, I've had some close shaves. For background, my mother's family is Irish Catholic (Unionist) and my father's is English Protestant (loyalist). >:Right, so you think the FBI and CIA already have every terrorist's >:fingerprint on file already do you? > >They have some, > Where from? How did they get those then? >and will get more with the help of this system. If > How? You think they'll have "Terrorist" under "Occupation" on their passport? >the terrorists decide not to show up for their flights, fine. All >the better. They can stay home and blow themselves up. > Alas, the preferred method for using planes as missiles is to hijack a plane outside of the US that is US-bound and then use it. So you'll never catch them, or get their fingerprints, until the attack is over... >Not trivial, but possible. All the more reason to go with genetic >sampling. > Which is also not infalliable. >As far as national defense is concerned, it comes at a price. If it's >money rather than lives, let it be money. > You're forgetting to put liberty and freedom for innocent civilians into that equation. -- Paul Robinson
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