Showing posts with label Arar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arar. Show all posts

Friday, December 21, 2007

Bernier Blows It

The MSM is all gushy over the fact that both U.S. President Bush and Condoleezza Rice mentioned Canada when talking about Afghanistan. I guess this is the big difference between the Conservative Government and the previous Liberal one. When the Liberals were in power Bush forgot to mention Canada. Wow what a victory for the Stephen Harper Party they got the U.S. to 'mention' Canada.

Bernier, Rice to discuss Afghanistan, border issues
Canada.com, Canada - 15 hours ago
Canada's deployment in Afghanistan is expected to be high the agenda at a meeting in Washington on Thursday between Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier and US ...
'Finish The Job,' Rice Says National Post
Canada praised by Bush for role in Afghanistan; seeks more US ... The Canadian Press
Rice praises Canada's role in Afghanistan CTV.ca

What Foreign Affairs Minister Bernier did not get was freedom for Canadian Citizen and teen ager; Omar Khadr still languishing in Gitmo, while the Brits have gotten their citizens released into British custody.

Ex-Gitmo detainee released on bail

Three Gitmo detainees return to Britain


Nor did he mention Mehar Arar let alone get him off the the U.S. terrorist list.


So as a foreign affairs mission it was a bust. It was simply cheer leading for Harpers War.



SEE:

Khadr -Canada's Shame

Cry Justice

Contradictions of the Security State


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Thursday, September 27, 2007

Only Two?


2 Patriot Act provisions ruled unlawful

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."

"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised," she wrote.

SEE:


Sacco and Vanzetti

CIA Conspiracies Are Real

Back In the USSA

Big Brother Bush


NARUS is Big Brother

State Sponsored Terrorism

ECHELON Spies on Greenpeace

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

Paranoia and the Security State



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Friday, June 29, 2007

Fraser Institute Racists

Whats the difference between the Fraser Institutes anti immigration conference and these guys?

One is overtly racist, while the other hides their racism behind 'national security'.

The other irony is that mainstream media commentators like right whingnut Michael Coren defend restricting access to Canada to White Christian Europeans, which is what media pirriah like right whingnut Paul Fromm also says. But unlike Fromm, Coren is an immigrant.

And being from Britain Coren has dual citizenship, another bugaboo of the right.

While right whingnuts like Coren can freely move here, or like their Canadian counterparts like Mark Steyn or David Frum who freely move to England and the U.S. to work, they would deny these rights to others.


SEE:

Procreation To Save The White Race

Conservatives Orwellian Language Politics

White Multiculturalism

Because They Ain't White

Racist ADQ

The Language Of Racism



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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

RCYA


Further proof that RCMP Commissioner 'Cover Yer Ass' Zaccardelli was an incompetent administrator who has a penchant for perjury.....as if we needed anymore proof....

Former RCMP commission Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Commons justice committee in 2004 that the forensic lab services matched the best in the world, that it had no backlog and that all cases involving violent crimes were given priority and that its clients — police forces and prosecutors were satisfied.

"Our audit found many of these claims to be incorrect," Fraser stated, adding that the most of the same problems found in the audit were raised in 1990 and 2000. "It is disappointing to find them still unresolved," she told reporters.

The auditor general said the fact is that for 99 per cent of its cases it is unable to meet its own turnaround target of 30 days, partly due to its backlog of DNA requests, which on average take 114 days to complete in 2005-06. However, when pressed, it can turn around urgent service request in 15 days, but this only happens in about one per cent of the cases.

Former RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli told a Parliamentary committee in 2004 that there was no backlog at his force's forensic services and that DNA analysis for major cases was completed within 15 days.

But a report released yesterday by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser says there is a backlog, it is growing, and fewer than one per cent of DNA samples sent to the RCMP Forensic Laboratory Services are processed in less than two weeks.

The rest, including homicides and sexual assaults languished in the lab for an average of 114 days in 2005-06, Ms. Fraser said in her report released Tuesday.

That was actually an increase of nearly three weeks over 2003-04 when additional spending and staff were directed at the labs because the force was being criticized for long turnover times and backlogs.

Ms. Fraser refused to speculate on the reasons for Mr. Zaccadelli's misleading testimony when she spoke to reporters at a news conference yesterday.

“I think you have to ask the people who made those statements. I have no explanation for that,” she said.

The suggestion that the former commissioner may have misled politicians comes after he resigned for providing false information to the government about Maher Arar who was wrongly accused of having terrorist ties. It also comes as Parliament is trying to get to the bottom of mishandling of the RCMP pension.

See:

Keystone Kops and Air India

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Friday, March 23, 2007

Senate Security Report Attacks Workers


Since 1985 there has been no improvement in security at our airports or ports. Nor since 9/11 says the new security report from the Senate. However it's recommendations that all workers in airports and ports be screened has nothing to do with security and everything to do with concerns about organized crime. Hence the recommendations for increasing RCMP at airports and ports, and putting security under the Public Security Ministry.

Canada’s ports are “riddled with organized crime, and nobody seems to be doing much about it,” according to the all-party committee. It wants security clearances for all workers at Canada’s seaports.


In broad sweeping generalizations the report wants all workers searched coming to work. Though this will do little to stop organized thefts or smuggling, since that occurs on site and when workers leave. And part of the problem is also the increased use of privatized security companies

While all this sounds perfectly reasonable at first glance, it is much like the issue of drug testing in the workplace. And the result will be interesting when unions representing these workers challenge the government over this.

The other issue here is not just improved security, but a lack of staffing that is forcing workers in airports to work mandatory overtime, and a management that is authoritarian and abusive. Adding the RCMP to the mix will make the workplace even more volatile.

The Senate document containing 16 recommendations was released as CBC reported chaos during a labour dispute at Calgary airport caused a serious breach in security last December when a rushed airline manager let 30 pieces of luggage fly to Houston without the owners on board.

Internal documents CBC obtained under the Access to Information Act show that Transport Canada is investigating the incident, a direct violation of major international security rules Canada adopted after the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people.

Continental Airlines has since issued an apology for its mistake last December, but in a scathing letter to the government agency in charge of security, Garth Atkinson, president of Calgary's airport authority, called pre-flight screening out of Calgary “the absolute worst in Canada.”


See:

Anti-Terrorism Act

Spying

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State



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Sunday, March 04, 2007

State Security Is A Secure State


A secure state is not a secure people, it is in fact a secure state against the people. At all costs the state must be kept secure,or anarchy will be unleashed on the world. Often the state claims that its own self interest is the same as the peoples, that a secure state is the publics security the security of its citizens. Such is NOT the case.

One of the most fundamental responsibilities of a government is to ensure the security of its citizens. This may require it to act on information that it cannot disclose and to detain people who threaten national security.Yet in a constitutional democracy, governments must act accountably and in conformity with the Constitution and the rights and liberties it guarantees. These two propositions describe a tension that lies at the heart of modern democratic governance. It is a tension that must be resolved in a way that respects the imperatives both of security and of accountable constitutional governance. Supreme Court Decision To Strike Down Security Certificates

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent


Deportation from Canada for political radicals who threaten the State is not new. It was done in 1918 against members of the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, the Wobblies, and anarchists. It was used against the Ukrainian and other Eastern Europeans strikers who were involved in the 1919 General Strike in Winnipeg. It was used between 1921 and 1937 against immigrants who were members of the Communist Party.

We did not have a Canadian Constitution during this period. The U.S. did but it too passed similar security acts to detain and deport foreign radicals. Such was the plight of the anarchist; Emma Goldman.

Contrary to the assertion of the Supreme Court Chief Justice and the various hacks in parliament, State Security laws are not required to protect the citizens, they are required by the State to protect it from its enemies. And as the executive class of capitalism to protect capitalism from its enemies. Whether the State calls its enemies; aliens, anarchists, or terrorists.

Washington Post Calls for the Execution of All Anarchists

The wave of anarchist bombings in the United States and Europe in the 19th Century led to the origin of the first international police organization still with us today; Interpol.

The governments of the time feeling threatened again called for extraordinary laws that would protect them from attack. Not their citizens but the state.

In the United States, despite its self created mythology, the FBI was more interested in countering anarchism and communism, then dealing with organized crime, through out most of its history.

Several journalists made a link between the history of the anarchist bombers and modern terrorism after 9/11. All of it was spurious because it did not look at what the differences were between the anarchists and the later Jihadists. It would be like equating the Black Handand Black September with the Black Bloc because they all had black in their names.

Common tactics were compared rather than ideologies. It would be like saying that since the Nazi's had an Army and the US had an army they were the same. Opps.. maybe that is the case... As Major General Smedley Butler warned at the time.

The anti-terrorism act is still in effect in Canada as are the Security Certificates, as is CSIS as is Echelon the secret information gathering efforts of the defense establishment.

The defeat of the Sunset clauses in the ATA last week was NOT a defeat of the Act itself, which the Conservatives deliberately obfusticated last week.

The ruling — and the broader issue of anti-terrorism legislation — has created considerable attention in Canada, as well as the United States.

A Globe and Mail editorial noted that the court still maintains it is legitimate to detain, indefinitely, non-citizens suspected of being terrorists “as long as they have a meaningful review process.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in the New York Times praised the ruling.

“Lawmakers have only to look to the Canadian court for easy-to-follow directions back to the high ground on basic human rights and civil liberties,” it states.

The issue goes beyond “legal niceties or technicalities,” said Evans.

“What is at stake are the basic human rights that we all depend on and take for granted: the right to be presumed innocent, to have legal counsel and to challenge the legitimacy of your detention before a judge, the right not to be tortured, the right to let your family know that you are alive,” he said.

In fact it is the courts, contrary to the Harper government claims, that have struck down the governments security acts.

In October, Rutherford struck down a portion of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act
defining terrorism as a criminal act committed for religious political or ideological reasons. He found it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but said Khawaja's trial could go ahead.
Greenspon said he began a process of obtaining new disclosure in November. He said he was given 23 volumes of disclosure that the government had "redacted."Portions of evidence were blacked out and labelled with a code identifying the justification for censoring the evidence.

And since it is the courts that have challenged the laws, the Conservatives have pushed to have their right wing allies including the police now on the committee to appoint judges. That's a way to make sure we have no more liberal decisions like these that restrict draconian measures to protect the state and its police. Because in reality that is exactly what these security laws are, they allow the State and it's police to engage in illegal activities and then to hide them under a bushel from public view. They are not laws for the protection of the citizens of Canada, nor for public safety. They are laws to protect the State and its Police from transparency and investigation when they act illegally.



I wd. say emphatically that in recent years the Police have succeeded only by straining the law, or, in plain English, by doing utterly unlawful things, at intervals, to check this conspiracy; & my serious fear is that if new legislation affecting it is passed, Police powers may be thus defined, & our practical powers seriously impaired.

—Robert Anderson, Home Office minute, 12 December 1898
Which is the irony of the Harpocrites using the Air India families as their hand puppets last week. Because the same security laws are being used to cover up the alleged malfeasance of the RCMP and CSIS and their possible role in acting as agent provocateurs in the Air India bombing.

Of course political sub-text of what the Conservatives were saying was that the Liberals are supporting terrorists in the Indo-Canadian community, that is Sikh's, while the Conservatives support non-Sikh Indo-Canadians, the Air Canada families. Just as they have linked the Liberals to the Tamil Tigers because of Tamil community support for the Liberals.

The Conservative Party now that it has state power has abandoned all its so called libertarian philosophy. It is beholding to its social conservative base, so it gave a contract to a far right think tank opposed to greater citizen participation in politics, to study parliamentary and election reform.

It has appointed right to life advocates on the board examining reproductive technologies including stem cell research. It has shut down the Status of Women long a bugaboo of its supporters in REAL Women. Now it is appointing right wing judges.


But its real face has been shown for the past year, that this is not the old Reform party of Western populism, nor a neo-liberal or libertarian party, rather it is a good old fashioned conservative, right wing party of Law and Order. As such Harper has declared the next election will be fought on two issues, Law and Order and Terrorism.

These are of course the traditional values of the right wing, despite its toying with capitalist libertarianism, from the old Tory days in England to modern Fascism.
All right wing governments regardless of their labels are parties of Law and Order. And Law and Order means power to the police and the creation of a secure state, a police state.

It means going to war for war's sake. In this case supposedly to protect Canadians from terrorism. And thus we see our Law and Order government promoting the rearmament of the Armed Forces and transforming them from liberal peace keepers back to conservative fighting forces.

Through out the debate on the Tories allowing police to appoint judges, and the debate around the sunset clauses in the ATA, the Tories in QP and through statements in the media declared that they supported the police and their opponents were opposed to the police.

The opposition was either silent or in the case of the Liberals quick to deny they were anti-police. No one said, yes sir I am opposed to the police, since they exist as agents of the state ABOVE the citizens they are supposed to protect. The police sir are empowered to defend the State AGAINST it's citizens.

Ask any cop they are the thin blue line of the state, of law and order, against anarchy and chaos. They are not citizens nor a citizens milita, they are agents of the State and thus above the laws they supposedly enforce. That is why they ignore paying for parking meters or donuts, and are always right and you and I are always wrong.

That is why they are allowed to use force including deadly force like Tasers, and the courts will uphold their rights to do so. While the higher courts may rule in favour of civil liberties they still support law and order as they are part of the State themselves. Thus their rulings will always be in favour of the police and even draconian legislation for security and secrecy as the recent rulings on Security Certificates and the Anti-Terrorism Act show.

They are only as liberal as the laws passed by parliament. They do not rule by the doctrine of natural justice, that would be libertarian. The are an arm of the state and if the state has not passed laws to defend the individuals rights or human rights then woe betide you and I.


To the police we are 'them', some of us are good guys but mostly we are bad guys, and even good guys can be bad guys. Thus all laws to give the police more powers, are laws allowing for a police state.

The Conservatives have created a not so new political paradigm in Canada, a militarized police state. And the last time I checked that paradigm was spelled F A S C I S M.

And the only voices that will oppose that are truly libertarian ones.





See:

Anti-Terrorism Act

Spying

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State




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Friday, February 23, 2007

Anti-Terrorism Act Abolished

I guess this takes the wind out of the Conservatives erroneous claims that the Anti-Terrorism Act is supported even by the Supreme Court.

This decision was unanimous.

Court strikes down security certificates

The Supreme Court of Canada

Federal Government has one year to craft a new system, court says

We didn't have to wait for March 1 either for the sunset clauses, which were the most offensive assault on our civil liberties, to expire.

Mr. Harper said it was "dangerous" to defeat the measures.


"I can assure you that we have all kinds of security information that indicates that there are very real circumstances under which these provisions could be used," he said. "I think the facts are clear here. It's a simple question of whether we have the leadership as a Parliament to do the right thing when we have to do the right thing, regardless of the kind of pressure we may feel from our caucuses."


Once again the Judiciary defends the civil liberties of Canadians that the State would eliminate for the good of "Law and Order" that is their police and spies.

As for Harper, yesterday he recruited families of the Air India tragedy to bolster his case and further isolate the Liberals. He cited RCMP plans to use the anti-terror law's compulsory hearings to force reluctant witnesses to testify in the ongoing investigation of the 1985 terrorist bombing. In short, civil rights should continue to be suspended to compensate for shoddy police work. The RCMP bungled its first investigation by destroying evidence; it has had three years since the acquittals of two prime suspects to invoke investigative hearings. Why hasn't it? Its defenders say there wasn't time; witnesses are hard to locate. Or is it just that the RCMP, or any police force, does not want to give up blunt tools that may offend soft-on-crime whiners, but could some day be useful?



See:

Anti-Terrorism Act


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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Cover Up

Another cat is out of the bag. And another Pandora's box has been opened by the Harper government. No less than the Air India Inquiry.

The ex Supreme Court Justice John Major's appointed by Harper to conduct a public hearing into the Air India F.U. has discovered that like the Arar Inquiry the State has marshelled all their forces in a united front called National Security.

The RCMP, CSIS, Foreign Affairs, the whole crew of bunglers has blacked out what could be incriminating evidence, refusing the Justice to even preview it in private.

And what could their reason be? Besides being creatures of paranoia, that their secret security state would fall apart if it was revealed how they operate? Or perhaps like bungling Keystone Kops they fell all over each other in jurisdictional sectarianism that meant no one cooperated letting the bad guys get away with murder.

Or perhaps it is more sinister than that.

CSIS specializes in deep cover operations, as they did with setting up the Heritage Front, may have set had an agent provocateur within the cell. Did they in effect create this very cell to keep track of Sikh Nationalist Militants. Did they end up supplying them with the explosives they needed.

It has been done before by the RCMP. Who were also bugging the same cell, and could they be in possession of evidence of CSIS wrong doing?

Again a jurisdictional dispute arises allowing each security division of the State point fingers at each other for their mutual failure to halt an operation they both had under surveillance.
Mountie cited Air India threat days before bombing, memo says

We may never know unless Justice Major gets to see all the evidence.

And if ever there was a case against State Security Laws like the Anti-Terrorism Act that give the police unlimited powers of arrest and detention, as well as the ability to declare operations secret and blacked out, then this is it.

This along with the Arar case, the Ottawa Citizen Case, etc. etc. is evidence that we have the same old Keystone Kops operating in the same old fashion that the MacDonald Commission on the RCMP identified as the problematic source of their wrong doing and undoing as a secret security force.

Something that the Conservatives fear dreadfully hence their out and out attempt to fabricate links between the Air India disaster and their current attempt to extend the Anti-Terrorism Act. An act that was put in place years after Air India.

How embarrassing for a self declared Right Wing Law and Order government that is demanding an extension of its draconian authoritarian Anti-Terrorism Act being told it is this very act that is halting the Air Inquiry.

Instead the Harpocrites take a page from the Bush White House and their yellow cake from Niger, Saddam has Nukes, falsehoods.

Harper and Co. are now spuriously linking the renewal of the Anti-Terrorism Act with the Air India inquiry, claiming the RCMP need the act to catch the bad guys twenty-five years later, and after a court case freed them because of CSIS/RCMP bungling.


What Justice Marshall needs is open access to ALL Government files from all its agencies involved in the Air India affair. And that demands the elimination of all Official Secrets Acts including the Anti-Terrorism Act that allow the State to cover up it's Keystone Kops agent provocateur's and their incompetence.



“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx



Articles referenced;

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

Fascists were CSIS Front

CSIS vs. CUPW

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent



Also See:

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime


Terrorism



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Saturday, February 17, 2007

New Math


This has to be some form of new math, right.

Terrorism suspect Mohamed Mahjoub will soon be living again in Toronto with his wife and two young sons after spending almost seven years behind bars without charges.


Because if he has been in jail for seven years on terrorism charges, counting backward on my fingers that means;he was arrested in 2000 a year before 9/11 and two years before the Security Act was passed and several years before they built Gitmo North in Kingston.

And if he was not allowed to know the charges against him or see the evidence in denial of habeas corpus, then we already had a paranoid security state in place in Canada before 9/11!!!

My gawd that means we have been living in a police state for seven years and it had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11.

But thats nothing new;
Canada's First Internment Camps




h/t to
verbena-19

SEE

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime


Terrorism



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Friday, February 16, 2007

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges


Harper admits he wants more law-and-order judges

So that they can stop liberal judges from doing this;

Yesterday in Toronto, a judge ruled it didn't make any sense to keep a sick, 46-year-old man who has not been charged with any crime locked up for almost seven years.

We haven't gained our equilibrium yet. Egyptian refugee claimant Mohamed Mahjoub may be able to rejoice now that Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley has allowed him to be detained under house arrest rather than in a special jail built just outside of Kingston. But there are still two other immigrants there who have been imprisoned for years without charge.

This won't solve all of the defects of the anti-terror laws. The legislation continues to give the government sweeping powers to outlaw any organization it wishes – and then treat anyone who has ever been a supporter of such an organization as a terrorist.

The word "terrorist" is defined so broadly that it can include not just those who commit or plan terrorist acts but those who use symbols associated with terrorism.

See

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime


Terrorism



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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act


The extension of the Anti-Terrorism Act being discussed in parliament hoists the Liberals on their own petard, for now they speak out in favour of 'liberalism' defending civil liberties as paramount, while the Conservatives speak in favour of totalitarianism; ie. law and order.

Once upon a time five years ago the Liberals too spoke in favour of totalitarianism, they embraced law and order and to hell with civil liberties.

Former Liberal justice minister Anne McLellan defended them this way: "And that's why preventive arrest is in this package. We have to look at stopping these people before they get on those planes and put them through the World Trade Centre."

Of course the Liberals have a history of defending statist totalitarianism squashing civil liberties in Canada with the War Measures Act. Today they find themselves opposing the extension of their own terrorism act only because they are Her Majesty's Official Opposition, and it is the Gnu Conservative Government that wants to extend the act.

The Liberal shift surprised national-security experts, who were expecting an extension to sail through Parliament. "I'm shocked," said Craig Forcese, an expert in national-security law at the University of Ottawa. "They were pretty enthused about it while in government."


Only the NDP has been principled and consistent on this issue since WWII, taking the unpopular stance of opposing the War as the CCF. Opposing the War Measures Act in 1970 and opposing the Liberals Anti-Terrorism Act. Because they are civil libertarians, and because they do not and have not held state power.

The State can never be truly liberal, for once it is threatened it reveals itself to be what it is armed force in defense of property and the propertied classes. Hence the Law and Order State which is what the Harpocrites are advocating.

Whether crime is really on the increase, it isn't, or whether there really is a terrorist threat in Canada, there isn't. But there is the appearance of crime being out of control, thanks to the government saying so. There is an appearance of a terrorist threat, thanks to the government saying so. That does NOT make it so.

The rule of law, which emanates from the state, has the right then to declare when to pass an “exception” violating the rights of a given number of individuals. And it is at this specific moment that politicians call “practical exception,” when the link and resemblance between totalitarianism and liberalism gets clearer as to develop into the same nature: liberalism becomes totalitarianism.

That the Liberals are hypocrites is a given, for they oppose the very act they introduced, and their actions resulted in the detention and torture of Canadians abroad, the building of the secret prison in Kingston which currently holds three detainees without right to habeas corpus. And when they invoked the War Measures Act in 1970, they claimed it was because 'of an apprehended insurrection', that is the State thought it was facing an insurrection. It wasn't.

Given the armed powers and nature of the State it becomes totalitarian when it feels threatened. Not because it is actually threatened. And it has nothing to do with defending our rights, our property or person, it has to do with the fact that the State itself feels threatened. It is the State which acts to curtail our rights for the good of the State, claiming that this also for the 'public' good for the good for its citizens. It isn't.



while the law wants to prevent and prescribe, security wants to intervene in ongoing processes to direct them. In a word, discipline wants to produce order, while security wants to guide disorder…security imposes itself as the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several decisive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterion of political legitimation.

A state which has security as its only task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic…the difference between state and terrorism threatens to disappear…In the end it may lead to security and terrorism forming a single deadly system in which they mutually justify and legitimate each others' actions

See

Arar


Crime


Terrorism



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