Doug
here detention without trial is being legalised, as is interception of all
private e-mail, while the tv (just) was showing a programme that portrayed
Britain (of all places) as being beset by armed criminals. For this reason,
the show opined, soon we will have to become like America, with the police
routinely armed. People I talk to, day to day, are swinging further and
further to the right. It's all the immigrants' fault, they think (people in
Leicester are apt to go on strange diatribes against Somalis, as urban myth
has established hereabouts that armies of Somalians are being pampered by
the state, they get free tv's, cookers, suites, carpets, I'm told) Myself
I've never seen a Leicester Somali, but the tale is peddled.
But I think the key-point is the US, a country that supposedly prides itself
on its democratic traditions but in reality is totally corrupt, in its arts
and letters as well as its social organisation, it is poisoned and it wants
its poison everywhere else too, by the standards of some of the right-wing
rhetoric that comes out the States (which rhetoric has some very strange
bedfellows) even the social critiques of The Simpsons would be a subversive
act if committed in poetry.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2001 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: opinion
> >At 8:49 AM -0700 7/12/2001, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> >>both John's Intro & his Letter to the Editor are strong stuff, just what
> >>we'd expect. I could certainly see the same things being said by such an
> >>editor about such an anthology in Canada today, especially as our
> >>government, too, is pushing through an 'anti-terrorist' bill that
'saves'
> >>democracy by denying many of its rights.
> >
> >
> >One of the strange paradoxes of the "free world", no?
> >
> >Is the Canadian bill being passed through with virtually no
> >opposition there, too?
>
> Well, Alison, Yes. And no. The trouble is it's the Liberals pushing the
> bill through with a huge majority, but most of their opposition is to
their
> right, so argue somewhat against a few of the Bill's anti-democratic
> aspects, but mainly want even tougher ways of dealing with immigrants etc.
>
> There's a fair amount of argument against the bill, inlcuding from Civil
> Rights groups, some university types, and the legal profession, but many,
> even thouthful students of such laws seem to think it's balanced enough.
> The Liberals were very smart: they introduced a Bill that was far too
> Draconian, then 'accepted' some fairly gentle ammendments, thus looking
> like they were listening to the people & not hell bent on ridding the law
> of many of its prime safeguards (& who knows, maybe they don't really want
> to do that, just, next door to the US, & watching Britain, they feel they
> must look sufficiently tought too?).
>
> Of course, all we 'law-abiding' canadians have nothing to fear. Right?
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> I put the difficulty down to god
> Who failed to be unambiguous in such matters
>
> Eli Mandel
>
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