UK toughening terrorism laws
Some small assistance, but not much:
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's plan would increase the limit for detaining suspects without charge from 28 days to 42 days, allow police to take DNA samples from terrorism suspects and urge judges to impose stiffer sentences on criminals whose offenses are linked to terrorism.I'm not sure what the real advantage is in holding suspects without charge for two weeks longer. If you can't even find enough evidence in one month to at least charge them with a crime, I don't think 14 days more is going to matter.
When I was in the 1-1 Cav in Iraq from 2003-2004, our command's policy was that we couldn't hold Iraqis longer than 72 hours without a formal charge. That was it. And believe it or not, we nearly always made that deadline. Why not? It wasn't so hard. We always had our evidence before we detained the individual(if we didn't have any evidence, we wouldn't have detained them in the first place!).
Here's another idea: how about cutting off terrorism at the source? While it wouldn't stop the ones already there, drastically reducing immigration levels would similarly drastically reduce the number of prospective terrorists entering the country (for an example look at next item above).
Even without the threat of terrorism, don't you think it's something that an island as crowded as Britain should be considering anyway?
6 comments:
These are nothing but superficial changes in order to keep the masses happy - the ministers must always claim they are "doing something" or their party will lose support.
whats with you and immigration? Especially Britain has ties to every continent due to them being a former world wide spanning colonial empire. The promise of getting rich fast or leaving poverty behind have fueled people to leave their home and family behind and try to start over somewhere else since mankind began. Why do you think the Puritans left for the new world? You can NOT stop imigration, the only thing you can do is to increase living standards in the countries most people come from to entice them to stay there. And terrorism cannot be linked with immigration that much, I'd bet that most imigrants just want to start a new life and not commit terrorist attacks against their new home or the western world. Those with suspicious and criminal intentions will find a way to enter regardless anyway. You have to stop being so paranoid! And yeah, tougher laws - I always thought that anti terrorist laws were pretty hard already, so making them even stricter will not have so much effect at all. And everybody knows that if you - that is the US Government - have strong suspicions about someone being a terrorist they simply disappear into one of your prisons without being allowed to see a lawyer or trial at all.
That is the urban legend about your legal practise anyway - guilty until proven innocent. For the small time crooks that might not hold true and they are let go after 72 hours but the bigger fish are fried in a different manner. I am not really sure what to think about that because it is ethically wrong but if it prevents terror attacks and saves lifes it causes a moral dilemma as to how much wrong you allow to make a right. How do you resolve that for yourself?
I am not in favor of ending immigration, just think it should slow down quite a bit in countries like the UK.
And immigration can stop. In fact, it will stop sometime, one way or the other. Right now, population density in the UK is 246 people per square kilometer (the USA is only 31). I predict that once the density hits over 1000 (as in Bangladesh today), immigration will end because the UK will be such a cesspool that nobody will want to move there anymore. So one way or the other, it will end - I would just rather it didn't end that way.
Good point with the density, but if it becomes too high living costs will go up as well and that alone will stop people from moving there. I think it will be a while yet until the little Island will be so populated that it compares to Bangladesh though. And im not so sure how easy it is to immigrate illegally since you can protect the borders of an island a bit more effectivly than say Germany which is in the middle of Europe and the Schengen Agreement which allows traveling without border controlls. You just have to manage to enter somewhere and you can travel anywhere you like inside of Europe.
And in all honesty, there are just parts in the US where nobody lives like Iowa or equally rural states. They have more pigs there than humans. I was an exchange student there for a year so I have first hand experience. So you can allow alot more people in the US until things become critical huh.
But back on topic, how do you plan to stop people from migrating all over the world? Build a huge fence around Europe? Chuck people back that manage to slip through holes, back into their impoverished corrupt homecountries in Africa, the middle east or Asia? I once saw a newsreport about how Marroco deals with the people that try to climb the fence into the Spanish exclave Ceuta. They simply drive them out in the desert and throw them out, leaving them to fend for themselves without food, water or shelter. That is almost a death sentence. I'm not sure I want to defent my amneties with such methods or how to feel about that. Or what about those immigrants that risked everything and paid some schlepper to bring them across just to be left alone in some hopelessly overfilled boat in the middle of the mediterranean and very likely to drown. Human compassion would demand to help them instead of arresting them and sending them back, stranding them effectivly in North Africa where they can see their goal without having a hope to ever reach it. So what magic plan do you have to stop those people from trying? Because they won't stop trying if anything is better than staying at home.
Ruthie - how to stop the large levels of immigration deserves a lot more space than I can give here, but succintly:
1) End the incentives for coming - crack down on employers for illegal immigrants and totally cut public benefits for immigrants who arrive to fill labor shortages
2) Limit family reunification to spouses and children only
3) Raise the standards for asylum applications (World agreements recognize the "safe third country rule", where asylum seekers are supposed to apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach, which means that most should have stopped long before they reached Europe)
4) A big one: Do not move migrants who arrive by sea to the mainland of Europe. For example, migrants who cross the sea to reach Malta or the Canary Islands (and many don't make it) should not be transported to Spain or Italy to be processed. Once on the continent, they can simply disappear and are totally unaccounted for.
If this seems harsh, remember this: for the same cost of supporting one immigrant family in a London flat, you could support ten or more families in most parts of Africa.
Tougher laws don't really solve the problem though. And its hard to sell it to the people that run businesses that they aren't allowed to exploit illegal immigrants anymore that work without healthinsurance and below minimum wage like slaves under conditions nobody else would be willing to work under. Sadly money makes the world go round, and that kind of prevents the crackdown on that particular aspect. Take the south of Spain as an example where alot of the vegetables that are sold in the supermarkets here are grown. The fields are all under plastic to protect them from the elements and they use pesticides etc to make sure they stay perfect. Imagine working under a plastic foil in toxic fumes while the sun shines down mercilessly all day long... right that is done by illegal immigrants. They work under abhorrent conditions that no regular Spanish person would endure and so their employer is able to sell his produce cheap to Aldi and co which makes German consumers happy. Illegal immigration is directly linked with the economy and big money. Ending that will be difficult.
And you havent even mentioned how you plan to entice people to stay in their homecountries. No matter how tough you make the laws and procedures to enter the fortress Europe, the situation is Lagos for example is still so bad that trying to get here is still preferable than staying there even if it kills you.
That discussion is about the bad fallout of globalization and I doubt that you can solve it with stricter border controlls and police razzias.
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