After Yesterday's Levity...

I have to go and get a bit serious again...

Sorry... Look, I don't like Jack Prescott (Dep. Prime Minister of Britain) any more than MOST Brit Labourites... Okay, I don't. (Although he has remarkable taste in art, for hanging one of my photographs in his office [somewhere, probably the loo] for six months.) But the fact that the guy has an extraordinary gift of putting his foot firmly in his mouth on a monthly (sometimes daily) basis is a GREAT thing at times...



I mean, seriously... Here's the article itself: Bush is crap, says Prescott

When will the guy learn that there ARE no "private meetings" in Politics?

Although it's a bit of a gaff... It's also rather apt. I mean... Bush IS crap. But... I don't know if a "fellow politician" and from an "Allied" country, no less... Should be saying stuff like that. But then... Muahahahahaha!

Britons, in general have a pretty good grasp of reality, unlike us Yankee folk...

Quick rant... For the past two weeks, since Lieberman lost the Democratic Primary in Connecticut, Republicans have been harping about "Weak Democrats, Weak security, cut and run, blah... Blah... F'n Blah... But then... The Brits foiled the terrorist plot to blow up 10 airplanes over the Atlantic.

How did the Brits foil the plan? Intelligence (both meanings of the word), police-work and ingenuity; Stalwarts of the British character.

How do the US Republicans fight terror? By invading a country that was ANTI Al-Qaeda, and f-ing it up so badly, that it's now the bloody headquarters of the bastards.

Yep... Makes lots of sense.

There's an old axiom... If all you have is a hammer, everything begins looking like a nail. And it's an obvious fact that the US has a great military. We do. Our military is staffed and funded up the wahzoo. However, terrorists can NOT be fought using a huge army. They can't. You have to infiltrate their groups. You have to discover their plots, and then catch 'em before they attack. That's the only way to do it. How do you do this? Police and Spies. That's what we need. Not an Abrahm's Tank and/or F-14's.

There's a whole hullabaloo this week about a judge in the Midwest of America deciding that warrentless wire-tapping by the Bush administration is illegal. Bless her.

Of course, today... In the NY Times: Experts Fault Reasoning in Surveillance Decision. And after reading the article, I see what these "experts" are saying. The judge in question, used rather circular reasoning to ban the wire-tapping... However... I DO think that the warrentless wiretapping is wrong.

Why, Tuckmac... You were just talking about using spying and intelligence to catch terrorists...

Yeah. I DO believe that spying is a good thing these days, however... It's the "warrentless" part that bugs me. See... We have laws that allow for wiretapping, but there's this pesky thing called a warrant that the gov. needs to acquire before doing so. There's privacy laws in the States, and they should be followed.

That doesn't mean that I don't want them to tap terrorists' phones. I do want them to do so, however... All of us that have "international" ties are nervous that the gov. is tapping our conversations. My Lady and her mother were on the phone two days ago, and My Lady was deliberately being careful to not use certain words that could be misconstrued as "dangerous" due to the practice of "Data-mining" that the gov. is using. You see... What we're all worried about, is that they're tapping ALL international calls, and using computers to 'listen in' and only start recording a call when certain 'words' appear in the conversation.

We shouldn't be worried about this. My Lady is a good little Scottish-bird that would never hurt a fly, and doesn't have any Islamic tendencies. However, due to the latest round of terrorists being "home-grown" in the UK... We DO sort of wonder just who's listening in whilst we chat with our friends and family over in Britain.

I know... I know... "Tuckmac, you and Fiona have nothing to fear, if you're innocent."

And my answer to that? Tell that to the few hundred folk that have been held in Gitmo for the past three years without charges, and most of whom were collected in a "witch-hunt" of the Afghanistan hillsides. Most of the dudes in Gitmo were captured without weapons, simply because they were "there" in the hillsides, of that rather dry little country.

Nah... My government has proved by illegally tapping phones, flouting the Geneva Convention AND US Constitutional Law, and their stupidity in Iraq... That my rights, safety and freedoms are non-existent.

I will worry until Bush is out of office, the Republicans lose control of Congress, and the US leaves Iraq and starts paying attention to our PORTS instead of Iraq's oil.

-Tuckmac