Thursday, February 08, 2007
Blair: this is not a police state. posted by Richard Seymour
It's hard not to laugh at the formal denial issued by Downing Street that Britain is a police state for Muslims. It's laughable that they felt it necessary to do this, and to make a big news item out of it. What do they want, an award? "We're not fascists, and stop saying we are." Is that going to be on the front of New Labour's next manifesto?
Of course it isn't quite a police state for Muslims. We aren't there yet, no matter how quickly some would like to propel us in that direction. As a point of comparison, Saudi Arabia is a police state for Muslims, and it's one our Prime Minister is rather fond of. However, this isn't entirely a normal democracy, is it? The withdrawal of habeus corpus, the imposition of detention without trial, the violent busts, the shootings, the torture flights, not to mention all the demonising hysteria - there has to be a phrase for this. Answers in the comments boxes, please? Is Britain: a) a democracy, b) a police state, c) fill in blank?