Europe: A Fascist Empire Brewing

Hello,

There has been terrorist attacks here in Europe like there was in America and the EU is starting to tighten their grip on the people of Europe. The European ministers of Justice and the European Commission want to keep all telephone and internet traffic data of all 450 million Europeans. This would be temporary, for about four years they say ... yeah right!

Let's go back in time to February 28th of 1933:

On February 28th, 1933 President Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which allowed the suspension of civil liberties in time of national emergency. This Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State abrogated the following constitutional protections:

1. Free expression of opinion
2. Freedom of the press
3. Right of assembly and association
4. Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
5. Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
6. Individual property rights
7. States' right of self-government

On the 27th of February 1933 the Reichstag had been burnt down, the Nazis accused communist terrorists, while infact they burnt down the Reichstag to get this state of national emergency.

So what the EU is basicly pushing for is number 4 on that list, and because the information from these telecommunication service providers will most likely be inaccurate and misleading, everybody will be a suspect, so I reckon they will push for number 5 next.
There will most likely be very much collateral damage, innocent people put in jail etc.


What are your views on this situation?

[edit on 1/8/2005 by SwearBear]

Well first of all, the EU needs to agree on a constitution. Once they do, then they can start worrying about those things.

That's what the us patriot act does.

They said it would only be temporary, and this year they renewed it for a second time this time 14 amendments have been made permanent.

That includes #4

Originally posted by TrueLies
That's what the us patriot act does.

They said it would only be temporary, and this year they renewed it for a second time this time 14 amendments have been made permanent.

That includes #4

Well America is pretty far down the line to becoming a fully corporatist fascist empire, but Europe is not too far behind it seems. Though as D noted, the EU members will probably first have to agree on a constitution.

www.oldamericancentury.org...

Maybe the EU is feeling the pressure from the other superpowers, the US, Russia and China. As it's possible that resource wars for oil and natural gas might start within a few years or maybe a few decades, and surely Europe also wants their bowl of the black soup. That's just a guess though, I'm probably wrong.

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net...

I'd be interested if you'd read the 'European convention on Human Rights' and tell me how this in the context of a democratic and free Europe has anything whatsoever to do with a "fascist state".

Get real.

The European ministers of Justice and the European Commission want to keep all telephone and internet traffic data of all 450 million Europeans.

Where can I read more about this?

What's your source?

Thanks!

Interesting thoughts and a good report. I suppose trouble's started an even free world governments need more le-way in infiltrating the bad guys, like the US Patriot Act for instance.

What I'm curious to know, that you did not mention was, how you think your government can better protect its people from radical killer nut-balls within your own community, with intent to kill masses?

Dalllas

As long as the people 'in charge' of monitoring the public's mail, email etc. are looking only for indications of terrorist activity, and leave everthing else alone, then one would think it would be OK. I would submit that most people would be relieved and possibly see some value in such an action by the government if a serious terrorist attack was discovered and prevented due the monitoring of an individuals email. Unfortunatley, because there is no guarantee that this will be done, it is understandable that people would be concerned.

Originally posted by Tinkleflower
Where can I read more about this?

What's your source?

Try this, London's Push For Surveillance Plan., and this, EU proposal + communications surveillance plan, and/or this, EU agrees e-surveillance plan.

Hope that helps.



seekerof

Thanks so much, seekerof

"“Some people say that is the case. I don't agree. The human right to travel on the Underground on a Thursday morning without being blown up is an important human right to sit alongside all the human rights with which we have to deal."

(Charles Clarke, quoted from eupolitix.com, referring to the allegation that the EU is moving towards a Big Brother society)

Is this man seriously trying to suggest that a unique tragedy somehow justifies infringing on other rights?

(Or am I simply misreading his intent?)

Originally posted by Tinkleflower
Thanks so much, seekerof

"“Some people say that is the case. I don't agree. The human right to travel on the Underground on a Thursday morning without being blown up is an important human right to sit alongside all the human rights with which we have to deal."

(Charles Clarke, quoted from eupolitix.com, referring to the allegation that the EU is moving towards a Big Brother society)

Is this man seriously trying to suggest that a unique tragedy somehow justifies infringing on other rights?

(Or am I simply misreading his intent?)

Don't you guys think it's kind of useless to start to monitor 450 million europeans of which 99.999% are not terrorists, adding the fact that terrorists most likely know how to avoid being detected?

The internet service providers and telephone companies have to put large sums of money into storing the information, but little ol' Jack Straw says it's worth it, but he isn't a computer expert, he doesn't know that it's not too hard to avoid being detected, or does he? If he did, and he'd be the slightest bit intelligent, he would definately say no to this, unless there's some hidden agenda here? I guess this is basicly about control, to more efficiently control the cattle, the general population is the cattle.

I would push for another solution to this terrorist problem, if there even is one.

My original sources were:
www.dataretentionisnosolution.com... (sign this petition if you think this is not the right way)
news.bbc.co.uk...
www.epic.org...
news.bbc.co.uk... (old news)
www.guardian.co.uk... (old news)

The links provided by Seekerof were also great, thanks!

sminkeypinkey: Maybe Europe will not turn fascist yet, but we sure are going down that road. We will have to wait and see how things progress, eventually the truth will start to unfold.

Dallas: I don't have an answer to that yet, I will think about diffrent solutions, but data retention is definately not the right way.


As I reckon most of us know, misinformation, fear, panic and the sense of revenge are VERY powerful tools in politics, if you know how to use them correctly. Look at what Bush has gotten away with.

Ok, first a few reasons why EU is absolutely not like Nazi Germany.

Hitler estabished fascist goverment in ONE country, where people spoke one language and had one culture and history.
EU are 25 very different sovereign countries.
To create nazi-like EU you would need a one-party system, one political party ruling over Europe. Such thing is impossible. You would need to get ALL 25 countries to vote for the same party and then get all those parties to agree on one ideology. That won't happen.

Hitler established control over the media. It was easy. One country, no TVs, one state controled radio station, no computers, no internet, one or two newspapers.
EU today: countless TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, internet, 50 years of free press mentality in heads of people. You would have to somehow get every EU country to ban ALL these sources of information at the same time, to have a chance to set up a propaganda channel of your own. Now, THAT is just impossible.

Those were just two examples of differences between these two.

EU is very extremely far away from any similarities with fascist goverment.


Now to that surveilance thing.
I think that the danger of it is exaggerated. If you haven't done anything illegal, you don't have to worry.
What they are doing might just be a PR thing, you know "look at us, we are the goverment and we are doing something about terrorists".

It also might be something else.
Lets say the goverment decided to monitor emails of arabs or generaly muslims in order to catch extremists, and they say that publicly. You would have a gigantic outcry by human rights organisations, media, oposition parties, that such action equals racial profiling. Saying that you want to monitor only a certain group in Europe is political suicide.
You can do something else though, you can pass a law that allows you to monitor ALL citizens. That gives you a neccessary legal and political window to do the job. They most certainly do not have enough resources and manpower to actually keep a surveilance on all EU citizens all the time.
If you are a normal citizen and you haven't done anything illegal, you're good, nobody cares about your emails to your boyfriend/girlfriend.

The ideals of free society are good, noble and worth living by, but the enemy does not play by the rules sadly.
There is a saying: one's greatest strength is also one's greatest weakness.

To protect our society we must not allow the weakness to be exploited.

Originally posted by paperclip
Ok, first a few reasons why EU is absolutely not like Nazi Germany.

I didn't say EU is like Nazi Germany, I just pointed out that it is starting to remind me of it.
They are at least pushing to remove one of the same civil liberties (4. Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications) that Hitler did when he and Hindenburg declared a state of national emergency after the terrorist attack at the Reichstag. I bet more civil liberties will be removed in the near future, next would most likely be "5. Protection against unlawful searches and seizures" so that law enforcement agencies around the EU wouldn't need to get warrants, which might take time to get, to search terrorist suspects homes etc. because as I previously said the information from the telecomm companies will probably be inaccurate and unreliable.

Originally posted by paperclip
Hitler estabished fascist goverment in ONE country, where people spoke one language and had one culture and history.
EU are 25 very different sovereign countries.
To create nazi-like EU you would need a one-party system, one political party ruling over Europe. Such thing is impossible. You would need to get ALL 25 countries to vote for the same party and then get all those parties to agree on one ideology. That won't happen.

I'm talking more about politicians removing civil liberties and assigning diffrent kinds of laws that apply to all EU countries, that support their hidden agenda. Slowly, but surely.
Fascism comes in many forms.

Originally posted by paperclip
Hitler established control over the media. It was easy. One country, no TVs, one state controled radio station, no computers, no internet, one or two newspapers.
EU today: countless TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, internet, 50 years of free press mentality in heads of people. You would have to somehow get every EU country to ban ALL these sources of information at the same time, to have a chance to set up a propaganda channel of your own. Now, THAT is just impossible.

Yes it's impossible to ban them all, but it's possible to control at least most of the biggest and credible ones. For example here in Finland the general public usually watch news from three diffrent channels, and usually read two diffrent newspapers (1 regional 2 local).
The Bush administration is controling the mass media in the US, if it's possible there, it's possible here, but I agree that it would be very hard to do it here because of multiple languages and stuff.
www.oldamericancentury.org...

Originally posted by paperclip
EU is very extremely far away from any similarities with fascist goverment.

That's true, but the EU is taking a step at the "right" direction.

Originally posted by paperclip
Now to that surveilance thing.
I think that the danger of it is exaggerated. If you haven't done anything illegal, you don't have to worry.
What they are doing might just be a PR thing, you know "look at us, we are the goverment and we are doing something about terrorists".

It also might be something else.
Lets say the goverment decided to monitor emails of arabs or generaly muslims in order to catch extremists, and they say that publicly. You would have a gigantic outcry by human rights organisations, media, oposition parties, that such action equals racial profiling. Saying that you want to monitor only a certain group in Europe is political suicide.
You can do something else though, you can pass a law that allows you to monitor ALL citizens. That gives you a neccessary legal and political window to do the job. They most certainly do not have enough resources and manpower to actually keep a surveilance on all EU citizens all the time.
If you are a normal citizen and you haven't done anything illegal, you're good, nobody cares about your emails to your boyfriend/girlfriend.

There's also rumours going around that it will be used for solving normal crimes aswell, including speeding, like if you travel from A to B in X time, they can calculate your average speed, if you've had your cellphone with you while driving. Sounds a bit farfetched though, but you never know what they will come up with. Maybe somekind of complex computer program could handle it. And it's simply too expensive too "good" of a project, to be used just for spying on possible terrorists.

Have you ever heard of the American Naval Base Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? There's many supposed terrorists locked up there, and from what I heard in the TV program "60 Minutes" and from what I've read in numerous articles suggests that there's loads of innocent people locked up there aswell, that have been locked up for more than two years! They have all been stripped of their human rights, and that's why it's very hard for them to prove that they are not affiliated with any terrorists!!
The same thing could happen here, innocent people getting locked up because of incomplete, inaccurate, unreliable information, but the law enforcement agencies simply don't want to take the risk of them turning out to be a terrorist.
Can anyone spell paranoia??

Kinda expensive PR thing tho, not only for the EU though, but also for the ISPs and telecommunication providers.

As I previously said, this monitoring is pointless if they want to catch professional dedicated terrorists that could do some actual damage, this monitoring method is only effective at catching lowlife criminals that don't really matter. If the EU would have any real experts (which I really think they do have!) working on this they would point this out, unless, they of course are told not to.
If they only want to monitor the european muslim population, they could do it covertly.
And so what if they catch a terrorist or two (which they most likely won't)? The al Qaeda for instance isn't really a small organisation from what I've heard, they probably have tons of eager flunkys waiting to go to "paradise."

[edit on 3/8/2005 by SwearBear]

I'm as uncomfortable about the potential for an overly assumed level of state interference as the next person, but is there not an established precedent for this kinda thing anyway.

I'm thinking about stuff like stop and search powers, and the random breath testing - If you have nothing that the state is interested in, you'd like to think that you'd be thanked for your time, free to go and that's it.

I'm happy to be pulled over on the odd occasion to see if I'm driving whilst under the influence, as long as the minute it's obvious that I've not been drinking, I'm free to go off about my business without any other malarkey unless there is very good reason for further suspicion. I'm not at all happy having to go through the steps of having to produce documents and enduring the 'is this your vehicle' type stuff, if I've only been pulled on a random 'are you drunk' thing late one night - that's where the problem starts ... so maybe it's more a question of degree than anything else ?

Think of the amount of data that would be generated, pulling anything meaningful out of that would be a mammoth task. I guess you could include certain triggers in what appears to be routine conversations about whether I needed to get cat food on the way home or not, but would there not be other evidence that hinted at that ?