Re: Just an item of interest


Subject: Re: Just an item of interest
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Jun 26 2002 - 02:56:41 EDT


    It came as a great disillusionment to a little boy reared
    on black & whites about intrepid G-Men to learn when
    he grew up that the FBI was regarded by his intellectual
    buddies as simply another version of the Geheimstaatspolizei
    run by an obese pervert in a pink tutu. Could that really be
    the case? he wondered. How awful.
 
    There have always been secret policemen (along with their
    secret, Pythonesque balls) & I, as Tim's pop-history reading
    Brit, am really quite glad. Without them, Fawkes would probably
    have blown up our Parliament, the Fenians Queen Victoria &
    their successors an even greater number of my own present day
    countrymen. Anyone living in a state threatened by internal
    enemies (& there always are such people) who thinks it can
    survive without underhand, 'unconstitutional' defences will
    eventually waken up, not in an FBI interrogation room but in
    something rather more reminiscent of the Lubianka.
 
    Suppose someone with a swarthy skin, cross eyes, a broken nose,
    smelling of stale kebab & speaking fractured Levantine English
    turned up at your local library asking for the latest books on
    do-it-yourself explosives & a map to the nearest nuclear plant.
    Wouldn't you consider checking his address on the card?
 
    Constitution, schmonstitution, keep up the protests, chaps.
    It helps maintain the balance between you libertines & us
    authoritarians - without which no civilisation can survive.
 
    But not too much self righteousness. The drains will always need
    clearing & the bed pans emptying. That lovely integrity of yours
    depends on not being asked to do it yourselves.

    Scottie B.

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