POWER LUST IS PUTTING OUR FREEDOMS AT RISK
IN 1964 I found myself Reuters’ correspondent for East Germany, required by the job to live beyond the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.
The mockingly called German Democratic Republic was the toughest of all the Soviet satellites and the nastiest part of it was the secret police, the Stasi.
Some weeks ago I saw a film The Lives Of Others which I really recommend. It was set in East Berlin in 1985 when things were a bit easier but not much. It showed a discontented East Berlin playwright being put under surveillance by the Stasi.
Well, thank goodness that could not happen here. Oh but it can. And it has. In Poole, Dorset, of all places, a couple were spied on for three weeks on the orders of some mini-dictator in the town hall. Anti-terrorist powers were used because it was suspected they might have put their three-year-old toddler into playschool while living outside the catchment area.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/41709
Filed under: Justice & Freedom