From AP, with thanks to RB: British House of Lords amends anti-terrorism law:
Prime Minister Tony Blair's plans for a new anti-terrorism law suffered a major setback Monday, as Parliament's upper chamber insisted that only judges should have the power to impose sweeping controls on terrorist suspects....
The vote was a blow to the government's plans to give a minister the power to act swiftly against suspects without the need for a trial. Prime Minister Tony Blair insists the new law is necessary to protect Britain from the threat of terrorist attack. Opponents argue, however, that it would erode civil liberties.The government may try to overturn the Lords amendment when the legislation returns to the House of Commons later this week.
This is an ongoing dilemma. I continue to believe that we can win the war against the global jihadists without giving up the guaranteed liberties of Western societies; I suspect, however, that to do so will require more realism about the true nature of the threat we face.
Yes and no. Abraham Lincoln, not exactly a totalitarian monster, suspended Habeas Corpus in wartime. And no war can be fought if the enemy is never identified, and confusion continues to reign. If the word "Islam" cannot be used, partly out of ignorance, partly out of failure to think things through, then at least the peoples and polities of the Western (and non-Western) world should be able to talk and write about "those who believe in the Jihad." That will be understood, and what can CAIR and company do? Deny that Jihad is central to Islam?
Let them.
I guess we've been extremely lucky so far that we haven't had a major attack here in the U.K.... although they say they have foiled a few.
If, or should I say when we are attacked, I bet the house of lords will do some pretty fast back pedalling, especially if an attack is aimed at Westminster.
But even then (sigh)I think they will still be convinced that it is just a rouge element, they'll fail to see the bigger picture, and fail to act.
whenever the House of Lords is televised half of them are sat there fast asleep anyway. Talk about relics.. shish!!
The continuing failure of Blair, or of any other well-konwn poltician in Britain, including those who dislike Blair, to properly identify the threat, which is hardly limited to terrorism, and has to do with the inexorable islamization of Europe, employing the Three Deadlies of Da'wa, Demography, and Dhimmitude (which, in turn, are all promoted, on the part of the Infidels, by the usual Seven Deadlies of Christianity. Among those Deplorable Seven, Greed and Sloth are the most worrisome. The first is exhibited in the desire of Euro-Arab politicians and businessmen for petrodollars and private payoffs; the Sloth, on the other hand, can be seen in the widespread mental laziness, which prevents even the most rudimentary homework being done on the theory and practice of Islam, and a preference for the easy cliches and assumptions, that will not do, about how "everyone wants the same thing" and "we all share the same faith" and similar nonsense and re-nonsense.
One longs for someone, anyone, to stand up and begin discussing, and not shutting up, about the three D's.
One more time, with feeling and alliteration:
The Instruments of Jihad:
Da'wa, Demography, and Dhimmitude.
Could be a bumpersticker.
"I continue to believe that we can win the war against the global jihadists without giving up the guaranteed liberties of Western societies..."
I agree.
The problem tends to be two-fold:
1) Poorly crafted legislation that doesn't stand a prayer before constitutional review
2) Legislation that lacks the necessary element or level of judicial review
These are easy fixes. Let's fix the laws, hire some more judges, and get on with it! It's inexcusable that legislators making six figure incomes can't write laws that conform to our constitutional freedoms.
Blair is desperate to avoid a Madrid-style terrorist attack that could cost Labour the election. To that end, he is trying to push through these laws while simultaneously appeasing the MCB and other Muslim groups with his religious thought-crime legislation and pro-Palestinian agenda. As Gordon Brown has learned, Tony will do anything to stay in power and he is an extraordinarily clever politician.
It has been pointed out that the House of Lords members who rejected this abortion of a law included several former Northern Ireland Ministers, Home Secretaries, security chiefs, armed forces chiefs, police chiefs and judges. All these people are very experienced in fighting IRA terrorism and allied kinds of violence and not at all liberal dreamers. (For that matter, the whole Tory party, the traditional party of law and order, rejected it.) The fact is that it is quite simply bad law, nothing more than a power grab by the Home Office bureaucrats, not even including the commonsense measure of making telephone intercepts available in court. Behind that piece of insanity, again, lies the power greed of Home Office bureaucrats, who do not want to surrender the oversight of phone interceptions to judges and want what they do kept secret. It was just bad law and Parliament was right to knock it down.
The British and their erstwhile colonies are heirs to a very intense struggle to prevent abuse of power that goes back to at least the tiff between parliament and Charles I--if not back to the barons and King John at Runnymeade. It got helped by a general weariness with conflict following the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Things got helped a bit further as 18th century Evangelicals (both Anglicans and Old Dissenters, who were at each others' throats in the mid-17th century; and Methodists, who were the new sect on the block) agreed to agree on the major issues of the Gospel and disagree without being disagreeable over ritual and church governance.
It seems that the British back off from civil liberties only in the face of a clear, present, and violent danger--the Northern Irish troubles being a case in point. The case of Lincoln in the USA shows a further instance how established rights are not to be used as a "suicide pact"--although the danger that anti-liberal (traditional sense of valuing liberty) measures will remain in place after the danger is past.
Of course, a large, vocal, and non-equivocating segment of Anglo-American Islam openly denouncing the terrorists and showing their hand in the arrests and prosecutions of the nasties (after all, the civil rights movement could appeal to the white South's Evangelical conscience against the Korrupt Kooks of the Klan) might go far to prevent any diminishment of civil liberties.
Mr Spencer,
I at times think that we have to withdraw rights from those that are acting oustide our system, but I agree with you.
Reading more of the stories of Muslims who have left Islam makes me feel there is hope that this will not end in terrible bloodshed. I still think the key is to stop the control aspects of Mosques and make sure that those who want to securalize can and are protected. That is the challange to our politicians, I would like to see a headscarf ban applied across Europe now.
I also think that Bush is being very clever, he is openning up the free world to the decent pretend Muslims in Muslim countries, this will undermine the extremists and is already putting them on the defensive. The more that see what Islam really is the more they will leave it. The West is the catalyst for this.
I am spreading the word where I live, I make sure that all my friends and contacts understand what Islam is, the information on the Qu'ran supplied by you and others has helped. Keep up the good work.
David