govenment terror

more on the governments plans to terrorise us all. First an article from the times, which says

HE LOOKED like the Manchurian Candidate. The figure at the dispatch box was massive, unshaven, confused and bumbling. This was not the Charles Clarke of old, of nutritious school food, more homework and fewer truants. He had changed. Something had got at his brain.

The Home Secretary wants to “derogate” from human rights. He demeans the British judiciary as unsound on terror. He writes mad letters to the Opposition. He demands that the Commons pass a Bill he no longer wants as law. On every side he cries threat, danger, emergency. Everyone is in uproar. So who is controlling Mr Clarke? Is it the mad cackling laugh that we hear echoing down the ravines of Bora-Bora and out over the Kandahar plains? Does Osama bin Laden still have Her Majesty’s Government on the run?

The Guardian also has an article attacking this bill, not the fact that it is basically a bad bill but on the way that it is being pushed through the house of commons without any attempts at a proper consideration of what it means to destroy teh rights that the British people have held for 800 years:

A normal bill can expect to receive about 25 hours of detailed scrutiny during its committee stage, and at least a further four or five hours on report and third reading. Yet the combined committee and third-reading stages of the bill in the Commons on Monday lasted no more than five hours in total.

Of course the governments excuse is that the threat from the Islamofacist terrorists, who have never commited one attack in this country, is so urgent that they cannot possibly delay burning the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights. The governmet claims that there are several hundred people planing attacks within this country, perhaps attacks that can be initiated in 45 minutes, but as The Register points out this is completly bogus:

The "700" Clarke refers to is the total of number of arrests made under the Terrorism Act 2000 from 11th September 2001 to 31st December 2004 (701, actually). The Home Office's breakdown of this number shows that half of these were released without charge, 119 were charged under the Act and 135 charged under other legislation. Only 17 of those charged were convicted under the Act in the period, however, and some of the others have already been acquitted, so it's by no means inevitable that the 17 will increase substantially.

and as the Times article says:

From the 1970s into the mid-1990s Britain was targeted in a series of concerted and often lethal bombing campaigns. That the bombers were not “suicidal” made little difference to the death toll, which far outstripped anything perpetrated (or reputed) by Islamic extremists today. If Mr Blair really thinks terrorism undermines British society and wants to hang tough, why did he release all IRA bombers from prison, scot free?

We know that the IRA is still active, especially since it recently carried out the biggest bank robberies in the history of Northern Ireland. Of the 17 people found guilty of terrorist acts since 9/11 in the UK, only four of the 12 whose ethnic backgrounds were known were Muslim, so is Islamofasism really that big a threat? A threat so much larger than the IRA that it requires a complete reassessment of the most basic elements of our constitution? No, of course not. But looking tough makes for good poll ratings just before an election. This becomes especially obvious when you find out that he does not even intend to use these powers strait away. If there is no need to use them then they obviously arn't required strait away, so why the rush? As in the Guardian article points out this insane speed that they are pushing things through has lead to massive abuses of parlimentary procedure, even going so far as to say it was:

... an abuse of executive power. And not an unintended one, either. The government has known both the scope and the essential content of the bill for many weeks. It was obvious that its importance and sensitivity would rouse strong feelings and require careful scrutiny. The decision to push the whole bill through in less than a month therefore amounts to a deliberate attempt to deny parliament the proper time that the bill requires.

I think that the last word on this should go to the Times as it hits the nail on the head.

Terrorism’s latest triumph was the spectacle of Mr Clarke at the dispatch box on Monday night. He shook and looked miserable as he laboured against the clock to do Osama’s bidding, to dismantle British liberty from within.