Creeping Fascism

Brown wins crunch vote on 42 days

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days.

It appears 37 Labour MPs joined forces with Conservative and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals.

But that was not enough to defeat the plan ministers claim is needed to deal with complex terror plots.

It was passed by 315 MPs to 306 votes. It will come as a big boost to Mr Brown after his recent troubles.

But shadow home secretary David Davis says it "wasn't the argument that won the day - it was the Labour whips' office" .

He said the government had lost the argument "hands down" but had "bought the vote" - with promises to Labour backbenchers as well as the nine DUP MPs who are thought to have voted with the government.

We now have a longer detention time than Europe, Australia, New Zealand and even America.

If the government has not gone up to 28 days yet detention wise why increase it to 42? It makes no sense and using the excuse 'just in case' just doesn't cut it.

Civil Liberties

The Australia connection

Mohammed Haneef is being held in a Brisbane jail for alleged involvement in the attempted car bombings in Britain last month. But does the evidence against the 27-year-old doctor stack up? By Barbara McMahon

In a photograph taken a few months ago on the golden sands of Surfer's Paradise in Queensland, Australia, Mohammed Haneef is shown smiling, with a protective arm around his young pregnant wife. The 27-year-old had recently left behind the grey skies of Britain, where he had been working as a junior doctor, for a job with better prospects at a hospital on the sunshine-soaked Gold Coast - and he looks like a young man with plenty to look forward to.

Today, any hopes Haneef may have had for the future are in tatters. In the wake of the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow last month, the Indian-born Muslim doctor - described by colleagues as "quiet and hardworking" - has been charged with supporting a terrorist organisation. A picture of him hunched in the back of a van, shoeless and wearing a prison jumpsuit, has been on the front page of every Australian newspaper, and he is now in jail, in solitary confinement. Despite the evidence against him being, at least on the face of it, weak and circumstantial, he is due to stand trial, and is almost certain to be deported whatever the outcome.

Absolutely appalling behaviour from the Australian government. Its beyond my understanding how anyone could treat a fellow human being this way.

Smith defends new counter-terror package

· Home secretary tells MPs 28-day limit is not enough
· Plan to permit post-charge questioning of suspects

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, yesterday presented the first detailed evidence to MPs for the case to go beyond the 28-day limit for holding terror suspects without charge.

Ms Smith made clear that today's counter-terrorism measures to be outlined by Gordon Brown will contain a detailed analysis of why new powers are needed 18 months after MPs last settled the issue.

Earlier this year the former home secretary, John Reid, said he had yet to see evidence from the police that it was necessary to extend the limit on how long police could hold suspects in detention without charge. The deeply contentious issue led to the first Commons defeat for Tony Blair when he attempted to extend the limit to 90 days in November 2005.

This is all about political posturing, the government is trying to look tough. Its quite amazing, even during the height of the IRA bombing campaign no anti terror laws like this were put in place. The bomb makers aren't even very good. I knew all a long that the government would push this, the failed bombings gives them an excuse. This 90 days detention policy was already soundly defeated in 2005, but they keep pushing it, its obtuse behaviour from the British government.

Civil Liberties

Half of terror suspects released

More than half of those arrested in the UK on suspicion of terrorism since September 2001 have been released without charge, according to figures.

Home Office statistics show 669 of the 1,228 people arrested in terrorist investigations were later freed.

Some 224 have been convicted in terrorism-related trials, with 114 awaiting trial.

More than 130 people have been charged under terrorism laws, while 195 were charged with other criminal offences.

Met given real time C-charge data

Police are to be given live access to London's congestion charge cameras - allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone.

Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time.

Al-Qa'ida threat 'justifies new anti-terror laws'

Four thousand al-Qa'ida suspects and sympathisers are on M15's watchlist, the Home Office warned as it accelerated plans for new anti-terror legislation.

Ministers are actively considering a fresh attempt to extend the 28-day limit for which terrorist suspects can be held without charge because of the scale of the plots facing Britain.

Opposition parties and civil liberties groups warned the Government against using the terrorist threat as a justification for undermining human rights.

Lord West of Spithead, the Security minister, disclosed that police and security services were monitoring 2,000 suspects and a further 2,000 sympathisers. Two hundred suspected terrorist cells are being watched, of which 30 are thought to be gathering the material to launch an attack in the near future.

I just knew the failed bombings last month would lead to the government calling for more repressive anti terror laws which will make us much less safer, they were just waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Detaining a suspect for a unnamed amount of time seriously hurts relations with the Muslim community which hampers investigations. Its also wrong to hold someone for days and not telling them what they are charged with and denying them representation, its shameful behaviour from the government.

Civil Liberties 3

Increase in anti-terror targets

Counter-terror police have recorded a 37% increase in "suspicious reconnaissance" of potential targets in the first four months of 2007.

Metropolitan Police commanders said the "undiminished" threat level justified the continued use of random stop-and-search powers.

But they accepted the reasons for almost 23,000 stops under anti-terror laws in London needed more explaining.

Campaigners say anti-terrorism stop and searches "criminalise" communities.

However, the Home Office may expand the powers yet further.

What the police need is more money and manpower, not more bloody laws.

The British Police have plenty of laws to deal with terrorism yet the government has to create more and more authoritarian laws, just because they make good headlines.

John Reid even wants to bring back the Sus law and he didn't bother to consulting the judges.

Some Good News For a Change

Campus extremism request rejected

Lecturers have voted unanimously to oppose government plans urging them to fight against extremism on campuses.

They had been asked to monitor and report suspicious behaviour amongst Muslim students.

But at the University and Colleges Union annual conference in Bournemouth, delegates rejected the demands, saying they amounted to spying on students.

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said student trust would be undermined by fears of a "quasi-secret service".

Well this is good news, I find it appalling that the government plans to make lecturers spy on their students, focusing on Muslims, is this what Britain has come too? That we cannot even trust students? A sorry state of affairs if this is what the government wants to do, going the authoritarian route.

Civil Liberties 2

Ihre Papieren, Bitte!

Reid's 'stop and question' powers for police are 'UK's Guantanamo'

John Reid has provoked a civil liberties storm and a cabinet split by floating plans to give police sweeping new anti-terror powers to stop and question anyone in the street.

The Home Secretary was accused of taking a further step towards an authoritarian state as the "draconian" proposals were condemned by politicians of all parties as well as by human rights and Muslim groups.

Strengthening police powers to stop passers-by is being considered among antiterrorist measures to be announced before Mr Reid steps down on 27 June, when Tony Blair leaves office.

John Reid deserves a long holiday in Guantanamo Bay. Authoritarian wanker

This does not surprise me, he is a former Leninst and a drinking buddy of the Bosnian Serb mass-murderer Radovan Karadzic.

Civil Liberties

PM's secret stalker squad has power to detain indefinitely

A new national anti-terrorist unit to protect the Prime Minister and the Royal Family from stalkers has been secretly set up with powers to detain people under mental health laws.

How very Soviet.

Blair sparks row with bid for anti-terror powers

LONDON, May 27 (Reuters) - Civil rights and community groups criticised a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday to give police broad powers to stop and question people as part of a new anti-terrorism law.

Critics said the proposed measure risked alienating the Muslim community whose support the government needed to combat militants and an opposition politician said Blair was pushing for the powers of a police state.

An interior ministry spokeswoman said the government was looking at including the "stop and question" power in new anti-terrorism legislation.

Whenever Blair and NuLab encounter a problem, their first instinct is heavy handed statist authoritarian solutions which don't work!

These types of laws are open to abuse if an even more authoritarian unscrupulous government took over. Blair has been busy laying the groundworks for a police state

Police State

Hewitt defends mental health proposals

Controversial revisions to mental health legislation will strike the right balance between improving patient safeguards and protecting the public, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said yesterday.

The introduction of supervised community treatment is "essential" to help ensure that discharged patients continue to take medication and treatment to keep them well and help to protect the wider public, she said.

Ms Hewitt was opening a Commons second reading debate on the mental health bill.

The bill, which has suffered a series of defeats in the Lords, would amend existing legislation to ensure patients continue to take medication following discharge and to prevent relapses.

Its provisions will see some psychiatric patients discharged from hospital subject to supervised community treatment. Those undergoing the treatment will be obliged to comply with a specified regime, which campaigners say will place unnecessary restrictions on their civil liberties and may deter people with mental health problems from coming forward for treatment.

This is even more scary than talking CCTV.

If this becomes law and if a far right government got into power, they could lock up anyone who is 'subversive', or who is different from the norm, like Stalin and his gulags.