Revolution

Meet the United States Womens World Bridge Champions who picked up their title in Shanghai last month - and are now banned from the game




Okay, I'm asking myself a question here- how can reasonably sane minded people declare these women guilty of "treason" and "sedition" for holding up a piece of paper which says who they didn't vote for?


Beats me.

Just look at their faces - that's innocence. I doubt they thought their win would make their local rag - let alone bring about a national uproar.

Possibly the funniest story i've read so far in the long narrative of mushrooming ridiculousness (and of course, horror) that extends out from a truly tragic epicenter - 9/II

These women are the victims of hype and hysteria - and their accusers are - must be - naff bridge players, who can't bare to be bettered - only explanation i can think of.

BARCELONA (Reuters) - "Galactic Suite", the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes.

Its Barcelona-based architects say the space hotel will be the most expensive in the galaxy, costing $4 million for a three-day stay.

An American company intent on colonizing Mars, which sees Galaxy Suite as a first step, has since come on board, and private investors from Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates are in talks.

**

"We have calculated that there are 40,000 people in the world who could afford to stay at the hotel. Whether they will want to spend money on going into space, we just don't know."

**

In an era of concern over climate change, Galaxy Suite have no plans so far to offset the pollution implications of sending a rocket to carry just six guests at a time into space.

"But," says Claramunt, "I'm hopeful that the impact of seeing the earth from a distance will stimulate the guests' urge to value and protect our planet."

personally i don't see how spending 4 million dollars distancing themselves further from humanity is going to help them with values - but you never know



in full

Two pretty bizarre stories - but none as mind blowing to me as the one in the Independent this week, informing me that some London councils want to make it a lawful offense to hand free food to others- unless its to advertise food stuffs for a company ___???

Are they serious?
Isn't that's taking away our right to assist a fellow human in need? What does it mean??

Soup run ban 'could cut lifeline to homeless'
By Emily Dugan
Published: 14 November 2007

Councillors in London are embroiled in a growing row over whether to ban the distribution of free food on public land, which could signal the end of soup runs for the capital's homeless.

The idea - contained in the London Local Authorities Bill to be presented to Parliament in a fortnight - has been put forward by Westminster City Council, which claims the much-needed charitable services cause "public order issues".

The subject proved so contentious at a meeting of the 33 London council leaders yesterday that a final decision was postponed until next week. In a speech to the gathered councillors, the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, urged Westminster to cease its attacks on homeless charities, saying: "It is quite wrong to seek to criminalise the activities of those who run soup kitchens and provide much-needed assistance."

For homeless people like Tony Hactur, the delay was at least welcome but the effects of an eventual ban could be catastrophic. His hands were shaking yesterday as he grasped his long-awaited plate of hot food from a volunteer van in King's Cross. It was 2.15pm and his first meal of the day, despite having been up since dawn. Sitting on the pavement, the 49-year-old explained his predicament. "I have been homeless for 22 months and without this food I'd be starving," he said, between hungry mouthfuls. "I'd have to go thieving to survive and I'd end up in prison. How would that be better?"

Westminster Council claims that places where free meals are given out attract violence and "intimidating behaviour". Yet Glenn Waddle, 39, who was waiting patiently in the food queue at King's Cross, said: "It will make the crime rate worse to take this away.

"People will have nothing, so what will they to do? They'll nick stuff from Sainsbury's instead. I've never seen any violence at these things and I've been coming for five years. Binge-drinking causes more of a disturbance, but they don't shut the pubs."

If the ban is approved, all those distributing free food to London's hungry will be breaking the law. The move would not include corporations wishing to promote their products by giving out free refreshments.

Luke Evans, a policy officer at Housing Justice, the charity which oversees soup runs in the capital, has been campaigning against the amendment to the Bill. He said: "These people could be left on the streets to die. But, more than anything, it is a philosophical principle that you should be able to care for your fellow human beings. They are penalising people who are trying to help."

He added: "There is a danger that people will starve. There is also a risk that taking the service away will actually make a disturbance of the peace more likely, because homeless people will be more desperate for food, and could potentially be driven to crime.

"We want to work with the council to solve the problem of homelessness but attacking the soup runs is not the way to go about it. These are dedicated people who do not cost the taxpayer anything."

Shelter, the housing charity, is also appalled by the prospect of a ban. Its chief executive Adam Sampson said: "Proposing to stop acts of charity and kindness by a legally enforceable ban is against the principles of tolerance, freedom and understanding which underpin British society.

"Despite claims, research shows soup runs provide vital help and emotional support to street homeless and vulnerable people and do not encourage people to remain homeless. Shelter is calling on London's council bosses to show compassion and moral leadership by deleting this inhumane clause from the Bill."

Westminster City Council's cabinet member for housing, the Conservative councillor Angela Harvey, claimed the distribution of free food was causing a "nuisance" and was not helping in the long run. She added: "Handing out free food serves only to keep people on the streets for longer, damaging their health and life chances. It makes them less likely to accept the range of services we offer to help them find work and a permanent home."

Many of the rough sleepers who disagree with Ms Harvey's viewpoint were gathered in protest outside yesterday's meeting.

Gary Birdsall, 34, who has been homeless for 19 years, said: "We have been warned not to make a racket but it is too important. People will starve without free food. Even if the Bill goes through people will flout it, but they shouldn't have to break the law to help their fellow men."




By Daniel Knowles Fight for soup kitchens

A Croydon charity that feeds the homeless has called for an end to a bid by London Councils to ban soup kitchens.

Nightwatch, which helps around 45 homeless people a night in the Queens Gardens with food and clothing handouts, has called on the public to reject a bid by London Councils to ban charities handing out food.

The group of 33 councils has included in its draft London Local Government Bill a proposal to set up zones where food handouts are banned.

Perhaps perversely, while charity food handouts would be banned free taste offers to tempt shoppers in to cafes and shops would be allowed.

The councils are expected to meet in the middle of next month to decide the final shape of the London Local Authorities Bill to be presented to Parliament on November 27.

The councils are taking comments on the plan until Friday. ((I take it that's tomorrow))

Nightwatch chairman Jad Adams said the plan was unworkable and targeted those most in need.

He also labelled the move "immoral" and "unworkable".



"Unlawful distribution of free food would be an offence, and would be liable on summary conviction to a fine.

"Exemptions would be included, for example, the distribution of refreshments to people taking part in sporting events or giving out free samples outside retail premises."

Comments should be sent to Oliver Hatch, Parliamentary and Public Affairs Officer, London Councils, 59 Southwark Street, London SE1 OAL or by email to [email protected]

Springsteen
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i heard they banned Bruce's new song

on the radio

that guy is a symbol of white soul

and of freedom

I want to hear what he has to say

They think because he's getting on

they can just shut him away?

Don't they know?

We'll get to hear it anyway?

Old rockers cannot be unborn

not in the USA






Endymion 2007

"He is completely traumatised by this. He is living with it every day."

A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds (UK) was shot twice with a Taser gun by police [while they held a real gun to his head] who feared he may have been a security threat.

Mr Gaubert said: "When I heard about that Brazilian man in London I just thought, 'oh no, that could have been me'."

This incident happened in 2005 - Why weren't we told this by the press then?




Mr Gaubert said he was told the police believed he looked "Egyptian".

words fail me

From the Guardian

Terror threat does not justify slicing away our freedoms

Timothy Garton Ash: Britain is now one of the world's most spied-upon societies, where such ancient rights as habeas corpus are hacked to bits

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/

Death prompts Canada Taser review

Canada has ordered an inquiry into the use of Tasers after footage emerged showing police using the stun gun on an unarmed man who died shortly afterwards.

A video broadcast on local and US television showed Robert Dziekanski shouting in pain after he was hit by 50,000 volt blasts at Vancouver airport a month ago.

"I've asked for a review relating to the use of Tasers. ... This is a tragic and grievous incident. We want to find out answers that can prevent these things from happening in the future," Stockwell Day, the public security minister, told the Canadian parliament.

Many Canadians were shocked by the images of Dziekanski writhing on the floor moments before he died.

Some people complained to radio and TV shows that police acted too quickly to stun a man who did not appear to be threatening them.

"The reaction of the RCMP officers was unsuitable to the situation. What I've seen was that Mr. Dziekanski [was] a person who was agitated, frustrated, I think terrified, but not aggressive. He was not making a gesture that he intended to fight anybody," Ogrodzinski told Reuters.

"He didn't know what to to do. In fact, he was in search [of] help. That is why it is a really very sad and deeply moving film to watch."

Dziekanski flew to Canada to live with his mother in the western Canadian city of Kamloops in British Columbia. She had told him to wait for her at the baggage area.

But this meant he never passed through the customs section to enter the main part of Vancouver's airport, where she was waiting.

More


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Again, words fail me

The correct link for the Timothy Garton Ash article in the Guardian
above -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2211273,00.html

There's that word again: Treason

Right, I'm not posting up here again until someone else does

this place could drive you nuts

Sorry; I've been looking in, but I'm too bummed by events to come up with more material.

I know exactly how you feel, edgar, but I'm working on it (or trying to), yes I am! :wink:

Edgar, Olga - I know

There is just so much of it - depressing stuff, I mean


Like This: Pentagon Cover Up

This well written piece by By MIKE WHITNEY (counterpunch) should set a few facts straight.

I knew it was bad - and i f*cking hate to see it. Same for Britain too - Army Morale is rock bottom.

Time to really start supporting the troops and get them the f*ck out of Dodge.

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Here's my quote of the week

From 1984 (George Orwell - prophet)


"You are a slow learner, Winston," said O'Brien gently.

"How can I help it?" he blubbered. "How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.
It is not easy to become sane."

Page 207

This speech is starting to make the rounds and a lot of people are saying it's one to be remembered -




Address by Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson on October 27, 2007


Salt Lake City, Utah --

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah's entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: "You have failed us miserably and we won't take it any more."

"While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss."

"You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law."

"You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation's history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder."

"We are here to tell you: We won't take it any more!"

"You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation's treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law."

"Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ?'patriotism,' our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.

It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense - when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling - and disgraceful. What part of "Thou shalt not kill" do you not understand? What part of the "Golden rule" do you not understand? What part of "be honest," "be responsible," and "be accountable" don't you understand? What part of "Blessed are the peacekeepers" do you not understand?

Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, ?'We won't take it any more!' "

"As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation's values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places - for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world."

In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.

It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.

In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress's sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country - and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people - 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks - a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.

As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship -- as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths -- we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: "You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions."

"But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ?'We won't take it any more.'"

If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders - the leadership has to come from us. If we don't insist, if we don't persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy - and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration - and to candidates running for office - and to the world - that we support the status quo.

Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what's right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part.

Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.

It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.

How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses.

Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?

We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don't cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.

Let's awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: "We won't take it any more!"

I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say "No more" and mean it?

I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.

If we expect our nation's elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted - that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.

The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won't let it go on one more day - that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation's reputation in the world.

Let us be unified in drawing the line - in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.

In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans - and as moral human beings - we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.

We read dozens of very well thought out indictments of the Bush/Blair crimes against humanity, but nobody does a thing about any of it.

yeah, Edgar - and on this side of the pond - where we seem to find ourselves in the a similar sinking ship - Henry Porter agrees with you.


We must not tolerate this putsch against our freedoms


A few journalists and MPs are prepared to fight the government's sinister anti-libertarianism. More people should join them

Henry Porter
Sunday November 18, 2007
The Observer

Welcome to Fortress Britain, a fortress that will keep people in as well as out. Welcome to a state that requires you to answer 53 questions before you're allowed to take a day trip to Calais. Welcome to a country where you will be stopped, scanned and searched at any of 250 railways stations, filmed at every turn, barked at by a police force whose behaviour has given rise to a doubling in complaints concerning abuse and assaults.

Three years ago, this would have seemed hysterical and Home Office ministers would have been writing letters of complaint. But it is a measure of how fast and how far things have gone that it does nothing more than describe the facts as announced last week.

We now accept with apparent equanimity that the state has the right to demand to know, among other things, how your ticket has been paid for, the billing address of any card used, your travel itinerary and route, your email address, details of whether your travel arrangements are flexible, the history of changes to your travel plans plus any biographical information the state deems to be of interest or anything the ticket agent considers to be of interest.

There is no end to Whitehall's information binge. The krill of personal data is being scooped up in ever-increasing quantities by a state that harbours a truly bewildering fear of the free, private and self-determined individual, who may want to take himself off to Paris without someone at home knowing his movements or his credit card number.

Combined with the ID card information, which comes on stream in a few years' time, the new travel data means there will be very little the state won't be able to find out about you. The information will be sifted for patterns of travel and expenditure. Conclusions will be drawn from missed planes, visits extended, illness and all the accidents of life, and because this is a government database, there will be huge numbers of mistakes that will lead to suspicion and action being taken against innocent people.

Those failing to provide satisfactory answers will not be allowed to travel and then it will come to us with a leaden regret that we have in practice entered the era of the exit visa, a time when we must ask permission from a security bureaucrat who insists on further and better particulars in the biographical section of the form. Ten, 15 or more years on, we will be resigned to the idea that the state decides whether we travel or not.

Who pays for the £1.2bn cost over the next decade? You will, with additional charges made by your travel agent and in a new travel tax designed to recoup the cost of the data collection. But much of the money will go to Raytheon Systems, the US company that developed the cruise missile and which, no coincidence, has embedded itself in Labour's information project by supporting security research at the party's favourite think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The odour that arises from the Home Office contract with Raytheon is as nothing compared to that created last week when the Home Secretary and Prime Minister used the announcement of the 'E-borders' scheme as well as increased security at shopping centres, airports and railway stations to create an atmosphere that would push MPs to double the time a terrorist suspect can be held without trial. It also helped to divert attention from the mess in another Home Office database concerning upwards of 10,000 security guards who may be illegal immigrants.

On detention without trial, no new arguments have been produced by Gordon Brown. He won't say how many days he wants and he won't answer David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, who points out that all the necessary powers to keep people in jail after a large-scale attack are provided in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

To this, Brown replies that declaring a state of emergency would give terrorists 'the oxygen of publicity'. How does he square this absurd statement with the high alert being sounded by police, politicians and spies over the past two weeks, which has given the greatest possible publicity to the power of the Muslim extremists to change our lives?

The truth is that while his government limps, heaves and splutters with an incompetence only matched by its unearthly sense of entitlement, the Prime Minister has become fixated with this issue as though it were a virility test. So his chief Security Minister, Lord West of Spithead, who had voiced his doubts about raising detention without trial on Radio 4, was hauled into Number 10 to have his thoughts rearranged. Less than an hour later, he appeared like an off-duty ballroom dancing champion and adjusted his conviction as though it was no more than a troublesome knot in his very plump, very yellow silk tie. He will not resign of course. What is a mere principle placed against his recent elevation to the Lords and the thrilling proximity to power?

How have we allowed this rolling putsch against our freedom? Where are the principled voices from left and right, the outrage of playwrights and novelists, the sit-ins, the marches, the swelling public anger? We have become a nation that tolerates a diabetic patient collapsed in a coma being tasered by police, the jailing of a silly young woman for writing her jihadist fantasies in verse and an illegal killing by police that was prosecuted under health and safety laws.

Is it simply that the fear of terrorism has stunned us? The threat is genuine and the government is right to step up some security measures, but let us put it into perspective by reminding ourselves that in the period since 7/7, about 6,000 people have been killed on our roads. And let's not forget the bombings, assassinations, sieges, machine-gunning of restaurants and slaughter that occurred on mainland Britain during the IRA campaign. We survived these without giving up our freedoms .

Or is there some greater as yet undefined malaise that allows a sinister American corporation to infiltrate the fabric of government and supply a system that will monitor everyone going abroad? I cannot say, but I do know that an awful lot depends on the 40 or so Labour MPs needed to defeat Brown's proposals on pre-trial detention. They should be given every encouragement to defy the whips on the vote, which is expected within the next fortnight

It is important that the press has moved to the side of liberty. The Daily Mail, which I wrongly excluded from the roll of honour last week, attacked Jacqui Smith for 'her utter contempt for privacy' and warned against the travel delays and inevitable failure of another expensive government database. And Timothy Garton Ash, who has so far stayed above the fray, wrote in the Guardian last week that 'we have probably diminished our own security by overreacting, alienating some who might not otherwise have been alienated'. Labour MPs should listen to these voices.

The Prime Minister is found of quoting Churchill, so I will again: "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only precarious chance for survival."

[email protected]

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I think his quote from Winston Churchill deserves reading again - just to reiterate

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only precarious chance for survival."

Winston Churchill



I think here in Britain, the fact that there is a third party helps. The Lib dems were against the war in Iraq from day one - and have fought hard for our civil rights.

The other day in the house of commons, Jack Straw (that pompous oaf) asked which parts of the Counter Terrorism Bill Nick Clegg (Lib Dem running leader) found offensive. He said,

"...may I invite him to say which of those 'offenses'?-and send my right hon. Friend and me a letter about it?-he would like to be removed from the statute book?"

In reply, Nick Clegg said,

"Legislation on identity cards, legislation removing the distinction between innocence and guilt in DNA databases, legislation restricting the right to protest in Parliament?-I could go on. I will send the right hon. Gentleman a list."

He also said in the house

Following the Secretary of State for Justice's extraordinary Panglossian, rose-tinted account of his Government's record on law and order and the criminal justice system, I am tempted to remind him that this Government have presided over criminal, inhumane levels of overcrowding in our prison system, the highest rates of reoffending in the western world, sky high rates of public fear about crime and an absolute collapse in the morale of our criminal justice system?-from a probation service that is on its knees to an almost permanent state of antagonism between the Government and the judiciary.

None the less, I should like to focus my remarks on the counter-terrorism Bill, and I thank the Home Secretary for our meetings on its provisions, which she will introduce in the weeks ahead. She knows that we already agree on plenty of things, and that plenty of things will deserve much greater scrutiny once we see the details. That being so, it is all the more curious that the Government appear so determined to reopen the vexed debate about the period during which the police can detain any of us without charge, and that she seems to have made such a beeline for an issue that is divisive, wrong in practice and wrong in principle.

As I have said to the Home Secretary, the suspicion arises that the reason for all that is politics rather than the lack of evidence. Is she labouring under the need to meet the political pledge made by the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, back in November last year?-I quote The Independent headline: "Brown backs 90 day detention for terror suspect"? That was in the good all days when everyone expected great things of him. No doubt it seemed to him a good idea to talk tough on terrorism as he was crowbarring his way into No. 10. But should we really change the law just because of prime ministerial posturing? Should the Home Secretary become a prisoner of prime ministerial political machismo? I do not think so.

The Government always used to claim that they were wedded to evidence-based policy making, yet we know, by their own admission, that there is no evidence whatever for the move. The New Statesman noted in an interview with the Home Secretary in early August that

"she cannot cite an example of an existing case that would have benefited from an extension".

In addition to that uncertainty, she said this morning that she does not know how far she would want to extend the period during which the police may detain people without charge. Yet one of her security Ministers said on Monday, on Sky television, that he thought it would be

"up to 56 days probably".

What on earth is going on?

I have heard some pretty odd arguments for the extension of the period during which the police may detain people without charge. The weirdest of all referred to the case of Kafeel Ahmed, one of the terror attackers at Glasgow airport, who fell into a coma and subsequently died in hospital. It has been suggested on several occasions that he might have needed more than 28 days of questioning. That is absurd?-the clock starts ticking when someone is formally detained. Why would we need to detain someone who is in a coma in a hospital bed? Surely we would wait until they had come to before starting questioning?

The Government have said euphemistically that they can "envisage a scenario" in which the change might become necessary. I can envisage all sorts of outlandish scenarios. I can envisage one in which France might wish to invade England, but I do not suggest that we should legislate to close the channel tunnel overnight."


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This may sound like public school boy 'ribbing' to anyone outside the UK - but hearing someone who is willing to stand up in the house and ridicule the Government over their right-wing stance and lack of imagination, is just great.

Some people (Paddy Ashdown included) have equated Clegg to Churhill (wit and balls) - lets hope he's right.


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Maybe the US needs to put together a 3rd Independent party ?

- call it the Party For The Reform Of The Constitution

Get Rocky Anderson to lead it. :wink:

Invaders and Allies Ignore Iraq's Humanitarian Crisis

"The United States and Britain have accepted only a handful of the 4.2 million displaced Iraqis. Ditto Kuwait, which was the most bellicose of America's pro-war Arab allies. Ditto Saudi Arabia, that other staunch American ally. It has shut its border with Iraq, and plans to fortify it with a $2 billion fence."


- seems everyone's putting up fences these days

Curious: We convince the Communists to tear down their wall, and proceed to build walls of our own.

09 Nov 1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall


The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly three decades keeping East and West Berliners apart.

At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/9/newsid_2515000/2515869.stm



i didn't really get the significance of what was happening when the Berlin Wall came down - i was too young to care much about the history, (at that time). I saw it on the news though, (where the Russian guy with the birthmark on his head kept turning up)- and i remember how it made people feel uplifted for a while - even in England. It seemed like a positive thing - a kind of miracle.