Tony Blair has introduced a new anti-terrorism bill in the UK. One section of the bill is sorely needed. Britain’s grand bargain with the jihadi mullahs, sanctuary in exchange for immunity, was as always as ill-informed as Saudi Arabia’s:

… the bill would make it illegal to publish, disseminate or sell material that incites terrorism, giving authorities power to shut down bookstores and Web sites deemed to promote extremism. It would also become an offense to attend a “terrorist training camp…” [Link]

Muslim men might be be arrested, jailed for 90 days and then released… the wrong ‘Mohammed Khan’But the rest is a bad echo of Dubya’s Fascist Act. From feudalism to democracy and back?

Blair, formally presenting his new terrorism bill to Parliament, said police had made an “absolutely compelling” case that they need to detain suspects for as long as 90 days without charge; the current limit is 14 days. [Link]

Heavy-handed measures can create backdraft. Careful policing is why people praised the British troops in Iraq — pity it’s good enough overseas but not at home:

Livingstone said the proposals brought back bad memories of the response to the start of the Irish Republican Army’s violent campaign in 1969. He said the government passed emergency measures under which innocent people were locked up for long periods. Far from making Britain safer, he told the group Wednesday, this reaction helped the IRA recruit more members.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, drew sustained applause when she said she feared that the new measures would largely target young Muslim men, who would be arrested, jailed for 90 days and then released with nothing more than an explanation that police had picked up the wrong “Mohammed Khan,” a common name. [Link]

… we already have 200 pieces of anti-terrorism legislation on the statute book… The police say they need this time because of the complexity of terrorist cases… But this is not a unique problem. Major fraud and pornography trials have faced similar challenges… We are talking about suspects here, not terrorists. Of the 895 people arrested under terrorist laws in the last five years, 500 were released without charge. Nothing is more likely to unite communities in opposition to anti-terrorist operations than this kind of law. [Link]

The British attorney general has also objected, the same chap who said the Iraq war was illegal:

The government’s plan to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge could be struck down by the courts as a breach of human rights, its own official anti-terror watchdog warned last night. The concerns raised by Lord Carlile QC are believed to reflect reservations privately voiced by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith… [Link]