Blair Attacks Civil Liberties...

New measures being implemented by Tony Blair look set to crack down on civil liberties and human rights. The Prime Minister aims to amend existing human rights legislation to allow him to close Mosques and deport Islamic preachers more easily if they are not UK citizens. How will threatening the closure of Mosques do anything to promote integration? The Muslim communities in the UK must feel themselves to be under seige at the moment and it seems that Blair may be making things worse. The Muslim Council of Britain has already condemned the wide ranging proposals as "counter-productive".

According to the BBC News website, the new criteria for triggering the deportation process "...will include advocating violence to further a person's belief, justifying or validating such violence..." Does this mean the US President is no longer welcome in the UK and will be refused entry or deported due to his actions in Iraq and subsequent justification of US violence in Iraq and Afghanistan? Sadly I doubt it. Double standards again.

Home Office Minister Hazel Blears was on Newsnight defending the proposals to deport people to countries where torture and murder by the ruling regimes was commonplace. Apparently the UK Government are putting in place "memoranda of understanding" with the governments in question. Well, I guess that makes it all OK then. I'm sure none of the regimes would dare to breach such an agreement in the face of international condemnation. Oh wait, they get condemned already for their inhumane practices? Ah well, just ready the planes, load them up and wash your hands of the consequences. That's the plan, isn't it Hazel? When did the Labour Party, the supposed champions of the people, become such cold hearted bastards? Somewhere around the time they swapped principles for power probably.

Also on the BBC, there was a section with profiles of three young Muslim women in the UK. The interviewer asked them repeatedly if they considered the suicide bombers who targetted London to be Muslims. Of course, it was plain that the bombers were Muslims and each of the young women made this point although they stressed that they were not adhering to the rules of their faith. The interviewer appeared to want to be told that the suicide bombers could not be considered Muslim. The overtone was almost aggressive and the intervieweees didn't appear happy with the conduct of the interviewer. With segments like this the BBC is doing nothing to help discourage religiously motivated attacks.