Rights Concern Prompts Poesy In Al-Britainiyah
Outraged Brit scribblers publish poetry, satire, essays vs. Brit anti-terrorism 42-day detention law. Online Advent-style calendar makes a great Christmas gift, nicely complements ”There Once Was a Man from Riyadh …” the collection of limericks decrying car bombs and beheadings that they published back in ‘04 …
Ha ha, just kidding. Why would any western navel gazers bother waxing poetic about American Imperialist War Criminals and hapless Iraqis getting vaporized, beheaded, kneecaps drilled, the plots to blow up planes, trains and automobiles, etc?
The wire service more Jihadis trust isn’t much interested in what the law is actually about, but offers up these examples of the deeply handwrought lyric and prose:
(Monica) Ali, who won widespread acclaim for her first novel “Brick Lane,” wrote a satirical dialogue between a grandmother and a child who asks if it’s true that “in the olden days” if police arrested you “they had to say what you’d done wrong.”
Actually, in the old days in Britain they used to stretch you and cut your guts out, shove you down an oubliette or let you rot in a gibbet if you challenged the status quo. Then there was the shipping of paupers off to America and Australia for stealing dinner. In more recent times, the British criminal justice and law enforcement systems have become considerably more advanced … if still wigged and quaintly helmeted … but the recently evolved concern for the rights of criminals to wander freely has had to be tempered by the recognition that elaborate plots to murder indiscriminately for political and religious reasons are matters of a certain urgency and complexity requiring unusual law enforcement measures.
Novelist Stella Duffy made a list of things that can take 42 days to accomplish. It included: writing the first six chapters of her first book; going through two rounds of chemotherapy; undergoing in-vitro fertilization and watching the garden change from summer to autumn.
To think, it only took al-Zarqawi two or three minutes to saw Nick Berg’s head off. Here’s an earnest scribbler, name of A.L. Kennedy:
“In 42 days we will have made you different. You may be charged, you may be released. You will always be different. We will always be in how you think. We do not need to hurt you. We will steal you from yourself.”
That takes 42 days? Very inefficient. Jihadi terrorists made 52 Brit commuters different, stole them from themselves in seconds flat.
AP eventually gets around to barely explaining what the law is about. Apparently because it is mainly about being opposed:
The human rights group Liberty coordinated the protest. The group’s director, Shami Chakrabarti, said no writer who was approached by the group turned down the opportunity.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently expressed his firm commitment to extending the pre-charge detention period from 28 to 42 days. The counterterrorism measure is one of several that Britain has considered or adopted since suicide bombers killed 52 rush-hour commuters in 2005.
The proposal is expected to meet serious opposition Monday in the House of Lords. The legislation narrowly made it through the House of Commons this summer.
Some police leaders say the measure is needed because terror cases are complex and others say existing powers are strong enough.Europe’s top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, recently said such police power could run afoul of European rights conventions.
I have no doubt. Not to mention Sharia law.
Topics: Britain, GWOT, literary, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:18 pm on Sunday, October 12, 2008
2 Responses to “Rights Concern Prompts Poesy In Al-Britainiyah”
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October 13th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
[...] the extension of the pre-charge detention period in the UK from 28 to 42 days. Of course, Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea. Sadly, Douglas Adams is not one of them and is unavailable for comment. posted by cjorgensen (17 [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
What is the point of repeating details of past terrorist atrocities? Is there any logical connection (at all) with the issue of 42 days? It’s just crass.
42 days is the proposed detention for terror suspects, as opposed to proven terrorists. It allows the police to put somebody in prison for a month and a half, without charging them with any crime.
The reason this would worry you, if you lived over here, is because it is open to abuse. Last week, the government used its “Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001″ to freeze the assets of one of Iceland’s failed banks. Iceland is not a sponsor of terrorism, it just had the bad luck to go bankrupt with some British money on its books.
You seem to me like the kind of person that disapproves of government power (NB: that isn’t meant as a compliment). I would hope you can see why 42 days’ detention is to be fought against, even if for some reason you don’t think that terrorists are really cool and admirable like the rest of us.