Govt. Still Pushing 6 Weeks Detention Without Charge

Power is addictive, they just won’t let this thing go-

The government has unveiled plans to let police hold terror suspects for up to 42 days without them being charged. The Counter Terrorism Bill also proposes “full use of DNA” in investigations and greater use of post-charge questioning.

It advocates putting terror convicts on a register like that for sex offenders. Some senior police officers support extending terror detentions beyond the current 28 days, but it is opposed by Lib Dems, Tories and rebel Labour MPs.

Ms Smith added that the bill would work in combination with government efforts at “challenging extremist ideology”.

What, like killing people for their oil and lying about it while agitating for a police state? Is that what you meant? We already have a four weeks without charge limit, plenty of time to fit up a punter, lazy friggin’ pigs. They used to torture a confession out of Irish Catholics in a few days and you can’t understand the words in pop songs anymore and I remember when all this used to be fields…

Gaza/Egypt Border Narrowed But Still Open

Al Jazeera’s Amr El-Kahky, reporting from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, said that the area was very crowded. He said: “Security forces are now blocking exits past the city of Arish, which is 50km from Rafah. They will not allow the Palestinians past the town, and are forcing them to go back to Rafah.”

Palestinian fighters set off at least 15 explosions at the wall running through Rafah separating the two territories before dawn on Wednesday, Hamas security forces said. The Egyptian security forces later closed most holes, but left two open to allow the flow of human traffic. Meanwhile, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, later said he had ordered his troops to allow Palestinians to cross into Egypt because they were starving. “I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons,” he said.

The move came after Egyptian troops had fired in the air and used batons and water canons to beat back Gazans trying to push through the previous day. The response drew drawn angry protests and complaints that Gaza was under siege not just from Israel but also by neighbouring Arab countries.

Palestinians were also told by the Hamas leadership in Gaza that they should respect Egyptian security forces, get what they need, and return to Gaza, El-Kahky said. Al Jazeera’s Samir Omar said all shops in Rafah were open to enable Palestinians to buy food and medicines. Witnesses said some Palestinians were only seeking to stock up on necessities, but others might stay longer in Rafah to meet relatives stranded in Arish.

Really Mubarak is just assenting to a reality and realising he probably could not order a lockdown with Egyptian popular support for the Palestinians so pervasive and a resurgent left (ht2 Dave), although arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members and others were his answer to demonstrations called by the Socialist Alliance. Although the US continues to back the siege and collective punishment of the Gazans, a war crime.

All of the members of the UN Security Council, except the US, have agreed on a draft statement condemning the Israeli clampdown on fuel and aid shipments into Gaza, as well as the decision to seal border crossings into the Palestinian enclave.

The US insists that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is a form of self-defence in the face of rockets fired from the Palestinian territory.  

Self defence?

(ht2 The Heathlander)

Nuclear Guinea Pigs

I have signed this petition, please think about signing it yourself-

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to conduct a full and thorough investigation into the effects, on servicemen and women, of the nuclear testing conducted off the coast of Christmas Island in the 1950s.

Between 1952 and 1967 the United Kingdom carried out a number of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean and at Maralinga, Australia, involving over 20,000 servicemen. Among these tests were the “Grapple Y” and “Grapple Z” series of six detonations at Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean (November 1957–September 1958), of weapons many times more powerful than those discharged at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• Of 2,500 men surveyed in 1999 30% of the men had died, mostly in their fifties.
• In their grandchildren spina bifida rates are more than 5 times the usual rate for live births in the UK.
• More than 200 skeletal abnormalities were reported.
• More than 100 veterans children reported reproductive difficulties.

(info taken from British Nuclear Test Veterans Association)

Click here- http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/christmasisland/