UK based politics junkies may be interested in this site I stumbled across recently:
It claims to provide in-depth coverage of political developments and says it will appeal to politicians, researchers, journalists, political activists, students, and voters. That’s probably a fair description of Harry’s Place readers
I was particularly impressed by the issue of the day section which I found when looking for information about the ‘house arrest’ terrorist suspects will be placed under if new measures proposed by the Home Office are enacted.
The site claims that Issue of the Day provides a snapshot of responses and views on the leading political questions. On the ‘House Arrests’ issue public statements – some quite surprising – from The Law Society, Liberal Democrats, Bar Council, Amnesty International and the Muslim Council of Britain are conveniently gathered in one place.
On the issue itself I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It’s probably worth bearing in mind this site when considering the question of how to deal with the sort of people the proposals are designed for.
Here’s an extract from the Judgment relating to Abu Qatada, a guest of Her Majesty in Belmarsh who describes himself as a respected Muslim scholar.
In March 1995 he issued a ‘fatwah’ which on its face sought to justify the killing of wives and children of ‘apostates’ (?) to stop the oppression of muslim women, prisoners and ‘brothers’ in Algeria. In October 1999, he is reliably reported as having made a speech at a gathering in the Four Feathers Mosque in which he gave a blessing to the killing of Jews. In addition, he said that Americans should be attacked wherever they were and that there was no difference between English, Jews and Americans.
His detention may have been declared illegal by the House of Lords in December but we’re going to have to come up with a way of dealing with people like him who wilfully and consciously pervert Islam in order to supply recruits for terrorism.
