Terror-Flops

Tony 'Bliar' Blair takes It On The Chin


In case you're wondering, the anti-terror law modifications Tony Blair wanted to put in were defeated in the House of Commons. What's interesting is that not only did the Tories oppose them, his own people crossed the floor to side against it. So Blair might want to look into changing his party whip.

Mr Blair says his authority is intact, despite his first Commons defeat, over a key part of his anti-terror plans.

But Tory leader Michael Howard says Mr Blair should resign, while Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy warned Mr Blair could become a "lame duck" leader.

MPs, including 49 Labour rebels, voted down plans to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

The police and Home Office said they were disappointed that their demands failed to get parliamentary approval and officials will meet Mr Blair shortly for a briefing on counter terrorism.

Mr Blair has said he hopes MPs "do not rue the day" they rejected his call to allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charging them.

MPs voted against by 322 votes to 291, but later backed a proposal to extend the detention time limit to 28 days from the current 14 days.

Mr Blair, who is planning to quit as prime minister before the next election, has said he will serve a full third term.

He told BBC News: "I don't think it is a matter of my authority - of course I would have preferred to have won rather than lost."

Meanwhile in Australia where anti-terrorism is a way of life, there's now a chance you can be stripped of your citizenship if they find you guilty of terrorism. Now that's going to be a total freak out.

Prime Minister John Howard has asked Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Citizenship Minister John Cobb to investigate whether terrorists should be entitled to keep the protection of citizenship.

And in the wake of Tuesday's arrests of 17 suspected terrorists in Sydney and Melbourne, Treasurer Peter Costello urged Muslims who wanted to live in a strict Islamic state to leave Australia.

"There are Islamic states around the world that practice sharia law, and if that is your object, you may well be much more at home in such a country than trying to turn Australia into one of those countries, because it is not going to happen," said Mr Costello.

As police in Sydney located a burnt-out car believed to be linked to Tuesday's raids, Federal Parliament began debating tough new counter-terrorism laws which Mr Howard said were needed to try to pre-empt attacks.

He confirmed the citizenship plan was on the agenda but said it could be difficult to put in action.

"It remains under consideration," Mr Howard told Sky News. "It's not right at the top of our list, there are arguments for and against and I am listening to those arguments but we are not about to make a decision on that."

It's also going to be very interesting to see how nations will respond when we dump these so-called terrorist criminals after their lengthy sentences, destitute and penniless, right on their doorsteps just because they were born there.
The rednecks must be having a field day with this stuff. Seriously, you can't write this sort of maliciousness as it is petty, mean and really really head-in-the-sand about the rest of the world.

Now I know why I'm listening to a lot of King Crimson this week. I'm actually really, really pissed off. I'm seeing Red.

Mailbag Funnies

Link 1: So you wanna be a US Republican?

Link 2: Michael Jackson sings his defense.

Also, found this pic predicting a Stormy Thursday for Sydney:

It's apparently a boat washed ashore in the Narabeen Lakes area.
It kind of looks like the subject of an old oil painting. :)

I Have At Least One Ally

Sharing my outrage, my housemate PJ has taken to the Web with his own weblog, 'Remote Control Society' where he says he's just going to post up all the stupid things going on in our part of the world. Really stupid things.
If you look at the 'Friends' Sites' on the right hand column, you'll see the latest addition there. Maybe you'll see some outrageous stuff there. It'd only be outrageous because you have common sense.