Apo­lo­gies for the lack of updates recently; I’ve been busy enjoy­ing a ver­it­able cor­nu­copia of symp­toms for the past couple of weeks, and haven’t really been up to writ­ing about much, even though there’s been plenty going on:

• The Texas Edu­ca­tion Agency has fired Chris Comer, a staff mem­ber of nine years, for send­ing an email announ­cing a talk by a Bar­bara For­rest, a prom­in­ent critic of ID. The inter­net has been buzz­ing, and For­rest her­self has writ­ten on how this proves her point that ID, rather than being a sci­entific pos­i­tion, is an attempt to force the reli­gious right’s agenda into the classroom (and the pub­lic con­scious­ness) through power-​​politics and out­right bul­ly­ing. Just remem­ber kids; it’s the Dar­win­ists who have a shady global con­spir­acy to sup­press the oppos­i­tion and get people fired just for sup­port­ing ID.

• The Brit­ish gov­ern­ment has given up all pre­tense at seek­ing con­sensus and is for­cing through legis­la­tion that will increase the time “sus­pec­ted ter­ror­ists” can be held without charge. If you’re a UK cit­izen, you can register your dis­pleas­ure by sign­ing this peti­tion. Please take the time; this is a hugely import­ant issue that bears dir­ectly on our most import­ant human rights.

• Some poor teacher was arres­ted, tried, jailed and then depor­ted for call­ing a Teddy Bear Muhammad. Local people took excep­tion to the fact that she wasn’t executed and took to the streets in protest. Gov­ern­ments the world over seem not to notice that whenever a group of people go bat­shit insane and start demand­ing inno­cent people are beheaded for some utterly trivial slight to their cul­ture, those people always seem to be Muslim. The Brit­ish pub­lic seems not to notice that the laws Gillian Gib­bons were arres­ted under bear a strik­ing resemb­lance to the laws our gov­ern­ment put in place a few years back with the express pur­pose of arrest­ing Muslims for mak­ing utterly trivial slights against our cul­ture.

That’s prob­ably enough for tonight. I should be back to a more reas­on­able posting-​​schedule now, so if I think of any­thing else I missed, I’ll sneak it into a future post.

The recent ordeal (which I’ve blogged about here and here,) of a young woman who was sen­tenced to state-​​sponsored bru­tal­ity after being gang-​​raped is just one example of the shock­ing bar­bar­ity of the Saudi regime. It is unac­cept­able that the UK counts any nation with such a poor human-​​rights record as an ally, so please take a couple of minutes to sign this peti­tion urging our gov­ern­ment to sever friendly ties with Saudi Ara­bia until such a time as they join us in the 21^st Century.

The actual text you’ll be put­ting your name to is:

The gov­ern­ment have rolled out the Red car­pet to the Saudi Royal Fam­ily yet the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia is an auto­cratic regime with an appalling human rights record. Exe­cu­tions, flog­ging and ampu­ta­tions are imposed and car­ried out with dis­reg­ard for the most basic inter­na­tional fair trial stand­ards. ‘Offences’ include being gay or being a woman unac­com­pan­ied by a man or driv­ing a car. Yet with utter hypo­crisy the UK gov­ern­ment con­demns sim­ilar regimes such as Burma and has very min­imal ties with coun­tries like Libya. The UK has turned a blind eye to this for its own selfish eco­nomic interests to the extent that we will break inter­na­tional law on cor­rup­tion to avoid upset­ting the Saudi Royal Fam­ily. As a con­sequence of this rela­tion­ship we are per­ceived as sup­port­ers and back­ers of this repress­ive regime. We have seen the con­sequences of these injustices on the secur­ity of our coun­try. It is now the oppor­tun­ity to restore Britain’s dig­nity and end this stain on our country’s reputation.

Last year I blogged about a Saudi woman who’d been gang raped, and then charged by the author­it­ies for being in the same car as a male friend who was not her hus­band (before the rape.) Ini­tially, she was sen­tenced to 90 lashes (yes, cor­poral pun­ish­ment.) She appealed that sen­tence (as well as the leni­ent sen­tences handed down on the rape gang.) Well, the appeal court has increased all the sen­tences. Not only have the rap­ists had their sen­tenced increased (as they should,) but so has their victim.

200 lashes and two years in prison for meet­ing a male friend. It’s back­wards, it’s bar­baric, and it’s a viol­a­tion of her human rights. And our gov­ern­ment tacitly sup­ports it because the big­oted des­pots in charge are our allies and sup­ply us with oil.

This hasn’t had much news cov­er­age here, but the Geor­gian gov­ern­ment is in the pro­cess of viol­ently crack­ing down on anti-​​government protests. The pres­id­ent, Mikhail Saakashvili, has declared a state of emer­gency and issued a declar­a­tion ban­ning demon­stra­tions and protests of all kinds. Riot police have been deployed and used tear-​​gas, water can­nons and rub­ber bul­lets to dis­perse demon­stra­tions, leav­ing at least a hun­dred hospitalised.

The inde­pend­ent TV sta­tion, Imedi, broad­cast images of the crack­down, prompt­ing riot police to storm the build­ing and take the chan­nel off the air. The station’s final minutes are avail­able on You­Tube, although the clip is (obvi­ously) in Georgian.

So, the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment wants to extend the length of time they’re allowed to hold ter­ror sus­pects without charge from 28 to “about 50″ days. When ques­tioned, the Secur­ity Min­is­ter, Lord West, acknow­ledged that a pre­vi­ous attempt to increase the limit to 90 days was “far too long”.

Appar­ently we’re to believe that three months is way over the top, but two months? Well, that’s prob­ably OK. You have to hand it to the gov­ern­ment; they’re auda­cious. They know this isn’t going to be pop­u­lar, but they’re try­ing to muscle it through anyway.

Any­one who knows me at all, already know what I think about this, but I’m going to be unequi­vocal here: there is no OK length of time for the Gov­ern­ment to lock people up without charge. We are talk­ing about the gov­ern­ment grant­ing itself the right to pull people off the street and lock them away for any­thing up to two months without even hav­ing to accuse them of any­thing. I’m sorry Lord West, but the reason you’re “not sure” how to con­vince crit­ics that this is the right thing to do, is because you can’t. Because it isn’t. This is wrong, pure and simple; you know it; we know it. Of course you’d like to be able to lock poten­tially dan­ger­ous people up without hav­ing to go through all that pesky due pro­cess, but that’s not the way it works in a civ­il­ized, free soci­ety; you actu­ally have to show that someone is a threat before you lock them away. It is most pro­foundly not OK to slap someone behind bars on the off-​​chance and then apo­lo­gise later if you were wrong. This is not Soviet Rus­sia, it’s not Iran and it’s not China; it’s Bri­tain, and while we may be called sub­jects, we live in a free soci­ety and we have rights.

Well, we used to, anyway.

The other two major parties have both made the usual oppos­i­tion state­ments that they don’t think it’s a good idea unless there’s new evid­ence to sup­port it. Well, that’s not good enough either. This isn’t about evid­ence, it’s not about bal­an­cing the mer­its of a couple of com­pet­ing ideas; it’s about prin­ciples. At it’s most basic level, it’s about one fun­da­mental ques­tion: “Do we con­trol the gov­ern­ment, or do they con­trol us?” Because if you think a gov­ern­ment is beholden to an elect­or­ate they’re able to lock up without reason, I’ve got some Burmese monks I’d like to intro­duce you to.

OK — so here it is. I’m stat­ing pub­licly, here and now, that I, as a sub­ject — and mem­ber of the elect­or­ate — of Great Bri­tain, do not sup­port any meas­ures res­ult­ing in the peace­time deten­tion without charge of any human being. Fur­ther­more, the first polit­ical party to come out and state, on the record and cred­ibly, that they would never sup­port such meas­ures, for any reason, is guar­an­teed my vote at the next gen­eral election.