Nick Cohen has irrational movements

If I’d made assumptions like this about the actual fascists in Nazi Germany at A-Level, I would have failed the course. Johann Hari obviously has more patience than I do with Nick Cohen’s new tome:

“I am very sceptical,” he says, “of people who think irrational movements have rational causes.” So if you talk, as virtually all serious scholars of jihadism do, about the role the US played in smelting jihadism through supporting torture in Egypt and a Wahabbi clerical establishment in Saudi Arabia, you are in Cohen’s eyes an apologist. Jihadism is in his account a spontaneous theological psychosis sprouting in the void, with social and economic factors playing no role at all. Its irrationality means it cannot be explained or discussed; it can only be defeated.

Nazi Germany, by that reasoning, had no root cause. It was an “irrational movement” which sprung out of nowhere in the happy happy Weimar Republic where children played with banknotes. Hitler was never angry about the Treaty of Versailles, he was a crazy irrational nut with no grounding in the history of Europe at all. Anyone who claims otherwise is an appeaser.

Or, err, not.

Hat tip Tampon Teabag.

28 days ‘protects your human rights’

BBC - Australia terror laws under scrutiny:

laire Macken, a legal scholar from Deakin University, is sympathetic to a 28-day detention period, because she says it would ultimately be more humane to the suspect.”If you know you are going to be held for 28 days, you can prepare yourself mentally, and that protects your human rights.

Part of the problem in the Haneef case is that he never knew what was going to happen and the process was so unpredictable,” she says.

How is locking anyone up without charge for a month protecting your human rights? If you’re stuck in a jail cell for a month you can’t work, you have no free access to your family, and you can’t go anywhere without the permission of the police. It may be fairer, but its not Amnesty International fair.

Do the de Menenzes

This is London:

Furious neighbours of Tony Blair’s £3.6million London townhouse are to complain to the Home Office after being quizzed at gunpoint by police outside their homes…

Mr Foughlaia, who is of Albanian descent, said: ‘I was getting out of the van when I saw two police officers running towards me, one of them with his gun raised at me. It was very frightening.

‘I think they were panicking because it was the day of the car bombs in Central London, three weeks ago. One of them told me they had received a call saying there was an intruder in the communal gated gardens.’…

One resident said: ‘The police appear to be gun-happy and we feel it is only a matter of time before an innocent person gets shot. This sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable.’

From Bloggerheads.

Gordon Brown’s new terror shirt: its an old one

If a circle doesn’t go into a square, do you keep hitting it with a hammer until the square turns circle shaped? BBC:

Gordon Brown is considering doubling to 56 days the period terrorism suspects can be detained without charge. He is expected to try to extend the 28-day limit, when he unveils his strategy on counter-terrorism.

A few weeks ago a few people commented on how Brown’s language had changed in contrast to Blair’s - namely that the words ‘war on terror’ were no longer being used and that the religion of the chaps who left bombs around London and threw themselves into Glasgow airport was also not mentioned. It was dealt with as a criminal act and not a ideological war, and it was a conscious effort in response to complaints from the Muslim community that the wider group is often made to feel responsible through the language used when talking about extremists.

Brown and Smith were applauded for their approach at the time, but the changes have been entirely cosmetic. Brown is still allowing policemen - who believe the solution to the problem is locking people up without charge for as long as possible - dictate government policy. If we allowed these wannabe-internmentists guide the rest of the criminal justice system, where would we be? Without jury trials because they’re inconvenient to sentencing? Should we allow hearsay evidence?

As Tim says, the complicated rhetoric used by the Government to justify the review suggests they can’t think of a good enough reason for how-ever-many-days-they-want-now (I suspect they picked a number out of the air). Anything more than a couple of weeks can be damaging enough to a person, but 58-days is like a unpaid holiday in hell. If you were arrested and detained for that long, do you think they’d have you back at your job? There would always be the possibility that, well, if the police could have held you for longer they may have found something - and there’s no smoke without fire.

If they want to deal with this problem - and stop young guys from being radicalised - then it needs to dealt with it head on. Crazy legislation like this, which ends up affecting only young Asian males and doesn’t help defending Britain against the charge that We Hate Muslims, needs to be nipped in the bud.

More here.