Bang 'em up, it's the only language they understand...

So. Justice.

This BBC article disturbs me greatly. So this country can keep filthy foreigners locked up indefinitely, as long as the government says they are a threat to national security. They have no right to a trial. No right to see the evidence against them. Just the right to be imprisoned, because they can't be deported as they might face victimisation and discrimination in their home country. An interesting interpretation.

Lord Justice Brooke said:

"Unless one is willing to adopt a purist approach, saying that it is better that this country should be destroyed, together with the ideals it stands for, than that a single suspected terrorist should be detained without due process, it seems to me inevitable that the judiciary must be willing to put an appropriate degree of trust in the willingness and capacity of ministers and Parliament."

Well, I happen to believe that it is not the job of the judiciary to place that level of trust in any government. The job of the judiciary is to show the just way to behave, the correct punishments, the appropriate protections. And yes, I do believe "it is better that this country be destroyed, together with the ideals it stands for" if the other option is that those very ideals be subverted and deformed to fit in with the expediancies of the day.

Ideals are not easy things to have. They are not something you can think of as a nice idea, but one that can be ignored when necessary. Those ideals are what makes this country worth fighting for, and yes, worth being destroyed for. I do not believe the country could be destroyed by any number of "suspected terrorists", but even if that were the case, is it better to fall protecting your ideals, or survive without them?

It is the same knotty problem that has come up time and time again. The UK made the same mistake in Northern Ireland, and those detentions set back any hope of a peace process there for many years. Are we to make this mistake over and over? One of this country's major contributions to the world was the seperation of justice from the sovreign, be that a man, a committee, or a parliament. For the judiciary to voluntary hand over this important power to the sovreign again, even in the limited case of foreign nationals who can not be deported, is an abrogation of their responsibility, or their duty. The Lord Justices who made this decision should be ashamed. Expediancy, of political and national security kind, has led them to come to the wrong decision. One can only hope this decision will be appealed again.