Positive News From Venice

Two stories have emerged from a meeting in Venice of the six largest EU members. The first is that security officials have backed a plan to profile mosques across Europe to try and prevent Islamist clerics from radicalising young Muslims. The increasing threat from home-grown Islamists has shown that more needs to be done. Just one example would be the Finsbury Park Mosque where Abu Hamza was allowed to preach hatred for years before anything was done.

The second piece of good news is that John Reid has called for a changing in the Human Rights Laws to reflect the nature of the war with Islamists. He said:

We need to work to modernise the law - still protecting human rights and still providing equity and justice - but reflecting the reality of the conflicts and struggles we now face.

...

The right to security, to the protection of life and liberty, is and should be the basic right on which all others are based. Now, more than ever, it should be the fundamental starting point of all our principles and practices across Europe.

With John Reid stepping down next month, let's hope his successor will act on his words and reform the Human Rights Laws so that our rights to safety and security are treated with at least as much importance as the "right" of criminals and terrorists.

Naturally, Human Rights groups are not happy. Shami Chakrabarti, from Liberty, is quoted by the BBC News as saying:

In this struggle, we have to work with allies around the world to make sure they up their game on human rights because terrorism is being bred in countries which have the worst human rights records.

Obviously, Ms Chakrabarti doesn't watch the news and has failed to spot that many Islamists are being bred right here in Britain. Unless, of course, Liberty think Britain have the worst human rights records.

And here's something for all the BBC bias watchers. Note how early the BBC chooses to quote Ms Chakrabarti's comments. Even before quoting what John Reid had said (which is what the article is actually about) three paragraphs are devoted to Liberty's response. Why place the response before the actual statement? Surely it isn't to ensure that people read Liberty's point of view before that of John Reid? Surely it isn't to ensure that Chakrabarti is above the fold?