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In the UK, Possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook Is Terrorism
Anonymous Terrorist writes "Back in the midsts of time, when I was a lad and gopher was the height of information retrieval I read The Anarchist's Cookbook in one huge text file. Now it appears the UK government considers possession of the book an offense under the Terrorism Act 2000 and is prosecuting a 17 year old boy, in part, for having a copy of the book. 'The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000. The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year. The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.'"
...who are the terrorists?
Don't people know most of the stuff in that book is a good way to get yourself blown up? Dangerous or not, though, censorship of any kind is just not acceptable in a free society. Everybody should read banned books.
The last time I've perused the section of textbooks for education, I've come across books for aspiring pyrotechnicians and chemists that create pyro-stuff. They've also contained instructions, recipes, handling instructions and whatever else. Because of that, I almost die laughing seeing all the attempts to ban said material on the web.
What you really need is a copy of the US Army's improvised munitions handbook.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
... is not in charge of Gundam.
Heh... As if we had not enough of these.
One thing the headline, summary and article itself don't make clear is that this guy had half a kilo of potassium nitrate, 250g of calcium chloride, videos of beheadings and he had recently visited Pakistan. More information article. There's a lot more to this story than "kid reads forbidden book and gets arrested". It sounds more like "this guy looks like he was planning on blowing people up".
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This may confuse many an american who live in a country that isn't free but they think it is. In europe we know we ain't got many of the supposed freedoms of the US of A and more or less, we like it that way. In for instance Holland the rules about banned books is VERY clear, it is the goverment that has banned them and those books are banned and ONLY those books. NO OTHER BOOKS CAN BE BANNED BY ANYONE ELSE!
No withholding funding from libraries that stock books somebody doesn't like. No pressure on printers, no self-censorship. IF the goverment wants to ban something, they got to come out and do it openly.
The US is very different, in theory every book is free, just that libraries that stock the wrong ones get no funding. An even greater evil exists in self-censorship. It allows the politicians to wash their hands off any anti-freedom policy while still having censorship.
Freespeech does not exist (shout fire in a crowded room to see just how free you are) so why even pretend it does exist? Far better to have extremely clear rules about what can and what cannot be said and make it very clear WHO wants it to be that way.
IF the british goverment wants to get rid of the page 3 girl, they would have to do it themselves, directly and show it to the public. In the US, the goverment would just hint at regulation, then the industry would self-regulate and nobody would be any the wiser.
Do I agree with the cookbook being under the terrorism law? No, but at least it is clear who is responsible for it (Labour party/Blair), it is clearly banned, not just not in stock at the local library. You go and live in lala land screaming to yourselve that you got freespeech. I prefer to live in the real world and KNOW what is forbidden and who forbids it. At least that gives me a target.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Publicly stripped and cavity searched, after all they don't have anything to hide and therefore shouldn't mind. Better take samples of bodily fluids just to be safe. Anybody got a clean needle? Tell them sorry, no, can't have their clothes back, might strangle someone with them. Hey, check this out Bubba, this one got a double barreled slingshot. Let us check their garages too, never know they might have laundry detergent and gasoline stored in them, you can make a version of homemade napalm with those. Call them liars when they say it's just there for mowing the yard and doing laundry. /sarcasm off
>> "The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes"
> Quit fucking sensationalizing everything.
This is the UK government, what do you expect? They are slowly inventing thier own kind of newspeak, where highly emotive language can be used to justify anything.
The best one was last year when some poor guys house was accidentally raided by mistake. The police burst in, accidentally shot him and labeled him a "terrorist suspect" (rather than just a normal "suspect"). When it started to become clear that they had the wrong address, they decided he was also a paedophile and investigated him for that as well. A TERRORIST PAEDOPHILE!!!
In the end, they dropped all charges.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Amazon UK don't seem to have that in stock. They do, however, have the Anarchist's Cookbook.
Who ordered that?
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security,
Actually, that's fair enough. For example, allowing blanket freedom of speech without any responsibility for the consequences is naive.
However, since the sort of thing described here is hardly in the interests of national security nor necessary in a democratic society, I fail to see how that exception applies.
Of course, with this government the Human Rights Act upholds a very important principle, except when it gets in the way of being heavy-handed and authoritarian, in which case it's just a criminal's charter and we should all ignore it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"You see you can't oppose the US/Israeli policy in the mid-east without being a terr'ist .."
...or modded as flamebait it would seem. The US has trained more international terrorists in the "art of constructive chaos" than anyone else for most of my 50yrs (closeley followed by the UK and France), it has often been under the guise of the war on drugs. It would seem to me that the "dogs of war" turned on the hand that stopped feeding them after the cold war.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes, it's part of the UK government's 'War On Islam' - rampantly persued by the British masintream press who salivate over every opportunity to report in the latest 'terror suspect' to be arrested. Of course, this salivation only occurs if the 'suspect' is a British Asian (in Britain 'Asian' denotes people of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi etc decent, not East Asian such as Chinese). A recent conviction of members of the BNP (right wing British National Party - which evolved from the National Front) for offences including having a huge stash of home-made explosives (the largest ever seized in mainland Britain), plus other materials including a rocket launcher of all things, went almost unreported by the MSM. One factor is that they weren't prosecuted under 'anti-terror' laws, they were arrested and charged under the previous existing laws for firearms and explosive materials offences and the whole affair seems to have been quietly ignored by the big news bulletins, because it doesn't fit the racial profile required for sensationalism. In the case mentioned previously of the Asian lad shot in the shoulder by the police during a raid - yes, he was released without charge, then investigated for 'paedophillia' which the media lapped up and reported ad nauseum, but then quietly 'un-arrested' (released without charge) which the press failed to report when the police found he'd done absolutely nothing wrong. The interesting thing is that in the BNP case where the police had genuine reason to suspect, and evidence to back it up, and indeed must have planned the raid in advance, there was a 'press blackout' - no media allowed at the scene. Yet in the London incident, there was a huge press presence as the raid took place involving something like 50 officers based on information which apparently came from an anonymous tip-off. How did the press know to be there as it unfolded unless the police and/or Home Office issued a press-release about the raid? It was planned and staged to hype it up through the roof and a blatant example of the propagandist methodology used by our government. As for the Anarchist Cookbook - I can't see how it could be construed as a piece of 'terrorist' literature. Surely it's a piece of anarchist literature - the clue's in the title!? I think it may be time to think about a print-campaign. Print 50 or 60 million copies and post them through every letterbox in Britain, so that EVERYBODY'S got a copy and then see how the police can possibly enforce this stupid gag of our peaceful freedom's of speech and expression. Otherwise it could be suggested that owning something as benign as a metal tube is a terrorist offence - it COULD be used as a mortar! tsk tsk.
It's not hypothetical - there really was a case in the UK a few years ago where an A-Z brand street map was treated as such information.
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- chili
- pizza - New York or Chicago Style (Pizza was never good in Italy until it came to America!)
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- Coney Fries -- french fries covered in chili and cheese sauce
- the Ice Cream cone (invented at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Mo.)
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And still, the goverment did not even try to prove that the mentioned 17 year old had an anarchist view. There is no mention of a specific intent of any kind. The goverment argues for an existence of a thought crime. Since, for example, the Khmer Rouge did torture and accuse of people suspected for a connections with the CIA, the British goverment has surpassed the Khmer Rouge in its totalitarian behaviour by accusing a person for a thought crime. Didn't Orwell actually warned about the totatitarian tendencies in the British governing culture?
On one hand it sounds like the UK govt are the german nazi's with the whole book-burning thing. Which is extremely disturbing.
But, i find it very hard to believe that the UK govt would hole up a teenager for no reason other than this. It sounds a little implausible.
But, of course, the world has gone slightly psycho when it comes to anything that could vaguely be interpreted at terrorism. I half expect to read about how some guy's dog did a cr*p on the lawn at a park when he just happened to have a clear line of site to George W Bush and so he got arrested for using his dog to drop a bomb that could have been used to kill the president of the USA.
its interesting that alot of what our societies were built on was to protect against such ridiculous and draconian control over the populace!
Sounds like the UK needs a modern day Guy Fawkes. Only the modern one needs to succeed in blowing up Parliament.
Speaking of that, if anybody in the RTP (NC) area is interested in having some sort of Guy Fawkes Night event this year, gimme a shout. I'm thinking we should co-opt the British holiday and celebrate the Guy Fawkes of the world, maybe burn an effigy of a cop or George Bush, instead of an effigy of Fawkes. Make it a celebration of the spirit of those who would oppose The State. After all, historically us lot here in the U.S. have taken ideas like Freedom and Liberty a little more seriously than our British kin.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_3ZGmmn5E
Free Speech...
But if you're arrested for PLANNING something... that is thoughtcrime, and remains thoughtcrime until you actually ACT on your thoughts.
How many people here have fantacized some personal enemy's spectacular demise? How many of you, as teenagers, wrote about how you would do away with your enemies at school? How many went so far as to load a gun, cool down a bit, and unload it again?? This isn't rare behaviour; it's not-unusual expression of typical teenage angst.
But now every distressed teen is a criminal, merely for having evil thoughts. Best start brainwashing 'em in the cradle, it's the only way to prevent 'em from growing up to be teenage anarchists.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Anyway, statistics fury:
- 10, 718 - total of deaths from the terrorist attacks bit of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_violent_events_by_death_toll (a run down of some of the better known terrorist attacks in the last century
- 300, 000 to "over 1 million" - estimates of death toll under 25 years of Saddam's rule in Iraq (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm)
- 3815 - American war dead in Iraq
- 1, 080, 923 - estimated Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003 (http://justforeignpolicy.org/
It's good this saving people's lives and freeing them thing isn't it? L8rShameless plugs and inaccessible site design FTW! - www.mistletoestreetmusic.com
I think he also managed to characterize the fear of the unknown (whether desired or not). After all the censorship in F451 was created because the people WANTED it. I also think that's a very crucial piece there, people WANT some things to be banned because they are afraid of it. Only in that case it was something they were too dumb to use anymore rather than something they were too old-fashined to understand. Perhaps Bradbury criticised himself a bit with that, where the people in his book fear the old unknown he fears the new unknown... Though bashing MTV is always a worthy cause.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
More than what?
Every time I see this (from either side), I immediately think: here's somebody who is not learning from history.
Terrorism is not on the rise. There is not more terrorism now than there was fifty or a hundred years ago. Terrorism is not something that other people do and we do not do. Your school history teacher may have focussed on more positive aspects of our history, but that doesn't mean the other bits did not exist.
Terrorism has always been prevalent. It has always been the tool of those who lack other means to accomplish their goals. "Terrorist" and "freedom fighter" have always been just two more names for "them" and "us". It is not on the rise because it has always existed at a "high" level (actually pretty low compared to, for example, deaths due to police/government corruption and abuses).
As long as any country has enemies and those enemies have no armies or nukes, that country will be the target of terrorist attacks.
Remind me again why we need to have less freedom today than we did ten years ago? It certainly isn't because the terrorists have changed.
Umm... The book is available in UK bookstores. It's also available from amazon.co.uk.
So. If you own an upper level chemistry text book you're probably in trouble as well. Or heaven forbid, if frequent hobbyist rocketry websites or worse, participate!
The Anarchist's Cookbook is no more dangerous than any of the dozens of military manuals that turn up in used booksellers.
You understand that the intent here is not to punish that stupid git but to set the stage for moving on Iran. You can't very well invade or attack a new country without some fresh outrage.
It's really sad that the US has let bush wave the bloody shirt for seven years now, and that blair facilitated it.
I'm not one to run from trouble. I supported the efforts in Afghanistan. Also those in Iraq. For awhile, at least. I'm now of the opinion that bush is dangerously deranged. He has no military experience whatsoever that could provide him with any useful knowledge to prosecute a war, yet congress and the citizenry have let him do just that. This is tantamount to allowing a building maintenance person at a medical school perform open-heart surgery on your child.
You really have to be aware of how and why certain things are published in news sources. Do your own research. Most of all, think for yourself. Don't accept the world of a politician for anything. If you trust a politician to guide your thoughts you're probably the same sort person who would let a pedophile babysit your children and then wonder why they always come home with a sore ass.