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Students Downloading Jihadist Material Acquitted
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Five UK students who were charged under the UK's 2000 Terrorism Act for possession of jihadist materials were acquitted after the jury found that, while they had downloaded the materials, there was no evidence that they were planning any sort of crime. The Lord Chief Justice was quoted as saying, 'Difficult questions of interpretation have been raised in this case by the attempt by the prosecution to use [this law] for a purpose for which it was not intended.'"
Well at least it's good to see that it's not a complete mudslide..
A judiciary.... adhereing to the spirit of the law. Brilliant!
It might seem like flamebait to say this, but people in their student years are always trying different things out. It's hard for older people to take them seriously sometimes, but that's how its always been.
I remember those days, far back in the distance. As a young campus radical, I remember the way the older, more seasoned off-campus radicals would look at us, with our newfound enthusiasm, and willingness to embrace any new idea. No slogan, no campaign is too outlandish when you're young and inexperienced.
Grumpy older people need to give those younger than themselves some slack. Hell, if the world took every angry-young-man at face value, we'd ALL be in jail.
Information wants to be Free. You cant stop people from knowing. You cant stop people from teaching.
If I go to a white supremacist web site, that doesn't necessarily mean I endorse their views. Even if I download their materials it doesn't--maybe I just find it disgusting and want to show it to someone who won't believe it's as bad as it is. Maybe I want to study it and figure out something about the psychology of the people involved. The same thing applies to terrorism, and... well, pretty much anything a student reads, or any person reads. *Reading* should not be a crime, with the possible exception of some classified/secret documents... whose classification is beyond the scope of this paragraph. =)
Well, not to support religious nutters of any persuasion, but if he had written "I'm off to fight for Christ, but only in conventional warfare somewhere Christians are being oppressed and killed" would anybody even bat an eyelid? Even less so: if they'd said they were going to Israel to fight for the preservation of the Jewish homeland?
Probably the best solution would be to put anyone espousing religious ideas into a mental hospital until they get better.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My point is about the way the word is used. The word "communist" was used to induce fear and justify a war economy just the way the word "terrorist" is being used now to justify a war machine and domestic surveillance.
History is written by the victorious; I'm sure similar words were used to describe the founding fathers as they threw tea into a harbor. You're absolutely correct in your definition of both words, but I was simply stating that "terrorist" is the new catch-word that has America rolling over and giving away its civil liberties in the the name of security.
I don't know if it was the word as much as it was historical actions of political entities who claimed to have been communists. Even if we forget all about germany for the sake of godwin's law, we have Russia rolling in to some countries and pretty much making the same posturing threats as what started WW2. Then when you take all forms of democracy out of the picture and watch Stalin's death machine, look to Vietnam and the subsequent killing fields there, North Korea wanting to invade south korea, and all, there was quite a bit to be scared of even knowing that the forms of communism wasn't true communism.
I mean claiming it is a word without meaning is sort of like saying Fuck or bastard are arbitrary words that people all the sudden decided was bad to say on day. There is a history amongst it that gave the bad, scary, and evil stigma to it.
Yea, they would care. Especially is they were going to join a side that was hostile to the homeland (the UK).
And 60 years ago, they would have been prosecuted for going to Israel too.
Don't look at this as people going to "work or war" for god, look at it as people going to join the enemy side of a force at war with you.
I don't believe I claimed it was a word without meaning. I know I was scared as hell as a child when I hid under a desk during air raid drills in elementary school because "the communists were going to drop bombs on us." The analogy was simply that while the words may have legitimate meaning (and a justifiable cause for concern), they also give our own extremists fodder to use for things like the Patriot Act and foreign occupations without much opposition from the general public. That is the goal of those catch-words as propaganda. The populace hands over its civil liberties because anyone could be a terrorist; a populace in fear is an easily controllable one. I'm not saying that Terrorism isn't a problem, nor am I saying that Radical Islam (capitalized for a reason) isn't a problem, nor am I saying that brutal, totalitarian regimes under the flag of Communism weren't (and aren't) a problem.
Nowadays, by most Europeans, those members of the International Brigade are regarded as heroes. The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter usually depends on who eventually won whatever the war was. The fact that many members of the International Brigades fought because of an adherence to irrational beliefs like Communism, or because they had split up with their girlfriends, or because they wanted to rebel against their parents, gets lost in the simplifications of history.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
But (with a special nod to your sig) Israel's founders did do that - see Deir Yassin for a shining example.
Nowadays, people seem to forget about the massacres and the bombing of the King David hotel, but at the time the Zionist gangs were routinely (and correctly) referred to as 'terrorist'.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make