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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.'"
Where's a mirror? I'd like to read ....
hang on, someone's at the door.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.
If you don't want your students to read something, have one of their professors assign it as homework and mention that there will be no grade or quiz.
Better yet, say there *will* be a quiz and then symlink "Jihadist Pamphlet Cliffnotes" to "Partial Differential Equations Vol. I, II, and III" in the google results.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I read instructions on how to operate an incendiary device.
I hope they don't arrest me for potentially committing future arson.
I believe the instructions said "close cover strike match".
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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. =)
""Though Saffran says he finds these First Amendment issues "dubious," in a letter to Internet executives he argues that no one has a constitutional right to use private property to facilitate terrorism. ... the moral obligation to stop them from doing so.""
"You have the right," he writes, "and
We have a "moral" obligation to stop our great discoveries in history from being propagated to the masses because some might use it incorrectly(note, this is not yelling fire in a packed theatre)? Please keep in mind, 4 grad students built the bomb (in design) to specifications that current atomic scientist said would actually chain react and detonate, using books that were publically available, but they're scared of information that might enable one to make dynamite? If someone is smart enough and motivated enought to make dynamite, they could do far, far, worse without explosives imo.
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
This whole thing came up because one of the students left home to join the others; they were intending to go fight in some unspecified foreign country. The student's parents called the police to report him missing when he sneaked out. Investigating his disappearance uncovered the material. But then I read the article yesterday.
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"
Bottle Bomb
Ingredients:
* 20 oz soda bottle (empty and dry on the inside)
* black powder (the more fine the better)
* steady burning long wick (at least 15 seconds delay) Instructions:
o Poke a small hole in the cap of the soda bottle.
o Pour a small amount of black powder into the bottle (just enough to cover the bottom with a thin layer, but totally covered, no empty spots on the bottom).
o Insert wick into the cap about halfway and put a bend in the wick.
Note: Be careful not to break the wick or it will shorten it causing possibly disastrous results.
o Screw the cap on the bottle tightly and set somewhere so that it is standing up.
o Light the fuse and get back about 30 feet. Watch the bottle to light up orange. The second after this happens the bottle blows up.
How it works:
The fuse drops onto the layer of black powder in the bottom of the bottle after it burns through the hole. The wick ignites the powder causing it to burn. This builds up pressure inside the bottle causing it to explode.
I have seen these fly up to 25 feet. You can try experimenting with different size bottles or, try a glass bottle with a metal cap if you have steel balls!!! Note- I'm not sure it has enough pressure to blow a glass bottle apart. It may just act like a rocket engine and flare.
There. Now were all criminals.
The British courts also ruled that a schizophrenic that thought himself the reincarnation of King Arthur saner than the Conservative Home Office. The courts tend to be less political and a lot saner than the politicos. The House of Lords was another organiztion that opposed such nonsense, which is why the Conservatives gutted it and Labour disembowled what was left. It's hard to buy out a group that need no money and own most of the land. It's hard to get them to be entirely sane, but so long as they're educated, it's a useful group to have as a transient mechanism until society has matured and that group's function is to bring society into maturation. The problem society has to face is that it isn't maturing. If it was, it wouldn't be repeating history. Athens and Wu went bankrupt from wars and got invaded in turn. Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan found their delusions of power run out through their fingers in their later years, and their deaths caused catastrophic collapses of what could meaningfully be called epic proportions. The systems are probably fine, but a car is fine... if you've the maturity to drive one.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
OK, found relavent material...
"By contrast, 18 U.S.C. 231(a)(1) -- like the proposed Feinstein Amendment -- arguably could be characterized as a prohibition on certain forms of speech. Section 231(a)(1) provides that: Whoever teaches or demonstrates to any other person the use, application, or making of any firearm or explosive or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, knowing or having reason to know or intending that the same will be unlawfully employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder which may in any way or degree obstruct, delay, or adversely affect commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce or the conduct or performance of any federally protected function . . . [s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/bombmakinginfo.html#IVA "
link here May just be violation of 1st...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
The reason to know is a bit wishy washy, but it's probably just a catch all for situations where you have a guy who goes into a room full of plans to blow something up claiming he didn't know that's what they were going to do with the bomb.
Personally I think this law is probably pretty much unecessary, as IMO, knowingly providing someone the means to commit an illegal act in this fashion should be covered under "conspiracy to commit _______" offense tree.
It's not illegal to sell a man a gun, but if someone asks you to sell him a gun so he can murder his wife you're treading on dangerous ground if you do it, and five years and a fine is probably pretty lenient.
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.
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."
They were not aquitted, they had their previous convictions quashed.
They were all originally found guilty, and sentenced to "up to" 3 years each, just for possessing a few dodgy pamphlets and recordings of "extremist sermons".
The appeals court (luckily a Court of Note in the UK, which means this does set a precedent) decided that in order to convict, the prosecution had to show intent to commit terrorist offences. The convictions were quashed because the jury was not told this, and the prosecution evidence would probably not have demonstrated it if they had been.
There's a whole bunch of these 'going equipped' style laws in the UK, where the courts presume to know why you were doing something that, without the intent to commit a crime in the future, would not be illegal.
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
Alexander the Great & Genghis Khan didn't just have delusions of power that poetically "slipped through their fingers"- they each ruled huge, expanding empires at the time of their deaths. Genghis Khan's descendants went on to rule what would become the largest empire ever.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I don't like to whinge but this is really starting to bug me, there are no British courts. There is English law based on precedent and Scots law based on jurisprudence.
It may seem like a semantic difference but it is in fact like saying North American law rather than Canadian and US. It is also important to Scots historically because it is one of the few things that were kept after the act of union with England.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
The House of Lords in the context or parliament is the non-democratically selected load of old codgers that was gutted by both parties in an attempt to make the British political system more responsive to change.
The House of Lords in the context of Law is the English equivalent of the Supreme Court. The Lords who sit and decide cases in regards to law are only selected from high ranking judges.
They also get to sit in the Parliamentary House of Lords above but this does not work both ways. The Hereditary Peers (land owners who inherited their position in the Parliamentary House of Lords) have never been able to sit as Law Lords unless they also trained to be a barrister then spent their entire life practicing Law first.
The only exception to this when all Lords (not just Law Lords) can decide a case is in the case of impeachment.
Your comment about them owning most of the land implies that you think both bodies to be the same thing, they are not.
The following wikipedia page has some interesting info, pay attention to the section marked Judicial Functions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
I dont read