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UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida
D Afifi writes "Two political researchers at the University of Nottingham, in the UK, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for downloading Al-Qaida material from a US government website. The material was to be used for research in terrorist tactics. There has been a huge public outcry, with university staff planning a march to demonstrate against the attack on academic freedom. Yet, one of the students, an Algerian, is still held in custody under immigration charges and is being fast-tracked for deportation."
The UK is the country furthest along the road to 1984.
Sweet, now there are even more kinds of "illegal data" out there.
Under-age porn, "terrorist" material, DRM removing software, MAFIAA products, etc...
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
in order to control the masses.
Fear is a common tactic used since the begging of civilization to manipulate people.
- Zeus will destroy you all!
- The devil will come for you and burn you for all eternity!
- Terrorists! omg! seek shelter at once!
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Anyone have a link to the material in question? (Is it in English?)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
All this means is ...... WTF????
Information hosted on a US government website? That is forbidden material? Entrapment anyone? How about err... uhhh... holy fuck!
So the UK government noticed this material being downloaded and never looked at where it came from? WTF? Is the US Government now hosting terrorism inciting materials for the internets?
This, I truly hope, leaves buckets full of egg and chicken shit on the faces of some government employee types.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
They were reading material from a US government website. These are the same idiot agencies who attacked Iraq to "get rid of Weapons of Mass Destruction". Clearly if anyone is less able to produce proper intelligence and material - it's these gaffs.
It's like reading an article on how to improve your country's economy written by George Bush.
No offense to any American's reading btw - it's the agencies I have no respect for.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I mean.. Information doesn't kill people; people kill people!!! It's what you do with the information that counts!
I got curious once and looked up how to make a hydrogen bomb. Does that make me a terrorist? NO. Because I only use my hydrogen bomb for personal self-defense!
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There are 2 issues here that I can tell.
;) ) therefore should not be treated as a terrorist.
:p
#1 Arrest under Terrorism act for having al-Qaida-related material.
#2 Immigration charges and subsequent deportation.
The two are related insofar as discovering 1 resulted in 2.
#2, the illegal immigration, *should* result in deportation - he is perfectly able to make a claim on humanitarian grounds or claim asylum. The fact remains that illegal immigrants should be deported.
#1 should be approached as:
a) person found with dodgy material
b) person was investigated
c) things happen
Now, the main objection is vs c). he was engaging in legitimate academic research (you COULD argue he is a terrorist and this is a clever coverup, but I wont go there
The fact that "An illegal immigrate faces deportation" is no surprise and should not impact your judgement here.
This probably comes acros as a bit confused - its been a long day.
à_à
Some things never change.
--
make install -not war
You shall lose both, and deserve neither.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Fear drives so much in the form of bad governmental behavior. I feel for my British friends, as they must feel for Americans. Blair and Bush (now Brown), leading their countries down the path to an oil war-- not terrorism-- oil. Not religious self-righteousness-- war for oil and to destabilize governments not marching in-step with them.
The quotations of American and British patriots that warn that liberty at the cost of security is folly are now sadly worn out. My British friends have less hope because they believe that Tory and Labor, just like Democrats and Republicans, are largely the same. This is a dangerous time in the world for people not to believe in the integrity and veracity of their governments; more is at stake in interdependency than ever before. I hope, no pray, they listen to their constituents.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
As I RTFA I realized that this looks like standard jobsworth cops at large and could happen any day here in the U.S. Too much responsibility too little brains.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Information should never be illegal unless it is a matter of (real) national security. Terrorist tactics are not a matter of national security, therefore the information should not be illegal. With the suppression of information comes the suppression of our freedoms. Read 1984 and see how close we are to becoming a similar society. In all dictatorships, it was first the information that was "dangerous to the state" then it became "dangerous to the state's morals" until all you can get is government propaganda.
Knowing terrorist tactics neither makes you a threat nor makes you a terrorist.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1984 assumes the government is competent and really out to get everyone. In reality its more like the movie Brazil. Everyone mindlessly doing their job without any critical thought. Watching Brazil and comparing it to current events is truly horrifying.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
No one else seems to have covered this angle, so I'll bring it up. WTF is wrong with the University of Nottingham? I cannot believe a supposed institution of higher learning would sell its scholars down the river like that. This whole thing flies in the face of what a University is suppose to stand for. Perhaps I'm just naive.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
BUt now maybe people who think there is nothing to worry about with this fascism creep that has been going on in thUK and the US wull start to wake up.
You can view video clips of Tony Blair and CIA officials basically stating that Al Qaeda doesn't exist on You Tube (IIRC from the BBC originally).
http://polidics.com/cia/top-ranking-cia-operatives-admit-al-qaeda-is-a-complete-fabrication.html
Maybe they are trying to stop people from researching this stuff.
Two details should be considered before judging the situation and blaming random people:
This is a gross mistake anyway, but it's a quite a bit less 1984-ish than one might think from the summary.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
If it's all countries I expect there are in fact quite a few in front of the UK in the "1984" stakes.
Not that that is anything to be proud of.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
This sounds very similar to a recent episode of numb3rs (not the greatest show in the world, but better than average). Charlie's colleague was arrested for working on genetically modified foods and sending the results to Pakistan where it could save people from famine. The government considered it bio-terrorism research material.
I have little doubt that this episode was inspired by the whole national security climate which silences research all the time.
In TFA, the student was researching (broadly) Islamic Politics. Which seems reasonable enough; it's regrettably a large part of perceived western views on Islamic politics. Additionally, it wasn't the student who originally downloaded the material who is now being threatened with deportation. Hisham Yezza was asked to print the document in question, and there's no evidence that he even read it.
Counter-terrorism? Sociology? History? Middle-eastern studies?
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
By my estimates there are many government and other activities which could be considered 'terrorist' by some definitions of the word. Back in South Africa Nelson Mandela was considered a 'terrorist'. So how do we define 'terrorism' without implicating the so-called 'good guys'?
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
Hmmm, pretty much, um any political science, international relations, or legal course of study. So basically, any liberal arts or law degree.
I spent four months researching the Bank Secrecy Act, Patriot Act Title III, and the Federal Money Laundering Prevention Act and their relation to terrorist finance- as well as their Indian counterparts. I could tell you the ins and outs of any number of terrorist finance schemes. And it was all for a substantial legal article for coursework.
There were 12 other people in that class, and I'm willing to bet that *every single one of us* downloaded at least one document that, pulled out of context, is as shady as the terrorist manual at issue here. Fortunately we had the advantage of doing so in the US, although several students wrote on just these very issues. Apparently doing so is hazardous to your freedom in the UK.
The only way to write effective law regarding a national security issue such as this is to have a robust academic discussion to adequately examine the issue. Arresting students for participating in that discussion doesn't make anyone safer.
Just wanted to clarify why he's being deported. The brits' reaction to the downloading of the document was a bit extreme, but if ya want to live in a country then ya gotta play by their(sometimes idiotic) rules
But there is something fundamentally wrong with the government if you're an academic and visiting a web site brings you to the attention of the immigration departmnet in the first place.
I think it is pretty obvious that the government decision and policy makers are useless without the people to execute their orders.
Why aren't we actively protesting to those people? These people are responsible for their actions and are responsible for acting on their own conscience. It's easy to show that various campaigns to influence government policy and direction even in small degrees.
How possible might it be to influence the arms and legs of bad government to refuse to act against its conscience?
Tagged: 1984 (of course)
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
was studying passenger jets, not Al Qaida literature. The real terrorists plotting a crime have already been recruited, and don't need to read any more Al Qaida stuff. Arresting someone for reading Al Qaida stuff is at best a "pre-crime": they might be converted and decide to commit crimes in the future so we have to stop them now. More likely, this is another case of panicked stupidity causing the innocent to suffer.
Just wanted to clarify that the UK still has due process. Being *charged* with an immigration crime is not the same as being guilty of said crime. Your reaction to the arrest was a bit extreme, but if ya want to have free speech then ya gotta put up with reactionary (sometimes total bullshit) posts on message boards.
Thank you Dave Raggett
> Terrorist tactics are not a matter of national security,
That has to be one of the stupidest statements in this entire thread.
Some one hits a "US government website" on terrorism (read: honeypot) designed to attract exactly this kind of terrorist explorer and you decide its no a matter of national security.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I wonder how many of the 7/7 students (and 9/11 airflight "students") researched terrorist tactics before they went off to kill others.
The question on your mind really should be "How many people have researched terrorist tactics before they went off and killed no one?" TLAs are a good place to start looking -- they're full of people who specialize in terrorism. Military men of all stripes are now familiar with at least the basics of urban guerrilla warfare. Curious gawkers, military aficionados, Medal of Honor players.
To quote David Letterman, when interviewing Bill O'Reilly ... "I'm not smart enough to debate you, but I have a feeling that 90% of everything you say is crap"
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/terrorism/alqaida_manual/
In a newer apartment, avoid talking loud because prefabricated ceilings and walls [used in the apartments] do not have the same thickness as those in old ones.
Most of the manual (the first one) is bullshit. BTW I'm surprised that they have given Israeli and Russian examples(what they did to achieve their goals) wherever possible.
Breakfast served all day!
"See: Africa and starvation."
I had no idea that Mugabe was an environmentalist?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So, let me get this straight. In order to uphold peace, freedom, civilization and whatnot, we clamp down hard on the academics. So far, so familiar. Now, just for the masterstroke, We focus out little witch hunt on pro-UK moderates, from middle eastern cultural and ethnic backgrounds, with an academic interest in terrorism. Y'know, because it isn't like those sorts of people might prove useful or anything? WTF. Cracking down on academic researchers under some sort of all-encompassing "state's power to do whatever, to whomever" act is bad enough; but not even doing it pragmatically? If 10 Downing Street were to enter the twilight zone, would anybody notice?
... I don't think that it was a "war for oil" because had it been a "war for oil" we would have more oil. We had a War On Drugs, and now there are more and cheaper narcotics than ever before.We had a War On Poverty, which widened the gap between rich and poor.
We're in a War On Terror, and there is more war and fear and uncertainty about the future of the world than at any other time since World War II.
What makes you think a War For Oil would mean more oil?
Just like all of these other wars on concepts, the War For Oil means two things. Firstly, the oil is not for you, and the control of said oil is not for your benefit. Secondly, thanks to Hubbert's Peak, the war was probably already lost before it started.
(AC: posting from work)
Careful reading the link from the UK, I hear you can get arrested and/or deported for reading certain websites over there.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
That's it, it all makes sense now - the reason law enforcement runs around arresting students for bringing LEDs to airports and such is not because they're dumb but because actual knowledge of how terrorists work would threaten national security, so they just have to guess.
In some jurisdictions you'd be put on a list just for reading this post on slashdot.
Come to think of it, imagine what they'd do to you if you actually bothered to type a response and pressed sub...
So, the police came in, grabbed the wrong guy and tortured him to death. Because of a typo. Well, it's a mistake, but not a horrible mistake. Happens all the time really. Go about your business, nothing to see here, eh?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It's very simple : The further away you are, the higher quality immigrants you get. Also religiousness makes you lessable to integrate. So together this insures that Islamic immigration to Europe is about the worst type of immigration imaginable.
On the first point :
- Mexican immigration to Europe is very high quality, but your aware of the problems in the U.S.
- African immigrants to the U.S. are *the* highest performing minority, above even any asian group, and even with the negative impact of African-American culture. Indeed, look who's running for president. At the same time, African immigrants to Europe are pretty much the scum of the earth, entering & working illegally, not integrating, etc.
Arabic people immigrating to Europe are not much better than these low class African immigrants. On top of this, Arabic people often expect others to conform to their barbaric interpretation of Islam.
As a side note, my impression is that Britain is handling it's Pakistani immigrant population successfully. Of course they must weaken the power of the loony bin Islamic leaders, but these are less problematic in that community than those in Arab communities, again largely because these were higher quality immigrants in the first place.
Basically all countries need essentially flat immigration quotas which accounts for assimilation, i.e. the quota is logarithmic in the countries population and the quota would be reduced if there was any tendency to form ghettos or home cultural institutions (like churches). Next you restrict to only the highest quality ones via a canadian style point system. Moreover quotas & should be applied across all immigrant, worker, and refugee categories.
Also, all countries should eliminate & revoke all religious worker visas. Indeed, even having religious training should count against you for other visa classes.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
First of all, that's a bit convenient a definition.
But the fact is, the western world too has a long and funny history of targetting civilians explicitly. The terror bombings of WW2 (started, duly noted by Germany, but continued by the Allies just as well) were probably the best example, though more recent examples do exist. The theory was explictly to kill enough civilians, as to (A) cause a huge morale drop and make them beg their government for peace, and (B) cripple the economy by killing enough of the workforrce.
The industrial cities of Germany for example have not been colateral damage in trying to bomb the factories, they have been the targets themselves. That was the actual target: bombing the city and terrorizing the population. (But again, so did Germany with UK cities, so I'm not trying to make it sound like only one side was doing it.)
The whole doctrine and technique of firebombing them didn't even work against factories. How it worked was dropping a big bomb with an otherwise thin shell, so the blast would blow the shingles off house roofs, followed by lots of little fire bombs that would then fall in the house and set it ablaze. The houses of civilians were _the_ target.
Against factories that particular mix had little to no effect. Against troops or military targets that mix would have been outright stupid, and noone used it for that.
Again, the whole doctrine was to kill as many civilians as your can, and scare the seven shades of shit out of the survivors. That's a terror tactic by any other name.
Want another example: the USA has actively researched biological warfare and had stockpiles of nasty germs until the 70's. I do believe that the doctrine wasn't to drop them just on enemy troops.
The west only gave up on that shit, when we finally figured out that nukes are enough of a deterrent anyway, and killing 3% of a city's population with modified Brucellosis is peanuts compared to nuking it. And again, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction isn't about nuking enemy troops. If you look at any country with nukes, right as we write this, the nukes are aimed at the (potential) enemies' civilian cities. The threat is, very much, "if you dare attack us, we'll wipe out your population and turn your country into a radioactive wasteland."
The neutron bomb was developed for the explicit reason of killing or injuring as many humans as possible, while causing as little damage as possible to everything else. It's not a bomb you'd use to disable a military factory, it's a bomb which would kill its workers (and the whole city nearby) and at most blow the windows off that factory.
Etc.
So, you know, freakin' _please_. I'm even willing to swallow _some_ "us vs them" dehumanizing arguments, but "we wouldn't ever target civilians" is so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You get 0 points for reading comprehension.
The UK government has presumably decided that the US government is a terrorist organization, and that downloading material from its Web sites is therefore a crime.
The world waits with bated breath to see if Uncle Sam retaliates in kind.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Call me paranoid, but isn't it as though they UK government wanted monopoly on information on the subject? That's at least the conclusion I would draw if I was persecuting for researching something.
Wouldn't want any non-state sanctioned truths getting out about what a bunch of hot air this so called terrorist 'threat' really is.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
British American Tobacco to be precise. Need I say more?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I have several texts which cumulatively detail how to make pretty much every conventional explosive out there. They're called Organic Chemistry Text Books.
Let's analyze this shall we?
Ok so the first part
So, a revolt against unfair imposition of outrageous taxes by people who do not represent you or even have your interests in mind is not, by your definition "a struggle for liberty".
So, a monarchy that does not represent you or your interests, and requires you to engage in unfair and outrageous acts at their behest is not a "dictatorial monarchy". Hmm.
It seems you have no idea what the fuck your babbling about.
Yo renounce your citizenship you clown, it happens all the time.
Oh please shut the fuck up. You don't want "personal freedom" as it really exists, because if you did you could just move to one of the many near lawless locations ALL OVER THE FUCKING WORLD where you could have all the freedom you like.
But that's REAL freedom, i.e., the unsafe, unclean, unruly, uncivilized kind. The kind of freedom people talk about wanting until they have it.
You want the safe, clean, happy freedom that so many people idealize, without appreciating that it's artificial and never lasts.
Long story short, move to Africa. You can get "freedom" out the ass, just don't be a crybaby when you realize the true cost.
The problem is your definition of "freedom" is unworkable. If you feel you only have freedom when you can do whatever you want, well then you can never be free. The reason is that if we let you do whatever you want, we are going to be infringing on someone else's freedom. You see situations like that in dictatorships, like say North Korea. Kim Jong-il has essentially total personal freedom. He can do whatever he wants. However, the price his country pays is that they are all extremely oppressed for that. While the one man may be free, the rest of them aren't.
So, in actual free nations, we have to work towards a balance of freedoms. You have to make sure that one person's freedoms don't infringe on another person's freedoms. That way everyone can be free to do pretty much what they want, and not have to worry about others forcing their will on them.
If you can't accept that kind of freedom, well, then you are a very selfish individual.
Why isn't there a bureaucratic process to get clearance to research content that normally triggers suspicion from authorities?
If you are in Uni and you see someone printing off an Al-Qaida terrorism manual and you reported it, would you or would you not expect the police to investigate??? Of course you would. Even if his lecturers are saying "Yes we knew about it". You would expect the authorities to keep digging in case there were alterer motives. I live in Nottingham and am for one happy that the police did there job. Getting caught up in an explosion would I don't know.... Kind of ruin my day.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Exactly, it's a well observed phenomenon that the 2nd generation is more adventurous in exploring their new home, since they have little memories of the old one.
The 'Little Italies' and other cultural neighborhoods are kind of like transition points. Many of the kids there move out and live typical American lives.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I'm glad there are some people who realize that there is such a thing as time. The children and grandchildren of immigrants will speak english and possibly be elected president. And when you make conditions better for the worse off people on this planet, you reduce the impact of the inevitable fall you or one you love will experience at some point.
It's called hedging your bets.
At least since the Communist Lee Harvey Oswald shot the brains out of the Democrat Party, turning them into the Dummycrat Party.
Our enemies have learned that the way to defeat America is to buy the Dummycrats. Look how much was bought with a Trip for Three to Saddam's Baghdad! The press still won't report America's successes, years after Saddam, because of the enormous goodwill the Democrats felt towards Saddam because he bought Bonior, McDermott, and Johnson.
Treason is the highest form of patriotism!
Cesar Noragueda
.. of the numbers for the same crimes.
Oh My God! if those numbers are put together, we will have one mighty embarrassment for all of us non-muslims.
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
that is was a comprehensively planned war for oil price manipulation!!
1. loot oil
2. scare everyone
3. create shortages globally
4. profit
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
Excellent, they should be deporting a lot more professors from the UK. Anti-English and anti-American cowards.
Then you were the one dumb enough to pay to be a citizen here, just to complain about it later. I would think that EARNING the right to be here, as you so aptly put it, would make it more obvious on how to change the country to fit your needs. Bitching here doesn't do you much good, nor does it change anyone's mind. I thought you were smart enough to know that already and just forgot where the exits were.
My mistake.
No. Nor is there anything in my post that would lead an intelligent reader to determine otherwise.
Reread that until you realize why your reply was moronic.
As to my rudeness, there is some question about your fitness to bring that particular point up, as YOU are the asshole bitching about arbitrary and inapplicable moral codes, yet are also trying to hold me to an arbitrary and inapplicable moral code that YOU suddenly feel is applicable.
You fail again.
Different Arabic users will have different pronunciations anyhow and different English users will attach different sounds to the letters.
Incidentally the bastion of balanced research (wikipedia) gives both alternatives.
Starvation in Zimbabwe (where I have actually been to - have you?) is occurring for very different reasons than starvation elsewhere in Africa. Some people with improved crops have been trying to help Africa use them for years to get better yields in the places that haven't confiscated farms as presents, but environmentalists fear genetically modified crops and so have blocked such action - probably killing more people than Mugabe could ever hope to in the process.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mugabe was the one who turned away the ship full of GM corn (the same variety the US eats in it's cearal), not the environmentalists. Other dictators have turned away western vaccinations and anti-aids medicine using equally bizzare excuses.
The fact is that this has nothing to do with environmentalists, it is politics. Dictator X doesn't want the population getting aid from someone else because dictator X will lose some of his control over said population. The same bullshit can be seen in Burma at the moment.
This is not to say that the extremist environmentalist don't want to ban GM crops but the 'fringe elements' do not have that sort of power in the west, in Africa, or anywhere else I have heard of.
Now since you have been to Africa and I haven't I could be wrong about the fucked up politics of the region. If that is the case you should easily be able to link to news reports showing which environmentalists are turning back aid ships and/or stopping them from being loaded.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Everybody seems to forget we ARE at war with Islamofascists....
Odds that you'll be directly affected by a terrorist attack: 0.0001%
Odds that you'll have your daily life affected by 'anti terrorism' measures on any given day: 99%
Yes, I'm sucking these figures out of my thumb, but they're close enough for government work and will serve the purpose of highlighting just how disproportionate the response to terrorism actually is.
Granted, I may not keep close track of US domestic news, but offhand I cannot think of a single terrorism attack specifically against a US target (outside of the onflict zones of Afghanistan and the Middle East) since 9/11.