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Fighting Terrorism By Becoming Terrorists


sparhawk

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I just found this story on the german newsletter from Heise and I translated a bit. For the full story read the german text, because I'm not that good at translating such legal stuff to english.

 

The british House of Commons are about to pass the new Terrorism Bill http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/c...6055.i-iii.html

 

A german article can be found here http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/65649.

 

Among other things the police should ebcome the official censorhisp authority under the guise of fighting terrorism. The offenses will be punished with up to seven years of arrest and/or monetary fine.

 

The major points include:

* Publishing a direkt or indirekt statement which can be assumed to be an encouragement, inducment or instigation of an act of terrorism ("Encouragement of Terrorism")

 

* Publishing information that can be helpfull in preparing or executing a terrorist act. Selling city maps to foreigners can become a dangerous job.

 

* Publishing or glorifying a portrait of past, current or future act of terrorism, if it can cause the public to potentially perceive it as an endorsement of such acts. Does this mean that the brits will no shut down all the Nazi sites?

 

* Animating a third party to publish above information.

 

* Providing, renting, publishing, selling, releasing or giving away such orders or invitations in any form as well as being in the possesion of such orders ("possession with a view").

 

* Ignoring an order for censorhisp from the police.

 

At the same time the definition of terrorism will also be extended. It will include that any such acts don't need to be performed on the british ground and also can lead to an arrest when it is being done in some other country.

Internet providers, webmasters and webhosters are only exempt if they can proove that they didn't know about the content if a website is falling under these crimes.

If a constable even THINKS that a potential publication is about to fulfill any of the conditions he can not only act against the perpetrator, he can also order all involved independent parties to cease and desist publications. The third parties must follow suit within two days, otherwise they will be charged with the same accusations. Wether a publication is illegal or not depend on the intent of the author or the actual content. It is enoguh if the authorities come to the conclusion that the public could potentially perceive it as such. Wether somebody actualy has been incited is irrelevenat. Legal remedies or appeals are not mentioned in the bill.

 

There will also new elements of an offence introduced like entering a nuklear site, entering an area which is known to be used for training terrorists, refuse to hand out encryption keys and more.

Offenders can be arrested up to three months without impeachment. A search warrant no longer needs to specify the exact location, instead it can be extended to include all areas the person visited and include also persons and their locations who were in contact with the arrestee.

Accounts and funds can be confiscated without a public hearing and without informing the cencerned person or it's laywer.

 

There are a number of other Acts which also will be amended so you will get a nice wrapup for all kind of real or perceived threats to the freedom under the guise of fighting terrorism. Is this really what you want?

Gerhard

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Is this really what you wantß

 

No. But we all know the British government doesn't give a monkey's about what anybody wants except themselves. This is after all the country where you can be convicted for typing in a URL.

 

I expect a lot of this stuff would get struck down by the courts if it was ever used, but that still takes time and some poor sod has to suffer by being the test case.

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That story would be really funny if it were not for real. :(

 

Conerning the Act. This seems to me lika an attempt to make the law more strict by requesting a lot of stuff that will be thrown out before it actually passes. The strategy reminds me of companies who want to reduce their number workers.

They want to reduce the number of works of at least 1000 people so they make a public statement of reducing about 5000 people. Then the union kicks in and makes a big fuss about it. After "tough negotiations" and lots of talking the "agreement" is reached that only 3000 are fired and the union celebrates it's victory. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same story.

Gerhard

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The Aussie Government is about to pass terrorism laws that will give the governemnt the same powers that Hitler had - the police will be able to lock you up for "disrespecting" the Prime Minister amongst all kinds of things that will allow the government to rig elections, control the media etc. Very Draconian, police state sort of stuff that means that any future Prime Minister who wants to become an absolute Dictator can do so with ease. The funny thing is, the ACT government is refusing to pass the laws at his stage, which would make the ACT the only jurisdiction not subject to the laws, meaning that the terrorists (if they even exist) would ironically have a free shot at Parliament house (relatively speaking).

 

There is no actual need for these laws, but Governments like to use fear to cow people into thinking there is actually a threat worth giving up their liberty for. The Ausie government is also about to pass new industrial relations laws that will turn Australia into a 3rd world country in terms of workers conditions and basically abolish unionism.

 

But like some American founding father said "anyone who is prepared to trade liberty for safety deserves neither liberty nor safety".

 

I'll take my chances with the supposed terrorists rather than suffer c***s like the current Australian government fucking it up for everyone.

 

I hope my fellow citizens will eventually see sense and drag the PM and his cronies into the street for a good beating for fucking up the country.

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Obscurus: I tend to agree, when I see what the Australian government does I actually feel quite positive about the British one.

 

sparhawk: Yep, that is a well-known tactic used by salesman, called the "door-in-your-face" technique. Basically you ask for something absolutely outrageous, then after the inevitable response you back down, say "I agree that was over the top, how about this?" and present something slightly less outrageous that was what you wanted all along. You get what you want, and your opponents thing they have accomplished something by getting you to "concede", even though you actually did nothing of the sort.

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Most people will only fight back against oppression when it directly effects something they deeply care about. Most of the 9-5 tools are being oppressed from useful thought by being conditioned throughout life to get an education for a job in which they repeat the same meaningless cycle everyday and only spend their offtime recovering or entertaining themselves and giving no effort to expand their mind or change their wasted life.

 

The same is with most of us posting from work. Posting on forums accomplishes very little, and is mostly for venting. If you truly hate the measures taken to 'protect and prevent' terrorism, do something actively about it. Posting on boards about it won't change it.

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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Most of the 9-5 tools are being oppressed from useful thought by being conditioned throughout life to get an education for a job in which they repeat the same meaningless cycle everyday and only spend their offtime recovering or entertaining themselves and giving no effort to expand their mind or change their wasted life.

 

Of course. Why do you think the government is so keen to introduce more "vocational" qualifications, and dumb down the entire education system with stupid league tables that nobody wants?

 

Because an uneducated populace with no capacity for rational thought does not present an obstacle to the government's desire to extend its power.

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U.S.: The Patriot Act, along with a bunch of other shit, makes it legal for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to demand the records of libraries in order to see what books have been checked out by whom. The librarians are not only forced to give up records without a judges warrant, they are gagged from telling library users that their records have been confiscated. If the librarians talk, they face prison time.

 

The pigs, in their zeal to capture terrorists, have arrested a plumber from Pennsylvania who told an undercover agent he was building a cold fusion energy device to sell to Al Quaida, an artist from New York who told an undercover agent he wished he could teach terrorists karate, and a few more overtly ridiculous cases. All of these under the Patriot Act, I believe. You can laugh at the idiots that work at the F.B.I., but these cases are only the ones that get a bit of coverage. The real fight is quietly taking place everyday in a thousand little cases

 

People are reacting over here, groups are taking stands against the Patriot Act, townships are refusing to enforce it. The problem, as always, is that the People will not move until they have been whipped and slashed out of complacency, if at all. In this land, the Land of the Overweight Consumer, who sees the world through Limbaugh or Oprah, who dreams only of buying a plasma TV or the next coolest widget or whatever the fuck, such reactions are slow to build. Strong religious superstitions coupled with the attitude of American exceptionalism/nationalism coupled with pernicious racism coupled with a poor education makes organizing and confronting power exceptionally hard.

 

The slaves love their chains here, example in PHiladelphia our bus/trolley company, SEPTA, has gone on strike. The management wants to make the workers pay a portion of their health care coverage, even though the company makes shitload of cash and can well afford the benefits. (For those of you in saner lands, remember there is almost NO socialized medicine here in the U.S. We would rather let people get really sick and cost society more, or just die. Witness Katrina.) So the workers have gone on strike. Now the media is covering it, but downplays the workers demands and instead concentrates on pissed off commuters who have been constantly saying "I have to pay for MY health insurance, why shouldnt they?" Not "SEPTA makes millions of dollars a month and can afford this, and my boss sure could too, so fuck the bosses!" or "Health care is a right and it would be affordable but for the fucking insurance companies gouging us left and right!" That smacks of a critique of America, and that is wrong by default. Sigh.

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The problem, as always, is that the People will not move until they have been whipped and slashed out of complacency, if at all. In this land, the Land of the Overweight Consumer, who sees the world through Limbaugh or Oprah, who dreams only of buying a plasma TV or the next coolest widget or whatever the fuck, such reactions are slow to build. Strong religious superstitions coupled with the attitude of American exceptionalism/nationalism coupled with pernicious racism coupled with a poor education makes organizing and confronting power exceptionally hard.
That's a little bleak isnt it? I think people in the U.S. are much smarter than you think, I've heard plenty of grumbling about what's going on but when you look at the normal Republican/Democrat garbage you realize there's not much to choose from in terms of leadership. Most of us want our freedom intact and wish to be left alone, the best thing we can do is to shift our votes to 3rd parties to break the current political deadlock. At least in the United States we have a Consitution with a codified bill of rights so we can see where we are getting screwed, England and Aus dont even have that. :(

I dont fear the dark...the dark fears me!

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Cirumstances have made the mass American public (other countries are similar) too complacent to effectively utilize the rights and constitution their forefathers fought hard for. Too much laziness and apathy exist in today's society, so it takes much much longer for resistance to effectively for and spread, and criticism through propaganda is more effective in countering resistance than it used to be.

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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The funny thing is, America with its Bill of Rights still ends up as one of the most draconian regimes in the western world. I think there are two main things that prevent the UK from going too far down that road, even though there is no formal Bill of Rights.

 

1) Very good media, such as the BBC, that is not afraid to attack the government where necessary. The jingoistic fuming of Fox News and the like simply don't happen over here to any notable extent.

2) The parliamentary system which requires all new laws to be debated (not just voted for - properly debated) several times before they can be passed, allowing compromises to be made following criticism from the opposition (or even the government's MPs). There is also no special power granted to the Prime Minister - no veto or anything like that.

 

I guess things like the EU and the European Court of Human Rights help to some extent as well.

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OrbWeaver I think you are pretty dead on. For all the "Freedom of Speech" and "Land of the free" and how all this slogans are, USA seems to me to be as close to a dictatorship as it can get. True, it's a kind of democratic dictatorship and the dictator is exchanged every 8 years, but that's the end of democracy. At least from my perspective, the actual circumstances remind me a lot of what I hear from back then when we still had Hitler.

As to the EU. I think it hurts more than it helps. To my mind "The EU" is so far away from the average man, that there is a huge gap between what a politician wants and what the average man needs. Having the base in Brussel adds to it, because politicans can go there for a kind of payed vacation and everything is far far away.

Gerhard

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That's a little bleak isnt it? I think people in the U.S. are much smarter than you think, I've heard plenty of grumbling about what's going on but when you look at the normal Republican/Democrat garbage you realize there's not much to choose from in terms of leadership. Most of us want our freedom intact and wish to be left alone, the best thing we can do is to shift our votes to 3rd parties to break the current political deadlock. At least in the United States we have a Consitution with a codified bill of rights so we can see where we are getting screwed, England and Aus dont even have that. :(

 

Maybe, but I still think it holds. Its not really a matter of intelligence, I would argue, but a matter of education. Critical thinking is not a strong point of our culture for starters, anti-intellectualism has deep roots here as well. Im not as hopeful as you may be about the prospects of a third party. For one, there are a lot of obstacles in the path of such a thing, legal, cultural, economic. Two, a third party that really wants to tear things up is going to be put down, if you want to see a whole lot of bi-partisan cooperation between the two parties you'll see it when a third party threatens their position. Im not saying its impossible, but its a long, long slog.

 

I think a deeper level of change is needed, what that is exactly I do not know. As a student of Marx, I look to class struggle, the symptoms of deeper conflicts and contradictions in the material conditions of the historical period, as a catalyst of change but America is a strange beast and its unwise to simply lift old theory and lay it atop new conditions. Marx himself cautioned againts such methods. I do not think this nation is ready to tear off its shackles, its too reactionary, too superstitious, to identify its real enemy and move against it.

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The problem is, it is human nature to rigidly and stubbornly ignore change until it overwhelms them, and people are quite content to see other people trampled over until it starts to affect them. Revolutions create a rapid oscillation between extremes of government, which is not desirable at all. The best way to change a regime is slowly and subtly, so the regime doesn't notice the change. Unfortunately, most regimes know this, and they do it to the people they govern - slowly, imperceptably, inexorably eroding the power of people to rule themselves until you have what we have now - governments willing to propose legislation that removes the last vestiges of democracy and the rule of law and replaces them with fascist totalitarianism.

 

Governments use a mix of hope and fear to control populations, and it is only when people abandon both and actually *ACT* that change occurs. Hope and fear are pointless emotions for the weak and stupid, the wise either act or patiently observe.

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Funny thing is that I submitted this story to slashdot as well, but they ignored it. For some reason I didn't really expect them to post it, but that still makes me think why. They bring all kind of stories like this, but I was pretty sure that they wouldn't pick it up because it can be seen as pro-terroristic. Maybe I'm not so great a writer that it suffices the QA from slashdot, I don't know.

Gerhard

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Well Slashdot is certainly not averse to posting anti-"war-on-terror" material, so I don't suppose that was the reason. Probably because a) it is Britain, rather than the USA, and B) because it hasn't actually passed yet, it is just going through the process (although they do sometimes post things that haven't yet come to pass).

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Most of us want our freedom intact and wish to be left alone, the best thing we can do is to shift our votes to 3rd parties to break the current political deadlock. At least in the United States we have a Consitution with a codified bill of rights so we can see where we are getting screwed, England and Aus dont even have that.

 

What bothers me about the US is that our gov't has basically suspended Habeas Corpus because of the "war on terror." The gov't can now call a US citizen an "enemy combatant" and hold them indefinitely without trial in an undisclosed location. Also our politicians have repeatedly said that the Geneva Convention does not quite apply in these cases of "enemy combatants." So we can hold our own citizens indefinitely and torture them, without having to prove that they're guilty of anything in a court of law. Great.

 

I would think that this would get to people and motivate some political change, since we do generaly wish to keep our freedoms and be left alone, yet citizens keep electing the same people by a narrow majority. Part of it is probably the politics of fear. The more our news media and politicians build up "terrorists" as a potential threat and keep showing us dreadful acts of terrorism every night, the more willing people are to ignore erosion of their own rights in the name of safety.

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I would think that this would get to people and motivate some political change, since we do generaly wish to keep our freedoms and be left alone, yet citizens keep electing the same people by a narrow majority.

 

Well, I guess this is also a tradition. A president is voted for 8 years, and this tradition is hard to break. Were there any presidents that were not voted again after the four years period? I don't know much about US history, but I would be surprised if this were a frequent occurence.

 

Part of it is probably the politics of fear. The more our news media and politicians build up "terrorists" as a potential threat and keep showing us dreadful acts of terrorism every night, the more willing people are to ignore erosion of their own rights in the name of safety.

 

They do this here as well. Every second attack on freedom is either motivated by saying it helps fight terrorists or by saying that it helps fighting paedophilia. Last year the word terrorist was mentioned so often in the media that it even registered consciously with me. Normally I hear radio very often and it just flies by, but this was mentioned so often that I couldn't help but noticing it.

 

Catching paedophiles is also a very popular because it create a lot of emotion. And of course if you try to stay sensible, then you can be easily accused to be a friend of, or even ARE yourself a paedohile.

Gerhard

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I would think that this would get to people and motivate some political change, since we do generaly wish to keep our freedoms and be left alone, yet citizens keep electing the same people by a narrow majority. Part of it is probably the politics of fear.

 

A lot of people just believe the propaganda - they are that stupid. The number of posts on the BBC "Have your say" section in defence of this kind of stuff is astonishing. They just trot out the retarded old argument "the innocent have nothing to fear" as if it was actually true.

 

What they really mean is "only people who look like Muslims have something to fear", which is largely accurate. I bet if the terrorist attacks were committed by rich white guys their opinions would be very different.

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The thing is, while these sort of laws have been targeted at Muslims, they could be used against anyone for any reason. You speak out about the Governments healthcare policy, they don't like it, they make you dissapear. The machinery of totalitarianism is in place, and it is only a matter of time before someone takes the opportunity to use the laws to make themselves the next Hitler

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Exactly. But the masses don't understand that.

 

I was actually discussing this issue with my brother once, and he simply would not believe that the government would ever abuse its powers, because they would just have to be trustworthy with something so important.

 

People have this perception that the government is a sort of superentity - a supreme being without human weaknesses. They totally ignore the fact that the government and authorities are staffed by ordinary people who can, do and will abuse the powers they are given to do their jobs.

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And they ignore the lessons of history - I'm sure most Germans thought that Hitler would never be a problem at first, and thought he would be a good thing for their country. Anyone who trusts a politician is an idiot - they are almost universally pathological liars who will do anything to retain and expand their power, and to force their own agenda on people. There are a lot of idiots running around, unfortunately.

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