How the U.K. Prosecuted a Student on Terrorism Charges for Downloading a Book
theintercept.comIf you don’t read the article and think the Intercept is being hyperbolic as they normally are. Rest assured the title is exactly what happened. Walker was charged under terrorism laws not for planning, conspiring, nor performing acts of terrorism. The prosecutor made the argument that possessing the book was an act of terrorism. A book he downloaded from the school library. Also equally available on the Amazon and downloadable from internet since the dawn of the WWW.
We have some pretty scary laws on the books here in the UK, not least in terms of chilling effects. Those of us who support human rights and generally democratic and civilised society have always expressed concern about broad reach and excessive powers and lack of effective oversight. Unfortunately our voice is not loud enough when fear is the opposition, even if that fear is mostly irrational and stoked more by the government and media than the bad guys. Sometimes I wonder who is really causing the most damage in the first place these days.
If you don’t read the article and think the Intercept is being hyperbolic as they normally are. Rest assured the title is exactly what happened.
.. with the minor addition that he was initially arrested upon returning from helping a militia in the Middle East.
Though an anti ISIL militia backed by the US, other western nations and Russia.
'The YPG is regarded as the "most effective" force in fighting ISIL in Syria' according to Wikipedia. I dare say Erdogan hates the YPG which is probably why the Brits have to be a bit half hearted in their backing. Got to think of the arms exports after all https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/22/uk-arms-sales-...
That's what I suspect was the reason for the unusual charge.
The powers that be are under pressure to show they're doing "something" about people who come back from fighting in the Middle East but since this wasn't for a terrorist organization, there was no obvious charge. I'd argue it was right for them to search his belongings given the circumstances, but then they decided to try and pin it all on owning the cookbook as that's all they really had.
Not that I think this was the right call for them, but I can see how it might happen, and also why the millions of others who've downloaded the cookbook out of curiosity have not ended up in court.
Well at least he got off free.
>Walker was accused of violating the Terrorism Act because he possessed information “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
What a dumb law. I guess they could prosecute you for reading Wikipedia on that basis.
More concise write up here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41751193
The "possessed information" by the way was The Anarchist Cookbook, available from £24 from Amazon.co.uk https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/d...
> The Anarchist Cookbook
I remember this being passed around between kids in the computer science lab on a floppy disk when I was about 13.
I vaguely remember something similar going on at my school way back when, though that might have been The Hacker's Handbook. Probably still enough to freak out the authorities these days, yet remarkably, I'm not aware that any of my class went on to become evil masterminds with secret underground lairs.
What? The Anarchist Cookbook isn’t even accurate, it’s a novelty a best.
This stood out for me:
>> It was an issue of “personal responsibility,” he said, and it was the government’s view that possessing the book was unlawful, because it could be useful to terrorists.
The prosecution claimed it's about personal responsibility while trying to enforce a law that seems to deny people are entitled or able to exercise such a thing.
> Last summer, Walker traveled from London to Syria, where he joined the Kurdish-led YPG militia in its fight against the so-called Islamic State
What a fucking stupid title.
How so? The prosecution had nothing to do with syria. That helped his case.
The arrest had everything to do with his travel to Syria.
What you're arrested for and what you're prosecuted for are really two totally separate issues. Arresting someone who fought in Syria is pretty reasonable. Finding out that they fought for the Western-backed "good guys" is a great reason to drop the charges, which they did.
Charging him for owning a book is what they did too.
There is a creeping fascism in the western world.
The so-called 'wars' on drugs and terrorism are used as excuses to remove personal freedoms. Governments take more powers unto themselves. The state security apparatus is allowed to spy on everyone. There is a presumption of guilt and citizens have to justify every trivial activity. The previous outlandish fictions of 'Thought Crime' and 'Pre-Crime' become facts of life in the police state.
Cultural Marxism also restricts freedom of speech, based on a combination of PC attitudes and juvenile hypersensitivity, which cannot tolerate the freedom to offend. The Enlightenment ideals of free speech and liberal open-minded rationality, are hounded into a Dark Age of gagged anti-scientific silence by the social justice Thought Police.
Huge debts have been accumulated by social democracies, which are in a spiral of decline induced by people voting for big govt, cushy public-sector jobs, bloated welfare and high taxes. Debts lead to artificially low interest rates to support banks, and QE to monetize govt debt. The corrupt cronies closest to the spigot of new money accumulate wealth (Cantillon Effect). Elites and insiders are bribed with bonuses and asset-price inflation. Voters are bribed with welfare and public sector jobs, many with anti-meritocratic barriers to firing and fantasy pension promises.
These 'wars' and debts combine to justify restrictions on economic freedom. AML and KYC regulations restrict access to financial services and impose de facto capital controls. The governments are broke and they are looking for any source of revenue. The War on Cash restricts economic freedoms. Large denomination notes are withdrawn. There are limits on cash withdrawals, cash deposits and cash purchases. Money is trapped in govt controlled accounts, so it can be taxed, bailed-in and seized at will. In the US, civil asset forfeiture is simply daylight robbery by the state.
Neoconservative war-mongering and the bloated military-industrial-complex consume vast resources and destabilize every corner of the world. Democracy is subverted in favor of corrupt autocrats and interventions are justified by false flag operations. Military hardware finds its way into domestic law enforcement. Monitoring and surveillance from the battlefield migrates to our cities and skies.
The fascism has arrived and it is all around us.
Please don't post ideological boilerplate here. It's not what this site is for.
Yeah but the long term trends are still positive https://ourworldindata.org/democracy/
Yes but he had traveled to Syria and fought their this isn't just downloading the book is it?
He fought against isis with the Kurds.
Wish I could upvote you more.
Cultural Marxism isn't real. It's a Neo-Nazi conspiracy theory popularized by a right-wing terrorist. If fascism actually has arrived, you played a part in it. Your views on economic and social policies do too but propertarians like you don't understand fascism and reduce it to authoritarianism.
Please don't use HN for ideological battle. It's not what this site is for.
The term makes it sound more conspiratorial than it is. It’s simply Marx’s framework of power imbalance and exploitation applied directly to social relations. That’s in contrast to Marx’s use of those ideas: applying them directly to economic relations, and seeing social relations as merely as the superstructure of economic relations.
“Critical theory” is a less loaded and more specific term, and there is no doubt that critical theory emerged from neo-Marxist thinkers of the Frankfurt School.
There are certainly conspiracy theories about critical theory, but critical theory scholars themselves used to use the term “cultural Marxism”. Modern day radical feminism and identity politics is without a doubt philosophically grounded in critical theory.
Thanks! Countless idiotic commentators who've been led astray. If only you had spoken up earlier we would have seen the truth. What a relief.
Your snark doesn't make my comment less true.
His snark also does not make your comment true in the first place.