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Censorship under the Terrorism Bill

socialist | 26.10.2005 06:29 | Terror War

Criticism and opposition to the Terrorism Bill has concentrated on the proposal to detain suspects for 90 days. The Bill also includes powerful powers of censorship.


Criticism and opposition to the Terrorism Bill has concentrated on the proposal to detain suspects for 90 days. The Bill also includes powerful powers of censorship.

Under section 3 of the Bill, a police constable! can issue a notice requiring a person to remove an item which he/she deems to be "unlawfully terrorism related". You then have two days to remove the item or face a penulty of up to 7 years. 7 years for failing to remove an item that offends a police constable!.
 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1590960,00.html

"under the terms of the bill, anyone who voices support for armed resistance to any state or occupation, however repressive or illegitimate, will be committing a criminal offence carrying a seven-year prison sentence - so long as members of the public might reasonably regard it as direct or indirect encouragement. Terrorism is not defined in the bill as, say, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, let alone an assault on civilian targets by states - but as any politically motivated violence against people, property or electronic systems anywhere in the world. This is not only an assault on freedom of speech and debate about the most contentious subject in global politics. It also makes a criminal offence out of a belief shared by almost every society, religion or philosophy throughout history: namely, that people have the right to take up arms against tyranny and foreign occupation. Clarke made clear on Tuesday that this was exactly his intention. He could not, he said, think of any situation in the world where "violence would be justified to bring about change".

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a Muslim organisation that campaigns for a Caliphate state. Since the government has stated that they wish to proscribe Hizb-ut-Tahrir it is reasonable to assume that they would also want to ban their website.

Bliar & Co are clearly attempting to silence legitimate opposition to their Fascist policies.


socialist

Comments

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Not even the intelligence to draft legislation as they intended!!!!!

26.10.2005 08:58

from the above.....
Clarke made clear on Tuesday that this was exactly his intention. He could not, he said, think of any situation in the world where "violence would be justified to bring about change".

er, so not even Iraq presumably?

Gulliver

Incredible

26.10.2005 12:02

The comment by Charles Clarke is as woefully hypocritical as the one by Blair about no country having any jusification for interfering in Iraq (he was discussing Iran, but the logic clearly applies equally to the UK).

This government are in an absolute, absolute mess.

Let's go to work kicking them in.

Non-violently, of course.

If we use violence we stoop to their tyrannical level.

Activefist
mail e-mail: activefist@hotmail.com

View from America

26.10.2005 16:34

Violence is a legitimate way to overthrow the British government because it violates the human and civil rights of it's citizens.

REAL IRA

All hail President Blair

26.10.2005 22:53

Such is the authoritarian and hypocritical character of the New Labour, that they are proscribing, through their parliamentary dictatorship, what the founders of the United States held to be "self-evident". For those who haven't read a lot of 18th century political history, this is the Declaration of Independence, which is now a banned document under New Labour:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

And so New Labour continues to reveal itself as the left wing of fascism.

The Hammer