Citizens Repent!

[sobrique]

Citizens. This year is the 400th anniversary of Mr. Fawkes rather splendid plan to flatten parliment.

I regret to inform you that under the new terrorist legislation before parliment, fireworks at this time of year will be considered 'glorifying terrorism'.

I would urge you all to go and turn yourselves in, for your 90 day sojourn with neither charge nor trial. Clearly any thoughts of such a celebration are ungood thinking, and must be corrected.

(And I'm only half joking. I wonder if half the country showed up at the nearest police station to 'turn themselves in' for glorifying terrorism, that might make the point)

Edit: Another thought just crossed my mind. Would a 'war of independance' count as an 'act of terrorism'?

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You have a very good point there.

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

Nice plan, but aren't the celebrations to commemorate the fact that they failed to terminally rearrange His Majesty on that date?

We do burn the Guy, after all?

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Celebrating success or failure is still celebrating an act of terrorism. Ok, so perhaps that's into hair splitting territory, but I _can_ see that as a possible interpretation.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Actually, does a 'war of independance' count as an 'act of terrorism'?

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

It depends which side you're on.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Terrorism is about half a matter of perspective, and about half not :).
I think in an absolute sense 'freedom fighting' would count under one of the more tenuous definitions, and therefore I declared celebrating "independence day" to be illegal.

[nuala.livejournal.com]

Meep!

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

It's up there with the new Texas anti-gay statuate banning Texas from recognising "any state similar or identical to marriage" - um, so that would include marriage then, wouldn't it? Marriage being, by definition, identical to marriage.

[lostdreamer666.livejournal.com]

How about turning up at your MP's local 'surgery' session, asking him if he celebrated Bonfire Night, and then placing him under citizens arrest?

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

thats a very good point.. and of course a good reason to flash mob the police stations. to prove the point. I would write to the news papers about that

[jorune.livejournal.com]

A modern response could be:

'Thank you sir, we were running a bit low on the performance targets for that crime, now if there any other crimes you'd like to confess to you can inform the duty sergeant. This month we're running a special on Anitsocial behaviour at bus stops.'

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Would a 'war of independance' count as an 'act of terrorism'?

If you lose it, yes. While you're fighting it, probably. Traditionally, it's only when you win that it becomes a 'war of independance', after all...

[necessitysslave.livejournal.com]

I would have though it was the method of fighting which determined whether freedom fighters were terrorists or rebels. eg a relatively small number of people using large scale scare tactics to cow a populous into taking a particular course of action versus fielding an army which defends/attacks a ruling regime in a particular nation.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

When you're in occupied territory - even when it's your own country - do you really field an army? Where geography allows, you might have a guerilla force in the mountains/jungle, but that's still a relatively small number of people using scare tactics.

A better measure might be to ask whether the general population agrees with the aims, if not the tactics - and whether the terrorist/rebel scare tactics are aimed squarely at the occupiers, or just at EveryoneWhoDoesNotAgreeWithUs.