Thursday, February 16, 2006

Authoritarian f***wittage of the day

The passage about 'glorification of terrorism' .

The justification given is to prosecute the bearers of those offensive placards, despite threatening to kill people being an offence under existing legislation. My original post on this topic is here (but this just keeps on coming back up... like a bad curry). The government also intends to ban groups who glorify terrorism. Unless you're not a Muslim and glorify terrorism at which point it's still ok to form a group to glorify terrorism... like in Northern Ireland.

The legislation also allows successor groups to be banned to overcome the problem of organisations that simply go underground by changing their names. Rather than groups who don't call themselves anything at all and just meet informally (although if they meet in a pub they won't be able to smoke during their meetings). But I want to know - how will the government prove they're a successor group? For example, if Hizb ut-Tahrir disbands but a number of members form the Finsbury Park Mosque Stitch n'Bitch circle will that get banned? Just curious... [serious point: how many members of the old group need to join the new group, and how close do the aims of the new group have to be to the old one?]

2 Comments:

  • At 8:51 am , Blogger Will said...

    You make good points, Viv. Does the government this someone setting up a successor to Hizb ut-Tahrir is going to write out a political party style constitution listing its aims and objectives (g. Organising trips to the seaside, h. Glorifying terror) so that someone in the Home Office can put it side by side with the previous organisation's and count the number of matches?

     
  • At 10:12 am , Blogger Joe Otten said...

    But one good thing will come of the ban. There'll be no more repeats of Allo Allo.

     

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