Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Britain declares a new terrorist state

Well, now that North Korea has been struck from the list of official terrorist states, there's room on the list for a new one. There's plenty of nasty states out there, so I'm sure that there was no shortage of candidates. Finally, after much thought, a new terrorist state was found to take its rightful place on this list of awful terrorist states. And the name of this terrorist state is... Iceland.

Yes, Iceland. Land of peaceful Nords and Celts with no military, land of Björk and Magnús Scheving (Lazytown, in case you don't have toddlers). And while I think Björk is over-rated and Lazytown is just demented, terrorists? Really?

What this points out is the problem with anti-terrorism legislation. When you have over-broad legislation that basically can define anything and anybody as a terrorist, everybody is a terrorist. The British law being used to seize Iceland's assets in Britain is not much different from the equivalent U.S. law. Sad to say, these laws are also very popular both in the United States and in Britain because people want to be "safe". But when we are all terrorists under these over-broad laws, how can any of us be safe?

-- Badtux the As-terrorist-as-Björk Penguin

H/T to Earthbound Misfit

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1 comment:

  1. James F. Elliott14/10/08 2:38 PM

    Gordon Brown was threatening something like this last week. Jeez. This is nothing more than using state power to make sure businesses based within your state get paid.

    ReplyDelete

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