Comment by ucee054 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ucee054 | Hacker News Reader

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By the way, I grew up in London in the 80s.

The IRA were bombing Britain all the time. There are still no trash cans in the London subway system today; they were taken out because the IRA might leave bombs in them.

The IRA even hit Downing Street and one of Thathcer's political conferences.

There might have been stepped up security in Northern Ireland itself, but security in London during that period was far less than during this stupid "War on Terror", and there weren't all these stupid "anti-terror" laws. The regular police didn't even carry guns back then.

Thatcher tried to use a regulation banning the voices of Sinn Fein from being put on air because they were advocating terror. The BBC just played the footage and used voice-over artists to say their words.

And this was how 80's Britain responded to the IRA, which was a large and well funded organization.

So I have an existence proof that you don't have to turn into a police state as a response to terrorism, because I grew up in a country that chose another option.

This is the third time this is posted to you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Terrorism_Acts

For the last time in the 80s it did not work like you are implying.

During the "War on Terror" an old man and anti-Nazi RAF veteran was arrested under "anti-terror" laws for holding an anti-Blair placard at a demonstration. During the IRA years, well ... Find me an example of "security" that egregious during the period I mentioned, I double dog dare you.

Stuff was blowing up all the time but the people simply did not get all paranoid. Business as usual.

By the way, your wiki link refers to laws that were put in place in the 70s. If I recall correctly, Britain tried full scale internment in the 70s and got bitch slapped in court by Ireland, and then stopped. That may be the reason Britain was acting in a saner way in the 80s, but I wasn't debating the history of it.

I was simply saying that 80s Britain was an existence proof of a society not responding to terrorism by turning into a police state. The IRA terrorism hadn't stopped in the 70s, by the way - it continued into the 90s making it far longer-lasting than Afghanistan.

And finally, the topic was Guantanamo Bay, where people have been held without trial for more than a decade. You are trying to compare that to British emergency powers that held people for one week?

You can post that wikipedia page a fifth and sixth time, it still won't change anything. It will just make you look stupider and more of a liar.

>>It will just make you look stupider and more of a liar.

My claim was:

The idea with terrorism against democracies is to scare the living daylight out of voters in a country. The politicians in those democracies want to win the next election do everything to stop the terror.

Afaik, most every democracy that had a serious terrorist problem over years threw out the law book [...]

You argue that the Brits of the 1980s weren't that scared, Blitz-style. That might be true (your personal experience isn't that big support) -- but it is not relevant for my point, which is about politicians' reactions to scared civilians.

But you know that, troll.

For British response: I posted a link to the law above. Google site:hrw.org yourself, for more -- it was definitely harsher than pure criminality would need.

Congrats troll, you got another answer. Now you can lie more about what I wrote, to see if you get another...

I don't need to lie about what you wrote, you are doing that yourself.

Firstly, you come out with this stuff whenever an even tangentially related topic comes up on HN. So you are not making an observation about political science, you are engaging in advocacy. You are saying "Hooray for throwing out the rule book! That keeps us safe and stops the towelhead terrorists!". Like you did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474143

Secondly, you are engaging in the no true scotsman fallacy whenever I give a counterexample. Breivik wasn't true terrorism because he was just one guy. Well that's irrelevant. The size and scale of any terrorist attack ever made up to now has been insignificant next to the damage to civil liberties from "security" or even to the death toll from road accidents. The difference is whether the population get hysterical, as you are advocating, or maintain their sense of proportion, as I am advocating. Marinus Van Der Lubbe was also just one guy, but we got Hitler and the Nazis being given emergency powers as a result of the Reichstag fire, because the Germans in the 30s ran around screaming about how the scary, scary legions of communist barbarians (well funded by their Russian backers) were a serious threat to all of civilization, just like you keep screaming about how the scary, scary legions of islamist barbarians (well funded by their oil-sheikh backers) are a serious threat to all of civilization.

Well we don't have to treat this crap as natural. Any sane society, like the Norwegians today and unlike the Germans in the 30s, can just refuse to be scared, and put checks and balances in place to curb the politicians, like the European courts curbed the British government.

Politicians taking away liberties under the excuse of "security" is the oldest fraud in the book, as anyone can see from Julius Caesar's comments on Sulla. Nobody who grew up in a country with functioning schools and books has any excuse for not knowing better.

Wow, you are totally shameless in lying about what I write!

>>You are saying "Hooray for throwing out the rule book! That keeps us safe and stops the towelhead terrorists!".

>>The difference is whether the population get hysterical, as you are advocating

I have written that terrorism against democracies is generally to influence/scare the population. See quote in what you comment on, troll.

You are fully aware that I have never discussed the motivation for (/morale of) that reaction, just noted that it is the usual outcome.

(I only read a few seconds until I saw a couple of quotes to show that you lie, troll.)

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