If you don’t read the article and think the Intercept is being hyperbolic as they normally are. Rest assured the title is exactly what happened. Walker was charged under terrorism laws not for planning, conspiring, nor performing acts of terrorism. The prosecutor made the argument that possessing the book was an act of terrorism. A book he downloaded from the school library. Also equally available on the Amazon and downloadable from internet since the dawn of the WWW.
Well at least he got off free.<p>>Walker was accused of violating the Terrorism Act because he possessed information “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”<p>What a dumb law. I guess they could prosecute you for reading Wikipedia on that basis.<p>More concise write up here: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41751193" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41751193</a><p>The "possessed information" by the way was The Anarchist Cookbook, available from £24 from Amazon.co.uk <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1607964813" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/d...</a>
This stood out for me:<p>>> It was an issue of “personal responsibility,” he said, and it was the government’s view that possessing the book was unlawful, because it could be useful to terrorists.<p>The prosecution claimed it's about personal responsibility while trying to enforce a law that seems to deny people are entitled or able to exercise such a thing.
> Last summer, Walker traveled from London to Syria, where he joined the Kurdish-led YPG militia in its fight against the so-called Islamic State<p>What a fucking stupid title.
There is a creeping fascism in the western world.<p>The so-called 'wars' on drugs and terrorism are used as excuses to remove personal freedoms. Governments take more powers unto themselves. The state security apparatus is allowed to spy on everyone. There is a presumption of guilt and citizens have to justify every trivial activity. The previous outlandish fictions of 'Thought Crime' and 'Pre-Crime' become facts of life in the police state.<p>Cultural Marxism also restricts freedom of speech, based on a combination of PC attitudes and juvenile hypersensitivity, which cannot tolerate the freedom to offend. The Enlightenment ideals of free speech and liberal open-minded rationality, are hounded into a Dark Age of gagged anti-scientific silence by the social justice Thought Police.<p>Huge debts have been accumulated by social democracies, which are in a spiral of decline induced by people voting for big govt, cushy public-sector jobs, bloated welfare and high taxes. Debts lead to artificially low interest rates to support banks, and QE to monetize govt debt. The corrupt cronies closest to the spigot of new money accumulate wealth (Cantillon Effect). Elites and insiders are bribed with bonuses and asset-price inflation. Voters are bribed with welfare and public sector jobs, many with anti-meritocratic barriers to firing and fantasy pension promises.<p>These 'wars' and debts combine to justify restrictions on economic freedom. AML and KYC regulations restrict access to financial services and impose de facto capital controls. The governments are broke and they are looking for any source of revenue. The War on Cash restricts economic freedoms. Large denomination notes
are withdrawn. There are limits on cash withdrawals, cash deposits and cash purchases. Money is trapped in govt controlled accounts, so it can be taxed, bailed-in and seized at will. In the US, civil asset forfeiture is simply daylight robbery by the state.<p>Neoconservative war-mongering and the bloated military-industrial-complex consume vast resources and destabilize every corner of the world. Democracy is subverted in favor of corrupt autocrats and interventions are justified by false flag operations. Military hardware finds its way into domestic law enforcement. Monitoring and surveillance from the battlefield migrates to our cities and skies.<p>The fascism has arrived and it is all around us.