terrorism

[xpastor]

The only way you beat 'terrorism' is by ignoring it, laughing it off, or otherwise marginalizing the fear factor.

Gee, if only the democracies had known back in 1939 that we just had to laugh at the Nazis, we could have saved ourselves six years of "blood, sweat, toil and tears"—four years for you Yanks who were late coming to the party.

I'm sure the terrorists enjoy it if we act terrified, but they have goals far beyond that, and they are not going to hide in caves just because we laugh at them. And you surely did not mean that I should just laugh off the murder of two Canadian soldiers,

The goal of ISIS seems to be to set up a caliphate in the middle east and then to bring the whole world under its sway converting everyone to Islam. They think Allah will inevitably grant them victory. It's delusional of course, but so was Hitler delusional, and it took an immense effort to stop him.

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Also, I'd suggest you learn the difference between "threat" and "advocacy". To put it quickly, a threat indicates the personal intent to carry out a deleterious action (see the first denotation in that link), while advocacy merely argues for something. Now, you and I both agree that advocating beheading is obnoxious. But claiming it to be a "threat" is abusing the definition.

Sorry, but I think you are quite wrong about the meaning of threat vs advocacy. Did the sign BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM imply a democratic campaign (advocacy) to have Britain enact beheading laws? I think not. It was more along the lines of, "We're going to behead people when we get a chance." Note that there have been attempts on the life of the Danish cartoonist who depicted Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.

The primary Meriam-Webster definition of "threat" is "an expression of intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage."

More importantly, I did not need to refer to hate speech laws as "uttering threats" is a criminal offence. Just to clarify about the hate speech laws, they are intended primarily to protect minority groups from attacks. I may be wrong, but my impression is that in the USA someone could say or write publicly that "blacks are dirty and shiftless" or "Muslims are mostly violent jihadis" but in Canada and many other nations, those statements would land you in deep legal doo-doo.

To expand on the matter of threats there is a whole page of legal summary on uttering threats as an offence in Canada. Here are some important points on the legal interpretation of threats.

it is irrelevant whether the victim appreciated the threatening nature of the utterance. To put it another way, the effect of the threat on the prospective victim is of no consequence.

It is further of no relevance whether the accused was capable in carrying out the threat.

A conditional threat in certain cases will satisfy the elements of a criminal threat.

Where the potential target of the threat is unknown at the time the threat is made may still allow for conviction so long as it is targeting unascertainable [sic-I think the wiki writers meant "an ascertainable group"] or identifiable group.

The fact that the subject of the threats did not feel threatened by them is not, by itself, reason to result in an acquittal.

As I said, this applies in Canada, but I suspect there are comparable laws at least in all English-speaking common law countries including the USA. It is easier to get information about Canada because the Criminal Code of Canada is the product of the federal government and is uniform across the whole nation, whereas I understand that each state in the US has its own criminal code.

I was able to determine that Texas and Virginia have laws against uttering threats, and there is also a federal law against threatening the president. Apparently in 2010 a man was sentenced to two years for writing in a private email "It is time for Obama to die." Was that a threat or a wish?