LONDON (AP) — U.K. police said that five men arrested in the early hours of Sunday near an air base used by the United States during its war against Iran are being held on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act that appeared to involve three trucks.
London’s Metropolitan Police, which takes the lead on potential terrorist activities, said police received a call at 12:45 a.m. related to the three suspicious vehicles that appeared to be traveling toward RAF Fairford, a U.K.-owned base that is operated by the U.S. under an agreement dating back to the Cold War.
I thought identities were things that people chose for themselves - not labels given to them by their enemies.
Probably how it should work but frequently not how it actually does work.
Speaking of how things should work - yeah, I have always understood the word “terrorism” to mean “attacking civilians in the hopes of terrorizing them into demanding their government change policies,” so yeah, attacking a military base shouldn’t be called terrorism, it’s espionage or something like that, but national security type people have done a lot of sloppy thinking over the last twenty five years and journalists still treat them like experts, so here we are.
They called them terrorists so they could deny them the rights normally afforded to people accused of a crime (for instance, they can be held 14 days without charge instead of only 24 hours).
That’s always been the end game for the term. At first this legal grey zone was mostly applied to people outside the imperial core so fewer Westerners gave a shit. Now it’s coming home baby.