The "Twitter bomb hoax" is a case that leaves me at a complete loss to comprehend what is expected or what the law means. English is my native tounge and I am at least moderately well educated and, I like to think, at least moderately successfully - at least average. Yet the decisions of the police and prosecutors and courts make it painfully obvious (it does pain me to consider the implications of the decisions) that the law does not mean anything like what I would have thought it to mean from my reading of it. But I am not a lawyer, judge, policeman or legislator. I can only assume I am as ignorant as a babe in the woods of the meaning of the English language, or that the law is not written in English, but rather in some arcane language that bears a merely superficial and misleading resemblance to English - but with completely different meaning.
I am also unable to understand why The Telegraph would re-iterate the assertion that the tweet contained a threat at all, let alone a threat to blow up an airport. Clearly, to me, the message was an expression of frustration in culturally normal terms, however much the authorities might wish otherwise. I can't see in the message that was sent any evidence that the sender intended to make anyone believe there was or would be a bomb or anything liable to explode anywhere. I can't see in the message any false statement - how can an expression of frustration be a false statement? It would make as much and as little sense to me to claim that the expression "bloody hell!" is a false statement that prima facie proves the intent to make the recipient believe that there is or will be a bomb or anything likely to explode somewhere or anywhere or everywhere - for surely it would take a bloody big bomb to bloody hell from anywhere here on earth and surely the sender of any message containing such expression would know that there is no bomb that could bloody hell and that the statement is, therefore, a false one. Yet I suppose there is someone who might believe there could be such a bomb and therefore be induced to believe there is such a bomb. But this still leaves intent. Can there be a threat in a communication where there is no intent to threaten? I might be persuaded there can be, though at the moment I am inclined to think not - there could be a misunderstanding but not a threat, I believe.
And, for the same reasons, I can't understand why the police or the courts, given the finacial crisis the world continues to suffer, and the daily suffering, illness and starvation of hundreds of thousands of people, and the violent crimes that go un-solved and criminals that go un-caught and un-punished, would consider this case worth pursuing, an effective expenditure of resources or in the public interest in any way. How did I become so ignorant and incomprehending? I didn't seem to be so in days gone by.
I can't understand the outcome as anything but a gross misscarriage of justice. One poor soul's carreer destroyed by the efforts of some in authority to send a message to the public is what it appears to be to me. A message that could have been sent without harming anyone, I am reasonably certain.
But, perhaps it is all good and just and I am simply too ignorant of the relevant facts or too stupid to comprehend the case rightly.
It does make me wonder if anyone among the authorities has ever turned on a television or radio, or walked the streets to become familiar with how ordinary people behave.
It does make me wonder if I have lost my mind. They say dementia creeps up on one - nibbling away at one's faculties slowly but surely, leaving one at the same time with diminished faculties and no awareness of the diminishment, until one, one day, one stumbles on evidence that something is amiss. Surely something is amiss here. I hope it's not me, after all, but for the sake of the other 7 billion on the planet I rather hope it is me after all. I would rather me demented than 7 billion suffering injustice and oppression.
It seems more likely to me that, if the fellow was serious in his message at all, that what he meant was that he would huff and he would puff, much like the big bad wolfe, but in order to get the planes up in the sky where they belong - carrying passengers on their way. Isn't that more likely than a bomb threat?
While I would agree that it is in the public interest to make people aware and mindiful of how they express themselves and to persuade them to avoid expressions which might be misunderstood by reasonable people (there is always some overly sensitive person who is scared or offended by anything and everything) as a threat or offensive, I don't understand how ending this person's career and giving them a criminal record achieved anything of value at all, to anyone, let alone achived anyting in the public interest. A stern lecture and a note on file such that repetition of the undesired behaviour can be detected and dealt with appropriately might have been in the public interest, but I can't imagine any value in anything more punitive than that.
Maybe a more understandable outcome would be reached if the case were re-heard by a jury rather than three high court judges. More likely, and I hope, I have lost my mind and have no more common sense with which to perceive the justice in what has happened.
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