| > government agencies should not refer to peaceful or even violent protesters as terrorists You mean "potential terrorists." And, I for one am fine with people in government speculating and planning. There is a vast difference in research and study, speculation and planning. After all, all it would take is a few OWS people to go blow up a bank or something to escalate the entire matter. Sure, it's just a few members, a splinter group, but then what do you do. Ignore the entire movement? Did the cover of OWS help them achieve some other goal, or did OWS unwittingly help them escalate the matter further. None of this is to lay blame to OWS, but maybe something like this should have been considered, so when bad things do happen, we are more prepared. And it's all speculation. But the minute you start holding to account speculation at the same level you hold official policy, you start serious restricting our ability to plan. I'd hope that our government has plans on how to invade Canada should the need arise. I hope that need never arises, but I'd rather have the plan and not need it then need it and not have it. There is a vast difference in planning something, and intending to follow through (which is always why the conspiracy laws are not just applied for planning, otherwise thriller writers the world over would be in jail). > and the judgement calls required to choose between freedom-fighter and terrorist are so subjective People are fond of reminding us that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter. They forget that for that statement to be true, that freedom-fighter must also be a terrorist. |