There was a raft of new laws about. The one banning ‘Glorification of Terrorism’ is surely the daftest and most arbitrary as well as the most dangerous. If you can’t glorify terrorists you can’t praise Nelson Mandela, the French Resistance, the founders of the USA or whoever. If you’re some misguided hot-headed Muslim teenager in the West who has decided that cutting people’s heads off on telly is great and glorious and just what God ordered you could be sent to jail for it. Not a very pleasant view of the world - but then nor is watching Celebrity Big Brother Goes Shopping on Ice. So should we have a ‘send every teenager with a bit of a twattish opinion to jail’ law? A ‘send people to jail who aren’t quite playing the white man’ law? A ‘The Home Secretary doesn’t like the cut of your jib law’? And on we go…’Without freedom of speech I might be in the swamp’ said the man.
lyrics
Glorification of Terrorism
Terrorism is glorious, terrorism is great
Let’s all be terrorists before it’s too late
Before it’s unfashionable, before its passé
Everybody make some commuter pate
There’s never a reason, don’t excuse the just bad
There are no just causes, just the plain mad
So fly ‘em from Prestwick, the civilised way
Translove Airways – run by the CIA
Strip ‘em and beat ‘em and ship ‘em out east
It’s not really torture when you’re fighting the beast - for liberty
And the whole world running from liberty
Ring that bell
The whole world crying for liberty
Ring that bell
Seems it’s illegal just talking like me
The authoritarians have taken over the asylum it seems
A police state for safety or a criminal gang
Spot the difference before you all hang
The woman’s got hand cream, that man’s got a beard
We don’t like the cut of his jib he looks weird
So raid and detain and shoot 7 times
No questions or judges or juries or trials - for liberty
And the free world running from liberty
Ring that bell
The whole world crying for liberty
Ring that bell
So terrorism is glorious, terrorism is great
Terrorists founded the United States
Now who can I glorify? Who can I praise?
To get put away for at least 90 days
I give you a lawbreaker, I glorify a man
I give you a terrorist, that Mandela man - for liberty
And the free world running from liberty
Ring that bell
The whole world crying for liberty
Ring that bell
The free world, drunken on bigotry
Ring that bell
The free world, crack down on liberty
All is well
credits
from Illegal Songs,
released January 14, 2008
John Parkes
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