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"Nuremberg Files" Decision Overturned
PeterMiller writes "ABC News is running a story on a US federal appeal court that threw out a record $109 million verdict against anti-abortion rights activists.
From the article: 'If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict,' Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. 'But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment.' My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?" Readers may recall that this case involved an anti-abortion website which published the names and addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and cheered whenever one of them was killed. Our previous stories are here and here. The Appeals Court's opinion reviews the history of the case, and the finding that the statements on the website were not true threats under U.S. law and were thus protected speech. There used to be a number of mirrors of the site available - most of them seem to have disappeared, but this one is still up, minus the lists of doctors.
Now I can put up a web site with pictures of Bush, Rumsfeld, Renquist, Thomas, O'Connor, David Rockefeller, all their children and relatives with sniper scope bulls eyes over them. Sure hope the secret service doesn't mind that...
Oh wait... this regarded free speach by a bunch of right wing religious nuts... never mind.
God dammit GOD DAMMIT how hard is this??
It's "speech."
That is spelled as follows:
S
P
E
E
C
H
Count the "E"'s.
There's two of them.
SPEECH
Note that it is not spelled "speach."
Christ Almighty I thought the readership of Slashdot was supposed to be clueful. God damn it is depressing that people can consistently spell such a simple word incorrectly. It's almost as bad as the way people spell "ridiculous" with an "e": "rediculous."
Fuck.
Some of you people belong in remedial spelling courses.
Remind us who defended the right of the KKK to march in Skokie, Bill.
Here we have rabid anti-abortionists officially sanctioned as not directly encouraging murder by posting names and adresses to the WWW, and yet here:
.gov officials to the web).
.gov officials), despite it being used against him.
http://cryptome.org/jdb032301.htm
we have another case, where a person named Jim Bell is being proscecuted for a similar intention (posting names of
In this case, however, he's not even being given access to the trial "evidence" (names and addresses of various
One asks, what gives? Especially in the light of this reversed verdict against anti-choice people, who's intention of publishing names/adresses of Doctors, Nurses and other personnel of clinics was quite apparent. Double-standards by the same judicial system?
The US is the most religious country in the Western World and also happens to be the most violent by orders of magnitude. Its murder rate per capita is seven times that of France, where active practice of religion is virtually nonexistant. Within the US, the most religious regions/states of the country (i.e., Louisiana) also have among the highest rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, drug abuse/alcoholism, and murder. Louisiana's murder rate is over twice the national average even though they lead the nation in churchgoing.
Yet the liberal centers of secular humanism such as Berkeley and New York City are shooting-free. I wonder why that is. I wonder why all of these school shootings are taking place in small, conservative, religious towns that Norman Rockwell would have been proud to call home. Hell, the school that was shot up in Santee, CA is one mile from the famous Institute for Creation Research. It seems that God-soaked is becoming synonymous with blood-soaked.
Personally I am sickened by the way that you people gleefully try to twist the murders of innocent people to further your own agenda. When events like Columbine happen I think you people are secretly overjoyed because you can go in and say "See, we need to hang up the Ten Commandments now!" even though if the Ten Commandments were hanging in Columbine the body count would have probably tripled.
Teacher-led prayer was taken out of schools in the sixties, kiddo, you're a bit too late to blame school shootings on it. Any other bright ideas?
You have mistakenly attributed this quote to Lincoln, it was not Abraham Lincoln who said it.
I have trouble believing this. I have a friend who worked in Japan for a few years. He had occasion to take a taxi home late one night. Part way through the trip he realized they weren't going the right direction. When he asked the driver about it, the driver pulled into a dark alley and stopped. A few friends of the taxi driver suddenly showed up, pulled him from the taxi, beat the living shit out of him, and robbed him of everything he was carrying, including his jacket (it was cold). He was left a bloody mess with several broken bones.
When he finally made his way to a police station to report the crime, the Japanese police didn't want to hear about it. They flat told him that crimes just didn't happen in Japan, and he must be mistaken. They sent him away without so much as taking his name.
If this approach to "crime fighting" is widespread in Japan, it would be easy to see how crime statistics could be kept artificially low. If a crime isn't even acknowledged, then it doesn't exist.
I recall a similar story in the US a few years ago where Atlanta, GA was caught doctoring murder statistics. Atlanta's murder statistics had suddenly gone way down that year. The local news interviewed several relatives of murder victims who were complaining that all records of the crime had mysteriously gone missing. I seem to remember there were other shennanigans, too, like reclassifying many crimes to lesser offenses. This was all right before the '96 Olympics, presumably to make the city seem safe for tourists.
Upshot is, if you want to brag to the world about a low crime rate it doesn't take much more than creative pencil-whipping to make it happen.
Good point. There should be a mod category for "Where the hell did that come from?"
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You misunderstood the logic. The court is drawing a line between TELLING someone to commit a crime and merely providing information that was then later used to commit a crime. If the website in question had ever said "Go kill these guys" THEN it would be in the same class as Charles Manson.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Being a generic name among millions is NOT comparable to being on a terrorists wishlist.
The two are not at all comparable.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Who have the KKK been publicly pointing out for execution lately? Unless you can tell us that (preferably by referencing kkk.org), the comparison is thin to the point of being meaningless.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Corporation != individual person.
That's rather the whole point of a corporation: to shield the participants from the consequences of the actions that they take out as a mob. As such a mob, they also have a bit more strength than the common individual.
You are trying to equate the situation faced by an individual being threatened by a gang with the situation where one gang is threatening another.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There's only problem with your position.
Doctors typically don't practice out of their homes or their children's schools.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Race has nothing to do with it.
A hood is a hood, even if you just happen to make a non politically correct connection.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You must have missed the corporate and university lectures on sexual harassment...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hardly surprisingly, your claims about me are almost universally false -- your habit of assuming (and stating as fact) naughty things about people who disagree with you simply MUST be curbed if you expect to participate in further public debate.
Until then -- bye. And don't expect me to do research at your beck and call. Yes, I have numbers (regarding post-abortion emotional trauma); no, I'm not going to look them up simply to further an argument with an idiot such as yourself.
-Billy
That's preposterous. Millions of people have killed for less reasons when they weren't fundies; I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who killed abortion doctors didn't do so because they opposed abortion, but rather because they were angry at the doctor for some other reason.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were pro-aborts who were angry at the doctor for performing an abortion on their wife or daughter without their "permission" or something -- or who were shocked at the grief trauma their wife was going through after they (the husband) forced her to get an abortion.
Forced abortions are all too common. Too many people still see abortion as less stigmatising than pregnancy.
-Billy
All your rudeness aside:
I agree. Even if my posting were entirely correct (and I assert that it almost certainly is), it FAR from excuses the fundies who HAVE killed abortion doctors. In fact, it EMPHASISES their guilt. They're blatant hypocrites, and my message DEFINITELY was in error in not calling them on that.
Now, put your rudeness back in:
I disagree. I'm not spewing shit, I'm telling it like it is. The simple fact that you hate christians and disagree with them doesn't make them ALL murderers, and it doesn't remove any guilt from anyone else.
Back On Topic: I believe that this judgement was a mistake. "Free Speech" is intended to be political speech, not violence or personal slams; this ruling does NOTHING to protect free speech. I believe the list was properly shut down, since it was NOT a political expression, but rather was a reckless endangerment and a violation of privacy.
-Billy
I don't know -- should we go see what they say, or just keep guessing?
From a press release concerning the original verdict, which you'd have found if you had let a thought get past the medulla oblongata, and actually gone to look:
BTW -- there's no "a" in "speech" and only two "m"s in "amendment". Hope this helps.
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
Actually it was the Nazi Party who wished to march in Skokie back in '76 I believe.
The reason why it is more signifigant that the Nazi Party wanted to march and not the KKK is because Skokie is a heavily Jewish populated suburb of Chicago.
"Call your local Police or FBI office and tell them you plan on killing the President. Then count how long until you door is busted down and you're hauled off in handcuffs. "
Oh heck just send an email to whitehouse.gov
It takes about three days before they come to talk with you.
When I was working at a University back in around '94 or so we had a high school kid come into the public labs and sent off such an email.
Silly kid didn't think that the public labs have video cameras in them... He got a stern lecture by the secret service, but they didn't haul him away in handcuffs.
If any websites could be said to encourage terrorism, it's these sites. I'm pro-life myself, but terrorism just plain goes too far. I don't see how the Appeals Court could possibly be blind enough to see that this site wasn't encouraging violence against these doctors.
And even if they weren't encouraging violence against said doctors, their lists were a marked privacy violation. I very much doubt those doctors were asked if their personal information could be put up on the Web. That's another count against it, perhaps far more damning.
However, I suppose there's an upside to this. If this one managed to get through the court system, then I don't see how any site could fail to get through it in the future. Or, to put it another way, if they'll defend this, they're likely to defend anything.
----------
Those calling themselves "pro-choice" have defined themselves by what they are for - the right of a woman to choose whether or not to carry a child to term.
"Pro-life", while not inherently descriptive, has become shorthand for "in favor extending the legal definition of human life as beginning at conception, and of extending the attendant rights and protections to the zygote/embryo/fetus at that point". I'm not a fan of this term, because it's less precise than "anti-abortion".
I could see the term "pro-abortion" being used accurately to describe those who favor the act of abortion itself - the only example I can think of would be forced abortion/sterilization that has taken place in parts of China as population control measures.
Of course, many from each side like to tar the other with terms like "pro-abortion" (inaccurate insofar as "pro-choice" != "pro-abortion"; it's not about the act of abortion but about the decision to carry a child to term belonging to the woman carrying it.), "anti-life" (who would describe themselves as "anti-life"? This is just the classic semiotic game of attempting to redefine your opponent's position through loaded words with multiple connotative/denotative meanings.), or "anti-choice" (a favorite of some on the "pro-choice" camp. Technically accurate, inasmuch as an abortion ban removes choice, but similarly loaded as in the last example).
I'm wasting a lot of wind here, so I'll recap:
Make sense?
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Not quite. (IANAL, blah blah)
First off, allow me to point out that it is not considered dangerous to yell fire in a crowded theater. It is dangerous to yell fire in a crowded theater, falsely, and with the intention of causing a riot. If there really were a fire, you have an obligation to yell about it. Not doing so would be criminally negligent!
Secondly the general criteria that is germane here (this isn't libel - the printed information is believed to be correct....) is the 'clear and present danger' doctrine.
If some speech constitutes a clearly recognizable, incontravertable danger, such as a death threat, and is intended to have immediate consequences, such as your death right now get him! then it's no longer protected from the government by the aegis of the first amendment. However sufficiently vague threats are entirely permissible.
It's not necessarily treasonous for me to advocate the overthrow of the government, for instance. It only becomes so when I start getting into my plan for doing it pretty damn soon. if my plan were that the Saucer People would assist us tomorrow, the clarity of the danger is too small; if it were that the populace would kill off government officials when they've had enough, the immediacy of the danger isn't actionable.
Furthermore, it is not technically the speech that's at issue, it's the intent to act upon that speech. The police are generally expected to prevent murders in progress. They don't have to wait for it to actually happen, standing idly by until then. Likewise, it's not really that you say fire, but that you're doing something deliberately intended to injure or kill.
(and given the nature of theaters in Holmes' day, there would literally be a stampede, crushing people to death, because those theaters were firetraps. Think 'soccer riot.')
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The actual case was in regards to anti-draft pamphleteering during World War I. (Schenck v. U. S. back in 1919)
(Additionally, what's up with the guy who keeps saying that Holmes wrote a dissenting opinon? The Schenck opinion was unanimous. I suspect that he's thinking of Abrams v. US, in which Holmes and Brandeis did dissent despite the majority using Holmes' own test, but they were in favor of the defendant.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Does anyone else see that the defendants in the "Nuremberg Files," provided a list of names, just like Napster's list of client-servers. What the visitors, or viewers, did with the names is not to be charged against the defendants. Ergo, Napster is not responsible for what people do with the links they provide.
Imagine a Napster Client like this:
*Acts as Anonymous (Secure?)FTP Server (to local mp3, etc files)
*provides a (bzipped?) Index file of all local (transferable) files, and a ServerIndex of other known servers (which is updated like gnutellas list - i ask you for everyone you know) in the root directory
*Searching would be done by spidering the servers and downloading the Index files, hashing the data locally - this shouldn't take too long... (the FTP Daemon can control bandwidth issues)
This uses standard protocols and conventions.. If anyone got your Index file, they must have somehow hacked you - not your fault (is it?).. Besides - no one is going to download songs that they don't already own anyway...
This isn't too unlike (at all) what people were doing before Napster came out...
But freenet should obsolete such a need..
Marques Johansson
I am decidedly AGAINST abortion because I believe it is murder of an innocent. (What has the baby done wrong? NOTHING.)
I am in favor of (freedom of) abortion because I believe the foetus is not a human being (yet).
Which you just demonstrated: if it can't do bad, and can't do good, it can't be a human being.
Religion makes me fart.
--
--
fascinating. i was actually trying your literary equation with x=free speech, y=abortion and w=freedom. looks to me like "freedom" took a loss there. try taking your head out of your pompous and preachy little ass. this case wasn't simple.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I prefer to have hate speech out in the open. It makes it easier to spot those likely to engage in violence. If the site is censored, do you really believe that those people considering violence will stop?
Search 2010 Gen Con events
No!
That's the whole point, at the stage a foetus may be legally aborted it is judged by society not to be a sentient entity. This is why abortion is time-limited, after a certain number of weeks of pregancy the foetus is not allowed to be aborted becase it has legally become human.
This decision would legitimize a mirror-image "inquisition files" web site with wanted posters of murderous religious dorks and their ISPs and website support staff.
--
I think Slash goofed. Your post should have been labeled "by Ignorant Fool," not "by Anonymous Coward."
Oh, and your church buddies don't comprise the entire general public.
Now explain, using this reasoning, why the anti-abortionists call themselves "pro-life." Are they afraid they'll lose support if they say, "I oppose a woman's right to have an abortion"?
No, there is no right to privacy.
The use of the term fetus is also begging the question. You see, the issue is whether the unborn are considered human or not. And the ultimate question is whether or not human beings have souls. If human beings do not have souls, and have their entire existence in the corporeal, then the likelyhood of the unborn being a human worthy of protection against murder is low until a certain point. (Actually, if we do not have souls, the whole issue of whether murder is wrong at all is up for debate.) Why no one will ever get down to the point and argue the real issue is beyond me.
You can do that here, too. However, you're still on a list somewhere that is at most just a little harder to access. Plus, your driver's license (and the accompanying personal information) is considered to be public.
Perhaps. But it would take an amendment to the Bill of Rights.
This would be called a phone book.
You wrote "The general public is, well, stupid and impressionable. European governments have recognised this for sometime, and take care of these issues for them by implementing strong censorship of violence. Hence there is little violence in European countries" The fact that we do not have 1.2 guns for every citizen like the US might have something to do with it as well.
Help fight continental drift.
George W. Bush is a murderer, having ordered air strikes that killed innocent people in Iraq. He lives at 1600 Pennslyvania Avenue, Washington DC.
Okay, now if anybody kills Bush, I'm partly responsible, because I said that he's a murderer and where he lives, right?
Steven E. Ehrbar
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
Personal information is potentially dangerous when released. Right now, address data, phone numbers, SSN, much credit data, a whole mess of personally compromising data (demographic plus other marketing-worthy, plus children's names, mother's maiden, birthplace, property ownership data, house floor plans, criminal records, in some cases tax data, etc. etc.) is all publically accessible, to varying degrees. Much of it is free or cheap.
There is no question that this data can be used against a person in god knows how many ways, legal or not. It becomes more interesting to ask whether potentially compromising data (and if so which data points) should be legally protected (that is, should restraints on disclosure be legally enforced for various bits), or if something else should be done.
A different option is to force companies doing business to take measures to protect the data. I don't mean basic security, of course, but blinded credidentials, better authentication and authorization for transactions,etc. The assumption here is that disclosure happens only when the individual knows it is happening, and can take care of themself.
A third option is to refuse to pass any laws, encourage insurance against data-based damages/injury, and use market driven measures to encourage people to select companies that protect data, and monitor data leakages. Of course, the government would have to stop leaking data as well as it does currently for there to be any point.
There are not only gradients between these, but several other options, too.
Imagine a world where if you tell me where you live so I can come to a party, I have to sign a contract saying I won't disclose your address to others. Well, what if I accidentally leave my address book open and my partner sees it? OK, what if I leave my cell phone on and the phone company ends up with an automated record of my driving habits while getting there? Crazy stuff, you say. So what happens when the legal system starts enforcing nondisclosure of personal data? To some degree, you can't _not_ disclose things about others. The question is how this works, intentionality of the disclosure, and the mechanisms of enforcement. (Don't answer that the phone company screwed up when an individual found the phone records by breaking the law, if you're an abortion doctor, who cares where the data came from, as far as psychos are concerned. Now think about Freenet for things besides MP3.)
As far as corporate concern about data, let me throw out a little experience that happened today. I am turning over the reins of a largish web site to someone else. I took them over to one of our hosting providers to get them access to the machines. The provider uses a low-paid employee whose main job is somthing besides making badges which allow access to the "secure" facility. Now, the badges are coded with a unique magnetic ID, photograph, name, company, and require a biometric for access to the collocation.
I called in a request the day before. I showed up for my appointment, didn't have the request number. I stated my name, company, and my request that this other person get access to our cabinets. They never looked up my name, asked for my ID or my badge, asked me for a palm scan, verified my company, or even verified that the badge request had been made. I could have gotten access to a lot of different companies' servers today. Big names, at that. We pay them 5 digits a month. Now think about what your credit card interest payment means to the security department at a major bank when they look at potential fraud. More seriously, and on topic, think about the ATT operator when whey get a smooth talker trying to find a phone number.
OK, I probably did tip my hand in that rant. I don't know I'm correct, though. It is an extremely difficult question. I would hope that people would think very, very carefully about implications before they start demanding one solution or another.
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
How ironic it is that these judges set a precedent for protesting this particular judgement. If you feel that the judges erred in overturning the verdict, set up a web site with their personal info and a little dancing hamster that goes ballistic singing when one of them passes away. Just my two bits.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
Do you have any statistics to back this claim up, or even a place that will tell me if the gun ownership is really a law? This smacks of an Urban Legend.
Yea, I did a bit of digging, and found out a few interesting facts. Yes, they are required by law to own a gun, and 75 rounds of issued ammunition. Its checked every year. BUT, even given that law, 18% of Swiss households have a gun in them, compared to 29%. Odd...
In order to legalize abortion, the left didn't do this. They got an activist court to legislate from the bench. How can you demand that we go about doing this in this way, when you side didn't?
You cannot claim a moral high ground if you're using the same tactics as your opposition. You must be above them in *all* respects. I notice you didn't respond fully to the part you quoted, either.
It's been some time, but I recall a passage near (at?) the end of _Animal Farm_: the animals looked in the windows, and could no longer tell the difference between the pigs and the humans.
Looking at abortion doctors accused of murder, and activists accused of murdering the doctors, I can't tell the difference.
I fail to see how killing an adult is a lesser crime than killing an adult. It may be more distasteful, yes, but if you want to stand on religious ground, I don't recall ages being taken into account in the Commandments. Then again, I'm no Bible scholar - perhaps you'd care to point it out?
Some would argue that the US *didn't* take the moral high ground. At least, I didn't see anything on recruiting posters regarding saving the Jews from genocide - again, perhaps you could point it out for me? I seem to recall the recruiting being all about killing the evil Hun and saving the world from fascism and a little man with a funny moustache. Further, as you said, you all weren't herding people into gas chambers.
You can't say "thou shalt not kill", and then follow it up by ambushing somebody and, um... killing them. Sorry, it doesn't wash.
Gah, I can't proofread. I fail to see how killing an adult is a lesser crime than killing a child. That'll learn me to preview before posting.
> He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you.
Prove it.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Do you think I care about your works of fiction?
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Prove there isn't a rhinocerous in the other room.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Japanese cinema is loaded with violence, yet there is little overall violence in Japan.
Indeed. And there doesn't seem to be an increase in tentacle sex crimes in Japan, even though tentacle rape hentai is readily available.
Much as I despise these right-wing wackos, I love my First Amendment even more. So I'm pleased that the court would defend it.
/. not too long ago in this story:
? tag=nbs
Something more that interests me is what happens when you consider this ruling in light of another one covered here on
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/26/1622248_F.shtml
And the CNET article referenced from the Slashdot discussion:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4930756.html
The gist of the story is that the high school students published satire aimed at his high school principal on his own time, and on a web site entirely independent of the school. When the school district tried to punish the student, he sued and won. The court ruled that the school had no jurisdiction over the student's speech rights as practiced on his own time and his own equipment. And rightly so. You high school kids still have some speech rights in the eyes of the courts.
Now consider today's case, in which the court said that the anti-abortion speech is protected, including the "hit lists", so long as the speech doesn't directly threaten to commit violent acts. Wow. Juxtapose this case against the high school case from some weeks ago and tell me what you see.
How long is it going to be until we hear about some high school kid publishing a hit list on his personal web site? I thinking here of a list a teachers, administrators, bullies, and the like... of course, this kind of thing is probably happening already, but now it's protected. Are more kids going to start doing this kind of thing? How will the school districts react? Will they continue to suspend and expel... or will they just call the police?
It's a fascinating situation. It's great that speech rights on the Internet are seeing some protection, especially for students, but I'm wondering how these new protections are going to be interpreted by today's high school kids, and what the repercussions are going to be when they start pushing the envelope with them.
--Jim
The cure for bad speech is truly more speech. This ruling will make it much harder to quash unpopular or politically incorrect speech, which is great. Kudos, again, to the 9th Circuit!
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
This was fought tooth and nail by that bastion of non-partisian free speach advocates the ACLU right? I must have missed the link to the ACLU press release talking about what a victory this is for the first ammendment.
Oh wait... this regarded free speach by a bunch of right wing religious nuts... never mind. Heck, they are probably lucky the ACLU did not file a friend of the court brief arguing that since this was posted on a partially federally subsidised internet, it violated the separation of church and state and must be removed!
Bill (who thinks the aforementioned site was evil, but did want to take the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy in the ACLU)
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
And whilst I'm burning Karma anyway... anyone notice the headline contradicts the story?
:)
Headline: Court: Abortion Threats OK
From 2nd paragraph: "If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict," Cricuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote (typo theirs, judge describing why the verdict against the site was not supported)
Well, which is it? Does the AP writer have an agenda here? That's a pretty big mistake to make on a headline... they are starting to look like slashdot
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
The simple solution to all this is to post all possible private information about the owners of the site. If they want the first amendment, they can have it, just as long as they realize the consequences.
NOTE: I consider myself to be a big advocate of the Bill of Rights. I think even the KKK should be able to adopt a highway or hold a rally, regardless of the hate, provided the hate is not a direct call to arms with specific wheres and hows. It's one thing to post the postal (or even home) addresses of congressmen if you want a bill to pass or not. It's another thing to get a child's school schedule and address, and praise people when that kid's parent is killed on the way to pick up that child. The site was a clear "Here's where you need to go and when" for attackers.
-jdm
I consider myself a "Cristian Conservative".
I am decidedly AGAINST abortion because I believe it is murder of an innocent. (What has the baby done wrong? NOTHING.)
I really get bothered when some loony-tune goes off and cheers the death^H^H^H^H^Hmurder of an abortionist. If the "doctor" is going to die for doing abortions, at least let him be found guilty in a court of law! (***The last time I checked, a "doctor" couldn't get arrested for doing abortions, so that requirement would be rather difficult to satisfy! ***)
There are better (more honorable) ways to stop abortions than to go off the Deep End and kill people.
I'm not the Judge, but I may be on the Jury... Geez. I love Jury Duty!
Just another computer geek....
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
I wonder how that court would have ruled if the Nuremburg files had threatened commerciall interests, rather than the lives of doctors.
Funny how a company can call all sorts of information "trade secrets" (e.g. DeCSS) and prevent people from posting the information, but abortion doctors can't consider their names and home addresses private.
Agreed.
This is just a way to paint the other group as "anti" something, giving it a negative connotation.
I think a "pro-abortion" , "anti-abortion" labeling would be fair, but then again most politicians really do not want to admit they're "pro-abortion" (they prefer pro-choice).
Absent a consitent labelling, I rather people use the names each group have given themselves, after all, it's how they want to be called. Let "pro-choice" people call themselves that, as well as "pro-life" people.
- sigs are for wimps.
Mainly because, if I follow this correctly, merely saying you are going to harm or kill somebody constitutes a crime.
I have said this many times, and never really meant it considering I have yet to off anybody, but the truly disturbing implication here, especially under the threat of workplace shootings and whatnot, If I were to say it now, I could be prosecuted.
This sounds suspiciously like a police state.
You say you want a revolution....
I can assure you that no twist of reality will result in doctors being charged with crimes for actions they took before a particular law was passed.
In the US, you are correct. Ex post facto would protect them from prosecution, however international courts have no such prohibitions.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
International law only operates within the bounds of national law, not the other way around.
Only when there is a contradiction between the two. If some international treaty were to make it illegal to wear red shoes on Mondays(or the equivalent day in the language of your choice), idiotic as it may be, unless you're in a country that specifically protects the action of wearing red shoes on that day, the international agreement makes those red Nikes of your verboten on mondays.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Most of the information that was published on the Nuremberg Files webpage was available through the yellow & white pages.
It's not like they were saying "He usually eats lunch at McDonalds at 11:45 am, the McDonalds is located at 1121 Main Street, and the overlapping police patrols are 12 minutes apart..."
This was an assault on free speech, Pure and simple. If this had been a site run by HCI and gave the same type of details about gun dealers do you think that there would have been any lawsuit?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
One's a tool to perfectly good program that will let you view your own DVDs on your own computer, the other is a tool and encouragement for illegal action.
So, peaceful protest is now illegal?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Whether you are pro or anti choice.
Your bias is showing.
I should hope we can all agree that using gestapo tactics to scare physicians by posting their addresses, names of spouses and children, phone numbers, children's schools and so on is just plain wrong
Gestapo tactics implies secret, covert, or untraceable means of persuasion. Neal Horsley made it known who he was, and what his agenda was. I think that the website was less about intimidation than it was about shame. It was about trying to make pariahs out of these "doctors". I'm not going to invite Dr. Slepian to my Labor Day barbecue if I know what type of OB/GYN he is. No, you're not going to get invited to my kids' birthday parties if you make a living by killing children.
If we happen to attend the same church, I'm not going to sit beside you. I'm not going to do business with people who do business with you.
Having a right to privacy is not the same as having a right to anonymity.
The people who wrote this site clearly intend that the doctors on the list be targeted for murder assault, and harassment
I suppose that depends on how you define harassment. If you mean, refusing to do business with, or letting others know how someone makes his living, or cutting off contact with, I suppose that could be one of the intents.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
People died because of it.
No, people died because there are some people among us who feel that using force to accomplish their goals is acceptable regardless of what the law says.
I am 100% in favor of Neal Horsley and the Nuremberg Files web page, and I am against unnecessary use of violence as well. There is no contradiction. Let people say whatever they want, but when you commit murder, you cross the line.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sadly the bulk of people who call themselves pro-life are shown by their actions to really be anti-choice.
If you want to stretch the logic that far, we can call you anti-choice as well. You're opposed to allowing people the choice of what to put on their web pages.
You are anti-choice. I am pro-choice because I think that Neal Horsley should be allowed to choose what he puts on his web page.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What about the right to privacy of the people who were killed?
Too bad they advertise their services in telephone directories huh? How can you advertise your services in one place, but demand to not be listed in another? These people are roaches in the kithcen who do not want the lights turned on.
What concerns me here about this website is not that they were happy when ppl were killed, but that they must have followed people around and stalked them to procure such information, thus violating their right to privacy.
You have a right to privacy, not a right to anonymity. Horsley would have been wrong if he planted hidden cameras in their homes, or bugged their cars or offices, but as I said, you have no right to anonymity.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I consider phone calls every night at three in the morning for an hour harassment.
I consider people threatening to sue me for speaking freely to be harassment.
the fact is, this is not about you and your church not doing business with this person, because clearly you won't.
Our society has a right to know who they are, so that we can make a decision whether or not to do business or associate with them.
If you want abortion to be illegal, join our system, and convince more then 50% that it is wrong. Don't do it by killing people, harassing them, and going outside the law.
In order to legalize abortion, the left didn't do this. They got an activist court to legislate from the bench. How can you demand that we go about doing this in this way, when you side didn't?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You so called "pro-choice" people who are opposed to free speech are an enigma to me.
You are in favor of people doing something that definately causes the death of a human, but are opposed to people doing something that maybe, might have, could have, encourged someone else to cause the death of a human.
If this were 150 years ago and a slave had risen up and killed his master, you assholes would be saying "But slavery is legal! That nigger should have taken the whipping like he was supposed to!"
And we, the abolitionists, would have said "But Mandingo is a human being who was defending himself."
You would have responded "You republican kooks just don't get it, keep your laws off of our slaves!"
Give me a fucking break! The Nuremberg Files web page had the stated goal of compiling information about abortion providers so that in the future if and when abortion becomes illegal they can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Do you know what the Nuremberg Trials were? In Nazi occupied europe it was legal to murder millions of jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and political opponents of the Nazis, but they committed crimes against humanity.
You're not "pro-choice" you're "pro-abortion", if you were truly "pro-choice" you'd be fighing for free universal birth control. You only desire to have an out for your own irresponsibility. You want to be able to punish children for your mistakes.
This is an issue of the politically correct thought police wanting to silence people who disagree with them.
If PETA had a web page that listed beef distributors and their personal information, there would be no outrage. You wouldn't see all of these liberals screaming that they're inciting violence.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
EVERYONE knows the real reason this site exists, and it is NOT business relations.
Just because you feel threatened doesn't mean that you are threatened.
Umm - excuse me, but last I looked, the court system was a part of our government. What using the courts to give us our rights back is worse then using harassment and murder to take them away again?
What was that you said about convincing over 50% of the population that I am right? That's not how Roe V. Wade became case law.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
hell, you probably already did with our braindead president.
You mean the president who has appointed the most diverse cabinet in american history?
somehow I think that you probably do think that it is justified to kill doctors who do things you don't like, but you won't embarass yourself by stating that here.
Unlike most of you pro aborts, I'm very careful about who I have sex with. Being the only chick at the bar who said yes isn't good enough for me.
I wouldn't be with a woman who would murder my child. Even if if you would.
Since you bring it up, I DO think it's appropriate to shame and embarass abortion providers to attempt to sway them away from the practice.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's not about ME or YOU, it's about the woman
It's about the baby.
Do you have to carry the baby?
So then you concede that it is a baby.
Do you have to get stuck in the situation of having to drop out of school because you ahve to care for a child? Perhaps permanently sitting you on the welfare role?
Have you ever heard of adoption?
DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT THINK THAT KILLING ABORTION DOCTORS IS AN ACCEPTABLE THING?
Though I would never do it myself because I believe it to be murder, I can't tell other people whether or not they should do it. How can I impose my morals and judgements on other people?
Sound familiar?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You go tell what you said right there to my friend who was raped when she was 15 and put the child up for adoption.
Even those of us who are opposed to abortion have little problem in the case of rape or incest. However those only acount for 4-6% of all abortions in the US annually. It's a red herring that the pro abortion people use to try to muddy the water.
And how her boyfriend dumped her 3 weeks after the condom broke and she got pregnant.
And her baby should be punished for this because?
I'm off to start a website advocating the murder of anyone who is stupid enough to believe in "god".
Where on the Nuremberg Files web site did they advocate doing harm to anyone? Have you ver even seen the site?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This is the original Nuremberg Files list of abortion doctors.
. ht ml
http://www.christiangallery.com/atrocity/aborts
Have a look for yourself.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
>>You cannot claim a moral high ground if you're using the same tactics as your opposition. You must be above them in *all* respects.
Not true, I'm going to take a little shortcut here. The US was able to take the moral high ground over Nazi Germany in WW2. The US was still waist deep in racism, sexism, and religious bigotry, but we weren't hearding people into gas chambers.
>>Looking at abortion doctors accused of murder, and activists accused of murdering the doctors, I can't tell the difference.
Let me help you. The doctors are the ones who kill children.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
not a troll my ass.
Murder is illegal, Abortions ARE legal. Get over it.
If you don't like the law, try and change it. Resorting to murder and terrorist acts to get your way is no better then a child throwing a tantrum, which is exactly what the religous right sanctioned war against abortion providers is: a temper tantrum because you all didn't get your way.
Grow up and participate in the republic.
oh and by the way, where the hell do you get the idea that abortion doctors are "paid Nazi exterminators"? as far as I can tell, the neo-nazi movement has WAY more ties to the super conservative right....
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
But they ARE doing something. They are inciting murder - three doctors were murdered after beign placed on this list.
these people are accomplice to that, and they know it - but they are hiding behind freedom of speech so that they can use the list to help other doctors get shot.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Like it or not, Abortion is legal, and for many people who don't want to have their lives trashed by having a child when they cannot reasonably care for one it is most deffinitly a service.
It is not by definition self-destructive. In many cases, abortions can lead towards a person having a far happier, and far more productive life.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
All true, but mix that with the fact that they are tracking the murders of these people, and the site is CLEARLY about how horrible these people are, it becomes somewhat questionable.
This site is practically begging for people to murder these doctors.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
I don't even know how to repy to this...
are you even involved in the same conversation that we are?
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Thanks :)
I'm glad to see at least someone around here agrees with me.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
great, thanks for the personal attack.
A liar is a person who intentionally decieves.
A lie is an intentional decite.
I believe that the page is inciting murder
I am not a liar.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
1. Only if you are a christian is sex before marriage such a horrible thing. Even such - should you punish that person for the next 18 years because they made one mistake? Having a child before you ar ready can really destroy your life.
2. I neve said anything about forcing. this point is foolish and moot. If a person wants a child then that is their choice, if they do not want a child, it is their choice. They get to choose if they do the responsible thing (abort) or not.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Umm - no.
I mispoke perhaps - because I (as the person talking to me) was referring to psyche. look at context before you spout off and call other people idiots.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Hrmmm
I kinda like that idea.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Fuck... do I have to spell it out for you?
vote for people who will place conservative judges on the bench.
hell, you probably already did with our braindead president.
that IS working within the system.
and you didn't address the question of whether killing & harassment is working more within the system then using judges.
somehow I think that you probably do think that it is justified to kill doctors who do things you don't like, but you won't embarass yourself by stating that here.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
It still doesn't give you the right to impose your religious beliefs upon others.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
This is an american issue, because it is an american judicial judegement. I have no position in which to judge this stuff in other cultures anyhow.
I do know that no matter where it is, I think going beyond the law to kill someone who is doing a legal task is not a good thing.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
It's a quote from Huxley - the man who coined the term "Agnostic"
what it means is this:
If you do not constantly examine your life, and find your flaws, if you do not strive to improve yourself constantly, then yours is a wasted life.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
I think this fits safely in the rights of a person to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness myself.
but on top of that - there is plently of lay that exists to prevent people from murdering me, harassing me, stalking me, raping me, injuring me, and so on. It is the government's responsibility to police the country to ensure that people behave in ways that do not seriously adversly affect the other citizens.
do you think all of the above should be legal?
I sure don't
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Ok - you wanna play dirty eh?
we have not defined self-destructive. So I will do it now:
I define self destuctive as any act that causes the perpetrator more harm then good.
keep in mind that everything you do can harm you in some way - so remembering that EVERYTHING causes some harm - the only way for any action to not be self destructive would be for that action to provide more good for the person then bad.
Abortion does damage tissues, but that tissue damage is negligable. The cancer issue is not an accepted medical fact, it is only a thing which a minority believe to be true.
so that covers harm.
on the benefit side, most women who have an abortion become free to go to school, enrich themselves, and become stronger, more stable people so that if they choose to have children, they can do it on positive terms, and have a child who grows up in a healthy atmosphere of success, instead of one of possible poverty.
that sounds like a net benefit to me.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
no - mre that I have always felt that if a person replies to one of my comments that I have a polite responsibility to respond to them.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
The reason is - that if a moral stance comes purely from religion, our government should not act to respect that moral stance.
if our government made everything illegal that the religions within it's borders find immoral - we would be able to to very little. for example, becuase dringking alchohol is immoral in islam, it would have to be illegal.
Our governemtn is base around the idea that we can have a society within which members of many religions can participate, but none of those religions will be able to effect other people through policy. This is done in an effort to keep the united states a free and open culture - ideas that are in many cases foreign to religion.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Hmm...and the same president that has purposefully aided in the trashing of our economy in order to pass a very shady tax cut?
The same president who has managed to actually piss off the entire UN?
The same president who helped remove any testing for arsnic in our water supply (Arsnic stays in the body's fat I might add...it doesn't just leave like cyanide)?
The same president who is activly trying to restart the cold war by damaging our relations as much as he can with russia (there was NO need to send 50 diplomats back to russia)?
you mean that idiot?
Unlike most of you pro aborts, I'm very careful about who I have sex with. Being the only chick at the bar who said yes isn't good enough for me.
oh - and I'm not? It's not about ME or YOU, it's about the woman. Do you have to carry the baby? Do you have to get morning sickness? Do you have to get stuck in the situation of having to drop out of school because you ahve to care for a child? Perhaps permanently sitting you on the welfare role?
I didn't think so
Since you bring it up, I DO think it's appropriate to shame and embarass abortion providers to attempt to sway them away from the practice.
And yet you still skirt the question: DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT THINK THAT KILLING ABORTION DOCTORS IS AN ACCEPTABLE THING? DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT THINK THAT INCITING PEOPLE TO KILL THEM IS AN ACCEPTABLE THING?
Answer it.
Answer the bloody question
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
I find this to be a very unfortunate decision. The people who are running this site are doing so as a direct attempt to scare people away from offering legal reproductive services. Whether you are pro or anti choice, I should hope we can all agree that using gestapo tactics to scare physicians by posting their addresses, names of spouses and children, phone numbers, children's schools and so on is just plain wrong.
The people who wrote this site clearly intend that the doctors on the list be targeted for murder assault, and harassment. I personally feel that this invokes the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" clause - these people's very lives are in danger because of this web page.
Hopefully the supreme court will overturn this, and won't pat these domestic terrorists on the head, and approve the ability for people to create on-line hit lists.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Ahh - but a web site that was intended for the purpose of people finding doctors that give abortions would not be listing their home addresses, nor would it have lots of personal information about them, such as children's names, schools, spouses, spouses places of work and so on.
the information on this list is intended for only two purposes, harassing and murdering abortions providers. period, end of story.
The examples you brind forward would not contain they type of personal information that could be gleened from the Nuremburg files.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
First off, I stand by my "Yelling Fire" statement, because the reason that is not protected speech is because it represents a clear threat to the lives of the people in the theater. I think the connection to this is clear, and does not need to be spelled out (but I will if anyone does not get it).
as far as your comments on racism & tobacco - This web site is not JUST about proclaiming that abortions are harmful or should be banned - it is also about providing terrorists with a hit list of doctors to murder, and is inciting people to do just that. Your example leaves one wanting when it comes to a comparison.
And yes, I DO think that (barring perhaps a regression or two to the ways of the past when a particularly conservative group gains control for a short period of time) we have evolved past the need to legislate christianity into our laws by making things like abortion illegal (which is a purely religious move).
I really believe that our society will not any time soon descend back into racisim, church control of state, women holding an inferior status, or banned abortion. Happly I think we as a society have for the most part worked past all of those.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
what? now fetuses are a racial group that needs protection?
the difference here I think is that we ALL were fetuses at some point. We were not all jews at some point.
But hey, you can continue to live in your mideval dark ages, condemning everthing that does not fit in your religion's tiny world view. In the mean time, I will live in this society which values people's choice of religion. (and don't think for a moment that banning abortion is not a religion issue)
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
that by far has to be one of the worst arguments against me yet.
this has ABSOLUTLY nothing to do with anything you mentioned.
what this has to do with is a group is supplying a known group of terrorists with personal information with the ACTUAL intent that these people get killed.
one word: CONTEXT
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
So all of a sudden everyone who even supports abortions are murderers? Hmm - I've never killed anyone....and I help to keep abortion legal by working with NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League). I would think that makes your logic flawed - but then again, I think it's clear that it is.
As far as the tantrum - you may not like it, but that is exactly how the far right is acting. (Oh, since we can't ahve our way being as mos of the public doesn't buy our bullshit, we'll just start killing people, and make impassioned speaches about tissue that we think should have a name)
And no - I don't have to know you to be able to make that republic judgement. You said you advocated killing abortion doctors, so you support people going outside of the system, instead of using it. clearly you are not respecting the establishment of our government (oh that's right - now that it's not run by clinton, who I can only assume you thought was pimping for the jews or some other assenine idea, maybe you feel like you are working with the republic)
I stand by my judgement of you on that.
Finally - your last fool point. I don't need "liberal activists" to tell me that the NRA, the christian coalition, the Neo Nazis, the KKK, the Anti Choice movement and the waco fucks out at ruby ridge or the montana freemen are all basically branches of the far right. Sure, each has a different objective:
NRA: keep guns
Anti-Choicers: Woman should have no right to choose if a man carries is seed to term or not
Christian Coalition: Get all these non christians out of this country
Neo Nazis: Get all these Jews out of the country
KKK: Get all of these blacks out of the country
hrm - I see alot of similarity there.
face it, the far right is based on the idea of hatign that which is different. Hell the CONCEPT of conservative (keep things the same) really pushes in that direction.
if you want a country where you can opress women, kill jews and blacks, and carry as many guns as you want - fine, but go found it somewhere else.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
If somebody's rights to be free of harassment, threats, or harm are being infringed, then punish the people who are infringing them. What's so hard about that?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The general public is, well, stupid and impressionable. European governments have recognised this for sometime, and take care of these issues for them by implementing strong censorship of violence. Hence there is little violence in European countries.
Aside from being one of the worst defenses of censorship I've ever heard, that's a very bad argument. Logic 101: correlation is not causation.
When I read simpleminded arguments like this that claim that exposure to violent or irresponsible imagery leads to violent or irresponsible acts, I tend to wonder whether countries with really high rates of violent crime -- like, say, South Africa -- have similarly high rates of violence in media. If they do, then are their violent media homegrown, or imported from Hollywood? Or is it just from watching TV news?
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
I think a similar argument applies to, say, safety regulations. Let's say that, in order to reduce costs, someone proposes to loosen safety regulations in such a way that a power plant will release slightly larger amounts of some toxin -- radiation, PCBs, what have you -- into the environment in a given year. A study establishes that, if the change goes forward, the amount of toxin released will result in an increase in the local death rate of one tenth of one percent per year. Does that sound all that bad? Maybe not, if the relevant local population is, say, 10,000 people and the area sees maybe one hundred deaths a year. In that case, the increase of the death rate disappears into the noise. But what if the population is 100,000? That translates to one extra death per year. In a large city, there will be ten extra deaths per year; in a major metropolitan area, maybe one hundred extra deaths per year. You get the idea. If the change in regulation goes through, does that make the person who proposed it a mass murderer? Well, does it?
Violence breeds violence. Exposure to violent media may not cause violence, but I'm certain it makes it easier to condone certain kinds of violence: revenge killings, capital punishment and other kinds of retributive justice, and so on. Are the people behind the Nuremberg Files any different?
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
Many of the people on this website would probably consider public disclosure of how to find these doctors for "reproductive services" to be advocating murder, and abetting it.
It's just good to remember that there is often more than one side to an issue.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
... then we can have a list of all the people who do piercings as well. Then we can have a list of all the people who are not catholic, and so on and so on. While it may be free speach, what about the rights of the people that DON'T want there names listed? Don't they have a right to privacy? Does this mean that someone can start listing my name on some anti somethign web site because I don't agree with them. While this may be a win for Free Speach, it is a violation and loss for privacy as well.
So what about someone who set up an anti gay site or an anti semetic site? Would that be free speach if they gave names and addresses of gays or jews? And then some of them started showing up dead????
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Good question, maybe we would be able to measure whether U.S. society has a higher knee-jerk quotient for abortion rights versus school violence.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Yup, over here you're welcome to think dangerous thoughts and say dangerous things, but we draw the line at doing dangerous things to other people. We are sadly lacking in government enforcement of thoughtcrime.
I would think it would suck to be otherwise, but then again why argue about crimes of belief against someone named "SpanishInquisition" ;)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
That makes a great slogan, but really that would be "free speech" in the technical sense.
A better question would be - is this more like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater (speech which creates an immediate danger and has little or no expressive purpose) or more like a civil rights speech (which also used to bring to a head a dangerous atmosphere (although that was not the intention of the speaker, I'm sure, but it still happened (and in fact the potential for violence has been used in the past as a reason not to allow the KKK to speak, for example) but has considerable political or social purpose).
Although it's fairly clear that a death threat has little or no political/social value (it's more of an ad hominem attack), I think it would be arguable on a case-by-case basis whether it really constitutes an immediate danger. A threat which clearly will not or cannot be carried out would be more trouble than it's worth to attempt to suppress.
In the case of the web site above, there is not a death threat per se (although I can see how this would be arguable, the court pointed out that there's no direct exhortation to kill a specific person, just a general feeling that if someone happened to do so, it would be all right), and there is a significant political and/or social commentary being made (namely, that the site creators vehemently disagree with the position taken by the doctors). This isn't commentary on the scale of "I Have A Dream", but the rights of the KKK to march and express even more inarticulate thoughts has been protected in the past. You could argue that the web site does create an immediate danger to the people whose names were posted, but I would say that if you're nuts enough to want to kill someone over this issue, you'd be motivated enough to track down their home address and telephone number anyway.
That's just from what I construe as the current legal considerations that can be made. I personally don't have a problem with anyone making death threats, as long as the citizenry can be sufficiently armed to defend themselves and murderers are sufficiently punished by the government. But I realize that this might be a more extreme position than some would agree with. I think I'm just used to ignoring what people really think of me :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I didn't say it was perfect yet, I'm just celebrating a step in what I perceive to be the right direction. There's plenty of work to be done. I would point out that an increasing number of states are considering moratoria on the death penalty after a number of widely publicized cases where death penalty inmates were exonerated in the light of new evidence. Even the state of Texas (motto from GW: "we kill 'em and we like it!") is considering such a moratorium.
I also think that you have to take into account some of the other rights enjoyed by citizens of the U.S. which are not available to the citizens of the rest of the world. Depending on what you consider a "human right" (for example, is discussing the history of the brutalities of WWII a human right? Is the availability of weapons to protect oneself a human right?) the U.S. even comes out ahead of some of the otherwise enlightened nations of Europe. YMMV, of course.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
If incitement from a film to do violence were a reasonable claim of innocence from the effects of your actions, then how much more powerful would be the argument advanced at the other Nuremberg trial: "I was just following orders". I wasn't incited, I was in the SS and they ordered me to do it! If your conclusions about European governments are true (and in general I would say they are not, but just for argument's sake), then this is exactly the wrong standard to use to prevent future holocausts in Europe.
I believe in strict personal reponsibility - it's nobody's fault but yours if someone tells you to do something, you do it, and it was illegal. In some cases if you were given false information, you may be able to in turn go after whoever it was that convinced you to take your actions, but even then you are responsible for the actions you take. And I doubt that a defense of "but somebody on the Internet said it was OK to blow up abortion clinincs" would fly very far in court (at least I hope it wouldn't). You can't blame your mistakes on taking the advice of random untrusted strangers, on the 'net or anywhere else.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Right?
I love how all of these right-wing hate-mongers justify their views by using Jesus Christ and YHWH. Do you really think that Jesus would encourage people to kill doctors? Would he have really wanted the Roman Empire giving money to the synagogues so that they could perform officially-sanctioned Roman charities or run Roman-sanctioned schools? Note: I'm not a bleeding-heart liberal. I'm a pissed-off ready-to-beat-down-the-ignorant liberal.
I am disgusted that this story was presented as is : once against the slashdot community shows how sexist and insensitive it really is.
./ community engage how to stop the murdering abortion doctors without infringing on the great rights of us all. Lets create a productive discussion about this --- even though we all are geeks we need to engage social issues after all we are people.
Even though there are legal concerns here at the heart of the issues is to find a "legal" way to stop murdering of abortion doctors and the harassment of pro-choice activists. To skirt that fact and deal with this as just another legal issues is insensitive at best. I would prefer the
You're right. That's the best way of thinking about it that I've encountered.
What is being violated is the right to privacy. And that's why the names of federal agents should be kept secret too. That was a correct decision that was made on the wrong grounds. Privacy is the criterion that should have been used. People, to be secure in their persons, need to have their privacy protected. There's always somebody who doesn't like who you are or what you stand for. So people who don't willingly choose to be public personalities (like, e.g., movie actors) should have the right to privacy.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And then there's the question of accuracy. What if the information isn't accurate? Do you get to apply for a retraction? Whee! More laws!
Or, perhaps the laws governing the accuracy of credit records could be extended? Whee! More regulations!
If regulations/laws are going to have anything to do with this, then they will need to be crafted very carefully. The recent history of the legislature doesn't promise well for laws, and the recent history of the executive branch implies that regulations might be even worse. But either might be better than an international treaty, which is what might really be required to do much about this.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The AYBABTU ref is unnecessary, but the idea of rivaling web sites causing the elimination of all people who care about an issue, one way or another, is pretty good satirical SF. Not only that, it points out an interesting contrast between government-sponsored justice/violence and vigilante justice/violence.
--
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Make mine methylphenidate.
But the question is, should that information have even gotten to them in the first place? Should they be able to publish that private information without authorization from those doctors? I tend to think not.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The only good defense against hate speech is more speech...
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Thanks. We all really appreciate that. Especially the customer service and support people that have nothing to do with crafting company policy or writing software.
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On reading the decision I note that the Judge leaves wide open a suit for invasion of privacy. See footnote 10, quoted below for your convenience. I would guess that the judge does not like the contents of the website any better than I do. My personal politics aside, this type of cheerleading for criminal behavior makes me want to hurl.
---- snip -----
10 We need not decide here whether the First Amendment would protect
defendants from a suit for invasion of privacy, because plaintiffs do not
claim damages based solely on the publication of private facts, namely
their addresses and telephone numbers. Cf. Anderson v. Fisher Broadcast-
ing Cos., 712 P.2d 803, 807 (Or. 1986) (recognizing a tort for invasion of
privacy when the tortfeasor has the specific intent to cause plaintiff severe
mental or emotional distress and such conduct exceeds "the farthest reach
of socially tolerable behavior").
----/snip-------
WALSTIB!
No, no, no, no.
THEY'RE more like the independant contractors that were working on the (incomplete) Death Star when those pesky rebels blew the fucker up.. hell, they KNEW they were working for the Evil Empire (tm), and thus knew that they in for. You can't do that kind of work without building up some serious negative karma, man.
Only Libertarians understand where the line should be drawn. If speech causes real damage and the link is clear between the damage and the speech cause, then there is a legal recourse. So Libertarians would only allow a doctor to sue after he'd been killed?
I don't think the court was trying to rule whether the posting of the information was illegal... however, they were ruling on whether the posting of the information was directly linked to the doctors getting killed.
am I right? or did I just put egg on my own face?
guess I'll have to stop reading the comments and read the articles sometimes....
Karnal
The second is not the case here. That is what this trial was about.
For the most part, rules that exist in Europe simply can not be maintained here. We are too diverse of a socity, with too much different backgrounds etc. Therefore natural self-interest (aided and abeited by the constitution) keeps thoose who would cause violence for personal reasons in line.
Hence, no Hitlers and a much more conservitive society.
I agree with you 100%. My question was based on people suing Oliver Stone (thrown out by now) producing Natural Born Killers, suing ID Software for making Doom, Quake, claiming Beavis and Butthead made kids burn down trailers, or that the Internet lead to Columbine.
People like us who are sick and tired of wackos calling for legal action on games, movies and music can point to this ruling as an example.
Am I the only one who has the strong suspicion that the people who support anti-abortion acts are the same people who blame sex and violence in media as the reason for ANY crime today? Good luck proving your case now!
I suppose there are various ways to get around this (set up a trust or shell corporation to own the land?) but it wouldn't be simple
No, both were civil cases. The jury in this case awarded damages.
One of the elements of conspiracy is an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. Merely planning a crime is not conspiracy, though it doesn't take much to constitute an overt act. (For example, telling a thief when the security guards at the diamond shop take their break is almost surely an overt act.)
(The point being: How is the proof offered in the theater case qualitatively different from the proof in the website case? In each case a jury is being asked to draw inferences about the relationship between one person's speech and another's action. If the totality of the evidence convices a jury that there is a relationship, why not impose liability?)
This begs the question, i.e., whether the website was legitimate protest or part of organized criminal activity. There's nothing in RICO that says it can't be used against violent political extremists as well as against narcotics traffickers or what have you. If you think the website was part of organized political violence, RICO should apply. If you think the website is legitimate political protest, it shouldn't.
If you have a mortgage, then you hold title to the property subject to a mortgage, and you'd be listed as owner at the registry of deeds. (On a separate document at the registry, you'd be listed as mortgagor of the property and the bank would be listed as mortgagee.)
You know the difference between just saying "I'll kill you", and the actual _real_ threatening of people?
An actual death threat makes a normal life rather impossible, due to the imminent fear of being killed everytime you go to bed, or go out og the house, or just about any situation.
Personally I dislike people who yell "I'll kill you", I find it crude and unpleasant, but I wouldn't want to see you prosecuted for it. If however, you looked me in my eyes and told me in a way I found to be truly sincere, that you would hunt me and my children down at night, then yes I would file charges against you, and I would be _very_ glad that this kind of law applies. The same goes for letters threatening to kill. If I file a complaint, you may of course be innocent, and that is up to the courts to decide.
This story isn't even _about_ this. The slashdot-crowd just goes way too far sometimes.
On a more personal note the publication of my address is protected by Florida Statute 843.17 - if you read the law it says that the publication must be done "maliciously, with intent to obstruct the due execution of the law or with the intent to intimidate, hinder, or interrupt any law enforcement officer in the legal performance of his or her duties" again there is an intent elment to the crime.
My personal take on this particular matter is that a civil case was probably a better way to go. I personaly don't believe that the case was strong enough for a criminal prosecution but probably would have supported a wrongfull death suit but IANAL so I could be wrong...
And the people who shredded said ftuses are not fscked up? I think that it's a useful thing to demonstrate that what they destroy is not a lump of tissue but a human being. An arm, a hand, a head--these illustrate that we are not dealing with a tumour but with a man.
Yeah, and instead we elected a President that doesn't mind poisoning the water so that industry can save a few million. First world nation with third world standards for arsenic. Pathetic.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Or that you hated that guy in front of you with the cell phone and that you really, really hated the 14-year old in the back row with the laser pointer fetish.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Wrong. There is much less censorship in Europe, be it of violence, sex or (let's not forget it) copyright infringement.
Though there is indeed less violence in European countries. I think (IMO) this is more of a cultural difference than legal difference (though cultural differences tend to shape law): the US has a culture that is not only gun-liking but somewhat trigger-happy and amazingly self-righteous, both individually (vs. other people) and as a country (vs. rest of world).
-- Colin
and dont for get sex, lots of sex in the japanese cinema, and we all know that carnal knowledge, reduces you to a violent killing spree
Further, there is a line between "unborn child" and "living, breathing person," despite what you seem to think. Is an egg a living, breathing person when it has just been penetrated by a sperm, and merely a single cell? What about when it's 16 cells? Or 128? That CANNOT be called a "living, breathing person" by any stretch of the imagination.
"Every sperm is sacred!"
Finally the law will let me put up the list of address's where teen schoolgirls commonly walk alone and would be easily abducted.
Everytime one of them gets kidnapped/assulted etc I'll put a little cheer on my website.
What part is exactly the freedom of speech there?
Is a list of address's a view? An opinion?
Is my "freedom of speech" to list address's more important than other people's saftey??
Just trying to put things in perspective.
It's turtles all the way down.
Could you please tell me what is more important than human life?
I'd say that the satisfaction/suffering ratio of the individual living that life is more important to them than their life. Assisted suicide wouldn't be an issue otherwise.
itachi
No, i'm not confused: they are one and the same. If you're not against it, you're for it, legal or not.
No, you do seem to be confused. Here's an example: I support the right of the KKK to hold meetings and rallies and such. Does that make me pro-KKK? No, not at all. I work for minority rights, but i believe in the right of EVERYONE's free speech.
In a similar manner, i don't support abortion, but i'm not about to tell you that you may not have an abortion. I feel the same way about marijuana legalization.
-ben.c
Case in point:I dislike Nazi ideology. I will actively seek to discredit (truthfully) the arguments of Nazi proponents and stop others from falling for the party line. However, I will defend people's right to speech the same way Noam Chomsky did. If a Nazi wants to write a book, in which he questions World War II history, I say let him have his press. If an anarchist wants to say "down with the government", more power to him (or her). If an anti-abortion advocate wants to say that doctors should be confronted with the horror that they instill in others, I don't agree, but go you forth and speak!
When a person posts the name and address of another person in with literature advocating harm to that person, I don't care if the target is Steve Balmer, Richard Stallman, the undersecretary of defence or the very person to whom I am responding; it's just wrong. On what basis? When you incite people to kill, you create a weapon. When you point that weapon and it goes off, you cannot claim "I knew it was loaded, but it's the gun's falt for firing."
If you were talking to ONE person, and discussed this, I would say that you have put it in that person's hands to make a decision, but when you're dealing with a mob of unknowns through a publishing mechanism (say, the Web), you know that someone out there is going to be unbalanced enough to do the deed.
Let me put this another way: if I walk into an asylum full of violently insane people, unlock the doors, tell them that the president is evil and must die and then I tell them exactly where he will be later today... would you say that I have just conspired to kill the president? In what way is it different if I say the same thing on a Web site? If I lay out the plan to kill someone, and suggest that it should be done, I am at the very least conspiring to commit 1st degree murder, am I not?
I have 2 disclaimers: 1) I never got the chance to read the original threats. If they were of the form, "here are the people that you should talk to," then I can't see a case. If they were of the form, "here are the people that need to pay for these crimes, and don't deserve to live," then I absolutely feel that the first amendment has nothing at all to do with this. 2) I am not a lawyer. Do your own research. These are just opinions.
Your argument is classically known as a strawman. You state "I want X. I'm going to get X. I'm ENTITLED to X. If your Y needs get in the way, you'd better watch out."
First off, this statement cannot be mapped to the post to which you reply. Especially "I'm going to get X" and "you'd better watch out."
You procede to demonstrate that your statement is one that is used to limit rights. Yes, clearly. Too bad no one said it.
The post to which you replied was discussing the harm that would come to those who engaged in a legal activity which some do not agree with.
Let me quote: "A bunch of kids' rights to go to school without being harrassed, threatened or hurt because of what their parents do for a living just got trashed."
Here we have the pivotal argument: is it legal to publish information which is intended to cause harm to come to specific persons. We're not talking about posting anti-abortion literature (which I defend your right to do all day long). We're talking about saying that someone should die and then posting their name and address.
As far as I'm concerned, this is loading the gun and aiming the gun. Even if the gun goes off on its own, I don't buy that you are innocent of the murder.
Of course they have that right. As well they should. Let's make no mistake, no one who defends the bill of rights can reasonably turn around and say that speaking out against someone for their deeds is wrong.
Again, of course they do. You have every right to publish a list of abortion doctors and suggest that people write them letters, call them or send them email. Personally, I think this is rude, but clearly defended.
I'm not sure. Clearly the law has determined that abortion is not (always) murder, so to call someone who practices abortion a murderer may be slander. I am not a lawyer, but I wouldn't take the chance if I were you. I would go for, "Dr A. is an abortion doctor, and I think abortion is murder." It makes your take on abortion clearly your take and you clearly accuse Dr A. of nothing other than abortion.
However, none of what you ask goes to the core question: can you post a list of people with their addresses and say that someone should kill them? If that is, indeed what was done, then I cannot see why it should be protected speech. You are inciting to murder. Would you be happy if I put up a list of pregnant mothers with their addresses and said that these children should be terminated with or without their mother's consent?
Free speech shouldn't be limited if you want bubble-gum
No, nor should it be limited because you want anything. It should be, and is, limited to protect the freedom of others. This is why you cannot lie in a way that damages others. This why you cannot write up a plan for the assassination of the president and distribute it (but you *can* write up a list of reasons why he should die).
In this case, I contend that the particular speach involved (regardless of the hot-button topic of abortion) constituted a threat and plan for serious harm to individuals, published to a wide and willing audience. This is, as far as I can tell, like pointing a gun at someone's head and then saying that you're not responsible for murder because you're not the one who pulled the trigger.
This is exactly the kind of speach that we're not supposed to let people get away with, beucause it damages the freedom of others to, as the Declaration of Independance put it, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The person seeking an abortion is only harmed indirectly. We should be concerned about this, but not so much as to infringe on free speach.
We should be very concerned that idiots who hide behind a rhetoric of saving life advocate and promote murder. I won't tell you if I'm pro-life/choice, but I will tell you that I feel ashamed of the actions of these people as a human being.
punish the people who are infringing them. What's so hard about that?
Right on, brother! In this case, that happens to be the people with the Web site that published names and suggested that these are people to harm. That's clearly conspiracy to commit a crime, and under our law that's a crime.
I can only guess that the judge felt there was sufficient disclaimer on the page to nullify the threats and suggestions that they made elsewhere. I would not buy it, and I hope that another court overturns it.
I would say that I am a strong believer in personal responsability, but I wouldn't say that I can exume my philosophy on others.
I can not say that this can be universally applied. I mean, people are by nature influenced by one another. By ignoring this fact, then we deceive ourselves into thinking that we have sole control over our lives.
Here is another point that is worth some heat. All of the movie examples that have been about violence have only been looking at the modern day violent movies, and have totally missed the point between drama, propaganda, and the differences between the two.
When you see a movie containing violence, it is not solely the violence that causes the effect, but the premiss of the entire movie. It can be debated what the movie, or any content in that matter is trying get across to the viewer. I doubt that many have gone on a semetic killing spree for watching Schindlers list, so there is more to the portayal of violence than the violence itself. Also, it can be said that a movie enters the arena of propaganda when it is used as a tool for the viewer to take action of it. Unfortunately, all movies can be casted as propaganda, because every movie has an effect, if only negligable on the person. Now the question is, if a movie was made as propaganda to influence someone into a violent action, how could one tell the difference? This is as I see, a difficult question, simply because the whole interpretation of movies or content in general is so subjective.
On the CBC last night I watched a report of how hard-core pr0n was being displayed on satellite TV in Canada, and that it was suggestive of pain to the participant(bondage++). One could say that the participant was never in any real danger by the action, that it was simply a dramitization.
The problem with defining propaganda is that it has a subjective existence. One man's propaganda is another man's bitter sweet action movie, etc.. It can be said that the only judgement of the purpose of the content be judged by the intention of the author, or those that control the content.
Man.. What a rant.. So, in conclusion, a violent movie shouldn't incite violence unless the person watching was messed up(crazy), or it was the itent of those in control(propaganda).
By taking a position of superiority you show how nearsighted you are. Thus Spake ADRA
Bye!
I didn't really get the point of the rest of your arguments, but common sense is really a BS concept.
You can argue that anything, no matter how off the wall, is just common sense.
Try it... bigger is better -- it's just common sense. Smaller is better -- it's just common sense. See?
I read the post. It agreed (as you seem to agree) that free speech should be limited for the sake of abortions.
Well, free speech shouldn't be limited because you want abortions. Not even if you really, really want abortions.
Free speech shouldn't be limited if you want bubble-gum, or world peace, or your MTV either (or "to feel good about yourself", or "a pleasant trip to school", or "because you hate right wingers").
Because my free speech is mine. And laws and the constitution are there to prevent you or the government from taking away what's mine. And what's more, this protection is provided to everyone equally. (Hooray.)
(I could swear I just said this in my prior post.)
BTW: I can read all your arguments and analogies in favor of taking away this particular free speech that you don't like. They simply don't matter. (Do arguments in favor of slavery matter? If I came up with 6 good reasons we should all come to your house and steal your car, would the reasons matter?)
A is like B, and I think B=3, so A must equal something like 3, and you said it was 7, so that's libel and you must be in the 10th grade to think that.
Oh well.
And as for the site in question, the court was really pretty clear. It's OK to (Y) "help someone else find a doctor", because that's free speech. It's not OK to be (Z) "killing the doctor", because that isn't free speech, and it's bad for the doctor.
Algebra again : "help someone else find a doctor" (Y) != "killing the doctor" (Z)
Yep.
You have now incited the posting of doctor's credit cards. Me and the doctors will be suing you for $109 million dollars.
Next, I'll be suing Slashdot for inciting your incitement. I'll be rich!
I wish Slashdot would post more stories like this. (Oh no! Now I'll have to sue myself!)
And so forth...
The day that all freedoms are abolished and all independant voices are silenced in this country, it will be justified with "... after all, you can't yell FIRE in a crowded theater."
The next argument will be: "you need a license to drive, why shouldn't you need a license to " (watch TV, write an essay, have children, cut hair, own a pet, carry a gun, walk, eat, breathe, etc.).
This is actually a great post. It completely illustrates the reason for a constitutionally constructed society.
The attitude is clear:
I want X. I'm going to get X. I'm ENTITLED to X. If your Y needs get in the way, you'd better watch out. If you stand in my way with your Y, I'll take away your Z and anything else I have to, including your W. I'm going to get X.
In this case, X="an abortion", Y="Free Speech", Z="money", and W="freedom".
Try X="guns" or X="money" or X="a pizza" or X=anything. Fill in the other variables with things you'd like not to be taken away.
The reason for laws and a constitution is to prevent this type of attitude from prevailing.
Hmm... that's funny. I'm a left leaning liberal myself, often to the point of being a communist, and I can't imagine a situation in which it would be safe to allow the government to regulate speech in any way. Heck, I even have my doubts about regulating speech that causes real damage--such a principle could well be used to eliminate all speech of any real substance.
And what's more, I have the strange feeling that, if I asked most conservatives I know the same question, they'd agree with me on this point, despite our other differences.
But no, that can't be right. I'm sure nobody outside of the Libertarian party could have any respect for freedom. I must just be mistaken about my beliefs.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
it, unless you are absolutist about it. We have seen many people on Slashdot complaining loudly about First Amendment issues regarding intellectual property and encryption enforcement, but where are they today, when the opinion seems to call for a result of which they don't approve.
Mind you, I'm left of Che, and despise what these people did. On the other hand, I think Judge K (a Reagan appointee, highly conservative/libertarian politically, but a brilliant (and very funny!) jurist) got this one right. Slam-dunk, yes absoulutely, right.
You have every right in the world to make truthful statements in your own words free of intervention from the state, at least here in the United States. This right is fundamental, and guaranteed to all citizens.
You have every right to be offensive as hell, and even a bit dangerou in your speech, so long as you are not creating a real "clear and present danger," which is an enormous standard to overcome. Just as with the Nazis in Skokie decades ago, we must let hateful people be hateful, so long as they are not actually committing or clearly dangerously inciting a crime.
Of course the speech is hateful. Of course its invasive and intimidating. Of course.
But if we don't permit the speech we hate, we have no cause to support the speech we love.
Some website had scanned copies of flyers being passed out by some prochoice organization which did list names and addresses of people. I'm sure the info is on the web someplace.
There are athiest prolifers: http://www.godlessprolifers.org
And there are libertarian arguments against abortion: http://www.l4l.org
To view the issue as a "religious issue" is as incorrect to view slavery as a religious issue simply because many of the arguments surrounding its practice in the US were religious in nature.
It's well established that, for example, an "Old West style wanted poster" with a picture of Bill Clinton declaring him to be wanted for Perjury, Sexual Assault, Accepting Bribes, etc (or, if you prefer, with a picture of Dubya Bush declaring him to be wanted for Election Fraud) is protected political speech. The intent is clearly to denounce the target as a "crook"; and denoucing politicians as crooks is a venerable tradition.
It does get a bit greyer when the subjects are not public figures. IMO, a good civil case for harassment, at least, could be made.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You can "assess" until the cows come home. What is forbidden is government action, outside a limited range of incitement to imminent lawless activity which the court found not to be present in this case.
Blurring the distinctions between "X is bad", "The government has the authority to suppress X", and "The government should in fact suppress X" is a common from of sloppy thinking (when done accidentally) or propaganda (when done deliberately).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
How many people realize that this sound bite originated as a lame rationalization?
The case in question, Schenck v. United States, arose from the prosecution of Schenck for distributing anti-draft leaflets in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. The analogy between peaceful distribution of literature and causing a panic with a false fire alarm is dubious, to say the least. Less generously (but more accurately), the analogy is an intellectually dishonest evasion of the Constitution.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
--
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Addresses are publicly-accessible information, as are criminal and driving records in most states - hell, the USPS sells mailing lists to junk-mail advertisers. Credit cards, on the other hand, are not.
Unpleasant, perhaps, but hardly a boundary case for free-speech considerations.
Right...
They asked for the doctors to be murdered, but left out the nickel.
They absolutely did no such thing. Whatever else you may say about the site, they were very careful to never use the words "murder" or "reward." That's what the whole case turned upon - whether without those words the site constituted a threat. They did cross out the name of one doctor the same day he was murdered rather than simply remove it, but that's the closest they ever came to solicitng, condoning or encouraging murder.
Right...
Interesting point. I'm still not sure that there aren't ways to obtain residence addresses by legal means, though. Law enforcement, for example, needs ways to find where someone physically lives, not just where they get their mail.
Right...
My feelings of being threatened do not constitute a legal basis for calling something a threat. I might be mentally ill, suffering from paranoia. Whether someone feels threatened is not the proper litmus test to apply.
You're also missing the point - the web site never advocated physical harm of any kind to these abortionists or their families. The use of Wanted poster and Most Wanted List-style layouts doesn't make them overtly threatening - the FBI doesn't advocate the killing of its Ten Most Wanted. The name of the site (The Nuremberg Files), its motif, and so on, were to draw parallels between the Holocaust and abortion - a perfectly legal and valid act of political speech. There are other purposes to publishing so many details of daily schedules and so on, as well - to insure, for example, that these abortionists were picketed by protesters everywhere they went, in front of their neighbors, the parents of their children's friends, etc. Those activities are also protected free speech, despite efforts to throttle them at nearly every level.
It is not possible to prove conclusively that the intent of the site was ever to solicit harm in any way, "context" be damned. Absent that necessary legal proof, there is no basis for suppressing the site or for granting such an obscenely large cash award.
Interesting, incidentally, that you would pick butchers as your stand-ins for abortionists in your scenario. Poetic.
Right...
You can't prove that. For a more detailed explanation, see my post here. There are other, perfectly legal reasons to have posted the information they did. Just because you infer a certain intent doesn't make that legally proveable.
Right...
The difference, I think, lies in the credibility of the inference. The inference that moviegoers would not run in panic spontaneously seems on its face (prima facie) to hold more water than the inference that no abortionist on the list would ever have been shot if this website hadn't existed, and thus that the website incited their murder. There are fewer external factors that can cause one than the other, knowing what we do about normal human behavior, sociopathy, and psychopathy.
Right...
Warning: I'm about to fly my self-righteous flag - the karma loss doesn't concern me.
Violence breeds violence. Exposure to violent media may not cause violence, but I'm certain it makes it easier to condone certain kinds of violence: revenge killings, capital punishment and other kinds of retributive justice, and so on. Are the people behind the Nuremberg Files any different?
Is a society that sends the message that the extermination of innocent lives is acceptable, no matter the well-intentioned reason, any different?
Please note: I do not condone the Nuremberg Files as moral, nor the killing of abortionists. That's my whole point, though - when a society says that it's okay to kill under any circumstance (except maybe self-defense - that's a boundary case), it's poisioned the well. Abortion is just such a poison.
Right...
That's a ridiculously weak connection.
Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre has the potential for immediate, causal effects of demonstrable harm. People would not run in panic, most likely causing some to be trampled or otherwise injured, if you never yelled "Fire!"
In this case, however, you cannot prove that any harm came to any abortionist because of direct action by the website, or that any who were harmed would not have been harmed had the website not existed. For the "FIRE!" analogy to work, any harmful action in question must be conclusively shown to be a direct result of the speech.
Right...
Go back to the dark ages where you belong. It's the 21st century, and the Inquisition and which burning you lust for is a bit outdated.
(sarcasm)Or most of western Europe. And we know how terrible and miserable life is in France, Germany or Sweden...(/sarcasm)
What a bunch of crap far-right bullshit !
Have you ever seen the effect of a godless society.
Hum yeah, western Europe ? Much less violence than in the land-of-the-biggot USA. And as far as I know there aren't any school shooting in Russia either...
Ha! Wait, you're seeing it right now. As America moves further and futher away from God
Seing how Bush is prez and Aschroft is where he is, I'd say America gets more religious every year.
you will see more school shootings
The stats say they are less and less, but I guess you don't know how to read either...
and you will see the morons in this country scratching their heads and saying "gawsh, guess we need more gun control".
Well, the country with the most school-shooting is also the one with the most gun/capita. Coincidence ? It's hard to kill 20 people in 10 minutes with just a kitchen knife.
some people actually believe in something.
Yeah, some believe in a huge pile of bullshit and then try to force it down the throat of those who don't believe the same. I've seen what's happen when religion is controlling the country (Iran or Afghanistan anyone ?) so let's get it out of here as soon as possible.
..for a box of fucking condoms.
:)
Is there any other kind of condom?
>
> And there doesn't seem to be an increase in tentacle sex crimes in Japan, even though tentacle rape hentai is readily available.
Tentacles don't rape Japanese schoolgirls. Giant squid-like Japanese monsters rape Japanese schoolgirls!
Write your Congressman today and demand that he or she stand up against the continuing encroachment of Great Cthulhu's 666th-Amendment-guaranteed right to bare tentacles in an crawling chaotic militia!
(There, have we covered all the Constitutional hot-buttons today? ;-)
>
> 2) If you go to 123 Anytown street, you will find an abortion doctor.
>
> The second one was just declared "okay." The first one, at various points in time, has been declared illegal.
Point of information:
The first example was declared as a violation of a section of the DMCA. The second was declared as not an incitement to commit murder. These are entirely different things, and for good reason.
Although I also feel that this is a weird juxtaposition of cases, my feelings don't enter into it. The operators of both sites got hauled into court for totally different things, and the judges were ruling on totally different sets of laws.
It is not - and cannot be - the job of the the legal system to deal with that issue. If Congress passes laws that say rape is punishable by 2-5 years in prison, but horse-rustling is punishable by hanging, then horse thieves hang, and rapists walk.
It's hard enough for a judge to be consistent with the relevant precedent for any one case. It's impossible - even in theory - to make it all consistent with some imaginary standard whereby different things are deemed differently-naughty.
The standard whereby different things are deemed differently-naughty and penalties are assigned is called "law".
Congress writes it. Judges rule on it.
Sometimes, Congress writes it without regard to the big picture. When this happens, Judges still have to rule on it, and they have to rule in accordance with what Congress wrote, not what they may personally believe is "fair".
Or would you rather have both the Legislative and the Judicial branch not doing their jobs?
...the hit list had been judges, not doctors.
What's the difference between a site that posts the name of abortion clinic doctors, and a site that posts the names of IRS workers? Both sites encourage murder, but one is shutdown by the government while the other is given free speech rights. I believe they both should be considered free speech.
0 .html
Look at: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40102,0
Do you think the judge would have ruled the same way had his name been on the list?
Would you have objected to the decision if the website were one that listed pictures and addresses of anti-abortion activists in order to "watch out" for them?
My initial reaction to this website was also one of disgust, but now I have to admit I'm torn between thinking a line should be drawn here or not. Are we or are we not in favor of free speech?
And if so, why not in this particular case?
Here's another one... what if a site listed doctors that provide abortion for those seeking one and provided exactly the same information. It could still be used as a hit list. Would you want to see that gone also?
It's a very slippery slope, and I'm not sure there's a ledge to grab onto.
Weirdos in America can do almost anything. Shit, we almost elected Al Gore!
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
I doubt that someone who had a page encouraging music "piracy", but providing no tools, would be the target of a lawsuit. The only difference is the emotional appeal, and liberal "sacred cow" status, of fetus vacuum operators...
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
But also remember that everyone is not like you, and some people are definitely swayed by the media, by books they read, by people they hang out with, by words that they hear, by group mentalities... And a website that praises the killing of doctors is going to lead some people to commit acts of violence. Yes, they make the final decision, but what led them to that decision?
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Perhaps you don't realize that nobody here is defending the content of these people's speech. There is a large difference in saying that you disapprove of what someone is saying and demanding that the authorities punish them. It is the latter approach that "political correctness" is associated with.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Hence there is little violence in European countries.
Bleep!
You're wrong: Britain, Australia top U.S.
in violent crime. Rates Down Under increase despite strict gun-control measures.
You see, when you take guns away from law-abiding citizens, by definition, the only guns left are in the hands of the criminals (and the government, but they're the same really). Additionally, criminals are less deterred from committing violent crimes because they know with certainty that their victims are unarmed.
A better example of "European Enlightenment" would be Switzerland: nearly 100% of the population owns firearms and the rate of violent crime is almost zero.
You're confused about the difference between promoting something and working to keep it legal.
:)
No, i'm not confused: they are one and the same. If you're not against it, you're for it, legal or not.
You would be justified in calling someone who promoted abortion as pro-abortion.
this is really the heart of the matter. i would be justified, as would you or anyone else. but it's the media who dictates the use of these terms, and by extension, the thoughts that accompany them. the media sets the agenda (in choosing what stories to run, when, and how often), and it's the media that controls the debate by choosing what language to use.
Just as you would incorrect to call someone who worked to defend a womans right to control her own body anything but pro-choice.
i'm sorry, i don't follow you. if someone promotes abortion, and i call them "pro-abortion", how is that incorrect? you see, i'm confused because these people do not in fact "work to protect a womans right", instead, they work at making abortions happen. big difference.
Sadly the bulk of people who call themselves pro-life are shown by their actions to really be anti-choice.
so, if i think that it's murder to kill a baby while it's in the womb, i'm automatically "anti-choice". man, orwell could have taken lessons from you.
This states that those called pro-choice in the media would be considered negative by being called pro-abortion. Therefore, you call call pro-abortion a "negative" thing, promoting an anti-abortion view.
:)
I'm sorry, I really don't follow what you're saying at all. Perhaps you could type it more slowly so I could understand it?
I myself am pro-choice and anti-abortion.
Sorry, you can't be on both sides of the fence. You're either against it or for it. Let me put it this way: let's say you were alive back in the 1800's, and we were discussing the issue of slavery. Would it be reasonable for you to say, "I'm anti-slavery but pro-plantation owner's rights?" I don't think so.
I'd like to see it never happen, but I'm not the one carrying the baby to term.
And what in tarntation does that have to do with anything? If something is wrong, you can (and should!) stand up and shout that fact regardless if you're involved directly or not. If you saw a woman being beaten, would you say to yourself, "well, I can't get involved because I'm not a family member?"
And I do have a problem with anti-abortion, pro-death-penalty people calling themselves "pro-life". Not that you have displayed any evidence of this hypocracy (or any hypocracy, for that manner), just saying.
Actually, I used to be one of those "pro-life" and "pro-death penalty" people. But the more I considered it, the more I realized the fallacy of that logic. (Saw a report on MSNBC about it soon after - it mentioned the "growing" (their term) number of folks coming to the same conclusion. The article should be easy enough to find if you're interested). I've come full circle on the death penalty issue: killing is killing, and killing is wrong. Womb, jail, or in Kavorian's van, human life means nothing unless we're willing to stand up and defend it at every stage. The only reason I'm mentioning this because I hope someone who thinks as I used to might be swayed by it.
Correct. also irrelevant, since there is virtually no-one who actually PROMOTES abortion outside of China.
Have you never heard of Planed Parenthood? They PROMOTE abortion every single day, to the tune of some 17 million abortions annually. And if you don't believe me, talk to a few girls who have visited them and ask them the first option given to them by the PP people.
While in the womb, it's not yet a baby. The term is zygote or fetus depending on how many cells are currently involved.
Let me tell you something personal: my wife is pregnant with our baby right now. She doesn't have a fetus in her belly, nor does she have a zygote, she has our baby . That baby has a name, and his name is Dax. The fact that he has not yet been born is the truly irrelevant matter, because all of the genetic information necessary to create him was determined at conception. If you choose to play semantics with the life of a human being, fine, go right ahead. However, let me share a thought: in pre-emancipation days, slaves were considered 3/5ths human in matters of property. They played with semantics to make their argument, too. The parallels between abortion and slavery are chilling; in both cases, those that argue and fight against them do/did so because those they were fighting for could not speak for themselves.
This leads me to guess that you in fact anti-choice, although you havn't yet come right out and said so
If your definition of choice is "one willing to kill human babies before they are born", then yes, I would proudly wear the label of "anti choice". Since you, too, have loaded your questions, I dismiss your argument in its entirety. But let me also note that your intent here is to dismiss my views because they disagree with your own, not because they are invalid or illogical.
Do you believe that abortion should be illegal under all circumstancs?
Absolutely.
Bonus question: * Do you believe that the death penalty should be an option?
No, not ever. You see, my arguments are entirely consistent: human life is valuable at every stage, regardless of time and circumstance. Are yours?
groups that are opposed to abortion are called "anti-abortion", and yet groups that promote the act are called "pro-choice". shouldn't the name-calling be consistent? in other words, it should be "anti-abortion" vs. "pro-abortion" or "pro-life" vs. "anti-life"? oh, wait a minute, doing so would cast those favored by the media in a negative light. can't have that!
/. and all major media really pisses me off. yeah, yeah, i know slashdot is only parroting the news stories of others, but if the editors would take a minute and think for themselves instead of blindly following the party line like the sheep they claim to despise, the world might be an ever-so-slightly better place.
i know i'll sound like a conspiracy nut, and i know i'm at risk for losing karma (can't get blood out of a stone, tho), but this obvious bias by
and please, before flaming me for having a different view than yours, read the fucking post and tell me where i have promoted one view or another.
flame on!
In France you Can speak freely but Organisation and Speaches Inciting violence are banned. ...
which means KKK type thing are illegal same for people inciting violence on doctors
This is not a speach restriction. You can get your ideas across without resorting to violence or else they are not worth fighting for...
Also in our constitution it is said that everyone is born free and equal this is the basis of our country and white supremacist can not have a say on that.
My drinking team has a Rugby problem
I can live with others deciding this issue - I made a decision long ago not to get involved with the abortion decision.
But I have to ask, what's with all the banner ads on the mentioned site (lancasterlife.com/NurembergFiles/).
Advertising seems to knows no boundaries.
Rights at the most fundamental level are contradictory. In this example, one person's right to free speech is contradictory to another's right not to be threatened or murdered. In general though, people's rights will always be entangled when we live in the same spaces and interact.
The only ethically consistent approach is to identify a set of values, and make decisions based on those values. Of course, we disagree on what those values should be, and so (for example) the left will call for censorship in one case and the right in another.
We may choose to support a set of rights because we believe, on balance, that those rights will have a net positive ethical impact. But it seems wise to regard those rights as a guide, rather than an absolute framework.
Without being a lawyer, or a US citizen ;), this decision looks very political. Previous judgements have ruled that although burning draft cards or copying DeCSS are actually speech, such speech should not be protected because of its side effects. Those precedents don't seem to have had much of an impact here...
Fixing copyright
republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.
The charge against the 1968 civil rights bill was led by southern democrats, namely Al Gore Sr., our former VP's father.
For more trivia, a Senate page ran the Stars & Bars above the Capitol dome for 4 hours the day the bill passed before he was caught and expelled from the school.
"Everybody knows Abraham Lincoln was a democrat"
-D.C. mayor Marion Barry, a year after
he was convicted of cocaine posession.
p.s. i'm not a republican.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
you can't trademark your SSN, it's number. plus if you trademark your name, now ANYONE can get it, so you've defeated the purpose.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
This case just outlines the need for a Privacy Bill of Rights. The Court is absolutely right - this speech is protected by the First Amendment.
But it should be absolutely banned under a Privacy Bill of Rights. Those people should be able to rant and rave about how Planned Parenthood is Hitler all they want, but they should not be able to violate the privacy rights of these doctors. Best Buy and Safeway shouldn't be able to sell my purchase profile from my "Safeway Club Card" to direct marketers and my health insurance company. Digital consumer profiles and personal profiles should be identified as tradeable items that are the intellectual property of the identified person.
If ever there was intellectual property, it's your own name, address, and SSN. And publishing people's names against their will along with other identifying information, for the purpose of having them executed or any other malicious reason (even calling them at dinner to sell them life insurance) should be explicitly prohibited.
at least, that's what i think.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
"And while I would agree that speech calling for violence necessary to revolutionize the government is clearly protected--it's the reason for the 1st Amendment--I don't agree that speech calling for violence against individuals engaged in medical practice should be protected. The government is not a doctor, and political action should be sufficient to decide the fate of such doctors. If political action is not sufficient, then your quarrel is with the government, not the doctors, or you're just plain wrong. In fact, I'm leaning towards the attitude that calling for violence against any person by name rather than a governmental institution is just plain wrong, though that would take some careful defining in a world where we place or inherit people in governing positions as an institution of one."
So in other words if the list had been the names and address of those judges who wrote the majority opinions in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (standing law on abortion - no its not Roe v. Wade) namely Blackmun (now dececed), Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter that would be permissible? After all it is these five who removed (or confirmed the removal of) abortion from the legitimate political organs of government. Or is the Supreme Court as an institution responsible for this decision (and must therefore our good friend Justice Scalia be held as accountable even though he dissented.)
This case will in all likelihood go to the supreme court and be overturned by the same coalition that affirmed the judgment in Hill v. Colorado. Because in the final analysis there are at least five supreme court members who think that unencumbered abortion-on-demand is more important then literally anything else. When they do overturn it you can rejoice in your victory - but when the court finds a new pet issue, one which you vehemently oppose perhaps you will realize why freedom is important. I quote from Justice Scalia's dissent in that case.
"The Court today concludes that a regulation requiring speakers on the public thoroughfares bordering medical facilities to speak from a distance of eight feet is "not a 'regulation of speech,' " but "a regulation of the places where some speech may occur," ante, at 14; and that a regulation directed to only certain categories of speech (protest, education, and counseling) is not "content-based." For these reasons, it says, the regulation is immune from the exacting scrutiny we apply to content-based suppression of speech in the public forum. The Court then determines that the regulation survives the less rigorous scrutiny afforded content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions because it is narrowly tailored to serve a government interest-protection of citizens' "right to be let alone"-that has explicitly been disclaimed by the State, probably for the reason that, as a basis for suppressing peaceful private expression, it is patently incompatible with the guarantees of the First Amendment.
None of these remarkable conclusions should come as a surprise. What is before us, after all, is a speech regulation directed against the opponents of abortion, and it therefore enjoys the benefit of the "ad hoc nullification machine" that the Court has set in motion to push aside whatever doctrines of constitutional law stand in the way of that highly favored practice. Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., 512 U.S. 753, 785 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Having deprived abortion opponents of the political right to persuade the electorate that abortion should be restricted by law, the Court today continues and expands its assault upon their individual right to persuade women contemplating abortion that what they are doing is wrong. Because, like the rest of our abortion jurisprudence, today's decision is in stark contradiction of the constitutional principles we apply in all other contexts, I dissent."
Let's see, how about:
doing so would cast those favored by the media in a negative light. can't have that!
This states that those called pro-choice in the media would be considered negative by being called pro-abortion. Therefore, you call call pro-abortion a "negative" thing, promoting an anti-abortion view.
Which is your right of course. I myself am pro-choice and anti-abortion. I'd like to see it never happen, but I'm not the one carrying the baby to term. I'd like to see adoption become a more viable option, but until that time...
And I do have a problem with anti-abortion, pro-death-penalty people calling themselves "pro-life". Not that you have displayed any evidence of this hypocracy (or any hypocracy, for that manner), just saying.
Stevis
We've got two lives, one we're given, and the other one we make. --Mary Chapin Carpenter
Will someone PLEASE set up a website with the names of the judges, their addresses, telephone numbers, license plates, etc., as see if they want to review their opinion?
p.s. Is it me, or has this court given up on the pretense of legal reasoning and essentially started voting straight down party lines?
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
I could also put up a list of Telecom companies (that really suck) executives up for the same treatment?
It's interesting to ponder this at length.
--Mike--
From the AP:
JAPAN -- The Associated Press reports: "According to a 1996 survey by the Supreme Court, of the 37,395 marriage arbitration cases filed by women in Japan's family courts, one-third involved complaints of domestic abuse. The majority ended in divorce... According to a study of domestic violence released in May by Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the first-ever done in Japan, one-third of the 1,183 women with partners in the survey said they had been battered by their husbands or boyfriends."
From a NOW blurb:
..concluded in their comprehensive study of domestic violence that nearly 35 percent of women in over 2000 American families had been subjected to one or more attacks by their husbands in the previous year before divorce...
Sounds pretty even to me..
.sig: Now legally binding!
This case has a real bearing on the future of that Assassination Politics guy, doesn't it? I mean, isn't he in jail right now for *proposing* something almost exactly like what the anti-abortion folks *did*?
Instead of verbal cheers, though, his proposal was to actually send the assassins money to show his support. But again without any causal link...
Anyone out there thinking the same way I'm thinking? Isn't this relevant to his case?
[
threatened is the key word here. You can't threaten people with violence.
Someone you trust is one of us.
We actually did elect Al Gore, but a few people in Florida pulled off a great coup.
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Further, there is a line between "unborn child" and "living, breathing person," despite what you seem to think. Is an egg a living, breathing person when it has just been penetrated by a sperm, and merely a single cell? What about when it's 16 cells? Or 128? That CANNOT be called a "living, breathing person" by any stretch of the imagination.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Sorry, you can't be on both sides of the fence. You're either against it or for it. Let me put it this way: let's say you were alive back in the 1800's, and we were discussing the issue of slavery. Would it be reasonable for you to say, "I'm anti-slavery but pro-plantation owner's rights?" I don't think so.
He's not on both sides of the fence. He wishes abortion did not have to occur, but he wants women to have the right to have it done, if they desire. Anti-abortion, pro-choice. Think for a bit, expand your brain, and you will understand.
Further, you can be anti-slavery, and yet still want plantation owners to have their rights, it just so happens you don't think those rights include slave ownership. You're thinking far too much in terms of black and white, dividing people into one of two camps, the line of thinking that is the source of a great deal of the problems with this country.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
It is important to watch for threats and illegal behavior, but to be truly fair, free speech decisions must almost always come down in favor of the speaker.
Too much talk and no action is what has gotten us into the situation we now face. As long as people feel inhibited from slandering, libeling and even censoring everyone who discusses sensitive issues people will merely continue talking about the issues and things will only get worse.
The sooner we start throwing the "nutcase rednecks" in prison for the the opinions they hold, preferably injecting them with estrogen so they are more passive and feminized while being raped by HIV ethnic gangs, the sooner we can get beyond all this mere talk and start seeing some serious Y-chromosome specific retroviruses being engineered and spread through the world's transportation infrastructure.
Seastead this.
Doesn't everyone want to see all the items that some people care enough about to spend moderator points either promoting OR suppressing? Well, OK, maybe not everyone, but I know I certainly want to see those posts.
Seastead this.
A rating certain to be applied to virtually all posts which have even the remotest bearing on reality -- which probably bears on their conspicuous absence.
Seastead this.
Why is it that the debate of abortion is always turned into a religious thing, or a "Pro Choice" thing. It's all bullshit! It has nothing to do with religion (to the non-religious), or choice(just as much as the right to murder is about choice).
What it boils down to is whether or not an unborn baby is a living human being that has a right to live. The obvious answer is yes. Fairly early on in pregnancy the baby has measurable brainwaves, a beating heart, etc. It even appears to be aware of itself. When it's killed it struggles and kicks.
The way I see it, an unborn baby has as much right to live as you or I. Some people say that a mother has the right to stop something from growing inside her body. Bullshit, the baby didn't choose to be there, it's there because the stupid bitch/asshole wasn't responsible enough to use birth control. Abortion is the absolute epitome of the irresponsible nature of our society today.
With my (admittedly arrogant) opinion out of the way, I disagree with the decision. These people were encouraging others to kill these doctors. That's not free speech any more than hiring a hitman is. They have shown that they are no better than their enemies. I say make a website and encourage people to kill them...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If the film ENCOURAGED the violent act then yes, they are in part responsible. But the person who committed the violent act is ALSO responsible.
Why the hell do we always try to pin the responsibility on a singler person/entity in cases like this.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Free speech is about speaking your mind. But that's not what this case was about. These people were trying to encourage people to commit violent acts, that's not really any different than hiring a hitman.
What it comes down to is intent. It is quite clear that in this particular case the intent was to get these doctors killed. This is probably hard to prove in most cases, which is as it should be in order to protect free speech. But when it can be clearly proven then it should no longer be considered free speech.
This is similar to the DeCSS case. The intent of DeCSS was not clearly proven to be for the "pirating" of DVDs, which is why the verdict was (IMHO) wrong. (not to mention that it is absolutely ridiculous that a corporation's monitary interests should weigh so heavily in court when people are getting away with murder all the time..., but that's getting offtopic)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Margaret Sanger is the woman who founded Planned Parenthood. What's funny is she actually was a supporter of the Nazi Party. Do a search on google and you can find tons of information about her. Her magazines and journals were filled
with articles by well-known members of the Nazi Party.
She was also very racist and wanted to control the Negro population.
Funny that liberals claim she was this great wonderful person who liberated women. The truth is she was a racist/nazi bitch who left her husband and children for her "cause".
Does that mean that liberals are Nazis? ; ) (I'm only kidding, they're just stupid... ok, kidding again)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Just a few comments about some of your arguments...
Saying that something is alive when it's self sustaining is hogwash. Children up to toddlers are not self sustaining, does that mean parents should be allowed to have them killed? If your answer to that question is yes, then this conversation is over, please move to another planet. It's a moot point anyway (IMHO) because whether something fits a scientific definition or not is really not the point. If an unborn baby is aware of itself, how can you justify killing it?
My opinion is not egocentric, it is arrogant. It is not based on personal experience, as I have never impregnated anyone. It is based on my opinion of other people and their reasoning for getting abortions and how I feel like I am a better more responsible person than they are. I feel superior, that is being extremely arrogant (I'm being honest here...).
I really don't know enough about this particular case to make a sound judgement, however it was my understanding that these people really were trying to get these doctors killed. That is not free speech. It really depends on intent. If you intend to influence someone to kill someone else, that is the same as hiring a hitman. Hiring a hitman is just influencing someone through monitary gain. Saying that you wish someone was dead is free speech though.
>> They have shown that they are no better than
>> their enemies. I say make a website and
>> encourage people to kill them...
>...and show that you're no better than them.
>A really good plan to perpetuate that cycle.
I was being sarcastic.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm glad your vocabulary is better than mine, I agree with you. I am arrogant, egocentric and egotistical ; )
Ok, there's only one thing I really have left to say about abortion and why I consider it wrong. After less than a month a baby has measurable brain waves, a beating heart, and it just plain looks like a small human(not that that is relevant). When it is aborted (depending on how, there's so many ways for it to be done) it kicks and jerks around, seemingly in response to pain. Now, it is very possible that it is not actually self aware, and that the response is only a natural reaction. But until it can be proven whether an unborn baby is actually self aware I think it is unacceptable to kill it when there's just no way to know.
With that said, I understand how people can see things differently therefore I do not support killing pro-abortion advocates. In fact, I do not even dislike people who are pro-abortion, I will just let my opinion be known from time to time.
Thank you for improving my vocabulary and making good arguments.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Imagine, for a moment, that you are engaged in a legal but controversial business. Let's say you're a butcher. Now imagine that the ALF has been murdering butchers, even shooting them in their homes.
One day, while you're on your way to your car, a stranger calls you by name. He starts talking about the weather, and casually refers to your wife, where she works, and what kind of car she drives. He talks about your kids, by name, and the school they attend. He describes your house. He mentions how other people in your profession have been killed, and that they think that's a fine and wonderful thing. He identifies himself as a supporter of the ALF, and then leaves, never having directly threatened you.
As he walks away, he turns and says "Oh, by the way, all the information I just mentioned is on a web site, along with all the other butchers we'd like to see killed."
Would you consider that a legitimate threat?
Free speech has never included threats, especially real, credible threats. The judges mistake in this decision is ignoring the climate. For instance, doing the same thing to Microsoft employees wouldn't be the same thing, because there is no organized movement to shoot them. It would be seen as a joke, not as anything real or credible.
But there is such a movement for abortion doctors. And there was no doubt that this site was not a joke. It was a real and credible threat. Shutting it down was the right thing to do.
nt
They go into a tizzy at even the mildest attempt to prevent children from being used for pornography on the internet and say write half the western hemisphere in protest.
That is because it can't be prevented by brute force. And I don't mean brute as in professional wrestler. I'm referring to that simplistic irrational utopian purism characteristic of modern day victims turned into idiots. Any attempt to prevent the impossible by brute force thinking is guaranteed to cause harm by definition. That's why the courts care whether a law is enforceable or not.
It always goes like this:
1. Criminal commits crime.
2. Victims try to restrict criminals.
3. Total restriction is impossible.
4. Therefore victims will never be satisfied.
5. Politician responds to to eternally unsatisfied victim's concerns.
6. Politician must take serious actions because victims are extremely unsatisfied beyond reason.
7. Non criminals get hurt.
8. Victims are reduced to irate idiots who don't care about the rest of the world around them.
9. Politician stays in power.
10. Criminals remain unrestricted. Go to step 1.
Have a fucking nice day.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Some do. I like, pro-choice, anti-choice.
Do you have some data or links to back this up? I'm not asking this because I disagree with your or think I smell a rat. I ask becuase I'm curious just how low the violence is over there. From what US media shows me Europe has lots of rampant car chases through downtown and riots at soccer games (yes, I know the media isn't painting a true picture).
American SQL:
SELECT names FROM American_People;
WHERE age LESS_THAN 20 AND;
offense LIKE "Current News";
INTO Prison
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
No trick at all. The following verses don't disagree.
What you are implying is that the second clause occurs if mischief happens to the fetus and a moments reflection will make it clear that is incorrect. "...So that her fruit depart her" covers that case already, the mischief that may or may not follow is to the woman.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Actually, the only mention of abortion in the entire bible the best I remember is in Exodus 21, and it quite clearly does not consider it murder or even near.
This was the punishment for destruction of property.
Though the new testament doesn't seem to mention abortion at all, that very silence is quite telling, considering that it was a hot topic of the day. If the authors of the new testament had thought it was murder, it's rather inexplicable why they wouldn't have said so, many pagans at the time did. So it seems only reasonable to think they must have agreed with the old testament on that subject.
The irony of the present abortion debate, then, is that the driving force behind the anti-choice lobby is clearly fundamentalist christianity - and not only does the bible they claim as ultimate authority not agree with them, it clearly disagrees with their position.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Hrm.... as far as I can see, the site contents can pretty well be summed up as: This is a list of horrible baby slaughterers who are spitting in God's face and should pay for the evil things they do! Here's exactly how to find them and their families, and when they'll be there. Here are some examples of the "meaningful conversations" we have with them by mail (because they keep getting unlisted phone numbers, darn it!) calling them killers and murderers, and showing them the kind of files we've put together on other baby butchers they know, so they know we're always watching and filming and invading their privacy something awful- and even hinting that we'll go after their kids! But we're not trying to incite violence, oh no, we'd never suggest that anyone harm these nice baby murderers, and we don't celebrate it when those blood-laden baby butchers die. (hallelujah! a dead abortionist means babies have been saved!)
Actually, they have many of the original files back online now, so you can go see how gosh durn NICE all their language is for yourself. You know, all those references to "baby butchers" and "pew-sitting baby butchers", "abortion mills", "baby slaughtering", "murderers", "blood-laden people", and the like. Clinic owners and workers (like receptionists and janitors) are labeled "weapons providers and bearers".
Besides their (hit) lists of doctors, clinic owners, and workers, they have lists of judges (including Supreme Court justices), pro-choice politicians, law enforcement personnel (some of whom are crossed out), as well as a list of "miscellaneous spouses & other blood flunkies" in the same sction. John Walsh of America's Most Wanted is included with the "blood flunkies"- I guess AMW must have done a show about one of the nuts who murdered doctors and others. (Hrm... if they don't support the killers, why is someone who's trying to help FIND a killer a "blood flunky"?)
They even have a section showing how "many people are having meaningful conversations with baby butchers"- letters like the following:
I wonder if they consider anthrax threats to be "meaningful conversation, too... the gods know I've had some scary times after hearing about some of those letters, as I know people who work in women's clinics, and who have received some of those threats. (Ironically, many of those threats go to clinics that don't even perform abortions.)
So, let's see what kinds of information they have on some of the doctors in their files...
They also have pictures up asking "who is this man?"- claiming that he's an "abortionist" in a particular area and they need information on him- like his name. Which makes me wonder- how do they know he's a doctor who performs abortions, anyway?
The site exists simply to incite hatred- and they sure don't seem to mind if all their rhetoric (and deliberate falsehoods, in some cases) incite violence, and they celebrate when people are injured or killed. These are threats, plain and simple. Threats and repeated, persistent harrassment are NOT protected speech.
Before anyone goes spouting off here, maybe a discussion of the RICO laws is in order by one of our resident lawyers.
My understanding is that the RICO laws were passed with the express purpose of attacking organized crime, i.e., the Mafia, and were never intended to be used to attack protesters in this way. Using the RICO laws against protesters would ultimately have a chilling effect on Free Speech. So, whatever else they may be guilty of, dismissal of the RICO charges may have been a good thing.
Does this mean we can post names and locations where certain political leaders and their bodyguards are/will be at certain times, and cheer when they are killed? :P
How about details of what weapons the bodyguards carry, as well as defenses such as what bulletproof glass is in what vehicle, etc. How about details to what is the best weapon to take out such defenses?
Where is the line drawn?
Not all humans are, no. And lumps of unborn pre-human growth sucking up resources from its human host is definitely a parasite. Sometimes it's a wanted parasite that becomes a human, eventually, sometimes not. And sometimes, yes, they do remain parasites even out of the womb. :)
As for the second part, no, if they web site had names of kkk members, and encouraged killing of those people, it would not be any better. They can speak their mind (or whatever it is they have in their heads) as well as anyone. When they advocate killing, and give the people information _with the intent_ of aiding killers that it crosses the line.
The web site can scream 'kill abortion docs' until it's blue in the face, for all I care. It's when they go 'Kill Jack Doeington of DC, working in John Blabbs abortion center' and go 'yeah, he was offed!' after someone killed him that it is wrong. They are doing this with the intent of aiding murderers. When we have a tool that is neutral, but can be used either way, we uphold free speech. When we have a tool that the express purpose is to aid murderers, it should be stopped.
See the diff?
And remember, juries _do_ get to judge cases on what they personally believe is "fair". If the jury judges a defendant technically guilty under the law, but the law unfair, the jury can let the defendant off.
Hardly anybody knows this, and informing a jury of this right is often considered jury tampering.
www.fija.org
I think what is missing here is that the abortion opponents not only said doctors are bad because they are performing abortions and these are the doctors, but it also provided addresses to aid in the violence against doctors. It is one thing if someone puts out a violent video game where someone shoots somebody, but it is another if someone includes in that videogame the contact info of the person they encourage to be killed.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Okay, earlier today I posted in anger (gasp!) in reponse to some moron. I owe it to more levelheaded persons to do something reasonable as penance =)
The web site wasn't posting addresses of clinics and saying "go picket". It was posting addresses of the doctors (and I am told their family members also, and other abortion supporters/workers). No, they didn't specifically say "go kill these people", or it would have been a very short trial. But they said "pressure these people, and we don't mind if they get hurt, wink wink nudge nudge".
Mafia members who say the same about a person end up in jail when that person gets shot.
There is free speech, and there is assisting in murder. The question is: which one was that site? The first trial said murder, the second said speech. I personally hope the third trial overturns it, because people on those lists are being killed.
And either way, if the ruling is too harsh it sets a bad precident for freedom. If the web site gets off free, the mob rule wins. If they get fined into oblivion and censored, it becomes precedent for more censorship.
Either way, some things, whether you call it a life or not, will die. One way, adults will die also.
So, when can we be seeing a site listing the names and addresses of the people who maintained this thing and anyone who ever mirrored it? I wonder if that would make them feel a bit differently...
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I always thought that the litmus test for responsibility and free speech was exemplified by "yelling fire in a crowded theater".
You're not physically harming anyone, or telling people to trample one another, yet you are responsible for the consequences.
These people have done the same, yet they are not held responsible?
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
are stupid because they rely on security by obscurity, find out the number and you can do anything. credit cards should have a public and private key and use the private key to sign purchases and the public key to verify them, that way those lists will be that much harder to compile, since packet sniffers would be useless. (it'd also make sure that no one other that the store can watch your purchases.) Censorship of the vital data does not make a secure system.
"huhuhuhh, go away. we're like closed or something"
"Only Libertarians understand..." That's a bit presumtuios don't you think? I want it one way and that way is freedom for everyone. Don't ever speak for me. (I support the Green party)
"huhuhuhh, go away. we're like closed or something"
And as for your comment about the Rainbow Coallition, how are they not racist? Racism is a minor problem yet they constantly exhume the carcas of the dead horse of racism and beat it whenever they want more donations. How is it not racist to constantly be obsessed with race? I've known very few blacks they didn't overtly make race a dividing issue. I live in a rural area of Virginia now and I dated a non-white Hispanic girl for a while and no one made the fact that we were an interracial couple a big deal, in fact some of the farm boys that are often stereotyped as rednecks (they're not when you actually get to know them, god forbid!!) thought it was pretty cool cuz she was very attractive. If she and I could be together without a problem in such a part of the country, that is proof alone that racism is dead as an issue in mainstream America now!! Yet in the part of north carolina I lived in prior to moving here, my relationship with her would have been an issue and it was a VERY socially liberal part of coastal NC, Wilmington.
What you fail to see is that the political correctness that is promoted by the left is the ultimate censorship; it is a more palatable version of newspeak! I assume you've read 1984 so you know the reason why Newspeak was invented was to create a language in which one could not deviate from party doctrine in one's thoughts and words. By not protecting those things we despise such as the "Nuremburg Files" we give in more and more to political correctness. Eventually we will simply be referring to people who do stuff like that as "Ungoodthinkful nogoodniks." In the spirit of our society I say celebrate diversity, but not of race, etc.... diversity of thought. You want to celebrate diversity, celebrate the fact that we live in a society that is relatively tolerant of the very things it despises the most such as hate speech and pornography.
Read "On Prerogative" in the 2nd Treatise on Civil Government to understand why people such as myself (I'm a combination of classical liberal and objectivist) harbor no love for the left and its knee-jerk, reactionary approach to society's problems. The government is just about never the solution, it is almost inevitably the source of the problem, the heart of the crisis.
Before anyone flames me, understand that I understand you don't believe that the Nuremburg Files should be censored, but I don't completely support your reasons for why not. It isn't just about protecting the stuff you like, it is about protecting the speech you don't like because censorship of any kind is morally wrong in the most fundamental way. You hate the KKK's website, but David Duke may hate the Rainbow coallition. Which one of you should have the discretionary power to decide which is good and which is bad speech and thus should be censored? I say neither because "offensive" speech is in the eye of the beholder; it is not an absolute. I find the rainbow coallition, the nation of islam and al sharpton to be extremely racist and I'm sure they find me to be so because I oppose their racist schemes, but in the interests of maintaining a free civil society I could never in good conscience condone them being censored no matter how many kill whitey pamphlets and websites they make. So remember kiddiewinks, the first amendment was never created to protect popular speech because popular speech would be protected by the majority, the first amendment was created to protect exactly those things they majority despises so people would never have to fear being punished for daring to question society's norms and the status quo's values.
Can you feeeeel the irony? Come on - can you?
XML causes global warming.
so then you should have no problem with companies like double-click cross referencing thier databases to match your browsing habits to your home address and telephone number.= \=\=\=\=\
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The pro-choice lobby should put up a parody web site with the judges labelled as murderers (they after all are allowing people to encourage the murder of medical profesionals) along with thier home and work addresses. The best part is the judges can't do anything about it without reversing their ruling. See how they like it.
I guess the question is "Where is the line that constitutes conspiracy?". Although I think the whole concept of conspiring to commit a felony is ridiculous. I should be able to conspire all I want so long as I don't act on it.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Just to clarify, because it's easy to misread the message I'm replying to on a quick glance: The above quote is basically what the lawsuit implies, though I think they'd say (and to some extent I agree) that the responsibility is shared. The decision is basically reversing that and saying that the person committing an act is solely responsible, not the creator of material that might have provoked that action (note that "might").
I doubt that this would affect cases where there's clear evidence that said material provoked a crime - if I put up a site instructing people to commit a crime I'd expect to remain somewhat liable, just as I would if I promised some sort of reward (presumably any reward, personal, financial or spiritual). If this countered that, the there'd be no repercussions if someone (e.g. Matthew Hale, leader of the First Church of the Creator) put up a page saying "Go kill a Jew today for God" or if some disgruntled spouse put up a page saying "I'll give $10,000 to the first person who kills my husband/wife."
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
I think the second question there is what would get you into trouble - the first while objectionable is legal, the second is at best questionable. Heck, following your next question on identity theft is Forbes criminally liable along with the New York busboy who was impersonating people on it's "wealthiest people" list? After all, they provided the base information.
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
Can both sides at least agree to call each other by their chosen names, "pro-life" and "pro-choice"? I'm tired of all the name-calling and propaganda tactics.
I'd also like to remind everyone that the vast majority of people who are pro-life are as disgusted by these extremist acts of violence as the everyone else.
This is a tough issue, and we'll never all agree, but I let's at least be civilized about it.
Rich
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
While the web pages can list the names and adresses of the doctors that preform abortions, if the doctors asked to be removed the site MUST LEGALLY remove their names and addresses off the site. Failure to do so would be a lawsuite the site operators would lose. Also, sure these people/sites can LEGALLY celebrate when one of the doctors is hurt or killed from the list, it is obviously morally wrong to praise the death of anyone. (well.. except Jesus I suppose :)
My 2 cents.
For the record, I agree with the Court's decision today, though I disagree with the opinions and intent of the group involved. It was a tough call to make, and they didn't create a problem with future precedent.
A few other points...
As for the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" defense for limiting speech, I've often retorted with the fact that it's perfectly reasonable to yell fire if there is in fact a fire in the theater. Otherwise, you're responsible for your actions, and if you get thrown out of the theater it's your own damned fault.
As for the harassment issue by various groups, here's a personal anecdote:
My father worked in the airline industry for over thirty years. While I was in school, he was in management. Though he was in the customer service division, anytime there was a labor dispute with the mechanics or pilots or whomever, he would get targeted like everyone else in management. Car windows would get smashed, mailboxes torn down, phone calls all through the night, etc. The weirdest tactic was having multiple pizzas delivered to the house each day--didn't really bother us much, but hurt the pizza joints (we did set up an arrangement by which the only way to get a pizza delivered to our place was if they would call back to our home number and confirm the order).
These were cowardly acts of petty vandalism, and my father was not even in a position to make decisions based on the disagreements involved. The people who committed these acts were criminals, nothing more, nothing less.
Again, while I disagree with the opinions of the "alleged" union members and try to uphold the first (as well as the other first 9) amendment, vandalism is not free speech, and those persons responsible should have been caught and held liable for the damage caused. Free speech does not mean abdication of responsibility.
The same goes for these people... What they did was within the law, but they are individually responsible for whatever happens to them, even if it involves crowds of people setting up people protests outside their homes and ridiculing them for their stupidity. Likewise, there's a fine line between speech and actions... To twist a quote, "I may not agree with a word you say, but I don't have the right to beat you to death because of it."
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
Unfortunately, it seems that country is moving much closer to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant myth of God, and to no good end. Religion is largely responsible for much of the suffering in this world, including overpopulation.
When religion stops becoming an inner journey, and falls into the realms of social policy, then we get such treasures as the Taliban, Jerry Falwell, Iranian Ayatolas, etc.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
A lot of the comments are trying to claim that if information is freely available (like address), then it's fair game for it to be made available elsewhere. But sometimes context is important. A list of all residents of Chicago is different from a list of all doctors who perform abortions and need to be eliminated.
This is about posting a list of people whom one doesn't like,with their names, addresses, phone numbers and commuting habits. This is about solicitation to kill those people. Those doctors have been targeted for death by Jesus, and at least one is already dead. 'Nuff said.
The thing that I find most amusing about the site is the baner ads at the top of the pages. The site design makes it look like the ads are dripping blood! I don't know who the advertisers are, but I'm not sure if they know how they're ads are being displayed.
One should pause before making well-armed paranoids feel foolish, no matter how foolish they seem.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Historically, a useful trick for a political movement is to have two arms; the highly visible part that works through the political process, and the extremists who do the dirty work. There are endless examples; the U.S. Revolutionary War, the IRA, the union movement, the U.S. civil rights movement, the green movement, and now the anti-abortion movement. It's a tactic independent of ideology.
If the goon movements are secretly working with the lobbyists, it's a straightforward conspiracy case. But sometimes they really are independent. This is most likely where some strong ideology or religion is involved, one strong enough to motivate people to kill.
This may start a new kind of publicity war. The pro-abortion movement could retaliate by publishing the names and addresses of anti-abortion lobbyists. Unions may start publishing names, addresses, and pictures of CEOs they don't like. (The AFL-CIO already names names). Unclear where this leads. Probably to increased sales of armored cars, which are popular in countries with a strong anti-business faction.
Now I can resume my website that publishes the names and addresses of microsoft employees in hopes that it shall bring them to an early demise. MUAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
-gerbik
Its murder rate per capita is seven times that of France, where active practice of religion is virtually nonexistant.
So is the practice of personal hygiene (trust me -- I lived there for six years). I conclude that frequent showering induces violent crime. But then what of fundamentalist Islamic countries, which have lower murder rates than both France and the U.S?
the liberal centers of secular humanism such as Berkeley and New York City are shooting-free.
Now this statement simply cannot be taken seriously. New York City shooting-free?!
Hell, the school that was shot up in Santee, CA is one mile from the famous Institute for Creation Research.
And probably no more than six blocks from the nearest McDonald's. Keep that in mind next time your kid asks for a Big Mac.
even though if the Ten Commandments were hanging in Columbine the body count would have probably tripled. Teacher-led prayer was taken out of schools in the sixties, kiddo, you're a bit too late to blame school shootings on it.
Lost me here -- the Ten Commandments are responsible for school shootings even though they were removed from the schools nearly forty years ago? Kiddo, methinks you're a bit too late to blame school shootings on the 10Cs.
Ah, yes. Salem -- that greatest of all shibboleths. Killed -- lessee, what was it? ah, yes -- 18 people. Truly one of history's epic tragedies.
Not that I'm defending it, of course. It just strikes me as odd how often Salem crops up as a litmus test of just how evil Religion is, despite the fact that some of the fiercest contempory opposition to the trials came from the pulpits of the day.
Oh, and just which Inquisition did you have in mind? There were dozens, scattered across Europe and through the centuries and the body count of even the most widespread of them pales next to that of, say, American fast food.
Sorry, you can't be on both sides of the fence.
I have to disagree here. Claimants to the title "pro-choice" make a valid distinction: the issue is morality on the one hand vs. legality on the other. That is, while abortion may be morally wrong or undesirable, it should non-the-less remain legal.
As an analogy, consider lying. Most people would agree that lying is wrong, yet very few would support laws against spouting falsehoods (aside from the occasional specific, such as lying to a cop, or while under oath). I.e., lying is wrong, but it shouldn't be illegal. Substituting "abortion" for "lying" makes it clear that "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" are not at all mutually exclusive.
Note: I'm in your camp on the pro-life issue. I simply allow that "pro-choice" does not mean "pro-abortion".
Not a bad summary, but curiously you left out the very term which started this discussion: the prejudicial "anti-abortion rights", which occurs liberally throughout the short ABC story. Try as I might, I fail to understand the preferability of this term over the older "anti-abortion", "pro-choice" and "pro-life" terminology that has been traditionally proferred.
What concerns me here is not so much the direction of the bias (as a non-US resident the whole American abortion debate is of little relevance to me). I am simply disconcerted to see such loaded terminology employed by an article which otherwise styles itself as objective journalism.
Honestly, can anyone give me a good, objective reason for preferring "anti-abortion rights" to the more traditional "anti-abortion" label, flawed as it might be? In addition to being more loaded, it also carries the potential for confusion with the similar-sounding "abortion rights activist" phrase.
Any chance you've got an American Atheists card stuffed in your back pocket somewhere? 'cause you spout the party line pretty good. But this line was tired when Ms. O'Hair (wherever she's got to) started spouting it thirty years ago. It's just as meaningless today.
First, of course, is the problem of definition. What do you mean by "religion"? Just the "organized" religions? Any quasi-religious belief system? Throw in theosophy, Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand? And what do you mean by "caused"? Direct causation? Contributing factor? Or just "hanging about in the general vicinity"? And what do you mean by "anything else"? Do you really mean anything else?!
In the twentieth century alone, one might argue that Stalinism (which, last I checked was atheist) has been the one of the leading causes of violent death -- Stalin's purges alone account for at least 20 million bodies, though no one really knows for sure. Throw in Hitler's six million Jews (plus an equal number of other "undesirables"), and the all and sundry other deaths from the two World Wars, and I'm afraid religion has a long way to hoe just to heave itself into the top ten.
And if you really mean anything else, well, we might start comparing deaths from religion (once, that is, we've agreed on definitions; see above) with, say, deaths from cancer, or STDs, or alcohol, or famine and plague.
Are you sure you want to play this game?
Thankfully, most of the rest of the civilized world is moving away from it.
Unless you want to beg the question by defining "civilized world" as "that part of the world which is moving away from religion", I'm afraid this assertion doesn't bear close examination, either. In this very discussion are numerous posts celebrating (or bemoaning) the fact that church attendance in America is on the rise. Where I sit in Asia Buddhism remains vibrant, and hardly a day goes by that doesn't feature a Daoist procession outside my window. Islam continues to be the dominant and unifying factor in the Middle East and throughout large segments of southeast Asia. And worldwide the growth of Christianity continues to outpace the population explosion.
Unless by "civilized world" you meant "America". But there are many (myself included) who are tempted to deny the application of the word "civilized" to any society which practices capital punishment, features children massacring children, and is so brazenly proud of its ghoulish "right to bear arms".
Someday, with any luck, humanity will be free from its plague.
Yep, and we will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief when we're free of the Salvation Armies, the Red Crosses, the Mother Teresas, and the soup kitchens and drop-in shelters those damnable religious zealots keep trying to foist on us.
I can't remember the last time I've seen an atheist-run soup kitchen, or a Freedom from Religion drop in shelter. When these anti-religious types start putting their money where there mouths are, and start actually doing something to better humankind, rather than simply complaining about the evils of religion, maybe then I'll be a little less sceptical.
"Ad hominem" means "to the man" -- attacking the messenger instead of the message, which I did not do. You are right, however, that just saying it's tired doesn't make it so. Which is why I went on to explain in great detail why it was false.
simply having an atheist instigate it is not enough.... Hitler was Catholic
Whoa. Let's leave the goalposts in one place, shall we? We can't blame atheism for Stalin just because Stalin was atheist; however, World War II was all the pope's fault just because Hitler was Catholic. Yup -- works for me. Not.
the Holocaust had its roots in the 1500 year history of persecution of and hatred towards the Jews by the Christians.
The problem with your little theory is that half the victims of the Holocaust were non-Jews -- and mostly Catholic. In Poland alone three million Catholics were exterminated under the Nazi regime from September, 1939 through the end of the war. For nearly the first two years of its existence, Auschwitz was home exclusively to non-Jews (the first Jew died at Auswchitz in 1942 -- 21 months after it began operation); ultimately, more than 100,000 non-Jews were exterminated at Auswchitz alone.
It is true that nearly six million Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust. It is equally true that more than five million non-Jews lost their lives. The man who, on August 22, 1939, mustered his stormtroopers to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent" was a racist, not a religious bigot.
As far as causation, I mean people who were killed in the name of religion, or whose deaths were a result of religious teachings
Well, which is it? "Killed in the name of religion" is a fairly clear target, but "a result of religious teachings" is way too self-servingly ambiguous to be of practical use, as you proceed to demonstrate.
The two world wars put together still killed less people than the various Crusades did, IIRC.
Sorry, but YDNRC (You Do Not Recall Correctly). Or, rather, you do not seem to recall at all, at least to judge by the complete lack of effort you make to back up your claims with anything resembling fact or figure.
Numbers for the two world wars are easy enough to come by: the Great War, 8.5 million military and perhaps 6 million civilian; the Second, 55 million; if you throw in the 26 million who died in the Spanish Flu epidemic (which I'm sure you'll think of some way to blame on religion) that swept the world in the aftermath of WWI, the total stands in the vicinity 96 million.
As for the Crusades, numbers are nearly impossible to guess, but the great British historian Wertham estimates the casualties at approximately 1 million. Pitirim Sorokin, on the other hand, estimated that Europeans lost some 435,000 men on all battlefields between 900 and 1450.
Even if we accept Wertham's higher numbers for the Crusades, still the two world wars did not simply kill more people than the Crusades, they exceeded the Crusades by nearly two full orders of magnitude. In fact, while both world wars made Matthew White's list (see here) of "(Possibly) The Ten Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other" (at #8 and #1, respectively), the Crusades aren't even on the scope.
Care to try again?
And as to the "Inquisition", if we presume you mean the Spanish Inquisition (which is the one most of those who don't know any better have in mind), Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, estimated that 31,912 people were executed between 1480-1808. Historian Will Durant, on the other hand, lends his weight to much lower numbers, in the vicinity of 2,000 burned between 1480 and 1504, and another 2,000 between 1504 and 1758, for a total of 4,000 burnings during the 254-year span of the Spanish Inquisition, or a rate of less than two a month. I'd be willing to bet more people died from lightning strikes during that same period than from inquisitorial persecutions.
You might also want to more closely examine the rest of White's top ten list (see link, above); of the ten worst atrocities humans have ever committed, according to White, only one (the last one, in fact) could be considered religiously motivated. Stalin alone beats the Thirty Years' War by nearly 3-to-1.
And how many of those deaths was religion a contributing cause of?
I begin to wonder if you even know the meaning of the word "cause".
How many people have died because of religious opposition to research into the treatment of various STDs? How many people died of plagues in Europe because of the Church suppression of knowledge? ... How much of the famine over the years has been due to religious opposition to birth control, and encouragement of out-of-control breeding?
Yes, "how many" and "how much", indeed. Tell you what -- when you can provide me with something more than the idle machinations of an overactive imagination, we'll talk. Until then, all you've managed to do is bandy about some wild, half-baked speculations without attempting even a modicum of factual support. As you said yourself, simply saying something don't make it true.
The fact that he was Catholic means that his church had been teaching him for years that the Jews were evil.
and
Uh, dude? Being a racist doesn't mean you're not a religious bigot. Hitler was both.
and
Catholicism was one of the main instigators of the attempted extermination of the Jews.
and
they [the Jews] were *singled out because of their religion*
The fact that there is no evidence to support your theories normally would be fatal enough for your arguments. But you have a much bigger problem: Hitler's own words stand against you. In Mein Kampf Hitler lays out in great detail the nature of the "Jewish problem" and his solution, and also provides a brief autobiographical sketch of the development of his own ideas. Regarding this second point, in chapter three of Mein Kampf, entitled "Political Reflections Arising Out of My Sojourn in Vienna", Hitler discusses in some detail the experiences which shaped his attitudes, particularly vis a vis Jews, which he summarizes as follows:
Interestingly one looks high and low in vain for any mention of Catholic (or even religious) influence on that "stock of personal beliefs" Hitler has been describing. To the contrary, when Hitler does occasionally discuss the Catholic Church, he sees it exclusively in political terms, as an institution to be exploited.
Regarding the first point, in all his extensive discussions of the Jews, Hitler almost always views them in exclusively racial terms. The few times he does mention Jewish religion, it is only to denounce it as a subterfuge, a camouflage smoke screen to mask the Jew's true goal. Again, from chapter three:
In his discussions of the Christian-Socialist movement, Hitler had this to say:
In the discussion which follows, Hitler makes clear that he believes the great mistake of the Christian-Socialist movement was its reliance on a religiously-motivated anti-Semitism. He then describes why he believed such an approach was doomed to failure:
I.e., to escape religious persecution was simply a matter of popping into the local Church and getting oneself baptized as a Christian. Then, under the guise of this "conversion" the Jew was free to carry on his business while remain a Jew racially.
Far from being religiously anti-Semitic as you claim, Hitler specifically and in the strongest terms denounced religious anti-Semitism, calling it "superficial", "narrow-minded", "shilly-shally", and "ineffective". It was, Hitler said,
In contrast to the Christian-Socialist movement stood the other "great" movement of the day, the Pan-German Party. Whereas the Christian-Socialists had correctly grasped the need for a nationalist identity, and yet erred in their religious approach to anti-Semitism, in contrast, Hitler assessed the Pan-German Party in this way:
Herein, then, lay the bedrock of Hitler's nationalist movement: a fusing of Christian-Socialist nationalism with Pan-German racial anti-Semitism.
[re: Two world wars vs. the Crusades] Congratulations on one of the most impressive pieces of intellectual dishonesty I've seen lately! ... military and civilian casualties from all sides ... [vs] ONLY military casualties from ONE side of the war. Since I can't find any information on civilian casualties during the Crusades
And you won't, for two probable reasons: first, military casualties are hard enough to estimate, given the meager historical data available to us. Trying to guess civilian numbers would be an exercise in futile speculation. And second because, in all likelihood, civilian casualties were insignificant compared to the military toll. It wasn't until the era of modern warfare that war-waging began to take a significant toll on civilian populations. Thus, even if we had civilian numbers for the Crusades, they're not likely to significantly impact the numbers we've been bandying about.
let's compare military casualties. [WWI/II: 26.5 million; Crusades: 900,000] ? not even CLOSE to your alleged "couple orders of magnitude."
You're right. If we go with your numbers it comes out to more like "an order of magnitude times 3" (is that the same as saying "1.3 orders of magnitude"?). What was I thinking?!
[re: Death by Torture: Inquisitorial minds want to know. Estimates] ranged between 20 and 68 million. (Highball estimate was on a fundie christian website, incidentally. So you can skip your beloved "athiest fanatic" accusations on this one.)
In fact, I've seen estimates as high as 95 million. But fanaticism is fanaticism, be it atheist or Protestant fundamentalist (who, in case you aren't aware, are amongst the most rabid of all anti-Catholics). Either way, you can't mean you seriously give credence to any numbers that not only claim a death-by-Inquisition rate approaching four times that of two world wars combined, but actually exceed the total combined populations of all countries in which the inquisitions were active.
There were, in fact, three separate "inquisitions". The first, established in 1184 in southern France as a response to the Catharist heresy, was known as the Medieval Inquisition; it was phased out as Catharism disappeared. Quite separate was the Roman Inquisition, begun in 1542. It was the least active and most benign of the three variations. Separate again was the famed Spanish Inquisition, started in 1478 (or, as I had already noted, 1480, depending on which source you go with), a state institution used to identify conversos -- Jews and Moors (Muslims) who falsely "converted" to Christianity and secretly practiced their former religion. Its job was also, and more importantly, to clear the good name of many people who were falsely accused as being It was the Spanish Inquisition that had the worst record.
The History Channel occasionally re-airs a 1994 BBC/A&E production called "The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition", which takes a fresh and objective look at the most famous various inquisitions. The BBC production notes that documentary evidence exists for only between 3,000 and 5,000 deaths during the 350- (not 250- as I had previously claimed) year history of the Inquisition. While it is all but certain that more than that died at the hands of the Inquisition, any attempts to fix a number are pure speculation.
Doesn't work. The web site provided names and addresses of specific doctors, This could reasonably be counted as conspiracy as they did some of the leg work in planning an attack.
Anyway, the orriginal post irks me excessivly. This sort of "responsibility" rhetoric that claims that finding anyone but the "trigger man" guilty is (IMHO) actually counter to imposing real responsibility on people. Its reductionist thinking that holding one person or group responsible negates the responsibility of any other person. No one can rationally claim that a particular movie, video game or website "made" them commit a particular crime. But that doesn't mean that we can't assess the contributory impact of such media on crime. But black and white thinkers who have to send one person to hell and let the rest of the world off pure innocent have a hard time dealing with that.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Thanks, the post above your's hadn't made me want to vomit enough...
Its nice to know that the concept of not advocating murder and terrorism is now "politically correct". And just of today, even! Next time that someone calls me PC, I'll just ahve to say "Why thank you, no, I don't advocate sick twisted fucks advocating and celebrating the murder of healthcare providers..."
You guys need to seriously get some perspective. I can only hope this BS gets overturned in a higher court.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I love the fact that this was labled Your Rights Online. Yeah, your on line rights are doing fine. Your offline rights to provide or recieve reproductive health services just took a trip to the shitter. A bunch of kids' rights to go to school without being harrassed, threatened or hurt because of what their parents do for a living just got trashed. But hey, it's FREE SPEECH so everything's good....
The people who run this page are disgusting terrorist fucks, and they just got the green light to keep going. You'll excuse me if I don't feel any increase in freedom from that. As far as I'm concerned, my world just got a little less free. But you'd have to let go of two preconceptions to see why, and most /.ers are really attached to those.
...will work for Chick tracts...
maybe when you get into the 11th grade, you can move up to geometry!
seriously tho, your post doesn't make any sense. The attitude of the people who put up the "Nuremburg" site is "I want X" where X = to stop doctors from performing abortions by Z, where Z = killing the doctor. An additional feature of the site is that it can Y, where Y= help someone else find a doctor, so Y may then X.
It also provides a convenient meeting place for Y to get together and talk about X and Z as though they were behaviors acceptable to general society instead of psycopathic acts, and keep track of which doctors have already been X'd out so they can focus their Z efforts on other doctors.
To make an analogy to something in your realm of experience, this is kind of like a crack house, which provides a convenient place for people who want to smoke crack can go hang out.
What you are saying in your post is, in effect (i'm using SUBSTITUTION here) I'm ENTITLED to stop doctors from performing abortions by killing them, and if your free speech needs get in the way, you'd better watch out [!]
You must not have taken civics class yet, either. The reason for laws is to punish people who mess up society in an intolerable way. People like killers. The reason for the US constitution is to keep the federal government from assuming too much power. As demonstrated by the presidential usurpation, it has clearly failed. What this country really needs is a good healthy revolutionary war.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
or try
Pro-life = Anti-choice
Pro-choice = let me think for myself, asshole
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
there's an interesting article in this month's Scientific American, (sorry, they don't have the whole article available online) about how people who are extreme narcissists not only have unduly inflated self-esteem, but are more likely than the average Jane to lash out, physically and emotionally, at others when someone points out one of their flaws.
The authors almost go so far as to suggest that one of their test subjects is a psycopath.
Participated in any research studies lately?
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Can a bunch of dangerous weirdos like that can get so much political and judiciary backing.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
- Dick the Republican wants to place censorware in all public libraries. Of course he'd say he's doing this to protect children: that's his "clear link to real damage."
- Jane the Democrat wants laws restricting publications that advocate crime, or are perceived to advocate crime. Her "clear link to real damage" is protecting a women's right to choose and doctor's a right to live.
A freedom of speech argument won't work against these people because you don't have the same definitions of "legal speech." Each one will say "We want to protect free speech" but none will mean the same thing.To say that Liberatarians are superior just because you happen to agree with them is as naive and false as any other bigotry. To put it another way, you can't argue from your own definitions when your conclusion is based on those definitions. First you must agree about your terms.
Look, if you lived in a society where "abortion" was legal up until 12 years of age (permise of a brilliant Philip K. Dick story), or were suddenly transplanted there, would you feel morally justified in killing the doctors who killed 11-year-olds for a living? Sure you would. It's disgusting - no free society should have people legally employed in killing other human beings (leaving the death penalty out of this - that's another argument entirely). That's how anti-abortionists feel.
If you want to have a credible argument on any issue you must understand your own position, then you must understand your opponent's position.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
The US might have a lot of guns, but the reason we have more gun violence is that only the criminals carry guns. Look at Switzerland, every male over 18 is required by law to have an assault rifle in the house, and they have a really low crime rate. Many Swiss carry guns with them. In the US it's really rare. I live in one of the US States with a very liberal concealed carry law, but don't know anyone who carries a gun. Americans are violent because very few of us were brought up well, and because so many Americans live in poverty (thanks to the welfare system), and have broken homes.
About Manson: If I remember the movie correctly...he killed somebody out on a hippie commune and got busted for that. He also planned and assisted in the murders of Tate and her friends, and the LaBiancas(sp?), hence the conspiracy charge. I wonder if conspiracy to commit murder could be applied to the doctor killing site...probably not unless the DA could prove communication in both directions (like with an email to the webmaster).
"Anti-abortionists" who truely believe killing doctors is A-OK, but the abortions, themselves, are wrong.
It pales your "contridiction" in comparison, but I suppose that isn't important.
As America moves further and futher away from God
In reality you are wrong, according to Fox News, if they are to be beleived, Americans are becoming more religious, not less. More people are going to Church regularly and the number of people claiming to be Athiest is on the decline and has been for several years. Abortion clinic bombing and the assasination of doctors who proform them, simply shows us we are no more civilized than we were when the Great Reliions of the world brought us the Crusades, the Inquisitions and the Salem Witch hunts. Frankly the Christian Religion has been responsible for more murders throughout history than Abortion, Drugs, Pornography and Video Games combined.
As an after thought, I'd also like to point out that Jim Jones and David Keresh were both Christian, as well as all or most members of the KKK and the Neo Nazi movement. Humans will be Humans regardless of the presence of religion.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
The same can be said for Athiests, most are good people who live incredibly moral lives, even by the standards of any Christian church, by which I mean, they don't lie, cheat, steal, murder and rape. Like it or not hypocrites are the reason most of us left organized religion, and it is the hypocrites by which we judge organized religion.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
See title
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
That's right. Today in the Netherlands, 2 gay people official marry. Because here, real freedom is implemented. We have abortion clinics, the lowest amount of childbirths among teenagers in the world, and the lowest amount of anti-abortion fanatics.
Also, to the people who think abortion doctors kill babies: they don't. They remove cells from a body, like when you give blood at the hospital, or when your butt gets a liposuction. Think about the 30 million CHILDREN you kill every time you're wanking at night and the semen hits the sheets, or when your wife gets her period.
Abortion is only called abortion when the cells developed from the conception are not forming all basic human characteristics, thus before the 26th week.
Oh... and 'pro'-life, means 'in favor of' life. Doctors have also lifes. Think about that for a change.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Credit card numbers aren't normally part of any public record.
Your (residential) address usually is because you have to give that out to get a driver's license, and by extension the phone book that links the information makes that public info.
If your state happens to put identifiers up on the internet (sometimes for a fee - there are ads for publicdata.com or somesuch that play occasionally), you should move or not give out that information. Or get a private mailbox or PO box and voicemail number.
If I give out information, I cannot then claim it is private unless I as for nondisclosure in advance. Maybe that shouldn't be the state of things, and I would approve of any law designed to fix the situation.
Also, the plaintiffs in question were licensed professionals. Unless you want to argue against licensing (medicine or driving for that matter), which is one possibility, the information used to identify the license holder should be on the public record.
And what if they just linked to 411.com(?) or whatever other service would produce the exact same invasive data (consider 2600-DeCSS)?
I suspect the plaintiffs did little if anything to protect the information they were bothered about appearing on the defendant's site. Even if they did, once discovered (again like DeCSS), can they protect it? Where is the IP right in your address and phone number?
Actually this is probably the reason I didn't renew my Libertarian party membership.
Thought crimes.
Web censorship.
Excessive fines (8th ammendment issue).
Who cares? Not the LP. They go into a tizzy at even the mildest attempt to prevent children from being used for pornography on the internet and say write half the western hemisphere in protest.
This REAL case treading on all the same points that the Computer Decency Act and others with actual defendants found guilty didn't elecit even a peep.
Probably because they didn't like the speech that was being banned.
But the true test of (small-l) libertarian principles is to defend things you disagree with.
There are other cites (a site that incites) that are against doing anything with animals that involves removing them from nature, not to smoke (if you want to talk about harassment), not to drink (with or without driving).
You can personally feel that speech you disagree with is "yelling fire", but it isn't so, at least not legally which the actual text of the decision (which appeals to reason and not to emotion) covers in depth.
By the way, racism and tobacco are legal. Are sites suggesting that you should boycott tobacco by threating you with disease and racists to bew banned? (The cigarette analogy was from the decision as was one case cited by the court involved exactly this - the NAACP was doing a boycott and one of their members made a much more direct threat against those breaking the boycott - this was considered protected speech).
The moment the standard becomes anything less than a direct threat, we will have a speech guestapo worse than anything you can imagine.
And don't assume that the liberals and pro-abortion side will always be in power. The first ammendment is designed to transcend such times.
Otherwise after the political wind shifts, or even the regulatory structure, a site that explains how to do an abortion might be banned because it encourages practicing medicine without a license, or because it incites people to murder (after abortion becomes illegal again).
If this were 1971 (pre roe-v-wade) would you ban such pro-abortion sites? That is exactly the danger. When your speech would have been the "guestapo tactics".
Some would only learn the value of the broad first ammendment the hard way. When we have the reverse of the status quo that happens to be in their favor at the moment.
1) If you go to http://xxx.yyy.zzz/aaa.htm, you will find a link to DeCSS code, the Terrorist's Handbook and source code to a strong-encryption algorithm. We think this is cool, and everybody should go there.
2) If you go to 123 Anytown street, you will find an abortion doctor. We think this is not cool, and would cheer a lot if something just happened to this doctor.
The second one was just declared "okay." The first one, at various points in time, has been declared illegal. It's all free speech, folks. Some folks didn't tell you to download DeCSS or MP3's or whatever (just links or addresses), but got slapped with cease-and-desists and possibly fines anyhow. So is it suddenly okay for others to walk away scott free after not suggesting it would be cool to kill an abortion doctor??
Some information is malicious. You can dance rings around the law as OJ and other cases have proven, but that doesn't change intent. The plaintiffs in this case intended, or okay, at least applauded the killing of doctors. I hope none of you run religious groups, gun shops, pornography, political lobby groups, or any other controversial business/industry, because sooner or later somebody might get it in their head to applaud your killing. "But Darlok, that can't happen to me!!" Keep telling yourself that...
I'm all about free speech, I'm all about defending what you believe in, but what they did is no better that screaming "Fire" in a crowded room. People died because of it. So, get down off your Constitutional high-horse and look at what you're defending... the framers of the Constitution are turning in their graves like little rotisseries... *sheesh*
Notice: Your mouse has been moved. Windows will now restart so this change can take effect.
Would you feel the same way if you worked in a job where you felt threatened enough that you had taken steps to prevent your name and number from being in the phone book? If you knew there were people who advocated killing you because of what you do? How about if the people who put your name and home address on their web site had previously advocated murdering people in your line of work but didn't specifically mention it in this case?
The point is that in this case the people who put the names on the web site were harassers and terrorists. Some of them had been jailed for bombing clinics in the past, and many of them had previously advocated murdering abortion providers. Just because they didn't explicitly threaten or advocate violence on those web sites doesn't meant that they didn't advocate or even participate in violence in other forums. Can I avoid the law just by having two separate web sites that don't directly link to each other, one of which advocates murdering abortion providers and the other of which lists their names?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
You are incorrect. The Schenck v. United States decision in which Holmes used the "Fire in a Crowded Theater" metaphor was unanimous in support of restricting some speech. OTOH, the reqirement for restricting speech is quite high; the words must be "used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." IOW, they must be directly related to some wrong, that wrong must be something that the legislative body has a right to concern itself with, and they must create an immediate danger of that wrong. In the current case, it appears, the court has ruled that speech that is not a direct threat but only gives information that somebody interested in doing harm might use does not constitute an immediate danger and thus may not be restricted.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If the defendant can reasonably claim that the film he watched incited him to commit the act, and that hence he is not responsible, then he can reasonably claim to be innocent.
Argh, the crap we put up with in our society.
People should be held responsible for the things that they do. Nobody should be able to claim "but they said to do it!" You did it - noone else, and you didn't even stop to think why other people wern't doing it. Maybe people would be a little more eager to unhook themselves from thier propaganda nipple if they could be made to realize that they can never disavow responsibility for thier own actions. They may do it legally, they may lie, they may hide, but they will have to live with what they did for the rest of thier lives.
Nobody considers giving the Nazis any slack, despite the fact that most of them "just followed orders". They don't deserve any. The fool who follows is just as guilty as the fool who leads. You'd think that this and other authoritiarian cults throughout history would teach us that the "he dared me to" legal/social defense simply cannot be tolerated.
Tocqueville warned us a hundred and fifty years ago that individualism was the only virtue that could save democracy. We must rebut the idea that membership in a hivemind somehow clears your sins away, before it goes too far.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
The philosophical debate about moral responsibility regarding coherced actions is a reasonably long one.
My view on the matter:
If I'm in an evil army, and I have a gun, and my superior says, while pointing a gun at me, "Kill those villagers", then, while I am not the primary motive force behind the death of the villagers, I still hold some responsibility.
Not too much - my "commander" could just as easily killed them himself. He wants me to, probably so I'll crack and follow all of his orders in the future. I'd like to think that in this situation I'd die trying to kill the commander, but of course that's just a fantasy, an ideal, a hope. I might kill the villagers, or myself, or lock up completely and not do anything.
The important thing is, where did this evil army come from? Such a thing can not be built without many, many people knuckling in and obeying a malign collective. When the army exists, and I am conscriped into it, I have no choice except to obey or die. When the army is just beginning, when things are at thier beginning, the choice is to obey, or not to obey. The primary moral failings here happened long before I was placed in this situation, when people said things like, "Yes, Hitler's a bastard, but he's doing great things for the economy, so I'll back him.", and set the stage for me being in front of a bunch of villagers with a gun much later.
To prevent such things from happening, the "He told me to" defense must not be considered morally valid.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
No, i'm not confused: they are one and the same. If you're not against it, you're for it, legal or not.
:)
What a stupid thing to say. I'll assume your are being stubborn rather than dumb.
i'm sorry, i don't follow you. if someone promotes abortion, and i call them "pro-abortion", how is that incorrect? you see, i'm confused because these people do not in fact "work to protect a womans right", instead, they work at making abortions happen. big difference.
Correct. also irrelevant, since there is virtually no-one who actually PROMOTES abortion outside of China.
so, if i think that it's murder to kill a baby while it's in the womb, i'm automatically "anti-choice". man, orwell could have taken lessons from you.
No, not automatically. Once again you are confused. While in the womb, it's not yet a baby. The term is zygote or fetus depending on how many cells are currently involved. The use of the loaded term 'baby' to refer to a fetus is begging the question.
I assume you are intelligent enough to know that, and the mis-use of terms is deliberate.
This leads me to guess that you in fact anti-choice, although you havn't yet come right out and said so.
I can find out for sure if you will answer a simple question.
* Do you believe that abortion should be illegal under all circumstancs?
Bonus question:
* Do you believe that the death penalty should be an option?
Hint, if you answer yes to the bonus question, then you are not pro-life.
Have a nice day
tj
You're confused about the difference between promoting something and working to keep it legal.
You would be justified in calling someone who promoted abortion as pro-abortion. Just as you would incorrect to call someone who worked to defend a womans right to control her own body anything but pro-choice.
Sadly the bulk of people who call themselves pro-life are shown by their actions to really be anti-choice.
Ghandi and the pope are pro-life. But Dubya and his crowd aren't against killing. The are only against reproductive choice.
If this fact is correct, then I say to all you people yelling "terrorist" only one word: Dhuh!
How many people have to suffer a harsh punishment before "cruel and unusual" returns zero?
We call people who shoot other people over the abortion issue, "Pro-Choice" because they choose to take a life to solve a social problem.
How many people have to suffer a harsh punishment before "cruel and unusual" returns zero?
Jew haters suck and swallow.
How many people have to suffer a harsh punishment before "cruel and unusual" returns zero?
I don't know about the US, but certainly in the UK you can ask to be 'ex-directory'.
What if they were publishing the doctors' credit card numbers instead - would that still be protected as free speech ?
Now we can once again TALK about something and actually be covered by free speech instead of having to toe the line for the politically correct speech of the day.
I'm glad. If it were someone with a left wing agenda, this wouldn't have even gone to trial, that's what bothers me the most. I don't like extremists of any stripe but every one of them has the right to say what they want and have all the publishings they care to have.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
There were dozens, scattered across Europe and through the centuries and the body count of even the most widespread of them pales next to that of, say, American fast food.
Ah, but you really can't say fast food ever killed anyone. It's only been *one* of the causes in all the deaths attributable to it. You can't say that about someone who's been racked to death.
Furthermore, unlike American fast food, the inquistions were localized. Let's compare the death toll of the inquisitions in western Europe in, say, the 14th century with the number of people in the 20th century where American fast food was one of the first couple factors in their death. Which do YOU think is gonna be bigger? And the fast food today has a much larger number of people to act on.
Do you REALLY want to compare the number of deaths caused or excused by religion worldwide throughout history, or even in the last couple centuries, to the deaths attributable to some other factor?
Religion has caused more deaths than anything else in the entire history of the world. Thankfully, most of the rest of the civilized world is moving away from it. It's just the fucking Jesus freaks in the US who can't get over it. Someday, with any luck, humanity will be free from its plague.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Any chance you've got an American Atheists card stuffed in your back pocket somewhere? 'cause you spout the party line pretty good. But this line was tired when Ms. O'Hair (wherever she's got to) started spouting it thirty years ago. It's just as meaningless today.
Nice little ad hominem attack there. And just because it's you're tired of hearing it doesn't make it false.
First, of course, is the problem of definition. What do you mean by "religion"? Just the "organized" religions? Any quasi-religious belief system? Throw in theosophy, Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand? And what do you mean by "caused"? Direct causation? Contributing factor? Or just "hanging about in the general vicinity"? And what do you mean by "anything else"? Do you really mean anything else?!
In the twentieth century alone, one might argue that Stalinism (which, last I checked was atheist) has been the one of the leading causes of violent death -- Stalin's purges alone account for at least 20 million bodies, though no one really knows for sure. Throw in Hitler's six million Jews (plus an equal number of other "undesirables"), and the all and sundry other deaths from the two World Wars, and I'm afraid religion has a long way to hoe just to heave itself into the top ten.
I'm talking about organized religion, as you know perfectly well.
As far as causation, I mean people who were killed in the name of religion, or whose deaths were a result of religious teachings. Applying the same standard to atheism, most of Stalin's 20 million were not killed because of atheism; simply having an atheist instigate it is not enough. The current Chinese persecutions of religious people ARE caused by atheism.
The two world wars put together still killed less people than the various Crusades did, IIRC.
As for the Holocaust, Hitler was Catholic (thus had been taught by church leaders for years that the Jews were evil), and the Pope didn't exactly condemn the early persecutions. Furthermore, the Holocaust had its roots in the 1500 year history of persecution of and hatred towards the Jews by the Christians. Finally, how can you claim murdering people based on their religion can be lodged at any door other than religion?
And if you really mean anything else, well, we might start comparing deaths from religion (once, that is, we've agreed on definitions; see above) with, say, deaths from cancer, or STDs, or alcohol, or famine and plague.
And how many of those deaths was religion a contributing cause of? How many people have died because of religious opposition to research into the treatment of various STDs? How many people died of plagues in Europe because of the Church suppression of knowledge? (Example: Cats were agents of the devil and were spreading the plague, so they were killed en masse across Europe, instead of being kept around to kill the rats who actually were spreading the plague.) How much of the famine over the years has been due to religious opposition to birth control, and encouragement of out-of-control breeding?
Are you sure you want to play this game?
Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am.
Unless you want to beg the question by defining "civilized world" as "that part of the world which is moving away from religion", I'm afraid this assertion doesn't bear close examination, either.
*shrug* Ok, you're right; "civilized" was the wrong word there. Chalk it up to the standard Americentric upbringing. How about "post-industrial" instead?
Islam continues to be the dominant and unifying factor in the Middle East and throughout large segments of southeast Asia.
Islam a unifying factor? Ever heard of Sunni/Shiite violence? How about the various wars and terrorism directed against Isreal? (Israel happens to be part of the Middle East too, you know.) How about Hindu/Muslim violence? Unifying my ass.
I'll take your word for the situation in Asia.
Yep, and we will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief when we're free of the Salvation Armies, the Red Crosses, the Mother Teresas, and the soup kitchens and drop-in shelters those damnable religious zealots keep trying to foist on us.
Ah yes, every possible good in the world is the result of religion, no atheist has ever had a charitable thought.
Sounds like you're as fanatically closed-minded as you want to pretend I am.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
"Ad hominem" means "to the man" -- attacking the messenger instead of the message, which I did not do.
Funny, that snide little "Have your atheist card? cause you spout the party line pretty good" sure as hell didn't look like any kind of attack on my message to me.
Whoa. Let's leave the goalposts in one place, shall we? We can't blame atheism for Stalin just because Stalin was atheist; however, World War II was all the pope's fault just because Hitler was Catholic. Yup -- works for me. Not.
Cute. Quoting me out of context. Here, let me quote the next part of that:
"As for the Holocaust, Hitler was Catholic (thus had been taught by church leaders for years that the Jews were evil), "
The fact that he was Catholic means that his church had been teaching him for years that the Jews were evil. See how that works? Hitler's being Catholic actually has, like, relevance, ya know what I mean?
Additionally, I never said that the Pope was responsible for World War II. (Though his extensive support of of the Nazi and Fascist regimes didn't exactly prevent it.) What I said was that Catholicism was one of the main instigators of the attempted extermination of the Jews. Try responding to what I actually said, OK?
Well, which is it? "Killed in the name of religion" is a fairly clear target, but "a result of religious teachings" is way too self-servingly
ambiguous to be of practical use, as you proceed to demonstrate.
Really? I'd say it's pretty obvious. When an organized religion (Catholicism, for example) goes out of its way to prevent the dissemination
of information and proceeds to spread false information in its place, then I'd have to say that that religion is at fault for any deaths caused by this. I'd also have to say that when a religion says that an act is EVIL and should be punishable by death (homosexuality, for example), and then, following that teaching, someone (a group of rednecks with a pickup, say, or maybe a short guy with a bad mustache) proceeds to do what they've been told by their religious leaders, then maybe their religion is responsible?
It's actually pretty damn obvious (at least to people who don't practice fuzzy thinking, and aren't trying to confuse the issue) when religious
teachings caused death.
It is true that nearly six million Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust. It is equally true that more than five million non-Jews lost
their lives. The man who, on August 22, 1939, mustered his stormtroopers to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent" was a racist, not a religious bigot.
Uh, dude? Being a racist doesn't mean you're not a religious bigot. Hitler was both.
And yes, somewhat less than half the Holocaust's victims were non-Jews. However, somewhat more than half *were* Jews, and Jews did not make up anywhere near half of the population of the areas the Nazis deported people from. Instead, they were *singled out because of their religion* for
extermination. Homosexuals were singled out because they offended Hitler's religious sensibilities. The rest offended Hitler politically, or were unfortunate enough to be of the wrong race.
Numbers for the two world wars are easy enough to come by: the Great War, 8.5 million military and perhaps 6 million civilian; the Second, 55 million; if you throw in the 26 million who died in the Spanish Flu epidemic (which I'm sure you'll think of some way to blame on religion) that swept the world in the aftermath of WWI, the total stands in the vicinity 96 million.
As for the Crusades, numbers are nearly impossible to guess, but the great British historian Wertham estimates the casualties at approximately 1 million. Pitirim Sorokin, on the other hand, estimated that Europeans lost some 435,000 men on all battlefields between 900 and 1450.
Even if we accept Wertham's higher numbers for the Crusades, still the two world wars did not simply kill more people than the Crusades, they exceeded the Crusades by nearly two full orders of magnitude.
Congratulations on one of the most impressive pieces of intellectual dishonesty I've seen lately! One the one hand, you're including military and civilian casualties from all sides of the wars, as well as the people killed by a plague whose severity was made worse by a war. On the other side, you're including ONLY military casualties from ONE side of the war. Man, if there was an award, you'd be up for it.
Since I can't find any information on civilian casualties during the Crusades, let's compare military casualties.
WWI military casualties: 8.5 million
WWII military casualties: Approximately 18 million
Crusades military casulaties: Let's double your low-end one-side figure and go with 900,000.
So, yes, I was wrong. However, it's not even CLOSE to your alleged "couple orders of magnitude."
And as to the "Inquisition", if we presume you mean the Spanish Inquisition (which is the one most of those who don't know any better have
in mind), Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, estimated that 31,912 people were executed between 1480-1808. Historian Will Durant, on the other hand, lends his weight to much lower numbers, in the vicinity of 2,000 burned between 1480 and 1504, and another 2,000 between 1504 and 1758, for a total of 4,000 burnings during the
254-year span of the Spanish Inquisition, or a rate of less than two a month.
First off, as a matter of fact, I'm talking about ALL the inquisitions carried out in Europe, Western and Eastern, by Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Might try leaving out some of the unwarranted assumptions you've been making here. Second, the Inquisition didn't just confine itself to burning people to death (which is what Llorente's figure actually was as well; the number of burnings, not the number of deaths). A LOT of people died under torture, or were executed in other ways. Finally, by 1808 the Inquisition was no longer in such wonderful repute, and it would be in their best interests to fudge the numbers downwards. In short, you've misinterpreted both sources, and I don't trust one.
In addition, the Spanish Inquisition was active well before 1480.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to dig up aggregate number I trust; everything I found was biased in one direction or the other. They ranged between 20 and 68 million. (Highball estimate was on a fundie christian website, incidentally. So you can skip your beloved "athiest fanatic" accusations on this one.)
I begin to wonder if you even know the meaning of the word "cause".
Well whaddya know! Another contentless ad hominem attack!
Yes, "how many" and "how much", indeed. Tell you what -- when you can provide me with something more than the idle machinations of an overactive imagination, we'll talk. Until then, all you've managed to do is bandy about some wild, half-baked speculations without attempting even a modicum of factual support. As you said yourself, simply saying something don't make it true.
Uh, dude? That, like, wasn't the point here. You're pointing out things which you believe are unrelated to religion. I'm pointing out that religious teachings CAN AND HAVE made them worse than they would would have been without organized religion spewing crap, and that they are, therefore, at least as closely connected to religion as the Spanish Flu was to WWI. Exactly how much worse? Well, given that my alternate-dimension teleporter's on the fritz today, I really don't know.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
As much as I disagree with the reason for the web site and as much as I am pro-choice, I feel the judges are right....I would not want to be charged for anything because of actions of someone else based on my words.
Having my cake, but not eating it.
I suspect the plaintiffs did little if anything to protect the information they were bothered about appearing on the defendant's site. Even if they did, once discovered (again like DeCSS), can they protect it? Where is the IP right in your address and phone number?
This is bullshit. I know some doctors that are harassed by these assholes, and they DO try to protect their privacy. Almost all of them try to keep the information secret-- they know what the dangers are. It inevitably gets out, because they follow them home. They follow their neighbors home, too, and impersonate other people to try to find out more about the doctors.
Yes, it's all legally obtained. Just like a very long list of credit card numbers can be legally obtained. Is is legal to post them? Probably not, but I'm really not familiar with the reasoning the court would use to say so.
BUT, if 2600 links, not provides, but links to information that allows people to read their OWN DVD's on their OWN computers, possibly cutting into a corrupt organization's profits, that information is more dangerous than the threat of violence against doctors. And is not covered by the First Amendment.
This may be a bit of a flame, but the people who made that site deserve to be drug out in the street, shot, tarred, feathered, and forced to go to work in a place that may or may not be bombed that day. It's bullshit. Anti abortion 'activists' need to pull their heads outta their asses and grow the fsck up. End of Story.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
I agree totally about responsibility, but what happens when failure to follow the order results in your death? I know that in the US and most (all?) civilized countries, it's a soldier's responsibility to refuse to carry out an illegal order, and that would hold up if said soldier was put in a courtmartial for failure to follow an order, but do you really think that would hold up in Nazi germany? A soldier refusing to commit a "war crime" would be taken out and shot by their government without any doubt. You cannot FORCE a person to do the noble thing and sacrifice their life for another.
Sounds like a clear cut case of duress to me.
Disclaimer 1: I'm not in any way defending the actions of the Nazis, I think that Hitler was a sick fuck, but many people will commit illegal acts when there's a gun pointed at their head.
Disclaimer 2: I'm a Canadian, not an American.
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
I think you have some facts wrong about who voted for and against the Civil Rights Act.
The House passed the bill 289 to 124, where 80% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats voted yes.
The Senate passed the bill 73 to 27, where 21 Democrats and 6 Republicans voted no.
Who fillibustered the Senate for 14 hours against the passage of the bill?  That's right, it's the Democrate "white n*gger hater" Robert Byrd.
ugh, that made no sense - tried to say the filmmakers are innocent of any crime.
What I want to know is, did they catch the guys killing the doctors and bobming the clinics and if so, what happened to them?
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Um, no. But that isn't what the appeal judgement said. The guys who ran a website pointing out the Doctors who performed abortions do not have to pay $109 Mil because others who saw their website went and killed doctors. A court had originally said that they were guilty of inciting to violence, this appeal judgement overturned that. (from the way _I_ read it)
So to put it in your terms is that those who make a violent film and then members of the audience are inspired to go commit murder are innocent.
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
It's no myth. Here's one link. You can easily find others if you look.
The fact is, guns aside, America just has a more violent culture than most other industrialized nations. Guns don't make people into killers, and it is possible to have a society where there are lots of guns and little crime. America just isn't that place for some reason -- we should try to find out why.
Since when do pregancies occur only through unprotected sex? There is not one single way to have completely safe sex (same-sex relations aside), except for having NO sex. Should a couple that took every precaution be forced to raise or at least bear a child because of a roll of the dice?
What about people who want kids and cannot reasonably care for it? Should we force them to abort? Why not - its the same theorey
No, it's not the same theory at all. Being pro-choice is about not demanding that a woman bear a child. This is rather the exact opposite.
--
Dyolf Knip
Then you have not meet any real libertarians. Allow me to explain. First of all Holmes was writing in dissent on that case. Keep that in mind . It is in fact fine to yell fire in a crowded theatre if as a result people die and there was not a fire then yes you were in the wrong. Encouraging someone to kill only causes real damage if and when someone tries to kill or does in fact kill that person and it can be proven that the person who killed that person in fact had no reasonable alternative but to kill that person because you said to. The theory behind the fire thing is that if you yell fire then most people will not have the time or tools to figure out if you are right or not and therefore you will cause them to do bad things. This was more true in Holmes' day due to the fact that theatres were likely to be on fire at that time. The fact of the matter is to prove this one you would have to prove that by someone posting something on the internet and a average resonable person looking at it would they be compelled to run out and do what it says with no thought on their own. I and every other livertarian that I know understand this fact. Most of us spend a large amount of time in these conversations debunking the "fire myth". So now do you understand? If not please ask me a question. :)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You are right I was wrong. Thanks for the info.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Ok You are right. I've always heard that Holmes was in dissent. In any case you are also right that this case does not come anywhere near being a clear and present danger. Thanks for the info.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Ok so you think that just because some people have weak minds that the government should be allowed to control what we hear, see and say. Just throw think in there also. I'm sorry but even if there was a proven link between violence in the media and people doing bad things it would not be worth it to give up any freedom because of this. And yes the person is responsible for what they do. Otherwise all I have to do is have someone post a reply to this telling me to shoot you between the eyes and if I do so it is that persons fault because they incited me to do it :). Of course according to this it's all about the beer. And of course if you look at this and other stats like it during the 90s with all the violence in the media the crime rate has been going down. Let's see maybe crime has more to do with poverty and social justice and since the European countries in which crime is lower do a better job of taking care of the poor maybe that is the reason it is lower and not the censorship. I like the beer theory best myself. Now someone please tell me to go shoot this guy!
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
It is also important to note that Holmes was writing in dissent. It amazes me how many people do not know or ignore that fact.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
That would be wrong. Justice Holmes wrote that opnion in dissent. The law in fact is such that you do have the right to yell fire in a theater. You may want to look here and here to understand why.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Has anyone taken a look at the mirror that michael provided in the posting? They just skip right into it.
Arrrragh! Run away, run away!
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
All of it, apparently.
Who peed in your Wheaties this morning?
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Free speech only goes so far. I am all for free speech and expression in any form, but some of the other issues that the courts must decide on include:
It is illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. The only case I can remember is a 1950's case where the Supreme Court ruled that inciteful speech is still protected. The case (Tortechelli vs. Chicago? something like that but spelled correctly) involved a man (T) who was holding a anti-"everyone except for white anglo-saxon males" rally in a Chicago theater. After a major riot broke out ouside theater, the police arrested the man. The court found that his speech is still protected and that the police did not have the right to arrest him.
It is illegal to say, "I will kill you." If I actively say to your face that I hate you for whatever reason and say I am going to kill you, that speech is not protected under the 1st amendment. As you can see there is a fine line where this kind of speech crosses over. In this case, the judge decided that it the anti-abortion Web site was still on the Free Speech side and not the other.
If I post flagrantly incorrect information about you and you sue me (in a civil court), I cannot claim free speech because the speech is libel (slander is a verbal "lie"). The most famous case was a Hollywood actress who sued the National Enquirer for printed false information about her. The publication claimed freedom of speech, but the court ruled in favor of the actress. Note:this is a civil case, not a criminal one. There is nothing inherantly criminal about slander or libel that is contrary to the first amendment.
While the Supreme court often does rule in favor of the speaker in these cases, they must also weight into account the criteria above. I am sure there are even more subtler/obscure criteria that the court considers when ruling in a freedom of speech case.
For every nutcase redneck who promotes white power, there's a rainbow coalition website who would have been edged out by our republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.
I had to laugh at this. It's so wrong in so many ways.
Bingo Foo
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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Easy. They did it to please Dubya and help their careers.
Marvelous land you have there, where decrypting a digital disc is illegal but encouraging murder isn't.
So are you saying that a doctor that hasn't had any harm to him can sue for potential harm? Can I then sue you for some potential harm that might befall me because of something you said? If so, then I am suing you because of your obvious (to me of course) hate speech (coded in your message) might inspire some to go out an harm me.
Where do you draw the line? When you draw a line in the sand, it only is a starting point.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Both left leaning liberals and right wing conservatives want it both ways all the time. They want free speech when it suits them, and don't when it doesn't. Only Libertarians understand where the line should be drawn. If speech causes real damage and the link is clear between the damage and the speech cause, then there is a legal recourse.
This is the rational for not being able to yell "fire" in a crouded theater. The causal reaction to the speech is likely to cause real damage.
Now if we can only educate people as to why free speech should be defended even when they don't like the content. That would be real education.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If they really wanted to make these doctors suffer, why didn't they put their email addresses on the site. This would make sure they get tons of spam
That's not what this decision says at all. It says that if a person sees a violent film and then commits a violent acts, then the producers of the film are innocent.
-Poot
"The United States, despite its high murder rate, was among the middle ranking countries with a 21 percent victimization rate" (as opposed to 26% in England).
So for a start, the crime you need guns for (murder!) is *much* higher in the states than in the UK. I suspect reasons for higher victimisation rates in the UK being the much higher population density (people in cities get in a pub-brawl much more easily than someone living on a farm out in the country).
The chance to get shot is higher in the US than in other western country AFAIK. I will almost certainly not get shot here, cause even most criminals do *not* have guns.
And talking about switzerland as an example for guns is complete rubbish. People there have guns, because they are expected to serve in the army in the case of war, so they have army rifles! Not hand-guns you can buy from a supermarket. The reason crime is low in switzerland is essentially because Switzerland is rich! People who are well off don't commit crimes because they have a lot more to lose!
anyway, this is all completely off topic, but I get furious every time i hear this ridiculous argument about guns preventing crimes.
american indians? (also known as "native americans")
not to mention the civil war...
Where-ever you look, be it TV, Newspapers, the Radio, internet discussion groups, EVERYONE says that the US is full of liberals trying to bring the country to ruins. However, I have almost never read an even left-leaning opinion, nor have I seen any left-wing or liberal politicians. Gore, Clinton and the like might be classed as "less conservative than a few others" but that's about as far as I'd go!
There is no left in the US, so what is everybody whingeing about? It's just like the fact that the places where people hate foreigners most, are usually small villages where they haven't seen one in a long time! It's a safe thing to do to blame everything on someone that hardly exist, or at least is in a minority!
and just as obnoxious as the N-files themselves.
sulli
RTFJ.
That said, explicit threats are wrong and illegal. The court ruled that the authors of this web site did not cross the line from harassment to an illegal, specific threat on an individual's life:
If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict," Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. "But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment."
On the merits, anyway, this case is not about abortion at all - it's about death threats, for which the perpetrator is liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit. This web site did not constitute an illegal death threat. End of story.
sulli
RTFJ.
No, the above statement is not true. The perpetrators are not innocent. The plaintiffs claim, that the people, who encouraged the crimes and cheered upon completions are also responsible.
Of course not (well, I'll grant you the "in some instances" exception). And that's not what the plaintiffs argue.
Consider an example of someone hiring a killer. They are both guilty, but of different things. And the one hiring is usually punished more, but the killer is, without a doubt, guilty. -mi
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The sentence I quote from seems broken, but I think, I get the point.
It is not Ok to kill. Abortion is not murder. It is a medical procedure, not matter how much the fetus resembles a human being.
But if you insist, let me agree with you for a minute. It is a killing -- fine. Why is it so "poisoning"?
Many civilizations provided parents with full life-and-death power over their children. In Rome, the father owned his sons until death, or until a special legal procedure was completed -- performed in rare situations.
Our own civilization restricts the rights of young people tremendously:
- no voting
- no smoking
- no drinking
are the most common restrictions.In most contries children have to attend schools often against their will. Children are also frequently subjected to violence from their peers with very little protection from society (He punched you in the nose? Well, I'll talk to his parents!). Until you are older you can not fully own your property either.
This are all accepted limitations on rights based on the age of a person. It is also accepted, that parents wield significant power over their children.
So, what's so poisoning about limiting the right to live to those who are born already? (IMO, it should be limited further -- until the child is at least a few years old or until he/she is still breastfed, but birth is probably better a separator).
-mi
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Put it this was if you truly beleive that it is wrong then don't you think it would be dishonourable to say wooped de dooo when that person dies????
Just because you think that person was evil for what ever reason(doing abortions) that doesn't meant that he was an evil person. He just beleived in something that was wrong. And I think that it is wrong(my own opinion), that doesn't make every thing he does wrong. Maybe that person has children of his own that he looks after(oh my god maybe he didn't get an abortion) what about them having to grow up with out a father???
To be quite blunt you have his whole family to feal sorry for when that person dies too not just the person. Now do you think that those people who you cheer and say I'm glad the f%@!$%er is dead arn't going to be a little pissed off, or upset???
Now come on think about it. 2 Wrongs NEVER made a right sept when it comes to politics.
I don't really agree about abortion but "I" don't think that gives me a right to chear when a person who does is killed died or what ever. If you beleive that abortion is bad then your just as bad as the other person to be rid of a human being. Wheather or not its grown any.
What if I published your credit card numbers or social security number? Have I commited a crime if I never used that info for identity theft? What if someone else did?
My point is, not all speech is protected. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater is against the law. If I abuse you with 'fighting words' (following the Supreme Court's definition), you can legally beat my lights out.
Limitations do exist--its not 'all-or-nothing' as you would have us believe. My opinion in this particular case is that the court dropped the ball, and went with the letter of the law rather than the intent of the law.
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
What about the right to privacy of the people who were killed? What about how their rights were violated when some fucking son-of-a-bitch followed them to their house, wrote down their house number, and their liscence plate number? What concerns me here about this website is not that they were happy when ppl were killed, but that they must have followed people around and stalked them to procure such information, thus violating their right to privacy.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Then there's nothing stopping the doctors from publishing the same information about their own "trackers".
Maybe if they had their own little group of stalkers they might think twice.
I'm not suggesting return violence, but I'm sure these people would not like to have their personal details available to the public either.
A slighty political tv show here in Australia once displayed an international phone number of someone who has criminal charges waiting for them here whenever they return. He had been taking advantage of a lack of crossover laws to escape trial there, and in the process was wide open for harassment from within Australia, because there are no crossover laws.
While he probably just got a few phonecalls at 4am calling him an asshole, and they would hardly make him return to face criminal charges, he's made other people's lives difficult, and it gave them a chance to return the favour, personally.
Some forms of social protest aren't about results, they're about showing there is an objection.
As we discuss this, the US Senate is trying to restrict political free speech back to the level of 18th century type where you are free to stand on the streetcorner and give a speech (except you have to stay clear of abortion clinics and national party conventions). This is being done largely by Democrats plus the Manchurian Candidate.
Well, technically by the logic displayed in the courts, Charles Manson should be released from prison... After all, he never actually committed the murders he's known for, he simply 'encouraged' the members of his 'family' to perform them... Speech is speech, after all, whether written or spoken...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Isn't this *exactly* the same behaviour that gets kids thrown out of school and put on the six o'clock news? I think it is.
Yes you have every right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Yes you have every right to post peoples credit card numbers.
Yes you have every right to publish how to make bombs, politicians & doctors home addresses, etc.
Yes you have every right to say ANYTHING!
It's what the person DOES with that information that is punishable.
Mental Exercise:
Think about it this way: Let's say the speech is in French, & no-one can read french -- Is it still illegal?. Repeat for encrypted, repeat for private.
Note on Home Addresses: (if you're that popular you should have a security guard) Or for that matter, submit false information everywhere.
Note on Credit Card Numbers: DOH, WHY are those idiot credit card companies using such a heinously insecure method to transfer money?!?!
Come on, give me a credit card with a keypad on the front for a pin, & (while they're at it) a "current balance" display!
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
After all, if a website doesn't actually facilitate the crime, terroristic or not, as this judge has ruled, then putting DeCSS and links to DeCSS must be equally protected, since these sites aren't actually committing any crimes.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
That doesn't change the fact that the civil rights legislation was strongly supported by the Republicans in the House and Senate. To the point where they stopped a filibuster by the Democrats in the Senate. The original post falsely suggested that there were a lot of Republicans who voted against civil rights in the 60's.
Furthermore, just because someone couldn't get elected as a Republican in the south, it doesn't necessarily follow that they would have been Republicans if they had a choice. If that were true then both Robert Byrd and Al Gore, Sr. (both of whom voted against the bill) would have become Republicans later in life. No, they were Democrats by choice, not because they had to be in order to get elected.
republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's
Quite the racist aren't we? Not to mention uninformed. Check out the below link about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 along with the voting records. More Democrats voted against the bill than did Republicans.
http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.htmlTwo days later, the Senate passed the bill by a 73 to 27 roll call vote. Six Republicans and 21 Democrats held firm and voted against passage.
Didn't the European Union institute some pretty severe restrictions on the selling of personal information a few years ago?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Providing names and addresses and womb parasite removers is a tool to facilitate these actions.
So humans are parasites? Well you may have that point in some cases, but you'd probably question the lable if it were applied to you personally. And tools are in-animate objects, how is the tool to blame for the use? Should we ban wrenches because they can be used to kill instead of fix things?
One's a tool to perfectly good program that will let you view your own DVDs on your own computer, the other is a tool and encouragement for illegal action.
If it were a website that had the names of kkk members instead of abortion doctors, does that make it any more legal? What if the intent was to make this knowledge public so that peaceful demonstrations could be arranged at locations such as near homes or in front of the place of work? Or should we disband the civil liberties union because the same information about who is for or against a certain law restricting free speech or advocating access control could just as easily be used for an illegal action as well as a legal and justly moral one?
My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?"
The websites that you're worried about:
1. ...are not condoning a violent act against a particular person. As any karma whore knows, recognition on the internet on a widespread basis can be its own reward.
2. ...are not facilitating this act by publishing specific names. Even the Klu Klux Klan has the decency to keep their hatred generalized (well, for the most part) and not cross off names of lynched blacks on a list for all to see.
3. ...are using violence as an artistic tool, either for entertainment, aesthetic or ironic purposes. In no way can one argue that because I write an exciting story where bad guys get killed, that I want you to find people in real life whose names match the names of my characters and kill them using methods that match my story. If we're going to hold art accountable for the violence of humanity then someone better start a war crimes trial for the Illiad.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
> Why is it that the debate of abortion is always
...and show that you're no better than them. A really good plan to perpetuate that cycle.
> turned into a religious thing, or a "Pro Choice"
> thing. It's all bullshit! It has nothing to do
> with religion (to the non-religious), or choice
> (just as much as the right to murder is about
> choice).
I can agree with the point, if not the wording, so far.
> What it boils down to is whether or not an
> unborn baby is a living human being that has a
> right to live.
Still with you.
> The obvious answer is yes. Fairly early on in
> pregnancy the baby has measurable brainwaves, a
> beating heart, etc. It even appears to be aware
> of itself. When it's killed it struggles and kicks.
Well, here you lose me. It's only obvious to those who have made the decision, and then justify it by what means are most convenient. One of the larger definitions that people on both sides of the issue tend to avoid is "self-sustaining." Can the fetus live without being in utero? Most definitions of life (scientific definitions, at least) require this at some level. Side note to the "coma victims and Christopher Reeve don't fit this definition" team: in virtually all cases that people have presented to me to support this, their example was at one time self-sufficient, and then through accident or illness lost it. By scientific definition, external or environmental damage that doesn't affect all members of a class don't change the definition. Thus, "can't live without water" can be ignored in the self-sufficiency argument, but "can't breathe without a respirator" qualifies.
> The way I see it, an unborn baby has as much
> right to live as you or I. Some people say that
> a mother has the right to stop something from
> growing inside her body. Bullshit, the baby
> didn't choose to be there, it's there because
> the stupid bitch/asshole wasn't responsible
> enough to use birth control. Abortion is the
> absolute epitome of the irresponsible nature of
> our society today.
Wow, an opinion, a factual error, and a social commentary, all in one. I'll skip the opinion, except to add "...or the doctors listed on this website" to the end of the first sentence. As to factual inconsistency, are you saying that birth control never fails? What if the bitch/asshole was responsible, but the condom leaked? Keep in mind that "the person is responsible for carrying the baby to term if the chosen cotraception fails" is either a religious issue (which you contraindicated in your discussion from the beginning) or a logic failure (if the person's responsible enough to try to prevent the pregnancy to begin with, and it doesn't work, logically she should then terminate the pregnancy as an effective second-line responsible action). Lastly, your argument about what abortion is assumes that all abortions are the result of lazy people taking the easy way out of pregnancy. Since you seek to prevent all abortions, your argument fails in cases where abortion isn't the lazy way out.
> With my (admittedly arrogant) opinion out of the
> way, I disagree with the decision.
Actually, your opinion isn't really arrogant. Arrogance means you think you're great. You argument is egocentric, which means you argue from personal experience, even when it's not appropriate to do so, and that you cannot get outside yourself (or consider it unimportant to do so) to better understand the opposing viewpoint.
> These people were encouraging others to kill
> these doctors. That's not free speech any more
> than hiring a hitman is.
Most certainly it is. To say that " want you dead" equals "I'm going to have you killed" is to make thinking about a crime a criminal act. Thoughtcrime is something I like to read about in satirical novels, not the newspaper.
> They have shown that they are no better than
> their enemies. I say make a website and
> encourage people to kill them...
Virg
Well, he's only on that slope because of inaccurate definition. I disagree with both of you; him for trying to define humanity by the ability to do "good" or "evil" (which are subjectively defined to begin with) and you for arguing based on the same.
I've always tried to define the issue by detemining what makes a human, well, human. By scientific definition (which is the only point I can argue without degenrating into religious or moral opinion), we've got the following:
Self Awareness. Is the fetus aware of itself and its surroundings? This is not a simple term, but there are expected norms for it, and a late term fetus exhibits most of the characteristics, while embryos (first trimester) mostly don't. Point conceded on late term fetuses.
Self Sufficiency. Can the fetus live without being in utero? In the last trimester, mostly that's a "yes", but before that, a strong "maybe" and the closer you get to the fourth month, the stronger the "no", so, again, I concede the point for last-trimester fetuses. As a side note, your argument about paraplegics isn't a valid argument, since virtually all paraplegics were at one point self-sufficient, and external or environmental damage that doesn't affect all members of a class are ignored for the argument. As I've stated before, "can't live without water" isn't a good argument against self-sufficiency, but "can't breathe without a respirator" counts (most of us don't need such things), and since (for example) Christopher Reeve could at one point breathe on his own, his loss is scientifically considered an anomaly.
That's just about it for science. The whole argument of soul is outside the scope of science, and so any such arguments must be made from a religious (or at least philosophical) point of view. Since this country is based on freedom of religion, I'd have to say that, except in cases where termination of the pregnancy would result in a medically viable child, it's got to fall to the mother to decide, and that's the central tenet of pro-choice.
The short form is that since you and I likely do not agree on whether the fetus can be considered separate from the mother (and when), you and I aren't going to be able to agree on whether it's right or wrong to terminate the pregnancy.
Virg
> New moderations are needed:
> -1, Self-indulgent
> -1, Self-rightous
> -1, WHAT???
> -1, didn't read the story
And, of course, -1, Can't Use a Spell-Checker.
This should all be taken with a grin, as I fully agree with you on this post, except for the last one. Take note, his statement was, "What this lawsuit says is that people who see a violent film and then commit a violent act are innocent", and this is what the lawsuit said. It's the overturning on appeal that the original article mentioned, so (perhaps accidentally) he didn't make a factual error.
Virg
> ...a page saying "I'll give $10,000 to the first person who kills my husband/wife."
And how much for the second person that kills them?
Virg
OK. Let's try this to see if "Help others find doctors" != "killing the doctor".
Hi there! Death is bad. Nobody wants to be killed. I've discovered something. People with blue heads overwhelmingly explode on their 20th birthday. It's a documented fact. Here's a list of testimonials. (insert links here) When these blue-headed people explode, they usually kill everyone in their vicinity. This is awful. I've discovered a little known fact. If you cut off the blue head before they're 20, it never explodes. What a service to all of those poor innocent bystanders! Hey, here's a list of people with blue heads. Have a nice day!
Now comes the time when you tell me that this isn't going to cause people to draw the obvious conclusion, right? Well, here's the secret. You know to what I refer when I say, "the obvious conclusion", don't you? Quod erat demonstrandum.
Virg
> One aside: eugenics was not soley focused on physical,
> but also on racial and IQ characteristics as well.
(Said with a large grin) Racial, but not physical? I confess, though that I didn't know about the IQ part, but since that's also very subjective, it's just as easy to reject.
> As a fundamentalist Christian, I agree also that
> many of my brothers and sisters are too quick to
> rush to conclusions, and to retreat into
> 'just-so' acceptance of the world around us.
> Thankfully, there are very exciting movements in
> the Christian fundamentalist movement towards
> education and dialogue.
A short while ago, I would have thought that "education and dialogue" and "fundamentalist" were contradictory terms, but of late I have made an effort to have intelligent discourse with some of my more fundamentalist acquaintances and co-workers, and I've discovered (as evidenced in this case, thanks to you) that a little civility goes a long way, and I've learned a lot about "the other side", which helps me understand my own argument better.
There is one thing that I have noticed in all of the back-and-forth that happened over this topic on Slashdot. I've discovered that any disucssion that involves such a highly polarized subject tends to turn toward a discussion (or fight) about the subject. This discussion was about an anti-abortion web site's being shut down or not, and most of the discussions I had (or saw) were about whether abortion is right or wrong, which is really tangential to the subject matter.
Virg
Way to go Slashdot community, you slashdotted the inciteful anti-abortionists, right on.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
Are you serious? You think if someone supports abortion, that they are murderers? That has to be one of the most immature/biased statements I have ever read in my life. So, I say abortion is Ok. Does that mean I should go to prison? Maybe just parole? Perhaps if I converted to your religion, I could be forgiven and no longer be termed a 'murderer'. oooooooh. Whatever.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
This lawsuit does not say that "people that commit a violent crime after watching a violent movie are innocent". It simply says that whoever produces the violent movie has absolutely no responsibility over any actions committed by the movie audience. This, IMHO, is the correct approach to the issue. If you happen to dislike someone so much, say... Drew Carey, and put up a website or make a documentary where you show a brutally violent scene of you beating 'Drew Carey' to hell and back, and some idiot goes and does just that, is it now your fault that Drew Carey got his ass kicked?
Freedom of speech goes both ways, whether you like it or not. Censorship is not 'right' when it's used to curb messages that may not be particularly pleasing to your sensitive self.
And regarding Europe, did you actually spend any time in a European country? I was born in Europe, try to stay informed about events in my country, and I can tell you that a lot of european countries are as fucked up as the US in some respects (namely drugs, drunk driving, racism, etc). Simply because our media doesn't cover these issues doesn't mean they do not exist over there.
Now, with all due respect, instead of trying to sound sanctimonious and trying to whore up those karma points, get your shit straight.
Regards,
Swift
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Logic 101: correlation is not causation
Actually there have been quite a few psychology lab expiriments that study whether violent movies would invoke violent acts. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find out relatively conclusive answer because people with different agendas would provide biased information, either intentionally or unintentionally. (There was a large government funded research/inquiry on TV/Movies violence and impact on people in late 60s/early 70s. Those interested should be able to find it out.)
I believe the scientific consensus is that violent movies/tv images would invoke violent acts to certain extent. Actually children are most easily impacted, followed by teenage male.
Now different countries have very different social situations. So it is really hard to compare two countries or use one country to evaluate another.
Take an trivial example, say last forty years many children who are now adult/teenagers watched many hours of TV. So they have been exposed to violence frequently. As a result, if some of them now go to see violent movies frequently, then they would be more likely to commit violent crimes.
Now what about South Africa? Perhaps not many children watch TV daily. But there may be other factors. Becuase i am not familiar with South Africa, my remote guess is maybe gang problems? No matter what reasons are, it is not directly related to US. Certainly it does not imply US violence problems are caused by their problems rather than TV/movies violence.
Actually what have i said?? Most of us are not sociologists or psychologists. I read some of the stuff i wrote from a psychology book. What should be done should depend on what is the case, not the other way around.
For fun. Actually why Logic 101 (not Logic ABC)? Because for people to become logical they have to go to college? What about highschool? I was borned in Hong Kong. I think it is their weakness that they do not focus enough on logical or independent argument/debating/thinking skills. I really hope that education in US (or Canada) is much better.
Ricky
TV
I am not sure. But TV violence may be more influencial because there are more children watching TV than watching movie.
Hi,
Nice to see you here. I really appreciate your courage.
I might add that it is very difficult to rationally argue the abortion issue nowadays. For sure for both side of pro-life and pro-choice there are people who genuinely care about life or choice of others. On the other hand there are people who either argue for argument sake or in real life they do nothing to support people in need. (pregnant people, orphans, those who are oppressed i.e. denied choice/freedom,etc.)
I assume here strictly speaking both of us are protestants. Here i think Catholic Church is far better than us in recent years. Know what, i think may be the best thing Christians should do are to do more social work. Help our neighbour. Help those who are pregnant, expecially young people. Help to set up orphanages and financially support them. (yeah, it is hard. Need to be monitored closely because that's the righteous thing and also because of scrutiny from society)
I am not saying we are logically inadequate and we should now appeal to emotion. Nor am i saying that church mandate is solely for social work. Just thinking this is how Jesus want us to live in the world.
Ricky
the key here is that it is speech. Regardless of what our opinion of their methods they are voicing their opinion. They also were not publishing anything which could not be lawfully obtained. Heck, some search engines returned personal information about me I did not know was available.
...
the same speech which protects these people also protects those out there who would stand up to corporate abuses. This can be used as case-law to allow for "environmental whacko sites" that list the home address of corporate CEOs of companies that are notorious for abuse.
It can also be used to list rapists and murderers that are free in society
So where do you draw the line? Freedom of speech only works when its the same rules for everyone. What one person considers harmless another will find a way to make it seem threatening.
* and yes, their "tactics" were scary - but they did not espouse killing anyone. They simply listed people akin to what other events they considered atrocities.
* I would think that a eco-group could legally do the same for company officers of corps which kill the environment daily.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When I attended UT, I had dinner from time to time with an Iranian exchange student who couldn't beleive that Americans got away with so much in the way of criticising our leaders and the rich and powerful. I had to explain to him the difference between a threat and criticism, but he still couldn't beleive how liberal we were and how public we could be with our speech.
He did see, however, how important it was for us to keep hold of these freedoms, even if it meant sacrificing some safety. (I'm certain that the abortion doctors don't agree with me, but...)
For every Klan site and every kill the abortion doctor site, there's a cryptome.org or a peacefire.org who couldn't function without basic freedom of speech laws. For every nutcase redneck who promotes white power, there's a rainbow coalition website who would have been edged out by our republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.
It is important to watch for threats and illegal behavior, but to be truly fair, free speech decisions must almost always come down in favor of the speaker.
These words are as true today as they were 50, 100 and 200 years ago: 'If it doesn't work for everybody, it doesn't work for anybody.'
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Doubtless. On the other hand, I can also guarantee that the vast majority of persons in the US can be "linked" to said slanderers (in the sense of there being a short path from the one to the other) for the appropriate choice of social relation. This is one problem with the "guilt-by-association" argument: with a distance of only a few hops, virtually anyone can be tied to a very large number of persons. Since most people seem to underestimate the extent to which this is true, such connections can seem like a very impressive indication of guilt (or, at least, suspicious behavior) to the uninitiated.
Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't a closer connection between those posting doctors' names and addresses on web sites and those gunning them down in cold blood. Just be careful in using relationship chains per se as evidence of complicity*....
-Carter
* And, if you're actually participating in a conspiracy, make sure your position has a low betweenness score. ;-) (IIRC, based on some work by Baker and Faulkner some years back.)
We in Europe get the idea that in the US it's mostly drug dealing, people running around with guns, schools shootings and money and lawyers deciding everything.
Ah, and don't forget kids and innocents fried on the electric chair....
By comparing with what you say I'd guess that things must not be very different between Europe and the USA, it's (as usual) the media publishing only the shocking news and forgetting about all the rest.... Wherever you look, most of the citizens are honest workers, but it's always the killers who get the press coverage.....
I just hope that now this decision is here, people will realize that their own actions are their own fault and not the fault of those who gave them the idea. Yeah, the idea of that site is sick, the idea of telling people (however covertly or overtly you do it) to kill/hurt/mame others isn't cool, but there's nothing wrong with giving people ideas.
Now if this same logic would just be used by Judges/Jurries hearing cases about Jonny shooting his teacher because Doom made it seem fun to watch people die and shit like that, good would come from this no matter how you look at it.
You do what you want, nobody will ever change that.
terradot, growing awareness
umm, I think you read the decision backwards...
terradot, growing awareness
actually, they got him on conspiracy didn't they? It's all well and good to talk about doing things, tell other people they should do things, but the second you and/or they do one action to further the conspiracy (say I buy some ski masks after we talk about robbing a bank), that's when you're gonna be in trouble...thus, if Manson and/or his followers didn't do anything but talk about it, they'd be in the clear.
terradot, growing awareness
The way to counter "offensive" speech is not less speech, but more.
well, it looks like all the view points I had have come and gone. Except this whole thing about "Privacy". Where do we draw the line for private people, and non-private people. Where do we draw the line between "Parody" and "Libel". One way I think it would be possible would be if the person has become a public citizen due to being an expert or comentator on a subject, or commit a crime.
Example:
I am a sports hero, and a comentator on television. I kill my wife. I am tried it a public arena, as with the laws of the land. I am found innocent of charges, yet libel for her death. People publish my home, phone, and location to where I sleep in my house. I am listed as someone who bought my innocence. I am therefore a public person.
Another one:
I am an abortion doctor. I have never given an interview, written a report in a journal, or done anything except do my job. Someone follows me home from my practice, and procedes to get my home address. A bit more research, and they find my phone number though pokeing around in my files at work. They give the information to a website such as Nuremburg Files. Is this fair to me, my children, while according to the current laws of the land, I have done nothing wrong. I just did my job. This is now legal.
What I want to know is if the privacy rulling also apply to the other residences in the house?
And before anyone flames me, or mods me down, just think of what Bill Hicks said about abortion:
"Nothing has polarized this country like abortion. Even my friends who are all intelegent, are devided. Some of them think that these Pro-life Wako's are annoying idiots. Others think of them as evil f**ks. Can't we all just think of them as evil annoying idiot fucks? I mean Pro-lifers killing doctors. Is it just me, or doesn't anyone see abit of irony here?"
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
You speak as though responsibility is finite in quantity, as though it has to be divvied up among those who share it. If the person who committed an act of violence was in some way driven towards that act by an outside party, he is no less responsible, but that outside party played a part as well. Just because we might say that they "share" the blame does not mean that you divide it up between them, or that one is suddenly innocent because another bears some measure of guilt for their role.
Granted, the person committing the act was already predisposed towards doing it, and might have done it anyways no matter what. But I really cannot believe for a second that pointing out abortion clinic doctors as targets and rewarding violent behavior towards them would have no impact whatsoever. Simple cause and effect...and doing something is a cause.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
If they allow this rulling to stand Renquist, Thomas and Scalia can expect to see Web sites that target them in the same manner, home addresses, car license plates, home telephone numbers, movement details etc.
The anti-aboritionists behind the site were clearly intending to incite murder, it was a hit list of their opponents. Gathering and making available that type of material has on numerous occasions been considered conspiracy to murder.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I would, but for lack of time/no webserver. And Geocities sucks. Send the judges nice little emails pointing to it. Lets see their reaction!!
C Pungent
There was a similar post above about this.
C Pungent
Let's now go somewhere else with this thread... what if they gave addresses to people in the witness relocation program, since they disagreed with some the principle of testimonial immunity? After all, all you're doing is telling citizens if they have a known criminal in their neighborhood, one whose background has been covered up by the Government...such material could be used for harm, but is there any connection between the two? What if you have sworn testimony showing that you never wanted said witnesses killed, but were rather using this as a political tool to force said witness to pay his time in jail? Then you have a case where even intent is non-malicious, but the end result isn't.... it would be damaging to the Government law enforcement system, but such is the price of free speech, eh? All it takes is for someone to find and publish such a list...
I dunno... maybe the logical thing to do is declare all abortion doctors' home addresses and numbers to be national secrets... then you can imprison nutcases like this for releasing state secrets, as they would probably do in the above scenario...
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
-----
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
-1, Self-indulgent
-1, Self-rightous
-1, WHAT???
-1, didn't read the story
I say this only because all four apply in this situation.
What the hell is this shit?
Ah yes, European citizens don't kill each other -- but in the last 100 years, their governments killed tens of millions. (I'll restrict this discussion to western Europe, since the Balkans is just too easy...) The British are still carrying on a colonial war in Northern Ireland. The French only gave up on colonial wars when they got their rears whipped everywhere from Vietnam to Algeria. The Germans and Italians had a worse colonial record than the Brits and French, until their colonies were taken away...
I think I prefer the American tradition of small-scale non-governmental violence.
Let's say I want someone dead, I put his name up on a website, one that's known to perhaps bestowe gifts of cash upon the one who just happens to make that person dead. Same shit. This can't be allowed. Next thing you know your geeky little friends who everyone thinks are gonna go on a shooting spree in your school are gonna be listed in a big database on the web. So much for privacy right? But hey, it's free speech for doubleclick to give out your private info, right?
Also, back in the 30' and 40', your Swiss parent would take you out to learn how to shoot your gun. The Swiss were know to be some of the best sharp shooters in the world at that time. Most German generals during WWII were not very keen on taking on the Swiss because they felt that the death tool was going to be to high and would lower moral.
The Swiss were expert marksmen and could hit moving targets at distances greater than 100 meters and the children were taught the same skills.
It was understood that the Swiss would kill 5 to 7 german personel before the troops would get into position. ( an if I was swiss I would make sure that my first kill would be an officer )
ONEPOINT
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
The topic of money trasaction between the Swiss and other countries is well documented. The Swiss held regular meeting inwhich the Nazi and USA would establish the value of gold to respect to their currency. The meeting were held monthly all during the war.
It was simular to OPEC's meetings that happen when Iraq and Iran were at war. Oil outputs were established even thou those 2 parties were at war.
Nazi's only moved there assets to the Swiss Banks in the later years of the war... 1943 and onwards. That was a move to protect what little funds they could try to keep after their defeat.
ONEPOINT
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
This is not a terrorism for hate speech transaction.
Welcome to the Bush era. In the new, monopolies 'R' us, if you don't smoke your cigarette you won't get any dessert class-war environment, we should see a return in the near future of anti-bashing legislation. You know, the sort of law that got Oprah in trouble with the Texas Cattlemen's Assn.
Soon you won't be able to talk down the pollution and cancer associated with petroleum products, but if you're a professional defamer and you happen to convince an unstable fundamentalist Militia rat to put a few rounds into the local Ob/Gyn, well, hey, you're good.
--Blair
Unrelated?
Seems like if you apply a few degrees of Kevin Bacon to it I bet you would find that the people doing the shooting are not all that unrelated with the people doing the slandering and intimidating.
So now it's okay for, say, November 17 to come into the US and incorporate a 501(c)(3) front that recruits members for November 17 as long as it says "kill them with kindness" in the title?
There's a lot of bad craziness in this ruling. They reach back to a left-wing supportive ruling with at least as much bad craziness in it in order to support this instance of courtly insanity. It's almost as though they're trying to tangle this obvious case of hate-speech/violence in order to get a legal excuse to re-review the previous one. When the Supreme Court gets this, they can either validate the concept of violence-enabling speech as free speech, or they can fix it across all the cases cited.
And while I would agree that speech calling for violence necessary to revolutionize the government is clearly protected--it's the reason for the 1st Amendment--I don't agree that speech calling for violence against individuals engaged in medical practice should be protected. The government is not a doctor, and political action should be sufficient to decide the fate of such doctors. If political action is not sufficient, then your quarrel is with the government, not the doctors, or you're just plain wrong. In fact, I'm leaning towards the attitude that calling for violence against any person by name rather than a governmental institution is just plain wrong, though that would take some careful defining in a world where we place or inherit people in governing positions as an institution of one.
--Blair
If the defendant can reasonably claim that the film he watched incited him to commit the act, and that hence he is not responsible, then he can reasonably claim to be innocent.
What this lawsuit says is that people who see a violent film and then commit a violent act are innocent. Is this reasonable?
Perhaps in some instances it is. The general public is, well, stupid and impressionable. European governments have recognised this for sometime, and take care of these issues for them by implementing strong censorship of violence. Hence there is little violence in European countries.
Should America foillow this lead? I think that if they can demonstrate the innocence of the defendant and think this is reasonable as the Europeans do, then yes. This is an undecided question though.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Just an aside....when you speak of "white Republicans" who voted against civil rights legislation in the '60s, are you thinking about Al Gore's father (a Democrat)? Or Senator Robert Byrd (a Democrat) who filibustered the legislation?
People like that?
Just wondering....
If I have a website can I post the alley that's hidden from view that your 9 year old child walks down every day after school?
I think someone should create a web site listing the names and addresses of all the anti-abortion wakos and then have animations from http://www.jesusdance.com next to the names of those that have been killed.
I don't like abortion, and I truly believe that there is a mass injustice being done in this country. There is a great parallel between what happened in Nazi Germany and what is happening in America today. One group of people has had there basic right to humanity stripped from them. It saddens me even more to see a noble cause such as women's rights supporting this. It smacks of hypocrisy for a group that claims that they have been discriminated against due to physical state commiting the exact same violation of human dignity. (Yes I do think it is a sin. I won't apologize for that.) On the other hand, I don't think it is right to advocate people being killed because they disagree with them.
The question here is whether cheering at someones death and suggesting that you'd like for them to die is acceptable. I don't like the idea, but to deny them their right to free speech would be to deny everyone. That's why we have to protect even people like this. After all, I thought this link was funny.
www.whowouldyoukill.com
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
This is why I HATE all religions, especially Christianity. Throughout history, religions have been responsible directly and indirectly for the suffering and intolerance of many millions of people.
These morons over at the Nuremburg Files, who the fuck do they think they're helping by killing doctors? Screw these motherfucking religious morons. I'd say we should start a website that lists the addresses and photos of these abortion clinic bombers and murderers just to counteract their terrorist tactics.
---------
Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?
eTrade SUCKS
At the moment, all the discussion has wrangled back and forth on whether or not he had the right to publish this information, and no one can prove it actually harmed someone. Obviously, if direct harm is attributed to his speech, the no yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theater restriction applies. If no direct harm has come of the site, then the First Amendment applies.
So, hypothetically, what would it mean if a terrorist came out and said, "I used the information on his site to find and choose my targets"? At that point he has aided a terrible criminal action by providing this information.
Granted, it is available elsewhere, but he has tailored his information to the specific needs of a group of violent criminals, with the hopes it would help them. Is not the intent of the creator then to aid and abet a crime, even if he has no direct contact with the criminals?
My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?
I see a difference between a video game that portrays violence in an abstract (albeit realistic) setting, and a Web site that active encourages murder. If the owners of the site had offered a nickel for each doctor killed, that would be considered "murder for hire," which is quite illegal. They asked for the doctors to be murdered, but left out the nickel.
(Score:0, Troll)
Thank you moderator, you have just proven my point!
"Who ever heard of a suitcase being dominated by minds from an alien star-system?" -- Philip K. Dick
this debate seems truly strange. In Germany, for example, it is simply illegal to publicly encourage acts of violence, whether or not anybody acts on them. This is not a law which worries people and hardly anybody ever tries to break it. I consider myself an extreme liberal, but I see no problem here. On the other hand, if Bob cries 'Kill Joe' and Henry actually does it, then Joe's relatives cannot sue Bob for damages. Everybody is responsible for their own actions only. I wonder, if it would be legal in the US to shout for the death of all (insert any racial/cultural minority here) followed by a list of addresses? This would certainly land you behind bars for several years in any European country.
I'm not trolling or starting a flame war but I think you missed my point. I was playing devils advocate to show that some lists just shouldn't be published if that publication places the individual in harms way. I too agree that there are somethings civilians don't need to know in the international political arena but there are also things we don't need to know in the domestic political arena as well.
If this list isn't a direct threat then how come so many governments get bent out of shape when the name of one of their spies is published? Why not then openly list the names of all spies who operate in the USA. Surely there's no danger from a list of names.
The First Amendment doctrine was created in the 20th century, and is by no means the last word on free speech. Our current conception is ruled by the Brandenburg ruling, which overruled previous Court decisions, such as Gitlow and Holmes' work in Debs, that subversive advocacy was not necessarily protected speech.
I would agree that, for example, the Debs ruling went too far in restricting political speech. But the Nuremberg ruling swings too far in the other direction. By focusing entirely on the semantics of the speech and not on the communicative intent (as per Habermas), the court has made incitement to murder legal, as long as that incitement is carefully phrased.
Providing personal information about an individual, and then accusing them of murder, is at least theoretically actionable as libel. But note the end of the story on the trial: "[The name of] Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was killed by a sniper in 1998 at his home near Buffalo, N.Y. ... was crossed out on [the] Web site later that same day." This certainly suggests that the site was acting as an incitement to murder and information clearinghouse for those who were killing doctors.
The court's ruling ignores the face of domestic terrorism, which is organized on a blueprint called "leaderless resistance." According to this doctrine, members of anti-governmental terrorist groups will arm themselves, train, and prepare for revolution on their own. When given appropriate signals or information, such as that provided on the Nuremberg website, the terrorists will begin anti-governmental activities alone.
The important aspect to leaderless resistance is that the people who provide the information do not need to know to whom they are speaking, or what methods they will use to carry out their goals. Unfortunately, the court today decided that they are no longer able to tell the difference between speech designed to discuss an interest, and speech designed to kill a person. This means that the means of leaderless resistance have been legitimated by those most likely to become its targets.
I only hope for an ultimate reversal by the Supreme Court.
"I am become a fisher of men. Now, what kind of line do I use for a 240 lb. Pharisee?"
"I am become a fisher of men. Now, what kind of line do I use for a 240 lb. Pharisee?"
The content producers aren't responsible for advocating or encouraging terrorist violence? Funny, but there's a precedent that says otherwise, and it was set, ironically, at Nuremberg. Anybody remember ol' Julius Streicher?
Unfortunatly except for a few comments it seems that most people are missing the significance of the court ruling. Free speech is reserved only for some people. Last week the Supreme Court (in a 5-4 ruling) ruled unconstitutional a federal law that, while providing funding for legal services, restricted the funding so that while an attorney may file a case in regard to say a person being denied benefits same attorney was prohibited from raising the issue of the constitutionally of the orginal law setting up the guidelines for the benefits. The Court said that was a violation of speech - once Congress provides funding for legal assistance they cannot put any restrictions upon the use. However as pointed out by a dissenting Justice the Court had allowed such Congressional restriction by holding valid the ban on doctors discussing abortion at family planning clinics that receive federal funding. This Justice even stated that the 5 justices making the ruling were saying that freedom of speech applies to attorneys but not to doctors. Likewise free speech does not count if you would care to publish the DeCSS code. In essence you have the right of free speech until you get the goverment or big money (MPAA) irate, at which time forget it. As some posters pointed try publishing the names, addresses, kids schools, etc of federal judges that make incorrect rulings, such as DeCSS, and muse upon the fact that the world would be a better place without such people and see how long your freedom of speech will last.
What kind of effect will this decision have on censoring video games, music, websites etc...
Absolutely none. This will be painful folks but lets face it , the abortion hit list is a just a couple of good old boys doing their duty to god. While the creators of Doom, Marylin Manson, and the like are doing the work of the devil. Free speech is only for the rightous, for those who have given what is ceasers unto god, for those who have striken the almighty right cheek, and for those who pray before men so that they may be seen by them.
-- force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins ayn rand
What if the amniocentesis indicates that the baby may be retarded? Is abortion promoted in that case? Should it be?
What about Jocelyn Elders' statement that "abortion has had an important and positive public health effect." Doesn't that statement promote abortion? (Elders went on to become Surgeon General.)
BTW, I also believe that being pro-life means also being anti-death penalty.
Everything you know is wrong - Firesign Theatre