Slashdot Mirror
Council of Europe Pushes Net Hate-Speech Ban
omnirealm writes: "The N.Y. Times is reporting that the 43-nation Council of Europe is trying to ban racist and hate speech from the Internet by adding a protocol, or side agreement, to its cybercrime convention, which was stamped for ratification on Thursday."
Filters that ban racist and hate speech don't work, because people find ways to get around them. Do we want to say the word "bicycle" assuming it's banned? What can we do:
b i c y c l e
b1cycle
bycycle
b icycle
All to the same effect. And there simply aren't enough people out there to monitor hate speech and get it removed, which is why we haven't solved the drug problem in most countries.
-Evan
I believe that any form of censorship, and yes folks, this is censorship is wrong. Now I do not and never will condone ignorant and/or hateful speech, but even Europe should learn that in order to maintain a free society, a government should allow freedom of speech, even if that speech is not touchy-feely. Remember, even the idiots have the fundamental right to free speech!
I hate sigs.
So if I tell someone that I think they should go to jail because they just forced Female Circumcision on their 12 yr old daughter, is that hate speech? The only groups I know of around here that do it are Muslims so is that racists?
"The Justice Department fought hard to have the racist bits pulled from the cybercrime convention itself. I can't imagine they will let freedom of speech be curtailed via the backdoor in this way."
I wonder how hard the DOJ fought against some of the other recent bills that have been passed that fly in the face of the Constitution.
Obviously the Council of Europe hates racists and are being given a public platform for their hateful beliefs! The N.Y. Times should be forced to remove this hate speech from their web site!
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
There's a very real danger of conventions like this to grow into a "meta-government" only within reach of lobbyists, especially if additional meta-government enforcement measures are provided, e.g. through the WTO in the case of certain WIPO treaties. But in this specific case, as in the Hague Convention, it should be possible for Europeans to lobby effectively against blatant violations of free speech and new privacy-violationg laws on a national level. Just don't be fooled by politicians telling you that they have to obey "international treaties". Tell them what you think these treaties, signed without any prior democratic discourse whatsoever, are really worth.
In France for example, you can easily go to jail if you say anything about the Jews : for example, if your opinion is that most banking establishments are run by Jews and you voice it publicly, you open yourself to antisemitic lawsuits against you, and most likely lost by you as well. That opinion isn't particularly antisemitic, and is frankly quite dumb (IMHO), but it's your right to have it. Just don't say it otherwise you could be in trouble.
If the same laws were even proposed in the U.S., people would scream bloody murder, and it's good. But in Europe, things like that happen all the time and people don't even notice.
So, what is surprising here ? nothing. This is a piece of non-news (for Europeans) reported by the US-centric Slashdot team. It's exactly like the Nazi memorabilia ban France tried to impose on Yahoo.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I mean, c'mon. You'd think Europeans would learn after a few centuries or so that trying to make bad people shut up doesn't really work.
No, I'm not an American.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Why is racist/hate speech wrong?
For example, I hate MSCE's, and we all know that they're inferior to the rest of us.
What's wrong with stating that? Are MSCE's going to get offended? Then let them be offended! And let them learn how to patch IIS so it isn't assaulted by countless virii!
On a more serious note, this is indeed stupid. Perhaps racist and hate speech is wrong, however, everyone's entitled to their opinion. What's next? Book burning?
Harry Potter, burn 'em all, they promote witchcraft. Get rid of those copies of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Man, if that doesn't promote violence, I don't know what does. Don't get me started on Tolkien..
Sounds ridiculous, eh? Not so much. If someone wants to believe something they read, whether that be that a certain race is inferior, or that the Nazgul are chasing them down.. Well, shouldn't it be their choice whether or not to believe it?
Banning hate speech from the internet isn't going to make the problem go away. Nor will banning it from being written anywhere else. You could always make it illegal to even speak hate, but in the end, if someone wishes to hate something, be it a person, place, thing, or an entire race, they will.
And there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
Fight now, Europeans, or become slaves to tyranny.
If you ban sites like http://www.godhatesfags.com from spouting their idiocy, then all kinds of poor saps on usenet will have to make up their own strawmen to shoot down.
It helps so much more to have these morons right there, where everyone can see, laugh, cry or whatever it is they do when they see such silly sites.
Why support a government that doesn't want its people to feel strong emotions?
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
One of the reasons that things like this concern civil libertarians is that its really not a very big step from hate speech to politically unpopular speech. In the United States, jurisprudence is such that many forms of speech and expression, including things both hateful or vulgar, can quite easily also be considered statments of political content, and therefor protected on general principle.
C//
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
Free speech doesn't end where you disagree with what the other person has to say. You can't muzzle people just because they're evil or stupid. Information wants to be free, even if it'll be misused. etc.
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link. Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
There's a deep-seated strain of virulent fascism in Europe that's been intermittently expressed in politics and popular culture for most of the 20th century. Hitler and Mussolini didn't come out nowhere - there were fascist governments in many European countries because the authoritarian tradition instilled by the former feudal/royal systems was a fertile breeding ground for fascists.
Sure, Germany and Italy lost the war. That doesn't change the fact that Italy has a Prime Minister with strong ties to the fascist right. That doesn't change the fact that neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Germany are getting more and more support from stupid teeangers every day. Jewish cemeteries are being defaced. Blacks are attacked, asylum seeker homes are burned down.
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals. They will use everything they can as propaganda material. They will find followers - probably not many, but enough. People are being killed by those 'few' followers. Hate is being spread. A lot of harm has been done to Europe through politics of hate, wars have been started, millions and millions have been killed.
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
Most of you haven't lived through the type of hate that's being spread by the hate speech being banned. It's easy to be an armchair critic. It's easy to criticize. Please don't. I know many of you will say that the only way to fight this is by allowing the complete and unfettered flow of information, with public education taking center stage to show the people how wrong all of that hate speech is. Sure. That has been done, for more than half a century now. But a small minority persists, a small minority causing a disproportionate amount of evil.
Yes, we have to be very careful not to let matters escalate too much - after all, who watches the watchment? It's important to note that banning hate speech is an approach that crosses party lines in Europe: in Germany, both the ruling Socialist/Green coalition and the right- and left-wing opposition are strongly in favour of dealing harshly with neo-Nazis.
In closing, hate speech is a genuine problem. There are very, very few solutions to dealing with it, and trying to criminalize its flow is one of the few approaches we have.
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
Well then.... if Euro folks are so adimate to censor people, then why don't they just create a proxie, and firewall, for their people? This would shelter their citizens from all that evil free speech, and free expression. While thier at it, why not just physically remove the internet, and replace it with euro-net.... a fully contained intra-net for euro folks that is protected from the hate-mongers?
serriously folks, the most logical reason this amendment is being slipped in is because the USA court rulled that Frenchy anti-hate laws do not apply to USA based companies. I would not doubt it to find that a french person sponsored this addition into being. IT is too ironic that this slips in not even a week after the USA court rullings.
"I HATE YOU"
OOOO.. oh no... I said it.... now I'm going to be banned in Europe.... and slahsdot is going to be sued in a French court....... its a damn shame.
Go ahead... balkanize the internet.... the folks in the USA wiull simply go on with what we have always done... freely express ourselves. And the folks in Europ will still do what they always do... read USA internet sites.
As if anything is going to change by this.... it might lift the ego of some politician for a year or two. If Europe folks are so advanced, and enlightend then it would seem that they would be mature enough to simply not look at the hatefull items on the net....
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Yeah I'm glad in the US we don't censor anything on TV,Radio or the internet like the beepheads at the European Union. I mean what a bunch of beepholes.
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
Free speech doesn't end where you disagree with what the other person has to say. You can't muzzle people just because they're evil or stupid. Information wants to be free, even if it'll be misused. etc.
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link. Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
There's a deep-seated strain of virulent fascism in Europe that's been intermittently expressed in politics and popular culture for most of the 20th century. Hitler and Mussolini didn't come out nowhere - there were fascist governments in many European countries because the authoritarian tradition instilled by the former feudal/royal systems was a fertile breeding ground for fascists.
Sure, Germany and Italy lost the war. That doesn't change the fact that Italy has a Prime Minister with strong ties to the fascist right. That doesn't change the fact that neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Germany are getting more and more support from stupid teeangers every day. Jewish cemeteries are being defaced. Blacks are attacked, asylum seeker homes are burned down.
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals. They will use everything they can as propaganda material. They will find followers - probably not many, but enough. People are being killed by those 'few' followers. Hate is being spread. A lot of harm has been done to Europe through politics of hate, wars have been started, millions and millions have been killed.
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
Most of you haven't lived through the type of hate that's being spread by the hate speech being banned. It's easy to be an armchair critic. It's easy to criticize. Please don't. I know many of you will say that the only way to fight this is by allowing the complete and unfettered flow of information, with public education taking center stage to show the people how wrong all of that hate speech is. Sure. That has been done, for more than half a century now. But a small minority persists, a small minority causing a disproportionate amount of evil.
Yes, we have to be very careful not to let matters escalate too much - after all, who watches the watchment? It's important to note that banning hate speech is an approach that crosses party lines in Europe: in Germany, both the ruling Socialist/Green coalition and the right- and left-wing opposition are strongly in favour of dealing harshly with neo-Nazis.
In closing, hate speech is a genuine problem. There are very, very few solutions to dealing with it, and trying to criminalize its flow is one of the few approaches we have.
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
Andrew T-B
St Alex
I don't disagree that racism and fascism are serious problems in Europe, but those are serious problems everywhere, including the United States. We have the Klu Klux Klan, and Al Sharpton and every other kind of maniac you could imagine. But we also have a key philosophical premise that it is unacceptable to make thought or speech illegal, because that is the real root of facism: the desire to control another persons thoughts and actions.
If you want to keep up on the wide world of hate I would recomend Hatewatch.org. If I can recall correctly they have had some trouble with keeping up with all the hate sites the web has to offer and had to suspend their arcive of hate sites. /. tradition of mentioning GPL any time you can, hatewatch is made with Post-Nuke a slashcode style GNU/GPL licanced app.
If they can not keep up with just monitoring these sites how is anyone going to cut down on them?
Also, in the grand
Ascii artist &
Once again, this proposition is a type of law that only hurts the innocent. Te real haters out there will continue on with there hateful websites, probably on some foreign server. But you and I (or in this case, innocent European civilians) will have to watch out that they don't accidently click on a link to a site that mentions the word nazi, or else the they'll find the KGB knocking on their door.
This is really like gun laws in the US. Real criminals can get any gun that they want through the black market, but law-abiding citizens have to jump through hoops just to get a gun so that they can protect their own home.
The more recent Anti Terrorist bill is more of a hassle, especially since members of congree didn't even get a chance to read it before passing it Many of the problems in the European measure are is a secondary or side agreement which is not binding on everyone - Citing from the article:
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
While I don't doubt this is well-intentoned, it must not be allowed to happen.
If all people are to be held equal before the law, then all human thought must also be held equal before the law, because it is thought which truly makes us human. And if that is true, then all human speech must also be held equal before the law, because it is via speech that ideas are formed and propagated. Even the right to say things as reprehensible as hate speech must be held as absolute and sacrosanct.
The reason for this is simple: no one person knows the absolute truth. Not just about morality, but about basically anything (even sciense; Heisenberg showed that with his Uncertainty Principle). And yes, I include myself in this. It is only at some point in between all the differing viewpoints that the truth can ever be found. Start disallowing thoughts of any type, and you permanently cripple humanity's ability to seek truth. This is a far greater crime against humanity than any hate speech could ever be.
Trying to eliminate racism is an honorable goal. But this must be achieved through education, not legislation. Yeah, it's not as efficient. But it doesn't limit the human mind, and that is what makes it ethical.
Ok. I have a solution to all this. I call it FacistNet(tm). It will be under the strict control of a committee of representatives from concerned interests who are unhappy with all the nasty freedom that the Internet provides. Users will not be allowed to post, send, say, think, or otherwise express anything that might offend, damage, cost, inconvenience, or otherwise do anything to make anyone sad. Membership will be open to anyone willing to submit to constant scrutiny and investigation, just to make sure that no bad people can use FacistNet(tm). Everything that goes onto FacistNet(tm) will have to be approved by the ApprovalsBoard(tm) to make sure that it doesn't violate any of the Terms Of Lets All Be Nice Conformist Citizens And Do What The Nice People Tell Us(tm).
Then maybe the rest of us can use the internet to send information to each other.
Geeze...
"The only solution to harmful speech is more speech."
-- Thomas Jefferson
It doesn't matter what frame of mind or what reason the criminal had when he committed the act. But try telling that to a liberal.
Killing in self-defense is not a crime at all, while killing while committing a felony is a capital crime punishable by death (in death penalty states of course).
If I kill you because I am upset you're sleeping with my wife, my punishment will be entirely different than if I kill you because your wife paid me to.
Intent and motivation is a major part of the crime. Mens Rea. This is not a liberal concept.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Sorry the clause in bold above negates the entire document. Rights by definition may not be subject to any law. They exist through providence, divine or not, and therefore are not subject to the whims of a filthy democracy. This is why Canadians have "hate speach" laws in place. Thanks for playing "Who Wants to be a Freeman". Try again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Too many of you people are posting hatefull comments about the Council of Europe. That means you're all outlaws.
Since the days of freedom and free speech are counted, I guess I better grab the few occasions I have and say what's on my mind. All those pro-censorship laws are crap.
Here's something that comes a lot closer to a sovereign individual than those pussies:
One sovereign individual says to the other: "You filthy son of a geezleforp! Your kind fratzlebgratz their sisters and fail to properly potty train their boys which is why they grow up to become triffsings!" This, being said in a prominent weblog can result in only one rational response: "'Sir' and I use the term lightly, I hereby formally and publically challenge you to a formal combat to the death. My purpose is to end your tyranny of hate speech against my people. If I cannot end your tyranny of hate speech against my people, then perhaps others, more expert, cunning and/or lucky, will see my example, and put an end to yours!"
After a mandatory 3 days of waiting, typically counseling with community leaders who attempt to find less extreme measures and avert bloodshed, the fateful day arives. Each individual sovereign gets 15 meters of strong cordage, a 10 inch blade, a wilderness area large enough to allow strategy chosen by a panel of community leaders, and a mandate that only one shall return. They enter from opposite sides and no observers are permitted in the wilderness area.
If one entering into a community bound by such rules of such individual sovereignty refuses combat or attempts to leave during the 3 day waiting and counseling period -- anyone may lawfully take any action whatsover against him at any time. See Valoric Fire: A Working Plan for Individual Sovereignty.
Seastead this.
In any event, it didn't turn out to be a "we must ban it" whitewash. It was particularly good having the Australian Broadcasting Authority give a speech about how wonderful filtering software was and having David Goldman blow everything they said away completely.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Excuse me? The best way to avoid a totalitarian state is to seize control of public discourse? The irony would be delicious if I weren't choking from laughing so hard.
Free speech is not the tool the "extreme right" (whoever they are) will use to "take over" the US. Free speech is the political defense mechanism by which they will never be able to do so. Only if we ever allow a restriction on speech will we run the risk that a small group could seize power and inflict its will on us. In a society that truly values free and open debate, the "extreme right wing" is easily seen as "extreme" and not in accord with popular thought.
Or should my post be censored now, since it "supports" the extreme right wing and therefore, by implication, hate crimes? Who gets to decide? Who gets to appoint the thought gods? And how do you ever keep such a system balanced, when the people making the decision can choke off any criticism of their decision?
I know that slashdot posts are far from a scientific sampling of modern thought
One reads a lot about the American arrogance, and goodness knows, it's true. But it seems to me far more arrogant to appropriate to oneself the power to choose between "correct and proper" beliefs and "bad and vile" ones. How paternalistic, condescending, and in the end, simply obnoxious is such an attitude. Let all people speak their minds fully in a free and open marketplace of ideas. Let all people say and read what they will. I have faith that ordinary citizens, in such a climate, can be trusted to make the right decisions.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Three problems with that line of thinking.
.50 cal target rifle and about 100 DU cored hot loads that'll punch through the side walls of most APC's. Since armed citizens outnumber armed soldiers about one hundred to to one in this country, we could stop them.
#1 The common foot soldier is still the most devastating part of any army. If you look at all the wars of the twentieth century, you'll notice that the longest and hardest part of the wars were fought by foot soldiers carrying rifles and pistols. In Somalia and Vietnam, all the technological might of the U.S. forces were actually bested by shoeless rebels with nothing more than AK-47's. And what about artillery and tanks? Well, you can build cheap bombs and build tank traps, or shoot the driver when he pops out to take a piss. It doesn't matter because there are ways to shut them down without high powered weaponry. You've also got nuts like me to help out...I've got a Barrett
#2 But I think that's a rather pointless argument anyway. All branches of the U.S. military are made up of 100% volunteer citizen soldiers. If a dictator somehow came to power in Washington and ordered the military to take control of all major U.S. cities, about 90% of the soldiers would politely tell him where he could shove it. Very, very few volunteer soldiers would follow an order to undermine the U.S. Constitution and fire on their friends and families.
#3 Your comment smacks of defeatism. Even if the military went along with a government overthrow of some type, and even if they had us completely outgunned, there are many of us who would rather fight and die than meekly submit to oppression. I personally don't care what the government has in it's arsenal, I know what I have in mine and I know how to use it. If worst came to worst, we could at least make life a living hell on an oppressive government long enough to incite a full scale rebellion.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
All I have to do under such a society is become a kung fu master, and I'm always right in any argument?
Fucking awesome.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I wonder if you'd find agreement with that statement in, say, India. Or Egypt. Or Mexico. Or Peru. Or anywhere in Africa (except South Africa). Or the Pacific Rim. Or...
To drag this back on topic, at least in the US, you're allowed to point out our hypocricies, our fallacies, and our failings. You're allowed to rail against the government and/or anyone you feel responsible. You're allowed to think and speak what you will. Our greatest danger is the growing acceptance by some of the sort of restrictions on speech common in Europe.
We aren't perfect and we aren't saints. But as far I can see, free speech is one thing we got right.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Those are two different kinds of crime. Here's a more apt comparison.
#1 I kill you because I don't like you.
#2 I kill you because I don't like you since you're black.
How exactly is #2 worse than #1? Are hate crime advocates stating that I should get off easier for #1, simply because I didn't take your race into account? Shouldn't both crimes be treated equally harshly in court?
Don't misunderstand us anti-hate crime people. We aren't objecting to the fact that murderers and criminals are being harshly punished for their hate crimes, we simply think that a white man who rapes a white woman should be sentenced just as harshly as a white man who rapes a black woman and calls her a "n*gger" in the process. If we're willing to double the sentence for someone who commits a "hate" crime, why don't we just double the sentences for everyone who commits that crime? A raped woman is a raped woman, regardless of why she was raped. A dead man is a dead man regardless of why he was shot. Don't just stiffen some penalties, stiffen them ALL!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
The two restrictions are not the same, though I'll agree that the US is not *ideal* - it's certainly better.
In Europe, hate speech is censored, period. You cannot SAY that you think Jews are evil, for example. You cannot record a video glorifying Hitler and sell it, as another example.
In the US, on the other hand, you cannot broadcast vulgar speech on television. You cannot put sexually explicit materials in the front window of your video store. You can however record pornographic videos and sell them (as should be obvious; this is a very large industry in the US). You can curse as much as you want on record albums, and then sell them to the public (this is also a quite large industry).
Don't confuse restrictions where you can do something with banning it entirely. Both are bad, but the second is far worse.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
*sniff* *sniff*
What's that smell?
Oh, yeah. It's the rancid stench of A Stupid Idea That Will Never Work.
SIGFEH
Huge difference here. In the U.S., the television and radio spectrum is owned by the PUBLIC, and the government decided long ago to that it should be run in a manner that is acceptable to the majority of its citizens. What you do or say in private is a totally different story however. You can write anything you want in a book, distribute anything you want in a video, or even transmit anything you want over non public TV stations (flip on Cinemax at 2am in most markets and you'll get an eyeful). In other words, you're free to do and say anything you want, but the PUBLIC doesn't have to support you with THEIR airwaves.
This act, however, steps much further and into an unacceptable realm. Many of Europes "anti-hate" laws ban reading "unacceptable" books, watching "unacceptable" movies, listening to "unacceptable" music, or playing "unacceptable" video games in your own home, where only you are audience to it. Sure, we in the U.S. don't see XXX videos broadcast on ABC primetime, but there's nothing stopping us from taking a trip to the local adult video store and picking up a few copies...or from calling my cable or satellite company and asking them to turn on the Playboy channel. The types of laws Europe is passing restrict not just public, but private behavior. THAT is unnacceptable!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Well, for the Council of Europe (an Organisation not related to the EU) freedom of speech is a very important right. This has been showen in the past. There is just something else that is more important.
The Council of Europe has priorities different from the priorities of the people writing the US constitution some hundred years ago. For example, in Europe death penalty is banned, because the life has a higher priority than revange.
The reason for the different priorities about anti-nazi laws is the different history.Anyway, i hope 10 years later all those anti-nazi laws will not be nescessary anymore, then maybe it will be more harm than use and the law should be changed. (In most european countries it is far easier to change a constitutional law, than it is in the usa)
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
While the US does have the 1st amendment there is much to say for the claim that there is less free speech in the US than in many other countries.
US TV is phemonmenally bland, there is also a marked lack of decent media to really question goverment and business. What has been built up is a system where it is okay for someone to stand up on national TV and say "Evolution is rubbish" but someone who stands up and says "God doesn't exist" is liable to get lynched.
The US has one of the most terrible self-censorship mechanisms in place on planet earth. Examples of this are demonstrated above. Most people in the US have no clue about the laws of other countries, and don't attempt to find out. You can't "easily" go to prison for saying anything about Jews. For godsake if you knew anything about French politics you'd know they have a real problem with racism with the Front Nationale who polled 15% of the vote a few years ago.
Now as to the idea that the US would scream bloody murder if the same laws are applied... take scientific bigotry there are States in the US (esp Kansas) where Evolution isn't accepted. No one in Europe would have a _chance_ of getting that even close to being approved, they'd be laughed at so hard and then locked in the nut house.
The self-censorship applied by the US media and US citizens is quite stunning, opinions voiced about "Global Terrorism" from the country that supported Pinochet, the IRA, Contra rebels etc etc. The country of the McCarthy Witch Hunt. The country of DMCA.
In other countries people fight for freedom, the US clings to the 1st ammendment as if it solves the need to fight.
In the UK if a policeman pulls me over I do not have to be carrying my driving license, or any other identification, I do not have to give my identity. Sure he can then take me into custody on suspicion... but it is not a crime to not say who you are. Do you have the same freedom ?
In France if a company wishes to close down they must first discuss it with their employees, do you have such power over your life ?
In the Netherlands you can smoke cannabis for your own personal enjoyment, do you have such Freedom.
The last 3 prime ministers in the UK have been a middle class lad turned new Labour (Tony Blair), the son of a bloke who worked in a circus and who was an accountant and very working class who led the conservative party (John Major) and the daughter of a grocer who got a degree in Chemistry and led the Conservative party in 3 successive election victories. Working class, middle class, upper class, man or woman and no-one cares about religon... all have led the UK. Do you have such equality.
Freedom is education.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's Voltaire you are referring to: "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to speak it."
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Now, do I like it when some racist jerk mouths off about how all blacks should be killed? Or about how all Jews are worthless? Or all Arabs should be shot? Or how all lawyers should be killed? Of course not. But what mature, enlightened people do (what we all SHOULD do) is consider the source. Some people will always gravitate towards hate, generally because of their own ignorance or fear. Censoring speech will not stop this. If anything, I *want* these idiots to be heard. Why? Simple. The more they blather on about their master race status, the more they show the world how stupid, ignorant, and pitiful they are.
If such viewpoints are censored who is going to help them dig their own hole by saying "explain more" or by rebutting their point.
It's a bit like the idea of banning journalists from interviewing people connected with terrorists. Sounds good in theory but it dosn't do much for any terrorist cause to be asked something like "You claim to be a moslem but your organisation just killed 5,000 people, how can you reconcile that?"
Your Nazis are not as sophisticated at the moment. Nazis in Europe [salon.com] are somewhat better spoken, and hence we need hate speech laws to contain them.
Except that this can be interpreted as agreeing with the idea that these people are some kind of intrinsically superior "master race". Thus they must be gagged, since no-one else could possibly "win" a debate with them...
Meaning speech, meaning source code, meaning all digital information, and not free as in you dont pay for it, but free as in anyone can write anything they want, and own any file, and trade any file.
This is freedom of expression, freedom of thought, etc
Now about the hate sites, you cannot Ban them from the internet, what they should do is treat hate sites like they treat kiddie porn sites
Meaning they should be monitored, the people should have a right to launch these sites but there should be rules. No one can have a hate site which threatens anyone for example,
people can host a kiddie porn site in europe, doesnt mean people wont arrest them for doing it.
People can host a hate site too, but if they choose to host this, they better be careful.
I'm totally against censorship, but i dont like hate sites, or kiddie porn sites, and i'm sure alot of other technically gifted people dont like them either
So anyone hosting a site like that wont have to worry about the government censoring them they should worry about the hackers who constantly hack them, the carnivore like tools constantly monitoring them.
Think of it like this, if Usama bin laden had a site, theres no rule saying he cant host a site, but if he hosts one you better believe people would be monitoring every thing he does.
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I know that slashdot posts are far from a scientific sampling of modern thought :) but the posts I've seen imply, to me, that Europeans don't really grasp the meaning of freedom: Free speech is never a threat! In fact it is an immunity mechanism that protects us from the extremists, the fascists, and the totalitarians.
Free speach is also something these people will oppose.
However if they are smart (as some of them are) they will propose restrictions using such politically correct language as "protecting minorities" (any any group can be a "minority" with the right definition), curbing "extremists" (to an extremist anyone who might disagree with them is an "extremist"), protecting children (after all who could possibly be against that), etc, etc.
On the internet at least.
Meaning warez files are legal,
mp3s are legally traded, source code legally shared
true freedom of information.
However some people will abuse this so there should be strict rules to follow. Like no profiting from it, meaning hate groups cannot accept donations.
Meaning napster like companies cannot earn a profit off of other peoples mp3s.
Meaning warez people cannot earn profits off of other peoples files.
Free information is one thing, but there should be rules.
Anyone should be able to say or share any information, but there needs to be rules.
If the people in europe believe hate sites are bad, while its not right to totally censor, they do have a right to make it difficult to host a hate site, by setting rules in place that make hosting a hate sitee difficult
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Try threatening the president.
Fact is hate sites should be monitored, any site which threatens anyone should be taken down.
Non violent hate sites can stay up but they should all be monitored.
kiddie porn sites too, people who subscribe to these kiddie porn sites should be arrested, and kiddie porn sites which profit should be illegal, but you cannot legally stop the free trade of information on the internet.
So that means you cannot stop mp3s, hate sites or kiddie porn, this all must be legal to have true freedom, it should be legal, but there should be concequences if you try to profit from it, or if you get caught downloading it.
Napster should be legal, but hey if you use napster ot pirate mp3s, thats your problem, and if you use morpheus to get kiddie porn, and someone monitors you and reports you, that is your problem.
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Here I am, sitting in the U.S., watching my Constitutional rights slowly being eroded and chipped away...2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment, today the 5th and 6th Amendments, and even part of the 1st Amendment with the reactivation of the (clearly unconstitutional) Sedition Acts.
You missed a few, 10th and 14th amendment also the IP clause.
Hey Europe, take a look at the U.S. and see what you have in store for you! First they weaken one freedom, and then another, and another, a little at a time until some day your rights are nothing more than a hollow shell of what they once were. That's happening right here in my country as we speak - you want the same thing done to you?
It has to be a little at a time, revolutions don't do much to help politicans careers...
The wrong concept of freedom is 'do whatever you want to do'.
This is the one used by the 1st ammendment, 'say whatever you want to say'.
In the US, the 'do whatever you want to do' is certainly not applied always, you are not allowed to kill people, for instance, substantially reducing your freedom. The reason is that killing others, harms.
In Europe, the same limit is applied. If it harms others, then it is not allowed. And this is also used for speech.
I agree that saying 'All the (your_choice_here) should be killed because they are the root of the problems in our country' is not as bad as effectively killing them, but hate speech, I believe, helps very much in creating the situation that leads to killing. That's why in some countries, it is not allowed.
Now I'll give you an example: do you think that Osama Bin Laden's hate speech, broadcasted all over the muslim countries has an influence on the latest terrorists attacks?
My opinion is that it has a lot of influence. To me, that man should not have the freedom to say what it says because using his speech (only words!) can convince a lot of confused people that yes, the US is the devil. He is not _literally_ pulling the trigger but his speech does.
Ha. I'm a swede (Sweden is a member of the EU). And we, as all the Nordic countries, do have free speech protection and protection of the press. In addition, we have a requirement for governmental transparency; all govermental documents not deemed critical for the security of our country, must be accessible to the public. We _are_ screeming bloody murder about these things! Just we are but 8 million people, so no one listens to us...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
While i'm also against racism and see the good intentions, i think this legislation will be used to squash legitimate critics and opposition. Probably scientology, who are very much criticised all over the Web, and often from sites which rely on the protection of their countries to be safe from lawsuits is already drawing up threat letters. Scientology didn't have any scruples to liken their case to the Holocaust the Jews experienced in the 3rd Reich, when they were not recognized as a religion in Germany, but as a business organisation. Soon they'll probably have a field day threatening with lawsuits to get any 'hate speech' against their organisation off the net.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Another thing that bugs me... How do you define the Internet? If I have two boxes that are "connected" the the Net, using external IPs, and transfer "hate speech" between them over LAN, am I on the Net? The whole thing with the net is that it's not so clearcut... And don't tell me that they're going to regulate what I send over my own network! When the packets get into someone else's network, I can see them objecting if they wish, but suppose I have run a small ISP? It all gets rather confusing...
Just some food for thought...
________________________________________________
suwain_2
There is no difference with free speech.
Proponents of free speech often draw a line in the sand. However, a favorite quote of mine comes from the movie "The American President". Check it out, because most of this next statement comes directly from the movie, and from history itself.
You say you value free speech, and want it protected? Lets see you protect someone's right to speak, whose very ideas conflict so greatly with your own, as to make your blood boil in rage. THATS free speech. THAT's an inherant freedom, as adopted the United States founding fathers.
The simple fact is that banning "free speech" on issues that the majority is against is only going to strengthen yougnsters resolve to be a part of that group. Look at child psychology, especially during the impressionable years of 12-18.
Children, by nature, become rebellious against THINGS. This rebellion is a deep seated psychological desire for that child to separate themselves from their parents, AKA, strike out on their own. Seeing as most parents are law abiding, non-critical people, their children will undoubtedly side with the side of ANARCHY for a time. If said anarchy takes the form of a socially unacceptable behaviour, then so much the better, in their eyes. If, however, society embraces someone's freedom to have such views, then having them will not be as much of a rebellion in their eyes.
I'm not advocating the acceptance of hate crimes, I'm only stating that making speech, or views a crime, makes those ideas more desirable to the very children you are trying to "protect."
Punish the crimes severely. Award zero quarter for participation in such crimes, regardless of how small. That way, you preserve the idea of free speech, while driving the crimes themselves underground.
In the end, you will never prevent anyone from having one idea or another. However, you can regulate a societies actions based on negative re-inforcement for certain acts. How Europe chooses to deal with this issue is really not of my concern. But, trying to make a claim that it's "For the Children" is laughable, because the Children will undoubtedly flock towards that which the parents dislike the most, in an effort to "rebel".
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
If you already have a mind-set of a racist or hater, this person will NOT search for balanced information and discussion, it will search for the most effective propaganda there is to support his views. Just how will letting some government official regulate which propaganda is allowed correct this problem?
Large-scale outbreaks of racist or religious murders in the last 50 years have always been preceded by gov't sponsored propaganda campaigns to stir up the hate. (the middle East, Burundi, Bosnia, Croatia, & Serbia.) The US has (greatly to our shame) had a few hundred hate-crime murders in the last 50 years, and a few thousand in the last 100, but we just had 7,000 murdered by foreigners raised on a program of hate in Saudi government schools. With government control of the media 60 years ago, Germany murdered at least 12 million just because of their ethnic origin; it's a lot harder to find accurate information about the Soviets, but probably Stalin killed more of his countrymen than the Germans did, sometimes for ethnic reasons. Present Western European gov'ts do't do this sort of thing, but will you bet your life that your countrymen will never elect another Hitler or Milosevich?
In the US, we drag the hate out into the open and discuss it, and only a few real wackos still express their hatred violently. How do countries that suppress this discussion do? I suggest you try to find how many Turkish guest-workers have been murdered in Germany lately. German law-enforcement is generally very efficient, and not bound up in so many constitutional restrictions as in the USA, but they seem to be either unable or unwilling to stop racist attacks on people of color living within their borders.
At least one (1) person in europe (i.e. Orwell) read the book.
I find it offensive and a travesty of justice that my life would be worth less (under such a new set of laws) than a minority or someone with an "alternative" lifestyle
Well your life is "worth less" than a police officer, fireman, mailman, etc, already. We've always had separate "classes" of victims, some more important than others.
But this doesn't have anything to do with the inherent worth of the victime -- it has to do with society's judgement of how unacceptable the motivation is.
If you kill a man who's sleeping with your wife, you've got a pretty good chance of getting a light sentence. If you kill a cop in the line of duty, you've got a really good chance of getting the death penalty. They might be the same person, same skin color, but the reason you kill them is different. And if you kill him for being black, it won't be as bad as if you'd killed him for being a cop, but much worse than if you'd killed him for cutting you off in traffic.
Some talk show I listen to, the guy was reading a newspaper clipping about a guy
With all due respect to this unimpeachable source, there is a distinct possibility that this is either being grossly misreporte, misinterpreted, or never happened in this manner.
I'm reminded of the story of the crook who cuts himself breaking into a persons house and sues the homeowner -- people bring it up all the time when complaining about the crazy legal system. Certainly its a terrible story, but it also has never happened, its an urban legend.
That said, there are a dozen different scenarios that could explain the set of facts you presented. Perhaps the man is being SUED by the assailant, which has nothing to do with the police. He'll lose, of course, but everyone in this country has the right to sue. Perhaps the victim's husband yelled the epithet not during the attack, but three days later outside the courthouse, in the context of a threat. Being the victim doesn't give you carte blanche to threaten people.
There are many other circumstances in which these two people could have this factual interaction in which the person yelling does not look particularly sympathetic. Until you see the complete story you're just as likely to come to the wrong conclusion as the right one.
Case in point, that damn McDonald's coffee case that everyone points to as an example of how stupid our court system is. But anyone who read more than the first paragraph of the story knows that in fact the case was handled as it should have been, and that the woman also didn't get that huge financial windfall that everyone reported.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
So, yeah, it is "funny" but it is also indistinguishable from reality...
Seastead this.
I'm Irish, spent years living in various German cities until 1996 and I can assure that I encounter far more racism, institutionalised and general, here in the USA than I ever did in Germany. In the 3 weeks I've spent in Germany, I didn't see any racism -- but I didn't see any people of color either. Racism is easier to detect when there are more people to be racist towards... But I have heard of apartment buildings burned down in Germany, with Turkish families inside. There is a history in the US of black homes and churches burned, but the last racial-arson deaths I recall were in the 1960's. We've still got nutcases who might want to do things like this, but they know they won't get away with it.
No I don't have statistics, and I don't trust government statistics unless I'm quite sure that the agencies collecting them aren't trying to conceal problems. If you want to know how many blacks were lynched in the US in the 1890's, don't look at crime reports -- the cops didn't consider it a crime. The best data you'll find, I think, are estimates compiled by historians several decades later.
The American Nazi Party was a joke. The Klu Klux Klan is moribund. McCarthyism ended up with McCarthy out of power. The Communist Party of the United States limped along for decades as a fringe group. (They're still there! "Workers of the World, Log In") David Duke and Stormfront are pushing white separatism, while the Nation of Islam is pushing black separatism. None of these have ever been a threat to the country. None of them are taken seriously. None are popular enough to get any political power or elect more than the rare public official now and then. They just don't matter.
Europe has a different history. Their nut groups have, on occasion, grown big enough to start major wars. So it's clear why Europe worries more.
But it won't work. Efforts to shut the nuts up won't be totally effective. If censored, they get to act like martyrs and continue to distribute their stuff anyway. Censorship in a reasonably open society doesn't work. Making it work requires heavy repression. Remember Falun Gong? So censorship is a first step to worse things, first merely to keep the censors from looking stupid, and later from real fear.
Actually, here's a better distinction. Child pornography can safely be banned because the production of child pornography necessarily entails the abuse of, and harm to, children. Racist speech does not require harm to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities as a precondition of its being produced. That's the difference.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Don't criminalize speech. Expose it. That's how we got rid of organizations like the Klan here in America, which still exists but is so hated and ostracized in this country that they no longer say or do anything publicly. The reason they don't have a public influence isn't that they aren't allowed to--they can have all the parades and get on TV as much as they want--but because they choose not to exercise their rights, knowing that they will be publicly ridiculed and attacked for it, and lose even more influence.
The perfect example of this is the march that Klansmen and Aryan Nation type white supremacists were supposed to have in Washington, D.C. a couple years ago. A white supremacist leader called for a public protest and march in D.C., to show the country that they could do the same thing black people did in the Million Man March and such. It got a lot of newspaper and newscast coverage for weeks before the event; he got on TV, calling for all white people to come join him in a show of strength against the "niggers" and Jews who have "taken over" the government. He got so much publicity, that he expected thousands of people to show up from all over the country. The D.C. police even hired extra workers from nearby police departments to come in that day to help keep the peace between these thousands of white supremacists and the people who would show up againts them.
Guess what? Less than 20 people came to this "demonstration," most of whom were this guy's friends. Nobody came. Despite coverage for weeks ahead of time of this white supremacist leader calling for all white people with his ideas to show up that day, nobody came. In contrast, there were far more peple who showed up to protest *against* the white supremacist march, than the under 20 who showed up for it. In the end, the guys who showed up left very soon after they got there, realizing that they just looked stupid and made people realize that so few people have these racist views.
The lesson there is that giving these morons enough rope to hang themselves publicly does more to discourage their racism than banning it ever would. Things grow in the underground. Things are given a mystiue and aura which draws people to them, when they are verboten. Pick up any rock and you'll find all sorts of nasty little creatures congregating in the darkness. Yet expose the same patch of ground to the penetrating sunlight, and nothing dares linger there, knowing it will be exposed and vulnerable.
This is how the white supremacist groups were driven out of public view in the U.S.--not by censorship, but by letting them make fools of themselves in public. In the 1980s and early 1990s, we had some very boisterous and exploitive talk shows in this country--Geraldo, Sally Jessy, Donahue, etc. Some of the shows still exist, but they have toned themselves down over the years and become more "respectble," not trying to shock as much as they used to. But back then, white supremacists, Klansmen and Aryan Nations skinheads would be on these shows about every week. Some of the shows would have them "confronted" by strong blacks or jews--and some broke out in violence on the stage, like the famous show where Geraldo Rivera got his nose broken.
Now, the upshot of all this open coverage is that people saw these white supremacists for what they truly were--ignorant, inbred, uneducated fools. They were laughed at and scorned, and used for entertainment as we mocked them in public on these talk shows. None of them ever had a good reason for their beliefs, and almost all of them were buffoons. After that, who would want to join them? Who would want to be mocked and scorned as they were? No one. And so, all the coverage they got worked against them. Klan membership fell. Aryan Nations membership fell. And except for occasional rallies in very uneducated redneck backwaters, and very occasional people who come on talk shows and get ridiculed in public, none of these groups ever shows itself in public any more.
There are still racially motivated killings here, like the black man who was dragge behind a truck in Texas a couple years ago. But they are much more rare then they were in the 1970s and 1980s, before we started ridiculing racists in public with their own words. And we can never completely eliminate hate and the crimes that come from it--it is as impossible as eliminating murder, rape, or any crime. But we have a much smaller problem with it than people in Germany do, where such ideas and speech is hidden away and given a mystique it does not deserve.
You see, in the U.S. I can go into any bookstore and buy a copy of *Mein Kampf*. I own a copy myself, not because I am a racist, but because I wantd to know how evil and foolish Hitler really was, from his own words. And yet, we have no great swell of neo-Nazism--because we expose neo-Nazis publicly for the fools they are. In the late 80s there was an upswing in neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S. The cure was letting them make fools of themselves in public on those talk shows I mentioned, and ever since they have no longer been growing in percentage. They are seen by almost everyone as uneducated idiots.
Germany has done the opposite, which is why they have a real danger today from neo-Nazis. You drive them underground instead of exposing them, which gives them power. It has an allure for some German young people, like a secret fraternity would. Some are interested only because of this mystique, this forbiddenness, and that draws them in. As you know, many teenagers will do something only because they're told not to. These groups also provide friendships and togetherness that is attractive to young people. But if you exposed them in public like we did and do in the U.S., they would not be attractive. Who would want friendship and togetherness with people who are made fun of and ridiculed and thought stupid and laughed at? Instead of mocking them, you fear them. That is why they have strength in Germany and France, but not in the U.S. The Klan used to be in the U.S. just like the Nazis in Germany--but while Germany faces increasing neo-Nazism, the U.S. does not face increasing Klan membership. The difference, once again, is that we expose it to the light of truth, while Germany hides it under a dark rock and allows it to grow.
Also, Germany is foolish for allowing so many immigrants to work there while there's so much unemployment. It is a recipe for disaster when you have so many Turks and other non-citizens (some are citizens, but most are not) working while so many citizens go unemployed. This immigration is allowed in Germany to please the rich, who would rather import skilled foreigners than invest in teaching skills to German youth. That is deplorable, and that feeds the fascism which seems to be the only faction truly devoted to keeping German jobs and German money for Germans. If Germany were to stop allowing so much immigration, and force employers to train young Germans to be skilled workers at a living wage instead of importing foreigners to work at a lesser wage, then that would take much of the force out of neo-Nazism. In a way, I can't blame many of the young people who are seduced by neo-Nazism in Germany and to some extent France--their own governments do not care enough about them to protect their jobs from lower-waged foreigners, so naturally they come to resent those foreigners. The U.S. allows even more immigration, but the difference is that even now in our recession, we don't have such high unemployment rates as you do in Germany and some other countries in the area. If your governments do not wake up and take care of your citizens and giving them the opportunity to work instead of importing cheaper foreign labor, you deserve the backlash you're getting. The foreigners don't deserve the hate crimes, but your governments do deserve the threat to their survival, since they are catering to the wealthy business owners and the foreign immigrants instead of to the average citizens.
Food for thought.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I agree with all the posts saying such censorship is wrong, and for a number of very good reasons. One that seems to have been missed is that it gives these minority groups something else to latch onto and rebel against (the fascist government are trying to suppress the real truth, etc). The people that get drawn into these hate groups are people lost and attracted to a cause (and instead of getting sucked in by bible bashers they got some neo-nazi group). Making their freedom of expression taboo will only make it far more exciting for them.
Not only that, but how are they going to maintain a social perspective? If they can express their views and can see the public holds them in disdain then this has some psychological effect. If they can only talk amongst fellow supporters then this hate will only feed on itself with no checks.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
(Ludicrous typo in my first reply, inverting the sense of my argument. s/have the self-restraint/lack the self-restraint/g)
> [the poster agrees with] 1. Banning propaganda solely intended to cause the breakdown and destruction of a democratic system, and spreading of hate [and claims this is different than] 2. Banning things you disagree with.
Question 1 for the poster:
A lot of folks have made jokes in recent times to the effect that "1984 is not a HOWTO document!".
Ought we to ban Orwell's 1984 a manual for what to do to institute a police state (because it can certainly be used as such, especially the appendix on the design of Newspeak), or ought we to encourage its dissemination as a manual describing what citizens should be on the lookout for?
Question 2 for the poster:
The arguments used for banning Mein Kampf because "other people might be seduced into fascism" sound a lot like the arguments for banning pr0n because "other people might decide sex for pleasure instead of procreation is fun", or banning strong crypto because "[terroists|pedophiles|drugdealers] could abuse it", or to ban disclosure of security holes because h4x0rz could abuse it.
How come the book-burners never say "I want this information banned because I lack the self-restraint necessary to use this information responsibly?"
It's always someone else who can't be trusted, isn't it?
A Modest Proposal:
I propose the jailing of those who would limit my access to information, because in their hearts they see themselves as my master. They do not deserve this power. They cannot be trusted with it. Their ideas ought to be the ones suppressed in a free and democratic society.
Everybody knows that those who would take our rights are all from Rightstakania, that despised little lump of shit country in Eurasia. Everybody knows that Rightstakanasians are a bunch of stupid, short, smelly little people. We have plenty of evidence to show that they are geneticly inferior. Why do we listen to them?
I say all Rightstakanasians should be forced to wear some kind of identification. Then, we can make sure that they only live in certain parts of the city. Eventually, we can execute them all so that the rest of us will never have to worry about our rights being taken away ever again.
This makes much more sense than persecutin niggers, chinks, spics, hebes or any other of them thar "hated groups". After all, those people wash dishes, make good food, dig ditches, and tell jokes. All the Rightstakanasians ever do is sit on useless government bodies and make a lot of noise. Nobody will miss them.
So, come on Rightsians! Are you with me?! I know a lot of people will be shocked by what I just said, but I felt like I had to stand up for my Rightsian rights before the Rightstakanasians took them away.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
He's not being sued, he got charged with some sort of "crime". And since it's a felony, the punishment is apparently five full years in the state penitentiary. I wish I could say it was urban legend.
Inyeresting, and thanks for the link. I'm curious how clear-cut the assault on the woman was, given the reaction in this case -- the husband "threatened" the ref by saying he was gonna kick his butt, so a lot of this would hinge on whether or not it was really a case of self-defense. It should be an interesting case when it reaches court and gets better documentation with witnesses and such -- right now it seems to be the story told only by these two victims in which the whole world is picking on them, which makes me suspicious. But given the facts as stated, its clearly an application of the law that wouldn't be upheld, so long as they are able to fight it long enough.
"Fighting words" are one of the few classes of speech that can be legally restricted, so the question would be whether or not the person uttering them was acting in self-defense or was provoking the fight in the first place.
I do remember a story (on television, I think) of a storeowner who was repeatedly getting break-ins by (I think) a rooftop window. He decided to wire it up with electricity as a deterrent. A would-be criminal wound up dead because it was more than just a deterrent; it was deadly.
Yes, there is a law against booby-traps. I found this out when trying to figure out how to protect my car which is frequently broken into.
The idea isn't that the criminal doesn't deserve it -- its that an innocent bystander or emergency worker could fall prey to it. Imagine a fireman trying to come in through a window that had been electrified. Oops! One of those times where I realized how many considerations have to go into lawmaking.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.