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Yahoo! Not Protected From French Anti-Nazi Laws
snoopsk writes "An appeals
court ruled that Yahoo is not protected from French legal attacks
due to Nazi-related items sold on Yahoo's auction site. Backed by the
ACLU, Yahoo
intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court
try to enforce French anti-hate laws. This case could have huge
implications for free speech online if the French courts are successful
in forcing Yahoo to remove this content.
"
"
There's a simple solution: delete the Yahoo.fr site and shut down all French business units. If Yahoo has no presence in France, their laws won't apply. It's not like France is as imperialistic as America; they can't make their laws transcend their borders. Then the problem becomes the French governments' and how they might block Yahoo.
Does this mean I have to buy all my Nazi gear on UBid now?
*shucks*
... if you don't want to be subject to french law.
Of course, the fact that france is enforcing an anti-nazi law is quite surprising.
at this rate, france may actually do something about the anti-jewish hatred that runs rampant in france.
Sure they don't like Nazi stuff, etc, but please, can you really ban that sort of material without banning countless other things? Free speach needs to be protected online.
If they feel this strong about Yahoo's sales items, why not just ban Yahoo in France(like China does with a ton of sites) until, if ever, they feel the need to remove the content.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
The BBC is looking into multicasting for UK isps... I remember these sorts of stories about Google and Ebay and others... Why can't we let IP block decide or .fr or similar? Let us not forget that France's child porn laws I hear are somewhat less than in the US... but also, they they and Germany were the only ones to have the balls to stand up against the US over Iraq, but perhaps that had something to do with oil for food... oh wait... shit... goddamn elections
So Yahoo is using the American Civil Liberties Union to fight the French, in France over their 1st Amendmants Rights gaurenteed by the United States Contitution. Yeah I can see that going well.
Do you yahoo?
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Yeah, those French anti-Nazi laws seem to be working real well.
Breakfast served all day!
Is there an FCLU? I don't really see what the ACLU and the First Amendment have to do with france...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think the most logical course of action should be for Yahoo! to withdraw its entire business from France by firewalling out all IP space known to be from France from all of their products. If France continues to enforce its policies against the American-aimed .com version of American-based sites (rather than their .fr spinoffs which were already Nazi-free-zones) such as Google, they'll eventually be left with a rather useless Internet...
I know we Americans are criticized a lot for being ignorant of other cultures, but this one might just take the cake?
Yahoo intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court try to enforce French anti-hate laws.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure France isn't bound by the United States Constitution.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
How so? This case would only have jursidiction in France. If worse comes to worst, just don't do business in France. It sets no legal precedent anywhere else.
Wow, slashdot has become waaay too liberal. I quit.
Better yet, I surrender.
Don't confuse the sale and promotion of Nazism and icons thereof with trying to cover up what happened. Europeans do not want that regime glorified. That's why some countries have laws such as this French law.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
is a nice juicy Free Trade Agreement between France and the US. That way, French law would simply be overruled by US law, and everyone could be happy
They aren't covering up the history; they are trying to stem the popularity of neo-Nazi movements. Memorabilia can be used as icons for such things. Even European museums are relatively devoid of Nazi goods. Most exhibits consist of audio/video footage and are presented in a dry, factual manner.
In fact, thre's a law in France making it a crime to "attack the character of the French President." That, combined with communist control of many of the French journalist's unions, means that many stories (such as all the members of the French government, past and present, who had their hands in the ELF bribery scandal, or, for that matter, the UN Oil-for-food scandel) never get adequately reported in the French press.
At that's to say nothing of the French journalist who got fired for pointing out that the French press were so incompetently pro-Saddam that the were talking about "terrible" American casualties and "fierce" Iraqi resistence right up until Saddam's statue was toppled.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Let's put this ruling in the proper context...
The US 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court said that Yahoo! cannot go running to the US courts to seek protection under the First Amendment from the ruling of a French court... go appeal your losses in France in France!
However, in the same breath they also warned the French that should they ever try to take their French verdict to a US court for help in getting collection, don't bother. You can't get protection from bad French verdicts from the US courts in part because, well, French verdicts don't work here in the first place! So long as Yahoo keeps all of its physical assets out of France, there wouldn't be much the French can do to them.
They didn't surrender national sovereignty so much as they recognized that even the French have it too.
The 9th Circuit overturned a ruling saying that thhe US First Amendment made the French verdict invalid. That's not a proper ruling at all, you can't appeal French verdicts in the US courts.
However, if they want to collect on a French verdict here in the USA by using the help of the US legal system... that's when they've got to prove that they've French verdict doesn't contradict US public policy. No chance of that working, so there's really no need to get protection from the dumb French verdict from the US courts in the first place, thanks to our national sovereignty we won't accept that verdict here.
I'm having trouble understanding what is peculiar about this particular legal issue. Could someone please highlight the important points for me, making liberal use of bold and italics?
People get a swastika tattooed on their skin, but you can't outlaw people. This memorabilia is basically harmless in this context, unless someone's selling full containers of Zyklon B.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But we do a fine job of not mentioning the genocide of Native Americans, including but not limited to the fact that Indian Health Service routinely sterilized women as late as 1970. Recently we're getting a little better about this, as some modern advanced history books actually talk about stuff like The Longest Walk now, but this stuff happened much longer ago than WWII.
Also, they're not ( in theory ) so much trying to cover up the *history*, as to keep the *current* bunch of Nazis from preaching the gospel of hate, and gaining acceptability through their icons. Not that such a tack is likely to work... but these laws are in fact not unlike anti-gang laws in the US. Except you can still *buy* red and blue bandannas. Just don't try to wear one to school...
I guess if neo-Nazis had as many pressure groups etc as the Jewish people then neo-Nazis could get protection under anti-hate law, but I expect that currently it is OK (legally) to hate neo-Nazis or any Nazi artifacts.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've got five shiny mod points at the moment, but rather than mod you, I'll take the time to point out that you don't have a "provoking question", you have a "groundless opinion". There's a difference. Thanks for playing.
Seriously, the courts, Congress, and President surrender our national sovereignty like this? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm sure as hell not voting for Bush, but of all the bad things he's done, he hasn't surrendered "our national sovereignty like this".
Maybe if France owned 9% of our economy... maybe if this involved oil... maybe if this involved actually going to war. What the hell are you talking about? This is a freaking WEBSITE that's selling junk on the INTARNET. Surrender our national sovereignty like this? You don't have a "provoking question", hell, you don't have "a clue".
And there ya go - I posted instead of modded. You're welcome.
This reads like a troll to me, but since you don't seem to have been marked a troll recently, if at all, I'll bite...
How many more times are we going to let the courts, Congress, the President, etc. surrender our national sovereignty like this? Don't we pay them to follow and enforce the law, not surrender it to foreign entities?
This event has nothing to do with our sovereignty, not yet have our rights been surrendered. Another country has expressed a dislike of one of our businesses items, that goes against their laws. Businesses have to accept the laws of the country they do business in... if a company centered in Denmark came here and started selling marijuana even if online, through an american domain, they would be circumspect to our laws, and we would all applaud the ripping apart of that country. Yes, I agree that they shouldn't be offended over something like this, and that they should just let the past be the past, but I do not think we should dictate their laws. The idea that we should be allowed to do that is to that country exactly what in your post you aren't willing to take anymore.
Yeah, this'll probably get marked Flamebait for asking such a provoking question.No, you probably wont be marked Flamebait, but maybe you'll be marked overrated for not thinking before you post.
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Halting "sale and promotion" of nazi icons is very different to "banning" nazi icons altogether.
Attempting to censor history, even small parts of it is wrong. Hooray for the Germans for teaching kids about the really bad stuff - now please come to your senses and stop worrying about the trivia.
According to the French government, by outlawing Nazi paraphenalia and memorabilia.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
hahahaha, I should have modded, not posted, since then I wouldn't have screwed up the italics tag. Just call me Ace, I'm this awesome every day.
Do you think "Friends of Osama" should be able to openly sell "Celebrating the attack on the Twin Towers" t-shirts (bad example, quickly made up)?
;-)
What if they opened a store in Times Square?
Don't you think that might incite a riot or something? Isn't that a bit *too* close to home?
And what if those t-shirts were being used to incite a whole new generation of Osamas to finish what he started? Wouldn't that upset you just a little?
Using Iconography from previous terrors to promote new terrors is not (IMHO) a good thing.
That's my rough interpretation of the French law. Do I agree with it? Not 100%, but I can see where they're coming from.
Yadda yadda 1st amendment or whatever rights (don't ask me, I'm a Brit in LA).
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
You let us sell our Nazi crap and we'll let you sell all the Jerry Lewis retrospective DVDs you frogs can crank out.
What a stupid comment. The point is not to enforce American laws but to not enforce French laws on the all of the internet. If France wants to set up their own Great Fire Wall, let them. There is no reason why the rest of the Internet needs to bend over backwards and kiss their asses. It isn't an American law being enforced, it is a stupid French law they are trying to shove down the throats of the rest of the Internet. In case it would be the French who are being the "OMFG imperialist!!!!111!!!!"
The Internet can not exactly bend to the lowest common denominator. It can not be subject to the law of EVERY nation. Maybe France just needs to come to grip with free speech. Even better, I would just rather see Yahoo pull out of France. If France wants to censor its citizen, let them. If France wants to cut themselves off from the world because they fear there citizens are too dumb to make informed decisions without the government regulating what they can and can not see, let them. No loss for me.
This case has nothing to do with sovereignty.
France courts are free to do what they want.
Yahoo is free to firewall off its business activity from France.
It would be a reach for Yahoo to try and escalate the case to the WTO, but probably not.
If only it resulted in a bit of a boycot by US-based airlines on Airbus planes... yeah, right.
Maybe we should put together all of our rubber bands to make a slingshot capable of lobbing French's Mustard paks across the Atlantic and do that. Or get Cristo to drop a few million over France and photograph the yellow mess from space.
Hank: By the way, Homer, what's your least favorite country; Italy or France?
Homer: France.
Hank: [chuckles] Nobody ever says Italy. [sets the coordinates of a giant laser gun]
If you think the government is intent on serving you then please contact me. I have a nice bridge to sell you.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yahoo certainly has first ammendment rights in the USA, but France isn't part of the US. How are they going to defend a law or right, which isn't part of the french legal system? That's like using the Basic Constitutional Law (aka constitution) of Germany in Vanuatu.
Just take a look at the Foreign Claims Act in the US if you want to know how local law can have much influence on global acting companies.
I don't read replies by ACs.
This is not quite accurate - I have seen many original Nazi posters and other propaganda material in museums in Germany and in other countries in Europe.
:-)
I think swastikas are good things actually. It makes neo-nazis easy to identify - forcing them to pick some other symbol is helping them to make a decision they otherwise wouldn't be smart enough to make. It would be as if all dog turds suddenly came with little red flags so you wouldn't step in them any more
of course America wouldnt try to hide anything would they ?
out of sight, out of mind perhaps ? or is it just some people can't handle the truth no matter how horrible it is.
it seems like a lot of countries still have issues they need to face , from rampant anti-semitism (which presumably France is trying to appease with this yahoo action)
can you see a pattern in all this trouble ?
That, combined with communist control of many of the French journalist's unions, means that many stories [...] never get adequately reported in the French press.
I'm so glad CNN and Fox News aren't in the hands of those dirty commies, so we always get FAIR AND BALANCED reporting from the US press.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"Yahoo intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court try to enforce French anti-hate laws"
I must have missed a day in Euro history. Does France have a first amendment that protects free speech?
Look folks, enforcing our laws in other countries isn't going to be any easier if we insist they have to NUMBER them the same way, too!
Easy.. Yahoo! = American company.. Fuck the French!
What is your penile percentile?
you completely miss the point.
there are frequent occurrences of anti-semitic vandalism in france. it's on the rise, so much so that israel's "move to israel" propaganda is having an effect in france.
Historical memorabilia is different than a recreation. The materials in quistion here were actual goods made and used by the Nazi regieme. By French law, a canister of Zyklon B that was used at a cap is illegal, but a reproduction is legal.
But we do a fine job of not mentioning the genocide of Native Americans
I know I'm going further off topic here, but a primary difference between that situation and the present one is that we didn't pass laws saying it was illegal to talk about the Native American abuses; for whatever reason - probably ignorance - it just hasn't gotten the attention it should have. I'd call it a sin of omission, which isn't any good either, but different from what we're talking about here.
On the 0th day, God created C
If we were to protect Yahoo from any foreign complaint, then we'd have the opposite effecte where someone could just pick someplace where there was no laws to speak of to put up stuff like kiddie porn and 419 scams. (er, uhm, right).
If we want the right to go after illegalities in other countries, then we have to allow the reciprocal right.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You are an idiot, or trolling.
Attacking the character of Jacques Chirac is practically a national passtime in France. He's disliked almost as much as Americans dislike Bush. If you actually knew anything about France, you wouldn't make such ridiculous claims.
You didn't bother to back up your claims of a "law" with references or even anecdotal evidence, but I'll give you an incredibly mainstream example of Jacques Chirac, Jospin, and the whole gang being routinely made to look like complete and utter idiots (along with most politicians worldwide): Les Guignoles de l'Info. It's a political satire show on French TV that is one of the most popular around; anyone claiming to be French who hasn't seen it, isn't French. That's how common/popular it is.
And it's bloody hilarious.
Actually, the French are quite similar to Americans in many respects, politically. When criticised by others, they will appear to be quite loyal to their government and way of life. But inwardly they are quite aware of their country's shortcomings and are quite harshly self-critical. This is not a bad thing, in my opinion.
It's kind of like "I can hit my little brother, but if anyone else even thinks about it, I'll kick the shit out of him."
Yahoo!, Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme
169 F. Supp. 2d 1181 (N.D. Cal. 2001)
Comity: ...the principle of comity is outweighed by the Court's obligation to uphold the First Amendment...
Accordingly, [Yahoo!'s] motion for summary judgment will be granted. Clerk shall enter judgment and close the file.
So the French lost already. Why are they trying again?
(Taken from CyberLaw: Text and Cases, 2nd Ed. by Ferrera et.al.)
No one wants to hear about it, I'm sure, but these issues are near and dear to my heart as a religious person. France recently banned the wearing of head scarves, large crosses, and other overt religious symbols in public schools.
Also, a Swedish Pastor was recently arrested for saying things the government didn't like.
er wait, someone shoot me
For that, you want the NRA.
Which country has more neo-nazis in it? Those that ban the items or those that do not?
The internet is not based on the idea of local laws or community standards (or even national laws)... it is an un-stoppable device that cannot be limited.
Take China... for every site they block, another one pops up. Just because you pass laws saying people can't be Nazi's doesn't mean they go away... it just means they go underground. Personally, I'd rather know who is in the KKK or a member of the Nazi party.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
Surely the availability of "Mein Kampf" serves as a historical record of how screwed up Hitler really was, thus strengthening human rights? I would like to think that more people will be repelled by the hatred in "Mein Kampf" than will be attracted by it. This majority will then keep the minority in check.
Maybe the French being pissed off with Hitler's writings have more to do with revenge for the German army making them look like fools, when they walked around their Maginot Line, than any real concern for human rights?
Banning books is what one does when one is too apathetic to put the effort into refuting them.
It basically comes down to the French couldn't give a shit about human rights but want to look like they do.
So the french are trying to take away Lance Armstrongs latest Tour de France win, as they found he had been using 2 substances banned in france.
Those substances, deodorant and toothpaste.
Thanks, i'll be hear all week, try the veal.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Why are the moderators modding you as troll? Has slashdot gotten that bad?
thisnukes4u.net
a company centered in Denmark came here and started selling marijuana even if online, through an american domain
Anyone know where I can find this hypothetical domain for... research purposes?
No more than French law applies to US company with headquarters and equipment within US borders.
Regardless of the French government's opinion of its subjects, the French are not children and should not be treated as such. France will survive quite well if a Parisian wants to read Mein Kempf.
We should not be forced to censor every piece of speech or expression that embarasses some other country. If that offends the thought police in France, Germany, China and other such countries, tough.
Only on
This is actually a really interesting question.
In school, we teach children -- unceasingly, it seems -- about slavery, our genocide of American Indians, the Holocaust, and so forth. The goal is to ensure it never happens again, by teaching everyone about how terrible it was.
In Europe, though, it's practically forbidden to acknowledge that Hitler ever existed.
Although maybe they're not totally misguided here. Every now and then, I catch myself thinking along the lines of some sort of completely unfounded racial stereotype, formed only through hearing the stereotypes, not any opinions I've formed on my own.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
there are frequent occurrences of anti-semitic vandalism in france. it's on the rise
Many people think that's the result of the anti-nazi laws and jewish protection laws. The act of criminalizing nazi *ideas* makes them attractive to a whole slew of mentally unstable people, and youth who are drawn to forbidden things.
Just look at the US: we're let hate groups say whatever they wanted, and now the hate speech they spew out is banalized, and people look at them as the redneck morons they are. In France, the criminalization of hate speech and hate-related objects makes them dangerously attractive.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Example: refusal to extradite criminals who might be subject to a death penalty in the US. Moral indignation is the reason why.
Comity my ass, the same principle applies here. Censorship laws are bullshit in the US, and no US company should have to bend a millimeter to a censorship law that smacks of being written by a Fascist.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Then Yahoo should just block all requests from .fr from any portion of their site that might deal with Nazi paraphernalia. Problem solved.
From the articles it doesn't seem to me that this would satisfy the French government. Seems to me they want Yahoo to pull these items, forever, regardless of which country they're sold in. Which is clearly beyond the jurisdiction of the French government, even if they're collectively suffering from the same delusions that de Gaul did.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Something is happening in another country that is considered illegal activity within France (or where ever). Pot is sold in Holland, there are probably even places that accept phone or fax orders for said pot. But it's still happening in Holland! So if you as a country have a problem with this activity, you have two alternatives in my opinion: block all telephone traffic to said telephone numbers (or, in this case, all traffic to http://auctions.yahoo.com) and/or stop the pot at the border with your own customs service (or, blocking all traffic from http://auctions.yahoo.com).
In either case, it's not a problem for the pot house in Holland. It's not (shouldn't be) their job to enforce the laws of every other country in the world, that is what the police and customs services for each country are for.
You don't like something going on over there? Fine, make sure it can't get in here. Don't expect the people over there to give a flying #$% about your beliefs/laws/whatever (let alone take on the financial responsibility to ensure that your beliefs/laws/whatever aren't broken). It's up to your own government to enforce your own laws. If something is "skirting" the law and making its way into your country, simply cut off it's route into your country and everything is fine. You can't blame the pot shop or the government of Holland if Dutch pot makes its way past your customs service! It's their job to stop it from entering your country in the first place, else what is a customs service paid to do?
On an aside, if I were a decision maker within Yahoo, I'd find it abhorrent that Nazi stuff was being peddled by my company by proxy. I would do my best to make sure it was no longer peddled due to my own personal beliefs. Only governments can censor, private companies can decide what they will and will not profit from. Of course, this has no bearing on the case from a precedent point of view, I just felt it should be said.
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Hehe, you must be new around here. Mentioning jews, revisionists, nazis, Noam Chomsky and having a swing at the Bush administration in the same post tends to trigger moderators' BS-meter.
:-)
Remember, moderators never read the post for more than 2 seconds, so if it even so much as looks suspicious, it's modded down. Even if the post says something constructive. Such is the Slashdot way, but I'm glad you read my post
I have no clue what in the French history have you seen that makes you think that they are such a tolerant nation. The revolution that possibly invented a totalitarian state? Vichy collaboration with Nazis? A strong record of voting for either communist, trotskist or else fascist parties?
Your proposition, eh? Well, I'm sure the Yahoo! brass are sitting up and taking notice, and will implement your policies to deal with French hate laws at once. After all, who wouldn't, given your credentials as an impotent, misguided Francophobe?
No, Yahoo's corporate solution will be to comply with French law, and ban sales of Nazi items across its entire system. The Yahoo profit lost from those items, and any fallout, will be smaller than the profit threatened by losing their local presence in the big, rich country of France. It's not like Yahoo is a person, with beliefs or freedoms. It's a corporation, and its fictitous "rights" are just cover for maximizing profit.
--
make install -not war
Zyklon B was devloped as a pesticide, and was widely used a such in Nazi camps until someone had the bright idea to kill the inmates with it. Today, it is to some extent still used as a pesticide although obviously they don't call it Zyklon.
Shows that such things do have legitimate uses, including Nazi 'memorabilia', which maybe collected by individuals who have absolutely no facist beliefs.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Anyone know where I can find this hypothetical domain for... research purposes?
here =D
Forgive me if you were just making a quip based on its "widespread" use, and already knew about it.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
As part of ethics class, it was required to consider: What is freedom? You are absolutely right that most people spout off "I can say anything here in the U.S.! That's freedom!" But, you can't. One cannot lie in court, one cannot say false and malicious things against people, one cannot say words that will likely incite or generate a public disturbance, and so on.
For every "freedom" we grant ourselves we must give up a freedom in cost. If we grant ourselves the ability to say anything, then anyone can say anything without merit. A common critique of "free speech" is that it leads to relativism, where there are so many people who say so many things (often contradictory and intentionally misleading) that it becomes practically impossible for any person to figure out what is true or not. In the end, people just accept practically everything they hear if it supports their opinion and rant if it doesn't. Not every country, in fact most don't, want the outcome we have in the U.S. and do not have an interest in letting anyone say just anything.
Personal opinion: You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Allow free speech and it only takes a small number of people who are willing to twist things so far out of context that it becomes impossible to have an informed opinion (Bush v Kerry comes to mind). Disallow free speech and people will eventually come to a norm and threaten those who cross it regardless if it has merit or not (France on Nazism). As an American, I would like to say that freedom to speak is blessed thing, but with free speech being used to attempt to defend any action from responsibility these days, I'm not terribly sure we can tout this horn much longer.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
and clearly I did not preview... Here is the link: http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=U TF-8&tab=nn&q=france+anti-semitic&btnG=Search+News
Actually as a native french speaker living in Seattle, I read/watch US/Swiss/French/UK media and the US media is the least trustful media by far.
If you actually read the french press, you'll find out that it is way more critical of the french government than any US media outlet is of the US government.
Besides, your comment about communists controlling the unions is stupid, France has been under a right-wing government for a number of years now, not a government the communists would support. Moreover, the ELF scandal has been written about widely in the french press, at some point there wasn't a day without an article on TV or in the big newspapers(Le Monde, Liberation...)
You'd better go check again your sources about French media, it's light years ahead of US media when it comes to being free of pressure groups.
I thought the same thing at first, but this is a lot more complicated of an issue.
Suppose I go to france, upon up my breifcase on the streets of Paris and start hawking my neo-nazi wear. When they try to fine me, it would be absurd for me to evoke my first-admendment rights. They don't apply to the french government, and when I'm in france I'm under their jurisdiction.
That's not what Yahoo was doing, and it's going to be interesting to see how the courts take this one. Even if yahoo didn't have any servers in france, the mere fact that the content was accessible to french citizens prompted the french government to levy the fine.
The argument by the french is not that yahoo servers based in france were responsible.less They're saying that anyone who sells nazi memorobilia in such a way that french citzens are capable of buying it is legally liable and subject to a fine. If the french government succeeds in fining Yahoo, then there would be a legal basis to levy a fine against any online merchant who sells nazi memorbilia, regardless of his location if he doesn't block people attempting to access his website from france. The argument could be extened even further - if a brick and mortar store accepts orders placed by phone, and they don't make sure no one from france orders nazi stuff, a precent set by the courts' ruling in this case could hold that US-based brick and mortar store liable to fines by the french for violating french law.
At first I thought yahoo's case seemed stupid for the same reasons you mentioned. But if you think about the possible results if this case sets a precedent (and when don't they) it gets really scary.
My blog
I totally agree with that.
However, one thing that's more important then anything else is that Americans and American companies have to realize that their laws do NOT apply outside of their borders.
There's nothing wrong with the First Amendment, but it's part of the American constitution, not the French.
Agh... sorry I'm an idiot and completely misread your post. Ignore my last comment, as it was just really really dumb.
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And it was the French that saved the Americans from saluting the king. Your point?
Why do most European countries insist on covering up any history of Hitler?
Could you spout more ignorant bullshit? To the people who moderated this up: this is completely inaccurate. I doubt that the poster could even label the countries of Europe on a map let alone tell you how modern European history is taught on the continent.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm absolutely baffled anyone could make such a statement as the one quoted above.
Wow. Just wow.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's not what the court held at all. They simply ruled that Yahoo can't sue a Frenchman in the US for suing him in France. Any other result would be absurd and an affront to French sovereignty.
The French plaintiff still cannot enforce his judgment in American courts, so American sovereignty is not affected.
The First Amendment is a shield, not a sword.
Yes, the 'offending material' was long ago yanked from yahoos french site. The French court is now trying to force them to take it down on their other sites as well. They asked the US court to tell the French court they couldn't do that, and the US court basically said 'we don't have the authority to give them orders... but if they ask us to enforce that order we'll laugh in their faces.'
The trouble, of course, is that Yahoo wants to continue doing business in France, and the French courts seem quite willing to seize everything they own in France and pull every dirty trick they can think of to force Yahoo to knuckle under.
Yahoo, and everyone else, should simply stop doing business in France until they come to their senses. It's a shame too, a great country in so many ways - but a country that doesn't recognise freedom of speech cannot be condoned.
It looks to me like France is violating human
rights.
Well, we can go back and land on the beach again.
Even the French deserve freedom.
Sin of omission? You mean like biology textbooks in Texas that don't mention the theory of evolution? It's much more than a memory lapse--it's an intentional expurgation of content with political motivation.
Frankly I don't see that sins of omission are a hell of a lot less horrible than sins of commission.
You shouldn't forget that France has the largest Muslim arab immigrant population in all of Europe. Mutual dislike between Muslims and Jews is nothing particularly new, I'd wager.
There is a strong anti-Israel sentiment in France, but despite what pro-Israel groups would have you believe, that isn't quite the same as anti-semitism, because it is motivated by national politics rather than religious belief/ethnic identity. Many French disagree with Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and ignore PLO terrorist tactics; just as we in the US take the opposite view, condoning IDF atrocities while condemning outright PLO activities.
Neither view is wholly unbiased. France taking the PLO side is probably mostly due to domestic political lobbying by Muslims in France, just as our pro-Israel stance is mostly due to domestic political lobbying of Jews in the US.
Anyone who has looked at the situation over there in any sort of logical way will recognize that both groups are pretty shitty to each other and both seem to feel that God is on their side. Not a recipe for long lasting stability or peace.
At any rate, I am both Jewish and pro-Israel, American and of French descent (parents are French). When I go back to visit family I don't feel like I get any static from anyone about being Jewish, although I imagine (perhaps incorrectly) that some Arabs might have issues with it if they knew.
But I can say that as a liberal-minded individual it annoys me that some pro-Israel groups attempt to leverage the cultural fear we all have of being "anti-semetic" in order to increase support for Israel, a la "If you don't support Israel, you don't support Jews. Nazi!" This has worked suprisingly well on a lot of Americans especially.
I dislike it not because I don't want people to support Israel, but because I think people are beginning to realize that they're being manipulated, and equating "anti-Israel" with "anti-semetic" is very much degrading the notion of anti-semitism; if all you need to do to be anti-semetic is be anti-Israel, well, it doesn't take much, does it? And so suddenly we're lumping a lot politically-critical people who are otherwise not at all anti-semites in with the KKK. Kind of removes the utility of the term, imho.
"It would be as if all dog turds suddenly came with little red flags so you wouldn't step in them any more"
Better yet, come up with a dogfood which makes their shit glow in the dark, that way you won't step on them even at night!
good plan!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Hrm... the law... Come back when Congress passes an anti-Nazi law. Otherwise, though we may not agree with it, it's a matter of French law.
Now, if France tried to collect its fines out of Yahoo!'s US assets, then there'd be a problem; they'd run into article V of the same document. But all the court said is that Yahoo! can't protect its French assets in a US court simply because of where they're headquartered.
(So... when do companies start getting their US assets fined for not complying with US labor laws while operating overseas?)
... you sure wield the word "freedom" like a true American!
Sorry to offend...But I stated clearly that I was NOT EUROPEAN. I don't what it is like on the other side of the pond. If I knew how it was, I wouldn't have posted what I did. I asked for some insight.
:)
Furthermore, I won a local geography bee, I'll have you know!
My MythTV HowTo
You have no idea what you are talking about. What a nonsense. Where in Europe? Have you ever been to Europe? Which country you are talking about? Half of European movies were about the world war II in various shapes or forms. The generation that went through that devastation is still (though barely) alive. You can't erase people's memory. Contrary to the U.S. that did not experience a war on its territory for well over a century, this is still not an abstract issue in Europe.
Complete and utter crap. You really have no clue about how Europeans regard Hitler, the Nazis and World War II. Europeans don't try to deny Nazism, what they do (and this law is a clear example of it) is deny neo-Nazis the chance to use Hitler's Third Reich as a tool to spread hatred and evil today.
I'm European. WWII history was taught to me at school, just as it's taught to every schoolkid from Iceland to Russia. Delude yourself that Europeans don't learn about Hitler if you want, but don't try and dupe others into believing it too.
And, by the way, perhaps this is a great example of the pot calling the kettle black. Native Americans are so well respected and so well treated in the US today that the name of the NFL franchise in the nations capital is called the Washington Redskins. That's about as racially sensitive as having a team called the LA Niggers, yet nobody seems to give a shit outside the tiny minority of Native Americans still left.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It seems to me that removing an atrocious event in history from society in the name of "anti-hate" removes the reminders from the society of the wrong that was committed. How can we learn when we sweep all of our mistakes under the rug?
I've come to the decision that to many of the moderators, any post they don't agree with is modded down as Troll or Flamebait. They seem to think that it's OK to use these mods to stifle all opinions except theirs. Shame, really, as Overrated would work just as well and be less likely to be meta-modded Unfair.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Sorry suwain_2, just re-read your comment. At least, I hope you were being sarcastic. ;)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The dispute is caused because the yahoo.com site hosted content that is apparently at odds with French laws.
It is not specifically targetted at the French market. However, the judge on the case ruled that since French citizens were able to access it, it must comply with French laws.
As other posts mentioned, try to read the post above, replacing "French" with "Chinese" or "Saoudi", to get a feel for what this implies.
Nothing to do with covering up Nazism. The history of WWII, the death camps and Adolf Hitler get a lot of attention in general education. You can walk around most European cities and find plates in the street saying "Here so and so were shot down by the German army", "There so and so was tortured to death by the Gestapo". History is present in everyday life at an extent most USians cannot imagine.
It's so present that professing Nazism today is now not considered as free speech. This ideology was given a try and resulted in tens of millions of people killed all over Europe. There's no more benefit of the doubt, no room left for public debate. The case is settled. Nazism is pure unadulterated evil. Its ideas do kill people and must not be tolerated in a civilized society.
There is one thing you must know about Nazism to understand why it is actively repressed in Europe. Nazism emerged from a democracy (while Stalinism emerged from a dictorial environment). Germany's Weimar Republic may have been dysfunctionnal and rife with political violence but it was a democracy nonetheless. Adolf Hitler came to power by the polls and gained a large following by convincing people far more than by coercing them. So there is no illusion in Europe on the ability of democracies to deal with this kind of ideas by the mere virtue of democratic debate. We know all too well how totalitarian ideologies can fall through the cracks and use momentary difficulties to impose themselves. Hence, the will not give those ideas any breathing space.
We know that democracies are fragile and must be defended. We learned that the hard way and that's a lesson I hope we'll never forget.
SNS Not Sig
It was *sarcasm*, not a troll.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
But you were quick to state as fact that "most European countries insist on covering up any history of Hitler", weren't you? This is so much bullshit that it borders on the unbelievable.
There's a big difference between not letting people celebrate Nazism (which is what this French law is intended to do, as other laws in Germany itself do) and denying it even existed. How you made the jump in logic from the former to the latter is beyond me. Europeans don't deny that Hitler existed, they deny that he and the Nazis he led should be lauded. There's a big fucking difference and you clearly need to learn that - plus a whole lot more.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yeah, you're damn right. After all, United States of Americas never tried to rules other countries.
Montreal - Best city to live in!
"The 9th Circuit ruling did not directly address San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel's free speech findings. Instead, the court found that U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to trump the orders of a foreign court without that foreign government first bringing the dispute into the American legal system."
Basically, the court says they have nothing to fight yet, since the Frogs haven't taken Yahoo! to court in the US. When that happens, Yahoo! may use the US Constitution's first ammendment to protect itself.
Yahoo! had essentially been jumping the gun when it asked US courts to clear it from having to follow the French court order. No need for anyone to get hyterical here...
Are slashdotters so rampantly liberal that in ANY situation, the American MUST be wrong?
When America attempts (foolishly, I might add) to enforce it's laws/standards on the internet, there's nothing but ranting from the slashdot crowd about arrogance and stupidity. But when the French do it, suddenly the "don't do business there if you don't like the laws" crowd comes of the the woodwork and starts arguing about the applicability of French law.
I simply don't understand the liberal penchant for euro-worship. Who cares what the French think/do/say/smell like; did their ban on Nazi Regalia keep the German army from driving tanks straight down the Champs d Elysees? Nope. Will it do anything to stop Neo-Nazis? Nope.
Laws are only as effective as the power to enforce them. France has absolutely no ability to enforce ANY decision they make, save for whining for the US government to enforce it, so why bother reporting the story?
"You'll be surprised to learn that there is free speech in Europe."
But it's perhaps not as liberally applied as it is in the US. As has been pointed out around here ad nauseam, most fundamental legal documents in Western countries say something to the effect of "the people have freedom of speech," essentially leaving it open to interpretation as to just how much freedom they are granted (by their government, presumably). The national charter in the US says "thou shalt not" to the national government with reguards to speech laws and another amendment forces all member states to follow suit.
"Not only that, you will be surprised that there are far fewer people making use of their free speech to put forward outlandish theories."
Apparently because it is illegal to do so. However, this begs the question of just who it is that decides what is outlandish and what is not, and what standards are used.
And is it that fewer people believe these theories, or simply because fewer people feel safe to admit they believe them?
"Name another industrialised nation where creationism is even being discussed as a topic for public school curricula..."
Somebody else's state, somebody else's problem. That's one of the nice things about federalism.
"Anyways, there's always limits to free speech, even in the home country of the first amendment (think slander, think inaccurate advertising (like Jay's vs. Lay's in Chicago a few weeks ago))."
How does freedom of speech equate to freedom from responsibility? Essentially, all the amendment says is that the government can't keep you from putting your foot in your mouth. And even then, in the case of slander, most (if not all) state constitutions guarantee that the truth can never be considered slander.
"What's more, the European press didn't censor itself in the runup to the Iraq war."
What are you looking for, free speech or forced speech? If you want the latter, please refer to the amendment three below this one.
"What good is free speech if it's unpatriotic to criticize the president's warmongering?"
The fact that it's not government-mandated.
was that the US courts ruled that basically since even Yahoo.com (as opposed to .fr) was accessible from France, French courts could indeed prosecute Yahoo (.com) if it broke French law, but that Yahoo would have to be prosecuted in France, not in the US. French courts have asked Yahoo to at least geo-filter the "nazi" parts of Yahoo auctions .
:
The press also remarks that Yahoo was quite happy to sign-up to the Chinese government's rules even while battling French ones, and attributed that to the larger potential of the Chinese market.
This is indeed a free speech issue, and we in France restrict it
- one may not "promote hate", such as anti-jew, homophobic , anti-immigrants discourse
- one may not divulge the private life of someone else (movie stars, politicians...)
- one may not advocate substance abuse, or any other law-breaking behaviour
On the other end, nudity and sex in particular are very much less frowned upon. We are bemused be the drama in the US over prime time tits, especially since prime time murders are so common.
I think the "private life" part does make sense, and we were quite bemused by Monicagate, both by the fact that Americans made such a fuss about something so private and personal, and that they thought it such a public scandal. We for example learned a few years before his death (couple of years after Monicagate ?) that our previous president (Miterrand) had an illegitimate teenage daughter by a regular lover. The main debate was on whether the newspapers shouldn't have held their tongues.
The "hate speech" and "law breaking" aspects are more debatable. The law aims to avoid the promotion of hate and such, but the net result is that these issues can barely be discussed publicly, ie rationally. It does give a weapon to sue neo-nazis and far-right groups though.
you mean france does not dictate world policy?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
For example, here in California, a local radio show is the ONLY media outlet reporting on the many shennagins of the state government. Arnold calling them girly men was about 1/1000 of what the scumbags in the Scaramento statehouse deserve to be called. Evil, fascist, brainless, retarded, shit-filled, legal citizen-raping vermin begins to get in the same city as the ballpark, and this is coming from a avowed Independent. Honestly, if someone revealed tomorrow inarguable proof that the state legislature was comprised mainly of foriegn enemy agents whose goal was to destroy California economically, I wouldn't be the least bit suprised. It's either that or these people are the dumbest shits ever to walk upright.
You click on the local news, and it's a laundry list of robberies/murders, vague weather reports and snowboarding cats. When they can be bothered to cover a press conference by a state official, it's just reported verbatim. No one ever challenges anything. No reporter ever asks something like, "Do you really think a new 75 cent a gallon gas tax even approaces the outer reaches of coherent sanity at this point in time, and have you considered how much revenue it will actually bring in when the California economy basically evaporates overnight?"
And you can tell it's not bias. It's just laziness. Asking a followup question is just too much bother for them.
--- Ban humanity.
The french capitulated with Hitler more or less 100%.
..and they're certainly not the only country that's induged in that conceit.
That's not *quite* fair. The Free French Army fielded 10 battalions or so on D-Day, and Eisenhower said that the French Resistance was worth ten divisions.
Yes, Petain turned out to be a traitor, but he's far from the only traitor in history. It's an American, Benedict Arnold, and a Norwegian, Vidkun Quisling, whose names are synonymous with "traitor".
they are taught they are the pinnacle of humanity.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
See "The Sorrow and the Pity, chronicle of a French city under the occupation" (Rottentomatoes).
i'm sick of people saying that the ninth circuit is more overturned than the rest without giving the real facts. The ninth circuit does have more overturned cases than the rest... why? Well here's a hint, look up the number of cases that the ninth circuit takes on compared to the other circuits.
Go have a look at the area covered by the ninth circuit. Compare this with the area covered by the other circuits!!! Then do a quick google and look at the percentage of cases over-turned compared to the other appeals courts. Stop spreading misleading facts because you've heard analysts say them out of context on tv!
HINT: Incase people cant figure out what to look for, type in
circuit courts overturned percentage
in google and hit "i'm feeling lucky"...i'm not going to do the work for you but thats a...good place to start learning about the 9th circuit.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
I can only say that, after the American general elections in November, we can hold a civilized conversation on Slashdot that does not immediately degenerate into political squabbling.
--Ohio
... One cannot lie in court... For every "freedom" we grant ourselves we must give up a freedom in cost...
If what your saying had any impact on reality, if you can't lie in court you can't lie outside of court. But we all know that reality dictates that we can and do lie outside of court all the time, even though it's illegal to lie in court. Your theory is flawed.
You can 'grant' freedoms without taking away.
I'll quote from the following article by Uri Avnery. The last sentence is the relevant statement.
Rather, "I can only hope that,"...
> Americans and American companies have to realize that their laws do NOT apply outside of their borders
There's some irony in that since the case is about the French court system pushing their law on a US site on US soil meant for a US audience.
However, the question remains:
The internet is making borders seem more artificial than ever, yet behind each border hides a slightly different sets and rules to abide.
This is probably not tenable in the long run.
...to worry about...you know, like fixing their labor laws that resulted in all those old people dying.
Blar.
Yes, an outstanding documentary. Commissioned by a French TV station in 1969 that then refused to broadcast it because it didn't convey the expected imagery, so released in theaters in 1971. The DVD is released by Milestone and has new English subtitling.
"Yet France stood back and waited to see which side would win the civil war."
Interesting how you single out the French there and not the other major European powers (like, say, the British) for doing that. After all, who was it who built the CSS Alabama?
Secondly, what would you rather had them done? For the federal government, the civil war was just that: a wholly internal matter. It certainly wasn't the North that was seeking international intervention. At most, their endeavors abroad were focused on preventing recognition of the Confederacy abroad. France was one of the countries that agreed to this, which resulted in a certain Confederate ship not staying in Cherbourg as long as they would have liked (or perhaps a century and a half longer, depending on how you look at things).
Of course, the captain managed to escape and found refuge in some other nearby country...
"since the naval blockade was cutting into their business, if, in France's mind, the war was not close to a resolution."
Of course, it's all about the economics. Nations either wage war or make peace entirely because of their wallets. I guess that makes the First World War one great big freakin' anomally...
What I don't understand, though, is why they need to do things like this:
It's not like Wolfenstein promotes Nazism any more than Doom promotes Satan.Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Who owns the land your house sits on, fucker? Your ancestors stole that land from its rightful owners and now you sit there complaining about not getting free health care? Fuck you, asshole.
"Its not like they were ever, you know, invaded and occupied by Nazis or anything, right?
.fr site. With any luck, American courts and lawmakers will come to Yahoo's rescue and put the pompous French beaurocrats right back on their socialist asses. Otherwise, we may well see the content of the internet reduced to the lowest common denominator of PC-filtered non-offensive non-confrontational child-safe mind-numbing drool.
I'm surprised that years of deprivation under Nazi occupation could leave any stigma like that...who'd have thought?"
Considering the fact that southern France was collaberating with the Nazis, I should think that they'd have not been that much more deprived than citizens of Germany during the war.
Aside from that, you seem to be supportive of France's attempt at purging "bad thoughts" from the minds of everyone on planet Earth via legislation and jail. State-sponsored reprogramming isn't the answer to any problem. Prosecution of thoughtcrime used to be something free peoples fought against.
Yahoo cannot possibly block all French citizens from accessing their other sites. Thus, if they can't fight this off with the help of the ACLU, they're going to have problems regardless of what they do with the
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
because a US court can't issue a ruling that would violate the Constitution.
Even the rights laid out in the US Constitution (and amendments) have limits.
If you don't believe me, make a few death threats at important people.
The original post was unfortunately vague about what's actually going on here so here's my summary (IANAL) seeing as I've actually read the article.
A French court has demanded that Yahoo stop selling pro-Nazi materials and memorabilia *in France* in accordance with French anti-hate laws.
On the point that this is only regarding Yahoo's activities in France a quote from the article:
"In 2000, a French court sided with the groups [suing Yahoo] and found that Yahoo had violated French anti-hate laws when it allowed online auction listings of about 1,000 Nazi-related items. The court ordered Yahoo to face a $13,000-per-day fine if it didn't block access to Nazi objects [*]within[*] France"
And NB: "Later, Yahoo removed a variety of the disputed items only from its French subsidiary, saying it was responding to customers, not the French court orders."
Given that the French democracy voted in these laws it probably makes good business sense to obey them.
Now, Yahoo is based in the US and holds to US values of free-speech as expressed in the 1st amendment.
Presumably the US courts are involved because France is seeking the corporate equivalent of extradition - they want to sue an American company over it's actions in France and they therefore need to go through American channels. This bit is not made very clear in the article.
So by way of analogy if an American company went to France and sold goods that did not meet French safety laws and French courts found that company guilty of disobeying French law I suspect no-one would deny that they had a right to do this even if those standards did not hold in the US.
However, a lot of people - myself included - think those French anti-hate laws are stupid (just like the laws against wearing Muslim shrouds to school).
Because the laws are stupid, and in the website case, unlike the imported goods analogy, it is possible to go on breaking the law as long as the US government backs Yahoo, it is easy to conclude that the US should back Yahoo and the 1st amendment even in a foreign country.
However, this is effectively forcing US laws on other countries and carries the implication that the US (or anyone else) need not respect the sovereignty of another nation if they can get away with it.
This is a very difficult call because on the one hand it means that US websites on democracy etc. could be banned from activity in China because they violate sovereign Chinese laws - though we may not like those laws. On the other hand it means that the US is playing fair with other nations and not forcing it's values on them over the internet.
In the end there is a choice between a situation in which 'lowest common denominator' standards result with a freedom that exists in one country being extended to all over the internet - which is good for free speech and democracy but bad for victim of child-porn rings, slander and so on. On the other hand nations could all agree to present a united front and support foreign rulings for local websites where those websites are made available to foreign customers - this way the law would pretty much stay the same, national sovereignty would be respected and the worst excesses (eg. child porn) could be restrained. But those countries we would like to see a bit free-er wouldn't be.
It's a choice between anarchism and sovereignty which will depend on your politics, but sovereignty is probably where the US courts want to stand so the decision is consistent with what they represent. And at the end of the day, seeing as a united front with the UN lasts about as long as a snowflake in hell it'll probably end up closer to democracy with whatever the majority* of nations can agree on being the case.
*'majority' and therefore 'democracy' must be understood to be adjusted by factors such as the possession of overwhelming military and economic force (and a lunatic Texan in control of them and damn willing to use them).
I fail to see how blocking the sale of a wristwatch with a swastika is covering up history. In Europe you can turn on any TV or pick up any book and learn about the historical record. The point is that objects with legitimate, historical and educational value are coveted by these countries, their museuames, and their educational systems; novelty collectable items are not.
what the whites did to us was shitty, no doubt...
but compared to most any other invading race at that time, you pick, germans, french, chinese, english, even portugese... it was comparable. that is what tended to happen in that stage of history.
my only problem is that our genetic diversity is now large enough to support ourselves as a distinct race, but this is also happening all over the world in australia, africa, and south america.
but anyways, too many people try to play the victim. how far back do you want to go as far as grudge-holding?
as far as the sterilization in 1970, im not saying i dont believe you, but such things were not widespread past ww2. now before that, i have some amazing stories to tell about my grandparents and before that, but I've ranted enough. We have had 70 years, several generations, to get over it.
Now look at any other 'genocided' culture, jews, slavs, whatever. They've managed to move on. Look to the future, not to the past.
Turtle Mountain Anishinabe (ND), reservation land owning, casino money-getting, on the census as such.
"my only problem is that our genetic diversity is now large enough to support ourselves as a distinct race"
should be
"my only problem is that our genetic diversity is not large enough to support ourselves as a distinct race"
or december. Rumor has it that the DNC cry babies, not content they had made a mockery of the electorial process with their selective recounts in Florida in 2000, are already planning lawsuits to contest the outcome of the coming election.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Too bad you are way off on the Washington Redskins remark. Complete and utter crap, really. [quote]The Washington franchise originally was located in Boston and was called the Braves until it was purchased by George Preston Marshall in 1932. He changed the name to the Boston Redskins in honor of the team's head coach, William "Lone Star" Dietz, who was an American Indian. The team moved to Washington in 1937 and was renamed the Washington Redskins.[/quote] Dietz came from a tribe known for smearing red warpaint on their faces. It is an honorable term. Beyond that, you'd have you have your head up your ass to think a team would want its namesake to be something that they didn't respect, or considered a slur. Its the height of absurdity. We could go on and on, noting that the vast majority of AMERICAN INDIANS don't consider the name offensive. The only people who consider it so are caucasian troublemakers. And any dictionary references regarding the term redskins as offensive are recent alterations to the record by said troublemaking, ignorant caucasians, as shown in the Trademark case rulings presided over by Judge Kotelly. So in short, STFU and educate yourself before trying to be high and mighty.
No it is not about yahoo.fr
Read older articles about the court case, it's clearly about the yahoo.com auction site having objectionable content.
I agree it would be quite hard to defend a situation where an american company had a French site that didn't respect French laws, but that's simply not what's happening here.
I can agree with even all of that. However, I will deny the allusions to moral distinctions between censoring historical facts and not-glorifying them. In the US, we assert the moral principle that ethnic bigotry is wrong, and is prohibited by the 18th amendement to the Constitution. Selling Nazi memorabilia is OK unless it in fact or in principle discriminates against a minority.
What the french do not want is people developing an economy around fascination with Nazi history, which would become a scaffolding for social and political organizing. It is really about the differences between french and US societies. French political pluralism doesn't necessitate protecting minority political opinions and speech the way US homogeneity needs to protect its precious different perspectives. There's always going to be scads of freaks to season the variety of political thought in France. They don't necessarily need Nazis to stir the pot. Americans, however, need Nazis: we need to know for a fact that we haven't become them, because there they are, opposing us. Otherwise we can't be sure, can we?
France has no right to deny Americans the political parity that we crave. If France wants American culture (the Internet, case and point), they can take what we are giving and STFU.
Just to quell any doubts: I hate the Illinois Nazis...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Calling everyone who speaks harshly of the French government a "Frankophobe" is as bad as calling anyone who criticises the actions of Israel an "anti-semite".
That's partly true, France certainly had economical interests in Iraq and it played a role in the government's decisions.
Now, if you look at what the _people_ wanted in France/Germany/... you'll see that they all refused a US invasion and they didn't refuse it for these economical reasons, they refused it because they considered that it was ethically wrong.
I highly doubt this. Why would anyone contest the outcome of an election that they won?
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
for what its worth, i personally agre with most of the ninth circuit decisions - but their decisions tend to be highly contentious and often make it to the supreme court. They are one of the most visible courts in the country, and with the supreme court, and pretty much the only 2 courts that end up regularly in the headlines. oh, and the amount of land covered by a given court is irrelevant. the population is. and i don't watch tv, and i read the entire courts opinion in every court decision that interests me, primarily the ninth circuit and the supreme court.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
American Indians consider it to be a racial slur, and that's all you need. They don't consider it to be a tribute, and they find the term very offensive.
Over the years, they've campaigned for the name and the mascot to be changed, just as they've campaigned against the name of the Kansas City Chiefs and the mascot of the Cleveland Indians.
These attempts by the Native American people (some of whom find the term "American Indian", which you choose to use, also offensive) to stop what they see as racist abuse and characaturisation aren't led by "troublemaking, ignorant caucasians", they're led by Native Americans themselves.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I struggle to suppress my childish streak and in the end, the adult in me forced me to erase 20 pages of "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" in response to French Law.
But know that I'm still feeling it in my heart.
I learned about the longest walk in grade school. That would have been about 1986. My history book was neither modern nor advanced.
..err.. maybe it does. Nevermind.
You are absolutely wrong. American Indians don't consider it to be a slur. A broad survey of American Indians showed that they Liked the name, and had positive associations with it. Thats what matters. That's all you need. They do consider it to be a tribute. They don't consider it to be offensive. When you say "they", you refer to a ridiculously small group of people who are absolutely not representative of the American Indian population. You are simply, completley, flat out, wrong.
"Example: refusal to extradite criminals who might be subject to a death penalty in the US. Moral indignation is the reason why."
Actually, it's nearly impossible to get France to extradite ANYONE to ANYWHERE. The death penalty has little to do with it.
That is absurd. "Redskin" may only make sense to 1% (though it is likely more), but if most of those are native Americans, they know they are being slurred. How can you say it is not an ethnic slur??
Look. I want to come over to your house. And I want to say "cock sandwich" in front of your wife and kids. Is it wrong for you to forbid me?
What's so bad about Chick-fil-A?
Like it or not, this, along with the wide disparities of copyright law are likely to force the world to come together, at least whereas it applies to the internet.
One can only hope that the US will come out on top regarding free speech, and that someone else will come out will come out on top regarding privacy rights (hopefully not China.)
Hmm. It actually would mean fear or dread of the franks.
Possibly misofranc? Just doesn't sound right.
I have a friend who speaks classical greek, but I hate to ask him, he has a phobia about racism.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
> Why do most European countries insist on covering up any history of Hitler?
For your information, french laws in that matter don't do that. At all.
Quite the contrary (at least they try to).
They just force you to tell the truth about that period. It is considered too important to be allowed to lie about it.
You have to remember that some people around the world (like Mel Gibson's father, here in the US) do not really believe that the concentration camps are responsible for "that many deaths among the Jews".
For instance, in France, it is illegal to state publicly that gas chambers did not exist.
The French consider that such lies about history should not be allowed. These laws are here to protect history, and to ensure that nobody forget or remember a "fainted" version of what really happened.
You may disagree with this strategy, but at least you agree with their goal.
It is a bit like forcing people to fasten their seat belt in a plane or a car. You protect someone (and the people around: hitting the driver from behind in a car accident may kill him, it has happened) against his own choices.
But there is also another dimension: you want to protect the memory of those who died, since they are not here to defend themselves anymore.
That's what Slashdot is for.
Was it love of the Iraqi people that caused the US to go to war? or was it the WMD? And if it was the love, where was it when they were dropping cluster bombs?
oh yeah I forget, who armed Iraq?
It is not even conceivable that the French (and MOST other US ALLIES) looked at the evidence for going to war, weighed it and it came up short? I mean it was proven that the intelligence that "caused" the US to go to war to "protect itself" was faulty.
Maybe they just couldn't bring themselves to sending their countrymen to die, and condemn Iraqi's to become "collateral damage" that doesn't even get an official body count.
But yeah, it could've been all about the money, why not that's what it's all about there in the US, right? Maybe they asked for a cut and were told to go fuck themselves with a baguette.
In case you'd like to learn something before you spew, here are some links....
0 2. asp
m e= article&node=&contentId=A40891-2002Jan25¬Found= true
f _f ame/inductees2002.htm
Incidentally, if you'd like to read up on the matter, here you go.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller0308
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagena
http://www.ricelake.k12.wi.us/rlasddepts/hall_o
...because of the rhetoric they were fed by their governments, which had an economic interest in ignoring the UN resolution dictating the terms of Hussein's surrender. The same governments that were profiting from the TRUELY ethically wrong deals that they had been making for 10 years.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Considering the fact that southern France was collaberating with the Nazis, I should think that they'd have not been that much more deprived than citizens of Germany during the war.
The average Parisian lost 20kg during the Nazi occupation. I could dig for something about southern France, but you get the idea.
Aside from that, you seem to be supportive of France's attempt at purging "bad thoughts" from the minds of everyone on planet Earth
No, I'm not.
I'm, to the contrary, opposed to jingoist who act as though this was somehow a French thing. First of all, right there, you claim they are trying to "purge" the thoughts of, as you said, everyone on the planet. Whereas we are talking about a law that only applies to, surprise surprise, France.
Your justification of your hatred of all things French is what I oppose.
My feelings about that perticular law or that perticular case are not involved, this is about you jerks attacking a whole country, a whole people and culture, and acting as though you were justified, as if this were right.
American courts and lawmakers will come to Yahoo's rescue and put the pompous French beaurocrats right back on their socialist asses.
Yes, they are pompous.
Its as though, you know, they want a company doing is business in their own country to obey the law of the land, and the company was responding by having the court of another country try to impose its own laws to a sovereign nation.
Because, of course, since America is better than the rest of the planet, it's laws take precedence over all other laws. That is not pompous, oh my no!
Otherwise, we may well see the content of the internet reduced to the lowest common denominator of PC-filtered non-offensive non-confrontational child-safe mind-numbing drool.
Because, of course, laws affecting content on the internet are only passed in inferior countries, the Almighty, divine United States of America are above, amongst other things, passing such laws.
So lets see, your opinion is that the French people did not suffer during WWII, that they are pompous, that they want to purge the thoughts of the entire world, and that they should submit to U.S. law.
My opinion is that you are a jingoist bigot.
You can't take the sky from me...
At that's to say nothing of the French journalist who got fired for pointing out that the French press were so incompetently pro-Saddam that the were talking about "terrible" American casualties and "fierce" Iraqi resistence right up until Saddam's statue was toppled.
Reference please. Never heard of that.Moreover, I'm still waiting for a Fox journalist to say that its employer is not "Fair and unbalanced"... If one did, he would be fired instantly.
So, for your point to be of some weight, you would have, at least, to show that the governement is responsible for that.
Otherwise, this is business as usual. Do not disagree with your boss.
This link suggests otherwise. And this discussion refers to a different court case that clearly supports the notion of "redskin" as a derogatory term referring to the scalps of Indian victims. And in the Kotelly case you mention, the judge plainly states that her ruling is not a ruling on whether the term is offensive to Indians in general or not. Whether or not Dietz put paint on his face, it's pretty clear that this term is widely considered an insult based on the history cited in these links.
you might think of the French as a tolerant people but you'd be mistaken.
I like that, that's a great example of tolerance right there...not at all generalising on an entire country based on isolated incidents.
I'm hungry, I'd like some freedom fries...
You can't take the sky from me...
Bot compliance with robots.txt is voluntary. There's no law enforcing it.
"If the land was given back to them, the "native-americans" (every single one I've ever met, which adds up to alot since I lived in Arizona) would just sell it right back to us for whiskey and the opportunity to steal from and kill each other"
A.) That doesn't excuse what American settlers did when they arrived here.
B.) Making a generalization like that places you well below what you descrbed an entire group of people to be.
Mods: Feel free to mod me off-topic. I just wouldn't have felt right if I didn't stand up to this lame attitude.
"Derp de derp."
as a member of the EU, france must not extradite anyone who could become a subject of capital punishment.
The solution to this problem for Yahoo is obvious. Forget ACLU backed ligitation. Invade France and liberate the French people from it's oppressive government. Couple bucks to the Bushes ought to do it.
Scenario: France decides to block all traffic from www.yahoo.com and related (www.yahoo.fr, etc...)
I am not intimately familiar with the structure of the "internet", but it seems unlikely that France would be able to shut Yahoo! off from only France's citizens. The Chinese government has tried to shut off the internet in China, but if I am not mistaken, they have not had great success. I would think that accomplishing this would require literally cutting the lines.
Despite my reservations for supporting the trafficing of Nazi paraphenalia (for hate related purposes only), I am once again pleased to see so many Americans stand behind the rights we have shed our blood for, even when the outcome of those rights is obviously unpopular.
Please explain how refusing to hand a prisoner over to those you personally consider to use cruel methods, is dictating any law whatsoever.
Bonus points if you know which country tries to dictate others' laws the most at this point in history.
A gold star if you can remember which country's government tried to pressure the EU to ignore its own antitrust laws for our friends at MicroShaft.
People here turn into idiots when someone mentions the french, why is that?
(by the way, I agree with your decision, just not the rest of the bullshit)
That's not true and that's the big difference with USA.
In Europe, the newspapers & TV were reporting BOTH views : the US/UK view, and the european(french/swiss/german/....) one, something which was sorely lacking in USA.
Switzerland for example had very little financial interest in Iraq, yet >90% of the people opposed the war.
If you look at the UK and Spain, where the government supported the war, the people also were opposed to the war, the UK population only started supporting the war _after_ it started, because they supported the troops.
Keep in mind that in most of Europe, people receive the BBC, CNN and often NBC Europe also and most people understand english, yet, they were all opposed to the war. Me, I'm in USA since 4 years, and like many people in this country I also opposed it, for the same reason as the people in Europe, yet, I heard both points of view.
It's not a matter of brainwashing, the media in Europe is way too diverse for that, partly because the countries are smaller than USA and thus you always get media from outside the country, it's sadly not the same in USA, very few media give enough time to dissenting opinions from outside USA.
Here is the link:
What's your point?
You can't take the sky from me...
on the subject. Personally I think that politics will stifle growth of computer related technology is many countries, disagreeing with the Gorniak Hypotheses.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
"previously mistreated peoples carry grudges through many generations and turn those grudges into violent vindication"
i understand that.
Chippewas and Dakota/Lakota are still beating each up and killing each ohter to this day.
Im saying that the genocided cultures such as the jews and south africans and slavs are in a much better position than they were some years ago. native americans also...
they are no longer the oppressed. while in some cases the scales have turned, the slavs, jews, chinese, indians etc are hardly living in peace... but they're not being systematically killed, anymore.
The Nazi's were beaten, over half a century ago.
Do you think the irony of forcing a dictatorship like law about Nazi paraphenala is lost on them?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The act of criminalizing any idea ought to, all other things being equal, make that idea more appealing to thoughtful people. Criminalizing ideas is wrong, and one ought to make a stand for criminalized ideas whenever possible.
Of course, most reasonable people do not support Nazi ideas even where they're criminalized. But in general, criminalizing ideas makes them more attractive to those of us who side with unpopular sentiment against oppressive government.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, I don't know how old you are or what part of the country you live in but I'm 40 and live in Houston Texas. The public schools I went to made no effort to conceal the fact that whites basically wiped out the vast majority of Native Americans as we spread across the continent.
Now granted they didn't spend an enormous amount of time on that portion of American history. We didn't have a class devoted to the various atrocities committed or anything like that but I can't honestly call it a "fine job of not mentioning the genocide of Native Americans".
Maybe they spend more time covering it up in other parts of the country or don't bother to mention it. I can only speak for where I went to school.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The US press tilts in various directions, depending on which outlet you look at, but generally they're less tabloidish and less prone to gross misrepresentations than many European outlets. The BBC is a good news source in Europe, and so are some of the German papers, but there's a whole host of papers in the UK, France, Spain, and especially Greece and Italy, that are absolute trash. A Greek paper a few years ago even reported that Bush's daughters were caught with "drugs", when what they were caught with was underage drinking, something that's actually legal in Greece.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, what Europeans do is funnel their support for Nazism through the PLO. The lesson Europeans learn from Holocaust museums is that it's evil to slay the Jews when white Europeans are doing the slaying. But you don't see anything wrong with the Arab Palestinists doing it. You funnel your money to the Hitler in a headscarf in Ramallah. The ultra-nationalist Arab führer doesn't use swastikas or sprechen Deutch, so his systematic genocide of Jews must be okay. In your upside-down view, the Jews are persecuting the Nazis now, and you're siding with the Nazis.
The french press was pro-Iraqi, not pro-Saddam. No one in their right mind would be pro-Saddam. But look at what's going on now. Honestly ask yourself: which is better?
Before Iraqis were living in a sort of limbo state (partially as a result of U.N. sanctions and of Saddam's brutal regime). Maybe eventually, over a few decades, with U.S. and other assistance, they would have been able to overthrow Saddam's repressive regime and institute their own form of government. (Though this is rather strange to consider; how can a generation of peoples who have been exposed to U.S. backed dictators (yes we did indeed support Saddam during the 80's, against Iran) suddenly create a form of government that wasn't a dictatorship? Here we see the need for the U.N.....) At any rate. That is all possibilities in the past. We have shattered that.
Now their life is a literal hell. It's sad, but not everything in the world can have a pretty flowery and springtime happy ending.
This is all pretty funny. If the argument is that Yahoo is a US company, and the French laws shouldn't apply, think about the effects of the rest of the countries' e-commerce firms on the US.
Should Dutch companies be allowed to ship pot to the US because in Holland that's allowed?
Should Canadian e-commerce pharmacies be allowed to ship cheaper medical drugs to the US? The US isn't very happy about that right now...
Actually, its not. If you read the following article, you'll see that an actual survey (as opposed to an anecdotal web messageboard post) suggests that 4 out of 5 Native Americans don't want the names changed. http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller030802. asp
So.... we have a few points
1) Why would a team choose to name itself after something it found to be disrespectful and derogatory? It defies logic.
2) We know that the team was named after a Native American head coach of the team.
3) We know that 30-40 years ago, the Redskins changed their helmets to a design that simply had an R on it, and Native Americans visited the team and asked for the return of Native American Imagery.
4) We know that the majority of Native Americans do NOT find the term offensive.
In total, the conclusion is PAINFULLY obvious, and CLEARLY evident. There's not much of an argument, really.
Mutual dislike between Muslims and Jews is nothing particularly new, I'd wager.
Check the textbook passages out here and tell me if the dislike is really mutual.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
ends when all the people I don't like are dead.
Don't French laws only apply to sites not just registered under the .fr domain but also physically located in France?
This reminds me of an episode of Family guy where Stewie and Brian get stuck in Arabia and then go through Germany to get back home. On a tour bus Biran notices that there is almost no documented history during WII in Germany and questions it. The German just denies it happenening. History, be it objectable in moral contact is still history and should be carefully observed and studied rather than censored. What are the European goverments thinking? They are acting just like the Roman-Catholic Church, you know that Church no one really liked and rebelled against.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Second, they have strict regulations about violence & gore in video games. Remember the game Myth: the Fallen Lords? Very nice death animations in that game, complete with blood and body parts. In the German version, Bungie had to eliminate those animations. Instead, the bodies disappear in a shower of pretty stars.
Wolfenstein is also a pretty violent & bloody game. Hence the disclaimer on the website.
I'm so glad CNN and Fox News aren't in the hands of those dirty commies, so we always get FAIR AND BALANCED reporting from the US press.
Good point, but remember that what the parent poster was trying to point out is that, because of speech laws, france lacks a free press. In the US, our major media outlets may be controlled by relatively conservative types, but other sources can still report the truth. This is unlike France, where criticizing the president is illegal(According to the parent).
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm afraid you're missing something fundamental about France here: France is a *secular* country. One of the consequences is that people are not supposed to wear blatantly religious symbols at school, be it a kippa, a very large cross, or a scarf.
The very fact that France is a secular country guarantees freedom of religion!
If Denis Halliday had received his fair share of press in the US when he resigned from administering that program, I could be convinced you had a point there. The whole topic was never adequately reported in the US press, even after years of activists trying to get issues to their attention.
There's been so much propaganda about Iraq and OFF that we sometimes forget that OFF was itself a scandal, a thinly veil for genocide. Enforced nominally by the UN, it was the UK and US that refused to lift the embargo, precipitating the deaths of over a million Iraqis (according to UN agencies). OFF was always inadequate. After Halliday quit in protest, his GERMAN successor also quit... also mostly unreported in the US press, although you can be sure the Europeans paid a bit more attention.
As some would rather not let you know why some Iraqis so hate your soldiers, it's easier to distract you with a petty scandal. Your media has also told you blatant lies - e.g. telling you Saddam Hussein expelled inspectors out while it was the UN that called them out before a US attack. Your media had reported the facts correctly when this happened in 1998, but in 2002 they couldn't be bothered to check their own damned archives.
The US is a media island. You've been told so many lies that you are willing to march to the drums of war. And when told France's media is servile and heavily censored, you swallow it whole because you've never set foot in a French newsstand. Had you done so, and had you been able to read it, you wouldd have seen more diversity of opinion then you thought could exist. I'll not count the number of marxist splinter groups and right-wing nutjobs, never mind for a second the several Greens and the Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Tradition weirdos- just the diversity of mainstream papers would kick the ass out of your newstainment sources.
And yes, I also have French citizenship, as well as Canadian, so I know I'm doubly suspect to your brand of trollish yanks. But I have to tell you your complaints about our media are going to fall on deaf ears until you manage to get respectable media yourselves.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
12% of the population of France is muslim. 15% of the population of France admit to being anti-semitic. Who do you think is more dangerous a bunch of young skin heads that talk big and drink too much. Or a bunch of unemployeed, gettoized, un-assimilated "north africans" who pray 5 times a day and who's religion tells them to wipe out the unbelivers? Unbelivers being muslims not of there sect, infidels, jews, gays and, christians. With Jews being high on their list. There are only about 600,000 Jews in France which has a population of 60 million 5 million of them being musilm. I don't think neo-nazis are the problem I think religious intolerance by islam is. France has every right to determin what is on web site hoseted on their territory. But It can't dictate what is on servers in the US. It has nothing to do with the 1st amendment. France has no sovereign power over the US.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Similarly, your freedom of speech is guaranteed if you don't say anything.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
"When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. at Harvard University, 1968
Yes we do hide from the past in the US too, and have convienently rewritten history when it did not fit the current mood. One example is the issue of slavery in this country. The Civil War was not about slavery but money. Slavery did not end with the Civil War, segragation still existed in the late 60s.
The US never had to deal with 10 years of facism at the hands of people like Hitler and Musolini. Europe did. European Jews and semites got burned, not Americains. I think that pretty much makes them more qualify than us to define how they want their post-war society to be...
That's a good question. Let's ponder this.
Iraq's tanks were made primarily in a place named Chelyabinsk. Let me suggest something: That is not a General Motors facility.
Iraq's fighter aircraft were a mixture of MiGs and Mirages. One made by Russia. The other, France. (What, France may have sold weapons to someone who shouldn't have had them? Zut alors!)
Iraq's small arms were largely AK-pattern rifles. Made in a dozen countries, but not by Colt or Bushmaster or Olympic Arms. Nor by any other US maker.
So, who armed Hussein? Someone who makes Russian tanks and French aircraft. You do the math.
Banning all religious symbols from school has nothing to do with freedom of religion. If it only applied to muslims, I would agree with you. However, this is not the case.
Maybe we don't agree on the meaning of "freedom of religion": By "freedom of religion", I mean "freedom to choose your religion and practice it".
The only thing to understand about this matter is that in France, religion has no place at school.
See, the notion that religion has no place in school goes against the notion that you should be free to practice it. Religion is an integral part of who you are, it's not something you check at the door. Seems you're confusing "freedom of religion" with "freedom from religion."
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Actually there's nothing wrong with Fox or other news sources being partisan. That's what you'd expect to get in a free country -- various diverging biases, and the chance to decide for yourself who's right. It's when the press is partisan because it's been ordered to be (or else), that you have a problem.
Come on. Grow up. When is the last time you were in a real war? You have absolutely no idea how how much of a shitty time this was for Europe. Comments like these and atitudes like yours is what causes history to repeat itself.
Europe went through a lot of gruesome wars, and had a terrible experience with colonialism. This pretty much explains why they (that is the people) currently cannot stomach much o fthe US foreign policies.
American courts and lawmakers will come to Yahoo's rescue and put the pompous French beaurocrats right back on their socialist asses.
You have no idea what you are talking right? France has actually a very right wing government.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Happily banning "bad" language and sexual content from everywhere, but fighting hard for Nazi hate propaganda to be protected by freedom of speech.
The same is seen on US TV. It seems to be ok to slaughter dozens of people, but be "Oh God" if you can see a nipple.
I, personally, do not believe that Nazi propaganda deserves this protection.
That said, of course it is rediculous to subject internet sites to all laws of every country that can access them. That would make almost every site illegal as you probably can always find a country in which the content is illegal.
If the french do not like the content, why don't *they* block it, or enforce it through *their* internet providers?!
Please mod parent Funny!! Or Naive.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Well, US arrested a Russian hacker for doing something in his country that wasn't against his laws. Who set the precedent?
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Damn right! In 'merica, we got freedom uv religion. Y'all cin praise the lord jesus christ our savoir any way yeh want! You can even be a moslem long as yer in south arabia or irack.
Yeah, I mean who woulda guesses that our boys would be shot at while taking over another country? I mean usually when one country takes over another, it is customary for oppsing forces exchange a friendly handshake and some small talk on their way up to the capitol city. But WTF is up with those people shooting at an invading force? This is a WAR for christ's sake, what on earth were they thinking when they SHOT at our boys?
This is an opinion poll. It's hardly responsive to the historical question of the origin of the term "redskin." Whether or not only 1 in 5 are actually offended by it, the origin of the term clearly suggests what one cannot but call a "racial slur." It's an open question whether the 4 out of 5 would agree if presented with that history. But it's also irrelevant to whether the term is a slur. (But of course I don't really expect anyone who cites National Review as the sole source for anything to catch such nuances).
Yep. Or the US State Dept. and the French equivalent can meet and decide how they will deal with this. This is a trade issue, not a Free Speech issue. :-)
A bit like if French car makers sold cars to the US without emmission control and the US stopped them because it was against the law and France complained that this was against free speech or free trade. In the end, it would be a trade issue and if the US governement thought that it was a good deal they would swallow their pride and compromise. Not that I think that French cares are worth the effort, but I am trying to draw an analogy here
sorry, my words should've been chosen with more care.
The US may not have been the ones supply the arms through direct sales, but do a search for "BNL", the US *did* provide Iraq with plenty of cash.
By no means are those who sold so many weapons to a mad man, innocent. They deserved to be shamed as well.
Let just not forget the US destroyed a mad man they supported (and helped build up), knowing full well of the evils he perpetrated against other nations as well as his own people.
We're talking about the same lame country that allowed 15,000+ people die because they thought air conditioning wasn't a good idea. Viva La Stupidity!
Many people are full of shit. These ideas were popular in France before there were laws regulating pro-Nazi sentiments.
It's not about the violence, it's about the Nazi symbols. They are unconstitutional in Germany, so for instance parading the streets with a swastika flag will get you a court appointment. Using them in a computergame is a no go area, because even though you shoot the nazis in wolfenstein, Computergames are considered a toy and Nazi logos are beyond limits there (It's the same for scale modelling kits btw, if you buy a Tiger tank kit or something like that in a German store you won't find any decals with swastikas, SS runes etc.) Now, while there are no Swastikas in the German version of the Indy 3 Adventure computergame (at least they were removed in the VGA version, not sure for the Amiga one, can't remember), there is no such problem with the Indy Movies, because they are considered art, and as long as the movie isn't Nazi propaganda the Swastikas are no problem. It's all about context.
I cannot beleive it... you actually posted something constructive. I lost count but this is like post #2 so far... We (well, maybe not me) are down by like 498 to 2. Keep up the good work. And do not feel bad when you are painted as being a "liberal" :-)
Mmmm... first line mentions jews, nazis and some communist dictator (ends in sky or something). You must one of those right wing liberals pigs, right? I'm going to mod you down just after I post this...
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Americans need a serious dose of real history. What they teach you about racism, slavery etc are granted real.
But the real history behind EVERYTHING is in the conspiracies. Read "The 70 Greatest Conspiracy of all Time". The first space trip by NASA was done in a hollywood studio for example. What makes you think osama bin laden exist today? French laws can complain about yahoo's nazi merchandise. It doesn't matter. There is always a secondary motive somewhere.
There are several issues at hand here, all of which work against you. That those against whom the slur, if it was in fact a slur would be directed against don't find it objectionable suggests that it is not in fact a slur, despite what you wish to portray. That the name was cast upon a team at all suggests that it was not a slur at the time, as it would be the height of absurdity to posit that a team would name itself after something disrespectful, disdainful, or flawed in character. That the head coach of the team was being honored in the subsequent naming of the team just drives that point home. Additionally, The Kotelly case found that the term has been deprecated in usage over the past half century outside of its use in the team's name, and that previous to that, the evidence cannot remotely conclude that it was instantiated as a slur at the time. So we know it wasn't a slur at the time, and we know that Native Americans don't consider it to be a slur now. Incidentally, its quite the sign of being on shaky ground when you attempt to condemn the source considering the article commented on another party, Sports Illustrated, that commissioned a survey by a survey group, to poll the relevant population. But I don't have to tell you that. You know you haven't any ground to stand on.
Of course, it's all about the economics. Nations either wage war or make peace entirely because of their wallets. I guess that makes the First World War one great big freakin' anomally...
And the Second. And the others. Read some Von Clausewitz.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Oh pleeeeeaaase! If you want to live in a country where religion is on every bill, where a Presidential candidate has to use the word God at least 5 times in a speech then just live here. Some people, such as the French as it turn out, were under the thumb or the Church and religion for a tad bit longer that the US. Following the (many) revolution(s) a secular society was borned. Churches were burned, Emperors and Kings guillotined, and a clear separation between Church and State was established. You might be well meaning when you point your well concerned fingers to France and its ban on head scarfs, but guess what: not everyone believe in a fairy tell that tried to explain why the world is the way it is. What we need in this country is freedom FROM religion and not freedom OF religion.
In any case, you are off topic. And look what you have done, yo manage to get me off topic too. Damn you! Evil! Evil!
Just look at the US: we're let hate groups say whatever they wanted, and now the hate speech they spew out is banalized, and people look at them as the redneck morons they are. In France, the criminalization of hate speech and hate-related objects makes them dangerously attractive.
Hooray for a priori reasoning! Do you have any evidence at all that hate speech is on the decline in the US while on the rise in France? No? Did you just whip this out of thin air because it sounded right, though a critical observer might have no objective reason to believe it?
I've never been in a real war, but I've worn the uniform, tossed grenades, been gassed and fired a machine gun. How about you?
I can also read. Here's what William Manchester says about it in The Glory and The Dream:
"Paris disturbed some Americans. It didn't look at all like an enslaved capital. Compared to London, it was prospering. Ed Murrow was surprised at the number of well-dressed women on the streets. Not only had the French textile industry flourished throughout the war; the French had developed the first practical television transmitters and sets. All the famous couturiers were in business-Molyneux, Lanvin, Schiaparelli-and their French customers were wearing full skirts and mutton-legged sleeves, which had long been out of the question for American and Britich women limited by clothes rationing.
So you see, all you have to do is read a little history instead of spouting righteous indignation.
That's what I like about slashdot. Get a little edgy in the wrong way and you're a troll or immature or whatnot.
And screw your comment about my attitude starting wars. I'm the one that's quoting history, asshole.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Don't forget extend your laws to other countries
"I think this line is mostly filler"
So in other words they are scared that French (European) ideas will fail in the face of neo-nazi or other facist ideas? Are democracy and equal rights that weak in Europe that people fear the use of symbolism and therefore try to make it illegal?
Just because you find the opinion or viewpoint repulsive does not mean you have a right to ban it. Violence is illegal, not thought or expression.
Rest assured, it was meant to be funny. It would be funny (or scary) if someone modded it Insightful. :-)
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
"The average Parisian lost 20kg during the Nazi occupation."
Ok, now take into account the entirity of France and put that up against the entirity of Germany. Everyone suffers during time of war, especially those on whose soil the war is fought. So don't talk to me about the plight of the poor French. Perhaps if they'd put up resistance instead of greeting and helping the Nazis (and later putting up anti-American signs throughout the country following WWII), they'd have suffered a little less in a long run.
"I'm, to the contrary, opposed to jingoist who act as though this was somehow a French thing."
Purging the existence of the Nazis from the collective memories of their people is primarily done by the Germans and the French. All meaningful discussion and debate is squelched, and the official account of events is the only one legally allowed to be believed.
"Whereas we are talking about a law that only applies to, surprise surprise, France."
They're trying to extend their purge to a company which exists - beyond its control - throughout the world. The only way for Yahoo to "follow" this law the way the French want them to is if they either remove everything from their auctions and websites worldwide that may fall foul of French law, or convince every ISP providing service to French citizens to block its content. France wants a "Great Firewall" like China's, but they don't want to shell out the cash to implement it. Their idea of an alternative is to enforce their will upon the rest of the world by forcing Yahoo to cease any business throughout the world of which France does not approve.
"Your justification of your hatred of all things French is what I oppose."
I have no hatred of all things French, and you have no evidence or reason to believe otherwise. What I do hate is the mind-control attempted by governments - especially when it's so open and blatant. what I hate even more is when one nation decides that its laws override those of the rest of the world and then decide to enforce those laws on companies simply providing a service. I was just as pissed at the US trying to go after Elcomsoft.
"this is about you jerks attacking a whole country, a whole people and culture, and acting as though you were justified, as if this were right."
I'm just one jerk, thanks. I'm not attacking the people, but I am attacking the culture that leads to laws in places like France, Germany, China, etc that seek to control the minds of the citizenry. That the French citizens choose to live under such an incredible set of freedom-crushing laws is appalling to me, but they're welcome to continue living under those laws. What they are not welcome to do is push those laws on me. If I were to decide to be a WWII collector, French laws, German laws, and anyone else's laws aside from those of the United States should have no bearing on what's available for me to purchase from my home in the United States from a company based in the United States.
"Its as though, you know, they want a company doing is business in their own country to obey the law of the land,"
Yahoo isn't doing business in France - their business is simply accessible to French citizens.
"and the company was responding by having the court of another country try to impose its own laws to a sovereign nation."
Yahoo responded by asking a court of the US - under whose laws Yahoo, the company, operates - whether they are forced to follow the least common denominator. What Yahoo wants is for a court in the US to say that they are subject to - and only to - the laws of the US so long as they operate within the borders of the US.
"Because, of course, laws affecting content on the internet are only passed in inferior countries, the Almighty, divine United States of America are above, amongst other things, passing such laws."
I'm as quick to call the US on laws I see as bad as I am anyone else. Your red herring aside, this isn't about what laws there are in the US.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to inform you that the Washington Redskins are located in the state of Washington, not in Washington D.C. which is where the nation's capital is located. It's not like they are close either... they are on opposite coasts.
OMFG. I don't even live in North America and I can tell you that the Washington Redskins play in Washington DC (well, just outside it, if I remember correctly) and not Washington state. The only NFL franchise in Washington state is the Seattle Seahawks.
This is what I just love about Slashdot, and Slashdot ACs in particular: lots of people who don't know shit about a single thing but are willing to open their mouths and remove all doubt that they are indeed idiots.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"You have no idea what you are talking right? France has actually a very right wing government."
UDP and UMP lost majority this year to the collectively left-wing Socialist Party, Communist Party, and the Greens and Radicals Party. Chirac's party, the UMP, formed in 2002 to unite the right-wing factions, couldn't get more than 1/6th of the vote in the March '04 elections; which had a ~65% voter turnout.
But you're right, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Well, I understand what you mean, but that's not the way people think in France: it seems we're debating over cultural differences (meaning that each of us is right in his own way).
In France, religion belongs to the private sphere of your life and is not a public matter. Church and State are separated, there is no "in god we trust" on our banknotes and a church wedding has no legal value (you need to go the mayor). This separation between church and state is fairly old and is a very important thing over there.
One of the consequences of these things is that religion (a private thing) is not to be broadcasted at school, which, being a state school in a secular country, doesn't want to have any link with religion.
Note that you still have the possibility to go to private schools (which are not necessarily expensive, since teachers in private schools are paid by the state as well) in which religion will play a part and will be taught.
Now, as to your comment,
the notion that religion has no place in school goes against the notion that you shouldn't be free to practice it. Religion is an integral part of who you are, it's not something you check at the door.
Well, this is precisely where the cultural difference appears: when the French public system was designed, this is precisely what people had in mind. France has a strong history of anti-clericalism. Religion, is something you're supposed to check at the door.
"No, all that's illegal is denying that the holocaust (Shoah) happened or glorifying the Nazis and their "ideology" or promoting genocide. I'd compare it to making child pornography illegal."
Why? Who's being exploited without their consent, statutory or otherwise?
And as long as verboten topics are being picked on a case-by-case basis, just who exactly is doing the deciding? By what standards?
"Other than statements about Nazis, central European society is actually a lot less restrictive about speech than the US"
Which somehow makes the subjects where speech is restricted "OK?"
"someone mentioned the Superbowl tits above, there are no fines for swearing on TV,"
People are actually working on that. Most of that hinges on a 30-year-old Supreme Court decision (specifically "FCC v. Pacifica Foundation") and (as a layman) I suspect all that is needed is one good push to overturn it, if for no other reason than because Congressionally-mandated technology like v-chips really take a bite out of the "pervasiveness" arguments (if nothing else).
But even in this, a policy where all too many Americans are in agreement with, there has been a great deal of hand-wringing involved and vocal dissent, including 4 out of 9 Supreme Court justices in this specific decision. I'm not sure I've seen anything of this sort in enacting and upholding, say, this specific anti-Nazi law in French courts, or else we probably wouldn't be seeing Yahoo! playing these jurisdiction games.
(Ironicly, the radio broadcast that triggered the case was a recording of some of George Carlin's satirical comments on the policy.)
"The point is that Europeans are often prepared to give up some rights of the majority in favour of protecting a minority."
That's the basis of forming democratic governments to begin with. The question is, though, whether such anti-speech laws are really a restriction on a minority (those few people who would espouse such views) for the sake of the "sensibilities" of the majority. You can guess my answer. After all, these laws don't specifically target speech that directly threatens that minority group so much as a blankent order against voicing a dissenting opinion (however ill-founded that opinion may be).
Please feel free to prove me wrong.
"I guess you could compare it to banning the Confederate Flag in order to protect victims of slavery and racism."
Which they don't. Most of the recent turmoil over the flag centered about South Carolina flying a Confederate flag over its statehouse. Groups like the NAACP that took umbrage boycotted the state to effect a policy change as opposed to seeking legal or legislative action against display of the flag in general, and to my knowledge nobody who has proposed a general, legal ban on displaying the flag has been taken seriously.
The closest thing we have to what you're talking about are laws in most states that require speakers of "hate speech" to identify themselves. If it comes to light that what is being said is specifically threatening (e. g. "Kill these abortionists"), the offending individuals are then taken to task. So long as what is being said is general and vague, they're allowed to keep saying it.
Like I said before, freedom of speech is not freedom from responsibility.
"And what about your right to free speech in the US if you happened to be a communist?"
So long as you're not openly advocating violence against specific people, you get to talk and put your candidates on the ballot, same as everybody else.
1) If the government banned the sale of a book, that would be a violation of free speech. Banning the sale of something with a swastika on IS inhibiting free speech.
2) I can spell it out if you want. North American generally refers to someone/something from the North American continent. Canadian generally refers to someone/something from Canada. American generally refers to someone/something from the United States of America because United States of American is a real mouthful, not to mention grammatically incorrect. What can I say, United States of Americans used their imperialist ways to steal the word America. Assholes.
Distasteful? Yes. Constitutional? Fuzzy gray area. Said speech still legal? Yes.
Besides, freedom of speech doesn't mean either a free soapbox or the freedom to block public rights-of-way.
You are so fucking diverse than in fact you just admited that everyone over there agreed that war was wrong.
No, 15% of the people disagreed.
Yet in this "not so diverse" US there was a huge debate regarding merits of this action with multiple points of view being discussed.
Huge debate among whom ? The mainstream media didn't push at all the dissenting opinion, they had to go through street protests to be heard and the opposing side kept calling them "unpatriotic", you call that a debate ?
Ah, it is matter of Europeans being simply intelectually more capable of understanding longterms of US policy.
No, it's a matter of Europe having more open media outlets
What the fuck are you doing in my country then ?
Ask your fellow citizens, they asked me to come help them and pay me quite a lot for it.
Go fuck yourself.
I thought about it, but then my girlfriend proposed to help.
Bad luck I'm not french.
I bet fucking grass is even greener over there and everyone gets up in the morning with the solemn promise to leave the world a better place at the end of the day.
Nope, they just consider that you're not allowed to invade another country without a valid reason, something the US government doesn't understand it seems.
As for this oldtimer fighting for their freedom, yep he did, like the french helped you get your independance.
Crap I posted that. I got my preferences set to post AC. Yes I do murder english quite well. BFD.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Yeah, for instance many countries are pissed that France let Henry Kissinger get away.
What I do hate is the mind-control attempted by governments - especially when it's so open and blatant.
See, we have irreconciliable differences: I hate the subtle ones more.
You can't take the sky from me...
So... requesting (and request is all it is) a search engine not to associate your site with certain key words along with a list of vetoed UN resolutions with extremely biased summaries is proof of... what? Err, a conspiracy to censor? You do recall that the topic was France trying to censor the Internet, right? Does your argument have even a little to do with the current topic? How do you sound in an argument?
"Mom! Billy hit me in the face with a baseball bat!"
"Yeah! But I saw Billy sneak a cookie from the cookie jar two years ago!"
So... if the Whitehouse requests search engines not associate their website with certain keywords, and the US's foreign policy on Israel is to your disliking, then France is okay censor speech on the Internet. That is your argument, right?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey! We're trying to get rid of our rednecks by sending them to the White House! Don't go sending more of them here!
They do teach you history in Europe, but that's not quite the problem. In countries where primary sources of information such as Mein Kampf are illegal people are forced to reach conclusions from looking at secondary sources.
While there's no denying that Hitler was a villain, it is dangerous to rely on pre-digested analyses of Nazi philosophy. How will you guard yourselves against convincing arguments for twisted policies if all you know is that people like Hitler are worthy of contempt?
You shouldn't worry about the kinds of attitudes that are easily identified as prejudiced; worry instead about those prejudiced attitudes that seem [i]prima facie[/i] benign. The words "know your enemy" are among the wisest words ever spoken.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
You are basically advocating that anything that makes money for a company is a good thing. Well, contract murders are a lucrative business (thought, granted illegal), but I can't see Yahoo entering that particular segment of the market...
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
I may be wrong, but if Yahoo.fr is hosting or distributing content that originates within the borders of France, why don't the French go after the French originators instead of Yahoo?
If the content is not originating in France, Yahoo is not the originator nor the distributor in the conventional sense, because the content is coming into France via external data links. Yahoo is merely a "conduit" like a phone line. If someone calls up a Frenchman on the phone from England and yells hate speech, do the French think the English OR French phone services must be shut down or try to control the content?
Not to mention the fact that there is no such thing as "hate speech" except by government fiat.
It seems to me the French government is merely being stupid like most governments.
Of course, the US is nearly in the same state. Try using the term "nigger" on any public media and see what happens - even if the context is perfectly legitimate.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
To a typical slashdotter this news reads:
.com means *nothing*).
Beware! French governement revokes freedom of speech of USA citizens.
To people who use their brain:
French government enforces local laws on companies conducting commerce in France.
If Yahoo markets itself to french citizens and conducts commerce with french citizens (to buy nazi related material), yahoo, *by choice* is subjecting itself to the law of France.
What would you have otherwise? Yahoo be immune from litigation in all countries bar the USA just because their HQ is in the US? Wake up, if you choose to do business in a country you are subject to the law of that country (having a website end in
But hey if you are too stupid to think, I have a large tower with great views situated in prime real-estate in the middle of Paris for sale...
No, it proves that the history of their country includes some of the worst atrocities committed by mankind and that they don't think selling a game reliving that is appropriate. I, for one, can't blame them.
Indian Health Service routinely sterilized women as late as 1970.
This still goes on today! Medi-Cal, California's public health service, routinely sterilizes the poor.
Perhaps you meant IHS forcibly sterilized Native American women? Bullshit.
You know, I bet the rest of that post said something about how European museums mostly use audio/video footage instead of Nazi goods, but we'll never know thanks to the magical ellipsis of context removal.
Nobody thinks they're biased. They think they're right, and the other guys are wrong. Maybe they'd admit to piling on the emphasis, to counter the blatantly biased slant of their opposition. But that doesn't make them propagandists, they're just putting their side of the argument.
When reasonable opinions diverge, it's up to the listeners to choose whom to believe.
We in the US do not hide the Civil War, slavery, or even racism.
d ay -ebert22.html
Of course, you "don't":
http://www.suntimes.com/output/answ-man/sho-sun
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Bullshit. He said "pathetic nanny state" which goes beyond appreciating the government alone.
Bad analogy either: as much as francophobe relates to anything or anyone french, there's more to Israel than judaism, whether criticizing or approving.
An enlightened court. The reasoning really is simple: If they claim that US law can hit you everywhere, like in the DVD case, where dozens of non-americans were sued, then quid pro quo and french laws apply to the US.
Of course, the other solution (every country's laws apply in that country and nowhere else) would make more sense, but there are these darn precedents and the US desire to rule the world...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Even if there's the law, during the last presidential campaign, that didn't stop a very popular caricatural (?) show to design the actual president as "SuperMenteur" ("SuperLiar"). Try to do that now in the states ;)
And it didn't stop either all the scandals that led to that. In fact, especially for the Elf bribery, at least one past influent member of the government got judged.
#include "coucou.h"
Strange I thought it was Israel that was playing the role of the Nazis in the 21st century. With their concentration camps, walling off citizens in their neighbourhoods and cleansing entire areas. Maybe someone should tell them about history so that they dont redo the same mistakes that were done on them by others.
That was in the European elections. While the European Parliament is of increasing importance (see European Patent problem), it actually doesn't govern the individual member nations. The European elections are almost universaly seen as a forum to express discontentment with the current government, because it is seen as being consequence free (no longer true in fact) and there is a low turnout (the discontent have more of an incentive to go and vote and so are overrepresented).
The last French parliamentary elections were held in June 2002. The French parliament, the one which gets to vote on each and every new French law actually has a solid right-wing majority and the prime minister is Jean-Claude Raffarin, definitely right-wing.
So no, you don't know what you are talking about, sorry.
"If it were, they would surely capitulate instantenously."
You know, writing a phrase like this basically says "Yes, I buy into the anti-French propaganda. Yes, I'm amused by jingoism thinly clothed in humour."
This whole "French surrendering" thing really isn't improving European perceptions of Americans...
Having worked for a French/American company between '78 and '84 I can tell you first-hand there is a very strong Anti Jewish group in France.
Before the Anti Hate laws came about you could buy their pamphlets in nearly every newspaper stall.
They were mostly rags with absolutely incredible claims and stories yet there were as well a couple of quite 'respected' looking publications doing the same in a far more refined way.
Presently you can *still* easily get such rags, it's just they have gone underground.
And there are regular occurences of defacing Jewish property / graves / synagogues.
And historically French behaviour vs. Jews is not exactly a shining example of "Liberté et Fraternité".
So you are not just an Anonymous Coward but an Anonymous Idiot too.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
...how much crap which basicly can be summed up as "The French laws are stupid and they shouldn't enforce them".
.us site, I sold nothing but FDA-approved drugs. In the .com (not US specific) site, I was selling everything and anything legal under the laws of my HQ country. Shipping to the destination of your choice. You think my US presence wouldn't get sued? You think my US assets wouldn't get ceased? The US is perfectly able and willing to do just what France is doing. Except that it is the French doing it to you, not the other way around.
The US is certainly not against prosecuting international companies with an US presence or even those without an US presence. For example De Beers, convicted in an US anti-trust suit despite having no US presence. Thus, no funds to cease which is really the difference here.
Let us, for the sake of argument say I was running a drug company, headquartered in a foreign nation. In the
Appealing a French case in US court? If you think that's a good idea, just wait until the French court appeals the US case. If you find that to be a "violation of your sovereignty", maybe you'll understand why the French would think the same.
Following the same principles as the De Beers case, yahoo.com could be sued in France even if there was no yahoo.fr. It's just that the French courts actually have something to collect. Don't like it? Well they're behaving like US courts. We don't like that either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"In Europe, though, it's practically forbidden to acknowledge that Hitler ever existed."
Bullshit. You have no idea what you are talking about.
I'm intimately aquainted with the educational systems of several european countries and if anything there is too much teaching of Hitler and the Third Reich, especially in Germany.
No but, yeah but, no but...
Except I don't remember the Cubans ever starting a world war and killing millions of people. ...).
But your right: every country has its restrictions on what can and cannot be sold. In the Netherlands you can buy pot legally, which is prohibited in most countries I know (of course, that doesn't mean pot isn't being sold there too). In Texas you can't buy dildo's (of course you can, but they label it "educational aids").
And in fact, I don't think restricting the sales of Nazi stuff is that bad. I mean, Nazi's are all about hatred. Making a whole nation hate a certain group of people can end up very bad (jewspalestina, muslim fundamentalistsunited states, catholicsprotestants,
This is one lame signature, please read the message above instead.
"Name another industrialised nation where creationism is even being discussed as a topic for public school curricula..." ...er... the UK
6 /2 0/lying_for_jesus
http://www.cloudsoup.com/weblog/archives/2004/0
No but, yeah but, no but...
I mean , the skarlov russian guy (spelling?) which cracked some reader format (yeah I have a bad memory) and was arrested, well this is the same type of story. Except that it wasn't nazi mamorabelia offered from the USA into france, it was a cracked reader offered from russia into USA. Where is the difference ? As far as I remmember the law in USA is that it does not matter that your firm is not in the USA, what matter is that you have economic interrest and client in the USA. Why should the things be different in EU ? Because it tickle badly your "free speech" nerve ? Well sorry, but what is good for the one is good for everybody. Accept it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There is undoubtedly a lot of truth in this, but I think it's also important to bear in mind that France has a long far-right tradition that is not always despised by the rest of the population, and that even today the French far-right has a far more authoritative intellectual base than it does in, say, Britain or America.
freedom os speech yes, thought polluting bile no.
It's not really censorship, it's more anti generic defamation laws. Most of any hate speech is a form of defamation towards a minority (jews, blacks, arabs, homosexuals, whatever...).
I agree that prohibiting people to buy/sell nazi objects (as in the France V.S. Ebay case) does not fall into this category, but blocking nazi speech is more of an antidefamation act than of censorship.
Think about it.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
"My father fought for their freedom, I spent years there protecting their freedom and sure like hell I will make sure that my son won't make that mistake again."
Hey, it seems like the US populout have pretty much come to the same decision regarding their own freedom!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
You are mistaken. This would be similar to saying that the Republican Party had lost the White House and the House of Representatives because the Democrats had won most State legislatures.
Earlier this year France held its regional (State) elections, in which the ruling coalition indeed did very poorly (Elections to the European Parliament were also held on the same day, with the same results).
However this does not change the fact that the right-wing parties still hold the 2/3 of the Assemblée Nationale and the Presidency that they won 2 years ago, and thus remain in control of the national government. The next national elections are due in 2007.
The current election calendar is set in such a way that regional and European elections are a mid-term election, in which the opposition traditionally fares well. However, as with many mid-term elections, popular dissent has little effect on actual government policies.
This said, it is indeed true European politics is globally more on the left than American politics. Most members of the French ruling party would qualify as moderate Democrats in the US.
(actually, being a "liberal" in Europe means you're pro-market, and that puts you on the right of the political spectrum)
On a final note, the rising acts of anti-judaism are mostly due to the large Muslim immigrant population, which sees them as payback for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a kind of exported (and obviously out-of-context) Intifada.
Those acts are not related at all to the old-school fascist nostalgics from the National Front. Whoever mentions those acts in a discussion related to Nazis is completely offtopic.
act, thre's a law in France making it a crime to "attack the character of the French President."
AFAIR, this law was repelled years ago.
That, combined with communist control of many of the French journalist's unions, means that many stories (such as all the members of the French government, past and present, who had their hands in the ELF bribery scandal, or, for that matter, the UN Oil-for-food scandel) never get adequately reported in the French press.
That, unfortunately, is completely true, and in fact communist workers unions have a lot more power than most people think. They hold an active minority in virtually every public service, including the Police and power distribution. They even had one of their men as Prime Minister not that long ago ! I half-jokingly call France "The Sovietic Republic of France" because of this. Sometimes that's "Ex-Sovietic Republic of France", though, because more and more people realize what's happening behind the political scene.
There is no real consensus between ALL french journalists, though, as proven by the existence of such publications.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I don't care about the rest of the issue, but I must say that despite weight-loss in Paris the suffering of the French people in the war was absolutely minimal compared to that of the Germans, British, Polish, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and other occupied or combatant countries. To claim that France heroically suffered is to belittle the genuine sacrifices of much of the rest of the world.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
You have to bear in mind that things the USA does tend to cover up, such as the invasion of Mexico and the actual causes of the Civil War, are things you won't have been exposed to much because, well, they tend to get covered up.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
According to the RSF organization, France is ranking 26th on the world's classment of freedom of press, while the US are 31st.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The French court is now trying to force them to take it down on their other sites as well
The French court doesn't want Yahoo to "take down" anything.
The French court simply wants Yahoo to block French users from their auction sites, or at least
make a credible attempt at that. That's controversial enough, no need to make it look even worse.
Look here.
Thomas Miconi
France has a rather large muslim minority. Recently, the mutual hatred between muslims and Israel from the middle east conflict seems to show up as antisemitism among these people.
I believe this to be a much larger problem than a few guys trading old SS uniforms.
C - the footgun of programming languages
On the labels of US music CDs.
What if they decide using Linux is 'hate speech against capitalism'?
It's very unlikely, but still. I have no idea what you do with your time. You could be a Mason and have a secret handshake. You could be a goth and like to pretend to be a vampire. Whatever - the point is that your speech should be protected even if it IS 'hate speech', which is something the US doesn't recognize, because the authors of our Constitution correctly divined that someday, someone would use that capability to outlaw speech they didn't like, which is oppressive.
Just like this French law is. The French can have whatever laws they like but i'll be damned if an American firm has to abide by them when conducting operations on US soil.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm European. WWII history was taught to me at school, just as it's taught to every schoolkid from Iceland to Russia.
Hey, I think it's also taught in the US! You know, about how they won World War II and all that...
Perhaps if they'd put up resistance instead of greeting and helping the Nazis
Well, actually, they did.
Notice Ike's comment about that "worth fifteen divisions" thing.
You may also not be aware of the fact that Paris was liberated by the French resistance, not by American troops (although the presence of Allied forces in Normandy certainly played a major role in the decision to start the uprising). Not that I blame you, apparently your Defence secretary is just as ignorant as you.
(and later putting up anti-American signs throughout the country following WWII)
The Communist party did. While they were a strong force at that time, they never won any general election and never represented the majority of the people.
RTF (History) M next time.
Thomas Miconi
Well said, here in Denmark we got a nazi radio and a few kids running around pretending to be nazis. And what happens is people here in Denmark just point and laugh. Let them alone and theyll just be something to laugh at.
That is nonsense, balderdash, baloney, bilge, bosh, bull, claptrap, fabrication, flimflam, garbage, hogwash, hooey, horsefeathers, poppycock, propaganda, rot, slander, slime, rubbish, trash, and tripe.
They're called prisons. They're not supposed to be Hiltons. You must be one of those people who thinks that putting a sack over someone's head is "torture." Never mind that Muslim men they make their own women wear burqas every day of their lives for the Islamic crime of being born women.
walling off citizens in their neighbourhoods
They're protecting Israeli citizens from Israel-occupying Arab terrorists. The anti-terror barrier is not to keep people inside an area; the purpose is to keep people out of an area. If Palestinists would stop shooting rockets into Israeli homes and murdering Jews on the street, this measure wouldn't be necessary.
and cleansing entire areas
The only cleansing Israel is doing is cleansing the land of Israel of Jews! Prime Minister Sharon is hell-bent on expelling 8,000 Israeli Jews from Gush Katif in the "Gaza Strip," and he wants to uproot and kick out the quarter million Israeli Jews of Judea and the Shomron (which comprise the "West Bank"). The IDF has destroyed synagogues multiple times. Yassir Arafat and the Palestinists should be cheering for Sharon. He's making large swaths of Israel Judenrein for them.
I don't know how you get off implying that the land is being cleansed of Arabs. The current government of Israel is adamant about destroying "illegal" Jewish homes and communities but doesn't do anything about the thousands of illegal Arab and Bedouin settlements and structures. The IDF is even reluctant to tear down many Arab structures used by terrorists to murder Israelis.
Who is cleansing whom? The Muslims have "cleansed" almost the whole Middle East of Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims. Islamic intolerance and persecution is causing a mass exodus of Christians out of Iraq. There are virtually no Christians in Bethlehem and a relatively small percentage of Jews in Jerusalem, the first holiest city to Judaism. They cleaned out the Holy Land of non-Muslims, and they're committing genocide all over Africa and Asia. Countless Christian villages (mostly African) have been burned to the ground just in the last decade. (Where is Kofi Annan?? Jesse Jackson?? All the leftist "human rights" phonies? Dirty secret: They hate Christians more than they care about blacks.) This is the way Muslims are. They're imperialist, warmongering fanatics who don't tolerate diversity or freedom. They've "cleansed" a third of the world of non-Muslims. They're about to start taking over Europe again, too. Russia, France, and Britain know it, make no mistake.
Israel is the only country on Earth where Jews are a majority. They're an "endangered species" of peoples. Israel is a sanctuary of preservation, but it's surrounded by ravenous wolves who want Jews to go the way of the dodo bird. The anti-terror barrier is to protect the peaceful people from the bomb-throwing wolves.
It should be noted that the barrier is being built with great reluctance by even its strongest supporters. Three objections: 1) The wall gives the impression of a political boundary, but much of Israeli land is on the predominantly Arab-occupied side. 2) There are several Jewish communities on the predominantly Arab-occupied side of the barrier who are not protected by it. 3) The necessity of it is the result of Israel's failure to prosecute the war on the occupying, militant Arabs on its land. Israel has failed to respect its own sovereignty and boundaries; therefore, nobody else respects them either.
It's interesting that Arabs characterize the barrier as walling them into an area. Umm, excuse me, but the other side is open-ended, you dunderheads. Ir
Also... ... ...
Another aspect of those laws is memory.
From U.S., a few million people came to Europe to rescue us. Thanks. A lot. But while many of you died for us, very few lived under occupation.
Here in Europe, everyone over 60 lived the terror. Everyone over 70 can name friend/families who died. Many old people who have forgiven germany (and others) crimes still wince when they hear a german military anthem, cry when they see a svastika tatoo. Those law are as much about neo-nazy movement as they are about respect to the dead and their fight. People fought to rid Europe of nazism and oppression and current law prohibit the display and selling of those items in memory of that fight.
I wasnt alive during that war. For me, a German dagger is a nice knife. For older people, its a symbol of dead and oppresion , and trading/displaying it hurt them. Ence those law.
Beside this, people and corporation doing business in a country must respect local law. A car drived by someone working for a german society cannot drive at 200mph on an american highway. Yahoo cannot sell or offer to sell nazi memorabilia to french people.
The World wide aspect of the web make this complicared, since yahoo have no easy way to know to whom it is displaying the sale offer, and france have no easy way to filter illegal offering. So, court fight
But stop crying about 'covering up history'. the only problem, and the interesting one, is about local law aplication in internationnal web dealings. And i suspect many lawyer will spend many hours and money on this for many years
Actually France does extradite but under the garantee that death penalty won't be required against the suspect, such garantee beeing given everytime ( and applied ). May I add that in 1948, United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which prohibit death penalty (Article 3). But wait... there's still using death penalty like China and Cuba, North Korea et al. But... they signed the UDOHR right ? Doesn't it mean they should apply it ?
\u262D = \u5350
I gotta give you that score, good comparison.
./ moderation system really shows its limits when the topic is France. Truly insightful posts such as this should not be modded at the same level than plain morons claiming historical absurdities.
As much as I support free speech, and stand up for our rights here, the French don't have to honor our laws inside their borders. ( no more then us here in the USSA have to honor theirs )
They ARE a different sovereign country remember...
Besides that, our government has pretty much gutted our bill of rights as of late... free speech is an illusion at the moment I'm afraid.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the US, state funding never goes to religious schools. That's illegal because it violates the principle of separation of church and state. As you point out, in France there are private religious schools. These schools receive state funding. The only religious schools receiving state funding are Christian (Protestant and Catholic). These schools either don't allow admission of non-Christians or they limit the percentage. They also have religious discriminatory hiring practices.
This has more practical problems than just violating the separation principal -- it causes non-christian immigrant minorities to be concentrated in one set of school systems where the mostly-French christians can flee them. It's a new apartheid.
Clothing (like the Muslim head-scarves) may have religious meaning for the people who wear them, but as long as it's not hurting anyone, the state should not be involved in determining that. A more balanced approach would be to prohibit proseletyzing and other behaviors which actually effect others, but allow people to otherwise observe the commandments of their religions. Making diversity visible has more positive effects than negative effects in a healthy society.
I find it interesting that high-range politicians in France actually get away with saying things like: "Muslim girls who wear headscarves do not want to be French". As if religion has anything at all to do with national identity. Except that in France it seems to.
And now we're being condemned for destroying that madman.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Some would argue that that's the problem with the way history is taught to Americans. You're led to believe that the US won World War I and World War II when most of the work was done by others.
In particular, the massive loss of live that the Soviet Union suffered in World War II seems to get overlooked, and hence the reason for their establishment of the satellite states that made up the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War is misunderstood: the Soviets simply wanted a buffer between them and any potential enemies.
Also, as well as the level of US involvement during the World Wars relative to those of others, the reasons for US entry into those wars is also often not properly taught. The US sat out WWI until very late in the game, and it was only the interception by British Intelligence of the Zimmerman telegraph from Germany to Mexico, promising German help if it were to invade the US, that prompted US entry into the war. Similarly, in WWII, the US didn't become an active participant until after Pearl Harbour, well over two years into the war. Japan made the first move and in effect declared war on the US, not the other way around, and after the Japanese attack Hitler formally declared war on the US as well.
So, in neither war were the US reasons for entering the conflict as altruistic as either American schoolkids seem to learn* or as Hollywood would like to portray.
(Whilst I was at university I met dozens of American students studying overseas for a year. Most of them, even those majoring in History, couldn't tell you what year either World War started let alone tell you the historical importance of the Zimmerman telegraph, etc. A great many of them were shocked that what they "knew" wasn't really what happened.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
March elections were regional ones. Last national elections were about two years ago, and people voted massively (~80%) for Chirac (right wing), in order to avoid Le Pen (fascist) to get any chance.
blah
To address the actual point, most native american cultures didn't have the cultural concept of "owning" land like european settlers did. Their culture didn't regard land as property to be owned as we do today. So you can't say they stole it. Native americans pretty much operated under a system of "If you were on it first, it was yours to use until you leave."
This doesn't excuse the of the truly awful treatment native americans were given on many occasions, but you can't say that they "owned" all of present day north america and that the european settlers stole it from them.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
>man.. where was I going wiht this incessant rant?!
Back to the home for the criminally insane bigots?
no taxation without representation!
>Purging the existence of the Nazis from the collective memories of their people is primarily done by the Germans and the French.
I can't speak for the French, but the Germans are doing anything but purging the collective memories of Nazi atrocities - if anything, they are overdoing the remembering sometimes (IMHO, I'm a German in exile, so I'll admit bias on this topic).
>All meaningful discussion and debate is squelched, and the official account of events is the only one legally allowed to be believed.
Au contraire; AFAIK the only thing that's actually illegal is to claim that the holocaust didn't happen, or to wear Nazi regalia and use the Nazi salute.
no taxation without representation!
Read the parent:
Where the hell did you get the info that there is anti-jewish sentiment in France?
I just pointed out where the hell is.
As many other people have pointed out, this is false. Last week I was talking with several Germans about this very issue. We also had a couple Japanese people with us, and we compared/contrasted how WWII is discussed in the USA (I'm American), Germany, and Japan.
In the US, I was taught that we won the war almost singlehandedly. As others have pointed out, this is not true. A little bit of misguidance on the part of the U.S. public school system.
In Germany, I was told they study WWII for years, covering it in every subject from history to art, literature, and philosophy. The dates and the battles are not the focus of most of the studies, either; it's causes and effects, in particular how the system failed enough to let Hilter come to power (Germany was a republic before him, remember). If anything, I was given the opinion that they spent too much time on it.
Then the Japanese people spoke up. They said they spent 'about a week' on WWII. If you want to slam a country for ignoring the war, focus your attention on the Pacific.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones
You're not being condemned for destroying a madman, but for going to war on false pretenses. Almost 1000 American's have died, and untold thousands of Iraqis, based on false information.
Should the world rejoice at that fact? I think not.
Q:Why are the boulevards in Paris lined with trees?
A:So the Germans can march in the shade!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Would he have been sucessful without US support?
Besides, it's not like Hussain is the only example. Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, to mention a few.
Read the parent:
Er... I'm not the one you want to reply to...
Anyway, MY point was, yes there are people who don't like jews and/or israel, that doesn't make it ok to hate french and/or france.
This shouldn't be hard to understand.
You can't take the sky from me...
Who gives a damn about the fuckin' Euro perception of America?
Right on. As if winning an international popularity contest was the most important thing for the US to be doing, or as if we could ever win such a contest under any circumstance.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
No reporter ever asks something like, "Do you really think a new 75 cent a gallon gas tax even approaces the outer reaches of coherent sanity at this point in time, and have you considered how much revenue it will actually bring in when the California economy basically evaporates overnight?"
I don't that is the place of a reporter to do. At least not apart from opinion pieces in newspapers. I read newspapers and watch news programs to get the unbiased facts. If the reporter wants to cover people expressing their dissenting views, I'm all for that. Granted, the extent of which the news covers these criticisms shows their own bias. It's not a perfect system but I prefer news that provides the straight unbiased facts on both sides of the issues, not news that tries to make me come to their conclusion.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
This ruling will be great. I can't wait to China to sue a website that promotes capitalism and/or democracy!
For that matter, it doesn't say anyone has any generic rights to free speech even in the USA, when it's not an act of the US government restricting it.
It always amazes me that the people most proud of their free speech, are the ones who have no fscking clue what it means. Whenever you see some idiot being an asshole or troll on a forum, MUD, or whatever else, chances are good they'll scream about their freedom of speech right when they get banned.
Too bad for them that it doesn't apply there, but apparently noone told them what that right actually means.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We went to war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Pure and simple. He was a threat that we were able to remove, but the "leading" nations of Europe wanted him to remain in power. The "anti-war" movement is being used by these governments for their own purposes. There was no "anti-war" protest against NATO and US involvement in the Yugoslavia mess, and it was perfectly all right for US soldiers to bomb Serbian civilians, and for our soldiers to die.
The double standard is sickening, and many of us don't care for it anymore. If the US sees a need to act in our self-interest, we're going to do so, especially if it involves threats to the safety and lives of our citizens.
If you want to resent us for being selfish, then enjoy your hypocrisy.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
People here turn into idiots when someone mentions the french, why is that?
Because Americans
1. Don't respect the french, as they capitulated to hitler comparitively easily, and lost rapidly in WW1 as well.
2. Don't like the french for their obstructionism of our agenda in Iraq, made worse when it became evident that the obstructionism was just to protect lucrative & crooked oil deals.
3. Are annoyed that france's policy decisions seem to be consistently based on 'Let's do the opposite of whatever the US wants'
That's a list that should get you started. I'm sure people could add more to it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
First, at least he was on American soil when they arrested him. We didn't declare him guilty, then ask the government of Russia to enforce the penalties levied against him.
Second, I didn't hear anyone outside of Adobe and the government defend the case against Skylarov (sp?), and Adobe even buckled to popular pressure and washed their hands of the action. I certainly didn't hear anyone defending the US ("It's their country and their laws - respect them!"), particularly those of us who live here.
Basically, we did something boneheaded but we admitted it. When France admits that their imperialist law enforcement is stupid and unmanageable, then we can revisit the topic to see which country handled the situation better.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That's actually the real problem... the mingling and hobnobbing of the media with those they are supposed to be covering.
I want unbiased facts, too. The problem is I get very few facts at all because the reporters never dig! I've lost count of the number of times I have watched a press conferecne and wished I could dive into the screen and ask some questions of my own. These so called pro reporters are rarely any better than the vapid, stupid bint who askeed Clinton "boxers or briefs".
--- Ban humanity.
Yes, but there is nothing lazier than an ideologue, which is what you are. As far as I care, Gore AND Murdoch could jump into a wood chipper together and I wouldn't even blink.
--- Ban humanity.
No jerkoff, I spent 3 year in the regular Army '70-'73. What did you do?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I was fucking your mom in the ass. The whole time. Now...don't you have to die or something?
I don't think so. Assuming you were alive then, which you weren't, my mom would have killed you dead for trying.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I'm from the South. Are you suggesting no one there remembers the Confederacy, knows anything about agricultural vs industrial economies in the 1800s, or has felt the sting of racial prejudice?
Or are you just failing to be funny?
Nice assumption. Too bad it's wrong.
Puhleese. Just stick you head in a bucket of water. It will benefit us both.
Nice. When you can't rebut an opponent's point, ask him to kill himself. It makes things so much easier.
Nice post.
However, the use of the word 'antisemitism' seems to be a blanket to cover any objective look at why Jews seem to have been disliked by every people they have come in contact through the ages.
Instead of ending discussion of the cause of this unpopularity with a routine labeling of 'them' as antisemitic, Jews should look at themselves as a possible part of the problem.
If at the end of a school year every child in a classroom had been in a altercation with a particular student, and all of their reasons ran along the lines of 'he said something about my family', 'he tried to steal from me', or 'he lied to me', maybe there is something tangible in the volume and unanimity of the complaints.
Of course, as a non-jew, I could have taken the easy way out and label all Jews as 'antianglo' or 'antiepiscopalian' and not write any of the above. That probably would have been a cheap way out of any discussion. Many hate and defamation groups seem to use this tactic, Jew and gentile.
Dialogue suffers when constrained by buzzwords.
Naw, it's not *that* bad, docs just told 'em the procedure was reverseable. That's according to the article I linked to, of course. But, hey, what's a little lie to keep a poor indian woman with a drinking problem from breeding, huh?
That is so wrong. Factually correct, but absurd.
The Wired article says "people in France" - what if other nationalities are visiting France and attempt to use a web browser there? "Oh, look honey, the French can't see the whole intarweb." It will lead to proxies for users, then I suppose these groups will attempt to shut the proxies down or have them filtered too...
If it is "French users", then they could be located anywhere in the world and Yahoo has to block them?! Sounds like a DNA sample keyed to an ID record with Nationality defined...
What was "reasonable" again?
8-PP
No. We went to war to remove Saddam. Period. WMDs or no WMDs, Saddam was not going to be in power and not going to be a continuing threat to anyone. You can attempt to paint it any other way you want, but the fact remains, we went in to remove him, against the wishes of our "betters" in Europe who were quite happy to buy his oil and sell him weapons.
In the "Blood for Oil" exchange, Europe better look to see how clean their hands are of the blood of Iraqi civilians.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
The only religious schools receiving state funding are Christian
I'm afraid you're just plain wrong about this. Since religion does not exist for the French state, there can be no discriminatory policy based on religion as to which school gets money... It is just a question of legal status: you have to be a "private establishment under contract with the state" (meaning you can't teach everything you want basically). As to the fact that sponsoring private schools violates the separation of Church and State, please note that 1. not all private schools are religious 2.The state does not sponsor a religious school but a private school under contract.
As to the muslim head-scarves, the situation is a little more complex than what it seems. One of the reasons it's been talked about is that many people see it as a way of oppressing women, especially when girls are forced to wear it by their family. Add to this the fact that people are weary of muslim fundamentalism (we've had quite a few bombs here), don't understand a thing about Islam, stir, and you've got a rather explosive situation: people mix up everything and get emotional.
Which politician said Muslim girls who wear headscarves do not want to be French? Sounds like a far right thing to me, hardly the opinion of the majority of the population...
I will repeat what I said before: secularism is deeply rooted in French culture. I totally agree with you when you say that making diversity visible has more positive effects than negative effects in a healthy society. Except when people misunderstand what they see (muslim head scarf), and when, at school, our secular culture says, superseding everything else "no religious stuff at school". You said A more balanced approach would be to prohibit proseletyzing : this is precisely the problem here. In our extreme secular culture, quite a few people see any kind of religious symbols as some kind of proseletyzing. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, just the way people see it. It is, I believe, a matter of cultural differences.
Please note that I am not some kind of secular fundamentalist. Half of my family is christian (catholic or protestant), the other half is muslim.
I have one question: What is "a religious school" in the US? As it is often the case, I fear we're having a misunderstanding over what we're talking about.
You can complain all you want, but I think your point of view is lost of the rest of the world. Go anywhere in the world, tell them you are an American, and they are not going to assume you are from Costa Rica or Canada. You can squabble all you want about what you want the word to mean, but to the rest of the world, if you declare yourself an American, they are going to assume you can from that nation between Canada and Mexico. So, be my guest and declare yourself American, but don't be surprised when they ask you which state you are from.
"Canada 8 US 0 ( zero ) ( this happen to be the score between our two country at war ) , whant another loss ? be my guess , first strike us , will crush you in the end."
Hahahahaha! U st1k3 f33r int0 m3 wit y3r 7hr34ts of Canadian invasion.
Yeah, their gonna use their first amendment right to free speach IN FRANCE....wonder if there is anything wrong with this...?
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
'Nazi' came from the phrase 'National Socialism', which, as a form of government, has many parallels in modern Israel.
...not that there is anything inherently wrong with nationalism. Humanity has lived under small nationalist monarchies and aristocracies for most of known history. Every people should have the right to survive and manage their nation in ways they see fit (including living under national socialist governments if they so choose). The problem is when people that would wish a utopia for themselves deny such for others.
Israel is strongly national-centered around a 'chosen people' (master race), with distributed social initiatives for this specific class or set. Marriage laws are present to forbid intermarrying with outsiders (goyim). The education system is fully integrated with the religious hierarchy, and nationalist/religious indoctrination is begun at an early age. Military service is mandatory. Finally, both nations share foundations based in myth (Nibelung/Holocaust).
If, without these hate laws, the people of France decide they want a national socialist government, Jews should pack up and head home, become 'French' (religiously, culturally, etc), or be prepared to live like the Palestinians under their own regime.
In France, the criminalization of hate speech and hate-related objects makes them dangerously attractive.
Very well said. It's odd that sociology is not a mandatory subject in school, even for little kids.
Like any European country, non-EU ones included, France is opposed to the death penalty. This means that they have a moral obligation to not hand over anyone so you can kill them. Otherwise, they would be hypocrites (sure, dig something up). They will, however, let you have your prisoner after their courts/police have determined that he is most likely guilty, and you have signed an agreement not to kill him, should he be found guilty at a fair trial. How is this a problem?
Do you make that up as you go? Some facts would be nice.
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
Well I can see your point that it's "Pure and Simple", once the facts are taken away. But I can't help remember the words clear and present danger used to describe Iraq. If it was to remove him from power, why then was the justification to congress that there was this imaginary threat?
You only assume there was no one against the bombs perpetrated by Nato. Just because it wasn't on CNN or FOX, or whatever, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I would hope you can see the danger of a government going to war to protect itself against a threat that was not there, only to say it actually went for another reason after the fact.
Whatever happened to the Neo Nazi Pedophiles website? That site was hilarious. True comedic genius. I have heard that it was shut down by the Australian government and I also heard that the sites author was getting to many threats from real neonazi groups who were offended by his site.
Second, I am not disputing the poll (though I have seen others); I am making the point that this term has a history of being a racial slur. If your poll is accurate, some 20% of native Americans find the term offensive; hardly an insignificant number. But even if the number were smaller, it is still pretty obviously a slur based on its historical usage, which you do not dispute. I don't know why the team would call itself a slur, other than that they, like you, thought the term was innocent of negative connotations. In other words, they made an unfortunate mistake.
The particular history of this term is not merely offensive; it is murderous. So the 20% who object to it probably object to it quite significantly, with reasonable historical basis for their objections. The fact that 80% are blind to that history is irrelevant; most Americans, native or not, are relatively ignorant of American history.
Third, I don't "wish to portray" this term as a slur; it is pretty clear from its use historically what it meant and why it is considered a slur by many. I'm also not saying that the use of the term should be banned as a mascot. That's up to the team. But if it were my team, and I realized that we had unintentionally chosen a racial slur that was offensive to 20% of the population, I would probably change it just to show good will. But maybe that's just me.
It's amusing, really. You aren't criticizing the poll, but you aren't criticizing me, either. You're simply embarassing yourself. You make ridiculous assumptions that reveal negative, petty insights into your nature in the very act of attempting to impugn mine. Fact one. The entire point of posting the link was to provide written evidence referencing the poll. An actual poll (not "my poll", incidentally, as you wrote). You then commit multiple logical fallacies. First of all, you assume that I am a reader of the National Review (I am not, I simply googled for written references to teh SI poll). Then, you go on to assume that anyone who reads that source is somehow intellectually shallow. Steereopying, based on incorrect information. Your point is absolutely terrible, incorrect, and reveals a shallow inability to debate a topic on its merits. And clearly, you are the one unable to follow nuances in an argument, or to properly identify relevant nuances, if you are ridiculous enough to attempt to argue on the aforementioned grounds. Really, really embarassing for you.
And back to the term. It is not offensive, and it is not murderous. And the majority of the target population doesn't find it to be offensive. We've established all of this. Weakly repeating the charge, while failing to support your position doesn't help your case. Yes, you do "wish to portray" the term as a slur. Its not a slur. Plain and simple. Its is completely absurd to assume that the team would base the name of the team on a slur, for reasons already discussed. So we have your final argument, complete ignorance as to the meaning of the term, despite a national trademark, Indian members, support from the Indian population, and relevant historical references of the time showing no offensive nature in the comments.
Terrible, terrible argument on your part. Just awful, really. And I'm sure you think yourself to be quite moral and enlightened, don't you? That makes your stance just that much worse. By attempting to incorrectly caste things in the light of offense, you lump situations together which aren't remotely within similar classifications. By doing so, you do incredible damages to other, just, serious, needy causes that need to be addressed. But I supposed thats far too nuanced for you. I guess I shouldn't expect you to be capable of comprehending something that requires any consderation beyond that of a kneejerk.
I hate this french law.
Do I need a lawyer?
But I just think you're missing the point of the main argument here. The term has a murderous history. It was a term used to identify numbers of indians murdered under the British policy of exterminating the populace. You have not even tried to refute this; you simply say that most Indians today aren't offended by it and that the team would not base its name on a slur. The first point misses the historical argument entirely -- even if nobody were offended by the term, its historical roots cannot be denied. It is possible that a term can change its meaning significantly over time, of course; but while that is true to a certain extent of the term "redskin," the fact that some 20% of native Americans still find the term offensive suggests that those historical meanings are still a part of the contemporary understanding. Is a term only a racial slur if 50% of a population is offended by it? 75%? Why do you insist I am just talking about "offensiveness" anyway? My point is about the history of the term.
Again, it wouldn't surprise me if many people -- including 80% of native Americans studies by SI -- were ignorant of this history of the term. Most Americans are ignorant of most of American history. But that doesn't make it false! You can't just cite a poll to dispute historical facts; what if 80% of native Americans didn't believe in World War II. Would you use that as evidence that World War II was a hoax?
Finally, I don't completely disagree with your point about trivializing more important issues. I am not an activist on this issue, and I think there are many more significant problems for native Americans today than the names of football teams. But that doesn't change the historical facts, which I don't think you can ignore. And I think it is worse than ignoring it when you assert with such certainty that the historical fact is false, when your only evidence is an opinion poll.
Not only that, but France has an economy roughly the size of Britain, or Italy. A trillion and a half dollars GDP may not be our 10 1/2 trillion dollar GDP, but it's nothing to scoff at. Quite clearly French businesses don't "capitulate instantaneously".
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Yeah... because having your trading partners and military allies on your side is a bad thing. I mean, we like Europe to side against us with the WTO! We like paying for 90% of the costs of the Iraq war, and losing 90% of the lives, ourselves. We don't like international cover - we'd much rather be seen as an occupying force. Right?
I find it ever so amusing that in Iraq - the country that we came to "liberate" - polls consistantly show the public far preferring the French to the US. Perhaps we should rethink how we try and win the hearts and minds at the point of a gun. Not that France is some sort of an angel, mind you.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Good point! I mean, when they started making noise about US steel tarrifs, nothing happened right? They certainly didn't go to the WTO, and get sanctions on the US, right?
Their making noise about Iraq sure had no effect! I mean, look at how well it turned out, given that the US didn't get its desired international cover, and 90% of the casualties and 90% of the costs are American. Whoever is in charge of printing Stop-Loss orders must be getting paid overtime. Or, wait, are you going to claim that it was doomed from the start? In that case, you all only have yourselves to blame for your god-awful judgement - something that the French tried to warn you all of!
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Now you suggest that the SCOite should hide the fact that he worked with SCO. If you'd suggested that people hade that they are gay, black, jewish,..... then you'd have been called racist or some other "ist". Surely discrimination in any form is discrimination.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"pathetic nanny state" = "pathetic nanny government".
What about this other case?
"In 1985, a DEA agent in Mexico was captured and tortured to death by members of a drug cartel. Subsequently, U.S. agents with the help of Mexican nationals "snatched" Dr. Alvarez-Machain in Mexico and delivered him to the United States for trial as a participant in the torture and murder."
"I think this line is mostly filler"
The state has no problem with sponsoring private schools. It won't sponsor religious private schools.
State funds may not go towards the promotion of a religion in the US. Which means no broadcasts of religious material on publicly owned channels (I wake up every morning in Germany to a Lutheran or Catholic preacher on an otherwise excellent public channel -- that would be illegal in the US). It means no state funds to charitable organizations run by religions (something shrub is trying to change). It means no religious symbols on state property (hence the big stir about that Alabama judge who wants to put up the ten commandments in the court house and the occasional little stir about nativity scenes). It means that school children cannot be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance (which contains the words "In God We Trust"). It means that the state will never collect tithes for a church (The German and Spanish governments and Alsace-Moselle do, but only for 3 or 4 religions). The list goes on.
It also means that if you were to argue in the US that Turkey should not be part of the European Union because it's not Christian that most people won't understand why you think that has anything to do with anything. That argument seems to have some traction in Europe though.
Actually apart from a few symbols, like the "In God we Trust" you mentioned on our money and the self-serving public piousness of our president, separation of church and state is much stronger in the US than in Germany (where I currently live). I don't live in France but many of the things I hear give me the impression that there separation of church and state means something more like forcing the "secular" religion down people's throats. That "secular" religion hasn't entirely disentangled itself from its Christian roots. In fact it seems fairly blind to the ways in which it is influenced by them. And it seems incapable of recognizing the possibility of a Muslim secular movement.
By the way -- I'll take you at your word that you're not a secular fundamentalist, but in other cases people from religiously mixed families have been in my experience the most fundamentalist of secularists. They seem to have usually had a bad experience with religious intolerance and taken the wrong message away from that.
And a second by the way -- the wikipedia has a nice overview of religious freedom in various countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_ and_state
Thanks for the information about religious schools in the US.
It also means that if you were to argue in the US that Turkey should not be part of the European Union because it's not Christian that most people won't understand why you think that has anything to do with anything. That argument seems to have some traction in Europe though. You're perfectly right about this one. I personally don't care about Turkey not being Christian, but it is apparently (and unfortunately, IMHO) important for quite a few people in Europe
I don't live in France but many of the things I hear give me the impression that there separation of church and state means something more like forcing the "secular" religion down people's throats.
This is true, but since people expect this and it is the way quite a few of them think (the cultural difference I keep bothering you with), I'm not sure it's really a problem. The real problem is actually what you very accurately pointed out next:
That "secular" religion hasn't entirely disentangled itself from its Christian roots. In fact it seems fairly blind to the ways in which it is influenced by them. And it seems incapable of recognizing the possibility of a Muslim secular movement.
Very well said indeed... I could not agree more. This comes mainly from the immigration model in France: you are supposed to "blend in" and forsake your previous way of life. France has a Christian past and has therefore problems integrating people with very different traditions/religions and wants to believe these problems don't exist, hence the problems with muslims. We've had no problem assimilating (I know the word is strong, but that's what it is) the Italians and Poles (Christian) who immigrated in the past 80 years for example. Our secularism has some kind of Christian roots, and people tend to mix things up. The other reason is that most of our Muslim population isn't exactly wealthy -which tends to foster religious fundamentalism-, and comes from Northern Africa which leads people to believe that muslim fundamentalist=Muslim=Arab=bad. Frankly, I have no idea how to solve this.
By the way -- I'll take you at your word that you're not a secular fundamentalist, but in other cases people from religiously mixed families have been in my experience the most fundamentalist of secularists. They seem to have usually had a bad experience with religious intolerance and taken the wrong message away from that.
You're right. In my case it's a little particular. My father is a Middle Eastern (Lebanese) sunni Muslim who now prays every wednesday in Catholic prayer group, my mother a British Protestant. Both my brother and sister are Protestant, I am personally an atheist. Religious intolerance is something that I haven't seen much in my family. I am not offended in any way by religion, I just know that I don't really understand it. It took me a while for example to understand that for an atheist faith seems to be a question of choice, when for a truly religious person, it is not a choice, but something obvious (God exists and He's there). I know this may sound stupid, but it took me a while and a lot of talking (not arguing -I would never dare questioning one's faith- but asking questions about something I did not understand) with religious people to get this. And I'm not even sure I got it right...
Maybe continuing the debate by email would be easier?
"These laws are here to protect history..."
History is always written by the victor and will always favor the author, but obviously only a "history" so off-base and incredibly untruthful needs laws protecting it. Usually it is businesses that are protected by laws, and in this context they are called shoah business or holocaust industry.
It is illegal so sell, manufacture or transport any drugs in the Netherlands unless you have a licence to do this for medical, instructional or scientific purposes. Shipping pot to the States is not allowed.
e therlands
So how come we have pot selling coffeeshops?
the government wants to keep an eye on the selling of soft drugs so it has allowed the prosecutors office to set a series of guidelines. If you carry 5 grams or less of pot for personal use you will not be prosecuted. A coffeshop is allowed to have a maximum of 500 grams for trade.
Read the exellent wiki article about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_N
Same id but at yahoo.
The court decision is there.
Interview (fr) of Joel Reidenberg (internet legal issues expert, law teacher at Fordham university.)
=~One where products advertised must be imported from the US.
France can make it illegal to import. Therefore it would be somewhat of a problem to export something that is banned from import in the country of destination.
France cannot force the US to remove the items.
My personal opinion is that a country that gladly kept all sorts of records on its citizens making it easy for the Nazis to find their victims got what was coming to them. That should teach them about privacy.
And if I were interested in history for personal research and enrichment, having an item from that era might allow me to appreciate the reality of thpse years not just the recorded history. It's a bit disturbing for someone to collect such things (and from an Erich Fromm perspective any kind of repetitive collecting is a sign of voluntary mentally deteriorating behavior - we call it an obsession whether it makes for Hollywood thrillers or not), but the past should and must be allowed to bite us or we'll forget the value of it.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Oh, and by the way, Islam is NOT a religion. I don't know of any other religion in the world that says it's okay to cut off people's heads and fly planes of innocent people (who are not soldiers) into a building full of more civilians.
Islam is a reason for crazy morons to blame their sociopathic behavior on someone/thing else. God told me to do it!
I'm not aware of another religion that is so violent, teaches you to hate everyone that is no like you, and treats women like dog shit as much as Islam. I am atheist, but at least Christianity teaches foregiveness and love (except for Catholocism, which only teaches fear and okays criminal behavior, like Islam).
No, iraq didn't attack us. However the afhanistan government at the time (Taliban) was sheltering and hiding those that did, so that was is much more easily justifiable.
That would probably violate some war crime laws and would make us as bad as al Quaeda.
Me too.
Islam doesn't say it is okay to do that. A few cults leaders did.
And crasy morons use Christianity to blame their sociopathic behavior on something else too.
The bottom line is the religion is completely irrelevant in this war. If you swapped Christianity in the US and Europe with Islam in the middle east, I assure you, noone's behaviour would be any different. The trade centers would be leveled in the name of Jesus, and Mohammed commands Bush to wage war in the middle east. As an athiest you should acknowledge that religions are just constructs put together by men, and so men can make them say anything they want.
Religion works like this: some sociopath comes along and says 'god (of any religion) told me that we need to do this or that. you should follow me.' and a bunch more nutcases believe him and carry out his wishes. People aren't following some god, they're following a man and his interpretation of some book written thousands of years ago (if even that).
You can't blame Islam for anything. There are as many interpretations and cults in that religion as there are in Christianity. One leader says Islam commands them to kill many americans, another leader says to make peace. Who is the true Muslim? Neither of them, because there is no true Islam and there is no true Christianity. There are just interpretations and fabrications made by men.
From the 2600 article:Yup. That's why you posted anonymous. I just hope the fool who modded you up gets taken down in metamod.
It's all about context.
I can understand that. To Americans, we grant neo-Nazis freedom of speech (if grudgingly), but Nazism doesn't carry the same sort of taboo and stigma here as it does in Germany. If it did, we might feel differently about the balance of free speech.
To put it in a context that Americans can understand, imagine a video game where you find and kill the bad guys, but instead of Nazis, the bad guys are child pornographers. And suppose the game contains photorealistic simulations of the bad guys actually creating the child porn. Perhaps the plot of the game is that you catch them in the act of making child porn, and administer a little vigilante justice on the spot.
Most Americans would want to ban such a game, and hang its creators by their toenails. It wouldn't matter if no actual child had been harmed in making the game (suppose young-looking adult actors helped with the portrayal of the simulated child porn). Child pornography is universally abhorred and loathed in this country, and I think the associated taboo and stigma might be comparable to the way Germans feel about Nazis.
For an even more relevant hypothetical, imagine a website in a foreign country selling real child pornography over the web. Free speech advocates might defend the hypothetical videogame with simulated child porn, but they wouldn't lift a finger to defend a vendor of real child porn. Wouldn't we want to prevent Americans from being able to purchase that child porn if possible? Our government would certainly try -- even if it was perfectly legal in the foreign country. (Suppose a girl was legally married at 10 years old and the married couple started selling amateur porn videos on the web?)
As an American, I can't know for sure how the Germans (and French) feel about the Nazis, but I believe this analogy is apt. Americans don't give a shit about free speech rights when it comes to real child porn (and even for simulated child porn, it's controversial) -- because we feel (as a society) that it's more important to prevent such atrocities than to slavishly follow our ideals about free speech to the letter. The world isn't black and white, and like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, there are times where Americans do not consider free speech paramount after all. I am very much an advocate of free speech, but there are necessarily limits -- otherwise we invite anarchy (or worse).
Germany and France have experienced the atrocities of the Nazis in their own homelands. Americans have not. Except for WWII veterans, for most Americans, the Nazis (and Hitler especially) may represent a symbol of ultimate evil, but that doesn't mean we have the same visceral reaction to Nazis, like we do with child pornography.
As an American, and a free speech advocate, my gut instinct is to say that the anti-Nazi laws in France and Germany are bad, and that free speech is more important. But we haven't suffered from the Nazis the way France and Germany have. If the USA had suffered Nazi occupation in World War II, we would probably be equally adament about Nazi suppression, despite our free speech ideals. As such, I have to allow for that difference in experiences, and admit that perhaps the anti-Nazi laws in France and Germany are justifiable.
That being said, I don't believe France has any right to dictate to Yahoo how to operate their US website, no matter what business Yahoo may do in France. At the same time, if a foreign multinational corporation started selling child porn outside this country, I guess we'd consider their US interests fair game to pressure them to stop. So I can't really blame the French for trying, but I hope they don't succeed.
[Ugh. I feel dirty just from having to talk about child pornography so much! But it's the only way I can think of to convey the analogy to my fellow Americans. To the French and Germans, obviously Nazis aren't to be grudgingly tolerated like the KKK is here -- they're to be utterly eradicated, as we feel about child pornographers...]
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07