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Amnesty International vs. Internet Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "Amnesty International has a new online campaign against governments which censor websites, monitor online communications, and persecute citizens who express dissent in blogs, emails, or chat-rooms. The website, Irrepressible.info contains a web-based petition (to be presented at a UN conference in November 2006) and also a downloadable web gadget which displays random excerpts of censored material on your own website."
"Hate speech" and "Neo-Nazi crap" is not the same thing as "death threats". It is perfectly possible to be a non-violent bigot.
But they're run by godless liberals. Most conservatives would rather die than to support such an "evil" organization.
The way I look at it is, if you have to legislate the truth then you're already fucked. By all means, let people sue each other in cases of blatant lies and deceit, but prison is going way too far. If the truth must be legally enforced, then either humanity is fucked up beyond all hope or the truth being legislated is one too shakey to be blindly trusted.
Anyway, I'm not sure your example holds water. From what I've heard, most Japanese people are in no big hurry to return to their hyper-militaristic roots, and there are plenty of neo-Nazi's left in Germany. Instead of being openly laughed at, they're merely oppressed and driven underground. By banning the swastika they've given it unimaginable strength--the power of taboo. On top of this, they've criminalized many eastern religions which for thousands of years used the swastika as a symbol of life.
Meanwhile, fundementalist Christian groups (Europe has their share, though I'm sure they're not powerful as they are in America) get a free pass to preach their hatred of anyone who dares to love in ways they don't approve. You see, in my eyes fundementalist Christanity's war on love is much more obscene and offensive and hateful than mere racism. But that's the problem--obscenity is in the eye of the beholder, even hate can be in the eye of the beholder, and that's why speech (and other forms of expression) should never ever ever ever be punishable by prison time. Civil penalties are reasonable in certain cases, but silence doled out by men with guns who throw you in a little locked room for a few years is never, ever called for.
Amnesty is an organisation that seems to have it's heart in the right place and it's mind off on holiday.
Typical responses to Amnesty in roughly the following order:
1) Ignore them
2) Acknowledge them only to tell them it ain't gonna change.
3) When they become a real nuisance kill whoever it is they're protesting about if it is an individual or kill off enough to get Amnesty's attention then blame Amnesty's meddling for the slaughter.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer