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In France, Only Journalists Can Film Violence
BostonBTS sends word that the French Constitutional Council has just made it illegal to film violence unless you are a professional journalist (or to distribute a video containing violence). The law was approved exactly 16 years after amateur videographer George Holliday filmed Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King. The Council was tidying up a body of law about offenses against the public order, and wanted to ban "happy slapping." A charitable reading would be that the lawmakers stumbled into unintended consequences. Not according to Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi: "The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said [Cohet]. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet."
> No true rightist/conservative/facist believes that all men are created equal.
Of course not. Only an idiot believes everyone is equal. But we must all be equal before the law to the maximum extent we can manage. My testimony in court should be equal to Donald Trump, although in reality we both know the jury will probably weight the Donald a bit more. Theory, meet reality. But we don't have rules like the crap in Sharia law that says a man's testimony is equal to three women's.
> They pay lip service to everyone competing on level playing fields but in the end all right theory boils down
> to those not born with a silver spoon in their mouths existing only to feed the rich.
Bullcrap. Go pull the Forbes list of richest people and go count the ones 'born with a silver spoon' vs the ones who made their wealth themselves. In America and most of Western Civilivation for that matter, anyone with a little ability, a lot of desire and a dash of luck can rise from abject poverty to the middle class and more than a few make it to the upper classes in a single generation.
> You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them when there are people who are denied
> even such basic human needs as education and health care because their family incomes are below
> a certain level.
I don't know where you are posting from, but here in the US of A everyone has an opportunity to get an education. Some government schools suck more than others but at even the worse a determined pupil CAN learn to read enough to learn how to learn and we have lots of public libraries to learn what the schools can't/won't teach.
As for an entitlement to health care I'll save that rant for another day, this thread has already drifted too much.
> You can't really have the right to free speech when you can't even afford a printing press or to access
> other mass communication media.
In modern America everyone has access to mass communication either directly or as part of an organization. Even the poorest can afford to have enough handbills printed to plaster a city. A small group can afford billboards, pamphlets and local radio and TV. And because of the 1st Amendment they don't have to get permission... at least until recently if you want to politic near an election.
Democrat delenda est
I second that. When you violate natural law, you die. Governments that are totalitarian disarm their citizens. No healthy form of government can disarm the people that created it, and hope to be kept in check.
.45.
And as an American, I know what you mean about the European mind. I lived there as well. They think of us as brash bully jackasses that shoot everyone in sight. That American citizens are violent kill zones. They forget that our cities have 2-10 million people, and if one person dies it makes the news.
They are right, though. You slap my grandmother or my kid on the street, and I will kill you and your friends. Sandniggers, mudslime niggers, or mudslime chinks. You will all die, and I'll enjoy doing it.
Roving bands of muslims in Omaha... haha. That would be something to film. They'd make great fertilizer. The worst problem we have are illegal mexicans and their women. If looks could kill they would be the electric chair. But that's another matter that you just can't help. Other than that, they're the nicest criminals you'll ever meet. But if they weren't- we you be seeing non-entities splattered along the sidewalk by grandma packing a