Slashdot Mirror
German President Refuses To Sign Censorship Law
thetinytoon writes "German federal president Horst Köhler has refused to sign a law to block child pornography that passed Parliament earlier this year, stating that he 'needs more information.' In Germany, the federal president has the right to reject a law only if its passage violated the order mandated by the constitution, or if it is obviously unconstitutional — he can't veto a law simply because he disagrees with it. The law was passed under a coalition government, but a different coalition took power before the law reached the president's desk. Political observers guess that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without losing face, but since it has already passed the Parliament, they can't simply abandon it."
... or at least according to the former family affairs minister - she said that everyone who is against this law is either a paedophile criminal or their lobby.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Well, obviously this guy supports child pornography.
Either that OR he wants to make sure that the censorship law is congruent with the German constitution.
Take a wild guess which of those two options is going to dominate headlines...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Germany has restrictive laws regarding Nazi symbols and ultra-violence. The USA has restrictive laws against showing nipples.
Why is it that the US seems to have such a high value on free speech
What makes you say that? Is it the "free speech zones" at the Republicrat national conventions or Lenny Bruce's multiple arrests for saying "four letter words" on stage?
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
I don't know about Germany, but in New Zealand we have a very similar way of voting in our members of Parliament so I will take a stab at why you would not want your president to be able to veto a law thing.
Unlike the US, we do not directly elect our head of state (I presume this is also true for Germany as well). Instead we vote for the party that we want to be in power, based on their policies and the party appoints a PM. This is actually quite common in many places, and it means that the Prime Minister can change inside a term. e.g. The United Kingdom had a PM change from Blair to Brown without an election. In the US if the president was to resign, the VP would become the president, it cannot be reassigned based on party politics. In practice the choice for PM is announced before the election, so many people do vote based on who they want their prime minister to be.
[The US is even stranger here, as you get the right to vote for your sentators, representatives and your electoral college member, but that is a whole different digression.]
The prime minister does have a fair amount of power, and does a bunch of figure head stuff (negotiate treaties, etc). But as it is not an elected position, the PM has fairly limited legislative power. The idea of one person vetoing a law that the other democratically elected MPs voted for would not be accepted, the PM already has a fair amount of unofficial power in the form of increased media time, and influence over the majority collation at the time. The fact that Germany has a system where the PM can overrule a law that violates the constitution is, in my opinion, a good thing.
[The closest NZ has to this is the governer general -- as a member of the commonwealth our official head of state is the Queen of the Commonwealth. She appoints the GG who then approves laws in her place. The GG could, in principle, turn down any law for any reason but that would quickly turn public opinion against being part of the commonwealth and would probably make NZ reconsider its position within the commonwealth.]
In contrast, ignoring the issue of the congressional college, the US populace votes directly for the position of president on the understanding that this one position will have a lot of legislative power in the form of vetos. Whether that is too much of a concentration of power for a single individual is up to you to decide, but at least it is an elected position. Ignoring our governor general (who theoretically has a lot of power, but would lose it is she ever tried to yield it) our system does not have as much power with a single person, and our elections for (psuedo-)head of state tend to be much more civil that the USA counterparts.
Hope this helped explain the origins / reasons for the differences!
And, in the realm of censorship, Germany seems to have the most sense
Yeah, sure. So long as you aren't wearing any Nazi symbols, or showing Nazi symbols in a game, or showing too much violence/blood in a game or...
Of course, German residents will [in typical fashion] defend such actions on the part of the government, but the way I see it, if Nazism is bad enough that there's enormous backlash against it in Germany, you shouldn't even NEED to censor it. People can make up their own goddamn minds.
Really, all the censorship serves to do is flush it under a rug. The people who want to openly support Nazism [or anything else] should be free to do so, and I should be equally free to deride those people for their beliefs.
Trying to hide it under the rug doesn't work, and should not be something that a "free and democratic" society should even consider doing.
Because the constitution isn't a listing of rights, but powers of the federal government. One of the objections to the bill of rights was that it would be interpreted as a complkete list, and look - that's what happened.
Reboot macht Frei.
I don't understand what the hell is going in modern society that we suddenly think there are hoards of paedophiles everywhere. The only thing that might have changed in the last 50 years is that child porn may be more accessible now that it was before, but child porn doesn't make people into paedophiles any more than Kylie Minogue makes people homosexual.
I would (sort of) understand it if this was just a stupid legislative thing - ie making laws to ban child porn in order to get more powers to spy on ordinary people, etc. but the thing is that the general public seem to be obsessed by it over the past 10 years.
Today is by 43rd birthday. As I played with my 9 year old son, I thought about what my life was like when I was his age. The first thing that struck me was that (were it not for the rain here in London), he'd be out playing in the streets with his mates, not in some kind of house arrest situation where he has to have at least one parent with him at all times when he leaves the house.
It's fucking sad. And it makes me angry that politicians pander to irrelevant crap like child porn and paedophiles. Yes, paedophiles exist, and so does child porn, but the NUMBER of paedophiles hasn't increased, has it? If it has, nobody's saying why. And even if it has, then the effect of 0.00001% of the population having a predilection for children is frankly irrelevant compared to dangers such as traffic accidents, non-sexual abuse, violence and murder, which - incidentally - hasn't increased either!
What the hell is going on???
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
The German constitution starts with the words:
"Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar."
Translated:
"The dignity of man must not be violated."
That is what is valued higher than free speech. And I think people agree for two reasons:
1. The Nazis heavily violated the dignity of people. That is what disgusts us most about them. They dehumanized people on a massive scale. The killing is just a consequence of that. That is why we think that a life with dignity should be guaranteed for everyone. And this is for example why we have so much "socialism", we want that even the poor, the ill and the weak have their dignity. No one should be forced to beg for their live.
2. I think most people don't really see what is gained by arranging the values with other priorities. It surely is important to be able to discuss and state ones opinion, but why is it important that I can ridicule everyone? Why is it important that I can publish racist jokes? Why is it important that I can make heavy accusations without any evidence? Why is that more important than dignity?
Especially given the example of the USA. We know that freedom of speech is valued highest there. But we can't see that it works out good for you. You have freedom of speech in theory but in practice everyone with a different opinion is labeled unpatriotic and unamaerican. You can say what you want but your voice is easily marginalized without a second thought.
The swastika is not actually outlawed in Germany, only symbols of unconstitutional organizations. So only a particular form of the swastika is thus outlawed. Now, I'm neither German nor American, but I'll take an outlawing of a 45-degree clockwise-pointing swastika rather than TV-nipples any day!
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.