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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."
This may come off as a troll, but I'm legitimately curious:
I'm from the US. I have an adequate understanding of various forms of government, including parliamentary forms, but Germany's constitution and government really just drive me crazy with lack of understanding. I think perhaps a big part of that is cultural and being raised in a country with different values. The idea that the president can't veto a law, and that the only checks against parliamentary power are the constitution itself kind of bugs me a little. The German system in general bugs me a little I suppose, because I place such high value in free speech and things Germany apparently values differently. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying I don't understand.
What I'd honestly like to understand is what the cultural differences are, and if anyone knows -WHY- they exist. Why is it that the US seems to have such a high value on free speech at least theoretically whereas Europe in general (Germany in particular) does not?
Maybe someone who has lived in the US and Germany and understands both governments could just write up a brief opinion, because I'm trying to understand without being a "US Imperialist" and saying OH WELL THEY'RE JUST WRONG AND NEED LIBERATIN' but I'd like to get an insider's view.
Like the guy who blew the whistle on the sub-prime fiasco this guy will be my secret ace in the hole for my dead pool.
The global elite only want control over everything you say or do while you slave away on subsistence wages to make them rich...is that so wrong?
What would John Galt do?
Freedom of speech and personal privacy are the tools of pedophiles don't ya know?
Personally I even support people's right to deny the holocaust, say the sky is red..or any other dumb ass shit.
Until you get all the opinions on the table you simply are not having an objective debate on any issue.
Things like these highlight some of the benefits of the German legislative system. Schavan would've been the better choice for the office of president and she'd've probably said 'Have enough information and my verdict is: Forget it' but never the less I'm positively suprised about this.
Köhler wouldn't have been my President but he has shown balls at other occasions and he has a very polite, neatly shrouded and delicate way of basically saying 'Go fuck yourself' to his party members without publicly hurting any feelings, as soon as day-to-day politics start screwing around again in Germany. He's like a gutter-grid keeping the biggest chunks of crap of the german supreme courts back. Which allready has a hard time keeping up with voiding all the BS Berlin has been coming up with lately.
Having a chancelor (currently Angela Merkel) for every-day politics and a President as mostly symbolic head-of-state does have its benefits, as it gives the President tthe obligation to use his power to prevent long-term-effects of election-term-based decisions and lobby/decoy/special-interest laws. And keeps him out of the regular decision making which gives him and his actions the required authority and weight.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Don't worry too much about it. I was raised speaking French and English, and I don't spot sarcasm all that well in either language online.
There's too much crazy on the internet to really be sure if somebody is being sarcastic or not.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I know two Brits at work who have moved to our Canadian office, and have described the situation as night-and-day. One, while on his decision-making trip, took notice of the well-traveled path through a tree-dense field and was surprised to see actual children walking on it. Without adult escorts. He was further struck by the absence of tall, barbed fences blockading the school he was evaluating for his kids.
He told me that if he were walking across the street back home and a child in front of him tripped and fell, his first instinct would probably be to keep walking and turn a blind eye (and indeed, he figured that most men in that situation would do exactly that). I was reminded of this recently when watching Torchwood - Children of the Earth, when an adult male character, seated with a female colleague at a picnic table at a playground, rushed to help a kid who hurt herself. The mother yelled at him to get away, calling him a pervert.
Is this really representative of the situation over there? Or does the above paint an overly extreme picture?
What has changed?
We are richer. We die less. We have less children. We value our children much more highly.
There are (vastly) more cars on the streets. We fear our children will be hurt if they play there.
We keep our children indoors.
So they play with indoor toys. They get more shortsighted. They become inward looking and less social. So do we - the parents.
We see our neighbours less. We know less of them. Perhaps we don't even notice if one of them has been enslaving children (yes, I am thinking of a recent case in the US).
So the solution is obvious - ban cars in residential areas.
Our children will once again be free to run the streets - even ride their bikes there. We will get to know our neightbours better. The children will look after each other. It'll be fine. (It was before - why not now?)
Oh, and we will have to walk from our homes to the car park (or train station). We will be fitter. And thinner.
It'll be a better place.
What has this to do with paedophilia? Not much. But it has a lot to do with children.
"Cats like plain crisps"
The German President is the "pet" of our Chancellor Merkel. And as the law was only required to let the social democrats look like fools (which worked perfectly) it can now be dropped. However, this would need normally another law. And this would mean a lot of discussion. And it would look bad for the present neo-liberal/neo-conservative government. So the best way was to call the President and tell him to stop the law. And now it can be dropped or held for some time and dropped later. As the actual government messed up a lot in the first month, I guess they want to reduce possible additional hazards. (they messed up in Afghanistan too the former minister for defense (what an euphemism) who was then the minister of labour resign just this weekend, because his misjudgments).
Well, the Communists aren't around to scare people and unfortunately both the politicians and the tabloid editors are really interested in scared people. Scared people buy every tabloid writing bold headlines like "THIS IS THE (suspected) SICK BASTARD WHO RAPED LITTLE SUSAN (9)" and after enough "news stories" asking questions like "WHY CAN'T ANYONE MAKE THIS ONSLAUGHT OF BESTIAL PEDO-RAPISTS STOP?" and featuring "world reknowned paedophilia experts" being one step short of reciting the eponymous song from the musical Reefer Madness with "child porn" substituted for "reefer", most people who rely on tabloids for their opinions agree that one, two liberties are not a bad thing to lose if it puts a stop to those pedo devils trying to rape all children on the planet.
Of course it won't change a thing. And the anti-paedophilia censorship they were sold on turns out to be anti-everything. But that won't matter as the BILD, the Sun or whatever's the name of their little opinion delivery rag will proudly proclaim the war on paedophilia over. Until the next high-profile paedophilia case when they get to spread the fear again.
I feel compelled to close my post with a few lines from the song "Lasse red'n" form German punk band "Die Ärzte":
Die meisten Leute haben ihre Bildung aus der BILD.
Und die besteht nun mal, wer wüßte das nicht,
Aus Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht.
Most people have their education from the BILD.
And that consists, who wouldn't know that,
Of fear, hate, tits and the weather report.
Truer words have never been spoken about a tabloid.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I agree with your concerns about children's liberty being restricted in the name of "protecting" them. I also agree with your belief that there are some serious issues which are often ignored by the majority; the hysteria over paedophilia allows significant risks to children to remain undetected or trivialised.
"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"
Actually, the percentage of people who are attracted to children is much higher than that, even if the men who like sexually mature 15 year old girls are not included in the statistics. Despite the widespread occurrence of paedophilia within the general population, most paedophiles refrain from abusing children for several reasons:
I'm not just making assumptions based on the fact that I live responsibly with a paedophilic orientation. I know many other paedophiles who are also responsible people.
I have posted this information previously, but it remains relevant:
From Hall, et al -
From the British Journal of Social Work -
From Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? -
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
The law states that the government manages a secret list which ISPs have to implement (without looking at it... don't ask me how this is supposed to work but hey, it's a law concerning the internet, thus not necessarily feasible) which does not block anything outright but rather displays a big STOP page, telling the user that he is about to look at a "forbidden" page and asking him whether he really wants to go there.
Or, as a German comedian put it, it's not a "no trespassing" sign. It's a stop sign. And people will do what they do when encountering a stop sign. They will stop, look that nobody is coming, and keep driving.
The law came under fire from freedom of speech proponents and anti-child abuse groups alike, the former for the obvious reasons, the latter for the similarly obvious reason that it doesn't change jack. All it does is that you don't see the crime anymore, it still happens and it still is a problem.
It's akin to the various pics that sprung up soon after this idea passed, like this one. Here we see the solution applied to homelessness.
And yes, it's much like a 3 year old closing his eyes and thinking "I can't see it so it ain't there".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That was just the "justification" for it. The law really kills free speech in a most horrific way. In fact, pretty much every German freaked out over this and protested (unlike when similar things happened/happens in the US/Canada). It's nice that at least one politician is trying to get rid of it.