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Ex-Marine Detained For Facebook Posts Deemed "Terrorist in Nature"
colinneagle writes with news of a marine turned conspiracy theorist who was detained for psychological evaluation after posting rants on Facebook. He has since been ordered to remain in a mental facility for at least 30 days. From the article: "There are conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don't really follow that news, but can people be arrested after saying so online, exercising their First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech? On August 16, the FBI, Secret Service and the Chesterfield Police arrested a decorated former U.S. Marine for 'airing his critical views of the U.S. government on Facebook.' On Facebook, Raub talked about the Illuminati, a shadow organization in which 'some of the leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers' and the 'great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government.' He said people may think he was going crazy, but a 'civil war,' the 'Revolution' is coming. 'I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting.' On July 24, he said he was at a 'great crossroads. As if a storm of destiny is about to pick me up and take me to fight a great battle.' On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them. On August 13, he wrote, 'Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads.' On August 14, Raub wrote, 'The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it.'"
I suspect being a former marine and threatening to decapitate military officials might have had something to do with this (communicating specific threats?). But then again, his Facebook page was reportedly private, and according to the AP newswire: "The big concern, Whitehead said, is whether government officials are monitoring citizens' private Facebook pages and detaining people with whom they disagree."
He should know that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Just quoting lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/swollenmembers/bringmedown.html
They didn't just get him for exercising free speech, they got him for revealing government secrets.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You're obviously trolling, but I'll bite
If you don't like the 1st amendment, then call a convention and repeal the goddamn thing. But do it legally. But while it remains on the books, you are obligated to enforce it exactly as written without exception. And nowhere in the constitution are there any exceptions.
Now, do the police have a right to investigate? Absolutely. Do they have any right to detain the man? Absolutely not. Unless they find something during a legal investigation. If that sounds like nuttery to you, then I would say your the nut.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I know everyone thinks that this is a punitive move, but at least on the face of it, the psych detention is for diagnostic purposes. We put people in this situation routinely when they are 1) an danger to themselves or others (likely the rationale here) or 2) gravely disabled (think sitting in the middle of the freeway).
From the limited info presented, it may well be the most reasonable thing to do. Perhaps he's just blowing off steam. Perhaps he is having a bad day.
Or perhaps he has a couple of fully auto M-16s, a couple thousand rounds of ammo, a couple of grenades and maybe some other souvenirs of the Middle East. It's a difficult balance between letting people do what they feel is right and allowing mass murder, even if it's justified to some people's minds.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And if they had done nothing and we had a few dead generals, I predict people would have shouted "how come no one saw the signs and intervened?"
Reading comprehension my good man, try it some time. The 1969 case overturned the original case, but not all implications of it. Speech is still illegal if it passes the "Brandenburg test" which is if the speaker intends to cause imminent lawlessness. That is precisely the case when yelling fire in a theater, and the Wikipedia article even says this about the concurring opinion (written by justice Douglas): "Finally, Douglas dealt with the classic example of a man "falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." In order to explain why someone could be legitimately prosecuted for this, Douglas called it an example in which "speech is brigaded with action." In the view of Douglas and Black, this was probably the only sort of case in which a person could be prosecuted for speech."
This link was presented on a message board I frequent: Update: Former Marine Arrested by FBI for Facebook Posts!!
The "threatening to decapitate military officials" in the summary seems, as far as I can tell, to be a conflation of two separate Facebook posts he made: 1) "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads" (which are apparently lyrics from a song) and 2) "This is part where I tell the Federal Government to go fuck itself. This is the part where I tell Generals, training our young med to fight Americans, I am coming for you. The Veterans will be with me."
The latter is probably what caught the government's attention.
As to "his Facebook page was reportedly private", also from the summary, a number of his posts were shared by people on his Friends list. If it's true that his page was private, it's very likely that the word got out through this sharing.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
" Then see how you can offer medical treatment "
That's what they were doing. He wasn't arrested, he was detained for psychiatric treatment. In the U.K. there's a handy verbified noun for this - 'sectioned'. I dunno if there's something equivalent in U.S. English. I think most jurisdictions allow for the forcible confinement of people who clearly have dangerous mental problems but refuse to be treated voluntarily - there's a demonstrated need for this, after all.
For example, I've never made anything remotely close to a threat or in any way indicated foul plots or intentions. I have merely ridiculed that which seems so flagrantly absurd that without a voice of contrast, blindness would prevail. Yet their attentions have surely been captured:
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors1.png [image]
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors2.png [image] | This visitor showed up hours before my youtube account was terminated with no prior warnings or violations - Just terminated, period. Then they nixed my Google (gmail, webmaster, etc.) account shortly after.
That's a slim example of the "attention" I've had at my own website. Some are bots, and some are not, but between fusion-centers and other profilers, a lot more has their attention than one would (or should) reasonably expect. The new security bureaucracy is Big Business and there just aren't enough angry brown people with bombs to justify the affronts to our liberties otherwise. Where the enemy is not, the enemy will be created. Just look at all the post 9-11 terror plots "foiled" by the FBI; they've been primarily cultivated from sub-stupid imbeciles hand-picked from the pinnacles of ineptitude.
We need security. People will continue going berserk. There are dangers. But it is NOT security we're getting. They ( Authoritaria) behave as if their sole passion is to protect society and make people cozy and safe, yet they think not twice before scooping human fodder for strange wars, , employing sock puppets, defiling education, tainting the media, feeding horrendous penal institutions, and severely tampering with things like foreign nations and our own economy.
It's just fine to have faith in government. But hold their feet to the fire and scrutinize the hell out of them, lest faith become dogma. It would appear -- in recent handling of transparency -- that government currently has a strong preference for the latter.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Good job. You are right. We can't legally prosecute you for being a douchbag, but even if we can't prosecute you for the speech itself, If you yell fire in a crowded theater with the intent of harming others, you can still be tried for reckless endangerment and, should the worst happen, voluntary manslaughter or murder.
You've managed to completely overlook what a fire in a crowded theater actually meant at the time that the phrase was coined. Let's just say that we have these things called "fire exits" in theaters now because theater fires used to be so gruesome. Holmes' 1919 opinion was written a mere 16 year after 600 people died in the Iroquis theater fire, and six years after 73 people died in Calumet, Michigan due to exactly the conduct you advocate. At the time, yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater was a guaranteed way play on popular fears and to ensure that large numbers of people died. Congrats on holding the moral low ground.
In addition, you've utter neglected the fact that people packed in tightly do not behave in the same way as people packed loosely, irrespective of their intentions. If you have a hundred tightly packed people in a narrow hallway so much as casually lean forward all at one time, the people in the front are going to be under immense force. (If you think that the inevitable trampling someone to death is any one person's fault, you are an idiot and a bastard.) That this principle is still true today is evident in the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
You have as much as admitted that people are predictable, and if you think that hurting people to emphasize that fact is acceptable, you deserve no better.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
Not really, at least not from my own experience; though it would be funny. What I can assure you of, is that they can and have done the following:
Me: Meditating in a holding cell (yes, I was in one, and later acquitted)
Officer: "What the fuck are doing you STUPID FUCKING son of a bitch!" [not a question]
Me: Cease posture, face wall and ignore.
Officer: I'll crack your fucking skull open you piece of shit. Fucking kung fu asshole. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU"RE DOING in MY CELL?"
ME: Preparing for pain, but not terribly concerned. Remaining silent and compliant.
You might be interested to learn that several years later -- it did take several years of not only threats, but physical assaults -- he was fired. But it took media attention and persistent effort from many people. Being an outspoken advocate of fairness, with good but often mistaken or resented intentions, I have encountered worse and suffered minor injuries from officers. An acquaintance who was a student at Ringling Art School was beaten by the same officer, for nothing more than uttering the word "corruption". It really is no joke that the distribution of law has grave discrepancies. It generally takes experience or a victimized loved-one to understand it. But there's always research, which offers a sore abundance of examples.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
These rights are both limited when they harm others. You cannot cause physical harm to others with your speech (yelling fire in a movie theater, making specific threats of physical violence) just like you cannot cause harm to others with a gun.
Owning a gun and using a gun to shoot someone are two very different things, just as speech and speech which incites violence are two different things.
I see no contradiction or conflict here.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain