Do they show that? Well if they do, then they do. I haven't checked the details on that story for a long time. Back then, it wasn't at all clear that the records showed that Bush was a good little soldier, but perhaps now it's clear. Without checking, I agree with you on the premise that the documents stand for their own truth.
I hear you, but I don't think so. The incentive to keep your nose clean is to be out of prison. I hardly think anyone considers the sanctity of suffrage when deciding whether to commit a crime. In a country where major decisions (say, who is President) are made on incredibly thin margins (say, a couple hundred votes in one county), it would be irresponsible to allow criminals to overwhelm those margins.
Even if rescinding suffrage were purely symbolic, I would still support it, because these are in fact people who have declared by their actions that they have contempt for the state.
If I were king, I would set up an official systematic purgatory by which motivated felons could show contrition and earn back full citizenship prerogatives. I'm imagining something optional, voluntary, post-incarceration. In that way, the ex-felon who wants to vote could regain that right.
Damn, Germany doesn't have juries? That blows my mind. This incident happened in Louisiana, which although it's in the USA, is the one state with the most crazy legal system, by a long shot. Who the heck knows how the law works down there! I sure don't.
I wish Brand good luck fighting this, because I'd hate to see the good guy (Brand) lose to the bad buy (photographer).
Is permanence required for theft in UK? I don't know for sure but I don't think that's part of the law in the USA.
In this case, no matter, because there was no time at which Brand held the phone away from the owner. He tossed it away immediately, where the owner at all times knew where to go to get his phone back.
"being excluded by society from involvement in democracy is hardly likely to make them value democracy and the rule of law any more than they originally did."
So, um, okay the reason we (often) don't allow felons to vote isn't because we are trying to teach them the value of democracy or the rule of law, it's because we are trying to protect the extremely important process of voting from enemies of the public.
And I'm not sure how extreme you meant it when you said that thing about the "privilege" of democracy, but of course participation in a vote is a privilege at least at some level, to the extent that there are any rules at all about who gets to vote.
I think the thing missing is the crime by the photographer.
Surely if someone held you up at gunpoint, and you grabbed the gun and tossed it through a window, nobody would suggest that you "stole" the gun. That would be absurd, even though (as you put it) "it's not yours, so you can't snatch it" (I guess it's not so simple).
Harassment is a crime, but in that locality apparently this kind of douchebaggery behavior doesn't count. I suggest that that is the problem. If that douchebaggery behavior were codified as a crime, then tossing away the camera would legally become the laudably ethical act that so many of us see it to be.
Actually, you only included two of the three parts of the legal definition of theft. Theft is
* taking something * against the will of the owner * with the intent to deprive
Brand took the phone and tossed it away. He didn't keep the phone, he immediately and in the presence of the owner put the item in a place where the owner could immediately retrieve it. It's hard to call that intent to deprive, it's intent to stop the use.
That's my guess as to why he was written up for "simple damage to property" instead of theft.
To me, mugging requires threat of bodily harm. I was not at this scene when it happened, so I can't say, but it seems to me that Brand was obviously just trying to stop the asshole from being a photodouche, and appropriated the instrument of that douchery -- perhaps misappropriated. To me that doesn't necessarily imply a threat to the asshole, but certainly I acknowledge that it often would include a threat of violence. Yanking a camera away doesn't sound like a mugging to me, and if I were on a jury and they tried to sell me on it, they would have a difficult case to make.
I hear you, but I just think it's naive to say that there is no shard blame for the paparazzi. To dismiss their contribution to that specific situation, and all the altercations they have with the people they harass, seems to be a misguided attempt to partition the world into tidy moral boxes. It's untrue and simplistic to ascribe a person's behavior strictly to that person, as if he is an island. For legal reasons, we sometimes simplify things in order to have workable laws, but the law isn't the end of the way we determine who to blame in a tragedy. I think it is clear that the paparazzi shares the blame and should be ashamed.
I always wondered about that. Who doesn't wear their seatbelt? More to the point who, when in a car driven by an angry drunk guy at a hundred miles and hour, doesn't put on their belt? It seems crazy.
Interesting. So, you see this as unequivocally a crime on Brand's part against an innocent (if jerkish) photographer. What level of harassment do you (you personally) think Brand should legally tolerate before having legal justification for some kind of altercation?
I mean, aggressively invading the personal space of a person with a camera is, in your estimation, a legally innocent act. Okay, so what if the photographer had shoved the camera so close that it had bumped Brand's arm just a tiny bit, then would you construe that as "battery" thus releasing Brand to grab the camera and throw it?
Or perhaps that would even release Brand to physically batter the photographer in self defense? Is it the actual physical touch by the photographer where you draw the line?
I'm just wondering what you think would constitute legally actionable behavior on the part of the photographer.
I don't agree and I think you would have a hard time selling this to a jury as "theft".
Wiki: In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
The GP (and its GP) correctly points out that there was no "taking of property", and remember that "taking" is a legal term of art. I would make it even more clear by saying that there was no "intent to deprive the owner". The intent was not to deprive the owner of the camera, but to stop its current use. He didn't keep the camera. The owner can go retrieve the camera, immediately. So there might be a crime, and I'm open to the possibility that the crime was "theft", but it doesn't seem that it was from what I know.
It sounds to me like the law needs to be tweaked a little. In this situation, I have a hard time seeing how you hold Brand as the bad guy. The owner of the camera sounds like an incredible douche, and the douche got a small fraction of what was coming to him. If the law is such that Brand gets punished, then that demonstrates an imperfection in the law.
In the same way that we distinguish "walking down the street" (legal, of course) from "stalking" (creepy, immoral, wrong, and as of recently illegal), we should be able to write a law which distinguishes "taking a picture" (legal, of course) from "ruining a fellow human being's ability to live life" (creepy, immoral, wrong, and hopefully soon illegal).
If we both agree that it isn't appropriate to grab a camera and smash it (and I do agree), then perhaps we could also agree that Brand should have had the protection of the law: he could have called a police officer who would issue a statement or perhaps even a citation to the douchebag. This wouldn't spell the end of the paparazzi, but it would bring their behavior into line with the rest of society.
"He did not justify his action on the basis that his roommate was gay."
My understanding is that they demonstrated his bias in court to the unanimous satisfaction of a jury. Are you so well informed about the evidence that you want to critique it specifically?
"They should not be charged for the fact that they are in group A and the other person is in group B."
Honest question: do you say this because you think that hate-criminals are "charged for the fact that they are in group A and the other person is in group B", or do you say that as a straw man hoping to score a point in an online forum? If you mean what you say seriously, then I'll deign to explain it to you.
My guess is that OP doesn't actually think Ravi should be raped in prison. Do you really think so? It sort of seems to me that you jumped on the only part of what he said which could easily be construed into an attack on the speaker. Did you only mention the prison-rape part because it was the only part with which you disagreed? Do you agree with all the other parts?
Yes, his room was private. Is that the question? He was in his bedroom with a lover, and nobody else was in the room. That's a private room. There is no reasonable expectation of a recording device or, say, a peephole or anything. Whether or not a roommate sleeps in the room at other times isn't relevant, because that roommate isn't in the room at the time.
"If a random guy walking down the street is beat up for his shoes, or because he was on someone else's "turf," that strikes just as much fear in the community."
No it doesn't. Not even close. Do you seriously believe that? Crimes happen in my city, but I don't worry about them much. But if there were a rash of assaults against a group of people which included me, I would be terrified.
I mean, okay, let me just be super clear by using what to me is an obvious example: do you think a black man in the Jim-Crow south should be equally worried by a lynching two towns over, versus let's say a couple drunks beating eachother up two towns over? Is that what you mean when you say these crimes affect the community equally?
"His parents, will have to live with the knowledge they raised a criminal, miscreant and despicable human being."
Maybe. Or maybe they are proud that he outed the homosexual, because they specifically taught him to hate homosexuals. Sometimes people pick up hatred from outside the home, but usually they get it from their parents. In this case, I don't know.
What you might not realize about the "bias intemidation" law, and in fact all laws, is that despite them having a name, there is vastly more to the law than just the name. No, really, stay with me here. So, there is a law called "bias intimidation", but after that heading, there are hundreds or thousands or words describing exactly what it means. Yes, crazy as that sounds, we don't have to guess whether insulting someone falls under the law -- we can go read it, and find out! So, hey, next time you'll know.
He hasn't been sentenced yet so it's premature to say that ten years is too long. Plus remember that state-level criminals usually get 50% time off for good behavior.
How much punishment do you think is appropriate, based on what you know?
The letter was central to the presentation, but not the truth of the story. The story as I recall it, was that George W Bush was a combat-dodging military fuckup. Did Bush even bother to claim that the actual story was wrong? The way I remember it, all they could come up with, was that one of the letters was faked by a source.
It's not ironic or hypocritical. He never compared himself to Fox News. Slashdot user dynamo52 is not, presumably, a leading media news organization. Slashdot user dynamo52 responded to the implication that TAL "lied" by pointing out the difference between how a liar (Fox News) handles a lie (doubling down on it), and how a professional ethical journalistic organization (TAL) handles a retraction (by devoting an entire hour of show to it).
I still think it's about the nukes. Sure, oil is a huge issue, obviously, but the reason we are taking this action at this time is because of the status of the nuke issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they show that? Well if they do, then they do. I haven't checked the details on that story for a long time. Back then, it wasn't at all clear that the records showed that Bush was a good little soldier, but perhaps now it's clear. Without checking, I agree with you on the premise that the documents stand for their own truth.
I hear you, but I don't think so. The incentive to keep your nose clean is to be out of prison. I hardly think anyone considers the sanctity of suffrage when deciding whether to commit a crime. In a country where major decisions (say, who is President) are made on incredibly thin margins (say, a couple hundred votes in one county), it would be irresponsible to allow criminals to overwhelm those margins.
Even if rescinding suffrage were purely symbolic, I would still support it, because these are in fact people who have declared by their actions that they have contempt for the state.
If I were king, I would set up an official systematic purgatory by which motivated felons could show contrition and earn back full citizenship prerogatives. I'm imagining something optional, voluntary, post-incarceration. In that way, the ex-felon who wants to vote could regain that right.
Damn, Germany doesn't have juries? That blows my mind. This incident happened in Louisiana, which although it's in the USA, is the one state with the most crazy legal system, by a long shot. Who the heck knows how the law works down there! I sure don't.
I wish Brand good luck fighting this, because I'd hate to see the good guy (Brand) lose to the bad buy (photographer).
Is permanence required for theft in UK? I don't know for sure but I don't think that's part of the law in the USA.
In this case, no matter, because there was no time at which Brand held the phone away from the owner. He tossed it away immediately, where the owner at all times knew where to go to get his phone back.
"being excluded by society from involvement in democracy is hardly likely to make them value democracy and the rule of law any more than they originally did."
So, um, okay the reason we (often) don't allow felons to vote isn't because we are trying to teach them the value of democracy or the rule of law, it's because we are trying to protect the extremely important process of voting from enemies of the public.
And I'm not sure how extreme you meant it when you said that thing about the "privilege" of democracy, but of course participation in a vote is a privilege at least at some level, to the extent that there are any rules at all about who gets to vote.
I think the thing missing is the crime by the photographer.
Surely if someone held you up at gunpoint, and you grabbed the gun and tossed it through a window, nobody would suggest that you "stole" the gun. That would be absurd, even though (as you put it) "it's not yours, so you can't snatch it" (I guess it's not so simple).
Harassment is a crime, but in that locality apparently this kind of douchebaggery behavior doesn't count. I suggest that that is the problem. If that douchebaggery behavior were codified as a crime, then tossing away the camera would legally become the laudably ethical act that so many of us see it to be.
Actually, you only included two of the three parts of the legal definition of theft. Theft is
* taking something
* against the will of the owner
* with the intent to deprive
Brand took the phone and tossed it away. He didn't keep the phone, he immediately and in the presence of the owner put the item in a place where the owner could immediately retrieve it. It's hard to call that intent to deprive, it's intent to stop the use.
That's my guess as to why he was written up for "simple damage to property" instead of theft.
To me, mugging requires threat of bodily harm. I was not at this scene when it happened, so I can't say, but it seems to me that Brand was obviously just trying to stop the asshole from being a photodouche, and appropriated the instrument of that douchery -- perhaps misappropriated. To me that doesn't necessarily imply a threat to the asshole, but certainly I acknowledge that it often would include a threat of violence. Yanking a camera away doesn't sound like a mugging to me, and if I were on a jury and they tried to sell me on it, they would have a difficult case to make.
I hear you, but I just think it's naive to say that there is no shard blame for the paparazzi. To dismiss their contribution to that specific situation, and all the altercations they have with the people they harass, seems to be a misguided attempt to partition the world into tidy moral boxes. It's untrue and simplistic to ascribe a person's behavior strictly to that person, as if he is an island. For legal reasons, we sometimes simplify things in order to have workable laws, but the law isn't the end of the way we determine who to blame in a tragedy. I think it is clear that the paparazzi shares the blame and should be ashamed.
I always wondered about that. Who doesn't wear their seatbelt? More to the point who, when in a car driven by an angry drunk guy at a hundred miles and hour, doesn't put on their belt? It seems crazy.
Interesting. So, you see this as unequivocally a crime on Brand's part against an innocent (if jerkish) photographer. What level of harassment do you (you personally) think Brand should legally tolerate before having legal justification for some kind of altercation?
I mean, aggressively invading the personal space of a person with a camera is, in your estimation, a legally innocent act. Okay, so what if the photographer had shoved the camera so close that it had bumped Brand's arm just a tiny bit, then would you construe that as "battery" thus releasing Brand to grab the camera and throw it?
Or perhaps that would even release Brand to physically batter the photographer in self defense? Is it the actual physical touch by the photographer where you draw the line?
I'm just wondering what you think would constitute legally actionable behavior on the part of the photographer.
I don't agree and I think you would have a hard time selling this to a jury as "theft".
Wiki: In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
The GP (and its GP) correctly points out that there was no "taking of property", and remember that "taking" is a legal term of art. I would make it even more clear by saying that there was no "intent to deprive the owner". The intent was not to deprive the owner of the camera, but to stop its current use. He didn't keep the camera. The owner can go retrieve the camera, immediately. So there might be a crime, and I'm open to the possibility that the crime was "theft", but it doesn't seem that it was from what I know.
It sounds to me like the law needs to be tweaked a little. In this situation, I have a hard time seeing how you hold Brand as the bad guy. The owner of the camera sounds like an incredible douche, and the douche got a small fraction of what was coming to him. If the law is such that Brand gets punished, then that demonstrates an imperfection in the law.
In the same way that we distinguish "walking down the street" (legal, of course) from "stalking" (creepy, immoral, wrong, and as of recently illegal), we should be able to write a law which distinguishes "taking a picture" (legal, of course) from "ruining a fellow human being's ability to live life" (creepy, immoral, wrong, and hopefully soon illegal).
If we both agree that it isn't appropriate to grab a camera and smash it (and I do agree), then perhaps we could also agree that Brand should have had the protection of the law: he could have called a police officer who would issue a statement or perhaps even a citation to the douchebag. This wouldn't spell the end of the paparazzi, but it would bring their behavior into line with the rest of society.
"He did not justify his action on the basis that his roommate was gay."
My understanding is that they demonstrated his bias in court to the unanimous satisfaction of a jury. Are you so well informed about the evidence that you want to critique it specifically?
"They should not be charged for the fact that they are in group A and the other person is in group B."
Honest question: do you say this because you think that hate-criminals are "charged for the fact that they are in group A and the other person is in group B", or do you say that as a straw man hoping to score a point in an online forum? If you mean what you say seriously, then I'll deign to explain it to you.
Yes I think that gay criminal would be prosecuted. You really don't think so? I think it would be pretty obvious.
My guess is that OP doesn't actually think Ravi should be raped in prison. Do you really think so? It sort of seems to me that you jumped on the only part of what he said which could easily be construed into an attack on the speaker. Did you only mention the prison-rape part because it was the only part with which you disagreed? Do you agree with all the other parts?
Yes, his room was private. Is that the question? He was in his bedroom with a lover, and nobody else was in the room. That's a private room. There is no reasonable expectation of a recording device or, say, a peephole or anything. Whether or not a roommate sleeps in the room at other times isn't relevant, because that roommate isn't in the room at the time.
"If a random guy walking down the street is beat up for his shoes, or because he was on someone else's "turf," that strikes just as much fear in the community."
No it doesn't. Not even close. Do you seriously believe that? Crimes happen in my city, but I don't worry about them much. But if there were a rash of assaults against a group of people which included me, I would be terrified.
I mean, okay, let me just be super clear by using what to me is an obvious example: do you think a black man in the Jim-Crow south should be equally worried by a lynching two towns over, versus let's say a couple drunks beating eachother up two towns over? Is that what you mean when you say these crimes affect the community equally?
"His parents, will have to live with the knowledge they raised a criminal, miscreant and despicable human being."
Maybe. Or maybe they are proud that he outed the homosexual, because they specifically taught him to hate homosexuals. Sometimes people pick up hatred from outside the home, but usually they get it from their parents. In this case, I don't know.
What you might not realize about the "bias intemidation" law, and in fact all laws, is that despite them having a name, there is vastly more to the law than just the name. No, really, stay with me here. So, there is a law called "bias intimidation", but after that heading, there are hundreds or thousands or words describing exactly what it means. Yes, crazy as that sounds, we don't have to guess whether insulting someone falls under the law -- we can go read it, and find out! So, hey, next time you'll know.
He hasn't been sentenced yet so it's premature to say that ten years is too long. Plus remember that state-level criminals usually get 50% time off for good behavior.
How much punishment do you think is appropriate, based on what you know?
The letter was central to the presentation, but not the truth of the story. The story as I recall it, was that George W Bush was a combat-dodging military fuckup. Did Bush even bother to claim that the actual story was wrong? The way I remember it, all they could come up with, was that one of the letters was faked by a source.
It's not ironic or hypocritical. He never compared himself to Fox News. Slashdot user dynamo52 is not, presumably, a leading media news organization. Slashdot user dynamo52 responded to the implication that TAL "lied" by pointing out the difference between how a liar (Fox News) handles a lie (doubling down on it), and how a professional ethical journalistic organization (TAL) handles a retraction (by devoting an entire hour of show to it).
I still think it's about the nukes. Sure, oil is a huge issue, obviously, but the reason we are taking this action at this time is because of the status of the nuke issue.