Good God, Texas Has Done It

[John Picard]

Bush is the most brilliant and cost conscience politician in history, not spending a dime more than necessary to defeat Al Gore, but probably way to much to defeat Kerry. Bush freed more people from tyranny than all of Europe combined since WW-II, excepting Europes freeing of European colonies. Sadly, those day are behind us, and now tyrannts are lining up for free US benefits. Fortunately, they'll eat Europe long before the US, because almost all of our immigrants are Catholic.

Hm. Sounds like the plot of a sci-fi novel.

With each passing day, I cannot WAIT for the moment I am able to expatriate.

 

[scotpens]

There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech anywhere. There has never been any such thing as absolute freedom of speech, anywhere, at any time. And that's a good thing.

Straw man. The only people who advocate ABSOLUTE freedom of speech are anarchists.

You cannot make false statements about other people that would damage their reputation.

AFAIK, in the United States, libel and slander are torts, not crimes. You can sue someone for making false statements that you believe are damaging to you in some way, but the government can't ban or censor material just because it may potentially be libelous.

(Anyone with better knowledge of the law, please tell me if I'm wrong.)

Another thing you can't do is persuade, encourage, instigate, pressure, or threaten someone to get them to commit a crime. Traditionally, that's called 'incitement.'

The problem with that definition of “incitement” is that it's overly broad. There's a world of difference between “persuade” or “encourage” on the one hand, and “pressure” or “threaten” on the other. The classic metaphor of holding a gun to someone's head immediately comes to mind. At what point do we hold Person A responsible for the acts of Person B?

. . . Thoughtcrime only exists when you try to regulate people's private thoughts or feelings. That's the problem with Section 319(2), which criminalizes attempts to persuade or encourage people to do something that is not, itself, against the law: namely, to hate other people.

We're in agreement there. For example, when Brigitte Bardot made inflammatory public statements about Muslim immigrants and other groups, she was criminally charged with “inciting racial hatred” or some such thing, and forced to pay a fine. THAT is most definitely wrong. Hatred is a thought, not an action. Simply trying to persuade people to think or feel a certain way shouldn't be against the law.

When it comes to inciting criminal ACTS, I think we have to be very cautious whenever we hold one person accountable for the actions, or potential actions, of another. In American jurisprudence, this is where the precedent of determining whether speech poses a “clear and present danger,” later modified to provoking an “imminent lawless action,” comes into play.

All in all, if the law is going to err, I think it's better that it err on the side of freedom rather than restriction.

 

[Goliath]

Straw man.

Excuse me?

You said:

People should be free to advocate whatever the hell they want to, be it racial segregation, theocracy, cannibalism, ethnic cleansing or colon cleansing. The very essence of free speech is the freedom to promote ideas, no matter how offensive or repugnant they may be to the vast majority.

"Whatever the hell they want to" and "no matter how offensive or repugnant they may be" both sound pretty absolute to me.

If that's not what you meant, then you should have put it differently. Don't talk in absolutes, and then accuse me of setting up a straw man when I point out that such absolute freedom has never existed anywhere.

AFAIK, in the United States, libel and slander are torts, not crimes. You can sue someone for making false statements that you believe are damaging to you in some way, but the government can't ban or censor material just because it may potentially be libelous.

First: this touches on only one of the examples I mentioned, and thereby fails to address my point: namely, that nobody has ever been free to just say whatever the hell they want.

Second: according to a report published by the OSCE, libel remains a criminal offence in seventeen US states and two territories. More to the point, it's a criminal offence here in Canada, and in many other common-law jurisdictions.

The problem with that definition of “incitement” is that it's overly broad. There's a world of difference between “persuade” or “encourage” on the one hand, and “pressure” or “threaten” on the other. The classic metaphor of holding a gun to someone's head immediately comes to mind. At what point do we hold Person A responsible for the acts of Person B?

Our lawmakers have already answered this question pretty fully.

If I hold a gun to your head, and order you to kill RJDiogenes, that's murder.

If I send you a note that says "Kill RJDiogenes, or I'll kill you," then that's uttering threats--which is also punishable here in Canada.

Suppose you got angry about being warned by RJDiogenes, tracked him down, and were having a violent argument with him. Suppose I was standing nearby, and I said "Go on--hit him! Kick the shit out of him!" That's incitement.

This is true, even in the United States: in 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that it is constitutional to limit free speech, when such speech is directed to inciting and likely to incite imminent lawless action.

Advocating genocide may not be likely to incite imminent lawless action. But it is certainly directed to inciting lawlessness. Nothing good can ever come from advocating genocide, and I cannot think of any legitimate reason for ever doing so. All such advocacy must necessarily involve both fraud and libel, as well as incitement to murder, no matter how distant.

I am willing to defend someone's right to advocate just about anything else, no matter how nasty. If some pedophile wants to deliver an impassioned speech in praise of man-boy love, then that's his business. I think that's disgusting--but I suppose I could be wrong. There might be cases where man-boy love might be beautiful and wonderful.

But, genocide? Come on. I can't believe we're even arguing about this.

 

[gturner]

But advocating genocide isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, I'm sure almost everyone would agree that the Aztec culture of human sacrifice needed to be stamped out. Destroying that culture is completely within the definition of "genocide."

 

[Goliath]

There's a difference between advocating the overthrow of the Aztec Empire and advocating the extermination of the Aztec people.

In my opinion, "cultural genocide" is a contradiction in terms. Stamping out cultures is one thing: frankly, I'm not even convinced that "cultures" are anything more than just imagined communities, like "races" or "nations".

But people are real. And exterminating peoples is quite another thing.

 

[gturner]

But stamping out cultures is part of the definition of genocide. Under international law even causing a culture "serious mental harm" is genocide.

 

[Goliath]

^You're mistaken. The Genocide Convention defines genocide as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Causing serious mental harm to members of the group, with intent to destroy that group, in whole or in part. That's not the same thing at all.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Of course, we don't want groups of kids going out to beat up people, regaurdless of whos their target. But by ignoring the fact they got together and set out solely to "beat up some gays" and just telling them their bad boys and throwing them in jail you ignore a potential way of prehaps further(ontop of it not being legel to beat up people) preventing this type of crime from happening again. By making people aware not only is beating up people wrong but creating hate groups to beat up "gays" as victums is going to get you extra time. A big reason why we have GBLT rights here is because they can be BIG targets because of SOME religious nuts who see it as wrong. Yes, its wrong to beat up old people but I don't see a local, well known religious group who would create these kind of hate groups for old people.

Then why not simply have the penalty for beating anyone up, regardless of subgroup, be equally harsh? That's the way to prevent beatings from happening again. Make the penalty for beating up ANYONE be so strict as to prevent it.

Punishing crimes against one group more than others creates the impression that it's MORE okay to beat up some groups. To use your example: If crimes against gays are prosecuted more harshly than crimes against old people, then by definition it implies that it's not as bad to beat up old people as it is gays (the opposite of "worse" is "better"). How is that anything but tragic?

I wanted to mention that in the case of a gang beating people up, you've got a whole host of other charges that could be brought into the mix, too. Conspiracy (if they got together to premeditate this at all and you can prove it, you've absolutely got them on conspiracy) and incitement of a riot (depending on how much a ruckus they caused, and if they were yelling things to encourage others to get in on the action that may well be the equivalent of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater) are the first two that come to mind. If someone were creative, I bet they could come up with a whole lot more to compound the jail sentence for losers who pull crap like this, even if hate crime laws weren't on the books.

 

[gturner]

I would say changing their entire culture and religion was "serious mental harm" aimed at destroying, in whole or in part, the Aztecs. If you look around the entire world, you won't find any practicing Aztecs because they were destroyed. Note that the Aztecs can be defined as a nation, an ethnicity, or a religion. Forcing them to change their religion is destroying them as a religious group - in whole.

Bringing about a group's physical destruction is only listed in part C as one of the five acts that may constitute genocide, and is not required for an act to be classified as genocidal.

Part B: "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group", also qualifies as genocide as long as it is aimed at destroying the group in whole or in part. Note that the preamble does not say "physical destruction" as a required intent of the acts, even though physical destruction is explicitely mentioned in Part C. In fact, causing bodily and mental harm to members of a group could not, in and of itself, cause any group's extermination (the physical death of all members of the group).

Part E, transfering children to another group, would specifically preclude causing the physical death of all members of a group, since the children would obviously survive, yet that is also genocide.

Therefore the crime of genocide does not require the intent of a group's physical destruction (bodily death of all members), though acts that lead to such extermination are classified as genocide under parts C and D. Parts B and E can only mean that destruction of a culture, without necessarily killing anyone, are also genocide if undertaken with intent to destroy that culture (accidentally wiping out a culture by exposing it to Gilligan's Island re-runs is not genocide).

Therefore, your previous comment that you didn't even believe in cultural genocide and your clear advocacy of overthrowing the Aztec empire forces me to conclude that you did in fact advocate genocide on a public message board, punishable by five years in a Canadian prison.

 

[RJDiogenes]

If I hold a gun to your head, and order you to kill RJDiogenes, that's murder.

If I send you a note that says "Kill RJDiogenes, or I'll kill you," then that's uttering threats--which is also punishable here in Canada.

Suppose you got angry about being warned by RJDiogenes, tracked him down, and were having a violent argument with him. Suppose I was standing nearby, and I said "Go on--hit him! Kick the shit out of him!" That's incitement.

What about writing a book or an editorial or a blog that says RJDiogenes should be killed? What about circulating a petition to pass a law allowing the killing of RJDiogenes? What about writing a work of fiction centering on the killing of RJDiogenes?

Not that I'm against it. I've heard he's quite the toad-spotted vassal.

 

[scotpens]

“Whatever the hell they want to” and ”no matter how offensive or repugnant they may be” both sound pretty absolute to me.

Re-read my post. I said people should be free to ADVOCATE whatever the hell they want to. As in saying, “This is a good idea” or “People ought to do such-and-such” or “we'd be better off if so-and-so happened.” That's not the same as absolute freedom of speech. Not by a long shot.

AFAIK, in the United States, libel and slander are torts, not crimes. You can sue someone for making false statements that you believe are damaging to you in some way, but the government can't ban or censor material just because it may potentially be libelous.

. . . according to a report published by the OSCE, libel remains a criminal offence in seventeen US states and two territories. More to the point, it's a criminal offence here in Canada, and in many other common-law jurisdictions.

In that case, I stand corrected.

Nothing good can ever come from advocating genocide, and I cannot think of any legitimate reason for ever doing so. All such advocacy must necessarily involve both fraud and libel, as well as incitement to murder, no matter how distant.

If I say, “All (insert group here) ought to be rounded up and shot,” in what way am I committing fraud? I'm not taking anyone's money under false pretenses, or misrepresenting anything.

I am willing to defend someone's right to advocate just about anything else, no matter how nasty. If some pedophile wants to deliver an impassioned speech in praise of man-boy love, then that's his business. I think that's disgusting--but I suppose I could be wrong. . .

But, genocide? Come on. I can't believe we're even arguing about this.

Sorry, but for the life of me, I fail to see how advocating genocide is any worse, or different, than advocating pederasty. The chances of anyone actually being induced to commit either act from reading or hearing words in praise of it are equally infinitesimal.

 

[Goliath]

What about writing a book or an editorial or a blog that says RJDiogenes should be killed? What about circulating a petition to pass a law allowing the killing of RJDiogenes? What about writing a work of fiction centering on the killing of RJDiogenes?

That depends. As the saying goes: hard cases make bad law.

If RJD complained, I'm sure it would earn the people in question a visit from the police, at least. What happened after that would probably depend on their judgment of the seriousness of the situation

But, as you point out, he's the kind of person who just attracts this kind of negative energy. So they might not even bother. Let him take his chances, they'd say.

From what I've read, these kinds of calculations figure into every prosecution under Sections 318 and 319. As I mentioned in my first post: in the last federal election, an independent candidate named David Popescu openly advocated killing all gay people--in front of a group of high-school students, no less.

A young man asked me what I think of homosexual marriages and I said I think homosexuals should be executed. My whole reason for running is the Bible and the Bible couldn’t be more clear on that point.

This was a pretty clear violation of Section 318, and he was subsequently investigated by the police for that reason. But in the end, they seem to have decided that he was a lone crackpot whose words carried no weight with anyone: IIRC, he got something like 80 votes out of more then 43,000. As a result, the police decided not to lay charges.

Even had they decided to lay charges, a prosecution would have required the consent of the provincial attorney general, who quite likely would have asked if prosecuting some lone nut was an effective use of his ministry's time and resources.

And even had they both decided to go ahead with a prosecution, Mr. Popescu would have had his day in court, with the best legal representation he could afford, and a chance to appeal any adverse judgment. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever appealed a conviction under Section 318 on the grounds that it violates the Charter right to free speech. I suspect that the Supreme Court would reject such an argument, but you never know.

As a consequence, all this horrified hand-fluttering over "thoughtcrime" strikes me as more than a little misplaced--along with all the heart-bleeding for those poor persecuted wanna-be genocidaires.

Fuck them. Being forbidden to advocate genocide imposes no burden on anyone who isn't a psychopath. And anybody who sees a fucking psychopath as a martyr to free speech needs to have their moral compass examined.

 

[Goliath]

Blah blah blah

Re-read my post. I said people should be free to ADVOCATE whatever the hell they want to. As in saying, “This is a good idea” or “People ought to do such-and-such” or “we'd be better off if so-and-so happened.” That's not the same as absolute freedom of speech. Not by a long shot.

Nothing good can ever come from advocating genocide, and I cannot think of any legitimate reason for ever doing so. All such advocacy must necessarily involve both fraud and libel, as well as incitement to murder, no matter how distant.

If I say, “All (insert group here) ought to be rounded up and shot,” in what way am I committing fraud? I'm not taking anyone's money under false pretenses, or misrepresenting anything.

Sorry, but for the life of me, I fail to see how advocating genocide is any worse, or different, than advocating pederasty. The chances of anyone actually being induced to commit either act from reading or hearing words in praise of it are equally infinitesimal.

Pedantry. All of it.

That is my last word on this subject.

 

[gturner]

Blah blah blah

So you blithely advocate genocide when it suits you, yet refuse to confront the fact that you yourself are a genocidaire who should be rotting in a Canadian prison.

Come on now. How hard is it to not advocate genocide while arguing for the prosecution of people advocating genocide? Since you so obviously failed at it, don't you think maybe the law needs changing?

 

[gturner]

And when is Canada going to prosecute the producers of Stargate SG-1 for advocating for the genocide of the Go'uld and Ori? What about Captain Janeway's genocide of the Borg? Sure, a Candian defense lawyer might argue that the only way to stop the Borg genocide of the entire galaxy was to wipe out the Borg, but the law makes no exceptions for advocating genocide, even if it's the only way of stopping vastly more genocide. But to not openly advocate for the genocide of the Borg is to be complicit in the genocides perpetrated by the Borg.

There you have it. Canadian law demands complicity in the Borg's genocide of the entire galaxy. That's what Canadian speech codes and hate crime laws lead to: Genocide on an unimaginable scale.

 

[Trilliam]

People should be free to advocate whatever the hell they want to, be it racial segregation, theocracy, cannibalism, ethnic cleansing or colon cleansing.

That's vilification, isn't it?

 

[RandyS]

Bush is the most brilliant and cost conscience politician in history, not spending a dime more than necessary to defeat Al Gore, but probably way to much to defeat Kerry. Bush freed more people from tyranny than all of Europe combined since WW-II, excepting Europes freeing of European colonies. Sadly, those day are behind us, and now tyrannts are lining up for free US benefits. Fortunately, they'll eat Europe long before the US, because almost all of our immigrants are Catholic.

Hm. Sounds like the plot of a sci-fi novel.

With each passing day, I cannot WAIT for the moment I am able to expatriate.

Where would you go?

 

[John Picard]

Hm. Sounds like the plot of a sci-fi novel.

With each passing day, I cannot WAIT for the moment I am able to expatriate.

Where would you go?

I have a few places in mind. A few South American countries are on the list.

 

[scotpens]

I have a few places in mind. A few South American countries are on the list.

Argentina?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Um...what is that?