1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: Today at 02:55:05 PM »

"He wasn't talking about black people! He was obviously just talking about congresspeople in general! You're the one who's racist for assuming he was talking about black people! And even if he was talking about black people, there's nothing racist about saying that some black people are smart and some are dumb! That's no different to white people! You're the one who's racist!"

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: Today at 05:24:39 AM »

How many politicians have pictures of themselves laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery? Can we just assume that it is many politicians, or do we need a collage of demonstrative photos? It could be argued that any sharing of a picture or video of a politician at Arlington is used for political reasons, as it would imply a moral or patriotic message about that politician.

Those pictures are taken by official Arlington photographers for official Arlington events. Once the politicians have access to the pictures, they can of course do whatever they want with them, but what they can't do is bring their own photographers onto Arlington to take pictures for their own political gain.

you are a colonial era puritan who says it is inappropriate to smile or display positive gestures at cemeteries

No, I didn't say that. I'm specifically talking about Trump's performative broad grin and thumbs-up. The vast majority of people can intuit a clear difference between an occasional smile and a display of crude, gleeful exuberance, especially when it's coming from a politician who doesn't know any of the deceased.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: Today at 01:27:14 AM »

Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs-up in that picture - beyond being incredibly tacky and inappropriate - is all the proof we need that this was meant as a political stunt and wasn't simply a neutral, respectful visit to the cemetery. Why would he be posing like that if it wasn't meant to be a political photo op? In fact, why would Trump's own photographer (as opposed to the official photographers who work at Arlington) be there and photographing him at all if it wasn't a political photo op? By the way, it's only a matter of time before Trump changes his story to "Yes, this was a political photo op, and it's good that it was." He first denies, then admits what happened every time he gets into trouble, and every time he does, he makes the people who have been denying the story on his behalf look ridiculous.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 30, 2024, 01:22:36 PM »

I especially love how part of the plan was to pretend this was an official memorial and then criticize Kamala for not attending. And judging by the number of Trump fans on Twitter I've seen responding to this story by asking where she was or why she wasn't there, it may actually be working, at least among their target audience.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 30, 2024, 01:45:46 AM »

Right - and that's illegal in the USA

...

Right. But that's identical to the USA. I don't understand how you're only now discovering that inciting violence is not acceptable in the West.

Like I told you, incitement has to be in regard to imminent illegal action to be against the law in America. As in, it needs to be in the heat of the moment, right then and there. Posting on social media, "People should commit this crime," and someone else reading the post and thinking to themselves, "Hmm, this person makes a good case. I think I will go commit that crime!" would not be illegal in America, while it evidently is in Britain.

Some pertinent quotes from your first example:

Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder that swept England last week.

In Northampton, Tyler Kay, 26, was given three years and two months in prison for posts on X that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.

For what it's worth, I'd strongly suggest not posting "Dagnabbit, those there immigrant hotels, we should burn these sonovaguns down! Come join me on <date> at <time>! Load my guns and horn my swaggle, we're goin' a' killin' tonight!" It's not gonna go well for you.

It would be entirely legal for me to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burned down in America. If I said that I was going to do it, it would become a threat, which is not protected speech, and if I called for people to join me at a certain date and time, it would become planning an attack, which is also not protected speech. But none of these guys threatened to do these things themselves, much less planned an attack out, so that's not really relevant. All their charges came down to simply encouraging other people to commit crimes, which is protected speech in America outside of the imminent factor.

Also, out of curiosity - do you know who Wayne O’Rourke is, or did you just bring him up because you thought the short article supported your position?

I don't know who he is outside of what the article says, and I don't think it really matters. The point is that nobody in America could ever be prosecuted for "stirring up racial hatred" or "anti-Muslim rhetoric."

Once again, I'm assuming you have no idea who "Count Dankula" is, and outside of "haha wow silly Britain arrested a guy for a Nazi dog!!!!!" you have no awareness of his long history with law enforcement?

You're right again, but I also don't see why that matters. Free speech has to be for everyone, regardless of their criminal record or how shitty they are as people, to truly mean anything.

The lengths you've been going to defend actual neo-Nazis here are impressive. I know this is out of extreme incompetence and not malice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to take you seriously the next time you claim to not be racist, or to support anti-racist movements.

Oh, come on, do you really think this huhuhuh you must agree with him then! bullshit is going to work on me? Really? That's a Babby's First Free Speech Debate-tier fallacy if I've ever heard one, and it's beneath you.

I'm not sure how you can see a man who posted photos of himself holding a gun and threatened to kill people based on their religion and decide that it was "ranting about Muslims". It really surprises me that you see no difference between making credible threats on people's lives and "ranting". Then again, I understand you've got a mythology to defend here.

Was he actually making threats, though? Because he wasn't charged with making threats, and neither the prosecutor nor the judge described what he said as being a threat. The whole case seemed to revolve entirely around him saying "offensive" things and stirring up hatred. I think it would be a higher priority to take down an armed man who's threatening to go out and kill minorities (and prosecute the case as such) than it would be simply to take down a guy saying racist stuff online, even in Britain, and the fact that this didn't happen suggests that the authorities didn't view this as a threat at all. The gun can easily be explained as just a prop to make himself look tougher and more badass.

Have you read that article? Did you follow up on what happened after it was published? It's talking about law enforcement overstepping its boundaries, and it has since led to significant adjustments. Like, yea, things went badly eight years ago when the government was trying to respond to a rise in violence. Lessons were learned, changes were implemented, and now things are going less badly. This is a good thing - it shows that our system works, and self-corrects when needed. I think y'all could learn from that, and it's not the big "gotcha" you were looking for.

I was just Googling around for examples of Britain punishing people for speech that would be protected in America. I should have guessed that I'd land on some outdated results. I do still feel that governments policing the expression of opinions like this is both fundamentally wrong and far too much power for them to be trusted with, but I'm glad that improvements are being made.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 29, 2024, 05:44:51 PM »

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-arlington-cemetery-campaign-event

Just an insane story all around.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 26, 2024, 02:25:16 AM »

Is Kamala promising anything about JFK disclosure or Big Pharma? No? Then she won't be getting RFK's voters.

Yeah, you're probably right. Anyone dumb enough to support a crank like RFK Jr. for president probably doesn't have the critical thinking skills to realize that the president can very easily declassify any files he want, that RFK Jr. is being offered a meaningless sinecure to court his voters, and the fact that Trump already said he'd declassify the files and broke his word in his first term.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 26, 2024, 12:07:37 AM »

I'm sorry to hear you fell for it. I'm not really going to invest the energy in convincing you of something so obvious. The OP says "if you commit crimes, we'll use extradition treaties to extradite you where appropriate". It refers to people who ran away abroad after committing crimes on British soil, and who continue to commit crimes - it's an extremely milquetoast statement, and perhaps it confuses you that it's a statement at all. I encourage you to take a deep breath and examine where you got your reading of the situation from - after all, you already pointed out it makes zero sense.

There may be a cultural difference here. Americans like to (but only sometimes) be very prescritpive in their wording, so they would say something like "we will prosecute to the FULLEST!1!!! extent of the law". Europeans tend to omit obvious statements like these, because they're obvious. We don't feel the need to caveat our statements with something like "we'll enforce the law unless it's illegal to do so", because we don't have a culture of cops breaking laws when it suits them.

I agree with you that Rowley wasn't threatening to extradite and prosecute citizens of other countries, and also that it was reasonable for him to not bother spelling out the obvious point that of course British laws don't apply to citizens of other countries. Nevertheless, he was very clearly talking about prosecuting people for the crime of "inciting" people to commit crimes by posting online. He was asked "What are you considering when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind a keyboard, maybe in another country?" and he responded with "Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding publishing of material. All of these offenses are in play in people on provoking hatred and violence on the streets. And we'll come after those individuals..." I'm not misunderstanding him or taking him out of context. He's talking about prosecuting people for expressing opinions online or calling for actions that rile up other people or encourage them to commit crimes. There are at least three people who have been punished for this already. And I think it's been pretty well-documented that Britain does have a long history of prosecuting people for hate speech or simply saying offensive things online. I wish I could find more timely examples, but there's a guy who dressed his dog up as a Nazi, and there's a guy who ranted about Muslims online. According to this article, there was even a huge anti-hate speech crackdown some years ago, with thousands of people being arrested over the course of a year.

Negatively? Not at all. America's free speech laws are roughly sensible, as I've said multiple times already. Though it is telling that you perceived these statements as negative...

There did appear to be a certain negative connotation to phrasing like "it does much worse than most of Europe," "unlike civilized countries," "the meme that is your defamation laws," and "the US's poor standing in press freedom benchmarks," at least in my view. But that's just a quibble. More importantly, American schoolchildren are not required to say the pledge of allegiance. They only have to stand during it. That changes everything.

9

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 25, 2024, 11:21:11 PM »

Actually this RFK-JFK task force announcement about falls in line with what Trump is saying in that 2018 link:

"Trump announced on Thursday that the public must wait another three years or more before seeing material that must remain classified for national security reasons — more than five decades after Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas."

It was Trump's decision to make everyone wait another three years before declassifying the documents. Nobody made him do it. He had the power to declassify the documents at any point during his presidency, and he said he would do it before breaking his word and saying "nope, actually we need to wait another three years before they can be released." And if Trump is reelected, he will once again have the power to declassify the documents at any point - or refuse to do so and keep them classified, like he did in his first term. He doesn't need a task force to do it, and he doesn't need to give RFK Jr. a made-up position to do it. All he has to do is give the order. It is literally that simple. I don't know why Trump decided not to declassify the documents in his first term (Trump doesn't give a shit about national security), but anyone who seriously cares about declassifying them would be out of their mind to trust Trump on this.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 25, 2024, 01:37:35 PM »

The president doesn't need a task force or a commission to declassify documents. He can simply give the order and it's done. In fact, according to Trump himself, all he has to do is think about declassifying a document for it to be official. There's also the very obvious fact that he could have declassified any of these documents during his first term in office - and as it happens, he had said he would, only to apparently change his mind. Giving RFK Jr. a meaningless job doesn't change anything. It's entirely up to the president whether these documents are declassified at all, and I think you'd have to be very gullible to think that this time Trump will totally follow through on declassifying the files after he already broke his word on this same subject.

Also, Vance's incredible visit to a donut shop has to be seen to be believed:

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 24, 2024, 02:48:14 PM »

I think the "imminent" qualification is very important. It's the difference between yelling "Jump!" at a would-be suicide jumper and talking about how you feel that anyone who's ever had a suicidal impulse ought to go through with it, or the difference between yelling "They're going to kill you! Run, fight back, don't let them take you!" at someone whom the police are arresting and talking about how you feel that as a general principle, nobody should ever peacefully submit to being arrested - or, to return to the Tyler Kay case, the difference between leading an angry anti-immigrant protest to a hotel known for housing migrants and refugees and bellowing, "There it is, let's burn it down!" and expressing your anti-immigration opinion and saying you'd like to see the hotels that house immigrants be burned down.

I have no fucking idea what you're talking about, nor do I have any interest in finding out. It sounds like you might be agreeing with me, but its obscured by layers upon layers of whataboutism.

I don't think there's anything complicated or difficult to understand about this concept. Encouraging other people to commit a crime in America is only illegal when the potential crime is both imminent and likely to happen, in recognition of the fact that social pressure can put undue influence on someone in a heated moment. In Britain, however, people are arrested and prosecuted simply for saying things that might influence other people to commit a crime at some point in the future, or, even worse, for simply being offensive. Even if I accept that the Sutton case was because that guy was rioting and not simply for what he said, the OP leaves no doubt that people are being punished or threatened with being punished simply for expressing opinions online that might influence other people to go out and commit crimes at some point in the future.

You were the one who raised the point of all the other types of regulated speech and negatively compared them to how they're handled in other countries. If you don't want to follow through on your own argument...okay? Kind of weird, but it's your call. And if your whole point was just to say that America does technically have laws regarding speech and therefore they shouldn't criticize the laws that other countries, then I'll just say the same thing that I did in my last post - it's beyond pedantic. Nobody in America thinks that there are literally no laws whatsoever that govern speech. What's being criticized are the specific laws governing speech in Britain and other countries, not the fact that they have laws to begin with. Of course they have laws regulating speech. Every country has laws regulating speech. Pointing this obvious fact out isn't a brilliant rebuttal.

Did you miss
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-comments-arrest-prosecution

This is a story about a guy being prosecuted for making threats. As it happens, he was entirely innocent, and the police were overzealous at best and corrupt at worst, but there's nothing inherently wrong with prosecuting someone for making threats. Making threats should absolutely be illegal. The problem in this case lies with the police, not with the law.

Bullshit. It's not just a shitty opinion, it's dangerous incitement in the context of stabbings in which a 17 year old stabbed a bunch of kids, killing 2, following which a load of disinformation was spread online that the 17 year old was a refugee and/or a Muslim. Neither are true. That sparked a load of riots in which hotels housing refugees were sent on fire and people's lives were endangered. I have no issue with people involved in that either directly or indirectly being punished. To characterise those tweets as "just expressing an opinion" is a massive stretch.

Those people chose to riot. Nobody made them do it. Think about it this way - if a dumb racist guy saying dumb racist shit online is enough to spark these riots and hotel-burnings, then you should be a lot less concerned about the people who spread these opinions and a lot more concerned about the people who obviously share these opinions and are willing to act on them. I guarantee you that not a single one of these people rioting were anything other than deeply racist themselves, and more likely than, most of them were probably regular criminal offenders too. Blaming riots on people expressing anti-immigration opinions as if they're somehow responsible for what all these other people did, as if all these rioters were fine upstanding citizens until racist shitposters corrupted them, is just avoiding the real problem, and doing so in a way that's fundamentally ugly for being so anti-free expression.

The issue I have in this thread is some people trying to paint the US as a shining beacon of liberty and freedom and the UK as as cesspit of oppression and control.

That is a very silly thing to say, yes. It's exactly because all governments are fallible organizations full of fallible people that I believe the right to free expression is so important. A government doesn't have to be marching stormtroopers down the street to be untrustworthy. The points that xasop raised about colonialism certainly aren't wrong, but we don't even need to go that far back to find good examples. Just twenty years ago, the U.S. government infamously lied about weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq and launched a catastrophic, destructive war for the purposes of their own political goals and enriching their cronies in the oil business. As part of their efforts, they aggressively smeared and tried to discredit anyone who questioned the facts or didn't enthusiastically support the war, both before and after the invasion. If there was a way to arrest and prosecute people for expressing their opinions, they absolutely would have done it, and figured out a way to spin their charges as somehow being "hate speech" or "incitement" after the fact. It's precisely because a government won't always have good, trustworthy people in positions of power that we need strong restrictions on what they can or can't do. To me, free expression is one of those things that should always be protected. The ability to restrict it is simply too powerful a tool for any government to be trusted with.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 23, 2024, 04:05:37 AM »

Just the News is a garbage website that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories, and this article in particular is light on verifiable statistical analyses of polls and relies heavily on the supposed authoritative weight of pollsters Scott Rasmussen and John McLaughlin insisting that something isn't right. The obvious response is that neither Rasmussen nor McLaughlin are neutral, objective observers giving their sincere professional opinions. They're both Trumpworld stooges whose continued relevance in the conservative mediasphere (mediaplane?) relies on them telling their audiences what they want to hear. Trumpworld does not tolerate bearers of bad news.

I also really like how a big part of this article is devoted to their incredulity that Kamala is more popular as a presidential candidate than a vice president. There are several elements that can explain this discrepancy. Firstly, and most importantly, the vice presidency is a very difficult job for anyone to distinguish themselves in. It's primarily a supportive role where they don't spend much time in front of the camera or publicly "doing" much of anything, and are mostly expected, at least in recent years, to represent some element that the president themselves lacks. Hence why Obama had an older, experienced senator as his VP, why Trump had a very openly religious establishment Republican as his VP, and why Biden had a younger woman of color as his VP. It's more than possible for a vice president who's mostly stagnating in the president's shadow to shine once they start campaigning for themselves as president. There's also the fact that Trump's campaign spent so much time hammering Biden on his age and frailty while he was running, and so switching Biden for Kamala has turned Trump's advantage into his disadvantage. And there's of course the candidates' vice presidential picks - Kamala made a good choice, while Trump made a terrible choice.

Of course, it's always good to have some skepticism of what the polls are saying, and make sure you vote no matter what. It's weird how McLaughlin claimed in the article that this was all an effort to suppress Republicans' votes, when falsely presenting Kamala as doing better than she really is is more likely to hurt her than help her by possibly making her potential voters complaisant.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched

« on: August 21, 2024, 08:12:18 PM »

The sooner the Marvel slop machine dies, the better off society will be.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: X can now fake election tampering evidence

« on: August 17, 2024, 08:41:46 PM »

From what I see this article is not even complaining that people online are creating election tampering evidence.

Obviously not, seeing how this AI was only just created, and the election isn't for another few months. NPR is arguing that people can create false evidence, not that they are. That's the very premise of the article, not some hidden truth that you've cleverly managed to discover.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 17, 2024, 08:37:12 PM »

This is what I get for waiting too long before responding. Now I have to answer posts from several pages ago.

Honk, do you really think the classic "I'm just following orders" justification is relevant here?

Given the stakes, yes, I do. But don't worry, I'll have a different take if and when this guy starts committing war crimes or crimes against humanity.

I keep forgetting that you believe normalized injustice is acceptable (you'll claim you don't, then bring this exact point of argument up in some other unrelated thread).

I've already told you that I don't think enforcing these laws is morally right. That doesn't make him a monster or even someone of poor moral character overall. There's a wide gulf between doing a bad thing and therefore fundamentally being a bad person who can always be counted on to do bad things.

They're not completely different and they are fundamentally related. Power hungry enforcement of insanely authoritarian laws all have the same foundation. His thinking that he can use his wacky powers to extradite people from across the world is not remarkably different from the idea that he can punish people for mean tweets in the first place.

There's a major difference between those two ideas. People are regularly punished for mean tweets in the UK, whereas extraditing citizens of other countries to punish them for breaking laws of a country they aren't subject to is a thing that has never happened and could never happen, and the chief of the Metropolitan Police can safely be assumed to know that. It makes perfect sense for Rowley to believe that he can do the former and not believe that he could do the latter.

He's a rich executive that lives and works in the UK, him calling for the UK to prosecute foreigners is relevant to the discussion.

Yeah, but I don't think it's fair to really blame the UK for having a dumb rich executive who publicly says stupid shit detached from the reality of the law among its population. By way of a counter-example, there's a similar dumb rich executive who lives and works in the US who also publicly says stupid shit detached from the reality of the law - in his case, it's been repeated assertions over the years, including one quite recently, that people who burn or deface the American flag should be punished by the law. Never mind the fact that flag-burning is textbook free speech and laws prohibiting it have been explicitly ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Still, I think you'd agree that it wouldn't really be fair to ask "Is the US okay?" as a general question simply because of this guy. Simply because of this guy's dumb take on flag-burning, I should clarify. I do think it's fair to ask "Is the US okay?" as a general question when we take into account that the guy I'm talking about is the former President of the United States, and has a good chance of being re-elected this November. But that's going off-topic.

Real freedom of speech - in the sense that you can literally say anything you want - doesn’t exist in the US or the UK or anywhere. And nor should it, actually. All societies are governed by rules, and they have to be because in a society my actions affect others. So I can’t drive as fast as I like because I might kill someone. You can’t just do or say anything you want in the context of a society. All those Americans trumpeting their “freedom” must scratch their heads every time they get a speeding fine. In the US you can’t even cross the road until the little man tells you. They’re so free!

This sort of response - "Hey, I think your rules are bullshit." "Ah, but you have rules too! Hypocrite much?" - is so pedantic that it's not worth even discussing. What I especially object to about speech restrictions in Britain is that expressing certain opinions is punished, which is a thing that never happens in America. For example, let's look at the case you mentioned earlier. This guy is being punished for expressing his opinion. Maybe things would be different if he were explicitly asking people to burn down a specific hotel, but he's really not. It's a shitty opinion from a shitty person, but an opinion nevertheless, and he should be free to express it. If the government has the power to decide which opinions are permissible and which ones aren't, I don't think that society is truly free. Sure, you agree with them now. But what happens in the future if your opinion is the one the government says isn't permissible? What happens if many years in the future, corrupt elements in the government are cracking down on political and social opposition to their policies by declaring those opinions impermissible?

After all, incitement to riot is illegal under US federal law, and "incitement to imminent lawless action" (lmao nice specificity, good job guys) is also exempt from first-amendment protections. This is fairly sensible (if asininely phrased, but we're not expecting competence here, are we?). Discussing this would be as pointless as pointing out that water makes your skin dry.

I think the "imminent" qualification is very important. It's the difference between yelling "Jump!" at a would-be suicide jumper and talking about how you feel that anyone who's ever had a suicidal impulse ought to go through with it, or the difference between yelling "They're going to kill you! Run, fight back, don't let them take you!" at someone whom the police are arresting and talking about how you feel that as a general principle, nobody should ever peacefully submit to being arrested - or, to return to the Tyler Kay case, the difference between leading an angry anti-immigrant protest to a hotel known for housing migrants and refugees and bellowing, "There it is, let's burn it down!" and expressing your anti-immigration opinion and saying you'd like to see the hotels that house immigrants be burned down.

Unlike civilised countries, "obscenity" is considered an acceptable excuse to crack down on speech

I strongly agree with you that obscenity laws are bullshit and have no place in a country that values free speech, and I remember making a thread on the subject many years ago on the old FES. In fact, I'll go further and say that what especially grinds my gears about obscenity prosecutions is that judges historically seem to interpret the final part of the Miller test that determines whether or not something should be concerned obscene, namely "Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" as "Do I personally find this work to appeal to my own subjective taste?" which I don't think at all is what the Supreme Court meant by that! For example, George Carlin's hilarious routine about the seven words you can't say on television, an absolute comedy classic, was ruled by one court to lack artistic merit, although thankfully they didn't go so far as to declare it obscene.

That being said, though, do other countries not have or enforce obscenity laws? There's a whole section about the UK on Wikipedia, but it doesn't exactly summarize the question we're discussing neatly. I'm sure you know more about it than me.

neither is "commercial speech"

"Commercial speech" is simply subject to more regulations than political or religious speech. For example, if you really want to put out a political ad that says something ridiculous about how every citizen will be given their own flying car if you're elected, you can. Nobody's going to stop you. But when you're promising goods and services in exchange for people's money, then there are more rules. You can't just outright lie about the benefits or lack of drawbacks that the drugs you're selling have, for instance. This is perfectly consistent with speech being free as a general concept, and I don't think that other countries do things especially different.

I'm glossing over the meme that is your defamation laws, because... y'know, low-hanging fruit.

I'm surprised to hear you say that, because I've always heard that Britain is the country that has the most memal defamation laws of all, ones that heavily favor plaintiffs and have been used many times by rich assholes (J.K. Rowling being one prominent example) to silence people they don't like in a way that would never be allowed in America. You really think that America has worse defamation laws?

Oh, and not to mention the US's poor standing in press freedom benchmarks.

Please explain. What's wrong with our press freedom?

For what it's worth, it's been great following the UK police's effective response to the riots and terrorist attacks. The US has been left in the dust, despite their police departments being so much bigger and better-equipped. Someone should look into that, y'all are being scammed out of your tax dollars.

There are a lot of things that Britain does much better than America when it comes to policing, but arresting and prosecuting people for expressing certain opinions is not one of them. It's fundamental to a truly free society, and without that, your freedom only exists at the government's pleasure.

16

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 12, 2024, 03:50:40 AM »

He's not a psychopath for enforcing laws that you don't agree with, let alone laws that are pretty much standard fare in every first-world country that isn't America, and even if he were, that wouldn't make the case that he was insane. Being a bad person who enforces unjust laws and being crazy enough to think that your own country's laws somehow apply to the citizens of other countries are two completely different things.

17

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 11, 2024, 10:54:43 PM »

No, he's not personally deciding that people should go to jail for tweets. As Tom pointed out, Britain does not have the same freedom of speech that America does, and people are regularly prosecuted there for saying things that would be protected here. And just to head off what I'm sure you're about to say next, no, I don't think that means his arresting people for tweets is okay or morally justifiable. That's not what we're talking about. He's not delusional for talking about doing something that's regularly done in Britain, regardless of how objectionable you and I find it. It would, however, be utterly delusional for him to think that British laws somehow apply to citizens of other countries, and there's no evidence to believe that he does think that outside of some ambiguity in his wording which could mean that if interpreted a certain way, but could also just as easily mean that he doesn't think anything so ridiculous if interpreted a different way.

18

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 11, 2024, 06:36:15 PM »

No, this entire exchange did not happen because of what Musk said.

Yes, it did. The rest of what you said is irrelevant, because it incorrectly veers from the context of the article.

No, it didn't. Read again:

Riots have broken out across the United Kingdom in recent days over false rumors spread online that an asylum seeker was responsible for a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event that left three girls dead and others wounded.

The murders, allegedly committed by a now 18-year-old British citizen born to Rwandan parents, sparked a series of violent protests that tapped into broader concerns about the scale of immigration in the U.K.

Footage of the violent clashes involving anti-immigration protesters and the groups of counter-protesters, some of whom have been seen waving Palestinian flags, has gone viral on social media, and the government is warning that sharing such content may have serious consequences.

They're clearly talking about widespread social media activity, not simply Elon Musk alone posting something. There's more than enough wiggle room for Rowley to be threatening legal consequences without assuming that he's specifically threatening Musk. If we look up the relevant part of this interview, which I could unfortunately only find on Facebook, we can see a bit more context. The interviewer asks, after first mentioning Musk specifically, "What are you considering when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind a keyboard, maybe in a different country?" That's a two-part question, or at least it could be reasonably interpreted as one, even if the interviewer didn't mean it to be. The first part asks what the police are planning to do about people inciting chaos online, and the second part asks what the police are planning to do about people inciting chaos online who are in another country. I believe that Rowley deliberately sidestepped the second part of the question and focused on answering the first, probably because he figured that stopping to clarify that there's nothing he can do about citizens of other countries would have sucked the energy out of the interview. He certainly said nothing about Musk or extraditing anyone. Maybe Crudblud is right that he was talking about British citizens who are out of the country, but if that had been the case, I feel like he would have been clear about it and specifically made a point of calling out British citizens who think they can get away with inciting chaos if it's done in another country.

Besides, let's use some common sense. Do you really, really think that the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police thinks that British laws apply to citizens of other countries, and that they have the right to extradite and prosecute them for that? Is that really what you think is going on here, and not simply that there's a bit of ambiguity in his wording that could mean something nonsensical like that if interpreted a certain way? Why assume that this guy is saying something ridiculous when you could just as easily assume that he's not saying something ridiculous?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 11, 2024, 03:15:27 AM »

Did you even read the article? He goes on to further clarify:

"Rowley answered by telling the reporter, “Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”"

“You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material,” he said.

He is blatantly referring to speech offenses online. This is not about physical crimes, as he further emphasizes:

“All of those offenses are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are taking — who are causing the problems for communities.”

He is delineating between being at the riots physically and supporting them online.

This has nothing to do with what I said.

This entire exchange happened in response to Musk tweeting about civil war. So, in reality, the commissioner would like to see Musk extradited and prosecuted.

No, this entire exchange did not happen because of what Musk said. Even the British police have better things to do than give the media interviews revolving around Elon Musk. He was simply mentioned as an example of a high-profile figure stirring shit up. As disingenuous as it is, the article does make this clear.

This isn't something that happened in a vacuum, so saying he's only referring to people inside the UK is nonsense.

By that logic, anyone who ever promises to crack down on any type of online crime is therefore threatening to extradite and prosecute citizens of other countries, because no illicit online activity happens in a vacuum. It's generally understood that when people talk about prosecuting online crimes, they're only talking about prosecuting people within their borders whom it's within their jurisdiction to prosecute. I don't think the commissioner needed to explicitly point out the obvious fact that British laws only apply in Britain for a reasonable person to intuit that he's not planning on extraditing and prosecuting citizens of other countries for breaking British laws.

20

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 11, 2024, 12:38:39 AM »

I don't think that's right. I think "committing crimes further afield online" is opposed to "committing crimes on the street," not "in this country committing crimes on the streets." The "in this country" part is meant to qualify the whole of what he's saying, not simply the part about the streets. Britain has a lot of silly laws, and I don't agree with criminalizing hate speech at all, but I really don't think this guy is so delusional that he thinks he can extradite and prosecute other countries' citizens for doing something that's illegal in Britain but legal in their countries.