Problematic Stuff

[Seabass]

I bet those whiny SJWs probably think this is problematic.

[Brian Peacock]

UK white supremacists gets another bite of the apple...

Tommy Robinson freed on bail after court quashes conviction.

Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, is to be freed from prison after the court of appeal ordered that he should face a retrial on a contempt of court charge. He has been held at Onley prison near Rugby after being jailed for 13 months following convictions in Leeds and Canterbury for breaching reporting restrictions.

At the court of appeal on Wednesday, the lord chief justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, upheld the Canterbury conviction but said there should be a retrial for the Leeds case. Robinson, the appeal court said, would be released on bail on condition that he attends the retrial before the recorder of London at a date to be fixed.

The judges had been urged to overturn contempt of court findings against Robinson, 35, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon.

At a hearing in July, his QC, Jeremy Dein, argued that procedural “deficiencies” had given rise to “prejudice”. Dein also submitted that the sentence was “manifestly excessive” and that insufficient regard had been given to personal mitigation.

Robinson was jailed in May after he filmed people involved in a criminal trial and broadcast the footage on social media. The footage, lasting about an hour, was watched 250,000 times within hours of being posted on Facebook. The far-right activist was given 10 months for contempt of court, which he admitted, and a further three months for breaching a previous suspended sentence.

Robinson was detained outside Leeds crown court after using social media to broadcast details of a trial that is subject to blanket reporting restrictions.

Jailing him, Judge Geoffrey Marson told Robinson it was a “serious aggravating feature” that he was encouraging others to share it and it had been shared widely. He added: “Everyone understands the right to freedom of speech but there are responsibilities and obligations. I am not sure you appreciate the potential consequence of what you have done. People have to understand that if they breach court orders there will be very real consequences.”

...

[Seabass]

Those scary SJWs are at it again. Harassing these poor, innocent Trumpkins who just want to have a peaceful rally.

Ahead of rally, Patriot Prayer leaders goad supporters and antagonize Portland
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... e-portland

The far-right groups Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys will converge on Portland in a matter of days, but Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson and his followers were apparently unable to wait until this weekend to harass the city’s residents and provoke left-wing activists.

The two groups have momentum from their last violent outing in Portland, a rally on June 30 that quickly became an all-out melee between right-wing rallygoers and antifascist counter-protesters. Gibson has said attendees plan to bring guns and other weapons to the city for the upcoming August 4 rally. The Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group styled as a men’s drinking club, will provide armed “security” for the event. In 2018, the SPLC named the Proud Boys a hate group because of its members’ ties to the racist right, their rhetoric denigrating Muslims and women, and the group’s affiliation with events featuring right-wing extremists.

Unable to pass up the opportunity to needle their political opponents, Gibson and a herd of supporters traveled to Portland’s “Occupy ICE” camp twice last week to harass activists there protesting the Trump administration’s child-separation immigration policy. He recorded the group’s activities on Facebook Live. Claiming he just wanted to talk, Gibson instigated a series of fruitless, sometimes unintelligible exchanges with the demonstrators at the camp. Behind him, members of his posse can be heard taunting and challenging people. In one video, the Patriot Prayer group is separated from the ICE protesters by a chain link fence, and Gibson argues with a masked man on the other side. Contradicting his insistence that his group is there to start a dialogue, his associate, Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys member Tusitala “Tiny” Toese baits the protester, “That’s all you do, talk. Try something!”

continued: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... e-portland

[Forty Two]

I bet those whiny SJWs probably think this is problematic.

Nawww... an video made "unavailable" is right up their alley. They love making sure people don't see or hear the wrong things.

[Seabass]

I bet those whiny SJWs probably think this is problematic.

Nawww... an video made "unavailable" is right up their alley. They love making sure people don't see or hear the wrong things.

Shut the fuck up.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crystle-ga ... ls-racism/

[Forty Two]

As an adjunct to this discussion: I would suggest that a 'right of freedom of speech' is not a consequence-free license to say whatever one wants in public. Instead I would say that 'freedom of speech' encapsulates a principle of protection if/when one is seeking to criticise and/or oppose the actions of the state - such that the state cannot interfere with you when it doesn't like what you're saying about it. Here I think we are really talking about a 'right of freedom of expression' - something which many Americans -- many people in fact -- appear to hold as absolute.

Can't disagree with you here.

Does a self-proclaimed paedophile have an absolute right to express at the school gate their desire to take children as their sexual partners?

What's "at the school gate?" On school premises? No. On the public sidewalk where people can express their views, yes. Like the arch-conservative group the ACLU has said, "In representing NAMBLA [North America Man Boy Love Association] today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children." https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-statemen ... anizations They said, "The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not. It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive. That was true when the Nazis marched in Skokie. It remains true today."

I know, I know - my agreement with the ACLU's traditional position on freedom of speech is, well, clearly alt right, tantamount to Naziism. I'm a racist Trumpking, total right wing conservanazifascist!

Some might say that, sure, paedophiles have an absolute right to express their views in public however and wherever they like, but also an argument might be made that what they would be advocating here is illegality,

Advocating illegality is not illegal. How else can one advocate a change in the law? If one wants to make recreational drugs legal, isn't one advocating illegality? Can I advocate for the legalization of insider trading? Can I advocate for legalization of theft? The elimination of private property? The banning of the private ownership of firearms? Can I say that dueling is a great way to solve disputes?

and therefore the content of their expression could be, and therefore rightly should be, limited in law.

Why? Why would the advocacy of illegal actions be "rightly" limited by law? If I want to say that it's right and good to "punch Nazis" aren't I advocating illegal actions? Should that "rightly be limited in law?" Why or why not?

This may indeed represent a valid limitation, but if so then the term 'absolute right' cannot be applied to 'freedom of expression' such that it remains a consequence-free license to say whatever one wants in public.

It's not consequence free, even if it's legal. Because having a legal right to espouse pedophilia, or pro life positions, or pro choice positions, or pro drug positions, or anti-drug positions, or pro gun positions, or anti gun positions, in public, are not and never have been "consequence" free. I.e., the opposition always gets to show up and counterprotest. The state doesn't get to enact an orthodoxy, and neither side gets to punch the other. Simple. Fair.

And, look - about pedophilia advocacy -- how does one advocate for a lower age of consent if one does not advocate something that others consider pedophilia? The term today is often applied to any underage attraction -- even if the underage person is past puberty (whereas the traditional definition is a person who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children). Can one say that the age of consent should be 16 when it's 18? 15 when it's 16? 14 when it's 15? When does it "rightly" become a message that is limited?

It is one of the founding principles of the US constitution that the rights of all citizens are equally endorsed and assured. One might say that expressing a desire to undermine or limit the rights of others (for example, in the way that white supremacists do with regards to those who do not meet their racial criteria) is to undermine or limit not just a principle but the actual scope of the constitution of the United States and the protections it affords all citizens.

Well, it's not just white supremacists who (sometimes) express a desire to undermine or limit the rights of others. Anti-gun rights folks do it every day. Does David Hogg get to express a desire to undermine and limit the rights of others? What about a person who advocates that there are certain things a person cannot advocate in public? Does that person get to express the desire to undermine or limit the rights of others to speak their truth or message?

I would say that everyone can "express a desire" to limit or undermine the rights of others, whether it be to say who should be allowed to marry, or who should be allowed to speak in public, or who should be allowed to own guns, or who should be allowed to follow what religion, or who should be allowed to march down the street in a public protest.

To advocate and agitate for a reduced or degraded form of constitutional rights based on a racial classification determined by those, who, by their own definition, are immune from such degradations, is to effectively argue that all US citizens' constitutional rights are conditional - not inalienable. Such advocates are in effect agitating for something which not only contravenes the US constitutional settlement, but something which fundamentally opposes it in terms of its scope and application to all citizens - and not just those who fail the racial tests of white supremacists.

Anyone advocating for the banning of guns agitates for a reduced or degraded form of constitutional rights.

One should have the right to advocate for the elimination of all constitutional rights.

It happens here on this forum all the time. I've had several conversations with people who have said that the very concept of "rights" in the US constitution is outdated and simply false - a nonexistent, archaic thing - and that there are no "rights" other than what the majority vote for. That's completely anathema to the US constitutional concept, which is that the majority cannot touch constitutional rights - fundamental rights. Your freedom of speech is not up to a vote. Your freedom of religion is not up to a vote. the majority can't make catholics stop taking communion. The majority cannot make the Amish hook up to the electrical grid. Some folks I've talked to here say that's stupid, and that it's the majority will that should control. To say people cannot advocate for reducing or eliminating or degrading the rights of others is to say that people who advocate for the elimination of all "Rights" as that concept is understood in American law would not be able to advocate that.

If white supremacists are essentially no different to the paedophiles in the examples given then paedophiles must be just as entitled to agitate at the school gates as members of The National Vanguard are to agitate in Charlottesville, or, alternatively, 'freedom of expression' has some reasonable limits and therefore cannot be a consequence-free license to say whatever one wants in public.

Just sayin

I think what keeps pedophiles from marching down main street is not the law (the law allows it). What stops it is public revulsion. If NAMBLA were to create a protest and gathering of 1,000s of open pedophiles to march down the street of my city, you can bet there would be a large gathering of counterprotesters there shouting them down, and making them very uncomfortable. I would never suggest that there is a right to "punch a pedophile", but there is certainly a right to call them names, ridicule them, argue against them, tell them to go the fuck home, take pictures of them, spread it around the internet, and the like.

That wacky church that protests soldiers funerals and says "god hates fags" and whatnot is another good example. They won their free speech cases too. They get to protest, even if they hurt the feelings of the families of dead soldiers. It's part of free speech. If you don't believe in free speech for those you hate, and for opinions that you loathe, then you don't believe in it at all..... says the alt righty cryptofascist Nazi....

[Forty Two]

I bet those whiny SJWs probably think this is problematic.

Nawww... an video made "unavailable" is right up their alley. They love making sure people don't see or hear the wrong things.

Shut the fuck up.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crystle-ga ... ls-racism/

That's not too far from me. That's a very concerning situation; however, that article, and the articles I've read about that, contain only one side of the story. It sounds insane, so if it's true, those paramedics should be fired and prosecuted. However, as with all things, we need to let due process play out. They'll get their hearing. I hope there is a good explanation.

I find it very odd, because that whole area where this lady is from is heavily populated with African Americans. Ambulances go there regularly, and regularly transport black people to the hospital. It sounds weird that the paramedics would concern themselves with what a patient can afford. It doesn't come out of their pocket. They don't get more money for taking people with more money to hospital. Why would they refuse to take her? And, why would they have taken the numerous other black people they respond to all the the time in that area?

[pErvinalia]

I think what keeps pedophiles from marching down main street is not the law (the law allows it). What stops it is public revulsion. If NAMBLA were to create a protest and gathering of 1,000s of open pedophiles to march down the street of my city, you can bet there would be a large gathering of counterprotesters there shouting them down, and making them very uncomfortable. I would never suggest that there is a right to "punch a pedophile", but there is certainly a right to call them names, ridicule them, argue against them, tell them to go the fuck home, take pictures of them, spread it around the internet, and the like.

That's very uncivil of you. Next time you are whingeing about seeing bad words directed at you, I might remind you of this.

[Forty Two]

Why? Being in favor of free speech is not the same as being against civility and decorum. There are rules against personal attacks here on this forum. There doesn't have to be, but there are. And, whinging about violations of rules on a forum is also free speech. I wouldn't punch you for being what you are, no matter how much you might appear to deserve it. But writing down objections to your rule violations is not being anti-free speech.

Jackasses have a right to yell nasty stuff at football games, for example. Doesn't mean it's "anti-free speech" to tell them to watch their language because there are kids around.

That's how a free society works, my friend. Free people self-ordering, and controlling themselves through open debate, social pressure, custom, etc. Workplaces have rules, for another example - you can't curse out your customers and remain employed there, most likely, even though you have a "right" to curse them out. It's because a free society self-orders.

Another example is the asshat SJWs, who have every right to whinge on and on about the nonsense they spew. They can push their nonsense, and other people can criticize them for it. Same with asshat racist alt-right douches - they can spout their bullshit, and others can react.

[Seabass]

Another unarmed black man killed by cops. But BLM, SJWs, and feminists are what's really wrong with this country.

Video: Louisiana man dies after officers put him in choke hold; experts disagree on excessive force or not
https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/ne ... e0adc.html

A criminal justice expert says Avoyelles Parish law officers who wrestled a Marksville man off a tractor while serving an arrest warrant last year used too much force, needlessly escalating a confrontation that ended with the man's death. A second expert said he doesn't agree the officers used excessive force, but said they may have acted negligently by failing to administer aid once Armando Frank was unconscious.

A video recording of the arrest, obtained by The Advocate, shows officers growing frustrated with Frank, 44, after he refuses to step down from a tractor near a Walmart store along La. 1. A use-of-force expert who reviewed the 10-minute recording at the newspaper's request says the law officers escalated the exchange by placing Frank in a choke hold and attempting to yank him off the tractor.

“His level of resistance starts out as passive. It doesn’t go to active and aggressive until he’s physically assaulted by these deputies," Gregory Gilbertson, director of the criminal justice program at Centralia College in Centralia, Washington, said Thursday.

Last Oct. 20, two sheriff’s deputies, Brandon Spillman and Alexander Daniel, along with Marksville Police officer Kenneth Parnell, tried to force Frank from his tractor. Spillman, Daniel and Parnell are named defendants in a civil rights lawsuit. There were other law enforcement personnel on the scene, according to the Sheriff's Office.

A forensic pathologist hired by the parish had said in a report that manual strangulation was the primary cause of Frank’s death. The video shows Spillman mount the tractor behind Frank and apply a choke hold while another officer tries to pull him down. For a time, Frank is doubled-over while resisting. Officers had to carry Frank to a patrol car after his body went limp.

Gilbertson said Frank’s questions as to what he was being arrested for, and who signed the warrant, were reasonable.

“There’s no exigent circumstance here,” Gilbertson said Thursday. “He’s not attempting to flee, he’s not assaulting anybody, he’s sitting on a tractor and he’s asking reasonable questions they are refusing to answer.”

[Seabass]

I must be stupid, 'cause I just can't figure out how this makes America great again.

Immigration crackdown: US soldier honored for service could be heading for ICE custody
https://www.stripes.com/news/immigratio ... y-1.540608

Final plea: Combat veteran's wife facing Friday deportation reaches out to Trump
https://www.stripes.com/final-plea-comb ... p-1.540333

[pErvinalia]

Why? Being in favor of free speech is not the same as being against civility and decorum. There are rules against personal attacks here on this forum. There doesn't have to be, but there are. And, whinging about violations of rules on a forum is also free speech. I wouldn't punch you for being what you are, no matter how much you might appear to deserve it. But writing down objections to your rule violations is not being anti-free speech.

Jackasses have a right to yell nasty stuff at football games, for example. Doesn't mean it's "anti-free speech" to tell them to watch their language because there are kids around.

That's how a free society works, my friend. Free people self-ordering, and controlling themselves through open debate, social pressure, custom, etc. Workplaces have rules, for another example - you can't curse out your customers and remain employed there, most likely, even though you have a "right" to curse them out. It's because a free society self-orders.

Another example is the asshat SJWs, who have every right to whinge on and on about the nonsense they spew. They can push their nonsense, and other people can criticize them for it. Same with asshat racist alt-right douches - they can spout their bullshit, and others can react.

I didn't say it was anti-free-speech. I said it was uncivil. Something you are constantly whingeing about.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Preliminary data, so nothing to hang your hat on. However, perhaps reason to doubt the narrative holding that US campuses are plagued by the jackboots of leftist scum and asshat SJWs stomping on the free speech of unfairly oppressed conservatives.

'Data shows a surprising campus free speech problem: left-wingers being fired for their opinions'

The American college campus, we are led to believe, is a dangerous place: If you say what you really think, particularly as a conservative, a mob of young social justice warriors will come for your faculty position or invitation to speak on campus. Entire books and online magazines are premised on the idea that political correctness is sweeping the American university, threatening both higher education and the broader right to free speech.

But a brand new data analysis from Georgetown University’s Free Speech Project suggests that this “crisis” is more than a little overblown. There have been relatively few incidents of speech being squelched on college campuses, and there’s in fact limited evidence that conservatives are being unfairly targeted.

The Free Speech Project’s researchers have cataloged more than 90 incidents since 2016 that fit their criteria for a person’s free speech rights being threatened. Of those 90, about two-thirds took place on college campuses. These incidents range from a speaker being disinvited to a faculty member being fired over allegedly offensive comments to a student-run play being canceled over concerns it would offend.

The raw numbers here should already raise questions about the so-called political correctness epidemic. According to the Department of Education, there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (including two- and four-year institutions). The fact that there were roughly only 60 incidents in the past two years suggests that free speech crises are extremely rare events and don’t define university life in the way that critics suggest.

Moreover, there’s a consistent pattern in the data when it comes to conservatives — one that tells a different story than you hear among free speech panickers.

“Most of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter ,” Sanford Ungar, the Free Speech Project’s director, writes. “In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.”

What Ungar is suggesting here is that the “campus free speech” crisis is somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous for offensive and racially charged speech — all of the above speakers fit that bill — in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other words, they’re trolling. When students react by protesting or disrupting the event, the conservatives use it as proof that there’s real intolerance for conservative ideas.

The other key thing that emerges from the Georgetown data, according to Ungar, is that these protests and disruptions don’t just target the right. “Our data also include many incidents, generally less well-publicized, where lower-profile scholars, speakers, or students who could be considered to be on the left have been silenced or shut down,” he writes.

[Forty Two]

Why? Being in favor of free speech is not the same as being against civility and decorum. There are rules against personal attacks here on this forum. There doesn't have to be, but there are. And, whinging about violations of rules on a forum is also free speech. I wouldn't punch you for being what you are, no matter how much you might appear to deserve it. But writing down objections to your rule violations is not being anti-free speech.

Jackasses have a right to yell nasty stuff at football games, for example. Doesn't mean it's "anti-free speech" to tell them to watch their language because there are kids around.

That's how a free society works, my friend. Free people self-ordering, and controlling themselves through open debate, social pressure, custom, etc. Workplaces have rules, for another example - you can't curse out your customers and remain employed there, most likely, even though you have a "right" to curse them out. It's because a free society self-orders.

Another example is the asshat SJWs, who have every right to whinge on and on about the nonsense they spew. They can push their nonsense, and other people can criticize them for it. Same with asshat racist alt-right douches - they can spout their bullshit, and others can react.

I didn't say it was anti-free-speech. I said it was uncivil. Something you are constantly whingeing about.

My apologies, indeed you did. http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 7#p1782273

However, I fail to see how I was uncivil. You said it was uncivil of me. However, acknowledging that people have a right of free speech to ridicule crazy ideas, like man-boy love, isn't uncivil. It might certianly be uncivil to ridicule them, of course. But then again, I likely wouldn't ridicule them anyway. I'd likely just get away from them.

[Rum]

Whatever one thinks about pedophiles, you've got to give it to them - they drive really slow around school gates.