Be Excellent To Each Other

Due to copyright and legal reasons we are not allowed to show you this outside of Sweden.

Malc

For those outside of sweden....

Bollocks i was hoping you could see it outside of sweden.

Turn your monitor a bit more to the west.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992

Boom!

56 days inside!

That's fucking insane.

The chap is clearly a massive belmer, but I'm not sure what purpose is served by locking him up.

!

Malc

No they weren't. Not even slightly. What a fucking retarded thing to say. And don't we have prior to say that doesn't work anyway?


The praying situation?

[edit]For people glancing at this post, I'm not responding to MaliA like it seems, but some judge.

Deterrent. We need to establish that social networking is no different to saying this stuff in the pub or street.

When you challenge people for this stuff first they are indignant, then they claim hacking, then they abuse you, then they delete their accounts. I've had dummy accounts set up pretending to be me and abusing all and sundry by people who I've reported to the police and the kickitout campaign.

If Stacey's headline status deters others from knackering their own lives up, it has been well worth it. He has made an example of himself.

Except it is, clearly. Hence the jail time.

8 weeks in jail (he'll probably not serve that much) for inciting racial hatred is a nice message to the rest of the country that it's not tolerated, and this is what might happen to you if you decide to do the same.

Malc

Of course it's tolerated. It's just not tolerated if it's someone famous on the receiving end.

Only in as much as that it's easier to catch someone online?

Malc

Prayer is an overt means of expressing that one wishes they could do something, so in this loose, figure-of-speechy context I think we can accept that His Honour was using typically judgey language to ram his point home to the clearly somewhat dim rugby racist.

I've no time for prayer at all but if it causes people to reconsider racist bullshit, at least we've finally got a practical use for it.

What are you on about?

Like that tram lady?

Malc

I think that by "literally", the judge meant "not literally".

*sigh* ok, it's no better than saying it in the pub or on the street. It's a recentish phenomenon which we need to stop prevent spreading, it's there to be read by children forever if not challenged and therefore it needs to be. How's that?

I think it was a stupid thing for the judge to say! As even if you take "pray" as thinking positivly, obviously not everyone was thinking that.

Malc

Was that sigh meant for me or Grim...?

Malc

People are reported to kickitout.org and the police for Twitter stuff all the time. Usually they get a stadium ban and a talking to from the coppers. Typically they're off twitter in any case, and any new account is toned down. It doesn't make the press because "man says racist thing" isn't headline material. When someone is stupid enough to go for a celebrity, it goes viral and the headline news writes itself. Their fault, and a bloody good warning to those who pick on the less famous.

Wierd - news on her just kind of dries up. She was in custody for a while, but I can't find anything about whether she went to jail or not.

What I can find is several really nasty sites set up by people that agree with her

She's called 'Emma West' if you want to do some digging.

I don't know, thread's going too fast!

Err.... both? Neither?

My point was essentially that anyone who is inciting racial hatred should see jail time, I don't care who they do it to, or where/how they do it.

If people who say it on the street don't get punished for it, I think that is the problem, not that this idiot got jail time for his.

Malc

Emma West's trial is June 11th.

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/arti ... t-for-raci

They're going to defend on mental health lines, iirc. I hope so and I hope she gets off, they we can section and medicate racists

LET US PERFORM THE DANCE OF AGREEMENT!

My only problem with this sentence is that i don't know that it is that clear that he is inciting racial hatred.

He's an abhorrent stupid little man, and a hateful person, but I am not quite sure where the 'incitement' comes into it.

He was expressing his own horrible, racist views, but wasn't inciting others to rally up and follow his beliefs in the matter. I did see his tweets and don't recall anything like that, but someone please set me right if I am mistaken.

If that were the case then anyone saying horrid things about homosexuals should be given the same sentence. In fact, it's far more a case of incitement when a religious leader preaches to a congregation on the evils of homosexuality as they ARE trying to convert people to their way of thinking. This was just some arse spouting off, so though I think he is a contemptible little twerp, I am not sure that the sentence is the correct one.

According to Wikipedia:



posting a tweet can probably fit in to a couple of those.

Malc

And then it's 'just' children, copying what they see others doing. 'Just' hundreds of contemptible little twerps retweeting and lending a veil of acceptability to something which really, really isn't.

Incitement is not simply telling people to do things. I'm sick of deprogramming eighteen year old racists in Hull who have only ever lived in a diverse city who stand to be evicted for saying things that only come out of their mouths because their absentee parents used to send them to the 'paki shop' to get beer while they sit at home calling footballers niggers at the screen.

It's a massive problem and cures are not pushing back the tide, it's time for prevention.

Really?


deliberately provoking hatred of a racial group
I'd say he was displaying racial hatred bt not provoking it in others


distributing racist material to the public
Perhaps a little, but was it really any more than any other nasty person at a pub or in town with his mates, and if not then why don't we lock all those up? I'd say this was more of a problem if this 'material' was inciting of racial hatred, not displaying it, and that links to the first charge.

making inflammatory public speeches
Again, his views are horrible, but I don't know that they are inflammatory as he wasn't exactly trying to raise a group of people to side with him, just displaying his own views.

creating racist websites on the Internet
Not this, but ooh the internet is scary. Again, a problem if they are inflammatory or inciting of racism.

inciting inflammatory rumours about an individual or an ethnic group, for the purpose of spreading racial discontent.
Inciting and inflammatory again... I think that's my main sticking point. I think there is a difference between expressing your own views, however wrong, and inciting others in hate crimes.

I'm not saying that it is right, I just don't think the charges are the correct ones. If expression of racist/homophobic/religious views should be punished in such ways then new laws need to be written up to support those.

He pleaded guilty to the charge, so presumably his legal team (or him) thinks that what he did is covered by that (remember that was just a quick copy/paste from wiki, I am sure the actual act is more detailed.

Also, as each post on twitter has it's own page, then I would have thought that might count.

Malc

Oooh! That is interesting! I would never have thought of that. Brilliant! Haha.

No they don't. The legal definition of hate includes disparagement of a protected group. As such the current laws cover this individual's words more than adequately.

I can see where you're coming from, but you're coming from there because you aren't using the same interpretation of the terminology that the courts use.

ahh, OK.

To be clear, though, i wasn't questioning the definition of 'hate' but rather 'incitement'. I am surprised that expressing one's views, however wrong, can be termed as 'incitement', and if it is then I can't see why members of certain numerous religious groups and congregations are not arrested all of the time...

Well they should be, but we don't pursue everyone for everything illegal in life, there's not the resources, and no-one would be free. Again though, impressionable people exist and ensuring they don't grow up to be societally ruinous involves a combination of teaching them tolerance/the law and acting against intolerance/illegal activity. Both are important and reinforce the other.

It's a tricky one, and I can't recall.

quote]


Oh, no. Someone got done recently for brochures about lynching homosexuals, didn't they?

It is incredibly easy to raise a lynch mob. Even accidentally.

If what you say is accurate then that was going on about lynching homosexuals. I don't think this guy was trying to get folks to lynch black people. Anyway, that doesn't mater if GY is right about what the courts believe to be inciting behaviour. I'd say that the example you give is DEFINITELY incitement to hate crimes against a specific group, whereas the example of this twitter guy is, to my mind, not quite so cut and dry, but if the courts have a definition that covers it then justice has been done.

It is incredibly easy to kill someone, even accidentally. Doesn't always mean it is murder, though.

I'm not saying that what you have stated is wrong, just that I am surprised by the definition of incitement, as I had been thinking too much of a definition as from a dictionary. To persuade or encourage someone to do something.

Hmm, Wikipedia suggests:



I don't know that he was persuading, encouraging, instigating, pressuring, or threatening other people to make them commit a crime, but the courts must have seen some possibility or likelihood of that being the case.

I'm always very wary of the idea of putting people in prison for being nasty little racists. Mainly because I think's it's a very short leap to go from making being openly racist a criminal offence to making being openly critical of other things a criminal offence. See the Irish blasphemy legislation. I pretty much think that having the nation brand him a horrible racist fuck was probably suitable punishment for this guy.

This is the one you are after: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

Taking your persuade or encourage point, I'm looking at getting an iPad once certain infuriating things fall into place. I've reached this decision in spite of people telling me I should get one. That only turned me off the things. Merely seeing someone use one and seeming happy doing so has, imho, persuaded and encouraged me to join in, where all the cajoling in the world would not have done so.

There's active and passive encouragement, in the same way a doctor can passively kill someone by not treating them when they should. I'd forget about the dictionary where law is concerned. If words meant what we think they do we'd not need solicitors.

I'll say it again though, there's impressionable people out there and it behoves society to ensure any choices they make are taken without recourse to saying "so-and-so was doing it so I thought it was OK".

/edit your angle is manifest here, probably: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/GC34.pdf

Maybe the jail sentence is because he first denied it, then said his account had been hacked, then panicked and tried to delete his account and then said he was too drunk to remember any of it?

Maybe but they 'all' do that, in my experience. We're going to need a bigger boat.

I suspect it was to do with "something must be done" if something, err, wasn't.

EDIT: Also, sometimes the courts will bend themselves over backwards to make an example of someone. A good case in point is where the husband had tried to rape. He was quite happy that it'd be lobbed out of court and he'd get away with it as, at the time, it wsn't illegal if you were married. This was 1989. Anyhoo, he gets to the court looking all pleased and stuff, explained that ho ho it wasn't an illegal act, and he'd quite like to go home now, thanks and the judge said "fuck you, we're going to make it illegal. retrospectively. Even though it isn't. Deal with that, bitch" or something, as they were fed up with it.

This all, always comes down to the tipping point though, doesn't it? At what point do our individual rights become outweighed by our collective responsibilities? I'd reckon the following:

1: Where someone is being a complete dick and the upset caused amongst those with no agenda is overwhelming. (Good luck measuring that!).

2: Where there is peer-reviewed empirical research to prove that a societal threat is inherent in the text (academic sense, not literal) being circulated. As per Racist Rugby Fool and the laws which have been brought in to stop his ilk going on.

3: Where a group has past form or links to organised violence, or where sufficient of the vanguard of a group have said form/links e.g. the far right groups of today, some religions.

4: Where the focus lingers too long on rights. Ditto responsibilities - looking at fundamentalist groups, they claim to be acting out of responsibility when they, as is currently a problem, lie to women seeking pregnancy terminations. In that instance the rights of the individual have to be pushed. Flipside is when the zealotry of an MP leads him to abuse his position and start saying disgracefully dangerous things about faith healing. There his rights must be temperred by his responsibilities.

If people subscribe to Spockism, then responsibilities will out, however the vital balance can only be maintained with meaningful dialogue... and tweets like that guy's are the enemy of meaningful dialogue, thus we have what some see as an over-sensitive treatment of his behaviour.

We're back to "Where's the line?" and "What do we do when people use free speech to convince the majority that we don't need free speech?" We have to have redundancy built into these laws.