What follows is offensive. The facts are unattractive and there is no hero in this story. On 30 April, two days after teacher Ann Maguire was stabbed to death by a pupil in Leeds, Jake Newsome, a 21-year-old man who had himself attended a secondary school on the other side of the city, posted on his Facebook page: "Personally im glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid… he shoulda pissed on her too".
"Thats not very nice" reads the first of 37 comments on his post. Others soon chipped in, addressing him by his nickname: "Greeny come on! You're better than that" wrote one. "Greeny seriously that's harsh" wrote another. "Greeny, not sure you should be saying this stuff on facebook man – people get in trouble for this kind of stuff".
A few days later, after his post had been shared more than 2,000 times, West Yorkshire police arrested and charged Newsome under the 2003 Communications Act with having sent "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature". Last week Newsome was jailed for six weeks, after pleading guilty, with the judge quoting his post back to him and saying: "I can think of little that could be more upsetting or offensive." (link to the rest of the story)
34 comments:
I'm now wrapping up a lecture series on Jurisprudence and the guy's been saying that SCOTUS has in modern times been narrowing the other two branches' power to limit speech in reaction to the New Deal and the newfound economic intrusivenes of government, i.e., the undermining of traditional property rights and freedom of contract.
I think he's talking about the theories of some guy named Ackerman.
Something to do with a 1-3 synthesis.
The Destruction of the Tea in Boston on December 16, 1773 was "grossly offensive" to some.
"Personally im glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid… he shoulda pissed on her too".
Seems to me that' a rather commonplace sentiment, frankly.
Maybe I hang with the wrong crowd or something.
One or two days in the county jail never killed anybody?
What's the worst thing that could happen?
"What's the worst thing that could happen?"
If he's a skilled writer, he could produce a manifesto in 1 or 2 days. Or worse: a pamphlet. Common Sense or The American Crisis. All hell could break loose.
Either that kid was beaten w. an ugly stick or he's got the worst Guy Fawkes mask ever.
No First Amendment over there.
No First Amendment over there.
That reminds me. That Jurispudence professor guy said that our understanding of free speech as the right to shoot your mouth off is ahistorical as it was originally (first regime) grounded in property rights.
Apparently the King of England stiffled dissent, in part, by literally confiscating printing presses.
I guess that would make it rather tough to make a living as a printer.
I kind of doubt the king paid fair market value for them but you never know.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of property.
I think that was John Locke's formulation.
Why Thomas Jefferson changed it to happiness, I don't know.
I'll bet he was a some kind of hippy/pinko/commie.
Once Jefferson started banging Sally Hemings the distinction was lost on him.
No pinko/Commie, just an agreement with Locke that self-sufficiency and self-direction beget "happiness":
"The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty." Locke
Hmmmm.
I'll give myself two marks out of four.
Probably a little too generous.
This is the kind of thing the politically correct and the progressives are trying to bring to America.
That is why the First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
This being the UK, the poster may serve more time than the stabber.
Cons get their panties in a bunch when someone doesn't say something nice about one of their recently deceased icons, and here they defend the expression of gratitude for murdering a teacher, and liken the sadistic act itself to rebelling against tyranny.
I think it's safe to say we can blame all evils in society on U.S. connies.
What this guy did was not reason enough to put him in jail. If you think that it is then you are beyond talking to about anything.
That's the problem. Cons don't understand the difference between not deserving jail and going out of one's way to offer a spirited defense of a patently despicable scoundrel. There's no rational conclusion: Just a with-us-against-them attitude. Some stances should just be plainly stated without turning it into a war on everything decent.
Do you really think the problem with what was said was that it was politically incorrect? It was about cheerleading murder in a country that's much less violent than (and almost as free as) us but still doing what it can to prevent a country within a country from replacing a more decent, established and civilized system of justice with sharia.
I see no need for and every reason to oppose such a law here. Also, people here would be sensible enough to criticize such a comment for cheerleading murder. They wouldn't make a political issue out of it.
The "Obama Phone" program started with a GOP congress under Clinton and continued under Bush but I saw the crazy black lady in that video too so I see what everyone's trying to get at by tying it to him.
The question is do we crimalize speech. Even nasty disgusting speech? Even speech that most people would find abhorrent?
And give felons who murdered and raped the vote because they will vote Democrat. Give every program to the lazy and stiff veterans.
Criminalize speech. Not action.
We don't and shouldn't criminalize speech, but we do threats. In this case it seems that they criminalized threats after-the-fact, maybe because they think it decreases future threats.
But that is Britain. They're more polite anyway. They don't go around threatening each other - so it's probably not a big issue. Criminalize saying "Gov'ner", however, and that might have caused a stir.
Felons should be given votes because a government that can tyrannically imprison anyone it wants to can take away the citizens' right to change and reform it. Do you think all the thought-crime "violators" in China should be given a vote? What about in North Korea? There's a conflict between a government denying basic rights and tying that to the right it has to imprison. We don't take away their right to speech, either - but maybe voting is a less important right to some people. I don't care who they vote for - just like I don't care what the speech is about or whom it offends. A felon should still have it. No one's asking to take away criminals' other basic rights. Hmmm...
No, we don't criminalize nasty, abhorrent or disgusting speech and the British stretched this by American standards. It's another one of those reasons I wouldn't want to live there. They're much more polite than Americans but I'll take our trashy behavior over their concern for decorum any day. It's just one of those shitty trade-offs I have to live with.
But that bill had a lot of things in it, some of it to keep consumers from being harassed by telecoms - which would be heaven in a country here where we let companies harass us in any way that's profitable to them.
And again, you should see some of the things they let their radicals get away with saying. Nothing that jihadists would feel comfortable in any way saying here. But there you have it: The speech needs to be said (and therefore allowed) to be challenged, so somehow they can protest challenges to overthrow the government there but murder praise goes punished. And yet, I've seen their jihadis praise mass murder time and again. That's probably what motivated the law, and yet, I don't see where it's worked - except in a stupid case like this.
How do you feel about a jihadi in America praising 911? Or a smaller but just as despicable and more recent act? I can see why we shouldn't prohibit that either - because it lets us see who supports what. But there they have a bigger problem with that and that's probably IMO what led to their tyrannical law. That, and they think being impolite is a horrible crime.
"This happened in England but if libs had their way it would happen here. Everyday."
Yep, that's the end game. In England, someone can record you making a private, racist comment to a girlfriend, and the police will come and arrest you. Here, for now at least, they just force you to sell your NBA team.
The weird disconnect liberals have is a feature not a bug to them. The motivation is hatred of conservatism, not a smiley, warm-hearted love of mankind.
The biggest supporters of Free speech in Czarist Russia were Stalin and Trotsky. Of course when the Bolsheviks took power, they changed their mind.
So rc, would you say you're a Tory?
That Guardian article also mentions that the European human rights commissioner (a Swede, no less) thought another sentence given a student who made racist tweets after a footballer had suffered a heart attack was wrong and excessive. Here's a link to a fuller piece on that -- the commissioner actually has some intelligent things to say.
It seems the Brits are outdoing the continentals in their zealotry to stamp out "offensive" speech. Odd.
Here's the thing. They are not looking to give back to voting rights to white collar or non-violent criminals. They want to give it to felons who murdered and raped and kidnapped people. Think what that would do in a county where there is a big jail. The Democrats want that because these are their voters.
They would take the voting rights away from conservatives. They would take free speech away from conservatives. They have already used the IRS to attack them. They will stoop to any level to win an election.
I think we have to worry about Obama using his pardon power. He might decide to pardon all felons. Even worse he might give a pardon to all illegal immigrants and register them as Democrats.
I put nothing past him. The rules do not apply to him.
You are going off the rails. The government imprisons people wrongly. It has no right to take away rights from people - white collar, blue collar whatever - only to keep others safe from them if convicted. You are not a conservative if you want to talk about how the government doesn't do anything right/the private sector always does everything better - but you want the government to say who can and can't vote. People believing that are going to go insane in America because it's a North Korean mentality. And no conservative's speech rights have been taken away. You are going delusional. The NBA is not a government institution. It's private. You hate what the private sector and the culture is doing and you want to blame it on the government, but no one is buying it. The NBA and the broader culture sanction/punish racism completely on their own. They don't need the government to do that. This is a multi-ethnic country that values equality and largely sees no profit in rewarding or excusing racism. We fought a war over it and Don Sterling and Shouting Thomas are not Abe Lincoln. You don't have to get over it but America is.
Your concern over Obama supposedly pardoning "all felons" makes me question your business/accounting acumen. It would be an insurmountable task. I'd ask you to relax but I worry you're getting too anxious to hear it. Seriously. All felons. What do I get when you're proven wrong? I mean, that would be a hell of a lot of unpardoned prisoners to backtrack on. Is this a racial fear? Seriously, how will anyone take anything you say seriously again once that sky-falling scenario doesn't materialize. I'm worried about you man.
Breaking news: Hillary delivers bomb threat to Simon & Schuster!
"I put nothing past him. The rules do not apply to him."
Oh, you mean the White Man's rules. The assertion of "white privilege" - well, Obama doesn't play by YOUR rules, Trooper. He's speaking to "truth to power", helping the unfortunate, and those who've been [insert Crack tirade]!
As wise Latina said, if you're not discriminating against Whites, you're a racist - and that's against the Constitution. So, in the same way, enforcing the immigration laws, is in fact, "unconstitutional".
"I put nothing past him. The rules do not apply to him."
Oh, you mean the White Man's rules. The assertion of "white privilege" - well, Obama doesn't play by YOUR rules, Trooper. He's speaking to "truth to power", helping the unfortunate, and those who've been [insert Crack tirade]!
As wise Latina said, if you're not discriminating against Whites, you're a racist - and that's against the Constitution. So, in the same way, enforcing the immigration laws, is in fact, "unconstitutional".
Post a Comment