juliet | Interesting things

If Indymedia want my support, they'll stop publishing articles supporting Holocaust denial. Until then, the FBI can ritually bumrape them for all I care.

See, I'm mostly concerned with the fact that a non-UK agency can seize UK property with no need to give any justification for this behaviour either at the time or afterwards. I'd be concerned about that whoever it was.

I don't especially like that, but seeing as we've now signed treaties saying that British citizens can be arrested in Britain on the sayso of a magistrate in any other EU country, losing a few disks for a while to the FBI when they belong to an organisation that is sympathetic to terrorists isn't exactly high on my list of worries.

People have a right to be protected by the law whether or not they are "sympathetic to terrorists" in someone else's opinion. And the USA isn't in the EU.

People's right to be protected from terrorists > People's right to support terrorists.

I am, in fact, you will be surprised to hear, aware of the geographical ambit of the European Union. But forgive me for being more worried that the Greeks can arrest me than that the Americans can look at my PC.

What I was getting at was really my fear that the Americans can come and look at my PC (and maybe arrest me) despite not being part of the EU.

What I was getting at was really that there are plenty of non-EU countries I would rather had legal rights here than EU countries, you know, specifically the ones that have jury trials, presumptions of innocence, defence lawyers, that kind of thing.

Yeah - that doesn't sound good, but is it not possible that they were (a) acting with the approval of the British authorities or (b) had a Court Order entitling them to seize the property.

Something just isn't right about this - why would the FBI risk creating a PR disaster for Bush's closest ally, weeks before the US elections? I can't believe that there wasn't British involvement somewhere along the line. And the lack of coverage in the mainstream press makes me wonder about what kind of reporting restrictions might have been imposed. It's fishy, decidely fishy.

It's been in The Register, Computer Weekly, Guardian, and a fair few American papers. Generally, when there's a reporting restriction, it doesn't get into the broadsheets...

> Sign the Indymedia petition

Not sure I want to...Hmmm. I'll think about it.

> Alien Loves Predator

I love their tag line.... "In New York no one can hear you scream".

Here's your starter for 10. What did a writer on Indymedia call the "most heinous ethnic cleansing of world history"

a) 'The' Holocaust
b) Some African shambles, let's say Rwanda, or Sudan perhaps?
c) The Armenian Genocide of 1915.
d) The dropping of the atom bombs on Japan
e) The expulsion of the Germans from Polish and Czech borderlands after 1945
f) The AIDS epidemic's disproportionate impact on Africa
g) The US attack on Iraq, 1990 through 2004, including sanctions era

No idea. I'll guess h) any of the above, although from what I remember of history e) didn't affect that many people.

Do you have a link to articles on their site supporting denial of the holocaust? I just looked and didn't see any, but I'd never heard of Indymedia until this incident.
I'm inclined to sign this petition in any case, because free speech doesn't mean much if it's restricted only to speech I like. I haven't signed it yet because I know so little about Indymedia.

Ah, I'm afraid it was (e). Here y'go.

http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2004/05/802998.shtml

We have lots of restrictions on free speech, most of them for damn good reasons.

(deleted comment)

Providing a platform for whackjobs is, unfortunately, a good way to get yourself associated with their whackjobbery, of course.

Take a look at the final comment on this page. BTW, John Paul Cupp has a known reputation as an utter crackpot (see

kennedybak's journal), and AFAIK has nothing at all to do with Indymedia.

Nothing to do with them apart from the fact that they are publishing his writings and therefore funding Holocaust denial.

Yes, funny that it's suddenly a spoof five months after it's posted, and after people start noticing it, rather than at the time... You'll excuse me for being a bit sceptical of a news organisation that evidently has no fact or quality control filter.

Here's a few more - I believe indymedia sites elsewhere in the world are part of the same dubious network, aren't they?

http://melbimc.nomasters.org/news/2004/06/71087.php
http://www.sdimc.org/en/2004/05/104243.shtml

You seem to think that because you disagree with some things that Indymedia has published, that they should not have the same rights as other people/organisations.

I don't especially think those who recklessly promote denial of the Holocaust should have any rights at all. This isn't about 'disagreeing with something they have published' as though whether or not the Holocaust happened is a debate in the same way 'Do you like Kylie's new single' is a debate.

I don't especially think those who recklessly promote denial of the Holocaust should have any rights at all.

In that case we are doomed to differ. I fundamentally believe that human rights have to extend to all humans, no matter how odious. Part of that stems from the selfish belief that if they don't, people who find my way of life abhorrent can take those rights from me.

I also think the best way to deal with whackjobs is to have their beliefs out in the open for all to ridicule and beware of, but that's a separate issue.

Actually it's a pretty similar issue, and your view is one which leads inexorably to the principle of the BNP roadshow, that the best way to stop the BNP would be to take their leaders round every town in the country, encouraging them to address public meetings.

I think there's a reason why every antifascist group I've ever known takes the opposite approach.

I think there's a reason why I tend to suspect the antifa of being a bunch of dangerous fuckwits.

My best guess: It's because you're a liberal and not part of a visible minority. Also, you don't live somewhere with a serious far-right problem.

Thugs have no legitimate place in the political process. Both the fascists and the antifa tolerate (and to some greater or lesser extent, encourage) thuggery on their behalf; therefore, they are both dangerous fuckwits.
(Also, I rejected the terminology of left and right to a significant extent some time ago; it lumps looney propertarian gun nuts in the same category as fascists, and state communists in the same category as anarchosyndicalists, proving its own bogosity.)

They're quite different. Antifascists who espouse violence hurt people because they have chosen to be Nazis. Nazis who espouse violence hurt people because they were born a different colour or sexuality. This isn't complicated.

1) Antifascists make trouble for (non-fascist) bands with ambiguous imagery.
2) Not all fascists are national socialists.

Whew, that guy writes like a 12 year-old. The "inverted commas" hurt my eyes (and my brain).

i can't think of any damn good reasons except maybe where campaign finance is concerned.

OK, restrictions on free speech which I think are good ones.

1) If I ring someone up and say "Hey, let's go out and rob a bank this afternoon, here's where you can buy some big guns", that's two crimes, and rightly so.

2) If I stand at the top of the high street and say "Hey, blacks are taking over the country, and faggots too, let's kill them all, come on, kill them now!" that's one crime, and one thing that probably is, and ought to be firmed up to be.

3) If I write all over my LJ "

the23 is a paeodophile who has sex with little boys", that's a civil offence, and I can be bound over not to say it again, and rightly so.

4) If I ring up the fire brigade and say "hey, the house across the road from me is on fire, come quickly!", and it in fact isn't, that's a crime, and rightly so.

5) If I find out at work that we are providing secure transport for nuclear material which could be used to make a dirty bomb, and there's a flaw in the security, and instead of fixing it, I ring up my local Al Qaeda supporter, that's a crime, and rightly so.

6) If I write a newspaper article saying that the UK should stop being a monarchy, that's a crime, and on reflection probably didn't ought to be.

someone has already tried something remarkably similar to 3) (i'm not kidding) and my world didn't fall apart at the seams so i'll happily rule that one out.

in 1) we are talking about conspiracy which frankly i'm not sure about (the law is certainly too strict, but that isn't to say that all conspiracy is fine) and if the secondary point is something to do with guns I ought to be able to buy any gun from anyone. 5) is similar.

2) is similar but instead of conspiracy and guns we have threats and racism. Voicing racist opinions definitely shouldn't be illegal and if the threat are as vague and ridiculous as in this example they clearly shouldn't be taken seriously either. That's not to say though that calling someone and threatening to kill them shouldn't be illegal, and you could say that impinges on freedom of speech.

4) has some validity although i'm sure it ought to be a civil issue rather than a criminal one (given that the fire brigade should be private).

given that the fire brigade should be private

Oh, sorry, my mistake, I didn't realise you were a libertarian, or I wouldn't have entered into a debate at all.

ha! you're coming on like tony blair.

Oh I just find it worth it, I'm a socialist, and I believe in the power of the state to do good, I believe that the private sector tends to deliver for those who are already wealthy (though I do believe in markets). I can argue with conservatives and liberals, I have enough in common with them to work out why we disagree and what about. Arguing with libertarians is like having a debate about the answer to a maths problem with someone who is using base 26, we'll never agree. Fortunately 99.9% of people round here think libertarians are wacko nutjobs, so it doesn't much matter.

that's one reason why i am reluctant to come back. i don't care what people think of me, but living somewhere so expensive just seems far too muchlike hard work to me. the one incentive to come back involves the one area where blair has shown an inclination to be liberal - gambling.

Doesn't feel especially expensive here. I dunno, maybe I don't have anything sensible to use as a comparator.

well i don't live in a cheap area by us standards, but houses in the less entertaining midlands seem to be around twice the price and rent is much lower here even though i'm in something of a cultural hub, taxes are lower (we pay 13.7% of our declared income in income taxes but most of that is for social security (=national insurance) and there is no sales tax), running a vehicle is much cheaper (i'm not sure about insurance though), there is no tv licence to pay (of course there isn't a whole lot of beeb), no equivalent of council tax (unless you are a property owner). we live comfortably (large apartment, two vehicles, cell phone, cable internet and tv, plenty of alcohol and frequent social outings including many to seattle) on around $25k a year. anything over that is saved for retirement. i reckon to live this way in england would require more like 25 thousand quid and that would be feasible but it would mean much more work. there is no way i could do so in such beautiful surroundings sinc eall the nice bits of the uk are too remote or hideously expensive. now if only they would legalise betting on the internet here.....

Dunno, I earn 22k, I have a large flat (which I do own), it's opposite a park and close to both the motorway and the railway station, I go to London at least twice a month, run a car... granted there's only one of me, I don't think two of us could live like this on that amount of money. On the other hand, I need regular medical treatment, and it costs me nothing.

Any public service ultimately comes from somewhere, and the overall difference isn't that great - taxes as a percentage of GDP in the US are just under 30%, in the UK they're around 38%. You could always move to Mexico (under 20%). Cost of living calculator says Seattle is 25% cheaper than London, dunno how quickly it tails off in each case as you move out of the city.

if you earned the equivalent of 22k here you would most likely have free (or very cheap) health insurance through work too. seattle is one of the more expensive cities in the us. i live in portland (which at 160 or so miles away is nearby by us standards) and it is apparently 15% cheaper to live here than in seattle.

(selfish as it may be) tax as a percentage of gdp isn't really my concern here. since the top rates of income tax aren't that dissimilar (although the brackets are), but sales tax/VAT (which i believe is compounded unlike sales tax which is only applied once in the states where it exists - not this one) rates are vastly different (17.5% for you and 0% for me and around 5% for many americans), i think the tax system may well be more progressive here (actually not something i support at the ballot box, but it does benefit me).

Here, friend for you, argue / agree with him.

tithonus

I'm not so much worried about free speech as about the issues of legal framework - stuff being seized without people being told why, that sort of thing.

Exactly. And being fuckwits shouldn't exempt you from that legal protection.

That's true, but also Indymedia aren't fuckwits.
They publish stories that are ignored by the mainstream
media, some of them very important. The opinions of
contributors are often controversial, and occasionally
they're completely insane, but nobody is forcing you
to agree with some random nutcase!

I guess I fundamentally disagree with beingjdc insofar
as I don't think the expression of wrongheaded beliefs
should be criminalised, whatever they concern.

(A proud signatory of the petition.)

You'd repeal laws banning incitement to racial hatred, and criminal offences of conspiracy, or not?

Anyway, I wasn't saying that they should be criminalised, I'm saying that the fact they hate Jews so much they will publish articles claiming that the most wronged people in human history were the Germans in 1945 is a *good indicator* that some of their 'reporters' might have something on these famous hard disks that might help the legitimate authorities in the prevention of terrorism.

Indymedia site going down for a couple of days, versus innocent people dying in terrorist attacks. I'm not finding this a very hard choice, obviously my moral compass is broken.

So where do you place a limit on invasive procedures in order to prevent terrorism? It's ok to take disks without a warrant in a region outside your jurisdiction, if it's to prevent terrorism, because fuckwits have been known to post on the site.
If that's a good indicator, how about raiding homes of people without a warrant because they are related to or work with people suspected of terrorism? Or related to or work with racists?
Racist != terrorist by default, any more than being of any race = terrorist.

"Indymedia site going down for a couple of days, versus innocent people dying in terrorist attacks."
False comparison. If the FBI can take disks from a company outside the US, what's stopping them seizing property or people of anyone in the world who exhibits 'good indicators' of terrorist sympathies. For example, anyone who's been to various countries in the Middle East - which marks you out for special questioning at US immigration. Must be a good indicator.

Fuckwits posting on the site is quite different in this case, when the site claims to be a news organisation. It's not like they're posting on the "we love osama" LJ community. The URL states 'newswire'. That's because they want people to accept that their reporting is the 'hidden truth' that the capitalist-(hem hem euphemism)-owned media doesn't want you to hear.

Fundamentally, I'm more scared of the bad guys than the good guys, though I appreciate that evil perpetrated by the notional good guys makes for better conspiracy theory fiction, which is why The Matrix was better than Men in Black. But it isn't the real world.

Fair enough re first para.
Re second - if the good guys think that what they do is good because they're the good guys, that can lead to worse consequences than the bad guys that everyone was watching closely.

Like Senator McCarthy who was a good American patriot.
Like nice Uncle Joe Stalin, staunch ally of Britain and the US.
Like Saddam Hussein, who was fighting the bad Iranians and was helped by the West.
To mention a few 'good guys' in real life who could have done with being checked earlier.

We've been through a period of history when we had to do an awful lot of messy choosing the lesser of two evils. If anything, the choice is clearer now than it has been in over half a century.

Hmm, I hope Juliet doesn't mind her journal comments
turning into a spirited debate. (If you do mind, Juliet,
let me know and I'll shut up.)

Ah, the vexed question of how far we should extend
the right to freedom of speech. There are no easy
answers, and I wouldn't pretend otherwise. Personally
I think incitement (to activity of any kind) can usefully be
distinguished from the expression of beliefs; but of
course there's no magic formula for making that distinction
in any particular case and there are murky grey areas.
Similarly, although I do worry about the wide scope
of our conspiracy laws, conspiring to do
something is not the same as saying what you think
about it!

I suspect that our actual differences are rather slight.
If the lives of innocent people (or even guilty
people for that matter) can be saved by seizing IM's
disks - which, though I have doubts, is not impossible -
then seize them by all means! But I think it's incumbent
on the authorities in such a situation to explain as
clearly and publicly as possible why they felt it necessary
to do such a thing.

In other words, there need to be checking mechanisms
to ensure that official powers designed to prevent 'terrorism'
are not misused. Is that unreasonable?

Yes, but the answer is probably something like "a spy in a terrorist group told us they had contact with person x in planning terrorist acts", and giving that answer is a pretty good way of getting your spy jumped. It's kind of the point of the secret services, they keep secrets.

Secret police can only do their job if they're secret.
Secret police are an essential element of maintaining the security of a state. Even Canada has secret police, I'm sure.

It's not as though secrecy is black and white; that either you never explain the reason for anything, or else you publish the details of all your investigations on the internet. When I say "as clearly and publicly as possible", I take that to imply reasonable constraints.

It seems to be in the nature of secret organisations to be as secretive as possible, rather than merely as secretive as necessary. There's an interesting article in the current LRB arguing that the CIA should be abolished. I don't know whether to agree with the conclusion, but the article gives plenty examples of that phenomenon and how it has backfired in the past.

hear, hear.

A point on laws banning incitement to racial hatred: They haven't made the BNP go away. They haven't even materially altered the actual beliefs and policies of the BNP; I'm willing to bet that the likes of Griffin are as racist now as they were 20 years ago.
However, laws formulated to obstruct the dissemination of racist policy (a worthy goal) have forced the BNP to adjust the declared character of its policies in such a manner to present the appearance of respectability, and thus of electoral plausibility.
The intelligent listener can still tell that they're racist scum, of course.

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Let's see how far this goes, then...

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